Studies on Steinschneider

Studies in Jewish History and Culture

Edited by

Giuseppe Veltri

Editorial Board

Gad Freudenthal Alessandro Guetta

Hanna Liss Ronit Meroz

Reimund LeichtJudith Olszowy-Schlanger

David Ruderman

VOLUME 33

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/sjhc

Studies on Steinschneider

Moritz Steinschneider and the Emergence of the Science of Judaism in

Nineteenth-Century Germany

Edited by

Reimund Leicht and Gad Freudenthal

LEIDEN • BOSTON2012

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Studies on Steinschneider : Moritz Steinschneider and the emergence of the science of Judaism in nineteenth-century Germany / edited by Reimund Leicht and Gad Freudenthal. p. cm. — (Studies in Jewish history and culture ; vol. 33) “Most of the contributions included in this volume are expanded and revised versions of papers delivered at the conference: “Moritz Steinschneider (1816–1907) : bibliography and the study of cultural transfer. A Centennial Conference”, held on 20–22 November 2007 at the Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin”Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-90-04-18324-7 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Steinschneider, Moritz, 1816–1907—Knowledge—Judaism—Congresses. 2. Judaism—Germany—History—19th century—Congresses. I. Leicht, Reimund. II. Freudenthal, Gad.

BM316.S78 2012 305.892’4043092—dc23

2011022963

ISSN 1568-5004ISBN 978 90 04 18324 7

Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

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CONTENTS

Preface and Acknowledgments ................................................... ixAbbreviations .............................................................................. xiList of Contributors .................................................................... xiii

Introduction: Studying Moritz Steinschneider .......................... xv Reimund Leicht and Gad Freudenthal

I. A JEWISH SCHOLAR IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY EUROPE

1. Moritz Steinschneider: The Vision Beyond the Books ........ 3 Ismar Schorsch

2. “Your Loving Uncle”: Gideon Brecher, Moritz Steinschneider and the Moravian Haskalah ................................................. 37 Michael L. Miller

3. Leopold Zunz and Moritz Steinschneider: Wissenschaft des Judentums as a Struggle against Ghettoization in Science ..... 81 Céline Trautmann-Waller

4. Moritz Steinschneider’s Notion of Encyclopedias ................ 109 Arndt Engelhardt

5. From Dialektik to Comparative Literature: Steinschneider’s ‘Orientalism’ .......................................................................... 137 Irene E. Zwiep

6. Moritz Steinschneider’s Concept of the History of Jewish Literature ............................................................................... 151 Reimund Leicht

7. Moritz Steinschneider and the Noble Dream of Objectivity .............................................................................. 175 Nils Roemer

vi contents

8. The Aim and Structure of Steinschneider’s Die Hebraeischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters. The Historiographic Underpinnings of a Masterpiece and Their Untoward Consequences ...................................................................... 191 Gad Freudenthal

9. Steinschneider and the Irrational: A Bibliographical Struggle against the Kabbalah ............................................ 213 Giulio Busi

10. Steinschneider’s Interstitial Explanation of Magic ............. 233 Giuseppe Veltri

II. THE FATHER OF HEBREW BIBLIOGRAPHY

11. Moritz Steinschneider and the Discipline of ‘Hebrew Manuscripts Study’ .............................................................. 249 Judith Olszowy-Schlanger

12. Moritz Steinschneider and the Leiden Manuscripts .......... 263 Jan Just Witkam

13. Creating a New Literary Genre: Steinschneider’s Leiden Catalogue ............................................................................. 277 Steven Harvey and Resianne Fontaine

14. Steinschneider’s Manuscripts ............................................... 301 Benjamin Richler

15. Aron Freimann and the Development of Jewish Bibliography in Germany in the 20th Century .................. 319 Rachel Heuberger

16. A Living Citizen in a World of Dead Letters: Steinschneider Remembered ............................................... 339 Avriel Bar-Levav

contents vii

III. THE STUDY OF MEDIEVAL LITERATURE, PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE

17. Moritz Steinschneider and Karaite Studies ........................ 351 Daniel J. Lasker

18. Moritz Steinschneider’s Contribution to Judaeo-Arabic Studies .................................................................................. 363 Paul B. Fenton

19. Steinschneider and Yiddish ................................................. 383 Diana Matut

20. Steinschneider and Italy ...................................................... 411 Asher Salah

21. Mathematik bei den Juden, cent ans après ............................... 457 Tony Lévy

22. Steinschneider as Historian ................................................. 477 Norman Golb

IV. MORITZ STEINSCHNEIDER IN CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH

23. The Genesis of Die Hebraeischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters 489 Charles H. Manekin

24. Genizat Germania. A Projected Comprehensive Electronic Catalogue of Hebrew Fragments Extracted from Bindings of Books or Archival Files in German Libraries and Archives ........................................................................ 531 Elisabeth Hollender and Andreas Lehnardt

viii contents

V. DOCUMENTS AND TEXTS

25. Tracing Steinschneider in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek ....... 549 Petra Figeac

26. Der Aberglaube [1900] ....................................................... 569 Moritz Steinschneider

Index ........................................................................................... 593

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The present volume of studies is devoted to the study of the life and work of Moritz (Moshe) Steinschneider (1816–1907). Its aim is to mod-ify the traditional view of Steinschneider as a “mere bibliographer” and to reveal further dimensions of his work and scientific personal-ity. Most of the contributions included in this volume are expanded and revised versions of papers delivered at the conference: “Moritz Steinschneider (1816–1907). Bibliography and the Study of Cul-tural Transfer. A Centennial Conference,” held on 20–22 November 2007 at the Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin—the former Königliche Preußische Bibliothek—where Steinschneider worked for over twenty years (1869–1890).1 Although held a century after Steinschneider’s demise, it was nonetheless the first conference entirely devoted to this pioneering giant of medieval literary history. So, too, the present volume is the first ever to focus on Steinschneider and his scientific achievements.

Felicitously, the centenary of Steinschneider’s death was also marked by a conference held at the Jewish National Library in Jeru-salem (16 January 2008). It will be followed by a special issue of the scholarly periodical Pe amim dedicated to Steinschneider (no. 129–130 [2011–12]). The editor of Pe amim, Avriel Bar-Levav, and the editors of the present volume have cooperated closely and the two publica-tions complement one another (although, naturally, the two groups of authors overlap somewhat).

We are very grateful to all of the institutions that made our confer-ence possible: the Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin, where the conference was held; the University Library, Frankfurt am Main and the University of Halle-Wittenberg, each of which handled a part of the administrative work. The Thyssen Foundation deserves our particular gratitude for its generous support of the conference.

1 Very regrettably, owing to a series of unfortunate misunderstandings, the seminal paper by Gerhardt Endress presented at the conference did not find its way into the present volume. It has been published as: “Kulturtransfer und Lehrüberlieferung. Moritz Stein-schneider (1816–1907) und ‘Die Juden als Dolmetscher’,” Oriens 39 (2011): 59–74.

x preface and acknowledgments

No less are we indebted to all the members of the Organizing Com-mittee of the conference.2 In particular, we acknowledge our special and warm indebtedness to Dr Rachel Heuberger (University Library, Frankfurt am Main) who contributed in manifold ways to the prepara-tion and carrying out of the conference. Last but not least, we extend sincere thanks to the contributors to this volume for their articles: we are confident that taken together, inasmuch as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts, they will help to bring about a change in scholarly perception of Steinschneider.

Jerusalem-Paris-GenevaReimund Leicht and Gad Freudenthal

2 Members: Hans Hinrich Biesterfeldt (University of Bochum), Petra Figeac (Staats-bibliothek zu Berlin), Gad Freudenthal (CNRS, Paris; Chair), Rachel Heuberger (Uni-versity Library, Frankfurt am Main), Reimund Leicht (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), and Giuseppe Veltri (University of Halle-Wittenberg).

ABBREVIATIONS OF WORKS BY MORITZ STEINSCHNEIDER

AE “Allgemeine Einleitung in die jüdische Literatur des Mittelalters,” JQR XV–XVII (1903–05).

Alf. Alfarabi. Des Arabischen Philosophen Leben und Schriften, etc. (St. Petersburg: Académie Impériale des Sci-ences, 1869).

Arab. Lit. Die Arabische Literatur der Juden (Frankfurt am Main: Kauffmann, 1902).

Arab. Üb. Die Arabischen Übersetzungen aus dem Griechischen (Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1889–96).

Cat. Berlin Verzeichniss der Hebräischen Handschriften der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin: Asher, 1878–1897).

Cat. Hamburg Catalog der Hebräischen Handschriften in der Stadtbibliothek zu Hamburg (Hamburg: Otto Meissner 1878).

Cat. Leiden Catalogus Codicum Hebræorum Bibliothecæ Academiæ Lug-duno-Batavæ (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1858).

Cat. Munich Die Hebräischen Handschriften der Königlichen Hof- und Staatsbibliothek in München (Munich: Palm, 1875; ²1895).

CB Catalogus Librorum Hebræorum in Bibliotheca Bodleiana (Berlin: Friedlaender, 1852–60).

Ges. Schr. Gesammelte Schriften, ed. by Henry Malter and Alex-ander Marx, vol. 1 (Berlin: Poppelauer, 1925).

Geschichtsliteratur Die Geschichtsliteratur der Juden in Druckwerken und Hand-schriften, vol 1: Bibliographie der hebräischen Schriften [the only pub. vol.] (Frank furt a.M.: Kauffmann, 1905).

HB Hebräische Bibliographie, ed. M. Steinschneider (vols. 1–8 [1858–64] and 9–21 [1869–82]).

HÜ Die Hebraeischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmetscher (Berlin: Kommissionsverlag des Bibliographischen Bureaus, 1893).

JL/G Jüdische Literatur, in J. S. Ersch und J. G. Gruber, Allge-meine Encyklopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste, section ii, part 27, pp. 357–471 (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1850).

xii abbreviations of works by moritz steinschneider

JL/E Jewish Literature from the Eighth to the Eighteenth Century, trans. by William Spottiswoode (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts, 1857).

JL/H Sifrut Yisrael, trans. by Henry Malter (Warsaw: A iasaf, 1897).Pol. Lit. Polemische und Apologetische Literatur in Arabischer Sprache

Zwischen Muslimen, Christen und Juden (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1877).

Pseud. Lit. Zur Pseudepigraphischen Literatur, Insbesondere der Geheimen Wissenschaften des Mittelalters. Aus Hebräischen und Arabischen Quellen (Berlin: Asher, 1862).

Vorlesungen Vorlesungen über die Kunde hebräischer Handschriften, deren Samm-lungen und Verzeichnisse, Beiheft zum Centralblatt für Biblio-thekswesen 19 (Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1897).

OTHER ABBREVIATIONS

JQR Jewish Quarterly ReviewJSQ Jewish Studies QuarterlyJTSA Jewish Theological Seminary of AmericaPAAJR Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish ResearchRÉJ Revue des études juivesZDMG Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Avriel Bar-Levav, The Open University of Israel (Israel )

Giulio Busi, Freie Universität Berlin (Germany)

Arndt Engelhardt, Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture, Leipzig (Germany)

Paul B. Fenton, Université de Paris-Sorbonne, Paris (France)

Petra Figeac, Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin (Ger-many)

Resianne Fontaine, Universiteit van Amsterdam (Netherlands)

Gad Freudenthal, CNRS, Paris, and Université de Genève (France/Switzerland)

Norman Golb, University of Chicago (USA)

Steven Harvey, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan (Israel )

Rachel Heuberger, Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Sencken-berg, Frankfurt/Main (Germany)

Elisabeth Hollender, Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany)

Daniel J. Lasker, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva (Israel )

Andreas Lehnardt, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz (Ger-many)

Reimund Leicht, Hebrew University, Jerusalem (Israel )

Tony Lévy, CNRS, Paris (France)

xiv list of contributors

Charles H. Manekin, University of Maryland (USA)

Diana Matut, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg (Germany)

Michael L. Miller, Central European University, Budapest (Hungary)

Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Sciences historiques et philologiques/IRHT-CNRS, Paris (France)

Benjamin Richler, The National Library of Israel, Jerusalem (Israel )

Nils Roemer, The University of Texas, Dallas (USA)

Asher Salah, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem (Israel )

Ismar Schorsch, Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, and Leo Baeck Institute (USA)

Céline Trautmann-Waller, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle—Paris 3/IUF (France)

Giuseppe Veltri, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg (Ger-many)

Jan Just Witkam, University of Leiden (Netherlands)

Irene E. Zwiep, Universiteit van Amsterdam (Netherlands)

INTRODUCTION: STUDYING MORITZ STEINSCHNEIDER

Reimund Leicht and Gad Freudenthal

Moritz (Moshe) Steinschneider (1816–1907) is probably the most oft-quoted scholar of nineteenth-century Wissenschaft des Judentums. In many branches of Jewish studies, serious research still cannot be done with-out constant reference to Steinschneider’s innumerable monographs, library catalogues, articles, and reviews. Notwithstanding the acknowl-edgment of his invaluable contribution to modern scholarship, Stein-schneider is probably also the least studied of all the central figures that shaped Jewish studies during the nineteenth century. Whereas the other major scholars of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, notably Leopold Zunz (1794–1886) and Heinrich Graetz (1817–1891), have received intensive scholarly attention, not a single comprehensive monograph or volume of essays has been dedicated to the man to whom Jewish studies in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries owe more than to anyone else. Using Steinschneider for the study of Jewish history and literature is a must, but studying Steinschneider himself is a rarity.

Reasons for this formidable lack of scholarly interest in Steinschneider are not hard to find. Steinschneider’s work often seems to consist of endless listings of often highly valuable but unreadable biographical and bibliographical information. His dry and factual style, occasionally interspersed with ironic remarks on the objects of his study and sarcas-tic attacks on earlier scholarship, keeps readers away from a prolonged study of his writings. Although Steinschneider wrote a few shorter essays that are more accessible, not a single one of his larger scientific works was written in view of being read continuously from the first to the last page. The essay “Jüdische Literatur” (1850); the Catalogus Librorum Hebraeorum in Bibliotheca Bodleiana (1852–1860); the catalogues of Hebrew manuscripts in the libraries of Leiden (1858), Munich (1875 and 1895), Hamburg (1878), and Berlin (1878 and 1897); and espe-cially the monumental Die Hebraeischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmetscher (1893) are essential reference books, but not tightly knit monographs with a continuous narrative.

xvi reimund leicht and gad freudenthal

Steinschneider clearly shunned the literary genre of fluently written historical accounts and interpretations. His literary style went hand in hand with his preferences in historiographical matters: to large his-torical reconstructions he preferred well-established facts, raw mate-rials painstakingly compiled and put at the disposal of the scholarly community for further research. Moreover, his books and articles are often obfuscated by a garbled manner of presentation, in part due to Steinschneider’s idiosyncratic working methods, and in part to the fact that the early Wissenschaft experimented with different scientific styles, methods, and literary genres. Furthermore, and perhaps most important, Steinschneider deliberately chose a style that concealed the motives behind his scientific work, his historiographical convictions, and the overarching aims that motivated and informed his scholarly work. These he never expounded systematically. Short remarks and allusions, rare and often scattered in unexpected places, are the only window into Steinschneider’s inner convictions and the ideological background of his gigantic scientific projects. Thus, when we think of Steinschneider, what often remains is the bare admiration in view of his breathtaking scientific productivity and knowledge and a respect for his scientific ethos. These feelings are, nonetheless, accompanied by a certain disappointment in light of his pedantry and his apparent wariness to draw general conclusions out of the mountains of facts he accumulated.

The lack of interest in Steinschneider the scholar is not the result merely of his scientific style and mode of presentation, however. It is likewise the outcome of commonly held convictions concerning Stein-schneider’s relevance to us today; while there is unanimous agreement that his work remains the best possible quarry for scientific informa-tion and an indispensable research tool, most scholars believe that Steinschneider is uninteresting as a historical figure and, in addition, that in the beginning of the twenty-first century, his work poses no intellectual challenge nor can it be a source of inspiration. Scholars’ expressions of the highest esteem for Steinschneider’s work are thus often paired with a certain condescension, reflected, for example, in the image of Steinschneider as the “gravedigger” at Judaism’s “decent burial” (see Avriel Bar-Levav’s contribution to this volume). Even where the ideological insinuations behind this dictum (first pronounced by Gotthold Weil [1882–1960] and later propagated by Gershom Scholem [1897–1982]) are not shared, by and large Steinschneider’s work is perceived as dry historical scholarship, equally uninspired and

introduction: studying moritz steinschneider xvii

uninspiring. This is also the image of many of the other scientific works produced by the Wissenschaft des Judentums during the second half of the nineteenth century. Thus, the lack of interest in Steinschneider is part of the deep intellectual estrangement of contemporary research from the scientific culture of Steinschneider’s time. Paradoxically, modern scholarship seems to be rather more attracted to and sympathetic with the early Wissenschaft, with its strong ideological roots in the Enlighten-ment and in German Idealism (e.g., Leopold Zunz, Immanuel Wolf [1799–1847], Nachman Krochmal [1785–1840], the early Heinrich Graetz [1817–1891]), or to scholars who partook of the philosophical and ideological turn in the first half of the twentieth century (Her-mann Cohen [1842–1918], Franz Rosenzweig [1886–1929], Gershom Scholem).

Thus, the initiative to publish the present volume of studies on Stein-schneider (as also the decision to hold the conference that preceded it) was much more than a respectful homage to one of the founding fathers of the Wissenschaft des Judentums. It reflects the conviction that Steinschneider’s gigantic scholarly work has more to offer than bare historical facts; that it is in fact rooted in a scientific agenda, one that may have become unfamiliar to contemporary scholarship but which nonetheless deserves to be carefully reconstructed and interpreted. The implication is that we must cease to regard Steinschneider merely as an inexhaustible treasure trove of historical and bibliographical infor-mation. Instead, the working hypothesis that underlies the present vol-ume is that Steinschneider should be viewed as a first-rank scholar in nineteenth-century Europe who devoted his life to the promotion and realization of a specific concept of the scientific study of Judaism. We believe that the essays assembled in this volume confirm this hypoth-esis. They thus represent a first attempt to draw scholarly attention to the intellectual biography and scientific activities of Moritz Stein-schneider and to signal the continued importance of Steinschneider’s work for contemporary Jewish studies.

*

Part One of this volume contains ten papers that shed light on Stein-schneider’s intellectual biography as a Jewish scholar of his times.3

3 The most comprehensive biography of Steinschneider to date remains that of Alexander Marx: “Moritz Steinschneider,” in his Essays in Jewish Biography (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1948), pp. 113–84. See also Petra Figeac: Moritz Steinschneider

xviii reimund leicht and gad freudenthal

Born in 1816 in the Moravian town of Prossnitz, where a specific brand of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) flourished in the early nineteenth century, Steinschneider was exposed to a number of impor-tant intellectual currents. During the formative period of his life, his maternal uncle, Gideon Brecher (1797–1873), apparently exerted a considerable influence on Steinschneider’s early intellectual develop-ment. As Ismar Schorsch and Michael L. Miller show, Brecher’s abil-ity to combine a high esteem for the Jewish tradition with a support of moderate reform in the spirit of the Haskalah and scientific ambitions inspired by the nascent Wissenschaft des Judentums, left lasting imprints of Steinschneider’s personality and thinking.

Steinschneider’s academic training began in Prague in 1833, and from there he went to Vienna in 1836 to study Semitic languages. Of more lasting impact, however, were his encounter with the Oriental-ist Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer (1801–1888), with whom he studied at Leipzig in 1839, and his collaboration with Franz Julius Delitzsch (1813–1890). While Steinschneider’s passion for Arabic language and literature may have had its roots in earlier periods of his life, the schol-arly exchanges with Fleischer were of particular importance, because they helped put Steinschneider in contact with leading Oriental-studies circles in Germany. Many of his articles and books on the history of Arabic philosophy and science, such as Zur Pseudepigraphischen Literatur des Mittelalters, insbesondere der geheimen Wissenschaften (1862) and Al-Farabi (Alpharabius), des arabischen Philosophen Leben und Schriften (1869) are the immediate fruits of Steinschneider’s active membership in the small but distinguished group of nineteenth-century German Orientalists.

But Steinschneider was not only, nor even primarily, an Orientalist. First and foremost, he was a scholar dedicated to the agenda of the Wissenschaft des Judentums. Alongside his uncle Gideon Brecher, it was the contacts with Leopold Dukes (1810–1891), Michael Sachs (1808–1864), and David Cassel (1818–1893) that brought him into close con-tact with that movement during his years in Prague and Vienna. The deepest and most lasting influence, however, was that of his paternal friend and colleague, Leopold Zunz. Steinschneider, who was twenty-two years Zunz’s junior, first met the latter in Prague in 1833, and the two men stayed in close contact until Zunz’s death in 1886. As Ismar

(1816–1907). Begründer der wissenschaftlichen hebräischen Bibliographie (Berlin: Hentrich und Hentrich, 2007).

introduction: studying moritz steinschneider xix

Schorsch and Céline Trautmann-Waller demonstrate, the relationship between these two scholars was not only one of faithful discipleship, but above all one based on shared convictions and common scholarly interests. Both men deliberately chose as their main object of research the history of Jewish literature and both were reluctant to adopt in their works large theoretical constructs. Only on occasion did they borrow concepts or terms from Hegelian and other philosophies, and both eschewed indulgence in overarching theoretical speculations in favor of the sober and solid study of the literary sources. In addition, Zunz and Steinschneider were both convinced that the only appropriate institutional setting for Jewish studies was the secular university of the modern state and not Jewish religious institutions. In the intra-Jewish debates of the nineteenth century, both expressed strong reservations about religious reform. With time, they both also became increas-ingly skeptical about the prospects of political emancipation for the Jews and the fight against anti-Semitism. Steinschneider, it may be added parenthetically, was also the first to use the construction “anti-Semitic”: he did so in the context of his life-long critical engagement with Renan (a subject that unfortunately had to be left out of consid-eration in this volume), although he used it only as a common word, not as a concept.4

These similarities notwithstanding, in some respects the two schol-ars, who belonged to two different generations, also differed. In a certain sense, Zunz is still a representative of the age of Enlighten-ment and the transition to the age of Idealism, whereas Steinschneider belongs to the post-idealistic second half of the nineteenth century. Thus, the former concentrated his efforts on the study of traditional Jewish literature and did not have direct access to Oriental languages and literatures, whereas the latter’s greatest scientific ambitions and

4 Pointed out in Alex Bein, The Jewish Question: Biography of a World Problem, trans-lated by Harry Zohn (Cranbury, N.J. etc.: Associated University Presses, 1990), pp. 594–95. In a review of an article by Heymann Steinthal (1832–1907) in which the lat-ter takes Renan to task, Steinschneider comments: “With his characteristic incisiveness the critic [Steinthal] demonstrates the contradictions in Renan’s fundamental views and their unfruitfulness for scholarship and research. The more Renan’s brilliant dia-lectic and stylistic talent captivates the readers, the more necessary it is to expose the consequences—or, more accurately, inconsequences—of his anti-Semitic prejudices [seiner antisemitischen Vorurtheile] . . .” (quoted from ibid., p. 594; original in HB 3 (1860), p. 16 (§ 863). The term “anti-Semitic as a well-defined concept was first used by the German journalist Wilhelm Marr in 1880; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism#Etymology_and_usage.

xx reimund leicht and gad freudenthal

achievements lie precisely in the field of the study of cultural transfer, especially between the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian worlds. Also, from the outset Steinschneider was probably much less religiously attuned than Zunz was ever to become. Despite these differences, however, the scientific work of the two men can be seen as two complementary parts of one and the same project: the scientific study of the history of the entirety of Jewish literature—religious and non-religious. It is no mere coincidence that Steinschneider, who feverishly published stud-ies on every subject that came his way, carefully avoided touching all the branches of Jewish literature that had been treated by Zunz in his classical studies on the Midrash and liturgical poetry (Die gottesdienstli-chen Vorträge der Juden [1832], Die synagogale Poesie des Mittelalters [1855], Literaturgeschichte der synagogalen Poesie [1865]).

Steinschneider published his first scholarly articles in the late 1830s and 1840s, most of them in Jewish journals such as Orient (Leipzig, 1840–1841), Literaturblatt des Orients (Leipzig, 1841–1843), Ost und West (Prague, 1841–1845), Bild und Leben (Prague, 1844), Sabbath-Blatt (Leipzig, 1844), and Zeitschrift für die religiösen Interessen des Judentums (Berlin and Leipzig, 1844–1846), but also in non-Jewish publications such as Oes-terreichische Blätter für Literatur und Kunst (Vienna, 1844–1845), Serapeum (Leipzig, 1845–1870), and the Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes (Ber-lin, 1845–1846).5 From 1841 onward Steinschneider also published books, mostly editions of Hebrew texts such as the Etz ayyim of Aha-ron ben Elijah of Nicomedia (with F. J. Delitzsch, 1841) or the Ma’amar ha-Yi ud, which he attributed to Maimonides (1846 and 1847). He also contributed introductions and appendices to the works of others, for example, to Hirsch Fassels orev be-Zion (a reply to Samson Raphael Hirsch’s Briefe eines jüdischen Gelehrten [1839]) and to Gideon Brecher’s Ueber die Beschneidung der Israeliten (1845). Although these publications already reveal Steinschneider’s enormous erudition, none of them shows the sovereign mastery of the history of Jewish literature that his later works bespeak.

An important turning point in Steinschneider’s biography as a scholar occurred in the mid-1840s and is connected with two ambi-tious projects, of which one failed and the other was a lasting success.

5 Cf. G.A. Kohut, “Bibliography of the Writings of Professor Dr. Moritz Stein-schneider,” in Festschrift zum achtzigsten Geburtstage Moritz Steinschneiders (Leipzig: Haras-sowitz, 1896), pp. V–XXXIX; the years in brackets indicate the period in which Steinschneider contributed to the respective journals.

introduction: studying moritz steinschneider xxi

In 1844, David Cassel initiated, along with Steinschneider, the publi-cation of a comprehensive encyclopedia of Judaism. Cassel published the description of the project as Plan der Real-Encyclopädie des Judenthums under his name only, but Steinschneider greatly contributed to it. It represents a first plan for an undertaking whose goal was to systemati-cally present all the different branches of the Wissenschaft des Judentums. The Wissenschaft could date its birth to the establishment of the Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden in November 1819, and the two young scholars obviously had the feeling that after more than twenty years of scientific efforts, it was high time for a conspectus. As Arndt Engelhardt shows in his contribution to this volume, this project for a Real-Encyclopädie was met with much skepticism among other Jewish scholars and failed in its initial phase. The idea, however, of presenting the scientific results of the Wissenschaft in an encyclopedic format was to occupy Steinschneider for many more years and lead up to another project, which was to become an enormous success: this is his essay on “Jüdische Literatur,” included in Ersch and Gruber’s prestigious Allgemeine Encyklopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste.

There can be no doubt that the composition of this comprehensive historical survey of Jewish literature was an enormous challenge, and one wonders what exactly qualified the young Steinschneider for this undertaking. And yet, after three years of intensive work (1845–1847), the essay Steinschneider presented was deemed more than satisfactory and the editors accepted the almost 120-page work without cuts. This was not only a personal achievement for the thirty-one-year-old scholar, but also a success for the Wissenschaft des Judentums in its attempts to gain respect for Jewish topics among non-Jewish audiences. And from a scientific point of view the essay indeed constituted a veritable quan-tum leap in the study of the history of Jewish literature.

From a biographical perspective, “Jüdische Literatur” certainly laid the foundations for much of Steinschneider’s later work. There can be little doubt that some of the monumental books he published in the subsequent years, most notably his Catalogus Librorum Hebraeorum in Bib-liotheca Bodleiana (1852–1860), the revised edition of the English transla-tion of the essay, known as Jewish Literature (1857), and the catalogues of Hebrew manuscripts in the libraries of Leiden (1858), Munich (1875 and 1895), Hamburg (1878), and Berlin (1878 and 1897), would not have been possible without the solid preparatory work done for “Jüdi-sche Literatur.” Indeed, the overarching scientific program underly-ing his great essay informs much of Steinschneider’s other works as

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well, and it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that almost all of Steinschneider’s later publications are only footnotes to and expan-sions of “Jüdische Literatur.” This essay is indeed a perfect exemplar of some of the most fundamental characteristics of Steinschneider’s scientific personality: his relentless striving for comprehensiveness and completeness, his strictly historical and a-religious outlook, his dry and factual style, and his deliberate abstention from theoretical and philo-sophical speculation.

“Jüdische Literatur” thus contained the seeds of Steinschneider’s life-long preoccupation with bibliography. It was Ismar Elbogen (1874–1943) who (in 1926) was apparently the first to describe Steinschneider as the “father of Hebrew bibliography.”6 This characterization of Steinschneider, although presumably well-intended, is inadequate; it overlooks many facets of Steinschneider’s intense activities, including his theoretical engagement with the fundamental issues of the history of Hebrew literature. Presumably, Steinschneider himself would not have been flattered by the label “bibliographer.” Nonetheless, the label cor-rectly captures one, the most palpable, facet of Steinschneider’s activity: Steinschneider indeed was the founding father of the scientific study of Hebrew bibliography. His great Catalogus Librorum Hebraeorum in Bib-liotheca Bodleiana (1852–1860), his catalogues of Hebrew manuscripts in the public libraries of Leiden (1858), Munich (1875 and 1895), Hamburg (1878), and Berlin (1878 and 1897), the surveys Polemische und apologetische Literatur in arabischer Sprache (1877), Die Mathematik bei den Juden (1893–1899 and 1905), Die arabische Literatur der Juden (1902), Die Geschichtsliteratur der Juden (1905), the monumental Die Hebraeischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmetscher (1893), and innu-merable articles and shorter notes, including especially those published in Hebräische Bibliographie (Ha-Maskir), which he founded and then edited himself between 1858 and 1882, are all major, lasting contri-butions to Hebrew bibliography and can be viewed as having laid its foundations.

During his work on “Jüdische Literatur” Steinschneider was con-fronted with a problem that had already occupied scholars of the first and second generations of the Wissenschaft des Judentums: the problem of Judaism’s inner unity. In a sense, this problem had been created

6 “Moritz Steinschneider, der Vater der Hebräischen Bibliographie,” Soncino-Blätter 3/4 (1926), pp. 155–58.

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by the Wissenschaft itself. From its very outset, the Wissenschaft aspired to broaden the vision of what Judaism was. For most of its repre-sentatives, the object of the scientific study of Judaism could not be limited to traditional Jewish religion, exclusively identified with East-ern European talmudism. Other historical phenomena, forgotten or intentionally suppressed from the canon of normative Judaism, had to be rediscovered and integrated into Judaism as it was to be con-ceived and studied by the new science. According to this program-matic vision, nothing Jewish would be alien to the Wissenschaft: Philo and Hellenistic Judaism, the heritage of medieval Spain and of the other Muslim lands, Jewish philosophy from Saadia to Spinoza—all was to be included in its purview and in its concept of “Judaism.” The agenda of the Wissenschaft des Judentums was thus characterized by the scientific ambition to achieve a comprehensive and objective historical description of Judaism, free of religious prejudices and limi-tations. On a sociological plane, this broadening of horizons to include traditionally excluded cultural phenomena allured to the Wissenschaft numerous individuals who had been painfully estranged from Juda-ism; these could identify with such a re-defined Judaism, in which real or imagined historical precedents of non-canonical Judaism were given due attention and in which the scientific understanding of an all-encompassing, unified, view of Judaism gave balanced representation to all Jewish phenomena with all their historical contradictions and tensions. All this fulfilled the contemporary need to give Jews an ideal, a vision to strive for, a way of overcoming the frictions and dichoto-mies within contemporary Judaism and restoring unity.

Ironically, however, this new broad concept of Judaism put its inner unity in jeopardy. If any and all expressions of Jewish culture—tra-ditional religious as well as modern secular—are made the legitimate objects of the science of Judaism, then what is it that unifies Jewish cul-ture? If ideational products originating in the most diverse cultures are all taken into consideration, then what circumscribes the unity of Juda-ism as a particular historical phenomenon? The answers to this press-ing question were as many as the scholars who tackled it. Immanuel Wolf in his essay Ueber den Begriff einer Wissenschaft des Judenthums (1822) located Judaism’s unity in a Hegelian vein in the idea of monism and its dialectical development in history from biblical times to Spinoza. Abraham Geiger highlighted Judaism’s religious ideas and values, and Heinrich Graetz, in his brilliant essay Die Construction der jüdischen

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Geschichte of 1846, identified the totality of Judaism in its national history.

Steinschneider, too, saw himself confronted with this daunting prob-lem. His approach to it is probably closest to Zunz’s, who in his essay Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur (1822) introduced the concept of a comprehensive history of Jewish literature; Jewish literature, taken to form a part of universal human culture, is construed as including every-thing that was written by Jews after the Hebrew Bible. As Irene Zwiep argues in her contribution to this volume, Steinschneider, too, repeat-edly addressed the task of defining Jewish literature. In his early essay, “Jüdische Literatur,” his definition of his subject-matter was grounded in the idea of a “national” Jewish literature, an idea strongly indebted to the Hegelian concept of a dialectical historical development. In his later life, Zwiep further argues, Steinschneider gradually gave up this “Jewish Orientalism” and replaced it with a new approach more akin to what one might call a “comparative-literature approach.” In other words, the inner unity of Jewish culture founded upon the national paradigm became more and more suspect to Steinschneider and was gradually abandoned in favor of a more universalistic approach. Simi-larly, Reimund Leicht, in his contribution, analyzes Steinschneider’s concept of a history of Jewish literature, showing that it displays a growing impact of nineteenth-century positivism on Steinschneider’s thought.

All throughout, Steinschneider’s scientific work was characterized by a strictly historical perspective and a clearly post-idealistic (anti-speculative) outlook. In his hierarchy of values, the goals of “scientific-ity” (“Wissenschaftlichkeit”) and “objectivity” assume a central place. Nils Roemer points out that Steinschneider’s “noble dream of objec-tivity” comes close to Leopold von Ranke’s (1795–1886) ideal of histo-riography, which presumed to describe history “as it really happened” (“wie es eigentlich gewesen”), rather than Heinrich von Treitschke’s (1834–1896) far more politically engaged approach. Steinschneider admittedly shunned explicit theoretical discussions, but nonetheless on occasion formulated his position on historical methodology. In this respect, one can even go so far as to say that in the debates raging in the mid-nineteenth century, Steinschneider did not side primarily with German historicism—be it of the Rankean or the Treitschkean brand—but with English positivism. In his Allgemeine Einleitung in die jüdische Literatur des Mittelalters he explicitly rejects the Hegelian “philo-sophical schematism” and the “political pragmatism” identified with

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Karl von Rotteck (1775–1840) to state that one should learn how to write cultural history (“Kulturgeschichte”) from Henry Thomas Buckle (1821–1862) and Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859).7 This statement is a rare piece of information demonstrating that Stein-schneider’s methodology, far from being naïve, is rooted in a conscious and deliberate choice of an approach to historiography indebted to positivism. It is therefore not surprising that the criticism leveled against Steinschneider—he was taken to task notably for his firm belief in sci-entific progress, the emphasis on the collection of historical data, and the alleged lack of interpretative depth—parallels the criticism of posi-tivistic historiography leveled by followers of the historicist school.

Steinschneider’s distance from the historicist school that dominated German historiography in the second half of the nineteenth century, and his inclination toward positivism, are highlighted through a com-parison with his great antipode, Heinrich Graetz. Although there is no scholarly consensus about Graetz’s indebtedness to German histori-cism, there can be little doubt that his monumental Geschichte der Juden (11 volumes, 1853–1875) is basically narrative historiography, close in style to the mainstream of historicism and concentrating on out-standing individuals who are taken to embody the spirit of their age. This kind of narrative historiography was anathema to Steinschneider, who sharply criticized Graetz’s magnum opus for its lack of scientific soundness.8 Contrary to what one would expect on the basis of Stein-schneider’s image as a pedantic collector of facts, Steinschneider not only criticizes Graetz’s history for factual mistakes and inaccuracies. It was of the very project of a “construction of Jewish history” that he disapproved. The critique Steinschneider leveled against Graetz shows that as a matter of principle he was more interested in the description of historical structures and facts (“Geschichte”) than in constructing overarching historical narratives (“Literatur”). Accord-ingly, some of Steinschneider’s methodological decisions in devising his own works may be interpreted as a conscious refusal to engage in historical narratives and the “history of great men.” A case in point

7 Moritz Steinschneider, “Allgemeine Einleitung in die jüdische Literatur des Mit-telalters,” JQR XV (1903), p. 312.

8 Steinschneider’s blunt critique of the 5th and 6th volumes of Graetz’s work was published in Hebräische Bibliographie 3 (1860), no. 17, p. 104, and 4 (1861), no. 22, p. 84, and was also expressed in private letters. See Reuven Michael, Hirsch (Heinrich) Graetz. The Historian of the Jewish People ( Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2003), pp. 91–92 (Heb.).

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is his Die Hebraeischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters; as Gad Freudenthal shows in his contribution to this volume, this monumental work delib-erately follows a non-personalistic approach, a choice that may owe as much to Steinschneider’s deep-seated historical preferences as to practical considerations.

It thus becomes clear that to be adequately appreciated, Stein-schneider’s approach to the study of the history of Jewish literature must be viewed in the context of his historiographical convictions. The latter, it turns out, are more complex and multifarious than may initially have been assumed and also to be more calculated and self-conscious. This applies also to Steinschneider’s approach to two additional historical literary phenomena: Kabbalah and magic. Stein-schneider has often been criticized for his disrespectful and utterly unsympathetic treatment of the Kabbalah. However, as Giulio Busi shows here, his interpretation of Kabbalah as irrational, deceitful, and fundamentally un-Jewish, as biased as it may be by ideological (i.e., rationalist) prejudices, is not one-dimensional at all. It is not only thoughtful but of considerable interest even for post-Scholemian schol-arship. Similarly, Giuseppe Veltri shows that although Steinschneider rejected magic as superstitious, he struggled to comprehend it scientifi-cally and depicted it as a sort of pre- or proto-scientific way of think-ing. (We reprint below Steinschneider’s text on this topic that has been nearly unknown and inaccessible.)

Such a reconsideration of Steinschneider’s goals and methods affords new insights into the domain for which he has been best known: that of Hebrew bibliography—the subject of Part Two of this volume. A fairly neglected aspect of Steinschneider’s engagement with bibliogra-phy is his interest in the material vessels of the texts making up this literature: manuscripts and books. As Judith Olszowy-Schlanger shows in her paper, Steinschneider was the first Jewish scholar to systemati-cally apply the newly developed tools of paleography and codicology to the study of Jewish manuscripts. It is worth emphasizing that he goes beyond viewing manuscripts as neutral bearers of texts, consider-ing them instead to be physical artifacts worthy of a scientific study of their own. This aspect of Steinschneider’s research again highlights his positivistic inclinations and his interest in the history of material culture. These characteristics are also apparent in the study of Stein-schneider’s manuscript catalogues. Jan Just Witkam sheds light on the genesis of the Leiden catalogue, which was Steinschneider’s first

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manuscript catalogue. Steven Harvey and Resianne Fontaine examine the goals Steinschneider set for himself in this catalogue and show that he broadened the traditional limits of the genre; he not only described the manuscripts, but read the texts they contain—mainly the philo-sophical and the scientific ones—and used them to advance the study of the history of Jewish thought. The Leiden catalogue thus became an important research tool for subsequent historians of medieval philoso-phy, like Adolf Neubauer (1831–1907), Ernest Renan (1823–1892), David Kaufmann (1852–1899), and many others. Steinschneider himself also collected manuscripts, although his collection was never large. Benjamin Richler describes the Hebrew manuscripts that Stein-schneider had owned at some point and identifies their present loca-tions. The two concluding papers of the section on the “father of Hebrew bibliography” shed light on Steinschneider’s influence on schol-ars of the next generation. Rachel Heuberger studies Steinschneider’s relationship to Aron Freimann, the most important Hebrew bibliogra-pher of the twentieth century. Avriel Bar-Levav brings to light forgotten testimonies on how Steinschneider impacted upon (then) young schol-ars such as Reuven Brainin (1862–1939), Arthur Biram (1878–1967), Marcus Ehrenpreis (1869–1951), and, last but not least, Gershom Scholem, an impact that led to the foundation of the Hebrew Bibli-ography Project.

Steinschneider’s exceptionally broad scientific interests and his intensive study of manuscripts that had often not been read for centu-ries turned him into a pioneer in a number of fields of literary history. In many of his studies, Steinschneider went far beyond bibliography to formulate interpretations and hypotheses that were often adopted by later generations of scholars and are still accepted today. In the pres-ent volume, Steinschneider’s contributions to Karaite, Judeo-Arabic, and Yiddish studies are highlighted by Daniel Lasker, Paul Fenton, and Diana Matut, respectively. Similarly, Asher Salah describes Stein-schneider’s contributions to the study of Italian Judaism, elaborated in the context of strong ties with Italian scholars and literati. Tony Lévy highlights Steinschneider’s singular contribution to the study of the history of mathematics. Norman Golb analyzes, more globally, Stein-schneider’s role as a historian of culture. This third part of the present volume could easily have been enlarged and complemented by addi-tional studies on subjects such as: “Steinschneider as historian of sci-ence,” “Steinschneider as historian of philosophy,” and many others.

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This reflects not only his lasting contribution to various disciplines of Jewish studies today, but also invites a study of Steinschneider’s con-tribution to each of them in its proper historical context.

The lasting value of Steinschneider’s bibliographic work is reflected in Charles H. Manekin’s project (described here) to translate into Eng-lish, update, and put online Steinschneider’s Die Hebraeischen Übersetzun-gen des Mittelalters. Another project, Genizat Germania, whose goal is the systematic investigation of fragments extracted from bindings of books or archival files in German libraries and archives, presented here by Andreas Lehnardt and Elisabeth Hollender, can in many respects be viewed as being conducted in Steinschneider’s spirit.

The present collection of studies, dedicated to Moritz Stein-schneider—the man and his work—, aspires no more than to be a starting point for future systematic research leading up to a compre-hensive intellectual biography of this outstanding nineteenth-century scholar of Wissenschaft des Judentums. Petra Figeac’s contribution dem-onstrates that the archives of the Berlin Staatsbibliothek have much material—literary and iconographic—to contribute to highlighting unfamiliar aspects of Steinschneider’s life and personality. Similarly, a number of contributors to this volume were aware that their subjects required the use of manuscript material. Any future in-depth study of Steinschneider will have to follow Steinschneider himself in draw-ing extensively on unpublished sources, notably those that are pre-served at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York (which holds Steinschneider’s literary Nachlass). Only an intensive and systematic exploration of these untapped materials will yield a comprehensive picture of Moritz Steinschneider—a picture that will finally do justice to Steinschneider’s importance for Jewish studies.

This takes us back to the question from which we set out: Is there a point in studying Steinschneider himself rather than studying Jewish literature and history with Steinschneider? Can such a study be more than a matter of repaying the debt most students of Jewish letters feel they owe Steinschneider? It seems to us that two reasons, at the very least, warrant a study of Steinschneider. The first is simple: through his immense influence on the course taken by Jewish studies in the twentieth century, Steinschneider has become a significant historical phenomenon in and of himself. He exerted this influence above all via his bibliographies and literary histories. Now, as argued above and confirmed by the papers grouped in this volume, Steinschneider’s

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works resulted from an elaborate agenda and were informed by reflected historiographic convictions. Therefore, if we wish to under-stand the course taken by twentieth-century Jewish studies, we must seek to delve more deeply into Steinschneider’s background, forma-tion, worldview, and mindset; these contributed to shaping us, scholars of the twenty-first century, into what we are. The light we will shed on Steinschneider will illuminate us, too.

The second reason for studying Steinschneider is perhaps more complicated. It touches upon the question of whether Steinschneider’s work and scholarly agenda still can pose a serious intellectual chal-lenge for Jewish studies today. Interestingly, not all scholars in the past saw Steinschneider as a detached scholar on whose work one can draw as a treasury of historical information without being confronted with fundamental questions about the nature, methods, and aims of Jewish studies. It was Gershom Scholem who acutely identified and formu-lated the serious challenge that Steinschneider’s (and Zunz’s) concept of Jewish studies posed to his own scientific self-understanding. In his epochal essay Mitokh hirhurim al okhmat Yisra el (“Thoughts about the Science of Judaism”), first published in 1944, he admits that the images of Zunz and Steinschneider have always attracted him:

I do not think that their like exists in the Science of Judaism: neither in terms of the breadth of their knowledge, which is world-embracing—and perhaps it is this very breadth which prevented them from seeing in depth—and certainly not in terms of the power of their presentation, which is totally lacking. Jokesters used to say that Steinschneider never wrote a sentence with a noun, a verb, and an orderly sentence structure. [. . .] However, one finds something in these two scholars that is not to be found among any other scholars, neither in their contemporaries nor in those that followed them: namely, that they are truly demonic figures. These sober figures are unique in their generation in their total lack of sentimentality in the approach to the past. They do not serve up their novellas with a stew of empty or mediocre sentiments or empty enthu-siasm; they speak to the point and only to the point, and this zealously matter-of-fact approach seems marvelous to us: at times annoying and cold, and at times refreshing and restraining. One finds in them the full measure of that spiritual asceticism which is demanded of the ideal scholar, and whose absence is so strongly felt in the generations of gush-ers which followed them. How much coolness is there in these temples of science.

But this is only one, the brighter, side of Zunz and Steinschneider, since Scholem goes on to say:

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But they also have an intense Other Side. Suddenly, while reading their words, you feel as if you are gazing into the face of the Medusa, as if from among the half sentences and side comments something completely non-human gazes back at you and freezes your heart—a hatred which is not only of this world, a grandiose cynicism. And the stage changes, and you see before you giants who, for reasons best known to them-selves, have turned themselves into gravediggers and embalmers, and even eulogizers.9

Gershom Scholem’s portrait of Zunz and Steinschneider is fraught with an unusual inner tension, and it is highly dialectical. Strong attraction and violent repugnance go hand in hand. It becomes clear that Scholem struggled with Zunz and Steinschneider, these taunt-ing demons, and they were a serious challenge for his own scientific agenda. Only on a rather superficial level can one find a simple answer to the challenge posed by Zunz and Steinschneider: “We sought,” Scholem says about himself and his fellow younger Zionist scholars, “to return to science, with all its strictness and without compromise, as we had found it in the words of Zunz or Steinschneider—but we wished to direct it toward construction and affirmation.”10 In other words, Scholem sought to integrate the historical study of Judaism into the greater project of Jewish nation-building, while remaining faithful to the highest standards of scientific objectivity. Such an aim, however, is not easily achieved, and Scholem was aware of this. Jewish stud-ies, he believed, are in constant danger of relinquishing their scientific standards in favor of national rhetoric11 and sentimentality.12 For this reason, Zunz’s and Steinschneider’s scientific ethos, their struggle for

9 Quoted from Gershom Scholem, “Reflections on Modern Jewish Studies (1944),” in On the Possibility of Jewish Mysticism in our Time & Other Essays, edited and selected by Avraham Shapira, trans. Jonathan Chipman (Philadelphia/Jerusalem: Jewish Publica-tion Society, 1997), pp. 51–71, here on pp. 58–59. Originally published in Hebrew in Lua ha-Aretz, Shenat TSH”H, 1944/45 (Tel Aviv: Hotza at ayyim, 1944), pp. 94–112, and reprinted as “Mi-tokh hirhurim al okhmat Yisra el,” in Devarim be-go (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1976), pp. 385–403; quotation from pp. 391–92.

10 Scholem, “Reflections on Modern Jewish Studies,” p. 68 (Devarim be-go, pp. 400–401).

11 Scholem, “Reflections on Modern Jewish Studies,” p. 70 (Devarim be-go, p. 402): “All of these ills have now assumed a national dress. From the frying pan into the fire: following the emptiness of assimilation there comes another type, that of the conten-tious nationalist phrase. Instead of religious homiletics and religious rhetoric, we have developed national homiletics and national rhetoric in science.”

12 Scholem, “Reflections on Modern Jewish Studies,” p. 70 (Devarim be-go, p. 402): “Have we destroyed sentimentality? It still walks among us, in new dress and in a new style, no less annoying than the original one.”

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scientific objectivity, will never become obsolete; they remain a chal-lenge, invincible demons reminding modern scholarship of its scientific ethos. They are a vital remedy for the shortcomings of ideologically motivated forms of science.

Translated into the vocabulary of contemporary discourse, Scholem touches here upon the sensitive issue of the uncertain role played by Jewish studies in constructing a coherent narrative of the history of the Jewish people and in criticizing such narratives. This question contin-ues to be of outstanding relevance for Jewish studies to this day. In 1995, the noted intellectual historian Amos Funkenstein wrote that in the nineteenth century, “the historical-philological perspective consti-tuted the backbone of the Wissenschaft des Judentums and sustained its branches.” In the late twentieth century, however, its status had been “eroded.” Funkenstein argued that this loss of authority of the historical-philological method and the consequent disappearance of a shared “master narrative” is reflected in a series of controversies among stu-dents of Jewish history that erupted in the 1990s. A polyphony of “voices,” each expressing a parochial outlook, replaced what once had been a unified vision. Funkenstein perceived this deconstruction of the shared vision of Jewish history as a destruction or elimination of the subject or the self, which he deplored: “There is no substitute for the self—neither in epistemology, nor in history, nor in life. [. . .] A coher-ent narrative is the mark of a subject’s identity. It even is the self, inasmuch as every self lives the narrative it shapes, not only in words but also in deeds: our narrative is our life.”13

Funkenstein’s diagnosis implicitly suggests that a move toward the reconstitution of a consensual narrative and a unified self is called for in Jewish studies. Although Funkenstein does not say this explicitly, the implication of his diagnosis is that the erstwhile “backbone” of Jewish studies, the historical-philological method, should be restored some of its former authority. Scholem would probably not have disagreed with Funkenstein—not in the sense that all students of Jewish history should become philologists, but that the creation of overarching (ideological )

13 Amos Funkenstein, “Jewish History among the Thorns,” in David Biale and Robert S. Westman, eds., Thinking Impossibilities: The Intellectual Legacy of Amos Funkenstein (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), pp. 309–27, on pp. 310, 323. (This is the revised English version of the Hebrew original published in Zion 60 [1995], pp. 335–47).

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historiographic interpretive schemes has to be based upon and coun-terbalanced by a sober preoccupation with texts and facts.

Would Steinschneider have welcomed this proposal? Probably not fully. Steinschneider, as we saw, was not an “objective scholar” in the naïve sense of the term. In his reconstruction of the history of Jewish culture, he was guided both by historiographic concepts that informed his thought and by historical narrative. In thus balancing historio-graphic thought with positive, factual research, he parallels Scholem and Funkenstein. But in a dialogue with both Scholem and Funken-stein, Steinschneider would probably always have warned us that the study of history should never become the handmaiden of preconceived ideas. The study of history is a critical enterprise that should not serve religious, ideological, or political interests. This was Steinschneider’s “noble dream of objectivity,” which made him a strong skeptic with respect to the beneficial effects of the Wissenschaft des Judentums for the “Jewish cause.” Does this render Steinschneider’s approach to his-tory obsolete for modern research? Certainly not. To be sure, his-torical research in the twenty-first century will not be able to emulate Steinschneider; it will do many things differently than they were done in the nineteenth century. But Steinschneider’s ideal of objectivity remains a critical force in scholarly discourse; the spirit of objective and critical science, this invincible demon, is still relevant to Jewish studies today.

6. MORITZ STEINSCHNEIDER’S CONCEPT OF THE HISTORY OF JEWISH LITERATURE

Reimund Leicht

Moritz Steinschneider’s tremendous and often unsurpassed achieve-ments in the study of Hebrew books earned him the title “father of Hebrew bibliography.”1 He is often seen as a scholar par excellence who studied, with a certain degree of pedantry, every piece of Jewish literature he came across, irrespective of its historical or cultural value. But was the comprehensive bibliographical mapping of Jewish litera-ture Steinschneider’s ultimate goal? Although much of his work does indeed leave us with the impression of Steinschneider as a painstaking scholar striving for the objective documentation of the remains of Jew-ish literature and nothing more, in the present paper I try to argue the case that this interpretation does not do justice to Steinschneider’s real ambitions. Already in his first important publication—the essay “Jüdische Literatur” for Ersch and Gruber’s Allgemeine Encyklopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste—Steinschneider gives much more than just a bibliographical sketch of Jewish literature. It is an ambitious draft for a comprehensive history of Jewish literature based upon clearly formu-lated historiographical concepts. In a later work—the lectures known as “Allgemeine Einleitung in die jüdische Literatur des Mittelalters”—Steinschneider makes it clear that bibliographical research, or the col-lection of dry facts, cannot be a goal in and of itself. Rather, the aim of all historical research should be “cultural history” (Kulturgeschichte), of which the history of literature is an inseparable part.2

This is an indication that Steinschneider’s own scientific goals were reaching beyond bibliographical documentation, and that they had deeper theoretical foundations than later generations were willing to concede. It is the purpose of the present paper to shed some light on

1 Ismar Elbogen, “Moritz Steinschneider, der Vater der Hebräischen Bibliogra-phie,” Soncino-Blätter 3/4 (1926): 155–58.

2 AE, p. XV/312: “Kulturgeschichte ist das eigentliche Ziel der Weltgeschichte, weil das Ziel aller Geistesthätigkeit.”

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Steinschneider, not the father of Hebrew bibliography, but the histo-rian of Jewish literature, who developed a concept of the history of Jewish literature as part of a general Kulturgeschichte—a concept that served him as a guideline for his relentless activities as a bibliographer but that goes well beyond the collection of dry facts.

Steinschneider’s conceptual framework for the study of the history of Jewish literature can be seen in many of his books and articles, but the above-mentioned essay, “Jüdische Literatur,” along with the lec-tures published under the title “Allgemeine Einleitung,” are the most important sources for the reconstruction of his ideas about what a history of Jewish literature should look like. These works are therefore the main focus of the following discussions. But before I proceed to them, I begin with a short discussion of Leopold Zunz’s (1794–1886) contribution to the discipline of the history of Jewish literature, which will serve as a foil for a proper appraisal of Steinschneider’s achieve-ments in this field.3

1. Steinschneider’s Predecessor: Leopold Zunz’s Concept of the History of Jewish Literature

Steinschneider’s essay “Jüdische Literatur” marks an enormous step forward in the study of Jewish literature, but it was made possible by the scholarly activities of earlier representatives of the early Wissenschaft des Judentums. Among these, Leopold Zunz’s epoch-making “Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur,” published in 1818,4 is of prime importance. Zunz’s article is generally interpreted as an impressive manifesto for the nascent Wissenschaft des Judentums, but it should also, and no less

3 The recently published book by Johannes Sabel, Die Geburt der Literatur aus dem Geist der Aggada (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), pp. 35–167, contains a detailed analysis of the interpretation of the Aggadah in nineteenth-century Wissenschaft des Judentums and in Jewish literature. Unfortunately, this book came to my attention only when this article was largely completed. The focus of the book and that of the present article are slightly different, but some of the conclusions regarding Zunz’s and Steinschneider’s interpretation of the Aggadah are complimentary.

4 Leopold Zunz, Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur (Berlin: Maurersche Buchhand-lung, 1818); republished in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1 (Berlin: Gerschel, 1875), pp. 1–31 (German citations according to this edition). A partial English translation used here can be found in Alfred Jospe, ed., Studies in Jewish Thought. An Anthology of German Jewish Scholarship (Detroit: Wayne University Press, 1981), pp. 19–25.

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importantly, be seen as a text dealing with the history of Jewish litera-ture. Read as such one is, on the other hand, baffled by the enormous progress made in the study of Jewish literature in the three decades between Zunz’s programmatic essay and Steinschneider’s “Jüdische Literatur.” This gap is manifested not only in the incomparably richer documentation of Steinschneider’s essay, but also in the formulation of some of its basic concepts and ideas. A good example of this is that Zunz declares without hesitation that “rabbinische Literatur” (i.e., post-biblical Jewish literature) should be seen as the “literature of a nation,” which serves as “the entrance gate to an understanding of that people’s cultural development throughout the ages.”5 Nationality as a paradigm for the reconstruction of Judaism’s literary history is thus an absolute given for Zunz, and accordingly he saw no need to expand any further on the matter. Therefore, he directly proceeds to a “table of contents of the sciences” (“Inhalts-Verzeichniss von Wissen-schaften”) and a “survey” (“Übersicht”) of Jewish literature. Reading this survey, the modern reader is once again surprised by the lack of systematic ideas. One searches in vain in Zunz’s work for a discussion of a historiographic pattern for the organization of the history of Jew-ish literature.

That being said, the preliminary outline of Jewish literature as it appears in “Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur” was not Zunz’s last word on the issue. Although, interestingly enough, Zunz did not include any systematic discussions on the nature or structure of a history of Jewish literature in any of his great works (e.g., Die gottes-dienstlichen Vorträge der Juden,6 Die synagogale Poesie des Mitteltalters7 or the Literaturgeschichte der synagogalen Poesie8), he did publish two articles

5 Zunz, Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur, p. 6: “Wer die Litteratnr [sic!] einer Nation als den Eingang betrachtet zur Gesammtkenntnis ihres Culturganges durch alle Zeiten hindurch—wie in jedem Moment ihr Wesen aus dem Gegebenen und dem Hinzu-kommenden, d. i. aus dem Innern und Aeussern sich gestaltet, wie Schicksal, Klima, Sitten, Religion und Zufall freundschaftlich oder feindlich einander greifen, und wie endlich die Gegenwart, als aller dagewesenen Erscheinungen nothwendiges Resultat dasteht: wahrlich der tritt mit Ehrfurcht vor diesen Göttertempel, und lässt bescheiden sich in Vorhalle einführen, die erhabene Aussicht vom Giebel herunter als ein Wür-digerer einst zu genissen”; cf. the English translation, p. 22.

6 Leopold Zunz, Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden (Berlin: Ascher, 1832).7 Idem, Die synagogale Poesie des Mitteltalters (Berlin: Springer, 1855–1859).8 Idem, Literaturgeschichte der synagogalen Poesie (Berlin: Gerschel, 1865).

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in Zur Geschichte und Literatur (1845),9 which give us more detailed insights into his concept of the history of Jewish literature. They also foreshadow later developments that are also found in Steinschneider’s works.

The apparently earlier of the two undated articles is entitled “Die jüdische Literatur.” It is saturated with Hegelian terminology and gives us a vivid impression of the intellectual atmosphere that prevailed among the early adherents of the Wissenschaft des Judentums. Zunz com-mences his survey with a characterization of the nature of literature in general, which he believes to be the product of a single universal Spirit (“Ausflüsse eines einzigen Urgeistes”)10 active in “the particular” (“in dem Besonderen”), i.e., in “the literature of a specific nation.”11 The concept that literature should be seen as the product of the activity of the “divine Spirit” (“göttlicher Geist”) in the “particular” is of special importance to Zunz, since it allows him to argue for the existence of a separate Jewish literature that nevertheless forms part of world lit-erature in general: The Jews are “a historical particularity recognized by world history” and they are “according to national tradition and confession a whole,” all this being the “justification for the existence and the foundation for the peculiarity of a Jewish literature.”12 At the same time, Zunz depicts Jewish literature as deeply interwoven with ancient literature, Christianity, and scientific activity in the Middle Ages, such that it is complementary to general literature, having “its own organism, which helps to understand the universal—if in itself understood according to universal laws.”13

9 Idem, “Die jüdische Literatur,” in Zur Geschichte und Literatur (Berlin: Veit, 1845), pp. 1–21; and idem, “Zur Literatur des jüdischen Mittelalters in Frankreich und Deutschland,” in Zur Geschichte und Literatur (Berlin: Veit, 1845), pp. 22–213.

10 Idem, “Die jüdische Literatur,” p. 1.11 Ibid., p. 2: “Dann wird die Literatur des einzelnen Volkes ein aus bildenden

Kräften gezeugtes, ein Widerglanz des göttlichen Geistes, der in dem Besondern, das auch seinen Antheil an dem Ewigen hat, sich offenbart, und ihre Summe und Spitze lässt uns alles dasjenige überschauen, was die edelsten Geister empfunden und gewollt, was sie gesucht, geliebt, erkämpft und wofür sie ihr sterbliches Theil hingegeben.”

12 Ibid., p. 2: “Eine solche von der Weltgeschichte anerkannte historische Beson-derheit sind die Juden, nach Volksthum und Bekenntnis ein Ganzes, dessen Richtun-gen von einheitlichen, mit ihren Wurzeln in das tiefste Alterthum hineinragenden, Gesetzen gelenkt werden, und dessen geistige Erzeugnisse, bereits über zwei Jahr-tausende, eine Lebensfaser unzerreissbar durchzieht. Diess die Berechtigung zur Exis-tenz, die Begründung der Eigentümlichkeit einer jüdischen Literatur.”

13 Ibid., p. 2: “Aber sie ist auch aufs innigste mit der Cultur der Alten, dem Ursprung und Fortgang des Christenthums, der wissenschaftlichen Thätigkeit des Mittelalters verflochten, und indem sie in die geistigen Richtungen von Vor- und

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After these general remarks, which assert Jewish literature’s pecu-liarity while safeguarding its honorable place within world literature, Zunz gives a brief account of Jewish history, aimed at explaining the “misfortune” (“Missgeschick”) Jewish literature suffered in the past. This part of the essay displays Zunz’s general chronological pattern for the history of Jewish literature. He begins with the contacts (and clashes) between Judaism and Hellenism in antiquity and describes the rise of Christianity.14 Then he mentions the “great revolution” of the Arabs and the spread of science under their hegemony, which led for a second time to the involvement of Judaism with a foreign national culture, resulting in the mutual influence of the two nations on one another.15 He further points out the deplorable cultural situa-tion in the Christian Occident, “darkened by the glory of the Pope,” where only in a slow process and after the defeat of the Crusaders did the first harbingers of the freedom of conscience appear. During this period, the Jews functioned as agents for the transfer of Arabic science to Europe, until Italian culture led to the awakening of science and, aided by the invention of the printing press, “the star of freedom” ascended.16 Zunz’s description of the modern age largely consists of a survey of the “ups and downs” of the study of Hebrew literature by Christian scholars from the Renaissance to its utter decline in the nineteenth century,17 concluding his article with a call to recognize the importance of the study of Jewish literature for philosophers, pub-licists, theologians, and students of the political sciences.18

In his second essay, “Zur Literatur des jüdischen Mittelalters in Frankreich und Deutschland,” Zunz further develops this historio-graphical scheme. In the introduction he presents, for the first time, a model of the history of Jewish literature with a detailed classification into three major divisions (“Abschnitte”) and no less than eleven sub-divisions, or “epochs” (“Epochen”). Similar to the model later pre-sented in Steinschneider’s “Die jüdische Literatur,” the three major “divisions” are as follows: antiquity (characterized first by unmediated

Mitwelt eingreift, Kämpfe und Leiden theilend, wird sie zugleich eine Ergänzung der allgemeinen Literatur, aber mit eigenem Organismus, der nach allgemeinen Gesetzen erkannt das Allgemeine wiederum erkennen hilft.”

14 Ibid., pp. 4–5.15 Ibid., pp. 5–6.16 Ibid., pp. 6–8.17 Ibid., pp. 8–19.18 Ibid., pp. 19–20.

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tradition and later on by the encounter with the spirit of classical cul-ture), the Middle Ages (determined by the influence of Christianity and Islam and characterized by the usage of Hebrew for all products of the Spirit [“Werke des Geistes”]), and modern times, when Juda-ism was confronted for a third time with Greek wisdom and which is characterized by the use of national languages and the discrepancy between religious dogma and life.19

Zunz does not limit himself to this rough division and subdivides it into smaller epochs, each of which receives its specific role and impor-tance “from the law of historical development.”20 The enumeration of all the characteristics mentioned for the eleven epochs in the history of Jewish literature is beyond the scope of this paper, but it is striking to see that the four epochs of ancient times are largely characterized by their changing attitude toward the Midrash, on the one hand, and external cultural influences, on the other: In the first period (330–143 BCE), the aim of intellectual activity was the understanding of the law. In the second period (143 BCE–138 CE), the influence of Hellenic culture grew and the schools of legal and speculative Midrash further devel-oped. In the third epoch (138–358 CE), a struggle ensued against the dominance of foreign influence, whereas the fourth epoch (358–541 CE) yielded the Babylonian Talmud. The fifth epoch (541–770 CE) seems to have been a period of transition from the ancient world to the Middle Ages, when the Halakhah lost its creative power, the Karaite sect came into being, and the first imitations of the poetry and sci-ence of the Syrians were produced. The sixth epoch (770–960 CE) is dominated by the impact of Arabic philosophy, which generated a conflict between different sects and ultimately led to the development of exegesis and philology (“grammar”) and of natural sciences. Finally, the seventh epoch (960–1204 CE) is the “golden era of the Jewish Middle Ages” with its development of the sciences and poetry. After this apogee of Jewish literature, the eighth epoch (1204–1492 CE) was more or less a continuation of the previous one, relying on its achievements, whereas the ninth epoch (1492–1655 CE) is a period of persecutions and of a decline in knowledge and culture, although the invention of printing heralded the coming of a new culture of

19 Zunz, “Zur Literatur des jüdischen Mittelalters,” p. 22.20 Ibid., p. 23: “Jedem dieser grossen Räume giebt das Gesetz geschichtlicher Fort-

bildung seine eigenthümliche Thätigkeit und Bedeutung.”

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science. Subsequently, the tenth epoch (1655–1755 CE) was a century of general decline, while the eleventh epoch (from 1755 CE onwards) announced the beginning of a new period in which Jews and Jewish literature would begin to participate in universal culture (“grössern Antheil an der allgemeinen Thätigkeit”).

This historical outline is the first draft of the history of Jewish litera-ture produced by the early Wissenschaft des Judentums. In many respects, it became paradigmatic for later historians of Jewish literature. To mention just a few important aspects: “Jewish literature” is considered to be the literature of the “Jewish nation”; it must be divided into three major periods (antiquity, Middle Ages, modern times); the center of ancient Jewish literature is the Midrash; and the impact of Arabic culture on Jewish literature marks the main factor for the transition to the medieval period, in which the Karaites also assume a crucial role as catalysts for historical progress. Not surprisingly, Jewish culture in Spain is considered by Zunz (and many others after him) as the unsur-passed apogee of Jewish literature, and he does not hide his healthy disrespect for the impact of theology on Jewish and non-Jewish literary history. Historical progress is associated with the liberation from its influence. Thus it was Zunz who was the first to develop a well-defined paradigm for a history of Jewish literature that could serve Moritz Steinschneider, Zunz’s most important student and friend, as a model for his own sketch of the history of Jewish literature.

2. Steinschneider’s Concept of a History of Jewish Literature in “Jüdische Literatur”

The first publication to provide insight into Steinschneider’s con-cept of the history of Jewish literature is his German essay “Jüdische Literatur.”21 It was published in 1850 in the twenty-seventh part of

21 Steinschneider’s essay “Jüdische Literatur” was preceded by David Cassel’s Plan der Real-Encyclopädie des Judenthums zunächst für die Mitarbeiter (Krotoschin: Monasch, 1844), a project in which Steinschneider was involved from the outset (cf. Plan, p. 3). One would expect Steinschneider’s central ideas of the concept of a history of Jew-ish literature to find their expression in this text as well. However, the outline of the section on Literaturgeschichte (Plan, pp. 28–29) and the subsequent remarks in it (Plan, pp. 49–52, §36) do not betray the slightest trace of the concept of the history of Jewish literature developed and adopted by Steinschneider in his later essay of 1845–1847. It is possible that in 1844 Steinschneider had not yet developed a clear concept and that

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the second section of Ersch and Gruber’s Allgemeine Encyklopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste, but it was written—as Steinschneider relates in the preface to the English translation—in the years 1845–1847.22 “Jüdische Literatur” is considered by all to be a synthesis of an over-whelming quantity of biographical and bibliographical information, culled from earlier Jewish bibliographical works (e.g., Abraham Zacuto [1452–1515], Gedaliah ibn Yachya [1515–1587] and ayyim Joseph David Azulai [1724–1806]), Christian Hebraists (e.g., Giulio Barto-locci [1613–1687] and Johann Christoph Wolf [1683–1739]), and of thirty years of intensive research carried out by the Wissenschaft des Judentums (Solomon Rapoport [1790–1867], Samuel David Luzzato [1800–1865], Leopold Zunz, Zacharias Frankel [1801–1875], Michael Sachs [1808–1864], Meyer Heinrich Landauer [1808–1841], Abra-ham Geiger [1810–1874], Leopold Dukes [1810–1891], David Cassel [1818–1893], Adolf Jellinek [1820/21–1893], Steinschneider himself, and others).

A closer look at this essay reveals, however, that it is no less remark-able for its chronological and systematic organization and historio-graphical interpretation of the material. In a brief introduction found in the original German version23 but omitted in the English transla-tion, Steinschneider attempts to define the subject matter of his essay, namely, “Jewish literature.” It is perhaps not surprising to see that Steinschneider tries to characterize “Jewish literature” in the most comprehensive manner, since it was one of the goals of the Wissen-schaft des Judentums to broaden the scope of its research and to include phenomena that were marginalized in Jewish history. Consequently, his all-embracing approach necessitated the search for an answer to the question: what makes Jewish literature a real unity? Steinschneider’s deep preoccupation with this question becomes clear in the first sen-tence of “Jüdische Literatur,” where he states that “the literature of

he did so only in the years following, in close dialogue with the ideas of his teacher Leopold Zunz.

22 JL/E, p. v. The English translation follows the German original in its general outline. In numerous passages, however, it is considerably enlarged and modified, as Steinschneider himself mentions in his introduction (p. ix). The most important omis-sions are “§31. Schluß, Quellen,” and a long section at the beginning of JL/G §1, which will have to be discussed in more detail later on. Since Steinschneider did not change his general outlook on the history of Jewish literature in the English version of his essay, the present interpretation relies on both versions, quoting the English ver-sion in the text and, where necessary, the German original in the footnotes.

23 JL/G, p. 357.

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the Jews in the broadest sense actually comprises everything that was written by the Jews from the most ancient times up to the present, irrespective of its content, language and fatherland.”24 This definition, however, gives rise to enormous difficulties, as Steinschneider himself acknowledges. Jewish literature was produced in so many different countries and languages and on so many different subject matters that one finds it difficult to convince oneself that “this apparent aggregate of literature” can be seen as “a connected organism.”

Steinschneider’s answer to this problem is carefully balanced: Jew-ish literature forms a unity, but in a most peculiar way “insofar as its agents form a specific whole, which cannot be designated exhaustively as religious community and only approximately as nationality.”25 Nei-ther the term hebräische Literatur, nor neuhebräische Literatur or rabbinische Literatur can therefore appropriately designate the subject matter of the essay.26 The task of defining the limits of Jewish literature becomes even more difficult if one takes into consideration the strong tension between the fact that Jewish literature follows currents prevalent in the countries and peoples in which it was written and the fact that it also creates specific literary genres (“Literaturkreise”) that cannot be compared to anything outside Jewish culture.27 In view of all these questions, Steinschneider’s delineation of “Jewish literature” could not have been simplistic. Similar to Zunz’s approach, he regards the Jewish nation as the foundation of the phenomenon of Jewish litera-ture, which guarantees its inner unity. Contrary to Zunz, however, in Steinschneider’s view this unity of Jewish literature remains a highly problematic one.

A similar impression arises from the chronological organization of “Jüdische Literatur.” Steinschneider divides Jewish literature into four “principal periods,”28 though not without expressing certain

24 JL/G, p. 357: “Die Literatur der Juden im weitesten Sinne begreift eigentlich Alles, was Juden von den ältesten Zeiten an bis auf die Gegenwart, ohne Rücksicht auf Inhalt, Sprache und Vaterland, geschrieben haben.”

25 JL/G, p. 357: “In diesem Durchgange durch so viele Länder, Sprachen und Materien liegt eine, die Auffassung und Würdigung besonders erschwerende, Eigenthümlichkeit; gewiß bildet aber dieses anscheinende Aggregat von Schriftthum einen stetigen Organismus, in sofern die Träger desselben ein eigenthümliches Ganzes bilden, welches mit dem Namen: Religionsgenossenschaft nicht erschöpfend, mit dem der Nationalität nur annäherungsweise bezeichnet ist.”

26 JL/G, p. 357.27 JL/G, pp. 358–59.28 JL/E, p. 1 (JL/G, p. 358: “Hauptperioden”).

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dissatisfaction at having to exclude the Bible and the older Hebrew lit-erature from his essay, these “having been treated by Christian authors under separate heads.”29 The division into four periods, however, must not be seen as a schematic one, and Steinschneider repeatedly empha-sizes that it is based upon a combination of chronological aspects, general characteristics, and systematic considerations with regard to content and literary form. The first period of Jewish literature from the time of Ezra to the Arabic hegemony is “characterized by the Oral Tradition and Midrash.” It is followed by a second period that stretches from the beginning of the Arabic hegemony until the expul-sion of the Jews from Spain and which is “characterized as a process of new formations first struggling for existence, then in full posses-sion, and finally perfected by cultivation.” The third period, covering Jewish history until the time of Mendelssohn, “is, in general, one of decay,” while the fourth period from Mendelssohn onwards is “now in course of elaboration” and thus exceeds the boundaries of a literary historian’s task.30

This chronological division can be seen as reflecting the common practice of dividing history into ancient, medieval, early modern, and modern times. It is similar to Zunz’s earlier model but also reveals a few differences. Whereas Zunz, for example, lumped together the apogee of the high Middle Ages with the subsequent period of decline, Stein-schneider makes a clear distinction between the two. Steinschneider follows Zunz, however, in his attempt to adjust the external chrono-logical scheme to internal criteria, and to anchor it in significant char-acteristics within Jewish literature. This leads him to an interpretation of the role of Midrash in Jewish antiquity which is partly foreshadowed by Zunz’s model.

Midrash, for Steinschneider, is the dominant form of all Jewish lit-erature in the first period of its history: all Jewish literature after the restoration of Jewish statehood under Ezra was midrashic in form. The “first germs” of this phenomenon can be detected in the latest

29 JL/E, p. vi; cf. also JL/G, p. 357: “Die Abtrennung der biblischen (hebräischen) und apokryphischen Schriften von den übrigen jüdischen geschieht nach einem dog-matischen, für den literaturgeschichtlichen Standpunkt untergeordneten Momente, mußte aber wegen ihrer allgemeinen Verbreitung auch in dieser Encyclopädie respektiert werden. Dem innern Wesen nach ist die Entwickelung eine stetige, auch in Übergängen der späteren kanonischen und apokryphischen wahrnehmbare.”

30 JL/E, p. 1 (JL/G, p. 358).

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parts of the Hebrew Bible.31 Later on, when the Bible had become “the centre of all thought and religious action” in post-exilic Judaism, it provided “a centre to the Jewish mind and a direction to literature, which, predominating in the first period, have remained active till the present time.”32 The results of this general attitude were, however, double-edged, since on the one hand the “Bible-centrism” stimulated mental activity and study, but at the same time submitted it to the hege-mony of Scripture.

The Bible as the center of post-biblical Jewish culture generated the production of a collective literature of a peculiar form. It is divided into two different branches—Halakhah and Aggadah—which Stein-schneider calls “the truly national literature of more than a thousand years, to which no analogous can be found elsewhere.”33 Midrash thus becomes the true core of national Jewish literature in late Antiquity. It should be noted here that Steinschneider uses the term “national literature” (“Nationalliteratur”) exclusively in the sense of “collective literature” not authored by individuals. “Nationalliteratur” is for Stein-schneider not equivalent to the sum of the literary products of authors belonging to one nation in the sense Zunz used this term earlier.

It is interesting to see, however, that the theory about the collective character of ancient Jewish literature yielded unexpected side effects. If ancient Jewish literature was essentially “collective,” perforce Stein-schneider had to exclude Hellenistic Greek literature (Philo, Josephus, or the poet Ezekiel ) from the canon of “Jewish national literature” in the first period of its history. He mentions them in “Jüdische Lite-ratur” only in passing,34 not quite knowing what to do with them, presumably because they did not tally his model of the development of ancient Jewish literature.

Midrash, as the dominant form of ancient Jewish literature, is charac-terized by a strong inner relation to the literature of the Bible35 and by its fundamentally unsystematic form of presentation.36 It was, however,

31 JL/E, p. 2 (JL/G, p. 358).32 JL/E, p. 3 (JL/G, p. 358).33 JL/E, p. 4 (JL/G, p. 359: “die eigentliche Nationalliteratur von mehr als einem

Jahrtausend, für die sich wol in keiner andern ein Analogon finden dürfte”). 34 See, e.g., JL/E, pp. 4 and 123 (JL/G, pp. 359 and 408).35 JL/E, p. 6 (JL/G, p. 360).36 JL/E, p. 6: “In the older periods the most varied subjects are blended with each

other, from the highest questions of the philosophy of the day, to the most indifferent things of common life” (JL/G, p. 360).

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highly productive and did not lose its “creative power” until the arrival of Arabic science.37 Now it is interesting to see that among the two branches of midrashic literature—Halakhah and Aggadah—the latter undoubtedly receives Steinschneider’s more sympathetic treatment.38 In contrast to Halakhah, which binds human action, Aggadah repre-sents thought “as being without the sphere of duty”: Thought “pro-duced by Revelation and Reason” becomes “the living internal law”, and “[t]hus free, in contrast to all law, and limited only in herself, [. . .] [she] has always found her expression in Judaism.” Moreover, “Hag-gada in connexion with Halacha” generated among other things “also the commencement of individual sciences, which form the transition from Halacha to special Haggada,”39 while “general Haggada” differenti-ates into ethics, metaphysics, and history. “Special Haggada,” on the other hand, deals with biblical exposition. In view of the enormous creativity of the Midrash it comes as no surprise that Steinschneider concludes his paragraph on Aggadah with the statement that “this brief development might justify the assertion made above, that a more intimate acquaintance with the Midrash literature, in which nearly all the mental energy of a people, equal at least in this respect to its con-temporaries, is concentrated and reflected throughout more than 1000 years, is worth, and actually needs, a lengthened and unprejudiced examination of details.”40

The most important factor for the transition to the second period in the history of Jewish literature was, according to Steinschneider’s model, the advent of Arabic science. The arrival of the Arabs on the stage of history in the geonic period “formed the first seeds of the new Arabian science,” and when they gradually became universal they even “arrested the living creative power of the Midrash.”41 The impact of Arabic culture on Judaism thus led to the vanishing of the Midrash and the creation of a new Jewish literature, which can be distinguished from the former period by five characteristics: it is a literature written in “the Dispersion”; produced “under the influence of different nation-alities and languages”; it “proceeded more from literature than from

37 JL/E, pp. 5–6 ( JL/G, p. 360).38 Cf. for the following discussion JL/E, pp. 28–31 (JL/G, pp. 370–71).39 JL/E, p. 33 (JL/G, p. 372).40 JL/E, p. 54 (JL/G, pp. 381–82).41 JL/E, p. 60 (JL/G, p. 384).

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life”; it is “in general richer and more diversified” than the previous period; and, finally, it is a written and not an oral literature.42

In sum, the entire structure of Steinschneider’s description of the second period of Jewish literature is based upon the assumption that ancient Jewish literature in both of its branches—Halakhah and Aggadah—inevitably underwent a process of fundamental transfor-mation under the influence of Arab culture. This process was less far-reaching in Halakhah, where it mainly prompted the creation of new literary forms and “the transition to independent systematic works.”43 But, as Steinschneider tries to show in the paragraph described below, the consequences for the domain of human knowledge formerly cov-ered by the Aggadah were dramatic.

“Jüdische Literatur” contains a long paragraph on the background, development, and historical significance of the so-called Maimonid-ean controversy (§11).44 This long dissertation might seem at first sight unfitting in the context of a general historical survey of Jewish litera-ture, but, when read more carefully, the relevance of this description of the “conflict between science and Haggada”45 within Steinschneider’s concept of the history of Jewish literature becomes immediately clear: Steinschneider believes that the Maimonidean controversy was the very painful historical process in which the different branches of Jew-ish literature formerly covered by Aggadah gained independence. This ultimately led to the reorganization of the whole of Jewish literature and science.

Previously, “the scattered precepts of the national Haggadah,” Stein-schneider explains, “did not, like Divine jurisprudence of the Halacha, take the form of a distinct theory, but were moulded by their connexion with the Bible into the Midrash,”46 and “the Haggada comprised the objects of the most various sciences; not however in a scientific form.”47 However, “when through the agency of Arabian science Muhammed-anism began to discuss the highest religious questions in a rationalistic manner,” Judaism became “conscious of a severance between faith

42 JL/E, p. 61 (JL/G, p. 384).43 JL/E, p. 67 (JL/G, p. 387).44 JL/E, pp. 82–94 (JL/G, pp. 393–96).45 The importance Steinschneider attributed to this part of his essay is further

strengthened by the fact that it is one of the few paragraphs he thoroughly reworked in the English translation.

46 JL/E, p. 83 (JL/G, p. 393).47 JL/E, p. 82 (JL/G, p. 393).

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and knowledge.”48 This process had direct bearings upon the develop-ment of Jewish literature, because “the essence of the Midrash [. . .] was for the first time set free; and its contents, disengaged from the tangled web of the Haggada, were formed on a scientific foundation.”49 Arabic science thus functioned as a catalyst for the emancipation of the different branches of science from the domination of the “national spirit” prevalent in the oral midrashic tradition. Arabic culture thus brought forth a civilization within Judaism that made possible the for-mation of “individual minds,” of “writers, composers, and separate sciences, properly so called.”50

This historical process was neither an easy nor a peaceful one. Quite to the contrary, Steinschneider insists that “this opposition between the national and the individual elements could not fail to give rise to a conflict, which beginning in Arabia was renewed wherever they came into contact.”51 Because the fields of knowledge covered by the Agga-dah in the first period and by independent sciences in the second were basically identical, the emancipation of the latter led almost inevitably to a “conflict between science and Haggada.” This conflict broke out for the first time in the eighth century when the Karaites contested the validity of the Halakhah, thus raising “in the last instance [. . .] the question which runs through the whole history of religion, con-cerning the relation between Reason and Revelation.”52 In twelfth-century Spain, the estrangement of Jewish philosophers from Judaism prompted similar results, and at the end of that century, the Maimo-nidean controversy made visible the inevitable conflict between the new independent sciences and the older Aggadah.

Each and every line in Steinschneider’s essay exudes the deep sym-pathy he felt toward this process and the fact that he regarded it as an emancipation of the sciences and a positive historical process that would ultimately be crowned by success. He upheld this fundamental optimism in spite of the appearance of certain “negative” phenomena

48 JL/E, p. 83 (JL/G, pp. 393–94).49 JL/E, p. 83 (JL/G, p. 394).50 JL/E, p. 83 (JL/G, p. 394).51 JL/E, p. 83 (JL/G, p. 394).52 JL/E, p. 84 (JL/G, p. 394). Steinschneider clearly adheres here to the assump-

tion that the polemics between Karaites and Rabbanites played a seminal role in the intellectual formation of medieval Judaism, although he subordinates this conflict to the larger conflict between Arabic science and the old Aggadah.

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in the history of Jewish literature, such as the formation of Kabbalah, which hampered the influence of scientific thinking upon Jewish culture.53 The conflict between traditional Aggadah and science there-fore continued throughout this entire period, though in its final phase (fourteenth and fifteenth centuries), “political events, the newly formed Kabbala, the revival of classical literature in Italy, the decline of Jew-ish civilization in Spain, and the greater interest in Christian literature occasioned by the polemics of both parties, turned the thoughts of individual minds in different directions.”54

The long paragraph on the “conflict between science and Hag-gada” thus appears to be an essential element of Steinschneider’s con-cept of the history of Jewish literature in the Middle Ages. It is not a digression but the point on which Steinschneider’s entire concept of medieval Jewish literature hinges, since the accentuation of the role of the Maimonidean controversy allows Steinschneider to interpret the development of different branches of medieval Jewish literature as organic ramifications of the old Aggadah after they were set free from the tutelage of tradition under the emancipating influence of Arabic science.

Like many other scholars of the Wissenschaft des Judentums in the nine-teenth century, Steinschneider was convinced that Jewish literature reached its apogee in the medieval period, such that the subsequent, third, period could not be anything but, “in general, one of decay.”55 In Steinschneider’s view, this meant that this was a period of decline in the production of scientific literature. But even if post-medieval Juda-ism was only a dim reflection of brighter days, he still emphasizes that the Jewish literature of this period was not totally disconnected from the progress of European culture in general. He states that the

connexion of the Jewish development with the general change from mediaeval to modern science is difficult and obscure, and will become clear only after the issue of the struggle now going on within it, if indeed any issue can be expected without a general revolution of the world, such as took place in former epochs. We ourselves stand too completely within the circle of modern times, and are in other respects not yet suffi-ciently free from the influences of the middle ages, to be able to describe

53 JL/E, p. 92 (JL/G, p. 396).54 JL/E, pp. 93–94 (JL/G, p. 396).55 JL/E, p. 1 (JL/G, p. 358).

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all the characteristics and features of the movements in Jewish literature which have followed the course of European civilization.56

In other words, Steinschneider was convinced that Jews participated in various ways in the new movements in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, such that the learned Jews turned “from Arabic science and scholasticism to the pure fountain-head, classical and Hebrew literature.”57 A more pervasive influence of the new movement upon the development of Jewish literature was hampered, however, by the (internal ) lack of freedom of Jewish literature from theology and the (external ) “spiritual and temporal oppression.”58 Steinschneider there-fore concludes his general survey of the third period with a vehement call for the political and social emancipation of the Jews, and, at the same time, for the liberation of Jewish literature from its ghettoization in modern science.59

In sum, it becomes clear that the leitmotif of Steinschneider’s entire concept of a history of Jewish literature in “Jüdische Literatur” is the gradual emancipation of different branches of human knowledge, of sciences (“Wissenschaften”) from one another and from the hegemony of tradition. The measuring stick according to which a given historical period can be characterized as one of progress or decline is the degree to which human knowledge can freely develop and differentiate into independent branches of scientific literature. This is the reason why the “medieval” period, with its rich scientific literature, becomes for Steinschneider the apogee of the entire history of Jewish literature. Later periods with less scientific activity cannot be considered anything other than periods of decline.

Steinschneider’s concept of the history of Jewish literature in his essay “Jüdische Literatur” is thus characterized by a strong emphasis on the development of the sciences. Science is the telos of human his-tory, and the development of independent sciences is the touchstone for historical progress.

For the formulation of his concept of Jewish literature, Stein-schneider evidently adopted many ideas found in Zunz’s work. Long

56 JL/E, pp. 204–205 (JL/G, p. 448).57 JL/E, p. 205 (JL/G, p. 448). The German original adds the words “which is to

be seen as the crucial turning-point in the history of literature” (“die als der entschei-dende Wendepunkt der Literaturgeschichte überhaupt zu betrachten ist”).

58 JL/E, p. 206 (JL/G, p. 449).59 JL/E, p. 210 (JL/G, p. 451).

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before Steinschneider, Zunz had already argued that Jewish literature originates in a “connected organism,” which can be called “national-ity.” He had pinpointed the role of the Midrash as the dominant literary form of ancient Jewish literature, highlighted the historical importance of Arabic science for Jewish literature, and depicted religious tradition as basically negative. But Steinschneider reshapes these motifs and integrates them in a model which posits science, and not Spirit, as the core of historical progress. Nowhere in this text does Steinschneider make the slightest attempt to adopt Zunz’s Hegelian view that the Jewish nation and its literature is the product of the activity of “divine Spirit.” Rather, he adheres to a post-idealistic outlook, reminiscent of the positivistic trends of the mid-nineteenth century.

3. Steinschneider’s “Allgemeine Einleitung in die Jüdische Literatur des Mittelalters” Lectures

If the analysis of the essay “Jüdische Literatur” has shown that, as early as 1847, Steinschneider developed a concept of a history of Jew-ish literature that was clearly distinct from that of his teacher Zunz, this trend became even stronger in his lectures entitled “Allgemeine Einleitung in die Jüdische Literatur des Mittelalters.” Before enter-ing into a reconstruction of Steinschneider’s concept of the history of Jewish literature in the “Allgemeine Einleitung,” a few words should be devoted to the history of this text. Steinschneider tells us in the preface that the lectures were originally delivered at the Veitel-Heine-Ephraim’sche Lehranstalt in the years 1859–1897, and then revised for publication in 1895. Almost a decade later, in 1903–1905, they were finally published in the Jewish Quarterly Review.60 A text that was used and revised over a period of more than forty years makes it dif-ficult to determine when a certain opinion, theory, or idea was first thought and formulated, and whether certain other ideas were per-haps later abandoned by its author. It will be seen that the lectures are far from being a unified literary composition. On the other hand, Steinschneider’s usage of the same material for lectures delivered over

60 The “Allgemeine Einleitung” was never translated into English. Reprint edi-tions were published in Jerusalem (Bamberger and Wahrmann, 1933) and Amsterdam (Philo Press, 1966).

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decades indicates that his general outlook on the history of Jewish liter-ature in the Middle Ages did not change substantially, even though the possibility of modifications cannot be ruled out. It is with this caveat in mind that we will try to reconstruct Steinschneider’s concept of the history of Jewish literature from the “Allgemeine Einleitung.”

Unlike “Jüdische Literatur,” the “Allgemeine Einleitung” is not an encyclopedic description of Jewish literature. Rather, it focuses on var-ious methodological aspects related to the scientific study of medieval Jewish literature. Unfortunately, it is sometimes difficult to uncover Steinschneider’s intentions in his lectures, because they are obscured by their structure. It becomes quite clear, however, that the first four sections on “Nationality,” “Geographical Conditions,” “Religion,” and “Political Conditions” are meant to lay the foundation for the more detailed expositions in the latter three sections, on “Culture,” “Lan-guages,” and the “Encyclopedic Development of Single Subjects.”

Within the limits of the present paper, only a few aspects directly related to Steinschneider’s concept of a history of Jewish literature can be mentioned. In the first section, on the nation (“Nationalität”), Steinschneider tackles the problematic concept of the Jewish people as the agent of the history of Jewish literature: if there is anything like “Jewish literature” in the Middle Ages, Steinschneider argues, it must necessarily be the product of a nation, i.e., the Jewish people. But were the Jews in the Middle Ages a nation?61 Similarly to his position in “Jüdische Literatur,” Steinschneider again takes a carefully balanced stance regarding this problem: Yes, he says, historically seen, the Jews were a nation in the Middle Ages, even if they only partially fulfilled the three essential criteria of a nation, i.e, a common origin (“Abstam-mung”), a common native country (“Vaterland”), and a common lan-guage (“Sprache”). They were a nation, and they thus could be the agent of a literary history of their own. But they could not do so in the full sense of the word. The Jews were in fact a “hermaphrodite” (“Zwitterwesen”), they lived the life of an “amphibian” (“Amphibien-leben”), and this deeply influenced their historical development.62 For Steinschneider, the national paradigm as a basis for a literary history of the Jews is valid, but it always remained a problematic one.

61 AE, XV, p. 303.62 AE, XV, p. 304.

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Steinschneider’s statements about religion in the third section are also of considerable interest for our purposes. Here, Steinschneider bluntly declares that the “religious development is the true final aim of Jewish history,”63 but at the same time he insists that the basic religious ideas cannot develop and cannot be “reformed.”64 Conse-quently, real development within a religion is impossible, and historical progress can only be compared to the “awakening of the child’s spirit to self-awareness.”65 This “awakening” is a constant struggle of “sci-ence” (“Wissen”) against “belief” (“Glauben”), of “internal authority” against “external authority,” and it takes place both in the develop-ment of individuals and in that of entire peoples.66 The Jewish people is no exception in this respect, so that the development of rationalism and of the concept of “secular science” (חכמה חיצונית, “profane Wis-senschaft”) within Judaism can also be interpreted as an awakening of the people to “self-awareness.”

Although Steinschneider does not mention any sources for this worldview, the motifs he employs again reveal a heavy indebtedness to nineteenth-century positivism, which also finds its expression in the fifth section of the “Allgemeine Einleitung.” In this section, dealing with “culture” (“Kultur”), he summarizes, in a clearly positivistic vein, the results of the previous sections, saying: “Nationality is a general formation, the organism of the subject; the geographical circumstances are the physical conditions, for the Jews indirectly the external condi-tions; the religion is the objective direction of the spirit, the political conditions are the scope for the activity of the individual in his relation to the whole,”67 and then he adds: “Culture” is the “activity of spirit itself,” the “realization of the spirit under the given conditions.” Now,

63 AE, XV, p. 305: “Religiöse Entwicklung ist der eigentliche Endzweck der jüdischen Geschichte.”

64 AE, XV, p. 306: “Religiöse Grundideen entwickeln sich nicht, und die ‘Religion’ kann nicht ‘reformirt’ werden.”

65 AE, XV, p. 306: “Die Bewegung, die wir wahrnehmen, ist analog dem Erwachen des kindlichen Geistes zum Selbstbewußtsein.”

66 AE, XV, p. 304: “Es gibt auf dem Gebiet der Religionsgeschichte nur einen wesentlichen Kampf, das ist der Kampf des Wissens mit dem Glauben, der Kampf der inneren Autorität mit der äusseren, sowohl in den Individuen, bei der Reife des Kindes zum Manne, wie in den Völkern bei ihrer Entwicklung.“Cf. also AE, XV, p. 307: “Alle grossen Kämpfe auf dem Felde des Geistes sind Kämpfe für die Ver-nunft, gegen die Autorität: alle kleinlichen einer Autorität gegen die andere.”

67 AE, XV, p. 311: “Die Nationalität ist ein allgemeiner Verband, der Organismus des Subjekts; die geographischen Verhältnisse sind physische Bedingungen, bei den Juden mittelbar die Bedingungen nach aussen; die Religion ist die objektive Richtung

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“since literature in itself is part of culture [. . .] the study of culture is the main foundation for the study of literature [. . .]. Through culture nations are identified. Cultural history is the true aim of world history, because it is the aim of all activity of the spirit.”68

At first glance, this passage seems to reverberate with concepts of German idealism, but this would be a misunderstanding of Stein-schneider’s intentions. His usage of the term “spirit” (“Geist”) has no idealistic overtones, since, in clear opposition to both speculative philosophy and purely descriptive historiography, Steinschneider con-tends that “history is not philosophical schematism (Hegel ) or political pragmatism (Rotteck).” Rather, as Steinschneider himself states, the English historians Henry Thomas Buckle (1821–1862) and Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) are to be seen as ideal paradigms for the writing of cultural history.69 Steinschneider thus explicitly sides in the “Allgemeine Einleitung” with two historians who belong to the positivistic strand of historiography, and who were quite influ-ential in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century. Only later did they lose the battle—in Germany, at least—against the historistic school of Johann Gustav Droysen (1808–1886), Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886), Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) and Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–1896), and become largely marginalized in the second half of the century.70

Steinschneider couples this positivistic approach with borrowings from German classicism, when he constructs the rest of the fifth section on “culture”71 according to the famous “human trias” of “the good, the

des Geistes, die politischen Verhältnisse sind der Spielraum für die Thätigkeit des Einzelnen im Verhältnis zum Ganzen.”

68 AE, XV, pp. 311–12: “Die Kultur ist die Thätigkeit des Geistes selbst (etwa Hegel’s ‘Substanz des Geistes’ ), also die Verwirklichung des Geistes unter gegebenen Bedingungen, und da die Literatur selbst ein Teil der Kultur ist, also hier das eng-ste Verhältnis zwischen beiden stattfindet, so ist überall die Kulturbetrachtung die Hauptgrundlage für die Anschauung der Literatur, also beide gegenseitige Hilfsmittel. Durch Kultur kennzeichnet man Nationen. Kulturgeschichte ist das eigentliche Ziel aller Geistesthätigkeit.”

69 AE, XV, p. 312: “Die Geschichte ist nicht philosophischer Schematismus (Hegel ) oder politischer Pragmatismus (Rotteck);—wie Kulturgeschichte zu schreiben ist, zeigt uns Buckle, der sich freilich frühzeitig zu Tode studirt hat, und schon Macaulay in einigen Kapiteln seines ersten Bandes.” Steinschneider refers in this passage to the historian Karl von Rotteck (1775–1840).

70 On Steinschneider and Buckle cf. also Jehudah Reinhartz/Yaacov Shavit, Dar-win and Some of his Kind: Evolution, race environment and culture. Jews read Darwin, Spence, Buckle and Renan (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Ha-Qibbutz ha-Me u ad, 2010), pp. 170–71.

71 AE, XV, pp. 312–29; XVI, pp. 373–80.

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true and the beautiful” (“das Gute, das Wahre, das Schöne”). Ideally, all three aspects should be harmoniously developed in the culture of a nation,72 but although Judaism has neglected some aspects of culture, most notably “the beautiful,” all of them are represented in various degrees and forms in Jewish history. In order to illustrate this, Stein-schneider provides an outline of Jewish law, political institutions, fam-ily life, and customs under the heading of “the good and noble” (“das Gute und Edle”),73 followed by a brief description of the different forms of literary activity and erudition (“Literärgeschichte,” “Geschichte der verschiedenen Wissenschaften,” “Literaturgeschichte,” “Geschichte der Erudition und Bildung”) subsumed under the title of the “idea of the true” (“Idee des Wahren”),74 and of art (“das Schöne”) as documented in historical monuments, coins, architecture, and cemeteries.75 The Jews, Steinschneider implicitly argues, are a “Kulturnation.”

Little needs to be said here about the sixth and largest section of the “Allgemeine Einleitung,” which is devoted to the languages of Jewish culture,76 and suffice it to say that Steinschneider considers language as the “form, without which the spirit would remain something [as inac-cessible as] the thing-in-itself.”77 The final, seventh, section of “Allge-meine Einleitung,” however, is again of more interest. It bears the title “Encyclopedic Development of Single Disciplines” (“Encyklopädische Entwicklung einzelner Fächer”),78 but in fact it falls into two differ-ent parts. The first one is an in nuce introduction to medieval Jewish literature,79 whereas the second part represents a concise outline of the Maimonidean controversy and its role within the history of Jewish literature.80 Repetitions of what has been said before and the abrupt transition from the first to the second subject of this section make

72 AE, XV, p. 312: “Das Ziel der Kultur ist die harmonische Entwicklung der Kräfte.”

73 AE, XV, pp. 314–20.74 AE, XV, pp. 320–23.75 AE, XV, pp. 323–29, and XVI, pp. 373–80.76 AE, XVI, pp. 380–95 and 734–64. 77 AE, XVI, pp. 380–81: “Wir haben bisher den Weg vom Abstracten zum Con-

kreten genommen, in der Kulturfrage die Antwort erhalten, ob und inwieweit die Juden ein Kulturvolk genannt zu werden verdienten. Wir haben die Kultur als Sub-stanz des Geistes bezeichnet; zu ihr verhält sich die Sprache wie die Form, ohne welche der Geist ein Ding an sich bliebe.”

78 AE, XVII, pp. 148–62 and 354–69.79 AE, XVII, pp. 148–62.80 AE, XVII, pp. 354–69.

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it likely that the last section of the “Allgemeine Einleitung” actually consists of two different lectures, which were artificially united under a single heading.

Be that as it may, Steinschneider here returns to the problem of the nation as the agent of medieval Jewish literature. With an eye to contemporary discussions about the national character of Judaism he states again that “medieval Judaism nolens volens formed a nationality,”81 explicitly leaving the hotly debated question about the identity of mod-ern Jews unanswered. Also Steinschneider’s strong orientation toward the history of the sciences, manifested elsewhere in his works, recurs in this concluding part of the “Allgemeine Einleitung.” Conceptually speaking, Steinschneider says, medieval Jewish literature is to be divided into two branches, “positive theology” and “rational philosophy,” with the Kabbalah mediating between the two. “Positive theology” consists of the “study of Scripture” (“Schriftkunde”) and “religious dogmas” (“Religionslehre”), whereas “rational philosophy” is either natural phi-losophy, the predecessor of modern science, or logic.82 At this point, Steinschneider has to concede that Jewish literature seems to be rather poor; its bulk belongs to “theology with a monotony, which has scared off many,” and the non-theological literature has often been discarded as being basically non-Jewish.83 Steinschneider, however, considers this approach to be objectionable; non-religious literature must not be sep-arated from Jewish literature in general, since “the history of sciences can only be constructed from special literatures,”84 i.e., also the Jewish one. In other words, once again Steinschneider attempts to reinsert the perspective of the history of sciences into the center of his history of Jewish literature, so that he is able to conclude the paragraph with a statement that stresses the Jewish contribution to the history of sci-ences: “The Jews as constant, and not dumb, witnesses of history have preserved things which would otherwise have remained unknown.”85

81 AE, XVII, p. 149: “Die praktische Auflösung dieser Frage für die Gegenwart überlassen wir der Theologie; eine unparteiische Geschichtsforschung muss zugeben, dass das mittelalterliche Judentum nolens volens eine Nationalität bildete, und noch jetzt sind ‘nicht alle frei, die ihrer Ketten spotten.’”

82 AE, XVII, p. 151.83 AE, XVII, p. 151.84 AE, XVII, p. 151.85 AE, XVII, p. 151: “Die Geschichte der Wissenschaften kann nur aus besonderen

Literaturkreisen construirt werden; letztere müssen als Selbstzweck studiert werden, um die Resultate ihrer Forschungen abzugeben. Die Juden als fortwährende, und

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Also in the subsequent paragraphs he revisits the central motifs he had developed earlier regarding the role of science in the history of Jewish literature, and reiterates his opinion that Arabic science in the eighth century played a crucial role for the development of Kara-ism and the awakening of scientific thinking among the Jews. Finally, the last paragraphs of the seventh section are devoted to a detailed account of the Maimonidean controversy, which has close parallels in §11 of “Jüdische Literatur.”86 There is no need to analyze it in greater detail here, because Steinschneider’s interpretation of the controversy in the “Allgemeine Einleitung” does not substantially differ from the earlier account, but the fact that he allotted such a prominent place to the conflict between science and religion in these lectures testifies to the enormous importance Steinschneider attributed to this historical turning point of Jewish culture.87

4. Conclusion

Steinschneider’s essay “Jüdische Literatur” and the “Allgemeine Ein-leitung in die Jüdische Literatur des Mittelalters” are valuable sources for the reconstruction of Moritz Steinschneider’s concept of the history of Jewish literature. The analysis of these texts could be enriched by a close comparison with Steinschneider’s other works and articles, but the general image would remain unchanged: Steinschneider was not, or not merely, a bibliographer. He was a historian of Jewish literature who began his scientific work as a close student of Zunz. He adopted,

zwar nicht stumme Zeugen der Geschichte, haben Mansches erhalten, was sonst unbekannt geblieben wäre.”

86 JL/G, pp. 393–96; JL/E, pp. 82–94; cf. also the discussion above in section 2 of this paper.

87 AE, XVII, p. 162: “Betrachtet man die jüdische Literatur als Ganzes, so fin-det man auch hier, wie sonst, das 13. Jahrh. als kritisches und doppelt interessantes, sowohl in seinen eigenen Produkten als auch wegen der daraus hervorgehenden Erscheinungen.

Die grosse Spannung, der Zwiespalt der Geister im 13. Jahrh. ist nicht minder bedeutend als die des 19., obwohl in den Kämpfen ein Fortschritt stattfindet, der uns veranlasst, etwas höher zurückzugreifen. Es handelt sich nämlich in der Literatur um die Auflösung der Haggada und ihre Umwandlung in verschiedene wissenschaftliche Zweige neben der Halacha.” Cf. also AE, XVII, p. 369: “Es stellte sich das Bedürfnis heraus, dem freien Inhalt der Haggada eine systematische Unterlage zu geben durch die ‘profane’ Wissenschaft; die Theologie wird systematisch, die Exegese teilt sich in verschiedene Tendenzen.”

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wherever possible, his teacher’s opinions, but he had an independent mind. As early as 1847, in his the essay on “Jüdische Literatur,” he displays a distinctive scholarly profile. In contrast to Zunz, who largely belongs to the intellectual world of Enlightenment and the Age of Ide-alism, Steinschneider’s approach is predominantly “science-oriented.” In spite of occasional references to and terminological borrowings from idealistic philosophy, Steinschneider’s guideline for structuring the history of Jewish literature was the idea of progress—the prog-ress of human culture, human knowledge, and, concomitantly, of the sciences. The ultimate victory of free scientific investigation over the dominance of religious authority is the aim of history, and the devel-opment of different branches of literature in the Jewish Middle Ages is consequently portrayed as the outcome of a process of scientific emancipation and differentiation.

Steinschneider’s scientific orientation and his belief in histori-cal progress derived from his strongly positivistic Weltanschauung. He regarded religion and other forms of pre-scientific thinking as phases of childhood to be overcome by the maturity of scientific thinking. In view of this strong proclivity toward positivistic ideas, which permeates all of Steinschneider’s works, it comes as no surprise that he strongly identified with the methods of Henry Thomas Buckle and Thomas Babington Macaulay and praised them as ideal paradigms for any form of cultural history. One even wonders whether Steinschneider had read anything of Auguste Comte (1798–1857), although he does not mention him in any prominent place.

In a historical perspective, however, Steinschneider had to pay a high price for taking this position. Positivism was a respected intel-lectual trend during his days, but with the vanishing of the positivis-tic school in historiography and the decline of positivistic thinking in general the basis for a proper understanding of Steinschneider’s scien-tific motives disappeared. The carefully collected treasury of historical information intended for the construction of a comprehensive history of Jewish literature fell apart into a random assemblage of data devoid of any inner coherence. This made it all the more suitable for exploi-tation by later generations, but if we look back at the last hundred years of the scientific study of Hebrew literature and its exploitation of Steinschneider’s work, it appears to have been the ignorance of the conceptual foundation of his scientific project that turned the histo-rian of Jewish literature into nothing more than the father of Hebrew bibliography.