Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) aimed to show that Judaism and the Enlightenment could be reconciled. How successful was his synthesis? This course will offer a close reading and discussion of his 1783 book, Jerusalem, or On Religious Power and Judaism. In it, Mendelssohn engages with a number of political theorists, including Spinoza, Hobbes, and Locke, to explore the idea of freedom of conscience. He asks a question still relevant today: what it would mean for Judaism to fit into a modern, secular state?