ABSTRACT
In the second half of the eighteenth century the German-Jewish Enlightenment, the Haskalah, marked the political, social, and intellectual transition of German Jewry into modernity. The developing interplay between the Jewish religious and spiritual tradition and the new philosophical and secular ideas led to a redefi nition of Judaism and its basic texts by the maskilim, as the Jewish enlighteners were called. This paper explores the way in which Aaron Halle-Wolfssohn (1756-1835), one of the main proponents of the German Haskalah, attempted to reconcile Jewish tradition and modern thought. The main focus is on those of his writings which refl ect many of the contemporary religious controversies by means of satire, comedy and prose, written in German, Judeo-German and Hebrew.
