RUHI AL-KHALIdI’S “AS-SAYūNīZM” • 59that Michaelis had misunderstood or misconstrued the impact of the
Jews’ messianic expectation. Mendelssohn wrote that “the hoped- for
return to Palestine” has “no influence on our conduct as citizens.” He
continued:
This is confirmed by experience wherever Jews are tolerated. In
part, human nature accounts for it— only the enthusiast would
not love the soil on which he thrives. And he who holds contra-
dictory opinions reserves them for church and prayer. In part,
also, the precaution of our sages forbids us even to think of a re-
turn by force.^71 Without the miracles and signs mentioned in the
Scripture, we must not take the smallest step in the direction of
forcing a return and a restoration of our nation.^72Mendelssohn explained that the Jewish hope for a return to Palestine
could have no impact on the loyalty of the Jews toward states that
tolerate them. In making his case, Mendelssohn appealed first to a psy-
chological observation that people tend to love a place where they are
able to live and flourish, and second to a rabbinic prohibition that,
in his view, expressly forbade the Jews from restoring their nation
in Palestine on their own, without the miraculous, divinely ordained
redemption.^73
Though Mendelssohn minimized the significance of the wish to re-
turn to Palestine (an attempt that must be understood in the context
of the eighteenth- century political debate over Jewish emancipation),
he never proposed severing the Jews’ link to Palestine or ceasing to
pray for their return to the Holy Land. He argued, rather, that this link
and hope had no practical influence on the way the Jews related to
the states in which they lived. Al- Khalidi, or whatever textual or oral
source he was using for his presentation of Mendelssohn’s theory, mis-
understood (or interpreted liberally) the actual argument Mendelssohn
made concerning Palestine. At the same time, it should be noted that
in the subsequent debates over the “assimilation” of the Jews within
european christian society, both supporters and opponents pointed to
the earlier figure of Mendelssohn as having heralded the “assimilation”
they either desired or dreaded.^74
(^71) That is, to attempt to bring about redemption through human effort.
(^72) See “Moses Mendelssohn: Remarks concerning Michaelis’ Response to dohm
(1783)” in ibid., 48– 49.
(^73) Mendelssohn was presumably referring to the passage in the Babylonian Talmud
Tractate Ketubot 110b– 111a in which the people of Israel are said to forswear “going up
by a wall” and “rebelling against the nations of the world.”
(^74) In the JewishEncyclopediaarticle on Mendelssohn, for instance, the authors write
that Mendelssohn’s “translation of the Pentateuch had an important effect in bringing the