Signing Judaism: Moses Mendelssohn’s “Living Script” and Deaf/Jewish Emancipation

This article argues that Moses Mendelssohn’s brief but significant reference to Deaf people in Jerusalem: or on Religious Power and Judaism (1783) is central to his theory of Judaism as a “living script” and its place in the civic life of the modern nation-state. His ambivalent position as a German Jew mirrors that of Deaf people, some of whom used sign language, which—like Jewish practice—was viewed as incompatible with Enlightenment ideals of disembodied reason. By placing Mendelssohn’s philosophy—and particularly his lesser-known essay on “stuttering”—in dialogue with eighteenth-century debates on Deaf education, I show that his thought challenges the “oralist” view that audible speech is essential for thought. He presents Judaism as an embodied “language of action” that resists assimilationist pressures and envisions an enlightened society grounded in religious and linguistic diversity. I argue that Mendelssohn’s engagement with Deafness reflects broader concerns about religious knowledge, the politics of signs, and European citizenship and underscore the importance of Deaf studies to religious studies—particularly in understanding how bodily difference intersected with religious and civil status in eighteenth-century Europe.