Haskalah Jewish Enlightenment

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Haskalah Jewish Enlightenment

• common features with European Enlightenment
• 1. rationalism (reason the measure of all
  things)
• 2. individualism
• 3. hope in positive development of history
• 4. emphasis on education
• 5. morality
• 6. religious tolerance /deism/

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Specifics of the Jewish Enlightenment

• abolishing of Jewish autonomy
• Bildung
• linguistic assimilation
• Germany and Habsburg Monarchy
• Eastern Europe (esp. Russia, Galicia, Romania)
• new era in Jewish studies

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Phases of Haskalah

• Central European
• Prussia, Austria, Bohemian lands
• from 1783
• Galician
• from the 1820s
• Eastern European
• Russia, Lithuania, Rumania
• from the 1830s to 1880s
• founder and originator Moses Mendelssohn

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Moses Mendelssohn(1729 - 1786)

• born in Dessau, son of a sofer
• studies of Talmud at the yeshiva in Berlin
• as autodidact studies of secular subjects and
  European languages
• friendship with G.E.Lessing and Emannuel Kant
• 1750 status of Jew under extraordinary
  protection
• 1783 Jerusalem, or, on religious power and
  Judaism
• translation of Tanach

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Main ideas of Moses Mendelssohn

• what makes Judaism unique is its divine
  revelation of a code of law
• God as a perfect Being
• He accepted the existence of miracles and
  revelation as long as belief in God did not
  depend on them
• Church does not have right to interfere into the
  choice of religion (into freedom of conscience)
• Plurality of truths he recognized the necessity
  of multiple religions and respected each one.
• Diaspora Jews no more the chosen people of God
  
• He tried to improve the relationship between Jews
  and Christians as he argued for tolerance and
  humanity
• State does not have the right to interfere with
  the religion of its citizens
• Jews must live in civil society but only in a way
  that their right to observe religious laws is
  granted

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Impact and consequences of Haskalah

• reasons of success of Haskalah in Central and
  Eastern Europe
• emancipation
• cooperation with absolutist rulers
• consequences of Haskalah
• acculturation (reforms of Judaism)
• assimilation
• Zionism