Raisin

1913 · 67024 — Philadelphia PA: The Jewish Publication Society of America 1913. Presumed first edition/first printing. Hardcover. Good. Bookplate on inside cover. Some pages uncut. Cover has some wear and soiling. Includes illustrations. Copyright is 1914 but date on title page is 1914. Notes. Bibliography. Index. From Wikipedia: "Haskalah the Jewish Enlightenment was a movement among European Jews in the 18th 19th centuries that advocated adopting enlightenment values pressing for better integration into European society and increasing education in secular studies Hebrew language and Jewish history. Haskalah in this sense 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. The division of Ashkenazi Jewry into religious movements or denominations especially in North America and anglophone countries began historically as a reaction to Haskalah. Leaders of the Haskalah movement were called Maskilim. In a more restricted sense haskalah can also denote the study of Biblical Hebrew and of the poetical scientific and critical parts of Hebrew literature. The term is sometimes used to describe modern critical study of Jewish religious books such as the Mishnah and Talmud when used to differentiate these modern modes of study from the methods used by Orthodox Jews. Haskalah differed from Deism of the European Enlightenment by seeking modernised philosophical and critical revision within Jewish belief and lifestyle acceptable for emancipation rights. Rejectionist tendencies within it led to assimilation motivating establishment of Reform and Neo-Orthodox denominations. Its outreach eastwards opposed resurgent mysticism and traditional scholarship. While early Jewish individuals such as Spinoza and Salomon Maimon advocated secular identity it remained until the late 19th century for secular Jewish ideologies to replace Judaism. In the 20th century Gershom Scholem reestablished the historical significance of Jewish mysticism dismissed by Haskalah historiography.Even as emancipation eased integration into wider society and assimilation prospered the haskalah also resulted in the creation of secular Jewish culture with an emphasis on Jewish history and Jewish identity rather than religion. This resulted in the engagement of Jews in a variety of competing ways within the countries where they lived; these included the struggle for Jewish emancipation involvement in new Jewish political movements and later in the face of continued persecutions in late nineteenth century Europe the development of a Jewish Nationalism. One source describes these effects as The emancipation of the Jews brought forth two opposed movements: the cultural assimilation begun by Moses Mendelssohn and Zionism founded by Theodor Herzl in 1896. One facet of the Haskalah was a widespread cultural adaptation as those Jews who participated in the enlightenment began in varying degrees to participate in the cultural practices of the surrounding Gentile population. Connected with this was the birth of the Reform movement whose founders such as Israel Jacobson and Leopold Zunz rejected the continuing observance of those aspects of Jewish law which they classified as ritual as opposed to moral or ethical. Even within orthodoxy the Haskalah was felt through the appearance of the Mussar Movement in Lithuania and Torah im Derech Eretz in Germany. Enlightened Jews sided with Gentile governments in plans to increase secular education among the Jewish masses bringing them into acute conflict with the orthodox who believed this threatened Jewish life. Another important facet of the Haskalah was its interests to non-Jewish religions. Moses Mendelssohn criticized some aspects of Christianity but depicted Jesus as a Torah-observant rabbi who was loyal to traditional Judaism. Mendelssohn explicitly linked positive Jewish views of Jesus with the issues of Emancipation and Jewish-Christian reconciliation. Similar revisionist views were expressed by Rabbi Isaac Ber Levinsohn and other traditional representatives of the Haskalah movement. The Jewish Publication Society of America hardcover