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.
[CHAPTER 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.