German-Jewish Enlightenment also Targets Yiddish

Abstract

The ‘Berlin Enlightenment’ that transformed German Jewry cannot wholly be seen as the result of a movement established by one towering figure, the German-Jewish philosopher and reformer Moses Mendelssohn (or Moses of Dessau, 1729–86). But neither can his overwhelming impact be minimized. His life and times, and the concurrent intellectual and cultural ferment, have been researched extensively (see, for example, Altmann 1973; Low 1979; Bach 1984; Sorkin 1987; Elon 2002; Hertz 2009; Feiner 2011).