9 - Judaism and the future

Summary

It would be rash at this point in time to predict how Judaism will evolve over the coming years and decades. Prediction is always hazardous, and Judaism has changed astonishingly and sometimes dramatically in the past, and particularly after moments of national catastrophe. After the Babylonian destruction it went from being a local Judaean cult to an embryonic world religion with a universal vocation. After the Roman destruction, following an initial period of upheavals, rabbinic Judaism emerged from the ruins of the priestly temple worship, replacing animal sacrifice with study and prayer. The period of the Christian destruction, beginning with the first crusade and culminating in the reconquest of Spain in 1492, gave birth to mystical Judaism, from the German pietists through the classical Kabbalah of Spain to the Lurianic Kabbalah of Safed. European antisemitism, manifested at the end of the nineteenth century in the Dreyfus trial and the Russian pogroms, led to Zionism. It remains to be seen whether the most recent destruction, wrought by the Nazi Germans, will give rise to some comparably creative and original development.

At the same time, as we look back over the history of Judaism, we can see how fruitful has been the encounter with other civilisations. The Judaism of the Bible would be impossible without the contribution of the surrounding Near Eastern civilisations. The encounter with the Greeks produced extraordinarily rich results (including both Christianity and the western philosophical tradition).