Rabbi Zvi Hirsh Chajes was the Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch of Eastern Europe: simultaneously a talmid chacham and secular scholar. He aimed to fight the haskala with its own weapons, but because of his time and place, he came under suspicion as a maskil himself. The tragic story of this misunderstood genius is the eternal story of the Jewish people, struggling to walk the tightrope between Torah and modernity.