Leopold Zunz. Ismar Schorsch
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and its innumerable components. Bearing the technical name Statistik, such a composite had nothing to do with numbers, but rather with a snapshot of a present moment sociologically viewed as comprehensively as possible. If history faced the past, Statistik focused on a slice of time in the present, with documentary evidence being the building blocks of both. In the last of his three essays published in the ZWJ, Zunz validated the long term mission of the archive by co-opting the eighteenth-century German concept of Statistik into the embryonic field of Jewish studies. Bereft of a galvanizing state, Judaism would serve as the fulcrum that gave coherence to the totality of the Jewish experience. Ultimately, Jewish history consisted of a myriad of “statistically” studied moments; it would take scholars some eighty years to approach the sweep of Zunz’s vision of historical sociology.76
Zunz had first lectured on the nature of a Jewish form of Statistik in the Verein’s scholarly seminar, as had Wolf on his conception of what constitutes the field of Jewish studies. Both lectures subsequently appeared in the society’s journal, ten of whose sixteen essays had first been rolled out in the seminar. The overlap was intended, for the seminar’s bylaws drafted by Zunz (with thirty-five separate articles) stressed that Judaism was to be subjected to critical scholarship in a free and objective spirit. The seminar was to meet frequently and each member was obliged to regularly share his research. Even associate members living outside Berlin were expected to submit at least one paper every six months. The gravitas of its agenda inevitably constricted its membership. Of the twenty-five papers given over the course of forty-five sessions during the lifetime of the Verein, sixteen came from the seminar’s three founders—Moser, Gans, and Zunz.77 Thus the seminar served as the laboratory for testing and collaborating on research, which would eventually be distilled for publication in the journal. The intimate connection requires that these two arms of the Verein’s activities be treated together, though each had its own elaborate set of statutes.
If the school and archive were oriented toward the external state of the Jewish condition, the seminar and journal concentrated on its internal state. Not only did the high-minded rhetoric of the society concede at least partial Jewish responsibility for the deplorable condition of German Jewry, but it also granted the legitimacy of the government’s demand for the social homogeneity of all its citizens. Accordingly, the Verein espoused an agenda of total assimilation that would drastically shrink the scope of Judaism, eliminate all external differences, produce a radically altered rabbinic leadership, and return Judaism to its Mosaic foundation. In an age saturated with Hegelian idealism that believed ideas to be the engine of human events, the society invested in identifying and formulating the essential idea of Judaism as the centripetal force that would offset the centrifugal stress of total assimilation. Jewish singularity and influence historically were always to be found in the realm of ideas and values and not in the annals of statecraft or military prowess. Though Zalman Shazar (then Rubaschoff) when he republished Gans’s three presidential addresses in 1918–19 called them “the first fruits of dejudaization,” he knew full well that neither Gans nor the Verein advocated religious conversion. Political accommodation yes, but not religious betrayal. The society was acutely aware of the differences between the demands of the state and those of the church. Nor was it oblivious to the suffering of Jews at the hand of the church in the Middle Ages. But the Verein was desperate for Jews to reenter history after nearly two millennia on the sidelines. The mantra of the age was reconciliation and toward that end the Verein demanded the completion of the emancipation process, which would bestow the freedom Jews needed to regenerate themselves.78
The Verein’s preferred weapon of combat was critical scholarship, an empirical and rational science of universal import. Research would muster the data to convince the authorities of the contributions of Judaism to humanity and the right of Jews to find their place in the present political configuration. Internally, it would craft a narrative over time that would steel the resolve of Jews to remain distinct, if not apart, or in Gans’s resonant metaphor “as a current … in the ocean.”79 Aimed at two audiences then, scholarship would simultaneously be a source of truth and pride.
With the nomenclature Wissenschaft des Judenthums as opposed to Wissenschaft der Juden, Zunz avoided the atomization implicit in the use of the plural Juden. Jews were now defined as individuals who played out their lives on a chessboard called Judaism, even as the expansive scope of that board recast it as a cultural rather than a theological grid. Clearly echoing Zunz’s Etwas, Wolf declared in the opening essay of the journal: “If we are to talk of a science of Judaism, then it is self-evident that the word ‘Judaism’ is here being taken in its comprehensive sense—as the essence of all the circumstances, characteristics and achievements of the Jews in relation to religion, philosophy, law, literature in general, civil life and all the affairs of man—and not in that more limited sense in which it is only the religion of the Jews.”80 Yet, ironically, what kept those divergent strands together for Wolf was Judaism’s unique God idea, which fructified even its most secular extensions.81
The sense of urgency that drove Gans, Moser, and Zunz to bring the Verein’s journal to life quickly was not shared by Jost. By resolution the society had decided to elect two editors and give them full autonomy. It would retain only a right to be consulted. Its primary responsibility was to get members to contribute samples of their work. Jost was exceedingly displeased by the exclusion of the Verein from managerial authority and at a meeting on April 20, 1820, aired his views at length. The purpose of the journal was to be a mouthpiece of the society and therefore it was improper for the Verein to forgo all supervision of the editors. Instead of a loose relationship between the Verein and the journal, Jost demanded a detailed set of bylaws and even a written contract with the editors that would spell out how future conflicts would be resolved. By way of a peroration, Jost cautioned that “it would be far better to proceed slowly and deliberately than to harm the project with rash decisions.”82 With Gans in disagreement, Jost’s proposal failed to garner support. And by May 14, he had withdrawn from the Verein.83
Some two years later in a discursive letter to Ehrenberg, Jost depicted the gulf that estranged him from his peers and friends:
[The Verein] is an outpouring of unabashed self-importance of the dumbest nonsense [Dünkels] of a few young people, who arrogantly imagine to be able to change a whole nation which they barely know. The results match the underlying premises, witness the boastful, laughable statutes, the childish criticism of everything that exists and the unreadable journal. What comes along to do some good must proceed modestly and young men who share the same goal must pave for themselves a calm road…. Moreover, the Verein, as yet unapproved by the authorities, operates illegally. I have nothing against an association of Jewish intellectuals [committed] to educating their errant brothers, but they must first give evidence that they themselves are educated…. That is why I hold myself aloof from a cause which I helped initiate with great excitement.84
But this self-revelatory epistle from August 1822 illuminates a much larger landscape. The dark horizon facing Prussian Jewry filled Jost with foreboding and resignation. Jews who attended a university had no alternative but to convert. If we don’t push Jews, Jost declaimed, to learn to work with their hands, a whole generation will go over to Christianity. And rightly so, for what binds them to their religion but childhood memories? What is more, Jost continued, the state cannot extend equality to Jews as long as they refuse to marry Germans. A state consists of a single national entity that must be a unified whole. How can the state tolerate a minority that believes it possesses the truth and will not socialize? Can such a minority ever show true patriotism? We are worse off than our persecuted ancestors, he contended, because we no longer find consolation in our faith. What can possibly compensate young intellectuals who wander around unemployed and hungry in order to preserve the name Jew? Faith is a bugaboo that vanishes as soon as it is derided. Jost was quick to assure Ehrenberg that he was no friend of desertion, but who can swim against the rapids of our day? Each person lives but once.85
Despite Jost’s abrupt departure, the first issue of the Zeitschrift came out in March 1822, with two more numbers thereafter in 1823, in all a single quarto volume of 539 pages.86 At its meeting on August 11, 1822, the Verein decided to pay both Zunz, its editor, and contributing essayists for their services.87