Cultural Translation: The Haskalah Library and the Making of the Modern Jew

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the maskilim, a group of young Jewish intellectuals who were starving for universal knowledge and for engagement with wider social circles, set out to reform Jewish society by expanding its cultural boundaries and building a bridge to the Enlightened world. Through dialogue with the non-Jewish society, and by introducing their fellow Jews to the texts and cultural goods of that society, mainly through translation, they sought to promote their social agenda and impart to their readers a new habitus, new social models of Bürgerlichkeit and Bildung, and a new awareness of civil equality and civil rights. This book explores this translational project and the ways by which it strove to affect a profound cultural change in the Jewish world.