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Abstract –
MODERN Jewish experience, to be fully understood, must be viewed under the aspect of emancipation, that process, starting in the late 18th century, whereby the Jews of Western and Central Europe achieved civic and social rights, thus paving the way for their entry into the larger society. The ramifications of emancipation are, of course, exceedingly widespread, not to say complex. In order to keep the present discussion within manageable limits, I shall restrict myself to some historical observations, with ultimate reference to the relationship between emancipation and the evolution of scholarly Jewish research. In this I take my cue from Leopold Zunz, the founder of Wissenschaft des Judentums-the scientific inquiry into Jewish history, literature, and religion that developed in Europe in the 19th century-who remarked that the political emancipation of the Jews would be attained only when the study of Judaism was similarly emancipated, that is, established within the academy.
Zunz, in turn, might very well have taken his cue from two intellectual events whose occurrence, a scant two decades apart, cannot have been altogether a coincidence. I refer to the publication, in 1663 and 1689, respectively, of Spinoza's Tractatus theologico-politicus, which ushers in the beginning of modern biblical criticism (and hence of modern Jewish scholarly investigation) and John Locke's First Letter Concerning Toleration, which, for the first time ever, talks of a secular state that would include Jews as citizens. Although Jewish emancipation had to wait one hundred years before it was transformed from a glimmer of thought into a political program, and although Wissenschaft des Judentums did not emerge until the second decade of the 19th century, certainly what had been initiated by the two 17th-century philosophers can be seen as an anticipation of future developments.
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