Religious Knowledge and Positioning: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Educational Media 9783110795905, 9783110784503

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Religious Knowledge and Positioning

Religiöse Positionierungen in Judentum, Christentum und Islam

Herausgegeben von Christian Wiese und Nina Fischer

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Religious Knowledge and Positioning The Case of Nineteenth-Century Educational Media Edited by David Käbisch, Kerstin von der Krone and Christian Wiese

ISBN 978-3-11-078450-3 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-079590-5 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-079863-0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2023938199 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Foreword to the Series Religious-ideological diversity with its ambivalent – destructive as well as enriching – elements is more than ever part of the everyday experience of most contemporary societies. This is especially the case as a result of globalization, migration, and the forced flight of millions of people from different cultural contexts due to political crises and conflicts. Interreligious encounters, communication, and positioning are therefore not a mere option but rather an expression of a „dialogical imperative“ (Christoph Schwöbel), on which the peaceful coexistence of religious communities in the respective societies or of entire neighboring cultures depends. The social, political, and cultural dynamics and explosiveness of this phenomenon can hardly be overestimated and are often accompanied by fears, prejudices, and conflicts. They explain why current research is intensively concerned with the challenges of multi-religious constellations. Several questions come to mind/: How can we deal with the inescapable fact of the plurality of conflicting claims to meaning and truth, which, in conjunction with social and political upheavals, can often constitute a potentially explosive mixture? What are the causes of religious conflicts, fundamentalisms, and violence? In contrast, how viable are concepts such as multiculturalism, interreligiousness, or interculturality which, with different emphases, take a critical stance towards forms of religious exclusivity, aggression, or the uniformity of religious or religious-national Leitkulturen, or „dominant cultures“? This book series assembles research results of an interdisciplinary and interreligious cooperative project of the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and the Justus Liebig University Giessen, which has been funded by the Hessian Ministry of Science and Art in recent years. Under the title „Religious Positioning: Modalities and Constellations in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Contexts,“ scholars in the fields of religious studies, Christian theology, Jewish studies, Islamic studies, ethnology, sociology, and pedagogy dealt with the phenomena of religious diversity and difference. These were analyzed as basic categories of interreligious and intercultural encounters from a historical-systematic and empirical-systematic perspective – with a focus on the three monotheistic religions. Strong attention was placed on the theoretically as well as socio-politically relevant core question regarding the possibilities, conditions, and limits of a qualified religious pluralism, i. e., a constructive, respectful handling of religious plurality and difference. In contrast to concepts of interreligious dialogue which aim at a consensusoriented, relativizing approach that aims to downplay the element of difference, the work of this research project is based on the premise that the existence of the Other or the Foreign in religiously diverse constellations necessitates positioning in the sense of a representation and affirmation of what is one’s own. This encounter and https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110795905-001

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Foreword to the Series

confrontation with different beliefs and claims to validity is constitutive for every interreligious contact and can initially be grasped with the category of diversity. Diversity as a perception of difference and otherness, or alterity, can be interpreted as enriching plurality. However, it is also often perceived as an irritating difference, incompatible with or even threatening to our own self-image. The respective experience and interpretation of diversity and difference can result in quite different options for dealing with it: the leveling relativization of one’s own and others’ claims to truth, the argumentative advocacy of one’s own position, the pragmatic toleration of the existence of the Other, religious apologetics, polemics, and discrimination, all the way to the missionary subjugation of the difference or its violent suppression. Of course, forms of dialogical rapprochement are also possible, provided that the perception of positions contradicting one’s own becomes the basis for mutual acknowledgement. In view of these possible alternative implications of experienced diversity, the question arises as to what potential but also what resistance Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (as well as other religious traditions) harbor with respect to a constructive-dialogical approach to religious and/or ideological difference. This question refers both to diversity and difference within the respective religion, and to the encounter between competing religious and non-religious worldviews. Whether religious positionings have a more destructive, integrative, or dialogical character obviously does not depend primarily on the content of the respective position held. Rather, the historical, political, and cultural constellations in which they take place, as well as on the modalities under which they are introduced into social discourses play a significant role. Thus, even beliefs conscious of differences can be capable of pluralism if they are committed to principles of epistemic humility and are able to recognize the legitimacy, dignity, and validity of other traditions when positioning themselves vis-à-vis them. The concept of the capability to deal with plurality in processes of religious positioning does not so much describe the ability to take a stand beyond one’s own beliefs and values but rather a conscious affirmation of the right of the Other to recognition and an understanding of one’s own position in the sense of a critically reflexive positionality in public discourse. One of the potential constructive modalities which were taken into consideration in the research network, can be grasped with the concept of dialogism, following the theories of linguistics and literary studies – especially in the work of Mikhail M. Bakhtin. This concept seems particularly suited to describe how argumentative positions, characterized by diversity and difference, can also be given voice as such, without the intention of reconciling them. As a theoretical approach that examines the philosophical, communication-theoretical, and historical-social as well as political conditions and implications of dialogical practice from a descriptive and normative perspective, it points to the possibility of a dialogical rather than con-

Foreword to the Series

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frontational understanding of positioning. It programmatically presumes the legitimacy of a polyphony of plurality and difference that may remain irrevocable even in dialogical constellations. On this basis, a communicative practice could be substantiated that facilitates an affirmation of one’s own point of view without a monological claim to absoluteness, i. e., the readiness to clearly express one’s own position and to do so without overwhelming one’s interlocutors or refusing to acknowledge their position. However, the monographs and edited volumes resulting from the collaboration within the research hub do not intend to promote a uniform normative model of dealing with religious diversity. Rather, they represent the polyphony of interdisciplinary discussions, theoretical and methodological approaches, and interpretations of religious positioning in history and the present. Apart from the project on „Religious Positioning,“ this volume is based on a German Israeli research project entitled „History of Knowledge and Jewish Educational Media“. It is devoted to an interdisciplinary historical analysis of the role of educational media in the transmission and transfer of religious knowledge in Judaism and Christianity in the nineteenth century. Using case studies on the processes of printing, publishing, and translation, on educational media as an element of teacher’s training, as well as on catechisms, childrens’ bibles, sermons, and historical textbooks as genres of religious education, the contributions examine the interplay between religion, education, and knowledge production in families, schools, and congregations in Jewish and Christian contexts. The focus is on questions such as: What can we learn in historical terms about the representation of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in religious textbooks? What kind of knowledge might one use for constructing one’s own faith and one’s own religious point of view? What knowledge must a person have gained to position himself/herself vis-à-vis other religions and denominations in a respectful and constructive manner? Frankfurt, June 10, 2023 Christian Wiese and Nina Fischer

Table of Contents David Käbisch, Kerstin von der Krone, Christian Wiese Introduction 1

Part A: Printing, Publishing, and Translation in the Nineteenth-Century: Methodological Considerations on Educational Media Zohar Shavit Cultural Translation and Educational Media

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Paul Schweitzer-Martin Printing and Publishing Religious Educational Media in the 39 Nineteenth-Century

Part B: Educational Media and Teacher’s Training as Response to New Social, Cultural, Political, and Economic Changes Andreas Brämer The Modernization of Jewish Teacher Training in the Age of Emancipation – 55 The Example of Prussia (1780–1871) David Käbisch The Professionalization of Protestant Clergy as Teachers of Religion in the Nineteenth-Century – The Example of Jena 69

Part C: Catechisms Kerstin von der Krone Nineteenth-Century Jewish Catechisms and Manuals: Or What One Should Know about Judaism 85

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Johannes Wischmeyer Confessional Position-Taking in Nineteenth-Century Christian Catechism 105 Culture

Part D: Children’s Bibles Dorothea M. Salzer “God Is Not Just One People’s God, Not a National God, But the Only God of All Nations”: Religious Knowledge in Jewish Children’s Bibles 117 Gordon S. Mikoski Bear-ing Witness to the Gospel: Religious Knowledge and Position Taking in 133 Illustrations of Nineteenth-Century Children’s Bibles

Part E: Sermons Samuel J. Kessler “Let There Be No Strife Between Me and You”: On the Relationship Between 147 Judaism and Christianity in an 1859 Sermon by Adolf Jellinek Ursula Roth The Sermon – an Educational Medium? Reflections on a Fundamental Understanding of the Practice of Christian Preaching 159

Part F: Historical Treatises and Textbooks Christian Wiese In the Shadow of Protestantism: David Cassel’s and Paulus (Selig) Cassel’s Educational Representations of the History of Judaism in Mid-Nineteenth Century Germany 173 About the authors

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Source index and Bibliography Index

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Introduction

Jewish and Christian Education Media: What One Should Know in Order to Position Oneself in Relation to Other Denominations and Religions? Religious education has changed fundamentally since the beginning of the nineteenth century. An ‘explosion of knowledge’ in all fields of research has left a lasting impression on the functions, topics, institutions, and methods of religious education. Philologists, theologians, and historians of religion have expanded the available knowledge of the manifold movements and tendencies in Judaism, Christianity, and other religious groups. They have also subjected traditional religious knowledge (grounded in the Torah, the Bible, or the Qu’ran, for example) to thoroughgoing historical criticism. What can count now as definitive, certain knowledge in Judaism or Christianity? How can religious educators represent such knowledge in the texts and practices employed in religious education and educational media? What can scholars and students learn about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam from religious textbooks and other literature designed to be used in educational settings? What kind of knowledge might one use for constructing one’s own faith and one’s own religious point of view? If these textbooks do, in fact, present such essential knowledge, how do they talk about other religions? Finally, which knowledge must a person have gained in order to position themselves vis-à-vis other denominations and religions? Since the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism in 1978, historians, theologians, and scholars of education alike have used the term “Orientalism” to refer to Western attitudes towards and stereotypes regarding Middle Eastern culture. Researchers exploring religious life in the time of Jesus or Muslim life in the period of the Reformation, for example, have widely used the concept of Orientalism. For example, people developing Christian art and Christian educational media shared “a common practice to represent biblical Jews as if they were Muslims.”¹ The book Orientalism and the Jews, edited by Ivan Davidson Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar, provides striking examples which are of particular relevance for this volume. To take one instance, during the nineteenth century, it “became more common to imagine biblical Israelites wearing not the Turkish turban but the Arab headscarf

1 Ivan Davidson Kalmar, “Jesus Did Not Wear a Turban: Orientalism, the Jews, and Christian Art,” in Orientalism and the Jews, ed. Ivan Davidson Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2005), 3–67, here 3. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110795905-002

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or kaffiyeh.”² In both cases, the Orient played a central role in constructing European culture and pictures in educational media “helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image.”³ Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld’s Die Bibel in Bildern, first published in 1860, provides a telling example.⁴ The illustrated Bible addressed children and adults alike. This common practice was based on the prevailing nineteenth-century notion of childhood as “an incomplete state of adulthood to which formal and informal education is the conduit.”⁵ The book included a popular image of the Parable of the Good Samaritan which depicted him in the traditional garb of a Turk, wearing a turban. Many reprints of this illustration can be found in Christian textbooks and in learning materials for school courses in religion, even today.⁶ Remarkably, these images from Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld’s book were also reprinted in Jewish educational media.⁷ The present volume discusses the media of religious education in Jewish and Christian families, schools, and congregations. Such media include children’s Bibles, catechisms, and sermons. In addition, individual chapters address phenomena such as printing and publishing in the nineteenth century, Jewish teachers’ training in the Age of Emancipation, and the professionalization of Protestant clergy who served as teachers of religion. All chapters are devoted to the reflection on broader processes of knowledge production and on the impact of science and scholarship on a wider audience. More importantly, they offer distinct answers to questions regarding the history of religious education and knowledge produc-

2 Kalmar, “Jesus Did Not Wear a Turban”: 3. 3 Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin Books 2003), 1–2. 4 Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Die Bibel in Bildern. 240 Darstellungen, erfunden und auf Holz gezeichnet. 2. Nachdr. d. Ausg (Leipzig: Wigand, 1860 = Zürich: TVZ Theologischer Verlag, 1989). Cf. Marion Keuchen, “Religionssensibilität in Kinderbibeln – Judentum, Islam und andere Religionen in christlichen Kinderbibeln,” in Religionssensible Schulkultur, eds. Gudrun Guttenberger and Harald Schroeter-Wittke (Jena: Garamond: 2011), 141–150. 5 Jaqueline S. du Toit, “Seeing Is Believing: Children’s Bibles as Negotiated Translation,” in Ideology, Culture, and Translation, eds. Scott S. Elliott and Roland Boer (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012), 101–112, here 103. 6 Cf. Karl Wentz, Evangelisches Religionsbuch für Westfalen. Nach dem Lehrplan für den evangelischen Religionsunterricht in den Volksschulen der Provinz Westfalen ausgest. von westfälischen Schulmännern mit Abb. von Schnorr von Carolsfeld u. a. (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1926); Albert Böhme and Hermann Lutze, Biblische Geschichte für den evangelischen Religionsunterricht an Volksschulen. Bilder von Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (Düsseldorf: Bagel, 1947). 7 Cf. Franz A. Schubert and Gustav Jahn, Biblische Bilder zum Ausschneiden und Zusammensetzen. I: Das Leben der Erzväter. Nach Motiven der Bibel in Bildern [von Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld], Bestehend aus: 14 Tableaux nebst Textbuch (Züllchow: Jahn, 1863); Zohar Shavit, Deutsch-jüdische Kinder- und Jugendliteratur von der Haskala bis 1945, 2 vols. (Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 1996).

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tion within the context of Christian and Jewish religious education. The scholars who contributed to this collection of essays explore the interplay between religion, education, and knowledge production in religions during the nineteenth century. They focus on distinctive patterns and practices as well as on the entanglements between them. Most articles draw on papers delivered at an international conference devoted to the topic “Religious Knowledge and Position Taking in the Nineteenth Century: The Case of Educational Media” that took place at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main in 2018 and brought together scholars associated with two different collaborative and transdisciplinary research projects.⁸

1 The Research Project on “Religious Positioning”: Framing the Question – Part I One of the contexts of this volume has been the Hessian Ministry for Science and Art funded LOEWE research hub “Religious Positioning: Modalities and Constellations in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Contexts,” based at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and the Justus Liebig University Gießen. The starting point and basic assumption of this interdisciplinary project was the conviction that religious diversity (including its destructive as well as its creative and enriching elements) belongs to the reality of most contemporary societies. Interreligious encounters, communication, and positioning represent an option and a “dialogical imperative”⁹ for the peaceful coexistence of religious communities in the respective societies or in entire neighbouring cultures in many regions of the world. Current political debates about the social and cultural consequences of the unprecedented numbers of migrants and refugees fleeing from ethnic conflicts, wars, and poverty demonstrate that religious and cultural pluralization – as well as the prejudices, fears, and conflicts triggered by the latter – are representing an in-

8 We would like to thank the institutions that helped cover the costs for the conference, particularly the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Association of Friends and Sponsors of the University of Frankfurt (Vereinigung von Freunden und Förderern der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) as well as the Foundation for the Promotion of International Academic Exchange at Goethe University (Stiftung zur Förderung der internationalen wissenschaftlichen Beziehungen der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität). For further information on the Frankfurt conference, see Paul Schweitzer-Martin, Conference report “Religious Knowledge and Position Taking in the 19th Century: The Case of Educational Media,” May 22–23, 2018 Frankfurt am Main, in: H-Soz-Kult, 14.06. 2018, www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-7744. 9 Christoph Schwöbel, Christlicher Glaube im Pluralismus. Studien zu einer Religion der Kultur (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2003), 1.

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creasingly significant challenge. This may be one explanation for the fact that much research is currently being devoted to questions concerning religious diversity and the difference and conflicts between religious traditions. Further, it may explain the potential for tolerance and dialogue inherent in religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The way these three religions deal with plurality is as multifaceted as the many models for confronting the challenge of competing truth claims that have emerged within those traditions throughout different historical contexts. While they may tend towards more exclusivist, traditionalist, or even fundamentalist strategies of demarcation, they are clearly also capable of more liberal thought patterns that are open to dialogical approaches towards plurality and difference and that provide efficient instruments for a peaceful negotiation of conflicting differences.¹⁰ The latter traditions are marked by the ability to recognize and embrace plurality as a defining element of cultural reality and to include it in their theological self-understanding as well as their practice of interreligious encounters. From different disciplinary and theoretical perspectives and encompassing a variety of historical, theological, philosophical, sociological, and empirical approaches, the project explored the many facets of religious plurality and diversity. It also explored religious difference as a fundamental category of interreligious and intercultural encounters.¹¹ In contrast to interreligious concepts of pluralism and dialogue which aim at relativizing or eclipsing differences, the underlying assumption of this project was that religions position themselves vis-à-vis other interpretations of normative questions regarding truth and values. They engage in such positioning both within their own pluralistic traditions and with regard to competing religious and secular worldviews. Religions are positional and, as a consequence, conflicted. This does not mean that they are necessarily incapable of dealing with diversity since conflicts do not need to be qualified as principally neg-

10 For Judaism, see Alan Brill, Judaism and Other Religions: Models of Understanding (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Alan Brill, Judaism and World Religions: Encountering Christianity, Islam, and Eastern Traditions (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Alon Goshen-Gottstein and Eugene Korn, eds., Jewish Theology and World Religions (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2012); for Islam, see e. g. Heribert Busse, Die theologischen Beziehungen des Islams zu Judentum und Christentum: Grundlagen des Dialogs im Koran und die gegenwärtige Situation (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1988); see also the different contributions to the chapter “Multifaith Perspectives,” in Chad Meister, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Religious Diversity (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), particularly 9–56. 11 For the theoretical approach of the project, see in more detail Christian Wiese, “‘Religiöse Positionierung’ im Spannungsfeld von Diversität, Differenz und Dialogizität – eine Problemskizze,” in Diversität – Differenz – Dialogizität. Religion in pluralen Kontexten, eds. Christian Wiese, Stefan Alkier, and Michael Schneider (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2007), 1–29.

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ative. They should be perceived in their ambivalent, potentially destructive, and creative or integrative function.¹² The second assumption has to do with the sheer existence of the differing Other, which forces religious traditions to position themselves and thereby in the sense of a representation or affirmation of their own self-understanding. This means that, because of the challenge by an Other, this encounter or confrontation with a differing tradition is a relational process that cannot leave one’s own self-understanding untouched. This complex reality can be defined and experienced in very different ways: as enriching plurality; as irritating difference (incompatible with one’s own convictions and values); and even as fundamental threat to one’s own self-conception.¹³ The differing experiences of diversity result in a multiplicity of options for dealing with them. One aspect is the relativization of one’s own truth claims as well as of those of the Other. Moreover, rational or emotional arguments in favor of one’s own position and the pragmatic toleration of the unchangeable fact of the existence of the Other come into play. Besides, religious apologetics, polemics, and discrimination, missionary strategies or exclusivist actions, including religious and political violence, should not be disregarded. Alternatively, some engage in forms of dialogical rapprochement premised upon processes of positioning as the starting point of mutually respectful perceptions and recognition. Against the background of such potential alternative pathways, one of the project’s most important questions concerned the potentials, boundaries, and barriers regarding a constructive approach to difference inherent in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (as well as in other religious traditions). By analyzing such questions, the project referred to the multifaceted and controversial hermeneutical debates about difference occurring within Christian, Jewish, and Islamic contexts.¹⁴ In contrast to interreligious projects which primarily focus on the main ethical values that should be unifying the differing religions, a number of approaches towards an interreligious “theology of religions”¹⁵ have emerged in recent decades. These strategies try to solve the problem of difference in a variety of ways and based on different theoretical models. Pluralistic theologies of religion, following John Hick and others, tend to understand the specific

12 Cf. Günther Schlee, Wie Feindbilder entstehen. Eine Theorie religiöser und ethnischer Konflikte (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2006). 13 For the latter element, see Martha C. Nussbaum, The New Religious Intolerance. Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). 14 See, e. g., Wolfram Weisse, Katajun Amirpur, Anna Körs, and Dörthe Vieregge, eds., Religions and Dialogue. International Approaches (Münster: Waxmann, 2014). 15 See Reinhold Bernhardt and Perry Schmidt-Leukel, eds., Interreligiöse Theologie. Chancen und Probleme (Zürich: TVZ, 2013).

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manifestations of religion as different but equally valid responses to the revelation of the Divine. Such theologies tend to relativize the challenging aspects of difference. Models such as “comparative theology,” which focuses on defining the commonalities and differences between religious traditions, are often also likely to underestimate the profundity of religious and cultural difference.¹⁶ The same seems to be true for some of the concepts suggested by Christian ecumenical approaches aiming at minimizing discrepancies for the sake of peaceful coexistence,¹⁷ or for the rather harmonizing model of an “Abrahamic trialogue,” which also tends to emphasize consensus rather than difference.¹⁸ There are a number of other relevant approaches to interreligious or intercultural hermeneutics which emphasize three major challenges in interactions between differing religious traditions: the appropriate understanding of the Other; the act of understanding oneself in the encounter with the Other; and the need to understand, the serious disagreement between the Self and the Other.¹⁹ The Religious Positioning project was explicitly based on the assumption of the unavoidability of difference as well as potentially conflicting relations. It endeavored to explore their positive and negative effects in various historical and contemporary contexts. The tentative hypothesis that formed the project’s basis can be formulated in terms of the question whether religious positionings assume a destructive or integrative and dialogical character. It can be further specified as the degree to which they enable religious traditions to embrace pluralism. Pluralism in this context is understood by referring to definitions which also ascribe pluralistic quality to convictions of faith that emphasize difference. This applies particularly in relation to their epistemic limitations and recognizing the legitimacy of competing truth claims as part of the process of mutual positioning. The ability to deal with plurality in a constructive manner is not so much about the will to assume a standpoint beyond one’s own convictions and values, but about a conscious affirmation of plurality and diversity which acknowledges the right of the Other

16 See Klaus von Stosch, Komparative Theologie als Wegweiser in der Welt der Religionen (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2012); Francis X. Clooney, Komparative Theologie. Eingehendes Lernen über religiöse Grenzen hinweg (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2013); and see Reinhold Bernhardt, ed., Komparative Theologie. Interreligiöse Vergleiche als Weg der Religionstheologie (Zürich: TVZ, 2009). 17 See Harding Meyer, Versöhnte Verschiedenheit. Aufsätze zur ökumenischen Theologie (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Otto Lembeck, 2000). 18 See Karl-Josef Kuschel and Jürgen Micksch, Abrahamische Ökumene. Dialog und Kooperation (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Otto Lembeck, 2011). 19 Reinhold Bernhardt, “Die Differenz macht den Unterschied: Differenzhermeneutische Ansätze in der Religionstheologie,” in Wiese, Alkier, and Schneider, eds., Religion in pluralen Kontexten, 3– 21.

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and understands the own position as open to a critical self-reflection within a public discourse and based on symmetrical power-relations. ²⁰ The fact that the term “dialogue” was not the leading term of the project is indicative of the assumption that the latter is often used to describe a communicative practice aiming at producing compromise and consensus, partly by harmonizing and relativizing real and persisting difference. Instead, the project tended to operate with linguistic and literary theories – including those presented by Michail Bakhtin – which use the term “dialogism.” This term describes a process in which argumentative positions characterized by diversity and difference can be voiced as such, without the need to harmonize or overpower a polyphony of diverging convictions and values.²¹ The concept of “Religious Positioning” thus becomes an integral element of a theoretical concept that tries to analyze the philosophical, epistemic, semiotic, aesthetical, or ethical aspects as well as the communicative, historical, social, and political conditions for a dialogical practice of dealing with religious difference. It implies a dialogical understanding of positioning that considers the possibility of an acknowledgment of persistent plurality and difference, thus arguing in favor of a communicative practice that clearly voices one’s own position without failing to acknowledge the position of the Other. Crucial for theoretical reflection on the term and phenomenon of religious positioning is its multidisciplinary character. It can be described in terms of theological, communicative, or pedagogical perspectives and may involve the exploration of the dynamics of cultural contacts and the power-relations defining them. Furthermore, it can be used as part of sociological analyses, including approaches of conflict sociology (which emphasize the integrative function of open, self-reflective debates on conflicting views). This includes Georg Simmel’s theory according to which conflicts can contribute to productive negotiations and mutual relations between differing parties.²² With regard to modalities of religious positioning, such sociological reflections inspire the question as to whether and under what condi-

20 See Bernd Schröder, “Pluralismusfähigkeit. Religionsunterricht vor der Herausforderung religiös-weltanschaulicher Pluralität,” in Gemeinsam lernen. Weggefährtinnen und Weggefährten im Gespräch mit Hans-Martin Lübking, ed. Ulrich Walter (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2013), 153–181. 21 For Bakhtin’s thinking, see Michael Holquist, Dialogism. Bakhtin and his World, second edition (London und New York: Routledge, 2002); Wolfram Eilenberger, Das Werden des Menschen im Wort. Eine Studie zur Kulturphilosophie Michail M. Bachtins (Zürich: Chronos, 2009). 22 Georg Simmel, Soziologie. Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1992), 114–116.

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tions an open debate about conflicting perceptions, convictions, and values furthers the self-reflectivity of the respective positions.²³ It is no coincidence that the German-Jewish experience during the nineteenth and early twentieth century played an important role in exploring processes of such dialogical positionings. These moves were based on firm religious conviction and the will to preserve a religious minority’s identity and integrity as a response to contemporary anti-Jewish stereotypes, anti-emancipatory politics, Christian cultural hegemony, and pressure to convert to Christianity. In the wake of the Haskalah and liberal discourse on religious and cultural plurality, Jewish intellectuals such as Samuel Hirsch, Abraham Geiger, Hermann Cohen, Leo Baeck and many others (including Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig) suggested a model of interreligious relations in which Christians and Jews would refrain from both relativizing their own religious convictions and distorting those of the religious Other. These interactions aimed to avoid hiding their own positions or attempting to silence positions differing from or contradicting one’s own self-understanding. One specific argument characterized the challenge posed to majority culture by Jewish historians, theologians, and philosophers: diversity as well as differing identities were legitimate and culturally creative phenomena of modern societies. This central claim included the ideas that the perception and acknowledgment of difference were essential prerequisites for a dialogical encounter between religious traditions and that interreligious encounters should not be based on attempts to eliminate, eclipse, or relativize difference.²⁴ During the nineteenth century, it would be difficult to find examples for mutual processes of dialogical positioning between Judaism and Christianity. What dominated was the apologetic element on the Jewish part: the necessity to defend Judaism against denigrating constructions of Jewish history and culture in Christian contexts while also claiming a distinctive space for Jews and Judaism within European societies. As Christian Wiese demonstrates in his article in this volume, Jewish intellectuals engaged in such processes of positioning and negotiation by using different literary genres that also involved educational purposes and knowledge production. Such writings addressed Jewish as well as non-Jewish audiences: religious and philosophical treatises, encyclopedia articles, catechisms, textbooks, sermons for Jewish services, or sermon-like speeches in institutions of higher learning for adolescents. He explores the differing positions of two brothers, David Cassel and Paulus (Selig) Cassel, one of whom was part of the discipline 23 Ibid, 284–286. 24 See Christian Wiese, “Dialogical Turn? Pluralitäts- und Dialogkonzepte in der jüdischen Religionsphilosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts,” in Wiese, Alkier, and Schneider, eds., Diversität – Differenz – Dialogizität, 142–174.

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of Wissenschaft des Judentums while the other converted to Christianity and became engaged in the activities of Protestant ‘Mission to the Jews.’ This dual case shows the dynamics inherent in the use of religious educational media. Both intellectuals engaged in ‘purely academic’ or ‘unpolitical’ educational efforts and also employed such media in order to position themselves and negotiate religious difference in a political constellation strongly shaped by the contemporary social and cultural power relations.²⁵

2 History of Knowledge and Jewish Educational Media: Framing the Question – Part II Innovation through Tradition? Jewish Educational Media and Cultural Transformation in the Face of Modernity ²⁶ was a collaborative German-Israeli research project that explored the multilayered processes of transformation which reshaped German Jewry between the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries.²⁷ One key question the project undertook to answer was, how and to what extent religious and cultural traditions served as points of reference in this period of transition, the underlying general assumption being that framing new and unfamiliar ideas in familiar contexts (i. e. in traditional or seemingly traditional concepts, practices, and modes of understanding) is beneficial to their wider acceptance.²⁸ In order to answer this question, the project focused on education as a key context of social and cultural change, which a transdisciplinary group of scholars examined through the lenses of Jewish educational media. Since the late eighteenth century, Jewish education has essentially been shaped by three forces: 25 See Christian Wiese, “In the Shadow of Protestantism: David Cassel’s and Paulus (Selig) Cassel’s Conflicting Educational Representations of the History of Judaism in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Germany,” in the present volume. 26 Associated with the German Historical Institute Washington as well as with Tel Aviv University, and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the project run from 2014 to 2019. https:// jewishtrad.hypotheses.org 27 Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770–1870 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973); David J. Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780–1840 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); Andreas Gotzmann, Eigenheit und Einheit. Modernisierungsdiskurse des deutschen Judentums der Emanzipationszeit (Leiden: Brill, 2002); David J. Sorkin, Jewish Emancipation: A History Across Five Centuries (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2019). 28 Simone Lässig, “Religious Knowledge and Social Adaptability in the Face of Modernity,” History of Knowledge, July 21, 2017, https://historyofknowledge.net/2017/07/21/religious-knowledge-and-socialadaptability-in-the-face-of-modernity/.

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first, the Haskalah, the Jewish enlightenment, and its educational program which challenged traditional authority; second, the process of emancipation and the significance that education and schooling assumed as part of it; and third, changing attitudes towards education and the question of what one should learn and know.²⁹ Against this background, the project chose a broad definition of Jewish education and educational media, thus equally exploring the school, the community, and the family. Case studies focused, for example on textbooks and other instructional literature, which were often written for school and home alike, as shown in Kerstin von der Krone’s contribution on catechism and manuals for religious instruction. Other projects explored the Haskalah and its educational literature,³⁰ textbooks for Hebrew instruction,³¹ the emergence of modern synagogue music within the context of religious reform and new liturgical formats, and the role German-language sermons and devotional literature played as a means to educate the community in their quest to gain social adaptability.³² The concept of cultural translation³³ was central to the project from the outset: rather than serving to un-

29 The research literature on the history of modern education is vast. See esp. James Van Horn Melton, Absolutism and the Eighteenth-Century Origins of Compulsory Schooling in Prussia and Austria (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Christa Berg, ed., Handbuch der deutschen Bildungsgeschichte, 6 vols. (Munich: C. H. Beck,_ 1987–2005); Karl A. Schleunes, Schooling and Society: The Politics of Education in Prussia and Bavaria, 1750–1900 (Oxford, New York, and Munich: Berg, 1989); Ernst C. Helmreich, Religious Education in German Schools: An Historical Approach (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959). 30 Zohar Shavit, “Train Up a Child: On the Maskilic Attempt to Change the Habitus of Jewish Children and Young Adults,” Journal of Jewish Education 83, 1 (2016), 28–53. 31 Tal Kogman, “Texts for Boys and for Girls,” Journal of Jewish Studies 70, 2 (2019), 357–374; Tal Kogman, “‘Do Not Turn a Deaf Ear or a Blind Eye on Me, as I Am Your Son’: New Conceptions of Childhood and Parenthood in 18th- and 19th-Century Jewish Letter-Writing Manuals,” Journal of Jewish Education 83, 1 (2016), 4–27. 32 Simone Lässig, “Systeme des Wissens und Praktiken der Erziehung. Transfers und Übersetzungen im deutschen Judentum des 19. Jahrhunderts,” in Kommunikationsräume des Europäischen – Jüdische Wissenskulturen jenseits des Nationalen, eds. Hans-Joachim Hahn, Tobias Freimüller, Elisabeth Kohlhaas, and Werner Konitzer (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2014), 7–34; Lässig, “Religious Knowledge and Social Adaptability in the Face of Modernity,” History of Knowledge. 33 Gerard Delanty, “Cultural Translations and European Modernity,” in Comparing Modernities: Pluralism versus Homogenity. Essays in Homage to Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, eds. Eliezer Ben-Rafael and Yitzhak Sternberg (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005), 442–460; Doris Bachmann-Medick, “Translational Turn,” in Cultural Turns. Neuorientierungen in den Kulturwissenschaften, ed. Doris Bachmann-Medick (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2006), 238–283; Simone Lässig, “Übersetzungen in der Geschichte – Geschichte als Übersetzung?: Überlegungen zu einem analytischen Konzept und Forschungsgegenstand für die Geschichtswissenschaft,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft: Zeitschrift für

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cover instances of direct linguistic transmission and transformation, it helped describe and interpret phenomena of cultural mediation based on complex processes of negotiation and mediation that contributed to translating knowledge, social norms, and values for a Jewish audience. Knowledge and religious knowledge became equally crucial categories of analysis in the wake of the project, partly due to the broader project setting at the German Historical Institute Washington (where it was central to the special research focus History of Knowledge).³⁴ This approach highlights the contexts in which Jewish knowledge (understood as religious knowledge) was defined, the way this knowledge was organized, and the forms and formats in which it was circulated. In essence, Judaism requires one to know and to search for knowledge of the Torah (i. e. God’s teachings),³⁵ which found expression in a rich literary tradition, in learning and teaching, and in rabbinical thought and practice. In rabbinical Judaism, knowing Torah was crucial to all aspects of Jewish life through Halakhah (Jewish law) which derives from Torah study. Access to Torah knowledge, however, was formally restricted to Jewish men, although prohibitions like these were subject to interpretation and change as rabbinical Judaism in general was by no means static. Rather, it was shaped by constant negotiations and re-evaluations in response to the challenges of daily life, which could differ depending on the political and legal conditions or social and cultural contexts of the Jewish diaspora. For Central European Jewry, these conditions began to change fundamentally during the late eighteenth century, mainly in the wake of a crisis of rabbinical authority, the impact of Enlightenment thought, and the Haskalah movement. Another contributing factor was the gradual dismantling of Jewish autonomy through emancipation legislation. In this context, the question regarding what a Jew should know about Judaism and its foundations – and about the world as such – occupied the attention of Jewish thinkers, religious leaders, and pedagogues as much as that of state officials involved in emancipation politics and policy. The Innovation through Tradition? project highlights the value of knowledge as a category of historical research at the intersection of cultural history, the history of religions, and Jewish studies. It explores religions, in this case Judaism, as systems of knowledge which derive from fundamentals or beliefs but follow hierar-

Historische Sozialwissenschaft 38 (2012), 189–216. See also the thematic issues of Transversal: Zeitschrift für Jüdische Studien (2011) and AJS Perspectives (Fall 2015). 34 See https://www.ghi-dc.org/research/history-of-knowledge; including the blog project History of Knowledge: Research, Resources, and Perspectives, https://historyofknowledge.net 35 Based on the biblical commandment to teach and learn the Torah (Deuteronomy 11:19 and Josua 1:8).

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chies and orders that govern the known and unknown.³⁶ Thus, a history of religious knowledge is about authority and access to knowledge as well as practices of knowledge production and knowledge transfer.

3 Exploring Religious Knowledge and Educational History through “Cultural Translations”: Framing the Question – Part III There is a growing body of literature that recognizes the importance of “Cultural translations” in the history of religions and religious education. The act of translation involves, as Zohar Shavit points out in her paper on Educational Media and Cultural Translation, not only “a process by which the textual and cultural models of a source system – rather than texts alone – are transferred to a target system”. This also involves “an adaptation and adjustment of the source system’s texts and models to the texts and models of the target system, while subordinating them to the systemic constraints of the latter in response to its needs and requirements.”³⁷ The theory of “Cultural Translations” provides a useful account of how Jewish and Christian educational media as well as the Torah, the Bible, or the Qu’ran, for example, transfer and transform religious knowledge and positions. Nevertheless, research on religious education has only rarely paid attention to processes of translation; be it through the engagement of students with the holy texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in their original language or in translation and retold through various literary forms, or through oral practices. Modes of linguistic and cultural translation also shape encounters with other cultures, religions, and denominations and thus ideas and practices that are unfamiliar to us.³⁸ Three examples highlight this perspective: Jaqueline S. du Toit’s observations

36 Simone Lässig, “The History of Knowledge and the Expansion of the Historical Research Agenda,” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 59 (2016), 29–58; Kerstin von der Krone, “Religious Knowledge in Historical Perspective,” History of Knowledge, January 26, 2017, https://histo ryofknowledge.net/2017/01/26/religious-knowledge-in-historical-perspective/; Kajsa Brilkman and Anna Nilsson Hammar, Religion as Knowledge, LUCK Lund Center for the History of Knowledge, April 24, 2019, https://newhistoryofknowledge.com/2019/04/24/religion-as-knowledge/ 37 Zohar Shavit, “Cultural Translation and Educational Media,” in the present volume. 38 Or when – as Simone Lässig explains – “alienation creeps over us because we cannot comprehend to what extent our own thoughts might have been changed or given a new connotation during the process of translation into a foreign language, simply because we do not have any facility in that given language”; see Simone Lässig, “Übersetzungen in der Geschichte – Geschichte als Über-

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on children’s Bibles as “negotiated translation;”³⁹ Zohar Shavit’s studies on Hebrew translations of Children’s Literature;“⁴⁰ and Dorothea M. Salzer’s research on bilingual Bible editions for Jewish Children.⁴¹ Jaqueline S. du Toit’s article “Seeing Is Believing”, published in 2012, sheds light on two challenges: “First, […] the delicate counterpoint between image and written ‘text’ for the enterprise of cross-generational knowledge transfer; and second, the ‘invisibility’ or ‘transparency’ of authors, storytellers, and translators of children’s Bibles, including how the motivation for such transparency differs from translators’ invisibility in secular adult literature.”⁴² Furthermore, children’s Bibles aim to serve a dual audience: “The target audience is as much the illiterate and semiliterate adult convert, served by the educational and persuasive presentation of the biblical text, as the child audience.”⁴³ In addition to this visual mode of translations, children’s Bibles are an example for the didactic role of translations. Moreover, religious educational texts, especially within Christianity, are “strongly regulated by strict adherence to canon.”⁴⁴ Moreover, in order to render the text more child appropriate, the author of a children’s Bible never delivers a “word-for-word” translation. In other words, the author has to negotiate between text and child, between religious context, its meaning, and the educational purpose. Apart from that, Christian children’s Bibles also encompass perceptions of Judaism and Jewish traditions and refer to the broader socio-cultural context of Jewish-Christian relations. Educational media – Jewish and Christian – are evidence to the way those relations were negotiated. Thus, children’s Bibles are an example for “negotiated translation.” Consequently, Jaqueline S. du Toit points out similar observations by Zohar Shavit on secular children’s literature. Her chapter on Hebrew translations of children’s literature ties into these previous studies and provides a case study in cultural translation.

setzung?,” Überlegungen zu einem analytischen Konzept und Forschungsgegenstand für die Geschichtswissenschaft,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 38 (2012), 189–216, here 189. 39 du Toit, “Seeing Is Believing,” 101–112. 40 Zohar Shavit, “Cultural Translation: Ideological and Model Adjustment in Translation of Children’s Literature,” in Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung international: Ansichten und Aussichten, eds. Gabriele von Glasenapp, Ute Dettmar, and Bernd Dolle-Weinkauff (Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang 2014), 31–52. 41 Dorothea M. Salzer, “Zweisprachige jüdische Kinderbibeln oder: Wie die Maskilim die Hebräische Bibel für jüdische Kinder übersetzten,” in: trans-lation – trans-nation – trans-formation: Übersetzen und jüdische Kulturen, eds. Petra Ernst, Hans-Joachim Hahn, Daniel Hoffmann, and Dorothea M. Salzer (Innsbruck et al.: StudienVerlag 2012), 65–101. 42 du Toit, “Seeing Is Believing”, 101. 43 Ibid., 103. 44 Ibid.

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Since the late 1980s, Zohar Shavit and her Frankfurt colleague Hans-Heino Ewers worked together on various joint research projects devoted to children’s literature, including Hebrew translations of German, French, and English books. As Shavit points out in her article in the Festschrift for Hans-Heino Ewers (2014), all studies on children’s literature “dealt in one way or another with cultural translation.”⁴⁵ Unlike most translators of adult books, the translator of children’s literature has more liberties regarding the text. With reference to Joachim Heinrich Campe’s book Robinson der Jüngere (1779–1780), Madame de Genlis book Les bergeres de Madian (1812), and Jonathan Swift’s book Gulliver’s Travels (1726), the Hebrew translators manipulate the source texts in various ways by changing, enlarging, deleting, or adding to it. In sum: “These liberties result from the peripheral position of children’s literature in culture, its view as a major agent of educational values, and the need to adjust the text and make it appropriate and useful to the child, in accordance with the social norms and with what society regards – at a certain point in time – as educationally ‘good’, as well as ‘proper’ for the child.”⁴⁶ The analyses of selected Jewish and Christian educational media in the present volume are based on the conceptual framework proposed by Shavit. In sum, the results prove du Toit’s suggestion that her understanding of ‘Cultural translation’ might be useful for the analysis of educational media such as children’s Bibles. These have been media of transnational knowledge transfer ever since their origination, which is evident in the case of Johann Hübner’s Histories of the Bible. First published in 1714, the book had been translated into fifteen European languages by 1874, and (among other things) had been printed in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1824.⁴⁷ Hübner’s book was also used to learn foreign languages. Written for Christian children, it also served as a model for Jewish children in Germany. In both cases, the teaching of the basics of literacy was firmly linked with religious knowledge. Shavit’s understanding of ‘Cultural translation’ is also evident in the case of modern catechetical textbooks. According to Johannes Wischmeyer’s paper in the present volume, the “structure of the modern Catechetic textbooks varied according to the authors’ systematic approach, whereas the new generation of confessional Catechisms followed the main text of the Early Modern catechetic works,

45 Shavit, “Cultural Translation”, 31. 46 Shavit, “Cultural Translation”, 45. See also Zohar Shavit, “Translation of Children’s Literature,” in The Translation of Children’s Literature: A Reader, ed. Gillian Lathey (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2006), 25–40, here 26. 47 See Christine Reents, Die Bibel als Schul- und Hausbuch für Kinder. Werkanalyse und Wirkungsgeschichte einer frü hen Schul- und Kinderbibel im evangelischen Raum: Johann Hü bner, Zweymal zwey und funffzig auserlesene biblische Historien (Gö ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1984).

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on the Lutheran side in most cases the Enchiridion, an Early Modern edition of Luther’s Small Catechism with additions by Philipp Melanchthon.”⁴⁸ Martin Luther’s Small Catechism for all pastors and preachers, first published in Wittenberg in 1529, has appeared in numerous revisions, commented editions, and translations in the course of its worldwide reception history. In America alone, there is proof of no less than 300 editions prior to 1850.⁴⁹ The most important confessional statement of the Reformed Church, the Heidelberger Katechismus (“Heidelberg Catechism”), which was published in 1563, was also present in congregations and schools as a central textbook.⁵⁰ The correct translation of this text, which first appeared in 1762 in Philadelphia in a German-English edition and then in 1764 in New York in an English edition, leads to debates within the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) concerning an appropriate self-understanding, even in the present.⁵¹ Although the worldwide distribution and translation of catechisms is welldocumented in bibliographical terms, it still has not been systematically analyzed as to its significance for the history of education.⁵² Furthermore, teacher’s editions and teaching aids are also informative, such as Herbert Girgensohn’s and Otto Thelemann’s books, which were published in America in English, so as to be used there.⁵³ In this context, we should also note for further research the various manuals and teaching aids which were translated and distributed by Protestant and Catholic mission organizations.

48 Johannes Wischmeyer, “Confessional Position-Taking in 19th-Century Christian Catechism Culture,” in the present volume. 49 See Arthur C. Repp, Luther’s Catechism Comes to America. Theological Effects on the Issues of the Small Catechism Prepared in or for America Prior to 1850 (Metuchen, NJ, and London: Scarecrow Press and American Theological Library Association, 1982). 50 See Douwe Nauta, “Die Verbreitung des Katechismus, Übersetzung in andere Sprachen,” in Handbuch zum Heidelberger Katechismus, ed. Lothar Coenen (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1963), 39–62. 51 See Lyle D. Bierma, “A Critique of the CRC’s New Translation of the Heidelberg Catechism,” Calvin Theological Journal 43 (2008), 111–122. The Christian Reformed Church is a very conservative Dutch Calvinist denomination located mainly in Western Michigan and Northern New Jersey, centered at Calvin University and Seminary. It is not the same things as what German speakers might understand as “the Reformed Church” in reference to single body of Calvinist-oriented Protestants. 52 Cf. Bernd Schröder, “Der Heidelberger Katechismus – religionspädagogisch gelesen,” in Geschichte und Wirkung des Heidelberger Katechismus, ed. J. Marius J. Lange van Ravenswaay (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2013), 213–236, here 224. 53 Otto Thelemann, An Aid to the Heidelberg Catechism, translated by M. Peters (Reading, PA: James I. Good, D. D, Publisher, 1896) [= Handreichung zum Heidelberger Katechismus fü r Prediger, Lehrer und Gemeindeglieder]. This handbook serves as an example of the fact that the Heidelberg Catechism was used primarily as a (theological) book of confession and less as a (religious-pedagogical) manual for religious education. See Schröder, “Der Heidelberger Katechismus”, 227.

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Finally, Shavit’s understanding of cultural translation is also evident in the case of Jewish children’s Bibles. About seventy of them were printed in German during the long nineteenth century. Based on these sources, Dorothea M. Salzer identifies four different types of translation. German Jews adopted a Christian literary genre by producing Jewish children’s bibles. ln this process of cultural translation, Johann Hübner’s Bible For Children served as a model. One example is David Samosc’s book Nahar me-Eden (1837) that transformed Hübner’s Bible into biblical stories with a clear Jewish character.⁵⁴ As another type, Salzer points out that the Hebrew Bible text was re-translated into a new Hebrew version to make it more accessible and useful to the child, in accordance with what the author regarded as educationally “good for the child.”⁵⁵ In yet another type, the Bible text was translated in accordance with contemporary values shaped by the Enlightenment. Finally, the Hebrew text was simply translated into German.

4 Publishing Educational Media and Teacher’s Training: Framing the Question – Part IV Heidi Schönfeld developed a remarkable study on media in Christian education in the nineteenth century that was published in 2003.⁵⁶ Using the example of Bavarian elementary schools, she pointed out that many educational media were used in Religious Education, including textbooks for reading and writing, catechisms, books with a few passages from the Bible, and hymnals. These educational media were produced and published according to the demands of educational as well as religious institutions. She analyzes how curriculum development in Bavaria affected the selection and production of educational media. Although her study does not explicitly consider the Hebrew Bible and the History of Religious Knowledge approach, her book provides important information in that regard.⁵⁷ Schön-

54 Salzer, “Zweisprachige jüdische Kinderbibeln”, 82–86. 55 Ibid., 93–94. 56 Heidi Schönfeld, Bücher für den evangelischen Religionsunterricht. Ein Beitrag aus den bayerischen Volksschulen im 19. Jahrhundert, second edition (Jena: Garamond 2003, 2005). 57 This is evident in the case of educational media with selected stories from the Hebrew Bible, followed by selected stories from the Greek Bible. On the one hand, there are stories from the Hebrew Bible that can be found in almost all books, such as Noah and the Great Flood (Genesis 6–10), God’s Promise to Abraham (Genesis 11–21) and even the Binding of Isaac (Genesis 22). This is a kind of fixed canon of religious knowledge. On the other hand, there are stories from the Hebrew Bible which are hardly told in religious education classes, such as the life and visions of the Prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah. The canon of religious knowledge also includes banned topics. Fur-

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feld’s results are similar to those reported by Gottfried Adam, Rainer Lachmann, Regine Schindler, and Christine Reents.⁵⁸ However, their groundbreaking research on children’s Bibles does not take into account the History of Knowledge approach. Moreover, translation studies might be insightful for the subject area as well as for research on Christian-Jewish relations in the nineteenth century.⁵⁹ In addition, the books by Schönfeld, Adam, Lachmann, Schindler, and Reents make no attempt to engage with current discourses on printing and publishing religious educational media in the nineteenth century. This is exactly where the contribution of Paul Schweitzer-Martin’s chapter begins, in that it addresses the publishing conditions and materiality of printed books, including the technical, political, and religious preconditions of nineteenth-century printing as well as the publishing structures of German and American religious educational media. What is surprising when it comes to economic interests is that “the market for religious educational media was shaped by the idea of spreading scripture and not necessarily earning money.”⁶⁰ New educational media as well as new institutions of teacher’s training can be interpreted as responses to social, cultural, political, and economic changes in the nineteenth century. The studies mentioned would have benefitted from focusing on the modernization of Jewish teachers’ training in the age of emancipation as well as the professionalization of Protestant clergy as teachers of religion. This is exemplified in the work undertaken by Andreas Brämer in the present volume. Using the example of Prussia (1780–1871), he points out that “the teaching institutions fulfilled an important function as accelerators of modernizing change,” including “the

thermore, there are other controversial stories which can be found only in some books, such as the nakedness of Noah and the cursing of Canaan (Genesis 9:18–10:32) or King David, who had seen Bathsheba bathing and lusted after her (2 Samuel 11). 58 Cf. Gottfried Adam, Rainer Lachmann and Regine Schindler, eds., Das Alte Testament in Kinderbibeln. Eine didaktische Herausforderung in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Zürich: TVZ 2003). See Christine Reents and Christoph Melchior, Die Geschichte der Kinder- und Schulbibel: evangelisch, katholisch, jüdisch (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011). 59 This is evident in the case of the textbook “Die biblische Geschichte oder biblisches Lesebuch für Schulen,” first published by Karl Heinrich Stephani in Erlangen in 1821. Cf. Karl Heinrich Stephani, Die biblische Geschichte oder biblisches Lesebuch für Schulen (Erlangen 1821), IV: “Unsere kirchliche Übersetzung ist durchaus hebräischartig, und an eine hebräischartige deutsche Sprache darf unsere Jugend gerade zu dieser Zeit durchaus nicht gewöhnt werden, wo der reine Geist der Muttersprache in ihr erzeugt werden soll.” 60 Paul Schweitzer-Martin, “Printing and Publishing Religious Educational Media in the 19th Century,” in the present volume.

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process of embourgeoisement of the Jewish minority.”⁶¹ Also exemplifying is the study on teachers’ training at the University of Jena, delivered by David Käbisch. The most surprising discovery of the case study is that educational media reflect not only the theological and pedagogical infighting of the nineteenth century, but also the territorial differentiation of the German Empire. All of them gave their pastors and teachers catechisms, textbooks, and children’s bibles for instruction in families, schools, and congregations. In sum, Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic children’s Bibles, catechisms, sermons, and textbooks demonstrate that the answers to our research question were subjected to a continuous and dynamic transformation. Just as in other areas of life within Judaism and Christianity in Germany, one must take into consideration the diverse and multifaceted processes of perception, communication, and knowledge transfer between Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic educators.⁶²

5 The History of Educational Media in Religious Education: Framing the Question – Part V So far, the historical study of religious education has turned its attention primarily to a few media related to religious education. However, the facet of their developmental conditions and timelines in the nineteenth century and a comparative evaluation regarding confessional and religious identities have been neglected. Nineteenth-century Protestant and Catholic catechisms and their respective institutional contexts have been well researched,⁶³ but Jewish catechisms have been the subject of fewer studies.⁶⁴ Thus, the section on Jewish and Christian cat61 Andreas Brämer, “The Modernization of Jewish Teacher Training in the Age of Emancipation – The Example of Prussia (1780–1871),” in the present volume. See also Simone Lässig, Jüdische Wege ins Bürgertum. Kulturelles Kapital und sozialer Aufstieg im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004). 62 On the approach of Transfer-History (in relation to comparative study), see David Käbisch and Johannes Wischmeyer, eds., Transnationale Dimensionen religiöser Bildung in der Moderne (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018). 63 See Johannes Wischmeyer, “Protestantische Katechetik – Institutionelle Kontexte und wissenschaftliche Profile im langen 19. Jahrhundert,” in Institutionalisierung und Profil der Religionspädagogik. Historisch-systematische Studien zu ihrer Genese als Wissenschaft, ed. Bernd Schröder (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2009), 53–88. See also Werner Simon’s contribution, “Katholische ‘Katechetik’ – Anfänge ihrer Institutionalisierung,” in ibid., 23–52. 64 See Bernd Schröder, “Jüdische Katechismen in Deutschland – am Beispiel eines Katechismus aus der Feder von Samuel Hirsch (1815–1889),” in Jewish Studies between the Disciplines: Festschrift for Peter Schäfer, eds. Klaus Hermann, Margarete Schlüter, and Guiseppe Veltri (Leiden/Boston:

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echisms in the present volume enters new territory in the history of religious education. Some Jewish catechisms “attracted Christian readers and widely circulated in Latin, and later in English and German translations,”⁶⁵ and vice versa. Moreover, there are strong structural analogies between Jewish and Christian catechisms: both were used in the practice of religious education for beginners, both are structured by questions and answers, and both are collections of the core principles of religious knowledge and positioning.⁶⁶ Taken together, these results suggest that catechisms are a significant source for an entangled history of religious education. Apart from some studies akin to a summary inventory of Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish children’s Bibles,⁶⁷ the character of this medium in the nineteenth century has been evaluated and sketched against the background of a comparative religious and educational history merely in a preliminary manner.⁶⁸ The panel on Christian and Jewish children’s Bibles opens further insight. First, the results of Dorothea M. Salzer’s research support the idea that Jewish children’s Bibles “promoted the idea of a universal natural religion of morality grounded in and derived from biblical texts and infused by a bourgeois catalog of values and cultural habits.”⁶⁹ Secondly, the findings reported by Gordon Mikoski shed new light on religious knowledge conveyed in children’s Bibles. This knowledge “is anything but neutral and it always reflects complex positions which in turn reveal various theological and political interests.”⁷⁰ Some evidence suggests that sermons played the most important role with regard to the transfer of religious knowledge and positions in the nineteenth century.

Brill, 2003), 456–477. For the contexts of Hirschs activity, see Christian Wiese, “‘An Intimate Friendship with Modernity’: Samuel Hirsch’s Reform Philosophy in the Context of the Ideological Controversies of the Time,” in Samuel Hirsch: Philosopher of Religion, Advocate of Emancipation and Radical Reformer, eds. Judith Frishman und Thorsten W. Fuchshuber (Berlin ans Boston: De Gruyter, 2022), 11–64. 65 Cf. von der Krone, Nineteenth-Century Jewish Catechisms and Manuals. 66 Cf. Johannes Wischmeyer, “Confessional Positioning in Nineteenth-Century Christian Catechism Culture,” in the present volume, and his comments on Bernd Schröders article on Samuel Hirsch’s Jewish Catechism mentioned above (see note 64). 67 See again Reents and Melchior, Die Geschichte der Kinder- und Schulbibel. 68 See also Dorothea M. Salzer, “Was sind und zu welchem Zweck studiert man historische jüdische Kinderbibeln?,” in: Kindertora – Kinderbibel – Kinderkoran. Neue Chancen für (inter‐)religiöses Lernen, eds. Georg Langenhorst and Elisabeth Naurath (Freiburg et al.: Herder, 2017), 91–110. 69 Dorothea M. Salzer, “‘God Is Not Just One People’s God, Not a National God, But the Only God of All Nations’: Religious Knowledge in Jewish Children’s Bibles,” in the present volume. 70 Gordon S. Mikoski, “Bear-ing Witness to the Gospel: Religious Knowledge and Position Taking in Illustrations of 19th-Century Children’s Bibles,” in the present volume.

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Aside from children’s sermons themselves,⁷¹ there are hardly any studies in the area of the history of religious education which recognize and evaluate sermons as educational media. Consequently, the panel on Christian and Jewish sermons makes an important contribution to closing this research gap. This is evident in the case of Samuel J. Kessler’s study on the relationship between Judaism and Christianity in an 1859 Sermon by Adolf Jellinek.⁷² Moreover, the sermon is “one of the most impassioned expressions of Jellinek’s entire philosophy of religious life, and of his life-long attempt to envision a new future of peace between the world’s religions.”⁷³ A more systematic contribution to filling this lacuna is offered by Ursula Roth’s reflections on Friedrich Schleiermacher’s theory of religious worship, including the performance of the sermon. The findings of this research provide insights for the term “positioning” and Christian sermons as an educational medium. Nevertheless, Roth points out that there is still an urgent need for clarification of what is meant by “positioning,” “medium,” and “education” in the context of church worship. Textbooks also represent an important form of mediated communication in religious education. Textbook research has so far only played a minor role in the study of religious education and its history. Within the German context, the Georg Eckert Institut, a key player in research on educational media in the past and present, began to collect textbooks for religion only a few years ago.⁷⁴ The 2014 conference “Textbooks and Religion” highlighted key questions,⁷⁵ and the afore-mentioned research project “Innovation through Tradition? Jewish Educational Media and Cultural Transformation in the Face of Modernity” offers a multilayered approach to education as an instrument for social and cultural change.⁷⁶

71 See Susanne Klemens, Die Nürnberger Kinderpredigten Andreas Osianders d.Ä. Entstehungsgeschichte, theologischer Duktus, didaktisch-methodischer Gehalt und Rezeptionsgeschichte (Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press, 2015). 72 Samuel J. Kessler, “‘Let There Be No Strife Between Me and You’: On the Relationship Between Judaism and Christianity in an 1859 Sermon by Adolf Jellinek,” in the present volume. 73 Ibid. 74 Founded in 1974, the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media – Georg Eckert Institute initially focused on textbooks for history, social studies and geography but has broadened its scope since the early 2000s. The institute holds one of the largest collections of text- and schoolbooks from all over the world and a substantial collection of historical German textbooks. 75 Zrinka Štimac and Riem Spielhaus, Schulbuch und religiöse Vielfalt. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven (Göttingen: V&R unipress 2018). 76 For more information on the project and its outcomes see https://jewishtrad.hypotheses.org/ as well as the database Ressources on Jewish education and religion http://resources-jewish-educa tion.net/ which was developed and established as part of the project.

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6 The Use of Images in the Media of Religious Education: Framing the Question – Part VI In older publications, one often finds the opinion that images can be understood by all human beings and, therefore, in contrast to texts, do not need to be translated. More recently, however, a different conviction has emerged according to which the “reading” and “translating” of images is just as laden with interpretative assumptions as is the reading and translation of texts. An example of this is the study carried out by Gordon Mikoski, including a more detailed account of religious knowledge and positioning in illustrations of nineteenth-century children’s Bibles. As demonstrated by engravings and prints of selected biblical stories, racial positions can be found quite frequently, and the same applies to “Christian appropriation of Jewish Scripture, Protestant-Catholic positioning, White normativity, and moral formation as obedience to patriarchal authority.”⁷⁷ The findings of this study suggest that images play a crucial role in knowledge transfer and positioning. Another example of what is meant by Mikoski is the portrayal of Judaism in children’s Bibles and school Bibles, e. g. the book The Bible in Pictures (“Die Bibel in Bildern”), which was published in Leipzig in 30 volumes between 1852 and 1860.⁷⁸ An English edition followed in 1861. It is worth taking a look at the final image in the book, the depiction of the Old and New Jerusalem. In contrast to the depiction of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, this picture is more complex. Moreover, it is one of the only pictures that includes written text. The Pauline text in the Letter to the Galatians 4:26 refers to the allegory of Hagar and Sara. According to the tradition, Hagar’s son Ishmael is regarded as the progenitor of the Arabs; this picture not only reflects the relation between Judaism and Christianity at the time of Paul, but also the relation between Christianity and Islam in the nineteenth century: Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman [Hagar] and the other by a free woman [Sara]. One, the child of the slave, was born according to the flesh; the other, the child of the free woman, was born through the promise. Now this is an allegory: these women are two covenants. One woman, in fact, is Hagar, from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia[a] and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slav-

77 Gordon S. Mikoski, “Bear-ing Witness to the Gospel: Religious Knowledge and Positioning in Illustrations of Nineteenth-Century Children’s Bibles,” in the present volume. 78 Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Die Bibel in Bildern. 240 Darstellungen, erfunden und auf Holz gezeichnet (Leipzig: Wigand 1860 = Zürich: TVZ Theologischer Verlag, 1989). Cf. Marion Keuchen, Bild-Konzeptionen in Bilder- und Kinderbibeln (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2016), 319–347.

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ery with her children. But the other woman [Sara] corresponds to the Jerusalem above; she is free, and she is our mother. [Galatians 4:21–26; New Revised Standard Version].

A further example of what is meant by Mikoski is the illustrated Bible of Gustave Doré, published in 1866.⁷⁹ This book also contains a depiction of the Parable of the Good Samaritan. What is characteristic here is that both are wearing not the Turkish turban but the Arab headscarf of kaffiyeh. In Doré’s Bible and further Christian educational media, it is a common practice to represent biblical Jews as if they were Muslims: In the artist’s Ascension, Jesus rises to heaven while his disciples look on, dressed as ‘typical’ Bedouin. When the Holy Spirit subsequently descends on these bereaved worshippers, the event has a very curious effect on their wardrobe. In the Descent of the Spirit we see, under the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, a gathering no longer Bedouin but of classic Western figures. Though a long beard here and there, or the central figure’s hood, may conceivably be read as ‘Jewish’, they do not disturb the overall reference to traditional images of saints, monks, and nuns.⁸⁰

Orientalism and orientalist representation of the biblical Jews found their way into Christian textbooks, and even today one can still find them in learning materials for school courses in religion. Consequently, three guiding questions for the overarching discussion of further examples are important: What strategies regarding the interaction with religious difference encountered in the images can be reconstructed? What religious knowledge and which positions do the images presuppose to be well-known among their viewers? What religious knowledge and which positions should the images convey? Marion Keuchen has offered most relevant answers to these questions in her 2016 book Bild-Konzeptionen, in which she strongly focused on the conception of images in the children’s Bibles and school Bibles of the nineteenth century.⁸¹ However, she is hardly interested in phenomena of religious positioning in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic contexts.

79 Die Heilige Schrift des Neuen Testaments illustriert von Gustave Doré. Nach der Übersetzung von Martin Luther (1867). Mit einem Begleitheft von Anja Grebe. Limitierte und nummerierte Ausgabe (Darmstadt 2005: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft = Reproduktion der Hallbergschen Ausgabe Stuttgart 1867). Cf. Keuchen, Bild-Konzeptionen, 348–377. 80 Kalmar, “Jesus Did Not Wear a Turban”, 27–28. 81 Keuchen, Bild-Konzeptionen; see also Keuchen, “Mit Bildern elementar bilden. Bild-Konzeptionen in Kindertora, Kinderbibel und Kinderkoran.”

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7 Epilogue Using examples from Jewish and Christian educational media, the present volume has shown that more substantial research needs to be done. Nevertheless, the case studies presented here have demonstrated that the Frankfurt research project on “Religious Positioning” as well as the History of Knowledge Approach can, when applied to religious educational media, provide relevant and innovative insights. Moreover, the concept of ‘Cultural translation’ is a particularly helpful approach which can take the analysis of the transnational transfer of the ideas of religious education even further. Translation Studies are strongly relevant for the topic explored in this volume in that they allow us to describe cultural contacts in the mode of agency analysis: when an educational medium is translated from one context into another, who does the translating, and when, where, how, and with what intention is it pursued? Which religious knowledge would the author or translator like to convey? Which acts of religious positioning are revealed in this context? Since the present volume was limited to case studies, it was not possible to answer these questions extensively. Nevertheless, the editors of the volume hope that the case studies will lead to further research in the field of religious education and hereby wish to express their sincere gratitude to all authors for their contribution.

Part A: Printing, Publishing, and Translation in the Nineteenth-Century: Methodological Considerations on Educational Media

Zohar Shavit

Cultural Translation and Educational Media Wash your hands and your face and also your neck with water / Do not forget to rinse [your] mouth and teeth, and keep your nails short / And [keep] your head combed every day and your hair in order.¹

These practical instructions appear in the book Sefer toldot Israel by Peter Beer, published in 1796. Trivial as they may seem, I contend that they were part of a major cultural and social reformation – even a revolution – undergone by Jewish society in German speaking regions. This reformation was carried out by the Maskilim, a group of young Jewish intellectuals who strove to transform Jewish society at the turn of the nineteenth century and who, to this end, recruited texts for children and adults. These texts aimed, as we will see, at changing Jewish society in both the private and the public spheres. They were intended to introduce into Jewish society both a new habitus and models pertaining to social organization, namely models of Bürgerlichkeit and Bildung.

1 The Notion of Cultural Translation This article describes how educational media – mainly texts for children and young adults – functioned as agents of change in socio-historical processes. All these texts were, in one way or another, translations of European texts of the Enlightenment movement. Most were German, but some were French and English as well. In the latter cases, however, the German system often served as a mediating system. The point of departure for my discussion is the view of these translations as cultural translations. Before turning to the case study, I would like to discuss briefly the concept of “cultural translation” and suggest a different understanding of it. The act of translation involves, as is commonly known, a process by which the textual and cultural models of a source system – rather than texts alone – are transferred to a target system, which may be part of the same macro-system or not. This transfer, as Gi-

Note: The article is written in the framework of a DFG-funded research project: Innovation durch Tradition? Jüdische Bildungsmedien als Zugang zum Wandel kultureller Ordnungen während der ‘Sattelzeit’ (with Prof. Dr. Simone Lässig, German Historical Institute, Washington). 1 Peretz Beer, Sefer Toldot Israel (Prague n.p, 1796), 285 [Hebrew]. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110795905-003

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deon Toury² and Itamar Even-Zohar³ have argued, often involves an adaptation and adjustment of the source system’s texts and models to the texts and models of the target system, while subordinating them to the systemic constraints of the latter in response to its needs and requirements. In light of this understanding of the act of translation, we may well ask whether there exists any translation that is not cultural. In fact, every translation is cultural in the sense that it is always the result of an ongoing dialogue between at least two cultural systems and of continuous tensions between the demands of the source and the target systems. As such, I contend, the concept of cultural translation becomes rather superfluous. This is why I propose to adopt a narrow definition of cultural translation reserved for those cases where translations play an active role in the dynamics of a certain society; in the case study this article examines translations acted as agents of social change in Jewish society during the period of the Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment movement). Members of the Haskalah movement employed translations not only to augment the repertoire of the Jewish cultural system, but also as part of the movement’s efforts to induce change in Jewish society. In many cases of cultural translation the source text is used as raw material, subject to considerable changes directed toward meeting the needs and demands of the target system. Thus it is often the case that source texts are regarded as no more than a starting point for the introduction of new cultural and social models into the receiving system – models which will become active agents of change. (I would like to remark that such treatment of source texts by many translators, who may introduce far-reaching changes to adjust the texts to the receiving system’s needs, often renders it difficult or even impossible to trace the source texts.) The motives behind the decision to translate a certain text are to be found in the receiving system rather than in the source system. Naturally it is the norms and needs of the receiving system which determine how a given text may be transferred to the target system and received by it. Cases of cultural trans-

2 Gideon Toury, “Transfer Operations and Translation,” in Semiotics Unfolding: Proceedings of the Second Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies, Vienna, July 1979, ed. Tasso Borbé (Berlin, New York & Amsterdam: Mouton, 1984), 1041–1048; Gideon Toury, Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1995). 3 Itamar Even-Zohar, “Translation and Transfer,” Polysystem Studies, a special issue of Poetics Today 11, no. 1 (1990), 73–78; Itamar Even-Zohar, “Polysystem Theory,” Polysystem Studies (ibid.), 9–26; Itamar Even-Zohar, “Laws of Literary Interference,” Polysystem Studies (ibid.), 53–72; Itamar Even-Zohar, “The Making of Culture Repertoire and the Role of Transfer,” Target 9, no. 2 (1997) 373– 381. See also: Rachel Weissbrod, “From Translation to Transfer,” Across Languages and Cultures 5, no. 1 (2004) 23–41.

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lation, therefore, should be analyzed primarily in the context of the receiving and not the source system. Why were translations chosen in favor of original texts to serve as a platform for the introduction of the desired change? I assert that there were two main reasons for the preference of translations over original texts: 1. It was easier to translate a text than to compose texts from scratch in a culture whose repertoire lacked most of the models that comprised the repertoire of the source texts’ cultural system. 2. Translations facilitated the introduction of new and foreign models into the receiving system, since the translated texts benefited from the source texts’ prestige and legitimacy. Most originated from German culture, which the Haskalah considered an ideal model for emulation.

2 The Case Study During the last decades of the eighteenth century, Jewish society in German-speaking regions was undergoing a social transformation that reshaped it completely.⁴ As already mentioned, behind this transformation were the Maskilim – members of the Haskalah movement – who joined forces with the Jewish economic elite in their efforts to modernize Jewish life.⁵ One of their initiatives was the systematic publication of books for Jewish children and young adults, almost all of which were translations. These books voiced the change that the Haskalah movement strove to engender in Jewish society, among other things by establishing a network of schools whose pedagogical approach embraced Philanthropinist values – albeit filtered through their Maskilic interpretation.⁶ The Maskilim realized that in order

4 Shmuel Feiner, The Jewish Enlightenment (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1880–1870 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973); Simone Lässig, Jüdische Wege ins Bürgertum (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004); Steven M. Lowenstein, “The Lifestyle of Modernizing Berlin Jews,” in The Berlin Jewish Community (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 43– 54; Azriel Schochat, “The German Jews’ Integration Within Their Non-Jewish Environment in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century,” Zion 21, no. 3 (1956), 207–235 [Hebrew with English summary]; Azriel Schochat, Beginnings of the Haskalah Among German Jewry (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1960) [Hebrew]; Jacob Toury, Prolegomena to the Entrance of Jews into German Citizenry (Tel Aviv: The Diaspora Research Center, 1972) [Hebrew]. 5 M.[iriam] Bodian, “The Jewish Entrepreneurs in Berlin and the ’Civil Improvement of the Jews’ in the 1780’s and 1790’s,” Zion 49, 2 (1984), 159–184. 6 Mordechai Eliav, Jewish Education in Germany in the Period of Enlightenment and Emancipation (Tel Aviv: The Jewish Agency for Israel Publishing House, 1960) [Hebrew]; Ernst A. Simon, “Peda-

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to make their modernization project viable, they must act to change the models of Jews’ daily practices. Because written texts were the main media of the Haskalah movement and because the new educational system was one of their main projects, they recruited translated texts to their aid in order to present to the Jewish public guidelines for new forms of daily practices, or more accurately of a new habitus.⁷ It must be emphasized that, trifling as they may seem, such practices that organize a person’s life are not spontaneous actions; rather, they derive from social norms and cultural codes that comprise the habitus of individuals and characterize them as a distinct social group. As is well known, the concept of habitus was developed by Pierre Bourdieu, building on the work of Norbert Elias;⁸ a thorough analysis would call for a separate discussion. For my purposes here, however, it is important to mention that habitus generally refers to a set of implicit behavioral codes, or a doxa; it is then interesting to note that the efforts to construct a new Jewish habitus also involved the introduction of explicit guidelines, which were presented in several of the most popular translated Maskilic texts for children. These guidelines included simple matters such as: What should one do after rising in the morning? Should one wash, and, if so, when? How should one behave at the table? How should one dress, employ one’s leisure time or interact with others, including non-Jews? All these were among the aspects of daily practices that the translated Maskilic texts addressed. Such guidelines made their way into not only a variety of texts for Jewish children, as we will see, but also into one of the most important texts of the Haskalah movement – the manifesto Divrei shalom ve-emet (Words of Peace and Truth) written by Naphtali Herz Weisel. In this manifesto Weisel presented the universalist nature of the Enlightenment and the place therein of Torat ha-Adam (“human knowledge”) versus “instruction in the Law of God” torat ha-eloim. Nevertheless, he did not refrain from dealing with mundane matters such as daily practices and wrote plainly that his manifesto was aimed, inter alia, at teaching his readers proper table manners, modes of dress and modes of interaction with others:

gogical Philanthropism and Jewish Education,” in Jubilee Book in Honor of Mordecai Menahem Kaplan, ed. Moshe Davis (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1953), 149–187 [Hebrew]. 7 Pierre Bourdieu, “The Habitus and the Space of Life-Styles,” in Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 171–175. 8 Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000). On Elias’ influence on Bourdieu, see: Rakefet Sela-Sheffy, “Models and Habituses: Problems in the Idea of Cultural Repertoires,” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature XXIV, no. 1 (1997), 35–47; Gadi Algazi, “The Shaping of the Concept of Habitus in Bourdieu’s Work,” Israeli Sociology 4, no. 2 (2002), 401–410 [Hebrew].

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[…] These lessons teach a person how to behave in the company of his friends, when he enters and when he leaves: He should speak calmly and not raise his voice, nor whisper. [They also teach him] table manners, comportment and dress, how he should behave with his household, how he should negotiate, so that other people will enjoy his company and his business and will wish to do business with him, and so on.⁹

My discussion of the guidelines will first examine four central books for children and young adults written by Maskilim and intended principally for the Maskilic schools. It will then address the translation of Rousseau’s Émile into Hebrew. The four central Maskilic texts, which until now have escaped almost any analytical examination, were reissued time and again in many editions in German-speaking regions and continued to be published in Eastern Europe, some even until the end of the nineteenth century. I refer to the following four books, which present explicit and implicit guidelines in each of the areas mentioned above: Avtalion, by Aaron Wolfsohn-Halle (Wolfsohn-Halle, 1790);¹⁰ Mesilat ha-limud, the first part of Bet ha-sefer by Judah Leib Ben-Ze’ev (Ben-Ze’ev, [1802] 1836);¹¹ Sefer toldot Israel, by Peter Beer (Beer, 1796);¹² and Moda le-yaldei bnei Israel, by Moses Hirsch Bock (Bock, 1811).¹³ One could further add the epistolary Igrot Meshulam ben Uriya ha-Eshtemoi by Isaac Abraham Euchel (Euchel, 1789–1790), whose instructions were more implicit.¹⁴ In the reader Mesilat ha-limud – the most successful reader of the Haskalah (it would certainly appear in best-seller lists today), Ben-Ze’ev meticulously prescribed rules for personal hygiene, with precise instructions for rising from bed, washing, and maintaining the cleanliness of one’s clothes: “You shall wake up and wash your face and hands, and brush and rinse your mouth with water and clean it and purify it of mucus and filth; and you should put on clean and splendid clothes and go over your hair with a comb, so that you will not be called by shameful names.”¹⁵ This need to keep clothing clean is mentioned repeatedly in almost all the guidelines. In Avtalion Wolfsohn-Halle maintained: “Your name will honor you

9 Naftali Herz Weisel, “Fourth Letter,” in Sefer Divrei Shalom ve-Emet (Warsaw: Y.Kh. Zabelinski Bookshop, 1886 [1782]), 237 [Hebrew]. All citations of the Hebrew texts are mine, Z.S 10 Aaron Wolfsohn-Halle, Avtalion (Berlin: Chevrat chinukh ne’arim, 1790) [Hebrew]. 11 J. Lev Ben-Ze’ev, Mesilat ha-Limud (Wien: Anton Edlen von Scmid, 1836 [1802]) [Hebrew]. 12 Beer, Sefer Toldot Israel. 13 Moses Hirsch Bock, Moda le-Yaldei Bnei Israel (Berlin: Chevrat chinukh ne’arim, 1811) [Hebrew]. 14 Isaac Euchel, “Igrot Meshulam ben Uriah ha-Eshtemoi,” Ha-Me’asef, Part 1 (Cheshvan 5550), 38– 50; Part 2 (Kislev 5550), 80–85; Part 3 (Adar 5550), 171–176; Part 4 (Iyar 5550), 245–249 [Hebrew]. 15 Ben-Ze’ev, Mesilat ha-Limud, 114.

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in your homeland and your dress abroad”,¹⁶ whereas Ben-Ze’ev asserted: “Your clothes should always be white and your dress clean of filth and spots, because a man is respected for the splendor of his clothing.”¹⁷ Similarly, in Moda le-yaldei bnei Israel, Moses Hirsch Bock offered general instructions on the use of soap: “Remove all filth from your body, wash it and clean it with soap, because cleanliness is very conducive to bodily health.”¹⁸ In his popular book Sefer toldot Israel, Peter (Peretz) Beer gave his readers concrete instructions concerning personal hygiene. Beer emphasized time and again the need to keep one’s body clean: My child! Before you lie down in your bed, / Go and kiss your father’s hands and do not forget to rinse your mouth and teeth / before you lie down to sleep, in clean water. So that in the morning your mouth will not smell foul, / and you will not disgust and repulse to all who encounter you.¹⁹ When you eat and your hands become grubby and soiled, / wash them afterwards so that you do not soil your clothes.²⁰

As already mentioned, another source for guidelines on personal hygiene was Rousseau’s Émile. Elsewhere I have dealt extensively with the strategies that Maskilim employed for the introduction in disguise of that work into the Jewish cultural and educational system.²¹ Here I will refer very briefly to Shimon Baraz’s translation of passages from Émile into Hebrew. Baraz was a virtually anonymous writer who belonged to Maskilic circles in Königsberg; his article entitled “The Education of Boys: On the Necessity of Educating Boys Properly”²² was published posthumously in five parts in Ha-me’asef, a Hebrew-language publication that was the leading organ of the Haskalah. The article incorporated various passages from Émile, twenty-five years after its original publication. We will probably never know for sure which edition of Émile Baraz used for his translation, but we may assume quite confidently that Baraz did not read Émile in French but rather worked from one of the German translations, as Émile en-

16 Wolfsohn-Halle, Avtalion, 12. 17 Ben-Ze’ev, Mesilat ha-Limud, 114. 18 Bock, Moda le-Yaldei Bnei Israel, 189. 19 Beer, Sefer Toldot Israel, 294. 20 Ibid, 290. 21 Zohar Shavit, “Rousseau under Maimonides’ Cloak: The Strategy of Introducing Enlightenment Literature into the New Jewish Library: The Case of Publication of Paragraphs of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile in Hame’asef,” Zion 79, no. 2 (2014), 135–174 [Hebrew]; English summary: xiii-xiv. 22 Shimon Baraz, “Chinukh Ne’arim: Al Devar Chinukh ha-Banim ka-Ra’uyi,” Ha-Me’asef (Tishrei 5548 [1787]), 37 [Hebrew].

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joyed enormous success in Germany, having been translated into German immediately after its publication in France in 1762 and reissued multiple times.²³ Baraz may also have had access to some of the summaries, reviews, and articles written by intermediaries who introduced the ideas of Émile into the German narrative of the Enlightenment. Baraz refers to Maimonides as his source and does not mention Rousseau as the author of the text. He does, however, point vaguely to a recent work by foreign “sages”, which a detailed analysis suggests referred to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Baraz translated and adapted several paragraphs of Émile which deal with concrete issues of child-raising and provide detailed guidelines pertaining to various phases of everyday life: how to dress, bathe, and feed children, and even teach them how to swim. He selected from Émile those passages which best accorded with Maimonides’ view of physical health as a prerequisite for mental health. In doing so, Baraz tried to draw connections between Rousseau’s and Maimonides’ discussions of the human body as well as to link the healing of the body with the healing of the soul (Maimonides 1187–1191, Part III, and Chapter 27). Lavez souvent les enfants; leur malpropreté en montre le besoin. Quand on ne fait que les essuyer, on les déchire; mais, à mesure qu’ils se renforcent, diminuez par degré la tiédeur de l’eau, jusqu’à ce qu’enfin vous les laviez été et hiver à l’eau froide et même glacée. Comme, pour ne pas les exposer, il importe que cette diminution soit lente, successive et insensible, on peut se servir du thermomètre pour la mesurer exactement.²⁴ They [the caretakers] will also make a habit of bathing children / at least twice a week in cold water / so they will be strong and healthy / because apart from this being in keeping with cleanliness and ritual purity / it is also good and conducive to bodily health.²⁵

Baraz also strove to tie his adaptation of Rousseau to rabbinical teachings. For instance, to Rousseau’s recommendation to teach children to swim Baraz added a quotation from the tractate Kiddushin, the most significant source in rabbinical literature on educating children: “And the Sages already warned of this when they said (Kiddushin, Aleph), ’The father is obligated to teach his son, etc. Some say, to teach him to swim as well.’”²⁶

23 On Rousseau’s place in the German Enlightenment see Jacques Mounier, La fortune des écrits de Jean-Jacques Rousseau dans les pays de langue allemande de 1782 à 1813 (Thèse, La nouvelle Sorbonne [Sorbonne 3, 1979]; idem, La fortune des écrits de Jean-Jacques Rousseau dans les pays de langue allemande de 1782 à 1813, Paris 1980). 24 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile ou De l’éducation, livre I (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1872), 34. 25 Baraz, “Chinukh Ne’arim”, 37. 26 Ibid, 38.

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Baraz followed Rousseau faithfully, even at the expense of contradicting Maimonides; for instance, he advised bathing children in cold water despite Maimonides’ instruction to keep the body warm. Yet Baraz’s version condenses Rousseau’s: his translation leaves out many of the topics covered in Rousseau’s discussion of childcare, such as the sections in Book I that deal with the tight swaddling of infants, as well as weaning and teething. At any rate, despite Baraz’s effort to follow Rousseau faithfully, his incorporation of passages from Jewish texts inevitably lends the Hebrew translation of the passages from Émile a different character and meaning than they possess in the original. In addition to the introduction of a new habitus into Jewish society, translations were used to introduce models pertaining to social organization, namely models of Bürgerlichkeit and Bildung. Translations were recruited to present and disseminate the social models the Maskilim aspired to bring into Jewish society. These models were based on the values of the German bourgeoisie, particularly in terms of familial relations, Bildung, vocational training, and relations with non-Jews. For example, the translation by David Samosc, a writer and translator from Breslau, of Campe’s Robinson der Jüngere (1824), was used as a platform for imparting these values. It is difficult to determine which edition of Robinson der Jüngere Samosc used for his translation; he appears to have worked from a different edition than the canonical one of 1779, which Reclam has used for its publication. This is evident, for instance, from two sections that appear in his translation but are absent from the Reclam edition:²⁷ one ten-page long section that describes, in vibrant and nearly graphic detail, the rescue of passengers from a shipwreck; and a scene in which the father offers the children a coconut to taste.²⁸ Samosc leveraged his translation to introduce to his Jewish brethren the values of Bildung and the familial model of the bourgeoisie as part of the Maskilic efforts to reform Jewish society. Such reform included becoming part of bourgeois civil society, in the spirit of Christian Wilhelm von Dohm’s recommendation that Jews be granted equal civil rights provided they adopt Bildung values and the be-

27 The epilogue to the Reclam edition notes: “Im folgenden werden alle inhaltlich bedeutenden Abweichungen aufgeführt, die die achte Auflage (A8) von der ersten (A1) unterscheiden. Diese Stellen wurden auch mit der dritten Auflage (A3) verglichen…” In: Joachim Heinrich Campe, Robinson der Jüngere, zur angenehmen und nützlichen Unterhaltung für Kinder (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1981), 354. 28 Joachim Heinrich Campe, Robinson der Jüngere, zur angenehmen und nützlichen Unterhaltung für Kinder, A8 [= eighth edition] (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1981), 60−63; A3: 68−72, 361; David Samosc (Trans.): Joachim Heinrich Campe, [German in Hebrew letters:] Robinson der Jüngere, ein Lesebuch für Kinder (Breslau: 1824), 25 f. From this point onward, all references to Campe’s original novel published by Reclam will be noted as “Reclam”, and all references to Samosc’s translation will be noted as “Samosc”.

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havioral codes of German civil society’s bourgeoisie. The Maskilim enthusiastically supported the adoption of such values because they saw it as a way to open up new horizons for Jews’ integration into non-Jewish bourgeois society, where one was judged on one’s ability to achieve independent status by attaining a profession, a broad education, and financial and cultural capital. David Samosc’s translation was designed to provide teachers and parents (primarily fathers) with a text that could be used to impart this new set of values to children, thereby generating a social and cultural transformation in Jews’ way of life in German-speaking areas. I have dealt extensively with Samosc’s translation elsewhere.²⁹ Here I would like to point to two conclusions of that analysis: (a) that David Samosc utilized Campe’s status among the Maskilim to embed Philanthropinist approaches to education into Jewish literature; and (b) that he used his translation as a platform for imparting the values of Bildung and the family model of the bourgeoisie. In his translation of Robinson, Samosc presented a model of bourgeois life and, like Campe, “staged” or dramatized various principles of Philanthropinist pedagogy, such as the existence of a constant dialogue between parents and children and between teachers and children. Staging scenes of family life and intrafamilial dialogues between children and parents (the latter often acting in a pedagogical capacity) and among the children themselves provided a way to illustrate the ideal model of interaction between parents and children and between teachers and students – a model that Philanthropinists believed should replace the alienation between teachers and students that characterized children’s education among the nobility and the bourgeoisie. Campe’s Robinson der Jüngere offered a clear alternative to such alienated relationships because the story, which evolves as a dialog between father and children, enabled the dramatization of various scenarios in a typical bourgeois family and thus provided an almost visual illustration of the ideal model of bourgeois life in which children are educated according to the principles of Philanthropinism. Indeed, Campe himself noted in his preface that his “authentic” scenes of family life expressed his ideal model of parent-child relations as well as teacher-student relations: Ich hofte nemlich, durch eine treue Darstellung wirklicher Familienscenen ein für angehende Pädagogen nicht überflüssiges Beispiel des väterlichen und kindlichen Verhältnisses zu geben, welches zwischen dem Erzieher und seien Zöglingen nothwendig obwalten muß.“

29 Zohar Shavit, “Robinson der Jüngere in the Service of the Haskalah: Joachim Heinrich Campe, the Haskalah and the ‘Bildung’ Project in Jewish Society”. In Dorothea M. Salzer (ed.), Jüdische religiöse Erziehung im Zeitalter der Emanzipation. Konzepte und Praxis, Europäisch-jüdische Studien Beiträge, Volume 56 (Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin, 2022), 201–252.

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“I assume that providing future pedagogues with a true representation of actual family scenes will give them a useful example of father-child relations – the kind of relationship that should prevail between an educator and his pupils.³⁰

Campe’s work was also a natural fit for Maskilic translation because his understanding of religion is universalist. He drew a strong connection between accepting God and achieving success in life, and believed that religious education and a genuine acceptance of God were fundamental to the construction of a “bourgeois person” – that is, to the adoption of bourgeois values and the bourgeois way of life: “wenn du Gott erst recht wirst kennen lernen: so wirst du dich noch vielmehr bemühen, so ganz gut zu werden, und dan [sic] wirst du noch vielmehr Freude haben, als jetzt.”;³¹ and in Samosc’s translation: “if you know the ways of God and strive to do only good, happiness will be yours from now on.”³² This universalist conception of religion eased Samosc’s task, and he found little difficulty in transmitting Campe’s ethical and religious message to Jewish readers. When, for instance, in the process of educating and civilizing Freitag (Friday), Robinson teaches him about God, the message is a universalist one: […] und fing von dem Augenblicke an, ihm besser Begriffe von Gott und von dem Leben nach dem Tode mitzutheilen. Er lehrte ihn, daß Gott ein unsichtbares, höchst mächtiges, höchst weises und gütiges Wesen sei; daß er Alles, was da ist, erschaffen habe, und für alles sorge; er selbst aber habe nie einen Anfang genommen; daß er überal zugegen sei, und wisse alles, was wir denken, reden und thun; daß er Wholgefallen am Guten finde und alles Böse verabscheue.³³ And he taught him of the ways of God and told him that there is an end, that there is reward and punishment in eternal life, and instructed him that God is powerful and glorious, that wisdom is his and he is compassionate to all. He created everything that exists on this Earth and breathes life into us all. He has no beginning and no end, and even if he is beyond our ken he exists and knows our thoughts and our deeds, loves what is good and hates what is evil.³⁴

Samosc’s translation aspired to equivalency with Campe’s text and presented his Philanthropinist ideas fully. The story of Robinson Crusoe, a young man who travels the world, was perfectly in line with the Maskilim’s aspiration to broaden Jews’ horizons beyond their narrow and provincial world. In his translation of Campe’s Robinson der Jüngere, Samosc depicted a society that was open to the world and 30 31 32 33 34

Reclam, 14. Reclam, 59. Samosc, 23. Reclam, 233–234. Samosc, 108.

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was characterized by social mobility, rationality, and a universalist outlook – a society of people who attained a profession, were knowledgeable about the world, and lived on their own hard work. In place of the isolated Jew keeping to the confines of his home, Samosc sought to portray a society that was open, inclusive, and characterized by fruitful interactions and relations with others in its local environment. David Samosc’s translation of Robinson der Jüngere thus allowed him – an unknown Maskil from Breslau, a provincial city in Prussia – to make his own modest contribution to the major reforms the Maskilim aspired to bring to Jewish communities in the spirit of the European Enlightenment. The “New Jew” in this society adopts the daily practices of non-Jews, speaks the language of the society in which he lives and is familiar with its culture. He makes his living through various professions and enriches his spiritual world not only through religious study but also through secular studies. The Maskilim’s effort to reform Jewish society thus involved the intentional use of a new educational system and of the media created for it, namely non-religious texts aimed officially at children and young adults, which unofficially reached adults as well, who were searching for a path towards Enlightenment.

Paul Schweitzer-Martin

Printing and Publishing Religious Educational Media in the Nineteenth-Century 1 Introduction The chapters and studies of this volume show the potential and diversity of religious educational media as a source for knowledge production and dissemination by focusing on their textual and pictorial content. This chapter wants to add a further perspective by considering the publishing conditions and materiality of the printed books. In the first part, the technical, political, and religious preconditions of 19th century printing will be explored while the second part will offer a comparison of printing and publishing structures of German and American religious educational media. This chapter has to deal with the challenge that while the material and technical preconditions were similar in all of what would later become Germany and the United States, the political and religious circumstances were diverse and far from stable in the numerous German and American states and territories. Thus, not all regions and also periods of the 19th century can comprehensively be taken into account. Despite the fact that German scholars of religious education have increasingly been interested in the history of their field of research and of religious education, Antje Roggenkamp states that educational media have not yet been thoroughly investigated.¹ This is not just the case for their content, but also the material aspects of production. This chapter therefore is only a first approach and can rely on few studies on the production of religious educational media. Fortunately, other fields of research provide insight into the production

Note: This chapter was written as part of the DFG-funded Collaborative Research Centre 933 “Material Text Cultures”, sub-project A06 “The Paper Revolution in Late Medieval Europe”. 1 Antje Roggenkamp, “Kaiserreich, Republik und Diktatur,” in Religiöse Sozialisation Erziehung und Bildung in historischer Perspektive. Arbeitsfelder historischer Religionspädagogik, ed. Antje Roggenkamp and Michael Wermke (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2014), 151. Furthermore, the works of Rainer Lachmann and his team should be pointed out. His research program and scope are described in: Rainer Lachmann, “Schulbuchforschung. Ein dringendes Desiderat historischer (Religions‐) Pädagogik,” in Forschungsforum. Berichte aus der Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg 5 (1993), 129–134. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110795905-004

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of religious educational media, too. American research, for instance, has scrutinized the impact of printing to understand the rise of Evangelicalism. Numerous newer studies could be pointed out, Nathan O. Hatch’s The Democratization of American Christianity, however, remains a key text.² In recent years, book history as discipline has been growing, especially in the English-speaking world. Multiple handbooks and companions attest to this trend. Many of them prove very helpful to understanding the technical and material preconditions, but few even mention religious educational media.

2 Preconditions 2.1 Material and Technical Preconditions In almost all fields the preconditions of printing and the proliferation of printed materials changed in the 19th century. Some scholars even speak of a second revolution of the book.³ At the beginning of the 19th century, the era of the hand press⁴ ended and the industrial revolution changed the ways of printing. From the Middle Ages onwards, the core technology of printing had been the same. Around the turn and through the first half of the century, numerous inventions and improvements were introduced. Lithography was invented as an alternative form of printing that allowed for larger color print runs. Nevertheless, printing with movable type remained the most common technology. In 1814, the steam-driven press was invented. However, the hand-powered press did not come to a sudden end but was used to print books until far into the 19th century, while newspapers with large print-runs were one of the first publishing fields to use steam-powered mechanical presses. Wooden presses were replaced by iron presses; cylinder instead of flatbed printing made production faster. And not just printing itself was mechanized. Also the process of casting type was revolutionized by the invention of typecasting machines. Set pages of type could be reproduced by making stereotyped plates with the help of plaster molds. This made the fast reproduction of 2 Nathan Orr Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989), esp. 141–146. 3 Jean-Yves Mollier and Marie-Francoise Cachin, “A Continent of Texts: Europe 1800–1890,” in A Companion to the History of the Book, ed. Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 304–306. 4 For a history of the hand press era see Henri-Jean Martin and Lucien Febvre, The Coming of the Book. The Impact of Printing, 1450–1800 (London: Verso, 2010, first published in French in: Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 1958).

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texts, for instance newspapers or broadsheets, possible because a workshop only had to set a page once and could then print it from multiple presses simultaneously.⁵ The new technology of stereotyped plates let the metal type wear down less and a workshop needed fewer pieces of type as the letters could immediately be reused after the stereotype copy was made. Another big advantage was that stereotyping allowed for reprints of a text at any later point of time without having to recompose the pages. As stereotyped plates did not have to be reset they usually had fewer mistakes. They thus were especially good for texts that were reprinted on a regular basis or needed to be produced quickly in a high print run, as for instance Bibles. An alternative had been to let plates for popular texts set. This was extremely expensive as it bound large quantities of type letters, and a workshop needed more space to store the set plates. Mechanical improvement also revolutionized bookbinding. For a long time, books had been sold without bindings and had to be bound by hand. Mechanical binding machines made book production faster, cheaper and more uniform. In the 1820s, cloth began to replace leather as binding material. This shift also cut costs. The in-house bound book became the market norm opposed to the previously often unbound book.⁶ And finally, the raw material for paper changed. From medieval times on, paper had been made from old rags and was what is called a recycling product today. Compared to the prior writing support parchment it was available in larger quantities, but also the number of rags that could be converted to paper where limited to a certain degree, and even after the introduction of steam powered paper making machines complaints about paper shortages are recorded. Rags gradually were replaced by wood pulp or more experimental materials like esparto grass in the middle of the century. Both resources were more available and cheaper in many regions of the world. Although the quality and durability of rag paper was usually superior to these new kinds of paper, the availability and quantity of paper was more important as the demand steadily grew in the 19th century and the supply of paper was crucial to the expansion of print.⁷

5 James Raven, “The industrial revolution of the book,” in The Cambridge Companion to History of the book, ed. Leslie Howsam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 143–161; Rob Banham, “The Industrialization of the Book 1800–1970,” in A Companion to the History of the Book, ed. Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 273–290; Reinhard Wittmann, Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels. Ein Überblick (München: C.H. Beck, 1991), 201–205. 6 Paul C. Gutjahr, An American Bible. A History of the Good Book in the United States 1777–1880 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1999), 13–14. 7 Banham, “The Industrialization of the Book 1800–1970”, 273–274; Peter F. Tschudin, Grundzüge der Papiergeschichte, Bibliothek des Buchwesens 12, 2nd ed., (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann,

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The material components of a printed book – e. g. paper, printing, typesetting, and bookbinding – had become cheaper throughout the first half of the 19th century due to technical improvements and industrialized production. The industrialization did not just allow for less expensive but also for faster and larger print-runs than in previous centuries.

2.2 Political and Religious Preconditions In the German speaking territories,⁸ the situation for publishers was complicated. The German system of federalism and national cohesion varied throughout the 19th century. Generally, taxes and customs duties between the many different territories made centralized mass production of books less lucrative. A second obstacle for the establishment of large publishing centers was censorship, restricting what could be published.⁹ The rules varied regionally but were usually strict.¹⁰ In some cases, these incongruent policies made national editions impossible, limiting the economic possibilities of large-scale publishing. From time to time, there also were waves of harsh censorship. One of best-known of these being the Carlsbad Decrees (Karlsbader Beschlüsse) of 1819 that came into place as a reaction to liberal protests and riots.¹¹ Also the German religious landscape was not advantageous. There were established state churches (Landeskirchen) which were closely linked to the local government or nobility. This gave the churches a strong position in the respective territory but divided the market for religious books. School books had to be compatible with state school laws (Schulverordnungen). These varied 2012), 118–120; Daven Christopher Chamberlain, “Paper,” in The Book. A Global History, ed. Michael F. Suarez, S.J. and Henry Ruxton Woudhuysen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 12–128; Raven, “The industrial revolution of the book”, 146. 8 Germany did not exist as a political entity in the 19th century. At the beginning of the century, the Holy Roman Empire was followed by the German Confederation after the Napoleonic Era. In 1871 the Empire under the Prussian King was founded. The territory under control of these political constellations varied. This chapter does not survey a specific political entity but looks at areas that belonged to one of these entities or would later belong to Germany. 9 Christine Haug, “‘Achtunddreißig Zoll- und Mautlinien in Deutschland lähmen den Verkehr im Inneren…’ Buchhandel und Föderalismus im Vormärz,” in Zensur im 19. Jahrhundert. Das literarische Leben aus Sicht seiner Überwacher, ed. Bernd Kortländer and Enno Stahl (Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag, 2012), 179–202. 10 John L. Flood, “Germany,” in The Book. A Global History, ed. Michael F. Suarez, S.J. and H. R. Woudhuysen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 381. 11 Eberhard Büssem, Die Karlsbader Beschlüsse von 1819. Die endgültige Stabilisierung der restaurativen Politik im Deutschen Bund nach dem Wiener Kongreß von 1814/15 (Hildesheim: Verlag Dr. H.A. Gerstenberg, 1974).

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from territory to territory and divided the market for educational media.¹² Overall, in the 19th century, the political situation was of disadvantage for the production of books and censorship was a serious limiting factor for the German market. The situation in the United States, however, was quite different. The First Amendment¹³ of the Constitution secured freedom of speech and allowed journalists to publish without censorship. Not just the federal constitution guaranteed this right, also state constitutions protected this system. After the Sedition Act of 1798, there were no further efforts to regulate newspapers. While newspapers were often taxed in Europe, the Post Office Act of 1792 enabled cheap mail rates for newspapers in the US and made information potentially accessible to a broader public.¹⁴ Hatch found that “the American Revolution made newspaper reading a way of life for many”¹⁵. Religious publications later seem to have filled in for the political pamphlets of the revolution. After the revolution, step by step the system of established churches in the individual states ceased, while a system of informal establishment stayed in place.¹⁶ These circumstances allowed religious minority groups like the Adventists, Millerites or Mormons to publish at large-scale without legal threats.¹⁷ Moreover, in contrast to the German market, publishing had a different place in society. “Elite and mass media together strengthened national perspectives in American life at the expense of the local and the cosmopolitan.”¹⁸ Overall, printing was virtually uncontrolled, especially compared to Europe at the time.¹⁹

12 Christine Haug, “Einleitung,” in Schulbücher um 1800: Ein Spezialmarkt zwischen staatlichem, volksaufklärerischem und konfessionellem Auftrag, ed. Christine Haug and Johannes Fimmel (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2015), 27, 33. 13 “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” (U.S. Constitution, amend. 1). 14 Robert Alan Gross, “Building a National Literature: The United States 1800–1890,” in A Companion to the History of the Book, ed. Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 317. 15 Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity, 24. 16 Mark Alan Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (1992; repr., Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing 2000), 144–148. 17 Paul Samuel Boyer, “From Tracts to Mass-Market Paperbacks. Spreading the Word via the Printed Page in America from the Early National Era to the Present,” in Religion and the Culture of Print in Modern America, ed. Charles Lloyd Cohen and Paul Samuel Boyer (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), 27–28; Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity, 144. 18 Gross, “Building a National Literature: The United States 1800–1890”, 326. 19 Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity, 144.

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2.3 General Trends in Nineteenth-Century Publishing In most European countries important and big publishing houses existed despite the adverse conditions described above. Well-known examples are Brockhaus in Leipzig, Paul Dupont in Paris and Thomas Nelson in Edinburgh with thousands of employees.²⁰ Looking at the whole market, religious books were popular in the 19th century. But also textbooks, dictionaries, practical books, guidebooks, treatises of popular medicine, and novels were printed in mass production.²¹ For the German market Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Halle, Leipzig, Munich, Stuttgart and Vienna (in Austria) were important centers.²² According to James Raven, German publishing expanded the number of published titles more than sevenfold from 1800 to 1900.²³ Due to the political conditions, the sale of school books was not organized centrally.²⁴ Simultaneously, large centers of Jewish printing had been established in Amsterdam, Venice and Prague.²⁵ Likewise, in many German towns Hebrew presses were active, for instance in Berlin, Königsberg, Stettin, Danzig, Hannover, Halberstadt, Leipzig, Posen, Karlsruhe, or Sulzbach, to name only a few. The high number and wide distribution of Hebrew presses can be explained by the above-mentioned efforts of political control over print production. Most states wanted to prevent the importation of Hebrew books and have direct control over the presses.²⁶ The first printing press in the United States was set up around 1638 by the Puritans in Cambridge, Massachusetts. By the middle of the 18th century, the printing trade was firmly established. During the early period, Bibles and other extensive books were still mostly imported from Great Britain.²⁷ After the Revolution the 20 Mollier/Cachin, “A Continent of Texts: Europe 1800–1890”, 305. 21 Mollier/Cachin, “A Continent of Texts: Europe 1800–1890”, 310. For an overview see Wittmann, Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels, 201–270. 22 Haug, “‘Achtunddreißig Zoll- und Mautlinien in Deutschland lähmen den Verkehr im Inneren…’ Buchhandel und Föderalismus im Vormärz”, 185; Haug, “Einleitung”, 28. 23 “German publishing (more than just in German States proper) expanded from about 3,900 titles in 1800 to 14,000 in 1843 and over 30,000 by 1900.” (Raven, “The industrial revolution of the book”, 156). 24 Haug, “Einleitung”, 32. 25 Ittai Joseph Tamari, “Sulzbach – Eine der bedeutendsten Hebräischen Druckereien Europas,” in Die Juden in der Oberpfalz, ed. Michael Brenner and Renate Höpfinger, Studien zur Jüdischen Geschichte und Kultur in Bayern 2, (München: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2009), 58. 26 Jennifer Berger, “Printing, Hebrew,” in Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 16, 2nd ed. (Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2007), 536–537; Tamari, “Sulzbach – Eine der bedeutendsten Hebräischen Druckereien Europas”, 53–68. 27 Russell L. Martin III, “Transatlantic Book Culture to 1800,” in A Companion to the History of the Book, ed. Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 262–264.

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print production was fully developed and by 1850, publishing in the US was centralized in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston.²⁸ Christian publishers were the pioneers of mass production.²⁹ The high number of religious prints fueled the general interest in reading, strengthening the ‘penny press’, which often contained religious news.³⁰ School books were produced centrally and at the end of the 19th century, a syndicate – the America Book Co. – is likely to have controlled 50 to 90 percent of the textbook market.³¹ In the above-mentioned centers, Hebrew texts were produced by Christian workshops, comprising mainly grammars, primers, Hebrew lexica, and single books of the Bible. Around the middle of the 18th century complete Hebrew prayer books began to appear, and in the following century Hebrew printing of sorts is found in multiple towns. For instance from 1825 onwards, Jewish printers ran workshops in New York. And starting in 1874, Hebrew and Yiddish newspapers were published in the United States on a regular basis.³² Copyright was far from fully established. Especially international copyright only came into place within the 19th century. In the United States there was an informal system that as soon as an American publisher had reprinted a book from abroad he had a monopoly on the book. This was only an informal agreement between printers and accordingly was not always respected. Local copyright laws, on the other hand, had been enacted in some German states in the 19th century, for instance in Saxe-Weimar (1839) with a protection term of 30 years after an author’s death. With the Empire, in 1871, a copyright law for all German states came into place and internationally in 1886 with the Berne Convention. The United States only participated as observers in Berne and did not adopt the Convention at

28 Scott E. Casper and Joan Shelley Rubin, “America,” in The Book: A Global History, ed. Michael F. Suarez, S.J. and Henry Ruxton Woudhuysen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 690; David Paul Nord, Faith in Reading. Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 71. 29 Casper/Rubin, “America”, 689. 30 Judith M. Buddenbaum, “The Penny Press and the Birth of Modern Religion Reporting,” in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the American New Media, ed. Diane Winston (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 38–40. 19th-century newspapers contained large amounts of religious news and usually reported in favor of revivals and similar events. See Buddenbaum, “The Penny Press and the Birth of Modern Religion Reporting”, 44–45; Richard Flory, “American Journalism and Religion, 1870–1930,” in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the American New Media, ed. Diane Winston (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 49–63. 31 Casper/Rubin, “America”, 691. 32 Berger, “Printing, Hebrew”, 538.

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first. In consequence, the texts of foreign authors still had no real protection. The Americans hoped to strengthen their publishers by this decision.³³

3 Religious Educational Media From today’s perspective, the term religious educational media implies a variety of media ranging from TV and radio broadcasts to textbooks and children’s Bibles or stories. This volume explores the broad range of religious educational media in the 19th century. However, as Bibles stayed the single most important educational medium, this chapter will focus on German and American Bible societies and their impact as publishers and distributers of educational media. Other media published by these societies will also be taken into account. Closely linked to the Bible societies the tract societies and the American Sunday School Union will also briefly be studied.

3.1 German Developments The British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) influenced the developments in both the German states and the United States. Founded in London in 1804, the BFBS was a role model, inspiration, source of money, and supplier of printed Bibles for many local and national Bible societies in the years to come.³⁴ The first German Bible society was founded in Stuttgart in 1812. It was one of many that were established in the second decade of the 19th century. The “Leipziger Bibelgesellschaft” (1813), the “Sächsische Bibelgesellschaft” in Dresden and the “Bergische Bibelgesellschaft” in Elberfeld (both 1814) followed only shortly after. Karl Friedrich Adolf Steinkopf, the pastor of a German congregation in London, was a key figure. The BFBS sent him to the continent multiple times to encourage the establishment of Bible

33 Flood, “Germany”, 380–381; Casper/Rubin, “America”, 691; John Feather, “Copyright and the Creation of Literary Property,” in A Companion to the History of the Book, ed. Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 526–527; Wittmann, Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels, 207–208. 34 John Fea, The Bible Cause. A History of the American Bible Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 9; Alexander Achilles Fischer, “Einführung in die Ausstellung,” in 200 Jahre Bibeln aus Stuttgart. Württembergische Bibelanstalt und Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft (1812–2012), ed. Alexander Achilles Fischer (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2012), 9.

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societies. He was very successful, not least because he could distribute funds provided by the BFBS.³⁵ In 1830, multiple German Bible societies, one of them being the Bible Society in Stuttgart that at the time worked under the name “Privilegierte Württembergische Bibelanstalt”, and the BFBS went separate ways. The German Bible societies had been publishing Bibles with apocrypha while most Bibles published by the BFBS went without. This developed into a major conflict that split the societies. The BFBS installed their own office in Frankfurt am Main to spread their Bible copies without apocrypha and by 1832 no more money was provided to German Bible societies from London.³⁶ Despite lacking financial support from abroad, the German Bible societies flourished over the years. They developed efficient fundraising strategies, one of them being special collections on Reformation Day.³⁷ The “Privilegierte Württembergische Bibelanstalt” was exempted from postage fees from 1813 to 1882, and the idea of wedding and confirmation Bibles helped raise production numbers and spread Bibles.³⁸ Catechisms³⁹ as common educational media had been in use since the Reformation. In addition, confessional reading books like the catholic “Neues ABC-Buchstabir- und Lesebuch” were produced. This primer was distributed by the publishing house Aschendorff in Münster from 1788 to 1877 and was mainly used in the diocese of Münster. The book combined learning to read with theological knowledge. Protestant primers were often reprinted for decades, too, but also only used regionally.⁴⁰ Throughout the 19th century, there were debates if the Bible as

35 Fischer, “Einführung in die Ausstellung”, 9; Hermann Ehmer, “Die Gründung der Bibelanstalt,” in 200 Jahre Bibeln aus Stuttgart. Württembergische Bibelanstalt und Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft (1812–2012), ed. Alexander Achilles Fischer (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2012), 13; Wilhelm Gundert, “175 Jahre Bibelgesellschaft in Württemberg”, in 1812–1987 Festschrift zur Gründung der Privilegierten Württembergischen Bibelanstalt vor 175 Jahren (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1987), 5–7. A comprehensive study on the topic of German Bible societies is provided by Wilhelm Gundert, Geschichte der deutschen Bibelgesellschaften im 19. Jahrhundert (Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, 1987). 36 Gundert, Geschichte der deutschen Bibelgesellschaften im 19. Jahrhundert, 185–197; Gundert, “175 Jahre Bibelgesellschaft in Württemberg”, 15–16. 37 Gundert, “175 Jahre Bibelgesellschaft in Württemberg”, 17. 38 Ehmer, “Die Gründung der Bibelanstalt”, 16; Hermann Ehmer, “Bibeln für bestimmte Anlässe,” in 200 Jahre Bibeln aus Stuttgart. Württembergische Bibelanstalt und Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft (1812–2012), ed. Alexander Achilles Fischer (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2012), 40. 39 See the contributions of Kerstin von der Krone and Johannes Wischmeyer in this volume for examples and the local distribution. 40 Gisela Teistler, “Der lange Aufbruch in das 19. Jahrhundert aus der Sicht des Lesenlernens. Die Fibel um 1800,” in Schulbücher um 1800. Ein Spezialmarkt zwischen staatlichem, volksaufkläreri-

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a whole was adequate for teaching in schools. After much debate, in some areas school Bibles with only a selection of – often illustrated – stories were provided.⁴¹ As a general trend, in the second half of the 19th century, confessional publishing houses gained in importance. Two very successful examples are the catholic publisher Herder in Freiburg and the protestant publisher Bertelsmann in Gütersloh. The protestant publishers were an important part of the home mission (Innere Mission) efforts.⁴² Jewish printers were very active, too. During the 19th century more than 100 books to teach Jewish religion in the German speaking parts of Europe were published.⁴³

3.2 Developments in the United States Despite the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 that had separated Great Britain and the United States of America, evangelism was still a joint interest. The BFBS and American Bible Societies worked together closely and just like in the German territories, the BFBS supported many Bible Societies in the United States financially. At the beginning of the 19th century local Bible societies were founded, the first being in Philadelphia in 1808.⁴⁴ Only a few years later, when the American Bible Society (ABS) was established as a national institution in 1816, about 100 local Bible societies were operating in the United States. Not all printed, but all distributed Bibles.⁴⁵ “American religion before the Civil War was predominantly Protes-

schem und konfessionellem Auftrag, ed. Christine Haug and Johannes Fimmel (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2015), 58–66. 41 Gundert, Geschichte der deutschen Bibelgesellschaften im 19. Jahrhundert, 280–283. For more details on the use of Bibles in German schools see Christine Reents and Christoph Melchior, Die Geschichte der Kinder- und Schulbibel. Evangelisch – katholisch – jüdisch (Göttingen, V&R unipress, 2011), 231–345. 42 Wittmann, Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels, 246. 43 Kerstin von der Krone, “Ordnung religiösen Wissens. Tora und Bibel in jüdischen Religionsbüchern des 19. Jahrhunderts,” in Deutsch-jüdische Bibelwissenschaft. Historische, exegetische und theologische Perspektiven, ed. Daniel Vorpahl, Sophia Kähler, and Shani Tzoref, Europäisch-Jüdische Studien. Beiträge 40 (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2019), 99–110. 44 Fea, The Bible Cause. A History of the American Bible Society, 9; Nord, Faith in Reading. Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America, 44. 45 Gutjahr, An American Bible. A History of the Good Book in the United States 1777–1880, 11; Nord, Faith in Reading. Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America, 52; Fea, The Bible Cause. A History of the American Bible Society, 8.

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tant and the national religious culture of print bibliocentric.”⁴⁶ This explains the great support for Bible societies. The BFBS had first pushed for a national Bible society in Philadelphia and offered financial aid, but the Philadelphia Bible Society turned this offer down favoring organizations on a state and not national level. Many of these local societies at first had similar opinions as the Bible Society in Philadelphia and were not in favor of a national society, but the great demand in the West helped create a national society and the ABS adopted the BFBS’s constitution at large.⁴⁷ “Tract and bible Societies shared the same goal – not profit, but the universal circulation of the word” accomplished by a “blend of business and benevolence.”⁴⁸ The Second Great Awakening was thereby an important factor for the rise of Bible publishing and initially also for the use of the Bible as a school text. By 1820, it was rarely used to teach reading in schools anymore, but it stayed in place as a text that was read on a daily basis.⁴⁹ Additionally, it was used in Sunday Schools. Later in the century, freedmen were provided with Bibles to learn to read after the Civil War. Bibles in Chinese were printed in the second half of the 19th century for immigrant schools on the West Coast.⁵⁰ The Bible was the first book to be printed with stereotype plates in the United States.⁵¹ Stereotyping revolutionized American book publishing and religious publishers were the leading innovators. In 1815, the local Bible society in New York City bought its own stereotyped plates and a year later, with the establishment of the ABS, stereotyped printing became customary for Bible societies.⁵² The ABS even advertised that it printed its Bibles with stereotyped plates. Commercial publishers in the United States such as Harper and Brothers introduced stereotyping only years after the ABS in the 1830s.⁵³

46 Charles Lloyd Cohen, “Religion, Print Culture, and the Bible before 1876,” in Religion and the Culture of Print in Modern America, ed. Charles Lloyd Cohen and Paul Samuel Boyer (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), 4. 47 Fea, The Bible Cause. A History of the American Bible Society, 13, 16–17, 21; Nord, Faith in Reading. Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America, 43. 48 Nord, Faith in Reading. Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America, 53. 49 Gutjahr, An American Bible. A History of the Good Book in the United States 1777–1880, 2–3, 119; Buddenbaum, “The Penny Press and the Birth of Modern Religion Reporting”, 37–40. 50 Fea, The Bible Cause. A History of the American Bible Society, 86, 102–103. 51 Gutjahr, An American Bible. A History of the Good Book in the United States 1777–1880, 13. 52 Nord, Faith in Reading. Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America, 6, 51–52; Gutjahr, An American Bible. A History of the Good Book in the United States 1777–1880, 29; Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada, 227. 53 Gutjahr, An American Bible. A History of the Good Book in the United States 1777–1880, 30; Nord, Faith in Reading. Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America, 69.

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However high the number of Bible societies was, they were in competition for readers and determined by the idea of driving ‘bad books’ out of circulation.⁵⁴ Their strategy was simple: “make the bible the most accessible written text in the United States, and you would make it the most important.”⁵⁵ The societies and evangelical groups could rely on circuit riders, ministers and lay people to distribute their publications.⁵⁶ A point of controversy between the BFBS and American societies had always been that the Americans not just sold but also distributed Bibles free of charge.⁵⁷ Overall, the spreading can be described as a concept of differential pricing that adjusted to financial capacities of the buyers and even allowed for free copies.⁵⁸ This publishing and selling strategy of the ABS made it unattractive for most other publishers to print or sell Bibles. As the ABS printed their Bibles “without comment or note” to avoid sectarian controversy, some publishers saw this as their chance and printed Bibles with illustrations or commentaries. Nevertheless, the ABS more or less held a monopoly on cheap simple Bible editions.⁵⁹ The ABS also served specific groups of readers as the example of the “small testament” published in 1827 for Sunday schools shows.⁶⁰ In 1849, 1,200 so-called auxiliaries across the United States distributed the ABS’s Bibles. And as in many parts of the Benevolent Empire, women played an important role. By 1838, there were 82 female societies affiliated with the ABS.⁶¹ In 1853, the ABS expanded its headquarters and became the largest and most highly capitalized publishing establishment in America. While the ABS had centralized the production, the distribution and fundraising was still organized locally.⁶² Apart from the ABS, the American Tract Society (ATS) and the American Sunday School Union (ASSU) were key distributors of religious educational media. Both 54 Nord, Faith in Reading. Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America, 82. 55 Gutjahr, An American Bible. A History of the Good Book in the United States 1777–1880, 19. 56 Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity, 144; Fea, The Bible Cause. A History of the American Bible Society, 11. 57 Nord, Faith in Reading. Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America, 44. 58 Nord, Faith in Reading. Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America, 50, 76; Fea, The Bible Cause. A History of the American Bible Society, 11. 59 Gutjahr, An American Bible. A History of the Good Book in the United States 1777–1880, 35–37; Nord, Faith in Reading. Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America, 43, 67; Fea, The Bible Cause. A History of the American Bible Society, 66. 60 Fea, The Bible Cause. A History of the American Bible Society, 54. 61 Fea, The Bible Cause. A History of the American Bible Society, 31, 56. 62 Nord, Faith in Reading. Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America, 48, 66–67, 71–72; Paul S. Boyer, “From Tracts to Mass-Market Paperbacks. Spreading the Word via the Printed Page in America from the Early National Era to the Present,” in Religion and the Culture of Print in Modern America, ed. Charles Lloyd Cohen and Paul Samuel Boyer (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), 15.

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the ATS and ASSU were nondenominational, viewed knowledge as the foundation of faith, and were organized very similarly to the ABS.⁶³ The tract societies had also grown locally. Their goal was not profit but universal circulation of scripture.⁶⁴ In 1825, the ATS was established in New York and from there spread tracts all over the country.⁶⁵ ABS and ATS agents sold their Bibles and tracts as wholesale agents to other societies, creating an efficient system of distribution.⁶⁶ The ASSU, founded in Philadelphia in 1824, became the third largest publisher of religious educational media.⁶⁷ It supplied Sunday schools with children’s books, periodicals and published materials for weekly lessons.⁶⁸ ABS, ATS and ASSU as the big players envisioned ‘general supplies’. The idea was to supply every family in the US with a Bible.⁶⁹ The ABS attempted this for the first time in the years 1829 to 1831. During the first ‘general supply’, half a million Bibles and New Testaments were distributed to the three million households in the United States.⁷⁰ Obviously, the ‘general supply’ failed, but still the numbers are impressive. ATS and ASSU followed suit and from 1829 to 1833 a total of 15 million tracts, half a million Sunday school books and one million Bibles were distributed.⁷¹

4 Conclusion The market for religious educational media was shaped by the idea of spreading scripture and not necessarily earning money. This lead to large societies in the German states and the United States with quasi-monopolies for Bibles and tracts. The 63 Nord, Faith in Reading. Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America, 76. 64 Nord, Faith in Reading. Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America, 41. 65 Boyer, “From Tracts to Mass-Market Paperbacks. Spreading the Word via the Printed Page in America from the Early National Era to the Present”, 21; Nord, Faith in Reading. Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America, 56. 66 Nord, Faith in Reading. Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America, 47, 94. 67 Nord, Faith in Reading. Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America, 81. 68 Mark A. Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (1992; repr., Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000), 229; Nord, Faith in Reading. Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America , 77. 69 Fea, The Bible Cause. A History of the American Bible Society, 40–50; Nord, Faith in Reading. Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America, 63. 70 Nord, Faith in Reading. Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America, 83–84. 71 Nord, Faith in Reading. Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America, 86. For detailed production and distribution numbers of ABS see Gutjahr, An American Bible. A History of the Good Book in the United States 1777–1880, 187–188. For prices see Gutjahr, An American Bible. A History of the Good Book in the United States 1777–1880, 189.

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major technical innovations of the 19th century facilitated this process, while in the old word censorship and territorial divides restrained the possibilities of publishing. The large, efficient, and successful societies on both sides of the Atlantic are well researched, but in most cases from a very national perspective. Further research should therefore focus on the trans- and international entanglement and on the smaller publishers that supplemented the market, especially with educational media such as, for instance, special Bible editions, school books, manuals, and catechisms. The analysis of their strategies and publications, even if only used regionally, promises fruitful results.

Part B: Educational Media and Teacher’s Training as Response to New Social, Cultural, Political, and Economic Changes

Andreas Brämer

The Modernization of Jewish Teacher Training in the Age of Emancipation – The Example of Prussia (1780–1871)

The widespread notion that the study of the sacred textual tradition had always and everywhere shaped the daily lives (of the male part) of the traditional Ashkenazi society hardly does justice to the actual diversity of German-Jewish existence in the early modern period. Nevertheless, it is undisputed that the appreciation of learning as a religious practice handed down and demanded in classical Jewish literature is also reflected in an extensive network of teaching institutions. For the most part, Jewish children attended a Cheder (Hebrew – parlour, room), a private, one-room school in which the male teacher, the melamed, imparted a basic knowledge of Hebrew and Jewish literature – especially the Bible, Mishnah and Talmud – for the most part to boys up until they reached the age of religious maturity.¹ Secular elementary education, on the other hand, did not achieve this objective and only played a role when such knowledge promised to contribute to a better understanding of religious tradition. Even in the first quarter of the 19th century, Jewish schoolmasters throughout the German-speaking world hardly moved beyond the boundaries of this traditional world of learning. If they also used Yiddish (or Jewish-German), the colloquial language, during their traditional lessons, they could count on the fundamental approval of the Jewish population, as long as its members did not strive to participate in the culture and socializing of their environment, but closely oriented their piety and also everyday life towards the requirements of the Halacha, Jewish sacral law.² The impetus for a paradigm shift in the last quarter of the 18th century came from the Jewish Enlightenment (Hebrew: Haskala), which adopted central educa1 On the (non‐)employment of women as teachers in the lower Jewish school system before 1871 see Andreas Brämer, “Kein Beruf für Israels Töchter? Jüdische Frauen im niederen preußischen Schulwesen (1800–1914),” in Jüdische Welten. Juden in Deutschland vom 18. Jahrhundert bis in die Gegenwart, ed. Marion Kaplan and Beate Meyer (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2005), 110–117. 2 See e. g. “Mordechai Breuer.” In Michael A. Meyer, ed., Deutsch-jüdische Geschichte in der Neuzeit, vol. 1: Tradition und Aufklärung 1600–1780 (Munich: Beck, 1996), 177; Michael Nagel, Deutsch-jüdische Bildung vom Ausgang des 17. bis zum Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts, Handbuch der deutschen Bildungsgeschichte, vol. II (18. Jahrhundert): Vom späten 17. Jahrhundert bis zur Neuordnung Deutschlands um 1800 (Munich: Beck, 2005), 169–171; see also Andreas Brämer, Leistung und Gegenleistung. Zur Geschichte jüdischer Religions- und Elementarlehrer in Preußen 1823/24 to 1872 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110795905-005

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tional ideas of contemporary pedagogics and advocated a renewal of Jewish education with reformist zeal. Far from being satisfied with a change in details, the protagonists of this movement aimed at a fundamental revision of previous teaching practices in Judaism. Inspired by the belief in both the ability and the need for improvement of the Jews, they argued for religious instruction in accordance with a rational world view, for general education in the national language, and for both a professional and an educational qualification of the teachers.³ Actual historical modernization of the Jewish school system, however, got off to a slow start. A look at the period between 1760 and 1800, and later, illustrates that the renewal of the Jewish school system initially went hardly beyond fruitful approaches. Admittedly, although the reform institutions that began teaching in Berlin, Breslau (1791), and other German cities in 1778, marked milestones in Jewish school history in modern times, most specifically denominational education for Jewish children proved to be stable.⁴ In their overwhelming majority, the boys (and sometimes girls, too, but separately from them) continued their attendance of the existing conventional Jewish educational institutions, provided that they attended school regularly at all. While the parents usually rejected the secular trends of their time, crisis awareness and the modernization commitment of the Jewish Enlighteners remained foreign to them. The traditional school thus fulfilled the essential expectations of Jewish society, even if it neglected important subjects of everyday school curricula, such as, for instance reading, writing and arithmetic. The study of the written and the oral Torah aimed at continuing a normative religious practice.⁵ The professional and social environment of Jewish teachers throughout the German-speaking world also remained relatively stable. Even during the first quar-

3 Cf. Mordechai Eliav, Jewish Education in the Period of Enlightenment and Emancipation (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Hotsaʾat ha-sefarim shel ha-sokhnut ha-yehudit le-Erets-Yiśraʾel, 1960), 15–176. 4 Literature on the Jewish reform schools: Ingrid Lohmann, ed., Chevrat Chinuch Nearim. Die jüdische Freischule in Berlin (1778–1825) im Umfeld preußischer Bildungspolitik und jüdischer Kultusreform. Eine Quellensammlung, 2 Bde, (Münster et al.: Waxmann, 2000); Britta L. Behm/ Uta Lohmann/ Ingrid Lohmann, eds., Jüdische Erziehung und aufklärerische Schulreform. Analysen zum späten 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert (New York/ Munich/ Berlin Waxmann 2002); Andreas Reinke, Zwischen Tradition, Aufklärung und Assimilation. Die Königliche Wilhelmsschule in Breslau 1791– 1848, Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 43 (1991), 193–214; Meike Berg, Jüdische Schulen in Niedersachsen. Tradition – Emanzipation – Assimilation. Die Jacobson-Schule in Seesen (1801–1922). Die Samsonschule in Wolfenbüttel (1807–1928) (Cologne/ Weimar/ Vienna: Böhlau, 2003). 5 See also Simone Lässig, Jüdische Wege ins Bürgertum. Kulturelles Kapital und sozialer Aufstieg im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), 155 f.; Brämer, Leistung und Gegenleistung, 55 f.

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ter of the 19th century, the professional competence of schoolmasters was primarily limited to the religious educational canon. If the teachers were familiar with secular fields of knowledge, they had not acquired these systematically. Furthermore, teaching activities in the Cheder remained untouched by impulses of such contemporary educational reformers as Basedow, Campe, or Pestalozzi. Outside the elite circles of the Haskala, there was barely any Jewish reception of the pedagogics then developing as a science.⁶ According to what we know of the educational pathways of Jewish schoolmasters around 1800, many of them – presumably even the majority – had temporarily pursued advanced studies under the guidance of a rabbinical scholar, for example at a Talmudic academy (Yeshiva), a house of study (Bet Midrash) or in a more informal setting. The majority of Jewish teachers had completed their apprenticeship years, but had prematurely discontinued their intensive studies without having been authorized as rabbis themselves, either as a result of economic constraints or because they lacked talent, ambition, or stamina. They had opted for longterm employment as schoolmasters not out of idealism or a sense of vocation, but rather out of a lack of alternatives in more attractive fields of work, sometimes after failing to make a living in other sectors of the economy. Genuine Jewish religious scholars were hardly to be found among the melamdim. As a rule, however, they had acquired sufficient knowledge and experience to carry out their original religious educational mission and to fulfil their function as supervisors of their pupils. The schoolmasters generally worked to the satisfaction of the children’s parents, who admittedly made neither high demands on the learning level nor offered high financial compensation.⁷ The example of Prussia illustrates that the authorities played an important role in increasing the pace of a reform aimed at Jewish acculturation by creating legal basics. Bureaucracy made its first attempts to establish its jurisdiction in educational matters at the end of the 18th century.⁸ Initially, however, it did not take its Jewish population into consideration, who still enjoyed certain privileges of communal autonomous administration thanks to the position they held beyond the social order of the corporate society. Even the Edict of Emancipation of March 1812, which granted Prussian Jewry an extensive improvement in regard

6 On the teaching situation see e. g. the contemporary assessment by Lazarus Bendavid, “Ueber den Unterricht der Juden,” in Aufsätze verschiedenen Inhalts, ed. Lazarus Bendavid (Berlin Frölich, 1800), 125–131. 7 Brämer, Leistung und Gegenleistung, 56–82. 8 See the school articles in the General Land Law for the Prussian States of 1794, in Deutsche Schulgesetzgebung (1763–1952), ed. Leonhard Froese (Weinheim/Berlin: Beltz, [1952]), 19–24.

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to legal rights, expressly omitted regulating the Jewish educational system.⁹ A new Jewish educational policy was not drawn up until May 1824, when rescripts from the education ministry first issued concise instructions designed to establish a Jewish elementary school system under state control and modelled on contemporary standards.¹⁰ The ministerial decrees marked a veritable turning point in Prussian-Jewish educational history. In accordance with the General Prussian Land Law, Jewish children from the age of five were now subject to compulsory education, which could also be enforced by coercive measures. As a rule, instruction was to take place in the general local schools, where the Jewish girls and boys were not allowed to participate in Christian religious instruction. If Jews established their own denominational schools, these were subject to official supervision. The Jewish schoolmasters were referred to in paragraphs 5 to 7, in which the prerequisites and conditions for proof of teaching qualifications were discussed: § 5. […] that especially in Jewish schools, no teacher may be employed who has not previously proven his ability as a teacher in exactly the same type of examination as a teacher at a Christian school of the same kind must also pass – with the exception of religious knowledge […]; § 6 That the previous provision extends to teachers who are to be appointed exclusively for Jewish religious instruction, even though their actual knowledge of the Jewish religion is not the subject of the examination, it is to be examined in any case, whether they possess the knowledge and skills in subjects expected of a teacher. § 7 And finally that even those Jewish private teachers, who wish to give lessons in private homes, must prove their qualification in an examination to be held with them […], and that without such a permit granted by the provincial government on the basis of the certif-

9 § 39 of the Edict, concerning the Civil Status of the Jews in the Prussian State, March 11, 1812, stated: “The necessary provisions concerning the ecclesiastical condition and the improvement in the education of Jews shall be considered at a later time, and with reference to these matters men of the Jewish faith who enjoy public trust because of their knowledge and integrity shall be consulted and heard with their expert opinion.” The German original text was edited by Ismar Freund, Die Emanzipation der Juden in Preußen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Gesetzes vom 11. März 1812. Ein Beitrag zur Rechtsgeschichte der Juden in Preußen (Berlin: Poppelauer, 1912), vol. 2, 459; Ludwig Hoffmann, Die staatsbürgerlichen Verhältnisse der Juden in den gesamten Königl. Preuß. Staaten (Berlin: Petri, 1829), 45; cf. Annegret H. Brammer, Judenpolitik und Judengesetzgebung in Preußen 1812 bis 1847, mit einem Ausblick auf das Gleichberechtigungsgesetz des Norddeutschen Bundes von 1869 (Berlin: Schelzky & Jeep, 1987), 63 f. 10 Andreas Brämer, Eine rechtsgeschichtliche Miszelle zum Preußisch-jüdischen Unterrichtswesen in der Emanzipationszeit – Zwei Ministerialreskripte (1824/1863) und ihr zeitgenössischer Kontext, Transversal 8:2 (2007), 149–156; idem, A Success Story? Prussia’s Jewish Educational Policy in the Aftermath of the Emancipation Edict (1812–1870), Jewish Quarterly Review 106:3 (2016), 413; idem, Leistung und Gegenleistung, 90 f.

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icate issued by the competent examination office on their sufficient qualification, will not be authorized to give lessons.¹¹

The fact that from then on Jewish teachers, analogous to their Christian counterparts, were only to be granted permission to teach if they could provide proof of sufficient qualification, caused unrest in the Prussian Jewish communities. Initially, both the Jewish teaching staff and many parents of school-age girls and boys sought to undermine the instructions of the authorities. The rabbinate and most synagogue congregations were also far from enthusiastically supporting a reorganization of schools and teaching, especially as both the curricula of elementary schools and the concession of teachers questioned the primacy of the religious sphere. On the contrary, both the schooling of Jewish children in elementary schools and the employment of Jewish teachers who fulfilled the state’s performance expectations were initially met with considerable reservations on the part of the denominational minority. Especially in rural areas and in the religiously strictly conservative milieu of the eastern provinces, the authorities could not presuppose compliance.¹² The Ministry of Education aimed at a selection process to lay off all the teachers employed in the Jewish school sector who seemed to endanger the success of the assimilation project due to their pre-modern qualification profile. Those schoolmasters who passed an official employability examination, on the other hand, found the general conditions in the individual government districts of the monarchy to be erratic as far as the location and the procedures of as well as the group of persons involved in the examinations were concerned. In many places, Jewish aspirants met on fixed dates at one of the public Protestant or Catholic teacher training institutes, where they were interviewed as externals and given the opportunity to prove their teaching qualifications. Commissions were also set up outside the teacher seminars – mostly with the participation of Christian clergymen – so that Jewish teachers could obtain qualification certificates. However, the examinations did not follow any uniform regulations, but were often con-

11 Circular Rescript of the Ministry of Spiritual, Educational and Medicinal Affairs, 15 May 1824, Jahrbuch für das Volksschulwesen 3:1 (1827), 12–16; also in: Ismar Freund, Die Rechtsstellung der Juden im Preußischen Volksschulrecht sowie den bezüglichen Gesetzen, Verordnungen und Entscheidungen (im Auftr. des Verbandes der deutschen Juden systematisch dargest.) (Berlin: Guttentag, 1908), 12–14. 12 Michael A. Meyer, “Jüdische Gemeinden im Übergang,” in Deutsch-jüdische Geschichte in der Neuzeit, vol. 2: Emanzipation und Akkulturation 1780–1871, ed. Michael A. Meyer (Munich: Beck 1996), 119.

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ducted according to improvised plans. Comparability of the test results was not initially considered a priority. The fact is that many old school Jewish educators were forced to give up teaching against their will. When Jewish teachers refused to take an examination, this refusal usually led to their being immediately prohibited from teaching. Teachers whose instruction was limited to reading Jewish texts and the Hebrew language, however, were in many cases not even nominated for examination if the local authorities believed that a certified teacher was not needed for these subjects. Aside from this, in some districts even house teachers, who only gave lessons to the children of individual Jewish families, were excluded from the examination. Older teachers, who could no longer be expected to acquire lacking knowledge through self-study or other subsequent learning, however, were often able to avoid being interviewed. Even those applicants who took an examination could count on support, as the examiners indeed required knowledge of the German language, but otherwise often refrained from querying the examinee’s general knowledge. “The examinations of the existing teachers”, according to the ministerial official Ludolph von Beckedorff’s report in the yearbooks on the Prussian elementary school system of 1826, “have yielded the most unfavorable results and large districts would be divested of all Jewish teachers if the authorities had wanted to proceed immediately and exactly according to the regulation”.¹³ However, numerous teachers succeeded in circumventing the examination requirement and continued their teaching activities without approbation – with or without the knowledge of the authorities. Although the authorities gradually gained a better overview of the educational system in the Jewish communities, they initially exercised control which held numerous loopholes.¹⁴

13 [Ludolph von Beckedorff ], Jüdische Schulwesen, Jahrbücher des Preußischen Volks-Schul-Wesens 4 (1826), 111. 14 See, for example, Max Aschkewitz, Zur Geschichte der Juden in Westpreußen (Marburg: Johann Gottfried Herder – Institut, 1967), 125; Sophia Kemlein, Die Juden in Posen 1815–1848. Entwicklungsprozesse einer polnischen Judenheit unter Preußischer Herrschaft (Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 1997), 85, 131 and passim; Manfred Kluge, “Zur Geschichte der jüdischen Schule in Vlotho,” in Sie waren Bürger unserer Stadt. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Juden in Vlotho (Vlotho: Mendel-Grundmann-Gesellschaft e.V., 1988), 22 f; Otto Konopka, Das Privatschulwesen der Stadt Posen seit 1815 mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Erziehungsanstalten für das weibliche Geschlecht, Zeitschrift der historischen Gesellschaft für die Provinz Posen 26 (1911), 284–90; Josef Menze, Judenschule und Synagoge in der Stadt Steinheim während der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Steinheim: Stadtverwaltung, 1992), 284–90; Kerstin Stockhecke and Heinz Finkener, Geschichte der Synagogengemeinde Enger, Stadt Enger – Beiträge zur Stadtgeschichte 7 (1991), 36–38; Maria Wein-Mehs, Juden in Wittlich 1808–1942 (Wittlich: Stadt Wittlich, 1996), 131; see also Jacob Toury, Soziale und

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It was only gradually and over the course of years and decades that the level of qualification of Prussian Jewish teachers began to rise, with young, sufficiently educated and well prepared teachers advancing and replacing the melamdim; while a greater awareness of the usefulness of elementary knowledge of the secular world caught on in Jewish communities. By the early 1860s, the transformation of the Jewish teaching system had apparently progressed so far that nearly all teachers had the minimum qualifications required for the lower school system. The melamed or Winkelschulhalter remained present as a discursive topos, but in real history it was already a phenomenon of the past. The new examination and admission system, dependent both on the support of the denominational teacher-training seminars and the Christian clergy as well as on the administrative apparatus of the public administration, would inevitably have an effect on the acquisition of knowledge by Jewish aspiring teachers. It turned out to be problematic, however, that although the examinations revealed qualification deficiencies in Jewish teachers, the Ministry of Education did not provide any funds to provide denominational seminars for their training.¹⁵ Jewish aspirants for teaching positions therefore frequently switched to Protestant or Catholic teacher-training institutes, the number of which steadily rose thanks to high state subsidies.¹⁶ The Christian seminars dealt with the phenomenon of Jewish applications in different ways, but Jewish candidates were often only accepted as guest students who attended classes without enjoying the special privileges of seminarians. The fact that the attendance of a Christian teacher-training institute also posed a dilemma for the Jewish candidates themselves was a topic that certainly

politische Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland 1847–1871. Zwischen Revolution, Reaktion und Emanzipation (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1977), 164; and Brämer, Leistung und Gegenleistung, 90–110. 15 See, for example, the memorandum on the draft of a decree concerning the status of the Jews, which states, among other things, “Such an endeavour [i. e. a Jewish teacher-training institute] will, with the consent of the state, only be left to the Jews themselves if they expect it to be a success.” (translation A.B.); In Eduard Bleich, ed., Der erste Vereinigte Landtag in Berlin 1847. vol. I (Berlin Reimarus, 1847), 450. 16 On the development of the general seminar system: Michael Sauer, Volksschullehrerbildung in Preußen. Die Seminare und Präparandenanstalten vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Weimarer Republik (Cologne/Vienna: Böhlau, 1987); Frank-Michael Kuhlemann, Modernisierung und Disziplinierung. Sozialgeschichte des preußischen Volksschulwesens 1794–1872 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992), 263–276; Heinz-Elmar Tenorth, Lehrerberuf und Lehrerbildung, Handbuch der deutschen Bildungsgeschichte, vol. III (1800–1870): Von der Neuordnung Deutschlands bis zur Gründung des Deutschen Reichs (Munich: Beck, 1987), 250–270; idem / Sebastian F. Müller, Professionalisierung der Lehrertätigkeit, Enzyklopädie Erziehungswissenschaft. Vol. 5: Organisation, Law and Economics of Education (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1989), 153–171.

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caused many discussions within the synagogue communities. The Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums published by Ludwig Philippson stated in 1852: They [i. e. the general teacher seminars] are for the most part strictly confessional, in areas where few or no Jews live. The Sabbath and religious holidays create great obstacles – and even then, where does the Jewish youth draw sufficient knowledge of his religion, its literature and history for the subject? Where – and this is the main point – is the full enthusiasm in the young man’s breast, the strong upswing of his pen, awakened and uplifted by the living word and the shining example of his teacher?¹⁷

What were the alternatives? Although many Jewish teacher candidates pursued their professional qualification by self-study and withdrew from the explicit Christian forms of life at the state seminars, this preparatory work required a high degree of self-discipline. This autonomy was further accompanied by a high degree of uncertainty, mainly caused by the lack of systematic guidance. Gottheil, a Jewish elementary teacher from the province of Poznan, gave a vivid description of the difficulties of autodidactic forms of learning in 1850: The Jewish candidate soon sees [the shortcomings of Christian seminars], thus takes matters into his own hands! But how? With a haphazard approach and self-education. There is no guiding hand to lead him through the labyrinth of the educational book world. But then he has heard the names of Diesterweg, and Schwarz, Scholz and Wurst, Becker and Dinter, Denzel and Graser, Welter and Volger, and so he ‘throws himself into the raging flood’. A varied mixture of books are read and internalized. And as the will is good and strong, the head is soon filled with pedagogical phrases and words, methodology and didactics drift off in all directions, are taken into account and read according to the method, geography, and history according to another method, language according to a third, and so on, in an endless tangle. And if you have worked thus for a year, then you check to see if you have everything you need, if you are right, if you are wrong, how should you ever know? Shaking, one signs up for the exam. The day comes. Trembling and with fear in his heart, the candidate enters the seminary; what has been stored so far in the silent sanctuary of the brain’s garret, in the holy of holies of his head, should now emerge in daylight and in front of whom? – in front of a seminary staff teacher, a government council, etc.¹⁸

17 Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums (AZJ) 16 (1852), 497. 18 AZJ 14 (1850), 613; During the course of the century, a number of textbooks were published in which Jewish candidates for teaching positions above all received information on the planning of religious instruction; cf. e. g. Moses Büdinger, ‘more lemorim‘ oder: Anweisung für Lehrer, wie der israelitische Religionsunterricht zu ertheilen und der Leitfaden Moreh Lathora dabei anzuwenden sey, nebst Gedanken und Bemerkungen über die israelitische Religionslehre und die dieselbe betreffende ältere und neuere Literatur; auch eine Schrift für Eltern und Schulbehörden, 2nd ed. (Kassel: Krieger, 1831); Gabriel Landauer, Derech lamorim, oder: Leitfaden für israelitische Religionslehrer, welche einen fruchtbaren Unterricht ertheilen wollen, Alsfeld 1835.

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In view of the unregulated training situation for aspiring Jewish teachers, the establishment of their own confessional seminars was an important step forward, which, however, always emanated from the Jewish communities themselves. When the German Reich was founded in 1871, five Jewish teacher training institutions existed on Prussian soil: the teachers’ seminar of the Marks Haindorf Foundation (Marks-Haindorf-Stiftung) in Münster, founded in 1825, the teacher-training college of the Jewish community (Jüdische Lehrer-Bildungsanstalt) in Berlin, founded in 1859, and the Educational Institute for Israelite Teachers (Bildungs-Anstalt für israelitische Lehrer) in Düsseldorf, opened in 1867 (and from 1876 in Cologne), were all located in the old Prussian provinces. With the territorial gains of 1866, two further institutions were added: the Israelite Schoolteacher Institute (Israelitische Schullehrerbildungsanstalt), founded in 1825 in Kassel, and the Seminary for Jewish Teachers (Bildungs-Anstalt für jüdische Lehrer) in Hannover, which had been founded in 1848. Although exact statistical surveys are lacking, a rough estimate shows that about half of all prospective Jewish religious and elementary teachers probably acquired a combination of religious, general, and pedagogical qualifications there.¹⁹ Analogous to the Christian parallel institutions, the Jewish seminars were considered as denominational socialization agencies, striving to strengthen a religious world view beyond a mere vocational training mission and to shape the personality of the young students in the sense of different ideals of piety. In addition to this purely functional mission, a change of goals, norms, and motivations was also sought. The fact that religious faith was regarded as the central point of orientation for the interpretation of meaning and life was also reflected in the fact that rabbis in all five institutions either held the overall leadership or were granted an influential position due to their participation in supervision and administration. Notwithstanding their contribution to the professional constitution of the Prussian-Jewish teaching profession, the Jewish teacher training institutions were criticized. A fundamental difficulty of the training proved to be the fact that the majority of Jewish teachers, as private employees of the synagogue com-

19 Literature on the seminars: Susanne Freund, Jüdische Bildungsgeschichte zwischen Emanzipation und Ausgrenzung. Das Beispiel der Marks-Haindorf-Stiftung in Münster (1825–1942) (Paderborn: Schöningh 1997); Michael Holzman, Geschichte der Jüdischen Lehrer-Bildungsanstalt in Berlin. Eine Festschrift zur Feier des fünfzigjährigen Bestehens der Anstalt am 8 November 1909 (Berlin H. S. Hermann, 1909); Wolfgang Marienfeld, Jüdische Lehrerbildung in Hannover 1848–1923, Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter 36 (1982), 1–107; Friedrich Holzgrabe, Das israelitische Lehrerseminar in Kassel 1825–1920, Mitteilungen des Vereins für hessische Geschichte und Landeskunde 17 (1988), 1–23; Tatjana Lehmann, Beiträge zu einer Geschichte des jüdischen Lehrerseminars in Köln, (unpublished state examination thesis) Cologne 1985; as well as Brämer, Leistung und Gegenleistung, 169–243.

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munities, also fulfilled duties in the field of worship, yet the seminars were hardly able to impart the additional knowledge and skills needed for these activities. Particularly in small congregations, whose small budgets did not permit the employment of a rabbi, teachers were often also used as theologians and preachers. After all, the denominational seminar instruction dealt with the most important texts of religious-legal literature, above all the Talmud and the codex Shulchan Aruch. In this way it could also impart expertise in the interpretation of Jewish law. On the other hand, the new tradition of German-language Jewish homiletics, which had experienced its breakthrough as a “medium of mediation of bourgeois models and normatives”²⁰ since the 1840s, was hardly reflected in the curricula. Printed pulpit speeches and model sermons by renowned Jewish theologians were therefore probably often used as models for orientation and training.²¹ In other areas as well, the curricula of Jewish seminars were inadequate. While even conservative communities increasingly demanded higher standards for the aesthetics of communal prayer, the qualification of pedagogues as chazzanim, i. e. cantors, fell far short of expectations. Jewish teacher candidates could only complete genuine training as precentors – for a fee – in Breslau, where the community cantor Moritz Deutsch, held in high esteem as a luminary in his field, had opened a music institute for Jewish cantors and teachers in 1856. The Kantorenanstalt initially operated in close cooperation with the Jewish Theological Seminary (founded in 1854), which at times trained rabbis and school teachers, but the institute continued to exist as an independent institution even after the closure of the Teachers’ Department. At other seminars, however, a clear discrepancy existed between demand and reality.²² 20 Lässig, Jüdische Wege ins Bürgertum, 303. 21 See Der Lehrer als Prediger, Der Israelitische Lehrer (IL) 4 (1864), 61 f., 65 f., 69 f., 73 f.; Israelitisches Predigt- und Schulmagazin, 2nd ed., Leipzig 1854, Xf.; Ludwig Philippson, Siloah. Eine Auswahl von Predigten. Zur Erbauung, so wie insbesonders zum Vorlesen in Synagogen, die des Redners ermangeln (Leipzig: Baumgärtner, 1843); Lion Wolff, Der jüdische Lehrer, sein Wirken und Leben: Kulturbilder aus der Gemeinde (Rostock: Carl Meyer’s Verlag, 1882), 28–30. 22 Moritz Deutsch, Vorbeterschule. Vollständige Sammlung der alten Synagogen-Intonationen (Breslau: Hainauer, 1871), VII; Aaron Friedmann, Das Dreigestirn, Salomon Sulzer, Louis Lewandowski, und Moritz Deutsch, Jahrbuch für Jüdische Geschichte und Literatur 16 (1913), 221 f; Andreas Brämer, Rabbiner Zacharias Frankel. Wissenschaft des Judentums und konservative Reform im 19. Jahrhundert (Hildesheim/Zurich/ New York: Olms, 2000), 350 f.; Ueber den Vorsängerdienst und dessen Reform, Der Israelitische Lehrer 3 (1863),163 f.; [Theodor Kroner], Ueber Leitung eines jüdischen Lehrerseminars und insbesondere die Ausbildung von Religionslehrern, Der Israelitische Lehrer 8 (1868), 275; Lehrplan der Elementar- und Seminar-Abtheilung der Marks-Haindorf’schen Stiftung zu Münster Westphalen, Der Israelitische Lehrer 10 (1870), 282; Bernhard Jacobsohn, Fünfzig Jahre Erinnerungen aus Amt und Leben (Berlin O. Wolff, 1912), 19–21; J. B. Levy, Der Vorbeter in Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft. Vortrag, gehalten auf dem 5. Verbandstag der

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The widespread combination of teaching duties along with the office of shochet proved to be particularly delicate. Where the ritual slaughter of large and small livestock was one of the main duties of Jewish cult officials, the communities expected the teachers to present their approbation as ritual slaughterers. At the Jewish teacher training institutions, however, the candidates could not learn this craft at all. If teacher aspirants did not fundamentally try to distance themselves from the slaughtering industry as a secondary occupation lacking respectability, they had to start an apprenticeship with practicing slaughterers before, during, or after their seminar triennium and also study the existing technical literature (in Hebrew and German), from which they could above all become familiar with the complex Halachic set of rules on slaughtering and meat inspection.²³ They acquired their formal authorisation as ‘kosher slaughterers’ according to traditional procedures from an acting rabbi, who not only examined the practical abilities and theoretical knowledge of the candidates, but who also attested to their impeccable religious lifestyle.²⁴ Measured by the wide range of work duties, it is hardly surprising that the Jewish seminars did not do justice to the contemporary maximum expectations of institutional teacher training. Not least for this reason, efforts to further improve and standardize the level of training were continued in subsequent years.²⁵ From the overall assessment that none of the Prussian Jewish seminars

jüdischen Lehrervereine im Deutschen Reiche zu Frankfurt am Main am 28. Dezember 1910, Hamburg 1911, 19 f. 23 See e. g. Meier Danziger, Der theoretische und praktische Schechter. Nach dem Ohel Jisrael des Rabbi J. Weil bearbeitet, Brilon 1848; Seligmann Baer, ’Zivche Tsedeq’ (Hebrew), Rödelheim 1857; Seligmann Bär Bamberger, [Sefer more lezovchim] Lehrbuch für Schächter, einschließlich der Religionsgesetze bezüglich des Schächtens und der Fleischbeschau (Hebrew), Fürth 1863; a German translation in Hebrew letters appeared under the title: Sefer hilchot schechita uvedika in deutscher Sprache, Mainz 1886; see also Lion Wolff’s foreword in Lion Wolff. Lehrbuch der ’bedika ushechita’ in fünf Theilen, Leipzig 1901, 3–5; further manuals are named in Aron Freimann, Katalog der Judaica und Hebraica Stadbibliothek Frankfurt am Main. Volume Judaica, reprint (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1968), 145 f. 24 L. Wolff, 50 Jahre Lebenserfahrungen eines jüdischen Lehrers und Schriftstellers. Kulturbilder aus den jüdischen Gemeinden, Leipzig 1919, 54 f.; idem, Lehrbuch, 16 f. 25 E. Sperber, ed., Die Allgemeinen Bestimmungen des Königlich preußischen Ministers der geistlichen, Unterrichts- und Medizinal-Angelegenheiten vom 15. Oktober 1872, betreffend das Volksschul-, Präparanden- und Seminar-Wesen nebst den Prüfungs-Ordnungen für Volksschul-Lehrer und Lehrerinnen, Breslau 1886; Karl Schneider and Egon von Bremen, Das Volksschulwesen im Preußischen Staate in systematischer Zusammenstellung der auf seine innere Einrichtung und seine Rechtsverhältnisse, sowie auf seine Leitung und Beaufsichtigung bezüglichen Gesetze und Verordnungen, vol. 1 (Berlin W. Hertz 1886), 434–440, 539 f.; Freund, Die Rechtsstellung der Juden, 140; Sauer, Volksschullehrerbildung, 69–93.

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was sufficiently fulfilling its qualification mandate, the demand occasionally arose for a merger of individual or all institutions.²⁶ Despite all the complaints and objective shortcomings, however, it must be emphasized that the seminars, which were essentially the result of private or synagogue-community initiatives, considerably improved confessional Jewish teacher training and committed it to methodological principles. Also, the role of seminar-educated teachers as multipliers of acculturation should not be underestimated. In the process of embourgeoisement of the Jewish minority, the teaching institutions fulfilled an important function as accelerators of modernizing change. A critical assessment of the development of the Jewish school system must, of course, also draw attention to the comparatively narrow limitations of state regulatory measures, which reflected the subordinate rank of the Jewish religion and its adherents as a whole. The fact that Catholic and Protestant seminaries were granted extensive state subsidies, but that the authorities did not fulfil their educational responsibility by financing Jewish seminaries, was expression of a Christian view of the world in which Judaism merely held a tolerated position. Teachers of the Jewish denomination were also victims of this discrimination. Discrimination against Christian professional colleagues was initially related to the teacher examination, which completely excluded Jewish theological knowledge. Although large sections of society assumed that a moral lifestyle was not possible without faith and piety, Jewish (in contrast to Christian) religious instruction was not considered a component of the canon of instruction. While Catholic and Protestant teacher candidates in any case had to take a religious examination, Jewish teacher candidates had to prove their knowledge exclusively in elementary subjects, which they could not pass on to their pupils in everyday school life, if, which often happened, the religious communities had not established schools, but merely organized religious education. At general, i. e. Christian, elementary schools, however, Jewish pupils were usually accepted, but as teachers Jews were denied admission.²⁷ The decree that the Ministry of Spiritual, Educational, and Medical Affairs circulated on 19 March 1863 and which formulated a partial revision of previous legal

26 See Josef Klingenstein, Unser Ziel, Der Israelitische Lehrer 1 (1861), 34; Josef Klingenstein, Ein neues Programm und ein altes!, Der Israelitische Lehrer 4 (1864), 162; Die Seminarfrage, Der Israelitische Lehrer 6 (1866), 163 f., 167 f., 171 f., 175 f., 179 f., 186 f., 187–89; Was den Lehrern vor Allem Noth thut, Der Israelitische Lehrer 5 (1865), 200; L.R., Stellung und Aufgabe des israelitischen Lehrers in den kleinen Gemeinden, Der Israelitische Lehrer 7 (1867), 65; Zeitfragen zum Zeitenwechsel, Der Israelitische Lehrer 7 (1867), 158, 163; Was ist zur Hebung der jüdischen Schule, namentlich auf dem Lande zu thun, Jeschurun 10 (1863/64), 348. 27 See the “Ministerial Rescript, 25 January 1869,” in Freund, Die Rechtsstellung der Juden, Berlin 1908, 307 f.

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practice, is also suited for illustrating the ambivalence of state educational policy, which was questionable from the point of view of Jewish claims to emancipation.²⁸ According to its wording, the access restrictions for Jewish religious teachers announced in 1824 and expressly confirmed in the Law on the Conditions of the Jews of July 1847, were to apply only to teachers at religious schools established by the religious communities. Whenever such formal institutions did not exist, on the other hand, “slaughterers and similar persons may in the future be granted permission to teach Hebrew and give religious instruction”, even if they had not passed the state elementary teacher examination.²⁹ Undoubtedly, the partially granted examination dispensation brought significant relief, especially to the smaller Jewish communities. Qualified teachers in general and professional representatives trained at the seminars in particular, did not want to make do with the low incomes they were offered in these Kehillot. Jewish communities with only modest budgets could now revert to choosing from among the numerous existing cult officials, the majority of whom came from the eastern provinces or Russian Poland, who could not present any formal teaching qualifications but demanded a significantly lower salary due to these training deficits.³⁰ However, apart from the financial relief, the ministerial decree did not have a clearly positive impact. Jewish teachers, who saw their professionalization not least as a means of enforcing social privileges, directed their collective efforts to free themselves of unpleasant competition by demanding the consistent enforcement of professional qualification standards. Thus, the “elimination of all subjects unworthy of the sacred teaching profession, mostly foreign, uneducated, untested, and characterless, from teaching” was considered an urgent objective of their professional policy.³¹ Rabbis as well, who tried to compensate their own loss of significance as halachic authorities by, among other things, becoming more involved in

28 Ministerial Rescript, 19 March 1863, in ibid., 256. 29 The rescript was confirmed by a further decree of October 3, 1870, In ibid.; cf. § 62, “Gesetz über die Verhältnisse der Juden, 23. Juli 1847,” in Die Emanzipation der Juden in Preußen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Gesetzes vom 11. März 1812. Ein Beitrag zur Rechtsgeschichte der Juden in Preußen, vol. 2, ed. I. Freund (Berlin Poppelauer, 1912), 517; “Denkschrift zu dem Entwurf einer Verordnung, die Verhältnisse der Juden betreffend.” In Der erste Vereinigte Landtag, 263. 30 See e. g. Der Religionsunterricht und die kleinen Gemeinden, Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums 47 (1883), 628 f.; Dr. Badt, Noch einmal die jüdischen Religionslehrer, Israelitische WochenSchrift 12 (1881), 430; Die Ausweisung der jüdischen Kultusbeamten und deren Folgen, Der jüdische Kantor 7 (1885), 84 f.; Wolff, Der jüdische Lehrer, 40. 31 Josef Klingenstein, An die israelitischen Lehrer Deutschlands, Der Israelitische Lehrer 11 (1871), 137; cf. Monika Richarz, Jüdische Lehrer auf dem Lande im Kaiserreich, Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für Deutsche Geschichte 20 (1991), 188.

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school teaching, opposed the employment of unexamined cult officials, of whom they warned as ‘canker to our entire religious school system’.³² Irrespective of the fact that the argument on teachers and rabbis was partly related to their own material interests, Jewish religious education in many places did indeed not meet contemporary quality standards, as part-time cantors and slaughterers employed as religious teachers had, as a rule, hardly acquired any theoretical pedagogical knowledge, and in some cases did not even have a sufficient command of the German language. Their employability and exemption from the obligation to take examinations, as determined by the rescript, led to a partial reversal of earlier modernization successes. It should furthermore be stressed that normative facilitations were not based on public reevaluation and an equal recognition of the Jewish faith. The ministerial decree of 1863 was intended to confirm the inferior status of Judaism as merely an accepted religious denomination. As long as the monarchy saw itself as a Christian institution founded on divine law, it refused to actively safeguard the religious interests of the Jewish community. So instead of supporting the training of Jewish teachers and subsidizing the employment of Jewish religious teachers in rural communities, the Ministry deliberately accepted a loss in the level of Jewish and Hebrew teaching, which in any case was not part of the elementary school curriculum.³³ Gaining an appreciation of Judaism in the hierarchy of creeds could not be effected in this fashion.

32 Verhandlungen und Beschlüsse der Rabbiner-Versammlung zu Berlin am 4. und 5. Juni 1884 (Berlin Walther & Apolant, 1885), 96; for the modernization of the rabbinate see e. g. Ismar Schorsch, “Emancipation and the Crisis of Religious Authority. The Emergence of the Modern Rabbinate,” in Revolution and Evolution. 1848 in German-Jewish History, ed. Werner E. Mosse, Arnold Paucker and Reinhard Rürup (Tübingen: Mohr 1981), 205–247. 33 See also Bernhard Jacobsohn, Der Deutsch-Israelitische Gemeindebund nach Ablauf des ersten Decenniums seit seiner Begründung von 1869–1879 (Leipzig: W. Schuwardt & Co., 1879), 12–14.

David Käbisch

The Professionalization of Protestant Clergy as Teachers of Religion in the Nineteenth-Century – The Example of Jena ‘Catechetics’ as a field of Practical Theology was the place where future protestant clergy were trained as teachers of religion. This paper on the Catechetical Institute at the University of Jena (founded 1817) points out that ‘catechetics‘ was by no means a dogmatics-centered endeavor, outdated from a pedagogical point of view. The University of Jena was in fact shaped for a century by a liberal theory and practice of religious education open to many innovations in the field of didactics. Adopting several professionalization theories, the source-based case study starts from the assumption that teacher training in Jewish and Christian contexts can be understood as a response to modernity.¹ Does historical evidence support that assumption? What does modernity mean in the historiography of religious education? Are Christian strategies comparable to Jewish and other responses to modernity? And how do religious positioning and knowledge-transfer work in ‘catechetics‘? Exploring these questions, the paper examines a variety of sources such as protestant catechisms, textbooks, and children’s Bibles. The findings are part of the Hessian LOEWE research hub “Religious Positioning: Modalities and Constellations in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Contexts” at the Goethe University Frankfurt and the Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Germany.²

1 Cf. Andreas Brämer, “The Modernization of Jewish Teacher Training in the Age of Emancipation – The Example of Prussia (1780–1871),” in the present volume. The following chapters are partly based on the article by David Käbisch, “Ist Schleiermacher die Antwort? Erschließungsperspektiven und Entwicklungsdynamiken der Religionspädagogik im 19. Jahrhundert,” in Differenz und Wahrheit. Theologische Transformationen konfessioneller Glaubensreflexion zwischen 1750 und 1914, ed. Markus Wriedt (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2023) 141–167. This article was partly translated by Travis R. Niles in 2018 (Doctoral Candidate University of Göttingen in 2018, today University of Bern, Switzerland). 2 Cf. www.relpos.de and Paul Schweitzer-Martin, Conference report “Religious Knowledge and Position Taking in the 19th Century: The Case of Educational Media”, 22.05. 2018–23.05. 2018 Frankfurt am Main, in: H-Soz-Kult, 14.06. 2018, www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-7744. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110795905-006

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1 Theoretical Framework In the last twenty-five years, scholars in religious pedagogy have sought after theoretical frameworks which could be compatible with discussions concerning professionalization in the fields of pedagogy and history. In the process they have used variously nuanced modernization theories in order to describe the challenges of modernity facing the institutions, content, goals, and methods of religious education. The works of Friedrich Schweitzer, Henrik Simojoki, Bernd Schröder, and Johannes Wischmeyer have set the trend in this attempt.³ The historical studies of these scholars share the common trait that they deny a clearly definable succession of “conceptions” of religious pedagogy which were somehow dependent upon positions taken in contemporary systematic theology. Instead, they analyze the manifold societal factors which shaped the field of religious pedagogy in the 19th century. Schweitzer in particular has argued, as early as 1992, for the study of the common history of catechetics and religious pedagogy to be examined from the perspective of modernization theories. In this way, catechetics and religious pedagogy will be “incorporated into the attempt, demanded of theology as a whole, to react to the challenges of modernity and the Enlightenment.”⁴ In the meantime, the approach based in modernization theory has been able to be tested in a series of case studies. This process has shown the problematic attempt to categorically differentiate between the traditional catechetics of the 19th century on the one hand and the modern religious pedagogy of the 20th century on the other hand according to the criteria of modernization theory. Modernization theories in older portrayals of the history of the field often led to the presumption that the “old” catechetics turned a blind eye to the challenges of modernity while the “new” religious pedagogy chose instead to face them head on. Such portrayals often allow themselves to be guided by the semantics of reformers of religious pedagogy around 1900, who used the concept of modernity to be able to dis-

3 Friedrich Schweitzer and Henrik Simojoki, Moderne Religionspädagogik. Ihre Entwicklung und Identität, Religionspädagogik in pluraler Gesellschaft 5 (Gütersloh: Kaiser, Gütersloher Verl.-Haus; Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 2005). Bernd Schröder, ed., Institutionalisierung und Profil der Religionspädagogik. Historisch-systematische Perspektiven, Praktische Theologie in Geschichte und Gegenwart 8 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2008). Johannes Wischmeyer, “Protestantische Katechetik – Institutionelle Kontexte und wissenschaftliche Profile im langen 19. Jahrhundert,” in Institutionalisierung und Profil von ‚Religionspädagogik‘ als wissenschaftlicher Disziplin – Historisch-systematische Perspektiven, Praktische Theologie in Geschichte und Gegenwart 8, ed. Bernd Schröder (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008); 53–88. 4 Friedrich Schweitzer, “Religionspädagogik als Projekt von Theologie nach der Aufklärung – Eine Skizze,” Pastoraltheologische Informationen 12 (1992), 211–222, here pg. 221.

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sociate themselves from the tradition. The Heidelberg and Marburg theologian Friedrich Niebergall, for example, spoke with this inclination when discussing modern theology. The 1911 article by Niebergall, Die Entwicklung der Katechetik zur Religionspädagogik (The [Transformation] of Catechetics into Religious Pedagogy), is quite a good example of the dichotomous juxtaposition of “the” traditional catechetics vs. modern religious pedagogy.⁵ Table: dichotomous self-presentations by Robert Schelander 1993 Traditional Catechetics

Modern Religious Pedagogy

Historical rather than psychological orientation

Psychological rather than historical orientation

Deductive Instruction (Ten Commandments, Apostles’ Creed, Our Father, etc.)

Inductive Method (based in everyday experiences, children’s fairy tales, adventure stories, etc.)

Priority of dogmatic content

Priority of the experience of the children

No difference between ecclesial and school instruction

Difference between ecclesial and school instruction

Inspired by the dichotomous self-presentations, Robert Schelander juxtaposed seven lines of development in his 1993 study of the history of catechetics and religious pedagogy: ‒ Away from the church and toward the school; ‒ away from theology and toward pedagogy and psychology; ‒ away from catechetics and toward religious pedagogy; ‒ away from dogmatics and toward the concept and phenomenon of religion; ‒ away from the exclusive focus on the religious objects of religious education (confession, catechism, etc.) and toward the pupil and his or her religious experience; ‒ away from a “dogmatic model” and toward an “inductive model” which could produce a religious life;

5 Friedrich Niebergall, “Die Entwicklung der Katechetik zur Religionspädagogik,” Monatsblätter für den evangelischen Religionsunterricht 4 (1911); 33–43. Cf. David Käbisch and Bernd Schröder, “Anstöße und Perspektiven – Aufgaben der (historischen) Religionspädagogik im Gespräch mit Friedrich Niebergall,” in Friedrich Niebergall. Werk und Wirkung eines liberalen Theologen, Praktische Theologie in Geschichte und Gegenwart 19, ed. David Käbisch (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 217–231.

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away from a mere mediation of knowledge with an excess of learning material (the so-called “memorization-materialism”) and toward a mediation of subjective religion, in order to address not only the mind but also the heart of the pupils.⁶

Such dichotomous juxtapositions are hardly suitable for any attempt to describe the relation of tradition and modernity in the history of religious education in a differentiated manner. Thus, the paper discusses the following premise of the German-Israeli research project “Innovation through Tradition? Jewish Educational Media and Cultural Transformation in the Face of Modernity” by way of some case studies: “[…] ostensible traditions can be modern responses to new challenges. We have to be careful about easy dichotomies that assume the apparently old is really that. Educational, religious, and other cultural practices that appear to merely manifest the old can very well represent innovative adaptations of the traditional in response to new social, cultural, political, and economic challenges.”⁷ In the center of the case study stands the common practice of the academic training of religious educators at the Catechetical Institute⁸ of the University of Jena, founded in 1817. Various kinds of sources were readily available to Johannes Wischmeyer and me as we conducted the study.⁹

6 Robert Schelander, Religionstheorie und Reformbewegung. Eine Untersuchung zur liberalen Religionspädagogik, Studien zur Theologie 9 (Würzburg: Stephans-Buchh. Mittelstädt 1993), 41 f. Cited approvingly by Christian Grethlein (among others), in Religionspädagogik, de Gruyter Lehrbuch (Berlin/New York: DeGruyter 1998), 68. 7 Simone Lässig, Zohar Shavit and Kerstin von der Krone, “Agents of Cultural Change: Jewish and other Responses to Modernity, ca. 1750–1900,” International Conference, Washington, DC, October 8–10, 2018. Cf. https://jewishtrad.hypotheses.org 8 I am grateful to Travis R. Niles for the following translation notes: for the sake of ease, the German term “Fakultät” has been translated throughout as “department”, and the term “Seminar” as “institute”. The term “Seminar”, however, means both a form of dialogue-based academic work and an administrative unit within an academic department. In contrast to a lecture, in which the professor alone speaks, a seminar is characterized by the opportunity for students to converse with one another, to discuss texts together, and to hold presentations or try their hand at lesson-planning. The establishment of homiletical, catechetical, and pedagogical institutes within theological departments in the 19th century was closely connected with the introduction of this new form of academic work: For the first time, students had the opportunity to speak. This was an innovation in the history of German universities which should not be underestimated. The consistent use of “institute” reflects the inseparable connection of both aspects of “Seminar” in this historical context. 9 Cf. David Käbisch and Johannes Wischmeyer, Die Praxis akademischer Religionslehrerbildung. Katechetik und Pädagogik an der Universität Jena 1817 bis 1918, mit einem Forschungsausblick

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2 Sources for a History of the Catechetical Institute in Jena A bit of archival serendipity is responsible for the fact that the history of the Catechetical Institute in Jena can be reconstructed with such approximation to the institution’s actual practice. Unlike other universities, the handwritten protocols which students were required to produce for each class session have been preserved. The relevant documents from 1837 to 1907 can be viewed in multiple volumes in the Jena university archive. Roughly 1,600 documents spanning 140 semesters have been preserved which offer a close and realistic look into the planning, execution, and evaluation of the class sessions.¹⁰ On top of that, we had a closer look at the process of archival transmission at the University of Jena, for example the detailed handwritten notes of the teachers who held catechetics lectures in the period 1840–1900. For the preceding period, 1817–1838, however, such institute protocols are lacking. The so-called “price-catecheses” which were printed in small batches at that time have also been thoroughly studied. These were catechesis models written by students participating in the Catechetical Institute and furnished with a monetary prize annually on the Reformation Day on October 31st. Through research of the secondary literature in journals for practical theology and religious pedagogy, the attempt was made to reconstruct the discussion surrounding catechetics during the entire time period under investigation. The approach of using this source-genre as a basis for the reconstruction of the institutionalization of a modern science and its endeavor to establish its own identity has proved to be conducive in the analysis of Jena’s catechetics as well.¹¹ The institutional by-laws of the Catechetical Institute in Jena were quite stable all the way from its founding in 1817 through the entirety of the period under discussion. The study and examination regulations from the years 1830, 1839, 1848, and

von Michael Wermke, Praktische Theologie in Geschichte und Gegenwart 5 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008). 10 Cf. Käbisch and Wischmeyer, Die Praxis akademischer Religionslehrerbildung, 5–7. 11 On this research approach, cf. Kerstin von der Krone, Wissenschaft in Öffentlichkeit. Die Wissenschaft des Judentums und ihre Zeitschriften, Studia Judaica 5 (Berlin/Boston, Mass.: De Gruyter, 2012); also Schweitzer and Simojoki, Moderne Religionspädagogik, 252–260, and Antje Roggenkamp-Kaufmann, Religionspädagogik als “Praktische Theologie”. Zur Entstehung der Religionspädagogik in Kaiserreich und Weimarer Republik, Arbeiten zur Praktischen Theologie 20 (Leipzig: EVA, 2000).

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1868 have been preserved and shed some light on this issue.¹² The procedure of the class sessions from 1848 are described in the following way: In the catechetical section [of the department for practical theology], members catechize a few lads from the younger grades of the secondary school, usually four or six of them, during a prescribed hour. The director of this section gives the member responsible for these sessions the text or topic of instruction a few weeks before the end of the catechization. In addition, an outline is developed with a stark emphasis of the chief points of the catechesis and a sufficient indication of its course. The director discusses this outline in the last gathering before the catechesis so that despite the immediate preparation of the catechesis, a full week of extra time remains. The catechesis itself is held extemporaneously and is not permitted to exceed one hour. One member is tasked with review and during the catechesis writes notes about the most necessary details regarding the critique which is to be composed after the dismissal of the pupils. With consideration of the items noted by the reviewer, the director submits the critique as quickly as possible and the summary evaluation is entered into the protocols of the institution. The goal is to establish a particular coherence of the disparate catechizations.¹³

Another source at our disposal for the reconstruction of the history of the Catechetical Institute in Jena are the publications of the various directors of the institute. Johann Traugott Leberecht Danz led the Catechetical Institute from 1817–1837, Johann Karl Eduard Schwarz from 1838 to 1870. From 1870 onwards, there was a relatively quick turnover rate for the many persons who assumed leadership of the institute and offered courses there. Among them were Otto Pfleiderer, Karl Rudolf Seyerlen, Paul Drews, and Wilhelm Thümmel. For all the institutional stability and the high level of continuity with the previous tradition of the discipline of catechetics, this period was a time of searching for and experimenting with new ways of training religious educators. In addition to the historical sources found in the archive of the Catechetical Institute of the Department of Theology, the sources for a history of the Pedagogical Institute of the Department of Philosophy proved to be a true goldmine which could enable a differentiated description of the institutional relationship between pedagogy and theology in Jena. Our investigation was aided by the fact that exten-

12 Einrichtungen und Gesetze des theologischen, des homiletischen und des katechetischen Seminariums der theologischen Facultät zu Jena, Jena 1830. Gesetze für die Seminarien der theologischen Facultät zu Jena, Jena 1839. Gesetze für die Seminarien der theologischen Facultät zu Jena, Jena 1848. Gesetze für die Seminarien der theologischen Facultät zu Jena, Jena 1868. Cf. also “Gesetz über die Lehrerausbildung (Lehrerbildungsgesetz) vom 8. Juli 1922,” in Die akademische Lehrerbildung an der Universität Jena. Verordnungen, Einrichtungen, Ratschläge (Mitteilungen der erziehungswissenschaftlichen Anstalt der thüringischen Landesuniversität zu Jena 1), Jena 1925, 5 f. 13 Gesetze für die Seminarien der theologischen Facultät zu Jena, Jena 1848, 12 f.

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sive studies and source books on the history of pedagogy in Jena had already been produced, with a particular focus on Karl Volkmar Stoy, Wilhelm Rein, and Peter Petersen.¹⁴ The tight integration of catechetical and pedagogical training in the 19th century is, however, only of peripheral interest in these studies. The study of catechetics in Jena conducted by Wischmeyer and myself thus provides a contribution to the reconstruction of the “suppressed heritage” of pedagogy in theology.¹⁵

3 The Catechetical Institute in Jena in the Context of the Training of Religious Educators at Other German Universities The institutionalization of the training of religious educators at German universities can be broken down into four phases. As of the end of the 18th century, private societies focused on pedagogy and catechetics existed at most universities. The practical preparations for one’s later occupation were regarded here as a private matter distinct from the scientific study found at the university. Such private societies at the University of Jena in the 18th century have been documented. The beginning of the second phase is marked by the founding of catechetical institutes at theological departments during the first third of the 19th century; e. g., 1817 in Jena, 1825 in Leipzig, and 1826 in Halle.¹⁶ On the basis of binding institutional regulations at these and other universities, we can see that practical preparations for one’s occupation were considered to be a component of the scientific course of university study. No theology student was supposed to leave the university without having gained some prior practical experience in the fields of religious instruction and proclamation.

14 An example is the study by Rotraud Coriand, Karl Volkmar Stoy und die Idee der Pädagogischen Bildung, Erziehung, Schule, Gesellschaft 22 (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2000). 15 Cf. Jürgen Oelkers, Fritz Osterwalder and Heinz-Elmar Tenorth eds., Das verdrängte Erbe. Pädagogik im Kontext von Religion und Theologie, Beiträge zur Theorie und Geschichte der Erziehungswissenschaft 25 (Weinheim/Basel: Belz, 2003), 7–17. Cf. Peter Dietrich / Theresa Jahns / Elija Horn, Conferenz Report “Religion und Bildung”, Jahrestagung der Sektion Historische Bildungsforschung, 07.09. 2017–09.09. 2017 Braunschweig, in: H-Soz-Kult, 04.11. 2017, . 16 Cf. Wischmeyer, “Protestantische Katechetik”, 53–88. David Käbisch, Die Konstruktion religiöser Bildungsräume. Theologische Profile der Lehrerbildung in Jena, Leipzig und Halle, in Regionen in der deutschen Staatenwelt. Bildungsräume und Transferprozesse im 19. Jahrhundert, eds. Eckhardt Fuchs, Sylvia Kesper-Biermann and Christian Ritzi (Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt, 2011), 31–56.

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The third phase can be associated with the founding of pedagogical institutes within philosophy departments, in which religious educators also found training for their future work. Jena opened its institute in 1843 under the direction of the aforementioned theologian and pedagogue Karl Volkmar Stoy, Leipzig followed suit in 1861 and Halle in 1881. It is interesting to note that the pedagogical institutes of philosophy departments followed the model of institutionalization pursued by the catechetical institutes of departments of theology. Thus, the theology department in Jena emphatically supported the founding of a pedagogical institute. Stoy in particular viewed his institute as an integral part of theological study, whose aim was to improve religious education in schools.¹⁷ In the case of the University of Jena, the entangled history of theology and pedagogy can be tracked quite well. This paper describes the academic training of prospective pastors and religious educators at the University of Jena. The training of teachers for public elementary schools, which took place outside the universities at so-called teachers’ institutes, however, cannot be considered here. It should be mentioned, though, that the integration of training for teachers in the public elementary schools into the university context can be designated as the fourth phase in the history of the training of religious educators. The various territories went their own ways and the impact of that is still felt today. The training of teachers for the public elementary schools in Thuringia and Saxony, for example, was integrated into the Universities of Jena and Leipzig during the Weimar Republic, whereas Prussia took a different approach by founding pedagogical academies (Halle did so as well). These pedagogical academies eventually became the higher education institutions for teacher training after 1933, and continued after 1949 in the “old” Federal Republic and the GDR. The independent, non-university training of teachers at these pedagogical institutes was dissolved in the 1970s (with the exception of Baden-Wuerttemberg), as well as in GDR-states after the Peaceful Revolution of 1989. This short outline demonstrates that whoever wants to understand the multifaceted contemporary institutions for the training of teachers at all levels of primary and secondary education in the sixteen states of the Federal Republic of Germany must know something about its history.

17 Karl Volkmar Stoy, Ein Vorschlag zur pädagogischen Bildung der Theologen, Jena 1843. Cf. also Karl Volkmar Stoy, Lehrbuch für den gesammten Religionsunterricht nach Bibel, Katechismus und Gesangbuch, 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1844, und Karl Volkmar Stoy, “Über Religionsunterricht,” in: Neue Jenaische Allgemeine Literaturzeitung 5 (1846), Nr. 18: 68–71.

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4 The Tradition in Response to New Social, Cultural, Political, and Economic Changes With its establishment as an independent discipline in the canon of theological study during the Late Enlightenment, catechetics functioned in many regards as that subdiscipline of theology which was most capable of confronting the challenges of the present.¹⁸ One such challenge was the coupling of theory and practice in the course of study for pastors and teachers. The founding of catechetical institutes at German universities established a way to join both together. A further challenge was the competitive situation Jena found itself in vis-à-vis new universities founded in the spirit of the Enlightenment, such as those in Halle, Göttingen, and Erlangen. The pluralization of courses on offer and the implementation of the principle of a state university, according to which state citizens ought to study at the university resident in their own state, led to a decline of enrollment numbers at the University of Jena at the beginning of the 19th century. The founding of the Catechetical Institute must be interpreted in this context as a modernization initiative which pursued the goal of becoming capable of competing with the aforementioned universities. A social challenge was the high number of orphans who lived in the city limits of Jena, a result of the cholera epidemic which ensued in the wake of the war in 1813. It was against this backdrop that in 1819 the members of the as yet two-yearold Catechetical Institute took upon themselves the task of giving daily elementary instruction to the orphans, as well as supporting the Sunday school of the Jenaer Versorgungsinstitut (Care Institute). This Versorgungsinstitut resulted from an initiative taken by Johannes Daniel Falk (1768–1826). Falk had already founded the Gesellschaft der Freunde in Not (Society of Friends in Need) in the neighboring city of Weimar in order to provide for the number of orphans which had grown considerably following the Napoleonic Wars of Liberation.¹⁹ The consecration of the Catechetical Institute during the 1817-anniversary of the Reformation was not only a social-pedagogical and educational-political innovation, but also the place of theological and political self-reassurance. The annual conferral of a catechetical prize at the Reformation Day served this two-pronged goal: Luther had – as is said in an acceptance speech from 1829 – asserted the 18 Cf. Käbisch and Wischmeyer, Die Praxis akademischer Religionslehrerbildung, 220–222. 19 Heinrich August Schott, “Nachrichten über das Seminarium,” in Heinrich August Schott ed., Denkschrift des homiletischen und katechetischen Seminariums der Universität zu Jena vom Jahre 1819 unter Auktorität der theologischen Fakultät, Jena 1819, 36–46, here pg. 44 f. In the following, only the abbreviated title along with the publication year will be mentioned, e. g., Denkschrift 1819.

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“true purpose of the Christian cleric” in that he exposed the “hypocrisy and secretmongering of the ruling church in her pitiful nakedness and immorality.”²⁰ The explicit goal of the Catechetical Institute and the annual conferral of a reward was to serve this “true purpose” of the clerical occupation. In this connection we also note the Wartburg Festival of 1817 in the neighboring city of Eisenach. After the Wars of Liberation and the Vienna Congress of 1815, hopes for a renewal of imperial unity were defeated. Students in Jena thus decided to hold a “National Festival” at the Wartburg on the 300th anniversary of Martin Luther’s posting of the 95 Theses; the festival was also intended to commemorate the Battle of the Nations, fought in Leipzig on 18 October 1817. The appeal to the theological tradition of the Reformation in the founding of the Catechetical Institute in Jena must be seen in the context of such a theological and political spirit of optimism. The Department of Theology in Jena supported not only the founding of the Catechetical Institute, but also the creation of the Pedagogical Institute in a significant way. The Pedagogical Institute, attended at the beginning primarily by theology students, should be understood in this context as an intended differentiation of theology: Achievements in modernization were already yielded by the classical university-based field of catechetics. While such an accomplishment can be seen most of all in the process of institutionalization during the first half of the 19th century, it is to be seen in the second half of the century in the laying of a theoretical foundation for Jena’s catechetics, which evinced the constant effort to take account of scientific progress in theology as well as in the general intellectual challenges of the time.

5 Pluralization of Protestant Catechisms, Manuals, Textbooks, and Children’s Bibles The modernization of religious education shows itself as well in the differentiation and pluralization of religious educational media which were mentioned, discussed, or recommended in the Jena Catechetical Institute. Educational media reflect here not only the theological and pedagogical infighting of the 19th century,²¹ but also the territorial differentiation of the German Empire. In the area of current-day Thuringia alone there were seven different territorial churches, all of which gave their pastors and teachers different catechisms, textbooks, and children’s bi-

20 Andreas Gottlieb Hoffmann, “Rede bei der Preisvertheilung für das homiletische und katechetische Seminarium am Reformations-Feste (25. Okt.) 1829,” in Denkschrift 1831, 60–68, here pg. 63. 21 Cf. Schweitzer-Martin, Conference report.

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bles for instruction for families, schools, and congregations. The seven territorial churches were: ‒ the Protestant-Lutheran Church of the Grand Duchy of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach ‒ the Protestant-Lutheran Church of the Duchy of Saxony-Gotha ‒ the Protestant-Lutheran Church of the Duchy of Saxony-Altenburg ‒ the Protestant-Lutheran Church of the Duchy of Saxony-Meiningen ‒ the Protestant-Lutheran Church of the Principality of the Reuss Younger Line ‒ the Protestant-Lutheran Church of the Principality of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt ‒ the Protestant-Lutheran Church of the Principality of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen. Innumerable catechisms were published for these and other territorial churches in Germany in the 19th century.²² Most of the time, these dealt with updates of Luther’s Small Catechism or of the Heidelberg Catechism, updates which of course could look quite different from one another depending on theological and pedagogical points of view.²³ Nevertheless, all catechisms in the 19th century were common in regard to the mindset of their authors: They credited the theological tradition with the potential to provide orientation in the present for the educational tasks with which a teacher was confronted in families, schools, and congregations.

22 Cf. also the lucid overview of the particular territories in Ferdinand Cohrs, Art. “Katechismen und Katechismusunterricht im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit,” in Real-Encyckopädie 10 (1901), 3rd edition: 135–164. Further, Ferdinand Cohrs, Art. “Unterrichts- und Bildungswesen, theologisches,” in Real-Encyckopädie³ 20 (1908), 3rd edition: 301–318. 23 Cf. Käbisch and Wischmeyer, Die Praxis akademischer Religionslehrerbildung, 68. According to Cohrs, the following works were prescribed for the four Saxon-Ernestine states which were patrons of the University of Jena in the 19th century: In Altenburg: the Kleine Katechismus Luthers in der Bearbeitung von Martin Caselius (first edition Altenburg 1646; later supplemented with an extensive collection of sayings and ‚little questions for holy feasts’); after 1853: Dr. M. Luthers Kleiner Katechismus nebst einer Spruchsammlung, Altenburg 1853. In Meiningen: Constantin Ackermann, Luthers Katechismus mit Bibelsprüchen für den Religionsunterricht in Stadt- und Landschulen, Salzungen 1855 (as of 1855). In Weimar: Johann Gottfried Herder, Luthers Catechismus mit einer katechetischen Erklärung zum Gebrauch der Schulen, Weimar 1800; after that Herder’s catechism began to be used less and less, only Luthers Kleiner Katechism remained in use; after 1850 there followed O. Fr. O. Nicolai, Der kleine Katechismus Dr. Martin Luthers. Mit kurzen Erläuterungen und einer Auswahl von Bibelsprüchen, Weimar, 13th ed., 1907. In Gotha: at first only Luthers kleiner Katechismus, but as of 1866: Carl Schwarz, Grundriß der christlichen Lehre. Ein Leitfaden für den Religions-Unterricht in Schule und Kirche, Gotha, 1866 (third revised edition, 1870). In contrast to the other patron states, a religious textbook which was completely independent in terms of content was in official use in Gotha.

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Each of the multiple territorial churches in Thuringia was equipped with their own stock of officially recognized and prescribed catechetical literature. The academic discipline of catechetics of the University of Jena, however, did not take this into consideration. Instead, the students were supposed to learn how to get their own bearings in the multifaceted landscape of the religious-political orientations of the Thuringian states, and then to arrive at their own educated opinion. Following the summer semester of 1860, when the institute director Schwarz suggested that students use the newly published “Brunswick Catechism of Ernestus as an exemplary resource,” he did not do so on the basis of political considerations pertaining to church and education. The reason was both theological and pedagogical: Schwarz considered this catechism to be the best. The differentiation of religious educational media in Jena is also exhibited in the area of the miscellaneous manuals and textbooks for the study of practical theology and catechetics which were discussed in lectures, among them the Vollständige Lehrbuch der allgemeinen Katechetik nach Kantischen Grundsätzen (1795–1799) by Johann Friedrich Christoph Gräffe,²⁴ Die vorzüglichsten Regeln der Katechetik (1800) by Gustav Friedrich Dinter,²⁵ the Anleitung zu dem Unterricht der Jugend im Christentum (1818) by Friedrich Heinrich Christian Schwarz,²⁶ and the corresponding chapters in the textbook Die Wissenschaften des geistlichen Berufs im Grundriß (1824) by the institute director Johann Traugott Leberecht Danz.²⁷ Yet how were educational media employed in the Catechetical Institute? On the basis of the preserved protocols, the work is portrayed as follows: For the preparation of their catechesis, the institute members used the aforementioned textbooks, their own textbooks from their years in secondary school, and children’s bibles. The use of these books usually dealt with finding a fitting bible-verse for a particular dogmatic or ethical topic which was to be covered in religious education in the schools. The institute director Schwarz wrestled for a long time with the issue of selecting a mandatory textbook. It was first in the winter semester of 1846–1847 that he prescribed the widespread collection of biblical stories which Johannes Hübner (1688–1731) had published in 1714. It underwent a revision at the hands of the theologian August Christian Ernst Rauschenbusch (1777–1840) and ap-

24 Johann Friedrich Christoph Gräffe, Vollständiges Lehrbuch der allgemeinen Katechetik nach Kantischen Grundsätzen, three volumes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Rupprecht, 1795–1799). 25 Gustav Friedrich Dinter, Die vorzüglichsten Regeln der Katechetik. Als Leitfaden beym Unterrichte künftiger Lehrer in Bürger- und Landschulen (Neustadt an der Orla: Wagner, 1800). 26 Friedrich Heinrich Christian Schwarz, Katechetik oder Anleitung zu dem Unterricht der Jugend im Christentum (Giessen: Georg Friedrich Heyer, 1818). 27 Johann Traugott Leberecht Danz, Die Wissenschaften des geistlichen Berufs im Grundriß. Zum Gebrauch akademischer Vorlesungen (Jena: Verlag Schmied, 1824).

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peared in 1806.²⁸ This book recommendation by Schwarz as well was not based on ecclesial or educational political considerations, but was rather personal: Schwarz simply held this children’s bible in the highest regard.

6 Conclusion With regard to Andreas Brämer’s contribution in the present volume, there are a number of similarities between the modernization of Jewish teacher training in the course of emancipation and the professionalization of protestant clergy as teachers of religion. First, the professional and social environment of Jewish and Protestant teacher training remained relatively stable in the 19th century.²⁹ Secondly, new state examination and admission systems affected the denominational teacher-training seminars as well as the professionalization of protestant clergy at universities. And finally, dichotomous juxtapositions between “innovation” and “tradition” or “old” and “new” orders of knowledge are not suitable to describe in a differentiated manner the relation of tradition and modernity in the history of Jewish as well as Protestant teacher training. These results are similar to those reported by Kerstin von der Krone and Simone Lässig.³⁰ Nevertheless, the Jena case differs from the study on Jewish teacher training by analyzing catechetics as an independent discipline in the canon of theological study at universities. Consequently, there are a number of important differences between both examples. Whereas Brämer focuses on denominational teachertraining seminars for public elementary schools (“Volksschule”), the present

28 Cf. Käbisch and Wischmeyer, Die Praxis akademischer Religionslehrerbildung, 66. August Ernst Rauschenbusch, Auserlesene biblische Historien aus dem alten und neuen Testamente, nach Hübner, 54th ed. (Schwelm 1853). The ‘Hübner‘ was revised often and translated into a total of 17 European languages. The 64th (and last) edition appeared in 1902. The work contains 52 stories each from the Old Testament and New Testament and despite harmonizations, was linguistically close to the Luther Translation. The roughly 5–7 questions which followed each periscope were primarily ethical in nature and did not presuppose knowledge of any catechism. On the topic, see Christine Reents, Die Bibel als Schul- und Hausbuch für Kinder. Werkanalyse und Wirkungsgeschichte einer frühen Schul- und Kinderbibel im evangelischen Raum: Johann Hübner, Zweymal zwey und funffzig Auserlesene Biblische Historien, der Jugend zum Besten abgefaßt, Arbeiten zur Religionspädagogik 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Rupprecht, 1984). 29 Cf. Brämer, “The Modernisation of Jewish Teacher Training”, in the present volume. 30 Cf. Simone Lässig, “The History of Knowledge and the Expansion of the Historical Research Agenda,” in Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 59 (Fall, 2016), 29–58. Kerstin von der Krone, “Old and New Orders of Knowledge in Modern Jewish History,” in Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 59 (Fall, 2016), 59–82.

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paper describes the academic training of prospective pastors and religious educators for higher education (“Gymnasium”). And while Brämer describes the example of Prussia, the Jena case refers to its university as well as to multiple territorial churches in Thuringia and its officially recognized and prescribed educational media. These results as well as the aforementioned similarities between the modernization of Jewish and Christian teacher training therefore need to be interpreted with caution.

Part C: Catechisms

Kerstin von der Krone

Nineteenth-Century Jewish Catechisms and Manuals: Or What One Should Know about Judaism In 1878 Moritz Daniel Oppenheim (1800–1882), probably the most famous nineteenth-century German-Jewish painter, created a work entitled The Heder, or “Jewish Elementary School”, which reimagined his first school in Hanau near Frankfurt am Main in the early 1800s.¹ In his memoirs, written only a few years later, he described this school as a longish chamber with a low ceiling next to a small courtyard . . . Alongside the wall was a small bench not much higher than a pair of shoes; boys and girls, the children of the Jewish quarter, sitting there until called upon, one by one, to the teacher sitting in an old chair. On the desk in front of the teacher was a table with the Hebrew alphabet, which the children could only see if they climbed on a brick.²

This rather informal school setting of one-room schools was not unusual for early modern education. Similar schools for younger children were as well common in the Christian society, especially for the children of the poor or in rural areas.³ What makes Oppenheim’s painting so fascinating is that by the time he had recreated his childhood memory, the organizational framework of Jewish education in Germany had changed entirely. The heder (literally “chamber”), a private institution run by the teacher usually in his own home and employed by the children’s parents, had been replaced

Note: Parts of this chapter were previously published as a blog post, see Kerstin von der Krone, The Duty to Know: Nineteenth-Century Jewish Catechisms and Manuals and the Making of Jewish Religious Knowledge, History of Knowledge, June 3, 2018, https://historyofknowledge.net/2018/06/03/the-duty-toknow/. 1 The Heder (1878) by Moritz Daniel Oppenheim. Oil on composition board (21.8 × 28.8 cm). Jewish Museum, New York. https://thejewishmuseum.org/collection/27123-the-heder-the-jewish-elemen tary-school-der-cheder-die-judische-elementarschule. See Fig. 1. 2 Published decades later by his grandson, Alfred Oppenheim, as Moritz Oppenheim, Erinnerungen (Frankfurt am Main, 1924). 3 Often called Winkelschulen (corner schools), these private elementary schools became common in the late middle ages. Teachers often lacked a proper training. See on Winkelschulen in eighteenth-century Prussia Wolfgang Neugebauer, Absolutistischer Staat und Schulwirklichkeit in Brandenburg-Preußen (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 1985), 581–601. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110795905-007

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Fig. 1: The Heder (1878) by Moritz Daniel Oppenheim. Oil on composition board (21.8 × 28.8 cm). Courtesy of the Jewish Museum, New York.

by Jewish elementary schools or supplementary religious schools mostly run by the community. From the 1830s onwards a growing number of Jewish children attended local public schools, which in the German lands remained Christian in character and included – down to this day – Christian religious instruction. Jewish children were exempted from these classes and either gained knowledge on Judaism at home or attended community-run supplementary schools that provided moral and religious instruction, usually on Wednesday afternoons and Sundays. Although some public schools opened their doors to local Jewish teachers or rabbis, Jewish religious instruction remained mainly outside the public school system. By mid-nineteenth century this kind of setting for formal Jewish education could be found in Central and Western European states as well as in the Unites States. In the German-Jewish case, the focus of my chapter, three forces shaped this new educational setting: 1) the Haskalah or Jewish enlightenment and its educational program, 2) the process of emancipation and the significance that education and schooling assumed within it, and 3) changing societal attitudes towards education in general and what children and young adults should learn and know.

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The transformation of Jewish education and its gradual restriction to religious instruction required new methods and teaching aids and gave rise to a new kind of educational literature including catechisms or manuals for religious instruction. Almost always these texts addressed both the school as a formal setting of education and the family, thus taking into account informal practices of parental instruction as well as modes of self-study.⁴ In this chapter, I will offer a closer reading of these texts and their claim to present an authoritative account on the foundations and principles of Judaism. I will examine Jewish catechisms and manuals for religious instruction as new means to produce and disseminate Jewish knowledge as well as tools for authors and readers, teachers and students to position themselves in a new social reality in the wake of Enlightenment, Emancipation and Acculturation.

1 Jewish Education in Transition The Haskalah challenged traditional notions of Jewish learning and teaching, redefining the very idea of Jewish schooling. Maskilim, Jewish enlighteners, broadened curricula by integrating non-Jewish knowledge and promoted the education of girls and women. Moreover, they established a new literary canon in Hebrew and German, a library of the Haskalah, and thus laid the foundation for a new kind of educational and instructional literature that would continue to flourish in the nineteenth century, mostly published in German.⁵ Until emancipation, all matters of Jewish education had been governed by the family and the community. As a part of communal autonomy, Jewish education was outside the state’s reach. Emancipation legislation thus altered the official status of and legal framework for Jewish education. State supervision was imposed to ensure compulsory education; the establishment of community schools that served all school-age children was mandated; and formal religious and moral instruction 4 For the history of Early Modern Jewish Education Robert Chazan has emphasized the need to look beyond schooling, Robert Chazan, “The Historiography of Premodern Jewish Education,” Journal of Jewish Education 71 (2005), 23–32. With respect to antique Jewish history Judith Hauptmann has argued that the focus on formal education and the formal institutions of Torah study, prevents us from fully understanding the scope and depth of Torah knowledge among girls and women. Judith Hauptman, “A new View of Women and Torah Study in the Talmudic Period,” JSIJ – Jewish Studies, an Internet Journal 9 (2010), 249–92. 5 Shmuel Feiner, Zohar Shavit, Nathalie Naimark-Goldberg and Tal Kogman, eds., The Library of the Haskalah. The Creation of a Modern Republic of Letters in Jewish Society in the German-Speaking Sphere (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2014) [Hebrew]. See also the online database Library of the Haskalah www.haskala-library.net.

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was introduced.⁶ The interest of the state in the education of its subjects was part of a broader matrix of state reforms that extended the reach of the state in the field of education, leading to the establishment of public education, from elementary school to the modern university.⁷ In the Jewish case, the state’s interest also drew on the prejudice that Judaism was ’morally inferior’ and ’unproductive’, that Jews had to be elevated through education. Emerging in this context, modern Jewish religious instruction began to focus on Bible studies and Hebrew instruction, and usually included a systematic introduction to morals and religion. Jewish catechisms and manuals served this new kind of instruction and became quite common in German-speaking Europe, with more than 100 such books appearing in the nineteenth century. These books not only taught what a Jew ought to know but embraced the duty to know, based on the presumption that knowing was a precondition of Jewish faith and practice. They appeared alongside a wide range of texts that served educational and instructional purposes, such as textbooks for Jewish history or Hebrew instruction, grammar books, readers and anthologies, bible editions and devotional literature that addressed school and home alike. Some of these books, for example devotional and ethical writings, were modifications of well-established textual formats, others like textbooks for religious instruction and in particular catechisms employed textual modes that were new to Jewish book culture. The catechism as the quintessential text of Christian religious instruction presenting the Christian creed and core prayers had no equivalent in pre-emancipatory Jewish literature, at least none that was widely used. According to David Ruderman Abrahm Yagel’s (1553–1623) Lekach Tov (Sound learning, Proverbs 4:2), the very first Jewish catechism, published in the late sixteenth century in Venice, was written as a pedagogical experiment,⁸ but had no significant impact on early-mod-

6 Mordechai Eliav, Ha-Hinukh ha-yehudi be-Germania be-yemei ha-Haskalah we ha Emanzipatzia [Jewish Education in Germany in the times Enlightenment and Emancipation] (Jerusalem, 1960). German translation: Mordechai Eliav, Jüdische Erziehung in Deutschland im Zeitalter der Aufklärung und Emanzipation, vol. 2, Jüdische Bildungsgeschichte in Deutschland, trans. Maike Strobel (Münster: Waxmann, 2001). 7 James van Horn Melton, Absolutism and the Eighteenth-Century Origins of Compulsory Schooling in Prussia and Austria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Daniel Tröhler, Thomas S. Popkewitz and David F. Labaree, eds., Schooling and the making of citizens in the long nineteenth century: comparative visions (New York: Routledge, 2011). On religious education see Ernst C. Helmreich, Religious Education in German Schools An Historical Approach (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959). On education and literature: Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Building a National Literature The Case of Germany, 1830–1870 (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1989). 8 David B. Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic, and Science: The Cultural Universe of a Sixteenth-Century Jewish Physician (Cambridge: Havard University Press 1988), 18.

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ern Jewish educational practices and writings.⁹ Rather it attracted Christian readers and widely circulated in Latin, and later in English and German translations.¹⁰ The astonishing popularity of catechisms in the first half of the nineteenth century is closely linked to moral and religious instruction becoming a core subject of Jewish education in the wake of emancipation, fundamentally changing how Jewish children encountered Jewish knowledge. The heder as the main framework of traditional Jewish elementary education was tasked to provide a path to Torah knowledge and Torah study and thus embraced two cycles of Jewish life, the weekly Torah portion (Parashat ha-Shavua) and the Jewish calendar. The calendar introduced children to the holidays and religious practices, sometimes based on the siddur, the Jewish prayerbook. Melamdim, Jewish elementary teachers, however, mostly relied on oral practices, on recitation and repetition,¹¹ quoting the respective weekly portion together with the rabbinical interpretation. The Torah was studied through the lens of rabbinical thought, mostly in Yiddish, rather than directly. The major purpose of such efforts was to prepare the Jewish child, or rather the Jewish boy, to fulfil his obligation to study Torah,¹² and perhaps to enable him to eventually become a Torah scholar. However, as Oppenheim’s painting shows, girls occasionally attended hadarim in the early modern period,¹³ indicating a less restrictive interpretation of the traditional boundaries that had long shaped Jewish learning and teaching. For centuries Jewish girls and women had access to Torah knowledge mostly through informal practices, often in the intimate context of the family, based on parental guidance and instruction that often came in form of oral modes of knowledge transmission such as semi-public readings and recitations. A variety of texts could feature in these practices, prayer books as already mentioned, ethical writings (musar literature) and humashim, printed editions of the Torah with commentary. Hamisha Humshe Torah, ʻim kol ha-haft ̣arot bi-leshon Ashkenaz, better known as Ze’enah u-Re’enah, ¹⁴ was the most popular Yiddish

9 Morris M. Faierstein, “Abraham Jagel’s ‚Leqaḥ Ṭov‘ and Its History,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 89 (1999), 319–350. 10 See for a list of all editions Faierstein, Abraham Jagel’s ‚Leqaḥ Ṭov‘, 337–350. 11 Robert Liberles “Childhood and Education,” in Jewish daily life in Germany, 1618–1945, ed. Marion A. Kaplan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 41–53. 12 “Let not this book of the Teaching cease from your lips, but recite it day and night, so that you may observe faithfully all that is written in it.” Josua 1:8. 13 Or Talmud-Torah schools that served the children of the poor and began to spread during the eighteenth century. 14 Based on the subtitle that cites verse 3:11 in the Song of Songs “ze’enah u-re’enah benot ziyon” (“O maidens of Zion go forth and gaze”). The earliest known print dates from 1622. Presumably written around the turn of the sixteenth century by Yaakov ben Yitzchak Ashkenazi from

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book in Early Modern Europe, providing guidance and knowledge to Jewish men and women alike.¹⁵ Oppenheim’s painting displays a few books as well as an aleph beth table for Hebrew instruction. Most students in the painting study books individually, although as it seems rather unenthusiastically. Among those books might be a siddur or a humash or one of the new maskilic educational writings like biblical anthologies or devotional texts that embraced Hebrew and replaced Yiddish with German. Oppenheim’s own school time in the early 1800s eventually belonged to a period of transition, were old and new modes of teaching and learning existed alongside each other.

2 Jewish Knowledge, Religious Instruction, and the Need for Books The call for new books to be used in Jewish education was already voiced by Naftali Herz Wessely in his treaty Divrei Shalom ve-Emet (Words of Pease and Truth, 1782–1785) and inspired not only maskilic writers but also subsequent generations of German-Jewish pedagogues. Maskilic thought and literature focused significantly on questions of education, was engaged with the dissemination of knowledge about Judaism and the world and aimed to shape the mentalities of Jewish children and young adults more broadly. Maskilim embraced the Hebrew bible, produced Bible editions, commentaries, and anthologies that were meant to serve the family, the community, and the school as equally important settings of Jewish life and Jewish education. David Friedländer’s Lesebuch für Jüdische Kinder ¹⁶ or

Janów, Poland (1550–1620), Tsene-rene contains the five books of Moses in accordance with the weekly Torah portions, the Haftarot and Megillot printed both in the Hebrew original and in Yiddish translation with annotations. Chava Turniansky, “Ẓe’enah U-Re’enah,”, vol. 2, Encyclopaedia Judaica 21, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. (Detroit, 2007), 491–492. 15 Morris Faierstein, “A Guide to the Ze’enah U-Re’enah: Correcting Some Misconceptions,” In geveb (February 2019), Accessed Mar 14, 2019. Ze’enah U-Re’enah remained a widely read text in Eastern Europe after 1800, see Iris Parush, Reading Jewish Women: Marginality and Modernization in Nineteenth-Century Eastern European Jewish Society (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, Hanover: University Press of New England, 2004). On a gender specific knowledge among Jewish women in eastern Europe, see Shaul Stampfer, Families, Rabbis and Education: Traditional Jewish Society in Nineteenth-Century Eastern Europe (Oxford: Littmann Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010), 167–189. 16 See Zohar Shavit, “From Friedländer’s Lesebuch to the Jewish Campe: The Beginning of Hebrew Children’s Literature in Germany,” The Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 33 (1988), 385–415; Michael Nagel, “The Beginnings of Jewish Children’s Literature in High German: Three Schoolbooks from Berlin (1779), Prague (1781) and Dessau (1782),” The Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 44 (1999), 39–

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elementary works like Moses Hirsch Bock’s Israelitischer Kinderfreund ¹⁷ were early examples in which authors would adapt new textual modes characteristic for contemporary pedagogics that were equally innovative within the Christian society.¹⁸ Friedländer’s and Bock’s books differed significantly in scope and length, but both included passages on Judaism and its foundations, which foreshadowed core elements of Jewish catechisms and manuals. Most significantly both books already highlighted systematic elements of Jewish tradition, such as the Ten Commandments and articles of faith like Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles.¹⁹ By 1800, Jewish teachers did not use any text comparable to the Christian catechism. But more importantly, the objectives of traditional Jewish education and Jewish thought did not require such a text. The commandment to teach and learn Torah did not end with a set of principles and prayers but required one to command rabbinical and biblical literature. Traditional Jewish education and scholarship was governed by its own knowledge orders, that of the Jewish calendar and the weekly portions, as mentioned before, and that of Talmud and Halachah. Maskilic thinkers and pedagogues were rather critical of rabbinical thought and its dominant role in Jewish education. They embraced Torah and Bible at the expenses of rabbinical literature, especially the Talmud. However, this did not mean that rabbinical texts disappeared from Jewish education.²⁰ While mascilic pegagogues and their nineteenth-century successors put the Bible at the center of Jewish education, they did as well draw on the Talmud, Halachic codices and rabbinical thought, most significantly by embracing philosophical and ethical works. Rabbinical texts remained part of the training of advanced (male) students, 54. A digital version of a 1927 reprint of Friedländer’s textbook can be accessed here: http://nbnresolving.de/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30-180015108001. 17 Full title: Israelitischer Kinderfreund, oder, Handbuch der gemeinnützigsten wissenschaftlichen Kenntnisse: Ein Elementarwerk in hebräischer, deutscher und französischer Sprache für den Schul- und Privat-Unterricht der israelitischen Jugend (Berlin, 1811). 18 Holger Böning, Hanno Schmitt and Reinhart Siegert, eds., Volksaufklärung: eine praktische Reformbewegung des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts (Bremen: Edition lumiere, 2007); Hanno Schmitt, Vernunft und Menschlichkeit: Studien zur Philanthropischen Erziehungsbewegung (Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhard, 2007); Rebekka Horlacher, “Schooling as a means of popular education: Pestalozzi’s method as a popular education experiment,” in A history of popular education: educating the people of the world, ed. Sjaak Braster, Frank Simon and Ian Grosvenor (London: Taylor and Francis Ltd., 2013), 65–75. 19 Friedländer’s Lesebuch included both. David Friedländer, Lesebuch für jüdische Kinder. Zum Besten der jüdischen Freyschule (Berlin: Voß, 1779). The Thirteen Principles were translated by Moses Mendelssohn. 20 Frequently-referenced rabbinical texts include Sefer Chinuch, Sefer Megila Gadol, and Shulhan Aruch. Authors as well reference philosophical and ethical writings, especially Maimonides or widely read texts such as Sefer Chovot haLevovot.

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of teachers and rabbinical candidates and became a core subject of nineteenthcentury Jewish scholarship.²¹ During the first decades of the nineteenth century, however, the objectives of Jewish education began to shift. While “worldly” knowledge gained relevance, the understanding of what is Jewish knowledge and how it should be taught changed. Maskilim and reform-oriented pedagogues promoted some of these changes, but also responded to a social and political reality that demanded Jewish communities to establish elementary schools and often focused on moral and religious instruction for Jewish boys and girls. Jewish catechisms and manuals emerged in this context and claimed to present Jewish knowledge systematically, embracing new modes to classify and structure this knowledge. Authors often claimed Wissenschaftlichkeit for their books, drawing on contemporary notions of science and scholarship. Nineteenth-century Jewish textbooks for religious instruction employed many formats and ranged from 30 to 300 pages, with about a third using the catechetic structure most common in the first half of the century. As these books served school and home alike, they were mostly meant to be used by teachers, parents and advanced students. Some shorter publications addressed younger children directly, often to prepare them for new ceremonies such as public examinations at the end of the school year and confirmation ceremonies. Some educators and religious leaders introduced the later to replace the bar mitzva, while others promoted confirmation as its modern re-invention, which now included girls as well.²² Depending on the emancipation legislation, regulations on schooling, and censorships in the respective German states, schoolbooks could be subject to some sort of official approval. However, only the Habsburg Monarchy mandated the use of a specific textbook, that of Herz Homberg’s Bne Zion (Vienna, 1812), which was written in close collaboration with state officials and had a significant impact on subsequent books – as a positive as well as negative role model.²³

21 Rabbinical Literature became central to modern Jewish scholarship, i. e. Wissenschaft des Judentums. See Jay M. Harris, How Do We Know This? Midrash and the Fragmentation of Modern Judaism (New York: State University of New York Press, 1995); Chanan Gafni, Conceptions of the Oral Law in modern Jewish scholarship (Jerusalem, 2019) [Hebrew]; Chanan Gafni, ‘The Mishnah’s Plain Sense’: A Study of Modern Talmudic Scholarship (Tel Aviv, 2011) [Hebrew]. 22 Benjamin Maria Baader, Gender, Judaism, and Bourgeois Culture in Germany, 1800–1870 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), 146–51. 23 Rachel Manekin, “The moral education of the Jewish youth: the case of Bne Zion,” in The Enlightenment in Bohemia: Religion, Morality and Multiculturalism, ed. Ivo Cerman, Rita Krueger, and Susan Reynolds (Oxford, 2011), 273–93.

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3 Catechism or Manual? – Two Examples Two examples shall offer insights into the key features and characteristics of nineteenth-century Jewish manuals and catechisms as means of the formation of Jewish knowledge and modes of religious positioning. The first example, Salomon Herxheimer’s (1801–1884) Yesode HaTorah. Israelitische Glaubens- und Pflichtenlehre für Schule und Haus (The Foundations of Torah: Jewish Doctrines of Faith and Duty for School and Home) was probably the most often used nineteenth-century Jewish textbook for religious instruction, with 36 editions published between 1831 and 1916 [see Fig. 2]. In contrast, the second example, Salomon Plessner’s (1797–1883) Dat Moshe ve-Yehudit oder Jüdisch-Mosaischer Religionsunterricht für die Israelitische Jugend (The Law of Moses and Jewish Customs or Jewish-Mosaic Religious Instruction for the Israelite Youth), saw only two editions, in 1838 and 1864 [see Fig. 3] While only a few textbooks saw more than five editions, re-editions, including revisions were common. Some books, including Herxheimer’s Yesode HaTorah were translated into other western languages and adapted for other educational settings.²⁴ Educational texts were closely tied to the educational practice in two ways: obviously as means of teaching and learning, but more importantly they were shaped by the proximity of educational practices and texts. Most authors of nineteenthcentury Jewish educational texts were educators themselves who wrote (and rewrote) their books against the background of their own teaching experience. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Jewish teachers had only a few texts and textbooks that could serve Jewish religious instruction. Many of them considered the books available insufficient, not compatible with their own position on Jewish education and Jewish thought. Herxheimer and Plessner belonged to the same generation as Moritz Daniel Oppenheim and thus received both a traditional education and made use of the new opportunities. Herxheimer entered a Yeshiva in Mainz at the age of 13, had Christian tutors and studied at the Universities of Magdeburg and Göttingen. Plessner, on the other hand, was raised in a traditional setting in Breslau. Compared to Herxheimer, he received a less formal training. After the death of his father, he became a merchant and was mostly engaged in self-study which included non-Jewish subjects as well. Plessner was a student of Akiba Eger (1761–1837) but equally in-

24 Herxheimer’s book saw two English translations: Yesodei HaTorah, Catechism of the Faith and Moral Obligations, of an Israelite for the Use of Schools & Private Institutions, trans. Felsenheld and David Barnard, (New York: Henry Frank 5610, 1850) and Doctrines of faith and morals for Jewish schools and families, trans. L. Kleeberg (Louisville, Ky: Bradley & Gilbert, Printers, 1871).

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Fig. 2: Title page of the first edition of Herxheimer’s Yesode HaTorah Courtesy of the Klau Library, Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati.

spired by Naftali Herz Wessely’s (1725–1805) writings and aimed at harmonizing Jewish tradition with maskilic thought and contemporary pedagogical principles. Herxheimer became a well-known reform-leaning rabbi, who first served as a teacher in Eschwege, where he wrote the first edition of Yesode HaTorah. In

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Fig. 3: Title page of the first edition of Plessner’s Dat Moshe ve-Yehudit. Courtesy of the Hebraicaand Judaica Collection University Library Frankfurt am Main.

1831 he became chief rabbi of Bernburg in, a position he held until 1879.²⁵ Plessner, however, was a teacher and public orator close to the emerging German-Jewish Or-

25 Rolf Faber, Salomon Herxheimer 1801–1884: ein Rabbiner zwischen Tradition und Emanzipation. Leben und Wirken eines fast vergessenen Dotzheimers (Wiesbaden: Heimat- und Verschönerungsverein Dotzheim, 2001).

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thodoxy, who gained prominence in the 1830s through his public speeches and religious publications. By the time he published Dat Moshe ve-Yehudit, he served as a teacher at the religious school in Berlin. In 1840 he moved to Posen.²⁶ Herxheimer’s and Plessner’s association with the emerging fractions of German Judaism shaped their vision of modern Judaism as well as Jewish education. Regardless of the growing influence of the state and local administrations, education remained a field of Jewish self-governance and was equally central to internal Jewish debate about religious reform, Jewish identity and belonging. Both Plessner and Herxheimer positioned themselves as pedagogues and religious leaders through their textbooks. Each author explored the core aims of their respective book in a preface, which as well included a reflection upon the textual modes they had chosen. Plessner had opted for the most common text mode for Jewish religious textbooks at the time, the catechism. Jewish catechisms were a phenomenon of the first half of the nineteenth century. While they remained in use after 1850, the majority of new textbooks used the format of a manual, structuring their content in a sequence of paragraphs. This text mode was not new, Herz Homberg’s Bne Zion (1810) as well as Herxheimer’s textbook were manuals. The initial popularity of the catechism among Jewish pedagogues can be explained by pragmatism. The catechism offered a didactical method commonly used, not only in religious instruction, but in civic education, vocational training, and the sciences.²⁷ And, authors of Jewish textbooks could assume that state officials, tasked with approving textbooks and teaching aids used in Jewish and public schools, were familiar with this format.²⁸ 26 Hartwig Hirschfeld, Biographie von Salomon Plessner. Verfasst von seinem Enkel, Hartwig Hirschfeld, herausgegeben zu seinem hundertsten Geburtstage von Elias Plessner (Breslau: T. Schatzky, 1897). 27 The French Revolution gave birth to the genre of civic catechisms, see for example Adrian Velicu, Civic Catechisms and Reason in the French Revolution, (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010). The catechetical method was as well used in vocational training, e. g.: Georg W. Stein, Katechismus zum Gebrauche der Hebammen in den Hochfürstlichen Hessischen Landen. Nebst Hebammen-Ordnung und Anlagen (Marburg, 1801) or Julius Petzholdt, Katechismus der Bibliotheken lehre. Anleitung zur Einrichtung und Verwaltung von Bibliotheken (Leipzig: Weber, 1877); and in science education: Samuel Parkes, The chemical catechism, with notes, illustrations, and experiments (London: Lackington, Allen, and Co., 1812); Heinrich F. Gretschel, Katechismus der Physik (Leipzig: Weber, 1865); Heinrich F. Gretschel, Katechismus der Meteorologie (Leipzig: Weber, 1867). 28 While only a few German states mandated the usage of specific textbooks, most introduced an approval process for school books. Prussia introduced regulations for public schools in 1817 that mandated such an approval process. These regulations were adopted for Jewish schools in 1824 through a Zirkular-Reskript by the Department of Cultural Affairs and Education dated May 15, 1824. See for the text of the rescript: Jahrbuch für das Volksschulwesen 3 (1827), 12–17. On the broader context of these legislations see Mordechai Eliav, Jüdische Erziehung in Deutschland, 240–243;

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Although the catechism remained popular during the nineteenth century, it was also subject to critique, mostly by enlightened thinkers and pedagogues. The mere sequence of question and answer was perceived as mechanical, soulless and thus pedagogically useless.²⁹ Herxheimer shared this critique which led him to choose the manual-structure for Yesode HaTorah. These discussions impacted Christian religious instruction as well, visible in a growing corpus of educational writings which, beyond catechisms, began to include handbooks and manuals that followed new pedagogical principles and made use of new technical developments in print and distribution.³⁰ Despite the initial popularity of the catechism among nineteenth-century Jewish educators, it came with a caveat. While Christian catechisms are intrinsically linked to the instruction to basic principles of faith foundational to Christian devotion,³¹ traditional Jewish education did not embrace anything similar to a creed but aimed at teaching the Torah in its entirety. Adopting the catechism as a textual mode and a didactical practice thus posed a theological question: Can one define the core foundations and principles of Judaism? What would they be? Which sources one should rely on? And, most significantly, how would they relate to the biblical command to study Torah, meaning the Written Torah – the five books of Moses and the Oral Torah – the rabbinical tradition. Jewish thinkers – most important among them Maimonides – offered compilations of principles of faith (ikkarim), but none of them gained the status of a creed but rather remained contested.³² They did, however, often serve a didactical purpose and where means

Andreas Brämer, Leistung und Gegenleistung. Zur Geschichte jüdischer Religions- und Elementarlehrer in Preußen 1823/24 bis 1872 (Göttingen: V&R, 2006), 90–110. 29 Rousseau’s critique of the catechism as an inadequate teaching method is a dominant subject in his Emile, Or on Education, Book II. 30 Cf. Johannes Wischmeyer, “Protestantische Katechetik – Institutionelle Kontexte und wissenschaftliche Profile im langen 19. Jahrhundert,” in Institutionalisierung und Profil von ‚Religionspädagogik‘ als wissenschaftlicher Disziplin – Historisch-systematische Perspektiven, ed. Bernd Schröder (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 53–88. 31 Karen E. Carter, Creating Catholics: Catechism and Primary Education in Early Modern France (Notre Dame, In: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011); Ian M. Green, The Christian’s ABC: catechisms and catechizing in England c.1530–1740 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Hans-Jürgen Fraas, Katechismustradition: Luthers kleiner Katechismus in Kirche und Schule (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971). 32 Marc Shapiro, “‘Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles: The Last Word in Jewish Theology?,” Torah-uMaddah 4 (1993), 187–242; Marc Shapiro, The limits of Orthodox theology: Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles reappraised (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2005); Menachem M. Kellner, Dogma in medieval Jewish thought: from Maimonides to Abravanel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

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to guide one’s Torah study.³³ For nineteenth-century Jewish education and the authors of Jewish catechisms and manuals, sets of principles such as Maimonides’ Thirtheen Principles of Faith or Joseph Albos’ Three Principles together with the Ten Commandments became useful tools in describing the foundation of Judaism. As mentioned, Herxheimer was critical of the catechetic method and argued that it only encouraged the teacher to ask “dull and empty question”, and made the child “feel rather like a machine” that soullessly had to learn the answers.³⁴ Instead, Herxheimer’s textbook included a new didactical feature, a section at the end of each chapter that displayed a set of questions meant to repeat, recapitulate and internalize the respective knowledge presented before. Yesode HaTorah thus made use of an innovative didactical concept that might explain its long-lasting legacy. Plessner, in contrast, used the catechetic structure for his textbook, but left it to the teacher whether to embrace it as a didactical tool. Plessner’s choice seems to be one of pragmatism, following a contemporary trend. This becomes evident in an addendum to the elaborate preface to Dat Moshe ve-Yehudit which consists of two lists of previously published handbooks and textbooks on Judaism, of which many were catechisms.³⁵ Title pages and paratexts have been an insightful source of book history and are equally valuable here. Authors like Herxheimer and Plessner used them intentionally to situate and position their books within their respective local context, their educational setting, and within contemporary debates on Jewish education and Judaism more generally. Both Plessner and Herxheimer presented themselves as experts in the field of Jewish education on the title pages of their respective books. Plessner introduced himself as a religious teacher and emphasized that his book was “edited and published on urgent request” (“bearbeitet and auf dringendes Verlangen herausgegeben”) whereas Herxheimer presented himself as a rabbi.³⁶ In the preface, he emphasized his experience as a teacher.³⁷ Both authors

33 Josef Stern, “Maimonides on Education,” in Philosophers on Education. New Historical Perspectives, ed. Amelié O. Rorty (London: Routledge, 1998), 109–123. 34 “Das ich nicht die gewöhnliche dialogische Lehrform gewählt, wo der Lehrer, der die häufig matten, leeren Fragen, dem abzufragen hat, und sich selbst so wie dem Kinde als Maschine vorkommen muß, und andererseits der Schüler die Antworten seelenlos auswendig zu lerne, veranlaßt wird, dürfte der Sachkundige auch darum billigen, weil diese Schrift auch Erwachsenen bestimmt ist;” Herxheimer, Yesode HaTorah, vi. 35 Plessner lists 45 publications, beginning with Yagel’s Lekach Tov, the only text originally published before 1750. Plessner, Dat Moshe ve-Yehudit, xxxv–xxxviii. 36 In the first edition as the rabbi of Eschwege, in later editions the title page recognises Herxheimer as the chief rabbi of Bernburg, Saxony Anhalt. 37 More specifically he states that his book draws on ten years of experience as a teacher. Herxheimer, Yesode Ha-Torah, 1831, v.

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legitimized their respective claim for authority in the field of Jewish education and religious thought through their professions. Most educational texts of the time had rather generic titles that included more specific information on their proposed audience and purpose. Therefore, these kinds of books often included the words israelitisch or mosaisch in the title, and almost always made use of Hebrew main titles. By choosing phrases such as Emunath Israel (Faith of Israel), Emet Torah (Truth of Torah) or Derech Emunah (Path of Faith) authors clearly situated their books within Judaism and Jewish tradition but also captured the core purpose of their publication, to foster Jewish knowledge and thus embrace the duty to know as a precondition of Jewish faith and practice. Herxheimer and Plessner chose particularly recognizable titles – Yesode haTorah echoes a chapter of Maimonides’ Book of Knowledge (Sefer Ha-Madda), which was part of Mishneh Torah, his most important halachic work.³⁸ Hilkhot Yesode ha-Torah deals with the foundations of the Torah. Plessner adopted a Mishnah quote³⁹ for his title. Dat Moshe ve-Yehudit (The Law of Moses and Jewish customs) refers to Ketuboth 7.6, which discusses the conditions under which a divorced woman will not receive any ketubah payment, namely when she violated dat moshe ve-yehudit. The ketubah, the Jewish marriage contract, includes a similar formula as part of the groom’s proclamation to take his bride as his wife.⁴⁰ By choosing this title Plessner emphasized both biblical, i. e. mosaic, and rabbinical thought as the fundament of Judaism, reinforced by the German title of the book Jüdisch-Mosaischer Religionsunterricht für die Israelitische Jugend (Jewishmosaic religious instruction for the Israelite youth), with Jüdisch (Jewish) referring to the rabbinic tradition and Mosaisch (mosaic) to the biblical. In addition, both

38 Herxheimer cited Maimonides in the second part of his book detailing the “Sittenlehre” (moral doctrines). Herxheimer, Yesode ha-Torah (1831), 39. 39 Mishnah Ketuboth 7.6: “The following women are divorced, and do not receive [the amount of ] their ketubah: – She who violates the Law of Moses or Jewish [rules]. What constitutes [a violation of ] the Law of Moses? If she causes him to eat [food] which has not paid tithe; she submits his embraces while she states Niddah: she does not set apart Chalah: and if she vows, but does not keep [her vow]. What constitutes [a violation of ] Jewish rules [customs]? If she goes out with her hair loose [bareheaded]: she spins the street, and converses [flirts] with any man. Abbah Saul saith, “[Likewise] she curses his children his presence.” R. Tarphon saith, “[Also] if she is a Kolonit, noisy woman.” What is [meant by] a noisy woman? One who speaks in her own house [so loud] that the neighbours can hear her.” Eighteen Treatises from the Mishna, trans. David A. Sola and Morris J. Raphall, (London: Sherwood, Gilber, and Piper, 1843), 259–260. 40 “According to the Laws of Moses and Israel” (Ke’ dat Moshe Ve’ Yisrael).

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authors display bible quotes on the title pages of their books, each of them embracing the role of child rearing and children’s education in Judaism.⁴¹ Plessner and Herxheimer thus not only identified their books as Jewish but situated them within Jewish tradition. Plessner’s choice of a Mishnah quote explicitly signaled to his potential readers his devotion to Torah and Halachah and his appreciation of rabbinical thought. In addition, this particular Mishnah reference foreshadowed Plessner’s attitude towards the religious education of Jewish girls and women, detailed in the preface. While he supported such an education, mostly in form of Torah and bible study, he distinguished its scope and content from what Jewish boys should learn and thus a Jewish man should know. Plessner reserved comprehensive Hebrew instruction and the study of rabbinical literature and Halacha for the education of boys. To some degree he tried to save the overall goal of traditional Jewish education – the training of future rabbinical scholars. He agreed to alter some elements of the system but was unwilling to entirely break with its main goal to enable every Jew to fulfill his – and to a lesser degree her – obligation to study Torah. Eventually, he aimed at ensuring that talented male students will have the opportunity to continue their studies and eventually become scholars and rabbis in their own right. Plessner’s preface, detailing his pedagogical philosophy, was meant as an instruction to the main readers and users of his book, teachers, parents, and advanced students. Although less comprehensive, Herxheimer’s as well addressed teachers and parents as instructors of Jewish children but also imagined yet “uneducated adults” as his audience.⁴² In contrast to Plessner, Herxheimer discussed his prospective audience more broadly.⁴³ While he did not address the education of girls and women in any particular way, we can assume that this book was written for a Jewish religious instruction for both sexes, as emancipation legislation of the time required Jewish communities to ensure the religious education of all Jewish children. These regulations still left room to differentiate between the scope and content of the education boys and girls. Jewish schools, thus, often arranged separate classes and curricula for boys and girls.⁴⁴

41 Plessner placed Jesaja 26:22–23 – “Nun werde Jakob nicht mehr beschämt, so er betrachte seien Kindlein als die Gebilde meiner Hände.” – on the title pages of his book. Herxheimer added “Hier habt ihr Samen” (Genesis 47:23) to the title page of some editions of Yesode Ha-Thorah, i. e. 1840 and 1868. 42 Herxheimer, Yesode Ha-Torah (1831), iii. 43 “Eine systematische Glaubens- und Pflichtenlehre, welche die Jugend und die (noch ununterrichteten) = Erwachsenen mit dem Wesen der väterlichen Religion […] zeitgemäß bekannt macht …” Herxheimer, Yesode ha-Torah (1831), iii. 44 Eliav, Jüdische Erziehung, 348–361.

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Authors like Plessner and Herxheimer needed to position themselves within their respective educational settings, which in both cases included the local context from which their work emerged as well as Jewish education more generally. As mentioned earlier, both wrote their textbooks as part of their official capacity as teachers and religious leaders, drawing on their experience. Plessner worked as a teacher for religious education at the Talmud-Torah school in Berlin, which at the time also served as a training institution for teachers. Simon Meyer Weyl (1744–1826) and Jeremias Heinemann (1778–1855) had restructured the school in the 1820s, initially with a view to training teachers and rabbis.⁴⁵ Catechisms and manuals for religious instruction were not used in the school until the early 1830s.⁴⁶ In 1831, Herxheimer lived and worked in Eschwege, a middle-size town with a population of a bit more than 5000 in the Electorate of Hesse (Kurfürstentum Hessen)⁴⁷, where he had been the religious teacher of the local Jewish community since 1827. This position offered a very different political and social context than that of Plessner in Berlin. Herxheimer’s experience, however, was closer to that of an average Jewish religious teacher, who at the time often served rural areas, in villages, and small and mid-sized towns. In 1823, the Electorate of Hesse had introduced new legislation on Jewish education and schooling that mandated compulsory education and the attendance of local public schools. Jewish communities gained the right to establish their own schools, although mostly restricted to religious instruction. The 1823 law also comprised specific regulations on the character of Jewish religious instruction⁴⁸ and recommended the usage of appropriate

45 Carsten Wilke, “Den Talmud und den Kant”. Rabbinerausbildung an der Schwelle zur Moderne (Hildesheim: Olms, 2003), 336. 46 Prussian state officials encouraged religious leaders like Weyl to promote the usage of systematically structured textbooks in Jewish schools, but never mandated such books. Weyl remained indifferent and at times opposed to the matter. Baruch Auerbach, who served as the school’s headmaster during the early 1830s, was equally skeptical of the genre and its pedagogical value. Kerstin von der Krone, “Old and New Orders of Knowledge in Modern Jewish History,” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 59 (2016), 59–82, see 70. 47 Eschwege (data set no. 5631) Historisches Ortslexikon, Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen, https://www.lagis-hessen.de/de/subjects/idrec/sn/ol/id/5631 (accessed May 28, 2019). 48 “Die israelitischen Religionslehrer haben in dem Unterrichte der Jugend und der Erwachsenen allgemein Menschenliebe, Unterwürfigkeit unter die Obrigkeit, Fügung in die bürgerliche Ordnung und Liebe zu dem Lande, in welchem sie geboren sind, oder ihren Lebensunterhalt und Schutz finden, nach eigener Angabe und richtiger Auslegung ihrer wesentlichen Religions-Vorschriften zu lehren.” §13 Verordnung vom 30. Dezember 1823, see Ismar Freund, Die Rechtsstellung der Juden im preußischen Volksschulrecht nebst den bezüglichen Gesetzen, Verordnungen u. Entscheidungen (Berlin: Guttentag Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1908), 364.

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textbooks on Jewish religion in German as well as a song book, which had to be approved by local rabbinical authorities and the ministry of the Interior.⁴⁹ Both Herxheimer and Plessner acknowledged the key role the family and the community played in Jewish religious life and Jewish education. Textbooks were often explicitly designated for school and home (für Schule und Haus), a phrase that Herxheimer included on the title page of his Yesode ha-Torah. Plessner chose a more elaborate subtitle to describe the educational settings his textbooks could serve, including private and public education and self-study.⁵⁰ Given the different positions of Herxheimer and Plessner within contemporary debates on religious reform and Jewish practices, the similarities and differences in how they presented the foundations of Judaism are fascinating. As most German-Jewish textbooks for religious instruction, both the liberal Herxheimer and the orthodox Plessner relied on a language shaped by enlightenment thought. They described Judaism as a positive, i. e. ethical religion based on reason, the idea of freedom and love. The Love for God, Oneself and the Other was presented as the ethical nucleus of Jewish thought and religion. Like other authors, both open their books with a discussion of the concept of religion as grounded in natural law, essential to ensuring social order and cohesion within a society. Subsequently, Judaism is introduced as a prime expression of religion, uniquely grounded in the idea of Revelation and Monotheism. Herxheimer structured Yesode Ha-Torah in two parts: he opened with the Doctrines of Faith (Glaubenslehre) that beyond the idea of religion discuss three principle focal points of Judaism and Jewish thought: God, Eternal Life and Divine Punishment and Revelation. In the second part of his book, he explored Judaism’s Doctrines of Ethics (Sittenlehre) by focusing on one’s duties towards God, oneself and the other.⁵¹ This two-part structure was commonly used in nineteenth-century German-Jewish religious textbooks, although the second part was usually entitled Doctrines of Duty (Pflichtenlehre). While Plessner followed this pattern with Dat Moshe ve-Yehudit, his overall goal differed to some degree from that of Herxheimer. Yesode Ha-Torah focussed somewhat on a core curriculum of religious instruction using didactically innova-

49 “Auch soll die Einführung sowohl eines zweckmäßigen Lehrbuches der jüdischen Religion in teutscher Sprache zum Gebrauche bei dem Jugend-Unterrichte als eines ebenfalls hierzu dienlichen teutschen Gesangbuches durch das Landrabbinat mit Genehmigung Unseres Ministeriums des Innern veranstaltet werden.” §16, ebd., 364. 50 Full subtitle: A textbook designated for public and private education, and self-study presenting the main religious truths and teachings of Judaism. 51 This is not reflected in the table of content, but described by Herxheimer in the introduction. Herxheimer, Yesode Ha-Torah (1831), 5.

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tive features. As mentioned earlier, Herxheimer explicitly opposed the catechetical methods, but used questions as a didactical tool, placed at the end of each chapter to repeat and memorize what was presented before. In addition, he integrated references to a song book published by Josef Johlson (1777–1851), a teacher at the Frankfurt Philantropin.⁵² Compared to Herxheimer, Plessner followed a more conservative approach by choosing the catechetical structure. His book also served more than one purpose: it was a textbook meant for self-instruction as well as a comprehensive handbook to be consulted by students, teachers and parents even beyond any formal educational goals.⁵³ In its scope Dat Moshe ve-Yehudit is one of the most comprehensive works of German-Jewish religious education in the nineteenth century. In contrast to Herxheimer and other textbooks, Plessner avoided the concept of Glaubenslehre. However, the first part of his book addressed topics that resembled what other authors subsumed under it. Plessner discussed the Human Being in relation to the idea of natural religion (Naturreligion), the Israelit in relation to revelation, and the Ten Commandments. He offered a closer look on Revelation as the idea of written and oral Torah and explored the Principles of Faith based on the prayer Ani Ma’Amin. Plessner chose “Doctrines of Duty” as the title of the second part of his book, which discussed one’s duty to study the Torah, to worship, and most significantly the duty to love. The fundament of Jewish ethical thought encompasses the Love for God, for oneself and the other (i. e. one’s neighbour or “Nebenmensch”). Plessner, as many other authors, expanded the passage on loving one’s neighbour with a passage on one’s duties towards the state. In Der Israelit als Untertan (“The Israelit as Subject of the State”), Plessner commands loyalty towards the state and its institutions as founded in Jewish tradition, referencing rabbinical sources including the principles of Dina de Malkhutat Dina (“the law of the land is law”). Other authors would base similar passages on the fifth of the Ten Commandments to Honor thy father and mother, broadening its meaning towards

52 Herxheimer refers to the third edition of Johlson’s Shir Yeshurun. Israelitisches Gesangbuch zur Andacht und zum Religionsunterricht, vol. 3 (Frankfurt am Main: In der Andreäischen Buchhandlung, 1829). The song book is part of a small book series Johlson published under the title Alume Yosef, starting in 1814, that included a catechism, two readers for Hebrew instruction, one focussing on Jewish history and a song book. 53 Plessner’s was one of the more elaborate catechisms which included additional information and material. His comprehensive preface concludes with two list of previously published handbooks and textbooks on Jewish religion. The appendix presents a small selection of Berakhot (blessings).

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the state and its representatives to invoking love for the country (Vaterlandsliebe).⁵⁴

4 Conclusion As detailed in this chapter, nineteenth-century Jewish educational writings offer plentiful insights into changing and shifting visions of Judaism in the wake of emancipation and acculturation. Jewish Education as a key dimension of German-Jewish life was subject to fundamental changes, based on new legal regulation, new pedagogical perspectives, and societal and cultural expectations towards education in general as well as moral and religious instruction in particular. Catechisms and manuals are evidence to these changes, and most significantly to a process through which the idea of Jewish education for children and young adults became mostly focused on religious instruction and on the question what one ought to know about Judaism. While textbooks and handbooks more generally served practical needs, these educational writings can also be understood as an epistemic genre and thus as a textual formation of knowledge in times of change. Educators like Herxheimer and Plessner actively sought to establish new practices of teaching and learning while at the same time promoting their vision of Judaism. Their catechisms and manuals became means in their endeavor to positioning themselves within contemporary debates – as Jewish intellectuals and pedagogues, as religious leaders and proponents of two different movements within German Judaism. More specifically Plessner’s and Herxheimer’s books show us the scope of text modes used to describe and present Judaism and Jewish knowledge for children and young adults, from the rather short manual to the comprehensive handbook like the catechism. With an emphasis on a systematic representation of Jewish knowledge, Jewish religious textbooks not only adapted Christian textmodes for Jewish education. They also privileged those elements of Jewish tradition that fit this systematic approach, most significantly in form of the Ten Commandments and principles of faith (ikkarim). Both elements reinforced the convergence of Jewish and Christian educational practices based on the adaptation of text formats. Moreover, these texts are evidence to efforts by Jewish thinkers and writers since the Haskalah to emphasize the Jewish heritage of Christian ethical thought and most significantly their efforts to reclaim the ethical message of the Hebrew Bible as Jewish.

54 For example: Eduard Kley, Edut Adonai: Katechismus der mosaischen Religionslehre (Leipzig: Voigt, 1850), 54–57, see 57.

Johannes Wischmeyer

Confessional Position-Taking in Nineteenth-Century Christian Catechism Culture 1 Position-taking in Nineteenth-Century Protestant Church and Theology In accordance with the crisis of Enlightened and Reformist ideas, the confessional divide between Protestants and Catholics was deepening anew all over Europe during the age of political restauration past 1815. This process has recently been called a ‘Second Age of Confessionalism‘.¹ Whereas the growing research in this field is no doubt important in order to gain a more differentiated view of 19th-century Religious History, our attention should focus on what was going on within the precincts of the two main confessional churches as well. According to the late Leipzig church historian Kurt Nowak, an exclusive confessionalist perspective may obscure the increasing amount of differentiation and antagonism that can be found on this level.² The reality is far more complex than confessional stereotypes suggest: By no means Protestantism always meant embracing social change and political liberalisation, no more than Catholicism was thoroughly shaped by regressive and reactionary tendencies. Nowak distinguishes three groups of Protestants – the enlightened, the awakened, and the pious.³ Although for the generations past 1848, some additional differentiations have to be introduced in order to keep account of the increasingly pluriform shape of German Protestantism, this basic typology is quite helpful. On both sides of the confessional divide, but far more solidly among Protestants,

1 Olaf Blaschke, Konfessionen im Konflikt: Deutschland zwischen 1800 und 1970: Ein zweites konfessionelles Zeitalter (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 2002). 2 Kurt Nowak, Geschichte des Christentums in Deutschland. Religion, Politik und Gesellschaft vom Ende der Aufklärung bis zur Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts (München: C.H. Beck, 1995), 66: “Die Bruchlinien zwischen Tradition und Fortschritt waren nicht im Sandkasten von Konfessionstypologien zu ziehen.” 3 Ibid., 94–100. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110795905-008

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different milieus began to solidify.⁴ Around the year 1870, we can roughly distinguish four different theological positions: 1. the wide field of Mediating Theology (‘Vermittlungstheologie‘), with varying degrees of conformity to the traditionally received dogma; 2. Neo-Confessionalism, as a movement of confessionalist repristination as well as a kind of modern-conservative Lutheran Historicism⁵; 3. Pious Theology, with several bible-centred and biblicist branches, a group that cannot always be clearly distinguished from the mediating approach; 4. ‚Speculative‘ respectively ‚free‘ theology, a blend of late Rationalism and critical Historicism with an intellectually open free-minded theology (‘Freisinnige‘), not to be confused with modern liberal theology that was going to develop only after 1870.⁶ Given this situation, much of the intellectual energy of 19th-century academic theology was used in order to gaining the upper hand in the internal conflicts between the intellectually antagonist camps. Likewise, the intellectual conflict lines were clearly visible in the field of contemporary church politics. In most German territories the one or the other milieu was winning over the majority of the clergy, often with the help of a cultural bureaucracy that was biased either way. In Prussia neither side could achieve a complete victory. Instead, individual provinces and their provincial churches assumed a relatively characteristic theological shaping. Consequently, the superordinate Ministry of Culture sometimes tried to loosen up a regionally entrenched positional situation by appointing teaching personnel of a different theological partisanship in the Divinity faculties of the provincial universities.⁷ The role of ministerial bureaucracy as an active part in the shaping of 19th-century German religious institutions must not be underestimated.⁸ Sadly, the intellectual history of 19th-century Protestant theology has been rather neglected, especially regarding cultural, social and political context. But there is a concept that can systematize these findings. It has been developed by

4 Johannes Wischmeyer, Theologiae Facultas: Rahmenbedingungen, Akteure und Wissenschaftsorganisation protestantischer Universitätstheologie in Tübingen, Jena, Erlangen und Berlin 1850– 1870, Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte 108 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 278 f. 5 Cf. Johannes Wischmeyer, “Heilsgeschichte im Zeitalter des Historismus. Das geschichtstheologische Programm Johann Christian Konrad Hofmanns,” in Heil und Geschichte. Die Geschichtsbezogenheit des Heils und das Problem der Heilsgeschichte in der biblischen Tradition und in der theologischen Deutung. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 248, eds. Jörg Frey, Stefan Krauter and Hermann Lichtenberger (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 633–646. 6 Wischmeyer, Theologiae Facultas, 279. 7 Robert M. Bigler, The Politics of German Protestantism: The Rise of the Protestant Church Elite in Prussia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972). 8 Wischmeyer, Theologiae Facultas, 95–122.

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the brilliant Practical theologian Dietrich Rössler.⁹ Following his suggestion, we may call the 19th century, and especially the period of ‘Nachmärz’, i. e. 1850–1870 – leading to the political unification of the German territories in the form of a new but smaller empire –, an age of ‘positionelle Theologie’ (positional theology may be a viable English translation). Over and over, contemporaries characterized this time as an “age of divide”. This divide was the reverse of a sometimes greater freedom of thought both in academia and in church that had been just recently achieved. As a result of theological enlightenment, it had become necessary to state rational reasons for the content of religious belief that had lost its compulsory force. The production of theological knowledge had become an individualist task. From now on, theological positions – i. e. specific concepts of religious thought on the one hand and of shared practice of religious belief and life on the other – were competing with each other with the aim of gaining compulsory quality in the Protestant church.¹⁰ It is, of course, not a new phenomenon that different theological schools are competing, but one may claim that the pressure on each and every theologian to take sides in an intensifying and increasingly polarized public discourse that was typical for 19th-century Christian theology represents a new quality of position-taking.¹¹

2 Modern Catechisms and Catechetic Instruction as a Medium of Communicating Protestant Religion Among university theologians, this position-taking occured not only in the field of dogmatics. Practical theology with Catechetics as a sub-discipline was right in the centre of positional battles. Being responsible for the academic representation of educational practice under church authority, the lecturers in Catechetics were situated at the interface between academia, school, church, and state bureaucracy. The practice of Catechetics, where clergymen and – from circa 1860 onwards – also high school teachers (‘Religionsphilologen’ who taught at ‘Gymnasium’ and

9 Dietrich Rössler, “Positionelle und kritische Theologie,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 67 (1970), 215–231. 10 Wischmeyer, Theologiae Facultas, 277. 11 Ibid., 278.

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‘Realgymnasium’¹²) were trained for their profession, was therefore shaped by positional partisanship. Traditionally, the history of religious education in the 19th century has been a history of catechisms to a large degree. And there is indeed much to tell about the mass of Catechisms that were issued during the long 19th century, representing every theological and religious trend of the time.¹³ Speaking in general terms, there are two basic types of Catechism in the 19th century: The genre of modern Catechism was shaped by Enlightened, Rationalist theology from the close of the 18th century onwards. Each textbook is following its own systematic agenda. The second type represents a repristination: there are hosts of new editions and modifications of the traditional confessional 16th-century Catechisms. Until the reforms of the Napoleonic Era, these traditional Early Modern Catechisms had belonged to the official and compulsory confessional status quo of the single territories – although late 18th-century clergy had pragmatically adopted new ways of Catechetic teaching and thereby new textbook literature. Since about 1840, the revival of confessional Catechisms was competing with the Enlightenment Catechetic culture, as we are going to see in greater detail in part 3. It is important to understand that in most cases the repristinatory impulse of conservative theologians was anti-modern in ideological terms but by no means outdated regarding theoretical and practicalpedagogic foundation. What was the practical difference between these two catechetic approaches? The structure of the modern Catechetic textbooks varied according to the authors‘ systematic approach, whereas the new generation of confessional Catechisms followed the main text of the Early Modern catechetic works, on the Lutheran side in most cases the Enchiridion, an Early Modern edition of Luther‘s Small Catechism with additions by Philipp Melanchthon, and the Heidelberg Catechism for those who saw themselves in the Reformed traditon. When we have a closer look, the differences become a little smaller. In many cases, the overall structure, the systematic or confessional grid of the catechetic textbook, is filled up by a neat arrangement either of questions and answers and/or by biblical quotations that may help to elucidate the background of the thematic question. Very often, also a repristinatory confessional Catechism was used together with a corresponding biblical textbook. The Catechetic method of question and answer would not automatically differ very much whether a liberal or a conservative Christian pedago12 Cf. Antje Roggenkamp-Kaufmann, Religionspädagogik als “Praktische Theologie”: Zur Entstehung der Religionspädagogik in Kaiserreich und Weimarer Republik, Arbeiten zur praktischen Theologie 20 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2001). 13 Cf. Ferdinand Cohrs, “Katechismen und Katechismusunterricht im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit,” Real-Encyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, 3rd ed., 10 (1901), 135–164.

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gue conducted the religious instruction. Likewise, the basic content for the catechetic lesson normally consisted in a short biblical quotation. In the 19th century however, the practical catechetical questioning technique was elaborated in great detail on an academic level. Not everything can be reconstructed by merely consulting printed books. The subtleties were left to oral instruction in the context of catechetical seminars where students of theology would conduct a practical lesson in religious education, typically at the higher classes of a primary school or at a middle school (‘Bürgerschule’), followed by a close evaluation by the professor and the other students who had been attending the lesson. In the course of research on the practical aspects of academic Catechetics, David Käbisch and the author found the manuscript of the main lecture in Catechetics that was held by the Jena Practical theologian Johann Karl Eduard Schwarz. In combination with other sources from the university archives, Schwarz‘ practice of the questioning method can be pictured in greater detail than hitherto possible by using the printed standard handbooks on Catechetics. A quotation from Schwarz‘ lecture shows that he was applying the questioning method with modern pedagogical aims in his mind.¹⁴ Die wirkl[iche] Lehrfrage hat freilich auch den Zweck zu wissen, wie’s beim Katechumenen aussieht, aber das ist nicht Hauptzweck, sondern durch sie soll er zum eignen Nachdenken angeregt u[nd] angeleitet werden etwas, was ihm noch neu oder noch nicht ganz klar, zu finden, einzelnes, was wir ihm dargeboten haben, nochmals aufzuzählen, zu sondern, unter allgemeinen Gedanken zusammenzufassen, allgemeines, wie z. B. viel umfassende durchschlagende Bibelsprüche, sich auseinander zu legen, aus vorhergegangenen Instanzen Folgerungen zu ziehn für eine Thatsache, oder ein Urtheil, die Gründe aufzusuchen, Anwendungen zu machen auf sich u[nd] seine Weltanschauung. D[ie] Lehrfrage, richtig angewandt u[nd] gebildet, ist gleichsam ein Samen, der ausgeworfen wird; u[nd] geht nun d[ie] kindl[iche] Seele darauf ein, so wird sie dadurch gefaßt u[nd] gefangen u[nd] empor geführt aus der über sie noch waltenden Unklarheit u[nd] Unsicherh[eit]. D[ie] Antwort, mit der, wenn sie auf die Prüffrage richtig gegeben wird, der Katechet sich beruhigt, giebt ihm hier Gelegenheit weiter auf die Sache einzugehen.

In the course of the 19th century, two main characteristics determined Protestant theology – independent of the positional orientation of single teachers or university faculties. Both these traits were a legacy of the idealist and romantic impreg-

14 Johann Karl Eduard Schwarz, university lecture on “Katechetik und Pastoraltheologie,” (1863/ 66), §21 (Ms.: ThULB Jena: Ms. Prov. q. 121, p.18); cf. David Käbisch and Johannes Wischmeyer, Die Praxis akademischer Religionslehrerbildung. Katechetik und Pädagogik an der Jenaer Universität 1817 bis 1914, Praktische Theologie in Geschichte und Gegenwart 5 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 92.

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nation that Protestant theology underwent as a reaction to 18th-century Rationalism and Ethicism. The first aspect can be called the historicization of theology and is part of the historicist approach that permeated all fields of academic study during the whole of the 19th century. The second impulse may be called the gaining of an ecclesiological dimension. More and more, the topic of the church as a social institution as well as a product of continous historical development became interesting to all of the various theological tendency groups. Christian Palmer who edited the maybe most widely read handbook of academic catechetics may serve as an example. He defines the two main aims of Protestant Catechetical practice as 1. to instruct the youth according to the doctrine of the church (‘Unterweisung in der kirchlichen Lehre’) and 2. to teach them a lifestyle in accordance with the church (‘Erziehung zum kirchlichen Leben’).¹⁵ We can find traces of this development in the Catechetic literature, on the level of academic teaching as well as in school textbooks. During the first decades of an Enligthenment-influenced theology, the principle question out of which individual modern catechetic systems were developed – and that accordingly supplied the structure of catechetic textbooks – was about the core of Christian belief (‘Inbegriff des Glaubens’). In the course of 19th-century church-builiding, which left vivid traces in academic theology, this initial question was often replaced by a concept of the meaning and identity of the Protestant church. Also, the newly awakened interest in the historical development of Christian belief and religious practice finds its repercussions in the academic theorizing – here, the seminal system of Christian Catechetics by Gerhard von Zezschwitz, a Neo-Lutheran of the Erlangen theological school, can only be named in passing. His compendious work assembled an enormous historical knowledge of religious education from the Early Church onwards. But also for practical school teaching, religious viz. Church history became interesting, and it was a special aim of liberal religious pedagogics (‘Religionspädagogik’) to introduce historical case studies into the table of contents of religious education, e. g. Martin Luther and the Reformation or Elisabeth von Thüringen.¹⁶ Sometimes, one has to analyze the semantic of the Catechetic discourse very closely in order to explore the respective theological affiliation. E. g., nearly every work on the theory of catechetical instruction evokes as the aim of religious 15 Cf. Johannes Wischmeyer, “Protestantische Katechetik – Institutionelle Kontexte und wissenschaftliche Profile im langen 19. Jahrhundert,” in Institutionalisierung und Profil der Religionspädagogik: Historisch-systematische Studien zu ihrer Genese als Wissenschaft, Praktische Theologie in Geschichte und Gegenwart 8, ed. Bernd Schröder (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 51–85 (71). 16 Cf. Käbisch and Wischmeyer, Die Praxis akademischer Religionslehrerbildung, 164–170.

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education the ‘religious autonomy‘ of the pupils. But the understanding of this autonomy can vary extremely; hard-bitten liberals saw it as the purpose of religious education to enable every pupil to build an individual outlook on the religious aspect of one’s existence (‘Weltanschauung’) whereas neo-confessionalists saw it as the teachers‘ duty to prepare the pupils for their full participation in the confessing community of the constitutional church.

3 Protestant Catechisms and Religious Position-Taking in an Age of positional Church and Theology The Wilhelmine Church historian Ferdinand Cohrs gives a concise summary of the historical dynamics of Protestant Catechetic culture in the second half of the 19th century. His article in the third edition of the leading contemporary theological encyclopedia (‘Real-Encyclopädie’) still is one of the best sources about 19th-century Catechetics in Europe. It contains singular information about the official Catechetic literature in European states and territories of all Christian denominations. It is rewarding to recall coherently a paragraph in which Cohrs summarizes the typical stages of the discourse about the Catechetical literature that was used for educational purposes in the German territories.¹⁷ So ist man über die Unterrichtsmethode im ganzen einig, aber hinsichtlich des beim Unterricht zu verwendenden Hilfsbuches weit auseinander. Meistens ist der Verlauf in neuerer Zeit so gewesen, daß zunächst einzelne Pfarrer die rationalistischen Katechismen abschaffen und zu den alten Bekenntniskatechismen zurückkehren, teils nur ihren Text zu Grunde legen, teils auch die alten exponierten Katechismen wieder hervorsuchen, teils neu entstandene Auslegungen einführen. Da andere die rationalistischen Katechismen beibehalten – viele freilich nur als Spruchbuch –, so entsteht bald ein buntes Durcheinander der verschiedensten Lehrbücher. Dann schreitet die Behörde ein, stellt statistisch die in Gebrauch befindlichen Katechismen fest und sucht ihre Zahl zu vermindern. Hier wird eine Anzahl Katechismen zum Gebrauch freigegeben, dort wird dem Text der Konfessionskatechismen nur eine Spruchsammlung hinzugefügt; anderswo ist man darauf bedacht, durch einen neuen Landeskatechismus der Vielgestaltigkeit ein Ende zu machen. Besondere Aufgaben stellt die Union. Bald läßt man den in einer Gemeinde vorherrschenden Bekenntnisstand für den zu gebrauchenden Katechismus entscheidend sein, so daß in einer Landes- bzw. Provinzialkirche Enchiridion und Heidelberger Kat. nebeneinander gebraucht werden, bald kombinirt man auch beide Bücher zu besonderen Unionskatechismen.

17 Cohrs, “Katechismen und Katechismusunterricht im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit,” 135–164 (144).

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To elaborate only one example, we may recall the conflict over the state Catechism in the Protestant Church of the Kingdom of Hannover at the beginning of the 1860s¹⁸. There, an influential neo-confessionalist party aimed at the compulsory introduction of a new Lutheran Catechism. The official Enlightened catechism, first issued in 1790, was to be replaced by a reworking of a version of the Lutheran Enchiridion that dated back to 1634. When in 1862 this repristinatory Catechism was introduced by order of King George V., an uprise took place in the kingdom. Liberal church ministers started a press campaign against this act of infringement of religious self-determination.¹⁹ In Hanover, revolutionary scenes occured, a policeman died during the violent protests, and military was on the streets for some days to restore order. Political protest against the remaining royal prerogatives in a constitutional state mixed with church-political agitation. The king had to revoke his decision, the state secretary for education and then the entire cabinet was dismissed and in due course the constitutionalisation of the state church that had been promised for more than a decade finally got under way.²⁰

4 Structural Analogies: Protestant Catechetics as a template for Liberal Jewish Catechism Culture In the course of the 19th century, a large amount of Jewish Catechisms was issued.²¹ The question whether their function in childrens‘ education was similar to the one of Christian Catechisms requires further elaboration. In the perspective of German-speaking pedagogues of religion, our view is – maybe a bit one-sidedly – guided especially by Bernd Schröder who has evaluated the liberal Jewish Cate-

18 (Anon.), Review of Albert Lührs, “Katechismusschule für Lehrer in Kirche, Schule und Haus über Dr. Martin Luthers Kleinen Katechismus mit Erklärung,” Allgemeine Kirchenzeitung. Theologisches Literaturblatt 44 (1867), 130 f. https://books.google.de/books?id=aPtbAAAAcAAJ&hl=de&pg= PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false. 19 Cf. the critical Carl Gustav Wilhelm Baurschmidt, Prüfet Alles: Ein Wort über den neuen Katechismus (Lüchow: Saur, 1862). 20 Cf. Hermann Heinrich, “Ludwig Harms und die Katechismusfrage, untersucht vor dem Hintergrund des Hannoverschen Katechismusstreits,” Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Niedersächsische Kirchengeschichte 96 (1998), 197–228. 21 Jakob J. Petuchowski, “Manuals and Catechisms of the Jewish Religion in the Early Period of Emancipation,” in Studies in 19th Century Jewish Intellectual History, ed. Alexander Altmann (Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1964), 47–64.

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chism by Samuel Hirsch.²² Schröder sees strong structural analogies between 19th century Jewish and Christian catechisms: 1. the social basis of catechisms as a literary genre is the practice of religious education for beginners, mostly in primary school age; 2. the catechism is structured according to the principle of question and answer, imitating a personal conversation and providing aids for acquiring religious knowledge; 3. the genre of catechism is interpreted as a collection of the core principles of religious belief.²³ For Schröder, the characteristics of Hirsch‘s catechism resemble closely those of contemporary liberal Protestant catechetic literature: 1. structure and content are adapted according to pedagogic principles; 2. the formal and linguistic shape is modern and reflects a Reformist spirit; 3. religion is interpreted according to anthropological and moral principles; 4. Judaism, like Protestantism, is presented proudly as the religion of choice for intellectually demanding people. Some additional observations may be added, not with the intention to ramifying the view of close structural analogies but in order to gather material for an advanced interdisciplinary dicussion: There are also several adaptions of rather conservative textbooks, e. g. a Lutheran school textbook that was widely recepted in the Protestant Church of Bavaria²⁴ was modified into a textbook for Jewish education.²⁵ A second point is the role of state authorities, namely the educational bureaucracy, for the control and standardization of practical religious education. In 1828, a leading official of the Bavarian school bureaucracy, J. B. Graser, expressed his view

22 Bernd Schröder, “Jüdische Katechismen in Deutschland am Beispiel eines Katechismus aus der Feder von Samuel Hirsch (1815–1889), in Jewish Studies between the Disciplines/Judaistik zwischen den Disziplinen: [Festschrift Peter Schäfer], ed. Klaus Herrmann et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 456–477. 23 Ibid., 458. Schröder (p. 460) postulates: “Das Genre verliert aber im Lauf der Zeit seine Trennschärfe und verschwimmt mit dem der Dogmatik oder des Lehrbuchs, später auch des Unterrichtsbuchs”. Cf. Ludwig Philippson, “Literarische Nachrichten. Magdeburg,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums 14 (1850), No.36: 506; No.38: 531 f.; No.39: 547: The author distinguishes between “catechisms” (for pupils); “textbooks” (“Lehrbücher”, for teachers), and “guides” (“Leitfäden”, somewhere between the two genres). 24 Christoph von Schmid, Die Biblische Geschichte für Kinder: Zum allgemeinen Gebrauche in den Volksschulen Baierns (München: Churfürstl. geistl. Rath deutschen Schulfonds-Bücherverl., 1801, 2 vols., various editions). 25 Karl Lucius Mailert, Biblische Geschichten nach Chr. von Schmid: Zum Gebrauche für israelitische Kinder in Schulen und Familien bearbeitet (Kassel: Luckhardt, 1851). In his review, Ludwig Philippson commends Mailert’s pedagogical style as “ein recht warmer, herzlicher, gläubiger und mit geringen Ausnahmen kindlicher”: Philippson, “Literarische Nachrichten. Magdeburg,” 547. Another example for the Jewish adaptation of a Christian catechism is: Joel Nathan, Deutscher Kinderfreund für israelitische Schulen: Nach d. 39. Aufl. d. Kinderfreundes von A[ugust] E[duard] Preuß u. I. A. Vetter für d. israelitische Jugend eingerichtet. Mit e. Vorw. von J[oseph] L[evin] Saaḻschütz (Königsberg: Bon, 1850).

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that – similarly to the Protestant state church – the Bavarian Jewry should adopt a compulsory Catechism.²⁶ The textbook for religious education at schools should also be officially sanctioned. Graser advocates strict neutrality of the state in religious affairs, the official religious literature should be expertly assessed by orthodox and well-educated Rabbis.²⁷ Die Prüfung der Regierung erstreckt sich auf zwei Punk[t]e; erstens, ob das Buch keine Lehren enthalte, welche weder den allgemein gültigen Prinzipien des Rechts und der Sittlichkeit, noch den Zwecken des Staats widerstreben; zweitens, ob es ein brauchbares Lehrbuch sey. … Ist einmal das Religionslehrbuch für die Schule von der Regierung genehmigt, dann hat es die strengste Gesetzlichkeit, und zwar in der Art, daß außer ihm kein andres gebraucht werden kann.

Of course, Graser‘s assessment is not free from contradiction. Although he gives so much credit to orthodox rabbis as religious authorities, he freely criticizes current Jewish Catechisms because of their conservative theological contents. ²⁸ As a last point, we should recall that the plurality of religious tendencies that was so characteristic of 19th-century Protestant church and theology can also be observed among contemporary Jewish communities. The contemparary Jewish press provides us with ample evidence for the respective positional debates. As it were, they bore also on the field of catechetics, and we can see practical conflicts quite similar to the above-mentioned ones in the Protestant church.²⁹

26 Johann Baptist Graser, Das Judenthum und seine Reform: Als Vorbedingung der vollständigen Aufnahme der Nation in den Staats-Verband. Justiz- u. Polizey-Beamten zur vorzügl. Rücksichtnahme (Bayreuth 1828), 172; cf. Robert Ebner, Johann Baptist Graser (1766–1841): Sein Leben und Wirken als “Religionspädagoge” (Dettelbach: Röll, 2008). 27 Graser, Das Judenthum und seine Reform, 103 f. 28 Ibid., 40; here, Graser speaks out against Alexander Behr, Lehrbuch der mosaischen Religion (München: Fleischmann, 1826). 29 E. g. Bohemian Jewish delegates stated during a meeting that was called to arbitrate a dipute on catechetical teaching: “In der jüd[ischen] Katechismusliteratur sind alle Partheien vertreten […] Die verschiedenen Richtungen sind nun einmal unter den Bekennern des Judenthums vorhanden, und es ist natürlich, daß sie sich, wie in d[er] Lit[eratur] überhaupt, so auch in den für d[ie] Jug[end] bestimmten Schriften geltend zu machen suchen.” (Anon.), “Konferenz der jüd[ischen] Gemeindevertreter in Böhmen,” Ben-Chananja. Wochenblatt für jüdische Theologie 5 (1862), 229 f. (amendations: J.W.).

Part D: Children’s Bibles

Dorothea M. Salzer

“God Is Not Just One People’s God, Not a National God, But the Only God of All Nations”: Religious Knowledge in Jewish Children’s Bibles Compared to Christian traditions of religious learning which had led to the production of children’s bibles almost since the start of the reformation in the 16th century¹, the genre of Jewish children’s bibles emerged only at the end of the 18th century. Nevertheless, it very soon became hugely successful, as is apparent from the fact that during the 19th century more than 100 different Jewish children’s bibles (intended for school or/and home reading) were published in German speaking areas, some of them real long- and bestsellers with multiple editions. As collections of biblical texts, chosen, reworked, and adapted for young Jewish readers, children’s bibles aim at a very specific target audience in a specific historic situation. In the 19th century, this situation is characterized by the beginning of emancipation, new religious discourses, and the transformation of Jewish religion and religious practice according to contemporary sensibilities and conceptions. The authors of Jewish children’s bibles found it necessary to build on Jewish traditions, but at the same time they adapted these traditions to new ideas and expectations that were associated with modernity on the Jewish as well as on the non-Jewish side. Jewish children’s bibles are thus typically the result of a multilayered cultural transfer. The authors aimed at conveying the relevance of the biblical text for the current world by dressing the former into a garb that profoundly appealed to the Zeitgeist, designed in accordance with both the horizons of contemporary Jewish culture as well as with discourses beyond the Jewish community. In the following, I will shortly describe the historical context that triggered the emergence of new perspectives on the Hebrew Bible as the core of Jewish religious knowledge in general and the basis for new pedagogical concepts, and of Jewish children’s bibles specifically. Subsequently, I will describe and exemplify two main hermeneutical strategies applied in children’s bibles from the beginning of the genre until the end of 19th century − moralization and universalization − and their implications for re-defining Jewish religious knowledge and practice. 1 See for example: Christine Reents, and Christoph Melchior, Die Geschichte der Kinder- und Schulbibel. Evangelisch − katholisch – jüdisch (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 53–58. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110795905-009

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1 The Beginning of a New Genre: The Hebrew Bible as the Fulcrum of Religion and Religious Knowledge At the end of the 18th century, when the Jewish movement of Enlightenment, the Haskala, began to flourish at several places in Europe, the Hebrew Bible started to be of renewed interest to Ashkenasic Jewry. For the Maskilim, the Jewish enlighteners, the Hebrew Bible represented the source and the fundamental essence of Judaism, and, as a consequence, they conceived the Hebrew Bible also as the fulcrum of Jewish renewal. Apart from these new perceptions and their role in redefining Judaism, Bible studies promised also to be beneficial for the further integration of Jews into the culture and society of their respective countries: By referring to a text that constituted the common religious heritage of Judaism and Christianity alike, and at a time when biblical scholarship began to flourish among Christian scholars,² the Maskilim were able to underscore mutual values and to emphasize universal common grounds and thus contribute to overcome alleged antagonisms or particularities. This approach of the Maskilim, however, faced a difficult challenge: Traditional Ashkenasic culture regarded the Bible primarily as a means of language teaching rather than as text to be studied and understood for its own value, since the Talmud was the actual aim and core of Jewish education. Practically, this meant that in the traditional Cheder, the Jewish elementary school, the children would learn the alphabet and the basics of grammar with reference to the Hebrew Bible but they moved on to rabbinic texts as the classical basis for religious knowledge and authority, once they had acquired the elementary skills. Fully aware of the transformative power of education, the Maskilim criticized this traditional approach for neglecting the study of the Hebrew Bible and called for a reform of the Jewish educational system. One of the first in this line was Naftali Herz Wessely (1725−1805). In his treatise “Divre Shalom we-Emet” (“Words of Peace and Truth”, 1782), he assigned biblical studies a central role in a new Jewish curriculum, and other Maskilim followed with similar claims. At the same time,

2 On the Haskala’s engagement with scripture and the reaction to emerging Christian biblical scholarship see for example: Edward Breuer, The Limits of Enlightenment. Jews, Germans, and the Eighteenth-Century Study of Scripture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996); on the Hebrew Bible in the context of enlightened Jewish pedagogy see Salzer, Dorothea, Mit der Bibel in die Moderne. Entstehung und Entwicklung jüdischer Kinderbibeln (upcoming Berlin: de Gruyter), esp. ch. 2.

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these reformers accentuated the Hebrew Bible as a source of moral and universal values and saw it fit for serving as a vehicle for teaching basic religious knowledge. The Berlin-based Maskil David Friedländer (1750−1834), for example, asserted that the Hebrew Bible conveys the fundamental and universal ethics of humankind − “the teachings of human religion, or the teachings that are equally holy to all human beings”,³ and should therefore be understood as the first and most sustainable Jewish educational book for religious education as well as moral ethics:⁴ The elementary work from which we Israelites can derive religious and moral instruction […] in our early youth is known to be the holy scripture. […] This holy scripture not only is the textbook of our early youth, but also for the largest part of the nation at a mature age, it remains the only source from which knowledge can be derived, new terms can be obtained, and old ones can be corrected, if it is not connected with the study of the Talmud, or is completely displaced by it in a way that is just as unskillful as it is useless.

Friedländer very explicitly expresses a shift with regard to the definition of religious knowledge: Not rabbinic literature and halakhic discussions ought to be seen as the core of Jewish religious thinking but the Hebrew Bible, which therefore also should serve as the source of reform and renewal, promising new insights and facilitating the rethinking of traditional beliefs and normative definitions of religious knowledge. Hence, according to Friedländer, the Hebrew Bible offers both traditional as well as innovative religious knowledge. At the same time, Friedländer points out that this is only possible if Bible study is accompanied by a rejection of traditional interpretations as presented in rabbinical literature. As a result of this perspective, the enlightened pedagogues saw it fit to derive actualizing adaptations of the Hebrew Bible through paraphrase and interpretation, focusing on contemporary moral ethics and religious practice. With an emphasis on the universal moral aspect, the Jewish enlighteners thereby joined the general tendency of the Christian religious discourse in late Enlightenment, which was strongly influenced by an interpretation of religion as consisting of 3 “Die Lehren der Menschenreligion, oder die Lehren, die allen Menschen gleich heilig sind.” − David Friedländer, Der Prediger. Aus dem Hebräischen von David Friedländer; nebst einer vorangeschickten Abhandlung, Ueber den besten Gebrauch der h. Schrift in pädagogischer Rücksicht (Berlin: Friedich Maurer, 1788), 46 f. 4 “Das Elementarwerk, woraus wir Israeliten […] in unsrer frühen Jugend, religiösen und moralischen Unterricht erlangen können, ist bekanntlich die heilige Schrift. […] Diese heilige Schrift ist nicht allein das Lehrbuch unserer ersten Jugend, sondern auch in reifern Alter, wenn sie nicht mit dem Studium des Talmudʾs verbunden, oder von diesem auf eine eben so unschickliche als zwecklose Weise ganz verdrängt wird, bleibt sie für den allergrößten Theil der Nation die einzige Quelle, woraus Kenntnisse geschöpft, neue Begriffe erlangt und alte berichtigt werden können.” − David Friedländer, Der Prediger, 21 f.

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practical moral ethics and inwardness, and which saw God’s destiny for humankind in their struggle for moral betterment. When communicating the Hebrew Bible in the classroom, however, it was necessary to proceed selectively, because according to the contemporary pedagogical view, which asked to take into account the gradual development of the children’s minds, children were not to be exposed to all topics presented in the biblical texts, as, for instance, Moritz Schlesinger (ca. 1770−1864), a teacher at the Maskilic Wilhelms-Schule in Breslau, made very clear:⁵ It is not possible for the youngest students of religion to understand the chapters as they follow one another, especially since there are parts in them that the child cannot understand, e. g. the story of Loth with his two daughters; the history of Judah and Tamar; the one of Dina, Jacob’s daughter, with Shechem, and others of the kind that would only spoil the morals of children if a teacher tried to make them understandable.

Establishing Jewish schools with new curricula of learning, the enlighteners also aimed at materializing their visions. In these schools, a significant part of the lessons was devoted to secular education, and religious instruction was based on other principles than the traditional learning in the Chadarim (Jewish elementary education). In addition to fundamentally new considerations about the way of teaching the Hebrew Bible, the fact that religious education now became one subject among many others increased the need of religious textbooks to convey the subject matter in a more compressed and systematic form. This need together with the wish to present a selection of suitable biblical texts meeting contemporary criteria of adequacy furthered the emergence of the genre “Jewish children’s bibles”, which therefore is one of the first new genres of reformed Jewish pedagogic literature. At the same time, it is one of the most successful ones, as apparent from its immense popularity throughout the 19th century. Notably, the genre remained mostly in the realm of Jewish reform, because for German-speaking Jews in search of new self-perceptions and self-definitions, education and reform were closely interwoven. Moreover, the traditional curriculum which ascribed rab-

5 “Es ist nicht möglich, daß für die allerersten Abcschüler der Religion die Kapitel, so wie sie aufeinander folgen, verständlich genug seyn, zumal da sich Stellen darin finden, die das Kind nicht verstehen kann, wie z. B. die Geschichte Loths mit seinen beyden Töchtern; die Geschichte des Juda und der Tamar; die der Dina, Tochter Jakobs, mit Sichem, und andere dergleichen mehr, welche nur zum Verderb der Sitten der Kinder dienen würden, wenn sie ihnen ein Lehrer verständlich machen wollte.” – Moritz Löwe Schlesinger, “Verbesserung der Erziehungsmethode, 1800”. In “Lerne Vernunft!” Jüdische Erziehungsprogramme zwischen Tradition und Modernisierung. Quellentexte aus der Zeit der Haskala, 1760−1811, edited by Uta Lohmann and Ingrid Lohmann (Münster – New York – München – Berlin: Waxmann, 2005), 274–304, here 286.

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binic literature the central role in Jewish education continued to exist in orthodox and later in neo-orthodox Judaism, whereas the education in Hebrew Bible played a rather secondary role in these movements, mirrored also in the fact that orthodox children’s bibles were published at a much smaller scale than children’s bibles in the reform movement. Additionally, however, the orthodox side was generally apprehensive of adapting biblical texts in form and content, as was one of the constituent features of many Jewish children’s bibles.⁶ For example, the author of a text published in the neo-orthodox magazine “Jeschurun”, edited by Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808−1888), stated: “[W]e must protest seriously and emphatically against any attempt to adapt biblical material and disapprove of it as profanation of the most holy.”⁷ Starting with Peretz (later Peter) Beer’s “Sefer Toledot Israel” (“Book of Israel’s History”, Prague 1796)⁸, the first representative of the genre, throughout the 19th century the notion of a rationally justifiable and universal moralization as the basis of Jewish religious knowledge and instruction developed into one of the main hermeneutic paradigms of Jewish children’s bibles. Abraham Cohn and Abraham Dinkelspiel, in the introduction to their children’s bible “Erzählungen der heiligen Schrift für Israeliten” (“Stories of Holy Scripture for Israelites”, 1934) summarize this attitude as follows:⁹

6 On this see: Dorothea M. Salzer, “Altneuer Text: Jüdische Kinderbibeln und die Popularisierung der Hebräischen Bibel.” In Übertragungen heiliger Texte in Judentum, Christentum und Islam. Fallstudien zu Formen und Grenzen der Transposition, edited by Katharina Heyden and Henrike Manuwald (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2019), 169−194. 7 “Ernst und nachdrücklich müssen wir aber gegen jeden Versuch, biblische Stoffe künstlerisch zu bilden, protestiren und als eine Entweihung des Heiligsten mißbilligen.” − N.G., “Ein Wort über jüdische Belletristik.” Jeschurun 4 (1858), 11, 574–578, 578. 8 Beer, Peretz,‫ והוא ספור כולל כל הקורות אשר קרו לכלל עם ישראל מיום ברא יי אלהים את‬:‫ספר תלדות ישראל‬ […] ‫( האדם עד שוב ישראל מגלות בבל ירושלימה‬Prag [no publisher provided], 1796) 9 “Die Bibel war das erste Religionsbuch und wird das letzte bleiben. Als die ehrwürdigste Urkunde der frühesten Erziehungsgeschichte des menschlichen Geschlechts eröffnet sie uns den Blick in das Walten der göttlichen Vorsehung und in die Geheimnisse der ewigen Liebe; als die inhaltsreichste und doch so einfache Tugend- und Sittenlehre, ist es der Bibel einziges Augenmerk, die Menschheit zu erheben und zu veredeln; als Anweisung zur Gottseligkeit dringt sie darauf, Gott im Geiste und in der Wahrheit zu verehren und ein frommes Leben von einem frommen Glauben nie zu trennen; endlich sind ihre Erzählungen ganz dazu geeignet, das sittliche Leben zu veranschaulichen und jedem Einzelnen einen Spiegel vorzuhalten, damit er sich sehen und erkennen möge.” – Abraham Cohn and Abraham Dinkelspiel, Erzählungen der heiligen Schrift für Israeliten. Zum Schul- und Privat-Gebrauch. Nebst einer Vorrede von G. Salomon in Hamburg (Iserlohn und Leipzig: W. Langewiesche, 1834), V.

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The Bible was the first book of religion and will remain the last one. As the most venerable document in humankind’s earliest history of education, it opens our eyes to the reign of divine providence and the secrets of eternal love; as the most comprehensive and yet so simple doctrine of virtue and morals, the Bible only focuses on uplifting and ennobling humanity; as a guide to godliness, it urges worshiping God in spirit and truth and never separating a pious life from a pious belief; finally, its stories are very suitable to illustrate moral life and to hold up a mirror to each individual so that they may see and recognize themselves.

In the following, the application of these hermeneutic predispositions in Jewish children’s bibles will be illustrated in examples derived from Beer’s “Sefer Toledot Israel” as well as from other Jewish children’s bibles published in the 19th century. At this, both the paraphrases of biblical narratives as well as the peritexts the authors added by way of explanation will be taken into account.

2 Moralization and Universalization of Jewish Religious Knowledge and Practice 2.1 Moralization as Universalization of Religious Knowledge Most of the texts presented in these Jewish children’s bibles retell biblical stories, evolving around one or two main figures in order to meet pedagogic considerations of the time, which preferred the so-called “Exempelmethode”, according to which children should be taught and inspired by stories exemplifying desired behaviors. Thus, by way of selection, the authors of Jewish children’s bibles were able to direct the interpretational reading of the biblical texts. All Jewish children’s bibles published from the end of the 18th century to the end of the 19th century, for example, omit texts that touch on the topics of sexuality or reproduction and thus correspond to the sexual morality that emerged in the 18th century. In most cases, also biblical stories of wondrous events or magical practices were omitted highlighting another fundamental paradigm of hermeneutics in Jewish children’s bibles of this period: The authors strongly promoted a rationalistic approach to the biblical texts with content and interpretation geared for their educational ideal of rationalism. On the other hand, texts that were regarded as suitable to promote bourgeois virtues like individual responsibility, temperance, and moderation or gender roles, were likely to be adopted by the authors. One example is Joseph’s virtuous resistance to Potiphar’s wife (Gen 39), which was understood as loyalty and obedience to his employer and therefore became popular in Jewish children’s bibles, al-

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though the fact that the woman wanted to seduce Joseph sexually had to be obscured.¹⁰ Apart from selecting certain biblical texts and disregarding others, their retelling offered further means of moralizing the biblical content. This, for example, is obvious in the story about the Tower of Babel as told by Peter Beer in his “Sefer Toledot Israel” (1796), the very first Jewish children’s bible, published as a bilingual work in Hebrew and German in Hebrew letters. In the biblical account, God decides to confound humankind’s language because he wants to prevent them from getting too powerful (Gen 11:6). In Beer’s version, however, God decides to intervene because according to him humankind was too full of themselves and forgot to strive for constant self-improvement in the sense of moral betterment:“But the Eternal disapproved of them relying on their power and not relying on him and not improving their behavior and he confounded their speech […].”¹¹ By retelling the story in his own words and by putting the stress on the people’s lack of self-improvement, Beer puts in clearly articulated references for moral education. In this, he demonstrates his enlightened understanding of religion according to which the moral implications of religion and practical ethics are the most important features of religious practice. According to enlightened anthropology it was the individual’s religious duty to constantly work on their selfimprovement (perfectibility) which mainly was understood as moral betterment and refinement in manners and virtues. Following Beer’s argument in his version of the biblical story, it is exactly the failure of the generation of the Tower of Babel to fulfill this duty that triggered God’s anger and crossed their plan. In his com10 In Peretz Beer‘s “Sefer Toledot Israel”, ch. 9, for example, the author describes the situation as follows: “Once his master’s wife wanted to coax him to do something bad” (“wollte die Frau seines Herren ihn zu einer schlechten Tat bereden”). Joseph Maier paraphrases the event as: “She was a mean and dangerous woman and she again and again expected Joseph to commit an act of infidelity towards his master” (“Diese war aber ein böses und gefährliches Weib, und muthete Joseph einmal um das andere eine große Untreue gegen seinen Herren zu”). – Joseph Maier, Lehrbuch der Biblischen Geschichte, als Einleitung zum Religionsunterricht in israelitischen Schulen. Nebst einem Anhang: Die Schicksale der Israeliten während der Dauer des zweiten Tempels (Frankfurt am Main: Jäger’sche Buch- Papier- und Landkartenhandlung, 1828), 31. By the end of the 19th century some authors found a more explicit way to describe the situation. In Isaac Herzberg’s children’s bible, for instance, we read: “Potifar’s wife was bad. She wanted so seduce Joseph and to sin with him” (“Potiphars Frau war schlecht. Sie wollte ihn verführen und mit ihm sündigen”). – Isaac Herzberg, Für unsere Unmündigen. Dreißig Geschichten aus der Bibel. Ein Lesebüchlein für die israelitischen Kleinen in Haus und Schule (Bromberg: F. Ebbecke, 1899), 14. 11 “Es missfiel aber dem Ewigen, dass diese Leute sich auf ihre Macht, nicht aber auf ihn verließen, und ihren Wandel besserten, er verwirrte daher ihre Sprache […].” Transcript from the original German in Hebrew letters. Since Beer’s children’s bible is a bilingual one, the author also gives a Hebrew version of the story. – Beer, Peretz, Sefer Toledot Israel, ch. 4.

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mentary, Beer emphasizes this point even more by explaining virtuous self-improvement as the only way to gain God’s approval: “Only by improving our behavior and by virtue we can please God as well as humankind […]”.¹² Thus, in his retelling as well as in his corresponding commentary, Beer renders the text a religious message conveying a universal set of values that are exactly in line with enlightened expectations and sensibilities, both from Christian and Jewish side. As a result of these ideas and ideals, moral lifestyle and the strive for constant self-improvement are generally described in Jewish children’s bibles as the actual task and destiny of humankind. Moses Mordechai Büdinger (1784−1841) in his children’s bible “Derekh Emuna. The way of Faith” (Stuttgart 1823), for example, describes “concrete ethics [sittlicher Wandel]” as “humankind’s perfection on earth”.¹³ Very often these notions are specified by giving detailed regulations about vices that are to be avoided, among which greed, envy, pride, boastfulness, and resentment are the ones most frequently mentioned. On the other hand, virtues that ought to be cultivated include trust in God and fear of God, piety, humility, moderation and self-control, charity, as well as diligence and fulfillment of duty. Not by chance these lists closely resemble bourgeois ethics, because due to the Jewish embracement of bourgeois values¹⁴ the endeavor to associate these with the Hebrew Bible or even to deduce them from it is another very common feature of Jewish children’s bibles in the 18th and 19th centuries. As a consequence, authors characterize biblical figures as models of bourgeois behavior: the patriarchs, for instance, are depicted as loving fathers devoted to their families, and Josef becomes the loyal and obedient servant of his master as well as a diligent worker. The tendency towards a moralizing interpretation of the biblical text, thus, meets with the implementation of bourgeois values in the text. Bourgeois work ethic is one of the most prominent core values propagated in Jewish children’s bibles. Beer’s “Sefer Toledot Israel”, for instance, promotes labor as humankind’s destiny assigned by God.¹⁵ This becomes apparent, inter alia, from 12 “Nur durch Besserung unseres Wandels und durch Tugend können wir Wohlgefallen und Wohlergehen von Gott und dem Menschen erreichen […].” – Beer, Peretz, Sefer Toledot Israel, ch. 4, note 3. 13 “So soll und kann jeder Mensch über seinen sittlichen Wandel – seine Vollendung auf Erden – nachdenken.” – Moses Mordechai Büdinger, ‫ דרך אמונה‬Der Weg des Glaubens, oder kleine Bibel. Enthaltend einen vollständigen Auszug aus den Büchern der heiligen Schrift; zunächst für israelitische Frauen und Mädchen, und mit Rücksicht auf den Unterricht in der Religion und Sittenlehre bearbeitet (Stuttgart: Löflund,1824 [first edition 1823]), 420. 14 On this see for example: Simone Lässig, Jüdische Wege ins Bürgertum. Kulturelles Kapital und sozialer Aufstieg im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004). 15 See, for instance: Peretz Beer, Sefer Toledot Israel, ch. 1, note 8.

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the lesson Beer derives from the story about Manna, which served as food of the Israelites during the 40 years in the desert. The author states determinedly that this should not be understood as an excuse for idleness: “Pray my dear ones, and work […]. Because work is indispensable, necessary for humankind, […] it provides us with the safest protection against vice, to which shameful idleness misleads us.”¹⁶ Although the first phrase reminds of the Benedictine “ora et labora”, it is more likely to evoke the identical motto whichthe enlightened and very influential German pedagogue Heinrich Joachim Campe, hence, begins his description (1746−1818) chose for his “Robinson der Jüngere” (“Robinson the Younger”, 1779/80): Hence, it is not the monastic asceticism that is the basis of Beer’s interpretation, but the conception of work as a satisfying, preserving, and even moral activity bestowed on humankind by God, as it was popular in contemporary discourses. Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden accounts in many Jewish children’s bibles for the necessity of labor and the good that derives from it for humankind because God imposed work on them as part of his plan for their betterment and spiritual fulfilment. Cohn/Dinkelspiel’s “Erzählungen der heiligen Schrift” (1834), for example, make sure to explain that God’s punishment of Adam and Eve only had their best interests at heart because it prevented them from “evil desire”.¹⁷ In Moritz Stößel’s “Biblische Geschichte” (“History of the Bible”, Brünn 1857/58) we find a very vivid and elaborated example of how the notion of human perfectibility is united with bourgeois work ethics in Jewish children’s bibles. Stößel starts with the same assumption as Cohn/Dinkelspiel, but goes on to describe work as a fount of self-improvement and natural progress:¹⁸ 16 “Betet also meine Lieben, und arbeitet. Denn die Arbeit ist dem Menschen unumgänglich, nothwendig, […] sie gibt uns den sichersten Schutz gegen das Laster, wozu uns der schändliche Müßiggang verleitet.” – Peretz Beer, Sefer Toledot Israel, ch. 22, note 1. 17 Abraham Cohn, and Abraham Dinkelspiel, Erzählungen der heiligen Schrift, 7. 18 “Durch die begangene Sünde waren Adam und Eva in ihren eigenen Augen sehr herabgesunken […]; ein unbeschäftigtes Leben hätte bei der einmal erwachten Begierde sie leicht der Sünde anheimfallen und noch tiefer sinken gemacht; ‘Müßigkeit ist ja aller Laster Anfang.’ Sie mußten nun einerseits abgehalten werden, den bösen Gelüsten so leicht nachhängen zu können, anderseits mußten sie zur Selbsterkenntniß, zur Erkenntniß ihres höhern, göttlichen Geistes gebracht werden […]. Das Mittel hierzu lag in dem anscheinenden Fluche eines arbeitsschweren Lebens. Die Noth nämlich machte die Menschen nun erfinderisch; durch Erfindungen, Erfahrungen und durch fleißiges Bemühen gelang es ihnen allmälig, ihre Nahrungsmittel zu verbessern, ihr Leben und ihre Umgebung sich zu verschönern, und außerhalb des Edens auch einen schönen herrlichen Garten anzulegen […].” – Moritz Stößel, Biblische Geschichte zum Gebrauche für den israelitischen Religionsunterricht an Gymnasien und Realschulen. Von Moritz Stößel, Lehrer der israelit. Religion an den k.k. Lehranstalten in Brünn. I. Heft. Für die erste Classe des Unter-Gymnasiums und der Unter-Realschule. II. Heft. Für die zweite Classe des Unter-Gymnasiums und der Unter-Realschule (Brünn: C. Winiker, 1857−1858), 15.

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Because of the sin they had committed, Adam and Eve had sunk very low in their own eyes […]; once the desire had awakened, an idle life would have easily caused them to sin and sink even deeper; “Idleness is the beginning of all vice.” On the one hand, they had to be prevented from indulging in evil desires so easily, on the other hand, they had to be brought to selfawareness, to the realization of their higher, divine spirit […]. The remedy for this lay in the supposed curse of a difficult life. For the hardship now made people inventive; through inventions, experiences, and hard work, they gradually managed to improve their food, to beautify their lives and their surroundings, and to create a beautiful magnificent garden outside of Eden […].

In general, Jewish children’s bibles advocate a reading of the Hebrew Bible, according to which already the ancient Israelites lived in pursue of the same virtues and moral ethics that were popular at the time of the authors and their readers. And because they conceived of the Hebrew Bible as the spiritual treasure of Judaism, they understood this ethics as a genuine part of Jewish religion and life since its very beginning. Consequently, biblical figures where perceived as role models for contemporary readers that were in search for a modern life style in agreement with Jewish tradition and the will of God. The interpretation of biblical stories against the background of enlightened notions such as perfectibility and morality, in the sense of a bourgeois set of values, led to the universalization of religious knowledge, while also entailing a decrease in the particularistic aspects of Jewish religion. This process, for example, is reflected in a new understanding of the covenant between God and Israel and a reinterpretation of what it meant to be the chosen people, as can be seen in Hillel Sondheimer’s preamble to the Ten Commandments in his children’s bible from 1881:¹⁹ Before God announced the Ten Coammandments, he said to Israel: “You shall be my property from all nations, for mine is the whole earth.” What do these words mean? These words indicate that Israel was called to recognize God first among all peoples and to do His will; but that God is not just one people’s god, not a national god, but the only God of all nations.

19 “Ehe Gott die 10 Aussprüche verkündete, sprach er zu Israel: ’Ihr sollt mir ein Eigentum sein aus allen Völkern, denn mein ist die ganze Erde.’ Was besagen diese Worte? Diese Worte besagen, daß Israel berufen wurde, zuerst unter allen Völkern Gott zu erkennen und seinen Willen zu erfüllen; daß aber Gott kein bloßer Volksgott, kein Nationalgott, sondern der einzige Gott aller Völker ist.” – Hillel Sondheimer, Geschichtlicher Religionsunterricht. Erste Abtheilung: Biblisch-Geschichtlicher Religionsunterricht. I. Biblisch-geschichtlicher Religionsunterricht (Lahr: Moritz Schauenburg, 1881), 40.

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According to Sondheimer, the concept of Israel as God’s chosen people relates only to the time of the divine revelation at Mount Sinai, but it does not provide Israel an absolute and everlasting special position. Just to the contrary, the God of Israel is the God of all people and not an exclusively Israelite one or a Jewish national god. He, hence, advocates a universal religion that is characterized by the belief in the one God. Nevertheless, also Jews in modern times have a divine assignment, as determined by Sondheimer’s contemporary Benno Badt (1844−1909) in his children’s bible (1890), taking recourse to the biblical prophet Jona: “Jonah is also a picture of the Jewish people. The people of Israel, too, are called by God to teach the people and to encourage virtue and morality.”²⁰ Hence, for Badt, the role of the Jewish people enjoined on them as God’s chosen people is to further moral betterment of humankind. With regard to such a universalist interpretation of Israel’s faith and fate, particularistic notions like the centralization of the cult in Jerusalem or the expectation of the temple’s reconstruction and the gathering of all Jews in messianic times posed of course a problem to the authors of Jewish children’s bibles, for which they had to provide a solution. In reaction to this challenge, Benno Badt suggested that Solomo’s Temple was already a holy place not only for the Israelites but rather for all people and all religions:²¹ God is everywhere, in heaven and on earth, his house is a house designed to remind people that they should pray in every situation of their lives. This house should not be exclusively for Israel, just as Israel’s God is also a God of the whole universe. Therefore, his house is also intended for prayer for the heathen if they recognize him. So the temple is not a narrowminded “national” sanctuary, but a sanctuary of the whole world that is supposed to recognize God’s nature.

20 “Jona ist auch ein Bild des jüdischen Volkes. Auch das Volk Israel wird von Gott dazu berufen, die Völker zu belehren und zur Tugend und Sittlichkeit aufzufordern.” – Badt, Benno, Kinderbibel. Biblische Erzählungen für die israelitische Jugend in Schule und Haus (Breslau: W. Koebner, 1890). The commentary is published as a separate book: Benno Badt, Erläuterungen zu den biblischen Geschichten für die israelitische Jugend in Schule und Haus. Anhang zur Kinderbibel, zugleich auch zu Levy-Badt’s biblischer Geschichte (Breslau: Wilhelm Koebner, 1890), 63. 21 “Gott ist überall, im Himmel und auf Erden, sein Haus ist ein Haus, dazu bestimmt, die Menschen an ihn zu mahnen, daß sie darin ihre Gebete an ihn richten in jeder Lage ihres Lebens. Dieses Haus soll nicht ausschließlich für Israel sein, so wie Israels Gott auch zugleich ein Gott des ganzen Weltalls ist. Daher ist sein Haus auch zum Gebet für die Heiden bestimmt, wenn sie ihn erkennen. So ist der Tempel kein engherziges ‘National’-heiligtum, sondern Heiligtum der ganzen Welt, die Gottes Wesen erkennen soll.” – Badt, Benno, Erläuterungen, 50.

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From the time of the Haskala onwards, ritual religious practice was anathema to Jewish reformers, because it epitomized what they regarded as meaningless “ceremonialism”. Badt, hence, begins his description of the Temple with an introduction that was designed to redefine the Temple’s function. According to Badt, the Solomonic Temple was not the Biblical sanctuary, featuring ritualistic offering and a hierarchized cult personal, but a symbol for the individual’s personal experience in prayer. In this line, Benno Badt projects natural religion’s perception of a universal God for all believers and the notion of a unified worship service back into biblical times and on the Solomonic Temple. As a consequence, both the Israelite sanctuary as well as Jewish religion in general participate in a religion shared by all humans since earliest times. Peter Beer in his “Sefer Toledot Israel” follows a similar line of interpretation when arguing that the messianic era will bring salvation for all people who will gather in Jerusalem:²² Hence, it is also the duty of every true Israelite to indeed believe in the promised return to Jerushalaim […] and to await without fail, when all people without difference of religion will recognize unanimously the only true God, worship and serve him in the same way, and will love each other like brothers.

According to Beer, thus, at the end of times there will be no differences between religions, the Jewish people will not be preferred over others, and all people will be united in brotherly love and in a unified worship service.

2.2 Universalization of Religious Practice As we have seen already in Badt’s redefinition of the First Temple quoted above, the effort to re-define religious knowledge in terms of universalism led to a universalist interpretation of religious practice as well. Peter Beer’s commentary on the Fourth Commandment (honoring Shabbat) is quite explicit in this regard, aiming

22 “So ist daher auch Pflicht eines jeden warhaften Israels, zwar die versprochene Rück Kehr nach Jeruschalaim […] sicher zu glauben und unfehlbar ab zu warten, wo so dan alle Menschen ohne Unter Schied der Religion, den einzigen wahrhaftigen Gott einstimmig erkennen, ihn auf gleicher Art anbeten und dienen, und einander brüderlich lieben werden.” – Peretz Beer, Sefer Toledot Israel, ch. 52, note 4.

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not only to admonish the children with regard to their obligation to keep Shabbat, but also to provide a detailed interpretation of Shabbat piety:²³ The Fourth Commandment commands to honor the Shabbat and other festivals and to rest on these days from work. But these holy days should not, my beloved ones! as some of you may mistakenly believe, be used for swarming, flirting and other idleness. This commandment further commands these sacred days to be carried out in true piety and devotion, to remember mistakes made last week, to ask God for forgiveness, to reconcile with Him, to reflect on one’s state of mind, and to prepare for the next week consciously.

Hence, Beer determines Shabbat indeed as a day of rest, but he makes sure to fill this “rest” with concrete practical piety: According to him, Shabbat ought to be a day of inner contemplation and introspection and a day of individual approach to God.²⁴ The author, thus, stresses a dimension that corresponds to the reinterpretation of religion as individual experience and a means to achieve individual perfectibility, completely in line with the enlightened concept of religion. At the same time, he does not stress or even explicate any of the obligations connected to Shabbat in Jewish Halakha. This universal approach to Shabbat is very typical for the way Peter Beer (and many authors were to follow him in this) relates to practices and contents that might be considered typically Jewish. If he mentions them at all, he paints them in a very broad sense, interpreting Judaism as a religion of good moral behavior free of particularisms such as halakhic commandments. In a number of children’s bibles, the authors make a point of drawing the attention to the connection between specific biblical narratives and Jewish holidays, in general in order to strengthen historical consciousness of the readers and to (re)define Jewish identity historically. Some of the authors even strive to give an introduction to the meaning of traditional festivities. In this, however, it is not so much a matter of presenting the content, commandments or customs traditionally associated with the holidays as it is about interpreting them in the universal, morally oriented language of the time. Cohn/Dinkelspiel, for instance, explain the meaning of Rosh ha-

23 “Das Vierte Gebott befiehlt, den Schabbat und andere Feste zu ehren, und an denselben von der Arbeit aus zu ruhen. Nicht aber meine Lieben! wie einige von euch irrig glauben möchten, dass etwa diese heiligen Tage euch zum Herum Schwärmen, Tändeln und sonstigem Müßiggange eingesetzt wären. Dieses Gebott befiehlt ferner, diese heiligen Tage in wahrer Frömmigkeit und Andacht zu zu bringen, Fehler, die man etwa vorige Woche begangen hat, sich zu erinnern, Gott darüber um Verzeihung zu bitten, sich mit ihm auszusöhnen, Betrachtungen über seinen Seelenzustand an zu stellen, und sich zur künftigen Woche wisslich vor zu bereiten.” – Peretz Beer, Sefer Toledot Israel, ch. 17, commentary on the Fourth Commandment. 24 See also the very similar commentary on Shabbat by Moses Mordechai Büdinger. Idem, Derekh Emuna. Der Weg des Glaubens, first edition, 78.

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Shana and Yom Kippur as giving the opportunity “for self-reflection, for exploring our way of life, for repentance, for change and improvement […]”, and Pessach, Shavu’ot and Sukkot are described as “opportunity […] to thank the Eternal for the blessed harvest and generally for our physical and spiritual preservation at all.”²⁵ The same trend can be observed in Benno Badt’s “Kinderbibel”, published at the end of the century. Badt defines holidays generally as “means by which the human beings tear themselves away from the circular thought of everyday life in order to think about their higher destiny as persons and to receive instruction.”²⁶ As is apparent from these examples, the considerations of these authors are based on the enlightened concept of religion as a means of moral improvement, as well as they are inevitably connected to the individualization of religious practice, which does not focus primarily on the fulfillment of ritual commandments, but rather on the inner experience and transformation of the individual. Similar thoughts are the basis for a new interpretation of Jewish prayer as it is discernable in Jewish children’s bibles of the 19th century. Here too, the focus shifts from the traditional ritualistic attitude towards prayer as personal experience and as a response to the wish for spiritual fulfillment.²⁷ In this new context, emotional qualities of heart and mind (“Gemüt”) had to be involved, and prayer was expected to further inner transformation. Individual consciousness became thus the yardstick of religious practice and experience, the goal of which was “edification” (“Erbauung”), an uplifting of religious sentiment. This shift in the interpretation of prayer went hand in hand with new aesthetic values, derived from middle class perceptions of decorum. According to these new aesthetic requirements, the inner involvement was expected to be expressed in the performance of prayer as well. Thus, for instance, movements of the body during praying and conversations during the worship service were perceived as disorderly and unworthy of true spiritual experience and therefore proposed to be banished from the synagogues.²⁸ This even found an explicit expression in the children’s bible of Cohn/Din-

25 “Zur Selbstbetrachtung, zur Erforschung unseres Lebenswandels, Zur Buße, zur Bekehrung und Besserung […].”; “Gelegenheit […], dem Ewigen für die gesegnete Aerndte und überhaupt für unsere körperliche und geistige Erhaltung zu danken.”. – Cohn, Abraham, and Abraham Dinkelspiel, Erzählungen der heiligen Schrift, 116. See also Badt, Benno, Erläuterungen, 22 f. 26 “Mittel, durch welche der Mensch von dem Gedankenkreise des alltäglichen Lebens sich losreißt, um über seine höhere Bestimmung als Mensch nachzudenken und Belehrung zu empfangen.” − Badt, Erläuterungen, 21. 27 On this shift in the understanding of religious service see Meyer, Michael, Response to Modernity. A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism. Detroit: Wayne State University, 1995, 18 f. 28 Already Peter Beer in his “Sefer Toledot Israel” makes a point of regulating prayer and worship service in the synagogue according to new aesthetic preferences, see, for example: ch. 17, note to the Second Commandment; ch. 30, note 1 et. al.

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kelspiel, who substantiate the correct behavior during prayer with the biblical story about Hannah praying for a child in the sanctuary of Shilo (I Sam 2):²⁹ Not in many words and sacred customs, not in noisy chants and other formalities prayer is really pleasing to God; rather only in true devotion and purely spiritual worship. Hannah barely moved her lips, and yet she was heard by God because she poured her heart out before the Benevolent. Hence, with our hearts and not with lips, hands and gestures we should worship the original source of all perfection.

By evoking Hannah’s heartfelt prayer in Shilo, Cohn/Dinkelspiel, thus, make the inner involvement of the individual the crucial point of praying. The individual is expected to be wholeheartedly concentrated during the prayer and at the same time should be emotionally involved and affected. In contrast to this, traditional prayer formulas, fixed times for prayers (“many words and sacred customs”, “formalities”) as well as gestures (e. g. swaying the body) are rejected. Thus, while the Hebrew Bible throughout the 19th century was understood as a crucial means to teach Jewish children the foundation of Judaism, universalistic concepts have governed its interpretations and have been promoted in Jewish children’s bibles since the beginning of the genre. These concepts are discernable at a first level in the general tendency to include, if at all, only very unspecific references to Jewish beliefs or practices of religion. On a second level, universalizing tendencies are explicitly represented in accounts and commentaries which reduce the particularistic aspects of Judaism, emphasize similarities with general or even with originally Christian concepts, and present contemporary ideals such as a bourgeois set of values as genuinely Jewish.

3 Conclusion Religious knowledge as presented in Jewish children’s bibles first of all is based on the Maskilic concept that the Hebrew Bible is the traditional Jewish spiritual heritage and the source of a renewed Judaism at the same time. Thus, biblical history

29 “Nicht in vielen Worten und heiligen Gebräuchen, nicht in geräuschvollen Gesängen und andern äußern Förmlichkeiten; sondern nur in wahrer Andacht und rein geistiger Verehrung besteht das wirklich Gottgefällige [sic] Gebet. Hannah bewegte kaum die Lippen und dennoch wurde si von Gott erhört, weil sie ihr Herz vor dem Allgütigen ergoß. Mit dem Herzen also und nicht mit Lippen, Händen und Gebehrden sollen wir den Urquell aller Vollkommenheiten verehren.” – Abraham Cohn, and Abraham Dinkelspiel, Erzählungen der heiligen Schrift, 152. For similar interpretations see: ibid., 10; 116; 219 f.; 222 f. Also in classical rabbinical literature Hannah’s prayer in Shilo is interpreted as a paradigmatic example of praying, see bBer 31a and yBer 4,1/7a.

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became a didactic means, shaping the presentation of religious knowledge in these books. Based on an interpretive retelling of the biblical stories and often enforced by peritexts such as commentaries or headlines, the authors of Jewish children’s bibles used the biblical stories to convey their interpretation of modern Judaism. Beginning with the first children’s bible, Peter Beer’s “Sefer Toledot Israel” (1796) and throughout the 19th century, this interpretation draws heavily on an enlightened discussion according to which the religious experience functioned as a means of the individual’s self-improvement (perfectibility) and was expected to further spiritual contentment. As a consequence, religion is construed in terms of universal moral values and practical ethics (mostly in their bourgeois interpretation) rather than as ritual and adherence to halakhic commandments. Moralistic and practical interpretations of biblical texts construed the individual as striving for moral perfection and seeking for spiritual contentment as the basis for the relationship with God. In this, however, the subjective inner experience of the individual was highlighted, while rituals that were interpreted as being purely ceremonial or even devoid of meaning were pushed into the background and marginalized. The tendency towards moralization, thus, ultimately contributed to the individualization and internalization of Jewish religion, in the course of which the focus shifted away from normative religious practice to the sentiment of the individual. Jewish children’s bibles, hence, promoted a new type of religiosity focusing on morality and edification, in renunciation of Jewish religious knowledge and practice in pre-modern times. The reconceptualization of religious knowledge and practice allowed for an opening to interconfessional understanding, because Jewish children’s bibles promoted the idea of a universal natural religion of morality grounded in and derived from biblical texts and infused by a bourgeois catalog of values and cultural habits. Thus, with their roots in the Haskala movement and enlightened pedagogical thinking which had a long lasting effect on the genre throughout the 19th century, Jewish children’s bibles were part of the reconceptualization of Jewish religion and its adaptation to contemporary sensibilities. It is one of the characteristics of this genre that its target audience was not an elite, but Jewish children in general. Thus, as pedagogical means, Jewish children’s bibles were highly influential agents of change in a time of emancipation and socio-cultural transformation, aiming at mediating between Jewish religion and non-Jewish culture as well as between Jewish tradition and the challenges of modernity.

Gordon S. Mikoski

Bear-ing Witness to the Gospel: Religious Knowledge and Position Taking in Illustrations of Nineteenth-Century Children’s Bibles I have discovered that there is a lively and growing body of literature around the topic of 19th-century children’s literature and even children’s Bibles. On the English side of things, I have been enormously helped by the still developing literature on the subject contributed by Ruth Bottigheimer in her key work The Bible for Children: From the Age of Gutenberg to the Present. ¹ I have also found Russell W. Dalton’s work Children’s Bibles in America: A Reception History of the Story of Noah’s Ark in US Children’s Bibles to be illuminating.² Caroline Vander Stichele and Hugh S. Pyper’s edited collection of essays in Text, Image, & Otherness in Children’s Bibles: What is the Picture? ³ has also proven to be quite useful in developing my thinking on the subject at hand. At the most basic level, engaging this topic has made it ever more clear to me that there is simply no such thing as innocent or apolitical children’s Bibles. Every children’s Bible that has ever been produced takes positions that reflect a set of theological, pedagogical, political, and social commitments.

1 Sola Scriptura?! E.B. White, the American author of the children’s book Charlotte’s Web as well as a standard manual on writing, once observed: “There’s no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.”⁴ Many aspects of contemporary life are not straightforward and are often not what they seem to be at first glance, particularly in romantic relationships. This is so much the case now that the phrase “It’s complicated” has become a stock phrase in American 1 Ruth Bottigheimer, The Bible for Children: From the Age of Gutenberg to the Present (New Haven: Yale, 1996). 2 Russell B. Dalton, Children’s Bibles in America: A Reception History of the Story of Noah’s Ark in US Children’s Bibles (New York: T&T Clark, 2016). 3 Caroline Vander Stichele and Hugh S. Pyper, eds., Text, Image, & Otherness in Children’s Bibles: What is the Picture? (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012). 4 E.B. White, “Quo Vadimus?” The Adelphi, 1:1 (1930), 34. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110795905-010

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slang for just about anything…including, sorry to say, the state of our government and our government’s foreign policy! When asked about what the Bible teaches and what we should teach in relation to the Bible, Protestant and Catholic religious educators would have to say: “It’s complicated!” As an adult convert to Christianity and an avowed, self-affirming Calvinist, I used to believe wholeheartedly in the Reformation cry of “sola Scriptura!” After having served as a pastor for middle school kids and adults for nearly a decade, after leading several “read through the Bible” campaigns in multiple congregations, and after teaching a seminary course entitled “Teaching the Bible in the Church” several times, I am now a little less sure about that Reformation rallying cry. First, I have come to see hermeneutically that it is never “sola” the Bible that we read; we always read as much about ourselves and our implicit cultural assumptions and biases as we read about the strange world of monotheistic religions originating in West Asia during the period that stretches from the Iron Age to the Roman Empire. Second, there’s a lot of difficult, disturbing, and disgusting material in the Bible: ‒ God finding two brothers so evil that He simply killed them (Genesis 38) ‒ A talking donkey (Numbers 22) ‒ A heroic king taking a devoted soldier’s wife as his mistress and then giving the order to have the soldier killed surreptitiously (II Samuel 11) ‒ A prophet ordered to marry a prostitute and then to give names to the children that would certainly get them beaten up on the playground (Hosea 1) ‒ God taking a bet with the devil about how much suffering it would take to break an innocent man (Job 1–2) ‒ The prophet Elijah trash-talking his rival prophets by suggesting that their god is too busy urinating to answer them by fire (I Kings 18) ‒ An apostle saying that he wishes that the knife would slip during the circumcision ceremony for those who think you have to become Jewish before you can become Christian (Galatians 5) I could go on…but you get the idea! The more I teach the Bible, the more I can see the wisdom of the Roman Catholic hierarchy who really didn’t want lay people to read the Bible and instead wanted to tell the people what the Bible teaches. There’s a lot of difficult and non-child friendly material in the Bible. At best, we can say, “It’s complicated.” Nevertheless, as a Reformed pastor and seminary professor I traffic in the Bible. Getting people of all ages to read and understand the Bible is a lot of what I believe God has called me to be about in my vocational life. The problem of what to teach and how to teach the Bible to children and youth, however, presents enormous challenges.

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With all of these concerns and commitments in mind, I turn to engage the question of “Religious Knowledge and Position Taking in Illustrations of 19th-Century Children’s Bibles.” Looking at engravings and prints of a selection of images related to selected biblical stories seems a bit innocuous. Upon deeper reflection, however, the issue becomes quite complicated, eventually, illuminating.

2 Engravings and Prints Related to Selected Biblical Stories I find Aristotle’s theory of causation as articulated in his Physics quite helpful for thinking about education in general and for decoding illustrations in children’s Bibles specifically.⁵ Aristotle argued that one cannot understand the existence of any particular thing without grasping the purpose for which a thing exists, the raw materials out of which it was made, the pattern to which the raw materials were shaped, and the processes by which the materials were transformed. These four “causes” correlate loosely to four interrelated elements of education: the purposive aims; the learners who need to be formed; the curriculum as the pattern into which the learners need to be formed; and the methods of instruction as the processes by which the learners are formed. Paraphrasing in a pedagogical key, we can really only comprehend properly the educational enterprise when we gain clarity on why educational activity should take place, who is involved in it, what should be taught, and how the subject matter should be taught. In addition, I always add a fifth factor (which seems consonant with other parts of Aristotle’s approach to understanding things): the context in which education takes place. These five interlocking Aristotelian categories, then, provide helpful analytical tools for interpreting illustrations found in 19th-century children’s Bibles.

2.1 Aims The overriding concern that guided the selection, development, and location of illustrations in children’s Bibles was always the aim or purpose. I have been able to identify several teleological concerns involved in the production of the Bibles for children in the 1800s. Most of them make clear that the aim is conversion. The selected stories (sometimes, but not always accompanied by illustrations) were pitched in such a way that they will bring children to an awareness of the wrath and 5 Aristotle, Physics 2.3. See also Metaphysics 5.2.

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mercy of God, the goodness of creation, the salvific character of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and the importance of a life of faith as expressed in terms of moral uprightness in society. Somewhat surprisingly, this does not account for the existence, selection, and illustration of all of the literature in question. Some children’s Bibles were produced in order to foster a desired set of social attitudes and behaviors. Moral formation as obedient children and, eventually, good citizens function as the overriding aims of some children’s Bibles. Other children’s Bibles were produced in order to stimulate a desire for deeper and more extensive engagement with the actual Bible at a later point in the readers’ lives. The aim in this group of children’s Bibles is more subtle than explicit. The hope is that by reading appropriately scaled biblical content, the readers will develop curiosity and a desire for reading the Bible more completely and deeply. It has to be said, though, that there is likely here, too, an evangelical intention about salvific knowledge.

2.2 Context The issue of context comes into play in relation to the aims of children’s Bibles. In fact, the aims can hardly be understood apart from considerations of context. The matter of location has several facets. For example, the physical location in which children’s Bibles were produced along with the geography of the imagined readership had a good deal to do with the selection, adaptation, and selection of biblical narratives. According to Dalton, there are three main eras for the cultural-historical context of children’s Bibles.⁶ First, there is the era of Puritanism in which fear of a righteous and judging God combined with high child mortality rates. In this cultural context, the selection of stories and the even more restricted selection of illustrations tended to emphasize the fear of God and the consequences of disobedience to God and to parents. Second, beginning in the middle of the 19th century, we see the development of Romantic notions of childhood arising from Fichte and the Romantic movement in Germany, channeled through the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge in England, and culminating in the landmark work in educational ministry by Horace Bushnell in his work Christian Nurture in 1854.⁷ The voluntarist theology of revivalism in the first half of the 19th century and the decline in child mortality rates also contributed to a shift in the cultural environment in

6 Dalton, 259 and throughout. 7 Horace Bushnell, Christian Nurture (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979 [1861]).

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which children’s Bibles were produced. In this cultural context, children were special and precious, rather than corrupt and potentially damned. The selection of biblical stories tended to downplay the wrath of God and to emphasize the choice that children had about faith and moral conduct. In the middle of the 20th century with the rise of modern psychology and pedagogy as well as growing concerns about childhood safety, the cultural context shifted in such a way that children’s Bibles tended to emphasize the care and support that an all-loving God provides to young children in the ups and downs of life. The issue of context plays out religiously as well. Whether children’s Bibles were produced by German Lutherans, French Catholics, Swiss and English Reformed, or American fundamentalists has a good deal to do with aims that, in turn, guided selection and illustration of content. Ruth B. Bottigheimer illustrates this particularly well in her analysis of the ways that Catholics and Protestants tended to illustrate the sacrifice of Isaac story in Genesis 22. For Catholics, Isaac is usually seen to be kneeling in obedience. For Protestants, Isaac is usually bound and laying in a prone position, indicating complete dependence upon grace for salvation.⁸ Social class also seems to have played a role with respect to context. Bottigheimer points out that for a time in the early part of the 19th century children’s Bibles were differentially produced. Those for poor children tended to emphasize the virtues of hard work and obedience, while the Bibles for rich children tended to emphasize responsibility to care for others. Even when the same content was made available to poor and rich children alike due to changes in the cost of printing production, the quality of the paper, the binding, the coloring of illustrations differed along class lines.⁹

2.3 Learners/Readers We next come to the matter of the learners. It is quite clear that the producers of children’s Bibles made several key assumptions about the raw human material they intended to shape by their material product. That Bibles were produced for children at all suggests that children were in need of religious and moral intervention and, contrary to Rousseau, should not be left to let “nature” take its course. Children were either born sinners or likely to fall into sin. Either way, divine in-

8 Bottigheimer, 76–7. 9 Ibid., 96–100.

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tervention mediated through the teachings of Scripture could address the problems of sin, selfishness, or fear – depending on the time period. The children’s Bibles of the 19th century assumed that children were passive learners and malleable in their thinking, feeling, and action. This means that guidance from parents, clergy, and teachers had a chance to set them on the right course in life and to steer them away from an undesirable way of life. All producers of children’s Bibles seem to agree that the most reliable way to produce good adults for church and society involved regular exposure to and internalization of biblical teachings from the earliest possible age. From a Protestant point of view, the producers adhered to the belief that God’s Spirit works in a young person’s life through the mediation of Scripture. Most importantly, the Spirit works to bring young people to a right relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

2.4 Methods of Instruction As for methods, children’s Bibles tend toward direct instructional strategies. The text of almost all children’s Bibles communicates settled, authoritarian answers to life’s big questions. The bulk of such literature is convergent in character. That is to say, it emphasizes conveying or leading the reader to the “correct” way of thinking and acting in relation to God and other human beings. Very little of this literature moves in a divergent outcome direction in which children would be invited to think for themselves or to explore questions in an open-ended fashion. Likewise, there is little place for the young reader to explore what the material might mean for herself. Instead, the meaning is determined in advance for the young person who should internalize the prescriptive messages conveyed in the narratives provided. The direct instruction conveyed by the prose and occasional poetry of children’s Bibles is supplemented by visual illustrations. What material is depicted and how it is depicted intend to guide the reader to the correct interpretation of the selected textual material. In other words, the illustrations function as a kind of visual shorthand for the direct instruction of the strictly textual matter. It should be noted that many children’s Bibles provide prefatory instructional notes to adults, often the father of the family or the pastor. The instructions often encourage these male adult authority figures to reinforce the direct instruction provided by the text with even more direct instruction in the event of reading together with the child. Occasionally, it is suggested that the adult instructor engage the young reader in some discussion of the text. At least in principle, this allows for at least a slight “crack in the door” of the overriding concern for direct instruction in children’s Bibles. Any deviation from a thoroughgoing embrace of direct in-

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structional methods, however, only comes after the rise of the modern pedagogical movement in the early decades of the 20th century and, even then, only in liberal Protestant streams of thought. Even until today, the predominant mode of encounter of subject matter in children’s Bibles is from the direct instruction family of teaching methods.

2.5 Curriculum Finally, we come to the question of subject matter or content. To begin, I would observe that the approach to subject matter in 19th-century children’s Bibles is essentialist and perennialist in character.¹⁰ It is essentialist in that there is an operative assumption that there are certain essential things that must be known in order to navigate life successfully and these principles have been explored and established in the past, namely during the biblical period. It is also perennialist in that the subject matters seek to address questions that emerge repeatedly and perpetually in human existence. The core questions and dilemmas are not new; they are as old as humanity itself and each generation has to deal with them in order to succeed at life. It is quite clear that the curriculum in children’s Bibles of the 19th century has nothing to do with progressivist notions of the engagement with and the reconstruction of learners’ experience in light of contemporary challenges. To be fair, Progressivism and John Dewey were not at play in the way educators approached curriculum and methods of teaching until the early part of the 20th century. Nonetheless, there is little to no commitment in 19th-century children’s Bibles to developing new insights to deal with contemporary spiritual or social problems. Even less is there evidence for a reconstructionist approach to curriculum arising from Marxist visions for revolution and the wholesale reconstruction of society as the basis of justice and equality. I have yet to see any subject matter in children’s Bibles of the 19th century through the present day that addresses the prophetic traditions of the Old and New Testaments as something more than providing examples of pious exemplars of (Protestant) faith. I cannot find anything that even remotely addresses structural injustice, racism, and sexism or the need to fundamentally reconstruct or revolutionize society on the basis of divine revelation. Such material is apparently entirely foreign to the subject matter of children’s Bibles in the 19th century. This underscores the overwhelming tendency of child-

10 Allan C. Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins, Curriculum: Foundations, Principles, and Issues, 5th ed. (Boston: Pearson, 2009), 56.

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ren’s Bibles toward upholding and maximizing the traditional ordering of society as White, patriarchal, socially privileged, and heteronormative. Said another way, the subject matter of 19th-century children’s Bibles looks to the hallowed past in order to preserve the order of things in the unstable present for the sake of a threatening future. I will briefly illustrate some of what I have found by looking at the themes of Christian appropriation of Jewish Scripture, Protestant-Catholic positioning, White normativity, and moral formation as obedience to patriarchal authority. Children’s Bibles produced by Christians in the 19th century – whether Protestant or Catholic – conveyed supersessionism as the norm in Jewish-Christian relations. The Israelites of the Old Testament were important precursors to the church on the New Testament. Moses received divine revelation and was a prefigurement of Jesus Christ (who was the Incarnation of divine revelation). We can see the dynamics of supersessionism quite clearly in two illustrations from Bible Pictures published by the London Religious Tract Society. In a page entitled “The Holy Law”, one can see an attempt to summarize the meaning of the Jewish Torah immediately morphed into a statement on salvation in Jesus Christ.¹¹ A few pages later, one can see a treatment of Samson killing a lion with his bare hands. In this case, allegorical exegesis is used to turn the story into a spiritual admonition for Christian children.¹² There are also racial positions that occur regularly in children’s Bibles of the th 19 century and their accompanying illustrations. We see, for instance, that human beings as God intended them are White. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve are clearly White people. They look like healthy young White adults from Western Europe or America. All of humanity is portrayed in terms of the normativity of Whiteness. One would like to believe that such White supremacy had been excised from contemporary children’s Bibles, but such is not the case. I came across an illustration from the DK Family Illustrated Bible published in 2013.¹³ Deplorably, this image continues to show that God’s norm for humanity is apparently Euro-American White people. This can be seen in an illustration of Cain and Abel from Bible Pictures. ¹⁴ In this depiction, the hapless and spiritually upright Abel is White and the violent and spiritually corrupted Cain is a person of color, probably Black. This can also be seen regularly in illustrations that depict the three sons of Noah: the wicked 11 No author, Bible Pictures, Picture Books for Little Children, No. 6 (London: Religious Tract Society, n.d.), 5. 12 Ibid., 8. 13 No author, DK Family Illustrated Bible (New York: DK, 2014), 18. 14 Bible Pictures, 2.

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Ham is Black and the other two brothers are White. The norm of Whiteness as God’s intention for humanity subtly communicates that Euro-Americans are God’s favored group and that people of color are somehow deficient or inferior. In this way, the seemingly innocent depiction of creation and the early history of humanity has a decidedly White supremacist and even colonialist agenda. If Whiteness is what God had in mind for all of humanity, then White Christians have an obligation to bring “civilization” and the right ordering of things to inferior, violent savages who are people of color. Another way in which we can see position taking at work in the religious knowledge taught in the subject matter of 19th-century children’s Bibles concerns moral formation as obedience to (patriarchal) authority. In one of the earliest and most widely published children’s Bibles in late 18th- and early 19th-century America, The Hieroglyphic Bible, one discovers that only the Second Table of the Ten Commandments is taught.¹⁵ The entire First Table is missing and only the commandments pertaining to right treatment of one’s neighbor make an appearance. Most intriguing of all, perhaps, is the appearance and disappearance of the story of Elisha and the two bears who kill the 42 children in II Kings 2.23–25. In the early part of the 19th century, this story played a prominent, if ominous role in children’s Bibles. In the “thumb Bible”¹⁶ that was reprinted and revised many times in the US, this story is one of the few stories from the entire Bible included and one of only 18 that are deemed worthy of illustration. In this image, we see bears attacking some of the children. The question immediately arises as to why this story was thought worthy of inclusion in very brief treatments of the entirety of Scripture. The answer is that this story shows what happens to children who flout God’s Word and who disregard God’s legitimate spokespersons, particularly fathers and male pastors. In case children were unclear on why the bears ate the children, a French Bible instruction card for use by fathers and pastors makes clear the rationale: the children were killed by God through the agency of the bears because they had been raised by bad parents and, in turn, had bad moral character.¹⁷ Remarkably, the shift in thinking about childhood that arose in the middle of the 19th century as a result of Romanticism gave rise to a complete erasure of the Elisha and the bears eating children story from the pages of children’s Bibles during that period. From that point forward, stories about Elisha – if included at all –

15 No author, A New Hieroglyphic Bible for Amusement and Instruction of Children (London: G. Thompson, 1794), 18. 16 For example, see History of the Bible (Hartford: Julius Gilman, 1827). 17 Published in 1805 as a deck of 48 Old Testament stories.

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tend to focus on the resurrection of the widow’s son and the healing of Naaman the Syrian. No more bears eating disobedient children.¹⁸ This brief consideration of White normativity and moral formation as obedience to authority shows that the selection of curricular material and the even more selective illustration materials are anything but neutral. The way in which biblical content is communicated to children reflects deeply embedded and usually highly conservative social commitments.

3 Summary Teaching the Bible to children and youth presents enormous pedagogical challenges. The Bible was not primarily written with children and youth in mind. It was written by adults, for adults. Yet, there has always been wide agreement among Protestants that core teachings of the Bible have relevance for people of all ages, including children and youth. From the 19th century to the present day, determining what to include and how to communicate what is deemed worthy of inclusion reflects commitments about aims, context, the learners, and methods of instruction. By analyzing the evidence using these interlocking pedagogical elements, we can readily see that the religious knowledge conveyed in children’s Bibles is anything but neutral and it always reflects complex positions which in turn reveal various theological and political interests. The hermeneutics of suspicion at work here needs, though, to be tempered a bit before closing. To be sure, illustrations in children’s Bibles intend to shape the interpretation of the selected and adapted texts from Holy Writ, yet that is only one part of the equation. As Michel De Certeau made clear in his book The Practice of Everyday Life, consumers and readers are never simply passive in the face of intended scripting by powerful social interests.¹⁹ Notably, DeCerteau pushed back on the narrative of active enscripting and the passive victimhood of those who are targets of the inscripting. The supposedly passive victims actually have agency and tend to make meaning out of what is pushed upon them in a way that makes sense to themselves, not always in the ways intended by those producing the cultural materials. Rarely, if ever, are the intended recipients of inscripting shaped without pushing back or bending meaning to fit their own agendas. It is not out of the question to imagine that even children who read children’s Bibles or 18 Ironically, the II Kings 2 story of Elisha and the bears killing the children only reappears in modern times in atheist positioning against the Bible and Christian faith. 19 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everday Life, translated by Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California, 1984), xii-xiv.

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who had the material read to them exercised some degree of meaning-making agency that did not always correspond to the agendas thrust upon them, even if they only exercised criticism or skepticism in private moments. In order to investigate the matter of reader agency with regard to 19th-century children’s Bibles, we would have to push research on the history of reception of biblical texts beyond the mere text of children’s Bibles to the experiences of children as readers of the material. We would, for instance, have to scour 19th- and early 20th-century diaries and memoirs in order to see what sort of sense the young reader actually made out of the matrix of direct instruction – with all of its implicit White, male, privileged class, and heteronormativity messages. With evidence from even one such reader who exercised creative push-back or critical agency in relation to encountering the message of children’s Bibles and their illustrations, we would have to say that the research into position taking and religious knowledge is incomplete and even oddly one-dimensional. Perhaps this is the next frontier of research into a reception history approach combined with a position taking approach to the teaching of religious knowledge through children’s Bibles. Despite the work that still needs to be done into the complex way that religious knowledge and position taking occurred in relation to 19th-century children’s Bibles, we can at least say that recent work on this topic has made it abundantly clear that there is no neutral ground – and that there never has been – when it comes to religious literature for children. Taking responsibility and promoting a multi-cultural, global view of religious knowledge has to be the order of the day going forward in developing biblically-based subject matter for children in the contemporary world. Perhaps Protestant religious educators might intentionally design and take explicit responsibility for the marbling of cultures, peoples, and religions that is now occurring in the digital age.

Part E: Sermons

Samuel J. Kessler

“Let There Be No Strife Between Me and You”: On the Relationship Between Judaism and Christianity in an 1859 Sermon by Adolf Jellinek

In the fall of 1859, Adolf Jellinek (1821–1893), preacher at the newly-constructed Leopoldstadt Temple in Vienna, gave a sermon entitled “Israel’s Teachings on the Relationship of Jews and Non-Jews (Israel’s Lehre über die Beziehungen von Juden zu Nichtjuden).”¹ The sermon (which he later included in a three-volume collection of his addresses) was written for Shabbat Vayera, the selection from Genesis (18:1–22:24) as designated by the annual Jewish cycle for reading the complete Pentateuch. The sermon unfolds in three parts, and like many of Jellinek’s discourses from this period, it is founded on themes of political liberalism – justice, equality, universalism – and the ways they are already deeply embedded in the classical texts of Judaism. In other aspects, as well, the sermon resembles many of Jellinek’s homilies from this period: it is full of high rhetorical flourish, including grand sweeping narratives of history and time and ending with a utopian vision of human society at peace in the bosom of God; it quotes generously from Jewish texts, demonstrating Jellinek’s mastery of halakha and aggada; and it argues that Judaism was first among the religions in its historical embrace of liberalism’s universalist values. Yet at a more fundamental level, the sermon stands out in both style and substance. What appears at its beginning to be merely a passionate discourse on the relationship between Jews and non-Jews becomes by its end a pointed and searing call to reimagine the entire relationship between Judaism and Christianity writ large. There has been mutual animosity between the two religions for so long, Jellinek says, a bitterness that dates back centuries and echoes in the writings of both sides. (“For every drop of ink which the Jews used to write these outbursts [against Christians]…streams of Jewish blood had flown before!”²) Do we not now, he asks, inhabit a century and society in which mutual respect – indeed, even friendship – between Jews and Christians is possible? Have we not had enough of hatred and bloodshed, of antipathy and malice, that we should not strive for a new beginning? Can we not now recognize that we share reverence for the same God, creator of 1 Adolf Jellinek, Predigten, vol. 2. (Vienna: Carl Gerold’s Sohn, 1863), 122–139. 2 Jellinek, Predigten, vol. 2., 138. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110795905-011

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Heaven and Earth, in a Europe that has space for us all? “Love generates love and hatred generates hatred, or, in concert with the great poet [Friedrich Schiller] who is celebrated these days in all parts of Germany: ‘Love is love’s price’.”³ In the sermon, Jellinek’s answer as to how Jews and Christians could forge mutual trust and charitable goodwill in modernity followed on ideas developed in the eighteenth century, that of both religions as children of Abraham.⁴ But Jellinek’s idea was to imagine Judaism and Christianity not as siblings but as parent and child, and therefore to prompt emotions not of fraternity but of filial piety and maternal love. Christianity is, Jellinek writes, one of Judaism’s “daughter religions” (Tochterreligionen), and is this not why, he asks, “[the great Jewish authorities of the early modern period] recognize in their legal provision that the followers of the oldest daughter religion of Judaism invoke the same God of Heaven and Earth as Israel, and that only through their conception and organization of the idea of God do they differ and are separate [from us]?”⁵ Just as children are an intrinsic part of their parents’ story, embodying their parents’ values but forging their own lives, so too Judaism and Christianity are engaged in the same great Earthly endeavor – love of God and pursuit of justice. Still, in the middle of the nineteenth century, to assert (in positive tones) a familial bond between Judaism and Christianity, and to have it be meaningfully believed, required more than rhetorical flourish. Which is why this sermon is so markedly different from nearly all of Jellinek’s others. Rather than a meditation on holiness or a heartfelt plea for justice – as is the common frame for most of Jellinek’s communal sermons in Vienna – this one is structured as almost an academic argument, analytical in its methods, comprehensive in its scope, brimming with citations and references. Using Abraham as his model and starting point, Jellinek’s sermon takes listeners from the actions of their forefather as recorded in Vayera, through the positive relations between Israelites and non-Israelites chronicled in later biblical texts, and up to the classical and medieval codifications of the rules and ethics of Jewish-gentile relations. In the end, says Jellinek, the great pagan civilizations of the past about whom the rabbis often wrote have long ceased to exist; therefore, the words of Judaism that once applied to them must now be understood as guiding Israel’s relationship with Christianity. And if the Bible and Talmud could find words of respect for the pagan peoples of history, should not – all the more so – Jews of the present find happy communion with their Christian neighbors, whose beliefs are not alien but actually derive from Judaism itself?

3 Jellinek, Predigten, vol. 2., 137 f. 4 This idea was made famous in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s play Nathan der Weise (1779). 5 Jellinek, Predigten, vol. 2., 136 f.

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1 Israel’s Teachings on the Relationship of Jews and Non-Jews As in all his sermons, Jellinek opens “Israel’s Teachings on the Relationship of Jews and Non-Jews” with a framing passage from the week’s biblical text, in this case Genesis 18:25: “Far be it from You to do such a thing, to bring death upon the righteous as well as the wicked, so that righteous and wicked fare alike.” These words are spoken in a famous scene in the cycle of stories concerning Abraham, forefather of the major monotheistic faiths. Abraham and God are standing on a hilltop, overlooking the plain which contains the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. God has decided to destroy the two cities and all their inhabitants because of their sinfulness, but does not want to keep such a momentous decision from Abraham, whom, God thinks, “I have singled…out, that he may instruct his children and his posterity to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is just and right [tz’dakah u’mishpat]” (Gen. 18:19). But when God tells Abraham what he is about to do, Abraham does not think such an action is tz’dakah u’mishpat. Instead, Abraham strenuously objects, asking, “Will You sweep away the righteous [tzadik] along with the wicked?” (Gen. 18:23), after which begins Abraham’s famous negotiation with God concerning the number of righteous necessary to save the cities. This is the passage from which Jellinek takes his opening quotation: “Far be it from You to do such a thing, to bring death upon the righteous [Ger. Gerechten / Heb. tzadik] as well as the wicked, so that righteous and wicked fare alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the judge of all the earth deal justly [Recht / mishpat]?” The reading for Vayera actually does not begin with this conversation overlooking the cities of the plain. Instead, it opens with a tableau of Abraham sitting at the entrance to his tent, greeting three unknown travelers. Jellinek identifies the men – following midrashic tradition (Genesis Rabba 40:8) – as a Saracen, a Nabatean, and an Arab. “As soon as he [Abraham] saw them, he ran from the entrance of the tent to greet them and, bowing to the ground, he said, ‘My lords, if it please you, do not go on past your servant’” (Gen. 18:2–3). The biblical scene is meant to highlight Abraham’s immediate and unconditional kindness, as well as the men’s thankfulness and their bestowal of a blessing (the birth of a future son, Isaac) on Abraham in return for Abraham’s hospitality. Abraham’s unreserved generosity is all the more striking because he is a foreigner in this land and among this people (see Gen. 12:1, 23:4). He is a resident alien, a sojourner, yet still he welcomes in strangers and offers them food and rest. By opening his sermon with these accounts of Abraham’s doings, Jellinek frames Israel’s forefather not as a Knight of Faith but as a Knight of Justice (Gerechtigkeit). There is justice in Abraham’s treatment of the three strangers and jus-

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tice in Abraham’s argument with God over the fate of the two wicked cities. The Hebrew word tzedek/tz’daka captures these two sides of Abraham’s actions. Whereas in English, “justice” is often associated with law,⁶ in Hebrew, “just law” is mishpat whereas tz’daka is a combination of legal and ethical righteousness, the act of full humane treatment of one person to another, be it juridical or philanthropic. In this case, Abraham is “just” (tzedek) not only in the legal sense (arguing for the lives of those about to die) but also in the humanitarian one (feeding weary travelers).⁷ From the very beginning, Jellinek argues, the Jewish model has been that of openness to strangers, welcoming to those who are different from oneself, cognizant that only in a world in which there is justice for everyone is there justice for anyone.⁸ For Jellinek, Abraham’s righteous actions toward strangers become the foundation on which to build an argument for how Judaism has always understood its relationship to non-Jews: as one based on the principle of mutual justice (tz’daka).⁹

6 The German Gerechtigkeit has somewhat more nuance, including not only “justice” but also “justness” and “fairness”. Jellinek will often link Gerechtigkeit with Wahrhaftigkeit (truthfulness) and Friedfertigkeit (peacefulness), making from them a single idea, “justice-that-is-true-and-fullof-peace”, an awkward but approximate definition of tz’daka. 7 Indeed, Abraham’s phrase “shall not the judge of all the Earth deal justly” (hashofet kol ha’aretz lo ya’aseh mishpat) brings out this distinction between mishpat and tzedek cogently. Abraham is asking God: should not the judge (the shofet) in the courtroom make a law (mishpat) that is just across all the world? (Actually, one really cannot say “a law that is just” and translate only half the sentence [a law] as mishpat; mishpat means “a law that is just”, which is Abraham’s entire argument: if God is going to issue a mishpat, it cannot be unjust, or it is not a mishpat and God is not a judge [shofet].) And when Abraham describes the good people in Sodom upon whom a just law (mishpat) – in this case, not being destroyed – should be enacted, he calls them tzadikim: “What if there should be fifty tzadikim within the city walls…? Far be it from You to do such a thing, to bring death upon the tzadik as well as the wicked, so that the tzadik and the wicked fare alike.” Thus, when Abraham calls those who are “innocent” (the standard translation; rendered here as “righteous”) in Sodom and Gomorrah by the term tzadik, and then says that God must issue a “just decree” (mishpat), he is already separating the two terms. Jellinek capitalizes on this philological distinction, which lends credence to Jellinek’s identity of Abraham as the originator of the Jewish notion that tzedek is justice that is humanitarian plus legal. (This example does not work in German translation, where the “righteous” of Sodom are called Gerechten, the “judge” of the Earth is der… Erde richte, and to “deal justly” is Recht üben, all of which is based on the root word Recht [right-law, closer to mishpat] and fails to capture the distinction between tzedek and mishpat.) 8 E. g., “There shall be one law [torah akhad] for the citizen [ezrach] and for the stranger [ger] who resides among you” (Ex. 12:49) and “You shall have one law [mishpat ekhad] for stranger [ger] and citizen [ezrach] alike, for I the LORD am your God” (Lev. 24:22). 9 Jellinek, Predigten, vol. 2., 126. One should hear echoes of the core ideals of nineteenth-century liberalism, not only justice itself, but also equality, liberty, fraternity, and universalism.

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“Already in Israel’s founding father, true humanity [Humanität] toward every human being without distinction was embodied and pronounced, and Jewish history from its very beginning represented the noblest love of the human being.”¹⁰ By focusing on justice, Jellinek shifts the conversation away from theological and ritual differences between Jews and non-Jews and toward moral continuities among individuals. What the stories of Abraham offer Jellinek is biblical evidence that, from its very foundation, Judaism has always understood the ethical ideas espoused by its God as universalist in their outlook. “Justice [Gerechtigkeit / tzedek], justice [Gerechtigkeit / tzedek] shall you pursue” (Deut. 16:20), which, Jellinek says, “a writer in the spirit of the Talmud explains [thusly]: the doubling of the word ‘justice’ here indicates that one should make no difference in this point [i. e., in pursuit of justice] between Jews and Gentiles.”¹¹

2 The relationship between Judaism and Christianity Expounding on the deeds of Abraham is, for Jellinek, an argument meant to combat Christian anti-Judaism as much as to educate his own Jewish congregation about their ethical responsibilities toward non-Jews. For Jellinek, one of the most disturbing claims made against Jews and Judaism by Christians is that Judaism is clannish and insular, and that its vision of God’s ethical commandments barely extends beyond the borders of the Jewish community. Such a view of Judaism by Christians represented a deep problem for Jellinek, who believed that the flourishing of Judaism in modern Europe depended on both the continued familial separation of Jews from non-Jews (i. e., no intermarriage) but likewise on Jewish legal emancipation and social integration based on a shared notion of universal ethics. As Jellinek wrote, “Judaism, by virtue of its fundamental truths about God and Man, must determine – and has determined – and [must] establish at all times and in all its writings the relations of Jews to Gentiles according to the principles of love and justice [Gerechtigkeit]. [As it says in the Talmud:] “He who has no love of his fellow man is a stranger to his forefather Abraham.”¹² In a point that Jellinek adopts from the rabbinic tradition, he notes that the Hebrew Bible begins not with the Jewish people, nor even with Abraham, but with creation itself, and therefore with the origin of all humanity.

10 Jellinek, Predigten, vol. 2., 126. 11 Jellinek, Predigten, vol. 2., 134. The reference is to Rabbeinu Bahya, Kad ha-Kemah. 12 Jellinek, Predigten, vol. 2., 130. The reference is to BT Beitza 32b.

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[Could it be that the God of Creation] would really be [only] a Jewish God, an Idea in which all humanity would find no room, a Prince who, as it were, would have to content Himself with the little country of Palestine [as His kingdom] and with a few millions of Judeans [as His subjects]?¹³

An affirmative answer to that question is patently absurd, for it not only contradicts the soaring vision of Psalm 24 (“The Earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof”) and Isaiah 66 (“The heaven is My throne and the Earth is My footstool”) but more profoundly the simple but powerful description of human Creation itself: “And God created man in His image” (Gen. 1:27). Not Jewish Man. Not Abrahamic Man. But Man, person, human being, Everyman, what the rabbis call simply adam ha’rishon, “First Man.” [The Biblical story of Creation] considers every man — wherever he is born, wherever he dwells, however he looks, however he can speak and dress — as a child of the One Creator God. This doctrine knows only one human family, whose members may well have different forms, voices, inclinations, abilities, and talents, but who in God, like children in their father, must know and empathize one with another.¹⁴

Would the God who is credited with creating humanity then content Himself merely with the ethical cultivation of one nation, especially one so small? Why go to the trouble of making the universal point of human equality at Creation if only to settle on adjudicating a particularistic ethics among a small number of people for the rest of history? Jellinek forcefully rejected such an idea of God’s parochial moral governance, as did the rabbis before him, who wrote: “Therefore, was Adam created singular…for the sake of peace among creation, that one should not say to another, ‘My father was greater than your father.’”¹⁵ For Jellinek, making ethical distinctions between Jews and Gentiles is simply not how the Hebrew Bible understands God’s ethical commandments. (Abraham’s argument for saving the tzadikim of Sodom – who were decidedly not Jewish – being a case-in-point.). At its core, Jellinek argues, the Bible teaches that the Jewish people have always been in relationship with non-Jews, and that the God of Israel has always also been the God of the world. [Need I argue] that the biblical rules relating to stealing, robbery, murder, measures, weights, labor, wages, hatred, resentment, vengeance, widows, orphans, and the poor…all make no distinction between Jews and Gentiles?¹⁶

13 14 15 16

Jellinek, Predigten, vol. 2., 127. Jellinek, Predigten, vol. 2., 128 f. Mishna Sanhedrin 4:5. Jellinek, Predigten, vol. 2., 133.

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Of course not, is the obvious answer, not just for Jellinek and his community but for every Biblical commentator, Jewish and Gentile alike.¹⁷ These laws all apply as much to Jews as to non-Jews, and as much by Jews toward non-Jews as vice-versa. Which is why Abraham’s argument “shall not the judge of all the Earth deal justly” is convincing to God, and also why there is theological import to the fact that it is said by the man who will become the forefather of the Jewish people: even at the beginning, Abraham’s God is already the God of the world.¹⁸ But Jellinek is not content to prove that the Hebrew Bible is universal. More or less, the Christians believe that on their own. Indeed, the problem is that Christians do not believe that Jews believe that on their own. Therefore, for much of the sermon, through quotations and rhetorical questions and impassioned pleas for moral common sense, Jellinek seeks to argue that post-Biblical Jewish tradition has understood God’s ethical commands as being universal, while simultaneously threading a very delicate line between Jewish particularism and God’s ethical universalism. For Jellinek,¹⁹ the Jewish people’s ritualistic and covenantal expectations are unique, but their practice and adjudication of justice is universal. He notes: “the Israelite should not mock and blaspheme the gods worshiped by foreign peoples. As the Mishnah says, ‘Despise no person’.”²⁰ For Jellinek, Jewish tradition has been in constant internal dialogue concerning its ethical relationship with non-Jews and has continually reinforced the position that Judaism seeks and expects justice both toward and from Gentiles. To prove this thesis, Jellinek outlines the various ways non-Jews have been understood by Jewish texts and history. It is true, he admits, that none of the major works of Temple or post-Temple Judaism – his list includes Bible, Apocrypha, Philo, Josephus, Mishna, Tosefta, Mekhilta, Sifra, Sifre, or the Talmuds – comment much on the Christians or Muslims, for (he believes), these canons were all but complete

17 It is important to point out that Jellinek believes these moral laws comprise much more than what some might call “natural law.” He would likely admit that laws against stealing, robbery, and murder are “natural”, that is, in a Lockean sense, intrinsic to the very essence of human society itself. But, Jellinek would say, ethical presumptions such as those concerning labor relations, honest weights and measures, and treatment of orphans and widows, are far from being “natural”, but exist and are incumbent upon us because of God’s mandate, as human acts of justice which are an imitatio dei. 18 Abraham’s God stands in stark contrast to many of the other Gods of Abraham’s time, which were specific to cities and nations. For instance, of Marduk, God of Babylonia, it would not make sense to ask “shall not the judge of all the Earth deal justly,” for Markuk was neither judge of all the world nor inclined to weigh the needs of non-Babylonians as equal to that of his own peoples. 19 As, notably, for Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) before him; see Jerusalem, or on Religious Power and Judaism (1783). 20 Jellinek, Predigten, vol. 2., 133. The reference is to Pirkei Avot 4:3.

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by the time Judaism’s “daughter religions” became theological rivals.²¹ Nevertheless, Jellinek provides numerous sources against the idea that Jews ever believed they were above or worthier than non-Jews writ large, or that the God of Israel has not also always been understood as the God of the whole world, who loves the whole world, and brings truth, freedom, justice, and peace to the whole world.²² But it is not until Jellinek’s discussion of the great Jewish philosophers of the Middle Ages that he focuses specifically on Christianity (and, to a lesser extent, on Islam). And it is here that he begins to more deeply develop his idea of Christianity and Islam as Judaism’s “daughter religions”. There is a clear reason for this. In Jewish-Christian relations, the long centuries of Church domination prior to the onset of modernity and Enlightenment witnessed some of the most horrifying and bloody events in Jewish European history: the Crusader massacres of the Rhineland; the burning of the Talmud in France; the exile of the Jews from Great Britain; the exile of the Jews from Iberia; the curtailment of Jewish civil rights, including land ownership, choice of profession, and freedom of movement; and the earliest blood libels and pogroms. As Jellinek would write a few years later: “The opponents of Judaism [in the Middle Ages], the usual enemies of freedom of conscience, belief, and thought, created fires of [flaming volumes of Talmud] in France and Italy…or searched for the ridiculous [within Jewish religion] to make it hateful to their supporters.”²³ If there were any centuries in which the conception that God’s justice were not universal, or that the Jews hold a uniquely superior ethical position in the hierarchy of humanity vis-à-vis their Christian brethren, it would have been those of the Middle Ages. Yet, Jellinek argues, that never happened. Jewish law and philosophy continued to understand God’s ways as true and God’s actions as just, and to imagine the Jewish people as merely one among the nations of the world.²⁴ The great insight of medieval Jewish philosophy, Jellinek argues, was to conceive of the Christians not as scions of the great pagan empires of the past but as in some ways descended from Judaism itself, or at least as part of the monotheistic family of

21 Since Jellinek’s day, scholarship has both pushed back the closing of the rabbinic canons by many centuries as well as greatly expanded what we think were the extent of interactions between rabbinic communities and early Christians; e. g., see Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). 22 See Jellinek, Predigten, vol. 2., 134. It is in this context that Jellinek mentions the Noahide laws, the basic moral code set out by the rabbis for non-Jews to follow; see BT Sanhedrin 56a. 23 Jellinek, Der Talmud. Zwei Reden, am Hüttenfeste 5625 (am 16. und 22. October 1864) (Vienna: Herzfeld & Bauer, 1865), 1. 24 Traditionally numbered at seventy; see Bereishit Rabba 37.

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theologies. Whereas the enemies of Israel’s past – Assyria, Babylonia, Greece, Rome – had been polytheist, by the Middle Ages both the Church and Islam were exceedingly powerful monotheistic forces, and, in the eyes of Jewish philosophers, in some recognizable ways working on behalf of the same God and contributing to the same divine historical plan as were the Jews. In this way, Jellinek says, in the Middle Ages there was a philosophical reevaluation of the place of Christianity and Islam in the eyes of Judaism, one that began to conceive of them both in some way as, like Judaism, adjutants of God’s will on Earth. Do we not have two famous teachers of the Middle Ages, Rabbi Yehuda Ha-Levi [c. 1075–1141] and Rabbi Moses ben Maimon [c. 1135–1204, called Rambam], one in Spain and the other in Egypt, who have openly stated that both daughter religions of Judaism were, according to the counsel of Providence, given a great world-historical mission to the Gentile world? And that they both play a mighty role in the gradual realization of the kingdom of God on Earth?²⁵

It is through arguments such as this that Jellinek refines his concept of the “daughter religion.” Children are both part of one’s self and yet entirely separate, recognizable as one’s own through physical appearance, mannerism, strengths and weaknesses, and interests, yet also separate, individual, unique, a combination that had heretofore never existed; something new.²⁶ For Jellinek, Christianity and Islam are such daughters: familial yet separate, recognizable yet distinct. And daughters – not sons. Daughters because (so Jellinek wants to argue) Christianity has no need for rebellion against Judaism, no desire to strike out at great distance against the paternal model and prove itself in the world. A daughter can, without acrimony, remain close to her parents and warmly tied to her childhood home – in this case, Jellinek means the Hebrew Bible. Jellinek’s description here of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity is not just obviously a metaphor, in his historical moment it could almost be called a fantastical daydream. Looking at history from the middle of the nineteenth century, had not the nearly two millennia saga of discord between Judaism and Christianity proven beyond doubt that these two religions were, at the very least, antagonistic, destined forever to suspect and mistrust one another? But of course, that is precisely the point Jellinek is arguing against. The purpose of all these biblical and rabbinic examples of acceptance toward strangers is to demonstrate that both Judaism and Christianity have been basing their assumptions of

25 Jellinek, Predigten, vol. 2., 135 f. 26 The Oedipal paradox highlights this struggle: love of a person who is both deeply of oneself and yet entirely separate and distinct.

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one another on a centuries-long misunderstanding. Judaism has always been open to strangers, Jellinek argues, so the Christian attack of parochialism is mute (the thesis of the first half of the sermon.) Christianity, on the other hand, is not really a stranger to Judaism at all, but a child, a daughter, and one destined to play a leading role in God’s divine plan (the thesis of the second half of the sermon.) And, undergirding it all, is Jellinek’s enduring belief in Enlightenment – that the nineteenth century is not an era of summary verdicts but of radical new beginnings, birthed by the promises of political and social liberalism. Jellinek ends the sermon on this grand new vision, where Christianity and Judaism recognize their ancestral ties and together seek a more just world in the image of God: O, let but there be for once a century of love, of humanity, of freedom, and of tranquility, after a millennium of hatred, bigotry, slavery, and of contention in the relations between the religions. The Jews, with Abraham their forefather, say: ‘Let there be no strife between me and you, and between my herdsmen and your herdsmen, for we are relatives’ [Gen. 13:8]. On the ruins of the old, bloody hatred [let there] arise a new, wonderful, glorious temple of religious peace, in which any good, noble, and pious person is recognized as a true priest of the Lord. For as the proverb of our Sages says: He who lives the practices and follows the divine commandments with love is a high priest of humanity!²⁷

Such words are not simply utopic rhetoric, the naïve desires of a man who believes that the situation for the Jews in Europe is indisputably improving. Rather, they are the plea of someone who seeks an enduring place for Jewry in European modernity. Jellinek’s return to Abraham, here at the end of the sermon, is revealing, because what he quotes this time is not a conversation between Abraham and God. Instead, it is a conversation between Abraham and a member of his own family, his nephew Lot, who until the birth of Isaac is like a son to Abraham. In context, the herdsmen of Abraham and Lot are quarreling. But instead of bickering (as siblings might do), Abraham proposes an amicable solution: Lot should take his household in one direction, and Abraham should take his in another. The land is capacious and fertile; they can live harmoniously, side-by-side yet not intertwined. The world is big enough for them both. The solution worked in Genesis. Why, Jellinek hints here at the end, shouldn’t it work with Judaism and Christianity as well?

27 Adolf Jellinek, Predigten, vol. 2, 138 f. The reference is to Sifra, Acharei Mot 13.

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3 Summary More than almost any of his other sermons, “Israel’s Teachings on the Relationship of Jews and Non-Jews” is full of quotations and allusions to classic works of Jewish scripture. Across all his collected sermons, Jellinek rarely put full quotations into the body of the text. More often, he gestures to them in Hebrew footnotes, or merely hints at them in his prose, never letting them distract from the lucidity and flourish of a rhetorical style that mainly aims at the edification of a popular audience. But not here. In “Israel’s Teachings on the Relationship of Jews and NonJews,” Jellinek chose quite a different approach in both subject and style. He decided to demonstrate the classic rabbinic form of argumentation: exegetical exactitude with a plethora of references and examples. Between the lines, Jellinek is telling his listeners that he is addressing an issue not merely of intellectual interest, not merely of politics and ideology. The relationship between Judaism and Christianity has theological consequence, Jellinek believes, reflecting directly on the nature of God and the world God created. Jellinek’s homilies generally stand out for their melding of philosophy and emotion, intellect and pathos. Such oratorical élan made him famous across German-speaking Europe. But this sermon is different. Its underlying tenor is anxious, demanding. Which is why, perhaps, unlike almost anywhere else, here Jellinek engages in overt argumentation. Instead of high, flowing style Jellinek chose scrupulous, disciplined argumentation. More than for almost any other topic he addresses as a preacher, in the case of Jewish-Christian relations and on the goal of a positive Jewish-Christian future, Jellinek felt the need to overwhelm with proofs, saying again and again: yes, this is, in fact, actually possible. That Jellinek felt his an argument to be precarious is not, in the end, surprising – though it might be to us today, who live in a world in which the basic assumption is that Judaism and Christianity (or Judaism and Islam) can coexist, and where (except at the far ends of the theological spectrum) most would assume all three religions are searching for the same ethical and universal God. But that was not the overriding presumption in 1859. Jellinek is in fact pioneering an argument in this sermon, one that says Judaism desires to live in peace with its daughters, who themselves bring something of supreme religious importance to the world. Christianity and Islam are not imitations of Judaism, he says; they are positive and proactive theological entities in and of themselves. In the end, this sermon is as one of the most impassioned expressions of Jellinek’s entire philosophy of religious life, and of his life-long attempt to envision a new future of peace between the world’s religions. Across all his writings, Jellinek argues repeatedly that religion – and even more so, the Bible, which tells us about

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what God wants in the world – is the ground upon which all ethical values stand. The Bible, Jellinek says, gives the world the idea of social welfare, with its love of the widow and the orphan. The Bible orders respect of the foreigner, rather than his conversion. The Bible suggests the separation of civil and religious law, rather than the theological monarchies of Europe. For Jellinek, there can be no universal values, no sense of the individual, no notion of justice, without the grounding of revealed religion. And for Jellinek, a world truly remade in the image of a just God is one where Judaism and Christianity live in peace with one another.

Ursula Roth

The Sermon – an Educational Medium? Reflections on a Fundamental Understanding of the Practice of Christian Preaching 1 Are Sermons an Educational Medium? Both historians and theologians would be well advised to view the sermon as an educational medium. A sermon not only introduces its listeners to particular attitudes of mind but also imparts a certain body of knowledge. The extent of this approach in the context of Practical Theology is evident from the frequent checks made in the course of empirical research into preaching, into how accurately those listening to a sermon are able to recall its content after the service. Anyone hoping that answers to the questions “What can you still remember?” and “What was the sermon about?” will provide information about the substance of a sermon assumes that sermons are first and foremost a means of transferring knowledge. If sermons are to be seen as an educational medium, it would seem reasonable to analyse sermons with a view to reconstructing the educational purpose intended by preaching them. This would apply to sermons from previous eras as well as to contemporary ones. In this way it is sometimes possible to reconstruct the religious ideas and moral standards that applied to a particular time and within a specific religious community¹ or even what content is conveyed in sermons preached nowadays. This creates the impression that sermons had and continue to have an effect on the subjective collective knowledge of the listener and are able to both change and extend it. In this sense, sermons come into focus primarily because of their socialising and integrating function. One might assume that sermons are particularly suited to reconstructions of this kind as they furnish texts reflecting ‘real’ life, which thus presumably provide authentic information regarding the religious practices of a particular era. In this sense, it is certainly reasonable to look on sermons as an educational medium. There is, however, good reason to look critically at this research perspective and to answer the question “Are sermons an educational medium?” with a

1 Cf. e. g. Simone Lässig, Jüdische Wege ins Bürgertum. Kulturelles Kapitel und sozialer Aufstieg im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), 303–325. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110795905-012

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more or less definite “No, probably not” or at best with a vague “maybe; it all depends”. Homiletic discourse at any rate has several findings ready which do not suggest that sermons should be understood primarily as a means of disseminating knowledge or indeed as a kind of Sunday school. Theoretical homiletic observations such as these certainly do not help to answer the question as to the intentions of the preacher at a particular time or in a particular place. Neither do they tell us anything about the final effect that sermons had. They do, however, give credence to the assertion that in regard to the institution of the sermon, the educational perspective does not suggest itself to anything like the extent that has been widely assumed. It is entirely possible that although educational questions can be posed in the context of homiletic material, they may not conform to the inherent logic of the Christian sermon. Neither can we entirely discount the fact that although sermons have a certain educational aspect, this is secondary to other aspects because the sermon is preached within the setting of a church service. I shall select three discursive contexts from homiletic discursive theory which may help to shed some light on the question of the educational objective of a sermon, in terms of both a particular epoch and the institution of preaching in general.

2 The Sermon as an Act of ‘Representative Action’ (‘darstellendes Handeln’) The first stop takes us back to the beginnings of practical theology as a scientific discipline. The Berlin polymath Friedrich Schleiermacher shaped the 19th-century homiletic discourse both definitively and enduringly, not only because of his clear-cut definition of the Christian faith but also because of his distinctive understanding of the purpose and objective of the Christian sermon. Schleiermacher sought to determine the nature of the sermon by observing it from within the context of the church service and placing it firmly within the realm of pious Christian practice. In this he referred back to a fundamental distinction in Christian religious practice. In his work ‘Die christliche Sitte’² Friedrich Schleiermacher differentiates between two types of pious Christian action: the ‘efficacious’ (or ‘effec2 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Die christliche Sitte nach den Grundsäzen der evangelischen Kirche im Zusammenhange dargestellt, aus Schleiermacher’s handschriftlichem Nachlasse und nachgeschriebenen Vorlesungen, ed. Ludwig Jonas, SW I/12 (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1843). On the significance of this differentiation for Schleiermacher’s theory of religious worship cf. Dietrich Rössler, “Unterbrechungen des Lebens. Zur Theorie des Festes bei Schleiermacher,” in “… in der Schar derer, die da feiern”. Feste als Gegenstand praktisch-theologischer Reflexion, eds. Peter Cornehl et al. (eds.) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 33–40.

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tive’) action (‘wirksames Handeln’) and the ‘representative’ action (‘darstellendes Handeln’).³ He goes on to subdivide the type of efficacious action into ‘purifying’ (‘reinigendes H.’) and ‘disseminating’ (or ‘broadening’) (‘verbreitendes H.’) action.⁴ The differentiation of these three forms of action (purifying, disseminating, and representative) form the underlying framework on which Schleiermacher bases his representation of moral doctrine.⁵ Efficacious action seeks to influence the attitude of others and to change people. Schleiermacher particularly relates ‘purifying’ action to the implementation of punishment, discipline, and penance.⁶ In ‘disseminating’ action Schleiermacher includes virtually every educational action,⁷ even those which are carried out only incidentally and informally. In both instances, Schleiermacher thinks not only of institutionalised forms of action but also of those forms which are embedded in the activities of everyday life. Disseminating action is based on the simple fact that every person in a social relationship with his or her environment can become the catalyst for educational processes, will always remain so and can take conscious account of this in their actions. Granted that, in the religious context, the main objective of education is not the dissemination of general educational content. Its task is rather to stimulate and even instigate the formation and expression of the hearer’s relationship with God. Even with regard to purifying action Schleiermacher does not concern himself primarily with the institution of ecclesial repentance or the institution of church discipline. Even this practice he first relates to ordinary everyday life.⁸ He thinks first and foremost of situations in which people are aware of some religious regression – either their own or someone else’s – and are now seeking counter measures to salve their uneasy conscience. Purifying action thus serves the restoration of a right relationship with God and the elimination of faults. Ac-

3 Cf. Schleiermacher, Die christliche Sitte, 50 f. To translate the terms ‚wirksames Handeln‘ and ‚darstellendes Handeln‘ into English, theologians use different words. ‘Wirksam’ is usually translated as ‘efficacious’ or ‘effective’; to translate the adjective ‘darstellend’, some academics prefer ‘representative’, ‘representing’ or ‘presentational’, others prefer ‘self-expressive’ or ‘performative’, cf. John Crossley, “Schleiermacher’s Christian Ethics in Relation to His Philosophical Ethics,” The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 18 (1998), 93–117, here: 104, 116. See also Theodore M. Vial, “Friedrich Schleiermacher on the Central Place of Worship in Theology,” The Harvard Theological Review 91 (1998), 59–73, and James M. Brandt (ed. and transl.), Selections from Schleiermacher’s Christian Ethics (Louisville: Westminister John Knox Press, 2011). 4 Cf. Schleiermacher, Die christliche Sitte 53. 5 Cf. Schleiermacher Die christliche Sitte 81 f. 6 Cf. Schleiermacher Die christliche Sitte 54. 7 Cf. Schleiermacher, Die christliche Sitte 53, 291. 8 Cf. Schleiermacher, Die christliche Sitte 391 f., 396.

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cordingly, purifying action also includes criticising offences in the social environment and working systematically to eradicate them. Thus Schleiermacher is inclined to cite the approach of the great reformers as a paradigm for instigating purifying action for dealing with public offences.⁹ The basis of efficacious action, however, is the awareness of a distorted and therefore weak consciousness of God. For Schleiermacher an awareness of sin is no other than that. The objective of efficacious action is, then, to overcome the awareness of sin, i. e. a distorted or weak God-consciousness, transforming pain (‘Unlust’) into pleasure (‘Lust’). This is where Schleiermacher locates the sphere of pastoral care action. The firm objective of pastoral action is to eliminate faults and thus to restore a pious community. Representative action, which is central to our context, stands in contrast to all this. It does not seek to engender change in either the subject or the object. Representative action is primarily determined by the fact that it can in no way be counted as efficacious action.¹⁰ In representative action a different and unique relationship of humankind to itself and its living environment presents itself; one that is not constituted by purposes external to itself. The purpose of representative action lies within itself. It is an “externalisation of the inner certainty of self-consciousness”¹¹. According to Schleiermacher the prototype for this area of ‘representative action’ is the church service. In contrast to forms of ‘efficacious action’, any action within the context of the church service is attributable not to the counterpart of pleasure and pain but to the awareness (relatively speaking) of blessedness. According to his idea, action within the context of the church service is not exactly intended to engender change but is an “expression of the internal […] without having actual efficacy.”¹² Representative action does not have its purpose external to, but rather within itself. Schleiermacher here refers not only to the church service in its institutionalised form (‘Kultus’) but – in a broader sense – to the service of worship as the “epitome of all actions through which we as organs of God and by virtue of the Holy Spirit represent”¹³. Understood in this way, ‘service of worship’ (‘Gottesdienst’) means “the ubiquitous self-giving of the person to the revealed will of God, unrestrained by moral place, in order to serve his will as an organ”¹⁴. Funda-

9 Cf. Schleiermacher, Die christliche Sitte 121. 10 Cf. Schleiermacher, Die christliche Sitte 48, 50 f. 11 Cf. Schleiermacher, Die christliche Sitte 512. 12 Schleiermacher, Die christliche Sitte 48. 13 Schleiermacher, Die christliche Sitte 525 f. 14 Ralf Stroh, Schleiermachers Gottesdiensttheorie: Studien zur Rekonstruktion ihres enzyklopädischen Rahmens im Ausgang von “Kurzer Darstellung” und “Philosophischer Ethik” (Berlin/New York: DeGruyter, 1998), 77.

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mentally this “has its place everywhere”¹⁵. The church service (‘Kultus’) as a service of worship in the narrow sense is distinct from the representation of pious selfconsciousness which characterises all Christian practice and encompasses all areas of Christian life, even when viewed relatively. It is only in the service as “core”¹⁶ of ecclesial action that “the representative action (forms) its peculiar circle”¹⁷; within this circle everything is focussed on the “complete representation of religious consciousness”¹⁸. Schleiermacher sees the church service as that institution in which the religious community is “explicitly” placed in order to become of “lasting sociological value.”¹⁹ Schleiermacher also highlights this basic aspect of ecclesial practice by defining the church service as based on the theory of the festival, in that he conceives the church service not as simply any festival but as the festival par excellence. The church service is the one festival in which the nature of the festival most clearly takes shape. It is in the church service that the nature of the festival as an “interruption in the other parts of life”²⁰ becomes particularly clear. It is the “relative counterpart” of the other parts of life.²¹ The sole “purpose” of the church service consists in the “representative participation of a more strongly stimulated religious consciousness”²². This is where that “symbolic idea of eternal life” is expressed “in which all disseminating and all purifying action” (both forms of efficacious action) “are set in place as perfectly complete so that only representative action remains.”²³ For Schleiermacher participation in the church service means behaving for a moment as though all efficacious action had achieved its objective. To a certain extent the church service is “the temporal realisation of the Kingdom of Heaven”²⁴. It is in the context of this theory of church worship that Schleiermacher sketches his insight into the sermon. He conceives it as a coherent sequence of thoughts; the purpose of which a sermon is drawn up is none other than to arouse the religious consciousness of those present, as we have said before, the entire

15 Cf. Schleiermacher, Die christliche Sitte 508. 16 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Die praktische Theologie nach den Grundsäzen der evangelischen Kirche im Zusammenhange dargestellt, aus Schleiermachers handschriftlichem Nachlasse und nachgeschriebenen Vorlesungen, ed. Jacob Frerichs, SW I/13 (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1850), 735. 17 Cf. Schleiermacher, Die christliche Sitte 530. 18 Schleiermacher, Die praktische Theologie, 754. 19 Stroh, Schleiermachers Gottesdiensttheorie, 114. 20 Schleiermacher, Die praktische Theologie, 70. 21 Cf. Schleiermacher, Die christliche Sitte, 70. 22 Schleiermacher, Die praktische Theologie, 75. 23 Cf. Schleiermacher, Die christliche Sitte, 600. 24 Stroh, Schleiermachers Gottesdiensttheorie, 140.

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church service institution is an institution for the circulation of religious consciousness. It cannot be denied that admittedly the teaching makes a point but only a secondary one. The main concern remains always the stimulation of religious consciousness; edification.²⁵ Conversely the other component, the sermon, indeed also belongs in the domain of actual representation but it belongs no less to the church as school. Even though it is in fact a representation, it must contain teaching for the purpose of representation.²⁶

According to Schleiermacher, the objective of the sermon is not primarily to impart moral principles to its listeners or to instruct them in matters of faith. Just as Schleiermacher strictly differentiates between religion on the one hand and knowledge and activity as well as doctrine and morality on the other hand, defining it solely as a matter of feeling, he also conceives the sermon as a religious and uplifting speech, in which every didactic moment is secondary or at least subordinate. According to Friedrich Schleiermacher the characteristic feature of Christian worship and preaching practice cannot be immediately seen as its educational effect. The essential and fundamental moment of Christian church worship culture is the festival, the celebration. The direct location of the sermon within the church service shapes its objective as edification rather than learning success. Those attending a church service do not do so in order to be exposed to erudite teachings. “Those who want to celebrate […], have […] no appetite for school.”²⁷ Consequently anyone making an empirical examination of the knowledge content conveyed may well stumble across this kind of knowledge transfer. According to Schleiermacher’s theory of church worship, it can be doubted whether such an understanding of the sermon as an instruction of knowledge meets the performative character of sermons.

3 The Sermon as Performance The second critical objection to the reconstruction of the traditional sermon as an educational medium stems from more recent homiletic insight. With recourse to the ‘performative turn’ of the cultural sciences, the realisation also dawned within homiletic discourse that the sermon comprises a complex happening in which many participants are involved. The sermon is not a text to be presented but is

25 Schleiermacher, Die praktische Theologie, 216. 26 Cf. Schleiermacher, Die christliche Sitte 396. 27 Eberhard Hauschildt, “Unterhaltungsmusik in der Kirche. Der Streit um die Musik bei Kasualien,” in Theophonie. Grenzgänge zwischen Musik und Theologie, eds. Gotthard Fermor et al (eds.) (Rheinbach: CMZ-Verlag, 2000), 285–98, here: 287.

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in fact a performance. With the aid of the term ‘performative’ this aspect of homiletic practice has been further developed in recent times.²⁸ As the terms ‘performative’ and ‘performance’ are used in many different ways, it is essential to define them more closely. In the context of cultural scientific discourse various reference theories are drawn upon to clarify precisely the terms ‘performative’ / ‘performativity’ / ‘performance’. In the context of worship/homiletics theory, John Austin’s²⁹ speech act theory and Judith Butler’s³⁰ gender theory are groundbreaking and the aesthetic discourse content even more so. In association with the cultural scientific ‘theatrical turn’ of the 1990s, a link was constantly being created to the ‘performance’ art form to clarify the term ‘performativity’. The Berlin theatre scholar Erika Fischer-Lichte³¹ seeks to make plausible the term ‘performative’ in examples taken from performance art, orientating herself frequently towards the stir caused by the stimulating performances of the performing artist Marina Abramović. Her performances such as ‘Lips of Thomas’ or ‘The Artist is present’³² are widely seen as outstanding examples of an art form whose kernel forms the multi-layered network of action and relationship between the performer and the public. Erika Fischer-Lichte maintains that it is precisely because of ‘performance art’ that the three fundamental characteristics of performativity from the perspective of theatricality theory can be clarified. These are to be found just as much in cultural performative events as in productions of performance art:

28 Cf. Ursula Roth, “Die Performativität der Predigt – Performanztheoretische Zugänge zur Homiletik,” in: Handbuch Homiletische Rhetorik (Handbücher Rhetorik Bd. 11), ed. Michael MeyerBlanck (ed.) (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2021), 313–31. 29 Cf. John L. Austin, How to do things with words, Second Edition, J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà (eds.) (Cambridge/Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962/1975). In his widely acclaimed lecture from 1955, Austin identified those utterances as ‘performative’, with which actions are executed, and juxtaposed them with purely ‘constative’ utterances. In the course of his lecture Austin abandoned the difference between performative and constative utterances, firmly attributing instead a performative aspect to all utterances. With the help of the differentiation between ‘locutionary’, ‘illocutionary’, and ‘perlocutionary’ acts, Austin attempted to define the nuanced differences in the pragmatic character attributed to all verbal utterances. 30 Cf. Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution. An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Theatre Journal 40 (1988), 519–31. Here Judith Butler described the cultural construction of gender identity as the result of performative acts. Gender identity should not be understood as prescribed but is rather first engendered in physical actions. The reality generating effect of performative acts reveal itself to be particularly impressive here. 31 Cf. Erika Fischer-Lichte, Ästhetik des Performativen (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 2004), 89 ff. 32 Cf. Marina Abramović, The Artist is Present. Published on the occasion of the exhibition Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present The Museum of Modern Art, New York, March 14 – May 31, 2010, (New York, NY: Museum of Modern Art, 2010).

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First of all: ‘Cultural performances’ come into being in the live co-presence of actors and audience; in other words in a live situation (‘liveness’).³³ A characteristic of this configuration is that the reaction of the audience helps to create a feedback effect, known as a ‘feedback loop’³⁴. This results in an exchange of roles between acting and watching. The audience is challenged to intervene and the actor becomes the observer of the action. This exchange of roles also applies essentially in the context of conventional performance art such as the theatre. The feedback loop there, however, consists to some extent solely in the effect of the retroaction of the various reactions in the auditorium on the acting style on the stage. Retroaction of this kind can take place if the audience presents a focused posture, there is hushed excitement in the auditorium, if someone marches out angrily, if members of the audience rustle sweetie papers or blow their nose noisily. All of these things are part of the ‘feedback loop’. The second significant aspect of the term ‘performative’ relates to the question of the intention of cultural performance. Fischer-Lichte has ascertained that the aim of ‘cultural performances’ is not so much to convey ‘meaning’ as to effect an instantaneous impression which is created reciprocally by those present.³⁵ Performances thus occur only in the fleeting moment of their presentation and can never be exactly reproduced. They are momentary, temporary, and transitory. Thirdly, performative acts which are interrelated with ritual have a typical transformative capability.³⁶ Participation in performative acts is capable of destabilising models of self-, world- and external perception for at least the duration of the performance and can make alternative perspectives seem plausible. Performative acts thus induce in all participants new physically and spiritually affecting experiences. They create space for experiences in which former realities can be newly developed and facets of another understanding of self and the world can be investigated. This view has consequences for the analysis of the sermon. A sermon is not a text that a preacher presents from the pulpit. Seen against the background of performance theory, the sermon is much more the completion of an exchange between the preacher and the church congregation. The term ‘sermon’ denotes a unique and unrepeatable space- and time-bound event in which all participants have a role to play. Anyone intending to analyse the sermon must take two things into account: Firstly, the entire process of preaching and listening to the sermon suddenly 33 Cf. Fischer-Lichte, Ästhetik des Performativen, 114 ff., dies., Performativität. Eine Einführung, (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2012), 54 ff. 34 Fischer-Lichte, Ästhetik des Performativen, 115. 35 Cf. Fischer-Lichte, Ästhetik des Performativen, 262 ff. 36 Cf. Fischer-Lichte, Performativität, 113 ff.

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comes into focus. If the entire preacher/listener-encompassing experience is to be understood as a ‘homiletic event’, then the study of the sermon must be focused on the entire performance of it. A sermon cannot be reduced to a script. The complex interaction between the production-aesthetic and reception-aesthetic role patterns need to be taken into account. Viewed in this way, the sermon is not an educational medium as such but may possibly initiate an educational happening. The sermon is not an instrument within a religious educational curriculum but is rather an implementation of religious education. It would therefore be appropriate to analyse such educational performances using performance analytical methods. This might include video analysis, participant observation, and other ethnographical methods. It would be crucial to focus the normative questioning on the transformative moment of the sermon. Moreover, it would be useful to explore to what extent the homiletic event typifies transformative capability, to what extent a space opens up, which engenders feelings, confronts people with new viewpoints, and challenges them to adopt new attitudes. This insight into the performative nature of the sermon also has consequences for the evaluation of sources that are set as a baseline in the course of homiletic research projects. Research into historic sermons is mainly carried out from printed sermons. This textual genre, however, demands repeated and separate reflection, as, strictly speaking, printed sermons are not sermons in the sense of performance theory. They are a sui generis intertextual phenomenon. Quite often they are reworked following a church service, sometimes greatly expanded, and eventually published for a wide readership. This has little to do with a sermon in the sense of an address within the context of a church service and more to do with a piece of devotional literature. Printed sermons are intended for private reading in the context of the reader’s private religious practice. Here the term ‘sermon’ refers solely to a stylistic moment. The setting of the church service has been removed and the context for reception transferred to the sphere of private piety practice. The texts thus provide an insight into private devotional reading but not into the institution of public worship. Based on their literary and reader-oriented character, these texts can be readily regarded as an educational medium. What also applies to these texts, however, is the following: First and foremost these texts are for the edification of the reader. The sermons published for a readership are aimed more at the formation of the heart and the development of religious feeling and less at the dissemination of (religious) knowledge.

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4 The Sermon as an Act of Religious Positioning The sermon is not a means of setting up a stock of knowledge but is designed as an address within the context of a church service to provide edification, reassurance, and comfort. The sermon is not a means to an end or an element in the religious curriculum. As a performative live event it amounts to nothing more than a complex happening within an experience space spread among all those present through the worlds of text and the ‘lifeworlds’. Its impact lies in the transformative effect of the fleeting and momentary performance event itself. The sermon does, however, have something to do with education. Particularly in regard to its uplifting character, it contributes to the education of the heart and the formation of religious identity; it enables reflection on one’s own piety and consequently on one’s personal religious standpoint. In order to appreciate the educational aspect of Christian homiletic practice it is necessary to adopt a differentiated concept of education based on performance theory and the theory of church worship. This educational aspect of the Christian sermon can be more precisely described using the theory of religious positioning. Particularly in the moment of its fulfilment the sermon implies positioning acts. Not only does the sermon bring to the fore the religious positioning of the preacher, particularly with regard to its performative aspects, but it also evokes further positioning on the part of the recipients. Viewed in this way, the educational effect of a sermon depends upon where the listeners place themselves in relation to the positioning of the preacher and how they explore new perspectives on the realities of life or call into question habitual patterns of thinking. The term ‘positioning’ helps to make it clear that the educational aspect of the sermon is less based on the successful dissemination of dogmas/doctrines than on the individual involvement and unique participation of the listener. The outcome of this educational process must necessarily remain open-ended, unpredictable, and only individually determinable. A glance at the range of preaching culture reveals that a variety of positioning models is possible, depending on preaching style. If, for example, a preacher in teaching mode puts forward an assertion about ‘what we Christians believe’³⁷, listeners to the sermon have only the choice to agree or disagree with the preacher’s

37 A ‘we Christians semantic’ approach such as this is, despite the inclusive effect presumably intended, more likely to have an exclusive effect, particularly in the context of public preaching at Christmas services or occasional offices. cf. also Ursula Roth, “Kirchliche Praxis als Akt religiöser Positionierung. Das Beispiel Bestattung,” in Religion und Gesellschaft. Sinnstiftungssysteme im Konflikt, eds. Friedrich Wilhelm Graf und Jens-Uwe Hartmann (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2019), 255– 70.

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positioning. This creates a binary-oriented scenario, based on the ‘in or out’ principle of reciprocal positioning. If, by way of contrast, the preacher succeeds in engaging the listeners in a “multi-perspective discussion […] in dialogue between an ambiguous situation and a polyphonic Christian tradition”³⁸ and is able to clear a space for different interpretations which the listeners are able to explore individually in a playful and tentative way, a multi-layered and complex model for positioning occurs. In such a case the educational process stimulated by the sermon does not depend on agreement with a religious belief asserted by the preacher. It rather thrives on each individual’s involvement with critical, liberating, disturbing, or even unsettling moments of encountering new viewpoints as well as on a temporary immersion into the realm of possibilities opened up by the worlds of text and lifeworlds. The objective of the sermon is less the dissemination of religious beliefs and more the reciprocal, intertextual play between tradition and the present time. What is gained from a sermon-based educational happening is open-ended and cannot be verified by knowledge tests.

5 Summary As my considerations of Schleiermacher’s theory of religious worship (2.), performance of the sermon (3.) and the term ‘positioning’ (4.) have shown, talk of “the sermon as an educational medium” is in urgent need of clarification. Both the term ‘medium’ and ‘education’ bring the complex practice of preaching into contact with aspects which are difficult to reconcile with the context of church worship, the performative basic structure and the specific ‘openness’ of the homiletic event. The attempt to recognise the sermon as a ‘medium’ has already proven problematic. Talk of ‘the sermon as an educational medium’ goes hand in hand with the misunderstanding that the sermon is purely a means of communication by which religious knowledge could be ‘imparted’ to the congregation. This understanding of the sermon runs counter to the insight into the performative character of the homiletic event that the independent participation of all those present encompasses. Even the term education is misleading in regard to the sermon if it is not explicitly differentiated from an occasionally widespread abbreviated educational term, relating purely to the dissemination of knowledge. Only an understanding of education which takes equal account of not only the critical and independent reflection of those listening to the sermon but also the emotional

38 cf. Henning Luther, “Predigt als inszenierter Text. Überlegungen zur Kunst der Predigt,” Theologia Practica 18 (1983), 89–100; here: 95.

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engagement of the participants which is inherent to religious interaction is suitable to express the complexity of the religious performance which is the sermon. Provided that this understanding is based on such performance and educational theory, it is appropriate to recognise the sermon as an educational medium.

Part F: Historical Treatises and Textbooks

Christian Wiese

In the Shadow of Protestantism: David Cassel’s and Paulus (Selig) Cassel’s Educational Representations of the History of Judaism in Mid-Nineteenth Century Germany Jewish Studies is the historical knowledge of Judaism, the science of its religious ideas, their revelations in the great individuals of the Jewish people, its literature, its religious and moral life. It is also the science of religious ideas and institutions as they appear to fit into our world view, proving their worth in us and to us as living moral forces. It is the great evidence of Judaism’s achievements in the past, of its right in the present and future, and it is our protection against prejudices disseminated over millennia, against all intellectual weapons concocted against us and our teachings. It protects the great facts of the past, it collects the rays emanating from the documents of Judaism that light the present and the future. Without it, we would be a body without a soul, a ship without a captain. […] It has become part of the legacy of the wonderful past of the Jewish people, and thus the difficult task still lies ahead, to awaken all good minds of our race with strong words against the destruction that has been caused by shortsightedness, ignorance, and indifference, to put an end to the listlessness, with which the teaching of Judaism has been passed down to the young generation. Its task is to raise everyone’s awareness of what mission Judaism has fulfilled by preserving the religion of the Prophets and the Torah from all sorts of obscuring by the unprecedented struggles and suffering of those who profess it, and it will also have the duty to take a stand against the attempt to transform our religion into a syncretistic construction by accepting foreign institutions.¹

This definition of Wissenschaft des Judentums, quoted from an essay published in 1898 by the Hungarian-Jewish historian and orientalist Martin Schreiner (1863– 1926), precisely reflects the self-conception the young discipline had developed during the nineteenth century. As a child of the modern age, its origins lay in the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, and in the encounter with the historical understanding of German Idealism and Romanticism, which revolutionized the Jewish awareness of history. The radical innovation of this new discipline of academic Jewish Studies consisted in the development of a scholarly ethos: although it had deep roots in the traditional Jewish scholarly tradition, its early representatives made it their task to approach the study of Jewish religion, history and literature using the methods of contemporary historiography, i. e. “to emancipate from the 1 Martin Schreiner, “Was ist uns die Wissenschaft des Judentums?,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums 62 (1898), 150–152, 164–166, and 175–177, here 177. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110795905-013

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theologians” and to cleanse itself from the prejudices, motives, and passions of religion.² Within the context of the emancipation of the Jewish minority, such a vision of academic objectivity promised to bring an end to the isolation from nonJewish academia, while furthering social and cultural integration. However, from its very inception, the young discipline went beyond the purely academic, fulfilling the important function of reformulating Jewish identity amidst a Christian and, especially in Prussia, predominantly Protestant society and culture. One of the central goals of the Jewish scholars was thus what Shulamit Volkov has called “inventing a tradition”: an ethical and philosophical interpretation of Judaism that aspired to prove the legitimacy of the continued existence of Jewry and Jewishness within modernity and to demonstrate its contribution to the contemporary social, intellectual and moral problems.³ A crucial inner-Jewish implication of this endeavor was the desire to achieve a modernizing renewal of Judaism and to immunize the Jewish minority against the threat of a possible self-dissolution as a consequence of religious-cultural indifference or conversion. Given this political and cultural constellation, Wissenschaft des Judentums was, from the early stages of the discipline in the 1820s through the nineteenth century up to the early twentieth century, a scholarly movement whose educational endeavors pursued different goals: On the one hand, Jewish scholars published books, scholarly editions, encyclopedia articles and other academic writings, including religious and philosophical treatises in order to provide their Jewish audience with knowledge on their own tradition or in order to offer fresh interpretations of Jewish traditions and sources, often for the sake of reforms aiming at a modernization of Jewish thought and practice; or they used the genre of textbooks, catechisms and sermons in order to educate Jewish readers, edify members of Jewish congregations, and contribute to strengthening Jewish identity and pride. However, these media were not only meant as tools for knowledge production within the Jewish communities. They were also an important element of processes of religious and political positioning in which Jewish scholars devoted much energy to challenging Christian – mainly Protestant – hegemonic cultural claims of superiority and to rejecting anti-Jewish sentiments and prejudice. Furthermore, such positioning helped negotiating religious difference in a political constellation strongly shaped by the contemporary social and cultural power relations. Finally, the goal was to assert the right of the Jewish minority to fully participate in German society 2 Leopold Zunz, Über jüdische Literatur (1845), reprinted in Zunz, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 1 (Berlin: Gerschel, 1875), 41–59, here 57; cf. Ismar Schorsch, “The Ethos of Modern Jewish Scholarship,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 35 (1990), 55–71. 3 Shulamit Volkov, “Inventing Jewish Tradition: On the Formation of Modern Jewish Culture,” Jewish Studies at the Central European University 3 (2002–2003), 211–227.

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as well as the right of Judaism as a distinctive religion and culture to be accepted as an equal and valuable part of German culture. Rather than attempting to provide a general survey on the role educational media played in this complex and often frustrating and disillusioning process, this article looks at processes of religious positioning towards Protestantism in the work of two specific representatives of Wissenschaft des Judentums in Germany during the second half of the nineteenth century. Even though they were brothers, their biographical, intellectual, and spiritual path as well as their relationship to Christianity, Protestantism in particular, could not be more different: one of them acquired renown as a historian of Jewish literature, whereas the other chose the path of conversion and became a Protestant theologian involved in the project of missionizing the Jews. A study on David Cassel (1818–1893) and Paulus Cassel (1821–1892) is, indeed, apart from the personal dimension involved, particularly relevant as it allows analyzing the very different choices Jewish scholars had in view of the protracted process of emancipation, the continuing pressure of Christian supersessionism, and the emergence of political and racial anti-Semitism. Within that context, Selig (later Paulus Stephanus) Cassel turns out to be a rather unique figure, a serious and learned intellectual, neglected by historiography and rarely discussed among scholars of Jewish intellectual history (as well as in scholarship on contemporary Protestantism), whereas his brother followed a more conventional path but is also one of the lesser known Jewish scholars of that period.⁴ The focus of the following remarks is less on the motivation of Paulus Cassel’s conversion or the question whether or not he truly was a “convert of conviction” or a “covert of convenience.”⁵ By comparing Paulus Cassel’s changing

4 This article draws, to a large extent, on my previous work on the two scholars; see Christian Wiese, “The Divergent Path of Two Brothers: The Jewish Scholar David Cassel and the Protestant Missionary Paulus Cassel,” in Converts of Conviction: Faith and Scepticism in Nineteenth-Century European Jewish Society, ed. David Ruderman (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2017), 55–95. 5 For these two categories, see Todd M. Endelman, Leaving the Jewish Fold: Conversion and Radical Assimilation in Modern Jewish History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 225: “Among the many Jews who became Christians in the modern period were a few who were, by their own testimony and the testimony of others, sincere converts, who changed their religion as the outcome of spiritual illumination, philosophical reflection, scriptural study, or some combination thereof. Unlike the majority, these converts took their new faith seriously. They believed that Jesus was the Son of God and the Messiah; that his death atoned for the sins of humankind; that the Christian reading of the Hebrew Bible was correct and the Jewish reading willfully incorrect; and that God’s covenant with the Jewish people was void, having been reassigned to the New Israel, that is, Christendom. They worshiped regularly and often testified publicly to the truth of their new faith. For them, Christianity was more than a new cloak in which they enveloped themselves for worldly advantage.” Endelman lists Paulus Cassel among the rare cases in Central Eu-

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views on Judaism and his perspectives on Christianity’s relationship to its Jewish origins with his brother David’s representation of Jewish history and literature, this article also endeavors to elaborate on the differing historical and theological concepts that characterize the two scholars’ positions and positionings in the political context in which they communicated their scholarly findings. Different audiences as well as different educational media proved to be significant to them: while both published in or planned to create encyclopedia for both a general and a Jewish audience, David Cassel’s focus was, among others, on textbooks for Jewish teachers and sermons addressing the Jewish youth, whereas Selig (Paulus) Cassel’s primary media were historical articles and books in which he represented his changing historical and theological views to a Jewish and non-Jewish readership, at a later stage theological and historical writings that were meant as interventions in the contemporary political discourse on anti-Semitism.

1 ‘Religious Positioning’ in David Cassel’s Jewish Scholarship and Educational Activities The Hebraist and historian David Cassel was a typical representative of the scholarly movement of Wissenschaft des Judentums in the nineteenth century. Born on 7 March 1818 in the Silesian-Prussian town of Groß-Glogau as one of two sons of a Jewish sculptor, he visited the local Klostergymnasium, a Christian grammar school, then enrolled at the University of Breslau and eventually studied philosophy and classical philology in Berlin, where he attended the lectures, among others, of the Orientalist Julius Heinrich Petermann (1801–1876), the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Trendelenburg (1781–1835), and the philologist August Boeck (1785– 1867). Apart from that, he devoted himself to Talmudic studies and literary studies under the supervision of one of the founders and towering figures of Wissenschaft des Judentums, Leopold Zunz (1794–1886), and maintained friendly relations with Moritz Steinschneider (1816–1907), later also with Abraham Geiger (1810–1874) and Zacharias Frankel (1801–1875) as well as with scholars such as Heinrich Graetz (1817–1891) and Michael Sachs (1808–1864). He received his doctoral degree with

rope in which conversion was not an expression of radical assimilation on the part of those who were unable or unwilling to endure the burden of being Jewish and who desired to be liberated from the marks of Jewish particularism for the sake of social acceptance and equal rights (ibid., 4– 5). As a critique of an overly neat division of sincere and opportunistic conversions, see, e. g., Alan T. Levenson, “The Conversionary Impulse in Fin-de-Siecle Germany,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 50 (1995), 107–122.

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a thesis on Die Psalmenüberschriften in kritisch-historischer und archäologischer Hinsicht in 1842 and his rabbinical diploma in 1843 from Frankel but never accepted a rabbinical position. In 1846, he became principal of an educational institute for orphaned boys called the “Dina-Nauen’sche-Erziehungsanstalt” in Berlin, a position he held until 1879. He also acted as a teacher of religion in Berlin at the congregational school for Jewish girls in 1850/51, from 1852 to 1867 at the Jewish school for boys, and from 1858 onwards as a lecturer at the Jewish community’s teacher seminary. In 1872, when the Lehranstalt für die Wissenschaft des Judentums was established in Berlin, Cassel was eventually hired as a lecturer in biblical exegesis as well as Jewish history and literature. In religious terms, he seems, at least initially, to have been closer to the positive-historical school associated with the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau than to the Reform movement. Not an ardent reformer but a devoted historian, he usually refrained from getting involved in inner-Jewish controversies, emphasizing the impartial objectivity of religious history and the constructive role of Wissenschaft in providing the basis for an adequate moral and aesthetic renewal of the synagogue service.⁶ In 1857, he became a member of the Gesellschaft der Freunde, originally an association of young intellectuals inspired by the Haskalah but later a cultural home for Berlin Jewish intellectuals of different backgrounds.⁷ Cassel’s most important work was his unfinished two-volume history of Jewish literature,⁸ but he is also known for his translation and edition of Jewish texts, for instance Yehudah Ha-Levi’s Sefer Kuzari ⁹ or Asarja de Rossi’s Me’or Einayim. His historiographical approach and main aspects of his representation of Jewish history can be seen in the short compendium of Jewish history and literature he published in 1868 for educational purposes, which he expanded to a more than 500page textbook in 1879.¹⁰ Following an introductory part on the biblical period

6 See David Cassel, Die Cultusfrage in der jüdischen Gemeinde von Berlin (Berlin: Adolf, 1856). 7 See Sebastian Panwitz, Die Gesellschaft der Freunde 1792–1935: Berliner Juden zwischen Aufklärung und Hochfinanz (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2007). 8 David Cassel, Geschichte der jüdischen Literatur, vol. I: Die biblische Literatur, part 1: Die poetische Literatur; part 2: Die prophetische Literatur (Berlin: Louis Gerschel, 1872/73). 9 Sefer ha-Kuzari = Das Buch Kusari des Jehuda ha-Levi: nach dem hebräischen Texte des Jehuda Ibn-Tibbon herausgegeben, übersetzt und mit einem Commentar, so wie mit einer allgemeinen Einleitung versehen von David Cassel (Leipzig: Voigt, 1869). 10 David Cassel, Leitfaden für den Unterricht in der jüdischen Geschichte und Literatur. Nebst einer kurzen Darstellung der biblischen Geschichte und einer Uebersicht der Geographie Palästinas (Berlin: Louis Gerschel, 1868); David Cassel, Lehrbuch der jüdischen Geschichte und Literatur (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1879); both works follow exactly the same structure, but the latter is much more comprehensive and detailed. The later work “follows the same structure as the smaller book, and is intended, first of all, to elaborate and supplement, for the use of the teacher, the material present-

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and a first chapter on the history of the Jews between the Babylonian exile and the destruction of the Jewish state by the Romans, the main body of both textbooks is devoted to Judaism’s Diasporic history. After the loss of Jerusalem and the Second Temple, “the most important caesura in the history of the Jewish people,” as Cassel pointed out, the political side of Jewish history had become negligible. The most interesting object for research is, therefore, the creative tension between Judaism’s efforts to preserve its own identity and the adoption of the characteristic cultural features of the nations, amongst which Jews lived from antiquity to the modern period: “They devote an astonishing intellectual energy to cultivating and developing the inherited religious teachings, producing a vast literature of their own, but they also took part with no less keenness and success in the scholarship, art, commerce, and industry of those nations. The focus of the historical representation, therefore, has to be on this literary and cultural history.”¹¹ And, indeed, the bulk of Cassel’s erudite Lehrbuch can be characterized as a comprehensive description of Jewish literature and scholarship from the period of the emergence of rabbinical literature through the medieval traditions of religious philosophy and Kabbalah, with a particular attention to the culture of Spanish Jewry, to the Jewish cultures in Western and Eastern Europe as well as the Ottoman Empire, including Palestine, until the period of the Enlightenment. Cassel’s judgement concerning the Talmud is ambivalent: In his earlier work, Cassel maintained that, on the one hand, in antiquity and up to the present day, the Talmud carried with it the tendency of the Jews “to sink into one-sidedness and unfruitful brooding,” but that, on the other hand, it was one of the main roots of the continuing vitality of the Jewish spirit.¹² In his Lehrbuch, a more detailed and nuanced picture can be found: The centuries-old occupation with the Talmud had consumed an “extraordinary amount of intellectual work and had given the Jewish mind a one-sided direction of thinking,” but at the same time it had made a decisive contribution to the further education of the Jewish spirit and in the periods of exclusion from political life had saved it from the danger of “sinking into unfruitful brooding and apathy.” In more favorable times, the most eminent connoisseurs

ed there in brief outline, as well as to refer to the sources and to major works of history by the added notes. Apart from this actual school use, the book should be welcome to all those who are interested in learning about Jewish history and literature without being able to work through more extensive, strictly scientific works. One will not deny the author the recognition that he has tried to treat his subject as objectively as possible, uninfluenced by the position he personally takes on the issues affecting contemporary Judaism”; Cassel, Lehrbuch, preface, no page number. In the footnotes, Cassel refers mainly to the historical works by Isaak Markus Jost and Heinrich Graetz. 11 Ibid., 163–164. 12 D. Cassel, Leitfaden, 52.

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of the Talmud – in contrast to the mystics – had also achieved success in the scientific field. If the Jewish minority in the Diaspora succeeded “in living through the most difficult times, in maintaining its faith in the face of the harshest hostility, and in participating with admirable elasticity in the intellectual work of its time at the first ray of light that reached the remote ghetto,” it was primarily due to Talmudic studies.¹³ Cassel therefore sharply criticized the ignorance and fierce hatred with which non-Jewish scholars had treated Judaism’s literary monument. The Talmud was at various times “accused of being a blasphemous book, banned, burned, censored,” and “meddlesome proselytizers” recognized in it the main obstacle to their missionary efforts and were encouraged in this view “by vindictive apostates.” Only few non-Jewish scholars, who had intensively studied Jewish literature, had advocated the recognition of the cultural value of the Talmud. For the present, Cassel called for a new scholarly appreciation of rabbinic literature appropriate to the spirit of emancipation: The equal rights that have been granted to the Jew in political terms cannot be denied to the Talmud in the scholarly field either, and the literary rabble, which gathers the scraps of borrowed, ill-understood knowledge into accusations against the Talmud and Judaism, must be treated with due contempt. Of course, in cultured countries the Talmud is no longer fought with the stake or the censorship scissors; it is recognized as a literary monument of its time and place, which, viewed objectively, should be valued neither higher nor lower than it deserves. It does not occur to any Jew to stand up for every one of the hundreds of words in the Talmud that are put into one’s mouth, and no one of reasonable understanding will want to object to the fact that the Talmudic authorities were at the height of their times in scholarly terms. To what extent the Talmud is used as the basis of specifically Jewish institutions is merely a matter for the Jews.¹⁴

In Cassel’s view, the splendid religious and intellectual heritage of Iberian Jewry before its expulsion in 1492, the catastrophe of Jewish history brought about by Christian fanaticism that set back the development of the Jewish spirit by centuries, was even more valuable in cultural terms than the rabbinical tradition. In contrast to the religious philosophy of the Spanish Jewish scholars, however, the Kabbalah of the Zohar and the entire tradition of Jewish mysticism had proven to be mainly harmful for Judaism.¹⁵ A long-term consequence of this mystical tradition, he argued, was the emergence of Hasidism, which in his eyes has dominated Eastern European Jewish intellectual life to the present “to the detriment of culture and intellectual progress.”¹⁶ However, the picture of the cultural state of 13 14 15 16

D. Cassel, Lehrbuch, 198. Ibid., 198–199. Ibid., 236–334. Ibid., 516.

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German Jewry painted in the Lehrbuch is also predominantly negative, even if Cassel strongly emphasized the cohesion and moral strength of the Jewish community. He named the predominance of the Yiddish language, the almost complete absence of scientific endeavors, ignorance in the field of secular education, and the prevalence of superstitious fantasies rooted in the Kabbalah as negative elements related primarily to the devastating effects of political oppression. He was particularly critical of the state of youth education in the pre-Enlightenment period, which had led to a glaring lack of Bildung. The cause, he said, was above all the negative influence of Polish-Jewish teachers, who imparted at best a meager knowledge of the Holy Scriptures and the Talmud, impressed upon their pupils “the corrupt jargon” (Yiddish) from childhood onwards, “and despised and denounced what they did not know.” The “hair-splitting method of Talmud study” they practiced resulted in “contentiousness and arrogance,” and the “spread of Kabbalistic customs led to superstition and obscuration of the mind.”¹⁷ When Cassel addresses the Jewish minority’s political experience, he presents a lachrymose history, dominated by a narrative of discrimination and persecution. Strong emphasis is placed on the hatred and fanaticism of the ecclesiastical elites in the Roman period, on the suffering of the Jews during the epoch of the Crusades, on the destruction of Iberian Jewry, and the continuing discrimination and persecution during the centuries from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment period. And even if, at least implicitly, the Jewish cultural interaction with the nonJewish world is given substantial weight, the image of the Jewish-Christian as well as Jewish-Muslim relations is one of constant struggle for survival. While Christianity had become “an irreconcilable enemy of the religion from whose womb it had emerged and whose right to exist it had denied since its birth,” Islam later became an equally dangerous and bitter foe. Judaism’s most important spiritual and cultural achievement was, according to Cassel, that despite those two powerful hostile religions, it had successfully fought for its religious distinctiveness, losing only its “weaker and less noble members” to the temptation of conversion.¹⁸ Christianity and Jewish-Christian relations before the Enlightenment are only briefly addressed but appear in a markedly negative light. Jesus and early Christianity are mentioned only in passing, with the emphasis that the Romans, not the Jews, were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus.¹⁹ Apart from that, Christianity ap-

17 Ibid., 488. 18 Ibid., 164. Islam according to Cassel, was insignificant for Judaism since the religious difference was less severe in comparison to the Jewish-Christian divide; what was a true caesura for Jewish history in political terms was Islam’s expansion and political rule; ibid., 212. 19 Ibid., 120. Cassel refers to Ludwig Philippson, Haben wirklich die Juden Jesum Christum gekreuzigt? (Berlin: Louis Gerschel, 1866).

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pears primarily as an agent of persecution that caused unimaginable suffering throughout the ages, particularly in the late Middle Ages, which were characterized by a terrible “series of persecutions and slaughters”: “thousands of innocent people succumbed to a delusion which has left an indelible mark of shame on medieval Christendom, especially German Christendom.”²⁰ The Reformation, too, had brought neither progress nor had it exerted any positive effect on Jewish life, mainly because of the heritage of Martin Luther’s hostility towards Jews and Judaism.²¹ The verdict on Christianity and the history of Christian-Jewish interaction that Cassel presented to the readers of his Lehrbuch when looking back at the pre-Enlightenment period is, therefore, devastating: It will probably not occur to anyone to speak of an educational influence of Christianity, at least during the Middle Ages. What the Jews got to know in Christianity, the stupidity and superstition of the monks, the chastity of the clergy, the crudeness of the nobility, the mercenary narrow-mindedness of the bourgeois and the insatiable greed of the prince, all this made Christianity an abomination to them. When they compared the pure, rational teachings of Judaism about God with the worship of holy images, which seemed to them to be mere idolatry, when they contrasted the pious, simple life of their rabbis, often content with meager circumstances, with the immorality, the pompousness and imperiousness of many clergymen, they could indeed come to prefer to consecrate themselves and their own to death rather than to accept such a belief. The Jewish law teaches to pay obedience to the orders and regulations of the state power; and yet, where force was regarded as justice, cunning and shrewdness had to replace the lack of power. Outwardly compelled to servile submissiveness, the Jew inwardly despised the proud ruler, to whom he felt superior in intelligence, wisdom, and skill in business. In all this, the most brilliant testimony that could be given to rabbinical Judaism is the fact that under such circumstances it maintained itself on such a creditable moral high ground; […] that in the community there lived an indomitable strong spirit of togetherness and common purpose; that there was no lack of brotherhood and willingness to sacrifice when it was necessary to resist the common enemy.²²

Both of Cassel’s textbooks end on a hopeful note given the gradual progress of the process of emancipation and the increasing Jewish participation in German bourgeois society over the nineteenth century. Less than a decade before the eruption of modern anti-Semitism in Germany, his perception of the modern period since the French Revolution, the Enlightenment and the process of Jewish acculturation is generally positive. The historian praises Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) as a model for the combination of cultural integration and loyalty to one’s own tradition that he himself envisions as Judaism’s future in Europe at a time when the

20 D. Cassel, Leitfaden, 95. 21 D. Cassel, Lehrbuch, 476. 22 Ibid., 389–390.

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still existing obstacles for Jewish equality, continuing outbreaks of anti-Jewish hatred, and increasing religious indifference and ignorance might seduce contemporary Jews to turn to the religion of the dominant majority.²³ However, the implicit warning in Cassel’s otherwise hopeful remarks on the modern Jewish experience points to an important aspect motivating his entire scholarly and educational work: his struggle against the loss of Jewish religious identity and his fierce rejection of conversion to Christianity. The following passages are thus devoted to three different writings from the fields of Jewish scholarship, religious education, and political apologetics that are relevant to this element of his thought as well as his educational activities. The first initiative that should be mentioned is Cassel’s plan, drafted in 1844 together with Moritz Steinschneider but never implemented, of an encyclopedia of Judaism – the Real-Encyclopädie des Judentums. ²⁴ In his final version of the document, Cassel strongly emphasized the need of such a project which was supposed to strengthen the scholarly character of the young discipline of Wissenschaft des Judentums and to foster the social and intellectual progress within the Jewish communities. The state of Jewish scholarship, he maintained, excluded as it was from the German universities, reflected the situation of the Jewish minority in general, particularly the denigration it suffered due to Christian society’s lack of knowledge about Judaism and its propensity to “declare it dead.”²⁵ Given Judaism’s mission to counter Christian particularism by embodying general human values and fighting for “the eternal freedom of the mind, against darkness, parochialism, and self-interest,” and in view of the fact that Jewish scholarship was constantly discriminated against on part of Christian scholars as well as the state, the planned encyclopedia was, according to Cassel, both an academic and a political project: “The more intrinsic the links between Jewish scholarship and Judaism’s external circumstances, and the more intimate the amalgamation of life and Wissenschaft, the more the scholarly endeavor should take the situation of the external world

23 Ibid., 514–515. 24 David Cassel, Plan der Real-Encyclopädie des Judentums: Zunächst für die Mitarbeiter (Krotoschin: B. L. Monasch & Sohn, 1844); for the history of this project, see Ismar Schorsch, “The Emergence of Historical Consciousness,” in Schorsch, From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism (Hanover, NH and London: Brandeis University Press, published by University Press of New England, 1994), 177–204, esp. 194–195; Arndt Engelhardt, Arsenale jüdischen Wissens: Zur Entstehungsgeschichte der “Encyclopaedia Judaica” (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 132– 152. The ambitious project that was supposed to follow the model of the Universal-Lexikon der Gegenwart und Vergangenheit, edited by the lexicographer Heinrich August Pierer (1794–1850) had to be given up in 1846 due to financial problems on part of the publisher. 25 D. Cassel, Plan der Real-Encyclopädie des Judentums, 4–5.

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into account.”²⁶ Judaism’s history and tradition should be explored by Jewish scholars only (since non-Jewish scholars continued to be motivated by prejudice) in an academic manner, independent of the differing religious trends, in dialogue with the achievements of general scholarship, and, most importantly, in an accessible style. Unfortunately, Cassel argued, since only very few Jewish scholars enjoyed the privilege of being able to fully devote themselves to scholarship, a systematic and coherent representation of Jewish theology and Jewish history had to be postponed to a better future. Instead of waiting for the “messianic period of Jewish scholarship,”²⁷ however, what had to be provided was a collaborative foundational work, a basis for future research and a source of knowledge for educated readers, irrespective of their religious affiliation. The encyclopedia was supposed to achieve this by educating its readership about the manifold areas of Jewish knowledge – dogmatic theology (Jewish thought, Kabbalah, relation to other religions), practical theology (ceremonies, religious service, law), history (from the Bible to the present, including geography), cultural history (Biblical and Talmudic culture, Jewish contributions to scholarship, art, and economy), literary history (Bible, Talmud and Midrash, rabbinical literature, poetry), and linguistics – and thus to convey an impartial, dispassionate image of Judaism. One goal was explicitly to lessen prejudice among non-Jewish intellectuals: The imagined reader was the “unprejudiced Christian, or at least the Christian who desired rich guidance,” who, until the present, had no more sources of knowledge than “old, dusty writings, produced by blind fanaticism, born out of raging hatred against the Jews, nourished by disgraceful ignorance and mindless confusion.”²⁸ Jewish scholars, therefore, were compelled to take the initiative to defend their denigrated faith by what, despite the apologetic element involved, he claimed to be the means of pure scholarship. More importantly, they had to take responsibility in order to strengthen those Jews who were alienated from their own tradition and thus vulnerable to the constant pressure to convert to Christianity: Finally, it is equally necessary for many Jews to be taught about their Judaism as it is for the Christians, since they themselves often live in deplorable confusion regarding their hereditary faith, and fraudulent merchants of salvation are doing their part in increasing the confusion, in order to cast their nets in the muddy waters. Or should we wait until the last spark of interest the Jew takes in his history and literature has been extinguished? Isn’t it, rather, the obligation of anybody who has kept a warm heart for his faith to use his entire strength to preserve, exalt and promote it? We, therefore, state (and every true Jew will agree with us) that it can only be desirable from a Jewish point of view that Judaism be thoroughly un-

26 Ibid., 8. 27 Ibid., 18. 28 Ibid., 22.

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derstood with regard to any possible of its elements; the semi-darkness hovering over so many aspects increasing prejudice rather than dissipating it.²⁹

As this passage demonstrates, David Cassel was, as many contemporary representatives of Wissenschaft des Judentums throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, strongly concerned about conversion as a serious threat to the Jewish minority – a threat that resulted from what he perceived as a volatile mix of religious alienation, disillusionment in view of the unfinished process of emancipation, and internalization of non-Jewish prejudices regarding Jewish history and culture.³⁰ The second source that reveals how strongly Cassel was concerned about conversion is his book Sabbath-Stunden zur Belehrung und Erbauung (1868), a collection of 52 homilies on the Torah, originally delivered as Sabbath lectures at a school for boys. The main goal of these – pastoral and moralizing – homilies was to foster the pupils’ bourgeois sense of Sittlichkeit,³¹ to convey them an appropriate knowledge and appreciation of Jewish values, and to strengthen their religious self-confidence and fortitude.³² The sermons follow the rhythm of the Jewish year and usually deal with one verse or a few verses of the weekly portion of the Torah. They consistently display an admonishing, educational, orienting, or comforting tone and address different aspects of the students’ lives in the mirror of the respective text. Many of these Sabbath speeches, which can best be characterized as teaching sermons, address general questions of moral good conduct at school and in the parental home and use biblical verses to justify and illustrate these values from the Jewish tradition. Admonitions concern, above all, the appreciation of work – especially also of handicrafts – and the criticism of idleness; the

29 Ibid., 23. 30 For the struggle of the representatives of Wissenschaft des Judentums against conversion during the later period, see Christian Wiese, “Übertritt als Integrationsleistung? Leitkultur- und Konversionsdebatten im Deutschen Kaiserreich,” in Konversion in Räumen jüdischer Geschichte, eds. Martin Przybilski and Carsten Schapkow (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2014), 81–122. 31 For the German-Jewish bourgeois concept of Bildung and Sittlichkeit that was strongly influenced by ideals regarding education expressed by Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), see David Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780–1840 (Oxford and London: Oxford University Press, 1991). 32 On the “basis of the Israelite moral teachings,” as Cassel emphasized in the preface, all the contexts relevant to the youth were to be addressed, “the adolescents themselves were to be guided to a correct appreciation of the past, equipped to walk through life and fight for Judaism with firmness of character, religious self-confidence, and a willingness to make sacrifices, and in general educated to become good and faithful citizens”; David Cassel, Sabbat-Stunden zur Belehrung und Erbauung der israelitischen Jugend (Berlin: Louis Gerschel, 1868), preface, no page number.

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warning against contentiousness, obstinacy, selfishness, and the inability to admit one’s own mistakes, or against exercising power over weaker persons and persons with impairments. The speeches emphasize virtues such as humility and modesty, gratitude and respect towards teachers and parents, but also towards servants, diligence instead of late sleep and laziness, moderation of pleasure and respect for the health of one’s own body. Furthermore, emphasis is given to punctuality, reliability in fulfilling promises, avoidance of hasty judgments on the misdeeds of others and charity towards the poor instead of hardening one’s own heart. In addition to these admonitions, which are based above all on the ideal of a moral bourgeois family life but also on adolescent obedience to authority, the sermons emphasize confidence in divine providence, which offers protection and orientation on the paths that lead from the parental home to one’s own journey through life, and which also helps to get through distressing experiences and suffering. A theme that appears again and again in the sermons is the crucial importance of religious education as the “most significant subject for the youth,”³³ namely as a means of strengthening the fear of God and the conviction of the value of the Jewish faith in the face of slander of Judaism by non-Jewish society. On the one hand, Cassel criticizes in the strongest terms Jewish contemporaries who, because they consider themselves in possession of philosophical and scientific knowledge, disparage the sacred foundations of Judaism,³⁴ and on the other hand, he evokes the threat that imperfect knowledge of one’s own tradition poses to the cohesion of the Jewish community. Nothing seemed to him “more shameful than when a Jew has no knowledge, or only an imperfect knowledge, of his own religion and of the foundations on which it is based.” In this respect, religious education was not so much about teaching doctrines regarding Judaism but rather about enabling students to “draw from the sources themselves” by imparting knowledge of the Holy Scriptures and Jewish biblical exegesis, as well as Talmudic traditions.³⁵ Thus, the goal of teaching is, according to Cassel, to provide students with a well-founded understanding of their own tradition – with the aim of strengthening Jewish identity and responsibility towards their own faith community. One of the dominating leitmotifs of Cassel’s sermons is the encouragement not to despair in view of the many experiences of discrimination the boys of his school would face in their social and professional lives and when becoming aware of the long history of suffering and persecution endured by Jews throughout their history. Instead, they should be proud of and remain loyal to their tradition while in-

33 Ibid., 366. 34 Ibid., 141. 35 Ibid., 366.

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tegrating into German society and fulfilling their duties towards the German fatherland – the best way to refute prejudices and gain respect for Judaism.³⁶ Incessantly, Cassel reminded his audience of the courage and steadfastness the Jewish minority had evinced even during the worst periods of discrimination and murderous persecution, thus appealing to the pride of the present generation: And we who are lucky enough to live in better times, we who have been awarded the right to live our religion in a free and unrestricted manner, should we be less steadfast than them? Could we reconcile it with our sense of honour to be ashamed of the name of Israel because we, as individuals, are confronted with a large majority of members of a different faith?³⁷

The Jewish youth, Cassel emphasized, should be aware that they would most certainly continue to be exposed to prejudice and discrimination, but they should all the more rely on God and, while embracing the majority culture, cherish the faith of the Jewish community. Rather than allowing themselves to feel ashamed of “belonging to this oldest of religions, the mother of other religions,” they should be proud of their twofold identity: “Never forget that, in the first place, you belong to the large brotherhood of humankind; never regret that you belong to the community of faith called Israel.”³⁸ Time and again, Cassel bemoaned the indifference characterizing many in the Jewish community and their lack of knowledge about “their own religion, their own history, Judaism’s role in the history of humankind.” He insisted that what was needed in order to live up to the responsibility towards Judaism’s future was the will, from early youth on, to acquire the intellectual and spiritual means to defend the Jewish tradition: “How would you feel if, at some point in the future, you would, during a social event, hear people talk about the Jewish faith, and you, being Jews yourself, felt unable to contribute, or if your religion was attacked and you were incapable of defending it?” It was, therefore, the holiest of duties for a young Jew to immerse himself into Jewish learning and to feel the joy of being permeated by Jewishness and a sense of Jewish belonging.³⁹ It was a distinguishing mark of modern Bildung, Cassel argued, that members of different religions respect each other, whereas prejudice, denigration, and hatred were the expression of a lack of education that young Jews should learn to despise rather than succumbing to the pressure exerted by the experience of such attitudes. At the same time, Jews should be careful to respect the religious identity of non-

36 37 38 39

Ibid., 239–240. Ibid, 13. Ibid., 82–83. Ibid., 238; see 193–194.

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Jews and avoid any sense of superiority, derision, and hostility, since it was Judaism – as a non-missionizing minority tradition – that had taught humankind the notion of legitimate religious difference: “If we demand tolerance for our religion and for the way in which we express it, it is quite natural that we should grant the same tolerance to others. Therefore, it cannot occur to an educated Jew to wish to offend the adherents of other religions by expressions of derision or hostile attitudes.”⁴⁰ In contrast to this Jewish notion of religious plurality, Cassel insisted, the still widespread strategy of alienating Jews from their religion by withholding from them essential civic and cultural rights as well as social and economic opportunities, thus rewarding those “who recklessly abandon their inherited faith and equally frivolously affirm a new conviction,” had to be considered a shame for modern society. All religions should refrain from coercion when it came to questions of faith and follow Judaism’s example in actively rejecting conversion should it be pursued out of sheer opportunism or as a consequence of external pressure: “The holiest of human values, religious conviction, should not be brought to the market-place like a commodity one gives away for money or which one buys again if suggested by the opportunities involved.”⁴¹ He was, however, confident that the Jewish minority was capable of resisting such pressure. There had always been apostates, he argued, but they were like withered twigs and leaves: They “are trodden in the dust and crumble to dust, and the trunk still lifts up its head to heaven.”⁴² While David Cassel’s remarks in his plan for a Jewish encyclopedia as well as in his homilies primarily served to immunize his fellow-Jews against both cultural discrimination and the temptation to subject to the attraction by the dominant culture, another intriguing document, an open letter, published in 1869, to the famous anatomist, pathologist, and liberal politician Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902), is one of the very few political statements published by the Jewish historian that is written also with a non-Jewish audience in mind. What prompted him to vigorously attack Virchow, whom he otherwise admired as an advocate of emancipation,⁴³ was that the latter had, in an essay on the history of civil and military hospitals, claimed that neither in antiquity nor in their Diasporic history had Jews developed an adequate medical system, whereas it was Christianity’s achievement to have intro-

40 Ibid., 233–234. 41 Ibid., 171–172. 42 Ibid., 313. 43 David Cassel, Offener Brief eines Juden an Herrn Professor Dr. Virchow (Berlin: Louis Gerschel, 1869), 1. For Virchow’s progressive political attitude, see Constantin Goschler, Rudolf Virchow. Mediziner, Anthopologe, Politiker (Cologne: Böhlau, 2001).

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duced a humanitarian concept of neighbourly love also to the realm of care for the sick and wounded.⁴⁴ Cassel perceived this statement as a disgraceful denigration of Jewish ethics that was likely to foster prejudice among the uneducated. Apart from his attempt to refute the specific historical assumptions underlying Virchow’s views, Cassel accused him of “unfriendly sentiments towards Judaism,” rooted in an obvious lack of insight when it came to defining “Christianity’s and Judaism’s relationship to humankind and especially to modern society.”⁴⁵ What is particularly relevant here is the way the Jewish historian defined his relationship to Christianity. He did this both by defending his own loyalty to Judaism and by embracing historical arguments reminiscent of similar views expressed by his more famous contemporaries Samuel Hirsch (1815–1889) and Abraham Geiger:⁴⁶ It is obvious that I don’t accept the specific Christian dogma; otherwise, I would have converted to Christianity. There is no reason for me to discuss this dogma, the teachings about the Trinity, the Original Sin, or about Redemption. As far as Christian ethics is concerned, I am far away from underestimating it. What a bliss it would be if all our political, civil, and social circumstances would express the ethical teachings of Christianity. However, I am convinced as a scholar that Christianity has produced no ethical truth that has not yet been taught by Judaism and that has not yet been included in the latter’s foundational source, the Old Testament. Nonetheless, I don’t deny Christianity’s historical significance, its merits for humankind. Judaism, with its irreconcilable opposition against paganism, and with its strict monotheism […] would, despite the eternal truth inherent in its notion of God, have had difficulties to spread it, including its ethical truths, quickly amongst the pagan world. Christianity took over this task; it came to a compromise with paganism, it complied, to a certain extent, with the latter’s views, it allowed it to keep its images, gave it saints instead of Gods, also used violence when conviction was not sufficient, and prided its priests a degree of power that has served humankind pretty well as a force against the crude morality of the nations and the harshness of the princely power. […] Four hundred years ago, a faint idea of the evanescence of this amalgamation of Jewish and pagan elements flashed through the Christian world; this faint idea found its expression during the period of the Reformation, which did, however, remain incomplete. The present desires a complete break with the opaque dogma and contents itself with the purely ethical part of Christianity.⁴⁷

This passage is a full-fledged expression of modern – particularly liberal and conservative – Judaism’s endeavor to position itself vis-à-vis the Christian majority culture and the way Christians questioned Judaism’s right to exist alongside Chris-

44 Rudolf Virchow, Ueber Hospitäer und Lazarette: Vortrag, gehalten im Decembner 1866 im Saale des Berliner Handwerker-Vereins (Berlin: Lüderitz, 1869). 45 D. Cassel, Offener Brief, 7. 46 See Susannah Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). 47 D. Cassel, Offener Brief, 31–32.

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tianity as a distinctive tradition within European society. This strategy was based primarily on an interpretation of the Jewish religion as an embodiment of pure ‘ethical monotheism’ with a strong emphasis on Christianity’s historical role in spreading Jewish ideas and values throughout the non-Jewish world and on the price the Christian religion had paid for such historical triumph, to the extent that it had, in its Christological tradition, become tarnished by the very paganism of the world it succeeded to permeate with its message. Christianity and Islam, according to this view, should recognize Judaism’s originality and acknowledge its historical role and universal future. Samuel Hirsch had provided a philosophical version of this powerful polemical interpretation in the 1840s in his Die Religionsphilosophie der Juden,⁴⁸ whereas Abraham Geiger had further accentuated it in Das Judentum und seine Geschichte [Judaism and its History, 1863/64 and 1871], which most likely influenced David Cassel’s argument in his letter to Virchow. Far from being original, he rejected conversion and defended Judaism’s right to exist, embracing what Susannah Heschel has characterized as a counterhistory that was meant to refute Protestant anti-Jewish constructions of Jewish history and to foster Jewish self-respect.⁴⁹ By emphasizing the Jewish elements of Christianity and insisting on Judaism’s continued significance for the future of religion, he challenged what he saw as an illegitimate identification of Christianity and the modern human conscience, an identification that unjustly denied Judaism’s preeminent historical role in bringing about that very sense of humanity. Apart from Virchow’s ignorance, he criticized the inclination of liberal Christian theologians to compensate the loss of plausibility of their dogmatic tradition by making Judaism the dark foil for Christian identity. Virchow, by rethinking his judgments on the role of Jewish ethics in human history, he hoped, could contribute to a pluralistic culture in which Jews would not be denied their part in humankind’s cultural achievements: “My most vigorous wish,” he concluded, “is to make sure that you might perceive in my words, even the sharper ones, the eager effort to help the acknowledgment of truth and to extirpate deeply rooted prejudices.”⁵⁰

48 Samuel Hirsch, Die Religionsphilosophie der Juden oder das Prinzip der jüdischen Religionsanschauung und sein Verhältnis zum Heidentum, Christentum oder zur absoluten Philosophie (Leipzig: Hunger, 1843); for Hirsch’s philosophy, see Christian Wiese, “‘An Intimate Friendship with Modernity’: Samuel Hirsch’s Reform Philosophy in the Context of the Ideological Controversies of the Time,” in Samuel Hirsch: Philosopher of Religion, Advocate of Emancipation and Radical Reformer, eds. Judith Frishman und Thorsten W. Fuchshuber (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2022), 11–64. 49 Heschel, Abraham Geiger, 14; for the concept of counterhistory, cf. Amos Funkenstein, Perceptions on Jewish History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 36–37. 50 D. Cassel, Offener Brief, 38.

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2 Ambivalent ‘Positionings’: Paulus Stephanus (Selig) Cassel’s Changing Historical Interpretations of Judaism and Christianity Given David Cassel’s firm theological and moral rejection of conversion, his brother Selig’s choice will most likely have been unacceptable to him. It is probably not too far-fetched to speculate on the impact this must have had on his strong determination to counter the potential inclination of young Jews to choose an easy way out of the enduring dilemma they found themselves in when attempting to secure their place in German society. It would be most interesting to catch at least a glimpse of the Jewish historian’s judgment on the twists and turns of his brother’s historical and theological views on Jews and Judaism that will be analyzed in the following interpretation. Given the lack of sources documenting the actual relationship between the two brothers, however, this remains a speculation. The same is true for the question how Selig Cassel, after having embraced Christianity, perceived his brother David’s representations of Jewish history, his reflections on the relationship between Judaism and Christianity as well as his vigorous rejection of conversion. Unfortunately, no sources seem to be available that would shed light on such questions, let alone on personal conversations or controversies between the two brothers about conversion or any other theological and historical issues. In fact, no documents, no private letters or public statements reveal the personal dimension of what must have been a story of alienation, conflict, and separation. This is confirmed by a few indications which suggest that, even though both brothers lived in Berlin for decades, they never spoke to each other again after what, for David, must have appeared as an act of apostasy that destroyed the very foundations of any further personal relationship. In terms of his biographical and intellectual development, Selig Cassel took a completely different path from his brother, despite similar beginnings. Three years younger than David, born in 1821 (also in Glogau), he was educated at the grammar schools of Glogau and Schweidnitz and subsequently studied history and philosophy at the University of Berlin, where he was strongly influenced by Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886). Apparently, he was also educated in rabbinical studies, and it seems that his early Jewish learning (as well as his brother David’s) was influenced by Jacob Joseph Oettinger (1780–1860), a native of Glogau, who acted as chief rabbi of Berlin between 1825 and 1860.⁵¹ While links to representatives of the Wissen-

51 See Selig Cassel, Ueber die Rabbinerversammlung des Jahres 1650. Eine historische Abhandlung:

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schaft des Judentums were apparently much less significant for him than for his brother, he often expressed his strong appreciation for Zunz, Steinschneider, and the historian Isaak Markus Jost (1793–1860), even long time after his eventual conversion to Christianity. In the 1840s, he wrote for the conservative Constitutionelle Zeitung for a while, before moving to Erfurt, where he served as the editor of the Erfurter Zeitung from 1850 to 1856. Among his writings before the conversion were a number of articles devoted to Jewish history and a rather idiosyncratic book entitled Sabbatliche Erinnerungen (1853) that was entirely different from his brother’s Sabbath sermons. The most striking and remarkable feature of those ‘memories,’ rather meditations than speeches or even sermons, is that they mainly consist of rather general religious-philosophical or moral reflections based on verses from the Hebrew Bible but with no single mentioning of either the word Jew or Judaism, or – a few years before his conversion – of the name of Christ or any reference to Christianity. As Cassel emphasizes in his preface, these texts were meant to address an audience beyond confessional separations, since the divine word they were inspired by did not “exclude anybody from its blessing.” Aiming at uniting the readers in the spirit of God, they were not supposed to talk about “what separates human beings and tears them apart, but about what unites them and preserves their togetherness: about God in Heaven and His revelation on Earth.”⁵² Selig Cassel was baptized as a member of the Protestant Church in Prussia on May 28, 1855, receiving the name “Paulus Stephanus.” After his conversion, he became librarian of the Royal Library in Erfurt and secretary of the Academy in Erfurt in the following year. He remained in Erfurt until 1859, and King Frederick William IV bestowed the title of professor on him in recognition of his political loyalty. Later, the University of Erlangen conferred on him the degree of “Licentiatus Theologiæ,” and he obtained that of “Doctor Theologiæ” in Vienna. In 1860, he moved back to Berlin, where he temporarily served as a teacher at a gymnasium, devoting himself to literary work. His public lectures, which drew increasingly large audiences, both Jews and non-Jews, made him known throughout Berlin and beyond. In 1866–1867, Cassel was a Conservative member of the Prussian House of Representatives, becoming a prominent member of the Conservative Party of Prussia. In 1867, he laid his mandate down in order to follow his true vocation. He was appointed missionary by the London Society for Promoting Christi-

Festschrift Sr. Ehrwürden Herrn J. J. Oettinger, Rabbiner in Berlin, zu seinem 25jährigen Amtsjubiläum in Ehrfurcht geweiht (Berlin: Buchhandlung des Berliner Lesecabinets, 1845). 52 Selig Cassel, Sabbatliche Erinnerungen (Erfurt: Keyser’sche Buchhandlung, 1853), III–IV. Later contemporaries interpreted these texts as a first indication of his intentions to convert; see Wilhelm Johann Albert von Tettau, Gedenkrede auf Prof. Dr. theol. Paulus Cassel, gehalten in der Königl. Akademie gemeinnütziger Wissenschaften zu Erfurt (Erfurt: J. G. Cramer, 1893).

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anity Amongst the Jews, a position which he retained until March 1891. At the same time, Cassel was assigned to the pastorate of the Christuskirche in Berlin, with over a thousand seats, erected from 1863 to 1864 by the Society on Königgrätzer Straße. He remained in service there for twenty-four years and, according to several sources, baptized two hundred and sixty-two Jews in his Church during that period.⁵³ A prolific writer, he continued to publish many books, pamphlets, and articles devoted to a variety of religious, cultural, historical and, political topics,⁵⁴ among them most interesting attacks against historical-critical interpretations of Jesus in contemporary Christian thinkers such as the Protestant thinker David Friedrich Strauß (1808–1874) and particularly the prominent French Orientalist and Semitic scholar Ernest Renan (1823–1892).⁵⁵ While we cannot, in the absence of more comprehensive autobiographical material, be completely sure about Cassel’s religious motivation, several aspects can be ascertained. In the later theological texts in which he reflected upon his conversion, the narrative he presented was that it had been his Judaism, including his Jewish scholarship, that had gradually prepared him to acknowledge Christ as the fulfilment of the Law and allowed him to embrace the full truth, without rejecting essential elements of his former conviction. Rather, his Jewish identity had been completed and given a new orientation in light of the Gospel.⁵⁶ What exactly led Selig Cassel to the baptismal font remains difficult to answer, since there are only passing explicit remarks in his many writings. Alan T. Levenson assumes that the failure of the Prussian State to provide full emancipation together with Cassel’s service in the Royal Library in Erfurt and in the Prussian House of Deputies after converting, and the social and professional advancement this meant, might hint at a certain degree of pragmatic or opportunistic motivations. But he is equally convinced that Cassel converted for religious and ideological reasons

53 See Reverend W. T. Gidney, The History of the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, from 1809–1908 (London: Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, 1908). 54 For a bibliography of Paulus Cassel, see Louis Grossman, “Cassel, Paulus Stephanus (Selig),” in Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 3 (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1902), 604–605; from 1875 to 1889 Cassel edited the journal Sunem, ein Berliner Wochenblatt für Christliches Leben und Wissen (16 vols.). 55 See Paulus Cassel, “Die Erfüllung: Ein Wort für christliche Wahrheit,” in Cassel, Vom Wege nach Damaskus: Apologetische Abhandlungen (Gotha: Gustav Schlößmann, 1872), 26–72; Paulus Cassel, “Ueber Renan’s Leben Jesu,” in ibid., 75–153; his harsh critique of Renan’s scholarship also includes that of the latter’s flawed reception of and verdicts on Talmudic sources (ibid., 110–115; 127–135). 56 For a more detailed discussion of the motivation, circumstances, and textual traces of his conversion, see Wiese, “The Divergent Path of Two Brothers,” 68–74.

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connected to the kind of conservative Protestantism embraced by Christian friends associated with the Neue Preußische Zeitung or Kreuzzeitung. ⁵⁷ Rather than speculating about the question which weight exactly should be attributed to the different elements that eventually led to Cassel’s conversion – disillusionment with the protracted process of Jewish emancipation, personal opportunism, political affinities to Prussian conservatism, religious doubts concerning the Jewish faith, and honest attraction to Christianity – it may be worthwhile following a trace he himself offered in his 1886 essay “Wie ich über Judenmission denke” [“How I think about Mission to the Jews”]. In these retrospective reflections he emphasized that he had been brought to Christianity first and foremost by his own intensive reading of history, and that it was the historical narrative and interpretation he had discovered over the course of his engagement with Jewish history that shaped his own missionary activity: It was the love of Christ, which I had found by myself, not by a missionary’s word, but by the study of world history, indeed, the history of the Jews themselves, which had cost me several years – that I wanted to implant into the hearts of my brethren according to the flesh, by the same noble means, by that same love […] I had to preach the Gospel. There was no alternative.⁵⁸

Taking Cassel’s own hint seriously suggests a comparative reading of his changing representations of Jewish history prior to and after his conversion – an intellectual path that led him from Wissenschaft des Judentums to a concept of “Religious Weltgeschichte.” What was his understanding of Jewish history? How, if at all, did it change after his conversion, and how was this expressed in educational media, such as scholarly or more popular depictions of Jewish history? The starting point for this attempt to interpret the development of his ‘religious positionings’ towards Judaism and Christianity is, firstly, the two hundred and thirty-eight pages article on “Juden-Geschichte,” which Selig Cassel wrote in 1847 for the multi-volume Allgemeine Enyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste, edited by Jo-

57 Alan T. Levenson, “The Apostate as Philosemite,” in Levenson, Between Philosemitism and Antisemitism: Defenses of Jews and Judaism in Germany, 1871–1932 (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 132–141, here 133. For the political character of Prussian conservatism after the failed revolution of 1848, see Doron Avraham, In der Krise der Moderne: Der preußische Konservatismus im Zeitalter gesellschaftlicher Veränderungen 1848–1876 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008); for conservative attitudes towards the Jewish minority, see ibid., 323–358. 58 Paulus Cassel, Wie ich über Judenmission denke: Ein kurzes Sendschreiben an Englische Freunde (Berlin: Sunem, 1886), 24–25.

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hann Samuel Ersch (1766–1828) and Johann Gottfried Gruber (1774–1851).⁵⁹ This article, originally planned for his brother David’s project, the Real-Encyclopädie, and now included in this prestigious encyclopedia, stands alongside the article on “Judentum,” written by the Protestant Biblical scholar Eduard Reuss (1804–1891), which focused mainly on the history of the Hebrew Bible and ended with an extremely negative depiction of postbiblical Judaism,⁶⁰ as well as Moritz Steinschneider’s entry on “Jüdische Literatur.”⁶¹ The overall narrative characterizing Cassel’s representation of the history of the Jews is that of an exceptional world-historical drama, shaped by profound passions, incomparable struggles, and suffering; an admirable expression of steadfastness and loyalty to Judaism’s national law; an extraordinary enthusiasm for faith; and a religious-cultural tradition that enabled Jews to be an integral part of the highest intellectual activities throughout their Diasporic experience. The history of unspeakable prejudice, hatred, and fanaticism the Jewish people endured was, as Cassel emphasized in his introductory passages, as terrible as it was undeserved, since Judaism had, throughout the millenia of its historical path, been “a source of human love and humane Bildung.” However, due to peculiar circumstances, the Jewish people was treated without such love and humaneness until the very present.⁶² In contrast to Cassel’s historical works after his conversion, this article does not provide any theological interpretation of the Jewish role in world history, nor does it attempt to lend it a religious meaning. Rather, it can be characterized as an extremely detailed and learned summary of post-biblical Jewish history in the Middle East and all of the European Diaspora, with a focus on its political, social, and cultural dimensions, with an abundance of footnotes offering references to contemporary Jewish and non-Jewish literature, and with a vast number of quotations from relevant source material, including the Talmud, in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. While it would lead too far to examine Cassel’s historical judgments in detail, the following passages will focus on a few crucial elements that might help

59 Selig Cassel, “Juden – Geschichte,” in Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste, in alphabetischer Folge von genannten Schriftstellern bearbeitet und herausgegeben von Johann Samuel Ersch and Johann Gottfried Gruber, 2. Section, Theil 27 (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1850), 1–238. 60 Eduard Reuss, “Judenthum,” in Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste, 2. Section, Theil 27, 324–347. 61 Moritz Steinschneider, “Jüdische Literatur,” in Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste, 2. Section, Theil 27, 357– 471. 62 S. Cassel, “Juden – Geschichte,” 1.

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identify the major changes his interpretation underwent later, after he embraced Christianity as well as Christian views regarding Judaism’s history. First of all, it is most interesting to observe that, even though Cassel described the destruction of the Second Temple as an important, albeit “not an epoch-making” event within Jewish history,⁶³ his depiction of the political and social situation of the Jews in the Roman Empire, even after Constantine, is very differentiated, emphasizing the contradictory aspects of mounting hostility against Judaism, social and economic restrictions, and a general protection of Jewish rights and equality. Based on Jewish and Christian sources as well as on the scholarship of his times, he underscored the complexity of the developments within Judaism, of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, and of the conflicts and interactions with the Roman authorities before and after Christianity became the dominant religion. The Roman attitude towards Judaism was oscillating between tolerance and the hostility triggered by the Jewish resistance against the Roman Empire. The Jewish attitude towards Rome was motivated by the pain of having lost national sovereignty as well as by a powerless yearning for its restoration. Jewish writings expressed hostility towards the emerging Christian religion which they perceived as a pagan-inspired distortion of Judaism, but Jewish attacks were never as disgraceful as those launched against the Jewish religion by the Church Fathers. The overall image, however, is not that of a relentless exclusion and persecution of the Jewish minority but that of an interaction shaped by mutual antagonism and polemics on the one hand and a strong degree of religious and cultural interaction on the other.⁶⁴ Even more important is Cassel’s account of the inner-Jewish life during the Roman period. At the center of his representation is the emphasis on the enormous significance of the Law for Jewish tradition, which, as he emphasized in contrast to most of the Christian scholarship, was entirely compatible with serious learning, tolerance towards the non-Jew, with ethical strength based on the idea of free will, and with religious originality. Despite a few critical remarks regarding the nature of rabbinical literature, the overall conclusion is that the halakhah, as a result of the need to preserve the Jewish Law after the loss of the Jewish state, played a creative role throughout Jewish history, and that it would be an utter misunderstanding to interpret it in terms of the traditional Protestant judgement on Jewish legalism and particularism. The rabbinical tradition, Cassel states, very much in contrast to his own later verdicts, “has not always been understood according to its value and its continuous

63 Ibid., 4. 64 Ibid., 5–34.

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creativity.”⁶⁵ It is the scholarship of Leopold Zunz, Zacharias Frankel, and Michael Sachs, particularly their works on literary history, that helped the young historian to celebrate the creative and universal elements of rabbinic Judaism as well as the significance history and remembrance had for the Jewish people, helping the Jews to develop a universalistic perspective with regard to the meaning of Providence for all the nations of the world. As much as the rabbinical literature was a distinctive, time-bound literary expression of Judaism within the context of antiquity’s Oriental-Roman culture, it should be viewed with admiration rather than with religious contempt. Against historical judgments based either on Christian religious fanaticism and ignorance or on Jewish “pseudo-objective neutrality,” as he characterizes Isaak M. Jost’s approach, Selig Cassel, much more strongly than his brother David, praises rabbinic literature as the guardian of the Jewish idea of God and Judaism’s spiritual and national values, as an effective means of warding off syncretism and loss of identity. Modern standards cannot do justice, he maintains, to its true nature as the product of “a vigorous, tenacious, original mind, an indefatigable, unbending, and unblemished character.”⁶⁶ Throughout the article, therefore, the emphasis is on Judaism’s vital and creative contribution to and interaction with the other cultures in the Diaspora, despite the mounting pressure of discrimination and violence since the medieval period. The largest part of Selig Cassel’s article is devoted to the history of the Jewish struggle for survival in the different parts of the Diaspora from the Middle Ages to the modern period, a recurring theme being the Jewish minority’s social circumstances under Muslim and Christian rule. Interestingly, and very much in contrast to his later views, the author argues that the Jews in Muslim lands were in a clearly more favorable situation than those in Christian Europe. Based on contemporary work such as Abraham Geiger’s Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judentume aufgenommen,⁶⁷ Cassel interprets the Jewish existence under Muslim rule as an ambivalent one, marked, in the beginnings of Islam, by Jewish influence on Muhammad’s thought, and eventually by a process of Arab appropriation of central Jewish values: “As Christianity carried the Jewish idea into the world by joining the wisdom of the people and giving up the isolation of the Law, Muhammad arab-

65 Ibid., 34. 66 Ibid., 46. 67 Abraham Geiger, Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen (Bonn: F. Baaden, 1832); see Susannah Heschel, “Abraham Geigers historische Philologie und die Anfänge der Islamwissenschaft in Deutschland,” in Jüdische Existenz in der Moderne. Abraham Geiger und die Wissenschaft des Judentums, eds. Christian Wiese, Walter Homolka, and Thomas Brechenmacher (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), 321–340.

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ized Judaism for his fellow countrymen.”⁶⁸ This early stage of cultural interaction was, in the wake of Islam’s emergence as a world power, followed by a situation in which the Jewish minority suffered legal and social discrimination but continued to flourish in religious and cultural terms and, particularly in the Ottoman Empire, enjoyed an unprecedented lack of persecution in comparison to most other parts of Christian Europe: “There is no trace of the systematic, furious, relentless obsession with persecution ruling amongst the Christian nations.”⁶⁹ This narrative further accentuates what is a dominating element of Cassel’s article, a detailed analysis of the Christian tradition of anti-Jewish prejudice, hatred, and its legal as well as socio-political consequences that overshadowed Jewish life well into the age of emancipation. The ever-more violent expressions of Christianity’s enmity towards the Jews since the early Middle Ages, with the crusades as a turning point and the Spanish Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula as another culmination, triggered an admirable response of martyrdom and religious-cultural creativity. The few elements of change, such as the temporary Jewish-Christian rapprochement within the context of Humanism and the early Reformation period, ended in disappointment: “Luther’s statements against the Jews have, rather, created a new canon of intolerance for centuries to come,” with Protestantism embracing the conversion of the Jews as its true and most important task.⁷⁰ Hatred and stigmatization, based on religious – not on national – antagonism, remained a crucial part of the collective mind. In contrast to his brother’s representation of Jewish history, Selig Cassel did not devote too much attention to modern developments associated with the Enlightenment and the period of emancipation, nor did he express much hope that a new era may have begun in Europe in the nineteenth century. Rather than harboring enthusiasm with regard to a real shift of the political, social, and cultural circumstances of the Jewish minority, the article ends with an equally brief and sober hint to the New World beyond the Atlantic, a land of freedom and independence “which is being granted to those who step on its soil,” including the Jews.⁷¹ Considering Selig Cassel’s harsh critique of Christian hatred of Jews and Judaism, his positive judgment on Jewish religion and culture, particularly on Jewish resilience and creativity in response to external pressure, whoever read his article, published shortly before the Revolution of 1848, would certainly not guess that its author was to convert to Protestantism less than a decade later. The same is true 68 S. Cassel, “Juden – Geschichte,” 169. 69 Ibid., 192. 70 Ibid., 78. In this regard, Selig Cassel had a view that was very similar to the one of his brother David, see D. Cassel, Lehrbuch, 475. 71 S. Cassel, “Juden – Geschichte,” 237.

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for another essay Cassel published in 1847, even though it seems permeated with a sense of disillusionment regarding the prospects of full emancipation. Under the title Die preußischen Bürger des jüdischen Glaubensbekenntnisses [“The Prussian Citizens of Jewish Persuasion”], Cassel deplored the persistence of the concept of the ‘Christian State’ and the often-implicit conviction that the Jews, as a nation within the nation, should not be granted civic equality. Citizenship, he insisted, is not constituted by religious unity, and the Jews, whether or not they were still to be considered a nation, i. e. an ethnic entity, should be acknowledged as belonging to the state with equal duties and rights: “With regard to the state, they are citizens, in terms of their relationship to the Christians they are confessors of Judaism.”⁷² By depriving the Jews of their rights, however, Prussia would lose its status as a constitutional state in which he, Cassel, believed, and every citizen had to protest against a form of discrimination “that only disappears if one converts.”⁷³ What follows, a defense of Judaism’s creative role in the realm of German Bildung, Sittlichkeit, and Wissenschaft, does not indicate, at least at first glance, any inclination to give in to the social pressure for conversion, on the contrary. In a remarkable passage, the author rejects the notion that the Jews were characterized by a number of national weaknesses and vices that would only be washed away by baptism, qualifying the proselytes for all the privileges of the Christian state. Instead, he strongly affirms his ancestral faith, defending it against anti-Jewish accusations. As a member of those “who desire to live and die in the Jewish confession [and] are profoundly convinced of the flawless integrity of our religious law,” he felt compelled to forcefully reject the false judgments on the Jewish religion and national character: “It is humiliating,” he wrote, “to be forced to defend yourself against the accusations of anti-Jewish writings. […] It is a merit, a consolation, to suffer for the holy legacy of the fathers, to endure violence, but the stigmatization of moral incapability we must reject.”⁷⁴ What exactly happened after 1847 (and the failed revolution of 1848/49), whether the pressure and disillusionment became too overwhelming, or what else led to Cassel’s radical intellectual and spiritual reorientation in the 1850s, including his dramatic revision of his own narrative of Jewish history presented in

72 Selig Cassel, Die preußischen Bürger des jüdischen Glaubensbekenntnisses (Leipzig: Gustav Meyer, 1847), 4. The Jews, he argued, continued to be a nation, unified by ethnics bonds, but had been torn from their national soil since millenia; “dispersed over the Earth, they found and loved new fatherlands and adopted new languages and customs,” and their religious difference from their environment was, therefore, no reason whatsoever for exclusion (ibid., 3). 73 Ibid. 9. 74 Ibid., 9. The same was true for ignorant denigrations of the Talmud which were beneath the dignity of academic work (ibid., 13).

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the Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste, seems to remain shrouded in the dark. In 1860, five years after his conversion, Cassel (now Paulus Stephanus Cassel) presented his views in a book entitled Die Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes seit der Zerstörung Jerusalems, published by the Berlin Society of the Promotion of Christianity amongst the Jews, thus clearly indicating the missionary context. The structure of the work is very similar to the article of 1847, but the essential narrative, the tone, and the scholarly approach are radically different. Footnotes have almost disappeared. Academic historical writing has been replaced by what Cassel calls a “book written from the bottom of the heart” [ein Herzensbuch], a call for “love towards and prayer for Israel, whose redemption we are awaiting from one morning watch to the other.” The drama of Jewish history has now become the greatest testimony “for Christian truth and Divine judgement,”⁷⁵ rather than for Judaism’s loyalty towards the Law, the Jewish people’s undeserved suffering, and its creative cultural role throughout history. That same year, Cassel also published a number of collected essays – based on speeches he had delivered in Berlin in 1859 – under the title Weltgeschichtliche Vorträge. The preface to these essays clearly reveals Cassel’s altered historiographical approach: “Our task was to present world-historical images, illuminated by the Gospel of our God and Savior. No historical work should know of a different task.”⁷⁶ In fact, these essays can be read as a commentary to the theological assumptions underlying his new representation of Jewish history. Judaism itself, Cassel argues, is an embodiment of world history, not so much because of the dispersion of the Jews into every corner of the world or because of the impression Israel had made on world culture and continues to make due to its adaptation to different languages and cultures. Rather, Israel’s significance lies in the way “it teaches, embodies and bears witness to a God who is not the God of a nation but the God of the world,” and because whoever reads this history gets an insight into God’s universal will for humankind in general.⁷⁷ Israel in world history is, as he points out in Israel in der Weltgeschichte, “the prophet of light and judgment, of consolation and ban, of burning love as well as wrath.”⁷⁸

75 Paulus Cassel, Die Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes seit der Zerstörung Jerusalems, ed. by the Gesellschaft zur Beförderung des Christenthums unter den Juden (Berlin: Magazin des Hauptvereins für christliche Erbauungsschriften in den preußischen Staaten, 1860), 1–2; a further variant of his interpretation was published under the title Israel in der Weltgeschichte (Berlin: Eduard Beck, 1866). 76 Paulus Cassel, Weltgeschichtliche Vorträge: Erste Abtheilung (Berlin: Martin Berendt, 1860), preface. 77 Ibid., 7. 78 P. Cassel, Israel in der Weltgeschichte, 7.

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However, Israel’s world-historical prophetic role, Cassel argues, reaches beyond this and culminates in “Christian Israel,” in fact in Christ himself, who is the true expression of world history: “World history is a product of the Christian truth” in that the latter has revealed the love of Christ to all nations and taught them the true meaning of God’s history with humankind.⁷⁹ Cassel’s previous emphasis on the political and social history of the Jews has now turned into a traditional Christian history of salvation, or Heilsgeschichte, or rather into a triumphalist history of Jewish perdition, or Unheilsgeschichte, which interprets the destruction of the Second Temple and the history of exile as an immediate result of the curse the Jewish people brought upon itself by its sins, particularly by its legalism and blindness towards the liberation from the Law offered by its Messiah Jesus Christ.⁸⁰ Jewish history in antiquity, from the Pharisees to the period of the Talmud, appears as the most glaring proof that the Jews had cut themselves off from salvation. With their rejection of Jesus, with the Jewish role in his crucifixion by the Romans, and with their hostility against early Christianity, the Jews brought punishment and subjugation upon themselves, without, however, realizing and acknowledging that they had been “ashamed by the victory of the Christian truth.”⁸¹ The image drawn by Cassel of Judaism’s religious and cultural development in the wake of its dismissal of the Christian Messiah is now quite like the pejorative depiction in Eduard Reuss’s entry on “Judaism” in the Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste. The Pharisaic honest, albeit mistaken legalism prevented the Jews from understanding the true meaning of the Torah. This failure rendered the rabbinical tradition superficial and particularistic, stuck in the hopeless hope for regaining political freedom rather than embracing the freedom of spiritual universalism. Judaism had reduced the rich potential of the Jewish spirit to a useless, artificial web of an “illusionary legalistic system.” It has thus become a “land made of paper in which the Jews led an imagined national existence and in which the entire distinctly Jewish intellectual activity is immured.”⁸² The distinctive mark of Jewish history and culture is, therefore, a profound lack of freedom, even servitude, that would only be overcome by the Jews’ future liberation through Christ. Jewish theology, culture, and philosophy throughout the ages – all this is an illusion that prevented the Jews from recognizing the Divine reality in Christ, even their ritual and ceremony which helped them to flee into a fictitious freedom. Cassel continued to acknowledge what he had previously praised, the Jews’ vibrant spiritual and literary activity – from the Talmud and the Gaonim 79 80 81 82

P. Cassel, Weltgeschichtliche Vorträge, 8. P. Cassel, Die Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes, 9–10. Ibid., 20. Ibid., 15 and 68.

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to Rashi, the medieval commentaries and the Shulkhan Arukh – even under conditions of pressure and persecution, but argued that this vitality had become utterly ill-directed: God, who had not forsaken them even in their exile, did not take their searching mind from them. However, their strength had taken the wrong direction. They evaded the real truth, which was fictitiously replaced by an oblique dialectic. Thus, their theology became an unproductive shadowboxing, and their entire participation in the work of the nations among which they lived took on a wrong and unhealthy smack. There is only one truth, and whoever deviates from it, will necessarily be misdirected.⁸³

Jewish culture, according to Cassel’s verdict, had been dominated by the lack of everything that constituted the strength of religion, including a creative exegesis, a talent for historiography, and a philosophical depth. From time to time, the mystical yearning of the Kabbalah for liberation from the barren world of Talmudism turned out to be an “asylum of freedom” in the midst of halakhic bondage, but the mystical thoughts about creation, sin, and redemption, despite coming close to Christian truths, were ultimately opposed to the Christian and biblical truth and thus soon “reversed into the darkest superstition.”⁸⁴ The Jews’ eschatological and political hopes – from antiquity to the present – were equally misguided: Since they had “killed the true redeemer,” their souls were burning from a thirst for freedom which made them vulnerable to fall for pseudo-messianic impostors such as Bar Kokhba and Shabbtai Zvi. They were living under a curse that prevented them from finding anything else than further slavery, even in the days of European emancipation, “where they fantasize about being free.”⁸⁵ What is most striking in Cassel’s historical account, apart from the negative depiction of Jewish culture,⁸⁶ is the theology of history that had crept into his interpretation since his conversion. Israel’s history of suffering which he had previously described as a result of undeserved and condemnable Christian hatred, particularly since the Middle Ages, is now perceived as a natural consequence of their abuse of Christ and Christianity. Cassel’s historical representation of the ChristianEuropean policy of discrimination and persecution (from the anti-Jewish policies of the Roman Empire through the Crusades to the Inquisition and the expulsion of Spanish Jewry) is almost unchanged. This includes the moral rejection of the obsessive medieval Christian hatred which lacked both wisdom and love, reflecting 83 Ibid., 69. 84 Ibid., 43–44. 85 Ibid., 74–75. 86 See, however, the slightly contradictory emphasis on the Jews’ continuing cultural creativity in P. Cassel, Israel in der Weltgeschichte, 17–21.

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the powerlessness of the Christian Church when it came to “overcoming Israel by means of the Christian message.” Only this, “the strengthening of Christian life and the purity of the teaching of the Gospel,” rather than violence, would have been capable of winning the Jews’ trust and prevailing over their “deluded spirit,” instead of further hardening their hearts against Christianity.⁸⁷ However, despite these more conciliatory overtones that are typical for the rhetorical insistence on “love for Israel” on the part of many theologians involved in the ‘Mission to the Jews’ since the early modern period,⁸⁸ Cassel’s text is interspersed with remarks such as “what a terrible consequence of Divine judgment.”⁸⁹ Even his severe criticism launched against anti-Jewish prejudice and malevolence is limited by the constant emphasis on God’s justified condemnation of his chosen people. It would also be interesting to comment in more detail on Cassel’s altered image of Jewish existence under Muslim rule, but suffice it to indicate here that, rather than providing a differentiated analysis of the ambivalent legal and cultural conditions in different parts of the Muslim world, including Spain and the Ottoman Empire, Cassel now resorted to a theological interpretation. According to this view, Jews had been unable to escape the divine wrath even when leaving the Christian world. Not only did he now depict Muhammad as a false prophet who, under Jewish influence, created a new religion of demonic violence, before turning against the Jews; he also interpreted the emergence of Islam in anti-Jewish theological terms: Islam was a verdict pertaining to the sins of many nations. To the Jews it revealed the power of Divine truth. Those who refused to be liberated by the gracious voice of the Divine Son of Man, have now been enslaved by the nations of the false prophet; they were suffering under the Christians because they opposed the Divine truth, but under the Moslems they suffered because they were witnesses of the Divine truth. Until it has been liberated by Christ, Israel will remain unfree. Unfree even in their own inner and spiritual life.⁹⁰

Finally, Paulus Cassel’s interpretation of the Jewish presence in the modern period, still rather hopeful in 1847, had become very negative in 1860. Christian Hebraism, once a vibrant force that entailed hopes for winning the Jewish minority over to Christianity, had been replaced by rationalism and indifferent tolerance, depriving the Jews of a model for a true Christian conviction. Although Moses Mendelssohn still managed to escape the Talmudic system without giving up the Jewish Law, the 87 P. Cassel, Die Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes, 53–55. 88 See Christian Wiese, Art. “Judenmission,” in Enzyklopädie jüdischer Geschichte und Kultur, ed. Dan Diner, vol. 3 (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 2012), 233–236. 89 P. Cassel, Die Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes, 47. 90 Ibid., 66.

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next generation of maskilic and post-maskilic Jewish intellectuals was inclined to convert but only because liberal Christians saw Jesus Christ simply as an ethical model rather than as the Divine redeemer. The emancipation, finally, had a more than ambivalent effect, leading mainly to the dissolution of all historically inherited commitments and to the abandonment of Jewish ethnicity as well as covenantal hopes with Orthodox Jews deceiving themselves and Reform Jews leaving true Judaism behind and becoming “unbaptized non-Christians.” Reform Judaism was, as Cassel wrote in his conclusion, a natural target for the Christian mission’s task to approach “the old nation which denies its name and no longer perceives the light in the dark with the words and the power of the apostle.” He added that, in the present, thousands of Jews had been unable to resist the power of the Gospel and that the time had come for missionaries of Jewish descent like himself to preach “the blessed word of the cross” and to profess “that the love of Christ means the end of the Law.”⁹¹ Had this missionary tractate in the guise of a history of the Jewish people remained Cassel’s last word, it would make it easy to characterize him as yet another apostate who turned against his religious tradition and the Jewish minority in order to legitimize his conversion and who re-wrote Jewish history in the light of his new religious conviction. However, the story is further complicated by the many indications that his spiritual journey had not yet been finished. Rather, his experience of the contemporary German discourse on Jews and Judaism led him to yet another, alternative reading both of Jewish history and of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. Rethinking his theology of history in view of the massive tide of modern anti-Semitism since the 1880s made him, as can only be indicated here, in many respects a rather unique voice within the chorus of Protestant missionaries, even though he neither returned to his ancestral faith nor gave up his conviction regarding Christianity’s superiority. In 1880, Paulus Cassel published another historical essay entitled Die Juden in der Weltgeschichte. It reveals a further turn his attitude took in confrontation with the explosion of anti-Semitic literature after the social crises following the establishment of the German Empire in 1871. Not everything changed in Cassel’s perception of Jewish history but what is conspicuously absent now is the theology of history dominating the historical views expressed after 1855 and the denigration of Jewish culture it

91 Ibid., 79–80. Already at this time, however, Cassel was aware that the shift from a fanatic Christian antagonism against Judaism to a nationalistic hatred of the Jews would strongly affect converted Jews, “since, even though nationalism doesn’t like the Jews it also perceives the proselytes, in particularly the believers, as an offense”; see P. Cassel, Israel in der Weltgeschichte, 23.

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entailed.⁹² Only thirty pages long, this essay emphasizes something rather different, namely the strong extent to which European and particularly the Germanic culture owed its religious, cultural, and moral strength to “Jerusalem,” the embodiment of absolute freedom and morality, in contrast to “Athens,” the origin of art, and “Rome,” the symbol of power which had come to dominate Christianity’s selfunderstanding, to its own detriment.⁹³ The valuable forces of modernity are rooted, according to Cassel, in the Hebrew Bible – Abraham, Moses, the Prophets, the Psalms – and the natural continuation this tradition found in the New Testament, in the Jewish apostles St. Peter and St. Paul.⁹⁴ The reasons for the Jews’ rejection of Christ, he argues, are to be found in the resistance of their national peoplehood against the teaching of universal humankind. The conflict between Israel and Christ was the first expression of the “world historical antagonism between nationality and cosmopolitanism.” The Jews rebelled against their universal prophetic mission and the Roman Empire alike, the paradoxical outcome being that, by being defeated, they became “a world historical nation” that was sent amidst the nations with a renewed mission.⁹⁵ To be sure, the Christian missionary does not refrain from emphasizing the liberation engendered by Christianity, the path the latter shows from a particularistic understanding of nationality towards universalism. But Christianity, too, according to his view, suffered from a paradoxical development, the amalgamation of religion and power as well as the obsessive

92 Paulus Cassel, Die Juden in der Weltgeschichte (Berlin: Louis Gerschel, 1880). It needs to be said, however, that while this book, apparently addressing primarily a non-Jewish audience and trying to convince it to abstain from anti-Semitic views, points to a substantial revision of Cassel’s value judgments on Judaism, another book, published that same year, reveals the continuity of essential themes of his earlier theology of history, namely the claim that the catastrophe of the Jews’ rejection and crucifixion of Jesus was the origin of their suffering in exile; see Paulus Cassel, Die Juden: Ein weltgeschichtliches Zeugnis der heiligen Schrift (Berlin: Selbstverlag, 1880), 5–14. But Cassel also criticizes the “Pharisaic zeal” with which the other nations looked down at the Jews instead of following the Paulinic theology of God’s enduring love for Israel (ibid., 15). He bemoans that even the Lutheran Reformation, despite its insight into the pure nature of the Gospel, remained under the spell of traditional prejudice (ibid., 25) and that Protestantism since then (with the possible exception of Pietism) one-sidedly focused on the principle of sola gratia rather than on Christian love: “This is why it saw the Jews as enemies of faith and spoke to them with Luther’s words of raging anger rather than with Christ’s words of love” (ibid., 42). However, despite the fact that Christians had become their persecutors, Jews have no reason to turn away from Christ, because it is in him that they will eventually find consolation and salvation: “The Jewish question is the question of Christ. Only the true Christ who died at the cross is the true solution” (ibid., 40). 93 P. Cassel, Die Juden in der Weltgeschichte, 5–7. 94 Ibid., 7–9. 95 Ibid., 12.

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hatred, rooted in Pharisaic self-righteousness, that led to the murderous persecution of the Jews during and since the Crusades.⁹⁶ How did the Jewish minority respond to the “truly world-historical power of prejudice”?⁹⁷ In answering this question, Cassel, interestingly enough, draws back on elements of his article from 1847, expressing honest admiration for Judaism’s intellectual and cultural achievements despite exile and persecution, and pointing to the wealth of Jewish literary creativity for which the Wissenschaft des Judentums had given ample evidence: “The venerable Zunz is still alive, to whom the modern Jews owe the awareness of having an enormously broad literature to which they can recur.”⁹⁸ Cassel also explicitly admitted that he had been mistaken in 1860 and needed to revise his verdict on emancipation. The fact that a persecuted minority managed to liberate itself from the ghetto, fighting for equal rights and cultural participation, making it amongst the best of European society, should be acknowledged and admired: A humane people such as the German nation should feel an explicit joy, when those who have felt the scourge of prejudice for such a long time, are still capable of raising to their potential. […] It is a joy to see how human beings manage to develop their strength and capabilities. […] If you remember that this nation, in order not to dissolve in world history, was fighting for its life, then being dispersed to live a life in the Diaspora, where it was tortured as a nation, and now, due to its new freedom, starts to adapt to the life of the nations, who would not consider this to be a world-historical miracle in the history of divine providence amongst the nations! Therefore, instead of launching attacks against their freedom, it is the task of human kindness to cultivate it; […] the more the Jews enter the realm of the State, the more the goal of humane and Christian Bildung will be fulfilled. The hand that built the ghettoes must tear them down, and those who caused disgrace, need to restore honour.⁹⁹

Rather than making the Jews responsible for their own disgrace and overemphasizing the consequences the long history of humiliation may have had on their character, what was needed, Cassel emphasized, was a self-critical analysis of the disgrace inherent in the obsessive hatred against those who embody the valuable roots of the Christian tradition. The Christian Church had to return to Jerusalem, to the tradition of the Holy Scripture, in order to overcome what he characterizes as the victory of Rome over Christian love.¹⁰⁰ The true Christian attitude

96 Ibid., 13–19. 97 Ibid., 22. 98 Ibid., 23–24. 99 Ibid., 26. 100 Ibid., 27–29; cf. P. Cassel, Die Juden: Ein weltgeschichtliches Zeugnis, 29: “The historical behavior of Christianity towards the Jews did not follow the example of the crucified Christ but that of Emperor Constantine, the ruler.”

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regarding the “Jewish question” was to refute the modern literary expressions of anti-Semitism, these “written crusades,” rooted as they were in envy, nationalism, and racism, and to follow the spirit of Christ rather than that of Roman Emperor Titus.¹⁰¹ His own motivation to fight against anti-Jewish hatred, Cassel concluded, was not only the willingness to defend the Jews – “an obligation towards the graves which I ought not to forget” – but even more to defend the Gospel he had embraced.¹⁰² The final chapter of Paulus Cassel’s theological and political journey can only be indicated here – the circumstances under which the Protestant missionary felt compelled to side with the attacked Jewish community he had left behind decades ago, confront contemporary anti-Semitism, and challenge racist ideologies by advocating the notion of a ‘Semitic Gospel.’ He did so under the impact of the anti-Semitic debates since 1879, especially in 1880/81, in which conservative Protestant theologians such as Adolf Stoecker (1835–1909), national-liberal historians such as Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–1896), and proponents of racial hatred such as Wilhelm Marr (1819–1904), Eugen Dühring (1833–1921), and many others laid the basis for a version of modern anti-Semitism that permeated particularly the German middle class but also the academic elites, undermining political liberalism’s support for Jewish emancipation in Germany. Be it Treitschke’s accusation of the Jews’ lack of integration and adaptation to ‘Germanness,’¹⁰³ Stoecker’s accusation that Jewish capitalism, socialism, and anti-Christian hatred had joined forces in order to destroy German Christian society,¹⁰⁴ or the new racial and volkish voices, they all made Jews into the symbols and scapegoats of the diverse crises of modernity that were plaguing contemporary German society and, with their attack on the ‘foreignness’ of the Jews and the ‘Jewish mind,’ played a central role in determining the national self-conception of many Germans during the German Kaiserreich. What was most challenging for many Jewish intellectuals, including Paulus Cassel, was the ideological transformation anti-Semitism underwent during

101 P. Cassel, Die Juden in der Weltgeschichte, 20 and 29. 102 Ibid., 30. 103 See Michael A. Meyer, “Great Debate on Antisemitism. Jewish Reaction to New Hostility in Germany 1879-1881,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 11 (1966): 137–170; for a documentation of the controversy on antisemitism in Berlin 1880/81, see Der “Berliner Antisemitismusstreit” 1879-1881: Eine Kontroverse um die Zugehörigkeit der deutschen Juden zur Nation, ed. Karsten Krieger, 2 vols. (Munich: Saur, 2003). 104 For Stoecker, see Martin Greschat, “Protestantischer Antisemitismus in Wilhelminischer Zeit: Das Beispiel des Hofpredigers Adolf Stoecker,” in Antisemitismus, eds. Günter Brakelmann and Martin Rosowski (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989), 27–51.

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those years. A pessimistic cultural critique of modernity depicted Jews as the embodiment of capitalistic mass society, intellectualism, pluralism, as well as the traditions of cosmopolitanism and liberalism. Under the influence of social Darwinism and racist theories, the new ideology now focused on the alleged biologically inferior and destructive nature of the Jews as well as a dualistic world view that explained the decline of Western history and ultimately the contemporary social, political, and intellectual conflicts with what they perceived as a Germanic-Jewish racial antagonism. Former notions characteristic for German nationalists, according to which conversion, mixed marriage, and the renouncement of Jewish culture might dissolve the stigma of alienation, were no longer accepted. Instead, some of the racial ideologues also objected to the Christian religion and its Jewish origins and made the goal of abolishing the Christian influence on Western culture, viewed as the intrusion of a destructive ‘Semitic spirit,’ an integral component of what they termed a ‘de-Judaization’ of German society.¹⁰⁵ Others who sought to preserve biblical traditions, especially the person of Jesus, as positive components in their ideology, suggested a programmatic ‘Aryanization’ of Christianity. It is that tendency that challenged Cassel most since it put everything in question that he believed in, including his self-understanding as a missionary to the Jews and his interpretation of Jewish Weltgeschichte. During the peak of the political debates of the early 1880s, Paulus Cassel published around a dozen pamphlets in which he opposed the different expressions of anti-Semitism, warning German society not to succumb to the temptations of national and racial chauvinism and particularly his own Protestant Church not to underestimate the threat the modern version of hatred against Jews and Judaism posed to the very foundations not merely of Judaism but of Christianity itself.¹⁰⁶ In political terms, Cassel reminded his readers that the emancipation of the Jews has been a fait accomplit for decades and that reversing it would threaten political culture, sparking off a destructive wave of fanaticism that could easily turn against the Church and the State as well.¹⁰⁷ The so-called ‘Jewish question’ [Ju105 For the phenomenon of an ‘anti-Christian anti-Semitism,’ see Uriel Tal, Christians and Jews in Germany Religion, Politics and Ideology in the Second Reich, 1870-1914 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1975), 223–289. 106 See, e. g., Paulus Cassel, Wider Heinrich von Treitschke. Für die Juden (Berlin: Friedrich Stahn, 1880); Paulus Cassel, Die Antisemiten und die evangelische Kirche. Sendschreiben an einen evangelischen Geistlichen (Berlin: J. A. Wohlgemuth’s Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1881); Paulus Cassel, Ahasverus. Die Sage vom Ewigen Juden: Eine wissenschaftliche Abhandlung. Mit einem kritischen Protest wider Ed. v. Hartmann und Adolf Stöcker (Berlin: Internationale Buchhandlung, 1885); Paulus Cassel, Der Judengott und Richard Wagner. Eine Antwort an die Bayreuther Blätter (Berlin: J. A. Wohlgemuth, 1881). 107 P. Cassel, Wider Heinrich von Treitschke, 18.

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denfrage], a consequence of the long history of discrimination of the Jews, had now become a “Christian question” [Christenfrage], i. e. the question whether modern society was capable of cleansing its collective mentality from traditional hatred and accepting the Jews as equal citizens.¹⁰⁸ Finally, Cassel also rejected Treitschke’s accusation with regard to Judaism’s and contemporary Jewish scholarship’s alleged hatred against Christianity – an accusation aiming at Heinrich Graetz’s critical representation of Christianity’s attitude towards the Jews in the latter’s History of the Jews. ¹⁰⁹ He conceded that Graetz’s views were, indeed, tactless, but defended them as an understandable, albeit exaggerated response to the injustice done to Judaism by Christian scholars, and pointed to the much more appropriate judgments in Isaak M. Jost’s work as well as in his own article from 1847 (thus counting himself to Wissenschaft des Judentums!): “Don’t we find there an appreciation of the Christian spirit?”¹¹⁰ With regard to the religious implications of contemporary anti-Semitism, the most interesting element in Cassel’s writings of the 1880s is his lucid awareness of the threat posed to Christianity itself by volkish attacks against the Hebrew Bible and by racially motivated concepts of a de-Judaized version of Christianity. He referred, among others, to Richard Wagner’s 1850 pamphlet Das Judentum in der Musik that had been republished during the early 1880s in the Bayreuther Blätter. Wagner’s voice was quoted again and again by those within the anti-Semitic movement who wished to destroy the notion of the identity of the old Jewish God, the Judengott, with the Christian God of love and remove the influence of the Jewish Bible as a means of liberating the creative impulses of German culture. To Cassel’s mind, the claim that Jesus the Galilean was a non-Jew – the basis for the myth of the ‘Aryan Jesus’ that rose to prominence during those years and later became part of volkish theologies within the Protestant Church – distorted Christianity, ignoring the profound biblical and, in fact, ethnic link between Jesus and Judaism as well as the theological truth that Jesus Christ had not come to destroy but to fulfil the covenant begun with Abraham and legislated with Moses.¹¹¹ The “bestial hatred against the Old Testament” which he perceived in Wagner’s, Dühring’s, and other volkish writings, was a horrible, pagan-inspired

108 P. Cassel, Ahasverus, 20. 109 See Michael A. Meyer, “Heinrich Graetz and Heinrich von Treitschke: A Comparison of their Historical Images of the Modern Jew,” Modern Judaism 6 (1986), 1–11. 110 P. Cassel, Wider Heinrich von Treitschke, 13. 111 P. Cassel, Der Judengott und Richard Wagner, 10. For tendencies of an ‘Aryanization’ of Christianity within Protestant theology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).

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attack which threatened to destroy – with the dignity of the Holy Bible – the Protestant confession and, indeed, Christianity itself. Cassel was utterly shocked that the Protestant Church did not protest more vigorously against such attitudes and predicted quite lucidly: “We will soon be at the threshold of a hatred which will throw away the Jewish theories of the New Testament and end up with a pseudo-Germanic nihil.”¹¹² Not hatred but love was the answer to the ‘Jewish question’: He reminded his readers that at Christmas “we should approach the crib of the Semitic child, whose Semitic parents shepherded him while the angels sung Semitic songs.”¹¹³ The notion of the Jewish roots of Christianity, even the idea of its Jewish and Semitic nature did not worry Cassel. On the contrary, he relentlessly insisted that Christianity merely fulfilled Judaism, or more precisely, fulfilled the prophetic potential inherent in the Semitic religion of the very Old Testament that anti-Semitic voices even within the Church sought to eliminate from the Christian canon. It is here, within the context of his fight against anti-Semitism, that he, for the first time, characterized Christianity as an essentially Jewish, even Semitic religion, as he told his fellow Christians in a rather drastic manner: Christ is a Semite. The teaching of the justification of the sinner and of sanctification is a Semitic teaching. What Luther put back on the table in the Reformation is the teaching of the Semitic apostle. The great Gospel of love, which has inspired all of modern literature is, indeed, to be found in the Bible, a Semitic book. There can be no doubt, the Germanic people has been educated in the Christian truth, but this truth came from a Semitic heart. The Prophets were Semites. That our people should not be deprived of the Biblical spirit – this is what our modern fight will be centered around.¹¹⁴

Contemporary anti-Semitism, Cassel was convinced, must have a terrible effect on the Jews, on Christianity, and on German society. Not only did it produce a society permeated with prejudice, hatred, and fear, it necessarily alienated the Jews and made it impossible to demonstrate to them the glory of the Gospel: “Should they listen to the missionary’s preaching while surrounded by the shouting of the anti-Semitic chorus?”¹¹⁵ The hatred they were exposed to would necessarily make them hate Christianity and become allies of those who had long left it behind. But more importantly, anti-Semitism was undermining Christianity itself with the Church not even becoming aware of what would have to disappear from Christianity if Judaism should be eliminated from it – in this regard partic112 113 114 115

P. Cassel, Die Antisemiten und die evangelische Kirche, 8 and 43. P. Cassel, Wider Heinrich von Treitschke, 27. Ibid., 22. P. Cassel, Die Antisemiten und die evangelische Kirche, 37.

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ularly Stöcker, the Protestant theologian and politician, was “the greatest enemy of the Gospel in this century.”¹¹⁶ With his passionate criticism of anti-Semitism and particularly with his provocative interpretation of Jesus as the “child of a semite” [Semitenkind], Cassel incurred fierce personal attacks. His opponents tended to insinuate either that he had only defended the Jews because he belonged to Israel himself, or that, given his missionary goals, his defense was not sincere.¹¹⁷ A number of pamphlets composed by Christian theologians affiliated with the anti-Semitic movement, all of them marginal figures, opposed his insistence on the Jewish roots of the Gospel,¹¹⁸ attacking him for inciting hatred against Christianity and claiming that he had never truly embraced Christianity.¹¹⁹ While Cassel pretended that he did not mind that Jewish readers might not acknowledge the sincerity of his motivation,¹²⁰ he confessed that, given the lack of support and understanding for his work, he felt strongly alienated from his fellow Christians:

116 P. Cassel, Ahasverus, 8. See the harsh criticism of Stoecker in P. Cassel, Die Antisemiten und die evangelische Kirche, 25–27. According to Endelman, Leaving the Jewish Fold, 240 Cassel’s most important achievement was that, in contrast to the majority of his Protestant contemporaries, he became aware of the fact that the modern race-based anti-Semitism in Germany was “an assault on the doctrinal foundations of Christianity,” and fought with courage and dignity against both the denigration of Jews and Judaism and the undermining of the Christian faith; Alan T. Levenson aptly portrays Cassel as a “philosemitic apostate,” in contrast to the many examples of Jewish converts who turned into enemies of Jews and Judaism, and as a “devout Christian and proud Jew”; Levenson, “The Apostate as Philosemite,” 141. 117 See P. Cassel, Ahasverus, 31. 118 See Hugo Delff, Judentum und Christentum: In Veranlassung der Schrift des Herrn Professor Dr. Paulus Cassel “Wider Heinrich von Treitschke” (Husum: C. F. Delff, 1880). 119 See Ludwig Berthold, Cassel! Predige deinen Juden und dir selbst! Ein Mahnwort an den Herrn Judenmissionar Professor Dr. Paulus Cassel und dessen Stammesgenossen (Berlin: Friedrick Luckhardt, 1881). The author, who constantly calls Cassel “Herr Judenmissionar,” refers particularly to the latter’s book Die Juden in der Weltgeschichte, deploring the priority it gives to Jerusalem over Athens and Rome and asking the question many of his opponents seem to have asked at that time: “Why didn’t Dr. Paulus Cassel remain a Jew rather than becoming a Christian, even a missionary to the Jews in Berlin?” (ibid., 8). If Cassel knew that Jesus was, indeed, an Israelite, but an Israelite rejected and crucified by his own people, his message to the Jews needed to be that they should overcome their blindness. And rather than preaching in a church in an area of Berlin inhabited mostly by Christians, he should go where the Jews were assembling: “Rent a hall close to the stock market, Judenmissionar, and preach there in front of those you are supposed to address!” (ibid., 28). 120 See P. Cassel, Wider Heinrich von Treitschke, 4: “The Jews know that I have not enjoyed their affection; I do, therefore, not even consider whether or not they are fine with me appearing as their defender while I am protecting their world historical right.”

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I had no allies: Those whom I defended, had – so far – been my adversaries; those against whom I protected the Jews, seemed, until then, to be my allies, after all I had spent strength and life in Christian and patriotic activities. […] But I would have been ashamed to deny the Gospel of love and to step on and defile the graves of the patriarchs with cowardly feet, just for the sake of the frail brotherhood with half-friends.¹²¹

Paulus Cassel’s autobiographical notes as well as his historical and theological writings indicate that the Jewish historian, after turning to Christianity and having found a firm religious and political identity, was never accepted as what he had chosen to become – a Christian missionary to the Jews preaching and teaching the Gospel of the ‘Semite’ Jesus Christ who had liberated humankind from the bondage of the Law, a defender of the Jewish minority’s equals rights as well as Judaism’s historical and cultural role in world history, and a guardian of the Hebrew Bible’s relevance for Christianity at a time when Protestant theology was strongly tempted to completely sever the ties between Judaism and Christianity. Despite his considerable success as a preacher, lecturer, and writer, a formative experience of Cassel’s life seems to have been rejection and suspicion: It was not merely his brother who refrained from having further contact with him, the vast majority of the scholars of Wissenschaft des Judentums ignored him entirely, even his writings against anti-Semitism. Many other Jews doubted the sincerity of his conviction or strongly opposed his missionary activity which they felt was a threat to Judaism’s very existence as an equal part of German society and culture. The most disappointing experience for Cassel was the lack of Christian interest in the project of the ‘Mission to the Jews.’ The Protestants in Germany, he complained, did not love the Jews, on the contrary: They also hated the proselytes and continued referring to them as former Jews.¹²² With the exception of scholars such as the Leipzig Protestant theologian Franz Delitzsch (1813–1890), whom Cassel praised for his solidarity with the Jews and with him as a convert and missionary,¹²³ even the representatives of the ‘Mission to the Jews’ turned against him, making him an outsider. When the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews decided to close the Christuskirche in 1890 for financial reasons, Cassel took this as a sign that his work simply failed to be of interest to Christians

121 P. Cassel, Ahasverus, 4–5. 122 Cassel, Wie ich über Judenmission denke, 7. 123 Ibid., 31. For Delitzsch’s fight against antisemitism, see Christian Wiese, Challenging Colonial Discourse: Jewish Studies and Protestant Theology in Wilhelmine Germany (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2005), 109–158, and Alan T. Levenson, “Missionary Protestants and the Defense of Judaism,” in Levenson, Between Philosemitism and Antisemitism, 64–90.

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any longer.¹²⁴ More than that, they also had no knowledge about the Jews, their social circumstances, their literature, and they utterly underestimated the significance the missionary work amongst the Jews had for Christianity itself – as a touchstone for the vitality of Christian love.¹²⁵ While Cassel never publicly argued that his vigorous polemics against anti-Semitism contributed to his dismissal, it seems quite likely that, as Alan T. Levenson phrased it, “Germany’s most successful missionary lost his position for being a Semitic philosemite.”¹²⁶ It seems symbolical that when Paulus Cassel died, just a month before his brother David, it was a Jewish journal, the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, that devoted an obituary to him and tried to do him justice. Even though it mentioned that his conversion had caused much pain to the Jewish community, it explicitly and publicly acknowledged him as a convert of conviction who had preserved his loyalty to the Jewish minority in political terms: When the anti-Semites began to show themselves, Cassel remembered his origin, and opposed the leaders […] with great decision and manliness. It was this manly action that gives us some satisfaction for his desertion of the parental religion. We must judge this apostasy very differently from that of many others in former and present times, as he did not forsake his old creed for any worldly reason, or to get honours and position, but rather because he followed a mystical line of thought. God alone can judge the veracity and purity of his life; we dare not. ‘Peace be to his ashes!’¹²⁷

124 Paulus Cassel, Sendschreiben an Freunde in Deutschland und England über die Christuskirche in Berlin und ihr Martyrium durch die London Society (Berlin: Ginzel, 1891). 125 Paulus Cassel, Mene tekel. Eine wissenschaftliche Entdeckung. Zweiter Brief an Freunde in Deutschland und England über die Leiden der Christus-Kirche (Berlin: Verlag des Bibliographischen Bureaus, 1891), 15–16 and 20–21. 126 Levenson, “The Apostate as Philosemite,” 134. 127 Der Gemeindebote: Beilage zur “Allgemeinen Zeitung des Judenthums” 56 (1892), No. 53, 2.

About the authors Andreas Brämer is deputy director of the Hamburg Institute for the History of German Jews and teaches at the History Department of the University of Hamburg, Germany. David Käbisch is professor of Religious Education at the Department of Protestant Theology, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Samuel Kessler is assistant professor, Department of Religion, Gustavus Adolphus College, Saint Peter, MN, USA. Gordon Mikoski is associate professor of Christian Education, Princeton Theological Seminary, NJ, USA. Ursula Roth is professor of Practical Theology at the Faculty of Theology, University of Erlangen, Germany. Dorothea M. Salzer is assistant professor at the Institute for Jewish Studies and Religious Studies, University of Potsdam, Germany. Paul Schweitzer-Martin is research associate at the chair of Medieval History with a special focus on the late Middle Ages, Department of History, University of Munich, Germany. Zohar Shavit is professor emerita at the School for Cultural Studies and chairperson of the Program in Research of Child and Youth Culture at Tel Aviv University, Israel. Kerstin von der Krone is head of Judaica Division at the University Library Johann Christian Senckenberg, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Christian Wiese is the Martin Buber Chair in Jewish Religious Philosophy at the Department of Protestant Theology, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Johannes Wischmeyer is a church historian and head of the Theological Department at the EKD Church Office in Hannover, Germany.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110795905-014

Source index and Bibliography 1 Printed educational media up to 1918 1.1 Catechisms Ackermann, Constantin. Luthers Katechismus mit Bibelsprüchen für den Religionsunterricht in Stadt– und Landschulen. Meiningen: Herzogliche Hofbuchhandlung von Brü ckner & Renner, 1855. Dr. M. Luthers Kleiner Katechismus nebst einer Spruchsammlung. Altenburg: Verlag der Hofbuchdruckerei, 1853. Gretschel, Heinrich F. Katechismus der Meteorologie. Leipzig: Weber, 1867. Gretschel, Heinrich F. Katechismus der Physik. Leipzig: Weber, 1865. HaTorah, Yesodei. Catechism of the Faith and Moral Obligations, of an Israelite for the Use of Schools & Private Institutions, trans. Felsenheld and David Barnard. New York: Henry Frank 5610, 1850. Herder, Johann Gottfried. Luthers Catechismus mit einer katechetischen Erklärung zum Gebrauch der Schulen. Weimar: Glüsing, 1800. Hirsch, Samuel. Systematischer Katechismus Der Israelitischen Religion. Luxemburg, 1856. Kleine Katechismus Luthers in der Bearbeitung von Martin Caselius. Altenburg, 1646. Kley, Eduard, and Edut Adonai. Katechismus der mosaischen Religionslehre. Leipzig: Voigt, 1850. Nicolai, O. Fr. O. Der kleine Katechismus Dr. Martin Luthers. Mit kurzen Erläuterungen und einer Auswahl von Bibelsprüchen. 13th ed. Weimar: Böhlaus Nachf., 1907. Parkes, Samuel. The chemical catechism, with notes, illustrations, and experiments. London: Lackington, Allen, and Co., 1812. Petzholdt, Julius. Katechismus der Bibliotheken lehre. Anleitung zur Einrichtung und Verwaltung von Bibliotheken. Leipzig: Weber, 1877. Stein, Georg W. Katechismus zum Gebrauche der Hebammen in den Hochfürstlichen Hessischen Landen. Nebst Hebammen–Ordnung und Anlagen. Marburg: Neue Akademische Buchhandlung, 1801.

1.2 Children’s Bibles and Picture Bibles (Anon.) A New Hieroglyphic Bible for Amusement and Instruction of Children. London: G. Thompson, 1794. (Anon.) Bible Pictures, Picture Books for Little Children, No. 6. London: Religious Tract Society, no date. Badt, Benno. Erläuterungen zu den biblischen Geschichten für die israelitische Jugend in Schule und Haus: Anhang zur Kinderbibel, zugleich auch zu Levy–Badt’s biblischer Geschichte. Breslau: Wilhelm Koebner, 1890. Badt, Benno. Kinderbibel. Biblische Erzählungen für die israelitische Jugend in Schule und Haus. Breslau: W. Koebner, 1890. Böhme, Albert, and Hermann Lutze. Biblische Geschichte für den evangelischen Religionsunterricht an Volksschulen. Bilder von Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld. Düsseldorf: Bagel, 1947.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110795905-015

216

Source index and Bibliography

Büdinger, Moses Mordechai. Der Weg des Glaubens, oder kleine Bibel. Enthaltend einen vollständigen Auszug aus den Büchern der heiligen Schrift; zunächst für israelitische Frauen und Mädchen, und mit Rücksicht auf den Unterricht in der Religion und Sittenlehre bearbeitet. Stuttgart: Löflund, 1824 [first edition 1823]. Doré, Gustave. La Sainte Bible: selon la Vulgate. Traduction nouvelle. Avec les dessins de Gustave Doré. Tours: Mame, 1866. Herzberg, Isaac. Für unsere Unmündigen. Dreißig Geschichten aus der Bibel. Ein Lesebüchlein für die israelitischen Kleinen in Haus und Schule. Bromberg: F. Ebbecke, 1899. History of the Bible. Hartford: Julius Gilman, 1827. Maier, Joseph. Lehrbuch der Biblischen Geschichte, als Einleitung zum Religionsunterricht in israelitischen Schulen. Nebst einem Anhang: Die Schicksale der Israeliten während der Dauer des zweiten Tempels. Frankfurt am Main: Jäger’sche Buch– Papier– und Landkartenhandlung, 1828. Mailert, Karl Lucius. Biblische Geschichten nach Chr. von Schmid: Zum Gebrauche für israelitische Kinder in Schulen und Familien bearbeitet. Kassel: Luckhardt, 1851. Rauschenbusch, August Ernst. Auserlesene biblische Historien aus dem alten und neuen Testamente, nach Hübner, 54th ed. Schwelm, 1853. Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Julius. Die Bibel in Bildern. 240 Darstellungen, erfunden und auf Holz gezeichnet. Leipzig: Wigand, 1860. Schubert, F., and G. Jahn. Biblische Bilder zum Ausschneiden und Zusammensetzen. I: Das Leben der Erzväter. Nach Motiven der Bibel in Bildern [von Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld], Bestehend aus: 14 Tableaux nebst Textbuch. Berlin, 1869. Sondheimer, Hillel. Geschichtlicher Religionsunterricht. Erste Abtheilung: Biblisch–Geschichtlicher Religionsunterricht. I. Biblisch–geschichtlicher Religionsunterricht. Lahr: Moritz Schauenburg, 1881. Stephani, Karl Heinrich. Die biblische Geschichte oder biblisches Lesebuch für Schulen. Erlangen, 1821. Stößel, Moritz. Biblische Geschichte zum Gebrauche für den israelitischen Religionsunterricht an Gymnasien und Realschulen. Von Moritz Stößel, Lehrer der israelit. Religion an den k.k. Lehranstalten in Brünn. I. Heft. Für die erste Classe des Unter–Gymnasiums und der Unter– Realschule. II. Heft. Für die zweite Classe des Unter–Gymnasiums und der Unter–Realschule. Brünn: C. Winiker, 1857−1858. von Schmid, Christoph. Die Biblische Geschichte für Kinder: Zum allgemeinen Gebrauche in den Volksschulen Baierns. München: Churfürstl. geistl. Rath deutschen Schulfonds–Bücherverl., 1801.

1.3 Textbooks Behr, Alexander. Lehrbuch der mosaischen Religion. München: Fleischmann, 1826. Büdinger, Moses. ‘more lemorim‘ oder: Anweisung für Lehrer, wie der israelitische Religionsunterricht zu ertheilen und der Leitfaden Moreh Lathora dabei anzuwenden sey, nebst Gedanken und Bemerkungen über die israelitische Religionslehre und die dieselbe betreffende ältere und neuere Literatur; auch eine Schrift für Eltern und Schulbehörden, 2nd ed. Kassel: Krieger, 1831. Cassel, David. Lehrbuch der jüdischen Geschichte und Literatur. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1879.

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217

Cassel, David. Leitfaden für den Unterricht in der jüdischen Geschichte und Literatur. Nebst einer kurzen Darstellung der biblischen Geschichte und einer Uebersicht der Geographie Palästinas. Berlin: Louis Gerschel, 1868. Danz, Johann Traugott Leberecht. Die Wissenschaften des geistlichen Berufs im Grundriß. Zum Gebrauch akademischer Vorlesungen. Jena: Verlag Schmied, 1824. Dinter, Gustav Friedrich. Die vorzüglichsten Regeln der Katechetik. Als Leitfaden beym Unterrichte künftiger Lehrer in Bürger– und Landschulen. Neustadt an der Orla: Wagner, 1800. Gräffe, Johann Friedrich Christoph. Vollständiges Lehrbuch der allgemeinen Katechetik nach Kantischen Grundsätzen, three volumes. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Rupprecht 1795–1799. Israelitischer Kinderfreund, oder, Handbuch der gemeinnützigsten wissenschaftlichen Kenntnisse: Ein Elementarwerk in hebräischer, deutscher und französischer Sprache für den Schul– und Privat– Unterricht der israelitischen Jugend. Berlin, 1811. Landauer, Gabriel. Derech lamorim, oder: Leitfaden für israelitische Religionslehrer, welche einen fruchtbaren Unterricht ertheilen wollen. Alsfeld: Bücking, 1835. Schwarz, Carl. Grundriß der christlichen Lehre. Ein Leitfaden für den Religions–Unterricht in Schule und Kirche. Gotha: Thienemann, 1866. Schwarz, Friedrich Heinrich Christian. Katechetik oder Anleitung zu dem Unterricht der Jugend im Christentum. Giessen: Georg Friedrich Heyer, 1818. Stoy, Karl Volkmar. Lehrbuch für den gesammten Religionsunterricht nach Bibel, Katechismus und Gesangbuch, 2nd ed. Leipzig, 1844. Wentz, Karl. Evangelisches Religionsbuch für Westfalen. Nach dem Lehrplan für den evangelischen Religionsunterricht in den Volksschulen der Provinz Westfalen ausgestattet von westfälischen Schulmännern mit Abbildungen von Schnorr von Carolsfeld u. a. Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1926. Wolff, Lion. Lehrbuch der ’bedika ushechita’ in fünf Theilen. Leipzig: Verlag von M. W. Kaufmann, 1901. Yeshurun, Johlson’s Shir. Israelitisches Gesangbuch zur Andacht und zum Religionsunterricht, vol. 3. Frankfurt am Main: In der Andreäischen Buchhandlung, 1829.

1.4 Sermons Eine Auswahl von Predigten. Zur Erbauung, so wie insbesonders zum Vorlesen in Synagogen, die des Redners ermangeln. Leipzig: Baumgärtner, 1843. Jellinek, Adolph. Predigten, vol. 1. Vienna: Carl Gerold’s Sohn, 1862. Jellinek, Adolph. Predigten, vol. 2. Vienna: Carl Gerold’s Sohn, 1863.

2 Bibliography up to 1918 (Anon.) “Der Lehrer als Prediger.” Der Israelitische Lehrer 4 (1864): 61 f., 65 f., 69 f., 73 f. (Anon.) “Der Religionsunterricht und die kleinen Gemeinden.” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums 47 (1883): 628 f. (Anon.) “Die Ausweisung der jüdischen Kultusbeamten und deren Folgen.” Der jüdische Kantor 7 (1885): 84 f. (Anon.) “Die Seminarfrage.” Der israelische Lehrer 6 (1866): 163 f., 167 f., 171 f., 175 f., 179 f., 186 f., 187– 89.

218

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(Anon.) “Konferenz der jüd[ischen] Gemeindevertreter in Böhmen.” Ben–Chananja. Wochenblatt für jüdische Theologie 5 (1862): 229 f. (Anon.) “Lehrplan der Elementar– und Seminar–Abtheilung der Marks–Haindorf’schen Stiftung zu Münster Westphalen.” Der Israelitische Lehrer 10 (1870): 282. (Anon.) “Zeitfragen zum Zeitenwechsel.” Der israelische Lehrer 7 (1867): 158, 163. (Anon.) “Review of Albert Lührs, Katechismusschule für Lehrer in Kirche, Schule und Haus über Dr. Martin Luthers Kleinen Katechismus mit Erklärung.” Allgemeine Kirchenzeitung. Theologisches Literaturblatt 44 (1867): 130 f. (Anon.) “Circular Rescript of the Ministry of Spiritual, Educational and Medicinal Affairs, 15 May 1824.” Jahrbuch für das Volksschulwesen 3:1 (1827): 12–16. Badt [The first name is unknown.). “Noch einmal die jüdischen Religionslehrer.” Israelitische Wochen– Schrift 12 (1881): 430. Baurschmidt, Carl Gustav Wilhelm. Prüfet Alles: Ein Wort über den neuen Katechismus. Lüchow: Saur, 1862. Beer, Peretz. Sefer Toldot Israel. Prague: n.p, 1796 [Hebrew]. Ben–Ze’ev, and J. Lev. Mesilat ha–Limud. Wien: Anton Edlen von Scmid, 1836 [1802]) [Hebrew]. Bendavid, Lazarus. “Ueber den Unterricht der Juden.” In Aufsätze verschiedenen Inhalts, edited by Lazarus Bendavid, 125–131. Berlin: Frölich, 1800. Berthold, Ludwig. Cassel! Predige deinen Juden und dir selbst! Ein Mahnwort an den Herrn Judenmissionar Professor Dr. Paulus Cassel und dessen Stammesgenossen. Berlin: Friedrick Luckhardt, 1881. Bleich, Eduard, ed. Der erste Vereinigte Landtag in Berlin 1847. vol. I. Berlin: Reimarus, 1847. Bock, Moses Hirsch. Moda le–Yaldei Bnei Israel. Berlin: Chevrat chinukh ne’arim, 1811 [Hebrew]. Bushnell, Horace. Christian Nurture. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979 [1861]. Cassel, David. Die Cultusfrage in der jüdischen Gemeinde von Berlin. Berlin: Adolf, 1856. Cassel, David. Geschichte der jüdischen Literatur, vol. I: Die biblische Literatur, part 1: Die poetische Literatur; part 2: Die prophetische Literatur. Berlin: Louis Gerschel, 1872/73. Cassel, David. Offener Brief eines Juden an Herrn Professor Dr. Virchow. Berlin: Louis Gerschel, 1869. Cassel, David. Plan der Real-Encyclopädie des Judentums: Zunächst für die Mitarbeiter. Krotoschin: B. L. Monasch & Sohn, 1844. Cassel, David. Sabbat-Stunden zur Belehrung und Erbauung der israelitischen Jugend. Berlin: Louis Gerschel, 1868. Cassel, Paulus. “Die Erfüllung: Ein Wort für christliche Wahrheit.” In Vom Wege nach Damaskus: Apologetische Abhandlungen edited by Paulus Cassel, 26–72. Gotha: Gustav Schlößmann, 1872. Cassel, Paulus. “Ueber Renan’s Leben Jesu.” In Vom Wege nach Damaskus: Apologetische Abhandlungen edited by Paulus Cassel, 75–153. Gotha: Gustav Schlößmann, 1872. Cassel, Paulus. Ahasverus. Die Sage vom Ewigen Juden: Eine wissenschaftliche Abhandlung. Mit einem kritischen Protest wider Ed. v. Hartmann und Adolf Stöcker. Berlin: Internationale Buchhandlung, 1885. Cassel, Paulus. Der Judengott und Richard Wagner. Eine Antwort an die Bayreuther Blätter. Berlin: J. A. Wohlgemuth, 1881. Cassel, Paulus. Die Antisemiten und die evangelische Kirche. Sendschreiben an einen evangelischen Geistlichen. Berlin: J. A. Wohlgemuth’s Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1881. Cassel, Paulus. Die Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes seit der Zerstörung Jerusalems, edited by the Gesellschaft zur Beförderung des Christenthums unter den Juden. Berlin: Magazin des Hauptvereins für christliche Erbauungsschriften in den preußischen Staaten, 1860.

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219

Cassel, Paulus. Die Juden in der Weltgeschichte. Berlin: Louis Gerschel, 1880. Cassel, Paulus. Die Juden: Ein weltgeschichtliches Zeugnis der heiligen Schrift. Berlin: Selbstverlag, 1880. Cassel, Paulus. Israel in der Weltgeschichte. Berlin: Eduard Beck, 1866. Cassel, Paulus. Mene tekel. Eine wissenschaftliche Entdeckung. Zweiter Brief an Freunde in Deutschland und England über die Leiden der Christus-Kirche. Berlin: Verlag des Bibliographischen Bureaus, 1891. Cassel, Paulus. Sendschreiben an Freunde in Deutschland und England über die Christuskirche in Berlin und ihr Martyrium durch die London Society. Berlin: Ginzel, 1891. Cassel, Paulus. Weltgeschichtliche Vorträge: Erste Abtheilung. Berlin: Martin Berendt, 1860. Cassel, Paulus. Wider Heinrich von Treitschke. Für die Juden. Berlin: Friedrich Stahn, 1880. Cassel, Paulus. Wie ich über Judenmission denke: Ein kurzes Sendschreiben an Englische Freunde. Berlin: Sunem, 1886. Cassel, Selig. “Juden – Geschichte.” In Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste, in alphabetischer Folge von genannten Schriftstellern, edited by Johann Samuel Ersch and Johann Gottfried Gruber, 2. Section, Theil 27, 1–238. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1850. Cassel, Selig. Die preußischen Bürger des jüdischen Glaubensbekenntnisses. Leipzig: Gustav Meyer, 1847. Cassel, Selig. Sabbatliche Erinnerungen. Erfurt: Keyser’sche Buchhandlung, 1853. Cassel, Selig. Ueber die Rabbinerversammlung des Jahres 1650. Eine historische Abhandlung: Festschrift Sr. Ehrwürden Herrn J. J. Oettinger, Rabbiner in Berlin, zu seinem 25jährigen Amtsjubiläum in Ehrfurcht geweiht. Berlin: Buchhandlung des Berliner Lesecabinets, 1845. Cohn, Abraham, and Abraham Dinkelspiel. Erzählungen der heiligen Schrift für Israeliten. Zum Schul– und Privat–Gebrauch. Nebst einer Vorrede von G. Salomon in Hamburg. Iserlohn, Leipzig: W. Langewiesche, 1834. Cohrs, Ferdinand. “Katechismen und Katechismusunterricht im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit.” Real– Encyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche 10 (1901), 3rd edition: 135–164. Cohrs, Ferdinand. “Unterrichts– und Bildungswesen, theologisches” Real–Encyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche 20 (1908), 3rd edition: 301–318. Danziger, Meier. Der theoretische und praktische Schechter. Nach dem Ohel Jisrael des Rabbi J. Weil bearbeitet. Brilon: Friedländer, 1848. Delff, Hugo. Judentum und Christentum: In Veranlassung der Schrift des Herrn Professor Dr. Paulus Cassel “Wider Heinrich von Treitschke”. Husum: C. F. Delff, 1880. Doctrines of faith and morals for Jewish schools and families, translated by L. Kleeberg. Louisville, Ky: Bradley & Gilbert, Printers, 1871. Eighteen Treatises from the Mishna, trans. David A. Sola and Morris J. Raphall. London: Sherwood, Gilber, and Piper, 1843. Einrichtungen und Gesetze des theologischen, des homiletischen und des katechetischen Seminariums der theologischen Facultät zu Jena. Jena: Schreiber, 1830. Freund, Ismar. Die Emanzipation der Juden in Preußen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Gesetzes vom 11. März 1812. Ein Beitrag zur Rechtsgeschichte der Juden in Preußen, vol. 2. Berlin: Poppelauer, 1912. Freund, Ismar. Die Rechtsstellung der Juden im preußischen Volksschulrecht nebst den bezüglichen Gesetzen, Verordnungen und Entscheidungen. Berlin: Guttentag Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1908. Friedmann, Aaron. “Das Dreigestirn, Salomon Sulzer, Louis Lewandowski, und Moritz Deutsch.” Jahrbuch für Jüdische Geschichte und Literatur 16 (1913): 221 f. Geiger, Abraham. Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen. Bonn: F. Baaden, 1832. Gesetze für die Seminarien der theologischen Facultät zu Jena. Jena, 1839.

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Gesetze für die Seminarien der theologischen Facultät zu Jena. Jena, 1848. Gesetze für die Seminarien der theologischen Facultät zu Jena. Jena, 1868. Gesetze für die Seminarien der theologischen Facultät zu Jena. Jena, 1848. Gidney, W. T. The History of the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, from 1809– 1908. London: Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, 1908. Graser, Johann Baptist. Das Judenthum und seine Reform: Als Vorbedingung der vollständigen Aufnahme der Nation in den Staats–Verband. Justiz– u. Polizey–Beamten zur vorzüglichen Rücksichtnahme. Bayreuth: Grau, 1828. Grossman, Louis. “Cassel, Paulus Stephanus (Selig),” Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 3. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1902, 604–605. ha-Kuzari, Sefer. Das Buch Kusari des Jehuda ha-Levi: nach dem hebräischen Texte des Jehuda Ibn-Tibbon herausgegeben, übersetzt und mit einem Commentar, so wie mit einer allgemeinen Einleitung versehen von David Cassel. Leipzig: Voigt, 1869. Hirschfeld, Hartwig. Biographie von Salomon Plessner. Verfasst von seinem Enkel, Hartwig Hirschfeld, herausgegeben zu seinem hundertsten Geburtstage von Elias Plessner. Breslau: Typ T. Schatzky, 1897. Hoffmann, Andreas Gottlieb. “Rede bei der Preisvertheilung für das homiletische und katechetische Seminarium am Reformations–Feste (25. Okt.), 1829 in der Kollegienkirche gehalten. “ In Denkschrift des homiletischen und katechetischen Seminariums der Universität zu Jena vom Jahre des homiletischen und katechetischen Seminarium der Universität zu Jena von 1830 und 1831, edited by Heinrich August Schott, 60–68. Jena: Cröckersche Buchhandlung, 1831. Hoffmann, Ludwig. Die staatsbürgerlichen Verhältnisse der Juden in den gesamten Königlich Preußischen Staaten. Berlin: Petri, 1829. Holzman, Michael. Geschichte der Jüdischen Lehrer–Bildungsanstalt in Berlin. Eine Festschrift zur Feier des fünfzigjährigen Bestehens der Anstalt am 8. November 1909. Berlin: H. S. Hermann, 1909. Jacobsohn, Bernhard. Der Deutsch–Israelitische Gemeindebund nach Ablauf des ersten Decenniums seit seiner Begründung von 1869–1879. Leipzig: W. Schuwardt & Co., 1879. Jacobsohn, Bernhard. Fünfzig Jahre Erinnerungen aus Amt und Leben. Berlin: O. Wolff, 1912. Klingenstein, Josef. “An die israelitischen Lehrer Deutschlands.” Der israelische Lehrer 11 (1871): 137. Klingenstein, Josef. “Ein neues Programm und ein altes!” Der israelische Lehrer 4 (1864): 162. Klingenstein, Josef. “Unser Ziel.” Der israelische Lehrer 1 (1861): 33 f. Konopka, Otto. “Das Privatschulwesen der Stadt Posen seit 1815 mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Erziehungsanstalten für das weibliche Geschlecht.” Zeitschrift der historischen Gesellschaft für die Provinz Posen 26 (1911): 284–290. Kroner, Theodor. “Ueber Leitung eines jüdischen Lehrerseminars und insbesondere die Ausbildung von Religionslehrern.” Der Israelitische Lehrer 8 (1868): 243, 252, 257, 273, 284, 292, 299 and 306. L.R. “Stellung und Aufgabe des israelitischen Lehrers in den kleinen Gemeinden.” Der israelische Lehrer 7 (1867): 61, 65, 69, 73, 113, 117 and 121. Levy, J. B. Der Vorbeter in Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft. Vortrag, gehalten auf dem 5. Verbandstag der jüdischen Lehrervereine im Deutschen Reiche zu Frankfurt am Main am 28. Dezember 1910. Hamburg: Lessmann, 1911. N.G., “Ein Wort über jüdische Belletristik.” Jeschurun 4 (1858), 11: 574–578. Nathan, Joel. Deutscher Kinderfreund für israelitische Schulen: Nach d. 39. Aufl. d. Kinderfreundes von A[ugust] E[duard] Preuß u. I. A. Vetter für d. israelitische Jugend eingerichtet. Mit e. Vorw. von J[oseph] L[evin] Saaḻschütz. Königsberg: Bon, 1850.

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Index Abramović, Marina 165 Ackermann, Constantin 79 Algazi, Gadi 30 Aschkewitz, Max 60 Austin, John L. 165 Avraham, Doron 193 Baader, Benjamin Maria 92 Bachmann-Medick, Doris 10 Badt, Benno 67, 127 f., 130 Banham, Rob 41 Baraz, Shimon 32–34 Baurschmidt, Carl Gustav Wilhelm 112 Beer, Peretz 27, 31 f., 121–125, 128–130, 132 Behm, Britta L. 56 Behr, Alexander 114 Ben-Ze’ev, J. Lev 31 f. Bendavid, Lazarus 57 Berg, Meike 10, 56 Berger, Jennifer 44 f. Berthold, Ludwig 210 Bierma, Lyle D. 15 Bigler, Robert M. 106 Blaschke, Olaf 105 Bleich, Eduard 61 Bock, Moses Hirsch 31 f., 91 Bodian, Miriam 29 Boeck, August 176 Böhme, Albert 2 Böning, Holger 91 Bottigheimer, Ruth 133, 137 Bourdieu, Pierre 30 Boyarin, Daniel 154 Boyer, Paul Samuel 43, 49–51 Brämer, Andreas 17 f., 55–58, 61, 63 f., 69, 81 f., 97 Brammer, Annegret 58 Brandt, James M. 161 Breuer, Edward 55, 118 Buddenbaum, Judith M. 45, 49 Büdinger, Moses Mordechai 62, 124, 129 Bushnell, Horace 136

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110795905-016

Büssem, Eberhard 42 Butler, Judith 165 Cachin, Marie-Francoise 40, 44 Calvin, Johannes 15 Campe, Joachim Heinrich 14, 34–36, 57, 90 Carter, Karen E. 97 Cassel, David 8, 173–221 Cassel Paulus (Selig) 8, 173–221 Casper, Scott E. 45 f. Chamberlain, Daven Christopher 41 Chazan, Robert 87 Cohen, Charles Lloyd 8, 43, 49 f. Cohn, Abraham 121, 125, 129–131 Cohrs, Ferdinand 79, 108, 111 Coriand, Rotraud 75 Crossley, John 161 Dalton, Russell B. 133, 136 Danz, Johann Traugott Leberecht 74, 80 Danziger, Meier 65 de Certeau, Michel 142 Delanty, Gerard 10 Delff, Hugo 210 Delitzsch, Franz 211 Deutsch, Moritz 2, 42, 46–48, 55, 57, 59, 61, 64 f., 67 f., 113, 184 Dinkelspiel, Abraham 121, 125, 129–131 Dinter, Gustav Friedrich 62, 80, Doré, Gustave 22 Drews, Paul 74 du Toit, Jaqueline S. 2, 12–14 Dühring, Eugen 206, 208 Ebner, Robert 113 Egon von Bremen 65 Ehmer, Hermann 47 Elias, Norbert 30, 96 Eliav, Mordechai 29, 56, 88, 96, 100 Endelman, Todd L. 175, 210 Engelhardt, Arndt 182 Ersch, Johann Samuel 194

238

Index

Euchel, Isaac 31 Even-Zohar, Itamar

28

Faber, Rolf 95 Faierstein, Morris M. 89 f. Fea, John 5, 46, 48–51 Feather, John 46 Febvre, Lucien 40 Feiner, Shmuel 29, 87 Finkener, Heinz 60 Fischer, Alexander Achilles 46 f. Fischer-Lichte, Erika 165 f. Flood, John L. 16, 42, 46 Flory, Richard 45 Fraas, Hans-Jürgen 97 Frankel, Zacharias 64, 176 f., 196 Freimann, Aron 65 Freund, Susanne 3, 58 f., 63, 65–67, 77, 101, 177, 193, 212 Friedländer, David 90 f., 119 Friedmann, Aaron 64 Froese, Leonhard 57 Funkenstein, Amos 189 Gafni, Chanan 92 Geiger, Abraham 8, 176, 188 f., 196 Gidney, W. T. 192 Goschler, Constantin 187 Gotzmann, Andreas 9 Graetz, Heinrich 176, 178, 208 Gräffe, Johann Friedrich Christoph 80 Graser, Johann Baptist 62, 113 f. Green, Ian M. 97 Greschat, Martin 206 Grethlein, Christian 72 Gretschel, Heinrich F. 96 Gross, Robert Alan 43 Grossman, Louis 192 Gruber, Johann Gottfried 194 Gundert, Wilhelm 47 f. Gutjahr, Paul 41, 48–51 Harris, Jay M. 92 Hatch, Nathan O. 40, 43, 50 HaTorah, Yesodei 93 f., 97 f. Haug, Christine 42–44, 48 Hauptman, Judith 87

Hauschildt, Eberhard 164 Heinrich, Hermann Ludwig Harms 17, 77, 80, 112, 125, 182 Helmreich, Ernst C. 10, 88 Herder, Johann Gottfried 79, Herzberg, Isaac 123 Heschel, Susannah 188 f., 196, 208 Hirsch, Samuel 8, 18 f., 112 f., 188 f. Hirsch, Samson Raphael 121 Hirschfeld, Hartwig 96 Hoffmann, Andreas Gottlieb 78 Hoffmann, Ludwig 58 Hohendahl, Peter Uwe 88 Holzgrabe, Friedrich 63 Holzman, Michael 63 Horlacher, Rebekka 91 Hunkins, Francis P. 139 Jacobsohn, Bernhard 64, 68 Jahn, Gustav 2 Jellinek, Adolph 20, 147–158 Jost, Isaak Markus 178, 191, 196, 208 Käbisch, David 18, 71–75, 77, 79, 81, 109 f. Kalmar, Ivan Davidson 1 f., 22 Kant, Immanuel 80, 101 Katz, Jacob 9, 29 Kellner, Menachem 97 Kemlein, Sophia 60 Keuchen, Marion 2, 21 f. Klemens, Susanne 20 Kley, Eduard 104 Klingenstein, Josef 66 f. Kluge, Manfred 60 Kogman, Tal 10, 87 Kokhba, Bar 201 Konopka, Otto 60 Kroner, Theodor 64 Kuzari, Sefer 177 Labaree, David F. 88 Lachmann, Rainer 17, 39 Landauer, Gabriel 62 Lässig, Simone 9 f., 12, 18, 29, 56, 64, 72, 81, 124, 159 Lehmann, Tatjana 63 Levenson, Alan T. 176, 192 f., 210–212

Index

Levy, J. B. 64, 127 Liberles, Robert 89 Lohmann, Ingrid 56, 120 Lohmann, Uta 56, 120 Lowenstein, Steven 29 Luther, Henning 169 Luther, Martin 22, 77–79, 81, 97, 108, 110–113, 169, 181, 197, 204, 209 Lutze, Hermann 2 Maier, Joseph 123 Mailert, Karl Lucius 113 Manekin, Rachel 92 Marienfeld, Wolfgang 63 Marr, Wilhelm 206 Martin, Henri-Jean 3, 7 f., 15, 17, 22, 39 f., 69, 78 f., 110 f., 181, 184, 199, 206 Martin III, Russell 44 Melchior, Christoph 17, 19, 48, 117 Mendelssohn, Moses 91, 153, 181, 202 Menze, Josef 60 Meyer, Michael A. 6, 55, 59, 64, 101, 130, 165, 198, 206, 208 Mollier, Jean-Yves 40, 44 Mounier, Jacques 33 Müller, Sebastian F. 61 Nagel, Michael 55, 90 Naimark-Goldberg, Nathalie 87 Nathan, Joel 40, 113, 148 Nauta, Douwe 15 Neugebauer, Wolfgang 85 Nicolai, O. Fr. O. 79 Niebergall, Friedrich 71 Noll, Mark 43, 49, 51 Nord, David Paul 45, 48–51 Nowak, Kurt 105 Oelkers, Jürgen 75 Oettinger, Jacob Joseph 190 f. Oppenheim, Alfred 85 Oppenheim, Moritz 85 f., 90, 93 Ornstein, Allan C. 139 Osterwalder, Fritz 75 Palmer, Christian 110 Panwitz, Sebastian 177

239

Parkes, Samuel 96 Parush, Iris 90 Peterman, Julius Heinrich 176 Petersen, Peter 75 Petuchowski, Jakob 112 Petzholdt, Julius 96 Pfleiderer, Otto 74 Philippson, Ludwig 62, 64, 113, 180 Popkewitz, Thomas S. 88 Pyper, Hugh S. 133 Rauschenbusch, August Ernst 80 Raven, James 41 f., 44 Reents, Christine 14, 17, 19, 48, 81, 117 Rein, Wilhelm 75 Reinke, Andreas 56 Renan, Ernest 192 Repp, Arthur C. 15 Reuss, Eduard 79, 194, 200 Richarz, Monika 67 Roggenkamp, Antje 39, 73, 108 Rössler, Dietrich 107, 160 Roth, Ursula 20, 159, 165, 168 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 31–34, 137 Rubin, Joan Shelley 45 f. Ruderman, David B. 88, 175 Sachs, Michael 176, 196 Said, Edward 1 f. Salzer, Dorothea M 13, 16, 19, 35, 117 f., 121 Sauer, Michael 61, 65 Schelander, Robert 71 f. Schleiermacher, Friedrich 20, 69, 160–164, 169 Schlesinger, Moritz Löwe 120 Schleunes, Karl A. 10 Schmitt, Hanno 91 Schneider, Karl 4, 6, 8, 65 Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Julius 2, 21 Schochat, Azriel 29 Schönfeld, Heidi 16 f. Schorsch, Ismar 68, 174, 182 Schott, Heinrich August 77 Schreiner, Martin 173 Schröder, Bernd 7, 15, 18 f., 70 f., 112 f. Schubert, Franz 2 Schwarz, Carl 79 f. Schwarz, Friedrich Heinrich Christian 80 f.

240

Index

Schwarz, Johann Karl Eduard 74, 109 Schweitzer, Friedrich 70, 73 Schweitzer-Martin, Paul 3, 17, 69, 78 Sela-Sheffy, Rakefet 30 Seyerlen, Karl Rudolf 74 Shapiro, Marc 97 Shavit, Zohar 2, 10, 12–14, 16, 27, 32, 35, 72, 87, 90 Siegert, Reinhart 91 Simojoki, Henrik 70, 73 Simon, Ernst A. 29 Simon, Werner 18 Sondheimer, Hillel 126 f. Sorkin, David J. 9, 184 Sperber, E 65 Stampfer, Shaul 90 Stein, Georg W 96 Steinschneider, Moritz 176, 182, 191, 194 Stephani, Karl Heinrich 17 Stern, Josef 98 Stichele, Caroline Vander 133 Stockhecke, Kerstin 60 Stoecker, Adolf 206, 210 Stößel, Moritz 125 Stoy, Karl Volkmar 75 f. Strauß, David Friedrich 192 Stroh, Ralf 162 f. Tal, Uriel 10, 207 Tamari, Ittai Joseph 44 Teistler, Gisela 47 Tenorth, Heinz-Elmar 61, 75 Thelemann, Otto 15 Thümmel, Wilhelm 74 Toury, Gideon 28 Toury, Jacob 29, 60

Trendelenburg, Friedrich Wilhelm Tröhler, Daniel 88 Tschudin, Peter F. 41 Turniansky, Chava 90

176

van Horn Melton, James 10, 88 Velicu, Adrian 96 Vial, Theodore M 161 Virchow, Rudolf 187–189 Volkov, Shulamit 174 von Beckedorff, Ludolph 60 von der Krone, Kerstin 1, 10, 12, 19, 47 f., 72 f., 81, 85, 101 von Dohm, Christian Wilhelm 34 von Ranke, Leopold 190 von Schmid, Christoph 113 von Tettau, Wilhelm Johann Albert 191 von Treitschke, Heinrich 206–210 Wein-Mehs, Maria 60 Weisel, Naftali Herz 30 f. Weissbrod, Rachel 28 Wentz, Karl 2 Wiese, Christian 4, 6, 8, 19, 175, 184, 189, 192, 196, 202, 211 Wilke, Carsten 101 Wischmeyer, Johannes 14, 18 f., 47, 70, 72 f., 75, 77, 79, 81, 97, 105 Wittmann, Reinhard 41, 44, 46, 48 Wolff, Lion 64 f., 67 Wolfsohn-Halle, Aaron 31 f. Yeshurun, Johlson’s Shir

103

Zunz, Leopold 174, 176, 191, 196, 205 Zvi, Shabbtai 201