The Jewish Enlightenment / / Shmuel Feiner.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Penn Press eBook Package Complete Collection
• VerfasserIn: Feiner, Shmuel,
• TeilnehmendeR: Naor, Chaya.
• Place / Publishing House: Philadelphia : : University of Pennsylvania Press, , [2011]; ©2004
• Year of Publication: 2011
• Language: English
• Series: Jewish Culture and Contexts
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (456 p.)

At the beginning of the eighteenth century most European Jews lived in restricted settlements and urban ghettos, isolated from the surrounding dominant Christian cultures not only by law but also by language, custom, and dress. By the end of the century urban, upwardly mobile Jews had shaved their beards and abandoned Yiddish in favor of the languages of the countries in which they lived. They began to participate in secular culture and they embraced rationalism and non-Jewish education as supplements to traditional Talmudic studies. The full participation of Jews in modern Europe and America would be unthinkable without the intellectual and social revolution that was the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment.Unparalleled in scale and comprehensiveness, The Jewish Enlightenment reconstructs the intellectual and social revolution of the Haskalah as it gradually gathered momentum throughout the eighteenth century. Relying on a huge range of previously unexplored sources, Shmuel Feiner fully views the Haskalah as the Jewish version of the European Enlightenment and, as such, a movement that cannot be isolated from broader eighteenth-century European traditions. Critically, he views the Haskalah as a truly European phenomenon and not one simply centered in Germany. He also shows how the republic of letters in European Jewry provided an avenue of secularization for Jewish society and culture, sowing the seeds of Jewish liberalism and modern ideology and sparking the Orthodox counterreaction that culminated in a clash of cultures within the Jewish community. The Haskalah's confrontations with its opponents within Jewry constitute one of the most fascinating chapters in the history of the dramatic and traumatic encounter between the Jews and modernity.The Haskalah is one of the central topics in modern Jewish historiography. With its scope, erudition, and new analysis, The Jewish Enlightenment now provides the most comprehensive treatment of this major cultural movement.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction: The Jews and the Enlightenment -- PART I. A Passion for Knowledge -- Chapter 1. Intellectual Inferiority: The Affront -- Chapter Two. The Early Haskalah and the Redemption of Knowledge -- Chapter Three. The Secular Author in the Public Arena -- PART II. Jewish Kulturkampf -- Chapter Four. The Wessely Affair: Threats and Anxieties -- Chapter Five. Projects of Enlightenment and Tests of Tolerance -- Chapter Six. The Rabbinical Elite on the Defensive -- Chapter Seven. On Religious Power and Judaism -- PART III. The Maskilic Republic -- Chapter Eight. The Society of Friends of the Hebrew Language -- Chapter Nine. The Maskilim: A Group Portrait -- Chapter Ten. Euchel Establishes the Haskalah Movement -- Chapter Eleven. The Society for the Promotion of Goodness and Justice -- Chapter Twelve. Growth and Radicalization -- PART IV. On Two Fronts -- Chapter Thirteen. Crisis at the Turn of the Century -- Chapter Fourteen. Tensions and Polemics in the Shadow of Crisis -- Chapter Fifteen. On Frivolity and Hypocrisy -- Afterword: Haskalah and Secularization -- Notes -- Index