ABSTRACT
This book explores the transformation from Jewish militancy to pacifism in the ancient world, and back, from pacifism to militancy, in modern times, with accompanying changes in educational outlook in ancient and modern times. In particular, two periods of intense warfare, 66–135 CE and 1881–1948, highlight conflicting forces in Jewish history, and conflicting definitions of Jewish identity. The Bible-based rabbinic tradition which accepted ‘a time for war’ – and, between 66 and 135 CE evidently gave support to war against Rome – changed radically by the end of the 2nd century CE. Defeat by Rome set off a centrifugal movement within Judaism, forcing the diaspora to expand as the territory of Judaea, with Jerusalem razed and ploughed over, and the Temple gone, lost its thousand-year centrality in Jewish life. After the final Jewish revolt against Rome (132–135 CE), the rabbis created a school system of religious education based on Scripture and halakha (law), which effectively defined Judaism until modern times, and ensured a higher level of literacy among Jews than in the general population. This was a watershed in the history of education – the first successful school system aimed chiefly at the poor. As the Talmud evolved out of discussion and debate on the Mishna, the first code of Jewish law (edited in Galilee, c. 200 CE), Torah study in every social stratum, at every level, was a sacred duty, but no longer associated with revolt against Rome. Instead, it was and remained until modern times fundamentally pacifist, with a strong universalist outlook, deeply distrustful of the militant messianism which had driven war against Rome, and rejecting the Greek culture which undermined Judaism both in its attractiveness and its anti-Semitism. The rabbis in Eretz Yisrael, led by the Patriarch, Judah Hanasi, undertook the challenge of creating an educational system open to all male children, however poor, in a subsistence-level agricultural society. They needed to reach accommodation with the hated ruling power, and did so. Under Roman rule, newly created schools and synagogues replaced the ruined Temple, and study and observance replaced the sacrificial cult. Schools, not war, ensured the survival of Judaism, wherever Jews were scattered, from the 3rd century CE on. Rabbinic education dominated Jewish life until the French Revolution and the rise of the secular national State. After 1789, a reverse, centripetal movement, from pacifism to Jewish national militancy, from the diaspora back to the land of Israel, was set off by a totally unexpected combination of factors: emancipation and conscription, the rise of industry and the secular capitalist state, urbanization and the spread of secular enlightenment and mandatory education, the growth of nationalism, racial anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish violence, leading to the emergence of political Zionism. These forces of modernism eclipsed pacifist rabbinic Judaism and its traditional forms of education and created a new modernized form of Jewish education dynamized by Jewish nationalism and the revival of Hebrew. The Jews became remilitarized from 1789 to 1939, first in service to European countries, particularly in World War I, in which over one million Jews served, often fighting in opposing armies, then in Eretz Yisrael in response to Arab opposition to Jewish immigration after 1917.
