A Popular Dictionary of Judaism
(RaMbeMan) (1729–1786) Philosopher. Mendelssohn dedicated his life to improving the civic status of the *Jews and providing a philosophical justification for the Jewish religion. His debate with the Christian clergyman John Lavater was widely discussed since, as a close friend of the philosopher G.E.
Lessing, Mendelssohn participated in the German intellectual life of his day. The character of Nathan in Lessing’s Nathan the Wise is believed to have been based on Mendelssohn and he is seen as the forerunner of *Reform Judaism. He himself remained faithful to the *halakha but in subjecting the Jewish religion to the rational tests of the 18th Century enlightenment the practices of strict *Orthodoxy were bound to be called into question. (See also *HASKALAH).
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