Repository | Book | Chapter

The chapter discusses the reception of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed in German Jewish thought roughly from the 1840s to the 1870s – with the focus on the highly ambivalent treatment of the work in the theological thought of two of the main figures of German Jewry at the time: Abraham Geiger and Heinrich Graetz. Geiger and Graetz find in the Guide cold intellectualism applied to their beloved 'spiritual" Judaism and agree that the ">Guide, contrary to its intentions, did not produce any kind of harmony between philosophy and religion. But both thinkers, Geiger and Graetz, still very much appreciated many of Maimonides' achievements in Judaism: first and foremost, that he made philosophical theology a common good among the Jews. In addition, the chapter evaluates the discussion of Maimonidean doctrines during the rabbinical conferences of the 1840s, the reception of Maimonides by Samuel Holdheim and several other rabbinical thinkers of contemporary Germany, such as Heymann Jolowicz, Moritz Eisler or Leopold Stein.It was in this period that many Reform theologians discovered in certain doctrines of the medieval treatise a mighty potential for the justification and grounding of religious reforms. Here, it was especially Maimonides' original and teleological Biblical interpretations and his rational, historizing understanding of the reasons for the commandments that often provided the Reformers with the welcome support of an accepted rabbinic authority.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-4035-8_3

Full citation: