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Spinoza
This Dutch Jew was the first strike towards shattering the authority of the rabbis. -
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Early Modern Period
The Scientific Revolution. the Enlightenment. Novel ideas on morality and fairness and individuality and tolerance sweep through Europe. People start getting heretical ideas that resist quashing. The once unshakable Rabbinic Authority is shaken and stirred, and fractures begin to split and spread. -
The Fracturing of Rabbinic Authority
Marked in time by Spinoza's rebellion against the rabbi's, the decline of Rabbinic authority began halfway through the 15th Century. Stirrings instigated by secular influence, communal distance, and the reactionary measures to the consequences of these stirrings, throughout the 15th and 16th Century, culminated in the division of Judaism into followers of the Hasidic, Haskalic, and Misngdic movements. -
Into the System (EDIT. Also america)
With the general advancements made on the fronts of tolerance and understanding by enlightenment values, the Jews, for the first time in history, are offered rights and citizenships. Napoleon gathers the leaders of Judaism into "Napoleons Sanhedren" to discuss the logistics of French citizenship for Jews and their integration into society, and, in the end, they got it all. Bravo Jews. Bravo. -
Period: to
Modern Jewish Period
Stepping out from the darkness of isolation, the Jews find themselves becoming accepted by the world. An unthinkable prospect until this time. They gain basic rights, they find freedom and America, and they make name for themselves. They find the American dream. They survive an unutterable horror, and they find, finally, peace and prosperity, happiness and freedom. This is the Modern Jewish Period. -
Period: to
Age of Opportunity
With newfound freedom following the emancipation of the Jews, Napoleons San Hedren, the French Emancipation, the American Emancipation, the Jewish people begin finding their way to America; into tenements and sweatshop-type labor. With dreams of suburbia and longings for manifestation of te American dream. -
Great Expectations
As the Jews found themselves more and more able to gain religious and communal freedom and more opportunities as a whole, the move to the world's center of these values began. While Jews fleeing from the Spanish expulsion already had found themselves in America, it was in 1830 that the wealthier German Jews made the move. Over the next 60 years, these German Jews and their eastern european brethren made the move to the U.S. -
The Nationalistic, Individualistic, Masochistic Movement. (Zionism)
Kicked off in 1882 by the firebrand move-to-Israel Proto-Zionist group known as BILU, the push for a Jewish state and independent freedom picked up speed into a substantial existence after examples like the Dreyfus case and the massacre of the Kishnev Pogrom in 1903. Having gained close footing, relatively, with the secular world, rights-wise, and having integrated with the U.S. specifically, a much stronger sense of global community and nationalism was ignited within the hearts of the Jews. -
From Rags to Slightly Nicer Rags.
Starting at the lowest of the low, the anti-"crème de la crème", in the tenements, the Jews suffered crowded and unsanitary living spaces while making very little, and worked themselves to the bone, exposing a previously tightly-held "chutzpah" and sense of individual rights to the world. This was seen in the fights for women's and worker's rights and in the white-picket-fence dreams of suburbia. -
WWII
The second world war. The holocaust. It begins. -
From Barbed Wire to White Picket
Having gone through the horrors of the Holocaust, European Jews find themselves on the other side of the barbed wire fence, in a new, much friendlier camp. A displaced persons camp. The years move on by as homes and lives are set up for set up for these DP-Campers and by 1950, the trickle of these tortured souls into America begins. -
Period: to
The Golden Age
The war is over and tears are shed but the Jews finally find their place in this world. Nestling up with the secular populace, and they thrive. After surviving inhuman conditions, the world finally sees the Jews as humans, true. The conservative begins, rises to the height of popularity, and then falls slightly to orthodoxy. For the first time in history, the sole focus of the continuity of Judaism is not on defending against violent powers, but rather on internal faith and connection within. -
Conserving Conservational Conservative Conservatives
Kicking off in the 1950's, the conservative movement responded to the void between the extremes of Orthodox and Reform, and filled it. A bridge between the Orthodox world and the world of the Reform, the new Jewish affiliation quickly became the most popular. -
Just a Moment
Today is today and now we are in the present. Orthodoxy is on the rise and a new frontier of challenges eagerly awaits our arrival. The future of Judaism is unclear. The future of Judaism depends on the children of today, the Jewish people of tomorrow. The millennial generation.
