History of the Jews, Vol. 5 (of 6)

by Heinrich Graetz

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leaders of the German community, who were more inconsiderate than the Portuguese in their opposition to those who had withdrawn from their midst, removed from their posts, probably through the action of the French ambassador Noel.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.