Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
257
frank, homely. But he was possessed of a light ning int ellec t , a personal warmth and
c harm, modesty and integrity that overc ame any shortc omings his body might have
imposed.
In Berlin, Mendelssohn studies sec ular subjec ts under the tutelage of several
exc ellent Jewish sc holars. He quic kly mast ered High German, It alian, Frenc h, Latin,
Greek, English, mathematic s, and philosophy. It was also in this period that he met
the German playwright and poet Gotthold Lessing. Thus began a lifelong friendship
between the two dissimilar men, one Jewish, the other Christian, brought together
by a passion for the life of the mind and a deep respect and affection for one
another.
With Lessing’s enc ouragement and assistanc e, he published his first writings.
Mendelssohn would not need Lessing to help for very long. He quic kly est ablished
hi mself as a writ er and lit erary c rit ic ; in 1763 he was awarded t he first prize of t he
Prussian Royal Ac ademy for his treatise, “On Evidenc e in the Metaphysic al
Sciences.” That same year he received an even rarer honour, being granted the
“right of residenc e” in Berlin by Frederick the Great. Although the Prussian ruler
was not ably liberal for t his era, even t oward his Jewish subjec t s, it was highly
unusual for suc h a residenc y permit to be given.
Mendelssohn clearly enjoyed a privileged status granted to very few European
Jews in the eighteenth c entury. That status, bestowed on a man who c ontinued to
c omport himself as an Orthodox Jew, pointed up the unc omfortable duality that
fac ed him in Frederic k’s Prussia (and anywhere else in Europe, for that matter), a
duality that has c harac terized the position of Diaspora Jews throughout the modern
era, albeit wit h t he lines drawn less sharply t oday. On the one hand, Mendelssohn
was permit t ed t o prac t ic e his fait h, t o maint ain his Jewish ident it y, and t o enjoy a
degree of ac c eptanc e in the salons and even some public ac c laim. But he was never
allowed to forget who and what he was, or that all the suc c ess c ould be swept away
with the stroke of a monarc h’s pen, that he was, as Mendelssohn himself ruefully
noted, “a member of an oppressed race.”
This painful c ontradic tion was brought home to Mendelssohn forc efully in 1769
by a turn of events that would c ause him to shift the foc us of his philosophic al
endeavours for the rest of his life.
Ironic ally, it began wit h anot her see min g honour. An ac quaintanc e named
Johann Caspar Lavater, a young Calvinist c lergyman, so admired Mendelssohn that
he dedic at ed his German t ranslat ion of a religious t rac t t o t he older man.
Unfortunately, he also inc luded in its introduc tion a public c hallenge to
Mendelssohn: read the treatise and refute it public ly or c onvert to Christianity.
Whatever motivated the young pastor, Mendelssohn would not be drawn into a
public quarrel; he published a quiet ly dignified reply, rest at ing his c ommit ment t o
Judaism and his pride in his Jewish ident it y.
But the inc ident reminded Mendelssohn of the metaphoric al tightrope he
walked. From this point on, the foc us of his life’s work shifted to questions of Jewish
ident it y, emanc ipat ion, and belief. Emil Fac kenheim writ es that despite the
sensation caused by the Lavater affair, “it would be a tempest in a teapot were it
not from one important result: it oc c asioned the first work in modern Jewish
philosophy.” (Of c ourse, Spinoza’s adherents would disagree with that last
st atement.)