§ 125
One will very easily be able to calculate how high a state stands when men who dare to assert again and again that the Jews who disregard the observance of their ancient law and undertake innovations in their religious constitution would lose respect among the Christians, count as statesmen in it. If one finally wants to come to the matter, the question could alone be whether the Jews can follow their ancient law, whether their present relation to the law can elevate their morality, whether it can be a moral one at all — indeed it is even the question what their law is.
The Mosaic Law and the Talmud
§ 126
In general, the Jews boast of their attachment to the religion of their fathers as a proof that they are capable of holding fast to the sacred. When it is a matter of repelling the adversaries who hold their emancipation for impossible, they designate their religion as the most powerful support of social and civic order: but — what is this religion? The Mosaic, according to their presupposition, contains the purest moral teaching; they profess themselves servants of the Mosaic law, and when their opponents use the views and precepts of the Talmud as a weapon against them, but are themselves seized by the aversion which the talmudic statutes inspire in them, they mostly declare that a return to pure or purified Mosaism would be sufficient — but also necessary — to raise the sunken condition of their people.
§ 127
But what is "pure Mosaism"? That determinate constitution which prescribes this determinate sacrificial rite, this priestly order, these property relations, which are possible only in Canaan, only under the presupposition of the sovereignty of the people, i.e., at present simply impossible.
§ 128
Or from what does one wish to "purify" Mosaism? From everything that relates to the sacrificial rite, the old priestly constitution and the legal property relations? Then let one see what remains of the whole! Those determinations are not only a particular, not even only a main part of the so-called Mosaic constitution, but the centre to which all other commandments refer, the ground which they must have if they are not to hang in the air, the support without which they must fall.
§ 129
That the Mosaic law in principle and in its most essential determinations contains all the harshnesses of Rabbinism, that therefore neither the return to its purity nor its purification, if it is not to be its complete dissolution, can really free one from the statutes of the Talmud — this we shall not even mention.
§ 130
Enough, the Mosaic law can in no way be followed any longer. The praise that is bestowed upon it therefore at least refutes itself through its own unfruitfulness. What a praise, which is so little meant seriously that it is in fact and by the whole of life disavowed! What a moral teaching which remains without all influence on real life, whose commandments are at least not carried out! What a moral principle which becomes impracticable when I step over the border of the land in which it alone can be followed!
§ 131
If, therefore, the Jews praise Mosaism as the purest moral teaching, as the most powerful support of social and civic virtues, then these virtues are in a very bad way: they must at least help themselves for a very long time and rely on their own inner excellence, since their "most powerful support" has long since been broken by history and there is as yet no prospect that it could ever be restored.
§ 132
The wisest statesmen, however, who wish to respect the Jew only if he clings to his ancestral law — let them see to it that all Jews are gathered together again, but also that they again have faith, therefore also that they dwell in the midst of kindred hordes whose surroundings must constantly stimulate and keep in agitation their nationalism. If they do not create for the Jews this their old historical existence, and are not in a position to restore it to them, then their talk of attachment to the old is just as empty as that of the Jews of their veneration for the Holy One whom the fathers served.
§ 133
The Jew's thought that he lives in obedience under a law which he in fact does not carry out, cannot carry out, is, in the most favourable case and expressed most mildly, fantastic. It is a self-deception and illusion which can maintain itself only by disregarding the mass of commandments which are now impracticable. Finally, however, it must lead to boundless sophistry when the individual impossible commandments are really attended to and means and ways must be devised by which they can be followed illusorily and in semblance. The sophistry, the casuistry, the accumulation of countless distinctions and the splitting of these again into the most petty differentiations finally becomes the surrogate for the real following of the law, or rather the only and, as we shall see, the only correct — following of it. The law becomes the law of a chimerical world and itself assumes a chimerical form.
§ 134
The Mosaic law which has become chimerical, i.e., the Mosaism spun out further, existing in the head of the sophist, transported into the air, is the only Mosaism now possible.
§ 135
Now, this Mosaism does not need first to be invented: it is given in the Talmud. The Talmud is the further development of the Mosaic law and of the whole Old Testament, but the chimerical, illusory, spiritless further development. Illusory is this further development because it is a mere splitting of the old, a haggling and bargaining with the old, a diluted repetition of it, but no new creation. Spiritless and chimerical it is because it does not dare to break with the old, which has moreover become impossible, must give up the essential conditions of life of the old and yet has not the courage to create a new world out of a new principle. It does not even struggle with the old: but where has there ever been a vigorous and vitalising development which did not first give shape to the new principle and secure its recognition in struggle with the old? The Talmud does not break the form of the old in order to give air to the spiritual content, but it is only a collection of the shards and splinters into which the old had fallen after the spirit had burst it asunder in order to seek a wider form for itself. The further development of the Old Testament in the Talmud is not at all an act of freedom, not one of those heroic deeds of history which bear witness to the power and creative capacity for development of the human spirit; rather, the rabbis have only picked up the shards after a historical revolution which they did not bring about had shattered the old. At most they have ground the shards still finer and completely pulverised them.
§ 136
Real Mosaism has become an impossibility. The Jew who thinks he simply obeys the Mosaic law lives in an illusion. The Talmud is Mosaism become bottomless. Those among the Jews, therefore, are alone right who want to know nothing of a return to Mosaism, but only insofar as they will not admit it: when they state what they wish to put in the place of Mosaism and when they at the same time intend to go beyond the Talmud, they too come back only to the illusory Mosaism which is the point of union of all Jewish parties.
§ 137
"Return to the Old Testament," it says in the petition of the adherents of the Jewish faith to Duke Wilhelm of Brunswick, 1831, "would be nothing other than a step backward in culture. The Talmud is the gradual further development of Moses and the Prophets and the transition to the present Judaism, which is in eternal progress. The standpoint on which our religion now finds itself is a far higher one than that of so-called Mosaism."
§ 138
Higher it is indeed, but only because it has raised itself higher into the airy region of the chimerical world. On the other hand, however, by raising itself higher, it has not struck its roots deeper into the real world, not intertwined itself more firmly with the moral interests of mankind. It is the elevation above prejudice, but at the same time the elevation of prejudice into a more abstract category. Prejudice has died, but on this higher standpoint it has risen to a uniform, immortal life. It has lost its coarse components, but now leads an eternal shadow-life.
§ 139
On this higher standpoint "Israel" has, as for example Herr Salomo declares in his "Open Letter to Herr Frankel" (1842), given up the thought of a "national independence"; it no longer links its salvation to the possession of a "corner of the earth"; it has even resigned itself to a future liberation through the Messiah. Its "Messianic time" has rather come with emancipation, and its expectation of the Messiah is nothing other than its wish to be "freed" from political servitude and political oppression.
§ 140
Under these conditions — and they are really there, those "declarations" in the name of Israel are sincerely meant — on that standpoint Israel really thinks of national independence, of Canaan and the Messiah; it would seem that emancipation could occur momentarily, if indeed the states in which Jews live have for their part also fulfilled the conditions indispensable for this work. Precisely where the nationality of the Jew and everything that makes the Jew seems to have disappeared, the Jewish essence shows itself in its highest power, since it knows how to preserve itself in its loss, and therefore also, when it makes emancipation impossible, at the moment when it seems closest to it, is furthest removed from it.
§ 141
Whether emancipation comes would have to be concluded solely from the political constitution or from the future of the states in which the Jews live, as well as from their own relation to them and from their capacity for development. But even on this standpoint of enlightened Judaism the eyes are so little opened to the real conditions of this world that the gaze remains directed only upwards, namely to the chimerical, religious and political prerogative of Israel. "The Godhead," it now says, "has great things in store for the Jews," as if the question were not alone how much is still lacking in the development of state relations and in the education of the Jews, so that the barrier which now separates the Jew from the union of Christian governments could be removed — i.e., as if it did not depend on the barrier being lifted from both sides. Further, from this standpoint it is also expressed that one "does not relegate the thought that the name of the Jews will again emerge free and independent into the realm of impossibility" — that, then, would be the emancipation which the enlightened Jew wants; that would be a real living-into state-interests, civic equalisation with fellow citizens, or even a sincere participation in the general interests of mankind, if the Jew achieves that his name as such again emerges free and independent. If the Jew, without knowing it, wants instead of emancipation rather the independent existence of his people, therefore the absurdity that he could begin his history again from the beginning, or a superfluous trouble, for the second history would be the same and end just like the first, then he must, still to give satisfaction to his Jewish consciousness, draw the last consequence of his particularism. Salomo, for example, in the aforementioned open letter, expresses that the Jewish religion is the world religion, therefore the religion which must abolish the pride and arrogance of the positive religions, i.e., that the exclusiveness of Judaism will finally succeed in excluding all other exclusive religions — but all must be exclusive.
§ 142
All assurances, even of the most enlightened Jew, that he "does not think" of an independent nationality of his people are, however sincerely they may be meant, illusory. In uttering them, he must revoke and deny them in the same moment and with the same words with which he presents them. So long as he wishes to be a Jew, he cannot and may not deny his essence, exclusiveness, the thought of his particular destiny, of sole dominion, in short the chimera of the most monstrous privilege, and it is only so much the worse for him if he still cherishes this chimera and professes it in the same moment in which he protests against it — it is the proof that the thought of privilege has grown together with his essence.
§ 143
And were he, although it is not possible, in his language to guard against all turns of phrase which give the lie to his assurances and keep them at a distance — but once again! it is not possible! — he would nevertheless refute his finest speeches of equalisation with others and of humanity by his deed, since he declares all others except the Jews to be unclean and, as a Jew, must declare them unclean. His dietary laws are the declaration that all others except the Jews are not his equals, not fellow-men.
§ 144
In short, Mosaism has always and up to now known how to maintain its following among the Jews. As a Mosaism that has become, it rules in the Talmud; illusion when some enlighteners think they can return to pure Mosaism; and with those who believe themselves already very close to equalisation with the subjects of Christian governments or with freer states, illusion insofar as they still seek to hold fast to the privilege which Mosaism confers upon its own, while believing they have given it up. Everything here is illusion!
§ 145
But more than that! Mosaism was also an illusion at the time when the people still existed independently and had historical life.
§ 146
We shall provide a part of the proof by showing how inconsistent the Jewish national consciousness was towards the consequences of its historical development, i.e., reduced its own development to an illusion.
§ 147
The inconsistency and rigidity of the Jewish national consciousness.
The Lack of Inner Stability and the Rigidity of Jewish National Consciousness
§ 148
At every step one wishes to take in religious discussions, one must be prepared for the theological prejudice to exert itself to hold it back. Thus, at the step we are about to take, we have to do with Christian and Jewish theologians who fight for the assertion that the Old Testament law teaches universal love of mankind and morality. The inconsistency and rigidity of the Jewish national consciousness.
§ 149
This matter is treated in my Letters on Dr. Hengstenberg (1839. Berlin) in such a way that every refutation is impossible, and decided against those who absolutely want to make the law into a moral one.
§ 150
For the interest which occupies us here, the following remarks will suffice.
§ 151
For the Jew only his fellow countryman is brother and neighbour, and all other peoples besides him count for him and must
§ 152
must appear to him according to the law as without right and without legal standing.
§ 153
If, then, the other peoples have no right to exist beside him, the difference between them and the people which alone possesses all right and all truth must disappear, and the members of the foreign nations must disappear within the true, the only nation. With the strangers, of whom the law often speaks, this has partly happened. It is presupposed of them that they incline towards the legal essence of the people and, because of this very inclination, dwell in its midst. They are therefore partly no longer strangers, and insofar as they are no longer so, they are recommended to the participation of the people. But in the same moment when the law seems to approach the thought of universal love of mankind, it withdraws from it and steps back again into the barrier of exclusive nationality. The mildness, or rather the individual benefactions which are to be shown to the stranger, are to be shown to him as a stranger. He is and remains a stranger, and if the Jew stands in relation to him, he stands in relation to him not as man to man; if he shows him benefactions, he shows them not as man to his fellow-man, but the Jew remains Jew, the stranger stranger. He remains a stranger, and the people is even expressly reminded of this relation by the law.
§ 154
It helps the stranger nothing that he inclines towards the legal essence of the people; in the end it also helps nothing that the law itself must regard the difference between the people and the peoples as an appearance which ought not really to be: it rather always restores the difference itself when it does not cease to regard the stranger as a stranger. It would no longer be the law which regards that difference as an illegitimate appearance if it did not always posit and consolidate it anew.
§ 155
On a larger scale this contradiction develops when it is said that Jehovah — in the time of the Messiah — will reveal himself as the God of the peoples and receive them into his community. The declaration that Jehovah takes pleasure in love, not in sacrifice, becomes entangled in the same contradiction.
§ 156
All these views and declarations are suited to nothing less than the rehabilitation of Judaism for which Jewish and Christian apologists have wished to use them; they serve rather only to make its guilt greater and its harshnesses recognisable in all their harshness.
§ 157
They are violations against the specific principle of legal Judaism — views which formed themselves in struggle against the fanaticism, narrowness and externality of the law — attempts of Judaism to overstep its original limit, therefore inconsistencies of Judaism against itself.
§ 158
But they remain inconsistencies. It is the essence of Judaism to be inconsistent. Its consistency consists in being and remaining inconsistent.
§ 159
As inconsistencies and individual views, they are violated and disavowed by the whole, by the ruling spirit of the law and the positive, that which really holds good.
§ 160
The whole of Jewish history has treated them as inconsistencies, i.e., the Jewish national spirit was during its historical development so inconsistent that it did not think of making the reformatory views which had offered themselves to it into deed. Even if it was said that Jehovah would receive all peoples, the exclusiveness of the law and of the people's life nevertheless remained in undiminished force, and the thought that Jehovah takes pleasure in love, not in sacrifice, moved no Jew to put the law of love in the place of the sacrificial cult.
§ 161
Over inconsistency, rather, the consistency of exclusiveness, of narrowness and of the soulless mechanism into which all external sacrificial practice must fall, carried the day.
§ 162
This power of consistency goes so far that it carried off the victory even in the same individual consciousness in which higher views had formed themselves. The same writer who expressly and repeatedly removes every distinction between the Jews and the peoples — e.g., the author of the so-called second part of Isaiah — is capable of the inconsistency of restoring this distinction in the harshest way and saying that the peoples would in the future be the servants of the Jews.
§ 163
There is no more uncertain and inconsistent national spirit than the Jewish: it develops in opposition to its narrowness and proceeds to views which would have to abolish its law, but it does not make earnest with progress, does not really advance, relegates what appears to it as the actual truth to the distant future, so that it does not alter it for the present; it knows, however, at the same time to ensure that even in the future no earnest is made with the truth and that rather the victory is reserved for its narrowness — i.e., there is no more consistent national spirit than the Jewish, since in progressing it really does not progress, in developing it does not develop, and despite the higher ideas which have pressed themselves upon it, remains what it is.
§ 164
This consistency is nothing but the egoistic obstinacy which denies the true consequences of historical development and persecutes them as inconsistencies.
§ 165
If the Jewish religion was the faith of this particular people in its uniqueness, then its historical development had to have as its result the people's unbelief in itself, since it believed itself to be in possession of universal truth, therefore had to see truth also as the universal possession of all and to burst its national narrowness. As Jewish, and insofar as it wishes to remain the people in whose particular possession the truth is, the people may not reach this goal of its historical development and may not admit that it is reached. Its history may not finish with itself. Its faith in itself forbids the Jew to have a history, and if he nevertheless could not escape historical development, he must, when it has occurred, deny it. His faith in himself, i.e., his religion, which must lead him to unbelief in himself, at the same time commands him to remain what he is.
§ 166
Under these circumstances, however, he is no longer what he was (the Jew who was capable of this determinate development, had it before him and necessarily had to see it): after the development and when he has denied it, he is rather the Jew who exists against the intention of his history, therefore also in spite of his history, the Jew who exists in opposition to his destiny, in short the anti-historical Jew.
§ 167
The Jew is rigid and consistent, but only in inconsistency and lack of consistency. That he must be so rigid and inconsistent, because he can no longer be the legal and exclusive, i.e., the real Jew, if he realised the ideas to which his history and his faith in himself led him, makes his whole essence into a contradiction, his existence into a morbid one, indeed into an injustice.
§ 168
By persisting in his exclusiveness, by following the petty precepts of the law as the highest eternal commandments, despite the fact that all this — his exclusiveness and his legal essence — was recognised as an untruth, he degrades the truths which his prophets speak to an untruth, and the prophets, because they feel and speak out of the Jewish national spirit and do not step out of their people, relegate the execution of those truths to the future.
§ 169
What truths, which as divine ought to be eternal and already valid now, and are only to hold good in the future! What ideas, which may have no influence on the people's life if the privilege of the people is not to be given up! The people had to suffer from a contradiction, to which it finally succumbed.
§ 170
The moral development of a people can go only so far that it earnestly carries out the highest ideas which have dawned upon its consciousness, is passionately active for them, and lets it come to the point that it must sacrifice itself for them. The Jewish people has kicked against this goad of development, and when it was passionately excited — which it was very often and could be to a very high degree — it was only for its privilege, and when it finally sacrificed itself as a people, it suffered only for wanting to maintain a standpoint which was designated as an untrue one by the result of its own development.
§ 171
If this is how it stands with the higher ideas to which Jewish consciousness had raised itself, the question still remains whether the existing, the positive, the law could make moral.
The Legalistic Life of the Jew
§ 172
The question is rather, after the clarifications which the newer critique has given on the manner in which religious communities develop, to be correctly posed: whether a people which has produced a law such as the Mosaic was could know and possess true morality.
§ 173
The religious laws are the expression, proceeding from the peoples themselves, of what they hold to be their true essence — an expression which they have reproduced in sacred history, e.g., of the patriarchs, the prophets and the holy kings, in the form of the ideal execution of their essence. In their laws and in their sacred history the peoples have uncovered, betrayed and expressed their inner being, and if this expression of their essence reacts back upon them, the consequences are to be credited to them alone as their merit or their guilt.
§ 174
What, then, are the Jews according to their own declarations, which we possess in their law and in their sacred history?
§ 175
Above all, an unfree people. They did not yet know that laws must be taken from the nature of relations, as the inner natural laws of these relations. They could therefore give no account of what was law among them. As soon as what we can improperly call law, when we think of our position regarding a law of worldly relations, formed itself among them, it counted for them as something foreign, pitiable, simply disproportionate, as the will of Jehovah, in short as a determination which has nothing at all to do with the nature of the relations for which it is supposed to be law. The law is simply arbitrary, and they are its slaves, who must obey it unconditionally, without knowing why? indeed, without being allowed to ask.
§ 176
A national spirit which places itself in relation to laws in this way is inwardly dull and crude. It develops, but does not know how; its development is without free consciousness, therefore also without a universal human content. It opens itself out of its closedness in order to express what counts for it as right and true, but only momentarily, in order immediately to close itself again against what has been expressed. Its own work now as will and deed of a foreign power.
§ 177
From so constricted and closed an inner being no universal truths can proceed. When it happens that in the Old Testament universal propositions are set up, e.g.: ye shall be holy, for I am holy, even these propositions are, as it were, only violently thrust out, are torn off, broken off; they lack every inner grounding, every connection — for why, e.g., should the people be holy because Jehovah is? What is the essential bond between the two? Why is this people, which is to be holy because Jehovah is holy? — in short, these universal propositions are themselves arbitrary.
§ 178
Thus all laws on this standpoint are arbitrary and their content the most accidental. That, e.g., oil in general is the means by which the character of holiness is communicated to a person is grounded neither in the nature of oil nor in the essence of holiness — (that holiness in general is the arbitrary separation from the natural and spiritual interests of men, and therefore, as arbitrariness itself, can also arbitrarily choose the means by which it expresses its separation — this we do not reflect upon here: we grasp holiness here in general as the universal determination which the Old Testament presupposes) — but that the anointing oil should be composed precisely of these ingredients, that the ingredients should be chosen in precisely these determinate quantities, that the clothing of certain persons should be made of these determinate materials, that the materials should be precisely of this or that colour, that sins should be atoned for by the death of irrational animals, that the animals for determinate cases should be precisely these determinate ones, that from the animals in particular cases precisely these or those parts should be burnt — this is arbitrariness itself.
§ 179
The newer science comprehends this arbitrariness, insofar as critique knows how to interpret the rites and ceremonies of the Jewish cult, i.e., has discovered how they arose, what meaning and connection with the spiritual idea of the whole the individual parts have. But first, there are also many rites which are completely arbitrary and not to be interpreted at all; secondly, the customs whose interpretation is possible are always a most inadequate expression for inner moral feelings and concerns, and their connection with the inner being of man is limited to a most unclear resonance with it; finally, however, the legal Jew does not want the precepts of the law to be understood at all, or only interpreted.
§ 180
His true life is the following of unintelligible and arbitrary rites. The arbitrary is for him the essential, his essence itself, and this or that cut of the clothes, this or that colour of them an essential concern.
§ 181
The arbitrary and accidental may therefore not be treated arbitrarily and as accidental. There is here in general no distinction between accidental and necessary. The accidental is the true and necessary, and the essential is the trivial and indifferent. The building of a house, its repair, the treatment of cooking utensils, accidental illnesses, the choice of foods — all this arbitrary matter is completely removed from arbitrariness or its own nature and quality and elevated into the world of the One Being, whose sole content it constitutes. The healing of illnesses is not medical, the choice of foods not a matter of dietetics, the cleansing of pots not a household affair, but the highest concern of life, a religious concern.
§ 182
The same unfreedom and dependence on the indifferent is proved by the Jew in his view that the soul, the human spirit, can be altered by nature, defiled by certain foods, by natural developments of the body, by contact with corpses. If the spirit fears nature and is convinced that it can be stained by it, then it has not yet completely distinguished itself from nature; in other words, nature counts for it immediately as a spiritual superior power, and indeed as a hostile one.
§ 183
For art and science the Jew was therefore lacking the liberality and expansiveness necessary for the establishment of a free, human relation with other peoples, as well as for the theoretical, free occupation with nature and with human interests. His whole essence is from the outset constricted, contracted and finally locked up in the most alien, most trivial and most indifferent things — in cooking pots, in household utensils, in clothes and ointment vessels.
§ 184
Only one of the determinate ways in which the Jewish national spirit has constricted itself is the hierarchy, the caste order. Hierarchy is everywhere where the national spirit does not yet have the power, liberality, mobility or capacity for development to exist in all members of the people. Within the people it needs a particular people in order to maintain its actual existence, i.e., the constricted and contracted existence which corresponds to the low degree of its culture, and within this constricted existence it chooses, or lets itself be given by nature and birth, a single individual in which it first gains its true and actual existence — the High Priest. This is first the true, the actual people.
§ 185
The highest essence of the legal Jew, or the One into whose exclusive, particular and accidental being his whole essence is constricted — this highest essence is without consistency, since it does not prove by deed that it is mine, but rather interests itself only in trivialities and reveals itself in arbitrariness. It is contradiction itself; to maintain itself, it must exert itself violently and be iron. Its zeal is therefore not a rational development of its universal significance, but has the form of a sudden, wrathful outburst and of revenge, which in its suddenness shows itself capable of theoretical extension only when it is a matter of being inventive in the fixing of sensual punishments. Theory exists only for the penal code.
§ 186
This lack of consistency of its essence the people expresses in its whole history, in its language, in its character. It wants to be everything, the unique, the one, the universal. Unique, however, it is only in this, that it has constricted its whole essence with such violent force into this one single determinateness that no room is left for universal interests, and therefore everything else outside this one must become nothing.
§ 187
The pride and arrogance of a people which believes itself and, as this one people, wants to be everything, is provoked and maintained by the fact that peoples exist at all, but at the same time also disquieted and made insecure. The people is not what it ought to be, the one and only universal, if there are peoples. It becomes uncertain of itself if there are happy and powerful peoples, and in order to become completely wretched and to despair of itself, it begins to cling all the more convulsively to the thought of its uniqueness and to intoxicate itself with its conviction of the injustice which the peoples have. They have, however, injustice already in this, that they exist as peoples, i.e., under the appearance of a national being which belongs to the one true people.
§ 188
Harshness, crudeness, wildness and cruelty were peculiar to this people in its wars and had to be peculiar to it, since it fought with peoples who counted for it as simply without right.
§ 189
One has spoken of the bravery of the Jews: but bravery, i.e., the calm and security in the midst of battle, the consciousness of fighting for a purpose which one knows to be secure and inviolable in the event that one succumbs as an individual or that the chance of a battle has once decided unfavourably — this bravery is found among the Greeks and Romans. What one has called bravery among the Jews was only a wild outburst against an illegitimate opposition, a fury of extermination, the consuming fire of the animal spirit, a measureless and uncontrolled outburst in the case of misfortune and failure, a just as great despondency, i.e., again a so much more convulsive elevation out of the thought of the exclusive prerogative of the people.
§ 190
Nowhere, therefore, and in no relation, morality, moral consistency and true humanity! — a lack which will show itself in its whole nakedness when we consider the relation of the people to its law in general.
§ 191
The first condition for an inner calming and consolidation of the national spirit was lacking, when reality, existence alongside other peoples, lagged behind the idea that this one people should be the only real people and gave the lie to it. Every day, every movement of history was a proof that the people was infinitely far from its idea; the national existence of the people was itself a constant falling away from its idea.
§ 192
If, however, it once really felt itself as a people, lived through the passions of national being and opened itself to the natural feelings which are peculiar to peoples, it also contradicted in fact its idea, according to which it was to be holy, to withdraw from the natural feelings of other peoples, therefore to lead a completely abstracted and separated life. If it could feel itself as a real, worldly people only at the cost of its idea, then this self-feeling, because it was removed and stripped of every idea, of every universal law, could only be wild, chaotic, turbid and a confused, dull brooding or inner struggling.
§ 193
Their law was finally, in itself, already the falling away from itself. If at the moment of its origin it appeared to the people as a foreign, imposed will and presented itself as such, then it excludes itself from the people's life and tears itself away from the heart in which it was to dwell. As soon as it arises, it repels the people from itself, and this does the same from its side: it repels the law. Jewish history tells only of an unbroken series of rebellions against the law; falling away followed upon falling away; only for moments was the law brought to a kind of recognition, i.e., only care was taken that rebellion could begin anew.
§ 194
The Jews are therefore the only people in world history which has never been able to unite with its law and first carried it out when it ceased to be a people and had lost its national independence. So it was natural and not otherwise to be expected, if the law could maintain itself only in estrangement from the national being, therefore could have no rational contact with anything less than real national affairs, if its task rather consisted only in standing all national relations on their head.
§ 195
It is the law — if that can still be called law — which rules in a wonder-world. The equal distribution of property which the law prescribes and presupposes is impossible and has never existed among the Jews; the arrangements which the Pentateuch makes to maintain this equality are pure postulates and arithmetical airy phantoms; a jubilee year such as the law wants is impossible and has never been celebrated as the law prescribes. The whole relation of the people's life to the sanctuary, as the law demands, has never taken place and is not only impossible — only in a wonder-world can, e.g., all men of a people leave their houses three times a year at the same time, and while they celebrate the high festivals before the sanctuary, leave the ends of the land defenceless without harm — but most of the laws belonging here have even first been thought out, and they have all first been brought into their ideal connection when the sanctuary whose existence they presuppose had long since ceased to exist.
§ 196
People and law were pure antithesis and had to be, without ever being able to fill out or balance the antithesis. The law was an irony of national and world relations, and the people held it for its essence and destiny to be no real people, i.e., no people alongside other peoples. It wanted to be the people of the wonder, could therefore also have only the law of the wonder and nowhere less than in this world and in its real and moral laws live itself in.
§ 197
If it is to remain with the law and Judaism as such wishes to maintain itself, then Rabbinism is the true form of the law and life in captivity the correct fulfilment of the law. The Jewish people wanted to be no people like the other peoples, no actual people, no people alongside others. Well then! it has become what it wanted to be: a people like no other: it is really no longer a people alongside others and yet has not ceased to be a people. It has now really become the people of the wonder, the people of illusion and chimera. Just so has the law become completely what it fundamentally always was, the law of a wonder-world which is absolutely opposed to the real world in which its servants live — the law of illusion, of chimera and of a fantastic or sophistical calculation and combination.
§ 198
The question of the moral standpoint of later Judaism has thereby already been answered. We need only reproduce the answer in a brief paraphrase.
The Ethical Standpoint of Later Judaism
§ 199
The moral standpoint of later Judaism.
§ 200
The law remains impracticable and incapable of giving the people an inner moral support.
§ 201
Because it consists of arbitrary determinations and takes no account of the nature of the real relations in which the people lives, it will give it an extraordinary tenacity and make it possible that it maintains itself unchanged in the midst of the other peoples, but it will achieve this its purpose only by preventing the people from living itself into the interests of other peoples or even gaining an inkling of that by which the historical life of the same is moved.
§ 202
Obedience to the whole law, since it is in fact impossible — as it always was — will be able to be only theoretical: brooding, casuistry and sophistry. The harshness and violence of this sophistry will be all the greater, since it has to do not with determinations about universal human relations, but with ordinances which refer to this particular people, and indeed to this people in this particular situation in the holy land, in the surroundings of peoples who were still entangled in nature-worship and natural religion and were more like animal-spirits than national spirits, and to the connection of this people with the legal sanctuary.
§ 203
Only a few legal determinations — namely those which refer to the external, e.g., to the observance of certain times, to the religious treatment of the body, to food, which can at all events be transferred from the soil of the holy land to any other — only such determinations will be able to be followed by the Jews in exile.
§ 204
But no! It is nevertheless not possible. Their observance has become a soulless semblance, since their actual meaning, their antithesis to natural religion, therefore also their connection with it, is now lost. The commandment, e.g., of purity and of abstinence from certain foods has its meaning only in a world where those who follow it, as well as those to whom its observance is to form an antithesis, see in nature a spiritual enemy, evil and a realm of sin. In Europe it has lost its original meaning.
§ 205
In order to maintain the soulless semblance, one must finally take refuge in hypocrisy. On the Sabbath, for example, the Jew uses Christian servants who keep the fire in his house, as if he were not responsible for what the servant does at his command and for his enjoyment.
§ 206
Precisely now, however, when its exercise has become senseless and a mere semblance, its customs separate the Jew from the peoples all the more, since the bottomless and false earnestness which is expended on the mere semblance must place the Jew, who sees in this semblance his true, highest essence and his national being, in a sharper antithesis to the earnestness with which the European peoples conduct their great affairs, than the earlier exercise of these customs had placed him to the Canaanite hordes.
§ 207
Now that he dwells in the midst of the peoples, the exclusive power of the Jew has not only first received the opportunity to prove itself, but has also reached its highest degree. He is still the member of the chosen people for whose sake the world stands, the sun rises and sets, until his time comes, the time which makes him the ruling one. The present life in captivity is only a time of trial, which is over when the Messiah comes.
§ 208
Those who wish to see the emancipation of the Jews carried out immediately and without circumlocution, e.g., Mirabeau, have said that the expectation of the Messiah would hinder the Jews from being good citizens just as little as the expectation of the future of Christ made the first Christians unfit for it. They should, however, first have proved that the first Christians, despite their expectations, were real citizens of this world, that their expectation of the Lord did not rather make them indifferent to the affairs of the Roman empire — in fact, however, they were indifferent only insofar as they watched every movement to see whether it might not be the herald of the judgment which would put an end to the empire of this world — those defenders of emancipation would therefore first have to furnish the absolutely impossible proof that a community which sees the treasure to which its heart clings only in the future or in heaven can devote a sincere and heartfelt participation to the affairs of the state and the history of this world. But can the heart be devoted to two masters? Can it be on earth and in heaven at the same time? If it is in heaven, only the heartless and soulless husk of the body is on earth.
§ 209
The Jews as such cannot amalgamate themselves with the peoples and throw their lot together with theirs. As Jews they must expect a particular future which is allotted to them alone as this determinate people and secures world dominion. As Jews they believe only in their people; this faith is the only one of which they are capable and to which they are obliged: for the other peoples they have only unbelief, and this unbelief is necessary and commanded to them so that the faith in their privilege does not expire. Their faith in themselves alone must continually kindle itself on the unbelief with which they regard the other peoples.
§ 210
By the manner in which we have treated the matter — we have, however, grasped it only as
§ 211
III. The Position of Christianity towards Judaism.
§ 212
Its solution will also not yet seem facilitated when we now designate the position of Christianity towards Judaism and shall furnish the proof for the proposition that Judaism was struck from the side of Christianity and of the Christian state by its own, but by its really carried-out consequences.
§ 213
If, however, a solution exists, it will certainly be found only where the difficulty has reached its highest peak.