Orthodox strategies in the research of the Wissenschaft des Judentums

Abstract

AbstractThis article deals with the attempts of Orthodox scholars, at the end of the nineteenth and the first third of the twentieth century, to create an Orthodox alternative to the Wissenschaft des Judentums (‘Science of Judaism’). On the one hand, those “experiments” clearly differed from their non-Orthodox equivalents, and on the other from the (un-researched) Orthodox historiography, which was created to serve as an alternative to existing Wissenschaft des Judentums investigations. The Orthodox scholars competed with the basic values and methods of research which challenged traditional concepts of the past, such as objectivity and historicism, and developed research strategies that allowed them to hold on to their two objectives at the same time, i.e. both scientific research methods and traditional values.