Download Modernity as a Crisis for the Jews Michael A. Meyer Modern

Modernity as a Crisis for the Jews
Michael A. Meyer
Modern Judaism, Vol. 9, No. 2. (May, 1989), pp. 151-164.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0276-1114%28198905%299%3A2%3C151%3AMAACFT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3
Modern Judaism is currently published by Oxford University Press.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained
prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in
the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/journals/oup.html.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For
more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
http://www.jstor.org
Sat May 26 05:53:09 2007
Michael A. Meyer
MODERNITY AS A CRISIS FOR T H E JEWS*
I n popular consciousness Jews have become the very symbols of modernity. Although Spinoza was a heretic? Marx baptized a Christian at
the age of six, and Freud the underminer of all transcendent faith, in the
popular mind these shapers of modernity continue to be regarded as
Jews. with apologists and critics alike ever and again seeking to link their
modernity to their Jewish origins. More generally, affirmers of modernity
have lauded the presence of Jews in the vanguard of intellectual innovation, while political movements of the extreme Left and Right have held
Jews collectively responsible for fostering values that destroyed the
medieval consensus and substituted a society of alienated individuals for
an earlier harmonious community. Yet if indeed the Jews were instrumental in advancing critical thought and in the propagation of a capitalist
ethos-a role much exaggerated by both their friends and their enemies
-it is surely an irony that for the Jews themselves modernity initially
presented such severe problems. Especially did it pose a crisis for the
Jewish religion whose God (pace Karl Marx) was not "merely an illusory
bill of exchange." Modernity. as the Jews of western and central Europe
first encountered it in the eighteenth century. was seductive. for it seemed
to offer liberation from political disabilities and from intellectual isolation. In their enthusiasm some Jews saw it not merely as the dawning of a
new age, but greeted it with something approaching messianic enthusiasm. That it would also severely call into question the viability of Judaism
and undermine Jewish solidarity was an outcome that a few Jews welcomed, others resisted, and many greeted with deep-seated ambivalence.
My intent in this study is to analyze the nature of the challenge that
modernity posed for the Jews, and especially for their religion, in the
period when they first encountered it. What effects did that encounter
have? How did Jewish thinkers attempt to reconcile Judaism and modernity? The undertaking is complicated by the shifting conceptual
framework in which modernity presented itself to the Jews. While in its
Enlightenment form it called forth one set of responses, post-Enlighten'This essay was delivered as a paper at a conference on "Jews,Christians, and Modernity"
organized by the American Jewish Committee and the Harvard Divinity School in Nove~ilber
1988.
152
Michael A. Meyer
ment thought produced a different confrontation and outcome. Indeed!
the divisions in modern Judaism during the last 150 years reflect an
ongoing rivalry between the two responses.
The concept "modernity" is employed in such different fashion by
various writers that my particular use of it requires explanation at the
outset. The basic division in usage seems to lie between those who take it
only as a temporal category and those who regard it as possessing a
particular content. For the former it simply designates the most recent
period of history. They take the word's etymology seriously and define it
relatively as "now" in opposition to "then."' While the modern period at
its inception thus marks a break with the preceding epoch? it remains
openended in relation to the present. and "post-modernity" becomes a
contradictory concept. The latter. in seeking an essence of modernity.
have focused on a range of phenomena that made their appearance anywhere from the Renaissance until well into the nineteenth century. These
phenomena not only mark a rupture with the past, but constitute a new
way of viewing the world. There is, of course. no agreement on which
elements of this modern Weltanschauung are decisive. and I suspect it is
an irresolvable issue.2 Depending on one's angle of vision, the catalogue
may be headed by scientific empiricism, humanism, relativism, secularism,
pluralism, the instrumental use of reason! historical criticism. o r the ascription of authority to individual conscience-to name but a few of the
actual choices. Clearly all of these elements also had their impact on
Judaism, as they did on Christianity. But my interest here is less in the
problems that modernity posed for Western religion in general than in
its particular influence on Judaism. Hence I shall focus on those characteristics of modernity that affected the Jewish religion more decisively,
or in a differentiated manner, than they did Christianity, with the intention of trying to reach an historical understanding of the specific ways
that modernity affected Jews and their particular religious responses to it.
On the most fundamental level it was political modernization in
central and western Europe that presented a crisis for Jewish religious
existence. Until modern times Jewish communities possessed the right to
conduct their own affairs in accordance with Jewish law. The state required little more than that the Jews pay the taxes levied on them and in
no way offend Christian sensibilities. It recognized the right of the
communities to discipline their own for religious breaches no less than
for civil ones. But the emerging modern centralized state, whether in
England. France or the various states of Germany, required the demolition of competing structures that impeded its direct authority. Thus the
political process that led to the emancipation of the Jews was characterized
as much by the breaking down of communal authority as by the liberation
from onerous restrictions. Even so backward a state as Poland had
Modernity as Crisis for Jews
153
attempted to assert greater direct authority over its Jews when it abolished
the representative Council of Four Lands in 1764; eighty years later
Tsarist Russia did away with Jewish self-government even locally when
it declared the Jewish kahal illegal. I n the West there was a steady erosion
of Jewish communal autonomy. German states in the eighteenth century
abolished or curtailed rabbinic juridical functions. In 1808 Napoleonic
France took over direct control of its Jewry by reorganizing Jewish life in
a consistory system under its own aegis. What remained in the wake of
this process were communities that lacked authority to impose the traditional way of life upon their members.
The most effective instrument of internal Jewish social control had
been the cherem, the ban. More severe in its economic and social effects
than an excommunication. threat of the cherem induced religious conformity, and when invoked. required painful and demeaning penance
before it could be lifted. In the eighteenth century states became increasingly reluctant to allow Jewish courts to apply this penalty. In a recently
studied case that caused a considerable stir in the early 1780s. Rabbi
Raphael Kohen of Altona (then controlled by Denmark) failed to coerce
a recalcitrant Jew, Samuel Marcus, to give up his fashionable wig and
grow a beard. Although Marcus was unsuccessful in attempting to remove
himself entirely from the rabbi's jurisdiction. promulgation of the cherem
was henceforth subject to government confirmation in Denmark and
therefore ceased to be a powerful threat. Kohen's view, expressed in a
sermon, that "the foundation of Torah and commandment was constructed upon coercion." no longer reflected empirical reality. Having
lost the ability to enforce their views. champions of the old ways could
resort only to the rhetoric of condemnation.3
The successful efforts of the modern state to constrict ecclesiastical
power were of course directed at Christian institutions 110 less than at
Jewish ones. Erastianism prevailed increasingly in the age of enlightened
despotism; church courts suffered no less than rabbinical ones. Frederick
the Great of Prussia viewed all religion with contempt, seeing it simply
as an agent of social control. and asserting the right of the state to interfere in church affairs. With ecclesiastical authority diminished?churches
became associations of likeminded persons that derived their influence
from individual a ~ s e n tStill.
. ~ they continued to enjoy state support and
to benefit from their close connection with secular rulership. Although
the church needed to transform itself organizationally and theologically
to meet the new conditions. Christian theology was ensconced in the universities and the role of Christianity in the modern nation state-while
its nature might be disputed-was never in widespread doubt.
The Jewish situation was far more serious because Jewish solidarity
had been constructed upon separation. When integration replaced separation! the implication was religious assimilation, not the bestowal of equal
status with Christianity in the life of state and society. Thus the breakdown
of rabbinical authority opened the way to increasing disregard of the
norms that had held the Jewish community together. Like Calvin's
Geneva, the medieval Jewish corporations had been theocracies, miniature and more limited continuations of the ancient theocracy of Israel.
But now the observance of Jewish law became a matter of individual
conscience, with the result that chaos replaced the earlier conformity.
Solidarity gave way to a variety of responses, as individual Jews drew
conflicting personal consequences from their new situation. Some continued undeterred in the old ways. But others rejected rabbinic Judaism
entirely, affirming only what they called "the pure faith of Moses." Still
others arbitrarily kept certain traditions-not necessarily the most important ones historically -while neglecting those that stood in the way of
economic or social advance. Children frequently conducted their religious lives very differently from their parents. Jewish practices in the
home became an embarrassment in the presence of strangers.5 By the
turn of the nineteenth century. the more radical Jewish exponents of
enlightenment regarded rabbis as almost wholly irrelevant. Deprived of
their authority. unwilling or unable to take on a new mediating role.
rabbis were reduced to making ritual decisions for those who would
bother to consult them. The observance of Jewish law. no longer recognized as binding by the state, had become a matter of individual choice.
T o those for whom Jewish ritual possessed no subjective meaning. conversion to Christianity became an attractive ~ p t i o n . ~
As more and more Jews withdrew themselves from the moral authority
of traditional Judaism and absorbed values from the surrounding world,
they perceived their heritage - to use a contemporary image - as "a
mummy" whose wrapping was unravelling. The well-preserved body
inside would crumble into dust as it was increasingly exposed to the light
of day. Universalism, it seemed. was incompatible with Jewish particularity. "Judaism necessarily ceases when the people begins to lose and
forget its consciousness of itself as the people of God," wrote Moses
Moser in 1824. "From thence there is no other religion but the world
religion, as Christ and Mohammed attest."'
For Christianity the confrontation with modernity was more gradual
because it had all along been in contact with the world that was modernizing.
For Judaism the exposure was almost sudden, unleashing energies whose
direction was by no means clear at the time. As the historian Isaac Marcus
Jost recalled from his own youth at the beginning of the nineteenth
century. for the young men who streamed to Berlin a new day had
dawned, arousing them as if from slumber and turning them to activity
whereby, in the course of a generation. they hastened through whole
~enturies.~
Modernity as Crisis for Jews
155
It was not, however, state interference alone that shattered the Jewish
religious consensus and factionalized Jewish communities. Part of the
responsibility lay with the attraction of the ideal of tolerance, which
because of its special significance for the Jews became the most alluring
facet of modernity. Modernizing Jews could justify departure from traditional Jewish norms? once that became legally possible, by reference to
the soon internalized value of tolerance for diverse religious opinions. It
was the prospect of their increased tolerance by Christians that drew
Jews to identify with the non-Jewish world and, of course, to hope for
their social and political integration. But for enlightened Jews? consistency required an internal Jewish tolerance as well. T h e most prominent figure to advocate such tolerance actively was Moses Mendelssohn,
the father of Jewish enlightenment in the eighteenth century. His position
on the subject was extreme. John Locke, who greatly influenced Mendelssohn. had written of the church as "a free and voluntary society" which
may not use force to obtain the obedience of its adherents. But Locke did
allow for excommunication as long as it would "carry with it no rough
usage of word or action whereby the ejected person may in any wise be
damnified in body or estate."g Still a century later the Christian advocate
of ameliorating the Jews' political status, Christian Wilhelm Dohm, did
not object to the continuation of ecclesiastical discipline among the Jews
even under conditions of political integration.10 But Mendelssohn rejected such coercion as wholly out of keeping with the properly understood character of religion. "True divine religion," he wrote, "requires
the use of neither arms nor fingers; it is pure spirit and heart." H e labelled
church discipline, whether among Jews or Christians. a "pernicious prerogative" inappropriate for devotees of a God "who, as we all acknowledge. is love itself."ll Mendelssohn's view had doubtless been influenced
by the ban leveled against Spinoza in Amsterdam and likely also by the
intolerance contemporary rabbis exhibited with regard to his own work.
I t is more difficult to determine whether Mendelssohn foresaw its consequences. For advocacy of a tolerant Judaism as the true Judaism gave
internal sanction to the external pressures from the centralized state.
Judaism became a private matter between the individual and God,
following the lead of Protestantism in this regard. The Jewish polity
became more similar to a church. Liberated from institutional control
and subjectivized. Judaism entered the modern world without clear norms
and uncertain of its future.
Given the Jews' precipitous plunge into modernity, it is not surprising
that they should have looked, sometimes furtively, to their environment
for cues and models. Initially, these came from the German Aufklarung.
Leibniz and Christian Wolff provided the Mendelssohn circle with a
rationalism open to religion that was as attractive to them as it was to
156
Michael A. Meyer
enlightened Christians. Mendelssohn became a lifelong Wolffian, virtually impervious to the critique leveled by the Spataufklarung and romanticism against the earlier metaphysics. Religious rationalism of the
type developed by the German neologists was especially attractive to
Jews emerging into non-Jewish society. It set aside the conceptions of
original sin and divine grace that constituted doctrinal barriers between
Christianity and Judaism. Through its espousal of natural religion, it
provided a common religious basis for Jew and gentile. The existence of
God, providence, and immortality were eternal truths available to all
humans. Revelation. a divisive source of truth, was not necessary for
salvation. I t simply supplemented, illustrated, and dramatized what
unaided reason could also attain.
Yet almost without exception even the most enlightened Christian
theologians and intellectuals were unwilling to allow that Judaism could.
like Christianity. be transformed into a fully rational?and hence modern
faith. They could draw upon rich veins of anti-Jewish literature located
not only in works of the old polemical tradition. but also in the writings
of prominent deists, who almost invariably declared Judaism incorrigibly
primitive, incapable of either rationalization o r tolerance. In Germany
such views were taken up by Michaelis, Reimarus, Spalding and others."
For Herder the Jewish religion, and therefore also the people obedient
to its laws, belonged to Palestine, less to Europe than to Asia.13 As
Reinhart Koselleck has pointed out. the Enlightenment in general and
even its culminating figure. Immanuel Kant, favored toleration in the
realm of ideas, but it possessed little toleration for divergent religions.
Put bluntly. the Enlightenment was not pluralistic.'J It sought to build a
new order on the ruins of the old.
The crisis for the Jews. then. was the widespread view that modernity
in the present. like Christianity in the past. required of the Jews some
form of conversion. Unlike Christianity itself, which could be made
rational and allow the right of individual conscience. Judaism could not.
It was irreconcilable with the values of the Enlightenment. Judaism was
by nature a religion of the medieval ghetto. It could not be tolerant. Had
the Jews not driven out Spinoza? I t could not be rational. Had not vast
numbers of Jews only three generations earlier gullibly put their faith in
the messianic pretensions of Shabbetai Zevi? Even in the eighteenth
century some Jews continued to use Sabbatian amulets.
Mendelssohn's response to this dilemma was audacious. H e sought
to reconceive Judaism in such a way that it was intellectually more. not
less. in accord with Enlightenment standards than was Christianity. Ignoring those elements in Jewish tradition that favored a mystical understanding of God. Mendelssohn stressed that the doctrinal content of
Judaism did not extend beyond the limits of natural religion. Unlike
Christianity, Judaism possessed no superrational dogmas. Moreover, it
was more tolerant than Christianity. While the latter was ever concerned
Modernity as Crisis for Jews
157
to save souls from outside its ranks-as Lavater and others had ardently
hoped for the salvation of Mendelssohn's own soul through conversion
-Judaism held to the tenet that "the righteous of all nations have a share
in the world to come." Mendelssohn was thus turning conventional
wisdom on its head. H e was arguing that inherently Judaism was not less
capable of viability in the context of modernity than was Christianity; on
the contrary. it was more so. Of course to avoid goring himself on the
universalist (and deist) horn of the dilemma. Mendelssohn had to allow
for Jewish particularism and for revelation. And, as is well known. he did
so by declaring that Jewish law, not dogma, was the essence of the Sinaitic
theophany. That law remained binding on all Jews. though its observance
was not necessary for the salvation of those outside their ranks.
The Mendelssohnian bifurcation of Judaism to make it both enlightened religion par excellence and a particular response to God's will
by keeping the law became paradigmatic for a certain ongoing kind of
Jewish modernism. While. as we shall see. Mendelssohn's solution proved
inadequate for most modern Jews, it became a model for those who
would in the nineteenth century call themselves Neo-Orthodox or
Modern Orthodox. The i~ltellectualprogenitor of Neo-Orthodoxy was
Samson Raphael Hirsch, a rabbi of the new kind, secularly educated
and playing a role more analogous to the Christian clergyman. but no
less committed to scrupulous observance of Jewish law than was Mendelssohn. Though Hirsch lived two generations after Mendelssohn. in a very
different German intellectual context. he. more than any other major
figure. represents the continuation of Mendelssohn's legacy. For Hirsch.
just as for Mendelssohn. Judaism was "eternal," by which Hirsch meant
that its religious truths and its laws were not subject to historical vicissitude. The norms of Judaism, emanating from revelation, stood above
history. judging the world but not judged by it. What made Hirsch a
latter-day Mendelssohnian, rather than simply an Orthodox Jew, was
that he too adopted a bifurcation in Jewish identity. though its lines ran
somewhat differently. For Hirsch. as for Mendelssohn. Judaism was a
rational religion, without dogmas. without mystical fantasies. For him.
too. God singled out the Jews by giving them an immutable law! not by
constricting their reason with dogma. But Hirsch laid out the Jewish and
general realms more broadly: on the one hand there was Torah, encompassing the totality of revelation, Written and Oral Law; on the other,
there were the norms of the modern world in all areas of life. While
Torah was the dominant category, it did not restrict freedom of thought
or, except where ritual law would be violated, full participation in nonJewish culture and society.
For Hirsch. then, as for Mendelssohn, modernity did not necessitate
recognition of the impact of historical change upon religious faith and
practice. Well into the nineteenth century Hirsch could ignore historicism,
basing his theology on the transcendent God who entered history in
revelation, yet remained apart from it. But as the earlier Enlightenment
thought reached the end of its tether with the Kantian critique and the
assault of romanticism. the way was opened for a new conception of
religious modernity, one that separated itself from tradition precisely in
its recognition that religious truths were not transhistorical. that they
were conditioned -or at least their understanding was conditioned -by
the historical experience of particular peoples and of humanity as a
whole. On the intellectual side. the failure of the Mendelssohnian model
of Jewish modernity to be passed on to a broader segment of German
Jewry than the modern Orthodox lay in large measure with the two
important figures in whose work the Aufklarung culminated and went
beyond itself. Both Kant and Lessing were venerated by modern Jews.
yet each of them independently undermined the Mendelssohnian solution.
Ironically. there is no modern philosopher who influenced Jewish
thinkers more than did Immanuel IZant. From Solomon Ludwig Steinheim in the early nineteenth century through Hermann Cohen toward
its end. and on to Leo Baeck in the twentieth century. the Kantian imperative was equated with the call to moral responsibility in the Hebrew
Bible. Jews were among the earliest disciples of Kant and Jews continued
to uphold his basic principles even when other philosophies were more
fashionable. Yet Kant himself failed to recognize the possibility of a
modern Judaism. Adopting Mendelssohn's view that Judaism was differentiated by its law and focused upon its observance, he declared
Judaism for that reason a non-religion and looked forward to its rapid
demise.15 Like the other Enlightenment figures. Kant too was not a
religious pluralist. H e offered his philosophical religion as the exclusive
basis for religious unity. Enlightened Jews who were persuaded by Kant
drew the consequence that the Kantian religion of morality had in fact
made Judaism anachronistic. If Judaism was law and legalism. if Christianity transformed and purified through Kantian philosophy had taken
over the moral seriousness of Jewish tradition, then Judaism remained
an empty shell. Some Jews toward the end of the eighteenth century.
having lost personal attachment to observance of the law. drew the proper
conclusion and became Kantians within the socially more acceptable
Christian framework. Those Jews who drew Kant into a Jewish framework
were faced with the task of appropriating a heritage not intended for
such disposition. At their hands Kantianism became an aspect of Jewish
modernity in spite of IZant.16
The double role played by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in bringing
Jews into modernity is especially poignant. His rather threadbare early
play. Die Juden, dramatized the issue of Jewish moral acceptability. It
argued that. despite popular prejudice, virtuous Jews who remained
Modernity as Crisis for Jews
159
Jews were possible. Almost thirty years later, in Nathan the Wise, Lessing
created a well developed character who, though a medieval Jew. was in
his worldview a man of the Enlightenment in the best sense. For German
Jews from the eighteenth century through the dark 1930s Lessing remained the embodiment of the noble German -precisely because he had
found nobility even and especially in the Jew. Nathan's tolerance and
highmindedness became for them the fictionalized ideal of their own
Jewish modernity. even as Mendelssohn served as their historical model."
But Lessing also wrote The Education of Humanity, a work that wholly
undermined the Mendelssohnian solution. By equating revelation with
education, Lessing deprived it of the eternality insisted upon both by
Mendelssohn in the eighteenth century and later by Hirsch in the nineteenth. Concepts of God. Lessing argued in 1780. evolved with the
spiritual evolution of the human race. Ancient Israel was a primitive
people incapable, for example, of rising to so exalted a conception as the
immortality of the soul. Only under the influence of "purer Persian doctrine" were the Jews able to recognize a universal God in their national
deity. And only under the influence of "a better pedagogue." Christ, was
the religious evolution of humanity able to advance to recognition of the
soul's immortality.18
Lessing. the paragon of Enlightenment tolerance, thus gave a modern
cast to the older doctrine of the Christian supersession of Judaism. With
abundant variations. other thinkers. from Hegel to Toynbee. would later
imply or declare the anachronism of Jewish survival into the modern
world. A fossil might be preserved in the airless darkness of the ghetto.
but? like the mummy mentioned earlier?it now belonged in a museum.
Mendelssohn, of course. possessed little sympathy or understanding
for either the critical work of Kant or the historicization of religion set
forth by Lessing. They represented new challenges that Mendelssohn.
late in his life, was not prepared to meet. He held on to his established
views in spite of them. Others tried to come to terms with Kant by rejecting the Mendelssohnian notion that Judaism was essentially the law.
Some early Jewish Kantians severed Judaism from the Mosaism, purged
of the ceremonial law, to which they themselves adhered. But that
provided no specifically Jewish norms. Saul Ascher, a later Enlightenment Jewish thinker? attempted to overcome the Mendelssohnian bifurcation by arbitrarily selecting certain Jewish observances as binding. while
others might fall into neglect. But his abstruse writing had little contemporary impact.
The burden of historicism was not easily borne. Like the Aufklarung.
it was blessing and curse together. Politically, recognition of the influence
of history worked to the benefit of the Jews. Gentile and Jewish proponents of emancipation argued that all of the "faults" attributed to the
Jews could be ascribed to the historical role they had been forced to
160
Michael A. Meyer
assume at the periphery of Christian society. If they were avaricious and
petty. that was because they had been forced into moneylending and
pawnbroking, occupations that had shaped their characters in particular
ways. Their undesirable traits were neither inherent nor the products of
their religion. They were simply the result of their unfortunate historical
experience. Freedom of opportunity would change them for the better.19
Yet applied to their religion! the same historical thinking forced the
conclusion that it was no more appropriate for Jews any longer to remain
adherents of Judaism than it was for them to remain predominantly
petty entrepreneurs (rather than farmers, artisans, and professionals).
The initial impact of such thought in its Hegelian form is most evident in
the history of a small circle of Jewish intellectuals founded in Berlin in
1819. Their Society for Culture and Scientific Study of the Jews was a
conscious effort to preserve Judaism by bringing its investigation into
the orbit of German Wissenschaft. Their broad orientation enabled some
of them to recognize in Judaism an ethnic as well as a religious foundation. But lack of community support and their own ambivalence caused
the society to collapse after five years. Deeply influenced by Hegel, its
president. Eduard Gans. had sought to reconcile Hegelianism with
Judaism. But to do so meant to act directly against the Hegelian view of
Judaism as no more than a stage in the history of the Absolute Spirit that
had long since been left behind. Although the practical motivation of
Gans's conversion to Christianity in 1825 was to obtain a professorship at
the University of Berlin. he could justify his act by the argument that
Judaism's contribution to civilization had already been absorbed. T o
continue as a Jew was to ignore dialectical progress.
As the nature of modernity shifted from rationalism and toleration
to historicism. the nature of the crisis that it represented for the Jews
shifted as well. Now the issue was no longer whether Judaism was inherently capable of religious rationality and broadmindedness. but
whether it had not stagnated two thousand years ago and any change now
was a rupture rather than a continuation of the process of evolution. Was
it inherently capable of development? Could it be shown, on the basis of
its own tradition, that Judaism had responded creatively to external
challenges in the past and that modernity therefore simply represented a
new encounter, not a crisis without precedent?
It is as an attempt to deal with this second stage of modernity that we
can best understand the rise of a new interpretation of the Jewish religion
called "historical Judaism."20 First appearing in Germany in the second
third of the nineteenth century. it quickly gained the religious center.
with both more orthodox and more radical positions remaining nonhistorical. For not only. as noted above, did modern Orthodoxy persist
in declaring that revelation remained untouched by political change and
Modernity as Crisis for Jews
161
intellectual progress. but the religious radicals. ironically. assumed a
similar stance. Their most prominent spokesman was Samuel Holdheim.
rabbi of the Reformgemeinde in Berlin. His religious position gave
nearly the same normative status to the Zeitgeist that Hirsch attributed
to the revelation at Sinai. For Holdheim the present did indeed require a
rupture with traditional Judaism. and he held u p to ridicule attempts to
read modernity into the Jewish past. The Reform Judaism that he espoused was fundamentally different from earlier Judaisms. and he made
no attempt to conceal that fact. 111 instituting a Sunday service and rojecting Jewish law entirely. the Reformgemeinde of Berlin broke consciously and deliberately with the Jewish past. Modernity. to the minds
of its rabbis and congregants. required a Judaism fundamentally different
from what Judaism had been in earlier times.
Hirsch and Holdheim represented the touching extremes of Jewish
religious modernization. each rejecting an evolutionary model because
he was able to find a sufficient norm in a single point of time, whether at
Sinai. as for Hirsch. or in the present. as for Holdheim. However. by the
end of the nineteenth century these two positions reflected the views of
small minorities within German Jewry. Neo-Orthodox and Radical
Reform Judaism alike existed organizationally separate from the Gemeinde, which embraced the broad center. both Conservative and Liberal.
I t was from this center that the characteristic rewish response to the
second stage of modernity emerged. Like Lessing. this new response
replaced static reason with dynamic reason.21
Two thinkers were the most prominent exponents of the newly conceived "historical Judaism." the one a Conservative. the other a Liberal.
Both were traditionally educated rabbis and university-trained scholars.
Both were deeply influenced by the scholarly program of Wissenschaft
des Judentums and sought to integrate its results into their understanding
of the nature of Judaism. Most importantly. both attempted to present
Judaism as a faith that developed out of its own inner dynamic? responding to changes in its environment without sacrificing its essence.
Born in Prague. Zacharias Frankel served for a number of years as
rabbi of the Jewish community in Dresden before becoming the head of
the first modern rabbinical seminary in Germany. in Breslau. in 1854. A
conservative religious reformer. Frankel opposed all but minor changes
in the liturgy and championed the continued use of Hebrew in worship.
H e discountenanced Pentateuch criticism and followed tradition in his
insistence that Jewish law, halakhah, was the still firm foundation of
Judaism. What set Frankel clearly apart from Orthodoxy was his rejection
of the notion that Judaism in its entirety. Written and Oral Law. had
been delivered to Moses at Sinai. Jewish law? Frankel insisted, was responsive to the successive historical circumstances in which Jews had
lived. T h e ancient Rabbis had shaped and reshaped it to fit changing
conditions. Thus Judaism was not at all eternal. in the sense of Mendelssohn and Hirsch, but to a considerable degree the product of its own
history. That history, moreover. did not end with the birth of Christianity.
And modernity, far from representing an unprecedented situation for
Judaism. simply required the reactivation of such modes of adjustment
as Judaism had employed when faced by similarly novel historical circumstances in the past. As a Conservative? Frankel thought it wrong to
tamper with practices still held dear. and he remained somewhat suspicious of the contemporary Zeitgeist. But in his conception of Jewish
law as flexible and adaptive. he created a basis for continuity and made
modernity seem more manageable.
Abraham Geiger, the Liberal. was a far more turbulent spirit than
Frankel. I n his youth he was uncertain whether the rupture of Jewish
tradition was not indeed a necessary consequence of the confrontation
with modernity. For a time he was persuaded that Judaism could survive
only through schism. those Jews who had absorbed the values of modernity separating themselves from their fellow Jews who remained mired
in medievalism. As a scholar. Geiger was more radical than Frankel.
While he too noted how Jewish law had adapted to its environment.
Geiger went further, pointing out how later interpreters of the tradition
had not only modified the law but misunderstood earlier texts. Moreover.
he did not draw the line of historical criticism at the Pentateuch. For
Geiger the Torah too was a product of its history. though it contained
divine revelation. Unlike Frankel, Geiger did not make the law the unit
of historical continuity. For the law, to Geiger's mind. would not necessarily
survive the onslaught of modernity. What would survive was the prophetic
conception of God and morality. Ethical monotheism. Geiger argued.
along with other Jewish religious reformers, was the core. preserved
intact by husks of law and custom. I t was grounded both in revelation
and in the religious genius of the Jewish people. T o Geiger's mind, this
narrower conception of Judaism. in which theology and morality. rather
than the law. became central. assured its viability. For theology and
morality were the categories of contemporary individualistic religion
that, since I<ant, eschewed heteronomy as unworthy of modern man.
However. if Geiger and others who thought similarly had simply
reconceived Judaism to make it more like Christianity, it would not have
met the particular challenge that modernity represented for Judaism as a
minority faith.22 I n Germany the adherents of a Judaism which they
might regard as no less modern than Christianity still suffered the consequences of social discrimination or worse. Whatever the Jews' own
views. German thinkers into the twentieth century persisted in regarding
Judaism as religiously inferior to Christianity. From Mendelssohn onward. therefore. Jewish writers were driven to stronger assertions than
the mere compatibility of Judaism with modernity. They insisted that
163
Modernity as Crisis for Jews
Judaism, more than Christianity. was in harmony with the ideals of the
modern age, and they argued that it was the more likely to survive into
the future. It is in this context that we must understand the popularity of
a modern notion called the "mission of Israel," which insists upon
Judaism's vocation to bring its "purer" conceptions of God and morality
to the non-Jew. While this doctrine, as it has usually been expressed.
does not imply proselytization, it does imply that Judaism exists not only
on account of its value for those born as Jews. It suggests that Judaism is
not only a modern religion whose historical development has not ceased,
but that it is inherently capable of becoming a model of modern religion
for humanity. It is not surprising that German antisemites attacked this
particular doctrine as the acme of Jewish arrogance. Yet it struck roots
also in American Jewry and remained unchallenged until after World
War 11. It was, in effect, the doctrine of the election of Israel turned
outward to a universal goal. It was also the sword with which Judaism
defended itself against the new form of Christian supersession.
HEBREW UNION COLLEGE-CINCINNATI
NOTES
1. Charles Whitney, Francis Bacon and Modernity (New Haven, 1986),p. 8.
2. Some recent views: Jurgen Habermas, "Modernity versus Postmodernity,"
New German Critique, No. 22 (Winter 1981), pp. 3-14; Michel Foucault, "What is
Enlightenment?" (1984), in Paul Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader (New York,
1984), pp. 39-50; and Lawrence E. Cahoone, The Dilemma ofModernity: Philosophy,
Culture, and Anti-Culture (Albany, 1988),pp. 1-31.
3. This account of the case is based on Jacob Katz, "Rabbi Raphael Kohen, the
Adversary of Moses Mendelssohn", Tarbiz, Vol. 56 (1987), pp. 243-64 [Hebrew].
4. Gerald R. Cragg, The Church and the Age of Reason, 1648-1789 (Grand Rapids,
1964), pp. 12, 95-97; Reinhart Koselleck, "Aufklarung und die Grenzen ihrer
Toleranz," in Trutz Rendtorff (ed.),Glaube und Toleranz: Das theologtiche Erbe der
Aufkliirung (Giitersloh, 1982),pp. 256-58.
5. Michael A. Meyer, "The Orthodox and the Enlightened: An Unpublished
Contemporary Analysis of Berlin Jewry's Spiritual Condition in the Early Nineteenth Century," Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, Vol. 25 (1980), pp. 101-30;
G. Schnapper-Arndt, "Jugendarbeiten Ludwig Borne's iiber judische Dinge."
Zeitschrift fiir die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland, O.S., Vol. 2 (1888), p. 379.
6. Michael A. Meyer, The Ori@ns of the Modern Jew: Jewish Identity and European Culture in Germany, 1749-1824(Detroit, 1967),pp. 85-114; Jacob Katz, Out of the
Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770-1870 (Cambridge, Mass.,
1973), pp. 104-123.
7. Adolf Strodtmann, H . Heine's Leben und Werke (Hamburg, 18843), Vol. I,
p. 326.
164
Michael A. Meyer
8. [Wilhelm] Friedenthal, "Dr. I. M. Jost: Eine biographische Skizze," Jahrbuch
fur Israeliten, Vol. 19 (1861),p. 152 note.
9. John Locke, Treatise of Civil Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration,
ed. Charles L. Sherman (New York, 1937),pp. 175, 179.
10. Christian Wilhelm Dohm, Ueber die burgerliche Verbesserung der Juden,
2 Vols. (Berlin and Stettin, 1981-83),Vol. I, p. 124.
11. Manasseh Ben Israel, Rettung der,Juden . . . Nebst einer Vorrede won Moses
Mendelssohn (Berlin and Stettin, 1782),pp. xxxvi, 1-li.
12. Shmuel Ettinger, "Jews and Judaism in the Eyes of the English Deists in
the Eighteenth Century," Zion, Vol. 29 (1964), pp. 182-207 [Hebrew]; Alexander
Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study (University, Ala., 1973),
pp. 202-203, 492; Katz, Out ofthe Ghetto, pp. 80-103.
13. Johann Gottfried Herder's samtliche Werke: Zur Philosophie und Geschichte, X
(Tiibingen, 1809),pp. 105-106.
14. Kosellek, "Aufklarung und die Grenzen ihrer Toleranz," pp. 269-71.
15. Nathan Kotenstreich, The Recurrent Pattern: Studies in Anti-Judaism in Modern
Thought (London, 1963),pp. 23-47.
16. Within the great wealth of Kantian influences on Jewish writers that have
been noted, it has remained unnoticed, I believe, that Abraham Geiger's essay,
"Die zwei verschiedenen Betrachtungsweisen. Der Schriftsteller und der Kabbiner," Wissenschaftliche Zeitung fur jiidische Theologie, Vol. 4 (1839), pp. 321-33
follows the distinction between scholar and priest laid down by Kant in his
famous essay "Was ist Aufklarung?"
17. This is perhaps best evident in the Lessing-Mendelssohn Gedenkbuch. Zur
hundert/iinfiigy'iihngen Geburtsfeier von Gotthold Ephraim Lessing und Moses Mendelssohn, sowie zur Siicularfeier won Lessing's "~X'athan"(Leipzig, 1879).
18. See especially Paragraphs 16,26, 27, 38-40, 50-53.
19. Hannah Arendt-Stern, "Aufklarung und Judenfrage," Zeitschrifi fur die
Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland, n.s., Vol. 4 (1932),pp. 65-77.
20. Part of the following is based on my Response to Modernity: A History of the
Reform Movement in,Judaism (New York, 1988),pp. 62-99.
21. These terms are from Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment
(Boston, 1951),p. 195.
22. In 1833 the young Geiger wrote in a letter: "Furthermore, Judaism as the
religion of a minority must contain a far more powerful content [than Christianity]
since any exclusiveness-though it be purely religious-must always have its
special justification in turning me away from the majority, which is, after all,
everywhere regarded as embodying the norm of human truth.. . . [The Jew] must
more adequately support his religious conviction precisely because he differs
from the majority. If he does not do that and cannot do it, he is asserting that
[Judaism] is a moribund residue of former times whose dissolution has only been
delayed." Ludwig Geiger, "Abraham Geigers Briefe an J. Dbrenbourg (1833-42),"
Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, Vol. 60 (1896),p. 104.
http://www.jstor.org
LINKED CITATIONS
- Page 1 of 1 -
You have printed the following article:
Modernity as a Crisis for the Jews
Michael A. Meyer
Modern Judaism, Vol. 9, No. 2. (May, 1989), pp. 151-164.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0276-1114%28198905%299%3A2%3C151%3AMAACFT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3
This article references the following linked citations. If you are trying to access articles from an
off-campus location, you may be required to first logon via your library web site to access JSTOR. Please
visit your library's website or contact a librarian to learn about options for remote access to JSTOR.
Notes
2
Modernity versus Postmodernity
Jürgen Habermas; Seyla Ben-Habib
New German Critique, No. 22, Special Issue on Modernism. (Winter, 1981), pp. 3-14.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0094-033X%28198124%290%3A22%3C3%3AMVP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J
NOTE: The reference numbering from the original has been maintained in this citation list.