A Debate on Jewish Emancipation and Christian Theology in Old Berlin

When wealthy Jewish industrialist David Friedländer proposed in 1799 that Berlin's Jews undergo a sham conversion to Christianity in return for full German citizenship, he touched off a political and theological debate that would continue to define the relation between Jewish and German identity for more than a century.

In the series of provocative letters collected here, Friedländer, Protestant leader Wilhelm Abraham Teller, and young Christian theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher debate Fri...