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Is There Jewish History?: Review Essay

Is There Jewish History?: Review Essay Review Essay Dean Bell Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor ofYosefHayim Yerushalmi (Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry Series, 29), edited by Elisheva Carlebach, John M. Efron, and David N. Myers. Hanover and London: Brandeis University Press, 1998. 462 pp. $50.00. Ambrose Bierce once noted that history is "an account mostly false of events mostly unimportant brought about by rulers mostly knaves and soldiers mostly fools." Now more than a century removed from Bierce, we can retain his cynicism while rejecting his argument. It may be that it is not history that is inherently false, unimportant, or subjective, but rather the historians who craft it and the histories that they construct. In the introduction to a recent set of microhistorical articles translated from the Italian historical journal Quaderni Storici, Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero ask, in language simultaneously dismissive, suggestive, and hauntingly accurate, "what might be unmasked by seeing the historian as criminal, historical practice as a kind of crime. What crimes do historians commit? They might best be seen as thieves, as persons who practice a form of grave robbing. Renaissance grave robbers carried off bodies to sell http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies Purdue University Press

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Publisher
Purdue University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Purdue University.
ISSN
1534-5165
Publisher site
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Abstract

Review Essay Dean Bell Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor ofYosefHayim Yerushalmi (Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry Series, 29), edited by Elisheva Carlebach, John M. Efron, and David N. Myers. Hanover and London: Brandeis University Press, 1998. 462 pp. $50.00. Ambrose Bierce once noted that history is "an account mostly false of events mostly unimportant brought about by rulers mostly knaves and soldiers mostly fools." Now more than a century removed from Bierce, we can retain his cynicism while rejecting his argument. It may be that it is not history that is inherently false, unimportant, or subjective, but rather the historians who craft it and the histories that they construct. In the introduction to a recent set of microhistorical articles translated from the Italian historical journal Quaderni Storici, Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero ask, in language simultaneously dismissive, suggestive, and hauntingly accurate, "what might be unmasked by seeing the historian as criminal, historical practice as a kind of crime. What crimes do historians commit? They might best be seen as thieves, as persons who practice a form of grave robbing. Renaissance grave robbers carried off bodies to sell

Journal

Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish StudiesPurdue University Press

Published: Oct 3, 2000

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