Sara Levy, a fascinating woman by all accounts, was for many years a rather minor figure in historical writing. Only in recent decades has her image gradually emerged. Scholars who include Sara Levy in their accounts typically present her as part of a remarkable group of educated Jewish women who were influenced by secularizing trends and led an acculturated lifestyle, deeply involved in the intellectual, cultural and social scene of their time. The prevalent assumption is that, with few exceptions, these women's acculturation came at the expense of their identification with Judaism: with their increasing participation in European culture and their deepening integration into German society, they purportedly became more and more estranged from the Jewish world.

In this chapter, I delve more deeply into the case of Sara Levy, examining untapped sources and reassessing her affiliation to this group of women. My goal is to reconsider to what extent she was an intrinsic part of this circle— how similar were her lifestyle and her way of thinking and acting to that of other women in this group. Examining the distinctive features of her life in comparison with the whole group yields, I believe, interesting results. It reveals the unexpectedly strong Jewish identity of this acculturated woman and illuminates the ways in which she maintained a solid bond with the Jewish community while integrating into German society and culture. Levy's case as depicted below provides a corrective not only to the strong emphasis often placed on the acculturation of this generation of modernizing women but also to the heavy attention given to the domestic sphere, especially when discussing manifestations of Jewishness among acculturating women in Germany. A particular aspect of Levy's obstinate allegiance to Judaism that emerges from the sources explored in this chapter is that hers was not merely a privatized Jewishness, confined to practices carried out at home, but involved aspects of a more public character. Born in Berlin in 1761 to the wealthy Itzig family, Sara Levy has been, for historians, exceptional indeed even at first sight as one of the few salonnières who remained within the Jewish community.