Jewish History : An Essay in the Philosophy of HistoryDubnow, Simon
Religion
Jewish History : An Essay in the Philosophy of History
Dubnow, Simon
Jews -- History
its national interests and spiritual ideals rooted in the past of the Jew.
By the side of a Lassalle, a Lasker, and a Marx towers a Riesser, a
Geiger, a Graetz. The leveling process unavoidably connected with
widespread culture, so far from causing spiritual desolation in
German Judaism, has, on the contrary, furnished redundant proof
that even under present conditions, so unfavorable to what is
individual and original, the Jewish people has preserved its vitality
to the full.
An analogous movement stirred the other countries of Western
Europe--France, Italy, and England. The political emancipation of the
Jews was accomplished earlier in them than in Germany. The
reconstruction of the inner life, too, proceeded more quietly and
regularly, without leaps and bounds, and religious reform established
itself by degrees. Yet even here, where the Jewish contingent was
insignificant, the spiritual physiognomy of the Jews maintained its
typical character. In these countries, as in Germany, the Jew
assimilated European culture with all its advantages and its
drawbacks. He was active on diplomatic fields, he devoted himself to
economic investigations, he produced intellectual creations of all
kinds--first and last he felt himself to be a citizen of his country.
None the less he was a loyal son of the Jewish people considered as a
spiritual people with an appointed task. Crémieux, Beaconsfield,
Luzzatti are counterbalanced by Salvador, Frank, Munk, Reggio, and
Montefiore. All the good qualities and the shortcomings distinctive of
the civilization of modern times adhere to the Jew. But at its worst
modern civilization has not succeeded in extinguishing the national
spirit in Jewry. The national spirit continues to live in the people,
and it is this spirit that quickens the people. The genius of Jewish
history, as in centuries gone by, holds watch over the sons of the
"eternal people" scattered to all ends of the earth. West-European
Jewry may say of itself, without presumption: _Cogito ergo sum_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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