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THE MYTH OF THE JEWISH EXILEFROM THE LAND OF ISRAEL
A Demonstration of Irenic Scholarship
Israel J. Yuval
More than that of any other nation, Jewish identity is based on the
imaginaire
ofa collective memory rather than on a common territory. I intend to examine herethe sources of one myth that has had critical influence on the establishment of Jewish collective memory and modern Israeli identity. In doing so, I find myselftreading a thin line. On the one hand, I am a Zionist loyal to awareness of theneed for the existence of the State of Israel. On the other hand, I am deeplytroubled by the price paid by the Palestinians for the fulfillment of this dream.Like many others, I desperately seek a fair solution that will minimize the painand suffering for both sides.I am presenting these remarks out of recognition that the historian—espe-cially a historian who deals with his own culture—cannot evade the responsibilityof clarifying the political, moral, and social significance of his research. I belongto the generation of Israeli historians who turned their back on Zionist histo-riography, which was characterized by the dominance of grand national narra-tives. My generation has preferred to cover itself in the warm, protective blanketof “professional history,” of scholarship free of ideological bias; and rather than
Common Knowledge
12:1Copyright 2006 by Duke University Press
16
This article is a revised version of an oral presentation madeat the
Common Knowledge
Skidmore Conference during asession on historical methodology.
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A D e m o n s t r a t i o n o f I r e n i c S c h o l a r s h i p
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grand national narrative, we have preferred to deal with a multitude of smallernarratives. However, this newer approach does not mean that the professionalstudy of history has ceased to serve political goals. Even as a “profession,” historyis still a tool that advances national and particularistic agendas, and these do notprovide the cultural and mental equipment needed for the establishment of anera of reconciliation and peace. For that reason, I prefer to assign another task tohistorical studies: to construct histories that educate toward self-criticism and thetolerance of conflicting national narratives. The position that I would like to propose here is not post-Zionist. I do not wish to undermine the Zionist national narrative or to weaken it. However, I do wish to add a dimension of self-awareness to it, so that it will be more critical,more nuanced, more balanced. In this way, historiography can take an impor-tant step forward. In the past two hundred years, historical studies mainly havehelped to shape national consciousness and national particularism—one may addnational egotism. Historical studies must undergo a corrective transformationand serve to foster understanding among nations, rather than hatred. Thus, aftershifting from monophonic national history to professional history, we shouldcontinue now into a new phase of polyphonic history. The study of history shouldcease to serve those who foment conflicts and become instead an instrument ofreconciliation, understanding, and tolerance.In order to achieve that aim, the change I am describing must take place inevery rival camp. Therefore, I proposed to the organizers of this workshop thatthey bring an Israeli historian who takes a critical approach toward the histori-cal narratives of Zionist nationalism together with a Palestinian historian whoadopts a similar approach toward the founding narratives of Palestinian nation-alism. Unfortunately, my wish could not be realized. Nevertheless, I am here,prepared to speak, because I have come to the conclusion that the duty of self-criticism is incumbent on the conqueror more than on the conquered. I hope thatthese remarks will foster parallel responses. It would be very disappointing if theonly result of this internal Jewish criticism were the reinforcement of criticismfrom outside.
I
The myth I will examine is that of the exile of the Jews from their land as aresult of the destruction of the Second Temple, and I will trace its vicissitudesand history. This myth is very common not only in Israel but also in the West. The national anthem of the State of Israel declares that the hope to live as a freenation in the Land of Israel is
2
,
000
years old. Belief that the establishment ofthe State of Israel put an end to a two-millennium exile is so widely shared that,in the first generation after the establishment of the state, Israelis liked to tag
C O M M O N K N O W L E D G E
1 8
new events with the cliché, “for the first time in two thousand years.” Most Jew-ish tourists who go to Rome today visit the Arch of Titus, and they innocentlybelieve that the figures bearing the Temple vessels are the Jews of Jerusalem,exiles in Rome, whereas in fact they are soldiers of the Roman legion marchingin a triumphal parade. The Arch of Titus expresses a complex of images touch-ing upon the beginning of the exile and the circumstances of its occurrence, themost important of these being the myth that the exile from the land dates fromthe destruction of the Second Temple in
70
CE. The common assumption is thatthe Jews were uprooted from their homeland because of an intentional policy of victorious Rome. Thus the two events—destruction and exile—entered histori-cal imagination and imagery as a pair. Just as Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed theFirst Temple and exiled the inhabitants of Judaea to Babylonia, so also Titus isthought of as destroying Jerusalem and exiling the Jews from their land.It is impossible to ignore the parallel between the myth of Jews driven fromtheir historical homeland and the opposing myth: the abandonment of the landby the Palestinians. The common Zionist view presents the flight of the Pales-tinians from their settlements in the years
1947
–
48
as “leaving.” That word hasmoral and political consequences. In an article published in
Haaretz
(“On a Sinthat We Did Not Commit,” September
17
,
1998
), the journalist Dan Margalit wrote: “If the Arabs left their homes—mainly on the initiative of their leaders,sometimes also urged by Israeli soldiers—the responsibility for the refugee prob-lem lies first of all upon the Arab world and the Palestinian leadership.” Leavingis a voluntary act, indirectly implying that the land was forfeited; whereas exileis coercion and apparently does not infringe upon the exiles’ connection withthe land or on their rights of ownership to it. The description of the flight of thePalestinians as “leaving” is meant to deprive them of the status of victim, to placethe responsibility for their fate upon them or upon their leadership, and to justifyrefusal to allow them a right of return. In contrast, the description of the Jews’departure as “exile” retains the image of victim, frees Jews of the responsibilityfor leaving the land for so long a time, and justifies their right to return to ittoday. The difference between leaving and being exiled is the difference between
denying the Palestinian right to return
and granting
the law of return
to Jews.
II
What is the source of the myth of exile from the land? What is the origin of the view that the emptying of the Land of Israel of its Jews after the destruction ofthe Second Temple was the result of intentional expulsion?
1
First, we need to
1
. To my knowledge, this question has not been dis-cussed previously in these terms in Jewish historicalresearch, and that silence is puzzling. The Israeli novel-ist A. B. Yehoshua has called for recognizing the politicaland moral consequences that derive, in his opinion, fromthe
abandonment
of the land by its Jewish inhabitants
1
,
500
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clarify the manifest particulars. The dispersal of the Jews did not begin with thedestruction of the Second Temple. The Book of Esther (
3
:
8
) describes the Jews as“a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the people in all the prov-inces of thy [the Persian emperor’s] kingdom.” At the end of the Second Templeperiod, Josephus Flavius flatly stated: “The Jewish nation is widely dispersed overall the habitable earth among its inhabitants.”
2
Philo even regarded the dispersalof the Jewish people among the nations of the earth as a blessing, and he comparedthe Jews’ dispersal to the Greeks’ establishment of colonies.
3
The destruction ofthe Second Temple did not empty the land of its Jewish inhabitants—many hadalready been abroad for a very long time—and in any case there is no real his-torical basis for belief in a wholesale exile at the hands of Rome. The Romans,like any victorious army, customarily took prisoners, but they did not have apolicy of exiling conquered nations from their lands. According to Josephus’sprobably inflated figures,
1
,
100
,
000
people were killed in Jerusalem, includingmany pilgrims who had been trapped in the city since Passover. About
97
,
000
were captured. Many of these met their deaths in battle with animals and in cir-cus entertainments. Others died of hunger. Still other prisoners were brought toRome; some were sold in Libya for forced labor in mines. But otherwise, the Jews were left in place. They emigrated from the Land of Israel during the first cen-turies of the first millennium in a slow and gradual process, and not as the resultof an intentional policy on the part of the Roman and Byzantine authorities.“The exile from the land” after the destruction of the Second Temple isnot a clear and evident historical fact. It is a story that reflects a world of images. Although the myth of expulsion serves the Zionist claim of renewed Jewish own-ership of the land, Zionism did not initiate the claim. Rather, it is deeply rootedin ancient soil, and these ancient roots constitute a complex and twisted tangle.Since I cannot pretend to discuss all of the vicissitudes of the myth, I will limitmyself to a modest and hesitant effort to explore its origin. The antiquity of themyth is indicated by the well-known critical remarks attributed to the Amora(talmudic sage) Rabbi Yoh.anan, who lived in the third century CE—remarks pre-
years ago or more: Yehoshua, “The Diaspora—the Neu-rotic Solution,” in
In Praise of Normalcy
[in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Schocken,
1980
),
31
–
46
. The only study known tome that deals with the meaning of the term
exile
in con-nection with the supposed expulsion of the Jews from theLand of Israel after the destruction of the Second Templeis that of Chaim Milikowsky, “Notions of Exile, Subju-gation, and Return in Rabbinic Literature,” in
Exile: OldTestament, Jewish, and Christian Conceptions
, ed. James M.Scott (Leiden: Brill,
1997
),
265
–
96
. Milikowsky argues—and his remarks are consistent with the central claim ofthe present paper—that in Tannaitic sources of the sec-ond and third centuries CE, the term
exile
had the mean-ing of political subjugation and not a connotation of beingdriven from one’s land. For more about exile and its mean-ing in Jewish historical consciousness, see Yitzhak F. Baer,
Exile
, trans. Robert Warshaw (
1936
; New York: Schocken,
1947
). See also Baer, “The Land of Israel and Exile inthe Eyes of the Generations of the Middle Ages” [inHebrew],
Measef Zion
6
(
1934
):
149
–
61
, and Amnon Raz-Krakotskin, “Exile within Sovereignty: Toward a Critiqueof ‘the Condemnation of the Diaspora’ in Israeli Culture”[in Hebrew],
Teoria Uviqoret
4
(autumn
1993
):
23
–
55
.
2
. Josephus,
Wars
,
7
:
3
:
3
.
3
. Philo,
Life of Moses
, II:
232
.
