Prejudices, adventures and silences. Polish intellectuals and Berlin’s Haskalah

Abstract

The Berlin Haskalah is characterised by sharp contrasts, not only between the souls of Judaism – on the one hand the more traditionalist one that Chassidism radicalised and on the other hand the new rationalist demand indebted to the European Enlightenment – but also between two countries Germany, represented above all by a king enlightened in religious issues like Frederick II, and Poland, the place of origin of many of its representatives, which is branded as barbaric, uncivilised, ignorant and backward. The gaps in the life stories of some figures among the Polish emigrants and the contradictions in contemporary reconstructions suggest a revision of the well-established historical-critical that highlights a radical contrast between these two worlds. The aim is to outline the presence of a rationalist tradition among the Polish Jews that contributed decisively to the impressive Jewish renewal in the 18th-century Berlin.