Joseph Salvador
An eminent but controversial religious scholar, Joseph Salvador has been viewed simultaneously as proto-Zionist and assimilationist. Born in Montpellier to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, he was raised in a liberal household. Antisemitic riots in Germany inspired Salvador to shift from his studies in medicine to Jewish antiquity, primarily as a means to uncover and disseminate historical reasons for Jewish pride. After graduation, he moved to Paris, where he briefly studied under the chief rabbi of Paris. Salvador theorized a new religion inspired by Enlightenment principles that fused Christianity and Judaism based on common roots in ancient Jewish faith and laws. He died in Versailles and was buried in a Protestant cemetery.
Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator
Primary Source
Paris, Rome, Jerusalem, or the Religious Question in the Nineteenth Century
Related Guide
Rabbinic Scholarship, 1750–1880
Despite the challenges of the early modern period, rabbinic scholarship flourished in Central and Eastern Europe in the latter half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century.