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Exegesis and Politics Between East and West: Nachman Krochmal, Moses Mendelssohn, and Modern Jewish Thought
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 October 2021
Abstract
Recent scholarship on modern Jewish thought has sought to overcome the field’s Germanocentrism by recovering diverse visions of Jewish life across eastern and western Europe. While studies typically emphasize either striking differences or surprising affinities between these settings, I use the neglected eastern European philosopher Nachman Krochmal to highlight a strategy of creative appropriation and redirection—an eastern European strategy of breaking with German-Jewish philosophy precisely by deploying that tradition’s own resources. One of modern Jewish philosophy’s early episodes, I argue, is a politically charged engagement with biblical exegesis involving Krochmal and the German-Jewish thinker Moses Mendelssohn. Implicitly drawing on yet revising the treatment of biblical interpretation in Mendelssohn’s Hebrew writings, Krochmal seeks to retrieve what he sees as a vital element of Jewish politics: possessing neither a shared land nor military strength, he insists, Jews have long sustained their diasporic collective through hermeneutical endeavors such as rabbinic midrash, and they should continue to do so by launching a transnational project of historically sensitive exegesis. The resulting image of a transnational Jewish collective whose fate is separate from that of non-Jewish polities breaks with Mendelssohn’s political vision, pointing to an east-west dynamic of creative repurposing—an instance of an eastern European thinker drawing on a German-Jewish predecessor to develop a sharply contrasting philosophical vision.
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- © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the President and Fellows of Harvard College
Footnotes
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I thank Judah Isseroff, Paul Nahme, Nancy Sinkoff, participants in the Modern Judaica Electronic Workshop and Princeton’s Jewish Thought Workshop, and two anonymous readers for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this article.
References
1 Some German-Jewish philosophers, most famously Martin Buber, explore eastern Europe: see Paul Mendes-Flohr, “Fin de Siecle Orientalism, the Ostjuden, and the Aesthetics of Jewish Self-Affirmation,” in DividedPassions: Jewish Intellectuals and the Experience of Modernity (The Culture of Jewish Modernity; Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991) 77-132. Recent studies, however, worry that while some specific thinkers examine eastern Europe, scholarship on Jewish thought remains Germany-focused.
2 Leora Batnitzky, How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011). See also Gershon David Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A Genealogy of Modernity (S. Mark Taper Foundation Imprint in Jewish Studies; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).
3 Eliyahu Stern, The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013); Shaul Magid, Hasidism Incarnate: Hasidism, Christianity, and the Construction ofModern Judaism (Encountering Traditions; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015).
4 Eliyahu Stern, Jewish Materialism: The Intellectual Revolution of the 1870s (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018).
5 Eliyahu Stern, “Catholic Judaism: The Political Theology of the Nineteenth-Century Russian Jewish Enlightenment,” HTR 109 (2016) 483-511.
6 Paul E. Nahme, “Wissen und Lomdus: Idealism, Modernity, and History in some Nineteenth-Century Rabbinic and Philosophical Responses to the Wissenschaft des Judentums,”(2017) 393-420.
7 Olga Litvak, Haskalah: The Romantic Movement in Judaism (Key Words in Jewish Studies 3; New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012).
8 Nachman Krochmal, Moreh Nebukey Hazeman (ed. Yehoyada Amir; Jerusalem: Carmel, 2010); idem, Führer der Verwirrten der Zeit (trans. Andreas Lehnardt; 2 vols.; Philosophische Bibliothek 615a-b; Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 2012).
9 Jay M. Harris, Nachman Krochmal: Guiding the Perplexed of the Modern Age (Modern Jewish Masters 4; New York: New York University Press, 1991). See also, e.g., Yehoyada Amir, “The Perplexity of Our Time: Rabbi Nachman Krochmal and Modern Jewish Existence,” Modern Judaism 23 (2003) 264-30l; Litvak, Haskalah, 124-30; Lawrence Kaplan, “Yehezkel Kaufmann, R. Nachman Krochmal, and the 'Anxiety of Influence,'” in Yehezkel Kaufmann and the Reinvention of Jewish Biblical Scholarship (ed. Job Y. Jindo, Benjamin D. Sommer, and Thomas Staubli; OBO 283; Fribourg: Academic; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017) 122-46.
10 English selections appear in, e.g., Ideas of Jewish History (ed. Michael A. Meyer; Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987); Gershon Greenberg, Modern Jewish Thinkers: From Mendelssohn to Rosenzweig (Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah; Brighton, MA: Academic Studies, 2011); Jewish Legal Theories: Writings on State, Religion, and Morality (ed. Leora Batnitzky and Yonatan Y. Brafman; Brandeis Library of Modern Jewish Thought; Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2018).
11 See below (n. 97) on the Polish Jews in Nancy Sinkoff, Out of the Shtetl: Making JewsModern in the Polish Borderlands (BJS 336; Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2004); this book was reissued with a new preface and bibliographic material in 2020.
12 See, e.g., Harris, Nachman Krochmal, 3-14, 313-26; Sinkoff, Out of the Shtetl, 201; Litvak,Haskalah, 124-30.
13 Steven Lowenstein, “The Shifting Boundary Between Eastern and Western Jewry,” Jewish Social Studies 4 (1997) 60-78. More broadly, see Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994).
14 See Israel Bartal, The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772—1881 (trans. Chaya Naor; Jewish Culture and Contexts; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); on Galician Jewry’s “Polishness,” see Sinkoff, Out of the Shtetl. On east-west boundaries, see Lowenstein, “Shifting Boundary,” 60-78.
15 Harris, Nachman Krochmal, 3-14.
16 See Bartal, Jews of Eastern Europe, 70-81; Sinkoff, Out of the Shtetl, 203-70; on Joseph II, see also Stanislaw Grodziski, “The Jewish Question in Galicia: The Reforms of Maria Theresa and Joseph II, 1772-1790,” Polin 12 (1999) 61-72. More broadly, see Iryna Vushko, The Politics of Cultural Retreat: Imperial Bureaucracy in Austrian Galicia, 1772—1867 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015).
17 Harris, Nachman Krochmal, 11-12. See also Litvak, Haskalah, 124-28; Rachel Manekin, “Galician Haskalah and the Discourse of Schwärmerei,” in Secularism in Question: Jews and Judaism in Modern Times (ed. Ari Joskowicz and Ethan B. Katz; Jewish Culture and Contexts; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015) 189-207, at 196-98.
18 Bartal, Jews of Eastern Europe, 79-80 (more generally, 70-81). See also Sinkoff, Out of the Shtetl, 203-70. On Galicia’s complexities, see Rachel Manekin, ” 'Daytsen,' 'Polanim,' 'O “Ostrim'? Dilemat Hazehut sel Yehudey Galisyah (1848-1851),” Zion 68 (2003) 223-62.
19 Simon Rawidowicz, “Mabo’ Lamahadurah Hari’sonah,” in Kitbey Rabbi Nachman Krochmal (2nd ed.; Waltham, MA: Ararat, 1961) 7-225, at 34-35, 46-47; Harris, Nachman Krochmal, 3-14. See also Raphael Mahler, Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment: Their Confrontation in Galicia and Poland in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (trans. Eugene Orenstein, Aaron Klein, and Jenny Machlowitz Klein; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1985) 34-35.
20 Krochmal, Moreh, 189. Translations are mine unless otherwise noted.
21 Ibid., 189-90.
22 Ibid., 190 [emphasis in original].
23 Ibid. [emphasis in original]
24 For Krochmal, while not all laws arose exegetically, “the vast majority” did (ibid., 206).
25 Ibid., 191-237.
26 Ibid., 238-39.
27 Ibid., 239.
28 Ibid. [emphasis in original]
29 Ibid., 191.
30 Ibid., 242, 248-49; see also Harris, Nachman Krochmal, 284-85.
31 Krochmal, Moreh, 229.
32 Ibid., 239.
33 Ibid. [emphasis in original]
34 Ibid., 248.
35 Harris, Nachman Krochmal, 206-307. See also Krochmal, Moreh, 191, 202.
36 See Harris, Nachman Krochmal, 226-34, 275-76; Margarete Schlüter, “'Jewish Spirituality in Poland'—Zur Rezeption früherer Konstruktionen der rabbinischen Tradition in Nachman Krochmals Darstellung der Entwicklung der Mündlichen Tora,” Frankfurter judaistische Beiträge 28 (2001) 103-19; Andreas Lehnardt, “Einleitung,” in Krochmal, Führer, 1:vii-lxxvi, at xlviii-l.
37 Ismar Schorsch, “The Production of a Classic: Zunz as Krochmal’s Editor,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 31 (1986) 281-315. Krochmal’s correspondence, but not the Guide, mentions Zunz (Letter 18, in Krochmal, Moreh, 453).
38 Leopold Zunz, Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden, historisch entwickelt. Ein Beitrag zur Alterthumskunde und biblischen Kritik, zur Literatur- und Religionsgeschichte (Berlin: Asher, 1832) 41-43, 57-61, 321-60 et al. See also Maren R. Niehoff, “Zunz’s Concept of Haggadah as an Expression of Jewish Spirituality,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 43 (1998) 3-24.
39 Whereas Krochmal distinguishes peshat and derash in terms of textual elements they highlight, Zunz links peshat to Scripture’s past meaning and derash to its contemporary significance. Whereas Krochmal does not privilege 'aggadah over halakhah, Zunz frequently praises the former over the latter (while ascribing importance to both). Additionally, whereas Krochmal suggests that 'aggadah matters sociopolitically by yielding ethics, Zunz takes 'aggadah to matter sociopolitically by preserving Jews’ sense of freedom and hope. See the citations above.
40 See Andreas Lehnardt, “Nachman Krochmal and Leopold Zunz: On the Influence of the Moreh Nevukhe Ha-zeman on the Wissenschaft des Judentums,” European Journal of Jewish Studies 7 (2013): 171-85, at 182-83, which speculates about Krochmal’s ideas, yet-to-be-formulated in the Guide, reaching Zunz through the Galician scholar Solomon Judah Rapoport.
41 Harris, Nachman Krochmal, 178-79, 295, 303 n. 20.
42 On Krochmal and other aspects of Mendelssohn’s thought, see, e.g., Simon Rawidowicz, 'Iyunim Bemahsebet Yisra’el (2 vols.; Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1971) 2:217-18; Harris, Nachman Krochmal, 79-80, 100 n. 54; Litvak, Haskalah, 127. Krochmal’s father, a merchant, reportedly met Mendelssohn.
43 Krochmal, Moreh, 143.
44 See Edward Breuer and David Sorkin, “Editors’ Introduction toMegillat Qohelet [Commentary on Ecclesiastes],” in Moses Mendelssohn’s Hebrew Writings (ed. Edward Breuer and David Sorkin; trans. Edward Breuer; YJS 33; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018) 109-22.
45 Recent works engaging Hebrew material include, e.g., Edward Breuer, The Limits of Enlightenment: Jews, Germans, and theEighteenth-Century Study of Scripture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996); David Sorkin, Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); Carola Hilfrich, “Lebendige Schrift.” Repräsentation und Idolatrie in Moses Mendelssohns Philosophie und Exegese des Judentums (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2000); Andrea Schatz, Sprache in der Zerstreuung. Die Säkularisierung des Hebräischen im 18. Jahrhundert (Jüdische Religion, Geschichte und Kultur 2; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009); Gideon Freudenthal, No Religion without Idolatry: Mendelssohn’s Jewish Enlightenment (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012); Grit Schorch, Moses Mendelssohns Sprachpolitik (SJ 67; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012); Elias Sacks, Moses Mendelssohn’s Living Script: Philosophy, Practice, History, Judaism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017).
46 See Krochmal, Moreh, 166; idem, Letter 14 in Moreh, 447. See also Amir, “The Perplexity,”294 n. 26, 295 n. 35.
47 Moses Mendelssohn, Haqdamah Lemegillat Qohelet, in Gesammelte Schriften Jubiläumsausgabe (ed. Fritz Bamberger et al.; 24 vols.; Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: F. Frommann, 1971-) 14:148 (hereafter JubA); following Moses Mendelssohn: Writings on Judaism, Christianity, and the Bible (ed. Michah Gottlieb; trans. Curtis Bowman, Elias Sacks, and Allan Arkush; Brandeis Library of Modern Jewish Thought; Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2011) 176 (hereafter WJCB).
48 Mendelssohn, Haqdamah Lemegillat Qohelet, in JubA, 14:149-51, slightly altering WJCB, 177-81.
49 Mendelssohn, Haqdamah Lemegillat Qohelet, in JubA, 14:149-50, following WJCB, 178-79; idem, Bi’ur on Exod 20:8, Deut 5:12, in JubA, 16:191, 18:339.
50 Mendelssohn, Haqdamah Lemegillat Qohelet, in JubA, 14:148, following WJCB, 176.
51 Although Krochmal invokes statements’ “continuity” (context) when discussing midrash (Moreh, 239), his emphasis on context’s centrality to peshat suggests that “continuity” figures in midrash as something other than a defining focus—perhaps that derash notes when textual features do not fit their context (and thus require investigation). Mendelssohn, too, links derash to cases where some “matter … does not agree” with its “context.”
52 Moses Mendelssohn, 'OrLanetibah, in JubA, 14:244, slightly altering WJCB, 199. According to this rule, when peshat and derash diverge, they are sometimes contradictory but sometimes merely different (yet logically compatible); only in the latter case can both be accepted.
53 Mendelssohn, Bi’ur on Exod 21, in JubA, 16:198, following WJCB, 205-6.
54 Yesu’ot Mesiho by Isaac Abrabanel (1437-1508) inserts one word between these phrases: Yesu’ot Mesiho (Königsberg: Gruber, 1860) 17a. Tosafot Yom Tov by Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller (1579-1654) inserts several clauses between these phrases: Tosafot Yom Tov on Menahot 9:4, Bar Ilan Responsa Project (version 20). Neither mentions “a rule” being “laid down.”
55 My point is not that only Mendelssohn influenced Krochmal. Indeed, Krochmal mentions Abrabanel’s Yesu’otMesiho, albeit merely as illuminating aggadic material used against Judaism by converts to Christianity—and not as illuminating peshat and derash (Moreh, 246). Nevertheless, the striking Krochmal-Mendelssohn similarities—the lack of intervening words linking the relevant phrases and the reference to a “rule” being “laid down"—suggest a particularly close link between the two figures. On Abrabanel and another element of Krochmal’s thought (his metaphysics), see Rawidowicz, 'Iyunim, 2:281-89.
56 Yehezkel Feivel’s 1801 Toldot 'Adam reproduces—with alterations (but no attribution)—the Mendelssohn passage Krochmal echoes: Sefer Toldot 'Adam (Dyhernfurth: R’aykil, 1801) 25b. See Edward Breuer, “The Haskalah in Vilna: R. Yehezkel Feivel’s Toldot Adam,” The Torah U-Madda Journal 7 (1997) 15-40, at 28-30. The relevant interpretive “rule” is described as “great” by Krochmal and Feivel but not Mendelssohn, suggesting that Krochmal may know Toldot 'Adam. However, Krochmal also uses language present in Mendelssohn but not Feivel: Feivel alters Mendelssohn to cast this “rule” as “a sign between our eyes,” whereas Krochmal follows Mendelssohn by describing it as “laid down [munah].” This suggests, at the very least, a use of Mendelssohn; if Krochmal knows Feivel but nevertheless follows Mendelssohn, using munah might even suggest a preference for Mendelssohn. Jacob Zvi Meklenburg’s 1839 Haketab Vehaqabbalah quotes (without attribution) the Feivel passage quoting Mendelssohn: Haketab Vehaqabbalah (2 vols.; Frankfurt: Kaufmann, 1880) on Deut 24:16 (at 2:67a). See Edward Breuer, “Between Haskalah and Orthodoxy: The Writings of R. Jacob Zvi Meklenburg,” HUCA 66 (1995) 259-87, at 278-79. Haketab Vehaqabbalah, on Lev 16:23 (at 2:29a) uses—but reverses—the phrases in Mendelssohn and Krochmal. Again, though, the Mendelssohnian language Krochmal invokes—the reference to a rule being “laid down"—is absent; moreover, Haketab Vehaqabbalah was published the year before Krochmal’s death, raising questions about whether he knows it. David Eybeschuetz’s 1825 'Arbey Nahal uses the phrases in Mendelssohn and Krochmal but with clauses intervening: Sefer 'Arbey Nahal (2 vols; Warsaw: n.p., 1871) 1:138a.
57 One of Mendelssohn’s innovations was to apply the phrase kavanah seniyah (“secondary intention”)—employed medievally in non-exegetical contexts—to derashic meaning (Breuer, Limits of Enlightenment, 190-93). Krochmal uses this same phrase when discussing midrash and derash (Moreh, 240).
58 Mendelssohn, Bi’ur on conclusion of Exodus, in JubA, 16:405-7; his best-known German treatise, Jerusalem, oder über religiöse Macht und Judentum, may also invoke this idea. See Sacks, Moses Mendelssohn’s Living Script, 93-121. Krochmal seems to know this Bi’ur passage, which divides societal activities into “works of necessity” such as agriculture, “works of utility” such as road building, and “works of splendor” such as painting; this model reappears in Krochmal (Moreh, 34, 42). Kaplan (“Yehezkel Kaufmann,” 130 n. 26) also suggests a possible link between a cyclical account of history Mendelssohn outlines here and Krochmal’s historiosophic views.
59 Moses Mendelssohn to Herz Homberg, 22 September 1783, in JubA, 13:134, following WJCB, 124.
60 Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, oder über religiöse Macht und Judentum, in JubA, 8:184-85,following WJCB, 106-7.
61 Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, in JubA, 8:192-93; WJCB, 113-14. See also Edward Breuer, “Politics, Tradition, History: Rabbinic Judaism and the Eighteenth-Century Struggle for Civil Equality,” HTR 85 (1992) 357-83, at 379-83.
62 The arguments are not entirely dissimilar: Krochmal envisions the Bible becoming opaque as “language … changes,” and Mendelssohn notes that biblical laws might become “incomprehensible” because no “words … preserve their meaning unchanged” (Jerusalem, in JubA, 8:193, following WJCB, 113). Nevertheless, as noted above, their positions differ considerably. Indeed, an earlier Jerusalem passage invoking written laws, social intercourse, and historical development focuses less on legal exegesis, and more on how halakhah promotes religious reflection, with concepts being revised over time and adapted for different individuals (JubA, 8:168-69; WJCB, 91-92). Krochmal never cites Jerusalem’s statements about interpretation, but does invoke a different passage: see Führer, 1:34-35.
63 Krochmal, Moreh, 40 [emphasis in original].
64 Ibid., 35 (more generally, 29-39). See also Yossi Turner, “Ma’amad Haruah Betefisat Hahistoriyah sel Rabbi Nachman Krochmal,” in The Path of the Spirit: The Eliezer Schweid Jubilee Volume (ed. Yehoyada Amir; 2 vols.; Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 18-19; Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Van Leer Institute, 2005) 1:289-323; Amir, “Se’arim Le’emunah Serufah,” in Moreh, 7-40, at 31-39.
65 Krochmal, Moreh, 37; see also 29-30, 38-39.
66 Generally, “one of these aforementioned spiritual portions becomes dominant,” and a nation’s “god or guardian angel is described … by that spiritual attribute”; by contrast, for Jews, “all the spiritual inheritances and portions come to be manifest and arranged harmoniously … so that they all are connected to Him, may He be blessed, and referred to Him in their truth” (ibid., 37-38). See also Turner, “Ma’amad,” 308-18; Eliezer Schweid, The Period of the Enlightenment (trans. Leonard Levin; vol. 1 of A History of Modern Jewish Religious Philosophy; Supplements to the Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 14; Leiden: Brill, 2011) 317-19. Nations also err by too strongly attaching the spiritual to materiality.
67 Although appearing to cast the “universal spiritual” as an active deity who “rescues,” Krochmal emphasizes that references to God’s presence “in our midst"—including to that presence rescuing Jews—denote Jews’ understanding of the divine. He states that “the rational representation of the statements 'that I may dwell in their midst’ [Exod 25:8], 'for I am with you [to save you and to rescue you]' [Jer 42:11 NJPS], and 'My spirit is still in your midst’ [Hag 2:5 NJPS]” is that Jews would attain a form of awareness—that “with every lofty and good spirit manifest and coming to light among us, we would know in our hearts and acknowledge with our mouths that a living God was among us and that they came to us from Him, that is, that they are rooted in Him and emanate from His spirit, the totality of all spiritual manifestations” (Moreh, 38). See Harris, Nachman Krochmal, 126-27; Kaplan, “Yehezkel Kaufmann,” 134-45.
68 Krochmal, Moreh, 50.
69 Ibid., 51.
70 Ibid., 38 [emphasis in original].
71 Ibid., 50.
72 Ibid., 51 [emphasis in original].
73 Ibid, 52.
74 Ibid., 51 [emphasis in original].
75 Ibid., 248-49; see also 52.
76 Ibid., 112.
77 Ibid., 228.
78 Ibid., 229-30.
79 For Krochmal, this basis existed: most laws arose exegetically (n. 24 above), but this derivation was not always outlined (Moreh, 204-6).
80 See, e.g., Harris, Nachman Krochmal, 313; Schlüter, “'Jewish Spirituality,'” 103-5.
81 See Andrzej Walicki, Philosophy and Romantic Nationalism: The Case of Poland (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982). I thank Nancy Sinkoff for raising this in correspondence.
82 Krochmal, Letter 8, in Moreh, 425.
83 Krochmal, Moreh, 5.
84 See Harris, Nachman Krochmal, 156-205.
85 Krochmal, Moreh, 5.
86 Ibid., 112.
87 Just as he notes here that historicizing this psalm “gives birth to every type of … goodness, wisdom, and commitment to justice” (ibid., 5), he later declares that national growth involves “wisdom,” “good ethical teachings,” and “justice” being “born” (34-35).
88 Compare, e.g., Abraham I. Katsh, “Nachman Krochmal and the German Idealists,” Jewish Social Studies 8 (1946) 87-102, at 98-99; Rawidowicz, 'lyunim, 2:217-18.
89 On contemporary debates, see, e.g., Julie E. Cooper, “A Diasporic Critique of Diasporism: The Question of Jewish Political Agency,” Political Theory 43 (2015) 80-110.
90 See, e.g., Moses Mendelssohn, “Letter to 'a Man of Rank’ (Rochus Friedrich Graf von Lynar),” 26 January 1770, in JubA, 12.1:212; WJCB, 37; idem, Jerusalem, in JubA, 8:198; WJCB, 118; idem, 'Or Lanetibah, in JubA, 14:232–42; WJCB, 193–96 et al.
91 See his Homberg letter (n. 59 above) and Jerusalem.
92 See, e.g., Sorkin, Moses Mendelssohn. While Mendelssohn did not pursue civic inclusion at all costs (Litvak, Haskalah, 112), it remained a key goal.
93 Moses Mendelssohn, Vorrede zu Manasseh ben Israels “Rettung der Juden,” in JubA, 8:5, following WJCB, 42.
94 Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, in JubA, 8:200, following WJCB, 119.
95 Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, in JubA, 8:198, following WJCB, 118.
96 Stern, Genius, 63–82; see also Breuer, “Politics,” 357–83.
97 This strategy may extend beyond Krochmal. Sinkoff argues that eastern European figures such as Mendel Lefin “appropriated certain values of the Berlin Haskalah and reshaped them to suit … Polish Jewry” (Out of the Shtetl, 7). Admittedly, this strategy may involve less tension with German-Jewish philosophy than I discover in Krochmal: Sinkoff generally describes figures less as breaking with philosophers such as Mendelssohn by utilizing those philosophers’ own writings, and more as sometimes diverging from such thinkers and wary of “radical acculturation” and “atheism” in post-Mendelssohnian Berlin (9, 46–47, 271 et al.). Moreover, although Sinkoff (like me) uses the language of “redirection” when discussing eastern Europe, I do so for Krochmal’s attempt to redirect German-Jewish philosophy, whereas Sinkoff stresses how Lefin and others appropriated such resources to “redirect” Polish-Jewish life (91, 199, 265). Nevertheless, in at least one case, Sinkoff’s Lefin uses Mendelssohn for non-Mendelssohnian purposes, invoking the German-Jewish philosopher to support a project—Yiddish biblical translation—that would have clashed with his commitment to German and Hebrew (176–98). See also Sinkoff, “Benjamin Franklin in Jewish Eastern Europe: Cultural Appropriation in the Age of Enlightenment,” JHI 61 (2000): 133–52.