16 AUGUST 1968, Page 18

Shorter notice

The Jews and the Age of Enlightenment in France Arthur Herzberg (Columbia University Press 112s 6d). Herzberg's great weight of learning doesn't hamper his vigorous, highly readable prose. He studies the Jewish com- munities of France in the late eighteenth cen- tury, notably the one at Metz, and the attitude taken towards them by the encyclopedistes and the founding fathers of the movement, known, perhaps flatteringly, as 'the Enlighten- ment.' Herzberg mounts a powerful attack ,on Voltaire. What a pity that Voltaire, the .best man at answering back in the last ,2,50 years, should no longer be around to frame..a reply.