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Moses Mendelssohn, Reply to Johann Caspar Lavater (1769)

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According to the principles of my religion, I should not attempt to convert anyone not born under our law.* Some would like to attribute the origin of this spirit of conversion to the Jewish religion, but it is [actually] diametrically opposed to it. All our rabbis are in agreement in teaching that the written and oral laws that make up our revealed religion are binding only on our nation. Upon us, Moses bestowed the law, the inheritance of the tribes of Jacob. All the other nations of the earth, we believe, are commanded by God to observe the law of nature and the religion of the patriarchs. Those who live according to the laws of this religion of nature and reason are called “virtuous men of other nations,” the children of eternal blessedness.

Our rabbis are so far removed from all desire to convert others that they even enjoin us to offer serious counter-arguments to dissuade anyone who presents himself [for conversion] on his own accord. We are supposed to give him pause because the step, though voluntary, entails a very arduous burden. In his current [unconverted] state he need only observe the Noahide laws** to achieve eternal bliss, but as soon as he accepts the religion of the Israelites, he would voluntarily submit to all the strict laws of the faith and have to obey them or expect the punishments that the lawgiver proscribed for their violation. Finally, we are to inform him honestly about the misery, oppression, and contempt in which the nation currently lives, in order to dissuade him from taking a hasty step that he might later regret.

The religion of my fathers, therefore, does not wish to be disseminated. We send no missions to the Indies, East or West, or to Greenland to preach our religion to those distant peoples. The latter, in particular, according to descriptions of them, observe the law of nature better – alas! – than we do and are therefore, according to our religious teachings, an enviable people. He who has not been born under our law may not live according to our law. We alone hold ourselves bound to observe these laws, and this cannot give our fellow men cause for anger. Do our opinions seem illogical? There is no need to provoke a dispute about them. We act according to our conviction, and others are free to doubt the validity of these laws, which we willingly concede do not apply to them. Whether it is appropriate, amiable, or humane of them to so greatly scorn our laws and customs – we leave that to their own consciences to determine. Inasmuch as we do not want to convert others to our opinion, dispute serves no purpose.

If there dwelt among my contemporaries a Confucius or a Solon, I could, according to the principles of my religion, love and admire the great man without entertaining the ridiculous notion of wishing to convert a Confucius or a Solon. Convert him to what? Since he does not belong to the tribes of Jacob, the laws of my religion are not binding upon him; and on the teachings we would soon come to an understanding. Do I believe that he could achieve a blessed state? Oh! I could scarcely think that he who leads men to virtue in this life can be damned in the next, and I need not fear that any venerable college will trouble me because of this opinion, as the Sorbonne did the honest Marmontel.***



* Jewish proselytism may have once been vigorously supported by a strong missionary consciousness, especially in the third century C.E., but had all but disappeared by Mendelssohn’s day. After Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century C.E., severe penalties were attached to conversion to Judaism – trans.
** The “Seven Laws of Noah,” binding on all mankind and providing a non-Judaic path to the next life, included prohibitions against murder, idolatry, theft, sexual license, blasphemy, and the eating of still-living animals. The seventh law provided for the establishment of just laws to enforce the previous six – trans.
*** Composer, dramatist, and Encyclopedist Jean-François Marmontel (1723-1799) fell afoul of the archbishop of Paris as well as the faculty of theology of the Sorbonne by advocating religious toleration of Protestants in one of his books – trans.

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