Notes to Chapter 2 { 29 1senschaft des Judentums,” Meyer examines the persistence of religion in Wissenschaft des
Judentums, especially in the hands of its nineteenth-century practitioners.
22. Schorsch, TC, 219.
23. Zunz’s major works include Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden ( 1832 ), Die syn-
agogale Poesie des Mittelalters ( 1855 ), Die Ritus des synagogalen Gottesdienstes, geschichtlich
entwickelt ( 1859 ), and Literaturgeschichte der synagogalen Poesie ( 1865 ).
24. Zunz’s most influential academic inspirations were the philologist and antiquarian
Friedrich August Wolf and Wolf ’s student August Wilhelm Böck. On the influence of Wolf
and Böck on Zunz’s conception of Wissenschaft, see Giuseppe Veltri, “Altertumswissen-
schaft und Wissenschaft des Judentums: Leopold Zunz und seine Lehrer F. A. Wolf und
A. Böckh”; Leon Wieseltier, “Etwas über die jüdische Historik,” 137 – 39 and 148 ; Schorsch,
TC, 222 – 23 , and Michael Meyer, The Origins of the Modern Jew, 159 – 60.
25. Adolf Strodtmann indicates that Zunz‘s remarks are from a letter to Wohlwill of sum-
mer 1824 (H. Heine’s Leben und Werke, 274 ).
26. Quoted in ibid., 274 – 75.
27. A certain reading of Zunz’s remarks has contributed powerfully to the “Zunzifica-
tion” of assessments of the Verein’s importance. After quoting this letter (from Strodtmann)
Heinrich Graetz comments: “Und wenn der Culturverein, der so hochstrebend begann und
so kläglich endete, auch nur dieses Eine erwirkt hätte, die Liebe zur Wissenschaft des Juden-
thums zu erwecken, so ist sein Träumen und Treiben doch nicht vergeblich gewesen” (Vom
Beginn der Mendelssohn’schen Zeit ( 1750 ) bis in die neueste Zeit ( 1848 ), 447 ). The editorial
notes in The Jew in the Modern World to Gans’s presidential address to the Verein of April
1822 echo Graetz’s sentiment, even as they too, albeit silently, evoke Zunz’s letter to Wohl-
will: “In addition to the loss of their president and driving spirit [Gans (my addition)], the
demise of the society can be attributed to the lack of support from the Jewish community.
Yet, in the last analysis, the society was not a total debacle, for emerging from its ruins was
the Science of Judaism, thanks largely to the Promethean efforts of its vice president and the
editor of its journal, Leopold Zunz” ( 221 ).
28. Heinrich Heine, Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe der Werke [hereafter DHA],
14 (part 1 : 270). On Heine’s appreciation of the Verein in his eulogy, see Norbert Waszek,
“Hegel, Mendelssohn, Spinoza,” 187 – 93.
29. Heine, DHA, 14 (part 1 ): 270. Scholars of early Wissenschaft des Judentums have
variously assessed the hopes for sociopolitical transformation that its first practitioners and
ideologues invested in it. Referring to the biography of Rashi that Zunz published in the
Verein’s Zeitschrift in 1823 , Meyer points subtly to how the new standard of academic rigor
always contained an implicit apologetic component: “the apologetic element—far from dis-
appearing—has simply moved from the results to the method” (The Origins of the Modern
Jew, 178 ). In Glatzer’s description of this apologetic dimension, “scholarship was expected
to serve as the most honest method of appeal, as the best possible proof of the Jews’ right to
be counted” (“The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Studies,” 39 ). In Rotenstreich’s view, the
early proponents of Wissenschaft des Judentums held that “a new basis for civilization
was being created by science, and the Jew who participated in this grand and noble un-
dertaking was no less deserving than anyone else. The Science of Judaism... would re-
veal the Jews in their reality and determine their ability to live on the same level as other
citizens” (Tradition and Reality, 35 ). David Myers focuses on the tension between scientific