Haskalah: the Jewish Enlightenment

In the late 18th Century C.E., decades after the Western Enlightenment, an Enlightening movement appeared among the European Jews. This movement was established by the important Jewish thinker, Moses Mendelssohn in Germany and particularly in Berlin. Then it gradually spread to other cities and countries in Central and Eastern Europe, including France, England, Austria, Poland, Italy and Russia and lasted more than one century. The adherents of this movement were called Maskil (pl. Maskilim) that means "an intellectual and open-minded". The central theme of the movement was rationality and criticism of traditional Jewish life and thought. In practice, it was going to remove seclusion of the Jews and to assimilate them in the non-Jewish societies. Therefore, the Maskilim struggled with those symbols of Jewish life which caused their separation and isolation from the rest of the society. The specific characteristics of Haskalah were rationality, critical and Philosophical-mindedness, opposition to Yiddish language, promotion of secular education and secular sciences, promotion of local languages along with Hebrew, encouraging productive occupations, moving towards assimilation of the Jews in non-Jewish societies of Europe and trying to involve them in social and political issues of their country.