A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism (34 page)

On September 6, news of the viceroy’s decision reached Damascus. The next day, Merlato, the Austrian consul, sent a letter to Crémieux:

Yesterday was the happiest day of my life. All the prisoners… were set at liberty and sent to their homes…. The joyful liberated men before returning… to their enraptured families proceeded to the [synagogue] where in unison with an immense multitude they… prayed for peace and every blessing upon Muhammad Ali and all their other powerful benefactors.
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Jews around the world also rejoiced. They greeted Montefiore and Crémieux as heroes wherever they traveled. Jews were proud of themselves as well. Never before had so many Jews in so many countries worked together to shape public opinion on an issue. Many also took pride in the fact that a large number of Christians had actively supported the Jews of Damascus, and a few, like Merlato and von Laurin, had shown courage in their defense of Jews.

But not everyone was pleased with the outcome. Thiers, France’s prime minister, along with many French citizens, continued to support Ratti-Menton.
Univers
, a conservative Catholic newspaper, proclaimed that “Judaism has reappeared as a power, as a nationality… and, as such, it has held all of Christianity in check.” After asking “Who can now say how far their aspirations will extend?” the editors turned their attention to the Rothschild family. “On [King] David’s throne, once it is restored, there will sit that financial dynasty which all Europe recognizes and to which all of Europe submits; its inauguration will surely provide a scene… most worthy of the [corrupt] century in which we are living.”
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These French writers attributed great power to Jews in general, and to the Rothschilds in particular, at a time when Jews were powerless almost everywhere. As the twentieth-century philosopher Hannah Arendt noted,

Where… was there better proof… than in this one family, the Rothschilds, nationals of five different countries, prominent everywhere, in close cooperation with at least three different governments (French, Austrian, British)…? No propaganda could have created a symbol more effective for political purposes than the reality itself.
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In other words, the power of a few wealthy and prominent Jews was seen as proof of the power of all Jews even though that power did not really exist.

During the Damascus affair, Jews discovered the power of publicity in fighting prejudice and discrimination. They were successful in shaping public opinion in part because many people in the early 1800s shared their belief in universal human rights. They were also successful because modern rulers—even dictators like Muhammad Ali—could not afford to completely ignore public opinion at home or abroad. In 1858, however, an incident in what is now Italy revealed that public opinion does not always prevail.

Early on the morning of June 24, papal guards in Bologna came to the home of a Jewish couple, Salomone David Mortara and his wife, and demanded their six-year-old son Edgardo. To the parents’ horror, the guards had a written order, signed by Father Pier Gaetano Feletti, a local priest, to take the child. At the time, Italy was divided into territories, some of which were ruled by other countries and some by the pope. Bologna was located in a papal state.

Convinced that a terrible error had been made, Mortara raced to Feletti’s home, only to learn that it was no mistake. Five years earlier, when Edgardo was ill, a Christian servant of the family had secretly baptized the baby by sprinkling water on his head and saying a prayer. The woman later left her job without telling anyone what she had done. In time, however, the woman spoke to friends about the baptism, and the information eventually reached Feletti.

In the view of the Catholic Church in the 1800s, once a child has been baptized, even if it was done without the parents’ knowledge or consent, the child is a Christian. And under papal laws, Jewish parents could not rear a Christian child, even if he was their own. Frantic efforts to release the boy failed. He had been taken with the approval of the secretary of state at the Vatican, Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli, who proudly told Edgardo’s father that his son was already “joyously wearing the cross” and attending mass.

Edgardo was not the first child the church had taken from Jewish parents in the 1800s, but his parents were the first to publicize their case. And like the Damascus affair, the story made headlines. In almost every western European city, Christians and Jews protested “the heartless abduction of a small child.” They were outraged that a child could be taken from loving parents for any reason.

Several government leaders, including the emperor of France, found the story so troubling that they quietly tried to persuade Pope Pius IX to release the boy. He refused. Moses Montefiore tried to arrange a meeting with the pope to discuss the matter, only to be told there was nothing to discuss. The church saw no reason to respond to public opinion about a matter of faith. This time, publicity only hardened the church’s stand.

Italy won its independence as a united nation in 1870—12 years after Edgardo’s abduction. During the fight for independence, the pope lost all of his territory in Italy except for the Vatican itself. Pius blamed those losses on his refusal to release Edgardo. The pope was painfully aware that most Italians, regardless of their faith, identified with the Mortaras. Yet Pius continued to believe that he had done the right thing. He was convinced that the baptism had saved the child’s soul and was therefore justified. Pius also felt threatened by the changes that were taking place in Italy and was convinced that bending the rules even slightly would endanger the traditions he valued and the beliefs he had vowed to uphold.

Soon after the independent Kingdom of Italy was formed, Jews became citizens in the new nation, entitled to the full protection of the law. Almost immediately, the authorities informed the Mortaras that their
son was now free to rejoin his family. But by then it was too late: the boy was 18 and studying to become a priest.

The Damascus affair and the Mortara case had shown how precarious it was to be outside a government’s universe of obligation—the circle of individuals and groups toward whom the government has obligations, whose rights are respected, and in whose name justice is sought. In May 1860, Adolphe Crémieux and other French Jewish leaders held a meeting in Paris to create a new organization known as the Universal Israelite Alliance. They explained why Jews needed such a group:

[A]ll other important faiths are represented in the world by nations—embodied, that is to say, in governments that have a special interest and an official to represent and speak for them. Ours alone is without this important advantage; it corresponds neither to a state nor to a society nor again to a specific territory; it is no more than a rallying-cry for scattered individuals—the very people whom it is therefore essential to bring together.
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Those who joined the alliance were mainly secular Jews who had come to believe that they must unite in response to a growing nationalism, which tended to treat Jews as permanent outsiders—a people beyond any nation’s universe of obligation. The early successes of the alliance eventually led to the founding of parallel organizations in other nations—the Anglo-Jewish Association in Britain in 1871, the Israelite Alliance in Vienna in 1873, the
Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden
in Berlin in 1901, and the American Jewish Committee in New York in 1906. These groups often worked together or at least coordinated their efforts.

The French alliance relied on three main tools to protect Jews: education, publicity, and diplomacy. On his first trip to the Middle East during the Damascus affair, Crémieux had been appalled at the lack of educational opportunities for Jews in the region. After meeting with Jewish leaders in Alexandria, he offered to raise money for a school. Under his leadership, the alliance expanded that idea by building a network of schools in North Africa, the Middle East, and eastern Europe to provide secular education and vocational training for both girls and boys. Those schools helped thousands of young Jews from poor families learn a trade or profession.

The French alliance also fought discrimination and prejudice through a combination of publicity and diplomacy. In earlier times, even large-scale massacres had gone unnoticed by most of the world. Now the alliance set out to document acts of violence against Jews. Frantic letters like the ones Jews wrote during the Damascus affair now went to a dedicated staff with the resources needed to take action.

How successful were such efforts? The late 1800s were a time of realpolitik. The word had been coined earlier in the century to describe Austrian efforts to keep the peace by balancing the influence of Europe’s great empires—Britain, France, Germany, Austria, and Russia—so that no single power would have the upper hand. Leaders of the French alliance and similar Jewish groups in other nations were increasingly aware that they must take into account not only a growing nationalism in eastern Europe but also the competing interests of the great powers.

In 1858, for example, the provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia in southeastern Europe broke away from the Ottoman Empire and formed a country later known as Romania. Like people in other newly independent countries in the 1800s, the Romanians wanted the great powers to accept and acknowledge their independence. At a meeting in Paris, representatives of the five powers prepared a treaty that recognized the new nation. At the urging of a number of Jews, that treaty included an important condition: legal equality for all Moldavians and Wallachians. The condition was an attempt to make Jews citizens. The leaders of the new nation signed the treaty but avoided granting Jews citizenship by declaring that they were not, and never could be, Moldavians or Wallachians.

The Universal Israelite Alliance supported schools for poor Jewish girls as well as for boys in the Ottoman Empire and eastern Europe. The students shown in the photograph are learning a valuable trade—dressmaking.

As discrimination against Jews continued in Romania, Emperor Louis Napoleon of France protested. So did Otto von Bismarck of Prussia, the chancellor of a newly united Germany. Romanian leaders ignored them. They also ignored efforts by various Jewish groups to secure at least some rights for Romanian Jews.

Then, in 1877, Russia defeated the Ottoman Empire in one of the many wars of the nineteenth century. Afterward, several countries in southeastern Europe declared their independence from Ottoman rule; others, like Romania, expanded their borders. These new nation-states asked their more powerful neighbors to recognize the change in their status. In 1878, diplomats from France, Germany, Britain, Austria, Russia, and other nations gathered in Berlin to prepare a treaty that would set the conditions for such recognition. Members of various Jewish groups saw the Congress of Berlin as an opportunity to protect Jews in an expanded Romania. Although they had no official standing at the Congress, they could state their case through intermediaries or in written statements.

These lobbying efforts were carefully coordinated, and they succeeded beyond expectation. The delegates to the Congress of Berlin tried to make it clear that citizenship could not be limited to people of a particular religion or culture. The new treaty stated:

In Romania the distinctions of religion, creed, or confession cannot be brought up against anyone as a motive of exclusion and incapacity, as regards the enjoyment of civil and political rights, admission to public employment and honors, or exercise of different professions or industry. The freedom and open practice of all religions shall be assured to all citizens of the Romanian state, and also to foreigners.
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The French ambassador boasted that in defending the Jewish cause at the congress, delegates had “defended the cause of justice, humanity, and civilization.” Jews throughout Europe celebrated. A group in Romania sent Crémieux a telegram: “Hallelujah! We are free. God be praised! Glory to you, noble and illustrious champions of our cause, glory to the Alliance!”

But the tone was very different in Romania’s parliament, where Jews were seen not as fellow citizens but as aliens who did not share in Romanian culture. One deputy declared, “I have the courage to say from this rostrum, that I shall never agree to the Jews of Romania,
en masse
, enjoying political rights.” He added, “If it turns out that injustice goes as far as Europe demanding any such a thing, the Powers will have first to pass over my body rather than get me to join in the murder of my country.”
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Romania refused to sign the treaty. After 18 months of debates, negotiations, and arguments, the nation’s deputies offered a compromise—a slightly improved version of the 1858 treaty they had signed but had ignored ever since. It allowed a few Jews to become citizens. Austria, Italy, France, Britain, and Germany all agreed to the compromise, despite frantic efforts by Jews and Jewish organizations fearful that this new treaty would provide no more protection than the one signed in 1858.