Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

62 } Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany

by the authorities; it thus exists illegally. I have nothing against an organiza-

tion of Jewish scholars for the Bildung of their erring brothers, but they first

must demonstrate Bildung themselves. This is unfortunately what they lack

most of all. Their entire practice (Thun) until now has been costly, without,

however, yielding a payoff, and a great deal better could have been accom-

plished with more modest sacrifices. Therefore I am keeping my distance

from something to whose founding I enthusiastically contributed.... It is

better, where the sum of reason (Vernunft) cannot be added up, for each

smaller portion to work alone. For the rest, the Jews now stand at the culmi-

nation point of embarrassment. The scholarly among them have absolutely

no career possibilities, and only baptism saves them for humanity. If we do

not promote the trades, our entire next generation will turn to Christian-

ity. And with good reason; what should bind them to the religion of their

fathers?^69

Jost faults the Verein for investing inordinate amounts of time and energy in the

quixotic pursuit of official state sanction, at the expense of research. In Jost’s

hostile estimation, the group squanders its energies on empty pursuits that not

only fail to advance, but actually inhibit, serious scholarship. He considers it

wiser to work alone than in such a counterproductive group. Jost also cogently

exposes the wishful thinking in the Vereinler’s belief that Wissenschaft would

bring about a grand human reconciliation. Jews with a passion for scholarship

(die Wissenschaftlichen among the Jews) could in reality hope for viable profes-

sional futures only at the price of conversion. Only an interpretation of Jewish

Wissenschaft that radically abstracted from the predicament of actual Jewish

scholars, let alone nonscholars (the need to promote trades), and invested “sci-

ence” with purely symbolic if not phantasmagorical meanings, could sustain

such grand hopes.^70

Hegel enabled just such a self-interpretation. At the inaugural meeting of the

Verein on November 7 , 1819 , Moser read a memorandum proposing that the

association should strive to assume the role of, or act in the place of, the state

(diesen [den Staat] nach Kräften zu ersetzen) in an effort to bring the cultural

niveau of German Jews into accord with that of the state (“dem Staat”).^71 In the

preamble to the published Verein statutes, the Vereinler describe themselves as

an elite group of highly educated Jews, distinctly qualified to lead their coreli-

gionists into the modern European world, the age, and the state. In the formal

document that centrally preoccupied them for eighteen months, and through

which they hoped to achieve official integration into the state, the Vereinler cast

themselves unmistakably in the role of Jewish civil servants with the competence