Abstract

Reviewed by: Leopold Zunz: Creativity in Adversity by Ismar Schorsch Alan T. Levenson Ismar Schorsch. Leopold Zunz: Creativity in Adversity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. xii + 245 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009418000715 Ismar Schorsch builds on his august contributions with this biography of Leopold Zunz (1794–1886), a match made in scholarly heaven. Schorsch's qualifications to undertake this biography are unimpeachable. With such a copious amount of material presented, one could read only the quoted sources and emerge with a clear picture of Zunz's world. Sketches of Zunz by some formidable scholars have preceded this study: Solomon Schechter, Michael Meyer, and Nahum Glatzer. Schorsch himself has dealt with Zunz before on many occasions. Until now, however, nobody has amassed all the sources, published and archival, to construct an edifice like this. We have before us the definitive Zunz biography; another one is unlikely. Schorsch takes some strong stands: Zunz's commitment to a scholarly approach to his material knew no bounds. His politics were consistently progressive. His willingness to clash in the small republic of letters with colleagues such as Abraham Geiger or Heinrich Graetz reflected a combative nature. His advocacy of circumcision, tefillin, kashrut, and Sabbath observance did not equate to a blanket opposition to religious reform. His fight against numerous Christian scholarly misrepresentations of Judaica was unrelenting. On every point of scholarship, and there are many, Schorsch displays mastery not only of Zunz's perspective, but also that of his collaborators and, more often, opponents. The cast of characters in this book is dauntingly large. With sincere respect for Schorsch's achievement, this is not a thesis-driven book. Scholars of Wissenschaft des Judentums and German Jewry will benefit greatly from this volume; the general reader may get lost in the thickets. [End Page 479] Schorsch evokes Zunz's truly miserable childhood. Given up for adoption after the premature death of his father, only Samuel Ehrenberg's intervention on behalf of the thirteen-year-old Zunz allowed him to attain a decent public-school education and step into the German university. Zunz's "fraternity" was the famed Society for the Culture and Critical Study of the Jews, founded in 1819, which exerted a lifelong influence. Years later, he and his wife Adelheid would visit the dying Heinrich Heine, and while he and Eduard Gans disagreed on many matters, Zunz did not consider Gans's apostasy as a betrayal; Zunz himself considered and rejected this dicey escape route. By the time Zunz left the university, he was a master of contemporary scholarship. Like most of the founders of Wissenschaft des Judentums, Zunz believed a university professorial chair in Judaism was a desideratum—and that he should occupy it. His early efforts—the extraordinary Etwas über rabbinische Literatur (1818) and the less programmatic, but methodologically exciting "Rashi" essay (1822)—ought to have insured this result, but Germany remained, for the rest of Zunz's lifetime, resistant to the idea of university-level Jewish scholarship. Why did Zunz begin with rabbinic rather than biblical material? The answer seems deceptively simple: the Protestant academy had already taken up the Bible as a subject of inquiry. Chapter 4 deals with Zunz's break with radical religious reform. The following citation gives a sense of Zunz's openness to Fränkel-style innovations: Some very desirable reforms such as the organ, the confirmation of girls, and doing away with the repetition of the silent devotion should be introduced gradually to avoid dissension and fragmentation. Among the reforms that are truly needed Zunz stipulated the confirmation for boys, a wedding address, sermons, hymns, the recitation of the Haftarah (the weekly reading from the Prophets) and the Psalms in the vernacular, a selective use of the penitential prayers (selichot) and poems of lamentation (kinot), the dropping of the Kol Nidre and kabbalistic accretions, the elimination of most of the piyyutim for the festivals, and the restoration of the dignity of the worship service by ending all customs that disrupt it such as the jeering on Purim at the sound of Haman's name, the sale of honors in the synagogue and calling up congregants to the reading of the Torah. (129) Chapter 5...

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