The Science of Judaism
Other options were chosen. Mendelssohn’s children and grandchildren saw their Judaism as a barrier to the new culture; and they became Christians. Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy entered the world of music.
Other grandchildren, the Veit brothers, became devout Christian painters. In the world of the Christian Prussian state it was a prerequisite for government service, university teaching and other professions that one should be a Christian. Many Jews entered that Christian world and were absorbed by it. But there were special islands of self-expression. The ladies of the salons (e.g. Henrietta Herz, Rahel (Levin) Varnhagen, Dorothea Mendelssohn, Fanny Arnstein) created areas of contact between artists, writers and politicians and a world of high Jewish intellect which gave more than it received and began to set a pattern for a secular Jewish survival.There were brilliant Jewish scholars and writers who did not want to cease being Jews but who yearned for the top of the pyramid: a university lecturership. But how could a Jew teach ‘Christian’ history, theology or philosophy? Hoping that a more liberal administration would permit Jews to teach, they decided that not only Jews but Judaism should enter the new world. Judaism itself should be taught at the university—and who was better equipped to teach this than ajew? A group of young scholars, Eduard Gans, LeopoldZunz, Immanuel Wolf (joined by Heinrich Heine, one of the greatest of German writers) came together in a Verein fuer Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden (Association for the Culture and Scholarly Study of the Jews). An important new concept emerged here: modem science and scholarship could be applied to the history, philosophy and basic texts of Judaism. Philology and archaeology would examine aspects ofjewish life hitherto held sacrosanct. Traditional thinkers were appalled: science had to remain subservient to religion. The Association only existed for a few years (1819-23) and many of its members converted as their passport to careers in a Christian world. Yet some (notably Zunz and Jost) persisted. Almost singlehandedly, Leopold Zunz (1794-1886) created a Science of Judaism which became a towering bastion ofjewish scholarship upon which the whole of modem Jewish thought has founded its new learning. This learning has remained opposed to much of traditional Judaism; yet it made possible a new approach to Judaism emerging at that time: Progressive Judaism.