Library:The Jewish Question/Critique of Judaism

The Jewish Question by Bruno Bauer

The text has been acquired via OCR and therefore currently has many errors.

Excerpts quoted by Karl Marx in On the Jewish question have been underlined.

Introduction

It is easy to figure out the level a state finds itself, if people are called statesmen who repeat again and again that Jews who disregard the commands of their ancient law and introduce reforms in their religious life, lose the respect of their Christian fellow citizens. In this regard the only question could certainly be whether the Jews are able to obey their ancient law, whether their present relationship to the law raises their morality, whether the relationship can really be a moral one, since it is even doubtful what is really their law.

Is it the Mosaic Law or the Talmud?

In general the Jews boast of their loyalty to the religion or their fathers as a proof of how faithful they are to that which is sacred to them. If they want to refute the adversaries of emancipation they call their religion the most powerful foundation of civil and social virtues: but which is this religion? The Mosaic law is said to contain the purest moral doctrine; they call them-selves adherents or the Mosaic law. If their adversaries use the views and commands of the Talmud as weapons against them, or if they themselves have come under the influence of the ideas of Enlightenment and are disgusted with the Talmudic commands, they usually declare that a return to a pure or reformed Mosaism is all that would be necessary to raise their people to a higher standard. But what is this "pure Mosaism?" That old constitution which prescribes certain sacrificial rites, institutes an order of priests and contains laws on distribution of property which could only be effective if there were a sovereign state; that is, they are entirely impossible now. Or what reforms are suggested to "purify" Mosaism? Should everything be dropped that refers to the sacrificial rites, to the priestly order and property regulations? Then what will remain standing? Those regulations are not only a certain, not even an important part of the whole Mosaic code; they are the center to which all other commands refer, the soil which they have to have in order to thrive, the support without which they must collapse.

We do not even mention that the Mosaic code contains, in principle, in its most important regulations, all the hardships or rabbinic Judaism, so that no return to it and no reform short of a complete abolition can mean a real liberation from the commands of the Talmud.

Enough, there is no way in which the Mosaic law can be obeyed. The frustration because or this gives the lie to the praise which is lavished on it... What a strange moral code, which remains without influence on real life, the commands of which are not followed! Therefore, if the Jews praise the Mosaic code as the purest moral doctrine, as the most powerful foundation of the social and civil virtues, then these virtues are indeed in very bad shape. They will have to depend on their own help and inner value, for that "most powerful support" was long ago shattered by history and there is not the remotest prospect that it will ever be restored.

The very wise statesmen, however, who are willing to respect the Jew only if he obeys his ancient laws, should take care to have all the Jews assembled again in the land of Canaan and have them live there according to their old faith. But then they would also have to be surrounded by the other tribes who excited their fanaticism and kept them always in a turmoil. If they cannot recreate for the Jews this old environment,then their talk about loyalty to the old is just as empty as the talk or the Jews about their loyalty to the sacred tenets of their ancestors.

The idea of the Jew that he is obeying a law, which in fact he cannot and does not put into action, is at best, and to say the least, fantastic. It is a self-ception and illusion which can be maintained only by leaving out the mass of commands which cannot be obeyed at present. Finally it must lead to an enormous sophistry if single commands which have become impossible are observed, or if ways and means have to be thought up to make it apparent that they are observed. The commands become the commands of a chimerical world and take on a chimerical form themselves. 'that idealized, chimerical Mosaic code which lives only in the mind of the sophist, is really the only Mosaism which fits the present age. Well, this Mosaism does not have to be newly invented: it is given in the Talmud. The Talmud is the continuation or the Mosaic law and of the entire Old Testament, but a chimerical, illusory, mindless continua­tion •••• There is no real development. Just a splitting of the old. a thinned repetition, no new creation. It is mindless and chimerical because it dares not break with the old which has become impossible • • does not have the courage to create a new world out or a new principle • • • a collection of sherds and splinters picked up by the rabbis after a historic revolution which they did not bring about had shattered the old. . • • Real Mosaism has become an impossibility. The Jew who thinks that he simply obeys the Mosaic law lives in an illusion. The Talmud is Mosaism that has lost i~s foundations. Those Jews alone are right who decline a return to Mosaism. But if they want to put something else in its stead and at the same time intend to go beyond the Talmud, they arrive again at the illusory Mosaism which is the point of union or all Jewish parties.

In an application of the Israelites to the Duke of Braunschweig in 1831, they say: "A return to the Old Testament would be nothing else but regression to a less educated viewpoint. The Talmud is the continuation of Moses and the Prophets and the transition to present continuously progressing Judaism. The point our religion has reached at present is by far higher than the so-called Mosaism." True, it is higher, but only because it is up in the regions or a chimerical world. However, by rising higher, it did not put roots deep in the real world, did not weave itself into the moral interests of mankind. It did rise above prejudice, but at the same time raised prejudice into a more abstract category. Prejudice is dead, but on that higher level it was resurrected to a monotonous eternal life. Its cruder ingredients are lost, but now it leads a perpetual shadow-life.

For instance, Mr. Salomo writes in his "Message to Herr Frankel." (1824) that Israel has given up the idea of "national sovereignty" that it looks no longer to the "possession of some spot on earth" for its salvation. It has even renounced the hope for liberation by the Messiah. Its Messianic time has come with the emancipation. Its only messianic hope is to be liberated from political servitude and political oppression."

Under these circumstances - and these declarations are sincere, on that level Israel really thinks no longer of national sovereignty, Canaan and the Messiah -it would seem that the emancipation could be carried through immediately, it, namely, the states in which the Jews live have, on their part, fulfilled the conditions which are indispensable for this work. But here, where the nationality or the Jew and everything that makes him a Jew seems to have disappeared, the Jewish nature appears in its greatest power. It maintains itself even where it seems lost, it makes emancipation impossible. In the moment when it seems closest to it, it is farthest removed from it.

It would seem obvious that the coming of the emancipation would be exclusively a consequence of the political condition of the states in which the Jews live, of their relationship to the Jews and their capability for progress. But even on that level ot en-lightened Judaism the eyes of the Jews are closed to the real conditions of the world and remain glued to the chimerical religious and political prerogatives of Israel. "God is planning great things for the Jews," they say -as if the only question were not how much is still missing in the development of political conditions and the education of the Jews before the barrier which now separates the from the subjects of the Christian governments can be removed. The hope is also expressed "that the name of the Jew would again emerge free and ind,pendent"--this therefore is the idea of emancipation of the enlightened Jew? This should be the result of real participation in the interests of the state, equalization of his status with that of his fellow citizens, that when all this has been achieved the name of the Jew should emerge free and independent again? It the Jew, without knowing it himself, demands instead of emancipation the independent existence of his people -an impossibility, because the clock cannot be turned back, or a superfluous undertaking,·ror his second history would be the same and end in the same manner as the first - he is in his Jewish consciousness drawing the last con-sequence of his particularism. In the above mentioned message, Salomo, for instance, declares that the Jewish religion is the world religion, the religion which must abolish the pride and pretensions of the positive religions.

All assurances of the most enlightened Jew that he is not dreaming of a sovereign nation fer "his people" are illusory however sincerely they may be meant. As long as he wants to be a Jew, he can and must not deny his nature, the exclusiveness, the idea of a special destiny, the kingdom, in short the chimera or the most enormous privilege. The worse for him if he cherishes this chimera even at the moment he protests against it. This is a proof that the idea of privilege ie intertwined with his nature.

And even if he would abstain in his utterances from all expressions which give the lie to his assurances -but once more, it is not possible-he would still by his actions refute his prettiest speeches about equality and humanity, for he holds everybody else but the Jew to be unclean. His dietary laws are a proof that he regards non-Jews not as his equals, not as fellowmen.

In short, Mosaism has always maintained its rule over the Jews. In the Talmud it is Mosaism that has become sophistry. It is illusion if some reformers think they can return to pure Mosaism; it is illusion,if those who think that equalization with the citizens of free states is very close, try to hold on to the privilege which Mosaism grants its believers while they think they have renounced it. All here is illusion!

But even at the time when the Jews still had a sovereign state and a history, even then Mosaism was an illusion. We shall show how inconsistently the Jewish national consciousness reacted to the consequences of its historical development, how it made an illusion of its own development.