A Biblical People in the Bible Belt: The Jewish Community of Memphis, Tennessee, 1840s-1960s.

This chapter explores the sectarian Orthodoxy of Hirsch’s Pentateuch. It is argued that the immediate context for Hirsch publishing his Pentateuch was the stunning success of the moderate Reformer Ludwig Philippson’s Israelite Bible (Israelitische Bibel). Philippson presented his Bible as an inclusive work to unite all German Jews including the Orthodox. It is shown that an important motivation for Hirsch’s Pentateuch was to prevent Orthodox communities from accepting Philippson’s Bible. Hirsch’s and Philippson’s Bibles are compared and connected to their opposing stances on the “Secession Controversy” of the 1870s that centered on the right of Orthodox congregations to withdraw from the governmentally-recognized official Jewish community. It is demonstrated that while Hirsch came to embrace the moniker “Orthodox” in 1854, during the “Secession Controversy” he distinguished his Neo-Orthodoxy from Ultra-Orthodoxy through a biting attack on the leading Ultra-Orthodox rabbinical authority in Germany at the time, Rabbi Seligmann Bamberger. While the early Hirsch presented a new, inclusive vision of German Judaism through his reading of the Bible in the Nineteen Letters, it is argued that the later Hirsch’s sectarian Neo-Orthodoxy which he grounded through his Pentateuch translation and commentary became emblematic of the irreparable fragmentation of German Judaism.

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The Road to the Bible Belt

10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190216283.003.0005 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Joseph Locke

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Historical Memory ◽

Public Life ◽

Moral Reform ◽

Religious Authority ◽

Bible Belt ◽

Religious Attitudes ◽

The Road ◽

The Bible ◽

Witch Trials

By the turn of the twentieth century, a cohort of clerical activists, plagued by notions of a widespread spiritual crisis, realized that religious authority in public life could be bolstered by the construction of new and powerful denominational bureaucracies, the pursuit of moral reforms such as prohibition, and by tackling head on the widely held anticlerical fears confronting religious activism in public life. Activists such as Methodist minister George C. Rankin would learn, for instance, that reclaiming historical memory—abolishing hostile associations with witch trials and inquisitions–could convince more and more Texans that government could—and should—be run along religious lines. Moral reform was only the most public manifestation of a brewing clerical movement that targeted the popular religious attitudes of everyday southerners to enable the construction of the Bible Belt.

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