Jewish Scholarship and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Germany: Between History and Faith

2. Returning Judaism to History

2 Returning Judaism to History The legacy of the Enlightenment and the failure to universalize Jewish emancipation at the Vienna conference in 1815—and the renewed antagonism toward the Jews—became defining experiences for the second generation of maskilim and a few university-trained intellectuals. In contrast to the ambiguities of Enlightenment conceptions of Jewish history, this generation faced a German historical school that reduced Judaism to a single idea and disregarded the existence of a postbiblical history. Friedrich A. Wolf, who had become famous with his studies on Homer, excluded Judaism from classical studies since only the Greeks and Romans among the ancient people had created genuine cultures.1 For the theologian and preacher Friedrich Schleiermacher, Judaism was deemed an “imperishable mummy.”2 By depicting Judaism as not only superseded by Christianity but also as oriental, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and others effectively erased Judaism from world history.3 Together, these various disciplines disregarded and relegated Judaism to the stage of world history that had long since passed. In light of these new challenges, the emerging Wissenschaft confronted a formidable task during the next decades when it comprehended Judaism from a historical perspective and asserted the vital role Judaism played in world history. Yet their prolific endeavor encountered a disinterested, if not hostile, German academia and an equally unenthusiastic Jewish public. Thus far from presenting a seamless evolution, the beginning of Jewish scholarship displays discontinuous developments with only 26 Isaac Jost and Leopold Zunz forging ahead once the Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden (Society for culture and science of the Jews) had folded. Several young Jewish intellectuals, including Eduard Gans, Moses Moser, Immanuel Wolf, Heinrich Heine, Isaac Jost, and Leopold Zunz, together with representatives of the second generation Berlin Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) such as Lazarus Bendavid and David Friedländer, formed the Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden. According to its statutes, the Verein devoted itself to scientific and educational efforts in order to augment Bildung and Wissenschaft among the Jews. The final version of the statutes included plans to create a scienti fic institute, organize an archive, publish a periodical, and erect a Jewish free school. The Verein thus combined classical maskilic activities such as youth education, enlightening, and training Jews in crafts, agriculture , and practical sciences with the more novel program of Wissenschaft des Judentums.4 The Verein, therefore, also did not simply come into being in response to the anti-Jewish riots in 1819 as has previously been claimed.5 The goals that the Verein set out to accomplish reflect rather a broader social-political situation. The members of the Verein belonged to a generation that had personally experienced the emancipation during the French occupation, when civic equality was introduced in all German territories ruled directly or indirectly by Napoleon.6 Zunz recalled in his autobiographical account from the early 1840s that he saw the approaching French armies as a sign of imminent salvation. The writer Heine exclaimed in a letter that he too understood himself as belonging to the generation that was “hit by the blow of the revoked edict.” 7 While the removal of emancipation was a profound disappointment, it did not translate itself into disillusionment but rather gave rise to clear expectations regarding the future. The revocation and delay of universal emancipation gave renewed impetus to all those activities that would hasten its onset. Nine years to the day after Prussia’s emancipation edict of March 11, 1812, Eduard Gans assumed the presidency of the Verein and delivered a programmatic speech. He believed the Verein’s task was “to hasten the time that [emancipation and cultural renewal] would occur otherwise, with all the required power and effort: this is the task, gentlemen, that you set before yourselves with this society.”8 The other members of the Verein also believed that only an objective treatment of Jewish culture would remove the existing prejudicial representation and function as a guide for the internal reform of Jewish society and Judaism.9 Returning Judaism to History 27 Gans, the student prodigy of Hegel, posited that history progresses according to a clearly charted path mapped out by a specific idea. Accordingly , it was the task of the historian to elucidate this idea and to delineate its progressive fulfillment. In a subtle turn against Hegel, Gans postulated that to trace the historical place and nature of...