The Science of Reform: Abraham Geiger and the Wissenschaft des Judentum

Abstract

In the nineteenth century, history emerged an academic discipline across Europe, especially in Germany. Historians, including historians of religion, tried to reconstruct the past as it really was, in Leopold von Ranke's famous statement, based on facts gleaned from the critical investigation of primary documents. Although the accomplishments of German historians in the nineteenth century were impressive, scholars today are well aware of the many ways in which historical scholarship was not a purely objective or scientific presentation of the past it really was. The historical study of religion done by Christian scholars clearly reflected the theological presuppositions of the authors, particularly in their negative portrayals of Judaism. Indeed, Christian scholars often used their historical reconstructions a way of advancing particular reforms in the teachings or institutional structures of their churches, and these reforms often had more or less explicit political implications well. The same was true for Jewish historians of religion in nineteenthcentury Germany. Like their Christian counterparts and often with even greater urgency, Jews debated the nature of their religious tradition and its place in modern life. Over the course of the century, legal restrictions on Jews in the German states were gradually eased, opening the door to a greater degree of assimilation than had previously been possible. Jews, therefore, had to determine what continued to be religiously obligatory, opposed to what had derived from their legal and social position in German society and could change that position improved.1 For scholars like Leopold Zunz