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3 The Lavater Affair and Related Documents (1769–1773) Prefatory Note to Selections 1. Lavater’s Dedication to Mendelssohn, 2. Open Letter to Lavater, and 3. Excerpt from “Counter-Reflections to Bonnet’s Palingenesis” On 26 February 1764, Johann Caspar Lavater and two friends visited Mendelssohn in his Berlin home, seeking to clarify his attitude toward Christianity. Although Mendelssohn sought to avoid a discussion of this sensitive issue by diverting the conversation to more neutral topics, Lavater and his friends persisted . In the course of their conversation, Mendelssohn expressed respect for Jesus’s moral character, adding that this respect was conditional on Jesus’s not having considered himself divine. Mendelssohn asked that their conversation be kept in strict confidence. As Lavater was gradually drawn to chiliastic fantasies that involved the Jews’ mass conversion to Christianity, Mendelssohn’s praise of Jesus assumed increasing significance in his mind. In 1769, Lavater read Palingenesis, a book recently published by the Swiss scientist and philosopher Charles Bonnet (1720–93). In this work, Bonnet defended the immortality of the soul on the basis of scientific theories about the nature of the nerve fibers of the brain. But Bonnet acknowledged that the immortality of the soul could not be proven on this basis and so must be confirmed through divine revelation. He argued that the existence of miracles confirmed the reliability of revelation, and that the testimony in favor of Jesus’s miracles was especially persuasive. Although Bonnet had intended his work as a way of strengthening belief in the immortality of the soul among Christians, Lavater interpreted it as a proof of Christianity addressed to nonChristians . He therefore translated sections of Palingenesis from French into German , under the title Investigation of the Proofs for Christianity. He wrote a dedication to Mendelssohn (selection 1), asking him to refute Bonnet’s argument or do “what Socrates would have done if he had read [Bonnet’s work] and found it irrefutable.” Lavater’s dedication embarrassed Mendelssohn and placed him in a very delicate situation. Were he to refute Bonnet’s arguments, this could be seen as an attack on Christianity—something very dangerous for a Jew to undertake. 4 But were he to ignore Lavater’s challenge, that could be construed as a tacit admission of his inability to refute Bonnet’s arguments and thus call into question the sincerity of Mendelssohn’s commitment to Judaism. Mendelssohn found a way out through his masterful open letter to Lavater (selection 2). In the letter, he turns the tables on Lavater by contrasting Lavater’s intolerant Christianity with tolerant Judaism. For Mendelssohn, while Christianity is a missionizing religion, according to which the only way to go to heaven is by believing in the divinity of Jesus, Judaism does not seek converts. Instead, it holds that anyone can go to heaven who observes the universal laws of rational morality, called the “Noahide laws.” At the end of the letter, Mendelssohn notes that although he has avoided responding to Bonnet’s arguments out of concern for the deleterious effects of such a critique—both to himself and to society as a whole—he had written a response to Bonnet’s arguments in the form of a document called “CounterReflections to Bonnet’s Palingenesis,” which, if pressed, he would publish. Mendelssohn was not bluffing. These “Counter-Reflections,” which were not published until 1845, contain some of his most forthright criticisms of Christianity . In the excerpt from this work that follows (selection 3), Mendelssohn critiques seven central Christian dogmas of faith. Although these dogmas contradict reason, Christianity demands that one believe in them under threat of eternal damnation. Mendelssohn contrasts this with the three foundational principles of Judaism, which are rational or in accordance with reason, but which no one is punished for not believing. Also noteworthy is Mendelssohn’s discussion of the differences between Judaism and Unitarianism, which appear at the end of the selection. Sources Selection 1. Lavater’s Dedication, JubA 7:3 (in German). Selection 2. Open Letter to Lavater, JubA 7:7–17 (in German). Selection 3. Excerpt from “Counter-Reflections to Bonnet’s Palingenesis,” JubA 7:90–106 (in German). ...

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