In ancient times, the most important thing for people was faith in God. Religious authorities were the intermediaries between the divine and the common people, and they held that tradition was sacred and unchangeable, so they strictly enforced accepted religious customs and principles. The rabbi was the most important authority. He, in addition to being a scholar of sacred texts, also officiated at religious ceremonies and acted as a judge.

Professor Jonathan Israel tells us that Western civilization was once based “on a core of faith, tradition, and authority.” But in the mid-17th century, the Enlightenment emerged, a European movement whose thinkers held that human reason could combat ignorance, superstition, and tyranny. Their writings began to challenge the authority of the most respected institutions, such as the figure of the rabbi. They sought to replace belief in the supernatural with knowledge of nature, dogmas with science, commandments with natural laws, priests with philosophers. Reason and experience were exalted as the way to solve problems. And special consideration was given to human rights, especially the right to be free from oppression and government corruption. Thus, faith was transferred from God to man.

The Enlightenment sought to limit the power of organized religion. Baruch Spinoza wanted to separate politics from religion and Moses Mendelssohn said that religion was an individual and private matter. For them, the value of a religion was its ethical principles and not the logic of its theology.

The Jewish Enlightenment, called Haskala, from the Hebrew root sejel = intelligence, was a movement that occurred among European Jews who wanted to adapt the principles of the Enlightenment to Judaism. His followers, the Maskilim, sought to integrate the Jew into European gentile society and to teach secular subjects in schools, along with the Hebrew language and the history of Judaism.

Although the Haskala originated primarily in Germany, it soon spread throughout Europe. Even in Eastern Europe, where the heart of Rabbinic Judaism was with its two streams, the Mintagdim and the Hasidim, the Maskilim brought the ideas of the Haskala to those regions and, with the help of the Russian government, promoted secular education in the Jewish provinces. Their presence in those places resulted in the creation of a secular Jewish culture, with an emphasis on Jewish history and identity. The Haskala went hand in hand with the Emancipation.

The light of the Enlightenment was a watershed in the history of Judaism. Just as in Genesis, the earth was in disarray and darkness was upon its face. But this time it was man who said: let there be light in the human understanding and there was light.

By Marcos Gojman.

Bibliography: Encyclopaedia Judaica and other sources.