Below is an editorial statement published in The Jewish Observer in January 1987 after an article was written about Moses Mendelssohn. This was written by the Novominsker Rebbe zt"l.
A cursory view of Jewish history might indeed consider Moses Mendelssohn an "enigma." But a perspective that rests on the truths of Torah, and one keenly sensed by the sages of his and later days, draws some very definite and unequivocal conclusions about Mendelssohn and his meaning. The search for hidden flaws and for clues to the apostasy of his children wrongly dignifies the man and ignores the main lesson to be learned from the Mendelssohn era.
One needn't really speculate too much as to why his progeny left the fold. One needn't even speculate about Mendelssohn himself-was he or was he not a true believer. The stark facts about
Mendelssohn are sell-revealing. Admittedly, he was an observant Jew, but culturally he was a thoroughbred German. He may have technically discharged his obligations to Jewish law; this, however, was but a circumscribed aspect of his being. His social and intellectual impact lay elsewhere-in the Enlightenment and secularity that he glorified to masses of Jews; and in the cultural assimilation that he and his friends and family embraced with such fervor. The "synthesis" that Mendelssohn aimed for and which he clearly portrayed was worse than a departure from Jewish tradition. It was nothing less than a schizophrenia of values, a falsification of the Torah ideal, that was doomed to fail.
The Gaon and Tzaddik, Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch also lived in an age and society of Emancipation. Yet, he was privileged to rescue entire generations from religious oblivion. Unquestionably, the distinction lies in the fact that Rav Hirsch's accommodation of "Derech Eretz"to the totality of Torah specifically rejected the split-personality type of Jew that Mendelssohn personified.
Mendelssohn's life seems a paradox only in a limited sense. In the larger, instructive sense, it was the centerpiece in a sea of spiritual corruption. The society that basked in Mendelssohn's fame, the milieu that he so comfortably belonged to and led, were the very forces of Reform and shmad that wrought havoc in the sacred community of Jews.
Life is more than a series of private thoughts and private deeds. Especially as regards figures of history, the meaning of their lives rests firmly on their contemporary and future impact. The Chasam Soter and the other Gedolei Yisroel who denounced Mendelssohn recognized this clearly. His personal observance mattered little to them because, wittingly or not, Mendelssohn was a
maisis umodiasch, a bold symbol of that philosophy and lifestyle that were the prime causes of the rabid assimilation that followed in his wake. Small wonder, then, that his children, raised as performing Jews but cultural gentiles, later took the final convenient step to baptism.
The exposition on Mendelssohn in the last issue of The Jewish Observer misses the mark, not merely because it treats him too kindly, but because the obvious is left unsaid-the idea put clearly by Ghazal: "Truth stands up, not falsehood." Torah, as synonymous with truth, is secured by Divine Providence only when it is the core of Jewish existence. Seen from this perspective, the life and meaning of Moses Mendelssohn at the core was hardly "Jewish." It was a radical shift away from the path of Jewish existence. No veneer of formal adherence could thus prevent the harsh sentence that the Judge of history-and Torah Jews-imposed upon him.
-Rabbi Yaakov Perlow
https://agudah.org/wp-content/uploads/1986/09/JO1987-V19-N10.pdf
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