Jacobs, Steven Leonard, A Short History of Judaism and the Jewish People (London: Bloomsbury, 2024), 235 pp. RRP £14.99 ISBN: 9781350236462

Darkness o’ershadow’d Israel all,

Woe, and death, and lamentation;

The Heathen walk’d on Sion’s wall,

The Temple all was desolation;

A dumb demoniac shape of stone

Was raised upon God’s holy altar,

Where children of the Faith kneel down,

And fearful priests through false-rites falter.

Thomas D’Arcy McGee, The Maccabees (1869).[1]

Introduction

In 1917, two months before the famous Balfour Declaration, the British Labour Party in its War Aims Memorandum—produced at the height of World War One—declared that Palestine should be freed from the rule of the Ottoman Empire and that “[a] Free State” should be established

“under international guarantee, to which such of the Jewish people as desire to do so may return and work out their own salvation.”[2]

The rest is history. The Ottoman Empire fell. The League of Nations Palestinian Mandate territory was assigned to the United Kingdom, who would administer the region until 1948 when the state of Israel was established—the world’s only majority Jewish state.

Judaism is one of the world’s oldest religions and Jews are one of the oldest ethnic groups. Persecuted for much of their history by small-minded but unfortunately powerful and bigoted people, the religion and its followers have a rich history. It is such a history that, in A Short History of Judaism and the Jewish People (2024), Steven Leonard Jacobs has illuminated for readers in one of the latest volumes of Bloomsbury’s ‘Short History of’ series. What follows here is a combined review/précis of this most fascinating book.

What is Judaism?

Jacobs’s book begins by offering a highly useful definition of what Judaism is:

“Judaism is the evolving cultural and religious expressions of the people, Jews—originally known as Hebrews or Israelites—over the course of the generations, in response to their and other’s changing perceptions of themselves, their historical journeys, their stories and ideas, their celebrations, and their understandings of their relationship with their God” (3)

Two other terms were mentioned there—Israelites and Hebrews. The first of these, Israelites, was applied to the descendants of the Biblical Jacob after he ‘wrestled’ or ‘struggled’ with God, as the Book of Genesis tells us:

“Your name will no longer be Ya’akov/Jacob but Yisra’El/Israel” (9).

The name of Israel, thenceforth, was used by both the Israelites and their enemies in reference to that people who lived in the land of Canaan, with non-scriptural references to the name of Israel appearing as early as the fourteenth century BC.

The Hebrew Scriptures

Writing the history of an ancient religion and its people is much different to the writing of, say, a social history of the nineteenth-century labouring classes. Many of the sources for the early history of the Israelites/  people are ancient scriptures and in the first chapter Jacobs approaches one important question head on by asking:

“To what degree are the texts before us accurate (and objective) depictions of the actual persons, places, and events they prescribe and present to us?” (20)

The question of scriptural veracity and even validity appears as though it has been an age-old question. Yet this is far from the case. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, whose stories are told in the Hebrew Scriptures (what Christians call the Old Testament), were, until the eighteenth century, assumed by most people to have been as real as Julius Caesar. Yet with the rise of Enlightenment criticism, in particular the works of Baruch Spinoza and Jean Astruch, new interpretations of the scriptures came forward. The historicity of these men has been questioned.

There are two viewpoints, then, that might broadly be categorised as the “minimalist” and “maximalist” positions. The minimalist position holds that the Hebrew Bible is nothing more than a series of texts, written long after the fact, is largely fictionalised, and can teach us nothing about the history of ancient Israel. The maximalist position describes those who, accepting that each author of the scriptures had their own way of retelling the past, and did not hold to modern standards of objectivity, still find much of value in the scriptures from which they can learn the history of their nation.

Be that as it may, Jacobs’s own position on the matter can be summarised in the following manner: the Hebrew Scriptures are not wholly true nor factual, nor can they be tossed aside as meaningless. Even if certain historical events did not proceed exactly as the scriptures told, there is a ring of truth about some of the events. During Ancient Egypt’s 15^th Dynasty (1655–1570 BC), for example, it is known that several non-Egyptians ascended to important government positions and even the dynasty itself was composed entirely of foreigners before the native Egyptians rose up and restored Egyptian rule. Is it perhaps from here that the story of Joseph becoming prime minister comes from? It seems likely.

Of course, for Jewish people, as Jacobs points out, the primary focus in Judaism is the understanding—be that expressed in either literary or scriptural works—of their relationship with their God. Which leads us on to one of the most interesting sections of the book: the section on Yahweh and his origins.

Yahweh / Jehovah

Much has been written on the history and origins of  יהוה‎‎ (YHWH) or Yahweh (Latinised: JHVH/Jehovah), the God of the Israelites. In 2002, Biblical scholar John Day summarised some of the viewpoints in his lengthy Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan (2002), while the recent edited volume titled Origins of Yahwism (2017) has presented us with new viewpoints. Jacobs expertly sifts through the scholarship and presents us with a condensed an informative overview on Yahweh’s nature.

Yahweh was initially viewed by the ancient Israelites as a storm and warrior deity who blessed his people with good harvests and led them into battle against their enemies. It is important to point out that the ancient Israelites never denied the existence of other gods—they were not monotheists but, as Jacobs points out, monolatrists. Yet Yahweh God was different to the other gods which flourished in the region because he was declared to be incorporeal. No graven images were to be made of him—this was one of the Ten Commandments revealed to Moses after he led the Israelites out of Egypt.

The coming out of Egyptian captivity was central to the early Israelites’ theology which centred on three festivals: Sukkot/Booths—to remind the people of the harvest season after coming out of bondage; Pesach/Passover, the festival of liberation; and Shauvot/Weeks, the commemoration of Moses’s return to the Israelites with God’s laws.

God gave his laws to Moses. To mark His people out as different, they were to be circumcised. Sacrificial offerings or gifts were also required to be given, especially after the construction of the Temple at Jerusalem, with the proceedings officiated by the priests.

Becoming Jewish: After the Babylonian Captivity

Jacobs weaves a fascinating, though swift, tale of how the twelve tribes of Israel settled the land of Canaan and became a powerful regional force—from the reign of the Judges, through to the United Kingdom of Israel under kings Saul, David, and Solomon, through to the separate kingdoms of Israel and Judah, until the conquest of Israel by the Assyrian Empire (720 BCE) and the conquest of Judah by the Babylonian Empire (587 BCE) (some groups date this event to 607 BCE).

The “lost” nine tribes of Israel were likely subsumed into Assyrian Empire, having been taken taking on their conqueror’s customs and even worshipping their gods. The land itself became the Assyrian province of Samaria. The Kingdom of Israel survived as a weakened kingdom and was, eventually, overcome by the Babylonians. The Temple which Solomon built was destroyed and after the conquest the Israelite elites, its priesthood, aristocracy, and gentry, were taken into captivity in Babylon. It was not until 538 BCE, when the Persian King Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon, that the Israelites were permitted to return home and rebuild the temple.

Those who passed under Babylon’s gates when taken into captivity were Israelites. Those who returned to Jerusalem with Ezra some 50 years later were Jews. The Babylonian captivity had a remarkably transformative effect on the Israelites’ religion. While in Babylon, and with no temple to honour their god, the concept of the synagogue likely developed. In an attempt to preserve their ancestral customs, the Torah was canonised in this period, “new” scriptures began to be written and were incorporated into the canon; sacrifices largely stopped, but a strict observance of the Sabbath commenced. The Hebrew alphabet was adopted, and literary and musical production was vast. Many of these musical numbers, in fact, commemorated the loss of their homeland, as in Psalm 137, to take just one example:

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.”

Back in their ancient homeland, the Jews began the construction of the temple again. They had their own state again, but in political terms it was a shadow of its former self, but the Jews’ fate was to essentially be a vassal tossed between the whims of the several empires which sprung up around it.

The fight against Hellenization and Romanisation

The Persian Empire crumbled as Alexander the Great’s armies propelled his empire forward. A large empire he created, and a great warrior he was—yet it was not a lasting empire. On his death, it was divided into four successor states. It was Judah’s fate to come under the sway of Seleucid Empire as part of its Syrian possessions.

It was inevitable that certain Hellenic customs (or degradations, depending on one’s point of view) would seep into the Jewish religion at this point. In fact, during this period the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Koiné Greek (in the Septuagint) and, as Antiochus Epiphanes sought to Hellenize all the place under his rule, some Jews willingly went along with it. The High Priest of the Temple was appointed by the Seleucid rulers. A gymnasium was built in Jerusalem and even the centuries-old rite of circumcision went by the wayside. A statue of Zeus was at one point even placed in the Holy of Holies.

Thus, under the surface discontent was brewing. Grievances over taxes and tribute payments, coupled with what many saw as an attack on their Jewish way of life, stirred some men to action: The Maccabees—a family of Hasmonean priests took action. Judas Maccabeus / Yehuda Ha-Maccabee (called “the hammer” due to his “guerrilla” tactics of striking swiftly and retreating), from Modi’in, led a revolt which —aimed to purge Judaism of its foreign degradations. The Temple was purified and the statue of Zeus cast out and the site was rededicated to the worship of Yahweh. In the process, Maccabee initiated another long-lasting Jewish celebration: Hanukah. Forced circumcisions were performed on all Jewish males who had lost sight of their ancient customs. 

Judas’s successors carried on his work after he fell in battle and established the Hasmonean Kingdom. I do wish there had been a longer discussion of the Maccabean Revolt in Jacobs’s book, for it is one of the most fascinating epochs in Jewish history and, as we have seen, birthed one of Judaism’s longest-running festivals. Luckily there are other recent works which analyse this event in depth, notably John D. Grainger’s The Wars of the Maccabees (2021).

Yet the Jewish state, in spite of the wars of the Maccabees, remained the plaything of the various powerful players around it, and the Romans were the next in line to impose their will on the Jews and Judea essentially became a Roman vassal state. Perhaps after the various wars and rebellions and unrest, most Jewish people wanted some stability. There were certainly some who supported Roman rule, notably the Sadducees. The Pharisees—who don’t come off well in the New Testament—were actually a very “democratic” group who believed that one did not need the priests to serve as the people’s voice. Finally, there was the Essenes, who were more akin to a modern day cult and removed themselves from interactions with outsiders, and the Zealots—a group of violent revolutionists who fomented rebellion against Rome (100).

It is also around this period—that of Herod the Great’s rule, when major modifications to the Temple were made—that the “questionably central” issue of the Messiah came to the fore among some Jews in the region (99). Some were waiting for a chosen one who would restore Jewish sovereignty and build a third temple. At this period, some indeed thought that this person was Jesus, the son of a carpenter from Galilee—though as Jacobs points out, for Jews, Jesus hardly meets the specific criteria for the Messiah (100).

Yet the putting to death of an obscure carpenter’s son was not the cause of the loss of Jewish sovereignty in the region. Instead, it was the actions of the Zealots who, in 66 CE, kick-started a revolt in the region which would end with the destruction of the temple in 70 CE. Not even the later Bar Kokhba Revolt would be able to restore Jewish hegemony in the region, and for the rest of Jewish history the Jews would become wanderers without a homeland—something which was not put right, as Jacobs says, until the establishment of “the Third Jewish Commonwealth” or the State of Israel in 1948 (103).

A History of Persecution and Oppression

The rest of the book, which packs a lot into such a small volume, makes for some depressing reading. After the Jewish Revolt, most of the Jews in Jerusalem were either killed or sold into slavery. Such was the fate of Jewish people in surrounding areas as well. What follows in the next 2,000 years of their history is a story of unremitting pogroms and persecutions under Christian and Muslim rulers in various lands. At least, in the immediate aftermath of the destruction of Herod’s Temple, the Talmud and Mishnah were organised which gave the dispersed Jewish people a unified law code which, no matter where they were in the world, meant that they could keep their own community’s laws (109).

But the litany of persecutions suffered by Jewish people, recounted in Jacobs’s book, is enough to shame the history of many nations the world over. The medieval period is an especially dark chapter of history in this regard. Despite, in the Anglosphere at least, moves away from describing the medieval period as the “dark ages,” Jacobs points out that for Jews the period was really so (119). When not subjected to actual persecution, antisemitism was the order of the day as Jewish people were falsely accused of deicide, blood libels and ritual murder, and in some parts of the world were subjected to forced conversions. The results of such antisemitism in the Christian west were, to take one example from the Spanish Inquisition, a total of 340,000 deaths (134). In 1648 in Ukraine, an estimated 100,000 Jews were massacred (145). Even where there has been debate about some of these numbers, Jacobs points out that, whatever the number—in Ukraine the lowest estimate is “only” 20,000 deaths—whatever the case it is

“Far too many innocent Jewish lives unnecessarily murdered” (145).

It was not until 1965 that Jews were “exonerated” of deicide by the Roman Catholic Church—the charge first having made its appearance in the writings of the Archbishop of Constantinople, John of Chrysostom, in (349–407 CE). Yet Protestants have been no better and the writings of Martin Luther—who has traditionally been viewed quite positively in Anglophone historiography—were eye-opening to read. Luther advocated that Jewish people’s houses be burned to the ground, their Talmudic writings also burnt, synagogues to be destroyed. Meanwhile the blood libel—the idea that Jews require human blood in the preparation of their Passover food—remains to this day a staple of anti-Semitic propaganda in some parts of the Arab world (130).

Glimmers of hope occurred during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Jewish people were recognised as French citizens and acquired the right to vote there in 1791 (153). But then sometimes it was a case of two steps forward and one step back. What emerged in Russia during the nineteenth century was a conspiracy so ridiculous that it’s amazing anyone—then or now—ever believed it: The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion which revealed a “master plan” by Jewish rabbis to subjugate the world under the rule of a Jewish monarchy, and the four “protocols” through which they would achieve this:

• Control of the economy and journalism
• The destruction of the Christian religion
• Destruction of the political constitutions of nation states across the world
• Subverting the morals of the gentiles.

Worthy of only being mocked, unfortunately many people since the nineteenth century have believed in this alleged worldwide Jewish conspiracy to control the earth—notably Henry Ford, the car manufacturer. Even the 1988 Hamas Charter referenced the Protocols when it spoke of “the Zionist blueprint for a world takeover” (159).

The Emergence of Zionism

The racialized hatred of Jewish people, begun in the early Christian period, and extended through the Muslim world, reached its fullest expression in Nazi ideology and led to the Shoah/Holocaust (134). This obviously occupies a significant part of Jacobs’s book, and rightly so. But Jewish history is so much more than the Holocaust, which is too sadly the only part of the Jewish story that most children in Britain—and I daresay around the world—are taught about. It is a sad fact of modern attitudes and lack of education in the West that Jacobs must still devote several pages to the demented Holocaust denialists, when usually conspiracy theories would barely be acknowledged at all in academic history books. Even in the late nineteenth century, before ugly Nazism was dreamed up by a low-skilled artist and racist degenerate like Hitler, it was becoming clear to some Jewish people that perhaps they needed a safe haven as well.

The response to European antisemitism convinced Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) that what Jews needed was their own state, and he argued for this in 1895 in Der Judenstaat (“The Jewish State”) and thus, with the publication of this tract, Herzl has earned the epithet of “the Father of Modern Political Zionism.” Then, out of the dying embers of the Ottoman Empire and the withdrawal of the British from the region, the state of Israel was founded in 1948 and unsurprisingly the experience of the Holocaust caused many Jews to rally around Israel’s new flag (185).

Yet for those Jews who did not emigrate to the new Jewish state, and even after the atrocities of the Second World War (1939–45), persecution was the norm. In Stalinist Russia, for example, Jews were viewed as a kind of “rootless cosmopolitan” and an enemy of socialism (174). In 1953 the “Doctors’ Plot” saw the beginning of a systematic attempt to extinguish Judaism from the Soviet Union.

As a result, he clearly believes in the necessity of a Jewish state and his book, appearing as it does in 2024 (we can assume it was written in 2023 and finished a long time before the events of October 2023), has the potential to draw negative reactions from many quarters of today’s reading public. Despite ongoing antisemitism and charges of “occupation,” Jacobs asserts that

“Israel remains a viable national entity with a growing economy, a military presence always at the ready, a technological marvel, and a growing Jewish population expected to pass, if trends continue, the American Jewish community and presently more than 7,000,000 children, women, and men” (169).

It is a sobering fact, however, to put the 7,000,000 Jewish population of Israel in perspective: The Nazis killed 6,000,000 Jews—just shy of the current Jewish population of Israel.

Conclusion

Thus, Jacobs is correct when he says that

“Since the fall and destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in the year 70 CE, two thousand years ago, the Jewish people have been a vulnerable wandering minority throughout primarily Western Europe, a population whose very safety, security, and survival were dependent upon those holding the reins of political, religious, and social power” (179).

Although we should note that, even in the darkest days of their oppression, the Jews were never just passive victims. They often rose up and attempted to take power to themselves—whether it be as long ago as the Bar Kokhba Rebellion or the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Yet despite their history of suffering and oppression, Jewish people have always been resilient; always able to survive the worst that humanity has thrown at them and even come out of many of these experiences victorious. The European dynasties which persecuted them are mostly gone—their regimes having crumbled into nothing—yet the Jewish people remain with us. This resilience is owing to the fact that the Jews are, in fact, a Civilization. This is one theme that is constantly, and convincingly, pursued throughout the book. I confess I had not thought of matters in this way before having read this book, thinking that the Jewish people were an ethnicity and Judaism was the religion of that people. But Jacobs has indeed convinced me on this point: Jewish Civilization has bequeathed to the world some of the most beautiful religious music and poetry. Indeed, this Civilization’s own scriptures have contributed to the development of Western Society in immeasurable ways. It is a civilization which has developed an intricate set of laws and customs. Numerous Jewish philosophers have gifted their writings to posterity and it is a Civilization which had its Enlightenment with the works of Moses Mendelssohn. These are just a few isolated examples of the growth of Jewish Civilization which hopefully, despite the horrors of the twentieth century (and the preceding twenty centuries), will continue to go from strength to strength.

Notes

[1] Thomas D’Arcy McGee, The Poems of Thomas D’Arcy McGee (London: D. and J. Sadler, 1869), 376–78

[2] Paul Kelemen, The British Left and Zionism: History of a Divorce (Manchester University Press, 2012), 11.