coherent entity. So, too, the history of the Jews. Jews in the twentieth century
are so vastly different from their ancient counterparts that there may be no
common thread that runs the gamut of Jewish history from antiquity to the
present. Thus, the challenge for the present-day reader and writer of Jewish
history is to flesh out the strands of this rope and the connections between
them without disregarding how different the strands are from one another.
Three aspects of Jewish history, in particular, are sufficiently broad to
encompass the diversity of Jewish experience, but together add up to a dis-
tinct history. First, the history of the Jews is the history of a small people
surrounded by larger, more powerful peoples. Whether a small independent
kingdom amid neighboring empires or a small religious or ethnic minority
living under foreign rule, Jews were faced with the challenge of preserving
their culture in the face of alluring alternatives that were often culturally
more sophisticated. In every age, there were Jews who chose these alternatives
over their Jewish identity. Yet there were also Jews who struck a workable
balance, living with one foot in the world of Jewish tradition and culture, and
the other in the world of the mainstream. Every period and episode in Jewish
history bears the imprint of a larger world in which Jews lived. Jewish iden-
tity, individual and communal, developed as a series of amalgams between an
existing Jewish heritage and aspects of the surrounding non-Jewish world
that were emulated and recast in an acceptable Jewish light.
Second, the complexity of Jewish history means that there has been a
recurring or chronic tension between a search for uniformity and a search for
diversity in Judaism and Jewish life. Recently, there has been a tendency to
avoid referring to a single, monolithic Jewish experience. Instead, historians
now speak of “Judaisms” instead of Judaism, and “cultures of the Jews”
instead of Jewish culture. Indeed, the diversity of Jewish history and the
multiplicity of Jewish experiences are undeniable. At the same time,
though, twenty-first-century Jews still feel somehow connected to their
ancient predecessors
Third, the tension between uniformity and diversity was at once compli-
cated and facilitated by a series of migrations by Jews from one part of the
world to another. It was complicated because migration meant dislocation
and was often the result of some form of adversity: military defeat, religious
persecution, or economic hardship. Migrating to a new home meant setting
down new roots, rebuilding a life, and coming to terms with a new society
and state and the accompanying array of new challenges and expectations. It
was facilitated because Jews never arrived into a new homeland empty-
handed; rather, they brought with them the cultural and communal baggage
of their former home, and transplanted them into their new home. Starting
over almost never meant starting entirely from scratch. Each new center of
Jewish life built on the successes and learned from the difficulties of its pre-
decessors. The seemingly endemic nature of Jewish migration gives an image
of an overriding sense of Jewish homelessness and rootlessness in the diaspora.
2 Introduction: dimensions of Jewish history