JUDAISM — FOSSIL OR FERMENT?
THIS WORK has grown out of an attempt to ascertain the opinions of the English historian Arnold J. Toynbee on Judaism and the Jewish people as they may be found in his monumental A Study of History.
Toynbee’s attitude to Judaism and Jewry is determined by his general interpretation of history. It is for this reason that Jews have to come to grips with it. Toynbee dismisses Judaism and Jewry, with an awe-inspiring claim to scholarship, on the grounds that they have failed in their endeavor to solve the problems of human existence. This is a challenge aimed at the very heart of all Israel. If Toynbee is right, there is no moral and spiritual justification for being a Jew. At the same time, the dilemma is Toynbee’s too. For, if he is wrong on the subject of Judaism, he is wrong altogether. His interpretation of Jewish history is not at all incidental to his main theme. Judaism and Jewry represent the antithesis to the Toynbean thesis.
The Jewish student of Toynbee’s great work must therefore look to his own bearings and review—and, if need be, revise—his own position. With the present volume the author has tried to meet that challenge for himself. He submits it to a wider public in the hope that it may be of help to others at a time when the meager knowledge and understanding of Judaism permit the Toynbean misrepresentations and distortions to cause confusion even among the Jewish readers of the English historian.
The present volume falls into two parts. The first deals with Toynbee’s interpretation of Judaism and Jewish history up to the fall of Jerusalem in the year 69-70 C.E. With that event, according to Toynbee, the history of the Jewish people as well as that of Judaism came to an end. The second part is centered around Chapter IV, which presents Toynbee’s explanation of Jewish survival after Jewry’s “extinction” in the year 70 C.E. In each case the author has tried to show how Toynbee’s opinions proceed from his general philosophy of history and religion. First, these specific views on Judaism and Jewish survival are analyzed on the basis of the Toynbean premises themselves and tested for their consistency and logicality. Next, the author offers a Jewish interpretation of those aspects of Judaism and Jewish history which have come under the purview of Toynbee’s inquiry. Finally, the author has endeavored to show the Jewish position on the broad universal issues of man’s existence and his relationship to God, over which—in the opinion of Toynbee—Judaism and the Jewish people came to grief. In the epilogue, an attempt is made to present the net result of A Study of History with a view to the crisis of our own times, as well as to evaluate it from a Jewish standpoint.
A Study of History is usually referred to in this book as the Study. The places in the Study from which quotations are taken are indicated in the notes by volume and page number only. Thus “V/237” refers to A Study of History, Volume V, page 237.
E. B.
Kislev, 5716—November, 1955.