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SELTZER / GRAETZ, DUBNOW, BARON
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volume on Israelite origins th rough the reign o f Solomon, was
published in 1874 and its sequel, Jewish history up to the Has-
monean revolt, in 1875-76. In the seventies Graetz visited the
land o f Israel and suppo rted the Hovevei Zion. His last years
were spent writing commentaries on various biblical books and
planning a critical text o f the Hebrew Bible that he did not
live to publish.
Graetz epitomizes the priorities o f 19th-century
Wissenschaft
des Judentums:
the philological-critical method applied to histor
ical texts, the recovery o f the full range o f Jewish literature,
philosophy, and high culture after the depredations o f the later
Middle Ages, a vigorous defense o f the Jewish contributions
to civilization and, above all, the centrality o f
Geist
— the tran
scending spiritual idea — in and through Jewish history.
Graetz’s essay, “The Construction o f Jewish History,” written
in 1846 when he was only 29, illustrates the philosophical ide
alism at the hea rt o f his approach. In this ex traord inary work
he defined his position, vis-a-vis the Hegelianism that dom inat
ed German intellectual life. His conceptualization o f Jewish his
tory from biblical to modern times affirmed its continuity and
articulated its periodical and dynamic un fo ld ing .1
Graetz’s starting point was the principle that the original Jew
ish idea was a “negative force” o f absolute spirituality, funda
mentally at odds with the deification by paganism o f forces im
m anent in nature . Judaism served as the antithesis o f paganism
inasmuch as its God was a self-subsistent transcenden t being
who freely created the universe and was not subject to the de
crees o f Fate. (The notion o f such a radical difference between
Judaism and paganism has a long and honored place in modern
Jewish thought.) T h e crucial point was that no static doctrinal
definition o f Judaism was possible since Judaism was a po ten
tiality that could be actualized only th rough the vicissitudes o f
time. In the biblical period Judaism was the community’s “con
stitution,” as the people sought happiness in the land o f Canaan.
The full force o f the “purely religious element” emerged du ring
1.
The Structure o f Jewish History and Other Essays,
tr., ed. and introd. by Ismar
Schorsch (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary o f America, 1975). Am
ong the essays on Graetz are two studies by Baron reprinted in
History
and Jewish Historians: Essays and Addresses by Salo W. Baron,
compiled by
Arthur Hertzberg and Leon A. Feldman (Philadelphia: The Jewish Pub
lication Society o f America, 1964), pp. 263-275.