Tradition and Transition: Mendel Lefin of Satandw and the Beginnings of the Jewish Enlightenment in Eastern Europe, 1749-1826 Na
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Tradition and Transition: Mendel Lefin of Satandw and the Beginnings of the Jewish Enlightenment in Eastern Europe, 1749-1826 Nancy Beth Sinkoff Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 1996 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 9706902 Copyright 1996 by Sinkoff, Nancy Beth All rights reserved. UMI Microform 9706902 Copyright 1996, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ® 1996 Nancy Beth Sinkoff All Rights Reserved Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT Tradition and Transition: Mendel Lefin of Satandw and the Beginnings of the Jewish Enlightenment in Eastern Europe, 1749-1826 Nancy Beth Sinkoff This dissertation reexamines the beginnings of the Jewish Enlighten ment (Haskalah) in Eastern Europe in the late eighteenth and early nine teenth centuries by focusing on its preeminent figure, Mendel Lefin of Satandw (1749-1826). Unlike the standard historiography on the Jewish Enlightenment, which stressed the influence of external factors upon the emergence of Haskalah and emphasized the rupture in traditional Jewish society created by the maskilim, this dissertation underscores the internal causes for Lefin's turn to the Haskalah and its moderation. Lefin defined the Haskalah in opposition to what he believed was a radicalizing trend among his Berlin peers and to Hasidism, the mystical movement which emerged and flourished in eighteenth-century Podolia and Volhynia. Lefin's conception of the Haskalah was a form of "religious Enlightenment;" he believed there was no contradiction between religion and Enlightenment, no disjunction between the desire to explore Western cultural creativity and fidelity to traditional rabbinic culture. This study illustrates how Lefin's distinctive conception of the Has kalah was due to his Polish identity and thus underlines the importance of regional variations in the Jewish encounter with modernity. Unlike his Western peers, whose identity and conception of the Jewish Enlightenment were formed in the context of the emerging enlightened absolutist state, Lefin's formulation of the Haskalah was shaped by the Polish variety of the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. "royal alliance." Moreover, the struggle for political emancipation, which so fundamentally defined the cultural response of enlightened Jews in the West, was absent in eighteenth-century Poland. Terms like "religious accommodation," "emancipation," "assimilation," and "crisis" used to define Jewish modernization in Western Europe do not fit Lefin's world-view, which was characterized by transition and not crisis. As conceived by Mendel Lefin, the Haskalah was a moderate, even conservative effort to ensure the future of an intellectually vibrant, yet traditional, Jewish way of life. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Table of Contents List of Figures.............................................................................................................i Acknowledgments................................................................................................... ii Dedication ................................................................................................................. vi Introduction..............................................................................................................vii Chapter 1: The Jewish Enlightenment in Eastern Europe: The Polish C ontext ................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: The Maskil and the Prince: Patronage and the Dissemina tion of the Jewish Enlightenment in Poland............................................................ 49 Chapter 3: Mendel Lefin's Battle Against Hasidism: The Struggle for the Adolescent Soul......................................................................................................113 Chapter 4: Mendel Lefin as a Natural Philosopher .................................. 170 Chapter 5: Kozim la-Mehazez (Thorns to the Archer): The Language Polemic in the East European Jewish Enlightenment....................................... 215 Conclusion.............................................................................................................253 Bibliography ........................................................................................................... 260 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. List of Figures Figure I. Mendel Lefin's Grid for Moral Self-Improvement [Mendel Lefin, Sefer Heshbon ha-Nefesh. (Vilna, 1845)] ............................................. 127 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Acknowledgments It gives me great pleasure to acknowledge the individuals who have assisted me in the completion of this dissertation. Michael Stanislawski, my dissertation sponsor, has been a supportive mentor and teacher throughout my years at Columbia. Always steadfast in his encouragement of me and my work, he has been a model of scholarly judgment and professionalism. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi played a critical role in my education. I am deeply indebted to Professor Yerushalmi's uncompromising intellectual standards; it was his insistence that I spend two years away from Columbia studying traditional Jewish texts that gave me the tools necessary to write on a fig ure such as Mendel Lefin. Like all of his students, I take his erudition for granted. However, it is Professor Yerushalmi's passion for the Jewish past that I will recall most in the future. I benefited greatly from my contact with Professors Eric Foner and James Shenton during my sojourn as a U.S. his torian at Columbia. At the Jewish Theological Seminary of America I was fortunate to study with the late Baruch M. Bokser, whose brilliance as a Tal mudist was not lost upon even the most beginning students. Elisheva Car- lebach, a teacher and mentor in an informal capacity, gave unstintingly of her precious time to read and comment on the entire dissertation. In Jerusalem, my participation in the seminar, "Change and Response in Eastern Europe, the 18th-20th Centuries," at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was an unexpected delight. It served not only as a forum for stimulating intellectual discussion, but as a venue for future academic relationships and friendships. Shmuel Feiner, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Moshe Rosman, Michael Silber, and Shmuel Werses shared their time and expertise freely. Motti Zalkin was a constant source of friendship and good cheer. David Sorkin and Shmuel Feiner gave me the opportunity to give a paper at the outstanding seminar, "New Perspectives on the Haskalah," sponsored by the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies at Yarnton Manor in July 1994, and have continued to encourage my work. The staffs at the libraries of Columbia University, the Jewish Theologi cal Seminary of America, the New York Public Library, the Jewish National and University Library at the Hebrew University, the Central Archives of the Jewish People, and the Biblioteka Czartoryskich in Krakdw were all extremely helpful; their professionalism made doing research for this dis sertation a pleasure. In particular, I would like to thank the staff of the Department of Manuscripts and Archives of the Jewish National and University Library (JNULA), whose offices became a second home to me during a year in Jerusalem. Pawel Prokop has given me invaluable help by xeroxing and sending materials to me from the Czartoryski library. Jerry Schwarzbard and Annette Botnick of the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America were always gracious and forthcoming with assistance. I am especially pleased to acknowledge the following funding sources for support through graduate school: the Mellon Fellowships in the Humanities, the Center for Israel and Jewish Studies of Columbia University, the President's Fellowship in the Department of History of Columbia University, the Max Weinreich Center for Advanced Jewish Studies, the Jewish Foundation for the Education of Women, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Leo Baeck iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Institute, the IIE-Fulbright Fellowship, the Interuniversity Program in Jewish Studies, and the American Council of Learned Societies. On a personal note, I could not have completed this work without the support of my colleagues, friends, and family. Nina Warnke and Nils Roh mer were always ready to offer their help with the (at times) tortured loops of Gothic script. Olga Litvak read the entire dissertation with her usual acumen and energy. Jonathan Karp has been a comrade in the study of his tory from the time