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Fighting for Rights: Conscription and Jewish Emancipation

Derek J. Penslar

in Jews and the Military: A History

This chapter illustrates the context in which western and central European armies took form and how Jews were included in them. The issue of military service played a major role in eighteenth- and ... More

This chapter illustrates the context in which western and central European armies took form and how Jews were included in them. The issue of military service played a major role in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century debates about the emancipation of Jews. In the early 1700s, Protestant Hebraists and Enlightenment thinkers reconceived the position of Jews in European society by presenting Jews as capable of martial valor and so deserving of civil rights. In the late eighteenth century, new conceptions of the meliorability of humanity led to the introduction of conscription for all men, including Jews. Proponents of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) paid considerable attention to the issue of military service, especially after the introduction of mass conscription in France during the revolutionary wars. In the German lands, early nineteenth-century advocates of Jewish emancipation urged Jewish youth to volunteer to fight against Napoleonic France.Less

Jewish Anticlericalism and the Making of Modern Citizenship in the Late Enlightenment

Ari Joskowicz

in The Modernity of Others: Jewish Anti-Catholicism in Germany and France

In the late Enlightenment, Jews in Germany and France first started to engage publicly with politics in German and French. This chapter shows that from this early moment, anticlericalism and ... More

In the late Enlightenment, Jews in Germany and France first started to engage publicly with politics in German and French. This chapter shows that from this early moment, anticlericalism and anti-Catholicism emerged as important themes for Jewish enlighteners, who found that anticlerical polemics offered them the chance to become part of Enlightenment intellectual circles. After the French Revolution, anticlericalism also allowed French Jews to demonstrate their patriotism to a newly anticlerical state. Examples drawn from the works of eight Jewish enlighteners—including Moses Mendelssohn and Abraham Furtado—highlight the similar anticlerical strategies of Jewish authors from Bordeaux to Metz and Berlin to Breslau. Unlike late nineteenth-century antisemites, who denounced Jews for dividing the nation with their anti-Catholicism, in the late eighteenth century, Enlightenment thinkers accepted the anticlericalism of Jewish enlighteners because they considered it proof of Jews’ ability to transcend parochial Jewish concerns.Less

ZIONISM AND THE EVOLVING NEW CULTURE

Menachem Mautner

in Law and the Culture of Israel

This chapter discusses the rise of the Jewish Enlightenment movement in the course of the last two decades of the 18th century. It also discusses four main approaches in Zionist thought as to the ... More

This chapter discusses the rise of the Jewish Enlightenment movement in the course of the last two decades of the 18th century. It also discusses four main approaches in Zionist thought as to the culture of the new Jewish society that took shape in Eretz Israel (Palestine) in the first half of the 20th century: the cultural revival approach, identified with Ahad Ha-Am; the halakhic approach; the European culture approach whose two most prominent representatives were Theodor Herzl and Zeev Jabotinsky; and the negation of exile approach. The chapter also considers the key constitutive principles of the new Jewish culture that actually evolved in Eretz Israel in the period from the 1880s until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The basic principle at the foundation of the new culture was ‘Hebrewness’, meaning that it should be the antithesis of the Jewish religious culture of Eastern Europe. Ever since the 1950s, however, ‘Hebrewness’ and ‘negation of the exile’ have been losing stature. Increasingly, room has been given to a self-identity in terms of Jewishness. Also, as a young culture, the new Jewish culture suffered from ‘thinness’. The chapter ends by arguing that during the second half of the 20th century the new Jewish culture underwent three significant metamorphoses: from a self-perception of Hebrewness to a self-perception of Jewishness; from a collectivist worldview to an individualistic worldview; from faith in socialism to neo-liberalism. These processes put the secular Jewish group on shallow, shaky and incoherent ground when it engaged in its kulturkampf with the religious Jewish group in the waning decades of the 20th century.Less

Maimon's Medieval Desire: The Hesheq Shelomo

in The Radical Enlightenment of Solomon Maimon: Judaism, Heresy, and Philosophy

Drawing on his unpublished Hebrew manuscript, Hesheq Shelomo, this chapter examines Solomon Maimon's philosophy in the context of his concept of philosophical and theological perfectionism. It also ... More

Drawing on his unpublished Hebrew manuscript, Hesheq Shelomo, this chapter examines Solomon Maimon's philosophy in the context of his concept of philosophical and theological perfectionism. It also considers the significance of this perfectionism in understanding the thought of the early Haskala and its dialogue, or debate, with Hasidism and the Mitnaged party of rabbinic traditionalism. Maimon shared a particular set of intellectual contexts and traditions with other Maskilim such as Moses Mendelssohn, Isaac Satanov, and Isaac Euchel. This chapter explores how the medieval philosophy of Moses Maimonides and his successors occupied a central place in Jewish Enlightenment during the eighteenth century. It also analyzes Maimon's idiosyncratic but influential post-Kantian idealism.Less

Ideological Foundations

Matthias B. Lehmann

in Emissaries from the Holy Land: The Sephardic Diaspora and the Practice of Pan-Judaism in the Eighteenth Century

This chapter discusses the ideological foundations for their philanthropic operation developed by the emissaries and their supporters in printed pamphlets, sermons, and other texts. The main ... More

This chapter discusses the ideological foundations for their philanthropic operation developed by the emissaries and their supporters in printed pamphlets, sermons, and other texts. The main challenges that they addressed were competing claims to the munificence of Jewish donors, for example local charitable causes in the diaspora, and the question of the enduring centrality of the Holy Land. The chapter looks at instances of resistance to the emissaries, which were tied to a broader early modern phenomenon of defying rabbinic authority, especially among Western Sephardic Jews. It explores the responses formulated by emissaries and their allies, which contributed to the rise of rabbinic orthodoxy in the early modern period.Less

Rabbinic Enlightenment: Mordecai Benet and the Moravian Haskalah, 1789–1829

in Rabbis and Revolution: The Jews of Moravia in the Age of Emancipation

Mordecai Benet (1753–1829) was a chief rabbi who greatly influenced Jewish matters in Moravia at the end of the eighteenth century. This chapter highlights the role played by Benet in the flourishing ... More

Mordecai Benet (1753–1829) was a chief rabbi who greatly influenced Jewish matters in Moravia at the end of the eighteenth century. This chapter highlights the role played by Benet in the flourishing of Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), a movement that brought fundamental change to Central European Jewish society. It also discusses Benet's endorsement of Bne Zion, a religious-moral textbook that was part of the state's efforts to break down barriers between Christians and Jews by emphasizing the universal human ethics that were common to both religious traditions.Less

Conclusion

in The Radical Enlightenment of Solomon Maimon: Judaism, Heresy, and Philosophy

Solomon Maimon had two extraordinary accomplishments, one of which is philosophical and the second literary, within the German and Jewish Enlightenments during the late eighteenth century. From a ... More

Solomon Maimon had two extraordinary accomplishments, one of which is philosophical and the second literary, within the German and Jewish Enlightenments during the late eighteenth century. From a philosophical perspective, he was among the very first critics to truly tackle the main issues in Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and to outline a post-Kantian German idealism in response. Through his autobiography, he was the first writer to show how an Eastern European Jew rejected traditional rabbinic culture in favor of the Western European Enlightenment. Each of Maimon's works is written under the philosophical sign of noetic, or intellectual, perfection. Another critical moment in Maimon's career was his move from being an exponent of what he termed the “Jewish peripatetic philosophy” of the Middle Ages to being a leading proponent of German idealism. Maimon's philosophical development complicates the standard picture of the history of Jewish philosophy.Less

The Literary Character of the Haskalah

Anat Helman

in Jews and Their Foodways

This chapter discusses the nature of Haskalah literature. Haskalah or the Jewish Enlightenment, was a movement among European Jews that advocated the adoption of enlightenment values by pressing for ... More

This chapter discusses the nature of Haskalah literature. Haskalah or the Jewish Enlightenment, was a movement among European Jews that advocated the adoption of enlightenment values by pressing for better integration into European society, and increasing education in secular studies, Hebrew language, and Jewish history. Thus, Haskalah literature promoted the movement as a system of thought and practice aimed at modernizing Jewish culture and Jewish life. The crux of literary Haskalah is not its philosophical or political stance but rather its implicit or explicit views regarding what culture can or cannot do in the world, making it similar to literature written during the Romantic period.Less

“The Unradicality of Modern Philosophy”: Thinking in Correspondence

Richard L. Velkley

in Heidegger, Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy: On Original Forgetting

This chapter illustrates and discusses the significant affinities possessed by Heidegger and Strauss. For Heidegger it was the question of Being that had been overlooked by the metaphysical tradition ... More

This chapter illustrates and discusses the significant affinities possessed by Heidegger and Strauss. For Heidegger it was the question of Being that had been overlooked by the metaphysical tradition as it concentrated on the characterization of beings rather than on Being as the ground of disclosure of beings. After the 1920s, Heidegger’s thought grew into a more Greek and less biblical effort to rethink the central question of philosophy. The problem of revelation engaged Strauss at the start as well. He was a committed Zionist in the 1920s but troubled by the attempts to fuse Jewish orthodoxy with rationalism in the Jewish Enlightenment and in its romantic-nationalist successor, Zionism. Strauss became convinced that the modern rationalist critique of biblical orthodoxy, as espoused by its greatest exponent, Spinoza, rested on a merely asserted and unproven superiority of reason to revealed truth.Less