24. Januar 2013: Vortrag von Prof. Dr. Ismar Schorsch
The Convergence of Islamic and Jewish Studies in 19th Century Germany
Islam and Judaism underwent in tandem a far-reaching process of critical scholarship in 19th century Germany. Moreover, it was the outsized role of Jewish scholars that brought these parallel developments to converge and fructify each other. The function of this lecture is to identify the stages and scholars of this symbiotic relationship, to account for its emergence and to illustrate its depth in the extraordinary friendship of Heinrich Fleischer and Ignaz Goldziher.
Prof. Dr. Ismar Schorsch is chancellor emeritus of The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and Rabbi Herman Abramovitz Professor of Jewish History. As a top scholar in the field of modern Jewish history and a leading figure of the American Conservative Movement, he has addressed the important issue of modern Jewish scholarship as a central factor in the reconstruction of Jewish identity and self-presentation. Professor Schorsch's book, From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism (1994), was translated into Hebrew and published in Israel in 1999. Four years later, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture honored him with a Jewish Cultural Achievement Award in Historical Studies. His most recent book is Canon Without Closure (March 2007, Aviv Press), a wide-ranging collection of Torah commentaries written during his tenure as chancellor of JTS. In 2004, he published a two-volume collection of the articles and essays titled Polarities in Balance, and in 1995, The Sacred Cluster: The Core Values of Conservative Judaism. He is currently working on a biography of Moritz Steinschneider and more generally on the interdisciplinary nature of Oriental studies in the 19th century.
Der Vortrag wird in Kooperation mit dem Graduiertenkolleg "Theologie als Wissenschschaft" organisiert.