Judaism flourished only under Christian or Muslim rule, not elsewhere
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
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- DEEPTHINKING: Challenges the assumption that Judaism would flourish best where free of Christian and Muslim persecution — instead those very ‘daughter religions’ were the only milieu where Judaism thrived.
- QUESTION: Why did Judaism stagnate in India and China despite tolerance? The passage offers no mechanism, just the observation.