18. Haskalah

Grand Sanhedrin

Jewish emancipation ensued after the Age of Enlightenment and the concurrent Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment. Two important edicts contributed to the emancipation of the Jews. The first was the 1782 Edict of Tolerance, when Joseph II, Grand Master of the Order of the Golden Fleece from the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, extended religious freedom to the Jewish population, ordering Jews in the Austrian Empire to learn German and to obtain a secular education, either in Christian schools or in German Jewish ones. The other was the Emancipation Edict of 1812, the result of a thesis to Frederick William II of Prussia, a member of the Berlin Illuminati and knight of the Golden and Rosy Cross and also a knight of the Golden Fleece.[1] Exercising an influence in the outcome of the Emancipation Edict of 1812, Israel Jacobson (1768 – 1828), who confessed to have been influenced by Moses Mendelssohn, and his Illuminati friend Lessing, and who would go on to found the Jewish Reform movement in Hamburg, Germany, and which and was associated with the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite in Charleston, North Carolina.

In countries that Napoleon Bonaparte’s ensuing Consulate and French Empire conquered during the Napoleonic Wars, he emancipated the Jews and introduced other ideas of freedom from the French Revolution. With the assistance of Sieyès, Napoleon orchestrated a coup in 1799 and became First Consul of the Republic.[2] Napoleon’s power was confirmed by the new Constitution of the Year VIII, originally devised by Sieyès to give Napoleon a minor role, but rewritten by Napoleon, and accepted by direct popular vote. The constitution preserved the appearance of a republic but in reality established a dictatorship.[3] The date and location of Napoleon’s initiation into Freemasonry is disputed. According to one account, it took place in Malta. Although as Emperor Napoleon did not specifically recognize Freemasonry, he made use of the order for maintaining loyalty towards him.[4]

Hegel famously referred to Napoleon as the Weltgeist (“World Soul”) on horseback. The phrase is a shortened version taken from the words Hegel’s wrote in a letter written on October 13, 1806, the day before the Battle of Jena, to his friend Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer:

I saw the Emperor—this world-soul—riding out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrated here at a single point, astride a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it.[5]

In 1806, Napoleon convened a Grand Sanhedrin of Jewish notables to answer twelve questions submitted to it by the government. In countries conquered during the Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon emancipated the Jews and introduced other ideas of freedom from the French Revolution. As explained by the historian Jacob Katz:

It is astonishing how many Jews who experienced emancipation from the ghetto almost instinctively described the event in terms drawn from the vocabulary of traditional Jewish messianism. Such emancipating rulers as Napoleon and the Emperor Joseph II of Austria were compared explicitly with the biblical Cyrus, and the dawning of the Enlightenment was frequently portrayed as the equivalent of the messianic age.[6]

The Sabbateans’ veneration of Napoleon, which survived beyond his death, was related to Jacob Frank’s messianic prophecies. Frank had been prophesying a “great war” to be followed by the overthrow of governments and foretold that the “true Jacob will gather the children of his nation in the land promised to Abraham.”[7] Wenzel Zacek cited an anonymous complaint against Frank’s cousin, Moses Dobruschka—founder of the Asiatic Brethren—and his followers, which stated:

 

The overthrow of the papal throne has given their [the Frankists] day-dreams plenty of nourishment. They say openly, this is the sign of the coming of the Messiah, since their chief belief consists of this. [Sabbatai Zevi] was saviour, will always remain the saviour, but always under a different shape. General Bonaparte’s conquests gave nourishment to their superstitious teachings. His conquests in the Orient, especially the conquest of Palestine, of Jerusalem, his appeal to the Israelites is oil on their fire, and here, it is believed, lies the connection between them and between the French society.[8]

The Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815, which remade Europe after the downfall of Napoleon, and subsequent Concert of Europe system, several major empires took control of European politics. Among these were the Russian Empire, the restored French monarchy, the German Confederation, under the dominance of Prussia, the Austrian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. German nationalists tried but failed to establish Germany as a nation-state, instead the German Confederation was created that was a loose collection of independent German states that lacked strong federal institutions.

Salomon Mayer Rothschild (1774 – 1855), the third son of Amschel Mayer, and the founder of the Austrian branch of the dynasty, retained strong ties with the famous Austrian statesman and diplomat, Prince Metternich (1773 – 1859), who according to the French imperial policy was suspected to be a member of the Illuminati, while his father, Franz Metternich (1746 – 1818), had been certainly a member of the order.[9] Metternich was the chairman of the Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815, which remade Europe after the defeat of Napoleon, and several major empires took control of European politics. The Congress gave birth to the Concert of Europe system, by which the Great Powers aimed to maintain the European balance of power, political boundaries, and spheres of influence. While Britain was benefitting from the Rothschild’s finances, Austria, Russia, and Prussia, then grouped together as the “Holy Alliance,” were also resorting to their financial help.[10] Salomon’s older brother Nathan Mayer Rothschild (1777 – 1836) set up his London business, N. M. Rothschild and Sons, which also had branches with his brothers in Paris, Vienna, Berlin and Naples. In the nineteenth century a legend began to circulate which accused Nathan of having used his prior knowledge of Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 to speculate on the Stock Exchange and amass a vast fortune. The Congress of Vienna’s “final act” was signed nine days before his final defeat at Waterloo.

Leading the negotiations at the Congress of Vienna were the Rothschild debtors, the Big Four, the Coalition of Britain, Prussia, Austria and Russia. France had to give up all its recent conquests, while the other three main powers making major territorial gains. Prussia added Swedish Pomerania, much of the Kingdom of Saxony and the western part of the former Duchy of Warsaw, while Russia gained the central and eastern part. Austria obtained Venice and much of northern Italy. All agreed on ratifying the new Kingdom of the Netherlands which had been created just months before from the formerly Austrian territory. One of the states to which regained sovereignty was the Papal States, under the rule of the Pope, whose official banker became James Rothschild.[11]

Jewish emancipation, implemented under Napoleonic rule in French occupied and annexed states suffered a setback in many member states of the German Confederation following the decisions of the Congress of Vienna, following Napoleonic defeat and surrender in May 1814. While assimilation had set in earlier in other countries of Western Europe, such as France or Italy, in Germany it was given more significance because of the cultural prominence of the German Jews, who represented the largest Jewish group in Western Europe at that time.[12] Germany was one of the first countries which introduced the principle of legal equality for Jews. In fact, German Jews are seen as having been instrumental in paving the way for the “return of Jewry to Society.”[13] According to Jacob Katz, Germany has been considered as the “classic land of assimilation.”[14]

Out of the Ghetto

The edict of 1812  was the result of efforts of Moses Mendelssohn’s favorite disciple, David Friedländer, in a thesis to Frederick William’s father, Frederick William II of Prussia, of the Golden and Rosy Cross, in 1787.[15] Friedländer’s father-in-law Isaac Daniel Itzig was a member of the Berlin Asiatic Brethren. Friedländer kept close contacts with Mendelssohn and the circle of the Haskalah, who shared his emancipatory ambitions. Friedländer occupied a prominent position in both Jewish and non-Jewish circles of Berlin. As noted by Gordon R. Mork, “After Mendelssohn and under the stimulus of the Napoleonic period, Western and Central German Jews rapidly began to acculturate themselves to their German environment.”[16]

Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem, or on Religious Power and Judaism, first published in 1783, can be regarded as his most important contribution to Haskalah. The basic thrust of Jerusalem is that the state has no right to interfere with the religion of its citizens, Jews included. As described by the German-Jewish writer Heinrich Heine: “as Luther had overthrown the Papacy, so Mendelssohn overthrew the Talmud; and he did so after the same fashion, namely, by rejecting tradition, by declaring the Bible to be the source of religion, and by translating the most important part of it. By these means he shattered Judaism, as Luther had shattered Christian, Catholicism; for the Talmud is, in fact, the Catholicism of the Jews.”[17]

The first of the Jerusalem’s two parts discusses “religious power” and the freedom of conscience in the context of the philosophies of Spinoza, Locke, and Hobbes, while the second part discusses Mendelssohn’s conception of the new secular role of any religion within an enlightened state. Mendelssohn was a proponent of the thought of Spinoza, who is regarded to have been the first to consider the issue of the “Jewish Question.” Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, one of the few books to be officially banned in the Netherlands at the time, put forth his most systematic critique of Judaism, and all organized religion in general. The treatise also rejected the Jewish notion of Jewish “chosenness,” and also claimed that the Torah was essentially a political constitution of the ancient Israelites, and since the state no longer existed, its constitution was no longer valid. In his view, the Jews were not a community shaped by a shared theology, but a nationality that had been shaped by historical circumstances, and their common identity developed due to their separatism. Spinoza also made what was later taken to be the earliest statement in support of the Zionist goal of creating a state in Israel.[18] In Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, he wrote:

Indeed, were it not that the fundamental principles of their religion discourage manliness, I would not hesitate to believe that they will one day, given the opportunity—such is the mutability of human affairs—establish once more their independent state, and that God will again choose them.[19]

Mendelssohn’s prescription for to the age-old “Jewish Question” was to call for Jews to leave the ghettos and assimilate themselves to European culture. The Haskalah inspired a similar reinterpretation of orthodoxy by contributing to the emergence of the Reform and the Conservative Jewish movements. Reflecting the Frankist rejection of the Torah, according to Reform Judaism, almost everything connected with traditional Jewish ritual law and custom is of the ancient past, and thus no longer appropriate for Jews to follow in the modern era.

The formation respectively of the Gesellschaft der Freunde (1792) and the Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft des Judenthums (1821), in Berlin, marked the passing of a large proportion of intellectual German Jews from Haskalah to assimilation, and, in many instances, to Christianity.[20] The Gesellschaft der Freunde (“Society of Friends”) was founded by several leaders of the Haskalah in 1792, including Moses Mendelssohn’s son, Joseph Mendelssohn, as well as Isaac Euchel (1756 – 1804) and Aaron Halle-Wolfssohn (1756 – 1835). Euchel was a tutor to the children of Meyer Friedländer (1745 – 1808), one of the brothers of David Friedländer. Meyer’s son Michael Friedländer (1767 – 1824), was Madame de Staël’s personal physician.[21] Halle-Wolfssohn was the private tutor of the children of the banker Jacob Herz Beer and Amalie Beer, including the later composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, and his siblings, the later businessman Wilhelm Beer and the later writer Michael Beer.[22] Beer’s wife, Amalie Beer, achieved fame with her literary salon at Tiergartenstraße, which was occasionally honored by the presence of Prince Wilhelm of Prussia (1783 – 1851), the son of Golden and Rosy Cross member Frederick William II.[23] Around 1820, the society became the cultural center of the Jewish community and the most important association of Berlin Jewry, led by respected and economically successful personalities.[24]

The Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft des Judenthums (“Society for Jewish Culture and Jewish Studies”) was founded in 1819 in the wake of the Hep-Hep riots, and brought together young, assimilated Jews who were all looking for of a Jewish identity that was worth defending to the outside world. Founding members were Joseph Hilmar, who was elected chairman, Joel Abraham List, Isaac Marcus Jost, and Gesellschaft der Freunde members Moses Moser, Isaac Levin Auerbach, Leopold Zunz, and the Hegel student Eduard Gans. Its principal objective, as it was then defined in 1822 in the Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (“Journal for the Science of Judaism”), was the study of Judaism by subjecting it to criticism and modern methods of research.[25] Drawing on Herder and the German concept of Kulturnation (“culture-nation”), Leopold Zunz classified Judaism as a Kulturvolk (“culture-community”). Rachel Livneh-Freudenthal, “By historicizing Judaism and defining it as a Kulturvolk, the founders of Wissenschaft des Judentums sought to impart the Jews with a national narrative that would dovetail neatly with universal values and categories.”[26]

Wednesday Society

The Edict of 1812 was the result of a long reflection since 1781 begun by Christian Wilhelm von Dohm (1751 – 1820), a prominent member of the Wednesday Society, and a staunch advocate for Jewish emancipation.[27] The Berlinische Monatsschrift functioned as the public organ of the Mittwochsgesellschaft (“Wednesday Society”), a secret society of “Friends of the Enlightenment” founded in 1783, which included Mendelssohn and his friend, the Illuminati publisher Friedrich Nicolai. The Wednesday Society, which was a who’s who of Berlin Aufklärer, was one of several reading societies established by former members of the Illuminati, following Adam Weishaupt’s command:

The great strength of our Order lies in its concealment: let it never appear in any place in its own name, but always covered by another name, and another occupation… Next to [the first three degrees of Masonry] the form of a learned or literary society is best suited to our purpose, and had Free Masonry not existed, this cover would have been employed; and it may be much more than a cover, it may be a powerful engine in our hands. By establishing reading societies, and subscription libraries, and taking these under our direction, and supplying them through our labours, we may turn the public mind which way we will.[28]

 

While working as a French ambassador in Berlin, the comte de Mirabeau associated with Nicolai’s circle and was privy to the operations of the Wednesday Society’s Berlinische Monatsschrift and Nicolai’s Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek.[29] Five years after Mendelssohn’s death in September 1791, France would grant full citizen rights to the Jews, being the first European nation to do so. Mirabeau, who with Sieyès played in a central role in the drafting the final Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789, was so taken with Mendelssohn’s ideas that, in 1787, in the immediate aftermath of Mendelssohn’s death, before he put forward his own case for the emancipation of the Jews, wrote Sur Moses Mendelssohn, sur la réforme politique des Juifs (“On Moses Mendelssohn and the Political Reform of the Jews”), proclaiming him as “A man thrown by nature into the midst of a degraded horde… has risen to the rank of the greatest writers this century has seen in Germany.” Mirabeau maintained that in Mendelssohn “humanity and truth” seemed much clearer to him than “the dark phantoms of the Talmudists,” and that if all Jews were granted rights that Mendelssohn was able to avail himself of, they too would become a benefit to the society that had so mistreated them.[30]

Dohm was also a friend of the famous salonnière Henriette Herz.[31] The prominent Prussian minister Wilhelm von Humboldt, the brother of Alexander von Humboldt, and a friend and student of Dohm’s, had been asked to comment on a proposed Prussian edict of emancipation, and did so by appealing to the value that emancipation would bring in helping to eliminate the vices of the Jews that were mostly the result of their current oppression:

…oppression is breeding now a really appreciable immorality among a number of Jews. . . . [This oppression] evinces a lack of moral esteem for Jews… and expresses a moral depreciation of them in an almost repelling fashion… It robs them of all reliance on their probity, loyalty, and truthfulness.[32]

A similar approach was adopted by Dohm. When Mendelssohn was asked by the Alsatian Jewish community to present the case for Jewish emancipation, but thought that such a work would produce better results if written by a Christian, he requested Dohm to complete the task. Dohm, who wrote Concerning the Amelioration of the Civil Status of the Jews in 1781, asserted that the Jewish character had been corrupted by centuries of persecution, but that emancipation and assimilation into European society would improve them and eliminate known Jewish vices. On critical points, Dohm’s was the same strategy of argumentation adopted by Herder.[33] According to Dohm, examples of Jewish corruption included “the exaggerated level… for every kind of profit, usury and crooked practices.” As a result, Jews were “guilty of a proportionately greater number of crimes than the Christians.” Such vices were “nourished” by Judaism, which was “antisocial and clannish” and nurtured “antipathy” towards gentiles.[34] Using an argument that was repeated by Mirabeau, Dohm claimed, “the Jew is more of a man than he is a Jew.”[35]

Frankfurt Judenlodge

Members of Mendelssohn’s entourage became involved in the Asiatic Brethren. Rothschild banking house’s head clerk, Illuminati member Siegmund Geisenheimer (1775 – 1828), aided by Daniel Itzig, founded the Masonic Judenlodge in Frankfurt in 1807, which became the headquarters of leaders of the early Jewish Reform movement.[36] When Frankfurt was occupied by Napoleon, a number of Jews petitioned the Grand Orient for a charter since they could not gain entry into the anti-Semitic German lodges of the day. The lodge was chartered as the Loge de St. John de L’aurore Naissante (“Loge zur aufgehenden Morgenrothe”), Lodge of St. John of the Rising Dawn. The Judenlodge admitted both Jews and Gentiles, raising the Jewish members up to the degree of Master Mason, but the Christian members were permitted to progress through the ‘higher degrees’ of the Scottish Rite, which barred Jewish members due to their Christian nature.[37]

Justus Hiller (1760 – 1833), who participated in Napoleon’s Sanhedrin, was also a member.[38] Historians Jacob Katz and Paul Arnsberg have shown that its members included almost all the leading families of the old Jewish community in Frankfurt, such as the Hanau, Goldschmidt, and Rothschild families.[39] Salomon Mayer Rothschild, the third son of Amschel Mayer, and the founder of the Austrian branch of the dynasty, joined the lodge for a short time.[40] According to Jean-Philippe Schreiber:

It was this Jewish Masonic bourgeoisie in Frankfurt that managed the affairs of a community increasingly attracted to a liberal, reforming vision of Judaism, and thus played a key role in the cultural and religious history of nineteenth-century German Judaism. All of its leading figures were Masons from 1817 to 1832, a period of significant community change—raising the question of the influence of their membership of the Masons on this reforming attitude. Far from being short-lived, the Jewish presence continued into the second half of the century, when the Creizenach, Goldschmidt, Hahn, and Lehberger families, for example, were both community leaders and members of several Frankfurt lodges.[41]

The Christian Kabbalist Franz Joseph Molitor, who was active in the Asiatic Brethren, became the Grand Master of the Judenlodge. Molitor’s friend, Ephraim Joseph Hirschfeld (1755 – 1820), a Frankist and activist in Mendelssohn’s circle, and also a member of the Asiatic Brethren. Hirschfeld was also close to Johann Georg Schlosser, the brother-in-law of Goethe. Hirschfeld and Moses Dobruschka met with Louis Claude de Saint Martin in 1793.[42] In 1784, Ecker und Eckhoffen took up residence in Vienna and he and Hirschfeld reorganized the Asiatic Brethren. Hirschfeld wrote of the Masonic Magic Flute by “the immortal Mozart,” a suspected member of the Asiatic Brethren, that it “will remain in all eternity: the canticum canticorum or the Sanctum sanctorum.”[43]

Hirschfeld maintained connections with Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel, who had succeeded the Duke of Brunswick as the head of all German Freemasons, and became a Grand Master of the Asiatic Brethren.[44] Hirschfeld arranged for Molitor to meet Prince Charles, who travelled to Schleswig to obtain a new constitution and authorization for the lodge. Molitor returned him the constitution for a lodge of the first three degrees to be named after Saint John, and authorizing the formation of a lodge subordinate to it conducted according to the Scottish rite. To permit the Jewish members to avoid having to swear allegiance on the Gospel of John, Prince Charles allowed it to be substituted for with Genesis 14, which mentions the name of Melchizedek, the name adopted by the lodges of the Asiatic Brethren.[45]

Despite the stipulation that the office of “Grand Master of the Chair” be reserved for Christians, a Jew, Carl Leopold Goldschmidt (1787 – 1858), of the influential Goldschmidt family of bankers and merchants, was elected to it. Prince Charles then withdrew his authorization and ordered the lodge to disband. Goldschmidt succeeded in communicating with the Mother Lodge of London. On May 22, 1817, he reported having received a letter of authorization signed by August Frederick, Duke of Sussex (1773 – 1843)—the sixth son of King George III of England, another descendant of the Alchemical Wedding, and godson of Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel—which empowered the Frankfurt Judenlodge to operate as a Masonic lodge without any restriction.[46] Another of August Frederick’s godparents was Ernst II, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (1745 – 1804), an Illuminatus and protector of Weishaupt, and the great-grandfather of Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.[47] August Frederick’s uncle, Prince Edward, Duke of York and Albany, who was initiated into the Grand Lodge of Prussia called the Royal York for Friendship.[48]

Hamburg Temple

As the process of assimilation advanced, traditional rabbinical courts and elders lost their means to enforce Jewish law (Halakha), like imposing the herem (“excommunication”), which allowed the new tendencies to gain wider acceptance, and for non-traditional approaches to Judaism to become perceived as equally legitimate. As Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808 – 1888), who had a considerable influence on the development of modern Orthodox Judaism, commented in 1854:

It was not the “Orthodox” Jews who introduced the word “orthodoxy” into Jewish discussion. It was the modern “progressive” Jews who first applied this name to “old,” “backward” Jews as a derogatory term. This name was at first resented by “old” Jews. And rightly so. “Orthodox” Judaism does not know any varieties of Judaism. It conceives Judaism as one and indivisible. It does not know a Mosaic, prophetic and rabbinic Judaism, nor Orthodox and Liberal Judaism. It only knows Judaism and non-Judaism. It does not know Orthodox and Liberal Jews. It does indeed know conscientious and indifferent Jews, good Jews, bad Jews or baptised Jews; all, nevertheless, Jews with a mission which they cannot cast off. They are only distinguished accordingly as they fulfil or reject their mission.[49]

 

The Jewish Reform movement, that began in Hamburg, was inspired by the activities of Israel Jacobson, a member of the Gesellschaft der Freunde. At the age of eighteen, after having accumulated a small fortune, Jacobson married into the Samson family, through whom he became friends with Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick (1735 – 1806), a favorite nephew of Frederick the Great and nephew of Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick, Grand Master of the Strict Observance and Illuminati member.[50] Charles William Ferdinand was the brother of Duchess Anna Amalia of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, who welcomed Benjamin Constant husband of Madame de Stäel in Weimar, and who was the mother of Illuminatus Grand Duke Karl August, who was the sponsor of Weimar Classicism and patron of Goethe. Charles William Ferdinand’s first cousin was Frederick William II of Prussia. He married Princess Augusta of Great Britain, granddaughter of George II of England. Their daughter, Caroline of Brunswick, married George IV of England. Like many others, Charles William Ferdinand had been impressed by Mendelssohn’s Phädon. When he came to Berlin in 1769, he sought out Mendelssohn’s company and treated him with a great deal of respect.[51]

When, under Napoleon’s rule, the Kingdom of Westphalia was created, and the emperor’s brother Jérôme Bonaparte was placed at its head, and granted equal citizenship to all the Jews of his kingdom and Jacobson was appointed president of the Jewish consistory, the Royal Westphalian Consistory of the Israelites, established in 1808. Jacobson played an influence in the outcome of the Emancipation Edict of 1812, issued by Frederick William III, which gave the Jews of Prussia partial citizenship, and after Jews served as soldiers for the first time.

The first permanent Reform synagogue was the Hamburg Temple in Germany, where the New Israelite Temple Society (Neuer Israelitischer Tempelverein) was founded in 1817, founded by Israel Jacobson. While the Jewish reform movement emerged in the nineteenth century, its beginnings lay really through the secular schools that began to be founded among the Jews in the closing decades of the eighteenth century.[52] The cause was advanced by a leader of the Haskalah, Naphtali Herz Wessely (1725 – 1805), a student of Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschütz, who greatly influenced him.[53] Wessely was an alumnus of one of Eybeschütz’s seminaries, which as early as 1726 had been placed under a Rabbinical ban for their Sabbatean teachings.[54] In Berlin, Wessely met Mendelssohn and contributed a commentary on Leviticus to the Biur, Mendelssohn’s translation of the Bible into German. Wessely is mainly known as a poet and advocate of the Enlightenment through his Divrei Shalom ve-Emet (1782), a call for support of Joseph II’s Edict of Tolerance. Wessely advised Jews to educate their children in secular branches and in the German language along the lines laid down in the Edict.[55]

The first of these schools was the Jewish Free School of Berlin, founded in I778 by David Friedländer and Isaac Daniel Itzig. In I791, the Wilhelmsschule was instituted in Breslau, which similar schools were founded in Dessau, in Seesen by Israel Jacobson, the Philanthropin in Frankfurt, and the Samson school in Wolfenbüttel, and another in in Cassel. The Free School of Berlin and adjacent printing house later became one of the main institutions of the Haskalah movement. It inspired other schools, such as the Philanthropin in Frankfurt, founded in 1804 by Geisenheimer. Fellow Judenlodge member Michael Hess (1782 – 1860) became headmaster of Philanthropin. Philanthropin also received substantial financial support from high-ranking Illuminati member, Baron Karl Theodor von Dalberg, whose “court banker” was Mayer Amschel Rothschild.[56]

It was through the influence exerted by the instruction given in such schools that the first reform of the ritual and the public worship developed. It was Israel Jacobson, who was involved in the foundation of the school at Seesen, who inaugurated the reform movement in Judaism. In 1808, the Royal Consistory of the Israelites in the Kingdom of Westphalia, headed by Jacobson, was created by the government of Jerome Napoleon I (1784 – 1860), the youngest brother of Napoleon I, and who was King of Westphalia between 1807 and 1813, to facilitate a civic betterment of the Jews. In 1810, Jacobson opened a prayer house in Seesen, to serve the modern Jewish school he founded earlier. He named it “temple,” a rather common designation at the time, borrowed from the French and used also by traditional Jewish houses of prayer.[57]

The Royal Consistory closed in 1813, and Jacobson moved to Berlin, where he opened a private prayer association in Palais Itzig, the residence of Daniel Itzig, and considered one of the most elegant and largest residential buildings in the eighteenth-century Berlin.[58] The room being too small to accommodate all who wished to attend, Jacob Herz Beer of the Gesellschaft der Freunde instituted a similar service in his home.[59] The sermons were delivered by Eduard Kley, Isaac Noah Mannheimer, and Karl Siegfried Günsburg, and two other members of the Gesellschaft der Freunde, Isaac Auerbach and Leopold Zunz. Three of them became commanding figures in later years, Kley as one of the founders and preachers of the reform congregation of Hamburg.[60] Kley was also the founder of the Israelitische Freischule (“Israelite Free School”) in Hamburg, founded in 1815 with support from Baruch Abraham Goldschmidt.

David Friedländer had dared to use Classical music and the organ during the prayer service in the Hamburg Temple. In 1808, the Temple’s founder, Israel Jacobson, used J.S. Bach’s leading hymn, O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden (“O head, covered with blood and wounds”) from the St. Matthew Passion, and other German hymns, for his synagogue in Seesen. In 1825, Beethoven was asked by Rabbi Izaak Noah Mannheimer (1793 – 1865), the protégé of David Friedländer, to write the dedication cantata for the opening of the new Hamburg Temple, which was then under construction. Instead, however, it was written by the composer Ignaz von Seyfried (1776 – 1841), and performed at the inaugural service in 1826. Seyfried was a pupil of Mozart and a friend of Haydn, and a close associate of Beethoven. Beethoven had personally called upon Seyfried to conduct the premiere of the last version of his opera Fidelio, whose theme is Freiheit (“universal freedom”).[61]

Reform and Conservative Judaism

The enduring legacies of the two new tendencies of Reform and Conservative Judaism were shaped by the Hamburg Temple disputes, two controversies which erupted around the Hamburg Temple, first between 1818 and 1821, and then from 1841 to 1842. Israel Eduard Kley, a member of Jacobson’s circle who served as preacher, left Berlin to assume the management of the new Jewish school in Hamburg. Kley was joined by fellow members of the Hamburg Temple, Seckel Isaac Fränkel (1765 – 1835), Meyer Israel Bresselau (1785 – 1839), and Gotthold Salomon (1784 – 1862). Following on the work of Moses Mendelssohn, Salomon was the first Jew to translate the complete Old Testament into High German, under the title Deutsche Volks- und Schulbibel für Israeliten (“German People’s and School Bible for Israelites”). In 1817, 65 Jewish households founded the New Temple Association, who a years later founded its synagogue, Qahal Bayit Chadash (“Congregation New House”), better known by its German name, Neuer Israelitischer Tempel, (“New Israelite Temple”).[62]

Fränkel and Bresselau published a new prayerbook for the Temple, Seder ha-Avodah (“Order of Devotion”), considered the first Reform liturgy. The new prayerbook omitted or changed several of the formulas anticipating a return to Zion and restoration of the sacrificial cult in the Jerusalem Temple. These changes evoked widespread denunciation from Rabbis across Europe, who condemned the new synagogue as heretics. The Hamburg rabbinical court, headed by the judge Baruch ben Meir Oser of Prague, immediately proclaimed a ban on the new synagogue.[63] Some forty responsa condemning the New Israelite Temple were received and edited into a single compendium, Ele divrei ha-brit (“These are the Words of the Covenant”), which was published in Hamburg in May 1819.[64]

The New Israelite Temple’s congregants nevertheless continued to attend it, little affected by the massive protest. The religious service of the Hamburg Temple was disseminated at the 1820 Leipzig Trade Fair, where Jewish businessmen from German states, many other European countries, and the United States met. As a consequence, several Reform communities, including New York and Baltimore, adopted the Hamburg Temple’s prayer book.

But the dispute in Hamburg itself was yet to be resolved. After the community was almost torn apart by in-fighting, and nearly three years in which the New Temple attracted large crowds, the board of elders finally decided to accept a solution promulgated by Lazarus Jacob Riesser (1763 – 1828), a member of the Frankfurt Judenlodge, from the first days of the crisis.[65] In 1921, they dismissed three elderly rabbinic judges, and a permanent new chief rabbi, they chose young Isaac Bernays (1792 – 1849), one of the first rabbis who also went to university. But the community assigned to him the title “clerical functionary” or Hakham, as the usual titles, instead of the traditional “moreh Tzedek” or “rabbi.”

In the two decades that followed the end of the first controversy, the social and cultural circumstances which led to the establishment of the Israelite Temple intensified, engulfing most of German Jews. A new generation had attended modern schools, while levels of personal observance, which had been in steady decline, now reached a critical turning point. In the 1840s, the majority of Jews could be classified a non-Orthodox. The last traditional yeshiva, in Fürth, closed in 1828. Higher education became required for rabbis, both by government decree and popular expectation. Young university graduates began to replace the old guard. Reform tendencies, that had until then been limited to an upper crust of an assimilated Jewish population, now permeated the rabbinate itself.

Many members of the Israelite Temple succumbed to the social pressures of a public losing interest in Judaism and the intellectual challenge of Judaic studies Wissenschaft des Judentums, pioneered by Leopold Zunz and his circle. The most radical exponent of Wissenschaft was the young Rabbi Abraham Geiger (1810 – 1874), considered the founding father of Reform Judaism. Geiger launched the journal Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift für Jüdische Theologie, where Judaism was critically analyzed. Emphasizing Judaism’s constant development over time, Geiger sought to re-formulate traditional interpretations and design what he regarded as a religion compatible with modern times.

In April 1839, the leadership of the Hamburg Temple therefore decided to draft a second edition of its prayerbook. The commission in charge comprised Salomon, Kley, Bresselau and Fränkel. In 1841, Bernays issued an announcement that the new prayerbook did not fulfill the minimal requirements under religious law, and those who used it were not meeting the obligation of worship. In imitation of the dispute of 1819, the Temple directorate published twelve responsa from liberal rabbis and preachers that, while not all in favor of the volume, lambasted Bernays for placing a ban and refuting his halakhic arguments.

A Frankist from Dresden by the name of Rabbi Zecharias Frankel (1801 – 1875)—a member of the Wissenschaft des Judentums—took a middle position between the Reform and the Orthodox, and dismissed the ban, demonstrating that the prayerbook contained all obligatory prayers. But he also declared himself opposed to the book. The belief in a personal Messiah, wrote Frankel, was ancient and hallowed. Neither did Frankel base his argument on rigid Orthodox notions, but on the sanctity of collective sentiment. According to Frankel, considered the founder of Conservative Judaism, Jewish law was not static, but had always developed in response to changing conditions.

However, Frankel also clashed with Geiger, who along with Jacobson and Zunz, came to be recognized as one of the founding fathers of Reform Judaism. While the Temple congregation enlisted massive support, Bernays only received aid from his close associate Jacob Ettlinger (1798 – 1871). Bernays and Ettlinger are regarded by historians as the founding fathers of “Neo-Orthodoxy,” or Torah im Derech Eretz, the ideology which sought to modernize traditional religious attitudes. Their most famous and prominent pupil was Samson Raphael Hirsch. A vocal opponent of Reform Judaism, Zionism, and similarly opposed early forms of Conservative Judaism, Hirsch wrote his Neunzehn Briefe über Judenthum (“Nineteen Letters on Judaism”), a defense of traditional Judaism. One of the young intellectuals strongly influenced by the “Nineteen Letters” was Heinrich Graetz (1817 – 1891) who was amongst the first historians to write a comprehensive history of the Jewish people from a Jewish perspective. In 1839, Hirsch published Erste Mittheilungen aus Naphtali’s Briefwechsel, a polemical essay against the reforms in Judaism proposed by Geiger and the contributors to his Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift für jüdische Theologie. The polemic eventually subsided. The defeat of the Orthodox effectively demonstrated the growing power of their rivals, paving the way for the Reform rabbinical conferences of 1844-6, led by Geiger, which were a key event in the formation of Reform Judaism.[66]

Lazarus’ son was Gabriel Riesser (1806 – 1863)—a member of the Gesellschaft der Freunde and the Frankfurt Judenlodge—became chairman of the Hamburg Temple Association from 1840–43, and a leading advocate of Jewish emancipation. New Israelite Temple had insisted in 1840 to get a license to build their own synagogue. Bernays, however, intervened at the Senate of Hamburg in order to have it deny the application. Nevertheless, the senate granted the license on April 20, 1841 and the cornerstone was laid on October 18, 1842. The New Temple Society invited the grandson of Moses Mendelssohn and Daniel Itzig, the Hamburg-born Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, to set Psalm 100 to music for a choir for playing it at the inauguration of the new Temple on September 5, 1844.[67] However, disputes on which translation should be used, Luther’s, as preferred by Felix, or that of his Jewish grandfather Moses, as preferred by the Society, prevented it from happening.[68]

In 1844, Felix Mendelssohn wrote a cantata based upon Psalm 100 for the dedication service of the new Hamburg Temple. Mannheimer, who preached in German and recited the poetry of Schiller, Lessing, and Goethe in his sermons, recruited as his cantor for the new synagogue, Salomon Sulzer (1804 – 1890). Sulzer published Schir Zion, his liturgical compositions for the services of an entire year, in 1839.  For the first edition, Sulzer sought Christian collaborators, including Joseph Drechsler (1782 – 1852), the choral director of St. Stephen’s Church, and his friend Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828). At Sulzer’s request, Schubert wrote a cantata, using the Hebrew text of Psalm 92, for the Sabbath service. In later years, Schubert set other psalms for voice and piano, using the German text of Moses Mendelssohn’s translation of the Old Testament. Sulzer’s performances attracted aristocracy, leading composers such as his friends Schubert and Robert Schumann (1810 – 1856), and other leading intellectuals, to regularly attend Sabbath services in the Vienna Reform synagogue.[69] In 1846, Felix collaborated with Geiger on the text of the oratorio Elijah, depicting events in the life of the Prophet Elijah as told in the Old Testament, and inspired by Bach and Handel.[70]

Alliance Israëlite Universelle

The influence of the Haskalah in France resulted in the creation the masonic-style order, Alliance Israëlite Universelle, which had for its aim, “The promotion everywhere of the emancipation and moral progress of the Jewish people.”[71] A leading exponent of the organization was Moses Hess (1812 – 1875), the grandson of Rabbi David T. Hess who succeeded to the Rabbinate of Manheim, after it had been seized by the Sabbatean followers of Rabbi Eybeschütz.[72] According to Hess, Baruch Spinoza, the excommunicated student of Menasseh ben Israel, was “latest expression of the Jewish genius,” and the true prophet of the messianic movement of Shabbetai Zevi.[73] Hess was a great admirer of Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic rabbis, who according to him lived in a “socialistic fashion,” and whose philosophical aspect, from the point of view of the theoretical Kabbalah, he explained, is developed in the Tanya, of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi. Hess observed:

The great good which will result from a combination of Hasidism with the national movement (secular Zionists) is almost incalculable… Even the rabbis, who heretofore have declared Chasidism a heresy, are beginning to understand that there are only two alternatives for the great Jewish masses of Eastern Europe; either to be absorbed along with the reformers, by the gradually penetrating external culture, or to avert this catastrophe by an inner regeneration of which Hasidism is certainly a forerunner.[74]

The Alliance was a Paris-based international Jewish organization founded in 1860 by five French Jews and Adolphe Crémieux (1796 – 1880), Grand Master of the Masonic Rite of Misraïm and Grand Commander of the Supreme Council of France, responsible for managing the high degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite within the Grand Orient of France.[75] The Alliance Israëlite Universelle had as its ultimate goal, “the great work of humanity, the annihilation of error fanaticism, the union of human society in a faithful and solid fraternity.”[76]

Although Carsten Wilke’s article about the Alliance Israélite Universal, “Who is Afraid of Jewish Universalism?” for Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism, was intended to dismiss the characterizations of the conspiracy theorists, he nevertheless concedes that the order’s members “frequently interpreted Judaism as a visionary cosmopolitan faith not unlike contemporary freemasonry,” which “underwent a kind of reconversion,” according to which “a world order based on the rule of law was imagined and fought for.”[77] The Alliance, Wilke explained, “pursued the vision of European nations living side by side in peace and respect,” constituting a kind of liberal universalism.[78] Effectively, the Alliance pursued the establishment of a “universal brotherhood,” or as Crémieux defined it, “the unification of all creeds under the common banner of Unity and Progress, which is the maxim of humanity.”[79]

Crémieux collaborated with Moses Montefiore (1784 –1885), a British financier and banker, activist, philanthropist and Sheriff of London, and also a Freemason. He was born in Livorno, Italy, a stronghold of the Sabbatean sect. Henriette (or Hannah), the sister of his wife Judith, married Nathan Mayer Rothschild, who headed the family’s banking business in Britain, for whom Montefiore’s firm acted as stockbrokers. Montefiore was a member of Bevis Marks Synagogue, which was Sephardic, and by marrying Judith, who was Ashkenazi, he deliberately broke the tradition according to which marriages between Sephardim and Ashkenazim were disapproved by the synagogue. Montefiore was president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews from 1835 to 1874, the longest tenure ever, and member of Bevis Marks Synagogue.

Amongst other notable members of the Bevis Marks Synagogue’s congregation was Isaac D’Israeli (1766 – 1848). His son Benjamin Disraeli (1804 – 1881), the only British prime minister to have been of Jewish birth, was also Grand Master of Freemasonry, as well as knight of the Order of the Garter. As noted by Ivan Poliakov, in The Aryan Myth, D’Israeli’s philosophy of history might be summed up in the formula: “All is race; there is no other truth.”[80] But he also included the Jews in the “Caucasian race.” In Coningsby, published in 1844, D’Israeli declared:

 

The fact is, you cannot destroy a pure race of the Caucasian organization. It is a physiological fact… And at this moment, in spite of centuries, of tens of centuries, of degradation, the Jewish mind exercises a vast influence on the affairs of Europe. I speak not of their laws, which you still obey; of their literature, with which your minds are saturated; but of the living Hebrew intellect. You never observe a great intellectual movement in Europe in which the Jews do not greatly participate. The first Jesuits were Jews; that mysterious Russian Diplomacy which so alarms Western Europe is organized and principally carried on by Jews; that mighty revolution which is at this moment preparing in Germany, and which will be, in fact, a second and greater Reformation, and of which so little is as yet known in England, is entirely developing under the auspices of Jews, who almost monopolise the professorial chairs of Germany…[81]

 

It was also in Coningsby that he confessed, through a character named Sidonia, modeled on his friend Lionel de Rothschild (1808 – 1879), eldest son of Nathan Mayer Rothschild, that, “the world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.” Of the influence of the secret societies, Disraeli also remarked, in Parliamentary debate:

lt is useless to deny… a great part of Europe—the whole of Italy and France, and a great portion of Germany, to say nothing of other countries—are covered with a network of these secret societies, just as the superficies of the earth is now being covered with railroads. And what are their objects? They do not attempt to conceal them. They do not want constitutional government. They do not want ameliorated institutions; they do not want provincial councils nor the recording of votes; they want… an end to ecclesiastical establishments…[82]

Correspondence in 1851 between Lord Stanley (1826 – 1893, whose father became British Prime Minister the following year, and Disraeli, who became Chancellor of the Exchequer alongside him, records Disraeli’s proto-Zionist views:

He then unfolded a plan of restoring the nation to Palestine – said the country was admirably suited for them – the financiers all over Europe might help—the Porte is weak— the Turks/holders of property could be bought out—this, he said, was the object of his life… Coningsby was merely a feeler—my views were not fully developed at that time—since then all I have written has been for one purpose. The man who should restore the Hebrew race to their country would be the Messiah—the real saviour of prophecy!” He did not add formally that he aspired to play this part, but it was evidently implied. He thought very highly of the capabilities of the country, and hinted that his chief object in acquiring power here would be to promote the return.[83]

As president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Montefiore’s correspondence in 1841–42 with Charles Henry Churchill (1807 –1869), who as British consul in Damascus responsible for Ottoman Syria under Foreign Office of Lord Palmerston (1784 – 1865), the Grand Patriarch of Freemasonry, proposed the first political plan for Zionism and the creation of the state of Israel in the region of Ottoman Palestine. The correspondence came in the wake of the Damascus affair of 1840, which drew widespread international attention when thirteen notable members of the Jewish community of Damascus were arrested and accused of murdering Father Thomas, a Christian monk and his Muslim servant for the purpose of using their blood to bake matzo, an antisemitic accusation also known as the blood libel. Backed by Palmerston and Churchill, Montefiore and Crémieux led a delegation to the ruler of Syria, Muhammad Ali (1769 – 1849), and eventually secured the release of the captives. They also persuaded the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire to issue an edict forbidding any further circulation of blood libel accusations.[84]


[1] Katz. Jews and Freemasons in Europe 1723-1939, p. 47.

[2] Le Forestier. Les Illuminés de Bavière et la franc-maçonnerie allemande, p. 679.

[3] François Furet. The French Revolution, 1770–1814 (1996), p. 212

[4] George William Speth. Royal Freemasons (Masonic Publishing Company, 1885), p. 15.

[5] Hegel, letter of 13 October 1806 to F. I. Niethammer, no. 74 (p. 119) in Briefe von und an Hegel (ed.) Hoffmeister, vol. 1 (1970), cited after H. Schnädelbach in Wolfgang Welsch, Klaus Vieweg (eds.), Das Interesse des Denkens: Hegel aus heutiger Sicht (Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2003), p. 223.

[6] Jacob Katz. “Israel and the Messiah.” Commentary, 36 (January 1982).

[7] Duker. “Polish Frankism’s Duration,” p. 308

[8] Ibid.

[9] le Forestier. Les Illuminés de Bavière et la franc-maçonnerie allemande, pp. 709; Melanson. Perfectibilists.

[10] Niall Ferguson. The House of Rothschild: Money’s Prophets 1798 – 1848. Volume I (Penguin Books, 1998).

[11] Gerald Posner. God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican (Simon and Schuster, 2015), p. 12.

[12] Marion Berghahn. German-Jewish Refugees in England (London: MacMillan Press, 1984), p. 40.

[13] Hans Liebeschi.itz, “Judentum und deutsche Umwelt im Zeitalter der Restauration,” Hans Liebeschiitz and Arnold Paucker (eds), Das Judentum in der deutschen Umwelt, 1800-1850 (Tübingen, 1977) p. 2; cited in Marion Berghahn. German-Jewish Refugees in England (London: MacMillan Press, 1984), p. 40.

[14] Jacob Katz. Emancipation and Assimilation (Westmead, 1972) p. x; cited in Berghahn. German-Jewish Refugees in England, p. 40.

[15] Jean Mondot. L’émancipation des Juifs en Allemagne entre 1789 et 1815 (Knopper & Mondot, 2008), p. 238.

[16] Mork. “German Nationalism and Jewish Assimilation: The Bismarck Period,” p. 86.

[17] Heinrich Heine. Religion and Philosophy in Germany, A fragment (Beacon Press, 1959), p. 94.

[18] Jacob Adler. “The Zionists and Spinoza.” Israel Studies Forum, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Spring 2009), pp. 25-38.

[19] Spinoza 1998: 47

[20] Herman Rosenthal, Peter Wiernik. “HASKALAH.” Jewish Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/7318-Haskalah

[21] Jill Storm. “Culture and Exchange: The Jews of Königsberg, 1700-1820.” All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs). 335 (2010), p. 212. Retrieved from https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/etd/335

[22] Jutta Strauss. “Aaron Halle Wolfssohn. Ein Leben in drei Sprachen.” In Anselm Gerhard. Musik und Ästhetik im Berlin Moses Mendelssohns (Tübingen, 1999).

[23] Petra Wilhelmy. Der Berliner Salon im 19. Jahhundert: 1780–1914 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1989).

[24] “Gesellschaft der Freunde.” Encyclopaedia Judaica. Retrieved from https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/gesellschaft-der-freunde

[25] Benzion Dinur (Dinaburg). “Wissenschaft des Judentums.” Encyclopaedia Judaica. Retrieved from https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/wissenschaft-des-judentums

[26] Rachel Livneh-Freudenthal. “Acknowledging the Past and Envisioning the Future: The Founders of Wissenschaft des Judentums (Science of Judaism).” In Paul Mendes-Flohr, Rachel Livneh-Freudenthal, & Guy Miron (ed.). Jewish Historiography Between Past and Future (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2019), p. 32.

[27] Jean Mondot. L’émancipation des Juifs en Allemagne entre 1789 et 1815 (Knopper & Mondot, 2008), p. 238.

[28] Ibid. (Kindle Locations 1405-1409).

[29] Terry Melanson. “10 Notable Members of the Bavarian Illuminati.” Conspiracy Archive (September 20, 2015).

[30] “Honore Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau” Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieve from https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/mirabeau-honore-gabriel-riqueti-comte-de-x00b0; Miriam Leonard. “Greeks, Jews, and the Enlightenment: Moses Mendelssohn’s Socrates.” Cultural Critique, 74 (Winter 2010), pp. 197.

[31] Petra Wilhelmy-Dollinger, in “Berlin Salons: Late Eighteenth to Early Twentieth Century.” Jewish Women’s Archive. Retrieved from https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/berlin-salons-late-eighteenth-to-early-twentieth-century

[32] Cited in Paul Lawrence Rose. German Question/Jewish Question: Revolutionary Antisemitism From Kant to Wagner (Princeston: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 24.

[33] Frederick C. Beiser. “Herder and the Jewish Question.” In Herder: Philosophy and Anthropology. (ed.) Anik Waldow & Nigel DeSouza (Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 245 n. 11.

[34] Cited in Jacques Kornberg. Theodor Herzl: From Assimilation to Zionism (Indiana University Press, 1993), p. 17.

[35] “Honore Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau” Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieve from https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/mirabeau-honore-gabriel-riqueti-comte-de-x00b0

[36] Antelman. To Eliminate the Opiate, vol. 1.

[37] Jacob Katz. Emancipation and Assimilation (Westmead, 1972) p. 61.

[38] Ibid., p. 61.

[39] Jean-Philippe Schreiber. “Jews and Freemasonry in the nineteenth century: An overview of current knowledge.” Archives Juives, vol. 43, no. 2 (2010), pp. 33.

[40] Antelman. To Eliminate the Opiate, vol. 1..

[41] Jean-Philippe Schreiber. “Jews and Freemasonry in the nineteenth century: An overview of current knowledge.” Archives Juives, vol. 43, no. 2 (2010), pp. 34.

[42] Katz. Jews and Freemasons in Europe 1723-1939, p. 53.

[43] M.F.M. Van Den Berk. The Magic Flute (Leiden: Brill, 2004), p. 507.

[44] Katz. Jews and Freemasons in Europe 1723-1939, Chapter 4.

[45] Ibid., p. 65.

[46] Ibid., p. 69.

[47] Vernon Stauffer. New England and the Bavarian Illuminati (Columbia University, 1918).

[48] McIntosh. Rose Cross and the Age of Reason, p. 43.

[49] Samson Raphael Hirsch. Religion Allied to Progress, in JMW. p. 198; Cohn-Sherbok, Dan. Judaism: History, Belief, and Practice (Routledge, 2004). p. 264.

[50] Jacob Rader Marcus. Israel Jacobson: The Founder of the Reform Movement in Judaism (Hebrew Union College Press, 1972), p. 17.

[51] Meyer. The Origins of the Modern Jew, p. 36.

[52] David Philipson. “The Beginnings of the Reform Movement in Judaism.” The Jewish Quarterly Review,  Vol. 15, No. 3 (Apr., 1903), p. 485.

[53] Zeitlin. Bibliotheca; Zinberg. Sifrut, 3 (1958), 325–8; Twersky, in: He-Avar, 4 (1956), 77–81; R. Mahler. Divrei Yemei Yisrael, 4 (1956), 53–56; B. Katz. Rabbanut, Ḥasidut, Haskalah, 2 (1958), 134–9; N. Schapira, in: Harofe Haivri, 34 (1961), 230–5; J. Katz. Jews and Freemasons (1970).

[54] Alexander Altmann. Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study (University of Alabama Press, 1973), pp. 453.454; cited in Antelman. To Eliminate the Opiate, vol. 1

[55] David Philipson. “The Beginnings of the Reform Movement in Judaism.” The Jewish Quarterly Review,  15: 3 (Apr., 1903), p. 479.

[56] Melanson. Perfectibilists.

[57] Michael A. Meyer. Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (Studies in Jewish history. Wayne State University Press, 1995), p. 42.

[58] “Vanished Berlin: Palais Itzig.” Kreuzberged — Berlin Companion (March 11, 2021). Retrieved from https://kreuzberged.com/2021/03/11/vanished-berlin-palais-itzig/

[59] Meyer. The Origins of the Modern Jew, pp. 133-137.

[60] David Philipson. “The Beginnings of the Reform Movement in Judaism.” The Jewish Quarterly Review,  Vol. 15, No. 3 (Apr., 1903), p. 500.

[61] Steven P. Meyer. “Moses Mendelssohn And the Bach Tradition.” Fidelio 8: 2 (Summer 1999).

[62] Meyer. Response to Modernity, pp. 47–51.

[63] Jakob Josef Petuchowski. Prayerbook Reform in Europe: the Liturgy of European Liberal and Reform Judaism (World Union for Progressive Judaism, 1968), p. 86.

[64] Meyer. Response to Modernity, pp. 57–59.

[65] Katz. Jews and Freemasons in Europe 1723-1939, p. 82.

[66] Meyer. Response to Modernity, pp. 118–119, 136–138.

[67] Eric Werner. “Felix Mendelssohn’s Commissioned Composition for the Hamburg Temple. The 100th Psalm (1844),” in: Musica Judaica, 7/1 (1984–1985), p. 57.

[68] Lily E. Hirsch. “Felix Mendelssohn’s Psalm 100 Reconsidered.” in: Rivista del Dipartimento di Scienze musicologiche e paleografico-filologiche dell’Università degli Studi di Pavia, vol. 4, N° 1 (2005). Retrieved from http://philomusica.unipv.it/annate/2004-5/saggi/hirsch/index.html

[69] Steven P. Meyer. “Moses Mendelssohn And the Bach Tradition.” Fidelio 8: 2 (Summer 1999).

[70] Ibid., p. 55.

[71] Benjamin Peixotto. “Principality, now Kingdom, of Roumania.” Menorah Vol. I. JULY, 1886 No. 1. p. 212.

[72] Antelman. To Eliminate the Opiate, Vo. 2, p. 20.

[73] Moses Hess. Rome and Jerusalem: A Study in Jewish Nationalism (New York: Bloch Publishing Company, 1918), pp, p. 83.

[74] Moses Hess. The Revival of Israel: Rome and Jerusalem (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, p. 248.

[75] Ellic Howe. “Fringe Masonry in England 1870-85.”  Ars Quatuor Coronatorum (September 14, 1972). Retrieved from https://freemasonry.bcy.ca/aqc/fringe/fringe.html; Cyrus Adler, Joseph Jacobs. “Freemasonry.” Jewish Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/6335-freemasonry

[76] Webster. Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, p. 410.

[77] Carsten Wilke. “Who is Afraid of Jewish Universalism? Adolphe Crémieux in Liberal Vision and Antisemitic Forgery.” Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Fall 2017), p. 73.

[78] Ibid., p. 77.

[79] Bulletin de l’Alliance israélite universelle (July 1864), pp. 17–18. Cited in Wilke. “Who is Afraid of Jewish Universalism?” p. 80.

[80] Poliakov. The Aryan Myth, p. 232.

[81] D’Israeli. Coningsby (London 1844), pp. 182-3; cited in Poliakov. The Aryan Myth, p. 232.

[82] Cited in Robert Dreyfuss. Hostage to Khomeini, (New Benjamin Franklin House, June 1981), p. 118.

[83] Benjamin Disraeli, John Alexander Wilson Gunn & Melvin George Wiebe. Benjamin Disraeli Letters: 1852–1856 (University of Toronto Press, 1982), p. 535.

[84] Isaac Baer Levinsohn. Éfés dammîm: a series of conversations at Jerusalem between a patriarch of the Greek Church and a chief rabbi of the Jews, concerning the malicious charge against the Jews of using Christian blood (Longman, 1841). p. 14.

Zionism