Moses Mendelssohn

The Tree of Knowledge

“The day the Bastille fell, the foundations were laid for the gas ovens of Auschwitz – and for the revival of the State of Israel.”
– Professor Israel Eldad

Exile is the condition of not residing in one’s own native habitat but rather being a guest in the territory of another. The Jewish people lived for nearly two thousand years in the exile. They were exiled from the Land of Israel and exiled to the four corners of the world. For most of Israel’s nearly two thousand years in exile, they have considered themselves to be strangers in strange lands, forcibly removed from their native soil and yearning to return home to Zion…

Moses Mendelssohn was the leading symbol of the Haskalah (Enlightenment) Movement. Born in Dessau, Germany in 5489 (1729) he was the son of an impoverished Torah scribe and received a traditional education under Rabbi David Fraenkel. When Fraenkel was invited to become the rabbi of Berlin, the 14-year-old Mendelssohn followed him to study in Fraenkel’s yeshiva, soon becoming a promising young scholar of Talmud and Jewish philosophy.

In addition to learning German and Hebrew in Berlin, Mendelssohn also studied French, Italian, English, Latin and Greek. He took up secular subjects, in which he excelled, including logic, mathematics and philosophy. Becoming comfortable socializing in erudite German circles, Mendelssohn developed close friendships with the philosopher Immanuel Kant and literary critic Gotthold Lessing, a fierce advocate of enlightened toleration. With Lessing’s encouragement, Mendelssohn began to publish philosophical essays in German. In 5539 (1779), Lessing wrote the play Nathan the Wise in which a Jewish hero, modeled after Mendelssohn, appears as a spokesman for brotherhood and love of humanity.

HaShem G-D took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden, to work it and to guard it. And HaShem G-D commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, you must not eat thereof; for on the day you eat of it, you shall surely die.” (BEREISHIT 2:15-17)

Now the serpent was cunning beyond any beast of the field that HaShem G-D had made. He said to the woman, “Did, perhaps, G-D say: ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “Of the fruit of any tree of the garden we may eat. Of the fruit of the tree which is in the center of the garden G-D has said: ‘You shall neither eat of it nor touch it, lest you die.’”

The serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die; for G-D knows that on the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like G-D, knowing good and evil.”

And the woman perceived that the tree was good for eating and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable as a means to wisdom, and she took of its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized that they were naked; and they sewed together a leaf and made themselves aprons. (BEREISHIT 3:1-7)

The Tree of Knowledge is alluring to the eyes and allows a person to desire something without truly loving it. The Rambam, in his Guide to the Perplexed, asks how Adam could sin and, as a result, ascend in levels of intellect and perception. Usually, a transgression would cause one to descend. So how does Adam advance to the level of understanding good and evil as a result of his sin? The Rambam answers his question by stating that, in fact, the knowledge of good and evil was a perceptual plunge from the level Adam was previously on. Before eating from the forbidden tree, man knew only truth and recognized the Divine unity of G-D in Creation. Now, after eating from the tree, Creation has become fragmented whereas good and evil have become relative terms. They are given equal footing and objective truth is removed from our world.

Throughout history, the premier level of perception has been “Listen Israel, HaShem is our G-D – HaShem is One”. When the philosopher Rene Descartes arrogantly stated “I think therefore I am”, intellectual perception in enlightened civilization moved from an idea of objective truth to revolving around the “I” – that reality is now dependent on one’s individual ego. Then Mendelssohn’s friend Immanuel Kant introduced his theory of “relative morality”. And from there it was only a matter of time until man reached the crematoria of Auschwitz.

            When Adolph Eichmann was brought to trial in Jerusalem, he attempted to bring Kant’s philosophy of “relative morality” to his defense. He argued before Judge HaLevi that he was a cog in a machine that was simply following orders in a society where the extermination of Jews was deemed humane. The judge refused to allow Kant into the courtroom and Eichmann was denied this avenue of defense. Professor Israel Eldad, however, argued that Judge HaLevi was one hundred percent wrong in this case and that it cannot be enough to try one man for the murder of six million. One must appraise the entire culture that committed this crime as well as the philosophy that bred it. In order for Israel to attain true justice, the philosophy of “relative morality” had to be brought to trial.

Before eating from the tree, Adam and his wife were naked and, due to their purity, it was acceptable to them. But now that they had eaten from the tree, they had become “intellectual”, therefore sacrificing their innocence by disconnecting the mind from the heart. They became emotionally immature and were suddenly ashamed.

Mendelssohn wanted to be both a German and a Jew; a German in public and a Jew in his home. To become an “intellectual”, he disconnected his intellect from his emotion, shedding his inner truth and sacrificing his innocence. Through emotional dishonesty he convinced himself that his aspirations were possible. But disconnected from the mind, his heart became numb and like Adam, he became ashamed.

The serpent said “you will be like G-D”. And Descartes said essentially the same thing with “I think therefore I am”. Now man had become like G-D and his very existence became dependent on his own contemplation.

Mendelssohn translated the Bible into German (with Hebrew letters) in order to open the door for Jews to leave the ghetto and enter gentile society without sacrificing their “religion”. He hoped that by offering the German language – fruit from the Tree of Knowledge – to the Jews, he would gradually break down the societal walls and emancipate German Jewry from their isolated existence.

Mendelssohn believed in a pragmatic theory of the plurality of truths. Just as eating from the tree caused Adam to no longer recognize the Divine unity in Creation, so was truth now fragmented by Mendelssohn’s view. He asserted that just as various nations require different constitutions (to one a monarchy, to another a republic), so too individuals may necessitate diverse religions. The test of religion, according to Mendelssohn, became not its absolute truth but its effect on human conduct. He argued that there are the truths of fact and truths of rationale. The truths of fact are historic truths; things that occur in history and exist. Rational truths are universal for all men.

Mendelssohn ate from the Tree of Knowledge which declares there to be no absolute truth. Eager to bring the Jews out from the ghetto and into German society, he alleged that mankind are all in fact the same, whether Jew or gentile, and that there are only historical differences between them but no genuine distinctions, as no “religion” can be truer than any other.

At the height of his career, in 5529 (1769), Mendelssohn was publicly challenged by a Christian pastor to defend the superiority of Judaism over Christianity. At this point, Mendelssohn was confronted with a question that challenged his entire philosophy.

“You say you are a German and at the same time a Jew. You claim that they do not contradict but this is an illogical statement. How can you consider yourself a German if you pray in your Synagogue for a return to Jerusalem?”

Mendelssohn responded: “Give unto the Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to the G-D what is G-D’s. When we pray to return to Zion, we do so because it is part of our ritual – part of our private cult – to say these words. But it is not part of our actual reality. In my real life, I am a German. In the Synagogue I am a Jew. There is a separation between church and state and therefore no contradiction between being a German and a Jew.”

After Adam realized his nakedness, G-D asked him, “Where are you?” But to Mendelssohn, who had refused to see his own ideological nakedness, G-D asked “Who are you?” Mendelssohn was confused. And his confusion not only led to his children becoming Christians, but also to his nation becoming comfortable in their unnatural state of exile for the first time in its long and bitter exile.

By eating from the Tree of Knowledge, Mendelssohn left the realm of absolute truth and descended to the level of relative morality. His heart became disconnected from his intellect and grew numb. He consequently sacrificed his identity and innocence, replacing idealism and truth with pragmatic private interests. Mendelssohn desperately wished to be an emancipated German. He brought himself honor but his heart became numb from the world of rationale. And like Adam, he covered himself because he was ashamed.

In Netzach Yisrael, the Maharal of Prague speaks of two types of fear, one healthy and the other sick. The first he calls “Praised is the man who is always afraid to forget the Truth” and the second is “Fear from sin due to not owning up”. When one is afraid to lose his inner truth, he is careful in living up to the ideals he believes in without permitting selfish interests to cloud his judgment or behavior. He is responsible for the people and values that he cares for and is empowered to struggle on their behalf. But when one is frightened to take responsibility for his actions, as was Adam after eating from the tree (Adam blamed his wife as she blamed the serpent), he seeks to pass his guilt on to someone else in order to rationalize his own behavior. He becomes irresponsible and frightened by nature, paralyzed by fear in the face of a challenge. Therefore, by eating from the tree and not being willing to take responsibility, one becomes ashamed and seeks to cover himself rather than own up and become mature. When one takes responsibility for his deeds, he is no longer ashamed. But so long as a person is reluctant to admit guilt, he will forever be humiliated and emotionally immature.

            By opening the ghetto and adopting a duel identity of Jew and German, Mendelssohn lost contact with his inner-self. Similarly, when Napoleon asked Rabbi David Sinzheim and his rabbinic Assembly of Jewish Notables if they considered themselves to be Frenchmen or Jews, they proved to him their identification with and devotion to France by exclaiming that “we are so French that if we were in England amongst Jews, we would consider ourselves among strangers”. At that point, Judaism became redefined as a “religion” and was no longer the nation of Israel scattered throughout the world, yearning to reunite together in their ancestral Homeland.