Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the maskilim, a group of young Jewish intellectuals who were starving for universal knowledge and for engagement with wider social circles, set out to reform Jewish society by expanding its cultural boundaries and building a bridge to the Enlightened world. Through dialogue with the non-Jewish society, and by introducing their fellow Jews to the texts and cultural goods of that society, mainly through translation, they sought to promote their social agenda and impart to their readers a new habitus, new social models of Bürgerlichkeit and Bildung, and a new awareness of civil equality and civil rights. This book explores this translational project and the ways by which it strove to affect a profound cultural change in the Jewish world.

Zohar Shavit, professor emerita at the School for Cultural Studies at Tel Aviv University, is an internationally renowned authority on the history of Israeli culture, child and youth culture, and Hebrew and Jewish cultures, especially in the context of their relations with various European cultures. In 2025, she won the Israel Prize in the field of Culture and Arts for her groundbreaking research on childrens' culture, cultural transition, and the cultural history in Israeli and Jewish society.

.