Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment (Jewish Thinkers) [Paperback]

a first-rate introduction to the most important figure in modern Jewish thought... Clearly structured and elegantly written

Sorkin has established himself as one of the most insightful scholars of modern Jewish intellectual history

Sorkin's book... opens up a world of Mendelssohn's thought hitherto hidden from most readers

Sorkin... has helped reconstruct the life and times of what many would call the first modern Jew

Sorkin has produced a valuable addition to the small library of one of the greatest thinkers in European Jewish history

Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) was the premier Jewish thinker of his day and one of the best-known figures of the German Enlightenment, earning the sobriquet "the Socrates of Berlin". Mendelssohn has been treated as a symbol of the modern Jewish predicament, symbolising the conflict between Jewish tradition and secular culture.

David Sorkin is the Frances and Laurence Weinstein Professor of Jewish Studies and the Director of the Institute for Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The reader wearied, if not bewildered, by the endless flood of literature on Moses Mendelssohn may justifiably ask: why a book? The answer is the need for a succinct and accessibly interpretation of Mendelssohn's Jewish thought. The authoritative biography by Alexander Altmann is so vast and vastly learned as to tax even the specialist's abilities. This volume is intended to provide a serviceable introduction for the interested layperson or undergraduate, Judaica scholar or historian.

While I explain my method in the introduction, one prior observation belongs here. It has become a time-honoured practice to study Mendelssohn primarily, or even exclusively, from his German works. In attempting to understand Mendelssohn as a philosopher of the German Enlightenment this practice is appropriate. But in attempting to understand Mendelssohn's thinking about Judaism it is untenable. Mendelssohn's Jewish thought has been studied time and again on the basis of a narrow body of evidence, the political/philosophical essay 'Jerusalem, or On Religious Power and Judaism' and one or two other German works. That Mendelssohn wrote on Jewish subjects in Hebrew throughout his career has long been neglected. There is English little if any scholarship on many of these Hebrew works, nothing that succinctly treats the entire Jewish corpus, and certainly nothing that concisely analyses that corpus in relation to Mendelssohn's general thought. One object of this book is to survey!
Mendelssohn's Hebrew works in order to introduce them into the discussion of his Jewish thought. One contention of this book is that if we read his better-known German pronouncement on Judaism as part of the larger corpus, a different understanding of them emerges.

I discuss Mendelssohn's German and Hebrew works in order to analyse his Jewish thought and delineate its place in the eighteenth century and its relationship to the medieval Jewish tradition. This volume will have discharged its duty if it serves as a map that enables readers to explore his thought further on their own.