The Haskalah, often termed Jewish Enlightenment
(Hebrew: השכלה‬; literally, "wisdom",
"erudition") was an intellectual movement
among the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe,
with certain influence on those in Western
Europe and the Muslim world.
It arose as a defined ideological worldview
during the 1770s, and its last stage ended
around 1881, with the rise of Jewish nationalism.
The Haskalah pursued two complementary aims.
It sought to preserve the Jews as a separate,
unique collective and worked for a cultural
and moral renewal, especially a revival of
Hebrew for secular purposes, pioneering the
modern press and literature in the language.
Concurrently, it strove for an optimal integration
of the Jews in surrounding societies, including
the study of native vernacular and adoption
of modern values, culture and appearance,
all combined with economic productivization.
The Haskalah promoted rationalism, liberalism,
freedom of thought and enquiry, and is largely
perceived as the Jewish variant of the general
Age of Enlightenment.
The movement encompassed a wide spectrum ranging
from moderates, who hoped for maximal compromise
and conservatism, to radicals who sought sweeping
changes.
In its various changes, the Haskalah fulfilled
an important, though limited, part in the
modernization of Central and Eastern European
Jews.
Its activists, the maskilim, exhorted and
implemented communal, educational and cultural
reforms in both the public and the private
spheres.
Owing to its dualistic policies, it collided
both with the traditionalist rabbinic elite,
which attempted to preserve old Jewish values
and norms in their entirety, and with the
radical assimilationists who wished to eliminate
or minimize the existence of the Jews as a
defined collective.
== Definitions ==
=== Literary circle ===
The Haskalah was a multifaceted phenomenon,
with many loci which rose and dwindled at
different times and across vast territories.
The very name Haskalah only became a standard
self-appellation in 1860, when it was taken
as the motto of the Odessa-based newspaper
Ha-Melitz, though derivatives and the title
Maskil for activists were already common beforehand
– in the first edition of Ha-Meassef from
1 October 1783, its publishers described themselves
as Maskilim.
While Maskilic centres sometimes had loose
institutions around which their members operated,
the movement as a whole lacked any such.
In spite of this diversity, the Maskilim shared
a sense of common identity and self-consciousness.
These were anchored in the existence of a
shared literary canon, which began to be formulated
in the very first Maskilic locus at Berlin.
Its members, like Moses Mendelssohn, Hartwig
Wessely, Isaac Satanow and Isaac Euchel, authored
tracts in various genres that were further
disseminated and re-read among other Maskilim.
Each generation, in turn, elaborated and added
its own works to the growing body.
The emergence of the Maskilic canon reflected
the movement's central and defining enterprise,
the revival of Hebrew as a literary language
for secular purposes (its restoration as a
spoken tongue occurred only much later).
The Maskilim researched and standardized grammar,
minted countless neologisms and composed poetry,
magazines, theatrical works and literature
of all sorts in Hebrew.
Historians described the movement largely
as a Republic of Letters, an intellectual
community based on printing houses and reading
societies.The Maskilim's attitude toward Hebrew,
as noted by Moses Pelli, was derived from
Enlightenment perceptions of language as reflecting
both individual and collective character.
To them, a corrupt tongue mirrored the inadequate
condition of the Jews which they sought to
ameliorate.
They turned to Hebrew as their primary creative
medium.
The Maskilim inherited the Medieval Grammarians'
– such as Jonah ibn Janah and Judah ben
David Hayyuj – distaste of Mishnaic Hebrew
and preference of the Biblical one as pristine
and correct.
They turned to the Bible as a source and standard,
emphatically advocating what they termed "Pure
Hebrew Tongue" (S'fat E'ver tzacha) and lambasting
the Rabbinic style of letters which mixed
it with Aramaic as a single "Holy Tongue"
and often employed loan words from other languages.
Some activists, though, were not averse to
using Mishnaic and Rabbinic forms.
They also preferred the Sephardi pronunciation,
considered more prestigious, to the Ashkenazi
one, linked with the Jews of Poland who were
deemed backward.
The movement's literary canon is defined by
a grandiloquent, archaic register copying
the Biblical one and often combining lengthy
allusions or direct quotes from verses in
the prose.During a century of activity, the
Maskilim produced a massive contribution,
forming the first phase of modern Hebrew literature.
In 1755, Moses Mendelssohn began publishing
Qohelet Musar ("The Moralist"), regarded as
the beginning of modern writing in Hebrew
and the very first journal in the language.
Between 1789 and his death, Hartwig Wessely
compiled Shirei Tif'eret ("Poems of Glory"),
an eighteen-part epic cycle concerning Moses
which exerted influence on all neo-Hebraic
poets in the following generations.
Joseph ha-Efrati Troplowitz was the Haskalah's
pioneering playwright, best known for his
1794 epic drama Melukhat Sha'ul ("Reign of
Saul") which was printed in twelve editions
by 1888.
Juda Loeb ben-Ze'ev was the first modern Hebrew
grammarian, and beginning with his 1796 manual
of the language, he authored books which explored
it and were vital reading material for young
Maskilim until the end of the 19th century.
Solomon Löwisohn was the first to translate
Shakespeare into Hebrew, and an abridged form
of the "Are at this hour asleep!" monologue
in Henry IV, Part 2 was included in his 1816
lyrical compilation Melitzat Yeshurun (Eloquence
of Jeshurun).
Joseph Perl pioneered satirist writings in
his biting, mocking critique of Hasidism,
Megaleh Tmirin (Revealer of Secrets) from
1819.
Adam HaCohen was primarily a leading metricist,
with his 1842 Shirei S'fat ha-Qodesh (Verses
in the Holy Tongue) considered a milestone
in Hebrew poetry, and also authored biblical
exegesis and educational handbooks.
Abraham Mapu authored the first Hebraic full-length
novel, Ahavat Zion (Love of Zion) which was
published in 1853 after twenty-three years
of work.
Judah Leib Gordon was the most eminent poet
of his generation and arguably of the Haskalah
in its entirety.
His most famous work was the 1876 epic Qotzo
shel Yodh (Tittle of a Jot).
Mendele Mocher Sforim was during his youth
a Maskilic writer, but from his 1886 B-Sether
Ra'am (Hidden in Thunder) abandoned its strict
conventions in favour of a mixed, facile and
common style.
His career marked the end of the Maskilic
period in Hebrew literature and the beginning
of the Era of Renaissance.
The writers of the latter period lambasted
their Maskilic predecessors for their didactic
and florid style, more or less paralleling
the Romantics' criticism of Enlightenment
literature.
The central platforms of the Maskilic "Republic
of Letters" were its great periodicals, each
serving as a locus for contributors and readers
during the time it was published.
The first was the Königsberg (and later Berlin)-based
Ha-Meassef, launched by Isaac Euchel in 1783
and printed with growing intervals until 1797.
The magazine had several dozen writers and
272 subscribers at its zenith, from Shklov
in the east to London in the west, making
it the sounding board of the Berlin Haskalah.
The movement lacked an equivalent until the
appearance of Bikurei ha-I'tim in Vienna between
1820 until 1831, serving the Moravian and
Galician Haskalah.
That function was later fulfilled by the Prague-based
Kerem Hemed from 1834 to 1857, and to a lesser
degree by Kokhvei Yizhak, published in the
same city from 1845 to 1870.
The Russian Haskalah was robust enough to
lack any single platform.
Its members published several large magazines,
including the Vilnius-based Ha-Karmel (1860–1880),
Ha-Tsefirah in Warsaw and more, though the
probably most influential of them all was
Ha-Melitz, launched in 1860 at Odessa by Alexander
Zederbaum.
=== Reforming movement ===
While the partisans of the Haskalah were much
immersed in the study of sciences and Hebrew
grammar, this was not a profoundly new phenomenon,
and their creativity was a continuation of
a long, centuries-old trend among educated
Jews.
What truly marked the movement was the challenge
it laid to the monopoly of the rabbinic elite
over the intellectual sphere of Jewish life,
contesting its role as spiritual leadership.
In his 1782 circular Divrei Shalom v'Emeth
(Words of Peace and Truth), Hartwig Wessely,
one of the most traditional and moderate maskilim,
quoted the passage from Leviticus Rabbah stating
that a Torah scholar who lacked wisdom was
inferior to an animal's carcass.
He called upon the Jews to introduce general
subjects, like science and vernacular language,
into their children's curriculum; this "Teaching
of Man" was necessarily linked with the "Teaching
(Torah) of God", and the latter, though superior,
could not be pursued and was useless without
the former.
Historian Shmuel Feiner discerned that Wessely
insinuated (consciously or not) a direct challenge
to the supremacy of sacred teachings, comparing
them with general subjects and implying the
latter had an intrinsic rather than merely
instrumental value.
He therefore also contested the authority
of the rabbinical establishment, which stemmed
from its function as interpreters of the holy
teachings and their status as the only truly
worthy field of study.
Though secular subjects could and were easily
tolerated, their elevation to the same level
as sacred ones was a severe threat, and indeed
mobilized the rabbis against the nascent Haskalah.
The potential of "Words of Peace and Truth"
was fully realized later, by the second generation
of the movement in Berlin and other radical
maskilim, who openly and vehemently denounced
the traditional authorities.
The appropriate intellectual and moral leadership
needed by the Jewish public in modern times
was, according to the maskilim, that of their
own.
Feiner noted that in their usurpation of the
title of spiritual elite, unprecedented in
Jewish history since the dawn of Rabbinic
Judaism (various contestants before the Enlightened
were branded as schismatics and cast out),
they very much emulated the manner in which
secular intellectuals dethroned and replaced
the Church from the same status among Christians.
Thus the maskilim generated an upheaval which
– though by no means alone – broke the
sway held by the rabbis and the traditional
values over Jewish society.
Combined with many other factors, they laid
the path to all modern Jewish movements and
philosophies, either those critical, hostile
or supportive to themselves.The Maskilim sought
to replace the framework of values held by
the Ashkenazim of Central and Eastern Europe
with their own philosophy, which embraced
the liberal, rationalistic notions of the
18th and 19th centuries and cast them in their
own particular mold.
This intellectual upheaval was accompanied
by the desire to practically change Jewish
society.
Even the moderate maskilim viewed the contemporary
state of Jews as deplorable and in dire need
of rejuvenation, whether in matters of morals,
cultural creativity or economic productivity.
They argued that such conditions were rightfully
scorned by others and untenable from both
practical and idealistic perspectives.
It was to be remedied by the shedding of the
base and corrupt elements of Jewish existence
and retention of only the true, positive ones
– indeed, the question what those were,
exactly, loomed as the greatest challenge
of Jewish modernity.
The more extreme and ideologically-bent came
close to the universalist aspirations of the
radical Enlightenment, of a world freed of
superstition and backwardness in which all
humans will come together under the liberating
influence of reason and progress.
The reconstituted Jews, these radical maskilim
believed, would be able to take their place
as equals in an enlightened world.
But all, including the moderate and disillusioned,
stated that adjustment to the changing world
was both unavoidable and positive in itself.Haskalah
ideals were converted into practical steps
via numerous reform programs initiated locally
and independently by its activists, acting
in small groups or even alone at every time
and area.
Members of the movement sought to acquaint
their people with European culture, have them
adopt the vernacular language of their lands,
and integrate them into larger society.
They opposed Jewish reclusiveness and self-segregation,
called upon Jews to discard traditional dress
in favour of the prevalent one, and preached
patriotism and loyalty to the new centralized
governments.
They acted to weaken and limit the jurisdiction
of traditional community institutions – the
rabbinic courts, empowered to rule on numerous
civic matters, and the board of elders, which
served as lay leadership.
The maskilim perceived those as remnants of
medieval discrimination.
They criticized various traits of Jewish society,
such as child marriage – traumatized memories
from unions entered at the age of thirteen
or fourteen are a common theme in Haskalah
literature – the use of anathema to enforce
community will and the concentration on virtually
only religious studies.
Perhaps the most important facet of Masklilic
reform efforts was the educational one.
In 1778, partisans of the movement were among
the founders of the Berlin Jewish Free School,
or Hevrat Hinuch Ne'arim (Society for the
Education of Boys), the first institution
in Ashkenazi Jewry that taught general studies
in addition to the reformulated and reduced
traditional curriculum.
This model, with different stresses, was applied
elsewhere.
Joseph Perl opened the first modern Jewish
school in Galicia at Tarnopol in 1813, and
Eastern European maskilim opened similar institutes
in the Pale of Settlement and Congress Poland.
They all abandoned the received methods of
Ashkenazi education: study of the Pentateuch
with the archaic I'vri-Taitsch (medieval Yiddish)
translation and an exclusive focus on the
Talmud as a subject of higher learning, all
presided over by old-school tutors, melamdim,
who were particularly reviled in Maskilic
circles.
Those were replaced by teachers trained in
modern methods, among others in the spirit
of German Philanthropinism, who sought to
acquaint their pupils with refined Hebrew
so they may understand the Pentateuch and
prayers and thus better identify with their
heritage – ignorance of Hebrew was often
lamented by Maskilim as breeding apathy towards
Judaism.
Far less Talmud, considered cumbersome and
ill-suited for children, was taught; elements
considered superstitious, like midrashim,
were also removed.
Matters of faith were taught in rationalistic
spirit, and in radical circles also in a sanitized
manner.
On the other hand, the curriculum was augmented
by general studies like math, vernacular language,
and so forth.
In the linguistic field, the maskilim wished
to replace the dualism which characterized
the traditional Ashkenazi community, which
spoke Judaeo-German and its formal literary
language was Hebrew, with another: a refined
Hebrew for internal usage and the local vernacular
for external ones.
They almost universally abhorred Judaeo-German,
regarding it as a corrupt dialect and another
symptom of Jewish destitution – the movement
pioneered the negative attitude to Yiddish
which persisted many years later among the
educated – though often its activists had
to resort to it for lack of better medium
to address the masses.
Aaron Halle-Wolfssohn, for example, authored
the first modern Judaeo-German play, Leichtsinn
und Frömmelei (Rashness and Sanctimony) in
1796.
On the economic front, the maskilim preached
productivization and abandonment of traditional
Jewish occupations in favour of agriculture,
trades and liberal professions.
In matters of faith (which were being cordoned
off into a distinct sphere of "religion" by
modernization pressures) the movement's partisans,
from moderates to radicals, lacked any uniform
coherent agenda.
The main standard through which they judged
Judaism was that of rationalism.
Their most important contribution was the
revival of Jewish philosophy, rather dormant
since the Italian Renaissance, as an alternative
to mysticist Kabbalah which served as almost
the sole system of thought among Ashkenazim
and an explanatory system for observance.
Rather than complex allegorical exegesis,
the Haskalah sought a literal understanding
of scripture and sacred literature.
The rejection of Kabbalah, often accompanied
with attempts to refute the ancientness of
the Zohar, were extremely controversial in
traditional society; apart from that, the
maskilim had little in common.
On the right-wing were conservative members
of the rabbinic elite who merely wanted a
rationalist approach, and on the extreme left
some ventured far beyond the pale of orthodoxy
towards Deism.Another aspect was the movement's
attitude to gender relations.
Many of the maskilim were raised in the rabbinic
elite, in which (unlike among the poor Jewish
masses) the males were immersed in traditional
studies and their wives supported them financially,
mostly by running business.
Many of the Jewish enlightened were traumatized
by their own experiences, either of assertive
mothers or early marriage, often conducted
at the age of thirteen.
Bitter memories from those are a common theme
in maskilic autobiographies.
Having imbibed the image of European bourgeoisie
family values, many of them sought to challenge
the semi-matriarchal order of rabbinic families
– which combined a total lack of Jewish
education for women with granting them the
status of providers – early marriage, and
rigid modesty.
Instead, they insisted that men become economically
productive while confining their wives to
the home environment but also granting them
proper religious education – a reversal
of what was customary among Jews, copying
Christian attitudes at the time.
=== Transitory phenomena ===
The Haskalah was also mainly a movement of
transformation, straddling both the declining
traditional Jewish society of autonomous community
and cultural seclusion and the beginnings
of a modern Jewish public.
As noted by Feiner, everything connected with
the Haskalah was dualistic in nature.
The Jewish Enlighteners pursued two parallel
agendas: they exhorted the Jews to acculturate
and harmonize with the modern state, and demanded
that the Jews remain a distinct group with
its own culture and identity.
Theirs was a middle position between Jewish
community and surrounding society, received
mores and modernity.
Sliding away from this precarious equilibrium,
in any direction, signified also one's break
with the Jewish Enlightenment.
Virtually all maskilim received old-style,
secluded education, and were young Torah scholars
before they were first exposed to outside
knowledge (from a gender perspective, the
movement was almost totally male-dominated;
women did not receive sufficient tutoring
to master Hebrew).
For generations, Mendelssohn's Bible translation
to German was employed by such young initiates
to bridge the linguistic gap and learn a foreign
language, having been raised on Hebrew and
Yiddish only.
The experience of abandoning one's sheltered
community and struggle with tradition was
a ubiquitous trait of maskilic biographies.
The children of these activists almost never
followed their parents; they rather went forward
in the path of acculturation and assimilation.
While their fathers learned the vernaculars
late and still consumed much Hebrew literature,
the little available material in the language
did not attract their offspring, who often
lacked a grasp of Hebrew due to not sharing
their parents' traditional education.
Haskalah was, by and large, a unigenerational
experience.In the linguistic field, this transitory
nature was well attested.
The traditional Jewish community in Europe
inhabited two separate spheres of communication:
one internal, where Hebrew served as written
high language and Yiddish as vernacular for
the masses, and one external, where Latin
and the like were used for apologetic and
intercessory purposes toward the Christian
world.
A tiny minority of writers was concerned with
the latter.
The Haskalah sought to introduce a different
bilingualism: renovated, refined Hebrew for
internal matters, while Yiddish was to be
eliminated; and national vernaculars, to be
taught to all Jews, for external ones.
However, they insisted on the maintenance
of both spheres.
When acculturation far exceeded the movement's
plans, Central European Jews turned almost
solely to the vernacular.
David Sorkin demonstrated this with the two
great journals of German Jewry: the maskilic
Ha-Me'assef was written in Hebrew and supported
the study of German; the post-maskilic Sulamith
(published since 1806) was written almost
entirely in German, befitting its editors'
agenda of linguistic assimilation.
Likewise, upon the demise of Jewish Enlightenment
in Eastern Europe, authors abandoned the maskilic
paradigm not toward assimilation but in favour
of exclusive use of Hebrew and Yiddish.
The political vision of the Haskalah was predicated
on a similar approach.
It opposed the reclusive community of the
past but sought a maintenance of a strong
Jewish framework (with themselves as leaders
and intercessors with the state authorities);
the Enlightened were not even fully agreeable
to civic emancipation, and many of them viewed
it with reserve, sometimes anxiety.
In their writings, they drew a sharp line
between themselves and whom they termed "pseudo-maskilim"
– those who embraced the Enlightenment values
and secular knowledge but did not seek to
balance these with their Jewishness, but rather
strove for full assimilation.
Such elements, whether the radical universalists
who broke off the late Berlin Haskalah or
the Russified intelligentsia in Eastern Europe
a century later, were castigated and derided
no less than the old rabbinic authorities
which the movement confronted.
It was not uncommon for its partisans to become
a conservative element, combating against
further dilution of tradition: in Vilnius,
Samuel Joseph Fuenn turned from a progressive
into an adversary of more radical elements
within a generation.
In the Maghreb, the few local maskilim were
more concerned with the rapid assimilation
of local Jews into the colonial French culture
than with the ills of traditional society.Likewise,
those who abandoned the optimistic, liberal
vision of the Jews (albeit as a cohesive community)
integrating into wider society in favour of
full-blown Jewish nationalism or radical,
revolutionary ideologies which strove to uproot
the established order, also broke with the
movement.
The national Jewish movements of Eastern Europe,
founded by disillusioned maskilim, derisively
regarded it – in a manner similar to other
romantic-nationalist movements' understanding
of the general Enlightenment – as a naive,
liberal and assimilationist ideology which
induced foreign cultural influences, gnawed
at the Jewish national consciousness and promised
false hopes of equality in exchange for spiritual
enslavement.
This hostile view was promulgated by nationalist
thinkers and historians, from Peretz Smolenskin,
Simon Dubnow and onwards.
It was once common in Israeli historiography.A
major factor which always characterized the
movement was its weakness and its dependence
of much more powerful elements.
Its partisans were mostly impoverished intellectuals,
who eked out a living as private tutors and
the like; few had a stable financial base,
and they required patrons, whether affluent
Jews or the state's institutions.
This triplice – the authorities, the Jewish
communal elite and the maskilim – was united
only in the ambition of thoroughly reforming
Jewish society.
The government had no interest in the visions
of renaissance which the Enlightened so fervently
cherished.
It demanded the Jews to turn into productive,
loyal subjects with rudimentary secular education,
and no more.
The rich Jews were sometimes open to the movement's
agenda, but mostly practical, hoping for a
betterment of their people that would result
in emancipation and equal rights.
Indeed, the great cultural transformation
which occurred among the Parnassim (affluent
commumal wardens) class – they were always
more open to outside society, and had to tutor
their children in secular subjects, thus inviting
general Enlightenment influences – was a
precondition of Haskalah.
The state and the elite required the maskilim
as interlocutors and specialists in their
efforts for reform, especially as educators,
and the latter used this as leverage to benefit
their ideology.
However, the activists were much more dependent
on the former than vice versa; frustration
from one's inability to further the maskilic
agenda and being surrounded by apathetic Jews,
either conservative "fanatics" or parvenu
"assimilationists", is a common theme in the
movement's literature.The term Haskalah became
synonymous, among friends and foes alike and
in much of early Jewish historiography, with
the sweeping changes that engulfed Jewish
society (mostly in Europe) from the late 18th
Century to the late 19th Century.
It was depicted by its partisans, adversaries
and historians like Heinrich Graetz as a major
factor in those.
Later research greatly narrowed the scope
of the phenomenon and limited its importance:
while Haskalah undoubtedly played a part,
the contemporary historical consensus portrays
it as much humbler.
Other transformation agents, from state-imposed
schools to new economic opportunities, were
demonstrated to have rivaled or overshadowed
the movement completely in propelling such
processes as acculturation, secularization,
religious reform from moderate to extreme,
adoption of native patriotism and so forth.
In many regions the Haskalah had no effect
at all.
== Origins ==
As long as the Jews lived in segregated communities,
and as long as all social interaction with
their Gentile neighbors was limited, the rabbi
was the most influential member of the Jewish
community.
In addition to being a religious scholar and
"clergy", a rabbi also acted as a civil judge
in all cases in which both parties were Jews.
Rabbis sometimes had other important administrative
powers, together with the community elders.
The rabbinate was the highest aim of many
Jewish boys, and the study of the Talmud was
the means of obtaining that coveted position,
or one of many other important communal distinctions.
Haskalah followers advocated "coming out of
the ghetto", not just physically but also
mentally and spiritually, in order to assimilate
among Gentile nations.
The example of Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86),
a Prussian Jew, served to lead this movement,
which was also shaped by Aaron Halle-Wolfssohn
(1754–1835) and Joseph Perl (1773–1839).
Mendelssohn's extraordinary success as a popular
philosopher and man of letters revealed hitherto
unsuspected possibilities of integration and
acceptance of Jews among non-Jews.
Mendelssohn also provided methods for Jews
to enter the general society of Germany.
A good knowledge of the German language was
necessary to secure entrance into cultured
German circles, and an excellent means of
acquiring it was provided by Mendelssohn in
his German translation of the Torah.
This work became a bridge over which ambitious
young Jews could pass to the great world of
secular knowledge.
The Biur, or grammatical commentary, prepared
under Mendelssohn's supervision, was designed
to counteract the influence of traditional
rabbinical methods of exegesis.
Together with the translation, it became,
as it were, the primer of Haskalah.
Language played a key role in the haskalah
movement, as Mendelssohn and others called
for a revival of Hebrew and a reduction in
the use of Yiddish.
The result was an outpouring of new, secular
literature, as well as critical studies of
religious texts.
Julius Fürst along with other German-Jewish
scholars compiled Hebrew and Aramaic dictionaries
and grammars.
Jews also began to study and communicate in
the languages of the countries in which they
settled, providing another gateway for integration.
Berlin is the city of origin for the movement.
The capital city of Prussia and, later, the
German Empire, Berlin became known as a secular,
multi-cultural and multi-ethnic center, a
fertile environment for conversations and
radical movements.
This move by the Maskilim away from religious
study, into much more critical and worldly
studies was made possible by this German city
of modern and progressive thought.
It was a city in which the rising middle class
Jews and intellectual elites not only lived
among, but were exposed to previous age of
enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire, Diderot
and Rousseau.
The movement is often referred to the Berlin
Haskalah.
Reference to Berlin in relation to the Haskalah
movement is necessary because it provides
context for this episode of Jewish history.
Subsequently, having left Germany and spreading
across Eastern Europe, the Berlin Haskalah
influenced multiple Jewish communities who
were hungry for non-religious scholarly texts
and insight to worlds beyond their Jewish
enclaves.
== Spread ==
Haskalah did not stay restricted to Germany,
however, and the movement quickly spread throughout
Europe.
Poland–Lithuania was the heartland of Rabbinic
Judaism, with its two streams of Misnagdic
Talmudism centred in Lithuania and other regions,
and Hasidic mysticism popular in Ukraine,
Poland, Hungary and Russia.
In the 19th century Haskalah sought dissemination
and transformation of traditional education
and inward pious life in Eastern Europe.
It adapted its message to these different
environments, working with the Russian government
of the Pale of Settlement to influence secular
educational methods, while its writers satirised
Hasidic mysticism, in favour of solely Rationalist
interpretation of Judaism.
Isaac Baer Levinsohn (1788–1860) became
known as the "Russian Mendelssohn".
Joseph Perl's (1773–1839) satire of the
Hasidic movement, "Revealer of Secrets" (Megalleh
Temirim), is said to be the first modern novel
in Hebrew.
It was published in Vienna in 1819 under the
pseudonym "Obadiah ben Pethahiah".
The Haskalah's message of integration into
non-Jewish society was subsequently counteracted
by alternative secular Jewish political movements
advocating Folkish, Socialist or Nationalist
secular Jewish identities in Eastern Europe.
While Haskalah advocated Hebrew and sought
to remove Yiddish, these subsequent developments
advocated Yiddish Renaissance among Maskilim.
Writers of Yiddish literature variously satirised
or sentimentalised Hasidic mysticism.
== Effects ==
Even as emancipation eased integration into
wider society and assimilation prospered,
the haskalah also resulted in the creation
of secular Jewish culture, with an emphasis
on Jewish history and Jewish identity, rather
than religion.
This resulted in the engagement of Jews in
a variety of competing ways within the countries
where they lived; these included the struggle
for Jewish emancipation, involvement in new
Jewish political movements, and later, in
the face of continued persecutions in late
nineteenth-century Europe, the development
of a Jewish Nationalism.
One source describes these effects as, "The
emancipation of the Jews brought forth two
opposed movements: the cultural assimilation,
begun by Moses Mendelssohn, and Zionism, founded
by Theodor Herzl in 1896."One facet of the
Haskalah was a widespread cultural adaptation,
as those Jews who participated in the enlightenment
began in varying degrees to participate in
the cultural practices of the surrounding
Gentile population.
Connected with this was the birth of the Reform
movement, whose founders such as Israel Jacobson
and Leopold Zunz rejected the continuing observance
of those aspects of Jewish law which they
classified as ritual, as opposed to moral
or ethical.
Orthodoxy, created new movements to fight
Haskalah, most notably the Mussar Movement
in Lithuania and Torah im Derech Eretz in
Germany.
Followers of Haskalah sided with Gentile governments
in plans to increase secular education, at
the expense of religious education and observance,
among the Jewish masses, bringing them into
acute conflict with the orthodox who believed
this threatened Jewish life.The spreading
of Haskalah affected Judaism as a religion
because of how much the different sects desired
to be integrated, and in turn, integrate their
religious traditions.
The effects of the Enlightenment were already
present in Jewish religious music and opinion
on traditionalism versus modernization.
Groups of Reform Jews such as the Society
of the Friends of Reform and the Association
for the Reform of Judaism were formed because
they wanted and actively advocated for a change
in Jewish tradition, mainly rituals like circumcision.
Another non-Orthodox group was the Conservative
Jews, who emphasized the importance of traditions
but viewed with a historical perspective.
The Orthodox Jews were actively against these
reformers because they viewed changing Jewish
tradition was an insult to God and that fulfillment
in life could be found in serving God and
keeping his commandments.
The effect of Haskalah was that it gave a
voice to plurality of views, while the orthodoxy
stubbornly preserved the tradition, even to
the point of insisting on dividing between
sects.
Another important facet of the Haskalah was
its interests to non-Jewish religions.
Moses Mendelssohn criticized some aspects
of Christianity, but depicted Jesus as a Torah-observant
rabbi, who was loyal to traditional Judaism.
Mendelssohn explicitly linked positive Jewish
views of Jesus with the issues of Emancipation
and Jewish-Christian reconciliation.
Similar revisionist views were expressed by
Rabbi Isaac Ber Levinsohn and other traditional
representatives of the Haskalah movement.
== List of Maskilim ==
David Friesenhausen (1756–1828), Hungarian
maskil, mathematician, and rabbi
Abraham Dob Bär Lebensohn (~1790–1878)
was a Lithuanian Jewish Hebraist, poet, and
grammarian.
Abraham Jacob Paperna (1840–1919) was a
Russian Jewish educator and author.
Aleksander Zederbaum (1816–1893) was a Polish-Russian
Jewish journalist.
He was founder and editor of Ha-Meliẓ, and
other periodicals published in Russian and
Yiddish; he wrote in Hebrew.
Avrom Ber Gotlober (1811–1899) was a Jewish
writer, poet, playwright, historian, journalist
and educator.
He mostly wrote in Hebrew, but also wrote
poetry and dramas in Yiddish.
His first collection was published in 1835.
Dorothea von Schlegel (1764–1839) was a
linchpin of the German-Jewish Enlightenment,
a novelist and translator, and a daughter
of Moses Mendelssohn.
Eliezer Dob Liebermann (1820–1895) was a
Russian Hebrew-language writer.
Ephraim Deinard (1846–1930) was one of the
greatest Hebrew 'bookmen' of all time.
He was a bookseller, bibliographer, publicist,
polemicist, historian, memoirist, author,
editor, and publisher.
Henriette Herz (1764–1847) was a Prussian-Jewish
salonnière.
Isaac ben Jacob Benjacob (1801–1863) was
a Russian bibliographer, author, and publisher.
His parents moved to Vilnius when he was still
a child, and there he received instruction
in Hebrew grammar and rabbinical lore.
Rahel Varnhagen (1771–1833) was a writer
and the most prominent female maskil and salonnière.
Isaac Bär Levinsohn (noted in the Haskalah
article)
== See also ==
Hebrew literature
Wissenschaft des Judentums
Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) was a German
Jewish philosopher, although not a maskil,
his ideas strongly influenced the Haskalah.
Jerusalem, a 1783 book by Moses Mendelssohn.
Berdychiv, a city in northern Ukraine, was
a hotbed of maskilic thought in the 19th century.
Isaiah Berlin (1725–1799) was a German Talmudist
who strongly opposed the maskilim.
== Notes
