Tuesday, February 14, 2012

From Berlin to Beit Shemesh

Photo by Orrling
Since our session last night, I have been reflecting on why I think the Haskalah is such an important phenomenon in Jewish history for us to study and understand as Reform Jews today.  After all, much of the Haskalah project, for better and worse, has long since been achieved (e.g., university-level Jewish studies, assimilation).  But the Haskalah and its opponents represent a struggle in Judaism that is very much still with us, a conflict that is shaping the Jewish world.

In the introduction to his history of the Haskalah, Shmuel Feiner writes:

The Enlightenment's values are also threatened by its enemies, the fundamentalist streams. In essence, these are antimodernist and antirationalist streams, and their slogans challenge each and every one of the conceptions of the Enlightenment, beginning with the very perception of man and his autonomous status in the world, and ending with political conceptions relating to rights, freedom, and equality. In certain aspects, these trends also gain a particular expression in Jewish and Israeli life. As we shall see later, the orthodox claim that the Haskalah is an extreme manifestation of apostasy and assimilation originated as soon as the Haskalah movement itself came into being. This criticism has never died out, and is one of the hallmarks of militant ultra-orthodox historiography in the present as well, particularly in the Kulturkampf being waged in the State of Israel. In actual fact, the Haskalah was the opening battle of the Jewish Kulturkampf, whose later stages are still being experienced by Jews in Israel at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The dilemmas that the Haskalah provoked when it first began to grapple with the challenge of modernity have not yet been completely resolved, and some are still very much alive after more than two hundred years.
Shmuel Feiner, The Jewish Enlightenment (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), p. 13

As an Israeli scholar, Feiner is very sensitive to the intense conflict between the ultra-orthodox and the forces of secularism, rationalism, and religious reform—all heirs of the Haskalah.  Just this week we were reminded that what happens in Beit Shemesh touches Montgomery County.  And of course the struggle for the rights of liberal Jews in Israel is vitally important to Reform Jews everywhere.

As Feiner suggests, hopefully the history of the Haskalah gives us insight and sensitivity into how our contemporary conflicts evolved out of the Jewish experience of modernity.

(I know I didn't ask a specific question, but I still hope you will share thoughts and reactions in the comments!)

Photo: "Please Do Not Walk Through Our Neighborhood in Immodest Dress."  This sign is from Jerusalem, but similar signs (and the issue of public modesty) are part of the ongoing conflict between ultra-orthodox and liberal groups in Beit Shemesh.

2 comments:

  1. Rabbi Fabricant noted in class that there has been an increase in popularity in Hasidism in the post WWII era, especially in recent decades. I think it is very interesting and indeed ironic that "reform" Jews have so taken to and adopted some if not many aspects of hasidism in our religious observances and practices. As heirs of the Jewish enlightenment, we modern Jews pride ourselves on being rational, tolerant, scientific beings. And yet, there is a very strong deisire to adopt religeous rituals that the practitioners of Haskalah would have greatly rejected. This very much mirrors what is going on in Christianity today with the decline in popularity of the "mainline" Christian denominations, and increase in the less formal, more spiritual mega evangelical churches. Many Jews today somehow are also seeking less formality in religious observance, more spirituality as well. In this highly educated, rational, and scientific age in which we live, it is ironic that the anti Haskalahic forces have become dominant.

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  2. Pendulums swing, and mass movements (even those on the fringe) influence "mainstream" culture, even those who reject them. You can see this in politics in the way the rise of the Tea Party and then Occupy Wall Street have shaped the conversation and "moved the center" even among those who reject both. The same is true with respect to mainstream Protestant churches and Reform Judaism facing the rise of fundamental Christianity and the ultra-Orthodox. At the individual level, the rejection of traditional ritual and spiritualism by the rationalists seems to leave a gap, and the pendulum swings in part to fill it. I doubt that Reform Judaism ( or WHC in particular) will become “Conservative” in the next decade; we’ll just move a bit, setting ourselves up for the next swing.

    The fundamentalist movements themselves are in part a reaction to the rise and dominance of "rationalism" but historically they seem to have roots in social turmoil and [justified] anxiety about economic decline. Chasidism had little to do with the Haskalah -- few of those who flocked to the Ba'al Shem Tov had ever heard of Mendelsohn or laid eyes on a secular Jew, and they would have been stunned more than offended by the sight of a Jew dressed like a Berliner. A strong argument can be made that it was largely a reaction to economic and political developments in Eastern Europe after the Thirty Years War. Poland was weak during the 18th Century. It was diminished through “partitions” among Russia, Prussia and Austria and disappeared as a state in 1795, reappearing only in the wake of World War I. 18th Century Poland was also in decline economically, and the decline fostered growing anti-Semitism, increasing pressure on a Jewish population that had served and been protected by (fading) Polish elites and was not favored by the advancing Russians, the resulting loss of influence by Jewish leaders, etc.

    OK, I’ll stop.

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