LOOKING BACK 1
The
First
Modern
Jew
Art By Starr Belsky
Born in 18th century
Dessau, Moses
Mendelssohn opened the
door of the ghetto to the
Enlightenment, caused a
cultural revolution and
built a bridge between
traditional Judaism and
the contemporary world.
RABBI BERNARD S. RASKAS
Special to The Jewish News
184
FRIDAY, SEPT. 25, 1987
T
his past year marked
the 200th anniversary
of the death of Moses
Mendelssohn — the first
modern Jew. He was the first
Jew to be accepted in the
European literary world
because of his extraordinary
facility in the use of the Ger-
man language. At the same
time, he opened up to the
Jewish community Western
thought. His goal was to
make Jews acceptable to
Christians as their equals and
to bring about the inner
liberation of Jews through
cultural enlightenment and
their outer liberation through
civil emancipation.
Moses Mendelssohn was
born in Dessau in 1729. Dur-
ing his early childhood he suf-
fered from a disease which left
him with curvature of the
spine. It was remarkable that
a small, homely, humpbacked
man, afflicted with a slight
stammer, managed to gain ac-
claim for the charm of his
language, the elegance of his
style and the clarity of his
thought. He rose to become
one of the fashionable think-
ers of his time.
The story is told that his
father, anxious not -to have
his son miss a single lesson,
wrapped the boy in an old
coat on winter mornings and
carried him through the dark-
ness and cold to the cheder.
Moses soon showed such bril-
liance in his study of the tradi-
tion and texts that he at-
tracted the attention of the
rabbi of Dessau, David
Frankel, the author of a well-
known commentary on the
Jerusalem Talmud.
In 1743, when Frankel ac-
cepted a call to become the
rabbi of the Jewish commu-
nity of Berlin, Mendelssohn,
then 14 years old, followed
him to Berlin and entered a
different environment: an ex-
otic, intoxicating, intellectual
world. It was a far different
place from the provincial
ghetto in which he was born.
He took as his family name
Mendelssohn, which was de-
rived from the name of his
father, Menachem Mendel,
who earned a precarious living
as a sofer, a scribe of Torah
scrolls and other Hebrew
documents.
Mendelssohn's poverty was
great and often he could not
afford the books he wanted to
read. At times, his only food
for days was bread. But he
did not allow hardships to
deter him from his studies
and he made rapid progress.
In addition to his fluent
knowledge of German and
Hebrew, he became familiar
with Latin, Greek, English,
French and Italian.
In 1750, he became a teach-
er in the house of Isaac Bern-
hard, owner of a silk factory.
Later, he was entrusted with
the bookkeeping of the fac-
tory and eventually became a
partner in the enterprise. Dur-
ing the day he was a business-
man and in the evening he
dwelled in the world of ideas.
He married Frumet Guggen-
heim of Hamburg and began
a family. Finally, in 1763, he
was granted "right of resi-
dence" in Berlin by the king.
Mendelssohn's first impulse
to write came from the bril-
liant German critic and dram-
atist, Gotthold Lessing. The
two men became acquainted
during the course of a chess
game at the home of a friend
one afternoon. A few years
earlier, Lessing had written a
drama, "Die Juden" ("The
Jews"), in which he exposed
the Christian world's bigotry
and ignorance of the Jew.
Lessing was delighted to