Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

48 } Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany

the Hegelian language that characterizes much Verein discourse. Nonetheless,

the construction of the Verein as an origin of the discipline of modern Jewish

studies, and the reticence about Hegel within this discipline, have conspired

to leave unexplored much of what most profoundly animated the Verein—a

Hegelian philosophical politics. The political aspirations the Vereinler pursued

become truly legible only when viewed through the Hegelian conceptual lens

that did so much to inspire, and warp, their understanding of the Verein’s sig-

nificance in the context of Restoration Prussia.

The Verein between Jewish Scholarship

and the Spell of Hegelian Theory

Two seminal assessments of the early Jewish Wissenschaftler as a point of

origin for the modern practice of Jewish historiography—by Yerushalmi and

Schorsch—exemplify how “autobiographies” of the discipline of Jewish studies

are prone to neglect the philosophical politics at the heart of the Vereinler’s proj-

ect.^18 Yerushalmi assigns the Vereinler epochal importance as the first practitio-

ners and theoreticians of modern Jewish historiography. Whereas, according to

Yerushalmi, even the Haskalah continued to appreciate history primarily as an

aid in the pursuit of traditionally valued learning, the Vereinler’s new historical

sensibility marks a decisive break with the world of traditional Jewish memory:

“From Weisel [or Wessely] and the Me’assef to the famous manifesto published

by Immanuel Wolf in 1822 and entitled On the Concept of a Science of Judaism is

a span of forty years, a biblical generation. Yet it represents a drastic leap into a

new kind of thinking.”^19 Notwithstanding the immense historical and ideologi-

cal distance between nineteenth-century Wissenschaft and the contemporary

Jewish historian, Yerushalmi sees remarkable continuity between the modern

historical sensibility into which the Vereinler abruptly “leapt” and his own poi-

gnantly ironic self-consciousness as a “parvenu” Jewish historian: “As a profes-

sional Jewish historian I am a new creature in Jewish history. My lineage does

not extend beyond the second decade of the nineteenth century, which makes

me, if not illegitimate, at least a parvenu within the long history of the Jews....

I live within the ironic awareness that the very mode in which I delve into the

Jewish past represents a decisive break with that past.”^20 Although Yerushalmi

considers the ideology of emancipation largely responsible for launching the

new historiographical enterprise, it is the new historical sensibility as a rupture

with traditional Jewish culture that commands his interest. These dimensions

are salient for his beautiful reflection on his own ambivalent relationship to the

historical conditions of possibility of the modern Jewish historian.