16 ms·

Why Jewish History Is So Hard to Write

200 points by diodorus 9y ago

aaron-lebo 9y ago
Schama who the article discusses produced a similar series that's on prime: https://www.amazon.com/In-the-Beginning/dp/B00J97O91Q/ https://www.amazon.com/In-the-Beginning/dp/B00J97O91Q/
- dizzy3gg 9y ago
  If you're UK based then it's on iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0398rkj/the-story-of-the-jews-1-in-the-beginning https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0398rkj/the-story-of-... I actually started watching last night after never really been taught (or remember being taught) much about them.
golemiprague 9y ago
There are much earlier archaeological artefacts including stone writing from much earlier than 457 B.C. This is the time after the destruction of the first temple by the Babylonians who dispersed the Jews around the area. Since then there were Jewish communities all over the middle east including in Egypt. I don't understand why the writer of the article is so baffled about this. Just as an example, the Merneptah Stele is the first to mention the name Israel and is dated to 1203 BC. Ahab and Omri the Israeli biblical kings are mentioned in the Kurkh Monoliths and the Mesha Stele from 850 BC so to start to research Jews just from 457 BC looks a bit too late in the game.
- jrumbut 9y ago
  From other things I've seen from Schama I think he starts the book there because he is fascinated with the episode, not because he thinks it's the first solid evidence of Jews. He sees Elephantine as countering widely held beliefs about ancient Jewish life (that it was all in Israel, homogenous, etc), containing interesting analogues to the present day, and being an altogether interesting story. It can be more difficult to spin a good yarn from the older material.
  - golemiprague 9y ago
    I can understand why Schama start from there, it is the time where we have a lot of other sources except from the bible and archeological sights here and there. My grief was more with the article writer and the idea that anybody thought there were no Jewish life outside Israel at that time. It is pretty common knowledge, from the bible itself which mention the life of Jews in Persia in the book of Daniel to anybody who read the history of Jews. It is not news and not surprising, we all know that the Talmud was written in Babylon, that's why it is called the Babylonian Talmud. There is no "widely held belief" that Jews lived only in Israel after the destruction of the first temple.
- wslh 9y ago
  Not (known if) specifically Jewish but there is a semitic slave figure in the Hecht Museum [1] from 18-19 Century BCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Figurine_from_Egypt_of_semitic_slave_(2).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Figurine_from_Egypt_of_se... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Figurine_from_Egypt_of_semitic_slave_(2).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Figurine_from_Egypt_of_se...
  - emmelaich 9y ago
    8th century BCE not 18th.
oyvey 9y ago
Wow amazing how the bound of religion and ethinicy can led people to survive thousands of years and still maintain an identity.
- baud147258 9y ago
  I didn't got that from the article. As far I understood it, during all this time, multiple iddentities appeared, evolved, split and disappeared, even if all can be traced back to the original Israel Kingdom.
- LoSboccacc 9y ago
  Not strange at all, integration is an exception more than the norm. The various chinatowns, italian quarters, irish quarters etc should be a testament to that: communities always tried to stick together thorough time and space, now and in the past. There are comparatively few cases of succesful long term non violent integration.
  - paganel 9y ago
    > There are comparatively few cases of succesful long term non violent integration. I beg to differ. I live in Eastern Europe, at the crossroads of different migration waves, and I'd say we've been quite successful at integrating people over the millennia. Just look at this widely circulated genetic map of Europe (http://brilliantmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/genetic-map-europe.png http://brilliantmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/genetic-...), you can see that Romania (the country from where I'm from) is pretty diverse, and that happened because we're at the crossroads between "mainland" Europe, the Asian steppes, Anatolia/the Middle East etc. And looking past genetics, I can give you countless examples of Transylvanian Saxons and Hungarians who, once they had passed the Carpathians into Wallachian and Moldavian lands, ended up by giving up their religion and language and completely assimilated (yeah, it took them a couple of generations or more, but the process was generally irreversible). The local Jews were also quite well integrated in terms of customs and everything, in fact one of the most famous Yiddish songs ("Roumania Roumania - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuj-qjyUjxY" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuj-qjyUjxY") mentions Romanian foods like "mamaliga" or "pastrama" (which we stole from the Turks, but everybody from the Balkans did that) in a melancholic way, like it also belonged to them, the Jewish people who used to live here.
DanAndersen 9y ago
Anyone interested in this topic should definitely check out Darryl Cooper's "MartyrMade" podcast, which had a Dan-Carlin-style series of episodes about early modern Zionism and the origins of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict: http://www.martyrmade.com/fear-loathing-in-the-new-jerusalem/ http://www.martyrmade.com/fear-loathing-in-the-new-jerusalem... It does a great job of being even-handed and emotionally connecting the listener with the motivations of the people in history. The history of the Jews (and the Jewish diaspora in particular) is fascinating. Between the typical opposing endpoints of assimilation/integration and separation there is this curious in-between state that seems both chaotic and stable over time -- the state of being "in a place" but not always being "of that place." The aforementioned podcast describes well the urge to assimilate or to remain distinct, positions held by both those in the Jewish community and those outside of it. The modern revival of the Hebrew language into a living tongue, both as a method of crystallizing identity and distinctiveness, is one example. Also interesting to consider how even small differences in "rules" between societies (like allowing usury or not, and to whom) leads to complex social consequences over time -- sort of a cellular automata analogy. Historical patterns of Jewish expulsion from various societies also make for interesting microcosms to understand tribe-based interactions: when the Jewish people were invited or allowed into a region, who was behind that change in policy and why? When pogroms or expulsions happened afterward, what were the causes and which segments of the population were the catalyst and why? It's an endlessly dynamic system that resists our efforts to create a simple static narrative -- and I suppose if anything it helps reveal that all of history is like that.
- linkmotif 9y ago
  Better post than the original link :)
- Pigo 9y ago
  On a side note ...and I know I'll be sacrificing some points for this comment... I can't seem to get what everyone likes about Dan Carlin. I really enjoy history, and appreciate color commentary, but I've found the couple that I've heard didn't hold my interest very long. I started the Khans and one on the Romans, after hearing the non-stop praise on JRE. I really wanted to like it, which is why I was shocked that it seemed slow and light on the history despite being hours-long. This is just, like, my opinion, man. I'm not trying to talk bad about it, I've just been curious if anyone else was disappointed or knows a better episode I should check out. I'm fascinated by Genghis Khan though, so I'm not sure how another topic could be more intriguing.
commandlinefan 9y ago
I've always been idly curious as to what happened in Israel (as in the geographic area) between, say, 35 A.D. and 1948. It seems, though, as if everybody who might have some insight there also has an agenda that makes any concrete information they might have to share indecipherable.
- agreen 9y ago
  I recommend The Source by Michener (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Source_(novel) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Source_(novel)). Masterfully written.
- isolli 9y ago
  I highly recommend this book (by a French author), which covers the years 70 AD to 1943, so not far! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Abraham_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Abraham_(novel) I don't know if some would call it biased, but it made a strong impression on me as a young adult. I am not Jewish, but it is fascinating in and of itself.
  - golergka 9y ago
    I just read the plot summary on wikipedia - and it seems that this book focuses on a family that leaves Israel pretty early on during these 2000 years.
    - kolpa 9y ago
      Yep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_diaspora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_diaspora
- fusiongyro 9y ago
  A friend of mine recommended A Peace to End All Peace, but I haven't read it yet. https://www.amazon.com/Peace-End-All-Ottoman-Creation/dp/0805088091/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522938442&sr=8-1&keywords=a+peace+to+end+all+peace https://www.amazon.com/Peace-End-All-Ottoman-Creation/dp/080... Your idle curiosity has already yielded an important insight: the situation is complex. I think if everyone only knew one thing about the middle east, it should be that.
Zenst 9y ago
History is not hard to write, it is just hard for many to read it correctly.
- zpatel 9y ago
  great point..
blah389405 9y ago
how is this relevant to hacker news?
- mfringel 9y ago
  To the simple son, you will say "Because enough people upvoted it."
  - mtVessel 9y ago
    Charitable. "What mean you by these postings?" suggests someone other than the tam.
  - googlemike 9y ago
    For those curious: This is a passover reference.
- sophacles 9y ago
  From the site guidelines: > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. It appears to have gratified at least 159 people's intellectual curiosity (at the time of making this post).
olivermarks 9y ago
I read Adam Kirch's review 'Why Jewish History Is So Hard to Write'. Perhaps it is because no one can ever seem to agree on what 'Jewish' actually is, as evidenced by some of the discussion threads here...
- throwawayjewis2 9y ago
  Fair point. I guess in that sense it's like "big data" or "blockchain", both concepts that I'm sure exist but I'm not quite sure how to define. Anecdote: I was once in a conversation with a fellow who was a rabbi and this topic came up. He said, "well...the way I think of it is, if you can think of ten characteristics that are 'Jewish', anyone who has any six of them can claim the title." I guess that's one way to be flexible.
Parsifal18 9y ago
This article reads like a glorification of the kind of ethnocentrism and tribalism that most here categorically condemn when it's engaged in by white people. Seeing as HN is supposed to be rational, pro-science, and skeptical, it's pretty strange to see an article on the front page so sympathetic to a religion--especially one that has infant genital mutilation as its core sacrament: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2304793/Two-babies-stricken-HERPES-ritual-oral-blood-sucking-circumcision-New-York-City.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2304793/Two-babies-s...
- LifeLiverTransp 9y ago
  That religion also spawned the first Hacker culture. If you can circumvent god and men law with logic - you are a rabbi.
  - bordercases 9y ago
    I'm not sure what legalistic hermeneutics has to do with hacker culture.
    - LifeLiverTransp 9y ago
      https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=30475 https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=30475 I sometimes wonder too- but then i meet the language lawyers, talking with the drm-legal team about, undefined behaviour in todays society- and suddenly. Or if you sit with actual lawyers, and all they talk about is how you could get away with a crime, in a theoretical sense of course, if you used that trapdoor and lousy wording, and you realize, that is just exactly what you talked about the other day, with the database team over lunch. You are right though, that the word hacker-culture does not capture it- its a mindset bend on edge cases, always looking for ways to circumvent.
  - kolpa 9y ago
    It's not circumventing law, it's carefully sculpting it. In general, those hacker loopholes come from (1) over-broad policies made by ancestor rabbis to "build a wall around the Law", and (2) a desire to shrink the walled area, without (3) disrespecting the judgment of ancestors. Do you think the US Supreme Court circumvents the Constitution and laws?

200 points by diodorus 9y ago

Schama who the article discusses produced a similar series that's on prime: https://www.amazon.com/In-the-Beginning/dp/B00J97O91Q/ https://www.amazon.com/In-the-Beginning/dp/B00J97O91Q/

dizzy3gg 9y ago
If you're UK based then it's on iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0398rkj/the-story-of-the-jews-1-in-the-beginning https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0398rkj/the-story-of-... I actually started watching last night after never really been taught (or remember being taught) much about them.

golemiprague 9y ago

There are much earlier archaeological artefacts including stone writing from much earlier than 457 B.C. This is the time after the destruction of the first temple by the Babylonians who dispersed the Jews around the area. Since then there were Jewish communities all over the middle east including in Egypt. I don't understand why the writer of the article is so baffled about this. Just as an example, the Merneptah Stele is the first to mention the name Israel and is dated to 1203 BC. Ahab and Omri the Israeli biblical kings are mentioned in the Kurkh Monoliths and the Mesha Stele from 850 BC so to start to research Jews just from 457 BC looks a bit too late in the game.

jrumbut 9y ago
From other things I've seen from Schama I think he starts the book there because he is fascinated with the episode, not because he thinks it's the first solid evidence of Jews. He sees Elephantine as countering widely held beliefs about ancient Jewish life (that it was all in Israel, homogenous, etc), containing interesting analogues to the present day, and being an altogether interesting story. It can be more difficult to spin a good yarn from the older material.
- golemiprague 9y ago
  I can understand why Schama start from there, it is the time where we have a lot of other sources except from the bible and archeological sights here and there. My grief was more with the article writer and the idea that anybody thought there were no Jewish life outside Israel at that time. It is pretty common knowledge, from the bible itself which mention the life of Jews in Persia in the book of Daniel to anybody who read the history of Jews. It is not news and not surprising, we all know that the Talmud was written in Babylon, that's why it is called the Babylonian Talmud. There is no "widely held belief" that Jews lived only in Israel after the destruction of the first temple.
wslh 9y ago
Not (known if) specifically Jewish but there is a semitic slave figure in the Hecht Museum [1] from 18-19 Century BCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Figurine_from_Egypt_of_semitic_slave_(2).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Figurine_from_Egypt_of_se... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Figurine_from_Egypt_of_semitic_slave_(2).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Figurine_from_Egypt_of_se...
- emmelaich 9y ago
  8th century BCE not 18th.

oyvey 9y ago

Wow amazing how the bound of religion and ethinicy can led people to survive thousands of years and still maintain an identity.

baud147258 9y ago
I didn't got that from the article. As far I understood it, during all this time, multiple iddentities appeared, evolved, split and disappeared, even if all can be traced back to the original Israel Kingdom.
LoSboccacc 9y ago
Not strange at all, integration is an exception more than the norm. The various chinatowns, italian quarters, irish quarters etc should be a testament to that: communities always tried to stick together thorough time and space, now and in the past. There are comparatively few cases of succesful long term non violent integration.
- paganel 9y ago
  > There are comparatively few cases of succesful long term non violent integration. I beg to differ. I live in Eastern Europe, at the crossroads of different migration waves, and I'd say we've been quite successful at integrating people over the millennia. Just look at this widely circulated genetic map of Europe (http://brilliantmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/genetic-map-europe.png http://brilliantmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/genetic-...), you can see that Romania (the country from where I'm from) is pretty diverse, and that happened because we're at the crossroads between "mainland" Europe, the Asian steppes, Anatolia/the Middle East etc. And looking past genetics, I can give you countless examples of Transylvanian Saxons and Hungarians who, once they had passed the Carpathians into Wallachian and Moldavian lands, ended up by giving up their religion and language and completely assimilated (yeah, it took them a couple of generations or more, but the process was generally irreversible). The local Jews were also quite well integrated in terms of customs and everything, in fact one of the most famous Yiddish songs ("Roumania Roumania - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuj-qjyUjxY" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuj-qjyUjxY") mentions Romanian foods like "mamaliga" or "pastrama" (which we stole from the Turks, but everybody from the Balkans did that) in a melancholic way, like it also belonged to them, the Jewish people who used to live here.

DanAndersen 9y ago

Anyone interested in this topic should definitely check out Darryl Cooper's "MartyrMade" podcast, which had a Dan-Carlin-style series of episodes about early modern Zionism and the origins of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict: http://www.martyrmade.com/fear-loathing-in-the-new-jerusalem/ http://www.martyrmade.com/fear-loathing-in-the-new-jerusalem... It does a great job of being even-handed and emotionally connecting the listener with the motivations of the people in history. The history of the Jews (and the Jewish diaspora in particular) is fascinating. Between the typical opposing endpoints of assimilation/integration and separation there is this curious in-between state that seems both chaotic and stable over time -- the state of being "in a place" but not always being "of that place." The aforementioned podcast describes well the urge to assimilate or to remain distinct, positions held by both those in the Jewish community and those outside of it. The modern revival of the Hebrew language into a living tongue, both as a method of crystallizing identity and distinctiveness, is one example. Also interesting to consider how even small differences in "rules" between societies (like allowing usury or not, and to whom) leads to complex social consequences over time -- sort of a cellular automata analogy. Historical patterns of Jewish expulsion from various societies also make for interesting microcosms to understand tribe-based interactions: when the Jewish people were invited or allowed into a region, who was behind that change in policy and why? When pogroms or expulsions happened afterward, what were the causes and which segments of the population were the catalyst and why? It's an endlessly dynamic system that resists our efforts to create a simple static narrative -- and I suppose if anything it helps reveal that all of history is like that.

linkmotif 9y ago
Better post than the original link :)
Pigo 9y ago
On a side note ...and I know I'll be sacrificing some points for this comment... I can't seem to get what everyone likes about Dan Carlin. I really enjoy history, and appreciate color commentary, but I've found the couple that I've heard didn't hold my interest very long. I started the Khans and one on the Romans, after hearing the non-stop praise on JRE. I really wanted to like it, which is why I was shocked that it seemed slow and light on the history despite being hours-long. This is just, like, my opinion, man. I'm not trying to talk bad about it, I've just been curious if anyone else was disappointed or knows a better episode I should check out. I'm fascinated by Genghis Khan though, so I'm not sure how another topic could be more intriguing.

commandlinefan 9y ago

I've always been idly curious as to what happened in Israel (as in the geographic area) between, say, 35 A.D. and 1948. It seems, though, as if everybody who might have some insight there also has an agenda that makes any concrete information they might have to share indecipherable.

agreen 9y ago
I recommend The Source by Michener (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Source_(novel) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Source_(novel)). Masterfully written.
isolli 9y ago
I highly recommend this book (by a French author), which covers the years 70 AD to 1943, so not far! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Abraham_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Abraham_(novel) I don't know if some would call it biased, but it made a strong impression on me as a young adult. I am not Jewish, but it is fascinating in and of itself.
- golergka 9y ago
  I just read the plot summary on wikipedia - and it seems that this book focuses on a family that leaves Israel pretty early on during these 2000 years.
  - kolpa 9y ago
    Yep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_diaspora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_diaspora
fusiongyro 9y ago
A friend of mine recommended A Peace to End All Peace, but I haven't read it yet. https://www.amazon.com/Peace-End-All-Ottoman-Creation/dp/0805088091/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522938442&sr=8-1&keywords=a+peace+to+end+all+peace https://www.amazon.com/Peace-End-All-Ottoman-Creation/dp/080... Your idle curiosity has already yielded an important insight: the situation is complex. I think if everyone only knew one thing about the middle east, it should be that.

Zenst 9y ago

History is not hard to write, it is just hard for many to read it correctly.

zpatel 9y ago
great point..

blah389405 9y ago

how is this relevant to hacker news?

mfringel 9y ago
To the simple son, you will say "Because enough people upvoted it."
- mtVessel 9y ago
  Charitable. "What mean you by these postings?" suggests someone other than the tam.
- googlemike 9y ago
  For those curious: This is a passover reference.
sophacles 9y ago
From the site guidelines: > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. It appears to have gratified at least 159 people's intellectual curiosity (at the time of making this post).

olivermarks 9y ago

I read Adam Kirch's review 'Why Jewish History Is So Hard to Write'. Perhaps it is because no one can ever seem to agree on what 'Jewish' actually is, as evidenced by some of the discussion threads here...

throwawayjewis2 9y ago
Fair point. I guess in that sense it's like "big data" or "blockchain", both concepts that I'm sure exist but I'm not quite sure how to define. Anecdote: I was once in a conversation with a fellow who was a rabbi and this topic came up. He said, "well...the way I think of it is, if you can think of ten characteristics that are 'Jewish', anyone who has any six of them can claim the title." I guess that's one way to be flexible.

Parsifal18 9y ago

This article reads like a glorification of the kind of ethnocentrism and tribalism that most here categorically condemn when it's engaged in by white people. Seeing as HN is supposed to be rational, pro-science, and skeptical, it's pretty strange to see an article on the front page so sympathetic to a religion--especially one that has infant genital mutilation as its core sacrament: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2304793/Two-babies-stricken-HERPES-ritual-oral-blood-sucking-circumcision-New-York-City.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2304793/Two-babies-s...

LifeLiverTransp 9y ago
That religion also spawned the first Hacker culture. If you can circumvent god and men law with logic - you are a rabbi.
- bordercases 9y ago
  I'm not sure what legalistic hermeneutics has to do with hacker culture.
  - LifeLiverTransp 9y ago
    https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=30475 https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=30475 I sometimes wonder too- but then i meet the language lawyers, talking with the drm-legal team about, undefined behaviour in todays society- and suddenly. Or if you sit with actual lawyers, and all they talk about is how you could get away with a crime, in a theoretical sense of course, if you used that trapdoor and lousy wording, and you realize, that is just exactly what you talked about the other day, with the database team over lunch. You are right though, that the word hacker-culture does not capture it- its a mindset bend on edge cases, always looking for ways to circumvent.
- kolpa 9y ago
  It's not circumventing law, it's carefully sculpting it. In general, those hacker loopholes come from (1) over-broad policies made by ancestor rabbis to "build a wall around the Law", and (2) a desire to shrink the walled area, without (3) disrespecting the judgment of ancestors. Do you think the US Supreme Court circumvents the Constitution and laws?