Does Judaism Have Dogma? Moses Mendelssohn and a Pivotal Nineteenth-Century Debate

Dogmas serve important functions in religious communities. R. Marston Speight identifies several such functions, including (a) providing a basis for membership in the community; (b) testing for orthodoxy; (c) expressing communal self-understanding; and (d) affirming communal unity.1 Since the Middle Ages, Jewish thinkers have debated the question whether or not Judaism has dogma.2 Moses Mendelssohn launched the modern Jewish discussion of this question with what many interpreted to be a negative response to this question. In the first part of this essay, I will show how Mendelssohn’s eighteenth-century discussion is informed by interreligious concerns; namely, seeking to express a distinct Jewish communal self-understanding in relation to Christianity. Mendelssohn rejects dogma in a Christian sense while affirming that there are principles that define Judaism analytically. In the second part of the essay, I will explore a pivotal nineteenthcentury debate over dogma in Judaism, in which the problem is addressed from an intrareligious perspective showing how it is informed by the problem of Jewish communal unity.3 My discussion will focus on four thinkers, each of whomwas an outstanding representative of a major school of German Judaism: Mendelssohn, the leading figure of the Haskalah; Samson Raphael Hirsch, the ideological leader of German Neo-Ortho-