The (Failed) Introduction of Jewish Theology as a Subject at the Rabbinical Seminaries in Germany

In 1849 Abraham Geiger formulated an extensive “Introduction into the Study of Jewish Theology”, however, when the new Rabbinical Seminary in Breslau was founded in 1854, neither Geiger nor his innovative concept were considered useful for the institution. Even when Geiger himself was involved in the establishment of the liberal Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in 1872, only medieval philosophy of religion was taught there, and no separate subject called “Jewish Theology” appeared on the curriculum. As late as 1904 the philosopher Hermann Cohen still called for the establishment of academic chairs for systematic Jewish theology at the German rabbinical seminaries – as opposed to the common practice of teaching there only the history of Jewish philosophical thought. The lecture not only follows those developments, but is especially interested in the educational reasons given for those calls for the introduction of Jewish theology into the education of German rabbis – as well as in the concept of theology that the protagonists of the lecture present. This interest is caused by a widespread opinion that systematic theology is essentially foreign to Judaism. For Hermann Cohen, at least, theology was nothing less than “living Torah” for the modern Jew. The unity of “Leben und Lehre” (reality of life and Torah and/or education) – that shaped the intuitive, traditional life-form of the pre-modern Jew – was to be replaced in the age of science with the ‘science of Judaism’ – that is, with Jewish theology as the ‘essence’ of the Jewish religion.