world Jewry. For those who see the Jewish past as a lachrymose trail of perse-
cution and adversity, the State of Israel represents liberation and redemption
from history. From this vantage point, the successes and failures of Jews in the
diaspora either reflected the inherently finite character of diaspora Jewish life
or were taken to be provisional measures to preserve the Jews until statehood,
sovereignty, and agency could be regained – rabbinic law and custom, and
Jewish communal organization.
For those who regard the heart of Jewish history as the history of the dias-
pora, the situation of Jews in the diaspora at the end of the twentieth century,
even in the aftermath of the Holocaust, marks the triumphant culmination
and resilience of centuries of diaspora life. From this point of view, life in the
diaspora was always possible – if not everywhere, then at least in many places.
More important, life in the diaspora made it possible and necessary for Jews
to refashion the limited institutional and territorial practices of ancient Israel
into a multifarious way of life: Judaism. Those who laud the centrality of the
diaspora note that the survival and coexistence of disparate forms of Judaism
at the end of the twentieth century in America and elsewhere in the diaspora
celebrate the vibrance that the diaspora experience has infused into Judaism
and Jewish life.
Each of these seemingly contradictory appraisals of contemporary world
Jewry has its merits and deficiencies. The important question is not which is
right or which is better, but how the tension between the two maintains a
certain dynamism within world Jewry. For millennia, Jewish life has bene-
fited from the tension between competing Jewish groups and worldviews:
prophets and priests, Hellenizers and Hasideans, Pharisees and Sadducees,
Hillelites and Shammaites, exilarch and gaon, philosphers and mystics,
Hassidim and Mitnagdim, Reform and Orthodoxy, Zionists and assimilation-
ists. The sum total of these tensions, as Gershom Scholem and other
historians have duly noted, was the dynamic tapestry of Jewish life that man-
aged to adapt and even flourish in the diaspora and in a Jewish state. It took
hundreds of years for Rabbinic Judaism to become Judaism. During the past
two hundred years, Rabbinic Judaism has lost some ground in all directions:
to Reform Judaism, Orthodoxy, and Zionism.
Yet the notion of what is normatively Jewish still refers at least to some
aspects of Rabbinic Judaism as a point of departure, in Israel and in the dias-
pora. Despite the vast diversity in Jewish life that has taken shape, especially
but not exclusively during the past two hundred years, there is a pervading
unity and arguably some measure of uniformity that binds world Jewry
together. To date, a Jew who is familiar with the synagogue service can enter
any synagogue in the world and have some notion as to what is happening.
Even Jews who are not religiouly observant in any respect will generally be
greeted with some measure of kinship upon entering even the most remotely
located Jewish community.
242 Conclusion: world Jewry faces the twenty-first century