Jerusalem (Mendelssohn)
Encyclopedia
Jerusalem or On Religious Power and Judaism (original: „Jerusalem oder über religiöse Macht und Judentum“) is the title of a book written by Moses Mendelssohn
, which was first published in 1783 – the same year, when the Prussian officer Christian Wilhelm von Dohm
published the second part of his Mémoire Concerning the amelioration of the civil status of the Jews. Moses Mendelssohn was one of the key figures of Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah
) and his philosophical treatise, dealing with social contract and political theory (especially concerning the question of the separation between religion and state
), can be regarded as his most important contribution to Haskalah
. The book which was written in Prussia on the eve of the French Revolution
, consisted of two parts and each one was paged separately. The first part discusses "religious power" and the freedom of conscience in the context of the political theory (Baruch Spinoza
, John Locke
, Thomas Hobbes
), and the second part discusses Mendelssohn's personal conception of Judaism
concerning the new secular role of any religion within an enlightened state. In his publication Moses Mendelssohn combined a defense of the Jewish population against public accusations with a contemporary critic against the present conditions of the Prussian Monarchy.
's Palingénésie philosophique, with a public dedication to Mendelssohn. In this dedication he charged Mendelssohn with the decision to follow Bonnet's reasons by converting to Christianity or to refute Bonnet's arguments. This intrigue was transferred to the times of the medieval crusades in the allegorical drama Nathan der Weise
of Mendelssohn's friend Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
: Lessing replaced the young priest Lavater with the historical figure Saladin
who appeared as the tolerant hero of the crusades in the perspective of contemporary enlightened historiography. The motive of Nathan who replied with the ring parable, was taken from Boccaccio's «Decamerone» and Lessing intended to create his drama as a monument of tolerance and enlightenment dedicated to Moses Mendelssohn. Lessing was an open-minded and modern type of freemason and he himself had a public theological dispute (Fragmentenstreit) about the historical truth of the New Testament
with the orthodox Lutheran Hauptpastor Johann Melchior Goeze
in Hamburg during the 70s. Finally he was banned 1778 by the Herzog of Brunswick. After the declaration of the so called „Toleranzpatent“ in the Habsburg Monarchy
1782 under Joseph II and the realization of the «lettres patentes» in the French Monarchy under Louis XVI, religion and especially the Jewish emancipation
became a favorite subject of private debates in Alsace-Lorraine and these debates were often followed by publications of Christian clerics and Abbés. Mendelssohn's Jerusalem or on Religious Power and Judaism may be regarded as his contribution to the debate.
During the 1770s Mendelssohn was frequently asked to act as a mediator by Jews in Switzerland and Alsace – and once Lavater supported Mendelssohn's intervention. About 1780 there was another antisemitic intrigue in Alsace, when François Hell accused the Jewish population to exhaust the peasants. The contemporary Alsatian Jews had no permission to buy land, but they often existed as innkeepers and moneylenders in rural areas. Moses Mendelssohn was asked by Herz Cerfberr, the communal leader of the Alsatian Jews, to react with a Mémoire about the legal discrimination of the Jewish population in the Prussian administration. Moses Mendelssohn arranged a Mémoire by the Prussian officer and freemason Christian Wilhelm von Dohm
in which both authors tried to relate the confirmation of the unenlightened condition with a demand for a general improvement of the civil condition.
In this respect Moses Mendelssohn proved in his book Jerusalem which was published in the same year, that the “amelioration” of the civil status of the Jews was the whole modernization of the Prussian Monarchy. The reason, why this first and most important philosopher of Haskalah
was from Prussia
, has to be understood by the fact that Jewish emancipation was on the lowest level in comparison with the neighbour countries. So the Jewish population was more forced to assimilate than in other countries during the 19th century: The Hohenzollern Monarchy followed with their edicts into the footsteps of the Habsburg Monarchy
– but with 10 years delay. 1784, one year after the publication of Mendelssohn’s book Jerusalem, the administration of the Habsburg Monarchy prohibited rabbinic jurisdiction and submitted the Jewish population to its own jurisdiction, but with an inferior legal status. This first step of the monarchy was expected to be done in a direction towards intolerance. The National Assembly of the French Revolution
declared 1791 (Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen
) the full civil rights for the Jewish population of the French Republic
.
. His book Jerusalem oder über religiöse Macht und Judentum can be regarded as one of the main works of Jewish Enlightenment.
Often this text which explains the real subject of “amelioration” in Dohm's defense, is still underestimated as a contribution to philosophy – probably because it was directly connected with the historical situation and the social conditions of the author's life. On the other hand a lot of historians concerned about Haskalah criticized the heroic image about Moses Mendelssohn in which he appears as the starting point of Jewish enlightenment without any respect to earlier attempts around the beginning of the 18th century.
Because he regarded the present accuses and complaints concerning the current state of Judaism as a modern Christian prejudice which just had replaced the medieval ones (like poisoning fountains, ritual slaughtering of Christian children on Pessah etc.), his subject of amelioration was the religion and especially the one which has to be separated from the state.
The two parts of his books got no titles except Erster and Zweiter Abschnitt (“first” and “second section”), and the first one treated clearly the contemporary conflicts of the state and the second those of religion. In the first the author developed his political theory towards an utopia of a just and tolerant democracy, which he identified with the political attempt of the Mosaic Law: therefore the title “Jerusalem”. In the second part he worked out a new pedagogic charge which every religion has to fulfill in the private sector. It was reduced to it, because the tolerant state should be separated from any religion. Hence the Mosaic law
and the traditional practice of jurisdiction was no longer the business of Judaism, if there would be a tolerant state. Instead the new charge of religion would the education of just and tolerant citizens. The book as a whole summarizes Moses Mendelssohn's critic concerning the contemporary conditions of the Prussian Monarchy and the legal status of the different religions, which finally means the civil status of its inhabitants according to their faith - the subject of Christian Wilhelm von Dohm
's Mémoire.
Mendelssohn's concept of political theory has to be understood from the historical situation in Prussian Monarchy and he formulated his theory before Kant. 1771 he was also chosen before Kant by Johann Georg Sulzer
, who wanted him as a member of the philosophical department at the Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften. But Sulzer's call was prohibited by Frederick the Great. This intervention clearly showed how enlightened and tolerant his monarchy really was, as far as the separation between religion and state was concerned.
1792 Immanel Kant
used in Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft
a conventional theological argument about the inferiority of the Mosaic law which would violently force mankind to a moral attitude, so it could not be really understood as a religion.
in his Tractatus theologico-politicus, Mendelssohn mentioned Spinoza only briefly: by a comparison of his merits in metaphysics that corresponded to Hobbes’ in the field of moral philosophy. Montesquieu’s more recent political theory remarked a change in the contemporary situation, when this conflict caused finally the decline of the church and also hopes and fears about the expected end of the ancient régime:
From this libertarian point of view he drew nearer to Thomas Hobbes
’ scenario of the “war of every man against every man” (bellum omnium contra omnes) which Hobbes had described as the “natural condition of mankind” in his book Leviathan
:
From this natural human condition which was banned by a religious fear of God (in Bosse
's frontispice made up by a crowd of people), Mendelssohn defined the role of the state (the left column under the sword) and the role of the religion (the right column under the crook) and the way, how they both had to be brought into harmony:
But, whatever the religion might be which had to be kept in harmony with the state, the state as a secular authority should never have the right to decide about the faith and the conscience of its citizens.
In Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan the argument that the fear of God also committed the state as an inferior power, was borrowed from a theological tradition which was also very common in Christian Patristic and its reception of the Tanakh
. Mendelssohn obviously used Hobbes’ moral philosophy to address the present conditions in the French and the Habsburg Monarchy and its Roman Catholic constitution, but his main address was probably Prussia and its “philosopher king”.
But Mendelssohn’s “triumph” over Hobbes did not mean that Hobbes’ condition of human nature was not important for his own political theory. Hobbes’ impressive justification of a social contract was much more useful for the rhetorical needs of Haskalah
than Rousseau’s contrat sociale, because his moral philosophy reflected very deeply the consequences of the abuse of political power. And all contemporaries who had another faith than that of state religion, were quite familiar with these consequences.
Through the category “freedom of conscience” (Gewissensfreiheit) Mendelssohn turned from the dark side (war of every man against every man) to John Locke
's enlightened definition of “tolerance” and to his concept of the separation between religion and state:
Locke’s proposed relation between a tolerant state and the humans who were associated to it as citizens, had to be granted by a social contract. Moses Mendelssohn followed a simple judicial advice, when he described the subject of this contract as “perfect” and “imperfect” “rights” and “responsibilities”:
According to Mendelssohn’s social contract the separation between state and religion was based on the distinction of the “formal” and the “inner” side. Therefore religion in itself was no “formal” subject of the social contract, only the acts of a citizen had to be judged, as long as they had violated a “formal right” or “responsibility”. Despite this separation of the religion from the political theory and its reduction to the private sphere, every religion had its own “inner” power which Mendelssohn described in the second part.
In his political theory Moses Mendelssohn had to criticize the present conditions of the Prussian state, and he did without mentioning it, partly for reasons of censorship and partly for rhetorical reasons. This was his polite way to say that its regent was centuries behind his own philosophy:
In consequence the second part on religious power had to criticize the present conditions of that religion which he always had to defend during his life. For these critics he needed the idea that state and religion should be divided, but kept in harmony, as well as the utopic postulation of a just state which should be the political target of a religious community. After this preparation, the finding of the preconditions in his political theory (the key or better: the ring in his whole argumentation), the first step was to comment the misconceived points of view: the adaptation to despotism, as it was postulated by many Christians discussing the “amelioration of the Jews”.
's Vindication of the Jews. With the medieval metaphor of masonry for the art of memory
(often represented allegorically as “prudence
”) and its reference to religious education as a moral and sentimental education, he tried to turn back Lavater's projection. While Christians like to regard the crisis of Judaism, Mendelssohn regards the present situation – in the eve of the French revolution
– as a general crisis of religion:
Mendelssohn’s house metaphor from the beginning of the first part reappears at the beginning of the second part. Here he used it to reflect the historical fact that Christianity never developed its own ethics independent from the ten commandments
, which are still part of the canonic redaction of the Christian Bible.
Lavater serves here as a more or less moderate example of the hypocritic religious man, whose religion is the favoured and the dominating one within the political system. Like in Hobbes’ scenario he likes, what the system allows him to do – at least in this case: forcing another citizen to convert to the dominating religion.
, legislature
and judiciary
will be no longer religious affairs. Nevertheless he was denying the contemporary practice of rabbinic jurisdiction, which was hardly acceptable for a lot of orthodox Jews. And one year after the publication of his book the denial of rabbinic jurisdiction became political practice in the Habsburg Monarchy
, when a state edict, added to the “tolerance patent”, submitted Jewish subjects to its own law court without regarding them on an equal footing with Christian subjects.
Moses Mendelssohn is supposed to be the first Maskilim of his time who denied the present conditions and the rabbinic practice attached to it. This condition was that each Jewish community had its own jurisdiction and that the coexistence of several communities often corrected judges. His proposition must not only regarded as very modern, it turned out to be substantial during the discussions of the French Legislative Assembly concerning the Jewish emancipation
during the 1790s. In these debates Judaism was often supposed to be an “own nation within the nation” and the Jewish representatives had to abandon this former status, so that the Jewish population will gain the new status as equal citizens and that they will participate in the new law of the French constitution.
In his pragmatism Mendelssohn had to convince the Jewish population that they have to abandon the tradition of rabbinic jurisdiction, but in the same time they have no reason to feel inferior, because some Christians believe that the moral conditions of Jewish tradition has to be regarded as inferior to their theological concept of absolution.
It was up to the Christians to find the way back to their fundament, which was the Mosaic law. But it was up to the Jews to face the present situation, in which Jewish communities were abandoned by a wealthy and privileged minority, so that poverty was increasing rapidly – especially in the town ghettos. In his philosophy Moses Mendelssohn reacted to the change from medieval conditions among the communities, when an elite between rich and rabbinic families was ruling the community. New privileges were granted by the Prussian state to rich members of the community, so that they finally left the community by conversion. But Mendelssohn regarded beneficence less as a “coerce responsibility” than as a voluntary act of wealthy members.
concept of a natural religion based on rational principles with the living tradition of Ashkenasic
Judaism. His adoration of the Mosaic law should not be misunderstood as a kind of historical criticism, it was based on an own politically motivated interpretation of the Torah
as a divine revelation which was offered to the prophet Moses, so that he will save Judaism from its materialistic decline, symbolized in worshipping the golden calf and idolatry, by the divine law.
For Moses Mendelssohn the Mosaic law was “divine”, as long as the community following its principles would be just. The attribute “divine” was simply given by the law’s function to create a just social fabric: the social contract
in itself. The eternal truth of the law was bound to this function, and it was so less achievable, that any judgement of a rabbi had to be judged according to Salomonic Wisdom. Mendelssohn referred to an anecdote of the Hillel school
of Mishnah
which has in itself an own theological formulation of the categorical imperative
as Kant would later call it on:
With this biblical proverb, often quoted in the New Testament including the beatitudes, Mendelssohn returned to the deistic adoration of the Mosaic law as the Jewish-Christian contribution to universal ethics:
“Mosaic Constitution” was just the Jewish name of the democratic constitution, as it was called by their ancestors. And probably some Jews were waiting for it like for a Messiah who would once unban them from feudal slavery.
The argument through which he inspired Lessing in his drama Nathan der Weise
, was the following: Each religion has not to be judged in itself, but only the acts of a citizen who keeps faith with it, according to a just law. This kind of law constitutes a just state, in which the people of different faith may live together in peace.
According to his philosophy the new charge of any religion in general was not jurisdiction, but education as a necessary preparation to become a just citizen. Mendelssohn’s point of view was that of a teacher who translated a lot of classical rabbinic authors like Maimonides from Hebrew into German, so that a Jewish child would be attracted to learn German and Hebrew in the same time.
As long as the state did not follow John Locke’s requirement concerning the “freedom of conscience”, any trial of an ethic education would be useless at all and every subject would be forced to live in separation according to their religious faith. Reflecting the present conditions Mendelssohn addresses – directly in the second person – to the political authorities:
In this paragraph it becomes very evident, that Moses Mendelssohn did not foresee the willingness of some Jewish men and women who left some years later their communities, because they do not want to suffer from a lower legal status any longer.
who died 1781 and could not defend his friend as he always had done during his lifetime.
who published an episode between himself and Lessing, in which Lessing confessed to be a “Spinozist”, while reading Goethe’s Sturm und Drang
poem Prometheus
. “Spinozism” became quite fashionable that time and was a rather superficial reception, which was not so much based on a solid knowledge of Spinoza’s philosophy than on the “secret letters” about Spinoza. These letters circulated since Spinoza’s lifetime in the monarchies, where Spinoza’s own writings were on the index of the Catholic Inquisition
, and often they regarded Spinoza’s philosophy as “atheistic” or even as a revelation of the secrets of Kabbalah
mysticism. The German Spinoza fashion of the 1780s was more a “pantheistic
” reception which gained the attraction of rebellious “atheism”, while its followers are returning to a romantic concept of religion. Jacobi was following a new form of German idealism and later joined the romanticist circle around Fichte in Jena. Later, 1819 during the hep hep riots
or progroms, this new form of idealism turned out to be very intolerant, especially in the reception of Jakob Fries.
The fashion pantheism did not correspond to Mendelssohn’s deistic reception of Spinoza and Lessing
whose collected works he was publishing. He was not so wrong, because Spinoza himself developed a fully rational form of deism
in his main work Ethica, without any knowledge of the later pantheistic reception of his philosophy. Mendelssohn published in his last years his own attitude to Spinoza – not without his misunderstandings, because he was frightened to lose his authority which he still had among rabbis. On his own favor Goethe fashioned himself as a “revolutionary” in his Dichtung und Wahrheit
, while he was very angry with Jacobi because he feared the consequences of the latter's publication using Goethe's poem. This episode caused a reception in which Moses Mendelssohn as a historical protagonist and his philosophy is underestimated.
Nevertheless Moses Mendelssohn had a great influence on other Maskilim and on the Jewish emancipation
, and on nearly every philosopher discussing the role of the religion within the state in 19th century Western Europe.
, praised the French republic as the “Messiah of modern Judaism”, because he had to convince French communities for the new plans of a Jewish reform movement to abandon their autonomy. The French version of Haskalah, called régénération, was more moderate than the Jewish reform movement in Prussia.
While better conditions were provided by the constitution of the French Republic, the conflict between Orthodox Rabbis and wealthy and intellectual laymen of the reform movement became evident with the radical initiatives by Mendelssohn’s friend and student David Friedländer in Prussia. He was the first who followed Mendelssohn's postulations in education, since he founded 1776 together with Isaak Daniel Itzig the Jüdische Freischule für mittellose Berliner Kinder (“Jewish Free School for Impecunious Children in Berlin”) and 1778 the Chevrat Chinuch Ne'arim (“Society for the Education of Knaves”). His attempt of a German translation of the Hebrew prayerbook Sefer ha-Nefesh (1787) which he did for the school, finally became not popular as a ritual reform, because 1799 he went so far to offer his community a “dry baptism” as an affiliation by the Lutheran church. There was a seduction of free-thinking Jews to identify the seclusion from European modern culture with Judaism in itself and it could end up in baptism. As Heinrich Heine
commented it, some tend to reduce Judaism to a “calamity” and to buy with a conversion to Christianity an “entré billet” for the higher society of the Prussian state. By the end of the 18th century there were a lot of contemporary concepts of enlightenment in different parts of Europe, in which humanism and a secularized state were thought to replace religion at all.
Israel Jacobson
, himself a merchant, but also an engaged pedagogue in charge of a land rabbi in Westphalia, was much more successful than David Friedländer. Like Moses Mendelssohn he regarded education as a religious affair. One reason for his success was the political fact, that Westphalia became part of France. Jacobson was supported by the new government, when he founded 1801 a boy’s school for trade and elementary knowledge in Seesen (a small town near Harz
), called „Institut für arme Juden-Kinder“. The language used during the lessons was German. His concept of pedagogy combined the ideas of Moses Mendelssohn with those of the socially engaged Philantropin school which Basedow
founded in Dessau, inspired by Rousseau’s ideas about education. 1802 also poor Christian boys were allowed to attend the school and it became one of the first schools, which coeducated children of different faith. Since 1810 religious ceremonies were also held in the first Reform Temple, established on the school’s ground and equipped by an organ. Before 1810 the Jewish community of the town had their celebrations just in a prayer room of the school. Since 1810 Mendelssohn needed the instrument to accompany German and Hebrew songs, sung by the pupils or by the community in the „Jacobstempel“. He adapted these prayers himself to tunes, taken from famous Protestant chorales. In the charge of a rabbi he read the whole service in German according to the ideas of the reformed Protestant rite, and he refused the “medieval” free rhythmic style of chazzan, as it was common use in the other Synagogues. 1811 Israel Jacobson introduced a “confirmation” ceremony of Jewish boys and girls as part of his reformed rite.
1815, the Jacobson family settled to Berlin, where Israel opened a Temple in his own house. The orthodox community of Berlin asked the Prussian authorities to intervene and so his third „Jacobstempel“ was closed. Prussian officers argued, that the law allows only one house of Jewish worship in Berlin. In consequence a reformed service was celebrated as minyan
in the house of Jacob Herz Beer. The chant was composed by his son who later became a famous opera composer under the name Giacomo Meyerbeer
. In opposition to Israel’s radical refuse of the traditional Synagogue chant, Meyerbeer reintegrated the chazzan and the recitation of Pentateuch and Prophets into the reformed rite, so that it became more popular within the community of Berlin.
Johann Gottfried Herder
's appreciation of the Mosaic Ethics was influenced by Mendelssohn’s book Jerusalem as well as by personal exchange with him. It seems that in the tradition of Christian deistic enlightenment the Torah was recognized as an important contribution to the Jewish-Christian civilization, though contemporary Judaism was often compared to the decadent situation, when Aaron created the golden calf (described in Exodus 32), so enlightenment itself was fashioning itself with the archetypical role of Moses. But the contemporary Jewish population was characterized by Herder as a strange Asiatic and selfish "nation" which was always separated from others, not a very original conception which was also popular in the discussions of the National Assembly which insisted that Jewish citizens have to give up their status as a nation, if they want to join the new status as equal citizens.
Moses Mendelssohn
Moses Mendelssohn was a German Jewish philosopher to whose ideas the renaissance of European Jews, Haskalah is indebted...
, which was first published in 1783 – the same year, when the Prussian officer Christian Wilhelm von Dohm
Christian Wilhelm von Dohm
Christian Wilhelm von Dohm was a German historian and political writer....
published the second part of his Mémoire Concerning the amelioration of the civil status of the Jews. Moses Mendelssohn was one of the key figures of Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah
Haskalah
Haskalah , the Jewish Enlightenment, was a movement among European Jews in the 18th–19th centuries that advocated adopting enlightenment values, pressing for better integration into European society, and increasing education in secular studies, Hebrew language, and Jewish history...
) and his philosophical treatise, dealing with social contract and political theory (especially concerning the question of the separation between religion and state
Separation of church and state
The concept of the separation of church and state refers to the distance in the relationship between organized religion and the nation state....
), can be regarded as his most important contribution to Haskalah
Haskalah
Haskalah , the Jewish Enlightenment, was a movement among European Jews in the 18th–19th centuries that advocated adopting enlightenment values, pressing for better integration into European society, and increasing education in secular studies, Hebrew language, and Jewish history...
. The book which was written in Prussia on the eve of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
, consisted of two parts and each one was paged separately. The first part discusses "religious power" and the freedom of conscience in the context of the political theory (Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch de Spinoza and later Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch Jewish philosopher. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death...
, John Locke
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
, Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury , in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury, was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy...
), and the second part discusses Mendelssohn's personal conception of Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
concerning the new secular role of any religion within an enlightened state. In his publication Moses Mendelssohn combined a defense of the Jewish population against public accusations with a contemporary critic against the present conditions of the Prussian Monarchy.
Historical background
In 1763 some students of theology visited Moses Mendelssohn in Berlin because of his reputation as a man of letters, and they insisted that they wanted to know Mendelssohn’s opinion about Christianity. One of them, the Swiss Johann Caspar Lavater, sent him 1769 his own German translation of Charles BonnetCharles Bonnet
Charles Bonnet , Swiss naturalist and philosophical writer, was born at Geneva, of a French family driven into Switzerland by the religious persecution in the 16th century.-Life and work:Bonnet's life was uneventful...
's Palingénésie philosophique, with a public dedication to Mendelssohn. In this dedication he charged Mendelssohn with the decision to follow Bonnet's reasons by converting to Christianity or to refute Bonnet's arguments. This intrigue was transferred to the times of the medieval crusades in the allegorical drama Nathan der Weise
Nathan der Weise
Nathan the Wise is a play by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, published in 1779. It is a fervent plea for religious tolerance...
of Mendelssohn's friend Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was a German writer, philosopher, dramatist, publicist, and art critic, and one of the most outstanding representatives of the Enlightenment era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the development of German literature...
: Lessing replaced the young priest Lavater with the historical figure Saladin
Saladin
Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb , better known in the Western world as Saladin, was an Arabized Kurdish Muslim, who became the first Sultan of Egypt and Syria, and founded the Ayyubid dynasty. He led Muslim and Arab opposition to the Franks and other European Crusaders in the Levant...
who appeared as the tolerant hero of the crusades in the perspective of contemporary enlightened historiography. The motive of Nathan who replied with the ring parable, was taken from Boccaccio's «Decamerone» and Lessing intended to create his drama as a monument of tolerance and enlightenment dedicated to Moses Mendelssohn. Lessing was an open-minded and modern type of freemason and he himself had a public theological dispute (Fragmentenstreit) about the historical truth of the New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
with the orthodox Lutheran Hauptpastor Johann Melchior Goeze
Johann Melchior Goeze
Johann Melchior Goeze was a Lutheran pastor and theologian during the period of Late Orthodoxy....
in Hamburg during the 70s. Finally he was banned 1778 by the Herzog of Brunswick. After the declaration of the so called „Toleranzpatent“ in the Habsburg Monarchy
Habsburg Monarchy
The Habsburg Monarchy covered the territories ruled by the junior Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg , and then by the successor House of Habsburg-Lorraine , between 1526 and 1867/1918. The Imperial capital was Vienna, except from 1583 to 1611, when it was moved to Prague...
1782 under Joseph II and the realization of the «lettres patentes» in the French Monarchy under Louis XVI, religion and especially the Jewish emancipation
Jewish Emancipation
Jewish emancipation was the external and internal process of freeing the Jewish people of Europe, including recognition of their rights as equal citizens, and the formal granting of citizenship as individuals; it occurred gradually between the late 18th century and the early 20th century...
became a favorite subject of private debates in Alsace-Lorraine and these debates were often followed by publications of Christian clerics and Abbés. Mendelssohn's Jerusalem or on Religious Power and Judaism may be regarded as his contribution to the debate.
During the 1770s Mendelssohn was frequently asked to act as a mediator by Jews in Switzerland and Alsace – and once Lavater supported Mendelssohn's intervention. About 1780 there was another antisemitic intrigue in Alsace, when François Hell accused the Jewish population to exhaust the peasants. The contemporary Alsatian Jews had no permission to buy land, but they often existed as innkeepers and moneylenders in rural areas. Moses Mendelssohn was asked by Herz Cerfberr, the communal leader of the Alsatian Jews, to react with a Mémoire about the legal discrimination of the Jewish population in the Prussian administration. Moses Mendelssohn arranged a Mémoire by the Prussian officer and freemason Christian Wilhelm von Dohm
Christian Wilhelm von Dohm
Christian Wilhelm von Dohm was a German historian and political writer....
in which both authors tried to relate the confirmation of the unenlightened condition with a demand for a general improvement of the civil condition.
In this respect Moses Mendelssohn proved in his book Jerusalem which was published in the same year, that the “amelioration” of the civil status of the Jews was the whole modernization of the Prussian Monarchy. The reason, why this first and most important philosopher of Haskalah
Haskalah
Haskalah , the Jewish Enlightenment, was a movement among European Jews in the 18th–19th centuries that advocated adopting enlightenment values, pressing for better integration into European society, and increasing education in secular studies, Hebrew language, and Jewish history...
was from Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
, has to be understood by the fact that Jewish emancipation was on the lowest level in comparison with the neighbour countries. So the Jewish population was more forced to assimilate than in other countries during the 19th century: The Hohenzollern Monarchy followed with their edicts into the footsteps of the Habsburg Monarchy
Habsburg Monarchy
The Habsburg Monarchy covered the territories ruled by the junior Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg , and then by the successor House of Habsburg-Lorraine , between 1526 and 1867/1918. The Imperial capital was Vienna, except from 1583 to 1611, when it was moved to Prague...
– but with 10 years delay. 1784, one year after the publication of Mendelssohn’s book Jerusalem, the administration of the Habsburg Monarchy prohibited rabbinic jurisdiction and submitted the Jewish population to its own jurisdiction, but with an inferior legal status. This first step of the monarchy was expected to be done in a direction towards intolerance. The National Assembly of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
declared 1791 (Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen is a fundamental document of the French Revolution, defining the individual and collective rights of all the estates of the realm as universal. Influenced by the doctrine of "natural right", the rights of man are held to be universal: valid...
) the full civil rights for the Jewish population of the French Republic
French First Republic
The French First Republic was founded on 22 September 1792, by the newly established National Convention. The First Republic lasted until the declaration of the First French Empire in 1804 under Napoleon I...
.
Moses Mendelssohn's Treatise “On Religious Power” and its Composition
Despite the fact that Moses Mendelssohn was a highly educated scholar and teacher who spent whole nights on German translation of classical Hellenic and Roman philosophers and poets as a young man, he became a very famous and influential philosopher of HaskalahHaskalah
Haskalah , the Jewish Enlightenment, was a movement among European Jews in the 18th–19th centuries that advocated adopting enlightenment values, pressing for better integration into European society, and increasing education in secular studies, Hebrew language, and Jewish history...
. His book Jerusalem oder über religiöse Macht und Judentum can be regarded as one of the main works of Jewish Enlightenment.
Often this text which explains the real subject of “amelioration” in Dohm's defense, is still underestimated as a contribution to philosophy – probably because it was directly connected with the historical situation and the social conditions of the author's life. On the other hand a lot of historians concerned about Haskalah criticized the heroic image about Moses Mendelssohn in which he appears as the starting point of Jewish enlightenment without any respect to earlier attempts around the beginning of the 18th century.
Because he regarded the present accuses and complaints concerning the current state of Judaism as a modern Christian prejudice which just had replaced the medieval ones (like poisoning fountains, ritual slaughtering of Christian children on Pessah etc.), his subject of amelioration was the religion and especially the one which has to be separated from the state.
The two parts of his books got no titles except Erster and Zweiter Abschnitt (“first” and “second section”), and the first one treated clearly the contemporary conflicts of the state and the second those of religion. In the first the author developed his political theory towards an utopia of a just and tolerant democracy, which he identified with the political attempt of the Mosaic Law: therefore the title “Jerusalem”. In the second part he worked out a new pedagogic charge which every religion has to fulfill in the private sector. It was reduced to it, because the tolerant state should be separated from any religion. Hence the Mosaic law
Halakha
Halakha — also transliterated Halocho , or Halacha — is the collective body of Jewish law, including biblical law and later talmudic and rabbinic law, as well as customs and traditions.Judaism classically draws no distinction in its laws between religious and ostensibly non-religious life; Jewish...
and the traditional practice of jurisdiction was no longer the business of Judaism, if there would be a tolerant state. Instead the new charge of religion would the education of just and tolerant citizens. The book as a whole summarizes Moses Mendelssohn's critic concerning the contemporary conditions of the Prussian Monarchy and the legal status of the different religions, which finally means the civil status of its inhabitants according to their faith - the subject of Christian Wilhelm von Dohm
Christian Wilhelm von Dohm
Christian Wilhelm von Dohm was a German historian and political writer....
's Mémoire.
The Philosophical Issue (First Part)
Johann Georg Sulzer
Johann Georg Sulzer was a Swiss professor of Mathematics, who later on moved on to the field of electricity. He was a Wolffian philosopher and director of the philosophical section of the Berlin Academy of Sciences....
, who wanted him as a member of the philosophical department at the Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften. But Sulzer's call was prohibited by Frederick the Great. This intervention clearly showed how enlightened and tolerant his monarchy really was, as far as the separation between religion and state was concerned.
1792 Immanel Kant
KANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
used in Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft
Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason
Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason is the English title of the German book Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft, written by Immanuel Kant in 1793. Although its purpose and original intent has become a matter of some dispute, the book's immense and lasting influence on the...
a conventional theological argument about the inferiority of the Mosaic law which would violently force mankind to a moral attitude, so it could not be really understood as a religion.
Despotism (Spinoza & Montesquieu)
1783 Moses Mendelssohn opened the first part of his treatise with a very similar understanding of religion, but he chose as political example the “Roman Catholic despotism”. Although his description of the conflict between state and religion as a conflict between common sense and religion was very close to that of Baruch SpinozaBaruch Spinoza
Baruch de Spinoza and later Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch Jewish philosopher. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death...
in his Tractatus theologico-politicus, Mendelssohn mentioned Spinoza only briefly: by a comparison of his merits in metaphysics that corresponded to Hobbes’ in the field of moral philosophy. Montesquieu’s more recent political theory remarked a change in the contemporary situation, when this conflict caused finally the decline of the church and also hopes and fears about the expected end of the ancient régime:
Despotism has the advantage that it is consistent. How inagreeable its demands might be commonsense, they are coherent and systematic. […] As well as the church constitution according to Roman Catholic principles: […] As long as you follow all its demands, you know what to do. Your edifice is founded, and perfect silence reigns in all its parts. Certainly only that terrifying kind of silence, as Montesquieu has objected, that you will find in a fortress, before it will be taken by storm at nightfall. […] But as soon as liberty dares to move something in this edifice, it will threaten disruption everywhere. So at the end you do not know which part of the building will not be ruined.
The Natural Condition of Man is Intolerance (Thomas Hobbes)
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury , in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury, was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy...
’ scenario of the “war of every man against every man” (bellum omnium contra omnes) which Hobbes had described as the “natural condition of mankind” in his book Leviathan
Leviathan (book)
Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil — commonly called simply Leviathan — is a book written by Thomas Hobbes and published in 1651. Its name derives from the biblical Leviathan...
:
[According to Hobbes] the state of nature was the state of a common riot, a war of every man against every man, in which everyone might do what he could do; in which everything would be right as long as there were only the power to do it. This unfortunate condition lasted until men agreed to finish their misery and to abstain from right and power, as far as public safety was concerned. And they agreed to leave both in the hands of a chosen authority. From now on it was right, what this authority had ordered.
He [Thomas Hobbes] either had no sense for civil liberty or he just preferred to see it annihilated rather than have it thus abused. […] According to his system, all right is based on power, and all common sense on fear. Since God in his power is infinitely superior to any [secular] authority, the right of God is also infinitely superior to the right of any authority. And this fear of God commits us to duties, which should never be abandoned for the fear of any [secular] authority.
From this natural human condition which was banned by a religious fear of God (in Bosse
Abraham Bosse
Abraham Bosse was a French artist, mainly as a printmaker in etching, but also in watercolour.-Life:...
's frontispice made up by a crowd of people), Mendelssohn defined the role of the state (the left column under the sword) and the role of the religion (the right column under the crook) and the way, how they both had to be brought into harmony:
The state gives orders and coerces; the religion educates and convinces; the state declares laws, religion offers precepts. The state has physical power and uses it, when it is necessary; the power of religion is charity and beneficience.
But, whatever the religion might be which had to be kept in harmony with the state, the state as a secular authority should never have the right to decide about the faith and the conscience of its citizens.
In Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan the argument that the fear of God also committed the state as an inferior power, was borrowed from a theological tradition which was also very common in Christian Patristic and its reception of the Tanakh
Tanakh
The Tanakh is a name used in Judaism for the canon of the Hebrew Bible. The Tanakh is also known as the Masoretic Text or the Miqra. The name is an acronym formed from the initial Hebrew letters of the Masoretic Text's three traditional subdivisions: The Torah , Nevi'im and Ketuvim —hence...
. Mendelssohn obviously used Hobbes’ moral philosophy to address the present conditions in the French and the Habsburg Monarchy and its Roman Catholic constitution, but his main address was probably Prussia and its “philosopher king”.
But Mendelssohn’s “triumph” over Hobbes did not mean that Hobbes’ condition of human nature was not important for his own political theory. Hobbes’ impressive justification of a social contract was much more useful for the rhetorical needs of Haskalah
Haskalah
Haskalah , the Jewish Enlightenment, was a movement among European Jews in the 18th–19th centuries that advocated adopting enlightenment values, pressing for better integration into European society, and increasing education in secular studies, Hebrew language, and Jewish history...
than Rousseau’s contrat sociale, because his moral philosophy reflected very deeply the consequences of the abuse of political power. And all contemporaries who had another faith than that of state religion, were quite familiar with these consequences.
The Contract of Tolerance (John Locke)
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
's enlightened definition of “tolerance” and to his concept of the separation between religion and state:
Locke who lived in the same time full of confusion [as Hobbes], looked for another way to protect the freedom of conscience. In his letters on the tolerance he founded his definition as follows: A state should be an association of humans, who agreed to support together their temporal welfare. From this follows quite naturally that the state should not take care of the citizen’s attitude concerning their eternal faith, it should rather tolerate everybody who behaves with civil respect — i.e. it should not obstruct its fellow citizens in respect of their temporal faith. The state, as civil authority, had not to observe the divergence; because religion in itself had not necessarily any influence on the temporal, it was just related with it by the arbitrariness of the humans.
Locke’s proposed relation between a tolerant state and the humans who were associated to it as citizens, had to be granted by a social contract. Moses Mendelssohn followed a simple judicial advice, when he described the subject of this contract as “perfect” and “imperfect” “rights” and “responsibilities”:
There are perfect and imperfect, as well responsibilities — as rights. The former are called “coercive rights” and “coercive responsibilities” and the latter “requirements” (requests) and “responsilities of conscience”. The former are formal, the latter only inner. It is allowed to enforce coercive rights, but also to refuse requests. The neglect of coercive responsibilities is an insult and an unfairness; but the neglect of responsilities of the conscience is only an inequity.
According to Mendelssohn’s social contract the separation between state and religion was based on the distinction of the “formal” and the “inner” side. Therefore religion in itself was no “formal” subject of the social contract, only the acts of a citizen had to be judged, as long as they had violated a “formal right” or “responsibility”. Despite this separation of the religion from the political theory and its reduction to the private sphere, every religion had its own “inner” power which Mendelssohn described in the second part.
The Religious Issue (Second Part)
I have the fortune to live in a state in which my opinions are neither new nor very extraordinary. Its wise regent who rules it, paid always, since the beginning of his reign, attention, that mankind gets its full right concerning all affairs of faith [literally: believe, confession]. […] With wise moderateness he preserved the privilege of the formal religion as he had found it. There are still centuries of civilization and preparation before us, when man will finally understand that privileges of a certain religion are neither based on law nor on the religion’s own fundament, so that it will be a real benefit to abolish simply any civil divergence in favour of one religion. However under the rule of this Wise the nation got so accustomed to tolerance and compatibility in respect to other religions, that at least force, bann and the right to exclude are no longer popular terms.
In consequence the second part on religious power had to criticize the present conditions of that religion which he always had to defend during his life. For these critics he needed the idea that state and religion should be divided, but kept in harmony, as well as the utopic postulation of a just state which should be the political target of a religious community. After this preparation, the finding of the preconditions in his political theory (the key or better: the ring in his whole argumentation), the first step was to comment the misconceived points of view: the adaptation to despotism, as it was postulated by many Christians discussing the “amelioration of the Jews”.
Falling to the Upper Floor (Lavater & Cranz)
Therefore Moses Mendelssohn refers to his older arguments which he used in his dispute with Lavater – and more recently in response to an anonymous recension of Mendelssohn's introduction to Menassah Ben IsraelMenasseh Ben Israel
Manoel Dias Soeiro , better known by his Hebrew name Menasseh Ben Israel , was a Portuguese rabbi, kabbalist, scholar, writer, diplomat, printer and publisher, founder of the first Hebrew printing press in Amsterdam in...
's Vindication of the Jews. With the medieval metaphor of masonry for the art of memory
Art of memory
The Art of Memory or Ars Memorativa is a general term used to designate a loosely associated group of mnemonic principles and techniques used to organize memory impressions, improve recall, and assist in the combination and 'invention' of ideas. It is sometimes referred to as mnemotechnics...
(often represented allegorically as “prudence
Prudence
Prudence is the ability to govern and discipline oneself by the use of reason. It is classically considered to be a virtue, and in particular one of the four Cardinal virtues .The word comes from Old French prudence , from Latin...
”) and its reference to religious education as a moral and sentimental education, he tried to turn back Lavater's projection. While Christians like to regard the crisis of Judaism, Mendelssohn regards the present situation – in the eve of the French revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
– as a general crisis of religion:
If it is true, that the cornerstones of my house had become so weak, that the building might tumble down, shall I follow the advice to save my goods from the ground to the upper floor? Will I be safer there? As you know, Christianity is built upon Judaism and so, if the latter tumbles, the former will necessarily fall over it in one heap of rubble.
Mendelssohn’s house metaphor from the beginning of the first part reappears at the beginning of the second part. Here he used it to reflect the historical fact that Christianity never developed its own ethics independent from the ten commandments
Ten Commandments
The Ten Commandments, also known as the Decalogue , are a set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship, which play a fundamental role in Judaism and most forms of Christianity. They include instructions to worship only God and to keep the Sabbath, and prohibitions against idolatry,...
, which are still part of the canonic redaction of the Christian Bible.
Lavater serves here as a more or less moderate example of the hypocritic religious man, whose religion is the favoured and the dominating one within the political system. Like in Hobbes’ scenario he likes, what the system allows him to do – at least in this case: forcing another citizen to convert to the dominating religion.
Jews as Equal Citizens & the Crisis of Judaism (The Reform of Haskalah)
But this hypocrisy reflects once more the radicalism of Moses Mendelssohn’s contract of tolerance: If the religion’s business has to be reduced to the “inner side” and religion itself cannot be the formal subject of this contract, it simply means that state affairs like executiveExecutive (government)
Executive branch of Government is the part of government that has sole authority and responsibility for the daily administration of the state bureaucracy. The division of power into separate branches of government is central to the idea of the separation of powers.In many countries, the term...
, legislature
Legislature
A legislature is a kind of deliberative assembly with the power to pass, amend, and repeal laws. The law created by a legislature is called legislation or statutory law. In addition to enacting laws, legislatures usually have exclusive authority to raise or lower taxes and adopt the budget and...
and judiciary
Judiciary
The judiciary is the system of courts that interprets and applies the law in the name of the state. The judiciary also provides a mechanism for the resolution of disputes...
will be no longer religious affairs. Nevertheless he was denying the contemporary practice of rabbinic jurisdiction, which was hardly acceptable for a lot of orthodox Jews. And one year after the publication of his book the denial of rabbinic jurisdiction became political practice in the Habsburg Monarchy
Habsburg Monarchy
The Habsburg Monarchy covered the territories ruled by the junior Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg , and then by the successor House of Habsburg-Lorraine , between 1526 and 1867/1918. The Imperial capital was Vienna, except from 1583 to 1611, when it was moved to Prague...
, when a state edict, added to the “tolerance patent”, submitted Jewish subjects to its own law court without regarding them on an equal footing with Christian subjects.
Moses Mendelssohn is supposed to be the first Maskilim of his time who denied the present conditions and the rabbinic practice attached to it. This condition was that each Jewish community had its own jurisdiction and that the coexistence of several communities often corrected judges. His proposition must not only regarded as very modern, it turned out to be substantial during the discussions of the French Legislative Assembly concerning the Jewish emancipation
Jewish Emancipation
Jewish emancipation was the external and internal process of freeing the Jewish people of Europe, including recognition of their rights as equal citizens, and the formal granting of citizenship as individuals; it occurred gradually between the late 18th century and the early 20th century...
during the 1790s. In these debates Judaism was often supposed to be an “own nation within the nation” and the Jewish representatives had to abandon this former status, so that the Jewish population will gain the new status as equal citizens and that they will participate in the new law of the French constitution.
In his pragmatism Mendelssohn had to convince the Jewish population that they have to abandon the tradition of rabbinic jurisdiction, but in the same time they have no reason to feel inferior, because some Christians believe that the moral conditions of Jewish tradition has to be regarded as inferior to their theological concept of absolution.
It was up to the Christians to find the way back to their fundament, which was the Mosaic law. But it was up to the Jews to face the present situation, in which Jewish communities were abandoned by a wealthy and privileged minority, so that poverty was increasing rapidly – especially in the town ghettos. In his philosophy Moses Mendelssohn reacted to the change from medieval conditions among the communities, when an elite between rich and rabbinic families was ruling the community. New privileges were granted by the Prussian state to rich members of the community, so that they finally left the community by conversion. But Mendelssohn regarded beneficence less as a “coerce responsibility” than as a voluntary act of wealthy members.
The Ring (Lessing & Deism)
Moses Mendelssohn created a syncretism which combined contemporary humanistic idealism and its deisticDeism
Deism in religious philosophy is the belief that reason and observation of the natural world, without the need for organized religion, can determine that the universe is the product of an all-powerful creator. According to deists, the creator does not intervene in human affairs or suspend the...
concept of a natural religion based on rational principles with the living tradition of Ashkenasic
Ashkenazi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim , are the Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities along the Rhine in Germany from Alsace in the south to the Rhineland in the north. Ashkenaz is the medieval Hebrew name for this region and thus for Germany...
Judaism. His adoration of the Mosaic law should not be misunderstood as a kind of historical criticism, it was based on an own politically motivated interpretation of the Torah
Torah
Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...
as a divine revelation which was offered to the prophet Moses, so that he will save Judaism from its materialistic decline, symbolized in worshipping the golden calf and idolatry, by the divine law.
For Moses Mendelssohn the Mosaic law was “divine”, as long as the community following its principles would be just. The attribute “divine” was simply given by the law’s function to create a just social fabric: the social contract
Social contract
The social contract is an intellectual device intended to explain the appropriate relationship between individuals and their governments. Social contract arguments assert that individuals unite into political societies by a process of mutual consent, agreeing to abide by common rules and accept...
in itself. The eternal truth of the law was bound to this function, and it was so less achievable, that any judgement of a rabbi had to be judged according to Salomonic Wisdom. Mendelssohn referred to an anecdote of the Hillel school
House of Hillel
The House of Hillel , also known as the Academy of Hillel, founded by the famed Hillel the Elder, is a school of Jewish law and thought that thrived in 1st century B.C.E.Jerusalem. The House of Hillel is most widely known for its hundreds of disputes with the Beit Shammai, founded by Shammai, a...
of Mishnah
Mishnah
The Mishnah or Mishna is the first major written redaction of the Jewish oral traditions called the "Oral Torah". It is also the first major work of Rabbinic Judaism. It was redacted c...
which has in itself an own theological formulation of the categorical imperative
Categorical imperative
The Categorical Imperative is the central philosophical concept in the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant, as well as modern deontological ethics...
as Kant would later call it on:
A goy said: “Rabbi, teach me the whole law, on which I stand with one foot!” Shammai to whom he addressed before with the same impertinence, disregardfully refused him. But Hillel who was famous for his insuperable serenity and mildness, replied: “Son! love thy neighbour as thyself. [Leviticus 19:18] This is the text of the law, the rest is commentary. Now go and learn!”
With this biblical proverb, often quoted in the New Testament including the beatitudes, Mendelssohn returned to the deistic adoration of the Mosaic law as the Jewish-Christian contribution to universal ethics:
The constitution had been here only once: you may call it the mosaic Constitution, which was its name. It has disappeared, and only the Almighty knows, in which nation and in which century something similar will appear again.
“Mosaic Constitution” was just the Jewish name of the democratic constitution, as it was called by their ancestors. And probably some Jews were waiting for it like for a Messiah who would once unban them from feudal slavery.
The argument through which he inspired Lessing in his drama Nathan der Weise
Nathan der Weise
Nathan the Wise is a play by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, published in 1779. It is a fervent plea for religious tolerance...
, was the following: Each religion has not to be judged in itself, but only the acts of a citizen who keeps faith with it, according to a just law. This kind of law constitutes a just state, in which the people of different faith may live together in peace.
According to his philosophy the new charge of any religion in general was not jurisdiction, but education as a necessary preparation to become a just citizen. Mendelssohn’s point of view was that of a teacher who translated a lot of classical rabbinic authors like Maimonides from Hebrew into German, so that a Jewish child would be attracted to learn German and Hebrew in the same time.
Moses Mendelssohn's Estimation of the Civil Conditions 1783
At the end of his book Mendelssohn returns to the real political conditions in Habsburg, French and Prussian Monarchy, because he was often asked to support Jewish communities in their territories. In fact none of these political systems were offering the tolerant conditions, so that every subject should have the same legal status regardless to his or her religious faith. (In his philosophy Mendelssohn discussed the discrimination of the individuum according to its religion, but not according to its gender.) On the other hand a modern education which Mendelssohn regarded still as a religious affair, required a reformation of the religious communities and especially their organization of the education which has to be modernized.As long as the state did not follow John Locke’s requirement concerning the “freedom of conscience”, any trial of an ethic education would be useless at all and every subject would be forced to live in separation according to their religious faith. Reflecting the present conditions Mendelssohn addresses – directly in the second person – to the political authorities:
You should think, that you are not allowed to return our brotherly love, to unite with us as equal citizens, as long as there is any formal divergence in our religious rite, so that we do not eat together with you and do not marry one of yours, which the founder of your religion, as far as we can see, neither would have done, nor would have allowed us? — If this has to be and to remain your real opinion, as we may not expect of men following the Christian ethos; if a civil unification is only available on the condition that we differ from the law which we are already considering as binding, then we have to announce – with deep regret – that we do better to abstain from the civil unification; then the philantropist Dohm has probably written in vain and everything will remain on the awkward condition – as it is now and as your charity has chosen it. […] We cannot differ from the law with a clear conscience and what will be your use of citizens without conscience?
In this paragraph it becomes very evident, that Moses Mendelssohn did not foresee the willingness of some Jewish men and women who left some years later their communities, because they do not want to suffer from a lower legal status any longer.
History of Reception
Moses Mendelssohn risked a lot, when he published this book, not only in front of the Prussian authority, but also in front of religious authorities – including Orthodox Rabbis. The following years some of his famous Christian friends stroke him at his very sensible side: his adoration for LessingGotthold Ephraim Lessing
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was a German writer, philosopher, dramatist, publicist, and art critic, and one of the most outstanding representatives of the Enlightenment era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the development of German literature...
who died 1781 and could not defend his friend as he always had done during his lifetime.
Mendelssohn & Spinoza in the Pantheism Controversy
The strike was done by Lavater's friend Friedrich Heinrich JacobiFriedrich Heinrich Jacobi
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi was an influential German philosopher, literary figure, socialite and the younger brother of poet Johann Georg Jacobi...
who published an episode between himself and Lessing, in which Lessing confessed to be a “Spinozist”, while reading Goethe’s Sturm und Drang
Sturm und Drang
Sturm und Drang is a proto-Romantic movement in German literature and music taking place from the late 1760s through the early 1780s, in which individual subjectivity and, in particular, extremes of emotion were given free expression in reaction to the perceived constraints of rationalism...
poem Prometheus
Prometheus (Goethe)
Prometheus is a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in which the character of the mythic Prometheus addresses God in misotheist accusation and defiance. The poem was written between 1772 and 1774 and first published in 1789 after an anonymous and unauthorised publication in 1785 by Friedrich...
. “Spinozism” became quite fashionable that time and was a rather superficial reception, which was not so much based on a solid knowledge of Spinoza’s philosophy than on the “secret letters” about Spinoza. These letters circulated since Spinoza’s lifetime in the monarchies, where Spinoza’s own writings were on the index of the Catholic Inquisition
Inquisition
The Inquisition, Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis , was the "fight against heretics" by several institutions within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It started in the 12th century, with the introduction of torture in the persecution of heresy...
, and often they regarded Spinoza’s philosophy as “atheistic” or even as a revelation of the secrets of Kabbalah
Kabbalah
Kabbalah/Kabala is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the esoteric aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It was systematized in 11th-13th century Hachmei Provence and Spain, and again after the Expulsion from Spain, in 16th century Ottoman Palestine...
mysticism. The German Spinoza fashion of the 1780s was more a “pantheistic
Pantheism controversy
The pantheism controversy was an event in German cultural history which had an impact throughout Europe.A conversation between philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and dramatist Gotthold Lessing in 1780 led Jacobi to a protracted study of Spinoza's works. Lessing had avowed that he knew no...
” reception which gained the attraction of rebellious “atheism”, while its followers are returning to a romantic concept of religion. Jacobi was following a new form of German idealism and later joined the romanticist circle around Fichte in Jena. Later, 1819 during the hep hep riots
Hep-Hep riots
The Hep-Hep riots were early 19th century pogroms against German Jews. The antisemitic communal violence began on August 2, 1819 in Würzburg and soon reached as far as regions of Denmark, Poland, Latvia and Bohemia. Many Jews were killed and much Jewish property was destroyed.-Historical...
or progroms, this new form of idealism turned out to be very intolerant, especially in the reception of Jakob Fries.
The fashion pantheism did not correspond to Mendelssohn’s deistic reception of Spinoza and Lessing
Lessing
Lessing - German family of writers and artists*Johann Gottfried Lessing pastor primarus in Kamenz, well respected, published theologian, translator and father of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Karl Gotthelf Lessing...
whose collected works he was publishing. He was not so wrong, because Spinoza himself developed a fully rational form of deism
Deism
Deism in religious philosophy is the belief that reason and observation of the natural world, without the need for organized religion, can determine that the universe is the product of an all-powerful creator. According to deists, the creator does not intervene in human affairs or suspend the...
in his main work Ethica, without any knowledge of the later pantheistic reception of his philosophy. Mendelssohn published in his last years his own attitude to Spinoza – not without his misunderstandings, because he was frightened to lose his authority which he still had among rabbis. On his own favor Goethe fashioned himself as a “revolutionary” in his Dichtung und Wahrheit
Dichtung und Wahrheit
Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit is an autobiography by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that comprises the time from the poet's childhood to the days in 1775, when he was about to leave for Weimar....
, while he was very angry with Jacobi because he feared the consequences of the latter's publication using Goethe's poem. This episode caused a reception in which Moses Mendelssohn as a historical protagonist and his philosophy is underestimated.
Nevertheless Moses Mendelssohn had a great influence on other Maskilim and on the Jewish emancipation
Jewish Emancipation
Jewish emancipation was the external and internal process of freeing the Jewish people of Europe, including recognition of their rights as equal citizens, and the formal granting of citizenship as individuals; it occurred gradually between the late 18th century and the early 20th century...
, and on nearly every philosopher discussing the role of the religion within the state in 19th century Western Europe.
The French Revolution & the Early Haskalah Reform of Education
Mendelssohn's dreams about a tolerant state became reality in the new French Constitution of 1791. Berr Isaac Berr, the Ashkenazic representative in the Legislative AssemblyLegislative Assembly (France)
During the French Revolution, the Legislative Assembly was the legislature of France from 1 October 1791 to September 1792. It provided the focus of political debate and revolutionary law-making between the periods of the National Constituent Assembly and of the National Convention.The Legislative...
, praised the French republic as the “Messiah of modern Judaism”, because he had to convince French communities for the new plans of a Jewish reform movement to abandon their autonomy. The French version of Haskalah, called régénération, was more moderate than the Jewish reform movement in Prussia.
While better conditions were provided by the constitution of the French Republic, the conflict between Orthodox Rabbis and wealthy and intellectual laymen of the reform movement became evident with the radical initiatives by Mendelssohn’s friend and student David Friedländer in Prussia. He was the first who followed Mendelssohn's postulations in education, since he founded 1776 together with Isaak Daniel Itzig the Jüdische Freischule für mittellose Berliner Kinder (“Jewish Free School for Impecunious Children in Berlin”) and 1778 the Chevrat Chinuch Ne'arim (“Society for the Education of Knaves”). His attempt of a German translation of the Hebrew prayerbook Sefer ha-Nefesh (1787) which he did for the school, finally became not popular as a ritual reform, because 1799 he went so far to offer his community a “dry baptism” as an affiliation by the Lutheran church. There was a seduction of free-thinking Jews to identify the seclusion from European modern culture with Judaism in itself and it could end up in baptism. As Heinrich Heine
Heinrich Heine
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder by composers such as Robert Schumann...
commented it, some tend to reduce Judaism to a “calamity” and to buy with a conversion to Christianity an “entré billet” for the higher society of the Prussian state. By the end of the 18th century there were a lot of contemporary concepts of enlightenment in different parts of Europe, in which humanism and a secularized state were thought to replace religion at all.
Israel Jacobson
Israel Jacobson
Israel Jacobson was a German philanthropist and, according to Borowitz and Patz in Explaining Reform Judaism , is considered the "father" of the Reform movement in Judaism.-Origins:...
, himself a merchant, but also an engaged pedagogue in charge of a land rabbi in Westphalia, was much more successful than David Friedländer. Like Moses Mendelssohn he regarded education as a religious affair. One reason for his success was the political fact, that Westphalia became part of France. Jacobson was supported by the new government, when he founded 1801 a boy’s school for trade and elementary knowledge in Seesen (a small town near Harz
Harz
The Harz is the highest mountain range in northern Germany and its rugged terrain extends across parts of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. The name Harz derives from the Middle High German word Hardt or Hart , latinized as Hercynia. The legendary Brocken is the highest summit in the Harz...
), called „Institut für arme Juden-Kinder“. The language used during the lessons was German. His concept of pedagogy combined the ideas of Moses Mendelssohn with those of the socially engaged Philantropin school which Basedow
Johann Bernhard Basedow
Johann Bernhard Basedow was a German educational reformer, teacher and writer. He founded the Philanthropinum, a short-lived but influential progressive school in Dessau, and was the author of "Elementarwerk", a popular illustrated textbook for children.-Early years:Basedow was born in Hamburg,...
founded in Dessau, inspired by Rousseau’s ideas about education. 1802 also poor Christian boys were allowed to attend the school and it became one of the first schools, which coeducated children of different faith. Since 1810 religious ceremonies were also held in the first Reform Temple, established on the school’s ground and equipped by an organ. Before 1810 the Jewish community of the town had their celebrations just in a prayer room of the school. Since 1810 Mendelssohn needed the instrument to accompany German and Hebrew songs, sung by the pupils or by the community in the „Jacobstempel“. He adapted these prayers himself to tunes, taken from famous Protestant chorales. In the charge of a rabbi he read the whole service in German according to the ideas of the reformed Protestant rite, and he refused the “medieval” free rhythmic style of chazzan, as it was common use in the other Synagogues. 1811 Israel Jacobson introduced a “confirmation” ceremony of Jewish boys and girls as part of his reformed rite.
Conflicts in Prussia after the Viennese Congress
Since Westphalia came under Prussian rule according to the Congress of ViennaCongress of Vienna
The Congress of Vienna was a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and held in Vienna from September, 1814 to June, 1815. The objective of the Congress was to settle the many issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars,...
1815, the Jacobson family settled to Berlin, where Israel opened a Temple in his own house. The orthodox community of Berlin asked the Prussian authorities to intervene and so his third „Jacobstempel“ was closed. Prussian officers argued, that the law allows only one house of Jewish worship in Berlin. In consequence a reformed service was celebrated as minyan
Minyan
A minyan in Judaism refers to the quorum of ten Jewish adults required for certain religious obligations. According to many non-Orthodox streams of Judaism adult females count in the minyan....
in the house of Jacob Herz Beer. The chant was composed by his son who later became a famous opera composer under the name Giacomo Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer was a noted German opera composer, and the first great exponent of "grand opera." At his peak in the 1830s and 1840s, he was the most famous and successful composer of opera in Europe, yet he is rarely performed today.-Early years:He was born to a Jewish family in Tasdorf , near...
. In opposition to Israel’s radical refuse of the traditional Synagogue chant, Meyerbeer reintegrated the chazzan and the recitation of Pentateuch and Prophets into the reformed rite, so that it became more popular within the community of Berlin.
Johann Gottfried Herder
Johann Gottfried Herder
Johann Gottfried von Herder was a German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic. He is associated with the periods of Enlightenment, Sturm und Drang, and Weimar Classicism.-Biography:...
's appreciation of the Mosaic Ethics was influenced by Mendelssohn’s book Jerusalem as well as by personal exchange with him. It seems that in the tradition of Christian deistic enlightenment the Torah was recognized as an important contribution to the Jewish-Christian civilization, though contemporary Judaism was often compared to the decadent situation, when Aaron created the golden calf (described in Exodus 32), so enlightenment itself was fashioning itself with the archetypical role of Moses. But the contemporary Jewish population was characterized by Herder as a strange Asiatic and selfish "nation" which was always separated from others, not a very original conception which was also popular in the discussions of the National Assembly which insisted that Jewish citizens have to give up their status as a nation, if they want to join the new status as equal citizens.