Like Reform Judaism, the Conservative movement developed in Europe and the United States in the 19th century, as Jews reacted to the changes brought about by the Enlightenment and Jewish emancipation, a confluence of events that lead to Haskalah, or the Jewish Enlightenment.

During this time, Jews have experienced slavery, anarchic and theocratic self-government, conquest, occupation, and exile ; in the Diasporas, they have been in contact with and have been influenced by ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenic cultures, as well as modern movements such as the Enlightenment ( see Haskalah ) and the rise of nationalism, which would bear fruit in the form of a Jewish state in the Levant.

A parallel Jewish movement, Haskalah or the " Jewish Enlightenment ", began, especially in Central Europe and Western Europe, in response to both the Enlightenment and these new freedoms.

In response to The Age of Enlightenment, Jewish Emancipation, and Haskalah, elements within German Jewry sought to reform Jewish belief and practice in the early 19th century.

In reaction to the emergence of Reform Judaism, a group of traditionalist German Jews emerged who supported some of the values of the Haskalah but who wanted to defend a conservative, traditional interpretation of Jewish law and tradition.

Philosopher of Jewish Enlightenment in Prussia ( Haskalah ), honoured by his friend Lessing in his drama as Nathan the Wise.

Moses Mendelssohn ( 6 September 1729 – 4 January 1786 ) was a German Jewish philosopher to whose ideas the Haskalah ( the ' Jewish enlightenment ' of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ) is indebted.

The early scholars of the Haskalah ( Jewish Enlightenment movement ) rejected the mystical in Judaism, in common with the secular Western thought of their time, and their personal wish to leave behind the Shtetl.

The philosophical father of Haskalah, Moses Mendelssohn, could seek therefore to remove the mystical dimensions of Jewish spirituality.

As both traditions encountered the secularising forces of Haskalah ( Enlightenment ), and political Socialism and Zionism, they reacted with a diversity of views, that today influence their different forms of Jewish thought and life.

The Haskalah opened the door for the development of all the modern Jewish denominations and the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language, but it also paved the way for many who, wishing to be fully accepted into Christian society, converted to Christianity or chose to assimilate to emulate it.

At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, the Jewish inhabitants were influenced by the Jewish Enlightenment, or Haskalah.

Until modern Haskalah ( Jewish Enlightenment ) and Jewish Emancipation, Jewish philosophy was preoccupied with attempts to reconcile coherent new ideas into the tradition of Rabbinic Judaism ; thus organizing emergent ideas that are not necessarily Jewish into a uniquely Jewish scholastic framework and world-view.

Mendelssohn was a German Jewish philosopher to whose ideas the renaissance of European Jews, Haskalah ( the Jewish Enlightenment ) is indebted.

This movement began among non-Hasidic Jews as a response to the social changes brought about by The Enlightenment, and the corresponding Haskalah movement among many European Jews.

; 1729 – 1786: Moses Mendelssohn and the Haskalah ( Enlightenment ) movement.

During the 19th century, ( especially the 1840s and 1850s ), Jewish immigration was primarily of Ashkenazi Jews from Germany, bringing a liberal, educated population that had experience with the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment.

Haskalah (; " enlightenment ," " education " from sekhel " intellect ", " mind "), 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.

Haskalah differed from Deism of the European Enlightenment by seeking modernised philosophical and critical revision within Jewish belief, and lifestyle acceptable for emancipation rights.

During the Age of Enlightenment, the Jewish Haskalah movement pursuing emancipation orientated itself by German protagonists like Moses Mendelssohn as in the Prussian lands under Frederick the Great, so-called Schutzjuden were able to live under the circumstances of a limited religious tolerance.

Historically, the division of Jews in many Western countries into denominations, which in the United States in particular took the form of three large groups known as Orthodox, Conservative and Reform, can be traced to Jewish reaction to the Haskalah ( Jewish Enlightenment ) and its aftermath, and to a certain extent the philosophies of these movements were shaped in reaction to one another.

The emancipation of the Jews in many European communities, and the Haskalah movement started by Moses Mendelssohn, brought the Enlightenment to the Jewish community.

The Jews of Biała Podlaska were typical of the small communities of that time ; all were religious to a greater or lesser degree, although some were influenced by the Haskalah ( Enlightenment ), and Zionist movements.

For him, writings of the Jews of the past 250 years have more philosophical and ethical validity than ancient writings because they are more likely to be infused with the values of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, and the more general Western Enlightenment.

Born in Vilna, he grew up poor and first worked braiding lace in Kovno, where he was first associated with the devout, moralistic Musar movement of Rabbi Israel Salanter, but later drawn to the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, and adopted a more modern Orthodox Judaism that renounced superstition.

Concerned by the new social and religious changes of the Haskalah ( secularising movement ), and emerging political ideologies such as Zionism, that often opposed traditional Judaism, the masters of Mussar saw a need to augment Talmudic study with more personal works.

The Haskalah gave birth to critical, academic approaches to Judaism, beginning with the 19th Century German " Wissenschaft des Judentums " (" Science of Judaism ") movement.

* The Tzemach Tzedek and the Haskalah movement in hebrew

A record of the Maggid's court in Mezeritch was recorded by the Jewish philosopher and advocate of the Haskalah ( secularising movement ), Solomon Maimon, in one of the first encounters of a Westernised Jew with Hasidism.

Moses Mendelssohn ( 1729 – 86 ) inspired the Haskalah movement in 18th century Germany

Leaders of the Haskalah movement were called Maskilim ( משכילים ).

Haskalah did not stay restricted to Germany, however, and the movement quickly spread throughout Europe.

Similar revisionist views were expressed by Rabbi Isaac Ber Levinsohn and other traditional representatives of the Haskalah movement.

A group of maskilim ( Jews belonging to the secular Haskalah movement ) living in Uman, Ukraine invited him to live in their town, and provided housing for him as his illness worsened.

Among these are Jacob Emden, Moses Mendelssohn ( as well as some other religious thinkers of the Haskalah movement ), and Elijah Benamozegh.

He began reading secular books and learning Russian under the influence of the Haskalah movement.

In Vienna he founded a Hebrew journal that became a literary platform for the Haskalah movement and the early Jewish nationalist movement.

Despite the universalist leanings of the Enlightenment ( and its echo within Judaism in the Haskalah movement ), many Yiddish-speaking Jews in Eastern Europe continued to see themselves as forming a distinct national group — " ' am yehudi ", from the Biblical Hebrew — but, adapting this idea to European Enlightenment values, they assimilated the concept as that of an ethnic group whose identity did not depend on religion, which under Enlightenment thinking fell under a separate category.

While Haskalah advocated Hebrew and sought to remove Yiddish, these subsequent developments advocated Yiddish Renaissance among Maskilim.

The play is loosely based on an earlier Romanian language play, Vlăduţu Mamei ( Mama's Boy ), transferred to a setting in a family of Hasidic Jews, a milieu that was a standard butt of humor among the " enlightened " Jews of the Haskalah.

Hasidic Yiddish literature # Hasidic and Haskalah literature | stories recount the travels of Tzadikim Nistarim ( hidden Tzadik im ) and Hasidic Rebbe s among the Shtetl s and countryside of Eastern Europe

Prague became an active center for the Haskalah in the nineteenth century, and the best known among the Haskalah writers there was Jehudah Loeb Jeiteles ( 1773 – 1838 ), author of witty epigrams (" Bene ha-Ne ' urim ") and of works directed against Hasidism and against superstition.