ABSTRACT
Radical change in European society from the mid-18th century – the French Enlightenment, the French revolution and Jewish emancipation, the rise of secular education and secular nationalism, especially in France and Germany, and the decline of religion – destroyed the religious unity created by two millennia of rabbinic education. The Haskalah movement – the Hebrew Enlightenment whose main period of influence was from the late 18th century to the late 19th century – brought about a critical revaluation of rabbinic literature and education. Compulsory secular education was generally welcomed by emancipated Western and Central European Jewish communities. Traditional elementary Jewish education at all levels, but especially for children, became a flashpoint of conflict and increasingly subject to attack in Hebrew and Yiddish literature, but also in other literatures, particularly German and English. The traditional teacher became an ugly model of much that was backward and wrong in Jewish life. Traditional Jewish education was gradually replaced by a modern secular system, strongly nationalistic, and based on the revival of Hebrew.
