Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory

by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi

Book Overview

"Mr. Yerushalmi's previous writings . . . established him as one of the Jewish community's most important historians. His latest book should establish him as one of its most important critics. Zakhor is historical thinking of a very high order - mature speculation based on massive scholarship." - New York Times Book Review

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0295975199
• ISBN13: 9780295975191
• Release Date: July 2011
• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.5"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Review of Zakhor

A great many Jewish holidays and practices in their earliest understanding reflect the great innovation of Biblical religion which placed the emphasis on "historic events" in contrast to other ancient Near Eastern religions which stressed nature. As Abraham Joshua Heschel noted, faith is memory. The observances of Jewish holidays and of various Jewish practices ritually articulate theological ideas reflective of a collective Jewish memory. That being said, one might assume that Jews and Judaism naturally place a great emphasis on the history of the Jewish people. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi in his work Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, however, argues that what has been understood as history in Jewish circles from the Biblical era until fairly recent times is considerably different that what the modern reader might expect in light of the importance of and emphasis placed on memory. Until recently as Yerushalmi notes, a general lack of interest in historical events that were disconnected to the theological concerns of the Jewish community existed, so much so that an interest in history was as Solomon Ibn Verga writing in the Middles Ages, seen as a "Christian" custom. The seeming disconnect between memory, history, and histiography according to Yerushalmi is surprising given the fact that beginning with the Tanakh, an emphasis, or better said a command to remember is given. For Yerushalmi, the principal goal of Zakhor is to understand the relationship of Jews to their past and the place of the historian in that relationship. What Jews remembered, or chose to remember is the subject of Yerushalmi's quest. As he notes correctly, the actual recording of historical events has been anything but the primary vehicle through which the Jewish people have preserved their collective memory. Yerushalmi highlights the distinction between Jewish memory and Jewish histiography. Herein lays one of the weaknesses of Zakhor. Yerushalmi does not sufficiently compare the nature of non-Jewish histiography during the various periods he addresses. While it is sufficiently clear from Yerushalmi's review of Jewish attitudes and the apologetically natured tone of many "Jewish historians" when introducing their works that general history was at best something interesting, but of little real value, the manner in which "general" history was perceived by non-Jews is a much needed comparison. He does not provide a view of how Frenchman, Spaniards, Italian, etc. understood their own sense of history. Yerushalmi divides his study of Jewish history into four broad eras. The first is the Biblical and Rabbinic eras reaching until the early medieval period. The sources here include Biblical texts and selections from rabbinic literature through the redaction of the Talmud. Yerushalmi points to a variety of Biblical texts (e.g. Deuteronomy 25:5-9; Deuteronomy 6:10-12; Joshua 4:6-7, etc.) to note that while the Biblical texts are focused on remembering the "historic" act

A profound exploration of Jewish History and Jewish Memory

This work has four major chapters each of which deals with a certain period of Jewish history, and its approach to Jewish Memory. In the first chapter Yerushalmi explores the Biblical and Rabbinic Foundations for writing history, and remembering it. This is the stage when the process of remembering is connected with the recording of, and participation in history. In the second phase, the Middle Ages Yerushalmi outlines the major division which dominates the work, between processes of collective memorization through ritual and religious practice which are not connected with everyday historical happening- and between the writing of history which is connected with historical happening. Yerushalmi says that from the time of the fall of the Second Temple and most especially in this period of the Middle Ages, the Jews remember without remembering historical events. The 'collective Zakhor' or command to collective remembrance ( which he says distinguishes the Jewish Religion) is done without writing the history of the people. The history of the people is avoided. The writing of history is considered by Rambam a low form of intellectual endeavor. The process of collective remembering is done through the living of the Jewish holidays each of which connects up with some historical memory. It is done through Memorbuchs of communities which have suffered in the Crusades. In the third period which comes immediately after the expulsion from Spain i.e. in the beginning of the sixteenth century there is somehow a return to looking at the actual events of contemporary history but this by framing them in world- historical narratives. The last period Yerushalmi writes about is the modern one in which there is a return to attending to the events of Jewish history. Here the writing of history, what he calls 'historiography' becomes once again a subject of Jewish interest. And this as certain other processes of collective memorization are breaking down i.e. as the Jews are moving away from being a 'faith- community' in the fullest sense of the word. Yerushalmi here does not go into the question of conflicting narratives of Jewish history. And the very interesting question of the way different kinds of Jews today construct different kinds of narratives of Jewish history as a whole. This work has a brilliant introduction by Harold Bloom. The work itself is recognized as a classic of modern Jewish scholarship. I conclude with one small piece of Yerushalmi 's writing. "When I spoke earlier of the coincidence of the rise of modern Jewish histiography and the decay of Jewish memory, I had in mind the specific kind of memory of the past, that of Jewish tradition. But hardly any Jew today is without some Jewish past. Total amnesia: is still relatively rare. The choices for Jews , as for non- Jewsis not whether or not to have a past, but rather-what kind of past shall one have."

A classic

This book enjoys a well-deserved reputation as a classic in the field of Jewish studies. The author maintains that "Only in Israel and nowhere else is the injunction to remember felt as a religious imperative to an entire people." What follows is a brilliant discussion of the meaning and selectivity of memory in Jewish religious tradition. Yerushalmi then shows how secularization radically transformed the meaning of memory and history for Jews. Writing of the rise of Jewish historiography in early 19th century Germany, he notes: "For the first time it is not history that must prove its utility to Judaism, but Judaism that must prove its validity to history, by revealing and justifying itself historically."