Part II

No attempt at writing a sketch of this nature can be complete without mentioning the seminal work “Zakhor; Jewish History and Jewish Memory” by the late Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi.

Yerushalmi contends that “only in Israel and nowhere else is the injunction to remember felt as a religious imperative to an entire people… They reach a crescendo in Deuteronomy: “Remember the days of old, consider the years of ages past” (interestingly, Targum Yonatan ben Uziel explicates this verse as an enjoinment to study Tanach—more on that another time). The biblical appeal to remember thus has little to do with curiosity about the past. Israel is told only that it must be a kingdom of priests and a holy people… Not only is Israel under no obligation to remember the entire past… it is above all God’s intervention in history and man’s responses to them, be they positive or negative, that must be recalled.”

This recalls what Hanna Arendt wrote in her “Between Past and Future” where she makes a distinction between the Greek concept of history and the Hebrew rejection of such a concept: Greek historiography, like Greek poetry, is concerned with greatness; men almost become the equals of nature. Hebrew teachings differ in that it stresses the sacredness of life above all else (to wit, even deeply righteous figures are imperfect and subject to imperfection and sin).

Yerushalmi: “If Herodotus was the father of history, the father of meaning in history were the Jews.”

He continues: “Many of the biblical narratives seem almost calculated to deflate the national pride, for the real danger is not so much what happened in the past will be forgotten, as the more crucial aspect how it happened.”

It is hard not to be reminded of the prescient saying by George Santayana: “Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes.”

This also seems to recall the Talmudic passage from BT Megillah 14a (which Yerushalmi fails to mention):

“Were there no more prophets? But is it not written, “And there was a man from Ramataim-Tzophim” (I Samuel 1:1), [which we interpret] one of 200 prophets [zophim] who prophesied to Israel? There were actually very many, as it has been taught, “Many prophets arose for Israel, double the number of [the Israelites] who came out of Egypt; only the prophecy that contained a lesson for future generations was written down, and that which did not contain such a lesson was not written.”

Yerushalmi observes that at about the year 100 CE the Jews seemed to have stopped writing even sacred history. The works of Josephus vanished from among the Jews. It would be almost 15 centuries before a Jew would actually call himself an historian. In the interim, Jewish memory moved instead through ritual and liturgy and in rabbinic customs and law.

Yerushalmi rejects the notion that the rabbis were no longer interested in history. In fact, the rabbis regarded themselves as heirs to the prophets for they had thoroughly assimilated their worldview, “they already knew of history what they needed to know; they obviously felt that they had all the history that they required.” For the rabbis, the Bible was not only a repository of past history but a revealed pattern of the whole of history; they knew that history had a purpose and that the Jewish people had a central role to play in the process. For instance, the catastrophe of the Roman destruction was due, like its Babylonian predecessor, to sin (although idolatry was no longer the main factor). Most importantly, the Roman triumph, like its Babylonian counterpart, would not last forever.

Yerushalmi: “What had happened long ago had determined what had occured since, and even provided the fundamental explanation for what was still transpiring.”

In the post-Temple period, Yerushalmi identifies four particular vehicles of Jewish memory: new penitential prayers inserted into the liturgy; memorial books in each community and “second Purims” to celebrate fresh deliverances (a subject I want to dedicate a separate series to); and special fast days for the catastrophes from which there had been no deliverance.

A small number of works dedicated to history were recorded in the Middle Ages, but these served a specific need. For instance, in the Medieval Period, several works that recorded the transmission of the Torah were penned, e.g., Epistle of Sherira Gaon; Seder Olam; Shalshelet HaKabalah by Rabbi Gedalia Ibn Yahya; Seder Hakabalah by Raabad, etc. These were apparently written in order to deal with new challenges to rabbinic “Orthodoxy,” such as nascent Islam and, within the Jewish people, the rising threat of Karaism.

It is, however, interesting to note at least several rabbis who lamented the dearth of Jewish historiography. One in particular, the Sephardic poet and rabbi Moses Ibn Ezra writes: “And they [the Jewish nation] did not write their chronicles and remember their histories and traditions… It would have been befitting that they should not have ignored and despised such matters… All the other nations have exerted themselves to write their histories and excel in them.”

To be continued…

By Joel Davidi Weisberger

 Joel S. Davidi Weisberger is the founder of the Jewish History Channel and an independent researcher. His forthcoming books deal with the history and historiography of the Medieval Karaite movement and the story of the Sephardic Diaspora in Central and Eastern Europe. He resides in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, with his wife Michal and would love to hear from you at   [email protected].