HASKALAH

Hebrew term (haśkālâ, literally "the bringing of understanding," hence "enlightenment"), first used by Judah Jeiteles, designating the movement among East-European Jews from c. 1750 to c. 1880 to add to the traditional Jewish Talmudic studies the knowledge of the literature and culture of Western Europe. As a distinctly Jewish movement, Haskalah resembled only in part the general movement of the enlightenment, with which it was connected. The leaders of the movement, who were called Maskilim (Heb. maśkîlîm, those who bring understanding), were convinced that Jewish Emancipation would not be effective unless the Jewish religion were modernized and Westernized. It thus sought a compromise between strict orthodoxy and complete assimilation.

Germany. Although the modernizing movement had forerunners in the 17th century among the Jews of Holland and Italy, the cradle of Haskalah as such was in Berlin, where the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86) in 1750 published a short-lived periodical written in Hebrew but modern in content. In 1778 he established in Berlin a Jewish school that combined the traditional subjects of the ghetto ḥeder (elementary school) with the study of German, French, and secular sciences, "the studies of man," as the Maskilim called the humanities. In 1783 he published his German translation (printed in Hebrew characters) of the Pentateuch, accompanied by a rationalistic commentary. In his treatise Jerusalem (1783) he stated that Judaism, though a revealed religion, does not contain any truth that could not be attained by rational thinking. Religious observance, not belief, was for Mendelssohn the hallmark of Judaism.

In the reign of frederick ii (the Great), King of Prussia, Polish intellectuals who were often tutors in wealthy immigrant Jewish families intermingled with followers of Mendelssohn in Germany, furthering the movement toward Western culture but retaining Jewish orthodoxy in rationalized form. They regarded the modernization of Jewish education as a prerequisite for the emergence of Jewry from its medieval ghetto into the full freedom of European civilization. A group of young Maskilim formed a society for the promotion of the Hebrew language and founded a literary monthly, Ha-Me’assēf (The Miscellany), published from 1783 to 1811. Thus Hebrew became the vehicle of the Haskalah movement. The pioneer Maskilim learned to use the holy tongue with ease, a noteworthy achievement because Hebrew had long since degenerated into confused scholastic jargon. Although the Haskalah inspired also a rich literature in Yiddish and other languages, the Maskilim, who opposed assimilation movements and addressed themselves to Jewry as a whole, made a point of using Hebrew.

Russia. The Haskalah reechoed convincingly in the Russian Empire in the early 19th century, where the first generation of Hebrew writers sought to defend the new secular ideas against the fierce opposition of orthodox Jewry. The outstanding figure of this period was I. B. Levinsohn (1788–1860) in the Ukraine, whose work, Te‘ûdâ be-Yiśra’ēl (Testimony in Israel), printed in Vilna in 1828, virtually inaugurated the Haskalah movement in Russia. The book was published with a grant of 1,000 rubles from the Russian government, which regarded it as a contribution to their policy of assimilation. In this work, as well as in his Bêt Yehûdâ (The House of Judah, 1839), Levinsohn undertook to convince his fellow Jews that the program of the Haskalah, which advocated the study of the Hebrew language and grammar, the acquisition of secular sciences, and the pursuit of handicrafts and agriculture, was not opposed to the Jewish religion. In proposing that at least one-third of the people be encouraged to engage in agriculture, Levinsohn was a forerunner of one aspect of Zionism. Russian Jewry, as a whole, did not support Levinsohn's ideas. The orthodox leadership rejected them outright, considering the Haskalah a dangerous innovation and a threat to the preservation of Judaism, being convinced that it would ultimately lead to atheism or conversion to Christianity.

Two outstanding authors are representative of the second generation of Russian Haskalah, Abraham Mapu (1808–67) and Judah Leib Gordon (1831–92). The former introduced historical romance into Hebrew letters. The subject matter of two of his novels is drawn from biblical times, while his ‘AyiṭṢāvû‘a (The Hypocrite) depicts the life of his own generation, denouncing corrupted community leaders and bigoted rabbis, while presenting in favorable light the young Maskil perplexed between religion and science. With Mapu the Haskalah became militant. The same offensive tone appeared in the work of Gordon, one of the greatest Hebrew poets since the Middle Ages. He attacked the tyrants of the Jewish community as responsible for the backward condition of his beloved people and declared that his desire was not to destroy the Jewish religion, but to seek the golden means to unite pure faith with reason and the needs of the time.

Meanwhile, independently of the Haskalah movement, profound changes had taken place in Russian Jewry. The young generation of the 1860s and 1870s had abandoned not only Jewish practices but Judaism itself. The Maskilim, with their plea for national consciousness, were now considered outdated. Peretz Smolenskin (1842–85), the most representative author of the expiring Haskalah, still struggled for the spread of light and knowledge but recognized that secular knowledge and the mastery of languages were not the panacea for all the ills of the House of Israel. In his opinion, Jews who pretended to be adherents of the Mosaic faith only were no longer Jews. "In Judaism," declared Smolenskin, "religion and national belonging are inseparable; the Torah is not only the religious guide of the Jews but also the witness of their peoplehood." If in an earlier time Maskilim endeavored to save the man in the Jew, Smolenskin wanted to save the Jew in the now enlightened and emancipated man. By asserting the distinctiveness of the Jewish people and by considering the Hebrew language as the mainstay of its national consciousness, Smolenskin paved the way for Zionism

Bibliography: s. bernfeld, Encyclopedia Judaica (Berlin 1928–34) 3:667–681. p. wiernik, Jewish Encyclopedia, ed. j. singer (New York 1901–06) 6:256–258. j. s. raisin, Universal Jewish Encyclopedia 5:242–245; The Haskalah Movement in Russia (Philadelphia 1913). s. halkin, Modern Hebrew Literature (New York 1950). m. waxman, A History of Jewish Literature, 5 v. in 6 (New York 1961) v. 3. l. greenberg, The Jews in Russia, 2 v. (New Haven 1944–51), bibliog. 1:190–199, esp. 196.

[m. j. stiassny]