Benjamin Franklin’s ideas and writings may be said to have had an impact on Jewish thought and practice. This influence occurred posthumously, primarily through his Autobiography and by way of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Lefin’s Sefer Cheshbon ha-Nefesh (Book of Spiritual Accounting, 1808), which introduced Franklin’s method for moral perfection to a Hebrew-reading Jewish audience. This historical development has confused Judaic scholars, and Franklin specialists have been largely oblivious to it. Remedying the record on this matter illustrates how even within the presumably insular world of Eastern European rabbinic Judaism—far from the deism of the trans-Atlantic Enlightenment—pre-Reform, pre-Conservative Jewish religion was affected by broader currents of thought.

可以说本杰明·富兰克林的思想和著作对犹太人的思想和实践产生了影响。这种影响是在死后发生的，主要是通过他的自传和拉比·梅纳赫姆·孟德尔·莱芬的《塞弗·切本本·哈·尼菲什》（《精神会计》（1808年），将富兰克林的道德完美方法介绍给希伯来语阅读的犹太听众。这一历史发展使犹太学者感到困惑，而富兰克林的专家们对此却基本无动于衷。纠正有关这一问题的记录说明，即使在东欧拉比犹太教的一个孤立的世界中-远离跨大西洋启蒙运动的神论-改革前，保守主义前的犹太宗教也受到了广泛思想潮流的影响。