Natkovich, Svetlana
Senior Fellow: August-September 2024
Research Project: Eradication of the Doubt and the Formation of the Nationalist Idiom in the Maskilic Thought
Perets Smolenskin (1842-1885) is widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of modern Jewish nationalism. While it's known that the his nationalist vision coincided with the critique of the Berlin Haskalah, this project aims to delve into another aspect of Smolenskin’s ideological work, presenting Jewish modernization and nationalization as efforts to eradicate doubt from the Jewish intellectual tradition. Smolenskin’s most extensive attempt to delve into the ontology of doubt emerged in the preface he wrote for the book “Even Rosha” (1871) by his mentor and friend Abraham Krochmal (1817-1888), who sought to popularize Spinoza’s philosophical ideas. Though endorsing Krochmal’s alignment with Spinoza, Smolenskin made a distinction between the “positive” figure of Spinoza and other Jewish trailblazers, and the “negative” group associated with doubt, including Rabbi Meir, Maimonides, and Moses Mendelssohn.
This project combines two intersecting research directions. The first one explores the relationship between the criticism of doubt and the nationalist vision propagated by Perets Smolenskin. The second direction investigates the encounters between Abraham Krochmal, Smolenskin, and Moshe Leib Lilienblum (1843-1910) – another student of Krochmal’s in Odessa.
Finally, the hypothesis is put forward that the critical secularism proposed by Krochmal played an instrumental role in shaping the early national thought of Smolenskin and Lilienblum. Uncovering the connections between these three figures and their intellectual influences is the main aim of this project.
Svetlana Natkovich is a senior lecturer at the Department of Jewish History of Haifa University.