A Jewish-Pietist Network: Dialogues between Protestant Missionaries and Yiddish Writers in Eighteenth-Century Germany

Abstract

Abstract:This essay considers intercultural exchange within the framework of the early modern missionary encounter, concentrating on the Pietist mission in eighteenth-century Germany. The complex ramifications of Protestant Pietism for Jewish history have not received sustained scholarly attention; this essay argues that the meetings between Pietist missionaries and Jews often resulted in an intense dialogue, entailing an intriguing cultural entanglement. In the first half of the eighteenth century, the Pietist mission prompted personal conversations between Christians and a significant number of Jews. Most Jews were surprisingly willing to speak with the missionaries, despite their evident agenda. The essay focuses on three individual authors of well-known Yiddish ethical (musar) works whose extensive links to Pietism have been largely overlooked: Elhanan Henle Kirchhan, author of Simhat ha-nefesh (1707, 1726/27), Aaron of Hergershausen, author of Liblikhe tfile (1709), and Isaac Wetzlar who penned the social critique Libes briv (1748).This creative dialogue between Jews and Pietists provides important empirical data to substantiate theories of cultural transfer and, more specifically, Jewish translation in the early modern period. In their dialogue with the Christian missionaries who set out to convert them, Yiddish writers formulated their own plans for the reform of Jewish society according to the precepts of piety. Rather than foregrounding confessional division, the Jewish-Pietist encounter was rooted in a shared quest for spiritual and social improvement through the reform of religious life, moral conduct, and education, to the extent that a comparative reading of Jewish and Pietist sources exposes an unexpected cross-cultural synergy.