The Haskalah
by Shira Schoenberg
The Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, was an
intellectual movement in Europe that lasted from approximately the
1770s to the 1880s. The Haskalah was inspired by the European
Enlightenment but had a Jewish character. Literally, Haskalah comes
from the Hebrew word sekhel, meaning "reason" or
intellect" and the movement was based on rationality. It
encouraged Jews to study secular subjects, to learn both the European
and Hebrew languages, and to enter fields such as agriculture,
crafts, the arts and science. The maskilim (followers of the
Haskalah) tried to assimilate into European society in dress,
language, manners and loyalty to the ruling power. The Haskalah
eventually influenced the creation of both the Reform and Zionist movements.
Background
As early as the 1740s, many German Jews and some
individual Polish and Lithuanian Jews had a desire for secular
education. Some of the elite members of Jewish society knew European
languages. Absolutist governments in Germany, Austria and Russia
deprived the Jewish communitys leadership of its authority and
many Jews became "Court Jews." They gave economic
assistance to the local rulers, using their connections with Jewish
businessmen to serve as military contractors, managers of mints,
founders of new industries and providers to the court of precious
stones and clothing. Court Jews were protected by the rulers and
acted as did everyone else in society in their speech, manners, and
awareness of European literature and ideas.
The lower class was also exposed to the outside
world. Jewish peddlers interacted frequently with non-Jews.
During the general Enlightenment (1600s to late
1700s), many Jewish women began to frequent non-Jewish salons and to
campaign for emancipation (the granting of equality to Jews). In
Western Europe and the German states, observance of halakhah (Jewish law) started to be neglected.
In the first half of the 18th century,
even some traditional German scholars and leaders, such as the doctor
and author of Maaseh Tuviyyah, Tobias b. Moses Cohn,
appreciated secular culture. In Italy,
there were some rabbis who had studied philosophy and Christian
theological literature. Jewish Italian physicians held particular
prestige.
The Haskalah began in Galicia (Germany, Poland and
Central Europe) and later spread to Eastern Europe (Lithuania and
other provinces of the Pale of Jewish Settlement1).
The Haskalah was characterized by a scientific approach to religion
in which secular culture and philosophy became a central value. It
was influenced by a Maimonidean approach that valued secular studies and used reason as the measure
of all things.
Moses Mendelssohn (1726-1789) is considered the
father of the Haskalah. Mendelssohn was a philosopher with ideas from
the general Enlightenment. Frederick the Great declared him a
"Jew under extraordinary protection" and he won a prize
from the Prussian Academy of Sciences on his "treatise on
evidence in the metaphysical sciences." He wrote in German, the
language of the scholars. He represented Judaism as a non-dogmatic, rational faith that is open to modernity and
change. He called for secular education and a revival
of Hebrew language and literature. He initiated a translation of
the Torah into
German with Hebrew letters, tried to improve the legal situation of
the Jews and the relationship between Jews and Christians, and argued
for Jewish tolerance and humanity.
Education
One of the biggest changes of the Haskalah was in
education. The maskilim tried to remove Talmud from its central position in Jewish education. They included Jewish
studies in their curricula but emphasized secular knowledge, modern
languages and practical training in labor, in order to help the Jews
become integrated into society. They advocated the study of Jewish
history and ancient Hebrew as a way to revive a national Jewish
consciousness. They wanted to train Jewish children in common sense,
tolerance and reasonableness.
The goals of the maskilim were affected by
the absolutist rulers of the time. Joseph II issued one typical edict
for the Jews of Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary and Galicia in the 1780s.
He decreed that Jews must establish "normal" schools or
send their children to state schools, Jews were allowed to attend
general secondary schools and universities, marriage was prohibited
without a certificate of school attendance and anyone who studied
Talmud before completing the school curriculum could be imprisoned.
As a result of this decree, many new, modern Jewish schools were
created. In 1820, Francis I of Austria required rabbis to study
sciences and use the language of the country in prayers and sermons.
As a result, a rabbinical seminary opened in Padua in 1829.
The first Haskalah school was founded in Berlin in
1778 and called both the Freischule ("Free School")
and Hinnukh Nearim ("Youth Education"). It was a
free education designed for poor children and the curriculum included
German, French, arithmetic, geography, history, art, some Bible
studies and Hebrew. The school was successful and began with 70
students. Other Haskalah style schools developed in Dessau and
Frankfort on the Main, among other places. In all of these schools,
Talmud was almost completely abandoned and both Hebrew and general
studies were taught. Educators began to write textbooks to guide the
new curricula.
The Haskalah also brought about change in the
education of girls. Daughters of wealthy families generally studied
with private teachers. In the 1790s, the maskilim established
schools for poorer girls in Breslau, Dessau, Koenigsberg and Hamburg.
The curriculum generally included some Hebrew, German, the
fundamentals of religion and ethics, prayers and arithmetic. Some
schools also taught Yiddish writing, handiwork, art and singing.
The Haskalah also affected education in other
European countries besides Germany. In 1813, a school was started in
Tarnopol (Galicia) that had classes in Bible, Mishnah, Gemara,
Hebrew grammar, Polish, French, arithmetic, history and geography.
Classes were taught in German and there were classes given for both
boys and girls. In 1819, three boys schools opened in Warsaw in which instruction was given in Polish. Two girls schools also
opened there. In 1845, a school similar to that in Tarnopol opened in
Lvov. In the 1820s and 1830s, schools opened in Russia that were
modeled after those in Germany. During the 1840s and 1850s, the
Russian government created a network of governmental Jewish schools
in which the language of instruction was either German or Russian.
Education was needed to instruct teachers on how
to teach in these new schools. The first teachers training
seminary was opened in Kassel in 1810, and others followed in
Amsterdam, Budapest and other cities. In Vilna and Zhitomir (Russia),
government rabbinical seminaries were established and funded by a tax
imposed on the masses. The maskilim educated there were taught
in Russian and their ties with the Hebrew language and Jewish
tradition were weak.
There were no Jewish secondary schools and those
who continued their studies went to non-Jewish institutions. In
Russia, as the hope of emancipation grew, the number of Jewish
children studying in Russian secondary schools increased from 2,045
in 1870 to 8,000 in 1880.
Language
The Haskalah marked the end of the use of Yiddish,
the revival of Hebrew and an adoption of European languages. At the
end of the 17th century, wealthy Jews in Germany taught
their children German and French to facilitate business and social
contacts with non-Jews. By the 1790s, French had become the language
of the Jewish elite while German was the spoken language of the
middle class.
German writers had previously claimed that Jews
deceived non-Jews by using Yiddish in business transactions and a
negative attitude toward Yiddish developed. Mendelssohn thought that
Yiddish was "ridiculous, ungrammatical, and a cause of moral
corruption."2 Some reformers called
for the removal of Yiddish from Jewish schools and others suggested
that Jews refrain from using Yiddish or Hebrew in bookkeeping and
business contracts.
In the Netherlands, Jews gave up Yiddish in favor
of Dutch. A Jewish weekly published in Dutch began in 1806. In 1808,
a Jewish society in Amsterdam translated the Bible and prayer book
into Dutch and printed textbooks in both Dutch and Hebrew. In 1809,
King Louis Bonaparte of the Netherlands issued a decree prohibiting
the use of Yiddish in documents. Sermons were to be given in Dutch
and Dutch became the language of instruction for youth. In France,
French had been spoken even before the Haskalah. In Hungary, maskilim substituted Hungarian for Yiddish in Jewish schools and synagogue
sermons.
The Haskalah led to the revival of Hebrew,
particularly biblical Hebrew. Mendelssohn wrote a Hebrew commentary
on the Bible called the Biur to accompany a German
translation. Ha-Meassef (meaning "The Gatherer")
was the first Hebrew publication of the Haskalah. It was founded in
Konigsberg, Prussia, by students of Mendelssohn and appeared
quarterly between 1783 and 1790 and irregularly until 1811. Doreshei
Leshon Ever ("Friends of the Hebrew Language")
published Ha-Meassef with the goals of promoting increased
use of the Hebrew language and preparing the Jews for emancipation.
Hebrew became a vehicle for secular and professional scientific
expression. The writers of Ha-Meassef rejected Rabbinic
Hebrew in favor of classical Biblical Hebrew. Ha-Meassef printed poetry, fables, biblical exegesis, studies on Hebrew
linguistics, essays on Jewish history and news about the Jewish
people.
By the 1820s, the focus of the Haskalah shifted to
the Austrian empire. A new journal, Bikkurei ha-Ittim ("First Fruits of the Times") was published annually in
Vienna between 1821 and 1832. It included poetry, literature,
biographies and satire of aspects of traditional Judaism that the maskilim opposed. The first Hebrew journal devoted to modern Jewish
scholarship was the Kerem Hemed ("Vineyard of
Delight") published in Vienna, Prague and Berlin between 1833
and 1856.
In Russia, a Jewish press helped spread Haskalah
ideas. Newspapers were founded in the 1860s in both Hebrew and
Yiddish that called for an alliance between the Jews and the Russian
government. Most maskilim, however, saw Yiddish and even
Hebrew as only temporary instruments for spreading ideas, and sought
to promote Russian as the dominant language.
Literature
The resurgence in Hebrew language led to a new
form of Hebrew literature. The Haskalah writers first tried to
capture the attention of readers by writing Hebrew novels modeled
after the type of writing that was popular at the time. The novels
were set mostly in Palestine with Jews as heroines, lovers and
villains. The novels depicted ancient Jews as romantic lovers and
brave warriors. They implied that Jews could change their present
situation by taking political action instead of sitting and waiting
for the messiah.
Later, Haskalah writers turned to more serious
themes including the meaning of Judaism and an examination of the Jewish condition. Writers of the Haskalah
bred new ideas for the Jews: "that their afflictions were not
part of an eternal design or a punishment for their sins; that
orthodoxy was not synonymous with Gods commandments; that Hasidism was not a paradise on earth."3 They
wrote in Hebrew for the intellectuals, though they still used Yiddish
for the masses. In theory, German writings in Yiddish were addressed
to women (who were not taught Hebrew) and uneducated men. The Yiddish
writers generally wrote fiction while the Hebrew writers composed
essays and poetry. The Yiddish writers developed from the early
Hebrew romanticism into realism. The Hebrew writers turned eventually
to Zionism, the Jewish aspiration
for a national homeland. Haskalah writers include Sholem Aleichem and
I.L. Peretz.
The Haskalah reached Russia in the 1840s. In 1841,
a Russian group called Shoharei Or ve-Haskalah ("Seekers
of Light and Education") put out the first Hebrew literary
periodical, Pirhei Zafon ("Flowers of the North").
One of its writers, Mordecai Guenzburg, wrote stories based on
Jewish, general and Russian history adapted from non-Jewish sources.
Many of its poets wrote about secular subjects in lyrical Hebrew.
In Lithuania, European fiction and textbooks were
translated into Hebrew. Modern Hebrew weekly newspapers were created
and, in 1863, the Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews
of Russia was established. During the 1860s and 1870s many Hebrew
writers turned to literary and social criticism.
Jobs
The maskilim encouraged a switch in Jewish
professions. Jews moved from commercial jobs such as money lending
and trade to more skilled jobs such as crafts and agriculture. The maskilim thought this would improve both the character and the position of
Jews in society. Some German schools taught their students crafts,
and then found the boys apprenticeships with Christian craftsman.
After the 1812 emancipation law in Prussia, a society for the
Promotion of Industry was formed. This was a Jewish group that stood
up for the interests of Jewish apprentices and supported Jewish
creativity. Some maskilim also advocated manual labor, because
they felt it taught morality.
Orthodox Jewry
Orthodox
Jews were against the Haskalah from the start because it went
against traditional Judaism and challenged both rabbinic orthodoxy
and the role of Talmud in education. They retained Torah,
not secular studies, as their central value; nevertheless, the
Haskalah influenced even the Orthodox Jews. The first Orthodox
schools that taught both Judaic and general studies started in
Halberstadt and Hamburg.
The Haskalah in Russia was in a large part based
on the views of an Orthodox rabbi, Elijah b. Solomon Zalman
(1720-1797), also known as the Vilna
Gaon. The Vilna Gaon wrote commentaries on the Bible, the Mishnah,
the Talmud, midrash, the Sefer Yetzirah, the Zohar and the Shulhan
Arukh. His method was to apply an exact interpretation of the
common-sense meaning of the text. He also studied secular subjects
including algebra, geometry, astronomy, geography and Hebrew grammar
to understand Talumudic discussions. Many Russian maskilim regarded themselves as his disciples.
Anti-Messianism
One of the ideas characterizing Haskalah
thought was anti-messianism, a feeling that one should not be
constantly yearning for a miraculous messiah.
This was boosted by the failure of Shabbetai
Zevi, a false Messiah in the 1600s. The maskil Jonathan
Eybeschuetz is quoted as saying that the main achievement of the
Messiah would be that the Jews "would find clemency among the
nations,"4 i.e., the better legal
and social status they were striving for in Europe. Mendelssohn
agreed in principle to messianic hope but considered it not to have
"any influence on our civic behavior," particularly in
places that "have treated the Jews with tolerance."5 Others equated the Messiah with universal peace and toleration. Exile
was no longer seen as divine, but as the result of historical
factors.
Nationalism
After emancipation there was a rise in
assimilation, but also in Jewish nationalism. Many maskilim identified themselves expressly as Germans. The Assembly of Jewish
Notables in 1806 coined the term "Frenchmen of the Mosaic
religion." Later maskilim, however, also had a sense of
Jewish nationalism and combined that attitude with Haskalah views.
Much of this nationalism was fostered by anti-Semitism and led to aspirations for redemption by a natural, human effort.
This was the start of modern Zionism.
Reform Movement
The Haskalah was one of the primary causes of the
start of the Jewish Reform movement. The Reform movement tried to bring Judaism closer to contemporary European standards of behavior. It also tried
to stem the tide of conversions to Christianity by Jews who were
estranged from traditional ritual. In Germany, synagogues began to allow sermons, choirs and organ accompaniments. Wearing a
hat was no longer compulsory in synagogue and the sexes were not
separated in the congregation. The liturgy of the prayer book was changed to omit repetitions, drop the medieval
poems (piyyutim), remove references to Zion or Jerusalem and reword traditional prayers that referred to a national redemption
of the Jewish people in the messianic age. The observance of the law
started being more focused on the ethical commandments than on ritual
observance. In 1807, a confirmation ceremony for boys in German, an
imitation of a Christian ceremony, was introduced in a school in
Wolfenbuettel, Germany. This custom spread to other Jewish schools in
Germany.
The End of the Haskalah
In most of Western Europe, the Haskalah ended with
large numbers of Jews assimilating. Many Jews stopped adhering to halakha (Jewish law). The struggle for emancipation in Germany awakened some
doubts about the future of Jews in Europe and eventually led to both
immigration to America and Zionism.
In Russia, anti-Semitism ended
the Haskalah. Some Jews responded to this anti-Semitism by
campaigning for emancipation, others joined revolutionary movements
and assimilated, and some turned to Jewish nationalism in the form of
the Zionist Hibbat Zion movement.
The Haskalah created the first Hebrew literature
and also the first secular Yiddish literature. It spawned a Jewish
press in Hebrew, Yiddish and Russian. It marked the transition of
Jews from commercial jobs to labor jobs, specifically agriculture. It
also began a system of secular and Judaic education that has
influenced the Jewish world until today.
Notes
1The Pale of Jewish
Settlement was part of Poland that Russia conquered. Russia did not
allow Jews to move from that area into the rest of Russia.
2Encyclopedia
Judaica, p. 1437.
3Dimont, p. 350.
4Encyclopedia
Judaica, p. 1443.
5Encyclopedia
Judaica, p. 1443.
Sources: Dimont, Max. Jews,
God and History. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962
Encyclopedia
Britannica Online. "Haskala"
Encyclopedia
Judaica. "Haskalah"
Kung, Hans. Judaism. New York: Crossroad, 1992
Seltzer, Robert. Jewish People, Jewish Thought. New York:
Macmillan Publishing Co., 1980.
The World Book Encyclopedia. "Haskalah". Vol. 9,
1988 Edition. |