A History of the Jews by Max I. Dimont

A History of the Jews by Max I. Dimont

Author:Max I. Dimont
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504049610
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2017-10-18T04:00:00+00:00


THE DIASPORA AND THE WORLD

If Spengler is right in his prediction of the death of Western civilization within a century or so, what will happen to the Diaspora Jews now overwhelmingly centered in that civilization? According to precedent, we would expect them to sink with Western civilization. But again, according to precedent, we should also expect them to reemerge in a new civilization, with Diaspora designers adapting themselves to new reality situations.

According to Spengler, the new tidal waves of civilizations should be those of Russia and China. Metahistorically, it is no more impossible for the Jews to establish viable Diaspora centers in Russia and China than it has been in other lands, other cultures. Having shown their ability to establish Diaspora centers in such diverse social, economic, and religious ecumenes as Babylonia, Persia, Greece, Rome, Parthia, Sassania, the Islamic Empire, as well as in the Catholic and Protestant Christendoms, why not Russia and China?

One thing history teaches us is that we cannot count on the present to perpetuate itself. Countries that were once pro-Jewish have turned against the Jews bitterly, and vice versa. The Hadrianic repressions of the Jews in second-century Rome turned into universal citizenship for the Jews in the third. Spain, once the spawning ground for a Jewish Golden Age, became the land of Inquisition and expulsion. So, too, present-day anti-Jewishness in Russia could vanish with an abrupt change in the Party line. The paucity of Jews in China today should not preclude the possibility of a Diaspora center taking root there, just as in the past Diaspora centers have risen in countries where previously there had been no Jews.

Future Jewish history in Russia could take one of four courses. Under the impact of antireligious propaganda and turning of the communist screw, the Jews could be totally assimilated within a century; the Communist Party line could take an abrupt about-face and permit a return to religion; there could be, as once in Spain, a mass expulsion; or there could be a vast migration of Jews out of Russia.

If the Communist Party line were to change and religion be permitted, then Russia’s three million Jews could nucleate a formidable intellectual Diaspora center in Soviet Russia. In case of an expulsion or exodus, however, where could the Jews go? Could Israel, because of its small size, absorb them all? Would the immigration policies of Western nations permit them to enter? China, however, in need of a trained scientific elite, might welcome a significant number, just as other underdeveloped nations have in the past.

Once before in history the Jews had an outpost in China. In the eighth century, Jews settled in Chang Ku Feng, in central China, where, for a thousand years, they maintained a Jewish enclave. Though cut off from Jewish learning, the Chinese Jews nevertheless held out until, around 1800, they finally disappeared.

Ideologically, China could be a fertile civilization for a Diaspora center, because the Chinese of today are even more “Judaized” than were the Puritans of Colonial America.



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