Tag: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy

Moses Mendelssohn’s Hebrew politics. How tolerant and diverse should a society be? Are there limits to the views that a society should accept? Given the events of 2016-2017, such questions stand at the forefront of American civic life. By the 1750s he was writing in German and Hebrew on philosophy and Judaism, and by the 1760s he had become not only his era’s leading Jewish thinker, but also a central figure in the late Enlightenment. German intellectuals in the 1780s wrestled with the question of whether Jews should receive the civic rights available to non-Jews, and Mendelssohn played a central role in these debates, addressing widespread suspicions that Jews were simply too different to be integrated into Prussian society. According to Mendelssohn, rather than requiring a fixed creed, Judaism demands only a set of practices that direct adherents to reflect upon matters such as God, empowering each individual to formulate her own religious beliefs. By following practices such as traditional dietary laws and celebrating liturgical events such as the Sabbath, Jews would find themselves frequently reflecting on the deity who commanded such behavior, and this reflection would provide occasions for individuals to form — and, when necessary, reimagine — their own conceptions of God. What is less well known is that Mendelssohn went further in his Hebrew writings, arguing that Judaism could also produce engaged citizens committed to the common good. Even if religious traditions can generate a commitment to the common good, this is hardly the only possible outcome.