From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism (Tauber Institute Series for the Study of European Jewry) [Hardcover]

Ismar Schorsch (Author)

Book Description

Series: Tauber Institute Series for the Study of European Jewry | Publication Date: November 15, 1994

Essays examining the emergence of Jewish scholarship during the period 1818 - 1919, concentrating on the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Wissenschaft reflected all the dilemmas that faced German Jews in the age of emancipation, and the sensitive reconstruction of the tensions within Jewish scholarly practice in nineteenth-century Germany is one of the great strengths of Schorsch's book . . . this is a learned, insightful and diverting study of the troubled encounter with history that accompanied the Jewish transition to modernity." --Times Literary Supplement --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From the Publisher

6 x 9 trim. 2 tables. LC 94-284

Product Details

• Hardcover: 421 pages
• Publisher: Brandeis; 1st edition (November 15, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0874516641
• ISBN-13: 978-0874516647
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,764,963 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A tattered vision for a tormented age, July 26, 2007

By 

R. J. Stroik (Stevens Point, Wisconsin) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism (Tauber Institute Series for the Study of European Jewry) (Paperback)

Others have written about the history of Judaism and Jewish life. As a non-Jew I marvel at this Jewish history of the history of Jewish life. A collection of essays by the Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the author, Ismar Schorsch, regrets that his duties did not permit integrating them into a "comprehensive synthesis." However, in the spirit of its title, this reality is truly a blessing. For while some texts may be repetitive, they are always in a different context.

The volume's 21 essays are about the ways in which Jews living in 19th century Europe immersed themselves in the rise of historical consciousness to reveal to themselves and others some of the many dynamics of modern Judaism. This historical consciousness ranged from the holistic views of Hegelian philosophy to the more atomistic historicism of Leopold Ranke. Although,through its monothesism Judaism has a necessarily universal thrust, before God each moment of history has its own unique configuration. Thus while 19th century European history involves the emancipation of Jewish life from the ghetto, the latter itself can be seen from two radically different perspectives: Were Jews locked into the ghetto by a civilization hostile to their presence? Or did Jews use cultivate ghetto life to cultivate their own communal identity?

The main theme of this volume involves the struggle of emergent Jewish scholars to seek and find a place for themselves in the German university, first as students, then as faculty, at the same time struggling to give scholarship its own relative autonomy from rabbinic dominance.

To this non-Jew, both of these struggles were truly heroic, foreshadowing my own more than half-century of struggle within a church that is much more Roman than it is Catholic. Although the turn to historical consciousness did not prevent the Holocaust, I ponder the very last sentence in this volume's last essay, our having a "tattered vision" for a "less tormented age."

It is in this spirit that I highly recommend this volume to a citizen of Germany, Joseph Ratzinger,Pope Benedict XVI. For in our tormented age, our vision is truly tattered, experiencing a deeply felt human need to extend ourselves far beyond historical consciousness, attending, in the spirit of Franz Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Levinas, to the ethical imperatives of historical Providence, reverencing the otherness of one another.