Divine Legislation as “Ceremonial Script”: Mendelssohn on the Commandments
My aim in this essay is to analyze a section of Moses Mendelssohn's Jerusalem largely ignored by previous readers. The treatise has generally been recognized as epochal in the history of modern Judaism, and Altmann, Guttmann, Rawidowicz, and Rotenstreich have therefore focused quite understanda...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
University of Pennsylvania Press
1990
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| In: |
AJS review
Year: 1990, Volume: 15, Issue: 2, Pages: 239-267 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | My aim in this essay is to analyze a section of Moses Mendelssohn's Jerusalem largely ignored by previous readers. The treatise has generally been recognized as epochal in the history of modern Judaism, and Altmann, Guttmann, Rawidowicz, and Rotenstreich have therefore focused quite understandably on that which made it so: the novel political theory set forth in part 1, or the controversial assertion near the start of part 2 that Judaism “knows of no revealed religion” in the common sense of that term, its uniqueness consisting only in the “divine legislation” revealed to the Jews at Sinai. Only Heinemann has made a serious attempt to unravel Mendels sohn's tortuous explanation of the “divine legislation” as “a kind of living script,” and his often excellent account is marred by explicit Orthodox apologetic and utter reverence for Mendelssohn, both of which prevent him from seeing just how radical a theory of the commandments Jerusalem sets forth.3 Mendelssohn coyly terms most of the section devoted to this theory a “digression.“ Altmann notes charitably that it contains not only “some flights of speculation” but “the least substantiated of all [the] theories Mendelssohn ever advanced.” |
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| ISSN: | 1475-4541 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Association for Jewish Studies, AJS review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0364009400002968 |