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105-553: The DSP was heavily influenced by the antisemitic Thule Society , led by Rudolf von Sebottendorf , as well as publications of engineer Alfred Brunner, who aimed to create a party that would be both nationalist and attractive to the German proletariat . Similar to the NSDAP, the DSP aimed to win the allegiance of the German proletariat away from Socialism , which had become highly influential following

210-519: A revival of Hebrew for use in secular life, which resulted in an increase in Hebrew found in print. Concurrently, it strove for an optimal integration in surrounding societies. Practitioners promoted the study of exogenous culture, style, and vernacular, and the adoption of modern values. At the same time, economic production, and the taking up of new occupations was pursued. The Haskalah promoted rationalism , liberalism , relativism , and enquiry , and

315-575: A change in Jewish tradition, in particular, regarding rituals like circumcision. Another non-Orthodox group was the Conservative Jews, who emphasized the importance of traditions but viewed with a historical perspective. The Orthodox Jews were actively against these reformers because they viewed changing Jewish tradition as an insult to God and believed that fulfillment in life could be found in serving God and keeping his commandments. The effect of Haskalah

420-418: A common theme in maskilic autobiographies. Having imbibed the image of European bourgeoisie family values, many of them sought to challenge the semi-matriarchal order of rabbinic families – which combined a lack of Jewish education for women with granting them the status of providers – early marriage, and rigid modesty. Instead, they insisted that men become economically productive while confining their wives to

525-665: A common theme in Haskalah literature – the use of anathema to enforce community will and the concentration on virtually only religious studies. Maskilic reforms included educational efforts. In 1778, partisans of the movement were among the founders of the Berlin Jewish Free School, or Hevrat Hinuch Ne'arim (Society for the Education of Boys), the first institution in Ashkenazi Jewry that taught general studies in addition to

630-416: A corrupt dialect and another symptom of Jewish destitution – the movement pioneered the negative attitude to Yiddish which persisted many years later among the educated – though often its activists had to resort to it for lack of better medium to address the masses. Aaron Halle-Wolfssohn , for example, authored the first modern Judaeo-German play, Leichtsinn und Frömmelei (Rashness and Sanctimony) in 1796. On

735-448: A defined ideological worldview during the 1770s, and its last stage ended around 1881, with the rise of Jewish nationalism . The movement advocated against Jewish reclusiveness, encouraged the adoption of prevalent attire over traditional dress, while also working to diminish the authority of traditional community institutions such as rabbinic courts and boards of elders. It pursued a set of projects of cultural and moral renewal, including

840-541: A longer period of time and it was not until more recent times that they had mixed . It was this mixing of the races that would lead to man's downfall. This idea of racial "confusion" was taken up by the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg . It was used by the Nazis to perpetuate the idea that the Jews were going to destroy Germany. The term semiticization was first used by Gobineau to label

945-550: A progressive into an adversary of more radical elements within a generation. In the Maghreb , the few local maskilim were more concerned with the rapid assimilation of local Jews into the colonial French culture than with the ills of traditional society. Likewise, those who abandoned the optimistic, liberal vision of the Jews (albeit as a cohesive community) integrating into wider society in favour of full-blown Jewish nationalism or radical, revolutionary ideologies which strove to uproot

1050-741: A religion, because of the degree to which different sects desired to be integrated, and in turn, integrate their religious traditions. The effects of the Enlightenment were already present in Jewish religious music, and in opinion on the tension between traditionalist and modernist tendencies. Groups of Reform Jews, including the Society of the Friends of Reform and the Association for the Reform of Judaism were formed, because such groups wanted, and actively advocated for,

1155-574: A religion, not Jews as a race, Franklin Sherman, editor of the American Edition of Luther's Works, writes that "Luther's writings against the Jews…are not ‘merely a set of cool, calm and collected theological judgments. His writings are full of rage, and indeed hatred, against an identifiable human group, not just against a religious point of view." On the Jews and Their Lies was popular among supporters of

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1260-673: A role in group behavior and characteristics, was highly respected and accepted as factual between 1870 and 1940. Historian Walter Lacquer lists numerous influential figures such as economist Eugen Duehring , composer Richard Wagner , Biblical scholar Paul de Lagarde , and historian-philosophers like Houston Stewart Chamberlain as important figures in the rise of racial antisemitism. This acceptance of race science made it possible for antisemites to clothe their hatred of Jews in "scientific theory" and propose grand, sweeping political solutions in coming decades, from relocation to Madagascar to compulsory sterilization to mass extermination. In

1365-492: A sanitized manner. On the other hand, the curriculum was augmented by general studies like math, vernacular language, and so forth. In the linguistic field, the maskilim wished to replace the dualism which characterized the traditional Ashkenazi community, which spoke Judaeo-German and its formal literary language was Hebrew, with another: a refined Hebrew for internal usage and the local vernacular for external ones. They almost universally abhorred Judaeo-German, regarding it as

1470-563: A stable financial base, and they required patrons, whether affluent Jews or the state's institutions. This triplice – the authorities, the Jewish communal elite, and the maskilim – was united only in the ambition of thoroughly reforming Jewish society. The government had no interest in the visions of renaissance which the Enlightened so fervently cherished. It demanded the Jews to turn into productive, loyal subjects with rudimentary secular education, and no more. The rich Jews were sometimes open to

1575-454: A standard self-appellation in 1860, when it was taken as the motto of the Odessa -based newspaper Ha-Melitz , but derivatives and the title Maskil for activists were already common in the first edition of Ha-Meassef from 1 October 1783: its publishers described themselves as Maskilim . While Maskilic centres sometimes had loose institutions around which their members operated, the movement as

1680-665: A variant of this theory in his writings, arguing that Jewish people were not a "real" race. According to Rosenberg, their evolution resulted from the mixing of pre-existing races rather than natural selection . The theory of semiticization was typically associated with other longstanding racist fears about the dilution of racial differences through miscegenation , which were manifested in negative images of mulattos and negative images of members of other mixed groups. Modern European antisemitism has its origins in 19th century theories—now most of them are considered pseudo-scientific , but back then, they were accepted as credible—that said that

1785-574: A whole lacked any such. In spite of that diversity, the Maskilim shared a sense of common identity and self-consciousness. They were anchored in the existence of a shared literary canon, which began to be formulated in the first Maskilic locus at Berlin . Its members, like Moses Mendelssohn , Naphtali Hirz Wessely , Isaac Satanow and Isaac Euchel , authored tracts in various genres that were further disseminated and re-read among other Maskilim. Each generation, in turn, elaborated and added its own works to

1890-488: Is a common theme in the movement's literature. The term Haskalah became synonymous, among friends and foes alike and in much of early Jewish historiography , with the sweeping changes that engulfed Jewish society (mostly in Europe) from the late 18th century to the late 19th century. It was depicted by its partisans, adversaries and historians like Heinrich Graetz as a major factor in those; Feiner noted that "every modern Jew

1995-575: Is largely perceived as the Jewish variant of the general Age of Enlightenment . The movement encompassed a wide spectrum ranging from moderates, who hoped for maximal compromise, to radicals, who sought sweeping changes. In its various changes, the Haskalah fulfilled an important, though limited, part in the modernization of Central and Eastern European Jews. Its activists, the Maskilim , exhorted and implemented communal, educational and cultural reforms in both

2100-545: The Völkische Werkgemeinschaft . They also tried to bring the NSDAP into the fold but while NSDAP chairman Anton Drexler was open to a merger, the NSDAP's leading speaker, Adolf Hitler , vehemently opposed such a move and threatened to resign from the party. This directly led to Hitler becoming party leader and assuming absolute control over the NSDAP. The DSP continued to lose members and popularity and dissolved in late 1922. Streicher and other functionaries joined

2205-655: The Berlin Haskalah influenced multiple Jewish communities who were interested in non-religious scholarly texts and insight to worlds beyond their Jewish enclaves. Haskalah did not stay restricted to Germany, however, and the movement quickly spread throughout Europe. Poland–Lithuania was the heartland of Rabbinic Judaism, with its two streams of Misnagdic Talmudism centred primarily in Lithuania and Belarus , and Hasidic mysticism popular in Ukraine, Poland, Hungary and Russia. In

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2310-584: The German Revolution of 1918–1919 . In 1920, the party (which had originally only existed in Nuremberg and Franconia ) attempted to become a nationwide party and compete in the Reichstag elections . However, the party only received about 7,000 votes. This led to various attempts to join forces with similar groups: In the summer of 1921, Julius Streicher , an important party official, formed an alliance with

2415-559: The Haskalah in its entirety. His most famous work was the 1876 epic Qotzo shel Yodh (Tittle of a Jot). Mendele Mocher Sforim was during his youth a Maskilic writer but from his 1886 Beseter ra'am ( Hebrew : בסתר רעם ), (Hidden in Thunder), he abandoned its strict conventions in favour of a mixed, facile and common style. His career marked the end of the Maskilic period in Hebrew literature and

2520-460: The Haskalah was dualistic in nature. The Jewish Enlighteners pursued two parallel agendas: they exhorted the Jews to acculturate and harmonize with the modern state, and demanded that the Jews remain a distinct group with its own culture and identity. Theirs was a middle position between Jewish community and surrounding society, received mores and modernity. Sliding away from this precarious equilibrium, in any direction, signified also one's break with

2625-544: The Holocaust of 1941–1945 as an attempt to eradicate conjured-up "Jewish traits" from the world. Throughout the history of antisemitism , racial antisemitism has existed alongside religious antisemitism since at least the Middle Ages , if not before. All Jews and all people of Jewish ancestry were barred from public office, universities and many professions, a policy which was enforced for centuries after no Jews were left on

2730-760: The Iberian Peninsula . In Spain even before the Edict of Expulsion of 1492, Spanish Jews who converted to Catholicism ( conversos in Spanish), and their descendants, were called New Christians . They were frequently accused of lapsing back into their former religious practices (being " Crypto-Jews "). To isolate the conversos , the Spanish nobility developed an ideology which it called " cleanliness of blood ". The conversos were called "New Christians" in order to indicate their inferior status within society. That ideology

2835-632: The Moravian and Galician Haskalah . That function was later fulfilled by the Prague -based Kerem Hemed from 1834 to 1857, and to a lesser degree by Kokhvei Yizhak , published in the same city from 1845 to 1870. The Russian Haskalah was robust enough to lack any single platform. Its members published several large magazines, including the Vilnius -based Ha-Karmel (1860–1880), Ha-Tsefirah in Warsaw and more, though

2940-672: The Sephardi pronunciation , considered more prestigious, to the Ashkenazi one , which was linked with the Jews of Poland , who were deemed backward. The movement's literary canon is defined by a grandiloquent, archaic register copying the Biblical one and often combining lengthy allusions or direct quotes from verses in the prose. During a century of activity, the Maskilim produced a massive contribution, forming

3045-483: The Third Reich (1933–1945), Nazis extended the logic of racial antisemitism, enshrining racial antisemitic ideas into laws which assessed the "blood" or ethnicity of people (rather than their current religious affiliations), and prescribing—purely on that basis—the subsequent fate of those so assessed. When added to its views on Jewish racial traits which Nazi pseudoscience devised, the logic of racial antisemitism led to

3150-535: The ghetto ", not just physically but also mentally and spiritually, in order to assimilate among gentile nations. The example of Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86), a Prussian Jew, served to lead this movement, which was also shaped by Aaron Halle-Wolfssohn (1754–1835) and Joseph Perl (1773–1839). Mendelssohn's extraordinary success as a popular philosopher and man of letters revealed hitherto unsuspected possibilities of integration and acceptance of Jews among non-Jews. Mendelssohn also provided methods for Jews to enter

3255-436: The maskilim were raised in the rabbinic elite, in which (unlike among the poor Jewish masses or the rich communal wardens) the males were immersed in traditional studies and their wives supported them financially, mostly by running business. Many of the Jewish enlightened were traumatized by their own experiences, either of assertive mothers or early marriage, often conducted at the age of thirteen. Bitter memories from those are

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3360-553: The "Jew" is gone. In the context of racial antisemitism Jews cannot get rid of their Jewishness. The premise of racial antisemitism is that Jews constitute a distinct racial or ethnic group which negatively impacts gentiles. Racial antisemitism differs from religious antisemitism , which involves prejudice against Jews and Judaism on the basis of their religion . According to William Nichols, one can distinguish historical religious antisemitism from "the new secular antisemitism " based on racial or ethnic grounds: "The dividing line

3465-908: The "Russian Mendelssohn". Joseph Perl 's (1773–1839) satire of the Hasidic movement, "Revealer of Secrets" (Megalleh Temirim), is said to be the first modern novel in Hebrew. It was published in Vienna in 1819 under the pseudonym "Obadiah ben Pethahiah". The Haskalah's message of integration into non-Jewish society was subsequently counteracted by alternative secular Jewish political movements advocating Folkish, Socialist or Nationalist secular Jewish identities in Eastern Europe. While Haskalah advocated Hebrew and sought to remove Yiddish, these subsequent developments advocated Yiddish Renaissance among Maskilim. Writers of Yiddish literature variously satirised or sentimentalised Hasidic mysticism. The Haskalah also resulted in

3570-490: The 18th and 19th centuries and cast them in their own particular mold. This intellectual upheaval was accompanied by the desire to practically change Jewish society. Even the moderate maskilim viewed the contemporary state of Jews as deplorable and in dire need of rejuvenation, whether in matters of morals, cultural creativity or economic productivity. They argued that such conditions were rightfully scorned by others and untenable from both practical and idealistic perspectives. It

3675-549: The 19th century, Haskalah sought dissemination and transformation of traditional education and inward pious life in Eastern Europe. It adapted its message to these different environments, working with the Russian government of the Pale of Settlement to influence secular educational methods, while its writers satirised Hasidic mysticism, in favour of solely Rationalist interpretation of Judaism. Isaac Baer Levinsohn (1788–1860) became known as

3780-593: The 19th century, the term Semitic was confined to the ethnic groups which have historically spoken Semitic languages or had origins in the Fertile Crescent , as the Jews in Europe did. These peoples were often considered to be a distinct race . However, some antisemitic racial theorists of the time argued that the Semitic peoples arose from the blurring of distinctions between previously separate races. This supposed process

3885-532: The Haskalah was a widespread cultural adaptation, as those Jews who participated in the enlightenment began, in varying degrees, to participate in the cultural practices of the surrounding gentile population. Connected with this was the birth of the Reform movement , whose founders (such as Israel Jacobson and Leopold Zunz ) rejected the continuing observance of those aspects of Jewish law which they classified as ritual—as opposed to moral or ethical. Even within orthodoxy,

3990-725: The Haskalah was felt through the appearance, in response, of the Mussar Movement in Lithuania, and Torah im Derech Eretz in Germany. "Enlightened" Jews sided with gentile governments, in plans to increase secular education and assimilation among the Jewish masses, which brought them into acute conflict with the orthodox, who believed this threatened the traditional Jewish lifestyle – which had up until that point been maintained through segregation from their gentile neighbors – and Jewish identity itself. The spread of Haskalah affected Judaism, as

4095-480: The Jewish Enlightenment. Virtually all maskilim received old-style, secluded education, and were young Torah scholars before they were first exposed to outside knowledge (from a gender perspective, the movement was almost totally male-dominated; women did not receive sufficient tutoring to master Hebrew). For generations, Mendelssohn's Bible translation to German was employed by such young initiates to bridge

4200-534: The Jewish community. In addition to being a religious scholar and "clergy", a rabbi also acted as a civil judge in all cases in which both parties were Jews. Rabbis sometimes had other important administrative powers, together with the community elders. The rabbinate was the highest aim of many Jewish boys, and the study of the Talmud was the means of obtaining that coveted position, or one of many other important communal distinctions. Haskalah followers advocated "coming out of

4305-475: The Jews to introduce general subjects, like science and vernacular language, into their children's curriculum; this "Teaching of Man" was necessarily linked with the "Teaching ( Torah ) of God", and the latter, though superior, could not be pursued and was useless without the former. Historian Shmuel Feiner discerned that Wessely insinuated (consciously or not) a direct challenge to the supremacy of sacred teachings, comparing them with general subjects and implying

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4410-779: The Medieval Grammarians' – such as Jonah ibn Janah and Judah ben David Hayyuj – distaste of Mishnaic Hebrew and preference of the Biblical one as pristine and correct. They turned to the Bible as a source and standard, emphatically advocating what they termed "Pure Hebrew Tongue" ( S'fat E'ver tzacha ) and lambasting the Rabbinic style of letters, which mixed it with Aramaic as a single " Holy Tongue " and often employed loanwords from other languages. Some activists, however, were not averse to using Mishnaic and Rabbinic forms. They also preferred

4515-525: The Middle East, Gobineau theorized that their mixing and dilution also occurred there, and he also theorized that Semitic peoples embodied this "confused" racial identity. This concept suited the interests of antisemites , since it provided a theoretical model for the rationalization of racialised antisemitism. Variations of this theory were espoused in the writings of many antisemites in the late 19th century. The Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg developed

4620-475: The NSDAP. Hitler's opposition might have been influenced by having been rejected by the DSP in 1919. Hans Georg Grassinger, the founding chairman of the DSP, later recalled: In the autumn of 1919, around September, Hitler appeared in the office of the publishing house to see Grassinger and offered [to] write for the paper, and to join and work for the German Socialist Party. He didn't have any money at

4725-440: The Nazi government. This further reduced their human rights; they were legally reduced to second-class compared to the non-Jewish populace. Racial antisemitic laws were also passed elsewhere. In the 19th century, King Frederick II of Prussia enacted multiple laws harmful against Jewish people of the time such as laws restricting marriage between them. In Austria, laws also fell upon the limit of children Jewish families can have with

4830-429: The Nazi party during the early 20th century. Hannah Arendt explained that before the 1870s, the Jewish population was a defined and dethatched group amongst western society. They were given rights and civil liberties for as long as they served the state in which they lived in. However, due to their apolitical standing, they became a target and they were visible to the public eye in their position in state finance. In

4935-453: The Pentateuch and prayers and thus better identify with their heritage; ignorance of Hebrew was often lamented by maskilim as breeding apathy towards Judaism. Far less Talmud, considered cumbersome and ill-suited for children, was taught; elements considered superstitious, like midrashim , were also removed. Matters of faith were taught in rationalistic spirit, and in radical circles also in

5040-686: The Semitic peoples, including the Jews, are entirely different from the Aryan , or Indo-European , populations, and they would not be able to assimilate. In fact, these theories may extend even further back in time, at least back to Martin Luther 's 1543 treatise, On the Jews and Their Lies , in which he writes that Jews are a "base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage , circumcision , and law must be accounted as filth". Though many argue that Luther expressed prejudice against Judaism as

5145-457: The ancientness of the Zohar , were extremely controversial in traditional society; apart from that, the maskilim had little in common. On the right-wing were conservative members of the rabbinic elite who merely wanted a rationalist approach, and on the extreme left some ventured far beyond the pale of orthodoxy towards Deism . Another aspect was the movement's attitude to gender relations. Many of

5250-478: The archaic I'vri-Taitsch (medieval Yiddish) translation and an exclusive focus on the Talmud as a subject of higher learning, all presided over by old-school tutors, melamdim , who were particularly reviled in maskilic circles. Those were replaced by teachers trained in modern methods, among others in the spirit of German philanthropinism , who sought to acquaint their pupils with refined Hebrew so they may understand

5355-622: The basis of their race, all Jews, even quarter- and half-Jews, were no longer citizens of their own country (their official title became "subject of the state"). This meant that they had no basic citizens' rights, e.g., to vote. In 1936, Jews were banned from all professional jobs, effectively preventing them having any influence in politics, higher education and industry. On 15 November 1938, Jewish children were banned from going to normal schools. By April 1939, nearly all Jewish companies had either been confiscated, collapsed under financial pressure and declining profits, or had been persuaded to sell out to

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5460-513: The beginning of the Era of Renaissance . The writers of the latter period lambasted their Maskilic predecessors for their didactic and florid style, more or less paralleling the Romantics' criticism of Enlightenment literature. The central platforms of the Maskilic "Republic of Letters" were its great periodicals, each serving as a locus for contributors and readers during the time it was published. The first

5565-457: The blurring of racial distinctions that, in his view, had occurred in the Middle East . Gobineau had created an essentialist model of race which was based on the three distinct racial groups, but he did not give a clear account of how this division arose. When these races mixed, they caused their " degeneration ". Since the place where these three supposed races first met each other was located in

5670-519: The creation of a secular Jewish culture , with an emphasis on Jewish history and Jewish identity , rather than on religion. This, in turn, resulted in the political engagement of Jews in a variety of competing ways within the countries where they lived on issues that included One commentator describes these effects as "The emancipation of the Jews brought forth two opposed movements: the cultural assimilation, begun by Moses Mendelssohn , and Zionism , founded by Theodor Herzl in 1896." One facet of

5775-435: The decreasing role of religion in public life and the simultaneous tempering of religious antisemitism, a combination of growing nationalism , the rise of eugenics , resentment of the perceived socio-economic success of Jews, and the influx of Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe to Central Europe, soon led to the newer, and often more virulent, racist antisemitism. Scientific racism , the ideology that genetics played

5880-403: The demise of Jewish Enlightenment in Eastern Europe, authors abandoned the maskilic paradigm not toward assimilation but in favour of exclusive use of Hebrew and Yiddish. The political vision of the Haskalah was predicated on a similar approach. It opposed the reclusive community of the past but sought a maintenance of a strong Jewish framework (with themselves as leaders and intercessors with

5985-428: The economic front, the maskilim preached productivization and abandonment of traditional Jewish occupations in favour of agriculture, trades and liberal professions. In matters of faith (which were being cordoned off into a distinct sphere of "religion" by modernization pressures) the movement's partisans, from moderates to radicals, lacked any uniform coherent agenda. The main standard through which they judged Judaism

6090-506: The end of the 19th century. Solomon Löwisohn was the first to translate Shakespeare into Hebrew, and an abridged form of the "Are at this hour asleep!" monologue in Henry IV, Part 2 was included in his 1816 lyrical compilation Melitzat Yeshurun (Eloquence of Jeshurun ). Joseph Perl pioneered satirist writings in his biting, mocking critique of Hasidic Judaism , Megaleh Tmirin "Revealer of Secrets" from 1819. Avraham Dov Ber Lebensohn

6195-518: The established order like Socialism , also broke with the Haskalah . The Jewish national movements of Eastern Europe, founded by disillusioned maskilim , derisively regarded it – in a manner similar to other romantic-nationalist movements' understanding of the general Enlightenment – as a naive, liberal and assimilationist ideology which induced foreign cultural influences, gnawed at the Jewish national consciousness and promised false hopes of equality in exchange for spiritual enslavement. This hostile view

6300-412: The first phase of modern Hebrew literature. In 1755, Moses Mendelssohn began publishing Qohelet Musar "The Moralist", regarded as the beginning of modern writing in Hebrew and the first journal in the language. Between 1789 and his death, Naphtali Hirz Wessely compiled Shirei Tif'eret "Poems of Glory", an eighteen-part epic cycle concerning Moses that exerted influence on all neo-Hebraic poets in

6405-446: The following generations. Joseph ha-Efrati Troplowitz  [ he ] was the Haskalah's pioneering playwright, best known for his 1794 epic drama Melukhat Sha'ul "Reign of Saul ", which was printed in twelve editions by 1888. Judah Leib Ben-Ze'ev was the first modern Hebrew grammarian, and beginning with his 1796 manual of the language, he authored books which explored it and were vital reading material for young Maskilim until

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6510-481: The general society of Germany. A good knowledge of the German language was necessary to secure entrance into cultured German circles, and an excellent means of acquiring it was provided by Mendelssohn in his German translation of the Torah . This work became a bridge over which ambitious young Jews could pass to the great world of secular knowledge. The Biur , or grammatical commentary, prepared under Mendelssohn's supervision,

6615-429: The growing body. The emergence of the Maskilic canon reflected the movement's central and defining enterprise, the revival of Hebrew as a literary language for secular purposes (its restoration as a spoken tongue occurred only much later). The Maskilim researched and standardized grammar, minted countless neologisms and composed poetry, magazines, theatrical works and literature of all sorts in Hebrew. Historians described

6720-401: The home environment but also granting them proper religious education, reversing Jewish custom and copying contemporary Christian attitudes. The Haskalah was also mainly a movement of transformation, straddling both the declining traditional Jewish society of autonomous community and cultural seclusion and the beginnings of a modern Jewish public. As noted by Feiner, everything connected with

6825-407: The jurisdiction of traditional community institutions – the rabbinic courts , empowered to rule on numerous civic matters, and the board of elders, which served as lay leadership. The maskilim perceived those as remnants of medieval discrimination. They criticized various traits of Jewish society, such as child marriage – traumatized memories from unions entered at the age of thirteen or fourteen are

6930-500: The languages of the countries in which they settled, providing another gateway for integration. Berlin was the city of origin for the movement. The capital city of Prussia and, later, the German Empire , Berlin became known as a secular, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic center, a fertile environment for conversations and radical movements. This move by the Maskilim away from religious study, into much more critical and worldly studies

7035-420: The latter had an intrinsic rather than merely instrumental value. He therefore also contested the authority of the rabbinical establishment, which stemmed from its function as interpreters of the holy teachings and their status as the only truly worthy field of study. Though secular subjects could be and were easily tolerated, their elevation to the same level as sacred ones was a severe threat, and indeed mobilized

7140-578: The law only allowing one child per family as to prevent rise in Jewish population. Haskalah The Haskalah ( Hebrew : הַשְׂכָּלָה ; literally, "wisdom", "erudition" or "education"), often termed the Jewish Enlightenment , was an intellectual movement among the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe , with a certain influence on those in Western Europe and the Muslim world . It arose as

7245-529: The liberating influence of reason and progress. The reconstituted Jews, these radical maskilim believed, would be able to take their place as equals in an enlightened world. But all, including the moderate and disillusioned, stated that adjustment to the changing world was both unavoidable and positive in itself. Haskalah ideals were converted into practical steps via numerous reform programs initiated locally and independently by its activists, acting in small groups or even alone at every time and area. Members of

7350-461: The linguistic gap and learn a foreign language, having been raised on Hebrew and Yiddish only. The experience of abandoning one's sheltered community and struggle with tradition was a ubiquitous trait of maskilic biographies. The children of these activists almost never followed their parents; they rather went forward in the path of acculturation and assimilation. While their fathers learned the vernaculars late and still consumed much Hebrew literature,

7455-481: The little available material in the language did not attract their offspring, who often lacked a grasp of Hebrew due to not sharing their parents' traditional education. Haskalah was, by and large, a unigenerational experience. In the linguistic field, this transitory nature was well attested. The traditional Jewish community in Europe inhabited two separate spheres of communication: one internal, where Hebrew served as written high language and Yiddish as vernacular for

7560-477: The maintenance of both spheres. When acculturation far exceeded the movement's plans, Central European Jews turned almost solely to the vernacular. David Sorkin demonstrated this with the two great journals of German Jewry: the maskilic Ha-Me'assef was written in Hebrew and supported the study of German; the post-maskilic Sulamith (published since 1806) was written almost entirely in German, befitting its editors' agenda of linguistic assimilation. Likewise, upon

7665-485: The masses, and one external, where Latin and the like were used for apologetic and intercessory purposes toward the Christian world. A tiny minority of writers was concerned with the latter. The Haskalah sought to introduce a different bilingualism: renovated, refined Hebrew for internal matters, while Yiddish was to be eliminated; and national vernaculars, to be taught to all Jews, for external ones. However, they insisted on

7770-863: The monarchy and the Church. However, the New Christians were later hounded and persecuted by the Spanish Inquisition after 1478, the Portuguese Inquisition after 1536, the Peruvian Inquisition after 1570 and the Mexican Inquisition after 1571, as well as the Inquisition in Colombia after 1610. In Medieval Europe , all Asian peoples were thought of as being the descendants of Shem . By

7875-413: The monopoly of the rabbinic elite over the intellectual sphere of Jewish life, contesting its role as spiritual leadership. In his 1782 circular Divrei Shalom v'Emeth (Words of Peace and Truth), Hartwig Wessely , one of the most traditional and moderate maskilim , quoted the passage from Leviticus Rabbah stating that a Torah scholar who lacked wisdom was inferior to an animal's carcass. He called upon

7980-413: The movement completely in propelling such processes as acculturation, secularization, religious reform from moderate to extreme, adoption of native patriotism and so forth. In many regions the Haskalah had no effect at all. As long as the Jews lived in segregated communities, and as long as all social interaction with their gentile neighbors was limited, the rabbi was the most influential member of

8085-484: The movement largely as a Republic of Letters , an intellectual community based on printing houses and reading societies. The Maskilim's attitude toward Hebrew, as noted by Moses Pelli, was derived from Enlightenment perceptions of language as reflecting both individual and collective character. To them, a corrupt tongue mirrored the inadequate condition of the Jews which they sought to ameliorate. They turned to Hebrew as their primary creative medium. The Maskilim inherited

8190-404: The movement sought to acquaint their people with European culture, have them adopt the vernacular language of their lands, and integrate them into larger society. They opposed Jewish reclusiveness and self-segregation, called upon Jews to discard traditional dress in favour of the prevalent one, and preached patriotism and loyalty to the new centralized governments. They acted to weaken and limit

8295-451: The movement's agenda, but mostly practical, hoping for a betterment of their people that would result in emancipation and equal rights. Indeed, the great cultural transformation which occurred among the Parnassim (affluent communal wardens) class – they were always more open to outside society, and had to tutor their children in secular subjects, thus inviting general Enlightenment influences –

8400-587: The old Christian hostility towards Jews, the new term antisemitism becomes almost unavoidable, even before explicitly racist doctrines appear. In the context of the Industrial Revolution , with the emancipation of the Jews (1790s onwards) and the Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment of the 18th and 19th centuries), many Jews rapidly urbanized and experienced a period of greater social mobility. With

8505-415: The probably most influential of them all was Ha-Melitz , launched in 1860 at Odessa by Aleksander Zederbaum . While the partisans of the Haskalah were much immersed in the study of sciences and Hebrew grammar, this was not a profoundly new phenomenon, and their creativity was a continuation of a long, centuries-old trend among educated Jews. What truly marked the movement was the challenge it laid to

8610-471: The public and the private spheres. Owing to its dual policies, it collided both with the traditionalist rabbinic elite, which attempted to preserve old Jewish values and norms in their entirety, and with the radical assimilationists who wished to eliminate or minimize the existence of the Jews as a defined collective. The Haskalah was multifaceted, with many loci which rose and dwindled at different times and across vast territories. The name Haskalah became

8715-495: The rabbis against the nascent Haskalah . The potential of "Words of Peace and Truth" was fully realized later, by the second generation of the movement in Berlin and other radical maskilim , who openly and vehemently denounced the traditional authorities. The appropriate intellectual and moral leadership needed by the Jewish public in modern times was, according to the maskilim , that of their own. Feiner noted that in their usurpation of

8820-455: The radical universalists who broke off the late Berlin Haskalah or the Russified intelligentsia in Eastern Europe a century later, were castigated and derided no less than the old rabbinic authorities which the movement confronted. It was not uncommon for its partisans to become a conservative element, combating against further dilution of tradition: in Vilnius , Samuel Joseph Fuenn turned from

8925-505: The reformulated and reduced traditional curriculum. This model, with different stresses, was applied elsewhere. Joseph Perl opened the first modern Jewish school in Galicia at Tarnopol in 1813, and Eastern European maskilim opened similar institutes in the Pale of Settlement and Congress Poland . They all abandoned the received methods of Ashkenazi education: study of the Pentateuch with

9030-510: The shape of the " Jewish nose ". In Nazi Germany , the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935 placed severe restrictions on "aliens" such as Jews or anyone of Jewish heritage. These laws deprived Jews of citizenship rights and prohibited sexual relations and marriage between any Aryan and Jew (such relations under Nazi ideology was a crime punishable under the race laws as Rassenschande or "racial pollution"). These laws established that on

9135-443: The state authorities); the Enlightened were not even fully agreeable to civic emancipation, and many of them viewed it with reserve, sometimes anxiety. In their writings, they drew a sharp line between themselves and whom they termed "pseudo- maskilim " – those who embraced the Enlightenment values and secular knowledge but did not seek to balance these with their Jewishness, but rather strove for full assimilation. Such elements, whether

9240-484: The sway held by the rabbis and the traditional values over Jewish society. Combined with many other factors, they laid the path to all modern Jewish movements and philosophies, either those critical, hostile or supportive to themselves. The maskilim sought to replace the framework of values held by the Ashkenazim of Central and Eastern Europe with their own philosophy, which embraced the liberal, rationalistic notions of

9345-647: The time and he also asked to borrow money from Grassinger. But they [told] him that they had no use for him in the paper and that they also did not want to have him in the party. The DSP dissolved in December 1922, and told its members to join the Nazi Party . Racial antisemitism Racial antisemitism is prejudice against Jews based on a belief or assertion that Jews constitute a distinct race that has inherent traits or characteristics that appear in some way abhorrent or inherently inferior or otherwise different from

9450-407: The title of spiritual elite, unprecedented in Jewish history since the dawn of Rabbinic Judaism (various contestants before the Enlightened were branded as schismatics and cast out), they very much emulated the manner in which secular intellectuals dethroned and replaced the Church from the same status among Christians. Thus the maskilim generated an upheaval which – though by no means alone – broke

9555-427: The traits or characteristics of the rest of a society . The abhorrence may find expression in the form of discrimination, stereotypes or caricatures. Racial antisemitism may present Jews, as a group, as a threat in some way to the values or safety of a society. Racial antisemitism can seem deeper-rooted than religious antisemitism , because for religious antisemites conversion of Jews remains an option and once converted

9660-449: The view of racial antisemitism, Jews are not opposed on account of their religion , instead, they are opposed on account of their supposed hereditary or genetic racial characteristics : greed, a special aptitude for money-making, aversion to hard work, clannishness and obtrusiveness, lack of social tact, low cunning, and especially, lack of patriotism . Later, Nazi propaganda also dwelt on the supposed physical differences of Jews, such as

9765-495: Was a form of racism , because in the past, there were no grades of Christianity and converts to Christianity had equal standing with life-long Christians. Cleanliness of blood was an issue of ancestry, not an issue of personal religion. The first statute of purity of blood appeared in Toledo in 1449, where an anti- converso riot lead to conversos being banned from most official positions. Initially these statutes were condemned by both

9870-479: Was a precondition of Haskalah . The state and the elite required the maskilim as interlocutors and specialists in their efforts for reform, especially as educators, and the latter used this as leverage to benefit their ideology. However, the activists were much more dependent on the former than vice versa; frustration from one's inability to further the maskilic agenda and being surrounded by apathetic Jews, either conservative "fanatics" or parvenu "assimilationists",

9975-581: Was designed to counteract the influence of traditional rabbinical methods of exegesis . Together with the translation, it became, as it were, the primer of Haskalah. Language played a key role in the haskalah movement, as Mendelssohn and others called for a revival of Hebrew and a reduction in the use of Yiddish . The result was an outpouring of new, secular literature, as well as critical studies of religious texts . Julius Fürst along with other German-Jewish scholars compiled Hebrew and Aramaic dictionaries and grammars. Jews also began to study and communicate in

10080-439: Was identified as a maskil and every change in traditional religious patterns was dubbed Haskalah ". Later research greatly narrowed the scope of the phenomenon and limited its importance: while Haskalah undoubtedly played a part, the contemporary historical consensus portrays it as much humbler. Other transformation agents, from state-imposed schools to new economic opportunities, were demonstrated to have rivaled or overshadowed

10185-601: Was made possible by this German city of modern and progressive thought. It was a city in which the rising middle class Jews and intellectual elites not only lived among, but were exposed to previous Age of Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire , Diderot , and Rousseau . The movement is often referred to as the Berlin Haskalah . Reference to Berlin in relation to the Haskalah movement is necessary because it provides context for this episode of Jewish history. Subsequently, having left Germany and spreading across Eastern Europe,

10290-492: Was primarily a leading metricist, with his 1842 Shirei S'fat haQodesh "Verses in the Holy Tongue" considered a milestone in Hebrew poetry , and also authored biblical exegesis and educational handbooks. Abraham Mapu authored the first Hebrew full-length novel, Ahavat Zion "Love of Zion", which was published in 1853 after twenty-three years of work. Judah Leib Gordon was the most eminent poet of his generation and arguably of

10395-461: Was promulgated by nationalist thinkers and historians, from Peretz Smolenskin , Ahad Ha'am , Simon Dubnow and onwards. It was once common in Israeli historiography. A major factor which always characterized the movement was its weakness and its dependence of much more powerful elements. Its partisans were mostly impoverished intellectuals, who eked out a living as private tutors and the like; few had

10500-502: Was referred to as semiticization by the race-theorist Arthur de Gobineau . Gobineau himself did not consider the Semites (descendants of Shem) to be a lesser race . He divided people into three races: white, black, and yellow. The Semites, like the Aryans (and Hamites ) came from Asia and were white. Over time, each of the groups had mixed with black blood. The Aryans had stayed pure for

10605-414: Was that it gave a voice to plurality of views, while the orthodoxy preserved the tradition, even to the point of insisting on dividing between sects. Another important facet of the Haskalah was its interest in non-Jewish religions, and for some the desire to synchronize or appreciate Christian and Islamic traditions and history. Moses Mendelssohn criticized some aspects of Christianity, but depicted Jesus as

10710-557: Was that of rationalism. Their most important contribution was the revival of Jewish philosophy , rather dormant since the Italian Renaissance , as an alternative to mysticist Kabbalah which served as almost the sole system of thought among Ashkenazim and an explanatory system for observance. Rather than complex allegorical exegesis , the Haskalah sought a literal understanding of scripture and sacred literature. The rejection of Kabbalah , often accompanied with attempts to refute

10815-613: Was the Königsberg (and later Berlin )-based Ha-Meassef , launched by Isaac Abraham Euchel in 1783 and printed with growing intervals until 1797. The magazine had several dozen writers and 272 subscribers at its zenith, from Shklow in the east to London in the west, making it the sounding board of the Berlin Haskalah . The movement lacked an equivalent until the appearance of Bikurei ha-I'tim in Vienna between 1820 until 1831, serving

10920-498: Was the possibility of effective conversion ... a Jew ceased to be a Jew upon baptism." However, with racial antisemitism: Now the assimilated Jew was still a Jew, even after baptism ... From the Enlightenment onward, it is no longer possible to draw clear lines of distinction between religious and racial forms of hostility towards Jews... Once Jews have been emancipated and secular thinking makes its appearance, without leaving behind

11025-449: Was to be remedied by the shedding of the base and corrupt elements of Jewish existence and retention of only the true, positive ones; indeed, the question what those were, exactly, loomed as the greatest challenge of Jewish modernity. The more extreme and ideologically bent came close to the universalist aspirations of the radical Enlightenment , of a world freed of superstition and backwardness in which all humans will come together under

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