Dualism and its Perils: The Case of Mendelssohn

Was Moses Mendelssohn "responsible" for the Reform Movement in Germany? Many of the Reformers wished to claim Mendelssohn as the spiritual ancestor of the movement -- the Marx to Abraham Geiger's Lenin, so to speak -- but, then again, some Orthodox figures wish to claim Mendelssohn as one of their own as well. Who is right, and how may this question be adjudicated?

On the one hand, we must take note of the fact that Mendelssohn remained a committed halachic Jew, despite his Enlightenment philosophy and involvement in the secular world. If practice matters more than belief -- as Mendelssohn himself states in Jerusalem -- then presumably this sole aspect of his life places Mendelssohn firmly in the "Orthodox" camp. But surely this rather ad hominem argument does not capture the significance of Mendelssohn's philosophical project, which, I will suggest, belongs more in the Reform camp.

My project here is to see Mendelssohn's Jerusalem, and the subsequent reforms of the Westphalia constitory, as containing within them more than just the seeds of "high reform;" I suggest that they have already ceded the important theological and philosophical ground to what would later become "Reform Judaism." Although I suggest that Mendelssohn himself would likely be extremely hostile towards later phases of the Reform agenda, I argue that the Westphalian reforms would not have been problematic for him, and that he and Westphalia share a fundamental reorienting of the meaning of the Jewish commandments: from ends in themselves to means.

As soon as the letter of the law becomes merely a means to attain the spirit of the law, the question of the law's significance shifts from the status of the law qua law to (1) whether other means might do the job better than the traditional ones and (2) whether we are empowered to opt for those newer means. Indeed, the latter question is what preoccupies early Orthodox responses to Reform such as those of the Hatam Sofer. But I want to trace a more fundamental question: how Mendelssohn's Jerusalem treats "divine legislation" as a means more generally, and how it interacts with the recurring Jewish battle with dualism.

I want to begin by positing a form of Talmudic Judaism which was not fundamentally about the "meaning" or "spirit" of the commandments. Building on Daniel Boyarin's analyses of "carnal Israel," and the Talmud's own many statements apparently opposing metaphysics and philosophical speculation, but most of all taking account of the seemingly perplexing disinterest in explaining what the halacha is meant to do -- a fact which alienated many early German reformers from the Talmud and moved them towards the more emotive and "spiritual" Bible -- I want to suggest that the dominant mode in halachic Jewish thought prior to the philosophical revolutions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was primarily ontological as regards the mitzvot. That is, the overwhelming emphasis of Jewish literature prior to Maimonides and his contemporaries treats the mitzvot as bearing intrinsic significance, not as pointing towards some other realm where true meaning inheres.

Obviously, such a statement is a generalization of hundreds of years of conflicting opinions, but it is an important beginning point. In contrast to Paul, who saw obeying the "letter" of the law as much less important than obeying its spirit, I want to begin by suggesting that the halachic structure envisioned by Pharisaic Judaism saw no significant distinction between the letter and the spirit of the law at all. Of course, the Pharisees were aware of equity and the conflict between rules and justice, but this is a far milder point than what we will see in later Jewish thinking, wherein the letter of the law is merely the "shell" of the spiritual "kernel."

Paul, of course, was operating in a Greek dualist context similar to Maimonides. Dualism sought to identify the essence of things and ideas which endured despite change in those things; this form of the thing or the idea (to use Plato's language) is apart from its contingent manifestation. Thus, though the appearance of a chair may change over time, and there may be many variations of a chair throughout time and space, there is nonetheless some way in which we can speak of "The Chair," the transcendent form which is reflected in the various chairs we see all around us.

What is critical to bear in mind about dualism is that it contains an implicit negation of the material world. If essence is something other-than-material (spirit, e.g.), then the material is something less important, less "essential." And, in Christian terms, when the spirit is that which links the human to the Holy Spirit, the letter of the law and the materiality of human existence becomes at best a distraction, at worst a distancing of the human from grace. While Christianity subsequently developed philosophical hedges against the world-rejecting dualism of gnosticism, Manicheanism, and the like, the tension constantly resurfaces, with the most notable case being the Reformation itself, whose denigration of the materiality of the eucharist and the legalism of canon law forms an important background for the period under study here.

Maimonides introduced a similar tension into Judaism. In the Guide to the Perplexed and the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides argued that the purpose of the mitzvot was actually to bring man closer to correct apprehension of the Divine. The ritual laws exist to wean Jews away from incorrect ideas, and towards truth. Crucially, Maimonides argued that our tendency to error recurs throughout time. Thus, the mitzvot are always necessary. While some practices, such as sacrifices, were pedagogically-oriented towards a particular set of circumstances which no longer exist and thus no longer have a place in Judaism (Maimonides notoriously suggested that only a small group of sacrifices would be reinstituted in the Messianic Age), others, such as the dietary laws, pertain to quintessential human frailties, and thus endure.

Maimonides adds other "guardrails" against anomianism: the nature of the Jewish community, for example. But already, the tendency towards anomianism, and even quietism, is in place, because if one is truly a perfect philosopher, the commandments appear to have outlived their usefulness.

As I have discussed elsewhere, It is interesting to note that Maimonides' opponents fell into the dualist trap, apparently unwittingly. While there were some figures who sought to maintain a "traditional" view of the Mitzvot (see Septimus 202ff), Maimonides' primary opponents were the early Kabbalists, who themselves developed a dualistic worldview. For the Kabbalists, however, the mitzvot were not arbitrary teaching-tools but were linked, in a mythical-theurgical way, to the structure of the universe itself. While, for Maimonides, the dietary laws are more important procedurally than substantively, the Kabbalists sought to link the very materiality of the mitzvot with the spiritual realms of the sefirot/godhead.

But the Kabbalists have also given part of the game away: the true zone of significance, according to theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah, is not the material, not the letter of the law itself, but the way the laws/commandments operate in the spiritual. The road was paved for Shabbetai Tzvi to speak of a "higher Torah" whose dictates may be opposed to those of the lower one with which Jews were familiar.

In this context, we may begin to understand the nature of Moses Mendelssohn's thought as expressed in Jerusalem, and other works. Mendelssohn takes a position similar to Maimonides', but different in very interesting ways. For Mendelssohn, Judaism is a revealed religion, but only with respect to its "legislation." (Jerusalem 69) Unlike Maimonides, who saw correct belief as both the goal and the quintessence of the mitzvot, Mendelssohn sees correct understanding of the nature of the godhead as separate from the mitzvot. After all, if God has endowed hwith Reason, why reveal what humans can deduce for themselves? (Jerusalem 65)

Moreover, since Reason in universal, only the legislation at Sinai was revealed particularly to Judaism. Salvation is available to everyone, because everyone can deduce universal "natural" religion. Laws, which are the essence of the Torah for Mendelssohn, "refer to, or are based upon, eternal verities, or remind us of them, or induce us to ponder them." (id. 70-71) Mendelssohn quotes "our rabbis" as saying "Laws are related to doctrines as the body is to the soul." (Id.)

These are critical issues for understanding Mendelssohn in the context of dualism. On the one hand, unlike later Reformers, Mendelssohn is keen to minimize the importance of creed in Judaism. He denies explicitly that Judaism has a set of articles of faith, and suggests that Judaism offers more possibilities for freedom of conscience than other religions. (Id. 72ff) On the other hand, he suggests that the laws exist only to encourage and inculcate these ideas. Why, then, have the laws at all, if people can be taught the ideas directly?

Mendelssohn himself takes a somewhat "Orthodox" line on this point, stating that while doctrines were never "tied to phrases or formulations which had to remain unchanged for all men and times," the law is written, in words which "represent rigid and unchangeable forms." (Id. 73) Although I would like not to enter into Mendelssohn's interesting, and somewhat strange, genealogy of writing, which I find a curious precursor -- and antithesis -- of Derrida's, we should understand that for Mendelssohn and idea cannot be written without turning in some way into idolatry. Only the details of the law can be so fixed into letters.

In any event, Mendelssohn effectively denies that the law can be changed: it is divinely revealed, in its details. Its norms are fixed for all time. (Id. 98) Mendelssohn even interprets Jesus as stating that "anyone born into the law must live and die in accordance with it." (Id. 106) And Mendelssohn defends the particularity of the law together with the universality of Judaism's and Christianity's shared rational basis, by arguing against a union of all faiths on what would now be called quasi-multiculturalist grounds. (Id. 108-09)

But the purpose of the law, to repeat, is still to "guide the seeking mind to divine truths -- partly eternal, partly historical -- on which the religion of this people was based." (Id. 99)

In other words, though Mendelssohn vehemently disagrees with Maimonides that proper belief can be commanded, he agrees that the law is meant to be a path towards that belief. Even more importantly, Mendelssohn does not set up particularly strong "guards" against anomianism. If we grant that he has justified why a rational, Enlightened man may be interested in maintaining Jewish ceremonial law (which was, after all, the purpose of Jerusalem), we cannot grant that he has explained why he must.

Elsewhere, Mendelssohn elaborates on the need for the law. In a 1783 letter, for example, he calls the law a "unifying bond" which is necessary "as long as polytheism, anthropomorphism, and religious usurpation are rampant in the world." (Mendelssohn 148) Principles and beliefs cannot act as such a bond, because they are "shackles" on free reason. (Id.) Rather, "acts" that are conducive, but not coercive, to proper thought must be the nature of this bond. And, Mendelssohn adds, Jews should try "to endow [the ceremonies] with genuine and real meaning." (Id.)

Of course, such was the goal of the Westphalian reforms, which will be examined momentarily, and indeed the later, more radical period of reforms as well. To see how Mendelssohn's ideas contained the seed of this reform, we need only take account of the weak rationale for the continued obedience to the law -- Jewish particularism. Mendelssohn himself apparently felt that Christianity was farther from rationality than Judaism; this is why he would not convert, according to a letter written to Prince Karl-Wilhelm. (Mendelssohn 123ff). But this itself is not a reason to continue practicing the same Jewish ceremonies, particularly if the quasi-ecumenical ferment which Mendelssohn himself applauds is to have any input on Jewish life.

Mendelssohn also felt that the law was divinely revealed, and thus, although he was willing to make moderate changes in accord with the times (See Meyer 15), both the fundamental structure and the vast majority of the letter of the law must remain intact. But if the law was divinely revealed in order for humans to get to a certain goal, then surely it would be part of the divine plan to find an even more efficacious means of attaining that goal. Indeed, this is the "spirit of the law" in its truest sense.

Mendelssohn's own statements against such hubris cannot stand together with the principle that human Reason can comprehend the divine, because if human Reason can do that, then surely it can act on the same plane of reliability as the Divine vis a vis instituting religious legislation. Finally, Mendelssohn admits that the ceremonies do not inculcate the right ideas on their own accord; some effort to endow them with real meaning is necessary.

To do so was precisely the thrust of the Westphalian reforms, which proceeded along the premise that "improvements" could be made in Jewish ritual life and education to bring it in accord with the rational basis of the Jewish religion. (Meyer 33ff) Although apparently some of the ritual tshuvot (such as the one permitting the consumption of legumes on Passover) appear to have angered traditional religious authorities more (Meyer 37), I think the best evidence of Westphalia's true implicit radicalism can be seen in the supposedly cosmetic changes introduced to the prayer service.

Westphalian alterations of Jewish prayer focused around a net of rules designed to increase "dignity and decorum" and convert the backward, Oriental Jewish prayer service into a respectable bourgeois worship ceremony. Changes in the geography of the Temple, professionalization of the leaders of the service, more group singing, less individual recitation, strict rules prohibiting unwanted conversations, and the remaining variety of Westphalian reforms may initially seem to have little in common other than the embarrassment of the reformers at the boisterous and unseemly nature of Jewish prayer.

Such an evaluation, in my view, radically underplays the conceptual shifts at work in Westphalia. Fundamentally, the desire for "dignity and decorum" stems from the idea that the purpose of the prayer service (inter alia) was calm, quiet (one might say German-Protestant) reflection on the divine. (Meyer 35-36) This was not at all "the" obvious reason for Jewish prayer, even if it was so for Protestant services. Indeed, as an aside, it is somewhat odd for a student of German Protestantism to see such an overwhelmingly rationalistic interpretation of religion and the prayer act emerge in the same societal context that produced the intuition-based philosophy of Friedrich Schleiermacher and subsequent German Romantic theologians. For Schleiermacher, religion and religious practice was not about detached reflection on rational religion but on an "intuition of the infinite." Westphalia's heir, High Reform, which evolved in a period already saturated with Schleiermachian ideas, seems the very antithesis not only of earlier Jewish conceptions of prayer (mystical or otherwise) but of the zeitgeist which later reformers were supposedly so keen on imitating. Imagine a contemporary reformer of Judaism insisting that to be au courant, synagogues should be converted into Carlebachian Houses of Love and Prayer, replete with guitars and love beads – Reform in Germany was at least thirty years behind the religious fashions it was seeking to emulate.

Returning to Westphalia itself, the emphases on decreasing active participation, reducing the form of ritual, and the use of professionals in the service represents a radical shift in the way the meaning of prayer is understood, the wayprayer is experienced by the community, and the relative import of "surface" ritual to "substance" spirit -- even if the liturgy remains constant. Prayer becomes not a matter of devotion or supplication; it is about edification. It does not involve the active involvement of the individual; it is more an extended version of a sermon -- another Westphalian emphasis. If we agree with the Westphalian reformers themselves that the true significance of a religious act is in its spirit, not its letter, then such "rediscoveries" of the true spirit of the prayer service is far more significant move than changing its material "clothing."

Such a reading is amplified by other Westphalian reforms. For example, Jacobson and other Westphalian figures were keen to point out the difference between "religious" preachers and "legal" rabbis, a distinction which echoes both the 'shell' and 'kernel' view of Jewish legal and ritual life, and much more long-running Christian oppositions between the legalistic forms of Talmudic Judaism and the true religious forms of the New Covenant. From this position it is only a short step to much wider critiques of both the particularities of Jewish law and the relevance of law to grace altogether. Throughout the Westphalian reforms, Mendelssohnian ideas about the law as a means to an end are amplified considerably as the supposedly superficial character of those means becomes radically altered to suit ends which were themselves not universally agreed upon.

In fact, once the Westphalian moves are granted, there seems to be no real reason not to change the liturgy and material performance of the prayers. If the spirit is what is important, and the letter is just a means, then why difficult, hard-to-comprehend means? Why not new means altogether?

The Hatam Sofer, in 1819, stated what has since become the Orthodox "party line" answer to the question. "One court cannot abolish the ruling of another court unless it is greater in numbers and wisdom," he wrote. (Sofer 170) Really, all the rest is commentary, at least in terms of halachic philosophy. The Hatam Sofer adduces a wide variety of sources on similar points -- that he who rejects the Oral Law is considered an Atheist, that the Sanhedrin decided this or that point, etc. But the essence of his response is that new means cannot be instituted because we are not legally/religiously empowered to overturn the old ones.

At the same time, it has been well noted that the Hatam Sofer himself seemed to develop an idea of the "spirit of the law," and if we contrast his innovation of the conservative spirit of the law with an analysis of Talmudic hermeneutic procedures, we can see that Orthodoxy, too, not only took on the idea of the "spirit" but also invented a spirit that seems somewhat at odds with earlier models. (Berkovits 8ff) Clearly, it would be a fatuous oversimplification to say that Orthodoxy is "just the same" as Reform. An innovative spirit of conservatism is innovative, but it does not have as many innovating consequences for the law as does the Reform approach. Rather than make such generalizations, we might see Orthodoxy as offering a different answer to a Reform question.

The Reformers asked, "What is the Spirit of the Law," and "deduced" that it was quite similar to their German Protestant surroundings. Here, I see very little difference between Mendelssohn, Westphalia and subsequent Reforms. Though Orthodox figures arrived at different answers than Reformers, we can see that in terms of the grammar of the question, they had largely been taken over by Reform thought. Even if mainline Orthodox opinion is one based on authority -- maybe "new means" might be better, but who are we to judge – it still to some extent views commandments as means rather than ends, and is willing to take the "spirit of the law" into account in deciding questions. Not unlike the Kabbalah responding to Maimonides, only this time in the halachic, rather than the philosophical realm, the conservative "counterattack" seems in my view to have already been taken in by the new modes of thought which are supposedly being opposed.

In sum, the brief treatment of Mendelssohn and Westphalia produced here suggests that, already, the main philosophical lifting was done by these early sources, and that even subsequent opponents to reform are to some degree enchanted by the basic spirit/letter formulation. What separated Mendelssohn from (later) Reformers seems to me to be more a matter of social factors than anything else. One cannot help but read the reforms of Westphalia, Hamburg, and beyond without being struck by the embarrassed tone with which the Reformers discuss Jewish ritual. Indeed, even those who seek to maintain parts of it refer to it as "Oriental," as belonging perhaps to the Near East or the newly-invented Eastern Europe (see Wolfe, passim), as being foreign to German taste. As developing such taste became more important, Mendelssohn's particular role for the Jewish people must have seemed less a "privilege" and more, to paraphrase Mordechai Kaplan, a burden.

By way of conclusion, it is interesting to note that at the very time Mendelssohn was writing in Germany, Hasidism was developing in Eastern Europe a remarkably similar set of dualistic ideas. Particularly viewed in the context of the Westphalian reforms, we might see Hasidic prayer and Westphalian prayer as two sides of the same coin. Both sought to return prayer to its "true meaning."

But where Westphalia operated under a rationalist rubric, Hasidism operated under a mystical one. Hasidic masters such as the Maggid of Mezrich innovated new forms of prayer, just as Westphalian reformers did. Though emotive instead of raitonalistic, Hasidism's meditative methods, ecstatic uses of prayer, and new modes of physicality were every bit as revolutionary as Westphalia's hymnals, decorum, and pews.

Probably, sociological factors are far more important for understanding why Hasidism did not turn to anomianism, while German reform did. German Reformers wanted to be good Germans; the Hasidim generally had no interest at all in their "secular" society. German Jewry was emancipated; Podolia's was not.

But we might also find in the writings of the Besht a theological difference between Hasidism and early Reform which goes beyond the simple rationalism/mysticism split. (This split is not enough, as I have suggested by referring to Shabbetai Tzvi; dualism is dualism, whether rationalistic or mystical.) The Besht, like the German reformers, used the metaphor of "shell" and "kernel" to discuss the letter/materiality of the mitzvah and its interior, spiritual meaning. But for the Besht, there cannot be spirit without a "container." There cannot be, at least according to texts in the Shivhei HaBesht which may be authentically Beshtian and may not, any experience of the divine apart from some receptacle. The mitzvot – and indeed the material world – are non-arbitrary containers, and may even be considered as divine.

We find similar ideas in the Tanya of R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi. R. Schneur Zalman has a rigorously dualistic worldview in the Tanya; indeed, it can easily be read as acosmic. But critically, in the Tanya the materiality of "tzimtzum" is itself part of God. Nature, which constrains and masks the divine light, is Elohim. And while it is the goal of the Hasid to perceive the light within, which is the only true reality, the "shell" itself is necessary to contain that light; there can be no undifferentiated "spirit."

I wish to stop short of suggesting that the Hasidim, in these doctrines, may be reflecting an understanding of human psychology superior to that of the German reformers. Whatever Reform's demographic results, it is important to note that Hasidism too proved unstable, although it evolved not into assimilationism but into conservatism. Before that historical process took place, however, Early Hasidism was very similar in thrust to Early Reform: both sought the spirit of the commandments, and both within the form of the prayer service towards a realization of that spirit. (Indeed, perhaps the focus on prayer, the "service of the heart" is not surprising, since its interiority is more manifest than that of dietary laws or the cycle of festivals.)

But the "Greek curse" of dualism eventually overpowered both movements. One slid headlong into pure spirit, discarding the literality of the nomos. The other, fearful of just such a slide, lurched back into the immutability of the law and the necessity for ever stricter pious observance of it. Perhaps Yeats was right that "the center cannot hold"?

Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Lectures to its Cultured Despisers (1798)

Moses Sofer, A Reply Concerning the Question of Reform (1819) in The Jew in the Modern World (Mendes-Flohr ed.)

Michael Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (1988)

Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (1994)