Leopold Zunz - Ismar Schorsch Jewish Culture and Contexts

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cold and I cannot hold out much longer. My small sum of money is running out and no rich Jew gives a damn [unterstützt] about scholarship. I had never imagined that a man who had learned a bit would have such a hard time finding [next word illegible] respect. What’s more, I don’t need much. Please don’t breathe a word of this to anyone. Would my presence in Altona be advantageous to me?”16

      Zunz’s dire straits compelled him to leave no stone unturned and in the fall of 1833 he allowed his name to be submitted for a rabbinic post in Darmstadt. Among the laudatory letters of recommendation was one by Gans, whose conversion had garnered him the academic trophy that eluded Zunz: “There is no one in Europe who with comparable knowledge has penetrated so deeply into [Jewish and rabbinic literature]. If the views regarding the appointment of Jews were not so superficial and mean-spirited, as they generally are, Dr. Zunz would long ago have found recompense for his selfless efforts in a university career. Alongside this scholarly equipment, Dr. Zunz commands a great gift for eloquence, which he amply displayed in his post as preacher here [in Berlin] and which is confirmed by his printed collection of sermons.”17 The tribute attests a friendship still intact as well as an act of courage to speak the unvarnished truth. To allay the traditionalists in Darmstadt, Zunz even secured a certificate of rabbinic ordination from the aged Aron Chorin in Arad, the inveterate Hungarian sage of the first generation of reformers in central Europe.18

      But all to no avail. The growing resistance of the traditionalists in both Darmstadt and Berlin persuaded Zunz to quash his candidacy. On June 15, 1834, he wrote Joseph Johlson, the Frankfurt am Main educator, who had been the first to encourage him to apply: “I have withdrawn, lost all desire for Jewish employment. Hopefully here [in Berlin] I will find enough to live on (in Hebrew); whatever time is left over will be devoted to scholarship. I would love to take a research trip to Paris and Oxford, but what Jewish capitalist would give money for that! Were I a horse or a singer or an unscrupulous clown [Heuchler] …” (continuation omitted by Maybaum).19

      Zunz’s timely withdrawal averted a painful mishap. That was not the case with the new Reform Association in Prague, which in January 1835 began courting him to become its first Prediger. Deteriorating conditions induced him to elicit a three-year offer following a successful site visit in May that met all his demands. The Zunzes left Berlin on September 10 bitter that no counter offer had been forthcoming from some local quarter, though gratified by the sixty-three people who had come to say good-by.20 In Prague Zunz was greeted by the heavy hand of the Hapsburg censor, whom he had to assure that the three cartons of books he was bringing were his property and to agree that the Hebrew works stipulated on a short list would never be sold, lent, or even leave his hands.21 Though still one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe with some ten thousand Jews,22 Prague quickly disaffected Zunz. By October 25 he wrote Steinheim that he was suffering from a want of science, people, books, newspapers, and freedom and sought to leave.23 And on November 6, he turned to a bureaucrat in Berlin whom he had befriended with a request to facilitate his return: “I have been here 50 days and it feels like 50 years. Everything seems to me old, decrepit and indifferent. Only my friends and relationships in Berlin, my lively independence, even though darkened at times by trouble … [what follows omitted by Maybaum]. Even when I preach, it is humanity that excites me, not Prague. Recalling your words to me when I left that if I ever needed help, I now come to you. For the moment, let’s keep it a secret. My intention is to return, for which I need permission (from the government) and sustenance…. I seek a post or provisional appointment of 4[00] to 600 taler, that would allow me some free time.”24

      Ehrenberg did not take kindly to Zunz’s abrupt change of plans and on December 12, 1835, countered by letter with a dose of common sense. First impressions should not be given undue weight. Soon enough you will be in the parsonage promised with your own kitchen, making new friends. Time for research and the books needed to do it will also eventually materialize. Above all, Ehrenberg reminded Zunz that he had gained economic security and urged him to fulfill his three-year contract: “You must erase Berlin from your thoughts like a departed friend, otherwise life will bring you no joy.” There is no work for you on the horizon in Berlin.25

      Zunz did not rush to answer and by the time he did on May 1, 1836, his spirits had rebounded. Adelheid would be back in Berlin by June (where serendipitously the first to greet her would be Gans)26 with Leopold to follow in August. His successor, Zunz reported, would be Michael Sachs, who would occupy the post until 1844, before coming to Berlin as its associate rabbi and preacher. The heart of the letter, though, gave vent to his disenchantment with the caliber of Jewish lay leadership: “As for me, I am cured of all rabbinic work, etc. While I would be pleased to see men of noble disposition and solid education at the head of Jewish religious life, the [current] Jewish aristocracy [kezinim—the high and mighty] is a crude rabble bereft of ideas and power. Indeed, I have put these moneybags [Geldseelen] entirely out of mind, and recognize only those who combine scholarship and religion as the aristocracy from which holiness can emanate. Neither Maimonides nor Mendelssohn were kezinim.”27

      Again Ehrenberg counseled moderation. In Zunz’s heated critique of the high and mighty, he sensed a disturbing undertone of misanthropy. They alone are not entirely to blame for the sorry state of affairs. The rabbis who need to work with them share some responsibility: “Just as I cannot tolerate rabbis who unduly curry favor with them [the kezinim] or bow and grovel before them, suffering gladly whatever they might do, I cannot tolerate rabbis who do not respect them and, so to speak, throw out the baby with the bath water. They [the kezinim] are a necessary evil on earth that we must suffer and endure, as God does. Only those who bear evil patiently can find therein a measure of comfort.”28

      The Prague trauma reconciled Zunz to Berlin, where he would live ever after. Realizing his error, Zunz chose to return without a job in hand or the prospect of one, to the astonishment of his friends, but not before taking a cure at the spa in Franzenbad on the way back to calm his frayed nerves, a pleasant expense in which he otherwise never indulged.29 This time, however, small assignments began to come his way from men of means who sensed the added value that Zunz brought to Berlin. Even before he arrived back, David Jacob Riess, a wealthy jewelry merchant, a former member of the short-lived Verein, and an elder of the Gemeinde board, contracted him in July 1836 to visit him weekly for 300 talers a year.30 The following month the board of the community commissioned Zunz to compose a brief rebutting the Prussian decree of 1828 forbidding Jews to take Christian forenames. In just over two months, Zunz submitted a masterpiece of erudition showing the historical travesty of the government’s action. Under the title Namen der Juden, it appeared in December 1836 and earned Zunz an honorarium of 100 talers. By March 1841 the government softened its original ordinance by restricting it to forenames intimately associated with the Christian faith (on the tract itself, more anon).31

      Most auspicious for Zunz was the election of Moritz Veit in 1839 as head of the governing body of the organized Jewish community.32 A publisher by profession and admirer and close friend of Sachs, Veit understood and appreciated Zunz fully. While Zunz’s masterpiece on midrash (to which we shall return) had inspired him to undertake the study of the underlying rabbinic texts with a learned tutor, Veit had prevailed on Zunz and a cohort of three others in 1836 to do a new translation of the Hebrew Bible into German. With Zunz as editor, Sachs and Heymann Arnheim did the lion’s share of the translating. From the outset, Veit was fully engaged to ensure that the final product would be popular as well as critical. In 1838 his company published it in a single compact volume.33

      Like Zunz, Veit was dismayed at the derelict condition of Jewish education in Berlin and quickly conceptualized a bold and comprehensive reorganization at the pinnacle of which would sit a modern teachers’ seminary with a national mission. Zunz’s name as director came to mind immediately with the subject being broached as early as July 1837.34 Nevertheless, several years elapsed before the city school board approved his appointment and permitted the dismantling of the outdated but long-standing yeshiva (jüdisches Seminar—Talmud Tora zu Berlin), which dispensed primarily instruction in Talmud to poor adolescents from Posen.35 During that interminable delay, Zunz had occasion to unburden himself to his former professor

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