Author Paul Johnson’s “History of Jews” is a massive book dedicated for an interesting subject of human history: origin and turbulent journey to survive, maintain the identity of Jews with a majority of individuals against the total global population, they, however, influenced and boldly imprinted on the historical process. This influence is still evident in the contemporary world.
This story provides readers with an enormous data on an equally voluminous subject, Paul Johnson divided “History of Jews” into five sections. The first two sections reviewed the origin of Jews from the evidence, details scattered in the various accurate ancient documents survived until this day, as well as the formation and basic principles of Judaism, the solid, enduring bonds have helped the Jews maintain their national unity as well as preserve their core traditional values through the time challenge.
The third and fourth sections of the book are the roaming history part of the Jews as they were roaming around the world, as well as how they organized to maintain their ethnic community existence, and how they adapted and built a foothold in the society. The last three sections of the book, the fifth through the seventh sections, is the story of Zionism and the birth of the modern Jewish state.
In the first section, “The Jews,” Paul Johnson introduces readers the origins of the Jewish nation as we know them from the literary and archaeological sources. Based on the Bible, especially the Old Testament, combined with the historical and archaeological studies of the Middle East, the author traced back the origin of the Jewish patriarchs from Abraham to Moses, the men of particular importance to the Jews. As referred to as in the Old Testament, the Jews were led by such men to leave Egypt for the promised land where Solomon later built the First Temple to worship the God.
Paul Johnson both guides readers with the Old Testament chronology and explains the profound meaning of the stories narrated therein, while connecting these details to the era established from archaeological evidence, scientific research to lead readers through the period of Ancient history that formed the Jews in terms of ethnicity, customs, religion, at the same time also witnessed for the first time the Jews appreciated a land – the Promised Land – as a settlement place, where they belonged to, and also where they built the first Jewish kingdom controlled by the two kings David and Solomon. Followed by the internal strife within the Jewish community that led to the rapid disintegration of the kingdom, ended by Babylonian attack on Jerusalem, the Jews again fell into the exile, and the First Temple was destroyed.
The second section “Judaism” is the story of the Jews since they exiled in Babylon for about half a century of the 6th century BC, the return to Jerusalem and the Promised Land thanks to the mercy of Cyrus, the forming process of the new Jewish orthodoxy, the religion would dominate the spiritual life of the Jews from then on. It is more important that Judaism was also the first monotheism in human history. The religious philosophy that was different from the ancient polytheism helped Judaism have a more stable and convincing foundation. Thereof, Judaism also became the inspiration for the formation of the global two most popular monotheistic religions today, Christianity and Islam.
Thereby, the formation of Christianity and its conflict with Judaism also left many consequences for the Jews until now, including anti-Semitism. Besides the formation story of the Old Testament and the canonical system, judaism’s canon law as well as the influence of religious thought on human outlook, worldview as well as ancient Jewish literature still survive until now. This was also a period when the Jews constantly clashed with other forces that dominated them, from the Persians to the Greeks to the Romans, resulting in another exile after the fall of Jerusalem in revolt of the Jews against Rome in the first century.
The third section “Clericalism” and the fourth section “Ghetto” continued the journey of the Jews when their nation was no longer independent, they had to learn how to become part of the population of the Roman empire, and then they became the Christian world and the Muslim world. Judaism and its clergy played an important role in uniting the community and preserving their traditional values and distinctive identity. In the spirit of promoting learning, keeping learning to adapt, the Jews always knew how to take the characteristic advantages of the societies in which they lived to establish a foothold in such important roles as merchants, doctors, scholars, even intruding into the political system. However, the un-submissive stubbornness to the religion dominated the society in which they lived (Christian or Muslim), the Jews had to accept the unfair treatment of the anti-Semitism movement, they had to be ready to accept the expel command from any city or kingdom for any reason.
This trend resulted in the isolation of the Jews into separate areas (ghettos) in the large cities, which became common in the late Middle Ages. The ghettos became special spaces where the Jews maintained their communal activities, but they also constantly interacted to the indigenous inhabitants. This has led to the formation of the Jewish communities with more or less different identities depending on the settlement place, the flows of the philosophical thought, the new religion in the Jewish spiritual world, including the introduction of radical thought flows beginning with the Enlightenment in 18th-century Europe.
The Jews also became “incarnated” with the indigenous societies depending on the tolerance and openness level of these societies, and achieved the remarkable success not only in the financial and banking sector (Rothchild family) but also stepped into the European aristocracy and political elite as in the case of Benjamin Disraeli, they became the pioneers in revolutionary thoughts (such as Karl Marx). However, the Jews gradually broke down the ghetto walls to step out into society, they also encountered the modern anti-Semitism and they gradually felt the need to have their own nation.
The fifth section “Liberation” reviews the active, conscious efforts of the Jewish communities in different regions such as Great Britain, German-speaking countries, France… aimed at liberating themselves from the restrictions imposed on the Jews by embracing local progressive thought, learning the local language and culture, even though they had to embrace the official indigenous religions (either via baptism to join the Christian community or voluntary conversion to Islam), and eliminating the conservative, backward aspects in the Jewish traditional thought and religion. However, the perception of the Jews was still very distinguished between the different countries, there were the societies where the Jewish community became an equal part like in England or get the great freedoms as in the German-speaking countries and France, while they were still subject to harsh treatment in other regions such as Russia. Then they became disillusioned with the deeply entrenched anti-Semitism spirit, either openly or implicitly, in even supposedly tolerant societies like France (with examples like the Dreyfus case), many Jewish intellectuals like Herzl gradually abandoned their position of active assimilation with indigenous society, and it was considered as the radical solution for the Jews to find a stable place to live, secure themselves in the form of a Jewish nation. This is the origin of Zionism.
The sixth section “Holocaust” and the seventh section “Zion” summarizes the milestone events of the Jewish nation history in the 20th and early 21st centuries. The 1917 Balfour Declaration of the British government was an important victory for the Zionists. This was an important first step in the legalization in the formation principle of a Jewish state in the Palestinian territories. The seeds of future instability were also rooted in this choice, as the territory in question had long been sparsely Jewish, with the majority of inhabitants who were Muslim Arabs. For the Zionists, a harmonious coexistence with the Arabs in the spirit of the Balfour Declaration which was not enough for the Jewish obsession with security for two millennia. They needed a state ruled by Jews at all costs, which would certainly be difficult to obtain the local Arab majority’s consent. Thus, the realization of a Jewish state as the Zionists aspired not to make much real progress, while Palestine conflict among Jewish settlers.
Instead of Europe, the United States of America became a home to the largest, wealthiest, most influential Jewish community in the 20th century. The Jewish community in the United States of America established a strong position in many fields, from banking and finance to the film industry, science and technology, to the underworld and organized crime. In Europe, anti-Semitism was pushed to the peak of atrocities under the control of the Nazi regime in Germany, resulting in the terrible genocide of the Jews across all of Europe under its control. This genocidal nightmare and the behavior of most European countries after the World War II before the honorary, materialism claims for Jewish victims further convinced the Jews that a sovereign Jewish state was paramount, the only answer to their safety, and it had to be gained at all costs.
The evidence was that the Jews were willing to plead for their violence and terror action even against the British, who was at the forefront in favor of the principle of a self-governing land for the Jews, when the establishing process of an independent Jewish state in Palestine was not realized as quickly as they wanted. Finally, the Israel state, the first modern Jewish sovereign state, was also established in 1948 thanks to the protection of the United Nations. A natural movement angered the Arabs who had lived in Palestine for a long time as well as the entire Muslim world, resulting in the first armed conflict as soon as the Israel state was founded. They kept looking for opportunities to strengthen their independent position, they kept using all means to eliminate potential security threats, Israel in the period 1948 – 1978 was constantly in a military confrontation with neighboring Arab countries. Israel was even ready to join hands with Great Britain, France, the two former colonial states, during the Suez Canal conflict of 1956 or proactively pre-emptively attacked Egypt, Syria, and Jordan during the Six-Day War in 1967.
Then the costly victory in 1973 showed the perpetual hostility of Israel’s neighbors. It was not a sustainable solution in the long run, and Israel took the conciliatory moves, they even looked for allies in the Muslim world. The 1979 peace treaty with Egypt and the handover of the Sinai peninsula to Egypt somewhat maintained Israel’s position in the world. Despite such movement and other progress in peace negotiations such as the 1995 treaty with the Palestinians resulted in the formation of an independent Palestinian state, the security for the Jews was still far from being guaranteed. During the Cold War, Zionism was heavily criticized as a variant of racism, and this point of view has been supported until this day, when such movement as the expansion of Jewish settlements as well as the persistent conflict with the Palestinians shows no sign of ending completely in the coming time.
Source : VietNam.Net