The Routledge Dictionary of Judaism
In the context of Judaism, the bestowing upon Jews the rights and duties of citizenship; a political process, commencing with the French Revolution, 1789, by which Jews ceased to form autonomous, self-governing communities within a larger empire and were changed into undifferentiated citizens. This was part of a larger movement of emancipation of serfs, women, slaves, Catholics (in Protestant countries, for instance, Great Britain), and the political change produced important results for Judaism. While Emancipation left Jews, like non-Jews, subject to and equal before the law, Judaism in its classical formulation had rested on the premise that the Jews were governed only by God’s law and formed God’s people. The conflicting political premises of the nation-state and the Torah scarcely permitted reconciliation. The result was the emergence of new Judaic systems—REFORM JUDAISM, Liberal Judaism, ORTHODOX JUDAISM, Positive Historical Judaism (in the U.S.A.: CONSERVATIVE JUDAISM)—each of them alleging that they formed the natural next step in the unfolding of “the tradition,” meaning the Judaic system of the dual Torah, written and oral.
Emancipation developed in three periods. In the first, 1740–1789, ending with the French Revolution, advocates of the Jews’ emancipation maintained that religious intolerance accounted for the low caste-status assigned to the Jews. Liberating the Jews would mark another stage in overcoming religious intolerance. During this period, the original ideas of Reform Judaism came to expression, although the important changes in religious doctrine and practice were realized only in the earlier part of the nineteenth century. In the second period, 1789–1878, from the French revolution to the Congress of Berlin, the French revolution brought Jews political rights in France, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Germany, and Austria-Hungary.
As Germany and Italy attained unification and Hungary independence, the Jews were accorded the rights and duties of citizenship.
During this second period, Reform Judaism reached its first stage of development, beginning in Germany. It made possible for Jews to hold together the two things they deemed inseparable: their desire to remain Jewish and their wish to be one with their “fellow citizens.” By the middle of the nineteenth century, Reform had reached full expression and had won the support of a sizable part of German Jewry. In reaction against Reform, Orthodoxy came into existence. But Orthodoxy no less than Reform asked how “Judaism” could co-exist with “German-ness,” meaning citizenship in an undifferentiated republic of citizens. (See also WISSENSCHAFT DES JUDENTUMS.) A centrist position, mediating between Reform and Orthodoxy, was worked out by theologians in what was then called the Historical School, and what, in twentieth-century America, took the name of Conservative Judaism. The period from the French Revolution to the Congress of Berlin therefore saw the full efflorescence of all of the Judaisms of political modernization.
In the third period, 1878 to 1933, from the Congress of Berlin to the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany, anti-Semitism as a political and social movement attained power. Jews began to realize that Jewish civic and political equality did not automatically bring social recognition or acceptance. The Jews continued to form a separate group; they were racially “inferior.” The impact of the new racism would be felt in the twentieth century, with the response of the Judaisms of that period forming a final chapter in the legacy of Emancipation.
This is the complete article, containing 545 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
View More Summaries on Emancipation
