Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People - Rafapal

80 THE INVENTION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE
Much of this basic position about "national origin-religion" is implied in the
foreword to the first volume of Graetz's History of the Jews. Whereas Graetz's
concept of history had until then tended to be dualistic, wavering between the
spiritual and the material, Hess's racial "materialism" helped shift it to a still
harder essentialist and nationalist position. By 1860 and the fifth (early) volume,
which Hess praised in Rome and Jerusalem, Graetz depicted Jewish history
before and even after the exile as made up of two essential elements. On the
one hand, the apparently immortal Jewish tribe was the body, while the Jewish
religion, no less eternal, was the soul. But from the late 1860s onward, Graetz's
history presented the body as more decisive in the definition of the Jews,
although divine Providence continued to hover over them through history.
Graetz read Rome and Jerusalem before meeting its author. That meeting began
their close friendship and extensive correspondence, which went on till Hess's death
in 1875. The two even planned to journey together to the old "ancestral land," but
eventually the historian traveled there on his own. A year after the appearance
of Hess's book, Graetz published a fascinating essay of his own, entitled
"The Rejuvenation of the Jewish Race." 30 This is largely an unstated dialogue with
Hess, and though it suggests some doubts and hesitations, it also reveals a partial
acceptance of the ideological breakthrough of which Hess was one of the catalysts.
The "Rejuvenation" reveals not only the forms taken by the invention of the
Jewish people in Graetz's writing, but also the historians acute consciousness of the
nationality issue roiling many circles of the European intelligentsia.
What gives a human community the right to present itself as a nation,
Graetz wonders, and replies that it is not a racial origin, because sometimes
different racial types join up to form one people. Nor is language necessarily
the common denominator, as is shown by Switzerland, for instance. Even a
unified territory is not enough for a national formation. Do historical memories
unify peoples, asks Graetz, and responds with a sharp and prescient historical
observation—that until the modern era the peoples did not take part in
political history, but passively viewed the deeds of leaders and rulers. Was it,
then, high culture that provided the basis for a nationality? No, because it, too,
is new, and has not yet been acquired by the entire people. The existence of
nations is a mystery, and there seems to be no single way to account for them.
As Graetz puts it, there have obviously been mortal peoples that vanished
in history and others that are immortal. Nothing is left of the Hellenic and
Latin races, which have dissolved into other human divisions. By contrast, the
Jewish race has succeeded in preserving itself and surviving, and is about to
30 In Graetz, Essays-Memoirs-Letters, 103-9.