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

In the frenzy of the Reign of Terror, which like a scourge of God fell upon the innocent and the guilty, some Jews also suffered. The familiarity of the Jews with persecutions, their acuteness, and the dexterity with which they effaced themselves, their obedience to the precept, "Bend thy head a moment, till the storm is passed," protected them against wide-spread massacre. In general, they were not stirred by the ambition to thrust themselves forward, or a desire to take part in affairs; nor did they give offense to the rulers of the hour. Thus the storm of the Revolution rushed over them without serious results.

The attack upon a belief in God, when the two blaspheming deputies, Chaumette and Hebert, succeeded in inducing the convention (November, 1793-May, 1794) to set up the religion of Reason, had likewise no effect upon the Jews. The intense hostility and anger felt to religion and the Divinity were directed only against Catholicism, or Christianity, by whose servants mankind had ever been degraded, who themselves had sacrificed myriads of victims, and during the Revolution had fomented a civil war. The Reign of Terror, the Massacre of September, and the Guillotine, had been conjured up by them almost as a sad, stern necessity, because, together with the feudal aristocracy, they were bitter enemies of freedom. The decree of the Convention ran thus: "The Catholic faith is annulled, and replaced by the worship of Reason." This represented not alone the mood of the most advanced, the Jacobins; it was the inclination of the French people to oppose the Church and its followers fiercely, because of a feeling that they are naturally hostile to liberty. Twenty days after the resolution of the Convention had been passed, more than 2,300 churches were transformed into Temples of Reason. The law included no provisions against Jews and Protestants. Only the magistrates or fanatically inclined members of clubs in the provinces, principally, it appears, in the old German districts, extended the order for the suppression of religion to the Jews also. In Nancy an official demanded of the Jews of the town, in the name of the city council, that they attend on an appointed day at the National Temple, and together with the clergy of other creeds renounce "their superstition," and further surrender all the silver and golden vessels of the synagogue. Brutal and riotous men forced their way into the synagogues, tore the Holy Writings from the Arks and burnt them, or searched the houses for books written in Hebrew in order to destroy them. Prayers in the synagogues of certain congregations were forbidden just as in the churches. By reason of the spy system which the revolutionary clubs supported, to enable them to oppose the imminent counter-revolution, even private meetings for religious purposes were attended with great danger. When the order of the Convention was issued, decreeing that every tenth day be observed as a day of rest, and making Sunday a working day, the Mayors of certain cities, as of Strasburg and Troyes, extended this decree also to the Sabbath. They commanded that Jewish merchants display their wares for sale on the Sabbath. In agricultural districts Jews were compelled, on the Sabbath and on Jewish Holidays, to mow and gather in the crops, and rabbis as well as bishops were molested. David Sinzheim, who lived in Strasburg, and afterwards became president of the great French Synhedrion, was forced to flee from town to town to escape imprisonment or death. In Metz the Jews dared not openly bake their Passover cakes, until a clever Jewish matron had the courage to explain to the officers of the Revolution that this bread had always been a symbol of freedom with the Jews. In Paris Jewish schoolmasters were compelled to conduct their pupils to the Temple of Reason into which the church of Notre Dame had been transformed on the Décadi. However, this persecution passed away without any serious effects. With the victory of the Thermidorians (9 Thermidor – July 27, 1794) over Robespierre, the Reign of Terror began to die out. The populace was anxious to resort to milder means. The equalization of the French Jews, once definitely settled, remained untouched through all changes of government. The new Constitution of the year Three of the Republic, or the Constitution of the Directory (autumn of 1795), recognized the adherents of Judaism, without further difficulty, as on an equal footing with all around them; moreover, it wiped away the last trace of inequality, inasmuch as the Catholic Church was no more than the synagogue acknowledged to be the state church. The law laid down the fundamental proposition, that no one can be compelled to contribute to the expenses of a church establishment, as the Republic subsidized none. Only the community of Metz had to suffer under some baneful effects of the Middle Ages.

Together with the victorious French troops of the Republic, the deliverance of the Jews, of the most oppressed race of the ancient world, advanced from one place to another. It took firm root in Holland, which had been changed into a Batavian Republic (beginning of 1795). Here several energetic Jews, among them Asser (Moses and Carolus), De Lemon, and Bromet, had joined a club, called Felix Libertate, which had taken the motto of the French Republic – Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.

These state maxims were on the whole adopted by the assembled States General (March 4, 1795). Although the 50,000 Jews of Holland, who formed the thirty-ninth part of the whole population of the country, and were divided into the Portuguese and German communities, might justly have regarded this land as their Paradise, they had hitherto been laboring under many disadvantages as compared with Christians. They were suffered to exist only as corporate bodies, little commonwealths, as it were, in the midst of larger ones. That they were excluded from public offices did not trouble them. But they were also debarred from several trade-guilds, and this was a matter of great importance to them. They had to contribute to the ruling church establishment and to its schools without deriving any benefit therefrom. Also, there was no lack of vexatious grievances. In Amsterdam, for instance, when a Jewish couple went to register their wedding, they were compelled to wait till Christians had been attended to, and, besides, to pay double fees. On this account the demand for equalization became pressing, more on the part of the German than on that of the Portuguese Jews, the latter, wealthy and of noble birth, being generally treated with distinction by the patricians, whilst the Germans were despised as wretched Poles. In the first excitement of the agitation several disabilities of the Jews of Holland or Batavia were removed, and voices were raised in favor of their admission to full civil rights. But later on, as in France, writings hostile to the Jews roused public opinion against them. Amongst these Van Swieden's work, entitled "Advice to the Representatives of the People," especially produced a great impression.

He asserted that owing to their origin, their character, their history, and their belief in the Messiah, the Jews remained strangers, and could not be absorbed by the state. This statement was in a measure accepted by the official representatives of Judaism as correct. For strangely enough the rabbis and administrators of Jewish affairs, especially the powerful Parnassim in Amsterdam, alike in the Portuguese and German communities, were averse to equalization. They feared that Judaism would suffer from the great freedom of the Jews and from their new duties, such as military service.

In a circular letter they declared that the Jews renounced citizenship, seeing that it was opposed to the commands of Holy Writ. Within a short time this declaration was covered with more than one thousand signatures. Although Jews were invited, but few took part in the election of the first Batavian National Assembly (Nationale Vergadering). Thus it happened that Amsterdam, which contained more than 20,000 Jews, did not return a single Jewish deputy. The Jewish friends of liberty in Holland were in a sorry plight, having to combat enemies within and without. They were driven to exert all their energy to overcome this double difficulty. David Friedrichsfeld, a member of the school of the Measfim, who had settled in Amsterdam, composed an excellent work (about 1795) against the assailants of the Jews, called "Investigation of Van Swieden's Work in Reference to the Civil Rights of the Jews." Beside him, six distinguished and intelligent Jews – most of them of German descent – developed the greatest zeal to accomplish the emancipation of the Jews of Holland. They were: Herz Bromet, who had long lived in Surinam, where he was recognized as a free citizen, and whence he had brought a knowledge of politics and a fortune; Moses Asser, who had been appointed knight of the Belgian Order of the Lion; another Asser, Carolus, and Isaac de Jonghe, all distinguished members of the German community. Only two of the Portuguese community participated in the endeavor to obtain equalization of rights: the highly respected physician Herz de Lemon, and Jacob Sasportas. They presented a petition to the Batavian National Assembly (March 29, 1796), which held its sittings at the Hague, demanding the emancipation of the Batavian Jews as a right; inasmuch as they were citizens of the Batavian Republic, possessing the franchise, and had already exercised civil rights, they prayed the Assembly to declare that they might enjoy this privilege in its entirety. The National Assembly considered the petition, and appointed a commission to advise and decide upon it. When the Jewish question came on for discussion (August, 1796), excitement ran high, and the tension between the parties was great.

Although the emancipation of the Jews in the Batavian Republic had been recognized in principle, and practically acknowledged by the permission to vote at the election, there were still many opponents to contend against, almost more than in France. The conservative Dutch deputies in their hearts believed firmly in the Bible, and they considered as the word of God the writings of the New Testament, in which it was said that the Jews were outcasts, and should remain so. The relatively large number of Jews, their wealth, respectability, and intelligence, gave cause for grave fears that they would make their way into the highest offices of the state, and expel the Christians. Sixty or a hundred thousand Jews, in the great territory of France, were lost like a grain of sand in an immense plain, but fifty thousand among two millions, especially twenty thousand Jews in Amsterdam among two hundred thousand Christians, might make themselves felt, and effect their purpose. One of the deputies, Lublink de Jonghe, dwelt upon this state of affairs with great emphasis. If the friends of the Jews pointed to America, where, as in France, they had recently attained to full civil rights, then he brought into prominence the unequal proportion of numbers; in Holland their great number would soon invest the populace with Jewish characteristics. The noble Portuguese might be admitted to full rights; but as to the German Jews, the majority of whom were outcasts, Lublink de Jonghe quoted Pinto's work against Voltaire, in which he, a Jew himself, had plainly shown the vast difference between the Portuguese and the German Jews. Thus the artificial caste feeling, within the fold of Judaism, brought about its own revenge. The fear was still greater that the number of the Jews in Holland might be considerably increased by immigrants from Germany and Poland, whose goal, for a long time past, had been Amsterdam. Opponents to the scheme of equalization could further adduce the argument that the majority of Jews did not desire emancipation, and that the six petitioners had acted without authority. Noel, the French ambassador, in somewhat imperious fashion, took the first step in favor of the equalization of the Jews. After a long debate, the complete equality of the Batavian Jews was finally decreed (September 2, 1796), with the addition, for those who wished to make use of it. Thereupon all earlier provincial and municipal laws which referred to their disabilities were abolished.

The Jews in Holland did not receive the announcement of this decision with joy, as those in France, when the rights of equality had been granted them. They had not felt the deprivation of liberty enough to go into ecstasies about their new freedom. They had no ambition to obtain state offices, and saw in citizenship only a burden and a danger to religion. They therefore were embittered against those who had procured their equalization, and so had broken asunder the bonds which held the two congregations together as corporate bodies. Thus there arose causes for dispute and internal dissension in Amsterdam.

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.

If the Jews met with no favor in the eyes of those who formed public opinion in Germany, who had raised it from antiquated customs to a brilliant height of culture, both in the democratic and in the aristocratic camps, but experienced at their hands only repulse and scorn, how much worse was their relation to the great mass of the populace, still engulfed in the depths of darkest ignorance and crudeness! Two noble-minded Christians addressed to the Congress of Rastadt the soundest arguments that the German Jews should be raised from their ignominious condition. One of them, an unknown philanthropist, hurled the shaft of ridicule at the stupidity and bombastic haughtiness of the German Jew-haters, and the other, Christian Grund, demonstrated with pitiless logic the injustice with which the Jews were treated. Both desired to support the demand of the Dutch Jews to the diplomatic representatives, that the princes of Germany be compelled to respect the Jews, and that influence be brought to bear upon public opinion to that effect. Grund acted as a clever advocate for the Jews; he complimented the Germans in order to win favor with them. "The German Jews," said he, "venture to approach the German nation, capable of great deeds, the creator of its own destinies, not merely an imitator of the actions of other peoples, uniting their voice with that of their brethren, to petition the representatives of the nation at Rastadt most respectfully for the abolition of those distinctions under which they live, and for the acquisition of greater rights." The answer of the German princes and rulers was not very encouraging.