Judaism: The Genealogy of a Modern Notion by Daniel Boyarin

Abstract

Reviewed by: Judaism: The Genealogy of a Modern Notion by Daniel Boyarin Ira Robinson Boyarin, Daniel – Judaism: The Genealogy of a Modern Notion. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018. Pp. 217. Scholarship always reflects its times, and Daniel Boyarin's book Judaism is definitely of the moment. In the "about the author" blurb, he meticulously informs his readers of his utilization of feminism, queer theory, and postcolonial studies in his work. Elsewhere, he self-identifies as a "non-Zionist" Jew (p. 153), and he is at pains to avoid any possibility that his readers might think that he attributes any essential superiority to European culture: "It is important to emphasize … since I do not want to be misunderstood. When I speak of the premodern or extra Euro-American, I am not claiming that modern Europe represents an advance over all other cultures" (p. 76; emphasis in original). In this, he is the very model of a contemporary Western scholar of the humanities and social sciences. Looking back on previous generations of scholarship on the concept of "Judaism," Boyarin is generous in acknowledging the merits of that scholarship while nonetheless letting the reader clearly understand that his own considered understanding differs. Thus, he greatly appreciates George Foot Moore's effort to redeem the term Judaism "from the prejudiced anti-Judaism of … Protestant Biblical scholars" (p. 13) while dismissing Moore's definition as a "normative essentialism" (p. 16). He lauds Jacob Neusner's attempt to define a "'Judaism' … that would purportedly be neither essentialistic nor normative," while criticizing it as "monothetic" (p. 14). He appreciates Michael Satlow, informed by Jonathan Z. Smith, who attempted to improve on Neusner by mapping a polythetic variety of Judaisms. Nonetheless, for all his appreciation, Boyarin concludes that Satlow "leaves us with the question of why we should seek to define something that no one knows of at the time about which the research is being done. … We end up with a polythetic definition of a word which did not exist" (p. 17). This brings Boyarin to his main thesis in the book, that "Judaism," "arguably one of the most key of key words for Jewish studies" (p. xi) is not a useful term for scholarship. In a theoretical sense, Boyarin juxtaposes the views of two influential scholars of religious and cultural studies, Jonathan Z. Smith and Talal Asad, and greatly prefers Asad's understanding over that of Smith. Asad asserts the necessity for scholars translating the concepts of other cultures to make "the coherence primitive thought has in the languages it really lives in, as clear as possible in our own." Smith, on the contrary, states that "giving primacy to native terminology yields, at best, lexical definitions. … But lexical definitions are almost always useless for scholarly work. … How 'they' use a word cannot substitute for the stipulative procedures by which the academy contests and controls second-order specialized usage" (pp. 4–5). Boyarin devotes the majority of the book to demonstrating that "'Judaism' is not a Jewish term" (p. xii) and was not used by Jews themselves until the modern period (p. 11). In Part II, "The State of the Lexicon," he searches for antecedent terms that correspond in meaning to "Judaism" in ancient and medieval Jewish texts and by and large does not find them. He rather asserts that the term "Judaism" as such was created by ancient Christians. The term was "invented initially for [End Page 677] the purposes of the formulation of Christian orthodoxy" (p. 105). For Christian thinkers, Judaism was a "false Ekklesia … to set off and solidify the identity of the orthodox Christian Ekklesia" (p. 110). It is only in modern times that Jews themselves, in adopting Western languages and mores, have adopted "Judaism" as the word describing their "religion," though it is clear that even with respect to modernity, what Jews do, and what scholars of Jewish studies teach, goes far beyond "religion" in the strict sense of that term (p. 153). Boyarin has created a very interesting argument but also a fairly narrow one. While it could be said that his investigation of ancient sources seems reasonably comprehensive, his survey of medieval and especially modern Jewish sources...