Trudy Gold
How Did Enlightenment Thinkers View the Jews?

Trudy Gold | How Did Enlightenment Thinkers View the Jews | 06.09.22

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- [Trudy Gold] Okay, well thank you all very much. And today I am looking at the thinkers of the Enlightenment, specifically in their relationship to the Jews. Let me explain first what I’m not going to have the chutzpah to do. I am not a philosopher, I am a historian. And of course you can spend your whole life studying the thinkers of the enlightenment. One of the issues when you are teaching or studying Jewish history is you have to know enough about the outside world to see how the outside world is going to react to the Jews and the Jews are going to react to them. The Jews are such, they are so incidental to the European Enlightenment, but the point is, it’s going to have an incredible impact on them. So what I’m going to do in this presentation, and I think it’s quite, and this is quite important because remember we are dealing with Russia Now. I want to start with a quote of Zalman of Liadi, and next week I’m going to be spending a whole session on him. He, of course, was the rabbi who was responsible for creating Chabad. Chochma. Bina. Da'at. And he was in Eastern Europe, under Czarist rule, at the time when Napoleon invaded Russia. It’s fascinating because if you think about it, it was Napoleon who extended writes to the Jews and knocked down the ghetto walls wherever he conquered. How was it then that Zalman of Liadi writes a letter to another rabbi in which he says, “I would rather my people be persecuted, even die under the Czars than live in peace under Napoleon, because Napoleon will be the end of the Jewish people.” And of course, he was talking about the reforms that had really been spirited by the European Enlightenment. So I think it’s important that we just discuss, because also there’s another reason.

One of the issues I find most painful, in the study of Jewish history, is how so many Jews, be it in Germany, France, England, in the west, felt that they had to apologise for themselves, that they had forgotten that they too came from a great history. They so much wanted to be part of the Europe of the Enlightenment, that they themselves downgraded their Jewish experience. So this is why I thought it was important to put this presentation in here. And at its most extreme, of course it leads to Jewish self-hatred. And in a way, the dilemmas that were posed by the enlightenment nearly 300 years ago are still with us. How are we part of society? Are we a group in exile? Are we a religious group? Are we cultural? What are we and is our experience a downgraded experience? What? How did the enlightenment thinkers see the Jew? Well, before I even can get onto that, I just want to give you a tiny little snapshot of what the Jewish world was like. And I want to take the year 1780, because this is just after the Czars had begun to partition Poland. So the largest Jewish population in the world, nearly three quarters of world Jewry, are now living under Czarist rule. A large chunk of Jewish population is now in Prussia. And another pro- another tranche is in the Hapsburg Empire. In 1780, there were about 45,000 Jews living in England. There were about 40,000 Jews in France throughout the whole of the Hapsburg Empire. Before the annexation of Galatia, there were about a hundred thousand. In America, there were three, about 3000 Jews at the time, the American Revolution. And in the world of Islam, about 10%.

So you are looking at a very small world population where the bulk is living in a world where the Enlightenment will not penetrate yet. And what I’ll be doing later on, when we come to that part of the course when we’re dealing with Eastern Europe, I’m going to talk about the Jewish Enlightenment, the Haskala, which is something very, very different. So let’s try and work out how the enlightenment happened because I think it’s important, and I’m sure many of you, I know I have philosophers on this, are listening. I know that so many of you know this very well. But what I’m doing is, what I’m trying to give you is the background to how it’s going to impact on the Jews. So the Enlightenment, its other name of course, is the age of reason. And it really begins as a movement that develops as an impact, the impact of the 30 years war. The 30 years war was one of the most disastrous wars that engulfed the European continent. Ostensibly it was the wars of religion. Well, in fact, it wasn’t the wars of religion, it’s about economics, it’s about politics, it’s about power, but it was also about religion. And the point is you had Catholics, Catholic priests, blessing one set of armies. You had Protestants blessing another set of armies. And Europe descended into total chaos and horror. Nearly a third of the population of Europe died as a result of the 30 years war. And society shrunk to its absolute lowest ebb. It was a period of darkness, the dark clouds that swept Europe.

And it led to certain individuals, be it in England, France, Germany in particular, and also taken over to America to begin to rethink what it meant to be a human being. And also to think about how we can apply reason. And it was also very much a product of scientific revolution The Renaissance, the all the, the, the discovery of the new world. More and more knowledge coming into Europe. And one of the problems was that many countries had to develop a proper economy, a modern mercantile economy, which meant you needed to educate how is it going to work? Enlightened autocracy, for example, which we’ve already discussed when we looked at Catherine the Great, so the Enlighteners at first really working in isolation, but gradually you are going to see them in communication with each other. And I should mention also there was quite a developed humanistic centre in Amsterdam. We’ve already looked at Amsterdam. You see that. You see that as a hub, as an important hub of Europe, people coming from all over the world, the great trading centres. It’s really where ideas come together. And what the reformers began to do, remember, they want to apply reason. So they want to reform theology. They are determined to make religion itself more reasonable. Academic teaching has to become more reasonable. And the law, what they were dreaming of creating was a tolerant, open-minded society that was less wedded to tradition and better adjusted to the advances of the early modern period. And of course, later on it’s going to have political overtones. And it gradually began to focus on turning absolutism into which of course what was absolutism really about? It’s concerned with dynastic glory, religious uniformity, and the enlightened thinkers are actually more interested in promoting and educating the general wellbeing of society.

Now, let’s be very, very careful here. When we talk about enlightenment, who are we talking about? We’re certainly not talking about women, we’re certainly not talking about people of colour. All you have to do is think of the slave state. We are certainly not thinking of the peasantry. We’re talking about the growth of the middle classes, and can the middle class man have a place in the new world? And they realised that this kind of thinking could only proceed and if could only proceed if there was some sort of radical challenge. And of course, it’s going to erupt in America into the American Declaration of Independence. Yes, of course it was about freeing itself from the British and it was about freeing itself from the taxes of the British. But what was the revolution also about? I often think of the words of George Washington when he visited the Rhode Island synagogue. And he made a speech and he said, “Ev-”, and he welcomed the Jews to the new world. And he said, “Every man should sit in peace on his own vine and fig tree, and no one should make him afraid.” So this is hugely forward thinking. And of course in Europe it’s the French Revolution.

So, It moves from the early philosophers of the Enlightenment, people like Voltaire into the more radical thinkers that are going to light a tinderbox that is going to lead to the French Revolution. And from a Jewish point of view, the reason we really have to consider this, because this is where it becomes so central to Jewish history, is quite simple. The French Revolution, and I say this so often, the Jews are irrelevant to the French Revolution. There were only, as I’ve already mentioned, there were only 40,000 Jews in France at the time of the revolution. But think of the watchword of the French Revolution, liberty, equality, fraternity. If it’s going to mean anything, what are we going to do with the 40,000 Jews living in France? Can they ever be made into useful citizens? And this was the debate, and if you like, it’s the enlightenment that plunges the Jews into the modern world. And by 1878, never in Eastern Europe, but by 1878, the whole of Western and central Europe has emancipated the Jews. As you all know, England was an exception. England and Holland, it’s a long slow process. With the others, It’s edicts of emancipation. So these outsiders are going to be plunged into modernity. Now the problem was that many of the figures of the Enlightenments who themselves are behind all these ideas, have a real problem with the Jews. Now what, how did traditional Christian society view the Jews?

I’ve pulled together a sort of little plan really in my own head for you. Jews are aliens, they’re uncultured, they’re corrupt, both morally and economically. They are hateful of non-Jewish society. And there should be no contact between Christians and Jews except for business, soci- business purposes. Now, how do you think Jewish society actually viewed the Jews? Not in America now where there’s hope, not in the Muslim world and not in England or Holland, but how did the average, and certainly in Eastern Europe, how did they regard the non-Jewish society, non-Jews or aliens? They’re hateful to us. There’s no inherent worth in their culture. We must live according to our traditional values, Torah and Talmud, the Tanakh. We are not interested in social contact with non-Jews. And you see, it’s the enlightenment that’s going to change that. Now, what were the ideas of the Enlighteners that really, if you like, is going to plunge them into considering the Jews? And I want to start with a man who was positive towards the Jews, and that’s John Toland. We’ve already discussed when we looked at Britain, how Jews had, had petitioned, had petitioned Oliver Cromwell in the first republic to come back. And you had a small group of converso sephardi merchants who were incredibly good in the economy. And there was a whole debate as to whether Jews should be naturalised. And it’s John Toland who’s going to make a very interesting speech in favour of the Jews. And I think this gives you a notion of the kind of ideas.

Now, who was John Toland? Now he was an Irish nationalist. So he was born in Catholic island. He, by, we don’t know much about his early life, except that when he was 16, he converted to Protestant Protestantism. We know that he studied theology at the University of Glasgow, and then he took his master’s degree in Edinburgh. So he’s a theologian, he’s very bright. He wins scholarships both to Leiden and to Oxford. And the Oxford Scholarship was actually paid for by free-thinking dissenters. And he’s, his reputation is going to be a man of great learning and little religion. He’s going to become one of the most important philosophers, political philosophers in Britain. And what he hated above all, was the dogma of faith. Remember, he’d been brought up as a Catholic, and he said this, “The Bible contains no true mysteries.” In fact, the Bible itself can, you can apply reason. In fact, the the Irish church was so angry, they wanted actually to burn him at the stake. Think Inquisition. And he called them the “Popish Inquisitors”, who performed the, and he, he writes this, “They performed that execution on the book when they couldn’t seize the author. Who had they, who had, they had destined for the flames.” We know that he spent most of his time in England, but he travelled on the continent meeting other free thinkers, particularly in Holland. Remember Holland is a great centre of humanism where you have real contact with Jewish scholars, Manassa, Ben Israel, et cetera, of course had come from Holland. And there’s real contact, this great centre of trade in Amsterdam. And John Toland would’ve been very happy in that atmosphere, discussing ideas.

He wrote his own obituary and he, he wrote this, “he died as he had lived, in great poverty in the midst of his books with his pen in his hand.” And he said this about himself, “I’m an asserter of liberty, a lover of all sorts of learning. No man’s follower or dependent nor could grow, nor could frown or fortune bent him to decline from the ways he had chosen.” If you note, want to know more of him, search his writings. He actually wrote over a hundred books. And what he believed was that religious political institutions should guarantee freedom. He had sympathies, he did have Republican sympathies. And if you look at his time, look when he lived 1670 to 1722, this is of course the glorious revolution in England, 1668, 1688, where the Protestant William of Holland takes the throne of England. And from then on, England’s going to be a Protestant country. But this is what he says when he writes, when he, he writes in favour of Jewish naturalisation. And the reason I’m reading this to you is it gives you a notion of the kind of prejudices that the Jews faced. My purpose is to prove that the Jews are so far from being an excrescence or sponge as some will have it, and useless members of the commonwealth and being ill subjects and a dangerous people on any count that that in fact they are obedient, peaceful, useful, and as advantageous as any, and even more so than many others for being excluded. This is important for being excluded everywhere in Europe, from public employment in the state as they are from following handicraft trades in most places. And in almost all from purchasing immovable, inheritances, inheritances that this, this does gone them into trade and usery otherwise they couldn’t live.

So he’s blaming the outside world. He says you force them into usery, you force them into trade. You don’t allow them to earn to own estates. And he says this, “Put them on an equal footing with others, not only for buying and selling, for security and protection to their goods and persons, but likewise for arts and handy crafts, for purchasing and inheriting. And then I doubt they’re not, they’re, but take themselves to building, farming and all sorts of improvements.” So here, here you have a very important figure of the European Enlightenment, who is very much, and he’s giving the argument that the greatest, the greatest criticism of the Jews by the enlightenment thinkers is that they have become a mean sorted race. Because they have spent their time in, usery all they can do is buy and sell and look after and and be interested in money and trade. And ironically, as we develop into the modern world after emancipation, so many Jews themselves are going to take on this negative stereotype. You know, it’s, it’s ironic, the Christian world determined the role that Jews could play and then the Christian world blamed them for it. And here you have John Toland, I think very carefully enunciating. And he’s saying, “Give them the world and then maybe they might even be better than us.” And you know, if you and I, one of the things I always find rather sad, no, none of them at the period actually delve. No, very few Jews delved into their own history. Look, Eastern Europe’s going to be completely different. And of course it leads to that terrible canna. Is antisemitism the key to (indistinct) in the West. You’re going to see such a desire to become part of society.

As I said before, and I’ll keep on saying it, they took on many of the views of the antisemites. Now I’m now going to turn to one of the most important figures of the Enlightenment. And of course that’s Voltaire. Could we see the next slide? If you don’t mind, Judi? Can we move on to Voltaire? Thank you. Voltaire, what a character. His real name was François-Marie Arouet, he was born in Paris. He was the youngest child of a lawyer. He was the, I think the youngest of five children. His mother came from the lower nobility, and he had a Jesuit education. He was brilliant. He had Latin, he studied Latin, he studied rhetoric, he studied theology. And Jesuit education is pretty strong. You know, it’s, you could al, you could almost say it. it rivals in methodology at Talmudic education. He also was a master of languages. He became fluent in Italian, Spanish and English. He, his father wanted him to be a lawyer, but he didn’t. He always had the dream of writing. And he begins quite early on to write essays and historical studies. And he, look, look, look at the time he’s living in, he’s living in France. And look what’s, look the revolution’s going to occur in 1789. Remember he’s living through the latter part of the reign of Louis the 14th. And then of course, Louis the 15th who’d moved his, the court had been moved to Versailles. And just think of the words of Marie Antoinette, “Let them eat cake.” The aristocracy was so divorced from the reality. And here you have this brilliant man who’s been brought up in a Jesuit tradition in Catholic France. And he is very critical now of the government. And he begins to write, he begins to write against the government. He was twice sentenced to periods in prison. And once he had to flee, he twice he had to flee to England.

But he’s a brilliant writer. And there is a circle of Enlighteners in Europe. Is it possible to be an enlightened death spot? Think of Katherine the great who, who adored Voltaire, by the way. But he, and he was also a great playwright. And when he staged his first play at the Comedy Conf, it was Oedipus and the Comédie Française. It was a huge success and it made him rich. So, and it was also it was also performed in London. So he’s a very important playwright. He actually writes more than 2000 books, pamphlets, and 20,000 letters. And one of his most important contributions is his philosophical dictionary. This is also the period of the encyclopaedia. How on earth do you gather knowledge and write it down. This is the important, this is the beginnings, really of modernity. He becomes a very important advocate of civil liberties. He hated censorship. He satirises in his works, intolerant religious dogma. He becomes violently anti-Catholic. His magnum opus was candid where he also makes fun of many of the other philosophers at the time. And what he wanted to do was to eradicate priestly authority and also the hierarchy of the aristocrats and the monarch. He wanted, he’d lived in England for a while and what he really wanted was to see a constitutional monarchy. You’ve got to remember, it’s these thinkers of the enlightenment because they’re applying reason, they, it, it introduces a real scepticism about religion and it deal on one level. With Voltaire, you could say, well, “If he is making blows against theology, how come surely He’s also making blows against anti Judaism.”

However, mo he, like many of the Enlighteners really did believe that making Jews full citizens was, was problematic. He argued that, that the Jewish ritual law would get in the way of civic duty. And he believed that Jews needed to be socially improved and to throw off their old, old customs and be regenerated. Now I’m going to read you some of his writings on the Jews. He actually had more to say about them than any other important philosopher. There was many, many letters. Arthur Hertzberg, in his book, the French in Enlightenment, brilliant, brilliant mind, Arthur Hertzberg, he’s, he’s really honed in on Voltaire and the Jews and I think he’s the best if you want to read about it. He wrote, Hertzberg goes as far as to say he was obs Voltaire was the philosopher who was obsessed with the Jews that he wrote hundreds of essays. And as I said to the point of obsession, this is an article on Abraham in his philosophical dictionary, the Jews, a small, new, ignorant, cruel, crude people. The only things that belongs to the Jew is their stubbornness, their superstition, and their hallowed usery. The su. Another comment of his, “The supreme expression of Jewish hatred of all men is that, that they, unlike all others, refuse to eat at the same table as other men.” And what you begin to see though, that particularly in Holland, some Jews are beginning to write letters to him. They admire him. He’s the greatest philosopher of his age. But why is he writing like this? And Isaac DePinto sends him a letter 1860, 1762, and he does write back to Pinto and he says, “The lines to which you complain are violence non jest. Your letter alone convinces me that they are highly cultivated men amongst you.”

Having said that, he promised to alter the dictionary, but he doesn’t. And it doesn’t stop him ranting on again. He did say, but then you, you occasionally, he says something positive, “let the fanatics, the superstitious, the persecutors be, become men.” What was the Jews crime? None the none other than being born. And he goes on to say, “Let Christians stop persecuting and exterminating the Jews, who as men are their brothers, and who as Jews are their fathers. Let each man serve God in the religion which he is born. Let each man serve his kind and his country.” So you have some positive but far more negative. And this is another one. This is a letter to Memmius of Cicero . Manito was a Roman who wrote very anti-Jewish diatribes. “They’re all of them born with fanaticism in their hearts. Just as Bretons and Germans are born with blonde hair, I would not be surprised if these people someday become deadly to the human race.” So I could spend a lot of time on Voltaire and his anti-Jewishness, but that would distort him because the point about Voltaire is he is an very important philosopher of the age of reason. However, I need to do this with you so that you understand that despite the ideas of the enlightenment, which leads to the emancipation, the negative stereotype of the Jew is going to be carried into emancipation.

Now it’s not. This is not antisemitism, this is anti Jew, this is anti Judaism. Now the next character that I want to talk about is the very famous Emmanuel Kant. And I’m doing them in chronological order in terms of when they were born. So can we see the next slide please? Yeah. There you see Emmanuel Kant. He also is one of the most important figures of the Enlightenment. And he believed he, he was, he was a man of great philosophy and also great peace. And what his dream was, the searching for universal democracy. But of course democracy. When I talk about it in terms of the enlightenment, it’s men and it’s men over a certain age and of a certain class. And he also had a very ambiguous attitude towards religion because the majority of the enlighteners are trying to break free from the fanaticism and dogma of Christianity. And he says this, “I found it necessary to deny law, to deny knowledge in order to make way for faith.” He was having said he was anti clerical. He said, “True religion is ethical religion in which the kingdom of God is the ethical commonwealth. Religion should exist within the limits of reason alone.” and but Kant. Again, you get a lot of contrarians in the writings. But he believed that Christianity because of its idealised ethical teaching, was based on pure love. It therefore approached the idea, the ideal of ethical religion more than any other. “Historic religion.” He said. And in this he was influenced by Barack Spinoza, the Jewish philosopher, or this philosopher of Jewish dissent who of course had been excommunicated. He believed that Judaism. Now take this in very carefully ‘cause this is where there’s a split.

Judaism is a national political entity that fails to satisfy his criteria of ethical religion. He said it, the, “The importance of religion is to inculcate morality.” And he said “The problem with Judaism, it demanded only external, external obedience to statutes and laws.” And he maintained that Judaism is only of this world. He didn’t know enough, he missed it. Now, ironically, he’s he is very close to Moses Mendelssohn, who I’m going to finish with. Because Moses Mendelssohn is the first Jew to cross from the world of the ghetto into the European Enlightenment. And he’s going to, my question is, is he going to change the perception of the enlighteners or are the enlighteners going to change his perception of what it means to be a Jew? Okay. And that is a key thought that you’re going to have to keep. I’m sure many of you have discussed this idea because we are back to the whole notion of what is a Jew now, can we come on to the next individual? And that is Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. He was a very, very important writer. He was probably the most important playwright in Berlin. He’d been born in a small town in Saxony. He was the son of a clergyman. He also studied theology and medicine in light. But he wanted to be a writer. He begins to write plays. He was influenced by Voltaire. And his dream, though was to establish a German national theatre. What was the language of the aristocracy in Germany? Remember Germany at this time is composed of about 350 separate city states. The language was French. He was beginning to think about Germany. What is Germany? The dream of Germany coming together. And you need a German culture, a holistic German culture, and a German theatre. Now he also believed in the Christianity of reason, but he also spoke up for tolerance in other religions.

And he wanted freedom of thought and he wanted to break away from absolutism. And it was he who made Shakespeare popular in Germany. Now in 1749, he horrified the German intelligentsia, the Berlin intelligentsia because he wrote a play called the Jews. It was first performed in 1754, and the Jew is portrayed as a virtuous individual. Now the play fails because no one can imagine a Jew has heroic propensities. It’s only in 1779 when he writes Nathan The Wise that he’s found his special Jew, Moses Mendelssohn, who is known as the Jewish Socrates in Berlin. And Nathan, the Wise becomes a very important play. And it’s based on the parable of the three rings, which is a story from Boccaccio’s Decameron. And it, the, the play represents the, the three rings, three sons, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, the sons of the benevolent father, the hero, the real hero is Nathan the Jew. He is made into the spokesman of the enlightenment, brotherhood and love of humanity. And as I’ve said, it’s critical because it’s based on the life of Moses Mendelssohn. Can we go on please? Obviously, I’m giving you snapshots now of some of the major thinkers of the enlightenment. You need the step snapshots. I’m, I’m trying to do this from the point of view of Jewish identity. Now this is Johann Gottfried von Herder, born in Prussia. Again, brilliant mind, educated himself from his father’s Bible enrolled at University of Conningsburg, became a student of Cant becomes a clergyman.

He is very involved in literary criticism. He goes to, he travels, he goes to Strasbourg, he goes to Paris, he meets Gerta. He’s the beginning of the Sturman drag storm and stress Proto romanticism, and I should show, should mention that one of Kant’s most important last works is the critique of pure reason. Because the point about the enlightenment is they believe that everything could be applied to reason. But as we all know on the 20th and 21st centuries must teach us that we are not just creatures of reason, are we? We are creatures of seething emotions. And Gerta thought very highly of herder. And he used his influence at court to secure him a position as a general superintendent. He, he, he develops the theory of the vote. He’s very important in the history of German nationalism and German, German patriotism. He said there is only one class in the state. What he wanted was a classless hierarchical Germany. So living in all these city states at a time when Berlin is absolute, all the states have absolutist rules. You have an educated class now who will work and remember they’re in communication with philosophers in England, France, et cetera. There is this whole new move to a change. He had a very, very complex attitude towards the Jews. He did share, unfortunately, many of the prevalent negative views of the Jews. But he did say “Their negative characteristics could be as ascribed to oppression.”

The problem was, he himself promulgates a philosophy of na, of of nationalism, what creates the culture, language, bildung. And of course it’s bildung. There’s no English word for it, it’s cultivation. That’s the nearest I can go. He did say this. “The people of God, To whom Heaven itself, once gave a fatherland, has-” this is the problem, “-has been a parasitic plant on the tribes of other nations for millennia, almost since its creation. A race of clever negotiators almost all over the world who despite all oppression, long nowhere for their own honour and home nowhere, the Fatherland.” I’m going to repeat this because you can see how these are, he’s terribly important. Herder, all these characters I’m mentioning are going to have a huge impact on the 19th and 20th centuries. There’s almost a schizoid, isn’t it? The enlightenment romanticism, let me repeat this because it’s terribly important. He uses the word parasite, which tragically is going to be used more and more. “The people of God to to whom heaven itself once gave a father land has been a parasitical plant on the tribes of other nations for millennia, almost since its creation, a race of clever negotiators almost all over the world who despite all oppression, long nowhere for their own honour and hope, nowhere of Fatherland.” Let’s go on. Christian Wilhelm. Here you have Abbé Grégoire now Abbé Grégoire in France. He’s going to live through the French Revolution. And it’s Abbé Grégoire, who is actually going to, he, he’s going to, he says this, he actually writes a very important essay on the Jews.

And he says, “The hard and oppressive conditions under which the Jews live almost everywhere would explain, although not justify and even worse corruption than they can actually be accused of.” And he says this, “It’s prejudice that prevents Jews from being good citizens in the restricted occupations of the Jews, We have found the true source of their corruption. with the elimination of unjust treatment of the Jew, will also disappear the consequence of it.” And he goes on to say, “Trusting that human nature is the same in all people. I am convinced that in a few generations, the Jews will be just like all other citizens in these states, which will give them equal rights. And they will defend the state just like the others.” He had been very much affected by a pilgrim in Alsace. And he, he believed very much in the amelioration of the situation of the Jews, that if in fact you did that, then you would have a completely different kind of Jew. Now, but so much of it, of course, is coming from the negative. Could we move on please Judi? Christian Wilhelm von Dohm, also a man, very, very similar to the ideas of the previous philosopher, that if we can improve the conditions of the Jew, then they can become part of our society. But they’re all saying the Jews have become, whether they’re taking a positive or a negative view, they all believe that the Jews have lived downgraded lives.

So can we now move on to Moses Mendelssohn? Yes. Because he’s the one I’m going to wrap it all up in. Now, of course, Moses Mendelssohn, I’m not going to spend too much time on his life because I’ve, I’ve done a whole session. In fact, I did a couple of sessions with you on Moses Mendelssohn a time ago. And once the website is up and running, and it won’t be long now, you’ll be able to listen. And of course there are so many interesting books on Moses Mendelssohn. You know, I remember about 30 years ago when there was an AO 11 in modern Jewish history. I had a phone call from a friend of mine whose daughter was studying at Carmel College, and she was studying theology with a rabbi Jewish studies. And she was studying modern Jewish history with a historian. And my friend said, “She’s in a real model” because the theologian who was very religious is saying that Moses Mendelssohn was a traitor to his people. And the historian is saying “He’s absolutely seminal to any understanding of Jewish history.” So who was Moses Mendelssohn? Now, Moses Mendelssohn was the young genius who was born in the ghetto of Desal, who when he’s 14 years old, comes to Berlin. Now, Berlin under Frederick II was very interesting. Frederick II was a merchant, was was very much the autocrat Prussia, but he was a, he believed in the enlightenment insofar as he can be an enlightened despot. But he believed in making Prussia into the most powerful nation in the German confederation. And what he wants to do is to raise the standard of his economy.

Consequently, he allowed certain Jews to settle in Germany in Berlin, who could be useful to the state. And because he was a man of the enlightenment, he allowed them to bring into Berlin people who would enable them to live a Jewish life. So for example, there would be tutors, there would be a rabbi, there would be a shocket, there would be a grave digger, et cetera. Now, Moses Mendelssohn, he had a very interesting rabbi who was invited to become the rabbi of Berlin. And this rabbi was unusual because he had studied foreign languages. Again, I often say to you, what may a Jew study, and Moses Mendelssohn, who was a Gaon, he was a very strong talmudist. By the time he’s 14 years old, he’s a talmudist. He’s versed in Torah. He’s versed in the Bible. He goes to Berlin as a tutor to a silk merchant. Now, physically he was quite unprepossessing. We know that he had a hunchback, but he evidently was an extraordinary man with a very, very pleasing disposition. People liked to be around him. And Berlin was a fascinating centre. Why? Because the bankers, these wealthy bankers, quite often, their beautiful wives and daughters housed very glittering salons to who, to who came, people who wanted to get away from the stuffy court figures of the European Enlightenment.

So this is really the first time that there is an intermingling on a social level between Jews and Christians or Jews and Gentiles, because the Enlightenment, some Christians are throwing away their Christianity. There’s also a belief in deism, God in nature. Anyway, Moses Mendelssohn, he be he, he becomes fascinated by the world of the Enlightenment. And he’s, he’s a genius. He studies Greek, he studies Latin, he becomes involved in the ideas of the Enlightenment. And he begins to study European philosophy, as his rabbi had done. What may a Jew study? And he becomes a welcome guest at the homes of some of these court. They call them the court Jews Court Jewesses. I hate that phrase, but that’s the phrase that’s used in the book. And he begins to meet these figures of the enlightenment, including Lessing, including Kant, both of whom thought. A lot of him. He also, for example, meets a Christian pastor who called Lata, who publicly challenges him. He says, you are a great figure of the enlightenment. Why are you still a Jew? And Mendelssohn says this, he says, “if I meet a Confucian, do I have to convert him?” And he said, “it is reasonable to suppose that there are many paths to the true God.” And he never ever recanted his Judaism. I want to say this very, very, very carefully. But he becomes more and more involved in philosophy. He actually, with his book, fight on, he wins a prize of the Berlin Academy. The philosopher Kant take second prize. He nobody reads Moses Mendelssohn’s philosophy today.

But in his day, he becomes one of the, the in in action. In effect, he’s probably the most important philosopher in Berlin. And he’s becoming more and more famous, and he’s attracting more and more attention. And he looks at, and he falls in love. I think we have to. He marries a woman called from Guggenheim. He has children by her. And of course, Felix Bartholdy Mendelssohn is one of his grandsons. He is completely torah true. He keeps a kosher home. He never breaks away from Judaism. However, it has to be said. And you, if you think about the condition of the Jews in Berlin, even though you’ve got these wealthy Jews with huge status, nevertheless, any foreign Jew that means Jew from any other German state had to arrive at the gates. They were treated really like cattle the way they were brought into the city. And th they’re downgraded in the eyes of the non-Jewish public. And Moses Mendelssohn, I think, begins to take that on because he begins to talk about the besserung, self-improvement. How can I improve the Jews, how can I make them acceptable to these people that I so admire? And he realises the best way to do it is through language. They speak Yiddish, that downgraded Yiddish. He now has fallen in love with the German language so much. So he’s an important, remember he’s won the prize at the Berlin Academy. He’s allowed as of right to settle in Berlin. He’s not a, he’s not there because he’s a silt merchant, useful to the state. He’s allowed right of settlement. And he’s a very famous figure now. And he has the frontery to write to one of the princes.

He’s in correspondence with saying, “Why are you using French when German is such a pure language?” He falls in love with Germany. And he said he began to believe that religion was a private affair. He’s not a political reformer. He is very much a creature of reason. He believed that Judaism could be equated with pure reason. In fact, though, when he does begin to trump, I’m jumping on, I should say one of the reasons, one of the ways he wants to introduce German to his people, the besserung, what he does is he translates the Torah from, from Hebrew into German, but using Hebrew, using Hebrew letters, because that, of course is how Yiddish is written. He wants them to understand pure German. He also begins to translate parts of the Talmud, but he begins to omit certain certain commentators because he says they do not equate with pure reason. Is he playing around with the sources? The rabbis don’t give him any trouble though, because he’s bringing them great glory. For example, there’s a murder of a Jew in one of the states. And what happens is, of course, the rabbis want to bury immediately, but the local Duke wants, an ex wants an autopsy. How did this man die? And that is of course not allowed in Judaism. Moses Mendelssohn writes on behalf of the rabbis, but privately he writes to the Duke and says, there are certain parts of Judaism that are outmoded and we don’t need anymore, just as the Christian figures of the Enlightenment are trying to get rid of dogma. So he believes there are certain parts of Judaism that one can get rid of.

Now, so what does Moses medicine’s life tell us? He’s a figure of the enlightenment. He is a brilliant man. He keeps completely taught, he keeps a completely kosher home. His home becomes a centre of enlightenment thinkers. We know that he was not a coercive father if his children didn’t want to study. He, he’s, he wrote to a friend, “My son Joseph, is no good at Hebrew. I don’t make him.” And of course, events are going to overtake. But the reality is that the majority of his children actually do convert as the poet. Heiner Kiner later said, “Baptism is the passport to European civilization.” Going back to the idea of Napoleon, when Napoleon, of course, he, when Heiner, who was desperate for a chair of philosophy at Dusseldorf University, which never came off. When he, he, he realised that the only way he could do it is to convert. He said, “I have had to convert because Napoleon had a very bad teacher of philosophy.” Look, when Kent wrote his critique of pure reason, Moses Mendelssohn was very upset by it. He dies three years before the French Revolution. What happens with the French Revolution? It takes a, it takes nearly two years, and there’s a lot of arguments, and we’re going to be studying France later on in the year. We’re going to spend three months with you on France because it’s such an exciting place and for all of us to be able to lecture on. When the French Revolution finally emancipated, finally emancipated the Jews, after nearly two years of corralling about it, it was Napoleon.

What happens then is that a group of deputies came to, to greet Napoleon when he was returning from the Battle of Austerlitz. And they said to him, “look, we, we still have troubles with the Jews. They, most of the Jews lived in Alsace. The the deputies were from Alsace. He said, "we’re, we’re still up to our neck. In debts, the harvesters failed.” And Napoleon decides he’s got to solve the problem. So he comes, cleans an assembly of notables. He brings together Jews, not just from France, but from the countries he’s conquered, because wherever he conquers, he breaks down the ghetto walls. Now this is absolutely critical to understand, I will keep on saying this because questions, he, he poses 12 questions, which we will study in depth later on. But one of the questions, “Do you regard France as your country for all purposes? Are you, will you defend it?” And basically they know, he said to them, “To expel the Jews would be a sign of weakness to reform them, to be a sign of strength.” They give Napoleon the answers he wants. His envoy to the assembly count Malay to the Jews as individuals, everything to call poor Israel, nothing. So wherever Napoleon conquers the Jews are emancipated. But as you know, Napoleon is defeated. And many of the princes who had given the Jews emancipation, they take it away. A classic case is in the Rhineland. That’s where Heiner came from. Heiner and a group of colleagues, by the way, actually set up a study centre because they saw that Jews were converting in groves. And they said, you know, they don’t remember their history. We once had a great history and a great culture too.

But he of course gives in, because he wants his chair of philosophy. Although he, to the end of his life, he mopped it all. And you know, on his deathbed, he said, “I now know that the Greeks were beautiful, but the Jews were heroic men.” And, but what it does is that period between emancipation and the the taking away of rights, many Jews decided that baptism, quote unquote Heiner, was the passport to European civilization. And this is where I think the backslide begins, because, you know, a third of the Jews of Germany actually convert during that period. Abraham Mendelssohn, when he converts his children, Fanny and Felix, he writes them a letter. He says, “Christianity is the religion of the civilised.” He doesn’t say I’m converting you because I believe in it. He says, it’s the religion of the civilised. And I really think this is an issue that is going to stay with it. That that really is going to dog Jewish history all the way through the 19th and 20th century, right up until the show up. Is there something about us that makes them hate us? Even the philosophers of the Enlightenment? I’m, I’m posing the question now. I personally, I I, you know, personally, I don’t have any problems with understanding it. But unfortunately you have to accept the fact that within the Chris Christianity, there is a deep thread of anti Judaism. And even when Christianity is on the way it’s so deep in Western civilization that we are still very much seen as a scapegoat.

And I think one of the problems we have today is that other victim groups see, still see us as perpetrators. None of these problems exist in Chinese civilization, Hindu civilization. It’s in the world of monotheism, particularly the world of Christianity. And I think if we can accept that and understand it and stop blaming ourselves, I, I, I feel great pain. Example, I, I could read to you a letter of Walther Rathenau where he really loathed, he became foreign minister in Weimar. And ironically, one of the, he was one of the cleverest most sensitive, artistic and yet also an amazing business brain of all time. And yet he writes some letter mocking the Jews. He said, “why’d you, why’d you, why, why’d you dress up as the Germans? You look like dachshunds trying to be greyhounds.” He talks about how you shroud your women in diamonds and laced, he’d forgotten their true beauty, but it’s so painful. Or even Karl Marx when he equates capitalism with Judaism. So what I’m saying to you, I think it’s important to take this, I’ve sort of taken this particular presentation out of con out of the context because in order to understand the point of view of Zalman of Liadi, I think I needed to give you the background to the enlightenment. And I suppose the question I posed, “can you walk both worlds?” The French Revolution and Napoleon said, “Be of the Jewish religion” Moses Mendelssohn “Be a jew at home and a man in society.” The outside world is going to say more and more you are a separate nation, you are a separate race.

Anyway, I will stop there and let’s have a look at questions.

Q&A and Comments

Oh, so many of you have been so sweet. Thank you. Oh, that’s so lovely of you. What? It’s about me wearing dark glasses. Oh, this is funny. From Nicholas, “While Washington spoke great Ro words in the synagogue, it didn’t stop the building. Escape hutch under the Bema.” Yes. The Toro Synagogue. Yes, of course Toro was a very, very important philanthropist. He addressed the congregation, I think you are right, it was 1791. Oh yes. And Steven says the need for an escape hatch would’ve depended on the likelihood of Indian insurgency rather than civil. Oh, this is from Karen.

Q: “Could you repeat the name of the rabbi who chose not to live under Napoleon?” A: No, he, he wanted Napoleon to lose Rabbi Zalman of Liadi who created, he was the, he, he created Chabad. And I’m going to do a whole session on next week.

Q: When and what was the 30 years war? A: 1618 to 1648. Europe was engulfed in ostensibly the wars of religion between Protestants and, and Catholicism. But it was also about who would have power in the states.

There is no real evidence that Marie Antoinette ever said, “let them eat cake.” No, you are right. Mar Martin. No, I I it’s not, I must talk to Patrick about that. I think he’s got an answer apparently says, Judi, this was a common reframe against any aristocrat considered unaware of the suffering of the lower classes.

Q: Why does Jewish history say so little about John Toland? Is it because he’s a scot? A: No, he’s not a, he’s an Irishman. Actually, David, you, if you read a good book on Anglo Jewry, it, it’s his, he he is quite important.

Do I differe, but do this is from Zamira.

Q: Do, how do you differentiate between anti Judaism and anti-Semitism? A: Anti Judaism is theological hatred. Anti-Semitism is racial and it comes out of the race theories of the 19th century. You know the irony Jews are going to say in the West, in the main, we are citizens of the countries in which we live, of the Jewish religion, anti-Semitism, which grows up in the middle of the 19th century, says, you are a separate race. You can’t possibly be French or German, et cetera.

Yeah. Here’s a tangent. Here’s a tangential question for Patrick.

Q: “Why is Voltaire smiling? Did portrait have taken a shift to showing smiles during the enlightenment?” A: I’m seeing him for lunch tomorrow. I will ask him. He’s back in England.

This is Maxine. “Voltaire is supposed to have visited Catherine DeCosta, born in Highgate in the first house officially occupied by Jews post Cornwall. And recorded a conversation between her and a priest. She pointed out that Christians should live and die like Jews if they want to be like Christ.” That is very interesting. Maxine, more information please. My question is, Ivan what Mr. Ivan,

Q: “What percentage of Jews in this period are Orthodox?” A: We can’t even use the word orthodox. A Jew was a Jew was a Jew in 1780. This is what makes all the difference, you see? And it’s also going to lead to the path of reform Judaism, because reform is also, you see, if you take English it, it’s interesting because reform, in its early days, it was Jews saw that Christians were beginning to study the source of the Bible and they began to do the same. And it was also to show that Jews could be Europeans. Let’s have some of the service in the vernacular, et cetera. So the word orthodox comes in as a response to reform. At this stage, there was, you were a Jew in Europe, in, in the other side of, if you look at Eastern Europe, the hassids on the misnagdim, which means opposers.

Q: How were the ideas of the enlightenment philosophers disseminated? How literate was the man in the street? A: Monty, who is the man in the street? I think you’ve got the growth of growth of an articulate middle class, a lawyer class. And they certain, you see, you needed more educated people to have a vibrant, vibrant economy. That was the problem with absolutism. So the man in the street, no, but middle class. Yes. And don’t forget also the importance of the encyclopaedias. The philosophers, the growth of knowledge.

This is Rose.

Q: “Although Moses Mendelssohn came from an orthodox background and continued to practise Judaism entirety. However, all three of his four children married non-Jews. What does that say if how he raised his children?”` A: No, they didn’t. His children didn’t marry non-Jews. They married Jews and they converted Rose. Most of his grandchildren married non-Jews. That’s the point. In fact, Felix married the daughter of a Swiss pastor.

Q: Why did Mendelssohn die so young? A: He didn’t. He was, Moses Mendelssohn was in his fifties, I think when he died. His dates are 1729 to 1786. Oh, if you are talking about Felix, Felix died young. Yes. He died in 1847. Along with his sister. There’s a brilliant book by Norman. By Norman. Oh, my brain isn’t working tonight. Someone would tell me called Genius and Anxiety. And he begins with the death of the Mendelssohn’s. Oh, Amelia thinks, I have so much knowledge. My family think it’s all useless knowledge. And they said yes. Thank you. Thank you.

Q: With so much done for the Jews. Why aren’t more Jews named Napoleon? A: That’s a very, very good question. When you think how many are named when, how many Jews in Germany were named Wilhelm Hindi. But there’s the family Katznelson, which came from the name Katz and their soldiers who fought like Nelson. I was told this by a friend’s mother in Israel who was tricking out the links to her Katznelson family from Burque. And I too have a link. Small world.

Oh, that’s lovely. Hindi, thank you. Thank you that Thank you. Thank you Susan. I’m coming down in a fortnight. Susan, thank you. Oh, this is from Marion. I think this is, I think Patrick told me this. Thanks for this. Marie Antoinette said, “If they don’t have bread, let them eat brioche.” Norman Abre. Thank you Stephanie Rose. How are you Stephanie rose? I dunno what’s wrong with my brain at the moment. Norman, thank you. Douglas Norman? Yes. Yes. Norman Abre. We interviewed, I interviewed him last year. And once the website’s up, you can of course get hold of that interview. Norman? Norman. Norman. What is Brioche says Julian. It’s a kind of French, I don’t know. How would you describe it? A French pastry. Really sweet bread. That’s it. Thank you, Judi.

• [Judi] Thank you, Trudy.

• [Trudy Gold] Thank you everybody. And

• [Judi] And we’ll see you again. Yes.

• I’m on again later, aren’t I?

• [Judi] You are. So we’ll see everybody in.

• [Trudy Gold] Oh, and I forgot to read from Israeli. I always forget something. Remind me next week, Jude, because Israeli sums it all up. God bless everyone.

• [Judi] see you all later. Bye-bye.

• [Trudy Gold] Bye.