Listening to Lin-Manuel Miranda's excellent new musical Hamilton reminded me of a lesson from American history. Americans did not suddenly begin governing themselves with no prior experience after a successful revolution. The capacity for self-government developed over the course of decades, aided by the British policy of salutary neglect. Selective British law enforcement facilitated the institution of American self-government.
Another institution--mobile identity--received similar assistance from repression that was only partial. This may be a conceit of my Jewish education, but I am currently under the impression that Jews were the first group with a mobile identity.* The story is that most gods were local, so when a person moved to a new place she would discard the gods of her origin and worship the gods of the new locality. Monotheism helped change that. When a Jew moved to a new place she could continue worshiping the god of her origin, who she believed was also present in the new locality.
The partial repression that aided mobile identity was the Babylonian exile.** Ancient empires that conquered new areas sometimes deported the local population to quash rebellion. There were two unusual features of the Babylonian exile. First, it was incomplete. Many Jews remained in the Kingdom of Judah. Second, it was brief. Jews were permitted to return from Babylonia after about 50 years. The Babylonian exile made Jewish identity mobile by:
- establishing a myth of exile and return (or strengthened it if you believe the exodus from Egypt is actual history), and
- establishing a model for a permanent diaspora community.
Partial British repression fostered American self-government, and partial Babylonian repression fostered Jewish mobile identity. And since I like comparing human institutions to biological phenomena, I'll conclude with the observation that a partial course of antibiotics can foster antibiotic-resistant superbugs.
* In this post I use Jews interchangeably with Hebrews and Israelites, which I'm sure is wrong but I doubt is consequential.
** I'm not sure where historical myth ends and actual history begins, but I believe the exodus from Egypt is probably historical myth and the Babylonian exile is actual history.
