ALIENATED INTELLECTUALS IN THE CAMP OF RELIGIOUS REFORM: THE FRANKFURT REFORMFREUNDE, 1842-1845 by MICHAEL A. MEYER A minor historical movement which never assumes mass pr which arises and passes from public view in a brief period of time leaves behind no residue of specific lasting effect would seem to p the most limited scholarly interest. Its intensive study can be just such research points beyond its immediate subject to broade trends and subjective attitudes which it crystallizes or foreshadow a small and transient grouping of similarly minded individuals ma focus external influences and motivational patterns which are more widespread and which exist over a far longer period of time will focus on a tiny, evanescent phenomenon: the first religio grouping to arise within German Judaism. While not disregard cifics of its history, it will seek to indicate how its subject reflec and tendencies of considerably broader measure and of longer 1. The most extensive discussion of the Reformfreunde is in David Philipson Movement in Judaism (New York, 1907; 2d ed., 1931), pp. 107-39. The relation o Jewish and secular politics in Frankfurt is elaborated in the first chapter of a J cal Seminary doctoral dissertation on Frankfurt Orthodoxy by Robert Liberles, enough to let me see an early version of this chapter. For the possible relations masonry see Jacob Katz, Jews and Freemasons in Europe, 1723-1939 (Cam 1970), pp. 92-94. 61