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Emancipation (Jewish Studies)

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  1.  
  2. Introduction
  3. Since the early 19th century, “emancipation” has been the catch phrase used to designate the release of Jews from an inferior political status through the acquisition of equal rights. The term is inherently ambiguous: “Emancipation” conflates the status and its attainment, and assumes a single goal and process of achievement. Many historians identify “equal rights” narrowly with national citizenship in the modern state, failing to account for the diversity of Jewish experiences across Europe. Jews gained equality through myriad processes, in such polities as the city-state, nation-state, or nationalities-state; they attained citizenship by residence (jus soli) or by descent (jus sanguinis). Equality included such statuses as corporate parity, juridical equality, recognition as the “subject” of a ruler or state, and local or municipal citizenship. Moreover, equality came in various forms and was often partial and nowhere irrevocable: it could be and was lost and regained. Emancipation involved virtually every aspect of Jewish life: occupations, education, religion, and communal solidarity. It had its enthusiastic proponents, who saw it as the messianic end of diasporic Jewish inferiority, and antagonists, who saw it as a threat to the existence of Judaism or Jews. While emancipation has been studied as a local, municipal, regional, national, and continent-wide development, there is no established consensus about so basic an issue as chronology. Some scholars who employ a narrow definition of equality date the process from the creation of modern citizenship during the French Revolution (1790–1791) (Dubnow) or write of a “long century” of emancipation extending from the American and French Revolutions to the Russian Revolution (Birnbaum and Katznelson 1995, cited under Anthologies). Others see an earlier inception with the Enlightenment debates about the Jews’ political status (circa 1770) (Katz 1973, cited under General Overviews), or the Peace of Westphalia’s promulgation of a toleration (1648) that eventually spilled over to the Jews (Baron 1960, cited under General Overviews). Some see the conclusion of the process around 1870 with the unifications of Germany and Italy and the restructuring of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Katz 1973); others date the end to the equality of Jews in Russia (April 1917), the minority rights treaties in the East Central European successor states such as Poland and Czechoslovakia (1921–1925), and autonomy in Birobizhan (1934) and the new Soviet Constitution (1936) (Mahler 1941, cited under Document Collections). This entry surveys four centuries of emancipation (1550 to 1950). While many historians have equated emancipation with the modern Jewish experience itself, this entry treats emancipation exclusively as a legal and political process.
  4.  
  5. General Overviews
  6. The study of emancipation belonged to the process itself. Advocates and opponents wrote detailed accounts of the Jews’ legal status and debated its consequences. Government bureaucrats studied the legal status of Jews in their own country and compared the policies of other governments. The scholarly study of emancipation was concomitant with Jewish historical writing. Indeed, some would argue that emancipation was a prime motivating factor, if not the primary factor, for Jews to begin to write their own history. Only through the medium of the past could Jews convincingly vindicate their claim to equality in the present. (Graetz 1891, Schorsch 1975). There have been few attempts to provide an overview of emancipation. Katz 1973 remains the sole monograph in English. He validates the East-West divide (emancipation in the West, either no emancipation or deferred emancipation in the East) by omitting Eastern Europe. Vital 1999, a political history of European Jewry, surveyed developments across Europe. There are a number of foundational articles. Baron 1960 has advocated a multi-causal conceptualization. Rürup 1969 offered a neo-Marxist approach contrasting France and the German states. Katz 1964 skillfully traced the changing terms. Sorkin 2001 has proposed a tripartite division of West, Central, and Eastern Europe.
  7.  
  8. Baron, Salo. “Newer Approaches to Jewish Emancipation.” Diogenes 29 (Spring 1960): 56–81.
  9.  
  10. DOI: 10.1177/039219216000802905Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  11.  
  12. Dates emancipation to the mid-17th century and transcends the East-West divide by organizing Europe into three regions.
  13.  
  14. Find this resource:
  15.  
  16. Graetz, Heinrich. History of the Jews. 6 vols. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1891.
  17.  
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  19.  
  20. The preeminent Jewish historian of the 19th century who was an avid advocate of emancipation.
  21.  
  22. Find this resource:
  23.  
  24. Katz, Jacob. “The Term Jewish Emancipation: Its Origins and Historical Impact.” In Studies in 19th Century Jewish Intellectual History. Edited by Alexander Altmann, 1–25. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964.
  25.  
  26. DOI: 10.4159/harvard.9780674730878Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  27.  
  28. By tracing the history of the various terms used to describe the acquisition of rights (naturalization, amelioration, emancipation) maps the shifting nature of the process.
  29.  
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  31.  
  32. Katz, Jacob. Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770–1870. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973.
  33.  
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  35.  
  36. The standard study that focuses on three countries: France, Prussia, and the Habsburg Empire. Katz proposed the categories that many historians have used, e.g., “autonomous community,” “semi-neutral society”.
  37.  
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  39.  
  40. Rürup, Reinhard. “Jewish Emancipation and Bourgeois Society.” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 14 (1969): 67–91.
  41.  
  42. DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/14.1.67Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  43.  
  44. Suggests two models of emancipation by comparing developments in Germany and France. The analysis of the German states emphasizes the role of the tutelary state in implementing conditional emancipation and the way in which the multiplicity of states, each with its own version of emancipation, reinforced that process. The French model is insufficiently elaborated.
  45.  
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  47.  
  48. Schorsch, Ismar, trans. and ed. Heinrich Graetz, The Structure of Jewish History and Other Essays. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1975.
  49.  
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  51.  
  52. Schorsch shows Graetz’s rootedness in the emancipation process and particularly the struggle over religious reform.
  53.  
  54. Find this resource:
  55.  
  56. Sorkin, David. “Port Jews and the Three Regions of Emancipation.” Jewish Culture and History 4 (2001): 31–46.
  57.  
  58. DOI: 10.1080/1462169X.2001.10512228Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  59.  
  60. Proposes a tripartite scheme based on the nature of the state and the scope and duration of the emancipation process.
  61.  
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  63.  
  64. Vital, David. A People Apart: A Political History of the Jews in Europe, 1789–1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
  65.  
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  67.  
  68. A descriptive account of how emancipation unfolded in five countries: England, France, Germany, Poland, Russia.
  69.  
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  71.  
  72. Anthologies
  73. Since emancipation involved so many different countries, multi-author anthologies have often been the medium for a comprehensive view of emancipation. Duker and Ben-Horin 1974 was an early effort drawn from the pages of a leading journal, Jewish Social Studies. Katz 1987 was a divided conference volume that promoted and questioned the Germano-centric model of emancipation. Frankel and Zipperstein 1992, a conference volume, questioned the “Russian Jewish school” and championed a variegated and non-teleological view of emancipation and its consequences. Birnbaum and Katznelson 1995, the most ambitious and comprehensive effort, utilizes the categories of historical sociology. Brenner, et al. 2003 focuses on cultural and political issues in France and Germany. Liedtke and Wendehorst 1999 innovatively tried to compare the emancipation of Jews to that of other religious minorities.
  74.  
  75. Birnbaum, Pierre, and Ira Katznelson. Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States and Citizenship. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.
  76.  
  77. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  78.  
  79. Examines eight countries and offers a theoretical introduction from the perspective of historical sociology. The essays are uneven, do not employ the same categories and do not always support the introduction’s claims.
  80.  
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  82.  
  83. Brenner, Michael, Vicki Caron, and Uri R. Kaufmann, eds. Jewish Emancipation Reconsidered: The French and German Models. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2003.
  84.  
  85. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  86.  
  87. Focuses on “the two main paths of Jewish emancipation in Europe” through essays dealing comparatively with Haskalah, Wissenschaft des Judentums, synagogue construction, modern anti-Semitism, and the phenomenon of intellectuals, among other topics.
  88.  
  89. Find this resource:
  90.  
  91. Duker, Abraham G., and Meir Ben-Horin. Emancipation and Counter-Emancipation. New York: Ktav, 1974.
  92.  
  93. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  94.  
  95. Emancipation here is taken to mean the modern period. A few essays are devoted specifically to the political process of emancipation (Baron, Rossi); the rest deal with a wide range of issues.
  96.  
  97. Find this resource:
  98.  
  99. Frankel, Jonathan, and Steven Zipperstein. Assimilation and Community in European Jewry, 1815–1881. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
  100.  
  101. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  102.  
  103. Takes issue with the “Russian Jewish school” of historiography that posited binary categories, e.g., tradition versus modernity, solidarity versus assimilation. The contributors studied diverse subjects that resist a linear and unified view of the 19th century.
  104.  
  105. Find this resource:
  106.  
  107. Katz, Jacob, ed. Toward Modernity: The European Jewish Model. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1987.
  108.  
  109. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  110.  
  111. A divided analysis of the impact of the “German-Jewish model” in Europe, with some contributors supporting it and others taking exception.
  112.  
  113. Find this resource:
  114.  
  115. Liedtke, Rainer, and Stephan Wendehorst. The Emancipation of Catholics, Jews and Protestants: Minorities and the Nation State in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1999.
  116.  
  117. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  118.  
  119. A pathbreaking attempt to create a comparative context for Jewish emancipation. It compares Jewish emancipation to another religious minority’s emancipation in four countries: England, France, Germany, and Italy.
  120.  
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  122.  
  123. Document Collections
  124. There are only two document collections in English devoted exclusively to emancipation. Both were compiled under the auspices of the American Jewish Committee during the Second World War and responded to concerns of the moment. Mahler 1941 presented the emergence and development of emancipation (1657–1936). Weinryb 1942 presented the subversion of emancipation (1935–1939). Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz 2011, the standard anthology of documents in modern Jewish history, relied almost entirely on Mahler and Weinryb in its first edition for documents on emancipation. The third edition adds new documents. There has been no effort to update either Mahler or Weinryb.
  125.  
  126. Mahler, Raphael. Jewish Emancipation: A Selection of Documents. New York: American Jewish Committee, 1941.
  127.  
  128. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  129.  
  130. This remains the most comprehensive collection of documents on Jewish emancipation. Mahler overcame the East-West divide by including documents from across Europe. He also included the Dutch and English colonies, and the American states and Canada. In the 20th century he included the Soviet Union and Palestine.
  131.  
  132. Find this resource:
  133.  
  134. Mendes-Flohr, Paul, and Jehuda Reinharz. The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History. 3d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
  135.  
  136. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  137.  
  138. In breadth and depth the best selection of documents on Jewish history in the modern period. Contains documents on emancipation in four of its twelve sections (“Harbingers of Political and Economic Change,” “The Process of Political Emancipation in Western Europe, 1789–1871,” “East European Jewry,” and “Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jewry”).
  139.  
  140. Find this resource:
  141.  
  142. Weinryb, Bernard Dov. Jewish Emancipation under Attack. New York: American Jewish Committee, 1942.
  143.  
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  145.  
  146. Focused on Germany, but also includes brief sections on the Sudeten region, Austria, Bohemia-Moravia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, and Italy. Stops in 1939 and thus does not include any legislation from the war years.
  147.  
  148. Find this resource:
  149.  
  150. Reference
  151. Major encyclopedias like the Encyclopedia Judaica contain lengthy entries.
  152.  
  153. Encyclopedia Judaica. New York: Macmillan, 1971–1972.
  154.  
  155. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  156.  
  157. Divides emancipation into three periods: 1740–1789, preparatory events; 1789–1878, emancipation in Central and Western Europe; 1878–1933, emancipation in Eastern Europe but also its testing throughout Europe by “racial animosity.”
  158.  
  159. Find this resource:
  160.  
  161. Early Modern Forms of Jewish Parity
  162. From the 1550s Jews began to achieve forms of parity in corporate society. This change in status occurred in different ways in different parts of the world: European port cities, European colonies, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Holy Roman Empire.
  163.  
  164. Merchant Colonies
  165. In the port cities of Italy (Ancona, Venice, Livorno) and the Atlantic seaboard (Bordeaux, Amsterdam, London), Sephardic Jewish merchants, many of whom were former conversos, were invited to join other foreign merchants to increase trade and fill state or city-state coffers. These port Jews became one “merchant colony” alongside others (Sorkin 1999). In the case of Livorno and Bordeaux, they received corporate privileges that gave them parity with other merchant groups (Trivellato 2009, Ravid 1992, Cooperman 1998, Dubin 2006). In the emerging civil societies of Amsterdam and London, they did not have a charter but achieved civic rights on an ad hoc basis. In Amsterdam they were able to purchase municipal citizenship from the 1590s and were recognized as subjects of the Estates of Holland from 1657. (Swetschinski 2000; also Endelman 2002 and Katz 1994, cited under Dutch and British Colonies).
  166.  
  167. Cooperman, Bernard Dov. “Portuguese Conversos in Ancona: Jewish Political Activity in Early Modern Italy.” In In Iberia and Beyond: Hispanic Jews between Cultures. By Bernard Dov Cooperman, 297–352. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1998.
  168.  
  169. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  170.  
  171. Highlights the Jews’ active role in negotiating their new status in Italy’s highly competitive port cities.
  172.  
  173. Find this resource:
  174.  
  175. Dubin, Lois. “Subjects into Citizens: Jewish Autonomy and Inclusion in Early Modern Livorno and Trieste.” Jahrbuch des Simon Dubnow Instituts 5 (2006): 51–81.
  176.  
  177. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  178.  
  179. Emphasizes municipal citizenship and “subjecthood” as forms of “civil inclusion” or parity which, mixing collective and individual rights, preceded, and were independent of, national citizenship.
  180.  
  181. Find this resource:
  182.  
  183. Malino, Frances. The Sephardic Jews of Bordeaux: Assimilation and Emancipation in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. University: University of Alabama Press, 1978.
  184.  
  185. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  186.  
  187. Traces the efforts of Sephardic Jews, and especially Abraham Furtado, to build on the civic rights or near parity they possessed in Bordeaux by charter (1723) in order to gain political rights and full citizenship during the Revolution and maintain it under Napoleon.
  188.  
  189. Find this resource:
  190.  
  191. Ravid, Benjamin. “A Tale of Three Cities and Their Raison d’État: Ancona, Venice, Livorno and the Competition for Jewish Merchants in the Sixteenth Century.” In Jews, Christians and Muslims in the Mediterranean World after 1492. Edited by Alisa Meyuhas Ginio, 138–162. London: Cass, 1992.
  192.  
  193. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  194.  
  195. Pope Paul III’s “safe conduct” for “Turks, Jews and other infidels” (1534) and charter exempted “New Christians” from prosecution (1544) in Ancona. He made it possible for Italian port cities to compete for Jewish merchants in their effort to capture a portion of the Levant and Mediterranean trade. In consequence, Jews attained new political statuses through favorable charters.
  196.  
  197. Find this resource:
  198.  
  199. Sorkin, David. “The Port Jew: Notes towards a Social Type.” Journal of Jewish Studies 50.1 (1999): 87–97.
  200.  
  201. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  202.  
  203. Drawing on the work of Lois Dubin, Sorkin suggested a “social type” that, juxtaposed to the Central European, Ashkenazi “maskil” and “Court Jew,” represented another figure of modernity.
  204.  
  205. Find this resource:
  206.  
  207. Swetschinski, Daniel. Reluctant Cosmopolitans: The Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam. London: Littman Library, 2000.
  208.  
  209. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  210.  
  211. Thoroughly researched account of the origins and development of Amsterdam Jewry. Emphasizes the Jews’ ill-defined or ambiguous status (no charter, virtually no legislation) that gave individuals near parity of rights (though with some economic restrictions) and that allowed the Mahamad to arrogate to itself greater powers than the government explicitly permitted.
  212.  
  213. Find this resource:
  214.  
  215. Trivellato, Francesca. The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.
  216.  
  217. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  218.  
  219. A study of the “communitarian cosmopolitanism” that enabled Livornese merchants to have diverse business partners (other religions, other nations). It includes a penetrating account of the growth of Livorno and its Jewish community.
  220.  
  221. Find this resource:
  222.  
  223. Dutch and British Colonies
  224. The Dutch and British colonies, which struggled to attract white colonists, offered Jews broader rights than they enjoyed in the homeland. Yerushalmi 1982 and Israel 2007 focus on the rights accorded to Jews in the Dutch colonies, while Katz 1994 and Endelman 2002 discuss the status of Jews in English colonies within broader analyses of the place of Jews in English history.
  225.  
  226. Endelman, Todd. The Jews of Britain, 1656–2000. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
  227.  
  228. DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520227194.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  229.  
  230. A synthetic survey based on recent scholarship.
  231.  
  232. Find this resource:
  233.  
  234. Israel, Jonathan. “Religious Toleration in Dutch Brazil (1624–1654).” In The Expansion of Tolerance: Religion in Dutch Brazil (1624–1654). Edited by Jonathan Israel and Stuart B. Schwartz, 13–34. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007.
  235.  
  236. DOI: 10.5117/9789053569023Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  237.  
  238. Toleration was not any individual’s creation but an integral aspect of the Dutch West India Company’s policy to promote colonization. That policy enabled Jews, who fulfilled a central economic function by bringing capital and technical knowledge of sugar refining, to enjoy unprecedented rights.
  239.  
  240. Find this resource:
  241.  
  242. Katz, David S. The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
  243.  
  244. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  245.  
  246. Focuses on the place of the Jews in English life and thus takes a broad view of issues.
  247.  
  248. Find this resource:
  249.  
  250. Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim. “Between Amsterdam and New Amsterdam: The Place of Curaçao and the Caribbean in Early Modern Jewish History.” American Jewish History 2 (1982): 172–193.
  251.  
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  253.  
  254. A sweeping survey that locates the colonial charters of the Dutch colonies against their European background.
  255.  
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  257.  
  258. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
  259. In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Jews moved eastward in large numbers into the newly colonized Ukraine, where magnates invited them to settle the private towns on their estates. In these market towns Jews negotiated collective privileges that gave them parity with Christian burghers in civil matters (residence, property ownership, occupational freedom, religious freedom) and, in a few exceptional cases, political ones (representation on the municipal council) (Hundert 2004, Goldberg 1986, Teller 1997, Teller 2009). These privileges transformed the Jews into a virtual parallel burgher estate. Acting as equal negotiating partners, Jews also entered into contracts with Christian burghers to resolve disputes over taxation and civic participation (Guesnet 2010).
  260.  
  261. Goldberg, Jacob. “The Privileges Granted to Jewish Communities of the Polish Commonwealth as a Stabilizing Factor in Jewish Support.” In The Jews in Poland. Edited by Chimen Abramsky, Maciej Jachimczyk, and Antony Polonsky, 31–54. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.
  262.  
  263. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  264.  
  265. With the decentralization of power in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, community privileges became increasingly important. Jews actively petitioned for privileges, sometimes writing them. Through these privileges, a variation on the burghers’, the Jews attained parity in the economic sphere but diverged in the scope of jurisdiction and political participation.
  266.  
  267. Find this resource:
  268.  
  269. Guesnet, François. “Agreements between Neighbors: The ‘Ugody’ as a Source on Jewish-Christian Relations in Early Modern Poland.” Jewish History 24 (2010): 257–270.
  270.  
  271. DOI: 10.1007/s10835-010-9118-7Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  272.  
  273. Jews entered contractual alliances with Christian burghers with whom they shared town or urban spaces in order to avoid costly and protracted judicial proceedings. The alliances often pursued mutual self-interest over and against the gentry/nobility.
  274.  
  275. Find this resource:
  276.  
  277. Hundert, Gershon. Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A Genealogy of Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.
  278.  
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  280.  
  281. Jews comprised such a high percentage of town and city dwellers that they were not actually a minority. Their privileges in private magnate towns made them a parallel burgher estate.
  282.  
  283. Find this resource:
  284.  
  285. Teller, Adam. “The Legal Status of the Jews on the Magnate Estates of Poland in the Eighteenth Century.” Gal-ed 15–16 (1997): 41–63.
  286.  
  287. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  288.  
  289. The Jews’ alliance with the magnates gained them parity with Christian burghers albeit with some differences, e.g., higher property taxes, release from labor obligations. The magnates increasingly integrated the rabbinate into their administrations, lowering its stature by reducing it a patronage position.
  290.  
  291. Find this resource:
  292.  
  293. Teller, Adam. “Telling the Difference: Some Comparative Perspectives on the Jews’ Legal Status in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Holy Roman Empire.” Polin 22 (2009): 109–141.
  294.  
  295. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  296.  
  297. Corporate privileges that promoted commerce were the basis of a favorable and secure existence for Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In contrast, in the Holy Roman Empire, where Jews had individual privileges and were treated as a source of revenue (Judenregal), their existence was less secure and they were subject to expulsion and exploitation.
  298.  
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  300.  
  301. The Holy Roman Empire
  302. In the Holy Roman Empire Jews attained juridical equality with the introduction of Roman law and the standardization of legal procedures at the Imperial Court and the Regensburg Diet (1495; 1559). These institutions revived the Roman legal concept of Jews as citizens and thereby recognized their legal standing, namely, their right to be plaintiffs. Jews turned to the courts to defend their collective privileges. For example, they successfully prevented urban expulsions prior to the Thirty Years War. Thus Jews gained a significant form of equality through the “juridification” of social relations in the Holy Roman Empire’s federal structure. Ehrenpreis 2003 focuses on legal spaces where Jews could defend their rights, while Wendehorst 2003 looks at the relationship between Jews and the Emperor or Empire.
  303.  
  304. Ehrenpreis, Stefan. “Legal Spaces for Jews as Subjects of the Holy Roman Empire.” Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 2 (2003): 475–487.
  305.  
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  307.  
  308. With the juridification of relations in the Holy Roman Empire, Jews used the courts to defend themselves against the rising territorial states and the threat of expulsion. Court suits were expensive, involving elaborate procedures, so Jews had to act collectively.
  309.  
  310. Find this resource:
  311.  
  312. Wendehorst, Stephan. “Imperial Spaces as Jewish Spaces: The Holy Roman Empire, the Emperor and the Jews in the Early Modern Period; Some Preliminary Observations.” Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 2 (2003): 437–474.
  313.  
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  315.  
  316. Jews had a threefold relationship to the Emperor and the Holy Roman Empire. They participated in its direct power through the court system, taxes, and homages. They benefitted from it indirectly through fairs, post offices, postal carriages, and the imperial army. Jews were a symbol of imperial power and the emperor/imperial institutions often defended them in order to exercise and safeguard their own power.
  317.  
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  319.  
  320. Discourse
  321. The 17th and 18th centuries saw the emergence of a discourse about the Jews’ status in society that, based initially in the positive valuation of commerce, became more wide-ranging as it converged with Enlightenment notions of common humanity and the malleability of group character.
  322.  
  323. Primary Sources
  324. Two distinct groups promoted the discourse. Jewish advocates often wrote to address a specific situation, such as the renewal of the Jews’ privileges in Venice (Luzzatto 1638), the readmission of the Jews to England (Menasseh Ben Israel 1901) or the Jews’ status in Prussia and France (Mendelssohn 1983). Non-Jews addressed specific situations but also articulated broader concerns about the nature of the state (Toland 1714, Dohm 1957) or the relationship of Judaism to Christianity (Grégoire 1789). Dohm articulated what would become a key issue of emancipation. Was an improvement in the Jews’ occupations and character (“amelioration” or “regeneration”) to be prior to rights (conditional emancipation)? Or were rights the sine qua non for regeneration (unconditional emancipation)? Dohm argued forcefully for the latter.
  325.  
  326. Dohm, Christian Wilhelm von. Readings in Modern Jewish History. Edited by Ellis Rivkin. Translated by Helen Lederer. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, 1957.
  327.  
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  329.  
  330. Dohm, who wrote at Mendelssohn’s initiative, provoked a major public debate in Central Europe that influenced the discussion of Jewish emancipation throughout Europe. Without reference to inherited theological arguments, he set the issue in a broad political framework informed by central Enlightenment tenets. Originally published in German between 1781 and 1783.
  331.  
  332. Find this resource:
  333.  
  334. Grégoire, Abbé. Essai sur la regeneration physique, morale et politique des juifs. Paris: n.p., 1789.
  335.  
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  337.  
  338. Grégoire used many of the same Enlightenment and natural law ideas as Dohm but within a framework of Reform Catholicism. His aim was first to regenerate the Jews and then convert them. He admired Joseph II’s legislation.
  339.  
  340. Find this resource:
  341.  
  342. Luzzatto, Simone. Discorso circa il stato de Gl’Hebrei. n.p., 1638.
  343.  
  344. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  345.  
  346. Writing in the vernacular, Luzzatto propounded many key ideas promoting Jewish commerce, e.g., Jews do not compete with established groups, will not return home with their wealth, and will be loyal to the polity. English excerpts appeared in Commentary 3 (1947) 371–377 and 13 (1952) 589–593. In Hebrew translation: Ma’amar al Yehudei Venezia, trans. Dan Last (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1950).
  347.  
  348. Find this resource:
  349.  
  350. Menasseh Ben Israel. Menasseh Ben Israel’s Mission to Oliver Cromwell. Edited by Lucien Wolf. London: Macmillan, 1901.
  351.  
  352. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  353.  
  354. Menasseh wrote three tracts. The Hope of Israel (1652) addressed the millenarian issue of the lost Ten Tribes and the end of days. The Humble Addresses (1655) promoted the Jews’ economic and political utility. Vindiciæ Judæorum (1656) refuted inherited theological prejudices.
  355.  
  356. Find this resource:
  357.  
  358. Mendelssohn, Moses. Jerusalem, or on Religious Power and Judaism. Translated by Allan Arkush. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 1983.
  359.  
  360. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  361.  
  362. Mendelssohn argued for the separation of church and state that would make Jewish equality possible while also interpreting Judaism as wholly suitable to such a state.
  363.  
  364. Find this resource:
  365.  
  366. Toland, John. Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews in Great Britain and Ireland. London: n.p., 1714.
  367.  
  368. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  369.  
  370. Drawing on Luzzatto for his arguments about the advantages of Jewish commerce, Toland recognized that the Jews were forced into commerce by their circumstances and, if permitted, could undertake other occupations. They could be as useful to Great Britain as other dissenters, e.g., Quakers.
  371.  
  372. Find this resource:
  373.  
  374. Secondary Sources
  375. Karp 2008 explores the role of Jewish commerce in the emergence of the discourse on the status of Jews in society, while Penslar 2001 covers the further developments of this discourse.
  376.  
  377. Karp, Jonathan. The Politics of Jewish Commerce: Economic Thought and Emancipation in Europe, 1638–1848. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
  378.  
  379. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511499081Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  380.  
  381. A focused study of the role Jewish commerce played in the debates that the emancipation process engaged, e.g., virtue versus commerce, the ancient constitution versus the ideal Republic.
  382.  
  383. Find this resource:
  384.  
  385. Penslar, Derek. Shylock’s Children: Economics and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
  386.  
  387. DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520225909.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  388.  
  389. Traces the debates about Jews’ economic activity into the 19th and 20th centuries. Emphasizes Jewish ideological and political movements.
  390.  
  391. Find this resource:
  392.  
  393. Legislation
  394. Eighteenth-century legislation created new statuses for Jews. The English Plantation Act (1740) opened the possibility of Jews becoming “natural born subjects” after a seven-year residence in the colonies (Godfrey and Godfrey 1995). Joseph II first issued an edict of toleration for Protestant and Greek Orthodox subjects (1781) and then a series of historic edicts for the Jews of his diverse realm, beginning with Bohemia, Lombardy, and Silesia (1781), continuing on to Lower Austria and Moravia (1782) and Hungary (1783), and ending in Galicia (1785, 1789). The 1781 decrees granted Jews occupational freedom and access to schools while maintaining restrictive laws limiting the number of marriages and families in a region; this became a model for “conditional emancipation” for other European states. The 1789 decree for Galicia granted the Jews equal civil rights and voting rights in municipal elections, enlightened absolutism’s most radical legislation for the Jews. That decree influenced later legislation in Central and Eastern Europe as well (Karniel 1986, Silber 2008). Prussia and some other German states increasingly incorporated the Jews into the state apparatus through an absolutist politics informed by natural law theory. Successive “Jewry laws” (Judenordnungen) introduced multiple legal statuses on the basis of wealth and utility to the state but maintained discriminatory laws, e.g., the odious “body tax.” These laws integrated Jews into the state’s emerging bureaucracy (Stern 1962–1975). In three successive illegal partitions (1772, 1793, 1795), Prussia, Russia, and the Habsburg Empire ended Polish independence for almost a century and a half. After the first partition, Catherine the Great, in her Charter for the Towns (1775), granted her newly acquired Jews the same rights as other merchants and town-dwellers. Though this legislation encountered difficulties in implementation, significant numbers of Jews did register in those two “estates” and participated in municipal elections (Polonsky 2010–2012, Rest 1975). Inspired by his brother-in-law Joseph II, Louis XV issued legislation in January 1784 for Alsace’s Jews, abolishing the body tax, opening new economic opportunities, and significantly recognizing the Jews as “subjects.” On July 10th, he rescinded that recognition and, while creating further opportunities in banking and manufacture for a few, imposed economic restrictions on poorer Jews. In 1787 Louis XV, again emulating Joseph II, issued a toleration edict for Protestants giving them civil status and legitimizing their marriages. He convened a commission to consider changing the Jews’ status but the Revolution irrupted before the commission concluded.
  395.  
  396. Godfrey, Sheldon J., and Judith C. Godfrey. Search Out the Land: The Jews and the Growth of Equality in British Colonial America, 1740–1867. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995.
  397.  
  398. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  399.  
  400. A comprehensive study that treats the future American states together with the other British colonies.
  401.  
  402. Find this resource:
  403.  
  404. Karniel, Josef. Die Toleranzpolitik Kaiser Joseph II. Gerlingen, Germany: Bleicher, 1986.
  405.  
  406. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  407.  
  408. The definitive study of the origins and formulation of Joseph’s policies.
  409.  
  410. Find this resource:
  411.  
  412. Polonsky, Antony. The Jews in Poland and Russia. 3 vols. London: Littman Library, 2010–2012.
  413.  
  414. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  415.  
  416. Definitive synthesis based on the most recent scholarship.
  417.  
  418. Find this resource:
  419.  
  420. Rest, Matthias. Die russische Judengesetzgebung von der ersten polnischen Teilung bis zum “Položenie dlja Evreev” (1804). Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrasowitz, 1975.
  421.  
  422. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  423.  
  424. Jews were a high percentage of the population in the areas that Russia annexed. From 1772 to 1786 the priority was integrating the Jews and extending civil rights. From 1786 to 1804 the priority was integrating them into extant categories as a precondition to improving their legal status. Yet Jews defied categorization in their occupational variety and as residents of both urban and rural areas.
  425.  
  426. Find this resource:
  427.  
  428. Silber, Michael. “Josephinian Reforms.” In YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. Edited by Gershon Hundert, 831–834. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.
  429.  
  430. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  431.  
  432. Concise survey of all of Joseph II’s Jewish legislation.
  433.  
  434. Find this resource:
  435.  
  436. Stern, Selma. Der preuβische Staat und die Juden. 7 vols. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr, 1962–1975.
  437.  
  438. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  439.  
  440. The definitive study of Prussia’s growing administrative mechanism devoted to developing and implementing policy for the Jews. Includes abundant documentary sources.
  441.  
  442. Find this resource:
  443.  
  444. Revolution
  445. The French Revolution included the Jews in its newly proclaimed concept of citizenship—yet only after lengthy debates and only after the Sephardic Jews of Bordeaux and Bayonne lobbied the National Assembly to be treated separately from the Ashkenazic Jews of Alsace and Lorraine. The Sephardic Jews gained rights on January 28, 1790 despite those National Assembly delegates who objected that it was wrong in principle to distinguish among the Jews. The decree affirmed their existing privileges “granted . . . by letters of patent,” which were tantamount to civic rights, and added to them “the rights of active citizens,” namely, political rights. The Ashkenazic Jews of Alsace and Lorraine gained civil and political rights in a decree (September 28, 1791) that abrogated all of their existing privileges in admitting them to the civic oath (Malino 1996, Hermon-Belot 1999, La revolution française et l’émancipation des juifs). Zalkind Hourwitz advocated for emancipation in print before 1789 and in print and in person during the Revolution (Malino 1996). Clermont Tonnere’s quotation from his speech to the National Assembly (December 23, 1789), “We must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation, and accord everything to the Jews as individuals,” has become famous as the emblem of emancipation in the last half-century; it was virtually unknown until the end of the 19th century (Sorkin 2011).
  446.  
  447. Blumenkranz, Bernhard, and Albert Soboul. Les juifs et la révolution française. Toulouse, France: Franco-Judaïca, 1976.
  448.  
  449. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  450.  
  451. A wide-ranging collection of articles by leading scholars. Some are devoted to general topics and some to particular regions or individual cities.
  452.  
  453. Find this resource:
  454.  
  455. Hermon-Belot, Rita. L’émancipation des juifs en France. Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1999.
  456.  
  457. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  458.  
  459. Concise and yet detailed account.
  460.  
  461. Find this resource:
  462.  
  463. Kates, Gary. “Jews into Frenchmen: Nationality and Representation in Revolutionary France.” In The French Revolution and the Birth of Modernity. Edited by Ferenc Fehér, 103–116. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.
  464.  
  465. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  466.  
  467. Whereas the debate over the Jews was about the nature of citizenship, it was limited to “active” rights since passive citizenship or civic rights had already been established (September 28, 1789).
  468.  
  469. Find this resource:
  470.  
  471. La revolution française et l’émancipation des juifs. 8 vols. Paris: Editions d’Histoire Sociale, 1968.
  472.  
  473. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  474.  
  475. Photomechanical reproductions of key documents for the emancipation in 1790–1791. An indispensable source.
  476.  
  477. Find this resource:
  478.  
  479. Malino, Frances. A Jew in the French Revolution: The Life of Zalkind Hourwitz. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.
  480.  
  481. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  482.  
  483. An immigrant from Poland, Hourwitz shared the prize for the Metz essay contest on how to improve the Jews. He participated in the struggle for Jewish emancipation by appearing in the Parisian sections, writing essays, joining the National Guard, and contributing his salary.
  484.  
  485. Find this resource:
  486.  
  487. Schechter, Ronald. Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715–1815. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
  488.  
  489. DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520235571.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  490.  
  491. The Revolution’s debate on Jewish emancipation was a way for delegates to the National Assembly who were not democrats to avoid instituting a more inclusive democracy.
  492.  
  493. Find this resource:
  494.  
  495. Sorkin, David. The Count Stanislas de Clermont-Tonnerre’s “To the Jews as a Nation . . .”: The Career of a Quotation. Jerusalem: Leo Baeck Institute, 2011. Jacob Katz Memorial Lecture.
  496.  
  497. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  498.  
  499. Analyzes the two distinct versions of the speech and their historical reception. Also evaluates the speech in relationship to Clermont-Tonnerre’s general politics.
  500.  
  501. Find this resource:
  502.  
  503. The French Revolution and Western Europe
  504. The French Revolutionary Wars exported Jewish emancipation. Mahler 1971 surveys these effects throughout the European continent. As the French armies occupied parts of northern Italy and Rome (1796–1799), ghetto walls fell alongside old governments. These changes were reversed when Napoleon embarked for Egypt and versions of the old governments returned to power. Napoleon restored emancipation when he again crossed the Alps as First Consul (1800), annexing to France first Piedmont and Parma, later Tuscany and the Papal States. He formed the northeast of the country into the Kingdom of Italy under his own rule (Kochan 2004). In Holland’s Batavian Republic, constituted during the French occupation, the debate about Jewish emancipation (August 22–30, 1796) turned on political rights or on their confirmation, since Jews already voted in the elections. Civic rights (residence, property ownership, religious practice) had been established in the course of the 17th and 18th centuries. The Jewish Enfranchisement Bill of 1796 followed the French precedent in granting individuals rights. The abolition of the guilds (1798) established occupational freedom; in practice discrimination remained (Michman and Aptroot 2002, Michman 1995).
  505.  
  506. Kochan, Lionel. The Making of Western Jewry, 1600–1819. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave, 2004.
  507.  
  508. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  509.  
  510. Focuses on the establishment and functioning of organized Jewish communities. Particularly attentive to the tensions between rich and poor manifested in the oppressive rule of oligarchies.
  511.  
  512. Find this resource:
  513.  
  514. Mahler, Raphael. A History of Modern Jewry, 1780–1815. New York: Schocken, 1971.
  515.  
  516. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  517.  
  518. A country-by-country survey with relevant background material on the 17th and 18th centuries.
  519.  
  520. Find this resource:
  521.  
  522. Michman, Jozeph. Gothic Turrets on a Corinthian Building: Dutch Jewry during the Emancipation Period. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1995.
  523.  
  524. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  525.  
  526. Western Europe’s largest urban Jewry, torn between traditionalists and emancipationists, faced the dilemma of how to maintain support for the poor, who comprised the majority.
  527.  
  528. Find this resource:
  529.  
  530. Michman, Jozeph, and Marion Aptroot. Storm in the Community: Yiddish Polemical Pamphlets of Amsterdam Jewry, 1797–1798. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2002.
  531.  
  532. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  533.  
  534. The Diskurs was the Yiddish polemical newspaper of the new community (Adat Yeshurun) that seceded from the established Kehillah. Published from August 1797 to March 1798, it is published here in a bilingual edition.
  535.  
  536. Find this resource:
  537.  
  538. The French Revolution and the German States
  539. The French armies brought equality to the German states either by granting emancipation directly through the extension of French law, e.g., Rhineland, Frankfurt, Hamburg, or because German states granted rights in response to the French occupation, e.g., Baden, Prussia, Bavaria. Significantly, the German states offered conditional emancipation and partial rights contingent upon future regeneration. With the creation of the Cisrhenan Republic on the left bank of the Rhine in 1797, the ghettos of Bonn and Mainz were dismantled and Jews took up residence in Cologne, enjoying full emancipation (1798–1808). The Kingdom of Westphalia (1808) granted rights based on French law. Hamburg’s Jews gained rights with the city’s incorporation into the French empire (1810). Baden, which grew fivefold with Napoleon’s territorial reorganization after 1800, issued a new constitution in 1807 to unify its territories, recognizing Jews as “hereditary state citizens” though without local civil rights in residence and occupation. Baden explicitly emancipated its Jews in 1809 by granting state citizenship though, again, without crucial local rights that determined settlement and occupation and requiring continuing state-supervised reeducation. Prussia emancipated its Jews as part of an overall reform of the state following its defeat at Napoleon’s hands at Jena. The 1812 emancipation decree granted residential and occupational freedom. It left unresolved the question of access to civil service positions and also called for the Jews’ further regeneration. Bavaria extended emancipation in 1813 yet left discriminatory legislation on residence and marriage in place. Freund 1912 is a classic study of the debates around Jewish emancipation, while Meyer 1996 is an excellent introduction to the history of the emancipation of German Jews. Toury 1977 focuses on the varieties of rights within individual municipalities, while Walker 1971 provides a view of the opposition to Jewish emancipation in small towns. Berding 1983 focuses on the “artificial creation” of the Kingdom of Westphalia. Sorkin 1987 explores how Jews “regenerated” themselves in order to prove themselves worthy of emancipation and Herzog 1996 focuses on the place of women and sexuality in debates around emancipation.
  540.  
  541. Berding, Helmut. “Die Emanzipation der Juden im Königriech Westfalen (1807–1813).” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 23 (1983): 25–50.
  542.  
  543. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  544.  
  545. An artificial creation “without a history” or core territory, the Kingdom of Westphalia abolished all privileges and imposed unitary economic policies including equality before the law. Napoleon envisaged the kingdom as a bulwark against Prussia and a “model state” that would encourage other German states to adopt the superior French system. Jews received equality and a French-style Consistory in 1808.
  546.  
  547. Find this resource:
  548.  
  549. Freund, Ismar. Die Emanzipation der Juden in Preuβen. 2 vols. Berlin: Poppelauer, 1912.
  550.  
  551. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  552.  
  553. The classic study revealing the intense debates within the Prussian bureaucracy as well as the active lobbying of Jewish advocates. Includes archival sources.
  554.  
  555. Find this resource:
  556.  
  557. Herzog, Dagmar. Intimacy and Exclusion: Religious Politics in Pre-revolutionary Baden. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.
  558.  
  559. DOI: 10.1515/9781400864348Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  560.  
  561. Relates the debate about emancipation to the status of women, issues of sexuality and Christianity, demonstrating liberalism’s fundamental ambivalence to Jewish equality.
  562.  
  563. Find this resource:
  564.  
  565. Humboldt, Wilhelm von. “Regarding the Draft of a New System of Legislation of the Jews (July 17, 1809).” In Jewish Rights at the Congresses of Vienna (1814–15) and Aix-La-Chapelle (1818). Translated by Max Kohler, 71–83. New York: American Jewish Committee, 1918.
  566.  
  567. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  568.  
  569. Famous memorandum arguing that conditional emancipation would be counterproductive since it would reinforce the very distinctions it was intended to remove.
  570.  
  571. Find this resource:
  572.  
  573. Meyer, Michael A., ed. German Jewish History in Modern Times. Vol. 2, Emancipation and Acculturation, 1780–1871. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.
  574.  
  575. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  576.  
  577. Authoritative synthesis of the postwar scholarship. Contains three chapters on emancipation (chs. 1, 7, and 8).
  578.  
  579. Find this resource:
  580.  
  581. Sorkin, David. The Transformation of Germany Jewry, 1780–1840. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
  582.  
  583. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  584.  
  585. Conditional emancipation linked to state-supervised regeneration arose from a bureaucracy imbued with the ideal of self-cultivation (Bildung). In actively pursuing their emancipation Jews created a public sphere and an ideology of emancipation based on their own version of German culture.
  586.  
  587. Find this resource:
  588.  
  589. Toury, Jacob. “Types of Jewish Municipal Rights in German Townships: The Problem of Local Emancipation.” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 22 (1977): 55–80.
  590.  
  591. DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/22.1.55Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  592.  
  593. Groundbreaking article that delineates a typology of municipal rights and shows their fundamental importance for state citizenship.
  594.  
  595. Find this resource:
  596.  
  597. Walker, Mack. German Home Towns: Community, State and General Estate, 1648–1871. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971.
  598.  
  599. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  600.  
  601. The classic study of towns under 10,000 that largely controlled local and municipal rights and were a bulwark of opposition to Jewish emancipation.
  602.  
  603. Find this resource:
  604.  
  605. Sanhedrin
  606. As part of his reassessment of the Revolution’s heritage, Napoleon also revisited Jewish emancipation, which he considered an act of “unwise generosity.” In his civil code he had replaced the Revolution’s citizenship by residence (jus soli) with citizenship by descent (jus sanguinis) (Weil 2008). Motivated by reports of continuing Jewish usury and exploitation of the peasants in Alsace, he convened an Assembly of Jewish Notables (1806), which he presented with a slate of twelve questions designed to ascertain whether Jews in fact were members of the French nation and deserved citizenship according to the new criteria of his Code (jus sanguinis). The Assembly’s answers largely satisfied Napoleon’s ministers. In a characteristically histrionic gesture, Napoleon then convoked a “Sanhedrin,” the authoritative Jewish court which, not having met for fourteen centuries, carried messianic presentiments. Diogene Tama 1985 provides the primary sources for both the Assembly and the Sanhedrin, while Blumenkranz and Soboul 1979 provides analysis on specific aspects of the Sanhedrin. Napoleon grandly wanted the Jews to “find Jerusalem in France.” Schwarzfuchs 1979 analyzes Napoleon’s motives and contextualizes his actions. At the conclusion of the Sanhedrin Napoleon issued two significant acts. First, he created a new collective structure, the “consistory,” modeled on the one he had given Protestants, which brought the Jews under direct state control, albeit with one significant difference. Protestant clergy, like Catholic priests, were supported by the state: Judaism first became equal when the state began to pay rabbis in 1831. Second, he imposed a ten-year law, which came to be known as the “infamous decree,” that limited the Jews’ residential freedom and economic activity, especially money lending, in Alsace. In preparing to replace the Revolution’s unconditional emancipation with conditional emancipation, Napoleon’s ministers studied Joseph II’s legislation. The Bourbon Restoration allowed the “infamous decree” to lapse in 1818. In most of the Rhineland territories France had occupied, as well as in Bavarian Pfalz, Rheinhessen, and the Prussian Rhineland, it remained in force until 1848. Through its recognition of the state and the supremacy of civil law, the Sanhedrin became the ideological touchstone for proponents of emancipation. Weil 2008 explores the larger context of the Sanhedrin and French nationality.
  607.  
  608. Blumenkranz, Bernhard, and Albert Soboul. Le Grand Sanhédrin de Napoléon. Toulouse, France: Collection Franco-Judaïca, 1979.
  609.  
  610. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  611.  
  612. Eight articles that explore aspects of the Sanhedrin (persons: Sinzheim and Furtado; regions: Southeast, Italy, Holland; iconography). Touati’s article on the Sanhedrin’s adherence to rabbinic law is especially important. Also includes the transcript of the proceedings.
  613.  
  614. Find this resource:
  615.  
  616. Schwarzfuchs, Simon. Napoleon, the Jews and the Sanhedrin. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979.
  617.  
  618. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  619.  
  620. Uses new archival sources to illuminate the orthodox-liberal divide and the religious definition of Judaism that emerged. Illuminates Napoleon’s motives.
  621.  
  622. Find this resource:
  623.  
  624. Transactions of the Parisian Sanhedrim, or Acts of the Assembly of Israelitish Deputies of France and Italy convoked at Paris by an Imperial and Royal Decree Dated May 20, 1806. Translated by M. Diogene Tama. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985.
  625.  
  626. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  627.  
  628. A translation of all the speeches and deliberations of the Assembly and Sanhedrin. Originally published in 1807.
  629.  
  630. Find this resource:
  631.  
  632. Weil, Patrick. How to Be French: Nationality in the Making since 1789. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008.
  633.  
  634. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  635.  
  636. The Revolution had used jus soli. The Code Napoléon introduced jus sanguinis to France and, through French occupation, much of Europe. It remained in force in France until the Third Republic (1889).
  637.  
  638. Find this resource:
  639.  
  640. Congress of Vienna
  641. The Congress of Vienna aimed to restore peace after the tumultuous Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Jewish emancipation was linked to larger issues, for example, German unification: when efforts at unification failed, so too did a unified approach to emancipation. The Congress created a German Confederation of thirty-six states which at some future time was to consider the issue of the Jews’ rights. In the meantime the signatories (Article 16) confirmed the rights “already granted to them by the individual Confederated States.” The original proposal had contained the preposition “in”—which would have included the rights granted under French occupation. Substituting the preposition “by” limited the obligation to those rights granted by the sovereign states. This infamous substitution of a preposition—by Bremen’s representative, who was determined to defend local autonomy—reversed the course of emancipation, with Jews in many German states losing the rights they had gained. Timms 2001 focuses on this episode and explores its causes. In most Italian states Jews lost rights for the second time. In contrast, in Holland and France (aside from the decade of the “infamous decree”), Jews retained the rights they had gained during the Revolutionary era. The political status of Jews in England was unaffected by events on the Continent. Baron 1920 is a classic study of the Congress of Vienna in its various ramifications.
  642.  
  643. Baron, Salo. Die Judenfrage auf dem Wiener Kongress. Vienna: Löwit, 1920.
  644.  
  645. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  646.  
  647. A unitary approach to Jewish emancipation failed alongside German unification. Article 16 opened the way to a farrago of legal situations. The Congress made the Jews’ political status in Germany an issue for all of Europe.
  648.  
  649. Find this resource:
  650.  
  651. Timms, Edward. “The Pernicious Rift: Metternich and the Debate about Jewish Emancipation at the Congress of Vienna.” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 46 (2001): 3–18.
  652.  
  653. DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/46.1.3Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  654.  
  655. Deliberating under the pressure of Napoleon’s return from Elba, the small states and city-states jealous of their autonomy succeeded in blocking a unitary approach to Jewish equality and subverting the rights granted by the French with the infamous preposition change of Article 16. This was the victory of “particularism.”
  656.  
  657. Find this resource:
  658.  
  659. Emancipation Politics in Western Europe
  660. With the conclusion of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era, three distinct patterns of emancipation had begun to emerge in three identifiable geographical regions. The emancipation process also produced two competing legislative models. Joseph II’s Edicts and Napoleon’s “infamous decree,” Sanhedrin, and Consistoire served as templates for conditional emancipation elsewhere in Europe. Napoleon’s “infamous decree” remained in force on the west bank of the Rhine down to 1848. His Consistoire influenced Russian legislators in the 1840s. The National Assembly’s legislation became the model for full unconditional emancipation, inspiring revolutionaries in 1848 and state-builders in 1870–1871 and 1917. The other model, of Joseph’s edicts, was used by Prussia in its newly acquired Polish territories (General-Juden-Reglement für Sud- und Neu-Ost Preuβen), by Russia in its first attempt at comprehensive legislation for the Jews (1804), and by Napoleon (1808). In Western Europe (England, Holland, Southern France/Bordeaux) the scope of emancipation was narrow, being limited to political rights, since Jews had already attained the equivalent of civic rights under the ancien régime. The duration of the process was brief. This process did not mark a radical break; the transition was relatively seamless. Jewish notables emerged as political activists across Europe. In England David Salomons (1797–1873) led the struggle for “emancipation,” which meant exclusively political rights and engaged only the Anglo-Jewish elite. That effort reached its successful conclusion when Rothschild took his seat in the House of Commons in 1858 (Salbstein 1982). In France in 1818 the Consistory protested vehemently against the renewal of Napoleon’s “infamous decrees.” Adolphe Crémieux (1796–1880) spearheaded the struggle against the vestiges of inequality in the form of the “Jewish oath” (more Judaico), which was finally abolished in 1846. He also helped defend Jewish citizenship in the public sphere during the Damascus Affair (1840) when the French Foreign Office (Quai d’Orsay) endorsed the blood libel (Posener 1940). From 1840 Moses Montefiore, a master of publicity and of creating alliances on grounds of “humanitarianism,” became an international defender of Jewish rights, travelling to the Middle East, Russia, and Romania (Green 2010).
  661.  
  662. Green, Abigail. Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.
  663.  
  664. DOI: 10.4159/9780674056442Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  665.  
  666. Drawing on the rights and wealth of English Jews, Montefiore was able to utilize the power of the British Empire in his efforts to defeat persecution and promote emancipation abroad. He organized public meetings and petitions, used the press, and negotiated with the British government.
  667.  
  668. Find this resource:
  669.  
  670. Posener, Samuel. Adolphe Crémieux. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1940.
  671.  
  672. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  673.  
  674. A successful lawyer, he linked liberalism and Jewish rights. He served in various capacities—in the Chamber of Deputies, as Minister of Justice, as a senator— in numerous governments. He advocated for emancipation and served as President of the Consistory and the Alliance. The edict emancipating the Jews of Algeria (October 1870) carried his name.
  675.  
  676. Find this resource:
  677.  
  678. Salbstein, M. C. N. The Emancipation of the Jews in Britain: The Question of the Admission of the Jews to Parliament, 1828–1860. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson, 1982.
  679.  
  680. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  681.  
  682. Traces how a handful of elite Anglo-Jews pressed for political rights and equal recognition of Judaism in a three-decade incremental struggle.
  683.  
  684. Find this resource:
  685.  
  686. Emancipation Politics in the German States
  687. In Central Europe (German states, Habsburg Empire, Italy), the scope of emancipation was comprehensive, encompassing civic and political rights, and the duration prolonged. Existing Jewry laws had to be abrogated while an entirely new structure of laws, ranging from civic to political rights, from local to national status, had to be promulgated. The states embraced conditional emancipation: they granted partial rights with further rights contingent upon “regeneration.” They instituted a contract of regeneration for rights by legislating and supervising this regeneration. The process constituted a radical break, and was concomitant with a radical restructuring of the larger society. The emancipation process mobilized educated and affluent Jews across Europe who fashioned an emancipation politics grounded in the available means of political engagement in their respective countries. While they continued to practice older forms of politics, e.g., intercession, they significantly supplemented these with new ones, e.g., petitions and public meetings, debates and the press. The maskilim or Jewish enlighteners were the first group to promote emancipation. The late maskilim in Central Europe turned to politics from the 1770s. In the German states Gabriel Riesser (1806–1863) wrote pamphlets, submitted petitions, and engaged in debates in opposition to the erosion of the Jews’ rights and the demands for “amelioration” or “regeneration” in the 1830s and 1840s (Friedländer 1926, Rinott 1962, Herzig 2008). In the German states in general, rabbis, as university-educated intellectuals who could speak and write German, played a leading role in defending the character of the Jews and Judaism (Liberles 1986, Schorsch 1981).
  688.  
  689. Friedländer, Fritz. Das leben Gabriel Riessers. Berlin: Philo-verlag, 1926.
  690.  
  691. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  692.  
  693. A political biography which, focused on the issues of Jewish emancipation and the constitution of 1848–1849, locates Riesser in the history of the age of restoration and revolution. Regards Riesser as creating Jewish emancipation by linking it to German liberalism. Celebrates the “living unity of Germanness and Jewishness.”
  694.  
  695. Find this resource:
  696.  
  697. Herzig, Arno. Gabriel Riesser. Hamburg: Ellert and Richter, 2008.
  698.  
  699. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  700.  
  701. Treats Riesser as a neglected figure who played a key role for Jews in achieving emancipation and for Germans as a “founding father of our modern democratic state.”
  702.  
  703. Find this resource:
  704.  
  705. Kaufmann, Uri R. “The Jewish Fight for Emancipation in France and Germany.” In Jewish Emancipation Reconsidered: The French and German Models. Edited by Michael Brenner, Vicki Caron, and Uri R. Kaufmann, 79–92. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2003.
  706.  
  707. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  708.  
  709. Jews lobbied and advocated for emancipation in both countries. There was virtually no Jewish opposition to emancipation in either country. As for political participation, a few Jewish politicians emerged in France before 1848. In Germany they emerged with the Revolution.
  710.  
  711. Find this resource:
  712.  
  713. Liberles, Robert. “Was There a Jewish Movement for Emancipation in Germany?” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 31 (1986): 35–49.
  714.  
  715. DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/31.1.35Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  716.  
  717. Rabbis and the Jewish press were at the forefront of the effort to attain emancipation in the German states, especially since “regeneration” involved questions about the nature of Judaism and its ritual practice.
  718.  
  719. Find this resource:
  720.  
  721. Rinott, Moshe. “Gabriel Riesser: Fighter for Jewish Emancipation.” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 7 (1962): 11–38.
  722.  
  723. DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/7.1.11Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  724.  
  725. The only scholarly survey in English of Riesser’s life and activities.
  726.  
  727. Find this resource:
  728.  
  729. Schorsch, Ismar. “Emancipation and the Crisis of Religious Authority: The Emergence of the Modern Rabbinate.” In Revolution and Evolution: 1848 in German-Jewish History. Edited by Werner E. Mosse, Arnold Paucker, and Reinhard Rürup, 205–248. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr, 1981.
  730.  
  731. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  732.  
  733. The university-educated rabbinate, that is, the rabbi with a doctorate, emerged out of the demands for regeneration and the reform of Judaism during the emancipation process.
  734.  
  735. Find this resource:
  736.  
  737. Emancipation Politics in Eastern Europe
  738. In Eastern Europe (Russia, Poland, Romania), the scope of emancipation was comprehensive, the duration at its most protracted. In struggling to find a policy to govern its newly acquired Jewish population after the partitions of Poland, tsarist Russia oscillated between two overlapping policies. On the one side, it enacted a Central Europe policy of conditional emancipation linked to government-supervised regeneration (education, occupational restructuring, integration), that is, a contract of regeneration for rights. On the other side, it implemented a punitive or coercive regeneration (conscription, occupational restrictions, quotas) that vitiated or indeed explicitly abandoned such a contract. The maskilim in Eastern Europe were politically engaged from the 1810s in the Kingdom of Poland and the 1820s in Russia (Wodzinski 2009, Stanislawski 1983, Zalkin 1996). In the Kingdom of Poland, maskilim engaged intensively in the politics of reform in the constitutional period (1810s–1830), turning to a defense of Jewish community interests after the failed rebellion of 1830 when political life constricted (Wodzinski 2009). In Russia from the 1840s the maskilim entered into an alliance with the tsarist state based on a mutual misunderstanding (Stanislawski 1988, Bartal 2002).
  739.  
  740. Bartal, Israel. The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772–1881. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.
  741.  
  742. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  743.  
  744. The maskilim wanted to reform the organized Jewish community by deposing the rabbis and inserting themselves as lay authorities. Many of the tsarist officials thought the maskilim would serve as an instrument for converting their brethren.
  745.  
  746. Find this resource:
  747.  
  748. Stanislawski, Michael. For Whom Do I Toil: Judah Leib Gordon and the Crisis of Russian Jewry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
  749.  
  750. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  751.  
  752. Gordon championed emancipation on the basis of natural rights, arguing that regeneration without rights undermined the Haskalah. Gordon identified with Moses Mendelssohn and German Jewry’s moderate reform of Judaism (the Breslau School).
  753.  
  754. Find this resource:
  755.  
  756. Wodzinski, Marcin. “Haskalah and Politics Reconsidered: The Case of the Kingdom of Poland, 1815–60.” In Let the Old Make Way for the New: Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Eastern European Jewry Presented to Immanuel Etkes. Edited by David Assaf and Ada Rapoport-Albert, 163–197. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 2009.
  757.  
  758. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  759.  
  760. The maskilim of the Kingdom of Poland were a distinct group separate from their Russian counterparts. They reached the apogee of political activity in the 1820s. In the 1840s and 1850s Hasidic intercessors were more successful than the maskilim.
  761.  
  762. Find this resource:
  763.  
  764. Zalkin, Mordechai. Ha-Haskalah ha-Yehudit be-Rusiya, 1800–1860. Jerusalem, 1996.
  765.  
  766. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  767.  
  768. A social history of the Russian maskilim. In the first half of the 19th century the Haskalah served as a platform that enabled modern culture and behavior patterns to penetrate broader circles of Russian Jewry. It reached its zenith in the 1840s–1860s with the proliferation of schools and the creation of the “crown rabbinate.”
  769.  
  770. Find this resource:
  771.  
  772. Community
  773. The policies that abrogated Jewish autonomy did not turn Judaism into a private voluntary matter. Rather, governments created new community structures which they sanctioned and often supervised, or Jews created voluntary centralized organizations. These structures had a legal status appropriate to the emerging civil society to which they belonged. Many of these communities were obligatory: Jews residing in a particular city, region, or polity were required to affiliate and to pay taxes. Emancipation thus resulted in the transformation and strengthening, rather than the disappearance, of Jewish communal structures and institutions. Liberles 1986 argues that in England, France, and many German states the emancipation process encouraged strong communal organization in order to advocate for equality at home and abroad.
  774.  
  775. Liberles, Robert. “Emancipation and the Structure of the Jewish Community in the Nineteenth Century.” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 31 (1986): 51–67.
  776.  
  777. DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/31.1.51Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  778.  
  779. Shows how English Jews formed a central organization for the purpose of attaining rights (Board of Deputies, 1828–1836). Napoleon created the Consistoire as a central organization which Jewish leaders also desired. In most German states Jews were required to belong to the communal organization (Gemeinde), which also levied compulsory taxes.
  780.  
  781. Find this resource:
  782.  
  783. United States
  784. Emancipation in the United States followed the West European model as Sephardi port Jews settled the Dutch and British colonies. Jews gained civic rights in the Dutch and British colonies as part of the development of Protestant pluralism. The federal Constitution (1789) guaranteed full equality before the law. Yet many states retained an established church and/or religious qualifications for office holders. To gain political rights Jews campaigned on the basis of natural rights but also their worthiness for rights. They continued to mobilize to guarantee that Jews and Judaism were “on equal footing” in all respects, e.g., Sunday laws, public schools. Chyet 1971 surveys Jews’ rights in the United States. Sorkin 2010 argues against widespread misperceptions about the political rights of Jews in the United States.
  785.  
  786. Chyet, Stanley F. “The Political Rights of the Jews in the United States, 1776–1840.” In Critical Studies in American Jewish History. Vol. 2. Edited by Jacob Rader Marcus, 27–88. Cincinnati: American Jewish Archives, 1971.
  787.  
  788. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  789.  
  790. In the colonies, toleration of fellow Protestants eventually spilled over into toleration of Jews. In the states, Jews and Catholics were “for many years second-class citizens.” In 1840 disabilities remained in five states.
  791.  
  792. Find this resource:
  793.  
  794. Sorkin, David. “Is American Jewry Exceptional? Comparing Jewish Emancipation in Europe and America.” American Jewish History 96.3 (September 2010): 175–200.
  795.  
  796. DOI: 10.1353/ajh.2011.0006Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  797.  
  798. Takes issue with the widespread notion of American Jewish “exceptionalism,” namely, that unlike Europe the United States had no emancipation process since Jews as white males were given equal rights in the Constitution. Emphasizes continuing inequality in state law and practice.
  799.  
  800. Find this resource:
  801.  
  802. 1848
  803. The Revolution briefly brought emancipation to the German states, the Habsburg lands, and much of Italy. With the Revolution’s collapse, emancipation vanished. The Frankfurt Assembly, with Gabriel Riesser elected to the office of Second Vice-President, voted in December 1848 for equality irrespective of religious affiliation, which was incorporated into the Constitution of March 1849. The German Confederate Diet formally repealed those rights on August 23, 1851. In Austria the constitution of April 25, 1848 instated equality of status for all religions without removing existing disabilities. The Imperial Constitution of March 4, 1849 introduced complete equality before the law; it was repealed in 1851. In Hungary the Diet voted for complete equality in July 1849; the decision was stillborn since the government fell two weeks later. In Sardinia-Piedmont, the Jews were granted civil rights in March 1848 and in June political rights. The revolutions in Lombardy, Tuscany, and the Duchy of Modena emancipated the Jews, and in Rome the ghetto walls were razed. After the Revolution’s collapse the ghetto walls in Rome were rebuilt. Thus the Jews in the Habsburg lands lost rights for the first time, in the German states for the second time, in Italy (with the exception of Piedmont) for the third time. The Revolution did succeed, however, in forging a new linkage between Jewish rights and liberalism that would shape events for the next two decades. In addition, Jews played an active role in the revolutions on the barricades and in elected office. Baron 1949 is an important survey, while Rürup 1981 updates Baron’s conclusions.
  804.  
  805. Baron, Salo. “The Impact of the Revolution of 1848 on Jewish Emancipation.” Jewish Social Studies 11 (1949): 195–248.
  806.  
  807. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  808.  
  809. A wide-ranging survey across Europe that considered community structures, participation in politics, and minority rights.
  810.  
  811. Find this resource:
  812.  
  813. Rürup, Reinhard. “The European Revolution of 1848 and Jewish Emancipation.” In Revolution and Evolution: 1848 in German-Jewish History. Edited by Werner E. Mosse, Arnold Paucker, and Reinhard Rürup, 1–53. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr, 1981.
  814.  
  815. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  816.  
  817. An update of Baron that surveys the Jews’ situation across Europe prior to the Revolution; the legal changes during the Revolution; the Jews’ political participation in the Revolution; and anti-Semitic disturbances and ideological anti-Semitism.
  818.  
  819. Find this resource:
  820.  
  821. Ottoman Empire
  822. The Ottoman Empire emancipated its Jewish and Christian minorities under pressure from the Western powers. Their release from the subordinate status of “tribute-bearing” (dhimmi) peoples started with the “Noble Rescript of the Rose Chamber” (November 3, 1839), which granted civil equality (“security . . . with regard to their lives, their honor, and their fortunes . . .”). Implementation required decades even in Turkey itself. The “Khatt-I Humayun” (February 18, 1856) recapitulated and reinforced the earlier edict, stipulating a new communal structure and repealing the tax (jizya) that had been a sign of dhimmi humiliation for centuries. These efforts culminated in the 1869 citizenship law that recognized all subjects regardless of religion. Rodrigue 1995 traces the difficult emancipatory path of Turkish Jews, while Stillman 1979 provides a survey and primary sources for Turkey and elsewhere.
  823.  
  824. Rodrigue, Aron. “From Millet to Minority: Turkish Jewry.” In Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States and Citizenship. Edited by Pierre Birnbaum and Ira Katznelson, 238–261. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.
  825.  
  826. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  827.  
  828. Emancipation was an integral aspect of the Turkish state which failed to maintain its centralized bureaucratic power, losing control of large swaths of the economy and thus its own funding. The state also failed to develop an adequate civic culture grounded in a common language and educational institutions. Alliance schools played a major role in reshaping the Jews’ culture and identity.
  829.  
  830. Find this resource:
  831.  
  832. Stillman, Norman. The Jews of Arab Lands: A History and Source Book. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1979.
  833.  
  834. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  835.  
  836. Excellent selection of documents accompanied by an introductory survey.
  837.  
  838. Find this resource:
  839.  
  840. Poland
  841. Napoleon exported emancipation to Polish Jewry as well. In 1806 he created the Grand Duchy of Warsaw from the territories Prussia had acquired in the 2nd and 3rd partitions and Austria in the 3rd partition. Its constitution (July 1807) freed the serfs and made Jews equal citizens. This improvement in the Jews’ status was quickly limited by the enactment of a version of the “infamous decree” that limited their rights for a decade on condition of further improvement. In general the Grand Duchy abrogated more favorable enactments from earlier regimes while retaining the oppressive legislation, e.g., the 1797 Prussian Jewry law (Reglement) that introduced a kosher meat tax, a toleration tax, and a tax on marriage. The Kingdom of Poland, the successor to Napoleon’s Grand Duchy of Warsaw, lost most of its autonomy after the failed uprising of 1830 and much of what remained after the unsuccessful revolt of 1863, when 200,000 Russian troops occupied the kingdom. Nonetheless, Wielopolski, head of the Civil Administration, emancipated the kingdom’s Jews on June 4, 1862. Eisenbach 1991 provides an overview of the process of the emancipation of Jews in Poland, while Wodzinski 2009 focuses on the role of Jewish intellectuals and activists in the debate around emancipation.
  842.  
  843. Eisenbach, Artur. The Emancipation of the Jews in Poland, 1780–1870. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
  844.  
  845. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  846.  
  847. Dense and highly detailed study that compares incremental emancipation in the Kingdom of Poland to the process across Central and Eastern Europe.
  848.  
  849. Find this resource:
  850.  
  851. Wodzinski, Marcin. “Haskalah and Politics Reconsidered: The Case of the Kingdom of Poland, 1815–60.” In Let the Old Make Way for the New: Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Eastern European Jewry Presented to Immanuel Etkes. Edited by David Assaf and Ada Rapoport-Albert, 163–197. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 2009.
  852.  
  853. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  854.  
  855. Jewish intellectuals and activists who promoted emancipation.
  856.  
  857. Find this resource:
  858.  
  859. Russia
  860. A policy of punitive or coercive regeneration came to the fore when Nicholas I (1825–1855) introduced the cantonist conscription system that drafted children from the age of twelve for a period of twenty-five years. In contrast, in the 1840s, Uvarov, Kiselev, and other government ministers looked to the example of the German states for a state-supervised regeneration based on education (Stanislawski 1983, Rogger 1986). Beginning in the 1850s, Alexander II introduced individual emancipation or “selective integration” for an elite using criteria common to Central European legislation, e.g., wealth, education, productive labor. His legislation emancipated Jews “into” existing estates and allowed them to live in the Russian interior, e.g., Moscow, Saint Petersburg. These policies held the promise of a general emancipation for all Jews (Nathans 2002). Alexander III reverted to coercive legislation and began to treat the Jews in an anomalous manner, with the discriminatory May Laws of 1882, which restricted their residence and occupations and the introduction of quotas in educational institutions (1887). At the same time, some departments of his government continued to deliberate on emancipatory legislation (Aronson 1977). While Jews briefly gained political rights with the Revolution of 1905, emancipation remained unrealized until the February Revolution (1917) and the minority rights treaties. Klier 1989 traces the obstacles to conceptualizing Jewish emancipation in Russia, while Klier 1995 studies Russian popular opinion and the press between 1855 and 1881. Taking a longer view, Löwe 1993 explores the function of Jews in Russian reactionary thought. Stanislawski 1995 studies the complex and multiple positions of Jews in Russian society.
  861.  
  862. Aronson, Michael. “The Prospects for the Emancipation of Russian Jewry during the 1880s.” Slavonic and East European Review 55.3 (1977): 348–369.
  863.  
  864. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  865.  
  866. In the 1880s moderate bureaucrats held sway in the Russian government. Sentiment favored emancipation (Pahlen Commission) or least the status quo. The change in the 1890s did not entail new legislation but harsh enforcement of extant legislation.
  867.  
  868. Find this resource:
  869.  
  870. Klier, John. “The Concept of ‘Jewish Emancipation’ in a Russian Context.” In Civil Rights in Imperial Russia. Edited by Olga Crisp and Linda Edmondson, 121–144. Oxford: Clarendon, 1989.
  871.  
  872. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  873.  
  874. Emancipation could only come with the “modernization” of the Russian state. Conversion remained a preferred “resolution” into the 1880s. From the 1804 legislation onwards Jews continued to be seen as a retrograde group that harmed others. From 1835 Jews were categorized as aliens (inorodtsy) alongside Siberian and Central Asian peoples.
  875.  
  876. Find this resource:
  877.  
  878. Klier, John. Imperial Russia’s Jewish Question, 1855–1881. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
  879.  
  880. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  881.  
  882. The Jews’ status was a central issue in Russia’s growing public opinion and press. Acculturated Jews, many of them graduates of the state-sponsored schools, contributed to those discussions. Government bureaucrats and commissions relied heavily on the press for information and ideas. The Polish uprising (1863) and the consequences of the emancipation of the serfs (1861) gave public opinion a hostile turn that predominated by 1881.
  883.  
  884. Find this resource:
  885.  
  886. Löwe, Heinz-Dietrich. The Tsars and the Jews: Reform, Reaction, and Anti-Semitism in Imperial Russia, 1772–1917. Chur, Switzerland: Harwood, 1993.
  887.  
  888. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  889.  
  890. Reform and reaction were inextricably intertwined in tsarist policy toward the Jews, with pernicious stereotypes deeply rooted in both. At the end of the 19th century Tsar Alexander III’s reactionary politics turned Jews into the symbols of modernity; anti-Semitism thus became central to a new ultraconservative Russian ideology.
  891.  
  892. Find this resource:
  893.  
  894. Nathans, Benjamin. Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
  895.  
  896. DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520208308.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  897.  
  898. Alexander II’s policy of “selective integration” led to the development of a trilingual (Russian, Hebrew, Yiddish) Russian Jewry in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The banking elite took the lead in trying to promote emancipation for all Russian Jews. Alexander III endeavored to limit “selective integration” by introducing quotas.
  899.  
  900. Find this resource:
  901.  
  902. Rogger, Hans. “The Question of Jewish Emancipation: Russia in the Mirror of Europe.” In Jewish Policies and Right-Wing Politics in Imperial Russia. By Hans Rogger, 1–24. London: Macmillan, 1986.
  903.  
  904. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  905.  
  906. Russian policy resembled Austria’s and Prussia’s from the partitions until the mid-19th century: an enlightened absolutism employing carrots and sticks to drive a conditional emancipation predicated upon regeneration. Only from the 1880s did Russian officials think the numbers, backwardness, and radicalism of their Jews precluded such policies.
  907.  
  908. Find this resource:
  909.  
  910. Stanislawski, Michael. Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews: The Transformation of Jewish Society in Russia, 1825–1855. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1983.
  911.  
  912. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  913.  
  914. Nicholas I’s conscription laws fractured Jewish communal solidarity by pitting the rich against the poor in the struggle over whose sons would fill the cantonist quota. The 1840s policy of regeneration through education propelled the Haskalah’s development by providing an institutional base.
  915.  
  916. Find this resource:
  917.  
  918. Stanislawski, Michael. “Russian Jewry, the Russian State, and the Dynamics of Jewish Emancipation.” In Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States and Citizenship. Edited by Pierre Birnbaum and Ira Katznelson, 262–283. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.
  919.  
  920. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  921.  
  922. Jews defied easy classification in the Russian system’s “taxonomic muddle.” They constituted an autonomous community, although not a legal corporation. In 1844 the tsarist government abolished the existing executive agency (kahal) yet not communal autonomy (kehillah). At the same time many Jews were enrolled individually in an estate (merchants, agriculturalists) that accorded them specific privileges.
  923.  
  924. Find this resource:
  925.  
  926. Central Europe: Emancipation Achieved
  927. Emancipation came to fruition in Central Europe with the combined triumph of liberalism and national unification and the recognition of the principle of equality before the law for members of all religions. McCagg 1989 provides a broad survey of emancipation in the Habsburg lands, while Herzig 1973 focuses on the region of Westfalen (or Westphalia) and Magnus 1997 on the city of Cologne in Germany. Häusler 1974 traces the halting progress of emancipation in the Habsburg lands from Joseph II’s toleration legislation until 1848, Clark 1999 demonstrates the haphazard quality of German Jewish rights in the 19th century, and Rürup 1986 surveys the disparate varieties of emancipation in the German states. In the Habsburg lands emancipation followed the defeats in Italy (1859). The introduction of full economic freedom with the abrogation of the guilds (1859) removed the economic barriers. Three Jewish aldermen entered the Viennese City Council in 1861. Equal rights came with the creation of the dual Austro-Hungarian monarchy (1867). The Hungarian Parliament voted for emancipation at the end of 1867. Austria introduced equality “independent of religious belief” in its Constitution of December 21, 1867. In the 1860s some German states supplanted the contract of regeneration for rights with the principle of legal equality for all citizens. Baden granted legal equality in October 1862 with its “Law on the Civic Equality of the Jews,” though claims to communal property and welfare support were delayed for ten years. In neighboring Württemberg Jews attained political rights in December 1861 and local rights in 1864. Prussia allowed Jews to vote in local and parliamentary elections in the early 1860s. The overall breakthrough came when the North German Confederation passed the “Law Concerning the Equality of Confessions in Respect to Civil and Political Rights,” on July 3, 1869. Bavaria emancipated its Jews on April 22, 1871 by accepting the decrees of the North German Confederation. In Italy emancipation came incrementally with unification through Piedmont’s expansion. Liberated by Garibaldi, Lombardy declared equality for all citizens regardless of religion on July 4, 1859. The provisional governments of the Duchies of Tuscany, Parma, and Modena abolished all discriminatory laws that same year. Similarly liberated by Garibaldi, Sicily declared equal rights on February 12, 1861. After Venice was freed from Austrian rule, civil and political rights were extended to Jews on August 4, 1866. After Italian troops occupied the former Papal States, Victor Emmanuel II granted equal rights on October 13, 1870. Segre 1995 is an analysis of emancipation politics in Italy, while Canepa 1986 examines the discourse around Jewish emancipation.
  928.  
  929. Canepa, Andrew M. “Emancipation and the Jewish Response in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Italy.” European History Quarterly 16 (1986): 403–439.
  930.  
  931. DOI: 10.1177/026569148601600401Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  932.  
  933. Studies the discourse of emancipation among Jews and non-Jews.
  934.  
  935. Find this resource:
  936.  
  937. Clark, Christopher. “German Jews.” In The Emancipation of Catholics, Jews and Protestants: Minorities and the Nation State in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Edited by Rainer Liedtke and Stephan Wendehorst, 122–147. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1999.
  938.  
  939. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  940.  
  941. The haphazard process consisted mostly of “one-off concessions” rather than rights and was compounded by the multiplicity of polities that remained “cellular and highly regionalized.” Critical was the support of liberals and business elites, who were overrepresented in the class-weighted political system.
  942.  
  943. Find this resource:
  944.  
  945. Häusler, Wolfgang. “Toleranz, Emanzipation und Antisemitismus: Das österreichische Judentum des bürgerlichen Zeitalters (1782–1918).” In Das österreichische Judentum. Edited by Nikolaus Vielmetti, 83–140. Vienna: Jugend und Volk, 1974.
  946.  
  947. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  948.  
  949. Joseph II’s toleration legislation was not fully implemented and significantly eroded after his death. A policy of privileges for the few and repression for the many prevailed until 1848.
  950.  
  951. Find this resource:
  952.  
  953. Herzig, Arno. Judentum und Emanzipation in Westfalen. Münster, Germany: Aschendorff, 1973.
  954.  
  955. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  956.  
  957. Emancipation was not just a constitutional or juridical issue but part and parcel of the development of the bourgeoisie and its relationship to the state. Jewish emancipation was integral to the debate about the nature of state and society.
  958.  
  959. Find this resource:
  960.  
  961. Magnus, Shulamit S. Jewish Emancipation in a German City: Cologne, 1798–1871. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997.
  962.  
  963. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  964.  
  965. Emancipation was caught in the tension between Cologne’s government and the Prussian authorities. Liberals and business elites began to favor emancipation from the 1840s, placing class over religion. Jews actively pressed for equality, especially in regard to subsidies for schools.
  966.  
  967. Find this resource:
  968.  
  969. McCagg, Jr., William O. A History of Habsburg Jews, 1670–1918. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.
  970.  
  971. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  972.  
  973. A sweeping survey that emphasizes modernization and the Jews who participated in it.
  974.  
  975. Find this resource:
  976.  
  977. Rürup, Reinhard. “The Tortuous and Thorny Path to Legal Equality: ‘Jew Laws’ and Emancipatory Legislation in Germany from the Late Eighteenth Century.” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 31 (1986): 3–34.
  978.  
  979. DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/31.1.3Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  980.  
  981. Emphasizes the “multitude of parallel developments” in the fragmented German states as well as the lack of uniformity of law within individual states, e.g., Prussia in 1847 had two dozen different “Jewry laws” in force.
  982.  
  983. Find this resource:
  984.  
  985. Segre, Dan. “The Emancipation of Jews in Italy.” In Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States and Citizenship. Edited by Pierre Birnbaum and Ira Katznelson, 206–237. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.
  986.  
  987. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  988.  
  989. The Jews, who constituted a large proportion of an otherwise small bourgeoisie, were overrepresented in the Risorgimento, and thus their central role as “co-founders” of the Italian state. The House of Savoy played a crucial role in transforming Piedmont into a “liberal, secular and democratic” state and then extending that transformation to the rest of Italy.
  990.  
  991. Find this resource:
  992.  
  993. Limits to Emancipation
  994. Legal emancipation did not spell the end of discrimination. In Imperial Germany in particular, various forms of discrimination persisted, whether in occupations (judiciary, education, the diplomatic corps, army reserves) or administrative process (naturalization). Some of these were the result of the constitutional tensions between federal law, which required equality before the law, and state laws, which did not (Pulzer 1992). In France barriers to office for Jews and Protestants seemed to fall with the radical turn of the Third Republic after 1879 (Birnbaum 1992). Birnbaum 2000 explores the role of Jews within the state apparatus in the Third Republic. In Italy Judaism remained a “tolerated cult” until 1889 (Codice Zanardelli).
  995.  
  996. Birnbaum, Pierre. “Particularism versus Universalism within a Strong State: The Case of the French Jewish Civil Servant.” In State Theory and State History. Edited by Rolf Torstendahl, 223–237. London: SAGE, 1992.
  997.  
  998. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  999.  
  1000. The first Jew was appointed a prefect in 1858 in the Second Empire. In the Third Republic there were some forty Jewish prefects, sub-prefects and prefectorial secretaries. These high civil servants played an important role in Jewish institutions, e.g., the Consistory, the Alliance.
  1001.  
  1002. Find this resource:
  1003.  
  1004. Birnbaum, Pierre. “From Court Jews to State Jews.” In Jewish Destinies: Citizenship, State and Community in Modern France. By Pierre Birnbaum, 45–63. New York: Hill and Wang, 2000.
  1005.  
  1006. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1007.  
  1008. Jews entered political life in significant numbers as elected deputies and civil servants in the Third Republic. Alongside Protestants, they helped to introduce republican social and educational policies.
  1009.  
  1010. Find this resource:
  1011.  
  1012. Pulzer, Peter. “‘Why Was There a Jewish Question in Imperial Germany?’ and ‘Religion and Judicial Appointments in Imperial Germany.’” In Jews and the German State: The Political History of a Minority. By Peter Pulzer, 28–68. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.
  1013.  
  1014. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1015.  
  1016. State laws did not resolve the tensions between nationality and citizenship. They also did not keep pace with economic and social changes. As a tiny minority Jews wanted judicial and educational appointments based on merit. As a sizable and underrepresented group facing deliberate discrimination, Catholics wanted quotas.
  1017.  
  1018. Find this resource:
  1019.  
  1020. Politics Institutionalized
  1021. The Alliance Israélite Universelle (1860), the Anglo-Jewish Association (1873; first founded in 1870 as a branch of the Alliance), and the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden (1901) aided Jews in Eastern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East in their struggle for emancipation. In particular they created schools that would regenerate impoverished, uneducated, and backward Jews so as to prepare them for equal rights. They resembled the pervasive Christian missionary societies that affirmed belief at home by promoting it abroad. Bar-Chen 2003 compares the work of the Alliance and the Hilfsverein, while Graetz 1996 studies the French Jews who contributed to the Alliance. Black 1988 explores the role of English Jews in international Jewish politics. The Ősterreichisch-Israelitische Union (1886) and the Centralverein (1893) were organized interest groups resembling many that emerged in Austria in the 1880s and Germany in the 1890s. They aimed to defend the emancipation that was now under siege by the newly emergent anti-Semitic political parties. Rinott 1971, Schorsch 1972, Lamberti 1978, and Penslar 2001 explore German Jewish political organizations; Toury 1985 explores the composition of Austrian Jewish political organizations.
  1022.  
  1023. Bar-Chen, Eli. “Two Communities with a Sense of Mission: The Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden.” In Jewish Emancipation Reconsidered: The French and German Models. Edited by Michael Brenner, Vicki Caron, and Uri R. Kaufmann, 111–121. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2003.
  1024.  
  1025. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1026.  
  1027. By accumulating knowledge about the Jews of distant lands, these organizations created an archive of knowledge and a sense of time related to their own position as emancipated Jews.
  1028.  
  1029. Find this resource:
  1030.  
  1031. Black, Eugene. The Social Politics of Anglo-Jewry, 1880–1920. Oxford: Blackwell, 1988.
  1032.  
  1033. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1034.  
  1035. Because of the power of the British Empire, Anglo-Jews played an outsized role in international Jewish politics. The London Anglo-Jewish elite controlled Jewish foreign policy through the Anglo-Jewish Association and the Conjoint Committee on Foreign Affairs.
  1036.  
  1037. Find this resource:
  1038.  
  1039. Graetz, Michael. The Jews in Nineteenth-Century France: From the French Revolution to the Alliance Israélite Universelle. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996.
  1040.  
  1041. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1042.  
  1043. Jews from the institutional periphery, especially former Saint-Simonians, were the moving spirits behind the creation of an unprecedented organization with international pretensions.
  1044.  
  1045. Find this resource:
  1046.  
  1047. Lamberti, Marjorie. Jewish Activism in Imperial Germany: The Struggle for Civil Equality. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1978.
  1048.  
  1049. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1050.  
  1051. An analysis of the nitty-gritty of Jewish politics, especially the difficulties in establishing a defense/interest group and creating political alliances with various liberal parties. Increasingly after 1898, Jewish activists participated in party politics and opposed and criticized discriminatory government policies.
  1052.  
  1053. Find this resource:
  1054.  
  1055. Penslar, Derek. “Solving the ‘Jewish Problem’: Jewish Social Policy, 1860–1933.” In Shylock’s Children: Economics and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe. By Derek Penslar, 174–222. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
  1056.  
  1057. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1058.  
  1059. Jewish social policy emerged with the shift from individual philanthropy by notables focused on poor support to institutions with more ambitious policies of trying to engineer a change in the character of Eastern European Jews, whose endemic poverty made them likely emigrants.
  1060.  
  1061. Find this resource:
  1062.  
  1063. Rinott, Moshe. Hevrat ha-ezra li-yehudei Germanya ba-Yetsira u-be-Ma’avak. Jerusalem: Beit ha-Sefer le-Hinnuk, 1971.
  1064.  
  1065. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1066.  
  1067. A detailed study based on archival sources that provides a solid history of the organization’s founding and development. The bulk of the book focuses on the Hilfsverein’s educational activities in Palestine.
  1068.  
  1069. Find this resource:
  1070.  
  1071. Schorsch, Ismar. Jewish Reactions to German Anti-Semitism, 1870–1914. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972.
  1072.  
  1073. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1074.  
  1075. Jews had to overcome their understanding of the emancipation contract, i.e., they were distinct only by religion, in order to organize a self-defense organization that resembled the interest groups that had begun to emerge in the 1890s. A younger generation of university-educated lawyers and activists deemed insufficient the efforts of the non-Jewish notables who took up the cause against the new anti-Semitism (Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus, 1891).
  1076.  
  1077. Find this resource:
  1078.  
  1079. Toury, Jacob. “Troubled Beginnings: The Emergence of the Ősterreichisch-Israelitische Union.” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 30 (1985): 457–475.
  1080.  
  1081. DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/30.1.457Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1082.  
  1083. Detailed study of the organization’s creation. Immigrant professionals and businessmen outside of the Viennese Jewish establishment took the initiative.
  1084.  
  1085. Find this resource:
  1086.  
  1087. Diplomacy
  1088. Jewish emancipation figured in European diplomacy beginning with the Congresses of Vienna and Aix-la-Chapelle (1818); the latter adopted a protocol favoring civil but not political rights (November 21, 1818). At the Conference of London (1830) the three powers (France, Great Britain, and Russia) required equality for members of all religions in the new state of Greece. The Jews of Greece thereby gained full emancipation. The Treaty of Paris (1856), which ended the Crimean War, referred to the Hatti-Humayoun but failed to instate equality for the Jews, especially in Romania. The Congress of Berlin (1878) required civil and political equality for members of all religions as a prerequisite for the establishment of new states (Serbia, Montenegro, Romania) or independent principalities within the Ottoman Empire (Bulgaria). Romania again evaded its international obligations in continuing to discriminate against its Jews. In Kohler 1917, Max Kohler surveys the Congresses of Vienna and Aix-la-Chappelle with an eye to swaying the discussions of his day; Wolf 1919 provides primary sources with the same goal. Fink 2004 follows the process of enshrining minority rights from the Congress of Berlin through the League of Nations and after. Stern 1977 argues for the role of economic motivations in Bismarck’s granting Jewish rights.
  1089.  
  1090. Fink, Carol. Defending the Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the Jews, and International Minority Protection, 1878–1938. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
  1091.  
  1092. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1093.  
  1094. The great powers developed the system of minority rights between the Congress of Berlin and Versailles Peace Treaties which was then enshrined in the League of Nations. The great powers applied the system to weak new nations but not to themselves. The League was unable to enforce the system.
  1095.  
  1096. Find this resource:
  1097.  
  1098. Kohler, Max. Jewish Rights at International Congresses. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1917.
  1099.  
  1100. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1101.  
  1102. Argued for the benefit of the diplomats in Versailles that there was an “almost unbroken chain of precedents” for peace conferences to address “liberty of conscience and equality of rights, regardless of creed.”
  1103.  
  1104. Find this resource:
  1105.  
  1106. Stern, Fritz. Gold and Iron: Bismarck, Bleichröder, and the Building of the German Empire. New York: Knopf, 1977.
  1107.  
  1108. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1109.  
  1110. Bleichröder made heroic interventions. Yet Bismarck traded financial remuneration for investors in the collapsed Romanian railroads over the issue of Jewish rights.
  1111.  
  1112. Find this resource:
  1113.  
  1114. Wolf, Lucien. Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question; with Texts of Protocols, Treaty Stipulations and Other Public Acts and Official Documents. London: Jewish Historical Society of England, 1919.
  1115.  
  1116. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1117.  
  1118. Like Kohler, Wolf addressed the Versailles Peace conference (“practical questions which may arise”). He divided his account into “interventions on grounds of humanity,” beginning with the expulsion from Bohemia and Prague (1744) and the Congress of Vienna (1815), and “interventions by right,” dating from the Treaty of Carlowitz (1699).
  1119.  
  1120. Find this resource:
  1121.  
  1122. War, Revolution, and Minority Rights
  1123. The First World War and the ensuing wars and civil wars brought unprecedented destruction to the Jews of Eastern and East Central Europe, especially those who lived in the paths of the armies or were the targets of deliberate attacks. At the same time, through the collapse of four empires (Austria-Hungary, Imperial Germany, tsarist Russia, and Ottoman Turkey), the war advanced the cause of emancipation. The first Russian Revolution of March 1917 that toppled the tsarist regime introduced full legal equality on April 2, 1917. The Weimar Republic (August 11, 1919) promised the full realization of emancipation with an end to the various forms of discrimination that had persisted in Imperial Germany. The concept of national minority rights, which had been invented at the fin-de-siècle, now entered European political practice (Janowsky 1933). The short-lived Ukrainian National Republic (1918–1919) introduced a system of national autonomy for its minorities, including Jews. In December 1918 the government appointed a Minister for Jewish Affairs. The Versailles Peace Conference embraced national minority rights as a means to guarantee rights for those peoples who did not gain sovereignty. Minority rights were written into special treaties. The first to sign was Poland (June 28, 1919), which then served as a model for other countries (Greece, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Turkey). The treaty’s clauses became part of Poland’s constitution (March 17, 1921). Fink 2004 follows the process of enshrining minority rights from the Congress of Berlin through the League of Nations and after. Stern 1977 (cited under Diplomacy) argues for the role of economic motivations in Bismarck’s granting Jewish rights.
  1124.  
  1125. Fink, Carol. Defending the Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the Jews, and International Minority Protection, 1878–1938. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
  1126.  
  1127. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1128.  
  1129. The great powers developed the system of minority rights between the Congress of Berlin and Versailles Peace Treaties, which was then enshrined in the League of Nations. The great powers applied the system to weak new nations but not to themselves. The League was not able to enforce the system.
  1130.  
  1131. Find this resource:
  1132.  
  1133. Janowsky, Oscar I. The Jews and Minority Rights (1898–1919). New York: Columbia University Press, 1933.
  1134.  
  1135. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1136.  
  1137. The origins of the idea of minority rights, the agitation on its behalf in Europe and the United States, and its institutionalization. The pioneering study.
  1138.  
  1139. Find this resource:
  1140.  
  1141. Repudiation
  1142. By the late 19th century Jewish emancipation had become a symbol of liberalism and a touchstone for democracy across Europe. The radical right-wing politics that emerged at the fin-de-siècle embraced anti-Semitism as an integral component of its ultranationalist, antidemocratic programs. These movements and political parties had limited political success in the decades before World War One. In contrast, in the interwar period, these right-wing parties and their successors came to power, undermined democracy, and replaced it with forms of dictatorship and fascism. They also repudiated the Jews’ rights. Economic measures such as expropriation of property and the imposition of quotas to restrict education and employment were integral to de-emancipation. Hungary pioneered quotas in education. Shortly after assuming power the Nazis began to exclude Jews from the civil service and from cultural and public life, and to confiscate property and denaturalize emigrants. The Nazis rescinded emancipation with the 1935 Nuremberg Laws and the “Reich Citizenship Law” that made race the criterion for citizenship. Three years later they excluded Jews from economic life and schools and began to ghettoize them. After incorporating the provisions of the Minority Rights treaty into its constitution, Poland refused to fulfill key provisions of the treaty by not subsidizing Yiddish- and Hebrew-language schools and de facto excluding Jews from the civil service. Post-Pilsudski Poland (after 1935), which became increasingly undemocratic, infringed on the Jews’ equality with laws prohibiting kosher slaughtering and prescribing Sunday rest. In Italy, as part of his effort to foment a new wave of revolution within fascism, Mussolini passed a raft of racial laws that undermined the Jews’ equality. These laws were neither imposed by the Germans nor the result of Nazi pressure. After the German occupation of September 8, 1943 the new Italian Social Republic of Salò introduced additional racial legislation. The Vichy regime, as heir to France’s right-wing parties, set out to realize anti-Semitic policies. Through the “Statut des juifs” (October 3, 1940) the Vichy government excluded Jews from the highest ranks of the civil service, the officer corps, and all the professions that influence public opinion. The law of October 4, 1940 authorized the government to intern foreign Jews. The statute of October 7, 1940 deprived Algerian Jews of their French citizenship by abrogating the Crémieux Decree. Marrus and Paxton 1981 is the authoritative study of Vichy France, Mendelsohn 1983 surveys East Central Europe, and Friedländer 1997–2007 is a detailed and comprehensive study of Nazi policy and the victims’ response. Dean 2008 is an important analysis of the role of theft in the Holocaust.
  1143.  
  1144. Dean, Martin. Robbing the Jews: The Confiscation of Jewish Property in the Holocaust, 1933–45. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
  1145.  
  1146. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1147.  
  1148. Jewish property was primarily confiscated by pseudo-legal, bureaucratic, and administrative means that created legal title for a “massive program of state-sponsored theft.” The process was rife with corruption at all levels. Confiscation was first linked to emigration, then to deportation and murder. Dean emphasizes the bureaucracy’s role in implementing the laws, the impact on individual Jews, and widespread complicity across Europe in processing and plundering the property.
  1149.  
  1150. Find this resource:
  1151.  
  1152. Friedländer, Saul. Nazi Germany and the Jews. 2 vols. New York: Harper, Collins, 1997–2007.
  1153.  
  1154. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1155.  
  1156. Combines a detailed analysis of the development of Nazi policy with the victims’ responses as well as others’ initiatives and responses, as those policies unfolded. Sees Hitler as the driving force behind “redemptive anti-Semitism,” yet functioning within the constraints of the party, the state, public opinion, and foreign policy.
  1157.  
  1158. Find this resource:
  1159.  
  1160. Marrus, Michael R., and Robert O. Paxton. Vichy France and the Jews. New York: Basic Books, 1981.
  1161.  
  1162. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1163.  
  1164. Vichy France acted on its own, drawing on France’s legacy of right-wing anti-Semitic politics, in introducing discriminatory legislation and interning Jews.
  1165.  
  1166. Find this resource:
  1167.  
  1168. Mendelsohn, Ezra. The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983.
  1169.  
  1170. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1171.  
  1172. Excellent overview of developments across East Central Europe in the interwar years, including legislation.
  1173.  
  1174. Find this resource:
  1175.  
  1176. Restoration, Restitution, and Reparations
  1177. During the war years various governments in exile promised to repeal discriminatory laws and reinstate equality, e.g., Free French, Dutch, Czech, Belgian, Polish (the Polish government in exile significantly qualified its promise by discouraging a mass homecoming of Jews). The eighteen states that signed the London Inter-Allied Declaration (January 5, 1943) declared null and void Nazi expropriation measures and promised to restore property to their rightful Jewish owners. In the post-liberation or postwar period a true obstacle for most governments, whether because of liberal principles, residual anti-Semitism, or an admixture of the two, was the inability to recognize that within the unprecedented horror of the war, a singular horror had been wreaked upon the Jews as targeted victims of racism. Hence there was frequently genuine reluctance to single out concentration/death camp survivors for special treatment or to offer special assistance or accelerated processing to Jews in general. Restitution turned out to be inordinately complicated since Nazi confiscations and expropriations occurred across occupied Europe and citizens and officials of many countries participated. Who bore responsibility was thus a complex question with no simple answers. In consequence, there were waves of restitution and reparations. The collapse of the Eastern Bloc (1989) and the restoration of private property rights reopened many of these issues. Some issues remain unresolved or in litigation even into the early 21st century.
  1178.  
  1179. Austria
  1180. The Second Republic did not accept liability for the results of the Anschluβ, which was treated as an illegal occupation (Moscow Declaration, November 1943). The Austrian government therefore preferred “restitution” to “compensation,” for the former neither implicated the state nor entailed government liability. On May 1, 1945 the Constitution of 1929 was reinstated, thus restoring citizenship to Jews (Knight 1991).
  1181.  
  1182. Knight, Robert. “Restitution and Legitimacy in Post-war Austria, 1945–53.” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 36 (1991): 413–441.
  1183.  
  1184. DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/36.1.413Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1185.  
  1186. Detailed analysis of how the Austrian government, deeming itself Nazism’s “first victim” and avoiding systematic denazification, and concerned to win the votes of ex-Nazis, refused to recognize the specific injustices that Jews had suffered and therefore avoided creating an equitable program to compensate Jews for property that had been forcibly expropriated (“Aryanized”).
  1187.  
  1188. Find this resource:
  1189.  
  1190. Belgium
  1191. Before the outbreak of the war 90 percent of the 65,000 Jews in Belgium were immigrants. It was significant that on June 27, 1944 the Belgian government declared that all foreigners resident in Belgium prior to the war would be readmitted. On October 6, 1944 the government decided to categorize German Jews as “Germans” and thus as suspect aliens. The government finally recognized the difference and removed all restrictions on German Jews, including sequestration of property, in early 1947. In the summer of 1945 the government recognized the suffering of survivors and offered them support alongside other victims of the Nazis. It rescinded that support for foreigners the next spring (1946). In 1947 the government relented vis-à-vis children, and especially orphans, who de jure were foreigners but were eligible to claim Belgian citizenship on reaching the age of majority (Caestecker 2005). A law of April 12, 1947 recognized coercion in agreements and contracts during the occupation and thus established a legal basis for restitution of property (Doorslaer 2007).
  1192.  
  1193. Caestecker, Frank. “The Reintegration of Jewish Survivors into Belgian Society, 1943–47.” In The Jews Are Coming Back: The Return of the Jews to Their Countries of Origin after WWII. Edited by David Bankier, 72–107. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2005.
  1194.  
  1195. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1196.  
  1197. The ideals of liberalism and the nation-state that did not recognize differences in race or religion but only in citizenship could not adequately address the Jews’ experience during the war and the hardships they faced thereafter.
  1198.  
  1199. Find this resource:
  1200.  
  1201. Doorslaer, Rudi van. “The Expropriation of Jewish Property and Restitution in Belgium.” In Robbery and Restitution: The Conflict over Jewish Property in Europe. Edited by Martin Dean, Constantin Goschler, and Philipp Ther, 155–170. New York: Berghahn, 2007.
  1202.  
  1203. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1204.  
  1205. The Belgian authorities improvised the process of restitution which lasted well into the 1970s.
  1206.  
  1207. Find this resource:
  1208.  
  1209. France
  1210. In returning to France, de Gaulle was cautious not to appear to be “bringing back the Jews.” It was almost a year after the Allied invasion of North Africa before the Crémieux Decree was renewed in Algeria (October 20, 1943). In France the French National Liberation Committee’s orders of May 24, 1944 annulled Vichy’s denaturalizations (July 22, 1940). The orders of August 8–9, 1944 revoked all racist laws in order to reinstate the status quo ante. Two laws of November 14, 1944 restored confiscated property and apartments. An order of February 3, 1945 legalized the status of all foreigners in France, which included many Jews who had been refugees before the war. France began a policy of reparations after 1997. Poznanski 2005 contextualizes the postwar failure to recognize the Jewish experience in the war, Weil 2005 traces the political factions that contributed to this situation in postwar France, and Andrieu 2007 provides a taxonomy of approaches to restitution and reparation in the postwar period.
  1211.  
  1212. Andrieu, Claire. “Two Approaches to Compensation in France.” In Robbery and Restitution: The Conflict over Jewish Property in Europe. Edited by Martin Dean, Constantin Goschler, and Philipp Ther, 134–154. New York: Berghahn, 2007.
  1213.  
  1214. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1215.  
  1216. Distinguishes between postwar restitution, which was primarily material and extended into the 1970s, and reparations, which, since 1997 and associated with the Mattéoli Commission, are “chiefly moral and emotional and only secondarily material,” resting on a recognition of the Holocaust (Commission for the Compensation of Victims of Spoliation).
  1217.  
  1218. Find this resource:
  1219.  
  1220. Poznanski, Renée. “French Apprehensions, Jewish Expectations: From a Social Imaginary to a Political Practice.” In The Jews Are Coming Back: The Return of the Jews to Their Countries of Origin after WWII. Edited by David Bankier, 25–57. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2005.
  1221.  
  1222. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1223.  
  1224. Jewish organizations modified their demands for recognition of Jews’ plight during the war because of animosity in the Free French government and the Resistance. Jews’ singular persecution was not recognized. After the liberation expropriators and purchasers organized in opposition to the restitution of Jewish property.
  1225.  
  1226. Find this resource:
  1227.  
  1228. Weil, Patrick. “The Return of Jews I the Nationality or in the Territoriality of France.” In The Jews Are Coming Back: The Return of the Jews to Their Countries of Origin after WWII. Edited by David Bankier, 58–71. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2005.
  1229.  
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  1231.  
  1232. Within the government “egalitarian republicans” battled against “timorous and even clearly anti-Semitic approaches” in formulating France’s laws after liberation.
  1233.  
  1234. Find this resource:
  1235.  
  1236. West Germany
  1237. The occupying powers passed laws of citizenship and restitution in their respective zones. The Americans restored nationality on September 20, 1945 and enacted legislation for property restitution on November 10, 1947 (Military Law No. 59). The French passed a similar restitution decree for their zone the same day. The British passed legislation in May 1949. The “Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany” that came into force on May 23, 1949 restored rights to all regardless of religion. The first indemnity law for individuals went into effect on September 1, 1949. Owners of former Jewish property created an organization in the spring of 1950 to resist restitution measures: “Federal Association for Fair Restitution.” West Germany agreed to pay reparations in negotiations with Israel and international Jewish organizations on September 10, 1952 (Brenner 1997). The Bundestag passed an additional restitution law on July 15, 1957 (Law for the Fulfillment of the Restitution of Obligations of the German Reich) to assume responsibility for claims in the occupied territories as well as those that had not been settled on the basis of the 1952 law. The situation in East Germany was different: Since the governing Communists rejected private property rights they enacted no laws of restitution—aside from an early one in Thuringia (1945) that was quickly forgotten. After reunification in 1989, Western Germany extended its restitution laws to these areas. The Constitution of the German Democratic Republic (October 7, 1949) restored citizenship to Jews. Goschler 2007 provides a detailed study of this complex political history of restitution of Jewish property.
  1238.  
  1239. Brenner, Michael. After the Holocaust: Rebuilding Jewish Lives in Postwar Germany. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.
  1240.  
  1241. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1242.  
  1243. A narrative account of the various Jewish populations in the immediate postwar era plus a collection of illustrative memoirs.
  1244.  
  1245. Find this resource:
  1246.  
  1247. Goschler, Constantin. “Jewish Property and the Politics of Restitution in Germany after 1945.” In Robbery and Restitution: The Conflict over Jewish Property in Europe. Edited by Martin Dean, Constantin Goschler, and Philipp Ther, 113–133. New York: Berghahn, 2007.
  1248.  
  1249. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1250.  
  1251. West Germany passed numerous restitution laws (1953, Federal Indemnification law, 1957 Federal Restitution Law, 1965 Final Law) in hopes of a “final settlement” only to find itself facing additional issues and cases, especially after reunification with the former East Germany.
  1252.  
  1253. Find this resource:
  1254.  
  1255. Italy
  1256. The Allies required the abrogation of the racial laws in the “long armistice” (Royal Decree n. 31, September 29, 1943, Malta) which led to the royal decrees (#25, 26) of January 20, 1944 that restored civil and political rights as well as patrimonial rights to property; the decrees were not published in the official Gazette until October 20, 1944. Italy restored full civil and political rights to all who had been persecuted in the Constitution of June 2, 1946, which came into force on January 1, 1948. The decree of May 11, 1947 awarded assets of Jews without heirs to the Union of Jewish Communities, though the wording of the decree complicated realization in the courts. The Republic did little to restore lost property, instead recognizing as legitimate the contracts used to sell property and businesses under the coercive circumstances of the racial laws of 1938. The same government organization (Ente di Gestione e Liquidazione Immobiliare [EGELI]) that had carried out confiscations from 1939 onwards was entrusted with managing the return of assets. A decree of May 5, 1946 (#393), for example, required Jews to refund the expenses of credit institutions that had managed their assets during the period of persecution. Individuals who had been dismissed from civil service, university, and military appointments faced obstacles and hostility in reclaiming their former positions. The 1930 law (Royal Decree 1731) creating the Union of Italian Jewish Communities as a compulsory community under the direct supervision of the then-fascist state remained in force, in part with the backing of the Jewish establishment, until 1987. Schwarz 2012 focuses on Jewish community life in postwar Italy, while Toscano 2005 explores the political reintegration of Italian Jews. Pavan 2007 is a study of confiscation and restitution.
  1257.  
  1258. Pavan, Ilaria. “Indifference and Forgetting: Italy and Its Jewish Community, 1938–70.” In Robbery and Restitution: The Conflict over Jewish Property in Europe. Edited by Martin Dean, Constantin Goschler, and Philipp Ther, 171–181. New York: Berghahn, 2007.
  1259.  
  1260. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1261.  
  1262. An empirically rich critique of confiscation and restitution.
  1263.  
  1264. Find this resource:
  1265.  
  1266. Schwarz, Guri. After Mussolini: Jewish Life and Jewish Memories in Post-fascist Italy. London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2012.
  1267.  
  1268. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1269.  
  1270. Studies the institutions of Jewish life and the Jews’ position in postwar Italy as well as the representations used to legitimate them.
  1271.  
  1272. Find this resource:
  1273.  
  1274. Toscano, Mario. “The Abrogation of Racial Laws and the Reintegration of Jews in Italian Society (1943–1948).” In The Jews Are Coming Back: The Return of the Jews to Their Countries of Origin after WWII. Edited by David Bankier, 148–168. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2005.
  1275.  
  1276. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1277.  
  1278. Examines official Jewish responses to the constitutional process as well as the myth of resistance (Resistenza) as a “second Risorgimento” that could reintegrate the Jews into Italy.
  1279.  
  1280. Find this resource:
  1281.  
  1282. Romania
  1283. The Goga-Cuza government in 1938 passed the Citizenship Review Law, which deprived thousands of Jews of citizenship. The Communist government delayed passing a new citizenship law that would restore rights to Jews. After the elections in May 1947 no law had been passed. Bankier 2005 includes Romania in its larger European survey, while Dean, et al. 2007, an edited volume on theft and property restitution throughout Europe, does the same.
  1284.  
  1285. Bankier, David, ed. The Jews Are Coming Back: The Return of the Jews to Their Countries of Origin after WWII. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2005.
  1286.  
  1287. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1288.  
  1289. A multi-author volume that surveys the problematic of Jews returning after the war.
  1290.  
  1291. Find this resource:
  1292.  
  1293. Dean, Martin, Constantin Goschler, and Philipp Ther. Robbery and Restitution: The Conflict over Jewish Property in Europe. New York: Berghahn, 2007.
  1294.  
  1295. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1296.  
  1297. Multi-author edited volume offering a comparative account of “robbery” and “restitution” across Europe.
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