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Bidding Information
Lot #    15716
Auction End Date    9/5/2006 12:58:00 PM (mm/dd/yyyy)
          
Title Information
Title (English)    Monatsschrift fuer
Title (Hebrew)    Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums
Author    [Periodical] Zacharias Frankel
City    Leipzig
Publisher    Heinrich Hunger
Publication Date    1858
          
Collection Information
Independent Item    This listing is an independent item not part of any collection
          
Description Information
Physical
Description
   Only edition. 397-432 pp. plus wrappers, 224:136 mm., nice margins, light age staining. A very good copy bound as issued.
          
Detailed
Description
   The November 1858 issue of Monatsschrift fuer Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums, learned monthly publication which appeared in Germany for 83 years between 1851 and 1939. The Monatsschrift was founded by Z. Frankel, while he was still rabbi at Dresden, to serve as the organ of what was called the "positive-historical school" in Jewish life and scholarship, which took up a middle position between Reform as represented by A. Geiger, and Orthodoxy as interpreted by S. R. Hirsch and A. Hildesheimer. This type of Judaism, conservative in its approach to Jewish observance and ritual but undogmatic in matters of scholarship and research, was taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary at Breslau, founded in 1854 with Frankel as head; the Monatsscrhfit was intimately though not formally connected with this Seminary and drew its editors and contributors mainly from the ranks of its lecturers and alumni. Frankel remained the editor of the Monatsschrfit until his death in 1868. In the post-revolutionary years after 1848, Frankel had hoped to stem the growing indifference of the younger generation to Jewish values by spreading the scientific knowledge of the Jewish past, thus reviving Jewish consciousness and self-respect. Frankel hoped, in particular, to influence the younger generation of rabbis who had turned their back on traditional learning. In time, the Monatsschrift became he Jewish world's leading journal. Frankel himself wrote about a quarter of the material published under his editorship, dealing with such subjects as the Septuagint, Jewish Hellenism, history of halakhah, and religious disputations in antiquity; he also wrote many painstaking book reviews. In 1869 H. Graetz took over the editorship, assisted from 1882 to 1886 by P. F. Frankl of the Berlin Hochschule. Graetz himself wrote mainly on Jewish history, Bible, and the language of the Mishnah. In 1887, when Graetz was 70, publication ceased for five years until M. Brann revived it in 1892, sharing the editorship with D. Kaufmann until his death in 1899, upon which Brann continued as sole editor. In 1903 the Monatsschrift found a new financial backer in the Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums. At Brann's death in 1920, I. Heinemann took over until his immigration to Palestine in 1938. The last volume was prepared by L. Baeck. From Frankel to the last, the Monatsschrift steered, more or less, an even course. Articles ranged over the entire gamut of Jewish scholarship. The editors generally tended to avoid systematic theology and purely religious problems. Most of the nearly 500 contributors were rabbis and seminary or university lecturers from Germany, Austria, and Hungary; but there were some from other European countries, the U.S., and Erez Israel. The last volume (83, 1939) of the Monatsschrift, a tragic and heroic monument to German-Jewish scholarship in its death throes, was confiscated and destroyed by the Nazis and only a few copies were saved; it was reprinted in 1964. Previously A. Posner had published a general index for volumes 1–75 (1938, repr. 1966).
          
Reference
Description
   EJ
        
Associated Images
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Listing Classification
Period
19th Century:    Checked
  
Location
Germany:    Checked
  
Subject
Other:    Periodical
  
Characteristic
First Editions:    Checked
Language:    German
  
Manuscript Type
  
Kind of Judaica