Berlin Jewish Community : Enlightenment, Family and Crisis, 1770-1830

This study investigates the relationship between the forces of Jewish modernization and the forces of assimilation and dissolution in the first major Jewish community to undergo the process - Berlin. Presenting a collective biography of the entire Jewish population of Berlin in this period, Lowenstein measures the personal and family connections between the followers of the Enlightenment and reform and those involved in the crisis of illegitimacy, family breakdown and conversion, and finds startling connections between the process of modernization and the ensuing crisis.