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DAVID BIALEis the Koret Associate Professor of Jewish History and Director of the Center for Judaic Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He won the JWB National Jewish Book Award in 1980 for his previous book, Gershom Scholem- Kabbalah and Counter-History.
A provocative meditation on the exercise of power by Jews throughout their history, Biale argues that Jews imitated and accommodated to survive but never retreated from politics. Most particularly, Biale shows that Jews had power in their dispersion, more power than memories of the Holocaust would have contemporary analysts believe, and they didn't always have genuine independent power, mostly because Jewish sovereignty has often had to exist in a political world overshadowed by a powerful empire. To make this point, Biale chronologically traces Jewish history, discussing revolts against Roman authority, rabbinical notions of power, the particular corporate nature of power in the Middle Ages, and the ways Jews have reacted to the strains of modernity. Finally, Biale uses his excursion to discuss what he sees as an ideological crisis. Most significantly, he discusses the challenges facing Zionism. He calls for a sharpening of ideological debates to determine, for instance, if Israel wants to be a normal state or a messianic one. Biale makes readers face Jewish history more realistically, and, in doing so, he raises questions that deepen historical understanding. (Kirkus Reviews)
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