X. THE MEASFIM AND THE JUDÆO-CHRISTIAN SALON…

X. THE MEASFIM AND THE JUDÆO-CHRISTIAN SALON

The Progressionists--The Gatherer (Meassef)--David Mendes-- Moses Ensheim--Wessely's Mosaid--Marcus Herz--Solomon Maimon--Culture of the Berlin Jews--Influence of French Literature--First Step for Raising the Jews--The Progressive and Orthodox Parties--The Society of Friends--Friedländer and Conversion--Depravity of Berlin Jewesses--Henrietta Herz --Humboldt--Dorothea Mendelssohn--Schlegel--Rachel-- Schleiermacher--Chateaubriand.

1786-1791 C. E.

The state of the German Jews, among whom the battle against unreason began, was more satisfactory than that of the Polish Jews. In Germany youthful activity and energy asserted themselves, an impulse to action that promised to repair in a short space of time the neglect of centuries. Great enthusiasm suddenly sprang up, which produced wonderful, or at least surprising, results, and overcame the benumbing effects of apathy. Young men tore the scepter from the grasp of the aged, and desired to preach new wisdom, or rather to rejuvenate the old organism of Judaism with new sap. The synagogue might well have exclaimed, "Who hath begotten me these, seeing I have lost my children, and am desolate, a captive, and removing to and fro? and who hath brought up these?" A new spirit had come upon these youths, which, in one night, put an end to their isolation, and transformed them into organs for historical reconstruction. As if by agreement they suddenly closed the ponderous folios of the Talmud, turned away from it, and devoted themselves to the Bible, the eternal fount of youth. Mendelssohn's Pentateuch translation poured out a new spirit over them, furnished them with a new language, and infused new poetry into them. Whence this body of spirited young men? What had hitherto been their course of education? Why were they so powerfully influenced? Suddenly they made their appearance, prophesied a new future, without knowing exactly what they prophesied, and, scarce fledged, soared aloft. From Poland to Alsace, from Italy to Amsterdam, London, and Copenhagen, new voices were heard, singing in harmonious union. Their significance lay wholly in their harmony; singly, the voices appear thin, piping, and untrained; only when united do they give forth a pleasant and impressive tone. Those who had but recently learnt to appreciate the beauties of Hebrew, came forward as teachers, to re-establish in its purity a language, so greatly disfigured, so generally used, and so continually abused. Inspired by ideals which the sage of Berlin had conjured up, they desired to pave the way to a thorough understanding of Holy Writ, to acquire a taste for poetry, and awaken zeal for science. Carried away by ardor, they ignored the difficulties in the way of a people, internally and externally enslaved, which seeks to raise itself to the heights of poetry and philosophy, and therefore they succeeded in accomplishing the revival. On the whole they achieved more than Mendelssohn, their admired prototype, because the latter was too cautious to take a step that might have an untoward result. But these youths pressed boldly forward, for they had no reputation to lose, and represented no interests that could be compromised.

This result was produced by a material and an ideal circumstance. Frederick's eagerness for money, his desire to enrich the land, almost compelled the Jews, especially those of Berlin, to accumulate capital. Owing to their manufactories, speculations, and enormous enterprises on the one hand, and their moderate manner of living on the other, the first Jewish millionaires arose in Berlin, and by their side many houses in affluent circumstances. But what could be done with these riches? To the nobility and the court, Jews were not admitted; the Philistine burghers closed their doors against these Jewish upstarts, whom they regarded with envy. There thus remained for wealthy Jews only literary intercourse, for which they have always had a preference. All or the majority had in their youth made the acquaintance of the Talmud, and were intimate with the world of books. This circumstance gave their efforts an ideal character: they did not worship Mammon alone; reading in their leisure hours was a necessity to them. As soon as German literature had been naturalized in their midst through Mendelssohn, they included it in their circle of studies, either with the serious object of cultivating themselves or to be in accord with fashion. In this matter they excelled the Christian citizens, who as a rule did not care for books. Jewish merchants, manufacturers, and bankers interested themselves in literary productions, as if they belonged to a guild of learned men, using for them the time that Christian citizens and workmen passed in drinking.

The first movement was made in Königsberg, a kind of colony to Berlin. In this town certain men had acquired wealth by their industry and circumspection, and shared in the culture dawning in Germany under the influence of French literature. Three brothers named Friedländer (Bärmann, Meyer, and Wolf) were the leaders. To this family belonged David Friedländer (born 1750, died 1834), a servile imitator of Mendelssohn, who by means of his connection by marriage with the banking-house of Daniel Itzig, obtained influence in Berlin (since 1771), and brought about close intercourse between Berlin and Königsberg. He also took part in the promotion of the revival among Jews. It was an event in the history of the Königsberg Jews, when Mendelssohn stayed there for several days while on a business journey. He was visited by distinguished persons, professors and authors, and was treated with extraordinary attention. Immanuel Kant, the profound thinker, publicly embraced him. This trifling occurrence gave to the cultured Jews of Königsberg a sort of consciousness that the Jew can by self-respect command the regard of the ruling classes. Moreover, the Königsberg University, at the instigation of certain liberal-minded teachers, especially Kant, admitted Jewish youths thirsting for knowledge as students and academical citizens. Among these young men, trained partly on Talmudical, partly on academical lines, there were two who awakened a new spirit, or rather, continued the quiet activity of Mendelssohn with greater effect. These were Isaac Abraham Euchel and Mendel Bresselau, both tutors employed by the wealthy, culture-loving Friedländers. Isaac Euchel, through Mendelssohn and Wessely, had acquired a dignified, correct Hebrew style contrasting most favorably with the corrupt language hitherto employed. His younger companion, Mendel Bresselau, who afterwards took part in the great contest against the old school, was of more importance. He was truly an artist in the Hebrew tongue, and without elaboration or ambiguity he applied biblical phraseology to modern conditions and circumstances. He took as his model the poet Moses Chayim Luzzatto, and like him composed a moral drama, entitled "Youth." Supported by two young members of the wealthy Friedländer family, Euchel and Bresselau, during the lifetime of Mendelssohn, and at the time of Wessely's conflict with the ultra-orthodox (spring, 1783), issued a summons to the whole Jewish world to establish a society for the promotion of the Hebrew language (Chebrath Dorshe Leshon Eber), and to found a journal to be called "The Gatherer" (Meassef). They had reckoned upon the support of Wessely, already recognized as an authority upon style, and had asked contributions from him, who, as they expressed themselves, "had taken down the harps from the willows of Babylon, and had drawn forth new songs from them." The aged poet gladly joined the young men, but, as if he had had a foreboding of the ultimate result, he warned them against turning their darts against Judaism, and in general against employing satire. Their summons found widespread response. They had chosen the right means to advance culture, and they satisfied a real want. The Hebrew language in its purity and chastity could alone accomplish the union between Judaism and the culture of the day.

"The Gatherer" found most encouragement in Berlin, the capital of Jewish culture. Here numerous literary contributions and material support were forthcoming. In this city lived a number of youths moved by the same aspirations as Euchel and Bresselau, who fostered enthusiasm for the Hebrew language, and renewed its youth. Not too proud to enter into rivalry with beginners, Mendelssohn also contributed a few Hebrew poems anonymously. It is characteristic of the newly-aroused spirit, that the fine introductory Hebrew verses in the periodical are represented as being written by a young child who modestly begs admittance, as if henceforth, not the grey-headed Eliphaz, but the youthful Elihu was to be spokesman, and lay down the law. Fresh names appeared in the newly-established organ, and their owners, under the collective name of Measfim, contributors to "The Gatherer" (Meassef, first published in the autumn of 1783), mark a definite tendency, a Sturm und Drang period of neo-Hebraic literature. Another pair of friends of Euchel and Bresselau afterwards undertook the editorship; these were Joel Löwe and Aaron Halle, or Wolfssohn--the one an earnest inquirer, the other a bold iconoclast, who first verified Wessely's fears, and, in a dialogue between Moses Maimonides and Moses Mendelssohn, subjected unprogressive Judaism to scathing criticism.

Two Poles residing in Berlin, Isaac Satanow and Ben-Zeeb, most accomplished masters of Hebrew style, also belonged to the Measfim, but their studies in German culture had an injurious effect upon their moral character. Besides, the small number of contributors to the "Gatherer" was swelled by Wolf Heidenheim, a strange man, who equally abhorred the crudeness and folly of the old system, and the frivolity and sophistry of the new, and banished his ill-humor by pedantically exact grammatical and Masoretic studies on the lines of the old masters. By his carefully arranged editions of old writings, if he did not destroy, he at least curbed, the old habits of slovenliness and carelessness.

The cultivators of Hebrew stretched out friendly hands to each other across widely-sundered districts, and formed a kind of brotherhood which spread to Holland, France, and Italy. David Friedrichsfeld was also an enthusiast for the Hebrew language and biblical literature. He possessed such delicate appreciation of the beauties of the language, that an ill-chosen Hebrew word caused him pain. He constantly insisted upon pure forms and expressions, and was a cultivated and severe judge. In his youth, Friedrichsfeld had chosen the better fate, by turning his back upon Prussia, so cruel to the Jews, and emigrating to the free city of Amsterdam. He heartily welcomed, with youthful ardor, the plan for the study of Hebrew, and lived to enjoy the good fortune of celebrating in Hebrew verse the complete emancipation of the Jews in Holland. At his proposition, the Jewish poets in Holland joined the ranks of the Measfim. The most renowned was David Franco Mendes in Amsterdam (born 1713; died 1792). He was descended from a Marrano family, was a disciple of the poet Luzzatto when the latter lived in Amsterdam, and took him as a pattern. A series of occasional poems, in the form of the Judæo-Spanish poetry of the seventeenth century, had gained him a name which was increased by his Hebrew historical drama, "The Punishment of Athalia" (Gemul Athalia). It distressed Franco Mendes to see how the Jews turned away from Hebrew to the fashionable French literature, because the latter produced beautiful, artistic works, whilst the Hebrew language seemed smitten with sterility. This disgrace Mendes desired to blot out, and, following in the wake of Racine and Metastasio, he undertook to dramatize the interesting history of the royal boy Joash who, to be protected from murderous hands, was brought up secretly in the Temple, and of the downfall of the bloodthirsty queen Athalia.

In France the Hebrew literature of the Measfim was represented by Moses Ensheim (Einsheim), or Moses Metz, who for several years was private tutor to Mendelssohn's children. He was a mathematician of great repute, whose work has been praised by qualified authorities of the first rank. Thus he wrote a work upon Integral and Differential Calculus, which won the applause of Lagrange and Laplace. But he never published any of his writings. He only gave voice to triumphal songs in Hebrew upon the victory of freedom over slavery in France, and some of these were sung in the synagogues. Ensheim influenced an advocate (Grégoire) of the liberation of his co-religionists in France, and provided him with material wherewith to defend them. Ensheim formed a contrast to an older teacher in Mendelssohn's house, Herz Homberg, a great favorite with Mendelssohn. The latter was deceived in him, and trusted in him too far when he invited his co-operation in the Pentateuch translation. Homberg was of a prosaic nature, actuated wholly by selfish motives, and was somewhat of a place-hunter. Through Homberg, during his stay in Görz, and Elijah Morpurgo, who corresponded with Mendelssohn and Wessely, the educational influence of the Measfim penetrated to Italy; and the younger generation, which afterwards united with the French Jews, drew inspiration from that source.

In this manner, the Hebrew language and neo-Hebraic poetry became a bond of union for the Jews of Western Europe, to some extent embracing also the Jews of Poland, and led the way to an astonishingly swift and enduring revival. The Hebrew tongue was known to almost all Jews, with the exception of a few ignorant villagers, and afforded an excellent medium for propagating European culture. Thousands of youths who studied the Talmud in various colleges, gradually, for the greater part secretly, took an active share in the movement, and drank deep draughts from the stream of innovation. Thus, with the expected deliverance from political oppression, which had already been realized in various places, there arose a peculiar excitement and confusion. The old and the new mingled, forming a kind of a spiritual hotch-potch. The question was raised whether or not, beside the Talmud, it was allowed to engage in biblical studies and profane literature, to cultivate philosophy, and in general to study the sciences (Chochmoth). The great rabbis, Ezekiel Landau, Raphael Cohen, and others, condemned such studies, whilst Mendelssohn and Wessely, blamelessly pious men, not only permitted, but even recommended them for the elevation of Judaism. Of the old and respected authorities, some permitted them and even occupied themselves therewith, whilst others prohibited and held aloof from them, as from some seductive sin. These important questions presented themselves to thinking Jewish young men, and gave rise to much disquietude. For the greater number the charm of novelty, the attractive language of the representatives of the new tendency, or the inclination to cast off burdensome ritual fetters decided the question. The number of those interested in the periodical, "The Gatherer," increased from year to year. The death of Mendelssohn also exerted a decided influence. His pupils--as such, all the Measfim regarded themselves--deified him, glorified him in bright colors, idealized him and his eventful history in prose and verse, pointed him out as an ideal worthy of imitation, and turned his renown to advantage in their cause. They went a step further, or widened the extent of their activity, aiming not merely at ennobling the Hebrew language, but at refinement in general. They called themselves "The Society for the Good and the Noble" (from 1787), without being able to define their purpose. The all-powerful stream of innovation could not be stemmed by the adherents of the old school. Unskillfully they attempted to vindicate the old system, exaggerating the dangers, and thereby losing all influence.

Thus in almost every large community, there arose a party of the "Enlightened" or "the Left," which had not yet broken with the old school, but whose action bordered upon secession. By the ultra-orthodox they were denounced as heretics, on account of their preference for pure language and form, both in Hebrew and European literature. This abusive name hurt them but little, and rather afforded them a certain amount of satisfaction. The outcome of the work of the Measfim was that they stirred men's minds, extending their range of observation, and leading them to ennobling thoughts and acts; but these writers did not leave any permanent results. Not a single production of the circle has enduring value. Their best performance was Wessely's swan-song, which possesses literary, if not artistic worth. Roused perhaps by the astonishment of Herder, the admirer of ancient Hebrew poetry, that no poet had celebrated the miracles of the departure from Egypt--whose center was the sublime prophet Moses--Wessely determined to compose a neo-Hebraic epic. Animated by the spirit of the prophets, there poured from his pen smooth, well-rounded, euphonious verses, which unroll before the eye the grand events that occurred from the cruel bondage in Egypt till the miraculous passage of the Red Sea and the wanderings in the wilderness. "Songs of Glory" Wessely called his Hebrew heroic poem, his Mosaid. In fact his verses and strophes are beautifully arranged and perfect in form. It is the best work that the school of the Measfim produced. Wessely's epic was so much admired that two Christian poets, Hufnagel and Spalding, rendered the first two cantos into German. The Mosaid is, however, by no means a masterpiece; it lacks the breath of true poetry, fancy and loftiness of conception. It is merely a history of the origin of the Israelites transcribed into verse, or, more correctly, a versified commentary on the Pentateuch. This criticism holds of the school as a whole; its disciples were good neo-Hebraic stylists, but as poets their ability was not even mediocre.

The appearance of the "Gatherer" aroused attention in Christian circles. The old assailant of the Jews, Michaelis, could not remain silent. Others greeted it as the dawn promising a fair day; it was in fact daybreak for the Jewish race. What is the distinction of a cultured people? Next to gentle manners, it consists in taste for harmonious forms and in the power to produce artistic creations. This taste and power, lost through external oppression and internal disorganization, were re-awakened among the Jews by the organ of the Measfim. To elevate the Jewish race to the rank of the cultured nations, nothing new was required; it was merely necessary that a comprehension of the beauties and sublimities of their own literature be inculcated.

In this period, the Jews owned profound philosophical thinkers, if not of the first, certainly of the second rank, who in acuteness of intellect almost surpassed Mendelssohn. Three are especially to be mentioned, who, though trained in the Mendelssohnian system, soon recognized its weaknesses, and directed their minds to new paths: these were Marcus Herz, Solomon Maimon, and Ben-David. The events of their lives picture on a small scale how the Jewish race as a whole worked its way from degradation and ignorance to freedom and enlightenment. Marcus (Mordecai) Herz (born in Berlin, 1747, where he died 1803) was the son of poor parents, and his father, like Mendelssohn's, supported himself and his family by copying Hebrew manuscripts. He received his Talmudical education in the school founded by Ephraim Veitel. Owing to poverty he was unable in spite of his talents to continue his studies, but at fifteen years of age was compelled to go to Königsberg as an apprentice. The desire for knowledge soon withdrew him from business and led him to the University, as the Albertina at that time admitted Jewish youths to the medical department. Philosophy, however, exerted greater attraction upon him. Herz was regarded as being gifted with the "keen mind peculiar to the Jewish nation." Kant, then at work upon his monumental system, saw Herz in his audience as often as the medical professors saw him in theirs. He distinguished him, drew him into the circle of his intimates, and treated him as his favorite disciple. When entering upon his professorship, according to an absurd and antiquated custom Kant had to argue in public upon a philosophical subject, and found no one better fitted than Herz to act as his assistant. Several University representatives objected that a Jewish student, however talented and superior to his Christian companions, should be allowed equal privileges with them. Kant, however, insisted upon his demand. Pressed by pecuniary difficulties, and because a Jew could not receive the degree at the Königsberg University, Herz returned to his native town and joined Mendelssohn's circle. He was, however, an advocate of the Kantian philosophy. He became at the same time a skilled physician, and practiced his art with conscientiousness and zeal. By his marriage with Henrietta de Lemos, he secured a large practice and numerous acquaintances as assistant-physician to his Portuguese father-in-law; and through his incisive wit and versatile knowledge he became a noted personage in the Prussian capital. When he delivered philosophical lectures upon the Kantian philosophy, still new and but little understood, many distinguished men were among his auditors. Had not progress been great, if notabilities sat at the feet of a Jew to hear his instruction upon the highest truths, whilst men like Michaelis roundly denied all possibility of culture in the Jews? Herz afterwards delivered discourses upon physics, and illustrated the marvellous laws of nature by experimental demonstration. These lectures were still more crowded; even the Crown Prince (afterwards King Frederick William III) and other princes did not disdain to enter the house of a Jew and be taught by him. His philosophical lucidity, acquired from Kant and Mendelssohn, contributed towards rendering his lectures upon medicine, as well as upon other subjects, enjoyable and appreciated. Herz was not, however, an independent thinker, able to illumine the dark ways of human knowledge by brilliant ideas; but he succeeded in explaining the profound thoughts of others and in making them intelligible to the average mind. Through his personality and his social position, Herz deeply influenced not alone the culture of Berlin Jews, but also of Christian circles.

Of the remarkable capacity of Jews for culture, Solomon Maimon was a still more striking example. This Pole, whose real name was Solomon of Lithuania, or of Nieszwiez (born about 1753, died 1800), rose from the thickest cloud of Polish ignorance to pure philosophical knowledge, attaining this height by his unaided efforts, but owing to his scepticism, he fell a prey to shocking errors. The story of his life is full of travel and restlessness, and is a good example of the versatility of Jews.

As in the case of Mendelssohn, Maimuni's philosophical religious work, "The Guide of the Perplexed" (More Nebuchim), was the cause of Solomon's intellectual awakening. He read the book until it became part of him, consequently assumed the name of Maimon, swore by the name of the Jewish sage whenever evil desire prompted him to sin, and conquered by its aid. But whereas Mendelssohn reached the right way through Maimuni, Solomon Maimon was led into error, doubt, and unbelief, and to the end of his life lived an aimless existence. In despair he snatched at the Kabbala, wishing to become a Jewish Faust, to conjure up spirits who would obtain deep wisdom for him; he also made a pilgrimage to the leader of the Chassidim, Beer of Mizricz. But the deception practiced disgusted him, and he quickly turned away from him. But what was he, with his spirit of scepticism, to do in a narrow world of rigid orthodoxy? Continually play the hypocrite? Rumor had carried a report to Poland, that in certain towns of Germany a freer religious system prevailed, and that more scope for philosophical inquiry was given. At this period a Pole felt no scruples in forsaking wife, children, and home, and wandering abroad. It cost Maimon the less effort, seeing that his wife had been thrust upon him when he was a child, and it was to his vexation that children were born to him. To appease his conscience he deceived himself by the pretext that he would study medicine in Germany, and be enabled to maintain himself and his family.

Thus Maimon left Lithuania (spring, 1777), at the age of twenty-five, "with a heavy, dirty beard, in torn, filthy clothes, his language a jargon composed of fragments of Hebrew, Judæo-German, and Polish, together with grammatical errors," as he himself says, and in this guise he introduced himself to some educated Jews in Königsberg, saying that he desired to devote himself to science. In this ragged Pole was a brain full of profound thoughts, which, as he grew older, developed into maturity. His journey from Königsberg to Berlin by way of Stettin was a succession of pitiful troubles. In Berlin the authorities refused to grant him residence. Those Poles who had severed themselves from the Talmud, and devoted themselves to science, lived in the odor of the worst heresy, and often gave occasion to suspicion. Maimon was sincere enough to admit the justice of this opinion. A moral life, activity of any kind, participation in the work of mankind, utilization of talent in the conquest of nature, man's liberation from the shackles of self-interest, the awakening of his moral impulse to act for the welfare of his brethren, the realization of the heavenly kingdom of justice and beneficent love--of all these ideals Maimon had no appreciation. These were indifferent matters, with which a thinker need not trouble himself. In this unsound state of mind he shunned all active work; to meditate idly and draw up formulas were his chief occupations. He attained no fixed goal in life, but staggered from folly to folly, from misery to misery.

To the general public he was first known through his "Autobiography," wherein he revealed the weak points of the Polish Jews, to him the only representatives of Judaism, as well as his own, with unsparing, cynical severity, as some years previously Rousseau had done in his "Confessions." He thereby performed an evil service for his co-religionists. His opinions concerning his brethren, originating in ill-humor, were accepted to their detriment as universal characteristics; and what he depicted as hateful in the Polish Jews was attributed to all Jews.

This kind of confession was considered extraordinary, and aroused great attention, in stiff, pedantic Germany. The "Autobiography" found its way into numerous circles, and gained many readers. The two great German poets, Schiller and Goethe, were absurdly fond of the cynical philosopher; and Goethe expressed the wish to have him live near him. His fame made Maimon neither better nor happier, and he did honor to the Jewish race only with his mental powers; in his actions he altogether dishonored it.

The third Jewish thinker of this time, Lazarus Ben-David (born in Berlin 1762; died there 1832), had neither the tragic nor the comic history of Maimon. He was a prosaic, pedantic personality, who in any German university could have filled the chair of logic and mathematics, and year after year given the same instruction unabridged and unincreased. For the philosophy of Kant, however, Ben-David possessed ardor and enthusiastic devotion, because he recognized it as the truth, and faithfully conformed to its moral principles. This philosophy was well suited to Jews, because it demanded high power of thought and moral action. For this reason Kant, like Aristotle in former days, had many Jewish admirers and disciples. Ben-David was also learned in the Talmud, and a good mathematician. It was perhaps a mistake on his part to go to Vienna to lecture upon the Kantian philosophy. At first the University permitted his discourses in its halls,--a Jew lecturing on a philosophy which denied the right of Catholicism to exist! He soon however had to discontinue them; but Count Harrach offered him his palace as a lecture-room. Meeting with obstacles here, too, he left the imperial city, continued his discourses in Berlin, and for some time acted as editor of a journal. Ben-David produced but little impression upon the course of Jewish history.

The German Jews, however, under Mendelssohn's inspiration, not only elevated themselves with great rapidity to the height of culture, but unmistakably promoted the spread of culture in Christian circles. Intellectual Jews and Jewesses created in Berlin that cultured public tone which has become the distinction of this capital, and has influenced the whole of Germany. Jews and Jewesses were the first to found a salon for intellectual intercourse, in which the elements of elevated thought, taste, poetry, and criticism mingled together in a graceful, light way, and were discussed, and made accessible to men of different vocations. The Christian populace of Berlin at the time of Frederick the Great and his successor greatly resembled that of a petty town. The nobility and high dignitaries were too aristocratic and uneducated to trouble themselves about intellectual and social affairs and the outside world. For them the court and the petty events of everyday life were the world. The learned formed an exclusive guild, and there was no high or wealthy class of burghers. The middle classes followed the narrow path of their old-fashioned German fathers; met, if at all, over the beer-jug, and were continually engaged in repeating stories of "old Fritz's victories." Particularly, the women lived modestly within their four walls, or occupied themselves wholly with the concerns of their family circles. With the Jews of Berlin it was entirely different. All, or most of them, had been more or less engaged with the Talmud in their youth; their mental powers were acute, and susceptible to fresh influences. These new elements of culture Mendelssohn gave them through his Bible translation, and his philosophical and æsthetic writings. In Jewish circles, knowledge procured more distinction than riches; the ignorant man, however wealthy, was held up as a butt for contempt. Every Jew, whatever his means, prided himself on possessing a collection of old and new books, and, when possible, sought to know their contents, so that he might not be wanting in conversation. Every well-informed Jew lived in two worlds, that of business, and that of books. In consequence of the impulse given by Mendelssohn, the younger generation occupied itself with belles-lettres, language, and philosophy. The subjects of study had changed, but the yearning for knowledge remained, or became still stronger. Amongst the Jews of Berlin, shortly after the death of Mendelssohn, were more than a hundred young men burning with zeal for knowledge and culture, from whose midst the contributors to the periodical "Ha-Meassef" were supplied.

To this honest inclination for study, there was added a fashionable folly. Through Frederick the Great, French literature became acclimatized in Prussia, and Jews were especially attracted by the sparkling intellectuality of French wit. Voltaire had more admirers in the tents of Jacob than in German houses. Jewish youths ravenously flung themselves upon French literature, and acquired its forms; French frivolity naturally made its entry at the same time. The clever daughters of Israel also ardently devoted themselves to this fashionable folly; they learned French, at first, to be sure, for the purpose of conversing in the fashionable language with the youthful cavaliers who borrowed money from their fathers. It was one more ornament with which to deck themselves. Through the influence of Mendelssohn and Lessing, such trifling gave way to earnest endeavors for the acquisition of solid knowledge, in order that they might occupy an equally exalted footing with the men. Mendelssohn's daughters, who were continually in the society of cultivated men, led the way, and stirred up emulation. In no town of Germany were there so many cultured Jewish women as in Berlin, for they learned easily, were industrious, and altogether superior to their Christian sisters in knowledge of literature.

Mendelssohn's house became the center for scientific and literary intercourse, and was the more frequented as his friends might expect to meet distinguished strangers there who were attracted by his wide-spread renown, and from whom something new might be learned. His daughters were admitted to this witty and charming society, to which they also introduced their young companions. After Mendelssohn's death David Friedländer and Marcus Herz took his place. Friedländer was, however, too stiff and plain to exercise attraction. Thus Herz's house became headquarters for Mendelssohn's friends, who became the nucleus of a large circle. Herz was a popular physician, and had numerous acquaintances among distinguished Jewish and Christian families. His lectures attracted people of every rank to his house, and those eager for knowledge were admitted into the intimacy of the family circle. Herz was gifted with caustic wit, with which he seasoned the conversation. But more powerful than his science and his genius was the influence of his wife. Hers was a magic circle, into which every native or foreign personage of importance in Berlin was magnetically drawn. Intercourse with the beautiful and gifted Jewess Henrietta Herz was, next to the court circle, the most sought after in Berlin. Had she not been misled by seductive influences, she might have been a source of rich blessings to Judaism.

This beautiful woman, then, made her house the gathering-place of the select society of Berlin, and illustrious strangers pressed for the honor of an introduction to her. Here the Christian friends of Mendelssohn, already accustomed to intercourse with Jews, mingled freely with cultured Jews, but also new men, who filled high positions, and diplomatists were to be met there. Mirabeau, in whose mind the storm-charged clouds of the Revolution were already forming, and to whom the Jews owed so much, during his secret diplomatic embassy (1786) to Berlin was more in the society of Henrietta Herz than in that of her husband. Gradually ladies of high degree and education also entered into relations with Madame Herz and her friends, attracted by the charm of refined, social communion. But her salon exercised most powerful attraction upon cultured Christian youths, by reason of its beautiful Jewish damsels and ladies, the satellites of the fair hostess. These Jewish beauties, however, did not merely form the ornament of the salon, but took an active part in the intellectual entertainment, and distinguished themselves by their originality. Gentz called them "the clever women of Jewry." Among them were two who shone by superior intellectual qualities, and combined modern culture with Jewish keenness of mind and wit: Mendelssohn's eldest daughter Dorothea, and Rachel Levin, afterwards the wife of Varnhagen von Ense. Both possessed eminent talents, in addition to which Rachel Levin had an inflexible love for truth, united with gentleness and amiability.

Almost at the same time a brilliant salon, where authors, artists, nobles, and diplomatists, native and foreign, came together, was opened in Vienna, by a Berlin Jewess, Fanny Itzig, daughter of the banker Daniel Itzig. She was witty, amiable and noble, and was married to Nathan Adam von Arnstein, who had been made a baron. Like her friends in Berlin she brought about the social intermingling of Jews with Christians in Vienna. These Jewish coteries most triumphantly refuted the foolish remark of the insolent scholar of Göttingen, "that gypsies would sooner undergo the transformation into a people than Jews." The prejudice of a thousand years was blown away with one breath more effectually than by a hundred learned or eloquent disquisitions.

The social equalization of the Jews in cultivated circles of Prussia caused them to hope, if not for complete civil rights, at least for a lightening of the oppressive taxes and the humiliations imposed upon them. Between the social position of cultured Jews and their legal standing there was a deep chasm. In the burgher classes, the Jews of Berlin were the first millionaires--no indifferent matter considering the important place held by money at that time--yet, according to the law, they were treated like peddlers. Humane treatment could not be expected from the philosophical king. Dohm's apology for the Jews did not exist for him. Hope was aroused among the Berlin Jews on the accession of Frederick William II, who was of a weak but kindly nature. Urged on by David Friedländer, who, the successor of Mendelssohn, was at the same time considered the representative of Jewish interests, the chiefs and elders of the Berlin community presented a petition for the abolition of the Jewish poll-tax, the repeal of barbarous laws against the Jews, and the concession of freedom of movement. They received a favorable reply, directing them to "choose honest men from their midst," with whom the government might negotiate. Their proposal to select delegates from amongst the Jews in the provinces was assented to, and a commission was established to investigate the complaints of the Prussian Jews and make suggestions for improvement. As general deputies of the Jews there were selected Friedländer and his rich father-in-law, Daniel Itzig, who, with great independence and courage, laid bare the barbarous and venal legislation of Frederick the Great in reference to the Jews.

The deputies drew up a list of the imposts extorted from the Jews, bearing ridiculous titles; for instance, the exportation of porcelain, which bound them to purchase articles of the worst quality for an exorbitant price (called in mockery "Jews' porcelain") from the royal manufactory and to sell them abroad; and taxes for the support of manufactories for caps, stockings, pocket-handkerchiefs, and veils. They pointed out burdensome restrictions, how in courts of justice they were not treated as the equals of Christian suitors, and they especially complained of the responsibility laid upon all for each, and boldly demanded complete equalization, not mere permission to engage in agriculture and trades, but also to fill public offices and university chairs (May, 1787). The expectations of the Jews of Berlin and Prussia were however baffled. Only the law to deal in bad porcelain was annulled for a sum of four thousand thalers. The degrading body-tax was also repealed for native Jews journeying from province to province, and for strangers when frequenting the fair at Frankfort-on-the-Oder (December, 1787; July, 1788.) This release from slavery had been effected by Joseph II and by Louis XVI of France several years previously. The high officials therefore advised the abolition of the Jewish poll-tax from shame. But the gain was not great, for, as Prussian Jews had to prove themselves such at every public gate, the stigma was not removed. The ultimate result of the petition of the Jewish deputies was lamentable. What was given with one hand, was taken away with the other. It redounds to the honor of the deputies that they frankly rejected the paltry, narrow-minded concessions, remarking, "The intended favors are below our expectation, and hardly accord with the joyful hopes entertained at the accession of the king." They declared that they were not empowered to accept the reforms offered, "which contain few advantages and many restrictions," especially as regarded the enlistment of common soldiers. Only certain individual Jews received exceptional equalization of rights. Orders were given that in official acts they should not be treated as Jews. Otherwise everything continued as of old, only slight relief being given to the Jews in Silesia.

Thus a nucleus for the elevation of the Jewish race was formed in the Berlin community, and their efforts were encouraged, if not by the state, at least by public opinion. In two ways their action influenced a wider circle--through the Free School (Chinuch Nearim), and the printing establishment connected with it. The Free School, conducted by David Friedländer and his brother-in-law, Itzig Daniel Itzig, was not managed according to Wessely's ideal plan. The curriculum was composed mainly of the subjects of a general education, and gradually everything Jewish (Hebrew, the Bible, the Talmud) was crowded out. In ten years (1781-1791) over five hundred well-taught pupils were graduated from the school--apostles of the Berlin spirit, who spread its influence in all directions. It became a model school for German and other communities. With similar ends in view the printing-press sent into the Ghettos a large number of instructive works in Hebrew and German. The spirit engendered thereby was at first one of scepticism, of superficial enlightenment. Its aim was to eradicate from Jewish life and manners everything that offended cultured taste or made the Jews objects of derision, but it included in its attack whatever did not at once recommend itself to the sober-minded, and so tended to obliterate everything that recalled the great events of the past, and that caused the Jews to appear as a separate race in the eyes of Christians. The dearest ambition of the advocates of this movement was to resemble Christians in every respect. "Enlightenment, Culture" were their passwords, the idols of their worship, to which they sacrificed everything. Mendelssohn had left no disciple of any importance able to recognize the great truths of Judaism, and bring them into accord with culture. Men like Euchel, Löwe, Friedländer, Herz, and almost all the Measfim, possessed mediocre minds and limited views; they were unable to scatter abroad fruit-bearing germs of thought. Despite their enthusiasm for Mendelssohn, they did not appreciate the essence of his nature, and thought that he was still in their midst, when they had long forsaken him. Even his own children, not excepting his accomplished daughters, misunderstood him; and this misconception resulted in great confusion.

With every step forward taken by the Berlin school of enlightenment, it became more opposed to the main body of Judaism, vexing its susceptibilities, and thereby frustrating its own efficacy. Misunderstandings, bitter feelings, friction, and strife were the direct consequences.

The ultra-orthodox party, however, numbered still fewer men of importance than the advanced school. The most eminent leader among them, or the one regarded as such, Ezekiel Landau, in Prague, had not the slightest sympathy with the new tendency, but thoughtlessly clung to every usage however unjustifiable, and thereby injured the cause he represented. He had only condemnation and denunciation as heretics for those who withdrew from the well-trodden path.

Owing to the friction between the progressive and the orthodox parties, both of whom exceeded all proper bounds, an exciting quarrel sprang up in the Berlin community. Young men--private tutors, merchants' apprentices, the sons of the rich, and fashionable youths--boasted a frivolous philosophy, and proudly despised their hoary religion, considering everything that interfered with their pleasures as superstition, prejudice, and Rabbinical folly. The adherents of the old views therefore grew the more tenacious, and held to everything that bore a religious stamp. As the orthodox communal leaders still had the upper hand in the benevolent institutions, they refused support to the partisans of enlightenment, especially to strangers, would not admit their sick into the Jewish hospital, and denied the dead honorable burial. In short all the phenomena that usually accompany religious party conflicts appeared. Those without families, among whom were two prominent Measfim, Euchel and Wolfssohn, determined to unite together so as not to stand isolated against the orthodox party. They desired to form a union for the protection of its members. Mendelssohn's eldest son, Joseph, was very zealous in promoting such a union, and on the strength of his name it met with abundant encouragement. Thus the "Society of Friends" was formed (1792), a community of illuminati within the community, comprising solely unmarried men, whose chief aim was to regard each other as brothers, and to support each other in distress and illness; but their collateral intention was to spread culture and promote enlightenment. The "Friends" took a saying of Mendelssohn as their motto, "To seek for truth, to love the beautiful, to desire the good, to do the best." A bundle of staves was their symbol. In the first year of its existence, the union numbered more than a hundred members in the capital. Young men in Königsberg, Breslau, and Vienna, joined the ranks. A bond of cordial brotherhood held the members together, and to the present day, a fraternal feeling of delicate benevolence has survived in the Society. But it was a morbid symptom. The Society floated in the air without a firm basis; it had roots neither in its own midst, nor in Judaism, nor did it attach itself to any great political ideal. It aimed at bodily welfare and quietude, as if civilized men could live by bread only: the catchwords and phrases of culture and enlightenment did not avail much. The struggle against the old régime was but weak; all that they succeeded in doing was to keep their deceased friends longer above ground. In short, the "Society of Friends" lacked the leaven of inspiration, the only quality which ultimately bears fruit.

If the members of this Society took up no firm attitude, those who never knew an ideal, nor even a dreamy striving, the commonplace men who were mere slaves, and sought their whole happiness in mixing with Christians, acted yet more culpably. The old system had no charms for them, and the new one no tangible form to attract them. The example of the court and high circles of society exercised an evil influence also upon the Jews of the large towns of Prussia. "Under Frederick William II," as Mirabeau remarks from his own observation, "Prussia had fallen into a condition of rottenness, before having attained the stage of maturity." Jewish youths of wealthy houses followed the general inclination to sensual pleasures. Not secretly, but openly in the light of day, they over-leapt all bounds, and with contempt of Judaism united contempt for chastity and morality. They aped other apes. Earnest men, such as David Friedländer, Lazarus Ben-David, and Saul Asher, deplored the decay of morality among the Jews, without noticing that their own shallow desire for enlightenment had contributed to it.

"Vices have spread in our midst, which our fathers knew not, and which at any price have been bought too dearly. Irreligion, voluptuousness, and effeminacy, weeds that spring from the misuse of enlightenment and culture, have alas! taken root amongst us, and especially in the principal towns we are exposed to the danger that the stream of luxury along with our boorishness is sweeping away our severe and simple morals."

Having broken loose from the bond of a national religion existing for thousands of years, superficial reasoners and profligates passed over to Christianity in a body. "They were like moths, fluttering around the flame, till they were consumed." Of what use was it to be galled by the fetters of the "general privilege," of what use to continue to bear the disgrace of being "protected" Jews, if by the repetition of an empty formula they could become equal to the Christians! So they washed away the mark of the yoke and its shame with the waters of baptism. The congregations of Berlin, Breslau, and Königsberg beheld daily the apostasy of their members, of the richest and outwardly the most cultured people. It appeared as if the words of the prophet would be verified, "I will leave in the midst of thee an afflicted and poor people." It must be considered a miracle that the entire Jewish party of enlightenment in Germany did not abjure Judaism. Three invisible powers kept them from following en masse the example of treachery and apostasy: deep aversion to the dogma of Divine Incarnation, indestructible attachment to their families and to their great past of thousands of years, and love for the Hebrew language and literature. Without suspecting it, they felt themselves united as a nation, a link in the long chain of the history of the Jewish race, and they could not persuade themselves to separate from it. The revival of Hebrew through the Measfim had had beneficial influence in this direction. Whoever could comprehend the beauties and elevated thoughts of biblical literature, and could imitate the language, remained a Jew in spite of secret doubts, degradation, and disgrace. Thus Mendelssohn provided the new generation both with a poison and its antidote.

David Friedländer alone proved an exception to this rule. Neither Jewish antiquity, nor Hebrew poetry, nor family ties, had power to keep him loyal to his banner, even with half-hearted devotion. The tearing asunder of all family connections, the casting aside of the duties of the religious brotherhood, did indeed oppress him. Nevertheless, he proceeded to sever himself from the Jewish community and to desert to the hostile camp. He had striven to obtain for himself and his whole family an exceptional naturalization with all its rights and duties, but had not succeeded. This pained him, and instead of hiding his annoyance in the pride of ancestry and martyrdom, instead of working on behalf of his co-religionists so as to surpass the haughty Christians, he coveted the honor of joining them. Friedländer, however, did not desire to effect this desertion alone or absolutely. He therefore, together with other fathers of families similarly disposed, in a cowardly manner directed a letter, without mentioning either himself or others by name, to the chief consistorial councilor Teller, who was on friendly terms with Jews. This letter expressed their desire for conversion and baptism, under the condition that they might be excused from believing in Jesus, and from participating in the rites of the church, or that at least they might be allowed to explain Christian dogmas in their own manner--a suggestion equally silly and dishonorable. Friedländer could not deny that, among the Jews, "virtue was general, benevolence inherent, parental and filial love, and the sanctity of marriage deeply rooted, self-sacrifice for the sake of others frequent; and that, on the other hand, gross crimes-- murder, robbery, and outrage--were rare." But this bright side of their servile state seemed to him only a secondary matter. Therefore, in this foolish letter, he libeled his people and its past, called the Talmud (that mental tonic) mysticism, spoke in illogical confusion now of the harmful character, now of the utility of the ritual laws of Judaism, and sketched the development of Jewish history in a way not to be excelled for perversity.

Teller disposed of the Jewish fathers who craved a Christianity without Jesus politely, but decisively, as they deserved. They might remain what they were, for Christianity had no desire for such infidel believers. Friedländer had met with an ignominious experience; he remained a Jew, but his children pressed forward to be baptized without conditions or qualifications. His letter however aroused more attention than it deserved.

If the German Jews, especially those of Berlin, through their intercourse with Christian society, and their interest in literature, gained in external conduct, in forms of politeness, and social manners--advantages not to be underrated--they lost something for which there was no compensation. The chastity of Jewish women and maidens during their isolation had been of inviolable sanctity; the happiness of family life rested upon this precious basis. Jewish women were seldom married for love--the Ghetto was not the place for the dallyings of love--but after marriage duty induced love. This sanctuary, the pride of Israel, which filled earnest Christians with admiration, and led them highly to esteem the Jews, became dishonored by their association with Christians of the corrupt higher ranks.

If the enemies of the Jews had designed to break the power of Israel, they could have discovered no more effectual means than infecting Jewish women with moral depravity, a plan more efficacious than that employed by the Midianites, who weakened the men by immorality. The salon of the beautiful Henrietta Herz became a sort of Midianite tent. Here a number of young Jewish women assembled, whose husbands were kept away by their business. The most prominent male member of this circle was Frederick von Gentz, the embodiment of selfishness, licentiousness, vice, and depravity, whose chief occupation was the betrayal of women. Henrietta Herz was the first to be confused and led astray by homage to her beauty. It was the time when German romanticism, the product of Goethe's muse, began to act upon the minds of men, urging them to translate lyrical emotions into reality, and transfigure life poetically. This romantic tendency resulted in fostering sentimentality and in infamous marriages which were contracted and dissolved at pleasure. A so-called Band of Virtue (Tugend-Bund) was formed, of which Henrietta Herz, two daughters of Mendelssohn, and other Jewesses, together with Christian profligates, were members. The Jewish women felt themselves exalted and honored by their close intimacy with Christians of rank; they did not see the fanged serpent beneath the flowers. With William von Humboldt, an ardent youth, afterwards a Prussian minister, Henrietta secretly maintained an amatory correspondence behind her husband's back.

When William von Humboldt married, and forgot Henrietta, who had been misled by her vanity, she entered into an ambiguous relation with Schleiermacher, the modern apostle of the new Christianity. Their conspicuous intimacy was mocked at by acquaintances, even more than by strangers. Both parties denied somewhat too anxiously the criminality of their intimate intercourse. Whether true or not, it was disgrace enough that evil tongues should even suspect the honor of a Jewish matron of good family.

Schleiermacher's companion was Frederick Schlegel, who stormed heaven with childish strength,--a chameleon in sentiments and views, enthusiastic now for the republic, now for monarchical despotism, who conjured up the specters and evil spirits of the Middle Ages. Introduced into the salon of Herz, he became the bosom friend of Schleiermacher, and at once resolved to seduce Dorothea Mendelssohn. Her father had died with the knowledge that she was joined in happy wedlock to the banker Simon Veit Witzenhausen. Her husband surrounded her with marks of attention and love. Two children were the issue of this marriage. Nevertheless, she allowed herself to be led into faithlessness by the treacherous voice of the romantic Schlegel. It was the fashion in this society to complain about being misunderstood and the discord of souls. The immoral teachings of Goethe's elective affinities had already taken root in Jewish families. The thought of parting from her husband and children did not restrain Dorothea from going astray, and Henrietta Herz acted as go-between. Dorothea therefore left her husband, and lived with Schlegel, at first in unlawful union. All the world was astounded at this immorality, which dragged Mendelssohn's honorable name in the mud. Doctor Herz forbade his wife to hold intercourse with this depraved woman. But she herself was at heart an adulteress, and informed her husband that she would not forsake her friend. Schleiermacher, the preacher, also took but little offense at this dissolute conduct. Dorothea followed her romantic betrayer from one folly to another, was baptized as a Protestant, and finally, together with him, became converted to Catholicism. It was a lamentable sight when Mendelssohn's daughter kissed the toe of the pope. The younger sister, Henrietta Mendelssohn, was not handsome enough to enthrall the libertines of the salon. It suffices to indicate her bent of mind to say that she also went over to Catholicism. The consequence of this internal corruption was to render the participators out of sorts with life.

Rachel Levin, another high-spirited woman, was too clever to take part in the frivolity of the Band of Virtue. She desired to pursue her own way. But her wisdom and clear mind did not secure her against the contamination of immorality. In one respect she was superior to her sinful Jewish sisters; she was truthful, and wore no mask. When Rachel first made the acquaintance of the heroic but dissolute Prince Louis Ferdinand, she undertook to teach him "garret-truths"; but she rather learned from him the follies of the palace. Herself unmarried, she consented to become the intermediary between him and the abandoned Pauline Wiesel. Rachel Levin, or, as she was also called, Rachel Robert, in whose veins flowed Talmudic blood, which endowed her with a bright and active mind, and enabled her to penetrate to the very foundation of things, and pursue the soul and its varying instincts in their subtlest manifestations, ignored her own origin. She desired to distinguish the breath of God in the mutations of history, yet had no appreciation of the greatness of her race. She despised it, considering it the greatest shame and her worst misfortune to have been born a Jewess. Only in the hour of death did a faint suspicion of the great importance of Judaism and the Jews cross her mind.

"With exalted delight I meditate upon my origin and the web of history, through which the oldest reminiscences of the human race are united with present affairs, despite distance of time and space. I, a fugitive from Egypt, am here, and find assistance. What all my life I considered my greatest disgrace, I now would not give up for any price."

But even in that hour her mind did not see clearly, her thoughts were disordered, and she exhausted herself in fantastic dreams.

These talented but sinful Jewish women did Judaism a service by becoming Christians. Mendelssohn's daughters and Rachel were converted publicly, while Henrietta Herz, who had more regard for appearances, received baptism in a small town to avoid hurting her Jewish friends, and took this step only after her mother's death.

Schleiermacher again inoculated the cultivated classes in Germany with a peculiar, scarcely definable, antipathy to Judaism. He was in no way a Jew-baiter, in the usual sense of the term, and indignantly protested against being called so; but his mind was agitated with a vague, disagreeable feeling towards the Jews, from which he could not escape. When Friedländer's foolish letter on the admission of certain families into Christianity divested of the dogma of the Trinity, was published, Schleiermacher expressed himself adverse to their admission. The state might concede to the Jews the rights of citizenship, but should tolerate them only as a special sect, inasmuch as they would not surrender their hope in the Messiah. It was quite in accordance with his romantic neo-Christianity, that from ignorance and confusion he depicted Judaism as a mummy "around which its sons sit moaning and weeping." He would not even acknowledge Judaism as the forerunner of Christianity. "I detest this sort of historical relationship in religion." Hitherto, Christendom had been conscious of a certain connection with Judaism, and the Old Testament, the Bible, had been the common ground upon which the insolent daughter and the enslaved mother met, and for the moment forgot their hatred. To this connection, or its recognition, the Jews owed their salvation in the sad days of excess of Christian faith, or they would have been altogether annihilated in Europe. The papacy protected them, "because the Saviour had come from their midst." This bond Schleiermacher destroyed at a breath. To have anything in common with the Jews enraged him. But were not Jesus, the Apostles, and the early Fathers of the Church, Jews? Schleiermacher would willingly have denied this fact, if he could possibly have done it; but as this was impracticable, he enshrouded it in mystery.

"What? we are to believe that Jesus was only a Jewish Rabbi, with philanthropic sentiments, and some Socratic morality; with certain miracles, or at least what some consider as such, and with the talent of composing neat riddles and parables-- some follies will even then have to be forgiven him, according to the first three Evangelists; and such a man could have established a new religion and a Church--a man who cannot be compared with Moses and Mahomet?"

This fact Schleiermacher could not tolerate; for in such case, not only Moses the prophet, but also Moses Mendelssohn, the sage of Berlin, would have been greater. Therefore Schleiermacher removed his Jesus far away from Judaism; he had only had the accident of birth in common with the Jews, but he was superhuman, and still a man, "whose consciousness of God may properly be called existence of God within him," as it is expressed in this mystic, extravagant, romantic teaching, which thus took its own chief under its protection. Schleiermacher's sermons were filled with this kind of word-juggling, to which the Berlin Jews, especially the women, listened as devoutly as their ancestors to the lying tricks of the false prophets. The school of Schleiermacher, which became the leading influence in Germany, made this intense contempt of Judaism its password and the basis of its orthodoxy.

At the same time, another romanticist, Chateaubriand, invented new, flimsy supports for Christianity, which was in ruins and almost forgotten in France. Even though he traced the origin of the arts, music, painting, architecture, eloquence, and poetry, to Christianity, he, at least, did not deny a share in these merits to Judaism, though only with the intention of claiming for Christianity the noblest features in Hebrew literature and history. "There are only two bright names and memories in history, those of the Israelites and the Pelasgians (Greeks)." When Chateaubriand desired to prove his assertion that the poetry of nature is the invention of Christianity, he cited as examples the beautiful descriptions in Job, in the Prophets, and the Psalms, to whose poetry the works of Pindar and Horace were much inferior. Chateaubriand gathered the flowers of Hebrew poetry to weave a beautiful garland for his crucified god. But he did not, like Schleiermacher, crush Judaism into the dust by denying the paternity of the child grown to be so powerful.

A new Judæophobia sprang from the neo-Christian school, which, as its originators obtained political influence, grew much stronger than that of old orthodox Christianity. It is remarkable that the twofold reaction, that of the Church, brought about by Schleiermacher, and that of the political world, which is connected with Gentz, had its rise in the Judæo-Christian salon in Berlin. But in the same year when the effeminate Schleiermacher, in his romantic delineation of himself, calumniated Judaism by describing it as a mummy, there arose a man, a hero, a giant in comparison with these wretched dwarfs, who issued a summons for the Jews to gather round his standard. He wished to conquer the Holy Land of their fathers for them, and, a second Cyrus, to rebuild their Temple. The freedom which the Berlin Jews desired to attain by the surrender of their peculiarities, and by humiliation before the Church, they now obtained through France, without paying this price and without disgraceful bargaining.

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XI. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE EMANCIPATION OF THE JEWS

Foreshadowing of the French Revolution--Cerf Berr--Mirabeau on the Jewish Question in France--Berr Isaac Berr--The Jewish Question and the National Assembly--Equalization of Portuguese Jews--Efforts to equalize Paris Jews--Jewish Question deferred--Equalization of French Jews--Reign of Terror-- Equalization of Jews of Holland--Adath Jeshurun Congregation --Spread of Emancipation--Bonaparte in Palestine--Fichte's Jew-hatred--The Poll-Tax--Grund's "Petition of Jews of Germany"--Jacobson--Breidenbach--Lefrank--Alexander I of Russia: his Attempts to improve the Condition of the Jews of Russia.

1791-1805 C. E.

He who believes that Providence manifests itself in history, that sins, crimes, and follies on the whole serve to elevate mankind, finds in the French Revolution complete confirmation of this faith. Could this eventful reaction, which the whole of the civilized world gradually experienced, have happened without the long chain of revolting crimes and abominations which the nobility, the monarchy, and the Church committed? The unnatural servitude inflicted by the temporal and spiritual powers produced liberty, but nourished it with poison, so that liberty bit into its own flesh, and wounded itself. The Revolution was a judgment which in one day atoned for the sins of a thousand years, and which hurled into the dust all who, at the expense of justice and religion, had created new grades of society. A new day of the Lord had come "to humiliate all the proud and high, and to raise up the lowly." For the Jews, too, the most abject and despised people in European society, the day of redemption and liberty was to dawn after their long slavery among the nations of Europe. It is noteworthy that England and France, the two European countries which first expelled the Jews, were the first to reinstate them in the rights of humanity. What Mendelssohn had thought possible at some distant time, and what had been the devout wish of Dohm and Diez, those defenders of the Jews, was realized in France with almost magical rapidity.

However, the freedom of the French Jews did not fall into their laps like ripe fruit, in the maturing of which they had taken no trouble. They made vigorous exertions to remove the oppressive yoke from their shoulders; but in France the result of their activity was more favorable and speedy than in Germany. The most zealous energy in behalf of the liberation of the French Jews was displayed by a man, whose forgotten memory deserves to be transmitted to posterity. Herz Medelsheim or Cerf Berr (born about 1730, died 1793) was the first to exert himself by word and deed to remove the prejudices against his co-religionists, under which he himself suffered severely. He was acquainted with the Talmud, in good circumstances, warm-hearted enough to avoid the selfishness bred by prosperity, and sufficiently liberal to understand and spread the new spirit emanating from Mendelssohn. He was intimately acquainted with the Berlin sage, and undertook to disseminate the Pentateuch translation in Alsace. Owing to his position, Cerf Berr was enabled to work for the emancipation of his brethren. He furnished the French army with the necessaries of war, and therefore had to be in Strasburg, where no Jew was allowed to live. At first he was allowed in Strasburg only one winter, but having performed great services to the state, during the war and a famine under Louis XV, the permission to stay was repeatedly prolonged by the minister, and he utilized this favor to take up his permanent residence there. Cerf Berr drew other Jews to Strasburg. Secretly he purchased houses for himself and his family, and owing to his services to the state, he obtained from Louis XVI all the rights and liberties of royal subjects, especially the exceptional privilege of possessing landed property and goods. He also established factories in Strasburg, and tried to have the work done by Jews, so as to withdraw them from petty trading and deprive their accusers of all excuse for their prejudices.

Although Cerf Berr was a useful member of society, and brought profit to the town, the Germans in Strasburg viewed the settlement of Jews within their walls askance, and made every conceivable effort to expel Berr and his friends. This Philistine narrow-mindedness on the one hand, and Dohm's advocacy of the Jews on the other, as well as the partial relief afforded by Emperor Joseph, impelled Berr seriously to consider the emancipation of the Jews, or at least their admission to most of the French towns, and to endeavor to carry the measure at court. To win public opinion, he energetically spread Dohm's Apology in France. The proposals of Cerf Berr were favorably received at court. From other quarters, also, the French government was petitioned to lighten the oppressive measures, which weighed especially on the Jews of Alsace and Lorraine. The good-natured Louis XVI was inclined to remove any abuse as soon as it was placed before him in its true light. The noble Malesherbes, enthusiastic for the well-being of mankind, probably at the instigation of the king, summoned a commission of Jews, which was to make suggestions for the amelioration of the condition of their brethren in France. As a matter of course, Cerf Berr was invited. As representative of the Jews of Lorraine, his ally, Berr Isaac Berr of Nancy, was summoned, who afterwards developed the greatest zeal for the emancipation of his co-religionists. Portuguese Jews from Bordeaux and Bayonne, the two towns where they resided, were also included in the commission. Furtado, who subsequently played a part in the history of the Revolution, Gradis, Isaac Rodrigues of Bordeaux, and Lopes-Dubec, were members of this commission instituted by Malesherbes. These eminent men, all of them animated with zealous sympathy for their languishing brethren, undoubtedly insisted upon the repeal of exceptional laws, but their proposals are not known. Probably in consequence of their efforts, Louis XVI abrogated the poll-tax, which had been particularly degrading to the Jews in the German-speaking provinces of France.

More effectually than Cerf Berr and the Jewish commission, two men worked for the liberation of the Jews who in a measure had been inspired by Mendelssohn and his friends, and were the incarnation of the Revolution. They were Mirabeau and the Abbé Grégoire, no less zealous for liberty than the former. Count Mirabeau (born 1749; died 1791), who was always on the side of the oppressed against the oppressors, was first induced, by his intimacy with Mendelssohn's circle, to raise his voice of thunder on behalf of the Jews.

Filled with admiration for the grand personality of Mendelssohn, and inspired by the thought of accomplishing the deliverance of an enslaved race, Mirabeau wrote his important work "Upon Mendelssohn and the Political Reform of the Jews" (1787). Of the former he drew a brilliant picture. The Jewish sage could not have wished for a warmer, more inspired, more clear-sighted interpreter. The liking he entertained for Mendelssohn Mirabeau transferred to the Jews in general.

"May it not be said that his example, especially the outcome of his exertions for the elevation of his brethren, silences those who, with ignoble bitterness, insist that the Jews are so contemptible that they cannot be transformed into a respectable people?"

This observation was the introduction to Mirabeau's vindication of the Jews, in which he gave a correct exposition of what Dohm had adduced and what he himself had experienced. He surveyed the long, tragic history of the Jews, discovering traits very different from those found by Voltaire. Mirabeau saw the glorious martyrdom of the Jews and the disgrace of their oppressors. Their virtues he extolled freely, and attributed their failings to the ill-treatment they had received.

"If you wish the Jews to become better men and useful citizens, then banish every humiliating distinction, open to them every avenue of gaining a livelihood; instead of forbidding them agriculture, handicrafts, and the mechanical arts, encourage them to devote themselves to these occupations."

With telling wit, Mirabeau refuted the arguments of the German anti-Semites, Michaelis and the Göttingen guild of scholars, against the naturalization of the Jews. It was only necessary to place the different objections side by side to demonstrate their absurdity. On the one hand, it was maintained that, in their rivalry with Christians, the Jews would gain the upper hand, and from another point of view it was demonstrated that they would always remain inferior. "Let their opponents first agree among themselves," he remarked, "at present they refute each other." Mirabeau foresaw, with prophetic clearness, that in a free and happy condition the Jews would soon forget their Messianic king, and that therefore the justification of their permanent exclusion, derived from their belief in the Messiah, was futile.

"There is only one thing to be lamented, that so highly gifted a nation should so long have been kept in a state wherein it was impossible for its powers to develop, and every far-sighted man must rejoice in the acquisition of useful fellow-citizens from among the Jews."

On all occasions Mirabeau seized the opportunity of speaking warmly on behalf of the Jews. He was devoted to them and their biblical literature, and scattered the clouds of prejudice with which Voltaire had enveloped them. When Mirabeau undertook the defense of any matter, the victory was already half won. His suggestions for reform came at the right moment.

Among the thousand matters that occupied public opinion on the eve of the Revolution was also the Jewish question. The Jews, especially in Alsace, complained of their unendurable misery, and the Christian populace, of their intolerable impoverishment through the Jews. In Metz an anti-Jewish pamphlet had appeared, entitled "The Citizen's Cry against the Jews," which inflamed the worst passions of the people against them. The pamphlet was indeed prohibited; but what slanderous assertion, however incredible, has ever been without result? Appearances, in point of fact, were against the Jews. A young Jewish author, the first Alsatian Jew who wrote in French, published a stinging reply (1787), which justified the expectation that the Jews would no longer, as in Voltaire's time, permit such insults to pass unnoticed, but would emerge from their attitude of silent suffering. Isaiah Berr Bing (born 1759; died 1805), well-educated and eloquent, better acquainted with the history of his people than his Jewish contemporaries, including even the Berlin leaders, rebutted every charge with convincing emphasis.

Through these writings for and against the Jews, the Jewish question became prominent in France. The Royal Society of Science and Arts in Metz offered a prize for the best essay in answer to the question, "Are there means to make the Jews happier and more useful in France?" Three replies, all in favor of the Jews, were sent in--by two Christian inquirers, and one Jewish, the Abbé Grégoire, Thiery, the member of Parliament for Nancy, and Salkind Hurwitz the Pole, of Kovno (on the Niemen), who had emigrated to Paris. That of Grégoire, however, had the greatest effect. Grégoire was a simple nature, and in the midst of universal corruption had preserved a pure, childlike mind.

When these apologetic pamphlets appeared, the storm-charged clouds of the Revolution, which were to bring about destruction and reorganization in the world, had already gathered. The fetters of a double slavery, beneath which European nations groaned, that of the State and the Church, were at length, in one country at least, to be broken. As if touched by a magic wand, France turned into a glowing furnace, where all the instruments of serfdom were consumed, and out of the ashes arose the French nation, rejuvenated, destined for great things, the first apostle of the religion of freedom, which it loved with passionate devotion. Was it not natural to expect the hour to strike for the redemption of the most abased people, the Jews? Two of their most ardent defenders sat in that part of the National Assembly which, truly representative of the nation, restored inalienable rights to those so long disinherited by Church and State. These representatives were Mirabeau, one of the fathers of the Revolution, and the Abbé Grégoire, who owed his election to his essay in defense of the Jews.

At the outbreak of the Revolution, there lived in France scarcely 50,000 Jews--almost half of whom (20,000) dwelt in Alsace-- under the most oppressive yoke. In Metz, the largest, "the pattern community," only 420 Jewish families were tolerated, and in the whole of Lorraine only 180, and these were not allowed to increase. In Paris, in spite of stringent prohibitions, a congregation of about 500 persons had gathered (since 1740); about as many lived in Bordeaux, the majority of them of new-Christian or Portuguese descent. There were also some communities in the papal districts of Avignon and Carpentras. In Carpentras there dwelt about 700 families (over 2,000 souls) with their own rabbinate. Those in the best condition were the Jews of Bordeaux and the daughter community of Bayonne. Among the Jews of the various provinces there was as little connection as among those in other European countries. Misfortune had separated them. Thus it happened that no concerted action was taken to obtain naturalization from the National Assembly at once, although Grégoire, the Catholic priest, true love for mankind in his heart, exhorted them to seize this favorable opportunity. They indeed boasted men of energy, filled with love for their race, and ready for self-sacrifice, men of tact, such as Cerf Berr, Furtado, Isaac Berr, and David Gradis, but at first no measures were taken. An appeal for united action may possibly have been made, but the pride of the Portuguese probably made it ineffectual. Therefore, in the first stormy months of the Revolution, nothing was undertaken for the emancipation of the Jews. The deputies in the States General or the National Assembly were sufficiently occupied without thinking of the Jews. Besides, they adhered rather closely to the programme enumerating the wishes of their electors, on which the emancipation of the Jews was not mentioned. The deputies of Alsace and Lorraine, in fact, had received instructions to attack the Jews. The assaults made upon the Jews in the German provinces, as a result of the disorders of the Revolution, first moved the victims to bring their complaints before the National Assembly. It was, perhaps, an advantage that the ripe fruit of liberty did not fall into their laps, but that they had to exert themselves energetically to obtain it; for thus liberty became the more precious to them.

The storming of the Bastille had finally torn the scepter from the deluded king, and handed it over to the people. The Revolution had tasted blood, and began to inflict punishment upon the tyrants. In many parts of the land, as if by agreement, castles were burnt down, monasteries destroyed, and the nobility maltreated or slain. The people, brought up in ignorance by the Church, and now released from the chains of slavery, knew not how to distinguish friend from foe, and rushed recklessly upon what lay nearest their stupid gaze. In Alsace the lower classes of the people at the same time made a fierce attack upon the Jews (beginning of August, 1789)--perhaps incited by secret Jew-haters--destroying their houses, plundering their property, and forcing them to flee half-naked. They, who hitherto had been humiliated and enslaved by the nobles and the clergy, were now fellow-sufferers with their tyrants. The Alsatian Jews mostly escaped to Basle, and although no Jew was allowed to live there, the fugitives were sheltered and sympathetically treated. Complaints were made to the National Assembly of the excesses after the first draught of liberty; from that Assembly all expected help, no longer from the monarchy, which had already become a mere shadow. Every deputy received detailed reports of disquieting, sometimes sanguinary, events. The ill-treated Jews of Alsace had turned to Grégoire, and he sketched (August 3) a gloomy picture of the outrages upon the Jews, and added that he, a servant of a religion which regards all men as brothers, requested the interference of the powerful arm of the Assembly on behalf of this despised and unhappy people. He also published a pamphlet, called "Proposals in Favor of the Jews," to influence public opinion. Then followed the memorable night of the Fourth of August, which covered the French nation with eternal fame, when the nobles sacrificed their privileges on the altar of freedom, and acknowledged the equality of all citizens--the birth-hour of a new order of things. In consequence of this agitation, and dreading that they might fall victims to anarchy, the Jews of the various provinces resolved to present petitions for admission into the fraternity of the French people; but again they acted singly, and to some extent preferred contradictory requests. The Jews of Bordeaux had already joined the National Guard, and one was even appointed captain. They had only one desire, that their equalization be sealed by law, and this wish their four deputies, David Gradis, Furtado, Lopes-Dubec, and Rodrigues, publicly expressed. About a hundred Parisian Jews were also enrolled in the National Guard, and rivaled the other citizens in patriotism and revolutionary spirit. They sent eleven deputies to the National Assembly, who prayed for the removal of the ignominy which covered them as Jews, and for equalization by law, saying that the example of the French people would induce all the nations of the earth to acknowledge the Jews as brothers. The community of Metz desired besides that their oppressive taxes be removed, and the debts which they had contracted in consequence of the taxes be made void. The communities of Lorraine sent a delegate to the National Assembly, Berr Isaac Berr (born 1744; died 1828), who, a man of many virtues and merits, and an admirer of Mendelssohn and Wessely, had great influence. He drew up a petition containing the special request that the authority and autonomy of the rabbis in internal affairs be established and recognized by law. The deputies for Lüneville and an adjacent community protested against this. It was a long time, however, before the Jewish question became the distinct order of the day. The National Assembly seemed to shrink from discussing the point, for fear of stirring up public opinion still more passionately in the German provinces with their obstinate prejudices and hatred of Jews.

Religious intolerance manifested itself even in the Assembly. On the 23d of August an exciting sitting was held. The subject of debate was whether the inviolable rights of man, to be placed at the head of the constitution, were to include religious freedom of conscience and freedom of worship. A deputy, De Castellane, had formulated this point plainly: "No man shall be molested on account of his religious opinions, nor disturbed in the practice of his belief." Against this motion a storm arose on the part of the Catholic Clergy and other representatives of Catholicism. They continually spoke of a dominant religion or confession, which, as hitherto, should be supported by the State, whilst other creeds might be tolerated. In vain Mirabeau raised a bold protest against such presumptuousness.

"The unrestricted freedom of belief is so sacred in my eyes, that even the word tolerance sounds despotic to me, because the very existence of an authority empowered to tolerate, injures freedom, in that it tolerates, because it might do the reverse."

But his powerful voice was drowned by the opposing clamor. The clever speech of another deputy, Rabaud Saint Etienne, however, gained the victory for freedom of conscience. He spoke also on behalf of the Jews.

"I demand liberty for the nation of the Jews, always contemned, homeless, wandering over the face of the whole globe, and doomed to humiliation. Banish forever the aristocracy of thought, the feudal system of opinion, which desires to rule others and impose compulsion upon them."

Amidst strong opposition the law was passed, which has since become the basis of the European constitution:

"No one shall be molested on account of his religious opinions, in so far as their outward expression does not disturb public order as established by law."

Therewith one point in the petition of the French Jews was disposed of. But when the Jewish question afterwards came on for treatment (September 3), it was postponed, and handed over to a committee. Three weeks later the Assembly was again obliged to deal with the Jewish question. Persecutions which the Jews underwent in certain places forced it upon them. Those in Nancy were threatened with pillage, because they were reproached with having bought up provisions and raised the prices. The Jewish question became so pressing, that the order of the day (on September 28) was interrupted by it. It was again Grégoire who defended the persecuted. He was supported by Count Clermont-Tonnerre, a sincere friend of liberty. With glowing eloquence he pointed out that Christian society was guilty of the degradation of the Jews, and that it must offer them some atonement. The Assembly thereupon resolved that the president address a circular letter to the various towns, stating that the declaration of the rights of man, which the Assembly had accepted, comprehended all men upon earth, therefore also the Jews, who were no longer to be harassed. The king, with his enfeebled authority, was asked to protect the Jews from further persecutions. This action, however, produced no results for the sufferers. The Jews of Alsace remained exposed to attack, as before. The Jewish representatives of the three bishoprics of Alsace and Lorraine lost patience, seeing that their equalization was being constantly deferred. They therefore strove to obtain a hearing for themselves. Introduced by the deputies of Lorraine to the National Assembly (October 14), Berr, the indefatigable advocate of his co-religionists, delivered a speech, in which he portrayed the sufferings of a thousand years, and implored humane treatment for them. He worthily fulfilled his task. He was obliged to be brief; the Assembly, which had to establish a new edifice upon the ruins of the old kingdom, could not spare time for long speeches. President Preteau replied that the Assembly would feel itself happy to be able to afford rest and happiness to the Jews of France. The meeting applauded his words, permitted the Jewish deputies to be present as guests at the proceedings, and promised to take the equalization of the Jews into consideration at the next sitting. From this time the French Jews confidently hoped that their emancipation would be realized.

Meanwhile, the Revolution had again made a gigantic stride forward: the people had brought the proud French sovereign like a prisoner from Versailles to Paris. The deputies also moved to Paris, and the capital became more and more infected with revolutionary fever. The youthful Parisian Jews, as well as the immigrants, took great interest in all occurrences. Even the middle classes aided the cause of the fatherland by supplying funds. At length the Jewish question was to be settled. A deputy was appointed to report upon it, and a special sitting called. But it was brought into connection with another question, namely, the franchise of executioners, actors, and Protestants, to whom the Catholic population in some towns did not wish to grant permission to vote.

The report was sent in by Clermont-Tonnerre, and spoke most logically in favor of all four classes. All sincere friends of liberty, Robespierre, Duport, Barnave, and, of course, Mirabeau, expressed themselves in favor of the Jews and their fellow-sufferers. The followers of the old school opposed them with determination, chief among them Abbé Maury, Bishop La Fare of Nancy, and the bishop of Clermont. Only one ultra-revolutionist, Reubell, from Alsace, spoke against the Jews, maintaining that it was dangerous forthwith to grant complete rights of citizenship to those resident in Alsace, against whom there was deeply-rooted hatred. Abbé Maury produced utterly false, or partially true statements, as arguments for unfriendly behavior towards the Jews. He even quoted Voltaire's anti-Jewish writings in order to prejudice the Assembly. The Assembly hesitated; it feared to attack the gross prejudice entertained by the populace of the eastern provinces against the Jews. At the representation of one of the deputies, the equalization of the Jews was separated from that of the Protestants, and the resolution ran in this equivocal manner: that the Assembly reserved to itself the right of deciding about the Jews, without determining upon anything new concerning them. This reservation was repeated at the discussion of the laws for the election of municipal officers (January 8, 1790), from which Jews were excluded.

This evasive decision grossly offended the Portuguese Jews of Bordeaux. Hitherto they had tacitly enjoyed all the rights of citizens, and in their turn fulfilled all their duties with self-sacrificing readiness. Now they were to be kept in uncertainty about their civil status, in company with the German Jews, against whom they bore an antipathy not less than that of hostile Christians. They therefore hastily despatched a deputation to Paris to cause this injurious resolution to be rescinded. As the population were on better terms with the Portuguese, their request was easily obtained. The deputy for Bordeaux, De Sèze, spoke warmly on their behalf. Talleyrand, then bishop of Autun, was appointed to report upon the matter, and concisely suggested (February 28), that those Jews who had hitherto enjoyed civil rights as naturalized Frenchmen should continue to enjoy that privilege. The enemies of the Jews, of course, opposed this motion, fearing that it would apply also to German Jews.

Nevertheless, the majority decided that those Jews in France who were called Portuguese, Spaniards, or Avignonese (of Bordeaux and Bayonne) should enjoy full privileges as active citizens, and the king at once approved of this law. It was the first legal recognition of the Jews as citizens, and, though only a partial recognition, it at least would serve as a precedent.

The deputies of the Jews from German districts did not so easily attain success; they had to struggle hard for equality. At the same time they lighted upon a means whereby to bring pressure to bear upon the National Assembly, and induce them to concede them full citizenship. There were five men who worked most perseveringly to remove all obstacles. They won over to their side the fiery, eloquent advocate Godard, to plead their cause with pen and tongue. They knew that power was no longer in the hands of the National Assembly, but had been seized by the parties of the capital, who, with their revolutionary ardor, held complete sway over Paris, the deliberating Assembly, the king, almost the whole country. The Jewish representatives from Paris, Alsace, and Lorraine therefore turned to them for help. They had Godard draw up a petition to the National Assembly, stating that the emancipation of the Jews was not only demanded by the principles of the Constituent Assembly and by justice, but that it was cruelty to withhold it. For, so long as their equality was not legally established, the people would believe that they were indeed the outcasts their enemies had described them to be. But even more efficacious than this petition was a scene which the Parisian Jews arranged with their advocate, before the General Assembly of the Paris Commune; it decided the question. Fifty Jewish members of the National Guards, adorned with cockades, among them Salkind Hurwitz, the Pole, appeared as deputies before the Assembly of the Commune, and petitioned that the city of Paris itself should energetically set about obtaining equality for the Jews. Godard delivered a fiery speech in their support. The president of the General Assembly, Abbé Mulot, replied to this vigorous address with the fervid eloquence peculiar to the orators of the Revolution: "The chasm between their religious conceptions and the truth which we as Christians profess, cannot hinder us as men from approaching each other, and even if we reproach each other with our errors and complain of each other, at least we can love each other." In the name of the meeting he promised to support the petition of the Paris Jews for equalization. Next day (January 29, 1790), the Jews of Paris obtained a certificate, couched in most flattering terms, and testifying to their excellent reputation, from the inhabitants of the district of the Carmelites, where most Jews dwelt at this time.

The six deputies appointed for the district of the Carmelites then went to the City Hall, to support the resolution in favor of the Jews. One of them, Cahier de Gerville, afterwards a minister, delivered an impressive address. "Do not be surprised," said he, "that this district hastens to be the first to make public recognition of the patriotism, the courage, and the nobility of the Jews who dwell in it. No citizen has proved himself more zealous for the gaining of liberty than the Jew, ... none has displayed more sense of order and justice, none shown more benevolence towards the poor, and readiness in voluntarily contributing towards the expenses of the district. Let us attack all prejudices, and attack them with determination. Let not one of the monstrosities of despotism and ignorance survive the new birth of liberty and the consecration of the rights of man.... Take into consideration the just and pressing demands in favor of our new brethren, and join your wishes to their petition, so that thus united they may come before the National Assembly. Do not doubt but that you will obtain, without trouble, for the Jews of Paris that which was not denied the Jews of Portugal, Spain, and Avignon. What reason is there for showing a preference for this class? Do not all Jews hold the same doctrines? Are not our political conditions alike for the one as for the other? If the ancestors of those Jews on whose behalf we plead experienced more bitter suffering and persecution than the Portuguese Jews, then this long, cruel oppression which they have sustained should give them a new claim to national justice. For the rest, look to the origin of these strange and unjust distinctions, and see whether any one to-day dares set up a distinction of rights between two classes of the same people, two branches of the same stem, basing his action upon apocryphal tradition, or rather upon chimeras and fables."

To this speech the President Abbé Mulot replied, bringing into prominence the fact that the report from the district of the Carmelites was to be considered of great weight in favor of the Jews.

The next speech, that of Abbé Bertolio, at length induced the meeting to add its favorable testimony to the Jews of Paris, and to express the wish to the National Assembly that these Jews, most of them of German birth, be put on an equal footing with the Portuguese. Mayor Bailly and his committee on the same day passed the resolution, that as soon as the other districts announced their approval, the whole weight of the influence of the municipality of Paris be exerted on behalf of the equalization of the Jews. In the course of the following month all the city districts, with the exception of that of the Halles, sent in their approval of the decision of the Carmelite district. Accordingly, a deputation of the Commune, together with its president, Abbé Mulot, officially commissioned by the capital (February 25), presented itself at the meeting of the National Assembly, to request, or rather by moral suasion to compel, that body to extend to Jews resident in Paris the decree declaring the Portuguese Jews full citizens.

After some delay, certain deputies demanded (April 15) that the Jewish question be placed on the order of the day. Abbé Maury again opposed the motion, and promised to present a memorial which the Jews should be called upon to answer. In order, however, to protect the Jews of Alsace from the attacks of mobs, the Assembly again decreed that they were under protection of the laws, and that the magistrates and the National Guard were to take precautions for their security. In this way they appeased their consciences. The king forthwith sanctioned (April 18) the law of protection for the Alsatian Jews, after which the question was not broached for three months.

Fortunately the Jewish question did not stand isolated, but was connected with other questions. The Jews of Alsace, especially those of Metz, had to pay high protection-taxes. When the subject of finances came on for discussion, the Assembly had to determine whether this tax should continue or cease. They came to a liberal decision, although the deputies were sorely troubled about the deficit thus created. The secretary of the committee of the crown land, Vismes, first showed how unjust it was that the community of Metz, which Louis XIV, once when in good humor, had given to the Duke of Brancas and the Countess De Fontaine, should pay annually to the house of Brancas 20,000 francs. He therefore proposed that the Jew taxes should be remitted without any indemnification, and that every tribute, under whatever name--protection-money, residence-tax, or tolerance-money--should cease. This proposal was passed into law (July 20) almost without opposition. Louis XVI, who by this act saw another remnant of the Middle Ages vanish, at first showed himself tardy in confirming the law (August 7). Ten years previously the Jews of Alsace had in vain presented a memorial to the state council detailing the misery of their condition; it received no notice. Owing to the sudden revolution of affairs, they now achieved in less than an hour more than they had ever dared hope for.

But the National Assembly would not proceed to deal with the chief demand of the Jews of the Lower Rhine--as these districts were then called--to grant them civil rights. Several had expressed themselves favorably, when the Duc de Broglie intervened with a violent speech. He asserted that the proposed resolution would engender new causes of excitement in Lorraine and Alsace, already in a state of ferment owing to the action of the clergy who refused to take the oath. Strasburg was likewise greatly excited on account of the Jews, who desired to settle there, where hitherto no Jew had been permitted. De Broglie further remarked that the general body of Jews in Alsace was utterly indifferent to citizenship; that the petition presented in their name was an intrigue carried on by four or five Jews; especially one, who had amassed a great fortune at the expense of the state (Cerf Berr), was scattering large sums of money most liberally in Paris, to gain adherents for the scheme of equalization. His motion to adjourn this question till the Constitution was finished was carried.

But the Constitution was definitely fixed and ratified by the king (September, 1791), and the German-speaking Jews of France did not obtain the equality so often promised. Only the paragraph in the "Rights of Man," which said that no one might be molested on account of his religious opinions, benefited them. At last, a few days before the dissolution of the National Assembly, the Jews were remembered by one of the friends of liberty, Duport, a member of the Jacobin Club, formerly a parliamentary councilor. In a speech of a few words he procured the equality they so much desired. He drew the natural conclusion from the above-quoted rights of religious freedom, and said, "I believe that freedom of thought does not permit any distinction in political rights on account of a man's creed. The recognition of this equality is always being postponed. Meanwhile the Turks, Moslems, and men of all sects, are permitted to enjoy political rights in France. I demand that the motion for adjournment be withdrawn, and a decree passed that the Jews in France enjoy the privileges of citizenship (citoyens actifs)." This proposition was accepted amid loud applause. In vain did Reubell strive to oppose the motion, he was interrupted. Another member suggested that every one who spoke against this motion be called to order, because he would be opposing the Constitution itself. Thus the National Assembly adopted (September 27, 1791) Duport's proposal, and next day formulated the law that all exceptional regulations against Jews be abrogated, and that the German Jews be admitted to the oath of citizenship. Two days later the National Assembly was dissolved, to make way for a still more violent revolutionary assembly. A few days later Louis XVI confirmed this full equalization of the French Jews (November 13, 1791). They were not required to swerve one iota from their religion as the price of emancipation; all demanded of them being that they forego certain ancient privileges.

Berr Isaac Berr was justified in rejoicing at this success, in which he had had a large share. He at once despatched a letter of congratulation to his co-religionists, to rouse enthusiasm for their newly-attained freedom, and at the same time incline them to appropriate improvements.

"At length the day has arrived on which the veil is torn asunder which covered us with humiliation! We have at last again obtained the rights of which we have been deprived for eighteen centuries. How deeply at this moment should we recognize the wonderful grace of the God of our forefathers! On the 27th September we were the only inhabitants of this great realm who seemed doomed to eternal humiliation and slavery, and on the very next day, a memorable day which we shall always commemorate, didst Thou inspire these immortal legislators of France to utter one word which caused 60,000 unhappy beings, who had hitherto lamented their hard lot, to be suddenly plunged into the intoxicating joys of the purest delight."

"God chose the noble French nation to reinstate us in our due privileges, and bring us to a new birth, just as in former days He selected Antiochus and Pompey to degrade and oppress us.... This nation asks no thanks, except that we show ourselves worthy citizens."

Berr added certain important, timely remarks, in which he gently pointed out to his French co-religionists faults growing out of their former wretched plight, and admonished them to remove these faults.

He also supplied the French Jews with means to enable them to become thorough Frenchmen and at the same time remain members of the House of Jacob. The Bible was to be rendered into French on the basis of Mendelssohn's German translation, and put into the hands of the young, so that the corrupt German language which they used might be completely banished from their midst. Berr thus attacked a foolish prejudice which regarded the German or Jewish-German dialect as akin in sanctity to the Hebrew, therefore a more worthy organ for Divine Service than the language of Voltaire.

Berr was thoroughly imbued with the conviction that Judaism was in every way compatible with liberty, civilization, and patriotism for the country which had restored to his co-religionists their rights as men. Berr was a better disciple of Mendelssohn than David Friedländer and the Berlin Jews.

With great assiduity and self-sacrifice, most of the French Jews interested themselves in the welfare of the state which had given them a fatherland, liberty, and equality. They destroyed at one blow all the calumniations of their opponents, who had asserted that as Jews they would not be able to fulfill the duties of citizens. They came to the front whenever the state stood in need of help. A large number of Jews in this feverish time calling forth courageous action, threw aside with wonderful rapidity the shy, grovelling manner which had debarred them from intercourse with the world, and had subjected them to general ridicule. When the French legions, inspired by freedom, had put to rout the mercenary troops of Germany, Moses Ensheim, the Hebrew poet of the Mendelssohn school, composed a fiery triumphal hymn, similar to the song of Deborah, which was solemnly chanted in the synagogue. The Jews, however, took no part whatever in the bloody atrocities of the Revolution.

In the frenzy of the Reign of Terror, which like a scourge of God fell upon the innocent and the guilty, some Jews also suffered. The familiarity of the Jews with persecutions, their acuteness, and the dexterity with which they effaced themselves, their obedience to the precept, "Bend thy head a moment, till the storm is passed," protected them against wide-spread massacre. In general, they were not stirred by the ambition to thrust themselves forward, or a desire to take part in affairs; nor did they give offense to the rulers of the hour. Thus the storm of the Revolution rushed over them without serious results.

The attack upon a belief in God, when the two blaspheming deputies, Chaumette and Hebert, succeeded in inducing the convention (November, 1793-May, 1794) to set up the religion of Reason, had likewise no effect upon the Jews. The intense hostility and anger felt to religion and the Divinity were directed only against Catholicism, or Christianity, by whose servants mankind had ever been degraded, who themselves had sacrificed myriads of victims, and during the Revolution had fomented a civil war. The Reign of Terror, the Massacre of September, and the Guillotine, had been conjured up by them almost as a sad, stern necessity, because, together with the feudal aristocracy, they were bitter enemies of freedom. The decree of the Convention ran thus: "The Catholic faith is annulled, and replaced by the worship of Reason." This represented not alone the mood of the most advanced, the Jacobins; it was the inclination of the French people to oppose the Church and its followers fiercely, because of a feeling that they are naturally hostile to liberty. Twenty days after the resolution of the Convention had been passed, more than 2,300 churches were transformed into Temples of Reason. The law included no provisions against Jews and Protestants. Only the magistrates or fanatically inclined members of clubs in the provinces, principally, it appears, in the old German districts, extended the order for the suppression of religion to the Jews also. In Nancy an official demanded of the Jews of the town, in the name of the city council, that they attend on an appointed day at the National Temple, and together with the clergy of other creeds renounce "their superstition," and further surrender all the silver and golden vessels of the synagogue. Brutal and riotous men forced their way into the synagogues, tore the Holy Writings from the Arks and burnt them, or searched the houses for books written in Hebrew in order to destroy them. Prayers in the synagogues of certain congregations were forbidden just as in the churches. By reason of the spy system which the revolutionary clubs supported, to enable them to oppose the imminent counter-revolution, even private meetings for religious purposes were attended with great danger. When the order of the Convention was issued, decreeing that every tenth day be observed as a day of rest, and making Sunday a working day, the Mayors of certain cities, as of Strasburg and Troyes, extended this decree also to the Sabbath. They commanded that Jewish merchants display their wares for sale on the Sabbath. In agricultural districts Jews were compelled, on the Sabbath and on Jewish Holidays, to mow and gather in the crops, and rabbis as well as bishops were molested. David Sinzheim, who lived in Strasburg, and afterwards became president of the great French Synhedrion, was forced to flee from town to town to escape imprisonment or death. In Metz the Jews dared not openly bake their Passover cakes, until a clever Jewish matron had the courage to explain to the officers of the Revolution that this bread had always been a symbol of freedom with the Jews. In Paris Jewish schoolmasters were compelled to conduct their pupils to the Temple of Reason into which the church of Notre Dame had been transformed on the Décadi. However, this persecution passed away without any serious effects. With the victory of the Thermidorians (9 Thermidor--July 27, 1794) over Robespierre, the Reign of Terror began to die out. The populace was anxious to resort to milder means. The equalization of the French Jews, once definitely settled, remained untouched through all changes of government. The new Constitution of the year Three of the Republic, or the Constitution of the Directory (autumn of 1795), recognized the adherents of Judaism, without further difficulty, as on an equal footing with all around them; moreover, it wiped away the last trace of inequality, inasmuch as the Catholic Church was no more than the synagogue acknowledged to be the state church. The law laid down the fundamental proposition, that no one can be compelled to contribute to the expenses of a church establishment, as the Republic subsidized none. Only the community of Metz had to suffer under some baneful effects of the Middle Ages.

Together with the victorious French troops of the Republic, the deliverance of the Jews, of the most oppressed race of the ancient world, advanced from one place to another. It took firm root in Holland, which had been changed into a Batavian Republic (beginning of 1795). Here several energetic Jews, among them Asser (Moses and Carolus), De Lemon, and Bromet, had joined a club, called Felix Libertate, which had taken the motto of the French Republic--Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.

These state maxims were on the whole adopted by the assembled States General (March 4, 1795). Although the 50,000 Jews of Holland, who formed the thirty-ninth part of the whole population of the country, and were divided into the Portuguese and German communities, might justly have regarded this land as their Paradise, they had hitherto been laboring under many disadvantages as compared with Christians. They were suffered to exist only as corporate bodies, little commonwealths, as it were, in the midst of larger ones. That they were excluded from public offices did not trouble them. But they were also debarred from several trade-guilds, and this was a matter of great importance to them. They had to contribute to the ruling church establishment and to its schools without deriving any benefit therefrom. Also, there was no lack of vexatious grievances. In Amsterdam, for instance, when a Jewish couple went to register their wedding, they were compelled to wait till Christians had been attended to, and, besides, to pay double fees. On this account the demand for equalization became pressing, more on the part of the German than on that of the Portuguese Jews, the latter, wealthy and of noble birth, being generally treated with distinction by the patricians, whilst the Germans were despised as wretched Poles. In the first excitement of the agitation several disabilities of the Jews of Holland or Batavia were removed, and voices were raised in favor of their admission to full civil rights. But later on, as in France, writings hostile to the Jews roused public opinion against them. Amongst these Van Swieden's work, entitled "Advice to the Representatives of the People," especially produced a great impression.

He asserted that owing to their origin, their character, their history, and their belief in the Messiah, the Jews remained strangers, and could not be absorbed by the state. This statement was in a measure accepted by the official representatives of Judaism as correct. For strangely enough the rabbis and administrators of Jewish affairs, especially the powerful Parnassim in Amsterdam, alike in the Portuguese and German communities, were averse to equalization. They feared that Judaism would suffer from the great freedom of the Jews and from their new duties, such as military service.

In a circular letter they declared that the Jews renounced citizenship, seeing that it was opposed to the commands of Holy Writ. Within a short time this declaration was covered with more than one thousand signatures. Although Jews were invited, but few took part in the election of the first Batavian National Assembly (Nationale Vergadering). Thus it happened that Amsterdam, which contained more than 20,000 Jews, did not return a single Jewish deputy. The Jewish friends of liberty in Holland were in a sorry plight, having to combat enemies within and without. They were driven to exert all their energy to overcome this double difficulty. David Friedrichsfeld, a member of the school of the Measfim, who had settled in Amsterdam, composed an excellent work (about 1795) against the assailants of the Jews, called "Investigation of Van Swieden's Work in Reference to the Civil Rights of the Jews." Beside him, six distinguished and intelligent Jews--most of them of German descent--developed the greatest zeal to accomplish the emancipation of the Jews of Holland. They were: Herz Bromet, who had long lived in Surinam, where he was recognized as a free citizen, and whence he had brought a knowledge of politics and a fortune; Moses Asser, who had been appointed knight of the Belgian Order of the Lion; another Asser, Carolus, and Isaac de Jonghe, all distinguished members of the German community. Only two of the Portuguese community participated in the endeavor to obtain equalization of rights: the highly respected physician Herz de Lemon, and Jacob Sasportas. They presented a petition to the Batavian National Assembly (March 29, 1796), which held its sittings at the Hague, demanding the emancipation of the Batavian Jews as a right; inasmuch as they were citizens of the Batavian Republic, possessing the franchise, and had already exercised civil rights, they prayed the Assembly to declare that they might enjoy this privilege in its entirety. The National Assembly considered the petition, and appointed a commission to advise and decide upon it. When the Jewish question came on for discussion (August, 1796), excitement ran high, and the tension between the parties was great.

Although the emancipation of the Jews in the Batavian Republic had been recognized in principle, and practically acknowledged by the permission to vote at the election, there were still many opponents to contend against, almost more than in France. The conservative Dutch deputies in their hearts believed firmly in the Bible, and they considered as the word of God the writings of the New Testament, in which it was said that the Jews were outcasts, and should remain so. The relatively large number of Jews, their wealth, respectability, and intelligence, gave cause for grave fears that they would make their way into the highest offices of the state, and expel the Christians. Sixty or a hundred thousand Jews, in the great territory of France, were lost like a grain of sand in an immense plain, but fifty thousand among two millions, especially twenty thousand Jews in Amsterdam among two hundred thousand Christians, might make themselves felt, and effect their purpose. One of the deputies, Lublink de Jonghe, dwelt upon this state of affairs with great emphasis. If the friends of the Jews pointed to America, where, as in France, they had recently attained to full civil rights, then he brought into prominence the unequal proportion of numbers; in Holland their great number would soon invest the populace with Jewish characteristics. The noble Portuguese might be admitted to full rights; but as to the German Jews, the majority of whom were outcasts, Lublink de Jonghe quoted Pinto's work against Voltaire, in which he, a Jew himself, had plainly shown the vast difference between the Portuguese and the German Jews. Thus the artificial caste feeling, within the fold of Judaism, brought about its own revenge. The fear was still greater that the number of the Jews in Holland might be considerably increased by immigrants from Germany and Poland, whose goal, for a long time past, had been Amsterdam. Opponents to the scheme of equalization could further adduce the argument that the majority of Jews did not desire emancipation, and that the six petitioners had acted without authority. Noel, the French ambassador, in somewhat imperious fashion, took the first step in favor of the equalization of the Jews. After a long debate, the complete equality of the Batavian Jews was finally decreed (September 2, 1796), with the addition, for those who wished to make use of it. Thereupon all earlier provincial and municipal laws which referred to their disabilities were abolished.

The Jews in Holland did not receive the announcement of this decision with joy, as those in France, when the rights of equality had been granted them. They had not felt the deprivation of liberty enough to go into ecstasies about their new freedom. They had no ambition to obtain state offices, and saw in citizenship only a burden and a danger to religion. They therefore were embittered against those who had procured their equalization, and so had broken asunder the bonds which held the two congregations together as corporate bodies. Thus there arose causes for dispute and internal dissension in Amsterdam.

The liberal-minded, most of whom belonged to the German community, demanded that the regulations which endowed the rabbis, and to a greater extent the Parnassim, or wardens, with powerful authority over the members, should be altered in accordance with the spirit of the age. The leaders of the community not only refused this demand, but even threatened the petitioners with fines. Upon this the advanced left the existing synagogue, established their own congregation, and declared that they constituted the real community (Adath Jeshurun, formed at the end of 1796). The conservative members of the old community thereupon passed a kind of interdict upon the separatists, forbade their own congregants to have any intercourse, or to intermarry with them. The political divergence of opinion at the same time became a religious one; for the supporters of the new congregation, Adath Jeshurun, initiated a sort of reform. They struck out of their ritual the formula of imprecation (v'la-Malshinim), which had originally been directed against the apostate Jewish Christians, but by misinterpretation was afterwards applied to all Christians. They abolished the practice of hastily burying the dead, and erected a new, clean communal bath,--innocent reforms, which, however, were regarded by the strictly orthodox as grave offenses against Judaism. The new congregation succeeded in having the fanatical leaders of the German community, who were more inconsiderate than the Portuguese in their opposition to those who had withdrawn from their midst, removed from their posts, probably through the action of the French ambassador Noel. Among the new council officers, members of the new congregation were elected. Gradually many of the old party became reconciled to the new order of things and to the aspirations of the liberal-minded section. The orthodox were also greatly flattered when two Jews, Bromet and De Lemon, were elected as deputies for Amsterdam. Several attended at the Hague at the opening of the second National Assembly (September 1, 1797), to participate in the honor of the Jewish deputies. They were still more pleased with the idea of equalization when the Jewish deputy, Isaac da Costa Atias, was successively elected a member of the city council, of the National Assembly, and finally to the position of President of the same (1798). The head of the Batavian Republic, the Grand Pensioner Schimmelpenink, was in earnest about the emancipation of the Jews, and without hesitation appointed able Jews to public offices. The first appointment to public posts in Europe was made in Holland.

It was natural that a sense of self-importance and honorable pride should be awakened in the breasts of the liberal members of the new congregation, among whom state offices were distributed. Indignation seized them when they saw that the Jews under the German princes were still treated as outcasts or wild beasts. They therefore laid a proposal before the National Assembly, entreating that the Batavian ambassador to the French Republic be instructed to move at the Peace Congress held at Rastadt, that the Dutch Jews in Germany should no longer be compelled to pay poll-tax, and to threaten that, unless this was granted, all Germans journeying through Holland would be subjected to the same dishonorable treatment. The National Assembly agreed to this proposition.

Righteous judgment soon overtook the German princes and people, who, stubborn as Pharaoh and the Egyptians, refused to loosen the chain of slavery from the Jews. They themselves were soon forced to become the servi cameræ of the French Republic, and to pay a poll-tax. Wherever in Germany and Italy the courageous French obtained firm footing, the Jews were made free. The walls of the Ghetto were burst open, and bent figures stood erect.

The name of the invincible French, who had achieved wonderful victories in Italy, quickly spread abroad, even beyond Europe, and aroused terror and surprise in the most remote countries. A new Alexander, the Corsican Bonaparte, a god of war when scarcely thirty years old, set out with a comparatively small army to subdue Egypt, and hoped to penetrate to India. In less than six months (July-November, 1798) Egypt lay crushed at his feet. But a Turkish army was on its way to meet him, against which Bonaparte advanced into Palestine. Thus, through a marvelous series of historical events, the Holy Land became the scene of a bloody war between the representatives of the old and the new spirit in Europe.

El Arish and Gaza in the south-west of Palestine fell into the hands of the French army, which scarcely numbered 12,000 men (17th and 25th February, 1799). The Jewish community of Gaza had fled. In Jerusalem the news of French victories and cruelty created a panic. It was rumored that Napoleon was about to enter the Holy City. At the command of the sub-pasha, or Motusallim, the inhabitants began to throw up ramparts, the Jews taking part in the work. One of their rabbis, Mordecai Joseph Meyuchas, encouraged and even assisted them in their operations. The Turks had circulated the report that the French treated Jews particularly in a cruel manner. Bonaparte had issued a summons to the Asiatic and African Jews to march under his banners, promising to give them the Holy Land, and restore ancient Jerusalem to its pristine splendor. But the Jews in Jerusalem appear either not to have trusted in these flattering words, or to have been utterly ignorant of the proclamation. Probably it was only a trick on the part of Bonaparte, intended to win over to his side the Jewish minister of the pasha of Acco, Chayim Maalem Farchi (assassinated in 1820), the soul of the defense of the important sea-fortress of Acco. Had Bonaparte succeeded in conquering Syria and carrying the war into the heart of Turkey, he would perhaps have assigned a share in his government to members of the Jewish nation upon whom the French could rely. But the appearance of Bonaparte in Palestine was like that of a terrible meteor, which disappears after causing much devastation. His dream to become Emperor of the East, and restore Jerusalem to the Jews, quickly faded away.

The glowing enthusiasm for France, where his enthralled co-religionists had been freed, had created a Jewish poet in Elia Halevi, while a Jewish youth was aroused to become a spirited orator, whose eloquence was always tinged with poetry. Michael Berr (born 1780, died 1843), a worthy son of Isaac Berr, who had so zealously striven for the emancipation of the Jews of France, in his youth aroused great hopes, by reason of his handsome, noble form, and his manifold talents. In him for the first time Jewish and French spirit met in harmonious combination. He was the first Jewish attorney in France. Animated by the ambition of courageous youth and in the glow of his fiery spirit, this young man conceived a bold idea, at the beginning of the new century, when peace was concluded. A Congress of the princes of Europe was expected to take place. To them and their people Michael Berr addressed a "Summons" in the name of "all the inhabitants of Europe professing the Jewish religion," praying them to free his co-religionists from oppression, and to guarantee to them the justice so long withheld. This youth voiced the hopes of rejuvenated Israel. Berr's summons was especially directed to the Germans, both to princes and nations, who still treated the Jews living in their midst as branded servi cameræ.

Berr, who was inspired with love for his co-religionists, preached to deaf ears, his burning words and convincing arguments finding no response in the hearts of the Eastern European people. In Austria, Prussia, and the numerous smaller German states, the Jews remained in their former abasement. In Berlin itself, the seat of enlightenment, Jewish physicians, however honorable their reputation, were not included in the list of their Christian fellow-practitioners, but were enumerated by themselves, relegated, as it were, to a medical Ghetto. Two men of the first rank, the greatest poet and the greatest thinker of the time, Göthe and Fichte, shared in the prejudices of the Germans against the Jews, and made no secret of it. Göthe, the representative of the aristocratic world, and Fichte, the defender of democratic opinion in Germany, both desired to see the Jews removed like plague patients beyond the pale of Christian society. Both were on bad terms with the Church, both looked upon Christianity with its belief in miracles as a folly, and both were considered atheists. Nevertheless they abhorred the Jews in the name of Jesus. Göthe's intolerance against the Jews cannot be taken as the expression of his personal prejudice; he only showed how the current of opinion flowed in cultured German circles.

Fichte, the one-sided complement of Kant, was still more savage and embittered against the Jews. Like most German metaphysicians, his philosophy was of a visionary nature before the outbreak of the French Revolution.

Apparently Fichte bestowed great honor upon the Jews when he put them on a level with the nobility and the clergy. But he did not wish in any way to honor them, but rather to accuse them before the bar of public opinion. Fichte, the philosophical thinker, cherished the same ill-will against the Jews and Judaism as Göthe, the aristocratic poet, and Schleiermacher, the Gnostic preacher.

Should civil rights be granted to Jews? Fichte opposed it in a most decided fashion; not even in the Christian state, in his view a petty state, contrary to right and reason, should they be emancipated. "The only way I see by which civil rights can be conceded to them (the Jews) is to cut off all their heads in one night, and to set new ones on their shoulders, which should contain not a single Jewish idea. The only means of protecting ourselves against them is to conquer their promised land and send them thither." History judged otherwise: new heads have not been set on the Jews, but on the Germans themselves. His view was that Jews should not be persecuted, that, in fact, the rights of men should be granted them, "because they are men," but that they should be banished altogether. Even the clerical opponents of emancipation in France, Abbé Maury and Bishop La Fare, had not spoken of the Jews in so perverse and hateful a manner. Fichte may be regarded as the father and apostle of national German hatred of the Jews, of a kind unknown before, or rather never before so clearly manifested. Even Herder, although filled with admiration for Israel's antiquity and the people in its biblical splendor,--the first to examine sacred literature from a poetical point of view--felt an aversion to the Jews, which became apparent in his relations with Mendelssohn, whom it cost him an effort to treat in a friendly manner. Herder, it is true, prophesied a better time, when Christian and Jew would work together in concord on the structure of human civilization. But like Balaam of old, he pronounced his blessings upon Israel in a half-hearted way. This growing hostility to the Jews among the Germans was not noticed by educated Jews who dwelt in their midst, at least they did not combat it vigorously. Only one pamphlet from the pen of a Jewish author appeared at this time. Saul Asher wrote his "Eisenmenger the Second, an open letter to Fichte," but hardly any notice was taken of it.

If the Jews met with no favor in the eyes of those who formed public opinion in Germany, who had raised it from antiquated customs to a brilliant height of culture, both in the democratic and in the aristocratic camps, but experienced at their hands only repulse and scorn, how much worse was their relation to the great mass of the populace, still engulfed in the depths of darkest ignorance and crudeness! Two noble-minded Christians addressed to the Congress of Rastadt the soundest arguments that the German Jews should be raised from their ignominious condition. One of them, an unknown philanthropist, hurled the shaft of ridicule at the stupidity and bombastic haughtiness of the German Jew-haters, and the other, Christian Grund, demonstrated with pitiless logic the injustice with which the Jews were treated. Both desired to support the demand of the Dutch Jews to the diplomatic representatives, that the princes of Germany be compelled to respect the Jews, and that influence be brought to bear upon public opinion to that effect. Grund acted as a clever advocate for the Jews; he complimented the Germans in order to win favor with them. "The German Jews," said he, "venture to approach the German nation, capable of great deeds, the creator of its own destinies, not merely an imitator of the actions of other peoples, uniting their voice with that of their brethren, to petition the representatives of the nation at Rastadt most respectfully for the abolition of those distinctions under which they live, and for the acquisition of greater rights." The answer of the German princes and rulers was not very encouraging.

The most disgraceful degradation and humiliation of the Jews consisted in the poll-tax, an impost unknown outside of Germany. Of what advantage was it that Emperor Joseph of Austria and Frederick William II had remitted it? It still existed in all its hideousness in Central and Western Germany, in the districts of the Main and the Rhine, where diminutive states bordered close on other diminutive states of the extent of a square mile, and where turnpike after turnpike at short intervals presented itself. If a Jew took a day's journey, he passed through different territories, and at the borders of each had to pay a poll-tax. A Jewish beggar, accompanied by his young son, once exhibited his poll-tax bills, which amounted to a florin and a half for six days, paid in various places. The way in which the tax was levied was more degrading than the duty of paying it. Very often the tax amounted to a few kreuzers, which only the poor, who were not exempt from it, felt as a burden. But the brutal procedure of the officers, and the ignominious treatment at each frontier-line offended also the rich. As long as the French armies were encamped in German territory, the Jews escaped paying the poll-tax. But no sooner was the peace of Lüneville concluded, and the French troops withdrawn, than the petty German princes re-imposed the tax, not in order to raise the small income derivable from this source, but to humiliate the Jews. They inflicted the insult also upon French Jews who crossed the Rhine for business purposes, defending their action by a literal construction of one of the articles of the peace of Campo Formio, which stated: "All business and intercourse shall for the present continue under the same conditions as before the war." The French Jews, proud of their citizenship, would not submit, severed their business connections with Germany, and complained of the injustice to the French government, by whom the question was not lightly passed over. The government commissioner Jollivet despatched a circular letter (1801) to the agents of the French Republic resident at German courts, instructing them not to permit French citizens of the Israelite faith to be degraded to animals. They were to make earnest representations to the governments concerned, and menace them with retaliation. Several small princes, like those of Solms, gave heed, and forthwith removed the poll-tax; from fear of the French the French Jews were freed from it, but it still weighed heavily upon German travelers. Every step towards the removal of oppressive restrictions in Germany was the result of great exertions.

In consequence of the peace of Lüneville, the Holy Roman Empire was now for the first time dismembered. The representatives of the Empire, assembled in Ratisbon, were driven to seek means of bringing their disunited members into some sort of order, or to decide upon the indemnity for the damage suffered. To this conference of the ambassadors of eight princes, occupied with traffic in territory, and regarded by the short-sighted as representing the German nation, the German Jews presented a petition asking for passive citizenship (November 15, 1802). This entreaty was drawn up "in the name of the Jews of Germany," by state attorney Christopher Grund. Which congregation, or what individuals zealous for emancipation had commissioned him to do this is not exactly known. It appears that the petition originated in Frankfort. It prayed that the representatives of the Empire remove from the German Jews the burdensome distinctions under which they labored; that the narrow confines in which they were forced to reside be thrown open, so that for the sake of health and free enjoyment of life, they might select their own dwelling-place in the cities. Further, that the bonds by which their population, their trade, and their industry were restricted to a fatal degree be loosened, and that, in short, the Jewish community be considered worthy, by the grant of civil rights, to constitute one united people with the German nation. The Jews, or their attorney Grund, cited the fact that they were "classed with dishonorable persons, outlaws, and serfs." The miserable condition of the Frankfort community, which, after the orders promulgated for the regulation of the town in 1616, had been deprived of natural freedom, and crowded together into the narrowest limits, served as a conclusive proof. The example of France and the Batavian Republic in emancipating the Jews was adduced; but the Jews could hardly have deceived themselves with the fond hope that the representatives of the Empire would concede so much to them. They hoped at least to have one restriction removed, viz., that of the poll-tax, and this point was insisted upon with great vigor. "The most degrading of all these disabilities," they said, "is the poll-tax, which removes the name of Jew from the category of rational beings, to place it among wild beasts, and forces him to pay his way when he sets foot upon one soil or another." Contrary to expectation, this petition to the representatives of the Empire was handed in and supported by the most distinguished member among them, the ambassador from the Electorate of Bohemia or Austria. He proposed the motion "that the Jews of Germany be allowed civil rights" (at the end of 1802). Meantime the Indemnification Congress had other affairs to engross its attention, and its members were unable to occupy themselves with the Jewish question. The petition was buried under a pile of state papers.

Nothing was to be expected from the German people, as those who watched the course of affairs readily perceived. The Jews therefore directed their zeal towards inducing the various governments to remit the poll-tax. Two men made their names famous in the struggle to remove this odious impost, viz., Israel Jacobson and Wolff Breidenbach. The former, court agent and finance counselor to the Prince of Brunswick, succeeded in procuring the abolition of the poll-tax in the territories of Brunswick-Lüneburg (April 23, 1803). During a number of years Wolff Breidenbach strove in the same cause, and effected more far-reaching results. Breidenbach was born in a village of that name near Cassel, 1751, and died at Offenbach 1829. He was a man of high culture, noble ideals, and so modest that his name has almost been forgotten in spite of all the sacrifices he made on behalf of the German Jews. He did not, like Jacobson, make provisions to have his name spread far and wide.

Deeply moved by the annoyances, and the contemptuous treatment inflicted on Jewish travelers in places where the tax was imposed, which came daily under the notice of Breidenbach in his business journeys, he determined at least to have the poll-tax remitted, and applied himself with all his energy to this task. Quietly he strove to have the chain loosened, where it weighed most heavily. He perceived that large sums of money would be required to provide presents for the police magistrates and the city clergy under the pretense of giving alms to the poor, and also "to erect beautiful monuments in honor of magnanimous princes" who would allow themselves to be influenced to leave the Jews untaxed and unoppressed. He was not able to meet this enormous expense out of his own means. He therefore issued a summons to German and foreign Jews (September, 1803), asking them to subscribe to a fund, from which the cost of abolishing the poll-tax might be defrayed. It was well known at the time who circulated this appeal, but out of modesty, Breidenbach did not append his name. By these means, and through negotiations with the minor German princes at the Diet in Ratisbon, carried on with the friendly help of the imperial chancellor, Dalberg, and finally by the recommendations of the princes themselves, who learned to esteem him, Breidenbach succeeded in obtaining the right of free passage for the Jews throughout the Rhineland and Bavaria. Even the narrow-minded, Jew-hating, most noble council of Frankfort was moved by Breidenbach's petition to abolish the poll-tax exacted at the gates and bridges.

The petition of the Jews to the representatives of the Empire for civil privileges, however restricted, the feeling displayed by several princes in favor of removing their bonds, and other signs, made the Jew-haters of Germany suspect that the old condition of imperial serfdom would soon vanish. They were terror-struck; they could not conceive the idea that the down-trodden Jews should be raised from their abasement in Germany. This painful idea induced a host of authors, most of them jurists, as if by mutual agreement, to employ all their efforts in various parts of Germany in opposing the deliverance of the Jews from slavery. Among these men were Paalzow, Grattenauer, Buchholz, and many anonymous writers, who persisted in their hostility for several years (1803-1805). They displayed hatred to the Jews, so malignant that it savored of the days of the Black Death, of Capistrano, Pfefferkorn, and the Dominicans. They produced an artificial fog, to prevent the spread of rays of enlightenment. In former days it had been the servants of the church who had branded the Jews with dishonor. Now the priests of justice assumed this part, and by perversion of justice sought to keep the Jews in servitude, for which course Fichte had prepared the way. As soon as the petition of the Jews reached the representatives of the Empire in Ratisbon, a jurist of South Germany opposed it, urging that a thousand reasons existed why Jews were unworthy of becoming citizens of the Empire and the provinces. The greater number and the most obstinate of the representatives of this Jew-baiting movement had their seat in Berlin, the city of enlightenment and of the Christianity taught by Schleiermacher. The character, teachings, and history of the Jews, even their prophets and patriarchs, in fact, everything Jewish, was attacked by these cowardly writers, most of whom wrote anonymously, and was made the subject of foulest abuse and vituperation.

The leaders of Berlin Judaism were at a loss how to oppose these systematic onslaughts. David Friedländer remained silent. Ben-David resolved to write an answer, but wisely abstained. The parts were now changed. In the days of Mendelssohn, and for some time afterwards, the German Jews had acted as guardians to the French Jews whenever the latter had any grievances to redress. Now freedom had made the French Jews so powerful and confident that they repulsed every attack upon themselves and their belief with courage and skill. The Berlin Jews, who had always been ready enough to boast of their courage, at the first hostile attack found themselves helpless as babes. In their perplexity they solicited the aid of the police, who issued an order that no pamphlet either for or against the Jews should be published. This step was regarded by their antagonists as a sign of cowardice or a confession of powerlessness. A new abusive tract, entitled "Can the Jews remain in their present condition without harm to the state?" gave additional weight to the accusations against them.

"What were a number of the most wealthy Jews or their fathers twenty or thirty years ago? Hawkers, who crawled about the streets in ragged clothes, annoying the passers-by with their importunity to buy some yards of Potsdam hair riband; or rustics, who, under the pretext of trading, stole into Christian dwellings, and often did damage to their owners."

This writer proposed to render the Jews harmless by means more revolting than those employed in the Middle Ages.

"Not only must the Jews again be enclosed in a Ghetto, and be placed under continual police supervision; not only should they be compelled to wear a patch of noticeable color upon their coat sleeves, but in order to prevent their increase, the second male child of each Jew should be castrated."

Protestant theology and German philosophy proposed regulations against the Jews unrivaled by the canonical decrees of Popes Innocent III and Paul IV.

In Breslau appeared similar libels which inflamed the hatred of the populace against the Jews. Even the well-meaning writings composed in their defense by Christians, such as Kosmann and Ramson--"A Word to the Impartial"--admitted the low character of the Jews, and seemed to imply that in every way it would be better for Christians if there were no Jews among them; but seeing that the evil existed, it must be endured. The honor of the Germans was partly redeemed by a man who belonged to the olden time, Freiherr von Diebitsch, once a major in the Russian service, to whom love of mankind was no empty phrase. He warmly defended the Jews against the venomous attacks of Grattenauer and his malicious allies (1803 and 1804), and thereby laid himself open to the charge of having been bribed. In view of the general prejudice against the Jewish race, he was prepared to see himself "caricatured, and represented as riding upon a sow or an ass." His kindly but pedantic pamphlets in defense of the Jews were not sufficient to close the mouths of their opponents.

Equally inadequate and fruitless were the attempts at vindication made by Jewish writers outside of Berlin, who found it necessary to lift their voice in opposition to the general outcry against their people.

Two Jews, one from Königsberg, the other from Hamburg, hit upon an excellent plan. Both recognized that the Jew hatred of the Germans could not be refuted by solid and weighty arguments, but might be silenced by ridicule. They were the forerunners of Börne and Heine, one being an unknown physician, the other writing anonymously (Lefrank). The former, in a satirical pamphlet written under the name of Dominicus Haman Epiphanes, expressed the opinion that unless all Jews were speedily massacred, and all Jewesses sold as slaves, the world, Christianity, and all states, must necessarily perish. Mankind would benefit enormously by the sale of the Jews: all immorality would thereby at once diminish, and the immortal Grattenauer, who had originated the glorious idea and had disseminated his noble abhorrence of the Jews, would everywhere be acknowledged a benefactor of mankind, and be deservedly commemorated by temples and monuments.

The other satirist, Lefrank, called his work "Bellerophon," (or the defeated Grattenauer). He wished to kill the chimerical monster "Jew hatred" in Grattenauer by mounting Pegasus. He addressed the Jew-baiter with the scornful "thou."

"Thou who hast grafted with so much success jurisprudence upon theology, thou who didst lick salt in Halle--not indeed Attic salt--thou who hast studied ignorance and stupidity under the great Semler, if thou art so proud of thy Christianity, that with contempt thou dost look down upon Jews, then pray let me ask thee why thy prisons are crammed with criminals condemned upon charges of high treason, murder, poisoning, robbery, and adultery? First remove from thy midst the scaffold, the gallows, the rack, the scourge, and all the ghastly instruments of torture and death, not one of which was invented by Jews. Divest thyself of the demon, and then wilt thou pity a people condemned to engage in traffic against its will, and accused because it does traffic. Deceit is said to be a widespread vice among Jews. Thy Christian tailor robs thee, thy bootmaker gives thee bad leather, thy grocer false measure and weight, thy baker despite prosperous harvests undersized loaves. Thy wine is adulterated, thy man-servant and thy maid-servant combine to cheat thee. Thou thyself--in the innocence of thy heart --offerest for sale wretched lies and spiteful malice written upon blotting-paper, for six farthings, which are not worth six pins, and thou darest assert that fraud is peculiar to Jews. See whether among all the bankruptcies now occurring in London and Paris there is a single Jewish failure." "Thou dost foolishly repeat the silly prattle of the great Fichte, when thou dost remark that the Jews constitute a state within the state. Thou canst not forgive the Jews the crime of speaking correct German, of dressing more respectably, and often judging more justly than thou. They no longer wear beards, which thou canst pull; they no longer speak gibberish, which thou mightest mimic.... The Jew for over twenty years has striven to approach the Christian, but how has he been received? How many alterations has he made in his canonical laws to be able to join you; but from pure humanity ye turn your backs upon him.... Yet thy pamphlet appears to me to be a good omen. The average man believes that winter can be parted from summer only by terrible thunder and hail-storms. Thus is it with thee. Persecution, fanaticism, and superstition are at their last gasp, and by mighty raging make their final effort through thee, before their spirit becomes entirely quenched."

The self-confidence manifested by Lefrank was the surest sign of the ultimate victory of the Jews.

Under existing conditions, in view of the fact that the Jews were apt to underrate and despise their own power, the hope of emancipation was deceptive. In Protestant as well as in Catholic countries, in Prussia as well as in Austria, the people were even more blindly opposed to them than their princes. That an Austrian voice might not be wanting in the chorus of Jew-baiters, a German-Austrian official, named Joseph Rohrer (1804), wrote against the "Jew people." He drew a dreadful picture, especially of the Jews of Galicia, without hinting that the Galician peasants were in a still lower state, and that the nobility was more degenerate than either class. Paalzow, Grattenauer, Buchholz, Rohrer, and their allies succeeded in their design. The idea of the emancipation of the Jews in Germany could not yet be entertained. With all his zeal, Breidenbach could not effect the abolition of the capitation-tax in all places. It still remained in force, a sad reminder and disgrace, in certain German provinces. Cannon had to be brought into the field to destroy these putrefying, deeply implanted prejudices.

A ray of light from the sun of freedom shining on the Jews of France penetrated even to Russia. The heart of Emperor Alexander I was filled with mercy towards the numberless Jews dwelling in his kingdom. He appointed a commission to consider a proposal for improving their condition. But a Russian commission takes time over its work, and after two years' careful consideration of the interests of Christians, and of the most effectual way of benefiting the Israelites, an ukase was at length published in 1804. By this law, farmers, manufacturers, artisans, those who had acquired a university education, or who had visited the upper or lower schools, were exempt from the exceptional laws against Jews. To wean them from using the jargon, special privileges were granted to those who would learn one of three languages--Russian, Polish, or German. The culture of the Jews within his kingdom was desired by Alexander, who hoped that another Mendelssohn would spring from their midst. Attendance at schools was not enforced; it therefore depended on the Jewish community to support boys' schools (Chedarim) as best they could. Nor could it be otherwise amongst the millions of serfs in Russia, not one of whom was permitted to visit a school.

A limitation was, however, introduced at that time which nullified all privileges in favor of the Jews. Those who dwelt in the country were ordered to depart within a short space of time and crowd together in the cities. Cruel subtlety dictated this order. The Polish landowners, who from indolence had given over the care of their breweries and the sale of produce to industrious and trustworthy Jewish managers and farmers, were ruined by the removal of the Jews from the villages, and thus rendered incapable of revolt. This law could not be carried out for the time being, but remained in existence as a dead letter, until later days. The worst result was that the Jews were treated as strangers, although they had been more than half a century in the Polish provinces. Naturally they did not advance in culture, being hindered and persecuted by Rabbinism, and even more so by Neo-Chassidism.

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XII. THE JEWISH-FRENCH SYNHEDRION AND THE JEWISH CONSISTORIES

Jew-Hatred in Strasburg--Bonald's Accusations--Plots against French Jews--Furtado--David Sinzheim--Assembly of Notables --Italian Deputies--The Twelve Questions--Debate on Mixed Marriages--The Paris Synhedrion--Its Constitution --Napoleon's Enactments--Israel Jacobson--Consistory of Westphalia--Emancipation in Germany--In the Hanse-Towns-- Restrictions in Saxony.

1806-1813 C. E.

Since the days of the Romans, the world had not witnessed such sudden changes and catastrophes as in the beginning of this century, when a new Empire was founded with the intention of establishing a universal monarchy. All the powers bent even lower before Napoleon, Emperor of the French, than before the First Consul Bonaparte. The pope, who in his heart cursed him and the whole new order, did not hesitate to anoint him successor to Charlemagne. The German princes were the first to recognize cringingly this innovation, the elevation of an upstart over themselves. As if Napoleon by contact with the Germans during his wars against Austria and Prussia had become infected with their Jew-hatred, his feelings with reference to them from that time underwent a change. Although he had before shown admiration for the venerable antiquity and gigantic struggles of the Jewish race, he now displayed a positive dislike to them. His unfavorable attitude towards the Jews was used by the Germans in Alsace to induce him to deprive the French Jews of their privileges and reduce them to their former state of abasement.

The storms of the Revolution had put an end to the old accusations against the Jews of Alsace. Jewish creditors, usurers, Christian debtors were alike impoverished by the Reign of Terror; the olden times were swept away. When quiet was restored, many Jews, who through their energy had acquired some property again, went back to their former trades. What else could they do? To commence to learn handicrafts and agriculture could not be expected of men advanced in years. Even young men found it difficult, as bigoted Christian employers in the German-speaking provinces did not care to take Jewish apprentices. A numerous class of the populace of Alsace offered well-to-do Jews a source of income. The peasants and day-laborers, before the Revolution serfs, had been liberated through it, but possessed no means wherewith to purchase land and commence work. Their cattle and even their implements of agriculture were lost during the stormy years; and many of them had fled to escape military service. These peasants, on the return of peace, had addressed themselves to Jews for advances of money, to obtain small parcels of the national land for cultivation.

The Jewish men of substance had responded, and probably demanded high rates of interest. The peasants, however, were not the losers, for, although originally destitute of means, they had greatly improved their condition. In a few years their possessions in landed property amounted to 60 million francs, the sixth part of which they owed to Jews. It was, indeed, hard for the peasants of Alsace to obtain ready money to discharge debts to their Jewish creditors, especially as the wars of Bonaparte called them away from the plough to bear arms, and many lawsuits ensued against the debtors. The Strasburg Trade Court of Justice alone, during the years 1802-4, had to decide upon summonses for debt between Jewish creditors and Christian debtors amounting to 800,000 francs. The defaulting peasants were sentenced to hand over their fields and vineyards to the Jewish creditors, some of whom may have acted harshly in these matters.

These circumstances were made use of by the Jew-haters. They generalized the misdeeds of the Jews, exaggerated the sufferings of the Christian debtors forced to pay, and stamped the Jews as usurers and bloodsuckers, so as to deprive the French Jews living in their provinces of their recently-acquired equalization, or if possible to prepare some worse fate for them. As at all times, the citizens of the German town of Strasburg took the most prominent part in this movement against the Jews. They had made a vain attempt to keep the Jews out of their city and to persecute them during the Reign of Terror. With fierce rage they beheld the number of Jewish immigrants increase. There were no Jewish usurers in their midst; on the contrary, there were wealthy, highly respected, and educated Jews, such as the families of Cerf Berr, Ratisbonne, and Picard, most of whom lived from their estates. Nevertheless the people of Strasburg raised the loudest clamors against the Jews, as if the latter were the cause of their impoverishment. The prefect of Strasburg, a German, aided and abetted the merchants. When Napoleon stayed in Strasburg (January, 1806), after the campaign of a hundred days against Austria, he was besieged by the prefect and a deputation of the people of Alsace with complaints showing how harmful to the state were the Jews; how like a crowd of ravens they ruined the Christian populace, so that whole villages passed into the possession of Jewish usurers, how half the estates of Alsace were mortgaged to Jewish creditors, and other malicious charges. Napoleon thereupon called to mind that during his campaign some Jews near Ulm had bought stolen articles from the soldiers, which had greatly displeased him. The Jew-haters suggested that these may have been Strasburg Jews, who followed in the track of the army in order to enrich themselves by means of the booty; and that all Jews were usurers, hawkers, and ragmen. To incite the emperor still more to acts of hostility, the following grave statement was added--that, in the whole of Alsace, indeed, in all the (German) Departments of the Upper and Lower Rhine, the people were so embittered against the Jews that a general massacre, scenes such as were witnessed in the Middle Ages, might ensue. In taprooms the question of slaughtering the Jews was often discussed. His mind filled with such evil impressions, Napoleon left Strasburg, promising redress of these grievances. That this impression might not fade away, the enemies of the Jews besieged the minister of justice with loud complaints about the baseness and hurtfulness of the Jews. Judges, prefects, all German-speaking officials vied with each other in attempts to deprive the Jews of their civil rights. The minister of justice, carried away by the complaints, was actually on the point of putting an exceptional law into force against the Jews of France, forbidding them for a time to do any business in mortgages.

Mingled with this Jew-hatred, which arose from the petty jealousy of guild members, and from fear of excessive competition, were the bigoted and gloomy views of the reactionary party, who commenced to spin their network of schemes in order to suppress mental freedom, the mother, so to speak, of political liberty. One of the chief representatives of this party, hostile to liberty, and skilled in intrigues, was Louis Gabriel Ambroise Bonald, a man of kindred spirit to Gentz, Adam Müller, and others of like caliber, who, together with the romanticist Chateaubriand, and Fontanes, a past-master of flattery, brought about the most terrible religious and political reaction. Bonald, who, after short-lived enthusiasm for liberty, unfurled the flag of the Bourbon Legitimists, and glorified it with mystical-Catholic inanities, beheld in the liberation of the Jews a diminution of the power of the Church, and employed means to undermine their equalization in France. He wished to lower them to the level of such despicable beings as the Church required for its purposes. In a paper which he issued conjointly with Chateaubriand for the purpose of maintaining the Ultramontane power, he attacked the Jews with sophistical eloquence. He envied the Germans because, more reasonable and prudent than the French, they had remitted only the capitation-tax, and had otherwise kept the Jews in subjection. He blamed the National Assembly for having conceded all rights without considering that when the French Jews were released from the yoke, they might easily act in concert with their co-religionists in other countries to secure all influence and all wealth to themselves and enslave the Christians. Bonald again gave utterance to that venomous slander which a venal, unscrupulous Alsatian had circulated in a pamphlet before the Revolution. His recurring statements were that the Jews were ever in conflict with morality, that they formed a state within a state, and that most of them were vampires and petty traders, among whom the high-minded disappeared. Bonald concluded his list of charges with an opinion which stigmatized the French nation as much as the Jews. "If the latter are ever permitted to enjoy independence and frame laws, then a Jewish Synhedrion would not establish more nonsensical or unworthy laws than the Constituent Assembly of philosophers has established."

It was a fortunate circumstance for the future of the Jews that the enemies of freedom as well as orthodox Christians included Jew-hatred in their programme, because this impelled friends of liberty to defend the cause of the Jews in part as their own. But for the moment, Bonald's Jew-hating attempts greatly harmed them. They were approved by those who strove to retard the advancing spirit of the age, and in a roundabout way were dinned into the ear of Napoleon. The French Jews had no idea of the extent of this agitation, they imagined that it concerned only the Jewish usurers in Alsace, and that it did not affect the honor, position, and existence of all, and therefore they did not sufficiently oppose it.

Matters now assumed a serious complexion. Napoleon laid the Jewish question for discussion before his council, which entrusted it to a young member, a Count Molé, known in later French history as the prototype of ambiguity. To the surprise of all the elder and more influential members of the council, Molé, whose great-grandmother was a Jewess, presented a report decidedly hostile to the Jews, suggesting that all French Jews be placed under exceptional laws, which meant that their legally acknowledged and practically realized equality was to be taken from them. His report was received with deserved derision by the oldest members of the council, who were so imbued with the principle of absolute equality sanctified by the Revolution, that they could not conceive that a creditor suing for payment from his debtor could have a right to inquire into his religious belief. They suspected that Molé was in league with the reactionary politicians Fontanes and Bonald, who were anxious to offer up the Jews as the first sacrifice to their retrograde policy. Molé, however, appears to have sought to curry favor with the emperor, who, as he knew, was not kindly disposed towards the Jews. Although all the councilors were in favor of their unabridged civil rights, the Jewish question was to be brought up at the regular session of the state council under the presidency of Napoleon (April 30, 1806), who attached great importance to the matter.

It was a fateful moment when these questions, settled long ago, again came up for discussion. The weal and woe not alone of the French and Italian Jews, but of those in all Europe, depended upon the issue of this consultation. For if the equalization of the Jews of the former countries was in any way threatened, those of other countries would be doomed to remain in a state of degradation and oppression for a long time to come. The sitting was stormy. It happened unfortunately that a recently elected state councilor named Beugnot, who in the absence of the emperor had spoken with great spirit and address in favor of the Jews, wished to display his eloquence before the emperor. He therefore made use of the following unlucky phrase: "To deprive the Jews of their full civil rights were like a battle lost on the field of justice." Napoleon was annoyed. Both the tone and matter of Beugnot's speech sorely displeased him. It vexed him that his prejudices against the Jews should be regarded as unfounded. Beugnot aroused his passion, he spoke against theorists and propounders of principles, and allowed his anger to outrun his discretion. He spoke of the Jews as Fichte had done, saying that they constituted a state within a state, being the feudal nobles of the time; that they could not be placed in the same category with Catholics and Protestants, because, besides not being citizens of the country, they were a dangerous element. The keys of France, Alsace and Strasburg, should not be allowed to fall into the hands of a nation of spies. It would be prudent to suffer only 50,000 Jews in the districts of the Upper and Lower Rhine, to scatter the remainder throughout France, and prohibit them from engaging in trade, because they corrupted it by usury. He made other accusations which he had learnt from the Jew-haters. In spite of this speech, two councilors of importance, Regnault and Ségur, ventured to speak on behalf of the Jews, or of justice. They pointed out that the Jews in Bordeaux, Marseilles, and the Italian cities belonging to France, like those in Holland, were held in the highest esteem, and that the offenses charged against the Jews of Alsace should not be imputed to Judaism, but rather to their unhappy condition. They succeeded in mollifying Napoleon's wrath for the moment, and a second session decided the matter.

Meantime some influential persons succeeded in impressing Napoleon with a better opinion of the Jews. They called to his attention how quickly they had become proficient in the arts and sciences, in agriculture and handicrafts. Persons were pointed out to him who had been decorated with the Order of the Legion of Honor, or who had received pensions for courage in war, and that, therefore, it was slander to call all Jews usurers and hawkers. At the second sitting of the state council (May 7, 1806) Napoleon spoke in a milder tone of the Jews. He rejected the proposal made to him to expel Jewish peddlers, and endow the tribunals of justice with unlimited authority over usurers. He desired to do nothing that might be disapproved by posterity, or darken his fame. Nevertheless, he could not free himself from the prejudice that the Jewish people, from the most ancient times, even from the days of Moses, had been usurers and extortioners. He was, however, determined not to permit any persecution or neglect of the Jews. He then conceived the happy thought--or it may have been suggested to him--to bring together a number of Jews from various provinces, who were to tell him whether Judaism demanded of its adherents hatred and oppression of Christians. The Jews themselves, through the medium of their representatives, were to decide their fate.

The decree which announced this resolution (May 30, 1806) was couched in harsh terms. Napoleon himself, it appears, gave it the last touches whilst in an angry mood. The first part of the decree ran as follows: "The claims of Jewish creditors in certain provinces may not be collected within the space of a year." The second part ordered the assembly of Jewish notables. The reason for their meeting was such as to satisfy the Bonalds. Certain Jews in the northern districts having by usury brought misery upon many peasants, the emperor had deprived them of civil equality. But he had also considered it necessary to awaken in all who professed the Jewish religion in France a feeling of civic morality, which, owing to their debasement, had become almost extinct amongst them. For this purpose Jewish notables were to express their wishes and suggest means whereby skilled work and useful occupations would become general among Jews. Thus, for a time at least, a portion of the Jews of France were deprived of their rights of equality. But balm might be expected from the Assembly of Notables for the wounds inflicted by Napoleon. The prefects were required to select prominent persons from among the rabbis and the laity, who, on a fixed day, should present themselves "in the good city of Paris." Not only the congregations of the old French provinces, but also those in the new ones, in the district on the left bank of the Rhine, were to be represented by deputies. The Italian Jews, who applied for permission to take part in this meeting, were likewise admitted.

Although the notables were somewhat arbitrarily chosen by the magistrates, on the whole their selections were fortunate. Among the hundred and more notables of French, German, and Italian speech, the majority were fully aware of the magnitude and importance of their task. They had to defend Judaism before the eyes of all Europe--a difficult but grateful task. Among them were men who had already gained fame, such as Berr Isaac Berr, his promising son, Michael Berr (who had issued the summons to princes and nations, to release the Jews from bondage), and Abraham Furtado, the partisan of the Girondists, who had suffered for his political opinions, and was a man of noble mind and great foresight. His descent is interesting. His parents were Marranos in Portugal, but in spite of the family's outward adherence to the Church during two hundred years, his mother had not forgotten her origin and her attachment to Judaism. When the terrible earthquake made Lisbon a heap of ruins, Furtado's parents were overwhelmed by their falling house--his father killed, but his mother, who was with child, entombed in a living grave. She vowed that if God would save her from this danger, she would, in spite of all difficulties, openly embrace Judaism. A fresh shock opened her tomb. She succeeded in escaping from this place of horror, made her way to London, and there publicly returned to Judaism. Here her son Abraham was born, whom she brought up as a Jew. Abraham Furtado was well acquainted with Jewish literature; he collected materials for a Jewish history, and paid particular attention to the Book of Job; but his Jewish knowledge was mere dilettanteism, without thoroughness. His favorite study was natural science. During the Revolution, Furtado belonged to the commission appointed to make proposals for ameliorating the condition of the French Jews. During the Reign of Terror, and as a supporter of the Girondists, his life was endangered and his property confiscated. By assiduous industry he had enabled himself to purchase an estate in Bordeaux. Next to the elder and younger Berrs, Furtado was the brightest ornament of the assembly; he was an eloquent speaker, and possessed great tact in public affairs.

A happy choice was that of Rabbi Joseph David Sinzheim, of Strasburg (born 1745, died 1812). He was a man of almost patriarchal character, of the deepest moral earnestness, and of a most lovable, gentle nature. Well furnished with means, and the brother-in-law of the wealthy Cerf Berr, Sinzheim devoted himself to the study of the Talmud, not from any mercenary purpose, but from inclination. His acquaintance with Talmudical and Rabbinical literature was astounding, but he was lacking in depth. His education prevented his being interested in other branches of science, but at least he had no antipathy to them. During the Reign of Terror, which caused the Jews in Jew-hating Strasburg to suffer severely, he was compelled to flee for safety, and could not return until peace was restored. The number of the Jews in Strasburg increased under the Directory and Napoleon. They formed themselves into a congregation, appointing Sinzheim as their first rabbi. Thence he was summoned to Paris to attend the Assembly of Notables. He was considered the most eminent French Talmudist, and became the leader of the orthodox party. Besides Sinzheim, only one rabbi was prominent, the Portuguese Rabbi Abraham Andrade, from Saint-Esprit; the majority of the members were laymen.

With trembling hearts about a hundred Jewish Notables from the French and German departments assembled. They had no plan, as they did not know precisely what were the emperor's intentions. A summons from the minister, addressed to each member singly (July 23, 1806), enlightened them but little. They learnt that in three days' time, on a Sabbath, they were to hold a meeting in a hall of the Hôtel de Ville set apart for them. There the assembly was to organize, and they were to answer the questions which imperial commissioners would lay before them. The purpose was to make useful citizens of the Jews, bring their religious belief into agreement with their duties as Frenchmen, refute the charges made against them, and remedy the evils which they had occasioned. The selection of Molé as imperial commissioner, together with Portalis and Pasquier, who were to treat officially with the Assembly, was not calculated to quiet their fears. Molé had been the first to serve as a medium for the spread of the anti-Jewish slanders of Bonald and others. On the day before the opening of the Assembly (July 25), there appeared in the official journal, the "Moniteur," an account of the history of the Jews from the return from Babylon till that time. The French nation was thus to be acquainted with the importance of the questions now to be submitted to the Jews themselves. In rapid sequence the following circumstances were depicted:--The independence and the dependence of the Jewish people, their victories and defeats; their persecution during the Middle Ages and the protection they found; their scattered condition and their massacres; the accusations directed against them; their abasement and oppression in different countries inflicted by monarch after monarch, and by fluctuating opinions and policies. Jewish history thus received, so to speak, an official seal. That there were many errors and false statements in this account was not to be wondered at. At the command of the emperor, the Jewish religion, or Judaism, was officially expounded, with even greater display of ignorance. Two points were particularly emphasized, viz., that the religious and moral separation of the Jews from the rest of the world, and the pursuit of usury to the injury of members of other creeds, if not prescribed, was at any rate tolerated by the Jewish law. "How otherwise is the fact to be explained," it was remarked at the conclusion of the official document, "that those Jews who at the present time extort high rates of interest, are most religious and follow the laws of the Talmud most faithfully?" The inference was to the last degree false. "Do we not see that the Portuguese Jews, who do not sully themselves with usury, are less strict in their adherence to the Talmud? Had the distinguished Jews in Germany, such as their famous Mendelssohn, great reverence for the rabbis? Finally, are those men among us who devote themselves to the sciences orthodox Jews?" Thus Talmudical Judaism was once again represented as a stumbling-block in the way of the progress of the Jews, not, indeed, in that spirit of hatred which prevailed in Germany; but it was laid open to attack, and that, too, before a public, so to say a European, tribunal.

On the same day that the Jews formed the topic of conversation in Paris, the deputies assembled to decide upon a question of conscience. The first official meeting was to be held on Saturday, and the first business was the election of a president and of secretaries by means of written votes. It was the first time that representatives of the French, German, and Italian Jews came together, and the contrasts and variations developed during the last half century by the changes in the times, became apparent,--all shades were represented, from the politician Furtado, to the rabbis who had spent all their lives in schools. They were expected to harmonize. At first they could not understand each other, but had to employ German and Italian interpreters. Was the public activity of the Jewish deputies to commence with the desecration of the Sabbath? Or should they strictly adhere to the religious prohibition, and thus give a handle to enemies of the Jews, who asserted that Judaism was incompatible with the exercise of civil functions? These serious questions occupied the minds of the members. The rabbis and the party of Berr Isaac Berr were of opinion that the first sitting should be postponed to another day, or at least that no election should take place. The less critical party, the politicians, urged that they prove to the emperor that Judaism can subordinate itself to the law of the land; and the debate grew very violent.

Thus the first Jewish Parliament in Paris assembled on a Sabbath, in a room of the Hôtel de Ville, decorated with appropriate emblems. The deputies attended in full force, none were absent; some of them intentionally came in carriages. Some of the stricter members again tried to have the first meeting postponed, but in vain. The dread of Napoleon's authority terrified those who as a rule paid scrupulous regard to religious ordinances. Under the chairmanship of Rabbi Solomon Lipmann, the oldest member, the election now proceeded. The orthodox had provided themselves with ballot tickets, but most of the others wrote them out unabashed before the very eyes of the rabbis, whilst a few had theirs written for them. Only two men were qualified for the presidency, Berr Isaac Berr and Furtado. The former was supported by the orthodox party, the latter by the politicians. Furtado obtained the majority of votes. With parliamentary tact he presided over the meeting. The deputies became fully conscious of the grave responsibility resting upon them, and proved themselves equal to their task. All were animated by a strong desire for unanimity.

Even the German rabbis, who hitherto had been buried in the seclusion of the academies amidst the Talmud volumes, quickly adapted themselves to the new circumstances and to parliamentary forms. Certain deputies contributed to impress all present with a feeling of concord. The speech of the deputy Lipmann Cerf Berr had a remarkable effect, especially the following words:--

"Let us forget our origin! Let us no longer speak of Jews of Alsace, of Portugal, or of Germany. Though scattered over the face of the globe, we are still one people worshiping the same God, and as our law commands us, we are to obey the laws of the country where we live."

When the officer of the guard of honor furnished for the meeting approached the newly-elected president to receive his orders, and when at the departure of the deputies, the guard greeted them with military honors and beat of drums, they felt themselves exalted, and their fear was turned to hope.

This joyful expectation revived their courage, and enabled them to oppose the attacks of Jew-hating writers. Meantime the whole body of deputies from the kingdom of Italy arrived, and created a favorable impression by their bearing. Amongst them the spirit of the age manifested itself in difference of religious views and opinions, although not so sharply marked as among the French and German Jews.

The most distinguished among the Jewish-Italian deputies was Abraham Vita di Cologna (born 1755, died in Trieste, 1832). He was well versed both in Rabbinical and scientific learning, of prepossessing appearance, and an elegant speaker. While rabbi of Mantua, he was elected a member of the Parliament of the Italian kingdom. His Talmudical and secular knowledge, however, was neither comprehensive nor deep. Cologna was in favor of the new tendency, which removed Judaism from its isolated position to imbue it with European ideas; but both the means and end were not clearly defined in his mind, and he took no steps to carry out his wishes. An elder member of the Italian notables, Joshua Benzion Segre (born about 1720, died 1809), at once owner of an estate, rabbi, and municipal councilor of Vercelli, was also in favor of scientific studies, and belonged to the advanced party. The follies of the Kabbala still found many supporters among educated Italian Jews, although its first opponents had come from Italy. Benzion Segre was averse to the study, while the Italian deputy Graziadio (Chanannel) Nepi, rabbi and physician in Cinto (born 1760, died 1836), was a firm believer in it. He was exceedingly well read in Jewish literature, and compiled an alphabetical register of the names of Jewish authors of ancient and modern times.

At the second sitting (July 29), the three imperial commissioners solemnly propounded twelve questions, which the Assembly were to answer conscientiously. The chief points were, whether the French Jews regarded France as their country, and Frenchmen as their brothers; whether they considered the laws of the state as binding upon them, and, by way of deduction from these two points, the incisive third question, "Can Jews legally intermarry with Christians," and, lastly, whether usury in the case of non-Jews is permitted or forbidden. The remaining points referred to polygamy, divorce, and the authority of the rabbis, and were of a subordinate nature. Most of the members could not listen to these queries without feeling pain that their love of country and their attachment to France should be called into question, notwithstanding that Jews had attested their patriotism by shedding their blood upon battlefields. From many sides rose a cry at these questions, "Aye, unto death." The address delivered by Molé on submitting these twelve questions was cold and to some extent offensive. Its contents were nearly as follows:--The charges against various Jews had been proved. The emperor was, however, not satisfied to check the evil himself, but desired the assistance of the deputies. They were to state the whole truth in replying to the questions laid before them. The emperor permitted full liberty of discussion, but wished them to bear in mind that they were Frenchmen, and would be relinquishing that honor unless they showed themselves worthy of it. The assembly now knew what was expected. They were brought face to face with the alternative of renouncing their equality or damaging Judaism.

Furtado, in his reply to the speech of the commissioner, very cleverly turned the mistrust of the emperor into a semblance of trust. He said that the Jews welcomed the opportunity of answering these questions, to lay bare all errors and put an end to the prejudices entertained against them. The speech which Berr Isaac Berr delivered at this meeting was more sincere, more manly, and altogether more fervent. Furtado represented the Jews, but not Judaism; he caused it to be understood that the Assembly should consider it a duty and an honor to obey every hint of the emperor. Berr gave dignified expression to the claims of Judaism. The duty of replying to the questions was assigned to a commission, which included, besides the president, the secretary, and the auditors, the four most eminent rabbis, Sinzheim, Andrade, di Cologna, and Segre, and two learned laymen.

This commission handed over the chief part of their work to Rabbi David Sinzheim, the most scholarly and esteemed member of the assembly, who in a very short time completed his task to the satisfaction of his colleagues, of the imperial commissioners, and eventually of the emperor (July 30 till August 3). His report was submitted to the commissioners, who reported it to the emperor before it was brought up for public discussion. Napoleon was so pleased with the behavior of the Assembly that he announced his intention to grant an audience to all the members. In fact, their parliamentary tact, as displayed in the proceedings, filled him with such high regard towards them that he partially overcame his prejudices against the Jews. He had always pictured them as ragmen and usurers, with cringing, bent forms, or as sly, cunning flatterers lying in ambush for their prey; and to his astonishment he beheld among the members men of fine character, intelligence, and imposing appearance. He thus acquired a better opinion of the Jews. It must be admitted that the incense offered him by the Assembly, as to a deity, did not leave him unmoved. On the other hand, the serious task placed before the Jewish deputies made them greater, exalted them above the common level, idealized them. Their harmonious work aroused their enthusiasm, the orations intoxicated them, and even the sober German members became infected.

At the third sitting (August 4), at the debate upon the replies to the various questions, the deputies were filled with self-confidence and the certainty of victory. No difficulty was offered by the first two questions--whether polygamy was allowed among Jews, and whether the validity of a divorce granted by the French law was acknowledged by their religious and moral code. These were decided according to the desire of the emperor without any injury to Judaism. But the third question aroused painful excitement, and revealed the opposition which had divided the Jews since the time of Mendelssohn--"May a Jewess marry a Christian, or a Christian woman a Jew?" This question had given rise to heated debates in the commission, how much more in public assembly. Even the orthodox party felt that to reply unconditionally in the negative would be extremely perilous. The commission, however, had already supplied a clever answer, and if it is owing to Sinzheim's efforts, it redounds to his intellect and tact. At the outset it was skillfully explained that, according to the Bible, only marriages with Canaanite nations were forbidden. Even by the Talmud intermarriages were allowed, because the nations of Europe were not considered idolaters. The rabbis, to be sure, were opposed to such unions, seeing that the usual ceremonies could not be performed. They would refuse to bless such an union, as the Catholic priests refused their assistance on such occasions. This refusal, however, was of little consequence, as civil marriages were recognized by the state. At all events, the rabbis considered a Jew or Jewess who had contracted a union of this kind as a full co-religionist.

The remaining questions were settled without any excitement in two sittings (August 7th and 12th). The questions whether the Jews regarded Frenchmen as their brothers, and France as their country, were answered by the Assembly with a loud, enthusiastic affirmative. They were able to refer to the doctrines of Judaism, which in its three phases--Biblical, Talmudical, and Rabbinical--had always emphasized humanity and the brotherhood of man. Only one point in the report of the commission gave rise to a certain amount of friction, viz., that which seemed to ascribe a kind of superiority to the Portuguese Jews, as if through their conduct they were held in higher esteem by Christians than the German Jews. This clause was therefore struck out.

In answering the two questions relative to usury, the Assembly was able to demolish a deeply-rooted prejudice and place Judaism in a favorable light.

The commissioner Molé, the first to yield to Jew-hatred and propose to exclude Jews from state offices, had now to declare publicly (September 18) that the emperor was satisfied with the intentions and zeal of the assembly. His speech on this occasion struck quite a different note to former ones. "Who, indeed," he exclaimed, "would not be astonished at the sight of this assembly of enlightened men, selected from among the descendants of the most ancient of nations? If an individual of past centuries could come to life, and if this scene met his gaze, would he not think himself transplanted within the walls of the Holy City? or might he not imagine that a thorough revolution in the affairs of man had taken place?" "His Majesty," continued Molé, "guarantees to you the free practice of your religion and the full enjoyment of your political rights; but in exchange for these valuable privileges, he demands a religious surety that you will completely realize the principles expressed in your answers."

What could the surety be? Napoleon then announced a surprising message, which filled the assembly with joyful astonishment and electrified them. "The emperor proposes to call together the great Synhedrion!" This part of their national government, which had perished together with the Temple, and which alone had been endowed with authority in Israel, was now to be revived for the purpose of transforming the answers of the Assembly into decisions, which should command the highest respect, equally with those of the Talmud, with Jews of all countries and throughout all centuries. Further, the Assembly was to make known the meeting of the great Synhedrion to all the synagogues in Europe, so that they send to Paris deputies capable of advising the government with intelligence, and worthy of belonging to this assembly. That the revived Synhedrion might possess the honorable and imposing character of its model, it was to be constituted on the pattern of the former one; it was to consist of seventy-one members, and have a president (Nasi), a vice-president (Ab-Beth-Din), and a second vice-president (Chacham). This announcement made the deputies feel as if the ancient glory of Israel had suddenly risen from the tomb and once more assumed a solid shape. Three months previously they had been summoned to rescue their civil rights which were endangered, and now a new vista opened before them; they seemed to behold their glorious past revived in the present, and assisted in the accomplishment of the dream; and they were filled with amazement.

Naturally, on receipt of this announcement, the Assembly passed enthusiastic motions and votes of thanks. They expressed their approval of everything which the commissioners had proposed or intimated. The Synhedrion was to be composed of two-thirds rabbis and one-third laymen, and was to include all the rabbis in the Assembly of Notables, together with others to be afterwards elected. The true importance of the Assembly now came to an end; its duties now were merely perfunctory. The proclamation issued to the whole Jewish world (Tishri 24--October 6) was its only momentous action thereafter. It aimed at rousing the Jews to take an interest in the Synhedrion and to send deputies. This proclamation was written in four languages, Hebrew, French, German, and Italian, and expressed the feelings which animated members of the Assembly, and the hopes entertained for the great Synhedrion:

"A great event is about to take place, one which through a long series of centuries our fathers, and even we in our own times, did not expect to see, and which has now appeared before the eyes of the astonished world. The 20th of October has been fixed as the date for the opening of a Great Synhedrion in the capital of one of the most powerful Christian nations, and under the protection of the immortal Prince who rules over it. Paris will show the world a remarkable scene, and this ever memorable event will open to the dispersed remnants of the descendants of Abraham a period of deliverance and prosperity."

The Jewish Parliament, and the re-establishment of a Synhedrion created much interest in Europe. The world was accustomed to Napoleon's feats of war and brilliant victories; the power of his arms had ceased to astonish men. But that this admired and terrible hero should descend to the most ancient people, to raise and restore them to some of their lost splendor, caused, perhaps, more general surprise among Christians than among Jews. It was looked upon as a miraculous event, as marking a new era in the history of the world, in which a different state of things would prevail. Some Christian writers in Bamberg, at their head a Catholic priest (Gley), expected such abundant and important results from the Jewish assembly in Paris that they established a special newspaper, a kind of journal for the Jews. Only the Berlin illuminati--David Friedländer's circle--experienced an uncomfortable sensation at the news, because they feared that, through the Synhedrion in France, ancient Judaism might be revived in a new garb. They therefore declared the Synhedrion a juggler's performance, provided by Napoleon for his Parisians. Patriotism was also involved in this sense of uneasiness, for the Prussian Jews participated in the deep grief into which the people of Prussia and the royal family had been plunged by the defeats at Jena and Auerstädt (October 14, 1806).

Four days after the dissolution of the Assembly of Notables (Adar 9--February 9, 1807), the Great Synhedrion, very different in character, assembled. It consisted, as mentioned above, for the greater part of rabbis, most of whom had been members of the Assembly of Notables. Twenty-five laymen from the same Assembly were added, and the ratification of the answers to the twelve questions according to the wishes of Napoleon was secured. To all appearances the great Synhedrion was to assemble and transact business according to its own pleasure. The commissioners were not to have any communications with it. The minister of the interior had chosen only the first three officials: Sinzheim as President (Nasi), the grey-headed Segre as first Vice-President (Ab-Beth-Din), and Abraham di Cologna as second Vice-President (Chacham).

After attending the synagogue, the Assembly made its way to the Hôtel de Ville, and there the seventy members, in a hall specially decorated for them, took their seats according to seniority, by ancient custom in a semi-circle around the president. The sittings were public, and many spectators were present at them. The members of the Synhedrion were suitably attired in black garments, with silk capes and three-cornered hats. The meeting was opened by a prayer specially composed by Sinzheim. The speeches of Sinzheim and Furtado, with which the first meeting commenced, were entirely appropriate to the situation.

The second sitting (February 12) was occupied with the reading of the motions which the Synhedrion was to sanction, together with the presentation of addresses from different congregations in France, Italy, and the Rhineland, and especially in Dresden and Neuwied, expressing their agreement with the assembly, and the reception of messengers to the Synhedrion from Amsterdam.

The Synhedrion felt itself at a loss for subjects to discuss. The new matters which they had proposed to settle were left untouched. The Franco-Prussian war had caused the emperor to be forgetful of the Synhedrion and the Jews in general. There only remained for the members of the Synhedrion to convert the replies of the previous assembly into definite, inviolable laws. The question as to the power of the new Synhedrion to impose binding laws, or whether it could be placed on the same basis as the ancient one, was not debated. The rabbis overcame this scruple by arguing that each generation was permitted by the Talmud to institute suitable ordinances and make new decisions, and therefore, without further discussion, they declared themselves as constituted. Without demur, the Synhedrion adopted Furtado's disintegrating view, that Judaism consisted of two wholly distinct elements--the purely religious and the political-legislative laws. The first mentioned are unalterable; the latter, on the other hand, which have lost their significance since the downfall of the Jewish state, can be set aside. The inferences from this difference, however, could not be drawn by any individual, but only by an authorized assembly, a great Synhedrion, which owing to unfavorable circumstances had never been able to assemble. The Synhedrion was, therefore, no innovation. The following highly important paragraph with reference to marriage was also passed without opposition: That not only must the civil marriage precede the religious ceremony, but that intermarriages between Jews and Christians were to be considered binding, and although they were not attended by any religious forms, yet no religious interdict could be passed upon them. In this evasive manner the Synhedrion satisfied its own conscience and the suspicions of the imperial officers.

As the Synhedrion had no actual business to transact, the time of the sittings was filled up with speeches delivered by Furtado, Hildesheimer, the deputy from Frankfort, Asser, the deputy from Amsterdam, and finally by Sinzheim, who made the closing speech. The new decisions of the Synhedrion, drawn up in French and Hebrew, enacted the following: That it is prohibited for any Jew to marry more than one wife; that divorce by the Jewish law was effective only when preceded by that of the civil authorities; and that a marriage likewise must be considered a civil contract first; that every Israelite was religiously bound to consider his non-Jewish neighbors, who also recognize and worship God as the Creator, as brothers; that he should love his country, defend it, and undertake military service, if called upon to do so; that Judaism did not forbid any kind of handicraft and occupation, and that, therefore, it was commendable for Israelites to engage in agriculture, handicrafts, and the arts, and to forsake trading; and finally, that it was forbidden to Israelites to exact usury either from Jew or Christian.

These new laws of the Synhedrion were of very limited scope. The Synhedrion had in view only the present, and did not look into the distant future. The Jews in general were not satisfied with its action and results. An English Jew, in a letter addressed to the members, boldly reproached them for having disowned, not alone Judaism, but all revealed religion.

"Has any one of our brethren in Constantinople, Aleppo, Bagdad, Corfu, or one of our (English) communities been sent as a deputy to you, or have they recorded their approval of your decisions?"

The French Government, however, had obtained the surety stipulated before the rights of citizenship would be legally recognized anew. At the proposition of the commissioners the Synhedrion dissolved, and their resolutions were submitted to Napoleon, whose attention had been fixed on the Prusso-Russian war, until owing to the decisive battle of Prussian Friedland the delusive peace of Tilsit was concluded. During Napoleon's absence, plans were secretly laid with the purpose of restricting the rights of the French Jews. The Jewish deputies, however, discovered this, and the indefatigable Furtado, together with Maurice Levy of Nancy, hastened from the Seine to the Niemen to acquaint the emperor with the agitation against the Jews; and he remained prepossessed in favor of Judaism.

After the dissolution of the Synhedrion the Assembly of Notables again convened to present their formal report to the authorities (March 25-April 6, 1807).

After an interval of a year, Napoleon announced to the Jews his intentions with reference to legislation on their behalf. He expressed (March 17, 1808) his approval of the wretched consistorial organization which degraded the officials of the synagogue to the level of policemen, and regulated the civil position of the Jews, or rather made encroachments on their hitherto favorable condition, although he repeatedly assured them that their equalization would suffer no restrictions. He had deceived all the world, and everywhere trodden freedom under foot; how could he be expected to keep his word with the Jews and to leave their freedom unmolested? The law suggests that the Jew-hating Molé framed it. It contained no word about the equalization of the Jews. No French Jew henceforth was to engage in any species of trade without having obtained the permission of the prefect, and his consent was to be granted only on the testimony of the civil magistrates and the consistory as to the good character of the applicant. Contracts of Jews who could not show a patent were null and void. The taking of pledges as security for a loan was also surrounded by limitations which savored of the Middle Ages. Further, no foreign Jew was to settle in the German departments, nor any from those departments in another district. Finally, the Jewish people were not allowed to procure substitutes for military service; each Jew who was chosen as a soldier had to enter the ranks. These restrictive laws were to remain in force for ten years, "in the hope that by the end of that period, and by the enforcement of various regulations, no difference whatever would exist between the Jews and the other citizens."

Thus the Jews of France, the anchor of hope of their brethren in other countries, were once again humiliated and placed under exceptional legislation. The law enacted, indeed, that the Jews of Bordeaux and certain other departments who had given no cause for complaint should not be included under these new restrictions. Shortly afterwards, owing to their loud complaints, exceptions were made in favor of the Jews of Paris, Livorno, the department of the Lower Pyrenees, and of fifteen other districts in France and Italy, so that only the scapegoats, the German-speaking Jews in France, were deprived of their civil rights. But the odious stain which had been again fastened to the Jews adhered to the emancipated as well. Their opponents, who zealously strove to check the elevation of the Jews, could now point to France, and urge that the race was indeed incapable of amendment, seeing that even where its members had been emancipated long since, they had to be deprived of their rights of equality.

Napoleon's arm, powerful though it was, could not stem the flood once set in motion, by the liberation of oppressed nationalities and classes. By his own genius and impetuosity he increased the tumult of forces. After the subjection of Prussia, Napoleon called into existence, chiefly at the expense of this state, two new political creations, the duchy of Warsaw (avoiding the dangerous and magical title of kingdom of Poland), under the rule of the Electoral Prince of Saxony, and the kingdom of Westphalia under his brother Jerome (Hieronymus).

In the latter kingdom, formed from the territories of many lords, the Jews obtained freedom and equalization. Napoleon framed the constitution of the new kingdom with the assistance of the statesmen Beugnot, Johannes von Müller, and partially also of Dohm, who, being friends of the Jews, had made their emancipation a feature. Jerome, juster and more honest than his brother, issued an edict (January 12, 1808) declaring all Jews of his state without exception to be full citizens, abolishing Jew-taxes of every description, allowing foreign Jews to reside in the country under the same protection as that afforded to Christian immigrants, and threatening with punishment the malicious who should derisively call a Jewish citizen of his state "protection Jew" (Schutz-Jude). Michael Berr, the brave and pious defender of Judaism, was summoned from France to accept office in the kingdom of Westphalia. Jews and Christians alike were filled with hope at this just treatment of German Jews, and the Jew-hating German University of Göttingen elected Berr a member.

An important part was played at the new court in Cassel by Israel Jacobson (born at Halberstadt, 1769; died at Berlin, 1828), who had been court agent, or councilor of finance, at the court of Brunswick. Although he cuts a figure in modern Jewish history, and was pleased to consider himself a German Furtado, yet he bore only external resemblance to this earnest Jewish patriot. The similarity lay in the fact that Jacobson possessed extraordinary flow of language and great vigor in carrying out his projects, which talents, it must be admitted, he employed for ameliorating the condition of his co-religionists. His wealth provided him with the means of realizing, or attempting, all the schemes which his active brain invented. Noble-minded, good-natured, ready for any sacrifice, and energetic, he kept one aim before him, the removal of the hateful, repulsive exterior of the Jews and Judaism, and the endeavor to render them externally attractive and brilliant.

To commemorate the day of the emancipation of the Jews, Jacobson caused a gold medal to be struck with the emblem of the union of hitherto antagonistic beliefs, and the Latin inscription: "To God and the fatherly king, united in the kingdom of Westphalia." At the instigation of Jacobson, the Jews of the kingdom of Westphalia were to be organized somewhat like their brethren in France. Twenty-two notables were summoned to Cassel, among whom the originator of the movement was naturally included. Jerome received them kindly, and spoke the memorable words on the occasion: that he was pleased to find that the constitution of his kingdom, which had been forced upon him, confirmed the equality of all creeds, and in this respect entirely corresponded with his own ideas. In the commission appointed to draw up the plan for a Jewish consistory in the kingdom of Westphalia, Jacobson was naturally elected to the presidency. Michael Berr was also a member. The constitution of the consistory, on the model of the French, was published at about the same time as the latter (March 3, 1808). In France a rabbi occupied the chief position, whilst in the German assembly Jacobson was to be president. He desired to be considered a rabbi, and even represented himself as one. The chief meeting-place of the Westphalian consistory was Cassel. Its authority was acknowledged on many subjects, and Jacobson was all-powerful, being ordered to consult the magistrates only upon important occasions. The consistory was also to be employed as a means of rousing patriotic feelings in the hearts of old and young on behalf of the House of Bonaparte. It especially busied itself with the debts of the various congregations, which were to be divided among the several communities, and thus paid off easily.

Strange to say, one of the members of the consistory was a Christian, state councilor Merkel, who, acting as secretary, kept a watch upon the highest Jewish judicial authorities like a detective. In the French central consistory thoughtful, trusty men, who had given proofs of their abilities, were elected, such as David Sinzheim, the president, Abraham di Cologna, and Menahem Deutz, whose son afterwards obtained sad celebrity, men who knew how to bridge over the gap between the old times and the new; while Jacobson delighted in foolhardy leaps, and dragged his colleagues along with him. In transforming the condition of the congregations and the synagogues under his jurisdiction, he consulted with David Friedländer, standing almost within the pale of Christianity, and his colleagues among the Measfim. The desire of Jacobson was for reforms, or rather for the introduction of such practices into the Jewish Divine service as were observed in the Christian Church, especially such as appealed to the senses.

The first German prince who voluntarily conceded to the Jews at least a restricted amount of freedom was Duke Charles of Baden, one of the dependents of the family of Napoleon. Baden being on the borders of France became accustomed to the recognition of the Jews of the latter country as citizens; and public opinion was more favorable to them there than in other parts of Germany. To be sure, the German Prince of Baden was not so free from prejudice as the member of the Napoleon family who occupied a German throne. He declared the Jews citizens of the state, but did not give them the freedom of the cities, so that they could not dwell in such towns as had hitherto been closed to Jews; and even where they had always been tolerated, they were only to be regarded as "protected citizens." The duke, however, reserved the right to confer the freedom of the cities upon those who should give up petty trading. Their religious peculiarities were to be respected, "only in so far as they agreed with the Mosaic Law, but not with the Talmudical interpretations of the same."

Even the city of Frankfort for a moment succumbed to the equality intoxication, although petty, pedantic hatred of Jews was incorporated in every patrician. This hatred had greatly increased in intensity since the spread of revolutionary principles. The subjection of the Jews was to compensate for loss of independence. Not a single badge or ceremony which perpetuated Jewish degradation was removed from the Jews, who numbered about five hundred families. The laws of "Stättigkeit," defining their dependent status, which had existed for two hundred years, were still annually read in the synagogue. Every newly admitted Jew was compelled to take the oath of allegiance to the Senate. Restrictions continued to be imposed on Jewish marriages. Jew-taxes had to be paid, as if the Holy Roman Empire still held sway, instead of the all-powerful will of the Corsican, crushing emperors and kings. The Jews were obliged to dwell in the narrow, dirty, unhealthy Jewish quarter, and every Christian, however degraded, had the right of calling to the most refined Jew, "Mach Mores, Jud'!" of treating him as a despicable object, and even banishing him from the better parts of the city and from the parks.

The French general Jourdan had indeed freed the Frankfort Jews from the Ghetto for a few years, when he bombarded the city and destroyed that portion of it. Under the eyes of the French victors, the patricians, sorely against their will, permitted Jews to rent houses in other districts; under no condition could they purchase or erect houses. When the Holy Roman Empire melted away like a snowflake before the breath of Napoleon, when Frankfort fell under the sovereignty of the Arch-Chancellor or Prince Primate of the Rhenish Confederation, and the powerful aldermen themselves became subject, the serfdom of the Jews came to an end, though the change was not expressed in legal enactments. Karl von Dalberg, a liberal-minded man, and most favorably disposed towards the Jews, would gladly have removed their yoke, indeed he wrote to Grégoire, the advocate of emancipation, upon this subject. However, he was too well aware of the stubborn hatred of the Frankfort patricians towards the Jews, to venture upon their complete emancipation. He had only promised in a general way at the so-called coronation that the members of the Jewish nation should be protected against injury and insulting treatment. The urgent necessity of regulating the status of the Jews by law, was apparent to this Prince Primate, who discharged his duty only by half measures, such as were characteristic of the Germans. By the publication of a new order for the government and protection of the Jews, he conceded, in the spirit of the new era, that "previous laws, being opposed to the modern constitution of the Jewish nation," should be abrogated. At the same time he figured as the adherent of the anti-Jewish party by stating "that complete equality could not be granted so long as the Jews did not show themselves worthy of it, by forsaking their peculiarities and adopting the customs of the country." By these new ordinances they were treated as strangers on sufferance, who might enjoy the benefits of the law of nations and of humanity, but not the rights of citizens. The only relief measure was that the various protection-taxes were consolidated into an annual impost of 22,000 florins. Even the Ghetto was again held out to them as their residence; they were cautioned not to renew their leases in town with Christian landlords, because the day would soon dawn when they would have to return to their prison. Naturally, the Jews of Frankfort used their utmost endeavors to have these exceptional laws annulled, the more as their co-religionists in the neighboring kingdom of Westphalia were enjoying equality. When the Rhenish Confederation was dissolved and the Duchy of Frankfort created with a constitution of its own, recognizing the equality of all inhabitants, of whatever belief, Amschel, Gumprecht, and Rothschild (the first court-agent who made princes subject to himself), as representatives of the Jews, did not rest until they had induced the Archduke Dalberg and his council to establish their equalization by a special law in spite of all opposition. The new archduke being in want of funds, besides desiring the freedom and equality of the Jews, consented to grant these privileges for the sum of 440,000 florins (being twenty times the amount of the annual tax of 22,000 florins), 150,000 to be paid at once, then 50,000, and the remainder in annual payments of 10,000 florins. The law (published December 28, 1811) decreed, "that all Jews living in Frankfort under protection, together with their children and descendants, should enjoy civil rights and privileges equally with other citizens." The Jews took the oath of citizenship, entered upon their privileges and duties, and Louis Baruch (Börne), a Jew, was employed in the ducal police. The Jew-street, or what remained of it, lost its mournful privileges, and was swept out of existence or joined to adjacent quarters. The proud patricians gnashed their teeth at such unheard-of innovations. They had suffered a double loss by the abolition of serfdom and of the old laws regarding the Jewish inhabitants; but for the time they had to acquiesce.

The northern Hanse Towns, where German guild-narrowness joined to ossified Lutheranism scarcely allowed the Jews to breathe, were compelled by order of the French garrison to grant them equality. Hamburg agreed to place all its inhabitants, including Jews, upon an equal level (1811), and also admitted them to seats in the civic council. The following testimony was afterwards adduced in their favor--

"With all the privileges of equality received, or guaranteed, their much-feared presumption did not obtrude itself, nor had any disadvantages accrued to the Christian citizens; on the contrary, the Jews displayed a quiet, modest, and friendly demeanor in spite of additional prerogatives, and showed eagerness to work for the public weal. Several gained distinction by their great benevolence and patriotism."

The small town of Lübeck showed more opposition to the settlement and emancipation of a few Jews under French protection. Hitherto only about ten families were tolerated in the town as "protection Jews," who were forbidden to engage in trade, join the guilds, or obtain possession of houses. These privileges were regarded as exclusively Christian; no Jews dared claim them. Only three Jews were allowed to come daily into Lübeck from the neighboring town of Moisling (under the dominion of Denmark or Holstein), and these were compelled to pay a sort of poll-tax at the gate. Any deputy of the merchants' guild could lay hands upon them, and take them before the police, if they sold goods, and everything found in the possession of such suspects was confiscated. With the advent of the French (1811-1814), about forty-two Jews from Moisling and fourteen foreigners with their families moved to Lübeck, thus bringing the number of families in Lübeck up to sixty-six. These sixty-six Jews aroused the fierce rage of the Lübeck patricians even more than Napoleon's sovereignty. The embargo laid by Napoleon upon the Continent to annoy England had attracted several Jewish families to North Germany, hitherto unfriendly to Jews.

In the Hanse Town of Bremen, which until then had known only traveling Jews, who paid toll on entering the town, Jews took up residence under French protection, not indeed in great numbers, but too many for the bigotry of the patricians. Here, too, they were allowed equal rights with other citizens. Even the Duke of Mecklenburg, Frederick Franz, granted the equalization of the Jews (February 22, 1812), and allowed marriages between Jews and Christians, a greater concession than those made by any other code. Prussia also could no longer resist the tide in favor of the Jews. In Prussia they had displayed much greater love for their native land, and brought more sacrifices during the times of trouble than many of the corrupt nobility, who had ingratiated themselves with their victorious enemies. But a long time elapsed before King Frederick William III could overcome his aristocratic and religious repugnance to them. He only abolished the insulting cognomen of "protection Jews," declaring them not only admissible to the citizenship of towns, but under compulsion to perform its duties. They were forced to take the oath as citizens of towns and to share in the burdens of the cities in which they lived. But they were not to be recognized as state citizens, their position being the reverse of that of the Jews in Baden. The prospect of equalization as state citizens was continually held out to them, but the promise remained unfulfilled for several years. When Hardenberg again assumed control of the disturbed affairs of the state, and insisted upon the repeal of decayed laws and the removal of rotten conditions, he favored the removal of the civil disabilities of the Jews, so that by their help new strength should be infused into the mutilated, bleeding, impoverished territory,--help which it could ill spare in its wretched state of deep depression. David Friedländer and his friends, Berlin capitalists, used their utmost efforts to bring about the state equalization so long promised. The king again and again delayed the ratification of the law submitted to him by the chancellor. At length--moved, it is said, by the interest taken by the Berlin Jews in commemorating the death of the much-suffering, lamented Queen Louise,--Frederick William gave his assent (March 11, 1812) to the equalization of all Jews at that time settled in Prussia. They were to be admitted to posts in schools and colleges; but the king withheld the privilege of admission to state offices. With the privileges, they were to assume the duties, especially as soldiers. Their religious affairs were to be regulated afterwards: "When the plan for their religious organization is drawn up, such Jews as enjoy public confidence both on account of their knowledge and probity will be consulted."

Three German princes alone withstood the spirit of the age: those of Bavaria, Austria, and Saxony. The first, Maximilian Joseph, appointed king of Bavaria by Napoleon, promulgated an edict (June 10, 1813), which appeared to concede equality to Jews, at least to those who possessed the right of settlement. But it was equality with many limitations. In cities to which no Jew had hitherto been admitted, their settlement was to depend upon the royal pleasure, and even in those places where they had dwelt for a long time their numbers were not to be increased, but rather diminished. In Austria, Leopold II and Francis I, the successors of Emperor Joseph, who had somewhat loosened the chains of the Jews, left the favorable intentions of their predecessor unexecuted, and imposed new humiliations. In addition to the unendurable burden of taxes in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Galicia,--taxes upon candles, upon wine, and meat--a collection-tax was imposed in Vienna, which was a toll upon every Jew who entered the capital. Spies closely watched the Jew who stayed in Vienna for a short time unprovided with a passport, and treated him like a criminal. Marriages among Jews were still restricted, and could be contracted only by the eldest son of the family, or by one able to pay heavy bribes. Although Austria was so often overrun by the soldiers of liberty, yet, impenetrable as the wall of China, it resisted every innovation. In the newly-created kingdom of Saxony all the restrictions imposed in the time of the Electoral princes and the Lutheran Church were maintained in their fullest rigor. Saxony was rightly called the Protestant Spain of the Jews. Indeed they were not suffered to dwell in the country at all; only a few privileged Jews were admitted to the two towns of Dresden and Leipsic, but under the express condition that they could be expelled at any time. They were not allowed to have a synagogue, but only to meet for prayer in small rooms, on condition that they made no noise. In Leipsic and Dresden every privileged Jew was compelled to pay annually seventy thalers for himself, besides other sums for his wife, children, and servants. The Jews were rigidly constrained in their choice of trades and occupations, and were placed under strict supervision while traveling. When all other German districts had abolished the poll-tax, Saxony still retained it. The example of the two neighboring countries--Westphalia and Prussia--had no influence upon this district, which at that time was rendered doubly selfish by trade jealousy and religious prejudice. The reactionary movement found plenty of fuel in Germany.

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