Israel Studies

British historian Arnold J. Toynbee in his twelve volume A Study of History, (1934–1961), on the rise and decline of twenty-three civilizations, depicted the Jews as a "fossil" civilization. Toynbee presented history as the rise and fall of civilizations, rather than the history of nation-states or of ethnic groups. He identified his civilizations according to cultural rather than national criteria.

With the civilizations as units identified, he presented the history of each in terms of challenge-and-response. Civilizations arose in response to some set of challenges of extreme difficulty, when "creative minorities" devised solutions that reoriented their entire society. When a civilization responds to challenges, it grows. When it fails to respond to a challenge, it enters its period of decline. Toynbee argued that "Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder."

Although Toynbee's defenders deny he was anti-Semitic, Elie Kedourie pointed out that Toynbee did not hesitate to describe the Jews as a "fossil" civilization or, in 1948, to equate the Palestinian Jews, battling to establish the state of Israel, with the Nazis. When he finally got around to reconsidering his position on Judaism, it was in the context of celebrating the idea of world government and insisting that the Jews lead the way in demonstrating to mankind the folly of capitalism, nationalism, and territorial attachment.

Yaacov Herzog Israel's ambassador to Canada challenged Toynbee to a debate which took place in January 1961 at McGill University, Montreal in which he convincingly refuted Toynbee's thesis.

Little credit for Herzog's success was attributed to Abba Eban, Israel's ambassador to the United States, who had provided the main thrust of Herzog's argument in an address on The Toynbee Heresy delivered six years earlier. During the debate Herzog noted that Toynbee's ideas had 'been challenged by historians of great eminence and writers', and cited the 'Toynbee Heresy'. However, it was Toynbee himself who had to remind [End Page 91] Herzog that this term was formulated and elucidated upon by Abba Eban. Furthermore, there is no recognition of Eban's contribution either in Herzog's book A People That Dwells Alone (London, 1976) or in Michael Bar-Zohar's, Yaacov Herzog—A Biography (London, 2005).

Abba Eban read Classics and Oriental languages at Cambridge where he achieved the extraordinary distinction of a "Triple First" and a clutch of prizes and scholarships. Eban concentrated on Arabic literature and history. He recalled, "I came to be impressed by its large visions and exuberant resources . . . the Islamic Arabic poetry and the histories, geographies, and literary and philosophical treatises of the caliphate periods were intellectually and emotionally stirring . . . My deep immersion in that legacy made it impossible for me thereafter to adopt the routine Zionist stereotype that regarded the Arab nation with intellectual condescension."

Through his studies of the Arab world, and contacts with Arab students Eban came face to face with the roots of the conflict between "two nationalisms striving for fulfilment in the same country." After completing his degree, he went on to become a Research Fellow in Oriental Studies (Arabic and Hebrew). He also worked part time for the Zionist movement. He found his own research and teaching in oriental studies to be "intolerably irrelevant in terms of my own urgent instinct for public service." In December, 1939, Eban left the closet academia at Cambridge and went to work for Chaim Weizmann at the Zionist Headquarters in London.[End Page 92]

The Toynbee Heresy

Abba Eban

. . . . . . a generally affirmative approach to the history of the Jewish people can be discerned in all but the most eccentric historical writing until Toynbee. Indeed, the attempts to discredit the Jewish historic process have, until this year, been confined to those who have sought an academic rationalisation for religious or political hostility.

Significance of Toynbee's Revolt

We cannot...