The painted ceiling of the Chodorow synagogue (17th c., reconstruction  of Bet ha-Tefutzot).The Temple of Lwow. Postcard, early 20th c.Maurycy Gottlieb.  Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur, 1878

Lesson 3: "The Jewish Enlightenment"

 

 

Summary: We ended today’s class in the Russian Empire, with the rise of the Haskalah as a powerful, if still minority force in Jewish society. As we look ahead to Jewish emancipation and the rise of modern Jewish politics, it will important to see not only how certain ideals of the Haskalah will be rejected, but above all how the Haskalah itself evolves, how there is an internal momentum from within Jewish society – including many ideals of the Haskalah – that lead to radically new forms of Jewish politics and Jewish identity.

Recommended Reading:

Rafael Mahler, Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment: Their confrontation in Galicia and Poland in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century” (1985), 31-67
Nancy Sinkoff, Out of the Shtetl: making Jews modern in the Polish borderlands, 225-41
Jerzy Holzer, “Enlightenment, Assimilation, and Modern Identity: The Jewish Elite in Galicia,” in Polin 12: Focusing on Galicia (1999), 79-85

Aditional lectures connected to the topic: 

Joseph Perl

Shlomo Yehuda Rapoport