Politics, Tradition, History: Rabbinic Judaism and the Eighteenth-Century Struggle for Civil Equality

Sometime in the early summer of 1782, Moses Mendelssohn received word that a pamphlet, entitled Das Forschen nach Licht und Recht (The Searching for Light and Right) and signed only as “S***,” was being prepared for publication. Enunciating the concerns of an Enlightenment-minded Christian writer, this pamphlet explicitly challenged Mendelssohn to clarify two issues of public interest: his increasingly outspoken advocacy for the civil admission of Jews into Prussian society, and the future shape of Judaism within a modern tolerant state. For Mendelssohn, the impending publication of the pamphlet was disconcerting because it insisted on linking his personal religious integrity to the broader political debate over civil integration. Given that his political campaign on behalf of his coreligionists was predicated upon the removal of confessional considerations from the public realm, this particular linkage became a source of no small irritation. Mendelssohn, however, quickly determined that the challenge could not be left unanswered. Indeed, it was in response to this tract and its appended postscript that Mendelssohn penned Jerusalem, his most articulate and enduring statement on religious tolerance and political equality.