“Juif de Berlin”

Considering the state of degradation in which the Jewish population lived in eighteenth-century Germany and, excepting Holland, elsewhere in Europe, Moses Mendelssohn's rise to fame and his acceptance into the republic of letters was an amazing feat of personal achievement. It indicated, at the same time, the awakening of a more liberal spirit among influential members of society: men of letters, aristocrats, even theologians. The humanist outlook of the Enlightenment had prepared the ground for a greater willingness to treat an individual Jew on his own merits. It had also, in conjunction with the emergence of modern industrial enterprise, facilitated closer contact between Christians and Jews. A Jewish elite group had come into being, comprising successful entrepreneurs on the one hand and literati on the other. Daniel Itzig (Jaffe), the banker, may be named as a representative of the first type, and Doctor Marcus Herz, Kant's pupil, of the second. David Friedlander, Itzig's son-in-law, was wealthy and learned.

Thus Moses Mendelssohn, although unique as a figure of European fame, was not a completely isolated phenomenon. It would be wrong, however, to assume that the rapprochement between Jews and Christians amounted to the coming into being of a kind of “neutral society” in which the distinctive elements of the two faiths were submerged or ignored. While it is true that overriding common cultural interests facilitated bonds of friendship that were hardly feasible at an earlier period, the differences between the two “nations”-a term frequently used by Mendelssohn2-were never glossed over. Indeed, it was an essential prerequisite of Enlightenment tolerance to face up to the Jewishness of Mendelssohn, however odd it may have looked to his friends, let alone his more distant admirers. It was gratifying psychologically to acknowledge the Jewish character of Herr Moses and yet to love him. The practice of absolute tolerance vis-à-vis this outstanding and amiable man demanded no great effort from a person able to appreciate his accomplishments and predisposed to Enlightenment liberalism.

People imbued with Christian missionary zeal found it harder to accept his unrelenting Jewishness. They either hoped for his eventual conversion or else, having realized the futility of this hope, consoled themselves with the thought that this exceptional “Israelite in whom there was no guile” was a Christian “at heart.”