Haskalah

Haskalah (Hebrew: השכלה‎; "enlightenment," "education" from sekhel "intellect", "mind"), 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 (משכילים).

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.