The Kabbalists - The Hassidic Movement - The Enlightenment

The Kabbalists

   

In the 16th century, the mountaintop town of Tzfat became the center of Jewish mysticism - the Kabbalah.

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In the past few installments, we have been relating the events in the history of the Jews that happened during a period known as the Renaissance (1350 to 1650).

During this time we saw: a resurgence of classical knowledge and the waning power of the Church; the advent of the Spanish Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews from various countries; the growth of Protestantism as a new offshoot of Christianity; the Golden Age of Polish Jewry and the Ukrainian massacres of Bogdan Chmielnicki. (See Parts 48, 49, and 50.)

Where was the Jewish world as the Renaissance was drawing to a close?

Geographically, about half the Jewish population was located in the Middle East, with a high concentration in Turkey and the lands of the Ottoman Empire. And about half in Europe, with a high concentration in Eastern Europe (Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania.)

That is not to say that all the Jews lived there. In fact, there were Jews literally the world over, including India and China. But for the purposes of a Crash Course in Jewish History, we are focusing on the large Jewish population centers.

OTTOMAN EMPIRE

From the year 638 (six years after the death of Mohammed) when Caliph Omar invaded Jerusalem, the Land of Israel had been in Muslim hands - with the very short exception of the Crusades (1099 to 1187) - and would continue to be until the end of World War I in 1917.

During the years of the Renaissance—from 1516 onward—that Muslim power belonged to the Ottoman Empire based in Istanbul. It is important to note that although they were Muslims, the Ottomans were not Arabs - they were Turks.

The Turks were traditionally good to the Jews. We already saw how following the expulsion from Spain, Jews were welcomed into Ottoman lands by Sultan Bayezid II, who declared: “They tell me that Ferdinand of Spain is a wise man but he is a fool. For he takes his treasure and sends it all to me.”

As the Ottoman Empire spread, the Turks came to Israel, and it was the greatest of the Ottoman sultans, known as “Suleiman the Magnificent,” who re-built the walls of Jerusalem.

It is fascinating that Suleiman is Arabic for Solomon - and that it is his walls that define the Old City of Jerusalem to this day.

At this time many Jews started to return to the Land of Israel, and particularly to the city of Tzfat (sometimes spelled Safed). In less than 100 years the population of Tzfat grew from a mere 300 families to 10,000 people thus making it the largest Jewish population in Israel at that the time .

And during this time Tzfat gave birth to some amazing contributions to Jewish scholarship.

First, we must mention Rabbi Jacob Berav (1475 to 1546). He’s very significant because he tried to do something which had not been done in the Jewish world for well over 1,000 years. He tried to re-institutesemichah, “rabbinic ordination.” Semichah is a “proper” rabbinic ordination which would come in a direct line from teacher to student traceable all the way back to Moses. It had been interrupted during Roman persecutions. Rabbis were still “ordained” but these ordinations were neither “proper” nor “official” in the way Jewish law intended them to be.

Based on a statement of Maimonides, Rabbi Berav thought it could be done properly again if it was supported by all of the Rabbis in Israel He ordained himself and a few other scholars, but his attempt at re-institutingsemichah was not successful. The rabbis in Jerusalem didn’t recognize it, and, to this day, rabbinical ordination is symbolic only.

One of the few people that Rabbi Berav ordained was Rabbi Joseph Karo. Rabbi Karo (1488 to 1575) was among the Jews expelled from Spain, and he had made his way through Europe and Turkey and finally ended in Tzfat. There he wrote one of the most important books in Judaism - theShulchan Aruch “The Prepared Table” - and it is a code of Jewish law which is followed to this day.

Before him, Rabbi Jacob ben Asher, (know as the Tur) had attempted to organize Jewish law in a book called the Arba Turim (“Four Sections). Rabbi Joseph Karo took the Arba Turim and spent 32 years writing a commentary to it, which he called Beit Yoseph, “House of Joseph,” and which he later condensed into the Shulchan Aruch.

Rabbi Karo was Sephardi, and Rabbi Moses Isserles (known as Ramah), a Polish rabbi from Krakow, wrote an Ashkenazi commentary to the Shulchan Aruch (
see Part 49). To this day, the Shulchan Aruch by Joseph Karo, as amended by Moses Isserles and with its later commentaries, dictates Jewish law.

While Joseph Karo is today most famous for his book of law, he was a mystic. And it is no coincidence that he made his home in Tzfat, because in his day Tzfat became the center of Jewish mysticism.

JEWISH MYSTICISM

What is Jewish mysticism?

Jewish mysticism is more popularly known as Kabbalah.1

Kabbalah (“that which was received”) is an interpretation of the Torah that focuses on the deepest, esoteric teachings of Judaism. According to Jewish tradition, this level of understanding of the Torah was revealed at Mt. Sinai, but because of its complexity, it was reserved for only a few initiated few. With time, that secret interpretation became more widely known and finally published and disseminated generally (though few could understand it).

The key work of Kabbalah is the Zohar—the “Book of Splendor.” The contents of this book were first revealed by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in approximately 100 CE, while he lived in a cave, hiding out from the Romans.

Rabbi Moses de Leon (1240-1305), a Spanish rabbi, was the first to publish the Zohar, though he never claimed to be the author. Furthermore, the teachings which he published were not organized into a coherent whole and, as before, few could understand them.

Then Rabbi Moshe Cordevero of Tzfat (1522-1570), better known as the Ramak, entered the picture. The Ramak rationally systematized all of Kabbalistic thought up to his time, in particular the teachings of the Zohar. In his work, Pardes Rimonim, “The Pomegranate Orchard,” the Ramak demonstrated the underlying unity of Kabbalistic tradition by organizing the various, often seemingly contradictory, teachings into a coherent system.

The core of the Ramak’s system consisted of a detailed description of how God created reality through the ten sefirot - channels of Divine energy. Understanding these ten forces is key in the study of Kabbalah today. (See Kabbalah 101 series on aish.com)

But perhaps the most famous figure in the development of Kabbalah as we know it today was Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-1572), popularly called the Ari.

The Ari was born in Jerusalem but subsequently relocated to Tzfat, arriving there on the day of the Ramak’s funeral. He lived there only two years, dying at the age of 38, but in that short period of time he revolutionized the study of Kabbalah. In fact, his teachings - which were chiefly recorded by his disciple Rabbi Chaim Vital - virtually dictate the study of Kabbalah.

The Ari’s system was different from that of the Ramak in that, rather than seeing the sefirot as one-dimensional points, he saw them as dynamically interacting partzufim, “personae,” each with a symbolically human-like character.

In his understanding, human actions can impact on the sefirot —which channel Divine energy into the world - and can either facilitate or impede the advancement of creation toward its intended state of perfection.

The Ari also advanced the study of reincarnation, which he explained inSha’ar He Gilgulim “The Gate of Reincarnation.”

During this period of time, many people came to study Kabbalah in Tzfat and legends are told of the Kabbalists, all dressed in white, walking out in the fields on the evening of Shabbat, singing the song welcoming the Shabbat Queen: Lecha Dodi Likrat Kallah, “Come My Beloved to Greet the Bride.” (This famous song/poem was written in the 16th century by Rabbi Solomon HaLevi Alkabetz.) The Kabbalat Shabbat service to welcome the Shabbat on Friday evening was created in Tzfat in the 16th century.

SHABBETAI TZVI, THE FALSE MESSIAH

Mysticism, because it often attempts to explain the deeper meaning behind the events of history, is often associated with Messianic expectation. But Messianic expectation - which is one of the Thirteen Principles of Faith as outlined by Maimonides—can sometimes be misplaced and lead to big problems for the Jewish people.

This happened in the late 1600s and Jewish history of the previous 150 years - the expulsions, the Inquisition, the Chmielnicki massacres - set the scene. Jewish morale was low. It seemed that things could not get any worse. Surely, the time had arrived for the Messiah to come to the rescue.

At this time, a so-called mystic named Shabbetai Tzvi became prominent. Born in 1626 in Smyrna, Turkey, he was by all accounts a brilliant, charismatic if emotionally volatile man. By the age of 20, he was already given the title of chacham, “wise man,” by the members of his community, though not too long after - when his behavior became erratic and people come to realize that though brilliant, he was also mentally unstable—he was thrown out by them.

He started to wander the Middle East, and in 1651 he made his way to Israel, specifically to Gaza. There he met another so-called mystic by the name of Nathan of Gaza, who became his promoter. It was Nathan who convinced Shabbetai Tzvi that he was the Messiah, and he started sending letters to all Jewish communities that the Messiah had come to Israel.

One account of what happens next comes from a primary source, a Jewish woman living in Germany named “Gluckel of Hamelin” whose memoirs give us insight into the life of European Jewry in the 17th century. She writes:

“About this time people began to talk of Shabbetai Tzvi but woe unto us that we have sinned and never lived to see what we heard and I believed. Throughout the world servants and children rent themselves with repentance, prayer and charity for two, yeah for three years my beloved people Israel sat in labor but there came forth naught but wind.

  “Our joy when the letters arrive from Smyrna is not to be told. Most of them were addressed to Sephardim. As fast as they came they took the letters to the synagogue and read them aloud. Young and old the Germans too hastened to the Sephardic synagogues.

  “Many sold their houses and lands and all their possessions for the day they hoped to be redeemed. My good father-in-law left his home in Hamelin, abandoned his house and lands and all of his goodly furniture. Full well we know the Most High has given us word and were we not so wicked but truly pious from the bottom of our hearts, I’m certain God would have mercy on us. If only we kept the commandment, ‘thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,’ but God forgive us for the way we keep it. No good can come from the jealousy and thoughtless hate that rules our lives…“2

From this account, we see how eager Jews were for the Messiah to come after the many persecutions, and how easily they were swept up by Messianic fervor.

It must be noted however, that even though Shabbetai Tzvi had a huge following in the Jewish world (much more than Jesus ever had), the majority of the European rabbis, who saw how Shabbetai Tzvi was changing, deviating from or violating Jewish law, were not fooled and warned against him.

Meanwhile Shabbetai Tzvi, believing his own story, went to pay a call on the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire to demand recognition as the Messiah. He also wanted the Sultan to hand over the Land of Israel to him.

The Sultan, not impressed, promptly threw him in jail and then threatened to torture him to death if he did not convert to Islam.

So Shabbetai Tzvi converted. For his cooperation, he was even given a royal title, Aziz Mechmed Efendi, and a position, “Keeper of the Sultan’s Gate.” He continued to claim that he was the Messiah and the Sultan eventually exiled him.

Of course, as soon as he converted to Islam, the Jewish world stopped believing that he was the Messiah. Some Jews though wouldn’t admit they were fooled - they converted to Islam along with him. This group - the Doenmeh—survived as a special Muslim sect within Turkey until World War I when the Ottoman Empire fell.

BACKLASH

As a result of what happened with Shabbetai Tzvi, there was a backlash that continued for many years after his death. The opponents of the Sabbatean movement (the followers of Shabbetai Tzvi during his lifetime and after his death), to whom no one had listened when Messianic fervor swept world Jewry—particularly Rabbi Tzvi Ashkenazi of Amsterdam, who was known as the Chacham Tzvi and his son, Rabbi Yaakov Emden - came out blaming Jewish mysticism for the fiasco. This time people listened to them.

As a result of this backlash, some brilliant Kabbalists were unfairly condemned, hounded out of town and their books burned.

One of those was the Italian rabbi, Moshe Chaim Luzatto, known as the Ramchal (1707-1747). A great Kabbalist and a brilliant profound thinker, he wrote a book which is still intensely studied today, Mesilat Yesharim, “The Path of the Just.” But because he his mystical inclinations aroused fears of more false messianism, he was hounded out of Italy, and he came to Israel where he died at age 40.

His contribution to Jewish studies was not appreciated until after his death. Rabbi Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman, the Vilna Gaon (“Genius of Vilna”), later said about the works of the Ramchal that his understanding of Judaism was perfect, and that if the Ramchal were alive in Vila Gaon’s time, he would have walked from Vilna to Italy to sit at the Ramchal’s feet and learn.

However, the Vilna Gaon, while praising the Ramchal, condemned another brilliant rabbi whose teachings were based on Kabbalah—the famous founder of the Hassidic movement, the Ba’al Shem Tov. That story follows.

1 Because it is by definition esoteric, no popular account (including this book) can provide a complete, precise, and accurate explanation of the Kabbalah. Because of the great difficulty involved in truly mastering Kabbalistic text, study of Kabbalah has traditionally been limited to older scholars who have already mastered the study of the Written and Oral Law. Because Kabbalah is associated with Jewish mysticism it has always been an alluring subject to the masses as we see today. The problem is that to truly begin to understand Kabbalah one must have significant knowledge of the entire corpus of all of Jewish learning: The entire Hebrew Bible, Mishnah, Talmud, Midrash etc.(and it goes with out saying a mastery of Hebrew and Aramaic). Modern, attempts to spread the study of Kabbalah amongst the masses of poorly educated Jews and even non-Jews are often ill-conceived, ineffectual and misleading. Trying to seriously study Kabbalah without having first mastered the rest of the Torah would be equivalent to trying to study advanced astrophysics before mastering basic addition and subtraction.
2 See: The Memoirs of Gluckel of Hameln, (Schocken Books, 1977), pp.46-47.

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#51 of 70 in the Aish.com Jewish History Series
<< Previous Part 50: The Reformation and the Jews	Next >> Part 52: The Hassidic Movement

The Hassidic Movement

   

Initially a movement largely of the poor and uneducated, Hassidism introduced Kabbalah and spirituality into everyday life.

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The Hassidic movement—the movement of the “pious ones” or Chassidut, in Hebrew—was founded in the 18th century in Eastern Europe by Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, who became known as the Ba’al Shem Tov, which means “Master of the Good Name.”

He was born in 1698 in Okup, in Podolia province (of what is now Ukraine) near the Dniester River. The Ba’al Shem Tov (who was also known as theBesht) was a poor orphan child who worked in the Carpathian Mountains as a laborer. During this time he studied with a secret society of Jewish mystics, the Nestarim, and he eventually became a revered rabbi.

He traveled from community to community, developing a reputation wherever he went as a spiritual holy man and mystical healer, attracting a huge following.

His teachings revolutionized the demoralized, persecuted Jews of Eastern Europe.

After the pogroms and massacres, (
see Part 49), large parts of Eastern European Jewry had slipped into dire poverty. In addition to the tremendous physical destruction wrought by the Chmielnicki massacres, the tremendous disappointment caused by the false Messiah Shabbetai Tzvi (see Part 51) left much of the Jewish population of Eastern Europe in a collective state of deep depression. One of the victims of this situation was Jewish scholarship, with only an elite few studying in yeshivas while the rest eked out a meager living. As a result of the decrease in scholarship, Jewish religious life suffered—with the average Jew not connecting either intellectually or spiritually with God. And this is what the Ba’al Shem Tov sought to change.

His teachings (he left no writings) brought about a whole movement which emphasized the idea of bringing God into all aspects of one’s life, particularly through intense prayer and joyous singing. He taught that even the deeds of the simplest Jew, if performed correctly and sincerely, were equal to those of the greatest scholars.

Hassidic thought stressed the importance of devekut or “clinging to God.” This involves feeling the presence of God in all aspects of one’s existence and not just through Torah study and observance of the commandments.

The following parable describes the way the early Hassidic masters diagnosed the situation:

An apprentice blacksmith, after he had learned his trade from the master, made a list for himself of how he must go about his craft. How he should pump the bellows, secure the anvil, and wield the hammer. He omitted nothing. When he went to work at the king’s palace, however, he discovered to his dismay that he could not perform his duties, and was dismissed. He had forgotten to note one thing-perhaps because it was so obvious-that first he must ignite a spark to kindle the fire. He had to return to the master, who reminded him of the first principle which he had forgotten.(1)

Trying to infuse one’s life with spirituality in all aspects caught on very rapidly among the simple Jews in particular. Very rapidly, especially in Eastern Europe, thousands upon thousands of Jews were drawn to the Hassidic movement.

HASSIDIC DYNASTIES

When the Ba’al Shem Tov died in 1760, he was succeeded by Rabbi Dov Ber or Mezrich whose disciples went off to develop particular streams within the Hassidic movement and to found their own dynasties. There were many significant personalities in this group. (For those interested in reading about them, see Chassidic Masters: History, Biography and Thought by Aryeh Kaplan.) We will mention just a few:

• Rabbi Dov Ber (1704-1772). Known as the Maggid of Mezritch, he succeeded the Ba’al Shem Tov as head of the Hassidic movement and further developed many of the movement’s philosophies. Incidentally, the great psychologist Carl G. Jung, nearing his death, said that all of his advances in psychology were preempted by Rabbi Dov Ber, which gives you an idea of the Maggid’s insights into human nature. (See C.G. Jung Speaking, p. 271-272.)
• Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, (1745-1812). He was known as the Alter Rebbe and the Ba’al HaTanya. He wrote the famous work, the Tanya, and founded the Lubavitch sect of Hassidism. The Lubavitch Hassidim are known as Chabad—which is an acronym for chochmah, (“wisdom”), binah (“understanding”) and da’at (“knowledge.”) According to Kabbalah, these are the three highestintellectual of the ten sefirot - channels of Divine energy - and their name for this Hassidic sect hints how much its teachings are steeped in Kabbalah.
• Rabbi Nachman of Breslav (1772-1811) was the great-grandson of the Ba’al Shem Tov. He was a gifted strory-teller and is perhaps best known for his allegorical stories of beggars and princes through which he tried to teach deep truths to simple people. He founded the Breslaver sect of Hassidism.

Hassidic sects have names like Kotzk, Sanz, Belz, Satmar, Lubavitch, Skvar. These were all names of communities in places like Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, etc. When these Hassidic communities moved, they took the names with them. So today in Israel you have Kiryat (city or district) Sanz, Kiryat Belz. In New York, there are the New Square Hassidim - they were the Skvar Hassidim whose original name became anglicized to Square.

The movement had a huge impact in spiritually revitalizing the Jewish world. It kept a lot of Jews in Judaism and put a lot of joy back into Judaism.

Writes Aryeh Kaplan (in his essay “A World Beyond” in Chassidic Masters: History, Biography and Thought p. 4):

“Hassidism uplifted the masses, but it would be wrong to suppose that its teachings were designed solely as a kind of spiritual medicine, necessary when one is ill, but of no value for the healthy. An important teaching of Hassidism is that its insights are important to the spiritual well-being of every Jew. Although its masters aimed much of their energies at helping poor, illiterate Jews, it would be incorrect to say that this was the main characteristic of Hassidism, since the movement also brought new vision and depth to the entire body of Jewish thought.”

THE OPPOSITION

As it spread, the Hassidic movement also attracted tremendous opposition from those more traditionally and intellectually-minded Rabbis, the majority of whom were against the Hassidic movement.

The major personality who was opposed to the Hassidic movement was Rabbi Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman, known as the Vilna Gaon (“Genius of Vilna”) and also the Gra (acronym for the “Gaon Rabbi Elijah”) who lived in this time period (1720-1797). The Vilna Gaon was a brilliant scholar who made an enormous impact on Jewish learning. A person of wide-ranging interests and author of some 70 books on various subjects, the Vilna Gaon seemed to excel in every aspect of scholarship. He knew Jewish law, Kabbalah, mathematics, astronomy, physics, anatomy. He barely slept; he just catnapped four times a day for one hour, and the rest of the time he studied. Whenever he got tired, he stuck his feet in a bucket of cold water to wake himself up. He never wanted to waste a minute. Although he never made it to Israel, he sent many of his students to live there.

What worried the Vilna Gaon was not so much the Kabbalistic aspects of Hassidism (after all, he himself had studied Kabbalah) but the potential for producing another false messiah (like Shabbetai Tzvi whose story we covered in Part 51. The Vilna Gaon also objected to the Hassidic concept that God is “in all things” as too close to pantheism or the idea that everything was equally holy.(2)

He was also concerned about the concept of the rebbe (as the leader of each Hassidic sect was called) because he felt that the Hassidic concept that a person elevates himself spiritually simply by “attaching” himself to a holy person (a rebbe) was an idolatress idea.

Another significant concern of the Vilna Gaon was de-intellectualization of Torah. The Hassidic movement was largely a movement of simple, uneducated Jews, and he worried that Jewish scholarship was going to be replaced by singing and dancing. A religion that was a synthesis of heart and mind would become all heart and no mind.

Finally, the Vilna Gaon, and many other rabbis strongly objected to the fact that the Hassidim had changed the text of the prayer as this was considered a serious break with tradition and wholly unacceptable.

The Vilna Gaon was so strongly opposed to the Hassidic movement that he and others like him came to be called misnagdim, which means “those who are against.” In 1772, the misnagdim excommunicated the hassidim, but the ban did not stick. The following is excerpts from the excommunication of Hassidim (April 1772):

Our brethren, sons of Israel…as you know, new people have appeared, unimagined by our forefathers….and they associate amongst themselves and their ways are different from other children of Israel in their liturgy…they behave in a crazed manner and say that their thoughts wander in all worlds…And they belittle the study of the Torah, and repeatedly claim that one should not study much, nor deeply regret ones’ transgressions…Therefore, we have come to inform our brethren, Children of Israel, from near and far…and top sound to them the voice of excommunication and banishment….Until they themselves repent completely….(3)

(For more on this subject, see Triumph of Survival by Berel Wein, pp. 86-119.)

While the creation of the Hassidic movement did initially cause a serious split in the Jewish world, it did not create a permanent separation. Today we can see hassidic sects who have become quite scholarship-minded, opening their own yeshivas and studying the Talmud intensely.

In hindsight we see that the Hassidic movement contributed significantly to the revitalization of Eastern European Jewry. It kept a lot of people connected to Judaism who could well have been lost because they didn’t have the time to study. And the pressure brought by the misnagdimagainst the hassidim acted as a brake in keeping them from going too far.

As a result of the Hassidic contribution, Judaism became stronger and more ready to face the assault from a new secular movement in the Western called “The Enlightenment.”

1. Raphael Jospe, ed., Great Schisms in Jewish History,(Ktav Publishing House, 1981), p. 129
2. Pantheism-The doctrine identifying the Deity with the various forces and workings of nature.
3. Paul Mendes -Flohr & Yehuda Reinharz ed., The Jew in the Modern World, (Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 390.

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#52 of 70 in the Aish.com Jewish History Series
<< Previous Part 51: The Kabbalists	Next >> Part 53: The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment

   

The Age of Reason gave Jews civil rights, but its emphasis on a Godless society was bound to backfire.

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The middle of the 17th century marked the end of the Renaissance. The new ideology that emerged in the post-Renaissance period—as a result of what came to be known as the Enlightenment—is an ideology that still permeates the Western world to a large extent. We have to understand this ideology and the Jewish people’s relationship to it in order to make sense out of what happens next in Jewish history.

The Enlightenment (1650-1850) was a period of time characterized by breakthroughs in thinking which steered the world away from religion and more and more toward secularism, humanism, individualism, rationalism, and nationalism.

Of all of these, it was rationalism that more than any other concept defined the Enlightenment, which was also called the “Age of Reason.”

In earlier installments, we spoke about how the Middle (Dark) Ages were dominated by the Church and were God-focused. Then came the Renaissance, a time that was more focused on humanity with emphasis on the arts and classical knowledge. The Enlightenment expanded the man-focus even further. At this time the human mind, rational thought, and empirical sciences took center stage. It was an age with total focus on the individual.

Because of it, we would eventually see many positive ideas and institutions emerging: liberal democracy, the scientific revolution, industrialization. But this focus on man also led to ideological attacks against some of the fundamental institutions of the Western world, including religion. Religion was viewed by many of the thinkers of the Enlightenment as an intellectual failing which was displaced by the ability of science to explain the unexplainable. Thus, a secular culture began to emerge as a very strong alternative to religion. The idea of a world without God took root in the Western world with big implications for Europe and the Jewish people.

As odd as it may sound, the less religious the Western world became, the better it treated the Jews. Christian fanatics killed Jews for various reasons as we have seen; the secularists, on the other hand, would do no such thing because the fact that a person was of a different religion did not matter to them. (What did matter more in this period was national, rather than religious identity.)

In tandem with secularism, the Enlightenment popularized the concept of individualism - each individual was valued and important, and along with this came an increased emphasis on civil rights.

On the surface, the emphasis on civil rights was good for the Jews. For the first time, the Western world started to look at the Jew as a human being. Edicts of toleration were issued, granting Jews certain basic (even if not equal) rights. One of the first such edict was issued by the French National Assembly in 1791.

The National Assembly, considering that the conditions requisite to be a French Citizen, and to become an active citizen, are fixed by the constitution, and that every man who, being duly qualified, takes the civic oath, and engages to fulfill the duties prescribed by the constitution, has a right to all the advantages it insures; Annuls all adjournments, restrictions, and exceptions, contained in the preceding decrees, affecting individuals of the Jewish persuasion, who shall take the civic oath…1

However, the problems with these ideas would surface and Jews would again be the victims.

THE BIG DIFFERENCE

The world without a God-given standard gets itself in trouble sooner or later.

Judaism believes that for an ideal world there must be a focus on both God and man. Because without a focus on God, all moral values become relative. Why is this bad? Well, for a while it might be nice to have respect for civil rights, but when it becomes convenient or necessary (for various social or political reasons) to change that focus, then respect for human life becomes just another idea that goes out of style. God-given values are immutable and can never go out of style. That’s a big difference.

This big difference explains how a key figure of the French Enlightenment, Jean Jacques Rousseau - the author of the Social Contract who espoused that human beings are equal - could have been so inhuman to his own children. Rousseau impregnated his young laundress five times and each time forced her to drop the newborn on the doorstep of an orphanage, the Hopital des Enfants-trouves. This was an orphanage he himself had written about, noting that two-thirds of the babies there die within a year, and most of those that survive don’t make it past age 7. His lofty ideas did not prevent him from practicing a modern version of infanticide. (See The Intellectuals by Paul Johnson, pp. 21-22.)

Likewise, all the talk of equality of man did not stop Francoise Voltaire from spewing out in his Dictionnaire Philosophique vicious anti-Semitic diatribes and singling out the Jews as “the most abominable people in the world.” Although he did state that Jews ought not to be killed, he cannot contain his hatred:

“In short we find them only ignorant and barbarous people with long united and most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition and the most invincible hatred of every people by whom they are tolerated…”

In contrast to France, the situation was very different in England (where the Puritan Revolution had a big influence) and in the New World, where again the Puritans figured prominently. The American Revolution came about as a result of the synthesis of very religious Bible-based ideas brought over by the pilgrims and the humanist ideas (such as “the inalienable rights of man”) advanced by John Locke. We see this clearly in the opening sentences of the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creatorwith certain inalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

The French Revolution did not have this synthesis. It was purely a secular movement. And there the problems with the philosophy of the Enlightenment became very apparent.

The French reformers, after executing the king and queen, Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette, by guillotine, unleashed the Reign of Terror, during which time 25,000 “counter-revolutionaries” were executed in a similarly bloody manner.

The Reign of Terror for all practical purposes brought to end the Age of Reason. The bloody brutality of the masses shocked much of the world and severely tested the Enlightenment’s belief that man could govern himself. A period of general unrest followed in France, marked by corruption ,runaway inflation and war with neighboring European states. All of it crashed when Napoleon Bonaparte came to power in a coup d’etat of 1804.

NAPOLEON AND THE JEWS

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), a Corsican officer, had himself crowned Emperor of France. During the ten years he held onto power, he embarked on a series of conquests which were unprecedented in modern history in terms of his rapid advance through Europe. A military genius, he took France on the offensive against the Austrian Empire, against the Italians, against the Russians. And he almost beat all of them, becoming the master of the Continent and rearranging the whole map of Europe.

(What brought him down was the Russian winter, and once other European countries saw that he was vulnerable, they joined together and defeated him first at Leipzig in 1813 and finally at Waterloo in 1815. Exiled as a prisoner of war to the island of Saint Helena, he died there either of cancer or by poisoning in 1821.)

As Napoleon marched through Europe, he liberated all the Jews from their ghettos. The idea of liberating the Jews and granting them civil rights had preceded him, but he really pushed it forward.

Napoleon was fascinated with the Jews, although he did not understand them. He wanted them to be accepted by the rest of European society, and he thought that they were not because they were different—if only they could become more like others, people would accept them.

My policy is to govern men as the great majority of them wish to be governed…If I were governing Jews, I should rebuild the temple of Solomon….[I plan] to revive among the Jews…the sentiments of civic morality that unfortunately have been moribund among too large a number of them by a state of abasement in which they have long languished. 2

So, he set about to help the Jews rid themselves of the things that set them apart. He advocated, for example, that one-third of all Jews must intermarry with non-Jews. His actions seemed more motivated by his desire to improve the position of the Jews of France rather than to preserve Judaism. Napoleon is quoted as saying “I will never accept any proposals that will obligate the Jewish people to leave France, because to me the Jews are the same as any other citizen in our country. It takes weakness to chase them out of the country, but it takes strength to assimilate them.“3

Twice, in 1806 and in 1807, Napoleon convened gatherings of prominent Jewish leaders to promote his platform for “saving” the Jews. Here are some excerpts from Napoleon’s Instructions to the Assembly of Jewish Notables (July 29, 1806):

The wish of His Majesty is that you should be Frenchmen; it remains with you to accept the proffered title…You will hear the questions submitted to you, your duty is to answer the whole truth on every one of them…Is divorce valid, when not pronounced by courts of justice, and by virtue of laws in contradiction with the French code? Can a Jewess marry a Christian, or a Jew a Christian women?...In the eyes of Jews are Frenchmen considered as brethren or as strangers? Do the Jews born in France, and treated by the law as French citizens consider France as their country…What kind of police-jurisdiction have the Rabbis among the Jews?4

The focus of these questions is obvious. Napoleon was asking the Jews to answer the great question that came out of emancipation: What is your primary identity? Are you first and foremost Jews or Frenchmen?

These religious leaders were astonished by these questions. On the one hand, they wanted to cooperate with Napoleon and make life easier for the Jews of Europe. On the other hand, they could not possibly acquiesce to some of Napoleon’s ideas which would have meant the destruction of Judaism. They answered him as diplomatically as possible, while sticking to `Jewish Law:

The only marriages expressly forbidden by the law, are those with the seven Canaanite nations, with Ammon and Moab, and with Egyptians…The prohibition in general applies only to nations in idolatry The Talmud declares formally that modern nations are not to be considered as such, since they worship, like us, the God of heaven and earth. And, accordingly, there have been, at several periods, intermarriage between Jew and Christians in France, in Spain, and in Germany…but we cannot deny that the opinion of the Rabbis is against these marriages. 5

Although Napoleon lost his wars in the end and ended up in exile, the things he put in motion had a huge ripple effect. By the end of the 19th century the notion of keeping Jews as non-citizens was no longer tenable in the more liberal environment in Europe.6 With time, Jews were granted citizenship in every country in Europe. Interestingly, the last two countries to grant Jews citizenship were Switzerland (1874) and Spain (1918).

This meant that by the late 19th century, Jews - who had been economically and physically marginalized, who had been locked out of any trades and professions - now were allowed (if not exactly welcomed) into all phases of European society.

Does that mean that the Enlightenment put an end to anti-Semitism?

Hardly.

It merely intellectualized it.

THE NEW ANTI-SEMITISM

Once the gates of the ghettos were thrown open, the Jews rose to the top quickly, gaining prominence and wealth. This doesn’t mean that, despite their achievement, they were accepted into general society. The times had changed, but not that much.

It is true that in Western Europe in the 19th century, there were no pogroms against the Jews. The post-Enlightenment society did not do things like that. Not in Western Europe anyway. (We will talk about Eastern Europe and particularly Russia in a future installment.)

But just because there were no pogroms doesn’t mean that the non-Jews suddenly began to love the Jews.

The new anti-Semitism of this time can be called “intellectual anti-Semitism.”

What that means is that people like Baron Lionel Rothschild - one of the most prominent and richest Jews in England - could not take a seat in the British Parliament after his election in 1847 because he refused to take an oath on the Christian Bible. It took eleven years and the passing of the “Jewish Disabilities Act” for him to have that right. (He became the first Jewish member of the British Parliament in 1858.)

In theory Jews had equal rights but in practice the story was very different. Many Jews saw conversion as the best way to advancement in enlightened Europe. A classic example was Benjamin Disraeli, who was twice the Prime Minister of England during the reign of Queen Victoria, and was only able to achieve that position because his family converted to the Church of England.

This attitude toward conversion could be best summed up by the German Jewish writer Heinrich (whose original name was Chayim) Heine, who was baptized as a Lutheran in 1825. “From the nature of my thinking you can deduce that baptism is a matter of indifference to me, that I do not regard it as important even symbolically…The Baptism certificate is the ticket of admission to European culture…“7

So yes, Jews were accepted into society as long as they were not too Jewish. If a Jew was willing to twist himself into taking an oath on the Christian Bible, or better yet, eschewing his religion, he was tolerated. If he insisted on being true to the Torah and the Hebrew, he was told to stay out.

(In the next installment, we will examine one attempt of the Jews of Germany to get around this problem when we look at the beginnings of the Reform Movement within Judaism.)

It is interesting to note that in this time of unprecedented toleration the term “anti-Semitism” was first coined. It was the product of one of German’s biggest thinkers of the 19th century—Wilhelm Marr - who wanted to distinguish hatred of the Jews as members of a religion (anti-Judaism) from hatred of the Jews as members of a race/nation (anti-Semitism). In 1879, he wrote a book called The Victory of Judaism over Germandom, which went into twelve printings in six years - it was a runaway best-seller.

Another important thinker was Karl Eugen Duehring who in 1881 wroteThe Question of the Jew is a Question of Race, summed up what anti-Semitism

“The Jewish question would still exist even if every Jew were to turn his back on his religion and join one of our major churches. Yes, I maintain that in that case the struggle between us and the Jews would make itself felt even more urgent. It is precisely the baptized Jew who infiltrates furthermost, unhindered in all sectors of society and political life. I return, therefore, to the hypothesis that the Jews are to be defined solely on the basis of race and not on the basis of religion.”

Jews who were dropping their religion and rising to power, wealth and prominence did not pay enough attention to these ideas. If they did, they would have realized that their joy-ride was going to be a short one. Because even if Jews escaped anti-Judaism by becoming Christian, or secular, or even if they refashioned themselves to blend in, “anti-Semitism”—which didn’t care what they believed or how they behaved as long as they were Jews—would get them in the end.

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1 Paul Mendes -Flohr & Yehuda Reinharz ed., The Jew in the Modern World,  (Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 118.
2 Allan Gould ed., What Did They Think of the Jews, (Jason Aronson Inc.,1997), p.103.
3 As quoted from the article by Ben Weider entitled Napoleon and the Jews. a href=“http://www.napoleonicsociety.com/” target=“_blank”>http://www.napoleonicsociety.com/ or at http://www.aish.com 
4 The Jew in the Modern World by Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, pp. 125-126
5 The Jew in the Modern World by Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, p. 129.
6 For more on this subject see The Jew in the Modern World by Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, pp. 112-132, and Triumph of Survival by Berel Wein, pp. 69-77. It’s interesting to note that many of the Rabbis of Eastern Europe, such as Shneur Zalman of Liada, thought it better to back the antisemtic Czar than Napoleon when he invaded Russia.  While this might seem strange, clearly the logic was “better the devil you know than the one you don’t know.”  In hindsight this proved to be largely correct as the mass assimilation brought on by emancipation proved to be far more devastating than the unceasing hostility of the antisemites. This illustrates one of the great truisms of Jewish history:  The most difficult situation to stay Jewish in is not in poverty and persecution but rather in wealth and freedom.
7 The Jew in the Modern World by Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz

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#53 of 70 in the Aish.com Jewish History Series
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