The discrepancy between legal and social emancipation is equally crucial in
understanding the conditions for Jews in England itself, which improved grad-
ually along with the broader contours of English society and politics. In 1753,
Parliament passed the Jew Bill, named for the legal equality it granted to all
English Jews, but repealed it a year later. Despite the apparent legal setback and
their official status as second-class subjects, by 1750 English Jews had access to
virtually all facets of English society – the lone exceptions being the right to
earn a degree from Oxford or Cambridge and to run for Parliament.
The same factors that facilitated Jewish settlement in the English colonies
were evident by the brief debacle over Jewish settlement in New Amsterdam
(now New York) in 1654 and 1655. When the first Jews arrived in New
Amsterdam in 1654 from Recife, following the Portuguese reconquest of
Brazil, their settlement was challenged by Peter Stuyvesant, the governor of
New Amsterdam. Stuyvesant asked the Dutch government and the Dutch
West India Company to authorize his decision to “require them in a friendly
way to depart.”
Stuyvesant’s objections combined economic arguments with older ele-
ments of religious disdain. He claimed that “their present indigence might
become a charge during the coming winter” and asked that “such hateful ene-
mies and blasphemers of the name of Christ be not allowed to further infect
and trouble this new colony.” Following protests from leading Dutch Jews,
the Dutch West India Company, recognizing “the considerable loss sustained
by [the Jewish] nation in the taking of Brazil, as also because of the large
amount of capital they have invested in the shares of this company;” denied
Stuyvesant’s request, with one important caveat, namely that “the poor
among them shall not become a burden to the company or the community,
but be supported by their own nation.” Both the affirmation of Jewish resi-
dence and the requirement of supporting their own poor reflected the
overriding importance of economics over religious considerations.
The social emancipation of Jews in Western Europe and the New World
went hand in hand with their rapid acculturation. By the mid-eighteenth
century, these Jews had adopted the vernacular language, dress, manners, and
general mores of their home country. In general, acculturating Jews emulated
the behavior patterns of non-Jews of comparable economic and social status,
with affluent Jews taking on the characteristics of the gentry, and rank-and-
file Jews the characteristics of the lower classes.
In England, Bordeaux, and the New World, in particular, this process was
aided by the limited authority of the Jewish community, whose jurisdiction
did not extend beyond religious matters. The truncation of Jewish communal
life to ceremonial and eleemosynary needs reflected the broader compartmen-
talization of life, which facilitated the emergence of a religiously neutral
society in which Jews and non-Jews could interact more freely. By the mid-
eighteenth century, western European Jews had entered mainstream society
144 The age of enlightenment and emancipation, 1750–1880