and Jewish isolation, even as late as the
eighteenth century, may be vividly realized by thinking of Rousseau
and Voltaire in contrast with the contemporary lights of Jewry--Elijah
Gaon and Israel Besht,[8] men as medieval as a gargoyle.

The French Revolution with its early philosophy of naturalism and
humanism and its later political expression in liberty, equality, and
fraternity, razed the physical and spiritual walls of the ghetto and
set up the "Jewish problem." Following the Revolution, four currents
of thought and action, working both simultaneously and successively,
causing, reacting upon, and intermingling with one another, affecting
the Jews now favorably and now unfavorably, went into the making of
this problem. To deal with Emancipation, Enlightenment, Nationalism,
and Anti-Semitism in detail would consume a volume, but an outline of
their bearing on the present situation is essential.

_Emancipation and Enlightenment_

Emancipation may be defined as the removal of the civil disabilities
from the Jews, following the acceptance of liberal principles by the
European governments. The process was a gradual one. In 1791 the
French Assembly passed the vote for the complete emancipation of the
Jews, which procedure was ratified and firmly established by the
Napoleonic regime. Belgium (1830), England (1846), Sweden (1848),
Denmark and Greece (1849), Prussia (1850), Austria (1867), Spain
(1868), Italy (1870), and Switzerland (1874) followed the lead of
France. The Balkan States in the treaty of Berlin (1878), upon
pressure from Disraeli, agreed to the emancipation of the Jews as one
of the conditions for securing their own freedom; Roumania has been
notoriously delinquent, however, in adhering to the terms nominated in
the bond.[9] The removal of civil disabilities brought the Jew into a
wide contact with the Christian. This resulted for the Jews in
liberalization of outlook and liberation of capacities and talents, in
an abandonment of the "jargon" for the national tongues, in a
precipitation into the Haskalah movement (to be described in the next
paragraph), and in a restatement of their leading religious doctrines,
which amounted to a surrender in theory of their nationality and their
destiny as a Chosen People to be restored to Palestine. For the
Christians the removal of Jewish disabilities resulted in the
necessity of either accepting or rejecting the Jew's claim to be an
equal and a fellow-countryman.