The History of the Jewish Community in Gentile Society

THE key to Jewish history is to be found, not in any single factor, but in the tensions and interplay between two influences which, at first sight, might well seem to be contradictory. The one is the ethical monotheism which developed slowly into a national religion over the centuries of experience which lie between the days of Abraham and those of “the men of the Great Synagogue”. The other is the Jewish will to survive as a people. For this determined that of the many migrants and conquerors who swept up and down the eastern Mediterranean sea-board it should have been those whom we call Hebrews, Israelites or Jews who survived. And because they used to the full the opportunities which their central position in the ancient world afforded, they experienced to the full the strange destiny which that position involved.

Of itself ethical monotheism could not be held to

Written by

James W. Parkes

Published in

Volume 17

1951

Other articles within the volume

• The Mediaeval Christian Hebraists of England: HERBERT OF BOSHAM AND EARLIER SCHOLARS
• Some New Facts About the Portsmouth Jewish Community
• The Anglo-Jewish Contribution to the Education Movement for Women in the Nineteenth Century
• Baron Paul Julius de Reuter
• Isidor Gerstenberg (1821-1876): Founder of the Council of Foreign Bondholders
• Were There Jews in Roman Britain?
• A Survey of Anglo-Jewry in 1851
• Judah Benjamin
• Anglo-Jewish Notaries and Scriveners
• Solomon Bennett, 1761-1838 Artist, Hebraist and Controversialist
• Samson Gideon: Eighteenth Century Jewish Financier
• The References to England in the Responsa of Rabbi Meir Ben Baruch of Rothenburg, 1215-1293
• The Beginnings of the Jewish Trade Union Movement in England
• A Survey of the Jewish Institutional History of Liverpool and District
• The History of the Jewish Community in Gentile Society
• The Jews of Falmouth—1740-1860
• The Jewish Contribution to the British Textile Industry “BUILDERS OF BRADFORD”
• Leone da Modena and his English Correspondents
• An Anglo-Jewish Family
• Preface