n only be accounted for by
the fact that up to modern times the Rabbinical and philosophical
literature of the Middle Ages sufficed for the needs of the student, and a
systematic exposition of the Jewish faith seemed to be unnecessary.
Besides, a real demand for the specific study of Jewish theology was
scarcely felt, inasmuch as Judaism never assigned to a creed the prominent
position which it holds in the Christian Church. This very fact induced
Moses Mendelssohn at the beginning of the new era to declare that Judaism
"contained only truths dictated by reason and no dogmatic beliefs at all."
Moreover, as he was rather a deist than a theist, he stated boldly that
Judaism "is not a revealed religion but a revealed law intended solely for
the Jewish people as the vanguard of universal monotheism." By taking this
legalistic view of Judaism in common with the former opponents of the
Maimonidean articles of faith--which, by the way, he had himself translated
for the religious instruction of the Jewish youth--he exerted a
deteriorating influence upon the normal development of the Jewish faith
under the new social conditions. The fact is that Mendelssohn emancipated
the modern Jew from the thraldom of the Ghetto, but not Judaism. In the
Mendelssohnian circle the impression prevailed, as we are told, that
Judaism consists of a system of forms, but is substantially no religion at
all. The entire Jewish renaissance period which followed,
characteristically enough, made the cultivation of the so-called science
of Judaism its object, but it neglected altogether the whole field of
Jewish theology. Hence we look in vain among the writings of Rappaport,
Zunz, Jost and their followers, the entire Breslau school, for any attempt
at presenting the contents of Judaism as a system of faith. Only the
pioneers of Reform Judaism, Geiger, Holdheim, Samuel Hirsch, Formstecher,
Ludwig Philippson, Leopold Stein, Leopold Loew, and the Reform theologian
_par excellence_ David Einhorn, and likewise, Isaac M. Wise in America,
made great efforts in that direction. Still a system of Jewish theology
was wanting. Accordingly when, at the suggestion of my dear departed
friend, Dr. Gustav Karpeles, President of the Society for the Promotion of
the Science of Judaism in Berlin, I undertook to write a compendium
(Grundriss) of Systematic Jewish Theology, which appeared in 1910 as Vol.
IV in a series of works on Systematic Jewish Lore (Grundriss der
Gesammtwis