"Wissenschaft des Judentums" (literally in German the expression means "science of Judaism"; more recently in the United States it started to be rendered as "Jewish studies" or "Judaic studies", a wide academic field of inquiry in American universities) refers to a nineteenth-century movement premised on the critical investigation of Jewish literature and culture, including rabbinic literature, to analyze the origins of Jewish traditions.

The first organized attempt at developing and disseminating Wissenschaft des Judentums was the Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden (Society for Jewish Culture and Jewish Studies), founded around 1819 by Eduard Gans, (a pupil of Hegel), and his associates. Other members included Heinrich Heine, Leopold Zunz, Moses Moser, and Michael Beer, (youngest brother of Meyerbeer). It was an attempt to provide a construct for the Jews as a Volk or people in their own right, independent of their religious traditions. As such it sought to validate their secular cultural traditions as being on an equal footing with those adduced by Johann Gottfried Herder and his followers for the German people. Immanuel Wolf's influential essay Über den Begriff einer Wissenschaft des Judentums (On the Concept of Jewish Studies) of 1822, has such ideas in mind. Its principal objective, as it was then defined in the Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (1822), was the study of Judaism by subjecting it to criticism and modern methods of research.

The failure of the Verein, which was attributable largely to the far greater attraction amongst German Jews of identification with German culture, was followed by the conversion to Christianity of many of its leading figures, including Gans and Heine.

Despite the lack of success of the Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden, its principles inspired many Jewish thinkers to invest their efforts in a wider Wissenschaft des Judentums movement, and also provoked a conservative reaction (see Opposition). The historian Amos Elon, in his book The Pity of It All, places the movement in the context of anti-Semitic riots in Germany in 1819. The purpose, Elon writes, "was to bring ordinary Jews into the orbit of German Kultur [culture] and at the same time reinforce their Jewish identity by bridging the gulf between secular and religious education"; the movement sought to explore Judaism as "both secular civilization and religion", and thereby "help young Jews to remain Jews", even as they moved to a more secular view. According to Dr. Henry Abramson, the primary aim of the proponents of the movement was to articulate a modality of Jewish identity that was consonant with nineteenth century values, and where Jews had to demonstrate that they were patriotic members of their own societies, and at the same time express their Judaism proudly. The movement took on slightly differing characteristics in different national contexts so that, for example, the nature of the Anglo-Jewish movement was affected by the more ambivalent, less overtly hostile, state of Jewish-Christian relations in England; historical critical approaches to Bible were unpopular; a strong interest in rabbinic theology, liturgy, and prayer; an emphasis upon eccentricity, marginality, and challenges to normative rabbinic Judaism; and a widening of the scholarly franchise in England to women and non-established scholars.

Proponents of Wissenschaft des Judentums attempted to place Jewish culture on par with Western European culture, as evinced in Goethe's ideas of Bildung, and endeavored to have "Jewish Studies" introduced into the university curriculum as a respectable area of study, freeing the field from the prevailing bias that regarded Judaism as an inferior precursor to Christianity and studied it as such. They also developed and advocated a style of scholarship which allowed complete freedom in the interpretation of traditional texts, and which might be pursued without concerns about the practical ramifications such interpretations might have for religious observance and religious life (Glatzer 1964).

Leopold Zunz (1794–1886), one of the movement's leading figures, devoted much of his work to rabbinic literature. At the time, Christian thinkers maintained that the Jews' contribution ended with the Bible, and Zunz began to publish in the area of post-biblical rabbinic literature. His essays "Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur" and "Zur Geschichte und Literatur" addressed this issue. His biography of Rashi of Troyes was pivotal. When the Prussian government forbade preaching sermons in German synagogues, on the grounds that the sermon was an exclusively Christian institution, Zunz wrote History of the Jewish Sermon in 1832. This work has been described as "the most important Jewish book published in the 19th century". It lays down principles for the investigation of the Rabbinic exegesis (Midrash) and of the siddur (prayer-book of the synagogue).

Despite the outstanding scholarship of Wissenschaft personalities such as Zunz and Heinrich Graetz (most of whom pursued their scholarly labors on their own time as Privatgelehrte), the Wissenschaft movement as a whole had a tendency to present Judaism as an historical relic with frequently apologetic overtones, and often ignored matters of contemporary relevance:

Zunz felt obliged to assume that Judaism had come to an end, and that it was the task of Wissenschaft des Judentums to provide a judicious accounting of the varied and rich contributions which Judaism had made to civilization. In a similar spirit, Steinschneider is said to have once quipped that Wissenschaft des Judentums seeks to ensure that Judaism will receive a proper burial, in which scholarship amounts to an extended obituary properly eulogizing the deceased.