Enlightenment, Assimilation, and Modern Identity: The Jewish Élite in Galicia
This chapter subverts the traditional image of Galician Jewry around the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Far from being ignorant and uneducated, this chapter reveals a significant number of secularly educated Galician Jewish academics and doctors. It shows that, in spite of the resistance to secular education among Galician Jews, there were many within the community who wished to allow their children to profit from the new opportunities open to them. The chapter goes on to explore how the Hebrew, German, and Polish cultural influences all managed to persist throughout the final decades of the nineteenth century, although Yiddish remained identified with the uneducated. Nevertheless, it is revealed that, over time, the balance between these three factors began to shift.