Judaism Organized Concepts of Life and Organicity in German-Jewish Scholarship During the Nineteenth Century

Home , Heinrich Graetz, Leopold Zunz, Moritz Steinschneider, Nachman Krochmal, Zecharias Frankel

UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM

Judaism Organized Concepts of Life and Organicity in German-Jewish Scholarship during the Nineteenth Century

Student Diederik Broeks Student ID 10049444 Supervisor prof. dr. I.E. Zwiep Second reader dr. A.K. Mohnkern Word count 19456

MA-Thesis Hebrew and Jewish Studies (Middle Eastern Studies)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ...... 3

Introduction: Conceptions of life in Jewish scholarship ...... 5

General introduction ...... 5

Research question ...... 6

Structure ...... 8

Romantic Trends and Imagery in Judaism ...... 8

On the phrase ‘Wissenschaft des Judentums’ ...... 11

Notes on translation ...... 12

Chapter 1: Cultivation and Harvest ...... 14

1.1 Reproducing Judaism: Leopold Zunz ...... 14

1.2 An Overgrown Garden: Immanuel Wolf ...... 19

Chapter 2: Organism and Decomposition ...... 24

2.1 The Amphibious Jew: Moritz Steinschneider ...... 24

2.2 Life’s Decomposing Forces: Abraham Geiger ...... 29

Chapter 3: Preservation and Rejuvenation ...... 34

3.1 Sowing the Teaching: Zecharias Frankel and Wolf Landau ...... 34

3.2 In the Valley of Bones: Heinrich Graetz...... 37

Chapter 4: Life and Death ...... 42

4.1 The Neglected Tree of Life: Samson Raphael Hirsch ...... 42

4.2 The Afterlife of Concepts: Gershom Scholem...... 44

Conclusion ...... 49

Reviewing the findings ...... 49

Connecting dots ...... 50

A glance ahead ...... 52

References ...... 54

ABSTRACT

This thesis explores how concepts of life, biology and organicity were adopted by 19th century German-Jewish scholars, representatives of Wissenschaft des Judentums, and adapted to contemporary Jewish issues. The author suggests that these concepts, images or metaphors may have developed into a conceptual paradigm in German-Jewish discourse, based on or incorporating conceptual trends in the contemporary German aca- demia and the wider European context. This paradigm centralized the image of ‘organic life’, which came to serve as a framework to articulate positions on various Jewish social, political and religious issues. Apart from considering the paradigm’s relationship with the contemporary German intellectual climate, the study also reflects on its roots in, or associations with, 18th century (Jewish) traditions and considers its survival into the 20th. The guiding hypothesis is that the paradigm particularly supported a conception of Judaism as a unity over the course of history (continuity), and in a modern context of perceived disintegration through acculturation or assimilation, conversion and, from a traditionalist perspective, religious reform. The objectives of the study are thus to a) sketch Jewish adoptions and adaptations of specific conceptual trends in the European context, in order to b) determine to what extent these trends had a formative influence on ensuing Jewish debates and c) determine whether they might deserve more systematic study. By order of appearance, the discussed scholars are: Leopold Zunz (chapter 1.1) and Immanuel Wolf (1.2), on concepts of reproductivity and cultivation; Moritz Stein- schneider (2.1), on the conception of the Jew as an amphibious organism, and Abraham Geiger (2.2), on conflict as an expression of life and the organic function of decomposing forces, juxtaposed with Richard Wagner’s view of the Jew as a parasite or decomposer as such; Zecharias Frankel and Wolf Landau (3.1), on the process of fertilizing and regenerating the tradition from its own sources; Heinrich Graetz (3.2), with a focus on his imagery in reflection on dispersion, rejuvenation and resurrection of the Jewish people; Samson Raphael Hirsch (4.1), on contemporary scholarship as dissecting a living Judaism, and finally Gershom Scholem (4.2), on the scholarly tradition of Wissen- schaft des Judentums as sterile and suicidal, reminiscent of a burial service.

INTRODUCTION: CONCEPTS OF LIFE IN JEWISH SCHOLARSHIP

General introduction What struck me as I read Gershom Scholem’s “The Science of Judaism – Then and Now” for the first time a few years ago was the type of imagery Scholem employed in his evaluation of 19th century German-Jewish scholarship. To him, this Wissenschaft des Judentums resembled a funeral ceremony for a Judaism declared dead prematurely by its scholars: he accused them of approaching a living subject with an antiquarian mind- set. Scholem’s experience, however, was quite different from my own impression from the writings of prominent representatives, such as Leopold Zunz and Heinrich Graetz. What especially stood out were the clear similarities between Scholem’s criticism of his predecessors and their original criticism of contemporary rabbinic leadership. Both critiques used metaphors of life, stagnation and death. As it turned out, those similarities were the result of a conscious rhetoric. From the perspective of progressive scholars in the 19th century, a once healthy Judaism had withered over the preceding centuries. Within the confines of the ghetto, halachic practice had ossified under increasingly rigid rabbinic leadership.1 Scholem, on the other hand, writing from a 20th century Zionist context, turned this rhetoric around and claimed that 19th century Jewish scholars, besides having been unsuccessful in their aim to ‘revive Judaism’, had in fact actively worked towards its ‘liquidation’. Scholem claimed that they had pursued a detached and elitist agenda, ignoring the living body of Judaism, and that their talk of revival had been empty. The original plan for this thesis was to study the language of that polemic, with a focus on the concepts of ‘regeneration’ and ‘revival’ found among 19th century scholars and appropriated by Scholem. In fact, the latter’s critique can be read as a late contribution to a polemic that had started already in the 19th century, when the first voices, most famously that of Samson Raphael Hirsch, criticized contemporary scholars for an al- leged lack of concern for ‘living Judaism’. However, I soon found out that (much of) this conceptual history has already been written by Asher Biemann, with special focus on the idea of Jewish renaissance in fin-de-siècle Jewish thought.2

1 Halacha; adj. halachic: the corpus of Jewish ritual developed to fulfill the religious commandments. 2 See: Asher D. Biemann, “Wissenschaft als Wiederaufstehung: Zur Polemik der toten Geschichte in der Wissenschaft des Judentums,” in Jüdische Existenz in der Moderne: Abraham Geiger und die Wissen- schaft des Judentums, ed. Christian Wiese, Walter Homolka and Thomas Brechenmacher (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2013), 391-405. Biemann extensively discusses the concept of ‘renaissance’ in Judaism in his

I consequently chose to shift my own focus. Firstly, by attempting a broader study of how concepts of ‘life’, ‘biology’ and ‘organicity’ found their way into the writings of 19th century Jewish scholars. Secondly, by looking back to the 18th century, to focus more on the roots of the conceptual language that thoroughly shaped debates on Jewish survival and revival, culminating in the conception of Zionism. Broadly speaking, we will examine how such concepts figured as means to (re)interpret Judaism, the Jewish people and/or Jewish history. They might be designated in different ways: I will mainly refer to them as ‘biological’ or ‘organicist’ concepts. I will explore how the concepts related to their wider intellectual context (as originating in the discourse of the German academy), and how they were adapted to Jewish debates on modern scholarship and religious reform. Starting with a statement of the research question, along with some clarifying remarks, I will briefly introduce my conception of the European and Jewish engagement with imagery of (organic) life. I will do so in order to formulate an hypothesis with regard to the functions these concepts or images may have served for 19th century Jewish scholars. Afterwards I will provide an introductory overview of the history of the phrase ‘Wissenschaft des Judentums’, which provides us with a framework to introduce and briefly characterize the main figures discussed in this study.

Research question As said, we will look into how a preoccupation with ‘life’ found its way into German- Jewish scholarship during its early development, and try to address the following question:

“How were concepts concerning life, biology and organicity adopted by German-Jewish scholars during the 19th century and adapted to contemporary Jewish issues?”

The biggest obstacle to formulating the question is in fact the proper designation for the concepts we wish to examine, which are admittedly rather elusive (partly explaining their adaptability and popularity to begin with). We are dealing with a range of words having to do with the conceptualization of ‘(organic) life’. I feel this collection might be characterized as a ‘conceptual paradigm’ of sorts, meaning a popular conceptual framework that was sufficiently general and flexible for each scholar to adapt it to their own book titled Inventing New Beginnings: On the Idea of Renaissance in Modern Judaism (Stanford: Stan- ford University Press, 2009).

concerns. We should remark that the difficulties of characterizing the paradigm are not limited to studies regarding the Jewish context, but are just as real and problematic in any study on the wider European intellectual climate: we are dealing with Jewish ‘in- flections’ of European phenomena. To express the character of the paradigm, I landed on three concepts meant to represent all others: “life, biology and organicity”. ‘Life’ is of course the central and over- arching concept, but too vague by itself. ‘Biology’ specifies those concepts with a diagnostic or taxonomic element, in other words: serving to interpret and categorize characteristics of (Jewish) life. ‘Organicity’ refers to those concepts expressing the nature of ‘(the) organism’, as popularly used in romantic scholarship for ‘living wholes’, rooting in a largely holistic view of reality. To give a first indication of the range of concepts covered, along with some of their negative counterparts, we will mention: ‘organism’ and ‘organicity’, versus ‘decomposition’; ‘lively’, ‘vital’ and ‘reproductive’, versus ‘lethargic’ and ‘sterile’; ‘revitalization’, ‘rejuvenation’, ‘regeneration’; finally, of course, concepts concerning ‘disease’ and ‘death’. I hope this gives the reader a decent impression of what we are looking for. In my phrasing of the research question I have left the historical window open on purpose. My main concern was that specifying a historical window might suggest an exhaustiveness that I cannot hope to offer: this is a preliminary study seeking firstly to examine trends. Furthermore, we want to look outside: firstly to the past, for possible continuities with thought in the 18th century, and secondly to the future, for very certain continuities with Jewish thought around the fin-de-ciècle, in particular that of Gershom Scholem and other Zionist publicists. The selection of scholars to be discussed in this thesis was guided by a few consider- ations. Obviously, limits of space forced me to leave out many scholars. In general, my aim was to present a diversity of attitudes in order to highlight various different adaptations of the concepts in question. The first two choices were easy in light of their central importance to the development of Wissenschaft des Judentums: Leopold Zunz and Moritz Steinschneider. Moreover, the consideration of diversity led me to include three figures representing different religious orientations (and attitudes to scholarship): Abra- ham Geiger, Zecharias Frankel and Samson Raphael Hirsch. Because of our focus on concepts, some choices were guided mainly by the fact that an author wrote a seminal particularly relevant text: Immanuel Wolf, Wolf Landau and Heinrich Graetz. Finally, I included Gershom Scholem because his polemical writings made me aware of these

conceptual trends to begin with, and because he consciously engaged with them from a 20th century Zionist perspective.

Structure I have chosen to present the discussion in four chapters. All chapters consist of two sec- tions, each dedicated to a specific scholar. In chapter 1 we discuss Leopold Zunz (1.1) and Immanuel Wolf (1.2); in chapter 2 we turn to Moritz Steinschneider (2.1) and Abraham Geiger (2.2); chapter 3 treats Zecharias Frankel together with Wolf Landau as representing ‘the Breslauer school’ (3.1), and Heinrich Graetz (3.2); the final chapter 4 is a bit shorter than the others, reflecting on two critiques of contemporary scholarship, namely by Samson Raphael Hirsch (4.1) and Gershom Scholem (4.2). The above order is mainly based on thematic similarities or associations, since most of the scholars lived and published over the same period. It is chronological only in the general sense that we start with Leopold Zunz and conclude with Gershom Scholem. The grouping of scholars into pairs was firstly a practical way to organize the whole, and although based on similarities in concepts, themes and perspectives, the reader should not read too much into it. Some concepts appear in all of their writings, but I had to make choices to manage the discussion. For example, Zunz and Wolf are not necessarily closer to one another than Zunz and Steinschneider, and what binds Hirsch and Scholem in this context is their shared critical attitude towards Wissenschaft.

Romantic Trends and Imagery in Judaism In this study we will be using the words ‘concept’, ‘metaphor’ and ‘image’ or ‘imagery’ loosely and for the most part interchangeably, because our emphasis lies on the significance of form. Concepts, especially those used in science and philosophy, can be said to imagine their object in one way or another. For example, ‘the human’ may be imagined as a machine, as an impulsive natural organism or as a soul with freedom of will, each evoking a specific range of concepts that develop the image. Thus, each image has significant consequences for the possible directions of thinking and debating the subject. Even if we are intellectually aware enough that we may distance ourselves from our own concept(ion)s, redefine them or even develop new ones, we remain partly tied to the established concepts of a discourse as ‘centers of gravity’ that keep participants in a

debate mutually intelligible. At the very least they determined our initial conceptions of complex or elusive subject matter, because they introduced us to it. Jewish communities across the Diaspora and throughout history of course developed or preserved their own traditions of concepts and images. Obviously, Jews have always had particularly rich traditions to draw on: most notably the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud, along with the many stories that grew around them. The powerful charac- ters, places and events of the Biblical narrative have helped generations of Jews as well as Christians to grasp their pasts and presents. In other words, these traditions would serve as a first frame of reference for new contexts and events. The constant interaction of Jews with their surroundings (whether positive or negative) likely stimulated the re- trieval of specific images from the sources, or alternatively the introduction of concepts from ‘foreign’ cultural traditions in which Jews participated. When we turn to the romantic scholarship3 current in German universities in the early 19th century, a period in which various of our Jewish scholars studied there, we encounter a more or less coherent collection of images making sense of the world as a living historical whole. The way I have come to understand it, thinkers across Europe gradually turned to the image of the organism to conceptualize ‘lively’ dynamics as opposed to the static forms of rationalist thought, which they deemed lacking. The concept of ‘growth’ provided a familiar image to express the continuity and gradual change of various traditions. Not merely the natural world, but also humanity and its history ended up being explained as living, organic processes. To specify, the growing organism represented an organized unity that appeared to be not merely determined and mechanical but also to contain a mysterious, perhaps transcendent, spark: life, often appearing next to the popular concept of Geist.4 One might say that centralizing this idea of an organizing life force allowed for an ordered,

3 Romantic: I will use this word regularly, although it is admittedly imprecise. The truth is that despite its ambiguity it suffices in the context of this thesis as an historical designation for the scholarship dominant in the German language area from the last decade(s) of the 18th into the first of the 19th century, marked by an emphasis on the arts, philology, the historical development of just about anything (texts, law, nations, all interconnected of course), hermeneutics and elements from philosophical idealism. One publication that shaped my perspective was: Joep Leerssen, “Notes towards a definition of Romantic Nationalism,” Romantik 2, no. 1 (2013), 9-35. Note that it specifically discusses ‘romantic nationalism’, but it reflects on the constituent terms and most importantly: on their vagueness. A publication more specifically about ‘romanticism in science’ that I consulted is: Yannis Hadzigeorgiou and Roland Schulz, “Romanticism and Romantic Science: Their Contribution to Science Education,” Science & Education 23, no. 10 (2014): 1963-2006. 4 An interesting article about the evolving meaning of the term ‘organism’ is: Tobias Cheung, “What is an ‘Organism’? On the Occurrence of a New Term and Its Conceptual Transformations 1680-1850,” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 32, no. 2/3 (2010): 155-194.

in many practical respects secularized, worldview that still reserved space for mystery and a link to the transcendent. It was perhaps in the same spirit that romantics hailed the poet as a new type of prophet, both deriving their genius or inspiration from a (divine) transcendent source. In other words, I would suggest that besides the concept of Geist, the image of the living organism functioned as a medium bridging theological and rational conceptions of nature, humanity and history. Moreover, the trend to view reality as organic and lively (lebendig), appears linked to a wider emergence of a fascination with the phenomenon of life. This preoccupation seems to have gained in prominence especially from the late 18th century onward. Apart from the popularity of organicism among philologists, these times also saw the publication of the first works of ‘biology’ as a budding scientific discipline.5 We should remark that the interest in the mysteries of life and death extended beyond German borders, as we may tell for example from literary meditations on the nature of life and attempts to manipulate its power, for example through galvanism.6 Furthermore, already during the 18th century there existed traditions of ‘vitalism’ and ‘organicism’ in France, but these lie beyond the focus of this study.7 In discussing the presence of organicist or biological trends in 19th century German- Jewish scholarship I hope to highlight some less emphasized aspects of the thought of its most famous representatives. My main focus is how scholars adapted popular imagery to come to terms with their social and political issues, and how it thereby shaped ensuing debates. To formulate a general hypothesis: I suspect that the organic ‘model’ helped scholars conceive of Judaism as a living and continuous unity: on the one hand throughout history and on the other in a present of internal conflict, a perceived de-

5 For example, Grundzüge der Lehre von der Lebenskraft (1797) by T.G.A. Roose (1771-1803), which also happens to be a great example of a work that reflects a transition from philosophical or theological speculation to scientific examination. Another is Biologie; oder die Philosophie der lebenden Natur für Naturforscher und Aerzte by G.R. Treviranus (1776-1837), published in volumes between 1802 and 1822. Lastly, there were the works by biologist/zoologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829), an early advocate for a theory of organic evolution, such as his Philosophie zoologique (1809). 6 The most famous example of this is of course Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shel- ley, first published in 1818. Apart from engaging with the question what a human is and what it means to be one, Shelley’s work engages with Milton’s famous Paradise Lost. In a way, I feel this literary engagement reflects how the emerging ‘biological’ fascination with humanity was linked to a tradition of theological reflection on the place of human life within the larger scheme of things. As I was finishing this thesis I discovered an article that actually seeks to situate Frankenstein in the romantic period and analyze its engagement with contemporary scientific developments: John Robbins, “‘It Lives!’: Franken- stein, Presumption, and the Staging of Romantic Science,” European Romantic Review 28, no. 2 (March 2017): 185-201. 7 For more on vitalism, especially in the French context, one might want to consult Science in Context 21, no. 4 (December 2008), which is dedicated to ‘medical vitalism in the Enlightenment’.

crease in observance and increase in conversion. It may have provided a theoretical basis for attempts at (re-)unifying a Jewry felt to be in danger of disintegration under the various pressures of European modernity.

On the phrase ‘Wissenschaft des Judentums’ I felt it important to dedicate part of this introduction to the development of the controversial phrase or designation at the center of it all: Wissenschaft des Judentums, meaning ‘science’ or ‘scholarship’ of ‘Judaism’ or ‘the Jewish people’. It is customary to refer to 19th century German-Jewish scholarship as ‘the’ Wissenschaft des Judentums, but one should bear in mind that it never had the level of consistency such a designation might suggest. In fact, the phrase went through a series of appropriations by rivalling scholars, finally becoming a designation by which scholars in the early 20th century re- ferred to the whole diversity of 19th century German-Jewish scholarship, in the context of evaluating its development and/or to contrast it to new styles of scholarship. The phrase ‘Wissenschaft des Judentums’ was first used more or less consistently in the context of the short-lived Kulturverein (active ca. 1819-24).8 Leopold Zunz was a prominent member and explicitly regarded it as an academic discipline for the study of Jewish literature(s), which he hoped to introduce to the German universities – an ideal his pupil Steinschneider would firmly hold on to. As such, their definition was quite close to modern conceptions of ‘Jewish Studies’, although their orientation was mainly philological. This original perspective, however, did not prevent the adoption of the phrase by associates of the Jüdisch-Theologische Seminar of Breslau, which was found- ed in 1854. This institute came to be directed by Zecharias Frankel, generally thought of as the father of Conservative Judaism. Neither Zunz nor Steinschneider dared to entrust theologians with objective Jewish scholarship, resulting in diverging definitions of Wis- senschaft des Judentums in the early fifties. Similar criticism came from the more radical reformer Abraham Geiger, who had originally hoped to direct and shape the theological seminary in accordance with his own liberal orientation. Only near the end of his life he saw his dream fulfilled, be it with the establishment of an entirely new institute: the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin in 1872, which thus explicitly incorporated the phrase into its

8 Kulturverein: an abbreviated designation for a society of young German-Jewish intellectuals calling themselves the Verein für Cultur [sic] und Wissenschaft der Juden, active from roughly 1819 to 1824.

name.9 A scholar such as Steinschneider, however, could not reconcile himself with the fact that despite its secular approach the Hochschule was still a separate, Jewish, institute: to him it represented an unsatisfactory compromise. Lastly, I should mention that near the end of the 19th and into the early 20th century the phrase witnessed a surge in usage in the context of debates on the state and future of Jewish life and scholarship in Europe. This seems especially linked to significant events like World War I and the rise of antisemitism. One may find multiple ‘evaluative’ essays from this period, in which German-Jewish intellectuals publicly looked back on the ambitions, direction, accomplishments and failures of Jewish scholarship until then, with an eye to its future.10 It is likely at this time that ‘Wissenschaft des Judentums’ achieved something close to its current use, as referring to the whole collection of 19th century Jewish scholars themselves, rather than their project. Needless to say, the original scholars hardly considered themselves a unified movement. One might say that they saw themselves at most as participants in the development and dissemination of ‘Jewish scholarship’, and that each ascribed a central significance to this enterprise. Apart from a shared ideal it is clear that they held strongly diverging views with regard to its theoretical underpinnings, approach, purpose or in what type of institute it should be housed. Over the course of this study we will come to discuss those different attitudes more closely.

Notes on translation ▪ I have translated all German and Hebrew passages to English, so all interpre- tative choices (and possible mistakes) are my own. ▪ Depending on the context, I have translated the word Wissenschaft a few times as ‘science’ but more regularly as ‘scholarship’. In the 19th century it was basically used for any systematic inquiry pursuing knowledge, whereas the word ‘science’ is nowadays associated mainly with the natural sciences and specific methods.

9 This institute produced well-known scholars such as Hanoch Albeck, Ismar Elbogen and Leo Baeck. 10 See for example: Martin Buber’s “Jüdische Wissenschaft” (1901); Osias Thon’s “Das Problem der jüdischen Wissenschaft” (1903); Ismar Elbogen’s “Neuorientierung unserer Wissenschaft” (1918) and “Ein Jahrhundert Wissenschaft des Judentums” (1922) or Rubashov/Shazar’s “Erstlinge der Entjudung” (1918). In fact Gershom Scholem’s “Reflections on the Science of Judaism” (1944) which we will discuss near the end of this paper, may be considered a late contribution to this ‘evaluative literature’.

▪ Due to the encompassing meaning of the word Judentum,11 referring not just to the Jewish religion but to the whole of Jewish life and worldly agency (analogous to concepts such as Deutschtum or Griechentum), I have taken some liberty with regard to its translation (‘Judaism’, ‘Jewry’, ‘the Jewish world’, etc.)

11 In the oft quoted words of Immanuel Wolf: “When speaking of a Wissenschaft des Judentums, it should be clear that the word Judentum is taken in its most encompassing meaning, as including all collective conditions, peculiarities and achievements of the Jews, in terms of religion, philosophy, history, laws, literature in general, civil life and all human affairs; not however in the more limited sense, in which it refers only to the religion of the Jews.” Immanuel Wolf, “Über den Begriff einer Wissenschaft des Juden- thums,” Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums 1, no. 1 (1822): 1.

CHAPTER 1: CULTIVATION AND HARVEST

1.1 Reproducing Judaism: Leopold Zunz It is almost customary to start a discussion on the history of Jewish scholarship with the controversial essay published in 1818 by a young student named LEOPOLD ZUNZ, titled “Notes on the rabbinic literature.” The famous text advocated the development of rigorous historical scholarship on Jewish (also ‘rabbinic’, ‘new-Hebrew’) literature: a so- called Wissenschaft des Judentums. At the same time it outlined the extensive preliminary works that would have to be compiled in preparation to more profound analyses. Its discussion will serve mainly to introduce the perspective and some conceptual fun- daments of the scholarly project. We will thus be focusing on Zunz’s evaluation of the state and direction of Jewish literary and scholarly life in his time, which led him to believe that the establishment of such a research agenda was an urgent matter. Zunz’s passionate text was quite clearly guided by progressive values, prevalent among a new generation of the German-Jewish intellectual elite, heirs to the first generations of maskilim.12 More or less separate from his progressive agenda, however, Zunz sought to convince his contemporaries of what he felt to be real and irreversible historical trends that endangered the preservation of Jewish history as well as its future. Where previous Jewish progressives had focused mainly on political and educational issues, Zunz’s essay, which shows the strong influence of contemporary German scholarship, placed more emphasis on new academic ideals and introduced these into German- Jewish debates. In the space of a mere three paragraphs at the start of his essay, Zunz sketches his view on the history of Jewish literature from the Bible to modernity. He describes a developmental course with creative peaks, namely the Biblical and early rabbinic literatures, which were separated by periods of decline, namely the post-Biblical writings that preceded the rise of rabbinic discourse as well as the more recent ‘rabbinic’ literary pro- ductions in Zunz’s own time. The ‘periods of decline’ were characterized by a lack of originality, resulting in what Zunz calls “hardly successful exegeses” of previous literary treasures.

12 Maskilim, sg. maskil: representatives of ‘Haskalah’, which is traditionally translated as ‘Jewish En- lightenment’. Although sharing many progressive ‘Enlightenment values’ (civil equality, religious reform, science and dissemination of education) it can be argued that Haskalah was a more or less distinct phenomenon, incorporating a greater diversity of historical trends (notably from the 19th century) than just those strictly associated with Enlightenment. I will also be using the adjective ‘maskilic’.

Zunz’s key suggestion is that an almost two-millennia long rabbinic cycle of Jewish literary life was finally coming to an end, and that the Jewish literary tradition would have to attach to a new one in order to be reborn. That was the way, Zunz argues, in which the rabbinic tradition had once been born itself: from the happy marriage of the Hebrew and Greek traditions.13 Indeed, Zunz asserts that the rise of early rabbinic literature was stimulated by a foreign influence (“eine neue fremde Bildung”), namely Hel- lenism.14 The marriage of old and new, of ‘national’ and ‘foreign’, carried the potential for an historical revitalization of Jewish literature. In light of the significance ascribed to literature in contemporary thought, for Zunz and his fellows a literary rebirth represented a renewed life in the modern European context, supporting both internal (educational, didactic) and external (political, social) emancipatory pursuits. In light of the above, it is quite understandable why Zunz did not attempt to hide the fact that he had been inspired by contemporary German scholarship. In conclusion to a programmatic overview of the domains of Jewish literature to be studied, he makes this claim explicit. The ambition to develop a Wissenschaft, he points out, flowed from the original spirit that had once produced rabbinism, but had finally left it: “We have merely come to point out gaps, striving to reawaken a scholarship, that, although with a rather flawed approach, once flourished more than it does today...”15 [my italics] Zunz goes on to express an idea common in maskilic writings, but articulated more ‘romantically’: “Wherever good will was present, often the classical training was lacking, while on the other side many scholars erred because they did not manage to attune themselves to the Hebrew mind and feel along with the author.”16 The dual criticism shows the young Zunz’s connection to earlier German-Jewish progressive thought: what had historically impeded Jewish development and tainted most previous scholarship on Judaism, were on the one hand ignorance, prejudice and lack of good-will on the Chris- tian side, and on the other a gradual decline in intellectual rigor among the rabbinic leadership (typically explained as a result of persecution).

13 Leopold Zunz, “Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur (1818),” in Gesammelte Schriften von Dr. Zunz Band 1 (Berlin: Louis Gerschel Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1875), 4. 14 Leopold Zunz, “Die jüdische Literatur (1845),” in Gesammelte Schriften von Dr. Zunz Band 1 (Berlin: Louis Gerschel Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1875), 43-45. Originally appeared as introduction to Zunz’s Zur Geschichte und Literatur published in 1845. 15 Zunz, “Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur,” 23. 16 Idem, 24-25.

What would particularly anger Zunz’s more conservative readers – and would, as it turned out, continue to annoy later generations of Jewish ideologues – was what they interpreted as a claim that Judaism was dying:

Even what still belonged to [the rabbinic literature] in the last fifty years, did only borrow its language as an accessible scholarly vessel for ideas that must prepare a time when the rabbinic literature will have ceased living. But exactly because in our time we see the Jews – to just focus on the German ones – em- brace the German language and culture with more seriousness and thus – perhaps often without meaning or suspecting to – are carrying the new-Hebrew literature to its grave, our scholarly discipline steps up and desires to account for that which has ended. [my italics]17

It should be clear that for Zunz the rhetoric of decay and the prophecy of death actually served as a premise to a more optimistic program of revitalization. His historical perspective on Judaism presented the rabbinic tradition as an important yet temporary expression of the Jewish spirit, so that the ‘death’ of that specific tradition was perfectly reconcilable with the survival of the Jewish whole. As one might expect, those who felt more profoundly attached to the rabbinic tradition as it was, most eloquently represented by SAMSON RAPHAEL HIRSCH (see page 43), were offended by Zunz’s almost casual claim that their tradition was near-dead. To them the rabbinic tradition was the only true form of Judaism, or at least made up an essential part of its body. Thus, they disagreed with both parts of Zunz’s argument: firstly, with the claim that rabbinism was becoming obsolete, and secondly with the idea that modern scholarship could do anything for Jews as Jews, even if science might ben- efit humanity as a whole. In fact, some of these critics would eventually adopt the rhetoric of life and death themselves, but we will save that discussion for later. As said, Zunz developed much of his conceptual perspective in the German academy. At this time the German academy found itself under the spell of romanticism, closely associated with an idealist philosophy that aspired to endow the rationalist tradition with life. Popular thinkers such as Schelling and Hegel emphasized the ‘organicity’ and ‘liveliness’ of reality, opposing a deeper understanding of its living development to what they regarded as a static formalism of earlier thinkers. A glance through the preface to Hegel’s famous Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807) suffices to illustrate this style of thought, in particular where he discusses Kantian schematism and scientific

17 Zunz, “Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur,” 4.

formalism.18 In chapter V (part a. ‘Observation of Nature’) he states: “In the systems of form as such, the organism is interpreted from the abstract perspective of dead existence; its moments, thus taken, belong to anatomy and the cadaver, not to knowledge and the living organism.”19 His view was that a true understanding constitutes more than an exercise of externally observing and designating parts or stating laws. While sharing Hegel’s perspective in the above regard, Schelling elaborated more on the image of life, placing it at the center of his idealism. Another characteristic of his writings is that they were more explicitly theological. For example, one emphatic analogy in Schelling’s (later) philosophy was that the capacity for disease in fact reflects internal freedom, associating or equating disease with sin.20 He characterized the preoccupation with one’s own interests as a move away from God’s unity – the only place where one may find immortality – in favor of an ultimately sterile particularity. Schel- ling explained localized diseases in parts of the body along the same lines: as reflecting the part’s abuse of its freedom in ignorance or defiance of the whole organism.21 One might keep these images or metaphors in mind for the rest of our discussion on Jewish scholars and religious thinkers. The details of the relations between philosophical idealism and romantic scholarship are a complex intellectual-historical question far beyond the scope of this study, so we will merely observe that the above philosophical concepts were prevalent throughout the contemporary German academy.22 In this context, one of romantic scholarship’s basic ideas was that literatures and the knowledge they represented grew organically throughout history in a living development, and that studying this development would yield insight into the present.23 Zunz and his peers ‘applied’ this perspective to Judaism

18 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes: Jubiläumsausgabe, ed. Georg Lasson (Leipzig: Verlag der Dürr’schen Buchhandlung, 1907), 33-35. On page 35 he states: “That colorlessness of the schema and its lifeless determinations and this absolute identity … is a … dead understanding … and a … superficial knowing.” 19 Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, 184. 20 F.W.J. Schelling, Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit und die damit zusammenhangenden Gegenstande, ed. Thomas Buchheim (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2011), 18. 21 Schelling, Philosophische Untersuchungen, 38. 22 Siegfried Ucko characterizes the intellectual trends of the time (romanticism, ‘Hegelianism’ and their closely associated development), as a ‘fashion’, referring to the analysis by Metzger in his 1917 Gesell- schaft, Recht und Staat in der Ethik des deutschen Idealismus. See: Siegfried Ucko, “Geistesgeschichtli- che Grundlagen der Wissenschaft des Judentums,” Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland 5 (1934): 1-34. 23 For further reading, one might have a look at the 1978 issue (Sonderband) of the Deutsche Viertel- jahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, themed Romantik in Deutschland - ein in-

and Jewish history, rediscovering the Jewish (literary) past as encompassing more than the rabbinic tradition. Moreover, and just as importantly, a view of the world as one developing organism offered them a framework to conceptualize Jewish emancipation: they hoped that by stimulating Jewish participation in this inclusive intellectual perspective, its essential contributions to general history might finally be recognized. It is unlikely that Zunz himself was influenced directly by the German idealists. Whatever he adopted more likely came from his professors in the university.24 Moreo- ver, he likely took inspiration from conversing with his friend Eduard Gans, a disciple of Hegel who had also been involved in the Kulturverein, and from the work of Nachman Krochmal (1785-1840).25 It was Zunz who, by request of Krochmal himself, posthumously edited and published the latter’s “Guide for the Perplexed of Our Time” (1851, originally in Hebrew: moreh nevuḵei ha-zman). Krochmal’s philosophy was strongly influenced by the famous idealists (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel) but wove them into a distinctly ‘Jewish’ philosophy of his own. Indeed his characterization of the people of Israel as eternal, undergoing periods of decline and renewal, might be discerned not just in the writings of Zunz, but also in those of other scholars such as HEINRICH GRAETZ, whom we will discuss later on. One of the key concepts Zunz introduced was that of a Reproduktionskraft, that is, a ‘reproductive capacity’ manifesting in the creative chapters of Jewish history. As we will see, this concept would become important in the context of Jewish debates on the state and future of Jewry (and Jewish scholarship) in Europe. In light of Zunz’s emphasis on the creative potential of a marriage between Jewish and non-Jewish traditions, one realizes that the concept might even have had a more concrete biological dimen- sion: most entities are sterile without a partner, so a marriage of traditions would be the natural basis for reproduction. This play with the imagery makes for a first subtle illustration of how the form of a concept may just imply more than is immediately apparent.

terdisziplinäres Symposium. Of particular interest to our subject is the contribution by Hans Querner on organicism: “Ordnungsprinzipien und Ordnungsmethoden in der Naturgeschichte der Romantik”. 24 Such as Friedrich Carl von Savigny. See: Fritz Bamberger, “Zunz’s Conception of History: A Study of the Philosophic Elements in Early Science of Judaism,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 11 (1941): 3. 25 Steinschneider remarks that Hegelianism was “planted on new-Hebrew soil” through Krochmal’s work. See: Moritz Steinschneider, Die fremdsprachlichen Elemente im Neuhebräischen und ihre Benutzung für die Linguistik, 32.

1.2 An Overgrown Garden: Immanuel Wolf The Kulturverein published one three-issue volume of a ‘Journal for the Science of Ju- daism’.26 The introductory essay that opened the first issue was titled “Über den Begriff einer Wissenschaft des Judenthums,” and written by IMMANUEL WOLF. Together with Zunz’s 1818 text, it has become well-known as an early statement of the Kulturverein’s scholarly ideals. Where Zunz had provided a sketch of the historical perspective in order to present the envisioned program for the Wissenschaft, Wolf’s introductory essay discusses the broader philosophical conception of Judaism that was to be the framework for future studies. Wolf’s thought may not appear particularly original or interesting in itself, but his text offers a representative articulation of the views guiding early 19th century Jewish scholarship. Wolf states that Judaism27 is determined by a religious idea, condensed in the tetra- grammaton, which in his view expresses “the lively unity of all being in eternity,”28 and thus ‘passed over everywhere into daily life’.29 More obviously than in Zunz, we can observe the influence of German idealism in his writings, in the sense that many of his statements are paraphrases or near-quotations from Hegel.30 Wolf repeats and elaborates on some of Zunz’s claims or suggestions with regard to internal and external cultural dynamics. For example, he states that Greek culture, as it was dying, had flung itself into the arms of Europe, an event that was only possible because Jews served as interpreters/translators (Dollmetscher) of the Arabic scholarship in which the Greek legacy had been preserved until that time.31 In line with Zunz’s view, Wolf held that Jewish intellectual productivity had begun to fade as European modernity and science were taking off. For this Wolf’s essay gives us two familiar explanations: oppression from the outside on the one hand, and rabbinic withdrawal into the narrow confines of the Jewish tradition on the other, a move Wolf

26 Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, 1822/3. 27 As mentioned in the introduction (page 14), Judentum was used in a more encompassing sense as cov- ering ‘the whole of Jewish presence and agency in the world’. 28 Immanuel Wolf, “Über den Begriff einer Wissenschaft des Judenthums,” Zeitschrift für die Wissen- schaft des Judenthums 1, no. 1 (1822): 3. 29 Wolf, “Über den Begriff,” 1. 30 To illustrate: “Thus we encounter [the Idea of Judaism] from its first revelation in a perpetual state of unrest, involved in a constant struggle. Rest and stasis are completely foreign to the domains of the Mind [des Geistigen], as the true elements of liveliness [Lebendigkeit]; rather, it is the nature of Mind [des Geistes], persisting in constant motion, to indefinitely develop itself.” See: Wolf, “über den Begriff,” 4. 31 Idem, 11-12. Note that this role of the Jews as ‘interpreters’ between Arabs and Europeans would become one of the central themes in the scholarship of MORITZ STEINSCHNEIDER, discussed below.

calls a retreat into ‘scholastic’ reservedness or prejudice (Befangenheit).32 Indeed, Wolf leaves little question as to who his heroes were: in a footnote he declares that Descartes represented the end of scholasticism in the sciences and the birth of a new, independent discipline. Unsurprisingly, Wolf refers to Spinoza’s discussion of Descartes’ work.33 Taking a closer look at the way Wolf phrased his critique of modern rabbinism and his enthusiasm for rationalism gives us an idea of the way that early romantic imagery might attach to, or continue, that of ‘classical’ liberal philosophy. At the same time, his essay illustrates how a Jewish thinker involved traditional Jewish images to (rhetorical- ly) reinforce his point. When I refer to liberal imagery, I mean the imagination of human well-being as based on a ‘freedom-from’, in order for people – and scholarship, for that matter – to realize their potential without impediment. The implied analogy might just be with the plant, which cannot grow in a confined space lacking light and air, for example due to ‘overgrowth’. In an allusion to the traditional concept of a syag la- torah,34 Wolf claims that “the fence, which [the Jewish people] planted around the Law, has expanded bit by bit to such an extent, growing into an impenetrable barricade, that it has restricted access to the inner shrine, that indeed it has buried this shrine within itself.”35 Such plays with images of growth and overgrowth especially make sense in light of contemporary reflections on the concept of ‘culture’, which seems to have become increasingly popular in intellectual debates from the 18th century onward. Culture was understood primarily as the civilizing process associated with morals and practical refinement, essential to a healthy and productive population. We find a brief but elucidat- ing reflection on its conceptual history in the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn’s 1784 essay on Enlightenment:

[Culture] appears more related to the practical. [...] The more a people has brought [arts, crafts and social customs] in line with the human purpose [Bestimmung], the more culture it is said to possess; just as a plot of land is ascribed more culture and cultivation, the more

32 Wolf, “Über den Begriff,” 12-13. 33 See for example the first part of Descartes’ Discours de la méthode (1637), the famous treatise in which he presents his rational method and first expresses his statement “je pense, donc je suis.” Wolf himself consulted Spinoza’s Principia philosophiae cartesianae (1663). 34 Syag la-torah: ‘a fence around the Torah’, an expression found in Mishnaic tractate Avot chapter 1. In the traditional sense it refers to extra measures that safeguard against transgression of an original precept. 35 Wolf, “Über den Begriff,” 15.

it has been developed through human industriousness to bring forth products beneficial to humanity.36

Culture, from Mendelssohn’s perspective, is one of the two pillars by which a society’s development can be measured, the other being its intellectual level as reflected mainly by the quality of its philosophy and sciences. His judgment is that an excess of neither the former nor the latter is desirable: they reinforce each other as practice and theory, and ideally maintain a balance. To be sure, Mendelssohn’s account reflects a relatively conservative appreciation of ‘Enlightenment’. The imagery, however, was also adopted by those less attached to (Jewish) tradition, such as Immanuel Wolf. The latter suggests rationality as the main cultivating force, stating that a liberal and scientific impulse has (finally) started to break through the weeds of a ceremonial practice turned mechanical and thoughtless by a thousand years of habit.37 In fact, Zunz himself was more reserved when it came to reform and uncompromising rationalism, especially later in life. His personal perspective – like that of Mendelssohn – reflected the strong influence of Greek philosophy, in particular when it came to conceptions of morality and health. To illustrate the above, one might have a look at a didactic speech that Zunz held in 1864, titled “Mental/Spiritual Health” (Die geistige Gesundheit), apparently for members of a society for young merchants. Seeing that it contains neither particularly original nor ‘Jewish’ content, it is not surprising that it has hardly received any scholarly attention. From the perspective of our topic, however, it contains some interesting elements. As the title suggests, Zunz discusses the importance of health, which he explains as an organic harmony of body and mind that results in the greatest productivity. He furthermore stresses the close link between health and morality, an idea rooting in ancient Greece and popular into the early 20th century. As he summarizes himself: “Al- ways strive to reach that fine goal, prosperity and kindness [...] Because living morally means being healthy.”38 To go a bit deeper, John Efron has argued that besides its “social, intellectual, educational and political” pursuits, the thought of Haskalah had also involved rather physi-

36 Moses Mendelssohn, “Über die Frage: was heißt aufklären?,” Berlinische Monatsschrift 4 (1784): 194. 37 Wolf, “Über den Begriff,” 16. 38 Leopold Zunz, “Die geistige Gesundheit,” in Gesammelte Schriften von Dr. Zunz Band 1 (Berlin: Louis Gerschel Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1875), 340.

cal concerns, namely a desire to restore Jewish control over their bodies.39 According to Efron, one dominant idea among Jewish progressives was that Jews had ceded control over their bodies to a tradition whose obsolete customs had become detrimental to Jew- ish health. He suggests that, in a general sense, this idea rooted in the Enlightenment ideal of freedom from (religious) tyranny over body and mind, but that it moreover was a shared assumption in the contemporary debate on the supposed physical and moral ‘degeneracy’ afflicting the Jewish population.40 Efron particularly refers to Henri Grégoire’s “Essai sur la régénération physique, morale et politique des Juifs” (1789), to illustrate the way physical concerns were part of an effort to ‘regenerate’ European Jewry, already in that century.41 The ultimate goal was to make the Jews ‘happier and more useful’.42 Efron’s discussion suggests that the concept of a Jewish ‘regeneration’, involving very practical, physical concerns, was already part of the Wissenschaft’s conceptual inheritance from 18th century maskilic thinkers. This would suggest at least some links between the ideas of mental, moral and physical cultivation to regeneration, and to the ‘projection’ of such physical imagery on the whole of Jewry in 19th century scholarship. Having suggested some conceptual continuities between early Wissenschaft and the thought of earlier Haskalah, let us highlight the 19th century’s innovations. The first thing to note is that, in line with the rising prominence of philology, the Wissenschaft put a new emphasis on Jewish literature as the main expression of Jewish life throughout history. Despite what some critics would come suggest,43 the new reverence for the Jewish literary inheritance did not – at least not intentionally – turn away from present Jewish concerns in favor of a detached antiquarianism. A fresh engagement with (the whole of) Jewish literature was presented as the only way to reawaken what may be seen as a lively dialectic within modern Jewry, which they claimed had become lethar-

39 John M. Efron, “Images of the Jewish Body: Three Medical Views from the Jewish Enlightenment,” Bulletin of the History of Medicin 69, no. 3 (1995): 350. 40 Efron, “Images of the Jewish Body,” 351. 41 John M. Efron has written more extensively on the development of race science and the various ways in which Jews engaged in it from the 18th to the early 20th century in his book Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors & Race Science in Fin-de-Siècle Europe (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), and his Medicine and the German Jews (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001) deals more specifically with the history of Jewish physicians in Germany from the Middle Ages to the era of the Weimar Republic. Especially the third chapter, “Haskalah and Healing,” is of interest to our topic: it may be read as elaborating his 1995 article. 42 Efron, “Images of the Jewish Body,” 352. 43 This criticism came primarily from early Zionist scholars, notably Gershom Scholem, in his highly polemical “mitoḵ hirhurim ‘al ḥoḵmat yisrael” (1944), who again drew on an earlier critique by Zionist ideologue Osias Thon (“Das Problem der jüdischen Wissenschaft,” 1903).

gic under rabbinic guardianship. Wolf, clearly in the spirit of Hegelianism, stated that ‘the Jewish Idea’ from the moment of its emergence in history had been in a constant state of motion, of struggle, which is the source of life and progress. This idea would be centralized by ABRAHAM GEIGER, whom we will discuss later. To summarize, the members of the Kulturverein imagined the history of literature to carry the secret of Jewish life within it, ready to be revived with the help of modern methods of research and ‘exegesis’.44 In their conception, ‘history’ was not limited to descriptions of the past, but even more so had the task to retrieve and reactivate the past in the present. Like previous maskilim they believed Jewry to be in bad shape but alive, slumbering but ready to be revitalized – their innovation was to seek the answer not just in political emancipation and educational reforms, but also in scientific studies through which Jews might learn to know themselves better. As Zunz wrote:

Many a field is still to be cultivated, now lying covered in weeds, but promising a bountiful harvest under better care; many a harmful seed is still sown and robs its fitter neighbor of maturation and health; many a ripe harvest is still battered by the hail of fervor, of malice, of false wisdom; and many a fine fruit lies neglected on the soil, or is coldly trampled out of arrogance.45

Still, time taught that the uncompromising life of the pioneer in scholarship was not for everyone, especially due to the frustrating condition of partial emancipation. Eduard Gans converted to Christianity in 1825, and so did Heinrich Heine, who would afterwards become a famous German poet. The other members of the Kulturverein each went their own path. Leopold Zunz would hold on to the ideal of scholarship, but Im- manuel Wolf ended up choosing a career as a teacher. The latter moved to Hamburg in 1823 to teach at the Israelitische Freischule.46

44 Wolf, emphasizing external causes of decline, writes: “Judaism lies in front of us in double form, firstly contained in historical-literary documents, in a very extensive mass of literature; secondly, as a still living principle, acknowledged by millions of people spread across the whole world. Among the people, however, the original, simple idea has, as it were, gradually passed over into a state of oxidation due to the oxy- gen of a hostile atmosphere.” See: Wolf, “Über den Begriff,” 15. 45 Zunz, “Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur,” 29. 46 Arno Herzig, “Wohlwill, Immanuel,” Das Jüdische Hamburg: Ein historisches Nachschlagewerk, accessed June 18, 2018, http://www.dasjuedischehamburg.de/inhalt/wohlwill-immanuel-auch-wolf- immanuel.

CHAPTER 2: ORGANISM AND DECOMPOSITION

2.1 The Amphibious Jew: Moritz Steinschneider

MORITZ STEINSCHNEIDER (1816-1907) is without a doubt one of the most productive figures in the history of Jewish Studies. His extensive bibliographical works on Jewish literature appear as loyal contributions to the execution of the plan originally drawn up by Zunz in 1818. After all, the latter had emphasized that the first step towards modern Jewish scholarship would consist in preliminary works (Vorarbeiten): mapping, prepar- ing and preserving materials that future scholars might further analyze and synthesize.47 Although first and foremost a scholar and less consistently engaged in contemporary polemics, Steinschneider was by no means unaware of or indifferent to the issues of his time. He chose to concisely express his concerns, insights and not rarely sharp criti- cisms concerning contemporary religious, political, social and scholarly issues in his prefaces and footnotes.48 To understand Steinschneider’s nuanced engagement with the conceptual trends under discussion, we had best reflect a little on his individual perspective (and, in a sense, on his nature). Steinschneider believed that scientific and religious pursuits were naturally opposed and showed a clear personal preference to occupy himself with the former.49 This fact, coupled with his often cynical tone and critical attitude to virtually all theological tendencies, have led many to consider him an agnostic or even an atheist. Although there may be truth to that assessment, one should also take consider that Steinschneider would have leaned towards a ‘negative theology’ anyway, in light of his obvious distaste for talk about what he considered ultimately incomprehensible. Even in the last years of his life he would still express a universalist view on a moral bond of all humanity, sharing equally in the transcendent (or divine) that must remain a mystery to all.50 In my view, what primarily frustrated him was what he perceived as willful ignorance and the tendency to deform facts among idealists of any cause or orientation, including priests and rabbi’s. It should be clear from the outset that Steinschneider is not an easy author to interpret, especially when it comes to his theoretical views. That does not mean, of course,

47 Zunz, “Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur,” 6. Zunz mentions works such as editiones principes of manuscripts, proper translations, handbooks and biographies. 48 A prominent example is his preface to Die Arabische Literatur der Juden (1902). 49 Moritz Steinschneider, Die Arabische Literatur der Juden (Frankfurt a.M.: J. Kauffmann, 1902), IX. 50 Steinschneider, Die Arabische Literatur, X.

that these are absent from his work. His scholarly aim to be as objective as possible, “neither apologetically nor polemically colored, neither nationally nor theologically shaped,” established firstly an order of priority.51 As a traditional objectivist and dedicated scholar Steinschneider seems to have felt that analysis of a shared reality should always precede judgment, to prevent reality from being molded to fit some traditional or chosen position. This consciousness caused him to refrain from ‘unnecessary’ speculation. Nevertheless, we find that he employs theoretical concepts, and how could he not? In light of his ‘minimalism’ we may perhaps even consider his concepts to have been chosen all the more consciously. It comes as no surprise that, especially during the first half of his life, Steinschnei- der’s thought strongly resembled that of his mentor Zunz. His 1844 lecture on “foreign language elements in new-Hebrew” (published in 1845) provides an overview of the various ‘influences’ that Jews incorporated into their lingual tradition from Antiquity to Modernity. Steinschneider quite explicitly presents this text as a linguistically focused complement to the overviews already composed by Zunz.52 Indeed, one finds plenty of similarities when reading this lecture alongside Zunz’s “Die jüdische Literatur” (the introduction to his Zur Geschichte und Literatur, also 1845). The most important structural view shared by Zunz and Steinschneider, was a special emphasis on the historical interactions of Jews with different contexts and the resulting additions to or even transformations of their original tradition. Zunz himself focused primarily on the development of Jewish liturgies, for which the idea of ‘historically interacting literatures’ served as a framework. Steinschneider on the other hand had a more pronounced linguistic orientation, which led him to focus on the languages spoken and written by Jews. He studied the active role of Jews in literary exchange throughout history, rather than strictly occupying himself with one theme or genre. He characterized language as “the most faithful mirror of history.”53 In the context of this thesis, the interesting thing about Steinschneider’s writings is that he made a more concrete attempt to determine the particular nature of (the) Jewish organism.54 The basic underlying question had in fact plagued philosophers of all ages, but gained special attention in a time obsessed with historical change: how are unity and

51 Steinschneider, Die Arabische Literatur, VIII. 52 Moritz Steinschneider, Die fremdsprachlichen Elemente im Neuhebräischen und ihre Benutzung für die Linguistik (Prague: Pascheles, 1845), 29. 53 Steinschneider, Die fremdsprachlichen Elemente, 29. 54 Organism: here in the sense of ‘manner of self-organization’.

identity maintained in discontinuity and diversity? For a Jewish scholar the question had fundamental relevance in light of the fragmented and mixed state of a people in Diaspo- ra, and special urgency in a context of (partial) emancipation, an experienced increase in acculturation of German Jews, as well as conversions.55 An author like Wolf, as we saw before, chose to simply posit a shared ‘religious idea’ as the essence that somehow binds the whole together. That solution could not satisfy a more rigorous scholar like Steinschneider, so he came up with his own analysis. One of the ideas introduced by Steinschneider was that Jews carried their homeland through the Diaspora in the form of their literature.56 At the same time, this literary tradition was subject to constant change and development, with parts being reconstructed or newly added under the influence of new lingual and cultural contexts. The clearest examples are of course the Aramaic and Arabic works, both translations and novel literary creations, that became incorporated into the Jewish tradition. Based on the above, Steinschneider suggests that the characteristic organism of the Jewish spirit might be best described as “historically determined reproductivity.”57 The concept of reproductivity (Reproduktivität) is of course linked to – possibly synonymous with – the Reproduktionskraft posited by Zunz, but perhaps it takes a slightly more careful stance in expressing a process rather than positing a capacity. Steinschneider suggests that what characterizes the Jewish people is its constant reproduction of its ancient ideas in new forms, attaching the new to the old.58 He moreover states explicitly that this ‘moment of attachment’ is the only thing that makes up the Jewish people’s organic unity. Thus, we see that although ‘Jewish ideas’ do figure in his analysis, Steinschneider refrains from using them as an explanation, but highlights the moments of adaptation as typically Jewish. To characterize the particular Jewish ‘double life’ between the Hebrew tradition and the various vernaculars they spoke depending on the context, Steinschneider intro- duces the idea of the Jew as a lingual ‘amphibian’ (Sprachamphibie), naturally comfort-

55 In a passage quoted by Ucko, Moses Moser (1797-1838) articulated the issue perfectly: “The biggest of all maladies from which our people suffers, is that in the part of the nation that already released itself completely or partly from the old bonds […] so little unity reigns, its efforts often wandering about in the greatest diversity of directions and dispersing […] and the individual gets entangled in the most tragic conflict with itself and the outside world, because a center is missing, in which the forces torn from the old mass are unified once more…” (Cited in: Ucko, “Geistesgeschichtliche Grundlagen,” 13-14.) 56 Steinschneider, Die fremdsprachlichen Elemente, 5. 57 Idem, 7. 58 Ibidem.

able in various lingual traditions at the same time.59 Other designations he used for the historical Jew were “a living, stuttering polyglot” or simply an “interpreter” (Dol- metscher). What is so significant here is that instead of positing a metaphysical Jewish essence – although he leaves the possibility of its existence open – Steinschneider comes up with what reads almost like a taxonomy of the Jew, explaining Jewish nature from its way of surviving ‘gaps’: between old and new, between particular and foreign, between Hebrew and vernacular. The reason that there were still Jews in 1844, Stein- schneider suggests, is that generation after generation managed to be flexible enough to cross such boundaries, preserving a continuous Jewishness. Although his words resem- ble those of his peers, his views turn out quite distinct. It will be clear by now that I do not consider Steinschneider’s choice to describe the Jew in terms of a zoological class as random, but rather as a subtle engagement with a prevalent conceptual paradigm. It is rather interesting to contrast his Jewish ‘lingual amphibian’ to another account written around that time, namely by Richard Wagner in his “Judaism in Music.” Let us look at one particular passage:

As long as the musical art carried a truly organic force of life within it, up until the time of Mozart and Beethoven, no Jewish composer was to be found: it would be impossible for an element completely foreign to this living organism to participate in the development of its life. Only at the moment that the inner death of a body becomes apparent, do the external elements attain the power to take possession of it, but only to decompose it; afterwards the flesh of the body surely disintegrates in a teeming and lively mass of worms: who, however, would, upon viewing it, still consider the body itself as living? [my italics]60

There are two aspects of this passage that I would like to highlight. Firstly, and obviously, the fact that the Jew is characterized as a parasite or decomposer. Secondly there is Wagner’s suggestion that there are strange elements that cannot become part of an organism, somehow because of its original and distinct organic life force. The ‘pseudo- participation’ of such elements, on his view, could only be a sign of decay. Steinschneider was perfectly aware of the negative trends in his time, and although at that time it cannot have been a direct response to Wagner, his ‘amphibious Jew’ offered a positive interpretation of the Jew in more or less biological terms. It moreover offered an answer to the difficult ‘Jewish’ question how a people without a land, with-

59 Steinschneider, Die fremdsprachlichen Elemente, 6. See also: Steinschneider, “Über die Volksliteratur der Juden,” 9. 60 Richard Wagner, Das Judenthum in der Musik (Leipzig: J.J. Weber, 1869), 31. (Expanded reprint of the original 1850 essay.)

out a clear unity, could still maintain a positive identity and tradition. We thus end up with two very different conceptualizations of the Jewish people as an organism and of life and organicity as such. One account presents Jews as beings who make themselves at home where they don’t belong and feast on the bodies of more worthy organisms, the other account presents them as amphibious beings that – in an almost evolutionary turn – have simply become well-adapted to diverse circumstances and rapid changes. In 1870, in the context of discussing the Jewish incorporation of foreign influences, Stein- schneider turns around Wagner’s conception of the signs of health, by stating: “Only the healthy organism and only a true idea show their power to overcome the foreign, by assimilating it, that is, transmute it to their own substance.”61 We saw that already in 1844, when Steinschneider was about twenty-eight, he adopted and altered popular concepts, carefully shifting the focus from essence to context. Over the course of his life, Steinschneider would maintain this critical style of engaging with the trends, and if anything, he only became more stubborn in light of a growing disappointment with his fellow member of society in the period after 1848. His 1870 essay “Über die Volksliteratur der Juden” seems to show both tempered expecta- tions regarding the power of scholarship and a reinforcement of the cosmopolitan ideals he so wished to return. In what was probably his most hopeful and enthusiastic period, around 1845, Zunz had expressed the typical early 19th century intellectual vision that as part of the universal development of the Geist, knowledge would transition to life, that is: intellectual achievements “would make thought freer and the senses more refined.” Steinschneider would express increasing pessimism in this regard, when he wrote in 1870 that proper science “often resides among its own people like a foreigner, misunderstood and even mocked.”62 Perhaps it is in light of such awareness, or perhaps from a more populist sentiment, that he adjusts Zunz’s idea, stating: “true national writings [...] emerge from the heart (Herzkammer) rather than the study (Studierstube); they reach from life (back) into life...”63 In conclusion, we can say that Steinschneider adopted and developed the organic conception of Judaism in line with his own scholarly conscience and judgment. It re-

61 Moritz Steinschneider, “Über die Volksliteratur der Juden,” Archiv für Litteraturgeschichte 2 (1872), 21. 62 Steinschneider, “Über die Volksliteratur,” 2-3. 63 Idem, 3.

flected his view of Jews as naturally inclined towards cosmopolitanism.64 The Jewish tradition had always been a mixed and changing construction, so what organized the organism? Steinschneider came to the conclusion that, since it could not be the rabbinic corpus of halacha, which after all had been expanded and reinterpreted in every chapter of Jewish history, the organicity consisted not so much in a spirit or idea present in all the parts but was more like an ability, or more carefully ‘occurrence’, of adaptation: Jewishness was preserved across generations as long as each of them managed to adapt it wherever necessary.

2.2 Life’s Decomposing Forces: Abraham Geiger The philosophical idea that conflict is a necessary process towards some greater realiza- tion would live a long life in modern European thought, on the one hand in the form of models centered around (Hegelian or Marxist) ‘dialectics’, on the other in the form of various theories of power commonly based on the thought of Nietzsche. Perhaps it makes sense that philosophical emphases on tension and conflict arose in the context of a highly self-conscious culture occupied with various revolutionary ideas and changing rapidly on virtually every level. A similar explanation might account for its central place in the thought of an enthusiastic polemicist and reformer like rabbi ABRAHAM GEIGER. It is on this aspect of his thought – conflict as a key to life – that we will focus. It goes without saying that it would be impossible to do any serious justice to the thought and opinion of such an influential publicist in a mere subchapter. In fact, the same goes for the other two ‘fathers’ of modern Judaism discussed below, ZECHARIAS FRANKEL and SAMSON RAPHAEL HIRSCH. What we can do is to try and bring out how they conceptualized the relationship between scholarship and Judaism, and how their concepts shaped ensuing debates on religious reform and Jewish futures. Geiger’s thought on the potential in conflict features prominently in two articles published in the 1844 volume of his Scholarly Journal for Jewish Theology (WZJT).65 The first is suggestively titled “The Task of the Present,” and the other explicitly poses

64 Steinschneider, “Über die Volksliteratur,” 9: “The Jews in captivity, if they wanted to remain connected to their past and to one another, had to learn foreign languages and scripts, in order to make the foreign accessible to their brethren. For their exclusion and isolation in life they compensated themselves by means of a livelier communication in literature, which nourished in them the seed of cosmopolitanism.” 65 Of the Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift für jüdische Theologie a total of six volumes appeared between 1835 and 1847. Contributors included Leopold Zunz, Isaak Markus Jost (Kulturverein), Salomon Ludwig Steinheim, Salomo Juda Rapoport, Isaak Samuel Reggio and Samuel David Luzzatto.

the question: “Is the Conflict in the Synagogue a Sign of its Decline or of its Newly Awakened Life?” In fact, we find that in line with the journal’s progressive theological approach, most of its volumes contained one or more reflective essays, usually to open an issue, on the conflicts related to reform efforts in the contemporary Jewish world.66 It is in the first of the two abovementioned articles that we find a passage which concisely articulates the premises of Geiger’s view on religion and life:

Closure is death, and what follows is decay. When [...] the time of prophecy was closed, at that point life, the free, marvelous, creative religious life of the prophetic era, was re- strained, the spirit began to dwindle, and the temporary form achieved dominion... 67

We may read the first part as a radical articulation of an idea also found in more moderate progressives such as Frankel or even Zunz, namely that rabbinic ossification had halted the lively movement at the heart of Judaism. The second part establishes an opposition of life and creative freedom to the dominion of temporary (traditional) forms. These ideas came to serve as the fundament of Geiger’s reform theology. A recurring concept in Geiger’s writings is that of ‘decomposing forces’ (zerset- zende Kräfte), which he mentions in the context of conflict (Kampf) and renewal. He holds that such forces are a natural and necessary part of any living organism: inherent, even, in the life forces (Lebenskräfte) themselves.68 He argues that they had always been present in the Jewish organism but never before managed to cause a crisis. Instead they had acted quietly under yet firmly established and powerful traditional forms, merely showing themselves historically in limited ‘eruptions’. Geiger suggests that such negative forces do not necessarily undermine an organism, but rather destabilize rigid, ossified forms in preparation to inner renewal and the incorporation of new elements. We find a specification in the opening essay of the very first issue (1835) of WZJT. There the progressive side of the conflict in Judaism is characterized as guided by the “disintegrating and decomposing, therefore as much as possible negating intellect” critically judging traditional conceptions and sources.69

66 Illustrative examples are: “Present Judaism and its Aspirations” (1835, no. 1), “A New Stage in the Conflict in Present Judaism” (1836, no. 2) and “Religious Acts of the Present in Judaism” (1847, no. 1, continued in no. 3). 67 Abraham Geiger, “Die Aufgabe der Gegenwart,” Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift für jüdische Theologie 5, no. 1 (1844): 34. 68 Geiger, “Die Aufgabe der Gegenwart,” 1. 69 Abraham Geiger, “Das Judenthum unserer Zeit und die Bestrebungen in ihm,” Wissenschaftliche Zeit- schrift für jüdische Theologie 1, no. 1 (1835): 1.

Thus we find that Geiger, like Wolf, especially emphasizes the centrality of rational efforts in the continuous renewal of tradition and Jewish life. At the same time, he imagines the rational effort ‘organically’ as a moment of decomposition in a cycle of life. He clearly plays with the opposition between analytic (‘separating’) and synthetic (‘combining’) efforts, associating them respectively with understanding (Verstand) and reason (Vernunft), either in the Kantian or the Hegelian sense: the dynamic between the two enables renewal – whether that constitutes a ‘dialectic’ I could not judge.70 The most significant aspect is that, for Geiger, the rational ‘deconstructive’ efforts enable the flow of (religious) life, keeping it in continuous movement. Thus he connected scholarship, religious reform and tradition in one organic theological model. This approach was of course disapproved of by a more convinced objectivist like Steinschneider, who sought a strict separation of scholarship from religious and other social purposes. Considering the above, it is no wonder that Geiger had an optimistic attitude to the tensions and polemics that had sprung up in the wake of late 18th century challenges to the rabbinic monopoly on Judaism. In the second article we mentioned, which was published in the second 1844 issue of WZJT, Geiger addresses the obvious question whether internal Jewish conflict did not in fact endanger ‘the organic whole’. Although he admits that internal division might weaken the organism in its relation to ‘the outside’, he holds that the status quo did not do Jewish emancipation any good either.71 Actual power, he argues, stems from a lively engagement on all fronts, not from the lethargy caused by strict adherence to custom. He claims that traditionalism offers only a pre- tense of unity in an actual condition of division (Getheiltheit): he perceives a gap, an opposition even, between life and teaching among many of his coreligionists.72 The struggle, then, served to awaken the Jewish people from its slumber, and although painful, it was ultimately in everyone’s best interest that it should happen openly and explicitly. Geiger points at the controversy around Maimonides to support this claim, positing that it had made contemporary Jewry aware of the danger in literal adherence to the sacred text (which at times suggests God’s corporeality).73 When the teaching is gradually alienated from the living seed that spawned it, development eventually becomes impossible, understanding decreases and religiosity along with it. Thus,

70 Geiger, “Das Judenthum unserer Zeit,” 1. 71 Abraham Geiger, “Ist der Streit in der Synagoge ein Zeichen von ihrem Zerfalle oder von ihrem neuerwachten Leben?” Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift für jüdische Theologie 5, no. 2 (1844): 147. 72 Geiger, “Der Streit in der Synagoge,” 151. 73 Idem, 146.

Geiger conceptualizes living as continuous adaptation of teaching to life, a view shared by Steinschneider: both centralized the act or process of adaptation, based on their perspective that all of the customs making up the ‘Jewish’ tradition at any moment in time were historically contingent and temporary. Geiger argues that the inner drive to adapt results in a struggle against anything or anyone, internal or external, that seeks to halt the process. Despite Geiger’s obvious Enlightenment-inspired rationalism or even Spinozism,74 one should not overlook his conscious theological engagement with the Biblical sources to reinforce his position. After all, the Biblical account imagines creation as a process in which the ‘spirit’ of God75 engages chaos, separates and reorganizes the elements, shines light on them – all in preparation to the introduction of life. Geiger states:

…the deepest substance of all truly spiritual [geistigen] movement is scholarship [Wissen- schaft]; wherever it […] turns, things become light and bright; the matter lying before it in unorganized chaos is disentangled, and from the raw mass a transparently clear composition of various elements emerges, which it offers to us as a well-organized whole.76

Interpreting his words in a more speculative vein, they show a more encompassing revision of traditional theology in European modernity. The analogy places human science at the center of the divine scheme, hand in hand with the truly creative power of Poesie (as a German rendering of the Greek concept poièsis) that had also characterized the Biblical prophets. It is no coincidence that Geiger traces the loss of the free and creative spirit all the way back to the end of the prophetic era. The prophet, both a pre-rabbinic and a creative character, offered an attractive traditional figure for a modern reformer challenging the established forms and norms. The last volume of WZJT appeared in 1847, almost as an addendum with final statements and reflections. It featured articles by Geiger himself and a single contribution by fellow reform rabbi Samuel Holdheim. In the opening essay Geiger discusses the transition from thought to action and the process of rejuvenation-through-struggle,

74 In fact, one can view the thought of most progressive Jewish scholars since the Haskalah as to a degree Spinozist, in the sense that they 1) emphasized Scripture over Talmud, 2) challenged rabbinic authority over its exegesis, and 3) generally assumed a core idea or teaching that could be distilled. After all, Spi- noza had argued in his Tractatus theologico-politicus that, instead of providing truths about history or the world, the whole of Scripture serves to preach the core teachings to obey God and to love one’s neighbor. 75 Of course, traditionally translated as Geist (Gottes) in German. 76 Abraham Geiger, “Die Gründung einer jüdisch-theologischen Facultät, ein dringendes Bedürfniß unserer Zeit,” Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift für jüdische Theologie 2, no. 1 (1836): 1.

presenting them as done deals.77 In 1844 he had stated that the vital task of the present was the recovery of the inner unity of contemporary spiritual and religious life, which he felt was lacking.78 Now, three years later, he declared that the time of theorizing reform was over and that the only way forward was its transition into practical life: “For more than two life-times now Judaism has been working on its refinement (Läuterung), it has experienced various inner struggles and through them rejuvenated itself.”79

77 Abraham Geiger, “Die religiösen Thaten der Gegenwart im Judenthume,” Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift für jüdische Theologie 6, no. 1 (1847): 1. 78 Geiger, “Die Aufgabe der Gegenwart,” 2. 79 Geiger, “Die religiösen Thaten der Gegenwart im Judenthume,” 1.

CHAPTER 3: PRESERVATION AND REJUVENATION

3.1 Sowing the Teaching: Zecharias Frankel and Wolf Landau As stressed in the title of an article in the 1836 volume of WZJT (see note 74), Geiger had the life-long ambition to see the establishment of a Jewish theological faculty dedicated to Jewish scholarship. Like Zunz and Steinschneider, he hoped for it to be recognized in the form of a department in the German universities, but unlike the former, he was not principally opposed to the creation of a separate institute. The year 1854 saw this dream come true with the opening of the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau, but Geiger himself was passed over for the presidency in favor of the more moderate ZECHARIAS FRANKEL. Under the latter’s guidance, the seminary would come to be associated with a ‘Breslauer school’ of Wissenschaft des Judentums. As we will see, Frankel and Geiger shared many general attitudes and conceptions, but Frankel’s approach to Jewish history and religion was distinctly more conservative with regard to Jewish tradition. All the scholars previously discussed – including Geiger – might be said to represent a secularizing approach that placed ‘modern’ rather than ‘rabbinic’ scholarship at the heart of Judaism and its future. At the center of their thought was what we might call an organic-historical conception of Judaism, which explained the fact of Jewish historical continuity as an organic developmental process with moments of rupture and rebirth, or alternatively: stages of pupation and metamorphosis. To generalize, it appears that especially the earlier writings, roughly of the period up to 1850, were guided by an idealist ‘essentialism’, most explicitly found in Wolf’s essay. It was around that year that the separate scholars more definitively decided to what extent they continued to have faith in the Reform effort, and apparently many, as Geiger suggested in 1847, chose a more conservative or passive stance in the end.80 The conservative position was based on a belief that Jewish life ultimately remained inseparably tied to the rabbinic tradition, a religious core that could never be replaced or succeeded by secular scholarship. In other words, they deemed the particular body necessary to maintain the particular identity. Adherents to this view again fell into roughly two categories. On the one hand there were those who believed that the tradition itself was perfectly fine and that the issue troubling Judaism came down to a decrease in religious observance. These represented the early development of Jewish

80 Geiger, “Die religiösen Thaten der Gegenwart im Judenthume,” 2.

orthodoxy. On the other hand, there were those who accepted the diagnosis that the rabbinic tradition had ossified, and that critical revision and scholarship were the remedy. However, rather than regarding modern scholarship a stimulating “foreign influence,” they argued that scholarship had always been at the heart of the rabbinic tradition, and consequently propagated it as a tool by which rabbinism would regenerate itself as it had done in the past. Of the latter type were the views advanced by Frankel in a prospectus to his Jour- nal for the Religious Interests of Judaism (1843).81 Already there he hinted at what he would develop into his ‘historical-positive’ approach to Judaism, and clearly distanced himself from both the idealist-style essentialism and more radical interpretations of decomposition and reconstruction as discussed above:

And as Judaism it will carry itself, not as the dilution and evaporation of some general idea: it may neither renounce its positive basis, nor [...] emerge from every time period reconstructed and torn from what came before: in such a repeated Proteus-transformation it would eventually lose itself.82

Whereas Zunz had emphasized the process of studying the past as a critical effort to separate the obsolete and recover neglected treasures of Jewish literature, Frankel saw the past, especially that enclosed in the religious tradition, more specifically as a source to feed religious life in the present: “The past [...] will fertilize the present with its spirit (Geist) and according to its needs help it develop an inner religious life” [my italics].83 He rejects the idea that Jewish unity lies merely in a continuous adaptation (Stein- schneider, Geiger), and that the concrete traditional forms are contingent in themselves. Another issue on which Frankel had a somewhat different perspective was the common scholarly diagnosis of historical and contemporary Judaism. Perhaps reflecting his middle position between more radical reformers and traditionalists, his assessment of both past and present seems milder. He stressed not so much the negative influence of historical hardship, but rather the internal Jewish power that manifested under such conditions.84 Frankel argues that even at the highpoints of suffering and darkness Juda-

81 The first issue of the Zeitschrift für die religiösen Interessen des Judenthums appeared in April 1844. 82 Zecharias Frankel, Anzeige und Prospectus einer Zeitschrift für die religiösen Interessen des Juden- thums (Berlin: M. Simion, 1843), 5. 83 Ibidem. Compare: Zunz, “Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur,” 4-5. 84 Zecharias Frankel, “Einleitendes,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 1, no. 1 (October 1851): 5.

ism retained an inner clarity and “undisturbedness,” retaining its love and pursuit of knowledge. Compared to the prevalent progressive view that Judaism had shriveled under persecution while it flourished during periods of relative peace, Frankel seems to have perceived a more stable and continuous Jewish productivity. Scholarship, he held, was always there as an essential part of Judaism, serving as a “lever” to raise it back up and revitalize it time and again. His framework and concepts were thus similar to those we saw before, but his interpretation of the chapters of history of Jewish religion differed somewhat.85

We find that Frankel’s perspective was faithfully adopted by his disciple WOLF LANDAU, who published the article “Scholarship, Judaism’s only means of regeneration” in 1852.86 We find Frankel’s position and some of his concepts (such as that of the “lever”) repeated there, but we moreover encounter a couple of profound reflections on the force that binds Judaism. This results in a quite interesting illustration of the fundamental issue(s) of Jewishness in Europe. Put briefly, Landau argues that it is impossible for a negative pressure from without to constitute a durable life for Judaism. He admits that it may inspire solidarity among Jews and historically fostered the “elasticity” typical of the Jewish people, but he also points out that it provides no binding purpose in the form of a shared Judaism.87 Landau holds that true consistency, able to survive a context of emancipation, can only be based in knowledge (of tradition, that is), which in his view nourished a collective awareness of shared fate and purpose. In fact, Frankel and Landau shared the main elements of their historical and conceptual framework with that established by Zunz and Wolf two decades before. Frankel agreed that Judaism’s true history was its literary history,88 and in the abovementioned article by Landau we find, for example, a repetition of the idea that the Babylonian exile was followed by a period of decline, ending with the fresh impulse of rabbinic scholarship. However, Landau emphatically adds that it was the prophet Ezra who sparked the revitalization of the tradition, and “by means of the divine letter of the law elicited elec-

85 See also: Michael A. Meyer, “Two Persistent Tensions Within Wissenschaft des Judentums,” in Mod- ern Judaism and historical consciousness: identities, encounters, perspectives, eds. Christian Wiese and Andreas Gotzmann (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 80. 86 Wolf Landau, “Die Wissenschaft, das einzige Regenerationsmittel des Judenthums,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 1, no. 13 (October 1852): 483-499. 87 Landau, “Das einzige Regenerationsmittel,” 485. 88 Frankel, “Einleitendes,” 5.

trical sparks from the ossified heart.”89 When it came to the issues of the present, Frankel and Landau positioned themselves in the first place as ‘traditional’ rabbi’s an- swering a call for a more responsible, modernized religious leadership, rather than as modern scholars taking over from the rabbinic authority. It will be clear, then, how their theological seminary, as an institute training rabbi’s, fit into the picture. Apart from the concepts of regeneration and revitalization, and perhaps some allusion to galvanism where such processes were associated with a lever and electrical cur- rents, Landau uses other concepts that are interesting for the continuation of our discussion. On page 491 he explains the success of the Pharisees over the Sadducees and the Rabbanites over the Karaites, stating that the latter parties became their own ‘killers’ by cutting themselves off from the living tradition of Judaism. They would live a brief afterlife supported only by the continuing polemic with the living tradition, but immediately thereafter their spirit would become rigid and their numbers would dwindle. The theme and metaphor of a suicide through rejection of the living tradition would return in GERSHOM SCHOLEM’s critique of cosmopolitan, acculturating and progressive elements in the Wissenschaft des Judentums. The reader might also have noticed that Landau counters Geiger’s reformative claim that traditionalism provides only a false sense of unity whereas conflict enables progress, by turning it around: internal and external conflict may create a temporary ‘liveliness’ reminiscent of life, but if a shared basis or attachment to tradition is lacking, the spark will inevitably die out. This would be true for overly radical reformers just as much as it had been for previous sects that had disregarded or rejected the tradition. Life is inherent in the positive basis of religious teaching, and Landau presents previous generations of rabbi’s as the heroes who reproduced the religious tradition over and over, reinvigorating it with new scholarship. He thus regards it the main task of the present to “reproduce the teaching” (die Lehre fortzupflanzen) and “secure a soil for it among the people.”90

3.2 In the Valley of Bones: Heinrich Graetz One of the teachers at the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau was the historian HEINRICH GRAETZ and his writings clearly contain many elements of the thought of Frankel (and Landau). Michael Meyer goes as far as stating that Graetz, in his historical

89 Landau, “Das einzige Regenerationsmittel,” 490. 90 Idem, 495.

works, applied Frankel’s vision that scholarship could serve to inspire Jews to reattach to their religious past.91 Indeed various statements by Graetz, such as that “the Jewish tribe (Volksstamm) approaches a hardly foreseen process of rejuvenation before our eyes,” and that “the cosmopolitan Jews silently shake their heads about it, whereas the rigidly pious develop idle hopes, all are amazed by this phenomenon,” reflect a closely related perspective.92 Still, Graetz certainly had a mind of his own, and his writings contain, for example, various original images and reflections that are of particular interest to our topic. In 1864 Graetz published an essay titled “The Rejuvenation of the Jewish Tribe,” in which he reflects on the mystery behind the life-span and durability of nations. His main interest is, as one might expect, to consider what the peculiar fact of the historical survival of the Jews implies for their present condition. Surely there are mortal and immortal peoples, he observes, but what is it that distinguishes them? One might look for the answer in an especially pronounced national identity, but Graetz objects that many na- tionalities meeting that criterium (such as the “ancient Latin and Hellenic races”) ultimately “descended into the grave” or “were absorbed in the form of atoms by other national organisms” over the violent course of history.93

Immortal in the true sense – not merely through deeds and thoughts that a race [Geschlecht] proclaims to the others – are peoples that withstand the chemical decompositions of history, do not succumb to catastrophes, have the elasticity to contract under pressure, to again emerge afterwards. [my italics] 94

The obvious literary choices may not just reflect Graetz’s allegiance to Frankel, but moreover suggest a critical response to Geiger, as I hope to demonstrate below. First, however, some speculative notes regarding what appears to have been a wider development in the conception of life and organicity, which might also be reflected in Graetz’s thought. In the above quotation he places some emphasis on the fact that a truly immortal people must be still physically present, not just in the figurative sense, and elsewhere he reveals that the secret to survival is the capacity to rejuvenate when faced with the infirmity of old age (Alterschwäche).95 Although often subtle, one may per-

91 Meyer, “Two Persistent Tensions,” 75. 92 Heinrich Graetz, “Die Verjüngung des jüdischen Stammes,” Jahrbuch für Israeliten 5624 1 (1864): 4. 93 Graetz, “Die Verjüngung,” 3. 94 Ibidem. 95 Graetz, “Die Verjüngung,” 4. Coincidentally, Leopold Zunz wrote in that same year: “The youth still has a life full of hopes ahead, is usually physically nimble; discontent, worries and sorrow have not yet, as

ceive a shift or development in the conception of life – at least in emphasis – from a mainly metaphysical, divine and intellectual force as it figured in German idealism, to a more physical and concrete force of nature as it came to be understood in later 19th century thought, such as that of Nietzsche. Perhaps this might even be associated with a move from universalist to particularist sentiments: from life as a shared spirit, to life as a quantitative force of particular bodies expressed in their physical characteristics.96 More generally, in the wake of romantic idealism, German philosophy seems to have witnessed a metaphysical shift from the ‘ideal’ to the ‘real’, as most prominently visible in Marx’s response to Hegel. With regard to the development of the life sciences, one should also remember that the second half of the century saw the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), which quickly began to exert its popular influence. As ‘evidence of a conceptual shift’ these facts would of course be vague and circumstantial, but I wish merely to bring them to mind for the sake of contextualiza- tion. Although too elusive to be a basis for any conclusions on the writings of specific scholars, I am quite certain that such ‘threads’ in the intellectual canvas bore some relation to one other and that no single mind could remain unaffected by their presence. Returning to Graetz, what we find more explicitly in his writings than in any of our previous authors, is a direct association of the 19th century conceptual tradition with Jewish sources. For Graetz the allusion to traditional stories was likely a rhetorical means to ‘inspire Jews to (re)attach to their religious past,’97 but it also offers a compel- ling example of how the contemporary language of organicity and resurrection could easily strike root in traditional Jewish literature. The first example is that Graetz illustrates the national elasticity that might withstand decomposition by referring to a Talmudic story about the eventual resurrection of the dead in the end time.98 The story tells that a body, whose atoms have been scattered by the winds of history, will ultimately be resurrected from a single durable kernel hidden in the spine. Although the whole body decomposes, this kernel remains intact, and

is so often the case with older people, broken their courage…” See: Zunz, “Die geistige Gesundheit,” 339. 96 Siegfried Ucko suggests that the struggle between the universalist ideal and the concrete issues of everyday life as Jews in Germany in fact already figured prominently in correspondence between members of the original Kulturverein. He states that contemporary Jews felt themselves confronted with a choice between death and life for Judaism: to assimilate or to retain a particular national existence. See: Ucko, “Geistesgeschichtliche Grundlagen,” 9. 97 I should remind the reader that Graetz’s essay, as part of an almanac, was addressed to a Jewish lay audience. 98 Graetz, “Die Verjüngung,” 4.

the body will regrow from it as from a seed. Thus, the image of the seed becomes the key to Graetz’s view on Jewish survival, and upon closer consideration reflects a rejection of the purely reproductive or ‘reconstructionist’ interpretations of Jewish continuity as in Geiger and Steinschneider. In line with Frankel’s perspective, Graetz characterizes the kernel as a religious core of the pious, the faithful, historically represented by those few who returned from the Babylonian exile to rebuild the temple rather than embracing the idols of their place of exile.99 A second image that Graetz uses to develop and illustrate his reflections comes from the Biblical account itself. “Can decayed, scattered remains again come to life?” he wonders: “This question in the same phrasing was once raised by a Jewish seer, when the Jewish tribe, perhaps even more than nowadays, resembled a corpse.”100 Graetz’s reference is to the ‘Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones’ found in Ezekiel 37:1- 14, in particular to verse 3.101 The passage tells how God demonstrates His power to the prophet, who is brought to a valley filled with bones and instructed to prophesy God’s word to the bones, upon which the bones grow new flesh and the breath of life is returned to them. Graetz continues by presenting the prophet Isaiah as the key figure to Israel’s resurrection from exile, as the one who prophesied God’s word to Israel’s remains and brought them back to life.102 On a side note, it should be clear that Graetz’s emphasis on Isaiah’s central role with regard to Jewish inner revival was also a polemical move against Christian theology. Graetz stresses that the ‘servant’ described from Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12 is the nation of Israel, loyal proclaimer of God’s message yet despised by mankind, whereas Chris- tians have of course traditionally regarded these passages as prophesying the arrival and fate of Christ. Graetz leaves no doubt as to his views when he states that “Israel is the Messiah-people,” stating moreover that “a people, that through suffering and death will be resurrected, through the doors of the grave will be revived, that is meaningful,” but “transferred to a single individual figure, it becomes a caricature and leads to romantic raving.”103 Ultimately Graetz’s essay remains open-ended, leaving the reader with a diagnosis of the present and a proven historical/traditional remedy, but also a question: “Is this

99 Graetz, “Die Verjüngung,” 6-7. 100 Idem, 4. 101 In Ezekiel 37:3 God addresses the prophet: “He said to me: human, will these bones return to life?” 102 Graetz, “Die Verjüngung,” 10. 103 Idem, 11-12.

stirring [of an apparent rejuvenation in contemporary Judaism], which appears so in- credible, a true heartbeat or merely the galvanized spasm of a corpse?”104 Even if once before in Jewish history a handful of loyal returnees from exile “poured their healthy juices into the veins of humanity,” and Graetz reveals the secret as to how they did so, nothing is certain about the present or future, and it would remain up to the loyal core of the faithful to prove its durability.

104 Graetz, “Die Verjüngung,” 4.

CHAPTER 4: LIFE AND DEATH

4.1 The Neglected Tree of Life: Samson Raphael Hirsch What we have seen up until this point were various adoptions and adaptations of organicist and biological concepts to make sense of Jewish reality. At the center of most of these plans stood modern scholarship as embodying or supporting a revitalization of Jewry or Judaism. We might roughly distinguish between those of a more secularist or objectivist approach to scholarship and Jewish life (Zunz, Wolf, Steinschneider, Geiger) and those who emphasized the continuing centrality of Jewish tradition and religion as the only viable ground and compass for such studies (Frankel, Landau, Graetz). All of these figures, however, shared a basic belief in the value of a modern Jewish scholarship, either as succeeding or as continuing rabbinism. As I mentioned a few times before, there existed another camp of critics, taking a more uncompromising stance: they denied that modern scholarship had anything to offer to Jews as Jews and rejected it as a remedy for the Jewish present.

The central figure voicing this criticism during the 19th century was SAMSON RAPHAEL HIRSCH, who had himself attended a German university alongside his later ideological opponent Abraham Geiger. In his own way, Hirsch shared many concerns with our previous authors, especially with those of a more conservative or moral perspective (including Zunz in his later life). The assumption was that Jews lived in a (po- tentially) dangerous time, in which a decisive choice had to be made with regard to the future. This choice would determine whether the organic unity of European Jewry would be preserved, or if it was doomed to fall apart. Practically all of the scholars we discussed perceived a decrease in observance among acculturated Jews and saw this, each in their own way, as a threat to Jewry. Even the reformers, who tended to blame the predicament firstly on the rabbinic inability to inspire Jews to be Jews, were ultimately worried about moral degeneration – their answer was reform. One might say that there existed a general consensus concerning the diagnosis, but internal division concerning the proper treatment. Leaving little ambiguity as to his perspective, phrasing it perfectly in the conceptual language of his scholarly contemporaries and colleagues, Hirsch asks his reader what good the participation into the non-Jewish world (in’s unjüdische Leben) had actually brought Jewry:

Is it a cheerfully blossoming tree of life, that took us into its shadow? Still the time staggers around sickly and seeks medicine for its diseased life, still the dull eye of desire looks around for a new seed, to replace the tree of life that it has come to perceive as withered! How [could it]? When this medicine has been long ago given to us, when we have since long possessed this seed – when also for such times of weakness and infirmity the Ruler of time has long ago prepared His eternally rejuvenating balm of life, and [when] this seed, this medicine, this balm has been nothing else, than – our ever unappreciated and despised Judaism?105

Hirsch’s message to his contemporaries is clearly that they are looking for a cure in the wrong place. Beyond merely being an advocate for an orthodox interpretation of Jewish tradition, however, Hirsch confronts his scholarly colleagues with an alternative and rather concrete conception of Jewish life, which would prove to find followers far beyond Jewish orthodoxy: that it takes place in action, in ritual, in everyday reality, rather than being a spiritual principle. In 1862 Hirsch published an essay articulating his sharp critique of the ideals and pretenses of Wissenschaft des Judentums, titled “How do we obtain life for our Wissen- schaft?”106 In it, he makes a distinction between jüdische Wissenschaft and the Wissen- schaft des Judentums, which he views as a dishonest venture, consequently renaming it a Wissenschaft vom Judentum.107 His core criticism is that the modern scholarship embraced and exalted by both his progressive and conservative contemporaries was in fact too far removed from living Judaism to have any chance of succeeding as a ‘Jewish’ project for ‘Jewish’ revival. A regularly expressed aim was to stimulate Jews to remain attached to Judaism even in a context of acculturation. From Hirsch’s perspective, however, none of the advocates of Wissenschaft had truly tried to do so, or managed to attune themselves to the inner perspective of their supposed public.108 In the course of his critique, Hirsch relentlessly turns his colleagues’ concepts of life and death against them:

Not a physiology of living Judaism did they provide, [but] a pathological anatomy of, as they assume, a deceased and dying Judaism is their work, and usually not even that. Be-

105 Samson Raphael Hirsch, “Cheschwan: Das jüdische Stillleben,” in Gesammelte Schriften (Frankfurt: J. Kauffmann, 1902): 13. 106 Samson Raphael Hirsch, “Wie gewinnen wir das Leben für unsere Wissenschaft?,” Jeschurun 8, no. 2 (November 1861): 73-91. 107 Hirsch, “Wie gewinnen wir das Leben,” 87. In his own critique of 19th century scholarship, Gershom Scholem would adopt Hirsch’s designation ‘Wissenschaft vom Judentum.’ 108 Hirsch, “Wie gewinnen wir das Leben,” 85-87. Compare: Zunz, “Etwas über die rabbinische Litera- tur,” 24-25.

cause they have hardly approached the organism of the supposed corpse, but rather the garments, the cover…109

To which he adds:

[Traditional] Jewish scholarship shall be the fruitful soil of Jewish life and as long as it ful- fills that role it will also take the first place in life, their scholarship however is the musti- ness from the sarcophagi of weathered corpses, that blows across the steppes of the present.

With this harsh characterization of contemporary scholarship as detached and sterile, Hirsch adopted the concepts that progressive scholars themselves had used against rabbinism, turned them around and thus set the tone for later critiques. In fact, what Hirsch regards as proper Jewish scholarship (jüdische Wissenschaft) sounds rather close to that advocated by Frankel and his allies. He states that its main interest had always been the life of Judaism, and that it had been embodied in rabbinism. However, Hirsch has a narrower conception of the object of study. For him, Jewish scholarship lives in the development of halacha that supports a Jewish life: not an open- ended life on the basis of a ‘Jewish spirit’, but a life of Jewish action.110 “What shall the practical Jew do with this modern scholarship?”111 Hirsch’s critique is a revolt against the objectivist ideal to separate “scholarship from faith and life,” which in his view de- taches it from its Jewishness and thereby renders it sterile with regard to Jewish life.112

4.2 The Afterlife of Concepts: Gershom Scholem As we previously (in chapter 1.2) looked back to the 18th century in reflection on the history of the concepts used by 19th century scholars, in this last section we will look forward to the 20th to discuss their longevity, continuity and/or reception. Hirsch’s criticism of contemporary scholarship as detached from ‘living Jewry’ found support in different camps: not just among the orthodox,113 but also among emerging particularist movements, most notably Zionism. Whereas the orthodox objection should be largely clear from the previous section, Zionist ideologues felt mainly uncomfortable with the

109 Hirsch, “Wie gewinnen wir das Leben,” 88. 110 Idem, 80. 111 Idem, 90. 112 Idem, 91. 113 For example down to the work of his great-grandson Mordechai Breuer, who shed light on the un- derrepresented orthodox side of the 19th century German-Jewish reality in his Modernity within Tradition: The Social History of Orthodox Jewry in Imperial Germany (1992).

universalist and elitist air of earlier scholarship, which had after all been shaped by acculturated, educated Jews striving to build themselves a stable home in Europe. To these Zionists, the Wissenschaft des Judentums represented a diasporic undecidedness or even resignation, an apologetic spirit and a lack of concern for the actual and physical, in other words: the very antithesis to their program.

One could easily dedicate a book to GERSHOM SCHOLEM’s views on the Wissen- schaft des Judentums, and much has indeed been written.114 He voiced his perspective most prominently in two publications: the first a Hebrew-language essay titled “Reflec- tions on the Science of Judaism” (1944), and the second a 1959 lecture titled “The Sci- ence of Judaism – Then and Now.”115 The subject has received quite some attention, not just because of Scholem’s famously harsh criticism but also because he dramatically adopted the concepts of life and death, much in the way that Hirsch did, in order to crit- icize the ideals and efforts of 19th century German-Jewish scholarship. Even in his tempered 1959 lecture, Scholem’s judgment remained that the previous scholarship had the air of a funeral service for Judaism.116 Scholem was not alone in this assessment. In the introduction to his “Reflections” of 1944, he cites an essay by the poet Chaim Nachman Bialik, titled “On the Science of Judaism,” which similarly expresses that the Wissenschaft had shriveled on four cubits, not of the halacha, but of the grave.117 In the words of Osias Thon, another influential Zionist publicist:

In the end, what remains in my ears are only mournful tones of a magnificent eulogy, and all around are gravestones and cemetery air. Suffocating and chilling. And then I am talking about Graetz, the liveliest and most warm-blooded of all.118

114 To mention some examples: Michael Brenner, “The Return of the Nation to Its Land: Zionist Narrative Perspectives,” in Prophets of the Past: Interpreters of Jewish History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 157-196; David Myers, “The Scholem-Kurzweil Debate and Modern Jewish Historiog- raphy,” Modern Judaism 6, No. 3 (October 1986): 261-286; Daniel Weidner, “Gershom Scholem, die Wissenschaft des Judentums und der ‘Ort’ des Historikers,” Aschkenas 11, no. 2 (January 2001): 435- 464. 115 Gershom Scholem, “Mitoḵ hirhurim ‘al ḥoḵmat yiśra’el,” in Ḥoḵmat yiśra’el: hebeiṭim hisṭoriyim u- filosofiyim, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Centre, 1979), 153-168; Gershom Scholem, “The Science of Judaism – Then and Now,” trans. Michael Meyer, reprinted in The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), 320-324. Original title: “Wissenschaft vom Juden- tum – einst und jetzt.” 116 Scholem, “Mitoḵ hirhurim,” 23-24, 159; Scholem, “The Science of Judaism,” 305. 117 Scholem, “Mitoḵ hirhurim,” 153. In a way one can read this as (re)appropriating the image used by Immanuel Wolf when he stated that Judaism has been buried by the halachic fence around the original Torah (see page 21). 118 Osias Thon, “Das Problem der jüdischen Wissenschaft,” in Essays zur zionistischen Ideologie (Berlin: Kedem, 1930), 49.

Gershom Scholem developed a distinctly negative interpretation and analysis of 19th century scholarship. He perceived ‘a dialectical tension’ at its heart, namely between constructive (or preservative) and destructive tendencies.119 He further explained this tension as resulting from three contradictions inherent in the scholarly program from its inception.120 Scholem regarded the destructive aspects as original, rooting in an attempt to dissect and bury Judaism, and the constructive aspects only as secondary romantic sentiments.121 His fundamental point is that the scholarly project had been un- dermined by a (partly unconscious) gap between the ideals the scholars espoused and their actual values and sentiments.122 The romantic elements in their work and methods held promise, but instead of being used productively and constructively (‘to build the nation’), they became tools in support of a self-negating universalist agenda. It is not hard to see that Scholem had internalized many ideas from the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. This is most apparent where finds a “hidden nihilism” in Zunz and Steinschneider, accuses the Breslauer school of descending into “mediocrity” (beinoni- yut), or where he presents the new, Zionist, scholarship as desiring a “change of values” (šinuy ‘araḵim) and “affirmation” (ḥiyuv; compare German Bejahung), among many other examples, both obvious and subtle.123 Concepts of life and death were of course abundantly present in the context of Nietzsche’s ‘naturalism’, but it should be clear by now that they were popular long before he arrived on the stage in the seventies. Scholem embraced these concepts because of their use by his predecessors, aiming his arrows with great precision. Almost every point he makes is a conscious literary rejection or reversal of a point made by one of the scholars we discussed. Where Frankel states that Judaism would not carry itself as “the dilution and evaporation of some general idea” (quote on page 36), Scholem declares that theologians such as Frankel actually “aimed to reduce Judaism to a purely spiritual, ideal phenomenon,” and “brought with them a certain tendency … to water down Judaism and spiritualize it.”124 Where Landau remarks that some sects committed suicide by cutting themselves off

119 Referring to the constructive tendencies Scholem alternates between the Hebrew words binyan (‘construction’) and šmirah (‘preservation’); for the destructive he uses words such as ḥissul (‘liquidation’), happalah (‘toppling’ or ‘bringing down’) and peiruq (‘dismantling’). 120 Scholem, “Mitoḵ hirhurim,” 154. 121 Scholem, “The Science of Judaism,” 153. 122 Scholem, “Mitoḵ hirhurim,” 156. 123 Idem, 160; 165. 124 Scholem, “The Science of Judaism,” 305.

from the living tradition, Scholem perceives a tendency toward historical suicide in the Jewish Enlightenment, which he regards the dominant impulse of Wissenschaft.125 Apart from adopting the concepts, Scholem also played with the imagery, adding his own twists. One example is his elaboration on the image of sterility, characterizing the Wissenschaft des Judentums as producing an “agile but castrated scholarship.” In fact this appears part of a consistent rhetoric exposing previous scholarship as lacking ‘masculinity’, since Scholem accuses its scholars of being sentimental, apologetic, bourgeois and uncombative.126 Another peculiarity is his involvement of mystical or Kabbalistic elements into the critique. For example, he calls previous scholars “bodiless spirits,” who feel most at home in foreign bodies or graves, and he considers the presence of Zunz and Steinschneider as “demonic”: they were awe-inspiring scholars with something inhuman about them, something ‘from the other side’ (sitra achra).127 Scholem’s 1944 text starts and ends on Mount Scopus, leaving little ambiguity with regard to his historical framework. He remarks that Zunz and Steinschneider ‘would have been amazed had they been able to see the resurrected dead walk from their graves’.128 In the developing Jewish community in Palestine he saw a “generation of rebirth” – or at least a generation with the potential for it – that desired new concepts and categories.129 Emphasizing his rhetoric of reversal, he presented this renewal of concepts as a “liquidation of the liquidation”: a rebellion against the legacy of an earlier German-Jewish generation of (misguided) rebels. Despite these obvious Zionist sentiments, one should not overlook the actual context and target of Scholem’s critique: he wrote for an Hebrew audience, tracing back tensions and criticizing trends that he identified around him. He thus warns against detached scholarship that is out of touch with its reality and its people, and against trends of sentimentalism. “We came to rebel,” he sighs: “…we found ourselves followers.”130 His characterization of Wissenschaft as an ultimately understandable Jewish attempt to be liberated from the yoke of (traditional) Jewishness and bury it in the past, is directed not at European Jews, but warns those who came to Palestine.131

125 Scholem, “Mitoḵ hirhurim,” 157. 126 Idem, 161-163 127 Idem, 157; 159. 128 Idem, 161. 129 Idem, 165. 130 Idem, 167. 131 Idem, 158.

Scholem himself was undoubtedly aware that his ‘rebellion against the rebels’ was only possible because of the original work undertaken by those rebels. As Siegfried Ucko put it in 1935:

Almost all tendencies of the Jewish present rely on the existence of the Wissenschaft des Judentums. The foundation of a new orthodoxy continues to work, even if not with all the value categories, still with the conceptual heritage of the Wissenschaft. The liberal version of Judaism as a religious community would be unthinkable without the examining and separating labor of the Wissenschaft, and the thought of a national Jewish renaissance is only possible as the thought of a national-humanist synthesis, which in turn is comprehensible as a result of entering general culture. This found its expression in the attitude of the Wissen- schaft des Judentums.132

132 Ucko, “Geistesgeschichtliche Grundlagen,” 1-2.

CONCLUSION

Reviewing the findings Having treated a rather diverse collection of scholars, issues and views, we are left with the task to organize our findings. Let us first of all briefly recall the main issues and images per chapter. In chapter 1 we encountered the idea that the Jewish people has an inherent historical reproductive capacity, reflected mainly by recurring peaks in literary (and ‘scholarly’) productivity. We saw an historical model of decline and revitalization serving as background to the idea of a similar degeneration and possible regeneration or awakening of contemporary Jewry. This possibility of regeneration was presented as dependent on cross-fertilization with a foreign tradition (Zunz), and/or on stimulation of internal cultivation, rooting in Enlightenment thought (Wolf). The associated images were that of a rabbinic tradition being carried to the grave, along with its potential for rebirth, a reproductive engagement of Judaism with its non-Jewish context(s), and the image of Judaism as a garden overgrown with weeds, to be cleared by reason and cultivated to make room for new life and allow for the collection of neglected literary fruits. Chapter 2 explored different ways in which Judaism or Jews were imagined or clas- sified as a type of living organism. We saw the Jew or Jewish people explained as ex- perts in adaptation (Steinschneider), and alternatively as decomposers of foreign cultures (Wagner). Regarding the concept of decomposition or ‘decomposing forces’, we encountered different interpretations: as either undermining or dissolving an organic whole (Wagner), or as periodically awakening it (Geiger). Also in Steinschneider and Geiger Jewish continuity was imagined as dependent on a characteristic capacity of the nation to reproduce itself. The images we saw in this chapter were firstly that of the Jew as an amphibious life-form, adapting to different circumstances; secondly, the anti- Semitic conception of the Jew as a parasitic life-form or decomposer of other cultural bodies. Moreover, we encountered a conception of Judaism and its life as driven by a ‘raw’ force of nature, leading to a recognition of conflict between co-religionists as a natural and healthy sign of inner development. In chapter 3 we looked more closely at the development of the concepts of regeneration and rejuvenation from a conservative religious perspective, namely as revitalization of the rabbinic tradition. Instead of emphasizing a reproductive pact with a foreign tradition (Zunz), the renewal was imagined rather as an internal process: the Jewish past

enclosed in the rabbinic tradition could be relied on as an inexhaustible source of power (Frankel). We moreover saw Jewish survival imagined as a process of falling apart and re-growing from a loyal core or seed, thus presenting historical continuity as dependent on the presence of a ‘loyal’ part or member of the body (Graetz). One image was that of the religious tradition as a seed to be planted in the soil of Jewry. We also saw the past imagined as fertilizing the present. We finally found the image of Judaism as a body either in the process of being resurrected artificially (galvanism) or organically (as re- grown as from a seed). In chapter 4 we considered critical appropriations of the above concepts, with both shifting the focus to ‘unhealthy’ tendencies in contemporary scholarship (Wissenschaft des Judentums) as such. On the one hand, we saw the idea that reform and the centrali- zation of secular scholarship were responsible for a decay of Judaism by discouraging strict ritual observance (Hirsch). In that context, we saw Judaism imagined as a diseased body, looking for a cure in the wrong place, and the religious tradition as the original and eternal medicine. On the other hand we saw the (alternative) view that contemporary scholarship had been detrimental to Jewish health because it chose to dissect rather than rebuild the Jewish nation (Scholem). It was thus imagined as dissecting the body as if it were a corpse. Furthermore, we saw various imaginations of contemporary scholarship as a suicidal and sterile or castrated enterprise.

Connecting dots Our original question was how concepts of life, biology and organicity were adopted by 19th century Jewish scholars and adapted to contemporary Jewish issues. I tried to explore how various religious and scholarly disputes were articulated by means of such concepts. The proposed hypothesis (see pages 11-12) was that these concepts and images served to present Judaism as a unity over the course of time and in a context of perceived disintegration. Let us try to draw some conclusions. Firstly, one specific application of life imagery, showing clear continuities with 18th century progressive traditions, imagined a) civil equality and b) national refinement or cultivation as the bases for a Jewish regeneration. In this context, the political, econom- ic and moral state of Jews were closely associated with the health of both the individu- als and the people as a whole. The process of externally and internally emancipating the people was viewed in agricultural terms, as a process of growth which may be stimulated through proper care or impeded due to negligence (Zunz, Wolf). This conceptualiza-

tion provided a clear image supporting the scholarly challenge to rabbinic guardianship over the Jewish (literary) tradition: a farmer cannot merely build fences – he must actively work the field. One might say that the critical response was that Judaism is not a garden to be plowed, but a living body that must be respected as such (Hirsch). Furthermore, a disagreement on the self-sufficiency of tradition took shape in the form of two more or less opposing interpretations of Jewish reproductivity or revitalization. On the one side stood a view of Jewish survival as dependent on foreign influences, relying on cross-fertilization with other traditions. On the opposing side stood the view that Judaism was able to fertilize itself, with ‘the past’ serving as fertilizer for the soil of the present. Both views considered scholarship central to the act of fertilization and reproduction of Judaism. Another dispute concerned the nature of Jewishness and the position of the Jew between different cultural spheres. An anti-Jewish interpretation, familiar from later traditions of antisemitism, suggested the Jew as a parasitic or decomposing being that lives on (the corpses of) superior cultural organisms (Wagner). An alternative view offered a more favorable interpretation of the ambiguous ‘natural’ position of Jews ‘in between cultures’, by reimagining them as organisms characterized by their remarkable flexibility and ability to adapt (Steinschneider). In the latter account, the biological clas- sification serves to explain the organic connection between the, often many, different parts making up a Jewish identity in any given historical context. With regard to a more encompassing Jewish debate, different imaginations of the nature of life itself were incorporated into arguments for either religious reform or con- servatism. Generally speaking, progressives in favor of reform would centralize the movement, dynamism, growth/metamorphosis and regenerative abilities associated with living organisms, or life as a ‘universal force’ (Zunz, Wolf, Steinschneider, Geiger). The more conservative, on the other hand, would centralize the body that is needed to harbor life at all, maintaining the living being’s continuity and identity (Hirsch, Graetz, Frankel). The image of the living body thus served as a conceptual ground for various disputes on issues of religious reform and the desirability of maintaining a Jewish particularity in Europe. The latter aspect was prominently present in Scholem’s critique. To end with a healthy dose of doubt: throughout this study I kept asking myself to what extent the discussed images exerted a real, formative influence on contemporary Jewish thought. Might they have been mere rhetorical vessels for debate and expression? After all, we find organicist and biological metaphors throughout works that also

employ completely different metaphors (at times to express the same issues). In fact, we cannot hope to, and luckily don’t have to, answer that question here, since it moves into the domain of philosophy and more encompassing intellectual-historical questions. Whatever epistemic status or pragmatic function the concepts might have had, I consider their use obvious, consistent and contextually significant enough to warrant more systematic study. Even if they made up a mere thread in the intellectual tapestry, only closer examination can reveal their relative (in)significance. This thesis was too ex- plorative in nature to allow for any definitive conclusions, but I feel (and I hope the reader agrees) that it has shown some promising directions for further research.

A glance ahead Finally, I would like to share some reflections I had while writing this thesis. Since the process involved sifting through quite a lot – probably between fifty and a hundred, – of 19th century source texts, I considered how much studies such as this one are dependent on good digital resources. Most of my source material came from the collection of Jew- ish journals and other publications digitized by the Goethe Universität, Frankfurt. As Optical Character Recognition software becomes more sophisticated, such sources are moreover becoming increasingly readable by artificial eyes. I could not help but day- dream about digital maps of scholarly or philosophical concepts throughout history. Fed by (mass) digitization projects, combined with the types of (self-learning) software that are already being developed, it would seriously help trace intellectual developments by making conceptual trends more visible. Fundamental questions surrounding this study, such as on the contextual significance of concepts, might just find an answer. When I read Zunz’s passionate plea of 1818 to compile Vorarbeiten for a future Jewish studies, I cannot help but think of the potential of digital resources in 2018. It would seem that the logic of Vorarbeiten poses the danger that no one dares an analysis or synthesis, because the preparatory work is never done: there are always more texts to consider. Just as problematic is the possibility of reaching an impasse in analysis and synthesis due to practical limits in mental capacity. In other words, one might reach a point where one has to stop – or take a speculative leap. In fact, one might argue that we take a similar leap every time we choose to publish. Something to consider is that we might (soon) have digital means that could allow us to go beyond that point and take our scholarly analyses and syntheses ‘to a new level’. Whatever that entails and whether it will prove revolutionary is of course impossible to predict.

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