Abstract
The chapter discusses the reception of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed in German Jewish thought from 1742 to 1845. Beginning from the first modern edition of the work, it covers Maimonides’ reception of the Haskalah in the Hebrew journal HaMeasef, in Saul Ascher’s Leviathan (1792) and in the works of the maskil Peter Beer. But the main focus is on the reception of the Guide by early Jewish reformers, such as Abraham Asch, Gotthold Salomon and Issak Markus Jost. The chapter concludes with an analysis of Samson Raphael Hirsch’s rejection of the Guide in his Nineteen Letters and an evaluation of the motives behind Simon Scheyer’s first German translation of the third part of Maimonides’ treatise. The first century of a modern reception of Maimonides’ theology was primarily marked by the many different attempts to provide accessible and reliable editions of the Guide, both in Hebrew and in German translation, the languages used by potential readers. It was in those years that not only the maskilim but most of the later influential reform rabbis studied the Guide for the first time. When Maimonidean thought was utilised in this period for proposing modernising ideas, it was above all the openness of the Guide towards secular studies and its apparent independence from Talmudic exegesis that impressed Jewish scholars.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Heinrich Graetz “Die Konstruktion der jüdischen Geschichte”, in: Zeitschrift für die religiösen Interessen des Judentums 1846. An English translation appears in H. Graetz The Structure of Jewish History and other Essays, translated, edited and introduced by Ismar Schorsch, New York, The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1975. Quote on p. 119.
- 2.
- 3.
For the eighteenth century editions see Irene E. Zwiep “From Perush to Be’ur”, in: Studies in Hebrew Language and Jewish Culture, (ed. Martin F.J. Baasten), Amsterdam 2007, p. 264–68. In the early nineteenth century the Euchel edition was reprinted several times together with the fideist commentary of Isaac Satanov on parts II and III of the Guide (Sulzbach 1800 and 1828, Vienna 1828). In 1829 Menachem Mendel Lefin published a new Hebrew translation (Żółkiew) – all those editions were obviously intended to make the treatise accessible to an eager eastern European Hebrew reading public. From Salomon Maimon’s time till far into the nineteenth century many documents survived that demonstrate how the Guide was clandestinely read at eastern yeshivot. (See below in this chapter.) Lefin’s introduction “Alon HaMoreh” deserves scholarly attention.
- 4.
David Sorkin Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment, Berkeley: 1996, p. xxiv. Mendelssohn did not use the Jessnitz edition, but rather the Sabionetta printing of the Guide from 1553. The library in Oxford holds this copy with very few Hebrew notes of Mendelssohn’s, hand-written on the margins. Cf. Simon Rawidowicz’ “Mendelssohns handschriftliche Glossen zum More Nebukim”, Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 78, 1934, p. 196–202.
- 5.
For Mendelssohn’s preference of Halevi, see also Eliezer Schweid “Halevi and Maimonides as Representatives of Romantik Versus Rationalistic Conceptions of Judaism”, in: Kabbala und Romantik (ed. E. Goodman-Thau et al.), Tübingen 1994, p. 281. For the differences between Maimonides and Mendelssohn see: Lawrence Kaplan “Maimonides and Mendelssohn on the Origins of Idolatry, the Election of Israel, and the Oral Law”, in: Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism, edited by A. Ivry, E. Wolfson, and A. Arkush, Harwood, 1998, pp. 423–445.
- 6.
See James H. Lehmann, ‘Maimonides, Mendelssohn and the Me’asfim. Philosophy and the Biographical Imagination in the Early Haskalah’, in: Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 20 (1975), p. 87–108.
- 7.
HaMeasef VII, 1794, p. 54ff. For details on the play, see Michael A. Meyer The Origins of the Modern Jew, Detroit 1967, p. 117f.
- 8.
Saul Asher Leviathan oder Über Religion in Rücksicht des Judenthums, Berlin 1792, p.146.
- 9.
Ibid., p. 150–53. See here Michael A. Meyer “Maimonides and Some Moderns”, in CCAR Journal, 1997, p. 4–15.
- 10.
The Jewish ‘consistory’ of the short-lived kingdom of Westphalia introduced the first Reforms in German Jewry when Napoleon’s brother Jerome established there full equality before the law after the French example. For its history, see Michael A. Meyer, Response to Modernity, New York 1988, p. 32ff. Concerning Hamburg – also the orthodox antagonist of the Temple community, Isaak Bernays, refused to be called rabbi, and preferred the title of a hacham. This ironic circumstance is nevertheless telling for the low status of rabbinical authority at the beginning of the nineteenth century in Germany.
- 11.
Cf. Sulamith 19, 1845, p. 27. Heinrich Graetz wrote of Salomon in 1870 that with him “began the influence of the preachers on German Jewry, when the pulpit replaced the Lehrhaus…” (Geschichte der Juden, vol. 11, Leipzig 1900, p. 389). The Eight Chapters are Maimonides’ lengthy philosophical introduction to his commentary on the Mishnaic tract Avot. Generally seen (together with the Laws of Character Traits from the Mishneh Torah) as the essence of Maimonides’ ethical thought, this position has been challenged, especially in reference to the Guide’s last chapters. See for example S. Schwarzschild ‘Moral Radicalism and “Middlingness” in the Ethics of Maimonides’, in: The Pursuit of the Ideal, ed. Menachem Kellner, New York, 1990. See also the biography of Salomon written by Ludwig Philippson in 1866.
- 12.
Maimonides indeed writes at the very end of the introduction to his Mishneh Torah that studying this compendium will render the rest of halachic literature unnecessary
. This view Maimonides confirmed later in a letter to his student Yosef (to whom the Guide is dedicated) where he writes that in spite of the initial heavy criticism of the Mishneh Torah, in the future all Israel will be content using it exclusively 
. See Maimonides’ Epistles (Hebrew), ed. I. Shilat, p. 302. The question that scholars have repeatedly asked about this claim is whether Maimonides simply believed that his codex was more comprehensive then the meandering Talmudic literature, or if he really assumed the Mishneh Torah would legally replace the Talmud once it had found acceptance among all Israel as the Talmud had before. Cf. Moshe Halbertal HaRambam (Hebrew), Jerusalem 2009, p. 160f. - 13.
Gotthold Salomon “Rabbi Moses ben Maimon”, in: Sulamith 1809, p. 392. (emphasis in the original).
- 14.
Ibid., p. 396.
- 15.
Ibid., p. 407.
- 16.
Ibid., p. 408.
- 17.
Gotthold Salomon Denkmal der Erinnerung an Moses Mendelssohn zu dessen erster Säcularfeier im September 1829, Hamburg 1829, p. 6f (and note).
- 18.
Abraham Asch Maimonides Lebensgeschichte: als Vorrede zu meiner Übersetzung seines berühmten Werkes: More Nebuchim, (Wegweiser der Irrenden) Berlin 1816, p. 13ff. On Asch, little biographical information is available. He was born in 1766 in Hotzenplotz (Silesia), and moved around 1795 to Berlin, where he worked as a teacher. He died of an illness in 1817. According to Jacob Katz, Asch is the author of a radical Reform treatise called Der Messias oder Reform der Juden in religiöser und moralischer Hinsicht: philosophisch und theologisch erläutert von Rabbi Assa. (Berlin 1805). Under his own name, he published a learned reply to an 1812 lecture by Lazarus Bendavid, in which Bendavid claimed the Biblical term El-Shaddai refers to the Egyptian Goddess Isis; and a lecture “On the Value of Time”, published by his students (among them E. Kley – next note) in order to support the already ill scholar financially. If the first work is attributed correctly, Asch wrote one of the first documents of Jewish scholarship to advance reforms on the basis of traditional Judaism’s texts; this deserves further discussion.
- 19.
Eduard Kley (1789–1867) also issued, together with Carl Siegfried Günsburg, one of the earliest Reform prayer books for the Berlin services. Kley earned a doctorate from the Berlin University while he worked as a private tutor in Beer’s house. He also wrote a popular Jewish catechism and, after he went to Hamburg, headed the Jewish Free School there for many decades.
- 20.
Jedidjah 1831, p. 64f. The German translation of the Guide printed in this edition of the journal contains only chapters I:1–24. Chapters I:25–32 Heinemann published only in 1842 in his Allgemeines Archiv des Judenthums, Berlin 1832–1843 (See 1842, No. 2, p. 37ff and 123ff.).
- 21.
Jedidjah 1831, Ibid., p. 68.
- 22.
Abraham Geiger’s Leben in Briefen, (ed. L. Geiger) Berlin 1878, p. 49.
- 23.
The unpublished manuscript is No 247/5 in the library of the Erlangen university. David Einhorn (1809–1879) took part in the Rabbinical conferences in the 1840s and defended Geiger’s appointment in Breslau in a detailed responsum from 1842. After a brief period as the rabbi of the new Temple in Budapest, he immigrated to America in 1855, where he advocated the abolishment of slavery, and published an influential Reform prayer book.
- 24.
For the same conclusion, see Hans-Joachim Bechtoldt Die jüdische Bibelkritik im 19. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart: 1995, p. 148–159.
- 25.
Heinrich Graetz Tagebücher und Briefe, ed. Reuven Michael, Tübingen 1977, p. 8 and 22.
- 26.
See Meyer Kayserling’s short biography of Abraham Neuda (1812–1854) in: Ungarisch-jüdische Wochenschrift 1871, p. 358, 365–66. On Trebitsch see by Michael L. Miller “Crisis of Rabbinical Authority: Nehemias Trebitsch as Moravian Chief Rabbi, 1832–1842”, in: Judaica Bohemiae XLIII, p. 65–91.
- 27.
Isaak Markus Jost Geschichte der Israeliten, vol. 6, Berlin 1826 p. 176. Jost (1793–1860) studied at the universities of Göttingen and Berlin. Taking great interest in pedagogy, he worked as a teacher for his entire life.
- 28.
Ibid., 180f.
- 29.
Isaac Markus Jost Allgemeine Geschichte des Israelitischen Volkes, Leipzig, 1850 Vol 2, p. 259.
- 30.
Ibid., p. 262.
- 31.
About the wide and positive reception of Jost’s History see Simon Bernfeld Juden und Judentum im neunzehnten Jahrhundert Berlin, 1898, p. 85.
- 32.
Ismar Schorsch, “Scholarship in the Service of Reform”, in: Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 35 (1990), p. 73–101, on Jost see pp. 74–78.
- 33.
See Meyer, Response to Modernity, p. 131 and 133, The revolt of radical laity is Meyer’s suggestive chapter heading.
- 34.
Peter Beer Geschichte, Lehren und Meinungen aller bestandenen und noch bestehenden religiösen Sekten der Juden und der Geheimlehre oder Cabbalah, 2 vols., Brünn, 1822, vol 1, p. 316f.
- 35.
Ibid., p. 319.
- 36.
Peter Beer Leben und Wirken des Rabbi Moses ben Maimon gewönlich RAMBAM auch Maimonides genannt, Prague, 1834, p. 50ff.
- 37.
For a detailed discussion, see Chap. 7 of this book.
- 38.
Leben und Wirken des Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, p. 15. See also Michael A. Meyer “Maimonides and Some Moderns”, in CCAR Journal, 1997, p. 4–15.
- 39.
Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift für jüdische Theologie, 1835, four parts on p. 97, 109, 210 and 414 respectively. Derenbourg (1811–1895), from a famous family of Orientalists, met Geiger at the University of Bonn, but moved to Paris in 1838, where he eventually became the successor to Salomon Munk at the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.
- 40.
Zunz nevertheless was already very familiar with the Guide when he published his landmark Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden in 1832. In at least a dozen places he refers to Maimonides’ treatise in footnotes, if only for philological and bibliographical reasons.
- 41.
Derenbourg, p. 99f.
- 42.
Ibid.. 101f. The Maimon quote is from the first chapter of exposition of the Guide in his autobiography, see Salomon Maimons Lebensgeschichte, ed. Z. Batscha, Frankfurt 1995, p. 247.
- 43.
Samson Raphael Hirsch Neunzehn Briefe über Judentum, Altona 1836, 18th letter, p. 97f.
- 44.
Ibid., p. 120f.
- 45.
See Chap. 7 of this study.
- 46.
Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift für jüdische Theologie, 1837, No. 1, p. 90f.
- 47.
Salomon Ludwig Steinheim Die Offenbarung nach dem Lehrbegriff der Synagoge, Frankfurt 1835, vol I, p. 331 and 352f.
- 48.
Abraham Geiger “Die Gründung einer jüdisch-theologischen Facultät, ein dringendes Bedürfniß unserer Zeit”, in: Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift für jüdische Theologie 1836, p. 20f. For the history of this Maimonidesverein see Frank Surall, “Abraham Geigers Aufruf zur Gründung eines ‘Maimonidesvereins’”, in: Görge Hasselhoff, (ed.): Moses Maimonides, his Religious, Scientific and Philosophical Wirkungsgeschichte in Different Cultural Contexts, Würzburg 2004, p. 396ff.
- 49.
Abraham Geiger’s Leben in Briefen (ed. L. Geiger), Berlin 1878, p. 17.
- 50.
Ibid., p. 18.
- 51.
Simon B. Scheyer Das psychologische System des Maimonides, Frankfurt, 1845. Already in 1842 Scheyer had published a book on Hebrew syntax, with the declared intention of facilitating the correct translation of the Bible into modern languages. (Die Lehre von Tempus und Modus in der hebräischen Sprache, Fankfurt 1842.)
- 52.
The book caries a Hebrew and a Latin title page. Parts II and III appeared in 1874 and 1879. The first edition was reprinted with Scheyer’s commentary (but without the German phrases in it) in 1904 (Warsaw), 1912 (Vilna), 1953 and 1964 (Tel Aviv).
- 53.
All quotes: Dalalat al Haiirin = Zurechtweisung der Verirrten /von Moses ben Maimon; ins Deutsche übersetzt mit Zuziehung zweier arabischen Ms. und mit Anmerkungen begleitet von Simon Scheyer, (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1838), Vorrede, p. V. That Hirsch did not succeed in banning the Guide entirely from the orthodox curriculum can be learned from the fact that the first-edition copy of Scheyer’s translation held by the National Library in Jerusalem bears the stamp of the library of the Berlin Rabbinical Seminary, founded by E. Hildesheimer for the training of orthodox rabbis (see the picture on page 193).
- 54.
Salomon Formstecher Die Religion des Geistes, Frankfurt 1841, p. 357. Nevertheless, earlier in the book Formstecher had referred to Guide III: 32 in support of his own opinion about the sacrificial cult as a mere “need of the time” (ibid., p. 166). This seems to have been a passage familiar to virtually every rabbi in the nineteenth century.
- 55.
Those four perfections are debated by Maimonidean scholars to this day. While most authors seem to agree that the fourth, intellectual perfection, is the highest level that man can reach, some thinkers identified (based on a close reading of III: 54) in Maimonides’ demand to imitate the actions of God a ‘fifth perfection’ that again seems to be practical, understood either ethically or politically. For a summary of positions and important studies, see Menachem Kellner Maimonides on Human Perfection, Atlanta, 1990, pp. 7–11. For Maimonides’ concept of imitatio dei, see Howard Kreisel “Imitatio Dei in Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed,” AJS Review, 19 (1994): 169ff.
- 56.
Scheyer, Dalalat al Haiirin, p. 446f. “Practicing mercy, justice and righteousness on earth” – the reference being to Jeremiah 9:23, a central verse for Maimonides in this context.
- 57.
See Das psychologische System, p. 85. In the early twentieth century, Hermann Cohen’s student Benzion Kellermann takes up the opposite position and criticizes Maimonides for silencing the intellect of the prophet by reducing prophecy to a mere vision or dream.
- 58.
For a summary of the discussion, see: Josef Stern “Maimonides’ Epistemology”, in: The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides (ed. K. Seeskin), Cambridge 2005, pp. 105–133.
- 59.
Das psychologische System, p. 73–75.
- 60.
See Chap. 5.
- 61.
Adolf Jaraczewsky “Zur Ethik des Maimonides”, in: Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 46, 1865, pp. 5–24 (quote p. 8). Jaraczewsky (1829–1911) studied in Breslau and earned a doctorate from the University of Rostock in 1861. He was the rabbi of the town of Erfurt from 1862 to 1879.
- 62.
Ibid., p. 16f.
. This view Maimonides confirmed later in a letter to his student Yosef (to whom the Guide is dedicated) where he writes that in spite of the initial heavy criticism of the Mishneh Torah, in the future all Israel will be content using it exclusively 
. See Maimonides’ Epistles (Hebrew), ed. I. Shilat, p. 302. The question that scholars have repeatedly asked about this claim is whether Maimonides simply believed that his codex was more comprehensive then the meandering Talmudic literature, or if he really assumed the Mishneh Torah would legally replace the Talmud once it had found acceptance among all Israel as the Talmud had before. Cf. Moshe Halbertal HaRambam (Hebrew), Jerusalem 2009, p. 160f.Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kohler, G.Y. (2012). The Beginnings. In: Reading Maimonides' Philosophy in 19th Century Germany. Amsterdam Studies in Jewish Philosophy, vol 15. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4035-8_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4035-8_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-4034-1
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-4035-8
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)