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Building the Temple of Judische Wissenschaft in the United States1

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Building the Temple of Judische Wissenschaft in the United States1 Building the Temple of Judische Wissenschaft in the United States1 Pseudonym: Ismar Schorsch Submission to the Belkin Judaic Studies Award and the Monis and Chaya Zuckerman Memorial award 1 The title for this paper draws upon Schechter’s concept of “the Temple of Truth and real Wissenschaft” in his inaugural address at JTS. See Herman Dicker, of Learning and Libraries, pp. 10-11, especially note 10. For the full address, see Seminary Addresses, “the Charter of the Seminary”, pp.17-18 In 1886, a new rabbinical seminary, The Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS) was founded in New York in response to the Reform Movement’s radical break with Jewish law and practice, with the mission of training rabbis who observe Jewish law as traditionally understood, are familiar with the historical-critical study of Jewish texts and history and are equipped to minister to the needs of the ever-growing American Jewish community. While JTS initially faced numerous financial difficulties almost resulting in bankruptcy, its reorganization by wealthy and well-connected supporters, such as Judge Mayer Sulzberger and Jacob Schiff, placed it on solid footing by the time Solomon Schechter had achieved scholarly renown for his publication of manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah and arrived in 1903 from England to head the institution.2 By 1913, JTS was home to an unparalleled faculty in academic Jewish studies, especially in the field of rabbinic text, and housed the largest Judaica collection in the United States, under the expert curatorial hand of librarian Alexander Marx.3 Among the faculty were scholars such as Louis Ginzberg and later, Saul Lieberman, who had studied rabbinic texts as students at elite eastern European yeshivot before pursuing the academic study of Jewish history at European universities.4 By 1940, the JTS Talmud faculty towered over that of every university in the world, and its library had surpassed that of even the Bodleian and British Museum, the two greatest Judaica collections in Europe. 2 Regarding the early history of JTS, see Robert E. Fierstien’s monograph: A Different Spirit: the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1886-1902. See also section one of Tradition Renewed-“overview; changing administrations, changing missions.” Pp.1-238. 3 In 1903, the Seminary library consisted of 5,000 books and 3 manuscripts. By 1913, the library had grown to 43,000 volumes and 1,700 manuscripts. By 1915, JTS could count Louis Ginzberg, Alexander Marx, Israel Davidson, Israel Friedlander, and others among its faculty. 4 For example, Louis Ginzberg studied at Telz and Slabodka and then earned his doctorate at the University of Heidelberg. Israel Davidson studied at Slabodka and Volozhin and earned his doctorate at Columbia University. Of the faculty appointed later before the Second World War, Saul Lieberman studied at Slabodka before receiving his university training in Israel, coming to JTS in 1940 from the Harry Fishel Institute in Israel. In one well-known telling, with the coming of Solomon Schechter, Louis Ginzberg and Alexander Marx to the United States, the torch of Wissenschaft Des Judentums, the critical, academic study of Jewish history and texts, had been passed from the old world, specifically Germany and England, to America. But as with founding myths generally, the widely accepted narrative of the origins of JTS and the migration of the center of Jewish scholarship is overly simplistic and ignores the complex convergence of economic, professional and religious factors which drove the movement of both scholars of academic Jewish studies and Judaica collections from Europe to the United States. The impact on Judaic studies and Judaic libraries of historical factors such as Anti-Semitism, Jewish immigration to the US and the rise of Hitler is beyond the scope of this essay In this paper, I will use JTS as a case study to provide a conceptual, source-based framework for understanding the arrival of Judische Wissenschaft in the United States during the first four decades of the twentieth century. More specifically, I will focus on the roles of Solomon Schechter, Alexander Marx and Mayer Sulzberger in recruiting faculty and setting a vision for JTS, creating the Judaica collection for which JTS became known, and providing monetary support as well as recruiting additional donors. I will also discuss the primary, archival materials related to Solomon Schechter, Alexander Marx and Mayer Sulzberger with an eye toward constructing the outline of a documentary-based history of JTS during the period 1903- 1940, with a focus on understanding the many factors which shaped JTS in its early years and influenced its current form. The State of Current Scholarship While there is no shortage of scholarly treatments of the history of JTS, much of the present scholarship concentrates on understanding its early history (1886-1900) within the context of American Judaism and as a response to the rise of the American Reform movement. This focus does not account for the influence on the early Seminary of modern rabbinical seminaries in Germany and Schechter’s conception of Judische Wissenschaft as both a religious and scholarly endeavor.5 Furthermore, present scholarship fails to sufficiently account for the sweeping changes in faculty, institutional mission and lay leadership which occurred between 1900-1903, following the death of Sabato Morais and other early leaders of JTS, and paved the way for Solomon Schechter’s arrival from England to head the reorganized Seminary and implement his vision for an American center of Judische Wissenschaft.6 While many prior studies focus on the founding of JTS as a response to Reform Judaism, singling out the “Treyfa banquet” and 1885 publication of the Pittsburg Platform as the key catalysts for the founding of the Seminary, I believe that this narrative overlooks a number of important factors. First, historians are to this day divided as to whether the non-kosher food at the HUC ordination banquet in July 1883 was intentional or a slip up by the caterer.7 Additionally, traditionalists had been calling for the establishment of a traditional rabbinical school for more than a decade, and the Treyfa banquet and subsequent break from traditional practice and belief manifest in the Pittsburg Platform merely accelerated and intensified these efforts. Finally, the focus on the founding of JTS as a traditionalist response to the Reform movement overlooks the demographic factors which were necessary for JTS to come into being. 5 See Schechter’s Seminary Addresses, 17-19. 6 See Robert E. Fierstein, A Different Spirit: the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1886-1902. See also Hasia Diner’s essay in Tradition Renewed, volume one “Like the Antelope and the Badger: The Founding and Early Years of JTS, 1886-1902.” 7 Diner “Like the Antelope and the Badger: The Founding and Early Years of JTS, 1886-1902.” Tradition Renewed volume 1, p.11 In brief, minimally two factors were necessary for JTS to be successful; German-Jewish emigration to the US in the first half of the 19th century and the massive influx of eastern European Jews in the 1880s. The presence of an established, wealthy German-Jewish community, including both moderate reformers and the traditional Orthodox, was crucial to the founding of JTS. Members of this community such as Sulzberger, Schiff and others became key funders of the Seminary. The presence of large numbers of eastern European Jews, a significant number of whom were Orthodox/traditional in practice, was also necessary since their children would become the nucleus for the early classes at the seminary. Perhaps the most glaring omission in present scholarship is the neglect of the economic and professional factors which motivated European scholars such as Schechter, Louis Ginzberg, Alexander Marx and Saul Lieberman to emigrate to the United States and assume well-paying faculty positions at JTS. It must be noted that the status of Jews in the German professoriate in the late 19th-early 20th century was fluid. While some Jews such as Herman Cohen were able to become full professors, this was not universally the case. Furthermore, unlike both Germany and England where academics were paid modest salaries, JTS under Schechter was backed by wealthy donors and could aggressively recruit faculty by offering highly competitive salaries and relatively easy teaching schedules which allowed scholars to concentrate on their scholarship. Furthermore, in view of Schechter’s insistence that faculty be fully conversant with both traditional Jewish texts and academic scholarship, understanding the religious character and perception of JTS from 1900-1940 is crucial to explaining why Orthodox/traditional scholars were comfortable accepting positions at an institution which today is indelibly associated with Conservative Judaism. These points, while evident in a careful reading of the primary, archival sources concerning JTS during the period 1900-1940 are mostly overlooked in current scholarship. In this paper, I will examine these factors using sources such as Schechter’s published addresses, correspondence between Judge Mayer Sulzberger and Schechter, correspondence between Sulzberger and Marx, as well as current secondary scholarship on the history of JTS and American Judaism from 1900-1940.8 TOWARDS A NEW APPROACH TO THE EARLY HISTORY OF JTS Why Schechter Comes to JTS Scholars were drawn to JTS by the convergence of a combination of economic, professional and religious factors in Germany and the United States which collectively served to make a faculty position in the United States far more attractive than one in Germany or in Schechter’s case, England. In contrast to Cambridge and institutions in Germany, the Seminary offered its faculty highly competitive salaries which were far higher than what they received in Europe as well as teaching schedules which left ample time for research. By way of example, Schechter’s starting salary in 1903 was $5,000 a year with annual increases.
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