Wissenschaft des Judentums

"Wissenschaft des Judentums" ("Jewish Studies" or "Judaic Studies" in German) refers to a nineteenth-century movement premised on the critical investigation of Jewish literature and culture, including rabbinic literature, using scientific methods to analyze the origins of Jewish traditions.

The first organized attempt at developing and disseminating Wissenschaft des Judentums was the Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden (Society for Jewish Culture and Science), founded around 1819 by Eduard Gans, (a pupil of Hegel), and his associates . Other members included Heinrich Heine, Leopold Zunz, Moses Moser, and Michael Beer, (youngest brother of Meyerbeer). It was an attempt to provide a construct for the Jews as a Volk or people in their own right, independent of their religious traditions. As such it sought to validate their secular cultural traditions as being on an equal footing with those adduced by Johann Gottfried Herder and his followers for the German people. Immanuel Wolf’s influential essay Über den Begriff einer Wissenschaft des Judentums (On the Concept of a Jewish Science) of 1822, has such ideas in mind. The failure of the Verein, attributable largely to the far greater attraction, amongst German Jews, of identification with German culture, was followed, significantly, by the conversion to Christianity of many of its leading figures, including Gans and Heine.

Despite the lack of success of the Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden, its principles inspired many Jewish thinkers to invest their efforts in a wider Wissenschaft des Judentums movement, and also provoked a conservative reaction (see Opposition). The historian Amos Elon, in his book The Pity of it All, places the movement in the context of anti-Semitic riots in Germany in 1819. The purpose, Elon writes, "was to bring ordinary Jews into the orbit of German Kultur and at the same time reinforce their Jewish identity by bridging the gulf between secular and religious education"; the movement sought to explore Judaism as "both secular civilization and religion", and thereby "help young Jews to remain Jews", even as they moved to a more secular view.

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