Cultural and scientific contributions to the world

Writing the history of Jewish contributions to universal culture and science demands a particular discipline: that of measure. The aim here is not to draw up a roll of honour, nor to claim for one tradition what in fact belongs to the circulation of knowledge between civilisations. Rather, it is to map transmissions — to understand how, over nearly three millennia, men and women issuing from Judaism received, preserved, translated, commented upon and enriched legacies coming from Greece, Persia, the Arab-Muslim world, India, and then modern Europe, before returning them, augmented, to the common heritage [Encyclopaedia Judaica].

The diasporic condition itself, often experienced as an ordeal, shaped a singular aptitude: that of living simultaneously in several languages, several cultures and several legal systems. The Jew of al-Andalus spoke Arabic, prayed in Hebrew, read the Aramaic of the Talmud and often knew the vernacular Romance tongue; this position of intermediary made many communities natural relays of scientific transmission [Encyclopaedia Judaica; Gerhard Endress, The Transmission of Greek Learning]. The present work seeks to retrace this history while always distinguishing what was established from what was transmitted, and refusing the anachronism that would consist in projecting modern categories onto eras that knew nothing of them.

The first lasting contribution of ancient Judaism to the world was textual and conceptual. The Hebrew Bible, developed and fixed over several centuries, bequeathed to humanity a narrative, poetic, and legal corpus whose influence extends far beyond the boundaries of Judaism [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. Its Greek translation, the Septuagint, undertaken in Alexandria from the third century before our era, constituted one of the first great acts of intercultural transmission: a Semitic text made accessible to the Hellenistic world, which would later become the scriptural foundation of nascent Christian communities [Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible].

Again in Alexandria, Philo (circa 20 BCE – 50 CE) undertook the first great attempt at synthesis between biblical thought and Greek philosophy, notably Platonic and Stoic. His allegorical method and his reflection on the Logos exerted a considerable influence on Christian patristics, which preserved his work even as the rabbinic tradition largely ignored it [Encyclopaedia Judaica; David T. Runia, Philo in Early Christian Literature].

The second pillar was the development of a legal and hermeneutic culture of rare sophistication. The Mishna, compiled around 200 of our era, and then the Talmuds of Jerusalem and Babylon, developed methods of reasoning, contradictory argumentation, and casuistry that constitute a monument of the legal thought of late Antiquity [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. Without claiming that these works directly shaped modern legal systems, historians recognize that they bear witness to an intellectual discipline — the art of debating a norm, of ranking authorities, of preserving the minority opinion — whose cultural legacy was profound within the communities that lived by them.

It was in Muslim Spain of the 10th–12th centuries, and later in the Christian kingdoms, that one of the most widely recognized contributions unfolded. In an environment where Arabic served as the language of learning, Jewish scholars took full part in scientific life. Hasdaï ibn Shaprut, in Córdoba in the 10th century, was a physician and diplomat; he is said to have contributed to the revision of the Arabic translation of Dioscorides' Materia medica [Encyclopaedia Judaica].

The dominant figure remains Moses Maimonides (1138–1204), born in Córdoba, who died in Cairo. Physician to the vizier and author of medical treatises in Arabic that circulated throughout the Mediterranean world, he was above all one of the greatest philosophers of the Middle Ages. His Guide for the Perplexed, written in Arabic and later translated into Hebrew and Latin, sought to reconcile biblical revelation with Aristotelian philosophy; his influence extended to Christian thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas and Albert the Great [Encyclopaedia Judaica; Sarah Stroumsa, Maimonides in His World]. His code of law, the Mishneh Torah, remains a pinnacle of Jewish legal thought.

In astronomy, Abraham bar Hiyya (12th century) and later Abraham Zacuto (15th–16th century) played an essential intermediary role. Zacuto, a professor at Salamanca, composed astronomical tables (the Perpetual Almanac) and improved navigational instruments; his work was used by the Portuguese navigators of the age of the great discoveries [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. Here too, the historian insists: these scholars did not create astronomy ex nihilo, but transmitted and refined a Greco-Arabic heritage, making it operative for new uses.

The central chapter of any history of transmission is that of the translators. After the reconquest of Toledo in 1085, the city became a hub where Arabic, Latin, Hebrew, and Castilian coexisted. Jewish translators played an irreplaceable role as intermediaries, often translating orally from Arabic into the Romance vernacular, which a Christian cleric would then render into Latin [Encyclopaedia Judaica; Gerhard Endress].

The Ibn Tibbon dynasty, in Lunel and Montpellier during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, embodies this vocation. Judah ibn Tibbon, nicknamed "the father of translators," and his son Samuel translated the great philosophical and scientific works from Arabic into Hebrew, including Maimonides' Guide [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. Thanks to these efforts, Greek texts lost in the West — by Aristotle, Galen, Euclid, or Ptolemy — reached European universities through the dual relay of Arabic and Hebrew. Without this chain of transmissions, the intellectual renaissance of twelfth-century Europe would have been inconceivable [Gerhard Endress, The Transmission of Greek Learning].

It must be emphasized here that this undertaking was collaborative in nature: transmission was never the work of a single community, but of a dialogue between Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars. The specifically Jewish contribution lies in this function of linguistic and cultural mediation, made possible by the diasporic position.

The political emancipation of Jews in Europe, from the late 18th century onward, opened access to universities and academies. As early as the 17th century, however, Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), born into the Sephardic community of Amsterdam, had laid certain foundations of modern biblical criticism and rationalist philosophy, at the cost of his excommunication by his own community [Encyclopaedia Judaica; Steven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life].

In the 19th and 20th centuries, Jewish scholars contributed in striking ways to the development of the sciences. In physics, Albert Einstein transformed the conception of space and time. In psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud founded a new discipline. In mathematics, Georg Cantor developed set theory, and Emmy Noether transformed abstract algebra [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. Statistics relating to the Nobel Prizes attest to a remarkable presence of laureates of Jewish origin, out of all proportion to the demographic weight of the communities concerned [Encyclopaedia Judaica].

The historian must nonetheless guard against any essentialist interpretation. This flourishing is explained by social and historical factors: a millennia-old tradition of study and literacy, urbanization, the aspiration to advancement through knowledge in societies where other paths remained closed, and the sudden encounter of highly literate communities with modern scientific institutions. It is not an explanation by "genius," but by history.

The contributions are not limited to the exact sciences. In literature, the Sephardic golden age saw the revival of Hebrew poetry with Salomon ibn Gabirol, Juda Halévi, and Abraham ibn Ezra, who adapted Arabic meters to the language of the Bible [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. In the modern era, writers such as Heinrich Heine, Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust — through his mother —, Paul Celan, and Saul Bellow profoundly shaped the European and American national literatures [Encyclopaedia Judaica].

In music, the contribution was considerable, from the composer Felix Mendelssohn in the nineteenth century to the great figures of twentieth-century music, by way of the liturgical tradition and the popular klezmer music born in the Ashkenazi communities of Eastern Europe [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. In the United States, composers such as George Gershwin and Irving Berlin shaped a substantial part of the American popular repertoire.

Here even more, caution is required: these creators belong as much to their national cultures as to a Jewish ancestry, and many of them maintained a distant, conflicted, or purely cultural relationship with Judaism. Their work belongs to the universal heritage; what the historian can note is the particular fecundity of the encounter between an inherited sensibility and the artistic languages of their time.

The twentieth century saw these traditions converge within a new framework. The revival of Hebrew as a spoken language, driven notably by Eliézer Ben-Yehuda, constitutes a linguistic phenomenon without any true equivalent: the transformation of a language of prayer and study into a living language of daily life and science [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. Research institutions developed, and several scholars working in Israel received Nobel Prizes in fields such as chemistry and economics, for example for work on quasi-crystals or protein degradation [Encyclopaedia Judaica].

In parallel, the contemporary diasporas, in North America, Europe, and elsewhere, remain centers of intellectual and artistic creation. The defining characteristic remains the same as in Toledo: a circulation, a dialogue, a role of intermediary between worlds. The permanence of this function of go-between, through so many ruptures and catastrophes — including the Shoah, which annihilated an immense part of this culture in Europe — is perhaps the most accurate observation the historian can formulate.

At the end of this journey, a thread of coherence emerges. The Jewish contributions to universal culture and science cannot be reduced to a list of illustrious names nor to a tale of national glory. They are best understood as a long history of transmission: the preservation of ancient texts, the translation of foreign heritages, the mediation between civilizations, and the enrichment of a patrimony that is always collective. The diasporic condition, by imposing multilingualism and constant contact with the other, shaped a vocation of conveyance that spans the centuries, from the Septuagint of Alexandria to the contemporary laboratories.

Historical honesty requires constantly distinguishing the established from the transmitted, and never claiming what belongs to other traditions. What this work has sought to show is not the superiority of one culture, but the fruitfulness of a position: that of one who, living between worlds, helps to connect them. It is in this role of relay, as much as in the works themselves, that the most enduring contribution to the common heritage of humanity resides.