Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

Off with Their Heads? { 35

externally imposed enlightenment will remain devoid of true moral content. En-

lightenment ultimately must come down to a matter of free will. On the other

hand, absent coercive measures the majority of Jews would continue to practice

traditional Judaism and feel no need to enlighten themselves at all. Bendavid’s

dilemma, then, is closely related to the problem of mediation in Kantian ethics

examined above, and it can be formulated as a problem of how to get inside the

moral will of the Jew when Jewish will seems to be utterly outside the sphere of

pure moral reason. Bendavid is in need of a paradoxical, noncoercive form of

coercion—and this is what he finds, or at least what he seeks, in decapitation, a

fantasy of total violence that seems to resolve the paradox of how the state might

legitimately intervene to transform the Jews’ will.

The immediate context of Bendavid’s comment about decapitating the Jew-

ish hydra deals directly with the central question of his treatise, how to convert

Jews into Menschen and Bürger:

The restriction the state imposes on the happiness of these noble souls [Ben-

david’s fourth category of enlightened Jews] is, I hear, to be lifted. Friedrich

Wilhelm the father of all upright men, also wishes, in accordance with his

compassionate heart, to be the father of all upright Jews. But how long that

nonsense with the shameful, senseless ceremonial law will be carried on,

how long the Jew will continue to believe that the divine father will bestow

upon him a special crown for observing it—only He who knows everything

knows this! Certainly it can never cease if no one dares to speak loudly and

earnestly to the hearts of the Jews, and makes robustly apparent to them the

imprudence of the maintenance of their customs; but at the same time also

asks the state for its endorsement [Genehmigung] of this abolition, since the

maintenance [of Jewish custom] must needs have a truly harmful influence

on the character of the Jew and, through him, on the state. In order to bring

this about, it will, I believe, be sufficient, given the wisdom of the govern-

ment, to remark that without this general abolition of the ceremonial law

things will needs transpire as they unfortunately always have with every fer-

ment that has arisen among the Jews. A portion of them, via various routes

and means, get themselves free from Judaism, and the others huddle together

more closely than before, abandon themselves more eagerly to their non-

sense, and propagate it more prolifically. It is the hydra, all of whose heads

must be cut off at once if two are not to grow back in place of every one

severed.^62

Bendavid’s civic cure for Judentum involves an attack on two fronts. He appeals

to Jews to reform themselves from within and appeals to the state to aid in a total