Moshe Shner: Dialogues of Tolerance: Baruch Spinoza (Benedictus de Spinoza) & Moses Mendelssohn. On Necessary Preconditions in Dialogues of Tolerance

Trying to introduce myself, I would say that my identity is shaped by several places and several stories, all give meaning to this tolerance discussion. First of all I am coming from Israel. I live in the north of the country, in an area called from antiquity the Galilee, an area of multiple cultures and the bed for many old and new spiritual movements. One can understand the need for tolerance and even a theology of tolerance when one lives in a multicultural area where Jews and Arabs are living side by side. Speaking about Jews we refer to a rich puzzle of people coming from dozens of countries, languages and cultures, seculars as well as religious, city dwellers and village people, new comers and those who are already rooted in the country. When we speak of Christians - the majority of the Israeli Christian population is "Galilean" - we speak of Latin Catholics, Greek Catholics, Greek Orthodox-s and a few other minor Christian groups. Speaking on the "Galilean" Muslims we refer first of all to Sunnites, but also to Sufi Muslims, Druze (all the Druze of Israel live in the Galilee), Circassian Muslims (non-Arabic people originally from the Caucasus) and Ahmadiyya Muslim Community (an Islamic movement originally from India). A unique addition to this cultural puzzle is the presence of the two world centers of the Bahai' faith in the Galilee (in Acco and Haifa). All together, we face in this small area, loaded with history, memories, narratives, religious traditions and cultures, a major challenge of tolerance: how people of so many identities can live side by side with mutual respect?

But I am coming, following the history of my parents also from Poland. My father was born in Lodze where his family lived among non Jews – Polish and German people - in the main street of the city. His mother Golda Szner (Shner) was the youngest among 16 brothers and sisters, religious and atheists, people of the political right and communist ideologists; all but one aunt who immigrated in time to Israel were perished in World War II. A whole "tribe", fifteen families, dozens of aunts and uncles, hundreds of relatives – all were gone. This fact gives tolerance in my mind a dimension of urgency; it adds also a hint of skepticism. We, Jews, do not fully trust 'tolerance talks' after what had happened to us.

My mother Sonia Duschnitzky came from Sejny, a diverse city of Poles, Jews and Lithuanians. The family history in Sejny goes back to the beginning of the Nineteen century. My mother spoke about 7-8 languages (I hardly speak 2). Thousands of Jews lived in Sejny before World War II – no one is living there now. All the Jews, but one, as far as we know and we know too little, who lived in Sejny in 1939, were perished. There are no Jews in Sejny today.

Sonia Duschnitzky (Shner) survived the war as a 'partisan' in Byelorussia and after a year in Soviet Lithuania and 2 years in Poland had rebuilt her life in 1948 in Israel; in 1949 together with my father and a few other survivors built in the Galilee the Ghetto Fighters' Kibbutz (community) and established the first Holocaust museum in the world – "The Ghetto Fighters House". Tolerance – and the historical failure of such ideas in the 20th century – is a major topic of this museum's educational activities.

To add to this complex picture of destruction and resurrection, I have part of my story here in Berlin as well. My grandfather, Moshe Duschnitzky, a distinguished member of the Jewish community in Sejny until 1928, when he was forced by the Polish authorities to leave Poland, is buried here. Following my recent dialogues with Pogranicze, I had renewed my search for the grave of my lost grandfather, and finally last year we had found his tiny, long forgotten, grave at the Jewish cemetery in Berlin. I believe it wouldn't happen without the people of Pogranicze. In these days I will have for the first time the chance to say the Kadish prayer (the mourning prayer) at his grave.

So I want to speak with you today about Tolerance and its very possibility in an interfaith dialogue. I want to share with you my understanding of the prerequisites for a dialogue of tolerance among people from different traditions. Part of it I derive from my life in the Galilee and the story of my family and my people, wondering homeless refugees who seek home throughout Europe and in an ancient homeland and urgently need this antidote of hatred – tolerance (and in all directions). Part of it I derive from my study of Jewish philosophy in Modernity.

I am wise enough, following all that is said, to know that ideas alone are sometimes not enough to become actions and policies, but I also believe that we don’t have the luxury of despair form the possibility of dialogues of tolerance. The alternative – as we already know from our history – is hell.
Monotheism and the challenge of tolerance. The alternative – as we already know from our history – is hell.


Monotheism and the challenge of Tolerance

I want to enrich our discussion of the core values needed to interfaith dialogue by the philosophical thought of two distinguished Jewish philosophers, the 17th century philosopher Baruch (Benedictus) Spinoza and the 18th century Berliner philosopher Moses Mendelsohn. From their thought we can derive at least two principles that without them interfaith dialogue will not be a dialogue of tolerance and therefore would not produce mutual understanding, respect and peaceful co-existence.

It is the nature of a monotheistic faith to claim sole possession of the ultimate truth about God. Monotheism means an exclusive one 'explaining principle' of reality. Truth is one and is given in the sacred text of the Monotheistic faith, any Monotheistic faith. Therefore, contrary to pagan religions, which tended to be pluralistic and tolerant by its very nature, tolerance is a serious challenge to monotheistic theologians. Throughout the medieval religious disputes it was self-evident to Jews, Christians and Muslims that they, and only they, each from their own perspective, possess the ultimate truth. The others were, at best, mistaken, and at worst, the enemies of God. Jews used to express the idea of Judaism’s supremacy over the faith of the gentiles (“Goyim,” non-Jews), while Christians tried to baptize and save the souls of all non-Christians. Alternatives were the option of going to exile or Auto de F'e (the holy fire). And Muslims offered non Muslims (Kuffar) the generous choice between Islam and the sword. At best Jews and Christians were tolerated as inferior and dependant populations, the 'Dhimmi' (ذمي).

A demonstration of this monotheistic understaning of truth we have in Rabbi Yehuda Halevi's (1075-1141) classic philosophical book, The Kosari, which describes a competition between representatives of the three monotheistic faiths and philosophy for the soul of the king of Kosar who sought – probably in the 8th century - a true faith for his people. It is a great story, based on a dim historical story of a Jewish kingdom of Kosar, though we can assume that the actual reader which Rabbi Halevi had in mind was not the Kosari king but the 12th century Jews of Spain, who faced the temptations and pressures of conversion. The Jew in that fictitious story – like the Christian, the Muslim and the philosopher - tries to convince the king (i.e. his Jewish reader) that he alone possesses the true knowledge of God.

In modern times, following radical changes in the European economy, the development of Absolutism and a new cultural atmosphere of Enlightenment, the theological discourse among Jews and Christians had changed as well. Jewish scholars, who recognized that the walls of the Jewish ghetto, physical as well as social and spiritual ones, start to collapse, wished to be accepted into the general society as Europeans. This desired emancipation could not come together with the old idea that their faith is the only true faith.

Modernized Jews entered new "neutral" social circles that brought together Jews and non-Jews and enabled cultural interaction. The other faiths seemed more acceptable as they recognized not only the differences but also the simmilarities between all monotheistic faiths. (Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis. New York University Press, 1971, Chapter 23, pp. 214-225). However, it was not an easy process and it never developed symetrically in all directions. Europe was basically Christian and many Jews crossed the lines to Christianity in their search for a better social status; in other cases they adopted a neutral stand and even indifference towards all faiths.

Nonetheless, it was by no means just a practical choice; The New Europe influenced the Jews and gave them new spiritual horizons. Ideas of universal humanity and reason made the separation of individuals of different faiths archaic. Tolerance became a key idea in modern Jewish thought.


Spinoza (1632-1676)

In the 17th century it was Baruch Spinoza (1632-1676) in the flourishing free Netherlands who led this vision of universal rationality. Baruch Spinoza was the son of former Marrano family from Portugal (Marranos, an insulting word in Spanish, secret Spanish and Portugese Jews who were forced to adopt Christianity under threat of expulsion but who continued to practice Judaism secretly) who escaped to free Amsterdam and returned publicly to Jewish life. The idea of Tolerance, on the one hand, and the question of the validity of all religious traditions, on the other hand, formed the spiritual context in which young Spinoza was brought up. Being stuck in the between zone of Christianity, which his family forced to practice of a few generations and Judaism, which became again the practice of his family, the bright young Portugese-Dutch Jew instead of becoming a distinguished rabbinic scholar grew up to be the great critic of all established religions.

In his Political-Theological Tractatus (1670) Spinoza articulated a brave idea that caused him his excommunication from the Jewish community of Amsterdam (1656). It was the idea that became the leading thread of this pioneering book: tradition is the historical creation of men and, therefore, any religious tradition should be learned in its historical context.

Spinoza articulated in his entire philosophical writings a monistic explanation of realty. All reality is part of one holistic Nature and one infinite God, which are, at last analysis, the same thing: Nature is God and God is nature (Deus sive Naturae). It follows that all religious phenomena are part of one history and subject to the same historical logic (an assumption that in post-modernity is under severe criticism). One historiography explains all human phenomena, including all the historical religions. Scriptures, as historical texts, teach us something about history and about the nature of those who wrote them; they tell us very little about the infinite.

The connection to tolerance is obvious. Spinoza is until these days the great rival of any fundamentalism. If scriptures were written by men, then they are losing its monopoly on God and God's words. It lose it's authority on human thinking as well. This is our first pre-condition for any fruitful interfaith dialogue – accepting the historical and cultural context of all religious traditions.

Even today when I discuss Spinoza with my Jewish, Christian and Muslim students, I face many who cannot digest Spinoza's idea that scriptures are human made and therefore are subject to our rational autonomous criticism. Observant Jews, Muslims and Christians are sometimes insulted by this 340 years old idea that it was human beings who wrote the Bible, the Talmud, The New Testament and the Koran in a certain historical context. And yet, even if we ignore the historical knowledge we already have as modern people and we grant a divine status to one or a few of these texts, or even to part of one of these texts as a few 'modern-tradionalists' suggest, we essentially exclude the other texts. Only when we place these most important texts within one historical paradigm we gain the possibility of respect towards all of these documents of tradition.


Moses Mendelsohn (1729-1786)

Spinoza was too early for the Jewish community of Amsterdam but his idea of cultural history could not be dismissed anymore from the European intellectual arena. In the 18th century it was Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), the father of Jewish enlightenment, who sought new bridges to the outside non-Jewish world and made the idea of tolerance a key factor of his thought. In 18th century Europe more and more Jews sought the modernization of Jewish life and education, but Moses Mendelsohn, the so-called “Jewish Socrates”, an observant Jew and a known rational philosopher, was even then a strange phenomenon. Jews and Christians alike could not understand how a Jew can adopt rational Deism, the Religion of Human Intellect, and at the same time remain an observant Jew.

Mendelssohn wanted to believe that he can hold these two worlds together and that the new spirit of enlightenment would enable him to be a Deist philosopher without being involved in medieval like religious disputes; however, his dualism was not easy for his surroundings and finally he was forced to publicly defend his position and explain how a Jew can enjoy both worlds at the same time. Here, in the texts we wrote to defend his dualism is where the idea of tolerance entered his thought. Here, for the first time in Jewish thought, the medieval idea of 'one-way-to-God' gave place to a pluralistic paradigm of many legitimate faiths.

Mendelssohn was born in 1729 in the town of Dessau, the son of a Torah scribe. The non-fanatic approach of the Dessau Jewish community enabled him to study philosophy in addition to the traditional rabbinical education. In 1743 he followed his Rabbi and mentor David Fraenkl to Berlin, at first as the tutor of the children of the soap maker Isaac Bernhard (1750) and later to become a rich merchant and a renowned philosopher. It was after this move to Berlin that he seriously undertook secular studies outside the world of traditional Jewish scholarship. A decade later (1754) Karl Gotthelf Lessing and Mendelssohn became acquainted, and a life-long friendship began, out of which grew Lessing's play, Nathan the Wise (1779). Their friendship exemplified the Enlightenment's ability to surmount religious differences and it was Lessing who secured Mendelssohn a place in the circle of German intellectuals. Of course, Jews and Christians had maintained intellectual contacts in earlier times as well, but the friendship between Lessing and Mendelssohn moved these relationships much further and attracted considerable attention.

During the 1750’s and 1760’s, Mendelssohn wrote several philosophical discourses, including his prize-winning Treatise on Certainty in Metaphysical Philosophy (1763), for a contest in which Immanuel Kant also competed. Mendelssohn was by far the most dominant figure of the German-Jewish Enlightenment in the 18th century. He is considered the founding father and continual reference point for evaluating later developments in Jewish philosophy. His philosophy anticipated the aesthetics of Kant and Friedrich Schiller, which emphasized the autonomy of aesthetical judgment. His writings include Philosophische Gespräche (1755), Philosophische Schriften (1761), Phäedon (1767), and Jerusalme: oder, Über religiöse Macht und Judentum (1783).

Being part of the Enlightenment, Mendelsohn wished to introduce his people to the German language and culture and he translated the Psalms and the Pentateuch into German, written in Hebrew letters. The translation was accompanied by a traditional Hebrew exegesis. The translation work, which aimed at lowering the boundaries between Jews and their surroundings, stormed the Jewish community and aroused severe opposition among local rabbis. Nevertheless, the time of the ‘Cherem’, the traditional Jewish excommunication, was over. Mendelssohn maintained good relations with the Berlin community and after the disputation with Lavater, was appointed a “Parnas”, one of the community leaders.

Mendelssohn was sharply conscious of living in exile and being a man without a homeland. The failed attempts by Johann Casper Lavater, the Swiss clergyman, to drag him into a religious dispute or to convert him to the Christian faith (1769) resulted in Mendelssohn's conviction that the social status of the Jews will never be secured without civil rights based on rationality and the universal humanistic ideas of 'Humanity' and 'Tolerance'.
Mendelssohn died in Berlin in 1786, probably from a heart attack following his intense engagement in a severe dispute over Spinoza’s pantheistic philosophy.

In his own life Mendelssohn exemplified the dualistic scheme of the modernized Jew which tears the modern Jews apart to this very day; a dualistic model of identity - being at the same time a Jew, a member of a defined particularistic religious group, and a respected member of the surrounding society.


Mendelssohn’s Philosophy of Tolerance

Mendelssohn’s philosophy was influenced by the tradition of classical 18th century rationalism: the emphasis on reason as the sole medium by which man obtained knowledge of his duties to God. The ‘Religion of Reason’, which he adopted from current European Deism, maintains the immortality of the soul (Phäedon, 1767) and the idea that man is endowed with eternally valid innate ideas of absolute goodness and truth. Morality becomes, in accordance with Kant’s “Categorical Imperative”, a faculty of the rational human being. A key value in this tradition is the belief that all men “are to be accounted by nature as equal.” The truth – according to this tradition – is that reason directs men to happiness of the individual and society through the perfection of men.

One of Mendelssohn’s main doctrines, which he shared with Locke, Shaftesbury and Leibnitz, and developed in his main book on Judaism, Jerusalem (1783) was the distinction between eternal truths, which are self-evident, i.e. metaphysics and physics, and historical truths, which require the evidence of sensory experience. This epistemology helped Mendelssohn to argue for tolerance towards the Jews. In accordance with Rabbi Yehuda Halevi’s teaching, Mendelssohn argued that the giving of the Torah at Sinai is a historical fact, which was brought to us by the long chain of Jewish teaching. All Jews – and only Jews – accept this rolling testimony and it abides only them.

His idea of tolerance is based on a dualistic scheme, based on this epistemic assumptions: as a rational philosopher he shares with his non Jewish neighbors the religion of reason and with other philosophers the eternal truth which is evident to all rational people. As a Jew he shares with other Jews a divine law – not human made law but divine law- given to Jews alone and obliges Jews only. This particularistic set of laws does not interfere in any way with his rationality nor with his good citizenship.


The Dispute with Lavater (1769)

Although it was against his nature and his intentions, Mendelssohn was compelled to publicly defend his personal dualism and the right and logic of independent existence of Jewish religion among the non-Jewish society of his time.

As Mendelssohn became more integrated into Berlin Enlightenment circles, his prominence continued to underscore the anomaly of a traditional Jew at the center of Berlin's intellectual circles. His encounter with the Swiss clergyman Johann Casper Lavater brought many of these underlying issues to the foreground. Lavater shared with Christian circles the ambition to convert Jews to Christianity and in that way to show the supremacy of Christian tradition over rationality, it's most severe rival. Lavater and Mendelssohn had met during the mid-1760s. Somewhat reluctantly, Mendelssohn agreed to some private conversations on the subject of Jesus Christ and expressed a positive attitude towards his moral teachings.

These positive remarks toward the father of Christianity were very tempting, too tempting. Lavater had sworn to maintain the privacy of these conversations. But in 1769, he recounted these discussions while dedicating his German translation of a Christian theology composition by the Calvinist Charles Bonnet to Mendelssohn, with the challenge: "To refute it publicly in case you find the essential arguments adduced in support of the facts of Christianity to be incorrect: in case, however, you find them correct, to do what prudence, love of truth, and honesty bid you do; what Socrates would have done, had he read this treatise and found it irrefutable."

Bonnet’s book expressed the Christian dispute against Deism and rationality and Mendelssohn was put in the middle of this public theological dispute. The Lavater affair revealed certain significant forces that were in play at the time and the extent of whose significance historians still debate. Lavater's challenge provided a direct attack on the notion of tolerance. Mendelssohn was called upon to enter a religious disputation by refuting Bonnet's arguments on behalf of Christianity. The record we have from Lessing and his brother shows that Mendelssohn’s first intention was to fight back and refute Bonnet’s arguments, but his request for peace and the awareness of his political fragile situation as a Jew in a Christian state made him formulate a different reply. In his response – a letter of which we will read a few lines today - Mendelssohn explained that his refusal to enter the debate derived from the inferior legal status that governed the Jewish community, almost pedantically rationalizing to Lavater the simple politics of minority existence.

The main idea he brought forward in his letter (Berlin, December 1769) was that we have to accept that there are more than one legitimate way to human salvation. Mendelssohn effectively forced Lavater to withdraw the public pressure, resulting in Lavater's isolation and the triumph of tolerance. On the other hand, Lavater was not alone in his wish to see Mendelssohn convert to Christianity and the pressure and social threat remained and affected the convertion decisions of many Jews in future decades.

Lets read a few lines from Mendelsohn's response to Lavater which illuminate his principal idea of Tolerance:
"… If a Confucius or a Solon were to live among our contemporaries, I could, according to our religion, love and admire the great man without succumbing to the ridiculous desire to convert him. Convert a Confucius or a Solon? What for? Since he is not a member of the household of Jacob, our religious laws do not apply to him. And as far as the principles of religion are concerned, we should have little trouble agreeing on them.
Do I think he can be saved? It seems to me that anyone who leads men in virtue in this life cannot be damned in the next. (Fortunately, I need not fear that I shall have to defend my views before an academic board of inquiry in the same way in which Marmontel was summoned by the Sorbonne to a hearing because of the conventions he held.)
It is my good fortune to count among my friends many an excellent man who is not of my faith. We love each other sincerely, although both of us suspect or assume that we differ in matters of faith. I enjoy the pleasure of his company and feel enriched by it. But at no time has my heart whispered to me, “what a pity that this beautiful soul should be lost…” Only that man will be troubled by such regrets who believes that there is no salvation outside his church [house of prayers]." (Berlin, December 12, 1769)
Mendelsohn, Jerusalem and other Jewish Writings, 1969, P. 117-118.)

The letter shows Mendelsohn's stand towards the other. Tolerance in this text is not a matter of tactics, good manners or 'politically correctness'. One should accept the other and his truth as one should not have any truth claim towards the other of different faith.

It is not a small statement by a leading Jewish teachers; it is, maybe, the first time in the history of Jewish tradition that a leading Jewish scholar is saying that Judaism – as any other religious tradition - is not the sole road to salvation and that human perfection can be achieved within several circles of faith. Neither Judaism, nor any other faith can claim ultimate truth! This is our second prerequisite for an interfaith dialogue – the idea that there are many ways to worship God and that they are all worthy.

We should be precise in our understanding of Mendelsohn's pluralism. It is not a postmodern like relativistic approach, which gives legitimacy to every trend and every moral teaching, lossing the very possibilty of common ethics. Mendelsohn maintains in his philosohical writings - as he does in our text - that universal ethics is a necessary pre-requisit for a pluralistic vision of society. According to the basic convictions of 18th century Deism, human beings share rational capacities that enable this universal ethical discourse. Solon (the ancient Greek founder of Athenian democracy), Confucius (the great ancient Chinese philosopher and father of Confucianism) and Mendelsohn could, in principal, agree on ethics and questions of human goodness. This common understanding would not prevent each one of them to hold his particular tradition. As rational ethicists Confucius, Solon and Mendelsohn share a common ground of universal ethics. As members of different communities each one of them has his own tradition which is legitimate as far as it does not exclude the validity of the other traditions.


Conclusions

In order to develop free dialogue among people of different faiths where one will not feel that he is under pressure by the neighboring traditions, two pre-conditions are essential.

The first, following the 17th century teaching of Spinoza, is the idea that religious traditions develop historically by human beings and therefore losses their ultimate force upon human beings, within a religious community and outside it towards other communities of faith. Traditions change and vary as human beings change in different times and different historical arenas.

The second, following the 18th century teaching of Mendelsohn, is the idea that there are more true traditions than a medieval theologian would accept. There are many genuine roads to God's salvation and one should not bother himself with the thought that the other is mistaken and doing evil if he or she follows a different tradition. The only demand from one-each-other is tolerance and mutual respect.

When we accept these two principles, we are free to enrich our world with the beauty of other cultures and other traditions and we are welcoming interfaith dialogues. Human beings are different and each one has his/her own beauty.

Accepting the historicity and plurality of religious traditions we still have to maintain that in order to achieve mutual respect and co-existence among people of different identities we need a common ground. Spinoza and Mendelsohn maintain universal rational morality. Looking back to our 20th century historical memories we must have severe doubts about the very possibility of this common ground, and yet, the alternatives, which are religious fundamentalism and nihilistic relativism seem much worse. Because we desperately need tolerance as a guiding principle in our post 20th century world we have to establish the historicity of religious traditions and at the same time face again the challenge of core values that will serve as a common ground for our pluralistic society.