Before the Holocaust

Twice in the 2,000 years of their dispersion, the Jews drew so close to another culture that pollination took place and a golden age ensued. The first contiguity occurred in 13th century Spain, where an unusually benign monarchy encouraged Talmudists to write romantic poetry and bishops to translate Maimonides and Ibn Gabirol into canonical Latin, melding two theologies.

The second convergence arose in 19th century Germany where Jews, emancipated by Napoleon, made common cause with the makers of modern culture. Together, they made Germany the intellectual brewery of Europe, a place of continuous creative ferment.

Both episodes ended in catastrophe. The Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 with heavy loss of life. Germany's Jews were expelled or exterminated after 1933. Both countries were gutted by these wanton acts of ethnic cleansing. Spain descended into centuries of darkness; Germany may never recover its cultural self-confidence.

Historians, unable to account for the violent eruptions, adopt one of two flags of convenience. There is a fleet of symbiosists who argue that the two cultures were on the point of a mighty fusion that somehow went wrong in the lab.

The isolationists, on the other hand, maintain that Jews and Gentiles cannot mix without dire consequences. Amos Elon, an Israeli journalist-turned-historian, scorns both schools of thought.

His story begins with the arrival in Berlin of Moses Mendelssohn, a 14-year-old Talmud student, to join a huddle of 200 families who were routinely abused and robbed by Frederick the Great.

Mendelssohn, speaking Hebrew and Yiddish, soon mastered German, Latin, Greek, French and English. He read Locke and Leibniz and was urged by the playwright Gotthold Lessing to write philosophy. His tract, Phaidon, marked the onset of German intellectualism.

He went on to translate Scripture into a vernacular more lucid than Luther's. Although strictly observant of the laws of his faith, he was a bold enlightener. His descendants converted overwhelmingly to Christianity; his Jewish followers founded a reform movement that sought to modernise synagogue rituals to conform with Christian practice.

The generation after Mendelssohn pursued cerebral dialogue in the Berlin salons of powerful Jewish hostesses, but to limited effect.

The converts found little succour in any society; they were the most homeless of Jews. Heinrich Heine yearned, in his poems, for a German fatherland that was never his. Felix Mendelssohn, Moses's grandson, composed Christian oratorios.