Non­fic­tion

Sur­viv­ing Sac­ri­lege: Cul­tur­al Per­sis­tence in Jew­ish Antiquity

Steven Weitz­man
  • Review
By – July 30, 2012

Every so often a schol­ar­ly book appears that is wor­thy of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis by the non-aca­d­e­m­ic Jew­ish read­ing pub­lic. Weitzman’s Sur­viv­ing Sac­ri­lege is one such book. He asks the age-old ques­tion about the rea­sons for Jew­ish sur­vival, espe­cial­ly in the ancient world. He calls it cul­tur­al per­sis­tence, and adopts a Dar­win­ian approach to explain Jew­ish cul­tur­al sur­vival amid hos­tile real­i­ties. Based on mod­els drawn from oth­er schol­ars and oth­er dis­ci­plines, he sug­gests that appease­ment, sym­bio­sis, mim­ic­ry, sto­ry­telling, the art of the piv­ot, opti­cal elu­sions, scop­tophil­ia (the urge to see for­bid­den objects), con­jur­ing pow­er, and play­ing dead are some of the tac­tics used know­ing­ly by ancient Jew­ish lead­er­ship in the strug­gle to survive. 

Weitz­man mar­shals con­tem­po­rary schol­ar­ship for the the­o­ries and backs it up with pri­ma­ry sources to make his case. He ana­lyzes ear­ly Jew­ish his­to­ry from the Baby­lon­ian era, the Mac­cabean peri­od and through the destruc­tion of the Tem­ple. The argu­ments and proofs for the strate­gies employed by the Jews are com­pelling. Even those who dis­agree with the main the­sis will find this book most read­able. The sur­vival instincts and adapt­abil­i­ty of the Jews seems forced at times. The author reads a good deal into Jose­phus and oth­er ear­ly sources, but his is nonethe­less an intrigu­ing approach. 

A major lack is that although Pro­fes­sor Weitz­man is the direc­tor of Indi­ana University’s exca­va­tion project in Israel, he does not uti­lize archae­ol­o­gy at all in this book. Archae­ol­o­gy may pri­mar­i­ly show the per­sis­tence of par­tic­u­lar insti­tu­tions as opposed to the strug­gles and strate­gies for cul­tur­al sur­vival. Yet, this data is impor­tant and can make con­tri­bu­tions to a study on cul­tur­al survival. 

Any study deal­ing with the whys and hows of Jew­ish sur­vival should be tak­en seri­ous­ly, espe­cial­ly one that shows how Jew­ish imag­i­na­tion expand­ed real­i­ty to over­come bound­aries of space, time, and even death. The art of cul­tur­al per­sis­tence is this abil­i­ty to maneu­ver between the real and the imag­i­nary. This art works with­in real­i­ty but is also able to tran­scend it. A nov­el and well thought out concept. 

Wal­lace Greene, Ph.D., has held sev­er­al uni­ver­si­ty appoint­ments, and cur­rent­ly writes and lec­tures on Jew­ish and his­tor­i­cal subjects.

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