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Oct. 31 - Nov. 7, 2004 |
17 - Europe’s Debt to Jewish People
Ancient “people of the Book” paid dearly for its diversity and influences
By Antonio Maglio
Originally Published: 2004-09-19
The Jews are “the people of the Book”, a name that was given them in ancient times. This expression is unavoidably associated with the image of an old rabbi immersed in the reading of monumental tomes.
Actually, “people of the Book” mostly refers to the Jewish acquaintance with reading and writing. Among them, illiteracy rates have always been extremely low.
Love for methodical, systematic studies, carried out in depth on sacred as well as profane subjects, in every field of knowledge, is one of the clearest traces of Jewish influence on Europe. There are others, just as important, beginning with the sense of God’s law, independent from any secular power. Jews affirm every day, in every action, the primacy of the Creator on the Creation, but their attitude is not passive because their faith establishes an exclusive relationship with the Creator, which gave them strength to stand up after every fall. Jews always stood up: their history, a history of persecution, massacres and a 2000-year long diaspora, is there to prove it. Europe owes much to these people; they taught never to give up.
The God of the Jews is listening. For them, faith consists in the belief that their prayer will reach Him. “This belief gives us hope,” says Elio Toaff, for years Rome’s chief rabbi. There isn’t faith alone, though: the people, the land of Israel and tradition are other values that form part of the Jewish identity. Therefore, we should talk of a Jewish civilization that left unique, deep traces in Europe. Just think of the idea of ‘people’, which Jews see as not just the inhabitants of the land or the members of the original community, but also as those living outside of them, all over the world. This concept has had an enormous influence, even recently, on the strategies devised by several states towards those citizens who were forced to go away: yesterday they were “emigrants”, today they are “citizens abroad”. This is no small difference.
The idea of the “chosen people” (as the Jews call themselves) has also had great influence on Europe’s culture. It doesn’t mean that the Jews believe themselves to be better than everyone else, but that they are the people chosen by God as consignee of His law. Rabbi Toaff continues, “Jews were monotheists, i.e. they believed in one God. Polytheistic peoples could not achieve so much.” He concludes, “I think that the Jewish people managed to diffuse monotheism in the world. We did it together with Christianity and Islam, but we were those who first beat the path.”
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