Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) Literature

Abstract

The Haskalah movement became distinguishable in Prussia during the last two decades of the 18th century. It had significant early precursors in Italy and central Europe during the earlier 18th century. After its stormy beginnings in Berlin and Königsberg it moved eastward, supported by new political and economic opportunities. It ran its course in eastern Europe by the early 1880s, with the rise of an avalanche of new ideas that came into being in the aftermath of anti-Jewish pogroms in the South of Russia. Nevertheless, the movement had many subsequent offshoots in the Middle East and North Africa, even after the rise of European Jewish nationalism, and well into the first half of the 20th century. Scholars usually consider the Haskalah movement and its literature a major factor in the process leading to the transformation and modernization of Jewish life, both inside and outside Europe, since the early to mid-18th century. Commonly translated as “Jewish Enlightenment,” the Haskalah (meaning, in Hebrew, knowledge, wisdom, and learning) is often depicted as having deep affiliation with secularization and European enlightenment. This rather automatic identification, however, became a subject of debate once scholars of Haskalah began to tie the movement to various strands of critiques of enlightenment. Such significant changes also befell the definition of Haskalah literature. Defined by most early- to mid-20th-century literary historians as a first instance of modern Hebrew literature, the founding scholars of Haskalah studies defined its literature as written, received, and formed by European elite males, who wrote in Hebrew. This definition has recently been broadened in ways that are likely to transform the innermost meaning of the Haskalah. Haskalah literature now includes works written in Yiddish as well as other Jewish languages, and it encompasses women’s writing and practices of reading, as well as detailed histories of Haskalah works written in North Africa and the Middle East. Finally, stimulated by new developments in the study of Enlightenment, the Haskalah is viewed by many as a playground for competing views on secularization, modernization, and the critique of Enlightenment. Thus, the field of Haskalah studies continues to evolve, as scholars revisit their most fundamental assumptions regarding its historical significance. The founding paradigm of the field established the perception that this was a daring break with Jewish traditional past and a harbinger of Jewish return to the universal or European history. This sense of exhilarating crisis has been replaced since the late 1980s with a more moderate view of Haskalah, as social and intellectual historians began to put greater stress on the maskilim’s (proponents of the Haskalah) attempt to reconcile Jewish scriptures and traditions with the main tenets of the European Enlightenment. This approach has been challenged yet again by scholars seeking to show that maskilim—or their texts—were often highly effective critics of Enlightenment and modernity.