- Lived:
- 1729–1786 · Dessau and Berlin, Prussia
- Tradition:
- German Enlightenment; founder of the Jewish Enlightenment (the Haskalah)
- The Big Idea:
- The state may compel what you do; no one — no church, no synagogue, no king — may compel what you believe. And a person can be fully enlightened and fully Jewish at the same time.
- In their words:
- "Adapt yourselves to the morals and the constitution of the land in which you live; but hold fast to the religion of your fathers too. Bear both burdens as well as you can."
- If you remember one thing:
- In 1763 a self-taught Jewish bookkeeper beat Immanuel Kant in the Berlin Academy's essay contest — and then spent the rest of his life defending, against friend and foe alike, his right to remain a Jew inside the Enlightenment he had helped to build.