THE OLD PATHS, OR THE TALMUD TESTED BY SCRIPTURE

Mcaul’s critique of the Talmud, published in 1837 under the title “The Old Paths,” caused a stir among Jewish intellectuals when it was translated into Hebrew two years later. As a missionary in Warsaw for ten years, McCaul was well-versed in Jewish texts and the life of the Jewish people. He was one of the leaders of The London Society for the Propagation of Christianity amongst Jews in the early nineteenth century. Many Jewish intellectuals responded to McCaul’s critique with lengthy essays defending traditional Judaism against McCaul’s stinging criticism. Some of these essays were written by East European Maskilim (Proponents of the Jewish Enlightenment), who had previously denounced rabbis and their strict Talmud laws in advocating radical religious and educational reforms. The irony that these critics of Rabbinical Judaism felt a duty to defend their sacred traditions is at the core of my analysis of McCaul’s critique and the response of the Jewish intellectuals to it. Their treatises are invaluable Jewish reflections on the meaning of newly constructed identities in nineteenth-century Europe.