Three generations of post-war study of Judaism in Germany: Goldberg, Schaefer, Houtman and Becker and the demolition of historical Judaism

Abstract

German academic anti-Judaism—theological contempt for the religion set forth out of Scripture by the Rabbinic sages of antiquity—begins with Martin Luther and survives the Third Reich. That is shown by the nihilistic representation of Rabbinic Judaism in post World-War II German scholarship, which denies to Judaism a determinate textual corpus, a synchronic venue, a diachronic context. Three generations—Arnold M. Goldberg, his disciple, Peter Schaefer, and Schaefer's disciples, Alberdina Houtman and Hans-Juergen Becker—have systematically denied to Judaism the possibility of historical study as a culture in dialogue with a particular social order. The outcome of the German academic tradition is a religion without determinate texts, religious texts out of all context—and texts without contents: the nullification of Judaism as a fact of history and culture.