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Chapter Four: Take Ancient Judaism for Example: Five Case Studies
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77 4 Take Ancient Judaism for Example Five Case Studies The previous chapter examined the complex relationship that has developed between Jewish studies and Jewish community, showing how the former over its long and convoluted history both mirrors and responds to the situation of the latter. The tensions inherent in this relationship are not simply of recent provenance, but have been there from the inception of Jewish studies in the early decades of the nineteenth century. In the American context, this relationship says as much about Jewish desire for inclusion as it does about university administrators’ traditional unwillingness to include Jewish topics within academic curricula for their own sake. Such community support still largely sustains the academic study of Judaism and, despite the caveats raised in the previous chapter, has largely contributed to its present vitality.1 However, such support also has the potential to undermine Jewish studies, especially when it is connected to particular ideological commitments. Recent years, for example, have witnessed the creation of numerous wealthy organizations (e.g., Schusterman Foundation,2 Tikvah Fund,3 Posen Foundation4 ) that are now in the business of subsidizing the academic study of Judaism. Although such support has its origins in the narrative told in the previous chapter, these organizations are now often connected to larger political projects , ones that have the potential to threaten the longterm viability of the field. Before examining this in greater detail, however, it is first necessary to return to the formative years of Jewish studies in America in order to try to tell the story (or, better, stories) of how Jewish data were integrated into the academic study of religion. The primary place that Judaism is encountered academically within the university today is in departments of religious studies.5 Therein, depending upon the scholar in question, Jewish data can 78 The Study of Judaism either be opened up by or closed to the theoretical and comparative models supplied by this larger field of inquiry.6 Whereas larger disciplines can and should be extremely useful in understanding the relationship between Jews and non-Jews, including the construction of Jewish identity (see, for example, Bodian 1999; D. Boyarin 2008; Hughes 2010a; Wolfson 2005, 2010), the particularist model that tends to reify Jews and Jewish data can still take precedence. There exist at least two potential problems in situating Judaism within departments of religious studies. Primary is the overwhelming propensity of the latter discipline toward theoretical models that stress ecumenicism and appreciation. Second and concomitantly, there is the desire on the part of many who study Judaism—as indeed there is with those working with data from other religious traditions—to avoid those paradigms within the larger discipline that are overly critical of traditional paradigms within the academic study of religion. The academic study of religion—referred to in the past as the history of religions or comparative religion—was first introduced as a subsection within the American Oriental Society (AOS) in 1897.7 In 1891, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Pennsylvania founded the American Lectures on the History of Religions (ALHR) with the aim of encouraging “path-breaking scholarship through a lecture and book series.”8 As more and more colleges and universities began to offer courses on the history of religions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Judaism could, at least in theory, now be studied in new intellectual contexts and using new methodological frameworks. However, as Ritterband and Wechsler do well to point out, Judaism’s inclusion within this new and so-called “objective” curriculum was often precarious and was frequently contingent upon the answers to at least three relevant questions: • Was the [history of religions to be] useful in the teaching of missionaries, or was it a “value free” academic discipline? • What were the methodological criteria for introducing specific religions into the arena of research? Would scholars emphasize primitive or sophisticated religions? • Would philologically trained Judaica scholars apply their skills to the study of Judaism [within the larger context supplied by the history of religions]? (Ritterband and Wechsler 1994, 190) [100.26.135.252] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 13:46 GMT) 79 Take Ancient Judaism for Example These questions are important and reveal the potentially tenuous position of the study of Judaism within the larger context of the study of religion in its earliest years in America. The first question, for example, revolves around how the field envisages the study of Judaism. Is Judaism an important component of the curriculum...