Non­fic­tion

The Faith of Fall­en Jews: Yosef Hay­im Yerushal­mi and the Writ­ing of Jew­ish History

David N. Myers & Alexan­der Kaye, eds.
  • Review
By – October 22, 2014

This vol­ume presents a com­pi­la­tion of essays, lec­tures, and even fic­tion pro­duced by one of the most dis­tin­guished Jew­ish his­to­ri­ans of mod­ern times, Yosef Hay­im Yerushal­mi. The edi­tors’ inten­tion is not to be com­pre­hen­sive but rather rep­re­sen­ta­tive, seek­ing to cap­ture the schol­ar­ly spir­it” of this promi­nent intel­lec­tu­al, while pro­vid­ing the read­er with a win­dow into his work­shop, as he goes about sift­ing evi­dence, weigh­ing hypothe­ses, offer­ing syn­thet­ic con­clu­sions, and telling a com­pelling sto­ry.” Some of the pieces have nev­er been pub­lished before while oth­ers are here trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish for the first time. Each essay is pre­ced­ed by an intro­duc­tion set­ting the work in context. 

The book is divid­ed into five sec­tions, each one con­tribut­ing to the por­trait of Yerush­almi’s per­son­al­i­ty and work. He took an ear­ly inter­est in Sephardic Jew­ish his­to­ry and this is evi­dent in his ear­ly mate­r­i­al, fea­tured in Part II. Part III con­cen­trates fur­ther in this area. Yerushal­mi lec­tured on the resilience and impact of Span­ish Jews and for­mer cryp­to-Jews on inter­na­tion­al com­merce and cul­ture after 1492.” He was par­tic­u­lar­ly intrigued with dis­cern­ing the bases of Jew­ish knowl­edge among the cryp­to-Jews, as well as explor­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties they faced when they left their homes in hos­tile lands to live life as full Jews in more accom­mo­dat­ing circumstances. 

Anoth­er aspect of his schol­ar­ship involved the polit­i­cal his­to­ry of the Jews. The mate­r­i­al in Part IV ranges from a delib­er­a­tion regard­ing Spinoza’s con­tention that it is Gen­tile hatred that pre­serves Jew­ish iden­ti­ty” to a dis­cus­sion of the man­ner in which the mod­ern state of Israel appears to have bro­ken with the tra­di­tion­al con­cept of Mes­sian­ism. In this essay Yerushal­mi demon­strates move­ment from his role as his­to­ri­an to com­men­ta­tor on con­tem­po­rary affairs.” 

Yerushal­mi was par­tic­u­lar­ly atten­tive to the issue of the his­to­ry of Jew­ish his­tor­i­cal writ­ing. He explored and com­pared mod­ern Jew­ish his­to­ri­og­ra­phy and Jew­ish mem­o­ry, assert­ing that the for­mer could nev­er sub­sti­tute for the lat­ter. This col­lec­tion pro­vides valu­able insight into his approach to these issues, trac­ing Yerushalmi’s intel­lec­tu­al tra­jec­to­ry as he maneu­vered his way among the mul­ti-faceted aspects of Jew­ish his­to­ri­og­ra­phy and mem­o­ry, issues of which he was an astute judge.

Relat­ed content:

Ran­dall Belin­fante has served as the Librar­i­an of the Amer­i­can Sephar­di Fed­er­a­tion for more than 13 years. He has tak­en a tiny col­lec­tion of 200 books and built an assem­blage of over 10,000 items. Mr. Belin­fante holds degrees in var­i­ous aspects of Jew­ish stud­ies, and dur­ing his tenure at ASF, he has inves­ti­gat­ed a vari­ety of top­ics, pre­sent­ing papers on such diverse top­ics as the Mizrahi Jews dri­ven from their homes in Islam­ic coun­tries and the cryp­to-Jew­ish Mash­hadis of Iran. He has also writ­ten many book reviews on books of Sephar­di / Mizrahi interest.

Discussion Questions