REVIEWS
“A History of German Jewish Bible Translation is important because the subject of Bible translations is a key to the mentalité of German Jewry since Moses Mendelssohn. With a novel handle on a complex body of literature, Professor Gillman has crafted an original conceptual grid to overcome the atomized character of eleven distinct translations that, until now, have defied treatment by a single scholar. Gillman’s goal is not to discuss all translations, but rather to highlight the endless effort by German Jews to cultivate their religious identity in a Christian body politic deeply ambivalent about their integration.”
— Ismar Schorsch, Jewish Theological Seminary
“Abigail Gillman’s work is a major scholarly achievement, indeed probably the most comprehensive study to date of the 170-year tradition of Jewish Bible translations into German. Gillman’s history is at the same time an important contribution to our understanding of the unique German-Jewish encounter in modernity, that is, of the philosophical, literary, cultural, and linguistic junction that brought to the world the likes of Moses Mendelssohn, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Else Lasker-Schüler, Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem, Nelly Sachs, and Paul Celan, to name only a few luminaries. I am hard pressed to think of another book that brings together such a thorough consideration of Biblical translation across languages and cultures.”
— Amir Eshel, Stanford University
"Abigail Gilman’s…is the first full-fledged book to offer a history of German Jewish bible translation as a whole…Gillman’s discussion seems to leave little untouched: from comparative textual analysis, through the paratextual level of introductions, commentary, and visual aspects, on to the biographies of the translator, their cultural environment, both Jewish and (too often neglected in previous studies) Christian, up to the contemporary reception and later legacies."
— Ran HaCohen, Shofar
“…without doubt one of the most learned and eloquent books in her interdisciplinary field and one of the most profound reflections on the Jewish encounter with modernity. It is a multi-layered book that will excite the novice and the expert alike, and that will speak to us for time to come. Finally, it is a book that resembles an intricate work of art deserving nothing less than the title of a masterpiece.”
— Asher D. Biemann, The German Quarterly
"In this fascinating book Gillman provides the first comprehensive overview of this phenomenon in English, tracing the development of the translations in the context of the Haskalah, Science of Judaism, modern Jewish denominations, and modernist aesthetics. . . . The book can be highly recommended to anyone interested in the reception of the Bible and in German Jewish history and culture."
— Journal of Modern Jewish Studies
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226477862.003.0001
[Hebrew Bible;German Jews;Translation]
This book examines representative German Jewish translations of scripture published between the seventeenth and the twentieth centuries as part of an evolving cultural project. In attempting to understand why modern German Jews produce far more Bible translations than any other European community, the book argues that four trends in German Jewish religious and intellectual life—Haskalah; Wissenschaft des Judentums; the rise of Reform and neo-Orthodox Jewish movements; and, in the twentieth century, the modernist cultural renaissance—inspired these translations. Rabbis and scholars designed translations to achieve a range of cultural, linguistic, and religious objectives. Within each period, moreover, different translations competed for readers. Studying these works in tandem brings the essential character of this wide-ranging translation tradition into sharp focus: translators were influenced by romantic (literary) as well as rabbinic (exegetical) motives; by contemporary Christian translations, and trends in European culture. Judeo-German (Yiddish) Bibles, such as the Tsene-Rene (Women’s Bible) and two modern Yiddish translations from Amsterdam, also shaped the German translations. Translation, it was hoped, might render the Jewish Bible appealing to modern readers; but the translators remained faithful to the Torah, and constructed a genealogy reaching back to Moses himself.
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Introduction
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226477862.003.0002
[Targum;Old Yiddish;Ashkenaz;meturgeman;khumesh taytsh]
This introductory chapter describes continuities and discontinuities in translation practices from the rabbinic and medieval periods to modern times. The Talmud prohibited written translations with the exception of the Aramaic Targum Onkelos, regarded as a sacred interpretive translation. Since all Jews were commanded to hear and understand the Torah portion chanted weekly in the synagogue, oral interpreters repeated Hebrew verses in translation.Similar customs and attitudes persisted in medieval Ashkenaz.The first printed Old Yiddish translations for use at home, school, and synagogue took the forms of glossaries and narrative Bibles—two genres that circumvented the prohibition against a stand-alone vernacular Bible. But modern Jewish Bible translations broke with this tradition; they aspired to be faithful to the form, as well as the sense, of Torah. As the author of a literal, word-for-word German translation, the Jewish translator acquired new importance as an authority on language and exegesis. Pre-modern translations had been justified as necessary for women and uneducated men; modern translations incorporated all manner of supplemental knowledge and information necessary for educated men and women. For all the differences, modern translators continued to operate within a religious and educational framework--even as the contents of that education changed dramatically.
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1. The First Wave: Jewish Enlightenment Bibles in Yiddish and German
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226477862.003.0003
[Uri Phoebus;Joseph Athias;Jekuthiel Blitz;Joseph Witzenhausen;Moses Mendelssohn;Haskalah;Wertheim Bible;Luther Bible;Johann David Michaelis;Jehuda Halevi]
The Haskalah was a period of intense linguistic transition, and new translations of the Bible—German and Yiddish; Christian and Jewish—played a central role, above all, by rendering scripture in language that was “clear, correct, and beautiful.” Two Yiddish Bible translations printed in Amsterdam in 1678 and 1679, though not commercially successful, must be counted as the first modern Jewish translations in Ashkenaz and precursors of the monumental Mendelssohn translation of 1780-83.Amsterdam publishers Phoebus and Athias were likely inspired by the popularity of the much-admired Dutch States Bible and the Luther Bible; their translators, Yekuthiel Blitz and Joseph Witzenhausen, also borrowed from those Christian Bibles. Phoebus and Athias used fine paper, engraved title pages, and Rabbinic approbations. One century later, Moses Mendelssohn reinvented the modern Jewish vernacular Bible, producing a multifaceted work, known as the Be’ur, that exerted enormous influence. Like his Yiddish forerunners, and like his Christian contemporaries (Michaelis; Schmidt), Mendelssohn domesticated biblical Hebrew and syntax, but he also foregrounded the literary and poetic qualities of biblical Hebrew, as he had done years earlier when translating Hebrew poetry. Comparisons of the Prefaces, paratextual elements, and individual verses show how these first three modern Jewish translators balanced innovation with traditionalism.
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2. The Second Wave: Emergence of a Bible Industry
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226477862.003.0004
[worttreu;Leopold Zunz;Joseph Johlson;biurists;Hebraism;Wissenschaft des Judentums;Salomon Herxheimer;Gotthold Salomon;Philanthropin;Michael Sachs]
The Bible translations of the second wave appeared in rapid succession in 1831, 1837, 1838, and 1841. They shared an underlying purpose: to provide an alternative to Mendelssohn’s Be’ur, andto be at once literal, scholarly, and popular. These translators were rabbis and university-trained scholars. Each paid homage to Mendelssohn while devising new forms of translation for a new generation of German-speaking Jews in the throes of social emancipation and religious reform. Johlson, a teacher and textbook author, and Zunz, a pioneering scholar of Jewish history and literature, introduced Hebraic sound and syntax into the translation. Johlson’s Five Books of Moses included terse footnotes to open up the nuances of the Hebrew for his readers. The Zunz Bible, a collaborative effort with Sachs, Arnheim, and Fürst, hebraized names and restored the conjunction und to mimic the paratactic rhythm of biblical syntax. Salomon’s People’s and School Bible was designed to appeal to a popular audience; Salomon Herxheimer’s Twenty-four Books broke new ground by appealing to Christian and Jewish readers and incorporating edifying homilies into its commentary. The differences among these four translations illuminate various paths that emerged from the Haskalah in the early nineteenth century.
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3. The Third Wave: The Bible as Gesamtkunstwerk
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226477862.003.0005
[Ludwig Philippson;Samson Raphael Hirsch;Lautverwandtschaften;Israelitische Bibel;Gustave Doré;Rabbi Seligmann Bamberger;Orthodox Bible Society;Baumgärtner;Berleburger Bible;Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums]
In the mid-to-late nineteenth century, two highly prolific rabbis—representing opposing religious ideologies—took similar approaches to the German Jewish Bible. Ludwig Philippson, a liberal rabbi, and Samson Raphael Hirsch, founder of neo-Orthodoxy, both composed vast, comprehensive commentaries to accompany their German translations, not merely to explain language or interpret verses, but to illustrate the Bible’s internal unity andto magnify its religious Weltanschauung. Philippson’s Israelite Bibleincorporated three tables of contents and 500 engraved illustrations featuring the realia of the biblical world—plants, animals, and Orientalist images—to showcase the Bible as a book of the world. Hirsch’s Pentateuch incorporated extensive analyses of Hebrew roots, their sound and spelling patterns, which, he believed, formed an internal symbolic language. Philippson’s illustrations and Hirsch’s Lautverwandtschaften(aural affinities) exemplify the desire to present scripture as a unified totality with aesthetic, religious, and nationalist dimensions. Bible translation was one of many initiatives by which these two rabbis hoped to regenerate their respective religious communities. The approaches of Philippson and Hirsch also reflect nineteenth-century innovations in print media and cultural production; the expansion of biblical studies into orientalism; and the Jewish turn to historicism and Geistesgeschichte.
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4. The Fourth Wave: Reimagining the German Jewish Bible
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226477862.003.0006
[Martin Buber;Bertha Pappenheim;Franz Rosenzweig;Jehuda Halevi;Zeenah u'Reenah;Die fünf Bücher der Weisung;Glückel of Hameln;Yiddish Women's Bible;Leitwort;Nachdichtung]
The three translators of the fourth wave believed that modern people’s relationship to the Bible, and to religion, had become reified, and that translation, undertaken in a modernist vein, could provoke new religiosity. They rejected the scholarly methods of their forerunners and also the axiom that a German Jewish translation had to be clear, correct, and beautiful. In Die fünf Bücher der Weisung, Buber and Rosenzweig deployed German to defamiliarize Hebrew scripture; to channel the voice beneath the written text; and to facilitate an intimate theological encounter. Bertha Pappenheim, social activist, pedagogue, and writer, began translating the Tsene-Rene, the medieval Yiddish Women’s Bible, into a folksy, Yiddish-inflected German. Pappenheim believed that the Bible ought to promote simple piety and ethical practice. Pappenheim was Buber's student and friend; she also lectured at Rosenzweig’s Lehrhaus. Proponents of the Jewish cultural renaissance, all three produced groundbreaking translations before turning to the Bible:The Memoirs of Glückel of Hameln (Pappenheim); The Tales of Rabbi Nachman (Buber); and Ninety-Two Poems of Judah Halevi (Rosenzweig). In the face of manifold crises of the early twentieth century, these three thinkers took radical measures to insure Jewish survival and renewal.
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Epilogue: Ma shemo? The Name of God in the German Jewish Bible
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226477862.003.0007
[Der Ewige;Tetragrammaton;Lord;The Eternal;Eheye asher Eheye;Moses Mendelssohn;Franz Rosenzweig;Adonai;John Calvin]
Rendering the Tetragrammaton poses the “ultimate challenge” for the Bible translator--and German Jewish translators eagerly took up the gauntlet. Mendelssohn made the radical decision to call the Lord “Der Ewige,” “the Eternal Being,” and defended his choice on traditionalist as well as philosophical grounds. Mendelssohn also set a precedent by introducing Der Ewigeonly in Exodus 3, rendering “Eheye asher Eheye” as “I am the being that is Eternal.” Mendelssohn’s innovation proved so popular that subsequent translators were compelled either to adopt it or to come up with an equally daring alternative.Hirsch decried “The Eternal” as both abstract and alien. Mendelssohn’s most famous opponents, Rosenzweig and Buber, used capitalized pronouns in lieu of a single divine Name; they too brought existentialist and Jewish reasoning to bear on that decision. Linking the translation of the Name to the theophany in Exodus 3 is symbolic of the many ways that German Jewish translators positioned themselves as direct heirs of Moses—the first secretary, transmitter, and translator of the Torah. The story of Der Ewige, pro and contra, recapitulates the history of German Jewish Bible translation in the modern era.
