This volume is a collection of studies by well-known Haskalah researchers from Israel and the United States that were presented at an international conference held under the auspices of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies in summer 1994. To counteract the German-centred model, the studies are dedicated to the Jewish Enlightenment in different regions. They all deal with Haskalah literature in Hebrew (except for Nancy Sinkoff's contribution on the multilingual Mendel Lefin), which means that they take Haskalah in the literal sense. They contribute mainly to intellectual history, and all of them are based on published material rather than on archival documents. Psychological and social perspectives and gender issues are touched on in only two of the eleven chapters. Many of the chapters examine memoirs and fiction in Hebrew. Some are summaries or fragments of previously published monographs, for example, Sinkoff's research on Lefin, and David Ruderman's book on the Jewish Enlightenment in England (Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key (Princeton, 2000)).

Most of the authors—Sorkin, Ruderman, Sinkoff, Breuer, Friedlander, and Salmon—use an approach that could be called bio-bibliography. They deal with representative actors of the Haskalah, sometimes grouping them in sociological categories (rabbis, scholars, and physicians; protectors and actors), but they rarely focus on the interplay of changing social, psychological, and intellectual structures. Citing the practice of pilpul and the integration of philosophy, biblical exegesis, and the study of Hebrew into the curriculum of Ashkenazi Jewry (with the aim of harmonizing current with traditional Jewish knowledge) as evidence of pre-1770 Haskalah trends, David Sorkin discusses early maskilim (Solomon Hanau, Asher Worms, Isaac Wetzlar, Israel Zamo ść, and Aaron Gumpertz). Edward Breuer characterizes Naphtali Herz Wessely as a ‘myopic individual who sometimes lost sight of the sensibilities of those around him’ (p. 28), seeing him as dislocated, marginalized, and alienated both from the rabbinical culture and from maskilic circles. Summing up, he points out that Wessely was a transitional figure and an early example of the dislocation that became characteristic of modern Jewish culture. David Ruderman's discussion of five maskilim (Mordechai Schnaber Levison, Abraham Jacob Hart, Samuel Falk, Abraham B. Naphtali Tang, and David Levi) provides an overview of the Haskalah in England.