if I remove my belongings from the lower to the upper floor for safety? ...
Christianity ... is built upon Judaism, and if the latter falls, it must necessarily
collapse with it into one heap of ruins.”
From this ideological point of departure, Mendelssohn forged the haskalah
program, whose platform consisted of educational, cultural, and political
reforms. Education reforms entailed a trilayered curriculum with a Jewish
component that included the Bible, Jewish philosophy, Hebrew grammar,
and Hebrew poetry in addition to rabbinic texts; a secular component that
included practical subjects such as the vernacular language, mathematics, and
civics; and the study of an artisanal trade. Cultural reforms meant, in addition
to embracing the vernacular language as the lingua franca, adopting the
dress, manners, and mores of mainstream society. As to political reforms,
Mendelssohn urged the state to remove all restrictions on Jews. In effect, he
was proposing that the heretofore exceptional behavior, education, and legal
status of the court Jews be extended and applied to all Jews.
Mendelssohn’s program of reforms, and, in general, the matter of the con-
dition of Jews in central Europe, remained largely a theoretical question until
the ascension of Joseph II as Habsburg monarch in 1780. Unlike his abso-
lutist mother Maria Theresa, Joseph II was an enlightened absolutist. He
believed that making Jews happier subjects would make them more produc-
tive subjects.
To this end, in 1782 Joseph II issued his edict of toleration. In many ways,
this edict translated Mendelssohn’s and Dohm’s theoretical arguments about
Jews into state policy. The edict, a mixture of old and novel regulation, had six
essential components and was a mixed blessing for Habsburg Jews. The
emperor allowed Jews to engage in crafts, but not to become master craftsmen.
He erected a network of state-sponsored dual-curriculum Jewish schools called
Normalschulen, while pressuring Jews to abandon Hebrew and Yiddish in favor
of German. He allowed Jews to engage in agriculture, but not to own land. He
allowed Jews to reside in royal free cities, and required them to serve in the
military. And he curtailed Jewish communal authority by outlawing the herem.
Jews responded to this edict with a mixture of optimism and suspicion. They
looked to Ezekiel Landau of Prague, the unofficial chief rabbi of the Habsburg
Monarchy, for guidance. Landau grudgingly endorsed the reforms.
Despite rabbinic sanction, the creation of the Normalschulenset in motion a
controversy over Jewish education. One of the instructors in the Prague
Normalschul, Naftali Herz Weisl (1725–1805), published a treatise on Jewish
education called Divrei shalom ve-emet(Words of Peace and Truth) in which he
argued that general knowledge was more foundational than Jewish learning.
In response, Landau and other rabbis severely scolded him. Landau’s objection
in particular was revealing. He supported the establishment of the
Normalschulen, partly because the emperor had ordered it, but also because
Joseph II had placed Jewish learning ahead of secular study. Thus, Landau and
other traditionalists differentiated between Weisl and the Normalschul, the
150 The age of enlightenment and emancipation, 1750–1880