Striking a Pietist Chord: Isaac Wetzlar’s Proposal for the Improvement of Jewish Society

In 1748/49, Isaac Wetzlar of Celle in Northern Germany completed Libes Briv (Love Letter), a Yiddish proposal for the improvement of Jewish society. In order to initiate exploration of the complex relationship between Central European Judaism and eighteenth-century Pietism selected sources are discussed that concentrate on the links between Libes briv and the contours of German Pietism. These sources demonstrate that Isaac Wetzlar’s Love Letter (edited and translated into English by M. Faierstein) substantially engages the concepts and initiatives encompassed by Pietist missionary efforts to Jews. The diaries of two travelling missionaries from the Institutum Judaicum in Halle who came to Celle several times in the 1730s as part of their quest to convert Jews document that Wetzlar engaged in theological discussions with at least one of them (cf. presentation by A. Siluk, source 1, “Travelling Journal of Johann Georg Widmann, 1732”). The sources introduce Isaak Wetzlar’s Love Letter as a calculated response to the challenge posed by Pietist missionaries and Christian critiques of Jewish life: Wetzlar’s call for religious and social renewal seems to compete with contemporaneous Christian Pietists over the preferable vision for eighteenth-century Central European Jewry