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The French Enlightenment and the Jews
Hertzberg develops his daring thesis that the "modern, secular, anti-Semitism was fashioned not as a reaction to the Enlightenment and the Revolution, but within the Enlightenment and Revolution themselves." He finds that modern anti-Semitism owes less to Christian theological mentality than to doctrinaire libertarianism of figures such as Voltaire, d'Holbach, Diderot, and Marat.
420 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1968
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June 27, 2016
There's a certain brand of Enlightenment anti-Semitism hat condemned the Jews for "infecting" classical society with the influence of Biblical laws. Modern anti-semitism then came about not due to an alleged residual influence of Christianity, but on a new, secular basis with the rise of neoclassicism. In this telling, Athens was the progenitor of Western civilization, while Judaism had been an inferior, superstitious and backwards intrusion upon that set the West back by later spawning Christianity. While Christians could perhaps be redeemed by shedding this ideological accretion and returning to their roots, Jews were not so lucky. They had no other roots to return to other than the allegedly monstrous and backwards legacy of Mosaic scripture. Thus, in the eyes some (most famously Voltaire), they were congenitally irredeemable no matter what they did.
Its not hard to see how such attitudes could lead to atrocities like the Holocaust. While the Enlightenment in France is credited with emancipating Jews in the short-term, it also sowed the seeds of hideous racial theories that saw them subjugated and massacred in later years. While persecution of Jews was nothing new in Europe, the Enlightenment opened the door for it to be done on a new basis. Instead of being "Christ-killers," Jews were now characterized as agents of ideological subversion within society. On top of this were economic complaints against them based on their involvement in moneylending, as well as racial theories born of physiocratic economic thought that further condemned their alleged failure to be involved in agriculture. The unfairness of this is evident when Jews were often forced by hostile interests out of industry by and into moneylending as a means of basic survival.
There are many disturbing parallels with modern Islamophobic rhetoric here. Jews were considered by Enlightenment anti-Semites to be governed by alien laws that made them unassimilable and commanded conquest and hatred of all others. Even among their defenders, a vigorous debate ensued about whether their involvement in usury was by nature or a byproduct of their oppression. This debate echoes in some ways the claim among some that Muslim terrorism is either primordially rooted or a product of geopolitical factors.
One thing I've always admired about books on Jewish history is the meticulous attention to detail. The author has records of the names of particular Jewish families in towns in Eastern France in the 1600's, not to mention occupations and basic life histories for people whose lives were largely ordinary. The corporate nature of medieval Jewish life (residues of which remain) perhaps made this possible, as well as the relatively small sizes of these communities.
I can't say that this was a thrilling read, it was plodding and the detail could be over-heavy. Nonetheless it was clearly a labor of love on the part of its author and offers for posterity a picture of medieval French Jewry in the run-up to the Revolution. It also offers a cautionary tale about the dark side of the Enlightenment and the racial insanity it later made possible.
Its not hard to see how such attitudes could lead to atrocities like the Holocaust. While the Enlightenment in France is credited with emancipating Jews in the short-term, it also sowed the seeds of hideous racial theories that saw them subjugated and massacred in later years. While persecution of Jews was nothing new in Europe, the Enlightenment opened the door for it to be done on a new basis. Instead of being "Christ-killers," Jews were now characterized as agents of ideological subversion within society. On top of this were economic complaints against them based on their involvement in moneylending, as well as racial theories born of physiocratic economic thought that further condemned their alleged failure to be involved in agriculture. The unfairness of this is evident when Jews were often forced by hostile interests out of industry by and into moneylending as a means of basic survival.
There are many disturbing parallels with modern Islamophobic rhetoric here. Jews were considered by Enlightenment anti-Semites to be governed by alien laws that made them unassimilable and commanded conquest and hatred of all others. Even among their defenders, a vigorous debate ensued about whether their involvement in usury was by nature or a byproduct of their oppression. This debate echoes in some ways the claim among some that Muslim terrorism is either primordially rooted or a product of geopolitical factors.
One thing I've always admired about books on Jewish history is the meticulous attention to detail. The author has records of the names of particular Jewish families in towns in Eastern France in the 1600's, not to mention occupations and basic life histories for people whose lives were largely ordinary. The corporate nature of medieval Jewish life (residues of which remain) perhaps made this possible, as well as the relatively small sizes of these communities.
I can't say that this was a thrilling read, it was plodding and the detail could be over-heavy. Nonetheless it was clearly a labor of love on the part of its author and offers for posterity a picture of medieval French Jewry in the run-up to the Revolution. It also offers a cautionary tale about the dark side of the Enlightenment and the racial insanity it later made possible.
November 16, 2016
When the French Revolution began in 1789, there were approximately 33,000 Jews living in France. 80 percent of them were Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim. The other 20 percent were French-speaking Sephardim. Neither group yet enjoyed the privileges of citizenship but, based on political advances over the preceding two centuries, things were moving in the right direction. “By the 1780s,” writes Arthur Hertzberg in The French Enlightenment and the Jews: The Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism, “advanced thinkers had largely settled the idea that Jews belonged within European society, and the medieval premise, that they ought to be excluded was, at the very least, no longer self-evident.” It would be easy to read ‘advanced thinkers’ and assume that enlightened thought was behind this sea-change, that a generation of philosophes, primarily men of the left, had used reason to combat old-fashioned anti-Jewish arguments rooted in Christian theology. That would be a mistake. As Hertzberg convincingly shows, the growing liberalization of policy towards the Jews during the 17th and 18th centuries was firmly rooted, first, in the interests of the state and, second, in the belief that the state could modernize the individual.
The story of the Sephardim, who at the time resided in the southwestern port cities of Bordeaux and Bayonne, lends credence to the idea that the Jews could be useful to the state and at the same time implement modernizing reforms within their own community. After emigrating from Spain and Portugal in the 16th century as Marranos, they slowly built a very organized, highly successful community that took advantage of economic opportunities related to the sea trade. The most successful members of this community extended their family networks throughout the new world and, through the facilitation of trade between France, West Africa, and the Americas, helped shape the mercantilist direction of the 18th century French economy and, thereby, enrich the royal treasury. In Bordeaux especially, they were supported by local elites because they didn’t compete with local guilds and their trade increased demand for local products such as whiskey, gunpowder, knives, and cloth. The wealthiest Sephardic families also led the way when it came to integration into French society. By the 1740s the community in Bordeaux had dropped Ladino in favor of French and was employing lobbyists in Paris to advocate for its interests. Combined, both its economic power and relatively greater acculturation into French society reinforced the idea that Jews could confer economic advantage to governing elites and at least achieve a modicum of internal “enlightened” reforms within their own community.
For the Ashkenazim of eastern France, political advancement came far less easily and was ultimately, at least before the Revolution, far less successful. The story of origins, for the Ashkenazim, is important. Unlike their Sephardim cousins, they didn’t come en masse to France voluntarily, or for economic opportunity. France came to them through its acquisition of the former German-ruled territory of Alsace. Customary laws of the time prevented France from expelling the already existing residents of a territory gained in battle and over the years the community, primarily centered in and around the city of Metz and in the hinterlands north of Strasbourg, grew rapidly. Because these Jews were excluded from ordinary economic pursuits—they even had to have express written consent from the King to buy property and build family homes—they primarily made their livelihoods through money-lending. The profession was not a lucrative one and the percentage of indigents in these communities was much higher, proportionally, than that of the Jewish communities in southwestern France. Though the Alsatian Jews did provide liquidity to French peasants, their more important function for the French state was trade, specifically the import of war materiels. The fact that they were bringing these goods in, often illegally, from the east made it even more important as it deprived French rivals, namely Austria and the German states, of their own production, whether that be weapons, draft animals, or foodstuffs. If this satisfied one aspect of what the French state hoped for from its Jewish communities, it didn’t help with the second. Perhaps because there was less overall wealth, or perhaps because there was more westward migration from poorer parts of Europe, the Ashkenazi community had great difficulty making internal reforms. Modernization came much slower in this part of France.
You’ll note from that summary of what each Jewish community looked like in the lead up to emancipation that there is quite a bit of detail. That’s a strength of Hertzberg’s history. But for the generalist reader, it’s also a potential sink. The longest of the book’s ten chapters is the seventh, entitled The Jewish Community. In it, Hertzberg goes to great length to document both the internal governance structures and most salient debates within each community. It’s clear that he’s at his very best when it comes to archival work, but it’s equally clear that he could have done a better job balancing the discussion en route to advancing his overall argument. Conversely, the best chapters are those that focus on the state’s mercantilist economics, or those that tend to the intellectual history of the era. In both, though, there remain pitfalls. The section on physiocratic economics is too small and ripe for more research (even half a century later.) And with regards to the intellectual history laid out, excepting Spinoza, Voltaire, and Montesquieu, the general reader is likely to find himself in the company of strangers. Here, though, I think it’s important to recognize a more salient point than this hindrance might suggest on surface. Yes, there are a lot of names, many of them minor intellectual figures in the broad arc of history, but the fact that so many people were publishing so much in the way of ideas is in and of itself fascinating. It speaks to the intellectual fervor of the era that there are more pamphlets mentioned in this book than there are handed out at your average Jehovah’s Witness rally. And the number of books, including those banned or censored, that shaped the intellectual climate of the day is impressive, even by the standards of our contemporary media-saturated environment. It’s easy to appreciate any society where annual essay contests, such as the one held on the Jewish question by the city of Metz in 1787, carry so much weight when it comes to general public opinion.
The textual culture of 18th century France speaks to a middle class that was increasingly literate. Unfortunately increasingly literate didn’t necessarily mean increasingly liberal, especially with regards to its opinions of the Jews. Anti-Semitism, both in thought and in action, was widespread and commonplace. Among the illiterate classes, the peasantry, it still took the old-fashioned form of a theological-based anti-Semitism, most classically expressed in the idea that Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. For the middle classes, and many of the thought-leading philosophes, anti-Semitism wasn’t something necessitated by the Jews of a millennia and a half earlier, but instead by the failure of those Jews' contemporary co-religionists to shed their ancient practices (especially Talmud study) and fully integrate into society. An interesting side note to this discussion, though, was the way in which a large number of commentators sympathetic to that anti-Semitic attitude began to recognize, from an early humanist perspective, that the Jews were as much victims of their exclusion as they were responsible for it. Hertzberg doesn't dwell on this in the way you might imagine a contemporary scholar would but instead, in a sort of half-hearted way, makes the case that this new, fashionable anti-Semitism was really a throwback to the secular Roman anti-Semitism of antiquity. There’s been many books on anti-Semitism since this one was published, none of which I’ve read. I would guess, though, that Hertzberg has strong footing to stand on when he documents an evolution in the reasons that were used to justify anti-Semitism in 18th century France. Whether or not the same claim can be made for his relating it to classical anti-Semitism, I leave to people more learned on the matter.
Admittedly I read some obscure books and this was one of them. The reasons for this are complicated. It has partly to do with the fact that I love to browse the shelves of second-hand bookstores, and partly to do with the fact that obscure books are often full of equally obscure yet very interesting references, making it something of a self-reinforcing phenomenon. More than anything, though, I think there’s a philosophical reason for it. It stems from a deeply held belief of mine that we as a society produce more knowledge than we can collectively process. It’s true that specialists are likely consumers of books like The French Enlightenment and the Jews that are relevant to their own disciplines. But the knowledge they gain from such books is situated on vertical chains, and such texts fit neatly into a large but limited whole that’s not easily applied exogenously. Generalists, on the other hand, tend to read horizontally across disciplines and focus only on the latest wavetops. The risk for them, as I see it, is that they are reading scholarship that is mostly response to what came just before it, and that work response to that which came just before it, and so on and so forth. Very quickly you can see how even scholarship can fall victim to a Facebook-like echo chamber that prevents the application of novel thought. Being a generalist who willingly reads across disciplines, I like the idea that reading a book from the bowels of a body knowledge rather than its head, might lead me down roads otherwise not taken. Or to switch operative metaphors in light of that one potentially leading down some rather unpleasant paths, I prefer my late-night visits to obscure works in eclectic intellectual neighborhoods. Do I get lost once in awhile? Yes. But just as often, some months later usually, I find there’s a new me in the world. The new me that Hertzberg has posthumously birthed, in this case, is someone who I think understands just a little bit better that bigotry is a Pandora’s box not easily closed, even by the most thought-full of men. © Jeffrey L. Otto, November 15, 2016
The story of the Sephardim, who at the time resided in the southwestern port cities of Bordeaux and Bayonne, lends credence to the idea that the Jews could be useful to the state and at the same time implement modernizing reforms within their own community. After emigrating from Spain and Portugal in the 16th century as Marranos, they slowly built a very organized, highly successful community that took advantage of economic opportunities related to the sea trade. The most successful members of this community extended their family networks throughout the new world and, through the facilitation of trade between France, West Africa, and the Americas, helped shape the mercantilist direction of the 18th century French economy and, thereby, enrich the royal treasury. In Bordeaux especially, they were supported by local elites because they didn’t compete with local guilds and their trade increased demand for local products such as whiskey, gunpowder, knives, and cloth. The wealthiest Sephardic families also led the way when it came to integration into French society. By the 1740s the community in Bordeaux had dropped Ladino in favor of French and was employing lobbyists in Paris to advocate for its interests. Combined, both its economic power and relatively greater acculturation into French society reinforced the idea that Jews could confer economic advantage to governing elites and at least achieve a modicum of internal “enlightened” reforms within their own community.
For the Ashkenazim of eastern France, political advancement came far less easily and was ultimately, at least before the Revolution, far less successful. The story of origins, for the Ashkenazim, is important. Unlike their Sephardim cousins, they didn’t come en masse to France voluntarily, or for economic opportunity. France came to them through its acquisition of the former German-ruled territory of Alsace. Customary laws of the time prevented France from expelling the already existing residents of a territory gained in battle and over the years the community, primarily centered in and around the city of Metz and in the hinterlands north of Strasbourg, grew rapidly. Because these Jews were excluded from ordinary economic pursuits—they even had to have express written consent from the King to buy property and build family homes—they primarily made their livelihoods through money-lending. The profession was not a lucrative one and the percentage of indigents in these communities was much higher, proportionally, than that of the Jewish communities in southwestern France. Though the Alsatian Jews did provide liquidity to French peasants, their more important function for the French state was trade, specifically the import of war materiels. The fact that they were bringing these goods in, often illegally, from the east made it even more important as it deprived French rivals, namely Austria and the German states, of their own production, whether that be weapons, draft animals, or foodstuffs. If this satisfied one aspect of what the French state hoped for from its Jewish communities, it didn’t help with the second. Perhaps because there was less overall wealth, or perhaps because there was more westward migration from poorer parts of Europe, the Ashkenazi community had great difficulty making internal reforms. Modernization came much slower in this part of France.
You’ll note from that summary of what each Jewish community looked like in the lead up to emancipation that there is quite a bit of detail. That’s a strength of Hertzberg’s history. But for the generalist reader, it’s also a potential sink. The longest of the book’s ten chapters is the seventh, entitled The Jewish Community. In it, Hertzberg goes to great length to document both the internal governance structures and most salient debates within each community. It’s clear that he’s at his very best when it comes to archival work, but it’s equally clear that he could have done a better job balancing the discussion en route to advancing his overall argument. Conversely, the best chapters are those that focus on the state’s mercantilist economics, or those that tend to the intellectual history of the era. In both, though, there remain pitfalls. The section on physiocratic economics is too small and ripe for more research (even half a century later.) And with regards to the intellectual history laid out, excepting Spinoza, Voltaire, and Montesquieu, the general reader is likely to find himself in the company of strangers. Here, though, I think it’s important to recognize a more salient point than this hindrance might suggest on surface. Yes, there are a lot of names, many of them minor intellectual figures in the broad arc of history, but the fact that so many people were publishing so much in the way of ideas is in and of itself fascinating. It speaks to the intellectual fervor of the era that there are more pamphlets mentioned in this book than there are handed out at your average Jehovah’s Witness rally. And the number of books, including those banned or censored, that shaped the intellectual climate of the day is impressive, even by the standards of our contemporary media-saturated environment. It’s easy to appreciate any society where annual essay contests, such as the one held on the Jewish question by the city of Metz in 1787, carry so much weight when it comes to general public opinion.
The textual culture of 18th century France speaks to a middle class that was increasingly literate. Unfortunately increasingly literate didn’t necessarily mean increasingly liberal, especially with regards to its opinions of the Jews. Anti-Semitism, both in thought and in action, was widespread and commonplace. Among the illiterate classes, the peasantry, it still took the old-fashioned form of a theological-based anti-Semitism, most classically expressed in the idea that Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. For the middle classes, and many of the thought-leading philosophes, anti-Semitism wasn’t something necessitated by the Jews of a millennia and a half earlier, but instead by the failure of those Jews' contemporary co-religionists to shed their ancient practices (especially Talmud study) and fully integrate into society. An interesting side note to this discussion, though, was the way in which a large number of commentators sympathetic to that anti-Semitic attitude began to recognize, from an early humanist perspective, that the Jews were as much victims of their exclusion as they were responsible for it. Hertzberg doesn't dwell on this in the way you might imagine a contemporary scholar would but instead, in a sort of half-hearted way, makes the case that this new, fashionable anti-Semitism was really a throwback to the secular Roman anti-Semitism of antiquity. There’s been many books on anti-Semitism since this one was published, none of which I’ve read. I would guess, though, that Hertzberg has strong footing to stand on when he documents an evolution in the reasons that were used to justify anti-Semitism in 18th century France. Whether or not the same claim can be made for his relating it to classical anti-Semitism, I leave to people more learned on the matter.
Admittedly I read some obscure books and this was one of them. The reasons for this are complicated. It has partly to do with the fact that I love to browse the shelves of second-hand bookstores, and partly to do with the fact that obscure books are often full of equally obscure yet very interesting references, making it something of a self-reinforcing phenomenon. More than anything, though, I think there’s a philosophical reason for it. It stems from a deeply held belief of mine that we as a society produce more knowledge than we can collectively process. It’s true that specialists are likely consumers of books like The French Enlightenment and the Jews that are relevant to their own disciplines. But the knowledge they gain from such books is situated on vertical chains, and such texts fit neatly into a large but limited whole that’s not easily applied exogenously. Generalists, on the other hand, tend to read horizontally across disciplines and focus only on the latest wavetops. The risk for them, as I see it, is that they are reading scholarship that is mostly response to what came just before it, and that work response to that which came just before it, and so on and so forth. Very quickly you can see how even scholarship can fall victim to a Facebook-like echo chamber that prevents the application of novel thought. Being a generalist who willingly reads across disciplines, I like the idea that reading a book from the bowels of a body knowledge rather than its head, might lead me down roads otherwise not taken. Or to switch operative metaphors in light of that one potentially leading down some rather unpleasant paths, I prefer my late-night visits to obscure works in eclectic intellectual neighborhoods. Do I get lost once in awhile? Yes. But just as often, some months later usually, I find there’s a new me in the world. The new me that Hertzberg has posthumously birthed, in this case, is someone who I think understands just a little bit better that bigotry is a Pandora’s box not easily closed, even by the most thought-full of men. © Jeffrey L. Otto, November 15, 2016
June 16, 2023
This book should indeed be entitled, “The Jews in France”, since that is the subject of 7 of its 10 chapters: the tribulations of the tiny Jewish minority in 18th century France, living in the Bordeaux-Bayonne region after fleeing the Spanish Inquisition; of another group in Alsace; and of even smaller one in Paris – “perhaps some 40,000 in a population of twenty million”, he says p. 83, although on page 1 he’d said that when the Jews were granted equal rights by the French Revolution in 1790, these were then “between three and four thousand individuals”. This is only one sample of the myriad and constant contradictions with which the book abounds.
But it is his opening and closing salvos that are endlessly repeated by the religious far-right today of every persuasion. Google ‘Voltaire antisemite”, and Hertzberg usually pops up first - writing letters to the New York Times, invading Wikipedia - and those quoting him.
What? The man who fought an entire lifetime for, and won, religious tolerance in the laws was an antisemite? That’s sure to get a rise – and add greatly to the anti-Enlightenment arsenal - which it has for years, despite the fact that far more qualified Jewish Enlightenment historians, such as Peter Gay, Bertram Schwarzbach, Alan Charles Kors and others – who don’t happen to be rabbis – disagree with him. They all saw the obvious quite clearly: that Voltaire’s supposed “attacks” on the Jews were aimed at the Bible – and at well over ten centuries of Christian persecutions. Charles Porset cites Voltaire’s aim in in his own words in “Voltaire humaniste” (p. 123) : “Christianity is based on Judaism; let us see then if Judaism is the work of God.” Everything that Hertzberg quotes was written in the context of this battle.
Yet even then, Hertzberg doesn’t find much to quote! And what he does quote leaves anyone who’s actually read these texts flabbergasted. The most vicious sounding quote, repeated by Himmelfarb and others, is in a dialogue of Cicero which, as several Jewish sites will tell you, reflects things Cicero actually said. And as always in this kind of cherry-picking, Hertzberg omits the previous line which explains the quote: “Every nation has committed crimes, but the Jews are the only ones who boast of it.” For anyone halfway objective, this obviously refers to the endless recitation of massacres in the Old Testament, especially considering the citation of Lucretius a few paragraphs above it: “To such heights of evil has religion been able to drive men.” The rest of the text, (just like the also cited Il faut prendre un parti - We Must Take Sides, available on wikisource) is a passionate argument against atheism.
But can anyone in their right mind cite Voltaire’s “Treatise on Tolerance” as “proof” he was an antisemite?? Voltaire’s two chapters on the Jews in the Treatise are a stunningly well-documented DEFENSE of the Jews against all the charges leveled at them over the ages! Did Hertzberg somehow miss all those astonishing footnotes? For anyone interested in the truth of these ridiculous claims, they are included in the Penguin Classics and Cambridge translations in English, as well as in all serious French editions.
He also routinely dismisses Voltaire’s scathing attacks on antisemitism, such as “The Sermon of Rabbi Akib”, or his summary of excellent points made by Ibn Ezra, Spinoza, or Orobio in “Letters on Rabelais and other Authors Accused of Writing Against the Christian Religion”. Did Hertzberg rely on the fact that these texts were not available in English when his book came out? They were available in the 18th century; and have been re-translated since in “Voltaire’s Revolution: Writings from His Campaign to Free Laws from Religion” - completely nullifying his theory. Indeed, antisemites can be found in all ages, but cherry-picking citations from people with agendas cannot be blamed on the original authors. Honest and intelligent people read the original text in full before squawking “opinions” about them.
His relentless campaign of framing Voltaire for “secular antisemitism”, and worse, the Nazis, is built on a house of cards knocked down by a feather in the hands of anyone who’s actually read the few texts he cites as proof, clearly counting on the fact that few indeed have read them.
But what is the point of this odd conceit? Hertzberg does not seem particularly put out with Spinoza whom he credits with “shocking criticism of the Bible” which “forced serious debate about the trustworthiness of the Bible as history and the importance of the ancient Jews” (p. 29-30) - even though he immediately admits this was not new, and gives several earlier examples right after saying so. How does this differ from anything he reviles Voltaire for? Is it because Spinoza was Jewish (albeit excommunicated) and pride in the most famous Jewish philosopher overrides the fact? That Spinoza was The Enlightenment’s “principal arsenal” for attacks on the Bible, however, is contradicted by himself, not to mention Voltaire’s Corpus Marginalia compiled off the 6,000 books still extant of his library. But if it were true, his theory would make even less sense!
Perhaps the clue lies in another easily overlooked admission in a footnote, p. 150, where he says that Pinto considered Spinoza a dangerous atheist (like Voltaire, Herztberg admits), but didn’t mention him because “his work was known only to a few”. True, and again in flagrant contradiction of earlier statements. But this, of course, is very far from the case with Voltaire, which he growls about repeatedly. However, Voltaire did, at least, devote an essay to Spinoza in his “Letters on Rabelais..” in which he highly praised Spinoza’s “Theological Political Treatise” and demolished all the nasty things invented about Spinoza’s character, which Hertzberg doesn’t do.
The endless details of dishonesty in this book would require another book. For just a few more examples, he frequently mentions support given the Jews by the Duke of Richelieu, Turgot and others, without ever mentioning the fact that they were Voltaire’s fans and collaborators. On p. 186, he credits Berr Isaac Berr’s French translation of Weisel, 1782, for “great eloquence” in saying “the Jews had only one crime, that of being born of Jewish parents and having followed their ancient faith” – a line straight out of Voltaire’s “Sermon of Rabbi Akib” of 1760.
Then, hiding behind the equally dishonest attack of an 18th century Catholic priest posing as “six Jews”, he accuses Voltaire of outrageously lying about 23,000 Jews slaughtered for worshiping the Golden Calf – when there were “only” 3,000 slaughtered. Problem is, Abbé Guénée doesn’t say this, nor would he, since the 18th century Bibles DID say 23,000. Voltaire says he’s citing The Vulgate Bible, and my copy from 1954 still says 23,000. For some reason, the number was reduced by 20,000 in many mid-20th translations, it seems – which neither Voltaire nor Guénée could have foreseen. But really? A rabbi writing in the 1960s didn’t know this? He himself mentions other “revisions” made or considered by Talmudists. And he constantly cites hate-mongering clergymen as saying there was ‘no God or king’ for the philosophes. (pgs 253-5 and elsewhere). Voltaire is constantly implied when not named directly, but show me a single line where Voltaire advocates overthrowing kings.
As Otis Fellows & Norman Torrey point out in their Age of Enlightenment anthology, awareness had been building since Columbus & the printing press in the late 1400s, then all throughout the Age of Discovery with missionary and explorer reports from China, Japan, Persia, India, etc., not to mention the scientific discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, that human history had not begun with a Jewish tribe in Palestine. Mr. Hertzberg and followers appear still unreconciled to that fact. Voltaire simply corralled those facts and brought them home with a powerful writing talent never seen before, and rarely since. This is, and always has been, Voltaire’s “sin” in the eyes of orthodox preachers. So-called antisemitism is just dishonest artificial bait used in the hope of making people who’ve never read Voltaire hate him - in the hope they’ll never read him!
But it is his opening and closing salvos that are endlessly repeated by the religious far-right today of every persuasion. Google ‘Voltaire antisemite”, and Hertzberg usually pops up first - writing letters to the New York Times, invading Wikipedia - and those quoting him.
What? The man who fought an entire lifetime for, and won, religious tolerance in the laws was an antisemite? That’s sure to get a rise – and add greatly to the anti-Enlightenment arsenal - which it has for years, despite the fact that far more qualified Jewish Enlightenment historians, such as Peter Gay, Bertram Schwarzbach, Alan Charles Kors and others – who don’t happen to be rabbis – disagree with him. They all saw the obvious quite clearly: that Voltaire’s supposed “attacks” on the Jews were aimed at the Bible – and at well over ten centuries of Christian persecutions. Charles Porset cites Voltaire’s aim in in his own words in “Voltaire humaniste” (p. 123) : “Christianity is based on Judaism; let us see then if Judaism is the work of God.” Everything that Hertzberg quotes was written in the context of this battle.
Yet even then, Hertzberg doesn’t find much to quote! And what he does quote leaves anyone who’s actually read these texts flabbergasted. The most vicious sounding quote, repeated by Himmelfarb and others, is in a dialogue of Cicero which, as several Jewish sites will tell you, reflects things Cicero actually said. And as always in this kind of cherry-picking, Hertzberg omits the previous line which explains the quote: “Every nation has committed crimes, but the Jews are the only ones who boast of it.” For anyone halfway objective, this obviously refers to the endless recitation of massacres in the Old Testament, especially considering the citation of Lucretius a few paragraphs above it: “To such heights of evil has religion been able to drive men.” The rest of the text, (just like the also cited Il faut prendre un parti - We Must Take Sides, available on wikisource) is a passionate argument against atheism.
But can anyone in their right mind cite Voltaire’s “Treatise on Tolerance” as “proof” he was an antisemite?? Voltaire’s two chapters on the Jews in the Treatise are a stunningly well-documented DEFENSE of the Jews against all the charges leveled at them over the ages! Did Hertzberg somehow miss all those astonishing footnotes? For anyone interested in the truth of these ridiculous claims, they are included in the Penguin Classics and Cambridge translations in English, as well as in all serious French editions.
He also routinely dismisses Voltaire’s scathing attacks on antisemitism, such as “The Sermon of Rabbi Akib”, or his summary of excellent points made by Ibn Ezra, Spinoza, or Orobio in “Letters on Rabelais and other Authors Accused of Writing Against the Christian Religion”. Did Hertzberg rely on the fact that these texts were not available in English when his book came out? They were available in the 18th century; and have been re-translated since in “Voltaire’s Revolution: Writings from His Campaign to Free Laws from Religion” - completely nullifying his theory. Indeed, antisemites can be found in all ages, but cherry-picking citations from people with agendas cannot be blamed on the original authors. Honest and intelligent people read the original text in full before squawking “opinions” about them.
His relentless campaign of framing Voltaire for “secular antisemitism”, and worse, the Nazis, is built on a house of cards knocked down by a feather in the hands of anyone who’s actually read the few texts he cites as proof, clearly counting on the fact that few indeed have read them.
But what is the point of this odd conceit? Hertzberg does not seem particularly put out with Spinoza whom he credits with “shocking criticism of the Bible” which “forced serious debate about the trustworthiness of the Bible as history and the importance of the ancient Jews” (p. 29-30) - even though he immediately admits this was not new, and gives several earlier examples right after saying so. How does this differ from anything he reviles Voltaire for? Is it because Spinoza was Jewish (albeit excommunicated) and pride in the most famous Jewish philosopher overrides the fact? That Spinoza was The Enlightenment’s “principal arsenal” for attacks on the Bible, however, is contradicted by himself, not to mention Voltaire’s Corpus Marginalia compiled off the 6,000 books still extant of his library. But if it were true, his theory would make even less sense!
Perhaps the clue lies in another easily overlooked admission in a footnote, p. 150, where he says that Pinto considered Spinoza a dangerous atheist (like Voltaire, Herztberg admits), but didn’t mention him because “his work was known only to a few”. True, and again in flagrant contradiction of earlier statements. But this, of course, is very far from the case with Voltaire, which he growls about repeatedly. However, Voltaire did, at least, devote an essay to Spinoza in his “Letters on Rabelais..” in which he highly praised Spinoza’s “Theological Political Treatise” and demolished all the nasty things invented about Spinoza’s character, which Hertzberg doesn’t do.
The endless details of dishonesty in this book would require another book. For just a few more examples, he frequently mentions support given the Jews by the Duke of Richelieu, Turgot and others, without ever mentioning the fact that they were Voltaire’s fans and collaborators. On p. 186, he credits Berr Isaac Berr’s French translation of Weisel, 1782, for “great eloquence” in saying “the Jews had only one crime, that of being born of Jewish parents and having followed their ancient faith” – a line straight out of Voltaire’s “Sermon of Rabbi Akib” of 1760.
Then, hiding behind the equally dishonest attack of an 18th century Catholic priest posing as “six Jews”, he accuses Voltaire of outrageously lying about 23,000 Jews slaughtered for worshiping the Golden Calf – when there were “only” 3,000 slaughtered. Problem is, Abbé Guénée doesn’t say this, nor would he, since the 18th century Bibles DID say 23,000. Voltaire says he’s citing The Vulgate Bible, and my copy from 1954 still says 23,000. For some reason, the number was reduced by 20,000 in many mid-20th translations, it seems – which neither Voltaire nor Guénée could have foreseen. But really? A rabbi writing in the 1960s didn’t know this? He himself mentions other “revisions” made or considered by Talmudists. And he constantly cites hate-mongering clergymen as saying there was ‘no God or king’ for the philosophes. (pgs 253-5 and elsewhere). Voltaire is constantly implied when not named directly, but show me a single line where Voltaire advocates overthrowing kings.
As Otis Fellows & Norman Torrey point out in their Age of Enlightenment anthology, awareness had been building since Columbus & the printing press in the late 1400s, then all throughout the Age of Discovery with missionary and explorer reports from China, Japan, Persia, India, etc., not to mention the scientific discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, that human history had not begun with a Jewish tribe in Palestine. Mr. Hertzberg and followers appear still unreconciled to that fact. Voltaire simply corralled those facts and brought them home with a powerful writing talent never seen before, and rarely since. This is, and always has been, Voltaire’s “sin” in the eyes of orthodox preachers. So-called antisemitism is just dishonest artificial bait used in the hope of making people who’ve never read Voltaire hate him - in the hope they’ll never read him!
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September 12, 2015This work focuses on the development of modern, secular antisemitism (i.e., antisemitism not based in religious beliefs), examining how ostensibly humanist Enlightenment thinkers could justify the continued exclusion of a group. Fascinating reading, not only for its investigation of Jewish history, but also for examining an aspect of the Enlightenment that doesn't often get to the general public.
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March 25, 2024"It has been well known the Voltaire personally disliked Jews quite intensely, and this has been explained as an accidental and secondary phenomenon. [ Due to 1. personal unfortunate experiences, 2. his early Christian education and 3. his attempt to dethrone Christianity.]
" A rereading of all the evidence , however, proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that Voltaire was consistently understood on all sides to be the enemy of the Jews of the present as well as those of the past. His writings were the great arsenal of anti-Jewish arguments for those enemies of the Jews who wanted to sound contemporary. The 'enlightened' friends of the Jews invariably quoted from Montesquieu and did battle with Voltaire.
Voltaire's own view cannot be explained or rather explained away in such a fashion as to defend a view of the Enlightenment as ultimately completely tolerant. An analysis of everything that Voltaire wrote about Jews throughout his life established the proposition that he is the major link between the classic paganism and the modern age. In his favorite pose of Cicero reborn he ruled the Jew to be outside society and to be hopelessly alien even to the future age of enlightened men.
These ambivalences within the Enlightenment have had large consequences. Jacobin anti-Semites used Voltaire's rhetoric and that of the of physiocrats. in the early decades of the nineteenth century some of the greatest figures of European Socialism, men like Proudhon and Fourier and even Karl Marx, found reason for doubling or denying entirely that the Jews could be readily included in their socialist vision. Most such arguments derived quite consciously from the same sources. The Christian idea that the religion of the Jews and their rejection of Christianity made them an alien element was still strong in Europe. It had now been reinforced by the pagan cultural argument that the Jews by the very nature of their own culture and even by their biological inheritance an unassimilable element. It had become possible for religious and anti-religious factions to agree that the emancipation of the Jews could not be realized and that it was dangerous for the European majority." p. 10-11
Louis XIV intended to expel all Jews, but since the expulsion of 1384 in the 1600's they had all been coming across the Pyrenees an also across the Eastern border.
"Before Colbert, all the Jews might still have been expelled from France; after him this was seldom proposed even by their enemies. Colbert had secularized the question of the Jews in French statesmanship. " p. 28
Colbert was the "greatest of the ministers of Louis XIV." Sometimes he spoke of the scandal to religion of allowing any freedom to the Jews, but the idea that dominated his outlook was that they were to be tolerated insofar as they contributed to the economic life of France. The Christian theme was always clearly the result of his bowing to Lous XIV; the more secularist was just as clearly his own for it was a natural outgrowth of the mercantilist conception of statecraft for which he is most famous." p. 23
Werner Sombart has proposed that the Jews founded capitalism after the Expulsion from Spain in 1492 with their ability in commerce and liquid capital. However a complete investigation of the questions reveals that: "the role of the Jews in creating the new European economy was everywhere of more significance than their numbers, but it was nowhere predominant. The Jews did not create the more mobile economy that was coming into being in Europe after the seventeenth century, they were, rather, the beneficiaries of the new trends. ...Both their enemies and their friends tended vastly to exaggerate the largeness of the Jews' role in international trade in cities such as Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Bordeaux." p. 79
The Physiocrat school was founded by Quesnay and Mirabeau. They proposed taxation of land which they viewed as the source of wealth.. Commercial and industrial mercantilism was frowned upon. Isaac de Pinto defended commerce (and thereby the Jews) against the Physiocrat theories by arguing that "credit and circulation as the basic forms of economic endeavor against what he termed as the 'frenzy of the soil.' " p. 74
Privately Montesquieu at his most Christian moments was critical of the Jews, "but this private opinion was unknown in the eighteenth century. His public utterance were the ones that influenced history and he was understood from them to favor tolerance of the Jews.
Some enlightenment figures thought the the "Karaites, the Jewish sect who rejected the Talmud, were the most reasonable." p. 279
" A rereading of all the evidence , however, proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that Voltaire was consistently understood on all sides to be the enemy of the Jews of the present as well as those of the past. His writings were the great arsenal of anti-Jewish arguments for those enemies of the Jews who wanted to sound contemporary. The 'enlightened' friends of the Jews invariably quoted from Montesquieu and did battle with Voltaire.
Voltaire's own view cannot be explained or rather explained away in such a fashion as to defend a view of the Enlightenment as ultimately completely tolerant. An analysis of everything that Voltaire wrote about Jews throughout his life established the proposition that he is the major link between the classic paganism and the modern age. In his favorite pose of Cicero reborn he ruled the Jew to be outside society and to be hopelessly alien even to the future age of enlightened men.
These ambivalences within the Enlightenment have had large consequences. Jacobin anti-Semites used Voltaire's rhetoric and that of the of physiocrats. in the early decades of the nineteenth century some of the greatest figures of European Socialism, men like Proudhon and Fourier and even Karl Marx, found reason for doubling or denying entirely that the Jews could be readily included in their socialist vision. Most such arguments derived quite consciously from the same sources. The Christian idea that the religion of the Jews and their rejection of Christianity made them an alien element was still strong in Europe. It had now been reinforced by the pagan cultural argument that the Jews by the very nature of their own culture and even by their biological inheritance an unassimilable element. It had become possible for religious and anti-religious factions to agree that the emancipation of the Jews could not be realized and that it was dangerous for the European majority." p. 10-11
Louis XIV intended to expel all Jews, but since the expulsion of 1384 in the 1600's they had all been coming across the Pyrenees an also across the Eastern border.
"Before Colbert, all the Jews might still have been expelled from France; after him this was seldom proposed even by their enemies. Colbert had secularized the question of the Jews in French statesmanship. " p. 28
Colbert was the "greatest of the ministers of Louis XIV." Sometimes he spoke of the scandal to religion of allowing any freedom to the Jews, but the idea that dominated his outlook was that they were to be tolerated insofar as they contributed to the economic life of France. The Christian theme was always clearly the result of his bowing to Lous XIV; the more secularist was just as clearly his own for it was a natural outgrowth of the mercantilist conception of statecraft for which he is most famous." p. 23
Werner Sombart has proposed that the Jews founded capitalism after the Expulsion from Spain in 1492 with their ability in commerce and liquid capital. However a complete investigation of the questions reveals that: "the role of the Jews in creating the new European economy was everywhere of more significance than their numbers, but it was nowhere predominant. The Jews did not create the more mobile economy that was coming into being in Europe after the seventeenth century, they were, rather, the beneficiaries of the new trends. ...Both their enemies and their friends tended vastly to exaggerate the largeness of the Jews' role in international trade in cities such as Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Bordeaux." p. 79
The Physiocrat school was founded by Quesnay and Mirabeau. They proposed taxation of land which they viewed as the source of wealth.. Commercial and industrial mercantilism was frowned upon. Isaac de Pinto defended commerce (and thereby the Jews) against the Physiocrat theories by arguing that "credit and circulation as the basic forms of economic endeavor against what he termed as the 'frenzy of the soil.' " p. 74
Privately Montesquieu at his most Christian moments was critical of the Jews, "but this private opinion was unknown in the eighteenth century. His public utterance were the ones that influenced history and he was understood from them to favor tolerance of the Jews.
Some enlightenment figures thought the the "Karaites, the Jewish sect who rejected the Talmud, were the most reasonable." p. 279
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