A European Enlightenment in the Promised Land? The Jewish Kulturkampf at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the European Kulturkampf in the nineteenth century from the points of view of the Russian Hebrew writer Judah Leib Gordon and the founding father of the Zionist movement Theodor Herzl. Gordon’s literary outlook emphasizes the tension between the traditional Jewish religious leadership and the maskilim as an instance of the sweeping all-European Kulturkampf phenomenon, in which the problem of the rabbis was the last issue that had not yet been solved. He believed that the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel, without the elimination of the rabbis’ authority, carried serious dangers. In his dystopian feuilleton published in 1885 depicting the future Jewish state, he argued that the victory of liberalism was a historical necessity in order to avoid a radical orthodox and nationalistic hegemony. Like Gordon before him, Herzl feared that losing the basic humanistic principles of the Enlightenment the Jews had acquired in Europe would be one of the outcomes of their settling in the Land of Israel. In his 1902 utopian novel Altneuland he declared: “Stand by the principles that have made us great: Liberalism, Tolerance, Love of Mankind. Only then will Zion be truly Zion.” Gordon and Herzl both expressed their concerns in their fictional works, probably wishing that these would serve only as warning signs.

KEYWORDS:

• Judah Leib Gordon
• Haskalah
• Enlightenment
• Kulturkampf
• Moshe Leib Lilienblum
• Zionism
• Nationalism
• Theodor Herzl

Notes

1. The best and comprehensive study of Gordon is Stanislawski, For Whom Do I Toil?; On the varieties of the Haskalah, see Feiner, The Jewish Enlightenment.

2. Gordon, Collected Works: Prose, 219; See Jedin and Dolan, “Italian Catholics”; McLeod, Secularization in Western Europe; Weir, Secularism and Religion; The Hebrew periodicals Hamelitz, 96 (1885); Hamagid, 29 (1885).

3. Hamelitz, 10 (1870), 241.

4. Gordon, Letters, 147–48; See Katzanelson, The Literary War.

5. Gordon, “Shenei yosef ben shimon,” 148–66; See Feiner, Haskalah and History, 295–306.

6. On this episode, see Stanislawski, For Whom Do I Toil, 129–45.

7. Gordon, “Zedikiah beveit hapekudot,” 98–103.

8. Ibid., 348.

9. Gordon, Collected Writings: Prose, 194.

10. Lilienblum, Complete Works, vol. 3, 57–61; Ibid., vol. 4, 13–16.

11. Hamelitz, 11 (1882), 210–15.

12. Gordon, Collected Writings: Prose, 202.

13. Ibid., 197–200, 219.

14. Ibid., 214–17; See Stanislawski, For Whom Do I Toil, 217–18.

15. Gordon, Collected Writings: Prose, 115.

16. Ibid., 116–17.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid., 285–90.

19. See Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn; Sorkin, Moses Mendelssohn; Feiner, Moses Mendelssohn.

20. Gordon, Collected Writings: Prose, 323.

21. Herzl, Altneuland, 129; Hereafter page references are cited in the text. See Feiner “‘Humani nil a me’,” 709–31.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shmuel Feiner

Shmuel Feiner is Professor of Modern Jewish History at Bar Ilan University, and Chair of the Historical Society of Israel.