He was a Doctor of Philosophy of Lemberg University who early in life had neglected the ancient Mosaic law in order to embrace the more recent creed which was spreading over the world—socialism. According to him, the Jews had been the initiators of that new faith as they had been of the other one. Karl Marx and Lassalle were to him the modern messengers of Jehovah upon earth, sent to bring forth the new gospel and the economic religion of the future. He considered their books as almost holy and rejoiced at seeing once more the divine Jewish supremacy asserted by their writings. He was affiliated with the principal socialist groups of the city and carried on an active propaganda in the poor districts. Three months in a fortress and ten years’ exile put a sudden stop to his zeal, if not to his convictions.
While in prison he had carefully thought out the place where he would seek asylum on leaving. Life would be very painful to him in Austria or in Germany, where he would be watched by the police and exposed to the attacks of the anti-semites. He decided upon a temporary stay in France where he went towards the end of 1882.
He thought he would make a living by teaching German, philosophy or the natural sciences. Warm letters of introduction had been given him by Viennese Jews to their relatives and fellow-Jews of Paris. Thus he rapidly obtained a certain amount of patronage which placed him beyond want and even earned him comfort.
Soon, however, and of his own free will, Schleifmann was to lose that comfort owing to an idealistic ambition and a mania to put his ideas into effect and to bring the Jews back to their hereditary duties.
He had noticed in Eastern Europe the contagious progress of anti-semitism and was deeply convinced that the anti-Jewish microbe would pursue its unrelenting march westward, successively invading France, England, the New World and finally the whole of Christendom.
This tendency must be resisted, fought and destroyed. As to the means of doing it, Schleifmann had a very clear theory, which he claimed to have derived from the very sources of the purest Judaism. It was simple. All that was needed was for the wealthy Jews to return to the traditions of their race whose almost divine mission was to supply the nations with moral examples, their brains with ideas and their hearts with a religion.
To accomplish this purpose they were to repudiate their past errors, leave the worldly and clerical society where they grew soft at the expense of their dignity, return to the fold of democracy whence they had sprung, employ their rare abilities in the defense of the weak, the triumph of the right, and enforce victory against injustice. Finally, keeping back nothing but a personal income, in no case to exceed ten thousand francs, they were to give up all their acquired riches, the whole of which would be used in national, popular or colonizing schemes. Such, in brief, were the main practical means by which Schleifmann intended to secure the salvation and glory of the Lor chosen people.
After a few months in Paris, he thought the moment was favorable for him to lay his daring plan of regeneration before the parents of his pupils, the clergy and the notables of Jewry. His illusions of success were short-lived.
The Jews of high finance had recently fought the first round with the Catholics. Some said they had been helped by the Cabinet. Others, that they had enjoyed the secret approval of a government which had long been in sympathy with the Jewish cause. Others again, more conservative in their estimate, claimed that the Jews enjoyed the “non-official sympathy” of the Administration to which the revolt of the wealthy Catholic families caused much anxiety. In fine, whether supported or alone, the Jews had won and now they were blinded by the enthusiasm of their victory. Never had their conceited arrogance been more insane nor their trust in the efficacy of the law more dense.
Schleifmann was everywhere repulsed. The rabbis were afraid that he might place them in a difficult position with high finance, whose members were all powerful in the Consistory; they begged him not to persist in his dangerous utopias. The rich and the half-rich dismissed him with a few dry words or with scornful jesting.