- Last Name
- YERUSHALMI
- First Name
- Yosef Hayim
- Title
- Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory
- Publisher
- University of Washington Press
- Year
- 2005
- Group
- MOH3 JID2
- Comments
- Amazon Review/s. As Abraham Joshua Heschel noted, faith is memory. Yerushalmi points to a variety of Biblical texts (e.g. Deuteronomy 25:5-9; Deuteronomy 6:10-12; Joshua 4:6-7, etc.) to note that while the Biblical texts are focused on remembering the "historic" acts of G-d's providence on behalf of Israel, they are nevertheless often connected to the lives of individuals in all of their fullness. Starting with the Talmudic era, his assertion is that Jewish memory is selective, where kings and great events do not necessarily merit attention. While he briefly mentions the three Jewish rebellions against Rome, he does not sufficiently address the trauma these unsuccessful bids for freedom produced. Yerushalmi notes the almost wholesale dismissal of "the comings and goings of Roman procurators, the dynastic affairs of Roman emperors...even the convolutions of the Hasmonean dynasty...were largely ignored." The intensity and ramifications of the destruction of the Temple and in particular Bar Cochba's failed revolt surely dictated the manner in which many events were to be understood and remembered, out of a political necessity if nothing else. Here the significance of the events that Yerushalmi notes as being ignored may instead reflect pressures stemming from issues internal to the Jewish community as well as concerns stemming from Roman hegemony. He does not sufficiently address the fact that the "dismissal" of these events may lay instead in an agenda to place at a distance any memories such as the Maccabean struggle (where Yerushalmi notes, the Talmud places emphasis on the miracle in contrast to the battles) and other events of Jewish history that might lead to future disastrous consequences. To understand the reason for the disconnect between history and memory, Yerushalmi contends that part of this may lie, in the complicated nature of history as drawn from none other than the Greeks, with Herodotus credited as the father of history. Yet the Greeks themselves appear to have failed to achieve a sense of the meaning of history as a whole. Writing of the rise of Jewish historiography in early 19th century Germany, Yerushalmi observes: "For the first time it is not history that must prove its utility to Judaism, but Judaism that must prove its validity to history, by revealing and justifying itself historically." For Yerushalmi, the scientific study of Judaism and Jewish history has seen history replace Scripture as the arbiter of Jewish ideologies. Here is his interesting conclusion, "When I spoke earlier of the coincidence of the rise of modern Jewish historiography and the decay of Jewish memory, I had in mind the specific kind of memory of the past, that of Jewish tradition. But hardly any Jew today is without some Jewish past. Total amnesia is still relatively rare. The choices for Jews, as for non-Jews is not whether or not to have a past, but rather-what kind of past shall one have."
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