The Jewish enlightenment
By: Shmuel Feiner ; translated by Chaya Naor
Series: Jewish culture and contexts
Publisher: University of Pennyslvania Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Philadelphia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 440
Subjects: Jews -- Intellectual life -- 18th century; Haskalah -- History -- 18th century; Jewish learning and scholarship -- History -- 18th century
Work titles: Mahpekhat ha-neʾorut.
Description: "The Jewish Enlightenment reconstructs the intellectual and social revolution of the Haskalah as it gradually gathered momentum throughout the eighteenth century. Relying on a huge range of previously unexplored sources, Shmuel Feiner fully views the Haskalah as the Jewish version of the European Enlightenment and, as such, a movement that cannot be isolated from broader eighteenth-century European traditions. Critically, he views the Haskalah as truly a European phenomenon and not one simply centered in Germany. He also shows how the republic of letters in European Jewry provided an avenue of secularization for Jewish society and culture, sowing the seeds of Jewish liberalism and modern ideology and sparking the Orthodox counterreaction that culminated in a clash of cultures within the Jewish community. The Haskalah's confrontations with its opponents within Jewry constitute one of the most fascinating chapters in the history of the dramatic and traumatic encounter between the Jews and modernity."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [375]-428) and index
Table of contents: title: A passion for knowledge; title: Jewish Kulturkampf; title: The Maskilic Republic; title: On two fronts