Abstract
According to a common narrative, Jews entered the modern world at a steep price. From an autonomous corporation, ruling themselves internally according to their own standards and law, Judaism became a “religion,” divested of political power and responsible only for the internal sphere of “faith” or belief. The failure of this project, in turn, gave rise to the sharp split between Jewish nationalism and religion-based conceptions of Judaism. Many modern Jewish thinkers sought to resolve this antinomy by imagining ways for Judaism to once again form the basis of a “complete life”. This essay seeks to challenge this narrative by examining the extent to which economics, another one of the “spheres” emerging together with modernity and often considered under the same broadly Weberian process of rationalization, ever truly formed part of the holistic, self-contained Jewish autonomous life for which modern thinkers expressed so much nostalgia. It will argue that rather than forming part of the internal world of Judaism and then being fragmented outward into a separate sphere under the pressure of modernity, the “economic sphere” was imagined and defined for the first time in modernity, and projected backwards into earlier eras. This projection was then taken as proof of Judaism’s ability to “be about everything,” whether in a religious or nationalist idiom.
Highlights
IntroductionAccording to a common narrative, Jews entered the modern world at a steep price: their former unity and integrity
Jews and Economies in Modern Jewish Thought and ScholarshipAccording to a common narrative, Jews entered the modern world at a steep price: their former unity and integrity
Jewish thinkers sought to resolve this antinomy, reunifying the separated spheres by imagining ways for Judaism to once again form the basis of a “complete life.”
Summary
According to a common narrative, Jews entered the modern world at a steep price: their former unity and integrity. Judaism and Jewishness were all these at once: religion, culture, and nationality.” The Rutgers series on Key Words in Jewish Studies has recently published books by Cynthia Baker and Daniel Boyarin, on the words Jew and Judaism, respectively, informing us of ways in which our current use of these terms is permeated by modern, Christian, and Protestant biases.. Judaism and Jewishness were all these at once: religion, culture, and nationality.” The Rutgers series on Key Words in Jewish Studies has recently published books by Cynthia Baker and Daniel Boyarin, on the words Jew and Judaism, respectively, informing us of ways in which our current use of these terms is permeated by modern, Christian, and Protestant biases.7 All of this is quite in line with trends across Religious. It is very easy to lose track of the heuristic function of such terms, and I would argue that in many cases this is what happened: the backwards projection of modern categories into the past has frequently been taken as proof—by both first-order, constructive philosophers and theologians as well as by second-order, descriptive scholars—of Judaism’s ability to “be about everything,” whether in a religious or nationalist idiom. My ultimate aim is to question the rationalization model itself, along with its accompanying historical narrative [wholeness → fragmentation]
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