For thousands of years Jews have understoo O d that empires are not always utterly evil
THE REDISCOVERY of the evils of empire — slavery, expansionism, racism, economic exploitation, disregard for human life — holds few surprises for Jews, who for most of their 3,000-year history have lived under the rule of empires and were, at times, attacked, plundered, exiled, enslaved, persecuted and nearly destroyed by them.
Yet, at crucial moments, empires gave Jews sanctuary from persecution and enabled Judaism to survive.
As the only ancient minority who made it to the present with their religious-national culture intact, the Jews have thorough knowledge of the hard fist of empires: Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Seleucid Greek, Ptolemaic Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Islamic, and all major European empires from the Renaissance to modern times.
The grief caused by the Mesopotamian and Roman empires (and indeed, later ones) is remembered in the Jewish calendar, on Tisha B’Av, the Ninth of Av. It is the anniversary of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, first by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, then by the Romans in 70 CE. Under the Hellenistic and Roman empires, the Jews were the first to be banned from observing their religion, and the first to die as martyrs.
The Roman historian, Sir Fergus Millar, attributes the unique survival of the Jews and Jewish identity, despite intense Roman pressure, to the Hebrew Bible itself.
The Bible attacks injustices of empires and teaches worship of one God, ruler of the “kingdom of eternity”, demanding truth, faith, love, and justice, and commitment to social and political change.
The value attached to reading and writing in the Bible and rabbinic tradition meant that the number of literate Jews in empires was exceptionally high.
Though the Bible does not encourage revolt against empires, the potential was always there.
Jews in the Roman empire, crushed in three revolts, hated Rome as “the evil empire”, the largest slave society in history.
Later empires were persecutory in different ways.
The medieval empire of Islam, which conquered the Middle East and much of Europe, imposed countless antiJewish restrictions and petty humiliations, mockery, insult and chronic insecurity; judicial discrimination including a special emblem, the origin of the notorious yellow star.
Nevertheless, empires were not uniformly wicked: some protected Jews and allowed Judaism and Hebrew culture to flourish.
Exile (galut) by expansionist empires is usually seen as an unmitigated disaster in Jewish life; but exile exposed the Jews to an enormous variety of people and cultures and enhanced the universalist character of Judaism.
There were advantages in large empires with many different nationalities and ethnic groups as these were often more tolerant than individual nation states.
The vast influence of empires is visible throughout the 3,000-year history of the Hebrew language, a Grand Canyon of civilisation, with visible strata of most of the major cultures created during this time.
According to the Hebrew philologist Angel Sáenz-Badillos, the fundamental unity of the Hebrew language and literature is beyond doubt: the vocabulary and grammar of the Bible have been “the basis for all later periods, despite the numerous innovations of each era”.
Empires were crucial in the survival of Hebrew. In the biblical age, the Persian Achaemenid empire allowed Jews exiled by the Babylonians to return to the land of Israel, to rebuild their religious life and re-establish the Hebrew language.
In the book of Isaiah, the Persian ruler, Cyrus, is described as the “messiah” (mashiach, or “anointed one”).
The Judeans, still attached to idolatrous cults when exiled, came back home half a century later under Persian auspices with renewed devotion to monotheist faith, and a new sense of mission, as “a light to the nations”.
The Romans, similarly, facilitated Jewish survival through their legal system, which unified the empire; and their army, which kept the peace, allowing a remarkable flowering of Hebrew rabbinic culture in Galilee, where the
Mishna, the first
Empires were crucial in the survival of the Hebrew language’
code of Jewish law, was edited (c. 200 CE). Hebrew grew with synagogues and the rise of Jewish education aimed not at the elites but at the masses.
In rabbinic literature, some emperors (particularly Titus and Hadrian) are cursed — “may his bones rot” — but others are viewed positively.
In the Midrash, the emperor Antoninus is a bosom friend of the editor of the Mishna, Judah Hanasi.
During the Crusades, when many Jewish communities were massacred or expelled, Islamic countries often gave Jews shelter from Christian Europe. Medieval Islam, with its loving attention to the text of the Koran, encouraged Jews to rediscover the Hebrew Bible, its vocabulary and grammar, and its artistic qualities; and, under Arabic influence, to develop for the first time Jewish philosophy and quantitative Hebrew verse. There was a golden age of Hebrew poetry in Muslim Spain.
The great 19th century European empires created school networks, enabling Jews to gain qualifications in most fields and adapt to the modern world; and the rise of secular education and nationalism within these empires led to a substantial growth of modern Hebrew, predating organised Jewish political nationalism.
In the 20th century, the British empire spurred the greatest flourishing of Hebrew language and literature, and of spoken Hebrew, since the Biblical age. This was consistent with the growth of many other cultures (as well as national movements) under British rule, in Egypt, Iraq, India, Nigeria, Uganda, and elsewhere.
During the British Mandate in the 1920s, the land of Israel regained its ancient standing as the centre of Hebrew culture, led by CN Bialik and SY Agnon, who later won the Nobel Prize for literature.
Empires had their own linguistic cultures in which Jews lived their daily lives, enriching Jewish languages — in the Roman diaspora, for example, most Jews spoke Greek; in Arabic lands, Arabic; in Austria-Hungary, German; in the British empire, English — though throughout they kept Hebrew alive.
Hebrew preserved the unity of Jews based on religious or national beliefs and identity, rather than class, wealth and status, the criteria of empires.
European Jews used Yiddish as the language of diurnal reality, and Oriental Jews, Arabic or Ladino, but Hebrew literature often creates the illusion of being outside history: although the Jews were a conquered, exiled people, they lived in an ahistorical timewarp, rejecting foreign influences. In fact, such influences were consistent and deep.
And so, despite their history of persecution, expulsion, enslavement, humiliation, and genocide, in which popular protest against antisemitism was practically unheard of, Jews sought the welfare of the lands of their exile.
A guiding text in Jewish life was the prophet Jeremiah’s letter to the Babylonian exiles in the early 6th century BCE exhorting them to live as normal a life as possible in the land of their enemies, to make their home there, to marry and have children, and seek the peace of Babylonia, “for in its peace you will find peace”.
In the Mishna, too, the rabbis prayed for the Roman empire regardless of its treatment of Jews, “for if not for its authority, chaos rules” (Avot 3: 2). The rabbis feared invasion by Germanic tribes: “If they break out [into the empire], they will destroy the whole world” (Megillah 6b).
The protective force of modern European empires, too, was clear after they collapsed in WWI. The chaos that followed, and the flood of antisemitic nationalism, led to mass murder.
In his interwar stories, Joseph Roth recalled the Austro-Hungarian empire with awe and affection, though the empire was a centre of Jew-hatred.
In contrast, his contemporary in Jerusalem, the Hebrew poet, UZ Greenberg, accused the British empire of perfidy. In its policies toward Jews, it was a modern Titus, Roman destroyer of ancient Judea. Yet, when war came in 1939, there was little alternative but to support the Empire. By defeating the Germans at El Alamein, the British stopped the Shoah from reaching the Jews in Jerusalem.
What did centuries of imperial rule teach the Jewish people? Perhaps not to judge too harshly, to seek the good;
Imperial rule taught Jews both scepticism and respect’ tolerance and sympathy for people in their diversity; scepticism toward power and respect when it is used wisely; reluctance to succumb to prejudice and hatred; interest in other cultures and languages for their own sakes; high valuation of education and communal and family ties; acceptance that other cultures might in some ways be superior; and a desire to contribute to the welfare of the country.
Under British rule in the 1920s, Israel regained its ancient standing’