Leopold Zunz. Ismar Schorsch
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in its contemporary iteration.
Rather than refute the plethora of Chiarini’s claims, Zunz zeroed in on the reliability of his underlying evidence. With cold precision, he uncovered that of the one hundred passages from the Talmud and rabbinic literature cited by Chiarini, some eighty of them were lifted directly from Eisenmenger with the rest taken from still other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century secondary sources. Hence, either the Talmud was already sufficiently revealed by the Christian humanists or Chiarini lacked the competence to do it.47
But then Zunz felt compelled to declare what the Talmud actually was not dogmatically but historically: “The Talmud is not the source but only a monument of Judaism, which, to be sure, as the oldest is recognized and revered, though many components of Judaism (customs, institutions and ideas) were modified by the rabbis without detracting from its veneration. Thus in the Talmud—as in the Pentateuch and the Mishna—two contradictory things come together: authority and nonauthority. A further development and modification of Judaism is evident from Jewish sources since the 7th century, from Jewish praxis and from the nature of Jews in different countries.”48 Zunz appended as well a list of six features of the talmudic dialectic that made it clear that not everything to be found therein was meant to be binding.49 In short, a historical perspective effected a momentous shift away from a normative text to a testament teeming with remnants of Jewish life in antiquity. Monuments are not sources of authority, but generators of reverence rooted in memory. Without fanfare, Zunz had historicized the Talmud by transmuting it from a repository of eternal verities and injunctions into a legacy of human wisdom and experience. The later development of Judaism no less than the talmudic text itself contravened the imputed absolute authority of the Talmud.50
As for a translation of the Talmud, a question that would roil German Jewry for the rest of the century, Zunz was not averse to the idea.51 The enterprise had to be free of extraneous tendencies and produce a faithful and comprehensible rendition. Though attuned to possible misuse by Germans unfriendly to Jews, Zunz displayed as yet no anxiety about losing control of a literature utterly foreign to Western sensibilities.52
Zunz published his learned tract with the publishing house of the Berlin paper at which he worked, the reason most likely for its quick appearance. At the time, Jost’s response to Chiarini was still in press. The interval allowed him in the foreword to express his embarrassment. Neither had been aware of the other’s intention. Clearly, living in the same city was not enough to restore a friendship that had frayed (on which more anon). Jost praised Zunz’s effort guardedly as “very compressed but still rich in content.”53 To be sure, they covered much the same ground, though Jost may have wanted to distance himself from Chiarini because he overtly held the first six volumes of Jost’s Geschichte der Israeliten in high regard. In a cryptic comment in his own essay, Zunz highlighted the problematic nature of the linkage: “Indeed the author [Chiarini] seems to know of Judaism, whose theory he propounds, only from hostile [fremden] reports, especially those by a nineteenth-century scholar full of unbelievable animosity toward all of rabbinic literature.”54 The allusion certainly accords with the tenor and substance of Jost’s early volumes (see above) and delivers a harsh, if veiled rebuke. Without admitting guilt, Jost had to clear his name.
Like Zunz, Jost harbored no reservations about a full translation of the Talmud. Provided it abided by scholarly standards, it could enrich the study of a broad swath of the ancient world by “yielding interesting disclosures about the intellectual character, the knowledge base and political and religious details of Jews as well as of the Persian empire in the early Christian centuries, strengthening our linguistic competence and finding as yet undetected historical connections.”55 For Jost the potential universal benefit offset what in the wrong hands might be turned into a Jewish liability. Irrespective of these early weighty endorsements, unremitting assaults on the Talmud to come would forge a consensus among German Jews not to provide still further grist for the toxic mill of anti-Semites by translating the Talmud in full.56
While other of Zunz’s occasional pieces were to be written at the behest of communal leadership, there is no evidence that his refutation of Chiarini was officially solicited. The duplicity, intent, and backers of the tract spurred Zunz to action. Gabriel Riesser, a young Hamburg lawyer, had just burst onto the German scene with a rousing plea for equal rights for Jews. Upon reading it, Zunz shared his appreciation with his Hamburg friend Isler: “I am pleased by Dr. Riesser’s book as I am with every new tract written with sincerity.” Zunz’s tract belonged to the same genre, though in his letter to Isler his mood quickly turned sour and acerbic: “It is a veritable misfortune to write for Jews. Rich Jews take no note of it. Learned [i.e., traditional] Jews can’t read it and Jewish idiots review it.”57
In Riesser Zunz found a fellow warrior, who like himself spurned the baptismal font to advance his career. In his opening salvo, Riesser indicted the tortuous system of disabilities by which German governments coerced young Jews to convert. Resorting to strength in numbers, Riesser called on Jews to form local clubs across Germany to lobby their governments and to avow personally not to baptize their children.58 In his next letter to Isler on April 28, 1831, Zunz applauded the strategy and sought more specific information on the club Riesser had formed in Hamburg. In a postscript, Adelheid chided Isler for taking her to be a dunce in that he had depicted Riesser so pedantically for her: “Yet it was all right and I thank you for it, since … 1000 voices have already sung his praises to me. Zunz and I read his book together and enjoyed greatly the incisiveness of his language and the truth it bore. I would like to get to know him better.”59
By July Isler could report little progress. In Hamburg Riesser alone was engaged, but on too many fronts. His hasty diversion to battle with a liberal theologian from Heidelberg, who continued to declaim the non-German national character of the Jews, had delayed the club to move beyond talking, as did the appearance of Riesser’s announced paper Der Jude.60 In his animated response, Zunz condemned the medieval bigotry of Hanseatic cities like Hamburg. Their autonomy was the source of their illiberalism: “Only the large, uplifting life of a state can promote freedom.” Zunz did not make light of conversation. It would arouse others and eventually lead to action. However, Reisser should not squander his time by answering every “barking dog.” Above all, Zunz was excited by the prospect of Reisser’s paper and layed out at great length the steps it would take to succeed, obviously drawing on his own experience in journalism. Zunz even promised to write for Riesser as soon as he could make time: “Still I must caution that an enterprise like this demands patience, endurance, vision, help, money and luck.”61
When Riesser spent time in Berlin in 1832, he and Zunz drew closer. Riesser visited often and Zunz bemoaned his departure as he wrote Isler: “For Berlin, I was often together with Riesser, often in our home. Now that he is leaving, the old emptiness returns. Those here become ever more estranged from me. My friends from the days of the Verein, if still alive, have either left Berlin or Judaism. I have no one here to work with me on my agenda. I am eager to see how long this can go on.”62 Thus the two men had bonded politically, ethically, and strategically, despite deep religious differences.63 Isler’s quick and laudatory review of Zunz’s Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden just after it came out in Riesser’s paper exhibited for all to see the concord and collaboration among the three men. In light of the medieval creativity that Zunz had unfurled, Isler hoped that the fixated focus on the Talmud by the opponents of equal rights for Jews would finally be dislodged.64
For Zunz a defense of Judaism was always an occasion to advance the frontiers of Jewish scholarship. His lofty sense of calling would not allow a momentary need to compromise his long-term objective. His aforementioned monograph on Jewish names attests his consistent quest for balance. As early as July 1834, his diary shows an entry that indicates that he was at work on the subject, as do his frequent requests for names of Jewish men and women in medieval France and Germany of Heimann Michael in Hamburg, who placed his friendship, private collection of Hebraica, and deep Jewish learning at Zunz’s disposal.65 When the elders of the community officially invited Zunz on August 5, 1836, to submit a brief contesting the constraints imposed on Jewish parents in naming their children, they relied on their