Train Up a Child: On the Maskilic Attempt to Change the Habitus of Jewish Children and Young Adults

ABSTRACT

Members of the Jewish Enlightenment movement and Jewish financial entrepreneurs undertook an active, conscious project to effect significant transformations in the Jewish habitus in German-speaking areas during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. A symbiotic relationship allowed these groups to disseminate a new vision of Jewish society through multiple mediums including, as this article examines in particular, a new Jewish educational system and new educational texts written for children and young adults. With guidelines on daily practices including personal hygiene, dress, language, leisure, and interactions with one’s surroundings, these texts reached not only their intended audience but the parents’ generation as well. What should one do after getting up in the morning? Should one wash, and, if so, when? How should one behave at the table? How should one dress, or employ one’s leisure time? These and others are among the daily practices that organize a person’s life. They are not spontaneous actions; rather, they derive from social norms and cultural codes that characterize a particular social group and distinguish it from others. To put it another way: they comprise the habitus of a specific individual and the social group to which he or she belongs. This article examines for the first time the changes in the Jewish habitus that resulted from significant transformations within Jewish society in German-speaking areas during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and the active role played by a new Jewish educational system therein. Changes of this sort are generally inconspicuous and latent; this article, however, points to an intentional and marked effort toward transforming the Jewish habitus via the active help of the educational system made by two key groups: members of the Jewish Enlightenment movement (Maskilim), and the Jewish financial elite of the time. It examines the realities and motivations that spurred both groups to action, the synergistic relationship that existed between them, and the methods each employed.

Funding

The article is written in the framework of a DFG-funded research project: Innovation durch Tradition? Jüdische Bildungsmedien als Zugang zum Wandel kultureller Ordnungen wahrend der ‘Sattelzeit’ (with Prof. Dr. Simone Lässig, Georg-Eckert Institut für internationale Schulbuchforschung).

Notes

¹ On Norbert Elias’ influence on Pierre Bourdieu, see Algazi (2002); Sela-Sheffy (1997).

² On the nature and the importance of the Haskalah movement, see the seminal works by Yaacov Katz (1973) and Shmuel Feiner (2004); especially Katz’s “The image of the future,” pp. 57–79.

³ The portrait of Dr. Elieser Marcus Bloch was retrieved from (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marcus_Elieser_Bloch.jpg).

⁴ The portrait of Dr. Marcus Herz was retrieved from (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Markus_herz.JPG).

⁵ The portrait of Naphtali Herz Wessely was retrieved from (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Naphtali_Herz_Wessely.jpg).

⁶ Unless otherwise noted, translations of quotations of Hebrew and German citations are mine.

⁷ My thanks to Dr. Kerstin von der Krone for her help.

⁸ My thanks to Dr. Kerstin von der Krone for her help.

⁹ Except for several amusing incidents such as the anecdote recounted by Franz Delitzsch about Issac Satanow, who is described as wearing two sets of dress at once: “A wonderful person of the strangest contradictions. Under his long Polish robe, above which hung his long beard, he wore the most delicate dress of a German given to French manners. As he used to say: the spiritual on top, the material below. And when his eye tired, he would assume a monocle” (Delitzsch, 1836, p. 115).

¹⁰ My thanks to Dr. Dirk Sadowski for this insight.

¹¹ My thanks to Prof. David Sorkin, who drew my attention to this quotation.

¹² On Rousseau’s place in the German Enlightenment, see Mounier (1979, 1980). On Rousseau’s place in the Jewish Haskalah, see Conforti-Tzur (1999).

¹³ My thanks to Dr. Tal Kogman.

¹⁴ Expanded edition, Dessau 1807, greatly expanded edition Prague 1816, Vienna 1816, Vienna 1825, Prague 1827, 1832, 1838, 1842, 1850, 1852.

Additional information

Funding

The article is written in the framework of a DFG-funded research project: Innovation durch Tradition? Jüdische Bildungsmedien als Zugang zum Wandel kultureller Ordnungen wahrend der ‘Sattelzeit’ (with Prof. Dr. Simone Lässig, Georg-Eckert Institut für internationale Schulbuchforschung).

Notes on contributors

Zohar Shavit

Zohar Shavit is the Porter Professor of Semiotics and Culture Research and Chairperson of the Program in Research of Child and Youth Culture at Tel Aviv University’s School for Cultural Studies. E-mail: [email protected]