GERMAN ORTHODOXY AND THE PROBLEM OF MODERN SCHOLARSHIP

THE VARIOUS religious and political disputes which were a part of German Orthodoxy in the late nineteenth century continued during the Weimar Republic. Before the next stage of Weinberg's career can be discussed, it is necessary to review a major disagreement between two important groups, the followers of Rabbi Esriel Hildesheimer and those of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, known respectively as ‘Berlin’ and ‘Frankfurt’. The ideology of Berlin had its source in the Berlin Rabbinical Seminary, a unique experiment in Orthodox rabbinical training founded by Hildesheimer. Recognizing the need for rabbis with a modern education, Hildesheimer attempted to establish a seminary while still in Hungary. After meeting unrelenting opposition from his Orthodox colleagues, he moved to Berlin where the local Orthodox community was very supportive.

The seminary Hildesheimer established in Berlin was the only institution under Orthodox auspices in which students were required to have a high level of secular education before they were admitted. It was expected that they would continue their general education at the university level. Furthermore, Wissenschaft des Judentums was a central element of the curriculum, and was taught by some of the greatest names in German Jewish scholarship. Although the training of rabbis was central to the Berlin seminary's raison d'etre, Hildesheimer made clear in his address at its inauguration that he did not intend to create a ‘rabbi factory’. Rather, in addition to rabbinic training, he hoped to make the Berlin seminary the centre of an Orthodox intelligentisa, consisting of merchants, theologians, lawyers, and doctors. In this he was at least partly successful.

In terms of commitment to the academic study of Judaism, there was little difference between the faculty of Hildesheimer's seminary and its counterparts at the non-Orthodox seminaries of Abraham Geiger (Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums) and Zechariah Frankel (Jüdisches-Theologisches Seminar). Indeed, Hildesheimer was always quick to defend the high academic standards at his institution. The Orthodox scholars who were associated with the Berlin seminary, even those who were uncompromising separatists in matters of Jewish communal politics, had no difficulty involving themselves in scholarly pursuits with the non-Orthodox.