As many of you know, there's a famous anecdote told

about a meeting between a prominent Russian Jew

and the German historian of Judaism, Leopold Zunz,

who in 1819 founded the Society for the Culture

and Science of the Jews, out of which grew the movement

known as Wysenshaft de Judentham, the science of Judaism.

The Wissenshaft movement produced the scholarship out of which grew the modern study of Judaism as we know it,

what we see thriving at Jewish studies departments in our universities.

It's also entered the popular, there we go, it's also entered the popular imagination, or I suppose my imagination at least, for being an objective method of looking at Jewish texts

and history, a neutral, perhaps even clinical approach that values detachment of the scholar

from the subject matter that he or she investigates.

Now, that may or may not be fair to the movement, but the story of Zunz and the Russian

Jewish man of letters demonstrates this sort of view quite well.

It's probably an apocryphal story, people tell me, but nonetheless.

Okay, so the story goes, Zunz, the German scholar,

asks the Russian guest to Berlin what he does,

and he receives the answer,

I'm a Hebrew poet,

to which Zunz responds dryly,

When did you live?

Now, Thickf's approach to the study of Judaism might well be called contra-visanchaftian,

if that's not too barbaric for you.

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