references - people.fas.harvard.edu - Harvard University

no Jewish problem. 47
A trope of jealousy borne out by history: For
when the greatest literary of the German language,
Goethe, declared a Jew to be an even greater prodigy
than Mozart, he unwittingly sowed the seeds of
Mendelssohn’s vulnerability. To wit: the conversations
between Felix’s teacher Zelter and Goethe in
1821, demonstrating clearly their anti-Semitic attitudes
by stigmatizing him as “the son of a Jew,” and
that “it would be something rare if a Jew became an
artist,” horrifi ed the family and revealed the roots of
Mendelssohn’s subsequent rejection by future generations
of Germans. 48
It is my position that Felix’s spirituality, from
within, was hybrid; for his environment, he lived in
a religious No-Man’s-Land. Crisscrossing Europe on
tour he quickly realized that the only other country
where he could be religiously more comfortable was
in a more tolerant Britain. But he was German, and
the most versatile, virtuosic German composer of
the generation that followed Beethoven. Steeped in
the ecumenical tenets of the Enlightenment, he held
steadfastly to his celebrated grandfather’s logical trajectory
of faith, in turn supported by Moses’ Christian
philosopher-friend Lessing and by his friend, Schleiermacher.
Lessing’s reasoning on education, “What
education is to the individual being, revelation is to
the whole human race,” 49 and Schleiermacher’s discourse
on religion, wherein he writes “It matters not
what conceptions a man adheres to, he can still be
pious” 50 amply refl ect the enlightened theology that
Mendelssohn imparted to his children, to his grandchildren,
and to the Jewish people. Mendelssohn,
who saw history as a continuum of both discipline
and emancipation, had created not a new philosophi-
47 Michael P. Steinberg, Introduction to Culture,
Gender, and Music: A Forum on the Mendelssohn Family, in The
Musical Quarterly (Winter, 1993): 649.
48 See Todd, 30.
49 Frederick Copelston, A History of Philosophy: The
Enlightenment. New York: Continuum, 1960, 128.
50 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Reden über die Religion an
die Gebilteten unter ihre Verächtern (1799); trans. John Oman.
New York: Ungar, 1955, 79.
ces papers - open forum # 6, 2011
cal system but a mechanism for understanding and
outreach.
Hand in hand with this extraordinary leap of
faith came Gotthold Lessing’s choice to incarnate the
person, character, spirit, and teachings of his lifelong
friend as Nathan der Weise. In time, this became one
of the most important plays of the German literature.
Central to this great work is the parable of the rings,
a latter-day projection of the Wisdom of Solomon.
Set in Jerusalem during the Third Crusade, Lessing’s
protagonist, the Jewish merchant Nathan, responds
to the Sultan Saladin’s and the Templar’s query as
to which is the true religion, and succeeds in bridging
the gaps between their faiths. Nathan advances
the parable of a family’s heirloom ring, imbued with
magical powers to transform its owner into a creature
as worthy of God as to his earthly environment. The
ring was to be passed down by the father to his three
sons. During moments of “pious weakness” he promises
it to each, and in order to keep his promise, the
father had had two replicas made, each indistinguishable
from the original. On his deathbed, he offers one
to each of his sons. Quarreling between the brothers
ensued as to which was authentic. A wise judge retorted
that no defi nitive decision could be rendered at
the time, that they must also entertain the possibility
the original had been lost, that all three rings were
replicas, and that it was up to each of them to live a
righteous life rather to than depend upon the powers
of the ring to imbue them with virtue. Nathan’s
reasoning as to which religion is true exonerates the
simple rationale that one should live according to the
religion learned from those we respect.
Two generations later, Moses Mendelssohn’s
grandson applied this axiom, through his own, prolifi
c legacy of sacred and secular-exegetical works,
to continue bridging the gap between Christians and
Jews. By creating works which address the tenets
central to both faiths, Felix Mendelssohn assumed
his grandfather’s mantle to become a genuine musical
philosopher whose compositions, through their
reason, emotional balance and structural equilibrium,
link him—and his most fervent prayers and wishes—
18