ABSTRACT
Of all the extraordinary features associated with the Jews, not the least impressive has been longevity. So far back does their history twist, so striking is their endurance, and so intact is their sense of themselves as a historical unit, that they make virtually everyone else on the planet look like transients. American Jews in the 1980s are expected to identify so fully with their Israelite ancestors on Passover that the chasm of time is bridged and the Jewish people are made whole and one. Voltaire seemed to answer in the negative, largely because the Jewish religion was only the manifestation of deeper, innate traits. Fascination with The Decline of the West has itself declined; and neither professionals nor amateurs bother much to study the history in A Study of History, though college courses in Jewish studies have expanded prodigiously.
