A week and a half ago, we observed the Fourth of July, our American Independence Day with picnics, fireworks and parades and, hopefully, a renewed dedication to the principles and aspirations on which our country is founded.
This week France observes its national holiday, Bastille Day, the 14th of July, marking the date in 1789 when the Bastille, a notorious fortress-prison in Paris and symbol of the arbitrary rule of the French monarchy, was stormed and its prisoners freed. This was the beginning of the French Revolution. Over the ensuing months and years, the “third estate,” the 98% of the population who were peasants, laborers, merchants and craftspeople, took over the National Assembly, abolished the feudal system and issued a Declaration of the Rights of Man. Two years later, Jews in France were given the rights of citizenship, which they had previously not enjoyed.
The French Revolution deteriorated into a reign of terror and ultimately led to the dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte, but its original motto of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” remained a source of inspiration. For European Jews, 1789 was the beginning of the process of Emancipation – the enjoyment of equal rights and full participation in the civil, economic, and cultural life of the countries where they resided. Napoleon’s conquests extended those rights and opportunities to Jews residing in the countries and states where he ruled. Napoleon’s defeat in 1815 and the Congress of Vienna that followed marked a temporary setback for Emancipation, which proceeded in fits and starts over the course of the nineteenth century and was not fully realized for Jews in central and western Europe until the 1860s and 1870s.
The experience of American Jews has been very much different. Individual colonies and states may have imposed some disabilities on Jews lasting into the early Federal period, but on the national level Jews have been emancipated from the beginning.
Emancipation has defined the condition of Jews in America and in democratic societies in Europe during the past two plus centuries. Along with the abundant blessings it has afforded, it has also entailed some challenges. Prior to Emancipation, Jewish identity was inherited by birth. Jews lived in close-knit communities, adhered to norms of Jewish religious practice, and in many localities enjoyed communal autonomy and were able to govern their own internal affairs according to Jewish law. There was no “neutral” society to which Jews who wished to cast off their Jewishness and the second-class status it often entailed could escape; they could do so only by taking the radical step of converting to the dominant religion, Christianity or Islam. With Emancipation Jewishness became a choice rather than an inherited fate, and it became possible to assimilate into the surrounding culture without adopting another religious identity.
As Emancipation became a possibility and later a reality, one group of Orthodox Jews was ambivalent and chose to maintain an insular existence, fearful that exposure to the non-Jewish world and its culture would lead to an abandonment of the rigorous standards of Torah observance which characterized their way of life. Indeed, following Emancipation, many Jews did assimilate. Their commitment and ties to the Jewish community and to Jewish ritual, worship and learning became attenuated. Other Orthodox Jews, however, embraced modernity and secular knowledge along with strict observance. The ideal of these modern Orthodox Jews (as they are called) was Torah im derech eretz (Torah along with the way of the world).
Alongside Orthodoxy, new forms of Jewish life and identity evolved. Reform and Conservative Judaism, originating in Germany and later taking root in America, adapted Jewish religious teaching and tradition to the circumstances of modernity. Since Jews are not only a religious group but also a people with a sense of a shared history and destiny, modern times also witnessed the rise of various secular forms of Jewish identity and belonging.
Jews as a minority group often enduring the hostility of elements in the outside world have long been preoccupied with the question of survival. The processes set in motion by the French Revolution and by Emancipation challenge us with the question: outside the state of Israel and outside the boundaries of Orthodoxy, can Judaism and Jewishness survive in a vigorous and meaningful way in a diverse and pluralistic society?
This article appears in Jul 10-16, 2025.
