Jewish History by S. M. Dubnow (top 10 best books of all time txt) 📖

a hierarchy animated by the isolating spirit of caste that flourished among all the other peoples of the Orient. The populace discovered only the ceremonial side of the religion; its kernel was hidden from their sight. Defective spiritual culture made the people susceptible to alien influences, to notions more closely akin to its understanding. Residence in Canaan, among related Semitic tribes that had long before separated from the Israelites, and adopted altogether different views and customs, produced a far greater metamorphosis in the character of the Israelites than the sojourn in Egypt. After the first flush of victory, when the unity of the Israelitish people had been weakened by the particularistic efforts of several of the tribes, the spiritual bonds confining the nation began to relax. Political decay always brings religious defection in its train. Whenever Israel came under the dominion of the neighboring tribes, he also fell a victim to their cult. This phenomenon is throughout characteristic of the so-called era of the Judges. It is a natural phenomenon readily explained on psychologic grounds. The Mosaic national conception of the “Eternal” entered more and more deeply into the national consciousness, and, accommodating itself to the limited mental capacity of the majority, became narrower and narrower in compass—the lot of all great ideas! The “Eternal” was no longer thought of as the only One God of the whole universe, but as the tutelar deity of the Israelitish tribe. The idea of national tutelar deities was at that time deeply rooted in the consciousness of all the peoples of Western Asia. Each nation, as it had a king of its own, had a tribal god of its own. The Phoenicians had their Baal, the Moabites their Kemosh, the Ammonites their Milkom. Belief in the god peculiar to a nation by no means excluded belief in the existence of other national gods. A people worshiped its own god, because it regarded him as its master and protecting lord. In fact, according to the views then prevalent, a conflict between two nations was the conflict between two national deities. In the measure in which respect for the god of the defeated party waned, waxed the number of worshipers of the god of the victorious nation, and not merely among the conquerors, but also among the adherents of other religions.[10] These crude, coarsely materialistic conceptions of God gained entrance with the masses of the Israelitish people. If Moab had his Kemosh, and Ammon his Milkom, then Israel had his “Eternal,” who, after the model of all other national gods, protected and abandoned his “clients” at pleasure, in the one case winning, in the other losing, the devotion of his partisans. In times of distress, in which the Israelites groaned under the yoke of the alien, the enslaved “forgot” their “conquered”

“Eternal.” As they paid the tribute due the strange king, and yielded themselves to his power, so they submitted to the strange god, and paid him his due tribute of devotion. It followed that liberation from the yoke of the stranger coincided with return to the God of Israel, the “Eternal.” At such times the national spirit leaped into flaming life. This sums up the achievements of the hero-Judges. But the traces of repeated backsliding were deep and long visible, for, together with the religious ideas of the strange peoples, the Israelites accepted their customs, as a rule corrupt and noxious customs, in sharp contrast with the lofty principles of the Mosaic Law, designed to control social life and the life of the individual.

 

[10] “Ye have forsaken me,” says God unto Israel, “and served other gods; wherefore I will deliver you no more. Go and cry unto the gods which ye have chosen: let them deliver you in the time of your tribulations” (Judges X, 13-14). The same idea is brought out still more forcibly in the arguments adduced by Jephthah in his message to the king of Ammon (more correctly, Moab), who had laid claim to Israelitish lands: “Thou,” says Jephthah, “mayest possess that which Kemosh thy god giveth thee to possess, but what the Lord our God giveth us to possess, that will we possess” (Judges xi, 24). Usually these words are taken ironically; to me they seem to convey literal truth rather than irony.

 

The Prophet Samuel, coming after the unsettled period of the Judges, had only partial success in purifying the views of the people and elevating it out of degradation to a higher spiritual level. His work was continued with more marked results in the brilliant reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon. An end was put to the baleful disunion among the tribes, and the bond of national tradition was strengthened. The consolidated Israelitish kingdom triumphed over its former oppressors.

The gods of the strange peoples cringed in the dust before the all-powerful “Eternal.” But, with the division of the kingdom and the political rupture between Judah and Israel, the period of efflorescence soon came to an end. Again confusion reigned supreme, and customs and convictions deteriorated under foreign influence.

Prophets like Elijah and Elisha, feverish though their activity was, stood powerless before the rank immorality in the two states. The northern kingdom of Israel, composed of the Ten Tribes, passed swiftly downward on the road to destruction, sharing the fate of the numberless Oriental states whose end was inevitable by reason of inner decay. The inspired words of the early Israelitish Prophets, Amos, Hosea, and Micah, their trumpet-toned reproofs, their thrilling admonitions, died unheeded upon the air—society was too depraved to understand their import. It was reserved for later generations to give ear to their immortal utterances, eloquent witnesses to the lofty heights to which the Jewish spirit was permitted to mount in times of general decline. The northern kingdom sank into irretrievable ruin.

Then came the turn of Judah. He, too, had disregarded the law of “sanctification” from Sinai, and had nearly arrived at the point of stifling his better impulses in the morass of materialistic living.

 

At this critical moment, on the line between to be and not to be, a miracle came to pass. The spirit of the people, become flesh in its noblest sons, rose aloft. From out of the midst of the political disturbances, the frightful infamy, and the moral corruption, resounded the impressive call of the great Prophets of Judah. Like a flaming torch carried through dense darkness, they cast a glaring light upon the vices of society, at the same time illuminating the path that leads upward to the goal of the ethical ideal. At first the negative, denouncing element predominated in the exhortations of the Prophets: unsparingly they scourged the demoralization and the iniquity, the social injustice and the political errors prevalent in their time; they threatened divine punishment, that is, the natural consequences of evil-doing, and appealed to the reason rather than the feelings of the people. But gradually they elaborated positive ideals, more soul-stirring than the ideals identified with the old religious tradition. The Prophets were the first to touch the root of the evil.

It is clear that they realized that alien influences and the low grade of intelligence possessed by the masses were not the sole causes of the frequent backsliding of the people. The Jewish doctrine itself bore within it the germ of error. The two chief pillars of the old faith—the nationalizing of the God-idea, and the stress laid upon the cult, the ceremonial side of religion, as compared with moral requirements—were first and foremost to be held responsible for the flagrant departures from the spirit of Judaism. This was the direction in which reform was needed. Thereafter the sermons of the Prophets betray everywhere the intense desire, on the one hand, to restore to the God-idea its original universal character, and, on the other hand, while strongly emphasizing the importance of morality in the religious and the social sphere, to derogate from the value of the ceremonial system. The “Eternal” is no longer the national God of Israel, belonging to him exclusively; He becomes the God of the whole of mankind, the same Elohim, Creator and Preserver of the world, whom the Patriarchs had worshiped, and to whom, being His creatures, all men owe worship. His precepts and His laws of morality are binding upon all nations; they will bring salvation and blessing to all without distinction.[11] The ideal of piety consists in the profession of God and a life of rectitude. The time will come when all nations will be penetrated by true knowledge of God and actuated by the noblest motives; then will follow the universal brotherhood of man.

Until this consummation is reached, and so long as Israel is the only nation formally professing the one true God, and accepting His blessed law, Israel’s sole task is to embody in himself the highest ideals, to be an “ensign to the nations,” to bear before them the banner of God’s law, destined in time to effect the transformation of the whole of mankind. Israel is a missionary to the nations. As such he must stand before them as a model of holiness and purity. Here is the origin of the great idea of the spiritual “Messianism” of the Jewish people, or, better, its “missionism,” an eternal idea, far more comprehensive than the old idea of national election, which it supplanted.

 

[11] Two Biblical passages, the one from Deuteronomy, the other from Deutero-Isaiah, afford a signal illustration of the contrast between the religious nationalism of the Mosaic law and the universalism of the Prophets. Moses says to Israel: “Thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth. The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people: for ye were the fewest of all people. But because the Lord loved you….” (Deut. vii, 6-8).

And these are the words of the prophecy: “Listen, O isles, unto me, and hearken, ye people, from far! The Lord hath called me… and said unto me, Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified! But I had thought, I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nought, and in vain; yet surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my work with my God.

For now said the Lord unto me… It is too light a thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: no, I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach unto the end of the earth” (Is. xlix, 1-6).

 

These sublime teachings were inculcated at the moment in which Judah was hastening to meet his fate. It had become impossible to check the natural results of the earlier transgressions. The inevitable happened; Babylon the mighty laid her ponderous hand upon tiny Judah.

But Judah could not be crushed. From the heavy chastisement the Jewish nation emerged purified, re-born for a new life.

VI

THE SECONDARY OR SPIRITUAL-POLITICAL PERIOD

 

The rank and file of a people are instructed by revolutions and catastrophes better than by sermons. More quickly than Isaiah and Jeremiah, Nebuchadnezzar brought the Jews to a recognition of their tasks. The short span of the Babylonian Exile (586-538 B. C. E.) was a period of introspection and searching self-examination for the people.

Spiritual forces hitherto latent came into play; a degree of self-consciousness asserted itself. The people grasped its mission. At last it comprehended that to imitate inferior races, instead of teaching them and making itself a model for them to follow, was treason to its vocation in life. When the hour of release from the Babylonian yoke struck, the people suddenly saw under its feet “a new