David B. Ruderman. Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key: Anglo-Jewry's Construction of Modern Jewish Thought.(Book Review)

Publication: Studies in Romanticism

Publication Date: 22-SEP-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 Boston University

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Pp. xvi+291, with index. $39.50.

David B. Ruderman's Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key: Anglo-Jewry's Construction of Modern Jewish Thought is probably the last book readers expect to see reviewed in Studies in Romanticism. As Joseph Meyerhoff Professor of Modern Jewish History, and Director of the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Ruderman approaches his material from an internally Jewish perspective; that is, he examines the manifestation of the Jewish Enlightenment--the Haskalah--in Anglo-Jewish culture from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Specifically, Ruderman counters the commonly held assumption that the Anglo-Jewish community never developed intellectually in a manner comparable to that of German Jews under the influence of Moses Mendelssohn, the touchstone for the Haskalah in Jewish Studies. Instead, Ruderman believes that the question of "enlightenment" should be approached not through a comparison of different Jewish communities, but in terms of the relationship established with the dominant culture; and when viewed from the perspective of the most significant intellectual debates of British romanticism, the Anglo-Jewish intelligentsia proved itself to be every bit as "enlightened" as the German Jews were within their intellectual milieu. To support his contention, Ruderman explores the topics of Bible translation, Hebrew language study, Deism, radical politics, contemporary science and, finally, Jewish translation, in each case demonstrating how the Jewish response to the national debate reflected a far greater degree of engagement than Jewish historians have heretofore believed. Clearly, Ruderman's research resonates greatly among Jewish scholars. Beyond that, however, this monograph has serious implications for British Studies as well, for in supporting his thesis, Ruderman simultaneously implies its converse, that as an intellectual movement, the Haskalah also had a noticeable impact on the development of British...

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