New Perspectives on the Haskalah

Edited by Shmuel Feiner and David Sorkin

Revises our understanding of the relationship between the Haskalah, Orthodoxy, and hasidism, reassesses the role of key individuals in the movement, and offers a new, more nuanced, definition of the Haskalah. Should be of interest to all students of modern Jewish history, literature, and culture in eighteenth-century Germany and eastern Europe in the nineteenth century.

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'Includes unique and original studies . . . The authors are acknowledged experts in their fields . . . a valuable addition to any library collection dealing with modern Judaism and is an important update to any collection dealing with European Jewish culture and religion.'
Shaul Stampfer, Religious Studies Review

'This volume will leave its mark on the research of Haskalah. The authors¹ passion for the field and their erudition are evident in each and every page.'
Lev Hakak, Shofar

This volume, written by a range of scholars, offers a new understanding of one of the central cultural and ideological movements among Jews in modern times. Disengaging the Haskalah from the questions of modernization or emancipation that have hitherto dominated the scholarship, the essays put the Haskalah under a microscope in order to restore detail and texture to the individuals, ideas and activities, that were its makers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In particular, the contributors replace simple dichotomies with nuanced distinctions, presenting the relationship between 'tradition' and Haskalah as a spectrum of closely linked cultural options rather than a fateful choice between old and new or good and evil.

The essays address major and minor figures; ask whether there was such an entity as an 'early Haskalah', or a Haskalah in England; look at key issues such as the relationship of the Haskalah to Orthodoxy and Hasidism; and also treat such neglected subjects as the position of women. New Perspectives on the Haskalah will interest all students of modern Jewish history, literature, and culture.

About the editors

Shmuel Feiner is Associate Professor of Modern Jewish History at Bar Ilan University, and the coordinator of the Samuel Braun Chair for the History of the Jews in Prussia. He is the author of Haskalah and History: The Emergence of a Modern Jewish Consciousness, published in Hebrew in 1995 and in translation by the Littman Library (forthcoming), and of I.E. Kovner, Sefer Hamatsref: An Unknown Maskilic Critic of Jewish Society in Russia in the Nineteenth Century (1998), as well as of various articles on the Haskalah in Germany and eastern Europe. He is currently working on a history of the Jewish Enlightenment in the eighteenth century.

David Sorkin is Frances and Laurence Weinstein Professor of Jewish Studies and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780-1840 (1987), Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment (1996), and The Berlin Haskalah and German Religious Thought (2000), and is co-editor of Profiles in Diversity: Jews in a Changing Europe, 1750-1870 (1998). He has received grants from the British Academy and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Previously a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and St Antony's College, Oxford, he has been a visiting professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, and a visting fellow at the Max Planck Institut für Geschichte, Göttingen.

Contributors

Harris Bor, Edward Breuer, Tova Cohen, Immanuel Etkes, Shmuel Feiner, Yehuda Friedlander, David B. Ruderman, Joseph Salmon, Nancy Sinkoff, David Sorkin, Shmuel Verses

Contributor information

Harris Bor
Edward Breuer, Department of Theology, Loyola University, Chicago
Tova Cohen, Associate Professor of Hebrew Literature, and Head of the Center for the Study of Women in Judaism, Bar-Ilan University
Immanuel Etkes, Professor of Modern Jewish History, and the Head of the Jewish History Department, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Shmuel Feiner, Associate Professor of Modern Jewish History, Bar-Ilan University
Yehuda Friedlander, Professor of Hebrew Literature, and Rector of the University, Bar-Ilan University
David B. Ruderman, Meyerhoff Professor, and Director, Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania
Joseph Salmon, Professor of Modern Jewish History, and Head of the History Department, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva
Nancy Sinkoff, Assistant Professor of History, Rutgers University
David Sorkin, Frances and Laurence Weinstein Professor of Jewish Studies and Senior Fellow, Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Shmuel Verses, Professor Emeritus of Hebrew Literature, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Publication details

Format	23.5 x 15.5 cm / 6" x 9"
Pages	270
ISBN	978-1-904113-26-3 paperback
Price	£16.95 / $29.95 paperback
Date of publication	November 2004 paperback 16 December 2004 (Print on Demand)

Introduction

1 The Early Haskalah DAVID SORKIN
2 Naphtali Hertz Wessely and the Cultural Dislocations of an Eighteenth- Century Maskil EDWARD BRAUER
3 Enlightenment Values, Jewish Ethics: The Maskilic Transformation of the Traditional Musar Genre HARRIS BOR
4 Was there a Haskalah in England? Reconsidering an Old Question DAVID B. RUDERMAN
5 Strategy and Ruse in the Haskalah of Mendel Levin of Satanow NANCY SINKOFF
6 The Struggle of the Mitnagedim and Maskilim Against Hasidism: Rabbi Jacob Emden and Judah Leib Miesis YEHUDA FRIEDLANDER
7 Magic and Miracle-Workers in the Literature of the Haskalah IMMANUEL ETKES
8 Portrait of the Jewish Maskil as a Young Man SHMUEL VERSES
9 Reality and its Refraction in Descriptions of Women in Haskalah Fiction TOVA COHEN
10 Enlightened Rabbis as Reformers in Russian Jewish Society JOSEPH SALMON
11 Toward a Historical Definition of Haskalah SHMUEL FEINER
Glossary
Bibliography
Index

Reviews

'Offers many new perspectives on the movement. It includes unique and original studies . . . The authors are acknowledged experts in their fields . . . a valuable addition to any library collection dealing with modern Judaism and is an important update to any collection dealing with European Jewish culture and religion.'
Shaul Stampfer, Religious Studies Review