Jerusalem (Mendelssohn)

Jerusalem (Mendelssohn)

Jerusalem or On Religious Power and Judaism (original: „Jerusalem oder über religiöse Macht und Judentum“) is the title of 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 paged 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 a contemporary critic against the present conditions of the Prussian Monarchy.