Jerusalem (Mendelssohn book)

Jerusalem, or on Religious Power and Judaism (Jerusalem oder über religiöse Macht und Judentum) is a book written by Moses Mendelssohn, which was first published in 1783 – the same year when the Prussian officer Christian Wilhelm von Dohm published the second part of his Mémoire Concerning the amelioration of the civil status of the Jews. Moses Mendelssohn was one of the key figures of Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) and his philosophical treatise, dealing with social contract and political theory (especially concerning the question of the separation between religion and state), can be regarded as his most important contribution to Haskalah. The book which was written in Prussia on the eve of the French Revolution, consisted of two parts and each one was paginated separately. The first part discusses "religious power" and the freedom of conscience in the context of the political theory (Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes), and the second part discusses Mendelssohn's personal conception of Judaism concerning the new secular role of any religion within an enlightened state. In his publication Moses Mendelssohn combined a defense of the Jewish population against public accusations with contemporary criticism of the present conditions of the Prussian Monarchy. In 1763 some students of theology visited Moses Mendelssohn in Berlin because of his reputation as a man of letters, and they insisted that they wanted to know Mendelssohn's opinion about Christianity. Three years later one of them, the Swiss Johann Caspar Lavater, sent him his own German translation of Charles Bonnet's Palingénésie philosophique, with a public dedication to Mendelssohn. In this dedication he charged Mendelssohn with the decision to follow Bonnet's reasons by converting to Christianity or to refute Bonnet's arguments. The very ambitious priest Lavater published his dedication to Mendelssohn and Mendelssohn's response together with other letters which were dated to the year 1774—including a prayer of Dr.