Ever since the beginning of our present [nineteenth] century they had come to view our ancestral faith as old fashioned. It was no longer suited to the sons and daughters of this century, in the full dress coats and evening gowns. Old style Judaism was always in the way, so oddly out of place at the fraternities and assemblies, at balls and dinner parties, at concerts and salons…. Is it any wonder, then, that this “ancient, inhibiting” religion should have been shaken off without hesitation in the rush to join in the “progress”?[Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Collected Writings Volume VI, Feldheim, 1992]
The nineteenth century was a period of great optimism that inspired many European Jews. Sadly, the Jews found themselves trapped in a struggle between progressive thinkers and traditionalists, with neither group willing to find a place for the newly emancipated Jew.
Whether the Jew embraced or rejected Enlightenment, anti-Semitism soon followed. How devastating it was to see the emergence, directly from the Enlightenment, of a new, virulent and racial anti-Semitism, which in time would produce unspeakable brutality and destruction on levels never before experienced.
As much as the Jew embraced progress, it never fully embraced the Jew.
