Letter Handwritten and Signed by Moses Mendelssohn - Berlin, 1771

Letter Handwritten and Signed by Moses Mendelssohn - Berlin, 1771
Letter handwritten and signed by Moses Mendelssohn. Berlin, [15 November 1771]. German in Hebrew letters.
The letter was written shortly following two debates conducted by Mendelssohn with Christian intellectuals. The first was his debate with Johann Kaspar Lavater, a Christian cleric from Zurich, who called on Mendelssohn to disprove the truths of the Christian religion, or admit its truthfulness and convert to Christianity. In parallel, Mendelssohn conducted another debate with the Christian solicitor Johann Balthasar Kölbele from Frankfurt, who was one of Mendelssohn's most outspoken opponents. Kölbele repeatedly called on Mendelssohn to convert to Christianity, as an act befitting a philosopher of his standing. In his turbulent debate with Lavater, conducted in letters open to the public, Mendelssohn staunchly defended his Judaism, in the spirit of the Jewish Enlightenment of those days, arguing that the Jewish religion is based on reason, as opposed to Christianity which is based on "revelation".
In the present letter Mendelssohn continues to reflect on the ideas that preoccupied him following the debates, writing to Elhanan Herz, among other things, that the reliance on "revelation" and "prophecy" is problematic since it is subject to bias according to personal inclinations and subjective emotions. He writes that Judaism does not require miracles, and that the statement by the Jewish Sages that "We pay no attention to a divine voice" is a "major principle of the Jewish religion".
Published in "Moses Mendelssohn Gesammelte Schriften, Jubilaumsausgabe" (Akademie-Verlag, Berlin, 1929), Sechzehnter band, letter no. 129, pp. 152-153.
[1] leaf, written on both sides. 22.5 cm. Good-fair condition. Stains. Folding marks. Some minor tears.