FOCUS: Greatest Jewish Myths, Part II
Was the Emancipation Good for the Jews? Jews were more successful, more numerous, and more privileged before the French Revolution. by Salo Baron
Editors’ Note: Professor Salo Baron’s struck off the bonds that fettered the Jew population does not mean that Jewry was the subject of special unfavorable article, first published 85 years ago, and opened up the gates that had shut discrimination. Then there was no such is renowned by Jewish scholars for him off from civilized life. Prisoner in thing as “equal rights.” In this cogently disputing what the period the absolute state, like author famously called the the medieval state, was still “lachrymose conception of largely built on corporations, Jewish history”—that our here meaning legally recogpeople’s historical experinized groups of people ence was an endless series belonging to different corpoof catastrophes. His radical rate organizations, each with interpretation remains the distinct rights and duties. The reigning view, which “is all corporation of the nobility had the more remarkable,” writes its rights and duties, among Columbia Professor Michael them that of administration Stanislawski, “given that and defense of the country. [the essay]…predated the The clergy was entrusted with most lachrymose chapter in “The Jewish Ghetto in Rome,” Alfredo Bea, 20th century. spiritual and cultural affairs. all of Jewish experience: the The urban citizenry (not the Holocaust, in which Baron’s own parents were murdered….It is the ghetto, denied access to the resources peasant or the proletarian mass) formed the real third estate, and its chief funca testament to the solidity and depth and activities of Western society, distion was the maintenance of economic of his scholarship that this new contorted intellectually, morally, spiritually life and the replenishment of the state ception survived a period that a third by centuries of isolation and torture, the treasury. Below these corporations was of the world’s Jews did not.” Jew was set free by the Emancipation. the peasant body, the vast majority of the Fuller information concerning Jews population, in many countries held in he generally accepted view has it in the Middle Ages and a more critical complete serfdom. that before the French Revolution examination of the supposed gains after It is, then, not surprising and certainly the Jews of Europe lived in a state of the Revolution both indicate that we no evidence of discrimination that the extreme wretchedness under medieval may have to reevaluate radically our Jews did not have “equal rights”—no one conditions, subject to incessant persecunotions of Jewish progress under Westtion and violence, but that after the ern liberty. If the status of the Jew (privi- had them. The legal status of Jews was comparable to that of the third estate. revolution a new era of enlightenment leges, opportunities, and actual life) in Certainly the Jews had fewer duties came to the nations, which forthwith the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries was in and more rights than the great bulk of fact not as low as we are in the habit of Salo Baron (1895–1989), Nathan L. Miller thinking, then the miracle of Emancipa- the population—the enormous mass of Professor of Jewish History, Literature, and peasants, the great majority of whom tion was not so great as we supposed. Institutions at Columbia University from 1930 were little more than appurtenances of ♦♦♦ to 1963, is considered one of the 20th century’s the soil on which they were born. When greatest scholars of history. This article has In the Middle Ages, it is said, the Jew the land was sold they were included in been adapted from his essay, “Ghetto and the sale. None could move away withdid not have “equal rights.” But to say Emancipation: Should We Revised the Tradiout the master’s consent. The larger part that pre-Emancipation Jewry did not tional View?” (The Menorah Journal, 1928). of their produce went to landlords or to have “equal rights” with the rest of the
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