Haskalah
Solomon Maimon abandoned his wife and children in search of intellectual perfection, thereby entirely missing the point.
Going out vs. looking in.
Our secular culture tells believers that they are too sensible to remain people of faith.
Does Islam need a Haskalah?
Pinḥas Eliyahu Hurwitz’s bestseller remains popular among Ḥaredim today.
For millions of Israelis (and others) who today write and speak the language with ease, Hebrew’s grand literary legacy is a book still waiting to be opened.
The Strashun Library.
As told by the author of The Dybbuk.
In 1819, Joseph Perl published Hebrew literature’s first novel. A riotous satire of the ḥasidic movement, it remains largely and unjustly forgotten.
Ruth Wisse isn’t asking Jews to stop joking; but more than humor, she knows, is required to fend off their (dead-serious) enemies.
Should the 19th-century Jewish Enlightenment be understood instead as the Romantic movement in Judaism? The evidence is underwhelming.