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in 1786, that was the year of Moses Mendelssohn's death, and
not only that, but Count Mirabeau attended his funeral and
even wrote an essay about the man. Who was this man Moses
Mendelssohn? And what was his influence on the Haskala?
Moses Mendelssohn was born on September 6, 1729 in
Dessau, Germany. When Mirabeau attended his funeral, it
was after January 4, 1786, the day of his death. 23 The title of
Mirabeau's essay was Sur Mose Mendelssohn sur la Reforme
Politique des Juifs which means Concerning Moses
Mendelssohn on Political Reform of the Jews, which appeared
in London in 1787. 24 In his essay Mirabeau argues that the
faults of the Jews were those of their circumstances, and that
the Jews could be made useful citizens if they could get rid of
the "dark phantoms of the Talmudists." Mirabeau was very
much akin to the personality of an Antiochus, who would
accept a Jew as long as he was a Hellenist, in
contradistinction to a Haman who wanted Jews dead.
Mirabeau wanted the Jew to disappear by assimilation.
Moses Mendelssohn is regarded by many as the father of
the Haskala movement. Indeed he was a role model for
German Jewry for assimilation. For example, in Maurice
Schwartz's Yiddish theatrical presentation of "The Family
Karnovsky" 25 in 1948, Karnovsky, a German Jew, returns from
World War I, marries a Gentile and justifies it because of
Moses Mendelssohn. Many writers, even in discussing other
subjects, will usually mention in passing Moses Mendelssohn's
influence on the Haskala. For example, Rufus Learsi, in writing
on The History of the Jews in America states:
"But the traditional or religious way of life which the bulk of the
immigrants from Eastern Europe carried with them to America
was no longer unchallenged, even in their homelands.
Intellectual and social movements were already afoot in all of
them whose basic character was secular. The first and the
oldest was Haskala, which traced its origin back to Moses
Mendelssohn, the frail and gentle sage of Berlin, who dies
three years before the outbreak of the French Revolution." 26
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