The article takes up George L. Mosse’s question how important liberal education in German Jewry since the Enlightenment has been. Mosse’s dispute with Gershom Scholem is discussed as part of the inner Jewish debate over the Jewish educational path into German culture. It is explored why Reform rabbis around 1900 deemed religiously indifferent liberalism a danger to educated Jews and why the self-image of the German university – education through research – has been so attractive to Jews. Finally, the article asks how a liberal and religiously indifferent society also in the present should respond to the values of religious people.