Böcker av Shmuel Feiner

The Berlin philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn, who died 220 years ago, a contemporary of Mozart, Friedrich the Great and Immanuel Kant, was the best-known Jew of the eighteenth century and the first humanistic Jewish thinker.

From the religious and cultural revolution of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) to the question of whether Jews could be citizens of any nation, Feiner presents a broad view of how this century of upheaval altered the map of Europe and the Jews who called it home.

Throughout the eighteenth century, an ever-sharper distinction emerged between Jews of the old order and those who were self-consciously of a new world. In this pioneering work Shmuel Feiner reconstructs this evolution by listening to the voices of those who participated in this process by deciphering its cultural codes and meanings.

Unparalleled in scale and comprehensiveness, The Jewish Enlightenment reconstructs the intellectual and social revolution of the Haskalah as it gradually gathered momentum throughout the eighteenth century.

`Thisimpressive study will doubtless come to be considered one of the definitiveworks in the intellectual history of the Jewish Enlightenment . . . Theoutstanding nature of this work, its conceptual clarity, and its penetratinganalysis make it an exceptional piece of historical research.' Fromthe Arnold Wiznitzer Prize citation