A Jewish Historical Agenda?

My deep thanks to Jon D. Levenson and Hillel Halkin for their penetrating and thought-provoking responses to my essay, “What Is the Meaning of Jewish History?” In what follows, I draw on each of them in an effort to advance further our mutual understanding of the issues involved in any attempt to answer the question raised by my title.

To begin: at the core of any reflection on the Jewish conception of history is its opposition to the Greek approach that, broadly speaking, lies at the root of modern academic history. For the Greeks, as Hillel Halkin rightly reminds us, history is “the embracing study of past events that seeks to describe and understand them, the connections among them, and the motives and mores of those involved in them.”

The Greeks taught us the love of knowledge for its own sake. As a historian myself, I cannot but stress my ongoing gratitude to Herodotus and his successors. As a Jew, however, I must stipulate that this form of knowledge of past events doesn’t help me to become a better human being or a better member of society and citizen of the world, as the Jewish ethical ideal equips one to be.