ABSTRACT
Intellectually, the discipline of history came into its own in the nineteenth century, often supplanting the Enlightenment appeal to pure reason as a guideline for political goals and religious reforms. In 1819 a small but impressive group of Jewish intellectuals formed a Society for Jewish Scholarship and Literature. The religious denominationalism so familiar to American Jews does not antedate the nineteenth century. If one were to include the Hasidic–Mitnaggdic conflict that heated up in the last three decades of the eighteenth century, one might very well conclude that intra-Jewish strife was a persistent feature of Jewish modernity. The religious denominationalism so familiar to American Jews does not antedate the nineteenth century. Hasidism, which emerged on the "left" of traditional religious life, drifted toward traditionalism and drew a line against accommodations with modernism.
