From the Introduction to The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 6: Confronting Modernity, 1750-1880:
The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization shares in a long and venerable anthological tradition. However, it also participates in its own moment in time: it is a product of the twenty-first century and the flowering of academic Jewish studies in Israel, the United States, and around the world. Its approach to Jewish culture and civilization reflects a new appreciation of Jewish diversity.
That said, no single volume can address the entire sweep of a multi-faceted culture and hope to render it in full, in all its layered complexity and dynamism. This is particularly true of Volume 6: Confronting Modernity, 1750-1880, a volume covering over a century in which every aspect of Jewish life underwent the most profound changes to have occurred since antiquity. Rather than attempting to be exhaustive, this volume intends to trace a trajectory. Each item, as well as the collection in the aggregate, tells the tale of a people who refused to sit on the sidelines while others did the work of culture, be it literary, visual, material, musical, or intellectual. There is virtually no field of human culture in this period in which Jews did not participate; they often pioneered, introducing new techniques, innovative approaches, and fresh new ways of looking at the world.
Most often, Jews were able to do this out of the deep wellsprings of Jewish identity and creativity itself. It is no exaggeration to claim that the very concept of a Jewish culture that was not primarily religious arose and was articulated first in the period covered in this volume. A truly Jewish total culture that was secular at heart while incorporating some traditional elements did not come to fruition until the advent of Jewish nationalisms (Zionism and diaspora nationalism), beyond the scope of this volume. What we have before us is a more inchoate and in some ways, more interesting, picture. The rupture from traditional patterns took place both in the form of an embrace of non-Jewish cultural idioms and forms, on the one hand, and the conscious reshaping of Jewish traditional culture into something modern, on the other. Both of these movements are in full evidence in this volume. They are intertwined and cannot and ought not be easily separated. Often the same artist or writer who made his or her mark in a fully neutral vein also pioneered new modes of representing aspects of Jewish culture. In the larger culture, the productions of Jewish women and men were often distinctive and original because they were among the first Jews to creatively participate in these fields. This allowed them to bring fresh perspectives into the larger culture. Simultaneously, their efforts remade the very concept of Jewish culture. Thus the volume does not include only material that looks or sounds “Jewish,” however that might be defined. To the contrary, it attempts to represent the full range of cultural creation by Jews regardless of whether such expressions contain identifiably Jewish content, as long as the work could be seen as having been nourished in some way by their Jewish background.
If there is one thread that connects the multifarious entries in this volume, it is the sense of great possibility and openness. In some parts of the world civil barriers to equality before the law had begun to fall, Jews of the West had finally been granted citizenship, and others believed they would soon follow suit. These Jews not only ventured into the world around them, they allowed the world to penetrate their thinking, their dreams, their very definitions of self, in ways they had scarcely done before. This period, 1750 – 1880, was largely one of creativity borne aloft by hope, a sense that the gates of the broader world of culture were finally opening to Jews, that their voices and their contributions could be judged on the basis of merit alone. European Jews embraced the opportunities with dazzling results.
In Eastern Europe, oppressive conditions dimmed hopes for integration. There, Hasidism, with its focus on pietism and spirituality arose as a genuinely new movement in the period covered by this volume. It burgeoned into a popular mass movement that offered alternative leadership models, new social organization, and new hierarchies of spiritual ideals that differed from those of an ongoing, vibrant rabbinic culture. Jews living in the Ottoman Empire, in Algeria, in Morocco, in Persia or in Yemen, encountered European culture under a far more complex set of circumstances. Just as Western powers spread their imperial gospel through their culture, their Jewish citizens, newly acculturated themselves, attempted to enlighten their indigenous co-religionists in colonial and semi-colonial contexts. The synthesis of cultural strands they wove is multi-layered and complex. Jewish culture in the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century emerged newly invigorated, drawing on the Middle Eastern and Iberian cultures to which it was heir.,/p>
Jews underwent demographic shifts of staggering proportions as they left the countryside and small villages for expanding cities. The exciting effect of urban bustle, the proximity to stimulating images and ideas, the public sphere offered by cafes, parks, boulevards and taverns in which to exchange views and learn about the lives of others, all these nurtured cultural productivity of every type.
In many parts of the world, as cultural endeavors by Jews were no longer rooted in religion, Jews experimented with different definitions of Jewish identity. The quest to find a positive Jewish identification that was not exclusively religious yielded fascinating and varied new results. Even those who steadfastly championed religious tradition could be seen as making conscious religious and cultural choices within the marketplace of competing identities, options which were themselves creatures of modern times.
For some Jews, this period was marked by the transition into modernity, for others into a new form of colonial rule, while for others yet, a growing confidence that they could put down roots in lands of relative civic equality and freedom. Sephardic women such as Grace Aguilar and Emma Lazarus wrote pioneering works of Jewish literature in English. In addition, women who had recently arrived to the US from Europe often ventured beyond home and hearth to help with family finances and ultimately found independent voices in public forums. This created a unique space for cultural production that differed in context and content from the European models.
Jews debated all sides of religious and political issues of their day. Some welcomed the idea of equality, whereas others feared the loss of their religious-institutional distinctiveness. Some defended and others repudiated the notion of private property and capital. Some defended and others repudiated the institution of slavery.
From wealthy merchants, to creative craftsmen, to the starving and destitute, Jews around the world belonged to every class and expressed something of their lives in their written legacies. Learned philosophers poured out their souls in their personal correspondence while boxers recalled learning their art and women wrote about keeping house on the American frontier. Salon hostesses in Berlin and Vienna, brilliant conversationalists who broke social and class barriers by inviting people of every background into their homes, agonized over their tortured decision to convert out of Judaism. A superb rabbinic scholar erupted in incredulous fury when someone proposed a new match for him shortly after the death of his beloved wife. (Not to worry, dear reader: he recovered and had nine children with the next wife.) Each excerpt provides us with a distant glimpse of the contours of a unique life, a Jewish life, at once greatly removed from our time, yet always human and somehow familiar.
The opportunities opened to Jews of the past may seem to be fragile victories from a contemporary perspective; they appeared to the Jews of the nineteenth century as inexorable progress. They seized opportunities regardless of how hesitantly offered and turned them into achievements of enduring value, deep humanity and surpassing beauty. What opens before you in this volume is a panorama of hope and of passion for the world.
