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David Friedländer alone proved an exception to this rule. Neither Jewish antiquity, nor Hebrew poetry, nor family ties, had power to keep him loyal to his banner, even with half-hearted devotion. The tearing asunder of all family connections, the casting aside of the duties of the religious brotherhood, did indeed oppress him. Nevertheless, he proceeded to sever himself from the Jewish community and to desert to the hostile camp. He had striven to obtain for himself and his whole family an exceptional naturalization with all its rights and duties, but had not succeeded. This pained him, and instead of hiding his annoyance in the pride of ancestry and martyrdom, instead of working on behalf of his co-religionists so as to surpass the haughty Christians, he coveted the honor of joining them. Friedländer, however, did not desire to effect this desertion alone or absolutely. He therefore, together with other fathers of families similarly disposed, in a cowardly manner directed a letter, without mentioning either himself or others by name, to the chief consistorial councilor Teller, who was on friendly terms with Jews. This letter expressed their desire for conversion and baptism, under the condition that they might be excused from believing in Jesus, and from participating in the rites of the church, or that at least they might be allowed to explain Christian dogmas in their own manner – a suggestion equally silly and dishonorable. Friedländer could not deny that, among the Jews, "virtue was general, benevolence inherent, parental and filial love, and the sanctity of marriage deeply rooted, self-sacrifice for the sake of others frequent; and that, on the other hand, gross crimes – murder, robbery, and outrage – were rare." But this bright side of their servile state seemed to him only a secondary matter. Therefore, in this foolish letter, he libeled his people and its past, called the Talmud (that mental tonic) mysticism, spoke in illogical confusion now of the harmful character, now of the utility of the ritual laws of Judaism, and sketched the development of Jewish history in a way not to be excelled for perversity.

Teller disposed of the Jewish fathers who craved a Christianity without Jesus politely, but decisively, as they deserved. They might remain what they were, for Christianity had no desire for such infidel believers. Friedländer had met with an ignominious experience; he remained a Jew, but his children pressed forward to be baptized without conditions or qualifications. His letter however aroused more attention than it deserved.

If the German Jews, especially those of Berlin, through their intercourse with Christian society, and their interest in literature, gained in external conduct, in forms of politeness, and social manners – advantages not to be underrated – they lost something for which there was no compensation. The chastity of Jewish women and maidens during their isolation had been of inviolable sanctity; the happiness of family life rested upon this precious basis. Jewish women were seldom married for love – the Ghetto was not the place for the dallyings of love – but after marriage duty induced love. This sanctuary, the pride of Israel, which filled earnest Christians with admiration, and led them highly to esteem the Jews, became dishonored by their association with Christians of the corrupt higher ranks.

If the enemies of the Jews had designed to break the power of Israel, they could have discovered no more effectual means than infecting Jewish women with moral depravity, a plan more efficacious than that employed by the Midianites, who weakened the men by immorality. The salon of the beautiful Henrietta Herz became a sort of Midianite tent. Here a number of young Jewish women assembled, whose husbands were kept away by their business. The most prominent male member of this circle was Frederick von Gentz, the embodiment of selfishness, licentiousness, vice, and depravity, whose chief occupation was the betrayal of women. Henrietta Herz was the first to be confused and led astray by homage to her beauty. It was the time when German romanticism, the product of Goethe's muse, began to act upon the minds of men, urging them to translate lyrical emotions into reality, and transfigure life poetically. This romantic tendency resulted in fostering sentimentality and in infamous marriages which were contracted and dissolved at pleasure. A so-called Band of Virtue (Tugend-Bund) was formed, of which Henrietta Herz, two daughters of Mendelssohn, and other Jewesses, together with Christian profligates, were members. The Jewish women felt themselves exalted and honored by their close intimacy with Christians of rank; they did not see the fanged serpent beneath the flowers. With William von Humboldt, an ardent youth, afterwards a Prussian minister, Henrietta secretly maintained an amatory correspondence behind her husband's back.

When William von Humboldt married, and forgot Henrietta, who had been misled by her vanity, she entered into an ambiguous relation with Schleiermacher, the modern apostle of the new Christianity. Their conspicuous intimacy was mocked at by acquaintances, even more than by strangers. Both parties denied somewhat too anxiously the criminality of their intimate intercourse. Whether true or not, it was disgrace enough that evil tongues should even suspect the honor of a Jewish matron of good family.

Schleiermacher's companion was Frederick Schlegel, who stormed heaven with childish strength, – a chameleon in sentiments and views, enthusiastic now for the republic, now for monarchical despotism, who conjured up the specters and evil spirits of the Middle Ages. Introduced into the salon of Herz, he became the bosom friend of Schleiermacher, and at once resolved to seduce Dorothea Mendelssohn. Her father had died with the knowledge that she was joined in happy wedlock to the banker Simon Veit Witzenhausen. Her husband surrounded her with marks of attention and love. Two children were the issue of this marriage. Nevertheless, she allowed herself to be led into faithlessness by the treacherous voice of the romantic Schlegel. It was the fashion in this society to complain about being misunderstood and the discord of souls. The immoral teachings of Goethe's elective affinities had already taken root in Jewish families. The thought of parting from her husband and children did not restrain Dorothea from going astray, and Henrietta Herz acted as go-between. Dorothea therefore left her husband, and lived with Schlegel, at first in unlawful union. All the world was astounded at this immorality, which dragged Mendelssohn's honorable name in the mud. Doctor Herz forbade his wife to hold intercourse with this depraved woman. But she herself was at heart an adulteress, and informed her husband that she would not forsake her friend. Schleiermacher, the preacher, also took but little offense at this dissolute conduct. Dorothea followed her romantic betrayer from one folly to another, was baptized as a Protestant, and finally, together with him, became converted to Catholicism. It was a lamentable sight when Mendelssohn's daughter kissed the toe of the pope. The younger sister, Henrietta Mendelssohn, was not handsome enough to enthrall the libertines of the salon. It suffices to indicate her bent of mind to say that she also went over to Catholicism. The consequence of this internal corruption was to render the participators out of sorts with life.

Rachel Levin, another high-spirited woman, was too clever to take part in the frivolity of the Band of Virtue. She desired to pursue her own way. But her wisdom and clear mind did not secure her against the contamination of immorality. In one respect she was superior to her sinful Jewish sisters; she was truthful, and wore no mask. When Rachel first made the acquaintance of the heroic but dissolute Prince Louis Ferdinand, she undertook to teach him "garret-truths"; but she rather learned from him the follies of the palace. Herself unmarried, she consented to become the intermediary between him and the abandoned Pauline Wiesel. Rachel Levin, or, as she was also called, Rachel Robert, in whose veins flowed Talmudic blood, which endowed her with a bright and active mind, and enabled her to penetrate to the very foundation of things, and pursue the soul and its varying instincts in their subtlest manifestations, ignored her own origin. She desired to distinguish the breath of God in the mutations of history, yet had no appreciation of the greatness of her race. She despised it, considering it the greatest shame and her worst misfortune to have been born a Jewess. Only in the hour of death did a faint suspicion of the great importance of Judaism and the Jews cross her mind.

"With exalted delight I meditate upon my origin and the web of history, through which the oldest reminiscences of the human race are united with present affairs, despite distance of time and space. I, a fugitive from Egypt, am here, and find assistance. What all my life I considered my greatest disgrace, I now would not give up for any price."

But even in that hour her mind did not see clearly, her thoughts were disordered, and she exhausted herself in fantastic dreams.

These talented but sinful Jewish women did Judaism a service by becoming Christians. Mendelssohn's daughters and Rachel were converted publicly, while Henrietta Herz, who had more regard for appearances, received baptism in a small town to avoid hurting her Jewish friends, and took this step only after her mother's death.

Schleiermacher again inoculated the cultivated classes in Germany with a peculiar, scarcely definable, antipathy to Judaism. He was in no way a Jew-baiter, in the usual sense of the term, and indignantly protested against being called so; but his mind was agitated with a vague, disagreeable feeling towards the Jews, from which he could not escape. When Friedländer's foolish letter on the admission of certain families into Christianity divested of the dogma of the Trinity, was published, Schleiermacher expressed himself adverse to their admission. The state might concede to the Jews the rights of citizenship, but should tolerate them only as a special sect, inasmuch as they would not surrender their hope in the Messiah. It was quite in accordance with his romantic neo-Christianity, that from ignorance and confusion he depicted Judaism as a mummy "around which its sons sit moaning and weeping." He would not even acknowledge Judaism as the forerunner of Christianity. "I detest this sort of historical relationship in religion." Hitherto, Christendom had been conscious of a certain connection with Judaism, and the Old Testament, the Bible, had been the common ground upon which the insolent daughter and the enslaved mother met, and for the moment forgot their hatred. To this connection, or its recognition, the Jews owed their salvation in the sad days of excess of Christian faith, or they would have been altogether annihilated in Europe. The papacy protected them, "because the Saviour had come from their midst." This bond Schleiermacher destroyed at a breath. To have anything in common with the Jews enraged him. But were not Jesus, the Apostles, and the early Fathers of the Church, Jews? Schleiermacher would willingly have denied this fact, if he could possibly have done it; but as this was impracticable, he enshrouded it in mystery.

"What? we are to believe that Jesus was only a Jewish Rabbi, with philanthropic sentiments, and some Socratic morality; with certain miracles, or at least what some consider as such, and with the talent of composing neat riddles and parables – some follies will even then have to be forgiven him, according to the first three Evangelists; and such a man could have established a new religion and a Church – a man who cannot be compared with Moses and Mahomet?"

This fact Schleiermacher could not tolerate; for in such case, not only Moses the prophet, but also Moses Mendelssohn, the sage of Berlin, would have been greater. Therefore Schleiermacher removed his Jesus far away from Judaism; he had only had the accident of birth in common with the Jews, but he was superhuman, and still a man, "whose consciousness of God may properly be called existence of God within him," as it is expressed in this mystic, extravagant, romantic teaching, which thus took its own chief under its protection. Schleiermacher's sermons were filled with this kind of word-juggling, to which the Berlin Jews, especially the women, listened as devoutly as their ancestors to the lying tricks of the false prophets. The school of Schleiermacher, which became the leading influence in Germany, made this intense contempt of Judaism its password and the basis of its orthodoxy.

At the same time, another romanticist, Chateaubriand, invented new, flimsy supports for Christianity, which was in ruins and almost forgotten in France. Even though he traced the origin of the arts, music, painting, architecture, eloquence, and poetry, to Christianity, he, at least, did not deny a share in these merits to Judaism, though only with the intention of claiming for Christianity the noblest features in Hebrew literature and history. "There are only two bright names and memories in history, those of the Israelites and the Pelasgians (Greeks)." When Chateaubriand desired to prove his assertion that the poetry of nature is the invention of Christianity, he cited as examples the beautiful descriptions in Job, in the Prophets, and the Psalms, to whose poetry the works of Pindar and Horace were much inferior. Chateaubriand gathered the flowers of Hebrew poetry to weave a beautiful garland for his crucified god. But he did not, like Schleiermacher, crush Judaism into the dust by denying the paternity of the child grown to be so powerful.

A new Judæophobia sprang from the neo-Christian school, which, as its originators obtained political influence, grew much stronger than that of old orthodox Christianity. It is remarkable that the twofold reaction, that of the Church, brought about by Schleiermacher, and that of the political world, which is connected with Gentz, had its rise in the Judæo-Christian salon in Berlin. But in the same year when the effeminate Schleiermacher, in his romantic delineation of himself, calumniated Judaism by describing it as a mummy, there arose a man, a hero, a giant in comparison with these wretched dwarfs, who issued a summons for the Jews to gather round his standard. He wished to conquer the Holy Land of their fathers for them, and, a second Cyrus, to rebuild their Temple. The freedom which the Berlin Jews desired to attain by the surrender of their peculiarities, and by humiliation before the Church, they now obtained through France, without paying this price and without disgraceful bargaining.

CHAPTER XI.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE EMANCIPATION OF THE JEWS

Foreshadowing of the French Revolution – Cerf Berr – Mirabeau on the Jewish Question in France – Berr Isaac Berr – The Jewish Question and the National Assembly – Equalization of Portuguese Jews – Efforts to equalize Paris Jews – Jewish Question deferred – Equalization of French Jews – Reign of Terror – Equalization of Jews of Holland – Adath Jeshurun Congregation – Spread of Emancipation – Bonaparte in Palestine – Fichte's Jew-hatred – The Poll-Tax – Grund's "Petition of Jews of Germany" – Jacobson – Breidenbach – Lefrank – Alexander I of Russia: his Attempts to improve the Condition of the Jews of Russia.

1791–1805 C. E

He who believes that Providence manifests itself in history, that sins, crimes, and follies on the whole serve to elevate mankind, finds in the French Revolution complete confirmation of this faith. Could this eventful reaction, which the whole of the civilized world gradually experienced, have happened without the long chain of revolting crimes and abominations which the nobility, the monarchy, and the Church committed? The unnatural servitude inflicted by the temporal and spiritual powers produced liberty, but nourished it with poison, so that liberty bit into its own flesh, and wounded itself. The Revolution was a judgment which in one day atoned for the sins of a thousand years, and which hurled into the dust all who, at the expense of justice and religion, had created new grades of society. A new day of the Lord had come "to humiliate all the proud and high, and to raise up the lowly." For the Jews, too, the most abject and despised people in European society, the day of redemption and liberty was to dawn after their long slavery among the nations of Europe. It is noteworthy that England and France, the two European countries which first expelled the Jews, were the first to reinstate them in the rights of humanity. What Mendelssohn had thought possible at some distant time, and what had been the devout wish of Dohm and Diez, those defenders of the Jews, was realized in France with almost magical rapidity.

However, the freedom of the French Jews did not fall into their laps like ripe fruit, in the maturing of which they had taken no trouble. They made vigorous exertions to remove the oppressive yoke from their shoulders; but in France the result of their activity was more favorable and speedy than in Germany. The most zealous energy in behalf of the liberation of the French Jews was displayed by a man, whose forgotten memory deserves to be transmitted to posterity. Herz Medelsheim or Cerf Berr (born about 1730, died 1793) was the first to exert himself by word and deed to remove the prejudices against his co-religionists, under which he himself suffered severely. He was acquainted with the Talmud, in good circumstances, warm-hearted enough to avoid the selfishness bred by prosperity, and sufficiently liberal to understand and spread the new spirit emanating from Mendelssohn. He was intimately acquainted with the Berlin sage, and undertook to disseminate the Pentateuch translation in Alsace. Owing to his position, Cerf Berr was enabled to work for the emancipation of his brethren. He furnished the French army with the necessaries of war, and therefore had to be in Strasburg, where no Jew was allowed to live. At first he was allowed in Strasburg only one winter, but having performed great services to the state, during the war and a famine under Louis XV, the permission to stay was repeatedly prolonged by the minister, and he utilized this favor to take up his permanent residence there. Cerf Berr drew other Jews to Strasburg. Secretly he purchased houses for himself and his family, and owing to his services to the state, he obtained from Louis XVI all the rights and liberties of royal subjects, especially the exceptional privilege of possessing landed property and goods. He also established factories in Strasburg, and tried to have the work done by Jews, so as to withdraw them from petty trading and deprive their accusers of all excuse for their prejudices.

Although Cerf Berr was a useful member of society, and brought profit to the town, the Germans in Strasburg viewed the settlement of Jews within their walls askance, and made every conceivable effort to expel Berr and his friends. This Philistine narrow-mindedness on the one hand, and Dohm's advocacy of the Jews on the other, as well as the partial relief afforded by Emperor Joseph, impelled Berr seriously to consider the emancipation of the Jews, or at least their admission to most of the French towns, and to endeavor to carry the measure at court. To win public opinion, he energetically spread Dohm's Apology in France. The proposals of Cerf Berr were favorably received at court. From other quarters, also, the French government was petitioned to lighten the oppressive measures, which weighed especially on the Jews of Alsace and Lorraine. The good-natured Louis XVI was inclined to remove any abuse as soon as it was placed before him in its true light. The noble Malesherbes, enthusiastic for the well-being of mankind, probably at the instigation of the king, summoned a commission of Jews, which was to make suggestions for the amelioration of the condition of their brethren in France. As a matter of course, Cerf Berr was invited. As representative of the Jews of Lorraine, his ally, Berr Isaac Berr of Nancy, was summoned, who afterwards developed the greatest zeal for the emancipation of his co-religionists. Portuguese Jews from Bordeaux and Bayonne, the two towns where they resided, were also included in the commission. Furtado, who subsequently played a part in the history of the Revolution, Gradis, Isaac Rodrigues of Bordeaux, and Lopes-Dubec, were members of this commission instituted by Malesherbes. These eminent men, all of them animated with zealous sympathy for their languishing brethren, undoubtedly insisted upon the repeal of exceptional laws, but their proposals are not known. Probably in consequence of their efforts, Louis XVI abrogated the poll-tax, which had been particularly degrading to the Jews in the German-speaking provinces of France.

More effectually than Cerf Berr and the Jewish commission, two men worked for the liberation of the Jews who in a measure had been inspired by Mendelssohn and his friends, and were the incarnation of the Revolution. They were Mirabeau and the Abbé Grégoire, no less zealous for liberty than the former. Count Mirabeau (born 1749; died 1791), who was always on the side of the oppressed against the oppressors, was first induced, by his intimacy with Mendelssohn's circle, to raise his voice of thunder on behalf of the Jews.

Filled with admiration for the grand personality of Mendelssohn, and inspired by the thought of accomplishing the deliverance of an enslaved race, Mirabeau wrote his important work "Upon Mendelssohn and the Political Reform of the Jews" (1787). Of the former he drew a brilliant picture. The Jewish sage could not have wished for a warmer, more inspired, more clear-sighted interpreter. The liking he entertained for Mendelssohn Mirabeau transferred to the Jews in general.

"May it not be said that his example, especially the outcome of his exertions for the elevation of his brethren, silences those who, with ignoble bitterness, insist that the Jews are so contemptible that they cannot be transformed into a respectable people?"

This observation was the introduction to Mirabeau's vindication of the Jews, in which he gave a correct exposition of what Dohm had adduced and what he himself had experienced. He surveyed the long, tragic history of the Jews, discovering traits very different from those found by Voltaire. Mirabeau saw the glorious martyrdom of the Jews and the disgrace of their oppressors. Their virtues he extolled freely, and attributed their failings to the ill-treatment they had received.

"If you wish the Jews to become better men and useful citizens, then banish every humiliating distinction, open to them every avenue of gaining a livelihood; instead of forbidding them agriculture, handicrafts, and the mechanical arts, encourage them to devote themselves to these occupations."

With telling wit, Mirabeau refuted the arguments of the German anti-Semites, Michaelis and the Göttingen guild of scholars, against the naturalization of the Jews. It was only necessary to place the different objections side by side to demonstrate their absurdity. On the one hand, it was maintained that, in their rivalry with Christians, the Jews would gain the upper hand, and from another point of view it was demonstrated that they would always remain inferior. "Let their opponents first agree among themselves," he remarked, "at present they refute each other." Mirabeau foresaw, with prophetic clearness, that in a free and happy condition the Jews would soon forget their Messianic king, and that therefore the justification of their permanent exclusion, derived from their belief in the Messiah, was futile.

"There is only one thing to be lamented, that so highly gifted a nation should so long have been kept in a state wherein it was impossible for its powers to develop, and every far-sighted man must rejoice in the acquisition of useful fellow-citizens from among the Jews."

On all occasions Mirabeau seized the opportunity of speaking warmly on behalf of the Jews. He was devoted to them and their biblical literature, and scattered the clouds of prejudice with which Voltaire had enveloped them. When Mirabeau undertook the defense of any matter, the victory was already half won. His suggestions for reform came at the right moment.

Among the thousand matters that occupied public opinion on the eve of the Revolution was also the Jewish question. The Jews, especially in Alsace, complained of their unendurable misery, and the Christian populace, of their intolerable impoverishment through the Jews. In Metz an anti-Jewish pamphlet had appeared, entitled "The Citizen's Cry against the Jews," which inflamed the worst passions of the people against them. The pamphlet was indeed prohibited; but what slanderous assertion, however incredible, has ever been without result? Appearances, in point of fact, were against the Jews. A young Jewish author, the first Alsatian Jew who wrote in French, published a stinging reply (1787), which justified the expectation that the Jews would no longer, as in Voltaire's time, permit such insults to pass unnoticed, but would emerge from their attitude of silent suffering. Isaiah Berr Bing (born 1759; died 1805), well-educated and eloquent, better acquainted with the history of his people than his Jewish contemporaries, including even the Berlin leaders, rebutted every charge with convincing emphasis.

Through these writings for and against the Jews, the Jewish question became prominent in France. The Royal Society of Science and Arts in Metz offered a prize for the best essay in answer to the question, "Are there means to make the Jews happier and more useful in France?" Three replies, all in favor of the Jews, were sent in – by two Christian inquirers, and one Jewish, the Abbé Grégoire, Thiery, the member of Parliament for Nancy, and Salkind Hurwitz the Pole, of Kovno (on the Niemen), who had emigrated to Paris. That of Grégoire, however, had the greatest effect. Grégoire was a simple nature, and in the midst of universal corruption had preserved a pure, childlike mind.

When these apologetic pamphlets appeared, the storm-charged clouds of the Revolution, which were to bring about destruction and reorganization in the world, had already gathered. The fetters of a double slavery, beneath which European nations groaned, that of the State and the Church, were at length, in one country at least, to be broken. As if touched by a magic wand, France turned into a glowing furnace, where all the instruments of serfdom were consumed, and out of the ashes arose the French nation, rejuvenated, destined for great things, the first apostle of the religion of freedom, which it loved with passionate devotion. Was it not natural to expect the hour to strike for the redemption of the most abased people, the Jews? Two of their most ardent defenders sat in that part of the National Assembly which, truly representative of the nation, restored inalienable rights to those so long disinherited by Church and State. These representatives were Mirabeau, one of the fathers of the Revolution, and the Abbé Grégoire, who owed his election to his essay in defense of the Jews.

At the outbreak of the Revolution, there lived in France scarcely 50,000 Jews – almost half of whom (20,000) dwelt in Alsace – under the most oppressive yoke. In Metz, the largest, "the pattern community," only 420 Jewish families were tolerated, and in the whole of Lorraine only 180, and these were not allowed to increase. In Paris, in spite of stringent prohibitions, a congregation of about 500 persons had gathered (since 1740); about as many lived in Bordeaux, the majority of them of new-Christian or Portuguese descent. There were also some communities in the papal districts of Avignon and Carpentras. In Carpentras there dwelt about 700 families (over 2,000 souls) with their own rabbinate. Those in the best condition were the Jews of Bordeaux and the daughter community of Bayonne. Among the Jews of the various provinces there was as little connection as among those in other European countries. Misfortune had separated them. Thus it happened that no concerted action was taken to obtain naturalization from the National Assembly at once, although Grégoire, the Catholic priest, true love for mankind in his heart, exhorted them to seize this favorable opportunity. They indeed boasted men of energy, filled with love for their race, and ready for self-sacrifice, men of tact, such as Cerf Berr, Furtado, Isaac Berr, and David Gradis, but at first no measures were taken. An appeal for united action may possibly have been made, but the pride of the Portuguese probably made it ineffectual. Therefore, in the first stormy months of the Revolution, nothing was undertaken for the emancipation of the Jews. The deputies in the States General or the National Assembly were sufficiently occupied without thinking of the Jews. Besides, they adhered rather closely to the programme enumerating the wishes of their electors, on which the emancipation of the Jews was not mentioned. The deputies of Alsace and Lorraine, in fact, had received instructions to attack the Jews. The assaults made upon the Jews in the German provinces, as a result of the disorders of the Revolution, first moved the victims to bring their complaints before the National Assembly. It was, perhaps, an advantage that the ripe fruit of liberty did not fall into their laps, but that they had to exert themselves energetically to obtain it; for thus liberty became the more precious to them.

The storming of the Bastille had finally torn the scepter from the deluded king, and handed it over to the people. The Revolution had tasted blood, and began to inflict punishment upon the tyrants. In many parts of the land, as if by agreement, castles were burnt down, monasteries destroyed, and the nobility maltreated or slain. The people, brought up in ignorance by the Church, and now released from the chains of slavery, knew not how to distinguish friend from foe, and rushed recklessly upon what lay nearest their stupid gaze. In Alsace the lower classes of the people at the same time made a fierce attack upon the Jews (beginning of August, 1789) – perhaps incited by secret Jew-haters – destroying their houses, plundering their property, and forcing them to flee half-naked. They, who hitherto had been humiliated and enslaved by the nobles and the clergy, were now fellow-sufferers with their tyrants. The Alsatian Jews mostly escaped to Basle, and although no Jew was allowed to live there, the fugitives were sheltered and sympathetically treated. Complaints were made to the National Assembly of the excesses after the first draught of liberty; from that Assembly all expected help, no longer from the monarchy, which had already become a mere shadow. Every deputy received detailed reports of disquieting, sometimes sanguinary, events. The ill-treated Jews of Alsace had turned to Grégoire, and he sketched (August 3) a gloomy picture of the outrages upon the Jews, and added that he, a servant of a religion which regards all men as brothers, requested the interference of the powerful arm of the Assembly on behalf of this despised and unhappy people. He also published a pamphlet, called "Proposals in Favor of the Jews," to influence public opinion. Then followed the memorable night of the Fourth of August, which covered the French nation with eternal fame, when the nobles sacrificed their privileges on the altar of freedom, and acknowledged the equality of all citizens – the birth-hour of a new order of things. In consequence of this agitation, and dreading that they might fall victims to anarchy, the Jews of the various provinces resolved to present petitions for admission into the fraternity of the French people; but again they acted singly, and to some extent preferred contradictory requests. The Jews of Bordeaux had already joined the National Guard, and one was even appointed captain. They had only one desire, that their equalization be sealed by law, and this wish their four deputies, David Gradis, Furtado, Lopes-Dubec, and Rodrigues, publicly expressed. About a hundred Parisian Jews were also enrolled in the National Guard, and rivaled the other citizens in patriotism and revolutionary spirit. They sent eleven deputies to the National Assembly, who prayed for the removal of the ignominy which covered them as Jews, and for equalization by law, saying that the example of the French people would induce all the nations of the earth to acknowledge the Jews as brothers. The community of Metz desired besides that their oppressive taxes be removed, and the debts which they had contracted in consequence of the taxes be made void. The communities of Lorraine sent a delegate to the National Assembly, Berr Isaac Berr (born 1744; died 1828), who, a man of many virtues and merits, and an admirer of Mendelssohn and Wessely, had great influence. He drew up a petition containing the special request that the authority and autonomy of the rabbis in internal affairs be established and recognized by law. The deputies for Lüneville and an adjacent community protested against this. It was a long time, however, before the Jewish question became the distinct order of the day. The National Assembly seemed to shrink from discussing the point, for fear of stirring up public opinion still more passionately in the German provinces with their obstinate prejudices and hatred of Jews.