Nahman Berlin

Naḥman ben Simḥah Berlin (; ) was a Jewish polemical writer from Lissa, Prussia. Although he was originally a supporter of the Haskalah movement, he grew to view it as morally corrupt. His primary literary activity was devoted to the cause of orthodoxy, opposing steadfastly and systematically all attempts at the reform of Judaism.

Biography Nahman was once a member of the Maskilim, living in Berlin, his hometown, and working in the Jewish Free School as an inspector. He believed that the school could serve as a means of creating a balanced European-Jewish identity for the Jewish youth, but would later acknowledge that it became an avenue for assimilation much to his dismay. At first he attempted to salvage the Haskalah movement, arguing that it was only possible through traditional Jewish Education while conceding that it was morally bereft tutors who were corrupting youths who had not yet learned necessary morals which led to heresies and immorality. He, along with other Jews, who saw Enlightenment thinkers increasingly becoming morally degenerate and licentious left the city in the late 1790s to criticize the movement they once supported. In the midst of this diaspora, Nahman moved to Lissa in the Posen district in 1801, completely rejecting the movement he previously advocated for.