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In recent years more and more scholars have become aware of the fact that the 19th century movement of the Wissenschaft des Judentums engaged in essential research of kabbalistic texts and thinkers. The legend of Wissenschaft’s neglect for the mystic traditions of Judaism is no longer sustainable. However, the true extent of this enterprise of German Jewish scholars is not yet known. This book will give an overview of what the leading figures have actually achieved: Landauer, Jellinek, Jost, Graetz, Steinschneider and others. It is true that their theological evaluation of the "worth" of kabbalah for what they believed was the ‘essence of Judaism’ yielded overall negative results, but this rejection was rationally founded and rather suggests a true concern for Judaism that transcended their own emancipation and assimilation as German Jews.
This book investigates the re-discovery of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed by the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement in Germany of the nineteenth and beginning twentieth Germany. Since this movement is inseparably connected with religious reforms that took place at about the same time, it shall be demonstrated how the Reform Movement in Judaism used the Guide for its own agenda of historizing, rationalizing and finally turning Judaism into a philosophical enterprise of ‘ethical monotheism’. The study follows the reception of Maimonidean thought, and the Guide specifically, through the nineteenth century, from the first beginnings of early reformers in 1810 and their reading of Maimonides to the development of a sophisticated reform-theology, based on Maimonides, in the writings of Hermann Cohen more then a hundred years later.
This monograph presents a critical analysis of the body of historical writing on the history of the Jewish population in Poznania in the era of the Prussian rule (1772-1918 ), including the identification and verification of the attendant myths and stereotypes. The interest in the Polish edition of this book was considerable. Similarly noticeable was the academic response to the title, despite its ostensibly local subject matter. While this study was also noticed abroad, the language barrier has severely impeded its impact. This prompted the author to work towards the English edition of this book, hoping it would find its way into global academic circulation. Some changes and additions were made in the English version. It includes an updated survey of scholarship on this subject of the past twenty years, a response to reviews engaging with the Polish edition, and some general reflections on the evolution of historiography in the recent years.
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