Jewish Contribution to Birth of Modern World

The article is rather long, so here is an excerpt that intrigued me:

"Today, we are witnessing the most dramatic results of Abraham's strategy (monotheism) in action: Our progress in the last 500 years, to the point of the current empowerment of the consumer with technology and information, only became possible through the rise of this ethic. In a polytheistic world, this could never have occurred. It was only once the people of Europe began actually reading the Bible and discussing what it had to say to them, that the concepts of human rights, social responsibility, the value of life, and eventually the ideal of world peace took a front seat in civilization's progress.
And it is only such a world that could have developed public education and health care, old age pension, telephones, fax machines, personal computers, the Internet, environmental design and nuclear disarmament."

Basically, the author argues that it is the Jews and the Bible that have given the world the individual freedoms and opportunity for technological advancement that we enjoy today.

My question is (and I emailed Tzvi Freeman - the author- about this): "How is it the reading of the Bible or the Jews that have given the world these freedoms? Isn't it the renaissance in Europe and the re-discovery of Greek ideas in arts, democracy and justice that brought Europe out of the dark ages in the 16 century and beyond?"

Any thoughts?

I read the article in full, there were a few controversial ideas some of them were challenged by Rabbi Dolnikov:
1st statement - “Our progress in the last 500 years, to the point of the current empowerment of the consumer with technology and information, only became possible through the rise of this ethic. In a polytheistic world, this could never have occurred.”

I agree with R. Dolnikov, there is nothing in Bible related to technology or science. It seems to me that technology is ethic-free. It’s application of technology which may or may not be ethical. As far as “technology and information” incompatibility with “polytheistic” faith the recent advance of India as a leader in that area illustrates this contradiction.

2nd statement - “It was only once the people of Europe began actually reading the Bible and discussing what it had to say to them, that the concepts of human rights, social responsibility, the value of life, and eventually the ideal of world peace took a front seat in civilization's progress. And it is only such a world that could have developed public education and health care, old age pension, telephones, fax machines, personal computers, the Internet, environmental design and nuclear disarmament”.

The author “accidently” forgot that Europe was familiar with Bible “reading and discussing” it for at least 900 years and just 70 years ago in a very Christian Germany overwhelming majority of Christians denied “human rights” for millions human beings, rejected the “idea of world peace”. Even more they used the most modern technology including punch cards and Ziklon-gas for mass murder.

I believe that it is not correct to stretch Torah outside of its origin. That creates confusion and may be exploited by opposition as an irrelevant teaching. I understand author’s idea to promote religious teaching and “our” contribution in human history, but as far as Jewish contribution in science, technology and social struggle, it was done mostly by secular Jews who were inspired by Torah.
I would like to finish my statement with and old shtetl joke – “Jews, keep jam and needls separately”.

What a great resource for Jewish history and information.

I think Vlad points out some very interesting points that needed to be clarified.
I’ll make a general comment, and then some specific ones about Vlad’s comments:

GENERAL COMMENTS:
I don’t think that the article is saying that technology comes from Torah. The main point of the article, I believe, is that such pillars of today’s society as public health, welfare, universal education, old age pension, nuclear disarmament as well as technological progress and environmental betterment do not just happen eventually inevitably, but flourish best in a society that holds dear certain values which promote the above ideals.
And that these values were brought to Europe in no small measure by the Jews.

The main values that the author points to as furthering these social causes are: A) inherent value of the individual irrespective of their social status and B) peace between people.

This is what the author (a renowned author and thinker in contemporary Jewish thought) replied to my initial question:

The concept of inherent value of human life is not Greek, but Biblical, ie Jewish. The Greeks of the Helenist world were aristocrats. The Jews were a middle class, interested in justice and humanitarian values. The most obvious catalyst of the Rennaissance and Reformation was quite simple: Hundreds of thousands of Jews flowing from the Iberian peninsula into a Europe decimated by the Bubonic Plague, carrying with them philosophy and science.

The manifesto of the Rennaissance was Pico della Mirandola's Oratory on the Dignity of Man. Pico had a library of thousands of pages of Kabbala. He was fascinated by all things Jewish. And the oratory reads almost as a Jewish work.

Some specific comments:
a) Of course technology is ethic free, but how many people are educated enough to develop the technology and how many people have access to (and create demand for) the technology is related to equality, opportunity and education – issues of applied ethics.

b) Clearly the Bible was around in Europe since the 4th century, but as the author points out in the email quoted above, Sephardic Jews coming to Europe from Spain in the 15th century had a lot to do with how the Bible was read.
Also, clearly I am not going to defend the actions of Christianity historically – people can abuse any idea and twist it for their gain. Its pretty hard to preach ‘equality’ on one hand but empower the aristocrats of Europe (as the church had done) on the other. In Jewish communities the ideas of equality were there to be seen – not only preached.

c) I agree that most recent Jewish technological advancements were made by secular Jews, but a) the fact that they even had the chance to make these contributions is due to the influence of Jewish ideas.

I think that the idea that all Jews were good and all Christians were bad is naive. The answer is probably nearer the middle. I do think though that the liberalisation of people generally gave rise to enormous technological development rather than whether their liberalisation was related to their religion.

Clearly one can draw the analogy that liberalisation only occurred because of religious reform but I think that good would have triumphed over evil irrespective of which religion was involved.

One could argue that Judaism in itself promotes freedom better than other religions but to claim it all to ourselves is not correct.

"The author “accidently” forgot that Europe was familiar with Bible “reading and discussing” it for at least 900 years and just 70 years ago in a very Christian Germany overwhelming majority of Christians denied “human rights” for millions human beings, rejected the “idea of world peace”. Even more they used the most modern technology including punch cards and Ziklon-gas for mass murder."

Rabbi Dolnikov has asked me to join the discussion. I can contribute only a few notes, due to the pressures of time.

History is written by the victors, which was certainly not us. Europe was far behind the world of Islam in philosophy, science and technology until the Inquisition.

Yes, Christianity had a Bible before the Reformation, but it was mostly chained to the altar. Without belittling the debates of the scholastics and other occasional oases of enlightenment, the Renaissance and the ensuing Reformation really saw the beginning of open discussion over theology and philosophy that was the birth of our modern world. It was at this time that Europeans began to talk of personal destiny, identity and meaning in a way that beforehand appeared commonly in Arabic and Jewish writings, but had disappeared from the Christian world. All our ideas of human dignity, the absolute value of life, purpose, equality of mankind and social justice--all ideas that for the Christians had lain almost dormant under a blanket of "original sin" and "salvation through the church"--all this became suddenly real and relevant at that period.

And where is their source? Among the Greeks who discarded unwanted children? Among the Romans with their multitude of slaves and gladiator contests? The obvious truth that conventional history conveniently chooses to ignore is that the only source for such ideas is the Tanach, the rabbinical tradition and common Jewish thought and practice through the ages.

In terms of industrialization and technology, Max Weber was the first to ask the question, "Why did the industrial revolution occur in Europe and not somewhere else, such as China?" His conclusion was to point to what he called the Protestant work ethic. Of course, he realized, this only begged the question: What was the source of this ethic? His conclusion and that of several of his colleagues was of great consternation to himself and many German intellectuals: Of all the ancient peoples, the only ones to laud the value of hard work were the Jews. The rise of the middle class in Europe, it turned out, was nothing more than gentiles emulating the Jewish mercantile class. For this reason, Paul Johnson goes so far as to call the German attempt at genocide "patricide".

For more on this topic, please see The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels by Thomas Cahill (or just read a few online reviews), www.HebrewHIstory.info (Samuel Kurinsky). There is also much material in the books of Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Sacks.

Islam - as well as Christianity - emerged from Judaism. In the centuries since their beginning, they've arrived at different cultural points in the current world.

Christianity over the last 3 centuries somehow developed a respect for individuality and (quite recently) human rights, as well as a culture of science and rationality (though not without a few holocausts and accidental world wars).

Islam has come into the modern world but isn't as concerned with human rights, individuality or rationality. They still seem dominated by religion and tribal mentalities (though they also have some progressive streaks and hold on to their traditions better).

I don't know if the reason that Christianity developed better technology and respect for the individual (compared to Islam) was due to Jews or Judaism however. I think they were guided by Christianity and the evolution of European society. It was also - importantly - due to the existence of universities outside the jurisdiction of both the Church and the State, that allowed for science and free thought to develop.

Interestingly European society had to banish religion to the merely private realm before a rational discourse could dominate the way people think.

Some comments:

To Michael:

I agree that to claim it all to ourselves is incorrect, but it interesting to investigate where the original seeds of ideas and shifts in thinking come from. I am sure there are ideas we started and others developed, and visa-versa.

You write that it "could be that Judaism promotes freedom better than other religions."

This is interesting to consider. On the one hand there is an inherent ideal in our tradition about individual liberty and personal empowerment through access to knowledge and through the concept of each person's unique, personal relationship with G-d (without needing a intermediary etc).

On the other hand, it could well be that our experience in the diaspora, having been oppressed and removed from place after place (often at the whim of one dictator/king/landowner) has taught us about the perils of empowering the ruling class or a 'great leader'. And as such we carry an inherent independence that we bring (i'm not saying we are the only reason for this) to the societies we live in.

You even see this individuality today in Israel . There's a story about an Israeli prime minister who was told by a US president that "i , as president of the US am answerable to 300 million people" to this the Israeli prime minister answered "yes, but I am answerable to 3 million Prime Ministers".


To Tzvi::
How do we see these ideals at the time of the Jewish Theocracy when the 1st Temple was standing?

To Ezra::
It is interesting how the banishment of religion to the private realm (separation of church and state etc) was so crucial to the development of the modern world.

BUT, which happened first: the influence of Jewish ideas (as Tzvi describes it) and then the banishment of religion into the private realm, or visa-versa?

Also, looking at the Divine providence in the Big picture of history, one could consider an interesting process:

1)jewish people have a country, a theocracy, ruled briefly by righteous moral kings (david, solomon etc).
2) jewish kings become currupted, this leads to jews being eventually kicked out of their land.
3) in diaspora Jews lobby/favour/promote a separation of church and state (for their own well being)
4) this (among other factors) helps bring about the separation of church and state, which leads to the advancements mentioned