The Berlin Haskalah and German Religious Thought: Orphans of Knowledge (review)

T H E JE W I S H Q UA R T E R LY R E V I E W, Vol. 94, No. 1 (Winter 2004) 205–208 DAVID J. SORKIN. The Berlin Haskalah and German Religious Thought: Orphans of Knowledge. London and Portland, Oreg.: Vallentine Mitchell, 2000. Pp. x Ⳮ 191 This innovative and fascinating book by David Sorkin, a historian of the Jewish Enlightenment, challenges the conventional approach to this period found in historical research and the collective Jewish memory and contends that the time has come for a revision, in particular, Sorkin argues that it is important ‘‘to cease using the Berlin Haskalah as the symbol of the whipping boy for Jewish modernization’’ (p. 129). For anyone who believes that the field of the eighteenth-century Haskalah has been so thoroughly and exhaustively explored that nothing new can be uncovered , Sorkin’s book suggests an insightful new reading that casts a surprising light on one of the cardinal chapters in Jewish intellectual history. What is the conventional view of Haskalah scholarship? Sorkin points to two dominant conceptions. The first is that the Berlin Haskalah was the main agent of Jewish modernization and hence is responsible for the disastrous results of the encounter between Jews and modernity, which led, among other things, to a crisis of tradition, and the painful separation of Haskalah from orthodoxy. The second assumption is that the main source of the Berlin Haskalah was primarily external, and that in relation to the European Enlightenment, it was a relatively marginal and parochial phenomenon. Sorkin, by means of his daring approach and broad historical thinking, suggests a revision to this conventional view, using a comparative method that would put the Berlin Haskalah in its rightful place as an integral phenomenon of eighteenth-century Europe. This approach calls for an important conceptual change; Sorkin looks at the Berlin Haskalah not only as part of the internal drama of the Jews, or as the principal agent of the Jews’ entry into German society, but rather as an expression of the development of Judaism concomitant with developments that affected Protestantism and Catholicism in the eighteenth century. The Enlightenment posed challenges to all religions in the states of Germany. How was it possible to defend the authority of the Scriptures in light of the criticism leveled by new philosophical and scientific currents? How was it possible to justify revelation in the face of natural religion? In this sense, Judaism, Protestantism, and Catholicism had a common challenge. The attempt to grapple with these challenges by utilizing the new philosophy of enlight- 206 JQR 94:1 (2004) enment to renew religious traditions gave rise to religious enlightenment in Central Europe. In Christianity, this took the form of the Protestant theological enlightenment and reform Catholicism, and in Judaism, the Haskalah. Sorkin’s aim in this book is to use a comparative historical method to provide a new understanding of the Haskalah. Accordingly, the chapters devoted to Protestantism and Catholicism are very detailed and rest on intensive readings of the relevant theological texts. At the same time, Sorkin draws our attention to early maskilim who, in the eighteenth century, endeavored to generate an intellectual renewal of Judaism. Solomon Hanau, Asher Anshel Worms, Isaac Wetzlar, Israel Zamosc, Moses Mendelssohn , and Aaron Solomon Gumpertz were not interested in social reforms but rather in a revision of Baroque Judaism. The religion of Ashkenazi Jews living in Europe in semiautonomous communities was based on the supremacy of Talmud study, the disregard for philosophy and the sciences, a huge degree of cultural insularity, and the refusal to learn foreign languages. The early maskilim engaged in a project that focused on a renewed encounter with significant aspects of their textual heritage. They discovered medieval Jewish philosophy, recommended the methodic study of the Hebrew language, and advocated the study of sciences in order to arrive at a better interpretation of the Bible and the Talmud. Their aim was to halt cultural assimilation and to enhance the prestige of Judaism. The early Haskalah, as described in Sorkin’s book, was the first movement to provide a response to the challenges posed to Judaism by the new science. But its roots also lay...