Latest / The Podcast of Jewish Ideas / 93. The English Haskalah | Dr. David Ruderman (Anglo-Judaism #1)

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93. The English Haskalah | Dr. David Ruderman (Anglo-Judaism #1) · The Podcast of Jewish Ideas

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Speaker 1: Greetings, friends, and welcome back to the Podcast of Jewish Ideas,
0:23
Speaker 1: a Torah in Motion production. I'm jj Kimri. Here on
0:26
Speaker 1: the Podcast of Jewish Ideas, we are conducting a multi
0:29
Speaker 1: part series on the major thinkers and religious leaders who
0:32
Speaker 1: shaped Anglo Jewish life. This series has been generously sponsored
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Speaker 1: by Larry and Sarah Krause in loving memory of Larry's father,
0:39
Speaker 1: Nathan Knotte Kraus and the Coronel of Braja, and in
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Speaker 1: honor and gratitude to his mother Kato Kraus, and this
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Speaker 1: episode in particular is dedicated to the memory of Sarah's father,
0:48
Speaker 1: Joe Cass Joseph ben se Vakoina. Thank you very much. Indeed,
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Speaker 1: in this series on Anglo Jewish thought, we seek to
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Speaker 1: recover the theological visions, intellectual commitments, and communal struggles that
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Speaker 1: defined jury in the modern period, and to ask how
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Speaker 1: those ideas continue to resonate today. This is a subject
1:05
Speaker 1: especially dear to my own heart, and will also serve
1:07
Speaker 1: as a taster for a trip to the UK with
1:10
Speaker 1: Turret in Motion in the summer of twenty twenty seven,
1:12
Speaker 1: the details of which shall be forthcoming. On today's episode,
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Speaker 1: we will be turning to an intriguing yet largely forgotten
1:19
Speaker 1: chapter in the history of modern Jewish thought, namely the
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Speaker 1: Jewish Enlightenment in England. Long overshadowed by the better known
1:25
Speaker 1: German Haskala, Anglo Jewish intellectual life in the early modern
1:28
Speaker 1: period developed along a quite different trajectory, shaped by the
1:31
Speaker 1: English language, Protestant biblical culture, Newtonian science, and a distinctive
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Speaker 1: political environment. We will be discussing how English Jews engage
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Speaker 1: questions of scripture, translation, science, and political dissent, and how
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Speaker 1: some of this setting produced its own form of Jewish
1:46
Speaker 1: self reflection and historical imagination. We will also have the
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Speaker 1: chance to reflect on some of the extraordinary figures thrown
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Speaker 1: up by this Anglo Jewish Enlightenment. Joining us to discuss
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Speaker 1: this subject today is one of the leading historians of
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Speaker 1: the early modern Jewish intellectual history, Professor David Rudiman, who
2:01
Speaker 1: is a Professor Emeritus of Modern Jewish History and Director
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Speaker 1: Emeritus of the Herbert Decat Center for Advanced to Day
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Speaker 1: Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, is author of numerous
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Speaker 1: award winning books and articles on these subjects, including his
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Speaker 1: latest work, The Making of An Anglo Jewish scholar The
2:16
Speaker 1: Unconventional Life and Thought of Solomon JENTF. Bennett, which was
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Speaker 1: published last year by De Greta and is in fact
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Speaker 1: open access and can be downloaded by anyone. Here. It
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Speaker 1: is a pleasure to welcome Professor Rudiman to the Podcast
2:27
Speaker 1: of Jewish Ideas Today. Professor welcome.
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Speaker 2: We thank you very much, can I say that? Of course?
2:35
Speaker 1: So you open your book or several of your books
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Speaker 1: by challenging the assumption that modern Jewish thought or the
2:41
Speaker 1: Jewish Enlightenment emerged principally primarily in the German Lands, surrounding
2:47
Speaker 1: the figure of Moses, Medalstinn, etcetera. So let's talk a
2:49
Speaker 1: little bit about this. What dared you to revisit this
2:53
Speaker 1: notion and what are the distortions let's say that arise
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Speaker 1: when we view the onset of Jewish modernity, I least
3:00
Speaker 1: intellectually through this kind of Germanic centric lens.
3:03
Speaker 2: Good. Let me answer the question a bit autobiographically how
3:08
Speaker 2: I got into this, and then I'll sort of answer
3:10
Speaker 2: your question about why England and how and the German
3:16
Speaker 2: English thing. I was never an English history and I
3:19
Speaker 2: began my work on Italy in the fifteenth century. So
3:24
Speaker 2: I don't know it's because of the history departments that
3:26
Speaker 2: I was in, either at Maryland or Yale or Penn.
3:32
Speaker 2: I've moved up, and of course now I'm writing on
3:34
Speaker 2: the nineteenth century. But in any case, when I finished
3:38
Speaker 2: the book in nineteen ninety five, when I was just
3:40
Speaker 2: about to I'm just about to leave Yale on Jewish
3:45
Speaker 2: Thought and Scientific Discovery, I had to finish the story
3:48
Speaker 2: by turning to those first Jews who were influenced by Newton.
3:54
Speaker 2: And I got to England, and the last two chapters
3:58
Speaker 2: of the book deal with England. All of a sudden,
4:01
Speaker 2: by working in the British Library, which to me is
4:03
Speaker 2: a mecca, gon Eden, whatever you want to call it,
4:06
Speaker 2: I never wanted to leave. I have this anglophile kind
4:09
Speaker 2: of thing, and particularly when I brought my wife there
4:13
Speaker 2: and she could do all of her ballet and the
4:16
Speaker 2: Royal Ballet and all of that, it was a perfect
4:18
Speaker 2: match for me to hang out and I never wanted
4:20
Speaker 2: to leave. So we got to England, and the book
4:24
Speaker 2: Jewish Thought and signific Discovery was a book created by
4:28
Speaker 2: just sitting in the British Library and absorbing and talking
4:32
Speaker 2: and of course there were only a few historians that
4:35
Speaker 2: were doing this. Particularly important for this conversation is Todd Endelman,
4:39
Speaker 2: who actually showed up at the lecture I did two
4:42
Speaker 2: weeks ago. I was really surprised because he's kind of
4:44
Speaker 2: been retired completely, and I became interested in, well, who
4:50
Speaker 2: has written on Jewish thought in England? And the answer
4:53
Speaker 2: is a group of amateur historians who ran the Jewish
4:57
Speaker 2: Historical Society for England had PubL for many years very
5:01
Speaker 2: interesting essays. But Todd and particularly pointed out how amateurish
5:07
Speaker 2: and how unprofessionally were as serious historians. And that was
5:12
Speaker 2: the literature that was available, plus a few other oddities
5:16
Speaker 2: that I found to deal with it. So, sitting in
5:19
Speaker 2: the library, of course, the question became what was going
5:23
Speaker 2: on at the end of the eighteenth and nineteenth century
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Speaker 2: in England and to what degree was it a result
5:29
Speaker 2: an overflow of Germany? As you point out when I
5:33
Speaker 2: began to write, Germany was the center of the Haskalah. Menelsin,
5:38
Speaker 2: of course, was the father Friedlander and all of his
5:41
Speaker 2: associates were all part of this extraordinary enlightenment. This story
5:47
Speaker 2: had been told to us by Jacob Katz, who was
5:49
Speaker 2: my teacher at the Heat University, and later on his
5:53
Speaker 2: major disciple, Schmulfeiner, who spoke primarily about Germany. This was
6:00
Speaker 2: prior to an interest in regional Hascalote. For example, my
6:05
Speaker 2: own student, Francesca Bregole, has written a wonderful book on
6:11
Speaker 2: the Jews, the Huscala in Lomorno. The book is more
6:15
Speaker 2: than Huscala, but it deals with Atias and with a
6:19
Speaker 2: whole group of Italian Jewish thinkers who really had a
6:22
Speaker 2: different experience with the Enlightenment, with modernity and so on.
6:27
Speaker 2: And similarly in England we found a different situation. Now
6:32
Speaker 2: Todd had already raised the issue of is there only
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Speaker 2: one way of looking at modernity and Huscala through German lenses?
6:42
Speaker 2: And his book on George and England, which became a classic,
6:46
Speaker 2: was a book which his primary interest was always social history.
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Speaker 2: He was a typical scholar of social history of the
6:53
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties. I used to make fun of him, but
6:56
Speaker 2: it's not true that you know any wherever Ideas he
7:00
Speaker 2: was allergic to them. And he loved to talk more
7:03
Speaker 2: about peasants and rag merchants and that kind of thing
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Speaker 2: he felt much more comfortable with. And I feel more
7:12
Speaker 2: comfortable talking about about intellectuals. But in any case, I
7:17
Speaker 2: began to look a little more deeply, and so I
7:20
Speaker 2: agreed with Todd that there were different models of enlightenment
7:24
Speaker 2: based on the country and the origin which Jees came from,
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Speaker 2: and how they interacted with a society at large. And
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Speaker 2: I noticed already that in England, in its open society,
7:34
Speaker 2: in its political structures, in the way that Jewish minority was
7:38
Speaker 2: accepted even before Jews were full citizens, there were opportunities
7:43
Speaker 2: that were never available in Germany. David Sorkin, who had
7:46
Speaker 2: also written very important books on the German osc A law,
7:49
Speaker 2: had already pointed out the difference between Germany and England,
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Speaker 2: between a closed society and an open society, but no
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Speaker 2: one had talked about the thought. So I began reading,
8:00
Speaker 2: and I came up not with a English haskalah, and
8:04
Speaker 2: not with the influence of Mendelssen. The Medlicine thing is
8:07
Speaker 2: really interesting. Medelsine is really not known in England throughout
8:11
Speaker 2: the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth century. The person
8:15
Speaker 2: who makes Mendelson important for English shoes is a guy
8:18
Speaker 2: named Moses Samuel, who writes a book in eighteen twenty five,
8:22
Speaker 2: which is a kind of biography of Mendelssin and talking
8:26
Speaker 2: about his remarkable image and a selection of his writings
8:29
Speaker 2: for the first time in English. That book opens up
8:32
Speaker 2: the door. So by the end of the nineteenth century,
8:35
Speaker 2: English Jews know who Mendelson is. But in many cases,
8:38
Speaker 2: and this would hold true, I think for all of
8:40
Speaker 2: the nineteenth century, Mendelssen was more of an image, a
8:44
Speaker 2: picture on a coffee cup. You know. I don't know
8:48
Speaker 2: if you ever seen in the brit In the Jewish
8:52
Speaker 2: Museum in Berlin, there's a whole room of Mendelsonia, of
8:56
Speaker 2: all kinds of physical objects with Mendelson is a person
9:01
Speaker 2: larger than life and so on. But he clearly very
9:04
Speaker 2: few people read his philosophy and thought in any depth.
9:08
Speaker 2: And that was certainly true of English Jees. So if
9:11
Speaker 2: I was going to find Mendalsin's influence on England, I
9:15
Speaker 2: would look for indigenous people who had actually thought about
9:21
Speaker 2: Judaism and wrote about Judaism. And I discovered, to my amazement,
9:24
Speaker 2: there were a bunch of people. I would not call
9:27
Speaker 2: this a movement. It wasn't organized, it wasn't protesting. It
9:30
Speaker 2: wasn't standing up and making statements about whether Jews fit
9:35
Speaker 2: in or not, the utility of Jews, and so on.
9:38
Speaker 2: These battles, of course went on. There was a debate
9:41
Speaker 2: over the jew Bill in the eighteenth century and so on.
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Speaker 2: But Jewish thinkers came to England. Mostly the most interesting
9:50
Speaker 2: ones came from Eastern Europe. So we have here, first
9:53
Speaker 2: of all, a story, as my friend Marson in Poland
9:59
Speaker 2: talks about, of Polish refugees or Eastern European refugees. To
10:04
Speaker 2: broaden it out, who came to England and there they discovered,
10:10
Speaker 2: through a variety of ways, an open society that found
10:14
Speaker 2: their knowledge useful, and they felt comfortable in writing about
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Speaker 2: Judaism within an English context. Some of them still wrote
10:23
Speaker 2: in Hebrew and thus were not identified by general scholarship.
10:30
Speaker 2: Many of their works are still in in Hebrew, but
10:35
Speaker 2: many also wrote in bilingually, they also wrote in English,
10:39
Speaker 2: or they wrote exclusively in English. Perhaps the two most
10:43
Speaker 2: famous in this group were David Levy and one who
10:47
Speaker 2: I discovered that although someone had tried to write a
10:50
Speaker 2: dissertation on him, he was absolutely not known. Avra Ham
10:53
Speaker 2: tongue tongue is perhaps the most original thinker. Levy is
10:57
Speaker 2: the most outspoken and public individual Jewel among this crowd,
11:02
Speaker 2: and I can identify five or six more, and in
11:05
Speaker 2: my latest book I added one more Solomon Bennett, who
11:10
Speaker 2: is different from the rest in that he was also
11:13
Speaker 2: an artist, so the artistic dimension of his work is
11:17
Speaker 2: also very interesting, and he also models himself. He doesn't
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Speaker 2: some of them also who are part of this crowd,
11:26
Speaker 2: and I expanded it into another book, as you know,
11:30
Speaker 2: on missionaries and converts and rabbis. Some of these Eastern
11:37
Speaker 2: European Jews converted. Two are in my book. One is
11:41
Speaker 2: Stanisla Hogan, the other is Moses Margoliots. They are really
11:46
Speaker 2: interesting because both of them somehow regret the conversion and
11:51
Speaker 2: it's not a good conversion, and they struggle with being Christians,
11:55
Speaker 2: and they're always yearning to be Jewish again, at least
11:58
Speaker 2: as the way I interpret them, so that in many respects,
12:02
Speaker 2: I would like to see them as a part of
12:04
Speaker 2: the Jewish thought of this period, because they're still conversing
12:07
Speaker 2: with Jews, they're still writing on Jewish topics, they're still
12:10
Speaker 2: extolling a knowledge of the Hebrew language, and they're still
12:14
Speaker 2: practicing Judaism. The case of Hoga still puts on fillin
12:18
Speaker 2: every morning. So someone has called them Judeo Christians. You
12:22
Speaker 2: can talk about an amalgamation of two, but clearly they
12:27
Speaker 2: haven't given up on their Jewishness at all. And of
12:29
Speaker 2: course you have a guy that has a similar profile,
12:34
Speaker 2: all a little different, but we could talk about him
12:36
Speaker 2: in another casion. In any case, this group of individuals
12:41
Speaker 2: is influenced by the outside world. Number one, they know
12:45
Speaker 2: that to communicate with other Jews you have to write
12:47
Speaker 2: in English, so they learn English, and English becomes overwhelmingly
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Speaker 2: the language of Anglo Jews. So this is an English Enlightenment,
12:58
Speaker 2: a version of the English Enlightenment. Second of all, they
13:01
Speaker 2: are open to the democratic world in which they live,
13:04
Speaker 2: and they are outspoken, and they enjoy this freedom and
13:08
Speaker 2: really speak out, even to the point where they insult
13:12
Speaker 2: their Christian hosts. And I have a wonderful passage that
13:15
Speaker 2: I'd like to stick in later between and some Bailey
13:19
Speaker 2: a Christian hebrast and David Levy, where David Levy oversteps
13:24
Speaker 2: his boundaries and says some nasty things to Christians, and
13:29
Speaker 2: on Bailey says, you can't say that you know we
13:32
Speaker 2: like you Jews, but know your a place in our society.
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Speaker 2: You don't speak like that to Christians. So there are
13:38
Speaker 2: limits to this openness and so on. But the most
13:42
Speaker 2: interesting thing is they're intellectual. They read English literature, they
13:48
Speaker 2: read John Locke and they read Newton, and they bring
13:52
Speaker 2: this to bear in their writing. And even people like
13:56
Speaker 2: Tongue reads way beyond that. We'll talk maybe later on
14:00
Speaker 2: about translations and so on, but they begin to translate
14:03
Speaker 2: into Hebrew things that don't need to be translated because
14:05
Speaker 2: people read English are ready, but they do it anyway,
14:08
Speaker 2: as if they're writing for a larger audience outside of England.
14:11
Speaker 2: Is this a husk alat? Again, it's not in the
14:13
Speaker 2: sense of an organized political movement to change the status
14:18
Speaker 2: of Jews. But these are Jews who are deeply embedded
14:22
Speaker 2: within the culture of their day and express their Jewishness
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Speaker 2: through this cultural lens. Let me stop, I can go on,
14:30
Speaker 2: but you want to have a conversation.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly, I mean this is fine I have
14:35
Speaker 1: for you to go to. I will occasionally interjecta yes,
14:39
Speaker 1: so all this is fascinating, and let me ask sort
14:42
Speaker 1: of a sort to drill down slightly into their englishness.
14:46
Speaker 1: Before going onto the specificities of their thoughts, which is
14:48
Speaker 1: what I want to get to mainly, which is that
14:51
Speaker 1: you know, so you mentioned the English language and how
14:53
Speaker 1: they started writing in English was of course important because
14:55
Speaker 1: as a century, as war on, English became more and
14:57
Speaker 1: more of an international language and a language scholarship. Aside
15:00
Speaker 1: from that, what made these what what was English about?
15:05
Speaker 1: This sort of loose constellation of scholars that you are
15:08
Speaker 1: referring to, What particular hallmarks of them or their thoughts
15:12
Speaker 1: sort of makes them different, let's say, from their counterparts
15:15
Speaker 1: in Europe or elsewhere. Is it something distinctive you could
15:18
Speaker 1: point out by dint of their being English or all?
15:21
Speaker 1: This distinction is not sort of national in that way.
15:24
Speaker 2: One aspect I just didn't answer your question fully. But
15:27
Speaker 2: one aspect that is really critical here is the place
15:31
Speaker 2: of English within within Anglo culture, which of course means
15:37
Speaker 2: brings us to the Bible. So much of what they
15:42
Speaker 2: are thinking about and writing about and absorbing comes from
15:47
Speaker 2: their encounter with the English Bible and with the King
15:51
Speaker 2: James version. In other words, by the nineteenth century, most
15:55
Speaker 2: Jews are most of the translations that exist of the
15:59
Speaker 2: Hebrew Bible into English are King James versions with revisions.
16:05
Speaker 2: Even David Levy's publications of the Old Testament are basically
16:09
Speaker 2: the King James with his revisions in the footnotes. So
16:13
Speaker 2: that basically what we are speaking about here is not
16:16
Speaker 2: only English but an absorption of the English Bible into
16:20
Speaker 2: the cultural matrix of Judaism. Now that's really hard to
16:23
Speaker 2: explain it. What does that mean? We are the implications
16:25
Speaker 2: of that, But nevertheless, it seems to me that the
16:29
Speaker 2: most important English book literary writing is the Bible, and
16:33
Speaker 2: the Bible has an enormous, enormous influence on society and
16:37
Speaker 2: on higher culture and lower culture as well, and Jews
16:41
Speaker 2: absorbed this directly. In other words, Jews have access to
16:45
Speaker 2: this and to all the ancillary literature that emerges out
16:49
Speaker 2: of this cultural matrix. So that's part of an answer
16:53
Speaker 2: to the question of englishness. But englishness also implies a
16:57
Speaker 2: certain pride of place. It involves a sense of belonging,
17:01
Speaker 2: which Jews feel right from the beginning, in the sense
17:05
Speaker 2: that they can participate fully in the culture and say
17:09
Speaker 2: what they want. What I found remarkable, and I wonder
17:13
Speaker 2: if you had that same experience. Of course, you were
17:15
Speaker 2: writing in the late nineteenth century. To what degree Jews
17:19
Speaker 2: participate in reviewing books or their books are reviewed, and
17:24
Speaker 2: how they write letters to editors, and how open they
17:28
Speaker 2: are in the press, And of course the most outstanding
17:32
Speaker 2: example of this is David Levy and his attacks on
17:35
Speaker 2: Christian scholars, particularly Joseph Priestley and so on. They say
17:40
Speaker 2: anything they want, the same thing as true of Bennett.
17:45
Speaker 2: Bennett didn't like several reviews of his books, so he
17:47
Speaker 2: wrote back a nasty response to his reviewers and so on.
17:52
Speaker 2: I wonder whether how many examples of you would find
17:54
Speaker 2: of that. In Germany, Jews are a bit more timid.
17:56
Speaker 2: I mean, the timidity of Mendelssohn compared to the spokenness
18:00
Speaker 2: of David Levy is like night and day. And that
18:04
Speaker 2: again is part of being of the political situation, but
18:08
Speaker 2: it's also part of the English playing field. They can participate.
18:12
Speaker 2: Or give you another crazy example, when Bennett gets involved
18:16
Speaker 2: with a serious struggle with the chief Rabbi and they
18:21
Speaker 2: are fighting, and initially the first stage of this debate
18:25
Speaker 2: takes place within Hebrew writings. Bennett writes a work in Hebrew,
18:30
Speaker 2: and then his adversaries representing the Rabbi answer in Hebrew
18:34
Speaker 2: and so on. Finally, Bennett is so exasperated he puts
18:38
Speaker 2: out a book about the Rabbi at Duke's place. He
18:42
Speaker 2: puts it out in English, all in dirty laundry, calling
18:46
Speaker 2: these Jews or hypocritical. They're sitting eating roast beef and
18:50
Speaker 2: the Rabbi has to get them out for a minion,
18:53
Speaker 2: and he talks about how these rich Jews are exploiting everybody.
18:57
Speaker 2: And then he talks about the rabbi and derogatory term,
19:00
Speaker 2: and he's publishing it for Christians. What is he doing there?
19:04
Speaker 2: How many Jews put their dirty laundry, and what does
19:07
Speaker 2: it say about the comfort level? Or somehow one can
19:10
Speaker 2: move into an English playing field with the same private
19:14
Speaker 2: stuff that should that Jews always kept in Hebrew as
19:18
Speaker 2: their kind of secret language, you know, in house language,
19:21
Speaker 2: and now it becomes part of a house. So I'm
19:23
Speaker 2: saying the psychology of English is also a psychology of
19:27
Speaker 2: writing and thinking in English is also very much a
19:31
Speaker 2: part of this new culture. Or one more example translation
19:36
Speaker 2: There is a wonderful translation by a guy named Avram
19:40
Speaker 2: than Ovin who came originally from Amsterdam. His son was
19:45
Speaker 2: also a very outspoken English leader in the beginning of
19:48
Speaker 2: the nineteenth century, and he published a work called the
19:51
Speaker 2: Economy of Nature. I got that wrong. Probably. It's a
19:55
Speaker 2: work which he attributed in Hebrew a translation. He attributed
20:01
Speaker 2: it to a sage from China who was writing, and
20:05
Speaker 2: he read it and he said, he says in the
20:07
Speaker 2: Hebrew introduction, this sounds very much like the Tanach and
20:11
Speaker 2: very much like the rabbis, and therefore it must have
20:14
Speaker 2: been Jewish before. Now that's an old trump, you know whatever.
20:17
Speaker 2: Jews loved to grandize and take over all of literature
20:20
Speaker 2: and say Aristotle and Plato were originally Jewish, or they
20:24
Speaker 2: learned their their stuff from the prophets and so on
20:26
Speaker 2: and so forth. But he really means it. And he
20:28
Speaker 2: puts out this book which everyone knew in English, by
20:32
Speaker 2: Robert Doldsley. He puts it out in Hebrew. Why exactly?
20:37
Speaker 2: And who's going to read it? I mean that can
20:38
Speaker 2: read it in the original. But nevertheless, he is brought
20:43
Speaker 2: into the idea that this English literature is really his.
20:46
Speaker 2: He identifies it with there's a level of identification with
20:49
Speaker 2: the culture which comes out of the English. In other words,
20:52
Speaker 2: I want to I want to bring it back to
20:54
Speaker 2: where you started with the question. So that's part of
20:56
Speaker 2: an answer.
20:57
Speaker 1: No, that was a large part of a large anzas.
21:02
Speaker 1: So let me zero in on one particular point that
21:05
Speaker 1: you made, namely the battle over the study of the Bible,
21:09
Speaker 1: which you've devoted quite a bit of time and attention to,
21:12
Speaker 1: especially because it wasn't only that Jews were reading the
21:15
Speaker 1: Bible the same time the Christians were. It was that
21:17
Speaker 1: things were going on in the world of Christian biblical
21:20
Speaker 1: scholarship in the English speaking world by Christians. The Jewish
21:23
Speaker 1: thinkers felt they had to respond to, and there was
21:25
Speaker 1: sort of a project by by Kennicott and others attempts
21:29
Speaker 1: to revise or apply new modes of scholarship to the
21:34
Speaker 1: Hebrew Bible, and various Jewish thinkers in eighteenth Central England
21:38
Speaker 1: believed that their duty, let's say, to defend or to
21:41
Speaker 1: at least express their own Jewish position on the subjects
21:44
Speaker 1: within the context of an inner intra English intellectual affair.
21:50
Speaker 1: Let's say, so could perhaps elaborate a little bit on that.
21:52
Speaker 1: I mean, what was going on within the Christian world
21:54
Speaker 1: and how did the Jewish scholars see fit to step
21:57
Speaker 1: in and sort of this forming a chapter, let's say
22:02
Speaker 1: in this English version.
22:03
Speaker 2: Of the Good all right, So that's that's exactly the
22:06
Speaker 2: next the next question to follow. It's it's a really
22:11
Speaker 2: an elaborate story, and it begins long even long before
22:15
Speaker 2: Kennicott at the end of the eighteenth century. But really,
22:19
Speaker 2: to to sum it up in very uh loose terms, uh,
22:25
Speaker 2: it's it's the fear on the part of Jews that
22:29
Speaker 2: they're losing their hegemony over the Hebrew text of the Bible,
22:33
Speaker 2: that Christians are learning Hebrew so well that they can
22:37
Speaker 2: replace Jews in this process of being the guardians of
22:41
Speaker 2: the book, so to speak. Uh. And there's a sense
22:44
Speaker 2: of anxiety, but also a sense of of of real
22:49
Speaker 2: disappointment and seeing that much of the work that Christians
22:52
Speaker 2: are doing is not really up to par uh. And
22:56
Speaker 2: that's a sense of superiority that here not only can
22:59
Speaker 2: we do better job, but possibly this is our way
23:03
Speaker 2: of contributing significantly to English culture, since this English Bible
23:09
Speaker 2: is so much a central part of what defines englishness.
23:15
Speaker 2: If we can contribute to playing a role here, it
23:19
Speaker 2: can be valuable. But clearly you're right, first of the
23:22
Speaker 2: first chapter of this is a challenge, a challenge. First
23:25
Speaker 2: of all by a group called the Hutchinsonians John Hutchinson,
23:30
Speaker 2: a group of real sugar exegits who had their own
23:37
Speaker 2: form of grammar, who interpreted the Bible freely in a
23:41
Speaker 2: different way, who essentially rejected all of Jewish exegesis, and
23:47
Speaker 2: of course the massoretic text. I want to stay away
23:49
Speaker 2: from the masoretic text, because that is your Bailey wook,
23:53
Speaker 2: and after reading your fabulous chapter, we'll get into that
23:57
Speaker 2: at another time. But in any case, the Jews had
24:01
Speaker 2: created a massoretic text, and that text became basically the
24:06
Speaker 2: text that Christians were using as well. But then there
24:09
Speaker 2: were all kinds of texts on is this massoretic text
24:12
Speaker 2: created between the ninth century, et cetera. Is that really
24:17
Speaker 2: a text that came from from Moses and you know,
24:22
Speaker 2: from the original version, or is it all these these
24:26
Speaker 2: these points, these these vowels, all of these marks added
24:31
Speaker 2: later on to distort the text to bring out a
24:33
Speaker 2: Jewish version of the text as opposed to a Christian
24:37
Speaker 2: reading of the text. Christianity was also having a crisis
24:40
Speaker 2: in that in reading the New Testament as they were
24:43
Speaker 2: now learning the Old Testament, there was a mismatch. There
24:47
Speaker 2: was when the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, it
24:51
Speaker 2: doesn't always fit the version that we have of the Bible.
24:54
Speaker 2: So there was a crisis in terms of situating the
24:57
Speaker 2: New Testament in relationship to the Old Testament. This indeed
25:01
Speaker 2: raised the issue for Kennicott. Kennicott decided, I'm going to
25:05
Speaker 2: collect every manuscript in the world. I'm going to collect
25:08
Speaker 2: every reading of the Bible and every language, and I'm
25:11
Speaker 2: going to have a whole team, and I'm going to
25:13
Speaker 2: get the Royal government to pay for all of this,
25:16
Speaker 2: and I'm going to create this enormous project to create
25:19
Speaker 2: a new Bible, independent of the Massoretic Text, independent of
25:23
Speaker 2: all the so called mistakes of the Jews. And thus
25:26
Speaker 2: I will create a Christian version of the Bible, and
25:30
Speaker 2: that will certainly the Old Testament, that is, and that
25:33
Speaker 2: will match you up perfectly with the New Testament. So
25:35
Speaker 2: that was really his ideal. The problem is, as I
25:39
Speaker 2: point out, he didn't have the tools to do this,
25:42
Speaker 2: and the Massoretic Text was still proven to be the
25:47
Speaker 2: best version that we can possibly have of God's words,
25:51
Speaker 2: so to speak. And the story I tell and I
25:55
Speaker 2: actually brought a book here because I've never shown it
25:57
Speaker 2: to anybody. The chapter on Kennicott is interesting for a
26:01
Speaker 2: variety of ways. I mean, basically, David Levy is one
26:04
Speaker 2: of the major protagonists, and that he takes on the Hutchinstonians,
26:07
Speaker 2: and then afterwards he takes on Kennicott and later on
26:10
Speaker 2: Robert both and all of the Christian readings of the
26:14
Speaker 2: text which he and he argues essentially that you just
26:17
Speaker 2: don't understand Hebrew well enough to do this. But I
26:21
Speaker 2: had an incredible discovery when I was sitting in the
26:23
Speaker 2: British library and in that well, actually the story this
26:28
Speaker 2: book is a book in French. I don't know. Can
26:30
Speaker 2: you see it well on the screen Lettre de monsieur
26:35
Speaker 2: l'Abbe duu and the ex Professor of Hebrew against Kennicott.
26:40
Speaker 2: This is an anti Kennicott book published by a group
26:43
Speaker 2: of Catholic priests in Paris. Now how did I get
26:47
Speaker 2: this book? My uncle, who used to be a big
26:50
Speaker 2: fan of when he was living, was looking at an
26:54
Speaker 2: old bookstore in Paris and he found this book. This
26:57
Speaker 2: is the This was published in seventeen seventy six and
27:00
Speaker 2: is an original with inscriptions, with a seventeen seventy six
27:04
Speaker 2: mark on it. But the more interesting story is that
27:08
Speaker 2: when I was working in Oxford, I found a written
27:12
Speaker 2: manuscript with the same text in it, written by I
27:16
Speaker 2: eventually identified him as a guy named Dumay, who was
27:19
Speaker 2: an assistant to Kennicott, who was a former Jew. Kennicott
27:22
Speaker 2: was hiring all kinds of people, all kinds of shady people.
27:25
Speaker 2: I mean, sort of like the qualifications of no. I'm
27:29
Speaker 2: no politics here. I was going to say ice policeman.
27:32
Speaker 2: But he hired this guy. And this guy saw what
27:36
Speaker 2: a rotten institution, what was going on here was all nonsense,
27:42
Speaker 2: and he published He wrote an expose which I have
27:45
Speaker 2: the original manuscript, and then he sent it off to
27:48
Speaker 2: these French priests who immediately published it against Kennicott. So
27:51
Speaker 2: it's its incredible story of how a person within reveals
27:56
Speaker 2: the secrets of Kennicott. So Jews had to respond, let
28:00
Speaker 2: me just take it one step, father and then I'll stop.
28:02
Speaker 2: So Levy, of course was major responding to this. There
28:06
Speaker 2: were all group of others who criticized. Robert Loathe is
28:09
Speaker 2: another part of that story. This beautiful author and interpreter
28:15
Speaker 2: with a new English prose based on Kennicott's findings, was
28:19
Speaker 2: going to produce this remarkable new translation of the Book
28:23
Speaker 2: of Isaiah and so on, and Levy goes after it
28:25
Speaker 2: and shows how many mistakes there are. But the process
28:30
Speaker 2: of Jews and the Bible goes on into the nineteenth century,
28:35
Speaker 2: and I just want to connect it to my story,
28:39
Speaker 2: my recent story of Bennett. Bennett also is concerned about
28:44
Speaker 2: the problem of the Bible, and he becomes a prominent figure.
28:48
Speaker 2: He was an Eastern European Jew as well, coming from Polunsk.
28:51
Speaker 2: He ends up in London and there he finds that
28:56
Speaker 2: people want to study Bible with him Christians, and he
28:59
Speaker 2: becomes very much a part of a group of very
29:03
Speaker 2: high falutin people who are interested in studying Bible with him.
29:07
Speaker 2: And he writes several Biblical commentaries in English. One of
29:12
Speaker 2: them we also have a Hebrew version of which is
29:14
Speaker 2: different than the English, which makes it. He wrote a
29:16
Speaker 2: commentary on the Temple of Ezekiel, for example. But his
29:20
Speaker 2: major project in life is to address the problem that
29:25
Speaker 2: Thomas Paine had challenged Christianity by speaking about all of
29:30
Speaker 2: the fables and the stories of the Old Testament and
29:33
Speaker 2: how bad it was I, as a Jew, says Bennett,
29:36
Speaker 2: has to stand up and help the Christian people of England.
29:40
Speaker 2: And therefore I propose that I retranslate the King James
29:44
Speaker 2: version myself, and that by doing so I can create
29:49
Speaker 2: not only a Bible for Christians, but a Bible for Jews,
29:53
Speaker 2: in other words, a universal Bible. Now, of course this
29:56
Speaker 2: lacked all of the massoretic stuff that later goes on
29:59
Speaker 2: with with Ginsburg and so on. But nevertheless he took
30:03
Speaker 2: the version of the King James version of eighteen twenty four.
30:07
Speaker 2: The Oxford what was called the Oxford Bible, was a
30:10
Speaker 2: big folio volume, and he broke it open, and he
30:13
Speaker 2: started writing in his notes, and he rewrote every correction,
30:18
Speaker 2: not in a way to denigrade Christianity, not in a
30:22
Speaker 2: way to polemicize with it, although there are plenty of
30:25
Speaker 2: polemics in his writings against you at Christian readings, but
30:29
Speaker 2: to present a Bible that Christians would love, that would
30:32
Speaker 2: in other words, he removed all references to Jesus and
30:36
Speaker 2: to christian is of Jesus. But nevertheless, what he leaves
30:40
Speaker 2: is a Bible which he believes is both Christian and
30:43
Speaker 2: Jewish at the same time, and Jews can use it
30:45
Speaker 2: in their shool, and the same time Christians can use
30:48
Speaker 2: it in their church. Unfortunately, he died after he finished it,
30:52
Speaker 2: and it was not published except for the Book of Genesis.
30:55
Speaker 2: But that to me is again a part of a
30:58
Speaker 2: story that at least us up to the first part
31:01
Speaker 2: of the nineteenth century. And then of course you take
31:03
Speaker 2: it farther in another way. It's but therefore there's a
31:06
Speaker 2: whole history. There's a whole romance with the Bible here
31:10
Speaker 2: in which Jews are fighting and defending their position but
31:14
Speaker 2: also wanting to participate in a very open way with
31:18
Speaker 2: their Christians. So that while a guy that Ginsburg does
31:22
Speaker 2: it as a Christian, ultimately Bennett is doing it as
31:25
Speaker 2: a Jew who is proud of his Jewishness, but nevertheless
31:28
Speaker 2: loves Christians. So in many so that again is very English, right,
31:32
Speaker 2: It's not doesn't happen that way in Germany. Yeah, I know,
31:36
Speaker 2: Mendelssohn has a circle and so on, and he's talking.
31:39
Speaker 2: He has all kinds of friends. But this kind of
31:41
Speaker 2: intimacy and particularly over talking about sacred Scripture in this
31:45
Speaker 2: way that can be shared by Jews and Christians is
31:49
Speaker 2: a very English kind of a situation. I guess when
31:53
Speaker 2: I go on on Amazon today, I was looking for
31:57
Speaker 2: a Tanach for my granddaughter, and I say, all these
32:01
Speaker 2: tan theme that are published by Christians, they call it
32:03
Speaker 2: tanah on Amazon. I mean, so you can't even which
32:08
Speaker 2: is the Jewish version which is the Christian version here
32:10
Speaker 2: and clearly there was an attempt at bringing these two
32:14
Speaker 2: religions together through their reading of Bible. I think that's
32:18
Speaker 2: a very English phenomenon. I said too much, and I
32:21
Speaker 2: went all over the place.
32:22
Speaker 1: No, no, you brought it back together, and that was
32:25
Speaker 1: very important. Also shows the extent to which Jews wanted to,
32:28
Speaker 1: I suppose, defend the one area where they felt they
32:32
Speaker 1: had expertise, because of course, for centuries in Europe, in
32:35
Speaker 1: many places, under many contexts, Christians looks towards Jews as
32:39
Speaker 1: having a kind of an expertise in Hebrew and expertise
32:41
Speaker 1: in the Bible that they would you know, many Christian
32:44
Speaker 1: Hebrews sought out Jewish converts or actual Jews, unbaptized Jews
32:50
Speaker 1: from whom they could learn from or learn how to
32:53
Speaker 1: read Hebrew, or gain insight into the Bible and others,
32:56
Speaker 1: and so Jews were Jewish intellectuals in England at the
32:59
Speaker 1: time sort of acting to keep control of their of
33:03
Speaker 1: their authority, of their expertise on the subject, perceived expertise
33:07
Speaker 1: on the subject, which which is fascinating. I want to
33:09
Speaker 1: turn actually to a little bit of a different context,
33:11
Speaker 1: and this is sort of more intra Jewish, which is
33:14
Speaker 1: an effect of another aspect of the English intellectual ambiance
33:18
Speaker 1: at the time, which is what has often been called
33:21
Speaker 1: a physical theology, which which stems from the scientific and
33:25
Speaker 1: philosophical advance at the time, especially the science of Isaac Newton, right,
33:28
Speaker 1: they're the new Newtonian physics and worldview, which proposed a
33:31
Speaker 1: whole new way of understanding the universe and the understanding
33:35
Speaker 1: the way of physics and cosmology and and sort of
33:37
Speaker 1: processes of physical processes within the world, which gave rise
33:41
Speaker 1: to a new kind of theology that was fairly popular
33:44
Speaker 1: with in England at the time. And there were some
33:45
Speaker 1: Jews who who understood this, who received it, who uh
33:49
Speaker 1: you know, were operating in this environment that sought to
33:51
Speaker 1: respond to it. So could you perhaps elaborate a little
33:53
Speaker 1: bit on this and then to what degree this Well, firstly,
33:56
Speaker 1: what were the aspects of this intellectual environment, and how
33:59
Speaker 1: did Jews try and deal with it and adapt it
34:01
Speaker 1: and work within it, let's say, philosophically, theologically, how does
34:05
Speaker 1: that little corner of intellectual history lay out?
34:08
Speaker 2: Okay, it's I think it's a story that still needs
34:11
Speaker 2: to be told in greater detail. In other words, in
34:14
Speaker 2: my preliminary look at this subject, I think I haven't
34:19
Speaker 2: exhausted it at all. But you're speaking a lot about
34:22
Speaker 2: a guy named Schnaber Levinson, who is a very interesting figure.
34:26
Speaker 2: In fact, one of the things that I wanted to
34:28
Speaker 2: talk about you next week is Schnaber Levinson's commentary on Cohellet,
34:33
Speaker 2: which you have not I don't think you've looked at
34:36
Speaker 2: what's interesting about it, and I think it underscores what
34:39
Speaker 2: we were just talking about a minute ago, is that
34:43
Speaker 2: it's basically we found, or someone in Brooklyn helped me
34:48
Speaker 2: find found his copy of Mendelssohn's cohal It is Ecclesiastes
34:55
Speaker 2: with his notes on almost every page. He hates he
35:00
Speaker 2: hates Mendelsohn's book. He hates it, and he brings up
35:04
Speaker 2: Locke all the time. In other words, to me, what
35:07
Speaker 2: I'm arguing, what I argue there is that his epistemology
35:10
Speaker 2: is English, as Mendelssen of course is coming from German
35:14
Speaker 2: roots and German metaphysics. So to me, that commentary and
35:20
Speaker 2: the two commentaries reveal the difference between England and Germany.
35:24
Speaker 2: Even though Schneberg Levinson goes Off is a very interesting character.
35:29
Speaker 2: He comes to England and he eventually goes to Sweden
35:32
Speaker 2: where he has contacts there with the Swedenborgians, and then
35:37
Speaker 2: he comes back to England. But he was a student
35:39
Speaker 2: of John Hunter, who is one of the major physicians
35:42
Speaker 2: of the end of the eighteenth and nineteenth century in England.
35:45
Speaker 2: The whole Hunter family were dominant figures, and he studied
35:49
Speaker 2: with him, so he had serious English credentials. But he
35:53
Speaker 2: wrote primarily in Hebrew, as opposed to Levy who wrote
35:56
Speaker 2: primarily in English, and so on, So and who is
35:58
Speaker 2: he writing for? And I'm getting back to to Newton.
36:00
Speaker 2: So the first time I saw Newton was in the
36:05
Speaker 2: writing of David Nietto at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
36:10
Speaker 2: David Neetto was the chief rabbi of the Sfardi at
36:15
Speaker 2: the beginning of the eighteenth century. He had come from Italy.
36:18
Speaker 2: He had a medical degree, from the University of Padua.
36:23
Speaker 2: So here's another connection which I want to somehow get
36:28
Speaker 2: in here. Arthur Heron and others have spoken about an
36:32
Speaker 2: Atlantic Jewish perspective, which for him begins in Italy and
36:37
Speaker 2: then comes to England and then goes off to America.
36:42
Speaker 2: Was you may ask when to ask me at the end?
36:43
Speaker 2: I'm anticipating it already. What are the implicat the implications
36:47
Speaker 2: of this for American jewelry and so on. The Atlantic
36:52
Speaker 2: connection is a way of connecting all of these things together.
36:54
Speaker 2: In any case, here's an Italian rabbi. He's not the
36:56
Speaker 2: only one that comes to England. Rafael Baruch has another
36:59
Speaker 2: one who was Italian. There are a whole bunch of them.
37:03
Speaker 2: And he begins to present in his Cuzari Hashni and
37:09
Speaker 2: his mate Don in this apologetic book of Judaism, written
37:14
Speaker 2: in Hebrew and in Spanish, since he was writing to
37:18
Speaker 2: a he was the rabbi of the Spanish Portuguese Synagogue,
37:21
Speaker 2: a variety of views about the world, and he includes
37:24
Speaker 2: Newton there for the first time. Was he a real Newtonian? No,
37:28
Speaker 2: but he was aware of Newton. Now we move forward
37:31
Speaker 2: to the end of the eighteenth century, and then we
37:34
Speaker 2: have people like s Number Levenson. In particular, we have
37:37
Speaker 2: Jacob Hart. There are a few others who I'm not
37:40
Speaker 2: recalling right away. The physical therap theology is a very
37:45
Speaker 2: interesting looking at nature and developing ideas about evolution, about
37:50
Speaker 2: the connection between the various species. This all begins, you know,
37:56
Speaker 2: the subject, which continues in the nineteenth century and to
37:59
Speaker 2: biology into comparative botany and all of this. These things
38:04
Speaker 2: are emerging, but they also evolved as ways of appreciating
38:08
Speaker 2: God in God's world. They come out of a certain
38:11
Speaker 2: deistic view of the world where God is a part
38:14
Speaker 2: of nature. God is Nature. Dietro himself gets into a
38:18
Speaker 2: whole controversy over whether he means is nature God or
38:23
Speaker 2: is God, you know, and he's accused of being as
38:25
Speaker 2: pinosas as That's another part of our story. But in
38:28
Speaker 2: any case, this physical therapy seems to have a physical
38:33
Speaker 2: not therapy, a theology. It seems to have captured Schnaber
38:37
Speaker 2: Levinson in a very serious way. But then he goes
38:40
Speaker 2: back to Sweden where he hangs out with Swedenborgians. So
38:43
Speaker 2: you have these mystics Swede Aboard. I don't know if
38:46
Speaker 2: you that there's a big Swedeenborgian church in London. I
38:49
Speaker 2: don't if you've ever seen that, and with a library,
38:52
Speaker 2: and it's really quite interesting. And it's also connected with
38:56
Speaker 2: another group who are very important for Jews in the
38:59
Speaker 2: eighteenth century. Part of our story Freemasons. Now, freemasonry has
39:03
Speaker 2: a long history, and of course Jacob Cass wrote the
39:06
Speaker 2: famous book on freemasonry in Germany, but Freemason lodges in
39:10
Speaker 2: England had exclusively Jewish members in certain lodges. It was
39:15
Speaker 2: really quite impressive. Every one of the thinkers I'm talking
39:18
Speaker 2: about were Freemasons, Avramtang, David Levy, they were all listed
39:23
Speaker 2: in I worked in the Freemason lodge as well. But
39:27
Speaker 2: swedenborg Freemasonry. Now we get into the mystical. We get in,
39:32
Speaker 2: in other words, where religious mysticism and God has something
39:36
Speaker 2: to do with nature and the larger Newtonian things. And
39:39
Speaker 2: of course why does this work so well Because Newton
39:42
Speaker 2: himself was a very religious person who wrote biblical commentaries
39:47
Speaker 2: and can be interpreted in a very religious way. So
39:50
Speaker 2: Jewish thinkers and here I don't Schnabu Elevens spends a
39:55
Speaker 2: lot of time describing the Newtonian system, but he never
39:57
Speaker 2: criticizes it. The others too, Newton seems even Jacob Hart,
40:02
Speaker 2: who writes a book on the Wars of the Jews
40:06
Speaker 2: in which he hates State Cart and he hates other
40:09
Speaker 2: modern thinkers, but when he gets to Newton, he said,
40:12
Speaker 2: it's not Newton's fold. It was his interpreters that made him,
40:16
Speaker 2: in his thinking into a mechanical universe. He always believed
40:20
Speaker 2: in God and saw God as the author of this
40:23
Speaker 2: mechanical universe, not simply coming out on its own. It
40:27
Speaker 2: was his later interpreters that corrupted the system. Similarly, and
40:31
Speaker 2: here I want to bring in Bennett, because Bennett is
40:35
Speaker 2: a total weird you know. You think of Bennett as
40:39
Speaker 2: being a Musquille and defending Judaism and teaching Bible to
40:43
Speaker 2: Christians and writing this Bible and so on. But in
40:47
Speaker 2: the beginning of his Bible commentary he has a long
40:51
Speaker 2: thing in which he attacks the Newtonians. Now this is
40:55
Speaker 2: the nineteenth century. Already by this time they're still fighting Newton,
41:00
Speaker 2: and he seems to have hung out. And this is
41:02
Speaker 2: the one aspect we haven't talked about it in terms
41:04
Speaker 2: of the English context. The deep missionary climate of the
41:09
Speaker 2: nineteenth century, particularly the beginning of the nineteenth century, the
41:12
Speaker 2: saud for the advancement of Christianity among the Jews, and
41:15
Speaker 2: a whole variety of other groups, which you know as
41:19
Speaker 2: well as I do. The missionary scare. In other words,
41:22
Speaker 2: these are bad Christians from the point of view of
41:24
Speaker 2: the Jews, and Jews need to defend themselves against those missionaries.
41:29
Speaker 2: But Jews can distinguish between good Christians and bad Christians.
41:32
Speaker 2: Newton is a good Christian. Those who used his work
41:36
Speaker 2: to spout secular ideas about the universe and the mechanical
41:41
Speaker 2: universe are bad. They're the Pagans. And in the case
41:46
Speaker 2: of Bennett, which is a really interesting story, he seems
41:49
Speaker 2: to have hung out with one of his wealthy sponsors,
41:52
Speaker 2: who happened to be a woman who lived in Bath
41:57
Speaker 2: and wrote five books against Newton, a six book actually,
42:01
Speaker 2: and they seem to have been in conversation, and believe
42:04
Speaker 2: it or not, he doesn't mention her name, but the
42:07
Speaker 2: language of his the twoperations against against Newtonians is exactly
42:13
Speaker 2: her language. Now, how is it possible? I mean, I
42:16
Speaker 2: could see why he might have been hesitant to quote
42:19
Speaker 2: a woman, but he hung out with other women donors
42:23
Speaker 2: who appreciated his work. Member is also I didn't mention
42:26
Speaker 2: he was an engraver and the way he got into
42:28
Speaker 2: Christian Holmes was by doing his art. She takes many
42:32
Speaker 2: of his art work on the Hebrew Bible and puts
42:35
Speaker 2: it in her books. So and she quotes him all
42:38
Speaker 2: over the place. He doesn't quote her by name, but
42:41
Speaker 2: I'm absolutely sure that he was influenced by her, which
42:45
Speaker 2: is an amazing story in its own right, not only
42:47
Speaker 2: a Jew hanging out with a Christian, but a Jew
42:49
Speaker 2: hanging out with a Christian woman. I don't think there
42:51
Speaker 2: was anything sexual, although he has a very interesting marital life.
42:56
Speaker 2: He left his first wife in Poland as an aug
43:00
Speaker 2: nah and came and had and married a seventeen year
43:04
Speaker 2: old when he was fifty one, and had nine children,
43:07
Speaker 2: So he was too busy to have other affairs, I
43:10
Speaker 2: would assume. But in any case, I mean, it's a
43:13
Speaker 2: remarkable story what comes out of this. But the missionary
43:18
Speaker 2: context is also part of our English story as well. Yes,
43:21
Speaker 2: course missions are in Germany, are in Poland, of course
43:25
Speaker 2: are in Warsaw as we well know, but they're English.
43:28
Speaker 2: Isn't that interesting that there are. Mostly the English are
43:31
Speaker 2: the first to get into to Poland until they're kicked out.
43:34
Speaker 2: So we're talking about something that the heart and soul
43:38
Speaker 2: of this missionary context and its imperialistic claims are in England,
43:43
Speaker 2: which is another dimension of Anglo Jewish life as well.
43:47
Speaker 2: I don't know if I answered your question, but I
43:49
Speaker 2: went on.
43:51
Speaker 1: You answered it, and then you answered another question, which
43:53
Speaker 1: is fine. Would there any other important intellectual context aside
43:58
Speaker 1: from Newton and any sort of new macare anical view
44:01
Speaker 1: of the universe that were that informed the backgrounds you
44:05
Speaker 1: mentioned many of these very important English writers you mentioned
44:09
Speaker 1: or Levinson and Avraham Tang and and I've all these
44:13
Speaker 1: these people, so in terms of assessing their ideas and
44:16
Speaker 1: their contributions, so we know about a new wave ideas
44:20
Speaker 1: coming through the scientific Revolution, are there any other ideas
44:23
Speaker 1: or intellectual facets of the world in which they're living
44:27
Speaker 1: which moved their Jewish writings in sort of a slightly
44:31
Speaker 1: different direction than the other otherwise would be either century
44:34
Speaker 1: earlier or in comparison to let's say, their counterparts in
44:37
Speaker 1: Germany and Italy and France and elsewhere.
44:39
Speaker 2: So you're asking me also about the originality of their
44:42
Speaker 2: of their reflections. Perhaps that part.
44:44
Speaker 1: Of the question, I would say, the distinctiveness of instinctiveness.
44:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And that's a that's a good question.
44:52
Speaker 2: I think the first thing I said was their writings
44:56
Speaker 2: are tinged with with echoes of the larger culture that
44:59
Speaker 2: they live, and that's clear. Do they contribute a new
45:03
Speaker 2: way of Jewish understanding? What has to be pointed out?
45:07
Speaker 2: And there was there's always been a discussion of this
45:11
Speaker 2: within modern Jewish thought, that essentially this is a Protestant
45:15
Speaker 2: understanding of Judaism. In other words, their English Jews are
45:19
Speaker 2: very comfortable with the kind of Protestantism, with Anglicanism and
45:25
Speaker 2: also with the Centers and so on, and that their
45:28
Speaker 2: Judaism really reflects that larger culture. They see themselves as
45:35
Speaker 2: as Anglicans, they see themselves as part of an English culture,
45:39
Speaker 2: and they see England as a kind of blessed land
45:43
Speaker 2: as opposed to what had gone on in Eastern Europe
45:46
Speaker 2: and elsewhere with respect to anti Semitism. And they were
45:50
Speaker 2: anti Catholic to a great extent like their English counterparts.
45:54
Speaker 2: So that in many respects and the way they define themselves,
45:57
Speaker 2: particularly along the biblical lines, everything is Biblical here, biblical
46:03
Speaker 2: is very much an English characteristic. To give you another
46:06
Speaker 2: example from Bennett, Bennett gets debate that I was talking
46:10
Speaker 2: about before, was over a catechism. Catechisms there are also
46:14
Speaker 2: another very interesting aspect of Jewish educational life. In the
46:18
Speaker 2: eighteenth and nineteenth century, Jews have written catechisms elsewhere. I
46:22
Speaker 2: wrote on the first Jewish catechism of Avremja Gael in
46:26
Speaker 2: the sixteenth century, which was taken directly from the Jesuit Catechism,
46:31
Speaker 2: and he just rewrote it in Hebrew and made it Judaized.
46:35
Speaker 2: But in the nineteenth century, if you remember the article
46:39
Speaker 2: by Petoowski, we have a long list of catechisms. One
46:43
Speaker 2: of them was by a guy named Kohne, which was
46:45
Speaker 2: originally published in German but then immediately was retranslated into
46:49
Speaker 2: English and became standard English catechism that was taught to
46:54
Speaker 2: English Jewish kids. Bennett goes crazy over it because he
47:00
Speaker 2: calls it mussar or ni musiut it's not biblically grounded,
47:06
Speaker 2: and he objects, and he says, how could the chief
47:08
Speaker 2: Rabbi approve of this book when it just sounds like
47:14
Speaker 2: it's it's it's just out there as kind of common morality.
47:19
Speaker 2: That's not what you should be teaching Jews. You should
47:22
Speaker 2: be teaching Jews based on biblical and to some extent
47:26
Speaker 2: rabbinic sources, but mostly it's it's biblical sources. So for him,
47:31
Speaker 2: he's very much of a literalist. That, by the way,
47:34
Speaker 2: is striking because David Levy is also a literalist. In
47:37
Speaker 2: other words, their way of handling Christian isogesis is to say,
47:41
Speaker 2: you're not reading the text properly, you're not reading it literally,
47:44
Speaker 2: you're making up Bubba mice is about it. It's not
47:48
Speaker 2: what it says, what you think it says. You're you're
47:51
Speaker 2: making up all all of these these interpretations which prefigure Jesus,
47:57
Speaker 2: which just don't exist. You have to be literalists. So clearly,
48:02
Speaker 2: in that sense, the Biblicism of Anglo jury is a
48:07
Speaker 2: characteristic of their world. And you know, to a great extent,
48:12
Speaker 2: you know, when I watched from close by Reform synagogues
48:17
Speaker 2: and Conservative synagogues, you know, Judaism is parshatasha vua. We
48:23
Speaker 2: hardly ever get beyond that, you know, we never get
48:28
Speaker 2: when I listened to rabbi speak and they're always talking
48:30
Speaker 2: about the Joseph Story or Moses and so on. They
48:34
Speaker 2: never seem to realize that there are two thousand years
48:37
Speaker 2: to go and there's so many there's so many layers
48:40
Speaker 2: of Judaism which they there are neo carrat in a
48:43
Speaker 2: certain sense. And I think that that mode of being
48:47
Speaker 2: Jewish emerges in England first and as very influential. I mean,
48:53
Speaker 2: the first English Bibles of Levy and someone are republished
48:57
Speaker 2: in America, you know, in colonial America. So there's a
49:01
Speaker 2: little thing at the end of the book where I
49:03
Speaker 2: talk about and I wrote it up as an article
49:06
Speaker 2: for American Jewish History once of how all of these
49:10
Speaker 2: early texts of these thinkers were republished in America and
49:13
Speaker 2: became part of a nineteenth century American Jewish world as well.
49:18
Speaker 2: So I don't know if that answers your question about
49:21
Speaker 2: the distinctiveness, but that's another aspect which is really very interesting. Here.
49:27
Speaker 2: They are Jewish Protestants, and as opposed to when I
49:31
Speaker 2: began in Italy, I would argue that people like Leonimodina
49:35
Speaker 2: and Luzzato, I'm talking about the first Luzzato, our Catholic Jews.
49:43
Speaker 2: In other words, they see a relationship between Catholicism, because
49:49
Speaker 2: the Catholic Church has its own or a law, it
49:52
Speaker 2: has its own tarasha balpa, which is both we are
49:55
Speaker 2: mediated religions, we're not simply biblical religions. The Jewishness that
50:01
Speaker 2: emerges in England is indeed a biblical based religious experience,
50:08
Speaker 2: and in that way it mimics the Protestant world in
50:11
Speaker 2: a very deep sense.
50:14
Speaker 1: Fascinating. Okay, there's one more significant context which I think
50:17
Speaker 1: we have to get to, which I found fascinating. Actually
50:20
Speaker 1: part of the story is the political dimension, because as
50:23
Speaker 1: you mentioned, we've been talking about the intellectual dimensions of
50:25
Speaker 1: the theology and the discussing of the Bible, et cetera.
50:28
Speaker 1: But actually several of these figures that we mentioned, and
50:31
Speaker 1: others as well, were quite involved of the politics, in
50:33
Speaker 1: the politics of their day and in you know, both
50:38
Speaker 1: sort of broader politics but also within the specifically English context.
50:42
Speaker 1: And so I suppose my question would be sort of
50:45
Speaker 1: Jewish let's say, English Hascala thinkers or English and likingment
50:49
Speaker 1: thinkers within within their political political landscape of the time,
50:53
Speaker 1: what were they saying, what were they advocating for, and
50:56
Speaker 1: what they're playing a role within the political life of
51:00
Speaker 1: the nation of the time.
51:01
Speaker 2: Okay, now I don't I don't want to exaggerate this point,
51:03
Speaker 2: because I begin that chapter in the book by saying
51:07
Speaker 2: Tyler Elman, I quote tyd Emlment who says that Jews
51:10
Speaker 2: never just followed the U the king and Queen, and
51:14
Speaker 2: they always wrote prayers on behalf of the king, and
51:17
Speaker 2: they never they never stepped out of place. And that,
51:22
Speaker 2: of course is an exaggeration, but I would agree with
51:26
Speaker 2: him to a certain extent that that most Jews in
51:28
Speaker 2: England were not political dissenters or activists in that sense.
51:33
Speaker 2: But I did found I find another number of examples,
51:36
Speaker 2: and if you define dissent and activism in the broadest
51:39
Speaker 2: of senses, you can sort of go all over the
51:42
Speaker 2: place with this notion. The most conspicuous text, which has
51:46
Speaker 2: a very interesting history. I forgot what it's called already.
51:49
Speaker 2: It's the word minority is in the title. Identified it
51:53
Speaker 2: with Abraham Toungue. It didn't have any signature on it.
51:56
Speaker 2: It was it printed a pamphlet which Small Finer sent me.
52:00
Speaker 2: He was looking in the JTS collection, which has an
52:02
Speaker 2: enormous collection of Anglo Judaica material, and he found this
52:07
Speaker 2: pamphlet which was supporting a English dissident, and it was
52:12
Speaker 2: signed by a primitive Hebrew with Hebrew with E, and
52:16
Speaker 2: all of a sudden I realized that that's the way
52:18
Speaker 2: Abraham Tungue signed his pamphlet. He translated peer k a
52:23
Speaker 2: Vote into English, a kind of deistic reading of perk Vote.
52:28
Speaker 2: It's an incredible text in its own right, but it
52:30
Speaker 2: was signed a primitive Hebrew. And then as I began digging,
52:33
Speaker 2: I saw how many Biblical texts are referred to, and
52:38
Speaker 2: I'm almost one hundred percent confident that this was Abram
52:42
Speaker 2: Tung's work. So this was a political feud between the
52:46
Speaker 2: king and the I don't remember the details already there
52:48
Speaker 2: in the book and the dissident.
52:50
Speaker 1: And.
52:53
Speaker 2: Tongue defends the dissident. Tongue, by the way, wrote all
52:58
Speaker 2: kinds of interesting things, including translating two big chapters of
53:03
Speaker 2: the Chinese Catechism of Voltaire into Hebrew. He has two worlds.
53:08
Speaker 2: He has a world in which he translates into English,
53:11
Speaker 2: and then he has a world that well all of
53:13
Speaker 2: these Hebrew manuscripts which were never published, which are really
53:17
Speaker 2: fascinating because he gets into things that you, I mean
53:20
Speaker 2: talking about the deistic world and the world of scholarship
53:24
Speaker 2: of Greek mythology, for example, or his political interpretation. I
53:30
Speaker 2: actually want to speak to you about this text some more.
53:34
Speaker 2: His father was a traditional Orthodox Jew who had written
53:38
Speaker 2: a commentary, and he and his father lamented the fact
53:42
Speaker 2: that his son didn't spend enough time studying Gemorah, so
53:45
Speaker 2: he wrote a pamphlet in honor of his father, on
53:50
Speaker 2: what's the name of the Rabbi and the hajme Avan
53:54
Speaker 2: in the Toalmwood. I forgot the rabbi we're talking about,
53:59
Speaker 2: But essentially it's a delegation of Jews who go to
54:03
Speaker 2: is it the Roman Emperor and there they have a
54:06
Speaker 2: dialogue with him. And he interprets this as a political
54:10
Speaker 2: spy action, and he interprets the whole thing as a
54:13
Speaker 2: political plot, and and he writes it in Hebrew about
54:19
Speaker 2: the the hajme Atuna. If I'm not mistaken, I'm going
54:22
Speaker 2: to go back. I would have had that prepared if
54:25
Speaker 2: I thought I was going to talk about it. But
54:27
Speaker 2: in any case, Uh, there's one example. Now, how do
54:31
Speaker 2: you interpret dissent brought more broadly than that? Well, first
54:34
Speaker 2: of all, you have two really interesting characters in the
54:37
Speaker 2: in the eighteenth century. One of is a guy, the
54:41
Speaker 2: Jew Gordon, who is arrested and will only eat kosher
54:44
Speaker 2: food in the prison. And it hangs around all these
54:48
Speaker 2: kind of strange characters Christian and Jews, and it's unclear what.
54:53
Speaker 2: But he converts to Judaism in prison and ab and
54:57
Speaker 2: we have cartoons of him with sits this and with
55:01
Speaker 2: beard and everything else and so on. But he was
55:03
Speaker 2: a dissenter and and uh and and very weird and
55:07
Speaker 2: very strange. But the whole part shot of Gordon is
55:11
Speaker 2: is one story. The other story, which is absolutely fascinating,
55:15
Speaker 2: is the story of the Balsham of London. A Jew
55:19
Speaker 2: comes from Eastern Europe again and sets up his occult
55:23
Speaker 2: laboratory on one of the bridges on the Thames. Uh.
55:28
Speaker 2: And there meets all kinds of people, all kinds of
55:31
Speaker 2: radicals coming from Eastern Europe, all kinds of of of
55:35
Speaker 2: mystical types, uh Swede, of Borgians and Freemasons, and and
55:41
Speaker 2: all kinds of others. Uh. There is a scholar named
55:44
Speaker 2: Marsha Schutgert who was a bit over the top, but
55:46
Speaker 2: she has tried to re to tell this story as
55:51
Speaker 2: an elaborate scheme of of of underground currents between Jews
55:55
Speaker 2: and Christians and so on. Who this guy is, what
55:58
Speaker 2: he is? Mihalo a number of years ago published two
56:02
Speaker 2: of his texts. One is his his sort of commonplace book,
56:06
Speaker 2: and another he writes about his servant and so on,
56:10
Speaker 2: And the writing is not as exciting as the image
56:13
Speaker 2: of this guy. But what to make of him and
56:16
Speaker 2: how to explain him in the context of Anglo jewelry
56:20
Speaker 2: and so on. He never converts, He's always a Jew.
56:23
Speaker 2: And if you look, you know, for pictures of the Balshem,
56:28
Speaker 2: the real Balshem, you'll come up with a picture of
56:30
Speaker 2: this guy because he looks like a bal Shem. You know,
56:35
Speaker 2: he could get away being looking like the best if
56:38
Speaker 2: you knew what the best look like. But those pictures
56:41
Speaker 2: are all of the Balsham of London, who is a
56:42
Speaker 2: different He's a Balsam in the sense that he's he's
56:46
Speaker 2: doing magic and all kinds of other things. So that's
56:48
Speaker 2: another dimension of this. The other part I already mentioned
56:51
Speaker 2: was Freemasonry and the Jews. Freemasonry has a radical side,
56:55
Speaker 2: it also has a more moderate side. But Jews were
56:58
Speaker 2: in Freemasonry. Remember I gave many years ago the Cecil
57:02
Speaker 2: Roth lecture in London, and all his remaining family showed up.
57:07
Speaker 2: It was really quite amazing and it was just filled
57:10
Speaker 2: because they all still love Cecil Roth is one of
57:12
Speaker 2: the great historians of England. And I was talking about
57:15
Speaker 2: freemasonry and I said, who is the freemason here? And
57:19
Speaker 2: half the audience stood up. So it's still a tradition
57:22
Speaker 2: that goes on in England. What does that mean? And
57:26
Speaker 2: to what degree is that part of the radical politics
57:29
Speaker 2: or not? You need not be a radical to be
57:31
Speaker 2: a Freemason, but it's certainly part of the story. But
57:33
Speaker 2: the last part of that chapter deals with David Levy's
57:38
Speaker 2: critiques open outspokenness. And you know I mentioned it before,
57:44
Speaker 2: but I just want to quote to you if I
57:47
Speaker 2: can find it really fast.
57:48
Speaker 1: Here he and some.
57:51
Speaker 2: Bailey, who appears throughout the book as one of these
57:55
Speaker 2: Christian ebrass who is very sympathetic to Jews, who knows
57:59
Speaker 2: Hebrew Bibe, who is part of this revival of biblical
58:04
Speaker 2: studies among Christians, who says, you know, I've always helped
58:07
Speaker 2: you Jews, I've always been kind to you. Why do
58:10
Speaker 2: you speak this way to Joseph Priestley, the Unitarian who
58:15
Speaker 2: Levy attacks. And while on some Bailey is a good
58:19
Speaker 2: Anglican and not a Unitarian, nevertheless he's offended by the
58:25
Speaker 2: way Levy addresses. So I end this chapter by saying,
58:28
Speaker 2: this is the most outspoken dissonance. And here is on
58:33
Speaker 2: some Bailey speaking doctor Priestley, pitting your sufferings, was in
58:38
Speaker 2: some sort for healing your grievances. In his way, presented
58:41
Speaker 2: you bomb wine and oil, which he would pour into
58:45
Speaker 2: your wounds and bind them up. You, with rudeness tear
58:49
Speaker 2: off the bandages and cast them in his face. And
58:52
Speaker 2: is to be expected that while you throw darts and firebrands,
58:56
Speaker 2: we should stand quietly by and laugh at the sport.
58:59
Speaker 2: And then later he says, behave as good Jews till
59:03
Speaker 2: it please God to call you to be Christians. And
59:06
Speaker 2: in the meantime, I will protect you in the utmost
59:08
Speaker 2: of my power. And if I had the authority I
59:12
Speaker 2: once had, I would protect your unhappy nation in the
59:16
Speaker 2: peaceful and quiet practice of your religion. In other words,
59:20
Speaker 2: we will tolerate you as long as you shut your
59:22
Speaker 2: damn mouths and don't be outspoken. That characteristic I mean,
59:27
Speaker 2: that's really quite amazing to see the just position and
59:30
Speaker 2: to see a Christian friend quote unquote of the Jewish
59:34
Speaker 2: people criticizing Levy for attacking Christians. But that kind of
59:40
Speaker 2: Anglo Jewish kutzba, I guess is another characteristic of this
59:45
Speaker 2: world that we have been describing. And that's really the
59:49
Speaker 2: fun part. I mean, the presses. You think our press
59:52
Speaker 2: is bad here, you know, fake news and all of that,
59:56
Speaker 2: you have to go to London and start picking up
59:58
Speaker 2: all the stuff that is selling in this three you know,
1:00:00
Speaker 2: and that tradition began centuries earlier. Anyway, That's that's an answer.
1:00:08
Speaker 1: So that's all fascinating. One sort of major question. Final
1:00:12
Speaker 1: major question I think I want to ask is actually
1:00:15
Speaker 1: occurred to me as I was listening to you, which
1:00:17
Speaker 1: is that would you say there is a distinctive English
1:00:21
Speaker 1: form of counter Jewish Enlightenment, because of course, as the Haskala,
1:00:25
Speaker 1: you know, grows and develops with in Central Europe and
1:00:28
Speaker 1: then later in Eastern Europe, you do get pushed back
1:00:31
Speaker 1: from the Orthodox figures and from from sort of conservative
1:00:34
Speaker 1: figures within within the Jewish world, and you know that
1:00:37
Speaker 1: takes a very specific tone, of very specific format in
1:00:40
Speaker 1: the whole the seventeen eighty two Drish lumbera Med controversy,
1:00:43
Speaker 1: and other controversies later on within Eastern Europe. And so
1:00:47
Speaker 1: as this sort of I would say, as you mentioned,
1:00:49
Speaker 1: like loose and heterogeneous English Enlightenment is occurring in the
1:00:54
Speaker 1: eighteenth century, is there also a distinctive pushback from from
1:00:59
Speaker 1: the conservative side or traditionalist side, which also can be
1:01:05
Speaker 1: identified as English or identified as applying to this very
1:01:08
Speaker 1: specific kind of Jewish enlightenment? That does that question make sense?
1:01:12
Speaker 2: Though?
1:01:13
Speaker 1: Is there an equal opposite reaction which can be the same.
1:01:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Well I would assume there is.
1:01:20
Speaker 2: In other words, this this episode doesn't last. In other words,
1:01:25
Speaker 2: you know, by I mean, you could tell me better
1:01:29
Speaker 2: since you studied the end of the nineteent century and
1:01:31
Speaker 2: I studied the beginning of the nineteenth century. Where this goes,
1:01:34
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously it all changes very much with the
1:01:37
Speaker 2: immigration of Eastern European Jews at the end of the
1:01:39
Speaker 2: nineteenth century and how that transforms England as it transforms America.
1:01:45
Speaker 2: So that's clearly a dividing line. But we could go
1:01:48
Speaker 2: back earlier and see a kind of of reaction. I mean,
1:01:51
Speaker 2: you know, part of that is already emerging within the
1:01:53
Speaker 2: Chief Rabbinet, and you know, and the circles that control
1:01:57
Speaker 2: the you know, the the the English, the English Jewish community,
1:02:01
Speaker 2: these are not really open or the controversy over reform
1:02:06
Speaker 2: Judaism in eighteen forty and you know, those reform Jews,
1:02:11
Speaker 2: you say, in some respects, you could say, are continuing
1:02:14
Speaker 2: this openness and this relationship with English society in their
1:02:18
Speaker 2: own way. And of course the debates that emerge. And
1:02:22
Speaker 2: I think also part of this is in terms of
1:02:25
Speaker 2: the missionary fervor and the Jewish defense. It's the anti defamation.
1:02:32
Speaker 2: I was gonna say Antidivessian League. But the response on
1:02:35
Speaker 2: the part of Anglo Jewelry is very conservative. So there
1:02:39
Speaker 2: is a pushback both the fear of Jews who are
1:02:42
Speaker 2: becoming too enlightened on the one hand, and those Christians
1:02:45
Speaker 2: who are are are grabbing the vulnerable, poor Jews and
1:02:51
Speaker 2: making them Christians and setting up missionary stands all over
1:02:55
Speaker 2: the place and so on. So, yeah, this doesn't last.
1:02:58
Speaker 2: It doesn't. It doesn't, And that's why it kind of
1:03:01
Speaker 2: disappeared and why I had to rediscover it, because it's
1:03:04
Speaker 2: not significant enough to these are still individuals. But of
1:03:09
Speaker 2: course you can also say the same thing about the
1:03:11
Speaker 2: German huscal law. It goes through, you know, the Madisonian period,
1:03:15
Speaker 2: and then there's a radical period in German, and then
1:03:19
Speaker 2: of course Eastern European huscala is related, but it's very
1:03:24
Speaker 2: different in all kinds of respects and reflects a different world.
1:03:28
Speaker 2: So each of each of these periods, you know, has
1:03:33
Speaker 2: a certain finality, or at least a serious decline. So
1:03:37
Speaker 2: I can't identify people like Abraham Tungue later on, and
1:03:42
Speaker 2: we could talk about, you know, what a Jewish intellectual
1:03:45
Speaker 2: looks like at the end of the nineteenth early twentieth
1:03:47
Speaker 2: century listening to you, But I would think they're very
1:03:51
Speaker 2: different in all respects, and sometimes they're not even Jewish anymore.
1:03:57
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the other thing that all most of
1:04:00
Speaker 2: most of the thinkers that I talk about, Bennett, for example,
1:04:05
Speaker 2: their families are are some of them that they remain
1:04:09
Speaker 2: Jewish for a while, but many of them are assimilated
1:04:12
Speaker 2: and convert. As opposed to Bennett, who understood who, As
1:04:17
Speaker 2: I argue, his Judaism was strengthened by his interaction with Christians.
1:04:22
Speaker 2: The more he could become a spokesman for Judaism within
1:04:25
Speaker 2: the Christian world, the more pride he felt in being Jewish.
1:04:29
Speaker 2: I don't think that formula worked beyond his generation to
1:04:34
Speaker 2: that extent. But I'm not such an expert on the
1:04:38
Speaker 2: on the late nineteenth century as you are, so you
1:04:40
Speaker 2: could answer your own question better. I think, to throw
1:04:43
Speaker 2: it back at you, and you know, how does the
1:04:47
Speaker 2: great spokesman of Judaism end up a Christian? You know,
1:04:52
Speaker 2: and the great scholar of Judaism in the ninety cents
1:04:54
Speaker 2: you become a Christian? Is really you know, one of
1:04:56
Speaker 2: the questions that I want to post to you, if
1:04:58
Speaker 2: not now in the future at another time. Yes, yes, yes, yes,
1:05:05
Speaker 2: So anyway, that's a good question, but I don't think
1:05:08
Speaker 2: I have an adequate answer for it.
1:05:10
Speaker 1: Fair enough, Okay, Unfortunately our time is drawing to a
1:05:13
Speaker 1: close up. But I would like to poset one final question,
1:05:16
Speaker 1: which is something I asked many of my guests, which is,
1:05:19
Speaker 1: as far as we've spoken today about a bunch of
1:05:21
Speaker 1: fascinating Anglo Anglo Jewish scholars, if you had to sit
1:05:26
Speaker 1: with one of them this evening for dinner. Firstly, which
1:05:29
Speaker 1: of your scholars would be? Would Bennetts would it be
1:05:31
Speaker 1: one of the others Snabe Lens and the David Levy
1:05:34
Speaker 1: or whoever? And what would you be what would you
1:05:36
Speaker 1: be asking them? What would you want to know from
1:05:39
Speaker 1: these scholars? What could they what could they tell you?
1:05:43
Speaker 2: Actually, at the in the after thought of this for
1:05:48
Speaker 2: the making of Anglo Jewish history, I actually start out
1:05:52
Speaker 2: by saying, you know, if I were to have dinner
1:05:54
Speaker 2: with this guy Bennett, it wouldn't be that fun because
1:05:56
Speaker 2: he wasn't a very nice man. He is always tentious, uh,
1:06:01
Speaker 2: and he was always arguing with everybody, and he even
1:06:03
Speaker 2: argued with his fellow Jews. And he wasn't a pleasant person.
1:06:07
Speaker 2: But then I go on say, but despite that, I
1:06:09
Speaker 2: would I would have liked this. I studied him for
1:06:12
Speaker 2: this reason and so on. Who of my favorites I
1:06:16
Speaker 2: think I Levy is an amazing guy. I don't know
1:06:20
Speaker 2: if I would have anything in common talk with him.
1:06:22
Speaker 2: He was very Orthodox, and he was very he was
1:06:24
Speaker 2: very you know, very literalist, as I said, and and uh,
1:06:29
Speaker 2: but clearly a very brave, outspoken person. I I admire
1:06:34
Speaker 2: him tremendously. Avram Tan is still a mysterious character. I
1:06:38
Speaker 2: have no idea what it would be like to have
1:06:40
Speaker 2: coffee with him or to English tea, I guess, but
1:06:45
Speaker 2: absolutely fascinating from his writings and and the kinds of
1:06:48
Speaker 2: things that he's writing about. But it's kind of like
1:06:50
Speaker 2: a secret world because uh, you know, it's it's not
1:06:54
Speaker 2: it's not available, and his English writings don't really betray
1:06:58
Speaker 2: who he is until you get into his But even
1:07:00
Speaker 2: there there are limits. If I were to have lunch
1:07:04
Speaker 2: with anybody, it would be one of the characters in
1:07:07
Speaker 2: my earlier books. Avram Na Gael, who I fully identified with.
1:07:13
Speaker 2: This is a sixteenth century Jew from Italy who wrote
1:07:19
Speaker 2: all kinds of interesting works in manuscript and published a
1:07:24
Speaker 2: kind of Dantean Bocaccian book, a novella of of of
1:07:30
Speaker 2: stories which in Hebrew which lead us to a cabalistic palace,
1:07:36
Speaker 2: and and and this was the one that wrote the
1:07:39
Speaker 2: catechism that I told you about. But I you know,
1:07:42
Speaker 2: I love them all. Let me let me make a
1:07:44
Speaker 2: more general point now, and I'll stop at the end
1:07:47
Speaker 2: of this book. Also, since it probably is my it
1:07:50
Speaker 2: was my tenth and probably my last monograph. I don't
1:07:53
Speaker 2: know if I'll write anymore, Uh, but uh, I talk
1:07:56
Speaker 2: about my relationship with all of these people and why
1:07:59
Speaker 2: I love these that do so much. And I speak
1:08:02
Speaker 2: about the role of the historian being a may team
1:08:06
Speaker 2: uh and that they become my friends. I mean, they
1:08:09
Speaker 2: really actually become my friends. I don't know how you
1:08:11
Speaker 2: feel towards Ginsburg and whether you would want to have
1:08:14
Speaker 2: dinner with him, But to me, anyone that could study
1:08:18
Speaker 2: spend all of his life referencing Uhak and Kyl and
1:08:25
Speaker 2: it sounds so awfully boring to me. But but I
1:08:28
Speaker 2: don't know. He has a more interesting side too. But
1:08:31
Speaker 2: you know, that kind of scholarship is just I don't
1:08:35
Speaker 2: know what to do with it. But but all of
1:08:38
Speaker 2: these people, I don't know. You're still beginning your career
1:08:42
Speaker 2: and I'm ending my career. But there is a there
1:08:46
Speaker 2: is Writing biographies is creating a relationship with with someone
1:08:50
Speaker 2: who is dead and trying to get into his shoes
1:08:53
Speaker 2: and trying to experience his life to the extent you can.
1:08:56
Speaker 2: Of course you can't, it's impossible to really replicate that reality.
1:09:01
Speaker 2: But nevertheless, even in touching him in all kinds of
1:09:03
Speaker 2: personal ways, it's a very human experience. It's not just
1:09:06
Speaker 2: doing history. There's something which transforms you as a person.
1:09:10
Speaker 2: So I would answer your question by saying that, in
1:09:12
Speaker 2: all respects, even Nasty Bennett, it would have been an
1:09:16
Speaker 2: extordinary experience of meeting them. I think I've met them
1:09:19
Speaker 2: in many respects, and maybe that's why I like them
1:09:22
Speaker 2: so much, because they can't talk back to me. But
1:09:25
Speaker 2: I don't know. But in any case, the personal relationship
1:09:30
Speaker 2: that one develops as a biographer is a vital part
1:09:34
Speaker 2: of what I've done for the last fifty years.
1:09:38
Speaker 1: Yes, first, I can I just say what you just said. Now,
1:09:42
Speaker 1: I fully identify having worked on Gidsbuck for my PhD,
1:09:46
Speaker 1: and I writing a book on him. I do feel
1:09:48
Speaker 1: him and other figures i've worked on Shadal. Yes, absolutely,
1:09:51
Speaker 1: the closeness, the sort of strange intimacy one gets. And yes,
1:09:55
Speaker 1: in a way, I can perfectly picture a dinner with him,
1:09:57
Speaker 1: because I could. I think I could quite accurately predict
1:10:01
Speaker 1: the sorts of things they would say, those of the
1:10:03
Speaker 1: conversations they would have, and opinions they would propose. And
1:10:05
Speaker 1: and it's it is that case. And even the less
1:10:09
Speaker 1: shall we say, savory characters who we work with, Yeah,
1:10:13
Speaker 1: it would be. It would be wonderful and in a
1:10:15
Speaker 1: way one could just do it in one's uh, in
1:10:18
Speaker 1: one's minds. I you know, I don't to press you
1:10:21
Speaker 1: too much on this point, but let's say you could.
1:10:23
Speaker 1: Let's say with with Solomon Bennett, he worked on what
1:10:26
Speaker 1: would you ask him back? What is the question that
1:10:28
Speaker 1: you weren't able to get two in your in your
1:10:32
Speaker 1: writing with him, that you need to ask the man himself,
1:10:35
Speaker 1: like I have a few of those, lid are these
1:10:36
Speaker 1: figures that just I answers I never got?
1:10:40
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, in the case of Bennett, I mean he
1:10:43
Speaker 2: has a lot of flaws of character, the fact that
1:10:45
Speaker 2: he left his wife, the fact that he attacked certain
1:10:49
Speaker 2: people that were inappropriate. He had this episode with him
1:10:52
Speaker 2: and Horror of Itz, who was the first professor of
1:10:55
Speaker 2: at UCL. You know, uh, first you wish professor at
1:11:00
Speaker 2: this was a chair that was given in honor, and
1:11:02
Speaker 2: he resented Hyman Horriz and attacked him publicly. I would
1:11:06
Speaker 2: ask him first of all about his personal life, because
1:11:10
Speaker 2: I think, you know that those flaws really are disturbing.
1:11:13
Speaker 2: But I would also ask him about this shift in
1:11:15
Speaker 2: the words, I was really writing against my my, my
1:11:21
Speaker 2: dear friend Schmoefeiner, who loves to categorize this is a musculo.
1:11:26
Speaker 2: This is a moderate musculo, this is a radical muscular
1:11:29
Speaker 2: I'm saying, in the case of Bennett, you can't. It's
1:11:33
Speaker 2: history is too messy. You can't do that. You can't,
1:11:36
Speaker 2: you can't label him as this and that. When I
1:11:38
Speaker 2: wrote this book on on on Pitress, Horowitz say, for Rabrit,
1:11:44
Speaker 2: he says, he is this is an Orthodox Jew? And
1:11:46
Speaker 2: I said, orthodox Jew who writes about the fact that
1:11:49
Speaker 2: we have to love all non Jews and that's the goal,
1:11:51
Speaker 2: that's the highest goal of attaining the Roja Kodesh. I said,
1:11:56
Speaker 2: that's that's Orthodoxy exactly. There's something again too mess See
1:12:00
Speaker 2: in the case of Bennett, how did he fall into
1:12:03
Speaker 2: this trap of hating, of attacking science and Newtonianism at
1:12:06
Speaker 2: the end of his life, after being so radical in
1:12:08
Speaker 2: so many other respects towards How do we explain this contradiction?
1:12:12
Speaker 2: I can't. He's both, He's uh. Someone called him an
1:12:17
Speaker 2: enlightened literalist. So what do we mean by mosquille here?
1:12:21
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, you could argue maybe that Ginsburg
1:12:24
Speaker 2: is an enlightened literalist, right everyone, But is that a
1:12:27
Speaker 2: mosquille or is that something else? So I guess I
1:12:32
Speaker 2: would try to figure out his contradictions by asking him,
1:12:36
Speaker 2: but I don't think he'd be honest anyway.
1:12:39
Speaker 1: Yes, that's actly something I didn't even if you had
1:12:43
Speaker 1: them sitting down for dinner, it's entirely possibility.
1:12:47
Speaker 2: Right right, right, right, right right, Okay.
1:12:50
Speaker 1: Professor David Rudiman, thank you so very much for joining
1:12:53
Speaker 1: yesterday on the Podcast of Jewish Ideas. This has been
1:12:55
Speaker 1: a pleasure talking about this period and these fascinating figures
1:12:58
Speaker 1: with you. And and yes, thank you for enlightening us
1:13:02
Speaker 1: with all these works. And yes, we hope to see
1:13:05
Speaker 1: further work in the subject from you in the future.
1:13:08
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us.
1:13:09
Speaker 2: You're welcome.
1:13:11
Speaker 1: This has been the Podcast of Jewish Ideas by Tora
1:13:14
Speaker 1: in Motion, produced by Alisha Kellman and myself Jjkimbri, edited
1:13:18
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