By this new departure (October 19, 1781), the Jews were permitted to learn handicrafts, arts, and sciences, and with certain restrictions to devote themselves to agriculture. The doors of the universities and academies, hitherto closed to them, were thrown open. The education of the Jewish youth was a matter of great interest to this emperor, who promoted "philosophical morality." He accordingly decreed the establishment of Jewish primary and high schools (normal schools), and forced adults to learn the language of the country, by decreeing that in future only documents written in that language would possess legal force. He considerately removed the risk of all possible attempts at religious compulsion. In the schools everything that might be offensive to any creed was to be omitted from the curriculum. An ordinance enjoined (November 2) that the Jews were to be everywhere considered "fellow-men," and all excesses against them were to be avoided. The Leibzoll (body-tax), more humiliating to Christians than to Jews, was also abolished by Joseph II of glorious memory, in addition to the special law-taxes, the passport-duty, the night-duty, and all similar oppressive imposts which had stamped the Jews as outcasts, for they were now to have equal rights with the Christian inhabitants (December 19). Joseph II did not intend to concede complete citizenship to the Jews; they were still forbidden to reside in those cities whence Christian intolerance had hitherto banished them. Even in Vienna Jews were allowed to dwell only in a few exceptional cases, on payment of protection-money (toleration-tax), which protection did not extend to their grown-up sons. They were not suffered to have a single public synagogue in Vienna. But Joseph II annulled a number of vexatious, restrictive regulations, such as the compulsory wearing of beards, the prohibition against going out in the forenoon on Sundays and holidays, or frequenting public pleasure resorts. The emperor even permitted Jewish wholesale merchants, notables, and their sons, to wear swords (January 2, 1782), and especially insisted that Christians should behave in a friendly manner towards Jews.
A notable beginning was thus made. The ignominy of a thousand years, which the uncharitableness of the Church, the avarice of princes, and the brutality of nations, had cast upon the race of Judah, was now partly removed, at least in one country. Dohm's proposals in consequence met with earnest consideration; they were not regarded as ideal dreams, but as political principles worthy of attention. Scholars, clergymen, statesmen, and princes began to interest themselves seriously in the Jewish question. Every thoughtful person in Germany and elsewhere took one side or the other. Various opinions and ideas were aired; the most curious propositions were made. A preacher, named Schwager, wrote:
"I have always been averse to hating an unfortunate nation, because it worships God in another way. I have always lamented that we have driven the Jews to deceive us by an oppressive political yoke. For, what else can they do, in order to live? in what other way can they defray their heavy taxes?"
Diez, Dohm's excellent friend, one of the noblest men of that epoch, afterwards Prussian ambassador to the Turkish court, thought that Dohm had asked far too little for the Jews.
"You aver most truly," he remarked, "that the present moral depravity of the Jews is a consequence of their bondage. But to color the picture, and weaken the reproaches leveled at the Jews, a representation of the moral depravity of the Christians would have been useful; certainly it is not less than that of the Jews, and rather the cause of the latter."
John von Müller, the talented historian of the Swiss, with his wide attainments in general history, also admired the glorious antiquity of the Jews, praised Dohm's efforts on behalf of the Jews, and supplied him from the treasures of his knowledge with new proofs of the unjust and pitiless persecution of the mediæval Jews, and their demoralization by intolerable tyranny. He wished the writings of Maimuni, "the Luther of the Jews," to be translated into one of the European languages.
Naturally, hostile pamphlets were not wanting. Especially noteworthy was an abusive tract, published in Prague, entitled "Upon the Inutility of the Jews in the Kingdoms of Bohemia and Moravia," in which the author indulged in common insults against the Jews, and revived all the charges of poisoning wells, sedition, and other pretexts for their expulsion. This scurrilous work was so violent, that Emperor Joseph forbade its circulation (March 2, 1782). A bitter opponent of the Jews at this time was Frederick Traugott Hartmann. And why? Because he had been cheated out of a few pennies by Jewish hawkers. On account of their venomous tone, however, these writings harmed the Jews less than those of the German pedants.
To these belonged a famous scholar of authority, John David Michaelis, the aged professor at Göttingen. His range of vision had been widened by travels and observation, and he had cut himself adrift from the narrowness of Lutheran theology. Michaelis was the founder of the rationalist school of theologians, who resolved the miracles and the sublimity of the Holy Scriptures into simple natural facts. Through his "Mosaic Law," and cultivation of Hebrew grammar and exegesis, he gained high repute. But Michaelis had exactly that proportion of unbelief and belief which made him hate the Jews as the bearers of revealed religion and a miraculous history, and despise them as antagonists of Christianity. A Jewish officer in the French army, when it was stationed in Göttingen, had given but a grudging salute in return for the slavish obeisances of the professors, which they held as due to every Frenchman. This was ground enough for Michaelis to abominate the Jews one and all, and to affirm that they were of despicable character. Michaelis had several years before remarked, on the appearance of Lessing's drama "The Jew," "that a noble Jew was a poetic impossibility." Experience had disproved this assertion through Mendelssohn and other persons; but a German professor cannot be mistaken. Michaelis adhered to his opinion that the Jews were an incorrigible race. Now he condemned the Jews from a theological point of view, now from political considerations. It is hard to say whether it is to be called insensibility, intellectual dullness, or malice, when Michaelis blurts out with:
"It seems to me, that here in Germany they (the Jews) already have everything that they could possibly desire, and I do not know what he (Dohm) wishes to add thereto. Medicine, philosophy, physics, mathematics, they are not excluded from,—and he himself does not wish them to have offices."