The Letter and the Law: A Brief Introduction

When Moses Mendelssohn published Jerusalem, or On Religious Power and Judaism in 1783, he believed he had resolved, once and for all, the problem of ecclesiastical and civil law that had plagued modern theories of the state from Hobbes onward. Religion, as he defined it, was a matter of personal conviction that could be neither compelled nor punished by the state. Civil law, by contrast, was a contract that one entered into to secure rights—most notably, the right to have personal convictions without the interference of the state.

Mendelssohn's treatise had immediate implications for minority communities that had been denied the protection of the law on the grounds that their religious convictions were not consistent with the doctrine of the state, which was invariably the religious persuasion of the Elector or ruler. Yet Mendelssohn's interest extended beyond the minority groups then living in Prussia, where he himself resided as an außerordentlicher Schutzjude, a Jew granted permission to live in a region but denied the possibility of passing this privilege on to his children. Mendelssohn sought to articulate a formal principle for the separation of church and state, a principle that would insure that neither institution infringed on the other within their specified domains. It was in this context that Mendelssohn expanded the notion of religion to include any reasonable conviction regarding eternal truths, even the conviction that God did not exist at all, which had surprising currency in the eighteenth century.

Yet Mendelssohn's defense of religion in general as an exercise of mind opened him up to attacks against his faith in particular, Judaism, which was said to confuse religion and the state. Most notable among these was the anonymous pamphlet "The Searching for Light and Right," now attributed to August Friedrich Cranz, who claimed to see an embrace of Christianity in Mendelssohn's idea of a universal religion of reason. More disturbing, however, was the critique offered by Daniel Ernst Mörschel in a letter appended to the pamphlet that questioned whether Jews could be loyal subjects who would uphold the law given the presence within their religion of a body of legislation that would have to take precedence over any civil code declared by a monarch. Mörschel's attack led to the second section of Jerusalem, in which Mendelssohn explains what Jewish law does and does not legislate and why the legislation revealed at Sinai would not conflict with a constitution founded on Enlightenment principles. Mendelssohn famously argued that Jewish law legislates actions but not beliefs. None of the 613 laws found in the Pentateuch dictates what one should think, only how one should act in relation to oneself, one's neighbor and God and, additionally, as the deputy of a state with God as the sovereign. As Mendelssohn is quick to point out, however, this state does not exist. It vanished with the destruction of the Second Temple, and in its absence all civil aspects of the Mosaic constitution (e.g., tax stipulations, recommended punishments for crimes, etc.) are suspended. Hence Jews could be citizens wherever they lived, bound by the local law, while still observing the ceremonial laws of Judaism, which remained in effect even after the destruction of the Temple.

Given Mendelssohn's centrality in discussions of religious and civil law in the eighteenth century, it is fitting to begin this special issue of the MLN devoted to the letter and the law in German-Jewish thought with three essays on Mendelssohn's work and influence. In "Mendelssohn and the State," Willi Goetschel revisits one of the commonplaces that has dominated Mendelssohn scholarship. He argues that Mendelssohn does not propose to separate the church from the state and to relegate the former to the private sphere. Such an interpretation is based on the assumption that power is an undifferentiated force that cannot be shared in the modern state without calling into question the legitimacy and authority of the state. In Goetschel's interpretation, however, Mendelssohn has a more complex notion of power. Power is not an ontological constant but a variable force. It is specific...