It took my related finals on Modern Man and Religiosity and on the Problems with Universal Claims of Liberalism in the fall semester 1997 at Georgetown to understand that my rather parochial identification of myself as a Jew might conflict with liberal claims on citizenship, a problem that I had not perceived earlier, and now believe somewhat solvable through Tocqueville and the latest Rawls (Political Liberalism).
I have attempted to document these problems of conflicting claims in the form of quotations all taken from Peter Pulzers EMANCIPATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS - The German-Jewish Dilemma.
There is another page on Jewish
critiques of the universal claims of the Enlightenment.
"The great noble business of government is so to diminish the principles
of exclusion of all societies that they cease to harm the great connection
that embraces them all [...] It will have achieved its great aim when the
nobleman, the peasant, the scholar, the artisan, the Christian and the
Jew is more than all of this, a citizen."
Christian Wilhelm Dohm, Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung
der Juden, 1781-83
"Nothing for the Jews as a nation, everything for the Jews as individuals."
Comte de Clermont-Tonnere, Frensh National Assembly, 1789
"Jews want to distinguish themselves from their fellow-citizens in no
respect except through their own inherited of freely chosen form of worship...
The state has the undeniable right to demand the fulfillment of general
civic duties as a condition for granting civic rights; but there is no
state in Germany in which Jews would not be ready to accept these duties
and burdens."
Gabriel Riesser, Gesammelte Schriften II, around 1850 (Riesser was
Jewish)
"Entry into a great nation exacts its price [...] It is (the Jews)
duty (...) to divest themselves to the best of their ability of their peculiarities
and to knock down all barriers betweent themselves and and the other German
fellow-citizens with a determined hand."
Theodor Mommsen, sterling opponent of antisemitism, around 1870
"In vain the Jews have proved, in theoretical and practical terms,
that except in their worship and a few charitable institutions they have
no particular and common concerns, that they belong, with all their hearts
and possessions to the people, that they have transplanted themselves to
all areas of life, spiritual as well as material, and submerged themselves
in all all sectors of public and cultural life. All to no avail; again
and again they are repulsed and described in the daily press and even in
scholarly works as a special class or caste."
Allgemeine Jüdische Zeitung, 1878
"We are Germans, because it is impossible for us, given what we are,
not to be Germans [...] We can only be good Jews today if we are good Germans,
but we can be good Germans only if we are good Jews."
Heymann Steinthal, 1925 (Jewish)
"(Prevalent antisemitism around 1890 presented) Jews and their Gentile
Liberal well-wishers (...) with a dilemma. Should they give up the hopes
they had invested in the Enlightenment project, one that aimed at creating
a society in which all those features that divide one group from another,
whether through the accident of birth or through religious affiliation,
would loose their salience? [...] The great majority of German Jews did
not abandon the Enlightenment project: indeed, it survived until 1933 and
even beyond. The exceptions were the Orthodox minority, who had never wanted
to be merged with a secular society in which the Sabbath was no longer
sacred. [...] The (Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus), whose leadership
was with the parties of the Liberal Left, stuck to the strict assimilationist
line that had been preached by German emancipators from Humboldt to Mommsen...
It was deeply suspicious of any Jewish associational life, whether among
students or in sports or in any leisure pursuits. Such activities smacked
of speratism, which ran counter to its interpretation of the Enlightenment
Project."
Peter Pulzer, Emancipation and its Discontents, 1997
"Jews throve visibly - and suffered invisibly."
Fritz Stern (Jewish historian)
"In the days of every German Jews's youth there is a painful moment
which he remembers for the whole of his life: when he becomes fully conscious
for the first time that he has entered the world as a second-class citizen
and that no skill or merit can ever free him from that condition."
Walther Rathenau, 1918 (Jewish)
"Despite their rationalism, Jews had the feeling that there must be
something in Judaism that was to be effective for the world and for humanity."
Ludwig Holländer, 1928 (Jewish)
"The drive towards unqualified assimilation (of the Enlightenment Project)
had led to losses of identity and self-confidence without adequate compensating
gains. A new generation of German Jews, even politically liberal adherents
of Reform Judaism, was trying to find a niche in a more pluralistic order
- or at least hoping for a more pluralist order in which to find a niche.
[...] Finally, what do these 150 years of German-Jewish co-existence teach
us about the viablitity of the Enlightenment project for Jewish-Gentile
relations: Its failure in Germany was not inevitable; nothing is inevitable.
But the ease with which it was overthrown, the indifference with which
most Gentile Germans viewed the swiftness and completenness of disemancipation
showed that in Germany this project was more vulnerable to external shocks
than elsewhere in the advanced world."
Peter Pulzer, Emancipation and its Discontents, 1997