Who Are the Jews and Why Are They Still Here?

Unsettled; An Anthropology of the Jews
by Melvin Konner, Ph.D., M.D.

Far reaching, intellectually rich, and passionately written, Unsettled takes the whole history of Western civilization as its canvas and places onto it the Jewish people and faith. With historical insight and vivid storytelling, renowned anthropologist Melvin Konner charts how the Jews endured largely hostile (but at times accepting) cultures to shape the world around them and make their mark throughout history from the pastoral tribes of the Bronze Age to enslavement in the Roman Empire, from the darkness of the Holocaust to the creation of Israel and the flourishing of Jews in America. With fresh interpretations of the antecedents of today's pressing conflicts, Unsettled is a work whose modern-day reverberations could not be more relevant or timely.

Who are the Jews and why are they still here? Other people have suffered greatly; others have survived. But the Jews seem to garner a kind of attention focused on no other people. They may be unique in their accomplishments and so have often been targets of envy. They may also be unique in their standoffishness and have also been feared and resented. But there is no doubt that they are unique in the amount of attention the world has given them, now perhaps more than ever. Why? That is the mystery at the heart of this work, and it took me, and will take us, through the grand sweep of Jewish cultures in time and space.

But this is no conventional Jewish history. It makes no claim to thorough coverage of events and leaders - the standard succession of wars and treaties, speeches and conventions, is not the point here. Rather, it is to understand the cultures of the Jews, from their origins to today and even perhaps tomorrow. Of course, some standard historical facts are needed as anchor points, but the interest of anthropologists is always drawn away from kings and ministers to ordinary people: How did or do they live? What do they believe in? What are their hopes and dreams? What do they worship? What do they teach their children? What entertains and uplifts them? What threatens their survival and how do they react? How do they see themselves in a wider human world?

This approach leads to some quite different emphases than those of conventional history. Here are some of the main points this book will make:

• Contrary to some claims, peoplehood - something quite different from religion - has been a part of Jewish identity from the beginning. It preceded by centuries Temple Judaism, the priestly religion of the ancient Holy Temple in Jerusalem, and, certainly, Torah Judaism, which the rabbis created after the Second Temple was destroyed, and it has figured in every phase of Jewish history. Notwithstanding the power of Jewish religion ancient and modern, in every generation there have been substantial numbers of Jews who did not practice Judaism yet played important roles in Jewish life.

• The notion of the Jews as a studious, mild, ethical people who do not fight is a myth. Ancient Israel was born in violence, as were both Temple and Torah Judaism. It is true that the Jews did not have an army of their own for two millennia, but they have fought bravely and effectively in the armies of every nation they have ever lived in, even nations where they were bitterly persecuted and had to fight for the right to fight.

• The great Jewish gifts to the world - monotheism, the Ten Commandments, resistance against tyranny - were born in weakness in a group of tribes, then a kingdom, buffeted between great empires; nurtured in a series of bitter exiles; and annealed in genocide. This produced allegiance to a single all-powerful God who could protect them, a code of laws that maintained decency in the face of perversions of power, and a searing sense of injustice.

• The Jews did not come to Israel from anywhere else at any time. They have been there from time immemorial. They became a coherent people there, discovered God there, built a kingdom there, created the Torah there, and composed much of the Talmud there. Attempts to evict them partly succeeded, but their presence there has always been significant. Wherever they were in exile they longed to go back there, and in every generation some did. Their presence there is permanent, and future attempts to evict them will incur a huge cost.

• At least four times ancient Israel was devastated because of Jewish factionalism, extreme religious zealotry, and military overreach. This may happen again. Recent Jewish fanaticism, mass murder, assassination, splinter cults, and messianic dreams all eerily recall the patterns of the distant past. Indeed, if that past holds any lessons and current conditions continue, modern Israel, like its ancient counterpart, will be at least as threatened from within as from without.

• The Jews have suffered bitterly, but every generation has celebrated life every year. They have sung their warriors' praises in joy, circumcised their sons in joy, prepared for the Sabbath in joy, danced with the Torah in joy, learned and taught it in joy, settled throughout the world in joy, and returned to their dangerous homeland in joy. They have made jokes about themselves and others, told and written funny stories, and commented on their frequently painful daily lives with a thousand lighthearted quips and proverbs. The view of the Jews as always weeping and lamenting is another myth.

The Jews came onto the stage of history as a group of warlike tribes centered in the hill country of Judea. They were indigenous to the Jordan River region, and slowly developed from a collection of tribes into a kingdom. Like everything else in the ancient world, this involved great violence. What we call civilization was nourished by rivers of blood.

There is no evidence outside the Bible for any of the events described in it until quite late in the saga. The Creation, the Flood, the patriarchal family settling the land, the Exodus, the revelation on Mount Sinai, the wandering in the desert, or the conquest of Canaan, the Promised Land - all exist only in biblical texts. But the Bible is a document like any other. It has its own purposes and distortions, but as a wise archeologist once said, just because it is written in the Bible doesn't necessarily mean that it is wrong.

And of course, there are other kinds of truth. If the text of the Bible is the revealed word of God, or even the work of authors directly inspired by God, then its claims do not have to be held to any scientific or scholarly standard. I understand this kind of belief, I respect it, and I once subscribed to it myself. But it will not figure in any sense in this account of how the people of Israel lived, and how they became the Jews - except when there is independent corroborating evidence. With all due respect to believers, I write here as an anthropologist who does not believe anything that is not scientifically proven.

So what do we know? From the start the Israelites were in a buffer zone between empires, and this was formative. We can't grasp the origins of the Jews without understanding the weakness of their physical position. The hatred of domination by foreign powers was of the essence of Israelite culture. But the Israelites had their own emperor - the one God who trumped all earthly powers. They came late to the world stage, millennia after the rise of the Near Eastern civilizations, and were no more than a footnote to ancient history. But by adopting writing and making texts central to their culture, and by placing one God at the heart of religion and ethics, the Israelites changed the world.

The destruction of their first Temple in Jerusalem and the resulting first exile brought a new kind of Judaism into being. Texts, scribes, and interpreters became all-important, longing for Jerusalem became central, adaptations to host countries were created, weakness became strength - the strength of monotheism, ethics, and speaking truth to power - and a succession of prophets constantly reminded the people of these imperatives. The Temple and its priesthood were restored; but the new religion, centered on Torah interpretation as much as on animal sacrifice, developed in parallel. Idol worship continued to be a problem, and prophets arose to decry it, but also to hold Israel's rulers to account for their treatment of the poor. Despite the Temple's restored glory, this concern with the weak was now permanent.

© 2004 Penguin, a division of Penguin Putnam, used by permission.

About the Author

Melvin Konner, Ph.D., M.D., the author of nine books, is a Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Anthropology at Emory University in Atlanta, where he teaches in the anthropology, human biology, and Jewish studies programs. He has written for The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, Science, and the New England Journal of Medicine.