The Jewish Enlightenment

Chapter Six The Rabbinical Elite on the Defensive

Chapter Six The Rabbinical Elite on the Defensive Despite the rumors from Altona-Hamburg about the affair involving Netanel Posner and Rabbi Raphael Kohen, the atmosphere in the small circle of maskilim in Berlin in the winter of  was one of elation.1 Within the brief period of several months, there were many encouraging signs that could arouse the optimism of anyone who believed in the Enlightenment and its practical implications for the fate of the Jews. One after another, Dohm’s On the Civil Improvement of the Jews and Joseph II’s Edict of Toleration were published. The Freischule had been established and was earning the esteem of German intellectuals. The five books of the Bi’ur prepared by Mendelssohn and his collaborators were gradually coming off the press. In January of , a short time after excerpts from the Edicts of Toleration had been published in the press, Wessely wrote his Divrei shalom ve’emet. Elsewhere, too, ambitious young maskilim were active. Wessely sent an open letter to various communities in his attempt to enlist favorable public opinion for his torat ha’adam program. The student and private tutor Isaac Euchel (–) initiated the establishment of a modern school in the Königsberg community.2 Euchel, thirty years Wessely’s junior, also adopted an unprecedented, subversive method to try to persuade the heads of the community that radical changes in Jewish education had to be made. At the end of , he published an open letter to the members of the community, entitled Sefat emet (Language of Truth), in which he appealed to the local rabbi. He drew a bleak picture of the crisis in Jewish education and culture, caused by an excessive concentration on study of the Talmud: My brethren, lovers of the truth and seekers of justice! . . . take a good look at the boys of our Jewish people . . . see how they are like a flock without a shepherd, without knowing or understanding the word of God and His Torah, they have found no guide in the Bible, and speak Hebrew with a stammering tongue. They did not linger long in studying the Mishnah for they thought lightly of it . . . but in the Talmud they thought they had gained success . . . most of these youngsters leave school when they are thirteen years of age, wander about the streets in search of a livelihood to satisfy their physical needs, they forget the little they have learned . . . they abandon their Torah, and falter in their piety.3  Chapter  In Sefat emet, Euchel circulated his program to the members and leaders of the community, proposing that they ‘‘establish a special school for all members of our community, to properly educate the youth.’’ In this school, the teachers would be ‘‘educated, astute men with a knowledge of language.’’ All the members of the community were asked to state their opinion, pro or con, in letters to be submitted to the local rabbi. After a few months, Euchel would open the envelopes and present the results of the poll to an assembly of community leaders: ‘‘Once I have the opinions of the majority of the people in our community on this matter, I shall present them at an assembly of all the leaders and prominent members of the community; they shall examine the results and based on them, reach their decision.’’4 It was no easy matter for a young private tutor, then only twenty-five, to interfere in the affairs of the community . Euchel’s initiative for the establishment of a new institution to cope with the crisis in education came from outside the circle of authoritative decision makers. His attempt to enlist the support of prominent community members through a democratic public poll, for which he was responsible and whose rules would be binding on the community leadership, also posed a problem. Nonetheless, his activity was one more expression of the maskilic elite’s consciousness of public responsibility and its demand that it be allowed to play a role in the overall leadership. ‘‘To Publicize the Wickedness of the Evil Man, Herz Wessely’’ Euchel’s program was never implemented. There is no way of knowing whether this was because of opposition to his presumptuous plan to conduct a poll instead of conforming to the accepted decision-making process, in particular to his intent to avoid addressing the rabbi, expecting him to accept the majority view. In any event, this affair did not make an impact on the public at large. In contrast, immediately after...