Haskalah and History

Shmuel Feiner'sinnovative book recreates the historical consciousness that fired theHaskalah-the Jewish Enlightenment movement. The proponents of this movementadvocated that Jews should capture the spirit of the future and take theirplace in wider society, but as Jews-without denying their collective identityand without denying their past. Claiming historical legitimacy for theirideology and their vision of the future, they formulated an ethos of modernitythat they projected on to the universal and the Jewish past alike.What was the image ofthe past that the maskilim shaped? What tactics underpinned their use ofhistory? How did their historical awareness change and develop-from theinception of the Haskalah in Germany at the time of Mendelssohn and Wessely,through the centres of Haskalah in Austria, Galicia, and Russia, to theemergence of modern nationalism in the maskilic circles in eastern Europe inthe last third of the nineteenth century? These are some of the questionsraised in this fascinating exploration of an ideological approach to historywhich throws a searching new light on the Jewish Enlightenment movement and theemergence of Jewish historical consciousness more generally.