This book explores three schools of fascinating, talented, and gifted scholars who absorbed into their thought the Jewish and secular cultures of their respective homelands. They include halakhists such as Rabbi Ettlinger and Rabbi Eliezer Berkowitz; Jewish philosophers from Isaac Bernays to Yeshayau Leibowitz; and biblical commentators such as Samuel David Luzzatto and Rabbi Umberto Cassuto. Running like a thread through the analysis of the different scholars, is the attempt to conciliate Jewish orthodoxy with a wish to connect with Western culture and philosophy and to accept the conclusions of scientific research. Among these attempts is Luzzatto’s famous ‘dual truth’ approach.

This book is the sequel to the Ephraim Chamiel’s previous book The Middle Way, which focused on the challenges faced by the members of the Middle Trend in nineteenth-century Jewish thought.