Afterword: German Jewry and the First World War: Beyond Polemic and Apologetic

Abstract

Polemics and apologetics are battles fought with words. The former, taken from the ancient Greek word for war (polemos), is a verbal attack, a biting critique, and the latter, the apologia, is a speech of defense. In language, as in battle, offense and defense are intermingled. Since antiquity, Jews have responded to polemics against them with attacks against their accusers and justifications of the worth of their faith and their way of life. In the Middle Ages, the verbal battle between Jews, Christians, and Muslims centered on the interpretation of Scripture. In modernity, the subject shifted to the Jews’ cultural creativity, economic utility, and capacity for good citizenship. In Germany, the nineteenth-century practitioners of Judaic scholarship, known as the Wissenschaft des Judentums, remained engaged in the cycle of polemic and apologetic, producing works that glorified the textual fruits of Jewish civilization and denigrated the intolerance and fanaticism of the Jews’ gentile oppressors. © 2019 Jason Crouthamel, Michael Geheran, Tim Grady, and Julia Barbara Köhne.