When the Enlightenment ideals of secular humanism swept Western Europe, King Frederick the Great of Prussia tried the experiment of granting rights to the Jews. One of the beneficiaries of this experiment was Moses Mendelssohn, a genius and scholar who proposed to solve anti-Semitism with the Reform movement. Rabbi Wein analyzes why this genius' solution was so gravely and tragically mistaken.

• the irony of German liberalism toward the Jews
• King Frederick the Great, the first "benign despot"
• Baron Rothschild, his banking empire and his philanthropy
• two views of Moses Mendelssohn - in his own times vs. through the lens of history