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Contents

Acknowledgments 9 Introduction 10

PART I: SEARCHING FOR A SCIENTIFIC LANGUAGE 22 1.1 Athens and Jerusalem: Philology vs. Hermeneutics at the Beginnings of the “Science of Antiquity” 23 1.2 From Biblical & Classical to “Jewish Studies” 41 Critica Sacra and Critica Homerica 42 Antiquity and the Sciences: Wolf’s Educational Intention 44 The Encyclopedia of the Classical Studies in the Works of Wolf and Boeckh 47 Leopold Zunz as a Student of Friedrich A. Wolf and August Boeck 50 Emancipation Because of/from Classical Studies? 59 1.3 Biography and Autobiography in the Early Years of the Science of Judaism 61 “Ich, L. Zunz,” or Concerning the (Auto-)Biography 64 The Autobiographies of Leopold Zunz and Isaak Markus Jost 69 Biographies as Critical Literary History: On Zunz’s Biography of Rashi 71 Biographies as Literary and Educational Creations 74 A Versified Epilogue 76 1.4 A Jewish Luther? The Academic Dreams of Leopold Zunz 77 Protestant Topoi and Reformed Jews 77 Religion and/or Wissenschaft: Perspectives of an Academic Antiquarian 79 From Wolfenbüttel to Berlin: Academic Dreams of a “Jewish” Luther 82 1.5 Separation through Integration? Dreams of a Chair of Jewish Studies in 1848 Prussian Germany 89

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PART II: POLITICAL AND CULTURAL HISTORY OF A CONJUNCTION 100 2.1 Goethe & Judaism: Typology of an Ambivalent Relation 100 Goethe’s Relationship to Judaism as Reflected in the Secondary Literature 101 Goethe’s Judaism 109 Political Conservatism 113 The Culturally Exploitative Mind: the Materia poetica and its Ingredients 118 “Fine Silence” and Reflections Loud and Clear 119 2.2 Johann Gottfried Herder, Mission and Judaism 124 The Rhapsodic Theory of Ambiguity: On Pietism & Simone Luzzatto 124 Concerning Leopold Zunz and Herder 135 2.3 Gesenius, his Colleagues, the Rabbis, and the Wissenschaft des Judentums 150

PART III: CREATIVE LANGUAGES AND INTERSTITIAL SPACES 162 3.1 Creative Monotheism: Chayim H. Steinthal 163 3.2 Steinschneider on Magic and Interstitial Spaces 179 Magic in the Wissenschaft des Judentums: Antecedents 179 Steinschneider’s Way to Magic 181 Steinschneider on the Functions of Magic: (i) The Maieutic Function 183 Steinschneider on the Functions of Magic: (ii) Magic as Error, Prejudice, and Mania 186 Steinschneider on the Functions of Magic: (iii) Magic, Faith, and Deformed Beliefs 188 3.3 On the Cultural Dynamics of the Jewish Religion: Lajos Blau’s Defense of Monotheism as a Driving Force 192 Changes in Blau’s Time 192 The Philosophical Background: Philo, Maimonides, and the Talmud 195 Monotheism vs. Paganism: The Moral Mission 198 Then and Now: Some Thoughts on the Debate on Monotheism 200 3.4 Appendix: Ludwig Blau’s “On the Present and Future of the Jewish Religion” 204

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PART IV: DISJUNCTION, OR THE JEWISH DISSENT 216 4.1 The Outspoken “Dissenter”: Leo Baeck 217 The Essence of Judaism 217 The Essence of Leo Baeck’s Non-Conformism 222 4.2 The Dissenter as Enfant Terrible: Jacob Taubes 228 The Trapeze Artist 228 Reason and/or Religion 232 4.3 Emmanuel Levinas, or, The (Un-)Translatability of Jerusalem into Athens 240 The Talmudic Discussion and Levinas’ Interpretation 244 Philological Analysis and Philosophy 249

INSTEAD OF A CONCLUSION 252 Jewish Philosophy and Islam from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Centuries 252 Jewish Philosophy? 252 The Historical-Philological Approach to (Judeo)-Arabic Philosophy 258 The Argument over Philosophy 261 Closure 266

Selected Bibliography 268 Index 282

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