The Haskalah and Jewish women.

One of the great debates during the Haskalah period of the Enlightenment was the status of women. The Moskelim, as they were called, professed admiration for reason, devotion to the idea of the brotherhood of man, and attempted to restore the Jews to the changing world of reality. This brotherhood did not include women. However, it did arouse their curiosity concerning learning. Wetzlar believed the lack of inclusiveness for women was a deliberate attempt on the part of the Haskalah rabbis to marginalize religious Jewish women. Wetzlar felt that it was wrong that Jewish girls were not allowed to learn that Holy tongue. Wetzlar wrote, “Women have been gifted with the intelligence to pray to God, to praise and thank Him, exactly like men, and they need to know the meaning of their prayers.” Even though most Muslims of the Haskalah movement wanted to keep women “in the kitchen,” they failed. As the Enlightenment swept through both Jewish and non-Jewish cultures of the day, any Jewish woman became eager to find a role to play. For the first time in millennia, Jewish women began to question their role.

As the creation of a Jewish bourgeois grew as a result of the Enlightenment, Jewish women organized the salon society, which freed them from intellectual inferiority. They became a gathering point for enlightened Jewish and non-Jewish men and women, and, while not organized politically, they attracted some of the great statesmen of the era. The role they played “behind the scenes” contributed to the success of the Congress of Vienna. There were, of course, Jewish representatives (all male) at the congress, but they were only allowed to observe, not participate in the discussion. The speaking took place in the organized female salons and lavish meals, which attracted politicians and statesmen who wanted a leisurely break from the daily debates and spent the evening with pleasant, literary, intelligent Jewish ladies. It certainly helped that many of the nobility were also members of the salon society.

As this milestone of emancipation determined the new status of the Jews, it led to a flowering of formerly latent Jewish potential, for both men and women. Marx believed in Jewish emancipation in Germany because it was precisely the type of society to which Jews should aspire. Marx believed that if Jews attained full participation in bourgeois society, it would create the first state in a dialectical process that would be a precursor to universal human emancipation and the establishment of civil society. Marx did not differentiate between Jewish men and Jewish women in this matter.

Despite setbacks, the role of Jewish women would never go back to the pre-enlightenment subservient mode that dominated their lives throughout the ages of pain, pogroms, and paternalism. Almost in the blink of an eye (in a historical sense), women emerged from the darkness into the light of the Enlightenment and, from there, into the bright sunlight of emancipation. The final change came in the form of acculturation to what had formerly been unavailable to them. Acculturation led to assimilation, for example, the marriages of upwardly mobile women to German nobility. It was the salons who facilitated such meetings—Jewish women and men identified with non-Jews in the First Reich, as well as most of Europe. Of course, traditional female roles continued in Eastern Europe for some time, but “civilized Europe” had been changed forever. This situation would face the test after World War I with the rise of anti-Semitism, which enflamed the ever-lurking hatred of the Gentiles against prominent Jews.

Jews never returned to the situation in which they had previously lived. European governments finally granted full citizenship to the Jews throughout Western Europe. Jewish men and women assimilated into the language and customs of their host country. However, this came at a price. Rabbi Wolf Boskowits, both a Talmudic Scholar and a student of the natural sciences, wrote, “If the nations desired us to assimilate with them only externally, then we would have some excuse for shedding the heavy yoke of exile and becoming like them. But this is not the case…their genuine desire is not for us to change our garments and the like, but they desire our souls and our religion, for they wish us to be like them in our inner selves and not only outwardly.

Rabbi Wolf Boskowits, both a Talmudic Scholar and a student of the natural sciences, wrote, “If the nations desired us to assimilate with them only externally, then we would have some excuse for shedding the heavy yoke of exile and becoming like them. But this is not the case…their genuine desire is not for us to change our garments and the like, but they desire our souls and our religion, for they wish us to be like them in our inner selves and not only outwardly.