2018 Hannah A. Quint lecture in Jewish Studies

Ismar Schorsch will speak on National Pride and European Prejudice: The Creation of Jewish Studies.

The year 2018 marks the 200th anniversary of the field of Jewish studies. In 1818 it was a remarkably wide-ranging bibliographic essay by Leopold Zunz, with the deceptively unassuming title “On Rabbinic Literature,” that launched the field in the midst of Prussia’s post-Napoleonic rejection of the West. As its newly founded University of Berlin set a new standard for the study of history, the government itself clamped down on any prospect of admission into its fiercely conservative body politic for its Jewish subjects. The object of this lecture will be twofold: to explore the rupture between traditional learning and modern critical scholarship within Jewish society and to show the utility of Jewish studies in the campaign for equal political rights for Jews in Prussia and eventually in Germany.