Storm in the Community: Yiddish Polemical Pamphlets of Amsterdam Jewry, 1797–1798 (review)

As a consequence of revolutionary events affecting Dutch politics in the years before and after the French Revolution, Jews were granted political emancipation and received citizenship on September 2, 1796. From that date on Jews were entitled to elect and be elected to the Dutch parliament. As in other places in Western Europe, this act had far-reaching consequences for the traditional Jewish communities in the Netherlands.

Modern and reformed Jews set up an association, "Felix Liberate," in Amsterdam in February 1795, whose goal was to promote the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and which was the kernel of the "new community" established a couple of months later and supporting the ruling revolutionary Batavian Republic. Members of the association employed Dutch, wished to integrate Jewish life into the fabric of Dutch political and cultural systems, and in principle were ready to accept non-Jewish members into the association. The extension of full citizenship a year later was accompanied by a fundamental change in the relationship between all Jewish communities and the authorities, and among members of the Jewish communities themselves. The state eliminated the autonomy of the traditional Jewish community but did not interfere in its current internal affairs; each local community had to solve its own problems according to general guidelines dictated by the Dutch government in The Hague. Therefore, the position of the "conservatives" (namely, the rabbis and the parnasim)—which had been nurtured due to the unique nature ("the autonomy") of the previous relationship between the Jewish communities and the state—had now weakened considerably, and the "radicals," or the reformist modern Jews, estimated that they would be able to create positions of power for themselves because of the vacuum that had been created and because, in terms of ideas and contacts, they were closely linked with the new Dutch regime. They hoped that they would be able to change the old way of running the Jewish community. The traditional community became the "old community" or the alte kile. Amsterdam had now two rival Jewish communities.

The parliamentary elections and referendum on a new constitution in August 1797 were considered by the Jewish radicals as a primary opportunity to cash in on the new position of Jews in the Netherlands. They wished to persuade the Ashkenazi masses of Amsterdam to exercise their newly granted right to vote as well as to encourage them to vote for two Jewish parliamentary candidates. Nevertheless, although they wished to draw the Jews closer to Dutch culture and regularly published their writings in Dutch, in this case the radicals were forced to appeal to the Ashkenazim, a majority of which were still members of the alte kile—in their own vernacular, Yiddish.

Through pamphlets in Yiddish the radicals wanted to inform the Ashkenazim of the new opportunities opened to them. The literary genre they chose for the pamphlets was the "discourse" (diskurs). The modernists were, in fact, emulating a popular genre in contemporary Dutch literature, imported from "The Spectator" in England. Authors wishing to encourage political and social changes usually employed the genre; the written pieces were usually anonymous; satire was the authors' favorite weapon and the dialogue (or discourse) the preferred device. The Yiddish discourses included three main characters: Anshel Hollander, Yankev Fransman, and Gumpel Spanier. Their names are typical of the local Ashkenazi community, but they bear an additional significance. Anshel is the progressive Jew and is, thus, Hollander: a Jew and a citizen of his state. Spanier is the traditional and, thus, the foolish Ashkenazi. And Yankev, although still a traditional Jew, is considering the idea of joining the new community, the naye kile. He is the one who tries to balance between the modern and traditional Jews and therefore is referred to as the Frenchman (precisely as France was the balancing power in Dutch politics of the period). The discourses take place on...