_ Source: _Volume 25, Issue 2, pp 279 - 304 In his influential _Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory_, Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi analyzed brilliantly the transition in Jewish conceptions of Jewish history from premodern to modern times. The present paper discusses a number of alternative perspectives on this transition. Yerushalmi argued convincingly the importance of the traditional conception of Jewish history, which he labeled “Jewish memory,” for Jewish survival. This paper challenges the terminology, agrees with the role played by the (...) traditional Jewish thinking in Jewish survival, and emphasizes the premodern circumstances that made the traditional thinking so vital and effective. With respect to modern conceptions of Jewish history, which Yerushalmi associates with Jewish history writing, this paper argues that an examination of the circumstances of modernity reveals the creativity of this altered view of the Jewish past and the ways in which it in turn has fostered Jewish survival in the face of radically new challenges. (shrink)

In medieval Jewish perception and representation of self and other there was a propensity toward viewing current happenings through the prism of the past. The general human inclination toward patterning, acting in combination with a strong Jewish sense of historic continuum, produced a pronounced tendency toward archetypical representation, such as that found in rabbinic literature and synagogue liturgy, as well as in the chronicles penned in the wake of the crusader assaults of 1096. At- the same time, a host of (...) specific needs and a similarly broad human inclination towards particularity engendered perceptions and descriptions that were remarkably free of stereotyping -perceptions and descriptions that are rooted in full awareness of the inevitable complexity of everyday human experience. (shrink)