2007/07/17 by Jeffrey C. Blutinger · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies #Religion, Theology, History, Judaism, Christianity #German legal, social, and political studies
paper · doi:10.1093/mj/kjm005
openalex publication_date 2007/07/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
One of the stranger aspects of the polemical arguments between German-Jewish reformers and traditionalists that took place in the middle of the nineteenth century is their odd agreement on the singular inappropriateness of the term “orthodox”—literally, “right believing”—to describe traditional Jews. Instead, they disagreed about who was to blame for the use of this label, with each group attributing its origin to the other. German-Jewish reformers regularly referred to their traditionalist opponents not merely as orthodox, but as “der sogenannte Orthodoxen” (“the so-called orthodox”), or “die vorgebliche Orthodoxie” (“the ostensibly orthodox”), or “die erheuchelte Orthodoxdie (“the sham orthodox”).1 In this way, reformers both disparaged the legitimacy of the description of traditionalists as right believing, as well as at the same time implying that this was how traditionalists referred to themselves. The leading spokesman for the traditionalists in Germany, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, responded to these attacks in 1854, stating that “it is not ‘orthodox’ Jews who first introduced the term ‘orthodoxy’ into Judaism,” but, in fact, “it was the modern ‘progressive’ Jews who first applied the epithet to their ‘old-style’ backward brethren to distinguish them in a derogatory sense.” Hirsch noted that traditionalists resented the use of the term “orthodox,” and “rightly so.”2 Yet, Hirsch himself used the term “orthodox” to describe traditional Jews, though he preferred the label “gesetztreu” (literally “true to the law” or “Torah true”).3