The Jewish Enlightenment

Introduction: The Jews and the Enlightenment

Introduction: The Jews and the Enlightenment The Haskalah movement had no less a historical impact on the Jews than did the French Revolution on the history of Europe. A conscious and deliberate revolution began as soon as the first maskil mounted the public Jewish stage and proclaimed the independence of the republic of maskilim: Listen to me! I bear a reformist and redemptive vision that will be fulfilled in this world; I speak of an all-embracing criticism of the ills of existing Jewish life, and I have a detailed plan for the rehabilitation of our society and culture. I come armed with new knowledge, am attentive to European culture, and am capable of reading the changing map of history and correctly and precisely interpreting its codes. My senses are particularly attuned to the changes of the time and I hold a compass that helps me navigate between the paths of present and future without repeating the errors of the past. The maskil had no troops behind him. His audience was small and selective , and he himself usually lacked any recognized religious-rabbinical authority . Nor, for the most part, did he possess the attributes of the high social class—capital and illustrious lineage. His only weapons were knowledge, a quill, and a bottle of ink, as well as a powerful urge to immortalize his words in print and to disseminate them widely. Nonetheless, he represented a new, unprecedented elite, which felt it was its duty to chastise and educate the public , and to promote alternative ideas. It was here that the revolution burst forth; here the historical process of a shift in sovereignty in the Jewish community began: an intellectual elite appeared that confronted the rabbinical, scholarly elite of the Jewish ancien régime and competed with it. The emergence of this elite in no way resembled the popular militant assault on the Bastille, which in France symbolized the revolt against the monarchy. But it was similar to what occurred on June , , when a bourgeois elite of professionals and intellectuals, leaders of the Third Estate announced that from then on it would be the ‘‘National Assembly,’’ and claimed sovereignty in France. This politicaldeclarative act shattered the foundations of the ancien régime, which, until then had rested on the king’s absolute sovereignty and on the privileges of the aristocracy and the church. True, the relatively small elite of maskilim in the eighteenth century did not enjoy the support of a broad popular camp, nor  Introduction did the traditional leadership of rabbis and community leaders vacate their seats for the maskilim. But, had it not been for that revolutionary emergence of a new Jewish intelligentsia, no modern public sphere of Jewish culture—the new book market, the new ideological and religious movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and their debates, and the press as a forum for political and cultural discourse—none of these would have been created in the modern era. This intelligentsia was secular insofar as its source of authority and the texture of its ideas were concerned (although it was multifaceted in its commitment to tradition), and at its center stood the modern Jewish intellectual . The implications of this revolution, which took place in Europe from the eighteenth century, were truly remarkable. The internal Jewish public debate now left the Torah study halls, synagogues, community council meetings, rabbinical responsa, books of ethics and sermons, and moved into the multilingual periodicals, literary clubs, the republic of letters, and private homes. One of the results of this process was the creation of a new Jewish library. The religious establishment’s monopoly on knowledge was broken and so too was its monopoly on the guidance of the community, on criticism and moral preaching , on education, and even on the most intimate aspects of life—dress, manners , and family. The path of the Haskalah, like that of the French Revolution, was far from smooth. From the outset, it was divided by various trends, some more extreme, others more moderate, and its strengths and achievements varied according to time and place. Nor was it free of internal rivalries and dialectic processes that greatly unsettled many maskilim, hurling them from one position to another—from a zealous militant awakening to plans for fundamental reform, to incisive soul searching, disillusionment, denial, to a return to conservatism , to a search for harmony, and in some cases also to rapprochement with the orthodox opponents of the Haskalah. It was a multifaceted movement , in which the...