Moses Mendelssohn

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Moses Mendelssohn
18th-century philosophy
Main interests
Metaphysics · Philosophy of religion
Signature

Moses Mendelssohn (6 September 1729

theologian. His writings and ideas on Jews and the Jewish religion and identity were a central element in the development of the Haskalah
, or 'Jewish Enlightenment' of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Born to a poor Jewish family in Dessau, Principality of Anhalt, and originally destined for a rabbinical career, Mendelssohn educated himself in German thought and literature. Through his writings on philosophy and religion he came to be regarded as a leading cultural figure of his time by both Christian and Jewish inhabitants of German-speaking Europe and beyond. His involvement in the Berlin textile industry formed the foundation of his family's wealth.

His descendants include the composers Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn; Felix's son, chemist Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy; Fanny's grandsons, Paul and Kurt Hensel; and the founders of the Mendelssohn & Co. banking house.

Life

Youth

Moses Mendelssohn was born in

Abraham Mendelssohn wrote in 1829 (to Felix), "My father felt that the name Moses Ben Mendel Dessau would handicap him in gaining the needed access to those who had the better education at their disposal. Without any fear that his own father would take offense, my father assumed the name Mendelssohn. The change, though a small one, was decisive."[2]

Mendel was an impoverished

David Fränkel, who, besides teaching him the Bible and Talmud, introduced to him the philosophy of Maimonides. In 1743 Fränkel received a call to Berlin, and a few months later Moses followed him.[3] Moses, age 14, "entered Berlin at the Rosenthaler Tor, the only gate in the city wall through which Jews (and cattle) were allowed to pass."[4] "Mendelssohn enrolled in Frankel's exacting seminary, where the program consisted of unending rote repetitions of early medieval texts, interpretations thereof, elaborations of Talmudic law, and copious commentary accumulated over the centuries."[5]

A refugee Polish Jew, Israel Zamosz, taught him mathematics,[6] and a young Jewish physician taught him Latin. He was, however, mainly self-taught. He learned to spell and to philosophize at the same time (according to the historian Graetz). With his scanty earnings he bought a Latin copy of John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and mastered it with the aid of a Latin dictionary. He then made the acquaintance of Aaron Solomon Gumperz, who taught him basic French and English. In 1750, a wealthy Jewish silk-merchant, Isaac Bernhard,[7] appointed him to teach his children. Mendelssohn soon won the confidence of Bernhard, who made the young student successively his bookkeeper and his partner.[3]

It was possibly Gumperz who introduced Mendelssohn to

Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) an anonymous satire, Pope a Metaphysician (Pope ein Metaphysiker), which turned out to be the joint work of Lessing and Mendelssohn.[3]

Early prominence as philosopher and critic

Mendelssohn became (1756–1759) the leading spirit of

Protected Jew (Schutzjude), which assured his right to undisturbed residence in Berlin.[3][9]

As a result of his correspondence with Abbt, Mendelssohn resolved to write on the immortality of the soul. Materialistic views were at the time rampant and fashionable, and faith in immortality was at a low ebb. At this favourable juncture appeared Phädon oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele (Phaedo or On the Immortality of Souls; 1767). Modelled on Plato's dialogue of the same name, Mendelssohn's work possessed some of the charm of its Greek exemplar and impressed the German world with its beauty and lucidity of style.[10] Phaedo was an immediate success, and besides being one of the most widely read books of its time in German was speedily translated into several European languages,[10] including English. The author was hailed as the "German Plato", or the "German Socrates"; royal and other aristocratic friends showered attentions on him, and it was said that "no stranger who came to Berlin failed to pay his personal respects to the German Socrates."[11]

Lavater

Judah L. Magnes Museum

So far, Mendelssohn had devoted his talents to philosophy and criticism; now, however, an incident turned the current of his life in the direction of the cause of Judaism. In April 1763, Johann Kaspar Lavater, then a young theology-student from Zurich, made a trip to Berlin, where he visited the already famous Jewish philosopher with some companions. They insisted on Mendelssohn telling them his views on Jesus and managed to get from him the statement, that, provided the historical Jesus had kept himself and his theology strictly within limits of orthodox Judaism, Mendelssohn "respected the morality of Jesus' character."[12] Six years later, in October 1769, Lavater sent Mendelssohn his German translation of Charles Bonnet's essay on Christian Evidences, with a preface where he publicly challenged Mendelssohn to refute Bonnet or if he could not then to "do what wisdom, the love of truth and honesty must bid him, what a Socrates would have done if he had read the book and found it unanswerable."[13] Mendelssohn answered in an open letter in December 1769: "Suppose there were living among my contemporaries a Confucius or a Solon, I could, according to the principles of my faith, love and admire the great man without falling into the ridiculous idea that I must convert a Solon or a Confucius."[14]

The ongoing public controversy cost Mendelssohn much time, energy and strength.

Lavater later described Mendelssohn in his book on physiognomy, Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe (1775–1778), as "a companionable, brilliant soul, with piercing eyes, the body of an Aesop [who was traditionally considered ugly]—a man of keen insight, exquisite taste and wide erudition [...] frank and open-hearted"[14]—ending his public praise with the wish of Mendelssohn recognizing, "together with Plato and Moses... the crucified glory of Christ." When, in 1775 the Swiss-German Jews, faced with the threat of expulsion, turned to Mendelssohn and asked him to intervene on their behalf with "his friend" Lavater, Lavater, after receiving Mendelssohn's letter, promptly and effectively secured their stay.

Illness

In March 1771 Mendelssohn's health deteriorated so badly that Marcus Elieser Bloch, his doctor, decided his patient had to give up philosophy, at least temporarily.[15] After a short and restless sleep one evening, Mendelssohn found himself incapable of moving and had the feeling of something lashing his neck with fiery rods, his heart was palpitating and he was in an extreme anxiety, yet fully conscious. This spell was then broken suddenly by some external stimulation. Attacks of this kind recurred. The cause of his disease was ascribed to the mental stress due to his theological controversy with Lavater.[16] However, this sort of attack, in milder form, had presumably occurred many years earlier. Bloch diagnosed the disease as due to 'congestion of blood in the brain' (a meaningless diagnosis in modern medical practice as such congestion is anatomically impossible), and after some controversy this diagnosis was also accepted by the famous Hanoverian court physician, Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann, an admirer of Mendelssohn.[16] In retrospect, his illness might be diagnosed as a heart-rhythm-problem (such as atrial fibrillation) and/or a mild form of familial dysautonomia, a hereditary disease of Ashkenazi Jews, which often brings with it a curvature of the spine and epilepsy-like symptoms in times of stress.[17]

Mendelssohn was treated with China bark, blood lettings on the foot, leeches applied to the ears, enemas, foot baths, lemonade and mainly vegetarian food. “No mental stress whatsoever” was ordered. However, although he remained subject to periods of setback, he eventually recovered sufficiently to write the major works of his later career.[16]

Death

Moses Mendelssohn's (reconstructed) grave in Berlin

Mendelssohn died on 4 January 1786 as the result (it was thought at the time) of a cold contracted while carrying a manuscript (his reply to Jacobi, titled To Lessing's Friends (An die Freunde Lessings)) to his publishers on New Year's Eve; Jacobi was held by some to have been responsible for his death.[8] He was buried in the Jewish Cemetery of Berlin.[18] The translation of the Hebrew inscription on his gravestone (see picture to the right) reads: "H[ere] r[ests] / the wise R[eb] Moses of Dessau / born on the 12th of Elul 5489 [6 September 1729] / died on Wednesday the 5th of Shevat [4 January] / and buried the next morning on Thursday 6th/ 5546 [5 January 1786] / M[ay] H[is] S[oul be] B[ound up in the] B[ond of eternal] L[ife]".[19] Although the cemetery was largely destroyed during the Nazi era, after German reunification, in 2007-2008, it was reestablished with monuments to its past, including a recreation of Mendelssohn's gravestone.

Philosophical work

Works on religion and civil society

Jewish Museum, Berlin
Mendelssohn’s Ritual Laws of the Jews, 1826 edition, in the collection of the Jewish Museum of Switzerland.

It was after the breakdown of his health that Mendelssohn decided to "dedicate the remains of my strength for the benefit of my children or a goodly portion of my nation"—which he did by trying to bring the Jews closer to "culture, from which my nation, alas! is kept in such a distance, that one might well despair of ever overcoming it". One of the means of doing this was by "giving them a better translation of the holy books than they previously had".

Pentateuch and other parts of the Bible. This work was called the Bi'ur (the explanation) (1783) and also contained a commentary, only that on Exodus having been written by Mendelssohn himself. The translation was in an elegant High German, designed to allow Jews to learn the language faster. Most of the German Jews in that period spoke Yiddish and many were literate in Hebrew (the language of Jewish scripture, liturgy, and scholarship). The commentary was also thoroughly rabbinic, quoting mainly from medieval exegetes but also from Talmud-era midrashim. Mendelssohn is also believed to be behind the foundation of the first modern public school for Jewish boys, "Freyschule für Knaben", in Berlin in 1778 by one of his most ardent pupils, David Friedländer
, where both religious and worldly subjects were taught.

Mendelssohn also tried to better the Jews' situation in general by furthering their rights and acceptance. He induced Christian Wilhelm von Dohm to publish in 1781 his work, On the Civil Amelioration of the Condition of the Jews, which played a significant part in the rise of tolerance. Mendelssohn himself published a German translation of the Vindiciae Judaeorum by Menasseh Ben Israel.[14]

The interest caused by these actions led Mendelssohn to publish his most important contribution to the problems connected with the position of Judaism in a Gentile world. This was

Jerusalem (1783; Eng. trans. 1838 and 1852). It is a forcible plea for freedom of conscience, described by Kant as "an irrefutable book".[14]
Mendelssohn wrote:

Brothers, if you care for true piety, let us not feign agreement, where diversity is evidently the plan and purpose of Providence. None of us thinks and feels exactly like his fellow man: why do we wish to deceive each other with delusive words?[21]

Its basic thrust is that the state has no right to interfere with the religion of its citizens, Jews included. While it proclaims the mandatory character of Jewish law for all Jews (including, based on Mendelssohn's understanding of the New Testament, those converted to Christianity), it does not grant the rabbinate the right to punish Jews for deviating from it. He maintained that Judaism was less a "divine need, than a revealed life". Jerusalem concludes with the cry "Love truth, love peace!"—in a quote from Zacharias 8:19.

Kant called this "the proclamation of a great reform, which, however, will be slow in manifestation and in progress, and which will affect not only your people but others as well." Mendelssohn asserted the pragmatic principle of the possible plurality of truths: that just as various nations need different constitutions—to one a monarchy, to another a republic, may be the most congenial to the national genius—so individuals may need different religions. The test of religion is its effect on conduct. This is the moral of Lessing's Nathan the Wise (Nathan der Weise), the hero of which is undoubtedly Mendelssohn, and in which the parable of the three rings is the epitome of the pragmatic position.[14]

To Mendelssohn his theory represented a strengthening bond to Judaism. But in the first part of the 19th century, the criticism of Jewish

catholicism; for the Talmud is, in fact, the catholicism of the Jews."[22]

Later years and legacy

Mendelssohn grew ever more famous, and counted among his friends many of the great figures of his time. But his final years were overshadowed and saddened by the so-called

atheist"—something which Lessing was accused of being anyway by religious circles.[23]

This led to an exchange of letters between Jacobi and Mendelssohn which showed they had hardly any common ground. Mendelssohn then published his Morgenstunden oder Vorlesungen über das Dasein Gottes (Morning hours or lectures about God's existence), seemingly a series of lectures to his oldest son, his son-in-law and a young friend, usually held "in the morning hours", in which he explained his personal philosophical world-view, his own understanding of Spinoza and Lessing's "purified" (geläutert) pantheism. But almost simultaneously with the publication of this book in 1785, Jacobi published extracts of his and Mendelssohn's letters as Briefe über die Lehre Spinozas, stating publicly that Lessing was a self-confessed "pantheist" in the sense of "atheist". Mendelssohn was thus drawn into a poisonous literary controversy, and found himself attacked from all sides, including former friends or acquaintances such as

Johann Gottfried von Herder and Johann Georg Hamann
. Mendelssohn's contribution to this debate, To Lessing's Friends (An die Freunde Lessings) (1786), was his last work, completed a few days before his death.

Mendelssohn's complete works have been published in 19 volumes (in the original languages) (Stuttgart, 1971 ff., ed. A. Altmann and others)

Family

See also: Mendelssohn family
Medal honoring Mendelssohn

Mendelssohn had

Friedrich von Schlegel), Recha and Henriette, all gifted women. Recha's only grandson (son of Heinrich Beer, brother of the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer), was born and educated as a Jew, but died very young, together with his parents, apparently from an epidemic.[citation needed] Joseph Mendelssohn's son Alexander (d. 1871) was the last male descendant of Moses Mendelssohn to practice Judaism.[14]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Hebrew calendar 12 Elul 5489

References

Citations

  1. S2CID 71750767
    .
  2. ISBN 0 521 82603 9
  3. ^ a b c d Abrahams 1911, p. 120.
  4. ^ Elon, Amos, The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743-1933 (New York: Picador, 2002), p. 1.
  5. ^ Elon, Amos, The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743-1933 (New York: Picador, 2002), pp. 33-34.
  6. ^ Adam Shear,"Jehudah Halevi's Kuzari in the Haskalah", p. 79; "Zamość, Yisra’el ben Mosheh ha-Levi" in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, accessed 31 October 2017.
  7. ^ "Textiles".
  8. ^ a b Dahlstrom (2008)
  9. ISBN 9780805059649
    .
  10. ^ a b Elon (2002), p. 40.
  11. ^ Abrahams 1911, pp. 120–121.
  12. ^ Moses Mendelssohn, Public Letter to Lavater, 12 December 1769 (Berlin 1770)
  13. ^ Lavater(1774), p. 2 .
  14. ^ a b c d e f g Abrahams 1911, p. 121.
  15. ^ Bloch (1774), pp. 60-71
  16. ^ a b c Brand, 1974
  17. ^ Tree (2007), p. 69, n.143, medical analysis by Dr. Channa Maayan, Hadassah Hospital, Jerusalem, Israel.
  18. ^ "Visit Berlin".
  19. 1 Samuel
    , 25:29
  20. ^ Moses Mendelssohn, private letter to August Hennings, 29 July 1779. Cited in Schoeps (2009), pp. 60-61
  21. ^ cited in Momigliano (1987), p. 158
  22. ^ Heine, Heinrich (1959). Religion and Philosophy in Germany: A Fragment (1959), Beacon Press, p. 94.
  23. ^ Altmann (1973), pp. 733 ff.
  24. ^ "The Jerusalem Post, Jpost.com". 31 July 2017. Retrieved 2 August 2021.

Attribution

Sources

External links

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