6 - The Struggle of the Mitnagedim and Maskilim against Hasidism: Rabbi Jacob Emden and Judah Leib Mieses

Summary

IT is well known that the Haskalah shared a common source with the movements of the mitnagedim and the hasidim. In the words of Dov Sadan, ‘beyond their superficial differences they draw nurture from common concealed roots; to be precise: from a single root, and they finally meet at the same pinnacle’. Both the Haskalah and hasidism emerged from the beit midrash and the yeshiva, and even after they developed in different directions they clearly retained common spiritual elements. The impressive expertise in Torah literature displayed by the overwhelming majority of the maskilim, acquired in their pre-maskil days, served two purposes. First, they wanted to create a firm basis for the delegitimization of hasidism —in this respect their position closely resembled that of the rabbis who opposed hasidism, the mitnagedim. Their second goal was to lay an ideological foundation for the Haskalah as a legitimate movement within Judaism that was superior to other trends; one of the ways in which they did this was by engaging in an exegetical dispute concerning the sources in halakhic literature which were open to differing interpretations.The nature of the first goal has been examined by Shmuel Feiner, who has demonstrated the resemblance between the attitudes of the maskilim and mitnagedim to hasidism. Both camps made strenuous efforts to delegitimize the movement, the mitnagedim because they regarded it as heresy, the maskilim because they saw it as anti-rational. But, beyond this common purpose, we should not lose sight of the maskilim's further objective: to establish themselves as more legitimate than the hasidim.

An example will serve to illustrate this point. The maskilim attacked the language of the hasidim, who were contemptuous of Hebrew grammar, as corrupt and distorted. Joseph Perl gave trenchant expression to this view in his satirical book Megaleh temirin; a later literary-satirical echo of this struggle appears in Shmuel Agnon's Hakhnasat kalah, in the encounter between Rabbi Yudel Hasid and his entourage and the maskil Heschel:

Said Heschel to the youngsters, My lads, take care to learn wisdom and style and grammar, for grammar is the foundation of the world. Wherein is a man more than other living creatures? Surely in understanding, in speech and in writing; but if he is not precise and grammatical he might as well be a beast. As the beast in question lows [go'eh] without grammar, so he bellows [po'eh] without grammar.