Frontiers of Jewish Scholarship: Expanding Origins, Transcending Borders 9780812298253

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Frontiers of Jewish Scholarship

JEWISH CULTURE AND CONTEXTS Published in association with the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania Series Editors: Shaul Magid, Francesca Trivellato, Steven Weitzman A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

FRONTIERS OF JEWISH SCHOLARSHIP Expanding Origins, Transcending Borders

Edited by Anne O. Albert, Noah S. Gerber, and Michael A. Meyer

u n i v e r s i t y o f p e n n s y lva n i a p r e s s philadelphia

 Copyright © 2022 University of Pennsylvania Press Publication of this volume was assisted by a grant from the Publications Fund of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www​.­upenn​.­edu​/­pennpress Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca on acid-­free paper 10 ​9 ​8 ​7 ​6 ​5 ​4 ​3 ​2 ​1 Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Albert, Anne O. (Anne Oravetz), editor. | Gerber, Noah S.,  editor. | Meyer, Michael A., editor. Title: Frontiers of Jewish scholarship : expanding origins, transcending  borders / edited by Anne O. Albert, Noah S. Gerber, and Michael  A. Meyer. Description: First edition. | Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania  Press, [2022] | Series: Jewish culture and contexts | Includes  bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021030565 | ISBN 978-0-8122-5364-1 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: Jewish learning and scholarship—History—19th century. |  Jewish learning and scholarship—History—20th century. |  Wissenschaft des Judentums (Movement) Classification: LCC DS115.95 .F76 2022 | DDC 909/.04924—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021030565

Contents

Introduction. The German Foundation, the Multifaceted Expansion Anne O. Albert, Noah S. Gerber, and Michael A. Meyer

1

PART I. NEW LANDS Chapter 1. Between Past and F ­ uture: Eu­ro­pean Jewish Scholarship and National Temporalities, 1845–1889 Irene Zwiep Chapter 2. German Wissenschaft des Judentums and the Late Nineteenth-­Century Development of Hungarian Jewish Studies Katalin Franciska Rac

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42

Chapter 3. Wissenschaft des Judentums Exported to Amer­i­ca: The Case of Gotthard Deutsch Michael A. Meyer

65

Chapter 4. Forging a New “Empire of Knowledge”: Jewish Scholarship ­Under Soviet Patronage Deborah Yalen

79

PART II. NEW THEMES Chapter 5. Between Assonance and Assimilation: Lit­er­a­ture as a Hyphen in the Wissenschaft des Judentums Clémence Boulouque

103

vi Contents

Chapter 6. Christian Contributions to Jewish Scholarship in Italy Asher Salah

121

Chapter 7. Integrating National Consciousness into the Study of Jewish History Yitzhak Conforti

137

Chapter 8. South Asian Frameworks for Eu­ro­pean Good Intentions: Hyderabad, Karachi, and Jewish Orientalism Hanan Harif

156

Chapter 9. Saul Lieberman and Yemenite Jewry Noah S. Gerber

172

Notes

191

List of Contributors

251

Index

255

Introduction The German Foundation, the Multifaceted Expansion anne o. albert, noah s. gerber, and michael a. meyer

Two hundred years and counting have passed since the birth of the modern critical study of Jewish history and heritage. Its beginnings are usually attributed to a small circle of Jewish intellectuals, some of them students at the newly established University of Berlin, who pursued a new scholarly proj­ ect that came to be called the Wissenschaft des Judentums (WdJ). Over the course of the ensuing two centuries, WdJ evolved in scope and purpose, taking on more diverse subjects and gradually assuming a major role within modern Jewish identity. Its intensely self-­conscious acolytes ­were driven to describe it from multiple ­angles, and accordingly it developed a history of its own. At the same time, it expanded beyond what its initiators ­imagined, crossing cultures, continents, and centuries. The pre­sent volume reckons with ­these transformations, integrating into the story of WdJ researchers, topics, and aims that ­were once seen as lying at the farthest frontiers of Jewish scholarship. From the outset, the term Wissenschaft des Judentums itself creates a prob­ lem of definition in languages other than German, as the most common translation, “Science of Judaism,” is misleading with regard to both of its ele­ments. The German word Wissenschaft is broader in scope than the En­glish science. It covers not only natu­ral and social sciences but also the forms of humanistic endeavor practiced by early proponents of the WdJ, including philosophical and literary studies, philology, and history. In short, unlike science, Wissenschaft can apply to any disciplined inquiry. The German term Judentum is

2

Introduction

likewise not the equivalent of the En­glish Judaism. Whereas the latter refers to the Jewish religion, the former can refer to e­ ither the religion or the culture of Jews as well as, collectively, to the Jews themselves. Hence one needs to understand WdJ as a study of Jews and/or Judaism that is in accordance with such academic standards as accuracy and objectivity.1 Two significant variants of the German designation have been employed for the purpose of making a point. Within German religious Orthodoxy of the mid-­nineteenth ­century, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch rejected the entire notion of modern scholarly inquiry into the Jewish past for the reason that it could potentially undermine what he regarded as divine revelation. When, ­later on, a ­limited WdJ was nonetheless taken up within Orthodoxy by Rabbi Ezriel Hildesheimer, he chose to write jüdische Wissenschaft, thereby indicating that this form of textual study, though within the modern academic realm, remained in some sense distinctly Jewish. Similarly, the Liberal rabbi Leo Baeck frequently, if not consistently, preferred to write Wissenschaft vom Judentum, substituting vom (from) for des (of ). Thereby he indicated that Judaism was not only the object of study but also its source: that the modern impartial study of Judaism flowed outward from within Judaism itself and was not an external imposition upon it.2 Though not usually characterized as such, Wissenschaft des Judentums in its initial stages was, to a large extent, a movement of liberation. Its principal founder, Leopold Zunz (1794–1886), was initially a rebel against what he believed to be the deleterious domination of rabbinism as the reigning structure of con­temporary Judaism. He longed for it to be overthrown. A new elite, composed of modern scholars, would ­free Judaism from shackles that prevented its ­free development. Rabbi Abraham Geiger (1810–74), the central figure in the movement for the religious reform of Judaism in Germany, was more specific and more extreme in his intentions. He was prepared to use WdJ as a tool of de­mo­li­tion that would topple the existing structure to the ground, leaving only the still-­viable and valuable foundation upon which to build anew.3 However, liberation from a Judaism that they felt had no ­f uture was only the first stage for men like Zunz and Geiger. Both ­were also committed to using WdJ to create a connection with the Jewish past. By focusing on ­those ele­ments that they regarded as enduringly meaningful for religious life, they could use study of the past for the sake of the ­f uture. Both looked to the Jewish past for inspiration, Zunz especially to the Ashkenazi tradition, Geiger more, though not exclusively, to the Sephardi.

Introduction

3

As German Jews increasingly integrated culturally into their environment, the gap between them and their inherited Judaism grew wider. Jewish scholars, committed to their heritage, now found it incumbent upon themselves as scholars to bridge that gap by creating a narrative that emphasized the ele­ments they believed possessed continuing vitality. Although they viewed Jewish history through a lens of modern criticism, they sought to create a narrative that was not merely in line with the objective facts but also emotionally attractive. No one did that more effectively than the historian Heinrich Graetz (1817–91), whose History of the Jews enjoyed lasting popularity.4 This internal motivation for the exposition of Jewish texts and traditions, for the elaboration of a heroic history, and for an aesthetically v­ iable literary creativity operated alongside external motives. WdJ was from the start also directed outward to the attention of non-­Jews as well as to Jews. Beginning with Zunz’s short-­lived scholarly periodical Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, and then with the very long-­lived Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums and ­later publications, it was hoped that non-­ Jewish scholars would take note of the fact that Jews ­were able to relate to their tradition in a manner similar to that in which critical Christian scholars approached theirs. Sadly, ­these efforts yielded only the most ­limited results. Few non-­Jewish scholars paid attention to what Jewish scholars had written, and when they did, it was grudgingly, without giving proper credit. Such was the case of the renowned professor of Oriental languages in Göttingen Paul de Lagarde, who, along with his students, made generous use of the work of Jewish scholars, especially Zunz, but nonetheless attacked them for overvaluing the objects of their research. Such disdain continued among some non-­Jewish scholars in Germany into the twentieth c­ entury. In 1912 the renowned biblical scholar Hermann Gunkel could still write about Wissenschaft des Judentums in a spirit similar to that of Lagarde: “What I have personally learned of Jewish Wissenschaft never inspired me with par­tic­u­lar re­spect. . . . ​As ­matters stand, it is still the case that the only religion in which a true spirit of Wissenschaft is pos­si­ble remains the Protestant.”5 Perhaps it was such negative views on the part of non-­Jews that prompted the prominent neo-­Kantian Jewish phi­los­o­pher Hermann Cohen to express the opinion that Jews alone could properly undertake Wissenschaft des Judentums. Christian scholars would necessarily see Judaism as nothing more than a preliminary stage on the road to Chris­tian­ity.

4

Introduction

Only Jews, who ­were attached to Judaism with an “inner religiosity,” could pre­sent it as a “living religion.”6 Throughout the nineteenth c­ entury and into the twentieth, the academic study of Judaism was unsuccessful in entering the acad­emy. The most that Jewish aspirants to teaching Judaism at a German university could hope for was the privilege of instructing a few classes as an outsider. Thus, for example, Julius Fürst, the editor of the semischolarly Der Orient, was allowed to teach Hebrew and Aramaic in the theological faculty in Leipzig where, in 1864, he was raised to the rank of Honorarprofessor, an outsider status that carried no salary. Heinrich Graetz obtained the same title in 1869 from the University of Breslau, where he taught Oriental languages, lit­er­a­ ture, and history. It is indicative of the higher prestige that the university enjoyed over the Breslau rabbinical seminary in Graetz’s eyes that on the title pages of his multivolume history of the Jews he identifies himself solely as “Professor at the Breslau University.” During the brief liberal period in Germany of the late 1840s, Zunz applied for a position at Berlin University only to be turned down as Judaism was deemed not worthy of higher-­level academic study. Giving it a place within the university would uphold Jewish particularity and endow it with greater spiritual strength; it would be “an abuse of the university.”7 Two significant Jewish scholars of Judaism, Josef Derenburg and Salomon Munk, left Germany for France, where they ­were able to find positions. When Munk sought to return to Germany for a position ­there, he received a letter from the Prus­sian minister of religion stating that “the ministry hereby informs you that t­ here are no resources available for extending your scholarly activity so long as you belong to the Mosaic faith.”8 In Weimar Germany t­ here w ­ ere a number of lower-­level positions in one or another Jewish subject, often financed by Jewish donors. But the only regular slot in Jewish studies was at the newly founded University of Frankfurt am Main where, for a brief time, classes ­were held by the Jewish religious thinker Martin Buber. Rejected by the academic establishment, WdJ found a home in Jewish institutions. Outstanding Jewish scholars who could find no position in a German university joined the faculty of one of the Jewish seminaries that ­were established, first in Breslau in 1854 and then two de­cades ­later in Berlin. The Monatsschrift emanated from the conservative Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau; yearly reports containing scholarly articles issued from the liberal Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin. However, for two prominent Jewish scholars, Zunz and Moritz Steinschneider,

Introduction

5

seminary education seemed too compromised by purposes transcending the pure Wissenschaft ideal. They engaged in Jewish education outside the seminaries in order to earn a living while performing their scholarship in leisure hours outside any orga­nizational framework. For ­those Jewish scholars who wished to employ Wissenschaft for an internal Jewish purpose, ­whether for inspiration, as in the case of Graetz; for religious reform, as in the case of Geiger; or as a defense against critique by non-­Jews, ­there loomed the power­f ul temptation to engage in apol­o­getics. Graetz sought to attach readers to his narrative by inducing them to empathize with Jewish suffering and take pride in Jewish intellectual and spiritual achievement. What did not fit into one or the other of ­these categories received only minimal attention. Geiger admitted that he engaged in a form of apol­o­getics but claimed that unlike the work of ­others, his was ­free from hushing up what was not admirable and prettying up what was not deserving of high praise.9 Baeck, upon being accused of apol­o­getics by the Jewish phi­los­o­pher Franz Rosenzweig, responded that when treating certain subjects—for example, the writings of the Hebrew Prophets— “understanding such a subject means admiring it.”10 For ­these men and no doubt for ­others, commitment to a par­tic­u­lar point of view and the ability to stir the soul as well as the mind did not conflict with Wissenschaftlichkeit, the acceptable manner of critical scholarship. The leading prac­ti­tion­ers of WdJ in Germany ­were with few exceptions religious individuals, mostly rabbis,11 and u ­ ntil the emergence in the twentieth ­century of Selma Stern as an outstanding historian of German Jewry, they ­were also exclusively men. However, they differed on ­whether WdJ should be dominantly a religious enterprise focused on inspiring dedication to the Jewish faith or a secular enterprise whose prac­ti­tion­ers ­were methodologically analogous to all other academics of what­ever faith or discipline. Did WdJ properly belong within a seminary or within the university? Geiger had early argued for the former in the shape of a Jewish theological faculty alongside existing equivalents for Protestantism and Catholicism. Residence for Wissenschaft des Judentums in a university, as noted, had also been the goal of Zunz, as it was likewise of the ­great Jewish bibliographer Moritz Steinschneider. However, Zacharias Frankel had favored a seminary education for rabbis, whose instructors would, in addition to teaching rabbinical students, include scholarly work among their tasks. Yet their Wissenschaft would have a limit imposed by divine revelation. The seminary’s scholarship, as reflected in its Monatsschrift, could include a critical approach to rabbinic

6

Introduction

lit­er­a­ture, the Oral Torah, but not to the five books of Moses, the Written Torah. Its intermediate position on textual criticism, along with the sharply differing strictly Orthodox faction who rejected it and the more radical scholars who set no limit, even regarding the Pentateuch, made WdJ into a source of division within German Jewry. This difference of view continued into the twentieth ­century. Some Jewish scholars in Germany clearly employed WdJ for a religious purpose, ­whether they ­were Orthodox or Liberal. But o­ thers regarded such use as illegitimate. Perhaps the most out­spoken among them was the historian Eugen Täubler, who believed that the Jewish past had to be presented not as a sacred history— as was the manner in which he believed it was written, for example, by Baeck—­ but as a strictly secular enterprise on the analogy of general history. In his view, Jewish historiography was a component of the discipline in general, not a separate undertaking, and its study had to be strictly secular. Hence it could not properly be taught in a rabbinical seminary where, he believed, it necessarily became what he called “disguised theology.”12 Täubler’s approach did not necessarily mean, however, that WdJ thereby became Jewishly irrelevant. On the contrary, for some Jewish scholars ­little interested in or­ga­nized religion, its practice became a new form of Jewish self-­expression, a channel for asserting Jewish identity.13 ­Others saw its value as a neutral space where Jews of what­ever religious orientation and what­ever views on Zionism could dwell in harmony as a Gelehrtengesellschaft, a society of the learned.14 For Ismar Elbogen, not only would WdJ have a beneficent influence in transcending religious differences among Jews, but Wissenschaft, more broadly, would serve a messianic purpose. It possessed the capacity to overcome hatreds and bridge antagonisms among p­ eoples. Within that objective, he believed, the scholars of Wissenschaft des Judentums ­were to play an ambitious role in helping spiritually to reconstruct the world.15 However, ­there ­were also ­those who in the first years of the twentieth ­century ­were mainly concerned that WdJ was becoming irrelevant to the living Jewish community. It was too externally focused and far too specialized to serve Jewish spiritual life. Hermann Cohen and Franz Rosenzweig both had reservations about w ­ hether the university was the best place to advance what Buber had termed the “Jewish re­nais­sance.” They both wished to establish an Acad­emy for Wissenschaft des Judentums outside the framework of the university that would combine scholarship with popu­lar instruction. Although the Acad­emy, which came into existence in 1919 ­under the leadership of Eugen Täubler and continued ­u ntil 1934, did produce significant

Introduction

7

scholarship, including the first volumes of a jubilee edition of Moses Mendelssohn’s works, it remained dedicated above all to scholarship for its own sake, carefully avoiding any ulterior Jewish purpose. Scholarship dedicated to popu­lar transmission through adult education thus became the preserve of Rosenzweig’s Jüdisches Lehrhaus, established in Frankfurt in 1920. ­There “Jewish learning,” not Jewish Wissenschaft, was the intent. Among young Zionists, as well, the value of WdJ lay as much in its ser­vice to the Jewish ­f uture as to the Jewish past. Within Germany, WdJ gradually expanded its scope. Initially, it had been focused on classical Jewish texts. Leopold Zunz regarded himself as a philologist on the model of his teachers at the Berlin University, Friedrich August Wolf and August Boeckh. And Zunz continued to devote himself especially to ancient and medieval Jewish writings of vari­ous sorts, especially midrash and liturgy. But already early on, a classmate of his youth, Isaac Marcus Jost, had undertaken to shift the focus from the Jewish religion to the Jewish ­people when over the course of nearly a de­cade, from 1820 to 1829, he published in nine volumes his Geschichte der Israeliten seit der Zeit der Maccabaer (History of the Israelites since the time of the Maccabees), the first comprehensive history of the Jews that was written by a Jew and adhered to the criteria of Wissenschaft. Although Wissenschaft des Judentums was increasingly represented outside of Germany as well as within it, ­u ntil the Holocaust the country of its birth remained its fountainhead. Prospective scholars of Judaism in the United States who desired to make their ­career in Jewish scholarship frequently traveled to Germany, where they combined studies in a German university with Jewish subjects taught at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin. On returning to the United States a number of them, including the historian Jacob Rader Marcus, then taught at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, which prided itself on not only training rabbis for the Reform movement but also producing scholarship, especially through its periodical, the Hebrew Union College Annual. The history of Wissenschaft des Judentums in Germany did not come to an end ­until the publication of the last volume of the Monatsschrift. In February 1941, Rabbi Baeck, who had taken over editing the journal ­after the Nazi authorities closed the Breslau seminary in 1938, reported to his colleague Ismar Elbogen, who had emigrated to the United States, that it had been approved for publication and that he hoped it would shortly appear.16 ­A fter some delays, the volume did indeed appear, only to be confiscated

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Introduction

by the Nazi regime. Following the war, the German universities, which had almost universally rejected WdJ, began to make amends by introducing it into their courses of study. Gradually, a new generation of Wissenschaft scholars arose in Germany, most of them non-­Jewish. Meanwhile, however, Wissenschaft des Judentums had put down roots in many lands. Its expansion did not exclude the new Germany, but its centers, in accordance with the centers of Jewish population, ­were in the United States and Israel. Initially, WdJ had at least to some degree neglected certain aspects of its subject for which scholars had ­little regard or had found embarrassing, such as mysticism and Jewish criminality. Likewise, subjects that seemed of ­little interest to Eu­ro­pean Jews, such as the recent history of the Jewish communities of Asia and Africa, received ­little attention. Certain fields, such as statistics and art history, emerged only ­later, as did the use of archives, which ­were only gradually absorbed into WdJ. However, in the course of time, outstanding deficits ­were overcome. And thus from its initial orientation primarily as a philological and historiographical endeavor, WdJ spread to multiple new areas and ­adopted new methods. Now known as “Jewish studies,” or mada‘e ha-­Yahadut, the critical study of Jews and Judaism in multiple fields of research has spread around the globe and has been asking questions that ­were ­either neglected by the found­ers or did not occur to them at all. In the pro­cess, WdJ has itself become the subject of investigation and analy­sis, with a spate of recent studies devoted to the motivations, intellectual genealogies, and activities of early scholars of Judaism, as well as the broad impact of the Wissenschaft proj­ect writ large.17 The essays in this volume trace some of the currents of this expansion as WdJ penetrated into new lands and embraced new themes. In the opening essay Irene Zwiep brings to light the diversity within Wissenschaft during its first fifty years or so, offering a corrective to a common image of WdJ as a well-­defined and consolidated movement from the start. This was an image, she points out, created by early twentieth-­century scholars with their own axes to grind. When interwar Jewish scholars first wrote Wissenschaft’s history, the previously capacious vision of scholarly Jewish activity, with room for multiple aims and an appetite for proj­ects of discovery and compilation on a ­grand scale, began to seem perhaps too capacious. The discipline needed pruning if it was to continue to bear fruit in an exhausted and contentious age, reckoning now with nationalistic and Zionist reframings of Jewish culture. Thus was born an understanding of WdJ as “the” Wissenschaft as

Introduction

9

opposed to “our” Wissenschaft, pinned as a movement situated within the German context, with its par­tic­u­lar scholarly modes and social concerns. The notion of Wissenschaft retained this die-­cast quality of homogeneity and totality. Highlighting, in contrast, its early fluidity, Zwiep looks at four case studies of Jewish scholarly journals in dif­fer­ent national contexts, peering between the covers to ask how their editors understood the craft of history and its potential impact on lived Judaism. In Italy, the Netherlands, France, and ­England, ­these journals took approaches that ­were tied to local intellectual and po­liti­cal contexts but also partook of a collective Jewish meta-­inquiry into the best way of approaching history to benefit the Jewish ­f uture. Zwiep’s essay shows early non-­German Wissenschaftler (prac­ti­tion­ ers of Wissenschaft) casting about for the right mode, taking attitudes from ­here and ideas from ­there in a linguistic and historiographic cacophony as a Jewish thirst for new kinds of scholarship spread throughout the continent. While the linguistic diversity of the journals she explores suggests scholarship in the ser­vice of this or that Eu­ro­pean nation-­state, Zwiep’s careful probing of representative essays and respective authors points ­toward a more transnational sense of purpose, most fitting for a ­people whose cultural cement consists of books rather than territory. Katalin Rac addresses an even less-­studied world of Wissenschaft, diving into Hungarian Jewish studies, which ­were ­shaped by deep cooperation between Jewish and non-­Jewish scholars and institutions. She rightly tempers the dominance of the German academic orbit by pointing out that Zacharias Frankel, known for his influence as the founder of the Breslau Rabbinical Seminary, carried out his university studies in Budapest. She goes on to make a compelling case for the (re)integration of Hungary into our ­mental map of Wissenschaft—­and si­mul­ta­neously argues for the reintegration of WdJ into the modern image of ­those Jewish scholars who so fully participated in the Hungarian acad­emy that their contributions are ­today often mentioned without reference to their Jewishness. Rac argues that the real flowering of Hungarian Wissenschaft took place at a moment of Hungarian national awakening, wherein scholarship in Hungarian—­any scholarship in Hungarian—­was welcomed and supported as part of the nation’s intellectual pro­gress. Jewish religious leaders, dominated by the Neolog stream, pushed an ideology of acculturation, and prominent scholars increasingly entered Hungarian academia. As with so much of Wissenschaft, periodicals ­were central to this enterprise, and Rac focuses on three of them, showing how Jewish authors

10 Introduction

in their pages mastered increasingly diverse disciplines, including lit­er­a­ture, history, ethnology, and more. In fact, Rac argues, Hungarian Jewish scholars played a central role in shaping certain areas of Hungarian research, including Oriental studies (especially its expansion into non-­Arab realms such as Persia), linguistics, and folklore. Thus, although some ideology of Hungarian Jewish thinkers remained connected to the German Jewish discourse, the rise of Hungarian Jewish studies took place very differently than had the development of German Jewish studies. Michael Meyer treats another geo­graph­i­cal shift in Jewish scholarship with im­mense long-­term impact, the move to North Amer­i­ca. Many Eu­ro­ pean scholars only began to recognize the significance of the American scene in the early twentieth ­century, but already in the late nineteenth ­century, Jewish scholarly culture was on the rise ­there. By the 1880s ­there ­were serious thinkers in rabbinical positions in the United States, and the need to build up Judaica libraries was being recognized; in the 1890s some periodicals began to publish Jewish scholarship alongside other kinds of work. This time of building momentum provides the setting for the arrival of the German scholar Gotthard Deutsch at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, who, Meyer shows, became a center of gravity for American Jewish Wissenschaft. Meyer explores Deutsch’s historiographical interests and activity, particularly his proclivity for amassing data rather than connecting the dots into an overall narrative of Jewish history, this despite the fact that Deutsch himself recognized an immediate need for such synthetic work. Deutsch was a colorful figure with a mind for trivia and a reluctance to accept any movement, methodology, or thinker without question. Meyer portrays him as a man of his age, deeply committed to historical positivism and yet also forward-­looking, recognizing that Jewish historians would have to account for differentiation within Jewish life according to dif­fer­ent cultural contexts. Deutsch also advocated extending the practice of history into the pre­sent day, recording and narrating con­temporary events, including the quotidian, as he called for more interest in the private life and habits of impor­tant Jewish figures of the past. In the end, his capacity and interests proved a perfect match for the format of the encyclopedia, his contributions to that genre laying new foundations of knowledge for the American English-speaking and Zionist Hebrew-speaking Jews of the twentieth ­century. Like Rac, Deborah Yalen examines a setting in which Jewish scholarship and non-­Jewish identity ­were bound tightly together, and like Meyer,

Introduction

11

her subject speaks to the major cultural shifts of the twentieth ­century, but with very dif­fer­ent conclusions. Among ­these shifts was a move ­toward ethnography in place of the Hebrew philology at the core of Zunz’s conception of WdJ. For a time, Rus­sian Jewish Orientalists like Albert (Avraham Eliyahu) Harkavy did not stray from the text as the basis for scholarship, and even Simon Dubnow’s 1891 nationalist call, “Netze ve-­nahkorah!” (Let us go forth and investigate!), while broadening the scope of primary materials, had also not ventured beyond the written word. However, ­these late Imperial Rus­sian Jewish efforts can be seen as precursors to the ­later embrace of ethnography. Yalen explores the po­liti­cal ramifications of government support of such Jewish research in the early Soviet Union, where institutionalization came along with strict control and instrumentalization of its cultural product. For this, her paper expands what we might consider the farthest frontiers of Wissenschaft not only in space and epistemology but also in time, to a power­f ul wave of rethinking that aimed to put Jewish studies to new purpose during the interwar period. As she shows, that thinking was not disconnected from what came before but rather engaged in an essential dialogue with it, in that Soviet leaders aimed above all to overturn what they saw as the bourgeois and nationalist orientation of existing Jewish scholarship—­labels that certainly w ­ ere not uniquely applied to Jewish scholarship but that just as certainly had a par­tic­u­lar relationship to Wissenschaft. The new Soviet Jewish scholarship, written solely in the Yiddish of the toiling masses as opposed to bourgeois, cap­i­tal­ist German or nationalistic Hebrew, was a Marxist Wissenschaft. Yalen’s paper also offers a deeper look at the ­actual scholarship that was produced ­under ­these conditions and shows how the commitment to writing in Yiddish and to a single pan-­Soviet identity marginalized numerous ­whole groups of Jews, particularly ­those in the eastern regions. Unlike other Soviet research institutions, which focused on individual, regionally centered ethnic or national groups, Jewish scholarship faced a complex scenario of internal diversity and internationalism that was difficult to address in centralized institutes and to square with the new directive to “nativize” minorities. Subsequently, with the drastic reversal of policies that ­were relevantly tolerant of minorities, ­these efforts ­were brutally crushed. The ultimate fate of the central figure in Yalen’s tale, Joseph Liberberg, suggests as much. As Yalen writes, this was the sad result of knowledge being “weaponized in the ser­vice of ideology”—an observation not without irony considering

12 Introduction

the ideological nature of much of the Wissenschaft des Judentums from its start. Clémence Boulouque looks to lit­er­a­ture as a lens through which to view the WdJ’s efforts to mediate between Jewish and non-­Jewish, between feeling and reason. In the genres of belles lettres, historical novels, and poetry, she finds efforts of Jewish thinkers to create what she calls “assonance” with the majority culture and promote the shared aims of Bildung and universal ­human self-­expression. The employment of a literary form had early been undertaken by the poet Heinrich Heine in his Rabbi of Bacherach, which recounted a medieval blood-­murder accusation. A ­later Jewish writer, Rabbi Ludwig Philippson, expanded the development of Jewish lit­er­a­ture, making both the Sephardi and Ashkenazi legacies formative for the literary canon of German Jewry. As an editor and popu­lar historical writer, Philippson straddled lit­er­a­ture and scholarship while making both available to the Jewish public. Boulouque deploys the notion of assonance to suggest that Jewish literary efforts ­were intended to have a felt similarity to German and other Western Eu­ro­pean writings but not necessarily to be indistinguishable from them or to echo them precisely as a strict rhyme might do. Rather, Jewish Wissenschaft thinkers felt themselves part of a wider noble enterprise and tried to create lit­er­a­ture that expressed and enacted that participation, performing their own role on the shared stage. Boulouque’s contribution is to emphasize the role of lit­er­a­ture in a movement that is often seen as primarily historiographic or philological, rational, and positivist. A prominent theme of her essay is that lit­er­a­ture itself served as a hyphen, connecting two spheres while still carefully acknowledging the gap between them. This applies not only to the relationship between Jewish and non-­Jewish culture but also to that between reason and emotion within the aesthetic and value system shared by Jews and non-­Jews alike. Thus, for example, prophetic poetry was appreciated for serving the ultimately rational end of ­human goodness, as well as for its moving language that was seen as universally appealing. As Boulouque points out, figures such as Samuel David Luzzatto, known for very broad scientific interests all tempered by a romantic bent of his own, also revered Goethe and Schelling, seeing poetry as a moral, civic, and utilitarian instrument. The Wissenschaft that Boulouque recovers ­here is more romantic and perhaps more polemically subtle than we thought, with literary expression taking the place of programmatic ideology and dusty philology.

Introduction

13

Whereas Rac’s and Yalen’s essays reveal the deep impact of non-­Jewish national and governmental institutions on Jewish scholarship, Asher Salah flips that relationship for the Italian context in order to suggest that Christian scholars w ­ ere not only helpful but even served as the driving force for modern Jewish scholarship in Italy. Arguably, early Christian Hebraism should be included in any history of critical Jewish scholarship, as both a forerunner and a perpetual source of assistance to fellow prac­ti­tion­ers. This was the case not only in continental Eu­rope but also in ­England, North Amer­i­ca, and, owing to a significant presence of missionaries with a scholarly bent, in the Holy Land. Some nineteenth-­and twentieth-­century Christian Hebraists w ­ ere also competent as Orientalists. Their relationship with Jewish scholars aligned with the WdJ ran the gamut from mutual hostility, even hatred, to theological animosity. It also contained a sphere of scholarly neutrality, which often made room for Jewish converts to Chris­tian­ity, especially in ­England and eventually the United States. However, as Salah’s contribution to this volume shows, the situation in Italy tells a dif­fer­ent story. ­There, a strong early modern tradition of Christian Hebraism was easily translated into Christian scholarship on the history of Jewish lit­er­a­ture and bibliography, a fact that served Jewish prac­ti­tion­ers rather well. In fact, whereas most Jews who engaged in scholarly activity in nineteenth-­century Italy w ­ ere rabbis, Christian researchers of Jewish subjects partook of a much wider range of disciplines, including epigraphy, bibliography, archaeology, philosophy, and so forth—so much so that the field as a ­whole lacked coherence. Without a strong in­de­pen­dent Jewish push to own Jewish scholarship and put it to social use, it was more diffuse and more integrated into diverse scholarly pursuits. Thus, Salah points out, whereas one dimension of German Wissenschaft des Judentums constituted an assertion of intellectual autonomy in response to scholarly exclusion, Italian Jews worked closely with Christians. Indeed, a number of Italian Christians recalled their collaboration with Jewish scholars with ­great personal fondness, and the lack of confessional requirements for academic posts at public universities in Italy made it pos­si­ble for Jewish professors to rise smoothly through the ranks—­quite a dif­fer­ent scenario from the one faced by German Jewish scholars. At the same time, Salah rightly asks ­whether the Christian-­dominated world of scholarship provided an entirely level playing field for Jews and, in terms of scholarly substance, queries how the Christian intellectual and po­liti­cal

14 Introduction

context colored the work that was produced, leaving traces in scholarship up to the pre­sent day. Yitzhak Conforti examines the ways in which Wissenschaft-­style learning was si­mul­ta­neously repurposed and rejected by the d­ rivers of the movement for Jewish nationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Simon Dubnow’s nationalist re­orientation of German-­Jewish historiography was intertwined with his vision of a Jewish cultural autonomy po­liti­cally sanctioned by a multinational Rus­sian empire. Even prior to Dubnow’s emergence on the scene, however, Graetz’s monumental achievement had been translated into what Shmuel Feiner has called the “second track” of nineteenth-­century Jewish historiography.18 The origins of this largely Hebrew-­language scholarship went back to the dawn of the Haskalah movement in Eastern Eu­rope, but reached its symbolic peak when grafted onto the embryo of Zionism. Instead of emancipation and assimilation, such thinkers as Peretz Smolenskin, Ahad Ha’am, and Hayim Nahman Bialik sought recognition of Jews as a nation at a safe geocultural distance but in constant critical dialogue with Eu­ro­pean modernity. Their efforts focused on what any nationalist movement would do: anthologizing, translating, and summarizing Jewish history into its “old-­new” language, in this par­tic­u­lar case, Hebrew, in order to strengthen and root the Jewish p­ eople. As Conforti shows, ­these figures developed a par­tic­u­lar approach to historiography that was focused on the nation as an organic, person-­like entity that could evolve over time, an approach that drew heavi­ly on the nationalistic and scientific thought of the day. The rhe­toric of such figures was often extreme in its denigration of ­earlier Haskalah and Wissenschaft figures, turning Moses Mendelssohn, for example, into an antihero, and proclaiming that modern scholarship in German not only spelled Jewish destruction but even marked it with funeral rites. In cultural and spiritual Zionist circles, it was deemed crucial for the Jewish ­people to engage in self-­reflection, which meant seeing and recognizing themselves as a nation with its own special history. Proj­ects such as Ahad Ha’am’s Hebrew encyclopedia Otsar ha-­Yahadut and the “ingathering” of Hebrew books projected programmatically by Bialik contributed to a sense of using the past to build a Zionist ­f uture. With the October Revolution, and despite the flowering of Hebraic culture in Weimar Germany, this ­f uture began to be focused especially on Mandate Palestine. With the final two essays, the volume moves eastward to South Asia and the ­Middle East, extending the history of Wissenschaft to modes of encounter

Introduction

15

between western Jews and t­ hose of the Muslim world. By highlighting Jewish scholars’ multipositionality in brokering the migration of western conceptions and practices of knowledge to vari­ous non-­European settings, ­these essays clarify the distinct role that critical Jewish scholars played in distinctly modern shifts in East–­West polarity. The participation of Jewish studies scholars in Islamic scholarly networks, probed in Hanan Harif ’s essay, has roots in pre–­World War I rivalries between Eu­ro­pean powers scrambling for cultural spheres of influence in vari­ous colonized realms. In this thicket we find the ­f uture German-­Jewish founder of Islamic studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Josef Horo­witz, teaching in British India and forging relationships with postcolonially minded scholars that would continue well into the Mandate period.19 Harif locates the sequel to t­ hese relationships in the scholarly odyssey of Horo­witz’s pupil from Frankfurt am Main, S. D. Goitein, against the backdrop of scholarship in Hyderabad. Goitein viewed the Jewish-­Muslim relationship as essentially one of kinship, an attitude that enabled him to take a deep interest in Islamic history from a Jewish perspective. While he did not share in his mentor’s ultimate vision of binationalism in Palestine, Goitein’s appreciation of Islam as a faith system survived the vio­lence of the Arab-­Jewish conflict. Although his relations with living Muslims ­were arguably less close, the post-­Israeli and formative chapter in his ­career would afford him ample opportunities to reaffirm his vision of affinity between the two religions while identifying Muslim scholars as potential colleagues in transmitting western notions of critical scholarship to institutions of higher learning in a modern Islamic nation state such as Pakistan. In contrast, Noah Gerber emphasizes the extent to which western Jewish scholarship that was heir to Wissenschaft in the early and mid-­t wentieth ­century dismissed the Jews of the Muslim world as incapable of intellectual sophistication. During his three-­and-­a-­half de­cades in Israel/Palestine, Goitein had called the Yemenite Jews, not Palestinian Arabs, his friends, as he pursued “ethnolinguistic” studies, but as Gerber argues, such relationships ­were the exception, as they ­were seldom pursued by Eu­ro­pean Jews who encountered non-­European Jews on their scholarly paths, despite the new contact zone of Zionism. Gerber’s essay concludes the volume in Jerusalem, where he follows the development of Saul Lieberman’s perception of the value of Yemenite Jewish texts. He shows that Lieberman relied heavi­ly on the work of Yemenites who had transmitted ancient midrash, yet he consistently downgraded their own

16 Introduction

contributions to that of “folklore” at best and an uncomprehending “muddle” at worst. Harif and Gerber both note that the Jewish scholars they discuss saw their counter­parts in the Near and ­Middle East as brethren but never on equal terms. Both essays thus also emphasize the ­human dimension of the contact that western Jewish scholars sought with—­and sometimes thrust upon—­their eastern in­for­mants, ­whether Yemenite Jews or Muslims. Gerber laments the western blindness to Yemenite midrash on its own terms and poignantly likens the perception of Yemenite Jews as “custodians” of ancient Jewish texts to the subservient role of a Yemenite man in Jerusalem, culturally and eco­nom­ically marginalized into the lowly position of shamash (custodian). Though far from exhausting its subject, the essays in this volume contribute to the construction of a more diverse and multifaceted story of WdJ’s development from its early years through the twentieth ­century. Stretching from the first points of opening into vari­ous and overlapping fields and disciplines to Jewish scholarship’s encounters with and occasional engulfment by twentieth-­century ideological currents such as Zionism and Marxism, ­these essays uncover a range of novel dimensions of Jewish scholarship with intellectual and cultural lineage that remains traceable to its German origins. While a lasting connection with German scholarly culture remains at the heart of any narrative of Wissenschaft des Judentums, the research presented h ­ ere c­ ounters any easy sense that it might be ­limited to German contexts or perpetually defined by them. Collectively, they offer a newly robust justification of the common understanding of WdJ as the birth of modern Jewish scholarship but now more broadly understood. The inclusion within the heritage of WdJ of the scholarship that developed in Soviet, French, and even Indian contexts and of Zionist, literary, ethnographic, and encyclopedic scholarly approaches more readily connects the world of WdJ to the scholarly world of the pre­sent day. From its foundational commitment to the philological reconstruction of rabbinic texts, Wissenschaft-­influenced scholarship launched a specifically Jewish yet expressly modern turn to history and continued to find new ways of interpreting how historiography and other rigorous study could serve the Jewish p­ eople, indeed how it was crucially necessary for the f­ uture of Jewish culture. The late twentieth and early twenty-­first centuries have witnessed increasing ac­cep­tance of Jewish studies in academic institutions and a concomitant shift away from explicit framing of such scholarship as serving particularistic Jewish ends. ­Today, it is no longer in line with scholarly norms

Introduction

17

to treat Jewish studies as “our” Wissenschaft—­appropriately enough since at the most basic level many prac­ti­tion­ers of Jewish studies ­today are not Jewish. On the other hand, the complex relationship between ser­vice to Judaism and the inherent universalism of academic or “scientific” study remains deeply embedded in the structure of the field and in the two centuries’ worth of scholarship on which new research invariably rests. Scholars necessarily contribute to an ongoing dialogue with the pioneers of the field and hence partake of an activity that can be seen, as Leo Baeck saw it, as flowing from within Judentum rather than merely observing it. In shining a light on the multiple paths of WdJ through a wide variety of Jewish scholarly enterprises, this volume may contribute to a greater understanding of that relationship within the field’s ever-­widening array of expressions.

Chapter 1

Between Past and F ­ uture

Eu­ro­pean Jewish Scholarship and National Temporalities, 1845–1889 irene zwiep

Avant-­Propos: Wissenschaft des Judentums as a Contested Concept (Kampfbegriff ) In 1907, ­after thirty-­five years of relative homelessness, the Hochschule (then Lehranstalt) für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin moved into a brand-­ new building in the Artilleriestrasse (now Tucholskystrasse). In a speech delivered at its inauguration on October 19, rabbi and homiletics professor Sigmund Maybaum (1844–1919) hastened to remind his audience of the classical truth that it is not the architecture that makes a city but the ­people. In Maybaum’s words, walls of brick and mortar, solid though they are, offered insufficient shelter against po­liti­cal danger and intellectual decline. It was the ­human spirit of freedom and truth, of a staunchly cultivated unbiased pluralism, that would protect Jewish scholarship from external strain and internal corrosion. But what exactly, he asked, was Jewish scholarship in ­those days of mounting pressure and fragmentation? “Was ist denn die Wissenschaft des Judentums?”1 In the hands of a seasoned pulpiteer like Maybaum the question was of course rhetorical, a conventional starting point for unfolding his own ideas on the proper course of Jewish learning. Judging by the opening lines of his answer, however, it was also profoundly polemical. Wissenschaft des Judentums, he argued in tacit response to Martin Buber, should not be confused

22

New Lands

with jüdische Wissenschaft, the new brand of Zionist scholarship in which the Jew featured as exclusive agens, the sole subject and author of Jewish national history.2 Real Jewish Wissenschaft was determined by its object, read: by the historical culture of an old diasporic community, united in the truth of a unique revelation yet assimilated in language, education, and habitus. In Maybaum’s definition, Wissenschaft des Judentums (that is, scholarship as part of   Judaism) thus equaled Wissenschaft vom Judentum (that is, scholarship about Judaism). It was an open, inclusive endeavor to which Jews of all denominations as well as gentile researchers ­were cordially invited—­the latter in blatant defiance of Wissenschaft’s original epistemology, which had aimed at the construction of an autonomous Jewish Selbstbewusstsein (self-­k nowledge). “­There can be only one jüdische Wissenschaft,” Buber had written in 1901, proposing a robust Jewish nationalistic standard. Six years ­later, Maybaum the Protestrabbiner (an epithet coined by Theodor Herzl) took up the gauntlet by formulating an emphatically catholic counterpart. To be sure, from the beginning ­there had been no consensus on the scope and weight of Jewish philology and historicism.3 The challenge posed by the Zionist paradigm only quickened old discussions, and vari­ous anniversaries (of Zunz’s debut, 1818–1918; of the Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden, 1821– 1921; of the Hochschule, 1872–1922; and Zunz’s fiftieth Todestag in 1936) lent further momentum to the debate. Si­mul­ta­neously, however, one cannot help thinking of Minerva’s owl, who according to Hegel’s famous dictum ­will not fly ­until dusk. ­After one hundred years of experimenting with what had simply and intimately been called “our Wissenschaft” (unsere Wissenschaft), the sudden stress on pinpointing the nature and duties of that Wissenschaft can be understood as an attempt at preserving a tradition that many felt was slipping away. Neuorientierung (re­orientation) was how Ismar Elbogen (1874– 1943) defined the effort in a 1918 address that expressed both the recent trauma of World War I and the old frustration over religious division and indifference.4 In hindsight, this re­orientation was more than simply readjusting an established course to altered circumstances; it was the consolidation of a diffuse set of scholarly methods and practices that had hitherto defied systematization. It was the moment, one could say, in which the Wissenschaft des Judentums was born.5 “It is one of the weaknesses of our Wissenschaft,” Elbogen stated, “that it was never given a clear, uncontested definition.”6 Zunz, who had never tried, had “prob­ably thought of a kind of Hebrew philology” built on the study of



Between Past and Future

23

the Greek and Roman classics. Abraham Geiger, cofounder of the Hochschule, had even started his introductory course by claiming that “­there was no need to formulate a strict definition.” By the turn of the ­century, this laissez-­faire spirit had produced a wealth of sources and approaches that lacked both disciplinary control (Elbogen recalled Zunz’s feeling of facing an avalanche of texts) and a ­f uture sense of direction. “The leading idea is missing” (es fehlt der leitende Gedanke), he added, noting that scholars kept gathering material while the building blocks ­were piling up and the overall proj­ect remained short of a unifying blueprint.7 What the field needed was the old attention to discovery and detail, supplemented by a new theological pro­cessing of data, geared t­ oward a better understanding of a­ ctual, living Judaism and the world at large. It was the only time in a long and productive ­career, Michael Meyer has noted, that Elbogen spoke of jüdische Theologie instead of Wissenschaft des Judentums.8 He did so in the hands-on Schleiermacherian sense (“for the resolution of a practical task”9), to formulate a paradigm that would outmaneuver both religious malaise and Zionism in the b­ attle for Jewish relevance. With each new definition came plans for a comprehensive research agenda. Buber, who was hesitant to narrow Jewish learning to one single Wissenschaft, proposed a multidisciplinary Wissenschaftskomplex that included, besides historical analy­sis, the study of the Jewish Question and its Zionist answer. It was a routine, he conceded, that did not yet exist and that could not be created, “since true science does not emerge from plans, schemes, and programs but from the . . . ​research of [individual] Wissensmenschen.”10 Elbogen, by contrast, envisioned “an inexhaustible field for methodical work,” in which publishing critical editions; developing a new, reflective hermeneutic; and training new recruits ­were the spearhead proj­ects.11 Fifteen years ­earlier the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums, attempting a pious reestablishment (Neugründung) of Jewish scholarship, had formulated a similar program. To ­counter the “alarming apostasy” of educated Jews and to equip them against gentile assaults, the cream of Eu­ro­pean Orthodoxy joined forces to edify their own generation, school the next, and oblige posterity through grand-­scale publication series, of which the Corpus Tannaïticum and Germania Judaica have become h ­ ouse­hold names.12 In all ­these ventures collaboration was the buzzword. Zunz’s wish to boost Jewish studies via a single academic chair, Fritz Bamberger wrote in 1936, showed how firmly the grandmaster had still been rooted in the Totalität des Jüdischen, the indivisible real­ity of premodern Jewish experience.13

24

New Lands

For most of Bamberger’s contemporaries, that organic unity had become a ­thing of the past, a distant memory at best. Si­mul­ta­neously, as a result of the proliferation and crystallization of modern disciplines, academic scholarship too had become compartmentalized. As a result, the tension between holistic nostalgia and specialist fragmentation informed nearly all institutions and agendas. Depending on denomination the details varied,14 but the task they set themselves was one and the same: to create conceptual unity in diversity in order to restore that elusive “au­then­tic” Judaism, in which Leben und Lehre (life and teaching) had gone hand in hand. Neugründung and Neuorientierung (reestablishment and re­orientation) thus meant a return to the old conundrum: how do we gain life for our Wissenschaft?15 Across the board the answer was sought in the systematization of a field that, in Elbogen’s words, had become unwieldy and amateurish, and in the transformation of an intuitive set of methodologies into a professional discipline (Fachwissenschaft) with a vital outreach task.16 With definition, systematization, and professionalization came the need for positioning the Wissenschaft des Judentums in the scholarly continuum. The time had come to write (and judge) its history, with Gershom Scholem’s 1944 deconstruction of the apol­o­getic—­and therefore pernicious—­Wissenschaft as a notorious climax.17 Already in 1901 Martin Buber used firm language to distance himself from “the so-­called ‘Wissenschaft des Judentums’,” which he found did not live up to its name.18 ­Great men had filled its ranks and performed outstanding work, he conceded, yet it had never shown the potential to outgrow its philological origins and thus could not serve as a starting point (Kristallisationskern) for the Zionist paradigm.19 It was the kind of challenge that could not go unanswered, and in 1907 Maybaum phrased a counternarrative. In a few lines he recapitulated the early history of “the movement,” thereby offering an emplotment of Jewish intellectual history that merits a closer look, even if (or perhaps precisely ­because) it may sound familiar. ­After a brief tour d’horizon that led him from Alexandria to medieval Spain, Maybaum recalled how in the early de­cades of the nineteenth-­century Leopold Zunz had followed in Moses Mendelssohn’s footsteps by bringing Jewish scholarship up to par with scholarship in the rest of Eu­rope. It had not been long, he added, before Zunz had been joined by “a band of loyal colleagues to whom we owe the ensuing expansion . . . ​of the Wissenschaft des Judentums.” Of ­these, Maybaum merely wished to mention “Frankel and Steinschneider, Abraham Geiger and Graetz, Jost, Joël and Herzfeld, Rapoport in Austria, Luzzatto in Italy, Derenburg and Munk in France,” who had toiled



Between Past and Future

25

for the sake of Jewish spirituality without any acknowl­edgment or support from the state—to their advantage, he concluded, for Jewish learning was best cultivated outside the sphere of government power.20 Maybaum’s short history features all the key markers of Hochschule identity: universalist roots, Enlightenment inspiration, and accommodation to Eu­ro­pean standards, plus due stress on the movement’s local foundations and international network. His tale of expansion and adoption hinged on the progressive “wave-­metaphor” that, as Franco Moretti has pointed out, conveys the notion of “uniformity engulfing an initial diversity,” of standardization taming original multiplicity.21 The result was an almost missionary narrative, in which local cultures of Jewish learning ­were quietly superseded by modern scholarship. It also suggested an unlikely degree of consensus: in his pantheon Maybaum had assembled celebrities who would have been surprised (Solomon Yehuda Rapoport) or even irritated (Samuel David Luzzatto) to find themselves grouped together and whose motivations greatly differed (compare Geiger’s Reform with Zacharias Frankel’s historical positivism, or Heinrich Graetz’s partisan historiography with Moritz Steinschneider’s stubborn universalism). In terms of counter-­ideology, Maybaum’s reconstruction definitely matched the purposeful focus of the Zionist program. As an intellectual history, however, it suggested a una­nim­i­t y that did ­little justice to the polyphony of nineteenth-­century Jewish scholarship, both in Germany and beyond. Present-­day students of the Wissenschaft des Judentums have been raised in this narrative of monogenesis and dissemination. An ironic case in point is the entry “Wissenschaft des Judentums” in the Encyclopaedia Judaica of 1971, a revised En­glish version of an entry previously composed for the Hebrew Encyclopaedia.22 In one broad sweep, it defines the Wissenschaft as “the legacy of all the impor­tant Jewish communities and one of Judaism’s outstanding manifestations in modern times” and sketches its development as an uninterrupted chain of tradition.23 I use “ironic” ­because the entry was authored by the Zionist historian Ben-­Zion Dinur (né Dinaburg, 1884–1973), who classified Maybaum’s generation as one “of confusion and compilation,” soon to be redeemed by the “generation of renewal and growth,” whose members had relocated the Jewish sciences to Jerusalem in 1925.24 I also use “ironic” ­because Dinur’s patently po­liti­cal entry was again reprinted almost verbatim in the 2007 second edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica. As early as 1995 David Myers unraveled the dynamics of “the Zionist return to history”; the unquestioning reprint, twenty years hence, of Dinur’s classical summary therefore calls for some reflection.25

26

New Lands

The history of nineteenth-­century Jewish scholarship has largely been written in terms of two ­great intellectual movements: the Haskalah and its “heir and successor,” the Wissenschaft des Judentums. Over time, each label has had a dif­fer­ent fate. In the wake of the ongoing debate on the nature and scope of the Eu­ro­pean Enlightenments, the definition of Haskalah underwent continuous revision. ­Until the mid-1980s scholars tended to highlight its secularizing power, which was held responsible for a contested Jewish modernization pro­cess (see especially the work of Jacob Katz). Starting from the opposite end, scholars such as David Sorkin and Shmuel Feiner identified modernity as the cause rather than the effect of the Haskalah, which they saw as an attempt at reconciling innovation and tradition. In reaction, more recent scholarship has begun to explore Jewish Enlightenment as a critical and global response to modernity, which tried to balance the sacred and the profane (Andrea Schatz) or even Enlightenment and Romanticism (Olga Litvak) in a distinctly Jewish key. ­Going with the flow of Eu­ro­pean historical scholarship, Haskalah thus became a fluid concept in permanent need of recalibration and review.26 Research into the Wissenschaft des Judentums seems to have lacked a similar reflective strand. If on occasion it has capitalized on trends in general historiography (witness, for example, the appropriation of postcolonial theory and idiom), this has never culminated in a fundamental rethinking of Jewish historicism as a pan-­European phenomenon. The omission has put disproportionate stress on German material and standards and has inspired researchers working on other traditions to frame their subject in terms of the question, “Is this Wissenschaft, yes or no?” By taking our pre­de­ces­sors’ attempts at self-­canonization at face value we have come to regard the Wissenschaft des Judentums as a historical datum, a distinct movement that can be traced in terms of origins and generations, of agenda and infrastructure, and, e­ very now and then, of riposte and re­sis­tance. The result of our lack of a Ricoeurian soupçon is a narrative of straightforward linear development that, like ­every wave-­metaphor, smoothly glosses over geopo­liti­cal borders. Yet, as Franco Moretti has written, “Waves is what markets do. . . . ​From the viewpoint of a wave, the ideal world is a pond.”27 Nineteenth-­century Eu­ro­pean real­ity, however, was ­shaped by national bound­ aries, with all the par­tic­u­lar loyalties, sensitivities, and, most relevant ­here, temporalities they entailed. Therefore any intellectual history of modern Eu­ro­pean Jewry should begin by looking at this divided landscape and work its way t­ oward—­rather than from—­the greater picture. Only a­ fter analyzing



Between Past and Future

27

local choices as meaningful options in their own right can we begin to draw broader patterns that transcend the reductionism of Haskalah versus Wissenschaft and capture the dialectic of connection and variation that characterizes the history of Jewish scholarship in modern Eu­rope. It goes without saying that such regional case studies cannot be our terminus, nor can they be conducted in splendid isolation. Dinur’s praise of the Wissenschaft des Judentums as “the legacy of all the impor­tant Jewish communities” was no groundless bluff: ­there is an unmistakable transnational dimension to modern Jewish scholarship, manifest in paper trails and allusions, in travel and learned correspondence. Yet transnational connection does not equal supranational ethos. And ­here we have reached the questions that ­will occupy the remainder of this essay: How did nineteenth-­century Jewish intellectuals in Eu­rope divide their loyalties between local issues and larger concerns? How did they position themselves vis-­à-­vis their colleagues at home and abroad? Did they feel part of a larger proj­ect, and if the answer is yes, may we identify this proj­ect as an expanding Wissenschaft des Judentums? For tentative answers to ­these questions we ­shall look at four pioneering scholarly journals published in Italy, the Netherlands, France, and ­England between the 1840s and the late 1880s.28 We ­will compare how the editors framed their aims and methods, their authors and audiences. But above all, as novices to history, how did they view time, the past, and the historical métier? What goals did their critical historicism serve, and how did they address its Jewish dimension: in cultural or religious, in universal or par­tic­u­lar terms? Rather than offering an exhaustive inventory, the following comparison merely aims to draw a few elementary patterns and shed some “emic” light on scholarly traditions whose history, as we have seen, would be written in Berlin in the early de­cades of the twentieth ­century. If anything, it may be a first step ­toward ridding our twenty-­first-­century interpretations of Jewish Wissenschaft of the mythologies of prolepsis and cohesion (in other words, of the anachronisms) that loom over e­ very attempt at historical classification.29

Scholarship as Public Discourse: Isaac Reggio’s Strenna Israelitica Isaac Samuel Reggio’s Strenna Israelitica (Israelite holiday gift), of which four issues appeared between 1852 and 1855, was not the first Jewish journal to sprout from Italian soil, but it was the first to spread modern Jewish

28

New Lands

knowledge via the Italian language.30 In that sense it supplemented the Hebrew Kerem ḥemed (1833–56) and its pre­de­ces­sor Bikure ha-­‘itim (1820–31), both Vienna-­based and largely geared ­toward Habsburg Galicia, but with supraregional coverage (Reggio himself had been among the contributors). With the latter, the Strenna shared its origins in the traditional almanac genre: the first two issues ­were published as calendars enriched with miscellaneous essays. In the third issue “for the year of the creation of the world 5615, which corresponds to 1854–55 according to the êra volgare,” Reggio (1784– 1855) abandoned the almanac format as “cosa troppo comune” (too common a practice). It was time, he wrote, to make room for more articles, which he believed contained the more in­ter­est­ing information.31 The decision to switch from counting time to recounting history marks an overt break with premodern temporality and its genres. Like Reggio’s Strenna, the premodern calendar had been more than an instrument for mea­ sur­ing time. Through their choice of calculation and the mention of saints (or no saints), markets, and holy days, the compilers could endorse their cultural affinities. Displaying time thus involved more than technical astronomy and mathe­matics: amid the theological and scientific disputes that rattled early modern Eu­rope, the calendar evolved into an impor­tant “literary genre, po­liti­cal tool, and marker of religious denomination.”32 Its appropriation by a new generation of literati fitted this original public profile. In the budding public sphere of the early nineteenth c­ entury, Jewish intellectuals in search of a format embraced the almanac as a platform for mixing their voice into the unfolding civic debate. The shift from calendars to separate yearbooks exposes that choice as a transitional strategy. The emancipation of historicism called for a specialist infrastructure, in which the reconstruction of times past would no longer be subordinated to the construction of times to come. Thematically, the Strenna resembled Pandora’s proverbial box—­articoli letterarj e varietá (literary articles and miscellanea) was how Reggio labeled this diversity on the title page. In 1854–55, the only issue I was able to consult for this essay, the articles fell into five distinct rubrics. Besides biographies (including that of the Palmyran warrior-­queen Zenobia), ­there was a section on con­temporary demography, one on history covering the timeline from Assyrian antiquity to the medieval Kabbalists, a se­lection of edifying lectures, and a residual category of bibliographic notes and poems. Working in provincial Gorizia, Isaac Reggio was not the only one to fuse maskilic literary genres with innovative history and statistics. A similar mix of synchrony



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29

and diachrony, of news and lit­er­a­ture had filled—to name but one prominent German example—­the pages of Isaac Marcus Jost’s Israelitische Annalen (Frankfurt, 1839–41), defined by the editor as “a central organ for the history, lit­er­a­ture, and culture of the Israelites in all times and lands” and devoted to the same motley thematic as its Italian counterpart.33 The key difference between the Annalen and the Strenna did not lie in form and content but in religious mindset. Whereas Jost (1793–1860) had vetoed all theological speculation,34 Reggio, who was also a rabbi, hoped that the Strenna would imbue the next generation of Israelites with a pious love of Judaism. He trusted that their pride in the Jews’ past per­for­mance would strengthen their loyalty to an identity that was becoming both more explicit and more tangential. His historiographical aspirations clearly did not reach much farther: his reference to “trifles (coserelle) from our history and lit­er­a­ ture” suggests that Reggio approached the past as a source of anecdotes rather than truths and certainly not as a national inevitability, a purposeful pro­ cess, or a source of methodological concern. For him, gathering anecdotes did not entail any responsibility on the part of the collector. Perhaps even more than the religious divide, it was this lack of professional accountability that separates the historian Reggio from the historian Jost, whose journal aimed to edify the masses as well as preserve newly found material for ­f uture research and interpretation.35 In terms of scope and content, however, Strenna Israelitica and Israelitische Annalen had too much in common to fall ­under opposite headings, namely, Haskalah versus Wissenschaft, without further qualification. Reggio’s self-­ presentation on the title page as a proud member of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft suggests that his public affinity lay with German Orientalism and strengthens our impression that his intellectual identity was more complex than current labels suggest. Working in Frankfurt and Gorizia, respectively, Jost and Reggio saw the same set of data being unearthed from Eu­rope’s libraries and archives, but they ­were watching from dif­fer­ent regional ­angles, through similar lenses, yet polished to dif­fer­ent degrees. By cata­loguing the results to the best of their abilities, both sought to ground a new Jewish real­ity in the same Jewish continuum. And ­going through varying pro­cesses of po­liti­cal transformation, neither could afford to view that real­ity as a mere extension of the past (das Sein aus dem Werden begriffen), as the current Romantic paradigm prescribed.36 Reggio’s way of bridging the gap between the Jewish past and an Italian-­ Israelite f­ uture was to tacitly ignore it, a solution that was neither traditional

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nor innovative, wissenschaftlich nor maskilic, but pragmatic and unreflective. Written in Italian for his “correligionarj d’Italia” (we can hear the Risorgimento approaching),37 his “trifles from our history” met an immediate popu­lar demand. Timely and apposite—­though analytically unsatisfactory—­these seem to me the only labels we can safely apply to Reggio’s scholarship during the 1850s. High time, therefore, to turn our gaze to other provinces and try to put this intermediate conclusion in a somewhat broader perspective.

Scholarship as Civil Prayer: Marcus Roest’s Israëlitische Letterbode In his best-­selling ­Children of the Ghetto (1892), Israel Zangwill has a newspaper man summarize the Jewish news flow as follows: “I translate a ­thing from the Italian Vessilo Israelitico, and the Israëlitische Nieuwsbode in Amsterdam copies it from us; Der Israelit then translates it into German, whence it gets into Hebrew, in Ha-­magid, thence into l’Univers Israélite in Paris, and thence into the American Hebrew.”38 From Italy via Britain to Holland and Germany, then via Central Eu­rope and France all the way across the ­Atlantic, Zangwill’s summary conjures up an elaborate closed cir­c uit of an Orthodox news network. Lacking an infrastructure of its own, scholarly discourse in the Netherlands to a large extent tied in with this network of diasporic journalism. Still, whenever learned conscience required, it felt ­free to follow dif­fer­ent paths, as I hope the following brief sketch ­w ill show. On Friday, July 30, 1875, the maiden issue of the Israëlitische Letterbode appeared, the first Dutch-­Jewish magazine to be devoted to “Joodsche wetenschap, geschiedenis en letteren” (in this case best translated as “Jewish Wissenschaft, history and lit­er­a­t ure”). Once a month it was to accompany the Israëlietische Nieuwsbode, a pious weekly that addressed a general readership, not the scholarly community. Subscribers to the Nieuwsbode received their Letterbode ­free of charge, while incidental buyers paid fifteen cents, and separate subscribers ­were lured with a discount, paying 1.50 florins for twelve installments. Advertisements w ­ ere welcome as long as they agreed with the journal’s erudite profile (“advertentiën, alleen van letterkundigen aard” [advertisements, only of a literary nature], the colophon stated). Its distribution on Erev Shabbos of course was no coincidence. In a time when newspapers had come to substitute for the citizen’s morning prayer,39 the Friday journal



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and its learned supplement supplied food for Jewish thought during the long weekend hours. The Nieuwsbode (1875–93) and its Letterbode (1875–88) had been an initiative of Meijer Marcus Roest (1821–89) and Joseph Hirsch Dünner (1833– 1911), who between them cultivated an efficient division of ­labor. Roest, an alumnus of the Nederlands Israëlitisch Seminarium in Amsterdam, was a man of letters and active in the book trade as well as in journalism. The Cracow-­born Dünner was appointed rector of the seminary in 1862, and left in 1874 to become chief rabbi of the province of Noord-­Holland.40 Ten years before, in 1865, the rabbi and the publicist had teamed up to defend moderate Dutch Orthodoxy against unsolicited religious reform. Together they founded the Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad, a weekly that sought to safeguard “moderate pro­gress in the spirit of Judaism” by teaching a combination of “religion, history, and lit­er­a­t ure.”41 In his eulogy of Roest, printed in the Nieuwsbode of November 29, 1889, Dünner praised his brother-­in-­a rms as “a Leonidas in the Thermopylae of Dutch Jewry,” thus evoking an image of heroic (if doomed) defense against the overwhelming onslaught of the forces of change and secularization.42 The creation, in the summer of 1875, of the Israëlietische Nieuwsbode and its scholarly supplement was a next step in the strug­gle over owner­ship of tradition. In their mission statement Roest and Dünner positioned themselves within the international scholarly canon, which for them was epitomized by Rapoport, Luzzatto, and Zunz (in that order), who together had “put Torah and tradition into proper perspective” and had proven “Judaism’s eternal truth and right of existence.”43 This short affidavit is significant in two re­spects. First, it reveals the Dutch affinity with the torah ve-­emunah variant of modern scholarship as personified by Rapoport and Luzzatto, while acknowledging Zunz’s iconic status as a benchmark for cutting-­edge research. Second, the emphasis on Judaism’s eternal relevance reflects the Dutch conviction, which I have discussed elsewhere, that historicism should confirm the timeless truth of revelation rather than deconstruct religion into a series of ­human, time-­bound facts.44 Roest and Dünner thus positioned their initiative as part of a transnational trend. Yet their uncompromising subordination of historical unicity to metaphysical continuity marks a fundamental contrast between Zunz’s jüdische Philologie and Dutch Joodse wetenschap. As mentioned above regarding the Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad, the Dutch variant had always been an effective mix of religious instruction, history, and lit­er­a­ture (godsdienst, geschiedenis, en

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letterkunde). In this re­spect it is telling that Roest and Dünner’s Letterbode was devoted not to this usual edifying triad but to “Joodse wetenschap, geschiedenis en letteren,” the combination of three—­overlapping—­critical disciplines. Where the Nieuwsbode offered popu­lar scholarship to strengthen religious civilization, the Letterbode featured, for the first time in Dutch history, professional Jewish research for the sake of research. In d­ oing so it supported Judaism’s eternal message as expounded in the Nieuwsbode by supplementing it with a set of modern critical footnotes. Roest and Dünner did not add a preface specifying precisely how to “do” history. The opening article of the Letterbode, however, was exemplary and left no room for speculation: the example of the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau provided both the method and the substance. ­Under the headline “Een literarisch won­der” (A literary miracle), rabbinical student Jacob Hoofiën (1846–86) flagellated Rabbi Markus Lehmann (1831–90) of Mainz, whose review of Zacharias Frankel’s Mevo ha-­Yerushalmi (1870) in Der Israelit had not gone down well with Dünner and his acolytes.45 With relish Hoofiën defended Frankel’s claim that the Babylonian geonim did not have access to the Jerusalem Talmud, against Lehmann’s assertions to the contrary. To the uninitiated reader, his argumentation must have seemed dreary and arcane. Yes, the article did set the tone for rigorous research, but one may doubt w ­ hether the average subscriber would have been saved for Judaism by Hoofiën’s subtle readings of the Babylonian Talmud and its medieval halakhic commentators, the Rif and the Rosh. Instead, ­until this very day, Dutch-­Israelite believers have preferred Samson Raphael Hirsch’s nostalgic conservatism over Frankel’s historical positivism. Witness Roest and Dünner’s reference to “moderate pro­gress in the spirit of Judaism” in the Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad, which resounds with Hirsch’s article “Religion Allied to Pro­gress” of 1854.46 In that continuum, the Wissenschaft of the Letterbode was but an interlude. ­Under Dünner’s presidency the Dutch Israelite Seminary was temporarily converted into a Breslau on the Amstel. Between 1875 and 1888, the Letterbode served as its platform, in obvious imitation of the Breslauer Monatsschrift. That the journal managed to survive for so many years was a literary miracle in itself, which may be attributed to Marcus Meyer Roest’s unwavering commitment to historical inquiry that was in need of a public stage. Its failure to survive his death in 1889 comes as no surprise. In the Netherlands, Jewish scholarship continued to serve religious civilization and remained embedded in mainstream journalism. Where specialist magazines came up in a night and



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perished in a night,47 it was up to popu­lar weeklies, such as Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad (1865–­pre­sent), Weekblad voor Israëlietische huisgezinnen (1870–1940), and Centraal blad voor Israëlieten in Nederland (1885–1940), to facilitate research and to digest its results for the Israelite believer—­w ith all the consequences for scope, style, and temporality that this entailed.

The Autarchy of History: The Revue des Études Juives ­ here was a period, especially during the late Enlightenment, when one could T have written an intellectual history of France and the Low Countries in almost synonymous terms. By the time the rabbis Zadoc Kahn (1839–1905) and Isidore Loeb (1839–92) founded the Revue des études juives (REJ) at the Paris École Pratique des Hautes Études (July 1880), the ways had parted. In the Netherlands the spirited Enlightenment of the postrevolutionary years had made way for a typically Dutch mix of intellectual withdrawal and complacency. In its wake, Jewish scholarship, too, showed a relatively high degree of introspection. On a local level it was cultivated in an expanding mosaic of dilettante genootschappen (confraternities); in the public sphere it remained embedded in a network of popu­lar journalism that favored education over erudition and no longer hoped to address a Christian readership. The found­ers of the REJ, by contrast, took a more ambitious stand. The opening paragraph of their first editorial reveals that their initiative was to facilitate nothing less than the creation of a “bibliothèque française de science et de littérature juives,” a French library of Jewish science and lit­er­a­ture.48 Since the 1830s and 1840s, Kahn and Loeb declared, France had failed to play a part in the “vaste mouvement scientifique et littéraire” (vast scientific and literary movement) that had changed the face of Jewish studies.49 The country had been wrong to ignore this development, but the editors trusted their new revue would lift it from this uncharacteristic “état d’infériorité” (state of inferiority).50 “Our country,” “inferiority,” “elevate,” “first rank”—at first sight ­these words reflect the competitive rhe­toric of resentment that informed much of the nineteenth-­century national discourse.51 It is almost as if chauvinist spite not only prompted the editors to start a journal of their own but even forbade them to mention the merits of Zunz and his Verein (society). Yet even more salient than their glossing over the German competition is their hushing up of indigenous pre­ce­dents, most notably of Prus­sian immigrant Salomon Munk (1803–67), who had introduced French Oriental

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studies to Berlin-­style Jewish philology. As Perrine Simon-­Nahum has pointed out, the found­ers of the REJ had good reason to pre­sent their endeavor as a journey into virgin territory. Their primary concern was not cross-­border competition but an internal paradigm change—­a change that would shift the weight from Zunz and Munk to Ernest Renan, in other words, from early nineteenth-­century Jewish philology to late nineteenth-­century French historiography.52 On multiple occasions the editors stressed that their journal was “as much in the interest of scientific pro­gress as in the interest of Judaism.”53 They addressed “the public in general and the Israelite world in par­tic­u­lar” (p. v), solicited recognition from the entire republic of letters, and hoped for a place among the country’s leading scholarly journals (p. viii). Throughout its history, they argued, Judaism had been too deeply enmeshed in the world’s ­great civilizations to be a ­matter of indifference to the learned world at large (p. vii). In twenty-­fi rst-­century research this compromise between universalism and particularism has been assessed in vari­ous ways. Some have identified the universalist claims of the Science du Judaïsme as its decisive characteristic;54 ­others have highlighted the growing emphasis on Jewish particularity, in stark contrast to previous policies of enlightened mimicry (régéneration).55 In the case of the REJ, however, one cannot but agree with Simon-­Nahum’s conclusion that the journal exuded a French republican spirit that was firmly grounded in Judaism’s universal potential.56 On the pages of the REJ, the very values and virtues that distinguished France ­were ­those that tied the Jews first to the brotherhood of man and then to their beloved patrie (fatherland). At what­ever end of the scale (that is, apol­o­getic universalism to proto­ national particularism) one places the center of gravity, one could say that in trying to reconcile being French and Jewish through educated humanism, the Science du Judaïsme was not all that dif­fer­ent from German Jewish Wissenschaft. The main difference seems to have been one of context and infrastructure. In Berlin, scholars ­were trying to show Judaism’s fundamental impact to a diminishing gentile (and Jewish) audience;57 in Paris their colleagues could explore its relevance in a relatively open academic environment. It goes without saying that this early institutionalization left its imprint on the focus, tone, and temporality of French-­Jewish historicism. In the early 1880s the religious sciences in France went through a pro­ cess of professionalization, and the founding of specialized periodicals was part of that trajectory.58 In the pages of the Revue de l’histoire des religions



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(1880), a new set of criteria for the study of religion was being formulated. Henceforth ­there would be no more polemics or apol­o­getics but an atmosphere of respectful understanding. Dogma and doctrine ­were to be replaced by detached, empirical scrutiny of historical documentation.59 In the same impartial vein, the REJ set out to “reconstruct the entire history of our past,” with a special spotlight on French medieval Jewry, whose virtues (“that admirable mix of orderliness, clarity, taste, and moderation”) seemed to prefigure the esprit français.60 The contents of the first issue, always a bit of a manifesto, reflected this penchant for Jewish local history. Yet beside archival studies, which should anchor premodern Jewry in French republican soil, we also find items on Semitic philology, literary notes on the traditional canon, and, perhaps the best indication of the journal’s learned setting, specialist attempts at situating that canon in its ancient Persian and Arabian milieus.61 The found­ers of the REJ did not give away their take on Jewish temporality, but their debut contains vari­ous clues that allow us to reconstruct it. The continuity they postulated between medieval Jewish virtue and modern French esprit puts their efforts in the category of what Nietz­sche had called “antiquarian history,” which was governed by the idea of permanence, above all the permanence of Volksgeist (national psyche) and tradition.62 The emphasis on French netteté, clarté, goût, et mesure (cleanliness, clarity, taste, and moderation) at the cost of, for example, Jewish rational ethical mono­the­ism suggests they identified general ­human values as the main constant in Jewish history. The essays on ancient Oriental lit­er­a­ture only confirmed the Jews’ historical talent for local osmosis (and not, in this case at least, their often-­ presupposed affinity with the Orient). Perhaps this humanist streak may be taken as an indication of the lasting impact of enlightened régéneration on French-­Israelite self-­perception. In the pre­sent context, however, it is the issue of temporality that demands our attention, for it is clear that if the REJ was to seal French Jewry into a historical continuum, it was the profane timeline of world history, not the eternal truth of Jewish revelation, that would be its ultimate home. As antiquarian historians, the men of the Science du Judaïsme ­were, again, not so dif­fer­ent from their colleagues elsewhere in Eu­rope and the United States. What does stand out, however, is their explicit resolve never to subordinate scientific truth to an ulterior doctrine. Following the mores of objective research, they renounced all religious propaganda. Unlike Reggio and Roest, they saw no need to edify the masses. Instead, their historiography was to be autonomous, an objective mix of questions intéressants and

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trouvailles heureuses (lucky discoveries) that satisfied the curiosité du savant (the learned person’s curiosity).63 No echoes of Graetz’s ­grand narrative, of Geiger’s critical urgency, or of Luzzatto’s pious compromise—­for the members of the Société des Études Juives, science equaled curiosity and serendipity, with perhaps a tinge of filial piety ­toward the feats of famous pre­de­ces­sors. If the result happened to strike the reader as arid, they begged forbearance but not forgiveness: being boring was part of the agenda. It is this belief in the autarchy of history that we must keep in mind when we turn our gaze from Paris to London, where in 1888–89 a quarterly was founded that can be read as a systematic critique of the REJ’s sterile impartiality.

A Remedy for History: The Jewish Quarterly Review Itemized and arranged from Austria to Zechariah, the ­table of contents of the first volume of the Jewish Quarterly Review ( JQR) appeared in plain alphabetical order. The opening article, however, was a statement by Heinrich Graetz, who in ten densely printed pages made a case for Judaism’s unbroken relevance for humanity.64 In their introduction, founding f­athers Israel Abrahams (1858–1925) and Claude Goldsmid Montefiore (1858–1938) staged a worthy overture to Graetz’s portrayal of Judaism as “a minimum of religion”65 of universal import. Writing ten years a­ fter the foundation of the Société des Études Juives and its Revue, they managed to twist their French colleagues’ mission statement almost to the point of parody. Where the latter proposed to “do history” for history’s sake, the editors of JQR stressed the fact that such historicism introduced an ele­ment of relativity into Judaism that could undermine its timeless, symbolic meaning. Feelings of national ressentiment may well have played a role, but a more tangible point of difference was the lack of institutional backing for the new British quarterly. As mentioned above, the founding of the REJ coincided with the secularization of French religious studies. In ­England, however, the academic study of Judaism continued to build on centuries of Christian Hebraism. Prior to the University Tests Act of 1871, Jews only sporadically managed to enter that domain. Championed by Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid (1778–1859), Hyman Hurwitz (1770–1844) became professor of Hebrew at University College London as early as 1828.66 It is more than symbolic that following this appointment Hurwitz’s output narrowed down to studies on Hebrew grammar and etymology.67 When in 1875 a readership in talmudic



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and rabbinic lit­er­a­ture was established in Cambridge, it reflected a similar focus on textual study. The first two readers, like Hurwitz immigrants with a continental training, quickly found their way to the local Hebrew trea­ sures. In 1876 Solomon Marcus Schiller-­Szinessy (1820–90) published the first volume of his Cambridge Hebrew manuscript cata­logue.68 Twenty years ­later, Solomon Schechter (1847–1915) began working on the Geniza fragments, which had “made the life of the student once more worth living” ­after Zunz and his generation had safely stowed away the greater part of the Jewish cultural heritage.69 From the onset the Jewish Quarterly Review was meant to address just that: the question of ­whether this sublimated storage of the past (Aufhebung in the original German) could have any meaning for Jewish life and a Jewish ­future. Students of the Wissenschaft des Judentums ­will recognize this thematic from Germany, where it fueled a debate that would span generations. Readers of the first REJ may have admired the cool with which the editorial board dared to turn its back on the issue. In response to that radio silence, the editors of JQR de­cided to tackle it head-on and with commendable brevity. Left to its own devices, they stated, pure historicism was bound to be disruptive. Without intervention it would “lead through stagnation to decay” and hence to the total dissolution of living Judaism.70 By resorting to the biological meta­phor of decline, rot, and fall, they conjured up the image of an ailing organism, emasculated by too much looking back at the cost of moving forward. At first sight this may strike us as an average Nietz­schean critique of the paralyzing effects of slavish historicism. As soon as we look beyond the imagery, however, the JQR’s position becomes more au­then­tic than the cliché suggests. Working on the Eu­ro­pean sidelines and observing both the French Science du Judaïsme’s detachment and Wissenschaft’s divisive power (Orthodoxy versus Reform versus . . .), the editors of JQR cut straight to the chase: u ­ nless scholars managed to slot the past into the f­ uture, they stated, historiography would harm rather than help Jewish continuity. The solution they proposed was not derived from Nietz­sche’s philosophy of life, nor did it reflect the Orthodox nostalgia for pre-­Wissenschaft coherence. Compared with ­these “holistic” remedies, it was in fact quite ce­re­bral. Moreover, it was emphatically not the historian’s way out. In the pages of JQR, the task of repairing the breach between the closed past and an open-­ended ­f uture was outsourced to a discipline that could claim expertise in timeless truth: Jewish theology.

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At this point one should stress that the crisis the editors tried to defuse did not come from the confrontation between Glaube und Geschichte (religious belief and historicism), which David Myers has observed was taking shape in Germany.71 Instead it stemmed from the perpetual chasm between past and f­ uture, in which e­ very h ­ uman being (not just the Jew) finds himself, and which was deepened by the progressive teleology of (post-) Enlightenment historical thinking.72 It was with this predicament in mind that Abrahams cum suis emphasized the importance of the pre­sent as the defining node in history, the moment “through which the ­f uture is determined.”73 In their scheme it was the historian’s task to help us interpret the ­here and now in the light of times past, just as it was the duty of the theologian to develop that interpretation into a narrative for times to come. The outcome of the marriage of history and theology was a journal that merged, in its own words, the results of research by scholars with the results of thought by theologians.74 It was a medium for sharing anything from biblical criticism, to local history, to ideas on Jewish nationality and religious identity. The format did not, the editors acknowledged, “conform precisely to the model of any continental con­temporary.” Nor did it fulfill an urgent local need: En­glish Jewry, they knew, was too middlebrow to care much for history or philosophy. With such an audience for a judge, the initiative might easily turn out “discreditable and dangerous.”75 The irony of this last line may be read as a British answer to the aplomb with which the French Société had introduced its review. Si­mul­ta­neously, however, it also indicates a certain doubt as to the efficacy of a proj­ect that tried to square the rewards of historical adventure with the risk of collateral damage. As we all know, En­glish Jewry did not get to enjoy the results of that attempt for long; in 1899, JQR moved across the Atlantic. In the meantime, the Jewish Historical Society of ­England (founded in 1893) had groomed a worthy and perhaps slightly more apposite successor, its annually published Transactions.

Summing Up: The Gap Between Past and ­Future and the ­Things ­People Do to Bridge It It is time to draw a few implications from the above set of sketches. As I hope they have shown, dif­fer­ent po­liti­cal and cultural contexts produced dif­fer­ent perceptions of the past, pre­sent, and ­f uture of history and of the historian’s duties and responsibilities. In late Habsburg Gorizia, Isaac Reggio



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freely roamed the—­Jewish and Oriental—­past in search of sustenance for a soon-­to-be Italian ­f uture. In Amsterdam, Marcus Roest and Joseph Dünner encouraged their authors to deconstruct the past in order to better ground modern Dutch existence in Jewish eternity. In Paris, Isidore Loeb and his associates documented it with what seemed “eunuchische Objektivität” (eunuch-­like objectivity),76 only to strike their roots deeper into the soil of the French republic. In London the contributors to the JQR faced yet another choice: they could ­either opt to research the past as past, or they could choose to rethink it in order to bolster a Jewish ­f uture. It is this rift in temporality between history and metaphysics (and not, for example, the increasing tension between science and religion) that dominated the strug­gle for and against Jewish historicism in nineteenth-­century Eu­rope.77 Dif­fer­ent national regions generated dif­fer­ent temporalities that yielded dif­fer­ent methodological a­ ngles. Depending on circumstance and disposition, time could be secular or religious, eternal or definite, Jewish or gentile, or a mixture of the latter. The categories ­under which the four journals tried to bend it to their needs ­were analogous, yet not without subtle differences. In 1855, the Strenna Israelitica approached the Jewish past through religione, storia, and litteratura, with science vis­i­ble mainly through the reference to Reggio’s ties with German Oriental research. In the Netherlands, where Jewish scholarship relied on the same triad, the Israëlitische Letterbode (briefly and atypically) imitated Breslau by insisting on a mix of Joodse wetenschap, geschiedenis, and letteren. The REJ, by contrast, propagated academic science et littérature without a trace of Jewish religiosity, to which the JQR responded by introducing history in tandem with theology, without mentioning e­ ither science or lit­er­a­ture. One ­thing we learn from this conceptual melee is that Jewish historicism, by isolating and sublimating the past, had become a shared predicament rather than a shared, unan­i­mous proj­ect. With the development of history into an abstract discipline came the need to specify its relevance for concrete Jewish life. In an age when Judaism had become almost synonymous with critical scholarship, it was vital to define this existential function, which for Zunz and his generation had been self-­evident.78 In Germany, where polarization had always been part of the Jewish public debate, the need to reconcile critical abstraction with everyday real­ity (Wissenschaft und Leben) generated a prolonged argument among scholars of vari­ous denominations. In other countries, where tradition and pro­gress ­were often balanced with greater ease, it became a ­matter of tacit or, in the case of JQR, understated compromise.

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That the scholars who found themselves in this predicament shared a yearning for permanence appears from the fact that they all presented themselves as part of an unbroken continuum. Between them they formulated a chain of tradition that transcended national bound­a ries. In segregated Berlin, Elbogen’s model had been Solomon Schechter, who had never founded a school and had put his studies at the ser­vice of one united “catholic” Judaism.79 Schechter himself had traced the roots of his Jewish Wissenschaft to the late eighteenth-­century protophilology of the Vilna Gaon.80 A few de­ cades l­ater Salo Baron drew out t­ hose roots into the Re­nais­sance by pointing at David Gans and Azariah dei Rossi as harbingers of the Wissenschaft ethos.81 In our time, David Myers has added the maskilim as “direct forebears of modern historical scholarship in Eu­rope.”82 The early ­giants, by contrast, venerated “pious” contemporaries, such as Solomon Rapoport and Nachman Krochmal, whose Moreh nevukhe ha-­zman was published posthumously by Zunz in 1851. In Amsterdam, Roest and Dünner shared this veneration for moderately conservative scholarship, though not without paying due re­spect to Zunz, whose name had become a metonym for modern Jewish research. If anything, this new, cumulative shalshelet kabbalah (chain of tradition) exposes the REJ’s refusal to root itself in Jewish scholarship as a relatively in­de­pen­dent initiative. Si­mul­ta­neously, it identifies a conservative mentality in both Dutch Joodse wetenschap and German Jewish philology. In ­doing so, it nuances the idea that early Jewish historicism can be divided into two distinct branches, namely, into a German, radically critical Wissenschaft des Judentums and a Hebrew ḥokhmat Yisra’el (Jewish science), which had always maintained “a reverential and referential relationship to traditional Jewish sources.”83 As we have seen, reverence for and reference to tradition ­were not the prerogatives of Central and Eastern Eu­ro­pean scholars, nor of authors writing in Hebrew. Conversely, German Wissenschaft did not hold a mono­poly on separating history from religion. If ­there is one ­thing I hope the above exercise has shown, it is that we need a more differentiated, bottom-up, emic toolkit to assess the dynamic and temporalities of Jewish historical thought and practice in the nineteenth-­century Eu­ro­pean nation-­state. That is why this essay, taking its inspiration from the ongoing debate on the Haskalah, has tried to open up a parallel reflection on what we have come to view as two centuries of Wissenschaft des Judentums. Its main working hypothesis was that the Wissenschaft des Judentums (with the definite article) was an early twentieth-­century invention, a Kampfbegriff to which



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scholars referred while positioning themselves within the broader po­liti­cal field; and that this contested construct cannot be projected retrospectively on previous scholarship. Instead it proposes to approach early Jewish historicism as an ensemble of national mentalities and practices, loosely (sometimes dialectically) kept together by transnational networks of journals, contacts, and correspondence and by the memory of Zunz’s short-­lived but decisive Verein.

Chapter 2

German Wissenschaft des Judentums and the Late Nineteenth-­Century Development of Hungarian Jewish Studies katalin franciska rac

Like many of his contemporaries, Zacharias Frankel (1801–75) supplemented his traditional Jewish learning with a modern education in the humanities, in his case through the pursuit of a doctorate at the Royal University in Pest. This was just one of several universities he might have attended in the Habsburg Empire, and biographers have offered l­ittle insight as to why he chose this one. Why did the Prague-­born rabbi, now remembered as the ­father of positive-­historical Judaism and the first director of the Breslau Rabbinical Seminary, decide to study in Hungary between 1827 and 1830, and how did the intellectual atmosphere of the ­f uture Hungarian capital influence him? The silence is especially puzzling in light of his concomitant influence on the development of modern Jewish learning and scholarship in Hungary.1 As Tamás Turán and Carsten Wilke have suggested, Jewish scholarship in Hungary developed mostly ­under the wings of Neology, a form of Judaism often likened to the Conservative movement in Amer­i­ca, and within the institutional framework provided by the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest.2 This seminary has often been called the Breslau Jewish Theological Seminary’s “­daughter institution,” a fitting characterization of the complex web of



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institutional and personal ties that connected the two seminaries as well as the ideological and intellectual differences that divided them.3 Both aspects of the two institutions’ relationship ­were on display in the inauguration ceremony of the younger institution on October 4, 1877, which Frankel did not live to see. Representing the Breslau Seminary, the renowned historian Heinrich Graetz (1817–91) addressed a celebratory crowd in the ­great hall of the Budapest Seminary’s newly constructed building. Following Graetz’s remarks, two other guests from abroad—­David Cassel (1818–93), from the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin, and Leopold Kompert (1822–86), the Viennese Jewish community’s emissary—­greeted the assembly.4 Speaking in German, which was still the Central Eu­ro­pean lingua franca and the dominant language of Wissenschaft des Judentums, Graetz noted the maternal feelings that connected his institute to the newly opened one in Budapest, while Kompert described a sisterly relationship between his community and that of Budapest. All three invitees stressed the importance of scholarship, specifically modern Wissenschaft, in shaping a bright ­f uture for Jews. Graetz expressed hope that the seminary in Budapest “would pursue the same goals” as the one in Breslau, namely, raising generations of Jewish theologians to be spiritual leaders with proper scholarly preparation.5 In a similar vein, and without harping on the ideological differences between Berlin and Breslau, Cassel emphasized that educators should concentrate their efforts on bringing up a studious and religiously committed youth.6 The addresses of the representatives of the “­mother” and “­sister” institutions ­were, however, relegated to the latter part of the ceremony. In the presence of Hungarian state functionaries at the highest level along with representatives of vari­ous Jewish and non-­Jewish scholarly and religious organ­ izations, the Pest congregation’s synagogue choir opened the event with a per­for­mance of Psalm 111. The head of the National Bureau of the Hungarian Israelite Communities, Márton Schweiger (1834–1905), addressed the audience first.7 His speech, delivered in Hungarian, reviewed the decades-­long history of the discussions and preparations that led to the establishment of the seminary.8 Proving his po­liti­cal acumen, he restricted his words to praise for the state and communal officials who took part in the lengthy preparations. Next, the keystone was laid, and a document listing the names of every­one who contributed to the establishment of the seminary—­from the emperor to the masons—­was read (in Hungarian). Afterward two Hungarian scholars came to the podium. First up was Sámuel (Samuel) Kohn (1841– 1920), a Breslau-­educated historian and chief rabbi of the Dohány Street

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(Neolog) Synagogue, representing the board of the new Budapest Seminary, and second was Vilmos (Wilhelm) Bacher (1850–1913), also a gradu­ate of Breslau and one of the three original faculty members of the Budapest Seminary. Kohn emphasized the seminary’s ­f uture role in shaping Hungarian Jewish life and learning and the relationship between the state and its Jewish denizens. To demonstrate that Jewish education had long enjoyed the Hungarian state’s protection, Kohn drew a parallel between Francis Joseph’s 1856 decree to establish a national rabbinical school and the 1251 edict of King Béla IV (1206–70), which mandated the punishment of anyone causing physical harm to Jewish schools. As Schweiger did before him, Kohn left unmentioned that the capital used to finance the seminary came from the indemnities the Austrian government imposed on Hungarian Jewry following the 1848–49 Revolution and War of In­de­pen­dence. Instead, sending a message to the Orthodox adversaries of the seminary, Kohn stressed that the Rabbinical Seminary was a worthy heir of the medieval yeshiva, raising knowledgeable and pious leaders for the Hungarian Jewish community.9 For his part, Bacher followed Kohn and their colleagues from abroad in expressing hope that aside from contributing to Jewish scholarship (zsidó tudomány) and training rabbis—in his wording two separate objectives—­the seminary would cultivate Jewish tradition. Furthermore, he wished to bring about “religious spirituality and intellectual advancement” all over the country, inspire his coreligionists’ patriotism, and diminish strife among Jewish denominations.10 In formulating the mission of the Budapest Seminary, both Kohn and Bacher focused on the local, specifically Hungarian, po­liti­cal and cultural conditions as opposed to modern, universal Jewish scholarly values. The Hungarian national anthem closed the event.11 The discrepancy between the German and the Hungarian speakers’ visions of the mission of the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest cannot be attributed solely to the language difference; nor does it reveal minimalist and maximalist versions of the same program. It attests to the transformation under­gone by the ­whole country, including the Jewish community and the city of Pest that Frankel had once known, over the course of the previous half-­century. In the late 1820s, when Frankel arrived in mostly German-­ speaking Pest, the Learned Society (Tudós Társaság), the progenitor of the Hungarian Acad­emy of Sciences designed to promote scholarship in Hungarian and encourage the cultivation of the Hungarian language, had just begun its operations. It synthesized and carried forward the preceding half-­century’s po­liti­cally infused literary and scholarly endeavors within a



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Diet-­sanctioned institutional framework, seeking both to cooperate with and counterbalance the intellectual influence of the university, an impor­ tant bastion of Habsburg imperial ideology. The Habsburg court in Vienna had played a complex role in the emergence of modern Hungarian scholarship, lit­er­a­ture, and arts: it was through its mediation that Eu­ro­pean modernization, the Enlightenment, and Romanticism first reached Hungary. The Diet began to react to its educational and cultural policies even prior to the establishment of the acad­emy. From the 1790s on, legislators had initiated a gradual shift to the Hungarian language in most walks of life; as a final act, in 1844, they replaced Latin with Hungarian as the country’s official language. Statewide Hungarian-­language policy, however, took ­actual effect only ­after the Compromise of 1867. This landmark constitutional reform created a semi-­independent Hungary, part of the Austro-­Hungarian dual monarchy, allowing social and cultural transformation to occur at an unpre­ce­dented rate and intensity. In 1872, the unification of Pest with the two cities on the western bank of the Danube, Buda and Óbuda, to form the overwhelmingly Hungarian-­speaking capital city of Budapest was part of this transformation. The German intellectual influence and the dawning national language-­ driven scholarship ­shaped the intellectual life of the growing Jewish community as well. Historians Michael Silber and Tamás Turán have shown that Haskalah spread to Hungary by way of Prague in the final de­cades of the eigh­teenth ­century, and then via Vienna in the next ­century, following the routes to Hungarian lands traveled by the Eu­ro­pean Enlightenment itself.12 The German periodical Ben Chananja illustrates that modern Jewish scholarship in Hungary was inseparable from modern Jewish learning in Germanophone Central Eu­rope, while many yeshivas, especially in the eastern parts of the country, ­were still connected to networks of traditional Jewish education. Ben Chananja first appeared in 1844 and, ­after an initial pause, ran between 1857 and 1868 ­under the editorial supervision of Leopold Löw (1811–75), the rabbi of the southern town of Szeged. It featured authors from all over Central Eu­rope, while Löw frequently contributed articles to German Jewish newspapers. Löw’s periodical not only brought the intellectual and po­liti­cal products of German Wissenschaft des Judentums to Hungarian Jewry but also aimed to influence Jewish attitudes ­toward the Habsburg government and the Hungarian state.13 A conscious citizen of a country on the path to creating a modern national high culture and scientific life, Löw conducted himself as a Hungarian patriot and advocate of reforming

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Judaism, and he did not shy away from criticizing the Hungarian po­liti­cal elite’s discrimination against Jews. He preached and published on religious and po­liti­cal topics in Hungarian, for example, urging Hungarian authorities to establish a modern rabbinical seminary in 1844;14 and yet, he still did not consider the Hungarian language adequate as a medium for Jewish scholarly discourse. Shortly ­after the Compromise of 1867, Hungary enacted the law of Jewish emancipation, news that Löw celebrated in one of the last issues of Ben Chananja.15 Next, lawmakers turned to an examination of the status and state of Jewish educational and religious institutions. In 1868 the state called a Jewish assembly (generally referred to as the “Jewish Congress”) in order to create a Jewish umbrella organ­ization (following the example of the 1806 French Consistory), but the assembly could not redress long-­standing factional grievances and Hungarian Jewry broke permanently into three denominations. (Kohn’s and Bacher’s addresses at the seminary’s opening ceremony alluded to this historical fracture.)16 The Neologs, who embraced a milder form of the Viennese religious reforms and followed Frankel’s scholarly guidance, supported the modernization of Jewish learning and the use of Hungarian in synagogue and school. Unlike two de­cades ­earlier, when Frankel had left the 1845 Frankfurt rabbinical conference protesting insufficient attention to Hebrew, in Budapest his Hungarian followers remained in the room. They became the first state-­recognized Jewish denomination, sometimes referring to themselves as Congress Jewry. The two denominations opposing the changes promoted by the congress left the discussions and earned state recognition only ­later—­the Orthodox in 1871 and the Status Quo Ante not ­u ntil 1928.17 As Jacob Katz noted, the dynamics governing attitudes ­toward reform in Hungary differed from t­ hose in Germany.18 The Neologs actively ­shaped and promoted the resolutions of the Jewish Congress, as the decision to establish a modern rabbinical seminary in Pest on February 21, 1869, demonstrates. It confirmed that the seminary’s first faculty would be formed ­under Neolog auspices, which, as Graetz confirmed eight years ­later, brought Breslau’s scholarly spirit to Hungary. Moreover, it solidified the Hungarian state’s role in institutionalizing rabbinical training. In sharp contrast to the seminary in Breslau, the one in Budapest became a state institution. At the opening ceremony, the presence of Prime Minister Kálmán Tisza and Minister of Education and Religion Ágoston Trefort, along with other Hungarian dignitaries, was not just an empty gesture of courtesy but a vis­i­ble sign of state endorsement. Moreover, the seminary was divided



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into a high school, which functioned as would any gymnasium that prepared pupils for university studies, and the rabbinical seminary itself. It was also mandated that prospective rabbis earn a doctorate at a university and that the language of instruction at the seminary be Hungarian.19 Although the first two of ­these three mea­sures did not distinguish the Budapest institution from the Breslau Seminary, they ensured and deepened the Budapest Seminary’s integration into the Hungarian state education system, while allowing the seminary’s leadership to shape the religious curriculum according to the tenets of Frankel’s positive-­historical Judaism. Indeed, from its foundation ­until ­today (except for the tragic intercession during World War II), the seminary’s scholarly and religious makeup has been determined by German Jewish and Hungarian national influences, the very same ones that ­shaped the addresses at the seminary’s bilingual opening ceremony. This essay explores the scholarly interests of the Budapest Neolog intellectual circles for which the seminary served as an institutional base. It argues that the Neolog ideology of acculturation, the state’s supervision over the seminary, and not least, Hungarian Jewish scholars’ growing willingness—or, in some cases, desire—to participate in Hungarian academia, together ­shaped Hungarian Jewish scholarship during the last quarter of the nineteenth ­century.20 The Hungarian Jewish field internalized internationally accepted academic methodologies, and German Jewish scholarly culture remained a presence during this time. ­Here, Hungarian Jewish scholarship is not defined as the agglomerate of works written by Jewish authors in the lands of the Hungarian Crown, such as Löw’s German-­language Ben Chananja, but rather as the body of writings in Hungarian that addressed Hungarian audiences in dialogue with national Hungarian scholarship. Adopting local scholarly interests, teaching at the University in Budapest, and founding and contributing to scholarly journals and associations, Hungarian Jewish academics invested in Jewish studies and built bridges between Jewish scholarship and the wider humanities, two fields they hoped to shape in equal mea­sure.21 The analy­sis that follows is constructed around three periodicals published during the last quarter of the nineteenth ­century: the Budapest Seminary’s annual newsletter, the Budapesti Országos Rabbiképző-­Intézet Értesítője (hereafter Bulletin), the Magyar Zsidó Szemle (Hungarian Jewish Review, hereafter Review), and the Izraelita Magyar Irodalmi Társulat (IMIT) Évkönyve (Yearbook of the Israelite Hungarian Literary Society, hereafter IMIT Yearbook). In addition, a few monographs and essays produced by Jewish scholars

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outside of the field are also considered as additional illustrations of the extent of their work. The seminary’s Bulletin was published in both German and Hungarian ­until 1918–19, when it continued as a monolingual Hungarian series.22 For the first few de­cades, most opening essays in the Bulletin ­were authored by David Kaufmann (1852–99) and the aforementioned Vilmos Bacher, two of the three original core faculty members and both gradu­ates of the Breslau Seminary and University, who guaranteed that the German seminary’s scholarly and religious influence would continue to shape education and research in Budapest. The third faculty member, the Talmudist doyen of the seminary Mózes (Moses) Bloch (1815–1909), contributed less, although the 1881–82 Bulletin was headed by his study on the civil procedures prescribed by “Mosaic and rabbinical law.”23 In the Bulletin, Bloch’s encyclopedic approach to halakhah was showcased alongside Bacher’s and Kaufmann’s inquiries into the history of aggadah, Semitic philology, the history of medieval philosophy, and early modern Eu­ro­pean Jewish history.24 Indeed, as a student of ­these three men, ­later the seminary’s director, and editor of the Review and the Hebrew scholarly periodical Hazofeh, the prolific scholar Lajos (Ludwig) Blau (1861–1936) wrote that modern Jewish scholarship originated with the “talmudist who became an exegete, historian, phi­los­o­pher, ­etc.”25 The other two periodicals, which also counted Bacher among their found­ ers, appeared between 1884 and 1948 and 1895 and 1948, respectively. Both published original works by Hungarian Jewish authors mastering an ever-­ broadening disciplinary variety: Hungarian Jewish history, literary studies, linguistics, ethnological research and folklore, and more. The historical reconstruction this essay offers cannot sufficiently address Hungarian Jewish scholars’ participation in German Wissenschaft debates, even though this was an impor­tant aspect of their work. Nor can this essay fully explore how Jewish Hungarian writings transmitted both the learning and the sociopo­liti­cal agenda of German and German Jewish academic works to the Hungarian milieu. Likewise, historical studies of halakhah are not discussed ­here, despite being the cornerstone of positive-­historical Jewish scholarship, as Ismar Schorsch has emphasized.26 ­These ele­ments are set aside in f­avor of attention to what distinguished Hungarian Jewish scholarship from German Wissenschaft des Judentums. However, one similarity should be noted: despite promoting positive-­historical Jewish scholarly culture in Hungary, the contributors to the seminary’s Bulletin, the Review, and the IMIT Yearbook perpetuated a dialogue with German Jewish scholarship without an



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exclusive commitment to one specific denomination. This sphere of neutrality was, in fact, shared with—if not directly inherited from—­Breslau, where ­free scholarly inquiry was valued.27 Hungarian Jewish scholarship both adhered to Breslau’s legacy and deviated from it.

A Bilingual Connection Between Breslau and Budapest: The Annual Bulletin of the Budapest Rabbinical Seminary Bacher’s study in the first Bulletin (1877–78) was called “the first work of Hungarian Jewish scholarship” by the seminary gradu­ate turned professor Bernát (Bernard) Heller (1871–1943). 28 Indeed, Bacher’s “Babylóniai amórák agádája: adalék az agáda történetéhez és a babylóniai Talmudba való bevezetéshez,” or “Die Agada der babylonischen Amoräer” (The aggadah of the Babylonian amoraim: Additions to the history of the aggadah and the introduction of the Babylonian Talmud) illustrates Bacher’s intention to translate positive-­ historical Jewish scholarship’s interest in postbiblical history into Hungarian as well as to develop a new research field. In the foreword Bacher relates to Leopold Zunz’s (1794–1886) groundbreaking Die Gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden from forty-­five years e­ arlier as his guide to the correct way to interpret aggadot. Bacher wished both to continue on the road paved by Zunz and to complement this inquiry with an examination of the biographies of the authors of the aggadot, which had gone untreated.29 In this regard, Frankel’s Darke ha-­Mishnah from 1859 and Isaac Hirsch Weiss’s (1815–1905) Zur Geschichte der jüdischen Tradition (1871 and 1876) provided additional context and guidance for his research.30 No less impor­tant was Bacher’s reliance on his intimate familiarity with the talmudic corpus and his modern philological training as he “collected” the “sayings” of the dif­fer­ent amoraim. Presenting their intellectual portraits in chronological order, Bacher’s study demonstrates the contribution of the Babylonian amoraim to the lit­er­a­ture of aggadah and maps nexuses between dif­fer­ent generations of thinkers, teachers and disciples, and the Palestinian and Babylonian schools.31 Over the following de­cades Bacher extended this research to the ­earlier period of the tannaim, as well as to the work of Palestinian amoraim. Heller points out that Bacher was drawn to the subject of aggadic lit­er­a­ ture ­because of his interest in exegesis as an enduring form of Jewish scriptural

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study. In Bacher’s eyes, exegesis was the sole articulation of Jewish thought from the period before the rise of Chris­tian­ity ­until the rise of Islam.32 Bacher’s other main research interest, the history of Hebrew grammar study, similarly stemmed from his fascination with Jewish exegesis,33 a connection he emphasized by quoting the medieval scholar Abraham Ibn Ezra to the effect that “the commentaries of the Pentateuch are bound up with grammatical ties.”34 Modern Jewish scholars and Semitic philologists understood that the study of Hebrew grammar had emerged ­under Arabic influence in the ­Middle Ages and prominently figured in the work of medieval Iberian Jewish authors, who contributed to Arabic letters and scholarship as well.35 In German scholars’ eyes they embodied a historical exemplar representing successful Jewish integration into a non-­Jewish polity. Bacher’s contribution to the Bulletin of 1880–81, “Ábrahám Ibn Ezrá mint grammatikus: Adalék a héber nyelvtudomány történetéhez,” or “Abraham Ibn Esra als Grammatiker: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der hebräischen Sprachwissenschaft” (Abraham Ibn Ezra as a grammarian: A contribution to the history of Hebrew grammar study), illustrates the German Jewish scholarly engagement with the Iberian legacy as well as Bacher’s interest in the history of the study of Hebrew grammar.36 While other modern scholars such as Abraham Geiger (1810–74) explored Ibn Ezra’s critical scholarship on the Hebrew Bible, Bacher examined solely Ibn Ezra’s inquiry into grammar, offering a dif­fer­ent interpretation of the historical ties between medieval and modern Jewish learning. In the 1884–85 and 1888–89 Bulletins, Bacher continued his research in this field, while in the 1890s, he was occupied with the history of Jewish biblical exegesis and religious philosophy, and in the last de­cade of his life he returned to the study of Persian Jewish lit­er­a­ture, to some extent an extension of the subject of his doctoral dissertation, as well as Yemenite Jewish poetry.37 As much as Bacher’s work contributed to Jewish scholarship, it also enriched the Oriental research field in general, which became one of the Budapest Rabbinical Seminary’s fortes—­t hanks also to the expertise of Kaufmann, who published three essays on medieval Jewish treatises in Arabic in the Bulletin. Bacher’s and Kaufmann’s contributions to Oriental studies are significant in several ways. First, many of the seminary’s students chose Orientalism as the state-­required university major.38 Some rabbinical students wrote doctoral dissertations that focused on Arabic or Hebrew manuscripts, while ­others, like the folklorist Raphael Patai (1910–96), researched Arabic lit­er­a­ture and cultures in­de­pen­dently from the study of Jewish letters.39



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One of Heller’s early and most influential works focused on the Arabic Romance of ‘Antar. It was inspired by the research on Hebrew my­thol­ogy and Arabic poetry conducted by Ignác (Ignaz) Goldziher (1850–1921), one of the most influential Orientalists of his time and Heller’s beloved professor.40 Heller’s subsequent research also demonstrated the Eu­ro­pean expression of Arabic literary motifs and explored connections between ethnography and comparative lit­er­a­ture, subjects that Goldziher had studied as well. Heller’s student Sándor (Alexander) Scheiber (1913–85), director of the seminary from 1950 ­until his death, continued the Orientalist tradition in Hungarian Jewish studies. The relationship between the two fields changed ­after Scheiber’s death. In 1987, Oriental research and (secular) Judaic studies ­were provided with a new institutional framework at the acad­emy and from 1989 at the university’s Department of Assyriology and Hebrew, both ­under the leadership of Géza Komoróczy (b. 1937), who made significant contributions to the historiography of Orientalism and Hungarian Jewish scholarship alike.41 Rabbinical students also flocked to the Turkish and Persian courses of Goldziher’s onetime teacher and mentor, Ármin Vámbéry (1832–1913), which ­were held at the university and often in his home.42 Notwithstanding his conversion to Protestantism prior to receiving his appointment to the university, Vámbéry openly proclaimed his Orthodox Jewish background and atheism (at the same time). He maintains a place in the annals of Jewish history also through his ­later involvement with Theodor Herzl’s Zionist politics. Furthermore, rabbinical students could take courses in vari­ous topics, among them Egyptology with Ede (Edward) Mahler (1857–1945), a member of the seminary’s board and chair of ancient history of Oriental ­peoples at the university from 1910. The creation of this chair and Mahler’s appointment to it in par­tic­u­lar came at the urging of Goldziher, who served as chair of philosophy at the seminary from 1899 on and then as chair of Semitic philology at the university beginning in 1905. The joint Oriental curriculum of the seminary and the university directed Jewish scholarly efforts ­toward the narrower fields of Hungarian language and history as well as the disciplines of linguistics, historiography, and ethnology. Bernát (Bernard) Munkácsi (1860–1937), who also served as the Neolog congregation’s school superintendent, was one of the most influential Finno-­Ugorists and ethnologists of the turn of the ­century and, as such, a fierce critic of Vámbéry’s research on Hungarian’s linguistic affinities with Turkish and Finno-­Ugric languages, central to the study of Hungarian national origins. Additionally, Jewish scholars and rabbinical candidates

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published articles on Hebrew grammar, phonology, and other linguistic subjects, as well as on the history of Hebrew philology in Hungary and on Hungarian scholars’ Semitic studies, integral to the study of Hungarian grammar, in non-­Jewish academic periodicals such as the Egyetemes Philologiai Közlöny (Universal Philological News), Nyelvtudományi Közlemények (Studies in Linguistics), and Magyar Nyelvőr (Hungarian Language Guard). Intended for Hungarian readers, ­these articles delineated a field where Jewish scholarly interests overlapped with Hungarian humanities, deepening inquiry for both areas of scholarship. At the same time, publishing outside of Hungary and participating in international congresses, ­these scholars also strengthened Budapest’s presence in international scholarly forums. For example, at the 1897 International Congress of Orientalists in Paris, Hungary was represented by Vámbéry, Goldziher, and their former student, the Turkologist Ignác (Ignaz) Kunos (1860–1945). Not least impor­tant, they ensured Hungarian Oriental scholarship’s continuing development: the scholarly bequests and correspondences of Vámbéry, Goldziher, Kaufmann, and the Sanskritist Aurél (Aurel) Stein (1862–1943) (nephew of Ignác [Ignaz] Hirschler [1823– 91], president of the congregation during the late 1860s), ­were donated to the acad­emy and ­were placed in the Oriental collection, established in 1949. Bacher’s studies on aggadic lit­er­a­t ure impressed subsequent ethnological and folklore researchers just as Goldziher’s and Vámbéry’s studies demonstrated the relevance of ethnology and folklore to Orientalism and religious studies in general and, as ­will be discussed ­later, to Hungarian literary studies in par­tic­u­lar.43 For example, Heller and Blau continued Bacher’s inquiries into aggadah and integrated them into investigations of Jewish legends and folktales.44 Blau also cultivated Breslau’s legacy when publishing historical studies on the Talmud. The two scholars’ studies appeared in the Review and the IMIT Yearbook as well as Ethnographia, the periodical of the Ethnographical Society. Kunos and Munkácsi established the periodical Keleti Szemle (Eastern Review) in 1900, offering Orientalist and ethnological studies from a varied group of Jewish and non-­Jewish scholars, including their professor Vámbéry and Bacher. In addition to contributions on medieval Judeo-­Arabic scholarship bearing relevance to the Oriental field, in the Bulletin Kaufmann published on the history of the expulsion of Jews from Vienna (1625–70), the seventeenth-­ century Venetian diplomat Israel Conegliano (ca. 1650–1717), and the royal ­factor Samson Wertheimer (1658–1724). ­These studies examined the relationship between Jewish individuals and communities on the one hand and



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governments on the other; they also highlighted the tension between state persecution and Jewish loyalty to the state. So did Kaufmann’s publication, in the IMIT Yearbook of 1896, of Megilat Ofen (The Book of Buda), a 1686 eyewitness report of the Christian conquest of Ottoman Buda written by Isaac Schulhof (1650–1733). Although Schulhof used a respectful tone when speaking of the imperial soldiers, he also described how they mistreated and abused him; he was rescued from their ruthlessness when they sold him as a slave. The text also emphasizes Jewish solidarity, as Schulhof repeatedly asked his captors to bring him to Moravia where, he said, fellow Jews would redeem him. While ­these studies exemplified the po­liti­cal engagement characteristic of the ­earlier periods of Wissenschaft des Judentums, Megilat Ofen also complemented the sources on one of the most dramatic events of late seventeenth-­century Hungarian history, the (re)capture of the royal capital. Especially ­after the Compromise, Hungarian scholars eagerly searched Ottoman archives to find documents from the Ottoman period to reconstruct Hungary’s sixteenth-­and seventeenth-­century history.45 Megilat Ofen shed light on this period from yet another ­angle. It elucidated the Jewish experience in Hungary prior to the beginning of German and Moravian Jewish immigration in the early eigh­teenth ­century. Kaufmann used ­these studies to give voice to a Jewish perspective and address Jewish civil rights and fulfillment of the duties of the conscientious citizen, much in the mode of his fight against antisemitism in the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums and Hungarian Jewish periodicals.46 Though they stand apart from Kaufmann’s German-­language studies and his accomplishments as editor, publisher, and librarian of the seminary, ­these writings inspired many of his students, who became ­f uture experts of Hungarian Jewish history.

The Politics of Neolog Jewish Studies and the Hungarian Jewish Review Whereas Kaufmann’s historical scholarship reflected on current issues, Ba­ cher’s studies in the seminary’s Bulletin remained neutral t­ oward public affairs. He did engage with ­these as coeditor of the Hungarian Jewish Review, an openly partisan periodical and the mouthpiece of the Neolog community’s leadership. The other editor was József Bánóczi (1849–1926), an expert on Hungarian Romanticism and Kant’s philosophy, an acknowledged literary scholar, and the author of a well-­researched biography of the leader of the

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Hungarian-­language cultivation movement, Miklós Révai (1750–1807). Bánóczi taught Hungarian language and lit­er­a­ture in the seminary’s gymnasium, and in 1887 he became head of the Jewish Teachers’ College while still teaching at the university as Privatdozent as he had since 1878.47 ­Under his and Bacher’s supervision, the Review’s articles further broadened and deepened the topics addressed in Ben Chananja and the seminary’s Bulletin, including history, talmudic studies, lit­er­a­ture, Oriental subjects, folklore, linguistics, and even statistics. They also published articles concerned with communal affairs, Jewish education, and communal administration in Hungary; featured book reviews; and discussed po­liti­cal, scholarly, and literary events all over the Jewish world. Moreover, the publication criticized the Orthodox “party” and denounced antisemitism. In Miklós Konrád’s assessment, the Review established Wissenschaft des Judentums in Hungary, using scholarship as an ideological weapon to spread knowledge and create a peaceful atmosphere across Jewish denominations.48 Indeed, the Review’s po­liti­cal engagement was almost as impor­tant as its scholarly contributions, testifying to the editors’ belief that through scholarship they could influence Jewish and non-­Jewish audiences alike.49 In all, the Review constituted a major step in the establishment of modern Hungarian Jewish scholarship as a field that paralleled German Wissenschaft des Judentums. The Review also provided a forum for Hungarian Jewish scholars’ competing visions of the social mission of Jewish scholarship as well as what subjects it should entail. Its editors’ relative openness to alternative ideas manifested itself starting in the first issue. The opening article of the section titled “Tudomány” (Science), Sámuel Kohn’s “A honfoglaló magyarok és a zsidók” (The homeland-conquering Hungarians and the Jews), discussed what is known ­today as the Khazar theory of the origin of Hungarian Jews, an argument that had long occupied Jewish authors, among them Löw.50 Kohn’s monograph A zsidók története Magyarországon a kezdetektől a mohácsi vészig (The history of the Jews in Hungary ­until the Mohács disaster), the first comprehensive Hungarian Jewish historical study, published ­later in the same year, expanded the article’s arguments.51 According to Kohn, the common history of Jews and Hungarians dated back to the period when Hungarian tribes dwelled in the Khazar borderland, known as Levédia, long before the establishment of the Hungarian state in a region far away from it. The Khazar leadership, who Kohn assumed had converted to Judaism, forged a po­liti­cal alliance with Hungarian elites and strengthened it through intermarriage as the head of the Hungarian tribal alliance, Előd, was likely given a noble



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Khazar ­woman as a wife. Moreover, tribes (known as Kabars), rebelling against the Khazar Empire, joined the Hungarian tribal ­union on their way to the west in the mid-800s. Kohn reminded his readers that the Khazars’ Judaism could not be compared to the learned religion of their contemporaries in the Jewish diaspora. Nonetheless, he saw this active Jewish participation in the conquest of the Carpathian Basin (Honfoglalás) and the establishment of the Hungarian “nation-­state” at the end of the ninth ­century as a significant episode in Hungarian Jewish history. The reception of Kohn’s Khazar theory in Jewish and non-­Jewish intellectual circles varied from uncritical approval to rebuttal.52 In their private letters, acad­emy members reviewing Kohn’s study took notice of its hy­po­ thet­i­cal character but nonetheless praised Kohn for his consultation of a wide variety of primary and secondary sources and, in addition to the breadth of the research, for the depth of his analy­sis as well.53 ­These favorable reactions can be attributed to the study’s marked patriotism, which fanned liberal pride. Konrád points out, however, that the published reviews ­were hesitant to affirm Kohn’s conclusions.54 One of the most refined criticisms came from Bacher in 1896. In direct contradiction to his po­liti­cally quiescent scholarly pose, in a celebratory article to commemorate the thousandth anniversary of the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin, Bacher demonstrated that the lack of written documents by the Khazars hindered the insertion of the Khazar chapter into broader Jewish literary history.55 Instead Bacher confirmed its relevance to early Hungarian history, thus offering a dif­fer­ent assessment of Jewish integration in Hungary. Po­liti­cal engagement was indeed integral to Hungarian Jewish scholarship just as highly politicized treatment of the humanities characterized both Hungarian academia and German Wissenschaft des Judentums. ­Today, Kohn’s study is seen as an apol­o­getic historical narrative advocating Jewish integration, which could teach impor­tant lessons to Jews and non-­Jews alike, especially in the immediate aftermath of the 1882–83 blood libel trial of Tiszaeszlár.56 It is, however, better understood as one voice in the modern polyphonic Hungarian Jewish identity discourse addressing Jewish and non-­Jewish readers alike.57 One of the reasons not to see it as reaction to the blood libel is that Kohn’s collection of Jewish sources on Hungarian history, Héber kútforrások és adatok Magyarország történeltéhez (Hebrew sources and data for the history of Hungary), was published in 1881, a year before the blood libel. This volume supplemented scarce documents available from Byzantine, Arabic, and Latin authors that shed light on the period

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predating the establishment of the Hungarian kingdom and served as a foundation for the analy­sis Kohn presented three years ­later. The 1881 and 1884 publications show Kohn’s engagement with a broader circle of historians, linguists, and ethnologists, some of whom, like Vámbéry, ­were entangled in the “Turco-­Ugric War,” arguing over the question of the Hungarian language’s affinity with Turkish—­a question that was often conflated with ones about national origins and thus divided both the academic community and the public, and hence influenced the subsequent development of Oriental scholarship and Hungarian linguistics and historiography. Kohn’s other research on Transylvanian Sabbatarians, published in Hungarian and German, and his (German) doctoral dissertation on the Samaritans, explored subjects that ­were relatively understudied in Jewish scholarship.58 Together with Kaufmann, he inspired studies on Jewish participation in Hungarian politics and Jewish contributions to Hungarian national scholarship and culture. Written by Béla Bern­stein (1868–1944) in 1898, A 1848/1849-­iki magyar szabadságharc és a zsidók (The 1848–49 Hungarian war of liberation and the Jews) is one of the best known among ­these works.59 Both the Review and the IMIT Yearbook published, reviewed, excerpted, and discussed such studies. In sharp contrast to Kohn’s approach and tone, Goldziher’s essay “A bibliai tudomány és a modern vallásos élet” (Biblical scholarship and modern religious life) in the very same opening issue of the Review focused on the Jewish community’s attitude t­ oward religious scholarship.60 At the time, Goldziher was affiliated with the university as a Privatdozent and held several impor­tant positions in the Jewish community. In Carsten Wilke’s view, as the secretary of the Pest Israelite Congregation and member of the seminary’s board, Goldziher continued Löw’s campaign from over two de­ cades ­earlier when pressing for “meaningful reform” of the “empty and stagnating” Neology, which he thought would lead to a more ethical modern religious life and establish a close connection between modern religious scholarship and Jewish theology.61 In the Review, he passionately scolded Jewish community leaders and scholars who contributed a ­great deal to the field of exegesis but neglected biblical criticism. They refused to read scripture “in the light of modern philology and literary history” ­because, Goldziher argued, biblical criticism “contradicted the dogma of revelation.”62 For Goldziher, the Hebrew Bible told the history of a constantly evolving Jewish mono­the­ism, as he argued in his first monograph My­thol­ogy Among the Hebrews and Its Historical Development, which he initially hoped to publish in



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Hungarian. It first appeared in German in 1876 and was translated to En­ glish within a year.63 Goldziher wrote that one source of inspiration for him was research in the field of Hebrew my­thol­ogy developed by the ­father of Völkerpsychologie Heymann Steinthal (1823–99), a Privatdozent at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums. Eight years ­later, Goldziher used the Review to reiterate his views and further the cause of higher biblical criticism within Jewish theology, which, he stressed, could shed light on what he considered the most characteristic traits of Judaism: re­sis­tance to dogmatism, intuitive prophetism, belated “speculative” (philosophical) thinking, and latent schism—­a list that he further expanded in his six-­part lecture series on the history of Judaism.64 In other words, biblical criticism could teach Jews about the intellectual and spiritual contents of their own religion as well as about its history from its very beginnings. This was an unambiguous protest against the chronological limitations of the Neolog historical vision. At the core of Goldziher’s claims lay his demand for a dif­fer­ent bond between scholarly and religious thought when emphasizing (through an unfortunate meta­phor) that “the rock of my belief is rooted in the truth, it cannot contradict scholarly results.”65 The truth of the Hebrew Bible, Goldziher contended, did not depend on when its individual parts originated. He thus openly embraced one of the most progressive scholarly attitudes, almost completely absent in Hungary but very much pre­sent in German Jewish scholarship, which also polemicized against Protestant portrayals of Judaism. Goldziher quoted Abraham Geiger, who had advocated the introduction of critical biblical scholarship into Wissenschaft des Judentums as early as 1847,66 to the effect that “Jewish scholarship does not believe any more that it must exclude itself from ­free research in this field. The claim ‘What can we do about it? The walls of masorah enclose us’ is not held anymore. Biblical criticism has regained its rights in Judaism.”67 Goldziher also mentioned the critical biblical studies conducted by Zunz, whom Hungarian Neologs trusted as a reliable authority,68 even though they saw learning as in­de­pen­ dent of religiosity and thus did not share Geiger’s, Zunz’s, or Goldziher’s interest in synchronizing scholarly knowledge with religious truth.69 Goldziher may have been thinking of Bacher’s oeuvre when he criticized scholars for neglecting biblical criticism in ­favor of exegesis. Goldziher had befriended Bacher in his late teen years and respected him as a scholar; Ba­ cher’s l­ater marriage to Goldziher’s cousin made the two men members of the same ­family. In his diary, Goldziher confessed his disappointment that Bacher did not share his passion for reforming Hungarian Jewish religious

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practice and scholarship,70 and indeed, biblical criticism would have been contrary to the oft-­quoted Bacher dictum, “The religious content of our Scripture is of divine origin, yet, in order to explore it, cognitive judgment must be employed”71 within limits. Nonetheless, as editor of the scholarly Review, Bacher published Goldziher’s essay as well as other writings that openly criticized the Neolog religious leadership.72 Bacher’s attitude ­toward biblical criticism, in fact, appears more tolerant when compared to that of the editor of the “Jewish communal and social weekly” Egyenlőség (Equality), Miksa Szabolcsi (1857–1915), in his reaction to the “Elzász affair”—an affair, as Tamás Bíró notes, that was mostly created by Szabolcsi himself.73 On March 3, 1889, Equality published a letter from a Protestant theology student, István Hornyik, complaining about a public lecture on the Song of Songs or­g a­nized by the Rabbinical Seminary’s Theological Association and delivered by the rabbinical candidate Bernát (Bernard) Elzász (1866–1938).74 Hornyik wrote that he was baffled that the “rabbinical students . . . ​­were not afraid to feed biblical criticism to a lay audience.”75 He noted that Protestants ­were themselves occupied with higher criticism, but that “in front of ­people who can be persuaded easily, we would not dare to say that the wise Solomon did not write Shir ha-­shirim.” At the time, Szabolcsi considered criticism to be a legitimate intellectual pursuit that, nonetheless, was contrary to “true” Jewish religiosity.76 Unmoved by Szabolcsi’s outrage, the Review’s editors published Elzász’s “Open Letter” to Equality, which Szabolcsi refused to print.77 In his letter, Elzász defended both the scholarly and “moral” claims of his lecture by stressing that they did not contradict Jewish religiosity. He also noted that ­after making inquiries, he learned that no Protestant theology student with the name Hornyik existed.78 Although Szabolcsi predicted that Elzász’s be­hav­ior would have serious consequences, Elzász was ordained as a rabbi not long thereafter,79 and despite such discouragement, rabbinical students continued to pursue critical scholarship on scripture.80 In time, Szabolcsi’s animosity against what he identified as religious dissent only grew. In the August 22, 1890, issue of Equality, he went so far as to contend that biblical criticism was a sin, perpetrated within the walls of the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest. He named Bacher as the culprit who spoiled the souls of the f­uture generation of Hungarian rabbis, reporting that “in his lectures Professor Dr. Bacher expounded on who put Moses’s commandments into words centuries ­after Moses’s death.”81 While Szabolcsi’s claim remains unsubstantiated by former seminary students’ reminiscences, it confirms



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that the internal scholarly strife articulated by Goldziher spilled over into the broader community.82 The Review repeatedly notified its readers about “the lit­er­a­ture of the Hebrew Bible” in the “lit­er­a­ture” (and not the “scholarship”) section even ­after Blau took over the editorial tasks. It showcased multiple Neolog scholarly voices and thus, albeit in a ­limited manner, maintained disciplinary variety within Hungarian Jewish scholarship.

A Confident Literary Turn: The IMIT Yearbook In 1895 Judaism was recognized as a state religion, and, as a result, Jewish scholars could theoretically become full university faculty members. Bacher and the ­lawyer and influential community leader at the National Bureau of the Hungarian Israelite Communities, Ferenc Mezey (1860–1927), established the IMIT Yearbook the very same year, and two years ­later Bánóczi, author of the first issue’s lead article, took over the editorial tasks from Mezey. Founded in 1894, the Israelite Hungarian Literary Society’s main objective was to commission a Hungarian translation of the complete Hebrew Bible.83 Other translations existed: the commonly used Protestant translation by Gáspár Károli/Károlyi (1590) and the Catholic Bible translation by György Káldi (1626) had been amended over the centuries according to changing language customs, and the Jewish Móric Bloch (1815–91) published a translation of the Pentateuch from the Hebrew original in 1840 and 1841. However, none of ­these satisfied the Neolog leadership. Bloch was a well-­k nown advocate of Jewish emancipation and an early proponent of a Hungarian Jewish teachers’ college. It is unclear to what extent his conversion to Protestantism in 1843 affected Jewish attitudes ­toward his translation, which was among the first manifestations of the growing Jewish interest in shifting religious lit­ er­a­ture and the language of religious practice to Hungarian, a chief po­liti­cal goal of Neology.84 Beginning in the 1840s, partial Bible translations and translations of prayer books sporadically appeared and, parallel to them, the Jewish press promoted the idea of a Hungarian-­language Jewish Bible translation. Löw’s Magyar zsinagóga (Hungarian synagogue) (1847) did so, and in 1886 the Review’s editors stressed that “we need the Bible as a tool of education in the school, we owe it to our national lit­er­a­ture ­because we are Hungarian, and we owe it to our confession ­because we are Jewish.” Hoping to strengthen Jewish identity among readers by praising the level of their acculturation and

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the firmness of their Hungarian consciousness, the editors added, “We are Hungarians enough to dare to be Jews.”85 The Israelite Hungarian Literary Society’s initiative bore fruit within de­cades: their Hungarian translation of the Hebrew Bible was published in four volumes between 1898 and 1907. Considering the number of German Jewish Bible translations produced in the nineteenth ­century, the role ­these translations played in shaping German Jewish cultural identification, and the significance of biblical criticism in German Jewish scholarship, the Israelite Hungarian Literary Society’s achievement seems rather meager. Looking more closely, however, it illustrates that the Hebrew Bible played dif­fer­ent roles in modern German and Hungarian Jewish learning. Heading the IMIT Yearbook’s first issue, Bánóczi’s “Toldi és a Biblia” (Toldi and the Bible) illustrates Hungarian scholarship’s literary and ethnographic approach to the biblical narrative. It examines connections between two texts: an epic poem retelling the history of the young peasant Miklós Toldi by the im­mensely influential Hungarian poet, translator, and acad­emy secretary János Arany (1817–82); and the Hebrew Bible.86 The article was no less strategically positioned than Kohn’s historical study in the Review eleven years ­earlier, suggesting that editorial work now concentrated on the promotion of Hungarian consciousness among Jews. Like other literary scholars, Bánóczi was interested in identifying Arany’s literary inspirations, demonstrating Arany’s intimate familiarity with the text of the Hebrew Bible, manifest in the poem’s language and the resemblance of its main characters to the biblical figures Samson, David, and Rebecca. Thus, the article served as an illustration of the Hebrew Bible’s creative influence on Hungarian lit­er­a­ture. Authored by Bánóczi, whose evident expertise in Hungarian literary history further reinforced its argument, the article was comparable to the efforts of Vámbéry, Mahler, and Goldziher to integrate scholarship by Hungarian Jews into Hungarian academic research in the field of Orientalism. Bánóczi’s approach was perpetuated in Bernát Heller’s studies examining Heinrich Heine’s oeuvre and the connections between Arany’s poetry and aggadah, both in the IMIT Yearbook and in non-­Jewish periodicals, such as the progressive literary periodical Nyugat (West) and Ethnographia. At the same time, as mentioned ­earlier, ­these articles also paid tribute to the teachings of Heller’s professors Bacher and Goldziher.87 Heller’s writings illustrate how Goldziher’s passion for the study of cross-­cultural influences between ethnicities and religions also inspired scholarly research regarding the influence of



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folk culture on high culture in dif­fer­ent geo­graph­i­cal regions and historical periods. The IMIT Yearbook editors’ occupation with ethnography and folklore is likewise reflected in a call to collect ethnographic data on Hungarian Jewry, published in the 1899 IMIT Yearbook.88 The author, the linguist József Balassa (1864–1945), one of the first contributors to Ethnographia, used an almost verbatim translation of the 1896 survey by the German Jewish folklorist and founder of the Gesellschaft für Jüdische Volkskunde, Max Grünwald (1871–1953).89 Emphasizing the significance of the adoption of Grünwald’s work, the scholars János Oláh and Szonja Ráhel Komoróczy observed the German impact on the development of Hungarian “Jewish ethnography,” suggesting that at the end of the nineteenth ­century German Wissenschaft des Judentums was still shaping the development of Hungarian Jewish scholarship.90 Yet Balassa was not the first to promote folklore research among Hungarian Jewish scholars. Not only had Goldziher, Bacher, Kunos, and ­others long exhibited interest in ethnography, but Goldziher, Kohn, and Munkácsi w ­ ere also among the found­ers of the Hungarian Ethnographic Society, established in 1889, a de­cade before the appearance of Ba­ lassa’s call. And not only did Ethnographia publish articles on subjects related to Jewish studies from Goldziher, Heller, Balassa, and ­others, but it was also edited by Munkácsi. In fact, through their disciplinary training they ­were necessarily exposed to the ethnographic aspects of modern Eu­ro­pean linguistics and historiography. However, Balassa’s significance in raising awareness of the need to study Jewish life and culture in Hungary is unquestionable. It was only ­after the publication of his survey, reprinted in a more detailed version in the Review in 1900, that IMIT’s folklore society was founded and the folklore section of the Review was opened.91 Thus, the institutionalization of “Jewish ethnography” based on the German example was a relatively late phenomenon; it followed Hungarian Jewish scholars’ own pathbreaking engagement with ethnography in their studies related to but institutionally on the margins of Jewish studies. Ethnographic research also opened a new ave­nue for Yiddish studies. Although it had never become a mainstream research field within Hungarian Jewish scholarship, according to Komoróczy, Yiddish studies ­were significant ­because their content reflected Hungarian Jews’ self-­identification as Hungarian speakers: in contrast to their Yiddish-­speaking grand­fathers, they felt confident that they “truly” belonged to the Hungarian nation.92 Similarly to historiography, ethnography, literary studies, and the proj­ect

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of the Hungarian translation of the Hebrew Bible, Yiddish studies reinforced the ethos of patriotic Jewish scholarship. In 1901, fifteen years ­after Bacher’s and Bánóczi’s rationale for a Hebrew Bible in Hungarian was published, Blau reasoned similarly apropos a wholly dif­fer­ent subject, namely, Yiddish scholarship. He wrote, “The Hungarian Jew is the product of the Hungarian soil. Thorough study of him contributes to the study of the Hungarian homeland.”93 Blau’s assessment of the po­liti­cal significance of Yiddish research reflects the view that early twentieth-­century Hungarian Jewish scholars ­were confident that their work would contribute not only to Jewish but also to Hungarian national scholarship.

Conclusion Based on the premise that modern German Jewish scholarship was pre­sent in Hungary for the greater part of the nineteenth ­century, this essay has argued that the separate field of Hungarian Jewish scholarship evolved out of the traditions of German Wissenschaft des Judentums over the last three de­cades of the nineteenth ­century. From both the institutional and the scholarly perspectives, the foundation of the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest in 1877 was a major step ­toward the establishment of this field. In the seminary’s curriculum as well as in the work of some faculty members, the teachings of positive-­historical Judaism and Hungarian national consciousness merged and remained prominent. This combined intellectual legacy can be detected in the examination of three Hungarian Jewish periodicals: the Rabbinical Seminary’s Bulletin, the Hungarian Jewish Review, and the IMIT Yearbook, edited by professors associated with the seminary during the first three de­cades of its history.94 It illustrates that Hungarian scholarship’s subsequent evolution was a result of the gradual shift in the choice of language from German to Hungarian, in addition to reliance on methodology developed internationally, the growing influence of Hungarian academia on the topical orientation of research, and Neology’s twofold approach to religion and scholarship, illustrated by its ambiguous attitude ­toward biblical criticism.95 Building on the foundations laid down by Silber, Turán, and Wilke, as well as Bíró and Kinga Frojimovics, further research should thoroughly explore the last of ­these issues, which may reveal how Neolog theological attitudes contributed to Hungarian Jewish studies’ engagement with the theological teachings of other religious communities, including Jewish



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Orthodoxy.96 Likewise, more research is needed to fully understand the theological motivations ­behind the disciplinary proliferation of Jewish research in Hungary. The fields and disciplines in which Hungarian Jewish scholars worked—­history, literary studies, Orientalism, ethnography, and folklore—­not only enriched Jewish studies but also allowed Jewish scholars to define their Jewish identification and emphasize their Hungarian consciousness as scholars and citizens alike. In the broader history of Jewish integration in modern Hungary, the history of Neolog scholarship reconstructed in this essay forms a relatively late chapter. Among German Jews, Moses Mendelssohn’s Bi’ur played a pioneering role in linguistic acculturation: it was a literary-­scholarly proj­ect that contributed to a longer, sociocultural pro­cess, also beyond the German borders. In contrast, Bible translation did not play an impor­tant role in Hungarian Jewish scholarship (and linguistic acculturation), nor did the scholarly proj­ect advance acculturation but rather came at a relatively late stage in integration. Jews in Hungary first encountered modern Jewish studies in German. As Silber claims, in the first part of the nineteenth ­century, “Hungarian maskilim failed to develop an in­de­pen­dent cultural center.”97 Only t­oward the end of the nineteenth ­century (­after a failed revolution and emancipation and then a constitutional reform and new Jewish emancipation) did university-­trained Hungarian Jewish scholars establish a Jewish multidisciplinary field in Hungarian. And when they did, it did not entail a break from the German scholarly center. If at the beginning of the ­century rabbis trained in Hungary found employment as rabbis in German communities, ­toward the end of the ­century, as Goldziher’s eminent student Márton (Martin) Schreiner’s (1863–1926) ­career illustrates, they also became recognized Jewish scholars in Germany.98 ­Those who did not leave for abroad—­that is, the first generation of the seminary’s faculty—­frequently contributed to periodicals in German, En­glish, French, and other languages and published monographs in multiple languages, continuing to participate, often as major authorities, in the German Wissenschaft des Judentums. The comparison between German and Hungarian Jewish scholars’ impact on national academia teaches similarly impor­tant lessons. Nils Roemer has argued that German Jewish scholars’ effect on German scholarship and readership was much more ­limited than what some historians claim. Their influence was almost negligible in comparison to that of their Protestant contemporaries.99 By contrast, this essay has emphasized that even if from a marginal position but certainly not as complete outsiders, Jewish scholars

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contributed to the research curriculum of the secular university in Budapest and of the Hungarian Acad­emy of Sciences alike. They played a central role in shaping Hungarian Orientalism, linguistics, and folklore research regardless of their relatively marginalized position in national academic institutions. Their c­ areers ­were characterized by a permanent tension between the national academic establishment’s acknowl­edgment of their scholarly achievements and their Jewish identification, which continually exposed them to po­liti­cal and cultural biases. The bi-­ and even multilingual character and methodological strength of their work counterbalanced the Hungarian language’s isolating effect on their scholarship. ­Today, it allows scholars to appreciate their work as if untouched by the Hungarian cultural context in which they w ­ ere produced, not unlike Frankel’s biographers dismissing the likely influence of Pest. At the same time, Hungarian lexicons and encyclopedias often eschew mentioning their Jewish identification or refer to it without properly addressing its relevance to their academic ­careers. Emphasizing that their collective oeuvre adapted German Jewish scholarly ideals and religious and ideological positions to the markedly dif­fer­ent po­liti­cal and cultural Hungarian milieu, this study has attempted to push back against such conventions of categorization and call for further exploration of the culturally complex, political-­scholarly forum that Hungarian Jewish scholars established at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth ­centuries.

Chapter 3

Wissenschaft des Judentums Exported to Amer­i­ca The Case of Gotthard Deutsch michael a. meyer

For multiple generations, from the time that Leopold Zunz, in 1822, edited his pioneering journal of critical research in the area of Judaism, the Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, modern Jewish studies have been associated with German Jewry. In Germany, Wissenschaft des Judentums developed, and in Germany during the nineteenth ­century, its greatest exponents did their work: Zunz and Moritz Steinschneider, Heinrich Graetz, Abraham Geiger, and Zacharias Frankel—to mention only the most outstanding names. As Jewish studies spread to other countries, the German term continued to be used, as it often is even t­ oday among Jewish scholars. For generations, Jewish scholarship outside Germany was regarded as peripheral to its point of origin, even though t­ here w ­ ere notable scholars in surrounding countries: in Italy, the Austrian Empire, and France. However, as Jewish demographics shifted, so too did Jewish scholarship.1 By the first de­cades of the twentieth ­century, it had become apparent even among the most Germanocentric of Jewish scholars that the rapidly growing American Jewish community would become the center of gravity for world Jewry not only in population but, in due course, also in Jewish scholarship. It is the purpose of this essay to illustrate an early stage in that transition through an examination of one of the Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars who exported it from Central Eu­rope to the United States, the historian Gotthard Deutsch

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(1859–1921).2 Although he played a large role in this transference, no critical study of his work has yet been undertaken.3 ­Here I ­shall attempt to show Deutsch’s connection to his Eu­ro­pean colleagues and teachers; his relation to his American milieu, especially the American Reform and Zionist movements; and the nature of his historiography, which not only reflected prevailing trends, but also contained a few ele­ments that ­were pioneering in his time.

* * * Although full-­time professorial appointments of Judaica scholars at American universities are frequently cited only for the period following World War I, when Harry Wolfson went to Harvard and Salo Baron to Columbia, ­there are numerous ­earlier examples of Jews teaching Hebrew language and Semitics within the American academic context.4 One need think only of Cyrus Adler, who taught Semitic languages at Johns Hopkins beginning in 1884, and Richard Gottheil, who taught them at Columbia beginning in 1886. Outside the university, by the 1880s American Jewry had attracted to the pulpit men of scholarly competence and achievement. Among them ­were David Einhorn, Samuel Hirsch, Marcus Jastrow, Benjamin Szold, Moses Mielziner, and Kaufmann Kohler. Deutsch once suggested that Alexander Kohut, who arrived in 1885, was “the last representative of the Eu­ro­pean ideal of scholarship as password into the rabbinate.” He had been called to his pulpit in New York, Deutsch argued, on the grounds of his scholarly reputation.5 To be sure, u ­ ntil the Jewish Quarterly Review was resuscitated by Cyrus Adler and Solomon Schechter in 1910, t­ here was no strictly scholarly journal of Jewish studies in the United States, such as the German Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums, that was devoted almost exclusively to Jewish scholarship. However, the Central Conference of American Rabbis Yearbook, beginning in 1890, and the Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, beginning in 1892, presented scholarly articles in addition to more ideological or popu­lar ones. At first skeptical about w ­ hether Wissenschaft des Judentums could flourish in Amer­i­ca, ­after the turn of the ­century Jewish scholars in Eu­rope became increasingly convinced that hegemony, or at least equivalency, was moving across the ocean. Even Moritz Steinschneider, who had at one time punningly spoken of American Jewish scholars as “Geleerte” (empty heads), eventually concluded that their heads ­were not so empty ­after all. He supposedly



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told a visiting American rabbi, Jacob Voorsanger, that the discerning Jew of Eu­rope expected ­great ­things from American Jewry in the twentieth ­century, presumably including ­great scholarship.6 What remained inadequate was library resources.7 It would take some time ­until private libraries brought over from Eu­rope and books purchased ­there made their way into what are ­today among the greatest libraries of Judaica. It was into this milieu that Gotthard Deutsch entered in 1891 when he received an appointment to become the professor of Jewish history at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, replacing the pedagogically unsuccessful Heinrich Zirndorf.8 That was the very year in which Heinrich Graetz died, and ­there is some indication both that Deutsch wanted to be Graetz’s successor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau and that the man who obtained that position, Markus Brann, was considered for the faculty of the Hebrew Union College.9 At the time Deutsch, then thirty-­t wo years old, was serving as rabbi in the small Bohemian town of Brüx (­today Most). He had been born in Kanitz, Moravia, in 1859 and attended both the yeshiva and the academic high school in Nikolsburg before entering the seminary in Breslau and studying si­mul­ta­neously at the local university ­there. From Breslau he traveled to Vienna, where he received a rabbinical diploma from Isaac Hirsch Weiss and completed a doctoral program at the University of Vienna, focusing especially on history and philosophy. T ­ here followed teaching positions at both Jewish and secular high schools in Brünn (Brno) before the rabbinical position in Brüx. In his university studies, Deutsch gravitated to professors of Jewish origin. At Breslau he studied history with Jacob Caro, a specialist in Polish history and the descendant of a prestigious rabbinical ­family, who had apostatized for the sake of his ­career. According to Deutsch’s ­sister, it was Caro who first recognized her ­brother’s talent for history and with whom he developed the closest relationship.10 During his five semesters at the University of Vienna he was also attracted to Max Büdinger, another converted general historian of rabbinical ancestry. Büdinger was a student of Leopold Ranke and no doubt transmitted some of his teacher’s commitment to excavating the solid facts of history to his own students. Büdinger’s prolific scholarship, which ranged very widely, included one work that lay in the area of ancient Israelite history, entitled Egyptische Einwirkungen auf hebräische Culte (1872). For his doctoral dissertation Deutsch chose a non-­Jewish topic, dealing with the Lombards’ relation to the native population of Italy.11

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Perhaps he thought that would be a better qualification for an academic position than a Jewish subject would have been. His goal at that time was to become a teacher of secular history.12 However, while still in Eu­rope, Deutsch began to concentrate on Jewish history. He wrote and published on his own a historical study on the Jews in Moravia. It was his expressed intent to show that in his own Vaterland the Israelites—he avoids the word “Jews”—­had been an indefatigable, productive ele­ment in the population. This brief essay anticipates Deutsch’s ­later work in that it brings together facts relating to demography, occupation, po­liti­cal status, and religious leadership, indicating remarkable mastery of the material but ­little penetration beneath the surface of events. He justifies this admitted limitation by the scarcity of sources, which did not allow for a more thorough treatment.13 Deutsch also wrote articles on a wide variety of subjects for the Jüdisches Litteratur-­Blatt, published at that time as a supplement to the Israelitische Wochenschrift by Moritz Rahmer, an adherent of the Breslau Seminary’s philosophy.14 From this period also stem pamphlet-­sized studies on Zunz and Samson Raphael Hirsch, as well as a short treatment of the expulsion of the Jews from Brünn in 1454, this last dedicated, as “a sign of grateful re­spect,” to his teacher Heinrich Graetz.15 The most in­ter­est­ing of Deutsch’s early Eu­ro­pean writings for our subject is a lengthy essay titled “Die jüdische Theologie als Wissenschaft” (Jewish theology as scholarly discipline). The issue was not ­whether theology, as then understood, qualified as an intellectual discipline worthy of the term Wissenschaft but rather w ­ hether Wissenschaft as a practice required substituting methodological atheism for religious Judaism. According to Deutsch, despite what some might think, atheism was not a prerequisite for objective scholarly study. In his view, the critical accomplishments of certain medieval and early modern Jews, such as Saadia Gaon, David Kimchi, and Elijah Levita, could properly fit ­under the rubric of Wissenschaft, or what we would ­today call Religionswissenschaft (religious studies). But Deutsch does recognize that ­these men ­were exceptions in their time and that the thorough study of rabbinic Judaism according to the criteria of Wissenschaft is largely indebted to the doyen of modern Jewish studies, Leopold Zunz, in whose wake it becomes incumbent on rabbis to apply the results of critical research to their rabbinical practice. In making such a statement, Deutsch recognizes himself as an “apologete” for the role of Wissenschaft des Judentums in con­ temporary Jewish life at a time when adherents of a traditional Judaism still opposed it on theological grounds or sought to limit its purview. In his eyes



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its scope should not be ­limited. Demurring from the philosophy of the Breslau School, he insists that biblical criticism, including that of the Pentateuch, not be excluded from Wissenschaft des Judentums. Both the rabbi and the Jewish teacher must deal with it even if, in the end, they reject its conclusions. Only unprejudiced and unconstricted research, Deutsch argues, can raise study of the Jewish religion to the rank of an academic discipline and thereby also raise the professional status of the rabbi and Jewish teacher.16 Perhaps it was this article in par­tic­u­lar that made Deutsch seem an appropriate candidate for the position at Hebrew Union College.

* * * Although he spent nearly half of his life in the United States, from his new home in Cincinnati, Deutsch communicated regularly with the dominant scholars of Jewish Wissenschaft in Eu­rope. As Samuel Krauss in Vienna wrote of Deutsch, it was the shared love of their field that bound them together.17 Deutsch claimed to have written an average of ten letters a day, many of them to Eu­rope, and even decorated his lecture hall in Cincinnati with portraits of his German pre­de­ces­sors.18 Looking back on the found­ers, he expressed re­spect for the impartiality that Isaac Marcus Jost had evidenced in his historical writing and credited it as the first attempt at writing scientific Jewish history from a Jewish point of view. In the years following the French Revolution—­which Deutsch regarded as an event of utmost significance in Jewish history—­Jost had been able to write with a proud self-­ consciousness vis-­à-­vis the outside world that had not existed previously. But at the same time, he criticized this pioneer of Jewish historiography for being hampered by “the rationalistic tendencies of the post-­Mendelssohnian era, which saw in rabbinism only a force of retardation.”19 Deutsch expressed a similar mea­sure of appreciation for Leopold Zunz. He had become acquainted with him in 1878 and was pleased to rec­ord that when he told the elder scholar that he had read the oft-­disregarded brief writings of Zunz’s late years, Zunz replied, “I thought that I had buried t­ hese articles in a catacomb, and I wrote them only upon Geiger’s urging.”20 Regrettably perhaps, Deutsch thought, Zunz had become a Stubengelehrter (reclusive scholar). But Deutsch thought Graetz grossly unfair in demeaning Zunz’s work as nothing more than Notizenkram (a mere ­jumble of notes), even if he had to admit that Zunz’s writings ­were not for the masses.21 Moreover, as Deutsch wrote to Louis Marshall, Zunz was praiseworthy in not being an excessively

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conservative scholar. He may have at one time defended tefilin, but his belief that the book of Leviticus was postexilic placed him among the radicals.22 ­Here and, as we ­shall see, also in some other re­spects, Deutsch followed more closely in the footsteps of Zunz than he did in t­ hose of Graetz. Deutsch did, however, wish to be known as a proud disciple of Heinrich Graetz, whom he regarded as the master-­builder of Jewish historiography, both as a scholar and as a writer. He had studied with him as a rabbinical student in Breslau, and in Amer­i­ca he assigned the work of his revered Eu­ro­pean teacher to his own students. He appreciated Graetz not only as a ­great historian, with an ability to penetrate the character of a period, but also as a warm-­hearted Jew. Still, in his writings on Graetz, the critique outweighs the praise. For Deutsch, accuracy is of the utmost importance, and he has ­little difficulty in finding ­mistakes in Graetz’s work, especially within the ­limited space that Graetz devotes to Amer­i­ca. Factual errors, in Deutsch’s view, necessarily raise the possibility of false interpretation. His interleaved copy of Graetz’s Geschichte der Juden, deposited at the Hebrew Union College Library in Cincinnati, contains numerous corrections and expansions of Graetz’s writing. Although he agrees with Graetz’s low regard for Hasidism, Deutsch criticizes Graetz’s unfair and overly ­limited treatment of Eastern Eu­ro­pean Jewry in general and his unfortunate neglect of a subject very dear to Deutsch’s heart, the development of Yiddish and Hebrew lit­er­a­t ure. 23 He does not find fault with his mentor’s attachment to Jewish nationalism but, not surprisingly, criticizes what he regards as Graetz’s highly biased treatment of the Reform movement. Deutsch is well aware that absolute impartiality is not pos­si­ble, but he argues that the historian owes it to his craft to pre­sent both sides of disputed historical issues. What trou­bles Deutsch most, however, is Graetz’s proclivity to treat emotionally appealing sources uncritically and sometimes to go entirely beyond them. Not only does Graetz take the romantic but manifestly legendary story of the Four Captives, recorded as fact in Abraham Ibn Daud’s Sefer ha-­kabalah (Book of tradition), as accurate, but he invents facts out of thin air, most notably in his first volume, dealing with the biblical period, where he does not hesitate to indicate what the weather was like on a given day. Moreover, Graetz transcends the proper métier of the historian in a second re­spect when at vari­ous points he introduces the theological concept of providence into his narrative. For Deutsch, such flights of imagination and the imposition of causalities foreign to scientific historical writing diminish Graetz’s stature.24 His mentor’s proclivity to dwell upon what was emotionally appealing led him to



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neglect ­matters that ­were clear from the documents but simply too prosaic to deserve extended attention.25 Deutsch had a romantic streak himself, but he wisely contained it within two ghetto novels that he wrote in German and a five-­act historical tragedy about a fifteenth-­century ritual murder accusation, written in En­glish.26 Throughout his life Deutsch remained anchored in the Eu­ro­pean traditions of Wissenschaft des Judentums, though he thought the term itself an awkward and misleading coinage, especially in its abbreviated form as jüdische Wissenschaft. Critical historical study, ­after all, was universal, and ­there was no par­tic­u ­lar Jewish form of it. Moreover, the Wissenschaft of historiography, for example, lacked the exactitude of the natu­ral sciences. “This term spells abomination to me,” he wrote, “and this so much the more so when it is translated into En­glish as ‘Science of Judaism.’ ” He preferred the description “a critical pre­sen­ta­tion of Jewish history and lit­er­a­ture.”27 But he was unable to substitute an alternative concise term, even as he began to develop his own approach to the subject in general and to the historiography of the Jews in par­tic­u ­lar. Moreover, the scientific ideal, however expressed, remained central to his scholarly work. It was Deutsch’s adherence to this ideal that in large mea­sure determined his attitude to the two Jewish movements that dominated his years in Amer­ i­ca: Zionism and Reform Judaism. Initially, Deutsch was not a Zionist. Indeed, that would have been difficult for him as a member of the Hebrew Union College faculty during the early years of Kaufmann Kohler’s presidency. Deutsch believed that the Zionists w ­ ere both too optimistic with regard to the success of their proj­ect and too pessimistic with regard to the United States. Moreover, they had set aside the universalism that was Deutsch’s religious ideal. He never put it more strongly than when he wrote at the end of a German article that “the ideal of a ­union of states of the ­whole world seems to some, including the author of this essay, higher than that of a west-­ Asiatic Bulgaria or even a west-­Asiatic Switzerland.”28 But he had no patience with “that Philistine idea which says that Washington is our Jerusalem and Amer­i­ca our Palestine.”29 As a historian, he had to recognize the absurdity of such a claim. Deutsch did support the yishuv, the Zionist settlement in Palestine, and expressed sympathy with Jews everywhere to the point that in a Hebrew biography Joshua Bloch could regard Deutsch, at least in his ­later years, as a national Jew. What­ever his personal position, however, he felt that in his role as historian of the Jews he had to be beyond partisanship. For better or worse, the Zionist movement was an active force in Jewish history,

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and it was his obligation as an adherent of Wissenschaft des Judentums to give it its proper due. It was therefore as a historian, not as a partisan, that he attended the Seventh Zionist Congress on his way to visiting Palestine in 1905.30 And it was as a devotee of Jewish culture in all its manifestations that he enjoyed reading and writing in both Yiddish and modern Hebrew.31 Although, as a ­matter of princi­ple, he never became an official member of any Zionist organ­ization, by the end of his life he was contributing the equivalent of a membership fee to the Zionist cause.32 The same was true for the Reform movement: he was indeed or­gan­i­za­ tion­a lly associated with it and, writing as a historian, recognized its role within Jewish modernity, but he freely indicated its shortcomings. To George Kohut he complained of the “clap-­trap of Reform, that constant cackling over the achievements of reform. . . . ​The only ­thing that revolts me is the unjust denunciation of Reform in its proper historic place, forgetting that we owe to Reform secular education, aestheticism in social life and in public worship, and the Wissenschaft des Judentums.”33 When some of his fellow Reform rabbis began to neglect what he called the “unique value of historic sentiment” with regard to the sanctity of the Sabbath, he felt the need to express a contrary view.34 For Deutsch, being a scholar of Jewish history meant adopting Solomon Schechter’s notion of klal Yisra’el, the broad catholicity of the Jewish p­ eople. When Isaac Mayer Wise died in 1900, Deutsch was among ­those favoring a merger between Reform’s Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati and the incipient, more traditional Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.35

* * * ­ ere one to attribute Deutsch’s historical writing, on what­ever subject, to a W par­tic­u­lar school of general historiography, it would doubtless be that of historical positivism. The positivistic approach to historiography stressed the importance of remaining true to discoverable and verifiable facts. During the 1880s it was intimately connected to the displacement of philosophy by a new scientific outlook in German universities, and it soon made its way across the ocean to Amer­i­ca as well, where German-­trained historians, such as Herbert Baxter Adams at Johns Hopkins, set out to write what they called “scientific history.” Like the natu­ral sciences, its approach would be strictly empirical, ­free of subordination to any philosophy. Their models ­were Leopold von Ranke, who had regarded speculation as anathema, and the most



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prominent of the German positivistic historians, Theodor Mommsen.36 As the German-­trained Harvard historian Ephraim Emerton wrote, “If one must choose between a school of history whose main characteristic is the spirit, and one which rests upon the greatest attainable number of recorded facts, we cannot long hesitate.”37 Similarly, Edward Cheyney at the University of Pennsylvania was convinced that if the historian ­were able to avoid the phantom of hypotheses, he could produce a body of reliable facts that “when justly arranged, interpret themselves.”38 Thus, in describing his task as arranging facts in a systematic manner, Gotthard Deutsch, this positivist historian of the Jews, was very much a scholar of his time.39 Although, as we ­shall see, Deutsch did attempt what he called a “philosophy” of history, for the most part he ­adopted the fact-­oriented approach of the positivists. Not only did critics of his work note the resultant shallowness of his writings, but he was himself aware of this shortcoming even as he upheld the notion of the primacy of individual fact over tentative generalization. He saw the trees, wrote Max Raisin, but failed to see the forest.40 Deutsch chose to call himself an artisan rather than an artist. “I am a historical carpenter,” he wrote in rejecting ­every teleological bias, “placing the boards and raf­ters where they belong, but I decline all responsibility for the architect’s plans, which I am not called upon to ­either admire or to condemn.”41 Indeed, Deutsch’s historical work was more often a m ­ atter of setting the planks side by side than constructing an elaborate edifice. He held to the safety of the facts; the more of them one could collect, the closer one came to the truth. Deutsch was, in fact, a notorious collector of Jewish historical facts. When a scholar discovered a new datum of Jewish history or when a con­temporary event—­for example, the death of a prominent personality, a pogrom, or some remarkable Jewish achievement—­occurred, Deutsch noted it down, together with its source, on a three-­by-­five card, which he filed in a cata­logue that at one point, incredibly, was said to have reached 70,000 items.42 His work drew on ­these cards and on his own no less incredible memory as grist for his mill. Scholars and nonscholars in Eu­rope and Amer­i­ca wrote to him with their historical questions.43 He was, in a sense, the Wikipedia of his day.44 Consciously in the tradition of Leopold Zunz, he compiled a list of historical events according to the days of the calendar—­a useful tool for public commemorations.45 The textbook that he wrote for teaching Jewish history in Jewish schools was largely a compilation of ­those facts that he deemed worthy of memorization, supplemented with only spare explanations.

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Most interpretation was to be left to “the intelligent teacher.”46 Of utmost significance for the historian was that the facts be correct, though Deutsch’s own work was not always ­free from factual error. Accuracy, wrote a friend, was his hobby, exactness his passion.47 Yet Deutsch must have realized that more was expected of the only individual in Amer­i­ca at that time who had a Eu­ro­pean doctorate in general history and had made the decision to devote himself to its Jewish component in medieval and modern times. Consequently, in some of his writings he went beyond the chronological arrangement of facts to deal with certain historiographical issues and even to propose innovations. Despite his objection to the term science as applied to Jewish studies, Deutsch ascribed to the social science of psy­chol­ogy a dominant role in writing ­human and Jewish history. Arguing that the chief forces (or “laws”) of ­human history are the same in all ages, he listed them as opposition, inertia, and compromise between ideal and real­ity.48 He then proceeded to give examples, demonstrating how they operated within Jewish history. This essentialism based on an unchanging ­human nature, with its resort to ­human psy­chol­ogy, was yet another characteristic of some historiography in his time, for example, in the work of Wilhelm Dilthey.49 Coming up with a periodization scheme for Jewish history, as Nachman Krochmal50 and Graetz had done before him, was another sine qua non. However, unlike his pre­de­ces­sors, Deutsch chose to focus less on spiritual development and more on politics. Similar to the l­ater work of Simon Dubnow, but unlike that of Graetz, the appearance of Moses Mendelssohn (whom Deutsch considered thoroughly overrated by both Jews and Christians)51 was not in Deutsch’s view the turning point for Jewish modernity.52 The turning point was instead the emancipation of the Jews, which began during the French Revolution. Deutsch could not be more precise: “Modern Jewish history begins the 27th of September, 1791, when the French Parliament passed a law abrogating all civic and po­liti­cal restrictions on the Jews.”53 Though he claims to eschew teleology, he sees all periods, especially the last, as marked by an—­albeit sometimes interrupted—­pro­gress, which reaches its po­liti­cal apogee in the United States. Only in Amer­i­ca, Deutsch argues, almost messianically, are Jews ­free from all fetters and fully able to harmonize Judaism with the needs of their age.54 His emphasis both on facts and on the significance of Amer­i­ca for Jewish history would find resonance in the writings of one of his successors at the Hebrew Union College, the historian Jacob Rader Marcus.



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If as a historian Deutsch was very much, and perhaps to a fault, a man of his time, judged by the ­limited and mostly inward-­focused concerns of con­temporary Wissenschaft des Judentums and especially Jewish historiography, he was also in some re­spects forward-­looking. Deutsch recognized clearly that Jewish history nestled within varying historical contexts, which the historian had to take into serious consideration. It was, for example, differing contexts that explained the success of the Reform movement in some countries and not in ­others.55 Similarly, it was the environment of Prague that was essential for understanding Zacharias Frankel.56 Stated most broadly, Jewish history was comprehensible only in its relation to world history. Deutsch was an early advocate not only of the American Jewish history neglected by the Eu­ro­pe­ans, but of what is ­today called “con­temporary history.” Analogously to the yearly reviews in the American Jewish Year Book,57 which first appeared in 1899, Deutsch would regularly report at the annual meetings of the Central Conference of American Rabbis on the most significant events affecting Jews worldwide during that year. And perhaps like no one ­else in Amer­i­ca at that time, Deutsch kept himself thoroughly informed by wading through some forty Jewish and general newspapers ­every week, carefully noting down the most impor­tant items—­raw data that could serve subsequent historical analy­sis.58 If not in itself Wissenschaft des Judentums, this assembling of facts was the preparatory task that made Wissenschaft pos­si­ble. Deutsch strongly objected to the notion that the Jewish history of modern times was less significant than that of antiquity or the ­Middle Ages. When he was called upon to produce an anthology of responsa for the Jewish Publication Society, he considered it “a grave error” that relevant lit­er­a­ture ­after the end of the eigh­teenth ­century would be excluded.59 To a lay leader of the San Francisco Jewish community he wrote that as a historian watching pre­sent affairs in Judaism, he was performing work that complemented his study of the Jewish past.60 That was not a position with which all could agree, forcing Deutsch to defend his shift of emphasis. “Friends ­here and ­there,” he wrote in the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums, “have counted it against me that I attribute a significance to the events of the day and they regard it as a prostitution of the Wissenschaft that I teach and am obliged to represent.”61 He then went on to deplore the excessive attention Jewish historians paid to such minute ­matters as the details of inscriptions on medieval Jewish tombstones while neglecting the driving forces of Jewish history in the pre­sent.

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Deutsch regretted not only that the prevailing Wissenschaft des Judentums focused excessively on the minutiae of the past, but also that it was unable or unwilling to deal with the personal side of historical characters and neglected ­those who did not fit into Graetz’s category of Geistesgeschichte (intellectual history). It is not too much to say that Deutsch was a pioneer in calling for a Jewish Alltagsgeschichte (history of everyday life). In his eulogy for a colleague at Hebrew Union College, Moses Mielziner, Deutsch said, “It is one of the saddest features in the sources of Jewish history that they contain so ­little of the personal ele­ment of our ­great men. When Rashi died, he left grown-up grand­sons, some of whom became prominent authors, but no one wrote anything about the private life of their famous grand­father.”62 Moreover, it was not only the Rashis who deserved attention. Deutsch calls par­tic­u­lar attention to the memoirs of Glikl of Hameln as the sort of source that deserves the attention of historians.63 In one of his novels Deutsch has a leading protagonist say that “even the quotidian (das Alltägliche) when it has passed becomes an object of history,” and in introducing an article he wrote for a German periodical, he explains that what he has to say contains no heroic events but simply outlines the life of unpretentious everyday ­people (Alltagsmenschen) who lived in a small village in Moravia. Although he obviously did not use the term, Deutsch considered such historiography a sort of microhistory, which, as he wrote, “shows en miniature the historical development of Judaism.”64 Deutsch wants to cast his historical net widely. Not only should historiography of the Jews include the common ­people as well as the famous, it should not draw a clear religious boundary line between Jews and non-­Jews. He believed that it should include all manner of Jews, ­whether or not religious, as well as ­those who had converted to another faith or ­were only partly of Jewish descent.65 Among Deutsch’s practical concerns was how to increase popu­lar interest in Jewish history. As a member of Cincinnati’s Board of Education from 1908 to 1912, he had recommended that classrooms install stereopticon projectors so that visuals would enhance the teachers’ pre­sen­ta­tions. When he spoke to Jewish groups in Amer­i­ca, Deutsch himself employed the stereopticon, suggesting to Rabbi Henry Berkowitz of Philadelphia that he wanted to use sixty lantern slides to illustrate his proposed lectures on modern Jewish history for the Jewish Chautauqua Society. When on one occasion he gave an illustrated lecture on “Judaism of the Nineteenth ­Century” in Chicago, he subtitled it “A Lesson in Popularizing the Study of Jewish History.”



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He wanted American rabbis to learn this new method of presenting Jewish history so that it would be more appealing to their congregants.66 A second practical concern to which he felt obligated, aside from popularizing his discipline, was presenting historical evidence to refute antisemitism, which in his day meant especially writing against the widely circulated antisemitic notions of Henry Ford.67

* * * Deutsch regretted that he was never able to produce a comprehensive scholarly history of the Jews. But for that task he had neither the requisite sources nor, it seems, the capacity. He could not transform his im­mense knowledge into a readable account. To Rabbi Sigmund Salfeld in Mainz he wrote in 1913, “My preparatory work ­toward a new Jewish history has already been dragging on for years. I have gathered thousands of notes for it but have not yet found the courage for a definitive treatment. I possess the Talmudic nature of a ­horse (Pferdenatur): ‫( אוכל הרבה ומוציא קמעה‬takes in a lot but produces ­little).”68 But in fact Deutsch did write a ­great deal, much of it in the Jewish press, in German and En­glish, in Eu­rope and in Amer­i­ca. He even called himself a newspaper person (Zeitungsmensch).69 He also produced scholarly articles for the Central Conference of American Rabbis’ Year Book, although, unlike Kaufmann Kohler and a few other Jewish scholars living in Amer­i­ca at that time, he did not publish in Breslau’s Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums.70 Fortunately for Deutsch, at the end of the ­century a venue came into existence that precisely matched his sort of scholarship, focused and highly factual. As he became closely associated with it, his name would be enshrined in the g­ reat work that more than any other marked the transfer of Wissenschaft des Judentums to Amer­i­ca. That, of course, was the Jewish Encyclopedia, which appeared between 1901 and 1906.71 Along with other prominent American scholars, mostly born in Eu­rope, Deutsch served on its editorial board, responsible for the Department of History from 1492 to the pre­sent, with the exception of Amer­i­ca, the latter being given to Cyrus Adler. Aside from editing the work of ­others, he also wrote numerous articles for its twelve volumes, including ­those on antisemitism, on Heinrich Graetz, on Prus­sia, and on Austria.72 Shortly thereafter, he would also initially be one of three associate editors for J.  D. Eisenstein’s ten-­volume Hebrew encyclopedia Otsar Yisra’el and would write articles for it as well, for example, on Jonathan

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Eibeschütz and on Eu­rope in volume 1.73 In this way Deutsch contributed to what Joseph Silverman, the rabbi of ­Temple Emanu-­El in New York, called a “re­nais­sance of the Science of Judaism in Amer­i­ca,” one that would affect Eu­rope as well as Amer­i­ca.74 Deutsch himself was not so hyperbolic. Although he regarded the Jewish Encyclopedia as “for de­cades the dream of Jewish scholars” that had come to fulfillment in Amer­i­ca, he saw his own work, and perhaps also that of his colleagues, as simply and modestly preparing the way for ­those who would follow.75

Chapter 4

Forging a New “Empire of Knowledge” Jewish Scholarship ­Under Soviet Patronage deborah yalen

In 1935, an impressive ­album of photo essays entitled Jews in the USSR was published in Yiddish in Moscow.1 Edited by Communist Party activist Shimon (Semen Markovich) Dimanshtein and emblazoned with portraits of Lenin and Stalin, the publication celebrated the triumphs of “socialist construction”2 in the Jewish milieu and the recent establishment of the Jewish Autonomous Region in the Soviet Far East. In addition to highlighting achievements in Soviet Yiddish lit­er­a­ture, theater, and the press, the collection also emphasized scholarly accomplishments. An essay entitled “Jewish Scholarly Work in the Soviet Union” by Joseph Liberberg, head of the Institute for Jewish Proletarian Culture at the Ukrainian Acad­emy of Sciences in Kiev, chronicled the creation of a new Marxist-­Leninist infrastructure for Jewish scholarship ­under state auspices.3 In the immediate aftermath of the October revolution, Liberberg explained to readers, activists focused on mass po­liti­cal enlightenment among ordinary Jews and the establishment of vocational schools, clubs, libraries, and reading rooms, as well as the creation of a new Soviet Yiddish print culture. Once ­these foundational tasks ­were accomplished, it became pos­si­ble to turn to developing “higher forms of culture,” including theaters, museums, academic libraries, and research institutes. Of the latter, the “two most impor­tant institutions” w ­ ere the Institutes for Jewish Proletarian Culture (hereafter IEPK) at the Ukrainian Acad­emy of Sciences in Kiev and the Belorus­sian Acad­emy of Sciences in Minsk.4 Other entities cited by Liberberg included a chair for Yiddish Language

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and Lit­er­a­ture at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute, a Jewish Section of the Communist University for National Minorities of the West, and Jewish research units within the Odessa Institute for Social Movements, the Kharkov Central Library, the Belorus­sian State University, the Belorus­sian Central State Library, and the Institute of Nationalities in Moscow. A key mandate of the research institutes in Kiev and Minsk, wrote Liberberg, was to carry out a “strug­gle with bourgeois Jewish nationalist ideology and scholarship.” The greatest challenge to establishing a Jewish scientific infrastructure in the Soviet Union, however, Liberberg recalled, was the lack of qualified (that is, po­liti­cally reliable) specialists to replace the “bourgeois” and “nationalist”-­minded scholars trained in the prerevolutionary era. By the mid-1930s, however, the “prob­lem of cadres” had been resolved through the creation of a new generation of specialists: no longer did individual “self-­ taught” amateurs operate in isolation from one another. Now, Liberberg explained, graduate-­level trainees ­were brought together in the leading institutions as part of a unified “scientific front,” where they fi­nally had an opportunity to “liquidate the autodidactic character of their work” and attain higher scholarly qualifications.5 The chief task now was to develop a comprehensive network of institutions and a foundational base of scholarly materials or­ga­nized along Marxist-­Leninist princi­ples. Liberberg acknowledged that the Minsk institute, as the first Jewish scholarly entity in the Soviet Union, blazed a pioneering path for ­others to emulate. He praised its periodicals, such as Tsaytshrift, Royte bleter, and Afn visnshalftlekhn front, as well as other publications dedicated to socioeconomic-­ statistical, literary, and philological studies.6 Most of Liberberg’s essay, however, was devoted to his own institution, the IEPK in Kiev, which he described as the “largest” and “leading” Jewish scholarly entity in the Soviet Union. The institute boasted more than one hundred employees and gradu­ate students, with a bud­get of approximately 650,000 rubles.7 In addition to an archive and training laboratories for f­ uture cadres, it had eight research divisions for history, socio­economics, pedagogy, lit­er­a­ture, linguistics, ethnography, bibliographic studies, and a special section for the study of the Jewish Autonomous Region in Birobidzhan. Among the trea­sures of the IEPK, Liberberg singled out its academic library, which contained 250,000 volumes. ­These materials included works about Jews in twenty-­five dif­fer­ent languages and a manuscript division containing over 1,000 documents dating back to the eigh­teenth c­ entury. The press archive contained 12,000 complete sets of periodicals in vari­ous languages



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from forty countries, and extensive materials on the Jewish revolutionary movement the world over. The IEPK’s Central Yiddish Bibliographic Bureau, moreover, had systematized Soviet Yiddish lit­er­a­ture produced for the period from 1917 to 1930. The archive of the historical section boasted extensive documentation on the history of the Jewish ­labor movement in Imperial Rus­sia and the experiences of Jewish workers during the October Revolution. The IEPK also had a series of subunits (kabinety) for the study of history, pedagogy, musical folklore, linguistic folklore, and Soviet Yiddish lit­er­a­ture and linguistics and a laboratory for experimental pedagogy.8 Liberberg had bold plans for the f­ uture of Soviet Jewish scholarship, and in his mind ­these plans ­were intimately connected to the ­f uture of the Jewish Autonomous Region in the Soviet Far East, which was officially established in 1934.9 Appointed in December of that same year to a significant leadership role in the Jewish Autonomous Region, Liberberg took up residence ­there and argued that the most impor­tant Yiddish academic institutions, libraries, and artifacts of Jewish culture should be transferred to its administrative center in Birobidzhan.10 Liberberg’s optimism, however, was misplaced. In 1936 he was accused of Trotskyism and “bourgeois nationalism” for his alleged role in attempting to make the Jewish Autonomous Region the center of Jewish culture in the Soviet Union, and he was arrested. In May 1936, the IEPK was downgraded to an Office for the Study of Soviet Jewish Lit­er­a­ture, Language, and Folklore, and Liberberg was sentenced to death on March 9, 1937.11

* * * The rise and fall of Jewish scholarship in the Soviet Union during the interwar period—­and the tragic fate of so many of its prac­ti­tion­ers—­speak to the promises and perils of state sponsorship at a time when knowledge was weaponized in the ser­vice of ideology. While Liberberg’s rapid change of fortune was by no means unique to Jews at this par­tic­u­lar juncture, as Soviet elites and cultural institutions across the board ­were swept up in waves of Stalinist terror in the 1930s, it does speak to a distinctive moment in Jewish intellectual history. Modern Jewish studies, dating back to the Wissenschaft des Judentums tradition of the nineteenth ­century, emerged in the absence of a state-­sponsored institutional base. The Soviet Union was the first state in the world to actively sponsor and promote Jewish scholarship and scholarly institutions, albeit within a heavi­ly circumscribed ideological framework,

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and only in Yiddish, the official language of the Jewish toiling masses, rather than in Hebrew (the language of Zionists and religious clerics) or Rus­sian (the language of “bourgeois” prerevolutionary Jewish scholars). The scholars who participated in the Soviet proj­ect ­were well aware of their intellectual lineage in the Wissenschaft des Judentums tradition, but their relationship to it was complex: viewed from a Marxist perspective, Wissenschaft had played a progressive role at a par­tic­u­lar historical juncture, but it was long obsolete. In dialectical fashion, the Soviet Jewish research institutes acknowledged their historical debts to this tradition while vowing to supersede it completely, primarily by mining the knowledge accumulated in ­earlier historical stages, thoroughly reinterpreting it from a class perspective, and applying it to the task of socialist construction.12 The militant language of scholarship at this time, filled with meta­phors of battlefronts and ­enemy encirclement, reflected the imperatives of the first and second Five-­Year Plans, when the Soviet Union sought to catch up with and surpass cap­i­tal­ist rivals. This essay explores state-­sponsored Jewish scholarship in the Soviet Union from the dual perspective of Soviet history and Jewish transnational history. The promotion and eventual suppression of Yiddish-­language Jewish research institutes during the 1920s and 1930s in the Soviet Union took place within the framework of the creation of a vast pan-­Soviet scientific infrastructure ­under Bolshevik patronage, an “empire of knowledge” devoted to the goal of noncapitalist modernization. At the same time, it was also part of a transnational movement that sought to expand knowledge of Jewish culture and the Yiddish language (for example, Yiddish lit­er­a­ture, folklore, and philology and Jewish history and sociology) and to disseminate secular knowledge more broadly to Yiddish-­reading audiences. Before World War II, the two most impor­tant centers for Yiddish-­language secular scholarship ­were located in Poland and the Soviet Union. While ­there was initially some degree of scholarly collaboration across borders, ­these two centers differed radically in terms of both ideological orientation and financial support. In this essay, the primary focus ­will be on the emergence of state-­sponsored yidishe visnshaft—­a term that, depending on context, could be translated as “Jewish scholarship” or “Yiddish scholarship”—in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s and the major questions raised by this historically unpre­ ce­dented undertaking. Consistent with the dual framing of this subject as one rooted in both Soviet and Jewish intellectual history, this article ­will consider the degree to



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which state policy ­toward Jewish scholarship was typical or anomalous compared to other state-­f unded scholarly initiatives, particularly in regard to censorship and po­liti­cal repression. It ­will also address distinctions between “Jewish scholarship,” “Yiddish scholarship,” and “scholarship in Yiddish” and touch on the comparatively small body of scholarship devoted to non-­Ashkenazi, non-­Yiddish-­speaking Jewish populations in the Soviet Union, primarily in the Caucasus region, Central Asia, and Crimea. For the purpose of this discussion, the terms scholarship and scholarly ­will be used in their broadest sense as conveyed by the original Rus­sian and Yiddish terms (nauka/nauchnyi and visnshaft/visnshaftlekhe). While t­ hese terms encompass both the exact sciences and the humanities and social sciences, they ­will refer ­here to the latter two, particularly the study of history, lit­er­a­ture, folklore, philology, demography, and socio­economics. Before proceeding further, it should be acknowledged that any consideration of this subject is indebted to the work of Alfred Abraham Greenbaum, whose 1978 study Jewish Scholarship and Scholarly Institutions in Soviet Rus­sia, 1918–1953 was produced long before the collapse of the Soviet Union, at a time when access to Soviet archives remained highly restricted.13 Based almost exclusively on published sources, Greenbaum’s study offers a remarkably comprehensive and balanced overview of the subject. Although it has not been updated since then and remains out of print, its lasting value is demonstrated by the fact that it was translated into Rus­sian in 1994 and has been broadly used by a new generation of post-­Soviet Judaica scholars.14 While an array of pioneering monographs on Soviet Jewish cultural and intellectual history has been published since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of the archives, no single work has superseded Greenbaum’s multifaceted overview of Jewish scholarly activity in the USSR. In its sheer scope, it remains essential reading on the subject.15

Jewish Scholarship in Imperial Rus­sia: Apol­o­getics Versus National Self-­Affirmation When Liberberg boasted of the rich archival and library materials in the possession of the IEPK in Kiev, he neglected to mention that most of ­these resources came from private collections that had been confiscated (“nationalized” in Bolshevik terminology) and redistributed to state-­sponsored institutions. Two of the most impor­tant Imperial-­era institutions that served

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as the source for ­these valuable collections ­were the Jewish Historical-­ Ethnographic Society and the Society for the Enlightenment of Jews, which ­were forcibly closed by 1929. As Liberberg and other representatives of the new Soviet research entities often stressed, the accumulated knowledge of ­these “bourgeois” institutions would need to be reor­ga­nized and reinterpreted according to a Marxist-­Leninist paradigm. As with many other Soviet institutions in the 1920s, however, the new scholarly apparatus remained heavi­ly dependent on prerevolutionary expertise even as it sought to delegitimize it po­liti­cally. This knowledge base was established in the course of the nineteenth ­century, when Jewish scholarship in Imperial Rus­sia emerged within the framework of the Eastern Eu­ro­pean Haskalah. In addition to seeking secular knowledge, modernizing Jews ­were also ­eager to dispel Judeophobic myths and stereotypes—­particularly regarding the economic role of Jews—­through the dissemination of authoritative information in the language of the host country. In turn, the Imperial Rus­sian state sometimes engaged the ser­vices of so-­called “learned Jews” in an effort to gather data on the peculiar ways of a non-­Christian, non-­Slavic minority that it was hoping to assimilate into the mainstream.16 In 1861, for example, at the behest of the Imperial Rus­sian Geographic Society, the Jewish scholar Moses Berlin composed a Russian-­ language ethnographic study of traditional Jewish communities living in the Rus­sian Empire.17 While primarily a work of armchair scholarship, Berlin’s study Sketches of the Ethnography of the Jewish Population in Rus­sia was intended to serve as a corrective to numerous Judeophobic ethnographies and travelogues already in print. Published in Rus­sian, it was directed not ­toward Jews but rather ­toward educated and progressively minded Rus­sians and was overtly apol­o­getic in tone. In the late nineteenth ­century, a new generation of Jewish intellectuals turned to the writing of history in an attempt to defend Rus­sian Jewry against misinformation and Judeophobic legislation.18 A key moment in the history of Rus­sian Jewish scholarship came in 1891, when historian Simon Dubnow called on Rus­sian Jewish intellectuals to embark on a systematic study of Polish Jewish and Rus­sian Jewish history. Dubnow described the subject as a “vast but unexamined historical region, a complete tabula ra­sa.”19 His sense of scholarly mission was strongly informed by the politics of diaspora nationalism (also known as Autonomism) and motivated by the goal of demonstrating the historical significance of the Jewish masses in Eastern Eu­rope, who demographically far outweighed the Jews of Western Eu­rope,



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as the wellspring of modern Jewish identity. While Dubnow and his counter­ parts ­were informed by the Wissenschaft des Judentums legacy, his rallying cry to study Eastern Eu­ro­pean Jewry was in an impor­tant sense a repudiation of that tradition. By shifting the focus away from Jewish elites in German-­ speaking lands, he stressed the ongoing vitality of Eastern Eu­ro­pean Jewish civilization and the agency of ordinary Jews. The year 1897 was a critical moment for the study of Eastern Eu­ro­pean Jewry. The first All-­Empire Population Census of January 28 (February 11), 1897, furnished crucial data to Jewish historians, economists, and demographers studying this tabula ra­sa that Dubnow had spoken of a few years ­earlier. The census provided two sets of data on Jews: one for Jewish religion, and one for populations that spoke a “Jewish language” or considered Yiddish to be its ­mother tongue. For intellectuals trying to defend Jews against accusations that they exploited the Rus­sian peasantry, the 1897 census represented an objective source of data proving conclusively that Jews engaged in a wide range of economic occupations.20 The year 1897 also marked the founding of the Bund and the World Zionist Organ­ization. With the rise of ­these modern Jewish po­liti­cal movements, the social scientific study of Jewish populations became a tool for defining and advancing the ideological agendas of a broad range of po­liti­cal groups in Rus­sia.21 In turn, the statistical studies produced in late Imperial Rus­sia based on 1897 census data would be used extensively by the Soviet state-­sponsored Jewish research institutes for their own ideological purposes, in order to demonstrate a shift among Jews away from “unproductive” economic activities ­toward centrally planned industrial and agricultural l­abor. As Dubnow’s exhortation to fellow historians back in 1891 suggests, Jewish scholarship in late Imperial Rus­sia was deployed not only for the purpose of self-­defense but also for self-­affirmation. His program of historical self-­study was followed several years ­later by the writer and ethnographer S. An-­sky’s call in 1908 for a Jewish ethnography ­free of apol­o­getics.22 An-­ sky spoke of Jewish folklore as the “Oral Torah” of the Jewish masses and a rich source of Jewish national identity. Together, Dubnow and An-­sky would become leading figures in the establishment of the Jewish Historical-­ Ethnographic Society (JHES) in St. Petersburg and its journal Evreiskaia starina (The Jewish past), which became an impor­tant venue for publishing scholarship on the Jews of Eastern Eu­rope. From 1912 to 1914, An-­sky led a famed ethnographic expedition into the Jewish Pale of Settlement, during which time he traveled to scores of small towns and villages, collected and

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recorded oral folklore, and acquired material objects for study and display in a museum established by the JHES. ­These materials ­were ­later confiscated by the Bolsheviks and redistributed to Soviet institutions, including the IEPK in Kiev.23 Although the JHES was not formally closed u ­ ntil 1929, both Dubnow and An-­sky ­were frequently vilified by Jewish Bolsheviks as “bourgeois-­ nationalists” and “folkists” who used scholarship to advance narrow nationalist concerns.

The Transnational Rise of Yiddish as a Language of Scholarship Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Jewish intellectuals in Imperial Rus­sia also engaged in “language wars” regarding which language—­Yiddish, Hebrew, or the language of the host country—­was the most appropriate vehicle for Jewish education and modernization.24 For much of the nineteenth ­century, proponents of the Eastern Eu­ro­pean Haskalah hoped that Jewish civic emancipation could be achieved through acculturation and assimilation into the host country. Many of ­these modernizing Jewish intellectuals disdained Yiddish, the everyday language of Eastern Eu­ro­pean Jewry, as a corrupted form of German and typically referred to it as zhargon. Although ­these reformers would have preferred to enlighten the Jewish masses in the Eu­ro­pean languages of their host countries, they ­were forced to recognize that Yiddish was the only effective language in which to disseminate their ideas, at least for the time being.25 With the rise of Jewish mass po­liti­cal movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the growth of the Yiddish press, however, Yiddish increasingly came to be recognized and celebrated as the legitimate language of the Eastern Eu­ro­pean Jewish masses. In the aftermath of World War I, the replacement of the old regimes of Eu­rope with new modern states obligated to protect the rights of national minorities made the public institutionalization of Yiddish language and culture pos­si­ble. In Poland, for instance, the conditions set by the Minorities Treaty made the establishment of the Yiddish Scientific Institute (YIVO) a po­liti­cal and l­egal real­ity, even though YIVO found­ ers would strug­gle over the years to obtain state support.26 In the new Soviet state, the promotion of Yiddish along with a host of other minority languages was part of a much larger effort by the Bolsheviks to use national language as a vehicle for the inculcation of Marxist-­Leninist consciousness.27



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This dramatic shift in the status of the Yiddish language in Eastern Eu­rope was an essential precondition for the institutionalization of both “Yiddish scholarship” and “scholarship in Yiddish” that occurred virtually si­mul­ta­neously in Poland and in the Soviet Union in the mid-1920s. YIVO in Vilna in interwar Poland and the Jewish Department of the Institute for Belorus­sian Culture (Inbelkult) in Minsk ­were founded almost concurrently in the course of 1924–25.28 When Inbelkult was reor­ga­nized in 1928, the Jewish Department became the Jewish Sector of the Acad­emy of Sciences of the Belorus­sian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR). In the meantime, in Kiev, a chair for Jewish culture at the Ukrainian Acad­emy of Sciences was announced in late 1926 and was ­later upgraded in 1929 to an Institute for Jewish Culture. In the early 1930s, both the Minsk and Kiev entities ­were subsequently redesignated as Institutes for Jewish Proletarian Culture.29 While t­ here was initially a good deal of intellectual exchange across borders in the 1920s, ­there ­were key financial and ideological differences driving t­ hese initiatives in Poland and the Soviet Union. YIVO was established at the behest of private individuals, without the material support of the Polish government, while the Soviet Yiddish–­language research institutes in Minsk and Kiev ­were part of a state-­subsidized scientific infrastructure. YIVO strug­gled financially, while the Soviet Yiddish institutes enjoyed relative financial security.30 Despite the radically dif­fer­ent ideological circumstances ­u nder which they ­were founded, the Yiddish research establishments in Poland and the Soviet Union shared a common intellectual genealogy dating back to the early nineteenth-­century German Jewish Wissenschaft des Judentums tradition. Influenced by the values of the Eu­ro­pean Enlightenment and motivated by the pursuit of civic emancipation, the adherents of Wissenschaft des Judentums pioneered a critical approach to Jewish knowledge and created an institutional framework within which the Jewish past became an object of “scientific” study.31 YIVO scholars and the Soviet Yiddish intelligent­sia alike positioned themselves negatively in reference to this movement, which they each for dif­fer­ent reasons viewed as ideologically flawed. YIVO scholars, who envisioned themselves as a community of scholars of and for the Jewish folk, criticized the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement as assimilationist and disdainful of the Jewish masses.32 Sharing this antielitist sentiment, Soviet Yiddish scholars similarly characterized the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement as an instrument of the German Jewish bourgeoisie. At the same time, however, they viewed the “bourgeois nationalist” scholarship of YIVO as a logical outcome of the Wissenschaft des Judentums tradition. The Soviet

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Yiddish establishment acknowledged the innovative role that Wissenschaft des Judentums had played in its own time, but it vowed that Marxist yidishe visnshaft would reinterpret this accumulated knowledge in the ser­vice of class warfare and socialist construction.33

Soviet Yiddish Scholarship: “National in Form, Socialist in Content” The mandate of Soviet Yiddish scholarship has to be understood within the larger framework of Bolshevik nationality policy. Nationality, which according to Marxist theory fostered an illusory sense of unity between the working class and the bourgeoisie, was not supposed to have been a cornerstone of the first worker-­peasant state, but it would nonetheless become an enormously influential ­factor in early Soviet social and po­liti­cal life. In the course of the Rus­sian civil war, the Bolsheviks recognized that the support of the former Rus­sian Empire’s innumerable minorities, including Jews, would be critical to the new Soviet state’s survival. This led Bolshevik strategists to temporarily revise their official position on nationality: instead of adhering exclusively to class as the au­then­tic foundation of identity, Bolsheviks promoted national identity and language within a circumscribed framework that permitted cultural expression to be “national in form, socialist in content.”34 This new formulation was reflected in the administrative-­territorial remapping of the country along national lines and the educational and po­liti­cal promotion of national elites via a pro­cess known as “nativization” (in Rus­sian, korenizatsia). The 1924 Soviet constitution created a federation of nominally autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs) for major non-­Russian nationalities, as well as regions and national districts for demographically smaller ethnic groups. National minorities, including Jews, ­were provided with an administrative and cultural infrastructure in their native languages that featured schools, courts, publishing h ­ ouses, and theaters. The institutions of the party-­state, moreover, included national sections responsible for dealing with the interests and concerns of specific minority populations. In the case of the Jews, the Jewish Section of the Communist Party (Evsektsiia) assumed this role ­until its dissolution in 1930.35 As recent studies of Soviet nationality policy have demonstrated, Bolshevik policy sought to preempt the development of a politicized form of nationalism by permitting and even encouraging the expression of national



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culture and language among the non-­Russians. The intended goal was not to foster national self-­determination but, on the contrary, to eventually cultivate a supranational Soviet collective identity, with national minority languages as the vehicle of ideological transmission. The organ­ization of the Soviet state along national-­territorial lines also enabled the regime to study and document the “productive capacities” of vari­ous regions and population groups according to their levels of socioeconomic development.36 As an “extraterritorial” minority scattered throughout the Soviet Union, Jews occupied a complex status within the scheme of Bolshevik nationality policy. Notably, Jews concentrated in the western (“Eu­ro­pean”) regions of the USSR ­were categorized among the developmentally “advanced” western nationalities and ­were vis­i­ble in the ranks of the Bolshevik leadership.37 At the same time, the Jewish population was composed of a high percentage of lishentsy (literally, “disenfranchised”), a new Soviet social category of p­ eople who had been deprived of voting rights and other privileges due to their undesirable “petty bourgeois” backgrounds.38 Moreover, Jews had historically led a number of competing po­liti­cal movements, such as Zionism and Bundism, which Bolsheviks (including and particularly Jewish Bolsheviks) viewed as potentially threatening to Communist hegemony. Within the Ukrainian and Belorus­sian SSRs, they ­were granted autonomous districts and the establishment of a Jewish Autonomous Region in the Soviet Far East in 1934 that held out the hope for an eventual Union-­level republic. ­These very concessions, however, would l­ater provide the basis for accusations of “bourgeois nationalism,” as illustrated by the case of Liberberg. The organ­ization of the Yiddish research institutes within the Soviet Acad­emy of Sciences reflected the peculiar status of Jews in the USSR as an “extraterritorial” nationality. Without its own republic, a Jewish section was never established at the all-­Union level of the Soviet Acad­emy of Sciences.39 Instead, Jewish sections ­were established in the branch academies in the two republics with the highest concentration of Jews: Belorus­sia and Ukraine. In the case of Inbelkult, which subsequently was reor­ga­nized as the Belorus­ sian Acad­emy of Sciences, ­there was a Polish Section or­g a­nized in addition to a Jewish Section, as well as subunits for Lithuanian and Latvian scholarship.40 The decision to establish ­these minority sections was influenced by a range of po­liti­cal considerations. The concern of Moscow to maintain a balance of local po­liti­cal interests within republics ­shaped the orga­nizational structure of Soviet institutions. The pro­cesses of “nativization” in Belorus­sia

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and Ukraine could potentially be threatened by the existence of extraterritorial minority groups (for example, Jews and Poles) operating in an official capacity in the Rus­sian language. This in turn could be perceived as an attempt by Moscow to indirectly promote a Russifying agenda. The establishment of Jewish Sections working in Yiddish (or Polish Sections working in Polish) at the Belorus­sian and Ukrainian Academies of Sciences, for instance, served to preempt the perception of extraterritorial minority groups introducing a “Russifying” ele­ment that could disrupt the fledgling pro­cess of nativization among ethnic Belorus­sians or Ukrainians. Thus the fostering of Yiddish-­language scholarship was not merely a promotion of the language of the Jewish working masses but also part of a larger strategy to balance the proj­ect of “nativization” within a specific republic. The taboo of publishing Jewish-­related scholarship in Rus­sian, then, might be understood not only as an attempt to avoid association with prerevolutionary, “assimilationist” Jewish scholars who worked in Rus­sian but also to avoid any perception of the influence of ­Great Rus­sian chauvinism.41 Soviet yidishe visnshaft shared a common intellectual lineage with the YIVO enterprise, but its sponsorship by the state was motivated by broader po­liti­cal concerns and strategies of Bolshevik nationality policy that affected all forms of minority scholarship. The Soviet regime was prepared to promote Yiddish scholarship and scholarship in Yiddish so long as it remained a means to an end—­the end ultimately being a supranational Soviet society—­ rather than the end in itself. Whereas YIVO was informed by the princi­ples of Jewish diaspora nationalism and a Yiddish scholarship of and for the Jewish folk, the Soviet Yiddish research infrastructure was tied to a Marxist-­ Leninist philosophy that envisioned the ultimate disappearance of national identity altogether.

Po­liti­cal Neutrality Versus Po­liti­cal Instrumentality While Yiddish scholarship in Poland and the Soviet Union shared close parallels in formal organ­ization (as reflected in analogous research sections devoted to the history, philology, folklore, demography, and economics of the region’s Yiddish-­speaking populations), the ideological under­pinnings of the respective enterprises ­were radically dif­fer­ent. As Cecile Kuznitz has noted, the YIVO found­ers, while deeply influenced by the princi­ples of Jewish diaspora nationalism, adhered to an official position of being “communally engaged”



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but po­liti­cally neutral.42 Since YIVO sought philanthropic support from a range of potential donors, including the American Jewish community, this need to maintain a reputation for scholarly integrity untainted by po­liti­cal pressures was critical. ­These po­liti­cal sensitivities became especially acute for YIVO in the realm of socioeconomic research, which dealt directly with such topical issues as demographic trends and employment patterns. YIVO scholars at times strug­gled to keep po­liti­cal issues from encroaching upon the task of scholarship.43 The Soviet Yiddish institutional establishment, however, was a state-­ sponsored enterprise that deliberately conflated the scholarly and the po­liti­ cal, the theoretical and the practical.44 By applying a Marxist-­Leninist approach to the study of Jewish history, lit­er­a­ture, language, and so forth, scholars ­were to use their knowledge to draw the “Jewish masses” into the larger pro­cess of socialist construction. Historians ­were to chronicle class strug­gle within the Jewish milieu, the role of the Jewish toiling masses in the revolutionary movement, and the beneficial impact of Bolshevik policies for the economic regeneration of the Jews through productive ­labor, while literary scholars studied t­hese pro­cesses as expressed in character and plot development. Folklorists and ethnographers collected and studied the “culture of the oppressed masses”45 while linguists had the very pragmatic task of orthographic reform, the de-­Hebraization and standardization of Yiddish, and the development of new vocabulary to meet the needs of socialist construction. Statisticians and economists ­were to document the pro­cesses of class transformation quantitatively, concretely demonstrating real change over time. By the late 1920s, the Jewish Department in Minsk and the Jewish Institute in Kiev ­were established components of the Soviet Acad­emy of Sciences at the republican level and as such ­were officially subject to the materialist princi­ples under­lying the Soviet scientific establishment.46 Basic guiding princi­ples of Soviet Yiddish scholarship would include the presumption of a base-­superstructure approach to knowledge and the social utility of research. With the advent of the first Five-­Year Plan, the notion that yidishe visnshaft had to fuse “theory” and “practice” in order to be relevant to the con­temporary needs of socialist construction overwhelmed the scholarly discourse. The names of the major journals published by the research institutes in Kiev and Minsk, respectively, Visnshaft un revoliutsye (Scholarship and revolution) and Afn visnshaftlekhn front (On the scholarly front), reflected this militant tone. In the early and mid-1930s, the leading pages of ­these journals featured portraits of Stalin and transcripts of his speeches, as well as

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articles addressing the role of yidishe visnshaft in contributing to the successes of the first and second Five-­Year Plans.47 The princi­ple of scholarly objectivity espoused so resolutely by YIVO, then, was rejected in Soviet Yiddish scholarship precisely for its attempt to separate knowledge from ideology. Claims of scholarly “objectivity” on the part of YIVO scholars ­were derided by their Soviet counter­parts as an escape from class strug­gle, while the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake was dismissed as “bourgeois academicism” and “eclecticism.”48 By 1930, this rhe­toric became amplified to the point where it was not unusual to find references to the work of YIVO as “ ‘ fascistized’ Yiddishism.”49 Another area of YIVO’s work that would be derided by Soviet Yiddish demographers was the collection of pogrom statistics from the years of World War I followed by the Rus­sian civil war.50 This commitment to accumulating documentation of anti-­Jewish atrocities was often mocked by the Soviet Yiddish establishment as a morbid, ethnocentric obsession with Jewish demographic losses. The statistician Jacob Lestschinsky, for example, was disparaged in Soviet Yiddish sources as a “weeper” and “professional mourner.”51 It should be noted that adherence to this code was hardly uniform or automatic among all Soviet Jewish scholars, and “deviations” within the ranks w ­ ere accordingly disciplined in the form of public “criticism” and “self-­criticism.” Overall, however, this rhe­toric signaled a perceptible shift inward ­toward “socialist construction” and a conscious detachment from the transnational Jewish scholarly community.52

Beyond Yiddish: Scholarship on Non-­Ashkenazi Jews Discussion thus far has focused entirely on Yiddish-­language scholarship produced by, about, and for Jews of Ashkenazi background. Certainly Yiddish-­ speaking Jews belonging to this background constituted the vast majority of Jews in the Soviet Union, even if they or their ­children ­were increasingly forgoing Yiddish in ­f avor of Rus­sian as the language of upward mobility. Nonetheless, the extraordinary ethnic diversity of the Soviet Union included both Ashkenazi and non-­Ashkenazi Jews. The first all-­Union Soviet census of 1926 identified several Jewish “nationalities.” The far more numerous Jews of Ashkenazi background residing in the Eu­ro­pean region of the Soviet Union ­were designated simply as “Jews,” while Mountain, Georgian, Crimean, and Bukharan Jews, as well as Karaites, ­were categorized separately.53



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While the 1939 census would radically contract ­these categories, the distinctions established in the 1926 census had impor­tant theoretical and practical implications for the scholarly study of Jews in the late 1920s and 1930s. Since Jews did not have their own republic, the study of specific Jewish populations was to be addressed by the scholarly apparatus of the Soviet republic in which they lived. While in theory this policy could have fostered the development of scholarship on non-­Ashkenazi Jewish populations throughout the Soviet Union, in practice, resources ­were concentrated primarily on the two major Jewish research institutions in Kiev and Minsk that ­were mandated to produce scholarship in Yiddish. As Liberberg’s plans to move the Institute for Proletarian Jewish Culture from Kiev to Birobidzhan in the Soviet Far East indicate, the Jewish Autonomous Region—­and presumed ­future Union-­level Jewish republic—­was envisioned as the center for the study of Yiddish (Ashkenazi) culture. Despite the inclusive rhe­toric of Bolshevik nationality policy, this de facto marginalization of non-­Ashkenazi Jews in Soviet Jewish scholarship reflected a combination of ­factors. ­These included the lingering influence of Imperial-­era Rus­sian colonialist and orientalizing attitudes, the long-­standing condescension of “Eu­ro­pean” Jews ­toward “Asian” Jews, and the hierarchies implicit in Soviet nationality policy, which categorized populations as “western” or “eastern”—­terms that ­were not so much geo­graph­i­cal as developmental54—­ based on the complexity of a given group’s socioeconomic structures. Dating back at least to the nineteenth ­century, Jews of the Caucasus and Central Asia had typically been referred to by ethnographers and travelers as “aboriginal” (tuzemnyi) and “primitive” (pervobytnyi) and ­were deemed barely distinguishable from the other “backward” ­peoples among whom they dwelled, 55 and a tendency to hierarchize Jewish groups was also evident in some prerevolutionary Jewish anthropological scholarship.56 Within the classification schemes of Bolshevik nationality policy, moreover, non-­ Ashkenazi Jews tended to fall ­under the “eastern” category, grouped together with their non-­Jewish neighbors. ­These attitudes ­were reproduced by the Jewish po­liti­cal elite in the Communist Party, which was dominated by Jews of Ashkenazi origin, when they debated policy ­toward Jews in “eastern” republics.57 Their Yiddish-­centric perspective was particularly evident in discussions of language reform. The heated debates among Soviet Yiddish-­language scholars about how to forge a standardized proletarian language for Jews, for example, did not extend to Judeo-­Tajik or Judeo-­Tat. Many Jewish Communists sent to work in Central

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Asia ­were ideologically resistant to the notion of a distinct Jewish Bukharan nationality,58 and since Judeo-­Tajik was spoken in vari­ous dialects corresponding to regional variations of Tajik, ­these activists questioned ­whether or not a distinctively “Jewish” language in fact existed. As one scholar observes, “Evsektsiia activists in Central Asia questioned the national affinity of Bukharan Jews and labeled them ‘Tajiks of the Mosaic Faith’ and argued that the Tajik language would be the language of instruction for Bukharan Jews.”59 In 1927 some local Bukharan Jews considered modernizing their writing system based on the Hebrew script, but they w ­ ere overruled by the trend t­oward Latin-­based writing systems, which ­were then being developed and applied among Muslim segments of the population.60 The question at this time was ­whether Bukharan Jews should retain their own language or adapt to using common Tajik, which was itself being latinized and standardized. For local Bukharan Jewish activists, Hebrew was viewed as a way to distinguish themselves from the general population and to reinforce their connection to the Jewish ­people.61 Their attachment to the Hebrew alphabet, however, contrasted sharply with the de-­Hebraization trends among Soviet Yiddish-­ language planners in Belorus­sia and Ukraine and made them vulnerable to accusations of Zionism. This disparity in language policy for Ashkenazi versus non-­Ashkenazi Jews had broader implications. The fact that Jewish languages such as Judeo-­ Tajik and Judeo-­Tat ­were latinized while Yiddish was not was indicative of a broader failure to create a “pan-­Soviet Jewish culture.”62 This failure is also illustrated by the very small number of literary translations that ­were made between Yiddish and other Soviet Jewish languages. While the princi­ple of drawing p­ eoples together by translating the lit­er­a­tures of minority cultures into multiple Soviet languages was considered a critical tool for inculcating a universal Soviet identity, only three translations of the Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem63 appeared in Judeo-­Tajik in 1931, 1934, and 1937. The creation of an official Soviet Jewish print culture thus effectively excluded non-­ Ashkenazi Jews, who did not speak or read Yiddish.”64 Despite t­ hese trends, t­ here was a sustained interest in the historical and ethnographic study of non-­Ashkenazi Jews on the part of many specialists, both Jewish and non-­Jewish, who ­were based in Leningrad, Moscow, and other major scholarly centers. The most robust scholarly infrastructure for the study of non-­Ashkenazi Jews in the 1930s was arguably in Georgia. In 1932, the Georgian Evkombed (Committee for the Assistance of the Jewish Poor of Georgia) established a Cultural Center (Kultbaza) in Tbilisi, which



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attracted 150 members. In addition to literary and theatrical programs, the Cultural Center also or­ga­nized activities for the study of the ethnography and history of Georgian Jews. Young amateurs took part in collecting documents and staging exhibitions, and ­these materials ­later became the basis for the Historical and Ethnographic Museum of Georgian Jews, which was officially established on November 23, 1933, by the Georgian Commissariat of Education. The mandate for the new institution was both scholarly and educational and followed a standard formula for ethnographic museum work at this time, first “to collect ethnographic material on Georgian Jewry,” and second, to show, “against the [backdrop] of the dark and gloomy past, typical episodes from the lives of Georgian Jews in the collective farms, in industry and in culture, with special emphasis on the ­great achievements of the Leninist-­Stalinist national policy.”65 In its first three years of activity, the museum or­ga­nized an academic council, which undertook the task of training a new cadre of scholarly workers. It also conducted a major ethnographic expedition with the goal of augmenting the museum’s inventory of artifacts reflective of “the daily life (byt) and history of Georgian Jews and their ethnographic distinctiveness.” Focusing on themes of material culture, social structures, and “superstructural phenomena,” the expedition returned with historical documents, drawings, photo­graphs, and mea­sure­ments of old buildings. The museum or­ga­nized its first exposition in 1935, which juxtaposed the “old way of life” with the accomplishments of socialist construction in Jewish communities throughout Georgia.66 While the museum in Georgia remained open at least through 1951,67 Jewish research activity in the Central Asian republics seems to have been more precarious and was effectively terminated in the 1930s. Isaac Lurie, a close colleague of S. An-­sky’s who played a key role in the development of the museum of the JHES in St.  Petersburg before 1917, came to Samarkand, Uzbekistan, with an ethnographic del­e­ga­tion in the early 1920s and stayed. He established a Bukharan Jewish museum and scholarly center in the historic Jewish Quarter of Samarkand and acquired an extensive collection of Jewish ritual objects, textiles, books and handwritten manuscripts, and photo­graphs depicting the everyday life of Bukharan Jews. In addition to ethnographic objects, Lurie collected data on the history and ­legal status of Bukharan Jews in the prerevolutionary period and carried out anthropological mea­sure­ments among the local population.68 An official audit of Lurie’s museum in 1931, however, resulted in accusations that he placed excessive emphasis on the connection of Bukharan Jews to Palestine. He was

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also criticized for failing to extol the accomplishments of socialism among the Jewish toiling masses and for omitting an antireligious section. He was arrested and tried in 1932 on allegations of supporting Zionism and spreading “nationalist propaganda” and was presumed to have been purged. Unlike Lurie, Zalman Amitin-­Shapiro belonged to a new generation of Soviet-­trained ethnographers. The product of a traditional Jewish education in the Pale of Settlement, Amitin-­Shapiro moved to Tashkent ­after the October revolution. ­There he studied at the Central Asian State University, where he specialized in eastern studies and jurisprudence. He published on such topics as folk medicine and customary law among Bukharan Jews and the history of the first synagogue in Bukhara, and wrote a series of articles devoted to Bukharan Jewish w ­ omen and customs and beliefs associated with marriage, the ­family, and child-­rearing.69 He was also the author of an official Hebrew-­language geography textbook published ­under the official Uzbek SSR imprint “before the Communists squelched such efforts.”70 Much of Amitin-­Shapiro’s scholarship was based on firsthand observation and interviews conducted in the field and was facilitated by his knowledge of local languages. His more overtly ideological publications included “Essays on Socialist Construction Among Central Asian Jews” and “Central Asian Jews ­After the Revolution.”71 ­These ideologically inflected publications, however, did not save him from scrutiny. Amitin-­Shapiro was arrested in 1938 on charges of organ­izing a Zionist movement in Central Asia, conducting propagandistic counterrevolutionary activity among Jews, and having ties to Zionist circles in Palestine. He served five years in a ­labor camp and was subsequently released.72 In the cases of both Lurie and Amitin-­Shapiro, their Jewish ethnographic materials w ­ ere confiscated and integrated into the collections of local museums.

“Academic Nationalism” and the Repression of Scholarly Institutes With the turn in the late 1920s and early 1930s ­toward building “socialism in one country,” Bolshevik nationality policy underwent a critical reversal. Whereas non-­Russian minorities had experienced educational, professional, and po­liti­cal upward mobility during the 1920s, the Stalinist regime now grew suspicious that this relatively liberal policy had led to the growth of “bourgeois minority nationalism” that threatened the hegemony of the



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Communist Party. In 1933, Moscow reversed the Bolshevik princi­ple that Rus­sian ­Great Power chauvinism was a more potent danger to the USSR than non-­Russian nationalism. An attack on Ukrainian nativization efforts led that year to the expulsion of nearly 100,000 members of the Party in Ukraine.73 The attempt to squelch alleged manifestations of minority nationalism in the republics extended to the scholarly realm as well. In Ukraine, a par­t ic­u ­lar target for “reform” was the Ukrainian Acad­emy of Sciences, which had been established in­de­pen­dently of the Bolsheviks back in 1918. Campaigns against “national deviationism” similarly led to purges of the Belorus­sian Acad­emy of Sciences starting in the late 1920s.74 The Jewish research institutes in Minsk and Kiev w ­ ere acutely conscious of the campaign Moscow was increasingly waging against “academic nationalism” in the Belorus­sian and Ukrainian academies and ­were mindful of the need to preemptively self-­discipline themselves.75 In the third volume of her Yiddish-­language memoir published in 1982, the educator Ester Rozental-­ Shnayderman recalled her experiences working at the IEPK in Kiev during Liberberg’s tenure.76 Looking back at the early 1930s, she describes the tense atmosphere of the IEPK, where employees ­were expected to closely align their research with party ideology. In par­tic­u­lar, she recalls that the economists operated ­under especially intense pressure: in the midst of the Stalinist regime’s campaign of accelerated industrialization and mass agricultural collectivization, the Social-­Economic Section of the IEPK was expected to quantitatively document the achievements of “socialist construction” among the country’s Jewish population.77 This, Rozental-­Shnayderman recalls, was an impossible task: “[Despite the] best efforts of scholars to sing the praises of the ‘accomplishments of Soviet power in the Jewish environment,’ ” she wrote, “­there was an ever-­present danger that they would involuntarily expose the appalling . . . ​squalor into which Communist power had thrust the majority of Soviet Jews.”78 Members of the Social-­Economic Section, in other words, “could not help but produce research that cast Soviet policy ­toward the Jewish masses in a negative light.” 79 This situation, she hastened to add, was not unique to Jewish scholars. Rozental-­Shnayderman recalls that Rus­sian, Ukrainian, and Belorus­sian researchers dealing with con­temporary “socioeconomic questions” in the USSR also experienced “similar permanent crises” and that “the Party kept its eyes and ears more alert ­here than in other fields of research.”80 ­These recollections, written many de­cades ­later, contrast sharply with Liberberg’s optimistic portrait of the IEPK’s successes as published in the

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photographic ­album Yidn in FSSR in 1935, just a year before his arrest. In that publication, Liberberg effusively praised the accomplishments of the IEPK’s Social-­Economic Section, the very one that Rozental-­Shnayderman described as a place where “day and night nerves ­were strained to the point of hysteria.” She recalled, “Every­one—­from the most se­nior scholar to the most ju­nior student—­k new that ­every calculation . . . ​placed him on the edge of an abyss into which the party could fling him—if not ­today, then tomorrow—­affixing to him the stamp of ‘left deviation,’ ‘Jewish chauvinism,’ ‘Trotskyism,’ ­etc., ­etc.”81 That Liberberg himself was flung into this abyss barely a year ­after moving to Birobidzhan with the expectation of establishing a world-­class Jewish scholarly center underscores the degree to which Jewish elites functioned as both agents and victims of a regime that si­mul­ ta­neously elevated and weaponized knowledge.

Concluding Remarks: Soviet Jewish Scholarship in Context The experiment in forging a uniquely Soviet tradition of Jewish scholarship lasted roughly ten years. While research activity continued ­u nder much-­ diminished circumstances during and ­after the war, Stalin’s postwar turn against Jewish elites, culminating in the arrest and execution of Yiddish cultural leaders in the late 1940s and early 1950s,82 closed off the possibility of reviving Jewish scholarship in any meaningful institutionalized sense. Subsequent studies of premodern Jewish texts tended to be categorized as part of “Semitic,” “Near Eastern,” or “Oriental” studies,” and ­were often accompanied by anti-­Zionist messaging.83 The Yiddish-­language literary journal Sovetish heymland (Soviet homeland), established in 1961, provided a forum for exploring modern Jewish cultural and intellectual history but was criticized by western observers as an ideological prop of the Soviet regime that was accessible only to a tiny audience of Yiddish readers.84 While Jewish scholarship experienced an under­ground revival in the 1970s and 1980s, this was carried out ­under the radar, by means of samizdat (self-­publishing), and had no institutional support.85 Archival rec­ords related to national minorities, including and in par­tic­u­lar Jews, ­were deemed po­liti­cally sensitive and thus relegated to so-­called “special storage” (spetzkhran), where they remained inaccessible to researchers ­until a­ fter the Soviet collapse in 1991.



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The po­liti­cally tendentious quality of much of the scholarship produced by the Jewish research centers in Minsk and Kiev in the 1920s and early to mid-1930s and the eventual persecution of so many of their most talented representatives leave the disturbing impression of a generation that sacrificed Jewish knowledge on the altar of Communist ideology. With the luxury of historical hindsight, it may be tempting to condemn Jewish intellectuals for partnering with the state. At the same time, it is impor­tant to consider not only the pressures but also the opportunities that led Jewish scholars to make the decisions that they did at a time of extraordinary social and po­liti­cal upheaval. From its inception, the new Soviet state posited the liberationist, emancipatory potential of knowledge. It provided unpre­ce­dented educational opportunities to historically repressed minorities that w ­ ere previously excluded from institutions of higher education, eliminated illiteracy in a generation, and established itself as one of the largest and most formidable scientific regimes in the world. And despite the blatant politicization of the Jewish research institutes and their periodicals, ­there ­were a number of impor­tant and high-­caliber works of scholarship produced in the fields of history, folklore, linguistics, literary criticism, and demography. ­These studies, however, ­were removed from public circulation for de­cades, and the vast majority of them remain untranslated from the original Yiddish.86 To put ourselves in the mindset of Jewish intellectuals living through this period, we would do well to remember that the Soviet Union was the first state in history to not only declare antisemitism a counterrevolutionary crime but also to promote secular Yiddish-­language culture and scholarship.87 Moreover, given the centrality of economic issues to Jewish po­liti­cal discourse across the ideological spectrum in Eastern Eu­rope in the early twentieth ­century, the materialist, class-­conscious dictates of Soviet scholarship would not have been entirely alien to many of the Jewish intellectuals who, at least initially, saw a promising ­f uture in state-­sponsored scholarship.88 It is also worth bearing in mind that ­there was already a well-­developed pre­ce­dent for redefining secular Jewish identity in the realm of not only culture but also scholarship, broadly understood (wissenschaft, nauka), before the advent of the Soviet state. Seen from this perspective, it may be pos­si­ble to approach Jewish participation in the Soviet scientific apparatus in terms of both continuities and breaks relative to prerevolutionary trends in Jewish intellectual history. Fi­nally, as historians of Soviet science have pointed out, scholars who ­were not “true believers” in the Bolshevik proj­ect quickly learned to speak

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the language of their patrons in order to continue their work.89 This paradigm in the exact sciences very likely prevailed in the realm of yidishe visnshaft, and the undiluted praise for Stalin and the Five-­Year Plans on the pages of the Yiddish-­language journals published by the Minsk and Kiev institutes, however noxious, may be understood within this framework. The Soviet state’s investment in Jewish scholarship must also be seen in its proper scale, as extremely modest compared to the enormous resources poured into the development of the exact sciences. Nonetheless, as a visionary regime seeking no less than to transform humanity itself, Bolsheviks believed that all forms of knowledge could potentially be mobilized. Within this framework and for a very brief time, Soviet Jewish scholars ­were presented with the tantalizing prospect of forging their own “empire of knowledge.” It is perhaps this very proximity to state power, which adherents of the Wissenschaft des Judentums tradition could hardly imagine, that accounts for the ambivalent legacy of Soviet state-­sponsored Jewish scholarship. Precisely ­because of ­these many ethical complexities, the story of state-­sponsored Yiddish scholarship in the USSR should not be marginalized as an aberration but recognized and studied as an integral chapter in the broader narrative of modern Jewish intellectual history.

Chapter 5

Between Assonance and Assimilation Lit­er­a­ture as a Hyphen in the Wissenschaft des Judentums clémence boulouque

The scientific study of Judaism with which some scholars occupy themselves can have no endurance, for they themselves engage in it not ­because it is especially dear to them; in the final analy­sis Goethe and Schiller are more impor­tant to them and more venerable than all the prophets, Tannaim and Amoraim. —­S. D. Luzzatto

In this scathing comment, Samuel David Luzzatto, the towering figure of Italian Judaism in the nineteenth ­century, invoked two non-­Jewish authors who played major roles in Jewish self-­understanding. Yet the sentence should be read as an indictment not of poetry itself but of misguided devotion to it.1 For most exponents of the critical study of Judaism, however, the significance ascribed to Goethe and Schiller, ­these “matadors of German lit­er­ a­ture,”2 differed sharply from Luzzatto’s description. In the eyes of prac­ti­tion­ers of the Wissenschaft des Judentums (WdJ), Goethe, Schiller, and a few other writers shared the same mission as the prophets: heralding both nationalism and universalism. In this construct lit­er­a­ture—­and, more specifically,

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poetry—­w as an instrument for moral education, civic engagement, and self-­explanation. The WdJ can be described as the use of academic methods and the pursuit of scholarly ideals in the study of Judaism, Jews, and Jewish history, aiming to demonstrate their value through a variety of publications, institutions, and networks.3 Originating in Germany, the movement’s geographic bound­a ries have traditionally excluded Galician and Italian scholarship that was written in Hebrew and mostly concerned with philology. However, the increasing use of the plural Wissenschaften des Judentums signals a more inclusive understanding of the phenomenon.4 Indeed, in spite of dif­fer­ent ideological and methodological leanings, most WdJ scholars ­were in conversation across the continent.5 In this essay I w ­ ill use the more expansive definition of the Wissenschaft not just geo­graph­i­cally but in terms of genres, with the essential aim of demonstrating that lit­er­a­ture should be included in the movement’s orbit. In order to refine the narrative of assimilation—­generally understood as the erasure of differences—­Franz Rosenzweig coined the term dissimilation in a 1922 diary entry.6 Whereas Amos Funkenstein emphasized the dialectics of assimilation,7 the term dissimilation itself gained traction de­cades ­later, notably in the work of Shulamit Volkov.8 Jonathan Skolnik applies the concept of dissimilation to German Jewish lit­er­a­ture,9 seeing it as an integral accompaniment to assimilation in writing “Jewish history into German history and into new notions of universal history.”10 In par­tic­u­lar, he examines its deployment in historical fiction, surveying expressions of literary dissimilation. I propose to introduce the term assonance in order to denote similar dynamics while creating fluidity and boundaries between Jewish and German values, conveying a universalism best expressed in poetry. In versification, assonance is the repetition of a vowel sound in nonrhyming syllables near enough to each other for the echo to be discernible. Assonance develops an internal rhyme, which is more fluid and has a subtler effect than alliteration (the repetition of consonants). Assonance can be heard between consonants, which are thought of as fixed bound­aries; thus it operates from within ­these limits but opens them up with an effect of both echo and per­sis­tence. The term implies both recognition of similar tones and acknowl­edgment of relative proximity, but, as a variegated way to occupy this place between consonants, it conveys echoes rather than repetition or slavish imitation, which can be translated onto dif­fer­ent planes—­political, ideological, or aesthetic.



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This essay first examines Wissenschaft des Judentums strategies and stances regarding lit­er­a­ture that ­were tantamount to a didactic and patriotic mission of Bildung. It then probes the significant role of translation strategies in reinscribing Jewish works in world lit­er­a­ture, thereby showing the porosity between Jewish and non-­Jewish sources at the intersection of art and ethics. Fi­nally, it shows how the emphasis on the affinity between poetry and prophecy was meant to demonstrate the universalism of poetry and Judaism.

Manifesting Bildung: Lit­er­a­ture and Apol­o­getics “For the Sake of What?” The Wissenschaft’s Agenda

The Wissenschaft des Judentums movement, ushered in with Leopold Zunz’s Etwas über die rabbinische Litteratur (On rabbinic lit­er­a­ture) and officially established in 1819 as the Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden (Society for the Culture and Scholarship of the Jews), strove to demonstrate the Jewish contribution to civilization and refute the widespread contention that postbiblical Judaism had become barren—­a message geared to non-­ Jews but also to Jews who ­were tempted to abandon their tradition. By holding that “Judaism must explain to itself and to ­others why it exists and for the sake of what it wishes to exist,”11 the rabbi, editor,12 scholar, and novelist Ludwig Philippson (1811–99) conveyed this double focal point: looking inward and outward. ­W hether envisioned as genuine scholarly pursuit, new apol­o­getics, or disguised theology,13 such endeavors would shape a new understanding of Jewish history and culture with a strong emphasis on reason, as laid out in Immanuel Wolf ’s seminal 1822 essay: “And if one day a bond is to join the ­whole of humanity, then it is the bond of science, the bond of pure reason, the bond of truth.”14 History and historiography in the Wissenschaft des Judentums have received ample attention, and so it is lit­er­a­ture that this essay seeks to place within its ambit. I propose that lit­er­a­ture functions as a hyphen: as a juxtaposition it is not oppositional, but neither does it fully unite. In the words of the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott (1896–1951), who examined the term in relation to the psyche-­soma, “the hyphen joins and separates.”15 Another use of the punctuation sign as concept can be found in Jean-­François Lyotard’s understanding of the notion of Judeo-­Christianity.16 In The Hyphen, cowritten with Eberhard Gruber, Lyotard focuses on the differences between

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Judaism and Chris­tian­ity, especially with re­spect to Paul’s views: the phi­los­o­ pher describes the hyphen as a line crossing out a blank space or an abyss17 that needs to be acknowledged, which Paul failed to do. I do not see an abyss, nor do I envision the hyphen solely in relation to the framework of identity, which has ­shaped conceptualization of the abyss. Indeed, the notion of hyphenated identity, while initially conveying negative associations,18 gained traction in the late 1980s and 1990s and has been proposed by Berel Lang as a description for the anxiety of post-­Enlightenment Jewish identity with its ever-­changing articulation within national cultures.19 In this essay, I posit the hyphen as a dialogical notion useful for fathoming inward-­outward dynamics (some of which I noted above in the work of Philippson), and, more broadly, for reflecting on the role of lit­er­a­t ure within a scholarly movement such as the Wissenschaft des Judentums. This hyphen functions on three levels: between scholars and their audiences, between reason and emotion, and between Jews and non-­Jews. In demonstrating the existence of references shared between Jews and non-­Jews and in providing mechanisms of recognition, Wissenschaft scholars invoked lit­er­a­ture in a twofold manner: when dealing with lit­er­a­ture written by Jews, they highlighted the presence of universal values recognizable in national literary canons; and in their analy­sis of the non-­Jewish corpus, they ferreted out values shared by Jews or identified ­those of Jewish provenance. Jewish lit­er­a­ture was not restricted to the Hebrew language but rather was increasingly understood expansively, as a rec­ord of the experiences of Jews and an expression of their cultural environment: it was thus a component of Kultur, in the German sense of high culture. ­These works included talmudic narratives as much as liturgical poetry and belles lettres (a canon of high-­brow fiction accessible to sophisticated nonscholarly readers).20 This type of lit­er­a­ture, regarded as indispensable, was a “marriage between scholarship and poetry” in the words of Philippson.21 Bellelettristik, the study of this specific genre, thus complemented historiography and philology, the key disciplines. It is the point of an 1826 exchange between the poet Heinrich Heine and the historian Leopold Zunz over the merits of lit­er­a­ture over philology in which Heine asserted that secular lit­er­a­ture is crucial for Jewish culture.22 Channeling Bildung

Formulated by Wilhelm Dilthey, who ascribed it to Goethe, 23 the concept of Bildung predates the 1870s, as does its embrace by German Jews. In his



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attempt to answer Kant’s 1784 query “What is enlightenment?” Moses Mendelssohn identified Bildung as Kultur plus Aufklärung (enlightenment). In his contribution to the con­temporary discussion, Johann Gottfried Herder distinguished the concept from the classical ideal of encyclopedic erudition; for Wilhelm von Humboldt, Bildung advanced aesthetic education and reason as a way to cultivate one’s personality. As a pro­cess of character building, it relied on the idea of self-­refinement and the enhancement of one’s humanity through a continuously deepening knowledge of the world. With its focus on the individual and on aesthetic experiences, Bildung could be accessible to anyone e­ ager to partake in the pro­cess of self-­cultivation. More recently, historian George Mosse observed that it became increasingly difficult to participate in this endeavor since Bildung evolved into a caste system ­because of the social status and bourgeois be­hav­ior associated with it. Nevertheless, it mitigated the early nineteenth-­century idea of culture in­ven­ted by German Romantic phi­los­o­phers who viewed it as the expression of a specific ­people’s genius, thus serving as a rationale for German unification and for the exclusion of any alien group. 24 The success of the concept can be gauged by the anxiety it created among antisemites. The notion that acculturated Jews could go undetected led the prominent ­lawyer Karl Grattenauer25 to provide strategies for detecting them in society in his pamphlet Wider die Juden (Against the Jews) in 1803. The liberal educated bourgeois man (Bildungsbürger) with his ideal of elevation 26 was viewed as the linchpin of the German nation; some scholars suggested that Jews ­were best equipped to demonstrate its value and to live by it since they had actually done so, a few centuries before, in medieval Spain—an ideal that novels and poetry sought to illustrate. In his pathbreaking article “The Myth of Sephardic Supremacy,”27 Ismar Schorsch argued that the Sephardic experience had par­tic­u ­lar appeal ­because it helped proj­ect German cultural ideas backward onto the Iberian model—as best illustrated by The Rabbi of Bacherach, an unfinished work of the poet and novelist Heinrich Heine. An early member of the Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden in 1822, Heine began working on this historical novel in the wake of the Hep-­Hep antisemitic riots of 1819, then published excerpts of it ­after the Damascus Affair, a blood libel that shook Eu­rope in the 1840s. Heine uses the term Bildung when his character, the Rabbi of Bacherach, is caught in the massacres visited on the Jewish community in the Rhineland. The rabbi, who boasts Sephardic descent, maintains a degree of lucidity, having absorbed “habits of ­free thinking, like many Spanish

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Jews who had at that time attained a very remarkable degree of culture [Bildung].”28 Historical novels ­were a prime means of conveying Bildung: they illustrated its tenets in fiction about Jews in the past displaying its elevated values. In his Historical Novel as Philosophy of History, 29 Richard Humphrey furthers György Lukács’s Historical Novel thesis,30 positing that representative characters embody social classes, dramatize social conflicts, and instantiate historical transformations; he contends that a defining characteristic of the genre in Germany was a clash between two forces—­a culture labeled as inferior set against one seen as more advanced—­w ith a protagonist who straddles both.31 ­Because such a confrontation captured an aspect of the Jewish experience, it comes as no surprise that a ­great number of Jewish writers and readers followed suit, embracing the genre in general and, specifically, Ivanhoe.32 Often considered the author of the first Jewish historical novel with his 1837 Spinoza, Berthold Auerbach (1812–82) had explained his views a year ­earlier in Das Judentum und die neueste Literatur (Judaism and recent lit­er­a­ ture),33 as part of Schrift und Volk (Lit­er­a­ture and ­people),34 his manifesto on realism in popu­lar lit­er­at­ ure in which he acknowledged its power­f ul potential for identity-­shaping. Philippson’s novellas, collected ­under the title Saron in 1843, as well as Hispania und Jerusalem (Spain and Jerusalem) in 1848, come down to the capacity of fiction to impact the formation of identity. In 1867, in Jakob Tirado, Philippson depicted the converso experience based on the path of one of the found­ers of the Spanish-­Portuguese community of Amsterdam and his loving wife, Marie Nunes, the ­daughter of a rabbi. In emphasizing historical hardships, Philippson’s novels placed the Jews firmly within a majority culture and showed how such inclusion could only benefit their host countries. An exchange between Philippson and Rabbi Simon Szánto ­a fter the 1848 revolution and the antisemitic agitation following its defeat illustrates their differing reactions. Szánto, who had been jarred by the conservative turn of the failed popu­lar revolution,35 claimed that the Jews had nowhere to go. Philippson, however, contended that Jews inhabit “the empire of truth” (das Reich der Wahrheit), the promotion of which would further demonstrate their worth.36 His work as a novelist, along with his efforts as a publisher, echoed the task he had spelled out for Judaism in his letter to Luzzatto: “to explain to itself and to o­ thers why it exists and for the sake of what it wishes to exist.”37 He reiterated this dual commitment more than two de­cades ­later in the introduction to Die Marranen (The Marranos), written by his ­brother



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Phöbus. First published in installments in 1837 and one of the most successful Jewish novellas of the era, it allowed Ludwig Philippson to state the mission he ascribed to lit­er­a­ture. The first goal was “the task of conceiving of the historical phenomena of Judaism and the Jews in poetic form, to bring them broader awareness and to validate them in their ethical content”; the second was “the tendency to illustrate Judaism and Jews—as they existed, felt, and thought in the previous period, before coming into contact with the modern world and being transformed by it, as is still the case in some remote districts—to portray them psychologically, to explain them, to envelop them in the fragrance of poetry, and also to justify to a certain extent their existence, which reached back centuries.”38 With its depiction of poetry as an olfactory cover, couched in traditional terms,39 Philippson’s statement confirms his twofold agenda: an emphasis on Jewish ethics and on the essence of Jewishness that was likely to serve as a justification for Jewish existence. Non-­Jewish Voices

While Jewish lit­er­a­ture had to be edifying in order to find f­avor in the eyes of the Wissenschaftler, novels written by non-­Jews ­were expected to demonstrate or acknowledge shared moral grounds and ideals. Jean-­Jacques Rousseau, for instance, was equally admired by Zunz and Luzzatto since Rousseau’s educational treatise Émile, or On Education aimed to demonstrate the supremacy of both the intellect and compassion, which Luzzatto saw as equivalent to the Hebrew ḥemlah (compassion).40 ­Because a non-­Jewish voice could articulate a Jewish attitude or a Jewish concept or issue that Jews would recognize as similar to their own perspective, lit­er­a­ture could be summoned as evidence of Jewish universalism. It invited reflection on the inside-­outside distinction that differed from the way in which other disciplines such as historiography or philosophy approached Judaism or the Jewish experience. First, identifying Jewish themes was a way to reclaim them as Jewish while acknowledging their translation into a non-­Jewish context. Second, especially when it involved non-­Jews writing Jewish characters, as in Ivanhoe, writing from a Jewish perspective involved, for the author, a becoming other that suspended his or her otherness, if only momentarily, but which effectively broke down the insurmountable identity bound­aries that accusations of Jewish particularism entailed. Third, such works conveyed an approbation of a Jewish worldview on the part of non-­Jews. In the words of Lukács regarding

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the modern novel, “What is given form ­here is not the totality of life but the artist’s relationship with that totality, his approving or condemnatory attitude t­ owards it.”41 Thus, if a hyphen is a juxtaposition that brings together while not erasing differences, lit­er­a­t ure can create this space in-­between over the apparent abyss of irreconcilable identities. In Heinrich Graetz’s 1883 Correspondence of an En­glish Lady on Judaism and Semitism, for example, the narrator seemingly condones George Eliot’s proto-­Zionist novel Daniel Deronda (1876) as it supports Graetz’s argument about the Jews’ lack of self-­awareness and the necessity of remedying it: “Our George Eliot remarks strikingly ‘about this self-­ignorance of con­temporary Jews’: The holy spirit could reside ­here, but ­people would merely smile and say: ‘a poor Jew!’ and the main scoffers would be my own ­people.”42 The use of the first-­person plural possessive pronoun, creating a sense of familiarity, also instills some ambiguity about Eliot’s identity and about that of the narrator, blurring the line between the En­glishness and Jewishness. Since the narrator is an En­glish Jew, “our” seems to refer to the En­glishness of George Eliot, but the narrator then uses “my own ­people,” which appears to point to his coreligionists. So George Eliot is an insider and outsider at the same time, both from her perspective and from the Jewish critique’s, which is ­eager to claim her but only ambiguously able to do so completely: her work is, indeed, a hyphen. The reaction to Eliot’s work was not unanimously positive: it elicited the admiration of other Wissenschaftler, such as Solomon Schechter and David Kaufmann, but also Moritz Steinschneider’s contempt. Nonetheless, it was perceived as an instance of what novels written by non-­Jews could achieve in aligning Jewish and non-­Jewish values and demonstrating their congruence.43 In this atmosphere, an observer such as Luzzatto chose to ignore the nuances of the literary landscape of his day—­most strikingly when he lumped together Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), Charles-­Paul de Kock (1793–1871),44 and Jules Janin (1804–74)45 as the reason for and symbol of the Eu­ro­pean de­cadence that Jews should shun. While all of ­these authors chronicle the daily life of the Restoration in Paris, their writings have ­little in common. An equally ill-­matched list of authors appears in a disapproving satirical poem “Derekh Eretz or Atticism,” published first by Jost in a short-­lived journal.46 In the ­later part of the ­century, as the WdJ was starting to wane, a target of choice was Émile Zola for his novels documenting the ills of the destitute urban working class. (He had not yet penned the impassioned defense of Alfred Dreyfus, J’accuse.) Zola’s naturalistic novel Nana (1880) chronicled the



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life of a prostitute and stirred outrage across French society. It is likely that the historian Graetz alluded to Nana as well in his Correspondence of an En­ glish Lady on Judaism and Semitism, which blamed Eu­ro­pean degeneration on “the filthy novels à la Zola.”47 The reception of realism was more nuanced. Eugène Sue’s Les mystères de Paris (The mysteries of Paris), an im­mensely popu­lar novel that first appeared as a newspaper feuilleton, elicited criticism not for its realism but for its mediocre literary quality. Falling short of the category of belles lettres, it was deemed unworthy of WdJ attention. This divide signaled a broader gap between the German Wissenschaftler and the maskilim in Eastern Eu­rope, a number of whom found the book crucial ­because it depicted poverty as injustice rather than as a moral defect, thus aligning traditional Jewish ideals of social justice with current lit­er­a­ture.48 Conversely, it was not for its literary merits (or lack thereof) that most proponents of the Wissenschaft des Judentums dismissed Leopold Kompert’s Aus dem Ghetto (Tales of the ghetto), the first account of life in Eastern Eu­ro­pean ghettos, published in 1848 and inspired by the author’s early life in Bohemia. This book and ­those that followed w ­ ere both very popu­lar with the general public and poorly reviewed among the Wissenschaftler as their sentimental portrayal of the ghetto featured oral traditions and superstition at odds with the image of Judaism that the Wissenschaft des Judentums sought to offer and for which historical novels proved useful. The ideal of Bildung was thus manifest in the literary choices of the proponents of Wissenschaft, favoring novels and novellas that earnestly represented the best and most exemplary characteristics of Jewish experience. Not only did it seek to insert Judaism into German society, but it also sought to demonstrate its adequation with the western canon. ­These are precisely the petty bourgeois and respectable attitudes that Gershom Scholem would ­later lambaste.49

Reinserting Judaism into the Western Canon: Translations and the Porosity Between Jewish and Non-­Jewish Sources Translations ­were bidirectional. On the one hand, the translations of Hebrew lit­er­a­ture into German ­were designed to showcase the exchanges between Jewish culture and its surroundings through the ages. On the other

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hand, the translations from Eu­ro­pean languages into Hebrew, mostly in Galicia and Eastern Eu­rope, sought to emphasize a Jewish literary canon. In the first instance, Michael Sachs’s Die religiose Poesie der Juden in Spanien (Religious poetry of the Jews in Spain)50 sought to emphasize the cultural porosity of Judaism. Published in 1845, the volume consisted of two parts: the first presented translated poems, and the second was a study of both Jewish and non-­Jewish sources, with an emphasis on the role of the latter in Jewish liturgical poetry. The proj­ect thus partook of the narrative of a symbiotic society of the past, a hyphen that could—­and was supposed to—­serve as an inspiration for con­temporary times.51 The second aspect of this translation endeavor pertains to the importation of Eu­ro­pean lit­er­a­t ure into Hebrew. A noted difference between the worldview of the strictly German-­centered WdJ and its Galician and Italian variations, however, relates to the respective purpose they assigned to ­these translations.52 Nitsa Ben-­Ari has shown how in Eastern Eu­rope literary works functioned as a “national” Jewish lit­er­a­ture.53 The Galicians, for instance, deemed translations essential in order to instill into Hebrew lit­er­a­ture a spirit that was lacking in classical Jewish sources and to shape it in accordance with the pattern of other lit­er­a­tures. They ­were both a way to revive Hebrew and to foster a new, robust national identity instead of assimilating into an existing one. Thus a key figure of the Prague Haskalah, Solomon Yehuda Rapoport (known as Shir, 1786–1857), set out to translate the second-­ century Hellenized satirist and rhetorician Lucian in order to inject a satirical spirit into modern Hebrew lit­er­a­ture—­a view he espoused in the first volume of his unfinished encyclopedia, ‘Erekh milin.54 Prob­ably the most influential translator of the period, Meir (Max) Letteris (1800–71), penned his first collection of poetry, Divre shir (Words of song),55 in 1822, which included original poems with very idealist overtones alongside translations from Schiller. He did the same in his next collection, Ayelet ha-­shaḥar (The doe of the dawn, 1824) in which he added translations from Homer and from Byron’s Hebrew Melodies.56 In multiple instances, the appropriation of Eu­ro­pean classics was also an acceptable way for Jews to reclaim texts that had been mostly channeled within a Christian tradition: such is the case of Lord Byron’s Hebrew Melodies, Jean Racine’s Esther, and Ludwig August Frankl’s Rachel. The first translation of Esther, a biblical play by the French tragedian, entitled She‘erit Yehudah (The remnant of Judah), was initially published in Vienna in 1827 in the journal Bikure ha-­‘itim (First fruits of the time) ­under the auspices of Rapoport,



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who dabbled in poetry before dedicating himself entirely to scholarship.57 The next translation, Shelom Esther by Letteris, bore the subtitle Imitation après celle de Mr. Jean Racine (Replication in the spirit of Mr. Jean Racine)58 and featured an introduction in which the translator declared his love of the Jewish nation. Letteris’s work on Goethe’s Faust is even more remarkable, as signaled by his choice of words to describe his proj­ect—­Umdichtung (rewriting, or transposition) rather than Übersetzung (translation).59 Letteris turned Faust60 into a familiar figure in the Jewish tradition, struck as he was by the resemblance between the heretical talmudic figure Elisha ben Abuya and Faust, the scholar and alchemist whose dissatisfaction with his existence and his inability to discover the true meaning of life prompted him to sell his soul to the devil in order to access knowledge. The play’s subtitle, The Other, is none other than Elisha’s nickname in the Talmud. The reception of ­these translations (or transpositions) illuminates the range of sensibilities and agendas among Jewish scholars: such a transposition found grace in the eyes of some Wissenschaftler and members of the Central Eu­ro­pean Wissenschaft des Judentums, such as Simon Szánto, a student of Rapoport, a Viennese journalist, and an advocate of the reform movement,61 who perceived in this dehistoricizing a distinct Jewish ability to capture myths: “The Germans too have such an extravagant story about a person called Faust versed in the secrets of nature and philosophy, and his evil demon Mephistopheles. The ­great poet Goethe introduced him to us in a superb play—­but, in my opinion, this story as told by our sages offers an even fresher and more forceful parable than that of the Germans.”62 Ascribing even greater merit to the Jewish version of the myth is certainly an instance of dissimilation. The choice of the word “parable” ­here is worth emphasizing: equivalent to mashal in the Talmud, or as found in the Gospels, the genre, with its juxtapositions of disparate ele­ments, aims to teach allegorically and fill gaps in comprehension with ethical meaning. Not only did it imply that Jewish themes and values and their condemnation of heretics ­were comparable to the German ones and ­were thus universal, but the vigor and anteriority of the Jewish sources manifested their superiority. The allure of such a composite of biblical and nonbiblical sources for making an ethical point suited a variety of other art forms. The collaboration of the scholar and Orientalist Julius Fürst (1805–73) with composer Felix Mendelssohn on his Earth, Heaven and Hell (Erde, Himmel und Hölle), his Last Judgment oratorio63 intended to resemble Faust or the Divine Comedy, seems

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to indicate that they w ­ ere willing to venture beyond their usual expertise and participate in proj­ects that aimed to employ the arts to foster an emotional, moral, and universal experience and a sense of shared humanity.

From Patriotic Poetry to Universal Prophets: Between Assonance and Assimilation Recognizing “Familiar Tones”

Luzzatto’s comment (“In the final analy­sis Goethe and Schiller are more impor­tant to [the Wissenschaftler] and more venerable than all the prophets, Tannaim and Amoraim”) and the undisputed preeminence of Schiller and Goethe illuminate the power and role of lit­er­a­ture, and specifically poetry. That the two heroes mentioned by Luzzatto happened to be poets could hardly be a coincidence, nor was it incidental that Dante occupied a similar place for Italian Jewish scholars. Poetry seemed able to play a critical role conveying echoes of religion into an increasingly secular age: a hyphen between reason and sentiment as well as between scholarship and faith.64 The first and most impor­tant journal of the Haskalah, Ha-­me’asef (The collector), published 122 poems and 11 translations between 1784 and 1811. Bikure ha-­ ‘itim, an annual published in Vienna between 1821 and 1832, used lit­er­a­ture as a platform for fostering a new identity, especially among Galician Jews. It published 265 poems, in addition to translations of authors such as the sixteenth-­century ­father of modern botany and philology Conrad Gessner and such now lesser-­k nown nineteenth-­century poets as Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and Gottfried August Bürger, as well as Heine, Schiller, and Herder. Although hardly a friend of WdJ, Samson Raphael Hirsch, the founder of Neo-­orthodoxy, delivered a memorable address65 at the Israelite Religious Society (Israelitische Religionsgesellschaft) school on November 9, 1859. Capturing the mood of the movement, he proclaimed that the ­great sages “would have greeted Schiller as one of their own, and they would have recognized only familiar tones among his sounds.”66 It is on the basis of this musical meta­phor that I introduce the term assonance. The reference to canonical texts of German lit­er­a­ture intended to promote a distinctly Jewish agenda has been described, in the case of Heine, as appropriation.67 Unlike assonance, appropriation denotes authority without necessarily entailing a sense of intellectual or artistic proximity.



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Based on this proximity, however, Jews could assess the use that their fatherlands had made of ­these artists’ ideals and compare it with what Judaism had to offer. Recognizing both the importance of such poets and their assonance with Jewish culture was a first step ­toward being fully part of a conversation. Heinrich Heine offered an ironic take on this Jewish desire to be part of the German culture in Ein Wintermärchen (A winter’s tale), published in 1839. This biting chronicle and—to some extent—­autobiographical sketch portrays a poet returning to Germany and confronting the narrowness of German identity. Despite his deep love for his homeland, he is not allowed to be more than a visitor. Heine’s tone explains Philippson’s moral condemnation of Heine’s poetry as opposed to the ­g reat admiration expressed for it by Graetz, thus further demonstrating Philippson’s understanding of lit­er­a­ture as needing to edify. By stigmatizing such pettiness, Heine continued attacks he had formulated in his 1833–35 Die romantische Schule (The Romantic school), an essay that lamented the abandonment of “that universal brotherhood of man, that cosmopolitanism which our greatest thinkers—­Lessing, Herder, Schelling, Goethe, Jean-­Paul and all German scholars—­have always revered.” Heine considered ­these writers to be Germany’s contribution to the Enlightenment, while si­mul­ta­neously bemoaning the antisemitism of some of the movement’s major figures, such as Friedrich Ludwig Jahn and Johann Gottlieb Fichte. In ­doing so, he availed himself of German writers in order to protect the German idea against the Germans, as though the Jews had a deeper grasp of its true nature and could defend it accordingly.68 Schiller, Goethe, Dante: Brotherhood and Cosmopolitan Patriotism

Jewish appreciation for Schiller or Goethe did not derive from any expressed affinity for Jews on t­ hese writers’ part, in contrast to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, whose sympathies famously came to the fore in his 1779 play Nathan der Weise (Nathan the wise).69 However, perusing Bikure ha-­‘itim makes the change of inspiration in the new generation clear: while Ha-­me’asef prominently featured Lessing, the first volume of Bikure ha-­‘itim had no fewer than three translations of Schiller, including “Das Lied von der Glocke” (The song of the bell),70 the longest poem in German lit­er­a­ture and a staple of school curricula. Schiller’s portrayals of Judaism in his essay Die Sendung Moses (The legation of Moses) w ­ ere contentious at best, but his Don Carlos, performed

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for the first time in 1787, featured King Philip II and heroic Jewish conversos who resisted a villainous Inquisition. In the case of the “Lied,” moreover, it might seem perplexing that not only does the poem conclude with the master craftsman gathering the workers together to christen the bell, but it is precisely this gathering that played an impor­tant role in Jewish intellectual life. What prevailed in this scene is a sense of the brotherhood also prominent in Schiller’s “An die Freude” (Ode to joy) translated many times since 1803,71 and whose injunction struck a chord: Seid umschlungen Millionen! Diesen Kuss der ganzen Welt! (Be embraced, millions! This kiss to the entire world!) In the German-­speaking WdJ, the widespread sentiment regarding the poet was best captured by the rabbi and historian Meyer Kayserling (1829–1905) in his claim that “Schiller took [the Jews] on his wings unto the sacred spheres. He fought for their freedom and educated them ­toward freedom through the arts.”72 Solomon Yehuda Rapoport in Prague made Schiller his hero, hence prompting Luzzatto’s rebuke even if Rapoport made it clear that it was not in poetry for its own sake or as an expression of feelings that he was interested.73 By emphasizing the unity of humankind through moral elevation, with clear didactic tendencies, Schiller gave Jews a new version of their faith74 and proved that its values could still be relevant when read in a secular key. Schiller’s patriotism served German Jews’ own demonstration of faith. Indeed, quoting him was tantamount to pledging allegiance to a literary embodiment of the nation.75 More broadly, poetry helped to fulfill a double educational purpose: it taught German classics and ideals to Jews, but it also showed the proximity of German aspirations to the Jews’ own traditions. Scholem’s view that this devotion to Schiller was an instance of delusional dialogue76 found disagreement from Peter Szondi, a Hungarian-­born literary critic. Engaging with a 1966 discourse on Germans and Jews, Szondi suggested that Scholem had not accurately portrayed the situation. Condemning the adulatory Jews even further, Szondi attributed the “false consciousness” that had prompted them to embrace Schiller less to accommodation than to abandonment of their Jewish identity.77



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At least for the first generation of Jewish scholars, Schiller retained his literary preeminence. The distinctly Jewish cult of Goethe as the icon of Weimar only manifested itself in the 1870s.78 Goethe’s poetry is certainly less didactic than Schiller’s and his ideational legacy—­with its emphasis on the demonic—is more troubling and haunting.79 The initial hesitancy ­toward Goethe had ­little to do with his characterizations of Judaism, although they ­were tinged with anti-­Jewish sentiment. His autobiography, Dichtung und Wahrheit, for example, abounded in such tropes. The more complex novel, Wilhelm Meister, portrays Jews as a nearly pagan and deeply flawed ­people whose most admirable facets are “self-­reliance, constancy, bravery and tenacity”—at best, ambiguous accolades. Yet Goethe also advocated for a cosmopolitanism that appealed to Jews, and he praised the role of translation in cultural transfer (Weltverkehr) as a formative ele­ment in his idea of world lit­er­a­ture. This engagement with the world implied intermediaries, a role that was familiar and appealed to Jews. In his work on Jewish lit­er­a­ture, Zunz emphasized the role of Jews as cultural brokers, who ­were thus perfectly suited to the civilizational model that Goethe called forth, based on intellectual exchanges. Goethe’s legacy in German-­Jewish lit­er­a­ture can be seen as a cautionary tale, as portrayed in 1891 in Ludwig Jacobowski’s Werther der Jude (Werther the Jew). The protagonist’s inner turmoil, destructive passion for German culture, and unrequited love for a young, non-­Jewish ­woman lead him to take his life.80 Thus, as the historian and advocate of autonomy Simon Dubnow suggested, the novel symbolically represents the fate of German-­Jewish symbiosis.81 Walter Benjamin ­later diagnosed the fragility of such a quest: “One could not possibly bear in one’s soul both aspects of [this] bifurcated spirit in a well-­balanced manner.”82 The role played by Schiller and Goethe in Germany resembles that of Dante in Italy in bearing witness to the priorities of a nation’s Jews. Dante’s critical reception signals two distinct moments of Italian Jewish history: before the eigh­teenth ­century it was used as a marker for differentiation from the majority culture; ­later it served as a mark of identification.83 Italian Jews turned to Dante to support their claim to patriotism. At the time of the Risorgimento, this meant re­sis­tance to Austrian control. Dante’s exile from Florence and his being forced to learn “how salty is the taste of another man’s bread, and how hard is the way of ­going down and up another man’s stairs”84 thus came to represent exile in the face of oppression—­a parallel with the fate of ­those who opposed repression ­under foreign occupation.

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From national hero and literary genius, Dante was elevated to the status of prophet. On the six-­hundredth anniversary of the poet’s death, Luzzatto composed a poem in his honor. Even more compelling is the fact that the dialogue between Dante and the Jews was mostly framed as the relationship between the Florentine and the poet Immanuel of Rome, whose Maḥberet ha-­tofet veha-­‘Eden (Treatise on hell and heaven) was the first imitation of the Commedia.85 The emphasis was on the mutual enrichment of both writers and a shared destiny. The desire to trace their proximity went beyond Italy, since Moritz Steinschneider in 1843 published a biographical portrait of Immanuel of Rome.86 The patriotism and the ­human brotherhood, the emotion and reason, professed by Schiller, Goethe, and Dante, thus resonated with the WdJ and enabled it to connect with the ethos of its time. Poetry as History and Secular Theology

Describing the mood of his time, Heine wrote that a ­people “demands its history from the hand of the poet rather than that of the historian. It does not ask for faithful reporting of naked facts; what it wants is to see ­these dissolved again into the original poetry from which they sprang.”87 The turn to poetry also furthered a strategy that consisted of using education to transcend national and religious differences without erasing them altogether. Aristotle’s proposition in chapter 9 of his Poetics that “poetry is more philosophical and more serious than history, that in fact poetry speaks more of universals whereas history of particulars” helps us to reconcile poetry and history. But how could this notion be reconciled with the attention given to history? Daniel Boyarin writes in Intertextuality and the Reading of the Midrash that poetry stands for that which is not social but aims to transcend the pre­sent time and social context. Poetry ignores facts of history but cares about its true meaning.88 Additionally, the poetic works that captured the attention of Wissenschaftler ­were not primarily concerned with such metaphysical questions as the origin of language or the relationship between language and real­ity: they ­were less self-­referential than hyphenating, seeking to create an edifying universe of references and finding assonance between worlds that seemed unrelated. Poetry thus enabled t­ hese thinkers to assuage tensions, most crucially ­those related to theology. If the lines of the poets constitute a hyphen



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between faith and scholarship, they could become prophets of and for the pre­sent. Identifying poets as prophets has a long and tumultuous history, as the latter ­were often portrayed as usurpers of the divine word.89 Yet the WdJ and, more broadly, the nineteenth-­century ethos included a renewed urge to appropriate prophecy for poets, who—­like prophets—­stand at the nexus of the national and the universal. This explains a distinct affinity for Herder, whose 1765 Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie (Spirit of Hebrew poetry) concluded that the universalism of Judaism had manifested itself in the religion’s poetic essence,90 constituting an “invisible chain,” a part of the “pandemonium” of lit­er­a­ture across humankind. Among the thinkers who shared the notion of a basic “­mental language,” a substratum common to humanity but refined by each nation’s par­tic­u­lar genius, was Ernest Renan, who granted Semites a natu­ral inclination ­toward poetry ­because of their eternal childlike nature91 (an allegation that Wissenschaft figures ignored). The stakes became all the higher as Jewish scholars pushed against efforts to deny the prophetic tradition that they now sought to articulate with apol­o­getic overtones, seeking the reconciliation of aesthetics and ethics that Luzzatto opposed. At a time when remnants of the romantic cult of individuality ­were being enriched with socialist or brotherly overtones, such ideas held up the role of the individual as a self-­designated guide in the ser­vice of both higher ideals and broader society.92 Luzzatto’s commentary on the book of Isaiah aimed to show the universalistic passion of the prophet.93 In that re­spect, poetry could serve a similar agenda. Prophecy had fallen ­silent, but its legacy endured and its motifs ­were revived in poetry, thus pointing to the foundation, mythical and mystical, shared by Judaism and other faiths.94 By showing the commonality of values, aspirations, and perspectives, scholars could educate their coreligionists to speak a common idiom and demonstrate their credentials to the non-­Jewish world. They aimed to show that Judaism was not only a religion of reason but also one of inspiration, a religion with a par­tic­u­lar affinity with both poetry and prophecy. In ­doing so, they also sought to demonstrate the worthiness of Judaism and thus account for the rest of Luzzatto’s qualm: “Yet another motive possesses them, as well: to grant Israel glory and honor in the eyes of the nations. They celebrate the virtue of some of our ancestors so as to hasten the major redemption, which, for them, is Emancipation.”95 The parallel he draws—­Emancipation as redemption—is obviously ironic but captures the ambiguous nature of the

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WdJ’s dual or even contradictory mission, one that poetry both assuaged and emphasized.

Conclusion In his book Dante, Poet of the Secular World, the literary critic Erich Auerbach (1892–1957) held that “the perception of history and immanent real­ity arrived at in the Comedy through an eschatological vision, flowed back into real history.”96 If most novels approved by the WdJ w ­ ere edifying, they lacked the resources that poetry offered by providing a detour through a kind of transcendence akin to religion (specifically to Judaism) and then flowing back into history. Poetry became the temptation and vestige of transcendence, something with which the Wissenschaftler could safely identify. An observer like Luzzatto could only voice his concern that the movement failed to understand “how, in each generation, the divine prevailed over the ­human”97 and that the assonance between Jewish and German lit­er­a­ture would lead to assimilation. The accuracy of Luzzatto’s assessment remains contested, but his words certainly echo Walter Benjamin’s famous quip that a German Jew would “find his Jewish substance, above all, in a study of Goethe”98—­all the more poignantly so as a “bifurcated spirit.”

Chapter 6

Christian Contributions to Jewish Scholarship in Italy asher salah

In spite of the distressing impression that the Jewish conditions in Parma had on me, I can still consider my stay ­there for almost two months to be among the most pleasant recollections of my life. The manuscript trea­sures of the local library provided rich compensation for all deprivations. Indeed, my studies ­were encouraged by the amiability of two men, to whom I feel deeply obliged. The librarian, Federico Odirici, a famous historian, made my use of manuscripts comfortable in ­every pos­si­ble way. The deputy librarian, the abbot Pietro Perreau, who managed the Hebrew department, was most of the time at my side. This scholar is a ‫[ חסיד אומות העולם‬a righ­teous Gentile] in the true sense of the word; his love for Jewish scholarship has ample proof and deserves the highest recognition. —­Abraham Berliner, “Sechs Monate in Italien”

This is how Abraham Berliner (1833–1915), the eminent German Jewish historian and scholar, describes his encounter with two non-­Jewish scholars during his stay in Italy for six months in the year 1878. While Berliner described this and other meetings with Christian learned men throughout Italy with dithyrambic enthusiasm, his general opinion of the state of Jewish learning among the Jews in Italy was much more pessimistic. The alleged love for

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Jewish critical scholarship—­“Liebe für die jüdische Wissenschaft”—of Pietro Perreau (1827–1911), a Catholic priest and librarian at the Palatina library in Parma,1 stood in stark contrast to Berliner’s view of Italian Jews’ relation to their own cultural heritage, with a chapter of his travelogue bearing the title “The Appalling Indifference and Influence of the Non-­Jewish Environment” (Sträfliche Indifferentismus und Einfluss der nichtjüdischen Umgebung). It sounds as if, in the eyes of Berliner, Christians ­were more attached to Judaism than w ­ ere the Jews themselves. Berliner’s account of his sojourn in Parma is symptomatic of the surprise felt by a Jewish scholar from Germany at discovering that a Catholic clergyman could be fully devoted to Jewish studies without any apparent conversionist or apol­o­getic intent, guided by the pure pursuit of scientific objectivity and even animated by a favorable bent t­ oward Jews and Judaism. This was not by any means an exceptional case in Italy in the second half of the nineteenth ­century. In fact, many non-­Jewish scholars on the peninsula ­were engaged in the study of Jewish history and lit­er­a­ture, often while enjoying close and friendly ties with rabbis and other Jewish intellectuals. On the model of Pietro Perreau, who corresponded with Moritz Steinschneider and was a regular collaborator to his Hebräische Biblio­graphie, Italian Christian scholars appear to have been integral to the scholarly networks of the Wissenschaft des Judentums on both sides of the Alps.2 Undoubtedly, Catholic involvement in the study of Judaism had momentous methodological and philosophical consequences for the development of the field of Jewish studies. However, moving beyond the allure of Italy as a land of an idyllic symbiosis between Jews and Christians, to which Berliner seems to have succumbed like so many of his fellow German Jews at the time,3 Christian and Jewish participation in the modern study of Judaism ­were responses to dif­fer­ent stimuli. Moreover, it is crucial to distinguish among the vari­ous intellectual backgrounds and contrasting ideological aims within the impressive cohort of non-­Jewish scholars and their corpus. ­Were they harbingers of a new kind of scholarship or the last offspring in Italy of a long chain of Christian Hebraists since the Re­nais­sance?4 The time frame addressed in this essay coincides roughly with the second half of the nineteenth ­century. It covers the period of the Italian in­de­pen­ dence wars, the consolidation of the Italian Kingdom proclaimed in 1861, and the recognition of the emancipation of the Jews by the Statuto Albertino in Piedmont in 1848, ­later extended to all Jews living on the peninsula ­under the Savoy monarchy. From the vantage of the history of Italian Catholicism it



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begins with the rise of Neo-­Guelfism, a movement led by Vincenzo Gioberti (1801–52), envisioning a federation of all the states of the peninsula with the pope as its president, and it ends in 1907 with the condemnation by Pope Pius X’s encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis of the modernist doctrine of Ernesto Bonaiuti (1881–1946) and ­Father Giovanni Semeria (1867–1931).5

Wissenschaft in an Italian Key Regrettably, the participation of non-­Jews in the general renewal of Jewish studies in nineteenth-­century Italy and their role in the development and definition of the academic study of Judaism has suffered from con­spic­u­ous neglect in modern scholarship.6 The so-­called “turn to history,”7 one of the main characteristics of nineteenth-­century Wissenschaft, is believed to have first arisen in the German cultural arena, ­later to spread its influence east and west to other parts of Eu­rope and the United States. Despite the recent questioning of the Germanocentric model for understanding the origins of this movement,8 the specific tradition within Italian Judaism of historicism and idealism established by thinkers deeply steeped in Catholicism, such as Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), Antonio Rosmini (1797–1855), and the ­earlier mentioned Vincenzo Gioberti, still lack dedicated studies. Jews and Christians in Italy actively participated in the “emergence of historical consciousness” roughly at the same time that this occurred in German speaking lands and not necessarily only in response to it.9 For instance, the first modern rabbinical seminary in Eu­rope was founded in Padua in 1829,10 and one of its main figures and teachers, Samuel David Luzzatto (1800–65) from Trieste, drew substantially on Catholic phi­los­o­phers of his time for his interpretation of Judaism.11 His main antagonist in the Italian Jewish intellectual arena of the second half of the nineteenth ­century, the mystically oriented Elia Benamozegh (1823–1900), head of the rabbinical seminary of Livorno, was also strongly indebted to the philosophy of history of Catholic thinkers such as Vico and Gioberti, with their concept of progressive revelation.12 Another striking difference between Germany and Italy is the early access of Jews to universities and the nonconfessional character of higher education in Italy. Whereas in Imperial Germany conversion was an implicit prerequisite for appointment to higher ranks in the faculty,13 presenting a considerable obstacle to Jews pursuing ­careers in the universities, several Jews

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in the Kingdom of Italy attained full professorships without having to abandon their religious affiliation.14 This was true in the ­legal and humanistic, as well as in the scientific, faculties, and it had a momentous impact on the field of Jewish studies, where chairs of Hebrew and Semitic languages ­were held by Jewish or Catholic teachers without discrimination.15 At the universities of Pisa and Florence, for instance, Jewish and Christian scholars alternated in the chair of Hebrew for more than fifty years, revealing how intellectual cooperation was not hindered by the difference of faith. The Christian scholar Fausto Lasinio (1831–1914),16 professor of Hebrew in Pisa and Florence, studied ­under the guidance of a Jewish teacher, Angelo Paggi (1789– 1867);17 he was then succeeded in Pisa by the Piedmontese Jewish professor Salvatore De Benedetti (1818–91) and in Florence by his Jewish pupil David Castelli (1836–1901). On the death of Castelli, ­after a brief vacancy of two years, Francesco Scerbo (1849–1927), a Catholic student of Castelli’s from Calabria, took over the teaching of Hebrew at the University of Florence u ­ ntil his retire18 ment in 1924. This does not mean that inclusion of Jewish scholars within universities in unified Italy was never confronted by antisemitic prejudices or re­sis­tance from the most conservative ele­ments of the academic establishment.19 But ­these w ­ ere isolated incidents that ran against the princi­ple of separation of Church and state in the newly proclaimed in­de­pen­dent Kingdom of Italy. The nonconfessional character of teaching in Italian universities was further strengthened in 1873 by the suppression of the faculties of theology in state-­ owned institutions of higher education. This occurred in the midst of an enduring and strained conflict between the Savoy monarchy and the papacy, aggravated by the 1870 annexation of Rome to the Italian state.20 The immediate result was the emancipation of Jewish and Hebrew studies from theological preoccupations. Their transfer to historical and philosophical departments indicated that the study of religion was expected ultimately to merge with philosophy. According to Gabriele Boccaccini, 21 the 1873 decree created favorable conditions for the development of the Italian school of comparative religion, supporting such scholars as Raffaele Mariano, who began the scientific study of the Jewish background of Chris­tian­ity with his appointment in Naples in 1876; Pietro Manfrin di Castione (1827–1909),22 jurist and economist from Treviso, senator of the kingdom, and author of a ponderous history of the Jews in the Roman Empire; and Baldassarre Labanca (1829–1913), the first professor of the history of Chris­tian­ity at the University of Rome and one of the foremost authorities on Hellenistic Judaism.23



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Therefore, whereas in Germany, Wissenschaft des Judentums was to a g­ reat extent conceived by Jewish historians in response to their exclusion from the wider non-­Jewish society, as a way of asserting intellectual autonomy, 24 the case of modern Italy turns this paradigm on its head: in Italy, Jews ­were not alone in developing Jewish studies but rather worked in close cooperation with Gentile scholars. Furthermore, although anticlerical stances and antisemitism ­were not completely absent in the Italian po­liti­cal arena, the dif­fer­ent governments that ruled Italian politics in the first de­cades ­a fter in­de­pen­dence consistently sought compromises with the Catholic majority and tried to avoid confrontational interpretations of the princi­ple of separation between religion and the state. 25 Although this prevented the diffusion in academic circles of the most radical results of German scholarship, such as Protestant biblical criticism, it created shared frames of allegiance among liberals and conservatives, secularists and clerics, Jews and Catholics—­commonalities that ­were less common in the French and German contexts, dominated ­either by a Gallican submission of the Church to the state, or by a Kulturkampf among vari­ous religious persuasions.26 Hence, in Italy, Christian scholars of dif­fer­ent po­liti­cal and social backgrounds, such as the liberal Enrico Narducci (1832–93) and the ultraconservative prince Baldassarre Boncompagni Ludovisi (1821–94) in Rome; the abbot Pietro Perreau, librarian at the Palatina in Parma; and the secular professor Fausto Lasinio in Florence, actively contributed to the intense revisitation of the Jewish past that accompanied the nineteenth-­century “turn to history,” as corollaries to the construction of a modern Italian nation-­state involving Jews and non-­Jews alike. This par­tic­u­lar po­liti­cal background explains a substantial difference between the approach to Jewish studies in Italy and in other Eu­ro­pean countries: the lack in Italy of what Christian Wiese, writing about the German context, has called “the affinity ­toward antisemitic thinking” among Christian authors and the “apol­o­getic perspective” of Jewish scholars.27 This difference was apparent also to nineteenth-­century scholars. Domenico Comparetti (1835–1927), one of the chief classical scholars of Italy and who was married to the Odessa Jew Elena Raffalovich, 28 commented on the article by Abraham Geiger in which the German scholar lamented the ideological biases and the shortcomings of con­temporary Christian Hebraists in his country.29 Comparetti pointed out that Italy, despite its backwardness in accepting the most advanced results of German philological research, had a

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considerable advantage over Germany in the study of religion due to its lack of religious unrest and conflictual disputations.30

Christian Scholars in Jewish Studies A first step ­toward understanding this community of scholars is to draw a map of Christian contributions to Jewish studies. The foremost bibliographical tool for this purpose is Giuseppe Gabrieli’s 1924 Italia Judaica.31 Gabrieli (1840–1913) was a specialist in Arab and Islamic lit­er­a­ture but devoted much of his research to the history of Oriental studies in Italy, of which Jewish studies (including Hebrew language and Jewish history) was considered a branch. His bibliography integrated all the data collected by his pre­de­ces­sors, from Angelo De Gubernatis’s monumental 1876 work32 to Umberto Cassuto’s in 1913.33 Gabrieli considerably expanded Cassuto’s list of works on Jewish studies, also including in his guide foreign scholars who dealt with Italian Jewish history. It is therefore pos­si­ble to refer to it as the most complete and exhaustive list of what has been published in Italy about Jews and Judaism in the second half of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth c­ entury. Gabrieli lists some 700 articles and monographs on Italian Jews and Italian Judaism authored by 319 scholars. Seventy-­three are foreign scholars (mostly German), 75 are Italian Jews, and 171 are Italian Christians, half of whom are members of the Catholic clergy. From this raw material clearly emerges a numerical preponderance of Gentile scholars in the field of Jewish studies. To better understand the nature of their contribution, I ­will try to collocate them within the three main subdivisions of the Wissenschaft des Judentums proposed by Leopold Zunz in his foundational work On Rabbinic Lit­er­a­ture: the doctrinal, that is to say, the interpretation of the theological basis of Judaism; the grammatical, consisting of the study of lexicography and philology; and the historical, the examination of the development of Judaism throughout the ages and in the world.34

Textual Criticism I have not included in this survey of Jewish Wissenschaft the area of theology, which Zunz believed “the Jews have never fully nor clearly set out.”35 The reason for the omission is ­simple: Jewish theology was virtually non­ex­is­tent among Christian scholars in Italy, being the only field of the Wissenschaft



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des Judentums in the nineteenth ­century cultivated almost exclusively by Jews.36 However, a noteworthy aspect of non-­Jewish involvement in what Zunz considered the preliminary work (Vorarbeiten) for any study of Jewish “doctrine” was its impressive contribution to the investigation of the trea­ sures held in Italian collections of Jewish books and manuscripts. Christian scholars in the nineteenth ­century played a central role in publishing bibliographical studies, establishing critical editions of Hebraica and Judaica, and collecting and preserving the textual and material patrimony of Italian Jewry, most of which was in the custody of Catholic institutions.37 Nineteenth-­century cata­logues of the prestigious Hebrew collections of the Vatican library of Rome, the Ambrosian library of Milan, the Palatina of Parma, and the Laurenziana of Florence ­were edited by members of the Catholic clergy, respectively, Cardinal Angelo Mai (1782–1854) in Rome, Antonio Maria Ceriani (1827–1907) in Milan,38 Pietro Perreau in Parma, and the abbot Francesco Del Furia in Florence.39 It is noteworthy that many of ­these librarians worked in close association with Jewish scholars, as partners and sometimes even as subordinates. In Turin, Bernardino Peyron (1818–1903), librarian at the local National Library and nephew of the abbot Amedeo Peyron, an impor­tant Hebraist in his own right,40 was assisted in cata­loguing the Hebrew manuscripts by Samuel Ghiron (1828–95), rabbi of Turin, and by Cesare Foà (1833–1907), rabbi of Sabbioneta.41 In Bologna, Leonello Modona (1841–1902) worked together with Olindo Guerrini on bibliographical items preserved in the university library.42 Of special interest are studies of Hebrew printers, a field cultivated in Italy by Christian scholars who seem to have responded to Zunz’s desideratum, when in 1818 he lamented that he was “unable to recall any Hebrew work on the art of printing among the Jews.”43 Alongside Giacomo Manzoni’s scholarly masterpiece on the Soncino presses,44 the history of Hebrew printing ­houses in Italy attracted a good deal of attention among Christian scholars.45 Unfortunately, this interest in Hebrew incunabula and manuscripts did not prevent the most impor­tant collections of Hebrew texts belonging to Jewish private estates and communities from being dispersed through sales to foreign collectors.46

Grammatical Studies The grammatical and lexicographical field is one of the most impressive contributions of non-­Jewish scholarship to Jewish studies. In the nineteenth

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c­ entury, Italian Orientalism and biblical studies ­were the direct offspring of the prestigious tradition of Italian Christian Hebraists engaged in the study of Hebrew language and rabbinic lit­er­a­t ure since the late sixteenth ­century. Personalities such as Giulio Bartolocci (1613–87), Biagio Ugolino (1707–71), and Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi (1742–1813) ­were a constant reference for any Italian scholar engaging in Jewish studies in the nineteenth ­century. In Italian universities during this period, chairs of Oriental languages, and of Hebrew in par­tic­u­lar, ­were mostly held by clergy or scholars with an ecclesiastical background. All the teachers of Hebrew at the Turin University ­were priests, such as Giuseppe Ghiringello (1807–79) and the canon Angelo Ortalda.47 At the University of Padua, following the tenure of the abbot Simone Assemani (1752–1820), the chair of Hebrew language, biblical archaeology, and biblical exegesis was held by the bishop Angelo Valbusa from 1822 to 1863, the period of Luzzatto’s instruction at the local rabbinical seminary, and then by the abbot Pietro Italiano from 1863 to 1873.48 In Pisa prior to Salvatore De Benedetti, the professorship of Hebrew was held by Ippolito Rosellini.49 In Rome, ­there was the school of the Irish cardinal Patrick Nicholas Wiseman (1802–65), who was the author of Fabiola and would become the first archbishop of Westminster. ­There ­were also Andrea Molza of the Vatican Library (d. 1850) and Abbot Vincenti, who counted among his pupils such towering figures as the Arabist Michele Amari (1806–89) and the Ethiopist Ignazio Guidi (1844–1935). Guidi began his c­ areer as a professor of Hebrew and of comparative Semitic linguistics at the University of Rome in 1873 and was the founder in 1903 of the still-­published Rivista di studi orientali.50 In Sardinia, the priest Giovanni Spano (1803–78) was elected in 1854 as director of the Cagliari Athenaeum, where he taught Hebrew and wrote seminal works on the history of the Jews on the island.51 Among the most proficient Hebrew grammarians of the time, the priest Gregorio Ugdulena (1815–72), a professor at the Universities of Palermo, Florence, and Rome and the author of a very innovative translation of the Bible into Italian, was extraordinary in that he was influenced to some extent also by Protestant scholarship in the field of biblical criticism.52 Thus it is not surprising that most of the Hebrew and Aramaic grammars and dictionaries published in Italy during the nineteenth ­century ­were authored by Christian scholars, such as Francesco Corsaro in Naples,53 Francesco Scerbo in Florence, and Italo Pizzi (1849–20) in Turin.54 Luzzatto himself acknowledged the superiority of Christian scholars in producing



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scholarship on the Hebrew language, writing: “Comparing what Jews and non-­Jews have produced in the last three centuries in the theoretical study of Hebrew language, the latter have considerably surpassed the former.”55 That this was not only the result of a quantitative superiority is apparent from the praise Luzzatto expressed for the work of the Piedmontese phi­los­ o­pher and scientist Tommaso Valperga Di Caluso (1737–1815).56 The study of Hebrew was cultivated throughout the Italian peninsula by scholars trained in Catholic seminaries, who also shared their knowledge in lay and secular circles within Italian academia. Incidentally, the interest in Jewish studies shown by numerous members of the Italian aristocracy deserves further investigation since it could represent a third strand in Gentile scholarship, alongside the clergy and anticlerical scholars. The most famous example is the early autodidactic study of Hebrew by the count Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837), but this is certainly not the only case.57 Giacomo Manzoni (1816–89) of Lugo58 studied Hebrew first privately in Lucca and then in Rome ­u nder the Irish cardinal Nicholas Wiseman. The count Francesco Miniscalchi Erizzo (1811–75) from Verona took lessons in Aramaic from the rabbi of Venice, Abraham Lattes, who assisted in producing a critical edition of the Evangeliarium Hierosolymitanum based on a Syriac text at the Vatican library.59 ­There ­were also many ­others who did not use their linguistic skills for any other scholarly pursuit, such as the count Lodovico De Besi; the countess Ersilia Caetani Lovatelli, ­daughter of the Duke of Sermoneta, himself a dilettante Hebraist; the polyglot Count Ottavio Castiglioni from Milan; and Giammartino Arconati Visconti, who had been a devoted pupil in Salvatore De Benedetti’s Hebrew classes in Pisa. In a few instances, Catholic writers actively contributed to the re­nais­ sance of neo-­Hebraic lit­er­a­ture in Italy, using Hebrew in their poetic compositions and in their correspondence. Suffice it to mention as examples the Hebrew epistolary of the Catholic priest from Gorizia Stefano Kociancic (1818–83);60 Giuseppe Venturi’s Hebrew letters from Verona to the abbot Giambernardo de Rossi in Parma and his Hebrew translation of Thomas Gray’s En­glish Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard;61 Pietro Bandini’s Hebrew epithalamia for the Tuscan ­grand duke;62 the verses by the Christian kabbalist and convert Paul Louis Drach (1791–1865);63 the writings of Giuseppe Fabiani;64 the Minorite friar Bonaventura Dumaine;65 and many other occasional and lesser-­k nown writers.66 However, ­t hese authors had a practical and celebratory goal, and the study of Hebrew was still considered propaedeutic to theological training,

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at least ­u ntil Florence became the true center of a new kind of Hebrew learning, based on the nineteenth-­century methods of con­temporary philology, historical grammar, and comparative linguistics. The institutional home of this new learning was the Regio Istituto di Studi Superiori e di Perfezionamento, established in 1859, which in 1924 became the University of Florence.67 This institution benefited from a very rich collection of Oriental typographical sets, used in producing valuable critical editions of Hebrew and Syriac texts.68 Also in Florence, in 1871 Angelo De Gubernatis founded the Società Italiana per Gli Studii Orientali, which would be renamed in 1876 the Accademia Orientale, an annex of the department of philosophy and philology; and in 1886 he created the Società Asiatica Italiana. The leading figure in the renewal of Italian Hebraism in the 1860s and 1870s was Fausto Lasinio (1831–1914), a professor in Florence and a regular correspondent with Samuel David Luzzatto and Graziadio Isaia Ascoli in Italy,69 and Moritz Steinschneider, Leopold Zunz, Abraham Geiger, Salomon Buber, S. J. H. Halberstam, and many other illustrious representatives of Wissenschaft in Germany and Austrian Galicia.70 Lasinio had vari­ous essays by Steinschneider published in the Bollettino Italiano di Studii Orientali during his years on the journal’s editorial board, from 1876 to 1882. Steinschneider in turn dedicated to Lasinio his Polemische und apologetische Literatur in arabischer Sprache, stressing his appreciation for Lasinio’s method of studying biblical texts, characterized by scientific objectivity and ­free from all religious prejudice.71 Lasinio and De Gubernatis played a crucial role in the convocation of the international congress of Semitic studies in Florence in September 1878.72 With the notable exception of Graziadio Isaia Ascoli and Salvatore De Benedetti, the participation of Italian Jews in the work of this impor­tant conference was nearly nil. Observant Jews may have been prevented from participating in an event taking place during the Jewish high holidays, as suggested by Liana Funaro,73 but this absence is also a clear symptom of the decline of Hebrew scholarship among Italian Jews, as signaled by as acute an observer as Comparetti, who wrote that “the knowledge of Hebrew becomes scarcer ­every day and less profound among ­those of our fellow citizens who descend from the original speakers of that language and, aside from some honorable exceptions, it does not persist as a rational inquiry but as practical and anti-­philological knowledge, unworthy of our times.”74 By contrast, during the same years, members of the Catholic Church became increasingly



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involved with Oriental studies, encouraged by the favorable attitude of Pope Leo XIII that was acknowledged by the Jewish press of the time and by many Jewish scholars.75 The Vatican’s interest in promoting the study of Orientalism from a modern and scientific perspective among the clergy established the bases of what became in 1910 the Istituto Pontificio Biblico and in 1918 the Istituto Orientale in Rome.

Historical Studies As far as historical scholarship is concerned, non-­Jews in Italy pioneered an unpre­ce­dented interest in postexilic Jewish history, writing the first comprehensive studies guided by modern scholarly princi­ples on the origins and the development of Jewish settlement on the Italian peninsula.76 Jewish history emerged as a modern subject in Italy along with the study of Hebrew in the late eigh­teenth ­century, intensifying through the last quarter of the nineteenth ­century. The first Jew in Italy to write a modern history of postbiblical Judaism was David Castelli.77 A manual of Jewish history was one of the major desiderata among Jewish scholars throughout the nineteenth ­century, and before David Castelli’s magnum opus they had to refer to the heavi­ly biased ­earlier Christian historiography, from Buxtorf to Basnage, and in the Italian context from Giulio Bartolocci to Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi. However, in the late nineteenth ­century, a new and more objective kind of scholarship emerged. Scholars addressed a wide range of topics related to the history of Judaism. The scientific output of local historians is quite extensive, although a bit erratic at times. The vast majority of ­these contributions is constituted by relatively short essays on specific aspects of Jewish history published in specialized scientific journals of Oriental studies, archaeology, geography, and, of course, local history. Nevertheless, some more ambitious and lengthy volumes can be found too, especially in the four de­cades following Italian in­de­pen­dence. Gentile scholars had a crucial role in drawing international scholarly attention to the history of the Jews in Southern Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia. Among the most impor­tant studies is the collection of documents concerning the history of the Jews in Sicily published by Bartolomeo Lagumina (1850–1931), bishop of Agrigento, and his ­brother Giuseppe (1855–1931).78 The interest in the Jewish past of two Sicilian priests was shared by other

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local historians, such as Isidoro La Lumia (1823–78),79 Raffaele Starabba (1834–1906), Ferdinando Lionti (1860–1949), and Nino Tamassia (1860–1931).80 Their studies appeared mostly in the Palermo-­based journal Archivio Storico Siciliano, which also published an Italian translation of Leopold Zunz’s “Geschichte der Juden in Sicilien,” constituting the sixth chapter of his Zur Geschichte und Literatur (Berlin, 1845), and offered the indispensable documentary basis for the historical synthesis of Raphael Straus’s Die Juden im Königreich Sizilien unter Normannen und Staufen (Heidelberg, 1910) and the pioneering work of Nicola Ferorelli, Gli ebrei nell’Italia meridionale, dall’età romana al secolo XVIII (Torino, 1915). While the nearly total absence of Jewish scholars dealing with the history of the Jews in Southern Italy could be attributed to the lack of or­ga­ nized Jewish communities ­there (aside from the small and recently established Jewish settlement in Naples), as well as the difficulty of accessing the rich archives of localities far from centers of Jewish learning, it is noteworthy that the main Jewish communities scattered in Central and Northern Italy ­were likewise studied primarily by non-­Jewish scholars. Luigi Carnevali wrote about Mantua,81 Andrea Balletti about Reggio Emilia,82 Ettore Natali about Rome,83 Guido Carocci about Florence,84 Pietro Lonardo about Pisa,85 Carisio Ciavarini about Ancona,86 and Ariodante Fabretti about Perugia.87 Likewise, Antonio Ciscato wrote Gli ebrei in Padova (1300–1800): Monografia storica documentata (Padua, 1901), perhaps the most impor­tant monographic study of a Jewish community before Umberto Cassuto’s Gli ebrei a Firenze nell’età del Rinascimento (Florence, 1918).88 A wider perspective characterizes Pietro Perreau’s brief historical overview on the education of the Jews in Italy in the ­Middle Ages,89 which appeared at almost the same time as Moritz Güdemann’s monumental history of education.90 The interest in the Italian Jewish past of t­ hese and the many other Italian writers who included the Jews in their histories of Italy is matched only by the simultaneous interest of German scholars in Italian Judaism, as attested by the monumental oeuvres of Ferdinand Gregorovius,91 Moritz Steinschneider,92 Abraham Berliner,93 Hermann Vogelstein, and Paul Rieger.94 In at least one instance, their common research goals resulted in a collaborative proj­ect uniting scholars from both sides of the Alps. Enrico Narducci, a fervent Italian patriot and chief editor of the Roman journal Il Buonarroti, wrote in association with Steinschneider some of the articles that ­were collected in the volume Letteratura delle donne in 1880. Narducci served as the liaison between Steinschneider and other Italian scholars working on Jewish



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subjects, such as Prince Baldassarre Boncompagni, Ignazio Guidi, and Michele Amari. The passion for archival research and the search for the origins of national identities was certainly not an exclusive feature of Christian Italians. Jews w ­ ere also actively involved in unearthing evidence of their presence on the peninsula since immemorial times, especially through primary sources in Hebrew and in other Jewish languages that w ­ ere other­wise inaccessible to Christian scholars. The idea of the existence of a cultural Gemeinschaft of Italians of ­every faith, preceding Italy’s unification as a nation, was particularly alluring to the Jews in their fight for recognition of their civil rights. For non-­Jews this interest in the Jewish past can be explained with reference to at least two ­factors. On one hand it is a consequence of the establishment of the società di storia patria (socie­ties for the history of the homeland) that played an impor­tant part in building and disseminating regional identities in the wake of unification. According to Stefano Cavazza, the attachment to local identities was a mainstay of Risorgimento ideology, to some extent also betokening what he calls “negative integration” on the part of many local elites.95 The reappraisal of local identity began with attention paid to regional dialects and folklore while complemented by a quest for “domesticated” exotics, such as the Jews. On the other hand, stressing the relatively tolerant policies of Italian cities in the ­Middle Ages and in the Re­nais­sance, in contrast to the religiously motivated persecutions of the Jews that ­were supported by the Church, could serve to build a secularized image of the Italian past, preceding national unification. In this case Jewish experience jelled well with the history of communal autonomies holding out against both the pope and the emperor in the ­Middle Ages. In this narrative Jews could also function as heralds of a modern secular and urban society, much like the burghers and the libertine thinkers of early modern times. Although a bit beyond the chronological frame of this study, Michele Luzzati mentions two curious examples of identification with the Jews from two dif­fer­ent ideological standpoints, one antidemo­cratic, the other liberal. The first is represented by Giustiniano Degli Azzi Vitelleschi, who devoted an essay to comparing Jews and aristocratic elites as agents of cultural change but also as victims of democracy.96 The second is Oreste Dito (1866–1934), who tried to establish a parallel between the Jewish claim for emancipation and the fight for freedom among the inhabitants of the southern part of the peninsula.97

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It is true that within this considerable output of historiographical essays relating to Jews, we ­will not find the most illustrious names of nineteenth-­ century Italian academia. Furthermore, ­there was no attempt to produce a comprehensive history of Italian Jews,98 but only disjointed pieces of scholarship reflecting what Michele Luzzati calls “the fragmented real­ity of Jewish settlements in Italy, a country already divided into dif­fer­ent states.”99 Jews ­were therefore perceived as a rather marginal subject within the borders of national history and ­were studied only insofar as they ­were connected to it, with ­little sensitivity to the internal dynamics of the Jewish communities, their relations with the rest of the Jewish diaspora, and their specific cultural identity. Nevertheless, ­these studies, focusing mainly on Jewish moneylending and on social history, are still valuable contributions, insofar as they provide the documentary basis for much of ­later scholarship in the twentieth ­century. Last but not least, they show that contrary to a still-­ widespread image of the history of Judaism and of the Jews on the peninsula as having been “uncharted territory even for eminent scholars and major public figures in Italy,”100 ­there ­were significant attempts among Christian intellectuals to integrate the Jewish past within a common narrative of national Italian history.

Conclusions This survey of the characteristics of Christian participation in the scientific study of Judaism in the second half of the nineteenth ­century reveals the extent to which Jewish scholarship was but a small part of a larger general engagement with the Jewish cultural heritage in Italy. Jewish Wissenschaft in fact developed in response to a well-­established general practice of scientific study among Christians. Furthermore, the Jewish study of Judaism flourished within the limits of the primary themes established by previous Christian scholarship. And lastly, nineteenth-­century Christian Hebraism engaged with a wider set of disciplines than Jewish Hebraism. Whereas Jews interested in their tradition ­were mostly rabbis, among Gentile scholars of Judaism we find archaeologists, epigraphers, and geographers alongside theologians, phi­los­o­phers, and historians of antiquity and the ­Middle Ages. However, it is precisely this heterogeneity that explains the fragmentation of the enterprise, its lack of methodological coherence, and the fact that the Jewish focus was generally quite marginal and peripheral to its main interests.



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Therefore, the major difference between nineteenth-­century Christian Hebraism and its antecedents in the early modern period is that its relationship to Jewish Hebraism has been turned upside down: while in the Re­nais­ sance Christians ­were strongly dependent on Jewish in­for­mants, in the nineteenth ­century Jews consistently relied on Christian awareness of methodological and disciplinary developments. In fact, since Italian Jews had rapidly become more estranged from their own ancestral tradition, including the study of Hebrew, non-­Jewish scholars facilitated the renewal of the study of Semitic languages and consequently of Judaism itself, aggregating it to the constantly expanding category of “Oriental studies.” Another substantial point of contrast with early modern Christian Hebraism is the scant attention in the nineteenth c­ entury to the Jewish mystical tradition, as opposed to ­earlier fascination with it. This lack of interest also distinguishes modern Christian scholarship from its Jewish counterpart, in which Kabbalah did figure, at least as part of an ongoing debate concerning its compatibility with modernity. From this brief overview it appears that Christian scholarship was not, in general, marked by biases against Jews or Judaism. Scholarly journals in Italy devoted to general cultural issues published numerous articles of Jewish interest without discriminating between Jewish and Gentile authors. This is true for nondenominational journals, such as the Archivio Veneto, as much as for their Catholic counter­parts, such as Il Buonarroti, where, with the help of Prince Buoncompagni, Steinschneider published his most impor­tant studies on scholarly issues and on the Jews of Italy. To be sure, the fact that many Jews and Catholics ­were united in fighting against biblical criticism, as promoted by Protestant scholars in the German cultural arena, facilitated trust between them and reinforced their common defense of tradition.101 This is why the Italian approach to Wissenschaft des Judentums did not result in an extensive pro­cess of revising the religious foundations of Judaism, as occurred on the other side of the Alps. Although the so-­called “turn to history” stimulated substantial changes in religious practice in Italy, the word reform remained highly controversial even within the most liberal circles, evoking for Jews and Catholics alike the schisms provoked within Chris­tian­ity by Protestantism.102 Undoubtedly, not all Catholics ­were as open-­minded as the abbot Perreau, the prince Buoncompagni, or the abbot Peyron, and some, such as the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica, publicly opposed the emancipation of the Jews.103 Nevertheless, discriminatory discourse was marginalized in an

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academic world where, especially ­after the proclamation of the Italian kingdom in 1861, the predominant values ­were inspired by positivism and a liberal approach to religious beliefs. This convergence could also be the consequence, as suggested by Baldassare Labanca, of “Italy’s apathy ­towards the study of religion”104 or of the absence of schisms within Italian Catholicism.105 This was so much the case that in the second half of the nineteenth ­century it seems that while Jews in Italy ­were quickly abandoning any interest in Jewish studies, scholarly work on their own patrimony was increasingly conducted by Gentiles, who attempted to enhance an image of the Italian past characterized by religious moderation and intercultural dialogue. Thus, Italy offers an alternative model of interaction between the secular and the religious, the academic and the lay, as well as between national and transnational transfers of culture, with considerable repercussions for the con­temporary historiography of the Jews, the incipient discipline of Jewish ethnography, and the development of neo-­Hebraic lit­er­a­ture. Giuseppe Gabrieli’s bibliographical overview of Jewish studies in Italy in the nineteenth ­century, published in Rome in 1924, opens with a dedication that summarizes a season of fruitful intellectual friendships and blurred lines of religious division: “I wish to inscribe at the beginning of this ­humble bibliographic list the name of Hermann Marcus, my dearest friend from my earliest youth, and the names of David Castelli (died in 1901) and Achille Coen (died in 1921), who w ­ ere my unforgettable teachers in the Institute of Higher Studies in Florence in the years 1894–1895. From that time forward I have learned to know the Jews, to re­spect them, often to admire them, and to love them.”106

Chapter 7

Integrating National Consciousness into the Study of Jewish History yitzhak conforti

Modern Jewish historiography did not begin at the same time as the rise of Jewish nationalism. The former developed at the beginning of the nineteenth ­century with the Wissenschaft des Judentums, while the latter arose only in the last third of the same ­century.1 Nationalist Jewish historiography thus involved the insertion of a set of ideas created in the historical context of the Emancipation era into a new age. Both Wissenschaft and nationalist Jewish historiography valued the past as a tool for molding the Jewish ­f uture, and both ­were served by scientific methodology. But dif­fer­ent agendas informed their under­lying assumptions: the former sought emancipation and assimilation, while the latter worked for recognition of the national existence of the Jews.2 The foundations of this new nationalist historiography w ­ ere set down at the end of the nineteenth c­ entury by maskilim, most of whom ­were from Eastern and Central Eu­rope. They emphasized the importance of Hebrew as the national tongue, called for the creation of Judaic studies with a national orientation, and emphasized the connection to the Land of Israel. ­These individuals undertook multiple cultural enterprises, including the production of a Hebrew lit­er­a­ture and the founding of schools, institutions of higher learning, publishing ­houses, journals, and literary and documentary ingathering proj­ects.3 The nineteenth ­century, in addition to being the ­century of nationalism in Eu­rope, was also the golden age of modern historiography. In that era a close connection was forged between the scientific

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writing of history on the one hand and the rise of modern nationalism and the establishment of nation-­states on the other. History played a vital role in the creation of national identity by forming a national consciousness of the past.4 The scholars on whom this essay w ­ ill focus are not generally perceived as having developed “Jewish studies” or as having been active in the Wissenschaft des Judentums as Leopold Zunz and Moritz Steinschneider are. Rather, they ­were known as cultural leaders, nationalist enlighteners, and men of lit­er­a­ture. Nonetheless, they also had an enormous influence on the development of a Zionist approach to Jewish studies in the scholarly or academic context. ­These nationalist intellectuals worked diligently in the field of Hebrew culture and provided an interpretation of the Jewish past that suited their outlook. Thinkers such as Peretz Smolenskin, Ahad Ha’am, Hayim Nahman Bialik, Yehoshua Khone Ravnitzky, Moshe Leib Lilienblum, Eliezer Ben Yehuda, and Joseph Klausner ­were responsible for the cultural translation of traditional Jewish concepts into a modern national idiom. Attention to the development of this nationalist historiography sheds light not only on the defining impact of early Zionist scholarship broadly speaking but also on inner relationships and contrasts within it, between Jewish scholarship in the West (in the form of Wissenschaft des Judentums) and in the East, called ḥokhmat Yisra’el, where the use of the Hebrew term for Jewish studies was significant for nationalist thinkers mostly from Eastern Eu­rope and the Ottoman Empire. It is impor­tant to note that although we find Eastern Eu­ro­pean intellectuals who acted or studied in the West, such as Klausner, they remained eastern Jews in their consciousness, and viewed both Vienna and Berlin as western cultural centers. The central figures discussed in this article, Smolenskin, Ahad Ha’am, and Bialik, worked for long periods in Vienna, Berlin, and London but at the same time sharply criticized western scholars.5 Most of the studies that have addressed the growth of Zionist historiography have focused their discussion on the period beginning with the establishment of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the 1920s.6 In this essay, I highlight the creation of the under­lying assumptions of Zionist historiography during the growth of Jewish nationalism during the last third of the nineteenth ­century. Jonathan Frankel has rightly indicated the decisive contribution of Simon Dubnow to the foundation of the Jewish nationalist school, which he called the Jewish-­Russian school.7 In another context, I addressed Dubnow’s impor­tant contribution to Zionist



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historiography.8 ­Here I ­will focus on Zionist historical thought overall, which is deeply connected to the Jewish-­Russian school that Frankel discusses, representing the ethnocultural stream of Zionism with its organic view of the nation as an individual with a personal history and fate. This essay outlines how national consciousness redefined scholarship in Jewish studies, particularly Jewish historiography, from the end of the nineteenth ­century through the founding of the Hebrew University in Palestine.

The Birth of Nationalist Historiography Peretz Smolenskin (1842–85), writer, editor, and publisher of Ha-­shaḥar, was one of the prominent national voices within Eu­ro­pean Jewry in the late nineteenth ­century.9 Smolenskin developed a clear national standpoint from the beginning of his literary and publishing path in 1868 in Vienna. The journal Ha-­shaḥar became a central platform of Hebrew lit­er­a­t ure, in which the books of Smolenskin himself and the works of the Hebrew literary ­giants appeared, among them Yehuda Leib Gordon (“Yalag”) and Moshe Leib Lilienblum. Aside from a literary platform, Smolenskin intended Ha-­shaḥar to become a platform for Judaic studies in a nationalist spirit. He developed close friendships with scholars and researchers such as Rabbi Dr. Aharon (Adolf) Jellinek (1821–93), the author of Der jüdische Stamm (The Jewish tribe; Vienna, 1869); the Viennese Orientalist David Heinrich Müller (1846–1912); David Kaufmann (1852–99) of Budapest; and ­others who contributed their research to the journal.10 At that time, Vienna was becoming an impor­tant meeting point between Jewish scholars from East and West. Eastern Eu­ro­pean Jews as well as Ottoman maskilim viewed Vienna as the cultural center of the West.11 Ha-­shaḥar served as the starting point for the creation of a national alternative to the kind of Jewish scholarship that prevailed in Eu­rope at the time, scholarship that reflected universalist ideology among the Jews of Central and Western Eu­rope. From the start, the national orientation for which Smolenskin strove as editor was clear, and his journal is widely understood as a turning point ­toward nationalism in Hebrew lit­er­a­ture.12 As opposed to the outlook of both Reform and Orthodox Jews, Smolenskin believed Jewish belonging was not a religious m ­ atter but a national one: the feeling of national fraternity was what had unified the Jewish ­people in the diaspora communities. The opening manifesto of Ha-­shaḥar announced a

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b­ attle on two fronts: against Orthodox Judaism on one side and against the Enlightenment and German religious reform on the other.13 Despite this, Smolenskin actually aimed most of his attacks against universalist tendencies among his fellow maskilim rather than against Orthodox Jews. In par­tic­u­lar, he took issue with westernized maskilim, who ignored the power of Hebrew to unite the Jewish ­people: “In the past the ­battle was only in front, but now it is both in front and ­behind, in a period when the eyes of the blind are gradually beginning to open, awakening from the foolish stupor which has overcome them for many years. ­Those who have already gained wisdom w ­ ill close their eyes to the language—­until now, the only t­ hing that was left to us was to bring the heart of each Jew closer to being one ­people in the Land.”14 In his eyes, the Hebrew language was the central component for preserving Jewish national fraternity. Its abandonment by the western scholars seemed to him a tangible danger for Jewish existence: “They ­will be ashamed of it or despise it—­therefore ­those who repulsed the Hebrew language ­will repulse the entire ­people, and ­there ­will be no remembrance in the House of Israel. They are traitors to their ­people and to their faith!”15 The use of the Hebrew language for his scholarly journal stemmed from a clear nationalist motive. Similarly, Smolenskin thought that the study of the Jewish past could be a power­f ul tool for building the spiritual and cultural national spirit. This notion was opposed to the prevailing German scholarly approach to history that led, in his opinion, to the loss of Jewish national identity in the age of Emancipation. In his article “Even Yisra’el,” which appeared in the first year of Ha-­shaḥar’s publication, Smolenskin drew the fundamental lines for national historiography.16 In his opinion, Jewish history must be written by a Jewish historian ­because Jewish history is essentially dif­fer­ent from the history of other ­peoples: “­Because the ­house of Israel is not like the rest of the nations, it ­will not be judged according to the law of nations. Its ways are as far from ­those of all other ­peoples as east is from west, and if the writer ­will not know how to be careful and ­will march in the ways of all the other historians, then he ­will be making a ­mistake and ­will be leading his readers astray into chaos.”17 Smolenskin associated his historical approach with the scholarly paths of the moderate maskilim Nahman Krochmal (Ranak), Samuel David Luzzatto (Shadal), and Shlomo Yehudah Rapoport (Shir), sharing their belief that research on the Jewish past must be written in the Hebrew language.18



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Smolenskin viewed Jewish history as analogous to the history of the pre­ sent: just as he saw the Jewish cultural ­battle in his lifetime as that between the maskilim and the rabbis, he viewed Jewish history as an ongoing saga of ­battles between the movement for unity and freedom of thought on one hand and the tendency ­toward sectarianism and religious reaction on the other.19 Thus, for example, to him the disputes among the sages of the ­Middle Ages ­were b­ attles between t­ hose who had both Torah and secular education and scholars of Torah alone, and this history of antagonism had had a negative influence on the character of Judaism from both a religious point of view and a national one.20 He found that Jewish faith needed change and correction, as the Torah had to serve all p­ eople, both the “enlightened” (maskilim) and the “God-­fearing” at the same time.21 On the other hand, he was very opposed to radical changes like ­those advocated by Jewish reformers.22 The ­battle that Ha-­shaḥar led against the legacy of the Berlin Haskalah and subsequent trends in Jewish universalism aimed to establish that Jews are foremost a ­people and not a religion. The outlook that he rejected had first taken hold, in his opinion, during the time of Moses Mendelssohn, whom Smolenskin transformed from an admired symbol of Jewish enlightenment into a despised image, a national antihero: “In the time of Ben Menachem [Mendelssohn] this opinion started to find its way into the hearts of the Jews, and now they have sent its branches afar, . . . ​­because this person, Moshe ben Menachem, was for the maskilim what Moses our lawgiver was for devotees of the word of God. They would look ­toward him and gaze upon him, and anything he said would be considered holy.”23 As opposed to an optimistic view of emancipation, Smolenskin’s attitude ­toward the modern age and ­toward the proj­ect of enlightenment was wary and pessimistic. The Enlightenment assumption that transforming the Jew into a useful citizen would lead to the solution of the “Jewish question” did not withstand the test of real­ity with the spread of antisemitism in the 1870s. In its wake, Smolenskin argued that Jews must never relinquish their national identity.24 In his best-­k nown article, “Time to Plant” (‘Et lata‘at), Smolenskin determined that all the Jews’ efforts to integrate with other nations at the price of giving up their own national identity did not help. On the contrary, this approach only made Jews despicable in the eyes of the other nations.25 Smolenskin attacked Judaic studies researchers in Germany with strong and scathing words.26 To him, their universalist approach only strengthened antisemitism and did not represent a solution to the “Jewish question.” Thus

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Ha-­shaḥar expressed the crisis that was taking place among the maskilim in Eastern Eu­rope in the late nineteenth ­century, and Smolenskin’s positions ­later served Zionist critics and scholars such as Bialik and Gershom Scholem, who viewed the Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars in a very similar way.27 For example, in his critique of the works of Jewish scholars in Germany, Smolenskin claimed that the fact that ­these works ­were not written in Hebrew lowered their quality: “This scandal, to research ḥokhmat Yisra’el and to clarify the holy writings but to do so in the German language, has produced lies and falsehoods and endless nonsense.”28 Smolenskin considered even Heinrich Graetz’s book, Geschichte der Juden (History of the Jews), which was enthusiastically received by other Jewish nationalist thinkers, flawed and unacceptable, as it was written in German for “Western” Jews rather than in Hebrew for the entire Jewish p­ eople.29 ­After the pogroms in Rus­sia in 1881, Smolenskin strengthened his nationalist position and wrote explic­itly that the Land of Israel must be settled. He continually emphasized that the aim of his Jewish historiographical work was on behalf of the national pre­sent and ­f uture and not merely to reveal the past: “However, when I constantly make appeals on behalf of the Hebrew language, I ask that you not misinterpret my words. I do not agree with ­those who build memorials to the books of the sages of past days. . . . ​ That was the intention of most of the Haskalah preachers, ­a fter they renounced the Hebrew language, and Torah and religious study. Then they left no trace of our Torah in the schools. Then they collected money to erect memorial tombstones to the dead.”30 As we see ­here, the work of Judaic studies in Germany seemed to Smolenskin like a mere memorial proj­ect and not research for Jewish life in the pre­sent. Therefore he called to the researchers of Judaism: “Wake up, reach out to one another, and awaken to life, so that we ­will not live like the dead that have no burial.”31 The burial meta­phor would ­later serve other Zionist thinkers in their treatment of Judaic studies in Germany as well,32 and such statements distinctly remind us of Gershom Scholem’s words in his controversial article “Reflections on Modern Jewish Studies” (1944), in which he claimed that that the methods and attitude of German Judaic studies scholars w ­ ere destructive: “­There ­were some scholars, such as Moritz Steinschneider (1816– 1907), to whom it was clear what they ­were ­doing, and who labored ­toward destruction, celebrating the burial ceremony in thought, speech, and action.”33 The nationalist alternative to Judaic studies, which began with Smolenskin’s



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work, saw the Judaic studies that had developed in Germany as oriented only ­toward the past, as a funeral for Jewish culture.

Spiritual Zionism and Judaic Studies In the 1880s and 1890s, Asher Ginsberg (1856–1927; known as “Ahad Ha’am”) became a leading cultural figure among Eastern Eu­ro­pean Zionists.34 As a result of his activity as the editor of Ha-­Shiloah and the promoter of Jewish cultural proj­ects, he made a meaningful contribution to the advancement of research in Judaic studies and to the development of Zionist historiography.35 He headed the Bnei Moshe Association (1889–1896), which aimed to influence lit­er­a­ture, education, and Zionist leadership during the time of Hibbat Zion.36 In the literary arena, the association published anthologies and journals, including Kaveret, Pardes, and Luaḥ aḥi’asaf in addition to the influential Ha-­shiloaḥ, and founded the Tushiyah and Achiasaf publishing ­houses. Ultimately, the success of the Bnei Moshe Association was ­limited,37 but despite his failures as a leader, Ahad Ha’am acquired high status and had enormous influence on the Zionist intelligent­sia.38 He was at the center of a group of writers and scholars in Odessa, including Haim Nahman Bialik, Yehoshua Khone Ravnitzky, Moshe Leib Lilienblum, ­Simon Dubnow, and Simchah Ben Zion. He also made an impact in the West, as his writings ­were translated into German (by Israel Friedlander [1876–1920]) and En­glish (by Leon Simon [1881–1965]) in the early twentieth ­century, and his letters clearly show that he had close personal and professional ties with Jewish scholars and researchers all over the world. ­Because so many perceived him as a groundbreaking thinker and ­because his articles, written in excellent, clear, and precise Hebrew, cast a spell over a wide range of readers, his writings w ­ ere subjected to deep analy­sis during his life and ­after his death. Ahad Ha’am worked for a clear cause: to shape Judaic studies and historiography in a nationalistic spirit. In par­tic­u­lar, he made a unique contribution to shaping the organic evolutionist model that was ­adopted in general terms by Zionist historians. Leading historians, including many of the Jerusalem scholars who founded the Hebrew University, strongly identified with the evolutionist approach that aspired to understand Jewish history “from within.” Yitzhak Baer (1888–1980) explained that the role of modern Jewish historiography was not to rely on the Orthodox dogmatic model on

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the one hand nor on the liberal, assimilationist model on the other, but to try to understand Jewish history from within. Baer, like Ahad Ha’am, believed that Jewish history should be understood from the inner perspective of the nation: “from the consciousness of the past generations of our ­people itself.”39 He also a­ dopted an organic approach to the Jewish past: “The history of the Jewish ­People, from its beginning ­until ­today, is organically connected. ­Every single episode sheds light on the nature and development of that same unique historical power, about which all admit the greatness of its inception and speculate on its ­future.”40 ­These words approximated Ahad Ha’am’s conception of the Jewish past. In his philosophy, Ahad Ha’am integrated fundamental components of Eu­ro­pean social positivist and historical thought together with modern Jewish thought and classical Jewish sources.41 His use of phrases like “the national spirit” and “the ­will for national existence” highlight his organic approach to the history of the Jewish nation—­a quality derived from British evolutionist phi­los­o­phers, such as Charles Darwin and Henry Thomas Buckle, who had a strong influence on Jewish thinkers in Eastern Eu­rope during the second half of the nineteenth ­century.42 He was especially influenced by the evolutionist approach of the British sociologist and phi­los­o­pher Herbert Spencer (1820–1903).43 Like Spencer, Ahad Ha’am also thought that nations develop as organic entities in an evolutionary manner. He thought that the ­people or the nation was an organic body with a “national self ” and a natu­ ral desire to exist.44 Nations ­were organic creatures with a certain resemblance to ­people as individuals45 but without the limitations of individual life spans: “The individual who is g­ oing to die w ­ ill die, and all his hopes for the f­uture cannot redeem him from death. But the nation, whose life span is spiritual, neither it nor the laws of physiology can dictate its years or the termination of its powers, if it succeeds in bringing into its ‘self ’ the foundation of the ­f uture—­even if only in an illusory image of hope alone, then it has found in this the elixir of life, fitting spiritual food for its nature that ­will revitalize it forever, regardless of any sickness or affliction.”46 In his historical scholarship, Ahad Ha’am combined ­these biological and evolutionary ideas with a positivist approach and emphasized the importance of cultural awareness in the development of the nation.47 He believed that for a Jewish national re­ nais­sance it was crucial to reinforce both awareness of the past and aspiration for the ­f uture. Therefore, he criticized the scholarly activities of Western Eu­ro­pean Jews (their Wissenschaft) in ­these words: “Jewish scholars have



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arisen who seek to completely banish the hope (for national redemption) and to erase its remembrance from the ­people. . . . ​Accordingly, we find that to the same extent that the ele­ment of the ­f uture is lacking, at the same time and in the same place, among ­these very same scholars, the past of the ‘national self ’ is gaining ground.”48 Ahad Ha’am criticized non-nationalist Jewish studies, saying it failed to look to the ­f uture; in his opinion, only his approach would do so. In its nationalist orientation, Ahad Ha’am’s view of the Jewish past was similar to that of his close friend Simon Dubnow49—­but while Dubnow’s historiography and ideology focused on the nation in the diaspora, Ahad Ha’am’s was Zionist: he believed in the need for a territorial basis for the Jewish nation. He saw both the Jewish past and the Jewish ­f uture through this lens. He and his successors in Zionist historiography gave the Land of Israel and the Hebrew language central locations in Jewish history and the ­f uture of the nation.50 From the beginning of his cultural activity, we are witness to Ahad Ha’am’s repeated efforts to shape the study of the Jewish past in a national and evolutionist spirit. In 1894, he undertook an ambitious attempt to publish a Jewish encyclopedia in Hebrew entitled Otsar ha-­Yahadut ba-­lashon ha-­ ‘Ivrit, for which he drafted the financial support of Rus­sian tea magnate Kalman Wissotzky (1824–1904).51 Ahad Ha’am wanted to bring his evolutionist method to full expression in this encyclopedia, which in his view would facilitate a Zionist re­nais­sance.52 He saw it as a national proj­ect that would be comparable in importance to Diderot’s encyclopedia53 and would be on a par with g­ reat classical Hebrew lit­er­a­ture, such as the Mishnah, Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, and the Shulḥan ‘arukh. His first article on this topic appeared in the newspaper Ha-­melits in 1894. In it he articulated the importance of Otsar ha-­Yahadut for the creation of national fraternity, set out the reasons that prompted him to initiate the proj­ect, and described the initial plan for its design.54 Ahad Ha’am feared the loss of interest in Judaism and its values among a younger generation gripped by an identity crisis,55 and he saw a Hebrew encyclopedia as bringing the Jews closer to their ­people and tradition b­ ecause only the use of the Hebrew language could bring about a “natu­ral and intimate” recognition (“from within”) of the history of the Jewish ­people. Not by chance did Ahad Ha’am mention that at the same time as he was planning Otsar ha-­ Yahadut the Jewish Encyclopedia was already being advertised in En­glish. He bemoaned the proj­ect—­which indeed did come to fruition beginning in

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190156—­and criticized its provenance: “Who can bear the disgrace that an Otsar ha-­Yahadut is being first published not in Hebrew, but in En­glish, and not by Jews, but by non-­Jews.”57 In Ahad Ha’am’s eyes, Otsar ha-­Yahadut was supposed to save Judaism in the modern age from losing its national identity.58 Self-­recognition, return to the “national self,” recognition of the national spirit—­these ­were the goals. His initial plan included four governing topics: Torah, history, sages, and lit­er­a­ture.59 Ahad Ha’am ­later developed ­these subjects into a more detailed plan in his article “The General Program of Otsar ha-­Yahadut in the Hebrew Language.”60 The program defined the outline of the Jewish encyclopedia u ­ nder his editorship: Within the term Judaism, we include every­thing that teaches us about the Jewish ­people and the characteristics of its national spirit. As an individual and as a ­people, it has three components: a) its fundamental thoughts and viewpoints, both in their content and in their method; b) its eternal ways and habits in all facets of life; c) the way it is inspired by sudden events and its actions as a result. As ­these ­matters change, ­whether for an individual or a ­people, from period to period for internal and external reasons, therefore, ­there is no full and true knowledge ­unless we recognize every­thing in its historical place from its inception, with all the changes that have taken place over time and the reasons for them.61 This definition of Judaism permitted Ahad Ha’am to say that every­thing that would facilitate understanding the national spirit throughout its history should be included in Otsar ha-­Yahadut. As a result of this definition, anything that did not correspond to the characteristics of the national spirit did not belong to it and would not be included. In order to expose historical revelations of “the national spirit,” the main topics Otsar ha-­Yahadut would address ­were the Hebrew language, Hebrew lit­er­a­ture, the Torah, Jewish history, and Jewish sages.62 In the end, the attempt to publish the encyclopedia failed despite more than a de­cade of trying, and all that survived of the ambitious plan for the Otsar ha-­Yahadut was a sample booklet published in 1906.63 The editor Joseph Klausner noted in the introduction that the aim of the encyclopedia had been “to save the nation from complete oblivion.”64 And yet, this cultural proj­ect never came to fruition. Due to this setback, Ahad Ha’am founded



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the journal Ha-­shiloaḥ, once again with the financial backing of Kalman Wissotzky and now with the Achiasaf publishing ­house as well.65 Ahad Ha’am’s policy of meticulous editing in Ha-­shiloaḥ highlighted the importance of the articles that addressed Judaic studies.66 He aspired to create a journal that was elite and Eu­ro­pean in style and that would meet the highest scientific standards of “the West.” It was in this editorial work that Ahad Ha’am, the intellectual, found his footing as a cultural leader. As he wrote in the journal’s opening manifesto, his aim was to create a scientific, Hebrew platform for the ­people that would assist in creating an “inner” understanding of the Jewish past and thus “gradually penetrate the inner chambers of our life.”67 Ha-­shiloaḥ was not a “scientific” journal in the sense of being neutral; its aim was to serve as a tool in the hands of the Jewish ­people. However, it did provide a platform for scholarly articles, especially on ­matters of Judaism and the Jewish past. ­These ­were at the heart of Ha-­shiloaḥ, as we can see clearly from Ahad Ha’am’s list of editorial priorities: chapters on ḥokhmat Yisra’el, opinion articles, criticism, and belles lettres. Among t­ hese contributions Ahad Ha’am emphasized his clear preference for articles on Judaic studies over lit­ er­a­ture and poetry.68 Ahad Ha’am’s concern for the loss of Jewish identity as the identity of a nation with “a historical personality” was the central motivation for his educational and cultural activity. He feared the exchange of traditional Jewish identity for a universal identity that leaves no trace of Jewish national fraternity. Thus he saw Ha-­shiloaḥ as a tool for changing modern Jewish self-­ awareness. This is the reason that he never compromised with the claims made against his editorial policy by the “young” critics, who ­were led by Micha Josef Berdyczewski (1865–1921).69 Ahad Ha’am explic­itly announced that his aim was to address only Jewish subjects from the past and pre­sent and to allow no room for general topics that ­were unrelated to the “concept of Judaism” as he defined it.70 Among the volumes of Ha-­shiloaḥ we find many articles on Jewish studies, biographical studies of Jewish sages, criticism, and lit­er­a­ture. One of the prominent writers in Ha-­shiloaḥ was Simon Bernfeld (1860–1940), a historian and prolific scholar who was close to Ahad Ha’am. Bernfeld published numerous historical articles in Ha-­shiloaḥ, of par­tic­u­lar interest among them his article on Ernest Renan (1823–92) entitled “Ernest Renan and His Attitude to Judaism.” 71 In this historiographical essay, Bernfeld dedicated a wide-­ranging discussion to the attitude of Christian scholars ­toward Jewish history in the modern age. He noted the books of Jacques Basnage (1653–1723;

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History of the Jews from the Time of Jesus Christ to the Pre­sent Time) and Heinrich Ewald (1803–75; History of the Jewish ­People) as well as Renan’s History of the Jewish ­People.72 Bernfeld complimented Renan profusely but also expressed concern that the author tended to rely too much on biblical criticism and on Julius Wellhausen’s documentary hypothesis regarding the Hebrew Bible. Bernfeld’s developmental and historical outlook ­were very close to that of Ahad Ha’am, and this was expressed ­later in his well-­k nown compilation The Book of Tears (1923–26). In this book, Bernfeld determined the Zionist historiographical attitude ­toward antisemitism. He viewed life in the diaspora as a tragic story of persecutions, destruction, and murder. In his introduction, he explained that hatred of Israel was a primal phenomenon that changed its expressions during history, but whose unique motive was the basic difference between the Jewish ­people and the nations among whom they lived. Antisemitism existed in ancient times and continued into the M ­ iddle Ages when the Jews w ­ ere u ­ nder Christian and Islamic rule, and into modern times when hatred of the religion was transformed into hatred of the ­people and the race.73 This view, which considered the Jews’ life in the diaspora to be the source of all their suffering, ­later gained expression in the attitude of the Zionist historians ­toward the diaspora.74 The historian Salo W. Baron bitterly opposed this position and called it “the lachrymose conception of Jewish history.”75 Despite the tragic narrative that Bernfeld chose to lay out in The Book of Tears, he ended the introduction of his book with a liberal national axiom: “The Jewish question can only be properly solved when the question of humanity is solved.”76 He saw in nationalism a necessary tool for ensuring the national rights of the Jews, including ­human rights, equality, and freedom. In the ten volumes of Ha-­shiloaḥ that Ahad Ha’am edited (1897–1902), the connection between the pre­sent lives of Jews and the Jewish past was prominent, as was the evolutionary approach that viewed Zionism as an organic part of Jewish history. Many editorials addressed the situation of Jewish communities around the world, alongside in-­depth studies of the Jewish past.77 Joseph Klausner (1875–1958) perpetuated this focus when he replaced Ahad Ha’am as editor in 1903. He served as editor, with some interruptions, ­until the final issue in 1927.78 In the 1890s, Klausner had participated in the trend of popularizing the scientific theories of Darwin, Spencer, Buckle, and Renan among Hebrew readers, and he published articles that surveyed their



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approaches.79 Klausner thus preserved the evolutionist approach that Ahad Ha’am had ­adopted in relation to the Jewish past, and he integrated Judaic studies in its popu­lar form into the periodical. He differed from his mentor in allocating broader space to lit­er­a­ture and poetry, appointing a special editor for the lit­er­a­ture section. This position was given to Bialik at first and then to Jacob Fichman (1881–1958).80

The Ethnic Stream and Judaic Studies in Palestine The resignation of Ahad Ha’am from the position of editor of Ha-­shiloaḥ in late 1902 marked the rise of Bialik as leader of the ethnic-­cultural camp in Zionism. Bialik viewed himself as Ahad Ha’am’s student, but we can also identify a change in the way that Bialik preferred to promote Judaic studies in its Zionist form. In contrast to the elitist approach ­adopted by Ahad Ha’am, Bialik aspired to pop­u­lar­ize Jewish culture in a much broader manner. As opposed to Ahad Ha’am’s purpose of using the encyclopedia to provide a kind of “authorized summary” of the Jewish past, Bialik preferred to pre­sent Jewish texts to the ­people through scientific mediation. At a farewell party or­ga­nized in Ahad Ha’am’s honor in January 1903, Bialik read a poem in tribute to his ­great teacher who led the way from the world of tradition to that of national identity. “We view you as a beacon of truth and a mighty spiritual fortress,”81 wrote the poet. This anthem of praise to Ahad Ha’am also signaled the passing of the torch of cultural leadership.82 Bialik, together with Simcha Ben Zion and Ravnitzky, founded the Moriah publishing ­house (1902), which produced classic Hebrew lit­er­a­ture and school textbooks. Together with Ravnitzky, Bialik published Sefer ha-­agadah (Book of legends, 1908–11). Bialik also initiated the creation of a literary ingathering proj­ect (mif ‘al ha-kinus) and established the Dvir publishing ­house, which printed the Hebrew-­language Jewish studies journal Dvir (1923–25). In addition, Bialik initiated a Hebrew anthological forum devoted to ethnography, Reshumot, and had ­great impact on the consciousness of some Zionist historians and scholars in the Hebrew University.83 Bialik saw Sefer ha-­agadah and the literary ingathering proj­ect as the main part of his cultural activity. His aim was to create a “book of the ­people” that would be in ­every Jewish home and would become part of modern Jewish life. Sefer ha-­agadah did actually achieve enormous circulation and became a part of his general plan to create the “Jewish bookcase.”84 ­After its

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publication, Bialik wrote the poem “In Front of the Bookcase” in the summer of 1910, in which he expressed his complex attitude to the trea­sures of older Jewish culture.85 In the poem the writer relates how he saved from burial the trea­sures of Jewish culture that had sunk in the depths of the past. In 1913, Bialik delivered a programmatic speech in Vienna called “The Hebrew Book,” in which he outlined the steps required for a literary ingathering proj­ect for Hebrew lit­er­a­ture. Bialik used the term lit­er­a­ture for all sorts of Hebrew writing, not only belletristic lit­er­a­ture. His goal was to collect Hebrew literary works from a range of historical periods in order to preserve and research them and in order for them to constitute the basis of a national Hebrew canon: “If the term ‘lit­er­a­ture’ connotes not merely belle-­ lettres, but mainly signifies the sum total of the expression of national thought and feeling in ­every manner of literary form during the dif­fer­ent ages—­then our modern lit­er­a­ture, when compared with that which preceded it, is no more than a drop in the sea. It suffices merely to indicate the known sub-­ divisions of the lit­er­a­ture: the Bible, the apocryphal writings, the Talmud in its two principal aspects—­Halakhah and Agadah—­Philosophy, Kabbalah, Poetry, Ethics, Homiletics, Hasidism, Folk-­literature.”86 Bialik expanded the literary ingathering proj­ect to Hebrew lit­er­a­ture in general, and in this we may observe similarity with the concept of Leopold Zunz in his programmatic article “On Rabbinic Lit­er­a­ture” (1818), which called for examination of all fields of such lit­er­a­ture.87 Despite the differences in the historical contexts and ideological motivations of the authors, their positions are similar in the desire to preserve and research all of Hebrew lit­er­a­ture. Bialik, for his part, encouraged and pushed the scholars to explain and consolidate the best of Hebrew lit­er­a­ture as part of the national re­nais­sance. He argued that a constructive national revival can only be based on a literary ingathering and on the creation of a literary canon. The Hebrew term he used was ḥatimah (sealing, or canonization), analogous to the canonization of the Bible, the Mishnah, and Talmud. The idea was to “seal” diaspora literary creation and then open a new national chapter in the Land of Israel. “­There is only one way, to my mind, in which to extricate ourselves from the aforesaid spiritual straits. . . . ​We must resort to it this time, too—­the phenomenon of literary ‘ingathering,’ that which is known in our literary history by the name of ‘canonization.’ ”88 ­Because of the scientific character of the literary ingathering proj­ect, he aspired to integrate the strengths of Judaic studies in the West and in the East. In his opinion, the scholars of the West had sinned in that they wrote in German and published the trea­sures



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of Judaism externally among the other nations, as opposed to the scholars from Eastern Eu­rope who preserved the Hebrew language and their loyalty to the Jewish p­ eople.89 Bialik did indeed recoil from the universalist approach of western scholars, but like Ahad Ha’am he very much admired their contribution to the study of the Jewish past.90 Therefore he called upon the Jewish historical researchers to join the literary ingathering proj­ect: “­Isn’t the time ripe yet for Jewish Science to unite with the language of the Jews for their own complete renascence as well as for the revival of the Jewish spirit? I am certain that it is.”91 Bialik emphasized the centrality of the Hebrew language in the lives of the Jewish ­people in general and the literary ingathering proj­ect in par­tic­u­lar, believing that the proj­ect would bring together all the Jewish spiritual trea­sures in Hebrew. For this reason, Bialik called for the translation into Hebrew of much prominent Jewish lit­er­a­ture that was originally written in foreign languages in order to “return” ­these trea­sures to the p­ eople.92 Like the idea of creating the Jewish bookshelf, Bialik’s ingathering proj­ ect met with re­sis­tance on the part of the younger generation of Zionist intellectuals, who viewed it as a continuation of Ahad Ha’am’s evolutionist approach. The radical Zionist trend in the spirit of Micha Yosef Berdyczewski was represented by the criticism of David Frishman and Zvi Auerbach, who strenuously objected to the return of the Jewish classics created in the diaspora.93 But Bialik was not dissuaded by the criticism and continued to act for the implementation of his vision. Bialik not only severely criticized German Judaic studies; he also worked to create a nationalist version. From the early 1920s ­until the establishment of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Bialik labored intensively to promote the Zionist form of Judaic studies. A prominent example of Bialik’s influence on the beginning of Zionist historiography is his direct influence on Zionist historian Ben-­Zion Dinur (Dinaburg), a leading figure among the Zionist historians in Palestine. Dinur became closely acquainted with Bialik and Ravnitzky during the years that he spent in Odessa (1920–1921), and together they designed proj­ects connected to Judaic studies in the Hebrew language. ­Later on, Dinur testified to Bialik’s role in defining his own historiographic enterprise.94 For example, Dinur’s 1920s multivolume proj­ect Israel in Exile, which was an anthology of historical sources, was accomplished in the spirit of Bialik’s literary ingathering enterprise.95 The first volume of the already-­mentioned journal Dvir was printed in Berlin in 1923, ­under the editorship of three prominent scholars: I. N. Elbogen,

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Y. N. Epstein, and N. H. Torczyner (Tur-­Sinai). This journal, published by Bialik and Ravnitzky’s Dvir publishing com­pany, appeared at Bialik’s initiative. In the journal’s opening manifesto, the editors connected the scientific journal to previous attempts at publishing Judaic studies journals: A hundred years have passed since Zunz printed his Zeitschrift fur die Wissenschaft des Judentums; that journal did not last the year. Since then, numerous attempts have been made to produce periodicals of ḥokhmat Yisra’el, but few ­were long-­lived. Least successful of all ­were such compilations in the Hebrew language. Even ­those that set aside space for belletristic lit­er­a­ture and questions about life and the nation, did not last long: only twelve volumes of Ha-­shaḥar ­were printed and even Ha-­shiloaḥ, which created a w ­ hole new type of Hebrew compilation of lit­er­a­ture and science, strug­gled several times with the Angel of Death. It departed from the world and was then reborn but ultimately, ­after a long stage of ­dying, it, too, permanently left this world.96 The editors attempted to create a clear linkage between the Judaic studies that developed in Germany in the nineteenth ­century and their national version. Moreover, they viewed Smolenskin’s Ha-­shaḥar and Ahad Ha’am’s Ha-­shiloaḥ as Hebrew journals that allotted much space to Jewish scholarship. The editors of Dvir wanted to continue this Zionist trend in Judaic studies, as is clearly evident in the opening manifesto: “We stand h ­ ere t­ oday as a generation of national revival and at a time of re­nais­sance for Hebrew lit­er­a­ture. The p­ eople of Israel is returning to its national assets, to the language of its prophets, and turning its heart to the lit­er­a­ture of its scholars. With the onset of this literary revival, we believe that t­here is hope for Hebrew scholarship in Hebrew. Out of ­these sentiments of hope, we willingly acceded to the proposal of H. N. Bialik to compile and edit a Hebrew periodical of Judaic studies [ḥokhmat Yisra’el].”97 Thus we see how Dvir appeared on the scene as a scholarly journal inspired by Bialik’s work. In addition to a preface by the editors, Bialik added a “Letter to the Editors” in which he expressed his hope that Judaic studies would return to its initial source: the Hebrew language and the Land of Israel. To Bialik, the fact that Judaic studies in the modern era neglected the Hebrew language was tantamount to teaching the p­ eople to assimilate. “­Those who would strip their nation naked of the spirit and prepare it for assimilation, whose end is



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annihilation, even if they accept the entire Torah—of them we say: they are spiritual apostates.”98 Bialik, like his pre­de­ces­sors Smolenskin and Ahad Ha’am, emphasized the decisive importance of the Hebrew language as the only research language that facilitated real understanding of the Jewish past: I have no way of making assumptions or prophesying about the past, regarding what Judaism would look like t­ oday if Hebrew had been also used in the West. But the transition to Hebrew did not win ­there, to the misfortune of the entire nation. Instead, the pro­cess of assimilating the Hebrew spirit and replacing it from within, which found power­f ul representatives and emissaries such as Zunz and Geiger and their ilk, spread like wildfire from community to community, from country to country, like the disease of leprosy, which has no cure. . . . ​The time has come to speak the truth, no ­matter what: ­After three generations of peace and welfare, of broad enlightenment and civil rights, of “ḥokhmat Yisra’el” and “­temples” and reforms, and reforms of reforms; of preachers and of composers of new prayer books, of sanctimonious Orthodoxy and factories for churning out rabbis, and “mekitse nirdamim” [awakeners of the sleepers]—­ after all this abundance of wealth, Western Judaism has been thrown down before us, lifeless.99 Thus we see how Bialik associated the problematic nature of Judaic studies research with his own spiritual diagnoses of German Jewry. ­Later in the same letter he argued that the revival of Hebrew as the language of lit­er­a­ture and research in Eastern Eu­rope led to Jewish national revival and return to the land of Israel. Therefore, only collaboration between the research achievements in the West and the Jewish nationalism of the East could facilitate the proper growth of Judaic studies. Bialik was one of the orators at the Hebrew University’s opening ceremony on Mount Scopus, and ­until the end of his life, even promoted the university’s activities in Tel Aviv. In his speech at the opening ceremony in 1925, Bialik emphasized the centrality of Torah study (limud torah) and education for the Jewish ­people: “The national school in all its forms—­the ḥeder, the yeshiva, the bet midrash—­these have been our securest strongholds throughout our long, hard strug­gle for existence and for the right to exist in the world as a separate and distinct ­people among the ­peoples.”100

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Therefore, the “Torah” in the eyes of the Jews was for Bialik a very deep cultural concept that brings closer together all the parts of the p­ eople in the diaspora and unites them: “The concept of Torah attained, in the esteem of the ­people, an infinite exaltation. For them the Torah was almost another existence, a loftier existence, added to or even taking the place of real existence. The Torah became the center of the nation’s secret and avowed aspirations and desires. The dictum ‘Israel and the Torah are one’ was no mere phrase: the non-­Jew cannot appreciate it, ­because the concept of ‘Torah’ cannot be rendered adequately in any other tongue.”101 According to Bialik, the concept of “Torah” was not l­imited to religious law but rather encompassed all facets of the spiritual existence of the Jewish ­people. This secularized adaptation of the traditional term (Torah) to a national concept had begun in the last third of the nineteenth ­century by Smolenskin and Ahad Ha’am. Now it was restated by Bialik, who hoped that the Hebrew University would realize the literary ingathering vision by developing Jewish academic studies in Jerusalem: “In the consciousness of the nation, the comprehensive ­human concept of ‘culture’ has taken the place of the theological one of ‘Torah.’ We have come to the conclusion that a ­people that aspires to a dignified existence must create a culture, not only apply one but create one—­create it with its own hands and its own implements and materials and impress it with its own seal.”102 Bialik believed in the cultural evolution of the Jewish ­people from the premodern religious tradition to the national re­nais­sance, and from the diaspora to the Land of Israel. Therefore, a large part of his public activity was devoted to the ingathering enterprise of Hebrew lit­er­a­ture and to cultural activity that connected folk consciousness with Judaic studies. As demonstrated by Israel Bartal, the Hebrew University only partially fulfilled Bialik’s dream of a literary ingathering.103 However, Bialik had tremendous impact as the disseminator and promoter of Hebrew culture, and his ethnocultural track in Zionism had g­ reat influence on Zionist scholars who dealt with Judaic studies.

Conclusion This essay has shown how Zionist scholars had a decisive influence in creating a national historiography, beginning in the last third of the nineteenth ­century. I have outlined the activities of thinkers with a deep ethnocultural consciousness who saw the Jewish past through this lens and attempted to



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convey such awareness to the nation. The emancipationist ideology of Wissenschaft des Judentums in Germany was exchanged for nationalist ideology, but the use of scholarly or “scientific” methodology continued. The Zionist version of Judaic studies viewed Zionism itself as the product of an evolutionary development from traditional Jewish society to national re­nais­sance, and it emphasized the necessity of the Hebrew language for the articulation of national history from an “inner” perspective. With the foundation of the Hebrew University, the nationalist trend was at last fully integrated with the Jewish scholarship that had developed in nineteenth-­century Eu­rope, and the ethnocultural self-­identification of the university’s found­ers had resulted in a new form of academic Jewish studies.104

Chapter 8

South Asian Frameworks for Eu­ro­pean Good Intentions Hyderabad, Karachi, and Jewish Orientalism hanan harif

On March 18, 1964, Shelomo Dov Goitein (1900–85), the renowned historian and scholar of the Cairo Geniza, wrote to Rabbi Melvin Glatt (1930–94) of the conservative congregation Kesher Zion in Reading, Pennsylvania, about a young Muslim who had recently moved to the rabbi’s town: “While in India, a colleague of mine ­there, a fine Muslim scholar, told me that his nephew, a physician, was serving a residence year in Reading. I invited the young man and found him a most pleasant and modest person. He comes from a scholarly ­family that is both modern and religious. Thus I immediately realized that the young man feels himself comfortable at a t­ able where ­people say a grace before and ­after the meal and keep their head covered during the grace (as traditional Muslims do).”1 Goitein suggested that Rabbi Glatt introduce the young Muslim physician to members of his congregation, signing off with the verse ‫( אתם ידעתם את נפש הגר‬You yourselves have known the soul of the alien resident; Ex. 23:9). The “fine Muslim scholar” to whom Goitein referred in his letter was Dr. Muhammad Yusufuddin, head of the Department of Religions and Culture at the Osmania University in Hyderabad, India. Yusufuddin, who met Goitein at a conference in Delhi, wrote to him about his nephew and invited him to visit Hyderabad. Yusufuddin also sent Goitein his book, Oriental and



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Islamic Studies in World Universities, a collection of study programs in ­these fields from universities in the United States, Canada, Eu­rope, Lebanon, and India, along with other relevant materials.2 Goitein’s letter to Rabbi Glatt hints at a common assumption regarding the proximity and interrelations between Islam and Judaism in the ­Middle Ages. In his popu­lar book Jews and Arabs, Goitein famously used the term symbiosis in order to characterize ­these relations.3 He referred to one of the champions of Wissenschaft, Moritz Steinschneider, who compared this phenomenon with that of modern German Jewry: “No won­der that Moritz Steinschneider, himself an outstanding German-­Jewish scholar . . . ​compared the German-­Jewish with the Arab-­Jewish symbiosis, regarding the two as of equal importance.”4 Goitein himself, however, had a dif­fer­ent view: “I venture to disagree with the ­great master. Despite their ­great relative importance, none of the creations of the Jewish authors writing in German or conceived ­under the impact of Modern Western Civilization have reached all parts of the Jewish ­people or have influenced the personal inner life of ­every Jew. . . . ​Modern Western Civilization, like the ancient Civilization of the Greeks, is essentially at variance with the religious culture of the Jewish ­people. Islam, however, is from the flesh and bone of Judaism. It is, so to say, a recasting, an enlargement of the latter, just as Arabic is closely related to Hebrew.”5 The meaning of this proximity, according to Goitein, is twofold: on the one hand, Judaism “could draw freely” from its Muslim environment while preserving “its in­de­pen­dence and integrity”; on the other hand, Islam itself is depicted ­here as a religion created “from the flesh and bone of Judaism,” a statement that in turn hints at Islam’s crucial dependence on its “­mother” religion. In other words, Judaism was able to maintain its authenticity ­under Islam ­because Islam itself is not an original spiritual phenomenon.6 Goitein’s depiction of Islam as an “enlargement” and “recasting” of Judaism ignores both the Islamic point of view and other perspectives on the formation of Islam. The picture painted ­here is not based on Goitein’s scholarship (since his PhD dissertation on prayer in the Qur’an discussed significant Christian influences on early Islam)7 but rather represents an effort to show kinship between Islam and Judaism in accordance with the general tendency of Jews and Arabs. Goitein’s suggestion that the relationship between Arabic and Hebrew was parallel to that between Islam and Judaism hints at the same approach, for it is clear that Arabic is not “an enlargement” of Hebrew.

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This comparison, therefore, does not contribute to the understanding of the ­matter; rather, it blurs it. But despite its shortcomings, this conception did serve Goitein as a driving force for his work. In fact, he published his ideas regarding symbiosis as early as 1949  in the Israeli journal Molad.8 For him, studying the symbiosis of the past was supposed to enable a new Jewish-­Muslim coexistence. According to his own diary, this was a fundamental motivation ­behind his work.9 Apparently, Goitein assumed that something of this relatedness continued into the twentieth ­century. Thus, a shared custom like covering the head during the grace before and ­a fter eating symbolized for him a Jewish-­Muslim commonality. In a case where the similarity derives not from origins but from shared present-­ day traits, a modern Conservative Jewish congregation might fit the temperament of a young Muslim scholar coming from a ­family “both modern and religious.” This episode is rooted in another trait, typical of Goitein and several other western and especially Jewish and Zionist scholars of Islam: ­these scholars aspired to maintain and develop contacts with colleagues from the Muslim world—­for both academic and po­liti­cal reasons. Thus, for instance, from the very establishment of the Hebrew University’s School of Oriental Studies in 1926, its scholars saw ­great importance in mediation between Jews and Arabs or Muslims. An early example can be found in a document written by two of the first lecturers of this institute, Levi Billig (1897–1936) and Hartwig (David Zvi) Baneth (1893–1973). In response to an offer by the French scholar of Islam Louis Massignon to publish classic works of Judeo-­Arabic lit­er­a­ ture, Baneth and Billig wrote in 1926 that since “we aspire for a Hebrew, not Judeo-­Arabic, culture, it does not make sense that we boast in front of the Arabs about the Arabic culture of the medieval Jews.” To that they added, “A better way to achieve a mutual understanding, in our opinion, would be to spread the knowledge of con­temporary Arab culture among our ­people, as [it is] the culture of the ­people who lives with us.”10 Goitein, who joined the School of Oriental Studies in 1928, possessed similar aspirations. But despite ­these intentions, the Hebrew University soon enough proved in­effec­ tive as a framework for mediation, for obvious po­liti­cal and historical reasons.11 The growing national tensions during the British Mandate era did not leave much room for hope; Billig himself was murdered during the Arab revolt in 1936. In the mid-1950s, Goitein admitted that in his eyes “a Jewish Arabist can work for the understanding of Jews and Arabs, if at all, as a professor at



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a renowned American university better than in Jerusalem.”12 Thus, three de­ cades ­after the establishment of the Hebrew University, Goitein, a committed Zionist and then the head of the School of Oriental Studies, admitted failure in achieving the institution’s po­liti­cal goals.13 The pre­sent paper deals with professional contacts between Goitein and Muslim scholars, offering perspective on the change in power relations between West and East as a result of the shift from the age of empires to the postcolonial era. Clearly, the essential function of t­ hese contacts was Goitein’s and his correspondents’ scholarly work in the fields of Jewish and Islamic studies. As a scholar of Islam, Judaism, and the relations between them, Goitein created research networks in Southeast Asia that illustrate the development and expansion of Jewish and Oriental studies during the second half of the twentieth ­century. However, the work of several historians and scholars has demonstrated that ­these fields never existed in a separate space, in­de­pen­dent of the historical circumstances within which they ­were practiced. Rather, they reflect wide po­liti­cal and historical changes, such as the shift in power relations between former colonies and the western world. This story of the expansion of Jewish studies over time, in new places, and in terms of content is thus part of a larger tale of the migration of knowledge.

Josef Horovitz: German-­Jewish Orientalism in British India Goitein’s connections with Indian and Pakistani scholars formed part of a long tradition, as the Indian subcontinent was for many years a hub of activity among western scholars. Although this activity was undertaken ­u nder the auspices of the British Raj ­until 1947, it cannot be understood according to a ­simple dichotomy between East and West. In fact, during the last half-­century of British rule in India, colonial intellectual proj­ects sometimes became hotbeds for anticolonial activity and contributed to the creation of national and religious identities among native intellectuals and elites. A well-­k nown example is the Muhammadan Anglo-­Oriental College of Aligarh (MAO; ­later, the University of Aligarh), established in 1875. This institution was the home base of the Aligarh movement, an Indian-­Muslim movement that encouraged modern Islamic education in India and called

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for regeneration and modernist reforms. The founder, Syed Ahmad Khan (1817–98), was indeed a pro-­British reformist who promoted western education and the modernization of Islam, but the MAO was also where figures such as the nationalist leader of the anticolonial Khilafat movement, Muhammad Ali Jauhar (or Johar [1878–1931]), ­were educated.14 Several students and scholars from this institution subsequently turned against the British while rejecting the moderate line that the MAO formerly represented. Such attitudes ­were not unique to natives: Josef Horovitz, the founding director (in absentia) of the School of Oriental Studies of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, joined this anti-­British chorus. Horovitz, a German Jew, taught at the MAO from 1907 ­until his forced departure in 1914 due to World War  I. Fourteen years ­later, in 1928, he published his book Indien unter Britischer Herrschaft (India ­under the British regime), in which he criticized the British policies ­there.15 Horovitz, who inspired several Zionist activists and intellectuals to rethink the Arab-­Zionist conflict (and indirectly to establish the Brit Shalom association in 1925), was acquainted with Muhammad Ali Jauhar and with the Khilafat movement.16 Reflecting on his direct experience in India, Horovitz pointed out in a newspaper article in 1930 that the most committed anticolonialist leaders ­were educated in the westernized institutions that had been founded by the colonial powers.17 In his view, if Zionists wanted to gain understanding and support among the Arabs, they must take into account the Arabs’ aspiration for in­de­pen­dence and give up the belief that Palestine could remain detached from the national developments in neighboring countries. Much like the anticolonial national strug­gle in India, Arab nationalism, too, won Horovitz’s sympathy, and he urged the Zionists to find ways to compromise and cooperate with it. Furthermore, both India and Palestine ­were subjected to the British Empire, each in its own way, and Horovitz clearly was not willing to have the Jews of Palestine identify with the British Empire against the local population’s aspirations. Horovitz did not refrain from using his intellectual authority and life experience for po­liti­cal goals. As Ruchama Johnston-­Bloom has recently shown, his connections with figures such as Muhammad Ali Jauhar and the Khilafat movement ­were not only po­liti­cal. According to Johnston-­Bloom, Horovitz’s scholarship was more readily accepted by Muslim scholars than was that of most Eu­ro­pean scholars ­because he did not “problematize Islamic tradition to the same extent.”18 He also worked for Muslim intellectual advancement



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through the establishment of a Muslim university and the revival of Arabic as a modern language.19 Since this was the legacy of the founding chair of the School of Oriental Studies at the Hebrew University, it is not surprising that other scholars in that institution also tried to make some po­liti­cal use of their scholarly work.

Islamic Culture and Its Post-­European Editors Some of Horovitz’s articles ­were published in Islamic Culture, a scholarly journal that represented a fruitful East-­West dialogue. This modernist publication was established by Marmaduke Pickthall, a British convert to Islam, a novelist, and a renowned translator of the Qur’an (1927).20 Pickthall (1875– 1936), who edited the journal ­until his death, worked in Hyderabad at the ser­vice and ­under the patronage of its Muslim ruler, the Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan. Po­liti­cally, Pickthall was a conservative and a supporter of the Ottoman Empire against its Eu­ro­pean opponents in general and, in par­tic­u­lar, against the anti-­Muslim (hence, anti-­Ottoman) Anglican Church.21 During World War I, heartbroken at the clash between Britain and Turkey, he was active in Muslim circles in London, and in 1917 he embraced Islam, becoming Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall. In the early 1920s Pickthall moved to India, where he became a supporter of the anticolonial Khilafat movement while at the same time maintaining contacts with British authorities. In 1925 he moved to Hyderabad, where he established Islamic Culture. At that time Hyderabad stood at the center of global networks of Muslim activity and functioned as a Muslim cultural and economic capital. This, however, was not only thanks to the Nizam’s influence but also due to the facilitating efforts of the British Empire.22 Islamic Culture was a scholarly journal that promoted Islamic revival. Thus, the opening article was written by Syed Ameer Ali (1849–1928), a prominent figure in the Aligarh movement, a propagator of liberalism and tolerance, and, like Pickthall himself, a supporter of British imperialism. The title of this article was a rather typical “The Modernity of Islam,” and it described the “pre­sent stagnation of the Muslim world” as an outcome of misreading the teachings of Muhammad.”23 Ali concluded his paper by defining Islam as a universal religion that perpetuates the message of Jesus: “Islâm needs only a revival of the Spirit which inspired the Prophet. . . . ​The

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best thinkers want a recognition of the Supreme Intelligence, of a Design in Creation, or the existence of law and order in the Universe. ­These constitute exactly the doctrines which Islâm proclaimed in the 7th ­Century of the Christian Era—­not in supersession of what Jesus thought but as a continuation of his efforts to revive the spiritual life in the world, which leads to the observance of the rule that the ser­vice of man is the most acceptable worship of the Almighty.”24 ­After Pickthall’s death in 1936 the journal was edited by another convert, this time of Jewish origin: Muhammad Asad (Leopold Weiss). Asad/Weiss (1900–1992), a Viennese journalist with a traditional rabbinic education, came to Palestine in 1923. While living next to his ­uncle, the psychoanalyst Dorian Feigenbaum, in Jerusalem, he became fascinated with Arab life. Soon he started to identify with the early Palestinian strug­gle against the Zionist movement’s efforts ­toward a Jewish nation-­ state, a cause that to his mind was receiving too much support from the Mandate authorities. Weiss subsequently left Palestine, spent a few years in nearby countries, and eventually converted to Islam in 1926. A ­ fter his conversion he spent years in Saudi Arabia at Ibn Saud’s court and ­later moved to India, where he became active in establishing the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, trying to put in place a modern Islamic constitution.25 As an Austrian citizen, he was jailed during World War II for six years in prison camps. In the early 1950s Asad moved to the United States, where he served as the head of the Pakistani del­e­ga­tion to the United Nations, and ­after resigning from ser­vice he published his spiritual biography The Road to Mecca.26 In 1980 he published an En­glish translation of the Qur’an, just as Pickthall had done exactly fifty years ­earlier.27 Asad’s involvement in the creation of Pakistan manifests his place within the pro­cess of anticolonialism in India. His intellectual and po­liti­cal activity for seven de­cades represents a dialogue between West and East, a dialogue in which a western scholar a­ dopted Islam and assimilated in the East while maintaining fundamental commitments to western notions that he now strug­gled to implement within his new environment.28 Islamic Culture and its first editors and contributors illustrate the interrelations between the colonial system, which enabled the presence and activity of western scholars and converts in India on the one hand and the anticolonial initiatives in which they participated on the other hand. In this regard, Yusufuddin and Goitein, like many other scholars, ­were continuing a long tradition of cooperation between local Muslim and western scholars. Goitein’s letter to Rabbi Glatt, which opens this paper, represents a related



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sentiment, namely, the desire of Jewish and Zionist scholars of Islam to build a “bridge” between Jews and Muslims.

Oriental and Islamic Studies in World Universities: Muhammad Yusufuddin, Osmania University, and Postcolonial Hyderabad As mentioned above, Yusufuddin also sent Goitein his book Oriental and Islamic Studies in World Universities, published in 1955, a few years ­after the forced incorporation of Hyderabad into the Union of India and a year before the latter’s dissolution. It consists of study programs in the field of Oriental and Islamic studies in universities around the world, to which Yusufuddin added letters of support from prominent scholars at several western universities, such as Gustave E. von Grunebaum, Philip K. Hitti, W. F. Albright, W. C. Smith, and Albert Dietrich. The idea ­behind this publication was to help Osmania University and its faculty achieve what he saw as its goal: “to serve and fulfill the same progressive purposes as are being fulfilled by the London SOAS, Asiatic Institute in Washington, the Department of Near Eastern Studies in Prince­ton and the Institute of Islamic Studies of McGill University.” ­Those and other western scholars, Yusufuddin wrote, “have been rendering eminent ser­vices to Indian and Islamic studies.”29 This statement follows the spirit of the local journal Islamic Culture, but the book’s foreword, written in December 1953 by Professor Muhammad Rahimuddin, a member of Osmania University’s senate and academic council and the president of the Islamic Publications Society in Hyderabad, adopts a more critical tone. Rahimuddin did not hesitate to criticize Osmania University, his academic home, for what he saw as its failure to comprehend the needs of the time. “Its ­great achievement in the past half a dozen years,” Rahimuddin wrote ironically, was not the acquisition of knowledge and learning but rather “the closing up of ­those ave­nues through which this knowledge has begun to be acquired in the past. The Osmania U. seems to be impelled more by the desire to unlearn than learn. The same spirit unfortunately prevails in the Hyderabad Dep. of Education. What could be more tragic than a system whereby an Indian student is provided with instruction relating to the History of Britain but is refused any knowledge relating to Turkey, Persia, Arabia, Egypt and the other Islamic countries.”30 Apparently, the release from the Raj and the annexation of Hyderabad into the Indian Union influenced

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the local study programs, which, according to this critique, suffered from a growing Anglocentric bias. Rahimuddin criticized “the East” for ignoring its own traditions while “the West,” as in the universities treated in the book, appreciated and studied it. He concluded: “Strangely enough, the moral is drawn from what is being done by the West for the East rather than from an account of what the East is ­doing for herself.”31 Writing in 1953, Rahimuddin did not see a prob­lem in stating that the West does something “for” the East by studying it. Clearly, both Rahimuddin and Yusufuddin viewed the developing of Islamic and Oriental studies in western universities as a sign of appreciation of the eastern world and high estimation of its cultures. Both of them stressed the importance of studying Islam and its languages as manifested at the establishment of Osmania University in Hyderabad. Their attitude ­toward western scholarship in this area was similar to that of many western scholars at that time: they saw it as a valid and positive field of study, something done “by the West for the East” ­and not—as it came to be viewed by postcolonial scholars beginning in the 1960s and certainly ­after the publication of Eduard Said’s Orientalism—as something done to, or imposed on, the East. Osmania University was the first public university to use a modern Indian language as a medium of instruction in all subjects. The language employed by its found­ers in 1918 was Urdu, associated with the Muslim population of the subcontinent. As the historian Kavita Saraswathi Datla noted, in the 1920s and 1930s Osmania University was a center for fashioning a new national, anticolonial identity, using Urdu as a basis for the creation of a new Muslim secular identity.32 According to Saraswathi Datla, “Osmania University’s engagement with the Urdu language was an attempt to make Muslim cultural and intellectual forms the center of a shared secular ­f uture.”33 However, already in the early 1950s, Urdu was replaced by En­glish, and Osmania became an English-­language university.34 This pro­cess of “Anglicization” happened ­after the end of British rule in India, and, as manifested in Rahimuddin’s text, it affected the content and not only the language in which it was taught. Oriental and Islamic Studies in World Universities illustrates the disappointment Muslim scholars felt at the direction taken by Indian authorities ­after India’s September 1948 annexation of Hyderabad and abolition of its status as an in­de­pen­dent Muslim state. The cultural autonomy and Islamic Urdu flourishing ­under the Nizam with the support of British authorities could not be maintained ­under the new nation-­state. Ironically, the liberation



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from British rule nullified Osmania University’s original aim of providing an alternative to the English-­language universities of British India. The aspiration to po­liti­c al in­de­p en­dence ­limited the cultural autonomy of the Muslim minority ­u nder the new Indian nation-­state. Oriental and Islamic Studies in World Universities was a protest against ­these developments.

Hashim Amir Ali: The Qur’an and Western Influences A related dialogue took place between Goitein and Hashim Amir Ali, another scholar from Hyderabad. Ali taught at the Jamia Millia Islamia, a Muslim university in Delhi. Initially, the Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) was a central proj­ect of the Khilafat movement and Muslim anticolonial strug­gle in India. Established in late 1920 within the MAO—by this time called Aligarh University—by anti-­British thinkers and activists who rejected the moderate attitude of the Aligarh University authorities, it existed for five years in Aligarh and moved to Delhi in 1925. Among its found­ers was Muhammad Ali Jauhar, who served as its vice president between 1920 and 1923, as well as several other leading Muslim nationalist thinkers and politicians of the “Indian National Congress” who supported Gandhi’s noncooperation movement.35 Hashim Amir Ali (1903–87), an admirer of Rabindranath Tagore, belonged to a ­later generation of Muslim scholars, having earned his doctorate in sociology at Cornell University in 1929 and gone on to teach at the JMI during the 1960s.36 His doctoral dissertation bears the indicative title “Social Change in the Hyderabad State in India as Affected by the Influence of Western Culture.”37 In his religious writings he aspired to propagate a modernized version of the Qur’an and the Islamic religion, faithful to its origins as against ­later medieval corruptions. In a letter from 1964, Goitein thanked Ali for having invited him to the JMI (“The visit ­there was indeed an inspiration for me”), and also for his book The Student’s Qur’an, which “caused me ­g reat plea­sure and illumination, and I hope we ­shall one day have [the] opportunity to discuss some of the prob­lems involved.”38 The Student’s Qur’an is a kind of introduction to the holy book of Islam, including an En­glish translation of its “25 earliest suras.”39 Ali, who was active and influential in both scholarship and administration, aspired to continue what he started in The Student’s Qur’an by producing a full En­glish edition of the Qur’an in accordance with liberal modernist

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views. In his letter to Goitein he wrote, “My dream is to bring out an edition with the individual comments of two persons, one having a Jewish and another a Christian background. . . . ​I know the Qur­a n is, in places, hard on the Jews but you w ­ ill agree that it is against certain Jews, not against Jews as a class. It condemns some Arabs as donkeys and calls ­others hypocrites. . . . ​I am so anxious to go over it just once with a scholar who ­will appreciate my desire to represent the liberal spirit which I see in the Qur­an and yet without over-­stepping the bounds of truth.”40 Evidently, Ali saw Goitein as the right candidate to occupy the position of the Jewish commentator. What is more impor­tant, however, is Ali’s own admission of the necessity for non-­Muslims to approve of his effort in representing the Holy Qur’an as liberal-­spirited while remaining loyal to its original religious goals, thereby rejecting the ­later imprint of Muslim “extreme orthodoxy.” His desire for the cooperation of Christian and Jewish scholars reveals this deep need for recognition and affirmation outside the Muslim community. Ali’s dream prob­ably was not fully realized, but he did publish a complete translation of the Qur’an, The Message of the Qur’an Presented in Perspective, in 1974. This monumental volume included references to previous En­glish translations, as well as reflections on his own nontraditional division of the Qur’anic text and the problematics of traditional understanding of the sacred text. Deeply influenced by the Bengali scholar Mirza Abul Fazl (1865–1956), who himself published an En­glish translation of the Qur’an,41 Ali stressed the importance of western scholarship—in his reliance, for example, on Theodore Nöldeke’s chronological sequencing of the suras—in the search for religious truth.42 Similarly to Muslim modernists, such as the abovementioned Syed Ameer Ali, whose work he admired, Hashim Amir Ali described the decline of Islam beginning in the second half of the twelfth ­century and especially ­after the Mongol conquest of the thirteenth ­century. ­After quoting at length from Syed Ameer Ali’s The Spirit of Islam on that point, he added his own modernist credo: “The repeated disruptions in the Muslim community the world over during ­these recent de­cades have led to further deteriorations in the intellectual status of Islam. A day may still come when the Muslims ­will subject this trea­sure of innumerable traditions to computers that ­will sift the genuine from the spurious and put a seal of authenticity only on ­those who conform to the spirit of the Qur’an. . . . ​The Hadith lit­er­a­ture . . . ​has obscured the Divine message and deprived it of all perspective.”43 Such a negative outlook on the Hadith lit­er­a­ture and the “damage” it caused to the



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“divine message” of the Qur’an, combined with a ­f uture technological vision of the digitization of the Hadith in order to purify it from inauthentic “deviations,” reveals Ali as a radical, western-­oriented modernist.

Bazmee Ansari and Islamic Studies: The Postcolonial Stage? Up to this point, western research was represented by Goitein’s Indian-­ Muslim correspondents as the standard ­bearer according to which they mea­sured their own work. T ­ hese “westernized” thinkers w ­ ere trying to adapt Islam to modern cultural norms while seeking recognition in ­doing so one way or another. Living in newly occupied Hyderabad, they strove to maintain their status within a state in which they constituted a religious minority. The following correspondence, this time between Goitein and a Pakistani scholar, hints at a dif­fer­ent approach. It suggests that Muslim po­liti­cal sovereignty in Pakistan may have changed the power relations between eastern and western scholars regarding the impact of the latter’s work on Islam. Dr. Bazmee Ansari was the founding editor of the Pakistani journal Islamic Studies. Ansari, who joined the Central Institute of Islamic Research of Karachi in 1961, established the journal in 1962 and edited it for a few years. Like Islamic Culture, Islamic Studies, too, published a mixture of Muslim and non-­Muslim scholars. Thus, for instance, the first issue contained, among ­others, articles of Douglas M. Dunlop of Cambridge University, Samuel M. Stern of Oxford University, and Bernard Lewis, then of the University of London;44 the second issue included Gustave E. von Grunebaum, A. S. Tritton, Marshall Hodgson, and so on. But unlike Islamic Culture, which, as we saw, was determined to “revive” Islam, Islamic Studies, established three-­and-­ a-­half de­cades ­later, was intended to strengthen modern Islam as a cultural phenomenon that was already in existence. As stated in its introduction, “The age of Muslim awakening, like the age of Muslim decline, is past. ­Today, the Muslim World stands on a threshold of a new age, the age of ­doing. Muslims the world over have had their fill of the ideational patterns of awakening: apol­o­getics for the past, explanation of Muslim decline, exhortation to rise up to the standard of the ­fathers. The questions that are being asked ­today augur new and dif­fer­ent patterns. Having outgrown awakening, the Muslim is awake, ­doing and willing to do more.” The reason for the apol­o­getic tone of “the previous age,” according to the writer (prob­ably Ansari himself),

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was the “risk of having their awakening hampered by the foreign imperialist.” 45 The tone of this introduction reveals a political-­cultural agenda that endeavors to demonstrate self-­confidence and in­de­pen­dence from external views and considerations. This did not mean that Islamic Studies and Islamic Culture ­were essentially dif­fer­ent in their content. Both included critical scholarship written by local as well as western scholars, including Jewish ones. However, the dif­fer­ent circumstances ­under which Islamic Studies was founded required an assertive antiapologetic agenda. Tellingly, this agenda was manifested also in the editor’s conduct t­ oward the contributors, as manifested in his correspondence with S. D. Goitein. In his letter to Goitein, Ansari commented on the paper “Between Hellenism and Re­nais­sance: Islam, the Intermediate Civilization,” which Goitein had submitted to him for publication. Despite his general satisfaction with the paper, Ansari was dissatisfied with some of Goitein’s statements and asked him to change them in order to make his paper fit the journal’s readers: “We cannot possibly inject the point that the term ‘Islamic Civilization’ is vague or it can be periodized. . . . ​Similarly the first few lines on the next page ­shall have to be amended. We sincerely regret that we cannot possibly accept the view that Islam—­‘ended as a militant denomination which made the holy war incumbent on its members.’ Nor can we possibly agree to the opinion or assertion that Muhammad did not intend to found a new religion. You know the reasons more fully than perhaps we do.” Up ­until this point, Ansari’s criticism had focused on Goitein’s own opinions regarding the essence of Islam and its innovative character. However, Ansari also refused to accept the unflattering description of the pro­cess whereby early Muslim society was created: “No one should expect our readers to be told . . . ​that ‘the Muslims became a greedy and voluptuous lot’ ­because ‘fabulous trea­sures and ­women of all races fell into their hands as an easy prey.’ The reprehensible actions of a few erring individuals cannot be taken to mean that the entire Muslim community had fallen into the vices to which you refer.” Ansari’s citations from Goitein’s original text are indeed characterized by a certain negative tone that is missing from the published version. Most in­ter­est­ing, perhaps, is Ansari’s last comment, in which he asked Goitein to “suitably amend” his suggestion, according to which “Islam is only ‘an eastern variety of a world culture,’ ” since it is “unfortunately not acceptable to us.”46 Ansari’s reference to “our readers” is telling in itself; for it is not just a question of historical accuracy but also of the journal’s audience. The writer, no ­matter what his academic status is, cannot “expect” Muslim readers in Pakistan to accept such



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statements. In other words, the readers are not just passive consumers of western “knowledge”; rather, they are also agents with regard to the content of Islamic Studies. In his answer, Goitein neither insisted that the paper remain unchanged nor negotiated the final version with Ansari. ­Needless to say, he did not withdraw his submission from Islamic Studies. His response was unequivocal: “I was ­really moved by the care and thoughtfulness with which you read my article. Naturally I have accepted all your suggestions. The results are to be found in the three pages attached.”47 Indeed, in the published version ­these statements ­were changed or omitted according to the editor’s request: “­women of all races fell into their hands as an easy prey” became “other comforts of life came to them as an easy prey”; similarly, the generalist and blunt description of “the Muslims” becoming “a greedy and voluptuous lot” was softened and ­limited to “many Muslims became attracted by worldly riches and pleasures.”48 Furthermore, the statements regarding Islam and Islamic civilization that Ansari called “problematic” ­were omitted altogether. ­These significant changes, it should be noted, w ­ ere not a one-­time gesture to appease the Muslim editor and his readership. In fact, a few years ­later Goitein published an updated version of this paper in his Studies in Muslim History and Institutions. ­Here, he returned to his own original version only in one case: the sentence “­women of all races fell into their hands as an easy prey” was used again, as in his original text before Ansari’s intervention. Regarding the early Muslims, Goitein did not return to his original text. Rather the corrected text, according to which many Muslims sought worldly pleasures, was employed, and the same is true also with regard to the other changes.49 This willingness to accept Ansari’s requests and revise or modify his original manuscript accordingly reveals how Goitein, an Israeli-­American historian and the product of German Wissenschaft des Judentums, a man who had himself served as a high official of the British Mandate administration in Palestine, was willing to accommodate the concerns and demands of a Muslim-­Pakistani editor and reading public. The aspiration to maintain and develop contacts with Muslim scholars directly influenced the content of “Islam: The Intermediate Civilization,” a paper that Goitein then chose to republish in a volume summarizing his work on Islamic history. This paper represents a fascinating shift in East-­West power relations as they ­were manifested in Muslim studies: for it was no longer a western discourse about Islam but rather a dialogue with it, a dialogue in which the Muslim editor

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had the ability to intervene in the western scholar’s text and to reshape it in accordance with the sensitivities of his community of readers. This new situation was typical of the postcolonial era in Pakistan, in which local Muslims ­were no longer natives at the mercy of colonial rule nor passive objects of research but active po­liti­cal agents in their sovereign land. In order to maintain his influence on and relevance to this world, Goitein, the western expert, had to take into account the editor’s reservations, and the final product changed accordingly.

Conclusion Beginning in the 1960s the fields of Islamic and Oriental studies ­were subject to a series of critiques. Goitein, like other se­nior scholars in the field, refused to accept the idea that ­after World War II a new, postcolonial age had begun, in which Oriental research was to be conducted differently.50 In his article “The Humanistic Aspects of Oriental Studies” (based on a lecture he gave in 1980), he openly discussed some of ­these critiques and reacted to them.51 In this defense of Islamic studies Goitein depicted the work of Orientalists of previous generations as essentially humanistic, just like the study of classical antiquity. “We, the orientalists,” he wrote, “study the classical writings of China, India, Islam and ­others, not in order to become, say, Taoists, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims or the like, but in order to find in ­those classical writings the ­human experience that might enrich and improve us. A humanist studies a foreign civilization in order to expand his own humanity.”52 Elsewhere, referring to two dif­fer­ent publications from the 1970s that aspired to represent a new, postcolonial perspective on Islamic and Oriental (or area) studies, Goitein wrote that “the woes and shortcomings of the discipline ­were attributed [in them] to a mysterious orientalism. . . . ​But the architects of this scholarly edifice ­were ­really ­great humanists and accomplished area students.”53 Furthermore, Goitein also underlined how modern research on Islam had benefited the study of Judaism, as manifested in the work of Shlomo Pines, Moshe Zucker, George Vajda, and ­others.54 Thus modern research on Islam was presented as a significant component of an expanded Wissenschaft des Judentums. Rejecting the new critical approach of younger western colleagues, while underlining the humanistic dimensions of Oriental and Islamic studies in response, Goitein was, in contrast, willing to reshape his writing when asked



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to do so by a Pakistani editor with a conservative agenda. Bazmee Ansari’s requests w ­ ere accepted by Goitein and found their way into his work, influencing his scholarly legacy. This malleability was not only a ­matter of scholarship but also served his need to maintain contacts with the Muslim world and with Muslim scholars—­not just as a mere necessity but also as a perpetuation of the humanistic legacy of the field’s trailblazers, especially Ignaz Goldziher, as well as Goitein’s own teachers, Carl Heinrich Becker and Josef Horovitz, all of whom appear in the 1980 rebuttal of the critique of Orientalism. The same complexity of motives also comes to the fore in Goitein’s personal communication with Rabbi Glatt. Goitein’s correspondence with Muhammad Yusufuddin, Hashim Amir Ali, and Bazmee Ansari, along with the history of western scholars’ involvement in Hyderabad and Aligarh—­here represented by Marmaduke Pickthall, Muhammad Asad, and Josef Horovitz—is a microhistory of scholarship reflecting broader developments in the history of India-­Pakistan in a global context. Shifts in the field of Islamic studies—­drawing on its mutual and historical affinities with Jewish studies and its scholars, nationalist movements and anticolonial voices of protest, and fi­nally on an emerging debate over Orientalism—­all cast light on a facet of East-­West relations in the second half of the twentieth ­century.

Chapter 9

Saul Lieberman and Yemenite Jewry noah s. gerber

A Hanukkah Gathering Hosted by Salman Schocken On the first night of Hanukkah in 1939, Saul Lieberman (then still Liebermann), a budding scholar of rabbinical lit­er­a­t ure and dean of the Harry Fischel Institute in Jerusalem, delivered an address on the topic of Yemenite midrash at “a party of the sages of the Land of Israel,” thrown by Salman Schocken.1 Schocken’s nearby library had been designed to ­house a vast, varied, and at that time still growing collection of rare Hebrew books and manuscripts. An accompanying Research Institute of Hebrew Poetry, founded roughly a de­cade ­earlier in Berlin, could also be found within its walls, with a more modest version of the same being done for the critical study of the Kabbalah, in tandem with the Hebrew University authority on the subject, Gershom Scholem.2 Although Schocken personally had much more use for medieval Sephardi poetry and the history of Jewish mysticism than for rabbinics, Saul Lieberman also benefited from his patronage. He had made use of Schocken’s collection of rare manuscripts and would continue to do so ­until the end of his life, hence the invitation to pre­sent at that year’s Hanukkah gathering, which was held at Schocken’s private residence.3 Some of the rare Hebrew books and manuscripts in Schocken’s collection came from Jerusalem’s Sephardi and Mizrahi synagogues and study halls. Novelist Shmuel Yosef Agnon had scouted most of t­ hese items on behalf of his patron and publisher.4 ­These materials enabled Schocken and his library to embody an elite cultural message, one that would have been on display at



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a typical mesibah mada‘it (scholarly party or gathering) that took place in the library’s auditorium, where a member of the Jerusalem republic of critical Jewish scholarship, a circle Agnon knew well and vice versa, could pre­sent the fruits of his philological scrutiny of textual sources. To be sure, the typical audience was not only Ashkenazi in the strictly German-­Jewish sense. Indeed, Lieberman was Lithuanian while Agnon was a literary custodian of traditional Galician Jewry, and Schocken’s own Eastern Eu­ro­pean roots and sensibilities have been noted. But certainly ­these scholarly gatherings ­were suited to the Eu­ro­pean side of the ethnic divide that so distinctly and deeply structured Jewish society in British Palestine. Both Lieberman and his host ­were keenly aware of the value that had been attributed to Yemenite manuscripts in nearly all branches of Wissenchaft des Judentums since Jacob Sapir, a rabbinic emissary from Jerusalem, and like Lieberman of Lithuanian stock, had visited Yemen by chance on a voyage to British India in 1859.5 It was precisely with a compressed version of that watershed event that Lieberman commenced his address, paying lip ser­ vice to the fact that Sapir’s two-­volume travelogue had been an ethnographic account, a thick description of Yemenite Jewish society and its lived religion. Despite Lieberman’s calling attention to “the lives of our ­brothers, the sons of Yemen,” in real­ity ­those lives, past or pre­sent, would be of no significance to his discourse that Hanukkah eve­ning, for in his discussion of Yemenite midrash he would focus exclusively on the “lit­er­a­ture of our brethren,” the text taking the place of its composer or transmitter. Indeed, he tempered the enthusiasm that some of his wissenschaftlich pre­ de­ces­sors had expressed about this lit­er­a­ture by systematically minimizing the amount of specifically Yemenite authorial intent that one could attribute to it. A ­couple of years ­later Lieberman briefly summarized this argument in the preface to his first English-­language monograph, Greek in Jewish Palestine: “Many apocryphal Midrashim which ­were banned by the official Synagogue have survived in the lit­er­a­t ure of the Yemenite Jews. ­These uneducated ­people naively and indiscriminately copied sundry Hebrew scraps which occasionally represented uncensored traditions previously altogether unknown or available only in the works of the Church ­Fathers.”6 He concluded that “Yemenite wisdom” puts a premium on anthologizing not from selected sources but from every­thing at hand,7 commenting that in the work of one Yemenite anthologist of midrash in par­tic­u­lar, “textual sources and the [reigning] view of his time have become muddled.”8

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Lieberman’s encounter with Yemenite Jewry and Jewish lit­er­a­ture demonstrates how the history of critical Jewish scholarship needs to account for its non-­European, as well as nontextual, components. Young Lieberman’s path to this intellectual discipline straddled an Eastern Eu­ro­pean realm of traditional rabbinic study and a radical German rupture with that tradition, demanding philological scrutiny of the entire rabbinic corpus.9 Employing manuscripts of Yemenite provenance in ­doing so does not make him a unique case; this had been common practice since Sapir’s days. What does merit revisiting Lieberman’s brief encounter with Yemenite Jewry is that it was not solely a textual affair. To be sure, this encounter did not inculcate in Lieberman a new appreciation for the East; this prodigy of the Lithuanian yeshiva world did not set out on his life’s mission as a critical commentator of the Jerusalem Talmud and the Tosefta due to enchantment with any Orient, real or ­imagined. On the other hand, Lieberman had acquired the necessary training for philological work not in continental Eu­rope but as a member of the first graduating class of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in Mandate Palestine, in the heart of the ­Middle East. A doctoral degree, although subsequently merited by ­others in his field at that institution, had eluded Lieberman. More notably, so had secure academic placement at his alma mater. Lieberman’s employment at the Harry Fischel Institute had come about owing to his relationship with the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Palestine, Abraham Isaac Kook. The institute’s namesake, one of the very few Orthodox Jewish philanthropists of his day and a longtime benefactor of the Kook f­ amily, was of a very dif­fer­ent background from Salman Schocken. ­Under the auspices of the chief rabbi, Lieberman’s role had been to spearhead a critical audit of hitherto unpublished rabbinic texts.10 But by the end of 1940 Saul Lieberman, like Salman Schocken, had relocated to New York City. Instead of ending up at Yeshiva University—­another institutional beneficiary of Fischel’s philanthropy—or at any other Orthodox seminary for that ­matter, Lieberman had accepted an invitation from the flagship institution of the Conservative movement, the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), and joined its faculty. At JTS, Lieberman swiftly became a dominant figure and rapidly achieved the academic prestige that had been denied him in Jerusalem. How he straddled the denominational divide between the Conservative and Orthodox camps in the postwar American Jewish community has been a ­matter of debate since his demise in 1983 (on a flight to Israel for the Passover holiday).11



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But to be sure, from his base at JTS, Lieberman’s voice began to hold sway not only in the Jewish studies community in the United States but also in the country he had left, where institutions and associations of higher learning bestowed on him a w ­ hole host of awards and honorary degrees, including membership in the Israel Acad­emy of Sciences and Humanities and an Israel Prize.12 Even the Schocken Library (although not all of its rare books and manuscripts), which had come ­under the auspices of JTS a ­couple of years ­after its found­er’s death in 1959, would not escape Lieberman’s shadow and oversight.13 Some five de­cades ­after the scholarly gathering at which he had presented his critique of Yemenite midrash, Lieberman’s personal library was deposited in what is known ­today as the Schocken Institute. Indeed, a glance at the impressive list of credentials below Lieberman’s name on the title page of the second and amended edition of his Yemenite Midrashim, which appeared in 1970, shows that it would not have been to his advantage to remain in Jerusalem for the meager deanship of the Harry Fischel Institute. Lieberman had made a smart and very successful ­career move in ­going to Amer­i­ca. As for Yemenite midrash and Yemenite manuscripts generally (if not living Yemenite Jews), an abundance of ­these could be found in the ­great collection of Judaica assembled by Alexander Marx at JTS.14 Admittedly, by 1940 Lieberman had himself also acquired a Yemenite manuscript or two, but nothing in comparison with the trea­sures of this type that awaited him at JTS, to which he would eventually even donate one that he had brought with him to New York.15 In terms of his scholarly goals Lieberman had many reasons to relocate and not much trou­ble adapting to both material abundance and an abundance of sources for his scholarly work. The next section ­will look closely at Lieberman’s cultural world in Jewish Palestine, as well as the socioeconomic margins of that world, made up to a large extent of Yemenite and other Mizrahi Jews. Subsequently, flashing back to the late nineteenth c­ entury, I ­will retrace the path taken by “Yemen Hebrew lit­er­a­ture”—­a phrase coined by a founder of the “pre-­Schechter” JTS, Alexander Kohut—­fi rst to Eu­ro­pean and eventually to American shores.16 That path led directly to the monumental library of the institution with which Lieberman would become so identified. Fi­nally, I ­will revisit Lieberman’s Hanukkah address and show how Yemenite Jewish agency, not just textually speaking, briefly came back to haunt Saul Lieberman when he

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was at the height of his ­career as a world-­renowned critical scholar of rabbinic lit­er­a­ture.

“East” and “West” in Saul Lieberman’s Jewish Palestine In 1929, roughly a year ­after he had settled in Palestine, Saul Lieberman published his first book, a programmatic and systematic demonstration of how the corrupted text of the famed but historically neglected Jerusalem Talmud could be corrected.17 In order to accomplish this task he had enrolled at the newly founded Hebrew University on Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus, where Jacob Nahum Epstein, the chair of the university’s founding unit, the Institute of Jewish Studies, and a dominant figure among its founding faculty, trained him in the discipline of talmudic philology. Although he was of Lithuanian origins like his formidable pupil, Epstein was a vocal opponent of the type of rabbinical seminary that was still the institutional setting for much of the Wissenschaft movement in both Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca. Lieberman, however, did not share his teacher’s more purist conception of mada‘e ha-­Yahadut generally or talmudic philology in par­tic­u­lar. Nor did he conceive of his life’s work as a radical rupture with more traditional forms of commentary on rabbinic texts. “Reb Shaul” (as he was known in Jerusalem) always cherished his Lithuanian roots, especially ­those that had dovetailed with its musar wing, common ground he would ultimately find with the Yiddish novelist Chaim Grade. One of Grade’s literary antagonists, Rabbi Abraham Yeshayahu Karelitz, better known by his self-­styled acronym, Chazon Ish, was Lieberman’s maternal first cousin. In his nonliterary role Karelitz was the epitome of Lithuanian Haredi society, which Lieberman’s only ­brother joined ­after settling in Jerusalem, just as “Reb Shaul” was departing for New York City.18 In Jewish Palestine, Lieberman also found older and younger fellow travelers who straddled the worlds of traditional Jewish learning and critical Jewish scholarship. One of ­these was Saul Khone Kook, a ­brother of the chief rabbi and early Religious Zionist activist from Tel Aviv.19 In 1929 Kook published one of Lieberman’s first critical comments on a talmudic text.20 The venue was, interestingly enough, a Sephardi and Mizrahi scholarly journal, Mizraḥ u-­ma‘arav (East and West), launched a de­cade ­earlier by Abraham Elmaleh, a veteran Jerusalem-­born Sephardi Zionist educator and emissary.21 The inaugural issue had included an essay penned by Abraham Zvi Idelsohn,



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the founding ­father of Jewish ethnomusicology who, like Jacob Sapir in his day, had been attracted to the Yemenite Jewish community by more than just manuscripts. Idelsohn had done fieldwork among Mizrahi Jews during the final de­cade of Ottoman rule in Jerusalem. Subsequently, he had argued that Shalom Shabazi, the revered seventeenth-­century Yemenite poet, had not been immune to the false messianic hopes spread by Shabbetai Tsevi. In a subsequent issue of Mizraḥ u-­ma‘arav his reading had been directly challenged by a respected and zealous leader of the Yemenite community in Jerusalem, Rabbi Abraham Nadaf, who had long frowned on Idelsohn’s contacts with his flock.22 I very much doubt that Lieberman read this exchange or, for that ­matter, took seriously any native response to how Yemenite Jewish lit­er­a­ture was being deployed for the sake of critical Jewish scholarship. That a comment of his had been published in a trailblazing Sephardi studies journal, to which Kook was a regular contributor, was prob­ably of ­little significance to him. In fact, Lieberman’s own cultural sense of “East” and “West” was strictly Eu­ro­pean centered. This was generally true of Ashkenazi intellectuals like Scholem, Schocken, Agnon, and even Hayim Nahman Bialik, the celebrated national poet, all of whom conceived of Zionist-­inspired anthological efforts as healing a nineteenth-­century rift between Western Eu­ro­pean (mainly German) professional standards of Wissenschaft and more Hebrew-­centered Jewish scholarship hailing from Eastern Eu­rope.23 Even though it was taking place in the ­Middle East, no room was made at this reunion of culturally distant Eu­ro­pean relatives for Jews of Sephardi or Mizrahi extraction.24 The only function ­these natives had in the Zionist imagination and its scholarly support networks was as suppliers of raw materials: mainly textual, preserved in manuscript form, and occasionally also orally transmitted traditions, as we s­ hall shortly see.25 Although rhe­toric like “our ­brothers, the Yemenites” was ubiquitous in Zionist discourse, non-­European intellectuals ­were simply not counted as peers in the emerging ­Middle Eastern Hebrew republic of letters known as mada‘e ha-­Yahadut.26 That is why Mizraḥ u-­ma‘arav did not survive for very long and u ­ ntil recently has been ­little noticed as an attempt to re-­orient the gaze. During his tenure at the Fischel Institute, Lieberman encountered a poverty-­stricken Yemenite Jew, living in the basement of the institution where he was employed as its custodian. While noting how this shamash made do with the ­little he had from week to week, and thus embodied a rabbinic ideal type, Lieberman found fault with his Yemenite employee for being

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overextended and put him on probation.27 When the man took umbrage, Lieberman fi­nally demanded an explanation. Admitting that he was overextended, the subordinate replied that he had not been shown the re­spect deserved by a talmid ḥakham, which in Yemen applied to any male who could orally recite the Mishnah and the code of Maimonides. Curious, Lieberman opened the relevant books on his desk and examined the man, who, he was surprised to find, had not exaggerated. Many years l­ater Lieberman would recall that even in Lithuania he had not encountered a shamash—­which he might have also interpreted as a synagogue beadle or yeshiva caretaker—­ “behaving like a ­simple Jew” yet possessing such erudition. Back in 1859 another Lithuanian Jew, Jacob Sapir, had encountered this phenomenon while in Yemen but had been rather unimpressed since it did not conform to his cultural norms as to how one studies rabbinic texts. Put bluntly, oral erudition did not count in Sapir’s eyes.28 But like Sapir had been, Lieberman was intrigued by his native in­for­mant’s pronunciation of ­these texts and claimed to have learned something from this encounter. It is ironic that a man who wrestled professionally with the orality of the Oral Torah as a historical prob­ lem was briefly enchanted by the idea that the Yemenite Jewish community in par­tic­u­lar had, unwittingly perhaps, preserved the phonetics of this other­ wise textually based culture.29 His encounter with a living Yemenite Jew aside, Lieberman hardly took notice of his multiethnic (and poverty-­stricken) surroundings in Jerusalem as a living laboratory of kibutz galuyot (ingathering of exiles), preferring to confine himself to a strictly textual episteme as a scholar. But Lieberman was not alone in thinking about the issue of orality, and o­ thers did take note of the Yemenites themselves. An older colleague in Jerusalem, Hanoch Yalon, was spearheading a systematic study of this very intriguing phenomenon ­after having found his Yemenite pupils in the Mizrahi teachers’ seminary to be useful in­for­mants.30 However, Yalon’s pioneering work was dif­fer­ent from Lieberman’s, not only in terms of the affinity he developed with his Yemenite pupils but also specifically in that they opened his eyes to what lay beyond textual analy­sis. In fact, long before their arrival in mass numbers in the wake of Israeli statehood, ­Middle Eastern Jews in Palestine had become the object of an ethnographic impulse, specifically ­because of what they had not written down. Shelomo Dov Goitein first probed his “Yemenite friends” as a self-­ styled “ethno-­linguist” while the Jerusalem-­born Joseph Joel Rivlin began to explore the orally preserved canon of the Jews of Kurdistan in vari­ous



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Neo-­Aramaic dialects.31 So smitten with lived Yemenite religion could one become that ­after attending a prayer ser­vice at the Yemenite Goral Synagogue, Louis Ginzberg, then a visiting professor of Talmud from JTS at the Hebrew University, remarked to Goitein, his escort on that occasion, “Now I know what Judaism is.”32 Ginzberg’s JTS colleague, Israel Davidson, experienced something similar, being “initiated into the folkways of the Yemenites” as a guest in the home of a scribe he had employed while spending a semester in Jerusalem.33 The shamash Temani (Yemenite custodian) that Lieberman employed was a ubiquitous type but always situated on the cultural margins of the Yishuv. In a satirical setting he appeared at the end of a Hebrew worker’s seder in Tel Aviv to announce not that the hour of morning prayers had arrived, as in the traditional Haggadah, but that it was time to turn off the lights and lock up.34 While Saul Lieberman, too, knew poverty during his stay in the Yishuv, it was his Yemenite neighbors who occupied the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, as did their female equivalents in the form of the typical Yemenite domestic who was usually underage and underpaid.35 When Gershom Scholem first settled in Jerusalem, he was apparently able to afford the employment of such a domestic, for the veteran Hebraist Reuven Brainin could not help but notice the tiny, multilingual, and dark-­skinned “Temanit” [sic] in Scholem’s small and book-­cluttered apartment.36 A shamash Temani could come in handy not only as an ethnolinguistic in­for­mant but also as an Arab-­Jewish communicator or mediator with local Palestinian society. This is borne out by the case of the multitasking Yihye Nahari, the builder and caretaker of a teachers’ seminary founded in early Mandatory Jerusalem by David Yellin, a veteran and hybrid Hebraist-­A rabist.37 Nahari would accompany the seminary’s students on “biblical” field trips, designed by Yellin, to nearby areas deemed both “hostile” and “native.” Meanwhile, he was also useful as a contact for both Goitein and Rivlin in seeking out new raw materials for scholarship.38 In adding Yemenite manuscripts (and kabbalistic works with a Yemenite circulation) to his own rare book collection, Scholem benefited from his own contacts with vari­ous Yemenite ḥakhamim (religious scholars), such as the abovementioned Abraham Nadaf.39 But critically, the two Orientalists trained in Frankfurt am Main, Goitein and Rivlin, had also grown to appreciate the native culture of their Mizrahi Jewish contacts, whereas the Zionist philologist of Kabbalah and his correspondent, “the Tana from New York,” never did.40

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When Lieberman famously introduced Scholem before a series of lectures delivered at JTS in 1957, he referred to the academic discipline so associated with his guest’s name as nonsense, with the familiar qualification that the history of nonsense is a science.41 Jerusalem had in fact once known a Kabbalist, the eighteenth-­century Shalom Sharabi, whose life is the stuff of legends and who started at the bottom of the barrel as a shamash Temani.42 Admittedly, Sharabi’s climb to the top of the Beit El Yeshiva was aided not just by miracles but by marrying into the ­family of his pre­de­ces­sor. When Scholem first came to Jerusalem in 1923, this yeshiva was still functioning according to Sharabi’s codified prayer system that had been saturated with and structured according to kabbalistic meanings. It had even merited some local Ashkenazi institutional mutations.43 Lieberman would have dismissed this ritual legacy as nonsense—­and not even textual nonsense at that. Scholem was not much kinder in his evaluation of what he took to be the ­dying vestiges of late Oriental Kabbalah.44 Modern ethnic barriers and not only the formation of academic disciplines had kept Yemenite Jews at a distance from Saul Lieberman’s cultural world.

Yemenite Midrash: Taking the Yemenite out of the Equation In preparation for his life’s work as both a corrector of and a critical commentator on rabbinic texts, Lieberman had discovered the usefulness of Midrash ha-­gadol, a thirteenth-­century commentary on the Pentateuch. Lieberman considered it an anthology of previous works of this type, sui generis to Yemen but impor­tant precisely ­because it incorporated strata from such classical rabbinic works as the Mishnah, the Tosefta, and the two Talmuds.45 Some of t­ hese strata w ­ ere invaluable as textual variants to canonical but corrupted versions of ­these classical works and thus essential for systematically correcting and critically commenting on them. Ever since Sapir first described the existence on Yemenite soil of Midrash ha-­gadol in 1866, it had become a coveted text, useful for reconstructing the rabbinic method of deriving ­legal rulings through ­running commentary on scripture (midrash halakhah), as well as ­later ­legal and nonlegal midrash.46 Before discovering the Cairo Geniza, Solomon Schechter had contributed to this effort, and in Berlin so had David Tzvi Hoffman, the doyen of the German Orthodox wing of the Wissenschaft movement.47 Both of them had eventually



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turned their efforts to churning out critical editions of Midrash ha-­gadol itself. Moses Wilhelm Shapira, the man who made the bulk of the manuscripts of this work available to scholars in Eu­rope, would ­later be described by Schechter as “the notorious Shapiro [sic], who furnished the Eu­ro­pean libraries and museums with many a forgery, but also with many a genuine old manuscript coming from Yemen.”48 Despite being a convert to Anglicanism, Shapira had indeed fooled many a Jew in Yemen into believing that he was a pious rabbinical emissary from Jerusalem following in the footsteps of Sapir. When necessary he had also facilitated the use of Ottoman force as a means to collect manuscripts from the natives. ­Until his demise by his own hand in 1884, “Herr Shapira,” in selling him invaluable manuscripts, enjoyed a profitable relationship with Moritz Steinschneider in Berlin. To be sure, once a trickle of impoverished Yemenite Jews began to make their own way to Jerusalem, Shapira’s cover was quickly blown. However, a now-­permanent Yemenite presence in Jerusalem made ­things much easier for Ephraim Deinard, the man who took Shapira’s place at the forefront of the Yemenite manuscript trade, to expand its market to the new world. Deinard was a late flower of the Eastern Eu­ro­pean Haskalah and a virulent foe of the Hasidic movement, especially Chabad (hence his dislike of the Chabad-­reared Schechter). Whereas Shapira had initially fooled his Yemenite hosts by posing as a traditional Ashkenazi rabbinical emissary, Deinard created his own cover in Jewish Palestine as an altruistic pioneer of the Hibat Zion type, deeply concerned for his Arab-­Jewish brethren’s economic and spiritual well-­being. ­Behind the scenes he shrewdly supplied Yemenite manuscripts—­initially from Shapira’s estate—to private clients in the United States such as Adolph Sutro in San Francisco, Alexander Kohut in New York, and Mayer Sulzberger in Philadelphia. Admittedly, Deinard was not alone on the scene. Meanwhile the London-­ based Adler ­brothers—­Marcus, Hermann (acting chief rabbi of the British Empire and ultimately his ­father’s successor in that role), and especially the venerable Elkan, whose collection would also eventually make its way to JTS—­had joined the murky world of aiding starving Yemenite Jews in return for their holy books. Moses Gaster, the city’s Sephardi ḥakham, was also a source of competition. Deinard, however, was able to control the American market for coveted Yemenite manuscripts. By the close of the nineteenth ­century he already had institutional clients such as Columbia University, where Richard Gottheil was building up a Hebraica collection. Eventually the core of Sulzberger’s own private collection found a permanent residence

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up the street in Morningside Heights and thus supplied the foundation on which David Tzvi Hoffman’s son-­in-­law (and Agnon’s brother-­in-­law), Alexander Marx, would ultimately build the greatest of American Judaica collections at JTS. In fact, a young Schechter had once been wooed by Sulzberger to come to Philadelphia “if only to devour one of your favorite Yemenite MSS now in my possession.” Thus the increasing migration of Wissenschaft to American shores is not only a tale of key figures, such as the Hungarian-­ born Kohut, the Romanian-­born Schechter, and eventually the Lithuanian-­ born Lieberman relocating to JTS—or, for that ­matter, the German-­born Gotthard Deutsch, moving to Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati.49 It is also about the availability of the textual materials necessary for the practice of the craft: manuscripts, many of which ­were of Yemenite provenance, just as the movement was becoming institutionalized in the United States. During the pre-­Schechter era of JTS, Kohut had launched his own systematic investigation of “Yemen Hebrew Lit­er­a­ture,” mostly midrash, and based on such rare manuscripts as the “Deinard Codex.”50 ­Until Kohut’s death in 1894 the fruits of ­these investigations regularly took center stage at the biennial assemblies of JTS.51 Even Louis Finkelstein, the man who recruited Lieberman for JTS as the institution’s brand-­new president of the faculty, had taken an interest in the manuscripts of Yemenite midrash so readily available in its collection.52 A ­couple of years before Lieberman’s arrival ­there, the Philadelphia antiquarian A. S. W. Rosenbach had published a celebratory essay on the man who had purchased t­ hose manuscripts, “Doctor Alexander Marx, Custodian of Hebrew Trea­sures in Amer­i­ca.” Rosenbach described how his subject had once outwitted “a Yemenite book peddler, who dumped his wares out of a grocery bag upon the Librarian’s desk.”53 Indeed, over his five-­decade ­career at JTS, Marx apparently had an abundance of experience dealing with “Eastern collectors,” although he could never seem to remember the names of the Yemenite ones he had outwitted.54 Lieberman, both before and ­after his arrival at JTS with its trea­sure trove of Yemenite manuscripts, would eventually experience a similar lapse. The history of how such textual wares had become available for scholarly consumption had not been the topic of Lieberman’s 1939 pre­sen­ta­tion. When not addressing them by name, he respectfully referred to his Ashkenazi pre­de­ces­sors and contemporaries in the cluster of Yemenite midrash studies as ḥakhme Yisra’el (sages of Israel) and ḥakhme ha-­zman ha-­zeh (con­ temporary scholars of rabbinics), respectively, ­after having relegated Abraham Nadaf ’s relevant account of Torah study in Yemen to a mere footnote.55



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In another footnote Lieberman had buried the one self-­reflecting comment he had formulated as an observer of Shabbat and the annual holidays, that in Yemen “as is our custom” the Song of Songs is read annually during the course of Passover. Implicitly he was distancing himself (and his presumed readership) from Yemenites by referring to Yemenite custom in comparison with “our custom.”56 Lieberman did the same with reference to dukah, the Yemenite and Aramaic term for ḥaroset (the mix of fruit and wine eaten at the Passover Seder): he noted on his mentor Epstein’s authority that this ancient term was still in use among Yemenite Jews, but only included this information inside a reference to his own work.57 Revealingly, Lieberman did grant Yemenite midrash a mea­sure of authority when it came to the debt owed by the Qur’an to the Arabian Judaism of its day.58 By striking contrast, as we ­shall soon see, he was far more reluctant to rely on any Yemenite authority when it came to countering the theological challenge presented by Chris­tian­ity.59 Leiberman’s Yemenite Midrashim was clearly not aimed at initiating an intellectual conversation with any living Yemenite Jews, for it is a devastating critique of the chain and rules of intellectual transmission that facilitated the survival of ­t hese works. With numerous examples Lieberman demonstrates almost comically how the anthologists involved could hardly be considered the authors of ­these compilations since they did not possess the critical faculties necessary to determine what was original in what had been transmitted to them and what not. Their confused minds prevented them from distinguishing between the Jerusalem Talmud, its Babylonian counterpart, the medieval commentary of Rashi on the latter work, and their own supposed creativity. Thus, Lieberman finds their citations of t­ hese works worthless and deems them the product of a collective wild imagination that totally muddles what has been transmitted to them. Occasionally he is skeptical about including ­these compilations in the rabbinic genre of midrash altogether. However, unwitting Yemenite transmission had its advantages from a critical scholar’s point of view, for Yemenite midrash anthologists had preserved heretical or “un-­Jewish” ideas that in light of Christian and Karaite theological challenges, normative channels of rabbinic transmission would have definitely censored.60 In the spirit of the Maimonidean controversy, Lieberman considered Yemen something of an unmonitored textual wastebasket of Fatimid Egypt, which for a twentieth-­century critical scholar of rabbinics, had preserved some very valuable trash. The one complaint Lieberman had against his scholarly pre­de­ces­sors who had utilized this material, including

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Kohut, was that they had been overly enchanted by the exoticism of ­these textual repositories and thus had been duped into assuming they had something to do with local creativity or native agency.61 While demonstrating his claims, Lieberman crossed paths with Scholem more than once. When Scholem published his 1957 Israel Goldstein Lectures at JTS, Lieberman furnished the volume with a brief Hebrew appendix, supposedly as penance for the “nonsense/history of nonsense” introduction, and in it he revisited the topic of his 1939 Hanukkah pre­sen­ta­ tion. In that address he had meticulously deciphered the Judeo-­A rabic fragments of a Yemenite midrash on the Song of Songs, implicitly ruling out any authorial comprehension of what had once been at stake for the rabbis in interpreting the biblical love panegyric in allegorical fashion, like the Latin Church ­fathers ­were ­doing. Lieberman now revisited this sole Yemenite textual witness in order to support Scholem’s claim that the rabbis themselves had indeed not shied away from interpreting this biblical love story in a systematic fashion, nor had they been wary of being publicly construed as ­doing so.62 To Lieberman’s mind ­there was a gulf separating Jewish-­ Christian polemic and Yemenite agency (the ­little ­there was of it). Evidently, ­there was yet some distance to go before medieval Judeo-­Arabic commentary on the Song of Songs—or any other midrash originating on Yemenite soil for that m ­ atter—­would be analyzed for its own sake.63 Another long-­standing mutual interest of the two scholars was the much ­later compilation Ḥemdat yamim, attributed to Shalom Shabazi.64 A first and rare edition of this work with an introduction penned by Jacob Sapir had been underwritten by pilgrims from Aden in Jerusalem in the 1880s, and Agnon had brought this publication to Scholem’s attention in the course of the latter’s bibliographical spadework on kabbalistic lit­er­a­ture.65 Sapir had appreciated this sacred poet as central to lived Yemenite religion, while being more skeptical of the reverence for Shabazi among both Jews and Muslims in Yemen. The philologically minded Scholem was rather dismissive of all this, deeming Shabazi a marginal figure from a part of the Jewish world that was peripheral in the transmission of Kabbalah—­precisely the type of “nonsense” that in Lieberman’s terms had unfortunately penetrated Yemenite midrash.66 Shabazi was in this view the supreme and latest example of a useless link in a rabbinic chain of intellectual transmission par­tic­u ­lar to Yemen. Indeed, Lieberman was somewhat hasty in pointing out that in this par­tic­u­lar case “the imagination of a Yemenite preacher [darshan]” had furnished the first fruits ceremony as described by the Rabbis with a further



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and unaccounted for detail by muddling two other tannaitic sources.67 By the time the first volumes of his masterpiece, Tosefta ki-­fshutah, appeared in 1956, Lieberman had learned that in fact Joshua Ibn Shu’eib, a fourteenth-­ century Hispano-­Jewish preacher, had preceded Shabazi in this error. That the sages of medieval Spain dwarfed the intellectual ability of their Yemenite brethren was a trope that went back to Alexander Kohut’s day, although Kohut had been much more charitable than Lieberman in making this comparison.68 In the 1970 version of Yemenite Midrashim, Lieberman corrected his error with the ­simple statement that Shabazi had relied on Ibn Shu’eib, but in Tosefta ki-­fshutah he added something more revealing about himself as well as his estimate of Shabazi: “The words of R. Shalom Shabazi are not the fruits of the imagination of a Yemenite darshan [­here Lieberman inserted the source and citation from Ibn-­Shu’eib], and my own comment [that Shabazi is the source of the error] is one of illusory erudition [on my part].”69 Lieberman’s admirers have cited this confession as exemplary of a critical scholar of rabbinics willing to admit his own lapse.70 They have implicitly ignored the damage already done to Shabazi’s reputation by initially being dismissed as a “Yemenite darshan”; that is, a transmitter of Lieberman’s own construct of “Yemenite nonsense.” Evidently this construct was power­f ul enough to override any attempt at rehabilitating Shabazi as more than a mere pawn in intellectual transmission. To be sure, Lieberman was not the first Lithuanian Jew to conclude that Yemenite comprehension of rabbinic texts hardly scratched the surface. That had already been Sapir’s judgment, ­after ­doing informal fieldwork in Yemen. What Lieberman had not picked up from Sapir in this context, however, was that a certain mea­sure of cultural relativism is also warranted before determining in what form and according to which criteria a rabbinic canon is transmitted. Probing Yemenite midrash for its own sake was simply not on Saul Lieberman’s scholarly agenda. Back in Israel, Yemenite Jewish intellectuals, led by Yehuda Levi Nahum of Holon, w ­ ere meanwhile struggling to defend the attribution of Midrash ha-­gadol to its Yemenite compiler (if not author), Rabbi David the Adenite.71 They even had to fend off an all-­too-­familiar claim that while a medieval Spanish Jew could have produced such a work, a Yemenite would not have been up to the task. From the start, Levi Nahum and his allies had ­little access to formal Israeli academic channels in order to do this. Ultimately, however, they ­were able to enlist some prac­ti­tion­ers of mada‘e ha-­ Yahadut and thus monitor the ongoing publication of a critical edition of this multivolume work by the “Rav Kook Institute,” the legacy of its namesake’s

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“Torah-­true” brand of critical Jewish scholarship. Lieberman, too, had close ties with this institution.72 One of his younger contemporaries and protégés, Mordechai Margaliot, a collector of Yemenite manuscripts in his own right and ultimately a JTS faculty member, had been the first editor of the proj­ ect.73 Quite possibly it was through this local Religious Zionist network of Jewish studies scholars that Lieberman had first encountered the young Rabbi Joseph Qafih, who also benefited from association with the Harry Fischel Institute.74 Subsequently, Qafih, like Levi Nahum, was involved in a native reclaiming of some of the works that had been the butts of Lieberman’s critique.75 Meanwhile, entire collections of Yemenite manuscripts had been taken from their ­owners before being airlifted to the newly founded Jewish state.76 Some of the o­ wners had also endured the mysterious disappearance of their ­children.77 This was the darker side of the Zionist saga of absorption of masses of Jewish refugees from Islamic lands such as Yemen. In his 1952 luncheon lecture delivered at the Jewish Theological Seminary’s newly founded Israel Institute, “The Yemenite Jews in the Israel Amalgam,” Goitein mentioned none of this, recalling instead Louis Ginzberg’s infatuation with a Yemenite synagogue ser­vice in Jerusalem.78 As already noted ­earlier in this essay, small Oriental Jewish enclaves in British Palestine, including that of the Yemenite community, had helped Goitein himself carve his own long-­held image of ­these “most Arab and most Jewish of all Jews.” However, romantic couplings of such cultural opposites could easily be turned on their heads, which is precisely what Allan Nevins, the DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at neighboring Columbia University, had done at another seminary Israel Institute luncheon: “The Yemenites, cut off for centuries in Arabia, ­were but for their religion and their pure Hebrew tongue, more Arabs (to me, at any rate) than Jews. Polygamous, Oriental-­mannered, strangers to knife, fork, handkerchief or bed, their very synagogues seemed half mosque.”79 Arguably, Saul Lieberman had been in attendance for both of t­ hese pre­sen­ ta­tions out of courtesy to his colleagues. For good mea­sure, both appear in a 1956 JTS collection entitled Israel: Its Role in Civilization, which includes a contribution penned by Lieberman himself. That he took notice of this volume, I dare say, had nothing to do with ­either Goitein’s rosy but dated account of how well Yemenite Jews ­were complementing Israeli society and culture or with Nevins’s favorable impression of the Zionist melting-­pot machine furthering their Israelization.80 From his perspective, most notable was the JTS library’s publication, in response to the 1949 airlift of Yemenite



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Jews to Israel known as Operation Magic Carpet, of a late nineteenth-­century Yemenite manuscript in its holdings, in which the text calls on Yemenite Jews to move to the Land of Israel (a response that Lieberman found quite adequate).81 Their subsequent fate was, for the time being, not on his mind since he was preoccupied with his scholarly work while making good use of the local abundance of Yemenite manuscripts.82

“Ways of Yemen” In 1975 ­there appeared in Jerusalem a volume on Yemenite Jewry coedited by the then Knesset chairman Yisrael Yeshayahu and my own mentor Yosef Tobi. It was based on the proceedings of a three-­day academic conference that had been held several years ­earlier on the grounds of the research institute that Yitzhak Ben-­Zvi, Israel’s second president, had founded back in 1947 for the study of Oriental Jewish communities.83 One of the papers had been presented by Zvi Meir Rabinowitz, a Tel Aviv University Talmud professor, a former Lieberman disciple, and the academic authority enlisted by Yehuda Levi Nahum in the ­battle for the Yemenite reclaiming of Midrash ha-­gadol. In the published version, while certainly modifying Lieberman’s attitude, Rabinowitz did not even suggest that his teacher’s essay on Yemenite midrash had possibly opened the door for the denial of Yemenite authorship.84 The probable reason is that the editors had solicited a paper from Saul Lieberman himself, who, while not attending the conference, did submit a short piece entitled “Hilkhot Teiman” (Laws of Yemen), a play on “Halikhot Teiman” (Ways of Yemen), the title of Qafih’s 1961 ethnography of mainly urban Sana’a Jewry, also edited by Yeshayahu on behalf of the original Ben-­ Zvi Institute.85 In his 1939 pre­sen­ta­tion Lieberman had begun by paying lip ser­vice to Jacob Sapir’s encounter with Yemenite Jewry eighty years ­earlier. This time around, Lieberman’s paper opened with his encounter with the shamash Temani from the basement of the Harry Fischel Institute, who had not been mentioned in his employer’s 1939 Hanukkah pre­sen­ta­tion. Evidently Lieberman was now trying his best to praise the Yemenite Jewish community for having been “the perfect custodians” of so many textual trea­sures throughout the ages. He also reaffirmed, and not only in the form of a footnote, how the Yemenite term for ḥaroset—­dukah—­had once helped him crack the meaning of a cryptic word in the Jerusalem Talmud. In 1975 Lieberman was fi­nally trying to rectify the tone if not the substance of Yemenite Midrashim.

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Mindful of how more recent criticism of the American melting-­pot ideology had been utilized in order to identify scars left by its Israeli mutation, he dismissed this comparison as a complete misunderstanding, with an added Zionist defense that the Jewish polity, thanks to the sacred doctrine of the ingathering of exiles, was historically immune to any ethnic divisiveness past or pre­sent. ­W hether the Yemenite reclaiming of Midrash ha-­gadol had had an effect on him is hard to determine. He did not mention it, perhaps not wishing to open a Pandora’s box. Nor was he specific about to whom he was referring when crediting the Yemenite community for Midrash ha-­gadol, which “saved for us large sections of works lost to us.” The rest of Lieberman’s short and conciliatory essay is a learned panegyric on Rabbi Joseph Qafih: indeed, a genuine appreciation of the latter’s ­labors in making a ­w hole host of Yemenite rabbinic works—­m idrash included—­available for scholarly consumption. In a similar context Yehuda Ratzhabi, Qafih’s only real competition as a native authority on Yemenite ­matters in the Israeli Acad­emy, had developed a professional relationship with Lieberman’s JTS colleague, Chancellor Louis Finkelstein.86 Times had changed since the early 1950s, but Israel’s own ethnic prob­lem had certainly not vanished.87 The shamash Temani came back to haunt the “Moreh” (“teacher,” as he was called in the title of an address marking Lieberman’s sixty-­fifth birthday) as a symbol of the Yemenite community’s demand that Yemenite facilitators of critical Jewish scholarship be given recognition that transcended the anonymity of previous generations.88 To be sure, Lieberman was prob­ably aware in 1975 that Qafih had also been awarded some of the Israeli high honors that Lieberman himself had accumulated over the years. Both had come a long way in their respective ­careers since the less secure times they had experienced as employees of the Harry Fischel Institute. Lieberman was not aware, however, that the one-­time shamash Temani of that institution had been Qafih’s own maternal ­uncle, Shlomo Zadok.89 Even “­simple Jews,” ­whether from Yemen or Lithuania, have names.

Epilogue Saul Lieberman’s demotion of Yemenite midrash to the rank of material with which scholars of “folklore” rather than rabbinics needed to occupy themselves has been construed as culturally offensive.90 Nonetheless, the study of ­these compositions continues apace, now with considerably more merit be-



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ing granted to authorial intent and self-­awareness.91 In fact, even the Yemenite Jews have long forgiven Saul Lieberman. Moshe Zadok, a veteran Israeli journalist of Yemenite provenance (not related to Qafih’s maternal ­uncle), has elevated him to a pantheon of Eu­ro­pean Jewish scholars who have studied the community and its culture.92 Lieberman’s encounter with an orally erudite shamash Temani even appears in an anthology devoted to Yemenite Jewry’s repre­sen­ta­tion and self-­representation in modern Hebrew letters.93 In this venue Shlomo Zadok’s symbolic value as an anonymous type has been greatly enhanced by his nephew’s ethnographic authority (complementing Lieberman’s), to the effect that the originally rabbinic ideal of not making the study of Torah a means to an end, seemingly long abandoned by every­one ­else in the Israeli amalgam, is still embodied by an anonymous shamash Temani in the morning, turned rosh yeshivah in the after­noon.94

Notes

introduction 1. The widely used En­glish term Jewish studies, as well as its Hebrew equivalent, ‫מדעי‬ ‫היהדות‬, have the advantage of breadth, though the En­glish can be misinterpreted to imply a parochial narrowness when interpreted to mean that “Jewish” includes not only the object of study but also the approach. The ­earlier Hebrew designation, ‫חכמת ישראל‬, meaning literally “the wisdom of Israel,” involves a further shift of meaning by limiting the actor to the Jews while broadening the object to ­every sort of “wisdom.” Using this designation, the Hebrew poet Hayim Nahman Bialik argued against its practice in any language other than Hebrew and by any scholar other than a Jew. See his “‘Al ḥokhmat Yisra’el,” in Kol kitve Bialik (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1938), 221–24. A German translation of Bialik’s essay by Robert Schine is in Thomas Meyer and Andreas Kilcher, eds., Die “Wissenschaft des Judentums”: Eine Bestandsaufnahme (Paderborn, Germany: Wilhelm Fink, 2015), 148–57. 2. The word vom can, of course, also be understood as having the same meaning as des. However, since Baeck wrote in the preface to his first collection of essays, Wege im Judentum (Paths in Judaism), that the pieces in that volume ­were “not so much written about Judaism but rather emerged from within Judaism,” his use of vom must have been more than a mere linguistic alternative. A very dif­fer­ent use of the variation vom occurs in the title of Michael Brenner and Stefan Rohrbacher, eds., Wissenschaft vom Judentum: Annährungen nach dem Holocaust (Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000). The editors’ preference is explained in the preface (p. 8) as intended to express distance from the historical Wissenschaft des Judentums. 3. Max Wiener, ed., Abraham Geiger and Liberal Judaism: The Challenge of the Nineteenth ­Century, trans. Ernst J. Schlochauer (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of Amer­i­ca, 1962), 86–87. See also the recent study of Geiger by Susannah Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). 4. See Jeffrey C. Blutinger, “Writing for the Masses: Heinrich Graetz, the Popularization of Jewish History and the Reception of National Judaism” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2003). 5. Cited in Christian Wiese, Wissenschaft des Judentums und protestantische Theologie im wilhelminischen Deutschland: Ein Schrei ins Leere? (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 339. 6. Hermann Cohen, “Zwei Vorschläge zur Sicherung unseres Fortbestandes,” in Hermann Cohens Jüdische Schriften, vol. 2 (Berlin: C. A. Schwetschke & Sohn, 1924), 138–41. 7. Heinrich Simon, “Wissenschaft vom Judentum in der Geschichte der Berliner Universität,” in Wissenschaft des Judentums: Anfänge der Judaistik in Europa, ed. Julius Carlebach (Darmstadt, Germany: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1992), 159–61.

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Notes to Pages 4–22

8. Cited in Maurice R. Hayoun, “Die Wissenschaft des Judentums und deren Vertreter in Frankreich: 1830–1970,” in Carlebach, ed., Wissenschaft des Judentums, 204. 9. Ludwig Geiger, ed., Abraham Geiger’s nachgelassene Schriften, vol. 5 (Berlin: Louis Gerschel, 1876), 292. 10. Leo Baeck, Das Wesen des Judentums (Berlin: Nathansen & Lamm, 1905), 28. 11. In Germany it was the rule that rabbis possessed a doctoral degree, for which they had written a university dissertation and thus had experience with modern scholarship. By 1848 ­there ­were sixty-­seven rabbis who possessed such degrees. A list can be found in Ismar Schorsch, From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1994), 39–41. 12. Christhard Hoffmann, “Wissenschaft des Judentums in der Weimarer Republik und im ‘Dritten Reich,’ ” in Carlebach, ed., Wissenschaft des Judentums, 26. 13. This possibility was suggested by Fritz Bamberger to Julius Guttmann. See Michael A. Meyer, “Scholarship and Worldliness: The Life and Work of Fritz Bamberger,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 58 (2013): 146. 14. Jacob Isaac Niemirower, “Eine ‘Moderne Jabnehakademie,’ ” Dr. Blochs Wochenschrift (1909): 644 ff. 15. Ismar Elbogen, Die Wissenschaft des Judentums: Festrede (Berlin: Philo Verlag, 1925), 14–15. 16. Letter to Ismar Elbogen, February 19, 1941, in Leo Baeck Werke, vol. 6, ed. Albert H. Friedlander et al. (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2003), 573. 17. Recent works on WdJ, aside from ­those mentioned elsewhere in the notes to this introduction, include Klaus Hödl, ed., Jüdische Studien: Reflexionen zu Theorie und Praxis eines wissenschaftlichen Feldes (Innsbruck, Austria: Studien Verlag, 2003); Nils Roemer, Jewish Scholarship and Culture in Nineteenth-­Century Germany: Between History and Faith (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005); Johannes Heil and Daniel Krochmalnik, eds., Jüdische Studien als Disziplin—­D ie Disziplinen der Jüdischen Studien (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2010); Andreas Lehnardt, ed., Judaistik im Wandel: Ein halbes Jahrhundert Forschung und Lehre über das Judentum in Deutschland (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017); and Paul Mendes-­Flohr et al., eds., Jewish Historiography Between Past and ­Future: 200 Years of Wissenschaft des Judentums (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019). 18. Shmuel Feiner, “Nineteenth-­Century Jewish Historiography: The Second Track,” in Reshaping the Past: Jewish History and the Historians, ed. Jonathan Frankel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 17–44. 19. See Ruchama Johnston-­Bloom, ‘ “Dieses wirklich westöstlichen Mannes’: The German-­ Jewish Orientalist Josef Horovitz in Germany, India and Palestine,” in The Muslim Reception of Eu­ro­pean Orientalism, ed. S. Heschel and U. Ryad (London: Routledge, 2019), 168–83.

chapter 1 I would like to thank Marcus Pyka. This chapter owes much to our stimulating discussions on the topic. 1. Sigmund Maybaum, “Die Wissenschaft des Judentums,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums (MGWJ) 51 (1907): 641–58. 2. Compare Martin Buber, “Jüdische Wissenschaft,” first published in Die Welt. Zentralorgan der Zionistischen Bewegung 41 (October 11, 1901), 1–2; and Die Welt 43 (October 25, 1901),



Notes to Pages 22–24

193

1. Republished in Buber, Die jüdische Bewegung: Gesammelte Aufsätze und Ansprachen 1900– 1915 (Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1916), 45–51. 3. David N. Myers, Resisting History: Historicism and Its Discontents in German-­Jewish Thought (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2003). 4. Published in Ismar Elbogen, “Neuorientierung unserer Wissenschaft,” MGWJ 62 (1918): 81–96. 5. Compare how in an address given on May 21, 1922, Elbogen qualified Zunz’s early work as the construction of “das Programm einer Wissenschaft des Judentums” (italics mine), i.e., as an effort to ground the critical study of Judaism “im Zusammenhang mit der Ge­ samtheit der Wissenschaften.” In Festrede des Dozenten Prof. Dr. Ismar Elbogen bei der Feier des fünfzigjährigen Bestehens der Hochschule, Bericht der Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin, 42 (Berlin, 1925), 15. 6. Elbogen, “Neuorientierung,” 85. 7. Elbogen, “Neuorientierung,” 91–92. 8. Michael A. Meyer, “Without Wissenschaft ­There Is No Judaism”: The Life and Thought of the Jewish Historian Ismar Elbogen, Braun Lectures in the History of the Jews in Prus­sia, 11 (Ramat-­Gan, Israel: Bar-­Ilan University Press, 2004), 24. 9. Elbogen, “Neuorientierung,” 90. 10. Buber, “Jüdische Wissenschaft,” 48. 11. Elbogen, “Neuorientierung,” 93–95. 12. Leopold Lucas, “Zum 25 jährigen Jubiläum der Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums,” MGWJ 71 (1927): 321–32. 13. Fritz Bamberger, “Wissenschaft vom Judentum,” Der Morgen 12 (1936–37): 7. 14. As we have seen, Martin Buber recognized three main areas of interest, one diachronic and theoretical, the other two expressly con­temporary and po­liti­cal. Two years ­later the Orthodox Gesellschaft identified four relevant domains (linguistics, history, and systematic and practical subjects), which they laid down in the series Grundriß der gesammten Wissenschaft des Judentums (1906–35, vari­ous publishers). By 1922, the curriculum of the Hochschule was built around five complementary chairs (in Bible, Talmud, history and lit­ er­a­t ure, religious philosophy, and practical theology), while Cohen and Rosenzweig’s Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (1919–34) hosted a parallel number of research sections (on rabbinics, history, lit­er­a­t ure, philosophy, and statistics-­cum-­economy). 15. ­After Samson Raphael Hirsch’s article “Wie gewinnen wir das Leben für unsere Wissenschaft?” Jeshurun 8, no. 2 (November 1861): 73–91. See esp. Mordechai Breuer, Modernity Within Tradition: The Social History of Orthodox Jewry in Imperial Germany (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 173–84; and, more recently, David N. Myers, “Glaube und Geschichte: A Vexed Relationship in German-­Jewish Culture,” in Modern Judaism and Historical Consciousness: Identities, Encounters, Perspectives, ed. Andreas Gotzmann and Christian Wiese (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 54–72. 16. Elbogen, “Neuorientierung,” 94ff. (pace Meyer, “Without Wissenschaft,” 25). 17. In his “Mi-­tokh hirhurim ‘al ḥokhmat Yisra’el,” reprinted in Paul Mendes-­Flohr, ed., Ḥokhmat Yisra’el: Hebetim historiyim u-­filosofiyim (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1979), 153–68. 18. In denouncing “the” Wissenschaft des Judentums as a pseudo-­Wissenschaft des Judentums, Buber tied in with a long-­standing polemical tradition. In November  1861 Samson Raphael Hirsch wrote that “that which for some thirty years has called itself jüdische Wissenschaft is anything but a Wissenschaft des Judentums. Fragments of a Wissenschaft

194

Notes to Pages 24–31

vom Judentum . . . ​is all they delivered”; in “Wie gewinnen wir das Leben,” 87. His critique was intensified in the early 1900s, when Orthodox authors articulated the relationship between (Reform) Wissenschaft des Judentums and (Orthodox) jüdische Wissenschaft as that between, e.g., form and content or ornament and building; see Breuer, Modernity Within Tradition, 194–200. 19. Buber, “Jüdische Wissenschaft,” 50. 20. Maybaum, “Die Wissenschaft des Judentums,” 653. 21. Franco Moretti, “Conjectures on World Lit­er­a­t ure,” New Left Review 1 (January–­ February 2000): 54–68, at 67. 22. I am indebted to Noah Gerber for the reference. 23. Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 21 (2007): 105–6. 24. Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 21 (2007): 107. 25. David N. Myers, Re-­Inventing the Jewish Past: Eu­ro­pean Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). 26. I am indebted to Yael Sela Teichler and Amir Banbaji for this reconstruction. 27. Moretti, “Conjectures,” 67. 28. Though dif­fer­ent in many re­spects, the following analy­sis can be read as a counterpart to Shmuel Feiner’s “Nineteenth-­Century Jewish Historiography: The Second Track,” in Reshaping the Past: Jewish History and the Historians, ed. Jonathan Frankel, Studies in Con­ temporary Jewry 10 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 17–44. 29. Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Po­liti­cal Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); and Visions of Politics, Vol. 1: Regarding Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 30. Alessandro Grazi, “Patria ed Affetti: Jewish Identity and Risorgimento Nationalism in the Oeuvres of Samuel Luzzatto, Isaac Reggio, and David Levi” (PhD diss., Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 2012), 145–55, and the lit­er­a­t ure mentioned on 146 n.83. 31. Isaac Samuel Reggio, “Ai miei correligionari d’Italia!” Strenna Israelitica 3 (1854): 4. 32. Elisheva Carlebach, Palaces of Time: Jewish Calendar and Culture in Early Modern Eu­rope (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 28. 33. Isaac Marcus Jost, “Vorwort der Redaction,” Israelitische Annalen 1 (January 4, 1839): 1. 34. Jost, “Vorwort der Redaction,” 2. 35. Jost, “Vorwort der Redaction,” 1. 36. Joep T. Leerssen, “Notes ­Towards a Definition of Romantic Nationalism,” Romantik: Journal for the Study of Romanticisms 2 (2013): 9–35. 37. Isaac Samuel Reggio, editorial, Strenna Israelitica 3 (1854–55): 3. 38. Israel Zangwill, ­Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar ­People, ed. Meri-­Jane Rochelson (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 359. 39. An insight attributed to Hegel and made famous through Benedict Anderson’s reference in ­Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1983), 35. 40. On Roest, see most recently Irene Zwiep, “No Friend of Humbug: Marcus Roest Mz, First Custodian of the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana (1881–1889),” in “Omnia in Eo: Studies on Jewish Books and Libraries in Honour of Adri Offenberg, Celebrating the 125th Anniversary of the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana in Amsterdam,” ed. Emile Schrijver et al., special issue, Studia Rosenthaliana 38–39 (2006): 37–48. On Dünner, see Bart Wallet, “ ‘ The ­Great Ea­gle, the Pride of Jacob’: Joseph Hirsch Dünner in Dutch Jewish Memory Culture,” in The Religious Cultures of Dutch Jewry, ed. Yosef Kaplan and Dan Michman (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 299–315.



Notes to Pages 31–34

195

41. Joseph Hirsch Dünner and Marcus Roest, editorial, Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad 1, no. 1 (August 4, 1865): 1. In his other­w ise critical biography of Dünner, Jaap Meijer hallowed the initiative as a departure from the seminary’s stolid routine. Meijer, Rector en Raw: De levensgeschiedenis van Dr.  J.H. Dünner (1833–1911) (Heemstede, Netherlands: Jaap Meijer, 1984), 137. 42. Joseph Hirsch Dünner, editorial, Israëlietische Nieuwsbode 15, no. 23 (November 29, 1889): 1. 43. Joseph Hirsch Dünner and Marcus Roest, editorial, Israëlietische Nieuwsbode 1 (July 2, 1875): 1. 44. In Irene Zwiep, “The Haskamah of History, or: Why Did the Dutch Wissenschaft des Judentums Spurn Zunz’s Writings?” Eu­ro­pean Journal of Jewish Studies 7, no. 2 (2013): 131–50. 45. According to Meijer, rumor had it that it was Dünner who had supplied the basis for the article. All Hoofiën had done was “paraphrase it in the dashing style of Dutch journalism” (Meijer, Rector en Raw, 165). ­Earlier, Dünner had joined the debate around Frankel’s Darke ha-­Mishnah (Leipzig, 1859). Dünner’s articles on the topic ­were collected in Die Theoriën über Wesen und Ursprung der Tosephta kritisch dargestellt (Amsterdam: Seyffardt, 1874). 46. See note 40 above. 47. Witness the life cycle of the most impor­tant publications in the genre: Jaarboeken voor de Israëlieten in Nederland (The Hague: J. Belinfante, 1835–38); Gabriel Polak’s Nederlandsch Israëlitisch Muzen-­Almanak voor . . . ​5604 (1 issue, Amsterdam: M. Coster Jz, 1843–44); Salomo Keyzer’s Palaestina (1 issue, Leiden: J. H. Gebhard, 1847–48); M. L. van Ameringen’s Tafereelen uit de geschiedenis der Israëlieten in de laatste 18 eeuwen: Uit onderscheidene bronnen bijeen gebracht (Amsterdam: J. B. de Mesquita, 1860–62); Leman Borstel’s Israëlietische Almanak (1 issue, Rotterdam: n.p., 1865); L. Landsberg’s Ibri: Bladen voor Israëlitische en algemeene volksbeschaving (1 issue, Dordrecht: n.p., 1869); Tijdschrift uitgegeven door de Vereeniging ter beoefening van Joodsche wetenschappen te Rotterdam (1 issue, Rotterdam: Gebroeders Haagens, 1869); Joodsch-­letterkundige bijdragen (Amsterdam: J. B. de Mesquita, 1867–69); Lezingen gehouden in de Vereeniging voor Joodsche letterkunde en geschiedenis te ’s Gravenhage (The Hague: Gebr. Belinfante, 1886–88); Lezingen gehouden in de Vereeniging Mekor Chajim te Amsterdam (Amsterdam: Vereeniging Mekor Chajim, 1887–99); and Ha-­Lekach: Maandblad voor leer en leven des Jodendoms; orgaan der Joodsch litteraire club te Rotterdam (Rotterdam: M. van Pels & Co, 1910–12). 48. [Editors], “A nos lecteurs,” REJ 1 (1880): v (italics in the original). 49. [Editors], “A nos lecteurs,” v. 50. [Editors], “A nos lecteurs,” v. 51. For the concept of nationalist ressentiment, see Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), esp. 177–83, 371–85. 52. Perrine Simon-­Nahum, “La revue des études juives et la Science du Judaïsme: La préhistoire de l’histoire,” in Simon C. Mimouni and Judith Olszowy-­Schlanger, Les revues scientifiques d’études juives: Passé et avenir: à l’occasion du 120e anniversaire de la “Revue des études juives”: Actes de la ­table ronde de Paris 13–14 novembre 2002, Collection de la Revue des études juives 38 (Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 2006), 1–20. See also Simon-­Nahum, “Wissenschaft des Judentums in Germany and the Science of Judaism in Nineteenth-­ Century France: Tradition and Modernity in Jewish Scholarship,” in Jewish Emancipation Reconsidered: The French and German Models, ed. Michael Brenner et al. (London: Leo Baeck Institute, 2003), 39–53.

196

Notes to Pages 34–38

53. [Editors], “A nos lecteurs,” viii. 54. Aron Rodrigue, “Totems, Taboos and Jews: Salomon Reinach and the Politics of Scholarship in Fin-­de-­Siècle France,” in Religious Difference in France Past and Pre­sent, ed. Kathlyn Perry Long (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press), 161–79. 55. Jay Berkovitz, Rites and Passages: The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Culture in France, 1650–1860 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 165–90. 56. Simon-­Nahum, “La revue des études juives,” 13. 57. Perhaps best summarized in Moritz Lazarus, Was heißt und zu welchem Ende studiert man jüdische Geschichte und Litteratur? Populär-­w issenschaftliche Vorträge über Juden und Judentum, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1900), whose title was a con­spic­u­ous recap of Schiller’s inaugural lecture on the importance of Universalgeschichte (1789; Schillers Werke, vol. 3 [Berlin: Auf bau-­ Verlag, 1978], 275–95). 58. The launch, also in 1880, of the Société des Études Juives was part of the same move ­toward the secularization of religious studies. The society’s statutes ­were included on pp. 162– 64 of REJ, vol. 1. 59. Simon-­Nahum, “La revue des études juives,” 10–12. 60. [Editors], “A nos lecteurs,” vii. 61. In REJ, vol. 1, Persian scholar James Darmesteter (1849–94) demonstrated the Jewish influence on Zoroastrianism by tracing parallels between the Bavli and the Bundahishn, while another French Orientalist, Joseph Derenburg’s son Hartwig (1844–1908), who was appointed chair of Islam and Arabic at the École Pratique in 1885, compared private names found in the Old Testament and in Himyarite inscriptions. 62. In Friedrich Nietz­sche, Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben (Leipzig: E. W. Fritzsch), 1874. 63. [Editors], “A nos lecteurs,” esp. vii–­viii. 64. Heinrich Graetz, “The Significance of Judaism for the Pre­sent and the ­Future,” JQR 1 (1889): 4–13. More than a ­century ­later, Graetz’s article became the starting point for Louis Jacobs’s Princi­ples of the Jewish Faith: An Analytical Study (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2009), 1ff. 65. Graetz, “The Significance of Judaism,” 8, ­a fter Ernest Renan in the Dictionaire de philosophie catholique, vol. 3 (Paris: Migne, 1864), col. 465. 66. Nicholas de Lange, “Hebrew and Jewish Studies in ­Great Britain,” in Jewish Studies and the Eu­ro­pean Academic World, ed. Albert van der Heide and Irene E. Zwiep, Collection de la Revue des études juives 37 (Paris: Peeters, 2005), 139 (­a fter Cecil Roth’s A History of the Jews in E ­ ngland [Oxford: Clarendon, 1964]). 67. Hurwitz’s Romantic collection of Hebrew Tales from the Writings of the Hebrew Sages (London: Morrison and Watt, 1826) dated from ­earlier days and enjoyed a broad popu­lar reception on the Continent; see Gabriele von Glasenapp, “From Text to Edition: Pro­cesses of Scholarly Thinking in German-­Jewish Lit­er­a­t ure in the Early Nineteenth ­C entury,” in Gotzmann and Wiese, eds., Modern Judaism and Historical Consciousness, 368–88. 68. Solomon Marcus Schiller-­Szinessy, Cata­logue of the Hebrew Manuscripts Preserved in the University Library, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge: University Press 1876). 69. Solomon Schechter, “The Beginnings of Jewish ‘Wissenschaft,’ ” in Seminary Addresses and Other Papers (Cincinnati: Ark Publishing, 1915), 193. 70. [Editors], “Introductory,” JQR 1, no.1 (October 1888): 3. 71. See esp. Myers, Resisting History.



Notes to Pages 38–43

197

72. The pre­sent as a locus for thinking and shaping the ­f uture most famously underlaid the essays in Hannah Arendt’s Between Past and ­Future: Eight Exercises in Po­liti­cal Thought—­ Enlarged Edition (New York: Penguin, 1977). 73. [Editors], “Introductory,” 2. 74. [Editors], “Introductory,” 2. 75. All quotations from [Editors], “Introductory,” 1. 76. ­A fter Droysen, who dismissed purely objective documentation of the past as both impossible and futile; see Christiane Hackel, Die Bedeutung August Boeckhs für den Geschichts­ theoretiker Johann Gustav Droysen (Würzburg, Germany: Königshausen & Neumann, 2006), 81–82. 77. For fundamental reflection on the role and experience of time in relation to history, see esp. Nathan Rotenstreich, Between Past and Pre­sent: An Essay on History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1958); and Reinhart Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1979). 78. In the words of Fritz Bamberger, Zunz had conceived of the Wissenschaft des Judentums as the ­bearer of “des Judentums lebensvolle Züge” and “eine andere Lebenswirklichkeit”; Bamberger, “Wissenschaft vom Judentum,” 6 and 8, respectively. 79. Meyer, “Without Wissenschaft,” 15. 80. Schechter, “Beginnings,” 181–86. 81. Myers, Resisting History, 16. Baron’s identification was endorsed by Ismar Schorsch (e.g., in his From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism [Hanover, NH: University Press of New ­England for Brandeis University Press, 1994]) but contested by Amos Funkenstein in Perceptions of Jewish History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 82. Myers, Resisting History, 20. 83. Myers, Resisting History, 20; and Re-­Inventing the Jewish Past, 25–37.

chapter 2 1. Andreas Brämer, Rabbiner Zacharias Frankel: Wissenschaft des Judentums und konservative Reform im 19. Jahrhundert (Hildesheim, Germany: Georg Olms Verlag, 2000), 40. Frankel studied at this Catholic university with the German-­speaking Protestant philologist Ludwig von Schedius. See Tamás Turán and Carsten Wilke, “Wissenschaft des Judentums in Hungary: An Introduction,” in Modern Jewish Scholarship in Hungary: The “Science of Judaism” Between East and West, ed. Turán and Wilke (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2016), 6. 2. Turán and Wilke, “Wissenschaft des Judentums in Hungary,” 3. 3. About the connection and parallels between the two seminaries, see Moshe Carmilly-­ Weinberger, “The Similarities and Relationship Between the Jüdisch-­Theologisches Seminar (Breslau) and the Rabbinical Seminary (Budapest),” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 44 (1999): 3–22. See also Miryam Thulin, Kaufmanns Nachrichtendienst: Ein jüdisches Gelehrtennetzwerk im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012). 4. Heinrich Graetz, “Begrüssungsrede des Prof. Dr. H. Grätz im Namen des Breslauer Jüdisch-­Theologischen Seminars”; and David Cassel, “Rede des Prof. Dr. David Cassel im Namen der Berliner ‘Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums;’ ” Leopold Kompert, “Begrüssungsrede des Dr. Leopold Kompert im Namen der Wiener Isr. Cultusgemeinde,” all published in József Bánóczi, “Die Geschichte des ersten Jahrzehnts der Landes-­Rabbinerschule,”

198

Notes to Pages 43–46

in Der Zehnte Jahresbericht der Landes-­Rabbinerschule in Budapest über das Schuljahr 1886–87 (Budapest: Athenaeum, 1888), 19–24. 5. Graetz, “Begrüssungsrede des Prof. Dr. H. Grätz,” 20. 6. Cassel, “Rede des Prof. Dr. David Cassel,” 22. 7. The name of the organ­ization headed by Schweiger is also known as the Central Organ­ization of the Jewish Communities in Hungary. Moshe Carmilly-­Weinberger, ed., The Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest 1877–1977: A Centennial Volume (New York: Sepher-­Hermon, 1986), 12–13. 8. The idea to establish a seminary was first raised in 1806 by David ben Meir haKohen Friesenhausen. Carmilly-­Weinberger, ed., Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest, 3. 9. The question of the necessity of a modern rabbinical school contributed to the internal strife tearing apart Hungarian Jewry. Sámuel Kohn, “Rede des Rabbiners und Predigers der Pester isr. Culturgemeinde Dr.  Samuel Kohn im Namen des ständigen Comités der Landes-­Rabbinerschule,” in Bánóczi, “Die Geschichte des ersten Jahrzehnts,” 13–16. 10. Vilmos Bacher, “Rede des Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Bacher im Namen des Professorencollegiums der Landes-­Rabbinerschule,” in Bánóczi, “Die Geschichte des ersten Jahrzehnts,” 16. 11. The Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums reported on the ceremony on October  16, 1877, and published the summaries of the speeches as well. “Die feierliche Eröffnung der Landes-­R abbinen-­Bildungs-­A nstalt zu Pest am 4. October” (The festive opening of the state institution for rabbinical education in Pest on October 4), Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums 41, no. 42 (October 16, 1877): 670–72. 12. Michael Silber, “The Hungarian Experience of German Jewry and Its Impact on Haskalah and Reform in Hungary,” in ­Toward Modernity: The Eu­ro­pean Jewish Model, ed. J. Katz (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1987); and Sinai (Tamás) Turán, “Leopold Löw and the Study of Rabbinic Lit­er­a­t ure—­a Bicentennial Appraisal,” Jewish Studies: Journal of the World Union of Jewish Studies 48 (2012): 41–75. The two scholars’ approaches differ in that Silber (in his doctorate, “Shorshe ha-­pilug be-­Yahadut Hungaryah: Temurot tarbutiyot ve-­ḥevratiyot mi-­yeme Yosef ha-­Sheni ʻad ʻerev mahpekhat 1848” [The roots of schism among Hungarian Jewry: cultural and social changes from the days of Joseph II ­until the revolution of 1848] [PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1985]) stresses that the division between traditional rabbinic conceptions of knowledge and Haskalah was rather blurred in Hungary, while Turán (in Modern Jewish Scholarship in Hungary, 2016, for example) considers the gap between modern and traditional learning significant. 13. In a 2018 article Turán explores the many directions of Löw’s inquiries and the intellectual dialogues he entered. Tamás Turán, “Jewish Heterodoxy and Christian Denominationalism: Leopold Löw’s Comparative Perspective on Modern Hungarian Jewry,” Modern Judaism 38, no. 3 (October 2018): 354–78. 14. Carmilly-­Weinberger, ed., Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest, 6. 15. Leopold Löw, “Ausserordentliche Beilage zu ‘B. Ch.’ Nr. 23: Der 25 November 1867” (Extraordinary supplement to Ben Chananja 23 [November 25, 1867]), Ben Chananja 10, no. 23 (November 29, 1867): 739–42. 16. In his PhD dissertation Michael Silber points out that the break between the denominations had been developing since before 1848. Silber, “Shorshe ha-­pilug be-­Yahadut Hungaryah,” 92. 17. Kinga Frojimovics, Szétszakadt történelem: Zsidó vallási irányzatok Magyarországon, 1868–1950 (Split history: Jewish denominations in Hungary, 1868–1950) (Budapest: Balassi, 2008), 71, 81.



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18. Jacob Katz, A House Divided: Orthodoxy and Schism in Nineteenth-­Century Central Eu­ro­pean Jewry (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1998). 19. Lajos Blau, Emlékkönyv a Ferenc József Országos Rabbiképző Intézet Ötven éves jubileumára 1877–1927 (Memorial book for the jubilee of the Franz Joseph Rabbinical Seminary 1877–1927) (Budapest, 1927), 17. Wilke notes that while in Germany rabbinical students suffered from a lack of coordination between the curriculum of the university and the seminary, in Prague, Vienna, and, as w ­ ill be discussed l­ater in this study, Budapest, Jewish scholars employed at the university ensured that the studies at the two institutions correlated. In the interwar period antisemitic attitudes at the universities cast a long shadow on this cooperation. Carsten Wilke, “From Talmud Torah to Oriental Studies: Itineraries of Rabbinical Students in Hungary,” in Turán and Wilke, eds., Modern Jewish Scholarship, 90–91. 20. Ismar Schorsch reminds us that Wissenschaft des Judentums cannot be understood without consideration of the German milieu in which it came to life. This is equally valid when discussing the Hungarian (and any other) cultural context of scholarly developments. Schorsch, From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1994), 162. This essay holds that specific po­liti­c al and cultural conditions in Hungary affected the emergence of modern Hungarian Jewish scholarship. 21. Jacob Katz argues that Hungarian liberal nationalism allowed Jews to participate in the creation of Hungarian national institutions. See Katz, “The Uniqueness of Hungarian Jewry,” Forum on the Jewish ­People, Zionism and Israel 2, no. 27 (1977): 45–53. In contrast, András Gerő stresses that Hungarian Jews embraced Hungarian culture and became Hungarian speakers due to lack of an alternative choice. Gerő, The Jewish Criterion in Hungary (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 2007). 22. The exceptions ­were the 1882–83 academic year and the years 1918 to 1923. In each Bulletin, following the scholarly essay, readers ­were informed of the ordination of new rabbis, monetary and other kinds of gifts (including books that the seminary received), and other issues relevant to the seminary’s work. Essay competitions and their winners ­were announced from the 1884–85 academic year onward. Blau, Memorial Book, 19. 23. Mózes Bloch, “A polgári perrendtartás: a mozaiko-­rabbinikus jog szerint” (Civic trial procedure according to the Mosaic-­rabbinical law), in A Budapesti Országos Rabbiképző-­Intézet Értesítője, 1881–82 (Budapest: Magyar Kir. Egyetemi Könyvnyomda, 1882). Like Kaufmann, Bloch also contributed to the publications of Mekitze nirdamim. Mihály Guttman, “Bloch Mózes,” in Zsidó Plutarchos II: Bacher Vilmos, Bloch Mózes, Kaufmann Dávid (Jewish Plutarch II: Vilmos Bacher, Moses Bloch, David Kaufmann), ed. József Bánóczi (Budapest: A Népszerű zsidó könyvtár kiadása, 192?), 51. 24. Bacher and Kaufmann had dif­fer­ent attitudes ­toward giving a Hungarian voice to German Wissenschaft des Judentums. Kaufmann, who came from Moravia and started learning Hungarian ­a fter his appointment to the seminary, initially was averse to the idea, while the Hungarian-­born Bacher, son of Simon Bacher, the famous Hebraist and translator of Hungarian poetry into Hebrew, was an engaged advocate of Hungarian Jewish scholarship from the outset; his ­father’s influence may have played a role in his openness ­toward Hungarian letters. Thulin, Kaufmanns Nachrichtendienst, 65, 326. I thank Noah Gerber for bringing to my attention that Simon Bacher might have influenced his son’s attitude ­toward Hungarian scholarship. 25. Lajos Blau, Adalékok a Ferenc József Országos Rabbiképző történetéhez: Az intézet fennállása negyvenedik évfordulója ünnepére (1877. október 4–1917. október 4) (Additions to the

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history of the National Joseph Francis Rabbinical Seminary: Celebrating the institution’s fortieth anniversary [October 4, 1877–­October 4, 1917]) (Budapest: Blau Lajos, 1917), 10–11. 26. Ismar Schorsch, “Zacharias Frankel and the Eu­ro­pean Origins of Conservative Judaism,” Judaism 30, no. 3 (Summer 1981): 351–52. Howard Lupovitch proposes that the Hungarian Alexander Kohut’s influence was crucial to the emergence of Conservative Judaism in the United States. See Lupovitch, “Navigating Rough ­Waters: Alexander Kohut and the Hungarian Roots of Conservative Judaism,” AJS Review 32, no. 1 (April 2008): 49–78. 27. Schorsch, From Text to Context, 168; József Schweitzer, “Az Országos Rabbiképző Intézet teológiai és halachikus irányáról” (On the theological and halachic orientation of the National Rabbinical Seminary), in “A tanítás az élet kapuja”: Tanulmányok az Országos Rabbiképző Intézet fennállásának 120. évfordulója alkalmából (“Teaching is the gate to life”: Studies written on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the National Rabbinical Seminary) (Budapest: Universitas, Országos Főrabbi Hivatal, 1999), 31; and Christian Wiese, Challenging Colonial Discourse: Jewish Studies and Protestant Theology in Wilhelmine Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 87. 28. Bernát Heller, “Bacher Vilmos,” in Bánóczi, ed., Jewish Plutarch II, 21; and Gábor Schweitzer, “A Tóra Megmentője: Bacher Vilmos emlékezete” (The savior of the Torah: Wilhelm Bacher’s memory), Szombat, September 3, 2015, http://­w ww​.­szombat​.­org​/­hagyomany​ -­tortenelem​/­a​-­tora​-­megmentoje (accessed June 25, 2016). 29. Vilmos Bacher, “Babylóniai amórák agádája: Adalék az agáda történetéhez és a ba­ bylóniai Talmudba való bevezetéshez,” or “Die Agada der babylonischen Amoräer” (The Aggadah of the Babylonian Amoraim: Additions to the history of the Aggadah and the introduction of the Babylonian Talmud), Bulletin (1878): x. 30. Bacher, “Aggadah of the Babylonian Amoraim,” x–xi. Examining the talmudic historical research of Graetz and Frankel, Jacob Neusner describes it as “biographical.” The Talmud as History (The 1978 Allan Bronfman Lecture delivered at Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, Westmount, Quebec, Canada, November 7, 1978) (Westmount: Gate Press, 1979), 7. 31. Heller, “Bacher Vilmos,” 22. 32. Heller, “Bacher Vilmos,” 22. 33. Heller, “Bacher Vilmos,” 22. 34. Vilmos Bacher, “Ábrahám Ibn Ezrá mint grammatikus” (Abraham Ibn Ezra as grammarian), Bulletin (1881): 26. 35. Ismar Schorsch, “The Myth of Sephardic Supremacy,” in From Text to Context, 71– 92; Martin Kramer, ed., The Jewish Discovery of Islam: Studies in Honor of Bernard Lewis (Tel Aviv: Moshe Dayan Center for ­Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel Aviv University, 1999); and more recently, John Efron, German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2015). 36. Heller, “Bacher Vilmos,” 24–25, 37. 37. Blau, Memorial Book, 68–72. 38. Géza Komoróczy, “The Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest and Oriental Studies in Hungary,” in Turán and Wilke, eds., Modern Jewish Scholarship, 37–54; and Wilke, “From Talmud Torah to Oriental Studies,” 91–94. 39. Raphael Patai, “The Seminary and Oriental Studies,” in Carmilly-­Weinberger, ed., Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest, 184–93. 40. Bernát Heller, Az arab Antar-­regény (The Arabic ‘Antar-­novel) (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1918), vi.



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41. Komoróczy, “Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest,” 37–54; and Wilke, “From Talmud Torah to Oriental Studies,” 91–94. 42. In his diary, Goldziher recorded his resentment ­toward Vámbéry’s scholarly conduct and civic comportment. See also Róbert Simon, “Goldziher és Vámbéry (két választás Magyarországon)” (Goldziher and Vámbéry [two choices in Hungary]), in Goldziher Ignác (Váz­ latok az emberről és a tudósról) (Ignaz Goldziher [Sketches on the man and scholar]) (Budapest: Osiris, 2000), 177–203. 43. Turán and Wilke, “Wissenschaft des Judentums in Hungary,” 28. 44. About Blau’s work see Tamás Turán, “Blau Lajos tudománya: Hatvan év múltán” (About Blau’s scholarship: Sixty years ­later), afterword to Lajos Blau, Az óhéber könyv—­A héber bibliakánon (The ancient Hebrew book—­The Hebrew Bible canon) (Budapest: Log­os Kiadó, 1996). 45. Edit Madas, “A Corvina újkori története Magyaroroszágon” (The modern history of the Corvinas in Hungary), in A holló jegyében: Fejezetek a Corvinák történetéből (In the sign of the raven: Chapters in the history of the Corvinas), ed. István Monok, 65–82 (Budapest: Corvina-­Széchenyi Könyvtár, 2004), http://­mek​.­oszk​.­hu​/­02600​/­02663​/­# (accessed May 28, 2019). 46. For example, David Kaufmann, “Az antisemitizmus uj évi mérlege” (The new year balance of antisemitism), Review (1886): 40–44. 47. Bacher and Bánóczi edited the Review together ­until 1890. 48. Miklós Konrád, “Támogatók és vetélytársak: A Magyar-­Zsidó Szemle helye a neológ felekezeti közéletben” (Supporters and competitors: The place of the Hungarian Jewish Review in the Neolog public life), Regio 24, no. 1 (2016): 126–47, esp. 128. 49. Bacher and Bánóczi, “Olvasóinkhoz” (To our readers), Review (1884): 1. 50. Miklós Konrád, “Zsidók magyar nemzete: A nemzeti múlt zsidó tudományos ábrázolása, különös tekintettel a kazárelméletre” (The Hungarian nation of the Jews: The Jewish repre­sen­ta­tion of the national past, with special regard to the Khazar theory), Századok 150, no. 3 (2016): 647; and Miklós Konrád, “Narrating the Hungarian-­Jewish National Past: The ‘Khazar Theory’ and the Integrationist Jewish Scientific Discourse,” in Cultural Nationalism in a Finnish-­Hungarian Historical Context, ed. Gábor Gyáni and Anssi Halmesvirta (Budapest: MTA Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont Történettudományi Intézet, 2018), 54. 51. Kohn did not finish the second volume on Hungarian Jewish history ­until the beginning of the nineteenth ­century. Sándor Büchler (1870–1944), a gradu­ate of the Budapest Rabbinical Seminary, continued Kohn’s research, though he did not succeed in publishing a comprehensive survey that would complete Kohn’s monograph. See Kinga Frojimovics and Gábor Schweitzer, eds., Adalékok Büchler Sándor és Kohn Sámuel történetírói munkásságához: A magyarországi zsidóság történetíróinak emlékezete, avagy egy kézirat legendája (Additions to the historiographical oeuvre of Sándor Büchler and Sámuel Kohn: The memory of the historians of Hungarian Jewry, or the legend of a manuscript) (Budapest: Magyar Zsidó Levéltár, 1997). 52. For the con­temporary discussion see Anikó Prepuk, “A zsidóság a Millenniumon” (Jewry at the millennial festivities), http://­w ww​.­c3​.­hu​/­scripta​/­szazadveg​/­17​/­prepuk​.­htm#fn10 (accessed June 30, 2016). Prepuk does not mention other articles in the Review about the Khazar theory, such as Zsigmond Kallós, “A kazár probléma” (The Khazarian prob­lem) Review (1933): 140–46; and Dénes Friedman, “A kazár-­probléma végső eredményei” (The final results of the Khazarian prob­lem), Review (1929): 269–75. See also Arthur Koestler, The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and Its Heritage (New York: Random House, 1976). The Khazar

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theme also spilled over into the antisemitic press, where it was used in connection with foreign Jews in a par­tic­u­lar Hungarian version of ostracizing Ostjuden. See, for example, Steven Aschheim, ­Brothers and Strangers: The East Eu­ro­pean Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800–1923 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982); and Jack Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers: East Eu­ro­pean Jews in Imperial Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). 53. MILEV (Hungarian Jewish Archives) XIX-112, Kohn Sámuel hagyatéka (Samuel Kohn papers), nos. 99 and 100. 54. Konrád, “Hungarian Nation of the Jews,” 653–54. 55. Vilmos Bacher, “Ezer év előtt” (A thousand years ­earlier) IMIT Yearbook 2 (1896): 1–13; excerpt based on the reprint in Bacher, Szentírás és zsidó tudomány (Holy scripture and Jewish scholarship) (Budapest: Múlt és Jövő, 1998), 23–30. 56. See for example, Konrád, “Hungarian Nation of the Jews”; György Kövér, A tiszaeszlári dráma: Társadalomtörténeti látószögek (The drama in Tiszaeszlár: Social historical perspectives) (Budapest: Osiris, 2011); and Andrew Handler, Blood Libel at Tiszaeszlar (New York: Boulder, 1980.) 57. In this article in the Review, Kohn explic­itly refuted the Hebrew-­Hungarian linguistic affinity theory that had long been held by Christian scholars. Sámuel Kohn, “A honfoglaló magyarok és a zsidók” (The homeland-conquering Hungarians and the Jews), Review 1 (1884): 10. 58. Raphael Patai, The Jews of Hungary: History, Culture, Psy­chol­ogy (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996), 28; Lajos Venetianer, A magyar zsidóság története különleges tekintettel gazdasági és művelődési fejlődésére a XIX. században (The history of Hungarian Jewry with special focus on their economic and cultural development in the nineteenth ­century) (Budapest: Könyvértékesítő Vállalat, 1986 [orig. 1922]), 21. Among the literary authors engaging with the history of the Sabbatarians are Zsigmond Kemény, Mór Jókai, and more recently András Nyerges. 59. Bern­stein’s 1848 és a magyar zsidók (1848 and the Hungarian Jews) was published in 1906 by Josef Patai, Raphael Patai’s ­father, at the Magyar Zsidó Könyvtár (Hungarian Jewish Library) publishing ­house. See also Nathaniel Katzburg, Jewish Historiography in Hungary (Jerusalem: [H. mo. I], 1957); and Gábor Schweitzer, “Scholarship and Patriotism: Research on the History of Hungarian Jewry and the Rabbinical Seminary of Hungary—­t he First De­cades,” in Turán and Wilke, eds., Modern Jewish Scholarship, 99–107. 60. Ignác Goldziher, “A bibliai tudomány és a modern vallásos élet” (Biblical scholarship and modern religious life), Review (1884): 89–97, 168–76. In his diary he noted that Geiger’s scholarship influenced his research on Judaism and Islam equally and quoted Geiger’s call for the Jewish engagement with biblical criticism. Ignác Goldziher, Tagebuch, ed. Alexander Scheiber (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 33, 123. The diary likewise demonstrates that despite the unmistakable scholarly-­religious discord between Kohn and Goldziher, they had deep re­spect for each other as colleagues and neighbors and through familial connections. See Goldziher, Tagebuch, 79–80. 61. Carsten Wilke, “Rabbi Wolf Meisel’s Attempt to Mainstream Judaism in Hungary 1859–1867,” Transversal 14, no. 2 (2016): 65–77. 62. In addition to this article, in 1887, Goldziher delivered a six-­part lecture series, “A zsidóság lényege és fejlődése” (The essence and development of Judaism) to a general audience. His lectures discussed the development of Judaism as a constantly evolving religion from prophetism to the development of Wissenschaft des Judentums, especially in Geiger’s and



Notes to Pages 57–58

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Zunz’s work, which he planned to discuss in the last lecture. However, that lecture was canceled due to lack of audience interest. Nonetheless, the lectures ­were published and republished several times. It is noteworthy that despite its deep antagonism ­toward biblical criticism, the Neolog Jewish weekly Egyenlőség (Equality) published the lectures the same year, and they ­were republished in 1923–24 in two volumes as part of the series Népszerű Zsidó Könyvtár (Popu­lar Jewish Library). For an En­glish review, see Lawrence Conrad, “A New Volume of Hungarian Essays by Ignác Goldziher,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 17, no. 4 (2007): 363–79. More recently, Ottfried Friesse published on Goldziher’s religious scholarship relating to Islam: Ignác Goldzihers mono­the­istische Wissenschaft: Zur Historisierung des Islam (Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014). 63. Ismar Schorsch offers some insight into the negative reception of Goldziher’s first monograph in Hungary in “Beyond the Classroom: The Enduring Relationship Between Heinrich L. Fleischer and Ignaz Goldziher,” in Turán and Wilke, eds., Modern Jewish Scholarship, 139–42. 64. Ignác Goldziher, “6. Előadás: Az újkori vallástudomány” (Sixth lecture: The modern science of religion), in A zsidóság lényege és fejlődése (The essence and development of Ju­ daism) (Budapest: Múlt és Jövő, 2000), 120. 65. Goldziher, “Biblical Scholarship,” 91. 66. For a comprehensive discussion of Jewish attitudes ­toward biblical criticism in nineteenth-­century Germany, see Ran HaCohen, Reclaiming the Hebrew Bible: German-­Jewish Reception of Biblical Criticism (New York: De Gruyter, 2010); about Geiger in par­tic­u­lar, 150, 185. Regarding Geiger’s engagement, and Jewish engagement in general, with Protestant theology, see Susannah Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Yaacov Shavit and Mordechai Eran, The Hebrew Bible Reborn: From Holy Scripture to the Book of Books—­A History of Biblical Culture and the ­Battles over the Bible in Modern Judaism (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007); and Christian Wiese, Challenging Colonial Discourse: Jewish Studies and Protestant Theology in Wilhelmine Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2005). 67. Goldziher, “Biblical Scholarship,” 89. Goldziher’s article opens with the quote from Geiger’s article “Der Boden zur Aussaat,” Jüdische Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft und Leben 1, no. 1 (1862): 3. 68. Fi­nally, Goldziher emphasized that religious erudition should not be the privilege of community leaders but available to all. He called for the publication of popu­lar works for general religious education, without which, he argued, one could not expect the desired changes to occur. “Biblical Scholarship,” 176. On Zunz’s biblical scholarship see Ismar Schorsch, “Leopold Zunz on the Hebrew Bible,” Jewish Quarterly Review 102, no. 3 (2012): 431–54. 69. Turán and Wilke, “Wissenschaft des Judentums in Hungary,” 29. 70. See Goldziher, Tagebuch, 32–33. Goldziher wrote ­these lines in 1890, six years ­a fter the publication of his first article in the Review. In the diary, he describes his admiration for Bacher’s learning and erudition and condemns him for not partnering with Goldziher in his quest to reform the corrupted Hungarian Jewish religious establishment. Goldziher’s relationship with the Neolog community still awaits scholarly treatment. 71. Heller, “Bacher Vilmos,” 25; and János Oláh, “Teaching Scriptural Scholarship [Biblical Studies] in the First 50 Years of the National Institution of Rabbinical Training” (in Hungarian), Gerundium MMXI 2, no. 1–2 (2013): 118. 72. Goldziher’s subsequent articles in the Review, written ­under his pseudonym, Izsák Ungár, articulate criticism from the “right” when reminding readers that the often-­criticized

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yeshivas trained the progressive leaders of Hungarian Jewry, such as Leopold Löw, Ábrahám Hochmut (1816–89), and Áron Chorin (1766–1844), and instilled in them an unconditional love for Jewish learning. Ungár, “A jesibák” (The yeshivas), Review 3, no. 8 (1886): 567–68; “A haladásról 1, 2” (About pro­gress 1, 2), Review 3, no. 10 (1886): 679–81; and 4, no. 1 (1887): 32–34. 73. Tamás Biró, “Szeminárium és bibliakritika: Elzász Bernát és a Rabbiképző Teológiai Egylete az Egyenlőség hasábjain” (Seminary and biblical criticism: Bernát Elzász and the Theological Society of the Rabbinical Seminary in the pages of Equality), in Papírhíd: Az egyetemes kultúra szolgálatában—­tanulmánykötet Scheiber Sándor születése századik évfordulójára (Paper bridge: In the ser­v ice of universal culture—­a volume of collected studies for the 100th anniversary of Sándor Scheiber’s birth), ed. Antal Babits (Budapest: Log­os Kiadó, 2013), 211–58. Biró notes that Bernát Elzász’s last name occasionally appeared as Elsass or Elsaß. 74. Biró, “Seminary and Biblical Criticism,” 218. 75. Miksa Szabolcsi, “A szeminárium és a bibliakritika” (The seminary and biblical criticism), Egyenlőség 8, no. 9 (March 3, 1889): 7–8. 76. Bíró, “Seminary and Biblical Criticism,” 238. For additional publications in the Hungarian and Austrian Jewish press related to the affair, see http://­w ww​.­birot​.­hu​/­Scheiber​ -­2013/ (accessed August 30, 2019). 77. Bernát Elzász, “Nyílt levél” (Open letter), Review (1889): 213–19. 78. Elzász, “Open Letter,” 219. 79. Szabolcsi, “Seminary and Biblical Criticism,” 8. 80. In his fascinating article that documents Elzász’s Canossa following his Song of Songs lecture, Tamás Bíró cites additional evidence that gradu­ates of the seminary ­were interested in incorporating biblical criticism into their works but similarly faced conservative hostility. 81. Miksa Szabolcsi, “A ‘haladó’ vidék” (The progressive countryside), Equality 9, no. 34 (August 22, 1890): 4 (emphasis in the original). 82. See, for example, Raphael Patai, “Wilhelm Bacher,” in Carmilly-­Weinberger, ed., Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest, 152. 83. Noted by Mezey in “Magyar Zsidó Irodalmi Társaság” (Hungarian Jewish Literary Society), Review (1893): 287. 84. József Zsengellér, “Bloch Móric (Ballagi Mór) bibliafordítása: Schweitzer József Jahr­ zeitjére (2016)” (Móric Bloch [Mór Ballagi]’s Bible translation: For the Yahrzeit of József Schweitzer [2016]), in Schweitzer József emlékezete: A halálának első évfordulóján rendezett tudományos konferencia köszöntő beszédei és előadásai (József Schweitzer’s memory: Greeting addresses and papers presented at the conference or­g a­nized on the first anniversary of his death) (Budapest: Mazsihisz, 2016), 208–29. 85. Vilmos Bacher and József Bánóczi, “A biblia új magyar fordítása” (The new Hungarian Bible translation), Review (1886): 676. 86. Lóránt Czigány, “János Arany,” in A History of Hungarian Lit­er­a­ture: From the Earliest Times to the Mid-1970s, http://­mek​.­oszk​.­hu​/­02000​/­02042​/­html​/­27​.­html (accessed September 5, 2016). 87. Heller’s article on Arany in the IMIT Yearbook was, in fact, published last ­a fter a series of related publications elsewhere. 88. Beáta Dömötör, “Az Izraelita Magyar Irodalmi Társulat Évkönyvének néprajzi tárgyú írásai (1896–1983/84)” (Ethnographic writings in the Yearbook of the Israelite Hungarian Literary Society), quoted in Katalin Fenyves, “Zsidó polgáriasodás a 19–20. század fordulójának Magyarországán: A nyelvhasználat és nők helyzetének alakulása” (Jewish



Notes to Pages 61–65

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embourgeoisement in turn-­of-­the-20th-­century Hungary: Language usage and the formation of the status of ­woman) (Habilitation, Országos Rabbiképző—­Z sidó Egyetem; Budapest, 2012), 29 n. 68, http://­w ww​.­or​-­zse​.­hu​/­phd​/­drFenyves​_­habilitacio​_­ertekezes​.­pdf (accessed July 1, 2016); János Oláh, “Adalékok a Magyar-­Z sidó Szemle és a zsidó néprajz kezdeteihez Magyarországon” (Additions to the [history of the] beginnings of the Hungarian Jewish Review and Jewish ethnography), Regio 24, no.  1 (2016): 180–89; and Szonja Ráhel Komoróczy, “ ‘Nem veszedelmes többé’: Jiddis a Magyar-­Z sidó Szemlében, a magyar zsidó tudományos diskurzusban” (“It is not dangerous anymore”: Yiddish in the Hungarian Jewish Review, Hungarian Jewish scholarly discourse), Regio 24, no. 1 (2016): 161–79; and Vilmos Voigt, “Suspension Bridge of Confidence: Folklore Studies in Jewish-­Hungarian Scholarship,” in Turán and Wilke, eds., Modern Jewish Scholarship, 108–16. 89. József Balassa, “A magyar zsidóság néprajzi felvétele” (The ethnographic recording of Hungarian Jewry), IMIT Yearbook (1899): 15–21. 90. Oláh, “Additions,” 183; Komoróczy, “It Is Not Dangerous Anymore,” 162. 91. Komoróczy, “It Is Not Dangerous Anymore,” 162. 92. Komoróczy, “It Is Not Dangerous Anymore,” 168. 93. Quoted in Komoróczy, “It Is Not Dangerous Anymore,” 168. 94. On the periodization of the seminary’s history, see Carmilly-­Weinberger, ed., Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest, 14–16. 95. Hungarian Jewish scholars, such as Goldziher’s student Martin Schreiner, when writing for German readers in German, did engage Protestant theologians with regard to Jewish history. See Christian Wiese, “Defending the Dignity of Judaism: Hungarian Jewish Scholars on Christian Prejudice, Racial Antisemitism, and the Exclusion of Wissenschaft des Judentums, 1880–1914,” in Turán and Wilke, eds., Modern Jewish Scholarship, 349–72. Tamás Turán, “Martin Schreiner and Jewish Theology: An Introduction,” Eu­ro­pean Journal of Jewish Studies 11, no. 1 (2017): 45–84. 96. Turán and Wilke, “Wissenschaft des Judentums in Hungary,” 25; and Biró, “Seminary and Biblical Criticism,” 238. See Biró’s reference to Frojimovics in n. 57. 97. Silber, “Hungarian Experience,” 117. 98. Turán and Wilke, “Wissenschaft des Judentums in Hungary,” 8, referring to Gábor Lengyel, Moderne Rabbinerausbildung in Deutschland und Ungarn: Ungarische Hörer an Bildungsinstitutionen des deutschen Judentums (1854–1938) (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2012), 175–77. On Schreiner’s research, see Tamás Turán, “Martin Schreiner and Jewish Theology: An Introduction,” Eu­ro­pean Journal of Jewish Studies 11, no. 1 (2017): 45–84. 99. Nils Roemer, Jewish Scholarship and Culture in Nineteenth-­Century Germany: Between History and Faith (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), 5.

chapter 3 I wish to express thanks for assistance and suggestions to Catherine Heszer, Menachem Butler, Asher Ozer, Allan Satin, and Christian Wiese. 1. A 2017 essay is devoted, in general terms, to the spread of Wissenschaft des Judentums to the United States. See Christian Wiese, “Translating Wissenschaft: The Emergence and Self-­Emancipation of American Jewish Scholarship, 1860–1920,” in American Jewry: Transcending the Eu­ro­pean Experience?, ed. Christian Wiese and Cornelia Wilhelm (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 185–211.

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2. According to Max Raisin, who had studied with Deutsch, he was in his lifetime “numbered among the ­g reat Jewish scholars of his age.” See Max Raisin, “Gotthard Deutsch,” in his ­Great Jews I Have Known: A Gallery of Portraits (New York: Philosophical Library, 1952), 143. No less an authority than Ismar Elbogen called him a “gifted historian and writer.” See Ismar Elbogen, “American Jewish Scholarship: A Survey,” American Jewish Year Book 5704 (1943–44): 51. However, it was also recognized in his day that Deutsch’s historiography lacked proper attention to under­lying ­causes. See Harold Berman, “The Last Work of a ­Great Historian: The History of the Jews by Gotthard Deutsch,” Reform Advocate, October 29, 1921, 324. 3. The only scholarly article focusing on Deutsch deals with the affair surrounding his unwillingness, as a pacifist and an admirer of German culture, to take a clearly anti-­German position during World War I. See G. A. Dobbert, “The Ordeal of Gotthard Deutsch,” American Jewish Archives 20, no. 2 (November 1968): 129–55. Deutsch believed—­some would argue quite rightly—­that the Germany of his day was less antisemitic than Tsarist Rus­sia and even than anti-­Dreyfusard France. See Max Raisin, Dapim mi-­pinkaso shel rabi (Brooklyn: Schulsinger ­Brothers, 1941), 225; and esp. Deutsch to Joseph Stolz, January 1, 1917, Gotthard Deutsch Papers, MS 123/3/21, American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati (hereafter AJA). 4. See Paul Ritterband and Harold Wechsler, eds., Learning in American Universities: The First C ­ entury (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994). 5. Gotthard Deutsch, “Alexander Kohut’s Contribution to Jewish Scholarship,” in Alexander Kohut, The Ethics of the ­Fathers, ed. and rev. Barnett A. Elzas (New York: Privately Printed, 1920), liii–­liv. 6. George Alexander Kohut, “Steinschneideriana,” in Studies in Jewish Bibliography and Related Subjects in Memory of Abraham Solomon Freidus (1867–1923) (New York: Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation, 1929), 84; and Jacob Voorsanger, The Chronicles of Emanu-­El (San Francisco: G. Spaul­ding, 1900), 62. However, on at least one occasion Steinschneider was exceedingly critical of one of Deutsch’s writings. See Steinschneider’s review of The Theory of Oral Tradition in Zeitschrift für hebraeische Biblio­g raphie 2 (1897): 138. 7. When Deutsch was called upon to deliver an address to the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), marking the one-­hundredth anniversary of the birth of the Jewish scholar Solomon Munk, he was unable to obtain some of Munk’s most impor­tant studies. Gotthard Deutsch, “Solomon Munk,” Central Conference of American Rabbis Year Book (hereafter CCARY ) 13 (1903): 339. It may be, of course, that Deutsch’s difficulties ­were due in par­tic­u­lar to the underdeveloped state of the Hebrew Union College Library at that time. 8. On Zirndorf, see Michael A. Meyer, “Heinrich Zirndorf (1829–1893): Writer, Rabbi, Historian,” in Jüdische Welten: Juden in Deutschland vom 18. Jahrhundert bis in die Gegenwart—­ Festschrift für Monika Richarz, ed. Marion Kaplan and Beate Meyer (Göttingen, Germany: Wallstein Verlag, 2005), 207–24. 9. This is hinted at by Elbogen when he writes, “Deutsch had not inherited—as was expected—­the mantle of his teacher Heinrich Graetz,” and by a letter from Bernhard Bettmann, the president of the Board of Governors of the Hebrew Union College, to Deutsch in Brüx, dated September 30, 1891, three weeks ­a fter Graetz’s death, in which ­there is reference to a Dr. Moses (­either the Reform rabbi Isaac Moses or his ­brother the rabbi Jacob Moses) having likely sounded out Dr. Brann about the Hebrew Union College position. Elbogen, “American Jewish Scholarship,” 51; and B. Bettmann to Deutsch, September 30, 1891, Deutsch Papers, MS 123/1/12, AJA. However, Deutsch regarded it as his responsibility to help raise funds for the Breslau Seminary and for other Eu­ro­pean Jewish scholarly institutions when their financial situation became desperate following World War I. See Judah Magnes to



Notes to Pages 67–70

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Deutsch, December 23, 1920, Central Archives for the History of the Jewish ­People, Jerusalem, P3/69. 10. Hebrew Union College Monthly, November 1922, 9; and Gotthard Deutsch, Scrolls: Essays on Jewish History and Lit­er­a­ture, and Kindred Subjects, vol. 1 (Cincinnati: Ark, 1917), 53. 11. Letter to author, in author’s possession, from the Universität Wien, March 19, 2014. 12. Deutsch, Scrolls, vol. 1, 66. 13. G. Deutsch, Geschichte der Israeliten in Mähren (Brünn: Selbstverlag des Verfassers, 1883). 14. For a listing see Adolph S. Oko, Selected List of the Writings of Gotthard Deutsch, Ph.D. (Cincinnati, 1916). However, the two items in the area of general history that Oko lists for this period and that are signed “George Deutsch” are clearly by a dif­fer­ent author. 15. The first two studies, entitled Dr. Leopold Zunz and Samson Raphael Hirsch: Eine biographische Skizze, do not have place or dates of publication, but they are clearly from this period. The third bears the title page Die Vertreibung der Juden aus Brünn im Jahre 1454 (Brünn: Verlag der Buchhandlung von Bernh. Epstein, 1887). 16. G. Deutsch, “Die jüdische Theologie als Wissenschaft,” Jüdisches Litteratur-­Blatt 14 (1885): 171–72, 176–77, 181, 183–84, 187. From this period stems another, much briefer but related article in which Deutsch argues that whereas Jews are pleased when Christian scholars undertake a fair treatment of Jewish subjects, when Jewish writers deal with Christian subjects, the Herren Zunftgelehrten confront them with Hass und Hohn. For Deutsch this creates a deplorable asymmetry. G. Deutsch, “Jüdische Wissenschaft in christlicher Beleuchtung und umgekehrt,” Jüdisches Litteratur-­Blatt 16, no. 24 (June 9, 1887): 92–93. 17. Samuel Krauss, “Zum Andenken an Gotthard Deutsch, 1859–1921,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums 86 (1922): 7. 18. Deutsch to Samuel Krauss in Vienna, January 18, 1921, Deutsch Papers, MS 123/2/23, AJA; and Deutsch to Ludwig Geiger, October 8, 1913, requesting an image of Geiger’s ­father, Deutsch Papers, MS 123/2/3, AJA. 19. Gotthard Deutsch, “Heinrich Graetz, the Historian: On the Centenary of His Birth, October 31, 1917,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 28 (1922): 66–67. 20. Deutsch, Dr. Leopold Zunz, ix. 21. Deutsch, Scrolls, vol. 1, 153–54. 22. Deutsch to Louis Marshall, December 14, 1917, Deutsch Papers, MS 123/2/33, AJA. 23. Of Yiddish, Deutsch wrote, “I hope we have outgrown the narrowness of the Philistine who sees in Yiddish merely a disgrace, but does not understand that ­t here is in it cleverness, beauty of expression, and particularly wit.” See the untitled and undated manuscript in Deutsch Papers, MS 123/6/13, AJA. An example of Deutsch’s Yiddish writing is his correction of an author who had mixed up Zunz with Heine in regard to the ­matter of conversion to Chris­t ian­ity. It was published in the Yiddish Jewish Morning Journal, May 26, 1913, 4. Unlike Rabbi David Philipson and some other American Reform Jews, the influx of Jews from Eastern Eu­rope did not disturb Deutsch. He did not believe that they would exacerbate antisemitism. On this ­matter he wrote that he stood with the Zionists. See his letter to Felix Goldmann in Oppeln, August  17, 1915, Deutsch Papers, MS 123/2/1, AJA. For Deutsch’s advocacy of Hebrew, see Ezra Spicehandler, “Hebrew and Hebrew Lit­er­a­t ure,” in Hebrew Union College–­Jewish Institute of Religion: At One Hundred Years, ed. Samuel E. Karff (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press), 455–56. Deutsch was a strong supporter of Eliezer Ben-­Yehuda’s Hebrew dictionary. See Gotthard Deutsch, “The Interest of American Jewry in the Judaism of Distant Lands,” CCARY 22 (1912): 287–88. This article,

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as Noah Gerber noted to me, is extraordinary for its interest in small, neglected Jewish communities. 24. Deutsch wrote two critical articles commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Graetz’s birth in 1917. The first, entitled “Heinrich Graetz: A Centenary,” was initially printed in CCARY 27 (1917): 338–64; it also appeared ­later in Hebrew in E. Schmerler, ed., Ḥaye Graetz (New York: Bloch, 1921), 115–60. The second is the ­earlier noted “Heinrich Graetz, the Historian,” 63–81. See also Deutsch’s footnote on the Four Captives in his “The Epochs of Jewish History,” reprint from Menorah (1894): 17n; and the popu­lar piece “My Graetz,” Hebrew Union College Monthly, February 1918, 135–44. 25. Deutsch to Sigmund Seeligmann in Amsterdam, December 25, 1913, Deutsch Papers, MS 123/3/16, AJA. 26. Gotthard Deutsch, Andere Zeiten: Eine Erzählung aus dem jüdischen Leben der jüngsten Vergangenheit (Berlin: Verlag von Albert Katz, 1898); Deutsch, Unlösbare Fesseln: Eine Erzählung aus dem jüdischen Leben der Gegenwart (Frankfurt: J. Kauffmann, 1903); and Deutsch, Israel Bruna: An Historical Tragedy in Five Acts (Boston: Gorham, 1908). 27. Gotthard Deutsch, Philosophy of Jewish History (Cincinnati: Bloch, 1897), 1; Deutsch, “A Plan for a Co-­operative Work in Collecting Material for Encyclopedia Studies in Jewish History and Lit­er­a­t ure,” CCARY 16 (1906): 243. Cf. Krauss, “Zum Andenken an Gotthard Deutsch,” 7. 28. G. Deutsch, Der Zionismus und das messianische Dogma (n.p., n.d.), 11; and likewise Deutsch, Zionism from an Anti-­Zionistic View (n.p., n.d.) (both of ­these may be offprints from a nonindicated periodical). See also Joseph Stolz, Memorial Address (n.p., 1922), 3–4; Deutsch, Scrolls, vol. 1, 267, 312; Deutsch, Four Epochs of Jewish History (New York: Philip Cowen, 1905), 53; Gustav Gottheil to Deutsch, December 31, 1898, Deutsch Papers, MS 123/2/6, AJA; and Deutsch, The National Movement Amongst the Jews (Boston, 1899). In his Zionist tract Der Judenstaat, Theodore Herzl had used Switzerland as the model for a state in which vari­ous languages are spoken. 29. “Report of Committee on Resolutions,” CCARY 19 (1909): 170–71. 30. The Hebrew writer Reuven Brainin recalled of Deutsch that “the entire congress, with its issues, its speeches, its disputes, and its leaders, was in his eyes but literary and factual material, short notes for the book of history that he was intending to write.” See Brainin, “Memories (Dr. Gotthard Deutsch) [Hebrew],” Ha-­toren 9, no. 1 (1922): 78. Further on in his trip, Deutsch spent five days with Brainin in Vilna, camera in hand, showing ­g reat interest in ­every manner of Jewish activity. Brainin recalls that in his eyes it was all “Jewish history” worth preserving in the notebook that he carried with him (80). Arriving in Jerusalem, he gave a lecture on “Ha-­musag veha-­fi losofiah shel ha-­h istoriyah ha-­Yehudit” at the “General Jewish Library.” Gotthard Deutsch Papers, MS 123/6/10, AJA. 31. Joshua Bloch, “Dr. Gotthard Deutsch,” in Menahem Ribolov, ed., Sefer ha-­shanah lihude Amerikah 6 (1942): 451–61; and Deutsch, Scrolls, vol. 1, 314. ­A fter the war he was ­eager once again to visit “the Holy Land.” Deutsch to Moses Gaster, November 17, 1918, Deutsch Papers, MS 123/2/2, AJA. 32. Deutsch to Intercollegiate Menorah Association, January 1921, agreeing to be a member of its governing council, Deutsch Papers, MS 123/2/12, AJA. 33. Deutsch to George A. Kohut, April 27, 1904, Deutsch Papers, MS123/2/20, AJA. Deutsch thought that perhaps Graetz’s dislike of the Reform movement was grounded in his aversion to pretense. Deutsch, “Heinrich Graetz: A Centenary,” 364.



Notes to Pages 72–74

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34. Deutsch comments during “Sabbath Discussion,” CCARY 13 (1903): 75. “That which history has made Jewish commands our re­spect, and ­shall not be disregarded,” he wrote, even as he allowed for change when traditions inhibited ­either pro­g ress or ­human welfare. Gotthard Deutsch, “The Theory of Oral Tradition,” CCARY 6 (1896): 130. 35. Deutsch’s contribution to the “Symposium: ­Shall Our Theological Colleges Unite?” in American Hebrew, May 25, 1900, 39. 36. Jürgen Herbst, The German Historical School in American Scholarship: A Study in the Transfer of Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1965), 57, 70, 99–100, 103. 37. Cited in Georg G. Iggers, The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Historical Thought from Herder to the Pre­sent, rev. ed. (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1983), 63–64. 38. Cited in Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 39. For other examples, see Ira Robinson, “The Invention of American Jewish History,” American Jewish History 81 (1994): 317. 39. Deutsch, Scrolls, vol. 1, 77. On another occasion he wrote, “Grouping and labeling is the art of the historian.” Deutsch, “A Plan for Co-­operative Work,” 241. 40. Max Raisin, ­Great Jews I Have Known: A Gallery of Portraits (New York: Philosophical Library, 1952), 151. 41. Gotthard Deutsch, “The Jewish Reform Movement Historically Considered,” Hebrew Union College Monthly, March–­April 1920, 1–2, 10. A con­temporary, J. Abrahams, used a more critical analogous image: Deutsch “gave the world chips from his workshop, but not finished products.” Comments of J. Abrahams, Hebrew Union College Monthly, 1922, 135. 42. However, Deutsch’s efforts to enlist fellow members of the CCAR in this task failed. See G. Deutsch, “Report of the Committee on Card Index,” CCARY 18 (1908): 51. A recent article pre­sents an in-­depth analy­sis of the significance of Deutsch’s cata­logue. See Jason Lustig, “ ‘Mere Chips from His Workshop’: Gotthard Deutsch’s Monumental Card Index of Jewish History,” History of the ­Human Sciences 32, no. 3 (July 2019): 49–75. 43. See, for example, the correspondence with George Foote Moore in Deutsch Papers, MS 123/3/1, AJA. 44. An example of Deutsch’s erudition occurs in the Jewish Chronicle, August 28, 1903, where, in response to information presented in the July 31 issue regarding a ­woman who was then performing traditional rabbinical ­legal functions in the Soho district of London, he adduces numerous examples from diverse times and places of ­women having done so in the past. 45. Gotthard Deutsch, Memorable Dates of Jewish History (New York: Bloch, 1904). Cf. Leopold Zunz, Die Monatstage des Kalenderjahres, ein Andenken an die Hingeschiedenen (Berlin: M. Poppelauer, 1872). Zunz, however, ­limited his compilation to deaths of individuals and to massacres. 46. Gotthard Deutsch, “Preface to the Second Edition,” The History of the Jews (New York: Bloch, 1921), 7. 47. Joseph Stolz, “Memorial Address,” Hebrew Union College Monthly, March  1922, 129–30. 48. Deutsch, Scrolls, vol. 1, 78–79, 145, 159; Deutsch, “Geschichtsphilosophie mit besonderer Beziehung auf Religionsgeschichte,” Die Deborah 2 (1902): 332–33. H ­ ere Deutsch uses the expression “vier hauptsächliche Gesetze für die philosophische Betrachtung der Geschichte.”

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Notes to Pages 74–77

As an example of opposition he suggests rationalism versus mysticism. See his “The Share of the Jewish ­People in the Culture of the Vari­ous Nations and Ages,” Judaism at the World’s Parliament of Religions (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke, 1894), 186. 49. On Dilthey’s use of psy­chol­ogy see R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), 172–73. 50. Deutsch sounds a bit like Krochmal when he notes that ­because the ­people of Israel stands for an eternal ideal (which he associates with God), Israel ­w ill survive all calamities. See Deutsch, Philosophy of Jewish History, 18. 51. Deutsch, Four Epochs of Jewish History, 46. 52. Initially, however, Deutsch had followed in Graetz’s footsteps, determining that the most recent period of Jewish history began with Mendelssohn’s Pentateuch translation. See his “The Epochs of Jewish History,” 25. 53. Gotthard Deutsch, “The Jew in Economic Life with Special Reference to Poland,” CCARY 30 (1920): 352. For the complete division into periods see Deutsch, The History of the Jews, passim. 54. Deutsch, “The Epochs of Jewish History,” 28. He could even speak of a “divinely guided onward march of humanity.” See his “Modern Orthodoxy: In the Light of Orthodox Authorities” (reprinted from the Reform Advocate, 1898), 26. 55. Deutsch, Scrolls, vol. 1, 92. 56. Gotthard Deutsch, “Zachariah Frankel,” Menorah 31 (1901): 330. 57. Like Deutsch, Herbert Friedenwald, the early editor of the American Jewish Year Book, saw that publication’s own compilation of the events of the year as grist for the mill of the ­f uture historian. See “Preface,” American Jewish Year Book 5672 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of Amer­i­ca, 1911), vii. 58. Deutsch to Max Raisin, November  8, 1912, Max Raisin Correspondence File, ­SC-9967, AJA. 59. Deutsch to Cyrus Adler, June 14, 1916, MS 123/1/2, AJA. 60. Deutsch to I. J. Aschheim, November 5, 1919, MS 123/1/6, AJA. 61. Gotthard Deutsch, “Im Wendezeichen des Krebses: Skizzen zur zeitgenössischen Geschichte des Judenthums in Amerika,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums 60 (1896): 413. 62. Ella McKenna Friend Mielziner, Moses Mielziner 1828–1903 (New York, 1931), xv. 63. Deutsch, Scrolls, vol. 1, 8. 64. Deutsch, Unlösbare Fesseln, 63; Deutsch, “Aus Urgroßvaters Tagen,” Liberales Judentum 12 (1920): 73; and Deutsch, Scrolls, vol. 1, 113. 65. Deutsch, “The Epochs of Jewish History,” 4; and Deutsch to editor of Jewish Standard, February 11, 1921, Deutsch Papers, MS 123/2/6, AJA. 66. Henry Berkowitz to Deutsch, June 4, 1906, Deutsch Papers, MS 123/1/11, AJA; and Gotthard Deutsch, “Judaism of the 19th ­Century Illustrated by Stereopticon Views: A Lesson in Popularizing the Study of Jewish History,” CCARY 17 (1907): 75–78. 67. “I am head over heels in work on this anti-­Ford campaign,” he wrote to a friend. See Deutsch to Ben Rubenstein in London, September 30, 1920, Deutsch Papers, MS 123/3/12, AJA. See also Deutsch to Samuel Krauss in Vienna, January 18, 1921, MS 123/2/23, AJA. 68. Deutsch to Rabb. Prof. Dr. Salfeld, August 15, 1913, Salfeld Collection, Leo Baeck Institute Archives, New York. 69. Deutsch to Felix Goldmann in Oppeln, August  17, 1915, Deutsch Papers, MS 123/2/1, AJA.



Notes to Pages 77–79

211

70. Aside from Kohler, the scholars living in Amer­i­ca who contributed to the Monatsschrift during Deutsch’s lifetime w ­ ere Israel Friedländer, Louis Ginzberg, Richard Gottheil, and Marcus Jastrow. Among Deutsch’s scholarly pieces in the CCARY is his e­ arlier mentioned “The Jew in Economic Life with Special Reference to Poland.” It was based, in part, on research he had done during his visit to Bialystok in 1905. Deutsch’s interest in the economic history of the Jews was likewise unusual if not exceptional in his time. He criticized Graetz for neglecting it. See Deutsch, Scrolls, vol. 1, 167. 71. On the history of the Jewish Encyclopedia, see the excellent study by Shuly Rubin Schwartz, The Emergence of Jewish Scholarship in Amer­i­ca: The Publication of the Jewish Encyclopedia (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1991). The largest number of contributors was American (279), with Germany (104) in second place. See Nancy L. Barth, “History of the Publication of the Jewish Encyclopedia” (MA dissertation, Gradu­ate Library School, University of Chicago, 1969), 11. A copy is at Small Collections, SC-5769, AJA. 72. It seems that he wrote several hundred additional articles that—­apparently for lack of space—­were not included and that he hoped to include in a supplement. See the article on Deutsch written by an anonymous member of the editorial staff in Otsar Yisra’el (1907–13), 4:42–43. 73. ­Earlier Deutsch had chaired a CCAR committee that was to produce a scientific “Encyclopedia of Jewish Theology.” He had drawn up a list of prospective contributors and invited scholars in Eu­rope to participate by writing articles. See Deutsch to Wilhelm Bacher, September 26, 1897, Deutsch Papers, MS 123/1/8, AJA. However, he gave up the proj­ect once plans for the Jewish Encyclopedia began to look realistic. He did not write as many articles for the Otsar Yisra’el as he had for the Jewish Encyclopedia and gave up the associate editorship ­a fter the first two volumes. See Deutsch, Scrolls, vol. 1, 241. 74. Joseph Silverman, The Re­nais­sance of the Science of Judaism in Amer­i­ca (n.p.: 1901). Silverman believed that the Jewish Encyclopedia “­w ill become to the Jew of ­today what the Talmud and Shulhan ‘aruk w ­ ere to the Jew of former generations” (4). 75. G. Deutsch, “Literaturbericht,” Die Deborah, new series, August 1, 1901, 225. Just as Deutsch annotated his copy of Graetz, so did he mark his copy of the Jewish Encyclopedia on the assumption that a yet more accurate and complete second edition would be published at some point. See Schwartz, Emergence of Jewish Scholarship, 99; Shimeon Brisman, A History and Guide to Judaic Encyclopedias and Lexicons, vol. 2 (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1987), 34; Gotthard Deutsch, “Supplementary Explanations to the Plan for Co-­operative Work in Collecting Material for Encyclopedic Studies in Jewish History and Lit­er­a­t ure,” CCARY 17 (1907): 259–70; and Deutsch to Prof. David Simonsen in Copenhagen, June 7, 1916, Deutsch Papers, MS 123/3/16, AJA.

chapter 4 The phrase “empire of knowledge” is drawn from Alexander Vucinich, Empire of Knowledge: The Acad­emy of Sciences of the USSR, 1917–1970 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). 1. S. Dimanshtein, ed., Yidn in FSSR: Zamlbukh (Moscow, 1935). For biographical information on Dimanshtein, see Arkadi Zel’tser, “Dimanshtein, Semen Markovich” in the online version of the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Eu­rope, http://­w ww​.­y ivoencyclopedia​ .­org​/­a rticle​.­a spx​/ ­Dimanshtein​_ ­Semen​_ ­Markovich.

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2. A ubiquitous slogan invoking the comprehensive economic, social, and po­liti­cal reor­ ga­ni­za­tion of the country ­under the Bolsheviks. 3. Professor Y. Liberberg, “Di yidishe visnshaftlekhe arbet in ratnfarband,” in Dimanshtein, ed., Yidn in FSSR, 121–30. For biographical information on Liberberg see Gennady Estraikh, “Liberberg, Yoysef,” in the online version of the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Eu­rope, http://­w ww​.­y ivoencyclopedia​.­org​/­a rticle​.­a spx​/ ­Liberberg​_­Yoysef. 4. The orga­nizational evolution of ­these institutions ­w ill be discussed further below. 5. Liberberg, “Di yidishe visnshaftlekhe arbet,” 124. 6. Liberberg, “Di yidishe visnshaftlekhe arbet,” 125–26. For recent scholarship on Jewish scholarly institutions in Minsk, see Elissa Bemporad, Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 98–109. 7. Liberberg, “Di yidishe visnshaftlekhe arbet,” 126. 8. Liberberg, “Di yidishe visnshaftlekhe arbet,” 127. 9. On the history of the Jewish Autonomous Region in the Soviet Union, see Robert Weinberg, Stalin’s Forgotten Zion: Birobidzhan and the Making of a Soviet Jewish Homeland, 1928–1966 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). For a concise introduction, see David Shneer, “Birobidzhan,” in the online version of the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Eu­rope, http://­w ww​.­y ivoencyclopedia​.­org​/­a rticle​.­a spx​/ ­Birobidzhan. 10. Apparently Liberberg had proposed moving the Kiev Institute to the Soviet Far East as early as 1932. See Gennady Estraikh, Soviet Yiddish: Language Planning and Linguistic Development (New York: Clarendon, 1999), 90. 11. See Robert Weinberg, “Purge and Politics in the Periphery: Birobidzhan in 1937,” Slavic Review 52, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 26; and Gennady Estraikh, “Liberberg, Yoysef,” in the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Eu­rope, http://­w ww​.­y ivoencyclopedia​.­org​/­a rticle​.­a spx​ /­Liberberg​_­Yoysef#author. 12. See Chapter 2 in Alfred Abraham Greenbaum, Jewish Scholarship and Scholarly Institutions in Soviet Rus­sia, 1918–1953 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1978). 13. ­Until the opening of the archives, Jewish archival materials, along with other rec­ ords deemed to be po­liti­cally sensitive, ­were held in so-­called “special storage” (spetskhran) and ­were generally off-­limits to researchers. 14. For the Rus­sian translation see Alfred Abraham Greenbaum and R. Sh. Ganelin, Evreiskaia nauka i nauchnye uchrezhdeniia v Sovetskom Soiuze, 1918–1953 (Moscow: Gesharim, 1994). 15. Some examples of English-­language scholarship published since 1991 include Jeffrey Veidlinger, The Moscow State Jewish Theater (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000); David Shneer, Yiddish and the Creation of Soviet Jewish Culture, 1918–1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Gennady Estraikh, In Harness: Yiddish Writers’ Romance with Communism (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005); Mikhail Krutikov, From Kabbalah to Class Strug­gle: Expressionism, Marxism and Yiddish Lit­er­a­ture in the Life and Work of Meir Wiener (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011); and Harriet Murav, ­Music from a Speeding Train: Jewish Lit­er­a­ture in Post-­Revolution Rus­sia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011). For a study that uses oral histories, see Anna Shternshis, Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popu­lar Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006). For English-­language regional histories, see Bemporad, Becoming Soviet Jews; and Andrew Sloin, The Jewish Revolution in Belorus­sia: Economy, Race, and Bolshevik Power (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017). 16. According to the All-­Empire Population Census of January 28 (February 11), 1897, ­there ­were approximately 5.2 million Jews in Imperial Rus­sia, amounting to just 4 ­percent of



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the entire population. Within the Pale of Jewish Settlement, they accounted for closer to 12 ­percent of the total population. As such, Jews represented the fifth-­largest ethnic group ­a fter Rus­sians, Ukrainians, Poles, and Belorus­sians among more than 100 ethnic groups in the Rus­sian Empire, and they constituted the largest non-­Slavic and the largest non-­Christian ethnic group. See Benjamin Nathans, Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Rus­sia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 4–5. See also Boris Brutskus, Statistika evreiskogo naseleniia: Raspredelenie po territorii, demograficheskie i kul’turnye priznaki evreiskogo naseleniia po dannym perepisi 1897. g. (St. Petersburg: Siever, 1909). 17. On the role of “learned Jews” see Vassili Schedrin, Jewish Souls, Bureaucratic Minds: Jewish Bureaucracy and Policymaking in Late Imperial Rus­sia, 1850–1917 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2016). 18. For further discussion, see Nathans, Beyond the Pale. See also Part I in Brian Horo­ witz, The Russian-­Jewish Tradition: Intellectuals, Historians, Revolutionaries (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2017). 19. Simon Dubnow, “Ob izuchenii istorii russkikh evreev i ob uchrezhdenii russko-­ evreiskogo istoricheskogo obshchestva,” in Voskhod: Zhurnal ucheno-­literaturnii i politicheskii (April–­September 1891): 37. As Nathans has pointed out, Dubnow also described the Pale of Settlement as the “dark continent” of Jewish historiography and likened the task of gathering primary sources to the expeditions of Burton and Stanley in Central Africa. See Nathans, Beyond the Pale, 378; and Nathans, “On Russian-­Jewish Historiography,” in Historiography of Imperial Rus­sia: The Profession and Writing of History in a Multinational State, ed. Thomas Sanders (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999), 397–432. 20. See, for example, I. Efren, “Osnovnye voprosy evreiskoi ekonomicheskoi politiki,” in Teoreticheskie i prakticheskie voprosy evreiskoi zhizni: Prilozhenie k zhurnaly “Evreiskii mir” (St. Petersburg: Trud, 1911); and Boris Brutskus, Ocherki po voprosam ekonomicheskoi deiatel’nosti evreev v Rossii (St. Petersburg: Ganzburg, 1913), iii. 21. See, for example, Mitchel B. Hart, Social Science and the Politics of Modern Jewish Identity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000). In late Imperial Rus­sia, the princi­ ples of cultural autonomism (also known as diaspora nationalism) rather than Zionism or liberal assimilation ­were also power­f ul motivators for the collection of Jewish social scientific data. 22. See S. A. An-­sky, “Evreiskoe narodnoe tvorchestvo,” Perezhitoe 1 (1908): 276–314. For the definitive biography of An-­sky, see Gabriella Safran, Wandering Soul: The Dybbuk’s Creator, S. An-­sky (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). 23. Much of the archival material in the IEPK’s possession came from prerevolutionary institutions such as the Jewish Historical and Ethnographic Society. See, for example, Efim Melamed, “The Fate of the Archives of the Kiev Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture: Puzzles and Discoveries,” East Eu­ro­pean Jewish Affairs 42, no. 2 (2012): 99–110; and Efim Melamed, “The Story of the Destruction of the ‘Jewel in the Crown’ of Yiddish Culture: Kiev Jewish Scholars on the Eve of and During the ­Great Terror” (in Rus­sian), in Gennady Estraikh and Alexander Frenkel, eds., Sovetskaia geniza: Novyie arkhivnye razyskaniia po istorii evreev v SSSR, Tom 1 (Academic Studies Press, 2020), 109–70. 24. Pages 86–92 draw on some previously published material in Deborah Yalen, “On the Social-­Economic Front: The Polemics of Shtetl Scholarship During the Stalin Revolution,” Science in Context 20, no. 2 (2007): 239–301. 25. For a sampling of primary sources in En­glish translation that illustrate ­these “language wars” among Jewish intellectuals, see the section on “East Eu­ro­pean Jewry” in Paul

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Notes to Pages 86–91

Mendes-­Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, eds., The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 347–434. 26. See Cecile Esther Kuznitz, YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture: Scholarship for the Yiddish Nation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 5, 27, 37, 196. 27. On Bolshevik nationality policy, see Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001). For more on the status of Yiddish within this paradigm, see Shneer, Yiddish and the Creation of Soviet Jewish Culture. 28. For the definitive history of YIVO, see Kuznitz, YIVO. As Elissa Bemporad points out, a Jewish “section” of the Institute for Belorus­sian Culture was founded in 1921, thus preceding the establishment of YIVO by a few years. See Bemporad, Becoming Soviet Jews, 101. 29. See chapter 2 in Greenbaum, Jewish Scholarship. 30. On YIVO’s finances, see Kuznitz, YIVO, 47, 51–55, 67–69. 31. For background, see the section “Scientific Study of the Jewish Past,” in Michael A. Meyer, Ideas of Jewish History (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987), 139–72. 32. See chapter 3 in Kuznitz, YIVO. 33. Greenbaum, Jewish Scholarship, 40–41; and M. Litvakov, “Fun teologiye tsu visnshaft, fun magides tsu marksizm,” Visnshaftlekhe yorbikher 1 (1929): 5–14. 34. For more on the history of Bolshevik nationality policy, see Martin, Affirmative Action Empire. 35. On the history of the Evsektsiia, see Zvi Gitelman, Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics: The Jewish Sections of the CPSU, 1917–1930 (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1972). 36. See Martin, Affirmative Action Empire; and Francine Hirsch, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005). 37. It should be noted that the “advanced” categorization applied to Jews from the Eu­ ro­pean region of the Soviet Rus­sia, primarily in Ukraine and Belorus­sia. The numerically smaller Mountain Jews would fall ­under a dif­fer­ent developmental category. See Hirsch, Empire of Nations, 133. 38. On the category of lishentsy, see Golfo Alexopoulos, Stalin’s Outcasts: Aliens, Citizens, and the Soviet State, 1926–1936 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003). 39. As noted already, the establishment of the Jewish Autonomous Region in the Soviet Far East led to hopes for a full-­fledged Jewish Soviet Socialist Republic, which would have allowed for the creation of a republican-­level branch of the Soviet Acad­emy of Sciences. 40. Greenbaum, Jewish Scholarship, 31. 41. See chapter 2 in Greenbaum, Jewish Scholarship. Since the Imperial regime was associated with “­Great Rus­sian chauvinism,” Rus­sian ethnic identity was not promoted at this time within this context of korenizatsiia. Eventually, however, “Rus­sian” identity was transmuted into a universalized “Soviet” identity. 42. Kuznitz points out that ­there ­were disagreements on this point. The historian Raphael Mahler, for one, argued that all scholarship bore a class imprint. See Kuznitz, YIVO, 99, 103. See also comments on Raphael Mahler and the economic dimensions of Jewish history in Meyer, Ideas of Jewish History, 299–301. 43. Kuznitz, YIVO, 99–109. 44. As Graham explains in his history of the Soviet Acad­emy of Sciences, however, Marxist-­Leninist views of science diverged significantly from the original writings of Marx and Engels on the topic of scientific theory and practice. See Loren R. Graham, The Soviet



Notes to Pages 91–95

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Acad­emy of Sciences and the Communist Party, 1927–1932 (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1967). 45. See Krutikov, From Kabbalah to Class Strug­gle, 168–69. 46. As historians of Soviet science have noted, however, the Soviet Acad­emy of Sciences was dominated by non-­Party scientists well ­a fter 1917. Party control became entrenched only starting in 1927. See, for example, chapters 2 and 3 in Vucinich, Empire of Knowledge. 47. See, for example, A. Osherowitsh, “Mobilizirn di visnshaft tsu dinst fun 2-tn finfyor,” Afn visnshaftlekhn front 1–2 (1932): 3–20. 48. Greenbaum, Jewish Scholarship, 53–54. 49. See, for example, Fashizirter yidishizm un zayn visnshaft (Minsk, 1930). 50. Par­tic­u­lar targets ­were Simon Dubnow, Jacob Lestschinsky, and Nahum Gergel. 51. See, for example, B. Rubshteyn, “In der statistisher laboratoriye fun der vayser emigratsiye.” Di royte velt 2–3 (February–­March 1929): 132–45. 52. See comments of David Shneer in “A Study in Red: Jewish Scholarship in the 1920s Soviet Union,” Science in Context 20, no. 2 (2007): 197–213. 53. The 1926 census lists the following: Jew, Crimean Jew, Mountain Jew (Dag Chufut), Georgian Jew, Central Asian Jew (Dzhugur), and Karaim. The 1939 census lists one category: Jew. See the census lists in Hirsch, Empire of Nations, 329, 333. 54. See Martin, Affirmative Action Empire, 23. 55. See, for example, Sascha L. Goluboff, “Are They Jews or Asians? A Cautionary Tale About Mountain Jewish Ethnography,” Slavic Review 63, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 113–40. 56. See, for example, the discussion of Samuel Weissenberg’s work in Jeffrey Veidlinger, Jewish Public Culture in the Late Rus­sian Empire (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 276–79; see also Chapter 10, “ ‘Jewish Physiognomy,’ the ‘Jewish Question,’ and Rus­sian Race Science Between Inclusion and Exclusion,” in Marina Mogilner, Homo Imperii: A History of Physical Anthropology in Rus­sia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013), 217–250. 57. See Zeev Levin, Collectivization and Social Engineering: Soviet Administration and the Jews of Uzbekistan, 1917–1939 (Leiden: Brill, 2015); and Shneer, Yiddish and the Creation of Soviet Jewish Culture, 54. 58. Levin, Collectivization and Social Engineering, 194. It is notable as well that Ashkenazi Jews living in Uzbekistan w ­ ere designated as “Eu­ro­pean Jews” in 1937. See Levin, Collectivization and Social Engineering, 192. 59. Levin, Collectivization and Social Engineering, 195. 60. See Lutz Rzehak, “The Linguistic Challenge: Bukharan Jews and Soviet Language Policy,” in Bukharan Jews in the 20th ­Century: History, Experience and Narration, ed. Ingeborg Baldauf, Moshe Gammer and Thomas Loy (Wiesbaden, Germany: Reichert Verlag, 2008), 44. 61. Judeo-Tajik included words borrowed not only from Tajik but also Persian, Uzbek, Rus­sian, and biblical Hebrew. See Levin, Collectivization and Social Engineering, 189, 191, 194, 195. 62. See, for example, Shneer, Yiddish and the Creation of Soviet Jewish Culture, 55. 63. Sholem Aleichem was one of the few prerevolutionary Yiddish writers canonized by the Soviet literary establishment for the “class-­conscious” nature of his work and was widely translated into other Soviet languages. 64. Shneer, Yiddish and the Creation of Soviet Jewish Culture, 55. 65. See Mordechai Altshuler, “Georgian Jewish Culture ­Under the Soviet Regime,” Soviet Jewish Affairs 5, no. 2, (1975): 21–39, esp. 31–37; and A. Khrikheli, “Muzee evreev Gruzii v Tbilisi (Tiflise),” Sovetskaia etnografiia 4–5 (1936): 228–29.

216

Notes to Pages 95–98

66. See A. Krikheli’s report “Izuchenie gruzinskikh evreev,” Sovetskaia etnografiia 3 (1940): 216–18. 67. Altshuler, “Georgian Jewish Culture,” 37. 68. Levin, Collectivization and Social Engineering, 222. For more information on Lurie, see Mikhail Nosonovskii, “Biblioteka i arkhiv Tuzemno-­evreiskogo muzeia v Samarkande. Opis’ materialov,” in Evrei v strednei Azii: Proshloe i nastoiashchee: Ekspeditsii, issledovaniia, publikatsii, ed. I.  S. Dvorkin and T.  D. Vyshenskaia (St.  Petersburg: Petersburg Jewish University, 1995), 187–247. 69. For example, Z. L. Amitin-­Shapiro, “Zhenshchina i svadebnie obriadi u tuzemnykh (‘bukharskikh’) evreev Turkestana,” Izvestiia Turkestanskogo otdela Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva, vol. 17 (Samarkand, 1925). 70. Greenbaum, Jewish Scholarship, 186 n. 29. 71. See V.A. Germanov and B.V. Lunin, “Istorik i etnograf bukharskikh (sredneaziatskikh) evreev Z.L. Amitin-­Shapiro,” in Evrei v srednei azii: Voprosy istorii i kul’tury: Sbornik nauchnykh statei i dokladov, ed. E.V. Rt’tladze (Tashkent: “Fan” Akademii nauk, 2004): 51–63. See also Z. L. Amitin-­Shapiro, Ocherki sotsialisticheskogo stroitel’stva sredi sredneaziatskikh evreev (Tashkent, 1933); and Amitin-­Shapiro, “Sredneaziatsie evrei posle Velikoi Oktiabr’skoi revolutsii,” in Sovetskaia etnografiia 1 (1938): 53–59. 72. Germanov and Lunin, “Istorik i etnograf bukharskikh (sredneaziatskikh) evreev Z.L. Amitin-­Shapiro,” 61. 73. Serhy Yekelchyk, Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 114. 74. See, for example, Per Anders Rudling, The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism, 1906–1931 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), 292. 75. Greenbaum, Jewish Scholarship, 54; and Bemporad, Becoming Soviet Jews, 108. As early as 1930, a show trial of alleged Ukrainian nationalists was staged that singled out the head of the Acad­emy of Sciences as one of the defendants. See Yekelchyk, Ukraine, 113–14. As Yekelchyk notes, other minorities in Ukraine also came ­under attack, and the Jewish Section of the Communist Party of Ukraine was dissolved in 1930. On the Jewish Section of the Communist Party of Ukraine, see chapter 7 in Gitelman, Jewish Nationality. 76. Ester Rozental-­Shnayderman, Af vegn un umvegn: Zikhroynes, gesheenishn, perzenlikhkaytn, vol. 3 (Tel Aviv: I. L. Peretz, 1982). For a biographical profile of Rozental-­Shnayderman, see Gennady Estraikh, in the online version of the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Eu­rope, http://­w ww​.­y ivoencyclopedia​.­org​/­a rticle​.­a spx​/ ­Rozental​-­Shnayderman​_ ­Ester. 77. Rozental-­Shnayderman, Af vegn un umvegn, 56. 78. Rozental-­Shnayderman, Af vegn un umvegn, 72. 79. Rozental-­Shnayderman, Af vegn un umvegn, 72–73. 80. Rozental-­Shnayderman, Af vegn un umvegn, 73. For newly updated information concerning the fate of several members of the IEPK, see Melamed, “The Story of the Destruction of the ‘Jewel in the Crown’ of Yiddish Culture.” 81. Rozental-­Shnayderman, Af vegn un umvegn, 73. 82. See, for example, Joshua Rubinstein and Vladimir P. Naumov, Stalin’s Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-­Fascist Committee (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005); and Gennady Kostyrchenko, Out of the Red Shadows: Antisemitism in Stalin’s Rus­ sia (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1995). 83. For an assessment, see Avraham Greenbaum, “Jewish Studies in the USSR 1950– 1990,” Encyclopaedia Judaica Year Book (1990/91): 179–83.



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84. On the history of Sovetish Heymland, see Gennady Estraikh, Yiddish in the Cold War (Oxford: Legenda, 2008). 85. For a firsthand recollection of this time, see Mikhail Beizer, “Podpol’naia iudaika v Leningrade v 1980-­x godakh,” in Sovetskaia iudaika: Istorika, problematika, personalii, ed. Mark Kupovetsky (Jerusalem: Gesharim, 2017), 361–78. 86. For some examples of innovative scholarship carried out in Minsk, see Bemporad, Becoming Soviet Jews, 100–103; on the work of folklorist Meir Weiner, see Krutikov, From Kabbalah to Class Strug­gle; on the demographic research of Ilia Veitsblit, which was praised by Jewish scholars outside the USSR, see Deborah Yalen, “On the Social Economic Front,” 274–77; as well as Yalen, “Statisticheskaia interpretatsiia i politika evreiskogo stradaniia: Pereosmyclivaia zhizn’ i tvorchestvo Il’ia Isaakovicha Veitsblita (1895–1937),” in Kupovetsky, ed., Sovetskaia iudaika, 96–117. 87. Moreover, however flawed the Birobidzhan proj­ect appears in retrospect, for a fleeting moment in history the prospect of a Jewish republic with its own Yiddish-­language scholarly infrastructure seemed to be attainable. 88. For a nuanced discussion of the relationship of Jewish intellectuals to the Soviet state, see Krutikov’s introduction to From Kabbalah to Class Strug­gle, 1–10. 89. See Nikolai Krementsov, “Big Revolution, ­Little Revolution: Science and Politics in Bolshevik Rus­sia,” Social Research: An International Quarterly 73, no. 4 (Winter 2006): 1173– 204. See also Michael David-­Fox and György Péteri, eds., Academia in Upheaval: Origins, Transfers, and Transformations of the Communist Academic Regime in Rus­sia and East Central Eu­rope (Westport, CT: Berkin & Garvey, 2000).

chapter 5 Epigraph: S. D. Luzzatto to Solomon Yehudah Loeb Rapoport, June 5, 1860, in Eisig Gräber, Igrot Shadal, vol. 9 (Przemysl, Poland: Zupnick & Knoller, 1882), 1,367. 1. By Luzzatto’s own account, poetry played a significant part in his youth. See Marc Gopin, Compassionate Judaism: The Life and Thought of Rabbi Samuel David Luzzatto (North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2017), 24–31. 2. Heinrich Graetz, The Correspondence of an En­glish Lady on Judaism and Semitism, in Ismar Schorsch, The Structure of Jewish History and Other Essays (New York: JTSA, 1975), 208. 3. Christoph Schulte, “Die Wissenschaft des Judentums,” in Handbuch zur Geschichte der Juden in Europa, vol. 2, ed. Julius H. Schoeps and Hiltrud Wallenborn (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 2001), 268–84. 4. Ismar Schorsch, “Jewish Studies from 1818–1919,” in Schorsch, From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism (Hanover, NH: University Press of New ­England, 1994), 345–59. Kerstin von der Krone and Mirjam Thulin, “Wissenschaft in Context: A Research Essay on the Wissenschaft des Judentums,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 58 (2013): 249–80. 5. Some of the Wissenschaftler published in journals of the Galician Haskalah, which ­were printed in Vienna. Alexander Langbank was the editor of a bilingual (Hebrew and German) booklet, Mishpat emet, in which he included articles written by the leading figures of Wissenschaft des Judentums. 6. “In ­every age, alongside the obvious phenomenon of assimilation, we can notice the dissimilation which always accompanies it.” Franz Rosenzweig, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1,

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Notes to Pages 104–106

Briefe und Tagebücher, ed. Rachel Rosenzweig, Edith Rosenzweig-­Scheinmann, and Bernhard Casper (The Hague: Nijho, 1979), citing entry of April 3, 1922, in vol. 2 (1918–29), 770. 7. Amos Funkenstein, “Dialectics of Assimilation,” Jewish Social Studies 1, no. 2 (Winter 1995): 1–14. 8. Shulamit Volkov, “The Dynamics of Dissimilation: Ostjuden and German Jews,” in The Jewish Response to German Culture from the Enlightenment to the Second World War, ed. Jehuda Reinharz and Walter Schatzberg (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 1985), 195–211. 9. Jonathan Skolnik, Jewish Pasts, German Fictions: History, Memory, and Minority Culture in Germany, 1824–1955 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 5–7. 10. Skolnik, Jewish Pasts, German Fictions, 67. 11. Ludwig Philippson, Die Entwicklung der religiösen Idee im Judenthum, Christenthum und Islam (Leipzig: Baumgartner, 1847), 2. On Luzzatto’s negative response, see Israel Zinberg, A History of Jewish Lit­er­a­ture: The Science of Judaism and Galician Haskalah (New York: Ktav, 1977), esp. 137–39. 12. In 1855, Philippson, along with Adolph Jellinek and Isaac Marcus Jost, spearheaded the creation of the Institut zur Förderung der Israelitischen Literatur (Institute for the Promotion of Israelite Lit­er­a­t ure) in Leipzig. Devoted to the publication of Jewish lit­er­a­t ure and functioning like a book club, the institute boasted a cata­logue of 87 titles, of which it printed 200,000 copies in its twenty-­eight years of existence. 13. Michael A. Meyer, “Two Per­sis­tent Tensions Within Wissenschaft des Judentums,” Modern Judaism 24, no. 2 (2004): 105–19. 14. Immanuel Wolf, “On the Concept of a Science of Judaism (1822),” in Leo Baeck Institute Year Book (1957): 194–204, at 201. 15. Donald Winnicott, “Psychosomatic Illness in Its Positive and Negative Aspects,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 47, no. 4 (1966): 510; and Winnicott, Playing and Real­ity (London: Routledge, 1991), 103. 16. Jean-­François Lyotard, “On a Hyphen,” in J.-­F. Lyotard and Eberhard Gruber, The Hyphen: Between Judaism and Chris­tian­ity (Amherst, MA: Prometheus, 1999), 13–27. 17. Lyotard, “On a Hyphen,” 13. 18. The term as it was used in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by Theodore Roo­se­velt and Woodrow Wilson conveyed the notion of dual loyalties. See John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of Nativism, 1860–1925 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 198–200. 19. Berel Lang, “Hyphenated-­Jews and the Anxiety of Identity,” Jewish Social Studies n.s. 12, no. 1 (2005): 1–15. See also Paul Hoggett, “What’s in a Hyphen? Reconstructing Psychosocial Studies,” Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 13, no. 4 (2008): 379–84. 20. Recent scholarship has turned to popu­lar fiction in the shaping of a national identity; see Jonathan Hess, Middlebrow Lit­er­a­ture and the Making of Modern German-­Jewish Identity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press), 2010. It is worth comparing the German model to the French one, which, as Maurice Samuels argues in Inventing the Israelite: Jewish Fiction in Nineteenth ­Century France (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), created that genre altogether. 21. John M. Efron, German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ ton University Press, 2016), 166. 22. Jonathan Skolnik, “History Narration and Tradition in the Age of Wissenschaft des Judentums,” in Renewing the Past, Reconfiguring Jewish Culture: From Al-­Andalus to the



Notes to Pages 106–109

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Haskalah, ed. Ross Brann and Adam Sutcliffe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 221. 23. Hans-­Hermann Groothoff, Wilhelm Dilthey: Zur Erneuerung der Theorie der Bildung und des Bildungswesens (Hannover, Germany: Schroeder, 1981), 73, 173. Rebekka Horlacher, The Educated Subject and the German Concept of Bildung: A Comparative Cultural History (New York: Routledge, 2015), 91–92. 24. Jonathan Freedman, The ­Temple of Culture: Assimilation and Anti-­Semitism in Literary Anglo-­America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 25. Deborah Hertz, How Jews Became Germans: The History of Conversion and Assimilation in Berlin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 59–60. 26. Freedman, ­Temple of Culture. On Jews and German Bildung, see George Mosse, German Jews Beyond Judaism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), esp. chap. 1. Also see Aleida Assmann, Arbeit am nationalen Gedächtnis: Eine kurze Geschichte der Deutschen Bildungsidee (Frankfurt: Campus Pandora, 1993), 85–91. On the overall significance of Bildung in the formation of German middle-­class culture, see Assmann, Arbeit; Walter H. Bruford, The German Tradition of Self-­Cultivation: “Bildung” from Humboldt to Thomas Mann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975); and Ulrich Engelhardt, Bildungsbürgertum: Begriffs-­und Dogmengeschichte eines Etiketts (Stuttgart: Klett-­Cotta, 1986). 27. Schorsch, From Text to Context, 71–92. On the idealization of the Iberian Jewish community, see John M. Efron, German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2015). 28. Heinrich Heine, The Works of Heinrich Heine, vol. 1 (London: Heineman, 1903), 181. 29. Richard Humphrey, The Historical Novel as Philosophy of History: Three German Contributions: Alexis, Fontane, Doblin (London: Institute of Germanic Studies, 1986). 30. Georg Lukács, The Historical Novel (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993). 31. Humphrey’s focus on the German model leads him to distinguish between multilayered novels and historical novellas, prob­ably influenced by Kleist, that focus on a single event with a ­limited cast and causality. 32. Nitsa Ben-­A ri, Romanze mit der Vergangenheit: Der deutsch-­jüdische historische Roman des 19. Jahrhunderts und seine Bedeutung für die Entstehung einer neuen jüdischen Nationalliteratur (Tübingen, Germany: Max Niemeyer, 2006). Nitsa Ben-­A ri, “1834: The Jewish Historical Novel Helps to Reshape the Historical Consciousness of German Jews,” in Yale Companion to Jewish Writing and Thought in German Culture 1096–1996, ed. Sander L. Gilman and Jack Zipes (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 143–51. 33. Berthold Auerbach, Das Judentum und die neueste Literatur (Stuttgart: Fr. Brodhag’sche Buchandlung, 1836). 34. Berthold Auerbach, Schrift und Volk, 2 volumes (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1846). 35. Michael L. Miller and Scott Ury, eds., Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and the Jews of East Central Eu­rope (New York: Routledge, 2015), 53. 36. Ludwig Philippson, “Des Juden Vaterland,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums 28 (1849): 377. See Stefanie Leuenberger, Schrift-­R aum Jerusalem: Identitätsdiskurse im Werk deutsch-­ jüdischer Autoren (Cologne, Germany: Böhlau Verlag, 2007), 60. 37. Quoted in Zinberg, History of Jewish Lit­er­a­ture, 137. 38. Ludwig Philippson, “Literarischer Wochenbericht,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums 46 (1882): 750. 39. See Genesis Rabba 42:1, “so ­w ill the fragrance of your learning be diffused from one end of the world to the other.”

220

Notes to Pages 109–112

40. Ron Margolin, “The Role of Hemlah (Compassion) in Luzzatto’s Thought” (in Hebrew), in Samuel David Luzzatto: The Bi-­Centennial of His Birth, ed. R. Bonfil, I. Gottlieb, and H. Kasher (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2004), 115–43, at 132–33. 41. Georg Lukács, The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-­Philosophical Essay on the Forms of ­Great Epic Lit­er­a­ture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971), 55. 42. Graetz, Correspondence, 213. 43. Gertrude Himmelfarb, The Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot (New York: Encounter, 2013), 121–44. David Kaufmann, George Eliot and Judaism (New York: Kessinger, 2006). 44. The work of the prolific de Kock benefited from translations that could hide the flaws in his writing. He depicted the daily life of a Pa­ri­sian boulevard without shying away from crude portrayals. See Florence Fix and Marie-­A nge Fougère, Lectures de Paul de Kock (Dijon: Éditions Universitaires de Dijon, 2011). 45. Novelist Jules Janin was also considered “the prince of critics.” On his realism, see Margaret Miner, “Devouring Streets: Jules Janin and the Abjection of Paris,” Modern Language Notes 113, no. 4 (1998): 780–811. 46. First published by Isaac Marcus Jost in the introductory issue of his Zion 1 (1841): 81–93; reprinted with an introduction and translation by Esdras Pontremoli as Il Falso Progresso (Padua: Crescini, 1879). 47. Graetz, Correspondence, 233. 48. Despite its portrayal of the grim life of the lower classes and the underworld, the work, translated and abridged by rabbi and historian Kalman Schulman as Misterei Pariz, enjoyed six editions. The book was hailed as even more impor­tant than Nachman Krochmal’s Moreh nevukhe ha-­zman (Guide for the perplexed of our time) by Yehuda Katzenelson (1846–1917), known as Buki ben Yagli. Eugène Sue’s depiction of poverty as injustice rather than moral defect and the unaffected nobility of the characters presented ­little threat, which prompted Karl Marx to heap scorn on Sue’s novel, which he characterized in The Holy ­Family as a manifestation of bourgeois paternalism. ­Earlier, in the 1840s, Sue’s Wandering Jew had drawn attention to the hardships of Jewish identity by turning his account of an anti-­Jewish trope into an indictment of arbitrary power, much to the satisfaction of his Jewish readers. In 1856, Zacharias Frankel (1801–75) addressed the same subject in an article in the Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums. 49. It is worth noting that Scholem’s condemnation was not unanimously embraced, even in Mandatory Palestine or Israel. Following the infamous critique of Wissenschaft by Scholem in Luaḥ ha-­arets, the bibliographer and writer Getzel Kressel penned an appreciative account of Philippson’s efforts that appeared in Hebrew in the newspaper Ha-­po‘el ha-­ tsa‘ir 39, no. 37–38 (1946): 15–16. 50. Michael Sachs, Die religiöse Poesie der Juden in Spanien (Berlin: Veit, 1845). 51. Céline Trautmann-­Waller, Philologie allemande et tradition juive: Le parcours intellectuel de Leopold Zunz (Paris: Cerf, 1998), 97–99. 52. Robert Singerman, Jewish Translation History: A Bibliography of Biblio­g raphies and Studies (New York: John Benjamins, 2002). 53. Ben-­A ri, Romanze mit der Vergangenheit. 54. Isaac Barzilay, “The Scholarly Contribution of Shelomo Judah Rapoport (SHIR),” Proceedings of the American Acad­emy for Jewish Research 35 (1967): 1–14. 55. Max Letteris, Divre shir (Zolkiev, Ukraine: G. Letteris, 1822). 56. Max Letteris, Ayelet ha-­shaḥar (Zolkiev, Ukraine: Letteris, 1824), reprinted in Tofes kinor ve-­‘ugav (Vienna: Y. Shlosberg, 1860).



Notes to Pages 113–115

221

57. Solomon Yehuda Rapoport, “She‘erit Yehudah,” Bikure ha-­‘itim 8 (Vienna, 1827): 171– 254. See She‘erit Yehudah (A drama in 4 acts and in verse, partly translated from Racine’s Esther) (in Hebrew; Vienna: A. Edler v. Schmid, 1827); and Bettina L. Knapp, “Jean Racine’s Esther and Two Hebrew Translations of This Drama,” in Salo Wittmayer Baron Jubilee Volume on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday, vol. 2, ed. Saul Lieberman and Arthur Hyman (Jerusalem, 1974), 591–621. 58. Max Letteris, Shelom Esther (Prague: Landau, 1843). 59. Svetlana Natkovich, “Elisha Ben Abuya, the Hebrew Faust: On the First Hebrew Translation of Faust Within the Setting of the Maskilic Change in Self-­Perception,” Naharaim: Zeitschrift für Deutsch-­Jüdische Literatur und Kulturgeschichte 8, no. 1 (2014): 48–73, at 48. 60. The choice of words also replicates the distinction in Hebrew between ha‘atakah (copy or imitation) for literary works and tirgum/targum (translation) mostly used for religious texts. The same distinction ­w ill be operative in the Faust transposition. 61. The other reformers featured in the Augsburg Synod in 1871 included Leopold Kompert, the author of the Tales of the Ghetto. See Robert Wistrich, “The Modernization of Viennese Jewry: The Impact of German Culture in a Multi-­Ethnic State,” in ­Toward Modernity: The Eu­ro­pean Jewish Model, ed. Jacob Katz (New York: Routledge, 2007), 49–50. 62. Cited in Natkovich, “Elisha Ben Abuya,” 52. 63. Jeffrey Sposato, The Price of Assimilation: Felix Mendelssohn and the Nineteenth-­Century Anti-­Semitic Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 80. 64. Nils Roemer, Jewish Scholarship and Culture in Nineteenth-­Century Germany: Between History and Faith (Madison: University Press of Wisconsin, 2005). See also Meyer, “Two Per­ sis­tent Tensions.” 65. Hirsch’s speech (November 9, 1859), published in Marc Shapiro, “Samson Raphael Hirsch and Friedrich von Schiller,” Torah-­u-­Madda Journal 15 (2008–9): 172–87, at 176. 66. “In Schiller’s songs we encounter man in his dignity, and humanity is transformed and perfected on ­every level and in ­every situation through the purity of its divine destiny. . . . ​ Who understood as well as Schiller how to pre­sent a flower to each in his own place, ­whether ­humble or ­g reat, allowing every­one to attach their hopes and dreams to it, and to consecrate and raise awareness of each moment in life?” Shapiro, “Hirsch and Schiller,” 176. 67. First appearing in postcolonial studies, this concept described the adoption by a majority group of the cultural features of a minority, thus putting on full display the asymmetry of power. It can be turned around to denote the subversion of the concept by a minority group. Bruce Ziff and Pratima V. Rao, eds., Borrowed Power: Essays on Cultural Appropriation (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997); and David Spurr, The Rhe­toric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993). 68. See Michael Brenner, Stefi Jersch-­Wenzel, and Michael A. Meyer, eds., German-­Jewish History in Modern Times, vol. 2, Emancipation and Acculturation 1780–1871 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 217–18. 69. Willi Goetchel, “Lessing and the Jews,” in A Companion to the Works of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, ed. Barbara Fischer and Thomas C. Fox (New York: Boydell and Brewer, 2005), 185–208. 70. Salomon Yehuda Rapoport, Bikure ha-­‘itim 1 (1820): 110–13. In addition to this poem, the chorale from Die Braut von Messina (The bride of Messina) and Die Macht des Gesanges (The power of song) w ­ ere included.

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Notes to Pages 116–118

71. Baruch Schönfeld, “Shir le-­Simḥah” (translation of “Ode to Joy”), Bikure ha-­‘itim 7 (1826): 100. On the translations of the poem, see Sabine Arndt, “A Pious Ode ‘To Joy’,” Studia Rosenthaliana 38/39 (2005): 266–67. 72. Meyer Kayserling, “Zur Schillerfeier,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums 23 (October 31, 1859): 650–51. “Schiller nahm sie auf seinen Schwingen mit in die heiligen Sphären; er kämpfte für ihre Freiheit und erzog sie zur Freiheit durch die Kunst.” 73. Solomon Yehuda Rapoport, untitled prologue in Bikure ha-­‘itim 12 (1831): v–­x. 74. Steven Beller, Vienna and the Jews, 1867–1938: A Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 75. To the extent that some devotees did not hesitate to tone down the ­great man’s wrathful and bold verses if censors might find them offensive. For instance, Israel Zinberg notes that the original text, “Manly pride before the throne of Kings,” became in Schoenfels’s translation, “An upright spirit before ­g reat men.” Letteris, a Galician Jew indebted to Franz-­Joseph’s edict of toleration, went for an even flatter version: “Do no evil and practice no deceit.” Zinberg, History of Jewish Lit­er­a­ture, 117. 76. Gershom Scholem, On Jews and Judaism in Crisis: Selected Essays, ed. Werner J. Dannhauser (New York: Schocken, 1976), 79. 77. Robert G. Eisenhauer, Paradox and Perspicacity: Horizons of Knowledge in the Literary Text (New York: Peter Lang, 2005), 81, 286. Peter Szondi, Einführung in die deutsche literarische Hermeneutik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1963), 422–23. 78. This culminated in Georg Simmel’s 1913 monograph, Goethe (Leipzig: Von Klinkhard und Biermann, 1913). Ehrhard Bahr, “Goethe and the Concept of Bildung in Jewish Emancipation,” in Goethe in German-­Jewish Culture, ed. Klaus L. Berghahn and Jost Hermand (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2001), 16–28. 79. Barbara Hahn, “Goethe Cult and Criticism During the Nineteenth ­Century: Demarcations and Projections—­Goethe in the Berlin Salons,” in Berghahn and Hermand, eds., Goethe in German-­Jewish Culture, 104–20. Wilfried Barner, Von Rahel Varnhagen bis Friedrich Gundolf: Juden als deutsche Goethe-­Verehrer (Göttingen, Germany: Wallstein-­Verlag, 1992). 80. Jonathan Hess, “Fictions of a German Jewish Public: Ludwig Jacobowski’s Werther the Jew and Its Readers,” Jewish Social Studies 11, no. 2 (Winter 2005): 202–30. 81. Simon Dubnow, “On National Education,” in Essays on Old and New Judaism (New York: Jewish Publication Society of Amer­i­ca, 1958), 143–49. 82. Quoted in Paul Mendes-­Flohr, German Jews: A Dual Identity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 53. 83. In creating this distinction, Asher Salah accepts Bonfil’s model, whereby Jewish autonomy prior to the emancipation is in fact “an absolute opposition between the two socie­ ties” and the Jewish world does not envision Christian society as worthy of its interest. Hence, he observes, the scarcity of quotations from Dante in Jewish lit­e r­a ­t ure before the Risorgimento—­Leone Modena being a notable exception. Asher Salah, “A ­Matter of Quotation: Dante and the Literary Identity of Jews in Italy,” in The Italia Judaica Jubilee Conference, ed. Shlomo Simonsohn and Joseph Shatzmiller (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2013), 167–97. See Roberto Bonfil, Tra due mondi: Cultura cristiana e cultura ebraica nel Medioevo (Naples: Liguori, 1996), 265. 84. Inferno 17: 58–60. 85. Twentieth-­century scholars questioned the two men’s friendship and this idea of influence. Umberto Cassuto, Dante e Manoello (Florence: Soc. Tip. Israel, 1922). Cassuto suggested other pos­si­ble connections, perhaps through the work of the Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia.



Notes to Pages 118–122

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86. Moritz Steinschneider, “Immanuel: Biographische und literarische Skizze von M. Sider in Berlin,” Literaturblatt des Orients 4 (1843): 1–9, 17–25, 33–40, 58–62. 87. S. S. Prawer, Heine’s Jewish Comedy: A Study of His Portraits of Jews and Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), iii. 88. Daniel Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 15–22. Jeffrey Grossman, “Heine and Jewish Culture: The Poetics of Appropriation,” in A Companion to the Works of Heinrich Heine (New York: Camden, 2002), 251–84. Heine, however, in a letter to Karl Immerman, questioned the value of history for poetic works. See Prawer, Heine’s Jewish Comedy, 208. 89. James Kugel, ed., Poetry and Prophecy: The Making of a Literary Tradition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 1. 90. Céline Trautmann-­Waller, Philologie allemande: Le parcours intellectuel de Leopold Zunz (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1998), citing Adolf Kohut, “Die verdienste Herders um die jüdische Wissenschaft,” Jeschurun 15 (1868–69): 155–67, 228–45. 91. Ernest Renan, Histoire générale et comparée des langues sémitiques, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Henriette Psichari, vol. 8 (Paris: Calmann-­Lévy, 1958), 129–589. See Maurice Olender, The Languages of Paradise: Race, Religion, and Philology in the Nineteenth ­Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), esp. 50–81. 92. See Paul Bénichou, Romantismes français I. Le temps des prophètes (Paris: Gallimard, collection Quarto, 2004). In Italy this prophetism was harshly criticized by Benedetto Croce and by Giovanni Gentile, whom he influenced. See Giovanni Gentile, I profeti del Risorgimento italiano (Florence: Valechi, 1923); and Albert Russell Ascoli and Krystyna von Henneberg, eds., Making and Remaking Italy: The Cultivation of National Identity Around the Risorgimento (Oxford: Berg, 2001). 93. Samuel David Luzzatto, Sefer Yesha’yah meturgam Italkit u-­meforash ‘Ivrit (The Book of Isaiah, with an Italian translation and a Hebrew commentary) (Padua: Bianchi, 1867). 94. In his book The Religious Sermons of the Jews (Die Gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden [Berlin: A. Asher, 1832]), Zunz emphasized the pedagogical aspect of the narratives in Halakhah and compared them to myths: Jewish law is both “explained and improved through new legends,” but it remains grounded in the morality of the prophetic tradition. 95. S. D. Luzzatto to Solomon Yehuda Rapoport, June 5, 1860, in Eisig Gräber, Igrot Shadal, vol. 9 (Przemysl, Poland: Zupnick & Knoller, 1882), 1367. 96. Erich Auerbach, Dante, Poet of the Secular World (New York: NYRB, 2007), 178. 97. S. D. Luzzatto to Solomon Yehuda Rapoport, June 5, 1860, in Igrot Shadal, vol. 9, 1367. 98. Letter to Ludwig Strauss, January 7, 1913. Cited in Hess, Middlebrow Lit­er­a­ture, 12.

chapter 6 Epigraph: Abraham Berliner, “Sechs Monate in Italien,” in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, Italien (Frankfurt: J. Kauffmann, 1913), 213. An Italian translation of Berliner’s travelogue was published by Pietro Perreau himself in the Jewish periodical Il Vessillo Israelitico 25 (1877): 19, 28, 73, 107, 135, 165, ­under the title “Sei mesi in Italia.” 1. Perreau wrote the “Cata­logo dei codici ebraici della Biblioteca di Parma, non descritti dal de Rossi,” in Cata­loghi dei codici orientali di alcune biblioteche d’Italia, ed. Ignazio Guidi et al. (Florence: Le Monnier, 1878), 109–97.

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2. Asher Salah, “Steinschneider and Italy,” in Studies on Moritz Steinschneider (1816–1907), ed. Gad Freudenthal and Reimund Leicht (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 411–56. 3. Asher  D. Biemann, “ ‘ Thus Rome Shows Us Our True Place’: Reflections on the German Jewish Love for Italy,” in German-­Jewish Thought Between Religion and Politics: Festschrift in Honor of Paul Mendes-­Flohr on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Christian Wiese and Martina Urban (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), 241–61; Asher D. Biemann, Dreaming of Michelangelo: Jewish Variations on a Modern Theme (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012). 4. A copious bibliography exists on Christian Hebraism in early modern Eu­rope: Allison P. Coudert and Jeffrey S. Shoulson, eds., Hebraica Veritas? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Eu­rope (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Ilana Zinguer, Abraham Melamed, and Zur Shalev, eds., Hebraic Aspects of the Re­ nais­sance: Sources and Encounters (Boston: Brill, 2011); Stephen G. Burnett, Christian Hebraism in the Reformation Era (1500–1660): Authors, Books, and the Transmission of Jewish Learning (Leiden: Brill, 2012); and Saverio Campanini, “Christian Hebraists: Re­nais­sance Period,” in Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics, ed. Geoffrey Khan, http://­d x​ .­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1163​/­2212​-­4 241​_­ehll​_ ­EHLL​_­COM​_­00000171 (first published 2013; accessed August 6, 2018). 5. Guido Verucci, L’eresia del Novecento: La chiesa e la repressione del modernismo in Italia (Turin: Einaudi, 2010); Giovanni Vian, Il modernismo (Rome: Carocci, 2013); and Cristiana Facchini, “Incontri inconsueti: Modernisti tra gli ebrei e spiritualità contemporanee,” Modernism 5 (2019): 15–61. 6. Whereas for the German arena the key work is Christian Wiese, Challenging Colonial Discourse: Jewish Studies and Protestant Theology in Wilhelmine Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2005), nothing comparable exists for the Italian peninsula. 7. Ismar Schorsch, From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1994). 8. In recent times ­there have been attempts to examine Wissenschaft in a transnational context, although with almost no reference to Italy. Cf. Louise Hecht, “The Beginning of Modern Jewish Historiography: Prague: A Center on the Periphery,” Jewish History 19, no. 3/4 (2005): 347–73; and Niels Roemer, “Outside and Inside the Nations: Changing Borders in the Study of the Jewish Past During the Nineteenth ­Century,” in Modern Judaism and Historical Consciousness: Identities, Encounters, Perspectives, ed. A. Gotzmann and C. Wiese (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 28–54. Among the first to examine the Wissenschaft phenomenon from a Eu­ro­pean vantage, including Italy, was Julius Carlebach, ed., Wissenschaft des Judentums: Anfänge der Judaistik in Europa (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1992), which includes Nikolaus Vielmetti’s essay, “Das Collegio Rabbinico von Padua,” 23–35. See also Cristiana Facchini, “The Making of the Wissenschaft des Judentums in Italy: Judaism and the Bible Between Risorgimento and Fascism,” Annali di storia dell’esegesi 36, no. 1 (2019): 227–48. 9. See the in­ter­est­ing and emblematic case of the Piedmontese rabbi Elisha Pontremoli (1778–1851), examined in Asher Salah, “Judaism as a Moral Theology: The Work and the Figure of Elisha Pontremoli,” Zakhor: Rivista di storia degli ebrei d’Italia 1 (2017): 101–29. 10. Nikolaus Vielmetti, “Die Gründungsgeschichte des Collegio Rabbinico in Padua,” Kairos 12 (1970): 1–30; and Kairos 13 (1971): 36–66. The most comprehensive work on this institution is Maddalena Del Bianco Cotrozzi, Il collegio rabbinico di Padova (Florence: Olschki, 1995).



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11. Irene Kajon, “L’influenza di Francesco Soave sul concetto di ebraismo di Samuel David Luzzatto,” in Samuel David Luzzatto: The Bi-­Centennial of His Birth, ed. R. Bonfil, I. Gottlieb, and H. Kasher (Jerusalem: Italia, 2004), 55–77, at 69. 12. As convincingly demonstrated by Alessandro Guetta in his Philosophy and Kabbalah: Elijah Benamozegh and the Reconciliation of Western Thought and Jewish Esotericism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009). Leonardo Amoroso mentions “the total appropriation” by Benamozegh of Vico’s philosophy in his “Benamozegh e Vico,” in Per Elia Benamozegh: Atti del Convegno di Livorno, Settembre 2000, ed. Alessandro Guetta (Milan: Thalassa De Paz, 2001): 187–206, at 187. 13. According to David Sorkin in The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780–1840 ([Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991], 109), the first Jew to attain a full professorship was the mathematician Moritz Stern in Göttingen in 1858. But this was an exception. In fact, it proved ­either extremely difficult or altogether impossible for a Jew in Germany to make a ­career as long as he remained Jewish. Christian Wiese rightly stresses that “one of the ­g reat disappointments of Jewish Studies in the nineteenth ­century was its failure to get into German universities. . . . ​The failure of this attempt is indicative of the prevailing desire to protect the privileged position of Chris­tian­ity in the university and not to concede a position to Jewish Studies, which would be a public acknowl­edgment of the equality of Judaism, both as a religion and of its institutions.” Wiese, Challenging Colonial Discourse, 81–82. 14. Marco Di Giulio, “Scholarship, Politics and Jewish Identity in Italian Post-­Unification Academia,” in History of Universities, vol. 29, part 1, ed. Mordechai Feingold (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 88–111. To the names of Beniamino Sadun (1818–1911), professor of hygiene at the Siena University in 1861; Luigi Luzzatti (1841–1927), professor of statistics and economics in Milan from 1863; Graziadio Isaia Ascoli (1821–1907), appointed at the chair of comparative linguistic in the 1860s, ­a fter refusing the chair of Semitic languages in Bologna; and Alessandro D’Ancona (1835–1914), professor of Italian lit­er­a­t ure at the prestigious and elitist Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa since 1860, mentioned by Di Giulio in his essay, we should add also ­those of the Assyriologist Felice Finzi (1847–72), professor from 1869 at the Florentine Regio Istituto di Studi Superiori, and of the historian Achille Coen (1844–1921), professor in Milan in 1878 and in Florence from 1887. 15. In the second half of the nineteenth ­century the most impor­tant Jewish professors teaching Hebrew and other Semitic languages in Italian universities ­were Salvatore De Benedetti in Pisa, David Castelli in Florence, and Eude Lolli (1826–1904) in Padua. Among the prominent Christian professors of Hebrew at the same time w ­ ere Fausto Lasinio in Pisa and Florence, Ignazio Guidi (1844–1935) in Rome, and Gregorio Ugdulena (1815–72) in Palermo and Rome. 16. On Lasinio, see Rita Peca Conti, “Fausto Lasinio,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani 63 (2004): 806–9. 17. Flaminio Servi, Angelo Paggi e le sue opere, ricordi biografici (Corfu, Greece: Naca­ mulli, 1869–70); and Liana Funaro, “ ‘Lettere sacre e profane’: Angelo Paggi, un maestro di cultura ebraica nella Toscana del primo Ottocento,” Zakhor: Rivista di storia degli ebrei d’Italia 9 (2006): 103–42. 18. Bruno Pelaia, Una fulgida gloria calabrese: Il sac. prof. Francesco Scerbo (Milan: U. Allegretti di Campi, 1958); and Cristiana Facchini, David Castelli: Ebraismo e scienze delle religioni tra Otto e Novecento (Brescia, Italy: Morcelliana, 2005). 19. For instance, the appointments of Alessandro D’Ancona and Salvatore De Benedetti encountered the opposition not only of the clerical milieu but also of progressive scholars in

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Pisa. Cf. M. Moretti, “La dimensione ebraica di un maestro pisano,” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 1, no. 1 (1996): 209–47. Angelo De Gubernatis writes that Angelo Paggi was prevented from pursuing an academic ­career by his refusal to convert to Catholicism. See Angelo De Gubernatis, Matériaux pour servir à l’histoire des études orientales en Italie (Paris: Ernest Leroux; Florence: Loescher, 1876), 99. 20. Francesco Scaduto, L’abolizione delle facoltà di teologia in Italia (1873): Studio storico-­ critico (Turin: Loescher, 1886); Louis Henry Jordan and Baldassare Labanca, The Study of Religion in the Italian Universities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1909); and Bernardino Ferrari, La soppressione delle facoltà di teologia nelle Università di Stato in Italia (Bologna: Morcelliana, 1968). 21. Gabriele Boccaccini, “Gesù ebreo e cristiano: Sviluppi e prospettive di ricerca sul Gesù storico ini Italia dall’Ottocento a oggi,” Henoch 29, no. 1 (2007): 105–54. 22. Pietro Manfrin, Gli ebrei sotto la dominazione romana, 4 vols. (Rome: Bocca, 1888–97). 23. Baldassare Labanca: Atti del convegno di studi (Isernia, Italy: Iannone, 2000); and Natale Spineto, “Gli studi sulle religioni in Italia fra Otto e Novecento: Un quadro d’insieme,” in La storiografia storico-­religiosa italiana tra la fine dell’800 e la seconda guerra mondiale, ed. Mario Mazza and N. Spineto (Alessandria, Italy: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2014), 1–10. 24. Christian Wiese summarizes this situation, writing that “impor­tant impulses for Jewish research came from the ‘defense work’ against anti-­Semitism, which became more intense around the turn of the ­century. The strug­gle to overcome the image of Judaism within the Protestant exegesis . . . ​is a rather impor­tant aspect that gives insight into the explosive po­liti­cal nature of many ostensibly purely theological controversies.” Wiese, Challenging Colonial Discourse, 102. 25. The most famous expression of this is the Legge delle guarentigie (Law of the guarantees) passed by the Italian parliament on May 13, 1871, recognizing the inviolability of the pope’s person and maintaining many ­legal and economic prerogatives of the Holy See, such as the properties of the Vatican and of Lateran palaces as well as freedom of assembly for the clergy. 26. Therefore, Ari Joskowicz’s arguments concerning the role of anticlericalism in promoting Jewish integration within general society France cannot be extended to Italy. Joskowicz emphasizes the Jews’ central and active role in the culture wars between liberals and Catholics in nineteenth-­century Germany and France. See Joskowicz, The Modernity of ­Others: Jewish Anti-­Catholicism in Germany and France (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014). 27. Wiese, Challenging Colonial Studies, 106. 28. For Domenico Comparetti’s biography see E. Frontali Milani, “Gli anni giovanili di Domenico Comparetti (1848–1859): Dai suoi taccuini e da altri inediti,” Belfagor 24 (1969): 174– 80; and Giovanni Pugliese Carratelli, “Domenico Comparetti,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 27 (Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1982), 672–78. On his relationship with Elena Raffalovich, one of the first intermarriages that occurred in Italy in the nineteenth ­century, see Asher Salah, “From Odessa to Florence: Elena Comparetti Raffalovich, a Jewish Rus­sian ­Woman in Nineteenth-­Century Italy,” in Portrait of Italian Jewish Life (1800s–1930s), ed. Tullia Catalan and Cristiana Facchini, Quest: Issues in Con­temporary Jewish History—­Journal of Fondazione CDEC 8 (November 2015), www​.­quest​-­cdecjournal​.­it​/­focus​.­php​?­id​=­365. 29. Abraham Geiger, “Das Studium der nachbiblischen Literatur unter den Christen,” Hebräische Biblio­g raphie 3 (1860): 37–41, 77–79; and 4 (1861): 81–84, 129–31.



Notes to Page 126

227

30. Domenico Comparetti, “Sugli studi ebraici in Italia e sul Prof. Lasinio,” Rivista italiana di scienze, lettere ed arti colle Effemeridi della pubblica istruzione 3, no.  68 (1862): 1690–92. Comparetti praises Lasinio for examining Hebrew texts only for their philological and literary value, respecting “all the pos­si­ble theological interpretations” that can be extrapolated from them. This, for Comparetti, is the “­really patriotic” attitude that can be expected from a serious scientist. 31. Giuseppe Gabrieli, Italia judaica: Saggio d’una bibliografia storica e archeologica degli Ebrei d’Italia (Rome: Fondazione Leonardo per la cultura italiana, 1924). On Gabrieli see Bruna Soravia, “Giuseppe Gabrieli,” Dizionario biografico degli italiani 51 (1998): 67–68; and Soravia, “Ascesa e declino dell’orientalismo scientifico in Italia,” in Il mondo visto dall’Italia, ed. Agostino Giovagnoli and Giorgio del Zanna (Milan: Guerini, 2005), 271–86. A continuation of this work, larger in scope, was prepared by Gabrieli for the Orientalism Congress that took place in Rome in 1935. Gabrieli, Bibliografia degli studi orientalistici in Italia dal 1912 al 1934 (Rome: Società poligrafica italiana, 1935). 32. De Gubernatis, Matériaux. De Gubernatis (1872–1942) was a professor of Sans­k rit in Florence and founder of the most impor­tant scientific journals in Oriental studies published in Italy at the time, such as the Rivista orientale (1867) and the Bollettino italiano degli studii orientali (1876), which he worked on together with David Castelli, Fausto Lasinio, Carlo Puini, and Antelmo Severini and which was modeled on the French journals Journal asiatique, Revue semitique, and Recherches bibliques. In an epoch when Sans­k rit studies ­were increasingly becoming an instrument to promote theories of Indo-­European superiority over Semitic cultures, De Gubernatis attempted to integrate the two allegedly opposed worlds within a unique cultural synthesis. His perspective was similar to that of his con­temporary Jewish colleague Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, who tried to demonstrate the linguistic affinities between Indo-­European and Semitic languages, or that of Emilio Teza (1831–1912), who combined his proficiency in Sans­k rit, which he taught at the universities of Bologna and Padua, with a prolific activity as an Hebraist. On De Gubernatis’s intellectual contribution see Tiziana Iannello, “Il contributo di Angelo De Gubernatis agli studi estremo-­orientalistici in Italia nella seconda metà dell’Ottocento,” in Angelo De Gubernatis, Europa e Oriente nell’Italia umbertina, ed. Maurizio Taddei and Antonio Sorrentino, vol. 4 (Naples: IUO, 2001), 325–52; and F. Solitario, “Angelo De Gubernatis storico dell’orientalismo italiano,” in Taddei and Sorrentino, eds., Angelo De Gubernatis, vol. 1, 499–525. 33. Umberto Cassuto, Gli studi giudaici in Italia negli ultimi cinquant’anni (1861–1911) (Rome: Casa editrice italiana, 1913). Umberto Cassuto (1883–1951), a rabbi and professor from Florence, ­limited his bibliographical survey to postbiblical secondary sources. The second part of his endeavor, which was supposed to include a general overview of the history of the field, was never published. On Cassuto see Robert Bonfil, ed., Umberto (Moshe David) Cassuto, Italia Conference Supplement Series 3 (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2007); and Ariel Viterbo, “Umberto Cassuto, maestro di Bibbia nel paese della Bibbia,” La Rassegna Mensile di Israel 82 (2017): 137–62. 34. Leopold Zunz, Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur (Berlin: Maurersche Buchhandlung, 1818), 8: “Theoretically then, we divide critical scholarship into three aspects: ideational, philological, and historical analy­sis. The last considers the history of ideas from the time of their transmission to the pre­sent at which time we have arrived at our knowledge.” Interestingly enough, Zunz mentions Italian Christian scholars, such as Bartolocci, Imbonati, and Egidio Forcellini, as early modern examples of scientific objectivity, and he asks, “From whence ­w ill we bring to Jewish history its impartial Paolo Sarpi?” (12). Zunz’s manifesto

228

Notes to Pages 126–128

was translated in full by A. Schwartz in The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, ed. Paul R. Mendes-­Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 221–29. 35. Zunz, Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur, 10. 36. With very few (and insignificant) exceptions, such as Federico Castagneri, Civiltà e costume degli israeliti (Bosco Marengo, Italy: Riformatorio, 1883). 37. G. B. de Rossi, Bibliotheca Judaica anti-­Christiana (Parma, 1800). 38. G. Rinaldi, “Mons. Antonio M. Ceriani e gli studi semitistici a Milano,” Annali Università Cattolica Sacro Cuore per l’anno accademico 1955–56, 1956–57 (Milan: Università Cattolica Sacro Cuore, 1958), 275–96. 39. Giuseppe Bardelli, Elogio del cavaliere professore Francesco Del Furia letto il 25 maggio 1857 (Florence: Torelli, 1857). 40. Amadeo Peyron, Notitia Librorum ma­nus typisque descriptorum qui illati sunt in Reg. Taurinensis Athenaei Bibliothecam (Leipzig: Weigelii, 1820). 41. Bernardino Peyron, Codices Hebraici: Ma­nu exarati Regiae Bibliothecae quae in Taurinensi Athenaeo asservatur—­Recensuit, illustravit Bernardinus Peyron—­Adiutor fuit in iis, quae ad linguam spectant Samuel Ghiron (Turin: Paraviam, 1878; 2nd ed, Turin: Bocca, 1880). 42. Leonello Modona, “Relazione sulla scoperta di un prezioso incunabolo nella biblioteca della R. Università di Bologna,” Bibliofilo 4 (1883): 97–100; and Olindo Guerrini, “Codici e libri preziosi conservati nella R. Biblioteca dell’università di Bologna,” Bollettino Ufficiale del Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione 9 (1883): 73–74. Modona l­ater published the Cata­logo dei codici ebraici della biblioteca della R. Università di Bologna (Florence: Le Monnier, 1889). 43. Zunz, Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur, 8. 44. Giacomo Manzoni, Annali tipografici dei Soncino: Contenenti la descrizione e illustrazione delle stampe ebraiche, talmudiche, rabbiniche, greche, latine ed italiane eseguite dai medesimi nel secolo XV e nel secolo XVI, 3 vols. (Bologna: G. Romagnoli, 1883–86). This work was preceded by the incomplete and error-­ridden Federigo Sacchi, I tipografi ebrei di Soncino: Studii bibliographici—­parte prima (Cremona: Ronzi e Signori, 1877). 45. Antonino Bertolotti, Le tipografie orientali e gli orientalisti a Roma nei secoli XVI e XVII (Florence: Gazzetta d’Italia, 1878); Ambrogio Bongiovanni, “Le rare o poco note edizioni ebraiche dei secoli XV e XVI esistenti nella biblioteca dell’Archiginnasio,” L’archiginnasio 2 (1908): 110–13; Carlo Castellani, “Documenti circa la persecuzione dei libri ebraici a Venezia,” Bibliofilia 7 (1905–6): 304–7; and L. Luchini, “Libri bruciati e libri salvati delle prime tipografie cremonesi,” Bibliofilo 7 (1886): 34–37. 46. Asher Salah, “La biblioteca di Marco Mortara,” in Nuovi studi in onore di Marco Mortara nel secondo centenario della nascita, ed. Mauro Perani and Ermanno Finzi (Florence: Giuntina, 2016), 149–68. 47. De Gubernatis, Matériaux, 109. 48. De Gubernatis, Matériaux, 119. On ­these and other Jewish and Christian Hebraists in Padua, see G. Tamani, “Gli studi ebraici a Padova nei secoli XVII–­X X,” Quaderni per la storia dell’università di Padova 9–10 (1976–77): 215–28. 49. Angelo Vivian, “Ippolito Rosellini e l’insegnamento dell’Ebraico a Pisa,” Egitto e Vicino Oriente 3 (1982): 11–20. 50. Giorgio Levi della Vida, “L’opera orientalistica di Ignazio Guidi,” Oriente Moderno 15 (1935): 236–48; and Soravia, “Ascesa e declino dell’orientalismo.”



Notes to Pages 128–129

229

51. Giovanni Spano, Storia degli ebrei in Sardegna (Cagliari, Italy: Timon, 1875). On Spano and Jewish studies see Luciano Carta, “Un intellettuale sardo dell’Ottocento in dimensione europea: Giovanni Spano (1803–1878),” Materia Giudaica 14, no. 2–3 (2009): 17–34; and Mauro Perani, “Giovanni Spano e gli ebrei: Due mss. ebraici della sua collezione nella Biblioteca Universitaria di Cagliari e nuove scoperte sulla Sardegna Judaica,” Materia Giudaica 14, no. 2–3 (2009): 35–62. 52. Gregorio Ugdulena, La Santa Scrittura in volgare, riscontrata con gli originali e illustrata, 2 vols. (Palermo: Tipografia di Francesco Lao, 1859). Placido da Sortino, “Gregorio Ugdulena, orientalista e biblista italiano,” Rivista biblica 14 (1966): 159–79, focuses on the liberal and patriotic views of this priest, views that brought him into conflict with Church authorities opposed to Catholic participation in the po­liti­cal life of the new Italian state. Nevertheless, his translation was favorably reviewed by the Sacra Congregazione dell’Indice during the pontificate of Pius IX. 53. Francesco Corsaro, Elementi grammaticali della lingua santa esposti in tavole sinottiche (Naples: Raffaele Miranda, 1840). Corsaro was a professor at the Catania seminar. 54. Massimo Pazzini, “Grammatiche e dizionari di ebraico-­a ramaico in italiano: Cata­ logo ragionato,” Liber Annuus 42 (1992): 9–32; and Pazzini, “Grammatiche e dizionari di ebraico-­ aramaico in italiano: Cata­logo ragionato—­Aggiornamento (dicembre 2011),” Liber Annus 61 (2011): 621–25. 55. Samuel David Luzzatto, Prolegomeni ad una grammatica ragionata della lingua ebraica (Padua: Cartallier, 1836), 67. Angelo Paggi, himself author of a Hebrew grammar, speaks about a “flood” of grammars composed by Christian students of the sacred language. Angelo Paggi, “Sull’insegnamento elementare della lingua sacra,” Educatore Israelita 1 (1853): 274. 56. Luzzatto, Prolegomeni, 54; and Tommaso Valperga di Caluso, Prime lezioni di grammatica ebraica (Turin: Corte d’appello, 1805). For an interpretation of Luzzatto’s linguistic research (as epitomized in Prolegomeni) as an act of Jewish self-­a ssertion out of the desire to protect the genius of Hebrew from perceived Christian mishandlings of its grammar, see Marco Di Giulio, “S. D. Luzzatto’s Program for Restoring Jewish Leadership in Hebrew Studies,” Jewish Quarterly Review 105, no. 3 (Summer 2015): 340–66. 57. Felice Israel, “Lo studio dell’ebraico in Giacomo Leopardi,” Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana 150 (1973): 334–49; Umberto Piperno, “Leopardi ed il Cantico del Gallo Silvestre,” Annuario di Studi Ebraici 10 (1984): 179–218. 58. Antonio Pirazzini, ed., Giacomo Manzoni: Studi, passioni e vita pubblica di un lughese nell’Italia dell’Ottocento (Faenza, Italy: Edit, 1999), and esp. Giuliano Tamani, “Giacomo Manzoni bibliofilo e ebraista,” 267–88. 59. Francesco Miniscalchi Erizzo, Evangeliarium Hierosolymitanum (Verona: Vicentini e Franchini, 1861–64). 60. On Kocianic see Guido ­Hugues, “Di alcuni illustri semitisti e orientalisti della Venezia Giulia,” Studi Goriziani 24 (1958): 33–80; Marco Grusovin, “Il carteggio ebraico fra Stefano Kociancic e Samuel David Luzzatto,” Materia Giudaica 7, no. 2 (2002): 385–95; and Marco Grusovin, Gli ebraisti cattolici a Gorizia nell’Ottocento: Esegesi, linguistica e teologia (Gorizia, Italy: Istituto di storia sociale e religiosa, 2001), 123–37. 61. He gave it the Hebrew title ‫שיר על בית החיים‬. Giuseppe Venturi, Elegia di Tommaso Gray sopra un cimitero campestre dall’inglese trasportato in versi ebraici (Verona: Mainardi, 1817). Giambattista Carlo Giuliari, “Dei veronesi cultori delle lingue orientali,” Rivista Orientale (1867–68): 388–400, 511–38, at 524.

230

Notes to Pages 129–131

62. Pietro Bandini, Canti epitalamici per le nozze di Leopoldo II, granduca di Toscana, con Maria Antonia, principessa delle due Sicilie (Florence: Stamperia Granducale, 1833), Mizmor le-­todah (Florence: Stamperia Granducale, 1835), and Carmi di lode per Pio IX (Livorno: Cristiani, 1846). 63. Drach was a Jew from Alsace who moved to Rome ­a fter his conversion to Catholicism. His Hebrew poems written between 1831 and 1842 are the sole extant Hebrew texts printed in Rome in the first half of the nineteenth ­century. Fausto Parente, “Paul-­Louis-­ Bernard Drach: L’ultimo cabalista cristiano nella Roma della restaurazione,” in Italia Judaica 4 (1989): 135–52. 64. Giuseppe Fabiani, Per l’arcadia radunata il 6 Dicembre 1860 a.d. onorare i cardinali di s.r.c. Giuseppe Mezzofante ed Angelo Mai: Cantico ebraico italiano (Rome: Congregazione de Prop. Fide, 1861). 65. Bonaventura Dumaine, ‘Al kle shir tehilah/Sugli instrumenti del cantico (Bologna, 1858). 66. De Gubernatis, Matériaux (117, 122) mentions a certain Giuseppe Spandri from Verona and the carmina orientalia by de Rossi. 67. Eugenio Garin, “L’Istituto di Studi Superiori di Firenze (cent’anni dopo),” in La cultura italiana tra ‘800 e ‘900, ed. Eugenio Garin (Bari, Italy: Laterza, 1976), 29–69. 68. One of the earliest examples of a Syriac edition using ­these characters is Angelo Paggi and Fausto Lasinio, Inni funebri di s. Efrem siro (Florence: Tipografia Lottini, 1851), an Italian translation that received flattering international reviews (see Journal des savants [1852]: 64) and was praised even by the antisemitic journal of the Jesuits, La civiltà cattolica 37 (1886): 210. 69. Rita Peca Conti, “Dal carteggio Ascoli-­Lasinio (1862–1900),” Quaderni giuliani di storia 7 (1986): 273–96. 70. See Salah, “Steinschneider and Italy.” 71. Moritz Steinschneider, Polemische und apologetische Literatur in arabischer Sprache zwischen Muslimen, Christen und Juden (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1877). 72. Atti del IV Congresso internazionale degli orientalisti, tenuto in Firenze nel settembre 1878 (Florence: Lemmonier, 1880). 73. Liana Funaro, “ ‘Cose d’Oriente’: Studi ebraici e orientalismo nella Firenze del secondo Ottocento—­Inediti da un epistolario,” Annali Storia dell’Esegesi 31, no. 2 (2014): 203–32. 74. Comparetti, “Sugli studi ebraici,” 1,690. On Hebrew in Italy in the nineteenth ­century see Alessandro Guetta, “Le statut de l’hébreu selon les intellectuels juifs italiens du XIXe siècle,” Revue de l’Histoire des Religions 213, no. 4 (1996): 485–500; Marco Di Giulio, “Italy: Modern Period,” in Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics, vol. 2, ed. Geoffrey Khan (Boston: Brill, 2013), 378–82; and Asher Salah, “Hebrew Print in the Nineteenth ­Century,” in Encyclopedia of Jewish Book Cultures, ed. Emile Schrijver (Boston: Brill, forthcoming 2022). 75. The Italian Jewish journal Il vessillo Israelitico dedicated a special section to “testimonianze di cattolici in favore di israeliti.” In one article signed by the director, Flaminio Servi (in Vessillo Israelitico 23 [1885]: 23), we can read the following statement: “The law of pro­g ress has made its entrance in the Vatican ­a fter the words by Leo XIII.” The reference is to the official recognition of the liberty of conscience in ­matters of faith by the Catholic Church. Daniele Pergola, rabbi in Fossano, stressed the openness of the pope in his La religione universale conciliabile con tutti i culti e il sacerdozio (Turin: Bona, 1879), 23. Funaro (in “Cose d’Oriente,” 204) reports that Consolo offered a copy of his translation of Jeremiah I treni di Geremia (Florence: Carnesecchi, 1874) to the pope.



Notes to Pages 131–133

231

76. Among the few studies concerning this aspect of Jewish studies in Italy in the nineteenth ­century is Michele Luzzati, “La ricerca storiografica sugli ebrei italiani del Medioevo e del Rinascimento fra la fine dell’800 e l’inizio del ’900,” Rassegna mensile d’Israel 7 (1981): 129–42; and Gadi Luzzatto Voghera, “Die Jüdische Geschichtsschreibung in Italien im 19. Jahrhundert,” in Judentum und Historismus, ed. Ulrich Wirwa (Frankfurt: Campus, 2003), 117–30. 77. David Castelli, Storia degli israeliti secondo le fonti bibliche criticamente esposte (Milan: Hoepli, 1887–88). 78. B. and G. Lagumina, Codice diplomatico dei giudei di Sicilia (Palermo: Amenta, 1884–95). 79. La Lumia’s study on Sicilian Jews, originally published in 1870 as the second volume of his Studi di storia siciliana, has been reprinted as Gli ebrei siciliani (Palermo: Sellerio, 1984) and translated into French as Histoire de l’expulsion des Juifs de Sicile en 1492 (Paris: Allia, 1992). 80. Nino Tamassia, Stranieri ed ebrei nell’Italia meridionale dall’età romana alla sveva (Venice: Ferrari, 1904). 81. Luigi Carnevali, Gli israeliti a Mantova: Cenni storici (Mantua, Italy: Segna, 1878); and Carnevali Il ghetto di Mantova con appendice sui medici ebrei (Mantua, Italy: Mondovì, 1884). 82. Andrea Balletti, Il tempio maggiore israelitico di Reggio nell’Emilia: Note storiche (Reggio, Italy: Calderini, 1908) 83. Ernesto Natali, Il ghetto di Roma (Rome: Stabilimento Typografico della Tribuna, 1887). 84. Guido Carocci, Il ghetto di Firenze e i suoi ricordi: Illustrazione storica (Florence: Galletti e Cocci, 1886). 85. Pietro M. Lonardo, Gli ebrei a Pisa (Pisa: Rigoli, 1898–99). Lonardo also published articles on the history of the Jewish communities of Benevento, Lucera, and San Marino. 86. Carisio Ciavarini, Memorie storiche degli israeliti in Ancona (Ancona, Italy: Morelli, 1870). 87. Ariodante Fabretti, Sulla condizione degli ebrei in Perugia dal XIII al XVII secolo (Turin: Fabretti, 1891). 88. Antonio Ciscato also wrote about the Jews in Este near Ferrara, in Gli Ebrei in Este (Este, Italy: Typ. Longo cond. Zanella, 1892). 89. Pietro Perreau, Educazione e coltura degl’Israeliti in Italia nel medio evo (Corfu, Greece: G. Nacamulli, 1885). 90. Moritz Güdemann, Geschichte des Erziehungswesens und der Kultur der Abendländischen Juden während des Mittelalters und der neueren Zeit, 3 vols. (Vienna: Hölder, 1880–88). 91. Ferdinand Gregorovius, Der Ghetto und die Juden in Rom, mit einem Geleitwort von Leo Baeck (Berlin: Schocken, 1935 [1853]). 92. Moritz Steinschneider, Letteratura italiana dei Giudei: Cenni (Rome: Tipografia delle scienze matematiche e fisiche, 1884). It was ­later revised and expanded, appearing in German as “Die italienische Litteratur der Juden,” published in Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums between 1898 and 1900. 93. Abraham Berliner, Geschichte der Juden in Rom, von der aeltesten Zeit bis zur Gegenwart (2050 Jahre), 2 vols. (Frankfurt: Kauffmann, 1893). 94. Hermann Vogelstein and Paul Rieger, Geschichte der Juden in Rom, 2 vols. (Berlin: Mayer & Müller, 1895–96). 95. Stefano Cavazza, “Regionalism in Italy: A Critique,” in Region and State in Nineteenth-­ Century Eu­rope: Nation-­Building, Regional Identities and Separatism, ed. Joost Agusteijn and Eric Storm (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 76.

232

Notes to Pages 133–137

96. Giustiniano Degli Azzi Vitelleschi, “I ‘paria’ delle società demo­cratiche medievali: Nobili ed Ebrei a Perugia nel sec. 14,” Varietà storiche perugine (1900): 43–73. 97. Oreste Dito, La Storia calabrese e la dimora degli Ebrei in Calabria dal secolo V alla seconda metà del secolo XVI: Nuovo contributo per la storia della quistione meridionale (Rocca San Casciano, Italy: Cappelli, 1916 [repr. Cosenza, Italy: Brenner, 1989]). 98. One exception to this statement is the eclectic and inconsistent Riccardo Rocca, Cenni sulle comunità israelitiche di Venezia, Mantova e Padova, con brevi notizie sugl’israeliti di Roma nell’evo antico e medio (Rome: Bencini, 1884). 99. Luzzati, “La ricerca storiografica,” 134. 100. Cristiana Facchini, “Judaism: An Inquiry into the Historical Discourse,” in History and Religion: Narrating a Religious Past, ed. Bernd-­Christian Otto, Susanne Rau, and Jorg Rupke (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 371–92. 101. Marc Gopin, “An Orthodox Embrace of Gentiles? Interfaith Tolerance in the Thought of S. D. Luzzatto and E. Benamozegh,” Modern Judaism 18, no. 2 (1998): 173–95. 102. Asher Salah, “Jewish Reform in 19th ­Century Italy,” in Filosofia Italiana: Filosofia ebraica in Italia (XV–­XIX secolo) 15, no. 1 (2020): 111–39. 103. Ruggero Taradel and Barbara Raggi, La segregazione amichevole: “La Civiltà cattolica” e la questione ebraica, 1850–1945 (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 2000); and Cristiana Facchini, “Le metamorfosi di un’antica ostilità: Antisemitismo e cultura cattolica nella seconda metà dell’Ottocento,” Annali di storia dell’esegesi 27, no. 1 (2010): 187–230. 104. Louis Henry Jordan and Baldassare Labanca, The Study of Religion in the Italian Universities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1909), passim. 105. Giorgio Levi della Vida, Fantasmi ritrovati (Venice: Neri Pozza Editore, 1966), 66. 106. Dedication in F. Gabrieli, Italia Judaica: Saggio d’una bibliografia storica e archeologica degli Ebrei d’Italia (Rome: Fondazione Leonardo per la Cultura Italiana, 1924).

chapter 7 1. Michael A. Meyer, Judaism Within Modernity: Essays on Jewish History and Religion (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001), 44–63; Ismar Schorsch, From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism (Hanover, NH: University Press of New ­England, 1994), chap. 10; and Rachel Livneh-­Freudenthal, The Verein: Pioneers of the Science of Judaism in Germany (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Leo Baeck Institute and Zalman Shazar Center, 2018), 49–57. 2. Shmuel Feiner pointed out the existence of Jewish historiography in Eastern Eu­ rope alongside German Judaic studies in the nineteenth ­century. Feiner, “Nineteenth-­ Century Jewish Historiography: The Second Track,” in Reshaping the Past: Jewish History and the Historians, Studies in Con­temporary Jewry, vol. 10, ed. Jonathan Frankel (New York: Littman, 1994), 17–44. 3. The pre­sent chapter addresses some aspects of my broader study on Jewish nationalism. In this chapter I refer to the Zionist intellectuals and their contribution to the Wissenschaft des Judentums and their efforts to widen the borders of Jewish studies. In my book I refer in an extensive manner to the work of many Zionist intellectuals in the pro­cess of building a nation from the perspective of the study of nationalism. Yitzhak Conforti, Shaping a Nation: The Cultural Origins of Zionism 1882–1948 (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben Zvi, 2019), 32–124.



Notes to Pages 138–140

233

4. Paul Lawrence, “Nationalism and Historical Writing,” in The Oxford Handbook for the History of Nationalism, ed. J. Breuilly (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 713–30, esp. 716. 5. Other examples include Berdyczewski, who worked and studied in Berlin, and Klausner, Ahad Ha’am’s student, who studied at the University of Heidelberg. For a po­liti­ cal examination of this division, see Yitzhak Conforti, “East and West in Jewish Nationalism: Conflicting Types in the Zionist Vision?” Nations and Nationalism 16, no. 2 (2010): 201–19. 6. David N. Myers, Re-­Inventing the Jewish Past: Eu­ro­pean Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Jacob Barnai, Historiography and Nationalism: Trends in the Research of Palestine and Its Jewish Yishuv (634–1881) (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1996); Amnon Raz-­K rakotzkin, “The National Narration of Exile” (in Hebrew; PhD diss., Tel Aviv University, 1996); Arielle Rein, “The Historian as a Nation-­Builder: Ben Zion Dinur’s Evolution and Enterprise (1884–1948)” (in Hebrew; PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2000); Yitzhak Conforti, Past Tense: Zionist Historiography and the Shaping of the National Memory (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben Zvi, 2006); and Michael Brenner, Prophets of the Past: Interpreters of Jewish History (Prince­ ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2010). 7. Jonathan Frankel, “Assimilation and the Jews in Nineteenth-­Century Eu­rope: ­Towards a New Historiography?” in Assimilation and Community: The Jews in Nineteenth-­Century Eu­ rope, ed. Jonathan Frankel and Steven J. Zipperstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 1–37. 8. Conforti, Past Tense, 57–96. Yitzhak Conforti, “State or Diaspora: Jewish Historiography as a Form of National Belonging,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 15, no. 2 (2015): 230–50. See also Brian Horo­w itz, “ ‘Building a Fragile Edifice’: A History of Rus­sian Jewish Historical Institutions, 1860–1914,” Polin 29 (2017): 61–75, esp. 69–75; and David Engel, “Dubnow on the Par­tic­u­lar and Universal Ele­ments in Jewish History” (in Hebrew), Zion 77, no. 3 (2012): 307–15. This entire volume of Zion was dedicated to vari­ous aspects of Dubnow’s national thought. 9. See Reuven Brainin, Peretz ben Mosheh Smolenskin: Ḥayav u-­sefarav (Warsaw: Tushiyah, 1897); Nahum Slouschz, The Renascence of the Hebrew Lit­er­a­ture (1743–1885) (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of Amer­i­ca, 1909), 224–70; Joseph Klausner, Historiyah shel ha-­sifrut ha-­‘Ivrit ha-­ḥadashah, vol. 5 (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Achiasaf, 1956), 14–231; and Charles Freundlich, Peretz Smolenskin, His Life and His Thought: A Study of the Renascence of Jewish Nationalism (New York: Bloch, 1965). 10. For his connection with David Kaufmann, see Mirjam Thulin, Kaufmanns Nachrichtendienst: Ein jüdisches Gelehrtennetzwerk im 19. Jahrhundert, Schriften des Simon Dubnow Instituts Band 16 (Bristol, CT: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), 66–73. See also Peretz Ben Moshe Smolenskin, Me’ah mikhtavim, ed. R. Brainin (in Hebrew; Warsaw: Ha-­t sefirah, 1905). Yaacov Shavit and Jehuda Reinharz, Darwin and Some of His Kind: Evolution, Race, Environment and Culture—­Jews Read Darwin, Spencer, Buckle and Renan (in Hebrew; Tel Aviv: Ha-­K ibuts Ha-­Me’uḥad, 2009), 233. 11. Shmuel Feiner, “­Towards a Historical Definition of the Haskalah,” in New Perspectives on the Haskalah, ed. S. Feiner and D. Sorkin (Oxford: Littman, 2004), 184–219, esp. 206–8. 12. Klausner, Historiyah shel ha-­sifrut ha-­‘Ivrit ha-­ḥadashah, 105–8. 13. Peretz Smolenskin, “Petaḥ davar” (Opening manifesto), Ha-­shaḥar 1 (1868): iii. 14. Smolenskin, “Petaḥ davar,” iv–­v.

234

Notes to Pages 140–142

15. Smolenskin, “Petaḥ davar,” v–vi. 16. Shmuel Feiner has shown that Smolenskin pioneered the change from enlightenment to nationalism in the Jewish awareness of the past. Feiner, Haskalah and History: The Emergence of a Modern Jewish Historical Consciousness (Oxford: Littman, 2002), 319–20; and Brenner, Prophets of the Past, 158. 17. Peretz Smolenskin, “Even Yisra’el,” Ha-­shaḥar 1 (1868): 235. 18. Freundlich, Peretz Smolenskin, 134. For Shir’s nationalist approach see Nathan Shifriss, “Shelomo Yehudah Rapoport (Shir), 1790–1867: Torah, Haskalah, Wissenschaft des Judentums, and the Beginning of Modern Jewish Nationalism” (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2011), 328–62. In this study, Shifriss explores Shir’s contribution to Judaic studies and to the rise of Jewish nationalism. Indeed Nahman Krochmal, Shmuel David Luzzatto, and Shlomo Yehudah Rapoport ­were viewed by Zionist scholars as nationalist maskilim as opposed to the “universalist” scholars of the Wissenschaft des Judentums. Yet I do not share the view that Jewish nationalism is in fact evident from the beginning of the nineteenth ­century. The historical context of Eu­rope in the 1860s and 1870s laid the foundations for the rise of Jewish nationalism. 19. Feiner, Haskalah and History, 323. 20. Peretz Smolenskin, Ma’amarim, vol. 1 (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Keren Smolenskin, 1925–26), 130–31. In addition, see his letter to David Kaufmann in which he made the distinction between “the main laws” or main religious tenets, such as Shabbat, circumcision, and the Day of Atonement, and “the laws that the most recent rabbinical decisors (poskim) had created without any knowledge or justification.” See Smolenskin, Me’ah mikhtavim, 13. 21. Smolenskin, Ma’amarim, vol. 1, 126–27. 22. Freundlich, Peretz Smolenskin, 158–68. 23. Smolenskin, Ma’amarim, vol. 2, 10. 24. Smolenskin, Ma’amarim, vol. 2, 104. 25. Smolenskin, Ma’amarim, vol. 2, 116, 121. 26. Smolenskin, Ma’amarim, vol. 2, 145–46. 27. On Bialik’s criticism of Judaic studies in Germany, see his letter to the editors of Dvir: “Mikhtav el ha-­‘orkhim,” Dvir 1 (1923): viii–­x iii. See also Gershom Scholem, “Reflections on Modern Jewish Studies,” in Scholem, On the Possibility of Jewish Mysticism in Our Time and Other Essays (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of Amer­i­ca, 1997). 28. Smolenskin, Ma’amarim, vol. 2, 234–36. This was Smolenskin’s general opinion regarding scholars of Judaic studies in Germany. Apart from isolated individuals such as Leopold Zunz (1794–1886), whom he very much admired, he considered the vast majority of scholars to be assimilated Jews who had abandoned their ­people. 29. Smolenskin, Ma’amarim, vol. 2, 236 n. 1. Smolenskin’s criticism regarded the entire book and particularly volume 11, which was published in 1868. Heinrich Graetz, Geschichte der Juden: Von den ältesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart, 11 vols. (Berlin: Arani-­Verrlag, 1998 [Leipzig, 1908]). See also Reuven Michael, “Vorwort,” in Graetz, Geschichte der Juden vol. 1, i–­x xxv; Michael, Hirsh (Heinrich) Graetz: The Historian of the Jewish ­People (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Bialik Institute and Leo Baeck Institute, 2003), 89–93. 30. Smolenskin, Ma’amarim, vol. 4, 90–91 (my emphasis). 31. Smolenskin, Ma’amarim, vol. 4, 92–93. 32. The use of death and burial meta­phors is most evident in the article of the Zionist scholar Osias Thon, “Das Prob­lem der jüdischen Wissenschaft,” Jüdischer Almanach (1903), 183–89, esp. 185.



Notes to Pages 142–145

235

33. Gershom Scholem, “Reflections on Modern Jewish Studies,” in Scholem, On the Possibility, 57. See Brenner, Prophets of the Past, 163–71; and Ronny Miron, The Angel of Jewish History: The Image of the Jewish Past in the Twentieth ­Century (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2014), 117–18. 34. Steven J. Zipperstein, “Between Tribalism and Utopia: Ahad Ha‘am and the Making of Jewish Cultural Politics,” Modern Judaism 13, no. 3 (1993): 231–47; and Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha’am and the Origins of Zionism (London: P. Halban, 1993), 105–6. 35. Ahad Ha’am’s essays, translated into En­glish and German: Achad Ha’am: Am Scheidewege, vol. 1, trans. Israel Friedlaender (Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1913); Ahad Ha’am, Selected Essays, trans. Leon Simon (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication of Amer­i­c a, 1912); and Richard  J.  H. Gottheil, Zionism (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of Amer­i­c a, 1914), 181–97. 36. Ḥibat Tsiyon (Lovers of Zion) was the first Jewish national movement. See Yossi Goldstein, We ­Were First: A History of Hibat Zion, 1881–1918 (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2015), 38–63. 37. Yosef Salmon, Do Not Provoke Providence: Orthodoxy in the Grip of Nationalism (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2014), 213–26. See also Shmuel Tchernowitz, “Bene Moshe” u-­tekufatam (in Hebrew; Warsaw: Hatsfirah, 1904). For harsh criticism of Ahad Ha’am see Ben Avigdor, “Ahad Ha’am u-­‘Vene Mosheh’,” Netivot 1 (1913): 238–90. See Yossi Goldstein, “ ‘Benei Moshe’: The Tale of a Secret Order” (in Hebrew), Zion 57 (1992): 175–205. 38. Ahad Ha’am, Pirke zikhronot ve-­igrot (Tel Aviv: Bet Ahad Ha’am, 1931), 11. 39. Yitzhak Baer, Meḥkarim u-­masot be-­toldot ‘am Yisra’el (Studies in the History of the Jewish ­People), vol. 1 (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Historical Society of Israel, 1986), 20. 40. Baer, Meḥkarim u-­masot, 2; and see the terms that the historians Baer and Dinur used in relating to the historical continuance of the Jewish ­people. Conforti, Past Tense, 167–72. 41. For an analy­sis of the philosophical foundations of Ahad Ha’am’s theoretical method, see Aryeh Simon and Yosef Eliyahu Heler, Ahad Ha’am: Ha-­ish, po‘alo, ve-­torato (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1956), 127–247; and Yehiel Alfred Gottschalk, Aḥad Ha’am and the Jewish National Spirit (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Hassifriya Haẓiyonit, 1992). 42. Shavit and Reinhartz, Darwin and Some of His Kind. The entire volume is very useful for understanding the development of the Zionist ethnic approach. For Spencer’s influence on Jewish thought, see esp. 103–52. On Henry Thomas Buckle (1821–62) see 153–90. 43. Shavit and Reinhartz, Darwin and Some of His Kind, 139–47. 44. Herbert Spencer, Essays: Scientific, Po­liti­cal and Speculative (New York: William and Norgate, 1864), 143–84; and Gottschalk, Aḥad Ha-­am, 58–76. 45. Ahad Ha’am, “Ḥeshbon ha-­nefesh,” in Kaveret (Odessa: A. Duchna, 1890), 14–15. 46. Ahad Ha’am, Kol kitve Ahad Ha’am (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1947), 81. 47. Spencer, Essays, 143–84; and Gottschalk, Aḥad Ha-­am, 103–6, relying on the approach of Ernest Renan (1823–92) and John Stuart Mill (1806–73). 48. Ahad Ha’am, Kol kitve Ahad Ha’am, 82. 49. Frankel, “Assimilation and the Jews,” 1–2. 50. Despite the differences between them, Dubnow saw Ahad Ha’am as an impor­tant scholar, as evidenced by Dubnow’s letter trying to convince him to take part in the Jewish Encyclopedia in the Rus­sian language. Ahad Ha’am Archive, Jerusalem, ARC 4*791, file 260. 51. Wissotzky supported many of Ahad Ha’am’s activities. See Yossi Goldstein, Ahad Ha’am (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Keter, 1992), 330–31. Goldstein, We W ­ ere First, 206–30.

236

Notes to Pages 145–148

52. See Leon Simon, Ahad Ha-­Am, Asher Ginzberg: A Biography (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of Amer­i­ca, 1960), 118–19; Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet, 113–16; and Adam Rubin, “Jewish Nationalism and the Encyclopaedic Imagination: The Failure (and Success) of Ahad Ha’am’s Otsar Hayahadut,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 3, no. 3 (November 2004): 247–67. 53. See Robert Darnton, The ­Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic, 1984), chap. 4. 54. Ahad Ha’am, Kol kitve Ahad Ha’am, 105. 55. Ahad Ha’am, Kol kitve Ahad Ha’am, 105. 56. The Jewish Encyclopedia, ed. Isidore Singer (New York: Funk and Wagnall, 1901–5). 57. Ahad Ha’am, Kol kitve Ahad Ha’am, 104. The publishers ­were not Jews, but the editor Isidore Singer and most of the writers ­were. 58. Ahad Ha’am, Kol kitve Ahad Ha’am, 106; and Rubin, “Jewish Nationalism,” 252. 59. Ahad Ha’am, Kol kitve Ahad Ha’am, 106. 60. The program appears in Ahad Ha’am, Kol kitve Ahad Ha’am, 113–14; and in Otsar ha-­Yahadut: Sample Booklet (in Hebrew; Warsaw: Achiasaf, 1906), 18–19. 61. Ahad Ha’am, Kol kitve Ahad Ha’am, 113. 62. Ahad Ha’am, Kol kitve Ahad Ha’am, 113–14. 63. See Ahad Ha’am Archive, Jerusalem, ARC 4*791, file 1873, file 1902. 64. Otsar ha-­Yahadut: Sample Booklet, iii–iv. 65. Ali Mohamed Abd El-­Rahman Attia, The Hebrew Periodical Ha-­shiloaḥ (1896–1919): Its Role in the Development of Modern Hebrew Lit­er­a­ture (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1991), 40–42; and Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet, 115–16. 66. Yehoshua Barzilai, Ha-shiloaḥ, 1896–­1927 (Bibliography) (in Hebrew; Tel Aviv: General Organ­ization of Workers in the Land of Israel, 1964), 131–61. 67. Ahad Ha’am, “Te‘udat ha-­shiloaḥ,” Ha-­shiloaḥ 1 (1897): 3. See also Attia, Hebrew Periodical Ha-­Shiloah, 188. 68. Ahad Ha’am, “Te‘udat ha-­shiloaḥ,” 3–5. 69. For the dispute between Ahad Ha’am and the “young” writers see Micha Josef Berdyczewski, “Mikhtav el ha-­korekh,” Ha-­shiloaḥ 3 (1898): 183–86; Avner Holtzman, Micha Josef Berdyczewski (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 2011), 103–31; and Dan Miron, When Loners Come Together: A Portrait of Hebrew Lit­er­a­ture at the Turn of the Twentieth ­Century (in Hebrew; Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1987), 23–111. 70. Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet: 122–23; and Simon, Ahad Ha-­Am, 127–49. 71. The full article was published in the first volume in 3 parts: Ha-­shiloaḥ 1 (1897): 24– 37, 101–16, 197–210. 72. ­These books ­were published in many editions and ­were also translated into En­glish: Jacques Basnage, History of the Jews from the Time of Jesus Christ to the Pre­sent Time (London: T. Bever and B. Lintot, 1708); Heinrich Ewald, History of Israel (London: Longmans Green, 1883); and Ernest Renan, History of the P ­ eople of Israel (London: Chapman and Hall, 1891). 73. Simon Bernfeld, Sefer ha-­dema‘ot, 3 vols. (in Hebrew; Berlin: Eshkol, 1924–26). The citation appears in vol. 1, p. 77. On Bernfeld and his book see Ma­ya Shabbat, “History, a Tool in the Hands of an Essay Writer: The Historiography of Simon Bernfeld (1860–1940)” (in Hebrew; PhD diss., Tel Aviv University, 2016), 283–301. 74. Yitzhak Baer, Galut (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1980; originally published in German, 1936); and Ben-­Zion Dinur, “Exiles and Destruction,” in Historical Writings, vol. 4 (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Dinur Center, 1978), 175–92.



Notes to Pages 148–151

237

75. Salo W. Baron, “Ghetto and Emancipation: ­Shall We Revise the Traditional View?” Menorah 14 (1928): 515–26. Baron’s stand was formulated in his book A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 3 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937). See also Yitzhak Baer’s criticism of Baron’s approach in “The Religious and Social History of the Jews: Remarks Concerning S. Baron’s New Book,” Zion 3 (1938): 277–99; and Yitzhak Conforti, “State or Diaspora: Jewish History as a Form of National Belonging,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 15, no. 2 (2015): 230–50. 76. Bernfeld, Sefer ha-­dema‘ot, vol. 1, 77. 77. See Barzilai, Ha-­shiloaḥ 1897–1927, 1–­64. 78. Eventually, Klausner became one of the found­ers and first professors of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. See Shaul Katz, “ ‘Pure Science’ in a National University: The Einstein Institute of Mathe­matics and Other Research Institutes at the Hebrew University During Its Formative Years,” in The History of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, vol. 1, Origins and Beginnings, ed. S. Katz and M. Heyd (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1997), 456d–­f. 79. Shavit and Reinhartz, Darwin and Some of His Kind, 52–53, 147, 155. 80. Joseph Klausner, “Megamatenu,” Ha-­shiloaḥ 11 (1903): 1–10. See also Ahad Ha’am, “Mikhtav el ha-­‘orekh,” Ha-­shiloaḥ 11 (1903): 11–15. 81. Haim Nahman Bialik, “Le-­A had Ha’am,” Ha-­shiloaḥ 11 (1903): 93–95. 82. Avner Holtzman, H. N. Bialik (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 2009), 13. 83. Israel Bartal, Cossack and Bedouin: Land and ­People in Jewish Nationalism (in Hebrew; Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2007), 98–108. On Bialik’s interest in Sephardic lit­er­a­t ure, see Noah S. Gerber, Ourselves or Our Holy Books? The Cultural Discovery of Yemenite Jewry (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2013), 145–50; and Amos Noy, “The Emergence of Ethnographic Practices Within the Sephardic and Mizrahi Intelligent­sia in Late-­Ottoman Early-­ Mandatory Jerusalem” (in Hebrew; PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2014), 126–37. 84. Tsafi Sebba-­Elran, “From Sefer Ha-­Aggadah to the ‘Jewish Bookcase’: The Aggadah Anthologies and Their Place in the Molding of Judaism in Hebrew Culture” (in Hebrew; PhD diss., Tel Aviv University, 2009), 260–77. 85. Adam M. Rubin, “Like a Necklace of Black Pearls Whose String Has Snapped: Bialik’s Aron Ha-­Sefarim and the Sacralization of Zionism,” Prooftexts 28, no. 2 (2008): 157–96. See also Dan Miron, Come, Night: Studies in the Works of H. N. Bialik and M. Y. Berdichewski (in Hebrew; Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1987), 125–89, esp. 187–89. 86. Haim Nahman Bialik, The Hebrew Book, trans. Minnie Halkin (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1951), 7. 87. Leopold Zunz, “Etwas über die rabbinische Litteratur (1818),” in Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Zunzstiftung, vol. 1 (Berlin: Louis Gerschel Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1875), 1–31. Schorsch, From Text to Context, chap. 11. 88. Bialik, Hebrew Book, 10. Bialik used the Hebrew term ḥatimah and not the En­glish term canonization as it appears in the translation ­here. He was referring to the ingathering of Jewish sources only. 89. Bialik, Hebrew Book, 32. 90. See also Ahad Ha’am, Kol kitve Ahad Ha’am, 82. 91. Bialik, Hebrew Book, 33. 92. Bialik, Hebrew Book, 34. 93. David Frishman, “Ba-­derekh,” Ha-­tsfirah 258 (November 28, 1913): 2. Zvi Auerbach, “Lifne ‘aron ha-­sefarim,” Revivim 5 (1914): 120–27.

238

Notes to Pages 151–158

94. Ben Zion Dinur, “Bialik’s Plans” (in Hebrew), Keneset 9 (1944): 18. 95. Ben Zion Dinaburg, Yisra’el ba-­golah (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1926–39); and Ariel Rein, “A Historian in the Building of the Nation: The Emergence of Ben Zion Dinur and His Enterprise in the Yishuv (1884–1948)” (in Hebrew; PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2001), 97–105. 96. Ismar M. Elbogen, Jacob Nahum Epstein, and Naftali Hertz Torczyner, “Le-­petiḥat sha‘are ha-­dvir,” Dvir 1 (in Hebrew; 1923): v. 97. Smolenskin, “Petaḥ davar,” v (my emphasis). 98. Bialik, “Mikhtav el ha-­‘orkhim,” ix. 99. Bialik, “Mikhtav el ha-­‘orkhim,” xi. 100. Haim Nahman Bialik, Divre Bialik ‘al ha-­Universitah ha-­‘Ivrit (Jerusalem: Azriel, 1935), 4. 101. Bialik, Divre Bialik, 5. 102. Bialik, Divre Bialik, 4, 8. 103. Bartal, Cossack and Bedouin, 107. 104. Shmuel Werses, “Joseph Klausner and the Beginnings of Teaching Modern Hebrew Lit­er­a­ture at the Hebrew University,” in Katz and Heyd, eds., History of the Hebrew University 487–515; and David N. Myers, “Was ­There a ‘Jerusalem School’? An Inquiry into the First Generation of Historical Researchers at the Hebrew University,” Studies in Con­temporary Jewry 10 (1994): 61–91.

chapter 8 In memory of Kavita S. Datla, 1975–2017 1. Goitein to Glatt, March 18, 1964, National Library of Israel (hereafter NLI), ARC 4* 1911 1/35. 2. Muhammad Yusufuddin, ed., Oriental and Islamic Studies in World Universities (Hyderabad-­Deccan: Islamic Publications Society, 1955). I ­w ill return to this book below. 3. S. D. Goitein, Jews and Arabs: Their Contacts Through the Ages (New York: Schocken, 1964 [1955]), 127–33 and passim. 4. Goitein, Jews and Arabs, 129. For Steinschneider’s view of Islam see Irene E. Zwiep, “Beyond Orientalism? Steinschneider on Islam, Religion and Plurality,” in Modern Jewish Scholarship on Islam in Context, ed. Ottfried Fraisse (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018). 5. Goitein, Jews and Arabs, 129–30. 6. For another illustration of this approach see S. D. Goitein, Muhammad’s Islam (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1956). 7. I would like to thank my friend Joseph Witztum for this comment. See also S. D. Goitein, “Banu Israil and Their Controversies: A Study in the Qorân” (in Hebrew), Tarbiz 3 (1932): 410, and 410 n. 3. 8. S. D. Goitein, “On Jewish-­A rab Symbiosis” (in Hebrew), Molad 2 (1949): 259–66. For discussion (and criticism) of Goitein’s theory of symbiosis, see Gideon Libson, “Shlomo Dov Goitein’s Research into the Relationship Between the Jewish and Muslim Traditions Through the Prism of His Pre­de­ces­sors and Colleagues,” in Fraisse, ed., Modern Jewish Scholarship on Islam, 145–80, esp.164–66. Interestingly, in Molad his portrayal of the Arab-­Jewish interdependence was more balanced. See also Goitein, “Ha-­tokhen ha-­r uḥani shel ḥinukhenu” (The spiritual content of our education), Luaḥ ha-­arets (1949–50): 93–109.



Notes to Pages 158–161

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9. Shelomo D. Goitein, “Diary,” NLI, ARC 4*1911 2/40. 10. The quote is taken from Yohanan Friedmann, From Zákamenné to Jerusalem (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: self-­published, 2019), 113. See also Hanan Harif and Amit Levy, “ ‘A Complete, Multifaceted Discipline’: The Debate over the History of Jews in Muslim Lands and Its Teaching at the Institute of Jewish Studies and the School of Oriental Studies, 1948–1955” (in Hebrew), in The History of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, ed. U. Revhun and Y. Weiss, vol. 5 (forthcoming). 11. Over the years, many attempts to contact Arab scholars and cooperate with them ­were made by the School of Oriental Studies. In this paper I ­w ill not be able to discuss them. See Amit Levy, “The New East: German-­Jewish Orientalism in Palestine/Israel” (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, forthcoming). On shifts in views of the Arab world in Palestine/Israel, see Gil Eyal, The Disenchantment of the Orient: Expertise in Arab Affairs and the Israeli State (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006). 12. Goitein to Ephraim Avigdor Speiser, December 1955, NLI, ARC 4* 1911 1/1. 13. For a comprehensive discussion of Goitein’s move from Israel to the United States, see Hanan Harif, “A Bridge or a Fortress: S. D. Goitein and the Role of ‘Jewish Arabists’ in the American Acad­emy,” Jewish Social Studies 26, no. 2 (Winter 2021): 68–92. 14. Regarding the establishment of the MAO of Aligarh, see S. K. Bhatnagar, History of the M.A.O. College Aligarh (Bombay: Sir Syed Hall Aligarh Muslim University by Asia Publishing House, 1969). 15. Josef Horovitz, Indien unter britischer Herrschaft (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1928). On Horovitz in Aligarh and his criticism of British imperialism see Ruchama Johnston-­Bloom, “Oriental Studies and Jewish Questions” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2013), 135–37, 183– 92. See also Hanan Harif, “The Orient Between Arab and Jewish National Revivals: Josef Horovitz, S. D. Goitein and Oriental Studies in Jerusalem,” in Fraisse, ed., Modern Jewish Scholarship on Islam, 319–35. 16. On Horovitz and his role in the establishment of Brit Shalom see Aharon Kedar, “History of Brit Shalom, 1925–28” (in Hebrew), in Studies in the History of Zionism, ed. Yehuda Bauer, Moshe Davis, and Israel Kolatt (Jerusalem: Zionist Library, 1976), 224–85. 17. Josef Horovitz (and Jesaias Press), “Zur jüdisch-­a rabischen Frage,” Der Orden Bne Briss: Mitteilungen der Großloge für Deutschland 8, no. 2 (1930): 33. 18. Ruchama Johnston-­Bloom, “ ‘Dieses wirklich westöstlichen Mannes’: The German-­ Jewish Orientalist Josef Horovitz in Germany, India and Palestine,” in The Muslim Reception of Eu­ro­pean Orientalism: Reversing the Gaze, ed. S. Heschel and U. Ryad (London: Routledge, 2019), 170. Following Angelika Neuwirth and Susannah Heschel, Johnston-­Bloom also underlines Horovitz’s interest in the inner developments and “agency” of the Qur’an and less in external influences. 19. Johnston-­Bloom, “ ‘Dieses wirklich westöstlichen Mannes,’ ” 173–74. 20. On Marmaduke Pickthall see Peter Clark, Marmaduke Pickthall: British Muslim (London: Quartet, 1986). 21. Mohammad Siddique Seddon, “Pickthall’s Anti-­European Dissent: The Politics of Religious Conversion,” in Marmaduke Pickthall: Islam and the Modern World, ed. Geoffrey P. Nash (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 93. 22. Clark, Marmaduke Pickthall, 61–62; and Eric Lewis Beverley, Hyderabad, British India and the World: Muslim Networks and Minor Sovereignty c. 1850–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 23. Syed Ameer Ali, “The Modernity of Islam,” Islamic Culture 1 (1927): 1–5.

240

Notes to Pages 162–169

24. Ali, “Modernity of Islam,” 5. 25. See Muhammad Asad, The Princi­ples of State and Government in Islam (Kuala Lampur: Islamic Book Trust, 1980 [first published 1961 by University of California Press]). 26. Muhammad Asad, The Road to Mecca (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954). 27. Muhammad Asad, The Message of the Qur’an (Gibraltar: Dar al-­A ndalus, 1980); and Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Qur’an (Hyderabad-­Deccan: Government Central Press, 1930). 28. See Abraham Rubin, “Muhammad Asad’s Conversion to Islam as a Case Study in Jewish Self-­Orientalization,” Jewish Social Studies 22, no. 1 (2016): 1–28. 29. Muhammad Yusufuddin, ed., Oriental and Islamic Studies in World Universities (Hyderabad-­Deccan: Islamic Publications Society, 1955), xiii. 30. Rahimuddin, “Foreword,” in Yusufuddin, ed., Oriental and Islamic Studies, x. 31. Rahimuddin, “Foreword,” xi (author’s emphasis). 32. Kavita S. Datla, The Language of Secular Islam: Urdu Nationalism and Colonial India (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2013). 33. Datla, Language of Secular Islam, 166. The similarities to the Hebrew University, the flagship of “cultural Zionism” that was established seven years ­a fter Osmania University, are striking; a comparative study of Urdu and modern Hebrew as “secularized” languages and of ­these two academic institutions in par­tic­u­lar still awaits. 34. Datla, Language of Secular Islam, 165. 35. See Mushirul Hasan and Rakhshanda Jalil, Partners in Freedom: Jamia Millia Islamia (New Delhi: Niyogi, 2006). 36. On his relations with Tagore see Hashim Amir Ali, “Three Years with Tagore,” Visvabharati Quarterly 15, no. 3 (Winter 1937): ix–­x iv. 37. Hashim Amir Ali, “Social Change in the Hyderabad State in India as Affected by the Influence of Western Culture” (PhD diss., Cornell University, 1929). 38. S. D. Goitein to Hashim Amir Ali, February 25, 1964, NLI, ARC 4* 1911 1 33. 39. Hashim Amir Ali, The Student’s Qur’an: An Introduction (Hyderabad-­Deccan: Shalimar, 1959). 40. Hashim Amir Ali to S. D. Goitein, March 12, 1964, NLI, ARC 4* 1911 1 33. 41. Mirza Abul Fazl, The Qur’an: Arabic Text and En­glish Translation Arranged Chronologically with an Abstract (Allahabad, India: G. A. Asghar, 1911). 42. Hashim Amir Ali, The Message of the Qur’an Presented in Perspective (Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, 1974), 20. 43. Ali, Message of the Qur’an, 73. 44. The other three contributors ­were Fazlur Rahman, visiting the Institute from McGill University; the Palestinian Ismaʻīl Rājī al-­Fārūqī, also at the Institute, formerly at McGill, and ­later at Chicago, Syracuse, and ­Temple Universities; and Muhammad Rashid Feroze, a local se­nior research fellow. All three published also in the next issue. 45. “Introducing the Journal,” Islamic Studies: Journal of the Central Institute of Islamic Research Karachi 1, no.1 (1962): 1. 46. Bazmee Ansari to S.D. Goitein, April 15, 1963, NLI, ARC 4* 1911 1/23. 47. S. D. Goitein to Bazmee Ansari, April 23, 1963, NLI, ARC 4* 1911 1/23. 48. S. D. Goitein, “Between Hellenism and Re­nais­sance: Islam, the Intermediate Civilization,” Islamic Studies 2 (1963): 225–26. 49. S. D. Goitein, Studies in Islamic History and Institutions (Leiden: Brill, 1966), 63. Another omission of a few passages in the ­later version was suggested by Goitein to Ansari, but



Notes to Pages 170–174

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Ansari left ­these passages in (see the first version, 218–19). Another passage was added in the ­later version (see Goitein, Studies in Islamic History, 59) in light of new discoveries in the field of Arabic translation from Greek. 50. Harif, “A Bridge or a Fortress.” 51. S. D. Goitein, “The Humanistic Aspects of Oriental Studies,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 9 1987: 1–12. This article was originally published in 1982. 52. Goitein, “Humanistic Aspects,” 5. 53. Goitein, “Humanistic Aspects,” 6. The publications u ­ nder discussion w ­ ere H. Mason, R. Nettler, J. Waardenburg, and M. Swartz, eds., Humaniora Islamica: An Annual Publication of Islamic Studies and the Humanities (The Hague: Mouton, 1973); and L. ­Binder, The Study of the ­Middle East: Research and Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences (New York: Wiley, 1976). See also Goitein’s review of the latter in MESA Bulletin 11 (1977): 35–36. 54. Goitein, “Humanistic Aspects,” 11.

chapter 9 1. Saul Lieberman, Yemenite Midrashim: A Lecture on the Yemenite Midrashim, Their Character and Value (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Bamberger and Wahrmann, 1940), 3 n. 1. Note that in this publication his name is spelled Liebermann. See also Anthony David Skinner, The Patron: A Life of Salman Schocken 1877–1959 (New York: Schocken, 2004). 2. On the transfer of the library from Nazi Germany see Stefanie Mahrer, “Much More Than Just Another Private Collection: The Schocken Library and Its Rescue from Nazi Germany in 1935,” Naharaim 9 (2015): 4–24. On its institutional history and cultural functions in Jerusalem see Zilkah Sheffer, “The History of Salman Schocken’s Book Collecting with an Emphasis on the Hebrew Books” (MA thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1995). 3. Saul Liebermann, “On Two Manuscripts,” Kiryat sefer 13 (1936–37): 105. The final part of Lieberman’s Tosefta ki-­fshutah, on the first three tractates of the order Nezikin, which appeared posthumously, drew considerably from a Schocken manuscript. Lieberman also contributed to the Schocken festschrift. See Lieberman, “Keles kilusin,” in ‘Ale ‘ayin: Minḥat devarim li-­Shelomoh Zalman Schoken aḥarei melo’ot lo shiv‘im shanah (Jerusalem: Haaretz, 1948– 52), 75–81. 4. Shai Agnon and S. Z. Schocken: Exchange of Letters 1917–1959 (Jerusalem: Schocken, 1991). See also Yaron Ben Naeh and Noah S. Gerber, “Libraries and Book Collections of Ottoman Jews: The Case of Late Ottoman Jerusalem” (in Hebrew), Sefunot 26 (2019): 367–68. 5. Noah S. Gerber, Ourselves or Our Holy Books? The Cultural Discovery of Yemenite Jewry (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2013). 6. Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Life and Manners of Jewish Palestine in the II–­I V Centuries C.E. (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of Amer­i­ca, 1942), preface. 7. See Lieberman, Yemenite Midrashim, 39. 8. Lieberman, Yemenite Midrashim, 27. 9. For some mainly English-­language assessments of his ­career and scholarship, see Meir Lubietzki, ed., Saul Lieberman (1898–1983): Talmudic Scholar (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2002). On his Hebrew University years see also Elijah J. Schochet and Solomon Spiro, Saul Lieberman: The Man and His Work (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of Amer­i­ca, 2005), 7–11.

242

Notes to Pages 174–176

10. Ari Yitzhak Shvat, “Rav Kook’s Connections with Prof. Rav Shaul Lieberman as an Example of the Former’s Attitude to Torah Critical Scholarship,” Tsohar 35 (2009): 59–66. See also Asaf Yedidya, Criticized Criticism: Orthodox Alternatives to Wissenschaft des Judentums 1873– 1956 (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 2013), 263–343. Dov Kook, the chief rabbi’s ­brother, was the administrative head of the institute while Lieberman served as dean and director of research. Fischel himself retired to Jerusalem in 1947 and died ­there a year l­ater. 11. Marc Shapiro, Saul Lieberman and the Orthodox (Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 2006). For another, more systematic view see David Golinkin, “Was Professor Saul Lieberman ‘Orthodox’ or ‘Conservative’?” Conservative Judaism 65, no. 4 (2014): 13–39. ­W hether Lieberman personally subscribed to the foundational narrative of JTS as an institutional offspring of Zacharias Frankel’s Breslau seminary or to its “positivist-­historical” theological under­pinnings is also still moot. See the review by Kimmy Caplan in Zion 64 (1999): 243–50, of Jack Wertheimer, ed., Tradition Renewed: A History of the Jewish Theological Seminary (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1997). For an alternative to this narrative, see Arthur Kiron, “Heralds of Duty: The Sephardic Italian Jewish Theological Seminary of Sabato Morais,” Jewish Quarterly Review 105 (2015): 206–49. 12. In stark contrast, ­these high honors ­were not bestowed on Shelomo Dov Goitein, the subject of Chapter 8 in this volume, who meanwhile had left the Hebrew University ­a fter some three de­cades for the University of Pennsylvania. 13. See the updated entry on the Schocken Institute in Encyclopedia Judaica, 2nd ed. (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), 18:155. In 1964 a Lieberman protégé, the talmudist Eliezer Shimshon Rosenthal, was appointed research director with a mandate to create an institute of talmudic research. 14. See, for instance, Alexander Marx, “A New Collection of Manuscripts,” Proceedings of the American Acad­emy for Jewish Research 4 (1932–33): 135–67, which Lieberman had already consulted in preparation for his 1939 pre­sen­ta­tion. Evidently, Marx considered Lieberman the last word on the subject of Yemenite midrash. See Alexander Marx, “Dr. Lieberman’s Contribution to Jewish Scholarship,” Proceedings of the Rabbinical Assembly 12 (1948): 265–66. 15. Alexander Marx, Bibliographical Studies and Notes on Rare Books and Manuscripts in the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary (New York: Ktav, 1977), 363; and compare with Lieberman, Yemenite Midrashim, 9. 16. On this (last) chapter in Kohut’s scholarly ­career see Gerber, Ourselves or Our Holy Books?, 73–75. 17. See Saul Lieberman, On the Yerushalmi (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Darom, 1929). 18. On ­t hese conflicting trends see the recent Shmuel Glick and Menahem Katz, “A Threefold Core: On Saul Lieberman and His Relationship with the Hazon Ish and Jacob Nahum Epstein” (in Hebrew), in Mehvah le-­Menahem: Studies in Honor of Menahem Hayyim Schmelzer, ed. Shmuel Glick et al. (Jerusalem: Schocken Institute for Jewish Research, 2019), 269–90, where Lieberman’s final termination from the Hebrew University, which involved Schocken as a pos­si­ble last remedy, is also revisited. Lieberman’s tribute to Chaim Grade was translated and introduced by Allan Nadler as “Chaim Grade: A Testimony,” in the spring 2017 issue of the Jewish Review of Books. Evidently it was Lieberman’s ­brother who first brought Grade’s work to his attention. 19. On Saul Khone Kook, see Yedidya, Criticized Criticism, 327 n. 18. 20. This publication is cited in the Lieberman bibliography assembled by Tovia Preschel in Shamma Friedman, ed., Saul Lieberman Memorial Volume (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1993), 3, item 2.



Notes to Pages 176–179

243

21. On Elmaleh and his journal see Amos Noy, Experts or Witnesses? Jewish Intelligent­sia from Jerusalem and the Levant in the Beginning of the 20th ­Century (in Hebrew; Tel Aviv: Resling, 2017), 125–77; and Michelle Campos, “Mizrach Uma’arav (East and West): A Sephardi Cultural and Po­liti­cal Proj­ect in Post-­Ottoman Jerusalem,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 16 (2017): 332–48. 22. On this exchange see Gerber, Ourselves or Our Holy Books?, 150–51. 23. See Chapter 7 in this volume. 24. See David N. Myers, “ ‘Distant Relatives Happening onto the Same Inn’: The Meeting of East and West as Literary Theme and Cultural Ideal,” Jewish Social Studies 2, no. 1 (1995): 75–100. Relevant, of course, to how this ideal took root in Mandatory Palestine is Myers, Re-­Inventing the Jewish Past: Eu­ro­pean Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). 25. See Gerber, Ourselves or Our Holy Books?, 147–50, with an emphasis on Yemenite Jewry as a case study. On the Zionist anthological proj­ect see Israel Bartal, “The Kinnus Proj­ect: Wissenschaft des Judentums and the Fashioning of a ‘National Culture’ in Palestine,” in Transmitting Jewish Traditions: Orality, Textuality and Cultural Diffusion, ed. Yaakov Elman and Israel Gershoni (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 310–23. See also Chapter 7 in this volume. 26. For a dif­fer­ent interpretation, which considers the Semitic East as part of the equation, see Hanan Harif, “Islam in Zion? Yosef Yo’el Rivlin’s Translation of the Qur’an and Its Place Within the New Hebrew Culture,” Naharaim 10 (2016): 39–55. 27. See Saul Lieberman, “Hilkhot Teman,” in Yahadut Teman: Pirke meḥkar ve-­‘iyun, ed. Yisrael Yishayahu and Yosef Tobi (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-­Zvi, 1975), 349. 28. Gerber, Ourselves or Our Holy Books?, 35. 29. On this prob­lem see Martin S. Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism 200 BCE–400 CE (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). More recently see Yaacov Sussmann, Oral Law, Taken Literally: The Power of the Tip of a Yod (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Magnes, 2019). 30. See the entry on Yalon (originally Distenfeld) in Encyclopedia Judaica, 21: 276–77. What made Yalon and Lieberman kindred spirits was not Yemenite issues but the unfair treatment both had received from the local academic establishment on Mt. Scopus. Fittingly, Lieberman edited Yalon’s festschrift. See Saul Lieberman et al., eds., Sefer Hanoch Yalon: A Collection of Articles (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Kiryat Sefer, 1963), esp. pp. 338–39, for the moving appreciation of Yalon articulated by Yitzhak Shavtiel (originally Damti), his leading Yemenite disciple. Together with Lieberman, Yalon received belated academic recognition for his work in the form of an honorary degree from the Hebrew University in 1962 (as well as an Israel Prize that same year). For a rare and veiled reference to the way he had been treated by the Jerusalem academic community, see the comments of Yechezkel Kutscher in Isadore Twersky et al., eds., Jewish Studies in American Universities (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Institute of Con­temporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1971), 45–46. 31. On Goitein in this context see Gerber, Ourselves or Our Holy Books?, 153–54, 194–97. Admittedly, as the mass exodus of Yemenite Jewry unfolded in 1949, Goitein’s Yemenite pursuits broadened and became more charged, ultimately peaking sometime before his 1957 departure for the United States. See Tom Fogel, “S. D. Goitein’s Yemenite Research” (in Hebrew; PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2019). On Goitein’s evolution as an Orientalist see Chapter 8 in this volume. In contrast, Rivlin’s scholarly pursuit of Kurdish Jewry has received much less attention. See Simon Hopkins, “The Jews of Kurdistan in the Land of Israel and Their Language,” Peamim 56 (1991): 59.

244

Notes to Pages 179–180

32. See S. D. Goitein, “The Yemenite Jews in the Israel Amalgam,” in Israel: Its Role in Civilization, ed. Moshe Davis (New York: Seminary Israel Institute of JTS, 1956), 183. I am indebted to Dr. Menashe Anzi for identifying this par­tic­u­lar synagogue. 33. See Claire Davidson, Out of Endless Yearnings: A Memoir of Israel Davidson (New York: Bloch, 1946), 133–34. 34. See Daniel Persky, “The Worker’s Seder in Tel Aviv,” in The Holidays of Israel in Their Sanctity and Laughter (New York: D. Persky, 1947), 269. 35. Interestingly, more has been written about the Yemenite domestic than her male counterpart in this context. See Bat Sheva Margalit-­Stern, “ ‘Exemplary Female Comrades’: Yemenite ­Women in Eretz Israel Between Gender, Social Class and Ethnic Origin in the ­Labor Movement (1920–1945),” Cathedra 118 (2006): 115–44. 36. See Mirjam Zadoff and Noam Zadoff, “Gershom Scholem and Reuven Brainin Get a Haircut in Jerusalem” (in Hebrew), Haaretz, literary section, November 17, 2017, 1. A partial En­glish translation appears in Mirjam Zadoff and Noam Zadoff, eds., Scholar and Kabbalist: The Life and Work of Gershom Scholem (Leiden: Brill, 2018), viii. The more correct and local form for a Yemenite domestic is Temaniyah. 37. Menahem Levin, “And Served Him as a Torch: Yihye Nahari,” Et–­Mol 236 (2014): 7. See also the memoirs of Eliezer Smoli, Gold in Jerusalem (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Zmora Bitan, 1980). (I thank Professor Elhanan Reiner for this reference.) On the issue of Mizrahi Jews (including Yemenites) vis-­à-­vis Palestinians during the Mandate era, see Abigail Jacobson and Moshe Naor, Oriental Neighbors: M ­ iddle Eastern Jews and Their Arab Neighbors in Mandatory Palestine (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2016). 38. Fittingly, Rivlin mentioned this at the beginning of an essay he contributed to Yel­ lin’s festschrift. See Joseph I. Rivlin, “Tsava’at Muḥamad le-­‘Ali ben Abi Talab,” in Minḥah le-­David: Kovets ­ma’amarim be-­ḥokhmat Yisra’el, ed. Ben-­Zion Dinaburg et al. (Jerusalem: David Yellin Jubilee Committee and Rubin Mass, 1935), 139. On Yellin’s own profitable contacts with the Yemenite Jewish community in Jerusalem, dating back to the late nineteenth ­century, see Gerber, Ourselves or Our Holy Books?, 142, 146. 39. On Scholem in this context, especially by way of comparison with Goitein, with whom he had immigrated to Palestine in August 1923, see Gerber, Ourselves or Our Holy Books?, 151–54. 40. Aviad Hacohen, “Hatana Mi-­New York: From the Correspondence of Saul Lieberman,” Jewish Studies 42 (2003–4): 289–301. 41. See Yaacob Dweck, “Gershom Scholem in Amer­i­ca,” New German Critique 132 (2017): 69, and the lit­er­a­t ure cited ­there. For a play on this mythical statement regarding Scholem’s “Messianic Idea in Judaism,” see Jacob Taubes, “The Price of Messianism,” Journal of Jewish Studies 33 (1982): 597. Regarding Taubes on Lieberman see Jerry Z. Muller, “I Am Impossible: An Exchange Between Jacob Taubes and Arthur A. Cohen,” in the Summer 2017 edition of the Jewish Review of Books. 42. Pinchas Giller, Shalom Sharabi and the Kabbalists of Beit El (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 43. Jonatan Meir, Kabbalistic Circles in Jerusalem 1896–1948 (Leiden: Brill, 2016). For an appreciation of the ethnic fluidity that distinguished ­these institutions, see Eliezer Baumgarten, “Between the Scholem River and the Streets of the River: The Circulation of Kabbalah in Jerusalem” (in Hebrew), Peamim 133–34 (2013): 291–96. 44. See esp. Meir, Kabbalistic Circles in Jerusalem, chap. 1, “The Last Kabbalists.” 45. Although the relationship between the two was tense when it came to sharing scholarly material (especially reproductions of the Leiden manuscript of the Jerusalem



Notes to Pages 180–183

245

Talmud), Lieberman might have first discovered the usefulness of Midrash ha-­gadol thanks to Epstein, his Hebrew University mentor. See J. N. Epstein, “Le-­mishnat Rabbi Eliezer ben Rabbi Yossi Hagalili,” Tarbiz 4 (1933): 343–52. 46. On the early scholarly reception of Midrash ha-­gadol, see Gerber, Ourselves or Our Holy Books?, 71–75. 47. For how denominational differences played out in the nineteenth-­century critical study of midrash generally, which to my mind played no role in the case of Yemenite midrash per se, see Jay M. Harris, How Do We Know This? Midrash and the Fragmentation of Modern Judaism (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995). 48. Solomon Schechter, “The Beginnings of Jewish Wissenschaft,” Seminary Addresses and Other Papers (Cincinnati: Ark, 1910), 193. For the following account of how Shapira and ­others in his wake acquired and traded in Yemenite manuscripts, see Gerber, Ourselves or Our Holy Books?, 56–70. On Shapira’s ­career and downfall as a forger see Chanan Tigay, The Lost Book of Moses: The Hunt for the World’s Oldest Bible (New York: Ecco, 2016). Also see Merav Mack and Benjamin Balint, Jerusalem: City of the Book (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019), 126–32. 49. On Deutsch see Chapter 3 in this volume. More generally see Christian Wiese, “Translating Wissenschaft: The Emergence and Self-­Emancipation of American Jewish Scholarship 1860–1920,” in American Jewry: Transcending the Eu­ro­pean Experience?, ed. Wiese and Cornelia Wilhelm (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 185–212. On Kohut see Howard N. Lupovitch, “Navigating Through Rough ­Waters: Alexander Kohut and the Hungarian Roots of Conservative Judaism,” AJS Review 32 (2008): 49–78. On Schechter see Ismar Schorsch, “Schechter’s Indebtedness to Zunz,” Jewish Historical Studies 48 (2016): 9–16. On his emergence as a textual critic of rabbinic lit­er­a­t ure see Yaacov Sussmann, “Schechter the Scholar” (in Hebrew), Jewish Studies 38 (1998): 214–30. For a monographic assessment of his ­career in both ­England and the United States, see David B. Starr, “Catholic Israel: Solomon Schechter, A Study of Jewish Unity and Fragmentation in Modern Jewish History” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2003). 50. See the communication by his son, George Alexander Kohut, American Hebrew 60, no. 15 (August 12, 1892): 472–73. 51. See Proceedings of the Third Biennial Convention of the Jewish Theological Seminary Association with an Essay on Manzur al’Dhamari’s Hebrew-­Arabic Commentary on the Pentateuch by Alexander Kohut (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1892); and Alexander Kohut, “Studies in Yemen-­Hebrew Lit­er­a­t ure Part II: Nathanel Ben Yeshaya’s Commentary on the Pentateuch ‫נור אלצלם‬,” in Proceedings of the Fourth Biennial Convention of the Jewish Theological Seminary Association (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1894), 1–136. 52. See Louis Finkelstein, “Fragments of an Unknown Midrash on Deuteronomy,” Hebrew Union College Annual 12–13 (1937–38): 523–57, which Lieberman referenced in his own study a ­couple of years ­later. 53. A. S. W. Rosenbach, “Doctor Alexander Marx: Custodian of Hebrew Trea­sures in Amer­i­ca,” American Scholar 74 (1938): 496. 54. See Alexander Marx, “The Library,” in The Jewish Theological Seminary: Semi-­Centennial Volume, ed. Cyrus Adler (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1939), 110–11. This might very well be the same dealer mentioned in Rosenbach’s piece (see the previous note). 55. See Lieberman, Yemenite Midrashim, 1 n. 2. 56. Lieberman, Yemenite Midrashim, 13 n. 1. Although of no consequence to Lieberman, the association of Yemenite Jewry with the Song of Songs did penetrate the New Hebrew

246

Notes to Pages 183–184

culture of Mandatory Palestine. See, for instance, Yair Liphschitz, “ ‘Why Should You Look upon the Shulamite?’ Theatre, the Pastoral and the Spatialization of the Song of Songs in Zionist Culture,” Theory and Criticism 43 (2014): 157–81. It was also of consequence for how Goitein conceived of the community. See Ilana Pardes, Agnon’s Moonstruck Lovers: The Song of Songs in Israeli Culture (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2013). How much of this had to do with native agency is a separate ­matter. 57. See Lieberman, Yemenite Midrashim, 12; and Lieberman, Ha-­Yerushalmi ki-­fshuto (Jerusalem: Darom, 1935), 520, where the author references his teacher on questions of Yemenite usage only ­a fter giving sufficient textual proof of the same point, which in Yemenite Midrashim is compressed as “from the Lit­er­a­t ure of the Yemenites.” From Epstein’s formulation (“Mi-­d ikduke Yerushalmi,” Tarbiz 5 [1935]: 271), it is clear that he was much more taken with Yemenite agency than was his pupil. Yemenite Passover terminology was not the real bone of contention between the two but rather how to interpret a cryptic term appearing in the Leiden manuscript of the Jerusalem Talmud. See Hillel Gershoni, “Ma hi dukah? Yeshivah ‘al madukhat ḥaroset,” in Shalom Pinhas-­C ohen, ed., ­Under the Hand of Yeḥiel: Studies Dedicated to Yechiel Kara (Kiryat Ono, Israel: Machon Mashah, 2019), 89–96. 58. Lieberman, Yemenite Midrashim, 18, where assistance in this ­matter rendered by Joseph Joel Rivlin is duly acknowledged. Subsequently, Lieberman’s line of argument would inspire another Jerusalem-­born and German-­t rained Jewish Orientalist; see Abraham S. Yahuda, “A Contribution to Qur­a n and Hadith Interpretation,” in Ignace Goldziher Memorial Volume, ed. Samuel Lowinger and Joseph Somogyi, vol. 1 (Budapest, 1948), 280– 308. The deployment of Yemenite Jewry by Jewish and subsequently Zionist scholars of early Islam as a con­ve­n ient transmission ­belt between the two religions is a topic I am pursuing elsewhere. 59. See Lieberman, Yemenite Midrashim, 13–18. 60. For a similar reading of the under­lying theme of Yemenite Midrashim, see the 1948 appreciation by Marx, “Dr. Lieberman’s Contribution,” 265–66. 61. On Kohut in this regard see, for example, Lieberman, Yemenite Midrashim, 18–19 and 39 n. 3. 62. See Saul Lieberman, “Mishnat Shir Ha-­Shirim,” Appendix D, to Gershom  G. Scholem, Jewish Mysticism, Merkabah Mysticism and Talmudic Tradition, 2nd ed. (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1965), 118–26. I have been greatly aided by Alon Goshen-­ Gottstein, “Did the Tannaim Interpret the Song of Songs Systematically? Lieberman Reconsidered,” in Vixens Disturbing Vineyards: Embarrassment and Embracement of Scriptures—­Festschrift in Honor of Harry Fox (le-­Veit Yoreh), ed. Tzemah Yoreh et  al. (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2010), 260–71. 63. See Y. Tzvi Langermann, “Saving the Soul by Knowing the Soul: A Medieval Yemeni Interpretation of the Song of Songs,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 12 (2003): 147–66. In addition see Langermann, Yemenite Midrash: Philosophical Commentaries on the Torah—­An Anthology of Writings from the Golden Age in the Yemen (New York: Harper, 1996), esp. p. xii for the translator’s self-­contrast with Lieberman’s approach. 64. On the authorship of this work see Zion Bar-­Maoz, “Midrash ‘Ḥemdat ha-­yamim’ le-mi?” Te‘uda 26 (2010): 40–46, where further citations are provided. On Shabazi’s poetry see Mark S. Wagner, Like Joseph in Beauty: Yemeni Vernacular Poetry and Arab Jewish Symbiosis (Leiden: Brill, 2009).



Notes to Pages 184–186

247

65. Gershom Scholem, “Perakim mi-­toldot sifrut ha-­k abalah,” Kiryat sefer 5 (1929): 266– 72. Although Scholem does draw on Nadaf ’s expertise in his evaluation, he does so only concerning biographical trivia. 66. See Y. Tzvi Langermann, “Yemenite Philosophical Midrash as a Source for the Intellectual History of the Jews of Yemen,” in The Jews of Medieval Islam, ed. Daniel Frank (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 335–36. For a current approach to how and in what form Kabbalah was transmitted to Yemen, see Eliezer Baumgarten, “Kabbalah and Printing in Yemen: Two Seventeenth-­Century Yemenite Scholars and Kabbalistic Knowledge from Eu­rope,” Peamim 157 (2019): 19–37. 67. See Lieberman, Yemenite Midrashim, 33. 68. On the contrast between medieval Sephardic Jewry and Yemenite Jewry, see Gerber, Ourselves or Our Holy Books?, 74–75. 69. Saul Lieberman, Tosefta ki-­fshutah: A Comprehensive Commentary on the Tosefta, Order Zeraim, Part II (in Hebrew; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1956), 851; see n. 85 where, based on the classic Mishnah commentary Tosafot Yom Tov, Lieberman finds further proof that the seventeenth-­century Shabazi had not made up this detail. On Ibn Shu’eib see Carmi Horo­w itz, The Jewish Sermon in 14th-­Century Spain: A Study of the Derashot of R. Joshua Ibn Shu’eib (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). 70. See Ephraim E. Urbach, “Kilus: ‘Al Lieberman mi-­Lieberman,” in Meḥkarim be-­ sifrut talmudit (Jerusalem: Israel Acad­emy of Sciences, 1983), 10. This volume of proceedings was based on a two-­day conference or­g a­nized by Urbach, then president of the Israel Acad­ emy of Sciences and the Humanities and arguably the most power­f ul figure in Israeli Jewish studies, to mark Lieberman’s eightieth birthday. The title of Urbach’s remarks is a play on a brief essay Lieberman had published in the Salman Schocken festschrift (see note 3 above). Also see Urbach, “Saul Lieberman u-­terumato le-­k lal mada‘e ha-­Yahadut,” in Le-­zikhro shel Saul Lieberman (Jerusalem: Israel Acad­emy of Sciences, 1984), 19. This self-­correction was first noted by Lieberman’s bibliographer, Tovia Preschel, “Mahalakh ḥayav u-­demuto ha-­ ruḥanit shel R. Shaul Lieberman,” Hadoar 42 (1963): 371. 71. Since I plan to deal with Levi Nahum’s strug­gle and strategy over Midrash ha-­gadol elsewhere, I am not including relevant references beyond Yehuda Levi Nahum, Sefer hasifat genuzim me-­Teman (Holon, Israel: Mif ‘al Hasifat Ginze Teman, 1971), 337–85. Yemenite Jews quickly learned to utilize their right to protest as Israeli citizens. See Orit Rozin, A Home for All Jews: Citizenship, Rights and National Identity in the New Israeli State (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2016), 131–34. 72. Lieberman served as a doctoral adviser to the institute’s longtime director, Yitzhak Rafael, his former student at the Hebrew University. Ultimately, he was dragged into a libel suit filed by Rafael over his dissertation. See Geula Rafael, “Ḥaim she-­ka’eleh,” in Sefer Rafa’el, ed. Yosef Eliyahu Moshlevitz (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 2000), 18–19. Lieberman’s JTS affiliation created a prob­lem, however, when in 1957 he was awarded the Rav Kook prize by the municipality of Tel Aviv for Tosefta ki-­fshutah. See “Prof. Saul Lieberman histalek mi-­ Pras ha-­Rav Kook shel Iriyat Tel Aviv,” Hazofeh, October 10, 1957, 3. He received a Bialik Prize in Jewish studies from the same municipality shortly thereafter. 73. On Margaliot as a collector of Yemenite manuscripts see Yosef Tobi, Yemenite Jewish Manuscripts in the Ben-­Zvi Institute (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Yad Ben-­Zvi, 1982), 12. 74. In 1947 a number of individuals, including both Lieberman’s former boss, Dov Kook, and his father-­in-­law, Meir Berlin, enlisted Qafih as a translator of Judeo-­A rabic for a planned

248

Notes to Pages 186–187

edition of Maimonides’ works (Lieberman himself assumed editorial responsibility for the Hebrew-­language Mishneh Torah of which only one volume appeared in 1964). No doubt Qafih’s private manuscript collection was also relevant to his association with the Harry Fischel Institute, where meanwhile he qualified as a dayan (rabbinic judge). Ultimately Qafih became associated with the Rav Kook Institute as well. See Gerber, Ourselves or Our Holy Books?, 191, and further references cited ­t here. Evidently some correspondence between Qafih and Lieberman does exist, but the former’s heirs have so far not made it available for viewing. 75. See, for instance, Netanel ben Isaiah’s Me’or ha-­a felah (nur ‘al zalem), trans. and ed. Joseph Qafih (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Agudah Le-­Hazalat Ginzei Teiman, 1957). Ultimately this merited Qafih a Rav Kook prize. 76. See Gerber, Ourselves or Our Holy Books?, 188–93; and Mack and Balint, Jerusalem: City of the Book, 174–77. See also Yehuda Ratzhabi, “Kina ‘al me’ora’ot Saana bi-­shnat tash”ah,” Yeda‘ ‘Am 49–50 (1982): 99–202, for an example of a manuscript purchased by JTS and subsequently recognized by its former Yemenite ­owners. 77. On the tragedy ­behind the heroic tale of the mass Yemenite aliyah in 1949, see Esther Meir-­Glitzenstein, The Magic Carpet Exodus of Yemenite Jewry: An Israeli Formative Myth (Chicago: Sussex Academic, 2014). Although relatively ­silent on this tragedy, Yemenite Jews eventually become more vocal concerning their missing ­children. See most recently Tovah Gamliel and Natan Shifris, eds., Hebetim ḥadashim be-­ḥeker Yahadut Teman (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2019). 78. Goitein, “Yemenite Jews,” 176–84. On his 1952 visit to the United States as chair of the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Hebrew University, see Goitein, “Bikur mizraḥani be-­A rtsot Ha-­Brit,” Molad 9 (1952): 117–18. 79. Allan Nevins, “The ­Future of Israel,” in Israel: Its Role in Civilization, ed. Moshe Davis (New York: Seminary Israel Institute of JTS, 1956), 220. For more on how established Israelis viewed the masses of Mizrahi Jews in early years of the Jewish state, see Orit Rozin, The Rise of the Individual in 1950s Israel: A Challenge to Collectivism (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2011), 139–61. On how the Yemenite Jewish community, in par­t ic­u ­lar, figured into this “demographic panic,” see Yaron Tsur, “Carnival Fears: Moroccan Immigrants and the Ethnic Prob­lem in the Young State of Israel,” Journal of Israeli History 18, no. 1 (1997): 73–103. 80. Lieberman surely did take notice of the essay preceding his. See Morton Smith, “Palestinian Judaism in the First ­C entury,” in Davis, ed., Israel: Its Role in Civilization, 67–81, followed by Lieberman’s own “Jewish Life in Eretz Yisrael as Reflected in the Palestinian Talmud,” 82–91. Smith had been Scholem’s student at the Hebrew University during World War II and ­later joined Nevins in Columbia University’s history department, from where he would eventually steer a younger generation of JTS men in a dif­fer­ent direction than Lieberman had in evaluating the cultural world of the rabbis. See Steven Fine, Art and Judaism in the Greco-­Roman World: ­Toward a New Jewish Archaeology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 40–42. 81. Moshe Lutzky, “Kol kore’ le-­Yehude Teman la‘alot le-­Erets Yisra’el,” in Yisra’el: Kovetz sifruti mada‘i mukdash le-­Medinat Yisra’el, ed. A. R. Malachi (New York: Schlesinger ­Brothers, 1950), 146–53. 82. In making use of Midrash ha-­gadol in his edition of Tosefta ki-­fshutah, Lieberman used the alternating acronyms of ‫ מדה”ג‬and ‫מה”ג‬. In the case of other JTS manuscripts he usually noted their Yemenite provenance.



Notes to Pages 187–189

249

83. Yisrael Yeshayahu and Yosef Tobi, eds., The Jews of Yemen: Studies and Researches (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Yad Ben-­Zvi, 1975). See note 28 above. ­A fter Ben-­Zvi’s death the original research institute bearing his name became a division within a larger entity, Yad Ben-­Zvi, which published the volume. 84. See Zvi Mayer Rabinowitz, “The Midrashic Works of the Jews of Yemen,” in Yeshayahu and Tobi, eds., Jews of Yemen, 367–72. The very mild criticism of Lieberman appears in the section “The Scientific Value of Yemenite Midrashim.” 85. See Lieberman, “Hilkhot Teman,” 349–55. The dedication in the copy of the Qafih volume available in the Lieberman collection at the Schocken library reads as follows in translation to En­glish: “Honorable Prof. R. Shaul Lieberman, Should you find time not allocated to sacred ­matters, please take a look at my profanities, the author.” 86. On Ratzhabi vs. Qafih, see Gerber, Ourselves or Our Holy Books?, 191–93. Ratzhabi identified the author of one of the Yemenite midrashim, of which Finkelstein had already published fragments. See Yehuda Ratzhabi, “Milu’im le-­ketah mi-­midrash almoni ‘al devarim,” Hebrew Union College Annual 25 (1954): 1–7 (Hebrew section), as well as the introduction to Finkelstein’s republication of his critical edition of Sifre on Deuteronomy (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1969). Ultimately Ratzhabi was involved in cata­loging the JTS Yemenite collection (see note 78 above). 87. See the consecutive chapters authored by Shlomo Swirsky and Alex Weingrod in Handbook of Israel: Major Debates, Vol. 1, Part A: Cleavages, ed. Eliezer Ben-­Rafael et al. (Oldenburg, Germany: De Gruyter, 2016), 265–303. 88. Eliezer Shimshon Rosenthal, “Ha-moreh,” Proceedings of the American Acad­emy for Jewish Research 31 (1963): 1–71 (Hebrew section), where the author includes himself in the category of “mi she-­zakhah leshamesh oto” (­those who ­were fortunate to serve him) as a play on the traditional Hebrew verb used to describe a student’s relationship with his master in Torah. Ironically, this verb could be used to describe how Yemenite janitors and midrashim had also served Saul Lieberman but hardly vice versa. It should be further noted that in his own scholarship Rosenthal had developed a par­tic­u­lar appreciation of Yemenite manuscripts of the Babylonian Talmud. 89. Once again I am indebted to Dr. Menashe Anzi for this information. 90. Lieberman, Yemenite Midrashim, 19; and Dinah Stein, “Let the ‘­People’ Go? The ‘Folk’ and Their ‘Lore’ as Tropes in the Reconstruction of Rabbinic Culture,” Prooftexts 29 (2009): 206–41. 91. See Gilead Shapira, “Midrash ha-­gadol on Genesis: Rhetorical and Stylistic Aspects” (in Hebrew; PhD diss., Haifa University, 2015). My thanks to Prof. Nahem Ilan for introducing me to Shapira’s work. For another perspective, see the introduction to Eliezer Schlossberg, The Commentary of R. Avraham ben Shlomo the Yemenite on the Book of Isaiah (Ramat Gan, Israel: Bar-­I lan University, 2015). Of course, Langermann’s publications (see note 67 above) ­were path-­breaking in this regard. Also see Baumgarten, Kabbalah and Printing in Yemen, 24–30. Midrash ha-­gadol is still seen as relevant to reconstructing the cultural world of late antique Palestinian Judaism; see most recently Haggai Ben-­ Shammai, “Me-­Tsipori le-­Teman: Gilgulo shebe-­p asifas ha-­m azalot bet ha-­keneset be-­ Tsipori be-­Midrash ha-­gadol,” in The Wisdom of the Sages: Biblical Commentary in Rabbinic Lit­er­a­ture, Presented to Hananel Mack, ed. Avigdor Shinan and Israel Jacob Yuval (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2019), 69–87. 92. Moshe Zadok, Tarbut Yehude Teman be-­sifre Yehudim yotze Eropah (Tel Aviv: Merkaz Le-­Tarbut Ve-­Hinuch, 1992), 58–62. Zadok had also monitored the Midrash ha-­gadol affair. See Zadok, “Mekoro ha-­Temani shel Midrash ha-­gadol,” Hazofeh, June 11, 1965, 4.

250

Notes to Page 189

93. See Hillel Barzel et al., eds., Be-­karme Teman: Yehude Teman ba-­sifrut ha-­‘Ivrit (Tel Aviv: Eeleh Betamar, 2002), 292. 94. This Yemenite embodiment of the rabbinic ideal of not using the study of Torah (or the Rabbinate for that ­matter) as a means to an end was already noted with appreciation by the maskilic-­minded Jacob Sapir. See Gerber, Ourselves or Our Holy Books?, 43.

Contributors

Anne O. Albert is the Klatt ­Family Director for Public Programs at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Jewish Politics in Spinoza’s Amsterdam, forthcoming from the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. Her research treats the history of Jewish thought and Jewish-­Christian relations with a par­tic­u­lar focus on early modern Eu­rope, po­liti­cal thought, and conceptions of Jewish community and history. Clémence Boulouque is the Carl and Bernice Associate Professor of Jewish and Israel Studies at Columbia University. Her monograph Another Modernity: Elia Benamozegh’s Jewish Universalism was published by Stanford University Press in 2020. She is also the author of novels and nonfiction published in her native France. Yitzhak Conforti is a se­nior lecturer in the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Department of Jewish History and Con­temporary Jewry at Bar-­Ilan University in Israel. He is the author of Past Tense: Zionist Historiography and the Shaping of the Zionist Memory (Yad Ben-­Zvi, 2006) and Shaping a Nation: The Cultural Origins of Zionism, 1882–1948 (Yad Ben-­Zvi, 2019). He has published extensively on modern Jewish historiography, Jewish nationalism, Zionism, and antisemitism. Noah S. Gerber is a se­nior lecturer in the Department of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University. His 2013 Ourselves or Our Holy Books? The Cultural Discovery of Yemenite Jewry (Yad Ben-­Zvi, 2013) won the annual Zalman Shazar Prize for a monograph in Jewish history. Currently he is working on a second book, Native Antiquarians and Mizrahi Communities: Re-­Orienting the Trail Taken by Modern Jewish Scholarship.

252 Contributors

Hanan Harif is a lecturer at the Rothberg International School of the Hebrew University and Deputy Chair of the Ben-­Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East. He is the author of For We Be Brethren: The Turn to the East in Zionist Thought (Zalman Shazar Center, 2019). His current proj­ect is an intellectual biography of S. D. Goitein. Michael A. Meyer is the Adolph S. Ochs Professor of Jewish History Emeritus at Hebrew Union College–­Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati. His principal field of academic interest is modern Jewish intellectual and religious history. Among his books are The Origins of the Modern Jew: Jewish Identity and Eu­ro­pean Culture in Germany, 1749–1824 (Wayne State University Press, 1967), Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (Oxford University Press, 1988), and most recently Rabbi Leo Baeck: Living a Religious Imperative (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021). Katalin Franciska Rac is a trained historian and archivist. Her research explores the creative and destructive forces of modern Hungarian nationalism and Jewish responses to it within and across modern Hungary’s changing borders. Asher Salah is an associate professor in the Department of History and Theory at the Bezalel Acad­emy of Arts and Design and teaches at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2021 he was a Se­nior Fellow at the Maimonides Center for Advanced Studies—­Jewish Scepticism (MCAS-­JS) at the University of Hamburg. Among his books on the history of Italian Jews are La République des Lettres: Rabbins, médecins et écrivains juifs en Italie au XVIIIè siècle (Brill, 2007); L’epistolario di Marco Mortara: Un rabbino italiano tra riforma e ortodossia (Giuntina, 2012); and Diari risorgimentali di Giuseppe Luzzatto e di Amalia Cantoni (Belforte, 2017). Deborah Yalen is an associate professor in the Department of History at Colorado State University, Fort Collins. She has published widely on the history of Soviet state-­f unded Jewish ethnography, demography, and shtetl scholarship. She is currently coauthoring a volume on the 1930s for New York University’s “Comprehensive History of the Jews in the Soviet Union” proj­ ect, sponsored by the Global Network for Advanced Research in Jewish Studies.

Contributors

253

Irene Zwiep is a professor of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Her research concentrates on Jewish intellectual history, with par­tic­u ­lar emphasis on the history of Hebrew linguistic thought and the nineteenth-­century Wissenschaft des Judentums.

Index

Abrahams, Israel, 36, 38 academic nationalism, 96–98 acculturation, 9, 47, 59, 63, 86, 107 Adams, Herbert Baxter, 72 Adler, Cyrus, 66, 77 aggadic lit­er­a­t ure, 49–50, 52 Agnon, Shmuel Yosef, 172, 173, 177, 184 Ahad Ha’am, 14, 143–49, 152, 154 Albert, Anne O., 1 Aleichem, Sholem, 94, 215n63 Ali, Hashim Amir, 165–67, 171 Ali, Syed Ameer, 161–62, 166 Aligarh movement, 159–61 Aligarh University, 159–60, 165 Amari, Michele, 128, 133 American Jewish scholarship, 65–78; in academic institutions, 66; expansion of, 8, 10; historical positivism in, 72–73; historiography in, 10, 69–77; Jewish Encyclopedia and, 77, 78, 211nn71–75; library resources for, 10, 67, 182; Reform movement in, 7, 66, 70–72; significance for Jewish history, 74; WdJ and, 65–66, 75–77; Zionism in, 71–72 American Jewish Year Book, 75, 210n57 Amitin-­Shapiro, Zalman, 96 Ansari, Bazmee, 167–71 An-­sky, S., 85–86, 95 anticolonialism, 159–62, 164, 165 antiquarian historians, 35 antisemitism: in academic settings, 124, 199n19; Bildung as rationale for, 107; of Christian scholars, 125; as counterrevolutionary crime in Soviet Union, 99; Jewish research as defense work against, 226n24; Khazar theory and, 201–2n52; scholarship in fight against, 53, 54, 77; universalist approach and, 141; Zionist historiographical attitude ­toward, 148

apol­o­getics: deconstruction of, 24; in Hungarian Jewish scholarship, 55; in Islamic scholarship, 167–68; lit­er­a­t ure and, 105–11; motivations for engaging in, 5; in Soviet Jewish scholarship, 83–86; universalism and, 34 Arabic language, 50–51, 157, 161 Aramaic language, 4, 128–29, 179, 183 Arany, János, 60 Aristotle, 118 Asad, Muhammad (Leopold Weiss), 162, 171 Ashkenazi Jews, 2, 12, 92, 94, 173–74, 177. See also Yiddish language assimilation: alternatives to, 14, 112; conceptualizations of, 104, 152; Haskalah on, 86; Soviet goals of, 84; WdJ and, 22, 87, 120 assonance, 12, 104, 114–15, 118, 120 Auerbach, Berthold, 108 Auerbach, Erich, 120 Auerbach, Zvi, 151 autonomy, cultural, 14, 164–65, 213n21 Azzi Vitelleschi, Giustiniano degli, 133 Bacher, Vilmos (Wilhelm), 44, 46, 48–50, 52–55, 57–62, 199n24 Baeck, Leo, 2, 5–7, 17, 191n2 Baer, Yitzhak, 143–44 Balassa, József, 61 Bamberger, Fritz, 23–24, 197n78 Baneth, Hartwig (David Zvi), 158 Bánóczi, József, 53–54, 59, 60, 62 Baron, Salo W., 40, 66, 148 Bartal, Israel, 154 Bartolocci, Giulio, 128, 131 belles lettres (literary form), 12, 106, 111, 147, 150 Belorus­sian Acad­emy of Sciences, 79, 87, 89, 90, 97

256 Index Benamozegh, Elia, 123 Ben-­A ri, Nitsa, 112 Ben Chananja (journal), 45–47, 54 Benedetti, Salvatore De, 124, 128, 129 Benjamin, Walter, 117, 120 Ben Zion, Simcha, 149 Berdyczewski, Micha Josef, 147, 151 Berlin, Moses, 84 Berliner, Abraham, 121–22 Bernfeld, Simon, 147–48 Bern­stein, Béla, 56 Bialik, Hayim Nahman, 14, 142, 149–54, 177, 191n1 biblical criticism: Christian scholars and, 128, 135; exclusion from WdJ, 69; in German Jewish scholarship, 60, 125; in Hungarian Jewish scholarship, 56–58, 62, 204n80 Bildung (self-­cultivation), 12, 106–9, 111 Billig, Levi, 158 Bíró, Tamás, 58, 62, 204n80 Blau, Lajos, 48, 52, 59, 62 Bloch, Joshua, 71 Bloch, Móric, 59 Bloch, Mózes, 48 Boccaccini, Gabriele, 124 Bolsheviks, 82–83, 86, 88–93, 96–100. See also Communist Party Bonaiuti, Ernesto, 123 Boncompagni Ludovisi, Baldassarre, 125, 133, 135 The Book of Tears (Bernfeld), 148 Boulouque, Clémence, 12, 103 Boyarin, Daniel, 118 Brainin, Reuven, 179, 208n30 Breslau Jewish Theological Seminary, 7, 42–44, 47–49, 67, 68 Buber, Martin, 4, 6, 21–24, 193n14, 193n18 Buckle, Henry Thomas, 144, 148 Budapest Rabbinical Seminary, 42–44, 46–54, 58, 62 Büdinger, Max, 67 Bukharan Jews, 92, 94–96 Bulletin (Budapest Rabbinical Seminary), 47–54, 62, 199n22 Bundism, 85, 89 Caro, Jacob, 67 Cassel, David, 43 Cassuto, Umberto, 126, 132, 227n33 Castelli, David, 124, 131

Cavazza, Stefano, 133 Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), 66, 75, 77, 206n7 Ceriani, Antonio Maria, 127 Cheyney, Edward, 73 Christian scholars: antisemitic thinking by, 125; biblical criticism and, 128, 135; grammatical studies by, 127–31; historical studies by, 131–34; in Italian Jewish scholarship, 13, 121–36; Orientalism and, 13, 128, 131, 135; textual preservation by, 127; WdJ in networks of, 122 Ciscato, Antonio, 132 Cohen, Hermann, 3–4, 6, 193n14 Communist Party, 79, 88–89, 93–94, 96–97, 99. See also Bolsheviks Comparetti, Domenico, 125–26, 130, 227n30 Conforti, Yitzhak, 14, 137 con­temporary historiography, 75–76, 136 Correspondence of an En­glish Lady on Judaism and Semitism (Graetz), 110, 111 cultural autonomy, 14, 164–65, 213n21 Dante Alighieri, 114, 117–18, 222n83 Darwin, Charles, 144, 148 Davidson, Israel, 179 Deinard, Ephraim, 181 Del Furia, Francesco, 127 Derenburg, Josef, 4, 24–25 Deutsch, Gotthard, 65–78; on biblical criticism, 69; criticisms of, 206n2; on French Revolution, 69, 74; on historiography, 10, 69–77; Jewish Encyclopedia and, 77, 78, 211nn72–73, 211n75; on Reform movement, 72; as university professor, 67–68; WdJ and, 65–66, 71, 75–77; on Yiddish language, 207n23; on Zionism, 71–72 diaspora nationalism, 84–85, 90, 213n21 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 74, 106 Dimanshtein, Shimon, 79 Dinur, Ben-­Zion, 25, 27, 151 disguised theology, 6, 105 dissimilation, 104, 113, 217n6 Dito, Oreste, 133 divine revelation, 2, 5 Drach, Paul Louis, 129, 230n63 Dubnow, Simon: on German-­Jewish symbiosis, 117; on historiography, 145; nationalism of, 11, 14, 84–86, 138; on Pale of Settlement, 213n19



Index

Dünner, Joseph Hirsch, 31–32, 39, 40, 195n45 Dvir (journal), 149, 151–52 Einhorn, David, 66 Elbogen, Ismar, 6, 7, 22–24, 40, 206n2 Eliot, George, 110 Eliyahu, Avraham, 11 Elmaleh, Abraham, 176 Elzász, Bernát, 58 emancipation, Jewish: acculturation in, 86; alternatives to, 14; autonomy prior to, 222n83; during French Revolution, 74; in Hungary, 46, 59, 63; on Italian peninsula, 122; opposition to, 135; as redemption, 119–20 Emerton, Ephraim, 73 ­England, Jewish scholarship in, 36–38 Epstein, Jacob Nahum, 176, 183 essentialism, 74 ethnography: in Hungarian Jewish scholarship, 51, 52, 60–62; in Italian Jewish scholarship, 136; nationalism and, 11; in Soviet Jewish scholarship, 11, 84–86, 91, 94–96; Yemenite Jews and, 173, 189; Yiddish studies and, 61–62 exegesis, 49–50, 56, 57, 128, 226n24 Feiner, Shmuel, 14, 26 Fichman, Jacob, 149 Five-­Year Plans, 82, 91–92, 100 Foà, Cesare, 127 Ford, Henry, 77 France, Jewish scholarship in, 33–36 Frankel, Jonathan, 138, 139 Frankel, Zacharias: Bacher influenced by, 49; in expansion of WdJ, 24–25, 65; historical positivism of, 25, 32, 47; Neolog following of, 46; on seminary education for rabbis, 5; university education of, 9, 42, 44, 197n1 French Revolution, 69, 74 Friedenwald, Herbert, 210n57 Frishman, David, 151 Frojimovics, Kinga, 62 Funaro, Liana, 130 Funkenstein, Amos, 104 Fürst, Julius, 4 Gabrieli, Giuseppe, 126, 136 Gans, David, 40 Geiger, Abraham, 2, 5, 23–25, 36, 50, 57, 125

257

Gerber, Noah S., 1, 15–16, 172 German Jewish scholarship: apol­o­getics in, 125; biblical criticism in, 60, 125; criticisms of, 142–43, 151; degree requirements for rabbis in, 192n11; engagement with Arabic scholarship, 50; history and evolution of, 2–8; Italian Jewish scholarship compared to, 123–26; literary canon of, 12; nationalist re­orientation of, 14; Orientalism in, 29, 39, 159–61. See also Wissenschaft des Judentums (WdJ) Gerő, András, 199n21 Ghiron, Samuel, 127 Ginsberg, Asher. See Ahad Ha’am Ginzberg, Louis, 179, 186 Gioberti, Vincenzo, 123 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 103, 106, 113–15, 117, 118, 120 Goitein, Shelomo Dov, 15, 156–59, 162–63, 165–71, 178–79, 186 Goldsmid, Isaac Lyon, 36 Goldziher, Ignác: on biblical criticism, 56–58; on ethnography, 60–61; humanistic legacy of, 171; lecture series by, 202–3n62; as Orientalist, 51, 52, 60; on religious erudition, 203n68; on Vámbéry, 201n42 Gordon, Yehuda Leib, 139 Gottheil, Richard, 66, 181 Grade, Chaim, 176 Graetz, Heinrich: on Budapest Rabbinical Seminary, 43, 46; Correspondence of an En­glish Lady on Judaism and Semitism, 110, 111; criticisms of, 70–71; death of, 67; History of the Jews, 3, 70, 142; periodization scheme for Jewish history, 74; on relevance of Judaism for humanity, 36; second track of historiography and, 14; as university professor, 4; WdJ and, 5, 24–25, 65 Grattenauer, Karl, 107 Greenbaum, Alfred Abraham, 83 Gruber, Eberhard, 105–6 Grünwald, Max, 61 Gubernatis, Angelo De, 126, 130, 227n32 Guerrini, Olindo, 127 Guidi, Ignazio, 128, 133 Gunkel, Hermann, 3 Halakhah, 48, 150, 180, 223nn94–95 Harif, Hanan, 15, 16, 156

258 Index Harkavy, Albert, 11 Ha-­shaḥar (journal), 139–42, 152 Ha-­shiloaḥ (journal), 143, 147–49, 152 Haskalah movement: Hebrew-­language scholarship in, 14, 142; Hungarian Jewish scholarship and, 45; lit­er­a­t ure of, 114; opposition to legacy of, 141; reductionist views of, 27; Soviet Jewish scholarship and, 84; WdJ as successor to, 26 Hebrew Bible, 50, 56, 57, 59–60, 62, 148 Hebrew language: in academic institutions, 4; Arabic in relation to, 50–51, 157; Christian studies of, 128–30; de-­ Hebraization trends, 91, 94; in Haskalah movement, 14, 142; for historiography, 140, 145; literary ingathering proj­ect and, 14, 137, 149–51, 154; in preservation of Jewish nationalism, 140; translation of works into, 112, 151; Zionist scholarship in, 14, 138, 151–53 Hebrew Union College, 7, 10, 67, 69–72, 74, 76, 182 Hebrew University: establishment of, 138, 143, 151; faculty members at, 237n78; Institute of Jewish Studies, 176; Islamic studies at, 15; literary ingathering proj­ect and, 154; opening ceremonies at, 153; School of Oriental Studies, 158–61, 239n11; Zionist influences on, 149, 155 Heine, Heinrich, 12, 60, 106–7, 114–15, 118 Heller, Bernát, 49–52, 60–61 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 107, 119 Herzl, Theodor, 22, 51 Hildesheimer, Ezriel, 2 Hirsch, Samson Raphael, 2, 32, 68, 114, 193–94n18 Hirsch, Samuel, 66 Hirschler, Ignác, 52 historical novels, 12, 107–11, 219n31 historiography: autarchy of, 35–36; calendars as used in, 28, 73; con­ temporary, 75–76, 136; Deutsch on, 10, 69–77; essentialism in, 74; Hebrew language for, 140, 145; microhistory, 76, 171; nationalist, 14, 137–46, 154; organic evolutionist model of, 143–45, 148; of Orientalism, 51; partisanship in, 25, 71; personal ele­ments of, 76; philosophical approach to, 73; positivistic approach to, 10, 25, 32, 42, 47–49, 62, 72–73; quotidian in, 10, 76; scientific, 70, 72, 138; second

track of, 14; secular study of, 6, 141; temporal variations in, 39; theology in, 37–39; Zionist, 138–39, 143–49, 151, 155 History of the Jews (Graetz), 3, 70, 142 Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, 4, 7, 21–23, 25, 43, 57, 193n14 Hoffman, David Tzvi, 180–81 ḥokhmat Yisra’el, 40, 138, 140, 142, 147, 152–53 Hoofiën, Jacob, 32, 195n45 Hornyik, István, 58 Horovitz, Josef, 15, 160–61, 171 humanism, 1, 34–35, 124, 170–71 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 107 Humphrey, Richard, 108, 219n31 Hungarian Acad­emy of Sciences, 44–45, 64 Hungarian Jewish Review (journal), 47–49, 52–62 Hungarian Jewish scholarship, 42–64; aggadic lit­er­a­t ure in, 49–50, 52; apol­o­getics in, 55; biblical criticism in, 56–58, 62, 204n80; ethnography in, 51, 52, 60–62; folklore research in, 52, 61, 63, 64; Haskalah movement and, 45; Hebrew Bible translation and, 59–60, 62; historical positivism in, 42, 47–49, 62; institutional framework for, 42–47; Khazar theory in, 54–55, 201–2n52; Neologs in, 9–10, 42, 46–47, 51, 53–59, 62–63; Orientalism in, 50–52, 64; po­liti­cal engagement in, 55, 56; sphere of neutrality in, 49; WdJ and, 9, 45, 48–49, 54, 61–63, 199n24; Yiddish studies in, 61–62 Hurwitz, Hyman, 36 Ibn Ezra, Abraham, 50 Ibn Shu’eib, Joshua, 185 Idelsohn, Abraham Zvi, 176–77 identity, Jewish: explicit nature of, 29; folklore as source of, 85–86; historical personality of, 147; Hungarian, 55, 59–60, 64; hyphen as framework for, 106; role of WdJ in, 1, 6; secular, 99 IEPK (Institutes for Jewish Proletarian Culture), 79–81, 83, 86, 87, 93, 97–98 Immanuel of Rome, 118 India: anticolonial movement in, 159–62, 165; German-­Jewish Orientalism in, 159–61; Islamic scholarship in, 15, 156, 161, 163–65, 167



Index

Institutes for Jewish Proletarian Culture (IEPK), 79–81, 83, 86, 87, 93, 97–98 Islamic Culture (journal), 161–63 Islamic scholars: apol­o­getics and, 167–68; on Arab-­Jewish symbiosis, 157–58; intellectual advancement of, 160–61; postcolonial, 15, 164, 167–70; WdJ in networks of, 15, 170; western influences on, 162–63, 166–67; in world universities, 163–65 Islamic Studies (journal), 167–69 Israelite Hungarian Literary Society, 47, 59–60. See also Yearbook of the Israelite Hungarian Literary Society Israelitische Annalen (journal), 29 Israëlitische Letterbode (journal), 30–33, 39 Italian Jewish scholarship: Christian contributions to, 13, 121–36; ethnography in, 136; German Jewish scholarship compared to, 123–26; grammatical studies in, 127–31; historical studies in, 131–34; patriotic poetry in, 117; as public discourse, 27–30; textual preservation in, 127; WdJ and, 104, 123–26, 135 Jacobowski, Ludwig, 117 Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), 165 Janin, Jules, 220n45 Jastrow, Marcus, 66 Jauhar, Muhammad Ali, 160, 165 Jellinek, Aharon (Adolf ), 139, 218n12 Jewish emancipation. See emancipation, Jewish Jewish Encyclopedia, 77, 78, 211nn71–75 Jewish Historical-­Ethnographic Society (JHES), 84–86, 95 Jewish identity. See identity, Jewish Jewish nationalism. See nationalism, Jewish Jewish particularism, 16, 34, 109 Jewish Quarterly Review (JQR), 36–39, 66 Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), 174–75, 179–82, 184, 186, 188 Jewish universalism. See universalism, Jewish Jews and Judaism: academic study of, 4–8, 16–17, 66, 87, 124, 225nn13–15; Arab-­ Jewish symbiosis, 157–58; Ashkenazi, 2, 12, 92, 94, 173–74, 177; Bukharan, 92, 94–96; characteristic traits of, 57, 117; civil rights for, 53, 133, 153; cultural porosity of, 112; Mizrahi, 172, 175–79;

259

modernity of, 26, 72, 74, 135; positive-­ historical, 42, 47–49, 62; Reform movement in, 7, 66, 70–72, 75, 139; Sephardi, 2, 12, 107, 172, 176–77, 181. See also antisemitism; Haskalah movement; Wissenschaft des Judentums (WdJ); Yemenite Jews; Zionism JHES (Jewish Historical-­Ethnographic Society), 84–86, 95 JMI (Jamia Millia Islamia), 165 Johnston-­Bloom, Ruchama, 160 Jost, Isaac Marcus, 7, 24–25, 29, 69, 110, 218n12 JQR (Jewish Quarterly Review), 36–39, 66 JTS (Jewish Theological Seminary), 174–75, 179–82, 184, 186, 188 Kabbalah, 135, 150, 172, 179–80, 184 Kahn, Zadoc, 33 Karelitz, Avraham Yeshayahu, 176 Katz, Jacob, 26, 46, 199n21 Kaufmann, David, 48, 50, 52–53, 56, 110, 139, 199n24 Kayserling, Meyer, 116 Khan, Syed Ahmad, 160 Khazar theory, 54–55, 201–2n52 Khilafat movement, 160, 161, 165 Klausner, Joseph, 138, 146, 148–49, 237n78 Kock, Paul de, 220n44 Kohler, Kaufmann, 66, 71 Kohn, Sámuel, 43–44, 46, 54–56, 60, 61 Kohut, Alexander, 66, 175, 181, 182, 184, 185 Komoróczy, Géza, 51 Komoróczy, Szonja Ráhel, 61 Kompert, Leopold, 43, 111 Konrád, Miklós, 54, 55 Kook, Abraham Isaac, 174 Kook, Saul Khone, 176, 177 Krauss, Samuel, 69 Krochmal, Nachman, 40, 74, 140 Kunos, Ignác, 52, 61 Kuznitz, Cecile, 90–91 Labanca, Baldassarre, 124, 136 Lagarde, Paul de, 3 Lang, Berel, 106 Lasinio, Fausto, 124, 125, 130, 227n30 Lattes, Abraham, 129 Lehmann, Markus, 32 Leo XIII (pope), 131 Leopardi, Giacomo, 129

260 Index Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 115 Letteris, Meir, 112, 113 Liberberg, Joseph, 11, 79–81, 83–84, 89, 93, 97–98 Lieberman, Saul, 15–16, 172–80, 182–89, 243n30 Lilienblum, Moshe Leib, 139 lit­er­a­t ure: aggadic, 49–50, 52; apol­o­getics and, 105–11; belles lettres, 12, 106, 111, 147, 150; of Haskalah movement, 114; historical novels, 12, 107–11, 219n31; as hyphen in WdJ, 12, 105–6, 110, 112, 114, 118–19; ingathering proj­ect, 14, 137, 149–51, 154; Jewish universalism and, 104, 109, 119; neo-­Hebraic, 129, 136; non-­Jewish voices in, 109–11; translations of, 111–14, 151; of Yemenite Jews, 50, 173, 175, 177, 182. See also poetry liturgical poetry, 106, 112 Loeb, Isidore, 33, 39 Löw, Leopold, 45–47, 54, 56, 59 Lukács, György, 108–10 Lurie, Isaac, 95–96 Luzzati, Michele, 133, 134 Luzzatto, Samuel David: on Christian scholars, 123, 128–29; on emancipation as redemption, 119–20; on Hebrew language, 140; on historical novels, 110; modern scholarship personified by, 31; on poetry, 12, 114, 118; on Rousseau, 109; WdJ and, 24–25, 103 Lyotard, Jean-­François, 105–6 Mahler, Ede, 51, 60 Mai, Angelo, 127 Manfrin di Castione, Pietro, 124 Manzoni, Giacomo, 127, 129 MAO (Muhammadan Anglo-­Oriental College of Aligarh), 159–60, 165 Marcus, Jacob Rader, 7, 74 Margaliot, Mordechai, 186 Mariano, Raffaele, 124 Marx, Alexander, 175, 182 Marx, Karl, 220n48 Marxist-­Leninist paradigm, 79–80, 84, 86, 90, 91 maskilim (enlightened), 40, 63, 111, 137, 139–42, 234n18 Maybaum, Sigmund, 21–22, 24–25 Mendelssohn, Moses, 7, 14, 24, 63, 74, 107, 141

Meyer, Michael A., 1, 10, 23, 65 Mezey, Ferenc, 59 microhistory, 76, 171 midrash, 15–16, 172, 173, 175, 180–88 Mielziner, Moses, 66, 76 Mizrahi Jews, 172, 175–79 Modona, Leonello, 127 Mommsen, Theodor, 73 Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums (journal), 3–5, 7, 32, 66, 211n70 Montefiore, Claude Goldsmid, 36 Moretti, Franco, 25, 26 Mosse, George, 107 Muhammadan Anglo-­Oriental College of Aligarh (MAO), 159–60, 165 Müller, David Heinrich, 139 Munk, Salomon, 4, 24–25, 33–34 Munkácsi, Bernát, 51, 52, 61 Muslim scholars. See Islamic scholars Myers, David, 25, 38, 40 Nadaf, Abraham, 177, 179, 182 Nahari, Yihye, 179 Nahum, Yehuda Levi, 185, 187 Narducci, Enrico, 125, 132–33 nationalism: academic, 96–98; Arab, 160; Hungarian, 199n21; politicized forms of, 88–89; propaganda in promotion of, 96 nationalism, Jewish: bourgeois, 80, 81, 86, 87, 89, 96–97; diaspora, 84–85, 90, 213n21; ethnography and, 11; Hebrew language in preservation of, 140; in historiography, 14, 137–46, 154; in organic evolutionist model, 144; in reframing of Jewish culture, 8; rise of, 137, 234n18; as standard for WdJ, 22, 103. See also Zionism nativization, 11, 88–90, 97 Neo-­Guelfism, 123 Neologs, 9–10, 42, 46–47, 51, 53–59, 62–63 Netherlands, Jewish scholarship in, 30–33, 39 Nevins, Allan, 186 Nietz­sche, Friedrich, 35, 37 non-­Jewish scholars. See Christian scholars; Islamic scholars Odirici, Federico, 121 Oláh, János, 61 organic evolutionist model, 143–45, 148



Index

Orientalism: Christian scholars and, 13, 128, 131, 135; in German Jewish scholarship, 29, 39, 159–61; historiography of, 51; humanistic study of, 170; in Hungarian Jewish scholarship, 50–52, 64; in postcolonial era, 170; in Soviet Jewish scholarship, 11, 98; in world universities, 163–65 Osmania University, 156, 163–65 Otsar ha-­Yahadut (Ahad Ha’am), 14, 145–46 Paggi, Angelo, 124 Pakistan: establishment of, 162; Muslim po­liti­cal sovereignty in, 167; postcolonial era in, 170 Pale of Settlement, 85–86, 96, 213n16, 213n19 Palestine: Arab-­Zionist conflict in, 160, 162; Bukharan Jews and, 95; Jewish scholarship in, 151, 176–77, 186; Zionist settlement in, 71, 96 particularism, Jewish, 16, 34, 109 Patai, Raphael, 50 patriotic poetry, 115–18 Perreau, Pietro, 121, 122, 125, 127, 132, 135 Peyron, Bernardino, 127, 135 Philippson, Ludwig, 12, 105, 106, 108–9, 115, 218n12 Pickthall, Marmaduke, 161, 162, 171 Pius X (pope), 123 poetry: Arabic, 51; of Haskalah movement, 114; as history, 118; Hungarian, 60; Jewish universalism and, 104, 119; liturgical, 106, 112; moral education through, 104, 116; patriotic, 115–18; prophetic, 12, 119; secular theology and, 118–20; of Yemenite Jews, 50 positivism: in academic settings, 136; historical, 10, 25, 32, 42, 47–49, 62, 72–73; social, 144 postcolonialism, 15, 26, 159, 164, 167–70 prophetic poetry, 12, 119 Qafih, Joseph, 186–88, 247–48n74 Qur’an, 157, 161, 162, 165–67, 183 Rabbi of Bacherach (Heine), 12 Rabinowitz, Zvi Meir, 187 Rac, Katalin Franciska, 9–10, 42 Rahimuddin, Muhammad, 163–64 Raisin, Max, 73, 206n2 Ranke, Leopold von, 67, 72–73

261

Rapoport, Solomon Yehuda, 24–25, 31, 40, 112–13, 116, 140 Ratzhabi, Yehuda, 188 Ravnitzky, Yehoshua Khone, 149, 151, 152 Reform Judaism, 7, 66, 70–72, 75, 139 Reggio, Isaac Samuel, 27–30, 38–39 REJ (Revue des études juives), 33–37, 39, 40 Renan, Ernest, 34, 119, 147–48 Revue des études juives (REJ), 33–37, 39, 40 Rivlin, Joseph Joel, 178–79 Roemer, Nils, 63 Roest, Meijer Marcus, 31–33, 39, 40, 195n45 Rosenbach, A. S. W., 182 Rosenzweig, Franz, 5–7, 104, 193n14, 217n6 Rosmini, Antonio, 123 Rossi, Azariah dei, 40 Rossi, Giovanni Bernardo de, 128, 131 Rousseau, Jean-­Jacques, 109 Rozental-­Shnayderman, Ester, 97–98 Sachs, Michael, 112 Salah, Asher, 13–14, 121, 222n83 Sapir, Jacob, 173, 178, 180, 184, 185, 187 Saraswathi Datla, Kavita, 164 Scerbo, Francesco, 124 Schechter, Solomon, 37, 40, 66, 72, 110, 180–82 Scheiber, Sándor, 51 Schiller, Friedrich, 103, 112, 114–18, 221n66 Schiller-­Szinessy, Solomon Marcus, 37 Schocken, Salman, 172–75, 177 Scholem, Gershom: on Bildung, 111; deconstruction of apol­o­getic by, 24; on Jewish devotion to Schiller, 116; as Kabbalist, 172, 180; lectures at JTS given by, 180, 184; on WdJ scholars, 142, 177; Yemenite domestic employed by, 179 Schorsch, Ismar, 48, 107, 199n20 Schreiner, Márton, 63 Schulhof, Isaac, 53 Schweiger, Márton, 43, 44 scientific history, 70, 72, 138 Semeria, Giovanni, 123 Sephardi Jews, 2, 12, 107, 172, 176–77, 181 Shabazi, Shalom, 177, 184–85 Shapira, Moses Wilhelm, 181 Sharabi, Shalom, 180 Silber, Michael, 45, 62, 63, 198n12, 198n16 Silverman, Joseph, 78, 211n74 Simon-­Nahum, Perrine, 34

262 Index Skolnik, Jonathan, 104 Smolenskin, Peretz, 14, 139–43, 152, 154 socialism, 79, 82, 88–92, 95–97, 119 social positivism, 144 Society for the Enlightenment of Jews, 84 Sorkin, David, 26, 225n13 Soviet Acad­emy of Sciences, 89, 91, 215n46 Soviet Jewish scholarship, 79–100; apol­o­getics in, 83–86; Bolshevik nationality policy and, 88–90, 93, 96; ethnography in, 11, 84–86, 91, 94–96; Five-­Year Plans as influence on, 82, 91–92, 100; Haskalah movement and, 84; institutionalization of, 11, 87, 98; library resources for, 80–81, 83; Marxist-­Leninist paradigm in, 79–80, 84, 86, 90, 91; for non-­Ashkenazi Jews, 92–96; Orientalism in, 11, 98; po­liti­cal neutrality vs. instrumentality in, 90–92; repression of, 96–98; for self-­a ffirmation, 85–86; socialist construction of, 79, 82, 88–92, 95–97; state-­sponsored, 81–85, 90, 91, 99, 100; WdJ and, 82, 85, 87–88; weaponization of, 11–12, 81, 98; Yiddish as language of, 11, 79, 82, 86–94, 99–100 Spano, Giovanni, 128 Spencer, Herbert, 144, 148 Stein, Aurél, 52 Steinschneider, Moritz: on academic studies, 4–5; on American Jewish scholarship, 66–67; on Arab-­Jewish symbiosis, 157; criticisms of, 142; Italian Jewish scholarship and, 118, 130, 132–33, 135; WdJ and, 24–25, 65; Yemenite manuscripts acquired by, 181 Steinthal, Heymann, 57 Stern, Moritz, 225n13 Stern, Selma, 5 Strenna Israelitica (journal), 27–30, 39 Sue, Eugène, 111, 220n48 Sulzberger, Mayer, 181–82 Sutro, Adolph, 181 Szabolcsi, Miksa, 58–59 Szánto, Simon, 108, 113 Szold, Benjamin, 66 Szondi, Peter, 116 Täubler, Eugen, 6–7 Tobi, Yosef, 187 Turán, Tamás, 42, 45, 62, 198nn12–13

Ugdulena, Gregorio, 128, 229n52 Ugolino, Biagio, 128 Ukrainian Acad­emy of Sciences, 79, 87, 90, 97 universalism, Jewish: in academic study, 17; apol­o­getic, 34; lit­er­a­t ure and, 104, 109, 119; in narrative of WdJ, 25, 103; rejection of, 71, 140, 141 Vámbéry, Ármin, 51, 52, 56, 60, 201n42 Vico, Giambattista, 123 Volkov, Shulamit, 104 WdJ. See Wissenschaft des Judentums Weiss, Isaac Hirsch, 49, 67 Weiss, Leopold (Muhammad Asad), 162, 171 Wiese, Christian, 125, 225n13, 226n24 Wilke, Carsten, 42, 56, 62, 199n19 Winnicott, Donald, 105 Wiseman, Patrick Nicholas, 128, 129 Wissenschaft des Judentums (WdJ): in academic institutions, 4–8, 16–17; American Jewish scholarship and, 65–66, 75–77; biblical criticism and, 69; in Christian scholarly networks, 122; as civil prayer, 30–33; as contested concept, 21–27, 41; criticisms of, 87, 144–45, 193–94n18; as disguised theology, 6, 105; diversity within, 8–9, 24, 25, 28, 104; Haskalah as pre­de­ces­sor to, 26; Hungarian Jewish scholarship and, 9, 45, 48–49, 54, 61–63, 199n24; in Islamic scholarly networks, 15, 170; Italian Jewish scholarship and, 104, 123–26, 135; lit­er­a­t ure as hyphen in, 12, 105–6, 110, 112, 114, 118–19; origins of, 1, 105, 123; po­liti­cal engagement in, 53, 55; as public discourse, 27–30; Soviet Jewish scholarship and, 82, 85, 87–88; subdivisions of, 126–34; terminology considerations, 1–2, 71, 191nn1–2; “turn to history” in, 16, 123, 125, 135; Yemenite manuscripts in, 173. See also historiography Wissotzky, Kalman, 145, 147, 235n51 Wolf, Immanuel, 105 Wolfson, Harry, 66 World Zionist Organ­ization, 85 Yalen, Deborah, 10–12, 79 Yalon, Hanoch, 178, 243n30



Index

Yearbook of the Israelite Hungarian Literary Society, 47–49, 52, 53, 56, 59–62 Yellin, David, 179 Yemenite Jews: airlift to Israel, 186–87; ethnographic accounts of, 173, 189; folkways of, 179; lit­er­a­t ure of, 50, 173, 175, 177, 182; midrash and, 15–16, 172, 173, 175, 180–88; Zionist rhe­toric on, 177 Yeshayahu, Yisrael, 187 yeshivas, 44–45, 67, 153, 174, 178, 180 Yiddish language: Deutsch on, 207n23; ethnography and, 61–62; in Hungarian Jewish scholarship, 61–62; institutionalization of, 86, 87; in Soviet Jewish scholarship, 11, 79, 82, 86–94, 99–100; standardization of, 91, 93; transnational rise of, 86–88. See also Ashkenazi Jews Yiddish Scientific Institute (YIVO), 86, 87, 90–92 Yusufuddin, Muhammad, 156–57, 162–64, 171 Zadok, Moshe, 189 Zadok, Shlomo, 188, 189 Zangwill, Israel, 30 Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (journal), 3, 65, 152

263

Zionism: in academic settings, 149; Arab-­Zionist conflict, 160, 162; Deutsch on, 71–72; ethnic-­cultural stream of, 149, 154, 155; Hebrew-­language scholarship in, 14, 138, 151–53; historiography and, 138–39, 143–49, 151, 155; in organic evolutionist model, 148; in reframing of Jewish culture, 8; as threat to Bolsheviks, 89; universalism rejected by, 71; WdJ and, 7, 22, 25; Yemenites in rhe­toric of, 177. See also nationalism, Jewish Zola, Émile, 110–11 Zunz, Leopold: on academic studies, 4–5, 23–24; Bacher influenced by, 49; critical biblical studies conducted by, 57; criticisms of, 3; cultural preservation by, 37; Deutsch on, 68–70; on Halakhah, 223nn94–95; on Jews as cultural brokers, 117; Krochmal’s works published by, 40; paradigm changes and, 33, 34; on philology, 7, 11, 22–23; on rabbinism, 2; on Rousseau, 109; Verein (society) of, 33, 41; WdJ and, 11, 31, 39, 65, 126–27, 197n78; Zeitschrift edited by, 3, 65, 152 Zwiep, Irene, 8–9, 21