rmany, as men for human emancipation, and you ought to feel the
special nature of your oppression and your disgrace not as an
exception from the rule, but rather as its confirmation.

Or do Jews demand to be put on an equal footing with Christian
subjects? Then they recognize the Christian State as justified, then
they recognize the regime of general subjugation. Why are they
displeased at their special yoke, when the general yoke pleases them?
Why should Germans interest themselves in the emancipation of the
Jews, if Jews do not interest themselves in the emancipation of
Germans?

The Christian State knows only privileges. In that State the Jew
possesses the privilege of being a Jew. As a Jew, he has rights which
a Christian has not. Why does he crave the rights which he has not,
and which Christians enjoy?

If the Jew wants to be emancipated from the Christian State, then he
should demand that the Christian State abandon its religious
prejudice. Will the Jew abandon his religious prejudice? Has he
therefore the right to demand of another this abdication of religion?

By its very nature the Christian State cannot emancipate the Jews;
but, adds Bauer, by his very nature the Jew cannot be emancipated.

So long as the State is Christian and the Jew is Jewish, both are
equally incapable of granting and receiving emancipation.

The Christian State can only behave towards the Jew in the manner of a
Christian State, that is in a privileged manner, by granting the
separation of the Jew from the other subjects, but causing him to feel
the pressure of the other separated spheres, and all the more
onerously inasmuch as the Jew is in religious antagonism to the
dominant religion. But the Jew also can only conduct himself towards
the State in a Jewish fashion, that is as a stranger, by opposing his
chimerical nationality to the real nationality, his illusory law to
the real law, by imagining that his separation from humanity is
justified, by abstaining on principle from all participation in the
historical movement, by waiting on a future which has nothing in
common with the general future of mankind, by regarding himself as a
member of the Jewish people and the Jewish people as the chosen
people.

Upon what grounds therefore do you Jews crave emancipation? On account
of your religion? It is the mortal enemy of the State religion. As
citizens? There are no citizens in Germany. As men? You are as little
men as He on whom you