Why Jewish History Is So Hard to Write

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Every generation of historians draws a picture of the Jewish past that is bound up with how they think about the Jewish future. And those visions of the future generally turn out to be wrong, because the past two centuries have seen continual, radical upheavals in Jewish life. Today, Jewish historians like Simon Schama and Martin Goodman define Judaism as a pluralistic tradition, emphasizing that Jewishness was never a simple or unitary identity and mistrusting the Bible as a source of historical evidence. The notion that Judaism is about diversity and pluralism reflects the liberal, multicultural values of modern Western Jews. But that liberalism is under several kinds of pressure in an era of rising nationalism and religious extremism, and the lessons of Jewish history might look quite different a century from now.</jats:p>