Trudy Gold
Foundation Course: The Jews and the Crisis of Modernity: Part 1

Trudy Gold | Foundation Course: The Jews and the Crisis of Modernity Part 1

- All right, well, let me start. Now, why have I decided to run this four-week course? Having been teaching aspects of Jewish history to Lockdown University for the past four years, why have I decided to solidify as we come up to the Yom Tovim? Because obviously after Yom Tovim, we’re going into different subjects. Why have I done it? Because frankly, I think the atmosphere in the Jewish world and the non-Jewish world is completely bewildering. Now, you will not get a prediction of the future from me. That’s not what historians can do. But I’m hoping that by putting a pattern on the past, you might be better able to cope with what’s going on now. And of course, what’s going on now is incredibly, incredibly complex. And so what I’m going to be talking about, the first thing I want you to think about is to define the word Jew for me. Can we see the first slide, if you don’t mind, Hannah? Yeah, the ghetto of Florence are the Jews. The only people who have managed to stay together as a continuous people, having suffered exile from their own country. And even though there’s always been a presence of Jews in that contested land at the end of the Eastern Mediterranean, they’d lost their independence. They even lost what they had under Roman control. And they go into exile. But they would’ve seen themselves as a nation in exile. Nobody would ever even ask them the question.

A Jew was a Jew, was a Jew. What we’re going to talk about in this particular session is how the modern world is going to encroach on the Jews, and it’s going to make them face that dilemma. What are the problems we face today, particularly in terms of what is going on in Israel? What is an Israeli? What is a Jew? How are the two connected? This, of course, goes back to the question, I’m going to suggest to you a few definitions of what a Jew could be, but let me do it in a very Jewish way. If I asked you to define Christian, you would probably say somebody who believes in the teachings of Jesus Christ. If I asked you to define British, you would probably indicate that it had something to do with their geography. But when I talk about the word Jew, is it a religious definition? The child of a Jewish mother who believes in Judaism? But what about cultural Judaism? What about those people who feel an affinity to being Jewish, but at the same time have absolutely no intention to go to synagogue? I know from the Seder I have, I have many Jewish friends who want to come to the Seder, but they have no religious affiliation. There are those at the end of the Eastern Mediterranean in the sovereign state of Israel who believe it’s nationhood, that in fact, remember, there are only just over 14 million Jews in the world, over half living in Israel. Ideologically, they believe we are living in exile. And then you’ve got that wonderful, easy definition of peoplehood. So already there’s some other, are we a religion? Are we a people? Are we a cultural grouping? Are we a nation?

And then to add to the horror of the complexity, there’s another definition that was actually put together in the main by the enemies of the Jews. And that is Jews are a race, and they are determined by blood. Now, anyone who knows anything about this field will know that the whole notion of race is totally spurious. There are thousands of different groupings in the world, ethnicities. To create a pure race, you would have to go for geographical isolation for how many thousands of years. So let’s obscure and let’s try and enlighten. And what I’m going to talk about is what were the forces of modernity that’s going to plunge the Jew into the modern world? And bearing in mind that one of the reasons the Jews had stayed together for 2,000 years, the religious would say, “Well, the rabbis built a wall of law around them.” Others might say it was the anti-Judaism itself. Because one of the problems the Jews are going to face in the world of monotheism, the world of Christianity and Islam, particularly in the world of Christianity, they become the accursed ones. They are blamed for the death of Jesus. Now, please don’t give me the rational explanations. We all know them.

The point is, if you read the gospels carefully, there is, particularly in Matthew’s Gospel, a rather dark passage when the mob come to Pontius Pilate, and evidently, now, there’s absolutely no evidence for this. So it’s a story. The story goes that the Roman governor at the time of the Passover would offer a prisoner to the crowd. He wanted them to take Jesus. They wanted to have Bar-Abba, Barabbas. And he said, “Well, take Jesus, the good man, Jesus.” And he said, “No.” And then he said, “Well, then we will take him away.” And then the crowd said, “Let his blood be upon us and upon our children.” And there are certain historians like Robert Wistrich and Hyam Maccoby who called this the warrant for genocide. I was recently in Salzburg. And if you want to understand the problem that the Jews had for centuries with Christianity, all you’ve got to do is to wander around some of those great Catholic churches of Europe where you see the image of the bleeding Jesus, and who had killed him but the evil Jew. There is not a positive image of a Jew anywhere in European culture until the Enlightenment. So this tiny people somehow kept themselves alive, because Christianity had gone on since 325, when it became the official religion of Rome, it had gone on the march. The last country in Europe to go was actually Lithuania in the 1200s. Written into Christian dogma is the Jew as the enemy. And yet why didn’t they just, why weren’t they wiped out? Because this is where it gets very interesting. They become very, very useful. They are illiterate international people.

They can’t go into any normal trade or profession because everything is governed by the Christian guilds. So they are the merchants. They are the money lenders. Consequently, they are useful, and also they concentrate on learning. After the fall of the second temple and the terrible loss of life in the Bar Kokhba rebellion, the rabbis actually instituted a law that Jews should not go into the army. They become the people of the book. Who was the greatest man in the shtetel, the greatest man in the village or the town? The learned one. Who did the rich merchant want as prize in marriage for his daughter? The yeshiva student. It’s money and learning. And not only that, the restlessness of the Jew, so often having to leave a country when it becomes inhospitable. So these are people who are, if you like, pulled together by persecution. And yet I would suggest to you right up until the 14th, 15th, 16th centuries, they were pretty sure their culture was superior to that of their neighbours. Now, what you see is the ghetto of Florence. Just an example, a ghetto, ghetto comes from the Italian word of iron foundry. The first ghetto was actually in Venice. What happens is in the clash of ideologies in Christianity, Catholicism and what becomes known as Protestantism, the arch-heretics, the Jews, are shut up in ghettos. Let’s have a look at a map of the Jewish world in 1750.

You will see that the bulk of the Jews live towards the East, and I’m going to be talking about that in a couple of sessions. You will also see just how disparate the community is and how widespread. By this time, only about 15% of the Jews were in the Sephardi world of Islam. The majority of them by this time are in Eastern Europe, in the kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, which is soon to be overtaken mainly by Russia. And they’re mainly, certainly in the West, city dwellers. So that gives you a picture of European Jewry. They are a very, very tiny percentage of the population. You’re talking about, for example, in Germany. Germany, up until 1871, was divided up into different city states. The Jews are a tiny percentage of the population. In France, there are only 40,000 of them. In England, the Jews first come back to England in the time of Oliver Cromwell. They petitioned to be let in. Up until 1880, there were under 60,000 Jews in England. So important to remember, they are a tiny percentage of the population. And prior to exile, prior to the beginnings of the modern world, they would’ve seen themselves as a nation in exile. Now, when Menasseh Ben Israel, the Dutch rabbi, petitioned the British parliament to allow the Jews in, why did he want them to come to England?

Because he looked at the economic opportunities, frankly. And also because there is a strange prediction that in order for the Messiah to come again, this was for the Puritans, then Jews must be scattered to every corner of the world. But in his petition, he talks about how useful the nation of the Jews can be to the countries in which they live. And he cites how countries that are good to the Jews in fact have prospered. And also, what should, can we see the next slide, please? Now, this is Frederick II. What you begin to see happening from the 16th to the 18th centuries is the emergence of the centralised state. This is a transformation of the European political structure. And what happens is power is concentrated in a single ruler, independent of the nobility, independent of the church. Now, two elements are absolutely essential for the ruler, the absolute ruler to keep control, liquid assets and a bureaucracy that was controlled by him. They had to break the power of the nobility. And it was this centralised state, along of course, with the conquest of the New World beginning in 1492, and all the wealth of the New World coming to Europe and the Age of Discovery that facilitated the development of what is called mercantilism, the idea that trade generates wealth. This is early capitalism. Now, Jews, particularly in Central Europe, were in a unique position to benefit this. They never had political power. They were no threat to the ruler. And they possessed the skills necessary to enable the monarch to develop his economy. And what grew up was the phenomenon of the court Jew. Before 1815, there were over 362 city states in Europe. You had, within the Habsburg Empire, further 15 different states controlled by the Habsburgs.

Many of these characters were the court Jews. There were hundreds of court Jews in Europe. They had special privileges. But this is where the tradition of the Jews and money comes in. They had privileges because they were useful. Now, Frederick II was a fascinating king. He was king of Prussia at a time when Prussia is emerging as one of the most powerful states in the German Confederation. He had allowed Protestants in. He had allowed Catholics in. If people were useful, they could be useful to him. And not, beg your pardon, he’d allowed Catholics in. He in fact was a Protestant. But he then issues a charter. There were certain Jews who would be useful to the state, and he allowed them to come into Berlin in order to help with trade, merchanting, to be useful, to be mint masters. And you find the same thing happening in the Habsburg lands. Joseph II issues an edict of toleration. The same thing happens in the Dutch Republic. Various countries are issuing these edicts which allow the Jews in, but on limitations. Now, because he saw himself as a figure of the Enlightenment, not only did he allow the Jews in who’ll be useful, and they didn’t have to live in ghettos, they could live alongside, in the best part of town if necessary. They didn’t have to have special dress anymore. But in order to allow them to live Jewish lives, he allowed in teachers, he allowed in a shochet, he allowed in rabbis.

So consequently, he’s a figure of the Enlightenment. But of those who settled in Berlin, they couldn’t marry all their children off and lived there. He had to keep the numbers down. But nevertheless, you’re beginning to see these charters, which because the Jews can be useful, they are allowed in. And this coincides with something else very, very important in European history. Can we see the next slide, please? Yes, the wonderful, wonderful Enlightenment. That is exactly what we need back in our civilization. The Enlightenment, better known as the Age of Reason. It really began because of the horrors of war. The Thirty Years’ War, 1618 to 1648, the most appalling carnage as the armies of Protestantism and Catholicism devastated a continent. For example, in the German lands, about a third of the population died. Either murdered, died of starvation. There was even cannibalism. Imagine humanity at its lowest edge. And it made certain thinkers rethink the whole nature of man. I’m going to quote one of my favourite writers of all time, the great Isaiah Berlin. This is what he said of the Age of Enlightenment. “The intellectual power, honesty, lucidity, courage, and disinterested love of the truth of the most gifted thinkers of the 18th century remains to this day without parallel. Their age is one of the best and most hopeful episodes in the life of man.” The Age of the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, individualism more than tradition, and also a break in the overarching whole notion of religion. It’s also tied up, of course, with more and more of the learning of Greece and Rome. There are, I mean, we could spend a whole term on the Enlightenment.

And I’m sure many of you will have read some of these philosophers, and you’ll say, “But Voltaire was an anti-Semite. Yes, he was to an extent, but I want to leave that aside now. What I want to say to you is that the Enlightenment itself was a very, very special period. And of course it gestates for a hundred years. I think that speech of Shakespeare’s in "Merchant of Venice” when he says “Hath not a Jew eyes, organs, dimensions,” he’s saying the Jews are human. Now, this isn’t necessarily about political rights, although of course the encyclopaedias very much wanted knowledge, knowledge, knowledge, knowledge. Knowledge, and out of, we had this wonderful belief that if we studied, we would understand that there are universal truths. And universal truths would lead to a far more harmonious age. Now, eventually, these ideas are going to have political ramifications. And those political ramifications are going to be the American Revolution and the French Revolution. But before that, some of these characters did grapple with the idea of the Jews. Can we see the next slide, please? I’m jumping on a bit now, because I want to talk about Thomas Babington Macaulay. He was a weak politician. He was a historian. He was a poet. He was in England. And he was a part of the debate on the emancipation of the Jews. 19th century Britain, Britain ruled the world. Britain was master of the world. At this particular stage in history, God is an Englishman.

And in 1828, the Catholics had won an awful lot of rights. What about the Jews? The whole issue of Jewish emancipation. And there was a debate. And I want to read to you what Macaulay said, because it’s going to give you a very interesting notion of how they saw the Jews. And remember at this stage, there were so few Jews living in England. By 1820, there was about 25,000. Of course, sitting in parliament when he made his speech was the young Benjamin Disraeli. If he hadn’t been converted, he could never have entered Parliament. Because to be a member of the House of Parliament, you had to swear on the true oath of the King James Bible, which also stopped free thinkers and Catholics. But this is what he said. “The honourable member for Oldham,” he’s talking about Robert Inglis, “tells us that the Jews are naturally a mean race, a sordid race, a money-getting race, and are adverse to all honourable callings, that they neither sow nor reap, that they have neither flocks or herds, that usury is the only pursuit to which they are fit, that they are destitute of all elevated and amiable sentiments. Such, sir, in every age has been the reasoning of bigots. They never fail to plead in justification of persecution the vices which persecution has engendered.

England has been to the Jews less than half a country, and we revile them because they do not feel for England more than half a patriotism. We treat them as slaves and wonder that they do not regard us as brethren. We drive them to mean occupations and then reproach them for not embracing honourable professions. We long forbade them to possess land, and we complain that they chiefly occupy themselves in trade.” Now, interesting. Similar things, ideas in Germany. Can we go onto the next slide, please? This is Christian Wilhelm von Dohm. He was a figure of the German Enlightenment. And he wrote an essay called, actually about the amelioration of the Jews. And I’m just going to read you a few extracts, because you need to see that even these characters have a downgraded notion of the Jew. “What might be the reason that induced the governments of almost all European states unanimously to do so harshly with them, the Jewish nation? What has induced them, even the wisest, to make this one exception? Should a nation of industrious, law-abiding citizens be less useful to the state because they stem from Asia, different from others by beard, circumcision, and a special way of worshipping the supreme being? It would have to be cleverly proved that this religion of the Jew contains such antisocial laws and principles that their divine laws are contrary to the laws of justice and charity. The hard and oppressive conditions under which the Jewish nation lived almost everywhere would explain an even worse corruption they can be accused of. Everything the Jews are blamed for is caused by the conditions under which they live.” This is a common thread. The Jews have become downgraded. Was that true? This is how he ends.

“Trusting that human nature is the same in all people, I’m convinced that in a few generations, the Jews will be just like all other citizens in those states, which will give them equal rights, and they will defend the state just like any other.” Okay, so I’m giving you a few examples. And there are quite a few. Of these thinkers who are looking at the issue of the Jew almost as an anomaly. Can we go to the next slide, please? Here you see Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. He lived in Berlin. He was a very important figure of the Enlightenment. Frederick II had a very, very kind of open court where all sorts of intellectuals gathered. ‘Cause he saw himself as a figure of the Enlightenment. And the fact that he was a despot is another story. And in 1743, Lessing writes a play called “The Jews.” He makes a Jew a hero. And it fails on the Berlin stage, because no one could actually ever imagine a Jew to have any heroic propensities whatsoever. Later on towards the end of his life, he writes another play called “Nathan the Wise.” And that succeeds, because, can we see the next slide, please? He had met Moses Mendelssohn. Now, Moses Mendelssohn is seminal to an understanding of Jewish identity. He’d been born in a ghetto in Dessau. He was the son of a Torah scribe. He was orphaned. He was actually physically impaired. He had a hunch back. But he had a brilliant, brilliant mind.

And he had a very interesting rabbi, a man called David Frankel. And under the terms of the charter of Frederick II, he was called to Berlin. And young Moses Mendelssohn wanted to follow him to study. He was already a great Torah, Talmud scholar, because I think it’s terribly important to understand that still even in the ghetto, the most prized person was the student or the rabbi. Study, study, study. What’s going to come under question now is, what can a Jew study? What may a Jew study? So Mendelssohn, and don’t forget that certainly in the great yeshivat, they studied mathematics, they studied astronomy, anything that helps with understanding the law. What they didn’t study was philosophy or any of the ideas of the West. There’s an extraordinary statement in the Talmud. Never forget there is wisdom amongst the Gentiles. There is no Torah. Moses Mendelssohn, this incredibly, almost insatiable, with his insatiable curiosity comes to Berlin from the ghetto of Dessau as a very young man to become a tutor to the children of a silt merchant under the terms of the charter. The silt merchant is needed by Frederick II. So Moses Mendelssohn can come into the city. He has to check in with the authorities all the time. It’s very downgraded. But he’s got a brain, a brain, a brain. And what is also interesting about Frankel, Frankel had languages.

Moses Mendelssohn studies and studies and studies. And soon in another phenomenon, what we call the salons, some of the wives and daughters of the wealthy merchants had these glittering salons to which came many of the thinkers of the Enlightenment. Characters like Rahel Varnhagen later on, Henriette Herz. These are going to be very important figures in the development of ideas. And Moses Mendelssohn falls in love with European culture. He’s in Berlin. Please never forget that Germany probably, one of the, I’ve just, as I said, I’ve just got back from Salzburg. And one of the problems of Germany, it does prize culture, probably far more than England. And Heine himself, he later on, Heine, Heinrich Heine, he said the two ethical nations, the Jews and the Germans, can create a new Jerusalem. He said other things as well, but there was this dream. He falls in love with the culture. Think about the music. Think about Goethe. Think about Schiller. And he goes to these salons. He learns languages. He learns German. He studies the classics. He is Torah-true, but he’s walking the tightrope now. And he’s mixing with other characters of the Enlightenment. He’s actually, he does so well that there is an essay prize. And he wins it. The philosopher came second.

We don’t read Mendelssohn today, but in his day, he gradually, he was known as the Jewish Socrates. He becomes a very important philosophical figure in Berlin. He marries. He has children. And he is then publicly challenged by Pastor Lavater who says to him, “You are this, you know, you are a great philosopher. Why do you belong to that downgraded religion?” And he said, “If a Confucian or a Solon came to me, would I convert him? No, I don’t need to. Because his path is to the path to the truth.” And he said there are many paths to the truth. “I’m a Jew, and that’s my path to the truth.” But he does look at the Jews around him back in the ghetto. And he believes in Besserung. I think the problem was he looked at the zenith of Berlin and German society, and he compared it with the whole of Israel. Besserung, self-improvement. He translated the Torah into German using Hebrew letters, Yiddish think. He wanted to raise the Jews up. He also privately began to think that religion was a private affair. When Kant wrote his Critique of Pure Reason in 1782, it completely flawed him. He didn’t get it. He believed in the Enlightenment. He was evidently an incredibly personable character. He didn’t coerce his children. And ironically, only one of them is going to remain Jewish. And his grandson was Felix Mendelssohn, the great composer, who tragically for him, he married the daughter of a Swiss pastor. And his music was later banned by the Nazis because he was of Jewish blood race.

So Moses Mendelssohn attracts an incredible amount of fame, but he dies three years before an important political development. You do realise that I could have been presenting on each one of these slides, and I have in the past. But what I’m trying to do is to pull it all together for you. I’m sure many of you have yourselves thought about it and discussed it, but I just thought it would be an interesting exercise just to try and pull the whole thing together. So can we see the next slide, please? Here you see Abbe Gregoire. Abbe Gregoire was very much a figure of the revolution. And he also, as I’ve already mentioned, he writes this essay, on the physical and moral political reform of the Jews, he writes in 1789, the year of the Revolution. “For the Jews, I am told, are incapable of being reformed. Let us cherish morality, but let us not be so unreasonable as to require it of those we have compelled to become vicious.” 40,000 Jews in France at the time. 10,000 Sephardi living in Bordeaux, originally from the Spanish Peninsula, originally expelled either by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, or had remained as conversos and came over later. And 30,000 Yiddish-speaking, much poorer Jews in Alsace. Alsace-Lorraine, the borderland of Germany and France that kept on changing hands, remember, between the French and the Germans. “Let us reform their education to reform their hearts. It has long been observed that they are men as well as we, and they are so before they are Jews.”

Now, this is abound of the Enlightenment, remember? So even the enlighteners have this downgraded view. There is an objection that this nation being in constant opposition to general manners will never become patriotic. We allow that it would be difficult to incorporate them into universal society, but between difficulty and impossibility, there is some difference, as between impossibility and possibility. Can a Jew ever become a patriot? This is a question proposed by those who reproach them with not loving a country that drove them out and with not cherishing people who were their executioners. And he also goes on to say, well, they always turn towards Palestine. That’s the same issue that Menasseh Ben Israel had brought up a hundred years earlier in his petition, when he said Palestine is a dream, a messianic dream. So basically, you have, he won a prize. The enlighteners are thinking about it. And then of course, the next cataclysmic event that engulfed Europe, let’s see a slide, please, the French Revolution. There’d already been a revolution in America, 1776. Now you have a product of the Enlightenment. You see, can you educate people and teach them about freedoms and then hold them in chains? And then the French Revolution. Now, the Jews are completely irrelevant to the French Revolution, just as they are irrelevant to the Enlightenment.

But it’s going to have a huge impact on them. Because once the French Revolution takes control, what are you going to do with the 40,000 Jews of France? And there are debates in the National Assembly, huge debates. Can the Jews be emancipated? Will they be a nation within a nation? Are they capable? Are they worthy of being part of the French state? It actually, the Sephardi Jews disassociated themselves from their Ashkenazi brethren and managed to prove in 1790 they already had charters. They were emancipated. But it wasn’t until 1791 that all the Jews of France were emancipated. And don’t forget when we talk about emancipation, I’m talking about men over 25. So, but then let’s see the next slide. And I should tell you that next term, when we get onto heroes and villains, William is going to give a very interesting analysis of Napoleon Bonaparte. To the English, he’s a villain. To the French, he’s still a hero. Napoleon Bonaparte, who takes on the revolution. And the next slide, please. Because a Napoleon is going to break down the ghetto wars in every country it conquers. So if you happen to visit the Italian states, you go to Verona, you go to Girona, you go to Venice, the new sign is the via libera. It’s fascinating though, when Napoleon invaded Poland, Zalman of Liadi who created Chabad, chokmah, binah, da'at, wisdom, understanding, knowledge, he wrote a letter to another rabbi in which he said, “I would rather my people be persecuted under the czars than live in peace under Napoleon, because Napoleon will be the end of the Jewish people.”

Well, what did Napoleon do? When he was returning from the Battle of Austerlitz, a group of deputies led by a man called Francois Rebel came to him and he said, “The area is in terrible financial problem. We’re still in debt to the Jews.” Because what does emancipation mean? Eman is the laying of the hands. What can you do that you couldn’t do before? As far as the Jews were concerned, they could travel. If they were really, really smart, where would you send your son now? Would you send him to yeshiva in the East? Or would you send him to the Sorbonne? You could become a doctor, you could become a lawyer, you could become a herdsman. Emancipation means you have freedom of movement and freedom of choice of profession. This is a very, very different kind of situation. Now, Francois Rebel tells Napoleon, the peasants are in debt to the Jews. They are still keeping to their terrible ways. And Napoleon being Napoleon, he realises he’s got a problem. And what he believes in more than anything else is the sovereign power of the French state. So he’s going to sort it out. And he calls together the Assembly of Notables. He calls Jews from all parts of France, from his territories that he’s occupied, which meant some of the German territories like the Rhineland, also from parts of Italy. The head of the assembly was a Sephardi rabbi called Furtado. The Ashkenazi rabbis from further East said that he had learned his Talmud through Voltaire, and he poses them 12 questions. Hannah, do you mind? Can we see the next slide? Hannah, can you read the 12 questions very slowly, if you don’t mind?

• [Hannah] The 12 questions Napoleon asked the Jews of France. One, can a Jew have more than one wife? Is divorce allowed by the Jewish religion? May a Jew marry a Christian? Are French Jews and Christians brothers? What conduct does Jewish law prescribe towards non-Jewish Frenchmen? Do French Jews acknowledge France as their country for all purposes? Who elects the rabbis? Do rabbis have judicial power over the Jews? What are the police powers of the rabbis? What occupations and professions are prohibited by Jewish law? Does Jewish law forbid Jews taking usury from fellow Jews? Does Jewish law forbid Jews taking usury from non-Jews?

• So you have the Assembly of Notables, and they’ve got to answer these questions. I’m going to shortcut it. Those of you who don’t know these questions, it’s great fun. Because what’s Napoleon trying to do? His envoys said it’ll count to the Jews as individuals, everything, to Israel as a nation, nothing. Can you become Frenchmen? Can a Jew have more than one wife? And remember, there are rabbis and laypeople. Well, the answer to that is that it was Rabbi Gershom in the 11th century who said that they should follow the customs of the land and only have one wife. Is divorce allowed? Yes, it is. May a Jew marry a Christian? This is the one that the rabbis had most problems with. But the point was, the French revolution was a secular revolution. So yes, they could marry secularly, but the rabbis did insist that they say that just as rabbis wouldn’t sanction, nor would priests. Are French Jews and Christian brothers? They quote the Torah. “Love ye the stranger, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt,” they say. How much more do we feel towards people who have embraced us since 1791? What conduct does Jewish law prescribe towards non-Jewish Frenchmen? The same. Does French Jewry acknowledge France as their country for all purposes? Yes, that’s what they said. Who elects the rabbis? Custom. Do rabbis have judicial power? No. Well, in fact, they did in Eastern Europe. You see, they fudge it. What are the police powers of the rabbis? None. Not quite true. In Poland, they could even imprison. Are any occupations, professions prohibited by Jewish law? Anything that’s moral. Does Jewish law forbid taking usury from fellow Jews?

Does Jewish law forbid taking usury from non-Jews? They had to explain what usury was and what was usury’s interest. The point was, even though Napoleon wasn’t too happy, he accepted it. He said to reform them is a sign of strength. To expel them would be a sign of weakness. And the minute he had those answers, the answers he wanted, he established the Grand Sanhedrin. Can you imagine, that sent echoes of shock waves around the Jewish world. The most powerful man in the world is giving the Jews back their Sanhedrin. And at the Sanhedrin, everything, all the answers that he gave were enshrined. He then sets up the Consistory system where every community, there was a consistory in Paris, which was controlled by rabbis and laypeople, and everyone who was Jewish had to, wherever they lived, they had to be part of it. So there might be one in Leon, there might be one in Marseilles, all answerable. But he also then, in the infamous decree, he, of marriages, one in three marriages had to be with an non-Jew. And he did say, the Jews have corrupt blood, we must change it. But having said this, this is really the beginning of the emancipation process. In England, it’s a long, slow process. Look, Napoleon’s defeated, but Prussia in 1812 emancipated the Jews.

And with a lot of toing and froing from country to country, by 1871, all the Jews in Western and 1878, I beg your pardon, that’s the Habsburg Empire, Every Jew in Western and Central Europe was now emancipated. If you go back to he Heinrich Heine in Germany, in the toing and froing after the fall of Napoleon, because when Napoleon was defeated, many of the states wanted to get rid of all the laws that Napoleon had introduced, including laws in favour of the Jews and emancipation. So for example, in the Rhineland, emancipation was taken away. That was a dilemma for a man who was called Marx, Herschel Marx. He’d become Heinrich and a lawyer. He had a brother who was a rabbi. He had a father who was a rabbi. He was married to the daughter of a rabbi. He had children. He baptises, you see, his wife doesn’t baptise for one more year, but he baptises his son, Karl. A third of German Jewry between 1815 and 1871 when the Jews are finally emancipated by Bismarck, who by the way said the Jews are the champagne in German society. That’s what gives them the, it gives it the fizz, about a third converted. Why? Because many of them had bought into the downgraded image of the Jew, and they wanted the world. Look, if you go back to Mendelssohn’s children, he actually said to friends, “I’m not a coercive father. I do not instruct them.” And don’t forget that his children were mixing with the so-called elite of German society. Heine and a group of friends actually set up a society for Besserung, for the improvement of the Jews. Heine himself converted in 1823.

I’ve already mentioned, he said, “Baptism is the passport to European civilization.” My becoming a Christian is the fault of the Saxons who changed saddles at Leipzig, and of Napoleon who didn’t know that Russian winters were very cold. The cynical Heine. But nevertheless, what happens is you have this, in Europe, and remember, Jews in the main, in Western and Central Europe are city dwellers. You have Jews in the capitals of Europe, in the big cities of Europe, tiny percentage. But on the other hand, they are going to explode into the modern world. Whatever your discipline. Let’s have a look at some of that explosion. Karl Marx, completely threw away his Jewishness. Not only that, anti-Semitic. Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud, who had no religion, and yet said, “I only did what I did because I didn’t belong to the compact majority.” Albert Einstein, the genius of the 20th century. Franz Kafka. None of these people have anything in common unless you believe in race and blood. Franz Kafka. Can we go on, please? I’ve just brought in some of the moguls. I do a lot of work on Hollywood. If you actually look at Hollywood in the '20s, '30s, '40s, and '50s, I’m going to suggest to you that 90% of the major players were people who were born Jewish, arbiters of modernity. They are outside the pattern. They are the arch outsiders. They are restless. And there’s nowhere else to go. Let’s have another look at another collage. Think modernity. Department stores. Jewish invention, of course, begins in America with the peddlers having to visit the homesteads, taking with them everything they needed. Finishes up in Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s, they take it to France, Galleries Lafayette, et cetera, et cetera. Advertising. Whatever you want to associate with modernity, you find a disproportionate number of Jews. And think finance.

Look, not all Jews became rich and famous, but the symbol of international unrest was Karl Marx, even though he hated his Jewish background. Who was the symbol of international capitalism? The house of Rothchild. That brilliant man from the ghetto of Frankfurt with his 10 children, his five brilliant sons. They lit up the world, and they were the symbol. And that’s what’s made people began to believe in Jewish power. In a century where so many people are going to suffer from the results of modernity. Modernity for, look, the majority of Jews living in the West did not become rich overnight, but a lot of them became successful. They stand, and the further east you went, so I’m talking now, if you look at the east of the Habsburg Empire like Hungary, you know, they were on the stock exchange. They were in trade, they were in law, they were in medicine, they were in the sciences. Think of Paul Ehrlich, the cure for syphilis. Think how many of these Jews who were outside the system pushed the system on, and they fell in love with it. How did they cope with the adversity? Well, in the end, they’re going to love us. I’m going to stop there because next week, I’m going to look at the 19th century and all the disruption, and how are the Jews going to fare in that? So let’s have a look at questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Oh, Adrian from Israel, just signed in at long last. Don’t want to listen to the news tonight. We’re all thinking of you, believe me, Adrian. Honey, there are Israelis that are not Jews. Yes, of course, I’m back in history now. But remember, Israel, when Israel was created, think the law of return. Israel is open to every Jew who wishes to become a citizen. The Israelis, ironically, or the theory of Zionism sees the diaspora as a nation in exile. The number of Jews around the world is based on the Orthodox definition, but what about reformed Jews who believe in patrilineal descent? Honey, I don’t believe, no. The statistics are not based on orthodoxy. Believe me. Reformed Jews, they’re Jews. Of course they are. Definitions. It’s much more complicated than defining a Christian. So it’s not that, Honey. I wonder why you are unhappy to have Jews defined as racial. This definition provides for Jews to be reflected in UK law. The case which included Jews as race was Mandla versus Dowell-Lee in the UK. Therefore, Jews benefit if they wish to pursue a claim of racial discrimination. There was certainly a shift in the reason for hatred of Jews from the killers of Christ to racial impurity.

Yes, Arlene, I’m going to be talking about that. But all I said to you, I think the notion of race is totally spurious. That’s what I’m saying to you. I don’t think it holds water. Because if you’re looking at the definition of social Darwinism, we’ll talk about that next week. I’m not necessarily saying what I believe. I’m giving you definitions.

Shelly, the problem with the Enlightenment is that Mendelssohn went from both educated, observant Jew, and educated European to his children. Except for one, all convert to Christianity. The next generation had no affinity for Judaism, whether as a religion or culture. It’s a very important point, Shelly.

Moses Mendelssohn, he was, look, although he was in love with the European Enlightenment, he kept kosher, he was Shabbat observant. In fact that nobody, none of the children converted, and he died first. But it was only after the mother died that the children converted. And yes, of course, Judaism is a religion of knowledge. And I’m going to say this, I think one of the things we’ve failed to do is to give our children as good a Jewish education as in the main. They have a secular education. What is wrong with both? And I’m also going to say, I think one of the problems is I don’t think that Jewish education in terms of their own history is good enough. I don’t think it’s being taught properly. And I’m going to stick my neck out on that one as I’ve been teaching it for 50 years. I think I’m entitled to have an opinion on it. But we can get a lot better. We need, our kids would feel so much more confident in the adversity they’re facing at the moment if they had the knowledge that most of their grandparents have. It’s up to your grandparents. Myrna says, it seems to me that Christianity has an inferiority complex. That their raison d'etre depends on the inferiority of the Jewish people, and perhaps likewise Islam. Look, you have the three monotheistic religions. Judaism is the parent religion. You want a bit of Freudian psychology? Don’t, let’s go there.

Q: Elaine says, even if you convert, you still have Jewish genes and the Jewish kopf. What is a Jewish kopf? That very restless thing. What is the Jewish judgement of the rabbis who responded to Napoleon’s questions in order to become citizens?

A: Depends which rabbis you’re talking to. That’s a very Jewish answer, I’m afraid, David. I told you what Zalman of Liadi thought. “I would rather my people be persecuted under the czars than live in peace under Napoleon. Because Napoleon will be the end of the Jewish people.” Jeremy Rosen and I once had a debate that anti-Semitism was the key to Jewish survival. There was a Jewish community in China, you know, the eighth century, the 10th century. You know what happened to them? They assimilated. It’s such a complicated, tricky story. There is no story, I think, quite as tricky and complicated as that of the Jews. Thank you, Mavis.

Q: What was happening to the Jews in the Arab world?

A: Ah, interesting question. As I said, they were a very small minority by this time. They have been, Islam, it’s, in fact, we’ve had Norman Stillman on Lockdown lecturing quite a lot on the Jews of Islam. And also the wonderful Lyn Julius. They had a very interesting history. I don’t want to shorthand this. Suffice to say, there were periods under Islam, like in the Golden Age of Spain. We have a website. Hilary Pomeroy has been lecturing on this brilliantly as well. Just apply to the website to get these lectures. Also, in 1492, when Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Jews, the sultan actually sent one of his admirals to pick 5,000 of them up from Spain. And he said to his courtiers, “Why are the Spanish monarchs expelling their most useful citizens?” Islam, but there is an issue. When Jerusalem was conquered from the Christians, the Pact of Umar, Jews and Christians, Islam, the pagans must be converted by the sword. Look, Islam is a fascinating religion. The followers of Muhammad, they sweep out of the Hejaz, which is now Saudi, and they create one of the largest land empires the world has ever known. All the pagans must be converted. But Jews and Christians are people of the book. Think Islam. Daud, David, Sulaiman is Solomon. Ibrahim is Abraham. Speaking as a historian, not a theologian, Islam is a blend of Judaism and Christianity plus the teachings of Muhammad.

Now, but the Pact of Umar, the Jews and Christians are Dhimmis. Even in the Golden Age, Jews were sometimes grand viziers, but they could never be the sultan. And the whole issue, can a Jew rule in Dar al-Islam, which is the Middle East, the world of Islam. There is a very interesting theological problem here. So basically, by the time we get to our period, the Arab world, which at one stage was so much more advanced than the Christian world, think Saladin and Richard I, think the Crusades, by this period, Islam was in abeyance. It was going down. Empires rise and fall, remember. We’re in an interesting period at the moment, as my dear friend, the late lamented Robert Wistrich, would say, “You’re living in the decline of the west. Get used to it. Which is the rise of the next empire? Will it be China? Will it be India?” I’m quoting Robert here. There are other historians who think like this, but Islam, when you’re dealing with Islam, you’re dealing with a people who were in decline. And as a result, many Jews leave the Arab world to go into the Ashkenazi world. I think you cited the Jews at some stages knowing they were superior to those around, and that’s problematic. No, Yehuda, what I said when I was talking about, look, let’s take the expulsion from England in 1290. I can show you Jewish codes of education from mediaeval times where they actually say in the diaspora, no teacher should have more than 10 children in the class.

It’s only in the rarefied air of our homeland that a teacher can teach 25. Always learning, learning, learning, learn. They wouldn’t have wanted the world. You see, the Christian world was codified. They’re not going to be part of the aristocracy or the monarchy. The church, perhaps some of them did convert to high positions in the church, in Spain, by the way. And the peasants. There wasn’t a middle class. So that world was not a world that they would’ve wanted. Today, it’s a different story. In the modern world, I would suggest to you that a lot of Jews entered the modern world feeling inferior, wanting to prove that they were as good as the Gentiles. Many of them took on that downgraded view. You need to study literature sometimes to look at this kind of thing. It’s fascinating. I mean, when I was in Salzburg, not only did we look at churches, when we went to Hofmannsthal, Tales of Hoffman, there’s the Jewish evil money lender. That was in Salzburg last week. It’s part of the culture. Thank you.

Erica said some Jews baptise their children to protect them from anti-Semitism, but in many cases it was meaningless. Yes, of course, because this is when terrible race theory had taken hold, of course. What do you think is the influence of the people on the plastic arts at the turn of the century? That’s a fascinating question. And you need a much bigger answer than I can give you. Certainly, art was a later discipline for the Jews, but I have other colleagues who specialise in that, and we’ve got lectures on the Lockdown. So I suggest you have a look. Thank you. Thank you. There are historians who are now questioning the wonders of the Enlightenment, not all it’s made up. Yes, of course. But when you look at what’s going on today, I still think that it had a lot going for it. Of course, there were problems. People are, we’re human. We’ve never created a perfect system. We’ve never even created a very good system, have we? Look at the world. Thank you, Francine.

Q: Oh my goodness, can I recommend a book?

A: Oy, what a question. There are lots. There isn’t one book on Jewish history. There are lots. There are lots of different books on the overview of Jewish history, but there isn’t one book that I could, you need to, actually, there’s a very good source book. Let me go to my, “The Jew in the Modern World,” by Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz. That is a source book. And it gives good introductory chapters. If you want to go, seriously, I would suggest you start with that. There are quite a few interesting books on the history of the Jews. Abba Eban wrote one. Paul Johnson wrote one. I can think, anything by Martin Gilbert. Get hold of Martin Gilbert’s atlases. But it’s such a big subject that nobody could put it all together in one book. I’ve tried to do something. I hope I’ve succeeded. I’m just giving you the major trends, because I want to talk about why are we here today. Why have you got this huge outpouring of anti-Semitism? There’s a very interesting quote from the great Howard Jacobson. “They’ll never forgive us the Holocaust.” I want you to think about that, because what I’m going to be talking about next week, I’m going to talk about the rise of nationalism, anti-Semitism, and Zionism, anti-Semitism as a modern movement.

Then I’m going to turn to the East, and I’m going to talk about then the impact of World War I, the Shoah and Israel. 'Cause they’re all linked together. Isaiah Berlin, “Of course we’re paranoid, but with our history, haven’t we got a right to be?” Thank you. Yes, and of course William has talked on the Islamic world. Go to the website. We have actually codified the lectures. This is from Ruthie. At the time when wrong seems to be right, left seems to be right, and Black seems to be white. Your lectures makes, oh, thank you, thank you so much, Ruthie.

Carol agrees with me. Our Jewish education has not done enough. Much change needed. Look, love that you speak out unafraid and honestly. Look, when you get to my age, what else is there to do? Look, I’ve been involved. I worked for the task force, IHRA. I saw that dream smashed. I’ve taught Jewish history for the past 40 years. I have some wonderful colleagues. But we haven’t got it right. Every one of you, teach your children, teach your grandchildren. Knowledge, knowledge, knowledge. I don’t believe it solves the problem, but it makes them walk a little taller. A lot of our kids and grandchildren are being confronted by naked anti-Semitism, and it’s bewildering. Give them the strength to fight, but fight with their brains. Genetic studies have shown that Ashkenazim comes from Sephardim. Thank you for that.

Judith, outside Regensburg Cathedral, Germany, this figure of a Jew sucking a pig. This figure faces the ghetto area. They only put out an explanation a few years ago. Oh, yes. And above the Frankfurt ghetto, which Mayer would’ve seen every time he walked in and out, was a picture of a suckling pig. The Germans had some particularly revolting art. The Jews of Kaifeng are interesting.

Yes, Myrna. And I’m pleased to tell you, I had a talk with Wendy yesterday, and we are thinking of doing a lot of lectures on China. Not just the Jews of China, but Chinese history and civilization. I taught in China for 12 years. We used to go out there once a year. This was through IHRA. They’re fascinated by the Jews. In fact, one of the best quotes, “We like the Jews. They’ve never hurt China,” quote, unquote. Another interesting quote, this was from the Chinese ambassador to Britain. He said, “I like the Jews. They respect family values, they work hard, and they look after their communities. What’s not to like?” Thank you. “Jews, God and history.” Oh, thank you, Claudia. Yes, of course. Anything by Max Dimont. He really gets you fired up. I loved it. Oh yes, “The Pity of It All.” That’s by Amos Elon. That’s about German Jewry. Look, I keep on saying I’ll do this. I will, maybe Claudia can come around and help me. I will put together 12 books. You need 12, really. That should cover most of the angles. What is my thoughts on the main reason for historical anti-Semitism, which we’re dealing with to this very day? Tibor, have you got 25 hours?

I will be touching on it next time, promise. Curious about what you mean the dream of IHRA smashed. Well, if you read the Stockholm Declaration, one of the reasons of all the education was to lessen racism and anti-Semitism. Doesn’t seem to me to have been very successful. Thanks, Susan. Lovely to hear from you. And it’s been suggested, “Reflexions sur la question antisemite” by Delphine Horvilleur. Thank you. And any of you who’ve got good ideas, just post them online. Anyway, bless you all. Keep well. Thank you, Hannah, as ever. And I’ll see you next week. Bye.