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Due to the lack of acceptance of Wissenschaft des Judentums in academia, modern Jewish scholarship in the nineteenth century organized itself along networks of institutions such as rabbinical seminaries, contacts with related disciplines like Oriental Studies, and personal relationships. This last pathway of communication was essential for the cohesion of modern Jewish scholarship. Therefore, my essay portrays the correspondence between David Kaufmann and Leopold Zunz as an example of this channel of communication. By analyzing the exchange of letters and personal encounters between the two scholars, particular attention will be paid to the following questions: How were the letters transmitted until today? What were the main topics of the correspondence between these representatives of two generations of Wissenschaft des Judentums? Which were the positions of Kaufmann and Zunz towards the present and future of modern Jewish scholarship? How did Kaufmann become the first biographer of Zunz?
In 1924, the Berlin ophthalmologist Arthur Czellitzer (1871–1943) and like-minded members of the local Jewish community founded the Society for Jewish Family Research. A year later, the Society launched the journal Jüdische Familienforschung (Jewish Family Research), edited by Czellitzer. The Society was an outstanding platform of professional academic and amateur researchers and promoted a type of Jewish genealogy and family history that was shaped by the historical-medical discourse of the time. The concepts and methods of both the biological sciences and Wissenschaft des Judentums shaped and defined the academic approach to family research and history in Czellitzer’s and the Society’s work. The Society soon became the leading international association for the academic Jewish genealogical research. Despite of its brutal end in 1938, Arthur Czellitzer’s and the Society’s works, the issues raised, and the methods they created shape Jewish family research and genealogy until today.
When the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau opened its doors in 1854, it established a novel form of rabbinical education: the systematic combination of Jewish studies at the seminary in parallel with university studies. The Breslau seminary became the model for most later institutions for rabbinical training in Europe and the United States. The seminaries were the new sites of modern Jewish scholarship, especially the academic study of Judaism (Wissenschaft des Judentums). Their function and goal were to preserve, (re)organize, and transmit Jewish knowledge in the modern age. As such, they became central nodes in Jewish scholarly networks. This case study highlights the multi-nodal connections between the Conservative seminaries in Breslau, Philadelphia, New York, Budapest, and Vienna. At the same time, it is intended to provide an example of the potential of transnational and transfer studies for the history of the Jewish religious learning in Europe and the United States.