About the work
The Jews is a one-act comedy that Gotthold Ephraim Lessing wrote in 1749; it was published in 1754, but its stage premiere did not take place until 1766, in Nuremberg. The short play marks one of Lessing's earliest engagements with the theme of religious tolerance.
Plot
A travelling merchant saves a baron and his daughter from an assault by two disguised swindlers and is taken in as a guest. Only at the end is it revealed that the admirable stranger is Jewish, surprising the family, who had unknowingly treated him with prejudice beforehand.
Cultural significance
The play is seen as an early contribution to the tolerance debate of the German Enlightenment and a forerunner of Lessing's later Nathan the Wise. Because audiences long found its plot implausible, it was rarely staged.