|
Showing 1 - 9 of
9 matches in All Departments
The second volume of Shmuel Feiner's The Jewish Eighteenth Century
covers the period from 1750 to 1800, a time of even greater
upheavals, tensions, and challenges. The changes that began to
emerge at the beginning of the eighteenth century matured in the
second half. Feiner explores how political considerations of the
Jewish minority throughout Europe began to expand. From the "Jew
Bill" of 1753 in Britain, to the surprising series of decrees
issued by Joseph II of Austria that expanded tolerance in Austria,
to the debate over emancipation in revolutionary France, the lives
of the Jews of Europe became ever more intertwined with the
political, social, economic, and cultural fabric of the continent.
The Jewish Eighteenth Century, Volume 2: A European Biography,
1750-1800 concludes Feiner's landmark study of the history of
Jewish populations in the period. By combining an examination of
the broad and profound processes that changed the familiar world
from the ground up with personal experiences of those who lived
through them, it allows for a unique explanation of these momentous
events.
Traces the gradual opening of university education in Germany to
Jews, its significance for assimilation to the bourgeoisie, and the
legal restrictions that nonetheless barred Jewish graduates from
most professional careers. For centuries Jews in Germany were
denied full rights and excluded from gentile society. At the same
time, Jewish law restricted scholarship to exegesis of the Talmud.
But from the late seventeenth century onward, as German
universities progressively opened their doors to them, many Jews
turned toward university studies. This process accelerated around
1800 once education (Bildung) assumed a central role for social
ascent among the so-called Bildungsburgertum (cultural
bourgeoisie). Many Jews sought to benefit from the professional and
social opportunities that university attendance enabled, but they
soon discovered that while the state encouraged education as a
means of the "moral improvement" of the Jews, it was unwilling to
concede them the right to professional careers. Alienated from
their ancestral religion and unwilling or unable to return to
trading occupations, academized Jews often found themselves leading
precarious existences. Many joined the struggle for emancipation or
took up the reform of Judaism. Now available in English translation
for the first time, Monika Richarz's classic study addresses the
far-reaching transformation of German Jewry under the impact of
university education. It traces the secularization of Jewish
education, the significance of academic education for social
assimilation, and the loss of Jewish solidarity with increasing
acculturation and emancipation.
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 second volume of Shmuel Feiner's The Jewish Eighteenth Century
covers the period from 1750 to 1800, a time of even greater
upheavals, tensions, and challenges. The changes that began to
emerge at the beginning of the eighteenth century matured in the
second half. Feiner explores how political considerations of the
Jewish minority throughout Europe began to expand. From the "Jew
Bill" of 1753 in Britain, to the surprising series of decrees
issued by Joseph II of Austria that expanded tolerance in Austria,
to the debate over emancipation in revolutionary France, the lives
of the Jews of Europe became ever more intertwined with the
political, social, economic, and cultural fabric of the continent.
The Jewish Eighteenth Century, Volume 2: A European Biography,
1750-1800 concludes Feiner's landmark study of the history of
Jewish populations in the period. By combining an examination of
the broad and profound processes that changed the familiar world
from the ground up with personal experiences of those who lived
through them, it allows for a unique explanation of these momentous
events.
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 Enlightenment.
Unparalleled in scale and comprehensiveness, 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 a truly
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. The Haskalah is one of the central
topics in modern Jewish historiography. With its scope, erudition,
and new analysis, The Jewish Enlightenment now provides the most
comprehensive treatment of this major cultural movement.
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.
This volume, written by a range of scholars in history and
literature, offers a new understanding of one of the central
cultural and ideological movements among Jews in modern times.
Disengaging the Haskalah from the questions of modernization or
emancipation that have hitherto dominated the scholarship, the
contributors put the Haskalah under a microscope in order to
restore detail and texture to the individuals, ideas, and
activities that were its makers in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. In particular, they replace simple dichotomies with
nuanced distinctions, presenting the relationship between
'tradition' and Haskalah as a spectrum of closely linked cultural
options rather than a fateful choice between old and new or good
and evil. The essays address major and minor figures; ask whether
there was such an entity as an 'early Haskalah', or a Haskalah
movement in England, look at key issues such as the relationship of
the Haskalah to Orthodoxy and hasidism, and also treat such
neglected subjects as the position of women. New Perspectives on
the Haskalah will interest all students of modern Jewish history,
literature, and culture. CONTRIBUTORS: Harris Bor, Edward Breuer,
Tova Cohen, Immanuel Etkes, Shmuel Feiner, Yehuda Friedlander,
David B. Ruderman, Joseph Salmon, Nancy Sinkoff, David Sorkin,
Shmuel Werses.
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.
Shmuel Feiner's innovative book recreates the historical
consciousness that fired the Haskalah-the Jewish Enlightenment
movement. The proponents of this movement advocated that Jews
should capture the spirit of the future and take their place in
wider society, but as Jews-without denying their collective
identity and without denying their past. Claiming historical
legitimacy for their ideology and their vision of the future, they
formulated an ethos of modernity that they projected on to the
universal and the Jewish past alike. What was the image of the past
that the maskilim shaped? What tactics underpinned their use of
history? How did their historical awareness change and develop-from
the inception of the Haskalah in Germany at the time of Mendelssohn
and Wessely, through the centres of Haskalah in Austria, Galicia,
and Russia, to the emergence of modern nationalism in the maskilic
circles in eastern Europe in the last third of the nineteenth
century? These are some of the questions raised in this fascinating
exploration of an ideological approach to history which throws a
searching new light on the Jewish Enlightenment movement and the
emergence of Jewish historical consciousness more generally.
|
|