Schooling at home he nonetheless received a broadbased education in the arts and classics; he was an avid reader of philosophy and took on Locke in Latin. As an adult he came under the protection of the Prussian King as a "protected Jew" [schutz jude] and began to write. His formidable work on the soul and immortality came as European discussions of the divine were more speculative than believing. His founding work, "Phädon oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele (About the soul's immortality; 1767)." earned him the name of the German Plato. A challenge by a friend, Lavater to debate the truths of Christianity did not bring about conversion for Moses Mendelssohn but did eventually with other studies lead to a belief that no one religion held all truth. A re-translation by Mendelssohn of the Bible's first five Chapters, the "Pentateuch" and other books into German gave Mendelssohn the stature of a Jewish Martin Luther. Mendelssohn went on to preach the enculturation of German Jews as citizens of Germany first, and supported the Kantian position of separation of Church and State in which the German Government or any government was seen as not having the right to intrude or make decisions in issues of faith and belief. Much of Moses Mendelssohn's work gave rise to modern Reform Judaism and Zionism. ¹

Mendelssohn was termed the "German Plato" and was heralded as a father of the "Jewish Enlightenment", a movement of the latter half of the 1700s lasting to the mid or late 1800s. In his neo-platonism, Mendelssohn encouraged more 'free-thinking' than traditional Hebraists, and encouraged Jews to enculturate in their respective European societies. Unlike Freud, he did not dismiss belief in God from Judaic thought and philosophy but sought a redefinition of relationship. His study of Christian thought and scriptures while not leading to known conversion inspired him to write of Jewish liberty, and a liberalization of the definition of Jewish identity. While clearly identified with the Jewish community, his redefinitions of Jewish identity and belief did lead to schisms within Judaism providing a believing liberalism bordering on humanism. Mendelssohn unlike Freud who would follow, did not dismiss God or the scriptures in Judaism, but did dismiss the exclusiveness of Old (and/or New) Testaments leading to a popular modern day concept of "all truth is 'god's truth'. While this teaching took hold and grew, in the 19th and 20th centuries, it was and is anathema to the teaching of Judaeo-Christian thought and Scripture which holds to exclusivity.