French Revolution: The Jewish Question

“The Jewish question” was a debate that become most prominent during and after the French Revolution. The French Revolution set a chain of events that encouraged people to advocate for more civil rights especially by the people that where being oppressed, such as the Jewish people. For 2,000 years the Jewish people carved out a living in Europe where their daily existence was a struggle due to there culture and value differences from the rest of the nation they inhabited. Thus, “The Jewish question” brought up many conflicts such as what is a Jew? Can there be a nation, within another nation? Should the Jews be granted basic rights or also civil rights? To answer “the Jewish question” it is important to understand weather being Jewish is

This became a concern for many European nations because they were worried about economic competition from the Jewish people. To solve this problem many nations such as Russian, Germany, and Austria forced Jews to live in certain areas for example, in Russia the Pale of Settlement was created to prevent Jews from intermingling with the population and were not allowed to conduct business outside of the settlement. With the population increasing many people in Europe detested the idea of Jews belonging to another nation and their lack of loyalty when they were living in another nation such as Germany, France, Spain etc. To come up with a solution in France The French National Assembly met and agreed that “They must be citizens. It is claimed that they do not want to be citizens, that they say this and that they are thus excluded; there cannot be one nation within another nation” (124). During the assembly they talked about, if the Jews want to live in their homeland, they must abandon their culture and believes in order to become citizens. Many of the Jews refused to do this, and the assembly had a hard time understanding this because the Jews in Habsburg Empire abandoned their traditions and thus, where enjoying the same civil rights as the non-Jews. The French agreed if the Jews refuse to become citizens then they shall be forced to be expelled from the country for

With Jews immigrating to Netherlands, the Dutch people saw them as aliens who did not fit into the Dutch society “the Jews came to us as aliens and were received as such” (132). The Dutch councilmen were trying to decide if they where people, if so they have the right to civils rights, or aliens, which meant they only had rights of a man. At the end of the assembly the Dutch agreed that the Jews had the rights of man…” that it places them under the general protection of the laws of the land, and that it opens to them the free entrance to the local assemblies, on condition of their making the common civic declaration...” (136). They also agreed that after living one year in the Netherlands the Jews would be granted civil rights only if they gave up their culture and traditions. Other countries such as Germany where not as generous and never gave the Jews a chance! The Germans viewed the Jews as a plague that had slowly taken over their society and to combat this “plague” the Germans believed they must take away every civil right. In the article Decrease Excluding Jews from German Culture and Public Life it listed some of things that the Jews where not allowed to do such as; Jewish layers, where not allowed to handle legal matters, farmers are