Among many other things, the late historian and journalist Paul Johnson was, in the words of J.J. Kimche, “one of the greatest philo-Semites of our time.” Kimche carefully analyzes the ideas and attitudes that underly Johnson’s A History of the Jews, as well as his engagement with the Judaism and the Jewish past in other works:
Eschewing the fashionable conclusion that Jewish communities scattered across various continents and millennia represent merely a loose constellation of disparate cultural units, Johnson insisted that the Jews are what they have traditionally imagined themselves to be: a single national entity, whose unique place in history is secured by their disproportionate contributions to the broader human story. In Johnson’s eyes, the Jews are special because they taught the world a set of indispensable guiding principles.
Such principles are not the contingent results of organic cultural stirrings or historicized necessity, but rather immutable convictions about God, humanity, and the world. The Jews’ embodiment of these principles as a religious and social modus vivendi has shaped, even determined, the contours of Jewish history, which is guided primarily by internal ideals rather than the vagaries of external circumstance. Put simply, Judaism created the Jews, not vice-versa.
Johnson’s insistence on the range and depth of the Jewish story constitutes a resounding rejection of accusations of Jewish ossification. Johnson’s investigations reveal two millennia of vigorous and turbulent exilic Jewish life, demonstrating that Diaspora Jewry satisfied all the criteria for a thriving national organism. In this narrative, there was no truly “quiet” era of Jewish history, let alone cultural atrophy. Jewish accomplishments in the religious, economic, political, social, and intellectual spheres placed them at the epicenter of many great civilizational narratives. The Jews have no need of reintroduction into world history, for the simple reason that they never left.
Read more on First Things: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2023/03/paul-johnson-philo-semite