Joel Abraham List (1780–1848) was one of the seven founding members of the Society for the Culture and Science of the Jews ( Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden); he served as its president from March 1820 to March 1821. He was also the founder and director of a private elementary school for Jews. Other notable members of the Society are Joseph Hilmar, Isaac Levin Auerbach,

Isaac Marcus Jost Isaak Marcus (Markus) Jost (February 22, 1793, Bernburg – November 22, 1860, Frankfurt am Main) was a Jewish historical writer. He studied at the universities of Göttingen and Berlin. In Berlin he began to teach, and in 1835 received the appoi ...

Leopold Zunz Leopold Zunz ( he, יום טוב צונץ—''Yom Tov Tzuntz'', yi, ליפמן צונץ—''Lipmann Zunz''; 10 August 1794 – 17 March 1886) was the founder of academic Judaic Studies (''Wissenschaft des Judentums''), the critical investigation ...

Eduard Gans Eduard Gans (March 22, 1797 – May 5, 1839) was a German jurist. Biography Gans was born in Berlin to prosperous Jewish parents. He studied law first at the Friedrich Wilhelm University, Berlin, then at Göttingen, and finally at Heidelberg, w ...

, and Moses Moser. They worked for the improvement of the situation of the Jews in the German federated states; the members shared a hostility to rabbinism, or the dominance of

talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cente ...

ic Judaism in Jewish Life.

Sources

* J. A. List, Unpublished Lecture of November 7, 1819, in Siegfried Ucko, "Geistesgeschichtliche Grundlagen der Wissenschaft des Judentums," Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland 5 (1935), pp1–35. Trans. by J. Hessing and P. Mendes-Flohr 1780 births 1848 deaths 18th-century German Jews {{Germany-academic-bio-stub