Tolerating Judaism/Reforming Fanaticism

Abstract

Chapter One explores state-sponsored reforms of Judaism from the 1840s to the eve of World War I which sought to eradicate Jewish superstition, educate and enlighten Jews and rabbis, fight clericalism, and attend to Jewish women as religious agents. Even as the state shifted from political reformism to reactionary conservatism in the 1880s and increasingly allied with Jewish Orthodoxy, it still sought to limit the reach of Jewish law, censor publication of the Shulḥan arukh, regulate the state rabbinate, reform the teaching of Judaism, and liberate Jewish women from patriarchal rabbis through education. Curating a Jewish library in the vernacular further enabled the imperial state to construct and control a reformed Judaism.