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They were emerging from the ferment of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, in which thinkers like Moses Mendelssohn searched for ways that Jews, freshly emancipated in Western Europe, could embrace the new secular gods of rationality and progress and nation.

One of Sasha’s most informative chapters, inspired by the front room of his grandparents’ house, outlines the three main currents of 19th-century Judaism: scholarly, yeshiva-based orthodoxy; mystical Hasidism; and the Jewish Enlightenment movement known as the Haskalah.

Mr. Wolfe traces its modern forms back to the 18th-century philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment he helped inspire.

Elijah Gaon, 70-76;   his curriculum of study, 73, 74;   his appreciation of science and influence on Haskalah, 74, 75;   reputed to be the author of Sefer ha-Berit, 102;   his disciples, 119-121, 126, 150;   his biography, Ascension of Elijah, 134;   referred to, 164, 197, 201, 212, 220.

Smolenskin, Perez, and Haskalah, 13;   his descriptions of the heder and yeshibah, 50, 266;   his life, 261-267;   his conception of Haskalah, 261;   on nationalism, 262-263, 284;   on reformers, 264-265;   attacks Mendelssohn, 265;   on the prophetic consciousness of the Jewish masses, 266-267;   his popularity, 267;   organizes the Kadimah, 285;   opposes the Alliance Israélite Universelle, 285.