Wissenschaft Des Judentums - Legacy

Legacy

Although the Wissenschaft movement produced a vast number of scholarly publications of lasting value, and its influence still reverberates through Jewish Studies departments (and, indeed, some yeshivas) around the world, it is possible to regard the publication of the Jewish Encyclopedia in 1901–1906 as the culmination and final flowering of this era in Jewish studies (Levy 2002). The choice of English over German as the language for this epochal work is a further sign that an era of German scholarship was drawing to a close. In the early years of the new century the Wissenschaft culture and style of scholarship was transplanted to a certain extent to bodies such as the Institute for Jewish Studies at Hebrew University (e.g., Gershom Scholem) and Jewish Studies departments at American universities such as Brandeis and Harvard (e.g., Harry Austryn Wolfson).