Selflessness

There is a beautiful story of the courtship of Moses Mendelssohn, the famous German—Jewish philosopher of two centuries ago. Moses Mendelssohn, a small hunchbacked man, fell in love with a beautiful and charming young woman named Frumtje, daughter of a prosperous banker. Several months after he had first met Frumtje, Mendelssohn visited her father and asked him how she really felt about the possibility of marriage.

“Please tell me the truth,” Mendelssohn insisted. Self-Righteousness 305 The father replied, “The truth is that the girl is frightened by you because...” Mendelssohn interrupted: “Because I am a hunchback?” “Yes,” said the father, “because you are a hunchback.”

Mendelssohn then asked to see the daughter on the pretext that he wanted to say farewell to her. He found her in an upstairs room where she was busy with some needlework. She avoided looking at him during the conversation (which Mendelssohn eventually directed to the subject of marriage). The young woman asked if he really believed that mar- riages were made in heaven.

“Oh course,” he replied. “And something very unusual happened to me. As you know, when children are born they call out in heaven, ‘This one or that one will get this or that girl for a wife.’

When I was born, my future wife was thus announced, but it was added: ‘She will, alas, have a terrible hump on her back.’ I shouted, ‘Oh, Lord, a girl who is hunchbacked will very easily become bitter and hard. A girl should be beautiful. Good Lord, give the hump to me and let her be well-formed.’” Frumtje was deeply moved.

She saw Mendelssohn in a whole new way, and so she became his faithful and loving wife.