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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 April 2020
The widespread Jewish sympathies for Lessing’s pre-Hegelian, pro-Jewish, progressive Deism from the Education of the Human Race spurred some Jewish authors to return to and discuss Lessing’s religious thought within the theological endeavors of the Wissenschaft des Judentums in nineteenth-century Germany. To be able to rely on Lessing, even retroactively, was welcome proof for Jewish Reformers that the humanistic approach to religious problems that stood at the very center of their project was at once Jewish and universal. It was the spirit of Lessing’s Education that was appropriated here for Judaism rather than Lessing’s letter. With Lessing in the camp of Reform Judaism the intended modernization of Judaism was safeguarded against the accusation of political and social egoism on the part of the Jews. It was the universal idea of religious progress that they shared with Lessing, not just the sloughing off of the yoke of outdated talmudic law.
1 Peter Gay, Freud, Jews, and Other Germans: Masters and Victims in Modernist Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979); Wilfried Barner, Von Rahel Varnhagen bis Friedrich Gundolf. Juden als deutsche Goethe-Verehrer (Göttingen: Wallstein, 1992); The Jewish Response to German Culture (ed. Jehuda Reinharz and Walter Schatzberg; Hanover: University Press of New England, 1985). See also Gershom Scholem, “Jews and Germans,” Commentary 42 (1966) 31–40.
2 For a convincing claim of Jewish superiority in questions of Bildung during the 19th century, see Götz Aly, Warum die Deutschen? Warum die Juden? Gleichheit, Neid und Rassenhass—1800 bis 1933 (Frankfurt: Fischer, 2011) 37–48.
3 The best example is certainly that of Michael Bernays (1834–1897), the son of the Ḥaḵam Isaac Bernays of Hamburg. Bernays was considered one of Germany’s leading experts on Goethe during the second half of the 19th century. Although he converted to Christianity, Rabbi Caesar Seligmann (who studied Goethe with him in Munich) writes in his autobiography that Bernays’s conversion was triggered by “his unrequited love for the daughter of a Protestant pastor” (see Caesar Seligmann, Erinnerungen [Frankfurt: Kramer, 1975] 68–69).
4 On Lessing in general, see Hugh Barr Nisbet, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: His Life, Works, and Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
5 The author of the “fragments” was actually Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768), who did not dare to publish them himself. For Lessing’s own theology, see the overview in Henry E. Allison, Lessing and the Enlightenment: His Philosophy of Religion and Its Relation to Eighteenth-Century Thought (New York: SUNY Press, 2018).
6 For an introduction, see A Companion to the Works of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (ed. Barbara Fischer and Thomas C. Fox; Rochester: Boydell & Brewer, 2005), and Francis J. Lamport, Lessing and the Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981).
7 When already culturally isolated, the theater of the Jewish Kulturbund premiered Lessing’s Nathan the Wise in Berlin in 1933.
8 The motif of the ring parable is derived from a complex of medieval tales that first appeared in German in the story of Saladin’s table in the Weltchronik of Jans der Enikel. Lessing probably adapted the parable from the third narrative of the first day in Boccaccio’s Decameron.
9 For good summaries, see, in German, Barbara Fischer, Nathans Ende? Von Lessing bis Tabori: Zur deutsch-jüdischen Rezeption von “Nathan der Weise” (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2000), and Willi Goetschel, “Lessing and the Jews,” in A Companion (ed. Fischer and Fox) 185–208.
10 See Lessing, Nathan, Zweiter Aufzug, fünfter Auftritt: “es gnügt, ein Mensch zu heißen!”
11 Ernst Simon, “Lessing und die jüdische Geschichte,” Jüdische Rundschau (22 January 1929) —referring (of all people) to the poet Heinrich Heine, who described in a fanciful text from 1838 how he heard the sobbing voice of an invisible Shylock when visiting the Venice ghetto at the end of Yom Kippur. Shylock had by then still not overcome the loss of his daughter to Christendom, according to Heine’s report (Heinrich Heine, Shakespeares Mädchen und Frauen und kleinere literaturkritische Schriften [ed. Jan-Christoph Hauschild; vol. 10 of Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe der Werke; Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1993]:135).
12 Heinrich Graetz, Geschichte der Juden (1870; 2nd ed.; 11 vols.; Leipzig: Leiner, 1897–1911) 11:34, note. Page numbers from the 2nd ed. More on Graetz and Lessing below. See Moses Mendelssohn’s discussion in the Lavater epistle (1771) of the decisive advantage of Judaism over Christianity on this very point, where he refers to the (talmudic) “Seven Noahide Commandments” as a Jewish version of natural law, the acceptance of which would bring salvation to non-Jews. For background, see David Novak, Natural Law in Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
13 First published in 1780, Lessing’s Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts contains 100 short paragraphs, the first 53 of which were already part of the Fragmentenstreit of 1777 (see n. 5).
14 Ernst Cassirer, “Die Idee der Religion bei Lessing und Mendelssohn,” in Festgabe zum zehnjährigen Bestehen der Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Berlin: Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, 1929) 22–41, esp. 27–33. In the following paragraph, I draw on Cassirer’s essay.
15 For the original, see Lessing’s “Über den Beweis des Geistes und der Kraft” (1777). For discussion, see Toshimasa Yasukata, “Lessing’s Ugly Broad Ditch,” in idem, Lessing’s Philosophy of Religion and the German Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) 56–71, and Gordon Michalson, Lessing’s “Ugly Ditch”: A Study of Theology and History (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1985).
16 The best work on Mendelssohn’s life and thought is still Alexander Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1973). Mendelssohn and Lessing became friends as early as 1754 and maintained a close intellectual cooperation and personal relation until Lessing’s death—probably holding the first true Christian-Jewish dialogue on theology.
17 Michael A. Meyer, On the Origins of the Modern Jew (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1967) 54–56.
18 On the discussion of the term orthodoxy in modern Jewish thought, see Jeffrey C. Blutinger, “So-called Orthodoxy: The History of an Unwanted Label,” Modern Judaism 27.3 (2007) 310–28.
19 For the influence of the Education on Judaism, see Michael Graetz, “Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts und jüdisches Selbstbewußtsein im 19. Jahrhundert,” Judentum im Zeitalter der Aufklärung (ed. G. Schulz; Wolfenbüttel: Jacobi, 1977) 273–95. For some reason, the essay discusses only thinkers who did not explicitly refer to Lessing’s theology. Hannah Arendt seems to believe that Lessing’s religious thought was more radical in other theological texts than the Education, but I do not see exactly why (see Arendt “Aufklärung und Judenfrage,” Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland 2/3 (1932) 65–77, at 67.
20 For Mendelssohn’s critique of Lessing’s Education, see: Gideon Freudenthal, “Moralische Bewährung oder Erziehung durch Offenbarung? Mendelssohn über Lessings Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts,” Lessing Yearbook 39 (2012) 199–216.
21 Maimonides (1138–1204) transformed the often confusing messianic thought of talmudic literature into an ordered system of a this-worldly Messianism, a period where eternal peace, learning, and prosperity are brought about by humanity itself (see his commentary on Mishnah Sanh.10:1 and his Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings and Wars, chs.11 and 12). For discussion, see Kenneth Seeskin, “Maimonides and the Idea of a Deflationary Messiah,” in Rethinking the Messianic Idea in Judaism (ed. Michael L. Morgan and Steven Weitzman; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015) 93–107.
22 Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem oder über religiöse Macht und Judentum (ed. David Martyn; Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2001) 92 (my translation). Recently, however, Elias Sacks pointed out that “Mendelssohn’s denial of global continuous progress should not obscure his conviction that some newly emerging philosophical systems may plausibly be judged to be superior to their predecessors” (Elias Sacks, Moses Mendelssohn’s Living Script [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016] 65). But in fact, much more must be said about Lessing’s and Mendelssohn’s differences.
23 Gideon Freudenthal reads Mendelssohn’s idea of the messianic age as the prevalence of religious pluralism rather than as the rule of a universal religion of reason (see Gideon Freudenthal, No Religion without Idolatry: Mendelssohn’s Jewish Enlightenment [Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2012] 235–45).
24 For the rediscovery of Messianism in 19th-century Reform Jewish theology, see, for example, Samuel Hirsch, Die Messiaslehre der Juden in Kanzelvorträgen (Leipzig: Hunger, 1843); Levi Herzfeld, Zwei Predigten über die Lehre vom Messias (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1844); or, for discussion, George Y. Kohler, “Prayers for the Messiah in the Thought of Early Reform Judaism,” in Jewish Prayer: New Perspectives (ed. Uri Ehrlich; Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2016) 5–29.
25 On the complex relation between the reform of Judaism and the Wissenschaft movement (often featuring the same protagonists), see Michael A. Meyer, “Two Persistent Tensions within Wissenschaft des Judentums,” in Modern Judaism and Historical Consciousness (ed. C. Wiese and A. Gotzmann; Leiden: Brill, 2007) 73–89.
26 This view of Mendelssohn, as seeing law and reason as completely separate, has been challenged in the recent scholarship. See also, along with the above-mentioned book of Elias Sacks (n. 22), the general line of argument in Michah Gottlieb, Faith and Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), and Freudenthal, No Religion. This is not the place to discuss their arguments, however.
27 The reception of Mendelssohn’s religious philosophy within the Jewish Wissenschaft theology has yet to receive its scholarly due. For now, see Gershon Greenberg, “Mendelssohn in America: David Einhorn’s Radical Reform Judaism,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 27.1 (1982) 281–93, for at least Einhorn’s radical critique of Mendelssohn. Other critics include Abraham Geiger, Samuel Holdheim, and many more.
28 See here, for example, Samuel Hirsch, Die Religionsphilosophie der Juden (Leipzig: Hunger, 1843), and, for discussion, Emil L. Fackenheim, Samuel Hirsch and Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964).
29 Only with Jewish existentialism after World War I did Jewish thought return to Hegel; see, for example, Franz Rosenzweig’s dissertation, later published as Hegel und der Staat (1920). At that point, many Jewish thinkers became more Hegelian, though often only via Marx or Heidegger.
30 If God were to hold all truth in his right hand, and in his left only the steady and diligent drive for truth, Lessing would take the left hand, he famously wrote (see his “Eine Duplik,” in idem, Gesammelte Werke in drei Bänden [ed. Heinz Puknus; 3 vols.; Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1966] 3:240).
31 See Ritchie Robertson, “‘Dies Hohe Lied der Duldung’?: The Ambiguities of Toleration in Lessing’s Die Juden and Nathan der Weise,” Modern Language Review 93 (1998) 105–20.
32 On its path to the messianic era, Judaism would only “utilize” Christianity, wrote Solomon Formstecher in 1841, in a passage typical of Reform theology of the 19th century. According to Formstecher, Christianity contains a “pagan element” that was extremely useful for its mission to pagan peoples, while Judaism must always maintain its separate tradition for its own mission, which is the representation of pure intellectual monotheism (see Salomon Formstecher, Die Religion des Geistes [Frankfurt am Main: Herrmann, 1841] 414).
33 Goldschmidt, who had studied philosophy in Berlin, became the rabbi of Leipzig in 1858 where he officiated for over 30 years (see Ludwig Fränkel, “Goldschmidt, Abraham Meyer,” Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 49 (1904) 435–38. For further discussion of his relation to Lessing, see Barbara Fischer, “From the Emancipation of the Jews to the Emancipation from the Jews,” in Contemplating Violence: Critical Studies in Modern German Culture (ed. Stefani Engelstein and Carl Niekerk; New York: Rodopi, 2011) 165–82, at 176. His wife, Henriette Goldschmidt, who helped to found an early feminist organization in Germany, explicitly referred to Lessing’s Nathan when she encouraged religious ecumenism in Leipzig (on this, see Ann Taylor Allen, The Transatlantic Kindergarten: Education and Women’s Movements in Germany [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017] 66).
34 Abraham Goldschmidt, “Die Bedeutung Lessings für die Juden. Rede bei der Lessingfeier in Leipzig am 22. Januar 1860,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums (14 February 1860) 95–100, at 99.
35 Ehrentheil was a teacher, grammarian, publicist, and book editor. In the 1870s he edited the weekly Šeḇet ’Aḥim (Tribe of brothers) in Judeo-German, the organ of Orthodox Jewry in Hungary, and in 1880 he published a theology in German, Der Geist des Talmud (Budapest: Burian, 1887). Ehrentheil’s earlier book, Jüdische Charakterbilder (Pest: Robert Lampel, 1867), is an important source for the biographies of several otherwise almost unknown rabbinical figures.
36 “Etwas über Nathan den Weisen vom jüdischen Standpunkte,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums (unsigned editorial; 23 July 1867) 589–93, at 590 [italics in original].
37 Ludwig Philippson, Die Israelitische Religionslehre (3 vols.; Leipzig: Baumgärtner, 1861–1865). The rabbi, scholar, novelist, Bible commentator, and newspaper editor Ludwig Philippson (1811–1889) was arguably the most seminal intellectual of German Jewry of nearly the entire 19th century.Today often underestimated, Philippson was active in so many fields of modern Jewish thought and culture that hardly anyone interested in Judaism during that time could avoid being confronted with his opinions and public statements. See Andreas Brämer, “Ludwig Philippsons Konstruktion der jüdischen Geschichte als Fundamentalkritik des Christentums,” in Ludwig Philippson, Ausgewählte Werke (ed. Andreas Brämer; Cologne: Böhlau, 2015) 7–33.
38 Ludwig Philippson, Gesammelte Abhandlungen (2 vols.; Leipzig: Fock, 1911) 1:104. Already as early as the 1840s, Philippson gave a series of lectures titled “The Development of the Religious Idea in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,” without, however, mentioning Lessing (Ludwig Philippson, Die Entwicklung der religiösen Idee [Leipzig: Leiner, 1847]).
39 “Etwas über Nathan den Weisen,” 592. These intra-Jewish debates about the true religious intention of Lessing’s Nathan, did not exhaust themselves in the 19th century but ran well into the 20th. On the Jewish reception of Lessing in the last third of the 19th century, facing a new rise of anti-Semitism, see Christhard Hoffmann, “Constructing Jewish Modernity,” in Towards Normality? Acculturation and Modern German Jewry (ed. Rainer Liedtke and David Rechter; Schriftenreihe wissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen des Leo Baeck Instituts 68; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003) 27–52, at 42–44.
40 The statue was eventually erected and inaugurated in 1853.
41 We are still missing a modern, monographic account of Reform Jewish theology as it was developed in 19th-century Germany and spread to America. See, in German, from 1933, Max Wiener, Jüdische Religion im Zeitalter der Emanzipation (Berlin: Philo, 1933). Michael A. Meyer has published a comprehensive history of the Reform movement, containing much theological material (see idem, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism [Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995]).
42 See above, n. 30.
43 Gabriel Riesser, Einige Worte über Lessings Denkmal an die Israeliten Deutschlands gerichtet (Frankfurt am Main: Stockmar & Wagner, 1838) 11–12.
44 The irony in this is that Riesser was the grandson of one of Mendelssohn’s fiercest critics, Rabbi Raphael Kohen from Hamburg, who threatened to ban Mendelssohn’s German translation of the Pentateuch (on the affair, see Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn, 383–88).
45 Riesser, Einige Worte, 16–17.
46 Ibid., 26.
47 Rashi’s commentary on Isa 53:4. Cohen even claims that “in suffering for the nations, Israel acquires the right to convert them” (Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism [trans. S. Kaplan; New York: Scholars Press, 1972] 283). See also Samson Raphael Hirsch, Neunzehn Briefe über Judenthum (Altona: Hammer, 1836), Letter 9, 44–45, although Hirsch views Jewish suffering more as an educational means of the Jews themselves, from which other peoples can probably learn something.
48 Riesser, Einige Worte, 27.
49 Ibid., 28–29.
50 Geiger, like many of his Jewish contemporaries, gave up his university career because he was unwilling to convert to Christianity. Earning his livelihood as a community rabbi, he was one of the most prolific scholars of the Wissenschaft movement, publishing influential works on legal, historical, and philosophical aspects of Judaism. His major work on the emergence of the Hebrew Bible was considered heretical, even by other non-Orthodox Jews. For a good overview on Geiger, see the collection of essays Jüdische Existenz in der Moderne. Abraham Geiger und die Wissenschaft des Judentums (ed. Christian Wiese, Walter Homolka, and Thomas Brechenmacher; SJ 57; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013).
51 Abraham Geiger, “Bruno Bauer und das Judentum, ”Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift für jüdische Theologie 5 (1844) 199–234 and 325–71.
52 Abraham Geiger, “Zum Lessing Denkmal,” Jüdische Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft und Leben 2 (1862) 85–88, at 88.
53 Geiger quotes in his discussion of revelation a Maimonidean passage that describes revelation as a flash-like epiphany, and he claims that Judaism is “a religion of revelation that had arisen from such divine glimpses, and later connects those visions to a whole, to a religion of truth …” (Abraham Geiger, Das Judenthum und seine Geschichte [3 vols.; Breslau: Schletter, 1865] 1:35–36).
54 Geiger, “Bruno Bauer,” 364, referring to the same letter to Lessing’s brother Karl (2 February 1774): “macht uns unter dem Vorwande, uns zu vernünftigen Christen zu machen, zu höchst unvernünftigen Philosophen.”
55 Ibid. (emphasis added).
56 See Abraham Geiger, “Einleitung in das Studium der jüdischen Theologie,” in Nachgelassene Schriften (ed. Ludwig Geiger; 5 vols; Berlin: Gerschel, 1875) 2:4–31.
57 On the Reformgenossenschaft, see Meyer, Response to Modernity, 129–31.
58 Immanuel Heinrich Ritter, Mendelssohn und Lessing als Begründer der Reformation im Judenthum (vol. 1 of Geschichte der jüdischen Reformation; Berlin: Peiser, 1858). The second volume (1861) deals with David Friedländer, the third with Holdheim (1865). A fourth volume on the history of the Berlin Reform community was published posthumously in 1892.
59 Ritter, Mendelssohn und Lessing, 6–7.
60 Ibid, 8.
61 Ibid., 69.
62 See Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, or On Religious Power and Judaism (trans. Allan Arkush; Hanover: University Press of New England, 1983) 90.
63 Ritter, Mendelssohn und Lessing, 70–71. Samuel Holdheim, Ritter’s predecessor in Berlin, also emphasized Lessing’s theological progressiveness, compared to Mendelssohn’s. In a footnote to his 1859 study on Mendelssohn, Holdheim called Lessing the trailblazer for historical criticism in religious questions (Samuel Holdheim, Moses Mendelssohn und die Denk- und Glaubensfreiheit im Judenthume [Berlin: Huber, 1859] 20–21).
64 Ritter, Mendelssohn und Lessing, 70–71.
65 The 19th-century debate over whether Reform was a restoration or a fundamentally new approach to Judaism, as Orthodox thinkers claimed (“the invention of a new religion”), is far from over today. Still the best discussion of this tension is found in Wiener, Jüdische Religion. Wiener unambiguously argued that Reform was a theological revolution.
66 Ritter, Mendelssohn und Lessing, 78. This, of course, is a form of what is known as Plato’s Euthyphro dilemma: “Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God?” (Euthyphr. 10a).
67 Ritter, Mendelssohn und Lessing, 78.
68 Compare, for Lessing’s critique of the rabbis, Education, §§50–51.
69 Ritter, Mendelssohn und Lessing, 78.
70 The Conservative movement of present-day Judaism has its roots in a group of scholars around Rabbi Zacharias Frankel (1801–1875), the first director of the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau, founded in 1854. While the more radical Reformers around Geiger tried to find theoretical criteria for religious reforms, the Breslau theologians deferred those criteria to the sphere of “living tradition.” For background, see Ismar Schorsch’s “Zacharias Frankel and the European Origins of Conservative Judaism,” in From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1994) 255–66.
71 Graetz taught Talmud and history at the seminary in Breslau. Crucially, Graetz’s major work was much more than the first academic historiography of Judaism; its eleven volumes became the most important source for the modern European Jew’s new self-identification in the 19th century. His anti-Christian views (which he shared with Geiger) were notorious; in 1879, they caused the Germany-wide “Treitschke-Debate” on anti-Semitism (see George Y. Kohler, “German Spirit and Holy Ghost—Treitschke’s Call for Conversion of German Jewry: The Debate Revisited,” Modern Judaism 30:2 [2010] 172–95).
72 On Graetz and Lessing, see Gabriele von Glasenapp, “‘Vom edlen Freunde.’ Lessing in der jüdischen Historiographie,” in Lessing und das Judentum. Lektüren, Dialoge, Kontroversen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (ed. Dirk Niefanger, Gunnar Och, and Birka Siwczyk; Kamenzer Lessig-Studien 1; Hildesheim: Olms, 2015) 176–78.
73 Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, 11:30–37, last quote at 33.
74 Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, 6:xii. For a discussion, see George Y. Kohler, “‘Scholasticism Is a Daughter of Judaism’: The Discovery of Jewish Influence on Medieval Christian Thought,” JHI 78:3 (2017) 319–40.
75 Joel was the first historian of philosophy of the Wissenschaft movement. He had studied philosophy in Berlin and later published the first academic monograph on the philosophy of Maimonides. Graetz seems to rely on his study on Maimonides and Albert the Great: Manuel Joel, Verhältnis Albert des Grossen zu Maimonides (Breslau: Grass, 1863). On Joel, see Görge K. Hasselhoff, “Manuel Joel and the Neo-Maimonidean Discovery of Kant,” in The Cultures of Maimonideanism: New Approaches to the History of Jewish Thought (ed. James T. Robinson; Supplements to the Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 9; Leiden: Brill 2009) 289–307.
76 See David H. Price, who has argued that it was “ultimately impossible for Enlightenment discourse of toleration … to defend traditional Judaism without qualification or ambivalence” (David H. Price, “The Philosophical Jew and the Identity Crisis of Christianity in Lessing’s Nathan the Wise,” ZRGG 68.2 [2016] 203–23, at 222).
77 Manuel Joel, “Ein Wort gegen Lessing zu Ehren Lessings,” in Lessing-Mendelssohn-Gedenkbuch (ed. L. Fürst and A. Bodek; Leipzig: Baumgärtner, 1879) 240–54, at 240.
78 See Abraham Geiger, “Das Verhältnis des natürlichen Schriftsinnes zur thalmudischen Schriftdeutung,” Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift für jüdische Theologie 1 (1844) 53–81; 2 (1844) 243–59. See the extensive discussion by Jay M. Harris, How Do We Know This? Midrash and the Fragmentation of Jewish History (New York: SUNY Press, 1995) 157–65.
79 In itself, this is interesting, since both men had previously engaged in several intense theological arguments, especially regarding the status of dogma in Judaism (see Ken Koltun-Fromm, Abraham Geiger’s Liberal Judaism [Bloomington: Indiana UniVersity Press, 2006] 147–49).
80 Joel, “Ein Wort gegen Lessing,” 244–46. For an extensive discussion of the debates about the role of the Mishnah in modern Jewish thought, see Chanan Gafni, The Mishnah’s Plain Sense (Tel Aviv: Shazar, 2011) (Hebrew).
81 For his exegetical method, see b. Menaḥ. 29b, whence this quote is taken. A good introduction is Barry W. Holtz, Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017); see also Judah Goldin, “Toward a Profile of a Tanna, Aqiba ben Joseph,” JAOS 96 (1976) 38–56.
82 Matt 5:18: “For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not a ἰῶτα, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” (NIV). Jesus is certainly referring here to the Hebrew letter Yod, assuming the form of the stroke of a pen.
83 Joel, “Ein Wort gegen Lessing,” 244, referring to one of Origen’s homilies on Exodus.
84 Ibid., 249.
85 Ibid., 251.
86 Ibid., 252.
87 Ibid., 254.
88 See Willi Goetschel, “Lessing, Mendelssohn, Nathan: German-Jewish Myth-Building as an Act of Emancipation,” Lessing Yearbook 32 (2000) 341–60.
89 Repercussions of this adoption of the idea of progress in religious thought are still noticeable in the works of Hermann Cohen, the most important Jewish philosopher at the turn of the 20th century. See especially his essay, “The Importance of Judaism for Religious Progress,” from 1910 (Hermann Cohen, “Die Bedeutung des Judentums für den religiösen Fortschritt,” in idem, Werke [ed. Hartwig Wiedebach; 17 vols.; Hildesheim: Olms, 2009] 15:429–54).
90 For the Jewish participation in the Lessing year of 1929, see Elizabeth Petuchowski, “Zur Lessing-Rezeption in der deutsch-jüdischen Presse—Lessings 200. Geburtstag,” Lessing Yearbook 14 (1982) 43–59.