Leopold Zunz. Ismar Schorsch

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СКАЧАТЬ us bigots, lazybones and ignoramuses and (b) by sophistry that saddles us with hypocrites, egotists, deviants and irreligious people. Unalloyed instruction in religion does not give children over to dry-as-dust history or incomprehensible miracles or antipathy toward Christianity—as the school teachers of that religion everywhere [currently] inoculate children with hatred for Jews with their mother’s milk. It [that unalloyed instruction] does not consist of terrible rote memorization of texts or in scientific proof of superstition. Rather it seeks to excite the spirit of the child for religion through affecting words and even more affecting example, to give them support for the storms of life, to implant the gentle virtue of love in their heart and to endow them with the good fortune which is the lot of anyone who believes in providence.¹⁰

      In conjunction with that full-throated articulation, Zunz insisted on the importance of a supportive ambience. The instructor must be an educated, credentialed, and ethical man. The child’s home life must be in consonance with what he learns at school and the family must attend a German synagogue with a reformed Hebrew worship service. While not all children should be expected to master Hebrew, all should at least learn to read it and be able to translate a few select passages. Finally, the ceremony of confirmation that culminates the child’s education must not entail an oath of allegiance. It should be no more than a show of his command of Judaism, a body of knowledge that cannot emanate from an inert catechism, but only from a teacher who embodies what he teaches. Though Orthodox intervention from Berlin torpedoed Zunz’s prospects for an invitation to come to Königsberg, his words again evinced the intensity of his religious commitment. Moreover, the maturity of his holistic view of Jewish education coupled with his three quick forays into the field during the 1820s (Königsberg, the Verein, and Berlin) strongly suggests that he held it to be a calling of a higher priority than the rabbinate.¹¹

      With the loss of his income from the Haude- und Spenersche Zeitung at the end of 1831, Zunz’s economic stability unraveled. In May 1832 he was offered the directorship of the Veitel Heine Ephraimsche Lehranstalt in Berlin, an institute set up and endowed in 1774 by Frederick the Great’s court Jew Veitel Heine Ephraim to teach Talmud as sanctioned by tradition. By mid-October the offer was withdrawn and Zunz was left with a meager teaching load of six hours a week of Bible, Hebrew, and German, which from February to May 1833 netted him no more than 50 talers for eighty hours of instruction. Among his students, as Zunz noted in his diary years later, was none other than nineteen-year-old Louis Lewandowski from Wreschen, Poland, who would in due time become Berlin’s renowned composer of synagogue music and choir director. Some forty-two years later, Zunz would be invited to grace the celebration of Lewandowski’s twenty-fifth anniversary in office with a stirring address on the role of music in religion and the synagogue.¹²

      In mid-October, with the top job at the Lehranstalt going to someone else, Zunz decided to look for a job as a bookkeeper, and a month later he turned to his close friend in Hamburg, Meyer Isler, the nephew of his beloved mentor, Samuel Meyer Ehrenberg, who had himself a half-year before secured a job in the city’s public library.¹³ Forty years later in 1872 Isler would rise to the helm of the institution, an emblem of the city’s long-standing liberalism.¹⁴ In Berlin Zunz suffered from a twofold deprivation: no job and few friends. He asked Isler to look around for him in Hamburg. He would be ready to serve as someone’s personal secretary, provided the job did not rob him of all free time. He had also recruited his new friend Gabriel Riesser, who lived in Hamburg, to keep his eyes open: “Given the unlikelihood that anything is going to come my way here where I live, Berlin is becoming steadily more repugnant to me…. [And] indeed you are well aware of my preference for Hamburg.”¹⁵

      Zunz reiterated his plea six months later more urgently to his good friend Solomon Ludwig Steinheim in Altona, a physician with a theological bent and poetic spark, in a letter dated July 21, 1833. Perhaps Steinheim could find or create something for him as a tutor or even a bookkeeper. As long as the job would pay him 1,500 marks (500 talers) and leave him time for research, he would grab it: “Here everything leaves me 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 СКАЧАТЬ