only with the prophets of Israel.

"The happiness of the Jewish people, the people of morality, does
not depend upon its political emancipation, but upon its faith
and its morality. The French and German Rabbis of the Middle
Ages, simple-minded and uncultured, but pious and sincere, are
preferable to the speculative minds of Spain, whose arguing and
rhetoric warped their judgment."

Such ideas as these involved Luzzatto in discussions and polemics with
the greater number of his friends, the German Jewish scholars, whose
views were far removed from his. He defied his contemporaries, as he
attacked the masters of the Middle Ages. In one of his letters he goes
to the length of asserting, that while Jost and his colleagues were
engaged in what they believed to be the useful work of defending Judaism
against its enemies, they were in reality doing it more harm than these
same enemies. The latter tended to preserve the Jewish people as a
nation apart, while the rationalistic criticism of the former, directed
against the Jewish religion, burst the bonds that hold the nation
together, and hasten its dissolution.

"When, my dear German scholars", he cries out vehemently, "when
will the Lord open your eyes? How long will you fail to
understand that, carried away by the general current, you are
permitting national feeling to become extinct and the language of
our ancestors to fall into desuetude, and are thus preparing the
way for the triumphant invasion of Atticism.... So long as you do
not teach that the Good is not that which is visible to the eyes,
but that which is felt within the heart, and that the prosperity
of our people is not dependent upon civil emancipation, but upon