Abstract / DOI
Joseph’s Mummy, Josiah’s Book: Safeguard and Danger of the Jewish Ideology of Tradition. For centuries, Jewish tradition has existed within the dialectical state of a ruling conservativism, expressed in the strict adherence to the law, and a hidden revolutionary potential, granted by the belief in the announcement of a messiah that could appear at any moment. This tradition could be traced back to the Bible, where, more than once, God’s announcements (for good as well as for bad things to happen) and their realization were far apart from each other. As it was tradition, then, that bridged the gap between the original announcement and its realization (which could be identified as such only retrospectively), so too, Judaism, regarding itself in exile all the way after the destruction of the 2nd temple, existed with the perspective of its final redemption. The emergence of Zionism, and the very founding of a Jewish state following the disaster of the Holocaust have caused deep rifts between different interpreters of Jewish history and tradition.