The text emerged in late eighteenth-century German Jewry during the transition toward the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) and the early debates surrounding Jewish integration into European society. Mendelssohn sought to reconcile participation in German culture with fidelity to Hebrew learning and rabbinic tradition.

Or li-Netivah is Moses Mendelssohn's three-part introduction to Sefer Netivot ha-Shalom, his German translation and commentary on the Pentateuch. The text offers a programmatic reflection on Bible translation, Jewish exegesis, Hebrew grammar, and the authority of the Masoretic text. Mendelssohn situates his translation within the long history of Jewish diasporic translations, arguing that translation becomes necessary whenever Jewish communities lose familiarity with Hebrew. At the same time, he defends the integrity of the Hebrew Bible against modern biblical criticism and presents translation as a means of renewing Jewish Bible study rather than replacing the Hebrew original. The work presents translation as a constitutive feature of Jewish diasporic existence and situates the German Pentateuch within a continuous tradition of Jewish scriptural translation extending from antiquity to modernity.

Or li-Netivah has been described as the first modern Jewish introduction to the Bible. It is especially significant because Mendelssohn understands translation as a recurrent feature of Jewish diasporic history: when Jews adopt the language of their surrounding culture, translation becomes necessary in order to lead them back to Scripture and to Hebrew. The introduction also develops a theory of the relation between peshat and derash, insisting that both may coexist as valid levels of meaning, although rabbinic tradition must prevail when a contradiction arises. The work is therefore important not only for the history of Bible translation, but also for the philosophy of language, Jewish hermeneutics, and the renewal of Jewish learning in modernity.

1. 01C. Hilfrich, Lebendige Schrift. Repräsentation und Idolatrie in Moses Mendelssohns Philosophie und Exegese des Judentums (München: Fink Verlag, 2000).
2. 02G. Schorch, Moses Mendelssohns Sprachpolitik (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2012).
3. 03G. Freudenthal, No Religion Without Idolatry. Mendelssohn's Jewish Enlightenment (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012).
4. 04Michael Gottlieb, “Mendelssohn's Metaphysical Defense of Religious Pluralism,” The Journal of Religion 86, no. 2 (2006): 205–225.
5. 05Elias Sacks, Moses Mendelssohn's Living Script: Philosophy, Practice, History, Judaism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017).