Mendelssohn & Modernity: Think Tank topic

Update: Prof. Samuel Feiner (New Perspectives on the Haskala) Secularization only reached its  peak in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, then becoming a mass phe­nomenon of such proportions that the various churches, including the rabbin­  ical elite, were, in many parts of Europe, pushed to the sidelines, and the state  and modern culture provided services, institutions, and values that replaced  religion. But in the eighteenth century, the roots of secularization first  emerged among both Christians and Jews. Religion still maintained its hold  on many people, but rationalist criticism of religions grew, the deist worldview  took shape, anticlerical trends were strengthened, and amid conflicts and  struggles, the authority of priests and rabbis was weakened. In the eighteenth century, the culture of the modern city offered a secular  substitute for the experience of religious ritual in the form of entertainment,  the consumption of luxuries, and fashions that changed with dizzying fre­quency. Ambitious individuals, seeking to live as free men, unrestrained by  religious discipline, became more self-confident. The birth of the "new world"  was attended by the repressed voices of the freethinking Jews and the angry  voices of the "congregation of believers." A penetrating look into the life of  European Jewry, with the help of several perceptive individuals who left  behind fascinating testimonies, reveals dramatic changes that occurred in that  century. It discerns not only the various channels through which religion was  weakened but also identifies religiously lax and skeptical Jews whose existence  was not previously known to us.

The Torah u-Madda Journal
The Hatam Sofer’s Nuanced Attitude Towards Secular Learning, Maskilim, and Reformers 2002-2003  Footnote 110. R. Hirsch felt that had Mendelssohn completed his work, the Reform movement might never have come into being. R. Hirsch termed Mendelssohn, “one of the noblest sons of Israel” and “a strictly religious Jew, and yet . . . brilliant and highly esteemed as the German Plato.” R. Azriel Hildesheimer, founder of the Rabbinical Seminary and head of the Adat Israel community in Berlin, termed Mendelssohn “the great worldly sage.” He claimed that Mendelssohn was a loyal adherent of the Jewish religion, but that his disciples and children crudely distorted the essence of his philosophy. Mendelssohn, therefore, could not be held responsible for their actions. S. R. Hirsch, Iggerot Zafon (Jerusalem, 1952) Letter 18; Jeschurun (Frankfort, 1885), 833-834; Mordechai Breuer, Modernity Within Tradition (New York, 1992), 58-59, 61, 71; Meir Hildesheimer, “Moses Mendelssohn,” note 105 above: 111-112.