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Concept
Wissenschaft des Judentums
Summary
"Wissenschaft des Judentums" (literally in German the expression means "Science of Judaism"; more recently in the United States it started to be rendered as "Jewish Studies" or "Judaic Studies," a wide academic field of inquiry in American universities) refers to a nineteenth-century movement premised on the critical investigation of Jewish literature and culture, including rabbinic literature, 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 Jewish Studies), 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 Jewish Studies) of 1822, has such ideas in mind. Its principal objective, as it was then defined in the Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (1822), was the study of Judaism by subjecting it to criticism and modern methods of research.
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).
Official source
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