Moses Mendelssohn (September 6, 1729 - January 4, 1786) was a German Jewish philosopher to whose ideas the renaissance of European Jews, Haskalah, (the Jewish enlightenment) is indebted. For some he was the third Moses (the other two being the Biblical lawgiver and Moses Maimonides) heralding a new era in the history of the Jewish people. For others, his ideas led towards assimilation, loss of identity for Jews and the dilution of traditional Judaism. Wikipedia
The definitive Wikipedia entry for Moses Mendelssohn. Wikipedia is the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Mendelssohn
While Mendelssohn found himself at home with a metaphysics derived from writings of Leibniz, Wolff, and Baumgarten, he was also one of his age's most accomplished literary critics. plato.stanford.edu/entries/mendelssohn/