Markus Jakob (Nissa) Weiss. Unparteyische Betrachtungen ueber das Grosse Judische Sanhedrin zu Paris ([“mpartial Views about the Great Jewish Sanhedrin of Paris.”]

Markus Nissa Weiss (1751-1817) was a Hungarian religious reformer and pioneer of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah). In the present work the author attacks what he saw as the reprehensible quality of Jewish urban life and linked political equality to religious reform. He proposed to convene a Sanhedrin (Jewish High Court) of six to twelve men who would arrive at a Reformed Judaism. Thereafter, those Jews who accepted this new approach would receive political equality and enjoy all the rights of citizens. Those who chose to continue their old ways - the Orthodox, or the falsely enlightened - would be excluded from the cities to minimize their harm. Weiss believed that in time the traditionalists numbers would recede and a new Reformed Jew would triumph.