It was in Vienna that the subservient humility of the Jew was first turned into self-respect, and this in spite of the political oppression which lasted until the year of the Revolution. The aversion felt by the barbarous Polish Jews to civilization gradually disappeared, giving way to a desire for self-improvement. The Viennese community thereby obtained historical importance. The tones that resounded from the pulpit and the choir, stirring the members of the congregation, awoke a mighty echo in the near and remote communities of Austria. Pesth, Prague, and smaller communities in Hungary and Bohemia followed the impulse given by Vienna, influenced by the conciliatory manner with which the "purified divine service" was there conducted, and the movement commenced in Vienna extended to Galicia.
The election of Chacham Bernays as head of the Hamburg congregation, and Mannheimer's activity in establishing the order of service in the Vienna synagogue, gradually aroused the emulation of other German communities. Educated rabbis were preferred, and they restored dignity to the synagogue. The German Jews in turn made their influence felt in France and Italy. The Franco-Jewish consistories having neglected the favorable opportunity to be leaders, offered by French supremacy, had to content themselves with being followers. In Italy those of the communities that belonged to Austria also felt the impulse originating in Germany, although sermons in the vernacular or in Spanish had been delivered there since olden times, and the divine service, at least outwardly, showed no signs of neglect.
How great the harm that can be done through unsoundness of mind or nebulous theories even by distinguished men, or how, at least, they can nullify their own efforts, was proved by a striking example in Berlin, in most remarkable contrast to that in Vienna. At the time when the learned mob of Germany were flinging stones at the Jews with the cry of "Hep, hep!" three Jewish young men met together to plan a sort of conspiracy against the incorrigible Christian state, all three filled with earnest ideals. They pondered carefully the means to be employed in destroying the deeply-rooted hatred against Jews in Germany. The first of the three was Zunz who lived to grow grey in research; the second, Edward Gans, the champion and apostle of Hegel's philosophy and the assailant of the old ways of jurisprudence; and lastly, an accountant who lived in a literary world, Moses Moser, Heine's most trusted friend, whom he called, "The édition de luxe of a real man, the epilogue of Nathan the Wise." They combined (November 27, 1819) for the purpose of founding a "Society for the Culture and Science of the Jews." Gans, who was of a mercurial nature, and might have been the leader of a revolution, was the chief of this movement. These three young men secured the aid of two others similarly disposed, who were enthusiastic for science, freedom, and idealism. The two fossilized Mendelssohnians, Ben-David and David Friedländer, also became members of the society, and Jacobson was ready with advice and assistance. In all it numbered about fifty members in Berlin; in Hamburg it owned about twenty of the supporters of the Temple Union, and a few others scattered in one place and another. As already mentioned, Heine afterwards attached himself to it, and worked for its success.
The first condition made by the founders was that the members were to adhere faithfully to Judaism, to withstand bravely the allurements of the Church, and thus give to the young generation a brilliant example of constancy and independence. Had it remained true to this programme, the society would have been a beneficent factor in the advancement of Judaism, seeing that most of its members were talented, and occupied the heights of culture. But it started from false premises, aimed at results too far removed, and employed the wrong means to attain the end. Practical minds were wanting in the society. The false premise was, that if the Jews acquired solid culture, devoted themselves to arts and science, and carried on agriculture and handicrafts instead of trade, German anti-Semitism would vanish, the sons of Teut would fraternally embrace the sons of Jacob, and the state would not deny them equal privileges. Therefore the society desired—their multitudinous wishes seem almost ludicrous—to establish schools, seminaries, and academies for the Jews, to promote trades, arts, agriculture, and scientific studies, and even educate them in the forms of polite society. From the idea of founding academies, however, only a sort of private school resulted, where the cultured members of the society taught or caused to be instructed poor youths who had come to Berlin principally from Poland, students of the Talmud who escaped from its folios to learn "wisdom." The founders soon perceived that they had built castles in the air, and that the Society for Culture, on account of its pretentious character, met with no support. They therefore took up a less exalted position, limiting themselves to mere agitation, and to the promotion of the science of Judaism,—certainly a praiseworthy enterprise and a pressing necessity. They determined to deliver discourses in turn, and to establish a journal for the "Science of Judaism." But the leaders themselves did not exactly know what was meant by this term, nor how to commence their work.
Hegel, the profound thinker and great sophist, the court and church philosopher, introduced these young Jews, ardent in the pursuit of truth, into the labyrinths of his method, and confused their minds. Young Israel, the founders of the Society for Culture, at first listened to the utterances of this philosophical acrobat as to oracles. In a parrot-like manner they repeated after him, that Judaism is the religion of the spirit, which has given up the ghost, and that Christianity has united in itself the whole of ancient history, and radiates its ideas in a rejuvenated, ennobled form. They also accustomed themselves, like their master, to walk upon stilts. The simplest thoughts were presented in distorted forms, as though they did not wish to be understood. How, indeed, could feeling for Judaism have awakened in them? Edward Gans, it is true, was continually speaking of the "unrelieved pain of Judaism," but was all the time thinking of himself, who could not obtain a position in Prussia. What was the aim of the science of Judaism which this Society for Culture desired to promote? Gans expressed it in the hollow phrases of the Hegelian jargon, and it is apparent that the leader did not know what cause his followers were to defend.
"The Jews cannot perish, nor can Judaism be utterly destroyed. But in the great movement of the whole, it is to seem to have perished, still it is to continue to live, as the stream lives on in the ocean."
The Society desired to assist in demolishing the wall of separation dividing Jews from Christians, and the Jewish world from the European. It wished to abolish every dissimilarity existing between the Jewish and the universal system.
The journal of the Society for Culture testified to the uncertainty and obscurity of its aim. Its articles consisted chiefly of indigestible Hegelian phraseology, or of learned matter of use to an exceedingly limited circle as material for further work. Heine, who called a spade by its name, bluntly declared to the editor of the journal, "That the greater part of it is useless owing to its obscure form."
"Did I not know by chance what Marcus [one of the contributors] and Gans are aiming at, I should not understand anything of what they write.... Insist upon culture of style with your contributors. Without this, the other culture cannot thrive."
Yet with this farrago of nonsense the Society hoped to elevate not only the Jews, but even Judaism, and were indignant that the former paid no regard to their efforts. Gans, in an article giving an account of their plans, complained that the founders were not understood. The reproach which he cast upon the Jews in general was especially true of the Society for Culture—