posted September 6, 2006
Write a 5-7-page report on a piece of secondary literature on Mendelssohn. Following is a list of items to choose from - feel free to suggest other titles that seem to be important, but that I may have missed.
Each seminar participant should choose a different item to review. Please be prepared to make your selection by the time our seminar meets for the second Jerusalem session (our third meeting), so that we can coordinate among participants. The reports are due on October 10. In addition to a printed copy, please also send your review to me by e-mail attachment. They will be distributed to all participants. The work people have done on Mendelssohn secondary literature will then serve as the basis of our "Mendelssohn, revisited" class meeting (October 16).
Your report should give a basic characterization of the work you're discussing: What are its scope, its aim, its disciplinary approach, and its agenda with respect to Mendelssohn studies? In what sort of a context or framework does the author place Mendelssohn? (Here, you will have to consider, for chapters of books, the books in which they are appearing, and the overall aims of those books, in order to assess the role of the discussions of Mendelssohn within them.) What larger phenomena or issues does the author take Mendelssohn to represent or illustrate? How is the author intervening in the previous scholarship? Are there assumptions guiding the interpretations that are worth highlighting? Are you able to say whether the account is persuasive? Whether it is original or represents a creative approach? Does it raise new questions that ought to be pursued further? Are there significant limitations to the approach?
Be sure to discuss your choice with me well in advance; I will be able to make some comments about the work you've chosen, and about why I've included it in this list.
(in roughly reverse chronological order:)
David Novak, The Jewish Social Contract (2005) [book on reserve], chap. 6
Dominique Bourel, Moses Mendelssohn (2004) [ordered for reserve; obtain via Interlibrary Loan]
Willi Goetschel, Spinoza's Modernity. Mendelssohn, Lessing, and Heine (2004) [book on reserve]
Jonathan Hess, Germans, Jews, and the Claims of Modernity (2002) [book on reserve]
Peter Fenves, "Language on a Holy Day: The Temporality of Communication in Mendelssohn," chap. 2 of Arresting Language. From Leibniz to Benjamin (2001) [book on reserve]
Jeffrey S. Librett, The Rhetoric of Cultural Dialogue. Jews and Germans from Moses Mendelssohn to Richard Wagner and Beyond (2000) [book on reserve]
David Sorkin, Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment (1996) [book on reserve]; cf. also The Berlin Haskalah and German Religious Thought (1997) [book on reserve]
Allan Arkush, Moses Mendelssohn and the Enlightenment (1994) [book on reserve / online via netlibrary], esp. chaps. 4 and 6.
Edward Breuer, "Politics, Tradition, History: Rabbinic Judaism and the Eighteenth-Century Struggle for Civil Equality" in Harvard Theological Review 85 (1992); cf. The Limits of Enlightenment: Jews, Germans, and the Eighteenth-Century Study of Scripture (1996) [book on reserve]
Amos Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish History (1993) [book on reserve], esp. chap. 7
Arnold Eisen, "Divine Legislation as 'Ceremonial Script': Mendelssohn on the Commandments," in AJS Review vol. 15, no. 2 (Fall 1990) [online via MORRIS]; cf. Arnold Eisen, Rethinking Modern Judaism. Ritual, Commandment, Community (1998) [book on reserve]
Nathan Rotenstreich, Jews and German Philosophy. The Polemics of Emancipation (1984) [book on reserve], Part 1, to p. 36 [master copy in UH 104], cf. Jewish Philosophy in Modern Times. From Mendelssohn to Rosenzweig (1968), ch. 1 [book on reserve]
Alexander Altmann, selected essays (e.g., "The Philosophical Roots of Moses Mendelssohn's Plea for Emancipation" (1974); "Moses Mendelssohn on Excommunication: The Ecclesiastical Law Background" (1980) - both in Die trostvolle Aufklärung (1982) [master copies in UH 104]); "Moses Mendelssohn's Concept of Judaism Re-examined" in Von der mittelalterlichen zur modernen Aufklärung (1987) [master copy in UH 104/book on reserve]; Introduction to Arkush translation of Jerusalem; and/or parts of Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study (1973) [book on reserve]
Fritz Bamberger, "Mendelssohn's Concept of Judaism" (1929) in Alfred Jospe (ed.), Studies in Jewish Thought. An Anthology of German Jewish Scholarship [book on reserve/master copy in UH 104]