Thulin, Mirjam; (2016) Wissenschaft and correspondence: Solomon Schechter between Europe and America*. Jewish Historical Studies , 48 pp. 109-137. 10.14324/111.444.jhs.2016v48.028.

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Abstract

In 1905, the managing editor of the Jewish Encyclopedia, Isidore Singer (1859–1939) published an article in the journal Ost und West from a “bird’s eye perspective on the development of American Jewry in the last 250 years.” In this historical overview, Singer eventually attested that Jewish scholarship in America had an “absolute dependency on the European motherland.” This judgment was based on his disapproving view of the two American rabbinical seminaries that existed at that time. According to Singer, there were still no scholars at the Hebrew Union College (HUC) in Cincinnati of an “already American[-born] generation of Israel.” In fact, Singer’s observation was appropriate because it applied to the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTSA) in New York as much as to the HUC. Despite the long history of Jewish settlement in America, around 1900 there was still no native Jewish scholarship in America. The scene was dominated by scholars educated in Europe, who often came with broken English and a strict academic sense of mission. In 1903, Kaufmann Kohler (1843–1926), born in Bavaria and trained at German universities, was chosen as the president of HUC. And a year earlier, Solomon Schechter (1847–1915) had been called to the JTSA in New York as its new president. Nevertheless, when Schechter came to the United States in 1902, he was an interesting choice by the JTSA search committee. He had never run a seminary or any other educational institution, but he was apparently qualified for this position because he had studied and worked at different institutions in Eastern and Central Europe as well as at first-rate English universities. Moreover, he had a good command of English. Schechter had experience as a teacher, tutor, and lecturer. His attitude towards Judaism and Jewish law was not driven by a rigid reform impetus, nor did he condemn religious reform per se. He was highly regarded as an erudite textual scholar: his Aboth de-Rabbi Nathan (1887) is still considered the first critical edition of a rabbinic text. Finally, Schechter had been itinerant throughout his life. He did not fear the hardships of travel, and although he was already in his mid-fifties, he was willing to relocate to New York. In American Jewish history, Schechter to this day stands for two major legacies: the active and systematic establishment of modern Jewish scholarship in America, and the creation of Conservative Judaism. Research in recent years has shown that Schechter was indeed a preeminent religious figure for what would become Conservative Judaism. However, it has also shown that Conservative Judaism was more a product of his disciples and following generations of the JTSA. In contrast, Schechter’s significance for Jewish scholarship in America is undisputed, particularly when the metrics of Jewish scholarship comes into play. Since Jewish studies had as yet found no place in the universities in Europe and North America, the personal and professional connections between the scholars formed, in a sense, the real institution of Jewish scholarship. Exchange among scholars required constant communication, a lively correspondence, and permanent mobility. Numerous Jewish scholars accepted these requirements and joined the exchange. Networks of correspondence and travel embodied the academic organization and coordination of modern Jewish scholarship, mostly in the shape of the dominant German-speaking Wissenschaft des Judentums (the term has long and imperfectly been translated as “Science of Judaism”. However, it refers to a unique German academic context and cannot be adequately translated; therefore I leave the original). Rabbinical seminaries, academic journals, and learned societies, and also the personal networks of distinguished scholars like Schechter, formed the interfaces of these networks. Ultimately, his active participation in, and shaping of, Jewish intellectual networks – hence the title of my essay, “Wissenschaft and correspondence” – served to make Schechter one of the towering figures of Conservative Judaism and Jewish scholarship in America. In addition to his published writings, Schechter’s letters in the estates and personal collections of archives and libraries are the main sources for the reconstruction of his life and legacy. Consequently, in this essay I shall take a closer look at Schechter’s correspondence with European scholars of Wissenschaft des Judentums. Besides the relatively few editions of letters, Schechter and his contemporaries’ unedited correspondence form the basis for this article. Since the list of Schechter’s correspondents is long, I shall focus on his age cohort, with whom he was in close contact. Moreover, his previously unknown letters to David Kaufmann (1852–1899), purchased in 2013 by the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP) in Jerusalem, are reason to concentrate on Jewish scholars from Budapest, including Wilhelm Bacher (1850–1913) and the orientalist Ignác Goldziher (1850–1921), as well as scholars from Breslau, Warsaw, and Berlin, such as the historian and teacher Markus Brann (1849–1920), Samuel Poznański (1864–1921), and Abraham Berliner (1833–1915).My essay is divided into three parts. After introducing the existing biographies on Solomon Schechter, I offer a brief overview of his life and encounters in order to identify and retrace his correspondents in his American years between 1902 and 1915, and, in the case of Kaufmann, earlier. In the second part, I analyse his correspondence over that period with the third generation of Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars from Budapest, Breslau, and Berlin. What were the main topics of their exchange? In what languages did Schechter communicate? How did Schechter manage his vast correspondence? What do his personal and institutional connections reveal about his role in that Wissenschaft? In the final part, I focus on Schechter’s reforms at the seminary in New York and his network-building in the new environment. I conclude by reconsidering Schechter’s legacy in the light of his correspondence and based on his understanding of modern Jewish scholarship.

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