BY ABRAM LEON  
The scientific study of Jewish history is yet to transcend the stage of idealist improvisation. Serious historians have boldly attacked the field of history as a whole in the spirit of Marx, and have in large measure conquered it for the materialist outlook. Jewish history, however, still remains the chosen land of the “god-seekers” of every variety. It is one of the few fields of history where idealist prejudices have succeeded in entrenching and maintaining themselves to so great an extent.

How many oceans of ink have been spilled to celebrate the famous “miracle of the Jew!” “What a strange spectacle are these men who have, in order to preserve the sacred trust of their faith, braved persecutions and martyrdom,” exclaims Bédarride.

The preservation of the Jews is explained by all historians as the product of their devotion through the centuries to their religion or their nationality. Differences among these historians begin to appear only when it comes to defining the “goal” for which the Jews preserved themselves, the reason for their resistance to assimilation. Some, taking the religious point of view, speak of the “sacred trust of their faith”; others…defend the theory of “attachment to the national idea.” “We must seek the causes for the historical phenomenon of the preservation of the Jewish people in their national spiritual strength, in their ethical basis, and in the monotheistic principle,” says the General Encyclopedia which contrives in this way to reconcile the various viewpoints among the idealist historians.

But while it is possible to reconcile these idealist theories with one another, it is hopeless to try to find some ground for reconciling these same theories with the elementary rules of historical science. The latter must categorically reject the fundamental error of all idealist schools, which consists of putting under the hallmark of free will the cardinal question of Jewish history, namely: the preservation of Judaism. Only a study of the economic role played by the Jews can contribute to elucidating the causes for the “miracle of the Jew.”

To study the evolution of this question is not exclusively of academic interest. Without a thorough study of Jewish history, it is difficult to understand the Jewish question in modern times. The plight of the Jews in the twentieth century is intimately bound up with their historical past. Every social formation represents a stage in the social process. Being is only a moment in the process of becoming. In order to undertake an analysis of the Jewish question in its present phase of development, it is indispensable to know its historical roots.  
 
Jews’ economic and social role
In the sphere of Jewish history, as in the sphere of universal history, Karl Marx's brilliant thought points the road to follow. “Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew.” Marx thus puts the Jewish question back on its feet. We must not start with religion in order to explain Jewish history; on the contrary, the preservation of the Jewish religion or nationality can be explained only by the “real Jew,” that is to say, by the Jew in his economic and social role. The preservation of the Jews contains nothing of the miraculous. “Judaism continues to exist not in spite of history, but owing to history.”

It is precisely by studying the historical function of Judaism that one is able to discover the “secret” of its survival in history. The struggles between Judaism and Christian society, under their respective religious guises, were in reality social struggles. “The contradiction between the state and a particular religion, for instance Judaism, is given by us a human form as the contradiction between the state and particular secular elements.”  
 
 
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