Johann Andreas Eisenmenger
Encyclopedia
Johann Andreas Eisenmenger (Mannheim
, 1654 – Heidelberg
, December 20, 1704) was a German
Orientalist
, now best known as the author of the anti-Semitic polemic, Entdecktes Judenthum (Judaism Unmasked).
of the Palatinate Charles I Louis
(who had, in 1673, offered Spinoza a chair in philosophy at Heidelberg), Eisenmenger received a good education, despite the early loss of his father to plague when he was 12 years old. He distinguished himself at the Collegium Sapientiae
at Heidelberg by his zeal for Hebrew studies
and Semitic languages
. He eventually mastered Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic. He was sent by the Elector to England
and Holland to pursue his studies there, and in Holland established amicable relations with figures like Rabbi David ben Aryeh Leib
of Lida
, formerly of Lithuania
, and then head of the Ashkenazi community in Amsterdam
. An intended sojourn in Palestine was interrupted by the death of his sponsor in 1680, who died in August of that year.
Later scholars cite two episodes during his sojourn in Amsterdam, which may or may not be apocryphal, to account for the formation of his anti-Judaic outlook. It is said that he was a shocked witness, in 1681, to blasphemous tirades against Jesus Christ by a senior Rabbi
there, identified by some as David Lida and that he grew indignant on finding that three Christians he met had had themselves circumcised and converted to Judaism..
As a devout Christian he was further scandalized by encountering anti-Christian references in rabbinical sources, material which fueled his hostility to Judaism
. For nineteen years he studied rabbinical literature assisted by Jews, first in Heidelberg and afterward in Frankfort-on-the-Main, pretending, according to some accounts, that he desired to be converted to Judaism.
, took great interest in it, appointing Eisenmenger professor of Oriental languages in the University of Heidelberg.
The book was designed not only to reveal to Christians the existence of elements in Jewish rabbinical thought which Eisenmenger thought injurious to the Christian faith, but also to appeal to a free-thinking secular public, and to enlightened Jews whom he wished to shock by his revelations. In particular he hoped to use his evidence in order to promote the conversion of 'honest Jews' to his own faith. As a recent critic puts it:-
Influential Jewish members of the Court of the House of Habsburg, fearing that the book's publication would give additional strength to the prejudice against them, denounced it as a malicious libel. Only a year previously riots against the Jews had occurred in the diocese
of Bamberg
, and that in the same year (July 21) a mob had, with the Court's permission, sacked the house of the Jewish Factor (agent)
(Hoffaktor) to the Court in Vienna
, Samuel Oppenheimer
. The aim of the riot was to pressure him over huge debts the Court had contracted for his services in financing the Habsburgs.. Oppenheimer succeeded in procuring an order of confiscation from the emperor, who commanded that the whole edition of 2,000 copies be placed under lock and key. However, the State refused to honour its debts to him. With him others worked for the same end, including Juspa van Geldern the great-grandfather of Heinrich Heine
's mother. The Jesuit
order, according to Hartmann, also complained about the book on the grounds that it slandered Catholicism
. The anecdote perhaps is intended to suggest that the success of the Jewish request for the book's suppression depended on its association with the Jesuits' criticism
According to one report written some decades later, the Jews had offered Eisenmenger the sum of 12,000 florins if he would suppress his work; but he was rumored to have demanded 30,000 florins, ostensibly in compensation for the considerable outlay from his own savings which the publication of the book had caused him to pony up. If any such proposed transaction was negotiated, nothing came of it.. Eisenmenger died suddenly of apoplexy
, some say induced by grief over the suppression of his book in 1704.
Meanwhile two Jewish converts to Christianity in Berlin
had brought charges against their former co-religionists of having blasphemed Jesus
. King Frederick William I
took the matter very seriously, and ordered an investigation. Eisenmenger's heirs applied to the king; and the latter tried to induce the emperor to repeal the injunction against the book, but did not succeed. He therefore ordered in 1711 a new edition of 3,000 copies to be printed in Berlin at his expense, but as there was an imperial prohibition against printing the book in the German empire, the title page gave as the place of publication Königsberg
, which was beyond the boundaries of the empire. Almost forty years later the original edition was released.
Of the many polemic
al works written by non-Jews against Judaism, Eisenmenger's has remained the most thoroughly documented one. Precisely because of its extensive citations of original sources, in the original Hebrew with facing translations, it has long furnished antisemitic journalists and pamphleteers with their main arguments. Eisenmenger undoubtedly possessed a great deal of knowledge. Jacob Katz
writes:-
There is no serious challenge to the authenticity of the sources Eisenmenger cited. What are often challenged are the many inferences he made from these texts, his tearing of citations from their context, the correctness of specific interpretations and, more importantly, his use of a relatively small number of texts within the huge chain of rabbinical commentary to characterise Judaism as a whole. In regard to the first two points, Siegfried, for one, argued that:-
In regard to the third point, G.Dalman wrote that:-
The Catholic theologian August Rohling
, in his influential antisemitic polemic Der Talmudjude (1871) harvested much of his material directly from Eisenmenger. The Lutheran biblical scholar Franz Delitzsch
subjected Rohling's book to a close examination and found that he not only drew on Eisenmenger, but introduced many significant distortions. Rohling's book however coincided with a rise in antisemitism and often influenced humanist critics and/or antisemites, who often cite him, rather than Eisenmenger's own voluminous treatise. One such example is afforded by Sir Richard Francis Burton
, who, in his antisemitic volume The Jew, Gypsy, and El Islam 1898, relied in part on Rohling's text. In recent decades the kind of material from rabbinical sources which Eisenmenger exploited to attack Judaism in general has been often discussed in contextualising certain extremist currents in modern Jewish fundamentalism
, of the kind observed in religious-political movements like those associated with the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Meir Kahane
, Abraham Isaac Kook
and his son Zvi Yehuda Kook
, such as Kach
and Gush Emunim
.
An English abridgment of Eisenmenger's volumes was published by John Peter Stehelin in 1748 under the title The Traditions of the Jews, with the Expositions and Doctrines of the Rabbins.
A new German edition of Entdecktes Judenthum, edited by Otto Brandner, was published by F. X. Schieferl, Dresden, 1893.
Eisenmenger edited with Leusden
the unvocalized Hebrew Bible, Amsterdam, 1694, and wrote a Lexicon Orientale Harmonicum, which to this day has not been published.
Mannheim
Mannheim is a city in southwestern Germany. With about 315,000 inhabitants, Mannheim is the second-largest city in the Bundesland of Baden-Württemberg, following the capital city of Stuttgart....
, 1654 – Heidelberg
Heidelberg
-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...
, December 20, 1704) was a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
Orientalist
Oriental studies
Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies...
, now best known as the author of the anti-Semitic polemic, Entdecktes Judenthum (Judaism Unmasked).
Studies rabbinical literature
The son of an official in the service of the ElectorPrince-elector
The Prince-electors of the Holy Roman Empire were the members of the electoral college of the Holy Roman Empire, having the function of electing the Roman king or, from the middle of the 16th century onwards, directly the Holy Roman Emperor.The heir-apparent to a prince-elector was known as an...
of the Palatinate Charles I Louis
Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine
Charles Louis, , Elector Palatine KG was the second son of Frederick V of the Palatinate, the "Winter King" of Bohemia, and his wife, Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King James I of England ....
(who had, in 1673, offered Spinoza a chair in philosophy at Heidelberg), Eisenmenger received a good education, despite the early loss of his father to plague when he was 12 years old. He distinguished himself at the Collegium Sapientiae
Collegium Sapientiae
The Collegium Sapientiae was a preparatory academy and later theological seminary in Heidelberg in the early modern period....
at Heidelberg by his zeal for Hebrew studies
Hebrew literature
Hebrew literature consists of ancient, medieval, and modern writings in the Hebrew language. It is one of the primary forms of Jewish literature, though there have been cases of literature written in Hebrew by non-Jews...
and Semitic languages
Semitic languages
The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
. He eventually mastered Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic. He was sent by the Elector to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and Holland to pursue his studies there, and in Holland established amicable relations with figures like Rabbi David ben Aryeh Leib
David ben Aryeh Leib
Rabbi David ben Aryeh Leib of Lida wrote works of rabbinic literature, including Sefer Shomer Shabbat and books on the 613 Mitzvot, bris milah, the Shulchan Aruch, the Book of Ruth, and Jewish ethics ....
of Lida
Lida
Lida is a city in western Belarus in Hrodna Voblast, situated 160 km west of Minsk. It is the fourteenth largest city in Belarus.- Etymology :...
, formerly of Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
, and then head of the Ashkenazi community in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
. An intended sojourn in Palestine was interrupted by the death of his sponsor in 1680, who died in August of that year.
Later scholars cite two episodes during his sojourn in Amsterdam, which may or may not be apocryphal, to account for the formation of his anti-Judaic outlook. It is said that he was a shocked witness, in 1681, to blasphemous tirades against Jesus Christ by a senior Rabbi
Rabbi
In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...
there, identified by some as David Lida and that he grew indignant on finding that three Christians he met had had themselves circumcised and converted to Judaism..
As a devout Christian he was further scandalized by encountering anti-Christian references in rabbinical sources, material which fueled his hostility to Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
. For nineteen years he studied rabbinical literature assisted by Jews, first in Heidelberg and afterward in Frankfort-on-the-Main, pretending, according to some accounts, that he desired to be converted to Judaism.
His Entdecktes Judenthum
Having collected citations from 193 Hebrew books and rabbinical tracts, he published his Entdecktes Judenthum (English titles include Judaism Unveiled, Judaism Discovered, Judaism Revealed, and Judaism Unmasked, with the latter title most commonly used), which has served as source for detractors of Talmudic literature down to the present day. The work, in two large quarto volumes, appeared in Frankfort in 1700, and the Elector, Prince Johann WilhelmJohann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine
Johann Wilhelm II, Elector Palatine was Elector Palatine , Duke Palatine of Neuburg/Danube , Duke of Jülich and Berg , and Duke of Upper Palatinate and Cham...
, took great interest in it, appointing Eisenmenger professor of Oriental languages in the University of Heidelberg.
The book was designed not only to reveal to Christians the existence of elements in Jewish rabbinical thought which Eisenmenger thought injurious to the Christian faith, but also to appeal to a free-thinking secular public, and to enlightened Jews whom he wished to shock by his revelations. In particular he hoped to use his evidence in order to promote the conversion of 'honest Jews' to his own faith. As a recent critic puts it:-
'Eisenmenger proceeded to amass quotations from the Talmud and other Hebrew sources revealing to all how the Jewish religion was barbarous, superstitious, and even murderous. All this was done in an apparently scholarly and reasonable way that belied the author's evident preoccupation (like Luther) with tales of Jewish ritual murder of Christian children and poisoning of wells. While piously insisting that the Jews must not be converted by cruel methods, Eisenmenger blithely recommended abolishing their present 'freedom in trade,' which was making them 'lords' over the Germans. He demanded too an immediate ban on their synagogues, public worship, and communal leaders and rabbis.'
Influential Jewish members of the Court of the House of Habsburg, fearing that the book's publication would give additional strength to the prejudice against them, denounced it as a malicious libel. Only a year previously riots against the Jews had occurred in the diocese
Diocese
A diocese is the district or see under the supervision of a bishop. It is divided into parishes.An archdiocese is more significant than a diocese. An archdiocese is presided over by an archbishop whose see may have or had importance due to size or historical significance...
of Bamberg
Bamberg
Bamberg is a city in Bavaria, Germany. It is located in Upper Franconia on the river Regnitz, close to its confluence with the river Main. Bamberg is one of the few cities in Germany that was not destroyed by World War II bombings because of a nearby Artillery Factory that prevented planes from...
, and that in the same year (July 21) a mob had, with the Court's permission, sacked the house of the Jewish Factor (agent)
Factor (agent)
A factor, from the Latin "he who does" , is a person who professionally acts as the representative of another individual or other legal entity, historically with his seat at a factory , notably in the following contexts:-Mercantile factor:In a relatively large company, there could be a hierarchy,...
(Hoffaktor) to the Court in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, Samuel Oppenheimer
Samuel Oppenheimer
Samuel Oppenheimer was a Jewish banker, imperial court diplomat, factor, and military supplier for the Holy Roman Emperor. He enjoyed special favor of Emperor Leopold I, to whom he advanced considerable sums of money for the Great Turkish War...
. The aim of the riot was to pressure him over huge debts the Court had contracted for his services in financing the Habsburgs.. Oppenheimer succeeded in procuring an order of confiscation from the emperor, who commanded that the whole edition of 2,000 copies be placed under lock and key. However, the State refused to honour its debts to him. With him others worked for the same end, including Juspa van Geldern the great-grandfather of Heinrich Heine
Heinrich Heine
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder by composers such as Robert Schumann...
's mother. The Jesuit
Society of Jesus
The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...
order, according to Hartmann, also complained about the book on the grounds that it slandered Catholicism
Catholicism
Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....
. The anecdote perhaps is intended to suggest that the success of the Jewish request for the book's suppression depended on its association with the Jesuits' criticism
According to one report written some decades later, the Jews had offered Eisenmenger the sum of 12,000 florins if he would suppress his work; but he was rumored to have demanded 30,000 florins, ostensibly in compensation for the considerable outlay from his own savings which the publication of the book had caused him to pony up. If any such proposed transaction was negotiated, nothing came of it.. Eisenmenger died suddenly of apoplexy
Apoplexy
Apoplexy is a medical term, which can be used to describe 'bleeding' in a stroke . Without further specification, it is rather outdated in use. Today it is used only for specific conditions, such as pituitary apoplexy and ovarian apoplexy. In common speech, it is used non-medically to mean a state...
, some say induced by grief over the suppression of his book in 1704.
Meanwhile two Jewish converts to Christianity in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
had brought charges against their former co-religionists of having blasphemed Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
. King Frederick William I
Frederick William I of Prussia
Frederick William I of the House of Hohenzollern, was the King in Prussia and Elector of Brandenburg from 1713 until his death...
took the matter very seriously, and ordered an investigation. Eisenmenger's heirs applied to the king; and the latter tried to induce the emperor to repeal the injunction against the book, but did not succeed. He therefore ordered in 1711 a new edition of 3,000 copies to be printed in Berlin at his expense, but as there was an imperial prohibition against printing the book in the German empire, the title page gave as the place of publication Königsberg
Königsberg
Königsberg was the capital of East Prussia from the Late Middle Ages until 1945 as well as the northernmost and easternmost German city with 286,666 inhabitants . Due to the multicultural society in and around the city, there are several local names for it...
, which was beyond the boundaries of the empire. Almost forty years later the original edition was released.
Of the many polemic
Polemic
A polemic is a variety of arguments or controversies made against one opinion, doctrine, or person. Other variations of argument are debate and discussion...
al works written by non-Jews against Judaism, Eisenmenger's has remained the most thoroughly documented one. Precisely because of its extensive citations of original sources, in the original Hebrew with facing translations, it has long furnished antisemitic journalists and pamphleteers with their main arguments. Eisenmenger undoubtedly possessed a great deal of knowledge. Jacob Katz
Jacob Katz
Jacob Katz was a Jewish historian and educator. He established the history curriculum used in Israel's High Schools....
writes:-
‘Eisenmenger was acquainted with all the literature a Jewish scholar of standing would have known ... [He] surpassed his [non-Jewish] predecessors in his mastery of the sources and his ability to interpret them tendentiously. Contrary to accusations that have been made against him, he does not falsify his sources."
There is no serious challenge to the authenticity of the sources Eisenmenger cited. What are often challenged are the many inferences he made from these texts, his tearing of citations from their context, the correctness of specific interpretations and, more importantly, his use of a relatively small number of texts within the huge chain of rabbinical commentary to characterise Judaism as a whole. In regard to the first two points, Siegfried, for one, argued that:-
'Taken as a whole, it is a collection of scandals. Some passages are misinterpreted; others are insinuations based on one-sided inferences; and even if this were not the case, a work which has for its object the presentation of the dark side of Jewish literature can not give us a proper understanding of Judaism.'
In regard to the third point, G.Dalman wrote that:-
'it could no more be called a faithful representation of Judaism than an indiscriminate collection of everything superstitious and repulsive within Christian literature could be termed characteristic of Christianity'
The Catholic theologian August Rohling
August Rohling
August Rohling was a German Catholic theologian, student of anti-Semitic texts, and polemical author....
, in his influential antisemitic polemic Der Talmudjude (1871) harvested much of his material directly from Eisenmenger. The Lutheran biblical scholar Franz Delitzsch
Franz Delitzsch
Franz Delitzsch was a German Lutheran theologian and Hebraist. Born in Leipzig, he held the professorship of theology at the University of Rostock from 1846 to 1850, at the University of Erlangen until 1867, and after that at the University of Leipzig until his death...
subjected Rohling's book to a close examination and found that he not only drew on Eisenmenger, but introduced many significant distortions. Rohling's book however coincided with a rise in antisemitism and often influenced humanist critics and/or antisemites, who often cite him, rather than Eisenmenger's own voluminous treatise. One such example is afforded by Sir Richard Francis Burton
Richard Francis Burton
Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS was a British geographer, explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, linguist, poet, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels and explorations within Asia, Africa and the Americas as well as his...
, who, in his antisemitic volume The Jew, Gypsy, and El Islam 1898, relied in part on Rohling's text. In recent decades the kind of material from rabbinical sources which Eisenmenger exploited to attack Judaism in general has been often discussed in contextualising certain extremist currents in modern Jewish fundamentalism
Jewish fundamentalism
The term Jewish fundamentalism may refer to militant religious Zionism or Ashkenazi or Sephardi ultra-orthodox Judaism.The term "fundamentalism" was originally used in reference to certain Christian groups but today commonly refers to the anti-modernist movements of any religion based on literal...
, of the kind observed in religious-political movements like those associated with the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Meir Kahane
Meir Kahane
Martin David Kahane , also known as Meir Kahane , was an American-Israeli rabbi and ultra-nationalist writer and political figure. He was an ordained Orthodox rabbi and later served as a member of the Israeli Knesset...
, Abraham Isaac Kook
Abraham Isaac Kook
Abraham Isaac Kook was the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandate for Palestine, the founder of the Religious Zionist Yeshiva Merkaz HaRav, Jewish thinker, Halachist, Kabbalist and a renowned Torah scholar...
and his son Zvi Yehuda Kook
Zvi Yehuda Kook
Zvi Yehuda Kook was a rabbi, leader of Religious Zionism and Rosh Yeshiva of the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva...
, such as Kach
Kach
Kach is town and union council of the Ziarat District in the Balochistan province of Pakistan. It is located at 30°26'2N 67°19'27E and has an altitude of 2020m ....
and Gush Emunim
Gush Emunim
Gush Emunim was an Israeli messianic and political movement committed to establishing Jewish settlements in the West Bank. While not formally established as an organization until 1974 in the wake of the Yom Kippur War, Gush Emunim sprang out of the conquests of the Six-Day War in 1967, encouraging...
.
An English abridgment of Eisenmenger's volumes was published by John Peter Stehelin in 1748 under the title The Traditions of the Jews, with the Expositions and Doctrines of the Rabbins.
A new German edition of Entdecktes Judenthum, edited by Otto Brandner, was published by F. X. Schieferl, Dresden, 1893.
Eisenmenger edited with Leusden
Leusden
Leusden is a municipality and a town in the Netherlands, in the province of Utrecht. It is located about 3 kilometres southeast of Amersfoort....
the unvocalized Hebrew Bible, Amsterdam, 1694, and wrote a Lexicon Orientale Harmonicum, which to this day has not been published.