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12 The essay is preceded by a note from the editors of the journal, in which they tell readers that what follows is an unpublished draft, dated 1885, discovered on the death of the author. Isidore Loeb (1839–92) was a French rabbi and scholar. He published on a wide variety of topics, including the Bible and Talmud, medieval history, the history of Jews in modern Europe, and mathematics. He held the post of secretary of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, and he also published works directly related to the situation of Jews in Turkey, Serbia, Romania, and Russia. See the entry in the Encyclopedia Judaica, 11:438. The idea of emancipating the Jews and according them, in the state, the same rights as all other men, is an entirely modern idea, but the idea is so just that in less than one hundred years, and despite inveterate prejudices, it has imposed itself on every spirit by the unique force of its truth. The principle of equal rights applied to Jews was a ray of light concerning policies affecting them, hitherto so obscure and so unrealistic. It appeared with the obviousness and certitude of an axiom. Any proof for this principle is therefore superfluous. This question, discussed in the past, is answered today. It is absolutely impossible to find any reason to justify exceptional laws for a groupofpeople,inparticular,fortheJews.Theprincipleofhumanbrotherhood, of equal rights for all men, is the foundation of every modern state. Outside this principle, there can only be arbitrariness and injustice, and a state that is not founded on justice cannot even be conceived of. The word “emancipation,” as it is officially used, is an inexact word that only imperfectly renders that which humanity, civilization, and fairness demand for the Jews. “In general, I do not like this word ‘emancipation,’” said [Ferenc] Deák to the Hungarian Chamber [of Deputies] in 1866, “it shames us; it is as if the Jews were once our slaves. The Jews have the law on their side, and if we accord it to them, we are not obeying feelings of sympathy or antipathy, but only principles of justice.”12 2 | Reflections on the Jews Isidore Loeb “Réflexions sur les Juifs,” Revue des Etudes Juives 27 (1893):1–31. 12. Wertheimer, Jahrbuch für Israeliten, 5627 (Vienna, 1867), p. XIII. “Reflections on the Jews” | 13 “If we continue to refuse human rights to the Jews,” Wolfgang Menzel said, “we deserve to lose ours forever.”13 On what grounds, in a modern state, could exceptional laws for Jews be based? Religious grounds? Religion certainly still accounts for a large part of the prejudices and malicious sentiments that prevail against the Jews in certain parts of Europe, and it can even exercise its influence on the conduct of statesmen regarding the Jews; but none of them would dare to invoke religion today to justify Jewish inequality. There is not a government that would want to or could oppress the Jews for the reasons cited in the Middle Ages; for example, that the Jewish crime [of deicide] is indelible, that God wants the Jews to be abased in order that their humiliation bears eternal witness to their fallacy and to the glory of Christianity. These reasons, which seemed excellent in the past and which were even invoked seriously in the English Parliament in the first half of this century, have lost all credibility today. Theology is definitively banished from politics.14 “European culture of late,” says [Johann Caspar] Bluntschli,15 “has little by little escaped and been delivered from places that joined the law with a circumscribed religion. It became clear to present-day peoples that religion is a question of internal conscience that cannot be submitted to external force. They conceive of the law as an external organization established by men, serving a human goal that men must uphold and yield to, and that, consequently, given the same circumstances, should be the same for everyone. This is why modern law was separated from the terms of a circumscribed religion and was established as common law, equal for all of the inhabitants of a country.” It is true that in the years 1820 and 1850, a Christian state was much talked about in Germany and that, all the while recognizing that Jews should be emancipated and treated as equals under the law, there was, however, a will to keep them from politics, from high administrative functions, from the police...

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