European Journal of Jewish Studies 11 (2017) 115–129 brill.com/ejjs

Jewish , Science of and Philology in Salomon Munk and ’s Letters Exchange

Chiara Adorisio

Abstract

The correspondence of the Italian Hebraist Samuel David Luzzatto (1800–1865) and the German-Jewish Orientalist Salomon Munk (1803–1867) sheds light on the trans- European dimension of the movement known as the Science of Judaism. This arti- cle is based on the reconstruction of the friendship between Luzzatto and Munk as reflected in Luzzatto’s letters to Munk in Paris. Their relationship was personal as well as intellectual: Luzzatto sent his son Philoxène, a promising Orientalist, to study under Munk’s supervision. Together with Munk’s letter to Philoxène, these letters provide us with details central to an understanding of the relationship between the two scholars. Although differing in their attitude toward Jewish faith and philosophy, Munk and Luzzatto shared a common interest in Hebrew and Oriental languages. Through their philological and linguistic studies, they challenged the Orientalistic attitude prevalent among European scholars and historians of philosophy in the first half of the nine- teenth century.

Keywords

Samuel David Luzzatto – Salomon Munk – – Wissenschaft des Judentums – Jewish studies – Orientalism – Judeo- literature and philosophy

Samuel David Luzzatto (1800–1865), Italian Hebraist and professor at the Rabbinic College of Padua, and Salomon Munk (1803–1867), German-Jewish Orientalist and professor of Semitic languages and literature at the Collège de France in Paris, are two outstanding figures of the Wissenschaft des Judentums in Europe. They contributed to the main goal of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, the development of Jewish studies as an academic discipline in European

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/1872471X-123412Downloaded99 from Brill.com09/25/2021 05:14:45PM via free access 116 Adorisio universities, through their pioneering philological and historical works on Hebrew literature and language (Luzzatto) and on Islamic and Judeo-Arabic philosophy and literature (Munk). They both were accomplished scholars of Oriental languages and of Hebrew grammar and history. Munk, as the author of a geographical, historical and archaeological description of Palestine,1 was considered by his contemporaries, among them Adolph Jellinek in his Eulogy for Salomon Munk,2 to be one of the most important Orientalists of his epoch. Munk and Luzzatto were both in contact with representative figures of the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement, founded in Germany at the beginning of the nineteenth century: Munk began his studies with and was a student of Abraham Geiger and in Berlin before he emi- grated to Paris in 1928; Samuel David Luzzatto held lively scholarly exchanges with Moritz Steinschneider, Leopold Zunz, Abraham Geiger, and others. They remained orthodox Jews throughout their lives—a fact which sets them apart from other representatives of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, such as Eduard Gans and Heinrich Heine, who abandoned Jewish orthodoxy or converted to . Although they were very dissimilar in personality and - sophical position, Munk and Luzzatto exchanged several ideas on the scien- tific and objective method of the Science of Judaism, shared their knowledge of Hebrew grammar and Hebrew literature, and warned, through their works, against the threat represented by pantheism both in Jewish mystical currents and in philosophy. Munk and Luzzatto were authors who tried to adapt the ideas of the German-Jewish Wissenschaft des Judentums to two very different contexts: the French academic world, and the world of Italian Hebraism, during the first half of the nineteenth century. The reconstruction of their scholarly dialogue will also allow us to reflect on Munk and Luzzatto’s position on the relationship between Judaism, rationalism and the scientific method. And though Munk and Luzzatto are much more known as historical scholars and philologists, and less as philosophers and Orientalists, still, in their historical and philologi- cal works, one finds numerous philosophical reflections influenced both by Jewish and non-Jewish philosophers, testifying to their profound interest in that subject. The present article is just such an examination of Munk and Luzzatto’s relationship—a relationship that exemplifies the trans-European dimension

1 Salomon Munk, Palestine: Description géographique, historique et archéologique (Paris: Firmin Didot Frères, 1845). 2 Adolph Jellinek, Gedächtnisrede auf den verewigten Herrn Salomon Munk (Vienna: Herzfeld & Bauer, 1867).

European Journal of JewishDownloaded Studies from 11 Brill.com09/25/2021 (2017) 115–129 05:14:45PM via free access Jewish Philosophy, Science Of Judaism And Philology 117 of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, and the influence that the German-Jewish scholars had on the development of nineteenth-century Orientalism through- out the continent. My examination is mainly based on the reconstruction of Luzzatto’s and Munk’s friendship through Luzzatto’s correspondence. Both his published and unpublished letters, as well as the letter that Munk wrote to Luzzatto’s son, Philoxène (who was for a brief period of time Munk’s student in Paris), will provide us with details about their relationship. All these letters are preserved in the Samuel David Luzzatto archive of the Centro Bibliografico dell’Unione delle Comunità Ebraiche Italiane in Rome.

1 The Relationship between the Study of Judaism and the Study of Language in Munk and Luzzatto

The correspondence between Luzzatto and Munk began around March 1850, when Salomon Munk wrote to Samuel David’s son, Philoxène Luzzatto, a promising student of Oriental languages, saying that he would like to read an example of the young scholar’s work on Assyrian.3 After this letter, Philoxène decided to move to Paris in order to continue his studies under Munk’s guid- ance, and thus became a sort of intermediary between his father and Munk. Writing to Munk about his son, Luzzatto also discusses several questions regarding his own work:

I have waited far too long in writing to you and in praising your admirable “Notice” on our ancient grammarians, always awaiting the opportunity to send you my letter with my Philoxène. I am happy to have, in Paris, a man worthy of being a father to my son. His feelings of admiration and sym- pathy toward you equal my own . . . I thank God that my son may reach France after the fall from power of the pompous words and charlatanism of the tribune, which are diametrically opposed to the motto of Judaism, “speak little and do much.”4

3 At that time, Philoxène Luzzatto had already written his Le sanscritisme de la langue assyri- enne (Padua: A. Bianchi, 1849), and was thinking about publishing a study on Assyrian Inscriptions: Etudes sur les inscriptions assyriennes de Persépolis, Hamadan, Van et Khorsabad (Padua: A. Bianchi, 1850). 4 “J’ai trop long-temps tardé à vous écrire et à vous faire l’éloge de votre admirable ‘Notice’ sur nos anciens Grammairiens, attendant toujours le moment de pouvoir vous envoyer ma lettre par mon Philoxène. Je suis heureux d’avoir à Paris un homme digne d’être père à mon fils. Ses sentiments d’admiration et de sympathie envers vous égalent les miens. . . . Je remercie Dieu

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In his letters (to his son, to Munk and to other scholars such as Albert Cohn), Luzzatto expressed great interest in the work of his German-Jewish émigré colleague, who around 1850 was already known for his French translation of ’ Guide for the Perplexed. At that time, Munk had already pub- lished seminal studies on Judeo-Arabic texts, a study on the Jewish philoso- pher Salomon Ibn Gabirol and a survey of the history of Jewish philosophy titled Philosophy and Philosophical Authors of the Jews: A Historical Sketch with Explanatory Notes, in which he sketched a history of Jewish philosophy up to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, and claimed that there was a fundamental conflict between philosophy and Judaism. This claim notwith- standing, the idea of the fundamental difficulty of reconciling Judaism and philosophy took different paths in the thought of the two authors, whose let- ters show their awareness of the differences in their positions. In 1850, Munk invited Luzzatto to join him in Paris and to accept a position at the French Academy of Inscriptions and Literature. Luzzatto politely turned down Munk’s offer and explained his decision in a letter to his son in Paris:

Although Munk’s idea consoled me, I have already told you that I would prefer not to leave Italy. But I am happy that that man, whom I consider the best and most learned of the Israelites of France, holds me worthy of such an eminent position, which, however, is not for me; it would impede my studies and distract me with worries alien to my vocation.5

In his autobiography, Luzzatto himself explains what that vocation is. He tells us, for example, that when he was eight years old, a young teacher awakened in him a love for the search for truth, for progress, and for rigorous enquiry. Then, under the influence of the Catholic author Francesco Soave,6 in particular, via Soave’s book Istituzioni di Logica, Metafisica ed Etica, Luzzatto became inter- ested in modern philosophers such as Montesquieu, Locke, and Condillac. Luzzatto never abandoned the study of Jewish sources, but considered

que mon fils arrive en France après la chûte du pouvoir des paroles pompeuses, et du char- latanisme de la tribune, diamétralement opposé à la devise du Judaïsme, ‘emor me’at va’aseh harbeh.’ ” From a letter to Salomon Munk in Paris, Padua, Purim 1852, in Epistolario italiano, francese, latino, di Samuel David Luzzatto da Trieste; pubblicato da’ suoi figli, ed. Samuel David Luzzatto (Padua: Tipografia alla Minerva dei fratelli Salmin, 1890), 665 (my translation). 5 Ibid., 713; Samuel David Luzzatto’s letter to Philoxène Luzzatto, Padua, December 7, 1852. 6 For an analysis of the influence of Soave’s works on Luzzatto, see Irene Kajon, “L’influenza di Francesco Soave sul concetto di ebraismo di Samuel David Luzzatto,” in Samuel David Luzzatto: The Bi-Centennial of His Birth, eds. Robert Bonfil, Isaac Gottlieb, and Hannah Kasher (: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2004), 55–77.

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Locke’s ideas and Condillac’s methods as somehow nearer to him. Particularly in Condillac, he found the same inclination to clarity and precision he had been exposed to during his studies of the , whose structure and vocabulary, he felt, promote brevity and precision. In his autobiography, Luzzatto writes that he had inherited “an attitude to concise and precise speech” from his father—a tendency toward economy in speech later rein- forced by his study of the Talmudic commentaries of Rashi, which he admired for their succinctness.7 Luzzatto’s penchant for clarity and precision of lan- guage contributed to what he saw as a needed purification of Jewish theology. The philosophy of Condillac,8 which was popular in France at that time and which placed a high value on human emotions as the true barometer of what is real and lasting, had an effect on his biblical, linguistic and critical studies, as well as on his studies of Hebrew poetry. Condillac’s view of language, as the vehicle by which senses and emotions are transformed into higher men- tal faculties and which reflects the structure of thought, influenced Luzzatto’s preference for the study of Hebrew language and grammar, rather than for the construction of a systematic philosophical and theological theory.9 Although Luzzatto found a congenial method in Condillac’s philosophy, the contents of this philosophy, which focused on the problem of the knowledge of nature, could not really help him with his own philosophical and existen- tial question: the problem of the relationship between religious tradition and the claims of modern criticism and philosophy, as they emerged through the reception of the Berlin Haskalah and of French enlightened ideas. Luzzatto also learned from Soave how to approach reflection on this problem. In 1818, he intended to publish a philosophical-theological treatise on the entitled Torah Nidrešet. This treatise, which he never completed and whose structure and contents he describes in his autobiography, was very much influenced by Soave’s work. He described, in the synopsis of his unfinished work, a concept of Jewish revelation based both on truths achieved by the senses and on truths

7 Samuel David Luzzatto, Autobiografia di S. D. Luzzatto, preceduta da alcune notizie storico- letterarie sulla famiglia Luzzatto (Padua: Tipografia Crescini, 1882), 60–61. 8 In particular: Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, La logique (Paris: s.n., 1792), and idem, Œuvres de Condillac: Revues, corrigées par l’auteur, imprimées sur ses manuscrits autographes, et augmentées de la “Langue des calculs,” ouvrage posthume, vol. 6, L’art de penser, vol. 7, L’art d’écrire, and vol. 23, La langues des calculs (Paris: Ch. Houel, 1798). 9 For an analysis of the influence of the French philosopher Condillac on Luzzatto, see also: Morris B. Margolies, Samuel David Luzzatto: Traditionalist Scholar (New York: Ktav, 1979), 11–13.

European Journal of Jewish Studies 11 (2017) 115–129Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 05:14:45PM via free access 120 Adorisio shown by reason.10 In another letter, written in December 1852 to Philoxène, Luzzatto discusses the problem of the virtues in , who recognized nei- ther the role of conscience nor the “internal sense” in defining moral truths, and considered the virtues dependent on habits or public opinion. In the let- ter, Luzzatto asks himself what Munk might have said about this problem in his notes to the Guide for the Perplexed:

I understand that the judgment of one’s own conscience may be abused, and that the judgments of others may be better trusted. But the fact is that, being content with the approbation of others, we are satisfied with apparent virtue. But these are questions too vast and profound. Who knows, perhaps Munk made some notes on that passage of the Moreh?11

Both Munk and Luzzatto interpreted Maimonides as an Aristotelian phi- losopher, but while Munk admired the philosophy of Maimonides, Luzzatto rejected what he considered to be Maimonides’ intellectualism, which was, according to him, extraneous to Jewish tradition. While Luzzatto saw the Rambam’s introduction of Aristotelianism into Judaism as a contamination of the traditional teachings, Munk, the translator of the Guide for the Perplexed, appreciated Maimonides’ success in reconciling sacred texts and reason, ratio- nalism and Judaism, which had resulted in the diffusion of Aristotelian philoso- phy among the Jews, “who thus became intermediaries between the Arabs and Christian Europe, and exercised an incontestable influence on scholasticism.”12 There is in Munk’s writing a contradiction, or at least an apparent contra- diction, between his acceptance of the unique reconciliation achieved by Maimonides and his own doubt as to the very possibility of such a reconcili- ation. Munk considered his ideal of science, which should be value-free, to be the only instrument which would have allowed him to study all manifesta- tions of Jewish life and Jewish tradition without rejecting its religious presup- positions. According to Munk, this was only possible by maintaining not only

10 On the influence of Francesco Soave on Luzzatto, see Kajon, “L’influenza di Francesco Soave sul concetto di ebraismo di Samuel David Luzzatto,” 55–77. 11 Luzzatto’s letter to Philoxène in Paris, Padua, December 26, 1852, in Epistolario italiano, francese, latino, ed. Luzzatto, 719. Luzzatto wrote in Italian: “Capisco che il giudizio della propria coscienza può venire abusato, e che più sicuro dovrebb’essere il giudizio degli altri. Ma fatto è che, contentandoci dell’approvazione altrui, ci basta la virtù apparente. Ma le sono quistioni troppo vaste e profonde. Chi sa se Munk ha posto qualche nota su quel passo del Morè?”. 12 Salomon Munk, Mélanges de philosophie juive et arabe, 2 vols. (Paris: A. Franck, 1857–1859), 486–487.

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Judaism and science, but also Judaism and philosophy completely separate, like parallel lines. Judaism and philosophy are in fact based on opposing prin- ciples, and their synthesis can only bring about movement in the direction of modern rational theology.13 Luzzatto is on the contrary an enemy of “Atticism” or “Aristotelianism” which, according to him, privileged the intellect over feelings. He uses a simile to exemplify his idea: Like a man who is composed of intellect, on one side, and heart, on the other, Judaism and Atticism are built out of rationality and feelings. Atticism, although not rejecting feelings, privileges rationality; in Judaism, feelings are predominant, while reason, though not rejected, is decid- edly secondary. All this notwithstanding, Luzzatto read Munk’s translation and commen- tary on the Guide for the Perplexed with admiration. At the same time, he was much more interested in Munk’s studies on the Hebrew poet Salomon Ibn Gabirol. Often using the letters he wrote to other scholars as a forum to pres- ent the state of his research and his latest discoveries, Luzzatto turned to Munk in Paris, addressing him as “wise, dear Shlomo,” in order to have his intuitions confirmed and to communicate the progress of his studies. He was happy to learn that, despite vision problems,14 Munk had been continuing his work on various texts by the Judeo-Arabic poets Shmuel Hanagid and Salomon Ibn Gabirol. He wrote: “Blessed are you by God for having raised up the vine of Gabirol, which the Rambam had thought to lower to earth. If you mention his poems, know that I have more than one hundred and ten of them.”15 Hebrew poetry, one of Luzzatto’s main areas of research, is a recurring theme in the exchange between the two scholars, which continued until Luzzatto’s death in 1865. Munk, in fact, was very fond of Hebrew poetry, which he defined as “la poésie de l’humanité,” because it is not necessary to be Jewish in order to understand it, and because of its parallels with Indian, Brahman,

13 For a history of the re-interpretations of Mamonides’s philosophy in nineteenth- century authors who adhered to the ideals of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, see: George Y. Kohler, Reading Maimonides’ Philosophy in Nineteenth-Century Germany: The Guide to Religious Reform (Dordrecht et al.: Springer, 2012); Jay Harris, “The Image of Maimonides in Nineteenth-Century Jewish Historiography,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 54 (1987): 117–139. 14 In these years Munk became blind, but he continued to work on his translation of the Guide; see Moïse Schwab, Salomon Munk, membre de l’Institut, professeur au Collège de France: Sa vie et ses œuvres (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1900). 15 Samuel David Luzzatto’s letter to Salomon Munk, March 20, 1850, transcribed in Italian by Filippo Natali for Cesare and Giuseppe Levi, in Il Fondo di Samuel David Luzzatto, Archivio storico dell’UCEI, Rome.

European Journal of Jewish Studies 11 (2017) 115–129Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 05:14:45PM via free access 122 Adorisio and Greek poetry. According to Munk, who like other scholars of that time assigned a sort of “mission universelle” to Judaism, human feelings are the sub- ject of Hebrew poetry. In order to study Jewish literature, it is necessary to study Hebrew grammar and its history. Luzzatto in fact sent Munk the chapters of his Hebrew grammar asking for his opinion, while also discussing the details of Munk’s interpreta- tion of Phoenician inscriptions.

2 Munk and Luzzatto’s Criticism of Mysticism and the Study of the Zohar

Reflections on grammar are also important for Munk and Luzzatto with respect to another crucial topic in the letters, that is, the question of the evaluation of the role of Jewish mystical currents within Jewish tradition. Both authors were very critical of Kabbalistic currents and based their arguments against the texts of on both theoretical and historical grounds. The history of gram- mar had played an important role in their critical arguments. On the one hand, they both saw in Kabbalah the risk of pantheism; on the other hand, Luzzatto was also concerned about the growing influence of the Chassidic movements, especially in Eastern Europe, where the Zohar had become an important point of reference.16 Their criticism was not new among the representatives of the Wissenschaft des Judentums. If is right, this opposition to mysticism was prevalent within the movement and was found in the works of many of the movement’s leading figures.17 Munk never wrote a work completely dedicated to the study of , but he did write about Kabbalah and mystical currents in many of his works, including in his Esquisse, in an article on the Kabbalah which he had been asked to contribute for the first volume of Duckett’s Dictionnaire de

16 On Luzzatto’s preoccupations concerning the influence of the Zohar on Eastern European movements, see his Discourse on the Kabbalah published in Hebrew: Samuel David Luzzatto, Vikû’aḥ ‘al ḥokhmat ha-qabalah vě-‘al qadmût sefer ha-zohar vě-qadmût ha-něqudôt vě-ha-tě‘amîm [Dialogue sur la Kabbale et le Zohar et sur l’antiquité de la ponc- tuation et de l’accentuation dans la langue hébraïque] (Gorice: J.B. Seitz, 1852), 122–123. 17 Scholem’s view has now been reconsidered and more subtly reformulated by several scholars, who have begun to show how the works of Moritz Steinschneider, for example, actually reflect a theoretical position that is more complex than previously believed and contain groundbreaking observations on the literature of Kabbalah.

European Journal of JewishDownloaded Studies from 11 Brill.com09/25/2021 (2017) 115–129 05:14:45PM via free access Jewish Philosophy, Science Of Judaism And Philology 123 la Conversation et de la Lecture, and in his geographical, archaeological and historical description of Palestine.18 Luzzatto, on the contrary, applying his knowledge of Hebrew grammar to the central texts of mystical tradition, wrote the Vikû’aḥ,19 which was published in Gorice in 1852, but which was conceived much earlier, in 1827. The idea of writing this dialogue arose from the convic- tion that it was necessary to respond to the increasing diffusion of messianic currents in Europe. Although Luzzatto came from a home where his father was a believer in the Kabbalah and often encouraged him to read the Zohar, he very soon distanced himself from his original Kabbalistic outlook and from his father’s Kabbalistic faith. In this work, he attempted to refute the antiquity of the sources of Jewish mysticism, first of all by establishing the date of the Zohar. He denied the book’s antiquity, claiming that the recourse to dots and accents for vocalization proves the late date of the text. Aided by his profound knowledge of Hebrew grammar, Luzzatto arrived at a hypothesis regarding the date of the composition of the Zohar, which he placed not earlier than the tenth century. The Vikû’aḥ takes the form of a dialogue between the author, who initially defends the antiquity of the Zohar, and a visiting Polish student. In this dialogue, Luzzatto stresses that the Zohar and the Kabbalah pose an even greater threat to Judaism than the theological speculation of the philoso- phers. In his view, not only do they distance the Jews from the literal sense of the Torah, they specifically obscure the degree to which the meaning of most laws depends on the exact interpretation of a given word or letter. Moreover, he decries the Zohar for undermining faith itself:

What I really want to say is that the Zohar tended to distract the sages of Israel from the study of the Torah itself—that is, from its literal meaning, which would reveal to them, through a profound linguistic study, what a great number of laws depend on a single word, a single letter; it has brought them to waste their time and minds with dreams and nonsense, and with things that have no substance, like gematria20 and acronyms21 and other similar things. . . . And the second thing that the Zohar did was

18 Munk, Palestine: Description géographique, historique et archéologique. 19 Luzzatto, Vikû’aḥ ‘al ḥokhmat ha-qabalah. 20 Gematria is a method of biblical interpretation based on adding up the numerical equiva- lents of the letters of a word or phrase, and, for example, relating them to other words or phrases sharing that value. 21 Rašei teivot is another method of biblical interpretation where the first letters of each word in a biblical verse are isolated and either combined into new words taken to have meaning or sense, or else used as an acronym for another phrase.

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to remove the yoke of the fear of Paradise that had weighed down on the sages of Israel, so that the honor of the Creator no longer interested them, but instead they pose and answer questions, write and print books on what is above and what is below, what came first and what will be later. They speak with pride and arrogance against the omnipotent God, about how He created His world . . ., how He contracted himself to create it . . ., how it is possible to emanate worlds . . ., how this essence is united to the things emanated . . ., how human deeds have the power to recall the attention of a superior world and similar things. Anyone who believes in God shudders when reading these things.22

Luzzatto’s philological and linguistic analysis does not avoid treatment of the mystical doctrines themselves. He discussed, for example, many problems connected with the definition of the nature of the sěfirot [spheres]. He refers to a Kabbalistic debate between the author of the Ma‘arekhet ha-’Elohut [The Order of God], who considers the sěfirot as having a divine essence, and Menahem Recanati, who claims that the sěfirot are but an instrument used by God in order to create and govern the world. The existence of such a con- troversy demonstrates, according to Luzzatto, the absence of anything like an authentic Kabbalistic tradition. He also stresses that the Kabbalists had been influenced in the elaboration of their doctrine by the medieval philosophers. A salient example of this influence would be Josef Albo in his Sefer ha-‘iqqarim [Book of Principles], where he considered Avicenna’s doctrine of the emana- tion, identifying the active intellect with the tenth sěfirah. As for the objection that the word sěfirot was not used by the philosophers, Luzzatto answered that had used it in order to designate the astronomers (ḥakhmey ha-sěfirot). The Kabbalists could therefore have made a connection between the term sěfirot and the Latin term sphaera, and they could have learned to employ the term sěfirot to designate the Aristotelian intellect which moves the celestial spheres. For Luzzatto, the Kabbalah is the way in which the Jewish medieval philosophers tried to combine Aristotelian doctrines with Jewish tradition. They therefore made use of allusion and parables, straying far from the literal or obvious sense of the words of the Torah. It should be noted that Luzzatto saw in this use of allegory one positive aspect, in that the Kabbalists avoided any anthropomorphic or corporeal representation of the divinity. Despite his support for avoiding anthropomorphism, Luzzatto strongly dis- approved of the Kabbalah’s adoption of the idea of emanation of the sěfirot, which he argued is fundamentally pantheistic. There is only one difference,

22 Luzzatto, Vikû’aḥ ‘al ḥokhmat ha-qabalah, 22–123.

European Journal of JewishDownloaded Studies from 11 Brill.com09/25/2021 (2017) 115–129 05:14:45PM via free access Jewish Philosophy, Science Of Judaism And Philology 125 according to Luzzatto, between the doctrine of the Kabbalists and that of the pre-eminent pantheist, : While Spinoza thinks that the whole world is a unique and eternal substance which can be called God, the Kabbalists say that there is a God separate from the substance of the world, who when he created the world, created it neither ex nihilo nor from a pre-existent substance, but let it emanate from the divine substance. Like Zoroaster, they therefore consider themselves and the whole world to be part of the divine substance of God. Such observations, which provoked much criticism of Luzzatto,23 led him to further study of the Jewish mystical sources. Luzzatto’s essays on the Zohar were known in both French and German-speaking circles. Adolf Jellinek, for example, quoted Luzzatto in his writings on the history of the Kabbalah.24 But another historian of Judaism, Isaak Marcus Jost,25 did not consider him at all. On this occasion, Luzzatto wrote to Philoxène saying that he felt neglected and misunderstood by his fellow scholars, particularly in the French world, and underscored his belief that only Munk understood him and his work:

Jost’s pamphlet is nothing but a newspaper article in praise of Jellinek’s pamphlet on the Kabbalah. Jellinek’s pamphlet contains a few minor Kabbalistic writings that are unedited, or little known, among them a long letter by Abulafia26 (on Mosè de Leon, nothing), with a few notes in German in which he aspires to prove that Abulafia was not the author of the Zohar. Of me and my Vikuach, pas un mot.27

23 See Elijah Benamozegh, Sefer ta‘am lě-Šad (: s.n., 1863). On Benamozegh’s criti- cism of Luzzatto, see also: Allessandro Guetta, Philosophie et Cabbale: Essai sur la pensée d’Elie Benamozegh (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998); English trans. by Helena Kahan, Philosophy and Kabbalah: Elijah Benamozegh and the Reconciliation of Western Thought and Jewish Esotericism (New York: SUNY Press, 2009). 24 See Adolph Jellinek, Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte der Kabbala (Leipzig: C.L. Fritzsche, 1851–1854; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1988); Adolph Franck, Die Kabbala oder die Religions- Philosophie der Hebräer, von A. Franck, aus dem Französischen übersetzt, verbessert und vermehrt von Ad. Jellinek (Leipzig: Heinrich Hunger, 1844); Adolph Jellinek, Philosophie und Kabbala (Leipzig: Heinrich Hunger, 1854). 25 Isaak Markus Jost, Adolph Jellinek und die Kabbala: Ein Literatur-Bericht (Leipzig: A.M. Colditz, 1852). 26 Jellinek published a study on Abulafia: see Adolf Jellinek, Abraham Abulafia (13. Jh.): Sefer ha-Ot: Apokalypse des Pseudo-Propheten und Pseudo-Messias Abraham Abulafia: Jubelschrift zum siebzigsten Geburtstag des Prof. H. Graetz (Breslau: S. Schottlaender, 1887). 27 Letter to Philoxène Luzzatto in Paris, December 8, 1852, in Epistolario italiano, francese, latino, ed. Luzzatto, 715, cit.

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A bit earlier, in the same letter to Philoxène, Luzzatto wrote: “The opinion of these learned men that surround me was demonstrated to you clearly by the propositions of that journalist. But I still don’t understand what sort of opinion they have. Or rather, I believe they don’t know me at all, except for Munk.”28 Munk and Luzzatto continued their exchange of letters even after the pre- mature death of Philoxène in 1854. Luzzatto considered the German émigré scholar in France not only as the teacher of his son, but also as an important intermediary between his studies and the French world. Munk sent Luzzatto many of his writings, including sections of his translation of the Guide for the Perplexed, and last but not least his first lessons at the Collège de France, which he gave after succeeding as professor of Semitic languages at the Collège de France. Luzzatto then wrote again to Albert Cohn:

Prof. Munk did me the honor of sending me his inaugural lecture. I admired his knowledge and blessed his courage . . . My poor Philoxène had spoken of Renan’s ingratitude and slyness towards Munk . . . Who would have imagined that the day would come when the latter would succeed the former, and have the opportunity to confute him and avenge his outrages against Israel?29

The works of the great Orientalist Ernest Renan owe much to Salomon Munk’s studies. While still head of a department at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, Renan met Salomon Munk. A friendship was born that enriched both parties, but, according to several scholars, Renan did not recognize the semi- nal contribution of Munk’s work to some of his own. Renan relied on Munk for his expertise in the classic texts of Judaism: the Mishnah, the , and the rabbinic writings of the Middle Ages. Although he also corresponded with Luzzatto among other exponents of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, his ties with Munk were especially strong, and in 1858 he supported Munk’s candidacy for the French Academy of Inscriptions and Literature, until Munk replaced Renan in his chair at the Collège de France.30 Munk, who was at that time

28 Ibid., 714–715; letter to Philoxène Luzzatto, Padua, December 8, 1852. 29 “Le Prof. Munk m’a fait l’honneur de m’envoyer sa Leçon d’ouverture. J’ai admiré son savoir et j’ai béni son courage. . . . Mon pauvre Philoxène m’a parlé de l’ingratitude et de l’astuce de Renan envers Munk. . . . Qui aurait pensé que le jour viendrait, où celui-ci serait l’héritier de celui-là, et aurait l’occasion de le confuter, et de venger Israël de ses outrages?” Ibid., 1061–1062 (my translation); letter to Albert Cohn, April 7, 1865. 30 Michael Graetz, The Jews in Nineteenth-Century France: From the French Revolution to the Alliance Israélite Universelle, trans. Jane Marie Todd (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 212.

European Journal of JewishDownloaded Studies from 11 Brill.com09/25/2021 (2017) 115–129 05:14:45PM via free access Jewish Philosophy, Science Of Judaism And Philology 127 blind and could hardly read anything, spoke in his lecture about the relation- ship between his scientific method, the study of the grammar of the Semitic languages, and his religious faith. He also spoke about philosophy and the risk of pantheism which philosophy can bring. Luzzatto, who as noted earlier also saw pantheistic tendencies as a threat to Judaism, wrote in his letter: “But what interested me the most in this lesson was the clear and precise judgment he brought to bear on pantheism, which he declared to be identical to atheism. I supported him for so many years, but I was alone . . . Finally, Munk won.”31 Luzzatto and Munk’s aversion to pantheism, which resulted from their tra- ditionalist positions on the relationship between Judaism and philosophy, was also a reason to reject the Kabbalah. On the one hand Luzzatto polemicized against Spinoza’s position, in particular, against its pantheism and its abstract rationalism, and on the other hand, against conceiving revelation as paradoxi- cal and absurd. Both Munk’s and Luzzatto’s philological and linguistic analy- ses led them to the conclusion that mysticism contains elements external to Jewish tradition. Ironically, through their respective philological analyses, each ended up contributing to the further study of the very approach they fought so vigorously against. Luzzatto was led to produce one of the most philologically accurate studies of the mystical tradition as represented by the Zohar, which opened the path to further work and to new fields of research in Jewish studies, including mysticism,32 while Munk, in his effort to be as thorough and scien- tific as possible, ended up producing a survey of the history of Jewish philoso- phy that inspired generations of historians of Jewish and Islamic philosophy33 after him.

31 “Mais ce n’est pas là ce, qui m’a le plus intéressé dans cette Leçon. C’est le jugement clair et net, qu’il a porté sur le panthéisme, qu’il a déclaré identique à l’athéisme. Je l’ai soutenu pendant tant d’années, mais j’étais seul. . . . Enfin Munk vint.” Letter to Albert Cohn, April 7, 1865, in Epistolario italiano, francese, latino, ed. Luzzatto, 1061–1062 (my translation). 32 , Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), and Boaz Huss, “Admiration and Disgust: The Ambivalent Re-Canonization of the Zohar in the Modern Period,” in Study and Knowledge in Jewish Thought, ed. Howard Kreisel (Beer Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2006), 203–237. 33 Munk’s Esquisse de la philosophie chez les Juives influenced several historians of Jewish philosophy, such as Isaac Husik (1876–1939) who, in reflecting on Jewish philosophy, offered a rather thin treatment of mystical topics and thinkers, preferring the rational face of Jewish thought; Harry Austin Wolfson (1887–1974), whose greatest contribution may therefore have been in collapsing all the barriers isolating the study of Christian philosophy from that of Islamic philosophy and Jewish philosophy, and who imagined a sort of philosophy written in three languages, Hebrew, Arabic and Latin (Martin Ritter, “Dolmetscherin der Vergangenheit und Prophetin der Zukunft: Das Profil der jüdischen Philosophie im Werk von Leopold Zunz, Abraham Geiger und Salomon Munk,” in Archiv

European Journal of Jewish Studies 11 (2017) 115–129Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 05:14:45PM via free access 128 Adorisio

3 Munk’s and Luzzatto’s Place in the Modern Debate about Jewish Orientalism

As the letters and documents that we have examined above show, Munk and Luzzatto were aware of the work of the most famous non-Jewish Orientalists in France, such as Ernest Renan. Renan, had several opportunities to talk with Munk in Paris, and was very much indebted to Munk’s research and knowl- edge. Munk’s influence on Renan’s work cannot be further analyzed here, but, as I have noted above, Luzzatto in his letters to Munk refers to Renan as some- one who did not acknowledge his debt to Munk. More generally, the letters we have examined show how Luzzatto does not evaluate French reactions to his work positively. Through the lens of their work, we can see just how much their relationship was based on their extraordinary linguistic skills and on their love for Hebrew texts and language. Munk and Luzzatto had a major influence on the development of French Orientalism—an influence that has not yet been fully recognized. Munk and Luzzatto were among those Jewish scholars who, because they had, on the one hand, traditional knowledge of Hebrew and Hebrew literature, and on the other, were steeped in academic culture and were committed to scientific methods, successfully established their legacy as pioneering researchers in the field of Jewish studies in particular, and Oriental studies in general. Their studies contributed in an original way to the study of the Orient. In fact, although not directly committed to the political and imperialist side of Orientalism, at least until the last decades of the nineteenth century, Germany, especially German science and philology, nevertheless played a key role in cre- ating a vocabulary, a knowledge, an authority relating to that subject of scien- tific enquiry called “the Orient.” Since the 1978 publication of Edward Said’s pivotal book, Orientalism has become one of the most hotly debated issues in the fields of the humanities and social sciences, thus deeply influencing the further development of colonial and postcolonial studies. Orientalism is for Said, in Foucaultian terms, a discourse on the Orient; “a set of representative figures, or tropes,”34 an ideological construction, establishing and reinforcing the political and cultural hegemony of the Occidental powers over the subal- tern Oriental world. Said also points out the strong commitment of Western scholarship to the creation of the “Oriental,” as “Orientalism” originally

für Begriffsgeschichte 45 [2003]: 121–150); and last but not least, Munk has been an impor- tant reference for contemporary historians such as Esther Seidel and Colette Sirat. 34 See Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 2003 [1978]), 71.

European Journal of JewishDownloaded Studies from 11 Brill.com09/25/2021 (2017) 115–129 05:14:45PM via free access Jewish Philosophy, Science Of Judaism And Philology 129 referred to the philological and linguistic study of Semitic languages.35 The achievements of German scholars significantly contributed to the assertion of colonial power. In a different vein, the achievements of those Jewish schol- ars who studied the reciprocal influences between Jewish, Arabic-Islamic, and Christian cultures, contributed to the rediscovery of Islamic literature and philosophy as an important source of Judaism and therefore also of European culture. Although influenced by German philology, Munk and Luzzatto con- tributed to the discussion about Orientalism through their pioneering studies based on the recognition of the reciprocal influences between East and West, and on the consequent denial of a dichotomy between these two categories. They saw in a new and different way from their non-Jewish colleagues the influence of the East on Western culture. Among Munk’s and Luzzatto’s con- temporary Orientalists, it is worth mentioning well-known scholars such as Moritz Steinschneider (1816–1907), Abraham Geiger, who was among Munk’s first teachers, the very famous Ignaz Goldziher (1850–1921) in Hungary, and Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer (1801–1888), in Germany. Furthermore, they were active in diffusing the ideals of the German-Jewish Wissenschaft des Judentums movement, and engaged in several projects intended to improve the condi- tions of life and education in the Jewish communities of the Orient. Munk himself, who was part of the entourage with that came to in 1840 to appeal to Muhammad Ali during the Damascus Blood Libel, helped found schools in and Alexandria where the study of languages, including Arabic and Hebrew, was very important.36 They contributed in this and other ways to a fundamental revision of the colonial way of conceiving the idea of the Orient, à la Said’s 1978 description.

Chiara Adorisio (Ph.D.) is Assistant Professor of Philosophical Anthropology and History of Moral Philosophy and, since 2011, a Montalcini Research fellow at Rome’s Sapienza University. She was an Alexander von Humboldt Senior Fellow at the University of Halle-Wittenberg, and a Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has taught in Germany and in Israel. Her book Leo Strauss lettore di Hermann Cohen: Dalla filosofia moderna al ritorno agli antichi was published by La Giuntina (Florence) in 2007. Her new book is a monograph on the life and thought of Salomon Munk: Dialectic of Separation. Philosophy and Judaism in the work of Salomon Munk (Boston: Academic Studies Press) (forthcoming).

35 Ibid., 51. 36 Schwab, Salomon Munk: Sa vie et ses œuvres.

European Journal of Jewish Studies 11 (2017) 115–129Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 05:14:45PM via free access