I just mentioned the social conflict, because the contemporary crisis of Judaism was less a conflict between Orthodox and Reform movement, but a social gap between a ruling minority, consisting of families which had bound together religious authorities, academics and wealthy merchants through marriages, and a ruled majority in the Jewish communities and town ghettos whose poverty had dramatically increased. This is not only the social context of the conflicts between Maskilim and Orthodox Rabbis or Maskilim and Reform Rabbis, but also between Orthodox authorities and mystic movements like Hasidism. Hasidim in Galicia and Bukovina usually understood much better the problems of the poor population than any Maskilim among the West Yiddish Ashkenazim in Alsace or Western regions of Prussia. And Polish nationalists and among them, Polish Jews who lived in the larger Shtetl and visited the universities in Wilna, Warsaw, Cracow and Lemberg, formed a governing elite in the Sejm of Lemberg – the parlament of the crownland Galicia. The rural communities of Galicia was another “uncivilized” world for modern Jews in Vienna, Paris, Budapest, Prague and Berlin. Nachman Krochmal from Galicia as a student of Hegel must have appeared like a mooncalf. Their hopes focussed on a revolution in 1848 and it failed again.

 Moses Mendelssohn certainly belonged to the privileged minority of the Schutzjuden and his circle was the upper class of Prussia, but this does not mean that they were not disappointed about the backwards conditions in Prussia, whatever faith they had. Wealthy members like the brothers Humboldt or Polish aristocrats were very engaged to improve the social conditions. They founded universities, hospitals, they improved the working conditions of coal miners etc. If I compare them with wealthy people today in Germany, I can assure that they were much less ignorant. Otherwise they were also very intolerant people (especially around Fichte in Jena) like the demagogues who cause the hep hep progroms, so Hegel and his pupils had to go the ghetto to protect their inhabitants...

 But like David Friedländer Moses Mendelssohn’s social sphere had an impact on his concept of modern Judaism. As a pedagogue he wanted to teach Jewish children German, Hebrew and Greek, but he refused Yiddish as a corrupt dialect, which finally meant to refuse the prospering culture (literature and drama) of East Yiddish and the Ashkenazim world from Wilna to Bucarest. From the point of view of Alsatian Ashkenazim, Mendelssohn was admired as a radical philosopher of Haskalah, but the reason behind his radical attitude was the extreme pressure of assimilation, that the Jewish population had to suffer in Prussia. For this reason I was a little bit surprised about your categorization of Moses Mendelssohn as an Orthodox Jew. Conversion finally remained the main access into the ruling elite of Prussia which can be easily analyzed by the cynical statements of Heinrich Heine (especially his commentaries of the Pietist circles around the children and grandchildren: “He [Felix] is the grandson of the great philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, but he has nothing better to do than to set the lamb’s piss into music!”).

 I just collect here all these names and places, in order to demonstrate how open the category of Reform Judaism should be. And I still see no reason how to exclude Moses Mendelssohn.