Eliyahu Stern. The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism.

Abstract

In the classic picture of eighteenth-century European Jewry a major place is reserved for the emergence of three new movements: the Haskalah, Hasidism, and the Mitnagdim. The interrelations among the three are usually marked by tension and conflict. Each had a prominent leader who left his imprint on Jewish history: Moses Mendelssohn in Berlin (1729–1786); Israel ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tov, in Mezhybozhe (1700?–1760); and Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, the Vilna Gaon (the “Genius” from Vilnius, 1720–1797). While Mendelssohn represented the distinctly modern movement that adopted the values of the Enlightenment and proposed a new agenda for social and cultural integration to the Jews of Central Europe, the leaders of the other two rival movements arose in Eastern Europe and were distinctly conservative, if not reactionary. The Baal Shem Tov, known as a popular healer who engaged in practical Kabbalah, was a source of inspiration for a movement of religious regeneration based on faith in a charismatic religious leader (the Zaddik) and the doctrine of devotion to God and spiritual elevation through prayer. The Vilna Gaon, who led the opposition to Hasidism fearing that it would demean the supreme value of Talmudic study, inspired those Jews whose lives centered on the new type of yeshiva (Talmudic academy) known as the Lithuanian yeshiva.