THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
mised in an attempt to reduce to serfage the cossacks of Ukraine, and many thousands perished, and a large number were killed in the Russian-Swedish war under Charles X. It is said that 180,000 families perished, 1648-1658, and Polish Judaism lost its eminent position.
4. The New Period: By the end of the eighteenth century a general deterioration and rankness of religious life had conquered Judaism all over the world; if the people was to be saved, a rebirth was necessary for the whole people. The reformation of the inner spirit of Judaism began in Germany through Moses Mendelssohn (q.v.); the betterment of the external situation began with the emancipation of the Jews of France. The great elector, Frederick William, had settled fifty Jewish families from Vienna in Berlin, and to that place came Mendelssohn, and gave himself to educational and philosophical work. His reputation, recognized even by Christians, stimulated the younger Jews to care for larger interests, and study of the Talmud alone no longer satisfied. His translation of the Pentateuch into German, though necessarily printed in Hebrew type, had great influence, though use of it was forbidden by the rabbis. Following his lead, a generation of authors sprang up having the purpose to release the Jewish people and religion from the superstition and regard for mere ceremony into which they had fallen, to break the yoke of Talmudism, and substitute the Bible as the basis of life. In France in 1791 Jews were given the right of citizenship, though this was withdrawn in Alsace in 1808. In 1812, after six years of preparatory measures, Napoleon declared the Jews of the empire eligible to citizenship, though in the free cities of Germany this right had to be purchased, and it was afterward withdrawn. Progress toward the same end of freedom for the Jews was made in other European countries. In Germany most of the states took the religion under their protection. Many Jews became Christians, others set up reformed synagogues (as in Cassel and Hamburg). Yet in 1819 there broke out a new popular uprising against the Jews, in which life and property were destroyed. Against the reform tendency in Judaism and the movement toward Christianity arose an orthodox party fostering the early ideals. Jewish consciousness of its past and a new awakening of Jewish spirit was brought about by the Geschichte der Israeliten (9 vols., 1820-29) of I. M. Jost (q.v.), while works on Jewish history, poetry, and philosophy, and on the linguistics of the Hebrew tongue further stimulated the newly awakened interest. While Abraham Geiger (q.v.) had a leading part in this movement, the political support gained in France through the help given to Louis Philippe in 1830 by the Rothschilds furthered the cause. The spirit of liberalism spread, the literary activities of Heine, Borne, and Gabriel Riesser contributed to its growth and many Jews accepted Christianity. An event in the East raised again the Jewish question in Europe. In Damascus, which reckoned among its 120,000 inhabitants 5,000 Jews, Father Tomaso, the guardian of the Capuchins, and his servants disappeared. Seven of the richest Jews were accused of murdering them, their houses were attacked and
destroyed in the effort to find the bodies, while the owners and other Jews were slain or arrested. The Jewish financial houses of Europe interested France, England and Austria in protecting the Jews, and an international court under Mohammed AH of Egypt was established to investigate the case. The general result was a unification of feeling among the Jews of Europe, and this was extended to the East by the establishment there of schools to raise the level of knowledge among the Jews of the Orient. A specially important movement was the founding of the Alliance Israelite Universelle at Paris under the leadership of Adolphe Cremieux, who had been a guiding spirit during the entire course of events. The result of the revolutionary movements of 1848 in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Italy, and elsewhere was the triumph of liberalism with the advancement of the Jews as an inevitable consequence. A reaction occurred, beginning in 1870, and antisemitism expressed itself, especially in Germany, in attacks upon the Jewish quarters, while this feeling and its consequent riots and legal limitations spread into Russia, Rumania, Austria, and France. The consequence of the feeling of insecurity thus awakened among Jews was the establishment in Vienna by Theodor Herzl of the Zionist movement, the object of which is the founding of a Jewish state in Palestine in which all persecuted Jews may find a secure refuge. (F. Heman.)
5. Jews in America. After the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, and from Portugal in 1497, a considerable number of them nominally adopted Christianity but retained their Jewish creed and practises in secret. Colum- ' t5 y bus, on his first voyage, was accomments" Painecl by several of these Maranos, or secret Jews; many Maranos visited or settled in Spanish or Portuguese America, and, when their creed was discovered, became victims of the Inquisition. By their wide connection with the Spanish Jews who had settled in Holland and the Levant, they contributed to international trade across the Atlantic. Owing to a natural sympathy with Holland, those of Brazil took the part of the Dutch in the conflict between Holland and Portugal for the possession of that country, and when the Dutch were expelled from Pernambuco and Rio Janeiro in 1654 a considerable number of Jews left with them and went to the West India Islands. Some twenty-three of these emigrated to New York in the summer of that year, and obtained a footing there through the influence of the Dutch West India Company, among the founders and members of which were a number of Amsterdam Jews. Four years later fifteen Jewish families arrived at Newport, R. I., and established a congregation there, under the direction of Aaron Lopez, one of the leading merchants of the country, about 1650. It is possible that Jews had appeared even earlier in Maryland; but the first of importance there was Jacob Lumbroso, a physician of distinction. These places and Philadelphia, Savannah, and Charleston constituted the chief seats of Jewish settlement in the latter half of the seventeenth and the first part of the eighteenth century; the settlers were mostly of the Sephardic, or Spanish branch of the