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Moses Mendelssohn In 1729, a baby was born in the Jewish ghetto in Dessau, Germany. He was born into a Germany of casual intolerance and Jewish isolation. Jewish children learned only enough to study Talmud and speak Yiddish, and those Jews in mainstream Germany faced limitations and prejudice at every turn. They could not read German or ancient Hebrew or work in mathematics because they simply didn’t learn them. Moses Mendelssohn would grow to be a stammering, hunchbacked enlightener and inspirer of the Jewish world. He would, as an open Jew, link cultures, defend his faith, and gain a respected place in the forum of German philosophers. Before Mendelssohn The Jews had been scattered for nearly two thousand years.