The Experience of the Enlightenment: the “Haskalah”

by Egon Friedler

What does the Jewish people really owe to the Enlightenment movement? To what extent was the European tendency toward emancipation sincere? How can we assess today the fall of the walls of the Ghetto? What, then, did the new era of Modernity offer the Jews? To what extent was the Jewish Enlightenment movement — that is to say, the Haskalah — a success? These questions are among the most fascinating concerning modern Jewish history. A full analysis of this problem would take us too long. We will try to give at least a few partial answers.

The positive consequences of those extraordinary events that defined the beginnings of Modernity are evident.

The realization of a dream: citizens with full rights.

Indeed, for the members of a despised and oppressed community, to become citizens with full rights was the realization of a dream long pursued. Yet the reception of the Jews by European society was not very encouraging. Some among the principal philosophers of the Enlightenment movement shared the same antisemitic prejudices as the societies they wished to change. Voltaire, a thinker who more than any other contributed to the destruction of the traditional beliefs of pre-Revolutionary European society — belief in monarchy by divine right, legitimacy of the privileges of the nobility, and infallibility of the Catholic Church — could thus write, concerning the Jews, in his “Dictionnaire philosophique” (Philosophical Dictionary) of 1756: “You will find in them only an ignorant and barbarous people, who have long joined the most sordid avarice to the most detestable and most invincible hatred for all the peoples who tolerate them.”

But to show his good feelings, this sharp-tongued philosopher adds: “They should not, however, be burned.”

Diderot, the director of the Encyclopédie (Encyclopedia), writes in his article on the philosophy of the Jews that they had “all the defects of an ignorant and superstitious nation.” But it is the Baron Paul-Henri d’Holbach who goes furthest in his extreme antisemitism. In his book “L’esprit du judaïsme” (The Spirit of Judaism) (1770) he writes that Moses was the worst and most dangerous of religious lawgivers. He indoctrinated the Jews with hatred of humankind, with parasitism and exploitation. From the fate of the seven Canaanite nations he deduces that the God of the Jews is a bloodthirsty divinity who justifies the Jewish tendency toward genocide. He was a severe critic of the Prophets, of Messianism, and of all things Jewish. Naturally, all the negative aspects of Christianity had, for d’Holbach, their root in Judaism.

In Germany the founder of ethical idealism, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, spoke of the “grotesquely infantile conceptions of God” in the Jewish religion, and even a moderate humanist such as Johann Wolfgang Goethe was opposed to the liberalization of the position of the Jews in German society.

Thus, unfortunately, the decline of religious devotion and of the position of the church in society did not bring about a reassessment of the Jewish question in Europe — quite the contrary. In this new enlightened world of modernity, a new layer, secular this time, was added to the old anti-Jewish myths of Christian origin. It is therefore only normal that much time should pass, and that many new public battles should take place, before the lofty ideals of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity were applied to the Jews and full citizens’ rights were granted to them.

European society was in reality prepared to accept the Jews only on its own terms. This often meant accepting the Jews without their Jewishness. As the Count Clermont-Tonnerre said to the French National Assembly: “Everything must be refused to the Jews as a nation, and everything granted to the Jews as individuals.” Napoleon Bonaparte imposed his own rules on the famous Sanhedrin when he convened it: the Jews had first to be French patriots, before even being free to embrace their religion. Even there Judaism was an encumbrance, as the poet Heinrich Heine said after his ambiguous conversion to Christianity: “I have bought my passport to European society.” Many Jews bought this passport, but very soon they understood that they had been left empty-handed: they had abandoned their familiar faith and their sense of belonging in order to join a society that felt aversion toward them and regarded them as strangers.

One of the ironies of history is that when at last the battle for Emancipation was finished, in almost all of Europe, modern, racist antisemitism had been born. And in our century this ideology of hatred, which was embraced by Nazi Germany, was as destructive, if not more so, than the old historical Christian antisemitism.

The attempt to create a Judaism adapted to the new times was called the “Haskalah,” the Hebrew word for “the Enlightenment.”

Yet in the last decades of the eighteenth century there were still many illusions. One of them was the dominant idea of the Jewish Enlightenment movement: Jewishness and full Jewish citizenship are perfectly compatible. The only condition was that the Jews become familiar with European culture. A new Judaism was to be built, a Judaism for an age of Reason, made of the lofty ideals of fraternity for humankind. This attempt to create a Judaism adapted to the new times was called the Haskalah, the Hebrew word for “the Enlightenment.” It began in Jewish society in the 1770s and continued to be influential and to spread, with fluctuations, over more than a century.

It was not at all a monolithic movement. It differed from one country to another and from one leading figure to another. Perhaps the word “movement” may mislead. In fact, it was more a historical tendency than a movement. The Haskalah had a decisive influence on the adaptation of the Jews to European society as regards their dress, their language, and their customs. It emphasized loyalty to the modern centralized State and strove to make the Jews productive. The Jews were to become citizens and cease to await the Messiah. At the same time Judaism was to become acceptable to European taste. The principal challenge for the

Dossier: Jewish Identities and Modernity

Haskalah was to adapt the old Jewish heritage to the new times. And of course, there were numerous proposals. So much so that the Haskalah spoke in many voices. Let us evoke a few of them.

Moses Mendelssohn is regarded as the father of the Haskalah.

Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) of Dessau is regarded as the father of the Haskalah. A highly gifted philosopher who won first prize in a competition in which the famous Immanuel Kant also took part. He sought to reconcile Judaism with modern rationalist philosophy. For him there was nothing in the Jewish faith that was opposed to reason; it was not a revealed religion but a revealed legislation. According to this approach, Judaism became a private affair, perfectly compatible with European culture. He translated the Pentateuch into German accompanied by an interpretation, Biur in Hebrew, and although he wrote numerous articles in Hebrew, his principal philosophical works were written in German. He was very influential in his time, and in his famous polemic with the Swiss pastor Lavater, he justified with dignity his intention not to convert (himself) to Christianity and to remain a Jew. But if we analyze his career we must admit that the man was more admired than his ideas. He had no disciples, essentially because he had established a clear division between his Judaism, which was strict and admitted no questioning, and his approach to modernity, which was open. But, as many soon found for themselves, one cannot separate the man of reason from the Jew. Ultimately, although he attempted to make his Judaism agreeable to Jews of modern mentality, he did not really succeed. All six of his children converted and joined the Catholic Church.

If Moses Mendelssohn was the most important thinker of the Haskalah, Jehuda-Leib Gordon (1831–1892) was its most striking poet.

Jehuda-Leib Gordon vigorously denounced the rigid and conservative positions of the rabbis and Jewish leaders.

Esteemed by Bialik as one of the greatest magicians of Hebrew of all time, he was also a sharp and courageous journalist who fought against the retrograde aspects of Jewish life. He pleaded for social and religious reform and vigorously denounced the rigid positions of the rabbis and the conservative ones of the Jewish leaders. But today Gordon is no better known for his struggle for a more liberal Jewish life than for his literary work. He is known above all for his famous slogan “Be a Jew at home, and a man abroad,” which to our modern ears connotes a certain self-hatred or at least a sense of inferiority. Yet Gordon was very far from a Jewish self-hatred. He was a true liberal who pleaded for a universal general education, for a reform of religious customs, and for the engagement of Jews in productive activities. In the 1880s, in his old age, when he became disillusioned by the failures of Russian liberalism, he saw a way out for European Judaism in the brand-new Jewish nationalism. In 1882 he praised Pinsker’s Auto-emancipation (Self-Emancipation) and proposed the creation of a “society for those who were going to Palestine.” Another important figure of the Haskalah was Leopold Zunz (1794–1886), who was one of the founders and the most assertive interpreter of the Science of Judaism (“Die Wissenschaft des Judentums”). Born in Detmold, in Germany, he devoted his long life to securing respectability for Jewish Studies and to explaining to non-Jewish society that a critical and scholarly approach to the Jewish religious tradition could become a science.