What Is the Jewish Enlightenment?

In the final decades of the 18th century, Berlin became the nerve-center of a movement of Jewish intellectuals across the European continent who wanted to bring the recent achievements of Christian science and philosophy to their fellow Jews, to encourage them to become literate in Gentile languages, and also to revive Judaism with a return to the Hebrew Bible. This movement became known as the Haskalah, a translation of the German Aufklärung, or Enlightenment. J.J. Kimche discusses the Haskalah’s ideas, its figurehead Moses Mendelssohn, and its many paradoxes with Michah Gottlieb. (Audio, 69 minutes.)