On the Sin We Did Not Commit in the Research of Oriental Jews

The essayist must confront historical reality, though not as the historian whose profession requires him to let reality speak for itself while he abstains as much as possible from personal involvement, nor as the historicist whose thoughts may soar through the universe yet remain only marginally tangent to historical reality. The essayist, on the other hand, works by the golden rule; though he stands before a clearly defined historical reality, his perception of it is meant to reflect his impressions and thoughts. Subjective involvement in this case is a necessity that should not to be penalized, for the essay is built on the sum-total of details accrued in generalized concepts, without the capability or intention to verify the details at the outset. For this reason the essayist is unable to command objective authority of his ruminations and these are therefore exposed to criticism from scholars of various disciplines.

My hope is that experts of the periods whose sketches I have ventured to present in my essay will not find me amiss. However, the ordinary reader will thank me for saving him/her from the frustration of missing the forest because of the preponderance of trees.

--Jacob Katz (1998)

IT IS CONVENIENT FOR ME to take shelter under the above quoted apology by the late Professor Jacob Katz (the eminent scholar of Jewish social history) as stated in the introduction to his book A Time for Inquiry--A Time for Reflection. ¹ These were most probably the last words he wrote in his long career. He defined his last work an "essay," dedicated to the polemic that has been raging in recent years between "new" and "old" historians. Katz believed that the mission of history should be protected from the onslaught of passing trends. Occasionally, I must admit to a feeling of malaise before the onslaught of new fads that seem to threaten the credibility of sociology and anthropology--trends whose provenance either stems from within the profession or from "invaders" raised in other disciplines. Plainly speaking, I intend to lay bare a professional thesis about a tale of guilt to which Israeli sociologists and anthropologists have resigned themselves, not pausing even momentarily to check the origins of the accusations and their wider implications. As the introductory quotation suggests, the following statements are somewhat impressionistic and reflexive. I admit to excluding many scholars whose works are invaluable for a more thorough and systematic discussion on this subject, and I hope they will forgive me for this failure.

It is difficult to be an Israeli sociologist or anthropologist. In contrast to their colleagues in other countries, Israeli academics in these fields were enlisted, almost from day one of the country's independence, to document and assist in the historical moment of national revival. In the following years, however, they were castigated for it and have been paying a high price ever since. Every student of sociology is familiar with the texts and their authors, members of the Eisenstadt School, ² who for a few decades were apparently responsible for fashioning the dominant theoretical patterns in the Israeli sociological discourse. But these representations, according to latter-day critics, granted legitimacy to the foundation and perpetuation of inequality in the power structure of Israeli society. It is an unprecedented charge in the social sciences, to attribute to the writings of sociologists such omnipotence in fashioning social history. For almost twenty years now, Israeli sociologists of the 1950s and 1960s have been caught up in an endless ritual of flagellation from within the profession and outside it, while the scourgers' joy has not lost a gleam of its exuberance.

The "cardinal sin" of first-generation Israeli sociologists was their conscription into the national project of "the ingathering of the exiles," and their translation of this Biblical-Zionist prophecy into contemporary concepts of international sociology. As fate would have it, this was a fruitful and promising hour...