PROPHETS OF THE PAST – INTERPRETERS OF JEWISH HISTORY pdf

Prophets Of The Past – Interpreters Of Jewish History by Michael Brenner

PROPHETS OF THE PAST – INTERPRETERS OF JEWISH HISTORY

From the Book

Historians cannot predict the future, but they have the power to interpret the past

 In their hands, the past is shaped in the same way that the future takes on form in the eyes of the classical prophets Thus for the poet and scholar Friedrich Schlegel historians were “prophets facing backward.”

Schlegel’s remark of 1798 can be understood in two ways, as Walter Benjamin explained: “Traditionally it has meant that the historian, transplanting himself into a remote past, prophesy what was regarded as the future at that time but meanwhile has become the past…

But the saying can also be understood to mean something quite different: the historian turns his back on his own time, and his seer’s gaze is kindled by the peaks of earlier generations as they sink further into the past.”

 Benjamin interpreted Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus as “the angel of history,” the ideal image of a backward-facing prophet.

He acquired this picture in 1921 and bequeathed it to his friend Gershom Scholem (1897- 1982).

In the concluding lines of a poem written for Benjamin in 1933, Scholem noted in defiance of Benjamin’s interpretation: