Bernard Wasserstein, author of Vanishing Diaspora: The Jews in Europe since 1945, is a professor of history at Glasgow University.
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Judaism, Europe, 1700-1799, 1750-1799, 1780-1799, 1800-1899, 1900-1999, 1900-1945, History
Vol. 22 No. 8 · 13 April 2000
pages 38-39 | 2870 words
Forever Unwilling
Bernard Wasserstein
- A People Apart: The Jews in Europe 1789-1939 by David Vital
Oxford, 944 pp, £30.00, June 1999, ISBN 0 19 821980 6
No one has yet written a worthwhile history of the Jews in modern Europe. Apart from the problem of the range of sources and languages, there is an intrinsic difficulty which is at the heart of the Jew’s predicament in the modern world: the Jews are and are not a unit. It is not just that they are internally divided – that is true of all groups – but that the modernisation of the Jews has involved an irretrievable jettisoning in part or whole of their Jewishness and a submersion in the cultures and societies of their residence. This process came into operation sooner and on a larger scale in some areas than others: it reached its furthest extent in France, England and some German and Hungarian-speaking regions of Europe. It was slowest in Russia and Russian Poland – though even there it had advanced substantially by the First World War. To write the history of the Jews in modern Europe is, therefore, like writing a biography of the Cheshire Cat: the historian’s impossible task is to catch the substance behind the fading smile.
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Letters
Vol. 22 No. 11 · 1 June 2000
From Geoffrey Lock
Bernard Wasserstein (LRB, 13 April) appears to be surprised that there are four references to Lord John Russell in the index to David Vital's A People Apart: The Jews in Europe 1789-1939. Yet the mention of Russell is surely justified by his leadership of the campaign to secure political rights for non-Anglican minorities. It was Russell who in 1828 initiated the freeing of Dissenters from political disabilities by defeating Wellington's Government in the House of Commons on the question and forcing it to legislate. Catholic emancipation was achieved in the following year. However, these changes made the Jews worse off, as the Government ill-advisedly accepted a backbench amendment in the House of Lords that oaths should be sworn 'upon the true faith of a Christian'. In 1833-34, the Commons passed a measure to take these words out of the oath, but this was rejected by the Lords.
The matter became urgent in 1847 when Baron de Rothschild was elected to the House of Commons. Russell introduced a Jewish Relief Bill which was passed by the Commons but rejected by the Lords, a process that was repeated on several occasions over the succeeding 11 years. Rothschild was allowed to sit in a part of the Chamber technically outside the House, but was not permitted to speak or vote. In 1851 a second Jewish MP, David Salomons, was elected, and he was disinclined to show the same patience as Rothschild. Eventually the Lords grudgingly accepted a compromise whereby each House could decide for itself whether to admit Jews. The Commons did so in 1858, but the Lords excluded them for a further eight years.
Geoffrey Lock
Lower Broadheath, Worcestershire
