Moses Mendelssohn's Philosophy of Jewish Liturgy: A Post‐Liberal Assessment

This paper represents an attempt to reflect on the significance of liturgy for postliberal Jewish thought. I do this by investigating the work of the eighteenth‐century Jewish enlightenment figure Moses Mendelssohn in the context of the postliberal thought of George Lindbeck. Mendelssohn not only shows how liturgy can be central to postliberal approaches to monotheism, but he also shows how enlightenment notions of a universal rational religion remain necessary and productive for postliberal interpretations of monotheism. In this latter move, Mendelssohn forms a corrective to Lindbeck's postliberalism.