“A Milestone in Haskalah Studies”: Center Hosts International German-Jewish Studies Workshop
Prof. Shmuel Feiner in Boone
Since 2020, the Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies has been host to the annual workshops of the Southeast German Studies Consortium, an organization founded in 2008 to provide much-needed networking opportunities for researchers in the region and help to train the next generation of scholars. The Org Committee headed by Prof. T. Pegelow Kaplan broadened the focus to include the pivotal field of German-Jewish Studies and incorporated global connections and partnerships. In 2022, the last event of the series held at Appalachian State, the Center partnered with the Samuel Braun Chair for the History of the Jews in Germany at Bar-Ilan University, one of Israel’s leading research universities. The incumbent Prof. Shmuel Feiner, one of the most widely recognized experts on the Jewish Enlightenment and one of Israel’s most distinguished historians, traveled to Boone to deliver the keynote. Several Israeli PhD students also attended, turning this workshop into the genuine international exchange. Fifty scholars from senior professors to advanced undergraduate students -- including two App State students -- from NC to Hawaii, Israel and Germany participated in two days of rigorous discussions based on pre-circulated papers. The meeting enjoyed broad sponsorships that extended to the German Academic Exchange Service, the American Friends of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill, the Council for European Studies in New York City and many more institutions.
In his presentation, Prof. Feiner discussed the dramatic revision of our thinking about the role played by the Haskalah in the major process of modernization. Feiner argued that the Haskalah movement cannot be seen as one of the modern Jewish denominations or coming out against religion. Still, even without attacking religion itself, the Haskalah conducted a critical project that subverted rabbinical authority and offered alternatives. The important inventions of the Haskalah became the building blocks of modern Jewish culture. Other scholars discussed several other critical facets from the lack of attention to Jewish Enlightenment movements in Eastern Europe – criticized by Malachi Hacohen (Duke) – and their interaction with maskilim in Central and Western Europe to calls – by Rhiannon Hein (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)— to “queer” the Jewish and German Enlightenments.
Like the 2021meeting, the 2022 workshop was well received. The chair of the History Department at Georgia State called it “a tremendous success,” thanking “the crew at App St” for “mak[ing] this come together so smoothly.” A department head of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum lauded the “wonderful organizing” and commented on how much she “enjoyed all the stimulating conversations!” Prof. Feiner even went as far as calling the workshop “a milestone in Haskalah studies.” The series will continue at the University of Alabama in 2023.
In his presentation, Prof. Feiner discussed the dramatic revision of our thinking about the role played by the Haskalah in the major process of modernization. Feiner argued that the Haskalah movement cannot be seen as one of the modern Jewish denominations or coming out against religion. Still, even without attacking religion itself, the Haskalah conducted a critical project that subverted rabbinical authority and offered alternatives. The important inventions of the Haskalah became the building blocks of modern Jewish culture. Other scholars discussed several other critical facets from the lack of attention to Jewish Enlightenment movements in Eastern Europe – criticized by Malachi Hacohen (Duke) – and their interaction with maskilim in Central and Western Europe to calls – by Rhiannon Hein (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)— to “queer” the Jewish and German Enlightenments.
Like the 2021meeting, the 2022 workshop was well received. The chair of the History Department at Georgia State called it “a tremendous success,” thanking “the crew at App St” for “mak[ing] this come together so smoothly.” A department head of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum lauded the “wonderful organizing” and commented on how much she “enjoyed all the stimulating conversations!” Prof. Feiner even went as far as calling the workshop “a milestone in Haskalah studies.” The series will continue at the University of Alabama in 2023.