What Keeps Judaism Alive?

It is a thought often attributed to Ernest Bloch that it is anti-Semitism that, for all its perniciousness, has preserved the Jews. Of course, if that were true our position in the world would be very different today. After all (according to the Encyclopedia Judaica) Jews accounted for about 1 percent of the population of the Roman Empire at a time when the total population was around 56 million at the time of Augustus. And in medieval times, Jews again accounted for 1 percent. Populations fluctuated, indeed, because of natural disasters, plagues, and wars. But by logic and right we should be at least 1 percent of the Middle Eastern and Western world’s population now.

During these thousands of years, of course, Jews were not only being killed in vast numbers. They were constantly converting to other religions, whether by force or simply to survive. Some, incredible as it seems, because they actually believed in the alternatives. So if it was anti-Semitism that was keeping us alive, then frankly it did a lousy job.