Jubilee in Tubingen
Neusner, Jacob
JUBILEE IN TUBINGEN JACOB NEUSNER In October, 1977, the Eberhart-Karl University of Tubingen celebrated the semi-millenial anniversary of one of the two important events of 1477. The other was...
...The ceremonial addresses all focused on current political events—the terrorists, for this was the week of the Lufthansa hijacking—and the overproduction of university graduates, no longer to be absorbed into the economy...
...In the cathedral of Miinster, I am told, cages in which free-church-dissenters were suspended in mid-air while they starved to death are still displayed...
...At the moment, it did not seem funny...
...The founding of the university that same season—that is something else again...
...My own lectures, delivered for the Protestant Theological faculty, dealt with Judaism in ancient times, in the early centuries before and after the beginning of the Common Era...
...they have known no Jews...
...Between them and the official, civic celebration stood 1,000 policemen, carrying submachine guns...
...This became clear when, in Berlin, my host's wife returned from a vacation on the island of Rhodes, and I remarked, when looking at the pictures she brought back, that before World War II, there had been quite an interesting Jewish community there...
...It was not the age of the great Tubingen school— the school which created New Testament scholarship as we now know it, the school which stands behind the massive theological contribution of the Germany of humanism and philosophy...
...Most were made up of children...
...His most recent books include Invitation to the Talmud and From Politics to Piety...
...It came toward the end of the vacation, before classes would call back the university's 18,000 young people...
...In any case, it is in the interest neither of the USSR nor the USA, nor indeed of Europe, for such a reunification to take place...
...Again, in Berlin, at an art museum which, in New York or Boston, would have been filled with young Jewish people, I felt again the pain of Holocaust, the utter absence of Jews...
...There was no comment...
...The impact of today's Germany upon the Jew of today is something Germans simply cannot grasp...
...there is nothing worth remembering...
...To be sure, it is not one religion...
...Christianity, for its part, is established, a state-supported religion...
...And again, in Tubingen, when I did observe that there was, after all, a double-celebration, one happy, the other sad, once more I found the same response...
...That is where the West comes to an end: no history, no human connection, no commitment, no emotion, at the empty spaces on the edges of a beleaguered city, filled in by the denizens of hell...
...The count of Wiirt-temberg in 1477 had made a tradeoff: the citizens of the town of Tubingen—located about twenty miles southwest of Stuttgart, in south Germany—agreed to accept the university...
...These long, long thoughts of world historical forces and powers did not win the attention of my host...
...It was the age of Tubingen as the most brown of the brown, the Nazi, universities...
...There can be no doubt that the prominent inclusion of Judaic studies was meant as a powerful statement of rejection of one past and affirmation of another...
...Once more in Berlin—where I also gave a lecture—this time for the Free University and the Evangelische Hochschule (Protestant divinity school)—I stood with my host looking east, across the wall, at the other side...
...Over the gate of the hell of Auschwitz were the words, Arbeit macht frei—work will make you free...
...The other was not even mentioned...
...You cannot have the one without the other...
...He remarked that some of the great cultural institutions are being built near the wall so that, if Germany is reunited, they will serve the East as conveniently as the West...
...On the day of the festakt, the cerJacob Neusner is University Professor, Professor of Religious Studies, and the Ungerleider Distinguished Scholar of Judaic Studies at Brown University...
...All the others spoke of faculties or presidents or senates...
...After all, from 1870 to 1945 we did have a single Germany, and it did not make for the stabilization of Europe, did it...
...Words which for others call up one set of thoughts bring to the surface quite another for me...
...To be sure, the monograph was only marginally competent...
...In truth, the history that cannot be mentioned means no history can be brought to speech...
...But what is worth reporting is that the pain was mine alone...
...The Catholics in the Theologicum, the building housing the theological faculty, occupy one floor, the Protestants another...
...To hear first this talk and then that music brought pain beyond bearing...
...But the students set up an exhibition, and in it were pictures of Tubingen in another age...
...The display seemed in poor taste to my informant, a free-church dissenter from America...
...Tubingen today is the center of that approach to New Testament which draws richly upon the Judaic evidences of the period of the founding of Christianity...
...Tubingen, after all, also was the home of Adolph Schlatter, one of the earliest New Testament scholars of rabbinic sources...
...I could not express it to my German hosts, not because they would have been offended (that would not have bothered me) but because they would not have heard nor understood at all.\To them the expulsion of the Jews from Tubingen took place a long time ago...
...I said, "True, but they will melt, since there can be no reunification of Germany without an atomic war...
...Nor did the apocalyptic scene toward the Brandenburg Gate, a long mall, with parks on both sides, presently used, I was told, mainly by roving prostitutes...
...Germany would have one Nazi less on its hands...
...I remarked rather casually that I would not be heartbroken if that leader of the Hitler youth and member of the S.S...
...Among its scholars, both young and old, are distinguished masters of the study of Hellenistic Judaism and its sources, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and other Jewish writings of the period...
...And why not think of Auschwitz, when, a few minutes before, I had heard a great ceremonial sermon on the theme, Die Wahrheit machtfrei— truth will make you free...
...So there will be no history at all on the occasion of the university's 500th anniversary...
...But, of course, I knew I had, just as I knew I had to...
...While I was in Germany, the abduction of Schleyer had not yet led to his murder...
...This seemed to me something important and memorable, something worth saying when speaking of the island of Rhodes...
...These lectures were the Theological Faculty's contribution to the celebration, part of the official program...
...Still, more than 1,500 made a celebration of their own, way out of town in a field...
...As soon as I saw those quaint costumed bands playing their not-very-quaint Prussian military marches, I found myself transported to the east...
...Germany provides virtually no encounter between a vigorous and self-respecting Judaism, on the one side, and an equally vigorous Christianity, on the other...
...Because the two Christianities have long memories there is yet another past one cannot mention...
...In these three, and in other instances, it was an absence of response...
...Since I was invited by the Protestants, I began to think of myself as one of them...
...The bad memories of their country's history are not to be mentioned...
...It was an odd and curious experience for me to join in the University's jubilee, for, like any Jew, I have a double vision of Germany...
...The Reformation is still alive...
...No one referred to the brown days of Tubingen, and, therefore, none to the golden days of the Tubingen school of the 19th century either...
...And then there is the music...
...I stood on the platform of the Auschwitz railway station and heard the bands playing to welcome the train loads of victims...
...In a celebration of the Catholic faculty of the same jubilee, I looked around the room and remarked to the dean of the Protestant faculty, "You know, you and I are the only Protestants here...
...If I had said something one does not say, even that was not communicated in a way in which I might perceive it...
...The anniversary was of the founding of the University of Tubingen...
...And I remarked on it to my host: I see no Jewish faces, except in the pictures (work of the 1920s...
...To the words macht frei I supplied the Jewish protasis: Arbeit...
...Only three greeted the university in the name of their faculties and students— Brown, Colorado, and Wyoming...
...The count agreed to remove the Jews...
...its clearly theological bias was evident...
...But the people had all been shipped north, and most died even before reaching the death camps, having frozen to death...
...were to die...
...Even the students did not present a picture of the Nazi, Kittel, who made a fine edition of the Hebrew text of the Hebrew Bible while the Jews were being removed and burned...
...There really was a Holocaust...
...some of them are perceived, even by the Germans, to whom a Jew can do no wrong, as charlatans...
...But even to those who approach Judaic learning with the best will in the world, Judaism is a dead religion, and Jews are a people of some other place...
...The stray Israelis who come by do not much change the picture...
...So many histories we cannot confront...
...Especially to welcome the children...
...The forgotten event was the expulsion of the Jews from Tubingen...
...It is not history but a curiosity of history...
...One of his principal monographs dealt with Yohanan ben Zak-kai...
...There were the high-sounding speeches on truth and freedom, and exceptionally pompous and vacuous hours of greetings by the foreign delegates...
...The two are not unrelated...
...But the jubilee-celebration was so timed that there would be no students at all...
...Still, there was Schlatter, and today there are others with a keen interest in Judaic sources and a desire to hear about them...
...emony of celebration, the medieval streets of the old town of Tubingen filled with several dozen village bands...
...Had the students been present, they would have had their say...
...Nothing was said, no emotion indicated even in the face, in a gesture...
Vol. 3 • December 1977 • No. 2
