UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The Problem of Pleasure: Disciplining the German Jewish Reading Revolution, 1770-1870 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/20c378fm Author Bitzan, Amos Publication Date 2011 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California The Problem of Pleasure: Disciplining the German Jewish Reading Revolution, 1770-1870 By Amos Bitzan A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor John Efron, Chair Professor Martin Jay Professor Ronald Hendel Spring 2011 Abstract The Problem of Pleasure: Disciplining the German Jewish Reading Revolution, 1770-1870 by Amos Bitzan Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor John Efron, Chair Focusing on learned men and women from traditional Jewish societies in Germany, between 1770 and 1870, my dissertation examines the emergence of an intellectual practice critical to the process of becoming modern: reading for pleasure. Unlike the written word that is its stimulus and object, the experience of reading in general is thought to be transitory and accessible only to individuals. But for Jewish intellectuals who were becoming modern by elaborating new selves outside the confines of traditional culture, pleasure reading, like writing, played a central role in their formations as modern individuals. Pleasure reading and the habit of sharing impressions of that reading in written correspondences, diaries, and memoirs, which were then re-read with equal pleasure, amounted to a revolution of traditional Jewish culture. In their discoveries of pleasure reading, Jewish men and women followed their feelings and imagination inside new interior spaces of individuality carved out by themselves. My dissertation traces this process by pursuing the discoveries of pleasure reading by three connected figures: the salonnière Henriette Herz (1764-1847), the founder of the critical study of Judaic literature Leopold Zunz (1794-1886), and the great historian of the Jews Heinrich Graetz (1817-1891). 1 לאבא ולאמא i Table of Contents Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................................... iii Preface .................................................................................................................................................. iv Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: The Problem of Reading for Pleasure in Jewish Legal Thought, 220-1863 .......... 10 Chapter 2: Reading Jewish Women and the Pleasures of the Vernacular, 1500-1770 ............. 23 Chapter 3: The Berlin Salonnières and the Feminization of German Jewish Reading, 1770- 1800 ...................................................................................................................................................... 31 Chapter 4: The Young Provincial Reader and the Revolt against Enlightenment Pedagogy, 1800-1815 ............................................................................................................................................ 49 Chapter 5: The Turn to Wissenschaft, 1815-1830 ............................................................................ 69 Chapter 6: The Sentimental Education of Heinrich Graetz, 1830-1838 ................................... 86 Chapter 7: History as Literature – Disciplining the Jewish Pleasure Reader, 1856-1870 ...... 111 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 132 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................................... 135 ii Acknowledgments I have incurred significant debts of gratitude during the writing of this dissertation. First and foremost, I thank my wife, Marina Zilbergerts Bitzan, for her unwavering belief in my project and abilities and her many contributions to its form and substance. Completing a work of this sort often takes one on an emotional journey in addition to an intellectual one; she was a fellow-traveler in both. I am profoundly grateful to John Efron, who has been my devoted Doktorvater here at Berkeley. His confidence in me from my first days as a graduate student was the sine qua non of my work. His scholarship and his commitment to both his family and to me as his student will continue to inspire my own approach to teaching, work, and life. I am also deeply appreciative of the support of Martin Jay, whose seminars in intellectual history were formative in my development. I thank John Connelly and Peggy Anderson for training me in European history. David Biale took time out of his schedule to think with me. Ron Hendel was kind enough to sit on my orals committee and to function as third reader of my dissertation. Before arriving at Berkeley and throughout my graduate education, I benefited immensely from the scholarship and teaching of my undergraduate mentors at Princeton, especially Anthony Grafton and Olga Litvak. Without them, I would not have pursued this path. I would also like to thank my friends and colleagues Batya Ungar-Sargon, Shaun Halper, Eliyahu Stern, Noah Strote, and Min Jun Gyu. Last but not least, I am grateful to my parents, Martin Bitzan and Zehava Cohen-Bitzan, who together embody the devotion to scholarship and intense pleasure reading that are the subjects of this dissertation. iii Preface In a central passage of his Commentary on the Mishnah, the great medieval philosopher Maimonides (Rambam, 1135-1204) distinguished between two kinds of pleasure, affirming a dichotomy familiar to students of Western philosophy: And now I will begin to speak about what I had intended. Know that just as a blind man cannot perceive the colors, a deaf man cannot hear sounds, a eunuch cannot desire sexual intercourse, so bodies cannot attain spiritual pleasures. And just as the fish do not know the element of fire because they live in its opposite, so are the pleasures of the spiritual world unknown to this world of the flesh. For we have no pleasures at all but the pleasures of the body and those achieved by our senses by eating, drinking, and sexual intercourse. We consider any pleasures outside of these to be non-existent. We do not recognize it nor do we grasp it at first thought, but only after great investigation. And this is fitting, because we live in the corporeal world and can, therefore, attain only its inferior, halting pleasures. Spiritual pleasures, though, are constant, everlasting, and unceasing. There is no relationship or proximity of any sort between these two types of pleasure.1 Commenting on a famous part of the Mishnah, the tenth chapter of Tractate Sanhedrin, known as ―Perek Helek,‖ Maimonides laid out one of the defining positions of Jewish intellectual history. Its influence, even if occasionally interrupted, was felt deep into modernity. Against carnal pleasure (ta’anug gufani), the Rambam privileged a ―spiritual pleasure‖ (ta’anug nafshi), to be achieved only after profound contemplation using one‘s mind (hakirah gedolah).2 As a life‘s aim, this project inspired a whole generation of Jewish ―enlighteners‖ or maskilim, in the German lands, Italy, Poland, and Russia, almost all of whom began their journeys with readings of the Rambam, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But there exists in the annals of humanity a kind of pleasure that is neither entirely ―physical‖ nor wholly ―spiritual.‖ It is that sensation experienced by a reader whose imagination and emotions are aroused when she reads a poem or a story with the sole aim of 1 Maimonides, Commentary on Mishnah Sanhedrin 10, Perek Helek. My translation is a modified version of Moses Maimonides, Maimonides' Commentary on the Mishnah: Tractate Sanhedrin, trans. Fred Rosner (New York: Sepher-Hermon Press, 1981), 143. ועתה אחל לדבר במה שכוונתי לו הוי יודע כי כמו שלא ישיב הסומא עין הצבעים ואין החרש משיג שמע הקולות ולא הסריס תאות המשגל כן לא ישיגו הגופות התענוגים שנפשיות וכמו שהדגיש אינם יודעים יסוד האש לפי שהיותם מיסוד המים שהם הפכי כן אינו נודע בזה העולם הגופני תענוג העולם הרוחני אבל אין אצלנו בשום פניםתענוג זולתי תענוג הגוף בלבד והשגת החושים מין המאכל והמשתה והמשגל וכל מה שזולתו אלה הוא אצלנו בלי מצוי ואין אנו מכירין אותו ולא נשיג אותו בתחילת המחשבה אלא אחר חקירה גדולה. וראוי להיות כן לפי שאנחנו בעולם הגופני ולפיכך אין אנו משיגין אלא תענוגיו הגרועים הנפסקים אבל התענוגים הנפשיים הם תמידים עומדים לעד אינם נפסקים ואין ביניהם ובין אלו התענוגים יחס ולא קורבה בשום פנים. Maimonides‘s commentary was originally composed in Arabic but was translated into Hebrew and known only in this language in the late medieval and early modern Ashkenazi world. The Hebrew above is from the Hebrew Commentary of Maimonides found in most editions of the Mishnah and Talmud, such as Maimonides, ―Perush ha-mishnah le-ha-Rambam (Warsaw, 1879 edition),‖ in Mishnayot Yakhin u-Vo'az 'im Perush ha-Mishnah le-ha-Rambam, vol. 7 (Jerusalem, 1960), 22. The Commentary‘s different parts were translated into Hebrew by a number of medieval translators. Maimonides, Maimonides' Commentary on the Mishnah, xii. 2 Here, I have provided the Hebrew terms that most of the work‘s