Preface Introduction: The Jews and the Enlightenment PART I. A PASSION FOR KNOWLEDGE 1. Intellectual Inferiority: The Affront --The Restoration of Jewish Honor --"Precursors of the Haskalah" or "Early Maskilim"? 2. The Early Haskalah and the Redemption of Knowledge --The Erotic Seductiveness of Knowledge --The Redeemers of the Neglected Sciences --Confronting Skepticism: The Noble Savage --Shaping Rational Thinking 3. The Secular Author in the Public Arena --On the Verge of Separation from the Rabbinical Elite --Patrons and the First Circles --Three Avenues of Development PART II. JEWISH KULTURKAMPF 4. The Wessely Affair: Threats and Anxieties --Orthodox Counterreaction --The Subversive Intellectual 5. Projects of Enlightenment and Tests of Tolerance --The Jewish Free School --Religious Tolerance Dohm: On the Civil Improvement of the Jews --Mendelssohn's Bi'ur of the Pentateuch --The Posner Affair 6.

The Rabbinical Elite on the Defensive --"To Publicize the Wickedness of the Evil Man, Herz Wessely" --An Ultimatum from the Seven Berliners --Rabbi Levin Flees Berlin 7. On Religious Power and Judaism --Saul Levin's Ktav Yosher --Mendelssohn's Jerusalem --Rabbinical Reactions --Wessely and the Italian Rabbis PART III. THE MASKILIC REPUBLIC 8. The Society of Friends of the Hebrew Language --Establishing a New Public Sphere --A Maskilic Association in Königsburg 9. The Maskilim: A Group Portrait --In Mendelssohn's Salon --Circles and Boundaries in Maskilic Society --Two Groups of Maskilim 10. Euchel Establishes the Haskalah Movement --The Genesis of a Maskil --The Haskalah Project's First Initiatives --Hame'asef, 1785-1786 11. The Society for the Promotion of Goodness and Justice --The Freischule Printing House --The Haskalah Is Institutionalized --Intensive Acculturation in Berlin 12. Growth and Radicalization --The Haskalah Library Expands --The Kulturkampf Escalates --An Attack on Rabbi Raphael Kohen --The Search for the Ideal Jewish Society PART IV.

ON TWO FRONTS 13. Crisis at the Turn of the Century --Voices of Despair and Protest --Decline in the 1790s --Jewish-German Intelligentsia --Friedländer and the Letter to Teller 14. Tensions and Polemics in the Shadow of Crisis --Satanow and the Haskalah Library in the 1790s --Hame'asef, 1794-1797 --The Early Burial Controversy --The Besamim Rosh Affair 15. On Frivolity and Hypocrisy --The Enemies of Enlightenment --Internal Rifts --Rabbi Josephche and Jettchen in the Brothel Afterword: Haskalah and Secularization The Haskalah as a Revolutionary Event Secular Revolution Notes Index.