Talk:Haskalah

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Sarahp1959.

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[Untitled]
I am not sure why someone would be concerned about NPOV in the article. Could you explain your concern? Take a look at the references if you want further backgroumd. --Goodoldpolonius2 14:35, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I presume you're talking to me, because I moaned about POV. The present version is rather biased towards the earlier maskilim and totally ignores later members of the movement who were active in 19th and early 20th-century Poland, Russia and Lithuania. I'm not offering to write it, because it will come out as POV by definition (I consider myself biased). JFW | T@lk  19:53, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * This isn't so much a POV issue then, as it is a lack of information issue. I don't know a lot about later haskalah movements, I just rewrote the previous (lacking) article.

Add the detail you want. The only way it would be NPOV is if you said something like "The German Haskalah movement was run by idiots" or something. --Goodoldpolonius2 02:20, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Jewish Emancipation
Should that page simply be a redirect to this one? Rmhermen 00:23, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)

Oh, come on. This is absurd. Now Jews want to take credit for the Age of Enlightenment, too?

Do Wiki's referees require ANY evidence for these preposterous claims? Gutenberg's invention of the printing press surely would have SOME documentation that Jews had their private, secretive Enlightenment, while America and Europe waited for instructions from the "underground?"

The Documentary Hypothesis illustrates Jews plagiarized the Tank-ah. Fine. It's not literal history, but a document of tribal faith of a nomadic peoples long ago non-existent. But to claim Jews were part of the Enlightenment is so bizarre it can only be ridiculed.

But no one -- other than Baruch Spinoza in Amsterdam -- drew any PUBLIC attention toward Enlightenment ideas. He was "excommunicated" by Amsterdams rabbinical authorities for his blasphemy, idolatry, and heterodoxy. But he was also a baptized Christian, as well as nominal Jew, in which Jews now want to capture him as their own? Holland's tolerance to pluralism was in fact one of the reason Jews migrated to Holland. Next they'll insist he was baptized against his will, that the rabbis were consumed that Dutch "intolerance" would have none of an unorthodox Christian/Jew? Please.

But, here is an undocumented, unsupported entry on Wiki of such preposterous, undocumented nonsense, not even a rabbinical or Jewish publisher can be cited for "independent verification." Are we to await as they manufacture it? Wait until the scrolls are unraveled?

Wiki's referees don't even understand Karl Popper, apparently a Jewish emigre, but more importantly, a man of impeccable standards. No evidence. No validity. Unable to be falsified, incapable of being verified. That from a nominal Jew who never thought his "identity" counted more than reason, science, logic, and evidence. I am sure he would find this entry outlandish, preposterous, and appalling. And perhaps, guiling. At some point, contributors to Jewish hegemony write their own anti-Jewish reactions. Of 0.2% populations, Jews were always the first?

No wonder Evangelicals, Rabbi Eckstein, and Fundamentalists find gullibility. Wiki is so gullible or lacking criteria, "making it up" works as PostModernists insist it will.

Dshsfca (talk) 01:13, 13 April 2008 (UTC)dshsfca


 * What is the Tank-ah? Sounds oily.. Zargulon (talk) 17:46, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, I could not understand what you added to the article, nor can I understand your comments here. Jayjg (talk) 23:39, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

"Authentic Judaism?"
I'm not a big expert on this, but this sounds a bit biased to me:

"Haskalah produced such groups as the Reform movement, which deviated from authentic Judaism with the relaxation of Jewish law which was based on denial of Divinity of Oral Torah in particular.."

Does Wikipedia take the stance that Reform Jews are not authentic Jews? --Jfruh 05:19, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
 * This line has since been removed. If it was still there I personally would have changed it from "authentic" to "Orthodox" for NPOV reasons.  However, it's fair to say that Modern Orthodox synagogues and communities continue to hold an attraction  for many secular Jews, particularly part-timers (such as myself) who prefer them rather than "the Reform" because of the overall greater feeling of authenticity of the services and other culture. 62.190.148.115 (talk) 10:41, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I think a better formulation might be just "older forms of Jewish practice." Meerkat77 (talk) 12:49, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Map
This isn't my field, but I found the article fascinating. One question, though - is there a way to incorporate the map *into* the article? The link is a bit awkward. Thanks. 86.29.110.26 00:36, 24 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I think this map is a good one, and I'd like to incorporate it, but I don't (yet) have permission to upload to Wikimedia Commons. Can someone help me?
 * https://blogs.bu.edu/guidedhistory/files/2012/09/map54b1.jpg
 * I put it in the References section at the end, but would love to use the image in the "Spread" section. Meerkat77 (talk) 13:24, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
 * The older Routledge map has a broken link (maybe it is no longer accessible by web, or is behind a paywall), so I replaced it with https://blogs.bu.edu/guidedhistory/files/2012/09/map54b1.jpg shared by Joel Udwin. Meerkat77 (talk) 13:25, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

I think this can be easily changed by saying "traditional Judaism." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.0.233.30 (talk) 21:28, 23 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I think "traditional" is again a value judgment. I agree it's difficult to formulate this. I think "older forms of Jewish practice in Europe" or "older forms of Jewish practice" might work, but I'm not going to dive in unless folks think this is a good change, since I'm not an expert. Meerkat77 (talk) 12:50, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Hebrew
I was under the impression that Haskalah was for Yiddish and "against" hebrew, since it was associated with religion and culture based on religion?--24.203.108.54 (talk) 18:29, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * This wasn't the Haskalah, it was a much later idea. It was more the product of the Soviet Union under Stalin in the early C20th.  The USSR opposed religions, including Judaism, but supported the Yiddish language and Ashkenazic Jewish culture as working class cutlural phenomena in its own right.  See Birobidzhan for the logical conclusion of this policy.  Stalin dismissed Hebrew as "church Latin and the language of colonials" (as best I recall the quote.)  The latter point was clearly a dig at the Jews of the Yishuv - bearing this in mind, if Stalin could see   modern Israel, it would be interesting to say the least to see what he would make of the role of Ivrit in the modern Israeli proletariat (mostly a mixture of Mizrachim, Arabs and 1990s Russian immigrants.) 62.190.148.115 (talk) 11:05, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Yiddish was (ironically) the language mainly of "traditional" Jews in the European diaspora. Hebrew (modern, spoken Hebrew) came later; Hebrew (ancient, scholarly, sometimes used as a spoken, often as a written language) was earlier but wasn't used in day-to-day interactions. Meerkat77 (talk) 12:51, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Effects section
Hi, I am planning on contributing to this page by adding more content to the “Effects” section of this article with material from a scholarly source by Dan Cohn-Sherbok, particularly expanding on the religious effects. If anyone wants to comment on these changes, please let me know on this Talk Page or on my Talk Page. (Sarahp1959 (talk) 18:07, 5 May 2016 (UTC))

"The Orthodox Jews were actively against these reformers ..."
Not wholly true - it actually produced a schism between Haredim and Modern Orthodox Judaism. The latter is as much as product of the Haskalah as "the Reform" is. 62.190.148.115 (talk) 11:12, 25 August 2016 (UTC)


 * I think your formulation of "it produced a schism between Haredim and Modern Orthodox Judaism" is a good one. Can it be adopted in the article? It would be easy to cite some sources on this. Meerkat77 (talk) 12:53, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

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Statements about an alleged "collapse" of the Haskalah movement
What precisely is S. Feiner's assertion about an alleged "collapse" of the Haskalah movement?

As far as I know, the gradual emancipation of the of the Jewish populations in the various newly formed nation-states throughout Europe in the 19th century and between the two world wars in the 20th century made the Haskalah movement finally obsolete. But some of its basic goals continue operating among Jewish populations up to this day. There was never a "collapse" of it, as you state.

As for the removal of the very useful wikilinks to the 19th century salonist women from the page, I don't think the removal is warranted, mainly because it does not "improve" the page. On the contrary, it just makes the page less rich in encyclopedic content. So, unless you reply specifically here to my question and to my comment about the encyclopedic content of the page, I will restore those wikilinks.

Actually, instead of simply reverting me with a provocative edit summary about "statements" you should have discussed my revert of your removal here first. Thank you, warshy (¥¥) 20:36, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I do not engage in speculation or OR. Samuel Feiner strongly distinguishes between the maskilim and the generation of those I deleted, in The Jewish Enlightenment, pp. 259-263. He definitely uses the word "collapse" to describe the fate of the Berlin Haskalah, at the very same pages. AddMore-III (talk) 22:38, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your reply. 1) What does it mean "strongly distinguishes?" Does it mean there is no connection whatsoever between the "Berlin Haskalah" and their successors in the 19th century? 2) An article about the Haskalah cannot be restricted to just the "Berlin Haskalah. The phenomenon of the Haskalah was wider than just Berlin, where it started. So the collapse of the Berlin Haskalah does not mean the final collapse of the Haskalah movement. Hope you can offer some insights about my questions from the sources you're using. Thank you, warshy (¥¥) 01:42, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree Meerkat77 (talk) 12:56, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I think it might be fair to simply state what you said here, that "some scholars" or just "Samuel Feiner" distinguishes between the maskilim and the others, and NOT delete any. This is the opinion of a scholar, and it seems definitely to be worth mentioning, but it's not a scholarly consensus. Meerkat77 (talk) 12:56, 13 April 2024 (UTC)