Haskalah and History The Emergence of a Modern Jewish Historical Consciousness

by Feiner, Shmuel; Silverston, Sondra; Naor, Chaya

• ISBN13: 9781874774433
• ISBN10: 1874774439
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-11-01
• Publisher: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in association with Liverpool University Press

Summary

Shmuel Feiners innovative book recreates the historical consciousness that fired the Haskalahthe Jewish Enlightenment movement. The proponents of this movement advocated that Jews should capture the spirit of the future and take their place in wider society, but as Jewswithout denying their collective identity and without denying their past. Claiming historical legitimacy for their ideology and their vision of the future, they formulated an ethos of modernity that they projected on to the universal and the Jewish past alike. What was the image of the past that the maskilim shaped? What tactics underpinned their use of history? How did their historical awareness change and developfrom the inception of the Haskalah in Germany at the time of Mendelssohn and Wessely, through the centres of Haskalah in Austria, Galicia, and Russia, to the emergence of modern nationalism in the maskilic circles in eastern Europe in the last third of the nineteenth century? These are some of the questions

Table of Contents

Note on Transliteration and Conventions Used in the Text	xi
Introduction. 'Haskalah' and 'History'	1	(8)
From Traditional History to Maskilic History in Late Eighteenth---Century Germany	9	(62)
An Enlightened Avant---Garde	9	(2)
The Legitimization of Traditional History	11	(6)
The 'Judgement of Reason': Legitimizations for a New History	17	(14)
Rationalistic, Realistic, and Moralistic History	31	(5)
The Modern Period in the Maskilic Picture of the Past	36	(14)
The Pantheon of Historical Heroes	50	(10)
The Dissemination of Maskilic History in the Early Nineteenth Century	60	(11)
The Manipulation of History in Nineteenth---Century Galicia	71	(86)
The Galician Maskilim	71	(8)
The Unfolding of Maskilic History	79	(12)
A Natural History of Hasidism	91	(24)
Nahman Krochmal: The Middle---of---the---Road Maskil	115	(10)
Wissenschaft des Judentums in Galicia	125	(13)
The Struggle for Freedom of Thought	138	(12)
Iconoclasm: Attitudes to Religious Reform	150	(7)
Optimism under Oppression: Maskilic History in Russia, 1825--1855	157	(47)
The Idea Yearning to be Realized	157	(6)
A Universal History for a Modern Era	163	(15)
The Maskilic Chain of Tradition	178	(14)
The Use of History in Maskilic Propaganda	192	(2)
Political History and Moral History	194	(10)
Reaching the Masses: The Dissemination of Maskilic History	204	(70)
The Channels of Distribution	204	(7)
Optimistic and Patriotic History	211	(6)
Scientific Knowledge of the Past	217	(7)
The Autobiography of the Haskalah Movement	224	(5)
Abraham Mapu and the Popularization of Maskilic History	229	(5)
Heroics and Sacred Memories in Popular Historical Fiction	234	(7)
Improvement of the Masses: History in Yiddish	241	(6)
Kalman Schulman: The First Professional Popularizer	247	(27)
Maskilic History in Crisis	274	(67)
The Radical Haskalah: A Loss of Optimism	274	(21)
The Anticlerical Struggle	295	(11)
The Historical Vindication of Hasidism	306	(11)
From 'Maskilic History' to 'National History'	317	(24)
Conclusion. New Directions	341	(8)
Glossary	349	(4)
Bibliography	353	(44)
Index	397