Shaping the Jewish Enlightenment - (Jews of Poland) by Zuzanna Krzemień (Hardcover)

About the Book

Krzemień's book delves into the life of Solomon Dubno (1738-1813), a devout Polish Jew who was pivotal to Moses Mendelssohn's project of translating the Bible into German. It explores Dubno's role, his library's influence, and his poetic endeavors to showcase the beauty of Hebrew. The work offers a nuanced image of the early Haskalah movement.

Book Synopsis

Krzemień's book delves into the life of Solomon Dubno (1738-1813), a devout Polish Jew who was pivotal to Moses Mendelssohn's project of translating the Bible into German. It explores Dubno's role, his library's influence, and his poetic endeavors to showcase the beauty of Hebrew. The work offers a nuanced image of the early Haskalah movement.

Review Quotes

"Krzemień's book makes a significant contribution to Haskalah's scholarship. She manages to construct a nuanced and coherent portrayal of a Jewish intellectual within Mendelssohn's circle, yet underlining his individuality and consequently, the multidimensionality of the Haskalah."

- Anna Zabraniak, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies

"Dubno is a relatively obscure figure, but the book makes a strong case that he is an interesting one. He was an Eastern European Jew of traditional religiosity and was widely recognized as a scholar of Hebrew grammar in his day. This study contributes to an understanding of the non-monolithic nature of the Jewish Enlightenment. It is a a fine work of scholarship that will mainly appeal to other scholars specializing in the Haskalah ( Jewish Enlightenment)."

-- Shmuel Ben-Gad, AJL News & Reviews

"Kremzien... weaves a variety of sources together in order to create a rich tapestry of the connection between the Haskalah and Eastern European Jewish culture."

-- Tradition

"This wonderful and comprehensive study of one of the less known but prominent and moderate agents of Jewish modernity helps us understand the complexity of the modern Jewish cultural project in the eighteenth century. Dubno, committed to tradition, represents the multifarious phenomenon of the Jewish Diaspora in Europe which included individuals with heterogeneous views. The book is a major contribution to the new scholarship on the Jewish Enlightenment, justly emphasizing the East European origins of the Haskalah."

-- Shmuel Feiner, The Samuel Braun Chair for the History of the Jews in Germany, Bar Ilan University

"This is a much, much needed and important book, impressively wide yet precise in source basis, innovative yet crystal-clear in analysis, and bold yet convincing in argumentation. Through the intellectual biography of a maskil, Talmudist, and Hebraist, Solomon Dubno, this impressive study helps us understand much more: the trajectories of the Jewish Enlightenment and the complex interrelation between East and Central European versions of the Haskalah in both their intellectual and social dimensions. A must-read for anybody interested in early modern and modern Jewish culture, both Western and Eastern."

-- Marcin Wodziński, Professor of Jewish history and literature, University of Wroclaw

About the Author

Zuzanna Krzemień (1987-2021) received her doctorate from the Hebrew and Jewish Studies Department at University College London. She held fellowships from the Posen Foundation and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, and served as the curator of East European collections in the British Library in London.

Noëmie Duhaut is a research associate at the Institute of European History in Mainz, Germany. She is currently finishing a book manuscript on Jewish internationalism in the context of post-Ottoman state-building in the Balkans. Her second book project is a biography of the nineteenth-century French Jewish leader Adolphe Crémieux. Her work has appeared in French Historical Studies, European History Yearbook and Archives Juives.

Wojciech Tworek is assistant professor in the Taube Department of Jewish Studies at the University of Wroclaw. He is the author of Eternity Now (SUNY, 2019) which examines the teachings of Shneur Zalman of Liady, the founder of Chabad Hasidism. Currently he is completing a book on the Chabad community in interwar Poland and - together with Marcin Wodziński - an anthology of Hasidic stories.

Monika Biesaga studied Information and Library Science, and Jewish Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. In 2021 she received her PhD from the Jagiellonian University with a historical study on Jewish libraries in interwar Poland (1918-1939). Apart from the history of Jewish libraries, her research interests include also the fate of Jewish book collections after the Second World War.