Jewish enlightenment in an English key
Subtitle: Anglo-Jewry's construction of modern Jewish thought
By: David B. Ruderman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2000
Place of publication: Princeton, N.J
Language: eng
Number of pages: 291
Subjects: Judaism -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century; Jews -- Great Britain -- Intellectual life -- 18th century
Description: "Historians of the European Jewish experience have long marginalized the intellectual achievement of Jews in England, where it was assumed no seminal figures contributed to the development of modern Jewish thought. In this first comprehensive account of the emergence of Anglo-Jewish thought in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, David Ruderman impels a reconsideration of the formative beginnings of modern European Jewish culture.

He uncovers a vibrant Jewish intellectual life in England during the Enlightenment era by examining a small but fascinating group of hitherto neglected Jewish thinkers in the process of transforming their traditional Hebraic culture into a modern English one. This portrait of English Jews reformulating their tradition in light of Enlightenment categories illuminates an overlooked corner in the history of Jewish culture in England and Jewish thought during the Enlightenment."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index
Table of contents: title: "The scripture correcting Maniae" : Benjamin Kennicott and his Hutchinsonian and Anglo-Jewish detractors; title: The new and "metrical" English bible : Robert Lowth and his Jewish critic, David Levi; title: Deism and its reverberations in English Jewish thought : Abraham ben Naphtali Tang and some of his contemporaries; title: Between rational and irrational dissent : political radicalism in Anglo-Jewish thought; title: Science and Newtonianism in the culture of Anglo-Jewry; title: Translation and transformation : the Englishing of Jewish culture; title: Appendix : Moses Mendelssohn through Anglo-Jewish eyes