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| Jewish |
The academic study
of Judaism, including the modern, critical study of
Jewish history, began in 19th century Germany. Early
19th-century German society afforded history a new and
prominent role. The spirit of the age, romantic nationalism,
argued that the forces of history and tradition were
dominating factors in human behavior. Historian Howard
Sachar explains, “To understand any belief or
ideal, any custom or institution, one had merely to
examine its gradual growth from primitive beginnings
to its present form. The validity of any institution
or idea was no longer to be measured by its reasonableness
or utility, but rather by its origin and history.”
In this manner, the 19th century became the age of historical
investigation.
The birth of modern historical method coincided with
a period of conservatism and mounting anti-semitism
in Germany. During this period, maskilim (followers
of the Jewish enlightenment movement) questioned why
large segments of Christian society continued to display
hostility toward them despite the fact that they had
acquired knowledge of European culture and adopted its
manners and behavior. |
| One group of maskilim reasoned
that this continued hostility resulted from European society’s
ignorance of Judaism’s history and its contribution
to European culture. In order to present the treasures
of Jewish creativity to the non-Jewish world, these Jews,
mostly university students, founded a group dedicated
to raising Jewish scholarship from obscurity to science,
called the Society for Culture and Science among the Jews
(Wissenschaft des Judenthums) in 1819. |
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Leopold Zunz was
a founder and leader of the Society. Zunz was
a Jewish orphan who received a traditional religious
education and taught himself secular subjects
by reading German books. Begging and borrowing,
he managed to attend the University of Berlin
where he was exposed to German ideas of history
and science. He ultimately received a doctorate
at the University of Halle and thereafter made
his living as a rabbi and Sunday School teacher
for various Reform congregations. Zunz lead the
Society in the attempt to master all the material
incorporated into Jewish literature, to arrange
it according to its historical development, and
to relate it to world literature.
With such a huge task before them, it is not surprising
that the Society ran out of energy in just a few
years, but Zunz alone succeeded in realizing a
major goal of the organization by cataloguing
the lot of Jewish literature.
In his most famous work, Contributions
to History and Literature, Zunz combed Jewish
history to demonstrate that the Talmud, medieval
poetry, homiletics, philosophy, and folklore all
belonged to the realm of literature as they were
authentic expressions of Jewish national life
and thought. With the publication of this work
in 1845, Zunz demonstrated that Jewish genius
had not exhausted itself with the Bible as Christians
had asserted. He revealed the wealth of the Jewish
literary tradition.
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Zunz attracted a group of followers, among them Mortiz
Steinschneider, who devoted his life to Jewish scholarship.
Steinschneider’s first book chronicled Jewish literature
from the 8th to the 18th century. It was so well received
that a year later he was called to Oxford to prepare a
catalogue of Hebrew literature for the library there.
Jewish scholarship had arrived!
In addition to Zunz and his group in Germany, other traditionally
educated Jews who were interested in and familiar with
Western European culture resolved to apply the new scholarly
methods the classical sources of Judaism. Notable among
these scholars were Samuel David Luzzatto, in Italy, and,
in Galicia, Nahman Krohmal and Solomon Judah Rappaport.
The most famous Jewish historian to emerge during this
period was Heinrich Graetz. His eleven volume History
of the Jews would become the most widely read and consulted
work in modern Jewish studies. It attracted much criticism,
for although Graetz collected the facts in a scientific
manner, his own ideas came through in his interpretation
of the facts. His rare synthesis of scholarship and style
popularized not only the history of the Jews but also
the science of Judaism.
These first modern Jewish historians and the scholars
who followed them faced issues both typical and unique
in their efforts to record the Jewish past. Like all historians,
Jewish historians must determine causality, create periodizaiton
schemas (the division of history into identifiable periods),
and take a stand on whether history is moving progressively
toward a goal.
Jews have lived in all corners of the globe, and their
daily life, including religion, has been influenced
by the societies in which they lived. While Jews are
influenced by larger societal trends, they are also
affected by events that are unique to the Jewish experience.
This “double consciousness”, a product of
living as both part of and apart from larger society,
results in complexity for historians of the Jewish experience,
who must consider both the larger culture and Jewish
culture when analyzing and understanding Jewish life.
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| Ideas and Beliefs |
Religion is often thought of as a belief
system or worldview, a philosophical framework through
which reality is perceived.
But this conception of religion doesn't necessarily fit
well with Judaism (and, scholars of religion would point
out, doesn't do justice to most of the world's religions,
which include behaviors, rituals, and ceremonies in addition
to beliefs).
In Jewish tradition and life, belief has often taken a
back seat to practice. Historically, Jews have been more
concerned with halakhah, the Jewish legal tradition governing
Jewish practice, than makhshavah, the discipline of Jewish
thought. In addition, it is difficult to speak of a single
or official Jewish worldview, theology, or philosophy.
Instead, we must speak of Jewish theologies and philosophies:
the various and varied religious worldviews articulated
during Judaism's long history. |
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