Only in the East of Europe restrictions continued. Czar Alexander I in 1804 issued a law which encouraged the Jews to take up agricultural pursuits and acquire secular knowledge. This step was isolated, and in the reign of Nicholas I (1825-1855) the Jews were subjected to terrible persecutions, the worst of which was that children were forcibly taken from the houses of their parents and brought up in barracks as soldiers to serve twenty-five years after they had reached the age required for the army. Under Alexander II (1855-1881) a slow improvement in exceptional cases took place. Jews who engaged in manufacturing or business enterprises, skilled mechanics and those who had received a college education, were exempt from most of the disabilities imposed on the masses, but the condition of the latter was not changed. They were still restricted in their rights of residence and occupation and excluded from all political rights.
With the assassination of Alexander II a new era of persecutions began. This culminated in bloody riots, which spread over a great part of Southern Russia and were periodically repeated afterwards. The bloodiest persecutions were those of Kishineff and Homel in 1903, and of Odessa and a great many other cities in Southern Russia in 1905, and of Bialystok in 1906, when more than a thousand people lost their lives. Even further restrictions were introduced. Thus a law of May 3, 1882, prohibited the residence of Jews in rural districts and the acquisition of rural estates, and while in former times the acquisition of secular knowledge by Jews was encouraged by the government, laws of December 5, 1886, and July 6, 1887, restricted the attendance of Jewish students at high schools and universities to a percentage ranging from three to ten. While the Jews obtained the right to participate in the elections of the Duma, the Imperial Parliament, they have no right to participate in municipal elections and are represented in the municipal boards only by a few members who are appointed by the government. They are also excluded from the county boards, Zemstvo.
Similar conditions prevail in Rumania. When that country gained its autonomy in 1856, it not only denied to the Jews political rights but declared them to be foreigners. Frequent mob attacks and arbitrary treatment on the part of the courts and the officials made them practically outlaws. A hope for improvement seemed to loom up when in 1878 the Congress of Berlin embodied an article in the treaty which compelled the newly founded sovereign and autonomous states of Servia, Bulgaria and Rumania to remove from their statute-books all laws discriminating against citizens on the ground of religious belief. They complied with this requirement, but Rumania availed itself of a ruse by which the law was practically rendered nugatory. By declaring the Jews to be foreigners, and naturalizing some Jews, it apparently complied with the law, while almost all the 250,000 Jews of the country remained in their former state of misery, enhanced by new regulations restricting their economic freedom.
It looked in 1878 as if Europe had guaranteed the fair treatment of the Jews even in countries of oppression; opposition began in popular ranks, and in the same year anti-Semitism arose as a new name for hostility toward the Jews. This first made itself felt in Germany through the foundation of the Christian Socialist party in 1878, started with the avowed object of withdrawing from the Jews their political rights, including that of holding public office and advocating the prohibition of the immigration of Jews.
From Germany the movement spread to Austria, where it first was taken up by the radical German party in 1883, and later on by the clericals. It spread then to Hungary and France, where the publication of Drumont’s “La France Juive” in 1886 marks the beginning of the movement culminating in the Dreyfus case. Captain Alfred Dreyfus in 1894 was charged with high treason in order to stir up anti-Jewish feeling, and this was not abated until his innocence had finally been established in 1906. Another sign of an unfavorable change in the attitude of the masses toward the Jews was the revival of the blood accusation. When in 1840 it made its appearance in Damascus, where Jews were imprisoned and tortured for this cause, it seemed that such a return to mediæval barbarism was confined to the Orient. In 1882, however, it took place in Tisza-Ezlar, Hungary, and other cases followed in Western Europe: at Xanten, Germany, in 1891, at Konitz in 1899, and at Polna, Bohemia, in 1900.
The disappointment caused by the unlooked-for reaction manifested itself also in the attitude of the Jews with regard to their future. Soon after it had become evident that the condition of the Jews in Rumania would not be improved by the Treaty of Berlin, and after the bloody persecutions in Russia had destroyed the hope that Russia would slowly improve the condition of its Jews, a movement for the settlement of the Jews in Palestine began. In 1882 the foundation of a society, “Lovers of Zion,” marked the beginning of a movement looking toward the resettlement of the Jews in Palestine. It assumed more systematic shape by the publication of “Der Judenstaat,” by Theodor Herzl in 1896, which was followed in 1897 by the first Congress of Zionists convened at Basle, which declared in its platform the object to establish “a legally secured home for the Jewish people in Palestine.” At the same time an unprecedented emigration took place from Russia and Rumania to free countries, particularly to the United States, Canada, Australia and South Africa, with a smaller but also considerable stream of emigration to England.
Baron de Hirsch attempted to regulate the emigration by turning it to Argentine, where he acquired large tracts of land in 1890. Indeed, agricultural settlements were founded there, although they did not realize the expectations of those who would have turned large masses of immigrants into that country.
In spite of the retrogressive movement which the history of the Jews seemed to present, Western Europe not only retained the principles enacted by the constitutions promulgated in and after 1848, but individual Jews have risen to prominence in political life. Almost all states of Western Europe have had Jews as members of their Parliaments, and some have obtained prominent positions in the government service. France had several Jews as ministers. Cremieux was minister of justice in 1848, Godchaux and Achille Fould served under Napoleon III, and Raynal under the republic. In Italy, Wollemborg was once and Luzzatti six times minister of finance, and Joseph Ottolenghi was minister of war. In 1910 Luzzatti became premier. Holland had repeatedly Jewish ministers, and England saw in 1909 the first Jew, Herbert Samuel, member of the cabinet. The United States had a Jew in the cabinet in the person of Oscar S. Straus, secretary of commerce and labor (1906-1909). In the Grand Duchy of Baden, Moritz Ellstaetter was minister of finance (1868-1893). Quite a number of Jews have occupied positions as judges, as professors at universities, and in other public activities.