Jewish Historiography Between Past and Future: 200 Years of Wissenschaft des Judentums [Illustrated] 3110553546, 9783110553543

Table of contents :
Contents
Introduction
Rabbinic Antecedents and Parallels to Wissenschaft des Judentums
Acknowledging the Past and Envisioning the Future: The Founders of Wissenschaft des Judentums (Science of Judaism)
“A Jewish Philosophy”: On the Background of Leopold Zunz’s Historical Definition
The Intellectual Networks of Rabbi Marco Mortara (1815–1894): An Italian “Wissenschaftler des Judentums”
Abraham Berliner and the Making of Orthodox Wissenschaft des Judentums
Wissenschaft des Judentums, Postmodernism, and Digital Humanities 2.0
History, Science, and Social Consciousness in the German Jewish Public Discourse during the First Years of the Nazi Regime
A Voyage in the Enchanted House: A Family History from the Personal Perspective
Wissenschaft des Judentums at the Fin-de-Siècle
Ludwig Philippson on Biblical Monotheism: Jewish Religious Philosophy between Mendelssohn and Hermann Cohen
Jewish Studies
Index

Citation preview

Jewish Historiography Between Past and Future

Studia Judaica

Forschungen zur Wissenschaft des Judentums Begründet von Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Herausgegeben von Günter Stemberger, Charlotte Fonrobert, Elisabeth Hollender, Alexander Samely und Irene Zwiep

Band 102

Jewish Historiography Between Past and Future 200 Years of Wissenschaft des Judentums Edited by Paul Mendes-Flohr, Rachel Livneh-Freudenthal, and Guy Miron

This volume was published with support of the Thyssen Foundation

ISBN 978-3-11-055354-3 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-055461-8 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-055369-7 ISSN 0585-5306 Library of Congress Control Number: 2019939559 Bibliografic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliografic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Contents Paul Mendes-Flohr 1 Introduction Jay R. Berkovitz Rabbinic Antecedents and Parallels to Wissenschaft des Judentums

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Rachel Livneh-Freudenthal Acknowledging the Past and Envisioning the Future: The Founders of Wissenschaft des Judentums (Science of Judaism) 25 Giuseppe Veltri “A Jewish Philosophy”: On the Background of Leopold Zunz’s Historical 45 Definition Asher Salah The Intellectual Networks of Rabbi Marco Mortara (1815 – 1894): An Italian 59 “Wissenschaftler des Judentums” Yedidya Asaf Abraham Berliner and the Making of Orthodox Wissenschaft des Judentums 77 Nils Roemer Wissenschaft des Judentums, Postmodernism, and Digital Humanities 2.0 91 Guy Miron History, Science, and Social Consciousness in the German Jewish Public 105 Discourse during the First Years of the Nazi Regime Christoph Schmidt A Voyage in the Enchanted House: A Family History from the Personal Perspective (In Memoriam Walter Schmidt 1889 – 1961) 127

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Paul Mendes-Flohr Wissenschaft des Judentums at the Fin-de-Siècle

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George Y. Kohler Ludwig Philippson on Biblical Monotheism: Jewish Religious Philosophy 181 between Mendelssohn and Hermann Cohen Martin Buber Jewish Studies Index

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Introduction

From its modest beginnings in Berlin in 1818, Wissenschaft des Judentums has burgeoned into a scholarly field of study pursued by a vast cadre of scholars. Now constituting a global community, these scholars continue to draw their inspiration from the determined pioneers of Wissenschaft des Judentums in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany. Beyond setting the highest standards of philological and historiographical research, German Wissenschaft des Judentums had a seminal role in a creating modern Jewish discourse in which cultural memory, bearing the stamp of historical scholarship, supplements traditional Jewish learning. The secular character of modern Jewish Studies initially pursued in German and subsequently in other vernacular languages (e. g., French, Dutch, Italian, Hebrew, Russian, Spanish, Yiddish), greatly facilitated exchange with non-Jewish scholars, and thereby encouraging mutual understanding and respect. Indeed, one of the overarching objectives of Wissenschaft des Judentums was to demonstrate that post-biblical Judaism played a vital role in the shaping of European culture. Hence, the Jews sought political emancipation and integration into the social and cultural life of Europe not as alien, “Asiatic” interlopers, but as co-progenitors of the modern spirit by right of patrimony. Judaism should, therefore, be honored as intrinsic to the curriculum of a modern, educated individual. Accordingly, in the preface to his monograph of 1832 on the history of Jewish homiletic literature—Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden—Leopold Zunz (1794– 1886) appealed to the German universities to embrace the academic study of Judaism: “If emancipation and scholarship are not to be mere words, not some tawdry bit of fancy goods for sale, but the fountainhead of morality which we have found again after a long period of wandering in the wilderness, then they must fecundate institutions—high ranking educational institutions.”¹ The cause of Jewish scholarship and emancipation thus go hand and hand. In this regard, Jewish Studies—as the luminaries of nineteenth-century Wissenschaft des Judentums adamantly insisted—should not be relegated to the particular intellectual and theological interests of the Jewish community or assigned to what in the United States is called “ethnic studies.” The present volume is largely based on papers delivered at a conference, sponsored by the Leo Baeck Institute in Jerusalem, by scholars from North Amer-

 Zunz, Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden historisch entwickelt (Berlin: A. Ascher, 1832, ix. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110554618-001

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ica, Europe, and Israel. Each of these essays explores ramified and evolving historical and methodological issues. The volume thus represents a tribute to the two hundred year legacy of Wissenschaft des Judentums and its singular contribution not only to modern Jewish self-understanding but also to the ever unfolding of humanistic cultural discourse. In the essay that opens this volume, Rachel Livneh-Freudenthal highlights the critical historical study of the sacred literature of rabbinic Judaism as the hallmark of the founding generation of Wissenschaft des Judentums. They thereby sought to herald the integration of Jews into the modern cognitive landscape marked by the concept of Wissenschaft—the assumption that scientific, objective criteria should be applied to examine all cultural phenomena, including religious literature. In doing so, Leopold Zunz and his colleagues, as Livneh-Freudenthal points out, implicitly promoted a radical transformation of Jewish self-understanding. Historical knowledge would perforce entail critical reflections on Jewish tradition, the theological presuppositions of its sacred texts and religious practices. The attendant epistemological and existential challenge posed by historical scholarship was eloquently anticipated by Moses Mendelsohn when he addressed in his defense of Judaism as a revealed religion, Jerusalem (1783), the question raised by his friend Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: To what kind of certainty does religious belief belong? Is it to be classified with the meta-historical, timeless truths of reason or the accidental “truths” of history? As Lessing famously put the issue: Contingent historical truths can never serve as proof for necessary truths of reason […] To jump from that historical truth [of Christ’s resurrection] to an entirely different class of truths is to ask me to alter all my metaphysical and moral concepts accordingly […] This is the ugly, wide ditch over which I cannot leap however often and earnestly I try.²

Like Lessing, Mendelssohn understood this “ugly, wide ditch” (der garstige breite Graben) to constitute not just an epistemological quandary but also a theological challenge of far-reaching existential significance. How was he to reconcile his abiding fidelity to the Torah as the revealed, timeless truth of God’s Word, and his commitment to rational, historically constituted, enlightened culture? Wissenschaft des Judentums served to deepen Lessing’s ditch. In his contribution, Jay R. Berkovitz notes that seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury traditional rabbis, while tacitly acknowledging the “ditch,” nonetheless affirmed the value of critical, philological scholarship in their analyses of rabbinic sources. The epistemological and existential challenge to cross the  G.E. Lessing, “Über den Beweis des Geistes und der Kraft,” in: G.E. Lessing, Schriften, ed. Franz Lachmann-Muncker (Stuttgart: G. Göschen, 1886 – 1924), vol, XIII, 5 f.

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“ditch” was boldly confronted by nineteenth-century Orthodox thinkers. In his chapter, Asaf Yedidia considers the writings on faith and historical scholarship of Abraham Berliner (1833 – 1915), the editor of the scholarly journal Magazin für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums and a faculty member at Rabbi Esriel Hildesheimer’s Berlin Seminary for the training of Orthodox rabbis. For non-Orthodox thinkers, however, the adoption of the epistemological and methodological tenets of Wissenschaft des Judentums necessitated a theological and philosophical reconceptualization of Judaism. In his contribution to this volume, George Y. Kohler revisits the theological writings of the Reform Rabbi Ludwig Philippson (1811– 1889). Drawing on his extensive scholarly studies on the Hebrew Bible’s evolving conception God as the basis of a universal ethics; Philippson elaborated a theology of Reform Judaism centered in ethical monotheism. Wissenschaft des Judentums was not limited to the Deutsche Kulturbereich. It found adherents throughout Europe and eventually also in North America. Wissenschaft des Judentums, as Asher Salah notes in his chapter, fostered an “international republic of scholars.” In an age when letter writing was the lone means of communication between individuals separated by geographic distance, Jewish scholars established a trans-regional and trans-national epistolary network whereby scholars would exchange Wissenschaftliche queries and share the fruits of their historical and philological research. Selah illustrates this “epistolary” efflorescence of Jewish scholarship through the extensive correspondence Marco Mortara (1815 – 1894), Chief Rabbi of Mantua, Italy. The scholarly interest of nineteenth-century Wissenschaft des Judentums was, on the whole, limited to the study of biblical and post-biblical religious literature. Although there were notable exceptions—as attested to by the multi-volume works on the history of the Jews by Isaac Marcus Jost (1793 – 1891) and Heinrich Gratz (1817– 1891)—the thematic and thus disciplinary scope of modern Jewish scholarship was comprehensively expanded with the emergence of the Zionist movement at the fin-de-siècle. On the pages of the November 1901 issue of Die Welt, the official organ of the World Zionist Movement, the twenty-three-year-old Martin Buber issued a passionate call to revise the scholarly agenda of “Juedische Wissenschaft.” In consonance with Zionist attention to the contemporary needs of the Jews as a people, he held, Jewish scholarship should address a broad range of secular subjects such as the anthropology, demography, economics, and folklore of the Jewish people. Indeed, every aspect of Jewish life and civilization were to be studied: “First in knowing what one loves. Second in investigating the exigent needs of our people […].” Buber’s cri-decoeur is published in an English translation in this volume. The disciplinary and ideological transformation of Wissenschaft des Judentums was not solely

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the urgent concern of Zionists, however. As Paul Mendes-Flohr details in his chapter, also liberal, even anti-Zionist German Jews acknowledged the need to redirect Wissenschaft des Judentums to focus on Judaism as a “living faith.” Led by the likes of the neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen (1842– 1918), liberal advocates of the spiritual renewal of Judaism held that this objective required a rejection of the methodological perspective that had hitherto informed the scholarly study of Judaism. In his chapter on the conception of historical scholarship that guided the founding generation of Wissenschaft des Judentums, Giuseppe Veltri delineates these methodological premises. Adhering to the then regnant model of historiographical study, they would study Jewish philosophy and rabbinic literature in light of the specific temporal and cultural context in which they took shape. Nineteenth-century Wissenschaft des Judentums thus perforce subscribed to an antiquarian bias that the texts one studies belong to the past. This presupposition, which has come to be known as historicism, deeply troubled Zionists and liberal Jews alike. Both the Zionists and Liberals were bent on sponsoring a Jewish Renaissance, buoyed by pedagogical and cultural programs to inspire a renewal of Jewish literacy and spiritual life. By its alignment with the envisioned renaissance, it was hoped that Jewish Studies would overcome the seemingly inherent relativism of its historical methods. Indeed, Jewish Studies was to play a decisive role in the German Jewish Renaissance. In the early years of Nazi Germany, as Guy Miron illustrates in his chapter, Jewish Studies was to gain a particular significance. In those dark years, the dissemination and the organized study of works of Jewish Studies served to strengthen Jewish self-esteem and communal solidarity. Christoph Schmidt’s family history provides a cultural and social biography of German Jewry in an era of far-reaching religious, social, and intellectual transition, a process of cognitive and cultural transformation beckoned by the emergence of Wissenschaft des Judentums. Schmidt’s family reaches back to the first generation of Jewish settlement in Berlin in the seventeenth century and later to the founding of Reform Judaism in the Prussian capital. The patriarch of this branch of Schmidt’s family in the nineteenth-century, Joel Wolff Meyer (1797– 1869), was a personal friend of Leopold Zunz, the spiritus rector of the founding generation of Wissenschaft des Judentums, and a principal member of the Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden. The biography of Schmidt’s family attests to the intimate relationship between the crystallization of the German Bildungsjudentum and the emergence of the scholarly study of Judaism as a vehicle for the shaping of a distinctively modern Jewish historical memory and self-understanding. Consequent to this alliance, Wissenschaft des Judentums pursued an academic agenda, as noted above, that focused nigh-exclusively on post-biblical

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Judaism’s contribution to “high-culture.” It thus wished to signal that Jewry sought inclusion in Bildungskultur—and a fortiori political emancipation—by virtue of its vital and multifarious participation in the creation of the unfolding spiritual patrimony of modern Europe. Nineteenth-century Wissenschaft des Judentums thus, by and large, set its sights on intellectual history. As noted in the article mentioned above by the young Martin Buber, the twentieth-century was inaugurated by a radical break with the apologetic impulse that informed the thematic and methodological purview of Wissenschaft des Judentums. With the ever increasingly pressing political and social distress of European Jewry, Zionists and Jewish socialists urged that scholarly attention to be granted to all aspects of the quotidian realities of the Jewish people. The project launched by Zunz and his colleagues was no longer confined to philological disciplines but now embraced multiple disciplines and agendas. The shift is reflected in the contemporary distinction between the History of Judaism and Jewish studies, a disciplinary divide that in Germany is referred to as Judaistik and Jüdische Studien respectively. Accordingly, it is now said that the academic study of Judaism and Jewish civilization is not a single discipline but a field of study, which entails multiple disciplines and diverse methodological considerations. These distinctions became more rigorously pronounced with the incorporation of the field into the formal curriculum of the universities—which was with few exceptions denied Wissenschaft des Judentums prior to the Second World War and the Shoah. Within the institutional setting of the university, the study of Judaism and Jewish civilization partake in the prevailing disciplinary and methodological discourse regarding the challenge of feminism, postcolonial hermeneutics et cetera. Nils Roemer, consequently, calls our attention to the contemporary, “postmodern” context of Jewish Studies. Probing the epistemological and axiological foundations of the European Enlightenment, postmodernism has engendered a heightened methodological and ideological self-awareness. In turn, it has prompted a hermeneutic reflexivity that insistently draws historians to pause and question how they construct their images and understanding of the past. Roemer further notes that the digitalization of archives not only facilitates access to archival and bibliographical resources, but also has the sociological consequence of fragmenting the “republic of scholars.” Sequestered in their studies and isolated by cybernetic gadgetry, scholars increasingly interact with their computer and websites, attenuating their interaction with their fellow scholars. Implicit in each of the chapters of this volume is the overarching question of the shifting Jewish conceptions of what the ancient Greeks proudly called paideia—education—as molding the ideal member of the polis and of sharing the community’s ideal of “the beautiful and good” (kalos kagathos). What does it

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mean to be an educated citizen of the modern, post-Enlightenment Jewish community? What are the values and worldviews that constitute an educated Jew? Who are now the agents and exemplars of Judaism’s paideia, the talmid chacham or the historian, the rabbinic sage or the professor? Are they parallel or competing Vorbilder? Are they simply alternative, divergent exemplars of Jewish memory and practice? Can the two dwell side-by-side, alternating reconcilable modes of Jewish expression? Or is there an irreconcilable cognitive and axiological conflict between them? As Gabriel Motzkin has observed, “the invention” of critical historiography entailed “the reinvention of memory.”³ Is the divide between the historian’s construction of memory and religious memory unbridgeable? Can Wissenschaft des Judentums but only deepen Lessing’s “wide, ugly ditch”? Or perhaps the ditch could simply be circumvented by the creation of a new cultural memory that could accommodate the spiritual and intellectual sensibilities of both religious and secular Jews. This publication is based on papers held at an International Summer Research Workshop of the Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem “Jewish Historiography between Past and Future: 200 Years of Wissenschaft des Judentums.” We should like to thank the Thyssen Foundation, which generously supported both the workshop and this publication.

 Gabriel Motzkin, “The Invention of History and Reinvention of Memory,” in: History, Memory, and Action: Essays in Memory of Natan Rotenstreich, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1996), 25 – 39.

Jay R. Berkovitz

Rabbinic Antecedents and Parallels to Wissenschaft des Judentums In a pioneering essay focusing on the analytic methods of four leading eighteenth-century Talmudists, the late Israel Ta-Shema lamented the pronounced tendency in modern research on the Haskalah movement to leave the world of traditional rabbinic learning outside its field of inquiry. In his estimation, this omission was unfortunate because the intellectual roots of the Central European Jewish enlightenment movement of the mid-eighteenth century could be traced to stirrings within the world of Jewish tradition several decades—perhaps even a century—earlier. What Ta-Shema had in mind was the awakening of a free critical spirit toward the established sources and content of the Jewish tradition, in all areas of knowledge, holy and profane, which he termed “the essence of the interest of the Haskalah.”¹ Here one might add that what Ta-Shema believed was true of studies devoted to the Haskalah is equally, if not overwhelmingly, characteristic of the scholarship that has focused on the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement. When examined closely, the writings of a number of Talmudists and poseqim (Halakhic authorities) who were active in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries bear out Ta-Shema’s suggestion convincingly. Early modern Talmudic and Halakhic novellae contain considerable evidence of source criticism and, more generally, the rudiments of scientific method well before Moses Mendelssohn rose to prominence and prior to the emergence of the Berlin Haskalah. This is hardly surprising. There is no dearth of literary evidence pointing to a critical perspective within the medieval rabbinic tradition, as evidenced by the critical-analytical writings of the Tosafists and of later medieval scholars.² Sixteenth-century Azariah de Rossi’s Me’or Einayim and the anonymous Kol Sakhal of the following century are perhaps the two best known expressions of this critical spirit in early modern Italy. De Rossi’s criticism of rabbinic history drew its  Israel Ta-Shema, “The Gra, the Sha’agat Aryeh, the Penei Yehoshua and Tziyun le-Nefesh Ḥayah. On the History of New Currents in Rabbinic Literature on the Eve of the Enlightenment” [Hebrew], Sidra 15 (1999): 181– 91.  See Ephraim Kanarfogel, The Intellectual History and Rabbinic Culture of Medieval Ashkenaz (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2012); Haym Soloveitchik, “Religious Law and Change. The Medieval Ashkenazic Example,” AJS Review 12 (1987): 205 – 21; Shmuel Shilo, “Encouragement of Commerce and Economy in the Pesikah of Rabbenu Tam” [Hebrew], Sinai 100 (1987): 882– 96. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110554618-002

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inspiration in large measure from the surrounding Renaissance culture, whereas the critical scrutiny to which rabbinic texts and practices are subjected in Kol Sakhal rested on traditional Jewish sources.³ In some areas, rabbinic learning displayed an affinity to scientific knowledge, as in the case of Rabbi Moshe Margolis, author of the Penei Moshe commentary to the Jerusalem Talmud (Amsterdam, 1756). In preparation for writing his commentary on Seder Zera’im, it appears that Margolis enrolled at the University of Frankfurt an der Oder, where he pursued botanical studies at the age of sixty-nine.⁴ He also consulted manuscripts to clarify textual variants. Furthermore, as Elchanan Reiner suggests, abstract textual study and the use of philology bore remarkable similarity to the treatment of classical literature during the Renaissance, especially the initiative taken by the Venetian printer Aldo Manuzio in the sixteenth century, which evidently influenced Daniel Bomberg.⁵ Although the foregoing examples offer what can be rightly called a “pre-history” of Wissenschaft des Judentums, they do not constitute a continuous tradition that extended uninterruptedly from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century. Moreover, from the standpoint of its resonance and reception within Jewish society, the transformation described by Reiner was more muted. Its restrained character was undoubtedly a product of the inherently conservative social and cultural ethos of Jewish learning. Alongside far-reaching social, cultural, and intellectual transformations that occurred in the sixteenth century, the assumptions, methods and central themes of Talmudic and rabbinic literature remained remarkably stable. Even the challenges to rabbinic authority that were posed by printed texts were not quite so revolutionary. In the new milieu of movable type, the text rivaled the teacher as the locus of authority and the study of sacred texts showed signs of democratization, but the impact of this development was relatively slow and, prior to the late eighteenth century, limited primarily to elite circles.⁶ Precisely how far back one ought to search for the antecedents of Wissen-

 See Azariah dei Rossi, The Light of the Eyes, trans. with an introduction and annotations by Joanna Weinberg (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001); Lester Siegel, Historical Consciousness and Religious Tradition in Azariah de Rossi’s Me’or ’Einayim (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989); Talya Fishman, Shaking the Pillars of Exile (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997).  Based on Louis Lewin, “Die jüdischen Studenten an der Universität Frankfurt an der Oder,” Jahrbuch der Jüdisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft 15 (1923): 92.  Elchanan Reiner, “Beyond the Realm of the Haskalah. Changing Learning Patters in Jewish Traditional Society,” Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts 6 (2007): 123 – 33, 130.  Ya’akov Spiegel, “The Influence of Printing on the Writings of Polish Rabbinic Scholars in the Sixteenth Century,” in Studies in Jewish Law, eds. Arnold Enker and Sinai Deutsch (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 1998), 297– 310.

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schaft des Judentums, then, is not a question of intellectual history alone. Ideally, the issue ought to be approached as well from the perspective of the social history of ideas, and with special attention to the structural changes that transformed early modern Jewish community and culture. In contrast to the iconoclastic Me’or Einayim and Kol Sakhal, each of which was viewed as heterodox by contemporaries and later generations, the works considered in the present chapter located themselves squarely within the boundaries of the normative tradition. Signs of critical perspective in early modern rabbinic scholarship reveal a degree of methodological similarity between traditionalist culture and the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement. Although there was relatively little awareness on either side of the approaches they shared, there certainly was more than a modicum of continuity between pre-revolutionary rabbinic culture and the post-revolutionary scientific study of Judaism. Following Ta-Shema’s lead, Reiner has identified several important features of early modern rabbinic literature that are pertinent to our investigation, particularly the rise of textuality and new modes of textual interpretation. This trend was exemplified by Rabbi Joshua Falk’s Talmudic novellae, Penei Yehoshua, and by its reception, as first shown by Ta-Shema. In a departure from established medieval approaches to the text of the Talmud primarily as a source of Halakhic rulings, Falk set his attention upon the syntactical structure, literary coherence, and intertextual character of the Talmudic text. It was the process of textualization, in Reiner’s view, that transformed the Talmudic text from a source, the primary importance of which was practical Halakhah, to a classical text demanding new tools of interpretation. Renewed interest in the Jerusalem Talmud reflected a comparable disengagement from interest in practical Halakhic matters. By the time Penei Yehoshua appeared in print, in 1740, a new genre of Talmudic exegesis, consisting initially of about fifteen books, had begun to emerge. During the next seventy years, that number increased sevenfold to approximately one hundred such works.⁷ Eighteenth-century literary approaches to the Talmud, as typified by Penei Yehoshua, offer a highly promising area of inquiry for historians interested in the roots of the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement. Nevertheless, the new trend was not entirely unprecedented. At the end of the fifteenth century and in the early sixteenth century, new methods of Talmudic study, known as pilpul, had emerged in a number of southern German towns and were subsequently introduced into Poland by Rabbi Jacob Polak (ca. 1460 – 1532). Pilpul was an ana-

 The first wave included ḥiddushim of Maharsha, Maharam of Lublin, and Maharam Shiff of Frankfurt. See Reiner, “Beyond the Realm of the Haskalah.”

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lytical tool that focused on the literary structure of the Talmudic sugya (passage), while showing virtually no interest in its practical Halakhic dimensions. Its main feature was the independent examination of the sugya without recourse to earlier traditions of interpretation; such inquiries were limited strictly to the sugya under discussion. Every detail and linguistic feature in the Talmudic passage was analyzed closely by breaking it down into smaller units. Ultimately, these individual inquiries were resolved at the advanced level through the method of ḥilluk, which reexamined the Talmudic passage in order to present a novel picture of the sugya as a whole. Pilpul and ḥillukim, when successful, produced what some considered dazzling insights into the Talmudic text, but critics viewed these as forced interpretations that were designed to resolve invented textual problems. Rabbi Solomon Luria of Lublin (ca. 1510 – 1573) and Judah Leib ben Beẓalel (the Maharal) of Prague viewed pilpul as the abandonment of efforts to apprehend the exact meaning of a text. It would not be unfair to say that Penei Yehoshua, by contrast, was a synthesis of the literary method of pilpul and the exacting efforts of derekh ha-yashar (“the straight path”), while Tziyyun le-Nefesh Ḥayah, the Talmudic novellae authored by Rabbi Ezekiel Landau (1713 – 1793), rabbi of Prague and Bohemia, exemplified pilpul in the eighteenth century. The leading voice calling for the renunciation of pilpul in favor of the systematic study of the Talmud was the Gaon of Vilna, Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon Zalman (1720 – 1797). His highly comprehensive curricular stratagem comprised the Bible, Mishnah, Tosefta, Midrash Halakhah, and grammar as preparation for studying the Jerusalem and the Babylonian Talmudim. Throughout much of his writings, the establishment of correct texts was a preeminent objective.⁸ The sphere of Halakhah itself offers fertile ground for detecting evidence of conceptual and methodological innovation in the early modern era. In the following pages, attention will be directed at two pivotal figures, each of whom em-

 Mordechai Breuer, “Aliyat ha-pilpul veha-hillukim ve-yeshivot Ashkenaz,” in Sefer ha-zikaron le-R. Ya’akov Yehiel Weinberg (Jerusalem: Feldheim Publishing Co., 1970); Ḥayim Zalman Dimitrovsky, “Al derekh ha-pilpul,” in Sefer ha-yovel li-khevod Shalom Baron (Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1975), 111– 82; Elchanan Reiner, “Temurot bi-yeshivot Polin veAshkenaz be-me’ot ha-16 – 17 veha-vikuaḥ ‘al ha-pilpul,” in Ke-minhag Ashkenaz u-Polin (Jerusalem: Mcaz Zalman Shazar, 1993), 9 – 80. For another example of Talmudic scholarship that followed the comprehensive approach advocated by the Gaon, see Aryeh Leib Ginzburg, Sha’agat Aryeh (Frankfurt am Main, 1785). On the scholarly methods of the Gaon of Vilna, see Jay M. Harris, How Do We Know This? Midrash and the Fragmentation of Modern Judaism (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), 235 – 40; and for trajectories in the nineteenth century, see Ḥanan Gafni, Peshutah shel Mishnah: Iyyunim be-ḥeker Ḥazal ba’et ha-ḥadashah (Tel Aviv: Ha-Kibbutz Ha-Me’uḥad, 2011). On the Gaon of Vilna, see Eliyahu Stern, The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 53 – 62, 118 – 20.

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bodied the distinctive patterns of Western Ashkenazic rabbinic culture over the course of nearly two centuries: Rabbi Ya’ir Ḥayyim Bacharach (1638 – 1702) and Rabbi Aaron Worms (1754– 1836). Bacharach was the author of several important works including a compendium of responsa, titled Ḥavvot Ya’ir (Frankfurt, 1699), and a commentary on the Shulḥan ‘Arukh, titled Meqor Ḥayyim, which remained in manuscript for three hundred years until it was published in 1984.⁹ Four prominent trends in Bacharach’s oeuvre relate either directly or more obliquely to the foundations of Wissenschaft des Judentums: (1) his conception of Halakhah; (2) his view of ritual transmission; (3) the distinction he drew between the secular and religious spheres; and (4) the strong emphasis he placed on methodological rigor.¹⁰ Halakhah, though indisputably rooted in divine revelation, was in Bacharach’s view largely the product of exegesis. This far-reaching proposition, which is implicit throughout much of Bacharach’s oeuvre, was developed most persuasively in a thoroughgoing critique of the Maimonidean assertion that the laws given to Moses at Sinai (halakhot le-Moshe mi-Sinai) were never subject to dispute. Bacharach demonstrated painstakingly that Talmudic evidence of forgetfulness and controversy concerning this distinctive category of Mosaic laws undermined Maimonides’ claim that they were impervious to disagreement. Forgetfulness was, according to Bacharach’s judgment, a universal condition of human nature that contributed to the proliferation of disagreements. Accordingly, the retrieval of forgotten traditions through exegetical methods would make it possible to preserve the ontological truth of the commandments, which he insisted was non-negotiable, alongside a conception of Halakhah shaped by human intervention. In Bacharach’s approach to the history of Halakhah, the central role of human agency is exemplified by the legal creativity and independence that had been exercised regularly by rabbinic authorities throughout the Middle Ages until his own day. Put differently, the remedy for the deleterious effects of forgetfulness, as Shalom Rosenberg has written, was “continuous constructive Halakhic activity.” All told, the Halakhic rulings published in Ḥavvot Ya’ir may well be viewed as a detailed record of the author’s persistent

 On Bacharach, see David Kaufmann, “Jair Ḥayyim Bacharach. A Biographical Sketch,” Jewish Quarterly Review 3 (1891): 292– 313, 485 – 536; and Ḥayyim [Jay] Berkovitz, “The Conception of Minhag in the Halakhic System of R. Ya’ir Ḥayyim Bacharach” [Hebrew], in Studies in the History of the Jews of Germany, eds. Gershon Bacon, Daniel Sperber, and Aharon Giamani (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2008), 29 – 56.  There are many other areas concerning Bacharach’s approach to rabbinic learning that are deserving of attention but are beyond the scope of this essay. These include the importance he attached to Mishnah study as an independent discipline. See Resp. Ḥavvot Ya’ir, no. 124.

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struggle to recover the essential truths of lost traditions through creative ingenuity.¹¹ Concerning the transmission of ritual traditions, Bacharach’s analytic approach, though certainly not dissimilar to the critical views expressed by his predecessors in the medieval period, embodied perspectives that were unmistakably characteristic of the early modern era.¹² The argument advanced most consistently by Bacharach was his claim that minhag (ritual custom) was integral to Halakhah and therefore needed to conform to its accepted legal strictures. He took aim at customs that had evolved independently of the Halakhic system and in some instances had even developed in opposition to it.¹³ Throughout his commentary on the Shulḥan ‘Arukh, Bacharach registered scores of objections to customs that deviated from the classical rabbinic tradition. In those instances where Rabbi Moses Isserles privileged minhag over Halakhah, as in the custom of discouraging menstruant women from entering the synagogue, pronouncing the name of God, or touching a Torah scroll, Bacharach objected vigorously. In his case against Isserles’s stringent ruling in Oraḥ Ḥayyim 88, Bacharach amassed all the relevant sources in order to demonstrate that the custom preferred by Isserles stood in clear contradiction to the Halakhic tradition. Similarly,

 For Bacharach’s vigorous efforts to rebut the Maimonidean conception of Halakhah le-Moshe mi-Sinai, see Resp. Ḥavvot Ya’ir, no. 192, a responsum that was no doubt intended as an independent essay. For an extended analysis, see Moshe Halbertal, People of the Book: Canon, Meaning, and Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 67– 72. See also the valuable comments by Shalom Rosenberg, “Emunat Hakhamim,” in Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century, eds. Isadore Twersky and Bernard D. Cooperman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 335 – 37; and David W. Halivni, “Reflections on Classical Jewish Hermeneutics,” Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research 62 (1996): 82– 89. For Bacharach’s views on forgetfulness, see Resp. Ḥut ha-Shani (Frankfurt am Main, 1679), no. 20. For examples of Bacharach’s creativity and independence, see Ḥayyim [Jay] Berkovitz, “The Self-Portrait of a Seventeenth Century Poseq. Between Biography and Autobiography” [Hebrew], in Yosef Da’at. Studies in Modern Jewish History in Honor of Professor Yosef Salmon, ed. Yosef Goldstein (Be’er Sheva: Ben Gurion University Press, 2010), 33 – 66; and Jay R. Berkovitz, “The Persona of a Poseq. Law and Self-Fashioning in Seventeenth-Century Ashkenaz,” Modern Judaism 32:3 (2012): 1– 19.  Cf. Rabbi Solomon Luria’s highly critical view of popular customs, such as the male head covering, in Resp. Maharshal (Lublin, 1575), no. 2.  See Isserles, gloss to Shulḥan ‘Arukh, Oraḥ Ḥayyim 88, and Bacharach, Meqor Ḥayyim, loc. cit. For a similar critique of Isserles, see Meqor Ḥayyim, Oraḥ Ḥayyim 17, on the subject of the exemption of women from time-bound positive commandments. For a complete discussion, see Berkovitz, “The Conception of Minhag,” 48 – 50, 54. On efforts of early modern jurists to systematize customary law, see Donald R. Kelley, “‘Second Nature.’ The Idea of Custom in European Law, Society, and Culture,” in The Transmission of Culture in Early Modern Europe, eds. Anthony Grafton and Ann Blair (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), 131– 72.

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he took exception to the custom requiring kohanim to separate from their wives the night before they were to pronounce the Priestly Benediction in order to avoid a seminal emission.¹⁴ His rejection of this pietistic observance typified his readiness to part company with venerated medieval Ashkenazic practice whenever it ran counter to his understanding of Halakhah. In other instances he dismissed customs that were, in his view, imbued with superstition and were therefore, by definition, in violation of Halakhah. More pointed was his insistence that ritual practices required a clear textual foundation if they were to be considered authentic. The source of Bacharach’s distress was the growing gap between the ritual act and the text, a concern that was doubtless exacerbated by questions concerning the reliability of textual traditions as they related to ritual practice and liturgy. In the absence of an explicit textual foundation, in his estimation purely mimetic traditions were of dubious origin and therefore to be set aside when they appeared to be alien to the Jewish tradition.¹⁵ The fact that Bacharach did not include Kabbalistic customs among the mimetic traditions he so summarily dismissed provides further insight into the role textuality played in his system. To be sure, his view of Kabbalah was not uncomplicated. He was the first poseq to engage Kabbalistic literature in a sustained and systematic manner while also exercising a degree of critical distance.¹⁶ His ambivalence came in response to the growing legitimacy attained by Kabbalah as a source for ritual practice in the seventeenth century, despite the misgivings of many leading Halakhic authorities. Kabbalistic practices were recorded regularly by Yissachar Ber of Kremenets (sixteenth century) in Yesh Sakhar (1609) and by Benjamin Slonik (ca. 1550–ca. 1619) in Mass’at Binyamin (1633); they subsequently found their way into Abraham Gombiner’s Magen Avraham commentary to Oraḥ Ḥayyim, where the literature of Lurianic Kabbalah was cited regularly.¹⁷ Bacharach himself was apprehensive about the authority of

 Bacharach’s position is culturally significant because the more stringent interpretation had been viewed approvingly by Rabbi Elazar of Worms, Rabbi Baruch b. Yiẓhak, Rabbi Yaakov Halevi of Maroash, and Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg. See Berkovitz, “The Conception of Minhag,” 37– 38.  See Jay R. Berkovitz, “Crisis and Authority in Early Modern Ashkenaz,” Jewish History 26:1– 2 (2012): 187– 88.  Berkovitz, “Crisis and Authority,” 189 – 90.  See Jacob Katz, “Post-Zoharic Relations between Halakhah and Kabbalah,” in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Bernard Dov Cooperman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 283 – 307. It is important to note that even those who firmly rejected the Halakhic authority of the Zohar or of other Kabbalistic sources liberally drew upon their concepts, symbols, and ideas. See Jacob Elbaum, Openness and Insularity: Late Sixteenth Century Jewish Literature in Poland and Ashkenaz [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1990), 356– 65. More recently, Sharon Flat-

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Kabbalah, and he therefore made it his practice to declare when rituals recommended by the Zohar contradicted the Talmudic tradition and rationality. On epistemological grounds, Bacharach’s critique of Kabbalah as conceived by late medieval and early modern exponents was extremely severe. In an extended discussion in responsum no. 210, he stated that Kabbalah, like astronomy, erred in its understanding of empirical reality. On historical grounds, he expressed doubts about the antiquity of Kabbalah, asserting that the loss of an oral tradition was the reason its transmission had become indirect and utterly unreliable. Accordingly, he rejected the claim that Kabbalistic hermeneutics offered the exclusive means to interpret rabbinic literature. Further, he was critical of the popular embrace of mystical practices and doctrines that resulted from the dissemination of printed editions of Kabbalistic texts. For these reasons, despite the spiritual benefits attendant to Kabbalah, Bacharach stipulated that Kabbalistic books should only be read with the greatest care—if at all. Quite tellingly, the curriculum he drafted in response to a father’s query about his son’s education made no mention of Kabbalah.¹⁸ Nevertheless, it is important to note that even when Bacharach rejected a Kabbalistic custom, he did so only after he brought textual evidence to substantiate his position. Ironically, Kabbalah, in his estimation, was an approximate source of Jewish tradition that had now, with its wider availability through printed texts, gained a measure of respectability. Recourse to Kabbalah could provide missing details of ritual practices about which Talmudic sources were either weak or muted. The critical use of Kabbalah thus provided a dependable means, albeit from an improbable source, to fill Halakhic lacunae when rabbinic sources were silent.¹⁹ to, The Kabbalistic Culture of Eighteenth-Century Prague: Ezekiel Landau and His Contemporaries (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010).  For critical perspectives on Kabbalah, see Resp. Ḥavvot Ya’ir, no. 210. For comments on curricular concerns, see Resp. Ḥavvot Ya’ir, no. 124; and Isadore Twersky, “Law and Spirituality in the Seventeenth Century. A Case Study in R. Yair Hayyim Bacharach,” in Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century, 447– 67. Although Bacharach’s criticisms bore some similarity to those advanced by Leon Modena, they were far more muted than the Venetian rabbi’s objections. See Yaacob Dweck, The Scandal of Kabbalah: Leon Modena, Jewish Mysticism, Early Modern Venice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 61– 100, 184– 87.  For examples of numerous citations from Sefer Hasidim, the Zohar, and various works based on Lurianic Kabbalah, see Meqor Ḥayyim 1:4, 6:2, 25:5, 47:14, 46:1, 48:1, 51:7, 92:10, 131:1. An example of Halakhic lacunae may be observed in the case of ritual handwashing. Although Bacharach did not adopt all of the stringencies, he did embrace the full range of details in the Kabbalistic sources concerning the order of the hands, the number of times the water needs to be poured, and differences between the washing performed in the morning and the washing preceding a meal. See Bacharach, Meqor Ḥayyim, Oraḥ Ḥayyim, 4: 7– 8. Cf. Yosef Hahn, Yosif Omeẓ (Jerusalem, 1984), no. 186. The adoption of the Kabbalistic ritual corresponded to what his-

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Equally significant was a heightened historical consciousness that guided Bacharach both in determining how law ought to be interpreted and in assessing the authenticity of religious customs practiced in his own day. Regarding law per se, his rulings painstakingly surveyed the history of legal interpretation while taking account of the impact of social and economic factors. His method is illustrated clearly in responsa that addressed the intricacies of commercial competition and in a ruling on the particulars of drying the fat and flesh of non-kosher animals.²⁰ Questions concerning the ongoing validity of religious rituals that dated from earlier periods were viewed as a matter of historical continuity and discontinuity. Bacharach viewed his own era as detached from the Middle Ages—a condition he no doubt attributed both to the lapse of time and to the cultural and economic transformations that typified the early modern era. Accordingly, the authority normally attributed to medieval traditions had expired, and owing to grave concerns about the process of recording and transmitting customs during the preceding centuries, Bacharach refrained from reconstituting minhag Ashkenaz on its medieval foundation. For these reasons, the traditions practiced during the community’s glory days, that is, in the days of Rabbi Eleazar ben Judah of Worms, as well as those ascribed to Hasidei Ashkenaz, were no longer considered binding by Bacharach. He set many of them aside in favor of minhagim performed in his own day, in Worms, provided that they met the textual criteria he demanded in all instances. Concerning the custom to include the recitation of piyyutim within the framework of traditional worship, Bacharach argued that the popular practice was most likely inauthentic insofar as it became prevalent only with the wider dissemination of printed texts.²¹ Bacharach likewise challenged the medieval claim that the obligation to uphold minhagim derived from their having been transmitted generationally from fathers to sons. Commonly used expressions such as minhag avoteinu be-yadeinu (“we maintain the custom of our ancestors”), and minhag avoteinu Torah hi (“the custom of our ancestors is the equivalent of Torah”), were absent from his vocabulary. Popular consent (known in Roman law as consensus populi), not tradition, was the critical factor that granted minhagim their authority, and therefore

torians call “ritualization.” See Avriel Bar Levav, “Ritualisation of Life and Death in the Early Modern Period,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 47 (2002): 69 – 82. For a rather uncharacteristic example of Bacharach’s reliance on Kabbalah in deciding a Halakhic question, see Resp. Ḥavvot Ya’ir, no. 67, on the obligation to send away the mother bird (shilu’aḥ ha-ken).  See, for example, Resp. Ḥavvot Ya’ir, nos. 41, 42, and 142.  See Meqor Ḥayyim, Oraḥ Ḥayyim 131:1 and Resp. Ḥavvot Ya’ir, no. 238. For additional examples, see Berkovitz, “The Conception of Minhag,” 43. On the question of historical rupture, see Israel Yuval, “Rishonim and Aḥaronim, Antiqui et Moderni,” Zion 57 (1992): 369 – 94.

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customs were in force only in those communities where they were accepted as obligatory. Accordingly, in sharp contrast to Rabbi Moses Isserles and Rabbi Yomtov Lipmann Heller, among others, Bacharach understood only local custom to have a valid claim on the individual’s allegiance.²² The authority of minhagim was, in his estimation, utterly decentralized and depended on a host of factors that included the primacy of text, historical continuity, the reliability of the ritual transmission process, and popular consent.²³ Gaining systematic access to classical rabbinic sources, with particular attention to their methodological underpinnings, was vitally important to Bacharach. Among his most striking contributions was the formulation and refinement of rules for kelalei pesaq (legal decision-making). In this field, an extensive literature in the medieval and early modern periods had already emerged. Works devoted to Talmudic methodology and interpretation date from the era of the Geonim. One such work, Kelalei ha-Talmud, is attributed to Saadia Gaon. By the beginning of the second millennium, interest in Talmudic hermeneutics and general rules of classification spread to Spain and North Africa, as evidenced by Talmudic and Halakhic manuals written by Samuel ha-Nagid and Joseph ibn Aknin. In the course of the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries, scholars in Franco-Germany, Spain, Turkey, Livorno, and Ferrara produced works that continued these earlier efforts. Most prominent among these were the introduction to Avot by Menaḥem ha-Me’iri of Perpignon; Sefer Keritot by Samson of Chinon; Halikhot ‘Olam by Joshua ha-Levi of Talmison; Darkhei ha-Gemara by Isaac Kampanton of Castille; and Sheyarei Knesset ha-Gedolah by Ḥayyim Benveniste of Constantinople and Smyrna. The medieval and early modern kelalim literature was overwhelmingly characteristic of the Sephardic approach to Talmud and Ha-

 See Resp. Ḥavvot Ya’ir, no. 126. By “local custom,” Bacharach was referring to contemporary practice, not to rites that were observed centuries earlier. The minhagim of Sefer Rokeach and Sefer Hasidim were therefore not presumed to have priority over minhagim observed in the seventeenth century. For parallel concerns in general law, see Donald R. Kelley, “‘Second Nature,’” 131– 72.  His insistence that Ashkenazic customs were more reliable than those in Poland was based on the assumption that the former evinced greater faithfulness to the Babylonian Talmud. The benediction ga’al Yisra’el in the evening prayer was viewed as more authentic than the formula used in Poland, melekh tsur yisra’el ve-go’alo, because the latter was influenced by the language of the piyyutim, which was based on traditions of the Talmud Yerushalmi. See Meqor Ḥayyim, Oraḥ Ḥayyim 66:9. Cf. Resp. Ḥavvot Ya’ir, no. 23, where Bacharach displayed an unwillingness to rely on the Talmud Yerushalmi as a source for a legal ruling because the reliability of the text (Gittin 7:1) was questionable in his view.

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lakhah, with only occasional exceptions, such as the rules of Talmudic adjudication published by Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz, author of the Shenei Luḥot ha-Berit. ²⁴ It is uncertain whether Bacharach was encouraged by the foregoing methodological works of predominantly Sephardic and Italian provenance. His own effort to systematically compile legal principles recorded both in the Talmud and in post-Talmudic literature centered on responsum no. 94, which may well have been intended as an independent essay. His compilation was the product of sifting, sorting, and assembling Talmudic kelalim (principles) that were meant to guide poseqim through the labyrinth of legal opinions stated in the name of various tana’im and amora’im. The goal was to trace the kelalim in medieval and early modern commentarial literature and legal rulings in order to determine how well the hierarchy of opinions that was set forth in the Talmud had fared. Bacharach proceeded to identify trends in the legal thought of Rishonim, particularly how their rulings corresponded to, or diverged from, Talmudic kelalim. He also elicited new rules from this same literature. In the course of his responsum, he clarified many obscure principles, reconciled contradictions in the works of major figures such as Maimonides and Nahmanides, and noted exceptions to established principles, as reflected in other Talmudic passages and in comments by Rabbi Isaac Alfasi, the Tosafists, Rabbi Solomon ben Aderet, and several early Aḥaronim. With breathtaking ease, Bacharach provided cross-references and intertextual connections to the entirety of rabbinic literature, which included novellae and responsa that had appeared by the mid-seventeenth century.²⁵ In Mar Keshisha, a work devoted to methodological issues, he composed a dictionary of Talmudic terminology and concepts that was described by David Kaufmann as follows: “[S]eldom has a collection of material for any

 For a survey of Talmudic introductions, see Zvi Hirsch Chajes, Mevo ha-Talmud [The Student’s Guide Through the Talmud], trans. Jacob Shachter (New York: Feldheim Publishing Co., 1960), xv–xx. See Yaakov Spiegel, “R. Gabriel Conforte and His Book Yesod ‘Olam” [Hebrew], Sefunot 18 (1985): 221– 75. Cf. the fourteen-volume encyclopaedia of Jewish law and lore compiled by Italian rabbi and physician Isaac Lampronti, Paḥad Yiẓhak (Ferrara, 1840) in the first half of the eighteenth century, and the recent study by David Malkiel, “Empiricism in Isaac Lampronti’s Paḥad Yishaq,” Materia Giudaica 10 (2005): 341– 51. For examples of citations of Resp. Ḥavvot Ya’ir no. 94 in Malachi Ha-Cohen, Yad Malachi (Livorno, 1767), see nos. 556, 580, 616, and 634.  Resp. Ḥavvot Ya’ir, no. 94. Also see no. 203, where Bacharach offered a comprehensive analysis of heqeshim (the juxtaposition of cases mentioned in a single verse or group of verses) in Talmudic literature.

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branch of knowledge been attempted in such magnitude, and with such comprehensive observation of all facts connected there with as in this one.”²⁶ Alongside the foregoing methodological approaches concerning the authority of custom, ritual transmission, and legal adjudication, two broader perspectives on Halakhah deserve brief mention. First, in several responsa that addressed the scope and authority of communal governance, Bacharach candidly acknowledged the validity of a non-Halakhic realm. The legitimacy accorded to communal legislation was rooted in the empowerment of the community in non-sacral terms, resting on the claim that its goal was “the preservation of the collective body” by serving as a barrier against corruption and immorality. The separation of the lay and religious spheres would have the effect of limiting the scope of Halakhah to a narrower domain; ultimately, however, it would allow greater flexibility in the interpretation of Jewish law.²⁷ Second, Bacharach insisted on the importance of distinguishing precisely between the categories of d’rabbanan and d’oraita (rabbinic and Torah) injunctions. In a lengthy discussion of the obligation to bury a met mitzvah (an abandoned corpse) when other mitzvot were pending (Ḥavvot Ya’ir, no. 9), he offered a critical analysis of the relative weight assigned to various categories of Jewish law. He concluded that a number of declarations aiming to reinforce rabbinic authority were overstated and therefore unreliable from a legal standpoint. For example, he argued that although Megilat Esther was the product of divine inspiration, it could not be considered a prophetic work, and therefore the injunction to read it could not be viewed as comparable to a Torah obligation.²⁸ In Ḥavvot Ya’ir, no. 139, on the issue of delayed burial (halanat ha-met), he explained that the Mishnaic statement “whoever leaves his dead unburied transgresses a negative commandment” (M. Sanhedrin 6:4) ought to be read primarily as hyperbole. Following an analysis of several other examples of this same phrasing in the Talmud, Bacharach concluded that none of these qualify as biblical precepts and cannot be regarded as constituting a legal prohibition. The two foregoing perspectives would gain greater

 Kaufmann, “Jair Chayim Bacharach,” 525 – 26, and Ya’ir Hayyim Bacharach, Mar Keshisha (Jerusalem: Machon Yerushalayim, 1993). In Mar Keshisha, pp. 230 – 31, Bacharach listed and explained, for example, all instances of the expression ‫ תרתי שמעית מיניה‬that appear in the Talmud, as noted in Resp. Ḥavvot Ya’ir, no. 139.  Resp. Ḥavvot Ya’ir, no. 81. This view, which reflected currents of sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury political philosophy and jurisprudence in France and Germany, requires further elaboration. On the separation of the lay and religious realms as well as their complementarity in the eighteenth century, see Jay R. Berkovitz, Protocols of Justice: The Pinkas of the Metz Rabbinic Court, 1771 – 1789, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2014), vol. 1, 46 – 78, 151.  Resp. Ḥavvot Ya’ir, no. 9.

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prominence in the nineteenth century in the course of discussions among Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars and rabbis on the scope and character of Halakhah.²⁹ Metz dayyan and poseq Rabbi Aaron Worms, who was born just at the mideighteenth century, viewed Bacharach as a fellow traveler in his approach to law and ritual.³⁰ An instructor in the Metz yeshiva and a judge in the rabbinical court, Worms was, alongside Rabbi David Sintzheim, the leading Halakhic authority at the Assembly of Jewish Notables in Paris and the Napoleonic Sanhedrin. Toward the end of his life, he was appointed consistorial grand rabbin of Metz. His major opus, Me’orei Or (Metz, 1789 – 1831), a seven-volume compendium of novellae on the Talmud and the Shulḥan ‘Arukh, is filled with examples of innovative thinking that was strikingly parallel to the emerging critical scholarship of his day.³¹ Two key elements—a readiness to challenge traditional authority and a critical approach to rabbinic sources—mark the original direction taken by Worms. This pattern of thinking is evident in three broad areas of concern: minhag, Halakhah, and Kabbalah. Much like Bacharach, Worms strongly disapproved of ritual practices that failed to meet rigorous textual standards and that were the product of historically unreliable transmission. Minhagim that were rooted in superstition, linguistic

 Bacharach’s view was cited approvingly by Rabbi Aaron Worms (Ken Tahor, B.T. Sanhedrin 46b) and Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Chajes in his novellae to B.T. Sanhedrin 46b. By contrast, Rabbi Moses Sofer, in Resp. Ḥatam Sofer, Yoreh De’ah no. 328, argued that halanat ha-met was a biblical prohibition, even though the biblical verse that is regarded as its textual basis refers to a criminal executed by the beit din. In practical terms, the classification of delayed burial as a biblical prohibition limits the flexibility that could be applied, whether to prevent severe economic loss or in order to preserve human dignity. In response to a letter from Chajes, who sought clarification for the view that halanat ha-met was biblically prohibited, Sofer urged that the view of Bacharach be kept from the public’s attention because “today many ignore rabbinic norms.” In addition, he criticized Rabbi Ezekiel Landau for having referred to certain Sabbath restrictions pertaining to a Jewish-owned factory that was kept open on the Sabbath as d’rabbanan. Sofer was of the opinion that the challenges to religious observance in his day demanded a blurring of the boundary between the two levels, whereas Bacharach (and Landau) were motivated by a purer analysis of Halakhah. See Moshe Samet, “Halanat ha-Met,” Asufot 3 (1989): 413 – 65; and Daniel Sinclair, “Normative Transparency in Jewish Law: Maimonides, R. Moses Sofer and R. Kook,” Jewish Law Annual 19 (2011): 119 – 40.  See the praise given to Bacharach by Worms in Ken Tahor (Metz, 1831), 143b.  The seven-volume work was published under the following titles: Me’orei Or, vols. 1– 3 (Metz, 1790 – 93); Be’er Sheva (Metz, 1819); ’Od la-Mo’ed (Metz, 1822); Bin Nun (Metz, 1827); Ken Tahor (Metz, 1831). On Worms, see Jay R. Berkovitz, “Authority and Innovation at the Threshold of Modernity: The Me’orei Or of Rabbi Aaron Worms of Metz,” in Me’ah She’arim: Studies in Medieval Jewish Spiritual Life in Memory of Isadore Twersky (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2001), 249 – 85.

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error, and corrupted texts were mercilessly condemned. He rejected widely observed customs such as kapparot and tashlikh because of their purported alien origin,³² and prayers such as Makhnisei Raḥamim were denounced on theological grounds because they called for the petitioning of angels.³³ Worms was naturally distrustful of medieval compilations of minhagim, such as the Likkutei Maharil, in this case because the corpus was assembled by a student and not by Rabbi Jacob Moellin himself.³⁴ Virtually every aspect of the criticism advanced by Worms was consistent with medieval rabbinic traditions of comparative source analysis, textual precision, and methodical argumentation. But they mirrored many of the same methods that had come to be prevalent in the Enlightenment era as well, including consultation of manuscript sources, textual emendation, and attention to historical development.³⁵ Likewise, Worms’ sustained efforts to reconstitute an authentic Ashkenazi ritual that was independent of relatively recent eastern influences corresponded to a parallel interest in classical traditions that was emblematic of the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Worms’ clear preference for the authority of Talmudic and early Midrashic sources over medieval rabbinic writings mirrored the preeminence of classical antiquity in Enlightenment thought. The “return to the Talmud,” which was embraced as well by the Gaon of Vilna and Rabbi Ezekiel Landau, among several others, undermined what had served since the middle ages as the main principle of Halakhic decision-making in the Ashkenazi Jewish world.³⁶ Hierarchy within the legal tradition rested, in Worms’ view, on the relative antiquity of rabbinic texts. This effectively neutralized the role of the legal principle halakhah ke-batrai (“the law follows the later authorities”). Post-Talmudic legal codes and commentaries were to be treated as exegetical texts that would remain subordinate to the Talmud.³⁷ As in the oeuvre of French maskilim and proponents of Wissenschaft des Judentums as well, the tacit goal of Me’orei Or was the restoration of Halakhah to an earlier, uncorrupted stage.³⁸ For this reason, he rejected rituals

 ‘Od la-Mo’ed, 50b.  Ibid., 53b; Be’er Sheva, 98a. See David Malkiel, “Between Worldliness and Traditionalism: Eighteenth-Century Jews Debate Intercessory Prayer,” Jewish Studies Internet Journal 2 (2003): 169 – 98, http://www.biu.ac.il/JS/JSIJ/2-2003/Malkiel.pdf.  See ‘Od la-Mo’ed, 68a; Ken Tahor, 189a. See Jay R. Berkovitz, Rites and Passages: The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Culture in France, 1650 – 1860 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 74– 76.  See Be’er Sheva, 3a; Bin Nun, 6b.  See Chaim Tchernowitz, Toldot ha-Poseqim, vol. 3 (New York: Ṿa’ad ha-yovel, 1946), 208 – 58.  Berkovitz, Rites and Passages, 169 – 70.  See Archives israélites 1 (1840): 66 – 67; Archives israélites 4 (1843): 4– 5; and La Bible, traduction nouvelle, ed. Samuel Cahen, vol. 9 (1838), Preface.

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such as mystical prayers recited at the sounding of the shofar because they had no basis in either the Talmud or Midrashim and, further, because they were a source of derision “by those who mock us.”³⁹ With this oblique reference to the disparagement leveled by proponents of the Haskalah against rabbinic traditions and their practitioners, Worms conceded that the criticism was not entirely unjustified. What is more, in Me’orei Or, Worms acknowledged implicitly that traditionalists could rightfully be held to a higher standard of precision in correcting errors and corruptions, in transmitting ritual practices, and in explicating their underlying principles. These perspectives endeared Worms to French maskilim, to proponents of moderate religious Reform, and to practitioners of Wissenschaft des Judentums, who welcomed his rational and enlightened traditionalism with much enthusiasm.⁴⁰ As Kabbalistic sources gained wider currency in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the challenge to normative Halakhah became ever more pronounced. Worms acknowledged the Zohar as an authentic source of ritual practice, even when it appeared to contradict the Talmud, and it therefore became necessary to reconcile the competing authority of the two. He approached the Zohar as a rabbinic text to be studied using the tools of standard rabbinic and Halakhic methodology. Consequently, the Zohar and the Talmud were not, in his view, incongruous. But insofar as the Zohar did not become known until centuries later, Worms defined its relationship to the Talmud as primarily exegetical.⁴¹ Moreover, he employed a critical-historical approach that located authentic Kabbalistic praxis in a Zohar stripped of layers of commentary, as the case of ritual handwashing reveals. The sixteenth-century Lurianic Tola’at Ya’akov, in the name of the Zohar, referred to the failure to wash one’s hands immediately upon rising as a capital offense. This assertion contradicted the view of B.T. Berakhot 60b, where the subject of handwashing was presumed to be a requirement only after the morning benedictions were recited. Against Tola’at Ya’akov, Worms argued that since no Zoharic source to this effect was extant, it was a matter of deciding which would have precedence, the much-respected Talmudic-Halakhic tradition or the disputed Lurianic Kabbalah. In his view, Lurianic customs could be considered reliable only if they were derived from a classical source—either Talmudic/Midrashic or Zoharic—but they enjoyed no author-

   lat

Be’er Sheva, 92b–93a. Berkovitz, Rites and Passages, 174. Berkovitz, Rites and Passages, 172– 73. Cf. the similar approach of Jacob Emden, Resp. She’eYaveẓ, vol. 1 (Altona, 1739 – 1760), no. 47.

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ity of their own.⁴² Against the invention of rites and the introduction of Lurianic customs, Worms argued that they not only violated the standards of reason, but that “matters such as these have no foundation in the Talmud and Midrashim.” In one liturgical matter, Worms questioned Rabbi Jacob Tam’s wording of the Kol Nidrei prayer, which calls for the release from future vows, because it contravened the standard rules of annulment, as other authorities before him had reasoned. Worms argued further that the correct wording of the annulment, in the past tense, could be found in the Zohar, in Raaya Mehemna. The confusion originated in the fact that the Zohar was unknown before it was “discovered” in the thirteenth century, and as a result Rabbi Tam and others were misled. Worms therefore urged individual worshippers to recite the Kol Nidrei both in the past and future tenses. While Worms’ world was clearly circumscribed within the “four cubits of Halakhah,” several key elements of his conception of law and ritual corresponded to the widely accepted ideology of the Haskalah and also echoed the new critical spirit of the Enlightenment. Indeed, Me’orei Or offers a striking illustration of how traditional learning in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries embodied innovative thinking, a critical approach to sources, and an appreciation for the process of historical development, particularly in relation to Halakhic and Kabbalistic traditions. It is not difficult to see how Worms’ critical perspective was understood to reinforce the reformist contention that the Halakhic tradition had veered from its original course. This assessment, which was shared by other rabbinic figures,⁴³ implied that Judaism faced an internal crisis arising from the growing multiplicity of ritual practices and, in some instances, even from distortions of classical traditions. A close reading of Me’orei Or suggests that Worms’ admirers, whether proponents of Haskalah or of Wissenschaft des Judentums, failed to understand that his work epitomized the longstanding dialectic of tradition and innovation in rabbinic scholarship, that its critical views were counterbalanced by an unwavering commitment to Halakhah. But there is no denying that in Me’orei Or we have evidence that the concerns voiced by

 See ‘Od la-Mo’ed, 33a; and Be’er Sheva, 21b and 28b. For an example of sharp criticism of the authenticity of Lurianic practices, see Ken Tahor, 188b. For additional examples, see the discussion in Berkovitz, “Authority and Innovation,” 298 – 300.  Israel Zamosc, an older contemporary of the two, maintained that the problem could be traced to the deleterious effects of pilpul. See Harris, How Do We Know This, 138 – 40.

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maskilim and reformers were judged to be compelling by at least one major Halakhic authority.⁴⁴ The far-reaching innovations of the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement were built in part on the intellectual foundations of rabbinic scholarship. Bacharach and Worms exhibited considerable independence in assessing the authority of minhag, Halakhah, and Kabbalah while profoundly aware of the impact of social, economic, and political forces on Jewish culture. Their efforts to chart a new course loosened the constraints imposed by the past while remaining firmly within the Halakhic framework. In an unprecedented manner, Bacharach and Worms redefined the boundaries between the secular and the profane, between text and mimesis, and between tradition and exegesis. The enlarged role of human agency and creativity is evident throughout their writings. Among the major differences that distinguish the scientific study of Judaism from critical rabbinic scholarship, two stand out most conspicuously. First and foremost is the question of influence. Modern scientific scholarship has been inspired by the broadest conception of knowledge, is invariably influenced by external currents of thought, and engages in comparative cultural and historical analysis. What is perhaps most remarkable about the progressive character of Bacharach’s and Worms’ writings is that they contain no explicit evidence of influence from the outside. This is not to imply that either of the two rabbinic figures was shielded from the cultural and intellectual forces around them. In Ḥavvot Ya’ir, there is evidence of discussion with gentile scholars and engagement with their ideas. But it hardly needs to be stated that authors of responsa, and of Talmudic and Halakhic novellae as well, unfailingly substantiate their arguments on the basis of evidence drawn from the rabbinic tradition, and as a rule refrain from citing external sources. Despite the likelihood that they were aware, even if only indirectly, of major ideas and scholarly streams in their own day, the main influences in the case of Bacharach and Worms were, without doubt, immanent. The rich traditions of textual scholarship and critical inquiry within the rabbinic tradition were the crucial factors that guided them in the direction that each had taken.⁴⁵ Second, conceptual advances and methodological

 Berkovitz, “Authority and Innovation,” passim. On the continuation of several of these trends in France, see Berkovitz, “Jewish Scholarship and Identity in Nineteenth Century France,” Modern Judaism 18 (1998): 1– 33; and Berkovitz, Rites and Passages, 174– 90.  It should nonetheless be emphasized that interactions with non-Jews was a standard part of the intellectual development of Halakhic authorities. For example, Bacharach cited the work of Johann Christoph Wagenseil (1633 – 1705), a Lutheran jurist and professor at Altdorf, in Resp. Ḥavvot Ya’ir, no. 1, subparag. 11. In no. 170, after indicating that he had “read in their books of laws” of a case that was precisely the same as the one that he was asked to consider, Bach-

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innovations in rabbinic writings most frequently emerged from an engagement with discrete issues and were intended to alter policy in the narrowest sense. As a rule, scholars of Wissenschaft des Judentums, even the more traditional among them—such as Tzvi Hirsch Chajes, Nachman Krochmal, and Solomon Judah Leib Rappaport—directed their efforts to broader goals and agendas. It appears that in all likelihood Bacharach and Worms had set their sights on their immediate communities, but at the same time had staked out positions that would occupy the attention of rabbis and lay scholars alike in the nineteenth century, and would eventually emerge as a line of demarcation between competing religious camps. These were only the very first steps anticipating the beginning of critical rabbinic scholarship in the modern era.

arach contrasted the general and Jewish legal approaches to the punishment of a capital crime. I am grateful to Edward Fram for bringing this reference to my attention. In the Pinkas of the Metz Beit Din of the 1770s and 1780s there is substantial evidence of consultations with French lawyers and legal experts. See the discussion in Berkovitz, Protocols of Justice, vol. 1, 114, 123 – 29. Cf. Adam Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 175 – 76.

Rachel Livneh-Freudenthal

Acknowledging the Past and Envisioning the Future: The Founders of Wissenschaft des Judentums (Science of Judaism) In 1823, the inaugural edition of Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, a journal of the Science of Judaism, was published in Berlin. The establishment of the periodical’s publisher, Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden (Society for the Culture and Science of the Jews) some four years earlier (1819) was considered the formative act of Wissenschaft des Judentums, and its editor, Leopold Zunz, is widely viewed as the pioneer of modern Jewish historiography. The first edition opened with a programmatic article, “Über den Begriff einer Wissenschaft des Judentums” (On the Concept of a Science of Judaism), by Immanuel Wolf— one of the association’s founders—explaining the need for the new discipline: “Wherever one turns, there are signs of the renewed inner fermentation, which holds the fundamental principle of Judaism.” Once more, this principle “aspires to evolve in accordance to the Zeitgeist. However, even this development […] will only proceed on the road of science, for it is none other than the scientific approach that characterized our era.”¹ In a lecture given to fellow members, Eduard

 Immanuel Wolf, “Über den Begriff einer Wissenschaft des Judentums,” in Leopold Zunz (ed.), Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums (Berlin, 1823), 1– 24, 24. For more regarding the Verein see: Ismar Schorsch, “Breakthrough into the Past: The Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 33 (1988): 3 – 28; Michael A. Meyer, ed., The Origins of the Modern Jew: Jewish Identity and European Culture in Germany, 1749 – 1824 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1972), 144– 82; Reuven Michael, Jewish Historiography: From the Renaissance to the Modern Time [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1993), 188 – 216; Michael Graetz, “Renaissance des Judentums im 19. Jahrhundert: ‘Der Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden’ 1819 bis 1824,” in Bild und Selbstbild der Juden Berlins: Zwischen Aufklärung und Romantik, eds. Marianne Awerbuch and Stefi Jersch-Wenzel (Berlin: Historische Kommision zu Berlin, 1992), 211– 27; Hanns Günther Reissner, Eduard Gans: Ein Leben im Vormärz (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr Paul Siebeck, 1965); Norbert Waszek, “‘Wissenschaft und die Liebe zu den Seinen:’ Eduard Gans und die hegelianischen Ursprünge der ‘Wissenschaft des Judentums,’” in Eduard Gans (1797 – 1839): Politischer Professor zwischen Restauration und Vormärz, eds. Reinhard Blänkner, Gerhard Göhler, and Norbert Waszek (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2002), 80. On the association’s philosophical enterprise, see Johann Braun, Judentum, Jurisprudenz und Philosophie: Bilder aus dem Leben des Juristen Eduard Gans, 1797 – 1839 (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1997); Siegfried Ucko, “Geistesgeschichtliche Grundlagen der Wissenschaft des Judentums: Motive des Kulturvereins vom Jahre 1819,” Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland, vol. V (1935): 315 – 52. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110554618-003

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Gans, the Verein’s president throughout most of its years in existence, described the raison d’être of Wissenschaft des Judentums: “If you ask me to what time aspires, I will answer that it aspires to reach a consciousness of itself, not to be alone, but rather to know itself.” Likewise, the goal of the association’s members is “to raise Judaism qua the object of our interest to the consciousness, to present the Jewish world to itself.”² Gans, Wolf, Zunz, and their colleagues claimed that only Wissenschaft des Judentums could impart Judaism with an existence “befitting the age” and guarantee “an existence of freedom” for both Judaism and the Jews. Through the Science of Judaism, they sought to consolidate all the stories or histories (Geschichten) about the Jews into an integrated and coherent narrative of a community whose existence extends from the past through the present to the future, whereupon they would present this story to the Jewish and non-Jewish world. Only in this fashion, they claimed, will Judaism return to be a historical subject and obtain its liberty. In the spirit of their age, they defined Judaism as a historical entity. Moreover, they believed that this history-oriented turn to the past would constitute a modern alternative for Jewish existence. Put differently, the Verein envisioned this discipline ushering in “a redemptive Judaism” that would provide Jews with the tools to survive in the modern world as a distinct collective, while nevertheless integrating itself into the European fabric of life. These ideas kindled the rise of Wissenschaft des Judentums, as its founders shaped the science’s paradigms and templates and oversaw its reconceptualization of Judaism. From their standpoint, the turn to the past was a means for creating a vision of the future. In this chapter, I will focus on three topics: the Verein’s outlook on history as a blueprint for the conceptualization of Wissenschaft des Judentums; the notion of liberty upon which this science’s objectives and functions were based; and finally, the synthesis that the Verein’s members created between the Science of Judaism and the liberty of the Jews.³

 Eduard Gans, “Dritte Rede vor dem Kulturverein (May 4, 1823),” in Eduard Gans (1797 – 1839): Hegelianer—Jude—Europäer, ed. Norbert Waszek (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1991), 78.  Much has been written on the movement’s turn to the past. See Ismar Schorsch, From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism (Hannover: University Press of New England, 1988); Rachel Livneh-Freudenthal, “Wissenschaft des Judentums: Paradigms and Initial Templates [Hebrew],” Shnaton Teudah 20 (2005): 187– 214.

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The Verein’s Conception of History Amid the generational transition from the Maskils to the Wissenschaft des Judentums’s founders, historical writing emerged on the global stage and coalesced into a scientific discipline. In the process, it became a key instrument for forming and deconstructing collectives. At the time, there were two prevailing ideas about history. The first, from the historicist school of thought, was that the history of a people constitutes the basis for its national existence and culture. Every nation has a Volksgeist (literally, “spirit of the people”) that reveals itself over the course of its history. What is more, the Volksgeist is rendered a historical subject via its representation in historical writing. The second idea, which was conceived by Georg W. F. Hegel, is that the Weltgeist (world-spirit) strives toward an end that comes to fruition in history. In other words, history’s objective is the realization of freedom; and this purpose is not detached from history, but is the engine that drives it forward.⁴ Both ideas reverberate throughout the Verein’s minutes and the output of its members, thereby shedding light on its vision and objectives.⁵ Understanding history as an organizing concept that encompasses all past, present, and future experiences was a hallmark of the era’s political culture. History was indeed perceived as the sum total of every prior occurrence, as well as all the ways of acknowledging and depicting this same past. In addition, history was grasped as an ongoing succession of events. Given the significance of this process, historians were called upon to decipher and expose its meaning. The rise of historical consciousness also informs the transition from Mendelssohn’s approach to representing Judaism to that of Zunz. Throughout the nineteenth century, the argument that the comprehension of any phenomenon invariably requires knowledge of its historical development was a major component of both

 On the first idea, see Leopold Zunz, “Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur [1818],” in Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: Louis Gerschel Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1875), 31. On the second, see Eduard Gans, “Vorrede des Herausgebers,” in Georg W. F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (Berlin: Verlag von Duncker und Humbolt, 1833), v–xvii.  Norbert Waszek expands on the Hegelian orientation of the Verein’s members; Norbert Waszek, “Hegel, Mendelssohn, Spinoza: Beiträge der Philosophie zur ‘Wissenschaft des Judentums:’ Eduard Gans und die philosophischen Optionen des ‘Vereins für Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden,’” Menorah 10 (1999): 187– 215. Gans compared the principles of historicism and those put forth in Hegel’s The Philosophy of History in his introduction to the latter; Stefan Jordan, “Hegel und der Historismus,” in Hegels Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, Hegels-Studien, Beiheft. 38, eds. Elisabeth Weiseer-Lohmann and Dietmar Köhler (Bonn, 1998): 205 – 24.

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the general discourse and the forum on Judaism. In his 1818 article “Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur” (A Few Words on Rabbinic Literature), Zunz wrote that: Only someone that will see a people’s literature as a gateway to apprehending the development of its culture over the ages, only someone that will learn to see how at every moment […] the essence of this literature emerged from the given and from the supplementation […], how the present was created and arrayed as an ineluctable outcome of everything that was —only he will be able to stand with awe before this temple of deities.⁶

That is, before Jewish history. Presenting Judaism as a historical phenomenon engendered the following question: Is Judaism an ahistorical, eternal essence that manifests itself in myriad forms, or a historical entity that adapts to the spirit of the age (Zeitgeist). This question would indeed become a focal point of many debates that accompanied the evolution of Wissenschaft des Judentums and undergirded the discussion on Judaism’s modern image. Furthermore, this question was the source of many dilemmas that characterized the Verein’s discussions. The radical approach of the members to this question would draw the wrath of Orthodox Jewish historiographers, who adamantly opposed the historization of Judaism, and their national counterparts as well. The latter not only dubbed the group under review “exterminators and destroyers of Judaism” who craved assimilation, but banned them from “the Jewish canon.”⁷ Besides rendering history a field of science dedicated to studying and representing the past, the era’s historians believed that these endeavors would, as the historian Leopold von Ranke put it, help them reveal “the way it really was.” In their estimation, the scientific method has the wherewithal to guarantee the veracity of their findings. The institutionalization of history as an independent discipline involved the establishment of suitable apparatuses and channels of discourse, such as history departments, chairs, journals, and the like. To this end, the Verein’s founders created parallel institutions: a scientific institute, a tutoring program for young Jews (Unterrichtsanstalt), an archive, and the above-mentioned journal.⁸

 Leopold Zunz, “Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur,” 7.  Rachel Livneh-Freudenthal, “From ‘A Nation Dwelling Alone’ to ‘A Nation among the Nations,’” in Streams into the Sea, eds. Rachel Livneh-Freudenthal and Elchanan Reiner (TelAviv: Alma College, 2001), 153 – 77.  Eduard Gans, “Zweite Rede vor dem Kulturverein” (on October 28, 1822), in Waszek, Eduard Gans (1797 – 1839), 62– 74; Also see Reissner, Eduard Gans, 71. On the manifest and the conflicts that reared up during the nascent stages of the Verein, see Braun, Judentum, Jurisprudenz und Philosophie, 24– 26. For an in-depth look at the association’s institutional and scientific enter-

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Transforming history’s scope from the supra-historical to the politico-historical level elicited a radical change in how social reality was perceived. Historical vicissitudes penetrated formative stories—be they educational or theological— and were interpreted as processes of development and progress. History, qua the progression of events over time, was grasped as a dynamic process in which the future is no longer the realization of the past or some utopian-cumapocalyptic vision. Instead, it is the outcome of human intervention, of a genuine political enterprise in which freedom is realized. For instance, Gans repeatedly stressed that owing to ineluctable historical developments in Europe, the integration of the Jews into their surroundings is the order of the day: “[…] the fruit of the labor of the ‘spirit of wisdom’ that has revealed itself in the history of the world.”⁹ Therefore, it is incumbent on the Jews to realize this liberty post haste. The Jews, according to Zunz and Wolf, are being called upon to join the general social campaign to secure freedom and to once again “become,” as the latter put it, “highly vigorous partners in the shared enterprise of humanity.”¹⁰ A disagreement between the Verein’s founders and Hegel over the comprehension of history sheds light on their reconceptualization of Judaism and their development of a program for the Science of Judaism. Some scholars consider the association’s members fanatic Hegelians. A case in point is Gans, who was heavily influenced by the philosopher’s work on the history of law. As evident from the Verein’s discussions and writings, every one of its members adopted the Hegelian terminology. That said, it is their deviations from Hegel’s path that enhance our knowledge of their mission and the role that they destined for the Science of Judaism. From their vantage point, Hegel’s attitude to Judaism and to the state’s naturalization of the Jews is inconsistent with the major tenets of his own worldview. As per his thought on the Weltgeist’s evolution, there is no room for Judaism in the quest for freedom. Likewise, his three-phase model is comprised of the Oriental, Greek-Roman, and Christian worlds. During the latter stage, the spirit becomes free, in its own right and on its own behalf; in parallel, the spirit manifests itself in the modern state. Within this framework, Judaism is merely a vestige of a defunct religion.

prise, see Ismar Schorsch, “A Breakthrough into the Past: The Society for the Culture and Science of the Jews,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 33 (1988): 3 – 28.  Eduard Gans, “Zweite Rede vor dem Kulturverein.” 64. On the development of the Hegelian definition of history in this particular context, see Franz Hespe, “Geist und Geschichte: Zur Entwicklung zweier Begriffe in Hegels Vorlesungen,” in Hegels Vorlesungen, eds. Weiseer-Lohmann and Köhler, 71– 93.  Wolf, “Über den Begriff einer Wissenschaft des Judentums,” 24.

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In contrast, Gans, Wolf, Zunz, and their colleagues presented monotheism as a crucial phase in the development of the world-spirit. It is the first step towards unity and epitomizes the Weltgeist. Furthermore, Judaism itself is the eternal and indispensable agent of the idea of unity.¹¹ The Verein’s members formulated this argument using Hegel’s terminology; following in his philosophical footsteps, they determined that all phenomena, including the Jewish faith and way of life, are historical, that is, they embody the world-spirit. If heretofore the Jews were, as Gans put it, “living mummies” beyond the realm of society and history, “the light of heaven” is now “lovingly illuminating and is emitting a warm and luminous ray on our co-religionists as well.” In other words, society is inviting Jews back into its fold. Faithful to Hegel’s principles, the Verein claimed that the Jews’ reintegration must be accompanied by the return of Judaism onto the stage of world history. This process will not come to pass so long as Judaism continues to be renounced. Instead, they averred that the said return would materialize via Judaism and Wissenschaft des Judentums. Hegel, who called for the naturalization of the Jews as people, not as Jews, ignored or completely spurned this idea.¹² Gans resolutely equated freedom with the self-realization of the historical subject. At a certain juncture, he argued, Judaism had vacated world history and ceased to be a historical subject. In Gans’ estimation, the Jews are presently being given an opportunity to return to history as a distinct entity. Therefore, Judaism’s uniqueness must no longer be denied, but rather accentuated so as to reinstitute it as a subject. Be that as it may, Gans’ theory cast a shadow over most of the centuries of the Jewish literary enterprise, for they coincided with a long period in which Judaism was a target of oppression. As we can see, his description of the Wissenschaft des Judentums’ objectives and missions was general and abstract. With respect to the history of jurisprudence, though, he was

 Gans, “Zweite Rede vor dem Kulturverein,” 65 – 66; Wolf, “Über den Begriff einer Wissenschaft des Judentums,” 2– 3. Hans-Christian Lucas expounds on this speech: Hans-Christian Lucas, “Dieses Zukünftige wollen wir mit Ehrfurcht begrüßen: Bemerkungen zur Historisierung und Liberalisierung von Hegels Rechts- und Staatsbegriff durch Eduard Gans,” in Eduard Gans (1797 – 1839), eds. Göhler, Blänker, Waszek, 105 – 35. The claim that Hegel’s attitude to Judaism contradicts his general worldview is explicated by Hespe, “Geist und Geschichte,” 80 – 81, 90; Terry Pinkard, “Hegel on History, Self-Determination, and the Absolute,” in History and the Idea of Progress, eds. Arthur M. Melzer, Jerry Weinberger, and M. Richard Zinman (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 47, 53.  Waszek, Eduard Gans (1797 – 1839), 50 – 56. For more on Hegel’s outlook concerning the naturalization of the Jews, see Livneh-Freudenthal, “From ‘A Nation Dwelling Alone,’” 171– 72; Waszek, “Hegel, Mendelssohn, Spinoza,” 198 – 99; Johann Braun, “Der Jurist Eduard Gans: Ein Streiter für Hegel (22. 3.1797– 5. 5.1839),” Kritische Justiz 22 (1989): 433 – 39.

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very meticulous and concrete. In contrast, Zunz argued that the Jewish people never ceased to be a historical subject because its members ceaselessly produced culture over the ages. Zunz, who was engrossed in Jewish creation throughout his lifetime, averred that Jewish literature had been transformed into a dogmatic system by the rabbinate, which had dominated this field since the Temple’s destruction. In the process, the literature’s character as a cultural undertaking had been distorted. Against this backdrop, there is a need for an objective and impartial Science of Judaism. Only a discipline of this sort, Zunz concluded, will have the wherewithal to restore the universal cultural significance of the traditional texts. In the early 1800s, history was presented as a national-oriented discipline, so that researching world history was only possible through this same prism. Therefore, in their discussions on Judaism’s return to world history, the founders of Wissenschaft des Judentums were compelled to redefine national Jewish history. Zunz grappled with this question in the pages of the Verein’s journal, in his article “Über die in den hebräischen Schriften vorkommenden hispaischen Ortnamen” (“On Spanish Toponyms in Hebrew Jewish Writings.)”¹³ He posited that the defining element of Jewish history in the various communities of the Diaspora is Judaism’s constellation of ideas, whereas the realm of action is external and random. “If the history that until now is called the history of the Jews […],” Zunz summarized, “was indeed to vanish, only Jewish history, independent and indispensable, would remain.” Therefore, the essence of Jewish history and the brunt of its development are not in the political sphere, but in the realm of ideas, where it is “independent and possesses an inner dynamic.”¹⁴ What, then, are the contours of this independent Jewish history? For the sake of making this determination, the Verein’s members had to first define Judaism. In the opening lines of his above-mentioned article “Über den Begriff einer Wissenschaft des Judentums,” Wolf claimed “that the word Judaism was grasped in the broadest sense of the word as the totality of all the relationships, special attributes, and accomplishments of the Jews in religion, philosophy, history, jurisprudence, literature in general, citizenship, and all human problems.”¹⁵

 Leopold Zunz, “Über die in den hebräischen Schriften vorkommenden hispaischen Ortnamen,” Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums (1823): 114– 76.  Zunz, “Über die in den hebräischen Schriften vorkommenden hispaischen Ortnamen,” 116; Michael A. Meyer, “Between Jewish Research and Jewish Identity in Modern Germany,” in Michael A. Meyer, Judaism within Modernity: Essays on Jewish History and Religion [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2006), 127– 42. For further insight into this topic, see Shulamit Volkov, The Magic Circle: Germans, Jews and Antisemites [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2002), 245 – 49.  Wolf, “Über den Begriff einer Wissenschaft des Judentums,” 1.

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According to this outlook, Jewish nationalism is thus a totality of the Jews’ creative output—a wellspring of revealed manifestations of its culture. Put differently, Judaism is a national culture; and in order to maintain this age-old endeavor, it must be exposed and constantly displayed in the public sphere. As both a succession of events and a body of work that refers to these same occurrences, history is the arena in which a nation’s culture evolves and in which its Volksgeist comes to expression.¹⁶ Drawing on Johann Gottfried Herder and the German concept of Kulturnation (culture-nation), Zunz classified Judaism as a Kulturvolk (culture-community). This term also underpinned his work as a historian and dictated the categories that he used to sort and organize source material.¹⁷ By historicizing Judaism and defining it as a Kulturvolk, the founders of Wissenschaft des Judentums sought to impart the Jews with a national narrative that would dovetail neatly with universal values and categories. Jewry, the Verein’s members claimed, has to return from its “exile” not as individuals, but as a distinct collective. Nevertheless, their efforts to fashion a national narrative that meshed with the ideology of the Emancipation and contemporaneous trends of integration would draw the ire of nationalist historians approximately one hundred years later.

Liberty as a Conceptual Basis for Defining Wissenschaft des Judentums In the aftermath of the Restoration, the Emancipation took a couple of steps backwards, among other areas in Jewish rights. It was this “disappointment” that turned the attention of this group of young German Jewish intellectuals to Judaism. Already deeply involved in their era’s German culture, they aspired to find the roots of Jewish nationalism. Although only a small handful of the Verein’s founders were connected to Jewish tradition and even fewer were capable of reading Hebrew or Aramaic, the era’s Romantic trends inspired them to search for what, in Lißt’s words, is “unique to our nation, to our pure nationalism.”¹⁸ In  Livneh-Freudenthal, “Kultur als Weltanschaung,” in Arche Noah: Die Idee der “Kultur” im deutsch-jüdischen Diskurs, eds. Bernhard Greiner and Christoph Schmidt (Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach Verlag, 2002), 103 – 25. On the concept of Volksgeist and the implications thereof, see Leon Wieseltier, “‘Etwas über die jüdische Historik’: Leopold Zunz and the Inception of Modern Jewish Historiography,” History and Theory 20 (May 2, 1981): 135– 49.  Zunz’s article “Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur” exemplifies this worldview. See Zunz, “Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur,” 1– 31.  Lißt, in the Zunz Archive, National Library of Jerusalem, Israel (JNUL), 4792/B, file B10C2, 3.

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seeking to define this ideology, they stumbled into the abyss between two competing desires: integration into German society, and maintaining their “national” exceptionalism. For instance, “the dilemma of emancipation”¹⁹ is reflected in their conceptual understanding of “Judaism” and their scientific program. At any rate, the wayward course of the Emancipation—during which rights were intermittently granted and revoked—and the cold shoulder that Jews continued to receive in Germany forced these intellectuals to reexamine their vision. Within the framework of the Verein’s internal discussions and its dialogue with society at large, the members came to the realization that the German Kulturnation, which had hitherto served as a model for their classification of Jewry as a Kulturvolk, was veering off in the direction of a young, patriotic nation state. Under the Romantic banner of roots, history, and “blood and soil,” as Karl Ludwig Börne noted in 1832, German society once again thrust its Jews back into that same inescapable, “enchanted circle.”²⁰ While the Verein’s members embraced the historicist paradigm, they rejected historicism as an ideology, for they were unable to accept two of its main components: historicism’s presumed moral relativism, and the national particularism that triggered robust patriotism and excluded the “stranger” (who was often the familiar Other in their midst—the Jew).²¹ Against this backdrop, the Wissenschaft’s founders, especially Gans, Zunz, and Heine, sharply altered its position on the nature of liberty in the years ahead. For the sake of assaying this shift, let us focus on Gans’ introduction to Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. According to Gans, his mentor’s book revolved around the concept of freedom and the ways to realize this ideal. Moreover, he testified that Philosophy of Right “gave me the courage to present a new approach to jurisprudence.” In “my research and academic work,” he added, “liberty, alongside the sciences, was a welcomed accompaniment.”²² The Verein’s conception of liberty had begun to take form within the parameters of the internal discourse on Judaism and the status of the Jews. At this point, though, it began to transcend the borders of this framework. Three prominent members—Zunz in his public outreach, Gans in his writing and lectures, and Heine by dint of his acer-

 In his account of the Verein, Ismar Schorsch uses the term “Emancipation dilemma.” This phrase accurately describes the worldview of Wissenschaft des Judentums, for it often seemed to be ambiguous and rife with contradiction. See Schorsch, “Breakthrough into the Past: The Society for the Culture and Science of the Jews,” 3 – 28.  A letter from Paris (February 7, 1832), in Ludwig Börne, Sämtliche Schriften, vol. 3 (Düsseldorf: Melzer, 1964), 511.  This topic is discussed in Volkov, The Magic Circle, 99 – 106.  Cited from Waszek, Eduard Gans, 130.

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bic tongue—took part in a heated campaign to institute a democratic regime in Germany. Gans was Hegel’s leading disciple and, in many respects, his successor. At first, the student ostensibly adhered to his mentor’s ideas and terminology. However, he gradually shifted to masked criticism of the philosopher—a reversal that undoubtedly stemmed from Gans’ experiences as a Jew. Upon concluding that Hegel’s premises on the actuation of liberty were rife with internal contradictions and no longer faithful to his original idea of freedom, the disciple formulated a political theory that was openly arrayed against that of his mentor. As Gans put it in 1840, “I found that the enormity and depth of the truth of this [i. e., Hegel’s] method was most attractive to me, but I never bound myself to its formulae. After taking from it what I needed, I readily went down a new path.”²³ The founders of Wissenschaft des Judentums accepted their era’s prevailing view according to which freedom is not merely a campaign against the powers that be, but a fundamental principle of governance. Zunz, who went on to become an elected delegate of the Berlin National Assembly and took to the barricades during the Spring of Nations (1848), unfurled his social worldview in a bevy of speeches and letters.²⁴ Speaking before the Assembly in 1849, he enumerated what he believed to be the pillars of democracy: equality, the maturation of the people, and unity. Moreover, Zunz averred that these principles, which were put into effect during the French Revolution, would penetrate all of Europe by revolutionary means as well.²⁵ The Verein’s discussions on the nature of liberty drew heavily on these ideas, which the group developed “in accordance to the needs of the time.” Its theoretical point of departure was Hegel’s criticism of the Enlightenment’s conception of freedom. Drawing heavily on the philosopher’s views, they defined individual liberty as the right to extricate oneself from the old ways of existence, in which the populace was under the subordination of the powers that be, and then assume the position of “autonomous subject.” Furthermore, they expounded on the Hegelian position whereby freedom would remain an abstract idea so long as it is not “a foundational principle of

 See Waszek, Eduard Gans, 53; also see Braun, “Der Jurist,” 433 – 39; Lucas, “Dieses Zukünftige,” 109.  Leopold Zunz, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, 301– 54. See also Luitpold Wallach, Liberty and Letters (London: East and West Library, 1959), 120 – 34; Nachum Glatzer, “Leopold Zunz and the Revolution of 1848,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 5 (1960): 122– 39.  Leopold Zunz, “Die Principien der Demokratie,” in Zunz, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, 308 – 16. See Zunz, “Den Hinterbliebenen der Märzhelden Berlins, ein Wort des Trostes,” in Zunz, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, 301– 2.

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state rule.” In the founders’ estimation, the most important accomplishments of the French Revolution were threefold: the notion that the authority of state is predicated on its guarantee of liberty for one and all; the sovereign’s recognition that freedom is a right, not a privilege; and liberty is a natural right, not a set of “rights.”²⁶ With respect to the Jews, Zunz declared that it is the one right that the Jews want, not rights. Hegel also deemed the promulgation of individual liberty, qua a universal right that the state is duty-bound to uphold, the most significant contribution of the French Revolution. However, he argued that the fomenters of this revolution were beholden to abstract Enlightenment thought. In consequence, the sort of freedom that they championed was essentially an “abstract” that repudiates the historical dimension of human existence. The renunciation of the past and the attempt to render it null and void severed Man from his legacy. Moreover, it prevented Man from realizing the inherently “concrete freedom” of individuality. Hegel pinned the negation of this liberty—the attempt to forge a new humanity that is cut off from its past—on the fanaticism of the French Revolution, from whose midst rose the very forces that led to its demise.²⁷ Nevertheless, he was on the same page as the Revolution in all that concerned granting civil rights to the Jews: “Man is deemed a Man on account of His humanity and not on account of His being a Jew, a Catholic, a Protestant, a German, an Italian, and the like.”²⁸ In other words, the Jews will be liberated solely by virtue of their being citizens of the state. This view echoes the Enlightenment’s position whereby the Jews will only merit civil rights if they renounce their Jewishness. Like his predecessors, then, Hegel viewed Judaism as a closed, ahistorical, and anachronistic system. The distinction between “abstract” and “concrete” liberty was also the point of departure of the Verein’s inquiries on Judaism and Jewish history. According to its members, the argument that Judaism could not endure as a distinct body was incompatible with the notion of “concrete liberty.” In response to the Jewish Enlightenment’s efforts to tear Judaism away from its past, the Verein imputed the Maskils with the “sin” of “abstract freedom,” namely, of denying Judaism’s historical uniqueness. This break with the past, the members claimed, was, is, and always will be a threat to Judaism’s survival. In a memorandum issued before one of the Verein’s meetings, Moses Moser, among the group’s founders, wrote: “This approach can indeed be a momentous step for the advancement  Joachim Ritter, Hegel und die Französische Revolution (Frankfurt am Main: Edition Suhrkamp, 1965), 24– 31.  Ritter, Hegel, 40 – 72.  See Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §209, in Shlomo Avineri, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Hapoalim, 1975), 182. See also Ritter, Hegel, 65.

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of the nation (for then it will cease to be a nation), but standing before our eyes is an objective that demands greater effort […]. We must undertake to abolish the contradiction between Jewish and European culture.”²⁹ What is more, Heine remarked in a letter to Wolf: “A couple of wart healers (Friedländer and co.)³⁰ attempted to cure Judaism’s body of its fatal tumors by means of bloodletting; and owing to both their lack of knowledge and their bandages of reason, the Jewish people’s blood is gushing out.”³¹ The founders rejected the liberal view that the naturalization of the Jews is an act of tolerance. For Zunz and his cohorts, the purpose of the Emancipation was to integrate the Jews into the state by way, not in spite, of their Judaism.³² The members’ position regarding the Jews’ acceptance into German society was but one facet of a broader discourse on state-society relations. One can discern the first buds of change on this matter in the Verein’s papers towards the end of 1819—a trend that would continue until the group’s dispersal in 1824. At the outset of their joint enterprise, the founders still believed that the state would refrain from conditioning the Jews’ integration on their relinquishment of Judaism. However, their subsequent experiences caused a change of heart. As active participants in the public discourse, they bore witness to the state’s repressive measures. For example, the authorities placed limits on freedom of expression, such as censorship of the press, and outlawed both political and nonpolitical associations. As Jews, the Verein’s members felt the immediate consequences of these kinds of policies on their own skin. Their loss of confidence in the morality of the nation state was accompanied by disillusionment with Hegel’s outlook on state-society relations.³³ Hegel pondered the idea of ushering in liberty within the framework of the state in his 1821 treatise Elements of Philosophy of Right and in a series of “Lectures on the Philosophy of History,” which he gave between 1822 and 1823 (years in which quite a few of the Verein’s members were his students). In the introduction to his Philosophy of History, Hegel asserted that “the state is the realization of liberty, namely the realization of the final, absolute end; the state exists for its

 Department B, file B10C2, the Zunz Archive, National Library of Jerusalem, Israel.  A banker, writer, and patron of the arts and sciences, David Friedländer was a leader of the German Jewish community.  Heinrich Heine, Confessio Judaica, ed. Hugo Bieber (Berlin: Welt Verlag, 1925), 13.  Livneh-Freudenthal, “From ‘A Nation Dwelling Alone,’” 165 – 66; Volkov, The Magic Circle, 156 – 61.  Rachel Livneh-Freudenthal, “Der ‘Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden’ (1819 – 1824) zwischen Staatskonformismus und Staatskritik,” Tel-Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte 20 (1991): 103 – 25.

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own sake. Furthermore, it should be known: all of Man’s value and his entire spiritual reality exist exclusively by virtue of the state. […] The state is the divine ideal in its revelation on the face of the Earth […] where freedom reaches objectivity.”³⁴ If this is indeed the case, where does that leave individual liberty? “The essence of the modern state,” Hegel explained, rests “in the fact that the general is interlaced within the absolute freedom of its individual parts and their personal welfare. […] One must see to the cultivation of the general; on the other hand, though, the subjectivity must reach its full and mature development.”³⁵ The modern state is not only responsible for the actuation of the individual’s liberty; its own morality depends on it. Both the individual and the state aspire to institute “concrete freedom,” with the latter providing the institutions and laws to achieve this goal. At the outset, the Verein’s members presented the state as “the defender and servant of bourgeois society.”³⁶ However, as the contrast between the state and society intensified, it became increasingly obvious that the authorities lack the motivation or desire to push through and uphold individual rights. Hegel solved this problem by completely subordinating society to the state. More specifically, he defined the former as “the system of needs”—the arena in which the individual’s interests are represented—and the state as “the system of ethics,” that is, the realm where the general interest is advanced. In so doing, he opened himself up to subsequent accusations of having abandoned the liberal cause and of conspiring to bolster the state in its struggle against civil society (bürgerliche Gesellschaft).³⁷ In fact, many of his contemporaries, including perhaps his erstwhile admirers among the members of Wissenschaft des Judentums, considered this position on the relations between state and society to be no less than an act of treason against the ideal of liberty. In the Verein’s documents, one can find two distinct voices. Alongside the uncompromising faith in the institutions of state, the members often suspected that freedom had been put on the backburner for the purpose of accommodating other interests, and that the state was gradually becoming a tool of oppression. As early as 1820, a reassessment of the situation was imperative. In an internal memorandum, Moser noted that only “a state bearing the seal of bourgeois culture” is worthy of the title “a modern state,” namely, a political entity that will

 Hegel, “Introduction to the Philosophy of History.” See also Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §260.  Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §209, in Avineri, Hegel’s Theory, 192.  Livneh-Freudenthal, “Der ‘Verein für Kultur,’” 108 – 14.  John Ehrenberg, Civil Society: The Critical History of an Idea (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 121– 32.

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take the necessary steps to usher in individual rights.³⁸ Over time, it became increasingly clear to the group’s members that Prussian law will no longer safeguard the freedom of the Jews. Responding to Gans’ sedulous appeals for a professorship at the University of Berlin, the king promulgated “the Gans Law” (Lex Gans) in August 1822. Pursuant to this decree, “a Jew cannot serve in academic and pedagogic institutions […] without eliciting difficult problems.”³⁹ It stands to reason that this declaration convinced the members to shift their hopes from the state to the bourgeois Society and, above all, the liberals. Even if we were to accept Hegel’s definition of bourgeois society—a realm of private interests—it was also a venue for the exchange of merchandise and ideas. In other words, bourgeois society was a kind of a public sphere. Moreover, this public field was where groups advocating individual liberties got started. Among the causes that such organizations took up was the abolishment of the censor and the establishment of a constitution, a representative system of government, and an apparatus that will ensure transparent legal proceedings. Gans subsequently referred to these institutions in his “theory of opposition.” Following his conversion to Protestantism in 1825, he obtained the coveted professorship at the University of Berlin’s Faculty of Law. Thereafter, he continued to vocally promote a constitution, an opposition, freedom of the press, and the like. In consequence, he drew the ire of the state authorities, who perceived him as a threat to their rule.⁴⁰ Likewise, Zunz clamored for these same ideas on every possible stage. In his article “The Principles of Democracy,” he contended that “No man is a subject; subjugation runs counter to maturation.”⁴¹ The Verein’s members identified “society” as the force that must bring the idea of liberty to fruition. This vision substantially differs from Hegel’s “bourgeois society.” It could even be said that Gans and his cohorts transformed this concept into what would come to be known as “civil society.” One can distinguish between Hegel’s bürgerliche Gesellschaft and the present understanding of civil society. According to Reinhart Kößler and Henning Melber, civil society is “a network of organizations and informal relations” with the wherewithal to confront authorities of state. The “doubts” concerning the meaning of “bourgeois society added another dimension to ‘civil society.’ It has earned the ‘honorific’ of a

 Department B, file B10C2, p. 4, the Zunz Archive, National Library of Jerusalem, Israel.  Volkov, The Magic Circle, 101; Braun, Judentum, Jurisprudenz und Philosophie, 46 – 74.  On Gans’ “theory of opposition,” see Johann Braun, “Die Lehre von der Opposition bei Hegel und Gans,” Rechtstheorie 15 (1984): 343 – 83.  Leopold Zunz, “Die Principien der Demokratie,” in Zunz, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, 315.

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society of equal and free men and also pertains to the […] prospects of and necessary conditions for effective participation” (emphasis in the original).⁴² Civil society’s voluntary organizations operate within a political community, that is, the state. In so doing, they identify themselves as an integral part of this framework. Outreach within civil society is quite different than on the suprastate level. Whereas the latter is organized on, say, class, ethnic, or gender lines, civil society groups encourage people to identify with the state collective. Accordingly, the Verein saw itself as a part of German society and its public life. As per the association’s charter, its members were agents of German culture and Bildung who engaged the Jewish citizens.⁴³ Earlier generations of Jewish leaders served as their community’s speakers in its dealings with the state. Before the Gans Law, though, the Verein viewed itself as the long arm of the state vis-àvis the Jews. For instance, Gans dedicated much of his first speech before the Verein, in October 1821, to its members’ allegiance and responsibility to the German homeland: “As such, the great miṣvah (Toranic commandment) of loyalty and thanksgiving to this our fatherland and its leaders is indelibly inscribed in fire on the tablet of our heart. […] We are unworthy of the name true sons of the fatherland, citizens of the state, unless we have sealed the heart before the love to our co-religionists who are lagging well behind us.”⁴⁴ As per the protocol of a meeting from July 1920, “All the members stressed that we will never want to establish an association without the approval of the state and we never wanted this. […] Our assembly is but an exchange of ideas on the matter of the Verein, which shall be established with the state’s approval.”⁴⁵ This declaration of loyalty notwithstanding, the Verein’s papers attest to the fact that its founders were vehemently opposed to classifying “the modern state” as a nation state. The distinction between Volksgeist as a cultural phenomenon and “Volk” as an embodiment of the national state recurs in their works and speeches. When a group turns into a Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community), Gans would later explain, a hierarchy is formed between nations. This pecking order engenders a repressive policy according to which the Other is classified as a stranger and excluded from the community of Men. Thereafter, he noted

 Reinhart Kößler and Henning Melber, Chancen internationaler Zivilgesellschaft (Frankfurt: Edition Suhrkamp, 1993), 93; Michael Walzer, “Civil Society and the State,” in Walzer, Politics and Passion: Toward a More Egalitarian Liberalism (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), 68.  Livneh-Freudenthal, “Der ‘Verein für Kultur,’” 122 – 23.  Gans, “Erste Rede vor dem Kulturverein,” in Waszek, Eduard Gans, 58 – 59.  The protocol of this meeting is preserved in B1, 27, the Zunz Archive, National Library of Jerusalem, Israel.

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that Jewish existence within its surrounding society is akin to “a stream among the ocean’s streams.”⁴⁶ This shift from the theoretical concept of “the modern state” to the tangible concept of “homeland” became ever more problematic for the association’s members. In this respect, their use of the term “Europe” whenever referring to “the modern state” was indicative of their ambiguous attitude towards the latter. More specifically, they argued that Europe, not Prussia, constitutes the highest stage in enlightened humanity’s development, for it is in this broader framework that individual rights shall come to pass.⁴⁷ In his second speech, in October 1822, Gans referred to another pillar of civil society: the freedom to choose one’s place in society at large.⁴⁸ Accordingly, he presented the Verein’s bond with Judaism as its founders’ choice to embrace a certain public activity. Such a choice is based on the assumption that “the public sphere” constitutes an important battleground in the raging conflict between state and society. The most vibrant element of civil society, Gans would later assert, is public opinion—Öffentlichkeit. Moreover, he claimed that representation in the absence of public life is an empty vessel. In Hegelian thought, “public opinion” is an ambiguous category. On the one hand, it is a manifestation of both subjective freedom and the principles of justice; on the other hand, public opinion is a medley of private views that are rife with contradictions and devoid of context.⁴⁹ Should “public opinion” fail to adhere to the law of the state, Hegel asserted, it will become the voice of “the mob” and jeopardize both the state and society. Conversely, Gans posited that by monitoring the state, public activism fills an oversight role in the realm of morality. In this capacity, public opinion is charged with the realization of liberty. Therefore, Gans saw it as no less than the highest political authority—“the supreme court of the present.”⁵⁰ In a similar vein, Zunz described “public opinion” as the true expression of “the people’s will, the free port for the exchange of ideas.” Through the discussion in associations and gatherings, Zunz added, the individual’s consciousness explicitly transcends borders and assumes a mature form. As such, this description of “public opinion” befits the above-cited characterization of “civil society.”

 For more on this expression, see Waszek, Eduard Gans, 66.  For a discussion on this term, see Livneh-Freudenthal, The Verein fuer Cultur and Wissenschaft der Juden (1819 – 1824): Seeking a New Concept of Judaism [Hebrew], PhD thesis, Tel Aviv University (1996), 138 – 39.  Livneh-Freudenthal, “Der ‘Verein für Kultur,’” 115; Walzer, Politics and Passion, 70.  Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosphie des Rechts, §301– 303, 307– 308; see G. W. F. Hegel, Ausgewählte politische Texte [Hebrew], ed. Avraham Yassour (Tel Aviv: Hakibuz Hameuchad and the University of Haifa, 1975), 107– 111; and on §316 – 319, see Avineri, Hegel’s Theory, 185 – 87.  Braun, “Die Lehre von der Opposition”, 371.

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This function of “the public sphere” constitutes the lynchpin of Gans’ theory of opposition, which also runs counter to Hegel’s worldview. The latter claimed that progress could only be achieved by “a revolution from above.” Moreover, he considered the opposition to be a threat to the state.⁵¹ In contrast, Gans believed that public struggle is the sole path to liberty. This disagreement aside, the disciple continued to use Hegel’s terminology, albeit to unhesitantly refute his arguments. Gans claimed that the generalness of the state does not exist of its own accord; it derives from struggles between contrasts, and must be reinstituted time and again. Unlike the Hegelian concept of opposition, that of his student is not aimed at the “general.” Instead, Gans’ opposition is a prerequisite for advancing the general interest. “If a government” lacks “an opposition, it will atrophy and wilt.”⁵² Likewise, only an established opposition is capable of taking the sting out of a revolution, thereby enabling the state to remain committed and attentive to the ideal of freedom. The Verein’s criticism of the state and its disappointment with the liberals, who were in no rush to put Jewish rights on their agenda, prompted a few of its members to search for more radical solutions. Zunz and Heine believed that the Jews would not be emancipated sans a revolution.⁵³ Gans, however, walked a fine line. As a university professor, he was occasionally called to order by the authorities and, in all likelihood, deterred by the radical implications of his own words. Like many Jews, Gans apparently balked at disassociating himself with that same community, the German state, whose acceptance he so desperately wanted.

Wissenschaft des Judentums and the Liberty of the Jews Having defined Judaism as a culture, and history as an expanse in which this culture takes shape, the Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden turned the spotlight onto science. Universal in its methods and particular in its subjects, the members considered science an appropriate tool for crafting a narrative of  Braun, “Die Lehre von der Opposition,” 368; Livneh-Freudenthal, “Der ‘Verein für Kultur,’” 117; Waszek, Eduard Gans, 33, 155.  Braun, Judentum, Juresprudenz und Philosophie, 144.  Leopold Zunz, “Revolution,” in Zunz, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, 349. For a discussion on Heine’s attitude toward revolutions, see Zvi Tauber, “Theory and Practice of the Revolution in the Works of H. Heine” [Hebrew], in Violence and Tolerance, eds. Zvi Tauber and Zvi Rosen (Tel Aviv: Papirus, 1989), 36 – 46.

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Judaism that would safeguard its universal attributes while ensuring a fair representation of the particular. In Gans’ vision for the Science of Judaism, there is an echo of Hegel’s distinction between “abstract” and “concrete” liberty: “The rupture with the internalness of our prior existence indeed came to pass, but the deepest return to that same internalness has not been realized […] and it is this return in particular that we need.”⁵⁴ According to Gans, Jewry’s break with its “prior existence,” which was epitomized by the rabbinate, is necessary because it contradicts “the spirit of the time” and threatens to render Judaism extinct. With the rise of the Haskalah, European Jewry, along with their neighbors, reached the stage of “abstract liberty.” This turn of events begot the ideal of freedom, which indeed permeated the general consciousness. That said, the Haskalah severed Judaism from its “historical substance” and thus jeopardized its survival. If Judaism were to remain mired in one of these phases, it would likely spawn the very forces that could lead to its ruin. Against this backdrop, the members of Wissenschaft des Judentums undertook to spark a “deep return to the internalness” that would reconnect Judaism to its past. The Science of Judaism, then, was their answer to the question of what framework best serves Jewish existence in an age of secularization and emancipation. As a voluntary civil society group that aspired to lead the Jews back into society, the Verein considered the Science of Judaism an instrument for returning Judaism to the annals of history. This objective would be accomplished not only by redefining Judaism and displaying it in the public sphere, but by replicating this discourse in the universal realm. The Science of Judaism was assigned the same role in the field of culture as civil society merited in the political sphere. Both of these realms fall under the heading of a “general place” in which particular entities that are maintaining their homogeneity encounter one another. The medium of “the general place” is the public sphere, where all the participants share a common language, interests, and philosophical categories. In all likelihood, then, the Science of Judaism was not only perceived as a mechanism for acknowledging the past, but was charged with reinterpreting it according to a vision of the future. Consequently, this discipline was and remains tendentious and ideological. Subordinating the knowledge of the past to a vision of the future and tethering the Science of Judaism to its practitioners’ outlook on liberty have accompanied this field from its inception. Moreover, this process ignited a debate over the past that is not without elements of a real struggle. Hein-

 Gans, “Dritte Rede vor dem Kulturverein” (on May 4, 1823), in Waszek, Eduard Gans, 80.

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rich Graetz, a member of the Wissenschaft des Judentums’ next generation, considered the Verein an insignificant historical phenomenon whose lone saving grace was the establishment of the major field under review. Like his predecessors, Graetz viewed science as a means for securing the freedom of nations as unique entities and believed that the public awareness of this discipline “aroused a subjugated people to self-liberation.” However, this freedom would only be realized, according to Graetz, when the notion of God is once again a political idea, namely, an objective put forth in the state’s constitution. “Judaism without the firm ground of the life of a state,” he contended, “is akin to a tree that is hollow on the inside.” Similar to the Verein’s members, though, he averred that “the totality of a nation” could only be comprehended through its annals, for “history is a reflection of the idea.”⁵⁵ Graetz’s disagreement with his predecessors, inter alios, revolved around the nature of Judaism’s connection to other cultures. His forerunners placed the evolution of Judaism within the surrounding culture and the mutual relations between the two. While they championed interaction, he spoke of influences and put an emphasis on the differences. Among the more heated episodes of this struggle over the past in the service of the future was the Zionist historiographers’ diatribe against the founders of Wissenschaft des Judentums. The nationalist historians accused them of peddling in “assimilation,” ignored every facet of their comprehensive enterprise, and excluded them from the pantheon of Jewish ideas, figures, and deeds. Following in Graetz’s footsteps, Zionist thinkers discerned a path to redemption through the Science of Judaism, but referred to this discipline in terms of national redemption and therefore constructed it as this sort of project.⁵⁶ The adversarial camps used key concepts from the Jewish past and tradition in, among other contexts, the public sphere. For instance, the Wissenschaft’s founders presented “exile” not as a historic rupture, but as a necessary and thus positive stage in Judaism’s evolution. The principle of “negating the exile,” which would figure prominently in the Land of Israel national Jewish historiography of the early twentieth century, was certainly anathema to Zunz and

 Heinrich Graetz, “The Composition of Jewish History” [Hebrew], in Heinrich Graetz, Essays. Memoirs. Letters (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1969), 55 – 210. Also see Reuven Michael, Hirsch (Heinrich) Graetz: The Historian of the Jewish People [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute and the Leo Baeck Institute, 2003), 47– 57.  Zalman Shazar, who translated Gans’ three speeches before the Verein into Hebrew, dubbed them “the first fruits of the national evisceration of Judaism.” Zalman Shazar, “Bikkurim” [Hebrew], in Modern Jewish Studies, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr (Jerusalem, Shazar Center, 1979), 32. Also see Livneh-Freudenthal, “From ‘A Nation Dwelling Alone,’” 156 – 57.

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his colleagues; and the same could be said for their contemporary successors. The Verein indeed wished to abrogate exile (galut) , but not by relocating the Jews to a national state of their own—a solution that indeed seemed rather far-fetched in the early nineteenth century. Instead, they labored to put an end to the exile experience, both in reality and in the Jewish consciousness. “The Science of Judaism will continue to survive even if all of us are baptized,” Moser wrote,⁵⁷ and “even if hundreds of years” go by, according to Zunz, in which “no one deals with it.”⁵⁸ The Verein’s idea of redemption, which its members compared to the vision of the biblical prophets, took the form of equality and democratic freedom. By reformulating the Jewish notion of the messiah in European cultural terms, Wissenschaft des Judentums ensured that it would survive as a lasting vision of freedom.

 Meyer, The Origins of the Modern Jew, 207.  Cited in Adolf Strodtman, Heinrich Heine’s Leben und Werke (Berlin: Verlag von Franz Duncker, 1867), 275.

Giuseppe Veltri

“A Jewish Philosophy”: On the Background of Leopold Zunz’s Historical Definition The origins, nature, and goal of a “Jewish philosophy” have been one of the most discussed topics of Jewish Studies at the turn of the twentieth century. There are many publications (articles, introductions, books, special issues of journals and magazines) devoted principally to the question of whether a Jewish philosophy exists at all—and if so, what its essence is.¹ The renewal of the question of the definition is a postmodern attitude aimed to limit the ideological damage of former generations, the epoch in which ideologies had been charged with the crime of over-rationalism, of shadowing the identities of the particular—the subject of philosophies—with a qualifying adjective like “Jewish” or “Islamic.” Defining Jewish philosophy became the task of searching for identities with the adjective “Jewish” with reference to philosophical topics. My entry point into this debate is not to answer the question of essence, but rather to approach the historical origins of the concept “Jewish philosophy,” which—in German-language publications—first appeared in Leopold Zunz’s manifesto for a Wissenschaft des Judentums, as I have stressed elsewhere.² My focus here will be on the historical definition of the concept and its range of meanings in the world of Judaism in the nineteenth century.

Leopold Zunz’s Definition of Jewish Philosophy Three hundred years after the Lutheran Reformation, new theses were nailed to the gate of science, and one of them concerns Jewish philosophy. The novelty of the approach is already present in the new literary coinage, namely, the term “Jewish philosophy.” In Leopold Zunz’s manifesto Wissenschaft des Judentums,

 Bibliography in Giuseppe Veltri, “‘Jüdische Philosophie: Eine philosophisch-bibliographische Skizze,” in Wissenschaft vom Judentum. Annäherungen nach dem Holocaust, eds. Michael Brenner and Stefan Rohrbacher (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 134– 63, 227– 31. My contribution here is a development of my Renaissance Philosophy in Jewish Garb: Foundations and Challenges in Jewish Thought on the Eve of Modernity (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), 11– 38.  “Die humanistischen Wurzeln der ‘jüdischen Philosophie’: Zur Konzeption einer konfessionellen Ontologie und Genealogie des Wissens,” in Die philosophische Aktualität der jüdischen Tradition, ed. Werner Stegmaier (Frankfurter am Main: Surkamp, 2000), 249 – 78. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110554618-004

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“Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur,” published in 1818, the German expression “Jüdische Philosophie” first made its appearance in a Jewish publication. Zunz writes: Above the halls of science, above the entire playground of human endeavor, rules Philosophy in unrivaled majesty, ever invisible, devoting herself with inviolable self-reliance to all that is humanly knowable. And that is why we have not wished to see her as a separate science, as the epitome of Jewish wisdom alone; for she is also the higher, historical awareness of how this wisdom spread over centuries, put down in writing to be treated and mistreated by Jews and non-Jews; she is the loftiest guide when we ourselves undertake to know the intellectual greatness of our people and to transmit that knowledge. In this manner, each historical date discovered through industry, deciphered with acumen, employed by philosophy and arranged with discernment, becomes a contribution to human knowledge, the sole most worthy end of all inquiry. But it is also only this higher notion that behooves Science, who survives states and nations, exalted over all earthly pettiness; she alone can lead us one day to a true history of Jewish philosophy,³ in which the lines of thought pursued by great minds need to be discerned and comprehended,⁴ and retraced in parallel with the comprehensive teachings of the earth,⁵ according to the strict prescripts of History.⁶

Zunz’s text is very peculiar in its genre. His at times very convoluted style contains a number of declarations on the history and nature of (Jewish) philosophy. Philosophy as Jewish wisdom is not a separate science; it also includes “the

 My italics. Footnote by Zunz: “Authors were immediately treated as representatives of the entire people, and that, too, without distinction as to periods or countries. Buddeus provides only an introduction, and a sparse one at that.”  Footnote by Zunz to this text: “[…] The Yes.irah is a little book that is neither as clever nor as silly as partisans of either view would have it. This is what has confused the majority of those who have attacked the Kabbalah; honest Reuchlin is still the one who manages best with it. Very much to the point is Andreas Sennert: ‘In our view there is one Kabbalah that is true, unquestioned and divine; after that there is a second, intermediate and human, that is commonly referred to as the Jewish Kabbalah; finally, there is a third, which is false, superstition, indeed demonic.’ The Messiah one finds in more recent Jewish religious books, and who is supposed to bring the world salvation and happiness, is the personified dogma that decrees what every reasonable human being should desire. It has replaced the former Jewish Messiah that now subsists only in form.”  Note by Zunz: “E. g., with the influence of Arab philosophy, of the study of grammar and astronomy, of scholasticism and of ideas of tolerance, etc.”  Leopold Zunz, “Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur,” in Leopold Zunz, Gesammelte Schriften, vol 1, ed. Louis Gerschel (Berlin: Louis Gerschel Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1875), 30 – 31. See Giuseppe Veltri, Language of Conformity & Dissent: The Imaginative Grammar of Jewish Intellectuals in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Boston: Academic Studies Jewish Press, 2013), 57– 59.

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higher, historical awareness of how this wisdom spread over centuries, put down in writing to be treated and mistreated by Jews and non-Jews.” With this statement, Zunz is attempting to blend together two concepts, one of which refers to Jewish wisdom, while the other strives for, or presupposes, a “higher, historical awareness” of this Jewish wisdom. Or is he, in fact, trying to say that the latter (historical awareness) should completely replace the former (Jewish wisdom)? In any case, one thing seems to me beyond doubt: he refuses to accept that Jewish philosophy is being reduced to Jewish wisdom. He has no wish to deny the latter its identity as being characteristically Jewish, but at the same time he proposes a concept of Jewish philosophy, in which it is precisely the historical dimension that plays a decisive, unifying role in cognition. This historical awareness, of course, plays a major role in research on the Jewish study of philosophy and of how Jews have dealt with it. For, he writes: “In this manner, each historical date discovered through industry, deciphered with acumen, employed by philosophy and arranged with discernment, becomes a contribution to human knowledge, the sole most worthy end of all inquiry.” The real problem that Zunz has is not to define what philosophy is, and far less is it his goal to historically integrate Jewish into general philosophy. His scientific worry is concerns to identify Jewish philosophers historically—i. e. within the axes of time and place—and their scientific knowledge more broadly in comparison with contemporary achievements. He stresses: “It [philosophy] alone can lead us one day to a true history of Jewish philosophy, in which the lines of thought pursued by great minds need be discerned and comprehended, and retraced in parallel with the comprehensive teachings of the earth, according to the strict prescripts of History.” The historical perception—and the study of every piece of writing concerned with Jewish philosophy and philosophers—is the key problem here, because of the lack of research on this topic. The second problem is to define what is, or, better, what was Jewish wisdom.

Jewish Philosophy in its Historical Awareness Although Zunz had not attended Hegel’s lectures at the University of Berlin,⁷ there can be no doubt that he is referring to the philosopher when he defines the element of intellectual development in the history of philosophy as a product  This can be clearly seen from his study records. On this, see my article, “Altertumswissenschaft und Wissenschaft des Judentums: Leopold Zunz und seine Lehrer F. A. Wolf und A. Boeckh,” in Friedrich August Wolf. Studien, Texte, Bibliographie, eds. Reinhart Markner and Giuseppe Veltri (Göttingen: Steiner, 1999), 32– 47.

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of higher historical awareness. This sentence by Zunz is, first, a plea against those who deny any contribution of the Jewish people to more universal intellectual history. Second, it constitutes a kind of lament against the scholarly lack of awareness of Jewish historical heritage, a kind of blind spot. Let me deepen this aspect, quoting a selection of Christian authors. I will begin with a peculiar aspect of how Christians have been wont to deal with Jewish philosophy. The first occurrence of the English expression “philosophy of Judaism” I encountered in my research is in the title of a book by Shaw Duncan (1725 – 1795), The History and Philosophy of Judaism: or, A Critical and Philosophical Analysis of the Jewish Religion, published in 1787 in Edinburgh.⁸ This volume by Duncan, minister of the parish church Elgin (Moray, Scotland), is an apologetic answer to the opinion of David Hume on the absurdity of Jewish religion. In his Of Superstition and Enthusiasm (1741), Hume wrote: “Modern Judaism and popery (especially the latter), being the most unphilosophical and absurd superstitions which have yet been known in the world, are the most enslaved by their priests.”⁹ In quoting Hume’s essay, the clergyman left out the mention of the Catholic Church, the specific focus of Hume’s attack. Furthermore, Hume questioned the adjective “modern.” In Hume’s view, the Jewish religion of the post-biblical, Talmud, Mishnah, and Gemara periods “will justify the severest epithets that could be bestowed upon it,”¹⁰ while the Old Testament fully deserves the quality of philosophical rationalism. Here is not the place to discuss the meaning of the discussion regarding the typical terminology of David Hume, the distinctions be-

 Shaw Duncan, The History and Philosophy of Judaism: Or, A Critical and Philosophical Analysis of the Jewish Religion. From which is Offered a Vindication of its Genius, Origin, and Authority, and of the Connection with the Christian, against the Objections and Misrepresentations of Modern Infidels (Edinburgh: C. Eliott, 1787).  The entire text is: “Modern Judaism and popery, (especially the latter) being the most unphilosophical and absurd superstitions which have yet been known in the world, are the most enslaved by their priests. As the Church of England may justly be said to retain some mixture of Popish superstition, it partakes also, in its original constitution, of a propensity to priestly power and dominion; particularly in the respect it exacts to the sacerdotal character. And though, according to the sentiments of that Church, the prayers of the priest must be accompanied with those of the laity; yet is he the mouth of the congregation, his person is sacred, and without his presence few would think their public devotions, or the sacraments, and other rites, acceptable to the divinity.” David Hume, Essays Moral, Political, Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller, revised edition (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987), quoted from the online version, http://ti nyurl.com/3hdrjy9 [last accessed: July 5, 2011]. The essay appeared in 1741 in the first volume of Hume’s Essays Moral, Political, Literary. This paragraph disappeared in successive editions, either because the philosopher changed his mind, or—and this is more plausible—he removed it because of the reaction of Roman Catholic Church.  Hume, Essays, 26.

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tween rationalism and irrationalism, religion and irreligion, and between those who accuse some of the religious confessions of being against reason because they include the so-called “cerimonialia” and those who defend the rational nature of Jewish (and Christian) laws. The important thing is that Duncan stood at the end of a discussion that properly began in the sixteenth century in Wittenberg and involved both Judaism and Catholicism, which, in the eyes of the Lutheran leaders of the Reformation, were tantamount to an old-fashioned and outdated religion, wedded to indurate tradition. The concept of Jewish tradition, archeologically deduced from the socalled canonical sources and theologically based on the rational attitude to modernity, is simply and solely taken from the Old Testament according to the Lutheran vision of the New Testament: the only valid law is the natural law written on the Tablets of the Ten Commandments. The customs and the ceremonial laws of the Jews are devoid of any and all validity.¹¹ It is very curious to observe that this negation of the validity of the Torah of Moses became the very and real stimulus for the study of Jewish customs, rites, and post-biblical traditions. From the beginning of the sixteenth century, and continuing until at least the first half of the eighteenth century, Christian scholarship produced a relatively large number of tractates on the rituals, rites, ceremonies, and customs of the Jews.¹² Interest in Jewish practices, both in the liturgy and in everyday life was, of course, not entirely new. Novel, however, was the relatively high number and accurate quality of such publications. Worth mentioning are also the general approach to Judaism and its intellectual potential like the Bibliotheca Hebraica of Wolfius, an introduction to the Jewish scholarship and an encyclopaedia of concepts related to the Jewish tradition. ¹³ Of some interest as well is a further phenomenon which touches upon the nature of Protestant academies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the Protestant interest in Hebrew and Jewish Studies as it is shown by the “dissertations,” the typical academic place to be taken as indicator of the mainstream and major trends of this era.¹⁴ In the archives of German universities,

 See my Renaissance Philosophy, 185 – 6.  Ibid., 169 – 94.  On this aspect, see Simone Hinträger, Die Entstehungs- und Rezeptionsgeschichte der Bibliotheca Hebraea Johann Christoph Wolfs unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der hebräischen Handschriftensammlung der Hamburger Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek (Bremen: no publisher, 1996).  See Giuseppe Veltri, “Academic Debates on the Jews in Wittenberg. The Protestant Literature on Rituals, the Dissertations and the Writings of the Hebraists Theodor Dassow and Andreas Sennert,” European Journal of Jewish Studies 6 (2012): 123 – 46.

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we can find more than 100,000 dissertations on almost every aspect of academic life. Approximately five to ten percent are concerned with Jewish topics of various themes, starting with biblical theology, philology, rabbinic literature, Jewish philosophy from the Middle Ages and Humanist period, and ending with subjects of modern life like considerations regarding the political condition of the Jews, etc. The philosophical texts and ideas of the Jewish medieval tradition played a big role in the Protestant concern with Judaism. The classical books by Maimonides, Joseph Albo and Isaac Abravanel were read, partly translated into Latin, and/or extensively quoted. Also, contemporary authors like Azariah de’ Rossi and Rabbi Loew of Prague were the objects of translation and study. The interest in locating Judaism within the compass of Christian history was probably the origin of the historical study of philosophy and ethics by medieval and modern Jewish authors. This interest definitively ended in the second half of the eighteenth century. Only biblical Judaism maintains a place in academic teaching, while the so-called “later Jewish literature” does not appear, or it was polemically silenced and “underquoted.” Also, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century concerns with Jewish literature, like the work of August Ferdinand Dähre (see below), Hermann L. Strack, Paul Billerbeck, Gustav Dalman, and others, are rather the exception than the rule, and tend to focus only on ancient literature as an explanation for aspects of the New Testament. This lack of interest perhaps has a reason: namely, the critical historicization of Jewish wisdom.

Jewish Wisdom In his article “Philosophy and Kabbalah,” published in 2008, David Myers¹⁵ writes: “One literary genre whose significance Zunz did not ¹⁶ herald in this essay was Kabbalah.”¹⁷ He is right: in the text of the essay, there is no trace of this, but it is there in the footnotes. I can concede that Zunz’s observation is not a plea for the study of a genre, but it is very significant for the successive study of Jewish mysticism, against the negative vision of mysticism that Gershom Scholem believed to have unmasked among the advocates of Wissenschaft des Judentums. Zunz was indeed conscious of the Christian and Jewish uses and misuses of Kabbalistic texts.

 David N. Myers, “Philosophy and Kabbalah in Wissenschaft des Judentums: Rethinking the Narrative of Neglect,” Studia Judaica 16 (2008): 56 – 71.  Italics by the author.  Myers, “Philosophy,” 60.

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In Zunz’s thesis on Jewish philosophy, is not surprising that he also takes the Kabbalah into consideration and says nothing good or bad about the pre-Kabbalistic Book of Creation, the Sefer Yesirah, only the following laconic remark: The Yeṣirah is a little book that is neither as clever nor as silly as partisans of either view would have it. This is what has confused the majority of those who have attacked the Kabbalah; honest Reuchlin is still the one who manages best with it. Very much to the point is Andreas Sennert (exercitt. phill. hept. alt. 139): Kabbalah nobis alia est verior, indubitata atque divina; alia sequior hac, media et humana, quae et Judaica dicitur vulgo; alia denique falsa, superstitiosa, immo daemoniaca.

Although Zunz praises the scholarly honesty of Johannes Reuchlin, it is the opinion of Andreas Sennert (1609 – 1689) that he quotes. Sennert was a Hebraist from Wittenberg who devoted several chapters of his Exercitationes philologicarum ¹⁸ to Jewish mysticism. The treatise appeared in 1678 and is today largely ignored. In the treatise, Sennert deals with the names of God, the Masorah, the Kabbalah, the musica hebraeorum, Jewish schools and studies, and the like, up to and including hieroglyphics. His vision of the Kabbalah is clear: there is one version that is divine and indisputable; a second that is human, the so-called Jewish Kabbalah; and a third that is unquestionably false, a superstitious and devilish invention. Judaism is no longer considered the bearer of the Philosophia kabbalistica divina. The Wittenberg Hebraist had no personal interest in Kabbalistic practices. He treats the matter as a subject of inquiry, judging the extent of its relevance by the fact that it was considered to be of importance to Christianity by the illustrious likes of Pico della Mirandola and Johannes Reuchlin, as well as by Petrus Colonna Galatinus.¹⁹ He deals extensively with the ways in which the Kabbalah is designated, and the synonyms applied to it; he compares it to the allegoria patrum; examines in detail the practical Kabbalah as technē (of Pythagorean origin); and thus shows some appreciation for it as a useful “scientific” instrument. He closes his treatise with the remark that the study of the Kabbalah artificialis

 Exercitationes philologicarum Heptas altera: quarum I. De Div. Nom. Elohim. add: Mantissa de Jehovah; II. De Masorah; III. De Cabbalah; IV. De Musica Ebræor; V. De Scholis, studiis, &c. &c. eorundem; VI. De Mendis Codicum Apographorum V. Intr. Ebr. hodiernor; VII. De Sceptro Judah, &c. ex Genes. c. XLIX. comm. 10, Cui additur Hierographicum Sinaicum Kircher &c. &c. (Wittemberg: Joh. Sigismundi Ziegenbeins, 1678). The text has been digitalized and is available online at www.bibliothek.uni-halle.de.  On Galatinus, see Giuseppe Veltri, “Der Lector Prudens und die Bibliothek des (uralten) Wissens: Pietro Galatino, Amatus Lusitanus and Azaria de’Rossi,” in Christliche Kabbala, ed. Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann (Ostfildern: Ostfildern, 2003), 133 – 42.

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sive technica is a worthwhile occupation to be engaged in, however, with caution (caute) and moderation (moderate). This is worthwhile, and even a duty, so as to avoid bringing guilt upon oneself either through excess (per excessum) or deficiency (per defectum). For there are, he adds, two groups that failed to follow this golden rule (ne vel in excessu, aut defectu quoque peccetur): the Valentinians, that is, the Gnostics, who misused Holy Scripture for heretical purposes; and the Karaites, who abhorred the Kabbalah and considered only the literal sense of the Bible.²⁰ Drawing a direct comparison between these two groups was something of a novelty. There is, however, a second author whom Leopold Zunz quotes, someone who had dealt with the subject of Jewish philosophy before him: Franz Budde. It is worth considering this quotation more closely, and in context. Part of Zunz’s objective in his quest for “a true history of Jewish philosophy” is that “the line of thought pursued by great minds need be discerned and comprehended, and retraced in parallel with the comprehensive teachings of the earth, according to the strict prescripts of History.” He criticizes the fact that Jewish authors had thus far all been treated as representatives of the Jewish people, without distinction as to time or place of origin, and without taking into account the intellectual influence of their surroundings. On this subject, he remarks, again laconically, “Buddeus provides only an introduction, and a sparse one

 Exercitationes philologicarum: De Cabbalah. IV, 177 (see footnote 17): “Ita vicissim tamen, ut moderate eadem atque caute item adhibeatur, ne vel in excessu, aut defectu quoque peccetur. In excessu, cum Valentinianis atque Gnosticis jam olim, quorum Haeresi, teste Irenaeo & Epiphanio, originem dedisse creditur non absimilis prorsus modus, & ipsis jam tum Quoque usitatus, interpretandi Scripturam S., dum discussis inter sese varie elementis lacerabant verius eam, quam examinabant aut exponebant, in lucem expositis ab ipsis miris inauditisque haereseon portentis. In defectu vicissim tamen, & ipso quoque cum Judaeis hodie nonnullis, quae apud ipsos factio ideo ‫ קראים‬sive Caraitae vocantur, et in Polonia, Russia atque Turcia praesertim satis frequens est, quibus (maxime propter Cabbalae abusum) nihil sapit nisi unice litera textus, quam mordicus ideoque tenent, nec ab ac vel latum unguem discedunt.” (Trans.: “Again, however, in such a way that it be approached with both moderation and with caution, lest one sin either through excess or deficiency. Through excess, along with the Valentinians and the Gnostics of long ago, whose heresy, according to Irenaeus and Epiphanius, is, in short, believed to have had its origin in a not dissimilar method of interpreting the Holy Scriptures, which they, too, even then made use of. When discussing various elements [of Scripture], they tended to mangle it rather than investigate or interpret it, professing miracles and unheard of heretical portents. Or through deficiency, on the other hand, and this along with not a few contemporary Jews, among whom there is a faction called the ‫קראים‬, or Caraites, which is quite popular in Poland, Russia, and especially Turkey, who—largely because of the misuse of the Kabbalah—acknowledge nothing but the letter of the text, to which they cling tenaciously, not departing from it by a finger’s breadth.”)

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at that.” He recognized and at same time criticized the function of Buddeus for the history of philosophy. Before speaking on Buddeus and his contribution, it is worthwhile to summarize the state of affairs of the Christian concern with Judaism, philosophy, and Kabbalah at the turn of the eighteenth century. This is a crucial point. The representation of Jewish mystical traditions contained in Christian works of the period between the Renaissance and the eighteenth century is often of good quality and frequently based on direct knowledge of sources authored by converted Jews or on the active cooperation of Jewish scholars. I wish to recall here Mithridates’ kabbalistic library for Pico della Mirandola,²¹ a mystical encyclopaedia placed at the disposal of the most influential author of Italian Humanism. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, we have many translations of mystical texts. Take, for example, the Cabbala Denudata of Christian Knorr von Rosenroth.²² Shortly before Zunz’s “Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur,” we have the first German compositions and translations of Kabbalistic texts like those of Ephraim Joseph Hirschfeld, secretary and later an expelled member qua Jew from the Freemason community of the Asiatic Brothers.²³ Interest in the Jewish mystical tradition was already at the beginning something that originated from the Christian desire to find new sources of the wisdom that was though to have been present at the creation of the world: the wisdom of Adam before the capital sin. Yet, against the direct as well as the indirect attacks on the validity of religion in the early modern period, originating from new scientific discovery and the closely linked development of skeptical and empirical philosophy, Christian scholarship developed an old-new genealogy of knowledge. It claimed to go back to Adam and the primeval tradition of the perfect science in Paradise. Their argument was: if philosophy, as a love for wisdom, is the main result of the Mosaic revelation, one should infer that Greek philosophy is either a plagiarism or that the Greek philosophers should have met with Jewish prophets. In this manner, legends developed about the plagiarism of the Greek

 See Giulio Busi, Simonetta M. Bondoni, and Saverio Campanini, eds., The Great Parchment: Flavius Mithridates’ Latin Translation, the Hebrew Text, and an English Version, The Kabbalistic Library of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (Turin: Nino Aragno Editore, 2004); Mauro Perani, ed., Gugliemo Raimondo Moncada alias Flavio Mitridate. Un ebreo converso siciliano. Atti del Convegno Internazionale Caltabellotta (Agrigento) 23 – 24 ottobre 2004 (Palermo: Officina di Studi Medievali, 2008).  Sulzbach 1677 and 1684, now re-published at Olms (Hildesheim: Olms, 1999).  See Giuseppe Veltri, Gerold Necker, and Patrick Koch, “Die versuchte Wiederaufnahme des jüdischen Freimaurers Ephraim J. Hirschfeld in den Orden der ‘Asiatischen Brüder’: Ein geheimer Rapport,” Judaica 68:2 (2012): 129 – 55.

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Torah via Alexandria or the alleged meeting of Pythagoras and Daniel and Ezekiel in Egypt. The demystification of legends is a peculiar element in the study and research of the eighteenth and definitely of the nineteenth century, the age of the enlightenment ante and post eventum. As early as 1702, a certain Johann Jacob Borsch wrote a Dissertatio historica de peregrinationibus Pythagora (Historical Dissertation on the Peregrinations of Pythagoras), under the direction of the Pietistic professor Johannes Franz Buddeus, who also led the discussion thereon. Both student and master attacked the position of the French scholar Pierre-Daniel Huet, who, in his Demonstratio evangelica (1679), had with deep conviction defended the idea of the Mosaic origins of philosophy. Borsch and Buddeus rejected the idea of Pythagoras having been a student of the Prophets Daniel or Ezechiel. The real travels of Pythagoras, they argued, had taken him to both Egypt and Babylonia, and thus expanded his philosophical horizons. They had, however, in no way contributed to a mastery of Jewish philosophy on his part. A similar point of view had already been taken two years earlier by Daniel Bandeco, a student from Berlin, who in 1700 defended his thesis, Pythagoras utrum fuerit Judaeus, Monachusve Carmelita (Whether Pythagoras was a Jew and a Carmelite Monk) under the direction of Johann Friedrich Mayer, in Hamburg. Mayer and Bandeco subjected to a thorough analysis the ancient belief that Pythagoras had been a student of Daniel or Ezekiel, concluding that although there might be some concordance between Hebrew and Pythagorean thought, there is no evidence of a direct relationship. The Pietistic and eclectic Professor Johann Franz Budde—and his school— was the first to “denounce” the theology of “archaic man” (Adam ha-qadmon) and of Christian philosophical Kabbalah through historicization, in his Introductio ad Historiam Philosophiae Ebraeorum. Already in the introduction, Budde takes care of the premise that there are different uses of the word philosophy. In his book, he employs the term in the same way as the authors he is dealing with, namely, as “the study of wisdom and love for it” (sapientiae studium atque amor).²⁴ With his laconic statement regarding the beginnings of a Jewish philosophy in Buddeus, Zunz refers to the historical analysis of the Halle pietist on the Bible, rabbinic literature (the schools), Jewish mysticism (Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai, for example), as well as medieval and renaissance literature and philosophy.

 Johann Franz Buddeus, Io. Francisci Bvddei … introductio ad historiam philosophiae Ebraeorum. accedit dissertatio de haeresi Valentiniana. Editio nova eaque multis accessionibus auctior (Halae Saxonum, 1720), 2.

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He lists authors and works, and tries to put them in a historical context. Most of the 800 pages of Budde’s treatise are devoted to the ideas and the concepts of the Kabbalah. There are of course mistakes and apologetic passes; however, it is—as Zunz states—the beginning of a history of Jewish philosophy. One has to note here that in the Wissenschaft des Judentums of the nineteenth century, a history of Jewish philosophy was never written. It was only a scholarly desideratum.

Jewish Philosophy and the Philosophy of Religion Similar to the perspective of Zunz was that of his schoolmate Immanuel Wolf. In 1822, in the first and only year of the new journal for the new generation of Wissenschaft des Judentums, the Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, Wolf wrote his famous essay “On the Concept of a Jewish Science.”²⁵ “The ‘philosophy of Judaism’ [note: not ‘Jewish philosophy’],” he wrote, “has as its object Judaism in and for itself, which it (philosophy) should develop according its inner rationality and lay out in its truth.”²⁶ As a topic of study, Wolf suggests the monotheistic idea in its historical development, as well the impact on the present. For the difference between history and philosophy consists in the preoccupation of the latter with the vital idea (of the divine) in its development in the history and in the present. Yet on the basis of the history of philosophy in Judaism, the German and later French scholar and translator of Maimonides, Salomon Munk,²⁷ denied

 Immanuel Wolf, “Über den Begriff der Wissenschaft des Judentums,” Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judentums 1 (1822): 1– 24, 19 – 20.  Immanuel Wolf, “Über den Begriff, “ 20.  Salomon Munk, Mélanges de philosophie juive et arabe. Extraits méthodiques de la Source de vie de Salomon Ibn-Gebirol… (Paris: A, Frank, 1859; reprinted in 1927), 469: “L’influence exercée par les philosophes juifs d’Egypte et de Palestine sur le néoplatonisme d’un côté et sur la gnose de l’autre, place les Juifs au rang des peuples qui ont pris part au mouvement intellectuel tendant à opérer une fusion entre les idées de l’Orient et celles de l’Occident; et à ce titre ils méritent une place dans l’histoire de la philosophie. Mais, quoiqu’on ne puisse contester à la philosophie des Juifs d’Alexandrie, ni encore moins à la kabbale, une certaine originalité, les divers éléments de ces deux doctrines, et surtout leur tendance évidemment panthéiste, sont trop peu en harmonie avec le judaïsme pour qu’elles puissent être décorées du nom de Philosophie juive: une telle philosophie n’existe pas, et les Juifs ne peuvent revendiquer que le mérite d’avoir été l’un des chaînons intermédiaires par lesquels les idées spéculatives de l’orient se sont transmises à l’occident. Ce même rôle d’intermédiaire, nous le leur verrons jouer encore une fois dans des circonstances différentes.”

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the existence of a Jewish philosophy at all. The sole merit of Jewish scholars, according to him, was to serve as intermediary for the Muslim philosophers to Christianity. Munk’s position was as negative as it was largely unnoticed in the scholarly landscape. The debate on religion and philosophy in the first half of the nineteenth century affected the discussion of the Jewish contribution to intellectual history and the reflection of the relationship of Judaism to the “queen” among the academic disciplines of the nineteenth century: philosophy of religion. For this reason, by the end of the eighteenth century, a new term appeared on the German intellectual scene: the philosophy of religion, or “Religionsphilosophie.” The new discipline was mostly considered the substitute of the theologia naturalis,²⁸ a branch of theology that tried to explain God and the world without recurring to revelations. The first to use the term in a German publication is the Jesuit Sigismund von Storchenau (1731– 1797) in Die Philosophie der Religion, 7 volumes, 1773 – 1789, an apology of the Christian Catholic religion. I do not really know whether Jewish scholars were influenced by Storchenau. To be sure, the most read author on the argument is Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel and his Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion. In the definition, contents, and goal of a philosophy of religion, Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher were of course also involved. Yet Hegel offered the structured vision of the new branch of intellectual value, which identified philosophy and religion and considered history as development of the spirit (Geist). The historical element and the ideas of wisdom and intellectual challenge constituted a turning point in the history of Jewish philosophy, now considered the philosophy of religion. The first person to use the term with reference to Judaism was a Christian theologian of the University of Halle, August Ferdinand Dähne, in 1834, in his Geschichtliche Darstellung der jüdisch-hellenistischen Religionsphilosophie. In the spirit—so to speak—of Hegel, he considered the JewishHellenistic philosophy as a previous chapter of Christian theology. The first Jew to use the term Religionsphilisophie is Iuliusz Barash (1815 – 1863), alias Julius Friedsohn, a Galician Jew who studied at the University of Leipzig and then in Berlin. In the journal Der Orient,²⁹ he faced the question: What is the relationship between the philosophy of religion and Judaism, concentrating on the idea of God and positive religion? In that same year, a book by Salomon Formstecher  On the following, see Matthias J. Fritsch, “Ansätze zur Religionsphilosophie bei Sigismund von Storchenau,” Verbum. Analecta Neolatina 2 (1999): 105 – 16, now also online at http://www. btk.ppke.hu/uploads/files/1-2- 09.pdf [last accessed: April 1, 2011].  Julius Barasch, alias Julius Friedsohn, “Gedanken über Religionsphilosophie und Judenthum,” Der Orient 2 (1841): 28, 427– 30.

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appeared in Frankfurt, Die Religion des Geistes. In 1842, in Leipzig, Rabbi Samuel Hirsch published Die Religionsphilosophie der Juden; in 1843, Der Orient published another anonymous article on the topic. In 1848, David Joel included Jewish mysticism in the concept of Religionsphilosophie, publishing Midrash haZohar: Die Religionsgeschichte des Sohar. From the middle of the eighteenth century onward, philosophy of religion is the most used term to define almost every aspect of Jewish religion as tantamount for every phenomenon in Jewish existence, for virtually everything concerned with Jewish culture, philosophy, and even education. I wish here to recall Hirsch Goitein and his study on optimism and pessimism in the Jewish philosophy of religion. The psychological school was thus its entry ticket into intellectual history.

Conclusion Julius Guttmann summarized this aspect of the discussion in his well-known introduction to his Philolosophie des Judentums. He denied the existence of a Jewish philosophy as a separate entity by qualifying it as philosophy of religion. “It is philosophy of religion in the specific sense, given through the distinctive feature of the monotheistic religions of revelation, which through the energy of their claim to truth and the depth of their intellectual content, placed themselves over against philosophy as a power of their own.”³⁰ At the end of the process, Jewish philosophy, or Jewish philosophy of religion, are two separate entities without direct cooperation. They contrast each other—a solution that of course Leo Strauss could not agree with, according to whom (medieval) philosophy cannot be anything other than the philosophy of religion. For Guttmann, on the other hand, “modern philosophy is superior to medieval philosophy, because it distinguishes religion and philosophy as ‘spheres of different validity.’”³¹ Division against unity—or instead of unity? That is the question. The study of Jewish philosophy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is nothing other than a struggle, like the proverbial situation of the two powers in heaven in rabbinic literature. And the modern scholar finds him- or herself in the position of a sailor

 Julius Guttmann, Die Philosophie des Judentums (München: Reinhardt, 1933; reprinted Wiesbaden: Fourier, 1985), 10. I have not checked the English translation Philosophies of Judaism: The History of Jewish Philosophy from Biblical Times to Franz Rosenzweig, introduction by R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, translated by David W. Silverman (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964).  Chiara Adorisio, “Philosophy of Religion or Political Philosophy? The Debate Between Leo Strauss and Julius Guttmann,” European Journal of Jewish Studies 1 (2007): 135– 55, 143.

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navigating between Scylla and Charybdis, hoping against hope that he or she will make it through in one piece.

Asher Salah

The Intellectual Networks of Rabbi Marco Mortara (1815 – 1894): An Italian “Wissenschaftler des Judentums” The correspondence of Italian Jews constitutes a source yet to be explored by historians. Only in recent times have scholars begun to use the main collections of letters written by Jews, in Hebrew and in other languages, in order to reassess the extent and the structure of mercantile networks and to understand migration patters.¹ As far as the intellectual history of Italian Jews is concerned, correspondence has been studied mainly for the early modern period,² when the composition of letters was dictated by rules that remained almost unchanged throughout the centuries and followed the parameters of the widespread Ars Dic-

 Such as the works by Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: the Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); Francesca Bregoli, Carlotta Ferrara degli Uberti, Guri Schwarz (eds.), Italian Jewish Networks from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); and Arturo Marzano, Una terra per rinascere: gli ebrei italiani e l’emigrazione in Palestina prima della guerra (1920 – 1940) (Milan: Marietti, 2003).  Roberto Bonfil, “Una ‘enciclopedia’ di sapere sociale: l’epistolario ebraico quattrocentesco di Josef Sark,” Rivista di Storia della Filosofia, vol. 1 (1985): 113 – 30; Roberto Bonfil, “Riflessioni su una prospettiva femminista nell’epistolario di Samuele Archivolti,” La cultura ebraica a Bologna tra medioevo e rinascimento (2002): 117– 28; Natascia Danieli, “L’epistolario di Mošeh Hayyim Luzzatto (1707– 1747),” Materia Giudaica 8:2 (2003): 361– 66; Giuliano Tamani, “Passione e Attività Di Ebraisti Nel Carteggio De Rossi-Vitali (1781– 1782),” La Rassegna Mensile Di Israel, vol. 33, no. 5 (1967): 182– 94; Giuliano Tamani, “Cinque lettere inedite di Binjamin Bassani a G. B. De Rossi,” Rassegna Mensile di Israel 33 (1967): 429 – 41; Massimo Pazzini, “Due lettere in ebraico da Gerusalemme (XV sec.): R. Yosef da Montagnana e R. Yishaq Latif da Ancona,” Studium Biblicum Franciscanum 56 (2006): 347– 74; Carla Boccato, “Lettere di Ansaldo Cebà, genovese, a Sara Copio Sullam, poetessa del Ghetto di Venezia,” Rassegna Mensile di Israel 40 (1974): 169 – 91; Maddalena Del Bianco Cotrozzi, “Lettere di ebraisti ed ecclesiastici friulani di fine Settecento a Giambernardo De Rossi,” in ‘Memor fui dierum antiquorum.’ Studi in memoria di Luigi De Biasio, eds. Pier Cesa Ioly Zorattini and Attilio Mauro Caproni (Udine: Campanotto, 1995), 99 – 114. Much has been done under the direction of Yaakov Boksenboim, whose Iggerot Beit Karmi (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 1983) is the first volume in the series Sidrat Meqorot: Iggerot Yehudei Italia Bi-Tequfat Ha-Renaissance, now at its fifth volume. For one of the most important eighteenth-century Jewish epistolaries in Italy, mention should be made of the Italian translation of Hebrew letters by Ramhal, ed. Natascia Danieli, L’epistolario di M. H. Luzzatto (Florence: La Giuntina, 2006). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110554618-005

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taminis textbooks.³ On the contrary, for the nineteenth century, when letter writing underwent a radical change both in style and content,⁴ much remains to be done, despite some excellent editions of epistolaries of important Jewish exponents of the Risorgimento⁵ and the huge cataloguing efforts of private archives and digital inventories of correspondences in the last decade.⁶ This lacuna is regrettable for scholars interested in Wissenschaft des Judentums in nineteenth-century Italy, a chapter in the history of Jewish Studies and Italian Orientalism still in need of serious and thorough research.⁷ Indeed, the

 For instance Samuel Archivolti, Ma’ayan Ganim (Venice, 1553); Johannes Buxtorf, ed., Istitutio Epistolaris Hebraica (Basel, 1603); and a Latin translation of the Iggeret Shelomim, Johannes Buxtorf, Iggeret Shelomim (Augsburg, 1534). For a general overview of Jewish letter writing Asher Salah, “Correspondences and Letters”, The Routledge Companion to Jewish History and Historiography (Dean Bell ed.) (London: Routledge, 2018): 420 – 437.  “Nell’Ottocento la corrispondenza scritta si trasformò da fenomeno sostanzialmente singolare, occasionale in un fenomeno socioculturale funzionale e strutturale rispetto allo sviluppo culturale ed economico della nuova società industriale.” Armando Petrucci, Scrivere lettere: una storia plurimillenaria (Bari: Laterza, 2008), 133. In the Jewish world this finds expression in the publication of textbooks for writing letters that abandon the traditional rhetoric and encourage the adoption of a more informal and clear style, such as the one by Shalom Ha-Cohen, Khetav Yosher (Vienna: Schmid, 1820). It should be emphasized that from this period onward, Jews in Italy wrote predominantly, if not exclusively, in Italian.  Giuseppe Laras, “Quattro lettere inedite di Benamozegh a Terenzio Mamiani,” Rassegna Mensile di Israel 34 (1968): 155 – 62; Laura Fano Jacchia, “Profondo sentimento ebraico in due lettere inedite di Giacomo Venezian,” Rassegna Mensile di Israel 38 (1972): 146 – 54; Gadi Luzzatto Voghera, “’Primavera dei popoli’ ed emancipazione ebraica: due lettere dell’aprile 1848,” Rassegna Mensile di Israel 64:1 (1998): 83 – 86; Liana Elda Funaro, “‘Speculiamo, amiamo, combattiamo.’ Lettere inedite di Elia Benamozegh,” Nuovi Studi Livornesi 10 (Livorno, 2002– 2003): 131– 48; Lionella Viterbo Neppi Modona, “Un epistolario intimo scelta di lettere del Rabbino Shemuel Zvi Margulies,” Rassegna Mensile di Israel 72:2 (2006): 115 – 38; M. Scardozzi, “Amiche. Lettere di Marianna, Regina e Lina Uzielli a Emilia Toscanelli Peruzzi,” in Donne nella storia degli ebrei d’Italia, eds. Cristina Galasso and Michele Luzzati (Florence: La Giuntina, 2007), 373 – 402. Tullia Catalan, “La ‘primavera degli ebrei.’ Ebrei italiani del Litorale e del Lombardo Veneto nel 1848 – 49,” Zakhor 6 (2003): 35 – 66, has used many still unpublished Jewish epistolaries, as before her Salo Wittmayer Baron, “Shadal VeHaMahpehot 1848 (Shadal e le rivoluzioni del 1848),” in Sefer ’Assaf. Qoveṣ Ma’amarei Meḥqar, eds. M. D. Cassutto and Y. Klauzner (Jerusalem: Mosad Ha-Rav Kook, 1953), 40 – 63. Lastly, for the Napoleonic period, mention should be made to the epistolary of the rabbi Jacob Israel Carmi published in Andrea Balletti, Gli ebrei e gli estensi, (Bologna: Forni, 1970; first edition 1905).  For instance the CEOD (Corpus Epistolare Ottocentesco Digitale), a digitalization project of letters initiated by the Università per Stranieri in Siena and the University of Cassino.  Cristiana Facchini’s David Castelli. Ebraismo e scienze delle religioni tra Otto e Novecento (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2005), who published 73 letters of the Florentine scholar, represents the first tentative attempt to confront the question of the Science of Judaism in Italy, in the context of

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erudite letter is, for nineteenth-century scholars, one of the main channels of scientific communication. It stands in between the public and the private sphere of social interaction, often finding its collocation in specialized journals as a normal scientific article, but indulging at the same time in everyday matters and intimate details of their authors’ life. In the nineteenth century, the epistolary exchange was akin to forms of parajournalistic writing, and in many cases the letters, before and after having been handed to their addressees, were read and commented on by a large number of people, many of whom added their own remarks in the margins and often dropped personal annotations and blessings inside the same envelope. Frequently, the academic essay and the scientific communication were presented to the public in the form of open letters. The principal journals of Jewish Wissenschaft in the nineteenth century were often conceived as epistolary compilations of scholars exchanging comments and ideas from different parts of Europe, and also beyond its borders. The scientific essay tried to imitate the style and the structure of the letter, even when this was clearly a literary fiction. Let’s just mention the Kerem Khemed (1833 – 1856), whose subtitle in Hebrew reads as follows ‫מכתבים יקרים אשר הריצו חכמי זמננו איש‬ ‫( אל רעהו‬letter exchanges among contemporary scholars), or the Ozar Nekhmad (1856 – 1863), Briefe und Abhandlungen jüdische Literatur. Many Italian Jewish periodicals, inspired by similar publications in the German lands, such as the Rivista Israelitica of Parma (1845 – 1847), the Educatore Israelita of Vercelli (1853 – 1874), the Vessillo Israelitico of Casale Monferrato (1874– 1922), the Corriere Israelitico of Triest (1862– 1914), and Mosé (a journal printed in Italian in Corfu between 1877 and 1885), devoted much space to scholarly correspondence and epistolary polemics. Moreover, most of the debates, ignited by the question of Jewish Reform in Germany, were conducted in epistolary form and as such were spread outside the German-speaking areas.⁸ Rabbinical and erudite correspondence among Italian Jews sheds light on the intense diatribes concerning the Reform issue, and allows us to invalidate a critical approach to the study of the Bible and of Jewish history. For other aspects of Jewish epistolography in nineteenth-century Italy, see also Asher Salah, “Steinschneider and Italy,” in Studies on Steinschneider: Moritz Steinschneider and the Emergence of the Science of Judaism in Nineteenth-Century Germany, eds. Gad Freudenthal and Reimund Leicht (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), 411– 56.  From the letters of Naphtali Herz Wessely, Nogah Ha-Ṣedeq (Dessau, 1818) to the volume on the liturgical reform in Hamburg Elle Divrei Ha-Berit (Hamburg, 1819) that was widely circulated in Italy, until the fictional letters in defense of Jewish Orthodoxy by Samson Raphael Hirsch, Neunzehn Briefe über Judenthum (Altona, 1836). On this subject Asher Salah, “Jewish Reform in Italy”, in Wissenschaft des Judentums in Europe: Comparative Perspectives, eds. Miriam Thulin, Christian Wiese (Berlin: De Gruyter, forthcoming fall 2019).

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once and for all the thesis, according to which in Italy—and I quote Cecil Roth, who is the main proponent of this claim—“the question of Reform was never seriously considered.”⁹ At any rate, epistolography, which on an international level performs a function similar to that of the salon on a local level, constitutes the most concrete expression of that socio-cultural space that had been yearned for since the Enlightenment, namely, a cosmopolitan République des lettres, a place potentially open to men of all creeds, who do not fear intellectual disagreements for they believe to belong to the same ideal and supranational community.¹⁰ For the Jews in particular, the emancipatory promises of the century found a favorable ground precisely in the possibilities of a free intellectual exchange provided by the rules of scientific and erudite correspondence, long before the official recognition of their civil rights. Nevertheless, besides nineteenth-century editions of letter collections of key figures of the Jewish intellectual arena,¹¹ almost nothing has been done in the twentieth century to save from oblivion this kind of material, despite its crucial importance for the biographer and for the historian of ideas.¹² For instance, in Samuel David Luzzatto’s case, for sure the most prominent figure of nineteenth-century Italian Judaism, among the 3441 letters that Shadal’s son Isaia

 Cecil Roth, The History of the Jews in Italy (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1948), 493.  For the eighteenth century, but also containing observations pertinent to the following century, see Anne Goldgar, Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters, 1680 – 1750 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995); and Françoise Waquet and Hans Bots, eds., Commercium Litterarium. La communication dans la République des Lettres (Amsterdam and Maarssen: APA-Holland University Press, 1994).  For instance, among the epistolaries published in the nineteenth century, those of Samuel David Luzzatto, Epistolario italiano, francese, latino (Padova, 1890), and in Hebrew Igrot Shadal, published posthumously between 1882 and 1884 in Cracow and Przemyśl, and S. Kocianic, ed., Celeberrimi Samuelis Davidis Luzzatto paucae quaedam epistolae hebraicae (Gorizia, 1868) (with some letters by Giuseppe Almanzi and Aron Luzzatto), or those in Hebrew by Isaac Samuel Reggio, Igrot Yashar (Vienna, 1834– 1836), Isaac Samuel Reggio, Devar Shemuel (Cracow, 1895), and Isaac Samuel Reggio, Katuv Yashar (Cracow, 1902).  Another typology of epistolaries is the one provided by the letters of important figures of Italian culture, who happened to be Jewish, but who did not relate to Jewish questions in their work, and if so, only marginally and sporadically. For instance, Alessandro D’Ancona’s letter exchanges with Benedetto Croce, Michele Amari, and Carducci etc., edited in seven volumes by Piero Cudini (Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore, 1972– 1986). Also Elio Providenti, Lettere di A. Cantoni a L. A. Villari (1895 – 1903) (Rome: Herder, 1993); and Rita Peca Conti, ed., Graziadio Isaia Ascoli a Emilio Teza (Pisa: Giardini, 1978), and G. I. Ascoli a Giovanni Flechia (Rome: Accademia dei Lincei, 1977).

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possessed in 1878¹³ only 716 were published in the Epistolario and 690 letters were in Hebrew, a little more than a third. From 1890 to the present, only about ten letters by Shadal have been published.¹⁴ And when we turn to other, less known but no lesser protagonists of Italian Jewish life in the nineteenth century, the void is almost absolute. This situation is caused by various factors, besides the still widespread prejudice against epistolary material, which is suspected to contain mostly private and anecdotal information. Indeed, gathering this kind of source material is a difficult task, scattered as it is in public and private collections, in Italy and abroad, after having being dismembered by collectors of antiquarian curiosities. Moreover, as far as Italian Jewish epistolaries are concerned, there is an additional problem related to the language in which they are written, usually Italian mixed with biblical and rabbinical Hebrew and Aramaic, but also French, German, and Latin. In this chapter, I would like to discuss the interest of studying the diffusion and the characteristics of Wissenschaft des Judentums in Italy through letter writing, not by means of a qualitative analysis (i. e. through the interpretation of the content of the documents), but rather by means of a quantitative analysis (i. e. through the instruments of statistics and the use of concepts borrowed from social sciences, such as frequencies, averages, and clusters). I would like to present here the first finds based on my research on the correspondence networks of Marco Mortara, Chief Rabbi in Mantua, who is a key figure in trying to understand the dynamics and themes that were debated among Italian lay and religious leaders in the nineteenth century.¹⁵ This should allow us to address the following questions: can we speak of an Italian way to Wissenschaft des Judentums? Who were the main actors of the Science of Judaism in Italy? Where can the main centers of diffusion of German-oriented methods of research be located? And last but not least, has Italy known anything like a Reform Movement similar to the one that developed in Germany? It is not my intention, within the limits of this chapter, to give an answer to all these questions. I would like to show  Isaia Luzzatto, Index raisonné des livres de correspondance de feu S.D. Luzzatto (Padua: Sacchetto, 1878).  Umberto Cassuto, “Una lettera inedita di Samuel David Luzzatto,” La Rivista Israelitica 4 (1907): 27– 32; I. Gatti, “Il carteggio Ascoli-Luzzatto conservato nella Biblioteca dell’Accademia dei Lincei,” Italia 1:1 (1976): 70 – 88; Marco Grusovin, “Il carteggio ebraico fra Stefano Kociancic e Samuel David Luzzatto,” Materia Giudaica 7:2 (2002): 385 – 95. The Hebrew letters between Luzzatto and Letteris, published in Tel Aviv in 1942, are only a selection of letters already published in earlier collections.  The letters of and to Marco Mortara have been published in Asher Salah, L’epistolario di Marco Mortara (1815 – 1894). Un rabbino italiano tra riforma e ortodossia (Florence: La Giuntina, 2012).

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how the study of the epistolaries, especially when conducted on a large number of samples, could be of invaluable help to address these themes in a systematic and more documented perspective. First, a brief biographical introduction is needed.¹⁶ Marco Mortara, born in Viadana in 1815, studied at the Rabbinical Seminary in Padua under Samuel David Luzzatto from 1842 until his death in 1894, and occupied the rabbinical chair of Mantua, one of the most important Jewish communities first of Austrian Lombardy, and, after 1866, of the newly established Italian kingdom. During his long professional career, Mortara played a major role in the transitional phase of Italian Judaism towards a complete juridical emancipation in the context of the foundation of the new national state. Mortara therefore had been a protagonist in the debates held at the two congresses of the Italian Jewish communities in Ferrara (1863) and Florence (1867), where the consequences of the Italian unification process on their legal structure were discussed.¹⁷ In his capacity of educator, preacher, and erudite, he also took part in the main debates concerning the status of the Science of Judaism in Italy and in the defense of an Italian Judaism he believed was under attack by a growing religious skepticism and relativism. Even if the failure of his stances deeply embittered Mortara in his later years, some of his ideas were indeed adopted by the legislation of the new Italian Kingdom, such as the one concerning the necessity for the Jews to renounce their right to divorce in order to conform their practice to the standards of the Italian civil law,¹⁸ or the one related to the death penalty, which Mortara wanted

 Among the biographies, besides the one reconstructed in the aforementioned work, we should also mention M. Reines, Dor Ve-Hakhamav (Krakow, 1890); the articles in Jewish encyclopeadias and lexicons such as those by Isidor Singer, Jewish Encyclopaedia (London, 1901); Samuele Schaerf in the fourth volume of the Grosse Jüdische National-Biographie, ed. Salomon Wininger, vol. 7 (Czernauti, 1925); Umberto Cassuto in the fourth volume of the Jüdische Lexicon (Berlin, 1927– 1930); M. Artom, Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem: Ktav, 1971); Roberto Salvadori, “Marco Mortara: un rabbino dell’Ottocento,” Civiltà Mantovana 32 (1997): 7– 20; and Bruno Di Porto, “Marco Mordechai Mortara Doresh Tov,” Materia Giudaica XV–XVI (2010 – 2011): 139 – 69.  For a good synthesis of these two congresses, see chapter 3 of the recent volume by Elizabeth Schächter, The Jews of Italy, 1848 – 1915. Between Tradition and Transformation (London: Valentine Mitchell, 2011). For an analysis of Mortara’s position in favor of convoking a rabbinical synod of the representatives of all Italian Jewish communities see Asher Salah, “Il progetto di sinodo rabbinico di Marco Mortara”, Atti del convegno sui rabbini piemontesi e il congresso di Firenze del 1867, eds. Chiara Pilocane, Alberto Cavaglion (Livorno: Belforte, forthcoming 2019).  With the exception of one open letter to the rabbi of Reggio Emilia, G. Lattes (1811– 1890), “Risposta alle considerazioni sul matrimonio tra parenti dell’Ecc.mo Sig. Rabb. Magg. G. Lattes,” Educatore Israelita 12 (1864): 259 – 65. On this topic Marco Mortara wrote the pamphlet Il matrimonio civile considerato giusta le norme del diritto e dell’opportunità (Mantova, 1864). On the

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to abrogate although it was permitted by Talmudic legislation.¹⁹ Important and much appreciated in liberal circles of the time was his public intervention against the Italian member of parliament Francesco Pasqualigo, who accused Isacco Pesaro Maurogonato, candidate to the position of minster of finance, of not being trustworthy enough by virtue of being a Jew.²⁰ In his pursuit of national and international recognition of his scholarly enterprises, Mortara benefited from the extraordinary collection of manuscripts and rare Hebrew books deposited in the library of Mantua’s Jewish community. Moreover, Mortara was able to gather an important personal collection of Hebraica and Judaica, having inherited the library of Samuel Vita dalla Volta (1772– 1853), rich of some 130 unique manuscripts that bibliophiles and scholars from all over Europe unsuccessfully tried to purchase.²¹ In 1855, Alexander Humboldt (1769 – 1859) wrote Mortara a much quoted letter in the intellectual circles of the time;²² in 1858, Mortara began a long-standing correspondence with Moritz Steinschneider (1816 – 1907); and in 1873, Ármin Vámbéry (1832– 1913), another celebrity of the European academic world, addressed Mortara in order to express his indignation about Pasqualigo’s antisemitic outburst and his support for the rabbi’s stand.²³ Mortara’s fame on a national level and outside Jewish circles is attested by the epistolary exchange with count Giacomo Manzoni (1816 – 1889), an erudite from Lugo, the only exchange with a Christian figure of Italian culture. However, it is in the Jewish world that Mortara became one of the most important repre-

question of divorce, see chapter 8 of the book by Ester Capuzzo, Gli ebrei nella società italiana. Comunità e istituzioni tra Ottocento e Novecento (Rome: Carocci, 1999).  On this subject Mortara had a public debate with Giuseppe Consolo. Mortara was an opponent of the death penalty, which he considered to have been superseded by the moral evolution of the peoples of the world. Marco Mortara, “Sulla pena di morte. In proposito dell’opuscolo del Cav. Avv. Consolo,” Educatore Israelita 15 (1867): 46 – 51.  Marco Mortara, Della nazionalità e delle Aspirazioni Messianiche degli ebrei (Rome: Cotta, 1873), 9. Among the most important studies concerning this episode and Mortara’s reaction, see Andrew M. Canepa, “Emancipazione, integrazione e antisemitismo liberale in Italia: il caso Pasqualigo,” Comunità 174 (1975): 166 – 203; and Maurizio Molinari, Gli ebrei in Italia: un problema d’identità (1870 – 1938) (Florence: La Giuntina, 1991), 37.  Concerning his library and collection, see Asher Salah, “La biblioteca di Marco Mortara,” in Nuovi studi in onore di Marco Mortara nel secondo centenario della nascita, eds. Mauro Perani and Ermanno Finzi (Firenze: Giuntina, 2016), 149 – 68.  Letter B.8 No. 42 in Salah, L’epistolario di Marco Mortara, originally published in Marco Mortara, Compendio della religione israelitica metodicamente esposto ad uso dell’istruzione domestica e delle scuole (Mantova: Beretta, 1855).  Letter B.5 No. 43 in Salah, L’epistolario di Marco Mortara originally published in Mortara, Della nazionalità, 9.

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sentatives of Italian Judaism. There is almost no Jewish publication in Italy for which Mortara did not write, while his articles were hosted by the main organs of Wissenschaft des Judentums, such as Steinschneider’s Hebräische Bibliographie in Berlin, Goldenberg’s Kerem Chemed in Prague, Jellinkek’s Bet HaMidrasch in Leipzig, Blumenfeld’s Ozar Nechmad and Bet Talmud in Vienna, and the Revue d’Etudes Juives and the Archives Israélites in France. Mortara’s oeuvre was well received and appreciated by international scholars of Judaism. We know for instance from a letter by S. D. Luzzatto of May 31, 1857, that “Jost mi scrisse aver parlato del vostro libro non so dove, e me ne dice bene” (“Jost wrote to me that he mentioned your book somewhere in positive terms”)—referring to the Compendio della religione israelitica published by Mortara in 1855. Another example of his notoriety can be found in Joseph Jacobs’s article from 1886, dedicated to the Jewish contribution to sciences and arts in the nineteenth century, where he is mentioned along very few other Italian Jews, such as S. D. Luzzatto, Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, Elia Benamozegh, Salvador De Benedetti, and David Castelli.²⁴ From 1862 onwards, Steinschneider regularly reviewed Mortara’s work in the Hebräische Bibliographie, and on the frontispiece of his journal he does not fail to stress that it appears “Unter Mitwirkung” (“with the collaboration”) of Marco Mortara, who, together with S. D. Luzzatto, is the only Italian to be mentioned. Only from the seventh volume onward will the names of two non-Jewish scholars, Fausto Lasinio (1831– 1914) and Pietro Perreau (1827– 1911), be added. An extremely severe review by Adolf Neubauer (1831– 1907) of one of Mortara’s articles was published in the Revue d’Etudes Juives, something that irritated Mortara so much that he felt compelled to share his disappointment with Steinschneider in a letter from 1885.²⁵ However, this episode also confirms the attention that his publications received from the main intellectual figures of his time. His fame was therefore spread on a European level and relied mainly on his bibliographic endeavors, such as the Catalogo della biblioteca della comunità ebraica di Mantova and the Indice alfabetico dei rabbini e scrittori israeliti di cose giudaiche in Italia, a late work that Mortara considered a minor achievement.²⁶ Mortara’s name reached the United States, where, besides Sabato Morais, it is known that he was in touch with Bernard Felsenthal (1822– 1908) and Alexander Kohut (1842– 1894), two central figures of the Jewish intellectual  Joseph Jacobs, “The Comparative Distribution of Jewish Ability,” The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 15 (1886): 351– 79.  Letter of December 13, 1885 (A.2 No. 22).  See what he says in the letter to G. Manzoni of November 30, 1886 (A.9 N° 161). His work is also mentioned in a letter to Steinschneider of 1885 (A.2 No. 22).

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world in America, representatives as they were of his different religious sensibilities, liberal and conservative. Mortara’s literary output can be divided in three main categories. 1) The doctrinal aspects of his oeuvre—what Mortara would have termed his “dogmatic works”—both theological and scientific, which appeared in general as printed monographs that Mortara deemed to be the most important part of his intellectual work.²⁷ This category includes not only his sermons and catechetic works, but also his economic, biological, and linguistic researches, writings that did not have a strong impact at the time of their appearance and that are today almost completely forgotten. Only his Indice dei rabbini e scrittori israeliti in Italia and his catalogue of the Jewish library of Mantua still conserve some of their original scholarly value.²⁸ 2) If Mortara’s name is still remembered, this is due mainly because of his positions concerning the Reform of Jewish liturgy, the adaptation of Judaism to the civil and penal legislation of the newly established Italian Kingdom, and his appeals for the convocation of the rabbinical synod, where the ritual and legal unification of all the Jewish communities on Italian soil were discussed. Mortara published these kinds of texts, which are of greater political actuality, then as now, in the main Jewish journals in Italy and Europe. Among the Italian periodicals that published Mortara’s contributions,²⁹ mention should be made of the Rivista Israelitica of Cesare Rovighi, l’Educatore Israelita, and its successor Il Vessillo Israelitico. The Corriere Israelitico and the Mosé instead were used by Mortara as a platform for his philological and historical writings (which he called

 Mortara, Dell’Autenticità del Pentateuco. Saggio del rabbino Marco Mortara, dottore in Teologia ebraica, Alunno dell’Istituto rabbinico di Padova (Padova, 1843), 111; Mortara, Sull’ Armonia della più recenti teorie cosmiche (Mantova, 1853); Mortara, Compendio della religione israelitica metodicamente esposto ad uso dell’istruzione domestica e delle scuole (Mantova, 1855); Mortara, Studii sull’origine del linguaggio. Il racconto biblico e le piu recenti conclusioni della scienza (Mantova, 1869), 8; Mortara, Della nazionalità, 23; Mortara, Un antico modello di istituzioni economicomorali. Memoria letta nella R. Accademia Virgiliana (Mantova, 1874), 37; Mortara, Il proselitismo giudaico (Mantova, 1876), 86; Mortara, Le proselytisme juif, translated into Italian by Ernest David, (Paris, 1875), first published by the Archives Israelites on the basis of some articles that appeared in Corriere Israelitico.  Mortara, Catalogo dei manoscritti ebraici della Biblioteca della Comunita israelitica di Mantova (Livorno: Costa, 1878), 72; Mortara, Mazkeret Ḥakhmei Italyah (Indice alfabetico dei rabbini e scrittori israeliti di cose giudaiche in Italia) (Padova: Sacchetto, 1886).  Bruno Di Porto, “Il giornalismo ebraico in Italia. Un primo sguardo d’insieme al Vessillo Israelitico,” Materia Giudaica 6 (2001): 106.

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“archeologic”), dedicated in great part to the past glories of Mantua’s Jewish community. 3) The last category is composed of letters, mostly manuscripts that have been overlooked, if not completely ignored, by scholars of Italian Judaism. Mortara’s extant correspondence is not particularly rich, especially if compared to the much larger epistolary collections of Moritz Steinschneider at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and Samuel David Luzzatto’s archives at the Centro Bibliografico dell’Unione delle Comunità Ebraiche Italiane in Rome, which include several thousand letters. Mortara’s correspondence is made up of 205 letters, 162 by Mortara himself and 43 that were sent to him by his various correspondents in Europe and the United States, from 1831 to 1890. To these should be added four letters from Marco Mortara to David Kaufmann from 1883 to 1885 published in Salah, La biblioteca di Marco Mortara, 159 – 161, and six letters by Mortara to Salvatore De Benedetti from 1871 to 1888 that I recently found in the Biblioteca universitaria of Pisa, ms 797 and are not included in my edition of Mortara’s correspondence. With the exception of one Hebrew letter to Sabato Morais (1823 – 1897) in Philadelphia and two in French addressed to Joseph Perles (1835 – 1894) in Munich, all the others are written in Italian, with many Hebrew and Aramaic intercalations. Despite some important lacunae, Mortara’s letters are well distributed over the span of more than half a century and offer an invaluable vantage point into the main events in Mortara’s existence and his intellectual interests and readings. They represent a precious key in appraising the kinds of social relationships prevalent between scholars and lay people, Jews and Christians, Italians and Germans: from his first steps as a young and enthusiastic lover of Jewish Studies under the guidance of his first mentor Samuel Vita Dalla Volta, to the moral and methodological apprenticeship with Shadal, from his friendship with his fellow student at the Rabbinical College in Padua, David Graziadio Viterbi, to his intellectual links with celebrities of Judaic Studies in Europe. To piece together, however partially and in a fragmentary manner, the personal and scientific networks of a personality such as Mortara can be an extremely rewarding exercise. To this purpose, it is useful to apply the concept of “cluster,” elaborated in the social sciences as a part of theories of communication, to the analysis of intellectual exchanges among Jewish scholars in the nineteenth century, sharing a common interest in the debates discussed as a part of the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement. In this context, Claude S. Fischer defines “density” as follows:

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The more of a person’s associates who are associates of one another, the denser his or her network. Network density is one of the two dimensions of networks that have long concerned sociologists. The other might be called relational density. It is usually labeled multistrandedness—how many different ways an individual is involved with someone. If all I do with my colleague is discuss sociology our relation is single stranded or specialized.³⁰

Since most of the letters deal almost exclusively with philological and historical questions, I will concentrate mainly on density rather than on multistrandedness (which in our case can be defined as single-stranded or specialized). The type of cluster I have been dealing with in the case of the letter collections by Mortara and others, such as Steinschneider or Luzzatto,³¹ is undoubtedly one of high density. This means that the presence of multiple connections among different actors can be an index of the fact that we are facing a group of persons who acted according to shared interests and had a strong collective identity. The presence of a cluster of persons linked together, although it does not necessary reveal anything about the reasons why these persons decided to enter the network in the first place, allows us to begin drawing the borders of what we call a group. The concept of cluster should help us to use the epistolary data collected and understand the nature and the spread of the values of the Science of Judaism or Wissenschaft des Judentums in the territories of the former Holy Roman Empire, including today’s Germany, Austria, and in particular Northern Italy.³² In Mortara’s publications and letters, I have been able to ascertain the existence of 72 correspondents, a considerably inferior number to the 231 of Luzzatto and the 328 of Steinschneider, but still more than double the 33 of Dalla Volta found in the Kaufmann collection in Budapest. This is a figure sufficiently high to single out some general trends and characteristics. Although I did not systematically examine other epistolary collections, besides those of Mortara, Viterbi, Luzzatto, Morais, Dalla Volta, Perles, and Steinschneider, it appears quite clearly that the crossed relationships should also include the names of Lelio Della Torre, Abram Lattes, Abram Mainster, Lelio Cantoni, Isaac Samuel Reggio, M. S. Ghirondi, and Salomon Yehudah Rapoport, whose letters have not been yet the object of thorough research in this context.

 Claude S. Fischer, To Dwell Among Friends: Personal Networks in Town and City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 139.  About the crossed relations among Steinschneider, Luzzatto, and other Jewish intellectuals in Italy, see Salah, “Steinschneider and Italy,” 411– 56.  Goldgar, Impolite Learning, 5. Goldgar writes that until recently, “any interest in the interconnections of scholars has aimed at the discovery of intellectual influences rather than social patterns.”

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On the Italian level, the net is extremely dense and enduring among the different generations of pupils and teachers at the Rabbinical Seminary of Padua. We have a circle of former students dispersed in different Jewish communities of Northern Italy characterized by a strong esprit de corps, despite ideological differences that aroused among them after leaving the school. The cluster theory should be used with care in order not to succumb in some occasions to obvious or paradoxical conclusions, demonstrating what we already know intuitively, such as the fact that the students at the Rabbinical Seminary of Padua constitute a strongly interconnected group, or, conversely, that individuals such as Giuseppe Almanzi (1801– 1860), Luzzatto, and Abram Salom (1793 – 1866), three friends belonging to the same intellectual Jewish milieu in Padua, do not constitute a cluster since they did not write letters to each other (and why should they, since they lived in the same neighbourhood and met on a daily basis!). Nevertheless, tracking down the epistolary connections of a great number of individuals can reveal some facts that are not necessarily self-evident. I will mention here only three such observations. 1) The first concerns the religious and professional identity of the members of the network. The epistolary exchanges link together mainly Jews. In Mortara’s case, non-Jews involved in the correspondence only make up ten per cent. This is consistent to what I have found studying Luzzatto’s correspondence at the Centro Bibliografico in Rome, the Steinschneider archive at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, and the Magnes Library in Berkeley. The highest percentage of non-Jewish correspondents can be found in Steinschneider’s case, with a percentage close to twenty percent. This is noteworthy since it empirically demonstrates the resistance to social integration with the surrounding society even decades after complete civil emancipation. The difficulty to break the mainly intra-community relationships, which has also been noted in Jewish financial partnerships in the nineteenth century,³³ is even more surprising in light of the fact that for men such as Luzzatto, Reggio, Mortara, Soave, and others, to entertain a correspondence with non-Jewish scholars was the most tangible proof of intellectual success. For instance, in one letter dated February 22, 1852, Mortara announces with evident pride that he is in touch with the scholars Pietro Tappari and Angelo Mazzoldi, and with the governor and the bishop of Mantua.³⁴ The same can be said for Luzzatto, who in a letter dated February 10,

 Barbara Armani, Il confine invisibile: l’elite ebraica di Firenze 1840 – 1914 (Milano: Franco Angeli, 2006).  Salah, L’epistolario di Marco Mortara, 125.

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1857, can barely contain his pride that he is in a friendly relationship with Camillo Ugoni (1784– 1856)³⁵ and can be counted among the collaborators of prince Baldassarre Boncompagni (1821– 1894), a Roman aristocrat, whom Steinschneider, too, was happy to count among his closest and long-lasting friends, despite the latter’s intransigent reactionary opinions about religious freedom and his opposition to liberalism. But, regardless of all the efforts Luzzatto or Mortara invested in order to be in touch with intellectuals and scholars outside the Jewish world, this proved a difficult and sometimes desperate enterprise in the absence of common grounds of socialization and intellectual exchange with Christian circles. Inside the Jewish community, the network predominantly spans among members involved in the rabbinical profession. This can account for the limited openness of this class in confronting the results of biblical criticism. Moreover, the historical and positivistic method is used above all for apologetic purposes in defense of Judaism against the attacks of religious indifferentism and relativism. But this explains also why the question of Reform was debated almost exclusively inside rabbinical circles, and, although the Reform of Judaism had vigorous proponents among some former pupils of the Rabbinical Seminary in Padua, such as Salomone Olper, it did not have any substantial impact in the outer Jewish society. The names of Jewish scholars with a university background, such as the linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli or the professor of Italian literature at the Athenaeum of Pisa, Alessandro D’Ancona, are rarely found in the epistolary networks I have been studying. Contrary to these figures of the academic world, the rabbinical epistolaries do not reveal any traumatic consciousness of the clash between modern science and traditional faith, and do not contain but sporadic references to the larger political debates of the time, such as those related to the nation building of the Italian independence wars. To this observation we should add another one: namely, that the network of Wissenschaft des Judentums almost exclusively connected males among themselves, while women did not feature in their correspondence except in negligible proportions, almost invariably as wives or kin, never as full-fledged collaborators. 2) The second observation derives from a quantitative examination of the extant letters concerning the geographical spread of the existing intellectual networks. We stand in front of a cluster which unites chiefly rabbis of the Italian territories of the former Holy Roman Empire. The main centers of the Science of Judaism on Italian soil appeared to be axed around Padua, Mantua, Venice, and Turin in

 Ibid., 236.

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Northern-Italy, excluding almost completely the large Jewish communities of Leghorn, Florence, and Rome. This can explain the difficulties in creating a unified rabbinate for the Jewish communities living in the territories of the newly formed Italian state, a program for which Mortara strenously fought all his life without success. It was easier for him and his colleagues to create networks of scientific collaboration on the other side of the Alps than on the Southern side of the river Po. In fact, the strongest relations between scholars of different national and linguistic backgrounds are between German and Italian scholars. Therefore, although the cluster is particularly dense inside the same linguistic and cultural area—i. e. an Italian scholar will more likely be linked with other Italians rather than with German-speaking correspondents, even when they are both citizens of the Hapsburg Empire—when a relationship is established outside the geographical and cultural borders of the Italian peninsula, it will concern mostly Germanspeaking scholars. The same is true the other way around—i. e. non-German correspondents of German-speaking scholars. For instance, among Steinschneider or Perles’s relationships outside the German-speaking world, Italians are the most important group of correspondents, although they were perfectly conversant in English and French. While Mortara had many connections with German intellectuals, he could hardly write and understand German, despite his own cultural background, which was more French oriented. This means that we are in the presence of a network of relationships that connected in a privileged way the German and the Northern Italian cultural area. This is even more surprising since French language and French culture was still the filter through which the European intellectual influences coming to Italy were mediated. However, it has to be kept in mind that the reciprocal links between German and Italian scholars are not equal. In fact, the number of Italian correspondents in the German epistolaries is considerably inferior to the number of Germans in the Italian ones. This confirms the subaltern position of Italy before German science, and its dependence as far as the circulation of ideas and information is concerned. In fact, contact with German scholars was, for rabbis such as Mortara, who suffered from the peripheral position of their provincial communities, but also for far more famous intellectuals such as Luzzatto and Reggio, the only way to participate in scholarly and ideological debates whose centers were in Berlin, Vienna, and in other Central and Eastern European capitals rather than in Italy. 3) The third and last remark concerns the central role played by Samuel David Luzzatto in creating and keeping alive the networks of erudite correspondence among Italian and foreign scholars. None of the other teachers at the Rabbinical

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Seminary in Padua, neither Reggio nor Della Torre, were able to implement a comparable policy of international scholarship like Luzzatto. Therefore, the values of Wissenschaft des Judentums in Italy have been filtered through his peculiar methodological and ideological approach. To his overwhelming influence must be attributed the substantially Orthodox character of Wissenschaft des Judentums in an Italian key. Although Mortara in many ways tried to create a movement in Italy similar to the ideas of Zechariah Frankel and of Samson Raphael Hirsch, he was not able to establish direct contact with them. Journals such as Zeitschrift fur die religiösen Interessen des Judenthums (1844 – 1846), Monatschrift fur Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums (1861), or Jeschurun (1854– 1870) were almost unknown in Italy. Moreover, as long as the correspondence in the first half of the century among Jewish intellectuals across Europe was written mainly in Hebrew, the Italians were still fully integrated in the international networks. But when Hebrew was quickly supplanted by national languages and German became the vehicular language of Jewish science, Italian scholars such as Mortara encountered greater obstacles in creating their own autonomous relationships outside Italy, without the mediation of persons such as Luzzatto or Della Torre, who were among the rare Italian Jews to be perfectly conversant in the main European languages of science. Despite the fact that these data should be completed and enriched by more far-reaching and comprehensive research, including a study of the relationships between Italian Judaism and that of the German-speaking area, what Alberto Cavaglion has called “il lieve accento straniero che contraddistingue le stagioni di ogni risveglio ebraico in Italia” (“the light foreign accent that marks the seasons of every Jewish awakening in Italy”) in the case of the Italian rabbinate between the eighteenth and the nineteenth century is an indisputably German one.³⁶ This dependence on the stronger numerically and intellectually Jewish communities of Central and Eastern Europe would be further accentuated at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century by the presence, in key positions of the Italian rabbinical chair, of Galician and German rabbis such as Moise Levi Ehrenreich, Zvi Chajes, Samuel Margulies, and in more recent times, Israel Zoller, Mordechai Vogelmann, Isidoro Kahn.³⁷

 Alberto Cavaglion, Storia d’Italia, Annali 11, Gli Ebrei in Italia, ed. Corrado Vivanti, vol. 2 (Torino: Einaudi, 1997), 1312.  Shmuel Feiner, Jewish Enlightenment (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 287, writes about the German Haskalah in the eighteenth century of a strong inferiority complex towards Italy; and Lois C. Dubin, “Trieste and Berlin. The Italian Role in the Cultural Politics of Haskalah,” in Toward Modernity: The European Jewish Model, ed. Jacob Katz (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1987), 202, stresses the condescension of Italian Jews toward their brethren

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While in the first half of the nineteenth century, Italy still sent appreciated rabbis to England, such as Benjamin Artom (1835 – 1879) from Asti, and to the United States, such as Sabato Morais from Leghorn (and in the 1850s, Luzzatto was offered to occupy the rabbinical chair of London), from the second half of the century scholars from all over Europe came to Italy to dismember the main Jewish collections and archives, including the one collected by Mortara, a clear sign of the lack of interest and the decadence of Jewish learning among Italian Jews. This observation is strengthened by the fact that almost all the philological and historical studies by Italian Jews are published in foreign journals, such as the aforementioned Ozar Nechmad and the Kerem Chemed, which in some cases are monopolized almost entirely by essays written by figures such as Reggio, Luzzatto, Della Torre, Almanzi, and Samuel Lolli (1788 – 1845), who could not publish the results of their researches in Italian periodicals. The German model is so predominant and prominent in Mortara and Luzzatto’s scholarship that we can connect to its influence another phenomenon that escaped scholarly attention and that I believe is one the most interesting phenomena in the past three centuries of Italian Jewish history. I would be tempted to tentatively call it the “Protestantization” of Italian Judaism, perceptible from the Counter-Reformation, for instance in the persons of Giuseppe Attias (1672– 1739) and Salomone Fiorentino (1743 – 1815), to the Emancipation, and which continues until the twentieth century with an intense dialogue and rapprochement of Jews and Protestants around figures—by now almost completely forgotten—such as Olga Ohlsen and the intellectual forums offered by journals such as Bilychnis, Coenobium, and Coscientia. ³⁸ A rabbi like Marco Mortara wrote pages and pages of praise to Reformed Churches, and especially the Unitarians, which

living in German-speaking areas. One century later the situation had radically changed. From Mortara’s letters it is possible to follow the different phases of this change. On August 23, 1834, he writes to Dalla Volta (letter A.1 No. 2) concerning the geographical work Švilei ‘Olam by Bloch: “È un libro assai buono nel suo genere, ma di poca utilità per noi, Ebrei Italiani, che abbiamo molte altre geografie, e storie antiche e moderne. Molto utile però per i Tedeschi dei quali pochi conoscono la lingua del paese.” While in the letter dated August 7, 1868 (A.2 No. 17), he must sadly recognize that “in Italia pochi sono gli Israeliti e pochissimi i cultori delle cose nostre.” Epistolario, 357– 77, 520 – 21.  Gabriele Rigano, Il ‘caso Zolli’. L’itinerario di un intellettuale in bilico tra fedi, culture e nazioni (Milan: Guerini Studio, 2006), 77 and 79; Facchini, David Castelli, 181 and 192. In the same sense, see also Alberto Cavaglion, Felice Momigliano (1866 – 1924). Una biografia (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988), 138, when he speaks of the “singolare osmosi fra giudaismo e cristianesimo (specie se protestante) che permeò tutta l’opera del nostro autore.”

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he deemed perfectly in harmony with a Judaism that was increasingly conceived as a moral theology with strong deistic and almost caraitic apparel.³⁹ Despite the increasing dependence of Italy on Germany in the field of Jewish Studies, Mortara still appears well integrated in the web of intellectual exchanges among the main representatives of European Wissenschaft des Judentums. For many Italian Jewish intellectuals, erudite pursuits constituted a possibility of moral emancipation, an alternative to merging into Italian society, and it gives us a glimpse into the desire of a universal fraternity under the superficial expression of national alliance. The epistolary international society not only plays the role of a sermo absentium,⁴⁰ where the letter connects persons who are otherwise unable to meet personally, but first and foremost it is the only instrument of cultural activity in the absence of official and accessible spaces of intellectual exchange, such as those represented by universities or national scientific journals. The correspondence of Mortara, Soave, Lelio Cantoni, Abram Lattes, and others reveals the frustration of being unable to be fully dedicated to scientific goals, even in a country like Italy that, as already noted by Steinschneider, did not manifest open academic antisemitism and therefore did not preclude, in theory, the possibility of embracing a university career. The existence of an epistolary society does not mean that its members also shared common ideological and cultural backgrounds, but it shows that all the other divides did not jeopardize the bases of their relationship. The cluster existed and subsisted thanks to two, only seemingly opposed values: on the one hand, the supreme and shared value of Wissenschaft des Judentums as the expression of a universal and objective science, and on the other, the particularistic common interest in the history of the Jews. The group reacted to the same debates, such as the one about the Reform Movement, but despite the personal divergences on these and other issues, the collective identity of the group was not endangered; quite the opposite. Therefore, we should not be surprised when the epistolary testimonies reveal unexpected relations between scholars that were otherwise ideologically opposed (such as Geiger and Luzzatto). The common scientific ideal bridged the gaps in their religious and political attitudes.

 Mortara, Il proselitismo giudaico (Mantova: Mondovi, 1876), 60, defends the idea that all the Christian heresies have in common the desire to return to the original Judaic truth.  As already pointed out by Bonfil concerning the Italian epistolaries of the fifteenth century. Bonfil, “Una ‘enciclopedia’ di sapere sociale,” 263. See also Asher Salah, “Are Karaites Sceptics? The Jewish Perception of Karaism in Nineteenth Century Italy,” Yearbook of the Maimonides Center for Advanced Studies, edited by Bill Rebiger (Berlin, Boston: Walter De Gruyter, 2018): 231– 250.

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Having dealt so much with the “mediatic” significance of the letter rather than with its contents, it is significant that Wissenschaft des Judentums ended concomitantly with the appearance of a new means of communication, the postcard, presented at the Karlsruhe Postal Congress in 1865 and first introduced in Italy in 1874. The creation of the postcard, thousands of which can be found in Steinschneider’s, Perles’s, Mortara’s, and Luzzatto’s archives from the late 1870s onwards, threatened not only the existence of the lengthy, erudite letter that contributed significantly to the development of Wissenschaft des Judentums on a European scale, but rapidly disrupted the dynamics of intellectual sociability that were built through the erudite letter. The diffusion of the postcard is the more tangible sign of the end of the idealized international republic of scholars so much desired by some of the protagonists of this chapter, a group that disappeared under the blows of an increasingly institutionalized and non-confessional study of Judaism.

Yedidya Asaf

Abraham Berliner and the Making of Orthodox Wissenschaft des Judentums Rabbi Leo Jung wrote in his autobiography about his teacher of Jewish history at the Orthodox Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin, Prof. Abraham Berliner: Abraham Berliner was married to Wissenschaft des Judentums. It offered a maximum substitute for the amenities and comforts of the Jewish home. The older he grew, the more his researches, his discoveries of new source material, became the major source of his serenity. In 1912, I dedicated an article in Juedische Presse to a more enthusiastic than satisfactory evaluation of that great scholar, valiant defender of the faith, and generous teacher. He thanked me, tears in his eyes.¹

Berliner was, in his students’ eyes, a model of the combination between religious devotion and Wissenschaft des Judentums, which was, at that time, a new Orthodox type of scholar. Wissenschaft des Judentums,² the scholarly study of the Jewish religion and people, which originated in the 1820s, challenged many traditional principles and in fact threatened conceptions of the traditional Jewish past. According to some scholars, Wissenschaft des Judentums appeared as an irrevocable fissure in Jewish life that wrought havoc on all elements of Jewish culture, due to the assimilatory motives of its founders. One of these scholars, Gershom Scholem, claimed that German Jewish historians had at best an antiquarian interest in Jewish history.³ Conversely, other scholars believed Wissenschaft des Judentums was the supreme form of German Jewish self-expression.⁴  Leo Jung, The Path of a Pioneer (London and New York: Soncino Press, 1980), 29.  Julius Carlebach, ed., Wissenschaft des Judentums. Anfänge der Judaistik in Europa (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftiche Buchgesellschaft, 1992); Ismar Schorsch, From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 1994); David Nathan Myers, Re-Inventing The Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Michael. A. Meyer, “The Emergence of Jewish Historiography: Motives and Motifs,” in History and Theory, vol. 27 (1988), 160 – 75; Nils Roemer, Jewish Scholarship and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005); Michael Brenner, Propheten des Vergangegen: Jüdische Geschichtsschreibung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2006).  Gershom Scholem, “Mi-tokh hirhurim ‘al hokhmat yisra’el,” in Devarim be-go, vol. 2 (Tel-Aviv: Am Oved, 1982), 385 – 403.  Schorsch, From Text to Context, 1– 6; Meyer, “The Emergence of Jewish Historiography,” 175; David Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry 1780 – 1840 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 134– 39. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110554618-006

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Either way, everybody agreed that Wissenschaft des Judentums was regarded by many traditional Jews as a real threat to traditional Jewish values. At the heart of this threat lay several premises and Weltanschauungen, regarding both methodology and content. The Orthodox movement that was fighting against Reform and for “rabbinism”⁵ could not ignore this discipline and was forced to respond ideologically as well as concretely. The anti-rabbinism of the researchers of Wissenschaft des Judentums was evidenced by their critical method of research, which was irreconcilable with the old Jewish method of learning. Moreover, the historicist method stood in contrast to the traditional view that “every future novel insight of an experienced scholar was already told to Moses at Sinai.”⁶ However, in the 1870s, an Orthodox alternative to Wissenschaft des Judentums began to emerge, one that aimed for alignment with the scientific field, without, however, breaking with tradition. The first team of Orthodox researchers to undertake the challenge of the scientific study of Judaism was consolidated around the Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin, under the leadership of Rabbi Esriel Hildesheimer. This group produced extensive literature, a significant portion of which dealt with Wissenschaft des Judentums. They published notable editions of ancient handwritten documents, works on Jewish genealogy in Germany and abroad, bibliographical studies, important contributions to Biblical science, and studies of the Talmud and Oriental languages. The group was headed by Rabbi Hildesheimer and his principal partners in the Rabbinical Seminary enterprise, Rabbi David Hoffmann, Abraham Berliner, Jacob Barth, and later, Simeon Eppenstein, Joseph Wolgmut, Samuel Greenberg, and the Rabbis Haim Biberfeld, Isaac Unna, and Yechiel Weinberg. Like their Wissenschaft des Judentums counterparts, German was also their written language. And they, too, published scientific periodicals.⁷ Apart from the fact that the Seminary was Orthodox as regards its rules of conduct and the affiliation of its lecturers, the research that was done there was clearly Orthodox in orientation. The Seminary was, therefore, unique in

 Mordechai Breuer, Modernity within Tradition: The Social History of Orthodox Jewry in Imperial Germany (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992); Adam Ferziger, Exclusion and Hierarchy: Orthodoxy, Nonobservance, and the Emergence of Modern Jewish Identity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005).  Jerusalem Talmud, Pe’ah, 2, 4.  Breuer, Modernity within Tradition, 181– 93; Mordechai Eliav, “Das orthodoxe Rabbinerseminar in Berlin: Ziele, Probleme und geschichtliche Bedeutung,” in Julius Carlebach, Wissenschaft des Judentums, 59 – 73; David Ellenson, Rabbi Esriel Hildesheimer and the Creation of a Modern Jewish Orthodoxy (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990); Isi Jacob Eisner, “Reminiscences of the Berlin Rabbinical Seminary,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, vol. 12 (1967): 32– 52.

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its study of Wissenschaft des Judentums (the Hildesheimer School), in that it not only recognized its own uniqueness, but also deliberately set out to create an alternative. Furthermore, its basic premises and declared methodology found expression in the School’s stated intention to establish an Orthodox alternative. However, this alternative was not just limited to these premises, but was much broader in scope. In fact, for each and every scientific orientation and ideology of Wissenschaft des Judentums that was problematic from a traditional perspective, the Hildsheimer School postulated an Orthodox alternative that interpreted the principles of scientific research according to their understanding. The Rabbinical Seminary recognized these Orthodox characteristics throughout its entire existence.⁸ Abraham Berliner was the founder of the discipline of Jewish History at the Orthodox Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin. Berliner was different from his fellows at the seminary, such as Rabbi Hildesheimer, Rabbi Hoffman, and Jacob Barth. Unlike these men, he was not a graduate of a university. He received the title of professor in honor of his many published studies in Wissenschaft des Judentums. He was born in 1833 in a town called Obersitzko in the Posen District, and received a traditional Jewish education, as practiced in his native province. He was an autodidact and acquired impressive knowledge of most disciplines of the Torah: Bible, Talmud, Midrashim, responsa, and the field of Hebrew poetry. In addition, he learned several languages, and besides German, English, and French, he also knew Latin, Greek, and Italian. Until the opening of the Orthodox Rabbinical Seminary, he served first as a teacher and preacher at Arnswalde (1858 – 1865), and later as a teacher in the Beit Midrash of Chevra Shas in Berlin. Berliner was a professor of Jewish History and Literature at the seminary, and served as the librarian in the library of the seminary, which under his management developed into an important institute.⁹ Actually, from the 1870s onwards, Berliner had been one of the central figures of the Orthodox community in Berlin, and completely identified with its values. In an article greeting the arrival of Rabbi Hildesheimer to serve as rabbi of the Orthodox community “Adaas Jisroel” in Berlin, he lists the reasons for establishing a separate community: This rabbi (the liberal Rabbi Joseph Ob), one of that community’s leaders, is the man who preached, last winter, as a believer, that “the law of Moses was written by different au-

 About the differences between them and Eisik HaLevy, see Breuer, Modernity within Tradition, 193 – 202.  Shimon Federbush, ed., Chochmat Israel Be’eropa Hama’aravit, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Ogen, 1959), 101– 8.

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thors”; he is the man who dared express his written hatred against some Jewish customs, which were established by the sages […] Has anything like this been heard in our camp? Can such a Rabbi, who is rebelling against God and man, understand and practice halakhah and lead the community by the wellsprings of Torah and mitzvot? Can he be the head of the largest community in our city, which has about thirty thousand Jews?¹⁰

In the manner and methods of this research, Berliner was similar to his two friends from Galicia, Solomon Buber and Solomon Zalman Chaim Halberstam, and his friend from Poland, Jacob Reifman.¹¹ We can say that all of them focused on the scientific publication of ancient Hebrew manuscripts. In their research, scholars who were Orthodox Jews placed themselves between the authors of Orthodox historiography and the non-Orthodox scholars of Wissenschaft des Judentums. On the one hand, they were careful and critical in their work and used their impressive general and Jewish knowledge for detailed scientific accuracy. On the other hand, their works were not systematic and not characterized by synthesis such as the works of university-trained scholars. We can define them as historians who mediated between the readers and the voices of the past, unlike historians who recreated the past based on historical sources. Even when they wrote about a defined subject, they merely added sentences and words of linkage between various sources, and incorporated chronological historical information, but did not create a synthetic image. Their major publications were mostly scientific editions of Hebrew manuscripts, including Targum Onkelos, Rashi, Tanchuma, Midrash Shocher Tov, Sefer Ha’agur, etc., and some rabbinic lexicons.¹² They printed those ancient texts after careful comparison of all the manuscripts of the same work they had available, and commented on changes in the formulas between the various manuscripts. They also added historical introductions, reviewing the history of the author, the work, and its manuscripts. They had a double aim with their work: increasing the study of Torah, and raising the prestige of Jewish culture in the eyes of the nations.¹³ Around this goal, they formed a strong friendship and co-operated in publishing dozens of manuscripts by Hevrat Mekize Nirdamim, of which Berliner

 Abraham Berliner, ‘Baruch Ata Bevoachah Berlina Dr. Hildesheimer,’ Halevanon 6 (1869): 290. All translations from the Hebrew are by the author.  See also Shimon Federbush, ed., Chochmat Israel Be’eropa Hama’aravit, vol. 3 (Jerusalem: Ogen, 1965), 41– 58, 389, 420 – 21.  Abraham Berliner, Luhot abanim (Frankfurt am Main: J. Kauffmann, 1881); Jacob Reifman, Toldot Avi Mishpahat Rapaport (Vienna: Joseph Holzwarte, 1872); Salomon Buber, Anshey Shem (Lvov: Joseph Fischer, 1895).  Letter of Abraham Berliner to Solomon Buber from 1899, the National Library of Israel Archives, Solomon Buber Collection, Arc 4° 1222.

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was chairman. Such co-operation in this framework went beyond the borders of Orthodoxy, and scholars of all camps participated in publishing scientific editions of ancient rabbinic texts. A community of scholars from all streams was created, forming in essence an intellectual elite with a common scientific aspiration. But as the study exceeded this limited goal and aspired to reach deep historical syntheses, increasingly the differences between researchers of the various religious streams surfaced. Only after Berliner, at a certain point in his life, turned to write systematic essays was his unique character as an Orthodox researcher discovered: for example, his books on medieval Ashkenazi Jews and the Jews of Rome from antiquity to his days, though those works were criticized for not having an appropriate academic level.¹⁴ In fact, Berliner accepted the main principles of Wissenschaft des Judentums. First of all, he acknowledged the need for direct philological examination of the studied text. In a letter to his friend Halberstam on the subject of his research into the Onkelos translation, he writes: “There is much more that is interesting and important, for I have paved a special path with my research. It is not based on the studies of those who preceded me, on what has been passed on by one scholar to his fellows, each adding a small amount of his own. However, even the greatest of them has not plumbed the depths, thus leaving me room to disagree.”¹⁵ This direct examination, not dependent upon the conclusions drawn by others, is also associated with the principle of objectivity underlying Wissenschaft des Judentums. ¹⁶ In the introduction to his book Geschichte der Juden in Rom, Berliner asserted the importance of objectivity, but he specifically linked it to his method of research, advocating minimal interference by the author in the historic narrative, focusing rather on deploying early sources and offering arrangements, links, and simple explanations, without lengthy commentary: I do not think others will object to my intention of merely processing the historic material as much as possible, rather than writing a pragmatic history [pragmatische Geschichte]. Even in places where I was obliged to conform to the path of pragmatic history, I was extremely careful to not to establish facts lacking in decisive historic examples. The greater the histor-

 Ben-Tzion Dinur, “Eugen Täubler ‫ז"ל‬,” Zion 19 (1954): 177; Isaiah Aviad, “Abraham Berliner,” in Abraham Berliner, Selected Writings, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Mossad haRav Kook, 1969), XIII.  The Jewish Theological Seminary of America Archives (JTS Archives), Letters of Abraham Berliner to Solomon Zalman Chaim Halberstam (1873 – 1886), 64.  George G. Iggers, Leopold von Ranke and the Shaping of the Historical Discipline (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990); Robin George Collingwood, The Idea of History (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 86 – 93.

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ian, the more liable he is to present his own subjective convictions as objective historic research.¹⁷

If so, Berliner attempted to turn the scholarly shortcomings leveled at him into virtues. As far as he was concerned, the lack of extensive commentary and synthesis guaranteed that the researcher would not introduce his own subjective opinion. In other words, this would ensure that the work is as objective as possible. The wealth of sources demanded by the principle of objectivity appears in Berliner’s essays as well. In this respect he was no different than the scholars of Wissenschaft des Judentums who preceded him. Like them, he did not limit himself to Jewish sources, but availed himself of every historic source of that period. In the introduction to his comprehensive book on the Jews of Rome, he submitted an array of historical sources: The study of this history leads us to the Mishna and the Talmud, to Alexandrian and Roman writings, it accompanies us through caves and tombs in the depths of the earth, over monuments—it brings us to pagan Rome. It also leads us to medieval Jewish and Christian literature. It forces us to hunt in libraries and archives, to examine parchments tattered with age and historic documents, in order to learn about the written laws of the popes—it shows us Christian Rome.¹⁸

He also utilized the research of the scholars of Wissenschaft des Judentums who preceded him: Zunz, Geiger, Steinschneider, Frankel, Graetz, S. J. Rapoport (Shir), Guedemann, and others. His essays are replete with references to their writings. Like many other proponents of Wissenschaft des Judentums, Berliner, by virtue of the fact that he was of the generation of the Emancipation, saw fit to justify the rights granted to Jews, emphasizing their valuable characteristics and their moral superiority throughout history. For example, he writes, “In all of classical literature there is not one single instance where Jews are referred to as lacking in moral fiber or using unpardonable means to amass their wealth.”¹⁹ Elsewhere he explains the success of the conversion movement among the Romans, and incidentally, this is how he enumerates the “qualities at which Jews excel: constant fear of God, stringent obedience to the law, abstemiousness, philanthropy, unity amongst themselves, fearlessness in battle, industriousness, peace-

 Abraham Berliner, Geschichte der Juden in Rom von der ältesten Zeit bis zur Gegenwart, vol. 1 (Frankfurt am Main: J. Kauffmann, 1893), VI-VII.  Ibid., V.  Ibid., 23.

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ful agriculture, fervent trust in God.”²⁰ Similarly, Berliner negated the argument raised by learned Christians, namely, that Jews uphold a double standard of morality, one for themselves, the other for Christians. He maintained that the attitude of equality Jews display toward Christians is anchored in Halakhic literature: “We are commanded not to differentiate between Jews and non-Jews as regards love of our fellow man and honest dealings.”²¹ In an article published in the periodical Knesseth Israel, Berliner spoke of the “covenant of peace and love that was entered into in medieval times between several Orthodox Jews and gentile sages.”²² In accordance with this approach, Berliner proposes replacing the negative version of the blessing “Who has not made me a Gentile” with the positive “Who has made me an Israelite.” However, when presenting his suggestion to his readers, he bases himself mainly on the opinions of important arbiters of the Halakhah rather than on humanistic values, since according to Orthodox principles he cannot of his own accord make changes in an established law. He ends his discussion of the various versions of the blessing with a warm recommendation: It should be emphatically proposed that all Siddurim (prayer books) carry the wording “Who has made me an Israelite,” as it already appears in Siddurim… The Vilna Gaon and Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg in his Siddur—they all insist on this wording. The proposed version, which thanks Divine Providence for placing my lot among the Jewish people who have been chosen to fulfill a lofty role in the world—this version expresses a great deal more than the original which is negative in form. Even without it, this blessing, both in the past and in the present, can lead to misconceptions about the Jewish people and may even inspire the hatred of other nations. If the proposed version is accepted and spreads throughout the Jewish Diaspora, the other two blessings—“Who has not made me a woman” and “Who has not made me a slave”—will automatically be nullified; thus we are relieved of the need to justify, in some way, these two blessings.²³

Like his colleagues of Wissenschaft des Judentums, Berliner relied on substantial rationalizations. He was an opponent of mysticism and customs that lacked rational underpinnings. Berliner maintained: “[that] in truth no Jewish superstitions have flourished on the soil of Judaism, Heaven forbid.”²⁴ For the same reason he was also opposed to Kabbalah, although here he seeks backing for his

 Ibid., 37.  Abraham Berliner, Aus dem Leben der deutschen Juden im Mittelalter (Berlin: M. Poppelauer, 1900), 105.  Abraham Berliner, “Negohot Meofel,” Knesset Israel 2 (1887): 111– 27.  Abraham Berliner, Randbemerkungen zum täglichen Gebetbuche (Siddur), vol. 1 (Berlin: M. Poppelauer, 1909), 15.  Berliner, Aus dem Leben der deutschen Juden im Mittelalter, 88.

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opinion from Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch rather than his Wissenschaft des Judentums colleagues.²⁵ In his introduction to the Siddur, he clarified his position: The phrase “justice and truth” that serves to guide me in my work, has brought me to discuss the influence of Kabbalah in the structure of the Siddur; I have studied it and judge it to be my duty. I regard it as a necessity from the point of view of my literary-historic approach. While the Kabbalist Siddur is still widely popular in the East, there too, wise rabbis will prevail in the battle of views and opinions. They will see to the restoration of the simple Siddur, one that does not contain the Kabbalistic elements that the author of the Nineteen Letters wished to designate as a magical system for accessing influences from higher worlds or protection from evil spirits.²⁶

He continued by proposing that “kaparot” be omitted from the prayer book, claiming that he has seen old editions of the Shulhan Arukh where, under this heading and with an explanation by Rabbi Yosef Karo, it is referred to as a “foolish custom.”²⁷ Berliner was cognizant of the historicist method on which his discipline was based, and the ensuing opinion that Jewish institutions and religious strictures are the result of the interaction between Jews and their neighbors throughout history. Thus, for example, he attached great importance to the invention of the printing press, crediting it with the origins of several canonical religious customs. He ascribed the accepted ruling that one must not place a sacred book upside down to the appearance of printed books in Hebrew. In his opinion, “This rule does not essentially apply to any except the most important books, in other words, it applies to sacred writings.”²⁸ Similarly, with regard to the most venerated domain of Judaism—the study of the Bible and the Talmud—marked differences occurred as the result of the printing press. Thus, in his opinion, the publication of the Talmud with the commentary of Baalei Hatosefoth alongside the body of the text has determined the nature of Talmud study,²⁹ whereas “the division of all the books of the Bible into chapters was only accepted and became widespread after the publication of the second edition of Mikraot Gedolot (Venice 1624). This division comes to us from the Christians […] and it is not always compatible with the Jewish standpoint regarding the Bible.”³⁰

 Breuer, Modernity within Tradition, 66 – 69.  Berliner, Randbemerkungen zum täglichen Gebetbuche (Siddur), VI.  Ibid., 39.  Abraham Berliner, “Über den Einfluss des ersten hebräischen Buchdrucks auf den Kultus und die Kultur der Juden,” Jahres-Bericht des Rabbiner-Seminars zu Berlin (1893 – 1894): 9.  Berliner, “Über den Einfluss,” 18.  Ibid., 29.

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At the same time, however, he took pains to tone down, as much as possible, the importance of external influences, emphasizing the uniqueness of Judaism that, in his opinion, has determined the nature of things: “Since at all times Jews have followed in the footsteps of the nations in whose midst they dwell, although all new inclinations and trends take on an entirely new appearance.”³¹ Thus, for example, with regard to the influence of Roman law on Jewish law, he writes: “Roman law was also known in Eretz Israel, which is why, of necessity, various technical utterances have passed from Roman law into the language of Jewish law.”³² Here, in contrast to Isaac Hirsch Weiss, who attributes the sources of many Mishnaic and Talmudic laws to Roman law, Berliner maintained that the influence was purely technical, changing only the legal terminology and not the contents of the laws. Thus, his conclusion, applying the historicist method, was the opposite of that drawn by non-Orthodox adherents of Wissenschaft des Judentums. In his opinion, “At a time when we are compelled to take into consideration changes wrought by time, we must only choose ways and means that do not harm the knowledge of our holy Torah; on the contrary, we must use these changes to expand our knowledge of Torah and the observance of its mitzvoth.”³³ The opinion expressed in this last sentence dovetails with the Halakhic opinions of the rabbis of the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary. With all the similarities between Berliner’s scientific approach and that of Wissenschaft des Judentums, his writing conformed to traditional values and did not disagree with them. In a letter to Halberstam from 1894, he defined the nature of his work, noting the objections of the liberal researcher Ludwig Geiger (1848 – 1919), the son of Abraham Geiger: “And in truth I feared the anger and wrath of Geiger after formulating my books on the foundation of the Torah, reverence, and love of Israel, as you have seen and read…”³⁴ One of the Orthodox characteristics of his book Randbemerkungen zum täglichen Gebetbuche (Berlin, 1909 – 1912), was the basic acceptance of the principle of faith that the Torah is divinely ordained. Accordingly, he saw fit to elucidate the basis of his research on the development of the wording of the prayer book, an extremely sensitive subject for German Orthodoxy: It is important to explain at the outset, and to clarify decisively, that this book is based on an unalterable premise, and that is, that the truths of our religion, as expressed in the for-

 Berliner, Geschichte der Juden in Rom, vol. 2, 42.  Ibid., vol. 1, 96.  Berliner, “Über den Einfluss,” 43.  JTS Archives, Letters of Abraham Berliner to Solomon Zalman Chaim Halberstam (1887– 1900), 63.

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mulae and profundity of Hebrew prayer, are rooted in the Holy Writings, and every true Jew believes in their divine origins as a principle of faith (Torah Min HaShamayim). As long as the opponents of the traditional Siddur cannot agree to tear out and remove from our Torah all pages containing doctrines and designations for all generations, they have no justification for removing those sections from our Siddur that express the divine truths of the Torah.³⁵

Berliner was not reconciled to the harm that Wissenschaft des Judentums inflicted on the greatest sages of Israel. He advocated alternative writings that would do justice to them.³⁶ In Sivan 5626 (May–June 1876), he wrote to his friend Halberstam: “Last week I read to my students a slanderous statement on Maimonides. I showed them what you wrote to rescue this righteous man from his oppressors in Jeschurun³⁷ and encouraged them to submit your article in German. It would be of great benefit to all those who draw their Torah from the well dug by Geiger and Graetz.”³⁸ He leveled harsh criticism against Isaac Hirsch Weiss, whose writings were extremely popular at the time. In an impressive book entitled Dor Dor Vedorshav (5621– 5641, or 1871– 1891]), Weiss traced the history of the Oral Law from its inception until after the Expulsion from Spain, also addressing the progression of the Halakhah and the development of the Aggada (a type of Rabbinic literature), in the annals of Talmudic and rabbinic literature and the characteristics of important sages. Taking a historicist-analytical approach, Weiss followed the development of Halakhah and the elements that influenced it—practical reality, the characters of the outstanding Torah sages, and the effect of neighboring cultures. He based his work on the writings of Rabbi Nachman Krochmal, Zechariah Frankel, and Graetz, but he surpassed them in the scope of his research, which in fact included all of Halakhic literature. Although Weiss maintained that the origins of the Oral Law dated back to the time of the Written Law, he attempted to prove that it contained many significant changes and developments that clearly had historical roots. In 1894, Berliner wrote to Halberstam, expressing his opinion of Weiss: “I have recently read

 Berliner, Randbemerkungen zum täglichen Gebetbuche (Siddur), 1.  In this Berliner was similar to Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Chajes and to Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, who published scientific essays defending Maimonides from the attacks of Samuel David Luzzatto.  He is referring to Halberstam’s essay “Our Master Moses (Maimonides) is true, and his Torah is true,” which came to refute claims made by several scholars—Geiger and Graetz among them —that when Maimonides was in Cordoba and in Fes, he outwardly accepted Islam. Abraham Geiger, Moses ben Maimon (Breslau: Rosenberg, 1850); Heinrich Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, vol. VI (Leipzig: Leiner 1894), 316.  JTS Archives, Letters of Abraham Berliner to Solomon Zalman Chaim Halberstam (1873 – 1886), 15.

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the complaint leveled by Rabbi Hirsch Weiss against Rabbi Solomon Judah Rapoport³⁹ and I was bitterly grieved, but I have learned the measure of such scholars, whose only desire is to express disrespect and to diminish their value, especially if they still uphold Torah and fear God. Now Weiss has taken a position to the right of AGG (Abraham Geiger)⁴⁰ and the two of them are of one mind. A word to the wise is sufficient.”⁴¹ But although he was critical of Geiger, Graetz, and Weiss, his attitude towards Leopold Zunz was more ambivalent. He distinguished him from those who would “destroy and demolish.” In the spring of 1886, Berliner wrote to Halberstam: “Now it is Tu B’Av, the ninetieth birthday of Zunz. I must say that ever since Zunz edited those articles on Bible criticism I am dissatisfied with him. Nevertheless he has maintained certain things. Moreover, he did not arise to destroy and demolish like others.”⁴² Despite negating several of Zunz’s opinions, Berliner appreciated the fact that Zunz still upheld some traditional principles, and that it was not his purpose to shatter traditional values like the others scholars mentioned above. He was particularly impressed by Zunz’s words at the conclusion of his book Gottesdienstlichen Vortraege der Juden: “Unity is the sweetest harmony. Let the organ and the choir be removed, therefore, for they are the cause of serious schisms in the community.” In his youth, Berliner even corresponded with him on matters of Wissenschaft des Judentums.⁴³ In contrast to the anti-rabbinic trend emanating from the studies of Wissenschaft des Judentums, we find in Berliner a clearly pro-rabbinic advocate. As one of the pillars of the breakaway Adaas Jisroel Orthodox congregation in Berlin, he regarded himself and his community as the standard-bearers of traditional rabbinic Judaism. He called his congregation “Our new congregation, old according to the tenets of the Oral and Written Law.”⁴⁴ In accordance with his identification with traditional Halakhah and observances “which have their foundation in

 This refers to the harsh words used by Weiss against Shir in his autobiography Zikhronotai [My Memoirs] (Warsaw: The Schulberg Brothers, 1895), specifically on pages 86 – 113.  When he calls Abraham Geiger by the acronym AGG, he clearly connotes Agag, King of Amalek in the days of Samuel the Prophet, a connotation usually used only for archenemies of Judaism.  JTS Archives, Letters of Abraham Berliner to Solomon Zalman Chaim Halberstam (1887– 1900), 64.  JTS Archives, Letters of Abraham Berliner to Solomon Zalman Chaim Halberstam (1873 – 1886), 75. About the different streams of German Jews claiming that Zunz identifies with them, see Roemer, Jewish Scholarship and Culture, 105 – 6.  Berliner, “Über den Einfluss,” 47– 48.  JTS Archives, Letters of Abraham Berliner to Solomon Zalman Chaim Halberstam (1873 – 1886), 41.

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mountains of sanctity, in the words of our sages,” he praised the “wise mitzvoth” (Halakhic stringencies) instituted by medieval German rabbis on matters of modesty, which were frequently criticized by members of the Haskalah and early proponents of Wissenschaft des Judentums, saying: “In times like these, it would be considered a great righteousness for our rabbis to sanctify life and guide on the matter of conduct between the sexes. Even though they may seem strange to us today, they have nevertheless succeeded in averting corruption and the destruction of values.”⁴⁵ Similarly, he extolled the value of religious devotion. In his review of German Jewry in the Middle Ages, he noted that they “excelled in this important attribute, remaining true to their religion, despite the danger that hovered over them.” In this context, he quoted a disciple of Rashi who speaks of the meticulousness of German Jews in their observance of practical mitzvoth. ⁴⁶ The other side of Berliner’s pro-rabbinic tone was anti-Reform, or his attempt to undermine Reform values through scientific research. In an article entitled “The Problem of the Organ in the Synagogue—a Literary-Historic Overview,” he examined the historic roots of playing an organ in Reform temples. For example, he proved through several sources that the intention of Israel Jacobson, who was the first to introduce organ music into prayer services, was “to impart Christian character to Jewish prayer,” in order “to curry favor with Christians.”⁴⁷ Similarly, he claimed that in the scholarly argument concerning the organ issue, the rabbis prevailed. Although supporters of the organ brought false rabbinic consent to bolster their arguments, they failed to gainsay the solid, well-grounded arguments of the famous rabbis.⁴⁸ Berliner even brought a historical parallel, comparing Reform Jews to the Hellenists of Second Temple times: I have chosen to call them “Hellenists” in view of the fact that these contemporary Jews, too, having been raised and educated with a modern worldview, regard a few token actions as the whole of Judaism. For them, Judaism has been reduced to High Holy Days, commemoration of the departed, and visits to the temple on the death of parents and relatives. Historically, the outcome of this direction in Judaism—now just as it was then—is certain. It will be felt in coming generations. The organ cannot protect them from the process of disintegration.⁴⁹

 Berliner, Aus dem Leben der deutschen Juden im Mittelalter, 15.  Ibid., 4– 5. See also Roemer, Jewish Scholarship and Culture, 67– 68.  Berliner, Zur Lehr’ und zur Wehr—über und gegen die kirchliche Orgel im jüdischen Gottesdienste (Berlin: Nathansen & Lamm, 1904), 40 – 43.  Ibid., 44– 54.  Berliner, Randbemerkungen zum täglichen Gebetbuche (Siddur), 7.

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Even in places where, because of his worldview and personal inclination, he would have liked to make changes in Halakhah, he ultimately bowed to Halakhic tradition and authority. For example, with regard to the wording of the prayer regarding apostates and slanderers, which was appended to the Shemoneh Esreh prayer by Shmuel HaKattan after the destruction of the Second Temple, with admirable candor Berliner began his deliberations as follows: “For me (and apparently for everyone!), the most problematic aspect of the Shemoneh Esreh prayer is the nineteenth blessing, which was initially composed against apostates and slanderers. In the course of time, and under varying conditions, many changes have been wrought, so the wording is not yet entirely suitable and complete. Just as in the Talmudic period, so again today, the question arises (Berachot 28,2): ‘Is there anyone who can amend this blessing?’”⁵⁰ In the nineteenth century, this prayer constituted a pretext for Christians to censure the Jews on the grounds that they were praying for the destruction of Christians. For this reason, in 1843, Zechariah Frankel introduced a revised version of the prayer in his Dresden congregation. In place of the traditional version: “And for the slanderers let there be no hope, let all evildoers perish swiftly and all your enemies be speedily cut off. Uproot, crush, cast down and humble the arrogant speedily in our days. Blessed are You O Lord, who breaks enemies and humbles the arrogant,” Frankel introduced a different version: “And for the slanderers let there be no hope, let evil perish swiftly, and speedily humble the arrogant so that they might return to You. Blessed are You O Lord, who breaks evil and humbles the arrogant.”⁵¹ In contrast to Frankel, however, Berliner, after dealing with the various versions of this prayer, drew an Orthodox conclusion: “Nowadays we must of necessity decide on one unified version. Today, too, we regrettably have much reason to pray that there be no hope for heretics, that they do not succeed, that the ‘seed of lies’ will be completely destroyed—in the words of the liturgist—and that all those who commit wickedness will be swiftly destroyed.”⁵² Further reasons as to why he did not advocate changing the wording here, as he did in

 Ibid., 50.  Both versions were translated by Michael A. Meyer, Response to Modernity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 107.  A similar approach can be found by some nineteenth-century German Orthodox rabbis. Rabbi S. R. Hirsch and Rabbi Z. H. Kalischer dealt with the problem of exacting revenge from Gentiles, as appears in the Av HaRachamim prayer. As opposed to the Reformists, they concluded it should not be cancelled, explaining that it did not at all allude to Gentile reality in Germany during the emancipation. See Sidur Tefilot Yisrael—Israel Gebete/ übersetzt und erläutert von Samson Raphael Hirsch (Frankfurt am Main: J. Kauffmann, 1906), 352; Hirsch Kalischer, Emunah Yesharah, I [Hebrew] (Krotoszyn: B. L. Monasch, 1843), 140 – 41.

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the blessing “Who has not made me a Gentile,” were, firstly, the antiquity of the prayer, and secondly, that he could not cite the authority of important Halakhic arbiters, not even as an alternative suggestion. These differences sharpened the rift between the Breslau school and the Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin. As regards the latter, critical examination was not in itself a sufficient reason for making changes in the traditional text. It required a Halakhic precedent issued by an important and accepted arbiter. Berliner’s students at the Rabbinical Seminary, like Simeon Eppenstein and Isaac Unna, followed in his footsteps. They pursued his line of research, one that accepted the ethos and central methods of Wissenschaft des Judentums in part, setting limits to objectivity, and taking pains never to conceal their regard for tradition and its guardians. They did so despite having attended German universities. In effect, they constituted a distinct school of Wissenschaft des Judentums.

Nils Roemer

Wissenschaft des Judentums, Postmodernism, and Digital Humanities 2.0 German Jewish Studies is more vibrant than ever. The four-volume German Jewish History in Modern Times (1996 – 1997) was a culmination of decades of intense study, only to immediately be followed by a detailed investigation of German Jewish daily cultures, signaling the continuous interest in and debate about the modern German Jewish experience.¹ The growth of German Jewish Studies coincided with its proliferation across distinct disciplines and fields. What constitutes German Jewish Studies today appears as much in the fault lines of several fields and disciplines. Studies on Jewish scholarship and its institutions, too, abound. They are part of a critical postmodern self-reflection about the nature of the humanities in general.² The overlap between postmodern critical perspectives, interdisciplinary approaches, and the emerging Digital Humanities in German Jewish Studies is, however, less noticed in current deliberations on postmodernism and Jewish Studies. The postmodern paradigm challenges how we derive meaning from words and events. The past is no longer believed to be discovered, but rather constructed. It is thus claimed that in their pursuit of knowledge of the past must assume a self-critical attitude regarding the conceptual and hermeneutical presuppositions of their analysis. Post-modern historiography is, accordingly, self-consciously provisional and open to continuous revision.³ Today’s scholars appear at times like the perpetually disappointed readers in Jorge Luis Borges’ “Library  Michael A. Meyer, ed., German-Jewish History in Modern Times, 4 vols. (New York: Columbia Universiy Press, 1996 – 1997); and Marion Kaplan, Geschichte des jüdischen Alltags in Deutschland: Vom 17. Jahrhundert bis 1945 (München: C. H. Beck, 2003).  See most recently, Kerstin von der Krone and Mirjam Thulin, “Wissenschaft in Context: A Research Essay on the Wissenschaft des Judentums,” The Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 58 (2013): 249 – 80; Todd Presner, “Remapping German-Jewish Studies: Benjamin, Cartography, Modernity,” German Quarterly 82 (2009): 293 – 315; Leslie Morris, “How Jewish is German Studies?” German Quarterly 82 (2009): vii–xii; “The Future of German-Jewish Studies,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 54 (2009): 3 – 56; Liliane Weissberg, “Reflecting ON THE Past, Envisioning THE Future: Perspectives FOR German-Jewish Studies,” GHI Bulletin 35 (2003): 11– 32; and Jeffrey M. Peck, “New Perspectives in German-Jewish Studies: Toward a Diasporic and Global Perspective,” GHI Bulletin 35 (2004): 33 – 41.  Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110554618-007

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of Babel.” Borges’ library wistfully promises final knowledge, understanding, and closure.⁴ Yet the infinite number of books undermines the very possibility of complete understanding, in much the same way that current critical introspection questions historians’ ability to fully and definitely comprehend the past. The library is designed not to unlock secrets, but to hold books to be read. To Borges’ narrator, the library is an infinite mystery, impossible to fully penetrate. In the library, the theoretical possibility of an answer is not identical to an answer. Borges’ library eloquently speaks to the desires and frustrations of current scholars. Recently, Moshe Rosman has argued that this represents an epistemological crisis for Jewish Studies that calls into question the founding premise of modern historiography: axiological and existential detachment as the methodological ground of objectivity. To Rosman, postmodernism defies the possibility of grand narratives. Instead postmodernism opts to see Jewish society as “a ‘hybrid’ component of the ‘hegemonic’ society and culture […] within which Jewish identity, culture and society are ‘constructed’—differently in each time and place.”⁵ Reading the past in this light presents the history of the Jews as unraveled into myriad experiences shaped by specific historical contexts. David Biale’s introductory comments to the multi-authored Cultures of the Jews (2002) articulate these new sensibilities when he defines Jewish identity as “diverse cultural interaction” that defies the “idea of one Jewish people and of a unified Jewish culture […].”⁶ Cultures of the Jews seeks more than to simply broaden our understanding of Jewish history: it questions many of the key concepts that have hitherto governed the study of the past.⁷ Conflicting ideals of cultural renewal, religious modernization, and political orientations invariably shape German-Jewish studies (as any other studies). This remained true even for Leopold Zunz and Moritz Steinschneider, who are often seen as the archetypical representatives of the Rankean tradition of “pure” scholarship. The idealization of Zunz and Steinschneider was part of a wider debate about objectivity that took on a more pressing form after the Berliner Antisemitismus debate that had begun with Heinrich von Treitschke’s attacks on Heinrich Graetz. Notwithstanding the political differences, scholarship by Ger-

 Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones (New York: Grove Press, 1962), 57.  Moshe Rosman, How Jewish Is Jewish History? (Oxford and Portland: Liverpool University Press, 2007), 53.  David Biale, “Preface: Toward a Cultural History of the Jews,” in Cultures of the Jews, ed. David Biale (New York: Schocken, 2002), xvii–xxxiii, xxiv.  Ibid., xxvii.

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man Jewish scholars reflected their political concerns as much as that of their opponents.⁸ Doubts about the discipline are also not new. In the nineteenth century, Wissenschaft des Judentums promised to arrive at a conclusive definition of the Wesen des Judentums, only to end up with various conflicting versions. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the certainty had further waned and research moved from the realms of “suffering and learning” to painstaking archival research and sociological consideration, which continued to rely to some extent or another on assumptions about the nature of Jews, Judaism, and their tradition. Even the grand narratives of the nineteenth century embedded fragments and shreds of conflict, and Zionist critics of Wissenschaft des Judentums, including the historian of Jewish mysticism Gershom Scholem, who wholeheartedly subscribed to ideals of historical objectivity, denied in his Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah the existence of a “well-defined and unvarying ‘essence’ of Judaism.”⁹ Moreover, as David Myers has demonstrated in his Resisting History: Historicism and its Discontents in German-Jewish Thought (2003), the turn toward history also elicited a vocal anti-historicist current in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.¹⁰ Today’s perceived conflicts and fears about the status of the study of Jewish and German Jewish history are, therefore, not unique to post-modern sensibilities. Yet plurality and loss of certainty is not identical to relativism or crisis. German Jewish Studies thrive within a field of communicative action in the form of conferences, reviews, and other forms of exchange that defines a procedural rationality capable of differentiating fact from fiction.¹¹ Nonetheless, the plurality of interpretations, one might argue, undermines the fields’ public educational role. Conflict and debate seem to threaten historians’ ability to infuse the public with a usable past. Yet scholars of memory have long noticed that the pursuit of scholarship does not always mesh with collective memories. It was clear to the founders of the Leo Baeck Institute in Jerusalem, London, and New York that fus-

 Nils Roemer, “Moritz Steinschneider and the Noble Dream of Objectivity,” i n Studies on Moritz Steinschneider (1816 – 1907), eds. Gad Freudenthal and Reimund Leicht (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011), 175 – 90.  Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), xi.  David N. Myers, Resisting History: Historicism and Its Discontents in German-Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).  Here I follow Jürgen Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984).

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ing scholarship and memorial work never existed as an option.¹² Moreover, the fact that the Leo Baeck Institute reflected various differing political and historical concerns already at its inception did not distract from its scholarly agenda. Despite discord and debate about the interpretation of the past, the Leo Baeck Institute forged a distinct research culture with its own demands, methods, and theories. Political engagement, or, more generally, the realization that the historian of German Jewry did not simply find the past but had to construct it, did not undermine its scholarly status. Claims about objectivity, methods, and approaches, as well as the status of the discipline, are relevant in regards to the question of institutions, journals, conferences, and, last but not least, public recognition and funding. These debates are part of a discipline’s attempt to situate itself within the university landscape, but they do not adequately or comprehensively describe the nature of scholarly research.

The Epistemological Challenge of Digitalization Less noticed in current debates is that postmodern critics engage with the humanities not solely from an epistemological perspective. They also reflect on new technologies and their impact on the humanities. Postmodernist thinkers interrogated both the production of knowledge and also its storage and dissemination. In 1979, Jean-François Lyotard, in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979), believed that technological advancement in communication and mass media gave rise to a plurality of competing views and ideas. Lyotard therefore famously proclaimed the end of grand narratives like the Enlightenment and Marxism, which he deemed a quintessential feature of modernity. He also questioned the problem of legitimization of truth in relation to power and influence.¹³ Michel Foucault, in his work, emphasized the extent to which words and meaning reflect existing power structures. To Foucault, the production of knowledge inclusive of the past is generated and transmitted in relatively closed communities of knowers. Disciplines and universities with their own rationality pro-

 Nils Roemer, “The Making of a New Discipline: The London LBI and the Writing of the German-Jewish Past,” in Preserving the Legacy of German Jewry: A History of the Leo Baeck Institute, 1955 – 2005, ed. Christhard Hoffmann (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 175 – 99.  Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi with a forward by Fredric Jameson (Minneapolis: University of Minesota Press, 1991).

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duce and legitimize information. When information is repeated within these circles, it becomes true.¹⁴ Legitimized by rules and practice, these decisions ultimately remain arbitrary. Probably more radically than others, Jacques Derrida questioned the tendency of viewing technology as a simple instrument. Rather, as Gayatri Spivak has noted in her introduction to Derrida’s Of Grammatology, writing serves Derrida as a whole “[…] strategy of investigation […],” and not merely as notation.¹⁵ Writing for Derrida is “[…] the condition of the possibility of ideal objects and therefore of scientific objectivity.”¹⁶ Furthermore, it is not a tool, but a constitutive condition of thought, as he critically dismissed the binary between speech and writing. Modern technology and the digital world do not simply provide instruments that transfer an object from analog to digital, but the technological production of knowledge is constitutive to its meaning. Moved outside the disciplining confines of institutions, the meaning of texts and images, as Jacques Derrida underlined, is plural, if not endless. They, however, are constrained in their possible meanings by the institutions that create them. To Derrida, even archives, for example, understood in the widest sense, are registers and producers of the past.¹⁷ Archiving is not solely an exercise in storage, preservation, and retrieval, but promotes particular views of the past. Seen from this perspective, Eugen Täubler’s Gesamtarchiv der deutschen Juden (Central Archive of the German Jews), for example, created in October 1905, aimed to forge a new German Jewish past. The creation of the archive involved moving archival collections from the individual communities to the central location in Berlin.¹⁸ As Täubler acknowledged, relocating documents appeared problematic from scholarly and cultural points of view insofar as the connection between the past and present of individual communities would be destroyed.¹⁹ In centralizing the various local collections, the Gesamtarchiv with its location in Berlin aimed to illustrate the close historical ties between Jews and Germans.²⁰

 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Vintage, 1972), 224.  Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1976), lxix.  Ibid., 27.  Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Prenowitz (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 17.  “Bericht über die Tätigkeit des Gesamtarchivs der deutschen Juden,” Mitteilungen des Gesamtarchivs der deutschen Juden 3 (1911): 55 – 84.  Ibid., 60, 65, 70, 58 and 61.  Ibid., 63.

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Today’s archives are no different in doing more than simply store and preserve historical documents and artifacts. Large-scale scanning increases access and availability. Collecting, storing, organizing, and interpreting are all intertwined. Digitizing the Leo Baeck Institute’s archival collection is still part of the larger first wave in Digital Humanities. With the launch of DigiBaeck, the Leo Baeck Institute aimed to make its entire archive available. In as much as the Leo Baeck Institute digitized its collection, it also dislodged it from the Center for Jewish History. The online access replaces the visit to the archive, which provided not just access to sources but represented an immersion into a distinct research culture and community; the virtual world does not reproduce that. Compactmemory.de has made over a 100 periodicals from 1806 to 1938 available, and Judaica Europeana provides in 2017 access to 42 million items.²¹ The free availability increases access, but the digital version has moved the study of the material from the reading room to the individual computer screen. Will this more decentralized access produce more varied and fragmented narratives? The transfer from print to digitized data represents a new process of archiving. It alters the production, dissemination, and consumption of information. The digital repository of these archives is accessed with an interface that reflects the process of archiving and digitizing. The interface does not simply contain or deliver the content, but partakes in it. Traditional non-digital bibliographic systems have helped to create these interfaces, but, as Jerome McGann argues, card catalogues have been far more flexible than digital interfaces.²² Compactmemory.de, for example, employs traditional browsing conventions, tabbed navigation paired with dynamic content, but its limited search capacities constrict the users’ curiosity, while the varied metadata creates uneven search results. DigiBaeck in comparison facilitates more advanced searches that combine author, title, and subject searches, but no full-text searches or access to either the metadata, i. e. the library classification system, is available. More innovative and possibly transformative is the virtual recreation of historical events and destroyed synagogues. In the late 1990s, German students of architecture virtually recreated many of the destroyed synagogues in Germany. In 2008, The Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington launched the educational resource and immersive recreation of Kristallnacht on Second Life.²³ The 3D en-

 Judaica Europeana: Final Progress Report ; 31st Jan. 2012; p. 3; eContentPlus; download at: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3 A%2F%2Fwww.judaica-europeana.eu%2FDown loads%2FD1.8_FINALProjectReport.doc [last accessed: October 31, 2118].  Jerome J. McGann, “Responses to Ed Folsom’s ‘Database as Genre: The Epic Transformation of Archives?’” PMLA 122:5 (2007): 1580 – 1612, 1591.  http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2008/12/kristallnacht-r.html [last accessed: October 31, 2118].

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vironment, reminiscent of computer games, embeds markers that trigger both sound effects and audio interviews from Holocaust survivors. Like war games, the recreation of Kristallnacht does not simply represent the past in a virtual manner, but embeds iconic historical moments or even historical material.²⁴ Far from simply representing a decisive break with traditional forms of scholarship, the virtual world remediates the material in a new environment. Historical documents serve to inform and authenticate the new virtual reality. The Holocaust Memorial Museum’s creation is already more in tune with what has been called Digital Humanities 2.0. Unlike its predecessors of the late 1990s and early 2000s, which focused on large-scale digitization, Digital Humanities 2.0 is generative and creates new ways of creating and curating knowledge.²⁵ The participatory platform Hypercities, headed by Todd Presner, allows users to create maps of places in relationship to textual and visual material. Within the digital media environment, the recreation is time specific, i. e. references to particular cities and places are time within a specific historical period. Availing these resources fashions multiple mappings and perspectives. The user becomes the curator who generates a map. Instead of interpretation, the project views itself as a “[…] collaborative and educational platform for traveling back in time to explore the historical layers of city spaces in a interactive, hypermedia environment.”²⁶ Currently, a large map collection allows tracing the geographical development, for example, of Berlin from 1237 to the present by placing historical maps onto Google maps. Maps link and overlay present and historical images and texts. Hypercities does not offer an authorial voice, but seeks to provide narratives “one story at a time.”²⁷ In contrast, a book directs readers along a clearly chartered path. Guided by the author, the book is physically concrete, and its text finite. Hypercities replaces the author, and is collaborative. Instead of an authorial voice, there is a multiplicity of narratives that can be explored synchronically and diachronically. The user’s encounter is individualized, making the user the curator of texts and images that the search produces, as well as the producer of the past. Closely aligned with postmodern sensibilities and wedded to new

 Steffen Bender, Virtuelles Erinnern: Kriege des 20. Jahrhunderts in Computerspielen (Bielefeld: transcript-Verlag, 2012).  Cathy Davidson, “Humanities 2.0: Promise, Perils, Predictions,” PMLA 123.3 (2008): 707– 17.  www.hypercities.com [last accessed: September 11, 2106].  “‘Hypermedia Berlin’: Cultural History in the Age of New Media, or, Is there a Text in this Class?” Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular (Summer 2005): http://www.vectorsjournal.org/index.php?page=7&projectId=60 [last accessed: September 11, 2016].

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technologies, Hypercities has created an innovative environment for the exploration of cities, a process that Presner likens to the experience of the modern flâneur. The figure of the flâneur and his aesthetic perception of urban life indeed strike a familiar chord with digital cultures. Yet Walter Benjamin provides not only a critical concept for the investigation, but he also represents the city. His view of the city is historically contingent and reverberates with the ideals of surrealism, montage, historical materialism, and sociology. Moreover, the shift from author to curator is less novel than it appears. It partakes in a well-established critical debate about the status of the authorial voice and the function of the reader as the producer of meaning. Traditional practices of reading also seemed altered by large digital archives that enable text-mining projects aimed to unearth patterns and structures. Existing vast databases of German Jewish cemeteries that catalogue, transcribe, and translate all the tombstones allow extensive computer-based analyses as well.²⁸ The large quantities of accessible newspapers, magazines, books, and archival documents allow computer-based text-mining projects. The Stanford scholar Franco Moretti calls this method of analyzing large bodies of data “distant reading.”²⁹ Distant reading is predicated on transforming books into texts; it almost reverses the impact of the printing press, which established books with limits and fixed content.³⁰ Computer-based research can further our understanding of larger structural changes in book production and dissemination. The history of Jews’ changing readings habits, book clubs and libraries, as well as the book market is an important facet of German Jewish culture.³¹ Though the content of books and their changing numbers do not exhaust the cultural significance of books. Digital Humanities have to remain mindful, too, of the historical significance of books as objects. With the invention of the printing press, texts became books

 Digitale Edition—Jüdischer Friedhof Worms (1050 – 1830/824 Einträge), http://www.stein heim-institut.de/cgi-bin/epidat?function=Inf&sel=wrm [last accessed: October 31, 2118].  Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History (London and New York: Verso, 2005).  Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Roger Chartier, ed., The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989); Roger Chartier, The Order of Books: Readers, Authors and Libraries in Europe between the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Centuries, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994); Robert Darnton, The Case for Books Past, Present, Future (New York: Public Affairs, 2009).  For a brief overview, see Nils Roemer, “German Jewish Reading Cultures,” Aschkenaz 18/19 (2010): 9 – 23.

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and objects.³² Reading was a habit of the educated middle class ideal of Bildung. For Germany Jewry in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, reading was represented as a cultural practice that was continuous with religious tradition in times of profound cultural and religious change. To the German Jewish writer Karl Wolfskehl, for example, Jews and books formed an innate relation, which had emerged from the study of religious texts. Reading appeared as authentic regardless of whether Jews read religious or secular texts.³³ Portraying reading individuals bridged the otherwise existing tension between the ideals of the cultured Jewish reading middle class and the Jewish religious tradition. Wolfskehl’s idealization of reading had its corollary in the depiction of readers in modern Jewish art. Here, too, differences between religious studies and secular reading remained at times uncertain. Whereas Max Lieberman, in “The Artist’s Wife and Granddaughter” (1926), combined reading as a symbol of middle-class education with the notion of continuity between the generations, Hermann Struck, in The Face of Eastern European Jewry (1919), portrayed men as readers of diverse texts as the representatives of Eastern European cultures, men he believed to be more authentic and in tune with tradition than their Western European counterparts.³⁴ With the nature of the printed book being uncertain, reading appeared as a cultural icon that negotiated the balance between Bildung and Jewish tradition. Moreover, in tune with debates about diaspora cultures, hybridity, and border crossing, Moretti’s plea for “distant reading” initially aimed to dismantle the structures of national literary histories by aggregating and analyzing massive quantities of data.³⁵ Today, the original revisionist posture merges postmodern sensibilities with Digital Humanities. Already in 1967, Roland Barthes pronounced the birth of the reader and the death of the author.³⁶ Today, his insight finds its corollary in distant reading. The scholar of English literature and advocate of Digital Humanities, Stephen Ramsay, for example, does not call for fini-

 Leah Price, How To Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012).  Karl Wolfskehl, “Die Juden und das Buch,” in Deutsche Juden als Bibliophilien und Antiquare, ed. Fritz Homeyer (Tübingen: Mohr, 1966), 1– 4.  Arnold Zweig, The Face of East European Jewry. With Fifty-Two Drawings by Hermann Struck, ed. and transl. Noah Isenberg (Berkeley: California University Press, 2004), 34, 36, 38, 42, and 128.  Franco Moretti, “Conjectures on World Literature,” New Left Review 1 (University of California Press, 2000): 54– 68.  Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” in Art and Interpretation: An Anthology of Readings in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, ed. Eric Dayton (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1998), 383 – 86.

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tude and closure in textual analysis, but he values in the Digital Humanities what he describes as “ludic.” It is “distinguished […] by a refusal to declare meaning in any form.” Seen from this perspective, the Digital Humanities possibly represent a new reengagement with the past. Much like in Borges’ library, the question might not be solely how to interpret a text and to derive meaning, but rather to “ensure that it keeps on meaning.”³⁷ The potentially liberating effect of the ludic impulse, however, risks avoiding coming to terms with larger historical questions. Only a little over a decade ago did Mark Anderson’s article provoke a wide-ranging debate when he asked, provocatively, what had happened to Jewish German Studies.³⁸ The debate signaled the increasing uncertainty about borders and newly emerging research agendas. Anderson’s sentiment was echoed by Volker Berghahn, who believed that the increasing challenges to grand narratives threatened to dissolve the nation and its structures into a series of marginal localities and multifaceted encounters. Embracing the multiplicity of experiences promoted in the postmodern criticism of hegemonic discourses threatened to decenter German history. Faced with the resurging postmodern sensibilities at the beginning of the twentieth century, Berghahn feared that the newly emerging curiosity in borders and margins in German studies thwarted efforts to engage the big questions of German history.³⁹ The corollary to these fears is the changing contextualization of German Jewish history that manifests itself equally in postmodern approaches and potentially in the Digital Humanities. Yet recontextualizing the German Jewish past is not new: diverse approaches have existed since the inception of German Jewish Studies. Till van Rahden, for example, significantly challenged the established wisdom of viewing German Jews as a fairly homogenous group, who, notwithstanding their class and religious and political differences, nevertheless formed a cohesive sub-group. German Jewish communities overlapped in certain ways with German society, but barely exhibited the comprehensiveness of, for example, Germany’s Catholic community. Rahden views Jews neither as members of a self-contained milieu nor as an excluded minority, but places them simultaneously as part of Jewish, German Jewish and German history. Steven Aschheim

 Stephen Ramsay, “Toward an Algorithmic Criticism,” Literary and Linguistic Computing 18:2 (2003): 166 – 74, 170.  Mark Anderson, “German Intellectuals, Jewish Victims: A Politically Correct Solidarity,” Chronicle of Higher Education, October 19, 2001 (2001): B7–B10.  Volker R. Berghahn, “The German Empire, 1871– 1914: Reflections on the Direction of Recent Research,” Central European History 35 (2002): 75 – 81, 76 – 77.

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further accentuated this interpretation when he argued that Jews did not simply integrate or assimilate, but were co-constitutive to the culture they embraced.⁴⁰ Neither Rahden nor Aschheim advocated for a radical change, but simply complicated our understanding of German Jewish history. Todd Presner, who argues that German and Jewish “are already contained within one another, co-constitutive, and deeply entangled,” recently made a similar point.⁴¹ Advancing these views further, Leslie Morris promotes German Studies’ turn to Jewish Studies “to envision Jewish Studies taken from its parochial and Germanic perch in the long aftermath of the Wissenschaft des Judentums to occupy a more central, transdisciplinary position within the humanities.”⁴² Historical arguments, literary theories, and postmodern philosophies converge in this program that aggregates and converges German and German Jewish Studies in new and varied ways. Morris advocates to reconceptualize German and Jewish Studies as “[…] inhabiting a new space of a trans, or a newly imagined, community that exists in a border zone of textual and historical memory, projection and fantasy, pathology and desire that will always exceed the geographic, linguistic and ethnic/national markers in which they are enacted.”⁴³ Instead of easily identifiable disciplines, different fields of studies would appear in changing constellations. There is something appealing and liberating about this proposition, but Morris advances the argument in the name of the universal in opposition to the particular, whereby the particular acquires meaning and significance insofar as it is absorbed into the universal. There is a paradox at the heart of this approach. The transfer of German Jewish Studies into German Studies promotes the universal and articulates the plurality of historical experiences but might silence the particular. These new voices in German and Jewish Studies, along with the Digital Humanities, risk dislocating texts from their historical location and to privilege experiences that speak to fluidity, border crossing, and ambiguity. Walter Benjamin might be a good guide for a sense of off-centeredness, as Morris puts it, but Benjamin’s identity was not solely an exercise in self-fashioning but also a source of pain. Benjamin, like many other Weimar intellectuals, represents certain liminality, as Steven Aschheim astutely noted, never quite subscribing to one orthodoxy

 Steven E. Aschheim, “German History and German Jewry: Boundaries, Junctions and Interdependence,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 43 (1998): 315 – 22.  Todd Presner, “Remapping German-Jewish Studies: Benjamin, Cartography, Modernity,” German Quarterly 82 (2009): 293 – 315, 294.  Leslie Morris, “How Jewish is German Studies?” German Quarterly 82 (2009): vii–xii, x.  Morris, “How Jewish is German Studies?” viii.

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or ideology.⁴⁴ Yet their position between the ideologies testifies not just to a void; their intellectual careers are, despite the absence of certainty, marked by a desire to find conviction. The relative uncertainty of identities does not mean that ideals of identity, community, and nation had become meaningless, but more often their uncertainty was part of intense debates that sought to reaffirm these concepts. Moreover, regardless of the myriad meanings that assimilation took on in modern times, resentment and hostility never allowed identity to be solely an issue of choice. Exclusionary politics severly restricted the ability to fashion oneself. The fluidity of borders, which facilitates the inclusion of the past in everchanging contexts, has to remain cognizant of the historical context within which events emerged. Benjamin’s observation that “[t]here is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism” is a truism when it comes to German Jewish history.⁴⁵ Every historical artifact of German Jewry tells not just the story of its past, but also of its partial destruction in the Holocaust, as well as its preservation and restoration. The uncertainty of borders will only increase with the use of new technologies that reassemble and represent historical sources in new contexts. Yet this might not be only as loss, but also a gain. Greater access, increased dissemination, and the lack of social and economic barriers are often citied as causes in creating a cognitive surplus that is enabling us to do things that hitherto seemed unattainable.⁴⁶ Digitizing, however, has also commodified research in new ways that have limited access. How is the visibility of German Jewish Studies affected when much of the current research exists only in the highly prized ProjectMuse and JStor? Is the push toward the new digital culture increasingly marginalizing research that does not make it into these sites? Politics of access and dissemination matter to German Jewish Studies. In 2009, the London branch of the Leo Baeck Institute made all of the Leo Baeck Institutes Yearbooks available in an electronic format based on subscription in an effort to increase visibility and place the prestigious Yearbook of the Leo Baeck Institute along other important scholarly journals. Moving the Yearbook into Oxford Journals, the Leo Baeck Institute followed scholarly convention. The Jerusalem-based German language

 Steven E. Aschheim, Beyond the Border: The German-Jewish Legacy Abroad (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 101.  Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations, eds. Hannah Arendt and Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1969), 253 – 64, 256.  Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (New York: Penguin Books, 2010).

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Mitteilungen des Leo Baeck Institute, meanwhile, has been relegated to the margins. Moreover, instead of positing a fundamental break, it might be more important to critically analyze the digital age from the perspective of the past. The director of Harvard’s Library and life-long historian of book culture, Robert Darnton, for example, understands the digital revolution less as a fundamental departure, but more as a continuation of previous revolutions in printed media communication. To Darnton, the current information age builds on the invention of writing, the development of the codex, and the spread of the printed word. Catalyzed by the Internet and the World Wide Web, this new, and fourth, information age builds on the massive social and cultural changes ushered in by the previous information ages.⁴⁷ The digital world is consciously relying on preexisting modes of textual and visual production. The transformation appears less as a fundamental break but rather as process of reoccupation or even remediation.⁴⁸ In sum, digitizing seems both liberating and confining. Readers of archival resources encounter material no longer within a community of researchers at the Center for Jewish History, but in their respective offices. The digital text is increasingly disengaged from physical space, and the social spaces and social media possibilities might forge new networks of communication, but social media does not represent existing realms and spaces. The virtual world does not entirely map and reproduce the “real” world, but has is its own space. Jürgen Habermas, the author of seminal work on the emergence of the public sphere, rightly cautions enthusiasm and emphasizes that “the web itself does not produce any public spheres.”⁴⁹ Technological transformation affects the scholarly interaction with the past and the production and dissemination of knowledge in different ways. Accessibility and greater restriction grate against each other; a renewed sensibility of critical self-reflection overlaps with the privileging of border crossing, fluidity, and ambiguity. Yet as historical material is increasingly moving into new forms, German Jewish Studies can no longer neglect to reflect on these changes. Indeed, without consideration of the momentous change from print to electronic media, Katherine Hayles contend, “[…] we will fail to grasp the fuller significance

 Robert Darnton, “The Library in the New Age,” New York Review of Books, June 12, 2008.  J. David Bolter and Richard A. Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999).  Jürgen Habermas, “Political Communication in Media Society: Does Democracy Still Enjoy an Epistemic Dimension? The Impact of Normative Theory on Empirical Research,” Communication Theory 16 (2006): 411– 26.

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of the momentous changes underway as the Age of Print draws to a close and print […] takes it place in the dynamic media ecology of the twenty-first century.”⁵⁰ Taking these fundamental changes into consideration allows us to comprehend the shifting lines within the humanities as well as the varied confluences between German Jewish Studies, postmodern theories, and the emerging new digital world.

 N. Katherine Hayles, “Translating Media: Why We Should Rethink Textuality,” Yale Journal of Criticism 16 (2003): 263 – 90, 271.

Guy Miron

History, Science, and Social Consciousness in the German Jewish Public Discourse during the First Years of the Nazi Regime Since its inception in the early nineteenth century, Wissenschaft des Judentums harbored tensions between its members’ inclination to cultivate Jewish Studies as an impartial humanities discipline, and their desire to mobilize the field on behalf of other, non-research objectives in the political, social, and educational spheres. In the course of more than a century—between the 1820s and the 1930s —many scholars, including Jewish historians, also operated in the public-cumjournalistic arena, where they sought to disseminate both their research findings and their worldviews. In the process, they elaborated on the practical ramifications of their historical work. For instance, during the nineteenth century, members of Wissenschaft des Judentums discussed the Emancipation and the legal status of the Jews. Some also took part in rearguard actions against antisemitism.¹ Moreover, they participated in internal Jewish discussions on topics like reforming Judaism and education. At any rate, the precise boundary between scientific and public enterprise was never quite clear. Contemporary researchers would indeed be hard-pressed to determine when an article on a historical topic in, say, a middlebrow newspaper crossed the line from history into “oped,” especially since educated writers who were not professional historians increasingly turned their attention to historical issues. Against this backdrop, the present chapter explores the ways in which history was employed in the German Jewish public discourse at the early stages of the Third Reich. During the Weimar Republic, particularly its final years, the interest of Jewish historians and columnists in popular history was closely This chapter is a translation, with slight changes, of my article “History, Science and Social Consciousness in the German Jewish Public Discourse in the First Years of the Nazi Regime,” in Historiography and the Science of Judaism (Te’uda, Vol. 20) [Hebrew], eds. Michael F. Mach & Yoram Jacobson (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 2005), 231 – 52. The original Hebrew article was written with the support of the Moritz and Charlotte Warburg Memorial Fund of the Institute of Jewish Studies at The Hebrew University. I am indebted to Prof. Havi Dreifuss for her insightful comments on an earlier version of this chapter. The article was translated by Avi Aronsky.  A case in point is the debate between Heinrich Tsvi Graetz and Heinrich von Treitschke. See, for example, Ismar Schorsch, From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism (Hanover and London: Brandeis University Press, 1994), 292– 93. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110554618-008

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linked to their efforts to thwart the emergent Nazi party. These writers frequently took up issues that were tied to German history. As a matter of principle, they also directed their words beyond the confines of the Jewish community.² Hitler’s rise to power triggered an expansion of the Jewish public discourse on history and transformed the manner in which its participants approached current events. Throughout the period under review, German Jews continued to occupy themselves with the research and instruction of history. Moreover, the historical discussions on the pages of the community’s periodicals, which did not cease to be published until the end of 1938—albeit under the watchful eye of the Nazi censor—only intensified.³ Under the circumstances, popular history books and surveys became a veritable trend. All told, these efforts and publications stoked a lively public discourse that encompassed all of German Jewry’s various camps.⁴ As hinted at earlier, journalists, public figures, educators, and rabbis also took part in this reassessment of history. From time to time, the discussants tackled urgent questions concerning their outlook on history and sought to delineate the role of the historian during such trying times. In the pages ahead, I will examine the tension between the idea that history is an objective science and the conscious attempt to use it as a tool in existential struggles. To this end, the following questions will be posed: How did German Jews in the Third Reich view the nexus between the scientific chronicling of Jewish history and more popular representations of this past, which were occasionally formulated by professional historians? How did writers balance the scientific and public dimensions of their enterprise? Was the border between these two pursuits, which to a certain extent had already been obscured during the Weimar era, maintained or rendered null and void by Jewish society’s desperate bid to fend off a threat to its survival? Alternatively, how did the participants in this discourse understand the legacy of

 For a comprehensive look at the historical discourse within the ranks of mainstream German Jewry under the Weimar Republic, see Guy Miron, “Between History and a ‘Useful Image of the Past:’ Representations of the Jewish and the German Past in the Liberal-Jewish Historical Discourse in Weimar Germany” [Hebrew], Zion 66:3 (2001): 297– 330.  Herbert Freeden expounds on the Jewish press in Germany during these years: Herbert Freeden, The Jewish Press in the Third Reich (Providence: Berg, 1992).  See, for example, Josef Kastein, Eine Geschichte der Juden (Berlin: Rowohlt, 1933); Joachim Prinz, Wir Juden (Berlin: E. Reiss, 1934); Bruno Weil, Der Weg der deutschen Juden (Berlin: Central Verein dt. Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens, 1934); Adolf Altmann, Volk im Aufbruch, Diaspora in Bewegung, Reflexionen zur jüdischen Zeitgeschichte (Frankfurt: Hermon Verlag, 1936); Emil Cohn, Die jüdische Geschichte, Ein Gang durch Jahrtausende (Berlin: E. Loewe, 1936); Arthur Elösser, Vom Ghetto nach Europa, Das Judentum im geistigen Leben des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Jüdische-Buchvereinigung, 1936).

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their nineteenth-century forerunners—the pioneers of Wissenschaft des Judentums? And to what extent were the former influenced by their predecessors’ approach to history?⁵

I From the beginning of the nineteenth century onwards, Jewish historiography constituted a sort of enclave in the country’s general historiographical discipline, and the same could be said for their accompanying discourses. Jews conducted important research in this particular field under the aegis of Jewish institutions, which published these studies in book form and on the pages of the community’s organs. Read primarily by Jewish audiences, these works occasionally even sparked public discussions.⁶ That said, due to the integration of German Jewry into the surrounding culture—most of the community indeed felt that they were an integral part of society—the Jewish historical discourse was far from impervious to trends in German historiography. Moreover, the Jews involved in this field, not least historians, were trained in German academic institutions. It is not surprising, then, that they reacted to and commented on the major developments in the national discourse. Towards the end of the Weimar period, the signs of social crisis and rupture were quite evident in the discourse about the representation of Germany’s past. According to the literature, the discussions increasingly tended towards imparting significance, rather than impartial scientific analysis. On occasion, this even reached the point where history was transformed from an objective science into a reservoir of myths, thereby paving the way for a consciousness that scholars have dubbed “Antihistorismus” (anti-historicism).⁷ Dietmar Schirmer argues that the fall of the Weimar Republic embodied the decline of the modern Western historical outlook, whose pillars were a rational interpretation of the past and an

 For more on this exchange between 1933 and 1938, see Guy Miron, “Emancipation and Assimilation in the German Jewish Discourse of the 1930s,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 48 (2003): 165 – 89; Guy Miron, “The Emancipation Pantheon of Heroes in the German-Jewish Public Memory in the 1930s,” German History 21:4 (2003): 476 – 504.  On German Jewish historiography in this context, see Moshe Zimmermann, “Jewish History and Jewish Historiography in the New German Historiography,” in Studies in Historiography [Hebrew], eds. Moshe Zimmermann, Menahem Stern, and Joseph Salmon (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1987), 223 – 30.  Erich Wittenberg, Geschichte und Tradition von 1918 – 1933 im Bismarckbild der deutschen Weimarer Republik (Lund: Gleerup, 1969), 285 – 301.

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abiding confidence in progress. In Schirmer’s estimation, this approach was replaced by a mythical-cum-archaic one that jettisoned rationalism for a belief in destiny and the eternal laws of nature. In consequence, the historical sphere was amenable to “metaphysical forces”.⁸ During the Weimar era, Iggers contends, the German historical discourse slowly warmed to the idea that history cannot be perceived as an objective process. Moreover, history should only be apprehended from the vantage point of a society and culture that is conscious of its past.⁹ As could be expected, signs of this transformation can also be found in the scientific and public efforts of Weimar Jewry to contend with the following sort of questions: What is the most effective way to present history? And what are the objectives behind this endeavor? In the summer of 1930, a review in the main journal of the Germany Jewish community, Central Verein Zeitung (Central Association Journal), took issue with the radical nationalistic, partly racist folkist outlook of history, which undoubtedly falls under the heading of Antihistorismus. Its author, Judge Jacques Stern, wrote that folkists had pretentions of revealing “the laws of world history,” which they compared to an undulating wave of Auf und Ab (ups and downs).¹⁰ Stern described this historical approach as unfounded and arbitrary. With respect to the topic at hand, he did not suffice with reproving specific instances of anti-Jewish content in folkist writing, but also defended history’s status as a reputable scientific endeavor and sought to expose the German right wing’s vulgar use of this discipline. Whereas criticism of this sort was directed at non-Jewish figures who presumably exploited history for ulterior motives, works on the desired goals and character of historical enterprise were reserved for intra-communal frameworks. A case in point is the deliberations of Ismar Elbogen, the rector of Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Higher Institute for Jewish Studies) and the editor of Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland (Journal for the History of the Jews in Germany). The distinguished historian considered scientific historical research as a vital need of every society. Even if it takes some time before this work “yields fruit,” he wrote, under no circumstance should it be

 Dietmar Schirmer, “Politisch-Kulturelle Deutungsmuster: Vorstellungen von der Welt der Politik in der Weimarer Republik,” in Politische Identität und Nationale Gedenktage, Zur politischen Kultur in der Weimarer Republik, eds. Detlef Lehnert and Klaus Megerle (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1989), 31– 60.  Georg G. Iggers, The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Historical Thought from Herder to the Present (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1983), 240 – 43.  Jacques Stern, “Die Gesetze der Weltgeschichte,” Central Verein Zeitung (CVZ) 18/7 (1930): 383 – 84.

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viewed as a “luxury.”¹¹ According to Elbogen, research for its own sake underpins the field of history. That said, he also depicted research as an essential means for preserving Judaism’s vitality and claimed that abandoning this discipline would be akin to spiritual suicide. The majority of German Jews between the wars, however, did not embrace this approach. Most of the participants in the discourse under review indeed emphasized the importance of historical research and instruction in their own right, but felt that the chief objective of this undertaking was to solve, or at least alleviate, the hardships of German Jewry. In a review that was published in the inaugural issue of Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland, Moritz Stern, a Berlin-based rabbi and historian, declared that this journal would not only serve “the science” (i. e., Jewish Studies), but “also has advantages for the struggles and aspirations of the day.”¹² Stern averred that comprehending the following aspects of German Jewry was vital to the present: the legal status of Jews throughout the generations of the community’s existence in Germany; their participation in the life of the German state, economy, and society; and their impact on the country’s language and culture. In articulating this view, he was trumpeting the prevailing mindset in liberal Judaism.¹³ As an aside, the reemergence of this journal was welcomed by, among others, an anonymous Orthodox Jewish writer, who lauded its value to the community’s safety and to its propaganda campaign “versus the historical lies that are rearing up today in the struggle against German Jewry.” What is more, he or she expressed the hope that the Zeitschrift would publish studies on Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, a leader of Orthodox German Jewry.¹⁴ A primary goal of some of the discussants was to bolster the synthesis between Jewish and German history. To some extent, this aspiration corresponds to the hope for social and political integration. According to the Jewish historian Selma Stern, it was one of the main objectives of the prospective literature on German Jewry.¹⁵ Fritz Friedländer, a young colleague of Stern’s, even argued that a credible fusion between the two would allow the historical past to supply

 Ismar Elbogen, “Jüdische Forschung in Not,” Gemeindeblatt der Jüdischen Gemeinde zu Berlin, vol. 22, no. 8 (1932): 182– 83.  From this point forward, all the cited excerpts have been translated from German into Hebrew by the author and subsequently rendered into English by the translator of this article.  Moritz Stern, “Brauchen wir eine historische Zeitschrift?” CVZ 22/2 (1929): 99.  Anon., “Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland,” Der Israelit 5/1 (1933): 10.  Selma Stern, “Die Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland,” CVZ 3/5 (1929): 233.

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“good evidence” for debunking the Nazis’ attempts to portray the Jews as a foreign element in the history of Germany.¹⁶ At the latter stages of the Weimar Republic, the turn to the past was also presented as an internal Jewish mechanism for coping with the torrent of political dangers. The magnitude of this storm steadily mounted over the course of the Nazi period, when it was no longer possible to use history for the purpose of the political struggle against the regime or for merging Jewish and German history. According to an editorial in Israelitisches Familienblatt in the spring of 1932, present events have a tendency to resort to the patterns of yesteryear. Therefore, learning history, especially how Jewish communities dealt with similar predicaments in the past, must become a significant “part of our life.”¹⁷ Owing to the dire circumstances of German Jewry during the last few months of the Weimar republic, some participants on the outer fringes of the discourse in question espoused subjectivity and expressed the radical view that impartial scientific enterprise was no longer a sustainable goal of historical research. In the youth supplement of the journal of the Frankfurt Jewish community, towards the end of 1932 a self-styled representative of “the consumers of historical writing” relied on distinguished German historians like Heinrich von Treitschke, Theodor Mommsen, and Leopold von Ranke. He claimed that these figures had availed themselves of history in order to burnish the credentials of German nationalism and had no qualms about subjectively describing the past to advance this goal.¹⁸ In the author’s estimation, the Jews similarly required a lucid and subjective account of history that would illuminate their path.

II The far-reaching changes that swept through Germany in the aftermath of the Nazi ascent to power naturally had an impact on how German society, not least its academia, approached history. Be that as it may, there were also signs of continuity. Scholars of German historiography posit that the regime never managed to bring about full “uniformity” within the historians’ guild or instill

 Fritz Friedländer, “Die Juden im Geschichtsunterricht,” CVZ 2/9 (1932): 368.  L. K., “Achtung vor der Vergangenheit,” Israelitisches Familienblatt (IFB) 31/3 (1932): n.p.  Recha Spier, “Subjektive Geschichtserkentnis,” Jugend und Gemeinde, Beilage zum Gemeindeblatt der Israelitischen Gemeinde Frankfurt am Main vol. 11, no. 2 (1932): 53.

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its own “picture of history”— if such a narrative even existed in the full sense of the word—in the public consciousness.¹⁹ In 1935, Reichsinstitut für Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands (Institute for the History of the New Germany), under the management of Walter Frank and the aegis of Alfred Rosenberg, officially opened its doors. The Institute sought to foster a Nazi approach to chronicling history. With respect to the topic at hand, a few of its researchers dealt with the history of “the Jewish question.” As per Rosenberg’s vision, the Reichsinstitut was intended to serve as a counterweight to the traditional historians’ guild, but never managed to supplant the academic elite.²⁰ As Karen Schönwälder has shown, the latter were indeed shocked by the Nazis’ rise to power, and the university expelled scholars that were identified with the center or left wing, including those of Jewish origin.²¹ That said, Schönwälder also described how most German historians already leaned toward the conservative right and were skeptical or even hostile to the Weimar Republic, so that they were retained by the new order. Many of the conservative historians that recoiled or were appalled by Nazism back in 1932 switched their allegiances from Hindenburg to Hitler—some out of a sense of resignation to the ascendancy of the National Socialists, and others with a passion. Several even developed an outlook according to which the Nazis were destined to usher in a national revival by rescuing Germany from its travails, foremost among them the “stagnation” of the Weimar Republic.²² Though certain gaps between the approach of the conservative historians and that of the Nazi movement endured, it appears that their political backing bolstered the regime’s legitimacy. During this period, conservative researchers also devoted themselves to topics that were related to the German peoplehood and nation, which also concerned the Jews. For the most part, they offered racist interpretations of history.²³ In turn, Jewish journalists and historians kept track of the shifts in German historical thought and their effect on popular history and the educational system. Throughout the 1930s, the German Jewish media published reviews of new historical studies and analyzed the changes in the discipline. In the process, they reflected on conservative Nazi and Catholic approaches. These Jewish writ-

 Karl Ferdinand Werner, Das NS Geschichtsbild und die deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1967), 24, 43 – 45.  For a disquisition on this research institute, see Helmut Heiber, Walter Frank und sein Reichsinstitut für Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1966).  Karen Schönwälder, Historiker und Politik: Geschichtswissenschaft im Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt and New York: Campus Verlag, 1992), 68 – 74.  Karen Schönwälder, Historiker und Politik, 20 – 33.  Karen Schönwälder, Historiker und Politik, 111– 19.

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ers were quite cognizant of the fact that the liberal mindset, which even before 1933 was the preserve of a minority in Germany, had all but disappeared. Within this context, Jewish writers assessed the work of non-Jewish German historians. Among the latter who drew such attention was Wilhelm Grau. As the Reichsinstitut’s head researcher on the “history of the Jewish question,” Grau published a book in 1935 on Humboldt’s positive attitude towards the Jews and their integration into Germany. In the Nazi writer’s estimation, this favorable view was evidence of the fact that Humboldt was blemished from a national standpoint. Grau even accused the renowned intellectual of causing damage to the German people by not referring to the Jews in scientific racist terms. In addition, he claimed that Humboldt’s attitude stemmed from his personal ties with Jews, especially salon women. Furthermore, Grau assailed the liberal Judaism of Humboldt’s era. A few weeks after the passage of the Nuremberg Laws, in September 1935, Fritz Friedländer responded to Grau by means of an op-ed piece in Central Verein Zeitung. More specifically, the young historian surveyed and took issue with Grau’s work²⁴ in the spirit of the contemporaneous intra-Jewish discourse. He not only refuted the Nazi’s approach, but also challenged what he saw as its positive reception in Zionist circles. According to Friedländer, Zionist writers availed themselves of Grau’s thought for the purpose of undermining liberal Judaism. By this juncture, it had long been impossible to criticize the policies of the Third Reich. Therefore, Friedländer resorted to openly attacking the Nazis’ conception of the past. In the Jewish historian’s view, it was already futile to clamor for the reinstitution of progressive values. He thus urged his audience to preserve the legacy of the liberal outlook on the past, the formulation of which had been spearheaded by Humboldt. As a matter of principle, Friedländer took issue with Grau’s propensity for judging the past according to contemporary values. Napoleon’s drubbing at Waterloo, he claimed, need not wipe out the memory of his triumph at Austerlitz. So too, the Emancipation—the Jews’ first step towards assimilation—is of utmost historical significance, despite the fact that this process has now run its course. Drawing on Leopold von Ranke’s view that all epochs are equally close to God, Friedländer called upon his readers to grasp the liberal era through the prism of its own values and to recognize that every age possesses its own norms. In his own critique of Grau’s book,²⁵ Hans Liebeschütz claimed that the German nationalist’s approach to the Jewish Emancipation and to historic figures  Fritz Friedländer, “Eine Charakterbild in der Geschichte, Zu Wilhelm Grau: ‘Wilhelm v. Humboldt,’” CVZ 7/11 (1935): n.p.  Hans Liebeschütz, “Zur Frage des jüdischen Geschichtsbildes von heute,” Gemeindeblatt der Deutsch-Israelitischen Gemeinde zu Hamburg 12/6 (1936): 4– 6.

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like Humboldt is excessively narrow, for he failed to take into account the more general changes to the nineteenth-century German mindset. A broader view, Liebeschütz averred, of the period’s luminaries—Schiller, Goethe, and Kant, among others—is likely to demonstrate that the Enlightenment spirit was all-encompassing and certainly did not derive from or pertain exclusively to the Jews. On the face of things, Friedländer and Liebeschütz only took up questions of methodology and raised the banner of objective, ideologically impartial, and far-ranging studies. This approach stood in sharp contrast to that of Grau and Walter Frank, who considered the very aspiration of objective scholarship a sign of moral atrophy.²⁶ By 1936, it was no longer possible to fight for political ideals or write pugnacious works of history, such as those that mainstream Germany Jewry had published before Hitler assumed power. In light of the above, the mere reference to historical scientificity and independent objectivity became a value in its own right. Paradoxical as it may sound, the case can be made that in raising these arguments, Friedländer and Liebeschütz had no choice but to take part in the general discourse on history, both for its own sake and as a rhetorical device. Their emphasis on neutral scientificity indeed helped them contend with the antisemitic approaches of Grau and his likeminded colleagues. Another, more renowned writer that Jewish figures felt compelled to respond to was the sociologist and economist Werner Sombart. His positions concerning the Jews’ influence on the development of capitalism and their status in Germany aroused a polemic in German Jewish circles even before World War I. Rehashing these views under the Nazi regime, Sombart inflamed them with racist arguments in his work Deutscher Sozialismus (German Socialism).²⁷ An anonymously authored editorial titled “Here Sombart Erred” in the fall 1934 edition of Israelitisches Familienblatt²⁸ objected to the very use of the phrase “the Jewish spirit” as a historical term. In addition, the writer sought to provide a more sophisticated historical account of capitalism’s evolution at the dawn of modernity. Even the Zionist camp, which more than two decades earlier had attempted to bolster its own ideology via Sombart’s theory on the so-called foreignness of the Jews in Germany, criticized his simplistic approach. According to an editorial in the Zionist Jüdische Rundschau, Sombart had judged the Jews in a poor ethical light in

 Fritz Friedländer, “Forschungsabteilung Judenfrage, Zwei neue Schriften des historischen Reichsinstituts,” CVZ 4/3 (1937): n.p.  Paul R. Mendes-Flohr assays the sociologist’s original thesis on the Jews: Paul R. MendesFlohr, “Werner Sombart’s The Jews and Modern Capitalism. An Analysis of its Ideological Premises,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 21 (1967): 87– 107.  Anon., “Hier irrt Sombart,” IFB 4/10 (1934): n.p.

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his historical work.²⁹ Prohibited from directly confronting Sombart, these Jewish writers, both in Israelitisches Familienblatt and in Jüdische Rundschau, refuted his antisemitic historical claims by championing pure and nuanced scholarship devoid of ethical judgment. Against this backdrop, it is worth noting Friedländer’s response to Friedrich Meinecke’s book on the advent of Historismus (historicism). This work, insofar as Friedländer was concerned, was a realistic account of the evolution of the liberal yet antisemitic historian’s own school of thought. Moreover, it revealed his philosophical worldview, which took root in the scholarly circle of Max Weber, Ernst Troeltsch, and Wilhelm Dilthey, among others.³⁰ The Jewish intellectual depicted Meinecke as a chronicler of the heroic resistance to the era’s agnostic trends (agnosticism was indeed winning many German hearts at the time) on the part of those who believed in the power of history. Friedländer’s reference to agnosticism clearly hints at the Nazi idea of history being driven by a biological-deterministic impetus. By labeling a respectable German historian like Meinecke as a representative of the true historical consciousness, as opposed to the mythical variety, Friedländer implicitly expressed his sharp critique of the Nazi historical worldview. Here, the Jewish historian used the ostensibly apolitical ideal of scientificity to express his protest against the pseudo-historical research that embraced the values of the Third Reich.

III In their critical discussions about Grau, Sombart, Meinecke, and other German figures, writers in the Jewish press, such as Friedländer, ostensibly took part in a wider German public discourse. Under the circumstances of the mid1930s, however, their work could not have an impact on the non-Jewish German historical public discourse. Their above-mentioned ripostes and commentaries were in fact intended for the Jewish reading public, whose interest in historical questions increased due to the convulsions set in motion by the Third Reich. The question of the purpose behind studying history, as well as the tension between the discipline’s scientific character and the public interest thereof surfaced not only within the framework of these reviews, but in the era’s internal German Jewish public discourse—albeit in different contexts. These Jewish ob-

 K. L., “Wir Juden und der ‘Jüdische Geist,’ Sombart und die Judenfrage,” Jüdische Rundschau (JR) 16/10 (1934): 3.  Fritz Friedländer, “Vom Werden des Geschichtsgefühls,” CVZ 10/12 (1936): n.p.

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servers were fully aware of the fact that, to some extent, they were following in the footsteps of the general historical research and Wissenschaft des Judentums of the 1800s. That said, they understood the need to deviate from this tradition given the current state of affairs. These same authors drew a clear-cut parallel between Jewish society’s growing interest in history and the way the Third Reich was extracting lessons from the past for the alleged sake of building a better future. During the initial phases of the National-Socialist regime, Stefan Fraenkel, a liberal German Jew, wrote an article titled “History Teaches the Present” according to which historians were struggling to maintain the necessary level of objectivity.³¹ Their challenge, he added, is to preserve a critical gaze and distinguish between the objective realm and the subjective point of view. Fraenkel sought to calm the Jewish public down and avert what the community’s leadership then viewed as a panicked reaction to Hitler’s election triumph. To this end, he emphasized the need to improve one’s perspective of current events through the lens of the past. However, Fraenkel admitted that the memories of erstwhile crises inevitably rear up during this period and that there is indeed a chain of hardship linking generations of German Jews. Despite, or perhaps because, of this difficult past, the author stressed the importance of remembering its more serene intervals as well. In a similar effort to present the community’s history as a potential source for different perspectives on the crisis at hand, an Orthodox Jewish writer claimed that not all the troubles of the “here and now” would eventually fall under the conceptual heading of history, for historic events carry more weight in the long run.³² These calls for a critical reckoning of history and the development of an historical sense of proportion apparently reflected a desire to preserve some of the insights from the past and a modicum of the stability that informed bygone ages. Moreover, they attested to their authors’ fear of an overly subjective and radical interpretation of history that was liable to wipe out the memory of Jewish integration in Germany. A more determined effort to rescue the scientific approach to history appeared in an article by Willy Cohn, a historian at Das Jüdisch-Theologische Seminar (Jewish Theological Seminary) of Breslau, shortly after the passage of the Nuremberg Race Laws. In surveying the history of German historiography, he contrasted the tradition of objective scholarship—the reconstruction of history “as it was” in the Rankean spirit—with the patriotic and exuberant writing of Treitschke, who had no pretentions of objectivity. Jewish historiography, Cohn as-

 Stefan Fraenkel, “Geschichte lehrt Gegenwart,” CVZ 19/4 (1934): n.p.  M. Elias, “Rückblick und Ausblick,” Part I, Der Israelit 3/1 (1935): 1– 3.

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serted, has a strong predisposition to effusive writing. Fine examples of this propensity, according to the Jewish historian, can be found in the work of Heinrich Tsvi Graetz and Simon Dubnow as well as the more recent, popular, and utterly unscientific histories of Joseph Kastein.³³ Leaning towards Rankean methods, Cohn’s approach hewed closer to the source material; to wit, his research was in line with the era’s scholarship at American and Western European universities. Accordingly, he criticized Jewish historiography for insufficiently merging the history of the Jews with those of other nations. Under the present circumstances, he conceded, German Jewry cannot be expected to allow its scholars to be educated or conduct research in this spirit. As part of the older generation’s efforts to pass down a semblance of the tradition and scientific pretentions that the discipline aspired to before Hitler’s rise to power, Cohn ended his article with the claim that apologetics and finger pointing are anathema to the professional historian. What is more, he expressed the hope that the foundation had been laid for the renewal of such objective historical research in the near future. Cohn’s appeal for scientificity and impartiality found few takers, as ever more Jewish historians passed ethical judgement and drew practical conclusions for the present from their research.³⁴ In other words, the primary function of his Jewish colleagues, as well as journalists and public figures who opined on historical topics, was to fill the deep need of many community members to draw knowledge and succor from the past. Above all, their readers sought an explanation for the tragic turn in the fate of German Jewry. Furthermore, Jews that felt particularly alienated by the German state and society hoped the history of their community would help them reconstruct a meaningful Jewish identity. Nevertheless, none of the discussants could avoid the tension between the impetus for pure scientificity and the attempt to mobilize history for the sake of responding to the public’s needs. Friedländer was indeed cognizant of the demand to place history at the service of the present, but also understood the implications of abandoning scientific standards. Nevertheless, his outlook differed from that of Cohn. In September 1932, Friedländer declared that Jewish historians must take into account all the new developments of their epoch (e. g., the chauvinism and the sense of decline that informed the interwar period) along with the practical needs of their

 Willy Cohn, “Welche Ansprüche müssen an ein Werk über jüdische Geschichte gestellt werden?” Frankfurter Israelitisches Gemeindeblatt vol. 14, no. 2 (1935): 52– 53.  By 1937, Ernst Fraenkel argued that the times demanded a history that was not only “a backward-looking prophecy.” It was thus incumbent upon historians to ratchet up their objectivity. Fraenkel, “Geschichtsbewusstsein und Geschichte,” Der Morgen 12/12 (1937): 575.

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community. Likewise, their research should be more attuned to daily life.³⁵ Given the crises at hand, he opined, there was no longer any room for expansive syntheses like those of Graetz and Dubnow. However, Friedländer did not believe that all research must come to a standstill. To the contrary, he argued that this was an opportunity to make history a significant factor in people’s lives and to offer a new direction for the Jews. In making this argument, Friedländer was not urging his colleagues to swap their objectivity for subjectivity, but rather to adapt their research interests to the challenges of the hour. More specifically, the new state of affairs demanded a shift in the Jewish historiographical tradition. Until now, Jewish historians, especially Graetz, had focused on cultural enterprise and sought to ascertain what “ought to be” (sollen). From this point forward, Friedländer insisted, Jewish historians must pursue areas of research that bear on more pressing contemporary issues. Since many community members were forced to give up their white-collar professions and, say, turn to basic industries, Friedländer entreated his peers to study the history of the Jewish economy.³⁶ Likewise, he pointed to the dearth of research on Jewish immigration.³⁷ By concentrating on these sorts of issues and German Jewry’s relations with its surroundings, Friedlander argued, Jewish historians could help the community implement the necessary changes to the modes of Jewish existence.

IV In 1935, a popular scientific book on the history of German Jewry by Ismar Elbogen, among the top experts in this field, was published in Berlin.³⁸ This work was the first comprehensive historical account of the community. Writing such a monograph during these years was part of the scholar’s outreach to the Jewish public at large. In his review of this work, Friedländer mentioned that the German Jewish intelligentsia had already been waiting for such a book since at  Fritz Friedländer, “Hemmung und Ziel jüdischer Geschichtsforschung,” CVZ 6/9 (1934): n.p.  For a comprehensive look at the intensive discussions on how the community should respond to the Nazis’ restrictions on Jewish employment, see Abraham Margaliot, “The Question of Vocational Retraining and Productivization—a Focal Point of the Discourse among German Jews amid the First Days of the Third Reich,” in Abraham Margaliot, Between Rescue and Annihilation: Studies in the History of German Jewry, 1932 – 1938 [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1990), 55 – 76.  For another discussion on the history of Jewish immigration that was spurred on by the establishment of the Nazi regime, see B. Weinryb, “Deutsch-jüdische Wanderungen im 19. Jahrhundert,” Der Morgen 10/1 (1934): 4– 10.  Ismar Elbogen, Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland (Berlin: E. Lichtenstein, 1935).

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least the 1880s.³⁹ Its release at this particular juncture, Friedländer noted, raised the question of what is the best time to experience this history and grapple with its meaning: Should this sort of publication coincide with a communal achievement and be written out of a sense that the group has reached a milestone, or is it best suited for a time of crisis and bewilderment? In the spirit of his earlier, above-cited article, the young historian commended Elbogen on his turn to the general reading public, even if it had come at the expense of paring down the descriptions and the scope of his work. Friedländer had only praise for the brevity, practicality, and “stoic restraint” that characterized Elbogen’s description of the volatility of Jewish life in Germany. Additionally, he emphasized his colleague’s focus on political history, which ran counter to the Graetzian school’s immersion in culture. By virtue of these traits, Friedländer claimed, Elbogen had realized his “calling” as an historian. In contrast, other reviewers felt that that the book’s account was lacking. While saluting the distinguished historian for filling the community’s need for insights on its past, they argued that this work fueled, rather than slaked, a desire for “a profound internal understanding of the facts.”⁴⁰ Less Rankean than Elbogen, these critics apparently expected the scholar to go beyond a mere description of past events. Instead, they had hoped that he would elucidate German Jewish history by showing that it adhered to a certain inner logic. However, Elbogen had no intention or aspiration to undertake these sorts of missions. Ludwig Feuchtwanger, a lawyer and publisher who frequently contributed to the Zionist journal Jüdische Rundschau, and the brother of Lion Feuchtwanger, averred that the book followed in the footsteps of Ranke’s clear-eyed topicality and penchant for factual detail, rejecting any historical-philosophical and metaphysical-theological generalizations.⁴¹ According to Feuchtwanger, Elbogen’s popular work was but a prologue to a more substantive discussion on the fate and history of the Jews. It is incumbent on the discussants, the lawyer wrote, to ponder the question of meaning and to place their own historical works in a broader, panEuropean context. In sum, nearly all the participants in German Jewry’s discourse on history, including scholars with a Rankean bent, felt a need to cater to the public’s needs. Writing popular history books, speaking before inclusive audiences, and contributing lay articles on historical issues to the Jewish press are all indi Fritz Friedländer, “Elbogens ‘Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland,’” Der Morgen 11/8 (1935): 369 – 71.  Werner Cahnmann, “Ismar Elbogen, Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland,” CVZ 3/5 (1935): n.p.  Ludwig Feuchtwanger, “Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland,” JR 6/6 (1935): 11.

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cative of these discussants’ commitment to greater society.⁴² Nevertheless, there appears to have been a disparity between the way in which this obligation was perceived by professional historians, like Elbogen and Friedländer, and several of their critics. Under the circumstances, the former by and large understood their role as enriching the community’s knowledge. To this end, they occasionally launched new studies that pertained to the major issues of the day, such as immigration. However, some observers expected these historians to impart meaning on past events and the travails of the hour in a more proactive and direct fashion. The latter, though, were dedicated to impartial scientific inquiry. With this in mind, they criticized German writers who geared their research to the pursuit of ethical judgement and the advancement of political ideologies. As a result, the vast majority of these Jewish scholars were averse to taking such a path on their own. The inclination to erect barriers between past and present and to consciously refrain from explaining contemporary predicaments through the lens of history also surfaced in the words of the aforementioned Selma Stern, one of the period’s leading scholars on the history of German Jewry. Following a lecture she gave at Das Jüdisch-Theologische Seminar, Stern was asked if the past could illuminate the questions of the hour. Consistent with Elbogen and Friedländer’s position, the historian’s answer seems to have been a fitting end to her comprehensive and tidy lecture on various patterns in the European state’s attitude towards the Jews. History, Stern averred, is incapable of offering solace or providing answers; studying historical developments can only “teach us to return to the sources,” absorb them with “humility,” and hope for the best.⁴³

V Needless to say, the 1930s were not the only period in which the relation between the scientific and the practical uses of history were placed under scrutiny. In the early nineteenth century, the founders of Wissenschaft des Judentums already championed what Immanuel Wolf referred to as the synthesis between scientific research “from a wholly independent viewpoint” and the desire to also influence

 For more on this development, see the series of articles by a variety of historians on the history of German Jewry in the official journal of the community: CVZ 17/5 (1934); 14/6 (1934); 28/6 (1934); 12/7 (1934); 26/7 (1934); 9/8 (1934); 30/8 (1934): n.p.  Selma Täubler-Stern, “Das Judenproblem im Wandel der Zeiten,” CVZ 7/11 (1935): n.p.

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“life” and to change the viewpoints of the non-Jewish public about the Jews.⁴⁴ Taking a more critical stance, Ismar Schorsch has claimed that “modern scholarship on Judaism betrayed all the urgent concerns raised by the long-contested venture in emancipation.” These concerns, he added, even “impacted on the formation of research agendas and intruded on the reading of the evidence.”⁴⁵ In 1936, German Jewry marked the fiftieth anniversary of Leopold Zunz’s passing. More than any other figure, in Germany or elsewhere, he was identified with the advent of critical Jewish Studies. This jubilee, which was commemorated with a series of articles and speeches on Zunz and his legacy, reawakened the discourse on the connection between Wissenschaft des Judentums and the plight of German Jewry in the 1930s. Within this framework, the participants shed light on various facets of the tension between unbiased scientific research of the past and society’s present needs. Once more, Ismar Elbogen played the leading role in a discourse among representatives of the Jewish establishment. His article marking the said jubilee described Wissenschaft des Judentums as a living and creative “science.”⁴⁶ Toiling to preserve Judaism, Zunz furnished explanations, according to Elbogen, for the “irrational elements” that he discovered therein and fought like “a man of action” on behalf of progress and the Enlightenment. The difference, the twentieth-century historian wrote, between Zunz’s era and the reality of 1936 was that during the earlier period, tradition was ubiquitous and the sciences were a rare commodity, whereas fifty years later the tide had completely turned. In addition, the ideal of scientificity was no longer the object of debate, while Judaism was in jeopardy of disappearing. “We too,” Elbogen claimed, “want to create the new out of the old”; therefore, it behooves us to reassess Zunz’s contributions. The former also referred to the legacy and research methods of his nineteenthcentury forerunners in a lecture that he gave a few weeks later. In the 1800s, Jewish Studies, especially its historical wing, was not only a “new science, but a novel form of Judaism.” More specifically, it differed in character from the traditional faith, which was based exclusively on the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud. Elbogen argued that the innovation of figures like Zunz and Graetz rested, first and foremost, on their shift from Geschichten (stories) and fact collection to the discipline of writing history—a term that, until then, was foreign to Juda-

 Immanuel Wolf, “On the Concept of a Science of Judaism,” in The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, eds. Paul Mendes-Flohr & Jehuda Reinharz (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 219 – 21.  Schorsch, From Text to Context, 163.  Ismar Elbogen, “Der Schöpfer der ‘Wissenschaft des Judentums,’ Zum 50. Todestag von Leopold Zunz am 17. März,” Frankfurter Israelitisches Gemeindeblatt 14/7 (1936): 249 – 51.

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ism.⁴⁷ Correspondingly, he emphasized the strong link between Jewish Studies and the general humanities and expressed the hope that Wissenschaft des Judentums would pollinate Jewish life. In assessing Zunz’s legacy, then, Elbogen reiterated the importance of scientificity to his own worldview. Compared to his statements four years earlier, the scholar now emphasized the historian’s obligation to his or her community, rather than research for its own sake. It is no coincidence, perhaps, that at this juncture Elbogen chose to present the founder of Wissenschaft des Judentums as, above all, an educator and a man of action. From this point forward, he also viewed science not only as an objective in its own right, but as a tool for preserving and fertilizing Judaism. In stressing the need to perpetuate Zunz’s legacy, this leading figure of the liberal Jewish establishment nevertheless chose to reaffirm his commitment to the ideal of pure research, to whatever extent this was still possible in the Third Reich. The Zionist activist Alfred Klee offered another interpretation of Zunz’s enterprise, as well as its relevance to the challenges of the hour. At a commemoration of the anniversary at the Jewish school on Berlin’s Grossen Hamburger Strasse, he argued that Zunz could not serve as a direct role model for today’s youth, for Wissenschaft des Judentums had been established during a period with a pan-European mindset in which German Jews were encouraged to integrate themselves in greater society. Therefore, this generation “must produce a new Zunz” whose approach better suited the present circumstances.⁴⁸ In other words, the needs of the 1930s differed sharply from those of Zunz’s lifetime. Klee’s outlook was shared by journalists, public activists, and even contemporaneous representatives of Wissenschaft des Judentums, such as Isaac Heinemann, a researcher and lecturer at the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau and the editor of Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums (Journal for the Science and History of Judaism). At his lecture on the occasion of the Zunz jubilee, Heinemann observed that Jewish Studies developed in the 1800s within the framework of German Jewish assimilation.⁴⁹ Put differently, it was the underlying forces of Zunz’ era that pushed for the integration of the Jews, qua a religious minority, into society at large; and the agenda and philo-

 Ismar Elbogen, “Von den Geschichten zur Geschichte,” IFB 30/4 (1936): n.p.  Anon., “Zu Leopold Zunz fünfzigstem Todestag,” IFB 26/3 (1936): n.p. Another participant in this discourse drew a similar contrast between Zunz’s Emancipation legacy and the community’s needs for Wissenschaft des Judentums in the Third Reich. B. Gafni, “Die Zukunft der jüdischen Wissenschaft,” JR 11/10 (1933): 647.  “Vorträge in Hamburg, Professor I. Heinemann-Breslau über die Wissenschaft des Judentums,” Gemeindeblatt der Deutsch-Israelitischen Gemeinde zu Hamburg 20/3 (1936): 7.

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sophical undertakings of Wissenschaft des Judentums were designed to advance this idea and burnish its legitimacy. Accordingly, the movement’s founders accentuated erstwhile Jewish societies that were immersed in their surroundings, especially Hellenistic and Spanish Jews. For the sake of illuminating the past, they also explored the ideals of development and progress. Lastly, these nineteenth-century pioneers endeavored to understand and interpret Judaism in a rational manner. All these steps were aimed at creating a scientific basis for reclassifying Jewry as a religion, thereby enabling its devotees to integrate into the German nation. In stark contradistinction to Gershom Scholem, who saw Wissenschaft des Judentums as a “diabolical” cadre aimed at destroying Judaism from within,⁵⁰ Heinemann claimed that like every other historical player, its founders operated according to their own Zeitgeist; hence, they should be understood exclusively within this context. While the movement strove to preserve Jewish tradition, this could only be accomplished, in Heinemann’s estimation, as part of an effort to integrate into and suit their culture to their surroundings. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, he added, this same environment began to spurn the Jews and view them as a separate nation. This process already reached an advanced stage by the 1930s. Under the circumstances, it was no longer possible to continue along the original path of Wissenschaft des Judentums. Heinemann eschewed negating the legacy of the movement’s founders, including their research on the connection between Judaism and its neighboring cultures. Instead, he asserted that recent developments had forced the Jewish community into an Aufhebung—uplation—in order to advance Jewish exceptionalism and the movement’s other new objectives. By delving into its history under the specter of the Third Reich, Heinemann concluded, German Jewry was building moral fortitude. In sum, there was a broad consensus within Jewish society over the merits of Zunz and his enterprise. This is undoubtedly the case for figures like Elbogen and Heinemann, who also pointed to the contribution of Wissenschaft des Judentums to the community at large. That said, there were significant discrepancies between the two intellectuals’ scientific appraisals of the movement and its relevance to the current political situation. Elbogen argued that there was little difference between the group’s main premises at its inception and during the 1930s. In essence, he called for the continuation of his predecessors’ legacy, despite the vast changes to the Jewish public’s needs. Conversely, Heinemann, inter alios,

 Gershom Scholem, “Passing Thoughts on the Wissenschaft des Judentums,” in Gershom Scholem, Explications and Implications: Writings on Jewish Heritage and Renaissance [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1990), 385 – 403.

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claimed that the Zeitgeist and the political circumstances of the 1930s demand a comprehensive revision of the movement’s basic goals.

Conclusion As we have seen, the rising interest in the German Jewish discourse on history at the latter stages of the Weimar Republic and, all the more so, during the first years of the Third Reich was influenced by Nazi conceptions of the past. “At a time when the external ruling power creates its power out of the past,” one of the era’s Jewish writers opined, “we the Jews must not be ashamed to do so.”⁵¹ Under the National-Socialist shadow, the prestige of the new historians soared among the general Jewish public. However, it bears noting that the problems that have been examined in this article—foremost the tension between the scientificity of history and the possibility of using this discipline to contend with the needs of the hour—were not the only or even the most pressing issues on German Jewry’s historical agenda. For instance, the community held public discussions on the integration of history in the educational system. Not only were these exchanges premised on the belief that history is indeed “usable,” but the discussants barely raised the issue of the field’s scientificity.⁵² Genealogical activities, particularly the building of family trees and the documentation of ancient names, also blossomed during these years. Inspired by the norms of greater German society, these pastimes did not receive the imprimatur of professional historians.⁵³ Not a single participant in this discussion on history and society’s needs could ignore the Jewish populace’s growing despair and its tendency to look to the past in the hopes of gleaning lessons for the present. Accordingly, recognized historians, such as Ismar Elbogen, Selma Stern, and Ismar Freund, took part in public lecture series that were organized by the community and wrote

 Fabius Schach, “Vergangenheit redet zur Gegenwart,” IFB 16/3 (1933): n.p.  See, inter alia, Fritz Friedländer, “Die Geschichtsunterricht in der jüdischen Schulen,” CVZ 10/5 (1934): n.p.; Hans Grünfeld, “Warum und wie jüdische Geschichte?” Jugend und Gemeinde, Beilage zum Frankfurter Israelitisches Gemeindeblatt vol. 13, no. 10 (1935): 407–8; Realschuldirektor Dr. Elias, “Geschichtsunterricht an jüdischen Schulen,” Erziehung und Lehre, Pädagogische Beilage zum Israelit 30/4 (1936), 11; 4/6 (1936), 9; 27/8 (1936): 11– 12.  Anon., “Arbeitsabend der Gesellschaft für jüdische Familienforschung,” IFB 26/3 (1936): n.p.; Ada Heinemann, “Jüdische Frauennamen in Frankfurt am Main zu Beginn der Emanzipation,” Frankfurter Israelitisches Gemeindeblatt vol. 13, no. 6 (1935): 211– 13; Anon., “Gestern und Heute,” Gemeindeblatt der Jüdischen Gemeinde zu Berlin 11/4 (1937): 1– 2.

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middlebrow historical surveys on different topics in the Jewish press. Even those with a strong Rankean bent for “scientificity” understood that under the circumstances, pure and objective research had become irrelevant on its own. All these figures could do was express the hope that the day would come when impartial scholarship could be renewed. This consensus notwithstanding, many and manifold views emerged on the value of scientific objectivity in historical research vis-à-vis the inclination to utilize the past for the needs of the present. For Elbogen and his colleagues, most of whom were members of the liberal camp, the continuation of scientific history remained their most prized possession, even under the Nazi regime. In their estimation, it was incumbent upon scholars that wrote popular history or suited their research topics to the demands of the hour to avoid getting caught up in practical interpretations and to refrain from ascribing far-reaching significance to their findings. Given the vicissitudes of the prewar years, this camp most likely considered the preservation of scientificity and “scientific truth” not only vocational prerequisites, but a matter of principle. Although the Jewish writers on the opposite end of the ideological spectrum did not completely shun these values, they put less weight on characterizing science as an objective and impartial undertaking. This camp, which included quite a few Zionists, was more influenced by major trends in German historiography than their counterparts. Even before Hitler’s ascent in 1933, these figures tended to stress the “usability” of history and to legitimize subjective research. In their estimation, the field’s primary goal was to satisfy the Jewish public’s genuine need for an explanation of its suffering and perhaps offer a hint as to what the future holds. Unlike Elbogen, they were inclined to believe that there were much more substantial and absolute differences between the fledgling years of Wissenschaft des Judentums and their own period. For this reason, they did not feel committed to Zunz’ legacy; and the guiding principles that they attached to Jewish Studies tended to vary from those of their liberal peers. Kristallnacht put an end to the relatively unsuppressed internal Jewish discourse that had hitherto been conducted under the Nazi regime. Between the passage of the Nuremberg Laws and the said pogrom on November 9, 1938, especially from 1937 onwards, all the German Jewish camps steadily adapted themselves to the new reality, as they replaced internal politics and the various social and economic issues at the top of their agenda with the pressing issue of immigration. In other words, the Jewish press allocated ever more space to this topic, and the community’s organizations ratcheted up their efforts to help those members wishing to leave. Consequently, the epilogue of the aforementioned discussions on Wissenschaft des Judentums during the 1930s revolved around the ques-

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tion of the discipline’s continuity following the mass exodus of Jews from its country of origin. In an article on this topic that appeared in the organ of the Berlin community, its anonymous author traced the roots of Jewish Studies and batei midrash (Torah study halls) back to Yohanan ben Zakkai, an historic figure whose name came up time and again in the discourse under review.⁵⁴ The founding of this Tannaitic sage’s beit midrash in Yavne in the aftermath of the Temple’s destruction was presented as the first in a succession of centers for Jewish Studies that subsequently migrated from the Land of Israel to Babylon, Spain, where a systematic religious philosophy took root, and then to medieval Ashkenaz (i. e., Germany), which focused on the Talmudic tradition. According to this writer, the earliest major divergence from Yohanan ben Zakkai’s legacy was the establishment of Wissenschaft des Judentums in the early 1800s. Though the origins and core of this movement were always in Germany, it had benefited the entire Jewish world. Against this backdrop, the author posed the following question: Would the gradual cessation of this activity on German soil have a detrimental effect on the Jews in the foreseeable future? Though Germany was no longer suited to host such an enterprise, he or she asserted, fears as to its demise are unfounded thanks to new centers in the Land of Israel and the United States, where German Jewish experts have already set up shop. Moreover, the days in which Wissenschaft des Judentums has to fight for legitimacy are long over. The movement has solidified its place in Jewish life and has become an integral part of Judaism itself. This achievement, the writer intimates, is modern German Jewry’s contribution to the entire Jewish people. By virtue of these efforts, the future of critical Jewish Studies is secure, regardless of what transpires in Germany. Regardless of whether or not this was the editor’s intent, symbolic evidence of the article’s conclusion was inserted in the very next slot. More specifically, the journal ran a story about a dinner that was held in honor of Prof. Ismar Elbogen on July 25, 1938, on the occasion of his upcoming departure to New York, where he would indeed continue to advance Wissenschaft des Judentums. ⁵⁵

 Günther Looser, “Die jüdische Wissenschaft, Von der historischen Entwicklung und Zukunft,” Gemeindeblatt der Jüdischen Gemeinde zu Berlin 31/7 (1938): 3.  S. S., “Abschied von Ismar Elbogen,” Gemeindeblatt der Jüdischen Gemeinde zu Berlin 31/7 (1938): 3.

Christoph Schmidt

A Voyage in the Enchanted House: A Family History from the Personal Perspective (In Memoriam Walter Schmidt 1889 – 1961)

Iron Curtain A dark shadow hung over my father’s family history, which I only learned about after his death but which explained why my father appeared to have no family history. The suicides of my great-grandparents, Edmund and Elise Meyer, must have been so traumatic at the time that my grandmother simply treated the subject as taboo. Her children were clearly not meant to know anything about this tragedy. In reality, there were in fact three family suicides in the era prior to Nazi rule. My great-grandmother, Elise Meyer, née Levy, took her life in 1916, presumably because she was repeatedly betrayed by her husband, the renowned professor of ear, nose, and throat medicine, Edmund Meyer (1864 – 1931). In any case, she most likely suffered from serious depression. Shortly thereafter, my greatgrandfather married Rosalie Levin, née Heimann. Fifteen years later, in 1931, he, too, committed suicide, together with his second wife. Whether the tragic constellation of these suicides occurred as a result of the economic crisis or in response to incurable illness was unexplained, but my grandmother, Hildegard Meyer (1891– 1961), who grew up in their shadow, must have been permanently scarred by that trauma of such mythic proportions. In 1916, the same year as her mother committed suicide, she met her German husband, the lawyer Dr. Walter Schmidt (1889 – 1961), while serving as a Red Cross nurse on the Belgian front. When, in 1931, her father and his new wife took their lives, she already had four children, from whom she carefully hid these events. This series of traumatic suicides came to play an important role in a dramatic moment in 1942. As a German patriot, my grandmother ignored her husband’s repeated suggestions that she emigrate. In 1934, her German husband, who ran a law firm with three Jewish colleagues, including his wife’s cousin Paul Kempner, suggested that she emigrate to Palestine. But even the suggestion, in 1939, that she go to Sweden was anathema to Hildegard Schmidt.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110554618-009

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Figure 1: The Meyer family with friends, the Jonas family, in Sylt. The man in the top-hat is Edmund Meyer – his daughter Hildegard has her arms around him. The second man from the right is his son Max. Elise Meyer stands to the far right in a white veil. Private property Christoph Schmidt.

After being dismissed from his post at the university clinic of Würzburg in 1933, her older brother, Max Meyer (1890 – 1958), a professor of ear, nose, and throat medicine like their father, had emigrated first to Athens and from there to Ankara, and finally to Teheran, where he established a clinic for diseases of the ear, nose and throat.¹ After a period of internment on the Isle of Wight, their older children, Wolf and Lilo, together with some of their cousins—Werner Mosse, and Max and Fritz Kempner—were accommodated in boarding schools in England in 1938. The two youngest children, Ellen and my father Eberhardt Schmidt, were initially sent to private schools, but in 1943 they were expelled as—‘Mischlinge’—(mixed blood progeny) and condemned to a precarious existence of illegality between forced labor and hiding.

 Linda Lucia Damskis, Zerrissene Biografien. Jüdische Ärzte zwischen nationalsozialistischer Verfolgung, Emigration und Wiedergutmachung (München: Allitera 2009), 72– 77, 165 – 68 deal with Max Meyer’s removal from the University of Würzburg, his emigration, and his return.

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Figure 2: Max Meyer. Private property Christoph Schmidt

The deportations had begun considerably earlier. Their cousin Heinrich Meyer (1897– 1943) was deported to Auschwitz.² Two other cousins, Alexander Coppel (1865 – 1942)³ and Martha Mosse (1884 – 1977)⁴ had been sent to Theresienstadt, and another cousin, Hermann Hagen,⁵ to Bergen-Belsen. But the arrest of another cousin, Anna Coppel, who like Hildegard was married in Düsseldorf to a German by the name of Anton Reiche, must have been even more alarming. She was thrown into a women’s prison on charges of racial defilement and later

 See Hans Heinrich Meyer, Stolpersteine in Berlin: Bornepfad 46. Deported on 1. 3.1943 and murdered in Auschwitz. The research for these stumbling stones, i. e. the histories of Hans Heinrich Meyer and his sister Gabriele, was undertaken by Eckhardt Rieke, who was kind enough to put all relevant documents at my disposal. I would like to take this opportunity to thank him.  Wilhelm Bramann, “Familie Coppel—dem Gemeinwohl verpflichtet,” in “…daß ich die Stätte meines Glückes vor meinem Tode verlassen müßte.”—Beiträge zur Geschichte des jüdischen Lebens in Solingen, (Leverkusen: Solinger Geschichtswerkstatt, 2000) 89 – 93.  See the entry on Martha Mosse in www.ghetto-theresienstadt.de (Theresienstadt 1941 – 1945— Ein Nachschlagewerk). Also Jens Dobler, Biographische Skizze zu Martha Mosse (Berlin: www.Lesbengeschichten.de, unter Buchstabe M.  See Hermann Hagen, Stolpersteine in Berlin: “Waitzstr. 27. Deported on 27. 5.1942, murdered 28.5.1942.

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Figure 3: Alexander Coppel. Photo: Stadtarchiv Solingen, RS 20007

murdered in Ravensbrück.⁶ Intermarriage at the time offered no protection from persecution. That was the moment my grandmother, in total despair, decided to commit suicide. After a lifetime spent assiduously hiding the fact of her parent’s and step-mother’s suicides, she must surely have felt that the historical fate of her family had come back to haunt her. Her decision prompted my grandfather, the lawyer, to set about concocting an ingenious legal fiction. Since the Nurem-

 See Bramann, “Familie Coppel,” 89 – 93. Stumbling stones on the Kurfürstenstrasse 8, Berlin, for Anna Reche and her sister Martha Fanny Coppel.

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Figure 4: Hildegard Meyer (Schmidt). Private property Christoph Schmidt

berg racial laws inferred Jewish descent primarily from the father’s line, Walter Schmidt decided to use the tragic suicides of his wife’s parents as the basis for construing a story of marital tragedy. According to that tragedy, not only was Prof. Edmund Meyer deemed to have betrayed his wife Elise with his patients, but his wife on her part was said to have entered into an extra-marital affair with the artist Wilhelm Lukas von Cranach (1861– 1918), a so-called blemishless Aryan, who was a close mutual family friend as well as a direct descendant of the artist and friend of Martin Luther of the same name. Walter Schmidt’s story of marital deception was devised in order to create an Aryan father for his wife. He only had to persuade the former Meyer-family housekeeper, Miss Auguste Garke, who had presumably lived with my grandparents, to give a false testimony

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in court. Thirty years after the event, the housekeeper would reveal a supposed confessional secret about the adultery of her former employer, Elise Meyer, shortly before the latter’s suicide. According to the confession, Elise Meyer had not only taken revenge on her unfaithful husband by committing adultery with their mutual friend, but the affair had resulted in a daughter, Hildegard. The “racial-biological investigation” requested by the court would hopefully defer a possible deportation and win time. In a sleight of hand, my grandfather managed to turn the onerous family suicides into acts of salvation, a kind of therapy. The details of how all this was possible, at a time when the Schmidts, forewarned by a well-disposed policeman, often had to flee their small villa on Charlottenburg’s Lindenallee 7 in the middle of the night, either to hide or to escape from bombardments by the Allied forces, came to light after the war in a memoir that Walter Schmidt shared among his Jewish friends. After my brother Niklas Schmidt managed to track down all the documents pertaining to the court statements and the racial-biological investigation, I was actually able to peruse the various scenes in this theater of the absurd. Since the morbid racial investigation could only be based on documents and photographs —the heroes of the tragedy being long dead—Dr. Schäuble, the doctor in Freiburg entrusted with the investigation, made his diagnosis on the basis of a comparison of the shape of the cranium, face, ears, and lips of my grandmother, her parents, and her alleged lover Dr. Wilhelm Lukas von Cranach. As the Institute of Racial Biology had been badly damaged in a bombing, the verdict only arrived in Berlin close to the war’s end: Cranach was deemed the likely father-out-of-wedlock of Hildegard Schmidt. The Nazi doctor was clearly thinking of his future career when he made that fictitious diagnosis! After the war, my grandparents settled in Düsseldorf and presumably never talked about this fictitious marital tragedy for the simple reason that it would have exposed the history of the suicides. On top of that, my grandfather’s mother, Margarethe Mann, had also taken her life when fleeing Russian troops in 1945. After his forced labor and period in hiding, my father completed his high school examinations and went to Geneva and Philadelphia to study medicine. It was a time of reconstruction and amnesia that had to be decreed from above, not only in the context of the prevailing spirit of restoration.

Time Travel It was only after the death of my father, in 2005, when I was slowly drawn into the remarkable adventure of investigating my own family history and was able to lift the dark curtain shrouding my great-grandparents’ past, that I unwittingly

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found myself in a sort of wonderland. The deeper I entered the time tunnel, the more incredible and fantastic it became. But this wonderland—which encompassed the villa of the secret consistorial councillor Joel Wolff Meyer (1797– 1869)—also offered insight into hidden abysses, which would possibly elucidate the mystery of the family suicides. Who would have thought that given such common Jewish names as Meyer and Levy, it would be remotely possible to penetrate the fog of contemporary history? But it soon became apparent that these names belonged to prominent families, namely, to the Levy banking family, which turned up in Cologne in the middle of the nineteenth century, seemingly out of thin air, and quickly set about advancing economically; and to the Meyer family from Berlin, whose forebears were among the Jews expelled from Vienna in 1671, purveyors of a flourishing silk factory from the eighteenth century who not only were consistorial councillors to the Prussian king, but who also played an important role on the board of the Berlin Jewish community. Unlike the venerable Meyer family, which was in economic decline by the close of the nineteenth century, the banking family of Hermann Levy, Elise Levy’s father, was just reaching its economic zenith at that point.⁷ Through his marriage to Johanna Coppel (1832 – 1902), daughter of the steel industrialist Alexander Coppel (1795 – 1878) from Solingen, Hermann Levy (1825 – 1873) considerably augmented his fortune. By the time of this marriage, the Coppels⁸ were not only supplying the German Emperor with weapons—there is an actual record of a conversation between Gustav Coppel and Emperor Wilhelm II⁹—but were manufacturing weapons for the world market. Bismarck himself is said to have intervened on behalf of the interests of the Coppel industry over an outstanding debt with Egypt.¹⁰ Through his marriage to industrialist Emma Hagen (whose family name he assumed), Louis Levy (1855 – 1932), an older brother of Elise Levy, became one

 See Werner Eugen Mosse, Jews in the German Economy: The German-Jewish Economic Elite 1820 – 1935 (Oxford: Claredon Press, 1987), 233 – 35.  Bramann, “Familie Coppel,” 80.  Bramann, “Familie Coppel,” 81. “[Emperor] Wilhelm commented most graciously on the matter: We were always highly satisfied with our suppliers. But you are in addition polite, despite the fact that you manufacture weapons, granted that we live in a time of peace. Councilor of Commerce Mr Coppel replied that we all rejoiced in the peace and understood perfectly well that his Majesty was to thank for it.”  Bramann, “Familie Coppel,” 79. In 1890, Gustav Coppel and partners from the firm Weyersberg and W. R. Kirschbaum traveled to Egypt to take on an exceptionally large order. It was completed. Payment was, however, not forthcoming, and it was only thanks to the personal mediation of Prince Bismarck that the matter was settled several years later.

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of the richest entrepreneurs in the Weimer Republic. After converting to Catholicism, he joined the Center Party in Cologne and was a close friend of the incumbent mayor, Konrad Adenauer, who subsequently delivered his eulogy.¹¹ Louis Levy Hagen was also one of the best-known patrons of the arts in the Weimer Republic.¹² Among other things, he funded Lotte Reiniger’s wonderful animated film “The Adventures of Prince Ahmed.” Fanny Levy (1860 – 1937), one of Elise’s sisters, married into the Kempner banking family, which was related to the Mendelssohn banking dynasty. Her son Max Kempner married Margarethe von Mendelssohn, the great-granddaughter of the banker Josef Mendelssohn, who was the fifth son of philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. The origins of the family of my great-grandfather, Edmund Meyer, can be traced back considerably further, namely, to the beginnings of the Jewish community in Berlin in the year 1671,¹³ when the Riess and Veith dynasties, expelled from Vienna, were taken in by the Great Elector in Berlin. Edmund Meyer was not only a direct descendant of the legendary Rabbi Model Halevi Riess (d. 1674) and his son Elias Wiener Riess (1650 – 1713), who was married to a sister of Glückel of Hameln, but he was also a direct descendant of the Chief Rabbi of Kurmark Brandenburg/Pommern, Rabbi Isaak Benjamin Wolff, the brother of court Jew Jost Liebmann, known as Juda Berliner, who together with his wife Esther Schulhof furnished the Elector with expensive jewellery.¹⁴ Rabbi Isaak Benjamin Wolff’s son-in-law was the famous Berlin rabbi Michel Chassid.¹⁵ The history of the Jewish community in Berlin actually begins with a kind of feud between the court Jews and the Jews expelled from Vienna, who at the time were competing for the favor of the Elector. To mark the two-hundredth anniversary of the Jewish community in 1871, Elieser Landshut composed the “Toldot Anshei HaShem,”¹⁶ in which he describes the beginnings of Berlin’s rabbinic families, to some degree to refute the official version set out in Ludwig Geiger’s

 See http://www.konrad-adenauer.de/dokumente/reden/1932-10 - 04-rede: Eulogy in the home of the late Dr. Louis Hagen in Cologne.  See Mosse, Jews in the German Economy, 10 – 12, 194– 95, 232– 33, 250 – 52.  See David Kaufmann, Die letzte Vertreibung der Juden aus Wien und Niederösterreich. Ihre Vorgeschichte (1625 – 1670) und ihre Opfer (Wien: C.Konegen, 1889), 206 – 20. Rachel Livne-Freudenthal, “Im Dunkel der Aufklärung,” in Juden in Berlin. Ein Lesebuch (Berlin: Oberbaum, 1988), 9 – 14.  See Selma Stern, Der Hofjude im Zeitalter des Absolutismus. Ein Beitrag zur europäischen Geschichte im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 47– 49  See Max Freudenthal, “R. Michel Chasid unf die Sabbatianer,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums (MGWJ) 76 (1932): 370 – 85.  Elieser Landshut, Toldot Anshei HaShem BeEdat Berlin. BeEt Hiwasda BeShnat 1671 ad Shnat 1871 (Berlin: Poppelauer, 1883).

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history of the Jews of Berlin,¹⁷ which treated these beginnings as mere background to Moses Mendelssohn, whose appearance was said to mark the real beginning of the Jewish community and to herald the glories of Jewish culture and the Enlightenment. In impeccable Hebrew, Landshut describes the tribulations of these early years that had a direct bearing on the Meyers’ ancestors.¹⁸ In 1697, Rabbi Koppel Riess, another son of the ageing Model Riess, had succeeded for the first time in procuring authorization from the Great Elector to build a synagogue, a matter that so incensed the court Jew Juda Berliner¹⁹ and his formidable wife Esther Schulhof that they then inveigled the Elector to grant them permission to build their own synagogue! Naturally, this second synagogue had to be erected immediately adjacent to the Riess clan’s temple on Heidenreutter Street. Only considerably later, after the death of the robust Esther Schulhof, who had meanwhile fallen out of favor with the Elector’s successor, was a settlement reached between the two feuding factions, which led to the building of a shared synagogue on the same street and was later reflected in the families’ marital arrangements. Two generations later, the two families of Model Riess and Isaak Benjamin Wolff were amalgamated into one. Since Glückel of Hameln (1645 – 1724) had dealings with Juda Berliner (1640 – 1701) and his wife Esther Schulhof (1645 – 1714) over commercial matters, and was also connected with the Riess clan—her sister Mate was married to Elias Riess Wiener, her son Loeb Hameln to the daughter of Elias Wiener Riess’ brother Hirschel—her memoirs are dotted with piquant and amusing stories about the two families. She describes not only the honors showered on her by her former business acquaintance Juda Berliner at the marriage of her son Loeb, but also the harsh business practices of the Riess family from which she hoped to spare her son Loeb who, as mentioned above, had married a daughter of Hirschel Riess, who was the brother of Elias Riess Wiener!²⁰ But she repeatedly

 Ludwig Geiger, Geschichte der Juden in Berlin (Berlin: Zolt Hansebooks, 1871). This tendency becomes a principle in Amos Elon, Requiem Germani. Jehudim BeGermania Lifne Hitler 1743 – 1933 (Or Jehuda: Dvir, 2004). The history of the Jews in Berlin begins with the arrival in the city of Moses Mendelssohn. There is no rabbinic background, just as no rabbi is mentioned thereafter. In this particular case, they have fallen victim to a secular historiography.  Elon, Requiem Germani, 6.  See Max Freudenthal, Aus der Heimat Mendelssohns—Moses Benjamin Wulff und seine Familie: die Nachkommen Moses Isserles (Berlin: F.Lederer, 1900). For an account of the ruthless battle that Jost Liebmann, alias Juda Berliner, fought against the court Jews and rivals of Moses Benjamin Wulff, see 29 – 31.  Glückel von Hameln, Denkwürdigkeiten (Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1987), 185 – 86. Later a trusted business friend shared the news with her that her son Loeb “owes his brother-in-law

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Figure 5: Bertha von Pappenheim, translator of The Memoirs of Glückel, in authentic costume as Glückel of Hameln.

stressed her great respect for the old rabbi Model Riess and his wife Pessel Mirels, who was a direct descendant of Vienna’s “Chief Rabbi” Abraham Halevi Heller Wallerstein and the famous Maharal of Prague. It is widely known what an admirable man Rabbi Model was, and that his devout wife Pessele was without equal in goodness in the whole world; since the time of the matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah, there has surely been no woman who surpasses her in godliness. Moreover, she was also a very industrious woman, conducting business and nourishing her husband and children amply, in Vienna and also later when they lived in Berlin. For Model Riess was always bed-bound and could do little business. But he was a man of exceptional wisdom, about whom the whole world knew, was also very popular with the Prince of Brandenburg. The latter once said: “If the man’s feet were like his head, he would have no equal!”²¹

Incidentally, these memoirs, as will later be revealed, are just a prelude to another, more dramatic literary relationship that will shed light on the Meyer family villa at the end of the nineteenth century. The chain of generations from Elias Wiener down to Edmund Meyer is actually quite easy to reconstruct thanks to Jacob Jacobson’s Heiratsbuch der

Model […] 4000 Taler and the latter is sitting in Loeb’s so-called vault, keeping watch; but he is a child and is not capable of doing so; he noshes, eats and drinks.”  Von Hameln, Denkwürdigkeiten, 146 – 47.

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Juden ²² and his Judenbürgerbüchern. ²³ In addition, these two documents, when read side by side, reveal astonishing affinities, since the Jewish families from Vienna and Berlin constantly intermarried. The daughter of Elias Wiener Riess and Glückel’s sister, Merle Riess, married the Hamburg banker Abraham Wulff Halle (d. 1755). Their daughter, who was also called Mate, married Levin Seligmann, who also called himself Meyer Jaffe (1715 – 1769). At the time, this Meyer Jaffe had a clothing business in Berlin, which his descendants later expanded to silk manufacturing. His brother, Benjamin Seligmann, was the grandfather of Saul Ascher (1767– 1822), a philosopher and proponent of the Jewish Enlightenment, who was not only one of the co-founders of the Jewish Reform Movement,²⁴ but whose polemical writings staunchly defended the ideals of the Enlightenment against national religious Romanticism and its “GermanoMania.”²⁵ The grandson of Levin Seligmann, Abraham Meyer Jaffe (1761– 1806), married Johanna Halberstadt, a great-aunt of the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791– 1864), and greatly expanded the business, bringing it considerable prestige. By the time his two sons, Wolff Meyer Wolff and Jacob Abraham Meyer, had reached maturity, the Meyer silk factory was already famed for its exquisite silk goods. The family business experienced its greatest economic success under the management of Wolff Meyer’s son, Joel Wolff Meyer (1797– 1869). The Meyers had long been supplying the royal and imperial courts of Europe; Joel Wolff Meyer, like his uncle Jakob Abraham Meyer, and his brothers, Philip and Israel Meyer, was appointed to secret consistorial councils of the Prussian court, a singular honor for a family, especially one, which adhered to Orthodox Judaism! A report by the Prussian Chief of Police dated October 25, 1843, describes the success of the Meyer clan:

 Jacob Jacobson, Jüdische Trauungen in Berlin 1759 – 1813 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1968).  Jacob Jacobson, Die Judenbürgerbücher der Stadt Berlin 1805 – 1851 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1961).  Saul Ascher, Bemerkungen über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden (Berlin: Greven 2016, ursprünglich, 1788). Saul Ascher, Leviathan oder über Religion in Rücksicht des Judentums (Berlin: Franke, 1792). Here Ascher, in principle, anticipates the consequences for Judaism, which Kant was later to draw from the Ethics of Autonomy in his 1793 Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft for a rational Christianity. Saul Ascher, Eisenmenger der Zweite (Berlin: C. Hartmann, 1794). In this book, Ascher defines the phenomenon of modern political antisemitism which he perceives in Kant and Fichte’s philosophical view of Judaism and which replaces religious anti-Judaism.  Saul Ascher, Die Germanomanie. Skizze in einem Zeitgemälde (Berlin:Achenwall und Com., 1815).

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Figure 6: Abraham Meyer Jaffe and his wife Johanna Halberstadt.

Figure 7: Wolff Abraham Meyer and his wife Henriette Riess.

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Figure 8: Caroline Hirschfeld (left), wife of Joel Wolff Meyer (right). In October last year his Majesty the King deigned to accept an armchair trimmed with silk from the Meyer brothers’ factory, and to bestow upon the factory the medal of golden homage. The Meyer brothers likewise enjoyed the highest praise for and appreciation of their products by the Empress of Russia and the Emperor of Austria, whose valuable gifts signaled their profoundest satisfaction with the works of silk dedicated to them.²⁶

Edmund Meyer’s grandfather, Joel Wolff Meyer (pictured above), a cousin of Saul Ascher and Giacomo Meyerbeer, was a moderately Orthodox Jew. As head of the Jewish community of Berlin, he was also among the conservative champions of the bourgeois revolution, but insisted on the principle of constitutional monarchy against the radical anti-monarchical left in the Frankfurt parliament. His loyalty to the king did not prevent him in 1836 from complaining in an open letter on his majesty’s order that Jews should not use Christian surnames. This affair seems to have led to Leopold Zunz’ research on the “Names of the Jews” in 1837. As head of the community he corresponded with the founder of the Culturverein, of which he was a member of its board of directors. We find his name together with Leopold Zunz in the list of signatures under the statutes of the Cul-

 See Mosse, Jews in the German Economy, 99. See also Stefi Jersch-Wenzel, Jüdische Bürger und kommunale Selbstverwaltung in preussischen Städten (Berlin: DeGruyter, 1967), 57– 59.

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turverein from 1841. His descendants would later become involved with the creation and activity of the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums. Nevertheless the relations between the secret consistorial councillor Joel Wollf Meyer and the Prussian court were very close. As legend would have it, during the revolutionary turmoil unleashed in Berlin in 1848, the councillor is said to have driven the Prince Regent in his own coach from the royal villa to his splendid villa in the Tiergarten, which had been built for him in 1839!²⁷ On the Jewish holidays, Joel Wolff Meyer’s family always received a special gift from the court. A letter from the Emperor to the Meyer family, in which the former thanks them for their generous financial support during the Franco-German war, confirms the intimate character of their relations, which undoubtedly served the interests of both parties. The president of the congregation was also among the founders of the great synagogue on Oranienburger Street, whose oriental dome not only competed with the Protestant cathedral churches on the Gendarmenmarkt, but was also supposed to proclaim the glory of the Berlin Jewish community and the holy covenant between Torah and throne. “It is a building that conjures up the miracles of the Orient in the midst of the modern prosaic world,” the Illustrated Berlin newspaper later stated, “a temple in the noblest Byzantine style, the prayer house of our fellow citizens of the Mosaic faith.”²⁸ Joel Wolff Meyer’s son, the royal councillor Siegmund Joel Meyer (1830 – 1903), and father of Edmund Meyer, was both the head of the Berlin community as well as a supporter of the Jewish Reform Movement, in whose spirit the synagogue was inaugurated in 1866. Siegmund Joel Meyer, together with his close friend Hermann Makower, was also involved in the creation and the activity of the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums. On the 6th of May 1872 he delivered the festive speech at the opening event of the Hochschule. From 1877 to 1883 he was member of its Kuratorium. In 1895, Siegmund Meyer donated the splendid red parochet (ark curtain) to the synagogue with gold-embroidered verses from the psalms, which can currently be seen in the Centrum Judaicum in the synagogue building. The verses from the psalms with which the royal councillor adorned his parochet and which proclaim God’s righteousness and justice were carefully chosen. For at  See Margarete Mauthner, Das verzauberte Haus (Berlin: Arche, 2004), 91– 92: “On that day Councillor of Commerce Meyer, disguised as a coachman, had come to take the Prince Regent, whose life was in danger at that critical time, and driven him to his villa during the night.”  Herrmann Simon, ed., Tuet auf die Pforten. Die Neue Synagoge 1866 – 1995 (Berlin: Centrum Judaica, 1995), 17– 18.

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Figure 9: “Donated by Siegmund Meyer, son of Joel Wolff Meyer – In commemoration of the anniversary of his presidency of the community, Tevet Tarnah, January 1895.” Courtesy of Centrum Judaicum, Berlin (Von Simon, Tuet auf die Pforten, 96 – 97)

the same time as praising God’s majesty and glory, they also conferred political and religious glory on the Berlin Jewish community. I found Siegmund Joel Meyer’s dedication to his father, Joel Wolff Meyer, particularly poignant. The text of the dedication on the parochet is written in German, but it is embroidered in golden Hebrew letters. It clearly invokes an open form of assimilation, a symbiosis of the two cultures, which should retain their independence even where they are merged into one. This dedication from the year 1895 was thus more than a symbol of the glory of the alliance between politics and religion so important to the Meyer family. The King, his Prime Minister Bismarck, and many other prominent notables from Berlin attended the opening ceremony of the synagogue in 1866.²⁹ It was clear that the curtains of the ark were intended to conjure up this grandiose al See the report in the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums (AZJ), September 18, 1866, 604: “The stately, glorious three-paneled room was filled with members of the Jewish community and invited guests. Among the latter, we noted Minister President v. Bismarck, Minister v.d. Heydt, Count Wrangel, the police president v. Bernuth […].” Von Simon, Tuet auf die Pforten, 15. The King and his wife had visited the synagogue a year prior to its opening.

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liance at a time when the first waves of antisemitism had long since rolled in, and the royal councillor and president of the community, after initial resistance, felt compelled to surrender to the founding of a Jewish Central Union. He also saw that the fight against antisemitism could no longer be left to German friends and allies. His optimistic prognosis that “the evil will sort itself out” had proven to be wrong.³⁰ The atmosphere in the villa reflected the spirit of this splendid alliance of Torah and throne. Thus, the white porcelain bust of King Frederick William IV was said to have stood alongside a large silver menorah in the grand drawing room. The memoirs of Margarethe Mauthner (1865 – 1909),³¹ a cousin of Edmund Meyer who was married to a nephew of the famous philosopher Fritz Mauthner, describe how the royal councillor Siegmund Joel Meyer would appear between menorah and royal bust and recite the Passover prayers in a fear-inducing voice: “Only when Uncle Siegmund, who was highly regarded in juridical circles and by the Jewish community, and was somewhat feared by the family for his aloof stance, raised his powerful voice and introduced the religious festival with a few short words before the meal […] would silence descend upon the table.”³² When in a “resonant voice” he then recited the Hebrew prayer, everyone knew “that complete harmony now reigned in the family circle.”³³ The royal councillor and the president of the Jewish community used to sign official documents with the abbreviation S. M., which, of course, stood for Siegmund Meyer, but was often read ironically by members of the community as the insignia of the Emperor “His Majesty” (“Seiner Majestät”).³⁴ This photo, taken in the villa by a court photographer, shows Siegmund Joel Meyer’s seven children, Edmund Meyer and his siblings: self-aware, well-dressed and well-bred Jewish princes and princesses. In fact, the Meyer clan had long been in economic decline and the royal councillor worked hard to ensure that his children would marry into families of the burgeoning economic elite. The

 See Jacob Borut, Ruach Chadascha beKerew Acheinu BeAschkenas—HaMifne beDarka Schel Jahadut Germania BeSof HaMeah HaTescha Essre (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1999), 82. The author describes Siegmund Joel Meyer’s reluctance to pursue a strategy of Jewish “segregation.” Borut, Ruach Chadascha, 154– 55.  Mauthner, Das verzauberte Haus.  Ibid., 109.  Ibid., 111.  See Hedwig Witkowsky’s memoirs of her grandfather Siegmund Joel Meyer, which were graciously placed at my disposal by her granddaughter Barabara Ford (Sidney): “Siegmund Meyer was certainly most strict in his management of matters of the Jewish community for his close circle often called him ‘S. M.’ after the initials of his signature (the Emperor at the time was also referred to as S. M.).” Hedwig Witkowsky is the daughter of Emil Mosse and Gertrud Meyer.

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Figure 10: Top row: Else, Edmund, and Heinrich Meyer. Bottom row: Alice, Gertrud, Caroline, and Ada Meyer. Private property Christoph Schmidt.

names of his children together with their spouses can be found in the long death notice of their father, which appeared in 1903 on the first page of Rudolph Mosse’s Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums.³⁵ The royal councillor arranged for two of his children to marry into the banking family of Levy Coppel; two other children married into the publishing family of Rudolph Mosse. His son Edmund married Elise Levy, while his daughter Else Meyer married the founder of modern social work, Albert Levy.³⁶ Edmund’s older sister Caroline Meyer (1859 – 1934) married constitutional lawyer Albert Mosse (1846 – 1925), while Gertrud Meyer (1862– 1937) married his brother Emil Mosse (1854– 1911), both brothers of Rudolph Mosse, who at the time was building

 AZJ (Rudolf Mosse Verlag, Berlin), March 13, 1903, 1.  See Sabine Hering and Richard Münchmeier, Geschichte der sozialen Arbeit. Eine Einführung (München: Beltz Juventa, 2000), 245 – 46; and Helene Simon, “Albert Levy. Werk und Persönlichkeit,” in Deutsche Zeitschrift für Wohlfahrtspflege 7:12 (1932): 636 – 72. Albert Levy’s reflections on Joel Wolff Meyer are published in the AZJ 2 (1895): 18 – 20.

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his publishing empire.³⁷ This kind of double marriage had for centuries been part and parcel of Jewish marital policy, in the same way as Margarethe Mauthner’s brother Carl Alexander married into the Mauthner family. Like these marriages, that of Prof. Edmund Meyer and Elise Levy was also arranged in the style of the Wilhelminian high bourgeoisie. It, too, was a marriage that symbolized an intersection of epochs, between time-honored tradition and the spirit of modern enterprise, between religion and modernity, between the Wilhelminian and Weimar eras, but also between bourgeois tradition and an avant-garde spirit of artistic and erotic rebellion so typical of the fin-de-siècle and decadence. Edmund Meyer was still acting as doctor to the Shah of Persia and the King of Spain, sent on orders of the Emperor, when his brother-in-law Albert Mosse was invited to Tokyo by the Japanese Minister of the Interior to draw up the Constitution of the Meidji government along the lines of the Prussian model. The exchange of letters between Albert and Caroline (“Line”) Mosse³⁸ and their father (in-law) Siegmund Joel Meyer reflects the unbroken family spirit which this Jewish-Wilhelminian coalition still sought to embody even after the constitutional lawyer, and later the head of the Kuratorium of the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (1914– 1923), was refused a professorial position in Berlin on the grounds of his Judaism. The founder of modern surgery, James Israel (1848 – 1925), another cousin of Edmund Meyer, was sent by the Emperor to Constantinople in 1915 to treat the ill Sultan Mohammed V in the spirit of the Turkish-German coalition.³⁹ His diary from Constantinople is a vivid and amusing testimony to the glory of this epoch. This world travel in the service of the Emperor reflects a new dimension to life where the limits and concepts of familiar culture spilled over into seeming infinity; such an overstepping of boundaries was to find its parallel in the avant-garde developments taking place in the artistic world at that time.⁴⁰

 See Elisabeth Kraus, Die Familie Mosse. Deutsch-jüdisches Bürgertum im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (München: C.H.Beck, 1999), especially the chapters III 2b: “Albert Mosse. Staatsbürger – Weltbürger–Ehrenbürger,” 200 – 40, and III 2c: “Emil und seine Brüder,” 241– 80.  Albert and Lina Mosse, Fast wie mein eigen Vaterland. Briefe aus Japan (1886 – 1889) (München: Judicium, 1999).  See James Israel, “Meine Reise zum Sultan. 10. Juni bis 3. August 1915. Tagebuchblätter des Chirurgen und Urologen,” Serie Jüdische Memoiren, ed. Hermann Simon (Potsdam: Hentrich u. Hentrich, 2006)  Richard Hamann, Impressionismus (Berlin: Academia, 1960), 28 – 32 points to the connection between art and the cultural-political Zeitgeist, represented as a “Flight from the personal Void”: Count Kayserling wrote his Reisetagebuch eines Philosophen (1919) under the paradoxical motto: “The shortest way to the Self leads around the world.” “For many people, travel, namely the Impressionistic exchange of impressions, becomes the real principle of life. Nearly every stay of

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Figure 11: James Israel. Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.

Figure 12: Albert Mosse. Private property Christoph Schmidt.

some duration gives rise to a feeling of horrific emptiness, and for this reason one strives never to ‘arrive,’ in order not to have to confront oneself. Consider the itinerary of the young Rilke, who traveled to Russia, Spain, Italy, and Egypt, who tried to live in Worpswede, Berlin, Munich, Paris, Istria, and Switzerland, until he finally locked himself into a towering solitude. […] The majority of people traveled overseas and their travel reports poured out in a metaphoric flood whose tropical abundance contained something exceptionally stimulating: think of Waldemar Bronsels’ India books, the India poems of the young Hermann Hesse, or Dauthendey’s verse cycle Die geflügelte Erde (1910) in which he recounts his impressions of Egypt, India, Japan, and America in marvellous colorful pictures.”

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Figure 13: Albert and Emil Mosse with Caroline and Gertrud Mosse. Private property Christoph Schmidt.

Wilhelm Lucas von Cranach and possibly also the sculptor Hugo Reinhold (1853 – 1900), the husband of Elise Levy’s sister Emma Levy, were instrumental in introducing Edmund Meyer and Elise Levy to the circle of Secession artists around Paul Cassirer’s gallery, in which two of Edmund Meyer’s cousins were to play a significant role. The aforementioned Margarethe Mauthner organized one of the first Van Gogh exhibitions in the gallery and translated Van Gogh’s letters into German.⁴¹ Another cousin, Martha Heimann (1874– 1949), studied painting with Lovis Corinth and had several scandalous love affairs, including  Vincent van Gogh, Briefe, ed. Margarete Mauthner (Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1918).

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one with the gallery owner Paul Cassirer himself, before marrying the novelist Robert Musil after two earlier marriages. In their memoirs, Margarethe Mauthner and Martha Musil not only described the artistic milieu of the Secession, but also hinted at a connection between that milieu and the events taking place in the backrooms of Joel Wolff Meyer’s castle-villa. The official coalition between throne and Torah, which in the era of his son, Siegmund Joel Meyer, had already become brittle, was showing the first signs of an inner turbulence closely bound up with the milieu of the Secession. It was apparent that this milieu was not just characterized by a rebellion against all bourgeois moral values, but represented something like the secret internal side of that same culture: the radically ruthless spirit embodied in the transgression of all values and the erotic-aesthetic adventurism which conquered new territory of the ego corresponded only too closely with the imperial expansionism and colonialism of the Wilhelminian epoch, which at that time raised the claim for world domination. While Siegmund Joel Meyer was still able to defend himself against the antisemitic stormwaves that broke into the idyll of the villa, the aristocratic way of life was less equipped to deal with the storms taking place in the backrooms. Margarethe Mauthner recorded the signs and symptoms of this upheaval, seemingly by mistake, in her reflections on the idyll of the villa. In fact, art belonged to the lifestyle of the old patriarch Joel Wolff Meyer, who was probably in part responsible for the fact that his cousin, the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, was appointed conductor of the Prussian court in 1842. Julius Stern,⁴² a son-in-law of the Meyer clan, was not only the founder of the Berlin Sing Academy of Music, but also a composer and conductor, whose friends at the time included Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn, Giacomo Meyerbeer, and Hector Berlioz, and who acquainted Berlin audiences with the operas of Richard Wagner. This did not contradict the fact that he was also occasionally the conductor of the choir in the Oranienburger synagogue! A cousin of Joel Wolff, Babette Meyer, married the artist Stanislaus von Kalckreuth and later opened a salon, which was frequented by politicians, artists, and art-lovers.⁴³ A brother of Siegmund Joel Meyer, Siegbert Meyer, who later took the nom de plume Siegmey, made a name for himself as a writer of popular stories and satirical poetry, including

 See Richard Stern, Erinnerungsblätter an Julius Stern (Leipzig: Selbstverlag, 1886). On the Stern Conservatory, see Cordula Heymann-Wentzel, “Das Sternsche Konservatorium für Musik in Berlin—ein privates Ausbildungsinstitut im Besitz Berliner jüdischer Familien,” in Musikwelten—Lebenswelten. Jüdische Identitätssuche in der deutschen Musikkultur, eds. Beatrix Borchard and Heidy Zimmermann (Köln: DeGruyter 2009), 251– 66.  See Petra Wilhelmy-Dollinger, Der Berliner Salon im 19. Jahrhundert (1780 – 1914) (Berlin: De Grutyer, 1989), 253 – 56.

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a verse on “The Popess Johanna”⁴⁴ and an amusing story in rhyme about the German Emperor,⁴⁵ in which this German patriot defends Bismarck’s policy against the Ultramontane Party. Of this Siegmey, Margarethe Mauthner writes that he not only had a disturbingly exuberant nature, but also that he suffered from an incurable disease, probably syphilis, and spent his last years in the villa.⁴⁶ This is also the setting for the scene in which an uncle of Margarethe Mauthner and Edmund Meyer, Benno Heimann, playing cards with the children in the living room, saw a carriage approaching and, thinking that it was bringing news of his bankruptcy, swallowed poison in an adjoining room.⁴⁷ This suicide was to cast a long shadow on the generation of Joel Wolf Meyer’s grandchildren, but especially on his daughter, Martha Heimann, who was to marry her cousin, Fritz Alexander (1870 – 1895) , the brother of Margarethe Mauthner, seeking to escape the confines of the villa and to lead an artistic bohemian life with him in Munich. As fate would have it, on a journey to Venice her husband was infected with cholera and died shortly afterwards on a final pilgrimage to Michelangelo’s statue of David in Florence. Margarethe Mauthner tried to transfigure this “death in Venice” avant la lettre aesthetically in the spirit of fin-de-siècle: In the afternoon, shortly before the terrible fever rendered him immobile, he and his wife had made the long journey across the Viale dei Colli to the Piazza Michelangelo, and had bathed their every pore with the sights of the flowering land, at the foot of the statue of David, about which he had once written […] His weakened organism was no longer able to withstand the renewed attack of the disease, and the terrible battle with death began […] On the evening of the 7th of November, Fritz gently fell asleep, resting like a beautiful marble statue among roses.⁴⁸

Martha Heimann-Alexander then took up her art studies with Lovis Corinth. After leaving her second husband, Enrico Marcovaldi, and after a love affair with the Secession gallery owner, Paul Cassirer, she married the novelist Robert Musil, who found literary inspiration in her love affairs and memoirs. After di-

 Siegbert Meyer, Die Päpstin. Höchst seltsame Historie so im 9. Jahrhundert passieret war (Berlin: Denicke, 1876).  Siegbert Meyer, Gereimte deutsche Kaisergeschichte (Leipzig: Westermann Staeglich, 1881). Siegbert Meyer also seems to have been a popular novelist. His numerous works include Moderne Cavaliere. Roman aus der Gegenwart (Berlin: Hartknod, 1876); Feuilletonistische Sticheleien (Berlin: Verlag der Stuhrschen Buch- und Kunstsammlung, 1871); and together with Duyffke, Die neue Odyssee. Tragikomödie einer Reise durch moderne Culturgebiete (Berlin: Denicke, 1880).  Mauthner, Das verzauberte Haus, 153.  Ibid., 106 – 7.  Ibid., 222.

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vorcing his wife, Paul Cassirer became friendly with the actress Tilla Durieux, but committed suicide when she, too, left him. Suicide was as much part of the Secessionists’ lifestyle as their aesthetic and erotic experimentation. The world travel of Edmund Meyer, Albert Mosse, and James Israel had long found its counterpart in the creative expeditions of these artistic natures, whose escapades, overstepping of boundaries and aesthetic-erotic adventures conquered, as it were, new psychic territory of the ego. These experiments in the name of intense experience lent the artistic life of these egomaniacs a kind of ruthlessness and compromiselessness in the search for happiness. In any case, they preferred suicide to the boring bourgeois life of Mr. Average! “Believe me,” says one of Wedekind’s heroes in Totentanz (1905), “that for more than half a century I have retained nothing more in this world than the unselfish worship of this one happiness that cries out from humanity’s throat, which, in the flood of all human sensation, compensates man for all the torments of existence.”⁴⁹ This was the counter-milieu and complementarity to the Wilhelminian culture in which the lives of the rebellious grandchildren of Joel Wolff Meyer, the generation of Edmund Meyer, played themselves out. According to Martha Heimann, this spirit was already palpable in the backrooms of the villa, where in their budding maturity the Meyer princes and princesses engaged in erotic, incestuous games. Robert Musil was no less fascinated by the overheated milieu of the artists’ circle than he was by the blunt erotic atmosphere in the villa, where he apparently met Martha Heimann-Alexander-Marcovaldi for the first time. His first novella, which became famous as The Seduction of Silent Veronica, was originally entitled The Enchanted House; the encounter it describes between Demeter and Victoria apparently reflects Robert Musil’s own encounter with Martha in Joel Wolff Meyer’s mysterious villa. Just as Martha Musil, the artist, always painted portraits of her husband, Musil repeatedly based the female characters in his works on his wife, delighting in recounting her life and love stories in literary form. Regine, from his play Die Schwärmer, is described as “an erotic with neurasthenic-hysterical underpinnings. Unable to see a man without wanting to seduce him,”⁵⁰ she was a “fragment of the liquid spark of creation.”⁵¹ The housekeeper, Miss Mertens, despairs

 Quoted from Hamann, Impressionismus, 40.  Robert Musil, “Die Schwärmer,” in Gesammelte Werke VI, ed. Adolf Frisé (Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1976, p 398.  Musil, “Die Schwärmer,” 399.

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at the thought of these swarmers; she can “do nothing with these volcanic people.” Robert Musil’s description of the utopian journey of Ulrich, the man without qualities, and his twin sister Agathe to Paradise, is based not only on the autobiographical notes of Martha and Fritz Alexander’s death journey and on his own trip to Italy with Martha Musil, but it transforms that journey into a norm- and moral-shattering adventure of sexual incest. The double reflection in portrait form was a kind of narcissistic prelude à deux to a last ecstatic fusion of man and woman, a total symbiosis of life and art, biography and literature, in which the Wagnerian idyll of the incestuous relationship of Siegmund and Sieglinde is elevated to the model of a heavenly life. This was the “other state” which Musil repeatedly celebrated in his novel, in which mechanical logic was to be suspended by mystical erotic intuition. Insofar as this fusion in a mutual literary “bio-graphy,” that is, in “life-writing,” represented not only the erotic union of man and woman, but of the German man Robert Musil and the Jewish woman Martha Musil, it might seem like a radicalized version and reversal of the golden dedication on the parochet of Siegmund Joel Meyer, in which the German language spelled out in Hebrew letters still symbolized the cultural exterior of this idea of a total fusion. Sexual incest as a cultural symbol for a supreme historical happiness that is doomed to remain without any possible future? It seems as if nothing could follow this hermaphroditic utopia but stasis and death. In this sense Ulrich, the man without qualities, proclaims the matter of what he would do if he were to take on world government: “There would be nothing left for me to do but abolish reality.” This reality was in fact abolished for the first time in World War I. In fact, Martha Musil was something like the Queen of the Night, and at the same time a key figure in the family saga of the Joel Wolff Meyer dynasty from Berlin. With her erotic-aesthetic escapades, she represents the end of this family’s Wilhelminian glory, while on the other hand this glory and her inner vision are only known through her own memories. We owe a debt of gratitude to Musil biographer Karl Corino,⁵² whose research offers insight into the biographical connections with events in the life of Musil’s wife Martha and her literary presence in his work.

 Karl Corino, Robert Musil. Leben und Werk in Bildern (Hamburg Rowohlt, 1988); Karl Corino, Robert Musil. Eine Biographie (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 2003). In the afterword to Mauthners memoirs, whose publication he initiated, Corino briefly recapitulated the essential biographical connections between Musil and the Joel Wolff Meyer family, p. 239 – 273

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Figure 14: Robert and Martha Musil with friends, on the ground Franz Blei. Proof of Origin: Karl Corino.

Contrary to the case of The Memoirs of Glückel of Hameln, in which I read about the family dramas of my early forebears without realizing it, the discovery of references to Robert Musil and Martha Marcovaldi’s life came as a total shock to me. For decades I had been an enthusiastic admirer of Musil’s work. Not only had I read and re-read all his novels, but I also knew his biography very well. In light of Corino’s discovery, this reverence turned into an almost uncanny sense of déjà vu. I had, without ever knowing it, long been familiar with the villa and its milieu, which in fact turned out to be the wonderland of my own family history, that of the Joel Wolff Meyer family. With this revelation, I had the impression that the ground was being swept from under my feet, as if I were falling out of my real

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Figure 15: Lovis Corinth, Portrait of Conrad Ansorge 1903. Proof of Origin: Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München, Dauerleihgabe der Münchener Secession.

life and, like Alice in Wonderland, being pulled into the deep shaft of a magical landscape of the past. Of course, this eccentric milieu does not explain the suicides of Edmund Meyer, Elise Levy, and Rosalie Heimann. It can only illuminate the stage against whose background they occurred. Edmund Meyer and his wife were not only connected to this milieu through Margarethe Mauthner, Martha Musil, and their close friend, Lukas von Cranach; their son, Max Meyer (1890 – 1958), was to marry the daughter of Conrad Ansorge (1862– 1930), a famous composer and pianist of the fin-de-siècle era. Lovis Corinth painted a beautiful portrait of this artist.

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Figure 16: Walter Schmidt. Private property Christoph Schmidt.

Ultimately the suicides remain inexplicable, puzzling, and sinister. Like menacing characters in a threatening omen, they seem to hint at the two catastrophes of the century. Elise Levy took her own life in 1916, in the middle of World War I. Edmund Meyer and his second wife, Rosalie Heimann, committed suicide two years before the National Socialists seized power, in 1931. My grandfather, Walter Schmidt, labored to construe a bourgeois marital tragedy out of these suicides. Like Odysseus seeking to outwit the man-eating Polyphemus, he sought to put an end to the system’s death-machine with its own weapons.

Epilogue My journey into the wonderland of Joel Wolff Meyer was to bring to light numerous other notable and strange relatives, who, like Martha Musil and Glückel of Hameln, intersected in a mysterious way with my (intellectual) biography. The philosopher Saul Ascher and the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, cousins of Joel Wolff Meyer, have already been mentioned. The famous art historian Erwin Panofski now became a family member in the Meyer-Mosse coalition.

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The author of numerous books on Dürer,⁵³ iconography, and perspective,⁵⁴ this theorist of art⁵⁵ was married to Dora Mosse,⁵⁶ daughter of Albert Mosse and Caroline Meyer, and taught at Princeton after their emigration. The Levy clan also gave rise to memorable family members. Thus Emma Jeanette Levy, the daughter Else Meyer and Albert Levy, founder of modern social work, married the wellknown classical scholar and historian of medicine, Ludwig Edelstein,⁵⁷ who taught in Boston after he had emigrated. A new Queen of the Night was to make her appearance on the family stage: the shrill and iconoclastic Nina Hagen, Queen of German rock and punk, whose great-grandfather Carl Levy Hagen was a brother of Elise Levy, and whose grandparents were murdered in Bergen-Belsen. As if reality had taken on another layer, I would at some point discover that many of the personalities I knew and admired actually belonged to the magic family circle of Joel Wolff Meyer. I would have liked to tell my father, who had no idea of his family history and remained ashamed of his own Jewish ancestry until shortly before his death, something about these legendary ancestors. For a Mischling like my father, the son of a Jewish mother whose own life had no Jewish orientation, Judaism represented infinite vulnerability and impotence, which he on the one hand preferred to bury behind a facade of German normality and a brilliant career as professor of paediatrics at the University of Düsseldorf, and which on the other hand imbued him with a special sensitivity towards other national or religious forms of identity. He was able to turn his “non-identity” into a special cosmopolitan strength, a humble mentality of pluralistic worldliness, which I repeatedly encountered in other forebears, whether they were “Orthodox,” “Reform,” “assimilated” or “converted.” As a non-historian, I have often asked myself how the history of these families should be told. The common categories of German Jewish historiography, which so often repeat the history of the Jewish Enlightenment, emancipation,

 Ervin Panofsky, Albrecht Dürer (Princeton University Press, 1943).  Ervin Panofsky, The Iconography of Correggio’s Camera di San Paolo (London: Warburg Institute, 1961); Ervin Panofsky, Perspective as a Symbolic Form (New York: MIT Press, 1991).  Ervin Panofsky, Idea: A concept an Art Theory (Columbia: Icon, 1968).  See Dora and Erwin Panofsky, Pandora’s Box: The Changing Aspects of a Mythical Symbol (New York: Princeton University Press, 1965). This book was apparently not only a co-production, but probably also encapsulated a kind of code, in that “Pan—dora” represents a fusion of “Pan” (= Ofski) and “Dora.”  Ludwig Edelstein, Ancient Medicine (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); Ludwig Edelstein, The Meaning of Stoicism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966); Ludwig Edelstein, Plato’s Seventh Letter (Leiden: Brill, 1966). With his wife Emma Jeannete Edelstein he published Asclepius (Ayer: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975).

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Figure 17: M. Giacomo Meyerbeer / engraved by D.J. Pound; from a photograph by Mayall. Proof of Origin: Bibliotheque nationale de France.

secularization, civic education, assimilation, loss of identity, and catastrophe, seem to be in danger of glossing over the glory and glamor of this colorful world, alongside its decay. These common categories, whose repetition suggests evidence, turn these magical pictures into boring, sad black-and-white images on which the dark shadow of historical denouement, the extermination of the Jews, has left its mark. This black-and-white schematization extinguishes the individuality and singularity of these people; they become characters in a pre-programmed historical process. As a descendant of this amazing family history, I find it impossible to accept those narratives that describe this history as one of loss of identity, as if the cat-

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Figure 18: Nina Hagen. Photographer: Richard Mey. Proof of Origin: Nina Hagen.

astrophe had something to do with assimilation and the resulting loss of Jewish identity, and not with the political process of imposing a nationalist identity on those who were opposed to such an appropriation and uniformity of identity.⁵⁸ This is not, however, the place to expand upon my uneasiness with the historiography of German-Jewish culture. Joel Wolff Meyer and his son, Siegmund Joel Meyer, were “assimilated” and, at the same time, proud Jews. They bore the consciousness of a kind of aristocratic Jewish dignity, even if and when they, as Joel Wolff Meyer wrote in a letter to “his” King, insisted on their right to bear German names!⁵⁹  Michael A. Meyer, The Origins of the Modern Jew: Jewish Identity and European Culture in Germany 1749 – 1824 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1967), 8. Meyer suggests that one speak of a plurality of identities, each of which places emphasis on a different element: “For the Jew in the modern world Jewishness forms only a portion of his total identity. By calling himself a Jew he expresses only one of multiple loyalties. And yet external pressure and internal attachment combine to make him often more aware of this identification than of others.”  See Dietz Bering, Der Name als Stigma. Antisemitismus im deutschen Alltag 1812 – 1933 (Stuttgart: Klett CottaState University, 1987). In the second chapter “The Battle for Christian Names” (in the abridged online version), Bering recounts Joel Wolff Meyer’s complaint against the Royal Decree of Frederick William III, issued in 1836, according to which Jews were not to be referred to as believers in the Mosaic faith, but as Jews, and were to be prevented from using Christian

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This national perspective appears to me to be even more disastrous when it describes “mixed marriage” and “mixed blood” as symptoms of a literal degeneration. It suffices to read Felix Theilhaber’s extreme and horrifying book, Decline of German Jewry, which claims to justify, supposedly scientifically, the spirit of the Zionist Renaissance. The tendency to hold mixed marriages and mixed blood progeny accountable for this national demise,⁶⁰ however exaggerated it is here, corresponded entirely to the general Zionist attitude. Not only were mixed marriages and mixed blood progeny the extreme cases in opposition to which the Nuremberg race laws were created, namely, the possibility of mixing the races, but they were a symptom of an aspect of the Enlightenment that sought to transcend national and familial boundaries in favor of a new cosmopolitanism, which the Nuremberg racial laws sought precisely to eradicate. names: “The merchant Joel Wolff Meyer drew his Majesty’s attention to the fact that many Christian fellow-citizens could interpret these words as contempt for the King’s Jewish citizens. The King then felt obliged to assure the appellant of royal recognition regardless of religious affiliation.” Leopold Zunz, Namen der Juden. Eine geschichtliche Untersuchung (Leipzig: L.Fort, 1837) traces the use of non-Jewish names over the generations and is clearly a direct response to this debate, especially since Joel Wolff Meyer was not only associated with Zunz, but was also a member of the Association for the Culture and Science of Judaism. See the correspondence between Joel Wolff Meyer and the other members of the association with Zunz, in Leopold Zunz Archive, http://www.jewish-archives.org/doc/home?lang=en, with ten letters of the board of the community, of which Joel Wolff Meyer was a member, to Leopold Zunz.  Felix A. Theilhaber, Der Untergang der deutschen Juden. Eine volkswirtschaftliche Studie (Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1921), and Felix A. Theilhaber, Die Schädigung der Rasse. Durch sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Aufstieg, bewiesen an den Berliner Juden (Berlin: Lamm, 1914). In 1912, Moritz Goldstein was already using very sharp language in “Deutsch jüdischer Parnass,” Kunstwart 25:11 (1912): 294: “Our enemies on the one side are the Germano-Christian Germanic idiots, who have turned the word Jew into a curse and term anything that derives from the Jews ‘Jewish’ in order to sully and diminish it, to render it suspicious […] On the other side are our even greater enemies, the Jews, who notice nothing, who blithely pursue German culture, who behave as if, and persuade themselves, that they are not recognized. They are our real enemies (!! C.S.), they are the people that need to be driven out from all-too-visible posts where they represent Jewry as a false type of Jew, they need to be silenced and gradually extirpated so that we other Jews can once again rejoice in our lives […].” This text from 1912 articulates ex extremis a Zionist stance that non-Jewish Jews always encounter with suspicion precisely because it takes away the right to individual self-determination, whose correlation would be a cosmopolitan understanding of society. It comes as no surprise that Goldstein wants to silence and extirpate this “type of Jew” because he seeks to incite a collective national Judaism against the national enemy of Judaism. Unlike Saul Ascher, whose Germano-mania recognized the Germano-Christian Germanic idiot and did battle in the name of the Enlightenment, Goldstein is an enemy not only of this nationalist German idiocy, but also adopts its Jewish counterfeit. The victim of both national fronts turns out to be the “bourgeois,” “naïve,” “blind,” non-Jewish Jew, the conceptual or even biological Mischling.

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It may be recalled that the debate about the Enlightenment in Germany was occasioned by the polemical article of a pastor who opposed mixed marriage (between Protestants and Catholics) and traced it back to the notorious Zeitgeist of the Enlightenment. The pastor ended his invective by asking: “What does Enlightenment mean?”⁶¹ It is by now commonly known that his polemical question inspired the famous debate on the meaning and aim of the Enlightenment in which Moses Mendelssohn and Immanuel Kant took part. In a strange way, both mixed marriages and mixed blood progeny were discredited from the perspective of national identitarian historiography even after the war, although in principle they seemed to be physical proof of the effectiveness of the Enlightenment, without the Enlightenment ever having elevated mixed marriage to an exclusive principle. With regard to my own family history, it is clear that the numerous mixed marriages served as a decisive bulwark against any national identification and discrimination, and that the Germans did everything remotely possible to save their Jewish spouses. The marriage of Walter Schmidt and Hildegard Meyer seems not only representative of this fact, but to exemplify it perfectly. In the case of mixed blood progeny, the national narrative appears still more fatal, because after the war these so-called Mischlings were once again suspect on account of their “non-identity.” They fell outside of the frame and had to be excluded from this narrative because they defied any clear historiographical classification, becoming a sort of “blind passenger of German Jewish history.” This “non-identity,” even though it was often perceived as a burden by the many “mixed blood” individuals in my family, always seemed to be an indication and guarantor of a cosmopolitan transcendence of all national boundaries: a kind of self-evident Enlightenment. Mischlings were individuals of “mixed blood” who were neither completely German nor entirely Jewish, who led a kind of “metaxological” life, namely, a life “between” that did not permit their reduction to a specific identity.⁶² Most of the mixed blood progeny of the  This debate on the Enlightenment arose, of course, in response to the polemical question of Pastor Johann Friedrich Zöllner, who, in 1783, in a footnote in the Berlinische Monatsschrift 2 (December 1783): 516, asked what the Enlightenment actually was, presumably in reaction to the anonymously published suggestion in that same journal that “The clergy no longer endeavor to conduct marriages.” Moses Mendelssohn formulated his answer to the question in September 1784 under the title: “Über die Frage: Was heißt aufklären?” Kant’s famous answer followed in December of that year.  The concept of the metaxological life, the life “between,” is taken from William Desmond, Ethics and the Between (New York: State University Press, 2001), 4– 9. With “metaxu” the Irish philosopher tries to define a position that would transmute the modern “identitarian” system of thought and the postmodern “differential” anti-system into a post-Hegelian dialectic.

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Figure 19: Nazi propaganda against the mixing of races. The woman’s placard reads: “I’m the biggest pig around and only hang out with Jews.” The man’s placard reads: “As a Jewish boy I only take German girls to my room.” Archive Heinrich Hoffmann Hamburg; Antijüdische Terrormaßnahmen 1. April 1933; Gruppenbild (SA- u.SS-Angehörige; Frau m.Schild: “Ich bin am Ort das größte Schwein…”; Mann m.Schild; Aufnahmedatum: 1. April 1933. Proof of Origin: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München Abtlg. Karten u. Bilder.

Meyer and Levy families who were driven into exile in 1933 went to America, England, and South Africa, where in a kind of biographical “common denominator” their lives were shaped by a cosmopolitan liberalism, their “non-identity” also expressing itself politically, for example in the American civil rights movement or the anti-Apartheid league. In opposition to an exclusively identitarian historiography and a monistic nationalist appropriation of German Jewish history, I dedicate this small family history to survivors and family descendants all over the world, those who returned to Germany after the war, as well as those who moved throughout the world, settling in Scotland, South Africa, America, Australia, and Israel.⁶³ I

 It was only after three years of research that I was able to find two members of the family who had emigrated to Palestine. Käthe and Charlotte Meyer, the daughters of Adelaide Meyer,

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would especially like to include those family members and forebears who rejected the need for identity and national confession in their daily lives, namely, the sons and daughters of the supposedly antiquated Enlightenment, who as “mixed blood” progeny are absent from the official historiographies and who, more than anyone else, lived and continue to live the ideals of a fluid identity as emigrants and in exile, completely self-evidently and without any ideological fuss.

List of Figures Fig. 1: The Meyer family with friends, the Jonas family, in Sylt. The man in the top-hat is Edmund Meyer—his daughter Hildegard has her arms around him. The second man from the right is his son Max. Elise Meyer stands to the far right in a white veil. Private Property Christoph Schmidt. Fig. 2: Max Meyer. Private property Christoph Schmidt. Fig. 3: Alexander Coppel. Picture: Stadtarchiv Solingen, RS 20007. Fig. 4: Hildegard Meyer (Schmidt). Private property Christoph Schmidt. Fig. 5: Bertha von Pappenheim, translator of The Memoirs of Glückel, in authentic costume as Glückel of Hameln. Fig. 6.1 and 6.2: Abraham Meyer Jaffe and his wife Johanna Halberstadt. Fig. 7.1 and 7.2: Wolff Abraham Meyer and his wife Henriette Riess. Fig. 8.1 and 8.2: Caroline Hirschfeld, wife of Joel Wolff Meyer. Fig. 9.1 and 9.2: “Donated by Siegmund Meyer, son of Joel Wolff Meyer—In commemoration of the anniversary of his presidency of the community, Tevet Tarnah, January 1895.” Proof of Origin: Centrum Judaicum, Berlin. Fig. 10: Top row: Else, Edmund, and Heinrich Meyer. Bottom row: Alice, Gertrud, Caroline, and Ada Meyer. Private property Christoph Schmidt. Fig. 11: James Israel. Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/ggbain.07441/. Fig. 12: Albert Mosse. Private Property Christoph Schmidt. Fig. 13: Albert and Emil Mosse with Caroline and Gertrud Mosse. Private property Christoph Schmidt. Fig. 14: Robert and Martha Musil with friends, on the ground Franz Blei. Proof of Origin: Karl Corino.

the sister of my great-grandfather Edmund Meyer. Käthe Meyer married Erich Oelsner and later invited her sister Charlotte, then suffering from cancer, into her home in Kiryat Amal, later Kiryat Tivon. Both died there, childless. In addition to the two daughters of Ada Meyer, I then learned from a cousin in Australia, Barbara Ford, the great-granddaughter of Gertrud Meyer and Emil Mosse, that two other descendants of Gertrud Meyer, Chawa Givoni and Hana Kipnis, had grown up on Kibbutz Givat Brenner, near the Israeli city of Rehovot. The two sisters are also the granddaughters of Ephraim Moses Lilien, the Jugendstil artist, painter of the Zionist vision and co-founder of the Bezalel Academy of Art.

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Fig. 15: Lovis Corinth, Portrait of Conrad Ansorge 1903. Proof of Origin: Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München, Dauerleihgabe der Münchener Secession. Fig. 16: Walter Schmidt. Private property Christoph Schmidt. Fig. 17: M. Giacomo Meyerbeer / engraved by D.J. Pound; from a photograph by Mayall. Proof of Origin: Bibliotheque Nationale de France, http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/ cb386427869. Fig. 18: Nina Hagen. Photographer: Richard Mey. Proof of Origin: Nina Hagen. Fig. 19: Nazi propaganda against the mixing of races. Proof of Origin: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München Abtlg. Karten u. Bilder.

Paul Mendes-Flohr

Wissenschaft des Judentums at the Fin-de-Siècle I In 1896, at a conference of liberal Protestant theologians in Eisenach, a young, hitherto little known Heidelberg professor, Ernst Troeltsch, mounted the rostrum and provocatively declared: “Gentlemen, everything is tottering.” He was responding to a “learned, somewhat scholastic” paper, delivered by one of the most respected scholars of the day. With unbridled impudence Troeltsch explained to his “appalled” colleagues that both theology and history had manifestly reached an impasse, both had lost their grounding in truth, in the notion of an absolute.¹ He proceeded to bemoan the sterile historicism that had, in his judgement, come to characterize historical scholarship, and which had perforce left its pernicious mark on religious studies. As he would put it some years later, a “merely contemplative view of history” invariably leads to: […] unlimited relativism, a playful occupation with the historical materials, and a paralysis of the will to live one’s life. The personal interest of the spectator then turns into the enjoyment of the play of the phenomena and the diversity of happenings; into a mere interest in knowledge or even into a skepticism that may issue in sophisticated irony or, in the case of people of hard temperaments, or, in the case of the kindhearted, in humor.²

The destructive implications of such a relativizing historicism, Troeltsch held, were particularly manifest when it was applied to the study of religion—its teaching, institutions, traditions. The tendency to specialize and fragment historical studies into numerous sub-disciplines was, he argued, but a further indication that modern scholars had lost a larger vision of their vocation. When, at the turn of the century, Troeltsch first gave voice to these feelings, the academic “old guard” greeted him as a heretic. Among the younger scholars, there was a growing feeling that historical studies were, indeed, in the midst of a

 Walter Koehler, Ernst Troeltsch (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1941), 41. Cited in H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation of European Social Thought, 1890 – 1930 (New York: Vintage, 1958), 230.  Ernst Troeltsch, Gesammelte Schriften, III, 61 (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1922). Cited in Wilhelm Pauck, Harnack and Troeltsch: Two Historical Theologians (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 86 – 87. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110554618-010

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profound crisis. Even Troeltsch’s mentor, Wilhelm Dilthey, who sought to set the “Geisteswissenschaften” on a firm epistemological footing, towards the end of his life confessed his fears that modern historical studies would inevitably beget an “anarchy of convictions.”³ This sense of crisis was shared by the votaries of modern Jewish Studies—known since their origins in the early nineteenth century as Wissenschaft des Judentums. Paradoxically, the malaise set in precisely when Wissenschaft des Judentums was called upon to assume new tasks.

II As Gershom Scholem has pointed out, from its very beginnings nineteenth-century Wissenschaft des Judentums was confounded by numerous inner contradictions.⁴ The most glaring contradiction was that although it was conceived as strictly a “scientific,” that is, secular study of religious texts,⁵ it was pursued largely by rabbis. Indeed, Wissenschaft des Judentums was principally a vocation of rabbis. Excluded from the curriculum of the universities, Wissenschaft des Judentums was adopted by the rabbinical seminaries that were established to train modern rabbis—the first being the Jüdisch Theologisches Seminar, founded in Breslau in 1854 and associated with what today is known as Conservative Judaism, followed by the establishment in Berlin in 1870 of the Liberal Hochschule (Lehranstalt) für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, and in 1873, in the same city, of the Orthodox Hildesheimer Rabbiner Seminar; similar institutions were founded in Budapest, London, Paris, and Vienna, and later in the New World. Aside from a few brave Privatgelehrte, such as Leopold Zunz and Moritz Steinschneider, nineteenth-century Wissenschaft des Judentums was placed in the charge of rabbis. Formally dedicated to the study of sacred texts embodying and interpreting the revealed Word of God, the modern rabbinical student was introduced to these texts via the by-ways of philological analysis, source criticism, and com-

 Wilhelm Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften, V (Leipzig: Tuebner, 1921), 9.  Gershom Scholem, “Wissenschaft vom Judentum einst und jetzt,” Judaica, I (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1968), 147– 64.  The secular presuppositions of science or scholarship were perhaps never more clearly stated than by Max Weber: “Science […] is not the gift of grace of seers and prophets dispensing sacred values and revelations, nor does it partake of the contemplation of sages and philosophers about the meaning of the universe […]. This […] is the inescapable condition of our historical situation. We cannot evade it so long as we remain true to ourselves (as scientists).” Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, eds. and trans. Hans H. Gerth and Charles Wright Mills (London: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1946), 152.

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parative historiography. So arose a strange anomaly: rabbis who studied the texts of the tradition not as normative sacred literature, but as historical documents to be critically scrutinized and analyzed.⁶ The theological implications of this situation were ironically portrayed in a biting sermon by one of the most eminent Orthodox rabbis of German Jewry, Samson Raphael Hirsch. Addressing his congregation in Frankfurt on the eve of Tisha B’av, the fast day commemorating the destruction of the Temple, he said: We who have fully imbibed the spirit of modern Judaism, we do not fast, do not pray Selichot, penitential prayers do not recite ‘Kinot’ (dirges) on Tisha b’Av anymore. We would be ashamed of the tear in our eye or the sigh in our breast for the fallen Temple; we would be ashamed to feel the slightest longing for this scene of “bloody sacrificial rites.” For us all this has become a myth. With our feelings “refined” by a cool reality, and with our unbiased scientific insights, we understand and evaluate all this very differently. Moses and Hesiod, David and Sappho, Deborah and Tyrtaeus, Isaiah and Homer, Delphi and Jerusalem, the Pythian tripod and the Sanctuary of the Cherubim, prophets and oracles, psalm and elegy—for us, all this has been peacefully encased and buried in our mind, reduced to one and the same human origin. For us, all this has received an identical meaning, human and transitory and of a by-gone age. The fog has lifted; the tears and sights of our fathers do not fill our breasts anymore. They fill our libraries.⁷

Indeed, Hirsch bitterly protested that there is a gap—a radical cognitive disjunction—between the historian’s knowledge and that of the believing Jew of tradition. By the very nature of their craft, the historians transform traditional knowledge, draining it of its sacral power. Delivered in 1855, Hirsch’s sermon anticipated by fifty years the revolt in religious studies against historicism inaugurated by Troeltsch. Hence, Hirsch’s words would have surely earned an approving nod from Troeltsch, who would have recognized in the cognitive and spiritual disjunction between the historian and believer described by Hirsch a situation similar to that afflicting the Christian community. Yet there was a cardinal difference between Rabbi Hirsch and Professor Troeltsch. Hirsch regarded the historians, even when, nay, especially when they donned a clerical gown, as dastard traitors for wantonly introducing an alien, “evil” perspective on the body of

 It has been estimated that approximately 100 of the 300 rabbis who graduated from the Breslau Seminary during the first forty years of its existence continued to engage actively in scholarly research of Judaism. “Wissenschaft des Judentums,” Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition, vol. 21 (Detroit: Macmillan Referance, 2007), 105 – 14.  Samson Raphael Hirsch, “Die Trauer des 9. Av.,” in Samson Raphael Hirsch, Gesammelte Schriften, I (Frankfurt am Main: J. Kaufmann, 1902), 130 – 31. Trans. in Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, 3rd edition (New York: Oxford Univesity Press, 2011), 260 – 61.

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faith. He thus recommended that loyal, faithful Jews erect a barrier against Wissenschaft des Judentums, protecting the Torah and the sacred traditions of Israel from the insidious gaze of the academic scholar. In contrast, Troeltsch held that it was simply “too late”—intellectually and existentially impossible—to fend off the historians. For the historian, he solemnly observed, is within in us. Our modern sensibility, he concluded, is so deeply shaped by a sense of history that we are at a loss to find an Archimedean point beyond or outside of history. Despite his religious convictions, he felt that he could not appeal to revelation or any value or concept independent of history. Accepting the inheritance of two centuries of Biblical criticism and the corrosive questions it raised about Church dogma and tradition,⁸ he devoted his life and prodigious talents to seeking a solution reconciling faith and history.⁹

III Troeltsch’s concerns found an analogue within Jewish circles of his day. There was the feeling that somehow Wissenschaft des Judentums had thrust Jewish self-understanding into the grips of a deadening historicism. Already since the early 1890s, there were increasingly voices that complained that the academic study of Judaism had become excessively specialized, scholastic, and removed from Judaism as a living faith—and irrelevant to the needs of the Jewish community. These discontents were intensified by the demand that Jewish Studies assume broad cultural and even political tasks. These tasks were defined by two related but not identical developments within the Jewish communities of Europe in this period, namely, the resolve to combat publicly antisemitism and the process now labeled as dissimilation, or the concerted effort to reverse the assimilation of emancipated Jewry. As political and racial antisemitism took on ominous proportions, the Jewish community organized itself to counter the defamatory campaign launched by the opponents of the Jews’ integration into the cultural, social, and political fabric of the respective countries of their residence. The flagship of these efforts to secure the achievement of emancipation and defend Jewish honor, even in the courts, was the Central Verein deutscher Staatsbürger Jüdischen Glaubens, which was founded in Berlin in 1893, and soon became the largest organization within Ger-

 See Hughes, Consciousness and Society, 231.  See Van A. Harvey, The Historian and the Believer: The Morality of Historical Knowledge and Christian Belief (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 3 – 9.

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man Jewry. In pursuit of its program, it quickly became clear that, as one of its founding members of the Central Verein put it, “one has to know the object one is defending.”¹⁰ This realization led to the systematic promotion of Jewish knowledge by the Central Verein, and a variety of similar organizations that sprang up in these years. The resulting popularization of the fruits of research carried out by Wissenschaft des Judentums required not only new forums and modes of presentation of the dissemination of Jewish knowledge, but also the expansion of the scope of Jewish research to cover new areas of interests, such as Jewish economic and social history. Impetus for this shift also came from the need to confront the effects of the mass emigration of East European Jews spurred by the pogroms and anti-Jewish policies in Tsarist Russia (and in the Baltic countries). The flow of destitute Jews seeking refuge from persecution revived a sense of universal Jewish ties, expression of solidarity, and reflection on the social and political condition of the Jews in the modern world. The nationalist movement that arose in response to the ever worsening situation of East European Jewry—as well as the heightened antisemitism in Central and Western Europe—also contributed significantly to the deepening of the Jews’ historical consciousness. The story of the first major collaborative effort of scholars of Judaica may serve to summarize the nature of these developments. Its spiritus rector was Isidore Singer (1859 – 1939), an Austrian writer who later moved to Paris, where he became active in the defense of Alfred Dreyfus. Similar to his fellow Austrian Jew, Theodor Herzl, who was also then residing in Paris, Singer was a visionary. He conceived of a grand project of a multi-volume “encyclopaedia of the history and mental evolution of the Jewish race.”¹¹ After several frustrating years attempting to interest European scholars in his project, he set his sights on the more practical minded Americans, and in 1895 travelled to New York City filled with hope that there he would find the support he desired. Indeed, he “found that it was only in America that he could obtain both that material aid and practical scholarly cooperation necessary to carry out the scheme on the large scale which he had planned.”¹² Soliciting the requisite funding and an international team of close to four hundred scholars, Singer brought his vision to fruition with The Jewish Encyclopaedia, published in twelve large, exquisitely printed vol-

 Paul Rieger, Rückblick und die Geschichte des Centralvereins (Berlin: Verlag des Centralvereins deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens, 1918), 68. Cited in Eva Reichmann, “Der Bewusstseinswandel der deutschen Juden,” in Deutsches Judentum in Krieg und Revolution, 1916 – 1923, ed. Werner E. Mosse (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1966), 567.  “Singer, Isidore,” Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition, s. v., vol 18 (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), 636.  Preface to The Jewish Encyclopaedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901), xix.

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umes, published in New York City from 1901 to 1906. The Preface to the inaugural volume, signed by Singer and ten of his chief editors, each of whom was a leading scholar in Jewish Studies, presented the rationale for the project: With the publication of The Jewish Encyclopaedia a serious attempt is made for the first time to systematize and render generally accessible the knowledge [of the Jews and Judaism] thus far obtained. That this has now become possible is due to a series of labors carried on throughout the whole of the nineteenth century and representing the efforts of three generations of Jewish scholars, mainly in Germany. With the material now available it is possible to present a tolerably full account of Jews and Judaism. At the same time the world’s interest in Jews is perhaps keener than ever before. Recent events, to which more direct references need to be made, have aroused the world’s curiosity as to the history and condition of a people which has been able to accomplish so much under such conditions. The Jewish Encyclopaedia aims to satisfy this curiosity. Among the Jews themselves there is an increasing interest in these subjects in the present critical period in their development. Old bonds of tradition are being broken, and the attention of the Jewish people is necessarily brought to bear upon their distinctive position in the modern world, which can be understood only in the light of historical research.¹³

The Encyclopaedia thus had a two-fold objective, one—as the Preface obliquely states—to counter antisemitism by correcting misinformed opinion about the Jews, their culture, history, and religion. The second objective was to meet the growing interest of the Jews themselves in their heritage and journey through history. This was true in virtually all the Jewish communities of the West. In Berlin in 1893, an association (Verband) uniting forty-eight recently formed groups (Vereine) throughout Germany devoted to the study of Jewish history and literature was founded. In the semester of 1898/99, the Verband sponsored approximately 1,000 lecturers in close to 150 local chapters of the Vereine für jüdische Geschichte und Literatur.¹⁴ In addition to coordinating the activities of the local chapters, the Verband published a very popular yearbook, with articles especially tailored for the laity, and the establishment of Jewish libraries in virtually every Jewish community in Germany.¹⁵ Indicative of the popular and popularistic nature of the burgeoning interest within the Jewish community in Jewish history and culture—as opposed to more rarified theological and religious matters—was the development of Jewish ethnography and folklore. Reflecting the general neoRomantic mood of the period and reaffirmation of the “pristine” imagination of  Preface, 22.  Michael Brenner, The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), 21.  Brenner, The Renaissance, 22.

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the Volk, uncorrupted by the rational calculus of the modern world, the discovery of the tales and customs of the “ordinary” Jew also gave expression to a rekindled ethic pride. The collection of Martin Buber’s Hasidic tales, which began to appear in 1906, and the Jewish legends gathered by Micha Joseph bin Gorion (Berdichevski), Die Sagen der Juden,¹⁶ were preceded by the founding in 1898 of the Hamburg based Gesellschaft für jüdische Volkskunde, which maintained a very active program of reclaiming the mystical and mystic sensibilities of the “Jewish masses.”¹⁷ Most significantly, this unhesitant celebration of the pristine wisdom of the Jewish Volksseele not only registered severe reservations about the embourgeoisement of Western Jewry, but also marked a rejection of the historicist premises of nineteenth-century Wissenschaft des Judentums. The study of Jewish folklore was intended to foster the renewal of Judaism and the Jewish people. As such “the rise of Jewish folkloristic as a subdiscipline of Wissenschaft des Judentums was only one aspect of the large-scale transformation that led to an emphasis on the present and future of Jewish existence, instead of on a pure examination of the Jewish past.”¹⁸ This commitment to Jewish renewal was a manifestation of a trend that crystallized in these years to affirm Jewish identity by giving it positive expression, going beyond Trotzjudentum—or the assertion of Jewish pride to spite the antisemites. This conscious effort to reverse the trend towards acculturation and assimilation has been suggestively labeled by the Tel Aviv historian Shulamit Volkov “dissimilation.” ¹⁹ Volkov has convincingly argued that assimilation was more of an ideology than an actual fact, for the Jews of Central and Western Europe had retained a level of Judaism and Jewish self-esteem far greater than their ideological commitment to attaining emancipation and a place within the culture and political life of Europe had hitherto allowed them to express.²⁰ But

 Micha Joseph bin Gorion (Berdichevski), Die Sagen der Juden (Frankfurt am Main: Rütten & Loening, 1913).  For a detailed study of the development of this turn in Jewish research, see Zeev Gries, The Book in Early Hasidism [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1972), 35 – 46.  Brenner, The Renaissance, 30.  Schulamit Volkov, “Jüdische Assimilation und jüdische Eigenart im deutschen Kaiserreich: Ein Versuch,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 9 (1983): 331– 48; and Schulamit Volkov, “The Dynamics of Dissimilation. Ostjuden und German Jews,” in The Jewish Response to German Culture: From the Enlightenment to the Second World War, eds. Reinharz Jehuda and Walter Schatzberg (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1985), 195 – 211.  Volkov argues that dissimilation was dialectically related to the dynamics of assimilation: “[…] while the particular process of Jewish social integration and cultural assimilation in (nineteenth-century) Germany promoted the disintegration of the old, traditional community, it simultaneously created a new bond among Jews, based on shared, distinctly modern ‘intimate cul-

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events that came to a head in 1890s—antisemitism and the ambivalent confrontation with East European Jewish immigrants²¹—served to render “dissimilation into conscious process.”²² Dissimilation thus led to a search for new definitions of Jewish identity, selfunderstanding, and expression. The organizational and cultural landscape of German Jewry, and Western Jewry at large, changed. There arose numerous new social organizations—Jewish student and adult fraternities, sport clubs, youth groups, women’s associations—and cultural institutions—journals, foundations and societies promoting Jewish belles letters, painting, sculpture, music as well as Jewish scholarship and its popularization. In a study of the so-called renaissance of Jewish culture that began with the fin-de-siècle and reached its full flowering in Weimar Germany, Michael Brenner has shown that efforts to revitalize Wissenschaft des Judentums was part of a large spectrum of social and cultural activities that in effect created a ramified and vibrant Jewish subculture in Germany.²³ The emergence of a Jewish subculture, independent of the synagogue and religious institutions, Brenner argues, was legitimated by the fact that by the close of the nineteenth century, Imperial Germany was evolving—perhaps in spite of itself—into a pluralistic, multicultural society, or at least a society that witnessed the vigorous assertion of a variety of subcultures: “German culture during this period was characterized not only by the awakening of nationalist thought and neo-Romantic ideas but also by the rise of various subcultures. Most important were the Catholics, the workers, and the Polish immigrants in the Ruhr region.”²⁴ Parallel to—and no doubt partly in response to— the then dominant trend to define Germany as an integral Volksgemeinschaft, with a special affiliation to the country’s Protestant heritage, there was the counter process led by those groups excluded by this definition allowing for Germany

ture.’ Furthermore, the unique capacity of German Jews to respond to the challenge of modernity gave them a relative advantage over the competing German bourgeoisie and eventually made for a distinctive substratum within it.” Volkov, “The Dynamics of Dissimilation,” 199.  “[…] in confronting the ever-continuing flow of Ostjuden, German Jews, a high proportion of whom were children of East European immigrants themselves were forced to reflect upon their own lives and seek new definitions of their existence as Jews. They were beginning to reach out beyond the limits of their own complacent, solid, bourgeois German identity […] Recognizing the foreigners as a reflection of oneself was essential for the entire process (of dissimilation). […] As an aspect of this process of reconsideration, Ostjuden were beginning to be looked upon with a different eye—not by everyone, not everywhere, but surely a significant, articulate, outspoken minority […].” Volkov, “The Dynamics of Dissimilation,” 210 – 11.  Volkov, “The Dynamics of Dissimilation,” 201.  Brenner, The Renaissance, passim.  Ibid., 20.

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to be regarded as a kaleidoscope of subcultures. This process clearly gave Jewish dissimilation added momentum. The role that Wissenschaft des Judentums was to play in this process was most eloquently articulated by a young Zionist, Martin Buber. In an article entitled “Jüdische Wissenschaft,” published in 1901 in the Zionist weekly he then edited, Die Welt, the twenty-three year old Buber declared that the aim of the scholarly study of Judaism—not just its ancient literature, he emphasized, but every aspect of Jewish life and civilization²⁵—is two-fold: “First, to know what one loves. Second, to investigate what are the exigent needs of our people and what it may expect—its needs and possibilities.”²⁶

IV Notwithstanding its analytical nuance, Buber’s statement was more declaratory than programmatic. It pointed to a desideratum, without developing a detailed plan to remedy it. Within the ranks of his fellow Zionists, Buber’s critique of nineteenth-century Wissenschaft des Judentums made little impression.²⁷ It was  Rejecting suggestions that Jewish Studies be recast as “science of the Jewish question” or, alternatively, as “a science of Zionism,” Buber argues that rather than narrowing its thematic purview, Wissenschaft des Judentums must be expanded into a “differentiated discipline” so as to capture the multilayered reality and needs of Judaism and Jewry. There is still room for the classical Wissenschaft des Judentums, which as the study of “ancient Jewish texts” is and must remain essentially a branch of philology. But in order to be truly be a Wissenschaft des Judentums it must consider multiple questions and include a plurality of methods: history, economics, jurisprudence, folklore, art history, archaeology, sociology, comparative religion (Religionsgeschichte), and literary history. Accordingly, Jewish Studies must not only embrace a variety of disciplines but various methods. “Ich habe nachzuweisen versucht, dass es keine im strengen Sinn gültige jüdische Wissenschaft geben kann, sondern nur einen jüdischen Wissenschaftskomplex […].” Martin Buber, “Jüdische Wissenschaft,” Die Welt, October 11 and 25, 1901. Translated in this volume, “Jewish Studies,” pp. 197– 202. Buber thus anticipated the semantic shift from Wissenschaft des Judentums to Wissenschaften des Judentums, first registered in the name of the Institute of Jewish Studies (ha-Makhon le-Ma‘adei ha-Yahadut—literally, the Institute for the Sciences of Judaism) founded in 1925 as the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  Buber, Die Jüdische Bewegung, 50.  See Ephraim E. Urbach’s remarks in the symposium, “‘Wissenschaft des Judentums’ in Germany and its Influences on Modern Research,” in Perspectives of German-Jewish History in the 19th and 20th Century, ed. Gilon Meir (Jerusalem: Leo Baeck Institute, 1971), 39 – 40. In his article, Buber broached two allied ideas—the establishment of a Jewish University, at whose center would be an Institute and an Academy promoting a multidisciplinary approach to Jewish scholarship—that did inspire activities that eventually led to the establishment of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, whose first faculty was the Institute for Jewish Studies (see also footnote 24).

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the non-Zionist Hermann Cohen, the neo-Kantian philosopher of Marburg, who would devote sustained thought both to reevaluating the methodological presuppositions of Wissenschaft des Judentums and developing a concrete program to accommodate its new agenda. Towards this end, he was active in the founding, in Berlin in 1902, of the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums, which sought to give new impetus to all branches of Jewish scholarships as well as to serve as a forum to clarify its objectives and methods.²⁸ At a plenum of the Gesellschaft in January 1904, he delivered a paper in which he offered a probing analysis of the state of Jewish Studies, pointing out what he regarded to be their methodological limitations and their ambiguous place within the cultural life of German Jewry. Cohen developed his critique in support of a proposal he set forth to establish chairs (Lehrstühle) in “Jewish Ethics and Religious Philosophy” at the existing seminaries teaching Wissenschaft des Judentums.²⁹ With professional cadences, he advanced the thesis that the proposed chairs would contribute decisively to a solution of the crisis of Jewish Studies, and by extension that of Jewish religious life in Germany. It is not fortuitous, he argued, that hitherto the modern rabbinical seminaries have not included within their curriculum courses in Jewish ethics and philosophy. The neglect of a systematic philosophical exposition of the principles of Jewish belief, he explained, was methodologically and thus dialectically necessary for the establishment of Wissenschaft des Judentums in the nineteenth century,³⁰ and at the same time, its neglect is profoundly symptomatic of the crisis itself. Disagreeing with those who argued that the problem lies with the positivism that laid hold of the Geisteswissenschaften in general— apparently an elliptical criticism of Dilthey and the South-Western School of Neo-Kantians—Cohen held that the crisis was inherent in the very project of treating religions historically. As the historical examination of the literature of Judaism, Wissenschaft des Judentums ipso facto sought to contextualize its subject matter, elucidating its historical development and connections. The achievements of this approach, Cohen underscored, should not be gainsaid. They have

 See Leopold Lucas, “Zum 25-jährigen Jubiläum der Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 71:35 (1927): 321– 31.  Hermann Cohen, “Die Errichtung von Lehrstühlen für Ethik und Religionsphilosophie an den jüdisch-theologischen Lehranstalten,” in Hermann Cohen, Jüdische Schriften, II (Berlin: Schwetschke & Sohn, 1924), 108 – 25.  Cohen, “Die Errichtung von Lehrstühlen,” 111.

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deepened our insight and appreciation of the religious heritage of Israel.³¹ But it also meant that the study of Judaism became an “Altertumswissenschaft.”³² Hence, the religious world of the texts and ideas so studied were pushed into the past, encased into a distant age. The full force of the historicizing nature of Wissenschaft des Judentums came to bear when Jewish religious thought was rendered into “the history of [Jewish] religious philosophy,” and the world of Jewish ideas and theology was thus likewise locked into the past; as a onetime activity of our forefathers, Jewish philosophy ceased to be the ongoing reflection on the founding ideas and teaching sustaining Judaism as a living faith. At the heart of this historicization of Jewish thought, Cohen averred, is the commonplace error, propounded since Moses Mendelssohn, that Judaism knows no dogmas—“a very dubious” position, for dogmas are but the fundamental “instructional concepts” (Lehrbegriffe) necessary for the methodical construction of a faith’s body of teachings.³³ With the aid of these “instructional concepts,” the philosopher sought to delineate the “essence of Judaism”—and “without philosophy this essence cannot be grasped.”³⁴ Cohen, of course, was alluding to the “essence of Judaism” debate that engaged German-speaking Jewry in the wake of Adolf Harnack’s volume of 1900, The Essence of Christianity, which contained disparaging remarks about the putative ethical failings of Judaism.³⁵ And with Harnack still in mind, he further commented that whereas Liberal Christianity, guided by the ethical faith of Jesus, may be able to dispense with dogmas, Judaism cannot, lest it loose its “center of gravity” (namely, the monotheistic conception of God³⁶) and the basis upon which its distractive ethical teaching (that is, its messianic oriented ethics) rests.³⁷ Bereft of a firm con Cf. “Es gibt keine Originalität, die nicht in einem genauen Zusammenhang mit der Geschichte stände.” Ibid., 112.  Ibid., 110.  Cf. “[…] wenn es einem Lehrgebäude an konstruktiven Lehrbegriffe gebricht, so entbehrt es des methodischen Fundaments.” Ibid., 114.  Ibid., 115.  For a detailed discussion of the ramified and highly charged debate between Jewish and Christian scholars which followed the publications in 1900 of Adolf von Harnack’s immensely popular The Essence of Christianity, see Uriel Tal, “Theologische Debatte um das ‘Wesen’ des Judentums,” in Juden im Wilhelminischen Deutschland, 1890 – 1923, eds. Werner E. Mosse and Arnold Paucker (Tübingen: J.C.B., 1976), 599 – 632.  Cf. “Jude sein heisst, als den Grund des Daseins, als den Halt der Welt den einig einzigen Gott bekennen. Das ist der Kern der Sache; das ist auch das einzige Herz der Sache. […] Der Gott Israels ist in der messianischen Idee zur Offenbarung gekommen; er ist der Gott der Weltgeschichte. Dies ist die Wurzel unseres Glaubens; und es ist die Quelle unserer Ethik.” Cohen, “Die Errichtung von Lehrstühlen,” 122 f.  Ibid., 109.

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ceptual grounding and clarity, the modern Jewish religious consciousness swirls between “a certain naiveté and alternating sentiments of depression and exaltation.”³⁸ Hence, Cohen warned that although “popularization” of Jewish knowledge and teachings has its merits, it cannot replace a systematic philosophical theology as the basis of the continuation of Judaism.³⁹ Departing from his philosophical argument, Cohen paused to expound a sociological analysis of the structural changes in modern Jewish life that allowed for what he deemed to be the modern distortions of Jewish religious sensibility and attitudes. He began by noting the half-hearted support given by the Jewish community to the rabbinical seminaries and Wissenschaft des Judentums. Historically viewed, this attitude is uncharacteristic of Jewry, which until the modern era had always respected scholarship and regarded it to be its responsibility and honor to support the training of rabbinic scholars and Torah study. This was especially so because the ideal of study was shared by all members of the community. Indeed: “Worship without extensive, well-grounded study of Torah was in principle unthinkable. The difference in intellectual capacity would seem to have been the only excuse allowing for a separation of divine worship and Torah study; social differences were in general not capable of making such differentiations, for even a peddler (Hausierjude) could be a great scholar.”⁴⁰ Cohen attributed this radical change in the values of the Jewish community to the modern division of life and teaching, and concomitantly the separation of worship and study. “So it transpired that since […] we entered the world of German (vaterländische) and general culture, the serious study of Jewish literature among us extensively diminished.”⁴¹ It was, he inferred, precisely the modern division between life and teaching that led Jews since the Enlightenment to claim that Judaism knows no dogma, that is, to dismiss its conceptual, theological superstructure as unessential, particularly with respect to its ethnical teachings and religious practice. Returning to his original theme, Cohen was able to complete his argument: the revitalization of Wissenschaft des Judentums is not to be effected merely through more generous funding of research, nor through the diversification of its subject matter, nor through its popularization. Rather, the study of Judaism must be reintegrated into the life of Jews. This can be accomplished, Cohen concluded, only when both Wissenschaft des Judentums and the life of the Jews are    

Ibid., 117. Ibid., 115. Ibid., 112– 13. Ibid., 113.

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grounded anew in the founding ideas and beliefs of Israel. It will be the mandate of the proposed chairs in Jewish ethics and religious philosophy to demonstrate that these ideas and beliefs are essentially independent of the historical coordinates of time and space. The philosopher’s revalorization of the creedal and conceptual ground of Judaism, Cohen maintained, will not only serve to release modern Jewish scholarship from the throes of a relativizing historicism, but also allow the contemporary, cultured Jew to affirm Judaism as a living faith.

V In a series of subsequent papers,⁴² Cohen elaborated and refined his argument that “ethics and the philosophy of religion belong together with Wissenschaft des Judentums.”⁴³ Here, we may summarize schematically two interrelated points he recurrently made in these papers, delivered in various popular and scholarly forums. First, the traditional form of Torah study cannot be revived;⁴⁴ Wissenschaft des Judentums is the modern form of the study of religious texts, for we do, as Troeltsch correctly argued, willy-nilly think historically.⁴⁵ But, in contrast to Troeltsch, Cohen insisted that religious thought must be guided by a conceptual system whose source and logic are autonomous and as such generated independently of history. He sought to elaborate this argument in his work of 1915, Der Begriff der Religion im System der Philosophie,⁴⁶ and his posthumous work— published by the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums— Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums. ⁴⁷ Significantly, at Cohen’s  These papers are collected in vols. 2 and 3 of Cohens’s Jüdische Schriften (see footnote 29). In vol. 2: “Zwei Vorschläge zur Sicherung unseres Fortbestandes” (1907): “Die Liebe zur Religion” (1911); “Der Jude in der christlichen Kultur. Streiflichter über jüdische Religion und Wissenschaft” (1917); “Zur Begründung einer Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums” (1918). In vol. 3: “Religion und Sittlichkeit. Eine Betrachtung zur Grundlegung der Religionsphilosophie” (1907); “Religiöse Postulate” (1907).  Cohen, “Die Errichtung von Lehrstühlen,” 122.  Cf. “Nicht alle Juden müssen Gelehrte des Judentums würden. Diese tiefe Grundforschung des alten Judentums kann vielleicht nicht aufrechterhalten bleiben.” Cohen, “Die Liebe zur Religion” (1911), in Cohen, Jüdische Schriften, II, 146.  Cf. citation in text, referenced by footnote 2, above.  Hermann Cohen, Der Begriff der Religion im System der Philosophie (Giessen: Verlag von Alfred Töpelmann, 1915).  Hermann Cohen, Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums (Leipzig: Gustav Fock, 1919). The first edition was inadvertently published with the article “Die” before “Religion,” which marked a fundamental distortion of Cohen’s philosophical intention; the error was corrected in subsequent editions. Cf. Bruno Strauss’s comments in his editorial “Nachwort” to

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request, the pre-publication publicity for the volume was to announce it as a work in “Jüdische Religionsphilosophie und Ethik.”⁴⁸ The second point Cohen recurrently made is that Wissenschaft des Judentums, grounded in a systematic theology, must “somehow” be made part of the Bildung—the process of ever continuing spiritual and intellectual edification—of the Jew, even of those who are bound by their professional labors to the bourgeois world of material and practical concern: “[…] the modern world distinguishes between Bildung und Wissenschaft. Bildung is the bonding agent between research and the scientific and scholarly professions. With respect to the literature and history of our religion and heritage (“Gemeingut”), Bildung must be a religious and cultural duty of our co-religionists (“Bekenner”).”⁴⁹ By appealing to the bourgeois ethos of Bildung ⁵⁰—which ideally meant that culture was no mere act of passive consumption, but a determined endeavor of constant intellectual and spiritual refinement⁵¹—Cohen sought to identify the modus by which the modern, cultured Jew could participate creatively in the discourse of scholars. The grammar providing for this shared discourse between the scholar and cultured Jew, Cohen of course found in philosophical theology. In the twilight of his life, he devoted himself fully to initiating this discourse and giving it the desired direction. Upon his retirement in 1912 from the University of Marburg, he took up a position in Berlin at the Lehranstalt für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, where he taught until his death in April 1918, holding lectures for both rabbinical students and the public at large. Among the latter was a young scholar, Franz Rosenzweig, the author of a brilliant doctoral dissertation on Hegel, and who, after protracted intellectual struggle, had found the philosophical basis to affirm Judaism as a living faith. Despite the difference of intellectual temperament and the two generations that separated them, Cohen and Rosenzweig quickly acknowledged their spiritual affinity. They soon became close friends, and collaborated on an elaborate the 2nd edition of 1929: “Aus zwei Briefen Cohens an die Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums […] ergibt sich mit völliger Sicherheit, dass Cohen sein Buch ‘Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums’ genannt wissen wollte und dass also der verschärfende Artikel zehn Jahre zu Unrecht auf dem Titelblatt seines Werkes gestanden hat.” Cohen, Religion der Vernunft, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt am Main: J. Kaufmann, 1929), 625.  Cohen, Religion der Vernunft, 625.  Cohen, “Die Liebe zur Religion,” 146.  On the impact of the ideal of Bildung on European, especially German Jewry, see George Mosse, German Jews beyond Judaism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 1.  One of the most penetrating discussions of the ideal of Bildung is Aleida Assman, Arbeit am Gedächtnis. Eine kurze Geschichte der deutschen Bildungsidee (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 1993).

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program to restructure Wissenschaft des Judentums as the basis for the renewal of the education and spiritual life of German Jewry. Their plan entailed the establishment of an Academy of Jewish Studies, which would train and support scholars who at the same time would serve as teachers within the Jewish community.⁵² By bringing to the community especially youth and a sophisticated, academically refined knowledge of Judaism, these scholar-teachers would be the catalyst for the reestablishment of the intimate bond between scholarship and learning that had sustained Jewish spirituality and community throughout the ages.⁵³ Inaugurated just after Cohen’s death, and financed by an initial grant from Rosenzweig’s family, the Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums took on a character that was far from the vision of Cohen and Rosenzweig. Rather than a new spiritual center for German Jewry, it became strictly a research center, albeit one that contributed greatly to promoting Jewish scholarship.⁵⁴ Independent of the tutelage of rabbinic seminaries, the Academy was an unambiguously secular institution and thus allowed for the full flowering of a comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach to Jewish Studies. The standard of excellence it set succeeded in attracting young talent to the field. Their labors helped earn for Wissenschaft des Judentums the recognitions on the part of the general scholarly community that had been denied it since its founding in Berlin a century earlier.⁵⁵ The Academy also inspired the founding of similar institutions, preeminently the Institute

 See Rosenzweig’s open letter to Cohen, which he penned from the trenches during World War I. Franz Rosenzweig, “It is Time. Concerning the Study of Judaism,” in Franz Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning, ed. Nahum Norbert Glatzer (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2002), 27– 54, esp. 49 – 52.  Cohen, “Zur Begründung einer Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums,” 216.  On the Academy, its founding and achievements, see David N. Myers, “The Fall and Rise of Jewish Historicism: The Evolution of the Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (1919 – 1934),” Hebrew Union College Annual 63 (1992): 107– 44.  On the history of the struggle of Wissenschaft des Judentums to gain recognition as a bone fide academic discipline and inclusion within the curriculum of German universities, see Ismar Elbogen, Ein Jahrhundert Wissenschaft des Judentums (Berlin: Philo Verlag, 1922); Alfred Jospe, “The Study of Judaism in German Universities before 1933,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 27 (1982): 295 – 309; and Willy Schottroff, “Nur ein Lehrauftrag. Zur Geschichte der jüdischen Religionswissenschaft an der deutschen Universität,” Berliner Theologische Zeitschrift 4 (1987): 197– 214. To be sure, the recognition that did come in the years of the Weimar Republic, which led to appointments—although never a full-fledged program in Jewish Studies—were as much a result of the changed political and social climate of the period as that of the esteem for the work of the younger generation of scholars sponsored by the Akadamie (among whom were such future luminaries as Fritz Baer, Gershom Scholem, and Leo Strauss).

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of Jewish Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which soon became the premier center of Jewish scholarship in the world.⁵⁶ Nonetheless, as a “pure research institute” (“rein wissenschaftliche Anstalt”),⁵⁷ to quote one of its directors, the Academy would have certainly disappointed Cohen as it did Rosenzweig. Rosenzweig’s disappointment with the Academy led him to embark on another project to realize the vision of a renewal of Jewish learning within the lay community. In 1920, he founded in Frankfurt am Main a Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus, which was modeled on the traditional Beit Ha-Midrash, a prayer room that also served as house of study. Here, assimilated Jewish adults—alienated from Judaism and illiterate in its traditions and teachings—would be introduced to Torah study. The dialogical method of study pursued at Rosenzweig’s Lehrhaus, while respecting the modern historical sensibility, sought to transcend it by regarding the texts studied as embodying a Thou that is eternal and thus beyond the vicissitudes of time. For him, the fellowship of Jewish learning constituted a meta-historical community.⁵⁸ In such manner, he solved—or rather circumvented—the challenge repeatedly voiced by Cohen to find a way to “rejuvenate”⁵⁹ Wissenschaft des Judentums by freeing it from its historicist bias.⁶⁰ Perhaps Rosenzweig recognized in Cohen’s vision of a Wissenschaft des Judentums that has overcome the relativizing gaze of critical historiography an un-

 David N. Myers, Reinventing Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 55 – 73. Not only did the Academy inspire the structure and research program of the Institute of Jewish Studies, it also supplied many of its leading scholars: Chanokh Albeck, David Baneth, Fritz Baer, Julius Guttmann, and Gershom Scholem.  Julius Guttmann, “Franz Rosenzweig, “ Korrespondenzblatt des Vereins zur Gründung und Erhaltung einer Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums 11 (1930): 3. Cited in Myers, “The Fall and Rise of Jewish Historicism,” 124.  Although the Jews may be “existentially” in history, according to Rosenzweig, “essentially” they are not. For Judaism—as constituted by the sacred fellowship of study and the liturgical calendar of the Synagogue—is a metahistorical community, anticipating and thus emnodying the promise of eschatological redemption. See Alexander Altmann, “Franz Rosenzweig in History,” in The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1987), 124– 37, 230 – 35.  Cohen, “Zur Begründung einer Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums,” 216.  Rosenzweig’s path to religious faith began while he was writing his doctoral dissertation under the supervision of the historian Friedrich Meinecke. Caught in the crisis of historicism that took hold of many of his generation, he eventually sought “refuge” in his ancestral faith, which with explicit reference to that crisis he conceived as a meta-historical reality. See my “Franz Rosenzweig and the Crisis of Historicism,” in The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, 138 – 61, 235 – 42.

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tenable antinomy: sanctioning the essentially secular scrutiny of the past as flush with meaning and value for the present. This of course was also Troeltsch’s dilemma, and that of a generation of fin-de-siècle intellectuals who shared a miasmatic discontent with historicism.⁶¹ We historians who find ourselves in the second decade of the twenty-first century cannot say we have gone much beyond Cohen and Troeltsch. It shall suffice to quote a poignant testimony to the existential and epistemological perplexities of a contemporary historian of Judaism. In his volume Zakhor, which has struck a deep chord among all professional and not just Jewish historians, Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi concludes with a note of resignation: “I live with the ironic awareness that the very mode in which I delve into the past represents a decisive break with that past.”⁶²

 See the now classic analysis of the crisis by Carlo Antoni, From History to Sociology, trans. Hayden V. White (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1959).  Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor, Jewish History and Jewish Memory. Foreword by Harold Bloom and a New Preface by the Author (New York: University of Washington Press, 1989), 81.

George Y. Kohler

Ludwig Philippson on Biblical Monotheism: Jewish Religious Philosophy between Mendelssohn and Hermann Cohen

The Rabbi, scholar, novelist, Bible commentator, and newspaper editor Ludwig Philippson (1811– 1889) was arguably the most seminal intellectual of German Jewry throughout the better part of the nineteenth-century. Often underestimated today, if not ignored, Philippson was active in so many fields of modern Jewish thought and culture that hardly anyone interested in Judaism at that time could avoid being confronted with his opinions and public statements.¹ As the philosopher Hermann Cohen put it: “There was no event, no trouble or hope that moved German Jewry, without that everyone was first waiting for a reaction from this man—and the waiting was never in vain: his word was always courageous, clear and without ambiguity.”² Born in 1811 into a family of rabbis, Philippson belonged to the first generation of rabbis to study at a German university. During his years at the University of Berlin, he showed such an outstanding talent as a philologist that a successful academic career was likely waiting for him—but Philippson was unwilling to pay the price of baptism, still required for Jews in nineteenth-century Germany.³ Like so many other young Jewish scholars, he resigned to become a community rabbi, assuming a rabbinical post in 1834 in Magdeburg. But soon, “the whole of Ger On Philippson, see Meyer Kayserling, Ludwig Philippson. Eine Biographie (Leipzig: Mendelssohn, 1898); Josef Bass, “Ludwig Philippson—Eine literar-historische Würdigung zur Hundertjahrfeier seines Geburtstages,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 56 No. 3/4 (1912): 218 – 49; Johanna Philippson, “The Philippsons, a German-Jewish Family 1775–1933,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 7 (1962): 95 – 118; Johanna Philippson, “Ludwig Philippson und die Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums,” in Das Judentum in der deutschen Umwelt 1800 – 1850, eds. Hans Liebeschütz and Arnold Paucker (Tübingen: Mohr, 1977), 243 – 91; Hans Otto Horch, “‘Auf der Zinne der Zeit’—Ludwig Philippson, der ‘Journalist’ des Reformjudentums,” Bulletin des Leo Baeck Institutes 86 (1990): 5 – 21; Sebastian Bauer, “Jüdische Geschichtsschreibung zwischen Reform und Orthodoxie. Die Positionen von Ludwig Philippson und Marcus Lehmann,” Medaon—Magazin für jüdisches Leben in Forschung und Bildung 9 (2015): 1– 16, 16.  Hermann Cohen, “Über die Bedeutung einer philosophischen Jugendschrift Ludwig Philippsons” [from 1831], in Ludwig Philippson, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Fock, 1911), 459 – 86, 461; and again in Hermann Cohen, Kleinere Schriften, vol. 4. 1907– 1912, ed. Hartwig Wiedebach (Hildesheim: Olms, 2009), 565 – 604.  Hermann Cohen still praised Philippson as a philologist in 1911 in the above-mentioned essay in footnote 2. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110554618-011

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man Jewry was his community,” as Caesar Seligmann wrote in 1911 on the occasion of Philippson’s hundredth birthday.⁴ That is because in 1837, Philippson founded and edited for more than fifty years the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums, the most widely read German-Jewish journal. Many of the most influential editorials of the journal were written by Philippson himself, especially those dealing with theological problems or with political questions of Jewish civil emancipation. The Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums appeared weekly, and to a large extend kept its promise to be an “Impartial Organ for the entire Jewish Interest,” with Philippson himself steering a harmonizing middle course between the divergent streams of German Jewry of his time. Thus, Philippson’s hundreds of editorials are an invaluable historical source for inner Jewish debates, the history of synagogue reform, and Jewish theological responses to religious antisemitism.⁵ But Philippson’s fame and impact went far beyond journalism. Already in the 1840s he published one of the most popular German translations of the Hebrew Bible, adding to this edition his own extensive theological commentary, which, too, has so far remained largely beyond the purview of modern scholarship.⁶ In addition to its frequent references to archeology, botany, natural history, and Egyptology, and even its careful approach to Biblical criticism, Philippson’s commentary is also a rich source for research of the nascent liberal Jewish theology. Here, too, Philippson stands somewhere between old and new. He still believed in the Mosaic authorship of (almost all of) the Pentateuch, but for theological, not simply dogmatic reasons: in his view, the concept of God did not essentially change throughout the entire Tanach. Philippson has no difficulty, however, in accepting several authors for the book of Isaiah, but he rejected the lex post prophetas thesis that later on became popular among liberal

 Caesar Seligmann, “Zur Hundertjahrfeier für Ludwig Philippson,” Liberales Judentum 3 (1911): 265 – 66, 265. The same edition has an essay by Max Dienemann about Philippson’s theology (266 – 70); and a review by Seligmann of Philippson’s Gesammelte Abhandlungen published in the same year.  For Philippson and the AZJ, see Michael A. Meyer, Response to Modernity (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995), 108.  Die Israelitische Bibel, enthaltend: Den heiligen Urtext, die deutsche Uebertragung, die allgemeine, ausführliche Erläuterung mit mehr als 500 englischen Holzschnitten, übertragen und erläutert von Dr. Ludwig Philippson, 3 volumes (Leipzig: Baumgärtner, 1844, 1848 and 1854). On the edition itself, see Hans-Joachim Bechtoldt, Jüdische deutsche Bibelübersetzungen vom ausgehenden 18. bis zum Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2005); Klaus Herrmann, “Translating Cultures and Texts in Reform Judaism. The Philippson Bible,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 14 (2007): 164– 97.

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Jewish theologians.⁷ The extremely wide distribution of this classical liberal Jewish Bible translation was thus also a means of disseminating new theological ideas that soon established themselves within a majority of German-speaking Jews.⁸ Another of Philippson’s immense achievements was connected to the Reform Movement of Judaism as it emerged in nineteenth-century Germany. If Abraham Geiger was the intellectual visionary of this movement, Philippson was its organizational mastermind. During the 1840s, he organized three rabbinical conferences on halakhic reforms of Jewish ritual and liturgical practice that finally united all the different efforts to modernize the religious law of Judaism.⁹ Actively participating in those assemblies, Philippson appeared to be closest to what soon afterwards would become the “positive-historical” camp of Judaism, led by Rabbi Zacharias Frankel, and which eventually gave birth to contemporary Conservative Judaism.¹⁰ Not any less important were Philippson’s activities as a publisher of major works of Jewish scholarship, written during the nineteenth-century. In 1855, he founded and ran for eighteen years the Institut zur Förderung der Israelitischen Literatur (Institute for the Promotion of Jewish Literature), a Jewish publication society that was responsible for publishing more than eighty works of Jewish history, poetry, fiction, and biography. The list included such highlights as the first ten volumes of Heinrich Graetz’s famous Geschichte der Juden (History of the Jews), and books by almost all of the most influential scholars of Wissenschaft des Judentums, among others Abraham Geiger, Isaak Marcus Jost, Salomon Munk, Julius Fürst, Leopold Löw and David Cassel.¹¹

 Compare Klaus Herrmann, “Ludwig Philippsons Bibelwerk,” in Die Tora, Die fünf Bücher Mose und die Prophetenlesungen in der revidierten Übersetzung von Ludwig Philippson, eds. Hanna Liss et al. (Freiburg: Herder, 2015), 24– 76, 40 – 45. Herrmann claims that Philippson anticipated in a certain way the arguments of later Jewish Bible scholars like Benno Jacob and Umberto Cassuto (44– 45).  In 2015, a new edition of (only) the Pentateuch was published in Germany; see the previous note.  The protocols of those conferences were later published and are today of immense value for the research of the theological thought of nineteenth-century German Judaism. See Meyer, Response to Modernity, 132– 42.  For the emergence of the “positive-historical” stream and an interpretation of ‘positive’, see Ismar Schorsch, “Zacharias Frankel and the European Origins of Conservative Judaism,” in Ismar Schorsch, From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1994), 255 – 65.  On the Institute, see Nils Roemer, Jewish Scholarship and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), 73.

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Ultimately, as aforementioned, Philippson was a leading voice in the shaping of a liberal theology of modern Judaism. His far-reaching theological efforts culminated in the 1860s, when he published the three volumes of his major theological work, Die Israelitische Religionslehre (The Doctrine of the Israelite Religion).¹² But in the twenty years prior to this publication he formulated his religious ideas in countless public lectures and synagogue sermons, which were later printed in several volumes, and would find their place on many GermanJewish bookshelves. As his biographer Meyer Kayserling noted, “The notion that monotheism was the Jewish religion’s basic doctrine and also its general morale did not succeed to gain acceptance for Judaism at this time, neither among the Jews themselves nor non-Jews. It was necessary [for Philippson] to demonstrate that Judaism had from its beginning not only room for such questions that were actually discussed at his time, but even provided answers for them […].”¹³ The sweeping success of those lectures “before a public of all confessions,” as attested by Kayserling, was probably achieved by Philippson’s overall approach to clarify what he called “the idea of religion” itself, and the different contributions of the historical religions to the development of a conception of religion at the basis of all religious (monotheistic) faiths. The two-volume published version of the lectures was entitled The Development of the Religious Idea in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.¹⁴ Thus, Philippson became one of the first Jewish intellectuals with an academic background to give public elaborations of theology from the viewpoint of Judaism. The first volume of Philippson’s Israelitische Religionslehre from 1861 is devoted entirely to a book-length introduction to the subject of Jewish theology, dealing essentially with the singularity of the Jewish religion. In the preface to this volume, Philippson explains that his theological writings were primed by the hope of restoring for Judaism a stable ground after the great confusion of the nineteenth-century, when religious Reform abandoned the living reality of Judaism, and when Orthodoxy was more traditional than ever, and the conservative middle way preached a dangerous compliancy for the sake of peace. In this situation, his Re-

 Ludwig Philippson, Die Israelitische Religionslehre, 3 volumes (Leipzig: Baumgärtner, 1861, 1862, 1865).  Kayserling, Ludwig Philippson, 131– 32. For an extensive discussion of those lectures and the Christian reactions, see Andreas Brämer, “Ludwig Philippsons Konstruktion der jüdischen Geschichte als Fundamentalkritik des Christentums,” in Ludwig Philippson, Ausgewählte Werke, ed. Andreas Brämer (Cologne: Böhlau, 2015), 7– 33, 18 – 28.  Ludwig Philippson, Die Entwicklung der religiösen Idee im Judenthume, Christenthume und Islam (Leipzig: Leiner, 1847). New academic edition in Ludwig Philippson, Ausgewählte Werke, ed. Andreas Brämer (Cologne: Böhlau, 2015).

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ligionslehre was to re-introduce “a guiding principle, a theological focal point” for the Jewish religion.¹⁵ Philippson’s intention was to write “a systematic representation of the Jewish religious doctrine”—a book that would help the perplexed (dem Suchenden) of his time to find unequivocal, well-defined Jewish beliefs and firm religious conviction, since many of the religious questions, currently so hotly debated, were in fact of a much more general nature. His Jewish theology had the task of securing Judaism, Philippson writes, but more so, its purpose was to guarantee the very future of the Jewish religion.¹⁶ In this major work, as in most of his earlier writings on religious philosophy, Philippson was especially interested in delineating a clean theological demarcation of liberal Judaism from Christianity— and obviously, it is in this context that many of his thoughts about the special nature of Jewish monotheism can be found. Therefore, the basic question of this chapter is: In what sense does the legacy of Ludwig Philippson belong to Wissenschaft des Judentums? To answer this, I assume that theology was from its very beginning an integral aspect of this revolutionary field of Judaism study. I posit this premise despite the opinion of the founding father of Jewish Wissenschaft Leopold Zunz (and later that of Moritz Steinschneider), who demanded a strict separation of theology from an academic approach to Judaism. Nonetheless, many young German Jewish thinkers of the Wissenschaft movement already in the first half of the nineteenth-century perceived themselves expressly as theologians—Abraham Geiger’s project of a Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift für Jüdische Theologie (Scientific Journal for Jewish Theology, published between 1835 and 1847) is only one example among many. As in the case of Geiger and Philippson, their employment as (reformed) communal rabbis financed their scholarly projects, which were often aligned with their efforts of laying the ideational foundations of religious reform. With the increasing alterations of traditional Jewish observance Jewish identity had to be rebuilt along new lines: The observance of Talmudic law as the traditional Jewish identity marker had to be replaced by a new theological foundation, justifying Judaism’s existence also in the modern era, by emphasizing seminal Jewish contributions to human culture. There was no other way available to those young Jewish intellectuals than to do this theologically. If Wissenschaft des Judentums in nineteenth-century Germany was indeed also “a religious project,” as Michael Meyer wrote, theology should be best suited to combine scholarly research and religious practice.¹⁷  Philippson, Religionslehre, I, XI.  Ibid., XIV.  Michael A. Meyer, “Two Persistent Tensions within Wissenschaft des Judentums,” Modern Judaism 2 (2004): 105 – 19, 105.

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Here, Philippson has done pioneering work. It can be shown that his thought between the 1840s and the 1860s paved the way for what eventually, towards the end of the nineteenth-century, would become the mainstream conception of Judaism as ethical monotheism, as expressed by the leading voices of Jewish liberalism, namely Moritz Lazarus, Leo Baeck, and Benzion Kellermann; but first and foremost by Hermann Cohen.¹⁸ Like many other Jewish theologians of the time, Philippson was convinced that ethical monotheism was the distinctive feature of Judaism, distinguishing the Jewish religion at a qualitative level from all other belief systems of the cultured world, including Christianity. All other differences between the modern world religions are but the theological consequences of Israel’s unyielding adherence through the ages to a pristine ethical monotheism, Philippson taught—and thus he was evidently interpreting Judaism as the only “pure” positive religion. Interestingly, throughout his life and his many works on the subject, Philippson insisted that Israel’s pure monotheism was the product of supernatural revelation, not the result of human intellectual speculation—notwithstanding the fact that Philippson firmly believed that the monotheistic conception of religion conformed to the requirements of human reason.¹⁹ This uncompromising insistence on divine revelation is somewhat surprising in the context of the widespread nineteenth-century academic debates about the philosophical reasons and the historical sources of the origins of monotheism. In the eighteenth-century, even such an ardent enlightened rationalist as Moses Mendelssohn (1729 – 1786) still believed that the biblical narrative was real history, and that thus the religious life of humanity began with monotheism. Later, humanity, alas, reverted to embrace idolatry, according to Mendelssohn and others—only to regain the height of belief in One God together with the people of Israel. Contrary to this view, most religious thinkers of the nineteenth century understood that humanity’s religious childhood was clearly polytheistic. Mendelssohn was thus obliged to develop a more sophisticated theory as to how the terrible error of idol worship came into this world,²⁰ while more modern religious think-

 The term “Ethical Monotheism” has Christian roots; it was first used in Jewish thought by Salomon Formstecher in his seminal Die Religion des Geistes (Frankfurt: Hermann, 1841), 109, but developed into a full-blown Jewish theology only towards the end of the nineteenth century in the writings of the aforementioned thinkers. See for discussion Steven Kepnes, The Future of Jewish Theology (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2013).  For monotheism as a product of revelation, see Philippson, Die Entwicklung der religiösen Idee, 34; later also Philippson, Religionslehre, II, 27.  For this theory see, Gideon Freudenthal, No Religion Without Idolatry—Mendelssohn’s Jewish Enlightenment (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012). Compare the similar attempt

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ers rather disagreed about the question of the nature of the historical appearance of monotheism: was it sudden, that is, “revelation-like,” or slowly and evolutionary? In Jewish thought, the former position was argued eloquently by Leo Baeck in his famous The Essence of Judaism of 1905, where he claimed that this was precisely the philosophical meaning of the word revelation: a radical monotheistic break with all former thought about the divine.²¹ Hermann Cohen, it seems, favored the latter, transformational, historical view, while Emmanuel Levinas arguably formulated the most radical theory on this subject in the 1950s.²² Philippson, however, took a middle ground between Mendelssohn and the moderns: for him, revelation was a supernatural event defying explanation, but conceptual monotheism is only the result of the redaction of Hebrew Bible. Probably even more interesting for the contextualization of Philippson’s views on monotheism is the observation that during the nineteenth-century, the first serious attempts were rendered independent of Jewish thought to describe the uncompromising Mosaic monotheism as primarily responsible for the unrest and war between ancient and a fortiori modern peoples.²³ In 1857, for example, Ernest Renan published his Études d’Histoire Religieuse, in which he claimed that the Semites originally forced their monotheistic religious views on the Arians, much to the disadvantage of the latter.²⁴ At the same time, Arthur Schopenhauer called the monotheistic God intolerant and jealous, therefore responsible for religious wars and the prosecution of heretics.²⁵ A few

to explain the strange “emergence” of idolatry in Maimonides’ (1137– 1204) rationalist system. Mishneh Torah, Laws of Idolatry, first chapter.  Leo Baeck, Das Wesen des Judentums (Berlin: Rathausen und Lamm, 1905), 39 – 40. See here also the theories of Paul Radin (1883 – 1959) from the 1920s, who denied the evolution of monotheism from polytheism in his Primitive Man as a Philosopher (New York: Appleton, 1927/Dover, 1957), where he claimed that at least “monolatry” has always existed.  See Hermann Cohen’s Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums (Frankfurt: Kauffmann, 1929), 42 and 284. Levinas holds that there is no other way whatsoever to pass over from polytheism to strict Jewish monotheism, but through atheism. See his “A Religion for Adults,” in Difficult Freedom. Essays on Judaism, transl. Sean Hand (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 14– 15.  In fact, the first ever use of the term monotheism in 1660 was negative: Henry More (1614– 1687) coined it to describe the view of some critics of the Christian Trinity.  Ernest Renan, Études d’Histoire Religieuse (Paris: Michel Levy, first in 1857, 1863), 85 – 87. (L’intolérance des peuples sémitique est la conséquence nécessaire de leur monothéisme… (87)) For Jewish replies to Renan, see for example Heymann Steinthal, “Zur Charakteristik der semitischen Völker,” in Heymann Steinthal, Über Juden und Judentum (Berlin: Poppelauer, 1906), 91– 104.  Cf. Schopenhauer, “Über Religion,” in Parerga und Paralipomena, vol. 2, first published in 1851, and again in Sämtliche Werke, vol. 6 (Wiesbaden: Suhrkamp, 1972), 380.

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decades later, Friedrich Nietzsche derisively spoke of “pitiful monotono-theism”.²⁶ Against this view, in the nineteenth and in the early twentieth-century many Jewish scholars joined Philippson in his attempt not only to challenge such opinions, but also to demonstrate the ultimate ethical and philosophical superiority of the Judaic belief in the One God—a project that culminated in the aforementioned philosophy of ethical monotheism.²⁷ Countering the negative views of monotheism, Jewish theologians almost univocally claimed the very opposite: The Hebrew invention of a monotheistic God was the fundament of absolute ethical truths, and only monotheistic belief guaranteed that humanity would ever be unified in a Kantian Eternal Peace, which in the religious language of Judaism was called the kingdom of the Messiah.²⁸ The best and most detailed substantiation of this thesis was probably presented by Hermann Cohen in 1918, in his neo-Kantian exposition of the inherent identity of the monotheistic God and human morality. The ethical God of the Hebrew prophets, Cohen wrote, was no longer the tribal God of the Israelites, jealous of other tribal gods. The monotheistic God assumed instead a completely original virtue: He became the apodictic guarantee for the poor and oppressed to be equally part of humanity.²⁹ The future moral unity of humanity is the ever approaching goal of history, but the absence of violence and social injustice as the features of universal messianism would presuppose, in Cohen’s view, the belief in a universal monotheistic God—that is, a God who is not “the only true God” compared to others, but the only Being compared to all existence (Sein versus Dasein).³⁰ Here again, as we shall see, Philippson’s thought marks an interim stage in the theological transformation from the pre-modern insistence on the  Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Antichrist, first published in 1888, and again in Werke—Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol. VI, 3 (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 1969), 183.  But this argument does not strictly follow the Jewish/non-Jewish division: Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768 – 1834), for example, held monotheism to be fundamental, because only through the belief in an infinite God the finite religious self-confidence feels satisfied. Friedrich Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube nach den Grundsätzen der Evangelischen Kirche im Zusammenhange dargestellt (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1960, first published in 1830 – 1831), 51. Also for Auguste Comte (1798 – 1857) monotheism was the last and highest stage of the religious evolution. See Harriet Martineau, The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, vol. 2 (London: Chapman, 1853), 599 – 612.  Already in Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah the time of the Messiah is described like this: “In that era, there will be neither famine or war, envy or competition for good will flow in abundance and all the delights will be freely available as dust. The occupation of the entire world will be solely to know God.” Laws of Kings and Wars, chapter 12, end of the book. (transl. Eliyahu Touger for chabad.org).  See Cohen, Religion der Vernunft, 283 – 98.  Ibid., 50 – 51.

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quantitative unity (indivisibility) of God to the neo-Kantian transcendental unity (singular uniqueness) of God, which is more than the negation of polytheistic religious views, because it includes the relation of God and world. To complicate matters, for Philippson the divinely revealed character of Jewish monotheism did not mean, however, that the monotheistic concept of historical Judaism always remained the same. Philippson distinguished two main periods in the gradual development of the monotheistic idea, once conceived: At first the Israelites themselves had to fully grasp and understand pure monotheism in all its conceptual implications and incrementally expurgate it from several errors and misconceptions. Only after this difficult work was achieved, primarily during the period of the Second Temple, the second phase commenced: Monotheism, called by Philippson the idea of religion itself, was to be “exported” from Judaism into the rest of humanity. This then was the task of Christianity, a religion born to compromise on the pureness of the monotheistic idea precisely for the purpose of the dissemination of this idea, while Judaism’s eternal challenge was to preserve the pristine form of the monotheistic belief ³¹—a widely held theory in Jewish thought of the nineteenth century.³² Philippson subdivided this first period in the development of the monotheistic idea—that is, the inner Jewish shaping of monotheism—into three different phases of progress. Regarding these phases, as outlined already in his Torah commentary from 1844, it should be noted that he never substantially changed his views. In his explanation of Deut. 6:4 Shma Israel (‫)שמע ישראל‬, the first and lowest stage is represented by the divine name ‫שדי‬, symbolizing “the sum of all natural powers,” that is, a God who is merely omnipotent. The second stage is represented by the name God gave Himself at the Burning Bush ‫יהיה אשר יהיה‬ (that was read into the tetragrammaton (YHWH), which Philippson interpreted as representing God as the “eternal, unchangeable, absolute being.”³³ Here, we need to refer back to his commentary on the episode at the Burning Bush itself (Ex 3:14, where God’s name is mentioned) to illustrate why Philippson believed

 “[…] durch das Christentum einen Teil der Gotteslehre in die heidnische Welt auszuströmen, in der israelitischen Nation aber die Gotteslehre in ihrer vollendeten Konsequenz zu bewahren.” In Ludwig Philippson, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, vol. 1 (Leipzig: Fock, 1911), 252. See for the same idea Philippson, Die Entwicklung der religiösen Idee, 99 – 113, and Philippson, Religionslehre, I, 21.  See before, Philippson, “Formstecher,” Religion des Geistes, 414. And later, in a more radical form, Moses Hess, Rom und Jerusalem (Leipzig: Wengler, 1862), 28 – 30. But this is essentially common lore among the liberal Jewish thinkers of the nineteenth century in Germany.  Die Israelitische Bibel, Erster Theil, Die fünf Bücher Moscheh (Leipzig: Baumgärtner, 1844), 880.

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that the second stage was indeed a further development: the omnipotent God of Nature did not yet include the idea of eternity, because the powers of nature could cease and dissipate. But with the knowledge of God’s promise “I will be” (‫ )אהיה אשר אהיה‬also time, as a philosophical term, became merged into the concept of God.³⁴ This thought, obviously, refers back to Mendelssohn’s disputed translation of YHWH as “der Ewige” (the Eternal), emphasizing perpetual divine providence.³⁵ But for Philippson, this was not yet enough: the substantial linguistic inter-relatedness of the three words ‫ יהיה אשר יהיה‬expressed ideally both eternity and inalterability and was thus completing the revelation of the divine essence.³⁶ It is here, Philippson emphasized in his commentary to Ex. 3:14, that the Jewish concept of God for the first time superseded that of all other religions, for all ancient peoples believed that the power of their gods could possibly vanish at a certain point. Contrary to this, the sublime superiority of YHWH, for Philippson, was both awe-inspiring and proved the necessity of it being revealed—indicating clearly that Philippson did not believe in any natural or intellectual superiority of the Jewish people over other ancient nations. He believed Israel’s religion was original, but it was superior only in its ethical essence.³⁷ Frequently Philippson called the phrase ‫ אהיה אשר אהיה‬the “most exalted utterance about the essence of God,”³⁸ a concept that would replace the actual “inconsolability” (Trostlosigkeit) of the idea of God in other religions with “vibrant confidence,”³⁹ especially because it guaranteed the eternal providence Mendelssohn had attributed to the divine name. In his popular theological Reden wider den Unglauben (Discourses against Unbelief of 1856), Philippson expounded his theory of the advanced stage of Judaism’s understanding of monotheism in great detail, characterizing the new divine name as a “profound metaphysical distinction.” As the Almighty God is still not necessarily an eternal God, and, even seen as the Aristotelian First Cause, God might be eternal, but still not necessarily unchangeable. Inalterability is

 Die Israelitische Bibel, Erster Theil, 311.  See Mendelssohn’s commentary to Ex. 3.14. The translation was later criticized both by Samson Raphael Hirsch and by Franz Rosenzweig for “philosophical coldness.” See Franz Rosenzweig, “Der Ewige”: Mendelssohn und der Gottesname, Berlin 1929 und Hirsch’s commentary to Gen 2.4 (Der Pentateuch übersetzt und erläutert von Samson Raphael Hirsch, Frankfurt: Kauffmann 1867)  Die Israelitische Bibel, Erster Theil, 312.  For this originality (Ursprünglichkeit) of Mosaism, see Philippson, Religionslehre, I, 26.  Philippson, Religionslehre, II, 3.  Philippson, Die Entwicklung der religiösen Idee, 26.

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no inherent attribute of the notion of omnipotence (Allmacht), Philippson claimed; it is here that divine revelation is needed to fully nuance the conception of God’s essence. Only with the revelation to Moses as YHWH is the decisive predicate of immutable constancy added, and God is now not anymore subject to, but representing the eternal laws underlying and determining all alterability outside Himself—and here, Philippson turned the service of the deity into the acceptance of those laws of the Torah and their creator.⁴⁰ But interestingly, divine inalterability is related to inalterable law for Philippson only in the realm of the natural world: God determined the unchangeable laws of nature. For both the human individuum and for human society, divine inalterability is not legally determined, but still rather metaphysical, or at least psychological: Every human being possesses an unchangeable I, the “I as the focal point, as the very center of our essence and being,” which is the divine representation in us, because it is eternal, even after death, and unalterable.⁴¹ And while we might expect that Philippson would re-introduce the aspect of divine law at least for human society, in fact, here he also talks of “morality as implanted by the creator in the nature of man,” and of moral consciousness as “the immediate ethical harmony of the soul.” True, for Philippson, as for many liberal Jewish thinkers of the nineteenth-century, human morality was identical with divine inalterability, but the way the former is derived from the latter still remains in the fog of the mystical.⁴² The conflation of divine omnipotence and God’s eternal inalterability, the third and final stage of the historical conceptualization of monotheism was for Philippson not necessarily the most important phase of the process. Rather it is the second stage, represented by the Shema, translated into “one”, meaning at the same time (‫ אחד‬ahad means “one”) “unique” and “united,” that is, singular and not consisting of any parts (einig und einzig). For Philippson, God is first and foremost the God of the second stage, “das immerfort so Seiende” (a timeless, unalterable being); but God’s being is, in addition, immediate (unmittelbar), as opposed to the being of the world, which is becoming and passing, creation and decay.⁴³ The Shema’-Yisrael, and thus the emphasis on God’s singularity, would bring the inner Jewish development of monotheistic belief to its final end. It seems, however, that for Philippson the uniqueness of God’s being was in a certain way already included in the second stage (inalterability), and that he therefore underrated the theological implications of the third, divine tran Ludwig Philippson, Reden wider den Unglauben (first published in Leipzig in 1856, here quoted from the second edition, Leipzig: Baumgärtner, 1861), 8 – 11.  Ibid., 13.  Ibid., 15. This is almost identically repeated in Philippson, Religionslehre, II, 2.  Ibid., 2.

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scendence, that is, the essential dissimilarity of God and world. He renounced pantheism, however, as we will see, on metaphysical grounds rather than for ethical reasons.⁴⁴ The aspects discussed so far is but all there was to know about the essence of God, according to Philippson: “All other predicates of God concern only His relation to man and world and are therefore of secondary importance.”⁴⁵ Especially this last formulation is interesting and positions Philippson in a medieval, metaphysical tradition—an impression that is frequently confirmed by his later works. While Maimonides indeed denied that man can know positive truths about God’s essence and reduced our positive knowledge of the divine to God’s relation to world and man,⁴⁶ many modern Jewish thinkers saw this limitation not as something “secondary,” albeit as essential in itself for all purposes of religion. Already in 1783, Moses Mendelssohn classified the notion of divine omnipotence and natural power as inferior, compared to a apparently “weaker,” but actually superior God of love, mercy, and forgiveness.⁴⁷ More than a century later, Hermann Cohen powerfully carved out the direct philosophical line that leads from what is knowable about the monotheistic God to the set of reasonbased laws of a true philosophical ethics. Using the same biblical passage as both Maimonides and Mendelssohn before him—“the Thirteen Divine Attributes” (Ex. 34:6 – 7)—Hermann Cohen noted that all that God predicates about Himself in this passage were purely ethical attributes, thus concluding that the knowable relation between man and God is of an exclusively moral nature.⁴⁸ Though Pan-

 Note here Philippson’s explanation for the human belief in the existence of angels. As nature has numberless stages in the development from low to high, reason might assume that also between man and God such intermediate stages exist, he writes. Philippson, Religionslehre, II, 21– 22.  Die Israelitische Bibel, Erster Theil, Commentary to the Shema’, 880.  Compare his Guide of the Perplexed, part I, chapters 51– 60. Maimonides’s formulation that God “exists, but not through existence; lives, but not through life; knows, but not through knowledge” (ch. 57) has kept generations of thinkers duly occupied, and does so today.  Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem oder über religiöse Macht und Judentum, ed. David Martyn (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2001), 116 – 17.  Hermann Cohen, “Charakteristik der Ethik Maimunis,” in Hermann Cohen, Werke, vol. 15, ed. Hartwig Wiedebach (Hildesheim: Olms, 2009), 161– 269, 203 (in the older edition: Cohen, Jüdische Schriften III, 221– 89, 246). For the same reading of Maimonides in Emmanuel Levinas, see his “A Religion for Adults,” in Difficult Freedom, 17. The other option to understand Maimonides here, adopted by most Maimonides scholars, is to read “the divine attribute of action,” that is, the knowable relation between God and world, as God determining the laws of nature, the study of which would then be the service of God—instead of Cohen’s worship as moral behavior. But this option turns Maimonides into a quasi-Pantheist, which contradicts his own ex-

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theism also upheld the uniqueness of God, it was not a true religion—because a religion without morality does not deserve this name, Cohen believed. It seems here that Philippson never fully arrived at what (only a few years later) became the theological hallmark of Jewish liberalism: the concept of ethical monotheism. Philippson anticipated Cohen’s argument when he claimed that Pantheism denied true human freedom, and thus “a moral order of the world” (sittliche Weltordnung), because it located the essence of man within the deterministic powers of nature. Although this “moral order of the world” was “not arbitrary” for Philippson, it was not determined by divine moral law, but by the divine providence of God’s will.⁴⁹ In sum, Philippson for the most part understood the oneness of God in the medieval scholastic (and probably also in an anti-Christian) sense as excluding divisibility from God, and therefore did not highlight the ethical meaning of the concept of divine uniqueness, because it seemed to him self-evident that God is the ontological ground of morality. For Philippson, revelation as the source of a monotheistic concept of God did not only explain the sudden historical appearance of a fundamentally different religious idea, that is, the originality of Judaism; divine revelation was first and foremost a logical and systematically essential element of his overall theological worldview. All other ancient religions began their thinking about God “from below,” from human reflection on the existential riddle of life and death, for which they had no explanation and therefore transferred it to the deity. Judaism, however, Philippson argued, began “from above,” from thinking the revealed, transcendent God who had created man and the world. While the pagan theologians held the view that the world exists, therefore there must be God, Moses, according to Philippson, claimed the opposite: God exists, therefore there is the world. The essential difference between anthropological existentialism and religious idealism that Philippson translates here into a theological language had widespread implications for him. Given its point of departure from the world and nature, pagan religious thought necessarily led to polytheism in the worst, and to pantheism in its more sophisticated expressions. Only on the Mosaic principle of deriving the world from a higher idea, Philippson believed, could monotheism have been established. While in the pagan view, God is merely the reflection of necessarily ambivalent perceptions of the world, and thus God therefore remains an ambivalent concept, the unique Mosaic creator-God could never have been a source of ontological ambivalence.⁵⁰ As we have ample of the thirteen attributes in Guide I, 54 and many other passages and thus calls for extreme esotericism.  Philippson, Religionslehre, II, 43 – 44.  Philippson, Die Entwicklung der religiösen Idee, 24.

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seen, Philippson knew of no gradual historical or anthropological development from polytheism to monotheism in the ancient world, as it was assumed by many of the leading scholars of his time. If monotheism is divine revelation, Paganism and Judaism exist in parallel, radically contrasting theological worlds and ergo in absolute antagonism.⁵¹ Divine self-revelation is for Judaism not only the modus rerum narrandarum of the Hebrew Bible, Philippson explained, but an inherently fundamental principle of monotheistic faith. It is the idealistic, transcendental representation of truth, which is to guide man in accord with divine law.⁵² It is here that Philippson came closest to the religious idealism of Hermann Cohen, when he writes: “God has revealed to man what is truth and what is law [Recht],” as he did frequently in his theological works, taking advantage of the philosophical ambivalence in the German word Recht in relation to God, meaning both law and that which is right.⁵³ But Philippson struggled hard with the concept of God as an idea of reason; he mistrusted the power of human speculation to arrive on its own merit at something as sublime as the monotheistic deity. Hence Philippson’s somewhat pessimistic justification for his insistence on supernatural revelation: if knowledge of God was based on the achievements of human speculation alone, it must have started and ascended from human nature and must thus consequently fail to grasp the true and unique character of the divine.⁵⁴ Philippson often seems to confuse the capability of human reason with the subject of reasoning, that is, the difference between the nature of human understanding and understanding human nature—sublime ideas can arguably be thought of as transcendental, as a priori ideals—but religious existentialism will always end up in mysticism or anthropology. Not surprisingly, also in his discussion of the obvious theological differences between Judaism and Christianity did Philippson come close to an ethical interpretation of Jewish monotheism. Aside from Abraham Geiger, Philippson was arguably the most outspoken Jewish critic of Christian theology in nineteenth-century Germany, elaborating his critique in several profound essays on the Christian religion and its dogmatism.⁵⁵ As part of their overall project to preserve

 Ibid., 99.  Ibid., 33.  See, for example, “Allgemeine Einleitung,” 31, Die Israelitische Bibel, Dritter Theil, Leipzig, XXIII, or in IR I, 53 – 54, and many other places..  Philippson, Die Entwicklung der religiösen Idee, 34.  For Philippson’s critique of Christianity, see George Y. Kohler, “Ein notwendiger Fehler der Weltgeschichte—Ludwig Philippsons Auseinandersetzung mit dem Christentum,” in Die Entdeckung des Christentums in der Wissenschaft des Judentums, ed. Görge K. Hasselhoff (Berlin:

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Jewish identity in modernity, liberal Jewish theologians felt the urgent need to dissociate themselves from modern Protestant versions of de-mythologized Christianity. This process resulted in the counter-historical idea that rational Judaism and mystical Christianity were fundamentally different types of religion, impossible to compare, let alone unify. Already by the 1840s, Jewish theologians had developed the notion of Judaism’s unique mission to human culture, countering still widespread Christian supersessionism. The radical monotheism of the Jewish religion was the original and decisive contribution Judaism had to offer to the progress of world civilization and Philippson subscribed to Jewish mission theology from its very beginning. In another extensive exposition of the Shema Israel from 1862, Philippson explained that the commandment expressed in this biblical formula of the Jewish creed concerned not only a defense against Kabbalistic attacks on the oneness of God from inside Judaism; it also rejected all attempts to alter strict Jewish monotheism from the outside. The use of the prominent word ‫( אלוהנו‬our God) in this formula indicates clearly that it is the Jewish religion’s exclusive challenge to be the historical “tool” (Werkzeug) of the monotheistic idea, even at the price of contempt and persecution by others.⁵⁶ Christianity, as previously noted, was assigned the task to spread and propagate the originally Jewish idea of the One God among the pagan nations. For this purpose, though, Christianity had to pay a heavy prize: it severed monotheism from Mosaic Law. As a result, Christianity began to emphasize the afterworld, replacing the rule of Mosaic law with the virtue of suffering; it increasingly became a religion of the individual. Eventually, Christianity had to split the deity into three parts, which is inadmissible for Judaism concept of God’s essential oneness, even in an allegorical meaning of the Trinity. But while Philippson believed that the Trinitarian God was ethically still ultimately superior to all pagan religions, it was the Christian dogma of original sin that created the insurmountable gap between pure Jewish monotheism and Christian theology.⁵⁷ The concept of man being created in the image of the One God, Philippson reasoned, is rendered impossible by the Christian concept of original sin. While in 1856, Philippson still believed that “man is created in the image of God” meant the immortality of man’s individuality, that is, a modern version of

De Gruyter, 2010), 33 – 62; and Andreas Brämer, “Ludwig Philippsons Konstruktion der jüdischen Geschichte als Fundamentalkritik des Christentums,” in Ludwig Philippson, Ausgewählte Werke, ed. Andreas Brämer (Cologne: Böhlau, 2015), 7– 33. For Geiger, see Susannah Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).  Philippson, Religionslehre, II, 26. For Philippson on Kabbalah, see George Y. Kohler, Kabbalah Research in the Wissenschaft des Judentums (1820 – 1880), (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019), 223 – 235  Ibid., 27; compare also Philippson, Die Entwicklung der religiösen Idee, 103 – 11.

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the immortality of the soul, he was also already aware of another dimension of this idea. Applied not to the individual, but to human society as a whole, God’s image stands for the immutability of morality. Moses’s teaching of the eternal, immutable God ‫ אהיה אשר אהיה‬brought humanity to eventually realize that morality, love, and justice have their origin in the monotheistic God.⁵⁸ In his major theological work from 1862, this is true not only for human society, but also for the individual human being. Being created in the image of God is laying the foundation for the moral essence of man, Philippson now held, the “entire structure of religious morality is built on this doctrine.” Paganism materialized and humanized its deities on earth. Monotheistic Mosaism went the opposite way: it elevated man towards God, opened the way to the divine transcendence and holiness.⁵⁹ The biblical analogy between man and God, Philippson summarized in a Kantian fashion, “finds its ultimate expression in the self-awareness and morality of the human will.”⁶⁰ These scattered remarks notwithstanding, Philippson’s views on the philosophical impact of monotheism are still stuck somewhere between medieval metaphysics and modern idealism. Interestingly, his main opinions never substantially changed on these subjects throughout his intellectual life—probably a sign that under the burden of his everyday work, he never seriously reviewed the theological claims he made in his thirties while writing his commentary on the Bible. Nevertheless, Philippson must be regarded as one of the pioneers of modern Jewish thought given his critical and non-polemical analysis of Christian theology—and it is certainly here that he makes the most profound contributions to the discussion of monotheism as a theoretical-theological concept and its impact on philosophical ethics in general. Motivated by the urgent need of demarcation from Protestantism, his liberal Judaism found in radical monotheism the ultimate criteria for measuring dogma and doctrine in light of eternal universal ethical principles.

 Philippson, Reden wider den Unglauben, 14– 15.  Philippson, Religionslehre, II, 64.  Ibid., 72.

Martin Buber

Jewish Studies Martin Buber (1878 – 1965) was appointed by Theodor Herzl in 1901 to edit the weekly organ of the World Zionist Movement, Die Welt, in which Buber called for a renaissance of Jewish culture. In an essay “Jüdische Wissenschaft” published first in Die Welt (in two parts, October 11 and 25, 1901), he criticized 19th century Wissenschaft des Judentums, which he held lacked a commitment to Judaism as a living cultural reality. In his criticism—and the concomitant demands that Jewish science expand its thematic and methodological horizons from antiquarian interest in Jewish literature to include all aspects of Jewish life—Buber anticipated the new scope and its conception Jewish studies in the twentieth century. Jewish historical scholarship would no longer be confined to philological study of texts, but employs broadly conceived conceptual and phenomenological tools for the study of Jewish literature and civilization; moreover, it incorporates the methods of various scholarly disciplines to facilitate the effort, as Buber put it, “to explore and know what one loves.”¹

Part One The agenda of the Fifth Zionist Congress includes the question of [Jewish] spiritual amelioration [geistige Hebung] as well as that of “Jewish Studies” (Jüdische Wissenschaft). Many loyal Zionists may be clueless about what Jewish Studies are. To what purpose and how does one engage in it? Where does it exist? What does it have to do with Zionism? And what [does Jewish Studies have to do with] the spiritual amelioration of the Jewish people? All this is not self-evident. We have to try to clarify the meaning of Jewish Studies and its relationship with our [Zionist] endeavors. Jewish Studies may have a threefold meaning. According to its point of departure, it may either be [1] the scholarly study of Judaism [Wissenschaft des Judentums], [2] the study of the Jewish question (Wissenschaft der Judenfrage), or [3] the study of Zionism (Wissenschaft des Zionismus). In the first case, Wissenschaft des Judentums, its point of departure would be the historical and present reality of the Jewish people; it would aim to describe and explain the facts and

 Martin Buber, “Jüdische Wissenschaft,” Part One, Die Welt. Zentralorgan der Zionischte Bewegung (Wien) 41 (October 11, 1901): 1– 2; Part Two, Die Welt 43 (October 25, 1901): 1. Translation by Paul Mendes-Flohr, with reference to translations by Jacob Hessing, Martin Buber, “Jewish Scholarship: New Perspectives (1901),” in Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, Jew in the Modern World, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2010), 266 – 68; and Gilya Gerda Schmidt, Martin Buber, “Jewish Science,” The First Buber: Youthful Zionist Writings of Martin Buber, ed. G.G. Schmidt (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1999), 34– 41. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110554618-012

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would pursue no practical aspect other than, perhaps, tracing consistent developments through the maze of contradictory phenomena. In the second case, the Jewish Question, it would have to deal with the “pathology” of contemporary Jewry and with their anomalous relations to other peoples. The study of the Jewish Question would find it more difficult to remain objective than would Wissenschaft des Judentums, for already the choice of material would be influenced by the very purpose of the Jewish Question. It would be even more difficult for the study of Zionism to be objective; its point of departure would not be a question, but an answer, an answer that in most cases was not arrived at by a scholarly method, but by intuition or, in any case, subjectively, and must now be justified; here the purpose would not merely determine the choice of the material but also its arrangement, its interpretation, and its evaluation. The two latter concepts seem even less satisfactory if we consider them from another, broader perspective. Let us consider an analogy. These two concepts are reminiscent of the scholarly investigations of topical sociopolitical themes, in one case by a naïve economist, in the other by a political scientist. We shall here ignore the distinction between the two disciplines. To the degree these disciplines flow from social life, they are both obviously but of a fragmentary and provisional nature. They must not presume, indeed, to be more than supplementary and provisional [perspectives]. And only when these disciplines do not presume more than that, they are of value. The study of the Jewish question or the study of Zionism likewise must not seek to be more than additional, provisional, transitional perspectives. But addition to what? And transitional to what end? In truth there can only be one type of Jewish Studies: the study of Jewry [Judentum]. Partly, at least, it would naturally result in a scholarly treatment of the Jewish question and of Zionism (because it would explain contrasting conditions historically and sociologically), and it would partly be complemented by these studies, just as the theory of political economy would complement it, just as the theory of political economy complements economic policy. But where is this study of Jewry taking place? One might respond: It does not exist. And one might add: And it cannot be created. That is correct. It does not exist. And it cannot be created. It does not exist, for there is no defined area of study of Jewry nor is there one specific methodology that is systematically applied to its study. And it cannot be created, for true inquiry does not evolve from plans, schemes, and programs, however well intentioned they might be, but from the farsighted and yet narrowly circumscribed research of a knowledgeable person. Plans and programs are only its gabled roof, not its foundation. Yet we do not only speak of an academically pursued Zionism but actually of Jewish scholarship. Admittedly, this latter expression is not quite correct; it is to

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be retained merely for practical reasons. But if one accepts our definition for our purpose (I shall presently try to prove its relative justification), then the answers to the question about where this scholarly discipline [Wissenschaft] might be found will also turn out not to be quite correct. For this scholarly discipline admittedly does not exist. A small part of it is embodied in what is presently called the Wissenschaft des Judentums]; its larger part can be found in various other disciplines. And it is not a matter of creation but of detachment and linkage. This process of detachment and linkage, however, must not take place to create an independent discipline, valid according to the principles of the philosophy of academic scholarship—an independent subject matter without a valid methodology will never suffice to establish a particular discipline—but to collect that which belongs to our people, to construct a continuously developing inventory of Judaism [i. e. Jewish history and culture], to see what we are, what we have, and what we are able to do. Even if this is also of a practical nature like those I have previously mentioned, it will not diminish the objectivity and completeness of the scholarly body of knowledge under consideration. The various parts pertaining to Jewry as a whole should, therefore, be detached from the relevant disciplines and then linked to the so-called Study of Judaism. It is to be hoped that through these efforts and related organizational work, and through the development and the deepening of the Jewish national movement as well, the interest in the newly defined resources will be enhanced, and that Jewish scholars will study the relevant issues in their respective disciplines. But what about the so-called Wissenschaft des Judentums, which will serve as the core for the crystallization of the scholarly complex [of the study of Jewry in all its manifestations]? Wissenschaft des Judentums is not entitled to its great name, that much is certain. To be sure, it could always claim outstanding scholars to its credit, and has developed its method with critical subtlety and heuristic acumen. It also has demonstrated eagerness in its research, comparison, and analysis. But inevitably, it has always remained what it was from the beginning, a branch of philology. Its object was ancient Jewish literature; its method of research was philological. It is not even entitled to the name Wissenschaft des Judentums to the degree that German Studies [Germanistik] deserve the name Wissenschaft des Deutschtums. To be sure, laymen have also gathered other scholarly creations under the rubric Wissenschaft des Judentums. But a history of the Jewish people surely is part of the historical discipline, a treatise on the legislation in the Bible or Talmud is part of the general jurisprudence, studies of Jewish legends and customs

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are part of folklore, the monuments of ancient Jewish art are part of archeology and the history of art. The studies of the development of the Jewish people as an ethic group, of our psychophysical uniqueness, of ancient Jewish economies, of our social stratification, of the evolution of specific customs and morals, of the Jewish spirit and Jewish culture—all these studies, to which we are looking forward, will not belong to that disciplines which depends on the philological method but to anthropology, ethnology, economic, social, moral, and cultural history, disciplines with a different purpose and, therefore, with different methods. These two areas—Jewish philology, on the one hand, and the Jewish chapters of anthropology, history, and the social sciences, on the other—can never be fused theoretically, only practically. That this is possible we can see in our days by the strange and valuable example of the Jewish Encyclopaedia,² which we shall discuss in detail later. But the Jewish Encyclopaedia is but an incomplete example, or only one example, no matter the monumental nature of the work. Especially as an Encyclopaedia is not purely an academic undertaking: it will include scholarly meaningful papers, but no scientific “whole”; that is contrary to its structure, its system, its task. As far as details are concerned, it will be thorough, even exhaustive, rich and deep in interpretation; however, it will not be able to draw the overall conclusions that are the final goal of scientific inquiry; it will not be able to produce a complete picture of any given aspect of the Jews. To do so it would have to deviate from its very nature and develop into a series of large, independent works. This seems impossible to me and to anyone familiar with the structure of the work. The Jewish Encyclopaedia, which many see as the end product, can in truth only be characterized as a propaedeutic, a great preparatory undertaken. If we consider further that the Encyclopaedia does not, and perhaps cannot, consider some of the above-mentioned disciplines sufficiently, for example, the social sciences, we understand where we need to begin. Regarding this a second article is to follow.

Part Two In my previous article (no. 41 of Die Welt) I tried to show that there can be no valid Jewish scholarship in a strictly methodological sense, but merely a schol-

 The first Jewish encyclopaedia was published in the United States, in 12 volumes, in 1901– 1906, and edited by Isidore Singer.

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arly body of data that could be organized by isolating the areas pertaining to Jewry in various disciplines and by systematically linking them to the modern philological Jewish Studies. Having said this, I shall call this body “Jewish Studies [Jüdische Wissenschaft].” This largely answers our first question, “What is Jewish Studies?” Actually, we already know its purpose as well. We shall engage in Jewish Studies in order to learn about the Jewish people—their origins, development, and present situation. This has a dual purpose. First, to understand that which we love, but then also to learn from the facts what our people need and what they might expect—our people’s needs and possibilities. The former and the latter [are needed] to be able to create a scholarly foundation for the grand design of Jewish politics, that is, to address that which we have called the “study of the Jewish question.” The purpose is a theoretical-practical one. The practical [purpose] may never predominate. It is, of course, self-evident that it would not make any sense if all who are engaged in Jewish Studies would seek to cover all the pertinent disciplines and extract that which is Jewish. It would be a waste of time and energy, which we cannot afford. Rather, we have to find ways to study all the Jewish subjects coherently and systematically. Among these ways I would like to single out two: the scholarly task and a Jewish college [Hochschule]. They correspond to the dual function of the discipline: the active and the contemplative. I already explained why the Jewish Encyclopaedia could only be considered a precursor. We will have to set a task for the discipline of Jewish Studies that would be carried out according to an academic plan and not encyclopedically (or even by examples). Biographies and generalities would have to make room for a strict organization of facts and relationships in the natural science, history, and sociology. This task I consider a collective creative effort in which the leading Jewish scholars would participate, each conscious of his task as a mission, each one presenting his findings independently and self-contained, and yet everyone together and interactively. Upon completion, this task would be a chapter of the intellectual endeavor from which we might try to discern the future of the Jewish people. Recently, the idea of a Jewish college has recurrently come up.³ The thought is entertained by some of the best of today’s Jews. The idea was presented at the [Fourth] Zionist Congress, and then it appeared repeatedly in periodicals; then, in a positive way, in the United States, through the personality of a herald con-

 See Martin Buber, Berthold Feiwel, and Chaim Weizmann, Eine jüdische Hochschule (Berlin: Jüdische Verlag, 1902).

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nected with the [Jewish] Encyclopaedia ⁴; and then, again, discussed in periodicals. Out of all of these proposals some guiding principles took shape for me that are in definite contrast to the American [Encyclopaedia] project. Briefly and precisely stated, they are: (1) a Jewish college is a necessity as the primary means to educate a modern, Jewish-thinking generation, as the preparation for future Jewish Studies, as the center of the efforts of an intellectual and spiritual amelioration of our people. (2) The college’s curriculum in Jewish Studies or the study of Judaism as defined by me. (3) The curriculum will not consist of the traditional, manifestly insufficient structure of study “history, literature, theology” but will be subdivided according to modern academic methodology (such as anthropology, history, including history of literature and history of religion, and the social sciences). (4) The present location of the college can only be in Europe; only here is the necessary personnel found. (5) The college will be run by an administration appointed by a Jewish academy. The Jewish academy under discussion here would be an institution whose “task” and that of the college would coincide. We have seen what today is still almost entirely missing in the “task”—a systematic plan, the parameters and organization of the material, the design of the structure, the organization of Jewish Studies. Likewise, the college is still lacking nearly everything. All of this cannot be supplied by individuals but only by founding an association for this purpose. This association I would like to call the Jewish Academy⁵. Its function would be to lead Jewish Studies from monographs and scattered activities to the task of education. This task and college are not yet feasible. It would be the responsibility of the academy to work for the realization of the college and to take on its administration. But more on that another time.

 Isidore Singer (1859 – 1939), an Austrian Jew who settled in New York City in 1895, edited the Jewish Encyclopedia and envisioned the establishment of a Jewish University.  An Academy for Jewish Studies was established in Berlin in 1919. See the essay in this volume by P. Mendes-Flohr, “Wissenschaft des Judentums at the Fin-de-Siècle,” p. 177 f.

Index Abravanel, Isaac 50 acculturation 169 Adaas Jisroel 79, 87 Adam (first man) 53 Adenauer, Konrad 134 adultery 132 agnosticism 114 Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums 177 Aknin, Joseph ibn 16 Albeck, Chanokh 178 Albo, Joseph 50 Alexander, Carl 144 Alexander, Fritz 148 Alexandria 54, 82 Alfasi, Rabbi Isaac 17 Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums 143, 182 Almanzi, Giuseppe 70, 74 Amalek 87 Amsterdam 8 Anderson, Mark 100 Ansorge, Conrad 152 anthropology 194, 200, 202 antisemitism 65, 75, 92, 105, 113 f., 137, 142, 147, 166, 168 – 170, 182 – racial 166 apologetics 48, 55, 71, 116 Aramaic (language) 32, 63, 68 archeology 182 Archimedean 166 Aristotelianism 190 Artom, Benjamin 74 Aryan 131 Ascher, Saul 137, 139, 153, 157 Aschheim, Steven 100 f. Ascoli, Graziadio Isaia 66, 71 Ashkenazim 11, 13, 16, 20, 81 Asiatic Brothers 53 assimilation, of the Jews 28, 43, 102, 112, 121, 141, 155 f., 166, 169 – dissimilation 166, 169 – 171 Attias, Giuseppe 74 Aufhebung 122

Auschwitz 129 Austerlitz, Battle of 112 autonomy 34, 73, 175 – ethics of 137 avant-garde 144 Babylonia 54 Bacharach, Rabbi Ya’ir Hayyim 11 – 19, 23 f. Baeck, Leo 186 f. Baer, Fritz 177 f. Baltic countries 167 Bandeco, Daniel 54 Baneth, David 178 Barash, Iuliusz 56 Barth, Jacob 78 f. Barthes, Roland 99 beit midrash 79, 125, 178 ben Aderet, Rabbi Solomon 17 ben Bezalel, Judah Leib (the Maharal) 10, 50 ben Zakkai, Rabbi Johanan 54, 125 Benamozegh, Elia 66 Benjamin, Walter 98, 101 f. Benveniste, Hayyim 16 Ber, Yissachar 13 Berdichevski, Micha Joseph bin Gorion 169 Bergen-Belsen 129, 154 Berghahn, Volker 100 Berlin 54, 56, 79, 97, 109, 132 f., 136 f., 140, 144, 150, 164, 166, 168, 172, 176 f. – Academy of Music 147 – Berlin Haskalah 7 – Central Archive in 95 – great synagogue of 140 f. – intellectual circles of 72 – Jewish school in 121 – Jewish settlement in 134 – Orthodox Jewish community of 79, 87, 139 – Orthodox Rabbinical Seminary in 77 – publications in 25, 66, 117, 125 – Rabbinical Seminary in 78, 90 – Reform Jewish community of 140

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Index

– University of 38, 47, 181 Berlin National Assembly 34 Berliner, Abraham 77 – 90 Berliner, Juda 134 f. Berlioz, Hector 147 Biale, David 92 Biberfeld, Rabbi Haim 78 Biblical criticism 71, 166, 182 Bibliotheca Hebraica 49 Bildung 39, 99, 176 Billerbeck, Paul 50 Bismarck, Otto von 133, 141, 148 Blumenfeld, Ignaz 66 Bohemia 10 Bomberg, Daniel 8 Boncompagni, Baldassarre 71 Bonsels, Waldemar 145 Borges, Jorge Luis 91 f., 100 Börne, Karl Ludwig 33 Borsch, Johann Jacob 54 botany 182 bourgeoisie 149, 153, 170, 176 – culture of 37 – moral values of 147 – revolution of 139 – society of 37 f. – tradition of 144 – Wilhelminian high bourgeoisie 144 Brenner, Michael 170 Buber, Martin 169, 171, 197 Buber, Solomon 80 Budde, Franz 46, 52 – 55 Burning Bush 189 Cantoni, Lelio 69, 75 Cassel, David 183 Cassirer, Paul 146 – 149 Cassuto, Umberto 183 Castelli, David 66 Catholicism 35, 48 f., 56, 100, 111, 134, 158, 170 – Roman Catholic Church 48 Cavaglion, Alberto 73 censorship 36 Center for Jewish History 96, 103 Center Party 134

Central Verein deutscher Staatsbürger Jüdischen Glaubens 108, 112, 166 f. Chajes, Tzvi Hirsch 17, 19, 24, 73, 86 Chassid, Rabbi Michel 134 chauvinism 116 Chevra Shas 79 Christianity 48, 56, 65, 68, 71, 82 – 84, 88 f., 165, 184, 186, 189, 195 – and Kabbalah 50 f., 53 f. – Christian theology 56, 194 – 196 – history of 50 – laws of 49 – liberal 173, 185 – literature of 82 – scholarship of 49, 53 – surnames of 139 – world of 29 civil rights – movement in America 159 – of the Jews 35, 62 civil society 37 – 40, 42 Cohen, Hermann 172 – 179, 181, 186 – 188, 192 – 194 Cohn, Willy 115 f. colonialism 147 commandment 11, 18, 39 – Ten Commandments 49 Compactmemory.de 96 Consolo, Giuseppe 65 Constantinople 16, 144 constitution (legal document) 38, 43 – constitutional lawyer 143 f. – constitutional monarchy 139 – of the Meidji government 144 Coppel, Alexander 129, 133 Coppel, Anna 129 Coppel, Gustav 133 Coppel, Johanna 133 Coppel industry 133 Corino, Karl 150 f. Corinth, Lovis 146, 148, 152 cosmopolitanism 62, 154, 157 – 159 Cranach, Wilhelm Lukas von 131 f., 146, 152 Culturverein 139 f. Dähne, August Ferdinand 50, 56 dalla Volta, Samuel Vita 65, 68 f., 74

Index

Dalman, Gustav 50 D’Ancona, Alessandro 71 Daniel (prophet) 54 Darnton, Robert 103 Dauthendey, Max 145 David (Biblical king) 165 De Benedetti, Salvador 66 de Rossi, Azariah 7, 50 death penalty 64 f. Deborah (prophetess) 165 deism 75 Della Torre, Lelio 69, 73 f. Delphi 165 democracy 34, 38 density (in theories of communication) Der Orient 56 Derrida, Jacques 95 Desmond, William 158 determinism 114, 193 dialectics 22, 158, 172 Diaspora 99 – Jewish 31, 83 Die Welt 171, 197, 200 Digital Humanities 91, 96 – 101 Dilthey, Wilhelm 114, 164, 172 Dreyfus, Alfred 167 Dubnow, Simon 116 f. Duncan, Shaw 48 f. Dürer, Albrecht 154 Durieux, Tilla 149 Düsseldorf 129, 132 – University of 154

68 f.

Edelstein, Ludwig 154 Egypt 54, 133 Egyptology 182 Ehrenreich, Moise Levi 73 Elbogen, Ismar 108 f., 117 – 125 Emancipation, Jewish 32 f., 36, 41 f., 64, 70, 74 f., 82, 105, 112, 120, 154, 166, 169 Emperor – of Austria 139 – of Germany 133, 140, 142, 144, 148 Empress of Russia 139 Enlightenment 20, 22, 34 f., 62, 94, 113, 120, 135, 137, 154, 157 f., 160, 174 epistemology 14, 92, 94, 164, 179

205

epistolary 60 f., 63 f., 70 – collections 68 f. – compilations 61 – data 69 – epistolography 62 – exchange 61, 65 – German 72 – Italian Jewish 59, 63 – networks 70 f. – rabbinical 71 – society 75 – testimonies 75 Eppenstein, Simeon 78, 90 eroticism 144, 147, 149 f. ethics 191 – 193 – Christian 173, 195 – ethical attributes 192 – ethical judgment 114, 116, 119 – ethical truths 188 – historical study of 50 – Jewish 173, 175, 188, 190, 194 – messianic 173 – philosophical 192, 196 – religious 175 – system of 37 – universal 196 exegesis 9, 11, 20 f., 23 exile 159 f. – negation of 43 – of the Jews (galut) 32, 43 f. existentialism – anthropological 193 – religious 194 Ezekiel (prophet) 54 Falk, Joshua 9 Felsenthal, Bernard 66 Feuchtwanger, Lion 118 Feuchtwanger, Ludwig 118 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 137 fin-de-siècle 144, 148, 152, 163, 170, 179 Fiorentino, Salomone 74 Fischer, Claude S. 68 flâneur 98 folklore 200 – academic study of 169 – of the Jewish people 168 f.

206

Index

Ford, Barbara 160 Formstecher, Salomon 56 Foucault, Michel 94 Fraenkel, Stefan 115 Franco-German war 140 Frank, Walter 111, 113 Frankel, Zechariah 73, 82, 86, 89, 183 Frankfurt 57, 165, 178 – Jewish community of 110 – parliament of 139 – University of 8 Frederick William III 156 Frederick William IV 142 freedom – abstract 35, 42 – concrete 35, 37, 42 – subjective 40 Freemasonry 53 French Revolution 34 f. Freund, Ismar 123 Friedländer, David 36 Friedländer, Fritz 109, 112 – 114, 116 – 119 Friedsohn, Julius See Barash, Iuliusz Fürst, Julius 183 Gans, Eduard 26 f., 29 f., 33 f., 38 – 42 Gaon, of Vilna 10, 20, 83 Gaon, Saadia 16 Garke, Auguste 131 Geiger, Abraham 75, 82, 85 – 87, 183, 185, 194 Geiger, Ludwig 85, 134 Geisteswissenschaften 164, 172 genealogy 53, 78, 123 gentiles 23, 83, 89 f. German studies (academic discipline) 100 f., 199 Gesamtarchiv der deutschen Juden 95 Gesellschaft für jüdische Volkskunde 169 Ghirondi, M. S. 69 Givoni, Chawa 160 Glückel of Hameln 134 f., 137, 151, 153 Gnosticism 52 God 80, 140, 188 – 194, 196 – and laws of nature 191 – and world 189, 192 – being of 191

– concept of 43, 56, 182, 190, 193 f. – essence of 192 – ethical 188, 192 f. – existence of 193 – exsistence of 193 – image of 195 f. – knowledge of 194 – monotheistic 187 f., 192 f., 196 – name of 189 – of Aristotle 190 – of pantheism 193 – omnipotent 190 – oneness of 189, 193, 195 – transcendent 193 – tribal 188 – Trinitarian 195 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 113 Goitein, Hirsch 57 Goldenberg, Samuel Leib 66 Goldstein, Moritz 157 Gombiner, Abraham 13 Graetz, Heinrich 43, 82, 86 f., 92, 116 f., 120, 183 – Graetzian school 118 Grau, Wilhelm 112 – 114 Great Elector 134 f. Greenberg, Samuel 78 Guedemann, Moritz 82 Guttmann, Julius 57, 178 ha-Cohen, Shalom 60 ha-Levi, Joseph 16 ha-Me’iri, Menahem 16 ha-Nagid, Samuel 16 Habermas, Jürgen 103 Hagen, Carl Levy 154 Hagen, Emma 133 Hagen, Hermann 129 Hagen, Louis Levy See Levy, Louis Hagen, Nina 154 HaKattan, Shmuel 89 halakhah (Jewish law) 7, 9 – 14, 16 – 23, 49, 83, 85 – 90, 183 – Oral Law 86 f. – Written Law 86 f. halakhah (Jewish law) 10, 80 Halberstadt, Johanna 137

Index

Halberstam, Solomon Zalman Chaim 80 f., 85 – 87 Halle 54 – University of 56 Halle, Abraham Wulff 137 Halle, Mate 137 Hamburg 54, 137, 169 Hameln, Loeb 135 Hapsburg Empire 72 Harnack, Adolf von 173 Hasidei Ashkenaz 15 Hasidism – Hasidic tales 169 Haskalah 7, 9, 21 f., 42, 88 Hayles, Katherine 103 Hebrew, language 31 f., 49, 59, 61, 63, 65, 68, 73, 79 f., 84, 86, 120, 135, 141 f., 150 Hebrew Bible 84, 87, 120, 187, 194 – German translation of 182 Hebrew University of Jerusalem 178 Hegel, Georg W. F. 27, 29 f., 33 – 38, 40 – 42, 47, 56, 176 Hegelianism 27, 29, 34, 40 f., 158 – Geist 56 Heimann, Benno 148 Heimann, Martha 146, 148 f. Heimann, Rosalie 127, 152 f. Heimann-Alexander, Martha See Heimann, Martha Heine, Heinrich 33, 36, 41 Heinemann, Isaac 121 f. Hellenism 56, 88, 122 Heller, Rabbi Yomtov Lipmann 16 Herder, Johann Gottfried 32 hermeneutics 14, 16 Herzl, Theodor 167, 197 Hesiod 165 Hesse, Hermann 145 Hevrat Mekize Nirdamim 80 High Holy Days 88 Hildesheimer, Esriel 78 f. Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary 79, 85, 164 ḥillukim 10 Hindenburg, Paul von 111 Hirsch, Rabbi Samuel 57

207

Hirsch, Samson Raphael 61, 73, 84, 89, 109, 165 Hirschfeld, Ephraim Joseph 53 historical materialism 98 historicism 27, 33, 78, 84 – 86, 114, 163, 165 f., 169, 173, 175, 178 f. – anti-historicism 93, 107 f. – crisis of 178 historiography 107, 110, 117, 124, 154, 156, 158 f., 165, 178 – German 107, 115 – Jewish 25, 28, 43, 107, 112, 115 – 117 – modern 92 – Orthodox Jewish 80 – post-modern 91 – secular 135 – Zionist 43 history – intellectual 9, 48, 56 f., 59 – social 9, 167 Hitler, Adolf 106, 111, 113, 115 f., 124 Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums 108, 140, 144, 164 Hoffmann, Rabbi David 78 f. Holocaust 97, 102 Holocaust Memorial Museum 96 f. Holy Roman Empire 69, 71 homeland 40 – German 39 Homer (Greek author) 165 Horowitz, Rabbi Isaiah 17 Huet, Pierre-Daniel 54 humanism 83 – Italian 53 humanities (academic discipline) 91, 94, 101, 104 f., 121 Humboldt, Alexander 65, 112 f. Hume, David 48 hybridity 99 Hypercities 97 idealism – philosophical 196 – religious 193 f. idolatry 186 Iggers, Georg G. 108

208

Index

immigration 119, 124, 167 – Jewish 117 immortality 195 – of the soul 196 incest 149 f. Institute of Racial Biology 132 integration, of the Jews 29, 121, 166, 169 – in Germany 32 f., 36, 107, 109, 112, 115 – reintegration 30 – social integration 70 intermarriage 130, 157 f. Internet 103 intertextuality 9, 17 interwar period 116 Isaiah (prophet) 165 – Book of Isaiah 182 Islam 45, 56, 86, 184 Israel – beliefs of 175 – heritage of 173 – land of 43, 85, 125 – people 186 – religion of 190 – state of 159 – traditions of 166 Israel, James 144, 149 Israelites 83, 189 – religion of 184 Israelitisches Familienblatt 110, 113 Isserles, Rabbi Moses 12, 16 Jacob, Benno 183 Jacobs, Joseph 66 Jacobson, Israel 88 Jacobson, Jacob 136 Jaffe, Meyer See Seligmann, Levin Jaffe, Meyer Abraham 137 Jellinek, Adolf 66 Jerusalem 93, 102, 165 Jeschurun 73, 86 Jewish Central Union 142 Jewish Encyclopaedia 167 f., 200 f. Jewish question 111 f., 171, 197 f., 201 Jewish Studies (academic discipline) 68, 101, 105, 108 f., 120 f., 124 f., 166, 168, 171 f., 197 f., 201 f. – Academy of 177, 202

– and philology 201 – and postmodernism 91 – and Zionism 197 – at the Hebrew University 178 – college of 202 – crisis of 92, 164, 172 – critical Jewish Studies 120, 125 – German-Jewish Studies 75, 92, 100 f. – in the nineteenth century 60 – in the twentieth century 45, 197 – interdisciplinary approach to 177 – meaning of 197 – Protestant interest in 49 Jewish Theological Seminary – of Breslau 115, 121, 164 – of New York 68, 70 Jews – civil emancipation 182 – of Germany 32, 77, 88, 91, 93 – 95, 98 – 107, 109 – 111, 113 f., 116 – 125, 154, 156 – 159, 165, 167, 170, 172, 177, 181 f., 185 Joel, David 57 Jost, Isaac Marcus 66, 183 JStor 102 Judaica Europeana 96 Judaism 26, 30 – 32, 40, 49, 51, 83 f., 87 f., 93, 105, 125, 144, 173 f., 176 f., 179, 184 f., 188, 194, 197, 199 – apologetic defense of 71 – as a historical phenomenon 28, 35, 50, 189 – as a national culture 32 – Christian concern with 50, 53, 56 – Conservative 164, 183 f. – definition of 31, 41 – differences with Christianity 194 – essence of 173, 187 – evolution of 43, 190 – extinction of 36, 42, 122 – Hegel’s portrayal of 35 – in the nineteenth century 45 – internal crisis of 22 – internal discourse on 33 – Italian Judaism 62, 64, 66 – 68, 73 f. – liberal 79, 109, 112, 115, 121, 164, 182 – 184, 186, 191, 193, 195 f. – literature of 172

Index

– modern 165, 181 – non-Orthodox 80, 85 – Orthodox 28, 61, 73, 77 – 81, 83, 85, 87, 89, 109, 115, 137, 139, 154, 164 f., 184 – philosophical conceptualization of 29 – philosophy of 48, 55 f. – preservation of 109, 120 f., 169 – rabbinic 7 – 9, 11 f., 14, 16 – 24, 28, 50, 54, 57, 78, 80 f., 86 – 88, 134, 174, 177 – reform 21, 61 – 63, 67, 71, 75, 78, 88, 105, 137, 140, 154, 183 – 185 – renewal of 169, 178, 184 – representation of 27, 154 – scholarship on 120 – scientific study of 9, 23, 76, 78, 166, 168, 171, 174, 197, 199, 202 – uniqueness of 85, 193 Jüdisch-Theologische Seminar, Das 115, 119 Jüdische Rundschau 113, 118 Juedische Presse 77 Jugendstil (artistic style) 160 Jung, Rabbi Leo 77 Kabbalah 13 f., 19, 21 – 23, 46, 50 – 55, 83 f., 195 – Lurianic 13 f., 21 f. Kahn, Isidoro 73 Kalckreuth, Stanislaus von 147 Kalischer, Rabbi Zvi Hirsch 86, 89 Kampanton, Isaac 16 Kant, Immanuel 56, 113, 137, 158 Kantianism 188, 196 – neo-Kantianism 172, 188 f. – transcendental idealism 194 – transcendental unity 189 kaparot 84 Karaites 52 Karlsruhe Postal Congress 76 Karo, Rabbi Yosef 84 Kastein, Joseph 116 Kaufmann, David 17 Kayserling, Count Hermann von 144 Kayserling, Meyer 184 kelalim (principles) 16 f. Kellermann, Benzion 186 Kempner, Fritz 128 Kempner, Max 128, 134

209

Kempner, Paul 127 Kerem Chemed 61, 66, 74 Kipnis, Hana 160 Klee, Alfred 121 Knesseth Israel 83 Kohut, Alexander 66 Kol Nidrei 22 Kößler, Reinhart 38 Kristallnacht 96, 124 Krochmal, Nachman 24, 86 Kulturnation 32 f. Kulturvolk 32 f. Landau, Rabbi Ezekiel 10, 19 f. Landshut, Elieser 134 f. Lasinio, Fausto 66 Latin (language) 50, 63, 79 Lattes, Abram 69, 75 law – Mosaic 11, 53, 182, 195 Lazarus, Moritz 186 Leah (Biblical matriarch) 136 Leghorn See Livorno Lehrhaus, Freies Jüdisches 178 Leipzig 57, 66 – University of 56 Leo Baeck Institute 93 f., 96, 102 – DigiBaeck 96 Levin, Rosalie See Heimann, Rosalie Levinas, Emmanuel 187 Levy, Albert 143, 154 Levy, Elise 133, 143 f., 146, 152 – 154 Levy, Emma Jeanette 154 Levy, Fanny 134 Levy, Hermann 133 Levy, Louis 133 Levy family 154, 159 liberalism 36 f., 65, 71, 85, 112, 114, 124, 159 – era of 112 – supporters of 38, 41, 124 liberty 26, 29, 32 – 38, 40 – 42 – individual 34, 37 Lieberman, Max 99 Liebeschütz, Hans 112 f. Liebmann, Jost See Berliner, Juda Lilien, Ephraim Moses 160

210

Index

liminality 101 Lißt 32 Livorno 16 Lolli, Samuel 74 Löw, Leopold 183 Lublin 9 f. Luria, Rabbi Solomon 10, 12 Luther, Martin 131 Lutheranism 45, 49 Luzzatto, Isaia 62 Luzzatto, Samuel David 62, 64, 66, 68 – 76, 86 Lyotard, Jean-Francois 94 Maharal See ben Bezalel, Judah Leib Maimonides 11 f., 17, 50, 55, 86, 192 Mainster, Abram 69 Makower, Hermann 140 Mann, Margarethe 132 Mantua 63 – 65, 67 f., 70 f. Manuzio, Aldo 8 Marburg 172 – University of 176 Marcovaldi, Enrico 148 Marcovaldi, Martha See Heimann, Martha Margolis, Moshe 8 Margulies, Samuel 73 Marxism 94 maskil 27, 35 maskil 20 f., 23 Masorah 51 Maurogonato, Isacco Pesaro 65 Mauthner, Fritz 142 Mauthner, Margarethe 142, 144, 146 – 148, 152 Mayer, Johann Friedrich 54 Mazzoldi, Angelo 70 McGann, Jerome 96 Mecklenburg, Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi 83 medieval period 7, 9, 12 – 17, 20, 50, 54, 57, 81 – 83, 88, 125, 192 f., 196 Megilat Esther 18 Meidji government, of Japan 144 Meinecke, Friedrich 114, 178 Melber, Henning 38 memory 112, 115 – historical 101

– scholars of 93 Mendelssohn, Felix 147 Mendelssohn, Josef 134 Mendelssohn, Margarethe von 134 Mendelssohn, Moses 7, 27, 134 f., 158, 173, 186 f., 190, 192 Mendelssohn banking family 134 messianism 188 – the Messiah 46 metaphysics 108, 118, 190 – 192, 196 Metz 19, 24 Meyer, Ada 160 Meyer, Adelaide 159 Meyer, Babette 147 Meyer, Caroline 143, 154 Meyer, Charlotte 159 f. Meyer, Edmund 127, 131, 134, 136, 139 f., 142 – 144, 146, 148 f., 152 f., 160 Meyer, Elise 127, 131 f., 134 Meyer, Else 143, 154 Meyer, Gertrud 143, 160 Meyer, Heinrich 129 Meyer, Hildegard 127, 129, 132, 158 Meyer, Israel 137 Meyer, Jacob Abraham 137 Meyer, Joel Wolff 133, 137, 139 – 141, 147 – 151, 153 f., 156 f. Meyer, Käthe 159 f. Meyer, Max 128, 152 Meyer, Michael 185 Meyer, Philip 137 Meyer, Siegbert 147 Meyer, Siegmund Joel 140 – 142, 144, 147, 150, 156 Meyer family 133, 136 f., 140 – 142, 147, 153, 159 – Meyer brothers 139 – Meyer silk factory 137, 139 Meyerbeer, Giacomo 137, 139, 147, 153 Michelangelo 148 – Piazza Michelangelo 148 midrashim 10, 20 – 22, 57, 79 f. minhag 12, 15 f., 19 f., 23 Mischling 128, 154, 157 f. Mishnah 10, 18, 48, 82, 85 Mithridates 53 modern era 10, 12, 15, 24, 174, 185

Index

modernity 49, 94, 113 – and religion 144 – Jewish identity in 195 Moellin, Rabbi Jacob 20 Mommsen, Theodor 110 monotheism 30, 55, 57, 173, 184, 186 – 196 – ethical 186, 188, 193 – Jewish 185 – Mosaic 187, 193 – universal 188 monotheistic 188 montage 98 Morais, Sabato 66, 68 f., 74 morality 40, 191, 193, 196 – human 188, 191 – human will 196 – immorality 18 – immutability of 196 – Jewish 83 – moral consciousness 191 – moral order 193 – of the nation-state 36 f. – religious 193 Moretti, Franco 98 f. Morris, Leslie 101 Mortara, Marco 59, 63 – 76 Moser, Moses 35, 37, 44 Moses (Biblical prophet) 11, 49, 54, 78 f., 165, 191, 193, 196 – Mosaic faith 140 Mosse, Albert 143 f., 149, 154 Mosse, Caroline 144 Mosse, Dora 154 Mosse, Emil 143, 160 Mosse, Martha 129 Mosse, Rudolph 143 Mosse, Werner 128 Munk, Salomon 55 f., 183 Musil, Martha See Heimann, Martha Musil, Robert 147 – 151 – the man without qualities 150 Myers, David 50, 93 mysticism 50, 83, 150, 191, 194 – Christian mysticism 53, 195 – Jewish mysticism 14, 50 f., 53 f., 57, 93, 169 – mystical prayers 21

211

Nahmanides 17 Napoleon 112 National Socialism See Nazism nationalism 32, 43, 108, 156, 159, 167, 170 – German 110, 112 – Jewish 32 natural history 182 Nazism 106, 110 – 112, 117, 123, 127, 132 – Nazi approach to history 111 f., 114 – Nazi Party 106 – Nazi regime 105, 113, 124 – Third Reich 105 f., 112, 114 f., 121 – 123 Neubauer, Adolf 66 New Testament 49 f. Nietzsche, Friedrich 188 Nuremberg Laws 112, 115, 124, 131, 157 Ob, Rabbi Joseph 79 objectivity 37, 81 f., 90, 92 – 95, 113, 115 – 117, 124, 199 Odysseus 153 Oelsner, Erich 160 Ohlsen, Olga 74 Old Testament See Hebrew Bible Olper, Salomone 71 omnipotence 189, 191 f. ontology 11, 193 – ontological ground of morality 193 optimism 57 original sin 195 Ostjuden 170 Ozar Nechmad 61, 66, 74 Padua 64, 68, 71, 73 – Rabbinical Seminary of 70 paganism 193 f., 196 – in Rome 82 – pagan nations 195 – pagan religions 195 – religious thought of 193 – theology of 193 Palestine 127, 159 Panofsky, Erwin 153 pantheism 192 f. Paradise 53, 150 particularism 33, 42, 45, 75, 101 Pasqualigo, Francesco 65

212

Index

Passover 142 patriotism 33, 115 – German 127, 148 Perles, Joseph 68 f., 72, 76 Perreau, Pierre 66 pessimism 57 Philippson, Ludwig 181 – 196 philology 8, 50, 67, 69, 74, 81, 164, 171, 181, 197, 199 – 201 philosophy of religion 56 f., 175 Pico della Mirandola 51, 53 Pietism 54 pilpul 9 f., 22 piyyut 15 f. pogroms 124, 167 Polak, Rabbi Jacob 9 Poland 9, 52, 80 polytheism 186, 189, 193 f. poseq 7, 13, 17, 19 positive religion 56, 186 positivism 172 postmodernism 45, 91, 93 f., 97, 99 – 101, 104, 158 Prague 10, 50, 66, 136 Presner, Todd 97 f., 101 ProjectMuse 102 prophets – Hebrew 188 Protestantism 35, 38, 49 f., 74, 140, 158, 170, 195 f. – liberal 163 providence 83, 190, 193 Prussia 40, 144 – king of 133, 139, 141, 156 – Prussian Chief of Police 137 – Prussian court 137, 140, 147 – Prussian law 38 psychology 57, 191 public opinion (Öffentlichkeit) 40 public sphere 32, 38, 40 – 43, 103 Pythagoras 54 – Pythagoreanism 51, 54 Pythian tripod 165 Rachel (Biblical matriarch) 136 racism 113 – in historiography 108, 111

– scientific 112 Rahden, Till van 100 f. Ramsay, Stephen 99 Ranke, Leopold von 28, 110, 112, 118 – Rankean historiography 92, 115 f., 118, 124 Rapoport, Salomon Yehudah 24, 69, 82, 87 Rashi 88 Rashi 80 rationalism 21, 45, 49, 83, 107, 122, 169, 186, 195 – irrationalism 49 Ravensbrück 130 Rebecca (Biblical matriarch) 136 Red Cross 127 Reformation 45, 49 – Counter-Reformation 74 Reggio, Isaac Samuel 69 f., 72 – 74 Reiche, Anton 129 Reichsinstitut für Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands 111 f. Reifman, Jacob 80 Reiner, Elchanan 8 f. Reinhold, Hugo 146 Reiniger, Lotte 134 relativism 33, 64, 71, 93, 163, 175, 178 religion – history of 184 Renan, Ernest 187 responsa 11, 14 f., 17 f., 23, 79 Reuchlin, Johannes 46, 51 revelation 11, 37, 53, 56 f., 151, 164, 166, 186, 189 – 191, 193 f. Riess, Elias Wiener 134 Riess, Hirschel 135 Riess, Merle 137 Riess, Pessel Mirels 136 Riess, Rabbi Koppel 135 Riess, Rabbi Model Halevi 134 – 136 Riess family 134 f. Rilke, Rainer Maria 145 Risorgimento 60 Roman law 15, 85 Romanticism 20, 32 f., 137 – neo-Romanticism 168, 170 Rosenberg, Alfred 111 Rosenberg, Shalom 11

Index

Rosenroth, Christian Knorr von Rosenzweig, Franz 176 – 178 Rosman, Moshe 92 Roth, Cecil 62

53

Salom, Abram 70 Samson of Chinon 16 Samuel the Prophet 87 Sanctuary of the Cherubim 165 Sanhedrin, Napoleonic 19 Sappho 165 Sarah (Biblical matriarch) 136 Schäuble, Dr. 132 Schiller, Friedrich 113 Schirmer, Dietmar 107 f. Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst 56 Schmidt, Dr. Walter 127 Schmidt, Eberhardt 128 Schmidt, Ellen 128 Schmidt, Hildegard See Meyer, Hildegard Schmidt, Lilo 128 Schmidt, Niklas 132 Schmidt, Walter 131 f., 153, 158 Schmidt, Wolf 128 Scholem, Gershom 50, 77, 93, 122, 164, 177 f. – Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah 93 Schönwälder, Karen 111 Schopenhauer, Arthur 187 Schorsch, Ismar 120 Schulhof, Esther 134 f. Schumann, Robert 147 scientificity 113 f., 116, 120 f., 123 f. Scylla and Charybdis 58 Secession (artistic movement) 147 f. – Secessionist artists 146, 149 Second Temple – destruction of 31, 89, 125, 165 – period of 88, 189 secularism 11, 23, 99, 164, 177, 179 – secularization 42, 155 Sefer Yesirah 51 Selichot 165 Seligmann, Benjamin 137 Seligmann, Caesar 182 Seligmann, Levin 137 Sennert, Andreas 46, 51

213

Sephardim 16 f. Shadal See Luzzatto, Samuel David Shah of Persia 144 Shema Yisrael 189, 191, 195 Shemoneh Esreh 89 shofar 21 Shulḥan ‘Arukh 11 f., 19, 84 Siddur 83 f., 86 Siegmey See Meyer, Siegbert Sinai 11, 78 Singer, Isidore 167 f. Sintzheim, Rabbi David 19 Slonik, Benjamin 13 Soave 70, 75 social media 103 sociology 69, 98, 171, 201 Sombart, Werner 113 f. Spain, king of 144 Spivak, Gayatri 95 Spring of Nations 34 Steinschneider, Moritz 65 f., 68 – 72, 75 f., 82, 92, 164, 185 Stern, Judge Jacques 108 Stern, Julius 147 Stern, Moritz 109 Stern, Selma 109, 119, 123 Storchenau, Sigismund von 56 Strack, Hermann L. 50 Strauss, Leo 57, 177 Struck, Hermann 99 subjectivity 37, 110, 117 – in historiography 82, 110, 115 – in research 82, 124, 198 sugya 10 suicide 109, 127, 130 – 133, 148 f., 152 f. Sultan Mohammed V 144 surrealism 98 synagogue 12, 135, 170 – destroyed 96 – great synagogue of Berlin 140 f., 147 – organs in 88 – synagogue reform 182 – synagogue sermons 184 syphilis 148 Ta-Shema, Israel

7, 9

214

Index

Talmud 7 – 11, 14, 16 – 21, 23, 48, 65, 78 f., 82, 84 – 86, 89, 120, 125, 185, 199 – Babylonian 10, 16 – Jerusalem 8 – 10 Tam, Rabbi Jacob 22 Tappari, Pietro 70 Targum Onkelos 80 f. Täubler, Eugen 95 tetragrammaton 189 Theilhaber, Felix 157 theology 20, 29, 67, 118, 165, 168, 174, 182 – 186, 188, 190 f., 193 f., 196 – biblical 50 – philosophical 174, 176 – systematic 176 Theresienstadt 129 Tiergarten 140 Tisha B’av 165 Torah 12, 15, 18, 39, 49, 54, 79 f., 85 f., 125, 140, 142, 147, 166, 174, 178, 189 – study of 174 f. Tosafot 7, 17 Tosefta 10 traditionalism 21 Treitschke, Heinrich von 92, 110, 115 Troeltsch, Ernst 114, 163 – 166, 175, 179 Tsarist Russia 167 Tu B’Av 87 Tyrtaeus 165 Ugoni, Camillo 71 Unitarianism 74 Unna, Rabbi Isaac 78, 90 Valentinians 52 Vámbéry, Ármin 65 Van Gogh, Vincent 146 Veith family 134 Verband 168 Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden 25 – 44 Vereine für jüdische Geschichte und Literatur 168 Vienna 66, 72, 133 f., 136 f., 164 virtual reality 97 Viterbi, David Graziadio 68 f. Vogelmann, Mordechai 73

Volk (people) 39, 169 Volkov, Shulamit 169 Volksgeist 27, 32, 39 Volksgemeinschaft 39, 170 Volksseele 169 Wagner, Richard 147 – Wagnerianism 150 Wallerstein, Rabbi Abraham Halevi Heller 136 Waterloo, Battle of 112 Weber, Max 114 Wedekind, Frank 149 Weimar Republic 101, 105 – 108, 110 f., 123, 134, 144, 170 Weinberg, Yechiel 78 Weiss, Isaac Hirsch 85 – 87 Weltgeist 27, 29 f. Wesen des Judentums 93 Wiener, Elias Riess 135 – 137 Wiener-Riess, Mate 135 Wilhelm II 133 Wilhelminian era 144, 147, 150 – culture of 149 Wissenschaft des Judentums 7, 20, 22 f., 26, 28, 30 – 32, 41, 44, 68, 71, 75 – 77, 79 f., 86 f., 91, 101, 120 – 122, 124, 163, 166 f., 170 – 172, 174 f., 185, 197, 199 – emergence of 8 f., 11, 27, 124 f., 164 – founders of 43 – founders of 31 f., 34, 107, 119, 121 – in Italy 60, 63, 73 – in the nineteenth century 19, 55, 93, 105, 115, 164, 169, 171, 197 – manifesto for 45 – members of 37, 42 f., 50, 75, 78, 82 f., 85, 121, 183 – methodology of 9, 85, 90 – principles of 81 – publications of 55, 66, 79 – revitalization of 174, 177 f. – scholars of 24 – values of 69 Wittenberg 49, 51 Wolf, Immanuel 25 f., 29 – 31, 36, 55, 119 Wolff, Rabbi Isaak Benjamin 134 f. Wolff, Wolff Meyer 137

Index

Wolfius 49 Wolfskehl, Karl 99 Wolgmut, Joseph 78 World War I 113, 150, 153 World Wide Web See Internet Worms, Rabbi Aaron 11, 15, 19 – 24 Worms, Rabbi Elazar 13 Yavne 125 Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim 179 yeshiva 19 YHWH See tetragrammaton Zalman, Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon Gaon, of Vilna

See

215

Zeitgeist 25, 28, 122 f., 158 Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judentums 25, 55 Zionism 43, 93, 112 f., 118, 121, 124, 157, 171, 197 – non-Zionism 172 – study of 197 f. – Zionist Congress 197, 201 Zohar 13 f., 21 f., 57 Zoller, Israel 73 Zöllner, Pastor Johann Friedrich 158 Zunz, Leopold 25 – 36, 38, 40 f., 43 – 48, 50 – 55, 82, 87, 92, 120 – 122, 124, 139, 157, 164, 185