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The Jewish Enlightenment
At the beginning of the eighteenth century most European Jews lived in restricted settlements and urban ghettos, isolated from the surrounding dominant Christian cultures not only by law but also by language, custom, and dress. By the end of the century urban, upwardly mobile Jews had shaved their beards and abandoned Yiddish in favor of the languages of the countries in which they lived. They began to participate in secular culture and they embraced rationalism and non-Jewish education as supplements to traditional Talmudic studies. The full participation of Jews in modern Europe and America would be unthinkable without the intellectual and social revolution that was the Haskalah, or Jewish...
The Jewish Eighteenth Century
The eighteenth century was the Jews' first modern century. The deep changes that took place during its course shaped the following generations, and its most prominent voices still reverberate today. In this first volume of his magisterial work, Shmuel Feiner charts the twisting and fascinating world of the first half of the 18th century from the viewpoint of the Jews of Europe. Paying careful attention to life stories, to bright and dark experiences, to voices of protest, to aspirations of reform, and to strivings for personal and general happiness, Feiner identifies the tectonic changes that were taking place in Europe and their unprecedented effects on and among Jews. From the religious and cultural revolution of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) to the question of whether Jews could be citizens of any nation, Feiner presents a broad view of how this century of upheaval altered the map of Europe and the Jews who called it home.
The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772-1881
"A remarkable achievement. Bartal presents the broad contours of nineteenth-century East European Jewish history even as he reworks them into a nontraditional narrative."—David Engel, New York University
Who Needs Arab-Jewish Identity?
In Who Needs Arab-Jewish Identity?: Interpellation, Exclusion, and Inessential Solidarities, Professor Reuven Snir, Dean of Humanities at Haifa University, presents a new approach to the study of Arab-Jewish identity and the subjectivities of Arabized Jews. Against the historical background of Arab-Jewish culture and in light of identity theory, Snir shows how the exclusion that the Arabized Jews had experienced, both in their mother countries and then in Israel, led to the fragmentation of their original identities and encouraged them to find refuge in inessential solidarities. Following double exclusion, intense globalization, and contemporary fluidity of identities, singularity, not ident...
Missionaries, Converts, and Rabbis
An examination of the life and work of Alexander McCaul and his impact on Jewish-Christian relations In Missionaries, Converts, and Rabbis, David B. Ruderman considers the life and works of prominent evangelical missionary Alexander McCaul (1799-1863), who was sent to Warsaw by the London Society for the Promotion of Christianity Amongst the Jews. He and his family resided there for nearly a decade, which afforded him the opportunity to become a scholar of Hebrew and rabbinic texts. Returning to England, he quickly rose up through the ranks of missionaries to become a leading figure and educator in the organization and eventually a professor of post-biblical studies at Kings College, London....
Reform Judaism for the Rest of Us
Reform Judaism has been tested by the spiritual torments and ideological upheavals of the last two centuries. Now, Reform Judaism for the Rest of Us brings into discussion key tenets and opinions that shape current thinking within the faith and introduces ideas for its future development. Author Alexander Maller believes that the core message of Reform Judaism, a modern faith inspired by the Jewish heritage and the Jewish and American Enlightenment, is entering a new phase in its history. Free from the defunct extremist ideologies of the last centuries, American Reform Judaism can expand its reach into the new millennium if it strengthens its grassroots appeal to be of, by, and for the Refor...
Cultural Revolution in Berlin
The process of secularization, which is one of the sources of present-day democracy, has its radical origins in eighteenth-century Europe. Criticism of religious norms and discipline, institutions and ideology led to the movement known as the Enlightenment. Its Jewish protagonists (the maskilim), a young intellectual elite, undertook the role of culturally revolutionizing eighteenth-century Jewish society. They aimed at overturning the monopolistic control of rabbinic scholars over education, publications, and social behaviour in favour of secular intellectual values. They sought to promote political rights and religious tolerance, embraced humanism, rationalism, and freedom of opinion. In t...
The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe
Throughout the eighteenth century, an ever-sharper distinction emerged between Jews of the old order and those who were self-consciously of a new world. As aspirations for liberation clashed with adherence to tradition, as national, ethnic, cultural, and other alternatives emerged and a long, circuitous search for identity began, it was no longer evident that the definition of Jewishness would be based on the beliefs and practices surrounding the study of the Torah. In The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe Shmuel Feiner reconstructs this evolution by listening to the voices of those who participated in the process and by deciphering its cultural codes and meanings...
Moses Hirschel and Enlightenment Breslau
Breslau has been almost entirely forgotten in the Anglophone sphere as a place of Enlightenment. Moreover, in the context of the Jewish Enlightenment, Breslau has never been discussed as a place of intercultural exchange between German-speaking Jewish, Protestant and Catholic intellectuals. An intellectual biography of Moses Hirschel offers an excellent case-study to investigate the complex reciprocal relationship between Jewish and non-Jewish enlighteners in a prosperous and influential Central European city at the turn of the 18th century.
Role Model and Countermodel
This book explores the “Golden Age” of Sephardic Jewry on the Iberian Peninsula and its perception in German Jewish culture during the era of emancipation. For Jews living in Germany, the history of Sephardic Jewry developed into a historical example with its distinctive valence and signature against the pressure to assimilate and the emergence of anti-Semitism in Germany. It provided, moreover, a forum to engage in internal dialogue amongst Jews and external dialogue with German majority society about challenging questions of religious, political, and national identity. In this respect, the perception of prominent Sephardic Jews as intercultural mediators was key to emphasizing the skills and values Jews had to offer to civilizations in the past. German Jews invoked this past significance in their case for a Jewish role in present and future societies, especially in Germany.
