Under the name ‘M. Samuel’ he published a series of pamphlets criticizing Christian efforts directed at the conversion of Jews (he suggested that Christians would be well-advised to resolve their own disputes on matters of faith before attempting to convert non-Christians) and – as ‘Moses Samuel of Liverpool’ – published An Address on the Position of the Jews in Britain, which appeared in London in 1844. He also completed an English translation of the ‘Book of Jasher’ – a work of questionable authenticity that was alleged to be an ancient Hebrew text – but, unable to find a publisher, he sold the translation to an American newspaper-owner and philanthropist who published it under his own name. In his Address on the Position of Jews in Britain, Samuel mentioned that he was preparing ‘an elaborate work of fifteen hundred pages,’ but no trace of this work survives.6 Between 1845 and 1847 he was involved in the publication of Kos Yeshuoth (‘Cup of Salvation’) – a monthly featuring articles in both Hebrew and English (including, as Bernard Wasserstein notes, an article by Samuel which represents the first discussion of railways in Hebrew). Over the next decade Samuel was plagued by poor heath and died on April 17, 1860.

Moses ben Menahem Mendelssohn (Moses of Dessau, 1729–1786), philosopher of the German Enlightenment in the pre-Kantian period and spiritual leader of German Jewry. He is credited as being the first Jew to bring secular culture to those living an Orthodox Jewish life. He valued reason and felt that anyone could arrive logically at religious truths. He argued that what makes Judaism unique is its divine revelation of a code of law. He wrote many philosophical treatises and is considered the father of the Jewish Enlightenment. As a child, Mendelssohn suffered from a disease that left him with a curvature of the spine. The son of a Torah scribe whose family was poor but learned, Mendelssohn received a traditional Jewish education under R. David Fraenkel, the rabbi of Dessau. When R. Fraenkel became rabbi of Berlin, the 14-year-old Mendelssohn followed him and studied in Fraenkel’s yeshiva in Berlin. He soon became a promising scholar of Talmud and rabbinics. Mendelssohn was a relative of R. Samson Raphael Hirsch, the founder of modern Orthodoxy and a stalwart opponent of Reform. He received free meals from neighborhood families and took on odd tutoring jobs. In addition to learning German and Hebrew in Berlin, Mendelssohn also studied some French, Italian, English, Latin and Greek. He took up other secular subjects, in which he excelled, including mathematics, logic and philosophy. In the mid-1750s, he developed friendships with the philosopher Immanuel Kant and also with Gotthold Lessing, a dramatist, literary critic and advocate of enlightened toleration in Germany. With Lessing’s encouragement, Mendelssohn began to publish philosophical essays in German.

In 1750, Mendelssohn began to serve as a teacher in the house of Isaac Bernhard, the owner of a silk factory. That same year, Frederick the Great gave him the status of "Jew under extraordinary protection." In 1763, the Prussian Academy of Sciences awarded him a prize for his treatise on "evidence in the metaphysical sciences." Four years later, he became the bookkeeper of Bernhard’s firm and eventually a partner. Throughout his life, he worked as a merchant while continuing to write. In 1779, Lessing wrote the play Nathan the Wise in which a Jewish hero, modeled after Mendelssohn, appears as a spokesman for brotherhood and love of humanity. At the height of his career, in 1769, Mendelssohn was publicly challenged by a Christian apologist, a Zurich pastor named John Lavater, to defend the superiority of Judaism over Christianity. From then on, he was involved in defending Judaism in print. In 1783, he published Jerusalem, or On Religious Power and Judaism. This study posited that no religious institution should use coercion and emphasized that Judaism does not coerce the mind through dogma. He argued that through reason all people could discover religious philosophical truths, but what made Judaism unique was its divinely revealed code of legal, ritual and moral law. He said that Jews must live in civil society but only in a way that their right to observe religious laws is granted. He recognized the necessity of multiple religions and respected each one.

Mendelssohn wanted to take the Jews out of a ghetto lifestyle and into secular society. He translated the Bible into German, although it was written in Hebrew letters, with a Hebrew commentary called the Biur. He campaigned for emancipation and instructed Jews to form bonds with the gentile governments. He tried to improve the relationship between Jews and Christians as he argued for tolerance and humanity. He became the symbol of the Jewish Enlightenment, the Haskalah.