Sanne de Niet MA

PhD candidate

E-mail: [email protected]

Area(s) of interest: Historiography & Theory of History, Intellectual History & History of Ideas, Modern & Contemporary History, Political History, Religious History & Theology

Cohort/Start PhD: 2024-2025

Using the past to legitimize the present: the use of Jewish religious currents from the Second Temple Period in the discourse of nineteenth-century German Jews

University of Amsterdam
Supervisors: Prof. dr. B.T. Wallet, Prof. dr. I.E. Zwiep
Start project: 2024

This research project focuses on the intersection of the history of historiography – particularly the development of Jewish historiography about Antiquity in nineteenth-century German society – and the social, political, and intellectual history of German Jewry. The profound political and philosophical changes that came with the prospect of emancipation for German Jews had far reaching consequences for Jewish institutions and for traditional Jewish ways of life and thought. The nineteenth century saw the birth of various religious currents in Judaism, which all dealt with modernity and emancipation in different ways. These religious currents sought to establish their legitimacy through specific articulations of Jewish history – particularly through identification with religious groups that were active during Hasmonean and early Roman periods of the Second Temple Period (167 BCE–70 CE).

This research project focuses on the ways in which Jewish religious currents from the Second Temple Period featured in the discourse of Jewish intellectuals in nineteenth-century German society. More specifically, it analyzes to what extent these ancient Jewish ideologies were used to mirror their contemporary situation and legitimize their ideas. The methodology that is used is that of historical analogies. This research project will help mapping an uncharted but essential part of intellectual Jewish history by looking at religious, inner-Jewish resourcement rather than at secular redefinitions, inspired by extra-Jewish (enlightened universal or Romantic national; Hellenistic or Islamic) paradigms. In addition, this research project will enrich our notions of the historical layers that were at play in the discourse of German-Jewish intellectuals, and will help finetune our views of the balance within the nineteenth-century German-Jewish poly-system. Lastly, the study will offer insight into the way historical parallels, analogies and framings can be used to legitimize new ideas or movements.