Wissenschaft des Judentums
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Wissenschaft des Judentums ("the science of Judaism"), refers to a nineteenth-century movement premised on the critical investigation of Jewish literature and culture, including rabbinic literature, using scientific methods to analyze the origins of Jewish traditions.
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[edit] The Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden
The first manifestation of the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement was the Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden (Society for Jewish Culture and Knowledge), founded around 1819 by Eduard Gans, (a pupil of Hegel), and his associates . Other members included Heinrich Heine, Leopold Zunz and Michael Beer, (youngest brother of Meyerbeer). It was an explicit attempt to provide a construct for the Jews as a Volk or people in their own right, independent of their religious traditions. As such it sought to validate their secular cultural traditions as being on an equal footing with those adduced by Herder and his followers for the German people. Immanuel Wolf’s influential essay Über den Begriff einer Wissenschaft des Judentums (On the Concept of a Jewish Science) of 1822, has such ideas in mind. The failure of the Verein, attributable largely to the far greater attraction, amongst German Jews, of identification with German culture, was followed, significantly, by the conversion to Christianity of many of its leading figures, including Gans and Heine.
[edit] The Wissenschaft des Judentums movement
Despite the lack of success of the society itself, its priciples inspired many Jewish thinkers, and also provoked a conservative reaction (see Opposition).
[edit] Goals
Proponents of Wissenschaft des Judentums attempted to place Jewish culture on par with Western European culture, and endeavored to have "Jewish Studies" introduced into the university curriculum as a respectable area of study, freeing the field from the prevailing bias that regarded Judaism as an inferior precursor to Christianity and studied it as such.
Leopold Zunz (1794-1886), one of the movement's leading figures, devoted much of his work to rabbinic literature. At the time, Christian thinkers maintained that the Jews' contribution ended with the Bible, and Zunz began to publish in the area of post-biblical rabbinic literature. His essays Etwas uber die rabbinische literature and Zur Geschichte und Literatur addressed this issue. His biography of Rashi of Troyes was pivotal. When the Prussian government forbade preaching sermons in German synagogues, on the grounds that the sermon was an exclusively Christian institution, Zunz wrote ”History of the Jewish Sermon” in 1832. This work has been described as "the most important Jewish book published in the 19th century." It lays down principles for the investigation of the Rabbinic exegesis (Midrash) and of the siddur (prayer-book of the synagogue).
[edit] Attitude toward religion
Despite the outstanding scholarship of Wissenschaft personalities such as Zunz and H. Graetz (most of whom pursued their scholarly labors on their own time as privatgelehrter), the Wissenschaft movement as a whole had a tendency to present Judaism as an historical relic (Mendes-Flohr 1998) with frequently apologetic overtones (Meyer 2004), and often ignored matters of contemporary relevance. As Mendes-Flohr (1998) puts it:
Zunz felt obliged to assume that Judaism had come to an end, and that it was the task of Wissenschaft des Judentums to provide a judicious accounting of the varied and rich contributions which Judaism had made to civilization. In a similar spirit, Steinschneider is said to have once quipped that Wissenschaft des Judentums seeks to ensure that Judaism will receive a proper burial, in which scholarship amounts to an extended obituary properly eulogizing the deceased.
Nevertheless, throughout most of its existence and despite certain of its most prominent practitioners, such as Steinschneider, being vocal opponents of religion, Wissenschaft des Judentums was very much a religious movement—pursued largely by rabbis at Jewish seminaries who were engaged in preparing their students for rabbinical careers (Meyer 2004). Many of these Wissenschaft scholars, such as Z. Frankel and H. Graetz, while employing critical methods in their investigations, still considered the Jewish religion and Jewish history to be reflective of a divine revelation and guidance, while some, such as D. Hoffman, yet regarded even the Biblical word to be the product of divine revelation. It was this essentially religious nature of Wissenschaft des Judentums that made it even more dangerous in the eyes of its opponents (Meyer 2004).
[edit] Attitude toward earlier scholarship
Indeed, one detects in the writings of many Wissenschaft scholars not only an intense love of scholarship "for its own sake," but also a genuine affinity for the rabbis and scholars of old, whose works they find themselves documenting, editing, publishing, analyzing, and critiquing. Indeed, far from disparaging or despising the Jewish religion and its many generations of rabbinical scholars, the majority of Wissenschaft practitioners are very keen to take ownership of the Jewish scholarly tradition. They see themselves as the rightful heirs and successors to Saadia and Rashi and Hillel and ibn Ezra, and in those prior generations of scholars they see their own Wissenschaft spirit and likeness.
In the Wissenschaft approach to scholarship, then, the earlier generations of scholars become "de-sanctified" and "re-humanized". Wissenschaft scholars feel completely free to pass judgment on the intellectual and scholarly capacities of earlier scholars, evaluating their originality, competence, and credibility, and pointing out their failures and limitations. The Wissenschaft scholars, while respectful of their predecessors, have no patience for a concept such as yeridat ha-dorot. For them, the classical authorities are no more beyond dispute and critique than are contemporary scholars; the opinions of ibn Ezra and Steinschneider may be presented in the same sentence without any sense of impropriety, and either one may then be debunked with the same forwardness. No doubt this de-sanctification of the Jewish luminaries provided further grist for the opponents of the movement.
[edit] Legacy
Although the Wissenschaft movement produced a vast number of scholarly publications of lasting value, and its influence still reverberates through Jewish Studies departments (and, indeed, some yeshivas) around the word, it is possible to regard the publication of the Jewish Encyclopedia in 1901–1906 as the culmination and final flowering of this era in Jewish studies (Levy 2002). The choice of English over German as the language for this epochal work is a further sign that an era of German scholarship was drawing to a close. In the early years of the new century the Wissenschaft culture and style of scholarship was transplanted to a certain extent to bodies such as the Institute for Jewish Studies at Hebrew University (e.g., Gershom Scholem) and Jewish Studies departments at American universities such as Brandeis and Harvard (e.g., Harry Austryn Wolfson).
[edit] Opposition
It is unsurprising given the attitude toward "living Judaism" of some of its leaders that the Wissenschaft movement drew criticism from traditional elements in the Jewish community, who regarded it as sterile at best, and at worst damaging to the religious community. Opposition came not so much from rural Jews, who had little or nothing to do with Wissenschaft scholars, as from the more urban and sophisticated Orthodox constituencies represented by Samson Raphael Hirsch. He and others regarded the Wissenschaft movement as draining traditional Jewish knowledge of its "sacral power" (Mendes-Flohr 1998), and utterly failing to meet the needs of the living Jewish community. Even such Orthodox Wissenschaft figures as David Zvi Hoffmann did not escape Hirsch's condemnations.
[edit] List of Wissenschaft des Judentums personalities
- Leopold Zunz
- D. Hoffman
- H. Graetz
- M. Steinschneider
- S.J. Rapoport
- Gershon Scholem
- Solomon Schechter
- W. Bacher
 Leopold Zunz (1794-1886), a founder of the Verein für Wissenschaft des Judentums. |
 Heinrich Graetz, (1817-1891). His magnum opus History of the Jews was written in the spirit of Wissenschaft des Judentums. |
[edit] References
- Schorsch, Ismar From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism (1994) ISBN 0-87451-664-1
- Meyer, Michael A. (2004), "Two persistent tensions within Wissenschaft des Judentums", Modern Judaism 24(2): 105–119.
- Mendes-Flohr, Paul (1998), "Jewish scholarship as a vocation", in Alfred L. Ivry, Elliot R. Wolfson & Allan Arkush, Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism: Proceedings of the International Conference held by The Institute of Jewish Studies, University College London, 1994, in Celebration of its Fortieth Anniversary, Australia: Harwood Academic Publishers.
- Levy, David B. (2002), "The Making of the ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA and the JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA", Proceedings of the 37th Annual Convention of the Association of Jewish Libraries, Denver, CO [link accessed January 1, 2007].
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