The Jewish Reformation

Bible Translation and Middle-Class German Judaism as Spiritual Enterprise

Michah Gottlieb (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

474 Seiten

2021
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-933638-8 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

In the late eighteenth century, German Jews began entering the middle class with remarkable speed. That upward mobility, it has often been said, coincided with Jews' increasing alienation from religion and Jewish nationhood. In fact, Michah Gottlieb argues, this period was one of intense engagement with Jewish texts and traditions. One expression of this was the remarkable turn to Bible translation. In the century and a half beginning with Moses Mendelssohn's pioneering translation and the final one by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, German Jews produced sixteen different translations of at least the Pentateuch.

Exploring Bible translations by Mendelssohn, Leopold Zunz, and Samson Raphael Hirsch, Michah Gottlieb argues that each translator sought a "reformation" of Judaism along bourgeois lines, which involved aligning Judaism with a Protestant concept of religion. Buber and Rosenzweig famously critiqued bourgeois German Judaism as a craven attempt to establish social respectability to facilitate Jews' entry into the middle class through a vapid, domesticated Judaism. But Mendelssohn, Zunz, and Hirsch saw in bourgeois values the best means to serve God and the authentic actualization of Jewish tradition. Through their learned, creative Bible translations, these scholars presented competing visions of middle-class Judaism that affirmed Jewish nationhood while lighting the path to a purposeful, emotionally-rich spiritual life grounded in ethical responsibility.

Michah Gottlieb is Associate Professor in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at NYU. An expert on modern Jewish thought and culture with a focus on ethics and Jewish-Christian relations, he has written or edited several books and articles, including Faith and Freedom: Moses Mendelssohn's Theological-Political Thought.

Preface
Abbreviations

Introduction: The Jewish Reformation

I. HASKALAH: MOSES MENDELSSOHN'S MODERATE REFORMATION
1. The Bible as Cultural Translation
2. Biblical Education and the Power of Conversation

II. WISSENSCHAFT AND REFORM: LEOPOLD ZUNZ BETWEEN SCHOLARSHIP AND SYNAGOGUE
3. Translation versus Midrash
4. Bible Translation and the Centrality of the Synagogue

III. NEO- ORTHODOXY: THE SAMSON RAPHAEL HIRSCH ENIGMA
5. A Man of No Party: Hirsch's Nineteen Letters on Judaism as Bible Translation
6. The Road to Orthodoxy: Hirsch in Battle
7. The Innovative Orthodoxy of Hirsch's Pentateuch
8. The Fracturing of German Judaism: Ludwig Philippson's Inclusive Israelite Bible and Hirsch's Sectarian Neo- Orthodox Pentateuch

Conclusion: The Jewish Counter- Reformation

Appendix: Mendelssohn on the Decalogue
Bibliography
Index
Biblical and Rabbinic Sources

Erscheinungsdatum	08.04.2021
Zusatzinfo	22
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	236 x 157 mm
Gewicht	839 g
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Religionsgeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Geschichte der Philosophie
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Philosophie der Neuzeit
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Judentum
ISBN-10	0-19-933638-5 / 0199336385
ISBN-13	978-0-19-933638-8 / 9780199336388
Zustand	Neuware