dogma, downplayed the differences between Jews and Christians in favor of
the commonalities between them. Simply put, for many there seemed to be
no logical reason to exclude a Rothschild from mainstream society.
This was furthered by the discovery of the non-European world and the
recognition that Jews looked less different than had conventionally been
assumed. The notion of the perfectibility of humankind suggested that
human frailty could be overcome without acceptance of the divinity of Christ
or any other religious doctrine. The notion of a universal brotherhood of man
belied the conventional notion that Jews were an inherently foreign and unas-
similable element.
More specifically, the Enlightenment called into question the conventional
assumption that the Jews themselves were responsible for their ostracism
from mainstream society and for the general antipathy with which most non-
Jews regarded them. It had hitherto been assumed that the alienation of Jews
had resulted from a combination of divine retribution for rejecting Christ,
hostility from the economic exploitation of Christians by Jewish usurers, and
the social barriers between Jews and non-Jews that Judaism itself had
imposed on Jews: dietary restrictions, a different day of Sabbath rest, a differ-
ent cycle of holidays, and taboos on intermarriage.
The solution to this situation was defined differently by enlightened thinkers
in France and Germany respectively, owing to a crucial difference between the
French Enlightenment and the German Enlightenment or Aufklarung. The for-
mer regarded religion itself as the source of humanity’s shortcomings, and Jews’
shortcomings in particular. The German Enlightenment regarded not religion
per se, but religious coercion as the source of the problem. These disparate views
of religion were reflected in different views of Jews and the ways to improve the
condition of Jews.
The French philosopheFrançois-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire, regarded
Judaism’s lack of a rational or philosophical foundation as the root cause of
contemptible Jewish behavior. In response, French Jews such as Isaac de Pinto
defended Judaism by conceding that while some Jews are contemptible, there
are also Christians who are no less contemptible; and there are other Jews,
like himself, who had overcome the ostensible shortcomings of Judaism and
embraced French culture. In response, Voltaire pointed to the very existence
of contemptible Jews as evidence of how destructive Judaism is. In doing so,
Voltaire distinguished Jews from Judaism, criticizing the latter while recog-
nizing the potential of the former. His scathing critique of Judaism, couched
in the scientific terminology of the Enlightenment, led some historians to
regard him as the first modern anti-Semite. In actuality, his willingness to
criticize Judaism but not Jews makes this assertion dubious.
For German enlightened thinkers, the task of Judenverbesserung, the civic
amelioration of the Jews, meant recognizing that the situation of the Jews
was not exclusively their own fault, as Christian dogma claimed, but the
combined result of Jewish and Christian attitudes and behavior. This shift in
146 The age of enlightenment and emancipation, 1750–1880