Moses Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem, on Religious Power and Judaism is a work of philosophical argument, not narrative: a sustained case, written in German in the late eighteenth century, for the separation of church and state and for the widest possible freedom of conscience. Its two halves move from the political to the theological — first an analysis of what authority a state or a religious body may legitimately claim over its members, then an account of what Judaism actually is, and what it therefore does and does not demand of those born into it. The Hebrew edition prepared by A. B. Gottlober and printed in Zhitomir in 1867 carried the book into a new reading public, framing it with a translator’s preface that defends Mendelssohn against his detractors and explains the choices made in rendering his German into Hebrew.
From Hobbes’s Covenant to the Limits of Religious Courts
The Translator’s Frame: Title Page and Dedication
The Hebrew Yerushalayim of 1867 opens with its title page announcing Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem, on Religious Power and Judaism, translated and annotated by A. B. Gottlober and printed at the Zhitomir press of A. S. Shadov. The page carries Isaiah’s verse, “For out of Zion shall go forth the Torah,” and a dedication addressed to Moses Weinshtein. Gottlober’s introduction then presents the author as the crown of his people’s glory and great among the nations—Moses son of Mendel of Dessau, called “Socrates” among the gentiles and, among Jewish sages, “the Rambam,” the third Moses after Moses son of Amram and Moses son of Maimon. He explains that Mendelssohn wrote his digest of the Oral Law when Torah was being forgotten in Israel and the education of children corrupted; the spoken language was German, and few grasped its worth, so Mendelssohn translated the Torah into pure German and brought light to Israel in their settlements. His intention, Gottlober insists, was for the sake of Heaven, and his translation was received throughout the dispersions with an authority like Onkelos’s Targum among Aramaic speakers. Maimonides too wrote in the language of his land, and two of his books were rendered into Hebrew; having seen these, Gottlober desired to translate Jerusalem, which concerns the whole of faith and its commandments.
The Argument as Gottlober Presents It
The Torah, mother of all corrected religions, does not distance anyone outside its covenant nor diminish his portion in the laws and rights of the members of its faith; it deals with him as with those who walk in its paths. If a man walks in the religion he inherited from his fathers, doing only good and right before God and man, he shall live; his faith does not prevent him from being a righteous man in the assembly of the holy. The Torah was given to refine Israel, God’s treasured people, a kingdom of priests and a holy people, for the merit of the fathers who walked in His ways. The other eternal truths a person must believe for his happiness are written in the Torah of man—the intellect planted in each person, to know there is a First Existent, incorporeal, creator of the world, who gives a soul that does not die with the body. In this all are equal, and the pious of the nations have a portion in the World to Come; between man and man, Israelite and stranger, all follows one’s deeds. Mendelssohn wrote to refute those brethren who slander the Torah, claiming it commands treating adherents of another religion as they treat us and punishes another faith by law. Gottlober cites Kant’s letter of 6 August 1783, quoted by David Friedländer, in which Kant says he read Jerusalem with admiration and regards it as the announcement of a great though slow-coming reform, uniting religion with such freedom of conscience as no other religion can boast.
Defending Mendelssohn Against His Zealots
Some preachers, fearing the collapse of their cherished foundations, attacked Mendelssohn’s words, and champions arose to fight the battle of Torah and defeat these “Rephaim, sons of the giant.” Gottlober cites the letter of Shadal included in the volume, depicting him as a warrior whose bow was broken, who fell before his foes yet rose to renew the fight and finally cried “You have defeated me!”—admitting the strength of Mendelssohn’s arguments and the weakness of the objections. Gottlober was alarmed to hear of a book called Atzei Eden, whose author strove to uproot the cedars. He compares Mendelssohn’s persecutors to Korach and his congregation and to the opponents of Maimonides, and notes a German defamation titled Der Entlarvte Moses Mendelssohn, published by Jacobi in Amsterdam in 1786, which he found twenty years earlier among piles of discarded books. Its author cited Dr. Herz’s report that Mendelssohn showed extraordinary humility even toward his closest friends, never calling one by name without an honorific—intending slander, though readers of his books recognize the humility that earned him the name “the Socrates of the Jews.”
Gottlober’s Method as Translator
Fourteen years earlier in Mohilev on the Dniester, a man had undertaken to translate Yerushalayim into Hebrew and completed it with astonishing speed; seven years later Gottlober was asked to review it against the German and correct it anonymously. Beginning the work, he judged it too heavy to bear his name, returned the book, and translated Yerushalayim himself over some five years, taking nothing from the other translator. He matched the translation to the German not only in meaning but in style and brevity, nearly word-for-word where possible, so a reader can compare the two side by side, and he sought to preserve the author’s spirit—”the spirit of Socrates speaking through his throat”—noting that the Rabbi never asserted “this is my opinion” like a teacher before students but humbled his voice like a student before his master. For technical terms he abandoned a planned alphabetical glossary in favor of placing the German equivalent beside each term, following the practice of scholars including Nachman Krochmal. He renders “Gewissensfreiheit” as cherut hada’at, “Abtrünnigkeit” as apikorsut, and argues that reshut in Avot 1:10 means “Obrigkeit,” authority. A poem, “Tehillah le-Moshe,” closes the introduction, and the first chapter, “Knesset ha-Chevrah ve-ha-Emunah,” opens with the conflict between the governance of society and the governance of religion, citing Montesquieu and beginning an analysis of Hobbes.
Hobbes Undone by His Own Premises
Hobbes himself, the argument runs, must have sensed that his premises labored and gave birth to weak children. If man by nature is bound to no duties, he is not obligated to keep the words of his mouth; if nothing binds us in the state of nature except fear and lack of power, then removing the cause removes the effect, the covenant made by agreement is annulled, and men gain nothing by establishing society—they remain in the first state, the state of general war. But if the words of the covenant are truly valid and enduring, it follows that the permitted power must be annulled. Hobbes forbade the supreme government to command anything opposing those obedient to it; yet if the fear of men does not terrify, the fear of Shaddai and His great power will frighten, and God revealed His good will to benefit the inhabitants of the world. This fear of Shaddai, which lays its hand on kings and princes to fulfill their duties toward those obedient to them, can in the state of nature be a faithful source from which duties of man to his fellow emerge; thus there are righteous laws in nature which Hobbes refused to acknowledge, and any student of the laws of nature can defeat Hobbes with true arguments drawn from the source of his own investigations.
Locke, Bellarmine, and the One Happiness
Locke too lived in days of confusion and sought to establish freedom of opinion another way. In his letters on tolerance he laid as a foundation that society is the association of men united to enlarge their temporal success and happiness; hence the congregation has no right to command in matters of opinions concerning eternal happiness, but must bear every man walking uprightly. The church, being the congregation of society, has no business with religions and beliefs, for faith in itself neither adds nor subtracts in matters of temporal life. Had the erring of his generation listened, envy and zeal against those of another faith would have been removed. But what, some ask, obliges us to limit the congregation’s purpose to temporal matters? If men can reach eternal bliss through good laws, they are obligated by reason to unite also for this purpose. Into whose hands, then, shall we deliver the affair of our eternal happiness?
The Limits of Authority Over Belief
The argument turns first to a warning about self-deception: no one should imagine that the pursuit of truth can hold firm when inquiry brings pain, or when wealth and honor dangle before the seeker. Truth and falsehood are the instruments of the intellect, and whoever fails to use them defeats his own purpose—meaning to uproot, he builds; meaning to build, he destroys his own will. From this the question arises: what is the straight path of government for the Keneset HaDat, the religious assembly? The answer is none. If disputes break out in the gates of Athens, the man to prove the matter is the one to whom God gave the talent to clarify by proofs. A government that rules where it holds no authority is like dumbness where no one can answer; it acts without laws of rights and claims. Neither the assembly of sages nor the religious assembly can judge matters of religion and faith, because no covenant or agreement ever granted men that jurisdiction. Yet the sages may act at a distance to prevent corrupting doctrines that destroy the state’s peace—heresy that denies the principle, Epicureanism that undermines the foundation of human happiness. They must weigh whether tolerating heresy against the principle is preferable to tolerating vain and empty faith, counting the harms past and future from these two sources of trouble, as one might ask whether more die of consumption or of fever. No state should lend a hand to either the zealotry of vain faith or the heresy that strikes at the root of society’s body, which would wither like a cancer eating the flesh.
The Oath and the Inner Sense
All this the assembly should do only from afar, fostering even the doctrines on which its success depends in moderate measure and proportion, never intervening in disputes of opinion to decide by force. If it forbids inquiry, or imposes opinions without foundations of reason and knowledge, its deeds contradict its purpose. It should attend not to the particular foundations of any religion, ruling or foreign, but only to the general principles on which all nations agree—without which happiness flies like a dream, righteousness is no righteousness, and the hope of future life is only weakness of soul and softness of heart. One need not ask whether to swear the Turim and Kohanim who believe in principles; the question is on which principles the oath begins. If the general principles are confirmed by oath, either you believe the swearer about his belief, or his oath is an abomination—mere words from the lips with the heart absent. Oaths gain force only from belief in these general principles. If they concern particular principles of some faith, without which righteousness and human happiness could exist, then by what authority does the assembly or its agents claim power to search all the chambers of men’s hearts and reveal secrets that neither profit nor save? No covenant can transfer such a right, since it does not pass from domain to domain by mere declaration of intent.
What an Oath Can and Cannot Do
The passage then asks whether an oath about matters of faith or denial—something having substance—or about men’s opinions and their agreement with judgments rooted in reason, is something one can swear to at all. Oaths generate no new obligations; calling on God as witness adds no right the man lacked before and subtracts none. The whole utility of an oath is to rouse the heart from slumber and awaken the ear to hear what the Judge of all the earth asks of him even without an oath. Hence an oath is impossible for a man whose soul is upright, and for one who swears with the intention of the first—who knows the truth anyway—every oath and curse is vain, since truth fills his chambers; God seeks not only words of the lips but all hearts and the thoughts of the heart. The wicked man, uncircumcised of heart in knowledge, will, and deed, does wrong—”He fears no gods, he spares no man,” as Lichtwer’s fable has it. Oaths should be administered only concerning things perceptible to the external senses—what one heard, saw, spoke, received, gave—but it is cruel to press men with oaths about matters belonging only to the inner sense: Do you believe with perfect faith? Perhaps you were seduced? Perhaps doubt remains? One should spare the upright in heart. Things verified by the inner sense cannot be held in the hand; sometimes at one moment one seems to grasp them, and at another doubt steals in unawares. What one was ready to die for today, tomorrow another spirit possesses. Asking a man to swear to such inner matters multiplies confusion even between the speaker and his friend, since inner feeling differs in each heart and cannot be measured against the other except through other measures; we can only use letters, signs, and words, and are forced to speak in allegory and borrowed names, producing confusion as meanings shift across centuries. The author addresses the pleasant reader, asking not to be blamed for the disease of doubt.
Reply to the Critic
Framed as a reply to a critic—later named as Herr M.—the author opens with Psalm 122 and restates his core thesis: he has already argued, in a work written with counsel and understanding on improving the condition of the Jews in relation to the state, that it is fitting to examine how far one may approach the congregations according to their laws and customs. Whoever holds judicial authority by virtue of the social covenant has a share in that jurisdiction proportionate to what is needed. Can such jurisdiction belong to a person at all? Neither the social community nor the ruling religious community has coercive jurisdiction in matters of faith; only on the foundations of sound reason, which obliges us to honor the Divine, does neither body have the right or power to take any jurisdiction except the jurisdiction to teach—not force, only the strength of proof; no cruel coercion, only moral reproof and demonstration from reliable foundations. If this can be brought near to straight reason, then no covenant, no ancestral custom handed from fathers to children, has force for such jurisdiction; all coercion by the religious court is without justice, all external force in matters of faith is oppression and violence. The court cannot grant jurisdiction it does not itself possess, nor give another a force that came to it by force and injustice. This evil usage, grown through a vain idea, has become so rooted in human souls that it cannot be uprooted at once; we are obliged at least to take counsel from afar and set a barrier to its stubborn spirit, saying “thus far shall you come,” so its roots spread no further.
Courage Before the Public
These were the results of his investigations, and he took courage to bring his thoughts before the reading public, though at the time he could not present his foundations with the full clarification he has now given in the first chapter of this book. He was enabled to live in a land among a society to whom these principles were not new, and whose ruler from the beginning of his reign set his eyes and heart on establishing human judgment on that basis in matters of faith—the first among the kings of the earth in our time who did not oppose the wise principle that human beings were created only for one another, teaching the habit of setting aside one’s own opinion before another’s and, failing that, to bear and tolerate the other. A footnote cites the preface to Jerusalem and a passage from Träume eines Menschenfreundes. The author grants precedence to the ruling religion that existed before him, and wonders how many years people will still need before they recognize that the claim of precedence for a religion over persons is not a true judgment. He praises certain distinguished Christian clergy in this city who publicized these reliable foundations—the principles of true fear of God—and some of whom hastened to stand at the right of his foundations opposing the idol of zeal. The religious court gave testimony and justified his foundations, and he marvels at their confidence in the power of truth, that they dared to establish it without support. Though he and they differ in principles, he cannot blame himself for not telling them how wonderful they appear to him for this lofty undertaking. By contrast, other readers mocked him, making his deeds foreign to his deeds. They did not destroy his foundations but testified and justified them; yet none tried to reconcile his learned and religious opinions with faith and judgment.
Idolatry, Writing, and the Misreading of Symbols
Mendelssohn turns to the deep origins of idolatry, arguing that early peoples chose as images only things that were tangible and resistant to the slippage of multiple meanings, or else combined such things into new images. A rare script, he observes, would be quickly corrupted by human hands and slide into idol worship. From this he draws a striking conclusion: it is entirely natural that idolatry began as the worship of animals rather than of human beings. Man did not manage to ascribe divine attributes to himself or to worship his own kind as gods.
How, then, did people first come to recognize divinity at all? Perhaps mighty men, conquerors, wise lawgivers or prophets arrived from some distant, blessed land already lit by wisdom, made a name for themselves in a dark country through awesome deeds, and were eventually honored as angels or gods. This happens most easily, he suggests, to a people that receives its culture from another people rather than growing it itself. He credits the observation to “the Lord Meyers,” who supports the hypothesis that the need for written signs was the first cause of idolatry.
The warning that follows is aimed at travelers and historians alike: when judging a foreign people’s customs, guard against the bias of seeing everything through your own eyes, lest you call idolatry what may be only writing. He offers a parable. A man ignorant of the art of writing arrives from a far country at one of Europe’s freest temples—say, the temple of Hamburg—and finds it empty of every image and form, with only some black letters on the wall that might have been written by chance. The whole congregation gazes at those letters with holy awe, spreads its hands toward them, and prays. Were this man to return to Tahiti and describe the religion of the Philanthropin in Dessau, his countrymen would scoff at the vanity of people who bow to black letters on a white wall. Such errors, Mendelssohn notes, recur constantly among our own travelers. The conquerors of Jerusalem, plundering the Temple, found the cherubim on the Ark of the Testimony and declared them the idols of the Jews—taking a picture that symbolized the divine presence for the image of divinity itself.
The Earth on the Tortoise
Readers today laugh at the sages of India who hold that the earth rests on an elephant, which stands on a great tortoise, which is held by a bear riding a serpent of endless length—and then ask what the serpent rests on. Mendelssohn cites the travel account of the Gentoos and Mr. Halwell’s study of their sacred books, quoting the eighth chapter: Berhma, the great being, surrounded by glory, is told by God that he was created and formed by God, who breathes a new spirit into him; he is to speak over created things and their image, establish his covenant with them, and be Ziv, who strips form and clothes another. When the waves of the great deep quieted, a mighty bear was formed—the Gentoos’ symbol of strength—and from the depths came a great tortoise, their symbol of permanence, and a very great serpent, their symbol of wisdom. Berhma set the earth on the tortoise’s back and spread it on the serpent’s head. All of this appears among them in pictures too, showing how easily tangible images and hieroglyphs mislead.
When the Sign Becomes Poison
Human history records how many hundreds of years people wandered in the desert while idolatry held all the earth. The original intent of images as signs was lost, every memory of it perished, and the spirit of truth that had guarded them was driven off. What remained—the image—turned to bitter poison. Customs surviving from the gods were corrupted by false belief and ruined by the cunning of priests, until people bowed to beasts of the field and creeping things, honoring or fearing them as gods. They knew nothing of God save dread of a great and mighty power.
The Law of a Single Nation
The laws, statutes, and commandments, the text argues, concern only this nation, through which the nation as a whole attains its happiness. Their legislator is God—not as creator and sustainer of the whole world, but as the shield and savior of the nation, the God of the covenant of the fathers, who swore to Isaac and established statutes for Jacob: their redeemer, prince of their host, king and head of this people. He gave these laws a dreadful sanctity before the whole assembly in a manner never heard of, binding the nation and all its descendants for every generation, unchanging forever. The laws came through revelation, by speech and writing, but only the most powerful part was transmitted in letters; even these became nearly unintelligible without the explanations delivered orally, since no written sign keeps its meaning for a single generation unchanged.
The commandments, written and oral, aim at general and particular happiness, but chiefly they are a kind of writing: the practical part guides the investigating intellect toward divine truths, some eternal, some received, on which this people’s foundations were cast. The practical commandments were the rope binding action to contemplation, life to study, urging hearts to emulate one another. In early days this aim was realized, until the people corrupted its way and folly returned to its place.
One Essence of Society and Religion
In this ancient constitution the assembly of society and the assembly of religion were not merely joined but one essence. The relation between man and fellow and between man and God met at a single point. God was Himself king and judge of this people—a single being in whom no division applies. This ruler seeks nothing from the nation except what brings about the good of the whole assembly. Political governance thus had the sanctity of Torah; all state service was service of God; taxes were God’s; even the lightest police duty was divine service. The Levites drew their sustenance from God and had no portion in the land, because God was their inheritance. Whoever dwelt outside the land “served other gods”—not literally, but because such a person bears the yoke of other political rulers.
Sin as Political Offense, and the Reluctance to Punish
Sins against God’s honor, since He is the nation’s legislator, counted as sins against the king’s honor and thus against society. Cursing God’s name despised the king’s honor; profaning the Sabbath abolished a foundation of the political order, for “it is a sign forever between Me and the children of Israel.” Such sins were punished as political offenses—evil deeds, not false opinions. Yet even for these, great effort was made to lighten punishment. By oral law, capital punishment or lashes required two valid witnesses who had warned the offender beforehand, and the offender had to confess orally, accept the punishment, and transgress immediately in the presence of those same witnesses. How little blood was spilled under such a government! Judges strained to exempt themselves from the confession that caused them grief, to avoid death for a fellow created in God’s image—for the executed is called “the curse of God.” A court wishing to keep its good name, the rabbis said, should see that no more than one soul is executed in seventy years.
Religion Does Not Fight Truth
From all this, Mendelssohn concludes, we see how little those understand the essence of Moses’ law who think Judaism extends its authority to punish the nonbeliever or the erring with temporal punishment. The seeker of light and truth—and likewise the gentleman of Berlin—are far from the truth in supposing that by the foundations of Judaism he has negated the authority of the court and of the religion. Religion does not fight truth.
Two Assemblies, Two Kinds of Power
The book’s organizing distinction is between what Mendelssohn calls the assembly of the state and the assembly of religion — the association of men formed to secure their temporal happiness, and the fellowship that concerns itself with their relation to God. The state may coerce outward action; it may punish and reward, because civil peace depends on deeds that can be seen and regulated. It cannot rule the heart. The religious assembly, by contrast, has no right of coercion over property or persons at all. Its instruments are teaching, admonition, strengthening, and warning — persuasion and proof, never force, never bribery by reward or punishment. Mendelssohn grounds this in a claim about the mind itself: thoughts cannot be changed by desire or compelled by fear and hope, which act on the faculty of desire, while rational foundations act on the faculty of cognition. To reward belief and punish unbelief by intermediate means is therefore not government but deception and oppression, and the legal textbooks that distinguish between “rewarding” and “punishing” opinion are engaged in mere trickery.
From this follows his treatment of the oath, which occupies a long stretch of the argument. An oath, he insists, generates no new obligation; calling God as witness adds no right the man lacked before and subtracts none. Its whole utility is to rouse the heart from slumber. Administering oaths about matters of inner belief — “Do you believe with perfect faith? Perhaps you were seduced? Perhaps doubt remains?” — is therefore cruel, because things verified by the inner sense cannot be held in the hand. What one was ready to die for today, another spirit may possess tomorrow. Oaths belong to what the external senses can attest: what one heard, saw, spoke, received, gave.
What Judaism Actually Commands
The second half turns to revelation, and here Mendelssohn makes his most contested move. Israel, he argues, never received a “divine religion” in the sense Christians give that phrase. What was revealed to Moses in a wondrous, supernatural way was commandments, statutes, and judgments — a divine Torah of deeds — not opinions, not doctrines, not truths of salvation. The eternal truths, both the necessary ones of arithmetic and geometry and the contingent ones concerning nature and the soul, God reveals to all mankind at all times through nature and the course of things, not through speech and writing. The distinction matters because it dissolves the apparent need for religious coercion: if the essentials of faith are available to reason everywhere, no community needs the power to police belief.
He classifies truths by how they are verified. Necessary truths rest on the unchanging connection among concepts and can only be taught by analysis — the teacher, like Socrates’ midwife, helps bring to light what is already hidden in the student. Contingent truths require observation and experiment, and here we must often rely on the testimony of trustworthy witnesses, though a claim of great consequence for our happiness will not fully persuade us until we can repeat the observation ourselves. Historical truths — what happened at one time and place — reach us only by tradition. Each kind of truth has its own mode of verification, and confusing them is the root of much error.
The practical commandments, on this account, were never meant to be a creed. They were a kind of writing with a purpose: a rope binding action to contemplation, life to study, designed to draw student and teacher together and to awaken hearts to emulate one another. In the ancient constitution, the assembly of society and the assembly of religion were not merely joined but one essence — God was Himself the king and judge of the people, so that political governance carried the sanctity of Torah and every police duty was service of God. Even sins against God’s honor, such as cursing the Name or profaning the Sabbath, were punished as political offenses against the legislator’s honor, not as false opinions. And the oral law hedged even those penalties so heavily — two valid witnesses who had warned the offender, confession and acceptance of punishment, immediate transgression in their presence — that a court wishing to keep its good name, the rabbis said, should see that no more than one soul is executed in seventy years.
The Book That Would Not Stay Buried
Gottlober’s preface shows what Jerusalem cost and what it did. He presents Mendelssohn as the third Moses, after Moses son of Amram and Moses son of Maimon, called “Socrates” among the nations, and he quotes Kant’s letter of 6 August 1783, which describes the book as the announcement of a great though slow-coming reform and praises the freedom of conscience it sets forth. Against this, Gottlober records the attacks: a German polemic published in Amsterdam in 1786 that twisted Mendelssohn’s humility into pride, and a book called Atzei Eden whose author strove to uproot his arguments. He cites the scholar Shadal, depicted as a warrior who fought and finally admitted the strength of Mendelssohn’s case. The translator’s own labors took some five years, matching the Hebrew to the German almost word for word so a reader could compare them side by side, and rendering Gewissensfreiheit as cherut hada’at, freedom of opinion.
The book’s legacy lies in that phrase. Mendelssohn’s argument that no covenant, no ancestral custom, and no religious court can confer jurisdiction over a person’s beliefs was radical in his own century and remained combustible in the next, which is why a Hebrew translation needed a defense of its author before a single page of the argument began. What he asked for was not toleration as a favor but freedom of conscience as a right — and he asked it, characteristically, by first showing that Judaism had never required anything else.
