Haskala in dialogue. Juda Jeitteles and Juda Leib ben Ze'eb as exegetes of the elightenment era

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Hannes Bezzel; Professor Dr. Christoph Schulte
• Subject Area: Religious Studies and Jewish Studies ; Protestant Theology
• Term: from 2015 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 275814139

The ongoing project that has been granted by the German Research Foundation since 2016 has its focus on two central, but merely forgotten representatives of the Haskalah movement in the Habsburg empire: Juda Jeitteles (1773–1838) and Juda Leib ben Ze’eb (1764–1811). At the University of Potsdam and at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, two scholars are doing research into the exegetical writings of the named maskilim, as the exponents of the Jewish enlightenment movement are called. Jeitteles, born into a highly reputable family in Prague and Ben Ze’eb, born near Cracow, are brought together through their employment with the Vienna printing house belonging to the Christian nobleman Anton von Schmid: It is von Schmid’s enterprise, where both scholars‘ exegetical writings are published. With these writings, both scholars enter new territory, each in his own way. In 1810, Ben Ze’eb presents, written in Hebrew, inspired by Eichhorn’s popular „Einleitung in das Alte Testament“, but also in dialogue with Herder, Lowth, and the Jewish renaissance scholar Azariah dei Rossi, the first Jewish historical-critical introduction to the books of the Tanakh, called Mavo el Miqra’e qodesh. Jeitteles, as the main editor and important author essentially shapes a series of commentaries on Biblical books, called Kitve Qodesh (sacred scriptures). in this series, shaped along the lines of Moses Mendelssohns Biur, Jeitteles tries to steer a middle course between rabbinic tradition and enlightened criticism. Along with a then recently made high-German translation and Jeitteles’ own philological annotations, he presents the Biblical text together with important rabbinic references at the same time. It is the aim of the Jena and Potsdam project to publish an annotated translation of Ben Ze’eb’s Mavo together with a monograph which contextualises his hermeneutics within the history of thought of his age. At the same time, another monograph shall deal with Jeitteles’ opus magnum in the context of the Vienna printing culture and the editorial programme of von Schmid’s publishing house. Previous achievements by the project group that have been accomplished based on the DFG funding since 2016 have demonstrated that in the context of von Schmid’s printing house a specific way of dealing with the writings of the Tanakh is developed which tries to mediate between traditional and modern approaches to the Bible. This specific “Vienna Haskalah” can be regarded as a hitherto neglected form of Jewish exegesis which constitutes an important intermediary link between the hermeneutics of Moses Mendelssohn and the later “Wissenschaft des Judentums”.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants