24

The article examines how and to what extent the knowledge of the Holocaust has influenced the ways in which historians of the Jews represent the pre-Holocaust Jewish past. It posits that such influence has been virtually nil. In fact, it has become axiomatic among historians of modern Jewry that the Holocaust not only fails as a source of new insights but actually impedes proper understanding of the modern Jewish experience. This axiom has developed out of post-War interpretations of the two dominant contemporary platforms for the writing of Jewish history ; one identified with Salo Baron, the other with the so-called “Jerusalem School” of Yitzhak Baer and Ben Zion Dinur ; both of which were initially formulated during the 1920s and 1930s. Although those interpretations are subject to question, they became dominant during the 1960s, largely in response to the efforts of Bruno Bettelheim, Raul Hilberg, and (especially) Hannah Arendt to attribute the dimensions of the Holocaust in some measure to the manner in which the Jewish victims had allegedly been conditioned by their history to respond to threats to their security. The writings of these three figures aroused a backlash among historians of the Jews, who used them as a reason to erect a wall of separation between the study of the Holocaust and the study of Jewish history. Agreement among historians of the Jews regarding the necessity of maintaining that wall transcends geographical and ideological divisions.