Haskalah and History

Shmuel Feiner'sinnovative book recreates the historical consciousness that fired theHaskalah—the Jewish Enlightenment movement. The proponents of this movementadvocated that Jews should capture the spirit of the future and take theirplace in wider society, but as Jews—without denying their collective identityand without denying their past. Claiming historical legitimacy for theirideology and their vision of the future, they formulated an ethos of modernitythat they projected on to the universal