Customer Reviews

Indestructible Jews

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Max Dimont shows how the Jews have been preserved through their tumultuous history by the Bible scriptures. The 10 commandments given by Moses, and the moral remonstrances of lessor prophets became the resource which preserved the Jews as a a separate, and very influential people for thousands of years. He shows how those biblical laws and precepts shaped the legal codes of Western Civilisation as the Jews migrated throughout the world during their Diaspora. Therefore, Western Civilisation owes much to the Bible scriptures through the idestructible Jewsih people. The book is authoritative and interesting throughout. The very readable work of a frequent lecturer on the history of the Jewish nation.

This extraordinary book approaches Jewish history from a unique historical and metaphysical angle. It adds another dimension to e.g. Paul Johnson's book History of the Jews. Dimont provides a frame of reference based on the ebb & flow of history as it is shaped by ideas; civilizations come and go but the Jewish people always emerge on the crest of the new as the old recedes. He employs the scheme of the great mystic Isaac Luria on the 3 stages of matter, consciousness & human experience: the contraction, the breaking of the vessels (Diaspora) to the restoration, the promise of a greater totality.

The author calls each era of 2000 years an Act, of which the third is still to come. The first covers the period from Abraham to Jesus when the Hebrews were psychologically equipped and prepared for survival in dispersion. The second, the exile with a mission, stretches to Ben-Gurion and the rebirth of Israel in its land. The third waits on the threshold.

Act I: The Manifest Destiny, considers the patriarchs, prophets & the concept of predestination. The cosmic project started with Abraham in whom the idea was conceived, moved through ancient Egypt, the Magna Carta at Sinai & the history of ancient Israel & Judah. The canonization of Scripture took place in the first millennium BC (Richard Friedman's The Hidden Book in the Bible provides food for thought in this regard) and the prophets made their mark. Later, Hellenism entered the stage. Humanistic nationalism & ideological universalism emerged, two poles first encountered in the prophets of whom Abraham Heschel's work is without equal.

Act II: The Existentialist Dilemma, explores the Diaspora in which ideas of ethics, justice and human dignity were spread throughout the world. In this phase, the Talmud was born. The first challenge was the Roman Empire, the second the Parthian-Sassanid World and the third the Islamic civilization. In an interlude, the author examines the crucifixion account. The challenges of the feudal world of Europe followed, first a flowering then a regression during the ghetto era. The scientific age culminated in the Zionist movement. The return was not to the letter of Talmudic Judaism but according to the spirit of biblical prophecy. Specific sections are devoted to the fate of the Jews in Russia, Germany & America.

Act II also explores the Oral Law and Torah interpretations down the ages that served as a protective force in the Diaspora. First was the Midrash, starting the science of exposition through allegory & homiletics. Around 200 BC the Mishna was born, based on reason & logic. Some great names here are Hillel, the master of logic and Gamaliel, father of Rabbinical Judaism. The Mishna was codified by Judah Hanashi. The School of Gemara developed under the Sassanid Persians; together with the Mishna it was compiled into the Talmud, completed by the end of the 5th century AD. The Talmud became Jewish common law in the Islamic Empire. In Islamic Spain, Moses Maimonides was a sage of reason whilst devotional poetry flourished with the likes of Solomon ibn Gabirol.

As the Islamic East declined, an influx followed into feudal Europe where the immigrants became a business and professional hierarchy. Rashi adapted the Babylonian Talmud to European conditions. During the ghetto phase Jewish thought stagnated. Moses Mendelssohn began the mental emancipation with non-Talmudic Judaism. The Enlightenment ultimately led to physical emancipation under Napoleon but later also spawned lethal modern strains of antisemitism. This in turn led to the rebirth of the Jewish State under the leadership of Ussishkin, Weissmann, Jabotinsky & Ben-Gurion.

Jewish mysticism or Kabalah (from 'kabeil' - to receive) had its roots in the 2nd century; its influence increased markedly from the 10th century onwards. I recommend On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism by Gershom Scholem for an introduction.

Dimont identifies the following 4 characteristics the Jewish people: (1) Iconoclasm - challenging the status quo (2) Skepticism regarding received ideas (3) Upholding the moral law through individual rights, the rule of law, justice & fairness (4) Scholarship & philanthropy, including a strong presence in the healing and protective professions like medicine & law. History shows that those societies that accepted the aforementioned ideas tended to flourish, whilst those that rejected them became totalitarian. History also reveals that the Jewish spirit represents all that is best in humanity whilst the antisemite represents all that is base and perverse.

In Act III: The Paradox of the Diaspora, Dimont speculates about the possible destinies of the world and the Jews, addressing the question of a divine mission and the function of Israel. He measures the history of the Jews against the theories of Spengler, Toynbee and Isaac Luria, and adds his own view of the future, one of the most thought-provoking passages of metaphysical speculation that I have ever encountered. The author's theory has the ring of truth and he conveys his well-organized thoughts in flowing prose.

The extensive bibliography is organized by the following subjects: general Jewish history, religion & psychology, the times of Jesus & the Dead Sea Scrolls, Antisemitism & Holocaust literature, Zionism & the State of Israel, general world history, perspectives of history, from Isaiah to Hitler - ideas & counter-ideas, miscellanea and encyclopedias. Works of interest covering related territory include WorldPerfect: The Jewish Impact on Civilization by Ken Spiro and Cracking the Bible Code by Jeffrey Satinover.

There is much good the Jews have done in history: they gave us Christianity, for example, which, to give a small example, brought an end to some incredibly barbaric pracitices like gladitorial combat in the Roman Coliseum. There is also the darker side, of course. Dimont goes into both, but unfortunately seems unable to distinguish between the two.

Dimont, for example, shows a perverse and sadistic pleasure in describing the tables turned against the Romanovs. He, also, claims, contrary to the evidence, that the average German knew and approved of the Holocaust.

At the end of the book, Dimont states that Western Civilization is doomed and in its terminal stage. Where might the Jews go, he asks. China, he says, is a possiblity, after all it is in many ways a Jewish state, with its Marxist foundation.

One hopes that enlightened Jews will ultimately expose the pathologies evidenced in Dimont's type of world-view, and seek to push their co-religionists into a more positive direction, to embrace the goodness in Judaism and reject its opposite.

I loved this book. It takes the stories that I have grown up with and puts them into their proper places in history. I could not put this one down.

In this highly cynical, irreverent and philosophical volume, Dimont presents us with a cross between a history and explorative essay on the question as to "Is there a manifest destiny in Jewish history".
The book is divided into three acts attempting to fit Jewish history into a kabbalistic framework.

Act 1 explores the period between the founder of the Hebrew nation, Abraham and the Jewish founder of Christianity, Jesus.
Act II describes the Jewish exile by the Romans from 70 CE to the return of the Jews to their ancient homeland when the Jews marched out of the concentration camps to found the Jewish State, and Israel wars of deface up to the Six Day War 0f 1967.
He describes the religious revolution of Abraham's innovation- monotheism and the origins in the Torah and Jewish civilization of the judicial system of democracies today.
As the author so correctly points out:
'The laws in the Torah regarding man's relations to man constitute mankind's first "bill of rights". These laws boldly proclaim that man's freedom is his supreme right. He has the right to personal liberty, free speech and private property. His life and person are inviolate. Charges against him must be made in open court, where he has a right to confront his accusers and defend himself. A century before Jesus, the Jews added yet another innovation, the right to cross examine a witness, so movingly illustrated in "Susanna and the Elders".

There are several places where he is off the rails though, including his bizarre comment ( though most historians have been guilty of this misguidance) claiming that after the Jews entered Canaan, "Canaan, the land of the Canaanites is subdued and becomes Palestine", referring to the split of the United Kingdom of Israel and Judah in 922 BCE as the "division of the Kingdom of Palestine".
The term "Palestine" came from the name that the conquering Roman Empire gave the ancient Land of Israel in an attempt to obliterate and de-legitimize the Jewish presence in the Holy Land. The name "Palestine" was invented in the year 135 C.E.
Before that it was known as the Land of Israel (if you want another neutral name then refer to the holy Land of the Levant), David and Solomon's kingdom named the United Kingdom of Israel and Judah .
The term "Palestine" came from the name that the conquering Roman Empire gave the ancient Land of Israel in an attempt to obliterate and de-legitimize the Jewish presence in the Holy Land. The name "Palestine" was invented in the year 135 C.E.
The Roman Procurator in charge of the Judean-Israel territories was so angry at the Jews for revolting that he called for his historians and asked them who were the worst enemies of the Jews in their past history. The scribes said, "the Philistines." Thus, the Procurator declared that Land of Israel would from then forward be called "Philistia" [further bastardized into "Palaistina"] to dishonor the Jews and obliterate their history. Hence the name "Palestine." Hence "Palestine" was a colony of various empires between 135 CE and 1948 (never an independent country). To refer before or after this to "Palestine" is simply incorrect.
How can the author refer to Saul as the "first King of Palestine" when the term Palestine was not to come into use for over another thousand years.

The author also wrongly refers to the liberation struggle by the Maccabees against Greko-Syrian tyranny as a war of intolerance by the Maccabees, and refers to the bloodthirsty tyrant Antiochus as "one of the most enlightened and tolerant kings of his age."
?????
The author also bizarrely refers to Marxism as having roots in Jewish thought just because Karl Marx was a baptized Jew. Absolute garbage, There is nothing Jewish about Marxism.
On the positive side the author is incredibly accurate about the origins of Islam and Christianity and the truth about the crucifixion.
The author refers to the trials and tribulations of the Jews in exile in Europe, but considerably little about Jewish communities in North Africa and the Middle East.
He does point out that the Khazars of Central Asia, whose aristocracy converted to Jewish in 740 CE, to Christianity 200 years later by Duke Sviatoslov of Kiev 200 years later. So much for the anti-Semitic slur that Ashkenazic Jews are descended from the Khazars. He also does establish that during the Barbarian invasions of Europe, and the subsequent Crusades and pogroms, there was rape of Jewish girls and women which led to the infusion of European strains into the Jewish bloodlines of Europe but as the Talmud views Jewishness as reckoned through the mother, the offspring of these incidents were fully fledged Jews by dint of birth.

The author also succintly explains the bottom line of the Arab/Moslem-Israeli conflict (This was written in 1971 shortly aftter the Six Day War but none of it has changed): "Ironically, the independence message of the Balfour Declaration helped the Arab dream more than the Jewish. Before World War I, the Arabs established by violence, politics, and war eighteen independent states and shiekdoms, the most important of which are Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq. Most were carved out of territory formerly belonging to the Ottoman Empire, France, Italy and Spain. This Arab landmass totals 4 626 000 square miles, greater than the United States by one and a half million square miles.
In contrast to the expansion of the Arab world Palestine contracted. After World War I, when liberated by the Allies from the turks, Palestine embraced 45 000 square miles. In 1949 after she was granted her sovereignty by the United Nations and secured it on the field of battle, she had shrunk, through successive partitions, to 8 000 square miles, or one fifth of her former size, an area constituting but 0.02 percent of the Arab landmass. The Arabs say that they must have this 0.02 percent to add to their 4 626 000 square miles or die".
This is indeed the bottom line of the 87 year old conflict.
The struggle for Israel's survival is not only the struggle for Jewish survival but that of human rights for minorities around the world.
The media and leftwing political and academic establishment today today ignore the rights of minority groups.