Chapter XI (2)

The liberal-minded, most of whom belonged to the German community, demanded that the regulations which endowed the rabbis, and to a greater extent the Parnassim, or wardens, with powerful authority over the members, should be altered in accordance with the spirit of the age. The leaders of the community not only refused this demand, but even threatened the petitioners with fines. Upon this the advanced left the existing synagogue, established their own congregation, and declared that they constituted the real community (Adath Jeshurun, formed at the end of 1796). The conservative members of the old community thereupon passed a kind of interdict upon the separatists, forbade their own congregants to have any intercourse, or to intermarry with them. The political divergence of opinion at the same time became a religious one; for the supporters of the new congregation, Adath Jeshurun, initiated a sort of reform. They struck out of their ritual the formula of imprecation (v'la-Malshinim), which had originally been directed against the apostate Jewish Christians, but by misinterpretation was afterwards applied to all Christians. They abolished the practice of hastily burying the dead, and erected a new, clean communal bath,--innocent reforms, which, however, were regarded by the strictly orthodox as grave offenses against Judaism. The new congregation succeeded in having the fanatical leaders of the German community, who were more inconsiderate than the Portuguese in their opposition to those who had withdrawn from their midst, removed from their posts, probably through the action of the French ambassador Noel. Among the new council officers, members of the new congregation were elected. Gradually many of the old party became reconciled to the new order of things and to the aspirations of the liberal-minded section. The orthodox were also greatly flattered when two Jews, Bromet and De Lemon, were elected as deputies for Amsterdam. Several attended at the Hague at the opening of the second National Assembly (September 1, 1797), to participate in the honor of the Jewish deputies. They were still more pleased with the idea of equalization when the Jewish deputy, Isaac da Costa Atias, was successively elected a member of the city council, of the National Assembly, and finally to the position of President of the same (1798). The head of the Batavian Republic, the Grand Pensioner Schimmelpenink, was in earnest about the emancipation of the Jews, and without hesitation appointed able Jews to public offices. The first appointment to public posts in Europe was made in Holland.

It was natural that a sense of self-importance and honorable pride should be awakened in the breasts of the liberal members of the new congregation, among whom state offices were distributed. Indignation seized them when they saw that the Jews under the German princes were still treated as outcasts or wild beasts. They therefore laid a proposal before the National Assembly, entreating that the Batavian ambassador to the French Republic be instructed to move at the Peace Congress held at Rastadt, that the Dutch Jews in Germany should no longer be compelled to pay poll-tax, and to threaten that, unless this was granted, all Germans journeying through Holland would be subjected to the same dishonorable treatment. The National Assembly agreed to this proposition.

Righteous judgment soon overtook the German princes and people, who, stubborn as Pharaoh and the Egyptians, refused to loosen the chain of slavery from the Jews. They themselves were soon forced to become the _servi cameræ_ of the French Republic, and to pay a poll-tax. Wherever in Germany and Italy the courageous French obtained firm footing, the Jews were made free. The walls of the Ghetto were burst open, and bent figures stood erect.

The name of the invincible French, who had achieved wonderful victories in Italy, quickly spread abroad, even beyond Europe, and aroused terror and surprise in the most remote countries. A new Alexander, the Corsican Bonaparte, a god of war when scarcely thirty years old, set out with a comparatively small army to subdue Egypt, and hoped to penetrate to India. In less than six months (July-November, 1798) Egypt lay crushed at his feet. But a Turkish army was on its way to meet him, against which Bonaparte advanced into Palestine. Thus, through a marvelous series of historical events, the Holy Land became the scene of a bloody war between the representatives of the old and the new spirit in Europe.

El Arish and Gaza in the south-west of Palestine fell into the hands of the French army, which scarcely numbered 12,000 men (17th and 25th February, 1799). The Jewish community of Gaza had fled. In Jerusalem the news of French victories and cruelty created a panic. It was rumored that Napoleon was about to enter the Holy City. At the command of the sub-pasha, or Motusallim, the inhabitants began to throw up ramparts, the Jews taking part in the work. One of their rabbis, Mordecai Joseph Meyuchas, encouraged and even assisted them in their operations. The Turks had circulated the report that the French treated Jews particularly in a cruel manner. Bonaparte had issued a summons to the Asiatic and African Jews to march under his banners, promising to give them the Holy Land, and restore ancient Jerusalem to its pristine splendor. But the Jews in Jerusalem appear either not to have trusted in these flattering words, or to have been utterly ignorant of the proclamation. Probably it was only a trick on the part of Bonaparte, intended to win over to his side the Jewish minister of the pasha of Acco, Chayim Maalem Farchi (assassinated in 1820), the soul of the defense of the important sea-fortress of Acco. Had Bonaparte succeeded in conquering Syria and carrying the war into the heart of Turkey, he would perhaps have assigned a share in his government to members of the Jewish nation upon whom the French could rely. But the appearance of Bonaparte in Palestine was like that of a terrible meteor, which disappears after causing much devastation. His dream to become Emperor of the East, and restore Jerusalem to the Jews, quickly faded away.

The glowing enthusiasm for France, where his enthralled co-religionists had been freed, had created a Jewish poet in Elia Halevi, while a Jewish youth was aroused to become a spirited orator, whose eloquence was always tinged with poetry. Michael Berr (born 1780, died 1843), a worthy son of Isaac Berr, who had so zealously striven for the emancipation of the Jews of France, in his youth aroused great hopes, by reason of his handsome, noble form, and his manifold talents. In him for the first time Jewish and French spirit met in harmonious combination. He was the first Jewish attorney in France. Animated by the ambition of courageous youth and in the glow of his fiery spirit, this young man conceived a bold idea, at the beginning of the new century, when peace was concluded. A Congress of the princes of Europe was expected to take place. To them and their people Michael Berr addressed a "Summons" in the name of "all the inhabitants of Europe professing the Jewish religion," praying them to free his co-religionists from oppression, and to guarantee to them the justice so long withheld. This youth voiced the hopes of rejuvenated Israel. Berr's summons was especially directed to the Germans, both to princes and nations, who still treated the Jews living in their midst as branded _servi cameræ_.

Berr, who was inspired with love for his co-religionists, preached to deaf ears, his burning words and convincing arguments finding no response in the hearts of the Eastern European people. In Austria, Prussia, and the numerous smaller German states, the Jews remained in their former abasement. In Berlin itself, the seat of enlightenment, Jewish physicians, however honorable their reputation, were not included in the list of their Christian fellow-practitioners, but were enumerated by themselves, relegated, as it were, to a medical Ghetto. Two men of the first rank, the greatest poet and the greatest thinker of the time, Göthe and Fichte, shared in the prejudices of the Germans against the Jews, and made no secret of it. Göthe, the representative of the aristocratic world, and Fichte, the defender of democratic opinion in Germany, both desired to see the Jews removed like plague patients beyond the pale of Christian society. Both were on bad terms with the Church, both looked upon Christianity with its belief in miracles as a folly, and both were considered atheists. Nevertheless they abhorred the Jews in the name of Jesus. Göthe's intolerance against the Jews cannot be taken as the expression of his personal prejudice; he only showed how the current of opinion flowed in cultured German circles.

Fichte, the one-sided complement of Kant, was still more savage and embittered against the Jews. Like most German metaphysicians, his philosophy was of a visionary nature before the outbreak of the French Revolution.

Apparently Fichte bestowed great honor upon the Jews when he put them on a level with the nobility and the clergy. But he did not wish in any way to honor them, but rather to accuse them before the bar of public opinion. Fichte, the philosophical thinker, cherished the same ill-will against the Jews and Judaism as Göthe, the aristocratic poet, and Schleiermacher, the Gnostic preacher.

Should civil rights be granted to Jews? Fichte opposed it in a most decided fashion; not even in the Christian state, in his view a petty state, contrary to right and reason, should they be emancipated. "The only way I see by which civil rights can be conceded to them (the Jews) is to cut off all their heads in one night, and to set new ones on their shoulders, which should contain not a single Jewish idea. The only means of protecting ourselves against them is to conquer their promised land and send them thither." History judged otherwise: new heads have not been set on the Jews, but on the Germans themselves. His view was that Jews should not be persecuted, that, in fact, the rights of men should be granted them, "because they are men," but that they should be banished altogether. Even the clerical opponents of emancipation in France, Abbé Maury and Bishop La Fare, had not spoken of the Jews in so perverse and hateful a manner. Fichte may be regarded as the father and apostle of national German hatred of the Jews, of a kind unknown before, or rather never before so clearly manifested. Even Herder, although filled with admiration for Israel's antiquity and the people in its biblical splendor,--the first to examine sacred literature from a poetical point of view--felt an aversion to the Jews, which became apparent in his relations with Mendelssohn, whom it cost him an effort to treat in a friendly manner. Herder, it is true, prophesied a better time, when Christian and Jew would work together in concord on the structure of human civilization. But like Balaam of old, he pronounced his blessings upon Israel in a half-hearted way. This growing hostility to the Jews among the Germans was not noticed by educated Jews who dwelt in their midst, at least they did not combat it vigorously. Only one pamphlet from the pen of a Jewish author appeared at this time. Saul Asher wrote his "Eisenmenger the Second, an open letter to Fichte," but hardly any notice was taken of it.

If the Jews met with no favor in the eyes of those who formed public opinion in Germany, who had raised it from antiquated customs to a brilliant height of culture, both in the democratic and in the aristocratic camps, but experienced at their hands only repulse and scorn, how much worse was their relation to the great mass of the populace, still engulfed in the depths of darkest ignorance and crudeness! Two noble-minded Christians addressed to the Congress of Rastadt the soundest arguments that the German Jews should be raised from their ignominious condition. One of them, an unknown philanthropist, hurled the shaft of ridicule at the stupidity and bombastic haughtiness of the German Jew-haters, and the other, Christian Grund, demonstrated with pitiless logic the injustice with which the Jews were treated. Both desired to support the demand of the Dutch Jews to the diplomatic representatives, that the princes of Germany be compelled to respect the Jews, and that influence be brought to bear upon public opinion to that effect. Grund acted as a clever advocate for the Jews; he complimented the Germans in order to win favor with them. "The German Jews," said he, "venture to approach the German nation, capable of great deeds, the creator of its own destinies, not merely an imitator of the actions of other peoples, uniting their voice with that of their brethren, to petition the representatives of the nation at Rastadt most respectfully for the abolition of those distinctions under which they live, and for the acquisition of greater rights." The answer of the German princes and rulers was not very encouraging.

The most disgraceful degradation and humiliation of the Jews consisted in the poll-tax, an impost unknown outside of Germany. Of what advantage was it that Emperor Joseph of Austria and Frederick William II had remitted it? It still existed in all its hideousness in Central and Western Germany, in the districts of the Main and the Rhine, where diminutive states bordered close on other diminutive states of the extent of a square mile, and where turnpike after turnpike at short intervals presented itself. If a Jew took a day's journey, he passed through different territories, and at the borders of each had to pay a poll-tax. A Jewish beggar, accompanied by his young son, once exhibited his poll-tax bills, which amounted to a florin and a half for six days, paid in various places. The way in which the tax was levied was more degrading than the duty of paying it. Very often the tax amounted to a few kreuzers, which only the poor, who were not exempt from it, felt as a burden. But the brutal procedure of the officers, and the ignominious treatment at each frontier-line offended also the rich. As long as the French armies were encamped in German territory, the Jews escaped paying the poll-tax. But no sooner was the peace of Lüneville concluded, and the French troops withdrawn, than the petty German princes re-imposed the tax, not in order to raise the small income derivable from this source, but to humiliate the Jews. They inflicted the insult also upon French Jews who crossed the Rhine for business purposes, defending their action by a literal construction of one of the articles of the peace of Campo Formio, which stated: "All business and intercourse shall for the present continue under the same conditions as before the war." The French Jews, proud of their citizenship, would not submit, severed their business connections with Germany, and complained of the injustice to the French government, by whom the question was not lightly passed over. The government commissioner Jollivet despatched a circular letter (1801) to the agents of the French Republic resident at German courts, instructing them not to permit French citizens of the Israelite faith to be degraded to animals. They were to make earnest representations to the governments concerned, and menace them with retaliation. Several small princes, like those of Solms, gave heed, and forthwith removed the poll-tax; from fear of the French the French Jews were freed from it, but it still weighed heavily upon German travelers. Every step towards the removal of oppressive restrictions in Germany was the result of great exertions.

In consequence of the peace of Lüneville, the Holy Roman Empire was now for the first time dismembered. The representatives of the Empire, assembled in Ratisbon, were driven to seek means of bringing their disunited members into some sort of order, or to decide upon the indemnity for the damage suffered. To this conference of the ambassadors of eight princes, occupied with traffic in territory, and regarded by the short-sighted as representing the German nation, the German Jews presented a petition asking for passive citizenship (November 15, 1802). This entreaty was drawn up "in the name of the Jews of Germany," by state attorney Christopher Grund. Which congregation, or what individuals zealous for emancipation had commissioned him to do this is not exactly known. It appears that the petition originated in Frankfort. It prayed that the representatives of the Empire remove from the German Jews the burdensome distinctions under which they labored; that the narrow confines in which they were forced to reside be thrown open, so that for the sake of health and free enjoyment of life, they might select their own dwelling-place in the cities. Further, that the bonds by which their population, their trade, and their industry were restricted to a fatal degree be loosened, and that, in short, the Jewish community be considered worthy, by the grant of civil rights, to constitute one united people with the German nation. The Jews, or their attorney Grund, cited the fact that they were "classed with dishonorable persons, outlaws, and serfs." The miserable condition of the Frankfort community, which, after the orders promulgated for the regulation of the town in 1616, had been deprived of natural freedom, and crowded together into the narrowest limits, served as a conclusive proof. The example of France and the Batavian Republic in emancipating the Jews was adduced; but the Jews could hardly have deceived themselves with the fond hope that the representatives of the Empire would concede so much to them. They hoped at least to have one restriction removed, viz., that of the poll-tax, and this point was insisted upon with great vigor. "The most degrading of all these disabilities," they said, "is the poll-tax, which removes the name of Jew from the category of rational beings, to place it among wild beasts, and forces him to pay his way when he sets foot upon one soil or another." Contrary to expectation, this petition to the representatives of the Empire was handed in and supported by the most distinguished member among them, the ambassador from the Electorate of Bohemia or Austria. He proposed the motion "that the Jews of Germany be allowed civil rights" (at the end of 1802). Meantime the Indemnification Congress had other affairs to engross its attention, and its members were unable to occupy themselves with the Jewish question. The petition was buried under a pile of state papers.

Nothing was to be expected from the German people, as those who watched the course of affairs readily perceived. The Jews therefore directed their zeal towards inducing the various governments to remit the poll-tax. Two men made their names famous in the struggle to remove this odious impost, viz., Israel Jacobson and Wolff Breidenbach. The former, court agent and finance counselor to the Prince of Brunswick, succeeded in procuring the abolition of the poll-tax in the territories of Brunswick-Lüneburg (April 23, 1803). During a number of years Wolff Breidenbach strove in the same cause, and effected more far-reaching results. Breidenbach was born in a village of that name near Cassel, 1751, and died at Offenbach 1829. He was a man of high culture, noble ideals, and so modest that his name has almost been forgotten in spite of all the sacrifices he made on behalf of the German Jews. He did not, like Jacobson, make provisions to have his name spread far and wide.

Deeply moved by the annoyances, and the contemptuous treatment inflicted on Jewish travelers in places where the tax was imposed, which came daily under the notice of Breidenbach in his business journeys, he determined at least to have the poll-tax remitted, and applied himself with all his energy to this task. Quietly he strove to have the chain loosened, where it weighed most heavily. He perceived that large sums of money would be required to provide presents for the police magistrates and the city clergy under the pretense of giving alms to the poor, and also "to erect beautiful monuments in honor of magnanimous princes" who would allow themselves to be influenced to leave the Jews untaxed and unoppressed. He was not able to meet this enormous expense out of his own means. He therefore issued a summons to German and foreign Jews (September, 1803), asking them to subscribe to a fund, from which the cost of abolishing the poll-tax might be defrayed. It was well known at the time who circulated this appeal, but out of modesty, Breidenbach did not append his name. By these means, and through negotiations with the minor German princes at the Diet in Ratisbon, carried on with the friendly help of the imperial chancellor, Dalberg, and finally by the recommendations of the princes themselves, who learned to esteem him, Breidenbach succeeded in obtaining the right of free passage for the Jews throughout the Rhineland and Bavaria. Even the narrow-minded, Jew-hating, most noble council of Frankfort was moved by Breidenbach's petition to abolish the poll-tax exacted at the gates and bridges.

The petition of the Jews to the representatives of the Empire for civil privileges, however restricted, the feeling displayed by several princes in favor of removing their bonds, and other signs, made the Jew-haters of Germany suspect that the old condition of imperial serfdom would soon vanish. They were terror-struck; they could not conceive the idea that the down-trodden Jews should be raised from their abasement in Germany. This painful idea induced a host of authors, most of them jurists, as if by mutual agreement, to employ all their efforts in various parts of Germany in opposing the deliverance of the Jews from slavery. Among these men were Paalzow, Grattenauer, Buchholz, and many anonymous writers, who persisted in their hostility for several years (1803-1805). They displayed hatred to the Jews, so malignant that it savored of the days of the Black Death, of Capistrano, Pfefferkorn, and the Dominicans. They produced an artificial fog, to prevent the spread of rays of enlightenment. In former days it had been the servants of the church who had branded the Jews with dishonor. Now the priests of justice assumed this part, and by perversion of justice sought to keep the Jews in servitude, for which course Fichte had prepared the way. As soon as the petition of the Jews reached the representatives of the Empire in Ratisbon, a jurist of South Germany opposed it, urging that a thousand reasons existed why Jews were unworthy of becoming citizens of the Empire and the provinces. The greater number and the most obstinate of the representatives of this Jew-baiting movement had their seat in Berlin, the city of enlightenment and of the Christianity taught by Schleiermacher. The character, teachings, and history of the Jews, even their prophets and patriarchs, in fact, everything Jewish, was attacked by these cowardly writers, most of whom wrote anonymously, and was made the subject of foulest abuse and vituperation.

The leaders of Berlin Judaism were at a loss how to oppose these systematic onslaughts. David Friedländer remained silent. Ben-David resolved to write an answer, but wisely abstained. The parts were now changed. In the days of Mendelssohn, and for some time afterwards, the German Jews had acted as guardians to the French Jews whenever the latter had any grievances to redress. Now freedom had made the French Jews so powerful and confident that they repulsed every attack upon themselves and their belief with courage and skill. The Berlin Jews, who had always been ready enough to boast of their courage, at the first hostile attack found themselves helpless as babes. In their perplexity they solicited the aid of the police, who issued an order that no pamphlet either for or against the Jews should be published. This step was regarded by their antagonists as a sign of cowardice or a confession of powerlessness. A new abusive tract, entitled "Can the Jews remain in their present condition without harm to the state?" gave additional weight to the accusations against them.

"What were a number of the most wealthy Jews or their fathers
twenty or thirty years ago? Hawkers, who crawled about the
streets in ragged clothes, annoying the passers-by with
their importunity to buy some yards of Potsdam hair riband;
or rustics, who, under the pretext of trading, stole into
Christian dwellings, and often did damage to their owners."

This writer proposed to render the Jews harmless by means more revolting than those employed in the Middle Ages.

"Not only must the Jews again be enclosed in a Ghetto, and be
placed under continual police supervision; not only should
they be compelled to wear a patch of noticeable color upon
their coat sleeves, but in order to prevent their increase, the
second male child of each Jew should be castrated."

Protestant theology and German philosophy proposed regulations against the Jews unrivaled by the canonical decrees of Popes Innocent III and Paul IV.

In Breslau appeared similar libels which inflamed the hatred of the populace against the Jews. Even the well-meaning writings composed in their defense by Christians, such as Kosmann and Ramson--"A Word to the Impartial"--admitted the low character of the Jews, and seemed to imply that in every way it would be better for Christians if there were no Jews among them; but seeing that the evil existed, it must be endured. The honor of the Germans was partly redeemed by a man who belonged to the olden time, Freiherr von Diebitsch, once a major in the Russian service, to whom love of mankind was no empty phrase. He warmly defended the Jews against the venomous attacks of Grattenauer and his malicious allies (1803 and 1804), and thereby laid himself open to the charge of having been bribed. In view of the general prejudice against the Jewish race, he was prepared to see himself "caricatured, and represented as riding upon a sow or an ass." His kindly but pedantic pamphlets in defense of the Jews were not sufficient to close the mouths of their opponents.

Equally inadequate and fruitless were the attempts at vindication made by Jewish writers outside of Berlin, who found it necessary to lift their voice in opposition to the general outcry against their people.

Two Jews, one from Königsberg, the other from Hamburg, hit upon an excellent plan. Both recognized that the Jew hatred of the Germans could not be refuted by solid and weighty arguments, but might be silenced by ridicule. They were the forerunners of Börne and Heine, one being an unknown physician, the other writing anonymously (Lefrank). The former, in a satirical pamphlet written under the name of Dominicus Haman Epiphanes, expressed the opinion that unless all Jews were speedily massacred, and all Jewesses sold as slaves, the world, Christianity, and all states, must necessarily perish. Mankind would benefit enormously by the sale of the Jews: all immorality would thereby at once diminish, and the immortal Grattenauer, who had originated the glorious idea and had disseminated his noble abhorrence of the Jews, would everywhere be acknowledged a benefactor of mankind, and be deservedly commemorated by temples and monuments.

The other satirist, Lefrank, called his work "Bellerophon," (or the defeated Grattenauer). He wished to kill the chimerical monster "Jew hatred" in Grattenauer by mounting Pegasus. He addressed the Jew-baiter with the scornful "thou."

"Thou who hast grafted with so much success jurisprudence upon
theology, thou who didst lick salt in Halle--not indeed Attic
salt--thou who hast studied ignorance and stupidity under the
great Semler, if thou art so proud of thy Christianity, that
with contempt thou dost look down upon Jews, then pray let me
ask thee why thy prisons are crammed with criminals condemned
upon charges of high treason, murder, poisoning, robbery,
and adultery? First remove from thy midst the scaffold, the
gallows, the rack, the scourge, and all the ghastly instruments
of torture and death, not one of which was invented by Jews.
Divest thyself of the demon, and then wilt thou pity a people
condemned to engage in traffic against its will, and accused
because it does traffic. Deceit is said to be a widespread vice
among Jews. Thy Christian tailor robs thee, thy bootmaker gives
thee bad leather, thy grocer false measure and weight, thy
baker despite prosperous harvests undersized loaves. Thy wine
is adulterated, thy man-servant and thy maid-servant combine
to cheat thee. Thou thyself--in the innocence of thy heart
--offerest for sale wretched lies and spiteful malice written
upon blotting-paper, for six farthings, which are not worth
six pins, and thou darest assert that fraud is peculiar to
Jews. See whether among all the bankruptcies now occurring in
London and Paris there is a single Jewish failure." "Thou dost
foolishly repeat the silly prattle of the great Fichte, when
thou dost remark that the Jews constitute a state within the
state. Thou canst not forgive the Jews the crime of speaking
correct German, of dressing more respectably, and often judging
more justly than thou. They no longer wear beards, which
thou canst pull; they no longer speak gibberish, which thou
mightest mimic.... The Jew for over twenty years has striven
to approach the Christian, but how has he been received? How
many alterations has he made in his canonical laws to be able
to join you; but from pure humanity ye turn your backs upon
him.... Yet thy pamphlet appears to me to be a good omen. The
average man believes that winter can be parted from summer only
by terrible thunder and hail-storms. Thus is it with thee.
Persecution, fanaticism, and superstition are at their last
gasp, and by mighty raging make their final effort through
thee, before their spirit becomes entirely quenched."

The self-confidence manifested by Lefrank was the surest sign of the ultimate victory of the Jews.

Under existing conditions, in view of the fact that the Jews were apt to underrate and despise their own power, the hope of emancipation was deceptive. In Protestant as well as in Catholic countries, in Prussia as well as in Austria, the people were even more blindly opposed to them than their princes. That an Austrian voice might not be wanting in the chorus of Jew-baiters, a German-Austrian official, named Joseph Rohrer (1804), wrote against the "Jew people." He drew a dreadful picture, especially of the Jews of Galicia, without hinting that the Galician peasants were in a still lower state, and that the nobility was more degenerate than either class. Paalzow, Grattenauer, Buchholz, Rohrer, and their allies succeeded in their design. The idea of the emancipation of the Jews in Germany could not yet be entertained. With all his zeal, Breidenbach could not effect the abolition of the capitation-tax in all places. It still remained in force, a sad reminder and disgrace, in certain German provinces. Cannon had to be brought into the field to destroy these putrefying, deeply implanted prejudices.

A ray of light from the sun of freedom shining on the Jews of France penetrated even to Russia. The heart of Emperor Alexander I was filled with mercy towards the numberless Jews dwelling in his kingdom. He appointed a commission to consider a proposal for improving their condition. But a Russian commission takes time over its work, and after two years' careful consideration of the interests of Christians, and of the most effectual way of benefiting the Israelites, an ukase was at length published in 1804. By this law, farmers, manufacturers, artisans, those who had acquired a university education, or who had visited the upper or lower schools, were exempt from the exceptional laws against Jews. To wean them from using the jargon, special privileges were granted to those who would learn one of three languages--Russian, Polish, or German. The culture of the Jews within his kingdom was desired by Alexander, who hoped that another Mendelssohn would spring from their midst. Attendance at schools was not enforced; it therefore depended on the Jewish community to support boys' schools (Chedarim) as best they could. Nor could it be otherwise amongst the millions of serfs in Russia, not one of whom was permitted to visit a school.

A limitation was, however, introduced at that time which nullified all privileges in favor of the Jews. Those who dwelt in the country were ordered to depart within a short space of time and crowd together in the cities. Cruel subtlety dictated this order. The Polish landowners, who from indolence had given over the care of their breweries and the sale of produce to industrious and trustworthy Jewish managers and farmers, were ruined by the removal of the Jews from the villages, and thus rendered incapable of revolt. This law could not be carried out for the time being, but remained in existence as a dead letter, until later days. The worst result was that the Jews were treated as strangers, although they had been more than half a century in the Polish provinces. Naturally they did not advance in culture, being hindered and persecuted by Rabbinism, and even more so by Neo-Chassidism.