Season 2: Episode 13 - Emden, Eybeschuetz and Enlightenment

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Knowing others is wisdom. Knowing yourself, says Lao Tzu, is enlightenment. I just want to bless us all together that we come to know others, and to always help one another to know ourselves. I'm Rav Mike Foyer, and this is The Jewish Story. Episode 13, Ending Eidjitz and the Enlightenment You know, as a rabbi, I suffer from a bit of an identity conflict. On one hand, I value the title. Not only am I a link in a chain of tradition which stretches back thousands of years, I'm able to wield that title for the sake of good. I definitely have friends who will say to me, I need you to put on your rabbi hat right now. Not to speak of the students and others who only seek me out because of the role I play in their lives.

At the same time, I feel like I know a bit too much. The institution of rabbi has been on the rocks for quite some times, and sadly for good reason. I've even gotten to hot water with my colleagues for labeling our current phase of post-modern Judaism the end of the age of rabbis. We can speak about that some other time, and I'm going to defend, in fact, that contention as the Jewish story moves closer to the present day. But for now, I want to explore one more story together. A story which many historians point to as the final blow which broke the back of rabbinic authority among large swaths of European jury and in that sense opened the door to modernity. Now don't misunderstand me. In many ways, the powers of the rabbis will increase as we head into 19th century Europe.

But I'll just remind you of that critical principle we've explored before that tool for historical analysis which Arnold Toynbee taught us that a civilization, or in this case an institution can actually have already died even as it appears to thrive this is the case which we've talked about before of the truck driver that goes through the guardrail and down the mountainside when did he die? when he went through the windshield and hit the tree when he fell asleep and went off the road when he made that fateful decision not to stop for coffee Toynbee says that civilizations fail when they cease to look toward the future and begin to worship their past even though the worship of the past can carry quite a bit of momentum going forward and in the same sense, the rabbinic class will not go quietly into the night And as much as the Jewish Enlightenment, the Reform, secular nationalism are all on the rise, competitors for Rabbinic Judaism, so are Orthodoxy and Religious Zionism.

Now personally, I have a mission to redeem the institution by returning it to what I see to be its roots. In my opinion, the big mistake of rabbis is when we see ourselves as authority figures rather than what we were really originally meant to be. educators. But we're going to have to come back to that as we head deeper into the struggles of modernity. For now, a story. A story of how the Sabbatean struggle dealt one last blow to the rabbinic institution. On a cold morning in 1725 in the city of Frankfurt, agents of the rabbinic authorities of the city accosted one Moshe Meir of Kemenka as he had lay asleep in his bed in his hotel. Upon searching his possessions, they discovered a trove of Sabbatean writings.

Under questioning, Moshe Mayer revealed that he was indeed a Sabbatean emissary who set out from Podolia to make contact with what proved to be an extensive network of Sabbatean enthusiasts in Frankfurt. Now this is nothing new to us. At this point in the early 18th century, we know from our story that Sabbateanism is on a greater rise than perhaps it ever was even when the false Messiah lived. But this is a unique event, because among the manuscripts was a work entitled Vavoh Hayom El Ha'ayin. I will go today to the spring. It's an in-depth exploration of Sabbatine and Kabbalah, but really, we're not interested in its contents. What we're interested in is, though the manuscript was untitled, The evidence pointed clearly to its author being the eminent German scholar, Rav Jonathan Eibschutz.

And when this got out, scandal erupted throughout Frankfurt. The news that a pillar of the rabbinic establishment was suddenly accused of being a secret Sabbatean rocked the rabbinic world. But Rav Eibschutz's reputation as a rabbinic genius first slowed any action against him. and when he placed himself at the head of those who decreed a ban on the Sabbateans in the wake of this discovery, the Fuhrer died down, at least for the moment. And over the next 25 years, Rabbi Jonathan Eibschitz pursued a successful career as a teacher, a preacher, a rabbinic authority in the cities of Prague, Metz, Hamburg. He was a rabbinic superstar who gathered a significant following. He was also a prolific author, so much so that even today, His collection of sermons, which is entitled Ya'arot Devash, and his comments on a certain portion of the Shulchan Aruch, the Great Code of Jewish Law, which is known as the Kretu Pleiti, are still in use in yeshiva.

I've learned them. So, 26 years later, in 1751, Rabbi Eibchez was appointed the chief rabbi of the triple community of Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbeck. It seems he'd made it at last to that coveted position of a secure rabbinate. every young boy's dream in early modern Europe. But in reality, this is where his trouble began, in the form of a decade-long confrontation with Rav Yaakov Emdin. Rav Emdin, also known as the Yavitz, was the son of the famous Chacham Tzvi, chief rabbi first of Altona and then of Amsterdam in the early 18th century. And Rav Emdin was considered one of the outstanding scholars of his day. However, he was also considered to be quite edgy, and his uncompromising personality kept him from holding any significant public post through his whole life.

He did, however, manage to gain permission from the non-Jewish authorities to open a printing press, which in the long term gave him even more power than a pulpit, because it was a platform for his broad size against enemies, real and imagined. so the Avitz was considered a rabbinic traditionalist even in a traditional age but nevertheless he had a little drop of what we'll come to know as the Jewish enlightenment because he took the time to learn Hebrew grammar and even to master German, Dutch and Latin this is a significant accomplishment for someone who held fast to the rabbinic dictum that it was only permissible to learn secular subjects at times when it was impossible to study Torah I can't even imagine how he did it.

And the Yavitz was also the foremost critical thinker amongst the sages of his day. He was an iconoclast and a fanatical opponent of the Sabbateans, as was his father before him. His zeal for truth and his critical mind led Yaakov Emdin to stand alone amongst contemporary rabbis as someone who questioned the antiquity and thus the authority of the Zohar. He was motivated, it seems, by the fact that the Zohar was the stronghold of the Sabbateans, and therefore he disregarded the fact that the majority of Am Yisrael had come to see it as second only to the Bible in sanctity. Needless to say, this won him no friends, although he is looked to, even in our day, by rationalists who want to question the authority of the Zohar as an important achron, late rabbinic authority, who questions its origins.

But as if this weren't enough, the Yavis also took aim at the Rambah, which frankly is a fairly old practice amongst rabbis. He claimed that the guide for the perplexed contained heretical thoughts and therefore could not have possibly been written by Maimonides. Now, there were many, many rabbis of his time who felt the wrath of his pen, particularly in the Sabbatean struggle. But the Yavis' greatest battle, the one that shook the foundations of the rabbinic establishment in Europe, was with Rav Yonatan Eibschitz. In 1751, rumors surfaced concerning certain amulets which Rav Eibschitz had written while rabbi in Metzenhamburg. Now we spoke an episode or two ago about the role which amulets played in the history and the ministry of the Baalei Shem, those masters of the name who really served the needs of the people all over Europe, and in particular, how the holy Baal Shem Tov himself first gained a name through the efficacy of his charms.

These amulets generally consisted of fragments of verses intertwined with sacred Kabbalistic names of God, often in geometric configurations. And what's critical is only initiates understood them. But huge sections of the population, Jewish and non, swore by them. The accusation was made that several of Rav Eibschild's amulets were in fact of a Sabbatean character, meaning that they were invoking the name not only of God, but of the false messiah in hopes to find healing and salvation. But, since the question really hinged on how one read these complex and esoteric designs, it simply led to confusion. Confusion and great controversy, because when Rabbi Yaakov Emden heard of the amulets, he immediately recalled the accusations against Rabbi Eibschitz from the scandal in Frankfurt back in 1725, and declared all-out war on this most dangerous of enemies, a pillar of the rabbinic establishment who was actually a secret heretic.

But not so fast, because Rabbi Eibschutz was so widely loved and respected that the vast majority of rabbis and community leaders, and even simple Jews, refused to believe that the accusations were true. That very year, Rabbi Yaakov Emden began his attack by publishing his accusations. He penned an address to the Council of the Four Lands that critical sort of pan body which ruled over Polish Jewry You may recall in fact that the Council had turned to Rav Yaakov Emdim himself for help in fighting the Frankists. We spoke about it a couple episodes ago. And now he called upon them to join the battle against one of their very own. Unite with us to protect the Torah. One will declare, I am for God. One will be called by the name of Jacob.

one will dedicate his pen to the great and awesome God, call to lands both near and far, Lithuania and its region, Ruthenia, Prussia, Wallachia, and the lands of the east, to the place where your word, the word of the King, the Lord of hosts, reaches, they that take up arms, hitch up the chariot, and make war against the enemies of God. Them's fighting words in my life. But, to his dismay, the council equivocated, and the local community leadership actually sided with Rav Ayonatan. Tempers ran so hot that there were threats of physical violence, and Rav Emden was forced to actually flee Altona to Amsterdam. A number of prominent rabbis immediately came to Rav Yaakov Emden's defense, but it was to no avail.

Rav Eibschitz seemed unassailable. But even though Rav Emden had fled town, violence between the opposing factions began to escalate in Hamburg and Altona and what had begun as an argument over text, heresy, and internal rabbinic power suddenly became a matter of concern to the non-Jewish authorities. The Hamburg City Council backed Rob Aitches, who after all was the legally appointed chief rabbi of that triple community, Hamburg, Altona, and Wandsbeck. However, the lingering political complexities of the Middle Ages suddenly came into play. Altona was legally a province of Denmark and the Altona city council was wary of choosing sides as the Hamburg city council had done this was a messy situation so instead they brought the dispute to the attention of the king of Denmark Frederick V shocked by the violence and complete breakdown of law and order in the Jewish community the king demanded that Rabbi Ibschitz appear before him in Copenhagen and explain the controversial ambulance In an attempt to rally support, Rav Eibchitz wrote to friends and colleagues across Europe, describing how disgusted he was that his opponents had resorted to the non-Jewish court system, a clear violation of Jewish law.

Well, such a thing might be a clear violation, but he wasn't being entirely honest, because in reality, the courts had only intervened as a result of the disorders in the Jewish community. And to make matters even more complicated, Rav Eibchitz engaged his former student, Carl Anton as his lawyer. Now that may sound like a funny name for a Jew, and you would be right, because Anton was born Gershon Moshe Cohen, but after studying in Raab Eibschitz's yeshiva, he inexplicably converted to Christianity, changed his name, and eventually became the professor of Hebrew at Helmstadt University in Wurzburg, Bavaria. Anton, by all counts, performed fantastically in the courtroom. He was, after all, a Hebrew professor at a non-Jewish college, and therefore completely comfortable explaining arcane rabbinic material to the uninitiated.

And furthermore, the trial was a sensation. It attracted the attention of journalists, religious scholars, and jurists far and wide throughout Europe. Everyone was eager to learn more about this secretive world of Jewish mysticism, and to delve into the details of its practical applications through these amulets. Fortunately, or not, depending on whose side you're on, Anton was undeterred by speaking to the highest court of the land before a packed courtroom or even by the presence of the king himself who presided over the trial. At the end of his presentation Anton turned to the king and looked him straight in the eye. Your royal majesty said It's my view that these proceedings have been a shameful waste of his majesty's time.

My client has on more than one occasion repudiated the false messiah Shabtai Tzvi, along with any person or doctrine associated with that evil charlatan. I implore His Majesty to declare my client innocent of all the charges, so that he may be allowed to proceed with his duties as Chief Rabbi, unhindered by unfounded rumors, lurid speculation, and groundless innuendo. Your Royal Majesty, surely enough is enough. it might seem so but even the results of the trial are a matter of dispute because both sides claim victory what I can say for sure is that Rav Ivesh was exonerated of all immediate charges but the king then ordered that a new election for chief rabbi take place at the first available opportunity and it indeed happened less than a year later and Rav Ivesh was overwhelmingly re-elected but the joy of his unexpected victory and vindication were quickly dimmed by other events.

Hamburg, unlike Altona, was a free city not under the rule of the Danish king. And immediately after his re-election as chief rabbi of the triple community, the Hamburg city council rejected both the king's verdict and the election result. A long battle began to unfold over the definition and powers of the chief rabbi for this triple community. Basically, the intervention of the non-Jewish courts had solved nothing. On the contrary, what it had done is expose the ideological battles and what many people saw to be ego struggles of some of the leading rabbis of Europe to the public eye. The battle over for Rabbi Eiches' alleged Sabbatinism actually only escalated. Positions hardened and the hatred between the rabbis and each side of the fight increased.

Meanwhile, they were progressively eroding their authority. Rav Yaakov Amdin drove on with his unrelenting campaign. His letters from the time portray a man who was basically terrified that unless he highlighted the threat, the Jewish masses, led by complacent rabbis who dismissed the dangers of Sabbateanism as phantoms of his imagination, would walk blindly into heresy. and they also depict a sage who was so filled with his own rectitude that he could not imagine compromise. It was at this point that Ravichezgil Landau entered the picture. Now later in his career, Rav Landau would become known as the Nodabi Yehuda, the famous chief rabbi of Prague and very important halachic legal authority. But, in 1752, he was a more or less unknown 39-year-old rabbi of a small town in the Ukraine a thousand miles from Hamburg, who'd never met either Rav Yonatan Eivshitz or the Yavitz.

But he wrote what's known as the Letter of Reconciliation, suggesting a compromise solution. And his grasp of the situation was shown by his obvious goal, that both Rav Yonatan Eivshitz and Rav Yaakov Emdin, along with all their supporters, could back down with their pride and reputations intact. Rav Lando had apparently seen the amulets from Metz, and it seems he was convinced that they indeed contained formations that referred to Shabtai Tzvi. But he had two critical observations to make. One was a face-saving device for Rav Yonatan, and the other a wise insight into the actual threat posed by the amulets. in the first case, he noted that none of the amulets were actually signed by Rabbi Shitz and therefore it was impossible to claim with any halachic legal certainty that he had written them in other words, he gave Rabbi Yonatan a graceful out to deny the authorship of any amulet that had any heretical link but his second point was even more astute and in many ways would set the mold for dealing with many of the ideological struggles that lay on our horizon.

He says, although there's no way of deciphering these amulets in any way that would eliminate their Sabbatean contents, to be perfectly honest, I do not regard them as heresy. Because heresy is only heresy if it encourages heresy. or as a modern movie paraphrase would say heresy is as heresy does in other words, Rav Ibrahimov was a pillar of the rabbinic establishment whose entire life was devoted to normative law and communal service who cares if he wrote arcane and even heretical symbols in some amulets 30 years ago he's not leading anyone into heresy but Rav Yaakov Emden was absolutely no mood for a compromise. This was a holy war. In a viciously worded pamphlet that he wrote against this letter of reconciliation, he basically called Ralph Lando every name imaginable, and even accused him of being a closet Sabbatean.

So, it was a stalemate. Rav Jonathan Eibschitz remained chief rabbi of Altona, but in Hamburg, his powers were stripped away by the city council. In the rabbinic world, Rav Eibschitz opponents were completely unyielding, continuing to insist that he was an unrepentant heretic, and Rav Yaakov Amdin continued to publish regular attacks against him. Meanwhile, hundreds of other rabbis responded to Rav Ivesh's request for letters of sports, and he published them in 1755 as part of a book called Luchot Ha'edut, The Tablets of Testimony, which also recorded his version of the events. And just as things seemed to quiet down, in 1760, the controversy gained a newly son life, when Rav Ibschid's younger son, Wolf, declared himself a Sabbatean prophet.

As a result of that incident, Rav Yonatan's yeshiva was actually closed down, never to be reopened. And even his death in 1764 didn't end things, because Yaakov Amdin continued to publish his attacks and to maintain that Sabbatean heresy remained a real threat. Although, oddly enough, in his death, he was buried almost next to his arch enemy. And ultimately, it was Rav Lando's resolution that was the blueprint for future generations. As I said, Rav Iveshitz's incredible scholarship are mainstays of the Jewish learning to this day. Rav Yaakov Amden is equally venerated as a rabbinic leader who fought a valiant battle against a man he regarded as a dangerous heretic And his words continue to be widely used and respected But this is more than a story of personal animosity and ego and it's even more than the story of the last gasp of the battle against Sabbatean heresy, more or less.

The willingness of the rabbinic establishment to tear itself apart publicly over what many saw as an irrelevant or imagined issue undermined the status of the rabbinate in the eyes of many Jews. And the highly public nature of the struggle, along with its downright medieval subject matter, was a source of embarrassment to many who had begun to grow close to the more enlightened culture of Europe of their day. And as the latter half of the 18th century began to unfold, the winds in the Enlightenment were blowing strong through Europe. The Jews were not immune. and oddly enough in the spring of 1761 a traveler appeared at the home of Rav Yonatan Eibschitz after the events of our story it was none other than the young Moses Mendelssohn who at age 32 had gained enough Talmudic mastery that he was seeking the rabbinic title of Moreno our teacher and was not yet known to the public as the father of the Jewish enlightenment as he would come to be.

He turned to Rav Eibschitz in Rav Eibschitz's capacity as the chief rabbi of the triple communities and because of his status as a scholar despite the controversy of which he was well aware. And there's no doubt from the accounts that were written that Mendelssohn impressed Rav Eibschitz with his erudition. Eibschitz tested him and was amazed by both his Talmudic skills and his knowledge of science and philosophy. He even compared Mendelssohn to his biblical namesake. For Moses' hands are heavy, and his ability great in learning and natural wisdom, research, logic, philosophy, and rhetoric, he writes. But the meeting did not go as Moses Mendelton had planned, because Rav Adobes was torn. Could he grant the title of rabbi to a Jewish philosopher who wrote in German in the literary journals of German intellectuals?

Was it right to give that title to a man who'd taken the unprecedented step of crossing the border between Jew and Gentile? Because this title would give Mendelssohn a membership card that would identify him as a member of the rabbinic elite. In the end, Rav Ives just decided that a letter of recommendation filled with praise would suffice. It was a fateful decision, which ultimately pushed Moshe Mendelssohn deeper into the arms of the waiting Enlightenment. but in order to understand the significance of this first step toward the Jewish enlightenment we have to ask, what was the enlightenment? so if I had to give a one line answer the enlightenment was a trend in 18th century western culture toward human reason as the touchstone of belief and as the standard of measure for values seen as a positive movement we might call the project of the enlightenment salvation through knowledge.

Knowledge which would make people happier, more aware of their world, ultimately more moral, and certainly more free. But as we will see, the picture was not quite so rosy for the Jews. Now, we can't trace the entire history of the European Enlightenment, not in one podcast and not in 20, and this is, after all, the Jewish story. But we do need to draw a certain line in order to understand how things will play out for Am Yisrael in Europe. So, just know, the first major figures of the Enlightenment actually came from England, though the movement really took off in France. The English contributors were many, but we'll suffice right now with a quote from Sir Isaac Newton, the real bridge between what historians label as the scientific revolution of the 17th century and the Enlightenment, which belongs more properly to the 18th.

Now just recall, we've spoken at length about a key aspect of modernity, the uncoupling of knowledge from tradition. Picture Galileo, the great astrometer, pointing his telescope at the sky and inviting you to take a look. But as a great scientist, he's well aware that our beliefs can color our experience. Never forget the inversion of the old adage, after all, if I hadn't have believed it, I wouldn't have seen it. So first Galileo cautions you, before you look, forget about what you believe just look through the telescope and tell me what you see or, as Newton would phrase it in his groundbreaking work The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy published in 1687 I have not as yet been able to discover the reason for these properties of gravity from phenomena and I feign no hypothesis For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena must be called a hypothesis, and hypothesis, whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.

I feign no hypothesis, but I trust my reason and observation will be the watchword of the coming enlightenment. Ultimately, it will be Immanuel Kant, perhaps the most influential philosopher of the 18th century, who will define the movement which began with Newton's attitude of unassuming inquiry in his famous essay answering the question, What is Enlightenment? He says, Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. knowledge is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance this knowledge is self-imposed if its cause lies not in a lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance dare to know, he says have the courage to use your own understanding is therefore the motto of the enlightenment And that call to courage speaks so deeply to the struggle to move from the scientific revolution, which gained so much knowledge, but was afraid to break the cultural vessels that held Europe together, into the Enlightenment, which sought to free that knowledge and unleash it on the world.

So once the seeds sown by the British thinkers took root in French soil, the familiar phase of the Enlightenment began to emerge. the Philosophes, these groups of young intellectuals who grew out of the salons of the early 18th century if you're familiar with European history, if not, it's not so important because they began to denounce Christianity as the ultimate source which kept the minds of people enthralled to superstition and darkness and to speak against the abusive governments of Europe which enslaved their bodies these men were deists, who still believed in a divine creator but one who was like a cosmic watchmaker who created the world, set it in motion, and then backed off beyond its furthest reaches.

Many of them were budding Democrats, and their thought would fuel both the American and the French revolutions before the 18th century without. And their primary vehicle was the pen. We have to know that the 18th century has been called the age of authors, and their audience was growing. Literacy is rapidly on the rise throughout Europe. and the scholarly language of Latin is being replaced by the vernacular languages, as an ever-broader segment of the population is accessing knowledge through the written word. We're going to have to return to this phenomenon of the rise of literacy when we discuss the appearance of nationalism. But for now, I just want to mention two authors who can frame the French Enlightenment for us, and in particular, they can help us explore how it intersects this phase of the Jewish story.

In 1748, the Baron de Montesquieu published his work of political philosophy, The Spirit of the Laws. The book elaborates on many of the ideas introduced by the early English Enlightenment thinkers, in particular John Locke. It's perhaps best known by political philosophers for the stress the author lays on the idea of the separation of powers and his early advocacy for a system of checks and balances in government. But for our story, Montesquieu's role as an early pioneer in sociology is more important than his political thought. Because in the spirit of laws, the Baron lays out the somewhat bizarre notion that environmental conditions shape behavior, and therefore that governments located in different climates should be adjusted accordingly.

Now, the literalist approach of a relationship between climate and government didn't really live beyond his writings. But the idea that the nature of man is not fixed, but rather a product of his environment, will be central to human experience in modernity. All the secular messianic dreams of social engineering for the human species, which drove the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, secular humanism, and much of Zionism, as we'll see, had a primary root in this simple assertion that if you can control a man's environment, you can remake him in your image. Montesquieu's sociology matters for our story because the ideas of freedom, citizenship, and humanism, which were central to the Enlightenment, lifted the Jewish question into the public discourse.

Now, in the 18th century, most of Europe was still intellectually and religiously in the Middle Ages. And I hope you'll recall Augustine in his assertion back in the late 4th century that the Jews were meant to survive but only as a suffering remnant amongst the Christians subjugated to their kingdom. It was a notion that fit quite well into the feudal societies of medieval Europe where the Jew most often held the status of serfs of the king. But serfdom is fading from the European scene in modernity driven out by the pragmatic notions of enlightened absolutism that we touched on in a previous episode and the moral stance of the philosophes that we speaking about now So the Jewish question which arose in the mid century was very simply do the ideas of the Enlightenment apply to the Jews?

And in many ways, the implication of such a question emanating from a humanist movement really was, are the Jews human? now, over the last season and a half of the Jewish story we've traced a long arc of relationship between the Jews and the non-Jewish society which surrounds them go back and listen to season 1, episode 11 if you want a particular review but for now, I hope you recall the struggle between the Jews and Rome in late antiquity when we became the indigestible element of the Roman Empire unwilling to accept a Roman peace founded on submission to superior force. Not one, not two, but three wars we fought before they broke us. And then, when Christianity adopted the empire, the question ceased to really be political.

And therefore the Jews moved from the indigestible element of empire to the obstinate refusers of salvation, unwilling to trade the Torah for a new covenant. and so it has more or less been for the last 1,000 plus years of European history but now the philosophers are attacking the religious and political assumptions which underlie their society and so the Jewish question is not secondary in many ways, as we'll see in our coming discussion of emancipation in episodes that lie ahead the Jewish question will actually be a test case for the very values of the Enlightenment are the Jews human like everyone else, and therefore deserving participants in the brave new world which the Enlightenment envisions?

Or have we simply gone from being indigestible to obstinate to alien other? Well, it really depends on which philosoph you ask. Montesquieu was an early advocate of Jewish emancipation. He maintained that despite their religion, because, of course, he still assumed the supremacy of Christianity, Jews should be granted civil rights. In fact, he argued, consistent with his theories, that emancipation would itself make the Jew a better person. Montesquieu believed that within several generations of gaining full civil rights, Jews would practice an enlightened, purified form of Judaism, not unlike the deism to which he adhered. As the Baron says, in the spirit of laws, it happens that slavery debases burdens and destroys the mind whereas liberty forms it, elevates it and fortifies it we make for ourselves the mind we want and we are the true artisans of it and so Montesquieu saw the Jews not as absolute alien other but basically as a war product of the oppression of his own society ripe to be reformed now, this sounds very nice But as we'll see, the seeming willingness to admit Jews into enlightened society is going to come at the price of leaving their culture behind.

But for now, it appears to beat the alternative offered by one of his peers. François-Marie Aue, which I'm sure I said wrong, is better known as Voltaire, the primary satirist of the Enlightenment, and perhaps its most prolific author. So Voltaire was known for his brilliant and biting wit, which he used to analyze everything, everything, from philosophy to politics to law, extolling the virtue of reason and mocking superstition and intolerance wherever he saw it. And to this day, many people see Voltaire as the voice of the Enlightenment. His novel Candide, a sarcastic exploration of blasphemy, sedition, and disillusionment, is seen to be one of the most influential works ever written by a European author.

And amongst the enormous collection of Voltaire's writings are hundreds and hundreds of letters and essays concerning the Jews. It was a topic he returned to so often that some later critics would accuse him of a strange obsession. And though there are complexities and contradictions within his writings, Voltaire's verdict on the Jews was largely thumbs down. Unlike Montesquieu, Voltaire held out no hope for a regeneration of the Jews. Like many other Enlightenment thinkers and their forerunners in the Renaissance, Voltaire believed that the true hope for European culture lay in returning to its roots in the traditions of classical Greece and Rome. And he knew, just as well as those of you who have been listening since season one, that the Jews lie outside of that tradition.

In fact, Voltaire subscribed to a racial theory known as polygenism, which assumed that each race had separate origins. In his eyes, the Jews were Asiatic, and therefore entirely alien to European culture. In his 1771 letter of Memmius to Cicero, Voltaire wrote himself in the pose of an ancient Roman reporting on the Jews, and he said, they are all, all of them, born with raging fanaticism in their hearts, just as the Bretons and the Germans are born with blonde hair. I would not be in the least bit surprised if these people would not someday become deadly to the human race. And in the essay, One Must Take Sides, which is said to be the last word by Voltaire on metaphysics, Voltaire mocked each of the major religions, but he saved his real venom for the Jews.

You have surpassed all nations in impertinent fables, in bad conduct and barbarism. You deserve to be punished, for this is your destiny. To Voltaire, Enlightenment could save white Europeans, so long as they abandoned Christianity and returned to their Greco-Roman heritage, but the Jews were irredeemable. In fact, in his philosophical dictionary, he wrote this section on the Jews and said, In short, we find that in them only an ignorant and barbarous people who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition and the most invincible hatred for every people by whom they are tolerated and enriched. Now, Voltaire's hatred of the Jews is in many ways an important turning point in the Jewish story.

First of all, his vehement hatred exposed the limits of Enlightenment tolerance. But truth is, he was far from unique in that respect. As I said, even Montesquieu's readiness to accept the regeneration of the Jews was premised on our abandonment of what made us Jewish. Voltaire is a turning point because in his rejection of Christianity, he also rejected the sources of Christian Jew hatred. In the eyes of the ultimate Philosoph, we were not God-killers Or obstinate refusers of salvation And therefore In many ways, Voltaire is the bridge Across which Jew hatred will pass Into modernity as it morphs Into anti-Semitism His quasi-scientific Approach to identifying the Jew As racial alien other Combined with his towering status As the voice of the French Enlightenment will make his thoughts on the Jews the basis for much evil to come.

So, the institution of the rabbinate, which has guided Am Yisrael at least since 8th late antiquity, and has held together the communal cohesion of European Jewry for a thousand years, it's on its knees as we walk into modernity. And as we've seen in the last few episodes, it's been eroded by its relationship with first the socioeconomic system in the late feudal era, and then by its growing relationship to the rising absolutist states. Remember, power corrupts most of what it touches, but an institution which is meant to serve as a religious guide is particularly vulnerable. As the old joke goes, what do you get when you mitts? Politics and religion? Politics. We also touched a little while ago on the impact of Hasidut, which after its grassroots phase developed a model of leadership through the Tzadikim, which existed outside of the official communal framework.

And at the opening of this episode, we saw what many take to be the final blow, as the end in Eibshitz controversy split the rabbis of Europe and exposed their all-too-human side for us to see. It would appear that the anti-religious wave of the Enlightenment, and particularly its anti-clerical side would be the coup de grace that would remove the rabbinic class from the Jewish story and sadly make the Jews all that much more vulnerable to a corrosive period which really required a greatness of spiritual leadership. But don't count the rabbis out too quickly. As a wise man once said, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Now in the coming episode we're going to explore the birth of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment.

As the great scholar Gershom Sholem notes, the leaders of what he calls the School of Mendelssohn found ready recruits for their cause in places like the Sabbatean circles, where the world of rabbinic Judaism had already been destroyed from within. But as we delve into the story of Moses Mendelssohn, who we only touched for a moment today, and the emergence of secular Jewry in the Age of enlightenment, will find that in many ways, Orthodoxy is born together into the world with the Haskalah. But that's a story that will have to wait. I just want to thank a few people. I want to thank the people who give their hard-earned money to make this show free and available to all. And I want to invite you to join them.

You can go right now to rovmike.com in the upper right-hand side. You'll hit the donate button for a little bit of per-podcast support. I want to thank the Land of Israel Network for giving me a platform to speak to so many people. I want to thank the Pardes Institute, that's p-a-r-d-e-s dot org dot i-l, for giving me the opportunity to teach so many wonderful Jews. I want to thank Sule Myakov, because it's my home. I want to invite you to connect to me on Rav Mike Poyer at Facebook, and I want to thank you for listening. I'm Rav Mike Poyer, and this is The Jewish Story.