Mendelssohn’s philosophy, Mendelssohn’s grandchildren
According to Daniel B. Schwartz in his study of The First Modern Jew – the historian is referring to Baruch Spinoza as that trailblazer – he discusses the descendants of German-Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, who was influenced by the heretic of Amsterdam. “Of Mendelssohn’s six children,” Schwartz writes, “four converted [to Christianity], all following their father’s death in 1786. Of his grandchildren, only one went to his grave as a Jew.”
Was Mendelssohn’s philosophy responsible for the conversions to Christianity of his descendants?
The blame of the mass apostasy of Mendelssohn’s descendants does rest, for some, on his philosophy. There is precedent for this assessment in the work of historian Yitzhak “Fritz” Baer in his dichotomy between Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews. Baer, a German Jew who made his mark of brilliance at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, blamed the conversion of Jews to Catholicism in Spain on their study of Aristotelian philosophy which, the historian believed, weakened their spiritual resolve. This was opposed to the Talmud-centered folk piety of medieval Ashkenazi Jews who chose martyrdom rather than conversion.
Many centuries before Baer in Muslim Spain, Hebrew poet Judah Halevi argued in his Kuzari that Revelation as an historical event dispensed with the need to reconcile Torah and Aristotle. But one could argue that Moses Mendelssohn was not Moses Maimonides, that 18th century Berlin was not medieval Cairo, and that the attempt by Mendelssohn to confront Kant led to a Jewish crisis worse than the Jewish struggle over Rambam’s philosophical works. For an early modern thinker like Catholic theologian and mathematician Blaise Pascal there was only one choice: “Not the God of the philosophers but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
But that is only part of the picture. While Mendelssohn’s philosophy was certainly the outcome of a confrontation with the German Enlightenment, it was not a radical rejection of Judaism – in fact, it was an heroic defense of the Jewish faith – and Mendelssohn remained an observant Jew his whole life. His classic work of Jewish philosophy, Jerusalem (1783), is conservative and careful and a far cry from the pantheism of Spinoza. In this work, Mendelssohn argues that Kant and the German Enlightenment’s understanding of Judaism are warped. Rather than viewing Judaism as coercive laws and superstitions that in no way elevates the individual morally, ethically or spiritually, Mendelssohn argues that it is Judaism that is a “revealed legislation” and not a “revealed religion.”
Mendelssohn is no atheist and, in fact, he argues that Judaism is the epitome of the “Religion of Reason,” purged of the dogma and superstition that dominated Christianity. He is on the mark despite the fact that he reinterprets the nature of Revelation in a way that would not please traditionalists.
Mendelssohn seems to neutralize that nature of the Covenant based on the relationship between God and God’s Chosen People. Still, he argues against religious coercion and for religious tolerance and is brave enough to confront those who would demean Judaism – and he would defend Judaism against Christianity. I do not see, at first glance, how this would lead to apostasy. It seems just the opposite.
A more cogent argument is a social one. Mendelssohn’s involvement in Prussian society, being dubbed the “German Socrates,” broke down the barriers which for centuries separated Jews from the non-Jewish majority. Mendelssohn’s acceptance by the German Enlightenment – and especially by his close friend G.E. Lessing – integrated the Jewish philosopher into a modern world he would not have know of had he been born 50 years earlier. The pressure on Mendelssohn by Christians to convert was intense and he had the fortitude to reject these calls. His children did not have that fortitude. Under the pressure of Prussian society they were unable to resist the temptation to abandon their father’s modern approach to