(Continued from the previously posted Part I.)
In his defense of the Jewish cause to the Gentile world, Moses Mendelssohn produced a giant effect on the Jewish, as well as on the Christian community, which has perhaps become his most historically significant and lasting legacy. His Jerusalem, oder über religiöse Macht und Judenthum, written for Jews, Christians and Moslems alike, details the separate roles of Church and State, and defines Mosaic Law to be coherent with Reason, as defined by Plato (a concept which was to revolutionize Judaism).
Throughout his life, Mendelssohn had to defend his unique middle ground position between the Jews and the Christians from attacks from both sides. Famously challenged by the Swiss theologian Johann Lavater to convert to Christianity, unless he could refute arguments for it, he resented the challenge and the whole controversy around it, but he felt obliged to reassert his Jewish faith, ending up with a nervous breakdown. In the meantime, he was challenged by the Jews, who saw his “Interfaith” effort as a threat to Judaism. Although his secular, philosophical, and religious works were in tune, more or less, with his conception of Orthodox Judaism, his ideas were rejected by the fundamentalist rabbis of his time, especially among the Hasidic Jews of Eastern Europe, who saw no connection of reason with the Mosaic law (see my discussion of Hasidism in a previous entry). They particularly objected to his ideas about a natural and necessary compatibility of religious upbringing with secular knowledge, and that any man, regardless of his faith, had a civil obligation to the whole of society (envisaging the right answer to Napoleon’s question to the Jews: “are you Jews first or French first?” which, because of its importance, I have been quoting on several occasions throughout this section).
Aside from the admiration of his Gentile friends who, in the spirit of Enlightenment, saw religion as a dark force of reaction, and therefore, had a tendency to dismiss all religious differences as a rudiment of the past, Moses Mendelssohn’s social stand became the basis for the “modernizing” tendency in Judaism, known as the Reform Movement. His followers became known as maskilim, intellectuals. Under his direct influence, and in the wake of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s (who became Prussia’s Minister of Education) reforms of the early 1800’s, young Jewish intellectuals who were studying to become rabbis, attended universities for the first time, and many of these received advanced degrees. These rabbis were trained in Platonic philosophy, philology, astronomy, geometry (how Spinozish!), and in other Classical subjects, a truly historical feat, as their predecessors had very little secular education, or none at all. “They used their training to educate their Jewish congregants. They were inspired to introduce the intellectual values of the Western civilization into Judaism, and saw themselves as participants in the life of their nation, with obligations for its present and future, and Judaism served as their moral guide. This was a major break with the orthodox rabbinate, who believed that the Jews were a theocratic nation in exile, awaiting their return to Zion.” (Quoted from Moses Mendelssohn And The Bach Tradition, a Schiller Institute article, by Steven P. Meyer, see my Judaica file in the Sources and Comments folder.)
And now, the final point, which is, in fact, the rationale for the whole entry on Moses Mendelssohn. What is his significance in the history of Judentum, and how can his overall role in it be properly evaluated?
The seemingly irreconcilable conflict between Hasidic Judaism, which I have unambiguously declared to be the most authentic and precious expression of the Jewish identity-- warts and all-- and the aesthetically pure, culturally symbiotic, rather than assimilationist, spirit of the Haskala, embodied by Moses Mendelssohn, can be resolved by ceasing the silly attempts at their mandatory reconciliation. After all, suum quique! There are many such conflicts in life, and they constitute the very essence of living: the final solution to all conflicts is death.
The above-stated conflict has taken a rather unpleasant quality on both sides. Instead of learning to accept each other’s differences, they have exacerbated them by mutual recriminations. The most regrettable side of this conflict is the conspicuous disrespect and a feeling of shame for the spectacle of their shtetl kin, which the maskilim have been consistently showing their counterparts, stressing their bad side, while overlooking the good side (which I myself have noted and appreciated). The ugliest expression of this shame complex, to date, has been the betrayal of the “Poilische Yidden” by the German Jewry, in the early years of the Nazi power in Germany. When they realized that even the Maskilim were not exempt from the Final Solution, it was already too late. What they seem not to have realized, was that the “filthy-rich” Jews of the post-World War I Germany may have been much more the reason for the Holocaust, than their generally impoverished and humbled shtetl kin had ever been.
But, generally speaking, the Maskilim have become a vital feature of the Christian Western Civilization, in what I have described as becoming the enlightened keepers of her elitist culture, protecting her from rape by the increasingly more liberated, by the democratic process, coarse, and aesthetically unappreciative, Gentile mob.
Unfortunately, Reform Judaism, since the good old times of Moses Mendelssohn, but, especially, in the last hundred years, and particularly, in the post-WWII “free” Western society, has undergone a transformation, even if partial, which has revealed its ugly side, no longer redeemable on aesthetic grounds. By taking on the defense of mass, “popular,” culture, it has allowed its delicate and vulnerable ward to be polluted, and instead of its noble role of lifting society upwards, it has become a panderer to its base instincts.
To be sure, the overall aesthetic attraction of Reform Judaism has by no means been lost, as testified to, in the previous entries of this section. However, the ugly trend is also very much there, and causes me great concern, as it should.
This theme will be further explored in my final entry in this section, The Once And Future Jew, but, in the meantime, I hope that my attitude toward this whole, extremely complicated and provocative, issue has been expressed with sufficient adequacy.
I applaud the historical role of "Nathan Der Weise" who represents a different, but supremely legitimate side of Judenthum, and deserves as much praise as I have lavished on the authentic Jew, the Hasid.
In his defense of the Jewish cause to the Gentile world, Moses Mendelssohn produced a giant effect on the Jewish, as well as on the Christian community, which has perhaps become his most historically significant and lasting legacy. His Jerusalem, oder über religiöse Macht und Judenthum, written for Jews, Christians and Moslems alike, details the separate roles of Church and State, and defines Mosaic Law to be coherent with Reason, as defined by Plato (a concept which was to revolutionize Judaism).
Throughout his life, Mendelssohn had to defend his unique middle ground position between the Jews and the Christians from attacks from both sides. Famously challenged by the Swiss theologian Johann Lavater to convert to Christianity, unless he could refute arguments for it, he resented the challenge and the whole controversy around it, but he felt obliged to reassert his Jewish faith, ending up with a nervous breakdown. In the meantime, he was challenged by the Jews, who saw his “Interfaith” effort as a threat to Judaism. Although his secular, philosophical, and religious works were in tune, more or less, with his conception of Orthodox Judaism, his ideas were rejected by the fundamentalist rabbis of his time, especially among the Hasidic Jews of Eastern Europe, who saw no connection of reason with the Mosaic law (see my discussion of Hasidism in a previous entry). They particularly objected to his ideas about a natural and necessary compatibility of religious upbringing with secular knowledge, and that any man, regardless of his faith, had a civil obligation to the whole of society (envisaging the right answer to Napoleon’s question to the Jews: “are you Jews first or French first?” which, because of its importance, I have been quoting on several occasions throughout this section).
Aside from the admiration of his Gentile friends who, in the spirit of Enlightenment, saw religion as a dark force of reaction, and therefore, had a tendency to dismiss all religious differences as a rudiment of the past, Moses Mendelssohn’s social stand became the basis for the “modernizing” tendency in Judaism, known as the Reform Movement. His followers became known as maskilim, intellectuals. Under his direct influence, and in the wake of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s (who became Prussia’s Minister of Education) reforms of the early 1800’s, young Jewish intellectuals who were studying to become rabbis, attended universities for the first time, and many of these received advanced degrees. These rabbis were trained in Platonic philosophy, philology, astronomy, geometry (how Spinozish!), and in other Classical subjects, a truly historical feat, as their predecessors had very little secular education, or none at all. “They used their training to educate their Jewish congregants. They were inspired to introduce the intellectual values of the Western civilization into Judaism, and saw themselves as participants in the life of their nation, with obligations for its present and future, and Judaism served as their moral guide. This was a major break with the orthodox rabbinate, who believed that the Jews were a theocratic nation in exile, awaiting their return to Zion.” (Quoted from Moses Mendelssohn And The Bach Tradition, a Schiller Institute article, by Steven P. Meyer, see my Judaica file in the Sources and Comments folder.)
And now, the final point, which is, in fact, the rationale for the whole entry on Moses Mendelssohn. What is his significance in the history of Judentum, and how can his overall role in it be properly evaluated?
The seemingly irreconcilable conflict between Hasidic Judaism, which I have unambiguously declared to be the most authentic and precious expression of the Jewish identity-- warts and all-- and the aesthetically pure, culturally symbiotic, rather than assimilationist, spirit of the Haskala, embodied by Moses Mendelssohn, can be resolved by ceasing the silly attempts at their mandatory reconciliation. After all, suum quique! There are many such conflicts in life, and they constitute the very essence of living: the final solution to all conflicts is death.
The above-stated conflict has taken a rather unpleasant quality on both sides. Instead of learning to accept each other’s differences, they have exacerbated them by mutual recriminations. The most regrettable side of this conflict is the conspicuous disrespect and a feeling of shame for the spectacle of their shtetl kin, which the maskilim have been consistently showing their counterparts, stressing their bad side, while overlooking the good side (which I myself have noted and appreciated). The ugliest expression of this shame complex, to date, has been the betrayal of the “Poilische Yidden” by the German Jewry, in the early years of the Nazi power in Germany. When they realized that even the Maskilim were not exempt from the Final Solution, it was already too late. What they seem not to have realized, was that the “filthy-rich” Jews of the post-World War I Germany may have been much more the reason for the Holocaust, than their generally impoverished and humbled shtetl kin had ever been.
But, generally speaking, the Maskilim have become a vital feature of the Christian Western Civilization, in what I have described as becoming the enlightened keepers of her elitist culture, protecting her from rape by the increasingly more liberated, by the democratic process, coarse, and aesthetically unappreciative, Gentile mob.
Unfortunately, Reform Judaism, since the good old times of Moses Mendelssohn, but, especially, in the last hundred years, and particularly, in the post-WWII “free” Western society, has undergone a transformation, even if partial, which has revealed its ugly side, no longer redeemable on aesthetic grounds. By taking on the defense of mass, “popular,” culture, it has allowed its delicate and vulnerable ward to be polluted, and instead of its noble role of lifting society upwards, it has become a panderer to its base instincts.
To be sure, the overall aesthetic attraction of Reform Judaism has by no means been lost, as testified to, in the previous entries of this section. However, the ugly trend is also very much there, and causes me great concern, as it should.
This theme will be further explored in my final entry in this section, The Once And Future Jew, but, in the meantime, I hope that my attitude toward this whole, extremely complicated and provocative, issue has been expressed with sufficient adequacy.
I applaud the historical role of "Nathan Der Weise" who represents a different, but supremely legitimate side of Judenthum, and deserves as much praise as I have lavished on the authentic Jew, the Hasid.
No comments:
Post a Comment