Workshop

26 July 2022

Photo: UHH/Public Domain

We would like to invite you to a workshop on "Gates to Modernity: New Perspectives on Hasidism and Haskalah." It will take place on 26 and 27 July 2022.

Date
26–27 July 2022

Convenors
Uriel Gellman (Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan) and Elke Morlok (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg)

Abstract

Haskalah and Hasidism present two vital ideological trends that shaped Jewish culture in modern Europe. Classical historiography defined these two movements as the initiators of the rift in traditional society, with Haskalah representing modernity and Hasidism promoting traditionalism. The cultural struggle between Haskalah and Hasidism was indeed dramatic and comprehensive, and it was expressed through polemics, sarcastic satire, political competition, and social tensions, which fashioned the character and self-perception of both groups.
Contemporary discourse on this cultural clash portrays more complex narratives and identifies both factions as intrinsic representatives of modernisation processes within European Jewry – also with regard to sceptical approaches, especially in the field of theosophy and its philosophical transformations. In our workshop, we will discuss whether lower forms of scepticism are superseded at some stage by mystical metaphysics or vice versa and which particular strategies are developed regarding doubt.
This workshop will present both trends and their intertwining as reflections of “multiple modernities” with all their socio-cultural and religious implications. The presentations will enquire into contesting paradigms of cultural, mystical, and religious scepticism that occasionally evolved from internal Jewish discourses into transcultural phenomena.

Participants