Jews

A

Racial Anti-Semitism

Having lost the argument to withhold emancipation, opponents of Jewish civil rights and political integration developed new arguments to justify rolling back emancipation. In the 1870s hatred of Jews took a new form, called anti-Semitism. Coined in 1879, the word anti-Semitism described opposition to Jews on racial grounds. Anti-Semites asserted that Jews constituted a distinct race that embodied characteristics different from, and dangerous to, the dominant European group, which they called the Aryan race. Because anti-Semites viewed these two racial types as mutually incompatible, they believed the health of European society depended on segregating Jews from Aryans. They opposed allowing Jews to participate in any institutions of European society and culture or to exercise political power. They favored making the strongest efforts to prevent Jews from marrying non-Jews.

Racial anti-Semitism combined forces with nationalist resistance to Jews, leading to the emergence of political parties that campaigned on a program of depriving Jews of some or all of their civil rights. Such parties emerged in France, Germany, and Austria-Hungary. Although rarely successful in winning political office, anti-Semitic parties managed to win a few electoral victories, most importantly the mayoralty of Vienna in 1897. Vienna at the time had a large population of Jews who were fully assimilated (integrated) within Austrian culture.

Racial anti-Semitism made fewer inroads in Eastern Europe, but Russian nationalism was deeply hostile to Jews. After the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, organized massacres called pogroms (Russian for “destruction”) broke out across the southern part of the Russian Empire. Although relatively few Jews were killed in the 1881 outbreak compared with later pogroms, the pogroms signaled an end to Jewish hope of becoming Russian citizens. Many Jews converted to Christianity to avoid being victimized by newly established quotas on Jews in the universities and professions.

B

Zionism and Other Responses to Anti-Semitism

Most Jews in Russia who reacted to anti-Jewish outbursts did so by immigrating to other countries. Of those who stayed on, some responded to the deplorable political and economic conditions by embracing socialism. Others—the fewest of all—began working toward a return of Jews to a homeland of their own in Palestine, which was then under Ottoman rule. The effort to create an independent Jewish state in Palestine became known as Zionism, after Zion, the hill in Jerusalem on which the ancient Temple stood. Zionism meant a clear rejection of the possibility of Jewish integration into the Western world.

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The initial Jewish responses to anti-Semitism in Western Europe were different from those in Eastern Europe. Rejecting the racial critique, some French and German Jews called for speeding up the process of Westernization among Jews in order to narrow the differences between Jews and non-Jews. Other Jews responded by creating political organizations to combat anti-Semitism and defend the political gains they had achieved. A very small number arrived at the same conclusion reached by the Zionists of the East—namely, that Europe would never be a hospitable place for Jews. Led by writer and journalist Theodor Herzl, these Jews began to agitate for a Jewish state. Herzl had covered the Dreyfus affair in France for a Viennese newspaper. The anti-Semitism unleashed in France by accusations against Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer, convinced Herzl and others that Jewish rights could be safeguarded only in a Jewish state.

The vast majority of Jews in the 19th century rejected Zionism, some quite passionately. They believed that Zionism represented a regression to an earlier tribal form of Judaism made obsolete by modernity. They insisted that the solution to the Jewish question, as it had long been called, was the moral improvement of Jews and gentiles (non-Jews) alike. In a better world there would be no room for anti-Semites, nor any need for Jews to disengage from the rest of humanity, according to this argument. This position was central to the message of Reform Judaism, which thoroughly rejected the nationalist, or Zionist, components of Jewish identity.

C

Jewish Culture

The political issues of emancipation and the quest for religious reform dominated Jewish culture in the 19th century, but Jewish culture also flowered in other areas. Jews emerged as writers of secular literature, enriching English, French, and German literature with novels, short stories, poems, and essays. In Britain Benjamin Disraeli, who converted to Christianity, wrote popular novels before becoming prime minister. Heinrich Heine, who converted to Christianity in order to earn a law degree in Germany, became one of the best-loved German poets.

Modern literary genres also developed in Hebrew and especially in Yiddish. Although Hebrew literature had few readers at that time, Yiddish literature revolutionized Jewish reading and thinking habits. This literature became an effective tool for modernizing the thought of Jews in Eastern Europe, especially in raising class-consciousness among Jews and promoting socialist ideals. It also served as an effective, although at times brutal, medium of social criticism. Yiddish writers such as Solomon Rabinovitz, who took the name Sholom Aleichem, used sarcasm and ridicule to motivate Jews to reshape their political and cultural lives. All the while, traditional Jews continued producing works of Talmudic scholarship.

The 19th century ended with Jewish life in political turmoil in Europe and a Jewish community fragmented over religious and political views. No unified response to the many challenges emerged, nor could it, given that European Jews were hopelessly divided regarding the central issues facing the Jewish community.

VIII

The 20th Century

Jews faced unprecedented challenges in Europe as the 20th century began. Could they survive as Jews? Should they even try? Was Zionism the answer, or was it socialism with a promise of a better life, or an extension of democracy under liberalism? Jews debated these issues in Western Europe, while many Eastern European Jews ignored ideology and immigrated to North America, especially after the pogroms of 1881.

A

Emigration from Eastern Europe

From 1881 to 1914, 2.5 million Jews left Europe, with nearly 2 million going to the United States. Thousands more made their way to Argentina, Australia, Canada, and South Africa. Others abandoned Eastern Europe for places closer to home, such as France, Germany, and Britain.

The migrants brought with them little money and less acquaintance with their new homelands, but they were committed to escaping the poverty and discrimination of Eastern Europe and to building new lives for themselves and their families. Many of those who emigrated from Russia had formed the most dynamic element of their Jewish community. They held traditional religious beliefs for the most part, but they were also willing to disregard the rabbinic leaders back home. Those leaders looked on American life with fear, seeing it as a radically different culture that would require Jews to assimilate and lose their Jewish identity.