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Desperados at Sea
(2023)
Pirates are fortune-seeking fighters at sea. Their exploits fire the imaginations of their victims and admirers, drawing a veil over individuals who rarely bear a real name and pursue their adventurous occupations as buccaneers, filibusters, freebooters, privateers, pirates, or corsairs. Piracy, corsairing, and contraband trade were epidemic among the Egyptians and the Phoenicians, the Greeks and the Vikings, the Spaniards and the Ottomans, the Muslims, and the Christians. And the Jews.
Jacob Brandon Maduro’s Memoirs and Related Observations (Havana, 1953) speak to the lasting yet malleable legacy of Jewish Caribbean/Atlantic mercantile communities that defined early modern settlement in the Americas. A close reading of the Memoirs, alongside relevant archival records and community narratives, lends new perspectives to scholarship on Port Jewries and the Atlantic Diaspora. Specifically concerned with Jacob’s adoption of such leading intellectual and political tropes as the Monroe doctrine, José Martí’s Nuestra America, and a Zionism that evolved from an ideology to a reality, the Memoirs reveal a narrative at once defined by the tremendous upheavals of the first half of the 20th century, and an enduring sense of Jewish diasporic peoplehood defined through a Port Jew paradigm whereby the preservation of Jewish ethnicity is understood as synonymous with the championing of modernity.
“Creating a Maritime Future”
(2023)
This article explores the importance of the port city of Hamburg in the evolving discourses on the creation of a maritime future, a vision which became influential in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. While some Jewish representatives in the city aimed at preserving and intertwining Hanseatic and Jewish traditions in order to secure a Jewish presence in the port city under the pressure of the Nazi regime and thereafter, others wanted to create new emigration opportunities, especially to Mandatory Palestine, and create a Jewish maritime future in Eretz Israel. Different Zionist organizations supported the newly evolving maritime ideas, such as the “conquest of the sea”, and promoted the image of a Jewish seafaring nation. Despite the difficulties in the 1940s, these concepts gained influence post-1945 and led to the foundation of the fishery kibbutz “Zerubavel” in Blankenese/Hamburg. However, the idea of a Hanseatic Jewish future also remained influential and illustrates how differently a “Jewish maritime future” was imagined and used to link past, present and future.
Mothers of Seafaring
(2023)
The article aims to trace the contribution of Jewish women in the Yishuv’s maritime history. Taking the example of Henrietta Diamond, a founding member and chairperson of the Zebulun Seafaring Society, the article seeks to explore the representation and role of women in a growing Jewish maritime domain from the 1930s to the 1950s. It examines Zionist narratives on the ‘New Jew’ and the Jewish body and studies their relevance for the emerging field of maritime activities in the Yishuv. By contextualizing the work and depiction of Henrietta Diamond, the article sheds new light on the gendered notions that underlay the emergence of the Jewish maritime domain and illustrates the patterns of inclusion and exclusion in it.
The birth of the Yishuv’s national shipping company, ZIM was preceded by private enterprise; the sea had not traditionally been a focus of the Zionist movement. In the 1930s, a five-year span of private commercial shipping saw three companies in the Jewish community in Palestine – Palestine Shipping Company, Palestine Maritime Lloyd, and Atid – before shipping was cut short by the outbreak of the Second World War. Despite their brief lifespans and their negligible contribution to general shipping, these companies constituted an important milestone. Their existence helped shift the Yishuv leadership’s attitudes about shipping’s importance for the community and the need for it to be supported by national institutions.
“Israel am Meere”
(2023)
For Jews in Germany, the period following the Nazis’ rise to power in January 1933 was a period of decision-making on many levels: How should they respond to the persecution? If they decided to emigrate, many more decisions had to be made: How does one leave a country, and where should one go? A key moment in the process and in the cultural practice of emigration is the beginning of the sea voyage – when the need for departure and the hope for a new arrival jointly create a period of liminality. Looking at reports from sea voyages of exploration and emigration from the 1930s, this contribution discusses the question whether, and in what ways, such reflections can be read in the context of religious experiences and in the search for Jewish identities in times of turmoil.
‚Maise Jeschurun‘
(2023)
Abgelegte Musik
(2023)
Schutz und Schaden
(2023)
Einleitung
(2023)
American occupying forces made the promotion of Jewish-Christian dialogue part of their plans for postwar German reconstruction. They sought to export American models of Jewish-Christian cooperation to Germany, while simultaneously validating and valorizing claims about the connection between democracy and tri-faith religious pluralism in the United States. The small size of the Jewish population in Germany meant that Jews did not set the terms of these discussions, and evidence shows that both German and American Jews expressed skepticism about participating in dialogue in the years immediately following the Holocaust. But opting out would have meant that discussions in Germany about the Judeo-Christian tradition that the American government advanced as the centerpiece of postwar democratic reconstruction would take place without a Jewish contribution. American Jewish leaders, present in Germany and in the US, therefore decided to opt in, not because they supported the project, but because it seemed far riskier to be left out.
A Secular Tradition
(2021)
This article focuses on the social philosopher Horace Kallen and the revisions he made to the concept of cultural pluralism that he first developed in the early 20th century, applying it to postwar America and the young State of Israel. It shows how he opposed the assumption that the United States’ social order was based on a “Judeo-Christian tradition.” By constructing pluralism as a civil religion and carving out space for secular self-understandings in midcentury America, Kallen attempted to preserve the integrity of his earlier political visions, developed during World War I, of pluralist societies in the United States and Palestine within an internationalist global order. While his perspective on the State of Israel was largely shaped by his American experiences, he revised his approach to politically functionalizing religious traditions as he tested his American understanding of a secular, pluralist society against the political theology effective in the State of Israel. The trajectory of Kallen’s thought points to fundamental questions about the compatibility of American and Israeli understandings of religion’s function in society and its relation to political belonging, especially in light of their transnational connection through American Jewish support for the recently established state.
In Search of Belonging
(2021)
More than 200,000 Jews left the Habsburg province of Galicia between 1881 and 1910. No longer living in the places of their childhood, they settled in urban centers, such as in New York’s Lower East Side. In this neighborhood, Galician Jews began to search for new relationships that linked the places they left and the ones where they arrived and settled. By looking at Galicia through the lens of autobiographical writings by former Jewish immigrants who became established residents of New York, this article emphasizes the role of regionalism in the context of transnational conceptions of a new American Jewish self-understanding. It argues that the key to analyzing the evolution of “eastern Europe” as a common place of origin for American Jewry is the constant dialogue between the places of origin and arrival. Specifically, philanthropic efforts during and after the First World War and the proliferation of tourism both enabled these settled immigrants to gradually replace regional notions, such as the idea of Galicia, with a mythical image of eastern Europe to create a sense of community as American Jews.
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.
As mid-19th-century American Jews introduced radical changes to their religious observance and began to define Judaism in new ways, to what extent did they engage with European Jewish ideas? Historians often approach religious change among Jews from German lands during this period as if Jewish immigrants had come to America with one set of ideas that then evolved solely in conversation with their American contexts. Historians have similarly cast the kinds of Judaism Americans created as both unique to America and uniquely American. These characterizations are accurate to an extent. But to what extent did Jewish innovations in the United States take place in conversation with European Jewish developments? Looking to the 19th-century American Jewish press, this paper seeks to understand how American Jews engaged European Judaism in formulating their own ideas, understanding themselves, and understanding their place in world Judaism.
This article explores the multi-directional geographic trajectories and ties of Jews who came to the United States in the 19th century, working to complicate simplistic understandings of “German” Jewish immigration. It focuses on the case study of Henry Cohn, an ordinary Russian-born Jew whose journeys took him to Prussia, New York, Savannah, and California. Once in the United States he returned to Europe twice, the second time permanently, although a grandson ended up in California, where he worked to ensure the preservation of Cohn’s records. This story highlights how Jews navigated and transgressed national boundaries in the 19th century and the limitations of the historical narratives that have been constructed from their experiences.
This article explores childhood discourses in the Jewish society of the Russian Empire. It focuses on images of parents, while exploring the differences between pre-modern and modern narrative types in Jewish autobiographies. In the pre-modern paradigm, mothers are barely present while fathers appear more often, although neither parent demonstrates emotional affection toward the child. In the modern paradigm, parents are either equally present or the mother is more prominent, they engage in the everyday activities with the child, and do not hesitate to show their emotional love. Moreover, the notions of inner world and child’s individuality emerge. These changes correspond to major shifts in discourses shaping the attitude toward children in the European society.
The article deals with the family backgrounds and school careers of teachers for religious education at Jewish higher schools during the 19th century. As many of them are known because of their academic publications, our knowledge about their work as teachers is still a desideratum. Therefore, biographies of teachers at both Jewish higher schools in Frankfurt (Main) are presented and compared with the objective to identify typical structures. A key finding is the fact that access to the position as a teacher was not much formalized. Different ways to become a teacher were characteristic for both schools whilst the Modern Orthodox “Unterrichtsanstalt der Israelitischen Religionsgesellschaft” (IRG) was furthermore characterized by close family relations between its teachers. On the other hand, within the liberal network there existed a strong support based on shared convictions which worked as counterpart to the familiar network of the Modern Orthodox School.
The paper investigates how cultural and social capital were passed down to the next generations via letters of recommendation. Focusing on fathers recommending their sons to German Jewish banker Gerson (von) Bleichröder, the paper asks how father-son relations were described and which role equivalent backgrounds, especially in terms of Jewishness and social standing, played in this process. Mainly discussed are four different patriarchs approaching Bleichröder on behalf of their sons to further their careers. Making use of methods such as historical network analysis and semantic analysis the paper introduces the letters of recommendation as a complex yet promising practice in order to maintain, strengthen and even further the family’s (social) capital over generational changes. The paper finds trust and tradition to be crucial for successful recommendations. Situated at a liminal point of economic and personal spheres, recommendations shed new light on crucial questions of 19th-century Jewish history, such as acculturation and distinctiveness as well as on intra-familial dynamics in the face of profound social transformation.
In 1810, Moses Lackenbacher, together with two of his children, Israel and Heinrich, and Moses Löwenstein created the company “Moses Lackenbacher & Compagnie” with headquarters in Nagykanizsa and a branch in Vienna. The main profile of the company was army purveyance. The business activity resulted in a high spatial mobility which led to socio-cultural acculturation and conversions to Christianity within the kinship. This paper explores the connection between kinship and the operation of the company on the basis of the prominent yet little-researched Lackenbachers in the early 19th-century Habsburg Monarchy. Central questions are how the relatives organized a company during the Napoleonic wars, as well as the impact of operating a business; how familial bonds and kinship links were affected, and, in this context, how relatives together evolved into a multi-religious network of kinship.
Tu felix Camelot nube!
(2020)
This article explores the ways in which the Yiddish Arthurian romance Viduvilt (sixteenth ct.) reworks its Middle High German model text, Wirnt von Grafenberg’s Wigalois (1210/1220), for an early modern Jewish audience. Through seemingly minor changes, the adaptor creates a story world in which family politics play an essential role and become the driving force behind the story development. Part of this change is the reevaluation of female figures, in particular mothers. In contrast to its model, the Arthurian knight in Viduvilt is created as a figure that relies and depends largely on the decisions made by mothers, who are portrayed as powerful matres familias.
Genealogical documents offer crucial information on various aspects of Jewish history. They are still underappreciated by many historians, and there is little overlap between academic researchers and the genealogical community, for whom such documents serve a different purpose, as they retrieve individual family histories. The article provides an overview of the material held by Leo Baeck Institute Archives and Library as well as other digital resources for family research today.
Squaring the pedigree
(2020)
Arthur Czellitzer (1872 – 1943) embodies the interdependence between eugenics and genealogy in early 20th-century Germany. He developed widely discussed genealogical recording techniques designed both for studies about human heredity and for the use in historical family research. When he shifted his focus from medical family studies to Jewish family research after World War I, he maintained a eugenic agenda which was now primarily targeted at the preservation of the “Jewish race.”
The Book of Radiance
(2019)
Tewje in Deutschland
(2019)
Drawing on the example of Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye the Dairyman, this article covers the history of Yiddish translation and publication in Germany in the 20th century.Following the paradigm of translation as a cultural practice, I demonstrate how the translation reflects aspects of Jewish-German cultural history, focussing on a mainly inner-Jewish identity discourse before the Shoah and a remembrance context after it. Whereas decisive differences and changes characterize 20th-century history in diachronic as well as synchronic respect, the article reflects also on continuities and parallels.
The Ram Bible (Tanakh Ram) is a recently-published Bible edition printed in two columns: the right-hand column features the original biblical Hebrew text and the lefthand column features the translation of the Bible into a high-register literary Israeli (Reclaimed Hebrew). The Ram Bible edition has gained impressive academic and popular attention. This paper looks at differences between academics, teachers, students, media personalities and senior officials in the education system, regarding their attitude to the Ram Bible. Our study reveals that Bible teachers and students who make frequent use of this edition understand its contribution to comprehending the biblical language, stories, and ideas. Opponents of Ram Bible are typically administrators and theoretician scholars who advocate the importance of teaching the Bible but do not actually teach it themselves. We argue that the fundamental difference between biblical Hebrew and Israeli makes the Hebrew Bible incomprehensible to native Israeli speakers. We explain the advantages of employing tools such as the Ram Bible.
Scholars of modern Jewish thought explore the hermeneutics of “translation” to describe the transference of concepts between discourses. I suggest a more radical approach – translation as transvaluation – is required. Eschewing modern tests of truth such as “the author would have accepted it” and “the author should have accepted it,” this radical form of translation is intentionally unfaithful to original meanings. However, it is not a reductionist reading or a liberating text. Instead, it is a persistent squabble depending on both source and translation for sustenance. Exploring this paradigm entails a review of three expositions of the Korah biblical narrative; three readings dedicated to keeping an eye on current events: (1) Tsene-rene (Prague, 1622), biblical prose; (2) Yaldei Yisrael Kodesh, (Tel Aviv, 1973), a secular Zionist reworking of Tsene-rene; and (3) The Jews are Coming (Israel, 2014–2017) a satirical television show.
Tewje in Deutschland
(2019)
Drawing on the example of Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye the Dairyman, this article covers the history of Yiddish translation and publication in Germany in the 20th century.Following the paradigm of translation as a cultural practice, I demonstrate how the translation reflects aspects of Jewish-German cultural history, focussing on a mainly inner-Jewish identity discourse before the Shoah and a remembrance context after it. Whereas decisive differences and changes characterize 20th-century history in diachronic as well as synchronic respect, the article reflects also on continuities and parallels.
This article explores an instructive case of translation critique against the background of the rise of Zionism in Europe at the turn of the previous century. It seeks to answer the question: Why did David Frishman, one of the most prolific Hebrew writers and translators of the late 1890s and early 1900s, criticize Vladimir Jabotinsky’s Russian translation of Hayim Nahman Bialik’s Hebrew poems? Both Bialik and Jabotinsky were major figures in the field of Hebrew culture and Zionist politics in the early 1900s, while Frishman generally shunned partisan activism and consistently presented himself as devoted solely to literature. Frishman perceived literature, nevertheless, as a political arena, viewing translation, in particular, as a locus of ideological debate. Writing from the viewpoint of a political minority at a time in which the Hebrew translation industry in Europe gained momentum, Frishman deemed translation a tool for cementing cultural hierarchies. He anticipated later analyses of the act and products of translation as reflective of intercultural tensions. The article suggests, more specifically, that it was Frishman’s view of the Hebrew Bible that informed his “avant-garde” stance on translation.
Hilfe für Erez Israel
(2020)
Zionistische Debatten im Kontext des Ersten Weltkriegs am Beispiel der Herzl-Bund-Blätter 1914–1918
(2019)
Die Bedeutung des Ersten Weltkriegs als zentraler Kontext für die Aushandlung, Anpassung und Verwerfung unterschiedlicher Konzepte jüdischer Identität im Deutschen Kaiserreich, aber auch über dessen Grenzen hinaus, wurde in der jüngsten Forschung in verschiedenen Aspekten erörtert. Die Kriegserfahrung gab insbesondere nationaljüdischen bzw. zionistischen Gruppierungen wichtige Denkanstöße und beförderte die Konkretisierung ihrer Handlungsstrategien für den Aufbau eines jüdischen Nationalwesens in Palästina. Die vorliegende Studie möchte den Fokus historisch-soziologischer Forschung auf der akademischen zionistischen Jugendbewegung erweitern, indem sie eine zionistische Jugendorganisation in den Mittelpunkt rückt, die in wissenschaftlichen Betrachtungen bisher kaum Beachtung fand: den 1912 in Halberstadt gegründeten Herzl-Bund, einen Zusammenschluss junger zionistisch gesinnter Kaufleute. Die Autorin unternimmt eine Auseinandersetzung mit dem publizistischen Schaffen seiner Mitglieder im Kontext des Ersten Weltkriegs, anhand derer es nachzuvollziehen gilt, wie die „großen Themen“, die die Arbeit und Debatten der zionistischen Bewegung im Deutschen Kaiserreich zu dieser Zeit bestimmten, auf der Ebene des Herzl-Bundes und der in ihm vereinigten Herzl-Clubs verhandelt wurden. Hierbei wird unter Rückgriff auf die interne Informationsschrift, die Herzl-Bund-Blätter, untersucht, welche inhaltlichen Aspekte Eingang in die Debatten der zionistischen Jugend gefunden haben. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Besprechung dreier Themenkomplexe: 1) deutsch-jüdischer Nationalismus versus jüdische Nationalbewegung, 2) Antisemitismus und 3) die Begegnung mit osteuropäischen Jüdinnen und Juden. Ziel ist es, diskursive Selbstverständigungsprozesse entlang dieser Themen offenzulegen, die auch der Beantwortung der Frage dienen, ob die Erfahrungen des Ersten Weltkriegs als Schablonen zur Neubewertung des Selbstverständnisses und der eigenen Arbeit des Herzl-Bundes verstanden werden können.
Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) portrayed modern Zionist historical scholarship as both a rejection and a corrective fulfillment of earlier eras of Wissenschaft des Judentums. Through attacks on his scholarly predecessors, Scholem detailed his vision for the potential of this renaissance of Wissenschaft to entail both objective research and a commitment to treating Judaism as a “living organism,” an approach that would ultimately ensure the scholarship could deliver value to the Jewish community. This article will explore the tensions that arise from Scholem’s commitments, his occasional admissions of these tensions, and his attempts to overcome them.
Ismar Elbogen (1874–1943) and Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) were both pioneers in Jewish thought and culture. Elbogen authored the most comprehensive study on Jewish liturgy, while Rosenzweig’s magnum opus The Star of Redemption has emerged as one of the twentieth century’s most innovative and elusive works of Jewish thought. Even though Rosenzweig is not known for his work on or appreciation for the Wissenschaft des Judentums, this article will explore this overlooked aspect of his thought by exploring the influence of Ismar Elbogen. Commentaries to Rosenzweig’s views on prayer are numerous, yet none mention the work of Elbogen. This is a problem. By comparing Elbogen’s work on Jewish liturgy with Rosenzweig’s writings on prayer in the Star, we are able to demonstrate how methods seminal to the Wissenschaft des Judentums helped articulate several of Rosenzweig’s most innovative contributions to Jewish thought.
The St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy (PFA RAN) contains two manuscript biographies of Daniel Chwolson, the Russian-Jewish Orientalist, advocate of Jewish scholarship, and bridge builder to the Breslau Jewish Theological Seminary. They were written by his pupil and colleague, Pavel Kokovtsov, and his grandson Yevgeny Chwolson, respectively. These two texts are studied against the background of published texts and popular opinion of Chwolson in late Imperial Russia. Apart from some details, these manuscripts offer limited additional information as factual sources, most of their contents being mere variation of published texts. However, the biography of Chwolson written by his grandson is a valuable source on the reception of Chwolson and illustrates the potential of further mythological appreciation of his personality and works in the Soviet time as a defense strategy for Chwolson’s family. It also contains crucial information on the fate of Chwolson’s archive.
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?
This article examines the works of Adolf Jellinek (1821–1893) on the history of mysticism and the Kabbalah, which were written during his fourteen-year residence in Leipzig. It argues that studying the Spanish Kabbalists allowed Jellinek to work through ideas concerning the development of Jewish theology and the interplay of Jewish and non-Jewish philosophical perspectives. The article briefly describes Jellinek’s early education and attraction to Leipzig; his first writings on Kabbalah; and concludes with an analysis of his larger philological and genealogical projects on the authorship and literary background of the Zohar. Though Jellinek’s later prominence as a rabbi and preacher in Vienna has had the tendency to obscure his years in Leipzig, it was Jellinek’s work in Saxony that laid the groundwork for most of his subsequent scholarship on Jewish mysticism. This article is a brief introduction to this research and one more step toward revealing the still too often forgotten Wissenschaft interest in the history of Jewish mysticism.
Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler (1892–1953) is often portrayed as antagonistic to secular studies. However, his writings show more of an intellectual hierarchy that places Torah wisdom at the top and all other wisdom a distant second. R. Dessler expended great effort promoting Torah scholarship while generally refraining from disparaging secular studies. Looking at the writings of his predecessors in the Mussar (moralist) movement, one can see that there was no disapproval of worldly education there, either: In fact, R. Dessler and his predecessors were well-educated in many secular disciplines. This essay looks to places R. Dessler’s attitude toward Wissenschaft des Judentums within the context of his life’s mission to advance talmudic study and his consequent unwillingness to countenance anything that detracted from furthering the learning of Torah. I argue that, whereas his extreme opposition to Wissenschaft was the result of his aversion to its aims, methods and conclusions, his nuanced relationship to Orthodox Wissenschaft was the result of the hierarchy through which he viewed secular as opposed to talmudic study.
Enlisted History
(2018)
Zeev Jawitz (1847–1924) was active in all spheres of culture: history, language, literature and pedagogy, all the while striving for harmonization with the Orthodox outlook. He understood that a people returning to its homeland needed a national culture, one that was both broad and deep, and that the narrow world of the Halakhah would no longer suffice. His main work was the multi-volume Toldot Israel (History of Israel, published 1895–1924) which encompasses Jewish history from its beginning – Patriarchs – until the end of the 19th century. His historical writing, with its emphasis on internal religious Jewish sources, the unity and continuity of Jewish history, and respect of Orthodox principles, comes as an alternative to the historiography of the celebrated historian Heinrich Graetz. The alternative that Jawitz tried to substitute for Wissenschaft des Judentums, was influenced not only by Orthodox ideology, which he supported, but also by his nationalist ideology. He saw himself and his disciples as the “priests of memory,” presenting the true and immanent history and character of the Jewish nation as a platform to the Jewish future in the land of Israel.
The article examines the work of Rabbi Yitzhak Isaac Halevy, arguably the most significant Orthodox response to the Wissenschaft des Judentums school of historiography. Halevy himself exemplified the Orthodox struggle against Wissenschaft, yet his work expressed a commitment to modern historiographical discipline that suggested an internalization of some of the very same premises adopted by Wissenschaft. While criticizing the representatives of Wissenschaft, Halevy was, at the same time, fighting for the internalization of its innovative characteristics into Orthodox society. He saw himself as a leader of a movement working towards the development of Orthodox Jewish studies and his application of modern historiographic principles from an Orthodox worldview as creating critical Orthodox historiography. Halevy’s approach promotes an understanding of Orthodoxy as a complex phenomenon, of which the struggle against modern secularization is just one of many characteristics.