The Jewish Eighteenth Century: A European Biography, 1700-1750

561 Pages·2020·6.601 MB·English

by  Shmuel Feiner, Jeffrey M Green

THE JEWISH
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Olamot Series in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Jason Mokhtarian and Noam Zadoff
THE JEWISH
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
A European Biography, 1700–1750
k
SHMUEL FEINER
TRANSLATED BY JEFFREY M. GREEN
Olamot Series in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Published in association with Indiana University Press
Indiana University Press
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No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Feiner, Shmuel, author. | Green, Yaacov Jeffrey, translator.
Title: The Jewish eighteenth century : a European biography, 1700-1750 /
Shmuel Feiner ; translated by Jeffrey M. Green.
Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2020. | Series: Olamot
series in humanities and social sciences | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020010920 (print) | LCCN 2020010921 (ebook) | ISBN
9780253049452 (hardback) | ISBN 9780253049469 (paperback) | ISBN
9780253049476 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Jews—Europe—History—18th century. |
Jews—Europe—Intellectual life—18th century. |
Jews—Europe—Biography. | Judaism—Europe—History—18th century. |
Judaism—Relations—Christianity—History—18th century. | Christianity
and other religions—Judaism—History—18th century. | Europe—Ethnic
relations—History—18th century.
Classification: LCC DS135.E8 F4513 2020 (print) | LCC DS135.E8 (ebook) |
DDC 305.892/4040922—dc23
LC record available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2020010920
LC ebook record available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2020010921
CONTENTS
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: Happy Times? The First Century in
the Modern Age 1
Part I. 1700
1. Pictures from Married Life: Glikl the Daughter of
Leib between Hamburg and Metz 55
2. “Rise Up and Succeed”: Absolutism and Court Jews in
Baroque Culture 71
3. Jews in the News: The Angry Masses, a Holy Society, and
“Judaism Unmasked” 93
4. Between Enlightened Thought and an Imaginary Universe 134
Part II. 1701–1725
5. “Everyone Wants to Be Happy”: Dangers and Amusements 161
6. “Our Miserable Brethren”: Jews in Time of War 191
7. Melancholy, Career, and Travels: Five Life Stories 212
8. Christians versus Jews: Bitter and Violent Relations 248
9. From London to Jerusalem: Confrontations and Disputes 286
10. The Storm over the “Hypocritical Serpent” 309
11. Competition over the Picture of the World: Witches and
Human Knowledge 332
Part III. 1725–1750
12. To Silence the “Fellow from Padua”: Moses H.ayim Luzzatto
and the Great Awakening 353
vi Contents
13. Criticism and Ambition: From Gulliver to the
Ba’al Shem Tov and Jew Süss 378
14. Contradictory Tendencies: Hostility, Violence, and
“True Happiness” 419
15. “An Indelible Stain”: War and Expulsion 439
16. A Vision of the Future: Ascent of the Soul, a Path for the Just,
and a Teacher of the Perplexed 477
17. Toward Mid-Century: The Awakening of Shame 513
Index 521
PREFACE
The eighteenth century was the Jews’ first modern century. The deep
changes that took place in its course shaped the following generations, and
many of its voices still reverberate today. Continuity, the preservation of sta-
bility, and the challenges of criticism and innovation were bound up with one
another and aroused mixed emotions among the people of the time: perplexity,
tense expectation, worry, and hope. The twisting and fascinating biography of
the eighteenth century from the viewpoint of the Jews of Europe emerges from
paying sensitive attention to life stories, to bright and dark experiences, to voices
of protest, and to aspirations for reform and personal and general happiness—
voices that arise from the many testimonies left by the people of the time.
The British historian Derek Beales wrote: “No period can outmatch the
catalogue of fundamental changes that came to pass during the Eighteenth
Century,” and Reinhart Koselleck attributed particular significance and di-
rection to this impression when he spoke of the century as the threshold over
which the entire modern age emerged. While it is possible to identify deep
historical changes in Europe and beyond even from the beginning of the early
modern period, awareness of the New Age as a concept laden with values and
aspirations, as an epoch in which accelerated and unprecedented processes
were taking place, directed toward an open future, did not arise until the eigh-
teenth century. The people of that century experienced the transition from the
old era to the new era at varying degrees of intensity, and spokesmen for the
Enlightenment even believed in the absolutely innovative character of their age
and strove for improvement and perfection.1
Toward the end of the century, several leaders of the Jewish Enlightenment
movement came to share this mood. They proclaimed the advent of the modern
vii
viii Preface
age not only as a historical period distinctly better than its predecessors but
also, and primarily, as a welcome change in the path of humanity. They hoped
that departure from the ways of thinking and political action that had been
prevalent until their time offered a chance for a dramatic improvement in the
lot of the Jews, as expressed, for example, with great excitement and anticipa-
tion in an issue of the groundbreaking periodical Hameasef, in 1786: “Today,
every day, men of rare spirit and generous heart rise up to shatter the shackles
of bitter exile, for the benefit of the Jews and to do good for them.”2
Of course, this optimistic view was merely partial and expressed a wish
rather than the historical reality. The biography of the Jewish eighteenth cen-
tury is tempestuous and rich in conflict. The tension between the new era
and the old one, with its opportunities and dangers, dreams and apprehen-
sion, determined the course of its life. Those who sought religious innovation
confronted conservative opponents who suspected them of heresy, and those
who designed plans for a fundamental overhaul of education in the spirit of
Enlightenment values confronted the rabbinical elite, protective and defen-
sive of its authority. The outlines of the vision of a future, for an improved and
enlightened world, where reason and humanism would overcome barbarism,
were mingled with the opposite pictures of the world, painting reality in the
gloomy colors of collapse. Struggles to remove the restrictions imposed on the
Jewish minority in the name of humanistic tolerance vied with suspicion re-
garding their inherently flawed character, which perpetuated their alien nature
and the dangers that it posed. At the centers of ferment and tension in Europe,
and particularly among the Jews, the power of modern mankind’s autonomy
was manifest. The identifying marks of the new self, of the individual who rec-
ognized his or her own value, are visible in almost every one of the vehement
disputes that arose in the public realm.
The time capsule of the eighteenth century contained the expectations and
hopes of the people of the time for a significant change in their lives and for
happiness. Many of them believed that happiness in this world was a right and
a possibility, and they invested efforts in the realm of the individual and in
the public sphere to establish an improved and better ordered life. In point-
ing out one of the most significant revolutions caused by secularization in the
modern age, Michael Heyd stated: “Happiness, which traditionally referred to
the world to come, increasingly became a concept relating to this world.”3 But
this expectation also included the discourse, the dispute, and the competition
regarding the nature of a happy life, as well as awareness of subjective distress
and objective suffering, which, rather, colored the period in gloomy hues, in to-
tal contradiction to the optimistic images of the philosophes. For many people,
Preface ix
perhaps even the overwhelming majority, “happy days” lay in the distant future,
while the present was the absolute opposite. At the same time, throughout the
entire century, a continuous effort was made to change reality, values, and the
vision of the future, while that happy life was on the horizon, even if it was
understood in differing and sometimes contrary ways.4 When the philosopher
Immanuel Kant wrote, “[Man] should partake of no other happiness or perfec-
tion than that which he himself, independently of instinct, has created by his
own reason,” he stated that the aspiration for happiness must be the life goal of
the autonomous person, and it would become a historical project of rethinking
and an exalted mission in the period he called “the Age of Criticism.”5
Research in Jewish history usually treats dispersed communities, the growth
of new movements, social issues, relations with the Christian world, schools of
thought, influential figures, and central writings (or publications), and it tends
less toward the full reconstruction or comprehensive sketching out of an entire
period. This work, which includes two volumes (this book being the first), each
covering half a century, presents the period between 1700 and 1800 as a histor-
ical framework for the retelling of the history of the Jews of Europe. According
to French historian Jacques Le Goff, in his last work, periodization, the division
of the past into periods and centuries, is required and necessary to give meaning
to the chapters of history. Le Goff did tend to mark out long periods (about a
thousand years, which he calls the Long Middle Ages, for example, ending only
in the mid-eighteenth century), but he conceded the need to set boundaries in
the flow of time so as to grasp change. The division of the past into slices is far
more than the creation of chronological units, because, as Le Goff argued, it
also includes the idea of transition, of one thing becoming another, making it
possible to examine the field of tension between continuity and change.6
The significant internal disputes that broke out and the stormy debate that
arose during the eighteenth century regarding the status and identity of the
Jews in modern circumstances are what gives unity to this epoch in Jewish hist-
ory. In a chronological account in which the points of interest and the main axes
are events and life stories in the region between England and Poland-Lithuania,
this work constructs a history of the century, traces its principle trends, and
mainly offers broad scope for the observations and self-understanding of the
people of the time.
As in every period, the Jews of the eighteenth century were not isolated
and insulated from their surroundings. The Court Jews acted in the political,
economic, and cultural realm of absolutism and the baroque. The religious
movements of revival and enthusiasm received significance in the context of
Christian religious revival, and the Haskalah appeared as a particular Jewish