Two Nations: British and German Jews in Comparative Perspective (review)

Two Nations is a collection of papers presented at a conference at Clare College Cambridge, England, in 1997. In contrast to similar past projects, the author of each individual paper was responsible for considering the experiences of both British and German Jews with regard to his/her chosen subject area. Consequentially, like has been compared to like, and the discrepancies and gaps that often characterize such efforts (the result of different authors reflecting different agendas while dealing with the same subject) has not occurred. In addition, each paper is accompanied by a brief “Comment” paper, by which the reader is treated to a short critique by an established authority. The result is a well-defined and focused consideration of eighteen or nineteen topics, ranging from comparisons of the British and German experiences of the Haskalah or Enlightenment (Ruderman) and Emancipation (Rürup), to Zionism (Wendehorst) and antisemitism (Kushner), to feminist organizations (Tananbaum) and business elites (Cassis), to Jewish representations in the respective literatures (Robertson) and the experience of each country in terms of preserving Jewish heritage (Williams and Weisbrod). The period covered does not precede the seventeenth century, dwelling mostly upon the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. Throughout, the theme of the Jewish response to modernity is constant, and the phenomena of acculturation and assimilation are considered in some depth. Of special note is Todd Endelman’s analysis of “Jewish self-hatred,” in which common-sense is finally brought to bear regarding the contemporary over-use of the term.

One criticism that could be levelled is that of the absence of any dedicated piece on Orthodox Judaism. A second, more serious criticism is that the collection is distinctly Germano-centric, with a number of the writers viewing the German-Jewish experience of modernity as normative, the benchmark against which to judge the British experience. Michael Meyer’s comparison of religious reform in the two countries is a case in point.

Meyer spends considerable time dealing with Claude Montefiore’s Anglo-Liberal Judaism, which shared a number of characteristics with the German Reform movement (pp. 77–79). Together with the earlier Anglo-Reform theology, Liberalism emphasized the idea of the “Mission of Israel,” an idea which had first gained currency with Mendelssohn, and also the conception of the essence of Judaism as “ethical monotheism,” as popularized by Hermann Cohen. The Liberal Jewish Prayer Book (1903) was theologically ahead of that of the Anglo-Reform, and in line with that of the more radical German thought. Montefiore’s biblical-critical attitude also echoed that of the German reformers, and Meyer suggests that the Anglo-Liberal movement had “turned for an answer to the ideology of the German movement” (p. 78). As the German reformers had done, Montefiore’s new emphases were justified as the inevitable consequences of Progress. For Meyer, the similarities are too much to be a coincidence, and he comments, “it is remarkable how far British Liberal Judaism was dependent upon ideas and practices developed in Germany” (p. 77).

Parallels do not necessarily indicate emulation, however, and the assumption that Montefiore was directly influenced by German Reform should be carefully examined. Meyer tracked down several articles in which Montefiore referred to German reformers positively, including Montefiore’s self-association with Geiger in developing a Judaism which emphasized historical continuity, and a side reference to S. Formstecher. He emphasizes a comment by Montefiore regarding Samuel Holdheim’s radical Reformgemeinde: “Without by any means agreeing with all that the Berlin Reformgemeinde has done, it is with this movement . . . that I feel the deepest and closest spiritual kinship” (p. 78). He also finds it significant that the opening essay in the very first issue of Montefiore’s Jewish Quarterly Review was written by the prominent Jewish historian and professor at the conservative Jewish seminary in Breslau, Heinrich Graetz, whose theology is regarded as almost precisely that of Montefiore (p. 79). This evidence of Montefiore’s exposure to German reform is...