Part 22 (2/2)
It is important to distinguish between these two races of Jews in discussing the question of Jewish emanc.i.p.ation at the time of the Revolution. For whilst the Sephardim had shown themselves good citizens and were therefore subject to no persecutions, the Ashken.a.z.im by their extortionate usury and oppressions had made themselves detested by the people, so that rigorous laws were enforced to restrain their rapacity.
The discussions that raged in the National a.s.sembly on the subject of the Jewish question related therefore mainly to the Jews of Alsace.
Already, in 1784, the Jews of Bordeaux had been accorded further concessions by Louis XVI; in 1776 all Portuguese Jews had been given religious liberty and the permission to inhabit all parts of the kingdom. The decree of January 28, 1790, conferring on the Jews of Bordeaux the rights of French citizens, put the finis.h.i.+ng touch to this scheme of liberation. But the proposal to extend this privilege to the Jews of Alsace evoked a storm of controversy in the a.s.sembly and also violent insurrections amongst the Alsatian peasants. It was thus on behalf of the people that several deputies protested against the decree.
”The Jews,” said the Abbe Maury, ”have traversed seventeen centuries without mingling with other nations. They have never done anything but trade with money, they have been the scourge of agricultural provinces, not one of them has known how to enn.o.ble his hands by guiding the plough.” And he went on to point out that the Jews ”must not be persecuted, they must be protected as individuals and not as Frenchmen, since they cannot be citizens.... Whatever you do, they will always remain foreigners in our midst.”
Monseigneur de la Fare, Bishop of Nancy, adopted the same line of argument:
They must be accorded protection, safety, liberty; but should we admit into the family a tribe that is foreign to it, that turns its eyes unceasingly towards a common country, that aspires to abandon the land that bears it?... My _cahier_ orders me to protest against the motion that has been made to you. The interest of the Jews themselves necessitates this protest. The people have a horror of them; they are often in Alsace the victims of popular risings.[625]
In all this, as will be seen, there is no question of persecution, but of precautions against a race that wilfully isolates itself from the rest of the community in order to pursue its own interests and advantages. The Jews of Bordeaux indeed recognized the odium that the German Jews were calculated to bring on the Jewish cause, and in an address to the a.s.sembly on January 22, 1790, dissociated themselves from the aggressive claims of the Ashken.a.z.im:
We dare to believe that our condition in France would not to-day be open to discussion if certain demands of the Jews of Alsace, Lorraine, and the Trois Eveches [i.e. Metz, Toul, and Verdun] had not caused a confusion of ideas which appears to reflect on us. We do not yet know exactly what these demands are, but to judge by the public papers they appear to be rather extraordinary since these Jews aspire to live in France under a special regime, to have laws peculiar to themselves, and to const.i.tute a cla.s.s of citizens separated from all the others.
As for us, our condition in France has long since been settled. We have been naturalized French since 1550; we possess all kinds of properties, and we enjoy the unlimited right to acquire estates. We have neither laws, tribunals, nor officers of our own[626]
In adopting this att.i.tude the Sephardim created a precedent which, if it had been followed henceforth consistently by their co-religionists, might have gone far to allay prejudice against the Jewish race. It was the solidarity generally presented by the Jews towards the rest of the community which excited alarm in the minds of French citizens. Thirty years earlier the merchants of Paris, in a pet.i.tion against the admission of the Jews to their corporations, indicated by an admirable simile the danger this solidarity offered to free commerce.
The French merchant carries on his commerce alone; each commercial house is in a way isolated, whilst the Jews are particles of quicksilver, which at the least slant run together into a block.[627]
But in spite of all protests, the decree emanc.i.p.ating the Jews of Alsace was pa.s.sed in September 1791, and hymns of praise were sung in the synagogues.
What part was actually played by the Jews in the tumults of the Revolution it is impossible to determine, for the reason that they are seldom designated as such in the writings of contemporaries. On this point Jewish writers appear to be better informed than the rest of the world, for Monsieur Leon Kahn in his panegyric on the part played by his co-religionists in the Revolution[628] finds Jews where even Drumont failed to detect them. Thus we read that it was a Jew, Rosenthal, who headed the legion known by his name, which was sent against La Vendee but took to flight,[629] and which was the subject of complaint when employed to guard the Royal Family at the Temple[630]; that amongst those who worked most energetically to deprive the clergy of their goods was a Jewish ex-old-clothes seller, Zalkind Hourwitz; that it was a Jew named Lang who murdered three out of the five Swiss guards at the foot of the staircase in the Tuileries on August 10[631]; that Jews were implicated in the theft of the crown jewels on September 16, 1792, and one named Lyre was executed in consequence; that it was Clootz and the Jew Pereyra, and not, as I had stated, Hebert, Chaumette, and Momoro, who went to the Archbishop Gobel in November 1793 and induced him by means of threats to abjure the Christian faith.[632]
All these facts were unknown to me when I wrote my account of these events; it will be seen then that, far from exaggerating the role of the Jews in _The French Revolution_, I very much underrated it. Indeed the question of their complicity had not occurred to me at all when I wrote this book, and the only Jew to whom I referred was Ephram--sent to France by the Illuminati Frederick William II and Bischoffswerder--whom M. Kahn indicates as playing an even more important part than I had a.s.signed to him.
But illuminating as these incidents may be, it is yet open to question whether they prove any concerted attempt on the part of the Jews to bring about the overthrow of the French monarchy and the Catholic religion. It is true, nevertheless, that they themselves boasted of their revolutionary ardour. In an address presenting their claims before the National a.s.sembly in 1789, they declare:
Regenerators of the French Empire, you would not wish that we should cease to be citizens, since for already six months we have a.s.siduously performed all duties as such, and the recompense for the zeal we have shown in accelerating the revolution will not be to condemn us to partic.i.p.ate in none of its advantages now that it has been consummated.... Nosseigneurs, we are all very good citizens, and in this memorable revolution we dare to say that there is not one of us who has not proved himself.[633]
In all these activities, however, religious feeling appears to have played an entirely subordinate part; the Jews, as has been said, were free before the Revolution to carry on the rites of their faith. And when the great anti-religious campaign began, many of them entered whole-heartedly into the attack on all religious faiths, their own included. Thus on the 21st Brumaire, whilst the Feasts of Reason were taking place in the churches of Paris, we find ”a deputation of Israelites” presenting themselves at the National a.s.sembly and ”depositing on the bosom of the Mountain the ornaments of which they had stripped a little temple they had in the Faubourg Saint-Germain.” At the same moment--
A revolutionary committee of the Reunion brings to the general council crosses, suns, chalices, copes, and quant.i.ties of other ornaments of wors.h.i.+p, and a member of this committee observes that several of these effects belong to individuals of the Jewish race.
A minister of the religion of Moses, Abraham, and Jacob asks in the name of his co-religionists that the said effects should not be regarded as belonging to such and such a sect, ... this citizen is named Benjamin Jacob.... Another member of the same committee pays homage to the patriotic zeal of the citizens heretofore Jews, ...
almost all have forestalled the wish of the revolutionary committee by themselves bringing their reliquaries and ornaments, amongst others the famous cope said to have belonged to Moses.[634]
On the 20th Frimaire at ”the Temple of Liberty,” formerly the church of the Benedictines, ”the citizen Alexandre Lambert _fils_, a Jew brought up in the prejudices of the Jewish religion,” uttered a violent harangue against all religions:
I will prove to you, citizens, that all forms of wors.h.i.+p are impostures equally degrading to man and to divinities; I will not prove it by philosophy, I do not know it, but only by the light of reason.
After denouncing the iniquities of both the Catholic and Protestant faiths, Lambert demonstrates ”the absurdities of the Jewish religion, of this domineering religion”; he thunders against Moses ”governing a simple and agrarian people like all clever impostors,” against ”the servile respect of the Jews for their kings ... the ablutions of women,”
etc. Finally he declares:
The bad faith, citizens, of which the Jewish nation is accused does not come from themselves but from their priests. Their religion, which would allow them only to lend to those of their nation at 5 per cent., tells them to take all they can from Catholics; it is even hallowed as a custom in our morning prayers to solicit G.o.d's help in catching out a Christian. There is more, citizens, and it is the climax of abomination: if any mistake is made in commerce between Jews, they are ordered to make reparation; but if on 100 louis a Christian should have paid 25 too much, one is not bound to return them to him. What an abomination! What a horror! And where does that all come from but from the Rabbis? Who have excited proscriptions against us? Our priests! Ah, citizens, more than anything in the world we must abjure a religion which, ... by subjecting us to irksome and servile practices, makes it impossible for us to be good citizens.[635]
The encouragement accorded by the Jews to the French Revolution appears thus to have been prompted not by religious fanaticism but by a desire for national advantage. That they gained immensely by the overthrow of the Old Order is undeniable, for apart from the legislation pa.s.sed on their behalf in the National a.s.sembly, the disorder of the finances in 1796 was such that, as M. Leon Kahn tells us, a contemporary journal enquired: ”Has the Revolution then been only a financial scheme? a speculation of bankers?”[636] We know from Prudhomme to what race the financiers who princ.i.p.ally profited by this disorder belonged.[637]
<script>