Faith & Fate
DAWN OF THE CENTURY 1900 -1910
LESSON 8 ENLIGHTENMENT, HASKALAH AND ITS IMPACT ON THE JEWISH COMMUNITY
GOALS OF THE LESSON
- A. To understand the beliefs and concepts of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment movement.
- B. To analyze how the beliefs of Haskalah directly challenged the beliefs in traditional Judaism.
- C. To show how this conflict between Haskalah and traditional Judaism impacted upon Jewish history.
View Video 2:30 min
SYNOPSIS OF FILM CLIP
For the first time, Jews voluntarily began to look for non-Jewish ways to solve their problems, due to the pressure of the secular environment. This started with the growth of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment movement, which began in England in the 18th century and then moved to Western Europe. This movement was a cultural shift to modern secularism and away from traditional Judaism. The movement was epitomized by Emanuel Kant and his philosophy that man is autonomous and God cannot rule over man or his choices. The idea that only man can solve all his problems without God was a direct challenge to traditional Jewish belief and practice. This conflict over Jewish identity impacted directly on Jewish history and is a struggle that continues until today.
SUGGESTED QUESTIONS
- 1. Define the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment movement. What were its beliefs and ideals?
- 2. How was the Haskalah movement a direct challenge to traditional Judaism?
- 3. How did the conflict between the Haskalah movement and traditional Judaism impact directly upon Jewish history?
MAIN TALKING POINTS OF THE LESSON
- A. Haskalah the Jewish Enlightenment, was a movement that began among European Jews in the late 18th century that advocated adopting enlightenment values, pressing for better integration into European society, and increasing education in secular studies and Hebrew language. It marked the beginning of the wider engagement of European Jews with the secular world, ultimately resulting in the first Jewish political movements and the struggle for Jewish emancipation. Haskalah also denoted the study of Biblical Hebrew and of the poetical, scientific, and critical parts of Hebrew literature. It believed in the centrality of man to decide his own fate, without relying at all on God, and that man had the ability to solve all his problems.
- B. Putting man in the center of the world and not God is antithetical to traditional Jewish belief. Intentionally mixing with the non-Jewish society also ran counter to traditional Jewish values. The corollary idea that emerged, that that the Torah could be altered to accommodate itself to the modern times, was a concept that traditional Jews could not tolerate.