Jewish Studies at the Crossroads of Anthropology and History by Boustan Ra'anan S.;Kosansky Oren;Rustow Marina;

Author:Boustan, Ra'anan S.;Kosansky, Oren;Rustow, Marina;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2019-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Toward a New Understanding of Tradition

If what we call “tradition in the strong sense”—claims of continuity with the past that serve the needs of the present—is not the same as Hobsbawm’s “invented tradition,” it is also not so far apart. We take issue, rather, with the implied judgments of value attendant on the distinction between genuine and invented traditions; and the implied homology between genuine tradition and the premodern, on the one hand, and invented tradition and the modern, on the other. Tradition in the weak sense is not permanently tied to short life expectancy, low levels of education, subsistence agriculture, sparse settlement, and unending starvation. Nor will modernity finally eradicate the unconscious devotion to tradition, leaving only the most headstrong and self-aware of revivalists among its proponents.

We are not the first to make this point. Edward Shils, in his 1981 book on tradition, launched a stalwart defense of the permanence of tradition as a part of human experience.73 His argument responded to social scientific denunciations of tradition by his generation of scholars and launched a critique of the notion of progress, or at least of the presumption that progress is always good. Shils argued cogently that tradition is a permanent feature even of social settings that do not consciously profess to follow it. But while he seemed to recognize, here and there, the connection between change and tradition in the strong sense for which we are arguing, the main thrust of his book remained an apology for tradition. In the end, Shils was correct about the connection between change and tradition, but for a reason we believe that we can articulate more explicitly than he did: tradition, in our strong sense, is no stranger to innovation. It is, perhaps, even the most intimate companion of change, especially of rapid change.

Tradition, as we wish to understand it, can support existing authority structures or challenge them. It can be deployed by “churches” as well as by “sects.” It can serve oral societies as much as literate ones, societies in which there are textual communities and a canon of authorized works or those in which everything is still up for grabs. The deployment of “strong” traditions differs from one social context to another; what remains constant is the link between those traditions, innovation, and change. Accordingly, the primary goal of historical analyses of tradition should not be to distinguish between the genuine and the invented types, but to explain the links between the specific claims made on tradition’s behalf and the changes taking place when those claims are made.

What is at stake in this argument is making what may seem paradoxical—the appeal to tradition at times of great change—appear logical and explicable. The distinction between “genuine” and “invented” tradition lessens the paradox and thus fails to resolve it: one still has to explain why traditions are invented when they are, and why and how they become accepted as tradition. As Elias Bickerman noted, paraphrasing Vico, “people accept only the ideas for which

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