Jewish Ahistory

At Shabbos Shacharit, which I davened at the Cote St. Luc Kollel, I encountered an interesting fellow. He is a professor of Ancient Greek History at Concordia University. When I told him that I am a history student he was surprised and pleased. Apparently he doesn't get very many frum students in his classes, and said that in general he has noticed that Orthodox Jews rarely study history seriously. I asked him what he thinks the reason is. His answer was, "Because until recently Jews haven't thought historically." Now, this is a pet issue of mine. I wrote about it once before, somewhat tangentially. I'd like to approach it more directly here. What my professor acquaintance said isn't entirely true. The fact is, for the most part frum Jews still don't think historically, at least not about Judaism. Pick up, for example, Berel Wein's book on Jews in the modern era, Triumph of Survival. What you'll find is a sequence of events strung together by the theme of God's hand in history. What you won't find is a description of the tremendous change that overcame the religious world in that period. Wein writes about the Reform movement, but he doesn't mention the ideological changes that the observant community made in response to reform, because according to his historiography those changes never took place. This is just a shameful dodge of the facts, which are obvious to anybody who looks at the literature of the time period objectively. This is the author who was recommended to me by my Rebbeim in Yeshiva when I said that I have an interest in Jewish history. Now, there really isn't a problem for Orthodoxy in looking at non-Jewish history with a critical eye. The problem is that studying history seriously trains the student to think historically. Once a student is thinking that way, the cognitive dissonance between his ways of looking at history in general and Jewish history in particular can get very uncomfortable and lead to a rejection of frumkeit. On the other hand, looking at Jewish history historically is viewed almost as heresy in many frum communities, so it would not be an option for many frum students. Thus, we don't see a whole lot of Orthodox history students, and we won't until Orthodoxy is able to come up with an historiography that accepts the fact that Modern Orthodox Judaism is not identical to the religion that was practiced 2000 years ago.