Moses Mendelssohn
By Matt Plen
In his classic work The Course of Modern Jewish History, Howard
Sachar argues that Moses Mendelssohn--although "neither a great
philosopher nor a penetrating theologian, nor even a Jewish spokesman of
exceptional courage"--was the herald of Jewish Enlightenment and the most
important figure in early modern Jewish history.
If Mendelssohn's intellectual legacy and political impact
were indeed meager, how has this unprepossessing, humpbacked figure attained
almost mythical status as the hero of Jewish modernization and progress or--depending
on your point of view--as the herald of assimilation and the breakdown of
Jewish tradition?
The Jewish Socrates
Moses
Mendelssohn was born in Dessau (now in eastern Germany) into a traditional
ghetto family--his father was a Torah scribe. Mendelssohn received a thorough
Jewish education, studying with David Frankel, the rabbi of Dessau and an important
intellect in his own right. When Frankel was appointed chief rabbi of Berlin,
Moses, then aged 14, followed him there on foot in order to continue his
education. Once in the Prussian capital, he exploited its intellectual
resources to the full, studying with the city's few "enlightened"
Jews and gaining a thorough
grounding in philosophy, Greek, and German language and literature.
Late 18th
century Berlin was not a friendly place for Jews. Emancipation and equal rights
were decades away and only wealthy, economically useful Jews were permitted to
reside in the Prussian capital. Most Christians saw Jews as alien and primitive.
Even among intellectuals, those few Jews who had managed to acquire a modern
education were regarded as exceptions to the rule.
Mendelssohn
certainly proved to be exceptional. In his twenties he was befriended by the
well known writer Gotthold Ephraim Lessing who, recognizing Mendelssohn's astounding intellectual potential, encouraged him to publish his
first books and articles. Non-Jewish readers, impressed by the erudition and
clarity of his writing, began to refer to Mendelssohn as "the Jewish Socrates."
At first Mendelssohn's
work concentrated on general philosophical and German literary themes. In Phaedo, his most important philosophical
piece, for example, Mendelssohn offers arguments for the existence of God and
the immortality of the soul, but in Western philosophical terms rather than
Jewish ones. At the same time, Mendelssohn published a number of Hebrew
writings, primarily attempts to bridge the gap between Jewish thought and
contemporary philosophical ideas.
A Changing Identity
Focusing on
building his literary career and intent on gaining acceptance in Christian
intellectual circles, Mendelssohn tried to give his Jewish identity a low
public profile. Yet the growing incomprehension of many Christian intellectuals
of how a cultured, sensitive person like Mendelssohn could remain loyal to an
obsolete religion eventually forced his hand.
In 1769,
Johann Caspar Lavater, a Lutheran minister who had met and been impressed by Mendelssohn,
challenged him either to refute the truth of Christianity or, if this was
impossible, to act on his conscience and be baptized. Mendelssohn responded
that Judaism's inherent religious tolerance prevented him from criticising
other people's spiritual convictions and, that as a member of an oppressed
minority, it would be unwise of him to engage in religious disputations. Even
though he avoided answering Lavater's theological charges, the incident
profoundly upset Mendelssohn and perhaps pushed him in the direction of
increased Jewish involvement.
From the
1770s, Mendelssohn began to exploit his celebrity status to intervene on behalf
of Jewish communities facing restrictions, discrimination and expulsion orders.
Following the French revolution he became involved in the debate over Jewish
rights, urging his colleague Christian von Dohm to write what became the
manifesto for Jewish emancipation, On the Amelioration of the Civil Status
of the Jews.
Perhaps
Mendelssohn's most significant contribution to Jewish life was his pioneering
translation of the Torah into German. The work was intended, according to
Mendelssohn, to provide a "first step towards culture" for the Jews; in
other words, to wean them off Yiddish and teach them German while enabling them
to read the Bible in the context of the Jewish, rather than the Christian,
interpretive tradition.
However,
what guaranteed Mendelssohn's place in the canon of modern Jewish thought was
his book Jerusalem, or On Religious Power and Judaism,
published in 1783. In this polemical
work Mendelssohn strives to demonstrate that Jewish faith is compatible with
good citizenship, and that traditional Judaism is a rational religion,
consonant with the values of the Enlightenment.
In particular, Mendelssohn is keen to show that Judaism has
no element of coercive authority in order to dispense with the accusation that
Jews in modern society are inevitably torn between compliance with the demands
of their faith and obedience to the civil authorities. But in making this
claim, Mendelssohn runs into a problem: how to argue against religious compulsion
without undermining the necessarily obligatory basis of Jewish law.
Mendelssohn's Philosophy
Mendelssohn
starts out by distinguishing between revealed religion and revealed legislation.
Judaism, as opposed to a revealed religion such as Christianity, comprises only
revealed legislation--laws which govern behaviour--and as such is free of
dogmas or mandatory beliefs. Mendelssohn believes that God has provided the
means for us to apprehend philosophical and scientific truths via our innate
powers of reason and observation.
All human
beings, not only Jews, can grasp these truths, without recourse to a holy text
(the exception to this rule is historical truths, which can only be
communicated to us by a reliable witness--hence the Torah's focus on historical
narrative). The need for revealed dogma suggests that innate human reason might
be unable to grasp these truths and casts doubt on the perfection of creation,
and thereby on God's omnipotence. For this reason, Judaism mandates only actions,
not faith.
According
to Mendelssohn even the laws of Judaism have a non-coercive character. As a
proto-liberal thinker, Mendelssohn believes that religions have no right to
compel human beings to act in certain ways. The State's right of coercion is not
based on the innate authority of the government, but rather derives from the social
contract. The State can make demands on its citizens is in order to preserve
their rights. For example, my right to life--which derives from my need of life--imposes
a concomitant duty on my fellow citizens not to kill me, and the State's role
is to guarantee this right, using coercion if necessary.
But an
omnipotent God by definition has no needs, and therefore has no rights. Duties
towards him cannot be understood in terms of a contract; rather, they derive
from love of God. Religion therefore lacks the contractual basis for the
legitimate exercise of coercion. The question of religious observance becomes a
matter for the individual believer. Moreover, if the goal of religion is to
boost morality by influencing people's beliefs and values, it's clear that this
can only be achieved through persuasion and argument, not by force.
To
Mendelssohn, Judaism fits this mold of non-coercive religion. As revealed
legislation, it does not attempt to mandate beliefs. The Torah's once coercive
legal framework was based on the social contract in the framework of the biblical
Jewish State; its power passed away with the destruction of the Temple. In our
time, Jews are mandated to obey the law of the land. (For this reason,
Mendelssohn argues that the State should strip the Jewish community of all
remaining vestiges of coercive authority, for example the right to place
members under herem, or excommunication.)
Yet despite
having lost its coercive authority, Judaism has not lost its meaning. Even though
revelation does not directly impart philosophical or scientific truths,
Mendelssohn believes that the laws of the Torah indirectly point to these eternal
verities. While there is no one-to-one correspondence between particular mitzvot
and specific insights into truth, the framework of halakhah is designed to push us into relationships with teachers
and rabbis and to stimulate us to contemplation, learning and instruction.
If Judaism
is still meaningful, it also has binding authority (in terms of individual
conscience, of course). The Torah was given to the Jewish people at Sinai (for
proof of this Mendelssohn relies on the medieval argument that the testimony of
600,000 people who witnessed the revelation can’t be wrong--ignoring the fact
that the only evidence for the existence of these witnesses is the very
narrative which their testimony is supposed to corroborate). As such, the Torah
is to remain in force until God publicly abrogates it. Therefore Christians should
not only desist from proselytizing, they should demand that Jews follow their
conscience and remain true to their tradition.
Rationalism &
Tradition
Mendelssohn's
argument pushes in two directions simultaneously. On the one hand, he argues
for the liberalisation of Judaism, grounding it in universal rationalism and
calling for the abolition of the religion's coercive authority. On the other,
he calls on Jews of good conscience to remain observant and to be faithful to
the tradition. Perhaps for this reason, Jerusalem attracted very little
support in its own time. Maskilim ("enlightened," modernizing
Jews) objected to its affirmation of halakhah, whereas the orthodox could not
accept the dismissal of religious coercion.
Mendelssohn
found himself caught in the dilemma subsequently experienced by every thinker
who has attempted to synthesize Judaism and liberalism. While rationalist
apologetics are essential if Judaism is to be made relevant, the rationalist argument
ultimately implies that the tradition should conform to a new source of
authority--reason. This paves the way for a process of selection, in which
those aspects of Judaism which don’t make sense in modern terms are simply filtered
out. The Torah's unity and authority are thereby irrevocably damaged. Perhaps
this explains why Mendelssohn ultimately held back from the logical conclusions
of his rationalist critique: the authority of Judaism can be upheld not in
terms of reason, but on the basis of faith.
Matt
Plen grew up in London before making aliyah to Jerusalem in 1998. He teaches
history at the Masorti High School and modern Jewish thought at the
Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem. Matt holds an MA in Jewish Studies from
the Jewish Theological Seminary and is currently pursuing doctoral studies at
the Hebrew University, where his thesis topic is Radical Education and Israeli
Ideologies of Social Justice.
