The rise of Enlightenment values, and their fervent development in the works of several major European philosophers, coupled with the prospect of an unprecedented emancipation of European Jewry and the dawn of secularism, led to an acute need for the formulation of a synthesis of Judaism and the philosophies and values of the modern era. Indeed, more specifically, it is clear that modern Jewish Philosophy could not but concern itself with trying to provide an intellectual framework that would harmonize the perceived universal nature of the values of the enlightened age of reason, with several prima facie particularistic aspects of the religious tradition it developed from. We will begin the course with a reading of parts of Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politucs, as Spinoza's ideas form arguably the most acute modern universalistic critique of Judaism. We will then engage in a thorough reading of Mendelssohn's Jerusalem, several chapters from Hermann Cohen's The Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism and several texts by Martin Buber. We will focus on the way in which all these thinkers to overcome the perceived dichotomies between Judaism and Modernity and between universalism and particularism, and reflect on the significance of their effort for contemporary Jewish identities.