Jewish slavery and emancipation

About this book

Berlin argues that the Enlightenment and the French Revolution liberated Jews from Western Europe. Allowing the vast majority to integrate peacefully into Gentile societies and to abandon, as far as possible, their Jewish identities. But then there were three types of Jews who responded to the temptation of assimilation in different ways. The first group refused this assimilation and, closed in orthodoxy, continued to live on the fringes of Gentile society. But what interested Berlin were the following two groups, who continued to live their Jewish condition in a disturbing and disturbed way. As if they were "deformed human beings", bearers of a "hump." There were those who exhibited this deformity, hysterically, as if the hump was the chief of human virtues. And there were those who hid this condition, living in the permanent anxiety of being discovered. Either way, they were both humpbacked, both sharing the same fate: feeling strangers in a strange land. At least until the creation of Israel. For Berlin, Israel had normalized the Jewish condition. Or, in his own words, Israel was the surgical operation that had removed the deformity. For the first time in 2,000 years, the Jews could walk with their backs straight.