The Haskalah, Moses Mendelssohn and the Emancipation of French Jewry

Moses Mendelssohn arrived in Berlin at fourteen, a hunchbacked youth from Dessau who knew only Talmud, and became one of Germany's most widely read philosophers. He remained an observant Jew, and in Jerusalem (1783) argued that Judaism compels no conscience and that the state has no business in belief. His major project was the Bi'ur, a translation of the Torah into literary German printed in Hebrew letters, so that a Jew reading Scripture would also learn the language of his country.

A circle of maskilim formed around him. After Joseph II's Edict of Toleration (1782), Naftali Herz Wessely called in Divrei Shalom ve-Emet for children to be taught grammar, geography and trades, not Talmud alone.

The political breakthrough came in France. On 27 September 1791 the National Assembly granted Jews full citizenship—the first in Europe. Count Clermont-Tonnerre framed the bargain: 'To the Jews as a nation, nothing; to the Jews as individuals, everything.' In 1806–07 Napoleon convened an Assembly of Notables and a Grand Sanhedrin to ask whether French Jews considered France their homeland.

The results were double-edged. Universities, professions and cities opened; so did mass assimilation and baptism. Four of Mendelssohn's six children became Christians. From the Haskalah came Reform, modern Jewish scholarship, secular Hebrew literature—and, much later, Zionism.