Jewish Historiography Between Past and Future: 200 Years of Wissenschaft des Judentums PDF
Preview Jewish Historiography Between Past and Future: 200 Years of Wissenschaft des Judentums
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 Introduction 1 Jay R. Berkovitz Rabbinic Antecedents and Parallels to Wissenschaft des Judentums 7 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 Definition 45 Asher Salah The Intellectual Networks of Rabbi Marco Mortara (1815–1894): An Italian “Wissenschaftler des Judentums” 59 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 Discourse during the First Years of the Nazi Regime 105 Christoph Schmidt AVoyage in the Enchanted House: A Family History from the Personal Perspective (In Memoriam Walter Schmidt 1889–1961) 127 VI Contents Paul Mendes-Flohr Wissenschaft des Judentums at the Fin-de-Siècle 163 George Y. Kohler Ludwig Philippson on Biblical Monotheism: Jewish Religious Philosophy between Mendelssohn and Hermann Cohen 181 Martin Buber Jewish Studies 197 Index 203 Paul Mendes-Flohr 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. Nowconstitutingaglobal community,these scholars continue to draw their in- spiration from the determined pioneers of Wissenschaft des Judentums in nine- teenth- and twentieth-century Germany. Beyond setting the highest standards of philological and historiographical research,German Wissenschaft des Juden- tumshadaseminalroleinacreatingmodernJewishdiscourseinwhichcultural memory, bearing the stamp of historical scholarship, supplements traditional Jewishlearning.ThesecularcharacterofmodernJewishStudiesinitiallypursued inGermanandsubsequentlyinothervernacularlanguages(e.g.,French,Dutch, Italian, Hebrew, Russian, Spanish, Yiddish), greatly facilitated exchange with non-Jewish scholars, and thereby encouraging mutual understanding and re- spect. Indeed, one of the overarching objectives of Wissenschaft des Judentums wastodemonstratethatpost-biblicalJudaismplayedavitalroleintheshaping ofEuropeanculture.Hence,theJewssoughtpoliticalemancipationandintegra- tionintothesocialandculturallifeofEuropenotasalien,“Asiatic”interlopers, butasco-progenitorsofthemodernspiritbyrightofpatrimony.Judaismshould, therefore,behonoredasintrinsictothecurriculumofamodern,educatedindi- vidual. 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)appealedtotheGermanuniversitiestoembracetheacademic 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 whichwehavefound again after a longperiod of wandering in the wilderness, then they must fecundate institutions—high ranking educational institutions.”¹ ThecauseofJewishscholarshipandemancipationthusgohandandhand. In this regard,Jewish Studies—as the luminaries of nineteenth-century Wissen- schaftdesJudentumsadamantlyinsisted—shouldnotberelegatedtothepartic- ularintellectualandtheologicalinterestsoftheJewishcommunityorassignedto what in the United States is called “ethnic studies.” The present volume is largely based on papers delivered at a conference, sponsoredbytheLeoBaeckInstituteinJerusalem,byscholarsfromNorthAmer- Zunz,DiegottesdienstlichenVorträgederJudenhistorischentwickelt(Berlin:A.Ascher,1832, ix. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110554618-001 2 PaulMendes-Flohr ica,Europe,andIsrael.Eachoftheseessaysexploresramifiedandevolvinghis- torical and methodological issues.The volume thus represents a tribute to the twohundredyear legacyof Wissenschaft des Judentums and its singular contri- butionnotonlytomodernJewishself-understandingbutalsototheeverunfold- ingofhumanisticculturaldiscourse.Intheessaythatopensthisvolume,Rachel Livneh-Freudenthalhighlightsthecriticalhistoricalstudyofthesacredliterature ofrabbinic Judaism as the hallmarkofthe foundinggeneration ofWissenschaft des Judentums.They thereby sought to herald the integration of Jews into the modern cognitive landscape marked by the concept of Wissenschaft—the as- sumption thatscientific,objectivecriteriashouldbeappliedtoexamineallcul- tural phenomena, including religious literature. In doingso, Leopold Zunz and his colleagues, as Livneh-Freudenthal points out, implicitly promoted a radical transformation of Jewish self-understanding. Historical knowledge would per- force entail critical reflections on Jewish tradition, the theological presupposi- tions of its sacred texts and religious practices.The attendant epistemological andexistentialchallengeposedbyhistoricalscholarshipwaseloquentlyantici- pated by Moses Mendelsohnwhen 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 tobeclassifiedwiththemeta-historical,timelesstruthsofreasonortheacciden- tal “truths” of history? As Lessing famously put the issue: Contingenthistoricaltruthscanneverserveasprooffornecessarytruthsofreason[…]To jump from that historical truth [of Christ’s resurrection] to an entirely different class of truthsistoaskmetoalterallmymetaphysicalandmoralconceptsaccordingly[…]This istheugly,wideditchoverwhichIcannotleaphoweveroftenandearnestlyItry.² LikeLessing,Mendelssohnunderstoodthis“ugly,wideditch”(dergarstigebreite Graben)toconstitutenotjustanepistemologicalquandarybutalsoatheological 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. Inhiscontribution,JayR.Berkovitznotesthatseventeenth-andeighteenth- centurytraditionalrabbis,whiletacitlyacknowledgingthe“ditch,”nonetheless affirmed the value of critical, philological scholarship in their analyses of rab- binic 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. FranzLachmann-Muncker(Stuttgart:G.Göschen,1886–1924),vol,XIII,5f. Introduction 3 “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 fürdieWissenschaftdesJudenthumsandafacultymemberatRabbiEsrielHilde- sheimer’s Berlin Seminary for the trainingof Orthodox rabbis. For non-Orthodox thinkers, however, the adoption of the epistemological andmethodologicaltenetsofWissenschaftdesJudentumsnecessitatedatheolog- icalandphilosophicalreconceptualizationofJudaism.Inhiscontributiontothis 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 mono- theism. WissenschaftdesJudentumswasnotlimitedtotheDeutscheKulturbereich.It foundadherentsthroughoutEuropeandeventuallyalsoinNorthAmerica.Wis- senschaftdesJudentums,asAsherSalahnotesinhischapter,fosteredan“inter- nationalrepublicofscholars.”Inanagewhenletterwritingwasthelonemeans ofcommunicationbetweenindividualsseparatedbygeographicdistance,Jewish scholars established a trans-regional and trans-national epistolary network wherebyscholarswouldexchangeWissenschaftlichequeriesandsharethefruits oftheirhistoricalandphilologicalresearch.Selahillustratesthis“epistolary”ef- florescence 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,onthewhole,limitedtothestudyofbiblicalandpost-biblicalreligiouslit- erature.Althoughtherewerenotableexceptions—asattestedtobythemulti-vol- umeworksonthehistoryoftheJewsbyIsaacMarcusJost(1793–1891)andHein- rich 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 twen- ty-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 addressabroadrange of secular subjects such as the anthropology,de- mography,economics,andfolkloreoftheJewishpeople.Indeed,everyaspectof Jewishlifeandcivilizationweretobestudied:“Firstinknowingwhatoneloves. Second in investigating the exigent needs of our people […].” Buber’s cri-de- coeur is published in an English translation in this volume. The disciplinary and ideological transformation of Wissenschaft des Judentums was not solely 4 PaulMendes-Flohr 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 re- quireda rejectionofthe methodologicalperspectivethathadhithertoinformed the scholarly study of Judaism. In his chapter on the conception of historical scholarshipthatguidedthefoundinggenerationofWissenschaftdesJudentums, GiuseppeVeltridelineatesthesemethodologicalpremises.Adheringtothethen 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 thepast.Thispresupposition,whichhascometobeknownashistoricism,deep- ly troubled Zionists and liberal Jews alike. Both the Zionists and Liberals were bent on sponsoring a Jewish Renais- sance,buoyedbypedagogicalandculturalprogramstoinspirearenewalofJew- ishliteracyandspirituallife.Byitsalignmentwiththeenvisionedrenaissance,it was hoped that Jewish Studies would overcome the seemingly inherent relativ- ism 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 GuyMironillustratesinhischapter,JewishStudieswastogainaparticularsig- nificance. In those dark years, the dissemination and the organized study of worksof Jewish Studies servedto strengthen Jewish self-esteemand communal solidarity. ChristophSchmidt’sfamilyhistoryprovidesaculturalandsocialbiography ofGermanJewryinaneraoffar-reachingreligious,social,andintellectualtran- sition,aprocessofcognitiveandculturaltransformationbeckonedbytheemer- genceofWissenschaft des Judentums.Schmidt’s family reachesback tothe first generationofJewishsettlementinBerlinintheseventeenthcenturyandlaterto 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),wasapersonalfriendofLeopoldZunz,thespiritusrectorofthefounding generationofWissenschaftdesJudentums,andaprincipalmemberoftheVerein fürKulturundWissenschaftderJuden.ThebiographyofSchmidt’sfamilyattests totheintimaterelationshipbetweenthecrystallizationoftheGerman Bildungs- judentum and the emergence of the scholarly study of Judaism as a vehicle for the shapingof a distinctively modern Jewish historical memory and self-under- standing. Consequent to this alliance, Wissenschaft des Judentums pursued an academicagenda,asnotedabove,thatfocusednigh-exclusivelyonpost-biblical
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