Menahem Mendel Lefin (1749–1826), maskil, author, and translator. Born in Satanów, in Podolia—a heartland of Hasidism—Menaḥem Mendel Lefin (also Levin) was a figure who linked the Haskalah between Western and Eastern Europe. Raised in a traditional Jewish family, Lefin was drawn in the late 1780s to Berlin, where he befriended Moses Mendelssohn and other maskilim. Unlike Salomon Maimon and Yitsḥak Satanov, two Polish Jewish contemporaries who also traveled to the West, Lefin returned to Poland and sought to further the ideals of the Enlightenment in a manner suited to East European Jews. He encouraged Jews to study the sciences and medicine, and worked to bring Jewish thought and works of Enlightenment ethics, such as the writing of the American Benjamin Franklin, to East European Jewish audiences. His work was highly critical of the Hasidic communities, who in turn saw him, as they saw many Jewish Enlightenment figures, as apostates of the Jewish faith. You can read more about Menahem Mendel Lefin (sometimes referred to as Mendel Lefin of Satanow, at this link.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Apr 2014 01:10:43 +0000