Table Of Content———————————————————— Introduction ————————————————————
Language of
Conformity
and Dissent
On the Imaginative Grammar of Jewish Intellectuals
in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
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Perspectives in Jewish Intellectual Life
Series Editor:
Giuseppe Veltri (Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg)
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Language of
Conformity
and Dissent
On the Imaginative Grammar of Jewish Intellectuals
in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Giuseppe Veltri
Boston 2013
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
A catalog record for this title is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-61811-238-5 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-61811-239-2 (electronic)
Copyright © 2013 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved
Book design by Adell Medovoy
On the cover, clockwise from top left:
Leo Baeck, Leopold Zunz, Johann Gottfried Herder, Friedrich August Wolf.
Published by Academic Studies Press in 2013
28 Montfern Avenue
Brighton, MA 02135, USA
[email protected]
www.academicstudiespress.com
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For my son, Carlo Azaria Giuseppe
“The desire of knowledge, like the thirst for riches,
increases ever with the acquisition of it.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
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Contents
Acknowledgments 9
Introduction 10
PART I: SEARCHING FOR A SCIENTIFIC LANGUAGE 22
1.1 Athens and Jerusalem: Philology vs. Hermeneutics at the
Beginnings of the “Science of Antiquity” 23
1.2 From Biblical & Classical to “Jewish Studies” 41
Critica Sacra and Critica Homerica 42
Antiquity and the Sciences: Wolf’s Educational Intention 44
The Encyclopedia of the Classical Studies in the Works of Wolf and
Boeckh 47
Leopold Zunz as a Student of Friedrich A. Wolf and August Boeck 50
Emancipation Because of/from Classical Studies? 59
1.3 Biography and Autobiography in the Early Years of the
Science of Judaism 61
“Ich, L. Zunz,” or Concerning the (Auto-)Biography 64
The Autobiographies of Leopold Zunz and Isaak Markus Jost 69
Biographies as Critical Literary History: On Zunz’s Biography of
Rashi 71
Biographies as Literary and Educational Creations 74
A Versified Epilogue 76
1.4 A Jewish Luther? The Academic Dreams of Leopold Zunz 77
Protestant Topoi and Reformed Jews 77
Religion and/or Wissenschaft: Perspectives of an Academic
Antiquarian 79
From Wolfenbüttel to Berlin: Academic Dreams of a “Jewish”
Luther 82
1.5 Separation through Integration? Dreams of a Chair of
Jewish Studies in 1848 Prussian Germany 89
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PART II: POLITICAL AND CULTURAL HISTORY OF A
CONJUNCTION 100
2.1 Goethe & Judaism: Typology of an Ambivalent Relation 100
Goethe’s Relationship to Judaism as Reflected in the Secondary
Literature 101
Goethe’s Judaism 109
Political Conservatism 113
The Culturally Exploitative Mind: the Materia poetica and its
Ingredients 118
“Fine Silence” and Reflections Loud and Clear 119
2.2 Johann Gottfried Herder, Mission and Judaism 124
The Rhapsodic Theory of Ambiguity: On Pietism & Simone
Luzzatto 124
Concerning Leopold Zunz and Herder 135
2.3 Gesenius, his Colleagues, the Rabbis, and the Wissenschaft
des Judentums 150
PART III: CREATIVE LANGUAGES AND INTERSTITIAL SPACES 162
3.1 Creative Monotheism: Chayim H. Steinthal 163
3.2 Steinschneider on Magic and Interstitial Spaces 179
Magic in the Wissenschaft des Judentums: Antecedents 179
Steinschneider’s Way to Magic 181
Steinschneider on the Functions of Magic: (i) The Maieutic
Function 183
Steinschneider on the Functions of Magic: (ii) Magic as Error,
Prejudice, and Mania 186
Steinschneider on the Functions of Magic: (iii) Magic, Faith, and
Deformed Beliefs 188
3.3 On the Cultural Dynamics of the Jewish Religion: Lajos
Blau’s Defense of Monotheism as a Driving Force 192
Changes in Blau’s Time 192
The Philosophical Background: Philo, Maimonides, and the Talmud 195
Monotheism vs. Paganism: The Moral Mission 198
Then and Now: Some Thoughts on the Debate on Monotheism 200
3.4 Appendix: Ludwig Blau’s “On the Present and Future of
the Jewish Religion” 204
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PART IV: DISJUNCTION, OR THE JEWISH DISSENT 216
4.1 The Outspoken “Dissenter”: Leo Baeck 217
The Essence of Judaism 217
The Essence of Leo Baeck’s Non-Conformism 222
4.2 The Dissenter as Enfant Terrible: Jacob Taubes 228
The Trapeze Artist 228
Reason and/or Religion 232
4.3 Emmanuel Levinas, or, The (Un-)Translatability of
Jerusalem into Athens 240
The Talmudic Discussion and Levinas’ Interpretation 244
Philological Analysis and Philosophy 249
INSTEAD OF A CONCLUSION 252
Jewish Philosophy and Islam from the Seventeenth to the
Twentieth Centuries 252
Jewish Philosophy? 252
The Historical-Philological Approach to (Judeo)-Arabic
Philosophy 258
The Argument over Philosophy 261
Closure 266
Selected Bibliography 268
Index 282
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Acknowledgments
As with every other work of my academic life, this book would not have
taken its present form without the support of many friends, students,
and research assistants. I am indebted to Dr. Anton Hieke, who trans-
lated and edited most of the chapters of the book from the original
German. The chapter on Lajos Blau was edited by Bill Templer. The origi-
nal German article by Blau was translated by Anne-Julia Schoen. Ruth
Einstein of Atlanta, Georgia, kindly improved the entire manuscript
from an American perspective.
Most of the aspects covered in the book were the subjects of lectures
I delivered on several occasions in Germany, Israel, Italy, Hungary,
and Belgium. Igor Nemirosvky, director of Academic Studies Press in
Boston, showed great interest in the book and supported me through-
out its composition; his assistant Sharona Vedol was of great help in all
production matters.
This book is dedicated to my son, Carlo Azaria Giuseppe, and his
desire for knowledge.
Halle-Frohe Zukunft, Germany, February 11, 2013
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Introduction
This monograph explores two areas: the origin of new languages (or new
expressions) and the consequent creation of new grammar that reflects
the exigencies of the new linguistic and/or cultural coinages. In order to
avoid any confusion for the attentive reader, I would like to emphasize
that my usage of the terms “language” and “grammar” is a metaphoric
one. I use these words to frame and broaden the understanding of cul-
tural phenomena as the birth of a new current, as well as a movement
in modern and contemporary Germany and Europe of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. Both assumptions have their roots in the
well-known fact that every generation uses characteristic vocabulary
and structures for expressive thoughts. The need for creating language
capable of expressing changes, fluctuations, and deviations in human
life is the first basis of every literature. This is even more true when
the changes are revolutionary to such a degree that the old vocabulary
cannot satisfactorily manage them.
The generation of the 1960s in Europe, for example, was fond of
using such terms as “revolution,” “atomic energy,” “economic develop-
ment,” and “renovation of (political and economic) systems.” They were,
at the same time, fond of utopian ideas relating to such subjects as how
to confront the Cold War. Dreams of universal peace, the conquest of
space, and political unity resulted. Succeeding generations have not ad-
dressed such topics: they have perceived these ideals as fallacies, and
have been rather indifferent to protecting the environment and achiev-
ing world peace. Frustration and violent challenges of the establish-
ment were followed by disillusionment. The atomic experience and the
economic crises that came as the consequences of Western, as well as
Arabic and Islamic, political strategies, and—above all—the failure of
the preceding generation to take responsibility for its own violent past
of Nazism and the Second World War, were fundamental elements of
the new generation, for which key linguistic terms were “disillusion,”
“involution,” “environment,” “anti-atomic reaction,” and the like.
A comparable process—albeit different in shape, entity, and the
people involved—took place during the nineteenth and early twentieth
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