Jews And Judaism in the Nineteenth Century

ey entered freely and without restriction into the movements contemporaneous with them. The history of this development is properly classed as part of general history or of the history of those conflicts between progress and reaction, between revolution and counter-revolution, which took place from 1815 on in every civilized country, in all fields of public and political life. At the same time, the history of this current of events naturally forms part of Jewish history as well. The subject has two aspects, one of which is the self-emancipation of the Jews, the other is their emancipation as dwellers among other nations. Of our self-emancipation we may assert with just pride that it was accomplished long before the other emancipation was even thought of; while the political and legal enfranchisement of the Jew had a history of quite other character. An historian of keen insight justly called it that emancipation by which the states and peoples freedthemselves from the errors and prejudices of their past, in the same way as the Jews had already emancipated themselves in all fields of thought. How they came to have a wider, freer life among the peoples of the civilized world is only an incident in the general progress of humane feelings and in the development of a sense of justice among the nations of the present day. It would be interesting to follow the very slow evolution of this sense of justice. It is difficult to realize how ideas so fundamental could ta...