ORTHODOX REACTIONS TO ‘‘WISSENSCHAFT DES JUDENTUMS’’

Jewish Historiography Between Past and Future: 200 Years of Wissenschaft des Judentums, 2019

2018

In 2018, we celebrate the bicentennial of Wissenschaft des Judentums, the early Jewish Studies that began in the nineteenth century and introduced critical historical research into Jewish sources, using all academic methods available, including non-Jewish sources or the comparison with them. Today, the academic study of Judaism exists in various national and cultural contexts. Its three centers -Israel, the United States, and Germany -have different labels and forms for it such as "Jewish Studies," "Jewish Science" (Madat ha-Yahadut), " Judaic Studies," or "Jewish Theology." 1 Their differences notwithstanding, they all refer to the year 1818 as the founding date of their disciplines. In that year, Leopold Zunz (1794-1886) published his essay Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur ("Something on Rabbinic Literature"), which unfolded the thematic field of modern Jewish Studies for the first time. 2 As Michael A. Meyer and Ismar Schorsch emphasize in the double interview opening this issue, Zunz's essay initiated a "Copernican revolution" by marking the turn to history in Jewish scholarship. The new historical consciousness among the Jews dethroned divine revelation as the source of authoritative and meaning-making knowledge, as it gave preference to 1 The most recent accounts on the contents and theories of Jewish Studies are: Andrew Bush:

Daniel J. Lasker (ed.), Jewish Thought and Jewish Belief, Beer Sheva 2012

The study of Judaism within the modern university would not be possible without the legacy as well as the methodological approach of the small group of young scholars and students in Berlin who founded the Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden in 1819. Although outside the walls of the German university, these scholars endeavored to make inroads within the discipline of Orientalistik while standing firm in their hope that the Hegelian spirit of the day might give Judaism its determinate recognition in the light of Absolute Spirit and give the Jews their citizenship. 1 The methodological focus of the Wissenschaft des Judentums aimed at legitimating and justifying Judaism in modernity. For scholars such as Leopold Zunz, the greatest symbol of modernity was the general nineteenth-century German * This article benefitted from conversations with Nathaniel Berman, Elias Sacks, Elliot Salinger, and Eliyahu Stern, as well as from comments and responses from Perry Dane and members of the Cambridge Project in Jewish Thought, members of the Judaic Studies Faculty Colloquium at Brown University, as well as from the helpful suggestions of an anonymous reviewer. Many thanks to Yonatan Brafman for conversations that generated the title of the article. All errors and shortcomings are mine alone. 1 Founding members of the Verein such as Moses Moser and Eduard Gans were students of Hegel's lectures on the philosophy of history in Berlin.

Seforim Blog, 2014