Reflection on History of the Jews Volume Five by Heinrich Graetz

               This book, published in 1891, is the oldest book I think I’ve read in a long time (besides the Tanakh). It was a good history though a little heavy at points going into specific persecutions. I would have liked a more holistic history and more information on the development of Reform Judaism. Graetz hates Kabbalah and mysticism and loves rationality. He is definitely very biased in that aspect, but his biases are clear since he makes no effort to hide them.

He has a really great and dramatic type of writing, like when he talks about Mendelssohn rescuing Ashkenazi Jews from the ignorance that they held. I think that his interpretations of what the religion was about were really interesting. He writes that, “Judaism recognizes the freedom of religious convictions. Original, pure Judaism, therefore, contains no binding articles of belief, no symbolical books, by which the faithful were compelled to swear and affirm their incumbent duty. Judaism prescribes not faith, but knowledge, and it urges that its doctrines be taken to heart. In this despised religion everyone may think, opine, and err as he pleases, without incurring the guilt of heresy. Its right of inflicting punishment begins only when evil thoughts become acts. Why? Because Judaism is not revealed religion, but revealed legislation. Its first precept is not, ‘thou shalt believe or not believe,’ but, ‘thou shalt do or abstain from doing.’” Another great passage is the following: “a nation actually did arise from the darkness of the tomb, the only example chronicled in the annals of man. This resuscitated people, the Jewish race, endeavored at its resurrection to collect its thoughts and memories, and recall a vision of its glorious past; feeling itself to be at once old and young, rich in memories and lacking in experience, chained to the hoary antiquity by a perfect sequence of events, yet seeming as if of yesterday. I think that the best thing about the book is how Graetz’s love of Judaism and the Jewish people shines through his writing.

I noticed a few really interesting things that I want to point out. One is that after their conquest by Napoleon, many German states reacted against the Jews, blaming them for the German defeat. This is very similar to the “stabbed in the back” theory that gained popularity among anti-Semitic Germans after World War One. Another is that Polish Judaism had become totally about the Talmud. Young Jewish scholars knew nothing of the Jewish writings or khetuvim, and only really knew the Talmud. It is so bizarre to think that the Talmud was studied more than the Tanakh but that’s the way it was. I was also shocked at how long discrimination of Jews went on for. Jews were not considered citizens of the countries they lived in until the French Revolution, after which we were slowly emancipated in Europe, ending with Romania in 1922. Even in Great Britain, Baron Lionel de Rothschild couldn’t enter the House of Commons because he was Jewish when he attempted from 1847 to 1851.