History of the Jews

by Paul Johnson

Quite suddenly, around the year 1800, this ancient and highly efficient social machine for the production of intellectuals began to shift its output. Instead of pouring all its products into the closed circuit of rabbinical studies, where they remained completely isolated from general society, it unleashed a significant and ever-growing proportion of them into secular life. This was an event of shattering importance in world history. Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) was the archetype of the new phenomenon. He was born in Düsseldorf of a mercantile family. Fifty years before he would have become, without question, a rabbi and talmudic scholar, no doubt of distinction. Instead he was a product of the revolutionary whirlwind. By the age of sixteen, without leaving his place of birth, he had undergone six changes of nationality. His family was half-emancipated. His mother, Piera van Geldern, had secular ambitions for him. When Napoleon’s armies advanced, she saw her son as a courtier, a marshal, a politician or governor; when the French retreated, he was transformed into a millionaire businessman.