One afternoon while digging through the Jewish Light archives, I stumbled upon a name I didn’t recognize—Moses Mendelssohn—in a full-page story spread from 1979. What grabbed me wasn’t the name at first, but the opening line by columnist H.H. Bremier:
“Fifty years ago, I stood at the grave of a man in the old cemetery of Berlin who had become the symbol of such a renaissance after the dark ages. Now is the time for his 250th birthday and Moses Mendelssohn should not be forgotten.”
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No local tie. No synagogue event. Just a full page story dedicated to a long-gone Jewish philosopher from Germany to mark his 250th. That told me he mattered.
I didn’t know how much until recently, when an email landed in my inbox about a rare sale of Moses Mendelssohn books—first editions, no less. Suddenly, that archive story wasn’t just an old editorial—it was a bridge.
Mendelssohn was born in 1729 in Dessau and made his way to Berlin, where he became a leading voice in the Jewish Enlightenment, known as the Haskalah. A philosopher and writer, he argued that religious life and modern civil society weren’t in conflict—and never needed to be.
His closest ally was Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, the German playwright and critic who championed religious tolerance. In 1779, Lessing wrote “Nathan the Wise,” casting Mendelssohn as the title character: a thoughtful Jewish merchant who urges peace and mutual respect across religious lines.
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Mendelssohn didn’t enjoy full rights in Prussia, but his ideas traveled freely. He debated clergy, translated the Torah into German to open Jewish life to the wider world and in “Jerusalem: Or on Religious Power and Judaism,” his landmark work, argued that Judaism rejected coercion and welcomed reason.
The books that outlasted the ghetto
That same book is one of five first editions now for sale through Dan Wyman Books. The offering includes Mendelssohn’s German Bible, his philosophical essays and his open letters defending Judaism in the face of missionary pressure. For Jewish collectors, institutions, or just readers with a sense of history, this is more than a sale—it’s a rare return to the foundations of modern Jewish thought.
The listings are live now with full photos and ordering info. Institutional buyers can reserve by email. For the rest of us, it’s a chance to rediscover someone who’s been sitting in our archives this whole time.
What Bremier saw in him
In 1979, H.H. Bremier wrote what he called a birthday tribute to Mendelssohn—250 years after his birth. He’d visited Mendelssohn’s grave in Berlin decades earlier, and remembered the man not as a monument, but as a turning point.
“He proved to the world and to the Jewish people that one can be a good and religious Jew and also a good citizen in a modern state,” Bremier wrote. “If you would be protected, tolerate and indulge, then protect, tolerate and indulge one another. Love and you will be beloved.”
That someone in St. Louis took the time to say all this in 1979 tells you something about Mendelssohn. That he’s relevant again in 2025 tells you even more.
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