The New Period: An Introduction

There was no magic moment in which the world changed for the Jews. Sephardi Jewry, particularly in Arab lands, had achieved an equilibrium enabling the Jew to survive within an almost closed system, although Italian and French developments gave warning of changes to come.

In Eastern Europe, medievalism was slow to crack; Jews moving from Eastern to Western Europe literally jumped across the centuries. The Enlightenment, emanating from the Netherlands and Germany, found its full political expression in France, where it culminated in the Revolution and in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, changing Jewish status. Its effect on the mind, with its doctrine of the autonomy of reason challenging all dogma, authority and tradition, first evidenced itself in Germany. Suddenly, Jews found themselves viewed as individual human beings. The medieval religious prejudices were challenged by the new system of economics which could see Jews as part of the gross national product—a human resource to be developed rather than destroyed or isolated for religious reasons. As the Age of Reason came into its own, the commercial middle class gained power and confidence, and there was a lowering of religious and class barriers. A sane and ethical deism, not tied to institutions, heralded a new world. C. W. von Dohm (1751-1820) wrote his Concerning the Civil Amelioration of the Jews in which he argued that improvement in Jewish status would result in improving the Jews whose ‘flaws’ were simply injuries inflicted upon them by persecution. Frederick II of Prussia could understand this; he could still hate Jews, but would give special status to thosejews who would improve the economy of Prussia. And then there was Moses Mendelssohn.

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Source: Clarke Peter et al. (eds.). The World's Religions. Routledge,1988. — 995 p.. 1988

The New Period: An Introduction

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