In the latest episode of The Israeli Perspective, Jay Shapiro reflects on the survival of the Jewish people and contrasts their continuing national identity with the disappearance of the great civilizations of the ancient world.
Shapiro begins with a thought experiment: What would happen if some of history’s most famous figures returned to the countries they once knew?
Socrates, he argues, would scarcely recognize modern Athens. Nero would find that the Roman Empire, its legions, and its imperial institutions had vanished. Cleopatra would encounter an Egypt whose language, religious beliefs, and culture bear little resemblance to the world in which she lived.
The ancient Jewish people, however, present a strikingly different story.
Were a Biblical Jewish figure to return today, Shapiro says, he would find Jews studying the same Torah, reciting the same prayers, observing Shabbat, and speaking Hebrew in the Land of Israel.
Throughout centuries of exile, Jewish communities scattered across the world remained connected by a shared faith and a common longing for Jerusalem. Jews in Europe, North Africa, Ethiopia, and the Middle East all turned toward the same city in prayer.
While other nations depended on armies and empires to preserve their power, the Jewish people maintained their identity through their homes, synagogues, traditions, and the transmission of Torah from one generation to the next.
Shapiro also addresses the persistence of antisemitism, noting that hostility toward Jews has survived even as the societies in which it originated have disappeared.
Jews have been accused of contradictory offenses, he observes: of being wealthy and impoverished, capitalist and communist, unwilling to integrate and too willing to assimilate. Even in places where few or no Jews lived, antisemitic theories continued to spread.
Despite repeated attempts to erase them, the Jewish people remain.
“There are no Babylonians left, there are no Philistines left," Shapiro notes, while Jews continue to declare “Shema Yisrael," light Shabbat candles, hear the shofar on Rosh Hashanah, and remember Jerusalem.
The rebirth of Jewish sovereignty in the State of Israel, he concludes, is the modern expression of that extraordinary continuity. After generations of exile and persecution, the Jewish people have returned to their ancestral homeland, rebuilt their national life, and restored Hebrew as the language of a living society.
The empires that once dominated the ancient world have become chapters in history. The Jewish nation, Shapiro emphasizes, is still remembering, rebuilding, and carrying on.