Diaspora, Secularisation and Science

Overview

Recall questions on the destruction of the Temple, the diaspora and migration, key modern figures, Gafni on the diaspora, secularisation and Kogel's position, Jewish liberationist thinking, and Cantor and Swetlitz on Jewish responses to Darwin.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Why was the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE such a turning point?

   Model answer

   It removed the sacrificial system, the priesthood's function and the single geographical centre of Jewish worship at a stroke. What replaced them was prayer, study and acts of kindness, led by rabbis rather than priests, which turned Judaism into something that could be practised anywhere. Tradition credits Yohanan ben Zakkai with securing a centre of learning at Yavneh as Jerusalem fell.

2. 2

   What did losing the Temple do to Jewish identity?

   Model answer

   It made Jewish identity portable. Holiness came to be carried by text, time and community rather than by a building, so the Torah scroll, Shabbat and the local congregation could be reconstituted anywhere Jews landed. Loss was also built into the calendar through Tisha B'Av and into the liturgy through prayers for return, so exile became part of how Jews understood themselves.

3. 3

   What is the diaspora, and how has migration reshaped it?

   Model answer

   The diaspora is Jewish life lived outside the Land of Israel, and it long predates the Roman destruction: substantial communities existed in Babylonia and Egypt centuries earlier, and the Babylonian centre eventually produced the Talmud that became authoritative for Jews everywhere. It has therefore been a place of major creativity, not simply of absence, and it has been remade repeatedly. The expulsion from Spain in 1492 scattered Sephardi Jewry around the Mediterranean and beyond. Ashkenazi Jews moved eastwards into Poland and Lithuania and then, after the pogroms of the 1880s and the pressures that followed, westwards in enormous numbers to Britain, the United States and elsewhere. The murder of European Jewry destroyed the eastern European heartland, and the later movements of Jews from Arab lands and from the Soviet Union shifted the centre of Jewish population to Israel and North America.

4. 4

   Name some key figures who shaped Judaism in the modern period, and say why they matter.

   Model answer

   Moses Mendelssohn opened the argument about Jews entering European culture. Abraham Geiger gave Reform its scholarly case, Samson Raphael Hirsch gave Modern Orthodoxy its founding formula, and Zacharias Frankel's historical approach led to Conservative Judaism. Theodor Herzl turned Jewish nationhood into a political programme, Mordecai Kaplan reconceived Judaism as an evolving civilisation, and Joseph Soloveitchik shaped Modern Orthodox thought in America.

5. 5

   What is at stake in disputes about the authentic voice of Judaism?

   Model answer

   Who has the standing to say what Judaism requires. Orthodox authorities claim the unbroken chain of transmission. Reform and Conservative movements claim that faithful development, informed by history, is the authentic Jewish method. Israeli state rabbinical authority, the diaspora's large lay-led communities and secular Jewish thinkers each add another claimant, and no body speaks for all Jews.

6. 6

   What does I Gafni argue about the diaspora?

   Model answer

   Gafni argues that diaspora Jews did not simply experience dispersion as punishment and wait to go home. Babylonian Jewry in particular developed accounts of its own dignity and even of its own centrality, claiming purer descent and a superior tradition of learning. On his reading, ideas of land, centre and diaspora were actively constructed to make a rich life outside the land religiously intelligible.

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