Research Catalog

Title

The Jewish enlightenment / Shmuel Feiner ; translated by Chaya Naor.

Author

Feiner, Shmuel.

Publication

Philadelphia : University of Pennyslvania Press, c2002.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xiv, 440 p.; 24 cm.

Summary

"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.

Series Statement

Jewish culture and contexts

Uniform Title

• Mahpekhat ha-neʾorut. English
• Project Muse UPCC books
• Jewish culture and contexts.

Alternative Title

Mahpekhat ha-neʾorut.

Subject

• 1700-1799
• Jews > Intellectual life > 18th century
• Haskalah > History > 18th century
• Jewish learning and scholarship > History > 18th century

Genre/Form

History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [375]-428) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Introduction: The Jews and the Enlightenment -- 1. Intellectual Inferiority: The Affront -- 2. The Early Haskalah and the Redemption of Knowledge -- 3. The Secular Author in the Public Arena -- 4. The Wessely Affair: Threats and Anxieties -- 5. Projects of Enlightenment and Tests of Tolerance -- 6. The Rabbinical Elite on the Defensive -- 7. On Religious Power and Judaism -- 8. The Society of Friends of the Hebrew Language -- 9. The Maskilim: A Group Portrait -- 10. Euchel Establishes the Haskalah Movement -- 11. The Society for the Promotion of Goodness and Justice -- 12. Growth and Radicalization -- 13. Crisis at the Turn of the Century -- 14. Tensions and Polemics in the Shadow of Crisis -- 15. On Frivolity and Hypocrisy -- Afterword: Haskalah and Secularization.

ISBN

0812237552 (cloth : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2003061057

OCLC

• 224240819
• SCSB-11819918

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library