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Leopold Zunz: Scholarship and Revolution

Exhibition Opening

Calling Cards from the Zunz Collection
On display will also be a selection of calling cards from visitors to Leopold and Adelheid Zunz. The cards give a vivid impression of the extensive network of scholars, friends, and family members who visited the couple. LBI Archives, Leopold and Adelheid Zunz Collection, AR 3648, Series II. The collection contains more than 800 visiting cards
Portrait of Leopold Zunz, at the age of 49
Portrait of Leopold Zunz, at the age of 49 By Gustav Heidenreich Reproduction of Oil painting, 1843 Courtesy of The National Library of Israel This portrait of Leopold Zunz shows the founder of Wissenschaft des Judentums at the peak of his life a few years after the publication of his major works and his political engagement during the 1848 revolution. The portrait was painted by the Berlin genre and historical painter Gustav Heidenreich, later known for his paintings of Nordic Gods in the New Museum in Berlin. National Library of Israel.
On Rabbinic Literature by Leopold Zunz
On Rabbinic Literature by Leopold Zunz. Berlin, Maurer, 1818. With this slim volume, Leopold Zunz established the academic field of Jewish Studies, advocating for the study of history as the key to Jewish freedom and equality.
Portrait of Leopold Zunz by Carl Fischer
Portrait of Leopold Zunz (1794–1886), Lithograph by Carl Fischer, c. 1864. Zunz was a Jewish historian and co-founder of the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement for the academic study of Jewish texts and culture. LBI Art & Objects Collection, 78.426.
Date/Time
Venue
Center for Jewish History (map)
15 W. 16th St.
New York, NY 10011
Format
In person
Admissions
LBI/CJH/Partner Members, Students, Seniors: $5
General: $10

Leopold Zunz (1794–1886) founded the discipline of Jewish Studies (Wissenschaft des Judentums) and produced its first great body of scholarly work, but his scholarship was never an end in itself. Rather, he forged it as a weapon in the fight for emancipation, with unambiguous political implications. Ismar Schorsch (Jewish Theological Seminary) discusses Zunz’s scholarly and political legacy at the opening of a new exhibition focused on Zunz in the Smart Gallery at the Center for Jewish History.

Leopold Zunz: Creativity in Adversity will be available for purchase at this event.

About the Speaker

Ismar Schorsch is chancellor emeritus of The Jewish Theological Seminary and Rabbi Herman Abramovitz Distinguished Service Professor of Jewish History. He received the Leo Baeck Medal in 2015. Since retiring as chancellor in 2006, Dr. Schorsch has returned to his first love: the life of the mind and serious scholarship. His most recent publication is “Better a Scholar than a Prophet” – Studies on the Creation of Jewish Studies a collection of essays that constitute a contextual study of the perilous origins and rapid developments of the Wissenschaft des Judentums outside the framework of the German university. His biography, Leopold Zunz: Creativity in Adversity was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2016.

Previously he had authored Canon Without Closure (March 2007, Aviv Press), a wide-ranging collection of Torah commentaries written during his tenure as chancellor. In 2004, he published a two-volume collection of the articles and essays written while chancellor titled Polarities in Balance; and in 1995, he published The Sacred Cluster: The Core Values of Conservative Judaism, a highly acclaimed monograph outlining the seven fundamental tenets of the Movement. In Feburary 2018, Professor Schorsch was awarded the Moses Mendelsohn Prize by the city of Dessau, Germany.

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