Kindle Notes & Highlights
Orthodox Jews portray Mendelssohn as a Jewish Faust striking a bargain with the devil—willing to give up Yiddish for German, Talmud for the worldly philosophers, and pilpul for science—a Faust willing to eat the fruits of Western civilization at the price of losing his Jewish soul.
They were as alarmed as the popes and bishops had been
when the Bible was translated into the vernacular.
“This translation could prove a danger to Judaism,” cried Rabbi Ezekiel of Prague. “Unclean,” thundered a Vilna scholar. “Not fit to be put into Jewish hands. We forbid Jews everywhere to own a copy or read it.”
“A work of unprecedented wickedness in Israel and will surely undermine the Jewish religion.” He had forgotten that pious and great scholars in previous
Had the Orthodox rabbinate had the power, would they have resorted to force and violence to silence Mendelssohn? To judge by the precedents of ancient Jewish history, when the Jews had a state of their own, the answer is yes. But as the rabbis did not have such power, they went to their local princes or bishops, begging them to suppress the wicked writings of Mendelssohn.
This is important
Jewish zealots on the inside to make sure no Jew would slip out. Only a tenacious few made it.
Break with Orthodoxy starts here for American Jews
Thus France was the first modern European state to grant citizenship to the Jews.
*Nowhere in the Torah is there a direct injunction against marrying a non-Jew.
In fact, the Torah cites several instances where prominent Jews, like Moses, for instance, married a Gentile.
