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第6巻
丸山 空大 Takao Maruyama「ユダヤ教の本質」をめぐる論争と世紀転換期のドイツ・ユダヤ教
The Debate on the Essence of Judaism and German Jewry at the Turn of the 20th Century
2014年06月 発行
[ 要旨 ]
本稿は20世紀初頭にドイツ・ユダヤ人の間で起こった「ユダヤ教の本質」をめぐる論争を取り上げる。この論争は、世俗化とドイツへの同化を規定路線として進展してきた近代のドイツ・ユダヤ教が、この路線に関して大いに動揺し、自問した時期におこった。それは、ユダヤ教とは何なのか、またユダヤ人とは誰なのかというアイデンティティをめぐる論争であると同時に、ドイツにおけるユダヤ人共同体のあり方をめぐるイデオロギー的な問題でもあったといえる。本稿ではまず、19世紀後半から20世紀前半にかけてのユダヤ教の状況を概観する。その後に、「ユダヤ教の本質」をめぐる論争がどのようなものであったのか、これに参加した幾人かの論客（レオ・ベック、イザーク・ブロイアー、ヤコブ・フローマー）の議論を通して明らかにする。そして最後に、同時代のプロテスタントのリベラル派との関係を考慮に入れながら、この論争を世紀転換期ユダヤ教の歴史の中に、位置づけてゆく。
[ Abstract ]
This essay focuses on the debate over the essence of Judaism, das Wesen des Judentums, in early 20thcentury Germany. In the late 19th century, German Jews were at a turning point. On the one hand, the process of emancipation that had begun a century earlier seemed successful, if slow; on the other, the tide of anti-Semitism showed no signs of abating. Against this persistent hostility, German Jews decided to found defensive institutions, a move they had long resisted out of concern that any assertion of Jewish separation from German society would cause a further increase of anti-Semitism. The most prominent of these protective institutions was the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (CV, the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith). Although the CV began with a defensive posture, it understood itself as a liberal, secular, and non-political organization, since it did not want to articulate any separation between Jews and Germans. Its early policy, “mission indoors” and “apologetics outdoors,” revealed both its ambivalence and its ideological weakness; it asked its members to be better German citizens and told the German people that the Jews were not harmful to society. Its main activity was legal support of members vexed by anti-Semitic prejudice. It soon became clear that the CV was too weakly responding to anti-Semitic forces. A stronger policy was demanded, and the self-consciousness of Jewishness intensified.
It was in this context that German rabbis and intellectuals began to discuss what Judaism was and what it should be. Adolf von Harnack, a liberal Protestant theologian, was a major inspiration for this debate, as he insisted that Judaism had nothing to do with the Gospel, the essence of Christianity, and rejected the prevalent academic tendency to emphasize the Jewishness of Jesus. Liberal rabbis and intellectuals were shocked, since they had thought that liberal Jews and Protestants could walk together, at least in the academic sphere, by means of a historical and objective methodology. The influence of Harnack's views inspired many Jews to resist anti-Semitic Christian efforts to define the essence of Judaism.
The essay analyzes the argument of the young liberal rabbi and future CV leader Leo Baeck and the counterarguments of Isaak Breuer, an Orthodox Jewish intellectual; Jakob Fromer, an eastern European Jew; and Ahad Haam, a Jewish nationalist. This analysis demonstrates the change of the tone among liberal German Jews, who now sought and expressed their Jewish identity, intensifying the tension between being German and being Jewish.