Jerusalem: Or on Religious Power and Judaism

by Moses Mendelssohn, Allan Arkush (Translator), Alexander Altmann (Introduction)

A classic text of enduring significance, Moses Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem (1783) stands as a powerful plea for the separation of church and state and also as the first attempt to present Judaism as a religion eminently compatible with the ideas of the Enlightenment. Allan Arkush’s new translation, drawing upon the great strides made by Mendelssohn research in recent decades, does full justice to contemporary insights into the subject while authentically reflecting a distinguished eighteenth-century text. Alexander Altmann’s learned introduction opens up the complex structure and background of Mendelssohn’s ideas. His detailed commentary, keyed to the text, provides references to literary sources and interpretations of the philosopher’s intent.

Genres: Judaism, Philosophy, Jewish, Religion, Politics, Nonfiction, German Literature

262 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1783

About the author

Moses Mendelssohn was a German Jewish philosopher to whose ideas the Haskalah (the 'Jewish enlightenment' of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) is indebted. Although himself a practicing orthodox Jew, he has been referred to as the father of Reform Judaism.

Born to a poor Jewish family in Dessau and originally destined for a rabbinical career, Mendelssohn educated himself in German thought and literature and from his writings on philosophy and religion came to be regarded as a leading cultural figure of his time by both Germans and Jews. He also established himself as an important figure in the Berlin textile industry, which was the foundation of his family's wealth.

Moses Mendelssohn's descendants include the composers Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn and the founders of the Mendelssohn & Co. banking house.

Reviews

[Yann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ce livre est un essai politique et religieux rédigé par Moses Mendelssohn, juif allemand du dix-huitième siècle. Autodidacte, en dépit d'une enfance difficile, il put acquérir de grandes connaissances, et même s'initier à la philosophie, celle des anglais Hobbes et Locke en particulier, en plus des humanités et du savoir religieux juif. Son érudition et sa sagesse le firent apprécier par des hommes éclairés de toute l'Europe, en particulier par Lessing, qui le peint de manière amicale dans Nathan le sage. Mais il se fit également remarquer favorablement en remportant un prix de philosophie, devançant le fameux Immanuel Kant, qui le reçut toujours avec de grandes marques d'affabilité. Il est considéré comme le père le la Haskalah, mouvement prônant l'intégration des juifs au sein de communautés nationales qui ne les accueillaient pas avec une pleine égalité de droit, mais les vexaient d'ordinaire par toutes sortes de mesures légales discriminatoires.

L'idée qu'il reprend a son compte est celle déjà amorcée par les anglais du siècle précédent : la séparation de l'église et de l'état, déjà défendue dans le Léviathan, puis la tolérance religieuse défendue par Locke. Mais alors que Locke limitait cette tolérance aux seuls membres des différentes sectes de la religion réformée, et excluait de fait catholiques, athées et autres minorités, Moses plaide pour que ses coreligionnaires soient eux aussi partie prenante de ce nouvel idéal : une société libre où religion et état se partagent sans heurts leurs différentes prérogatives, et où plusieurs religions peuvent coexister sans heurts. A l'état, le rôle sévère et nécessaire de protéger et de corriger, à la religion, celui aimable et bienfaisant d'instruire et d'améliorer.

Or certains pouvaient remarquer que la religion juive était aussi bien une institution étatique que religieuse, mais il rappelle que cette époque historique est bien révolue. Pour autant, Mendelssohn reste vigilant face au risque d'assimilation, pas moins dangereux pour la pérennité de la foi qu'il veut défendre que l'hostilité dont elle est victime. A cet égard, l'auteur répond aux quelques chrétiens réformés qui le pressent d'embrasser leur propre foi et d'abandonner le judaïsme, puisque ses idéaux semblent si semblables aux leurs, qu'il est plaisant qu'ayant détruit le rez-de chaussée d'une maison, on aille se réfugier au premier étage, rappelant par là que le christianisme s'appuie sur le judaïsme. Car ce n'est pas tout d'embrasser les idées libérales, dans ce nouveau monde qui se dessine alors, il faut également défendre ses spécificités, convaincre de sa nécessité et se montrer sous son meilleur jour, sous peine de disparaître.

A bien des égards, on retrouve dans cet ouvrage les mêmes arguments que ceux qui furent avancés par Philon d'Alexandrie, chef de la communauté juive installée dans l'ancienne capitale du royaume Lagide. Ce dernier cherchait à défendre sa confession des accusations portés par ceux des grecs qui travaillaient à la flétrir. On les retrouve également dans le Contre Apion de Flavius Joseph à la fin du premier siècle, comme dans quelques autres. Aux accusations habituelles de misanthropie, il oppose des valeurs universelles humaines de bienveillance professées par sa confession, lesquelles devaient normalement paraitre déjà familières aux chrétiens. Sa foi, explique-t-il, n'est pas temps affaire de conviction que de règles à suivre, et l'observation de ces règles est un entrainement à agir de façon morale, chaque règle étant l'image d'une vertu.

Mendelssohn fait une analyse détaillée et intéressante de l'histoire de sa foi et de ses évolutions au cours des siècles. Ses digressions savantes sur les conséquences de l'apparition de l'écriture sont très intéressantes. L'écriture est perçue comme tout progrès, de manière ambivalente : d'un côté, il permet aussi au plus jeune d'acquérir rapidement une plus grande sagesse que l'ainé, pour peu qu'il ai lu plus de livres. De l'autre, s'il permet au savoir d'être transmis, mais prend le risque d'une corruption s'il n'est pas en même temps compris d'une manière vivante, le sens des mots variant inexorablement avec le temps. Par ce livre, on comprend parfaitement l'estime sincère que son auteur a pu susciter chez ses contemporains.

[Orla · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of Jerusalem is definitely my favourite. Mendelssohn has a great gift for writing and he engages even the uninitiated reader very well. There are some pieces of his discussion that might be hard to understand to people who haven't read any Hobbes or Leibniz but on the whole it's very accessible.

Mendelssohn discusses the nature of the state in relation to religion in ways that modern societies are still trying to grasp and it is a treatise that will not fail to challenge and inform a reader.

[UChicagoLaw]

Mendelssohn was the leading philosopher of the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment. Jerusalem is one of the most significant works about the relationship between religion and the state in the European tradition of political philosophy, but it is rarely read as such, because it has (rather irritatingly and condescendingly) been defined as a part of the history of Jewish thought only -- despite the fact that Mendelssohn engages with the arguments of Hobbes and Locke, and conducted a correspondence with Kant about the nature of rational religion. Mendelssohn attempts two different projects in the book: first, he advances a new account of the complex interrelationships among individual liberty, state power, and the entitlements of religious communities, arguing for broad toleration for minority speech and religious conduct. He improves on Locke's account in many respects (particularly by recognizing that individual freedom is at risk from religious organizations as well as from the state). Second, he offers an account of Judaism as a religion based upon respect for each person's rational autonomy. Particularly interesting is Mendelssohn's claim that an established church makes us "unrecognizable to one another" by removing difference and disagreement about ultimate values, so clearly a hallmark of our humanity. - Martha Nussbaum

[McKenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5

Update: I reread this to use it in my final paper, and it was so much more comprehensible this time around, and I honestly appreciated it significantly more this time. The first section is more cohesive than the first in my opinion, but he is doing some really interesting work in terms of discussing the freedom of religion and the significance of religion in daily interactions. It was really neat to reread it. My rating still stands because I do still find it pretty hard to follow if you are not given some explanation or are not reading it multiple times. But this was good.

Original Review:
Read for my Jewish philosophy class- pretty interesting. It is kind of all over the place though and he goes on some pretty wild turns to get to his overall place. Of all of the philosophers we’ve read not my favorite thus far; his writing is a bit much for me.

But I enjoyed the reading in general though and some interesting points were made

[Daniel]

The first half is a somewhat bread and butter social contract theory but with some interesting details about perfect and imperfect rights, and aimed at a critique of separation of church and state, more especifically to the requirement of swearing an oath to the state church in order to exercise a public office. The argument is well structured and easy enough to follow, but it doesn't expand the horizons in discussing social contract theory and its validity.
The second half is more interesting, discussing a rational and enlightened form of Judaism, accepting the truths of reason as divine truths, echoing from HaLevi to Spinoza, but without going so far as the latter's heresies, instead focusing on a God that is still a cosmic lawgiver, and the validity of historical and scriptural truths and the power of its oral and practical transmission.

[Jill]

so migraines make reading kinda impossible but I read this anyway. Nice to compare to Locke, Voltaire, etc. with their views on toleration at the time.

[Jyothis James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some very interesting ideas on the notion of the social contract and whether the punitive capacity extends to religious institutions.

[Eitan]

I liked the bit about the hieroglyphics. Good bedtime read (zzzzzz).

[Drew Witte · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kant was right that this book was near irrefutable (except by him).

[Zachary · Rating 5 out of 5]

On its surface, Jerusalem is a treatise on the liberty of conscience. In two sections, Moses Mendelssohn strives to demonstrate that neither church nor state can compel the conscience to accept certain convictions or beliefs. Mendelssohn defends this thesis with recourse to natural law principles and a theory of the social contract, albeit in an entirely different vein than either Thomas Hobbes or John Locke, from whom he explicitly distances himself. Ultimately, Mendelssohn concludes that while the state can coerce certain actions for the sake of public welfare, neither can promise civic rewards or threaten civic punishment for the possession of certain beliefs. For Mendelssohn, the church (understood in the broadest sense as those institutions concerned with the relations between God and humans) plays a crucial role in civil society, but its purview is limited: the church should form citizens to have those convictions that both reflect the eternal truths of reason and promote the common good. When harmony between secular and churchly authority is achieved, citizens will thereby promote the common good not because they are coerced by law, but because wish to enhance public welfare. Moral action and civic virtue will flow from sincere conviction.

In defense of these claims, Mendelssohn advances a specific theory of “natural” or “true” religion. Natural religion, he claims, consists of three doctrines: the existence of God, providence, and future life. Here, Mendelssohn reflects the rationalist milieu of the Enlightenment; the three doctrines of natural religion replicate the standard tenets of Deism. He insists that all religions concur on these fundamental principles; by implication, those that do not are no religions at all. It is at this point in Jerusalem that Mendelssohn introduces his second, more distinctive thesis—namely, that Judaism, or at least the “ancient” version of it uncorrupted by later accretions, ultimately embodies this natural religion most saliently. Hence, it is not merely the case that states should respect Jews’ liberty of conscience and collaborate with them to promote the common good; more provocatively, Judaism represents the most rational religion and, by extension, the tradition most likely to enhance public welfare. In this way, Mendelssohn effectively turns the tables on those who would call for his conversion to Christianity on the premise that Judaism’s idiosyncrasies run contrary to natural religion.

In fact, the supposedly idiosyncratic elements of Judaism—what Mendelssohn in Jerusalem calls its “ceremonial law”—serve a key semiotic function vis-a-vis the eternal truths of natural religion. In Section II, Mendelssohn contends that the ceremonial law corrects for dual tendencies toward, on the one hand, superstition and idolatry and, on the other, excessive speculation, both of which are a product of the human need to use signs to preserve and later recollect the abstract ideas of religion (and other concepts). The ceremonial law uniquely transcends the division between doctrine and life created by our reliance on signs; its precepts link religious and moral truths with humans’ everyday activities insofar as they prescribe actions that signify the universal doctrines of religion and morality. Here, too, we see that the most distinctive features of Judaism—indeed, those which visibly set Jews apart from other members of civil society—prove to be precisely those elements that preserve natural religion from the corruption that, presumably, has infected other religious traditions (and, for Mendelssohn, certain forms of Judaism as well).

It is difficult not to love Jerusalem for its philosophical complexity, rhetorical brilliance, and subtle polemic against Christianity. In my estimation, it reflects the best of the Enlightenment ethos, even if one may bristle at Mendelssohn’s construal of “natural religion” or robustly contest his anachronistic vision of “ancient” Judaism. His conception of the ceremonial law, in particular, may represent a fruitful way to understand the link between embodied, ritualized action, language, and truth.

[Salma Hasan · Rating 3 out of 5]

בספרו "ירושלים" מציג מנדלסון את תפיסתו כי המפגש בין העולם היהודי המסורתי לבין העולם החדש המשכילי אפשרי ורצוי. הוא דן, בין השאר, ביחס שבין המדינה לדת, ומדגיש את חשיבות הסובלנות הדתית ואת הדרכים ליישומה. וזאת במגמה לקדם את הרעיון של שוויון זכויות ליהודים ואת העיקרון של הפרדת הדת מן המדינה, שיאפשר את השינוי המיוחל במעמד היהודים. מנדלסון מתאר בספר חברה המתנהלת על בסיס אמנה חברתית המגדירה את חובותיהם וזכויותיהם של חבריה. לשיטתו של מנדלסון, למדינה יש זכות לכפות את רצונה על הפרט, אך זכות זו שמורה למדינה בלבד - ולא לדת כלשהי.
לספר שני חלקים: החלק הראשון עוסק ביחס שבין הכנסייה למדינה ברמה העיונית; החלק השני דן בהיבט היהודי המיוחד - בדת ההתגלות. בחלק זה מבחין מנדלסון בין הדת האוניברסלית, המכירה באחדות האל ובהשגחתו, ובין חוקי התורה שניתנו לעם היהודי בלבד. הספר "ירושלים" הוא "הצהרת נאמנות ליהדות תבונית המבוססת על שלילת הכפייה הדתית ומעניקה ליהודי המאמין לגיטימציה להתאזרחות במדינה המודרנית".

http://lib.cet.ac.il/pages/item.asp?i...

[Leonardo]

Mendelssohn dedicó la primera parte de su obra "Jerusalén o acerca del poder religioso y el judaísmo" de 1783, a argumentar a favor de la distinción y separación entre el Estado y la Iglesia. Según su posición, el fin del Estado es el bienestar de los ciudadanos, el cual no implica únicamente su supervivencia terrenal sino también su perfeccionamiento espiritual y la felicidad de los hombres. En este sentido, Mendelssohn establece allí que el Estado debe favorecer el desarrollo de la religión natural, la cual, en la medida en que establece racionalmente los fundamentos de la felicidad de los hombres, garantiza que el fin del Estado se cumpla.

Historia de las Ideas de la Modernidad. Clase 8

[Ryan Rosenberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

1/14/17: Read it for Modern Jewish Thought my last semester at UNC. Some very good moments but unsurprisingly dense. Will write more once I re-read it.

[Olivia]

no rating because most of this book was incomprehensible to me, oops