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The many beliefs and practices of Judaism
were not developed all at once. They were gathered slowly through the
course of a long history—one of the longest histories of any living
civilization.
 THE
ORIGIN OF THE DIASPORA
The early history of the Jews is recorded in the Bible and in the
Talmud and Midrash. Following this period, the long years of Jewish
wandering began when, in the year 70 C.E., Titus led the Roman forces
through the walls of Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple of the
Jews. The Jews considered themselves in exile (the Diaspora or
“dispersing”) from the Promised Land, and they were scattered among
the nations of the world. When such a Diaspora had overtaken other nations
in ancient times, the people had slowly assimilated to local populations
and disappeared. This would not be the case for the Jews.
In Babylonia, a large Jewish community flourished. Here, the Talmud
was completed around 500 C.E. (a smaller, lesser-known, Talmud had been
compiled in the Holy Land slightly earlier). Possibly because it was
written in the Diaspora, the Babylonian Talmud became the basis for Jewish
ritual practice and belief, community planning, individual and group
conduct, government among Jews, and a basic understanding of the Bible
from that time forward. In Europe great Jewish communities were
established in Spain, Germany, and Poland over the centuries, each
contributing to a growing Jewish tradition.
Jews were often persecuted and uprooted. Communities along the Rhine
in what is now modern Germany and France were destroyed by the Crusades.
The Spanish Jewish community flourished in a Gold Age only to find itself
sent into a new exile by the Inquisition, A populous Jewish community in
Poland was eventually torn by pogroms— organized attacks and
massacres encouraged by the church and sometimes instigated by the state.
MODERN
JEWISH WANDERINGS
At the very beginning of the modern period, Jews were already
seeking refuge in the United States. As each wave of persecution hit the
Jews of Europe and Asia, waves of Jewish immigrants came to the New World.
First to appear were Jews who had fled Spain and Portugal. From
settlements in England, Holland, and South America, they slowly made their
way to the Thirteen Colonies that would later form the United States. Jews
fleeing Germany followed them in the nineteenth century. And Jews fleeing
Poland and Russia arrived in the United States in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, crowding into Jewish neighborhoods like the
Lower East Side in New York. The freedoms guaranteed by the separation of
church and state in the United States, and the promise of unlimited wealth
and prosperity in the New World, drew Jewish immigrants from villages and
cities alike.
Throughout the years of the Diaspora, small groups of Jews came to
settle in Palestine (the name give to the Land of Israel by in Roman
times). Most settled in towns where they lived observant lives and
studied, supported by charity from Jewish communities in the Diaspora. In
modern times, some few came to buy small parcels of land, attempting to
eke out a living as farmers. As conditions in Europe worsened, Zionism
flourished. Jews coming to Israel found that the land could support farms,
vineyards, and orchards. They set out to create a modern Jewish society,
one that would not be reliant upon charity from abroad. But the Turkish
government was only sometimes tolerant and never really friendly. In 1917,
however, the Turks were forced to allow the government of Great Britain to
administer Palestine, and the Zionists obtained a promise from the British
government. Britain officially declared that it would aid the Jews in
establishing a new homeland in Palestine.
THE
HOLOCAUST AND THE STATE OF ISRAEL
Alas, the tide of history was against the Jews one more time. In
1933 Hitler rose to power in Germany, and twelve years later, at the end
of the Second World War, a shocked and horrified world learned that the
Nazi government and its allies had destroyed six million Jews. (For the
history of the Holocaust, see The Holocaust: An
End to Innocence.) Nationalism
had also seized the local Arab populations in Palestine and in the Arab
countries surrounding it. Their sudden claim that Palestine belonged to
the Arab nations came as a great disappointment to the Jewish people. In
the face of it, Great Britain would never complete its commitment to aid
the Jewish settlers in the Promised Land.
Despite this, in May of 1948, the State of Israel was created by the
new United Nations, and the new state was immediately attacked by the Arab
nations that surrounded it on three sides. A fierce war, which the Arab
nations had intended to end by driving the Jews into the sea, ended
instead as Israel’s War of Independence. But no peace treaty was signed
and the new nation still required supported from the Jewish communities of
the United States and Europe. More wars followed, but the new State of
Israel grew and prospered. Trees were planted to create forests and
improve the climate of the country, swamps were drained and land was
reclaimed for agriculture, factories appeared and flourished, and high
technology and advanced science were pursued as prospects for a bright
future developed.
The American Jewish community had prospered, too, growing stronger
with each passing generation. Canada and Mexico had become strongholds of
Jewish activity. Jewish communities were flourishing in England,
continental Europe, South America, Australia, and South Africa. It will
still require many generations to recover from the horrors of the death
camps of World War II and to rebuild the Jewish population of the world,
but it cannot be denied that the future is hopeful.
AN
HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS
Jews look upon this history as an important part of their Jewish
tradition. They have comprised a significant and involved minority in
every epoch of Western civilization and in the history of the Islamic
peoples of Spain and North Africa, as well. Jewish greats have often been
world greats. A sampling of well-known Jewish figures of the present
century would include the following: Sigmund Freud, the father of modern
psychoanalysis; Martin Buber, the teacher of humanitarian philosophy;
Albert Einstein, the mathematician and scientist; Golda Meir, the Prime
Minister of the State of Israel; Jonas Salk, the
discoverer of the anti-polio vaccine; Franz Kafka, the great writer; Marc
Chagall, the brilliant artist; Louis Brandeis, the outstanding
American lawyer and jurist; and Stephen Spielberg, the maker of movie
magic. Jews are, of course, proud of the many
achievements of their people. But equally as important, from a Jewish
perspective, are the many individuals, known and unknown, who worked to
build a more peaceful world—people who believed with perfect faith that
history moves in an inexorable direction toward the end of days and the
world to come. It is this sense of history that enables Jews to continue
searching for the ways of God
while helping one another.
(c) 2008 by Seymour Rossel
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