Don't Know Much About History

I recently finished reading a short book by Gershom Scholem: “From Frankism to Jacobinism – The Life of Moses Dobrushka alias Franz Thomas von Schonfeld alias Junius Frey”. Although I learned very little, I was left with even greater respect for its author. I suppose that needs a little unpacking.

When I’ve read other Scholem works, there have always been juicy details to sink my nerdy teeth into. For instance, how did cabala evolve over the years, and what was the context? Or how did European Jews react when they first heard about Sabbatai Zevi? How did they feel years later when he apostatized?

But this book doesn’t really have anything like that. The focus is about nailing down the movements of Dobrushka AKA Schonfeld AKA Frey, and it gets to be a bit tedious. And as brilliant as I am, I don’t know enough about Europe from just before the French Revolution up to the Reign of Terror to grok all the details. And that’s where the awe comes in.

Dobrushka AKA Schonfeld AKA Frey was a small d democrat, and a capital A aristocrat, a small c con man, and a capital T true believer. He changed his name as he moved around, lied about his age, claimed various notables as blood relations, invented imaginary associates and allies. One of his more endearing activities was pimping out his sister, who was evidently chill about being pimped out. Just how did Scholem put together all the pieces?

Scholem started his research in the late 1940’s, and he didn’t have anything along the lines of a searchable database. He would have been lucky to get his hands on dusty old catalogs and long abandoned books. Some of his information would have come in manuscripts handwritten in various languages. That’s a neat trick in itself – I can’t even read my own scribbles.

And he managed to piece it all together: where Dobrushka AKA Schonfeld AKA Frey was and when; just what he was up to; who was supporting him. He settled a few controversies amongst historians of the era, and he corrected some of his own mistakes made earlier in his career. We’re talking about next-level scholarship here.

One of the first Jewish authors I ever read was Isaac Asimov. He produced fascinating speculations about the future, some of which have turned out to be remarkably prescient. In “The Naked Sun”, written in 1957, he describes a woman having mind-blowing sex with an anatomically correct male robot. No need to be concerned about consent: robots were programmed to be empathetic, validating, and supportive. This might cause folks to anthropomorphize, form emotional attachments, and even become dependent. The same could be said about ChatGPT.

Asimov also wrote the “Foundation” series, which is set a few thousand years in the future after Earth was decimated by nuclear war and humankind spread out through the Milky Way. A small part of the story takes place on the planet Trantor, the galactic capital. One of the characters consults a computer library containing all records going back as far as the first cave drawings. An Interstellar Internet Archive and Wayback Machine, if you will. As it turns out, some of these files were too corrupt to be accessed. Nonetheless, these degraded collections of information were never, ever deleted.

Which is not all that different than today. If an archeologist stumbled across some smudged parchment or shattered tablets, these would surely be preserved in the hope that information could be extracted from them as new capabilities were developed.

This brings us back to the next-level scholarship I described earlier. Just how do scholars assemble pottery shards and palimpsest fragments into any sort of narrative? I’m sure it requires some patience and a good deal of eye strain, but technology has become increasingly important as a tool to unlock the dead past’s dark secrets.

Searchable databases are obviously a boon to any sort of research, but we should soon see new techniques that will greatly enhance our understanding of history. For starters, many ancient scrolls have been recovered which are too frail to be read. Clever scientists are attempting to harness x-rays, electronic microscopes, and perhaps a dash of AI to virtually unroll these artifacts. A similar method is being used to make some sense out of smudged letters. But my personal favorite involves a garbled source of more recent vintage.

Consider Richard Nixon and the abuses of the Watergate scandal. I know that all seems quaint compared to what’s going on today but bear with me.

Tricky Dick was ultimately brought down by the release of his precious White House tapes. There was much in the recordings that was incriminating, such as the “smoking gun tape”. But far more intriguing and suspicious was the existence of an 18 ½ minute gap.

Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods, took the fall for that, claiming she had inadvertently erased that portion of the tape. For what it’s worth, William Safire, one of Nixon’s speechwriters, never believed that and blamed it on his boss’s clumsy ham-handedness. But none of that matters!

Several years ago, an attempt was made to recover whatever had been erased. It was, after all, a magnetic tape, and perhaps some stray electrons could be detected by modern equipment. Alas, the effort failed but watch this space!

The examples I’ve just cited are not quite ready for prime time, but here’s one that came up with a fascinating result. In 2 Kings 20:12-19, Hezekiah is visited by envoys from Babylon. This leads to some questions. Judah was just a small little kingdom, and Babylon was a great big power. Would they really bother sending an ambassador to the tiny backwater town of Jerusalem? And is there any evidence outside of the Bible that supports this?

As the Nazarene put it: “Seek and ye shall find.” In September 2025, just a few months ago, 2700-year-old pottery sherds were discovered in Jerusalem. These were inscribed with Akkadian cuneiform, which was used for diplomatic correspondence. Petrographic analysis determined that the material came from the Tigris basin in modern northern Iraq. I don’t know if any of Hezekiah’s DNA was recovered.

As cool as that is, the archeological record doesn’t always line up so neatly with the Bible. There is no evidence of a massive Semitic slave population in Egypt. Jericho may not have been inhabited at the time Joshua is said to have destroyed it. Modern scholars do not believe that David presided over a vast empire stretching from the Euphrates to Egypt.

Whatever can be made of these tidbits, it’s probably why an Orthodox friend told me that he doesn’t pay attention to archeology. That’s fine, but none of this shakes my commitment to Judaism.

I’ve recently learned two new words: historiography and historiology. One was taught to me by a learned scholar of my acquaintance; the other, by a genuine college professor. These both refer to how the view of history changes throughout history. I was grateful for the heads up. I didn’t know that there was a name for what I’m interested in. It turns out this is the source of a lot of conflict among the Children of Israel.

The Haskalah, also known as the Jewish Enlightenment, got started in Germany in the mid-18th century, later moving into eastern Europe. It got some pushback from elements of the traditional Jewish community, who accused it of promoting assimilation. I don’t agree with that assessment, and there were many rabbis committed to Haskalah. However, there was certainly an anticlerical predilection in some parts of the movement.

The Maskilim wanted to expose Jews to the advances in secular knowledge that had been hidden from them through both enforced ghettoization by the Christians as well as the disapproval of Jewish religious authorities. Young Jews shouldn’t spend all their time in stuffy study halls and should have choices other than smalltime peddling and pauperization. Jews should work the land, engage in all trades, touch some grass, just like in the First and Second Commonwealths. They need to be taught science, languages, and above all, history. And many of the histories written by the Maskilim were propagandistic, promoting these views.

Compare this to the work of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, known in English as the Science of Judaism. Heinrich Graetz, a member of this 19th century movement, felt that history should be presented accurately and without any agenda. You know, just the facts ma’am. And don’t wear your implicit bias on your sleeve. He might not have always been successful, but that was his goal.

Then there’s what I suppose should be called the traditional Jewish view of the past. ArtScroll frequently describes historical works in its catalog as being written with a Torah perspective. It’s hard to argue with that, except it sounds like an old boss of mine who said, “Be a team player” when he really meant “Do what I want”. And as far as that perspective goes, remember the words of that esteemed Jewish scholar, the late Sammy Davis Junior: “It ain’t necessarily so”.

Rav Avigdor Miller, he should rest in peace, was the greatest Talmud scholar I’ve met in person. He had nothing but scorn for what he called “the irresponsible history-writers.” He was furious at them for their text criticisms, challenges to traditional thinking, and their alleged hatred for Torah. He vented his most toxic venom at Heinrich Graetz, who had written one of the first modern Jewish histories. It is six volumes in English, which I’ve almost finished reading. It is quite a tour de force. He produced it without AI, Google Translate, Wikipedia, or even Microfiche.

Which is not to say it doesn’t have any faults. The language can seem flowery and a bit dated. The tsunami of names, dates, and places can be bewildering. Some conclusions do not gibe with current scholarship. For example, Graetz claimed that virtually all Conversos who underwent baptism in Spain and Portugal practiced Judaism privately and then threw off their Christian disguises as soon as they could. Certainly, this is in line with what my Hebrew school teachers taught me, and I don’t doubt that it was true in many cases.

But compare this to what Benzion Netanyahu wrote in “The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain”. He claimed that many if not most Conversos, and certainly their descendants, were wholly committed to Christianity. I don’t have nearly the chops to say which historian was right, but I suspect there is something to Netanyahu’s version.

But none of this made it to the Rav’s radar screen. Here’s one thing that did. It really ticked him off that Graetz declared that there was only one Shimeon ben Chonio.

Traditionally, there were two: Shimeon the Just and some other Shimeon the Considerably Less Just. According to Graetz, the snowflake sages split him into two, something like the Good Kirk/Bad Kirk episode in Star Trek. This left Rabbi Miller intensely triggered.

And don’t get the Rav started on how the “writers” fiddled with dates, typically saying that many events occurred later than Jewish tradition suggests. This was nothing less than a heretical accusation of Talmudic retrofitting.

I don’t reject our tradition, but the Tanach does have some seeming inconsistencies. I’ll start with something a bit esoteric.

Exodus 12:8-9 gives these instructions for Passover preparation: “They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted with fire… Do no eat it raw or boiled in water.” Here’s Deuteronomy 16:7: “You shall boil it and eat it at the place that the L-rd your G-d will choose.” So, shaken not stirred. I mean, roasted not boiled. This will be the first thing I’ll ask Moshiach about when he gets here.

2 Samuel 21:19 states that “Elhanan son of Jaare-oregim, the Bethlehemite, struck Goliath the Gittite.” But didn’t David dispatch Goliath with a slingshot? There might be a difference between a Gittite and a Philistine, but I’m not sure. In any event, 1 Chronicles 20:5 either clears up or adds to the confusion: “Elhanan son of Jair struck Lahmi, the brother of Goliath the Gittite.”

Chronicles cleans up David’s reputation with a bit of an omission. There’s no mention of his indiscretion with Batsheva nor his setting up the loyal Uriah for death in battle. I hope I don’t get excommunicated for saying this, but Chronicles cleans up KBH’s reputation as well. In 2 Samuel, the Almighty incites David to conduct a census and then gets angry with David for conducting a census. In Chronicles, it’s Satan that does the inciting.

This next one’s particularly tricky. Here’s 1 Kings 9:11 - “Solomon gave Hiram twenty cities in the Galilee.” And 2 Chronicles 8:1 – “ Solomon rebuilt the cities that Hiram had given to him.” Huh? Maybe the texts could have used a little cross-checking, or at least some proof-reading?

Perhaps some traditionally minded type can square these circles or tie up loose ends for me. But Lucy, you’ve got some reconciling to do.

I’m a Zionist. Period. Paragraph. Full stop. The Arab world’s rejection of Israel’s right to exist has extended the suffering more than anything Israel has done. It’s a bit glib to say, but it take two sides to make peace, and only one side to make war. It makes me sick to think about the celebrations after the atrocities of October 7. It left me utterly confounded to hear claims that whatever came next would be the Zionist’s fault, even before Israel had responded. I don’t know what the Hamas leadership expected that response would be, but they could have asked me.

As I’ve said before, that’s not the same as saying the Israeli government is completely blameless. The way the West Bank is being carved is criminally foolish. The IDF is not doing enough to prevent extremist Jews rampaging through Palestinian villages. Israel is not committing genocide, but I’ve read about actions by individual soldiers that are, if accurately reported, war crimes.

You may have heard the phrase: “Where you stand depends on where you sit.” Clever words that essentially describe motivated reasoning. I coined a similar phrase: “Where you start depends on where you sit.” I call that motivated memory. That’s another one of my bon mots. At least I think these are mine. I never heard anyone else say them.

What lessons can be learned from history? What works in your favor, and what do you just cast aside?

I once heard that in 1948, Arab governments called on Palestinians to leave their homes so that it would be easier to kill the Jews. I don’t doubt this notion was popular in Zionist circles, and I believed it myself. Problem is, it’s just not true. It’s not an example of what I’m calling motivated memory. I’ll try to describe things that are, such as focusing on facts which are only part of the truth or ignoring inconvenient details entirely.

“A peopleless land for a landless people.” These catchy words were first put out there by Christian Zionists but were popularized by the Jewish writer Israel Zangwell in 1901. Sounds great, but don’t expect it to win over many hearts and minds.

An Israeli once recommended a book by an American Christian: Joan Peter’s “From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine.” It’s well researched and eye opening. The main thrust of the book is that the Palestinian Mandate was indeed largely uninhabited before the Jews arrived. When the economy improved with all that Zionist investment and effort, the Arab population was vastly increased as migrants from outside the territory started pouring in. I’m sure there’s a lot of truth to that. The book also suggests that most of the 1948 refugees were those same migrants and their descendants. I have no idea if there’s any truth to that.

Arab leaders have been quite cynical about the refugees. All wars produce refugees. After World War 2, there were over 70,000,000 displaced persons and refugees in Europe. Ten years later, virtually all were resettled. After Israel’s War of Independence, also known as the Nakba, there were 750,000 refugees, which is horrible. But these unfortunates and their descendants have been cooped up for nearly 70 years to hold a knife at the throat of the Zionist entity.

When I was in middle school, I had a classmate whose father had been kicked off his farm by Jews. My Anti-Zionist friend really hated Israel, which was not all that surprising. He lent me a few pamphlets. Here’s another surprise: I didn’t like a lot of what I read. There was something quite interesting. In many of the areas assigned to Israel by the UN Partition Plan, Jews were in the minority. Of course, the Arabs rejected the Partition Plan and invaded. After the resulting combat, Israel controlled more land than was originally granted to it. The Arabs insisted that they wouldn’t even consider negotiations until Israel withdrew to the original lines. Which, you’ve got to be kidding. In 1967, the Arabs tried destroying Israel again, and Israel ended up controlling even more land.

This all may well be true, but how does that matter today?

Something frustrated me about my Anti-Zionist friend. No matter what atrocity was perpetrated against Israel, he justified it by saying that the Palestinians were right. For example, after the hostages at Entebbe were freed, he was shocked, shocked that Israel violated Ugandan sovereignty.

But what about his father’s story? A right-wing friend assured me that my Anti-Zionist friend’s father had probably been born in some Cairo ghetto. Let’s put that speculation aside.

On April 9, 1948, the Irgun launched an attack on Deir Yassin. Other Jewish forces were ultimately involved, and as many as 100 Arabs were killed. Most were civilians. There were allegations of sexual violence. War being what it is, each side had its own version of what happened. The Arabs claimed that this is how the Zionists dealt with all Palestinian villages, and I don’t believe that. Jews frequently compare it to the many massacres of Jews by Arabs throughout the ages, and I say, “give me a break”. It is true that Jews were treated better under Moslem governance than under that of the Christians, but that is setting a low bar. Grading on a curve, if you will. Arabs killed many Jews and other non-Muslims in lands that they ruled. Still, we shouldn’t talk like Bungalow Bill’s mummy: “If looks could kill, it would have been us instead of him.”

“Khirbet Khizeh” by S. Yizhar was published in 1949. It’s a fictional but realistic account of an Arab village that was depopulated during the war. It depicts a relatively gentle but still terrifying act of ethnic cleansing, taking place far away from the front lines of the fighting. It’s certainly true that attacks against Jews were launched from villages just like this. I wasn’t born then, and today I’m safe in my American living room. I’m not going to judge.

It’s notable that “Khirbet Khizeh” was included as required reading in Israeli high schools. There’s always a danger of whitewashing history, especially in a country that felt that the first war it lost would be its last. The Israelis had good reason to think that. Of course, interest in the book has faded, in part due to changing curriculum standards, but also because of political pushback. I don’t know if the pushback was as overt as removing exhibits about slavery and segregation from the Smithsonian or cancelling the 2026 quarter commemorating the passage of the 19th amendment.

At one point, I told my Anti-Zionist friend that I was beginning to see his point of view. He smirked and told me that he hadn’t changed his mind at all. Because of course he didn’t.

So, just what do we know about history? I’m not quite sure, but here are a few notions I found in the dusty corner of some library:

“History is a mirror, not a map.”

“History remembers outcomes, not intentions.”

“History repeats itself.”

“History waits to be understood.”

“History is edited memory.”

“History whispers before it screams.”

Doomsday cults and domestic abusers have something in common. They both limit access to information and contact with outsiders. History is replete with examples of how that works out.

George Orwell’s “1984” introduced the language of Newspeak with words like unperson, blackwhite, doublethink, and thoughtcrime. The novel’s protagonist, Winston Smith, worked in the Ministry of Truth, which insured that all records reflected the government’s current version of reality. After the chocolate ration decreased, it was announced that the ration had in fact increased. Grocery prices are going down, not up. Oceania is originally at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia, but then the ground shifts, and now Oceania is at war with Eastasia. In fact, Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Was January 6th an insurrection or a day of love? And while we’re at it, which death is more outrageous, Ashli Babbitt’s or Renee Good’s. It all depends on Dear Leader’s mood or Big Brother’s morality. Who knows? Maybe we will be trading out “Yankee Doodle” for the “Horst Wessel Marching Song”.

Orwell wrote: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past”. I think it might be more accurate to paraphrase Mark Twain: “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its tallis”.

I’ll conclude this discussion of history with a few words about migrants and the undocumented. Some of our fellow Americans prefer to call them illegal aliens. These folks typically brag that their grandparents came here legally. That’s clueless and a tad hateful. For starters, a Jew should never say that. Our ancestors spent centuries worrying about their papers. Plenty of them came to these shores in ways that were not strictly kosher, at least from the standpoint of U.S. law. It’s shameful to think how many victims of the Nazis would have been saved if Lady Liberty hadn’t shut the doors. I doubt that it would be any different now in the environment created by the world’s worst Jew.

But let’s turn the focus away from the Chosen People. When the Pilgrims came over on the Mayflower, did the indigenous Nauset and Patuxet tribes say, “there goes the neighborhood”? Perhaps. But consider how immigration law has changed over time.

At first, there were no restrictions at all. This changed with the Naturalization Act of 1790, which limited citizenship to “free White persons” of “good moral character”. Native Americans, slaves, free Blacks, Asians, Mestizos and Afro-Latinos were explicitly shut out. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first law banning immigration by nationality. Quotas favoring North Europeans were established by the Immigration Act of 1924. Women were also disadvantaged, and I’ll get to that shortly.

The so-called “Heritage Americans” who despise DEI because it isn’t colorblind should consider that the laws favoring their families’ entry to the Land of the Free were not colorblind either. So much for “Blood and Soil!” Seems like someone pulled up the ladder after climbing out of the pit themselves.

Historically, American immigration law discriminated against women as well. There was probably some concern with potential prostitutes, along with mothers and their broods of children poisoning the nation’s blood. If only the fairer sex had a protecter in the White House. Still, this only impacted about half of the population, so I’ll just let that slide.

Here’s a trigger warning. I’m about to use the N-word. Feel free to clutch your pearls in horror.

I’ve always been a bit ambivalent about my own Whiteness. I’m not ashamed of it or anything. A Black friend once suggested that it’s easier for Jews to blend in. There’s certainly something to that. But I was told decades ago that a Jew is nothing but a White Nigger. I hope you’ll forgive my language, but that thought has always stayed with me.

If there’s one thing that we could learn from Jewish history: if anyone made in G-d’s image is unsafe, then every Jew is in danger.

First they came for the migrants, and I did not speak out - because I was not a migrant.

Then they came for the undocumented, and I did not speak out - because I was not undocumented.

Then they came for the American citizens…

I’ll have to get back to you on that last one.

Now, go and study.