Shmuel Feiner
Shmuel Feiner, 2025
Born	(1955-01-23) January 23, 1955 (age 71) Tel Aviv, Israel
Occupation	Historian
Known for	Studies on the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment)

Shmuel Feiner (born January 23, 1955, Tel Aviv, Israel) is an Israeli historian and Professor Emeritus of Modern Jewish History at Bar-Ilan University. He is Chairman of the Historical Society of Israel and, since 2023, a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences.^[1][2]

Feiner's research focuses on the processes of modernization and secularization in European Jewry during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with particular emphasis on the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment).^[3] His book The Jewish Eighteenth Century: A European Biography, 1700–1750 was reviewed in the American Historical Review, which described it as "a landmark contribution to the field."^[4]

Feiner’s scholarship examines how Jewish intellectuals of the Enlightenment reinterpreted the Jewish past, constructed a modern historical consciousness, and articulated new forms of Jewish identity in dialogue with European intellectual currents.^[3] He has emphasized tensions between tradition and modernity, the responses of Orthodox and dissenting groups to change, and diverse trajectories of secularization across Jewish communities.^[3]

Feiner has held numerous academic leadership roles: Chair of the Department of Jewish History at Bar-Ilan University (2001–2004), head of the Jerusalem Leo Baeck Institute (2007–2019), and Vice President of the International Leo Baeck Institute.^[2] He is Chairman of the Historical Society of Israel and editor of Zion: A Quarterly for Research in Jewish History. He has held visiting appointments at institutions including Yale University and Goethe University Frankfurt.^[5]

Feiner's work has been recognized with awards including the Zalman Shazar Prize for Jewish History, the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award (2012), and the Meyer-Struckmann Prize.^[1][6]

Many of his works have been translated into several languages, including German, English, and Chinese, helping to broaden their impact on international scholarship.^[6]

• Haskalah and History: The Emergence of a Modern Jewish Awareness of the Past (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1995; 2nd ed. 2011, Hebrew)
• Haskalah and History: The Emergence of a Modern Historical Consciousness (London and Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2001)
• Ma‘apechat ha-Ne‘orut: The Jewish Enlightenment in the 18th Century (Jerusalem: Shazar Center, 2002; 2nd ed. 2011, Hebrew)
• The Jewish Enlightenment (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004)
• Moses Mendelssohn: Biography (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 2005; 2nd ed. 2025, Hebrew)
• Haskala – Jüdische Aufklärung. Geschichte einer kulturellen Revolution (Hildesheim, Zürich, New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2007)
• Moses Mendelssohn: Ein jüdischer Denker in der Zeit der Aufklärung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009)
• The Origins of Jewish Secularization in 18th Century Europe (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 2010; 2nd ed. 2011, Hebrew)
• Moses Mendelssohn: Sage of Modernity (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010; new ed. 2022)
• The Jewish Enlightenment in the 19th Century (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2010; 2nd ed. 2011, Hebrew)
• The Origins of Jewish Secularization in 18th Century Europe (Philadelphia and Oxford: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011)
• (with Natalie Naimark-Goldberg) Cultural Revolution in Berlin: Jews in the Age of Enlightenment (Oxford: Bodleian Library and the Journal of Jewish Studies, 2011)
• Moses Mendelssohn, Pioneer of Jewish Modernity (Chinese edition, Taipei: Showwe Information Co., 2014)
• A New Age: Eighteenth Century European Jewry, 1700–1750 (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 2017)
• The Jewish Eighteenth Century: A European Biography, 1700–1750 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020)
• A New Age: Eighteenth Century European Jewry, 1750–1800 (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 2021)
• The Jewish Eighteenth Century: A European Biography, 1750–1800 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2023)
• An Essay on the History of Jewish Secularization (Jerusalem and Berlin: Blima, 2024; 2nd ed. 2025)

• S.J. Fuenn – From Militant to Conservative Maskil (Jerusalem: Dinur Center, 1993, Hebrew)
• Sefer Hamatsref: An Unknown Maskilic Critic of Jewish Society in Russia in the 19th Century (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1998, Hebrew)
• (with David Sorkin, eds.) New Perspectives on the Haskalah (London and Portland, OR: Littman Library, 2001)
• (with David Assaf, Israel Bartal, Yehudah Friedlander, Avner Holtzman, Chava Turiansky, eds.) Studies in East European Jewish History and Culture in Honor of Professor Shmuel Werses (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2002, Hebrew)
• (with Israel Bartal, eds.) Varieties of Haskalah (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2005, Hebrew)
• (with Tova Cohen, eds.) Voice of a Hebrew Maiden: Women’s Writings of the 19th Century Haskalah Movement (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2006, Hebrew)
• (with David Ruderman, eds.) Early Modern Culture and Haskalah – Reconsidering the Borderlines of Modern Jewish History (Simon-Dubnow-Institut Jahrbuch/Yearbook, VI, 2007, pp. 17–266)
• (with Israel Bartal, eds.) Historiography Reappraised: New Views of Jacob Katz’s Oeuvre (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center and Leo Baeck Institute, 2008, Hebrew)
• (with Avriel Bar Levav and Ron Margolin, eds.) Secularization in Jewish Culture, 2 vols. (Ra’anana: The Open University, 2013, Hebrew)
• (with Zohar Shavit, Natalie Naimark-Goldberg, Tal Kogman, eds.) The Library of the Haskalah: The Creation of a Modern Republic of Letters in Jewish Society in the German-Speaking Sphere (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2014, Hebrew)
• (with Nathan Shifris and Chanan Gafni, eds.) Revealers of Secrets: The Haskalah Movement in Galicia – History, Literature, Philosophy, and Memory (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2022)
• (ed.) Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, oder Über religiöse Macht und Judentum (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2022, Hebrew)
• (ed.) Naphtali Herz Wessely, Words of Peace and Truth (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2025)

• Shmuel Feiner on Academia.edu
• Shmuel Feiner on Google Scholar