Joseph Perl
Encyclopedia
Joseph Perl was an Ashkenazi Jewish educator and writer, a scion of the Haskalah
Haskalah
Haskalah , the Jewish Enlightenment, was a movement among European Jews in the 18th–19th centuries that advocated adopting enlightenment values, pressing for better integration into European society, and increasing education in secular studies, Hebrew language, and Jewish history...

 or Jewish Enlightenment. He wrote in Hebrew, Yiddish, and German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

. Born and raised in the Austrian
Austrian Empire
The Austrian Empire was a modern era successor empire, which was centered on what is today's Austria and which officially lasted from 1804 to 1867. It was followed by the Empire of Austria-Hungary, whose proclamation was a diplomatic move that elevated Hungary's status within the Austrian Empire...

 province of Galicia shortly after its annexation in the first partition of Poland
Partitions of Poland
The Partitions of Poland or Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth took place in the second half of the 18th century and ended the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland for 123 years...

, he was a follower of hasidism in his youth. Later, he turned against hasidism and became a proponent of Jewish emancipation
Jewish Emancipation
Jewish emancipation was the external and internal process of freeing the Jewish people of Europe, including recognition of their rights as equal citizens, and the formal granting of citizenship as individuals; it occurred gradually between the late 18th century and the early 20th century...

 and Haskalah
Haskalah
Haskalah , the Jewish Enlightenment, was a movement among European Jews in the 18th–19th centuries that advocated adopting enlightenment values, pressing for better integration into European society, and increasing education in secular studies, Hebrew language, and Jewish history...

, although he remained an observant Jew. He is best known for his many writings on hasidism, ranging from critical treatises to parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...

.

Youthful publisher

In 1816, only 13 years old, he published a book in German, Ueber das Wesen der Sekte Chassidim Aus ihren eigenen Schriften gezogen (On the Nature of the Sect of the Hasidim, Drawn from Their Own Writings), in which he attempted to demonstrate the absurdity of the beliefs and practices of hasidic rabbi
Rabbi
In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...

s, including Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav
Bratslav
Bratslav |Breslov]] as the name of a Hasidic group, which originated from this town) is a townlet in Ukraine, located in the Nemyriv Raion of Vinnytsia Oblast, by the Southern Bug river. It is a medieval European city having dramatically lost its importance during 19th-20th centuries...

 and Rabbi Shneur Zalman
Shneur Zalman of Liadi
Shneur Zalman of Liadi , also known as the Baal HaTanya, , was an Orthodox Rabbi, and the founder and first Rebbe of Chabad, a branch of Hasidic Judaism, then based in Liadi, Imperial Russia...

, founder of what became the Lubavitcher movement. His work was rejected by the imperial censor
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...

s, who apparently feared that it would create disharmony among Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

's Jewish subjects. At the age of 14 he was engaged by his parents, but he continued living in his father's home.

After studying Kabala and Hasidut, his father, being opposed to these studies, made him a merchant. This affected deeply on his opinions regarding various subjects. Perl's satire of the Hasidic movement, Revealer of Secrets
Revealer of Secrets
Revealer of Secrets, first published in 1819, is an epistolary novel by Joseph Perl, a proponent of Jewish emancipation and Haskalah. It is often considered the first modern novel in Hebrew...

(Megalleh Temirim), is said to be the first modern novel in Hebrew. It was published in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 in 1819 under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

 "Obadiah ben Pethahiah." Structured as an epistolary novel
Epistolary novel
An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used. Recently, electronic "documents" such as recordings and radio, blogs, and e-mails have also come into use...

, it is currently in print only in an English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 translation
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...

, by Dov Taylor, published by Westview Press
Westview Press
Westview Press is an American publishing house. It publishes textbooks and scholarly works for an academic audience.Westview was founded in 1975 in Boulder, Colorado by Fred Praeger. The press was sold in 1991 to SCS Communications. HarperCollins acquired the company in 1995. Since 1998, it has...

. It is an unusual book in that it satirizes the language and style of early hasidic rabbis writing in Hebrew, which was not the vernacular of the Jews of its time. To make his work available and accessible to his contemporaries, Perl translated his own work into Yiddish. A subsequent parody of hasidic writings, Words of the Righteous, written with Isaac Baer Levinsohn
Isaac Baer Levinsohn
Isaac Baer Levinsohn , born Kremenetz, October 13, 1788; died there, February 12, 1860, was a notable Russian-Hebrew scholar, satirist, writer and Haskalah leader. He was called "the Russian Mendelssohn"...

 and published in 1830, is available in Hebrew.

Educator

According to the Introduction to a 1997 Engish translation of Revealer of Secrets written by Dov Taylor and published by Westview Press, Perl denounced hasidism not only in his writing but in memoranda to representatives of the Austrian Empire. On March 22, 1838, Pearl wrote a letter suggesting that the government censor Jewish libraries, prohibit meetings in Jewish ritual baths and close traditional Jewish schools, which he called "a place of refuge for vagabonds,thieves . . . a nest of demoralization and of . . . nefarious, scandalous deeds."

As an educator, he was founder of the Deutsche-Israelitische Hauptschule, a school for Jewish children which taught secular subjects such as history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

, geography
Geography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...

, mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

, and natural science
Natural science
The natural sciences are branches of science that seek to elucidate the rules that govern the natural world by using empirical and scientific methods...

 in German, in addition to Bible and Talmud
Talmud
The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....

.

Death

Joseph Perl, who ridiculed the ecstatic dancing and singing of the Hasidim, died on Simchat Torah (rejoicing in the Torah), a holy day traditionally — and currently — celebrated by song, dance and a processional through the streets carrying Torah scrolls, so the galician hasidim haven't missed the opportunity to dance on Perl's fresh grave immediately after his burial (Jeremy Dauber in Antonio's Devils - Writers of the Jewish Enlightenment and the Birth of Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature (Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 2004) wrote: Many of these memoranda were intended to be secret, for obvious reasons, but Perl's authorship became generally known, and it is said that Hasidim danced on Perl's fresh grave immediately after his burial. (see Rafael Mahler: Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment).

Sources

  • First Hebrew Novel: Joseph Perl's Revealer of Secrets, at National Yiddish Book Center. Review by Hillel Halkin
    Hillel Halkin
    Hillel Halkin is the author of several books, including the New York Times bestselling Letters to an American-Jewish Friend: A Zionist Polemic and Across the Sabbath River: In Search of a Lost Tribe of Israel. He is a prominent translator of Hebrew and Yiddish Literature into English, including...

    .

  • Ken Frieden. "Joseph Perl’s Escape from Biblical Epigonism through Parody of Hasidic Writing," AJS Review 29 (2005): 265-82.
  • Jewish Encyclopedia entry

  • Jonatan Meir. Divrei Saddiqim (דברי צדיקים). Words of the Righteous: An Anti-Hasidic Satire by Joseph Perl and Isaac Baer Levinsohn. Sources and Studies in the Literature of Jewish Mysticism 12, 2004, 180 pages, ISBN 0-9747505-7-3

  • Allan Nadler
    Allan Nadler
    Allan L. Nadler was educated at McGill and Harvard University, where he received his doctorate in 1988. He is Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Jewish Studies Program at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey.Nadler was ordained as an Orthodox Rabbi by Rabbis Aryeh Leib Baron of...

    . "New Book Reveals Darker Chapters In Hasidic History." Jewish Forward. Fri. Aug 25, 2006

  • Nancy Sinkoff, "The Maskil, The Convert, and the Agunah: Joseph Perl as a Historian of Jewish Divorce Law," AJS Review 27 (2003), 281–300.

  • Dov Taylor. Joseph Perl's Revealer of Secrets: The First Hebrew Novel. Westview Press. Boulder, Colorado. 1997. Translation with notes, commentary, and introductory materials. ISBN 0813332125

  • Jonatan Meir. ‘Imagined Hasidism: Satire, Reality and the Concept of the Book in the Anti-Hasidic Writings of Joseph Perl (With an Annotated Critical Edition of Sefer Megale Temirin)’, Dissertation, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2010
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