286 } Notes to Chapter 1
ment seems more consistent with Kant’s opposition to encouraging insincere professions
of faith. In 1790 an edict was passed in Prussia under the reactionary Friedrich Wilhelm II
and his minister of education and religious affairs, Johann Christoph Wöllner, requiring that
candidates for university degrees in theology make a formal profession of orthodox faith. For
a concise account of the historical background to Kant’s writings on religion in the 1790 s,
see Wood “General Introduction.” In his Schlußanmerkung (concluding remark) to his 1791
“Über das Mißlingen aller philosophischen Versuche in der Theodicee” (On the failure
of all philosophical attempts in theodicy) Kant writes that “blind and external professions
(which can very easily be reconciled with an internal profession just as false) can, if they yield
means of gain, bring about a certain falsehood in a community’s very way of thinking” (RRT,
35 ). See also Kant, IKW, 11 : 122. Bendavid deploys a related argument. In his view, the Jew-
ish convert’s faith in Christianity would inevitably remain hypocritical and would therefore
provide no solution to—and could even exacerbate—the essential moral deficit of the Jew.
Although Bendavid and Kant disagree on the moral efficacy of conversion to Christianity,
they nonetheless agree about the goal of overcoming revealed religion altogether, through
purely rational morality. Kant sees conversion as a step in establishing “die reine moralische
Religion” (pure moral religion), something that would entail what he disturbingly calls the
“Euthanasie des Judentums” (euthanasia of Judaism) (Kant, IKW, 11 : 321 ). Bendavid would
rather sever the heads of the Jewish hydra in a single moment.
78. See, for example, Bendavid, Über die Religion der Ebräer vor Moses and Zur Berech-
nung und Geschichte des jüdischen Kalenders. The later was a radical departure from the
usual treatment of the subject and received an outraged rejoinder from Meyer ben Moses
Kornrik (Dabar Be’itto).
79. Heinrich Heine, Säkularausgabe 20 : 103.
80. Ibid.
81. Ibid., 20 : 240.
82. Of course, Friedländer made a famous (or notorious) proposal to Propst Teller in
1799 that Jews convert en masse in order to gain access to the polity. However, Friedländer
proposed conversion not so much to Christianity as to rational religion in Kant’s sense. On
the essentially Kantian conception of religion underlying Friedländer’s proposal, see Nathan
Rotenstreich, Jews and German Philosophy, 30 – 33.
83. Heine, Säkularausgabe, 20 : 240.
84. Heine, DHA, 14 (part 1 ): 268. Looking back, Heine also praises Bendavid’s essay in
the Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums contesting the centrality of the Messiah
in Judaism (see note 77 ), although at the time he had dismissed Bendavid’s contributions
to the journal as outdated. Heine’s friend and colleague in the Verein, Moses Moser, wrote
to his and Heine’s mutual friend Immanuel Wohlwill on March 28 , 1832 , about Bendavid’s
death in tones that combined—as would Heine’s homage a dozen years later—respect for
Bendavid with irony over his unyielding devotion to Enlightenment rationality: “Bendavid
died this morning from the effects of dropsy in his chest, for which he stubbornly refused any
aid from doctors or nurses. He demonstrated to a visiting friend a priori that it was merely a
rheumatic malady, and after he had been overcome by a fainting spell, he calculated, upon
awaking, how long he must have lain on the floor unconscious. He reached the age of 70 ,
perhaps the last Jew of the Kantian school” (correspondence between Moses Moser and
Immanuel Wolf-Wohlwill, typescript, Leo Baeck Foundation, New York, 128 ). The Moser-