The Bible, the Talmud, and the New Testament. Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik

accusations. The same was true of Hermann Strack, who published two works of his defense of Jews in German: May Jews Be Called “Criminals” on Account of Their Religion, court proceedings of his 1893 defense of Jews in Berlin; and The Jews and Human Sacrifice, based on 1891 court testimonies he gave in the trial of Esther Solymosi.

      90 See William Ayerst, “The Rev. Dr. McCaul and the Jewish Mission,” Jewish Intelligence and Monthly Account of the Proceedings of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews, n.s. 4 (1864): 31–34, cited in Ruderman, “Towards a Preliminary Portrait of an Evangelical Missionary to the Jews,” 51, 52. Cf. Endelman, Leaving the Fold, 246.

      91 McCaul, The Old Paths, 24–32; and E. Stern, “Catholic Judaism,” 491.

      92 Alexander McCaul, Sketches of Judaism and Jews (London, 1838), 2.

      93 See McCaul, The Old Paths, 652.

      94 See David Feldman, Englishmen and Jews: Social Relations and Political Culture 1840–1914 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 54, 55.

      95 Even before coming to England, Soloveitchik likely had at least heard of McCaul’s work. In a letter from Isaac ber Levenson to David Luria in 1872, reflecting back on the late 1830s, Levenson writes: “McCaul’s work was read widely. Circulating in Vilna and St. Petersburg.” Cited in E. Stern, “Catholic Judaism,” p. 8 in typescript and n. 31.

      96 On this, see E. Stern, “Catholic Judaism.”

      97 See ibid., 485–486.

      98 Houston Stuart Chamberlain, Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (Elibron Classics, 2005). The Elibron Classics edition is a facsimile of the 1911 Munich edition.

      99 E. Stern, “Catholic Judaism,” 498. Others, such as Franz Delitzsch, argued similarly. Delitzsch favored Reform Judaism precisely because it diminished the Talmud in favor of prophetic Judaism, thus coming closer to the Jesus movement. See A. Levenson, “Missionary Protestants,” 410.

      100 E. Stern, “Catholic Judaism,” 501–503.

      101 Ibid., 504.

      102 On Hoga, see Beth-Zion Lask Abrahams, “Stanislaus Hoga—Apostate and Penitent,” Transactions: Jewish Historical Society of England 15 (1939–1945): 121–149; and David Ruderman, “The Intellectual and Spiritual Journey of Stanislaus Hoga: From Judaism to Christianity to Hebrew Christianity,” in idem, Converts of Conviction, 41–53. I want to thank Professor Ruderman for making this text available to me before its publication.

      103 See Lask Abrahams, “Stanislaus Hoga,” 139.

      104 See Ruderman, “The Intellectual and Spiritual Journey of Stanislaus Hoga,” 44. For more on Hoga’s relationship to McCaul, see Ruderman, “Towards a Preliminary Portrait of an Evangelical Missionary to the Jews.”

      105 For an analysis of these works in some detail, see Ruderman, “The Intellectual and Spiritual Journey of Stanislaus Hoga.”

      106 Ibid., 9, 10 (in typescript).

      107 Margoliouth studied in the yeshivas of Grodno and Ger before abandoning his family in Poland and migrating to England. He published a book about his trip to Palestine, with much autobiographical information, as A Pilgrimage to the Land of My Fathers in 1850. Cf. Endelman, Leaving the Fold, 242–243.

      108 On Hoga’s critique of Reform, see Lask Abrahams, “Stanislaus Hoga,” 128: “He writes with vigor against the tendency of new-fashioned Jews of our age, and especially of some so-called Rabbis in Germany who wish to not be Jews but Germans.” On Hoga’s return to Judaism, see Shnayer Leiman, “The Baal Teshuva and the Emden-Eibeschuetz Controversy,” Judaic Studies 1 (1985): 3–26

      109 See Ruderman, “The Intellectual and Spiritual Journey of Stanislaus Hoga,” 14 (in typescript).

      110 Cited in Lask Abrahams, “Stanislaus Hoga,” 128.

      111 On this, see Ismar Schorsch, “From Wolfenbüttel to Wissenschaft,” in idem, From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1994), 233–254.

      112 See Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, “Laws of Kings,” chaps. 11–12.

      113 Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, For the Sake of Heaven and Earth (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2004), esp. 148–153.

      114 See Byron Sherwin, “Who Do You Say That I Am (Mark 8:29): A New Jewish View of Jesus,” in Jesus Through Jewish Eyes, ed. B. Bruteau (New York: Orbis Books, 2001), 31–44.

      115 For a lengthy discussion of this idea, see Maimonides, “Epistle on Resurrection,” in Epistles of Maimonides: Crisis in Leadership, trans. A. Halkin (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1993), 246–280. More generally, see Jon D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006).

      116 This issue was the subject of debate between Samuel David Luzzatto (1800–1865) and Nachman Krochmal (1785–1840), both of whom lived during Soloveitchik’s lifetime. Luzzatto’s critique of Maimonides’ rejection of resurrection is defended by Krochmal in a sharp letter. See Krochmal, More Nevukhei Ha-Zeman (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2010), 427–432.

      117 BT Mo’ed Qaṭan 28a, “Raba sat before Rabbi Naḥman. He saw him going to sleep [dying]…. Raba said to him: “Appear to me, master, in a dream.” He appeared to him. Raba asked him: “Did you, master, suffer pains?” Rabbi Naḥman said to him: “[As little] as taking hair out of a glass of milk [i.e., the separation of the soul from the body is as easy and sweet as that].”

      118 See John G. Gager, Who Made Early Christianity?: The Jewish Lives of the Apostle Paul (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 17–52. Others explore similar views. See, e.g., E. P. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1983); Krister Stendhal, Paul Among the Jews and Gentiles (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1976); Lloyd Gaston, Paul and Torah (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1987); Daniel Langton, The Apostle Paul in the Jewish Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); and Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). Of those mentioned, Gager makes the strongest case of Paul’s affinity with the Pharisees, which dovetails with Soloveitchik’s view.

      119 See Theodor Herzl, “A Solution to the Jewish Question,” repr. in Israel in the Middle East: Documents and Readings on Society, Politics, and Foreign Relations, Pre-1948 to the Present, ed. Jehuda Reinharz and Itamar Rabinowitz (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2008), 16–20. Cf. Herzl, The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl (Tel Aviv: Herzl Press, 1960), 9–10.

      120 See Peter Schäfer, Toledot Yeshu: The Life Story of Jesus, 2 vols. and database, ed. M. Meerson and trans. Yaakov Deutsch (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011).

      121 Qol Qore (London, 1868), 1, 2; and Hyman, Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik, 54, 55.

      122 Naphtali Zevi Berlin (Neziv), “Se’ar Yisrael,” first published in his Rinat Yisrael and again as an appendix to Neziv’s commentary to Song of Songs. On the Neziv, see Gil Perl, The Pillar of Volozhin: Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin and the World of Nineteenth-Century Lithuanian Torah Scholarship (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2012). Neziv’s small tract on anti-Semitism was published in English by Howard Joseph, Why Antisemitism?: A Translation of “The Remnant of Israel” (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1996).

      123 A few other rabbis in this period exhibited a positive view toward Christianity. One, Jonathan Eybeshutz (1690–1764), was a protagonist with Emden on the question of Sabbateanism but, like Emden, was quite sympathetic to Christianity. Eliezer Fleckeles (1754–1826) was also engaged in the anti-Sabbatean controversy but, like Emden and Eybeshutz, was sympathetic toward Christianity. Of these three figures, Soloveitchik mentions only Emden.

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