New Perspectives On The Haskalah

by Feiner, Shmuel; Sorkin, David; Feiner, Shmuel

• ISBN13: 9781904113263
• ISBN10: 1904113265
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-01-09
• Publisher: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in association with Liverpool University Press

Summary

This volume, written by a range of scholars in history and literature, 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 contributors 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, they 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 movement 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. (PRINT ON DEMAND)

Table of Contents

Note on Transliteration	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
The Early Haskalah	p. 9
Naphtali Herz Wessely and the Cultural Dislocations of an Eighteenth-Century Maskil	p. 27
Enlightenment Values, Jewish Ethics: The Haskalah's Transformation of the Traditional Musar Genre	p. 48
Was there a 'Haskalah' in England? Reconsidering an Old question	p. 64
Strategy and Ruse in the Haskalah of Mendel Lefin of Satanow	p. 86
The Struggle of the Mitnagedim and Maskilim against Hasidism: Rabbi Jacob Emden and Judah Leib Mieses	p. 103
Magic and Miracle-Workers in the Literature of the Haskalah	p. 113
Portrait of the Maskil as a Young Man	p. 128
Reality and its Refraction in Descriptions of Women in Haskalah Fiction	p. 144
Enlightened Rabbis as Reformers in Russian Jewish Society	p. 166
Towards a Historical Definition of the Haskalah	p. 184
Glossary	p. 221
Notes on Contributors	p. 224
Bibliography	p. 225
Index	p. 251
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