Moses Mendelssohn, the greatest Jewish philosopher in the eighteenth century, was born in Dessau, the son of a poor Jewish copyist of sacred scrolls. His first studies were devoted to the Bible, the Talmud, and Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed. He followed his teacher Rabbi David Fränkel to Berlin in 1745, where he learned to read German and Latin while living in great poverty. In 1750 he became a tutor in the household of the Jewish silk manufacturer Isaak Bernhard; he was later a bookkeeper and ultimately a partner in Bernhard's firm. In Berlin Mendelssohn became a close friend of G. E. Lessing, C. F. Nicolai, and Thomas Abbt. After 1755 his reputation as a philosopher and critic grew rapidly throughout Germany. By his contemporaries he was regarded as eminently kind and virtuous, and because of his wisdom and ugliness he was called "The Jewish Socrates...