Rabbis of the (Scientific) Revolution: Revealing the Hidden Corpus of Early Modern Translations Produced by Jewish Religious Thinkers

Abstract

This essay discusses the corpus of translations of non-Jewish texts into Jewish languages, which emerged during the early modern period. Particular attention is given to Hebrew translations produced by members of the Jewish religious elite during the long eighteenth century, which have hitherto been viewed as original Jewish works. The article argues that translation was perfectly suited to the combination of attraction and anxiety with which many early modern Jews, particularly members of the Jewish religious elite, observed the cultural developments of their time. These authors acknowledged (what they viewed as) their own cultural inferiority, but feared the potential hazards of direct exposure to non-Jewish texts and ideas. Jewish translators thus became cultural gatekeepers rather than passive recipients of non-Jewish culture. They mistranslated both deliberately and accidentally, added and omitted, gave new meanings to texts and ideas, and harnessed their sources to meet their own agendas. The works of these translators reveal a form of cultural transfer that relied on the mindful adaptation and reformulation of new ideas by discreet, almost inadvertent innovators.