The Russian Revolution, the Holocaust, the creation of the State of Israel, the rise of American Jewry—each of these developments put its own stamp on the meaning of Jewishness, and of the Jewish past. How, then, does that past appear from the vantage point of our own moment? What does being a Jewish historian in the twenty-first century allow one to see, and what does it obscure? These are the questions raised by two major new surveys of the subject: “A History of Judaism” (Princeton), by Martin Goodman, and “The Story of the Jews: Volume Two: Belonging, 1492-1900” (Ecco), the newest installment of a trilogy by Simon Schama.
In certain obvious ways, the two books present very different approaches to the topic. Goodman, as his title declares, is interested in the history of Judaism—that is, of the religious ideas and practices that have defined Jewish life over the millennia. He discusses matters like the order of sacrifices in the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, the doctrinal arguments between different Jewish sects in the Roman Empire, and the varieties of Jewish mysticism, or Kabbalah. Schama, on the other hand, is less interested in Judaism than in Jews—individual human beings who have thrived and suffered. His subjects are by no means the people who did most to shape the Judaism of their time: we meet only a few theologians or rabbis in these pages. Rather, Schama is fascinated by figures like Dan Mendoza, a celebrity boxer in late-eighteenth-century England, and Uriah Levy, a Jewish lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, who purchased Thomas Jefferson’s house, Monticello, in 1834. “The Story of the Jews” is a pageant of microhistories, told in an engaging and dramatic style, which some novelist or playwright ought to plunder for material, the way Shakespeare used Holinshed’s Chronicles.
Despite this difference in focus, however, it is clear that Goodman and Schama, who both grew up Jewish in Britain after the Second World War, share some basic assumptions about what Jewish history teaches. For one thing, unlike their Germanic predecessors, they are empiricists. Neither has any interest in metaphysical principles or historical missions; they do not aim to justify Judaism as a constructive force in world history. These aspects of the Jewish historian’s work have dropped away, partly under the pressure of modern conceptions of scholarly detachment, and partly thanks to a greater confidence in the right of Jews to have their story told.
Instead, Goodman and Schama emphasize the diversity within Judaism. In keeping with the temper of the times—or what that temper seemed to be, until fairly recently—they are in favor of pluralism and against essentialism. This can be seen in the way each chooses to begin the story of the Jews. One might think that the obvious approach would be to begin at the beginning, with Abraham, who, in the Book of Genesis, is called by God to be the father of a great nation. This was the origin of the Jewish people, according to its own age-old self-understanding: Jewish tradition refers to “Abraham our father,” emphasizing the biological kinship between members of the same people.