Chapter 5: Emancipation in Western Europe, 1815-1870
Study Questions
1) Gartner states that during the Old Regime, the assertion that Jews were “discriminated against” was not entirely accurate? Why?
2) Why were many Jews opposed to the Napoleonic regime’s bestowal of equality and citizenship?
3) What in your opinion was the most dramatic change in Jewish life effected by emancipation in the 19th century?
4) What were some of the intellectual currents (philosophies, theories, worldviews) which characterized the German period of reaction following the Napoleonic wars? How were the Jews affected and was their experience unique?
5) Can one really make, in your opinion, any generalizations about the motives and feelings of those Jews who converted to Christianity as Gartner appears to suggest (top of page 137; note Gartner’s use of the illustrious Mendelssohn family as an example)?
6) What impact did the Science of Judaism (Wissenschaft des Judentums) school of early 19th century Europe have on notions of Jewish identity and religious expression?
7) What were some of the basic tenets of Reform Judaism as it emerged in early 19th century Germany? What reasons did the Orthodox give for opposing it?
8) What were the basic elements of the “compromise” which Dresden Rabbi Zacharias Frankel struck between immutable Orthodoxy and radical Reform? To what religious development did Frankel’s argument subsequently contribute?
9) What did the “liberal-nationalist” revolutions of 1848 in western and central Europe suggest about the sociopolitical status of the Jews by mid-century?
10) Although Gartner stated earlier that the highest percentage of European
Jewry still lived in Poland (under foreign control) and Russia in the nineteenth
century, he makes no mention of this vast area in his chapter on Jewish emancipation.
Can one, therefore, truly speak of Jewish emancipation if the numbers involved
were comparatively small? Why or why not?