3.
As for the Jewish student who concludes a study of Toynbee, he cannot but feel deeply embarrassed. He realizes that to have failed and to be a fossil are not really dishonorable. More than fourteen higher civilizations have already perished. Those still extant are badly stricken; the only one with a certain, not-very-well-explained hope for survival is—as Mr. Toynbee attests—a somewhat “slimy thing.” The four “living” Higher Religions too seem to be all “petrified.” In view of the fact that for sixty generations Jewry—as again certified by Mr. Toynbee himself—remained free of the guilt of aggression and persecution, which during the same time has been piling up to tragically towering heights on the backs of Toynbee’s “living” religions and civilizations, the present writer must confess that many a time, during his study, he was “tempted to offer the Pharisee’s thanksgiving”:25V/41. Ribbono shel Olam! If this is being alive, I thank Thee with all my heart for having made me a fossil. He must also confess that, in view of the fact that to fail and to perish and to become petrified seem to be the norm in history, and salvation to be the mysterious miracle of exception, the venom of Mr. Toynbee’s condemnation of Jewry, and the vehemence of his rejection of Judaism, for having failed where greater and mightier societies and religions have not succeeded either, seemed to be out of all proportion to the Jewish share in man’s failure in history. Mr. Toynbee’s offensive and deliberately humiliating treatment of both Judaism and Jewry must be understood as a desperate attempt to stifle a suspicion in his own heart that, perhaps, there might be something right with Judaism after all.
Concerning the present crisis of the West, the Jewish student of A Study of History is even more embarrassed to find that the decisive issues of Zero Hour are directly or indirectly related to Judaism and Jewry. The two colossi, facing each other in the present crisis of mankind, have conflicting ideologies; but these ideologies take their origin from two great personalities who, though antithetical, were nevertheless Jews. A Jew, Jesus, was the founder of Christianity and a Jew, Karl Marx, the founder of the Marxian philosophy of dialectical materialism. The conflict between the colossi is charged with a potential threat to the human race owing to the progress of modern physical science, which placed in human hands unlimited powers of possible destruction. But the era of modern science is dominated by one outstanding name, that of a Jew, Albert Einstein. Without the Einsteinian physics the release of atomic energy would not be conceivable. The two opposing ideologies and modern, relativistic science dominate the entire contemporary situation. A Jew is able to recognize in each of the three a specific expression of a basic Jewish concept, namely, that of “Ehad,” of Unity. The Unity that Judaism affirms of God implies the unity of the One God’s creation. Faith in the One God posits the unity of mankind as well as the unity of physical nature. The unity of physical nature has to be discovered by man, that of mankind established by him. The Marxian doctrine is a unifying philosophy, in that it aims at the establishment of a politically unified humanity in a Kingdom of Man that is identical with “this World.” Christianity is a unifying religion that aims at the salvation of all mankind in a Kingdom of God that is not of “this World.” On the other hand, the unlimited power wielded by the two colossi, threateningly as well as promisingly, is the result of modern science, which owes its unparalleled progress to the unifying force of the relativity theory, which discovered the “oneness” of mass and energy and explains both through the curvature of space.
At the same time, a Jew sees himself related to the most tragic debacle of Western society, i.e., fiendish Nazism. He notes that the essence of Nazism was a rebellion against the principle of unity, aiming, as it did, at the establishment of a dualistic world order of rulers and ruled, masters and slaves. In its rebellion against the principle of unity, Nazism turned on Communism as well as on Christianity; its greatest fury, however, was directed with demoniac instinctiveness against the original protagonist of the concept of Oneness as the fundamental value and the basic ideal—against the Jew.
Looking at the contemporary scene, the Jew is astounded by the uncanny stagecraft of the mysterious producer: the unifying genius of a Jew, exiled from his home by the dark rebellion against unity, placing in the hands of the colossi the power that may destroy all in the conflict of the two ideologies that each have its root in its own variation of the Judaic theme of Oneness. Does the solution lie, as Toynbee suggests, not in one prevailing over the other, but in transcending both ideologies by a new vision and a new way of life? In terms of Judaism this could only mean the transcending of the materialistic, this-worldly Kingdom of Man as well as that of the spiritual, otherworldly Kingdom of God: the interpenetration of the two by the Judaic transformation of this world into the Kingdom of God. In the building of this world as a Kingdom of God, the power of physical nature would become the benevolent helpmate of man in the sanctification of the Mundane by readying it to receive the imprint of a purpose from on high.
Most baffling of all, however, is the unique phenomenon that, at this Zero Hour of mankind, the old-new people of the Jews, having proved by its survival that man may overcome all odds against him, is returning to its ancient homeland, as it has always proclaimed that one day it would. Once again it may take up the long-interrupted task of working in its homeland for the establishment of “this World” as God’s Kingdom.
Pondering over such an extraordinary constellation of issues and events, the Jew remembers the opinion of a Christian historian, who once called Judaism the Ferment of History.26Theodor Mommsen did, of course, not use the term in a sense flattering to the Jews. But how much better would it have been for Germany, as well as for the world at large, had the ferment of Judaism indeed succeeded in “decomposing” some parts of the German ethos. Perhaps the Word of the Living God on this subject has not yet been heard or, if heard, not yet understood. In the meantime, let Jewry continue its path through history, serving God as it has been given to it to understand Him and His service; striving and working, praying and hoping, living and—if need be—suffering for the transformation of this Kingdom of Man into the Kingdom of God; firm in the faith that the words of the prophet will not fail to be fulfilled:
In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses: Holy Unto the Lord … Yea, every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holy unto the Lord of hosts.27Zechariah XIV/20-21.