18 Facts About Leopold Zunz

Leopold Zunz was the founder of academic Judaic Studies, the critical investigation of Jewish literature, hymnology and ritual.

Leopold Zunz was born at Detmold, the son of Talmud scholar Immanuel Menachem Zunz and Hendel Behrens, the daughter of Dov Beer, an assistant cantor of the Detmold community.

Leopold Zunz subsequently gained admission to the Jewish "free school" founded by Philipp Samson, in Wolfenbuttel.

Leopold Zunz settled in Berlin in 1815, studying at the University of Berlin and obtaining a doctorate from the University of Halle.

Leopold Zunz was ordained by the Hungarian rabbi Aaron Chorin, an early supporter of religious reform, and served for two years teaching and giving sermons in the Beer reformed synagogue in Berlin.

Leopold Zunz found the career uncongenial, and in 1840 he was appointed director of a Lehrerseminar, a post which relieved him from pecuniary troubles.

Leopold Zunz was always interested in politics, and in 1848 addressed many public meetings.

Together with other young men, among them the poet Heinrich Heine, Leopold Zunz founded the Verein fur Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden alongside Joel Abraham List, Isaac Marcus Jost, and Eduard Gans in Berlin in 1819.

In 1823, Leopold Zunz became the editor of the Zeitschrift fur die Wissenschaft des Judenthums.

Leopold Zunz "took no large share in Jewish reform", but never lost faith in the regenerating power of "science" as applied to the traditions and literary legacies of the ages.

Leopold Zunz influenced Judaism from the study rather than from the pulpit.

Leopold Zunz himself was temperamentally inclined to assign a determinative potency to sentiment, this explaining his tender reverence for ceremonial usages.

Leopold Zunz emphasized most strongly the need of a moral regeneration of the Jews.

Leopold Zunz wrote precise philological studies but impassioned speeches on the Jewish nation and history that had an influence on later Jewish historians.

Leopold Zunz was friendly with the traditional Enlightenment figure Nachman Krochmal whose Moreh Nebuke ha-Zeman, was edited, according to the author's last will, by his friend Leopold Zunz.

Leopold Zunz believed that only an academic approach to Jewish texts and a comprehensive and interdisciplinary academic framework would allow for the adequate study of Jewish themes and Judaism.

Leopold Zunz had visited the British Museum in 1846, and this confirmed him in his plan for his third book, Synagogale Poesie des Mittelalters.

Besides these works, Leopold Zunz published a new translation of the Bible, and wrote many essays which were afterwards collected as Gesammelte Schriften.