Jacob Neusner, the famed scholar and almost mythically prolific author, who suffered from Parkinson’s disease and died on Oct. 8 at age 84, almost singlehandedly created the modern study of Judaism. In doing so, he revolutionized our understanding of the history of Judaism and our perception of what Judaism can mean to Jews today.
His career, which spanned more than 50 years and included the publication of hundreds of books, brought him national and international recognition. But most important, it created a model of Jewish life and learning that both adheres to the heritage of Torah and tradition, and, with intellectual and historical honesty, is at home in 21st century America.
By the early 1960s, when Neusner was first beginning to publish, Bible scholars had long questioned and sought methods of analyzing topics as far-ranging as the Hebrew Bible’s account of the history of early Israel and the New Testament’s assertions regarding what Jesus had said and done. But it remained routine in Jewish history simply to accept as fact what Jewish texts, written hundreds of years after the events they reported, said had happened or alleged that certain rabbis or other figures had said.
Instead, Neusner insisted ancient Jewish writings be examined according to the same norms of analysis that were routinely applied to the Bible and New Testament.
In his earliest writings, Neusner showed conclusively that rabbinic books — the Mishnah, the two Talmuds, collections of midrash — expressed distinctive ideologies uniquely suited to the time and place of their authors and editors. This meant that Jewish history, just like Israelite and early Christian history, could not be expressed in terms of what had actually happened, but only as the history of the ideas and ideologies of those who compiled and edited the later literary evidence.
A first implication of this discovery was that we could no longer speak simply of some single and monolithic “Judaism.” Individual rabbinic books, rather, needed to be understood in the context of the specific and diverse Judaic systems in which they arose.
Second, talmudic texts could not be studied as they always had been, with every text, early or late, being used to illuminate every other text.
And third, accurately interpreting this literature required academic methods. This meant that the Talmud, to be truly understood and for it to take its rightful place among the world’s great literatures, could no longer be in the sole purview of the yeshiva and yeshiva-trained scholars.
The last point is perhaps the most significant. Through critical examination, massive projects of translation and commentary, and his application of disciplines ranging from literary study to anthropology, Neusner brought the study of Judaism — and the university-trained scholar of Judaism — into dialogue with scholarship throughout the academy. Talmudic literature, previously viewed as neither accessible nor, because of its superficially arcane content, worth accessing, would now contribute to the work of humanists and social scientists throughout the academy.
Alan J. Avery-Peck is the Kraft-Hiatt Professor in Judaic Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. He is co-editor of “A Legacy of Learning: Essays in Honor of Jacob Neusner” (Brill, 2014).
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.