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The Enlightenment (17th-18th cc.) . Human nature by and large the same everywhere Race and creed do not change this Till Enlight ., believed to be natural to live with groups, suspect outsiders; simply assumed Notions of toleration, integration, equality all utopian.
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The Enlightenment (17th-18th cc.) • Human nature by and large the same everywhere • Race and creed do not change this • Till Enlight., believed to be natural to live with groups, suspect outsiders; simply assumed • Notions of toleration, integration, equality all utopian. • Power of Christian church–respons. for so much bigotry, misery (medieval libels, caricatures) • Movement from religious/sacred to a secular /profane worldview, organization
The French Revolution (1789) • Helped usher European Jewry into the modern world (for good or bad) • Aimed to make it difficult for groups or individuals to be ghettoized, live on periphery • Insisted that allegiance given not to region, class, religion, ethnic group • Allegiance owed instead by everyone to national state • Conformity, assimilation were key watchwords • Even uniformity of lifestyle, education, dress, cultural practice, belief
Articles of Human Rights (1789) • Articles: • Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good. • The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression. • The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation. • Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law. • Law can only prohibit such actions as are hurtful to society. Nothing may be prevented which is not forbidden by law, and no one may be forced to do anything not provided for by law. • Law is the expression of the general will. Every citizen has a right to participate personally, or through his representative, in its foundation. It must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, are equally eligible to all dignities and to all public positions and occupations, according to their abilities, and without distinction except that of their virtues and talents. • No person shall be accused, arrested, or imprisoned except in the cases and according to the forms prescribed by law. Any one soliciting, transmitting, executing, or causing to be executed, any arbitrary order, shall be punished. But any citizen summoned or arrested in virtue of the law shall submit without delay, as resistance constitutes an offense. • The law shall provide for such punishments only as are strictly and obviously necessary, and no one shall suffer punishment except it be legally inflicted in virtue of a law passed and promulgated before the commission of the offense. • As all persons are held innocent until they shall have been declared guilty, if arrest shall be deemed indispensable, all harshness not essential to the securing of the prisoner's person shall be severely repressed by law. • *No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious views, provided their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law. • The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law. • The security of the rights of man and of the citizen requires public military forces. These forces are, therefore, established for the good of all and not for the personal advantage of those to whom they shall be entrusted. • A general tax is indispensable for the maintenance of the public force and for the expenses of administration; it ought to be equally apportioned among all citizens according to their means. • All the citizens have a right to decide, either personally or by their representatives, as to the necessity of the public contribution; to grant this freely; to know to what uses it is put; and to fix the proportion, the mode of assessment and of collection and the duration of the taxes. • Society has the right to require of every public agent an account of his administration. • A society in which the observance of the law is not assured, nor the separation of powers defined, has no constitution at all. • Property being an inviolable and sacred right, no one can be deprived of it, unless demanded by public necessity, legally constituted, explicitly demands it, and under the condition of a just and prior indemnity.
Consequences: Positive and Negative • 1. Opened up new opportunities for econ, soc, poliparticipation.Seemed to promise legal, occupational and social equality with gentile neighbors. • 2. At the same time, assimilation certainly threatened the cultural and religious particularity of the Jewish community; may even have resulted in the lossof a coherent group identity and a historic reason for being different, namely the profound sense of election experienced by many Jews over millennia. • 3. The dilemma thus faced by the Western Jew is whether to move out of the medieval world of ghettoization and marginalization and to accept the invitation to move from the political and economic periphery to the center. The attractiveness of this invitation was, however, muted by the demand that he or she relinquish his or her ancestral traditions and identity • 4. Even when Jews entered professions like law medicine, journalism and medicine, they faced the charge by gentile neighbors (in Germany for example) that they were enjoying too much success. This is the first cruel, though comparatively speaking, mild dilemma or predicament with which newly-liberated Jewish communities were faced in the era a emancipation. • 5. In the West, nonetheless, it must be said that, at least through 1900, these ominous signs were largely ignored. Were regarded as vestiges of the bigotry and sectarianism of the medieval world. Hoped it was a chapter of world history now being brought to a close by education and progress.
Jews and the World of Eastern Europe • 1. Tsarist Rule • 2. Influence of Orthodox Church • 3. Conscription • 4. Pogroms • 5. Jewish Reaction to Violence; complex
Racial antisemitism: main tenets • 1. Racial/anthropological demonizing • 2. Incorrigibility (baptism does not improve) • 3. Rise of Antisemitic Political Parties • 4. *Pan-Germanism
The “International Conspiracy:”Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Depiction of Assassination of Heir to Austro-Hungarian throne, Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo
Consequences of WWI • 1. Austro-Hungarian Empire, Ottoman Empire, Tsarist empire give way to independent nation-states in east-central Europe, including Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania. • 2. New states had sizeable minority populations; Jews were the largest. In Poland, over 3 m; Romania: 900K; • 3. New states>nationalism>right wing regimes>severe restriction on Jewish business, education • 4. Exacerbated by economic crisis (crash of 1929) • 5. *Thus, by the time Hitler came to power in Germany in January 1933, several of the emerging central European countries which contained significant Jewish populations — Poland, Hungary, Romania, Latvia and Lithuania — had regimes installed which would be symptheticowardsmany of his racial policies. This would have disastrous consequencesfor their Jewish populations. Severe antisemitic policies introduced. Discrimination. 6. Many Jews had fought for Germany. Retreating Russians treated Jews as traitors. *Consequence: by contrast, German armies in Eastern Europe treated them humanely. Would prove to be disastrous in June 1941. • - • -
