Abstract

ABSTRACT
Believing in Oneself: An Analysis of the Views of R. Noson Sternharts of Nemirov on the Enlightenment
Daniel Leibish Hundert, PhD
Concordia University, 2020

This dissertation will map out a broad and complex picture of the theological universe of R. Noson Sternharts of Nemirov (1780-1844) on the Enlightenment and the Haskalah, as expressed in his magnum opus: Likutei Halachot. The analysis presented here will result in a substantial revision of the scholarly consensus regarding Noson’s views, especially of the Enlightenment and the Haskalah: whereas his approach has been previously understood one-dimensionally, as harsh, obsessively and utterly rejectionist, here it will be shown that his rejection of the Enlightenment is nuanced and needs to be understood within the framework of his theology, which does include a place for the new scientific thinking of the era. In a broader context this study provides a careful analysis of the thinking of a European Jewish believer in the first half of the nineteenth-century confronting the challenges of modernity.
As the notion of God ascended to the abstract heights of an Aristotelian “unmoved mover,” or receeded into the immutable laws of nature of a Spinozist pantheism, the individual was left bereft of a sense of inherent self worth that is rooted in a living relationship with God. The personal religious experience, the religious sense of quest, came to be seen as outdated, laughable, and simply false. Hence a major aspect of R. Noson’s polemic was the reinstatement of the human being to a position of being valued by God and capable of engaging in relationship with God. This reinstatement is not an abstraction, it must be believed personally: this is called emunah b’atsmo or faith in oneself.