Enlightenment as Exodus: Jewish Ulysses

Journal of the History of Philosophy, 2004

Forward, 2003

An essay on Edward Said and Adam Sutcliffe's books, the latter a superb and erudite new work of scholarship, and the former more of the same, lazy anti-Zionist rhetoric.

The historian of Jewish modernization is faced with the formidable challenge of recreating in all its vitality the dramatic and convoluted historical development that gave birth to the contemporary Jewish world. One of the most fascinating and telling areas to explore regarding the aspirations of the Jews to drastically alter their values, modes of thought, and collective future is that of the elite of maskilim (enlightened Jews). This book is devoted to the history of the eighteenth-century Haskalah (Enlightenment) movement, weaving it into the broad and prolonged story of the changes that affected the Jewish people in the modern era. It provides a wide-scope reconstruction of the historical development and its ideas, and describes the public storms and the initial shocks that attended modernization. The book opens in the early eighteenth century, with the story of several young men in European Ashkenazi society, who embarked on a conscious, deliberate course to change their cultural environment. They were motivated by a sense of intellectual inferiority, as well as by the strong desire to partake of the domains of knowledge of a cultural renaissance-the redemption of science and philosophy-the entrance to which had been denied them by those holding the keys to the traditional library. In relation to the state of knowledge and those who monopolized it, this was a subversive trend that began to break new ground for an alternative route. In the last quarter of the century, over a period of twenty years (-), this cultural trend crystallized into the Haskalah movement. With the intensification of the maskilim's revolutionary demands for an autonomous status and the right to speak out on current issues and to shape culture, the critical and modernist character of the Haskalah became clear. As soon as it did, the guardians of the existing order sounded an alarm, and an inevitable struggle ensued between the two competing elites-the rabbinical-traditional elite and the innovative maskilic elite with its liberal worldview. The front lines of the Jewish culture war, then, were already drawn. The unity of the pre-modern Jewish society, at least in the minds of its members, was shattered once and for all. In the history of Jewish culture, the modern era opened, marked by controversies, conflicts and schisms. When I entered the field of historical research, I was intrigued by the subject of the Haskalah movement. I realized that by attempting to fully under-xii Preface stand it and all its ramifications, the scholar and student would gain a compass for navigating the complex map of the various paths of modernization. The Haskalah is a dynamic phenomenon of transition from tradition to modernity, and its bearers are the maskilim. Each and every one of them experienced, in his own way, a profound cultural conversion. Hence one must try to comprehend the mind and soul of the maskil, his qualms, his rebelliousness, and his special traditional-secular language. Generations of research have greatly enriched the picture of the eighteenth century. The accepted model, which placed the Haskalah in Germany and Moses Mendelssohn at the epicenter of the changes of the modern era, has been undermined, since the formulation of other and different models of modernization, in which the movement is not seen as the agent of change, such as the model of the Sephardi diaspora in Western Europe, ''Port Jews'' in Italian Trieste, or British Jewry. My intent in this book is to show that, despite this, the value of the Haskalah should not be underestimated. On the contrary, the enlightenment movement led by the maskilim in Europe represented the conscious process of modernization and signified the point of departure of the major trends in i n t e l l e c t u a lh i s t o r ya n di nt h eh i s t o r yo ft h eJ e w i s hp u b l i cs p h e r ef r o mt h e eighteenth century and thereafter. In my previous book, Haskalah and History, I attempted to prove that the ideology of the Haskalah was responsible for a series of manipulations of the past in all of the movement's metamorphoses, in particular in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe. That book centered on one of the most influential inventions of the Haskalah-the ''modern age'' in Jewish culture. The historical space of the present book is confined to the eighteenth century. It describes in detail-and I hope with the sensitivity it merits-the process in which the modern and secular intellectual elite came into being. I was faced with three main tasks in writing this book. The first was to uncover new historical sources that would enable me to paint a complete picture of the Haskalah movement. By examining letters, contemporary newspapers, documentary material spread throughout the issues of Hame'asef, unknown manuscripts, neglected figures, and forgotten books, I was able to present as full a picture as possible, and on more than one occasion to observe the maskilim from a variety of vantage points: through their self-consciousness and their experiential worlds, through the eyes of their adversaries and through the testimony of observers outside of Jewish society. My second task was to reinterpret the Haskalah movement and to explain its historical significance. To a large extent, I was inspired by the insights offered by the recent research on the European Enlightenment and was helped by freeing myself of the perception of the Haskalah as a movement of German Jewry only. I felt it was particularly important to properly present the role

“Humanity lived in darkness – until He came. […] a coterie of apostles resolved to spread a simplified version of his good news against stiff-necked enemies who often made martyrs of them”

Religions, 2021

The co-existence of Enlightenment and ideology has long vexed Jews in modernity. They have both loved and been leary of Enlightenment reason and its attending scientific and political institutions. Jews have also held a complex relationship to ideological forms that exist alongside Enlightenment reason and which have both lured and victimized them alike. Still, what accounts for this historical proximity between Enlightenment and ideology? and how does this relationship factor into the emergence of modern anti-Semitism? Can Jewish communities participate in contemporary societies committed to scientific developments and deliberative democracies and neither be targeted by totalizing systems of thought that eliminate Judaism’s difference nor fall prey to the power and seduction of ideological forces that compete with the Jewish life-world? This article argues that Hegel’s discussion of the Enlightenment in the Phenomenology of Spirit as a social practice of critical common sensism pro...

Chronicle of Higher Education, 2003

This is something between a review of Adam Sutcliffe book Judaism and Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and a profile of Sutcliffe as his academic career was just beginning (he was then an assistant professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is now Professor of European History at King's College London).

From the early 18th century until the end of the 19th, relatively small groups of young maskilim (followers of the Jewish Enlightenment) from Central and Eastern Europe wrought a signifi cant cultural revolution, one that was unprecedented in the Ashkenazi Diaspora. Th e appearance of the maskilim on the stage of Jewish history, as the representatives of a new intellectual elite who felt obligated to undertake the role of educating the public and providing alternative ideological leadership, augured a revolutionary move-the transfer of cultural sovereignty over the Jewish public space to new hands. An intellectual elite emerged to compete with the rabbinical, scholarly elite that held a complete monopoly over knowledge, books, cultural creation, education; supervised norms and behavior; and provided guidance to the public. Th is new elite adopted some of the basic values of the European Enlightenment culture, in particular humanism, religious tolerance, freedom of opinion, criticism, rationalism, and the consciousness of progress, and it regarded itself as responsible for reforming traditional society in the light of these values. Looking back, it seems as if the whole public culture of the Jews in the modern age-the book culture, the ideological debates, the new religious movements, modern politics, and the press as a forum of cultural and political discourse-all of these would not have been possible had it not been for that revolutionary breakthrough of a new Jewish intelligentsia. It was secular insofar as its source of authority and ideological fabric was concerned (albeit with a diverse spectrum of views regarding its commitment to religious tradition) and had at its center the writer, the modern Jewish intellectual. From a historical perspective, this new elite expanded cultural boundaries, raised acute questions about the place of Jews in modern Europe, and entered into a cultural confl ict with emerging Orthodox elite.

Jewish Review of Books, 2018

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 496 pp., $30 few years ago, the rabbi of Manhattan's Park Avenue Synagogue, Dr. Elliot Cosgrove, began a sermon with a sobering question: If every single Jewish studies professor, from every campus across North America, were to get on an airplane that took off, flew away, and never came back again, would Jewish life change at all? Our synagogues, our Hebrew schools, our Jewish summer camps, our UJAs, our relationship with Israel-if there were no Jewish studies departments on campus, would it have any effect on the Jewish community?