Back in 1984, Abba Eban’s PBS series, Heritage: Civilization and the Jews, made an enormous splash, was viewed by 50 million people and won a Peabody Award and two Emmys. This nine-part series tells the Jewish story from ancient times in Mesopotamia, through Roman antiquity and the Middle Ages, through the Holocaust to present-day America and Israel.
In receiving the Peabody award, the citation declared:
There are good television documentaries and there are exceptional television documentaries. Heritage: Civilization and the Jews is, in the opinion of the Peabody Board, an exceptional series of nine one-hour documentaries. In this excellent group of programs more than 3000 years of Jewish history, culture and thought is brought together, not just as history but as history in interaction with all of Western civilization.”
Who was Abba Eban?
He was a diplomat’s diplomat and the voice and face of Israel before the English-speaking world. Eban’s great speech to the entire General Assembly in 1949 was as much aimed at the American public and world opinion as at the assembled delegates, and it led to Israel’s admission to the UN.
In 1967, he spoke powerfully from the UN defending Israel’s case at its most dire moment. In modern times, I don’t think there has been a voice that embodied the Jewish condition and advocated for the Jewish people more than his.
Surely, we can deal with a little illiberalism. This series is telling us – we can do this! We’ve done it before. We’ve stood up to Pharaoh. We’ve survived persecution. And we should be proud of what we’ve done. And learn about it. So that we can save the world’s bacon, so to speak, yet again.
When he came to speak at Beth El in Stamford in 1987 – just after I arrived there – he was literally larger than life. Tall, stout – he stood head and shoulders above a group of teens that we brought together for a photo. He dominated the photo. His chins alone blocked out half the kids.
And when he spoke, he elevated advocacy to an art. He was the quintessential public speaker. It always boggled my mind that he was not nearly as popular in Israel as he was here. He was just as eloquent in Hebrew as in English. But you know, the English accent that is so regal and distinguished over here, does not ring quite that way to Israeli ears. Because there was this thing called the British mandate. Although he was born in Cape Town, Eban was Cambridge trained and served in the British army in Egypt and Mandate Palestine.
Anyway, a British or even an American accent in Hebrew is not conducive to political success in Israel.
One of the main questions I want to address in this class is…
WHAT HAS CHANGED SINCE 1984, WHEN THIS SERIES ORIGINALLY AIRED? AND WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT AMERICAN JEWRY AND AMERICA AS A WHOLE?
In creating this series, Eban had two concerns above all: Jewish pride and Jewish literacy.
Eban said in an interview:
‘’I must say in all frankness, the lack of knowledge that Jews have about themselves is almost as great as the lack of knowledge that gentiles have of Jews. Among American Jews, especially, there’s a consciousness of heritage, and a pride in it, but that doesn’t mean there’s knowledge of it.”
Eban wondered how many among them would know “that Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, or that one in 10 people in Spain was Jewish, or that the Spanish-Jewish community was like the American- Jewish community today in terms of prosperity and prestige - where a Jew could be Prime Minister of Granada or doctor to the king, and where as great a scholar as Maimonides could flourish?”
While his main objective was Jewish literacy, when 50 million people watch a program and America has only 6 million or so Jews, that’s ALOT of non-Jews seeing it! So a prime purpose of the series was to tell the Jewish story to non-Jews – to share our narrative and frame history from a Jewish perspective.
But that can be spun in two ways, with a “Wow!” or an “Oy Vey!”
Was his goal to show the world the amazing things we’ve accomplished that have added so much to civilization and made our mothers so proud of us? And that it is impossible to tell the tale of human history without the considering the Jewish contribution?
Or does this series primarily hold to what I call the “oy vey” theory of Jewish history? Everyone hates us - And that includes you, and you and you and you….. Everyone hates us and yet somehow, we survived – and how we survived and THAT we survived is our greatest contribution to world history – and the greatest miracle.
But even the “oy vey” approach has to be more than simple survival. And indeed it is. So we find a synthesis of the “Wow!” and the “Oy.”
The Passover Haggadah states that in every generation there are people who have tried to destroy the Jewish people. But at the same time, in every generation the Jews have made an invaluable contribution to enhance the human enterprise.
Wow + Oy (or despite Oy) = Incredible wow!
And all that = Pride in a priceless legacy.
There’s a quote at the end of part 8 – the episode covering the Holocaust – a quote from Elie Wiesel:
“There is nothing my generation could do but bear witness and therefore bear witness for humanity. They thought they could kill 6 million Jews and then go on as if 6 million Jews didn’t die. But together with the Jew, the image of man was destroyed. We have all the reasons in the world to despair, to give up on man, to give up on culture on civilization on language, even on God. But we won’t permit it to happen. We have the reasons to do so, but we will not invoke them. And in spite of everything we shall go on believing.”
That’s nine episodes wrapped up in a single quote. And remember, in 1984, the Holocaust was both fresher in our collective memory and yet less understood than today. Jews, and the world, needed to understand. And the Holocaust was becoming central to Jewish identity.
Because the Holocaust was beginning to overshadow all that came before it, Eban saw a need to reframe Jewish history with universalist colors. This series is not a history of the Jews, which invariably must lead to that catastrophe and victimhood. It’s a history of humanity, and the Jews’ essential role in the unfolding of the human story, from the alphabet to the printing press to the internet, of liberation movements and migration, of resilience and adaptation. It’s a triumph, not a tragedy – or at least not JUST a tragedy.
What about Israel? Abba Eban was a diaspora-raised Israeli statesman – and a proud Zionist. His next series was specifically about the history of Israel, but is this a Zionist history of the Jews? And what does that mean. really? Can there be a history of the Jews that doesn’t include a Zionist view at its core – focusing on the centrality of the 2000-year Jewish yearning for the land of Israel? – a dream that was ultimately, and unbelievably fulfilled?
In fact, whether a history of the Jews was or was not Zionist is not a question that would have absorbed people back then. It does now.
And what of the diaspora? In fact, I think Eban pulls off something remarkable. The diaspora experience is filled with both triumph and tragedy, not merely a litany of martyrdom and expulsion. The importance of the diaspora is not negated by Eban, as it was by Ben Gurion and so many early Zionist thinkers. Still Jewish peoplehood is at the program’s core and indirectly at least, so is Zionism.
One more note of introduction:
We need this series now perhaps more than in 1984.
We have now passed the 40-year mark since this show was written, which at that time was 40 years removed from the Holocaust. Halfway from Auschwitz to October 7. Think of how much has changed since 1984.
It was a time of relative optimism, of “Morning in America,” a belief that America could win the Cold War - which it did (along with the battle to save Soviet Jewry) - and a belief in the primacy of morality and religious values, spurred by the Moral Majority on the right and, on the left, a post-Watergate emphasis on the rule of law, with government excess checked by a strong, free press.
The very first scene of the 9-part series could have been shot anywhere. But they didn’t choose Jerusalem, Rome, or Toledo. No, this is what the viewers see, even before they see Eban’s visage.
It was jarring for me to see that - and to recognize how much has changed.
Perhaps this choice was made to appeal to PBS’s core audience, portraying the most optimistic and forward-looking scene imaginable. Less than a decade later, those twin towers would be attacked – and a decade after that, destroyed. That skyline would be altered forever. But the World Trade Center was at that time a symbol of optimism and American exceptionalism, and given New York’s centrality in the Jewish story, Jewish exceptionalism as well.
All was good.
The last part of the 20th century was a “Golden Age” for American Jews. As Franklin Foer wrote in The Atlantic last year:
Over the course of the 20th century, Jews invested their faith in a distinct strain of liberalism that combined robust civil liberties, the protection of minority rights, and an ethos of cultural pluralism. They embraced this brand of liberalism because it was good for America—and good for the Jews. It was their fervent hope that liberalism would inoculate America against the world’s oldest hatred.
For several generations, it worked. Liberalism helped unleash a Golden Age of American Jewry, an unprecedented period of safety, prosperity, and political influence. Jews, who had once been excluded from the American establishment, became full-fledged members of it. And remarkably, they achieved power by and large without having to abandon their identity. In faculty lounges and television writers’ rooms, in small magazines and big publishing houses, they infused the wider culture with that identity. Their anxieties became American anxieties. Their dreams became American dreams.
But that era is drawing to a close. America’s ascendant political movements—MAGA on one side, the illiberal left on the other—would demolish the last pillars of the consensus that Jews helped establish. They regard concepts such as tolerance, fairness, meritocracy, and cosmopolitanism as pernicious shams.
The Golden Age of American Jewry has given way to a golden age of conspiracy, reckless hyperbole, and political violence, all tendencies inimical to the democratic temperament. Extremist thought and mob behavior have never been good for Jews. And what’s bad for Jews, it can be argued, is bad for America.
So it’s not simply that the Golden Age of American Jewry is over, but the golden age of America is over, because of behaviors proliferating on the right and the left.
For Jews, this golden age culminated in Joe Lieberman’s nomination for VP in 2000. And he nearly won. In fact it was Jewish voters in Palm Beach County who left those hanging chads. His Jewishness and steadfast support of Israel was never an issue. In fact, his Orthodoxy was seen as a plus – exemplary to walk to the Capitol on Shabbat. Never an issue, even for Democrats. Israel was seen as a victim of terror – especially after the Hamas bombings following Oslo and the Rabin assassination.
We are far from that place. It is very hard to be a Jew right now, here in America – anywhere, but especially here.
Today I was listening to a podcast and the host was literally crying, so ashamed that Jeffrey Epstein was Jewish. Now the fact of his Jewishness should have as much relevance as the fact that Jack the Ripper was Christian. His crimes should not be considered as a stain on Jewishness. Yet we feel a personal sense of shame over what happened. We are not responsible. But we are our brother’s keeper. And in this case, also our daughter’s. We cry for the victims but also for the reputation of our people. And even for God. What he did was what Jews call a “hillul Ha-shem,” a desecration of God’s name. I was the one who wanted to excommunicate Bernard Madoff,2 for that very reason. I’m considering adding Stephen Miller to the list.
For Jews are more than a religion – we are a family. And it hurts. When two Israeli diplomats are gunned down in Washington DC last summer, it hurts, even though one wasn’t technically Jewish. And for Jews, there’s a lot that hurts right now.
And so we wish we could go back to that golden age – or at least be proud again.
I think we can. I think the Jewish story has not even come close to writing its final chapter.
We’ve come up with answers so many times before – in the shadow of the pyramids and at Sinai, by the Rivers of Babylon and Shushan, in the libraries of Alexandria and the catacombs of Rome, in Cordoba and Cairo, Amsterdam and New Amsterdam, in Paris and Prague and in Auschwitz and Jerusalem. We see it in this series.
Surely, we can deal with a little illiberalism. This series is telling us – we can do this! We’ve done it before. We’ve stood up to Pharaoh. We’ve survived persecution. And we should be proud of what we’ve done. And learn about it. So that we can save the world’s bacon, so to speak, yet again.
So, what is our purpose for this age?
Not to get too far ahead of ourselves, since we’ll come back to this in our final session, maybe the message we should come away with is that, given how much HAS changed since 1984, and how much we have seen the normalization of antisemitism and extremism on the right and the left, maybe it’s up to us to help America and the world dig our way out of this.
Maybe this is the new Jewish miission - and message - for our wounded generation.
From the lecture description:
At a time when Jews are questioning the value of their heritage, and some even hiding their identity, we look back at a project from 40 years ago that made American Jews swell with pride. Back in 1984, Abba Eban’s PBS series, Heritage: Civilization and the Jews, made an enormous splash, was viewed by 50 million people and won a Peabody Award and two Emmys. This nine-part series tells the Jewish story from ancient times in Mesopotamia, through Roman antiquity and the Middle Ages, through the Holocaust to present-day America and Israel.
In three Zoom sessions, I’ll take a fresh look at Eban’s work - and Jewish history itself - and discuss how his optimistic vision holds up 40 years later, at a time where world Jewry is in a very different (and some would say more perilous) place. At the same time, we’ll follow the series in exploring the threads that define the Jewish experience, including 3000 years of its interaction with other civilizations.
An Open Letter to Malcolm Hoenlein Regarding Bernard Madoff (Joshua Hammerman)
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