MENDELSSOHN, HIRSCH AND THE MITTELER REBBE OF LUBAVITCH
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Moses Mendelssohn is widely acknowledged as one of the great Jewish thinkers whose ideas marked the progression of Modern Jewish thought. However, the image of the man in his own time and his legacy thereafter, continue to mystify. Despite his almost legendary fame, there is no modern stream of Judaism that traces its roots back specifically to his worldview or labels itself "Mendelssohnian". On the other hand, it is clear that he and all others associated with the early Haskalah (Enlightenment) movement, have been generally disassociated from Orthodoxy. Relative to the great Jewish thinkers of the nineteenth century, Mendelssohn is more likely to be associated with Abraham Geiger and other reformers than with Orthodox figures such as Samson Raphael Hirsch or Esriel Hildesheimer.
Moses Mendelssohn is widely acknowledged as one of the great Jewish thinkers whose ideas marked the progression of Modern Jewish thought. However, the image of the man in his own time and his legacy thereafter, continue to mystify. Despite his almost legendary fame, there is no modern stream of Judaism that traces its roots back specifically to his worldview or labels itself "Mendelssohnian". On the other hand, it is clear that he and all others associated with the early Haskalah (Enlightenment) movement, have been generally disassociated from Orthodoxy. Relative to the great Jewish thinkers of the nineteenth century, Mendelssohn is more likely to be associated with Abraham Geiger and other reformers than with Orthodox figures such as Samson Raphael Hirsch or Esriel Hildesheimer.
By all accounts, however, Mendelssohn was a strictly observant Jew who championed the validity of the ritual component of Jewish law as Divinely mandated by the authority of the Revelation at Sinai. If so, it would seem that the differences between Mendelssohn and Hirsch, are less significant than those between the former and Geiger, for example. To be sure, Hirsch was a Rabbi with a beard, while Mendelssohn looked and lived the part of a renaissance man of letters. But their attitudes towards Torah and modern society don't seem to be so fundamentally different. There certainly are differences, but apparently they relate more to semantical aspects of Jewish thought than to the fundamental tenets of belief. Both attempted to draw Judaism into the modern world, championing the causes of general education and integration into secular culture, without compromising on Jewish law and practice.
