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Archive 1 |
from the bottom of the 4th Paragraph from the end:
I suspect that "jaoted" is OCR for "jaded" but am not sure.
"gifted" seems to fit better, but jaoted more interesting
How about "noted"? The "j" key is close to the "n" key.
Lestrade (
talk)
00:16, 11 April 2009 (UTC)Lestrade
"He was the foremost Jewish figure of the 18th century"
says who?
Moved from 'low' to 'mid', as the former is oriented to technical issues remote from the layman. whereas the latter deasl with general issues at a low technical level-- Smerus 06:09, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
On the cause of his death, the most likely cause is a condition called phaechromocytoma, a tumor arising from the adrenal medulla or the sympathetic ganglia, which produces and releases catecholeamines. The condition is associated with neurofibromatosis (vonRecklinghausing disease),a hereditary condition that may cause kyphoscoliosis( curved back),skin tumors(neurofibromata) and skin pigmentation( cafe au lait spots). The main symptoms of phaeochromocytoma are high blood pressure and recurrent episodes of adrenal crisis( paroxysms),charecterisedby by very high blood pressure, profuse sweating,chest, abdominal and neck pains,palpitations and feeling of impending death. these paroxysms could be frequent or sporadic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Babukhadir ( talk • contribs) 02:40, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
He wasn't a reform Jew. Nor did he ever support many of the ideas of reform Jew. I suggest removing him for that cat. Anyone disagree? 210.84.40.154 21:29, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
True for Mendelssohn, but not for his disciples, like Isaac Euchel or David Friedländer. He became, whether he would have approved of this or not, an important figure in the development of Reform Judaism. ( Fuxmann 06:09, 27 July 2007 (UTC))
You could use the same argument that Mendalssohn was an important figure for Torah uMada and therefore should also be added to that cat. Maybe it is just best to add him to the Orthodox Judaism cat. 203.217.41.188 11:16, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, what is a "reform Jew" in that case? Is this a religious or an ideological discussion? Certainly it would be unorthodox to add Mendelssohn to the Orthodox Judaism cat :)
Moses Mendelssohn is certainly a very ambiguous protagonist in Jewish history, worth to be discussed controversally as the young Hannah Arendt did, but historiography concerned with Haskalah can hardly ignore him. His arguments concerning a transformation of Jewish religion (Jerusalem oder: über religiöse Macht und Judentum, 1783) might be theoretical, and not as concrete as some later ritual reforms, but I do not know how it is possible to separate his ideas from the history of Reform Judaism. I clearly disagree that he did never support their ideas. Maybe the mentioned disciples betrayed Mendelssohn's ideas of Reform Judaism...
-- Platonykiss ( talk) 14:42, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Like Bal Shem Tov, whose contemporary he was, Moses Mendelssohn created a new way of being a Jew in a changed world and thus ensured the survival of Judaism. Personally he lived and thought as what we would call (from todays perspective) an orthodox Jew, a position from which he only differed by not granting the rabbinate the power to punish those who deviated from its demands. He believed and tried to prove a Jew could be both - a contributing member of the enlightened avant-garde of humanity and a frumm man living according to the precepts of his religion. He was respected and defended by such strictly orthodox rabbis like Yechezkel Landau and did not allow the slightest depreciation of religious precepts in his presence. After his death he became an icon or flag to rally around or fight against for both sides in the battle between "reform" and "orthodoxy", which he himself had done his best to prevent. ( Fuxmann ( talk) 21:00, 8 March 2010 (UTC))
I do not see how those who preceded the movementf Reform Judaism can be cited as its 'thinkers'. If you include Mendelssohn on the basis of his analysis of the roles of religion and society, you might as well also include Locke, Voltaire, etc. etc. Fuxmann I think has it right. I have removed the category. -- Smerus ( talk) 06:14, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
If the only criterium is that a Reform Jew should live like a Reform Jew did 50 years later, then it is right. But what do you expect him to do 50 years before? The changed world was (for the Habsburg Monarchy) the so called Tolerance edict, which forbade rabbinical jurisdiction. So it was the time to think about the new role of the religion AND of the state, which was the just state which treated its members without any respect to their faith. In consequence the religion which still was regarded as the authority concerning any education, was no longer responsible for jurisdiction, but for the education of the just citizen. The just state and its constitution which granted the full civil rights did not exist before the declaration of the droits de l'homme, but Moses' model for a religious education of the just citizen was certainly not the Cheder school. A cult reform and the installation of reform temples was just a side effect, but it explains, why Moses Mendelssohn is regarded as one of the most important among the Maskilim. He could live without Reform Judaism, but what the Reform Jews will do without him?
If you think that there is no difference between Christian enlightenment and Haskalah, you may also add Locke, Voltaire etc. But only in this case, please :)
-- Platonykiss ( talk) 13:29, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
“ | I have a good friend who is a catholic priest in Poland and discussing the relationship between Christians and Jews he said: "You know that I have not any problem to talk in my community about the fact that Jesus was born as a Jew, that he lived his life as a Jew, and that he died as a Jew. But that Mirjam was a Jewish girl... This is something which I should rather not tell them!" | ” |
Mendelssohn lived in Prussia, which had restrictive Jewish laws of its own, while the Habsburg Tolerance edicts came very late in his life. The changed world Mendelssohn reacted to is the non-Jewish society of the Western Enlightenment, with its new discoveries and attitudes to science, mathematics and philosophy, where Jews, at least on a philosophical level, could take part as equals - something they could not do in everyday life. Mendelssohn believed and wrote, in the same "Jerusalem oder über religiöse Macht und Judentum" to which Platonykiss refers to, that all Jewish laws given on Sinai (which for him, as a matter of course, included the oral law) had to be adhered to by all Jews all the time. At the same time he believed, as a true disciple of the Enlightenment, that religion should admonish and not punish by force of law. Mendelssohn's importance for the Jewish Enlightenment is obvious. Yet this should not lead to easy and quick generalizations about one the most important thinkers of modern Judaism, who, properly read, might show a way out of the impasse between the two hostile camps. Fuxmann ( talk) 17:27, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
With the two camps I meant Jewish orthodoxy and reform, which constituted themselves during Mendelssohn's time. I cannot see any relation between the Prussian laws for Jews - restrictive but with exceptions and loopholes, which made life tolerable - and those in the Habsburg Monarchy (difficult under Maria Theresia, reformed under her son Joseph II., but far from delivering the promised equality before the law). The situation for Jews in Prussia and Germany actually got worse in the years after Mendelssohn's death, when some of Mendelsohn's children got baptized and his pupil David Friedländer developed the notion of a Judaism with baptism-certificate - which would have given it's carriers a much better position regarding taxes, owning property and rights of settlement. Mendelssohn himself stated unequivocally (in "Jerusalem") that Jews should rather renounce the civil rights for which he was fighting all his life than relinquish any religious laws. Fuxmann ( talk) 19:32, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
While I fully agree that the much awaited "tolerance edict" was a great disappointment to those it directly affected, and for good reasons, I believe it did help to improve the situation of the Habsburg Jews in the long run - just compare it to those who came under Russian jurisdiction. I do not see the Jewish Enlightenment as a playground of a few rich and privileged. Salomon Maimon, one of its important proponents, was a poor man all his life, as was the friend of Mendelssohn Hartwig Wessely, the bête noire of the orthodox camp, a Hebrew poet with six children who had just lost his job at a bank. The young maskilim had to scrape and beg to keep their enterprise, the Hebrew magazine Hame'asef, going. And I consider the situation of the German and Prussian Jews, who lived and/or moved mainly to cities as different from the formerly Polish, mainly rural Jews of Galicia. The "loopholes" in Prussia worked just because they could be used by the not so rich, Mendelssohn being a typical example: He could marry with a special permission although he did not have the right to do so as a "Jew 6th class"; he could not legally buy the house he was staying in, but managed to get a Jewish lady "1st class" to buy it for him, while he held the title to the debt. All this of course cost a lot of money - as did all the extra taxes the Jews of Prussia were subjected to. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fuxmann ( talk • contribs) 13:55, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
I not not consider the conflict between Maskilim and Orthodoxy as social, rather as two different developments in two different spheres: the Maskil-movement with its center in Prussia in the West as reaction to the pressure of assimilation, and the Chassidism in the East as a reaction to the breaking up of the century-old Wa'ad. Both encompassed all social strata. That they soon clashed with traditional Orthodoxy and each other does not mean they were not necessary, each in its specific sphere, for the survival of Judaism. The term "Schutzjude" in Prussia meant that the specific Jew had the right of settlement, without, as was Mendelssohn's case, the right to pass it on to his wife and children, should they survive him. Mendelssohn started off as a "Privatdienstbote" (Private servant, the lowest class in Prussia's six-class system for Jews) and managed to move up to the third class of "außerordentlicher Schutzjude" (extraordinary Schutzjude) thanks to the intervention of of an admirer, the Marquis d'Argens, himself a philosopher and friend of Frederic II. I do not see him as "privileged" - except by his own achievements and the honors the Jewish community of Berlin decided to bestow on him (freedom of community tax, the right to be a "Parnass" although he did not fulfill the legal condidtions). Fuxmann ( talk) 15:08, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
I removed 'although' from, 'he won the prize…, although among the competitors were Thomas Abbt and Immanuel Kant,' because it implied that one of them should have won instead. RoseWill 02:23, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
By the way: One letter in which Immanuel Kant expressed his admiration for Jerusalem, is translated into English. Curtis Bowman quoted it.