Studies in Modern Jewish Literature (JPS Scholar of Distinction Series)

Jewish Literature in the University

 Jewish Literature in the University Let us begin with Paul, known among the Pharisees, his teachers, as Saul of Tarsus. For no discussion of any facet of Jewish intellectual history in its relationship to what is commonly called Western Civilization of the past thousand years can be historically oriented or comprehensible without a consideration of the role of the man who gave Christianity its rationale and direction. Western European universities, so central in the development of Western cultural concepts, are the creations of late medieval Christian society. Furthermore, the European world most Jews have lived in was (with the exception of Moslem Spain and Ottoman Turkey) decidedly Christian. And the fact that Jewish writers generally knew little and grasped less of Paul’s mission, which affected them so profoundly, only proves that Paul was eminently successful. Paul it was who defined the relationship between Christianity and its mother-religion , Judaism; Paul it was who declared Judaism obsolete, decadent, hypocritical —hence superseded by its more righteous and vibrant daughter; and Paul it was who, therefore, essentially excluded Judaism from the realm of Western intellectual history. Western Civilization as we know it from the fourth century C.E. is fundamentally a Christian civilization; in spite of its pagan and Judaic origins , its institutions and modes remained Christian. If the Christians adopted the “Old Testament” as a sacred text, it was not the same Bible sacred to Jews. The very name “Old Testament” implies that there is a “New Testament” and that the original book testifies to the authenticity of the advent and crucifixion of Jesus. The Jewish writer, taking his 369 sacred text as a point of departure in his creative ventures, never thought of it in these Christian terms. When I assert that the exclusion of Jewish intellectual history can be traced to Paul, I mean Jewish intellectual history as lived by the writers who made it, men for whom Jesus was either ignored or disdained and Christianity, at first a vexatious heresy, and then, after centuries of persecution, the living symbol of human depravity . Cultures should be understood in the light of their own norms; their achievements should be judged in the light of their own self-image. In that Western Civilization has not accepted Judaism on its own terms, it has excluded it. The American university is a new departure in the long history of universities going back to Europe at the end of the Middle Ages. Though our universities thrive upon their intellectual freedom from either church or state, even though our wider knowledge of varieties of cultures has broadened our concept of culture, the notion of Western Civilization current in the university is predominantly Christian. Open a standard textbook in history or literature, scan a syllabus and you will see: the Hebrew Bible or Israelite culture is tucked in between Mesopotamia and Egypt, all presented along with Greece and Rome as adumbrations of Christianity; post-Biblical Jewish literature is not mentioned at all. (Islam, incidentally, rarely fares better, and since Islam is slighted, Jewish cultural creativity within the Moslem world also receives the scantiest notice). The outlook of the American college professor is certainly more enlightened, but still far from adequate. Often his knowledge is arrived at as a fragmentary by-product of his own interests; few universities even today offer courses covering the material. His concept of Jewish intellectual history highlights the Biblical period and some aspects of the past century but leaves the rest in total darkness. Granted that Christianity has been the dominant European and American culture, the picture a university presents still cannot be complete, hence authentic, without an adequate understanding of both Jewish and Moslem intellectual history. In America, it would seem, the time is ripe for an advance toward this greater catholicity of concept. World politics and improved communications have subjected dozens of new modes of thinking and living into our consciousness, and we are obviously on the threshold of a new period of cultural adjustment in which we shall have to reassess the European and American experience in the light of an expanded universe. Perhaps we shall now be more open to the diversity within the Western tradition. In adding Jewish studies to its curriculum, for instance, a university renders itself a great service and takes an important step towards the 370 Jewish Studies and the Community achievement of authentic objectivity and perspective, which is one of its...