The Founder of Jewish History

While Heinrich Graetz (1817–1891) was not the first modern scholar to write a work of Jewish history, his multivolume History of the Jewish People became the definitive work of its kind, and laid the groundwork for an entire academic field. He was also deeply engaged in the Jewish faith and the Jewish future, and was one of the founders of “historical-positive Judaism,” a 19th-century German precursor to Conservative Judaism. In conversation with J.J. Kimche, Jeffrey Blutinger expounds not only on Graetz’s scholarship, but on his personal relationships with Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (founder of German-style Modern Orthodoxy) and Moses Hess (an early socialist-turned-proto-Zionist), his visit to the Land of Israel, and what it was like to listen to him read from the prophets in synagogue.