Irene Zwiep

Alien, Everyman, Jew: The Dialectics of Dutch “Philosemitism” on the Eve of World War II

This chapter proposes to reexamine a Dutch philosemitic classic: Antisemitisme en Jodendom (Antisemitism and Judaism), a collection of eleven antifascist essays published in 1939 by philosopher Hendrik Pos and the Comite van Waakzaamheid. Throughout the book, Judaism was merely instrumental; its primary concern was to defend international Civilization against ultranationalist barbarism. The author zooms in on the articles on the Jewish contribution to Western ethics, philosophy, and literature (by Menno ter Braak), to find out which intellectual paradigms and cliches had nourished their argumentation. It is shown that the Jewish condition anno 1939 was never on the radar. The book was thus a prime example of utilitarian Western philosemitism, of gentiles backing the Jewish cause only in support of a non-Jewish agenda.

Through the walls of time: A Short Reflection on Writing Early Modern Intellectual History

This short piece takes a longstanding problem from the history of ideas, viz. the use of contemporary concepts in descriptions of past phenomena, and discusses its implications for broader intellectual history. Scholars have argued that being transparent about anachronism can be a first step towards solving the issue. I would argue, however, that it may actually interfere with proper historical interpretation. As a case study, we shall explore what happens when a modern concept like ‘culture’ is applied to pre-modern intellectual processes. As the idea of cultural transfer is prominent in recent Jewish historiography, we will focus on exemplary early modern intermediary Menasseh ben Israel, and ask ourselves whether his supposed ‘brokerage’ (a notion taken from twentieth-century anthropology) brings us closer to understanding his work. As an alternative, I propose ‘ bricolage,’ again a central analytical tool in modern anthropology but, as I hope to show, one with unexpected hermeneutical potential.

Introduction: Paradigms We Live By

This introductory chapter of the book A Universal Art. Hebrew Grammar across Disciplines and Faiths contains about the ancient history of Hebrew linguistics is extended to new epochs and spaces, thus drawing our attention to new, sometimes unexpected cultural contacts. Attacking an early and little explored chapter in the history of Jewish-Christian scholarly encounter, Judith Olszowy-Schlanger sets out to rewrite the story of Christian Hebraism in thirteenth-century England. Where the picture of that period traditionally has been dominated by the Franciscan friar Roger Bacon and his teacher bishop Robert Grosseteste, Olszowy-Schlanger now identifies an additional, distinctly separate school of Hebrew learning, whose influence appears to have reached even into Tudor England. In-depth study of, among other features, the technical terminology employed in MS Longleat House 21 reveals a unique Christian reliance on Jewish sources, from Rashi in Northern France to Judah Ḥayyūj in tenth-century Cordoba. Keywords: Christian; Franciscan friar Roger Bacon; Hebrew linguistics; Jewish sources; Jewish-Christian scholarly encounter; Judah Ḥayyūj; Judith Olszowy-Schlanger; Tudor England

The impact of teytsh on diqduq, or: Why the metaphor became a noun in early modern Ashkenazi linguistics

The starting point for this exploration of how the practice of translating the Bible into Yiddish joined hands with the art of logic in shaping the contents and categories of early modern Ashkenazi linguistics is a curious little grammar that was published in Amsterdam in 1713 as Mafteaḥ Leson ha-Qodes or The Key to the Holy Tongue . By identifying ros in ros ha-har as a metaphorical rather than a substantive noun, the reader could come up with a different equivalent that did justice to both the Hebrew and the teytsh , as well as to traditional practice of translating paradigmatically. Based on the proper grammatical identification, this translation could be one hundred percent literal while avoiding unidiomatic literalism Israel ben Abraham had found so offensive in most Yiddish translations of Scripture. It soon becomes clear, however, that Israel ben Abrahams interest in Hebrew metaphor was only partly inspired by aesthetic considerations. Keywords: Ashkenazi linguistics; Hebrew; Israel ben Abraham; Mafteaḥ Leson ha-Qodes ; ros in ros ha-har; teytsh ; The Key to the Holy Tongue ; Yiddish

A universal art: Hebrew grammar across disciplines and faiths

A Universal Art. Hebrew Grammar Across Disciplines and Faiths reflects on medieval and early modern Hebrew linguistics as a discipline that crossed geographic and religious borders and linked up with a plethora of scholarly activities, from Judaeo-Arabic Bible translations to the Renaissance search for the holiest alphabet. This collection of articles presents a cross-section of new research avenues on Hebraism, Karaite, Rabbanite and Christian, with an emphasis on the transmission of linguistic ideas through time and space among different communities, cultures and religious currents. The resulting picture is one of intrinsic variation and dynamic growth as opposed to the linear paradigm of development, culmination and stagnation current in the historiography of Hebrew linguistics.

The haskamah of history, or: Why did the Dutch Wissenschaft des Judentums spurn Zunz's writings?

AbstractAccording to common opinion, nineteenth-century Dutch Jewry never developed a follow-up to the German Wissenschaft des Judentums. This paper makes a case for the opposite: Dutch Jewish intellectuals not only were avid readers of Wissenschaft publications, they also used them extensively as sources of inspiration and information. The result, however, lacked the academic dimension of the German tradition. Instead, Dutch Jewish scholars consistently merged the results of critical scholarship with the edifying content of the traditional treatises they were translating and annotating. Time-bound historical truth thus served to affirm the timeless truth of Jewish ethics. It is further argued that this indeed somewhat derivative strategy was more than a mere sign of conservatism or scholarly mediocrity. The Dutch Wissenschaft soon became one of the key instruments in formulating a new Jewish civic identity in the decades following the Emancipation Decree of 1796. Working from rather than towards political equality, the Dutch Jewish scholars could afford to ignore the radical content of Jewish national philology as developed by Leopold Zunz and his German colleagues.

Jewish Enlightenment (almost) without Haskalah: the Dutch example

This contribution offers a comparative perspective on the Prague Haskalah as a movement in its own right, by briefly analysing another tradition that, like Prague, has often been presented as deeply indebted to the project of the Berlin Maskilim: the Dutch Jewish Enlightenment, which flourished during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Contrary to common opinion, which has always emphasized the German origins of the ‘Dutch Haskalah’, this ‘Haskalah’ was not imported from Berlin but had been inspired first and foremost by contemporary Dutch (Christian) enlightened discourse. Of course one Jew’s Dutch Enlightenment was not the other Jew’s Dutch Enlightenment. To illustrate this, the article briefly compares four ‘enlightened’ publications, i.e. historical biographies, by four prominent Dutch-Jewish intellectuals who operated in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Their varying treatments of Judaism’s role in (universal) history serve to illustrate the complexity of enlightened experience in the Netherlands, where the Jews had received civic equality as early as 1796, thus facing the challenge of building new communal infrastructures and forging a new, at least partly Dutch identity.

From Dialektik to Comparative Literature

The present volume is devoted to the study of the life and work of Moritz (Moshe) Steinschneider (1816-1907). It shows that far from being a “mere bibliographer,” Steinschneider pursued a precise scientific agenda. This is a noteworthy contribution to our understanding of the project of the Wissenschaft des Judentums.

Goodbye to All That? Jewish Views of Europe after 1945

Ever since the late 1980s, when the Jewish communities in Europe began to rise from their ashes and reinvent themselves, ‘Jewish Europe’ has become a fashionable and productive topic. Recently, Israeli scholars have even begun to speak, with a tinge of worried envy, of contemporary European Judaism as he-ammud ha-shelishi, the ‘third pillar’ of world Jewry, which is gradually reclaiming its position as a centre of Jewish life alongside the approved strongholds of Jewish continuity in Israel and the US. Authors such as Kertesz and Konrad, established filmmakers such as Lanzmann and Szabo, and scholars such as Dan Diner and even the Israeli-American historian Saul Friedlander are usually identified as the intellectual heralds of this collective resurrection.1

The Wissenschaft des Judentums and the visual

As common opinion has it, the Wissenschaft des Judentums had little affinity with art and aesthetics. This article begins by relating this lack of ‘visual antenna’ to the movement’s original national-philological orientation. By scrutinising relevant passages from the writings of hard-core Wissenschaftler such as Leopold Zunz, Michael Sachs, Moritz Steinschneider, David Henriques de Castro and David Kaufmann, it then explores how traditional Jewish philologists coped with art and the visual when confronted with the non-textual, supranational dimensions of Jewish material culture, which became more and more prominent as the nineteenth century drew to a close.