JACOB JR, MY JEWISH WORLD. JUDAISM: RELIGION, CULTURE, NATION. PART II
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| Moses Mendelssohn |
Thursday, Tammuz 1, 5776. July 7, 2016.
Shalom! World.
Moses Mendelssohn and the Jewish religion.
Mendelssohn is rightfully considered the founder of modern Jewish thought. He invents the modern idea that Judaism is a religion. Yet his argument is fraught with the fundamental tension that would and still does define much of modern Jewish thought: religion is a modern German Protestant category that Judaism does not quite fit into. Protestant notion simply as the view that religion denotes a sphere of life separate and distinct from all others, and that this sphere is largely private and not public, voluntary and not compulsory.
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| Gotthold Ephraim Lessing |
Mendelssohn, friend of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.
The Grosse Hamburguer Strasse cemetery today in the former East Berlin, one will see a reerected headstone marking Mendelssohn's grave - the only gravestone standig since the Nazis destroyed the rest of the cemetery's headstones. Across from the cemetery is Berlin's Jewish high school, founded in 1862, whose building was used by the Nazis as a deportation center for Jews. Mendelssohn's image is engraved in stone on the building, with the inscrition "Moses Mendelssohn, Philosopher and Friend of Lessing." Ths phrase captures what is clearly still taken to be Mendelssohn's legacy - that he was a friend of the great Enlightenment Christian philosopher Lessing (1729-81). On the face of it, it is strange that Mendelssohn's life should be memorialized by who his friend was, perhaps leading one to conclude that Mendelssohn's significance derives only from what must be Lessing's monumental greatness.
Mendelssohn was born in Dessau. He received a traditional education and was a promising Talmudic scholar. In 1743, at age fourteen, he went to Berlin to continue his studies. With the help of other Jews interested in Enlightenment ideas, Mendelssohn was able to teach himself German, Latin, Greek, English and French as well as mathematics, logic, and philosophy. He quickly became part of the Jewish Enlightenment, which was attempting to make reforms in Jewish education in conjuction with some of the German Enlightenment's ideas. Jews and non-Jews alike knew him as the "Socrates of Berlin." However, that despite his fame, Mendelssohn, like all other Jews, had no civil rights. Mendelssohn would have had to enter Berlin through the Rosenthaler gate because this was the only gate through which Jews and cattle were allow to pass. Second, when Mendelssohn received a permanent personal visa to remain in Berlin in 1763, it could not be transferred to his wife and children if he died.
A movement away from the feudal and corporate structure of medieval Europe toward a unified Prussian state went hand in hand with the German Enlightenment's argument for a universal, rational ideal. One may expected sympathy for the Jews and claims for their full integration into such a unified state. But instead the Jewish community was increasing accused of being a "state within the state" that could not, by definition, be integrated into the Prussian one. As Prussia consolidated into a state, the Jews were especially resented for their moneylending practices. Yet Jews had no others occupational options beyond moneylending and other commercial pursuits. In Mendelssohn's day, Jews were still banned from artisian trades, farming, and landowership as well as military service.
Christian Wilhelm Dohm, a journalist, political writer, and Prussian civil servant, brought great hope to the prospects for Jewish emancipation when in 1781 he published, at Mendelssoh's behest, On the Civic Improvement of the Jews, arguing for the extension of civil rights to Jews. Dohm suggested that the Jewish tendency for "fraud and usury" was a result of their degraded political situation, which began after the Romans destroyed the Second temple in 70 CE. He pointed out that prior to the Romans conquest of Jeruslem, the Jewish nation was politically autonomous as well as religiously, culturally, and economically dynamic. The loss of Jewish political autonomy brought with it what Dohm called Talmudic "sophistry" and an obsession with ceremonial minutia. As he put it: "Certainly, the unnatural oppression in which the Jews have lived for so many centuries has contributed not just to their moral corrupcion, but to the degeneration of their religious laws from their original goodness and utility." From this analysis Dohm concluded that if they were given civil rights, Jews could and actually would improve enough to be worthy citizens of the state.
Dohm was willing, as others are not, to recognize that "the Jew is more a man than a Jew." Mendelssohn speaks of the civic admission of the Jews rather than their civic improvement, and he stresses that Jews should receive civil rights as individuals and not as a corporate entity. This last point goes to the heart of the difference between Mendelssohn and Dohm, and is also the core of Mendelssohn assertion that Judaism is a religion. Mendelssohn defines the very category od Jewish religion by separating Judaism from politics. His claim that Jewish law is in no way political. This is because, Mendelssohn argues, religion by definition, and not just the Jewish religion, is not political.
Mendelssohn concurs with Dohm's view that while religion is separate from the state, it is aldso an important means through which citizens of the state develop civic virtue. As we saw, Dowm suggests that once Jews are better able to develop habits as citizens, their religion will return naturally to its original goodness, which had been corrupted by the rabbis. For this reason Dohm is willing, unlike many of his contemporaries, to concede that Judaism is a religion like Lutheranism, Calvinism, or Catholicism. Mendelssohn directly rejects Dohm's valorization of Rome's victory over Jerusalem, amintaining that rather than Jerusalem requiring Rome, Rome in fact has something to learn from Jerusalem! In plundering the Temple, the conquerors of Jerusalem found the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenat, and took them for idols of the Jews. They saw everything with the eyes of the barbarians, and from their point of view."
Mendelssohn considers the human propensity toward idolatry a permanent part of the human condition. Unlike some of his contemporaries, such as Lessing, Mendelssohn rejects the notion that the human species progress for the good. As he puts it, "Individual man advances, but mankind continually fluctuates within fixed limits, while maintaining, on the whole, about the same degree of morality in all periods - the same amount of religio and irreligion, of virtue and vice, of felicity and misery." Mendelssohn defends Judaism in Jerusalem by emphasizing the point that he had made preciously in his response to Dohm: religion by definition cannot be coerced, because "the right to our convictions is inalienable." In his historical and political context, Mendelssohn of course does not argue, and could not have done so, that Judaism is superior to Christianity. But he does explicitly suggest that Christianity, as the child of Judaism, still has much to learn from Judaism and especially from Jewish law.
Mendelssohn claims that is not a religion like Christianity because Judaism demands action, not belief. But Mendelssohn also defines Jewish law in completely apolitical terms - that is, precisely in contrast to the laws of the state. As he observes: "The religion (Judaism), as religion, knows of no punishment, no other penalty than the one the remorseful sinner voluntarily imposes on himself. It knows of no coerction, uses only the staff (called) gentleness, and affects only mind and heart." So if Jews don't follow Jewish law because of belief, and if Jews don't follow Jewish law because it is in some sense political, why do or should Jews follow the law? Kant wrote, that "it's necessary that every religion have unrestricted freedom of thought". In Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, published in 1793, Kant not only ignores Mendelssohn's arguments about Judaism but also claims that Judaism is not properly speaking a religion at all because it is only a "collection of mere statutory laws." Kant refuses to accept the idea that Christianity is the child of Judaism. Mendelssohn attempted to separate the individual Jew politically from the Jewish community, he did not separate the individual Jew theologically from the Jewish community.
No single thinkler did more to define the modern concept of religion than Schleiermacher, the founder of liberal Protestant theology. Schleiermacher is best known for On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, published in 1799. Schleiermacher aleges that the essence of religion constitutes a unique and separate dimension of experience, by definition, separate from all other spheres of life, such as politics, philosophy, morality, and science, and is characterized by Schleiermacher calls intuition and feeling: "religion's essence is neither thinkung nor acting, but intuition and feeling." In order to become citizens, Scheiermacher states, Jews need to repudiate their hope for a messianic future in which Jews would be reunited as one people, and they also need to submit to Prussian law, which would relegate Jewish law to a secondary, cerimonial status at best. In others words, political rights for Jews means Judaism must become a religion. in Schleiermacher's sense, assigned to its own distict sphere of private feeling.
Mendelssohn seems to reject the German Protestant definition of religion offered by Schleiermacher, who argues, "Religion's essence is neither thinking nor acting, but intuition and feeling." Mendelssohn's words, "Among all the prescriptions and ordinances of the Mosaic law, there is not a single one which says: You shall believe or not believe. They all say: You shall do or not do..."
Mendelssohn wants to have it both ways: Judaism is a religion of law requiring action and stimulating contemplation. He provides a traditional conception of the Jewish obligation to obey Jewish law: "He who is not born into the law need not bind himself to the law; but he who is born into the law must live according to the law; and die according to the law."
The Modern Orthodoxy
In March 1812, the status of Jews in Prussia changed. Jews were declared citizens of the Prussian state and were permitted to hold academic positions, although not governamental ones. Special taxes and occupational restrictions for Jews were abolished. This change in status came not from Dohm's, Mendelssohn's, or Freidländer's efforts but instead stemmed from the humiliating defeat of Prussia by Napoleon I in 1806. The edict of 1812 reflected the French notion of equality, and emancipations to the contrary, they would be associated with the French and characterized once again as foreigners. Yet in immediate aftermath of the some extent actualized. The question now was: What value is there to Judaism in an age in which Jews don't have to be defined as Jews, at least from the perspective of the modern nation-state?
The eminent historian of the Jews, Jacob Katz, notes that after emancipation, German Jews and German Jewish culture could have taken three possible roads in answering this question. First, Jews could have simply left Judaism behind and joined the German cultural tradition. Second< Jews could have used German culture to refigure Judaism and Jewish culture in light of the modern era. And third, in Katz's words, "Jewish novelists could have depicted contemporary Jewish society as they experienced it, or the Jewish past as they had learned it, and spun their tales around Jewish characters. As Katz puts it, "Jews had been emancipated; Jewishness was not." The citizenship meant the subordination of any communal identity to the state and the relegation of religion to the sphere of private sentimment. In Comte de Clermont-Tonnerre's well-known words to the French assembly in 1789, "One must refusse everything to the Jews as a nation but onemust give them everything as individulas; they must become citizens."
Orthodox Judaism identifies itself as the movement that recognizes the eternal, unchanging, nature of Jewish law. Orthodox Judaism defined Judaism as law. What is today called Orthodox Judaism also has its roots in nineteenth-century Germany, where it defined itself by rejecting the idea that history had somethin to teach modern Jews about the eternal truth of Judaism and Jewish law. While orthodoxy has historically defined itself against liberal Judaism and its relegation of Judaism to a modern religion, we will see below that modern orthodoxy is actually predicated not on a rejection but rather an intensification of Mendelssohn's premise that Judaism is a religion that in no conflicts with the sovereignty of the modern nation-state. Orthodox Judaism, like Jewish religion more generally, is a modern invention.
Christian Wilhelm Dohm, a journalist, political writer, and Prussian civil servant, brought great hope to the prospects for Jewish emancipation when in 1781 he published, at Mendelssoh's behest, On the Civic Improvement of the Jews, arguing for the extension of civil rights to Jews. Dohm suggested that the Jewish tendency for "fraud and usury" was a result of their degraded political situation, which began after the Romans destroyed the Second temple in 70 CE. He pointed out that prior to the Romans conquest of Jeruslem, the Jewish nation was politically autonomous as well as religiously, culturally, and economically dynamic. The loss of Jewish political autonomy brought with it what Dohm called Talmudic "sophistry" and an obsession with ceremonial minutia. As he put it: "Certainly, the unnatural oppression in which the Jews have lived for so many centuries has contributed not just to their moral corrupcion, but to the degeneration of their religious laws from their original goodness and utility." From this analysis Dohm concluded that if they were given civil rights, Jews could and actually would improve enough to be worthy citizens of the state.
Dohm was willing, as others are not, to recognize that "the Jew is more a man than a Jew." Mendelssohn speaks of the civic admission of the Jews rather than their civic improvement, and he stresses that Jews should receive civil rights as individuals and not as a corporate entity. This last point goes to the heart of the difference between Mendelssohn and Dohm, and is also the core of Mendelssohn assertion that Judaism is a religion. Mendelssohn defines the very category od Jewish religion by separating Judaism from politics. His claim that Jewish law is in no way political. This is because, Mendelssohn argues, religion by definition, and not just the Jewish religion, is not political.
Mendelssohn concurs with Dohm's view that while religion is separate from the state, it is aldso an important means through which citizens of the state develop civic virtue. As we saw, Dowm suggests that once Jews are better able to develop habits as citizens, their religion will return naturally to its original goodness, which had been corrupted by the rabbis. For this reason Dohm is willing, unlike many of his contemporaries, to concede that Judaism is a religion like Lutheranism, Calvinism, or Catholicism. Mendelssohn directly rejects Dohm's valorization of Rome's victory over Jerusalem, amintaining that rather than Jerusalem requiring Rome, Rome in fact has something to learn from Jerusalem! In plundering the Temple, the conquerors of Jerusalem found the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenat, and took them for idols of the Jews. They saw everything with the eyes of the barbarians, and from their point of view."
Mendelssohn considers the human propensity toward idolatry a permanent part of the human condition. Unlike some of his contemporaries, such as Lessing, Mendelssohn rejects the notion that the human species progress for the good. As he puts it, "Individual man advances, but mankind continually fluctuates within fixed limits, while maintaining, on the whole, about the same degree of morality in all periods - the same amount of religio and irreligion, of virtue and vice, of felicity and misery." Mendelssohn defends Judaism in Jerusalem by emphasizing the point that he had made preciously in his response to Dohm: religion by definition cannot be coerced, because "the right to our convictions is inalienable." In his historical and political context, Mendelssohn of course does not argue, and could not have done so, that Judaism is superior to Christianity. But he does explicitly suggest that Christianity, as the child of Judaism, still has much to learn from Judaism and especially from Jewish law.
Mendelssohn claims that is not a religion like Christianity because Judaism demands action, not belief. But Mendelssohn also defines Jewish law in completely apolitical terms - that is, precisely in contrast to the laws of the state. As he observes: "The religion (Judaism), as religion, knows of no punishment, no other penalty than the one the remorseful sinner voluntarily imposes on himself. It knows of no coerction, uses only the staff (called) gentleness, and affects only mind and heart." So if Jews don't follow Jewish law because of belief, and if Jews don't follow Jewish law because it is in some sense political, why do or should Jews follow the law? Kant wrote, that "it's necessary that every religion have unrestricted freedom of thought". In Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, published in 1793, Kant not only ignores Mendelssohn's arguments about Judaism but also claims that Judaism is not properly speaking a religion at all because it is only a "collection of mere statutory laws." Kant refuses to accept the idea that Christianity is the child of Judaism. Mendelssohn attempted to separate the individual Jew politically from the Jewish community, he did not separate the individual Jew theologically from the Jewish community.
No single thinkler did more to define the modern concept of religion than Schleiermacher, the founder of liberal Protestant theology. Schleiermacher is best known for On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, published in 1799. Schleiermacher aleges that the essence of religion constitutes a unique and separate dimension of experience, by definition, separate from all other spheres of life, such as politics, philosophy, morality, and science, and is characterized by Schleiermacher calls intuition and feeling: "religion's essence is neither thinkung nor acting, but intuition and feeling." In order to become citizens, Scheiermacher states, Jews need to repudiate their hope for a messianic future in which Jews would be reunited as one people, and they also need to submit to Prussian law, which would relegate Jewish law to a secondary, cerimonial status at best. In others words, political rights for Jews means Judaism must become a religion. in Schleiermacher's sense, assigned to its own distict sphere of private feeling.
Mendelssohn seems to reject the German Protestant definition of religion offered by Schleiermacher, who argues, "Religion's essence is neither thinking nor acting, but intuition and feeling." Mendelssohn's words, "Among all the prescriptions and ordinances of the Mosaic law, there is not a single one which says: You shall believe or not believe. They all say: You shall do or not do..."
Mendelssohn wants to have it both ways: Judaism is a religion of law requiring action and stimulating contemplation. He provides a traditional conception of the Jewish obligation to obey Jewish law: "He who is not born into the law need not bind himself to the law; but he who is born into the law must live according to the law; and die according to the law."
The Modern Orthodoxy
In March 1812, the status of Jews in Prussia changed. Jews were declared citizens of the Prussian state and were permitted to hold academic positions, although not governamental ones. Special taxes and occupational restrictions for Jews were abolished. This change in status came not from Dohm's, Mendelssohn's, or Freidländer's efforts but instead stemmed from the humiliating defeat of Prussia by Napoleon I in 1806. The edict of 1812 reflected the French notion of equality, and emancipations to the contrary, they would be associated with the French and characterized once again as foreigners. Yet in immediate aftermath of the some extent actualized. The question now was: What value is there to Judaism in an age in which Jews don't have to be defined as Jews, at least from the perspective of the modern nation-state?
The eminent historian of the Jews, Jacob Katz, notes that after emancipation, German Jews and German Jewish culture could have taken three possible roads in answering this question. First, Jews could have simply left Judaism behind and joined the German cultural tradition. Second< Jews could have used German culture to refigure Judaism and Jewish culture in light of the modern era. And third, in Katz's words, "Jewish novelists could have depicted contemporary Jewish society as they experienced it, or the Jewish past as they had learned it, and spun their tales around Jewish characters. As Katz puts it, "Jews had been emancipated; Jewishness was not." The citizenship meant the subordination of any communal identity to the state and the relegation of religion to the sphere of private sentimment. In Comte de Clermont-Tonnerre's well-known words to the French assembly in 1789, "One must refusse everything to the Jews as a nation but onemust give them everything as individulas; they must become citizens."
Orthodox Judaism identifies itself as the movement that recognizes the eternal, unchanging, nature of Jewish law. Orthodox Judaism defined Judaism as law. What is today called Orthodox Judaism also has its roots in nineteenth-century Germany, where it defined itself by rejecting the idea that history had somethin to teach modern Jews about the eternal truth of Judaism and Jewish law. While orthodoxy has historically defined itself against liberal Judaism and its relegation of Judaism to a modern religion, we will see below that modern orthodoxy is actually predicated not on a rejection but rather an intensification of Mendelssohn's premise that Judaism is a religion that in no conflicts with the sovereignty of the modern nation-state. Orthodox Judaism, like Jewish religion more generally, is a modern invention.
Shalom! Aleichem.
Suporte cultural: Jacob Jr. B.A.C.E., avec L'Integration d'Association avec Israel et dans le Monde/Cz.
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