Place
Berlin ברלין
The city of the Haskalah: both the German translation of the Torah and the argument that split European Jewry began here.
Moses Mendelssohn came to Berlin as a boy and became the figure around whom a whole movement formed. His German translation of the Torah in Hebrew letters was meant as a bridge: read in German while staying with the text. Some saw an open door in it, others a breach.
Then the paths diverged sharply: within a generation or two part of Berlin's Jewish families were baptised, and out of the argument with that came both R. Hirsch's German Orthodoxy and the position of the Chatam Sofer. In the twentieth century Berlin was a centre of Jewish scholarship and publishing — until 1933.
On the timeline
5551 · 1791 CEThe Haskalah, Moses Mendelssohn and the Emancipation of French Jewry5566 · 1806 CEThe Chatam Sofer and the Orthodox Response to Reform5699 · 1939 CEThe Shoah: the Destruction of European Jewry
Sources
Documents of the period
- Jerusalem (Moses Mendelssohn) — the book in which the Haskalah's central figure set out its programme
- The Bi'ur — the Torah translation — the German translation in Hebrew letters itself
Basis: documents and evidence.