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. On the one
hand, a great majority of observant Jews still accepted the
authority of the Talmud and the leadership of the rabbis; on the
other, there was a gradually more conspicuous minority of
"Epicureans" and "freethinkers." As the ground shifted, each
individual was marked according to his or her place on the path
between faith and heresy, between devoutness and permissiveness or
indifference. Building on his award-winning Jewish Enlightenment,
Feiner unfolds the story of critics of religion, mostly Ashkenazic
Jews, who did not take active part in the secular intellectual
revival known as the Haskalah. In open or concealed rebellion,
Feiner's subjects lived primarily in the cities of western and
central Europe-Altona-Hamburg, Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Breslau,
and Prague. They participated as "fashionable" Jews adopting the
habits and clothing of the surrounding Gentile society. Several
also adopted the deist worldview of Enlightenment Europe, rejecting
faith in revelation, the authority of Scripture, and the obligation
to observe the commandments. Peering into the synagogue, observing
individuals in the coffeehouse or strolling the boulevards, and
peeking into the bedroom, Feiner recovers forgotten critics of
religion from both the margins and the center of Jewish discourse.
His is a pioneering work on the origins of one of the most
significant transformations of modern Jewish history.
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