Project Details
Projekt
Emancipatio Rabbinica: The Role of Rabbinic Literature in Debates Surrounding the Status of the Jews in the Modern Period (1600–1900) in the Italian, German, and Eastern European Contexts
Applicant
Professor Zeev Strauss, Ph.D.
Subject Area
Religious Studies and Jewish Studies
Term
since 2023
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 518233389
References to ancient rabbinic literature, and primarily the Talmud, permeate the vast body of Jewish and Christian texts debating the place of Jews in Europe between 1600 and 1900. Whether a person was for the cause of Jewish civil and social advancement or against it, the Talmud was the source they used to articulate their position. Thus, ascertaining the overall bearing of the Talmud and rabbinic literature on Christian majority civil society became a vital part of the prevailing discussions of the time. A number of these works address the Talmud explicitly, either seeing it as a source of ethical and cultural strength for the Jewish people or, at worst, as the cause of the woes that bedevil them. Yet a large-scale study of the unique role of traditional rabbinic sources in these debates has never been undertaken, in spite of the topic’s far-reaching transcultural and cross-geographical implications. Emancipatio Rabbinica seeks to map and explore a large corpus of texts that emerged from the Italian, German, and Eastern European cultural domains, from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the end of the nineteenth century. It will search for answers to thorny questions about the character of the religious discourse of the time; the framework of Jewish-Christian relations; perceptions of Jews and Judaism; and strategies for attacking the Talmud as a proxy for Judaism, as well as for defending it. In the process, the research project will uncover a theologico-political narrative that is deeply embedded in the emancipatory history of European Jewry and in contemporary understandings of Europe itself. With its corpus-based approach, the Emancipatio Rabbinica project seeks to fulfill three objectives: to re-conceptualize the struggles for and against the Jews’ civil and political rights in modern Europe through the lens of Jewish and Christian reappraisals of rabbinic Judaism; to provide further insight into the development of modern antisemitism, and how the rise of the public sphere helped promote it; and to highlight broader issues surrounding the experience and integration of religious and ethnic minorities in Europe, through an investigation into the complex theological foundation upon which interreligious discourse took place in the past.
DFG Programme
Independent Junior Research Groups
International Connection
Israel, Italy, USA
