Simon Dubnow - Philosophy

Philosophy

In a short article, Dubnow presented a memorable portrait of historical depth, and its presence in contemporary life:

"Every generation in Israel carries within itself the remnants of worlds created and destroyed during the course of the previous history of the Jewish people. The generation, in turn, builds and destroys worlds in its form and image, but in the long run continues to weave the thread that binds all the links of the nation into the chain of generations. ... Thus each generation in Israel is more the product of history than it is its creator. ... We, the people of Israel living today, continue the long thread that stretches from the days of Hammurabi and Abraham to the modern period. ... We see further that during the course of thousands of years the nations of the world have borrowed from our spiritual storehouse and added to their own without depleting the source. ... The Jewish people goes its own way, attracting and repelling, beating out for itself a unique path among the routes of the nations of the world... ."

Another writer of Jewish history although from a younger generation, Lucy Dawidowicz, summarizes the personal evolution and resulting weltanschauung of Simon Dubnow:

"Early in his intellectual life, Dubnow turned to history and in the study and writing of Jewish history he found the surrogate for Judaism, the modern means by which he could identify as a Jew, which would give him inner satisfaction and keep him part of the Jewish community. ... Even in his pioneering studies of hasidism, Dubnow's rationalism shines through. ... Yet despite his rationalism, despite his modernity, Dubnow believed in a mystic force--the Jewish will to live."

Dubnow himself adombrates his own philosophical and religious understanding. "I am agnostic in religion and in philosophy... . I myself have lost faith in personal immortality, yet history teaches me that there is a collective immortality and that the Jewish people can be considered as relatively eternal for its history coincides with the full span of world history." "Dubnow with his profound historical approach, weaves into his automomist theories all the strands of Jewish past, present and future."