ABSTRACT
Since the Enlightenment, scientific advances have led to a shift in consciousness and revealed the universality of humanity. Nevertheless, each group also has its own “personal equation.” Here, Neumann introduces one of his major themes, the importance of the individual. He argues that archetypal symbolism pervades the development of human consciousness, from prehistory to modernity, giving individuals their spiritual and psychological grounding. The catastrophic situation of contemporary Jews (Neumann wrote during the Hitler years) threatens the very existence of Judaism and the individual Jew. For Neumann, this catastrophe is made worse by the assimilation to western European culture, which has cut off individuals from their tradition and left them rootless. Both volumes of The Roots of Jewish Consciousness deal with the same basic theme: the relationship of consciousness and the unconscious. Neumann examines this theme in relation to two historic eras. The first is ancient Judaism, spanning from prophetism, which begins with the tension between YHWH and earth, through the time of the Second Temple and the apocalyptic writers. The second era is that of Hasidism, the late eighteenth-century movement whose teachings provide, Neumann says, “a new basis for resolving the essential problems of the Jewish person.”
