Haskalah

Haskalah , [Heb.,=enlightenment] Jewish movement in Europe active from the 1770s to the 1880s. Beginning in Germany in the circle of the German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and spreading to Galicia and Russia, the Haskalah called for increased secularization of Jewish life through secular learning, a concern for esthetics, and linguistic assimilation (especially in Germany), all in the cause of speeding Jewish emancipation. The proponents of the Haskalah ( maskilim ) established schools and published periodicals and other works. By publishing in Hebrew, they contributed to the revival of the language.

Bibliography: See J. Katz, Tradition and Crisis (1961).

Haskalah (Heb., ‘enlightenment’). The Enlightenment movement of the late 18th and 19th cents. in Judaism. Those who espoused the Haskalah were known as Maskilim. Related to the secular Enlightenment, Moses Mendelssohn is generally considered to be the ‘father of the Haskalah’.

Prominent Haskalah thinkers included Naphtale Herz Wessely, the educationalist, who believed that Jewish children ‘were not all created to become Talmudists’, and David Friedlaender who rejoiced in the decline of the yeshivot. Throughout Europe, rich Jews rejected Yiddish and taught their children the language of their host nation.

In their desire for acceptance and emancipation, the Maskilim were particularly patriotic towards their host countries, and the messianic hope was weakened. Members of the Assembly of Jewish Notables, set up by Napoleon in 1806, described themselves as ‘Frenchmen of the Mosaic religion’. The diaspora was no longer seen as a punishment for Israel's wickedness, but the result of historical and geographical factors. Judaism was understood as a spiritual and moral creed, and from this thinking grew the Reform movement with its updated Prayer Book and its rejection of the absolute claims of halakhah.