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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
"Freedom, human rights, emancipation, expiation of a thousand year old wrong" - these are such great rights and obligations that the heart of every honest man is certain to respond to their appeal. The mere words are often sufficient to make the cause which is defended by their use popular.
All too often, however, one thinks victory of a cause has been won, if one only uses words which serve so to say as a holy symbol which nobody would dare deny lest he be looked upon as a monster, a scoffer, or a friend of tyranny. Momentary success can be won in this manner, but real victories can not be won this way, nor can real difficulties overcome.
In the course of the present negotiations regarding the Jewish question the great words "liberty, human rights, emancipation" were often heard and applauded; but they did not contribute much to progress in the matter itself, and it will perhaps be useful to abstain for once from using them continuously and instead to give serious thought to the subject under discussion.
The popular interest in the Jewish problem cannot be explained by the merits of its advocates, but only by the fact that the public feels that the emancipation of the Jews is connected with the development or our general conditions. The advocates of emancipation did not seek out and explain this connection. In a period when not a single power that ruled the world till now was sate from criticism, Jews and Judaism were left alone. One did not even ask the question as: What are they and whether or not their essence is compatible with freedom were freedom be granted to them.
There is an outcry as if it were treason against humanity if a critic starts to investigate the particular character of the Jew. The very same people who look on with pleasure when criticism is aimed at Christianity, or who consider such criticism necessary and desirable, are ready to condemn the man who subjects Judaism too to criticism.
So Judaism is privileged: now, when privileges come tumbling down under the blows of criticism; and subsequently after they have fallen?
The advocates of emancipation are therefore in the strange position that they fight against privilege and at the same time grant to Judaism the privilege of unchangeability, immunity, and irresponsibility. They fight for the Jews with the best of intentions, but lack true enthusiasm, for they treat the Jewish problem as a matter foreign to them. If they are partisans of progress and the higher development of humanity, the Jews are excluded from their party. They demand that the Christians and the Christian state give up prejudices which not only have grown into their hearts but which are an essential part of their heart and being, and yet they demand no such thing from the Jews. The heart of Judaism must not be touched.
The birth of the new epoch which is now emerging will cost the Christian world great pains: are the Jews to suffer no pain, are they to have equal rights with those who fought and suffered for the new world? As if that could be! As if they could feel at home in a world which they did not make, did not help to make, which is contrary to their unchanged nature!
Those people who want to spare them the pains of criticism are the worst enemies of the Jews. Nobody who has not gone through the flames or criticism will be able to enter the new world which will soon come.
Besides, you have not brought the Jewish problem to the general public. You have talked about the injustices of the Christian states, but have not asked whether these injustices and hardships did not have their basis in the nature or the old state organizations.
It the treatment of the Jews in the Christian state has its basis in its nature, then the emancipation of the Jews only under the condition that they change that nature - i.e.,as far as the Jews themselves change their nature - means that the Jewish problem is only a part of the general problem, the solution of which our age is seeking.
Until now the enemies of emancipation had much the advantage over its advocates, because they considered the contrast between the Jew as such to the Christian state. Their only mistake was that they pre-supposed the Christian state as the only true state and did not subject it to the same criticism that they applied to Judaism. Their opinion or Judaism seemed harsh and unjust only because they did not at the same time look critically at the state which denied and had to deny liberty to the Jews.
Our criticism will be aimed at both sides: we will be able to find a solution only in this way. Perhaps our understanding of Judaism will appear even harsher than that which used to be expressed by the enemies of emancipation. Perhaps it is harsher: but my only concern can be whether it is correct. The only problem will be whether an evil is thoroughly abolished if it is not torn out by the roots. Whoever insists upon complaining, may accuse Liberty, because it demands not only from other nations but from the Jews as well, that they sacrifice antiquated traditions before they win liberty. If the criticism seems, or really is, harsh, it will still lead to Liberty and nothing else will.
At the outset, we want to pose the problem correctly and remove the wrong formulations it was given before.
The Problem Posed Correctly
What advocates usually do at the end or a trial, namely,appeal to the emotions of the judge and the public, be it only that they explain how their clients were driven by dire necessity to go astray, the advocates or the Jews do right at the start. They either complain about the oppression under which the Jews lived in the Christian world, or, if they admit that some of the reproaches regarding the attitude, the character, and the condition of the Jews are in part justified, they make that oppression appear even more hateful by asserting that it alone was the cause of those characteristics.
The Innocence of the Jews
To defend the Jews in this manner is really to do them a great disservice and it is detrimental to their cause.
One usually says of martyrs that they were killed, though innocent - this is really the greatest insult. Was what they did and for what they died nothing? Was it not contrary to the way of life and the ideas of their adversaries? The greater, the more important they are as martyrs, the greater must have been their deed, which was against the existing laws; therefore, the greater their guilt against the powers that ruled in their time.
Of the Jews it will at least be admitted that they suffered for their Law, for their way of life and for their nationality, that they were martyrs. They were thus themselves to blame for the oppression they suffered, because they provoked it by their adherence to their law, their language, to their whole way of life. A nothing cannot be oppressed. Wherever there is pressure something must have caused it by its existence, by its nature.
In history nothing stands outside the law of causality, least of all the Jews. With a stubbornness which their advocates themselves praise and admire they have clung to their nationality and resisted the movements and changes of history. The will of history is evolution, new forms, progress, change; the Jews want to stay forever what they are, therefore they fought against the first law of history - does this not prove that by pressing against this mighty spring they provoked counter-pressure? They were oppressed because they first pressed by placing themselves against the wheel of history.
Had the Jews been outside this action of the law of causality, had they been entirely passive, had they not from their side strained against the Christian world, there would not be any tie to connect them with history. They could never have entered into the new development of history and have influenced it. Then their cause would be quite lost.
Therefore the oppression which they suffered, that the hardening of their character caused by this oppression was their own fault. Then you admit them to a place in a two thousand year old history, although a subordinate one; then you make them a member which is capable, and finally has the duty to take part in history's progress.
Sometimes the advocates of Judaism forget that they ascribe to it the purely passive role of the sufferer and boast that. it has a very beneficial influence on the life of the states. An example!
Spain
Look, they say, what became of Spain after the Most Catholic Majesties condemned the industrious, enlightened and active Jewish population to exile! Spain, however, did not decline because of the absence or the Jewish population. The reasons for its decline were the intolerance, oppression and persecution practiced by its government. It sank deeper and deeper under the pressure of these principles and the same would have happened, had the Jews remained. Did the condition of France become desperate because the repeal of the Edict of Nantes sent thousands of Huguenots into exile? No! It was the tyranny of the government, the privileges of the aristocracy and the clergy, the strict police regime, which brought France to the point where only revolution could bring relief. Who knows whether the stubborn Huguenots would have contributed a great deal to the liberation of their country. Enough, France did manage without them.
Spain, too, liberated itself without the Jews from the oppression of the Most Catholic government, and it is very questionable whether the Jews, had they remained in Spain, would have made an important contribution to this liberation. This proves that the Christian states are alone responsible for the rise and decline of their power, and even if the Jews play some role, it is prescribed by the principle of the Christian state. On the other hand, we can clear the Jews from the accusation that they were responsible for the ruin or a state, for instance, Poland.
Poland
The constitution of Poland was such that there was an immense gap between the ruling aristocracy and the masses or the serfs, a gap which enabled the Jews to settle there in greater numbers than anywhere else. This constitution which by tailing to provide an element equivalent to that in Western Europe developed into the third estate, and instead utilized a foreign element which led Poland to its doom.
Poland is itself to blame for its misfortune. It is also itself to blame for permitting a foreign population to settle there and contribute to making more dangerous and fatal, the sore in its national existence.
Although Poland is itself to blame for its fate, it does not,on the other hand, speak favorably for the Jews that they could settle in numbers which about equal their number in all other European countries together, only in the most imperfect state or Europe and gain a position which can almost be called indispensable and a necessary complement. That they could thus make a home themselves only in a state which to a great extent is no state, speaks against their ability to become members of a real state; what speaks even more against them is the fact that they utilized the defects in the Polish constitution for their private profit, that they enlarged the gap instead or forming the material to fill it in an organic and politically useful manner.
An enemy of Jewish emancipation remarks and complains that "all distilleries in Galicia are exclusively in the possession of the Jews, and thereby the moral strength of the inhabitants is given in their hands." As if it were the fault of the Jews that the moral strength of a nation is in a glass of brandy or can be lost in a glass of brandy! That enemy of the Jews has to admit himself that the Pole "sees in brandy his only consolation for all his toils and for the oppressions of his landlord." It is therefore the oppression of the regime which drives the peasant to the Jew. It is the mindless materialism of his life which makes the peasant reach for the glass of brandy, so that the minds of the people are in the hands of the Jew if the Jew is in possession of the distilleries.
The constitution has given the Jew his important position and it put the minds of the people in his hands - but is it an honor for the Jew that he utilizes this position to distill the last consequences out of this condition? Does it speak for him that he is ready, that he makes it his only business to oppress the victims of the regime once more? The constitution is to blame for oppressing the peasant, for putting him in the hands of the Jew, but the Jew is culpable if he draws only the worst consequences from the constitution.
This situation repeats itself in civil society in general.
Civil Society
Demand is the mighty spring which puts civil society in motion. Everyone utilizes everyone else to satisfy his own needs, and he in turn is utilized by others for the same purpose. The tailor utilizes my need to support his family. I utilize him to supply my need.
This egotistic activity of civil society has been restricted in the Christian state by forms which take some of its ugliness away and which connect it with the interests of honor. The special ways of supplying certain needs have been brought together in estates; and that class in which the need of the moment had the greatest power, in which, therefore, greed is most rampant, the tradesmen, were organized in the Christian state in the form of corporations. The member of the corporation has as such the obligation to pursue not only his personal interests but the interests of his guild. In this manner certain limits are set to his own interests, and he feels honored because he feels now that he cares not only for the needs of individuals but for the needs of society in general.
But where demand with its accidental caprices and moods rules absolutely, where the satisfaction of the demand is again dependent on accidents of nature, there the individual can personally remain honest, but cannot protect himself against sudden, unexpected changes which are beyond his calculation. Demand, the basis of civil society, which secures its existence and guarantees its necessity, exposes it at the same time to continuous dangers, gives it an element of insecurity, and causes that ever changing mixture of poverty and wealth, misery and prosperity change.
This element of insecurity was not created by the Jews; it belongs to society; they are not to be blamed for its existence. But it is another question whether it should perhaps be counted as a merit that they - by means of usury - have exploited it and have made this their domain to the exclusion of all other activities in the circles of civil society.
Like the gods of Epicure who live in interstellar spaces and are freed from specific labors, so the Jews have struck roots outside the corporate interests in the gape and crevices of society, and have caught the victims of the element of insecurity in civil society.
But, their advocates reply, they were denied admittance to these estates and corporations. But the question is this, would they, who regard themselves as a nation, have been able to assume a real and "sincere' position in those circles, did they not exclude themselves? As they, as a nation, stand outside the interests or the peoples, were they not forced to assume a position outside the interests of estates and corporations?
What? they will reply again, you will not acknowledge the industry of the Jews, their frugality, their perseverance in their work, their inventiveness in seeking new sources of profit, their indefatigable endurance? We have acknowledged all this. Now we allow ourselves two more questions.
The Industry of the Jews
Who worked for eighteen hundred years to educate Europe? Who fought the battles in which a hierarchy which wanted to rule beyond its time was defeated? Who created Christian and modern art and tilled the cities of Europe with enduring monuments? Who developed the sciences? Who developed theory of state constitutions?
There is not one Jewish name. Spinoza was no longer a Jew when he created his system. Moses Mendelsohn died or grief when he heard that Lessing, his deceased friend, has been an adherent or Spinoza.
Now the second question! True, the European nations excluded the Jews from their general affairs. But could they have done it, if the Jews had not excluded themselves? Can the Jew as such, that is without ceasing to be a Jew, work for the progress of art and science, for freedom from the hierarchy? Can he take interest in the state and give thought to the general principles or government? On the other hand: Are art and science subjects which can be made inaccessible by the accidental situation somebody finds himself in by birth? Are they not free goods that cannot be denied to anybody? How many men who had great influence in art and science have come from the lowest classes and had to surmount extraordinary obstacles to gain entry into the realm of art and science? Why did not Jews do this? The reason is probably that their particular national spirit is opposed to the general interests or art and science.
The industry or the Jews is or such a kind that it has nothing to do with the interests or history.
The same is true or the tenacity or the Jewish spirit which is frequently praised.
The Tenacity or the Jewish Spirit
It would not be cruel, it would only be just and fair to tell our adversaries the names or all those tribes that also survived all the storms of history and maintained their identity in the dispersion among civilized peoples. But even without doing this we will be able to put the matter in its true position. Is it a dishonor for the tribes which were melted together into the French nation to have given up and lost their identity? Certainly not! That they dissolved into the whole proves their malleability and their ability to make a contribution to the formation of this particular historical national genius. Have the tribes which formed the population or the great new republic in North America kept their former identities? No! Even now, German immigrants for instance, assume in a short time the character or the Whole, and this is certainly not a dishonor. It only proves their ability to adjust to the general direction of national life and to make themselves at home. Do the European nations in general keep their identity with the tenacity which is praised in the Jews? On the contrary, they change their character and these changes are according to the will of History. Instead or praising the tenacity or the Jewish national spirit and regarding it as an advantage, one should ask What its basis is and Where it comes from. Its base is lack of ability to develop with history, it is the reason or the quite unhistorical character or that nation, and this again is due to its oriental nature. Such stationary nations exist in the Orient, because there human liberty and the possibility or progress are still limited. In t .h e Orient and in India, we still find Parsees living in dispersion and worshiping the holy tire of Ormuzd.
The individual as well as the nation which in its thought and deeds follows universal laws will progress with history; for universal laws have their base in reason and liberty, they develop with the progress of Reason. This progress is to be expected and it is effected with certainty and easily, because Reason in its laws has to do with its own products, and does not have to ask per- mission from a foreign, supernatural power. In the Orient, man does not yet know that he· is free and gifted with reason. his real nature. He does not recognize freedom and reason as He sees his highest task in the performance of mindless, baseless ceremonies. The oriental man likewise, has as yet, no history,if only that which is a development of general human liberty deserves to be called history. To sit under his vine and his fig tree, is for the oriental the highest boon man can achieve. He performs his religious ceremonies again and again, he considers their unchanged performance his highest duty, and he is content that they are Just so and must be so because he knows of no reason other than that this is so and has to be so according to the will of a higher, inscrutable being. True, a character, a law such as this must impart a peculiar tenacity to a nation, but at the same time such a character will rob it of the possibility of historic development. The Jews are right if they talk of a fence around the Law. The Law has fenced them off from the influences of history, the more so, as their Law commanded from the start seclusion from the other nations. They have survived; but the question is whether the content of the Law is so exalted that they are to be praised because they survived with it without change.
Are the mountains of Greece greater and more worthy or our admiration than the Greek nation because these mountains stand to- day, unchanged, while the Greeks or Homer, Sophocles, Pericles and Aristotle are gone? Moses Mendelsohn said the advantage or the Jewish religion is that it does not teach universal truths, but gives only positive commandments for which no universal reason can be given. He declared therefore - and he is right, for it something is beyond my horizon and I can give no account or it to myself, then I have no power over it - that the Law keeps it validity for the Jew until Jehovah abolishes it expressly and unmistakably, as He revealed it on Sinai. Is this tenacity an honor? Does it make the nation, whose existence is due to it, an historical nation? It only keeps it alive against History.
Life under Oppression
If a nation does not progress with History, if it is never caught up in the enthusiasm which is necessary for the fight for new historical ideas, if it keeps aloof from political passions, then it lacks one of the most important incentives to exalted and pure morality. affairs. At the end it will lose interest in general human One's only care will be his private profit, and the feeling for true honor will be lost. One will reply that because or the oppression under which the Jews lived this could not be otherwise, that it was natural that the nobler sentiments be suppressed. Shall we reproach them for a lack or morality when they were excluded from the affairs and interests which gave ever new incentive to the spirit or the European nations?
It has already been argued that oppression in other instances improves men, that it sharpens their feeling for honor and morality. The oppression under which the Christians lived in the first three centuries or our era was an incentive for them to develop those virtues which helped to overthrow the Roman Empire. The Jews, how- ever, under oppression have never discovered a moral principle which might renew the shape or the world or their own nation. Now, if the Jews have not been improved by oppression, abolish it, give them full, unlimited freedom, and see it they Will not improve then! Still another reason could be advanced for this step and experiment. It is not true that oppression really improves character and opens the way to true morality. It only makes men inflexible, isolates them, it cuts them off from the path to true morality by making it impossible for them to take part in the public affairs of the state. As private individuals it will either give them a harsh character or make them egotists who care only for what happens with- in the tour walls of their own home. This cannot be called true morality if the early Christians, unconcerned about the general affairs of the Roman Empire, occupied themselves only with themselves and their own souls, always listening for the rustling of a wind, whether it might not be the messenger or a coming storm. The more urgent is the necessity to abolish the oppression under which the Jews have lived until now! Stop! First ask the question whether the Jews as Jews did not have to seclude themselves from other nations, whether they them- selves did not want the wheels or history to roll over them.
. . breathe more freely? Did they open their hearts to feelings of universal humanity, did they feel least oppressed? No! oppressed. Even then they thought of themselves as the nation most And indeed this was a fact, because their pretension, which was their true nature, could never be satisfied. to their basic view they had to be ~ According nation, the only nation, that is the nation beside which no other people had the right to be a nation. No other people was a real nation compared with them, they were the chosen people, the only true nation, the nation to which the whole world would belong. The mere fact, therefore, that other nations existed meant oppression. The existence, prosperity, happiness, and progress of other nations meant suffering for them, for the existence or other nations negated, excluded, ridiculed the basic nature of the.ir own existence, its exclusiveness. Give them complete freedom, and they will always abolish it themselves as long as they remain Jews and regard themselves as the chosen people. Reality not only threatens their Jewish conception of themselves, it proves it to be false. Therefore,they are or necessity oppressed and their suffering is incurable. After this we will also be able to evaluate correctly the often repeated remark that there are relatively less criminals among the Jews than among the Christians in whose midst they live.
The Number of Criminals
What is important is not the number, but the nature of crimes; not the legal evaluation which is expressed in the degree of punishment, but the moral evaluation which considers the crime in relation to the social conditions.
A crime can be punished very lightly by the law and still be a sign of a great deterioration of the inner moral condition; another crime may be punished severely by the judge, but someone who recognizes the motive may see it as a violent resolution of a deeply moral, inner struggle, of which the lesser criminal may not be capable.
It is further important to find out in which field of moral and legal interests the crimes were committed.
Where various interests of different classes clash, Where antiquated laws are at odds with new claims, there are more occasions for crimes than in a region with less frictions and therefore less collisions.
Still the greater number of crimes committed under such circumstances will not refute the assertion that in midst of this lawless crowd a new and better moral order is born. On the other hand,it can happen that where less crimes are committed and smaller ones, not only the strength for greater crimes is missing, but also the strength to create a new social order.
We will now consider the question insofar as it touches Christianity and the Christian state from the right point of view.
The hostility of the Christian world towards the Jews has been called inexplicable. Is not Judaism the mother of Christianity, the Jewish religion the predecessor or Christianity? Why this hatred of the Christians, this enormous ingratitude of the consequent for the cause, of the daughter for the mother?
The Behavior of the Consequent toward its cause
Why does the blossom break the lock of the bud, why does the fruit cast off the petals of the blossom? Why does the seed break the capsule or the shell? endures. Because the new cannot be if the old It would never come into existence if the permission or the old were required. In spiritual things, in history, the cause does in reality still exist and wants to remain in existence, although· the consequent is already there. The cause denies the importance or the consequent,it denies that it !! its consequence which has correctly interpreted its nature, developed, and perfected it. Not the daughter is ungrateful toward the mother, but the mother does not want to acknowledge her daughter . The daughter has really the higher right, because she represents the true nature or the mother. If one wants to call both sides egotistical, then the daughter is selfish for wanting her own way and progress, and the mother because she wants her own way but no progress. 'lhe old had the seeds or progress in it, but in the fight with its consequent it did not want to permit progress for others, nor did it want progress for itself. It "has the key or cognition, but does not itself enter and defends the entrance against others who wish to enter." The hostility or the Christian world towards the Jews is therefore quite understandable and is caused by the circumstances. Neither or the two parties can acknowledge the other and allow it to remain in existence. The existence or the one excludes the existence or the other; each one believes herself to be the representative or absolute truth. It would mean denying that it is the truth if it were to acknowledge the other. But, one will object, does not this exclusiveness of Christianity offend against Love, which it calls its principle? We shall see.
The Zeal and Exclusiveness of Christian Love
Christianity confesses the law of Love, but it has also to observe the law of Faith. Christian love is zealous and comprehensive, but it is both in the interest of Faith only. It embraces the whole world, but only to give to it the treasure of Faith. It does not go forth to men as such, but to men as believers and as persons who can or shall become believers,and have to become believers if they do not wish to be damned . If it is written that ..God,as the God of Love, does not look at the person, that anyone who tears him and does the right is acceptable to him, this merely means that God does· not ·discriminate among the nations but accepts into his kingdom everyone who accepts the true faith. Christian Love i8 universal in that it does not distinguish between nations and offers to all nations the treasure or Faith. But universal is also its zeal, as it excludes everything that resists .and contradicts the faith. The Christian religion is ~he abolition of Judaism, therefore it also abolishes Jewish exclusiveness. This is true, however, insofar as it really is the perfection or Judaism and its exclusiveness. Judaism denied the right of existence of other nations but permitted them to exist. Its fanaticism and exclusiveness were not yet translated into action, the word had not yet become flesh, the fire or a single exclusive religion had not7et been 'thrown into the world. "I have come to light a fire on earth," says the evangel, "I wish it were burning already."
Christianity has taken the exclusiveness of Judaism seriously, has put it into effect, and abolished all differences between nations. Zeal for the Faith means nothing more than the exclusive upholding of the Christian principle or the tire or Christian Love. 'Ibis tire lights up the whole history of the Christian church and flares up in specially blessed epochs to give them a special splendor. Augustine, for instance, wrote in its light when he fought against the schismatics in North Africa, when he commanded the prosecution of the heretics. The fire lighted the path of the crusaders on their way to the Orient; it shone for the Spaniards when they fought to convert the peoples or America; it shone in the night of St. Bartholomew and in the Dragonades. Therefore, it Christian zeal is directed also against Judaism, this is not inexplicable and the Jews have no right to complain. From Judaism the Christian religion has taken over the zeal, the exclusiveness, the polemic against all who contradict it. zeal ie nothing else but the perfection, Christian the consequent, the serious and effective putting into action of Jewish zeal. So, even it it is directed against Judaism, this means only that it is hurt by its own consequent. It is in the nature or the consequent to battle against that from which it emerged. It Christianity fights Judaism, that means only that zeal exalted to perfection is directed against a zeal which is still limited and less energetic. From Jews and Christians one hears: "The fact that some Jews and Christians hate each other is not the fault or their religion, but a misunderstanding of their religion." An extraordinary understatement, that some! Is it true, then, that only some Christians and Jews, hated, persecuted, oppressed during eighteen hundred years? Have they all misunderstood their religion? No, they hated each other because they still had real religion, because they lalew the meaning of religion, and really followed the commands or their religion. If after two thousand years of proof to the contrary some people assert that the hatred between the two religions was only due to a misunderstanding, this proves only that they themselves do not understand any longer what religion is. If the mutual hatred has really abated, the cause can only be that religious zeal is diminished; this means that since real religion has to be zealous, religion itself has lost its power. The illusion under which the Jewish and Christian advocates of emancipation are laboring is best shown when they ask, "Why, of all things, should the fact that the Jews are forever segregated from the Christians in their religion and way of life be a reason for robbing them of human and civil rights?"
Human Rights and the Christian State
The question is, rather, whether the Jew as such, that is the Jew who admits himself that .he is forced by his true nature to live forever segregated from others, is capable of accepting universal human rights and or granting them to others.His religion and way or life obligate him to eternal segregation:why? because this is his nature, but this nature is in contradiction to what others consider their nature. His nature makes him not a man but a Jew, Just as other people's nature makes them not men but Christians or Mohammedans.
Jews and Christians can consider each other and treat each other as men only when they have given up the special nature which separates them and enjoins them to "eternal segregation," when they acknowledge the common nature of man and consider humanity as their true nature.
The idea of human rights was discovered for the Christian world in the last century only. It is not innate in man, it has rather been won in battle against historical traditions which determined the education of men until now. So human rights are not a gift of nature or of history, but a prize which was won in the fight against the accident of birth and against privilege which came down through history from generation to generation. Human rights are the result of education, and they can be possessed only by those who acquire and deserve them. Can the Jew really possess them as long as he lives as a Jew in perpetual segregation from others, as long as he therefore must declare that the others are not really his fellow men? long as he is a Jew, his Jewishness As must be stronger in him than his humanity, and keep him apart from non-Jews. He declares by this segregation that this, his Jewishness, is his true, highest nature, which has to have precedence over his humanity. In the same manner the Christian as a Christian cannot grant human rights. What neither or the two parties possesses it cannot give to or accept from the other. But surely citizens rights could be granted the Jews? cannot be deprived of civil rights. (
The question is, rather, whether in a Christian state as such there are such universal rights, whether there are not exclusively special rights, that is a greater or smaller sum of privileges which are a right for some and a non-right, but not as such a wrong, for the other; for the other will have his own special privileges, unless one would want to assert that the sum of special rights is at the same time the sum total of wrongs, or that the lack of universal civil rights is the universal wrong. Do the Jews want to become "Citizens" in the Christian state? Ask first whether this state knows "citizens" or only subjects; whether the Jewish quarter is a contradiction if the subjects are divided into special estates according to privilege; whether it would even be remarkable if the Jews were commanded to wear special attire or special badges, if even the estates when formally represent- ed must wear different clothes. One refers to concessions which the Christian state has made in periods of stress - concessions which were almost as comprehensive as a complete equalization of the Jews with the Christians. One should first ask whether the state was not at such moments in need and danger of its life, and only made concessions to the Jews in order not to perish completely, a higher state-idea. It had to make concessions to Then do not complain that the state later withdrew to a certain extent, the concessions made in times or danger. Are the Jews the only ones who suffer? general experience? Is not this a If they are condemned to an existence under special rights again, is it not because privilege in general is ruling. again or is intended to rule again? Ask, rather, what they did in the intervening time, what did they do to show that they had grown out of the status of privileged subjects.
One more question we have to point out from the correct angle. The solution would seem most difficult, even impossible, if the contrast is conceived of as purely religious; for religion is exclusiveness, and two religions, as long as each is recognized as the highest and as revealed truth, can never make peace with one another.
The Contrast between Judaism and Christianity
The Jews, one says, do not consider Jesus as the Messiah; they deny the highest which the Christian knows, that which for the Christian is the only true tie of all union, therefore they can never have a sincere relationship with him. As they regard the highest good of the Christian as false and a fraud, God himself for- bids association with them. No Christian must have intercourse with the anti-Christ. But: Does the Jew who resists the Gospel really deny a super- natural being? Is his resistance directed against a divine being which no man must contradict lest he be eternally damned? Or is his crime not rather that he does not acknowledge a purely human progress in history, a progress in his own attitude toward the Law? Is the contrast not basically one between different stages or development of the human mind,and only in minds or the two parties does it appear to be religious? Would the contrast not be less sharp and the possibility of a solution greater if· it were recognized as human and historical and no longer religious? If the opposition is no longer religious, if it is scientific and has assumed the form of criticism, if the Jew shows the Christian that his religious view is only the historical product or certain factors, then a solution has been given, because now the opposition is really not even scientific any more. As soon, namely, as the Jew directs scientific, and not merely crude,religious criticism against Christianity, he must have looked critically at Judaism at the same time, because he must conceive of Christianity as a necessary product of Judaism. As soon, however, as both parties direct scientific criticism against each other, therefore also each against itself, there will be no religious hostility any more, and scientific differences of opinion are solved by science itself. This is the solution of the contrast, that it dissolves into nothing. The Jews cease to be Jews without the necessity of be- coming Christians, or rather, they must cease being Jews and must not become Christians. What have they done, however, to make this solution of the contrast possible and bring it about? Have they voiced criticism against Judaism and Christianity? Have they shown that the religious difference is a difference in historical development? Or have they refuted by actual criticism of the sacred history, the fable that they have special, secret records about Jesus and his time,(a story which even now is brought up by some Jews), and revealed it as a foolish tale, a dirty product of religious partisan- ship? How far are they capable or rising to the level of that point of view from which the religious difference is dissolved? If the Jew, in the course of criticism leveled by one religion against the other, declares that the Gospel is a fraud, the Christian counters with the reproach that the miserable condition
in which he finds himself since the downfall or his state is the consequence or God's curse on the enemies of the Messiah. what consists the misery or the Jews? suffer from the Christians? oppressed! But in Only in the oppression they The martyrs too were persecuted and Oppression and persecution always were the lot or those who fought for a higher idea against the tenets of their epoch and expected that the future would certainly bring Justification or their actions. the Christians? But how were the Jews oppressed and persecuted by Not as martyrs for a higher idea, not as martyrs for the future, but as martyrs of a past, a progress from which, they did not recognize. What one calls the curse or God is only the natural consequence or a Law. This Law is in itself chimerical and incapable or forming the core of a real national life. In addition to this it forbids progress which alone would have been able to give it some firm hold. The supposed divine curse is nothing else but the natural consequence of the contradiction which the Jews have created for themselves between History and their Law. A deputy from Wurttenberg (in 1828) declared that he saw it as a sign or the curse under which the Jews live that even the oppression which they suffered until now did not do them any good. "It is only by virtue or the blessings or Christianity that its adherents are improved and ennobled by oppression, a blessing in which the Jews do not participate." But even if we were to assume that oppression really ennobles and improves, which in spite of the usual sentimental assumption is not the case - do we have to have· recourse to supernatural dispensation if the effects are not always the same? Does the question need a religious answer, must the contrast be perpetuated by a religious slant? It is true, oppression can exalt, fortify, encourage progress; if it did not help the Jews in that manner, the reason was that they did not, like the Christians, represent progress, that they were not linked to the possibility or a step toward in world history. Only if this had been the case could oppression have helped them, if it is at all possible that pressure can be helpful by strengthening the elasticity or a party. We have shown that the question, posed correctly, makes the right answer an irresistible necessity. We will now give the answer: