280 } Notes to Chapter 1
- As Stephen Burnett has remarked (“Distorted Mirrors,” 276 – 77 ), Margaritha’s ac-
count represents an especially important moment in the tradition of early modern theologi-
cal ethnographies of Jews through the influence it had on Johann Buxtorf the Elder’s Juden
Schul. See also R. Po-chia Hsia, “Christian Ethnographies of Jews in Early Modern Ger-
many.” - For an analysis of Buxtorf ’s Juden Schul in the context of early modern theological
polemics, see Stephen Burnett, From Christian Hebraism to Jewish Studies, chapter 3. - See Menassah ben Israel, Humble Addresses ( 1655 ) and Vindiciae Judaeorum ( 1656 ),
both in Menasseh ben Israel’s Mission to Oliver Cromwell. - Bendavid, ECJ, 65.
- On the temporalization of medicine and the sciences generally since the eighteenth
century, see Wolf Lepenies, Das Ende der Naturgeschichte and “Historisierung der Natur
und Entmoralisierung der Wissenschaften seit dem 18. Jahrhundert.” - Volker Roelcke, Krankheit und Kulturkritik, 11 – 17.
- Ibid., 16.
- Martin Davies, “Karl Philipp Moritz’s Erfahrungseelenkunde,” 20.
- Quoted in ibid., 23.
- Moritz wrote: “The real happiness of our life depends on our being as little as pos-
sible jealous, avaricious, vain, slothful, lascivious, vengeful, etc.; because these are all diseases
of the psyche, which can often spoil the days of our lives more than physical disease” (“Revi-
sion der ersten drei Bände dieses Magazins,” 3 ). - Ernst-Peter Wieckenberg, “Juden als Autoren des Magazins zur Erfahrungsseelen-
kunde,” 137. - Lazarus Bendavid, “Selbstmord aus Rechtschaffenheit und Lebensüberdruß,” 4. Al-
though Bendavid does not refer expressly to the “patient” in this case study as Jewish, Jewish
contributors to Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde wrote overwhelmingly about Jews; this
was their social context. There is very little likelihood that Bendavid would have reported
about a Christian. For the journal’s readers, moreover, Jews were arguably the outsiders par
excellence, which was one of the reasons Moritz readily published stories about Jews. I thank
Liliane Weissberg for her insights on this point. Weissberg also identifies the figure in this
case history as Jewish (“Fußnoten,” 236 ). - Lazarus Bendavid, “Sonderbare Art des Trübsinnes,” 80.
- I thank Michael Meyer for pointing me to an anonymous manuscript now attributed
to Sabbatai Joseph Wolff ( 1757 – 1832 ). Written and revised in 1812 – 23 , it takes up and modi-
fies Bendavid’s four-part social typology of contemporary Jews. See Meyer, “The Orthodox
and the Enlightened.” - I thank Christoph Schulte for the opportunity to present my ideas on the affinity
between Nietzsche’s genealogy of morals and Bendavid’s rewriting of the Jewish Leidensge-
schichte as a Krankheitsgeschichte in his 1999 seminar on Kant and the Haskalah. In a sub-
sequent book, Schulte advances a similar thesis in the section titled “Eine Genealogie der
jüdischen Moral: Lazarus Bendavid” (Die Jüdische Aufklärung, 107 – 14 ). - Bendavid’s and Nietzsche’s narratives thus follow different timelines. The crucial
turning point for Nietzsche is the experience of powerlessness in the Babylonian Exile, to
which priestly Judaism emerged as a moral and psychological response. Bendavid derives
the moral Sklavensinn of the Jews from the loss of the Jewish state in 70 CE.