Judaism could only flourish, not merely survive, under Christian or Muslim rule

Evidence

Between those two eras, between the ending of the ancient Jewish commonwealth and the foundation of the modern Jewish commonwealth, Jews, Judaism, Jewish life and Jewish culture seemed to have flourished only under Christian or Muslim rule. There were other possibilities in the world. There were vast areas of Asia—India, China, which were neither Muslim nor Christian, but in which Judaism never took root. Jews settled in these places, but in spite of the absence of certain disadvantages which affected Jewish life under both Christian and Muslim rule, Judaism did not flourish. It barely sur­ vived, but rather stagnated in these places. It was only under the aegis of what in this company I may call the two daughter religions that Judaism seems to have been able to grow, to expand, to live, to flourish, to continue an original religious and cultural life. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 316

Categorization

• XREF: Inverts the standard persecution narrative — connects to debates about Jewish flourishing in diaspora vs. under co-religionist-tolerant states; resonates with the competition-stimulus thesis about Jewish survival.
• QUESTION: What mechanism is Lewis implying — theological kinship making dialogue generative, or persecution itself forcing rigor? Holds germ for a longer essay.