Summary
The Jewish Enlightenment: in Dowty’s account of Jewish politics, the vehicle for Western liberal ideas whose proponents created a “public space” outside the Kehilla and bridged traditional politics and the modern political movements, Zionism among them (The Jewish State: A Century Later, lines 517-530).
Details
- The Haskala served as a vehicle for Western liberal ideas and inspired new forms and organs of political activity; its influence among Russian Jews peaked after the middle of the nineteenth century (The Jewish State: A Century Later, lines 517-525).
- Its proponents (maskilim) formed institutions and organizations that were part of neither the kahal nor state authority, creating a “public space” where none had existed before; it served as a bridge between traditional politics and the modern political movements that emerged shortly thereafter, and many of the early Zionists had been raised in a Haskala atmosphere (The Jewish State: A Century Later, lines 517-530).
- Dowty’s Chapter 2 notes cite Steven Zipperstein’s formulation that the Haskala “offered a haven for Jews caught between an inaccessible, larger cultural world and an unacceptable, Jewish one” (The Jewish State: A Century Later, lines 700-720, Chapter 2 note 41 as ordered).