New Perspectives on the Haskalah

This

volume, written by a range of scholars in history and literature, offers a

new understanding of one of the central cultural and ideological movements

among Jews in modern times. Disengaging the Haskalah from the questions of

modernization or emancipation that have hitherto dominated the scholarship,

the contributors put the Haskalah under a microscope in order to restore

detail and texture to the individuals, ideas, and activities that were its

makers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In particular, they

replace simple dichotomies with nuanced distinctions, presenting the

relationship between ‘tradition’ and Haskalah as a spectrum of closely linked

cultural options rather than a fateful choice between old and new or good and

evil.

The essays address major and minor figures; ask whether there was such an

entity as an ‘early Haskalah’, or a Haskalah movement in England, look at key

issues such as the relationship of the Haskalah to Orthodoxy and hasidism,

and also treat such neglected subjects as the position of women. New Perspectives on the Haskalah

will interest all students of modern Jewish history, literature, and culture.

CONTRIBUTORS: Harris Bor, Edward Breuer, Tova Cohen, Immanuel Etkes, Shmuel

Feiner, Yehuda Friedlander, David B. Ruderman, Joseph Salmon, Nancy Sinkoff,

David Sorkin, Shmuel Werses.