Nicholas de Lange, “Books and Bookmen: The Cambridge Teachers of Rabbinics, 1866–1971,” Jewish Historical Studies, vol. 44 (2012): 139–163 (original) (raw)

When Solomon met Solomon: A Medieval Hebrew Bible in Victorian Cambridge

2016

In the Spring of 1869, the Cambridge University Library acquired a medieval Hebrew Bible (Ms. Add. 465), first written in 13th-century Spain and decorated and annotated by various hands in subsequent centuries. The manuscript contains what many consider the earliest record of a Jewish reader of Christian chapter divisions of the OT. This article uncovers the story of that manuscript's discovery by Solomon Marcus Schiller-Szinessy (1820–1890), the first practicing Jew formally appointed to an academic position at that university. It studies Schiller-Szinessy's published and unpublished descriptions of the manuscript, and it reconstructs his understanding of its history of transmission and reception. It places this story in the distinct but connected contexts of Victorian interests in Rabbinics and in the Massorah, Henry Bradshaw's renewal of the Cambridge University Library, the development of bibliography as a genre of historical scholarship in the Wissenschaft des Judentums, and the late 19th-century understanding of distinct medieval and early modern chapters in the history of Jewish and Christian biblical traditions, their transmission, reception, mutual encounter and critical study. Finally, the essay takes this case study to reflect on the effect of Jewish emancipation on the academic study of the Hebrew Bible.

Langton, D. "Wandering Jews in England’s Green and Pleasant Land: Wissenschaft des Judentums in an Anglo-Jewish Context." In Hebrew Union College Annual, 94 (2024), 235-284.

Hebrew Union College Annual, 2024

There has been an historical tendency to neglect the story of the emergence and development of the historical-critical study of Judaism in the United Kingdom. The British experience has been widely regarded as derivative and less vital when compared with the Wissenschaft des Judentums as found throughout continental Europe and the United States. Undoubtedly, there were few British home-grown scholars of note, but the story is no less interesting for the diversity and vibrant intercourse of the diverse groups and individuals who did relocate to England’s green and pleasant land. This article will set out to provide an outline of the growth of Wissenschaft des Judentums in the British Isles, from the pious precursors in the 1840s to 1860s, to the Prussian and Hungarian émigrés from the 1860s to 1880s who worked with recognisably German scholarly methods and values, to the more complicated period that followed in the 1880s to the 1940s and that included the largely British-born scholarly network that called itself “the Wanderers” alongside the many talented foreign scholars who washed up on British shores and who comprised a varied assortment of catalog- ers, collectors and others. Along the way, we will consider the extent to which one can speak of distinctive British interests and experiences, and in particular how Jewish scholarship sat within the wider Anglo-Jewish communal and institutional contexts.

"The International Context of Samuel Krauss' Scholarship: Network Connections Between East and West"

2016

The scholarly life of Samuel Krauss (1866Krauss ( -1948, who was born in Hungary and lived in Budapest, Vienna, and Cambridge in his later life, illustrates the intellectual connections between scholars in Eastern and Western Europe and the United States at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. These connections resulted in both cooperation and criticism. They indicate that prominent Central European scholars of Jewish Studies were not isolated figures but international "players" who communicated with geographically distant colleagues and friends to receive feedback on their writings and support in practical matters. Wissenschaft des Judentums (Science of Judaism) comprised geographically dispersed centers of Jewish Studies, and Wissenschaft scholars such as Samuel Krauss maintained connections with its representatives in Europe and America. Krauss was also familiar with ancient and medieval Christian literature and engaged in critical dialogue with New Testament scholars and church historians.