Shelley’s love was deep, sincere, passionate, indeed everlasting-but it was always changing its object. - Paul Johnson

This culture-contempt on the Greek side, and the love-hate which some educated Jews had for Greek culture, were sources of constant tension.

Moreover, if the Jews, by accepting the enlightenment, were to forfeit the particular claims of Judaism, it was by no means certain that they would get a quiet life in return. The country which came closest to Mendelssohn’s ideal was the United States, where the notions of the enlightenment rested on a solid basis of English parliamentarianism and tolerant religious pluralism. The very year Mendelssohn was writing Jerusalem, Thomas Jefferson, in Notes on Virginia (1782), argued that the existence of a variety of sensible, ethical religions was the best guarantee of material and spiritual progress, and of human freedom.

religious culture, but it is likely that increasing pressure on Indian land by the rapidly expanding Massachusetts colony was the real reason.