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Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) is widely recognized as the most innovative German-Jewish thinker of the Enlightenment. He maintained friendships with notable Christian intellectuals of the time, such as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and published a wide variety of works concerning aesthetics, religion, and philosophy. The debate concerning Mendelssohn’s legacy continues today: Do his accomplishments reflect an assimilation to European Christian culture or the preservation of Jewish tradition? David H. Price approaches this question by engaging deeply with Mendellsohn’s oeuvre in the context of the Haskalah, i.e., the Jewish Enlightenment: “Let us retain the freedom of thought and speech with which the Father of all humankind has endowed us as our inalienable heritage and immutable right” (Jerusalem, 1783).

David H. Price is a professor in the departments of Jewish studies, religious studies, art history, and history at Vanderbilt University. He is one of 10 scholars to visit the University of Iowa this year as an Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor.