4. POOR TOYNBEE!
We shall take one more glance at the net results of Toynbee’s struggle for spiritual survival.
The “fossil” survived nineteen centuries of persecution and martyrdom because it was preserved by the “social drill” of the meticulous observance of the Mosaic Law. Or, as he also puts it, Judaism converted itself “into a ‘social cement’ possessing the astonishing property of being able to hold together a fossilized community in diaspora.”28VIII/447. Astonishing indeed! We ought to remember that Judaism itself became a fossil following its transformation into a political instrument by the Maccabees. Mr. Toynbee, we must assume, therefore means that a fossilized Judaism converted itself into a “social cement” in order to preserve a fossilized Jewry. Unwittingly, he has paid Judaism the finest compliment. After all, this fossilized Jewry has not been preserved “out of the way,” deep down in the air-tight vault of a pyramid, but on all the storm-assailed highways of history. What a power this fossilized Judaism must possess if it succeeded in holding a fossilized Jewry together against the fury of nineteen centuries of inhumanity and barbarity! It must possess a secret source of inexhaustible energy, unknown to the empires and mighty conquerors that fossilized Jewry has outlasted. However, the compliment, even though very flattering, cannot be accepted, because the explanation of the survival of the fossil does not seem to make much sense. It sounds very much like a suggestion that the best way to preserve a mummy is to encase it in another mummy and then let it lie around to be kicked about and trampled upon by all. It is simple: mummy A converts itself into the appropriate “cement” in order “to hold together” mummy B. If one might give a broader currency to the Toynbean principle of fossil preservation, one might also say that the best way for a dead body to hold itself together—no matter what an unfriendly environment may do to it—is to feed itself with cadaver. The “explanation” that a fossilized Judaism converted itself into a “social cement” and thus preserved a fossilized Jewry in the Diaspora—even though Toynbeanism needs it badly—is nothing but pompous nonsense.
As to the Zionist crime, we recall that Zionism was described as something worse than all the persecutors of Jewry in all history: more evil than Nebuchadnezzar, Titus, Hadrian, the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition, and even Nazism. Toynbee does not seem to notice that even from his own point of view such an observation is absurd. Criminality is not normally associated with fossils. Barbarity, far from being a mark of fossilization, is the manifestation of primeval, demoniac vitality. If Zionist Jewry “outnazied” the Nazis and out-persecuted Torquemadas, then Jewry must at least be tremendously alive.
One comes to the same conclusion as one looks more closely at Toynbee’s application of the standards of the “Kingdom” to the Zionist guilt. The Jewish guilt is so overwhelming because the Jews, having suffered so much, knew what they were doing—whereas the Nazis, the Inquisitors, and the Hadrians did not. But, before making his accusation, Toynbee must surrender his previous interpretation that fossilized Jewry succeeded “in living without disaster” by rendering itself “insensible to the painfulness of the mundane Present by a minute observance of a God-given law… ”29See above, Ch. IV, section 1 and VI/216. Only if they had felt what was done to them, could they have known better how to treat others. If Zionist Jewry is guilty, it must mean that it was fully conscious of what it was doing; there must have been a moment when it was faced with the challenge of the choice between “Good and Evil, Life and Death.” But, as Toynbee so rightly maintains, a man is challenged by God and is able to choose Good and reject Evil by virtue of the freedom granted to him by God.30See above, Ch. IV, section 1 and IX/382-92.
CHAPTER VI Therefore, if Zionist Jewry is guilty, it, too, must have been challenged by God and “set free” by Him to enable it to choose. How then could Jewry be a fossil? If the Zionist guilt surpasses the guilt of all other persecutors because Jewry, not having succeeded in rendering itself “insensible,” had been vouchsafed “more light” by God in the experience of its own suffering, then surely Jewry must have been also more alive than all other persecutors. The greater challenge from God, the increase in responsibility, “more light” from God, are surely also manifestations of greater strength and richer vitality. We must then presuppose a Jewry that, far from having survived in the Diaspora in a state of fossilization by “living without disaster” on account of successful “insensibility,” has been so eminently alive that it has survived in spite of disaster, living with it daily for endless centuries.
Thus Toynbee is back to his original problem: Jewry, which should have perished for rejecting the only path of salvation, lived on; having lived on, it survived centuries of oppression and martyrdom; having survived, it has returned to Zion, as it always said that it would do. All this has happened contrary to the Toynbean “laws” of history and against the “Will of God,” as revealed in them according to Toynbee. The entire structure of the Toynbean universe is threatened with collapse. One may well sympathize with Mr. Toynbee. He is fighting, not very successfully, for his intellectual and spiritual survival. He is like the beggar whose garment is much too small to cover his body. Pull as he might, his nakedness will show.