The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe

Abstract

Preface Introduction: Sins and Doubts -Suspicions Arise -Religion under Attack -Early Jewish Skepticism -Acculturation and Rebellion -Secularization Terminology PART I. LIBERTY AND HERESY, 1700-1760 1 Pleasures and Liberation from Religious Supervision -Insulting the Angels of God -Physical Gratifications 2 Temptations of Fashion and Passion -Life a la Mode: Temptations of the City -Temptations of Eros -Hedonism and Abandoning God 3 The Mystical Sect: Subversive Sabbateans -A New Torah to Permit the Forbidden: From Hayon to Eybeschutz -I Will Trample on All the Antinomianism and Libertinism 4 The Rationalist Sect: Neo-Karaites and Deists -Freethinkers and the Threat of Reason -The Fool Says in His Heart That There Is No God: Skepticism and Jewish Identity PART II. A NEW WORLD, 1760-80 5 Providence Is Tested: Secularization on the Rise in the 1760s -Warning Bells Toll in Europe -To Remove the Shackles of the Commandments: Indifference and Laxity -Counterreaction: The Early Maskilim 6 The Supremacy of Nature: Deists on the Margins -A Generation without Religion: The 1770s -From the Second Spinoza to the Biological Epicurean -Religious Skeptics: The Primitive Ebrew and the Blasphemer 7 The Emergence of the New World For We Are All Made of Flesh: Fashionable Jews in Amsterdam and Hamburg -The Autonomous Individual: Fanny's and Henriette's Hairstyles PART III. THE OVERTURNED WORLD, 1780-90 8 Scandals and Rebellions -Religious Tolerance and Skepticism in Europe -The Sect of the Wicked Reveals Its Face -Trash Heap of the Ceremonial Laws: The Heterodox in Breslau and Berlin 9 Replacing Mosaic Laws with Laws of Freedom -The Sect of Germans Grows Stronger in Prussia -A Peek into Jewish Life in London -How to Reply to an Epicurean: Fears of Conservatives from Virginia to Lithuania PART IV. ANXIETIES AND CONFRONTATIONS, 1790-1800 10 On the Decline of Judaism: The Last Decade -Between Linitz and London: Irreligion and the Mysteries of Religion -Between Observance and Laxity: Rifts and Tensions -Epicureans on the Offensive: Provocations and Conflicts 11 Soon Our Faith Will Be Lost: Deists and Believers -Falsifications of the Rabbis: Deistic Texts -Transgressions Have Become Permissible: The Counter-War of the Congregation of Believers Summary: Free Jews and the Origins of Secularization Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments