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Wissen und Lomdus: Idealism, Modernity, and History in some Nineteenth-Century Rabbinic and Philosophical Responses to the Wissenschaft des Judentums*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2017

Paul E. Nahme
Paul E. Nahme*
Affiliation:
Brown University
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Extract

The study of Judaism within the modern university would not be possible without the legacy as well as the methodological approach of the small group of young scholars and students in Berlin who founded the Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden in 1819. Although outside the walls of the German university, these scholars endeavored to make inroads within the discipline of Orientalistik while standing firm in their hope that the Hegelian spirit of the day might give Judaism its determinate recognition in the light of Absolute Spirit and give the Jews their citizenship.

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Articles
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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 110 , Issue 3 , July 2017 , pp. 393 - 420
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Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 2017 

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Footnotes

*

This article benefitted from conversations with Nathaniel Berman, Elias Sacks, Elliot Salinger, and Eliyahu Stern, as well as from comments and responses from Perry Dane and members of the Cambridge Project in Jewish Thought, members of the Judaic Studies Faculty Colloquium at Brown University, as well as from the helpful suggestions of an anonymous reviewer. Many thanks to Yonatan Brafman for conversations that generated the title of the article. All errors and shortcomings are mine alone.

References

1 Founding members of the Verein such as Moses Moser and Eduard Gans were students of Hegel's lectures on the philosophy of history in Berlin. See Trautman-Waller, Celine, “Leopold Zunz and Moritz Steinschneider: The Wissenschaft des Judentums as a Struggle against the Ghettoization of Science,” in Studies on Steinschneider: Moritz Steinschneider and the Emergence of the Science of Judaism in Nineteenth-Century Germany (ed. Leicht, Reimund and Freudenthal, Gad; Leiden: Brill, 2012) 84–85 Google Scholar. For a recent treatment of the Hegelian cultural aspirations of Wissenschaft des Judentums, see Rose, Sven-Erik, Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789–1848 (Lebanon, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chapter 2 in particular.

2 The term “Wissenschaft” connotes much more than “science” does in English. In the German academy of the nineteenth century, in particular, this term expresses what we might refer to as high culture and includes the humanities within its purview. Wissenschaft als kulturelle Praxis, 1750–1900 (ed. Hans Erich Bödeker, Peter H. Reill, and Jürgen Schlumbohn; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999).

3 Zunz, Leopold, “Etwas über die rabbinische Litteratur,” reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: Olms-Hildesheim, 1975; Berlin: 1875–1876) 27 Google Scholar.

4 On Herder's use of the model of natural science to outfit his philosophy of history, see Wolfgang Proß, “‘Die Begründung der Geschichte aus der Natur’ Herders Konzept von ‘Gesetzen’ in der Geschichte,” in Wissenschaft als kulturelle Praxis, 187–225.

5 By contrast to Susannah Heschel's influential thesis concerning Geiger's implicitly subaltern reformist inclinations, I want to expand the category of this minority history by giving voice to a properly dialectical interrogation of the “antimodern” within Jewish modernity. See Heschel, Susannah, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

6 Cf. Chakrabarty, Dipesh, Habitations of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Eisenstadt, Shmuel N., Comparative Civilizations and Multiple Modernities (2 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 2003)Google Scholar. My thanks to the anonymous reviewer for pointing out this parallel.

7 Throughout this article I translate Lomdus, the traditional Ashkenazic pronunciation of the Hebrew “Lomdut,” meaning understanding or comprehension, as “conceptualism” or the “conceptual approach.” While Norman Solomon has referred to the method as “analysis,” I find this terminology somewhat misleading as it presupposes the “analysis” in question concerns the simple derivation of conceptually pre-given halakhic constructs. I employ “conceptualism” in order to connote the idealizing of normative ideas from out of their textual sources and redeployment in the method of analyzing, or the standard construction of a “ḥaqira” or investigation of the logical possibilities within halakhic concepts and arguments. See Solomon, Norman, The Analytic Movement: Hayyim Soloveitchik and His Circle (Atlanta: University of South Florida Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

8 On the opposition of Haskalah thought to the “pilpul” or casuistry of talmudic learning, and the perceived lack of methodological sophistication, see Schachter, Jacob J., “Haskalah, Secular Studies, and the Close of the Yeshivah in Volozhin in 1892,” The Torah U-Madda Journal 2 (1990) 76–133 Google Scholar, at 85–86; 90; cf. Avital, Moshe, Ha-Yeshivah ve-ha-Ḥinnukh ha-Masorati be-Sifrut ha-Haskalah ha-‘Ivrit (Reshafim, 1996)Google Scholar; Saiman, Chaim, “Legal Theology: The Turn to Conceptualism in Nineteenth-Century Jewish Law,” The Journal of Law and Religion 21:1 (2005–2006) 39–100 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 42–43, 46–50.

9 On the nominalist orientation of historicism and the individualizing of events, see Beiser, Frederick, The German Historicist Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012)Google Scholar. See also Beiser, Frederick, “Normativity in Neo-Kantianism: Its Rise and Fall,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 17.1 (2009) 9–27 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition, 5–6.

11 For a brief overview of the development of rabbinic curriculum, see Katz, Jacob, Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages (trans. Cooperman, Bernard Dov; New York: Syracuse University Press, 2000) 156–69Google Scholar. Cf. Zinberg, Israel, A History of Jewish Literature (vol. 6 of The German-Polish Cultural Center; New York: Ktav; Cincinnati: HUC Press, 1975)Google Scholar.

12 Zunz, “Etwas über die rabbinische Litteratur,” 5 n. 1 [italics in the original]; quoted in Meyer, Michael A., “Modern Jewish Historiography,” in Judaism Within Modernity: Essays on Jewish History and Religion (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001) 52 Google Scholar.

13 Compare Abraham Geiger's reform-oriented Wissenschaft. See Schorch, Ismar, From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism (Hanover, MA: Brandeis University Press, 1994) 195 Google Scholar. See also Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus.

14 Cf. Meyer, “Modern Jewish Historiography,” 55.

15 See Rose, Jewish Philosophical Politics, 47 and esp. chapter 2, for discussion of the Hegelian dimensions of the Verein's political goals.

16 Rosenzweig, Franz, “Einleitung in der Akademieausgabe der Jüdische Schriften Hermann Cohens,” in Cohen, Hermann, Jüdische Schriften (Berlin: C.A. Schwestschke & Sohn, 1924)Google Scholar; Rosenzweig, Franz, “Atheistic Theology,” in Philosophical and Theological Writings (ed. and trans. Franks, Paul W. and Morgan, Michael; Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000)Google Scholar.

17 Zunz, “Etwas über die rabbinische Litteratur,” 27.

18 Koselleck, Reinhart, “On the Need for Theory in the Discipline of History,” in The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts (trans. Presner, Todd Samuel, et al.; Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002) 8 Google Scholar.

19 Koselleck, “Social History and Conceptual History,” in The Practice of Conceptual History, 30.

20 While Yerushalmi drew attention to the question of historical temporality by focusing upon collective memory in Yerushalmi's, Yosef Ḥayim Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996)Google Scholar, treatments of the philosophical generation of norms and normativity in history remain a lacuna for scholarship on modern Judaism.

21 See Pippin, Robert, Idealism as Modernism: Hegelian Variations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997) 2 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Köhnke, Klaus Christian, Entstehung und Aufstieg des Neukantianismus: Die deutsche Universitätsphilosophie zwischen Idealismus und Positivismus (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986) 109 Google Scholar.

23 See Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition, 273–74, 372–73.

24 For Cohen, “the historian should be a philosopher. The historian should not hesitate to place himself between the contending parties.” Quoted in Poma, Andrea, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen (trans. Denton, John; Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997) 5 Google Scholar [italics in original].

25 Lotze's remark that the truth-conditions of concepts do not depend upon “existents” or “substance” but upon concepts or functions set the tone for the following generation of neo-Kantians. See Lotze, Hermann, System der Philosophie: Erster Theil, Drei Bucher der Logik (3 vols.; Leipzig: Hirzel, 1874) 1:465–97Google Scholar; cited in Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition, 369. See also idem, Late German Idealism: Trendelenburg and Lotze (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013) 179–87.

26 Cohen, Hermann, System der Philosophie, Zweiter Teil: Ethik des reinen Willens (Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1904) 413 Google Scholar; repr. Hermann Cohens Werke (vol. 7 of 17 vols.; ed. Helmut Holzhey; Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1987–2012). Hereafter cited as ErW with reference to 1st ed. noted in brackets.

27 Cohen, ErW, 65.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid., 63–4.

30 Cohen, Hermann, Kants Theorie der Erfahrung (Werke 1.3; New York: Georg Olms, 1987) 9–10 Google Scholar. Cf. Cohen's comments on science as a body of literature in the public realm in his foreword to Lange, Friedrich Albert, Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart (Leipzig: Beadeker, 1902) x–xi Google Scholar.

31 Cohen, ErW, 436; On normativity, see ibid., 270.

32 Ibid., 393.

33 Ibid., 85.

34 Ibid., 13; 177. Cohen is of course punning off of the is/ought distinction (the is of the ought) of such importance to practical philosophy in the wake of Hume and Kant.

35 Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition, 98–166, 214–52; See also Kelly, George, Idealism, Politics and History: Sources of Hegelian Thought (Cambridge: University Press, 1969)Google Scholar.

36 See Von Savigny, Frederick Karl, Vom Beruf unsrer Zeit für Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft (Heidelberg: J.C.B. Mohr, 1828). Cf. Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition, 237 Google Scholar.

37 One of the most prominent exponents of the idea of a Christian Rechtstaat—the Christian state as the embodiment of the true Rule of Law. See Stahl, F.J., Philosophie des Rechts, Philosophy of Law: The Doctrine of Law and State on the Basis of the Christian World-View, IV, Doctrine of State (trans. Alvarado, R.; Aalten, Netherlands: Wordbridge Publishing, 2009)Google Scholar; See also Toews, John E., “The Immanent Genesis and Transcendent Goal of Law: Savigny, Stahl and the German Christian State,” The American Journal of Comparative Law vol. 37.1 (1989) 139–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 On the relationship between Cohen's idealism and his training at Breslau, see Adelmann, Dietrich, Reinige deine Denken: Über den jüdischen Hintergrund der Philosophie von Hermann Cohen (Würzberg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2010)Google Scholar. On Cohen's time at the seminary, see also Yedidiah, Asaf, Batei Midrash Nusaḥ Ashkenaz: Zikhronot shel Bogrei Ha-Seminarim Le-Rabanim be-Germaniah (Jerusalem: Karmel, 2010) 88–93 Google Scholar.

39 David Myers has offered an interesting depiction of “historicism” as a major force against which modern German-Jewish thinkers struggled in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, Myers does not give extensive treatment of Cohen's “system” of philosophy in particular. See Myers, David N., Resisting History: Historicism and Its Discontents in German-Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003) 49–51 Google Scholar.

40 Graetz, Heinrich, Die Konstruktion der jüdischen Geschichte (Berlin: Schocken, 1936)Google Scholar; English translation as “The Structure of Jewish History,” in The Structure of Jewish History and Other Essays (trans. Ismar Schorsch; New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1975) 71–72.

41 See Frankel's editorial comment in the original publication of Graetz's essay in Zeitschrift für die religiösen Interessen des Judentums (1846) 89 and 421.

42 Cohen distanced himself from Graetz in his response to Treitschke (see “Ein bekenntniss in der Judenfrage,” in Jüdische Schriften 2 [1880] 100) although he agreed with Graetz's philosophical orientation in historical study. Similarly, he supported Frankel's criticism of Graetz's politicization of Jewish history. See Hermann Cohen, “Graetzens Philosophie der jüdischen Geschichte,” Werke KS VI (1917) 565.

43 Thus, Cohen wrote in response to Buber's public attack: “My opposition to Zionism is by no means a matter of apologetics. Rather, I am interested in the general ethical-political problem of preserving nationality.” See Hermann Cohen, “Zionismus und Religion,” KS VI, Werke 17 (1916) 215. Cf. Wiedebach, Hartwig, The National Element in Hermann Cohen's Philosophy and Religion (Leiden: Brill, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Graetz's nationalism, see Brenner, Michael, Prophets of the Past: Interpreters of Jewish History (trans. Rendall, Steven; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010) 53–92 Google Scholar.

44 Cohen, ErW, 329.

45 Cf. Herder's comments on the analogy between morality and physics in Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, Part I, in Sämmtliche Werke (ed. Berhard Suphan; 33 vols.; Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1887) 13:16–20. Cf. Proß, “Die Begründung der Geschichte aus der Natur,” 190.

46 Cohen, “Graetzens Philosophie der jüdischen Geschichte,” 565.

47 Cohen, ErW, 268; idem, Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums (Nach dem Muskript des Verfassers neu durchgearbeitet und mit einem Nachwort versehen von Bruno Strauß; Wiesbaden: Fourier Verlag, 1978) 399; English. Translation, Religion of Reason: Out of the Sources of Judaism (trans. Simon Kaplan; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995). While I cite the English translation for the ease of the reader, I have relied upon my own translations for citation.

48 Cohen, Religion der Vernunft, 393; Eng., 338.

49 Ibid., 397; Eng., 342.

50 Reiner sees R. Yaakov Yehoshua Falk's Pene Yehoshua as a particular catalyst for this shift. See Elchanan Reiner, “Beyond the Realm of the Haskalah: Changing Learning Patterns in Jewish Traditional Society,” in Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook VI (2007) 123–33. Modifying Jacob Katz's famous thesis that the social transformations of “traditional” Jewry led to a complete overhaul in Jewish education, Adam Teller suggests that a more gradual transformation, related to economic transitions and a development of textual culture, should be considered as social factors explaining theses changes. See Teller, “Tradition and Crisis? Eighteenth-Century Critiques of the Polish-Lithuanian Rabbinate,” in Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, Society 17. 3 (2011) 1–39.

51 Katz, Tradition and Crisis, 166.

52 Saiman, “Legal Theology,” 47; Schachter, “Haskalah, Secular Studies, and the Close of the Yeshivah,” 90.

53 On the term “rabbinic idealism” as a way of opening space for the “rabbinic” dimension of philosophical idealism, see Franks, Paul W., “Rabbinic Idealism and Kabbalistic Realism: Jewish Dimensions of Idealism and Idealist Dimensions of Judaism,” in The Impact of Idealism (ed. Boyle, Nicholas; vol. ed. Nicholas Adams; Vol. 4 of Religion: The Legacy of Post-Kantian German Thought; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013)Google Scholar.

54 See Shelomo, Eliyahu b., Aderet Eliyahu (Halberstat: 1859)Google Scholar Gen 1:1, where the Gaon discusses the difference between the language of reshit and rishonah as a difference of quantification and quality, that is, of the difference between creation in time and the creation of time as such.

55 See, for example, his commentaries on Sifra, Vayikra, Parashat, Dechataot, Deibura, Parshata 6:7, emendation I. Cited in Eliyahu Stern, The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013) 208 Google Scholar n. 93, 104. The most notable studies are Etkes, Immanuel, The Gaon of Vilna: The Man and His Image (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002)Google Scholar and, most recently, Stern, The Genius. Notable for its extensive citation of numerous secondary sources is Landau, Bezalel, Ha-Ga'on he-Ḥasid mi-Vilna, (3rd edition; Mi-Zion, Torah: Jerusalem, 1978)Google Scholar. See also Stampfer, Shaul, Lithuanian Yeshivas of the Nineteenth Century: Creating a Tradition of Learning (trans. Taylor-Gudhartz, Lindsey; Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2012) 17 Google Scholar n. 6.

56 Although textual emendation was a method employed by R. Shelomo Luria (Maharshal) in his Ḥokhmat Shelomo, and a non-pilpulistic literary analysis had been used by R. Yehoshua Falk in his Pene Yehoshua, the Gaon's method was concerned primarily with a metaphysical justification for emendation rather than an interest in text qua text or the kind of “textualization” with which both Teller and Reiner are concerned. Compare Reiner, “Beyond the Realm of the Haskalah,” 129–30.

57 See Aderet Eliyahu, Gen 1b on the distinction between bri'ah, yeṣirah, ‘asiyah. Compare the Gaon's comments on the relationship between be-sefar, ve-sefer, ve-sippur in his commentary to Sefer Yeṣira, 2b and his similar comments throughout Sefer de-Ṣeniyuta’. For different presentations of the Gaon's use of mathematics in relation to reason and knowledge, compare Stern (The Genius, 41 n. 19) and Elliot Wolfson's readings of sefer and sippur in relation to ḥokhmah, binah, and da‘at in the creation the world. Here, I only want to note how in Sefer Yeṣira, the Gaon is clearly invoking the first two forms of sfr as hokhmah and binah, which operate at the level of ideal reason alone (sekhel levad) and supports my reading of the idealism at work in the Gaon's theory of creation.

58 Stern writes, “[for GRA,] rabbinic literature is quasi-divine in the sense that it ideally is meant to be perfect—and yet, in practical terms, it was not ‘created’ by God but ‘produced’ (written) by human beings and hence can include errors, superfluities, and synonymous ideas. . . . While many before him emended texts, none did so in accordance with the principles of synonymy and hermeneutic ideality” (Stern, The Genius, 57).

59 Though not the first to emend texts, as Stern, The Genius, 55, points out, the Gaon brought a metaphysical apparatus to this work. See also Harris, Jay M., How Do We Know This?: Midrash and the Fragmentation of Modern Judaism (Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 1995) 329 Google Scholar.

60 Commentary to Sefer Yeṣira, 2b.

61 Stern notes the Gaon's deletion of a halakha in the text of Sifra (see Sifra, Parashata 7, ch. 9, halakha 1–9) because of his interpretation of a textual redundancy indicating superfluity (meyutar), though the redundancy is consistently part of the original manuscripts. See Stern, The Genius, 55.

62 Which is not to say such knowledge is attainable, since all knowledge is specific to the context of its authorship. See Aderet Eliyahu, Mishlei, 1:2; cf. Stern, The Genius, 51.

63 For the social and historical context and documentation of the founding of Volozhin and its implicitly modern goals, see Stampfer, Lithuanian Yeshivas. For the relationship between the Haskalah and traditionalist rabbinic thought, and the influence of the Haskalah on the student body of Volozhin, see Schachter, “Haskalah, Secular Studies, and the Close of the Yeshivah in Volozhin in 1892” and Saiman, “Legal Theology,” 46–50.

64 Stampfer, Lithuanian Yeshivas, 44.

65 Yiṣḥaq, Ḥayim b., Nefesh HaḤayim (Vilna: 1873) 1: 22 Google Scholar.

66 Ibid.

67 On the differences between the approach of the Gaon and his students, see Stern, Eliyahu, “The Mitnagdim and the Rabbinic Era as Age of Reason,” in Time and Eternity in Jewish Mysticism: That Which is Before and That Which is After (ed. Ogden, Brian; Boston: Brill, 2015)Google Scholar.

68 Nefesh HaḤayim, 4:10.

69 Ibid.

70 Ibid., 4:11. Cf. On the perspectival theme in Nefesh HaḤayim, see Magid, Shaul, “Deconstructing the Mystical: The Anti-Mystical Kabbalism in Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin's Nefesh Ha-Hayyim ,” JJTP vol. 9 (1999) 21–67 Google Scholar, at 35–36. Although Ḥayim Volozhiner's perspectivalism may seem like an implicit distinction between noumenal and phenomenal, Magid demonstrates the degree to which his kabbalah is in service of a non-mystical epistemology, which I believe can still be counted as monistic from the vantage we have (i.e., mi-ṣiddeinu), whereas the mystic seeks such knowledge to transform our experience.

71 For one of the most comprehensive accounts of the reception of Kant's critical project and the various revisions and reworkings of Kant's critique of metaphysics in terms of monism and dualism, see Franks, Paul W., All or Nothing: Systematicity, Transcendental Arguments, and Skepticism in German Idealism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

72 On Shklov as a site of diffusion of Haskalah, see Fishman, David, Russia's First Modern Jews: The Jews of Shklov (New York: New York University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

73 Stern, “The Mitnagdim and the Rabbinic Era as the Age of Reason,” 144–5.

74 Hurwitz, Pinḥas, Sefer Ha-Berit (Vilna: Menaḥem Mann, 1817) 175b–176a Google Scholar; cf. Ruderman, David, A Best-Selling Hebrew Book of the Modern Era: The Book of the Covenant of Pinḥas Hurwitz and Its Remarkable Legacy (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014) 67–74 Google Scholar; see also Zinberg, A History of Jewish Literature, 263–64.

75 The work of R. Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin (Netziv), the last Rosh Yeshivah of Volozhin, demonstrates a historical dimension, as Berlin's erudite use of non-canonical sources enables detailed comments on natural science and near-eastern history (Ha‘ameq Davar, [Volozhin; Jersualem, 1998] Gen 1:21; 2:7; 6:12) and the use of grammatical criticism which Gil Perl has been able to compare with the handwritten manuscript of ‘Emek Ha-Netziv, at Be-ha‘alotekha 34, [1: 290]; ‘Emek Ha-Netziv, Teṣeh 35 (3: 287); cited in Perl, Gil S., The Pillar of Volozhin: Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehdua Berlin and the World of Nineteenth-Century Lithuanian Torah Scholarship (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2012) 66–83 Google Scholar, at 79, 175–76. For an illuminating discussion of the Gaon's role in early 19th-century midrash commentary, compare Harris, How Do We Know This?

76 See Schacter, “Haskalah, Secular Studies, and the Close of the Yeshivah in Volozhin in 1892,” 101–2.

77 Schacter, ibid., 103–4.

78 R. Yosef Dovber ben Yitsḥaq Ze'ev Ha-Levi Soloveitchik, known as the Halevi, Beis (1820–1892) She'elot u-Teshuvot Beit Ha-Levi (Vilna: Yosef Reuven bar Menaḥem Mann, 1863) 1–2 Google Scholar.

79 See ibid., which begins by discussing the relationship between the study of halakha (torah li-shemah) and the spiritual deepening of holiness, qedusha, so as to make study more than tashmishē qedusha, the vessels of holiness or the use of holiness, and instead to make holiness manifest (ḥal), citing the Zoharic interpretation of Exod 24:7, “na‘aseh ve-nishma‘.” See ibid., 1–2.

80 See Norman Solomon's characterization of the general tendency of the analytic school to shun such historical method in The Analytic Movement: R. Ḥayim Soloveitchik and his Circle. See also Saiman, “Legal Theology,” 66. For an example of the tendency to anachronistically characterize the Wissenschaft des Judentums as synonymous with contemporary academic Talmud study, see Lichtenstein, Aharon, “The Conceptual approach in Learning,” in Leaves of Faith: The World of Jewish Learning (New York: Ktav, 2003)Google Scholar; Lichtenstein, Moshe, “What hath Brisk Wrought?” Torah U-Madda Journal 9 (2000) 1–18 Google Scholar.

81 See Shapiro, Marc, “Brisker Method Reconsidered,” in Tradition 31:3 (1997) 78–105 Google Scholar, at 83 where Shapiro notes the logical analysis of Aryeh Leib Ha-Kohen Heller's Keṣot Ha-Ḥoshen and Shev Shem‘atet'a as precedents for Soloveicthik's method. See also Saiman, “Legal Theology,” n. 51.

82 See Wozner, Shay, “Ontological and Naturalistic Thinking in Talmudic Law and the Yeshivas of Lithuania,” Dine Israel 25 (2008) 41–98 Google Scholar [Hebrew].

83 On the aversion to practical legal rulings see, Joseph, R. Soloveitchik, B., Halakhic Man (trans. Kaplan, Lawrence; New York: Jewish Publication Society, 1984)Google Scholar as well as Saks, Jeffrey, “Rav Soloveitchik on Brisker Method,” Tradition 33:2 (1999) 50–62 Google Scholar; See also Zevin, Shelomo Yosef, Ishim ve-Shitot (Tel Aviv: Oz ve-Hadar, 1966)Google Scholar.

84 The term ḥaqira is one that occurs more often in the work of Soloveitchik students than in his own writings. See Saiman, “Legal Theology,” 52.

85 For an example of the jargon-based “ḥaqirot” pioneered by Soloveicthik, see Saiman, “Legal Theology,” 53–55 and Solomon, The Analytic Movement.

86 Shimon Shkop's methodological approach often treats legal reality as changing the physical composition of nature. See Wozner, “Ontological and Naturalistic Thinking.” Cf. Saiman, “Legal Theology,” 60.

87 Shapiro, Marc, Studies in Maimonides and His Interpreters (Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

88 In this respect, building upon the argument of Daniel Boyarin, the Sephardic method of ‘Iyyun, or the philosophical commitment to the logic of science permeating all realms of knowledge including the study of the Torah, makes its possible to characterize Soloveitchik's study of Maimonides as an unearthing of the “philosophical” logic of law. On ‘Iyyun, see Boyarin, Daniel, Ha-‘Iyyun ha-Sefaradi (Jerusalem: 1989) 47–68 Google Scholar.

89 See Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Nizqe Mamon, 4:4. Maimonides's ruling places strict liability upon the shoulders of the owner and exempts the watchmen. In the Talmud, this law is reasoned quite differently (see BT Baba Qamma, 45b; 55b). Cf. Shulḥan ‘Arukh, Ḥoshen Mishpaṭ, 397: 2–4.

90 R. Abraham ben David of Posquieres (Ra'abad) criticized Maimonides's ruling, suggesting instead that the question of obligation might be transferred from one actor (owner) to another (watchman) when the watch is underway. Unless the owner is somehow simultaneously watching the animal, how could he too be liable? R. Jacob ben Asher likewise notes in ’Arba‘ah Ṭurim that he has “no understanding of his [Maimonides's] words” (Ṭur, Ḥoshen Mishpat, 397). Further, while R. Yoseph Karo records the halakha in his Shulḥan ‘Arukh according to Maimonides's ruling, in his later commentary, Kesef Mishnah, Karo points to the existence of Maimonides's own responsum on this question to the rabbis of Luniel, wherein he notes that the ruling is incorrect and due to scribal error. See Kesef Mishnah, ad loc.

91 See BT Baba Qamma, 45b, 40a-b, 35b; (idem.) Tosafot on Baba Qamma, 45a s.v. hashta.

92 Cf. MT Nizqe Mamon, 4:4. Soloveitchik's analysis ignores the comments of R. Yosef Karo's Kesef Mishnah as well as R. Abraham Ḥiyya de Boton's Leḥem Mishnah, both canonical commentaries printed on the page of all editions of the Mishneh Torah in Soloveitchik's time, which happen to draw attention to Maimonides's responsum and the inaccuracy of the traditional textual variant. Instead, Soloveitchik engages the commentators that address the ruling as it is normatively recorded in the halakha, such as R. Abraham ben David (Ra'abad) and Vidal of Tolossa (Maggid Mishnah).

93 Soloveitchik, R. Ḥayim, Ḥiddushei Rabbenu Ḥayim Ha-Levi ‘al Ha-Rambam (Brooklyn: Shirah, 2011) Nizqe Mamon 4:4Google Scholar.

94 My thanks to Nathaniel Berman for conversations that elucidated this point.

95 On the problem of prioritizing rulings found in Maimonides's Responsa vis-à-vis the Code, and the differing hermeneutic principles than those of “historical” research, see the contemporary example of R. Ovadiah Yosef's introduction to Maimonides's Responsa: She'elot u-Teshuvot Ha-Rambam (ed. R. David Yosef. vol. 1; Pe'er Ha-Dor; Jerusalem: Machon Yerushalayim, 1984).

96 Despite noting the foreign nature of Soloveitchik's method to those of Maimonides, see the example of Weinberg, R. Yehiel Yaakov, Seride Esh (4 vols.; Jerusalem: Mosad HaRav Kook, 1997)Google Scholar vol. 2, no. 144. Cf. Shapiro, “Brisker Method Reconsidered,” 86; idem, Between the Yeshivah World and Modern Orthodoxy: The Life and Works of R. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg, 1884–1966 (London: Litman, 2002) 194–95. See also Karelitz's (Ḥazon Ish) assessment of Soloveitchik's method, in Kaplan, Lawrence, “Chazon Ish: Haredi Critic of Traditional Orthodoxy,” in The Uses of Tradition (ed. Wertheimer, Jack; New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of New York, 1992)Google Scholar.

97 See Eisenstadt, Comparative Civilizations and Multiple Modernities.

98 Jurgensmeyer, Mark, “Global Antimodernism,” in Reflections on Multiple Modernities: European, Chinese, and Other Interpretations (Leiden: Brill, 2002) 100–118 Google Scholar.

99 Weber, Max, “Wissenschaft als Beruf,” in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1922) 524–55Google Scholar, at 554.

100 The most well-known presentation of the ideality of the halakha in the Brisker worldview is that of Joseph, R. Soloveitchik, B. in Halakhic Man (trans. Kaplan, Lawrence; New York: Jewish Publication Society, 1984)Google Scholar. Soloveitchik's own interpretations of halakhic ideality bears the conceptual imprints of Paul Natorp's neo-Kantianism and even the phenomenological influence of Max Scheler, and this distinguishes his thought from that of his grandfather in terms of its natural-scientific paradigm.

101 For an overview of the social history of Lithuanian Jewry, see Levin, Dov, Pinkas Hakehilot Lita translated as The Litvaks: A Short History of the Jews of Lithuania (trans. Teller, Adam; Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2000) 72–101 Google Scholar. While my interest here is not with the social historical forces to which the Mitnagdim or the Lamdanim were responding, it cannot be ignored that dramatic transformations in economic and social mobility created new intellectual challenges for rabbinic thinkers and required new hermeneutic developments. The latter is my interest here. However, for an overview of the new challenges of a modernizing environment in Eastern Europe, see Gafni, Chanan, Peshuṭah shel-Mishnah: ‘Iyyunim be-Ḥeqer Siphrut Ḥazal be-‘Et Ḥadashah (Tel Aviv: Ha-Kibbutz Ha-Meyuhad, 2011)Google Scholar.

102 See also, for example, Falk, Yaakov Yehoshua, Pene Yehoshua (Jerusalem: Or HaTorah, 1998)Google Scholar Baba Qamma, 56b, Rashi s.v. ’ela; Karelitz, Avraham Yeshaya, Ḥazon Ish, (Bnei Brak: 1991)Google Scholar Baba Qamma, Neziqin, 7:7; Simḥah, Meir of Dvinsk, Or Sameaḥ (Warsaw: Meir Yeḥiel Halter, 1926)Google Scholar H. Nizqe Mamon, 4:4; Zalman, Iser Meltzer, Even Ha-Ezel Nizqe Mamon (Jerusalem: Ha-Ivri, 1935)Google Scholar 4:4.

103 Hazon Ish, Nizqe Mamon 7:7; For the most detailed exposition of Karelitz's method, according to a certain legal formalist framing, see Brown, Benjamin, Hazon Ish: Halakhist, Believer, and Leader of the Haredi Revolution (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press of the Hebrew University, 2011) 339–442 Google Scholar [Hebrew].

104 Consider Isaac Hirsch Weiss's claim that many talmudic arguments impose rabbinic reasoning upon textual sources and undermine the textual integrity of the Mishnah and Tosefta. Weiss named this prominent tool of rabbinic ideology as the imposition of sevara or logic. See Weiss, Isaac, Dor Dor ve-Dorshav (4th ed.; Vilna: Romm, 1904) 4–6 Google Scholar.

105 Shkop, Shimon, Sha‘are Yosher (Jerusalem: 2010)Google Scholar 3:3.

106 Ibid., 1:7.

107 Ibid., introduction.

108 Amiel, R. Moshe Avigdor, Ha-Middot Le-Ḥeqer Ha-Halakhah (3 vols.; Jerusalem: Shem, 2001)Google Scholar 1:5.

109 Bleich, Moshe, “The Role of Manuscripts in Halakhic Decision-Making: Hazon Ish, His Precursors and Contemporaries,” Tradition 27:2 (1993) 22–57 Google Scholar. Bleich points out that conceptual halakhists such as Soloveitchik's student R. Elchanan Wasserman also engaged in a kind of critical attribution of the purported Hiddushei Ha-Rashba on tractate Ketubbot of R. Shelomo Ibn Aderet to Nahmanides. Indeed, R. Iser Zalman Meltzer concurred with this view, publishing an annotated edition in 1925. See Bleich, “The Role of Manuscripts,” 41.

110 Amiel, Ha-Midot, 7.

111 Cf. Lindell, Yosef, “A Science Like Any Other? Classical Legal Formalism in the Halakhic Jurisprudence of Rabbis Isaac Jacob Reines and Moses Avigdor Amiel,” Journal of Law and Religion 28:1 (2012–2013) 179–224 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

112 Amiel, Ha-Midot, 8.

113 Granted, Pippin's understanding of modernism and idealism deserves greater clarification in its relation to my claim. See Pippin, Robert, Idealism as Modernism: Hegelian Variations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.