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Modem Judaism 14(19*4): 121-138 O 1994 by The Johns Hopkins Univerjity Press
122 David Sorkim
tradition we are "like a blind man in the dark."" The true path to
knowledge is the combination of Torah and logic.55 However far man's
understanding can go in comprehending God and divine truth, it is
only possible through the application of God-given reason to God's
Torah and tradition. Only the prophet who has direct revelation can
dispense with logic.5* Mendelssohn therefore recommends that stu-
dents study logic an hour or so per week in support of their traditional
textual studies.57 Mendelssohn manifestly regarded logic as a means
and not as an end.
Maimonides' indisputable piety and his succinct exposition served
Mendelssohn's purposes, with one important exception. Maimonides'
method and philosophy were distinctly medieval. His work might lead
the uninitiated student backward to medieval Jewish philosophy, but
it could not lead him forward to eighteenth-century philosophy. Men-
delssohn's commentary was to be the bridge. At the end of each of
the fourteen chapters of his treatise, Maimonides provided a list of
the terms he had introduced. Mendelssohn used these as a philo-
sophical lexicon: next to each Hebrew term he gave the equivalent in
German and in Latin (in Hebrew characters). He thereby attempted
to renew philosophical discourse in Hebrew, performing the same
function for Hebrew that Wolff had for German some four decades
earlier. In his early German philosophical treatises Wolff had invented
German equivalents for accepted Latin terms.58
Mendelssohn did not rest content with creating an up-to-date
philosophical vocabulary. He also introduced the substance of
eighteenth-century philosophy. Wherever Maimonides had used Ar-
istotelian or platonic notions, Mendelssohn corrected it with the eight-
eenth-century Leibnizian-Wolffian view.59 (The distaste for scholastic
philosophy Mendelssohn revealed in his German writings is apparent
here as well: he is especially critical of those medieval philosophers
who endlessly commented on the master without adding anything of
their own.)40 In addition, Mendelssohn seized every opportunity to
introduce Wolfnan categories. At one point in his treatise Maimonides
mentioned the idea of luck (mezulat ha-adam). Mendelssohn pounced
on this chance phrase, employing the same method as in the Kohelet
Musar. He expounded the Wolfnan conception of theodicy; then
quoted a rabbinic source and Maimonides' own Guide of the Perplexed;
and concluded with a peroration of Wolfnan concepts.'"
This same use of novel means for pious ends also holds for Men-
delssohn's work in subsequent periods. His biblical commentaries and
translations of the 1770s and early 1780s used the best of contem-
porary aesthetics and Bible study, science and philosophy as well as
drawing on medieval Jewish philosophy, exegesis and grammar. At
130 David Sorkim
clesiastical politics, but also edited Pope and Shakespeare;59 the Italian
Ludovico Muratori wrote on church reform and devotion but was
also a pioneer in the writing of Italian history.60 S. J. Baumgarten,
the theological Wolffian, wrote theology, hermeneutics and exegesis,
but also had a considerable reputation as a secular historian.61 If
Mendelssohn is compared to such figures, his "two faces" no longer
seem singular. Rather, he appears as the preeminent Jewish repre-
sentative of the religious Enlightenment, a status which explains his
ability to pass through the various stages of the Enlightenment and
Haskalah, and his use of novel means for conservative ends.
One goal of studying individuals or groups mainstream historians
have neglected or ostracized, beyond its intrinsic validity, is to modify
our perceptions of the larger society or culture. Jewish history pro-
vides fertile ground for such an endeavor. Comparison enhances un-
derstanding not only of Moses Mendelssohn but also of the religious
Enlightenment. On the one side it emerges that he was not a singular
figure in Europe but one among many eminent thinkers of the reli-
gious Enlightenment. On the other it emerges that the religious En-
lightenment was not a Protestant, a Catholic, or even a Christian, but
a European phenomenon. If applied to Jewish history, the method
of comparison will yield many examples of this sort. Once armed with
sufficient examples of this kind, Jewish historians will be able to breach
the "inner" perimeter, the assumption of singularity, and Jewish his-
tory will, perhaps, finally be emancipated.
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
NOTES