Assaf Yedidya ORTHODOX REACTIONS TO ‘‘WISSENSCHAFT DES JUDENTUMS’’ Wissenschaft des Judentums, 1 the scholarly study of the Jewish religion and people, which originated in the 1820s, challenged many traditional prin- ciples and in fact threatened conceptions of the Jewish traditional past. According to some scholars, Wissenschaft des Judentums appears as an irrevocable fissure in Jewish life that wrought havoc on all elements of Jewish culture, due to the assimilatory motives of its founders. One of those scholars, Gershom Scholem, claimed that German Jewish histor- ians had at best an antiquarian interest in Jewish history. 2 Conversely, other scholars believed Wissenschaft des Judentums was the supreme form of German–Jewish self-expression. 3 Either way, everybody agreed that Wissenschaft des Judentums was regarded, by many traditional Jews, as a real threat to Jewish traditional values. At the heart of this threat lay several premises and Weltanschauungen, both methodological and of content. Those concerned: (i) objectivity—a necessary pre-condition for research of the culture or its historical outcome was the recognition of science’s objective truth. Objective research free of dogmas was conditional upon the examination of questions without pre-existing answers, and on obedience to the power of evidence rather than to the authority of tradition with its wealth of historical pretensions. As a corollary to the right of free research, the critical student of the origins of Judaism had to choose a detached observation point. The internal norms of the researched field (the Halacha, for example) no longer obligated the observer and were not to influence his critical description of it. 4 (ii) The new sources—in accordance with the principle of objectiv- ity, the researcher could not be limited to Hebrew and Aramaic texts written by Jews. It was necessary to utilize all texts relevant to the researched subject. The recognition of Jewish literary works in the many different languages eventually led to a totally new perspective of Jewish creativity on the one hand, and on the other hand, to a preference for the credibility of non-rabbinical historical sources over rabbinical sources, because of the doubt cast on the credibility of the rabbis. 5 doi:10.1093/mj/kjp021 ß The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org. Modern Judaism Advance Access published February 2, 2010