Must Download: Free ebook on Jewish History

Don’t pass up this opportunity to get a free copy of this excellent book; it is downloadable from amazon.com on the kindle app; if you don’t have a kindle, just download the kindle app, also a download from amazon.com.   Not because it is free but because it is a treasure find, worth the read!

The title is:  JEWISH HISTORY: An Essay in the Philosophy of History

[English translation based upon the authorized German translation, which was made from the original Russian; published under the joint auspices of the Jewish Publication Society of America and the Jewish Historical Society of England, H.S.]

The author:  S.M [Simon Markovich] Dubnow/1860-1941

A word about the author: “a scholar by profession, whose foremost concern is with historical truth, and whose every statement rests upon accurate, scientific knowledge; not a bookworm with pale academic blood trickling through his veins, but a man who, with unsoured mien, with fresh buoyant delight, offers the world the results laboriously reached in his study, after all evidences of toil and moil have been carefully removed; who derives inspiration from the noble and the sublime in whatever guise it may appear, and who knows how to communicate his inspiration to others.”

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Introductory Note

What is Jewish History? In the first place, what does it offer as to quantity and as to quality?  What are its range and content, and what distinguishes it in these two respects from the history of other nations?  Furthermore, what is the essential meaning, what the spirit, of Jewish History?  Or, to put the question in another way, to what general results are we led by the aggregate of its facts, considered, not as a whole, but genetically, as a succession of evolutionary stages in the consciousness and education of the Jewish people?

If we could find precise answers to these several questions, they would constitute a characterization of Jewish History as accurate as is attainable.  To present such a characterization succinctly is the purpose of the following essay.

Table of Contents

I  The Range of Jewish History

• Historical and Unhistorical Peoples
• Three Groups of Nations
• The “Most Historical” People
• Extent of Jewish History

II  The Content of Jewish History

• Two Periods of Jewish History
• The Period of Independence
• The Election of the Jewish People
• Priests and Prophets
• The Babylonian Exile and the Scribes
• The Dispersion
• Jewish History and Universal History
• Jewish History Characterized

iii The Significance of Jewish History

• The National Aspect of Jewish History
• The Historical Consciousness
• The National Idea and National Feeling
• The Universal Aspect of Jewish History
• An Historical Experiment
• A Moral Discipline
• Humanitarian Significance of Jewish History
• Schleiden and George Eliot

IV  The Historical Synthesis

• Three Primary Periods
• Four Composite Periods

V The Primary or Biblical Period

• Cosmic Origin of the Jewish Religion
• Tribal Organization
• Egyptian Influence and Experiences
• Moses
• Mosaism, a Religious and Moral as well as a Social and Political System
• National Deities
• The Prophets and the Two Kingdoms
• Judaism, a Universal Religion

VI  The Secondary or Spiritual-Political Period

• Growth of National Feeling
• Ezra and Nehemiah
• The Scribes
• Hellenism
• The Maccabeees
• Sadducees, Pharisees,, and Essenes
• Alexandrian Jews
• Christianity

VII  The Tertiary Talmudic or National-Religious Period

• The Isolation of Jewry and Judaism
• The Mishna
• The Talmud
• Intellectual Activity in Palestine and Babylonia
• The Agada and the Midrash
• Unification of Judaism

VIII The Gaonic Period, or the Hegemony of the Oriental Jews (500-980)

• The Academies
• Islam
• Karaism
• Beginning of Persecutions in Europe
• Arabic Civilization in Europe

IX  The Rabbinic-Philosophical Period, or the Hegemony of the Spanish Jews (980-1492)

• The Spanish Jews
• The Arabic-Jewish Renaissance
• The Crusades and the Jews
• Degradation of the Jews in Christian Europe
• The Provence
• The Lateran Council
• The Kabbala Expulsion from Spain

X The Rabbinic-Mystical Period, or The Hegemony of the German-Polish Jews (1492-1789)

• The Humanists and the Reformation
• Palestine
• An Asylum for Jews
• Messianic Belief and Hopes
• Holland, a Jewish Centre
• Poland and the Jews
• The Rabbinical Authorities of Poland
• Isolation of the Polish Jews
• Mysticism and the Practical Kabbala
• Chassidism Persecutions and Morbid Piety

XI The Modern Period of Enlightenment (The 19th Century)

• The French Revolution
• The Jewish Middle Ages
• Spiritual and Civil Emancipation
• The Successors of Mendelssohn
• Zunz and the Science of Judaism
• The Modern Movements outside of Germany
• The Jew in Russia
• His Regeration
• Anti-Semitism and Judophobia

Xii  The Teachings of Jewish History

• Jewry, a Spiritual Community
• Jewry, Indestructile
• The Creative Principle of Jewry
• The Task of the Future
• The Jew and the Nations
• The Ultimate Ideal