האשה היהודייה המודרנית: מקרה-מבחן ביחסי ההשכלה והמודרנה

This article examines the attitudes of Jewish Maskilim to the initial appearance of modern Jewish women in two places and points in time. One case study relates to Germany at the turn of the 18th–19th centuries, while the other examines the situation in Russia in the 60s and 70s of the nineteenth century. In both cases, the role played by the Maskilim in the development of the modern Jewish woman was limited. Maskilim rarely functioned as the initiators of the change, but rather as those who would attempt to preempt a social, historical and cultural process that had already commenced, with the aim of introducing a certain order and direction into the process, primarily through proper education, and thereby effecting a moderation of what they considered to be the radical tenor of the process. It appears that the modern woman was perceived more as a threat to the Maskilim, than as the embodiment of any future and ideal dream. The "woman's issue" that was raised in Russia served as a topic of debate between moderate and radical Maskilim. The stage for this debate was set by the process of acculturation that modern women were experiencing in the big cities, and accompanied by the emergence for the first time of a matriculated female intelligentsia. The moderates claimed that these women, as part of "the new generation", were undermining the basis of the Jewish family, compromising sexual morality and endangering society at large as well as the Jewish national identity. They particularly came out against what they considered to be a "lower", superficial acculturation, referring to it as a "false Haskalah". Coinciding with this process the Maskilim would encounter for the first time female authors who wrote in Hebrew and whose appearance surprised the Maskilim, inasmuch as they rarely encouraged women to join their ranks. For the first time we hear the voices of young women fighting for women's emancipation. What emerges from articles and literature is the ideal of a modern woman resembling that of the 18th century European Enlightenment and the ethos of the German bourgeoisie. Women were assigned the role of mothers, wives and ideal homemakers, with public life placed beyond the scope of proper behavior even for the most outstanding woman. In sum, the Haskalah was perceived as a platform reserved solely for men. The study of the Haskalah's attitude towards modern women reveals the overall ambiguity in its position towards modernity. Accompanying its call for change and refinement within the Jewish community, the Haskalah also sounded warnings against the dangers of modernity and stressed the need for a moderate and controlled process of modernization.