1 - Some a priori Issues in Jewish Historiography

Summary

ANYONE WHO SETS out to write about Jewish history—no matter what period or place—confronts basic questions about the enterprise before actually undertaking the task. One's position on these fundamental problems creates a framework within which the research will be presented and by which the narrative will be significantly affected. Before the development of the postmodern consciousness discussed in the Introduction, the engagement of Jewish historians with these issues was usually oblique and tacit, their positions typically presented as part of the conclusions of their research. However, it is now apparent that these positions represented prior assumptions that, in part, guided that research, and influenced its interpretation and presentation. The new postmodern sensibility has made us aware of this, and we now self-consciously assess our approach to these a priori issues before writing our narratives, even before reading the sources. In this way we can understand the beliefs about the nature of the history we are studying, which we bring to the research and writing we are doing. This knowledge can result in healthy self-criticism. Understanding the mechanisms of a syndrome does not mean, however, that a person who understands does not display its symptoms. One of the ‘certainties’ of postmodern discourse is that we can never escape the effects of our deeply held convictions. The more extreme version of this is that we cannot escape them at all; the more moderate one, that we can never completely escape them. In this chapter we will consider a key five of these a priori issues.

What Are the Jews?

The first key issue concerns the definition of the subject we are writing about. Jewish history pertains to the Jews, but what are ‘the Jews’? Here is a sampling of the manifold answers that have been offered to this question. Some say that the Jews are practitioners of the religion called Judaism. This formulation is problematic on several counts. First, not all those commonly regarded as Jews, and written about by historians of the Jews, were associated with Jewish religion.