The Englishness of Jewish Modernity in England

This chapter talks about the Jewish historians who looked to the German Jewish experience as the paradigm for the transformation of European Jewry. It reviews the pioneers of Reform Judaism and practitioners of Wissenschaft des Judentums as the key actors in Jewish development. It also explains how Jewish historians constructed a model of change in which new ideas radiated outwards from Berlin and slowly diffused throughout Europe. The chapter considers Jewish historians who looked at developments in Germany from the perspective of liberal states like Britain, France, and the Netherlands, which was problematic as the German states were not in the vanguard of change. It describes the course of Jewish transformation in central Europe that reflected the backward nature of the states in the region.

Memories of Jewishness

This chapter looks at Marcel Proust's epic, a multi-volume novel titled In Search of Lost Time, where a distinguished member of the Jockey Club named Charles Swann is regarded as a Jew before the Dreyfus affair erupted and heightened the Jew-consciousness. It explains why Marcel and others in the aristocratic world of the Faubourg Saint-Germain regarded Swann as a Jew, who saw himself in a similar light towards the end of his life. It also explores why the lines demarcating Jews from Christians became blurred between the French Revolution and the Second World War and how this blurring affected Jews who had converted to Christianity. The chapter refers to Jews in medieval and early modern Europe, with the exception of Iberian Conversos, who were not troubled by issues of collective identity. It recounts how Jews exchanged one well-defined legal and cultural status for another when they rejected Judaism and became Christians.

The Emergence of Disraeli’s Jewishness

This chapter talks about Benjamin Disraeli and his policies, which elicited strong reactions, and who was known to some as a vulgar, cynical careerist and for others a visionary, patriotic statesman. The chapter emphasizes Disraeli as a Jew, and being Jewish was central to his self-understanding despite having been baptized at the age of 12. It also reviews accounts of Disraeli's Jewishness in which historians and biographers have labelled him variously a proto-Zionist, a Marrano, a racist, a proud Jew, and a self-hating Jew. The chapter examines the complex, ambivalent character of what being Jewish meant to Disraeli at different times in his life. It investigates Disraeli's consciousness of being a Jew as a fixed cultural or biological inheritance that emerged and evolved over several decades in response to external changes in his life and stabilized only when he was in his forties.

Welcoming Ex-Jews into the Jewish Historiographical Fold

This chapter refers to the emancipation and enlightenment that failed to uproot hoary views about Jewish otherness nor erase the stigma of Jewishness in an era of unconditional social acceptance. It talks about how Jews became 'less Jewish' when antisemitism persisted and, in some contexts, worsened. It also explains how the enlightenment and scientific and industrial revolutions undermined the doctrinal foundations of Christianity, which initiated the tradition of viewing Jews as demonic outsiders and did not eliminate the stigma attached to Jewishness. The chapter explores the perception that Jews were different in kind from non-Jews that was too rooted in Western culture and sentiment to disappear when the religious doctrines that had engendered it in the first place weakened. It then describes Jews in liberal states like Britain, France, and the United States, who found being Jewish problematic to one degree or another.