The Eastern Haskalah movement (Judea, Russia, Galicia)

In Eastern Europe, the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment movement, took on a specific character, distinct from its initial Berlin center. The maskilim of the Russian Empire and Galicia accorded a central place to Hebrew as a modern language of culture, while also addressing the Yiddish-speaking masses. Confronted with the conditions of oppression under the tsarist regime and the poverty of the communities, they advocated reform of education, productive labor, and a critique of certain aspects of traditional life. Writers such as Mendele Moykher Sforim and Isaac Leib Peretz, heirs of this movement, laid the foundations of modern literature in Hebrew and Yiddish. The Eastern Haskalah thus nourished both a literary renewal and the ideological debates that led to Jewish nationalism and socialism.

Sources & resources

• The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe ↗
• Encyclopaedia Judaica — 2e éd., Keter/Macmillan