The Enlightenment
Europe and the Jews: Part 2
The Age of Modernity

Rejecting other religions came naturally to the Jews, but the Enlightenment was a wholly different matter. The dawn of the modern age spurred the rise of science, democratic revolutions, and industrialization, yet on the negative side, it saw the birth of such anti-religious movements as the Haskala and Marxism. The Orthodox Jewish response to it also varied: from pitched battles fought by Hasidim to the moderate compromises of Rav Hirsch. From past to present, Rabbi Wein surveys the many permutations of the Enlightenment – for good and for ill.

• Napoleon and “the Jewish problem”
• the Haskala in Volozhin?
• the Jewish approach to science and secular studies
• the controversies of Rav Hirsch