latter falling well within the pale of acceptable Jewish behavior. This differ-
ence pointed to the fact that ideological justification of changes such as
Weisl’s treatise generally elicited more heated criticism than behavioral
changes such as the curricular changes themselves.
The impact of the Normalschulenon Habsburg Jews was far-reaching. These
schools operated in the Czech Lands until 1848, providing a dual education
for several generations of Bohemian and Moravian Jews. The schools also
became a blueprint for subsequent initiatives to reform and improve Jewish
education. During the 1850s, for example, when the Hungarian government
authorized the creation of a network of state-sponsored Jewish schools, these
schools were fashioned for the most part along the lines of the Normalschulen.
In contrast to the impact of the Normalschulenand, more generally, the
reforms of Joseph II, the immediate impact of the Berlin Haskalah was lim-
ited. Its aim of reviving and modernizing the Hebrew language was
overshadowed by increased use of the vernacular. Ha-me’assef,a Haskalah lit-
erary magazine founded on the principle of developing Hebrew as a literary
language, closed down in 1793. Mendelssohn’s Biur, intended as a vehicle to
revive interest in Hebrew, became instead a way for young German Jews to
learn German. Moreover, the image of the Berlin Haskalah was tainted as
some of its adherents, including Mendelssohn’s children, converted to
Christianity. In the end, the Haskalah failed to provide a meaningful Jewish
ideology for its generation. The notion that Judaism and Christianity were
essentially the same gave way to the reality that there was one essential differ-
ence: the religion of the state was Christianity. This reality would be altered
in 1789 during the French Revolution.
The French Revolution in 1789 launched the age of legal emancipation in
Jewish history, which lasted from 1789 to 1917 by way of the late 1860s. The
term “emancipation” typically connotes a transition from slavery to freedom.
For Jews, though, who had always enjoyed certain privileges and had never
been treated as slaves, emancipation meant replacing one set of rights and
obligations by another. Although some Jews had reservations about emanci-
pation – communal leaders, who saw emancipation as a threat to their
communal authority, and religious leaders, who regarded emancipation as a
threat to religious coherence – there was general agreement among Jews that
the material benefits of emancipation outweighed its potential harm.
The debate over Jewish emancipation in France followed on the heels of an
initiative in France to improve the lot of French Jews, which culminated in an
essay contest held by the Société royale des arts et sciencesin Metz in 1785. The
topic of this contest, “Are there possibilities of making the Jews more useful
and happier in France?”, attested to how prevalent the situation of Jews had
become in French Enlightenment thought by the end of the eighteenth cen-
tury. The three finalists in this contest were Adolph Thiery, a lawyer and
member of the Parlement of Nancy; Zalkind Horowitz, curator of the Royal
Library, who was not totally assimilated but not entirely traditional; and
The age of enlightenment and emancipation, 1750–1880 151