"Woman:" "Who is the father who raises his children only to take vengeance on them, with great and fuming wrath?" "We have sat on the ground;" "We have also wept." "Abba Eban:" "1492-a year of bitter ironies." "On the day set aside in the Jewish calendar for mourning the destruction of the Jewish temple by Rome centuries before, the last Jewish refugees set sail from Spain." "On the very next day, another ship set sail from a Spanish harbor, this one commanded by Christopher Columbus." "A door was opening onto a new world for Europe, but all the doors seemed to be closing for the Jews." "Man:" "Your brothers went as exiles from Jerez and Seville." "I saw their stubbornness." "I brought on the expulsion from Castile and Sicily;" "Aragon, Granada, my children." "I took you from the Holy Land as exiles into bondage." "I saw your stubbornness." "You did not heed Isaiah or Jeremiah." "Therefore, I had not mercy on you, my children." "Eban: 1492 was a tragic year for the Jews of Spain." "King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, under the pressure of their advisor Tomas de Torquemada, ordered all Jews to leave the Kingdom within 4 months on pain of death." "The glorious institutions of Spanish Jewry, like this great synagogue at Toledo- now Santa Maria la Blanca- were doomed." "Now, expulsion was not a new experience for the Jews of Europe." "Jews had been expelled from England, France, and many a town in Germany during the preceding 5 centuries." "But those events had nothing like the dramatic effects that marked the expulsion of the Jews from Spain." "Jews had never made themselves at home anywhere more deeply, more intimately than in Spain." "Their creativity had flowed in every direction." "they had been 150,000 or more in numbers." "One out of every 10 Spaniards had been Jewish or of Jewish origin." "And now this Jewish community, the largest and most prosperous in the world, was doomed to destruction by a single stroke of the pen." "The traumatic effects were not felt by the Jews of Spain alone." "No event since the destruction of Judea by the Romans 14 centuries before, had so shaken the security of Jews everywhere or brought them to so sharp a realization of their exile and their vulnerability." "Men, women, and children- aristocrats and common laborers alike" "150,000 Jews displaced and homeless." "With the exception of a few cities in Italy, western Europe was closed to the refugees." "They were forbidden even to cross its territory." "[man singing in foreign language]" "They fled to the Ottoman Empire, to the Moslem lands of the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa." "They settled in the Jewish communities of these lands, and they prospered." "But wherever they went- to Morocco, to Istanbul, to Italy, or to the Eastern Mediterranean- the Jews of Spain carried with them a burden of sorrow that no material well-being could relieve." "The fate of the refugees from Spain stirred within the Jewish heart and mind a profound self-examination." "It forced upon Jews everywhere a deep sense of exile, and they reached for ways to redefine their place in the world." "In the years following the expulsion from Spain, a new understanding of Jewish existence would emerge in a village in the Ottoman province of Palestine." "Man:" "He who saw Safed 10 years ago and observes it now, has the impression of a miracle, for more Jews are arriving here continually." "hatred of the Jews is unknown here, and the Turks hold them in esteem." "Safed was at first little more than a village standing near the graves of the revered Jewish sages" "Hillel and Shammai." "Now it became a center of Jewish mysticism." "In their search for an explanation of the meaning of Jewish existence, scholars from many lands came to worship and study the sacred texts of Judaism." "In the books they studied lies the key to their mystical vision." "The Mishnah, the Talmud, and the Midrashim were books traditionally studied by Jews everywhere for the previous thousand years." "But the Zohar- the Zohar was different." "It was called the book of splendor, the book of radiance." "It was enigmatic and mysterious." "It was at the heart of a world of ideas known as the Kabala." "In Safed, the Kabala would take a place in the forefront of Jewish thinking." "The greatest of the mystical scholars of Safed was the rabbi Isaac Luria." "Woman:" "He saw spirits everywhere and heard their whispers in the rushing of the water, in the movements of the trees and grass, in the song or twitterings of the birds, even in the flickerings of flames." "Eban:" "Luria found in the Kabala a mystical explanation for the condition of the Jews." "It was not just the Jewish people who were in exile." "The whole world, even God himself was in exile." "[men chanting in foreign language]" "Luria taught that there had been an accident before the creation of the universe." "Part of the divine spirit, in the form of celestial sparks, had been scattered and lost." "For the divine spirit to be made whole again, the scattered sparks would have to be recovered." "According to Luria, the Jews had a special role in this cosmic drama." "If every Jew were to obey the commandments of God in every action- no matter how small or seemingly insignificant- the sparks would be recovered," "The world restored to holiness, and the people of Israel redeemed." "While the Jews of Safed studied and prayed and waited for the restoration of the world, across the Mediterranean, another sort of restoration was taking place." "In Venice and in other cities of northern Italy, the late Middle Ages had brought a rebirth of trade and commerce unmatched in Europe since the days of the roman empire." "[bell ringing]" "Man:" "I see vessels as big as any mansion, their masts taller than its towers." "They are as mountains floating on the waters." "They go to face incalculable dangers in every portion of the globe." "They bear wine to England;" "honey to Russia;" "saffron, oil, and linen to Assyria, Armenia," "Persia, and Araby." "They return heavily laden with products of all kinds, which are sent hence to every part of the world." "Eban:" "Great sums were needed to finance this commerce." "In Venice, a group of men began to specialize in gathering the money necessary for such investments." "Seated on benches at their exchange tables, these early capitalists came to be known as bench men," ""banchieri" in Italian... bankers." "The rise of a money economy meant a new respectability for merchants, traders, and financiers." "The Jews who practiced these trades would share in this new acceptability." "The Middle Ages were coming to a close." "Across all of Italy, the new merchant class came to power." "They broke away from the pious convictions of medieval society and found in the culture of ancient Rome and Greece an inspiration for the world they would now create." "They called it a rebirth, a Renaissance." "In their desire to rediscover the achievements of the past, the men of the Renaissance studied Greek and even Hebrew texts." "In their painting and sculpture, they portrayed mythological and biblical subjects." "It seemed that the thousand years since the fall of Rome had been nothing but a sojourn in darkness and ignorance." "For the men of the Renaissance, wisdom was to be found in the classical world." "Man:" "When evening comes," "I return home and go into my library." "I dress myself as though I were to appear before a royal court as a Florentine envoy." "Then, decently attired," "I enter the courts of the great men of antiquity." "They receive me with friendship." "For 4 long and happy hours, I lose myself in them." "I forget all my troubles." "I am not afraid of poverty or death." "I transform myself entirely in their likeness." "Eban:" "The rediscovery of ancient literature and the desire among growing numbers of people for books to read was spurred on by an invention:" "printing with movable type." "Books, once rare and costly- some of which, incidentally, were in Hebrew- were now being published in all the major cities of that day." "a generation of scholars began to examine the world around them with new eyes." "In the early 1500s, a Polish doctor," "Mikolaj Kopernik, was working to simplify the mathematics that described the motion of heavenly bodies." "He came to a shocking conclusion:" "the Sun and stars did not revolve about the Earth." "The Earth was not the center of the Universe." "Kopernik would be remembered by the Latin form of his name" "Copernicus." "What he started was no less than a revolution." "Others followed in his footsteps:" "Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Galileo." "[men singing in Latin]" "It was a time of vast upheavals in man's understanding of himself and his world." "Medieval doctrines that had been cherished and preserved for centuries were being threatened on all sides." "Man:" "I believe in neither pope nor councils alone, for it is perfectly well-established that they have frequently erred as well as contradicted themselves." "I must be bound by those scriptures which have been brought forward by me." "Yes, my conscience has been taken captive by these words of God." "Here I stand." "I cannot do otherwise." "God help me." "Eban:" "A few years before Copernicus had come to his radical conclusions, martin Luther, a young German priest, angered by what he saw as corruption within the church, launched a one-man crusade that would rock it to its foundations." "Over the years that followed," "Luther moved further and further away from the church in his beliefs." "Throughout Europe, others began to break away from the church." "In 1537," "Henry VIII declared the church of England independent of Rome." "4 years later, in Geneva, the preacher John Calvin set up his own church with beliefs that differed dramatically from traditional Christian doctrine." "For the first time since its founding, the church in Rome was unable to suppress a major heretical movement." "The unity of Christian faith in the West, although often fragile, had lasted for almost a thousand years." "Now, in a little more than two decades, it was rent asunder forever." "[bell rings]" "Man:" "We have been informed that in Rome and elsewhere, the shamelessness of the Jews is such that they presume to dwell among Christians in the neighborhood of churches and even to rent houses in the more elegant streets and squares of the cities." "Eban:" "The reaction of the church to Martin Luther's protestant rebellion was disastrous for the Jews." "The church was determined to stamp out deviation and heresy of every kind, and Jews, like protestants, were regarded as a threat." "Indeed, ironically," "Jews were regarded and considered as the allies of the protestant reformation." "So in 1553, the papacy endorsed the burning of the Talmud, imposed a censorship on Jewish texts, and in 1555, pope Paul IV revived the segregationist policies of the church and ordered the Jews of Rome into a ghetto." "Ghetto:" "Deprivation, isolation, separation." "Across the centuries, the word "ghetto" came to mean the segregation of any people." "But originally, the word ghetto was a Venetian word meaning "iron foundry. "" "The new meaning of ghetto was created here in Venice some 40 years before pope Paul issued his encyclical." "Once upon a time, there was an iron foundry in this place." "But at a specific date- to be exact, march 1516- it was decreed that the Jews of Venice could live only in this place, surrounded by a wall, closed in at night by a gate that was shut at sunset." "It was not at first a place of deprivation or persecution." "The intent of the Venetians was perhaps only to limit Jewish competition with their own commercial activities." "But this ghetto set the pattern that was soon followed by city after city throughout Italy and eventually by cities across all of Europe." "It's very hard to paint the reality of ghetto life, the social or the intellectual reality, in one single color." "Yes, the Jews were separated geographically from their neighbors, but there was a great deal of intermingling with non-Jews on the social level." "There were periods of repression and persecution, but there were also periods of relative toleration." "And if in some places the ghetto had a stunting effect on intellectual life, in others, and especially here in the ghetto of Venice, there was a vibrant social and religious life." "and so we find Jewish composers like Salomon Rossi composing music for the synagogue in the Renaissance style." "And so we find Jewish poets like Sara Coppio Sullam, whose fame transcended the limits of the ghetto." "It is not that the Jews were free from disabilities." "The dark side of life was never far away." "But for a brief spasm of time, something of the brilliance and glitter of the Renaissance illuminated the life of the Jews." "The dynamism of the Renaissance passed now to the nations along the Atlantic coast." "The opening of shipping routes to the Orient and the New World had made catholic Spain the most powerful kingdom of Europe." "Possessing vast territories in the New World," "Spain and Portugal monopolized the Atlantic trade routes." "In 1556, as part of a royal inheritance, the Spanish crown came into possession of the Netherlands, one of the most thoroughly protestant regions of Europe." "In Spain, for 60 years since the expulsion of the Jews," "Spanish rulers had waged a bloody campaign to root out all vestiges of Jewish and Islamic worship among their subjects." "The Spanish inquisition had tortured and burned at the stake thousands suspected of deviating, however slightly, from strict catholic orthodoxy." "Now with the Nederlands under Spanish rule, the Spanish inquisition would deal with the Dutch." "The Netherland rose in revolt protestant England and its queen-Elizabeth- came to their aid." "The battle lines were drawn:" "Elizabeth and the protestant lands on one side, the grim and zealous monarch of Spain-Philip II- and the Catholics on the other." "Man:" "Before permitting religion to be weakened," "I would lose all my dominions and a hundred lives if I had them, for I will never be a ruler of heretics." "Woman:" "I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a King, and of a King of England, too;" "and think foul scorn that Spain or any prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm." "Eban:" "Spain's attack, when it came, was massive." "a fleet of greater proportions than the world had ever seen, it was called the catholic armada." "The English, under sir Francis Drake, sailed out to meet it." "When the two fleets met, the lighter and swifter ships of the English quickly outmaneuvered the armada and broke up its formation." "The defeat of the Spanish armada did not end the struggle between Spain and the protestants of Europe, but it was a crucial turning point." "The Atlantic was no longer a Spanish sea." "the protestant low countries achieved their independence, and with it the right they had so boldly proclaimed when they joined in rebellion." "Man:" "Where it concerns matters of religion," "Holland and Zealand shall conduct themselves as they think proper, provided that every individual remains free in his religion and that no man shall be molested or questioned on the subject of divine worship." "Eban:" "Amsterdam, once little more than a minor port on the north sea, welcomed refugees from religious intolerance all over Europe." "Protestant merchants came from Flanders," "Huguenots from France," "Jews from Spain and Portugal." "The city grew into the trade capital of northern Europe." "Spices, textiles, goods of all sorts crowded the docks of Amsterdam." "Its ships went forth in search of trade routes everywhere." "The Dutch flag was raised over lands in the distant Orient and in Africa and in the New World." "It's merchants gathered fortunes." "The Jewish exiles from Spain and Portugal had found a home in Europe where they could live with few restrictions." "Here in 1616, a rabbi could write..." "Man:" "Today, the people are living peacefully in Amsterdam." "They have made laws and rules among them which accord freedom of religion to all." "Everyone is permitted to live according to his creed." "However, he is not to make it publicly apparent that he belongs to a religion different from that of the rest of the city's inhabitants." "Eban:" "A synagogue or a catholic church would be discreetly hidden from view, like this church in the attic of an Amsterdam mansion." "Over the years," "Amsterdam's respect for diversity and dissent grew to allow public worship by those of all faiths." "The Jews came to call it the New Jerusalem." "At the dedication ceremony of this majestic building, there was a choir and an orchestra." "This reflected the taste, the culture, and the practice of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews who founded this community and who built this synagogue." "They had been marranos" "Jews who in Spain and Portugal had outwardly accepted the forms and ritual of Christianity;" "who pretended to be Christians in order to avoid the cruelties of the Inquisition, but who maintained their fidelity to the Jewish faith and the Jewish tradition." "And who secretly practiced that faith and made their allegiance to that tradition." "For several generations in Spain and Portugal, the marranos endured hiding their Jewish identity." "In Amsterdam, they would reshape their lives." "[horn blowing]" "But the very conditions in Amsterdam that allowed for freedom of worship also allowed individuals to challenge the Jewish community from within." "Man:" "I take a totally different view of God and nature." "I say, all is in God;" "all lives and moves in God." "Eban:" "Baruch Spinoza was an exception in the world of Amsterdam Jews." "The son of a Portuguese marrano, he had studied Descartes and others of the new philosophers." "Although gentle and unassuming, he shocked Jews and Christians alike by questioning the truth of miracles, treating the bible as a historical document, and denying the accepted idea of God." "Man:" "The senhores of the synagogue's governing council make it known that they have long since been cognizant of the wrong opinions and behavior of Baruch d'Espinoza." "Second Man:" "I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion." "First Man:" "We excommunicate, expel, and curse and damn Baruch d'Espinoza." "Cursed be he by day, and cursed be he by night;" "cursed be he when he lies down, and cursed be he when he rises up." "We order that nobody should communicate with him orally or in writing, or show him any favor, or stay with him under the same roof, or come within 4 cubits of him, or read anything composed or written by him." "Eban:" "Unshaken, Spinoza continued to study and write in solitude." "He had alarmed his contemporaries with his view that God and nature were one and could be understood by reason." "They accused him of atheism, but later generations would recognize in his writings a foundation of modern philosophy, and see him as a "god-intoxicated man. "" "The Jews who first came to Amsterdam were called Sephardim, those of Spanish and Portuguese background." "But it was not long before another group began to arrive, the Ashkenazim," "Jews from Poland, Lithuania, and Germany." "The experience of these Ashkenazi Jews, the Jews of Northern Europe, often had been bitter." "The Middle Ages had been a time of unending trial." "but they continued to lead a precarious existence in scattered communities throughout Germany and Central Europe." "[bell ringing]" "In the city of Prague in Bohemia, caravans were assembled to carry manufactured goods to Russia." "Other caravans returning from the East unloaded their cargo of Russian grain, lumber, and cattle for reshipment to the West." "Here, for centuries," "Jews mingled with Christians in the marketplaces." "in the 13th century, they built this synagogue." "It is called the Altneuschul- the old new synagogue- and it alone among the synagogues of medieval Europe survives to this day, a reminder of the antiquity of Jewish settlement in the land." "The world of the Ashkenazim was unlike that of the Spanish Jews in many ways." "In Spain, Jews had felt that they were Spanish at least as much as they were Jewish." "But in Northern Europe, constant tension between the Jews and Christians from the tenth century onward had closed the Jews within their own society." "[man singing in Hebrew]" "As much as possible, the Ashkenazi community sought to be self-sufficient, a world apart." "The Jewish quarter within a city was a town within a town." "Jews had their own internal government, their own courts, their own schools and guilds." "They cared for each other in times of hardship, trying not to depend upon the Christian world around them." "And though, over the years, they were influenced by the dress, the speech, and the customs of their Christian neighbors, at heart they remained fiercely loyal to their jewishness and resistant to any change in their way of life." "Translator:" "Blessed art Thou, o Lord our God, king of the universe, who hast made a distinction between the sacred and the profane, between light and darkness, between Israel and the other nations, between the seventh day and the 6 working days." "Blessed art Thou, o Lord, who hast made a distinction between the sacred and the profane." "Eban:" "In the late 15th century, large numbers of German Jews arrived in Poland." "In many senses, Poland was still a frontier." "Its farming system was primitive and feudal." "The Polish nobles realized the greater profits could be made if the lands produced more efficiently." "The nobles turned to the Jews." "Man:" "We do hereby lease to the worthy master Abraham, son of Samuel, our estates, villages, and towns, and the monetary payments that come from the tax on grain, beehives, fishponds, lakes, and places of beaver hunting;" "on fields, on meadows, on forests, and on threshing floors." "We also give him the authority to judge and sentence all our subjects, to punish by money fines or by sentence of death those who are guilty or who disobey." "Eban:" "The Jews who leased the lands from the nobles were called arrendars, and they enlisted other Jews to help them administer those vast domains." "Goods that were produced were turned over to Jewish merchants for sale." "In this new land of opportunity, Jews became innkeepers, traders, artisans, and financial agents." "All the Jews benefited." "The Jewish community of Poland grew to be the largest in the world." "This people, who had come from Germany, found in Poland a land on a crossroads between Europe and the Orient." "And from its culture, they relearned elements of an eastern heritage and created a blending of East and West that was uniquely theirs." "It is with a sort of painful foreboding that we look back on the period of greatest prosperity for the polish Jews." "Man:" "In Lvov, in Lublin, and particularly in Cracow, the Jews have in almost every brick house 5, 10, 15, or 16 shops." "Second Man:" "We are tired of tolerating the growing audacity of the Jews." "Not satisfied with engaging in occupations interfering with the livelihood of Christians, they raise their heads as enemies of Christian religion." "Eban:" "The mixture of economic competition and religious tension had always proved dangerous." "The Jewish governing councils soon realized the peril of their situation." "Man:" "In all Jewish communities dwelling in and near the cities, the elders should warn their members to be careful neither to ridicule nor to assault any gentile." "We all see that the bitter exile is getting more and more intense." "Eban:" "In 1569, Poland annexed the Ukraine." "huge regions of wilderness were brought under polish rule." "Arrendars and other Jews were sent in to colonize these territories." "The Ukrainians were members of the eastern orthodox church, their language and culture distinct from that of the polish rulers" "They hated the poles with their roman catholic priests and their Jewish arrendars." "In 1647, Bogdan Chmielnicki, a Ukrainian Cossack chieftain, called upon the peasants of his land to rise against their polish masters." "Cossacks and peasants swept across the Ukraine, burst unchecked into Poland burning, looting, annihilating." "Woman:" "Some were skinned alive, and their flesh was thrown to dogs, some had their hands and limbs chopped off, and their bodies thrown on the highway to be crushed by wagons and trampled by horses." "The enemy slaughtered infants in the laps of their mothers." "[trumpet playing]" "Eban:" "When it was over, Warsaw, Cracow, the great cities and towns were decimated." "The Cossacks had been followed by the Russians and then the Swedes." "What had started as a rebellion had ended as a deluge." "The Jewish dead numbered at least 100,000." "Many thousands more had been taken captive and sold into slavery." "Throughout the world of Judaism there was shock- shock at the fate of the polish victims, shock at the recurring pattern of violence to which Jews everywhere were subject." "The turmoil and violence of the times seemed proof that the end of days was near." "Jewish tradition had promised redemption at the end of days, had promised a time when the Messiah would come to restore the world to holiness and redeem the nation." "The Jews waited, and they hoped." "In 1665, when the massacres in Poland were almost ending," "Shabbetai Zvi, a Turkish Jew, proclaimed that he was the Messiah." "The word spread like wildfire." "Man:" "Everybody talked about having seen a pillar of fire." "to one it had appeared at noontime;" "to another at night." "Woman:" "Torchlight processions would move through the city to cries of "long live the messianic King,"" ""long live Shabbetai Zvi. "" "Eban:" "There had been many messianic pretenders in the past, but never before had one man united the Jewish people of all lands in a movement so inspired with enthusiasm and hope." "It is not to the person of Shabbetai Zvi that we must look for an explanation of this outpouring of emotion." "Most Jews had never seen him and had little direct knowledge of him." "Rather, we must look to the Jewish people themselves and see the movement as poignant testimony to their deep longing for an end to suffering, an end to 1,600 years of exile." "Woman:" "My good father-in-law left his home in Hameln, abandoned his house and lands and all his goodly furniture." "He sent on to us in Hamburg two enormous casks packed with linens and with every manner of food that would keep, for the old man expected to sail any moment from Hamburg to the Holy Land." "Man:" "No Jew attended to business." "The shops were closed." "People kept themselves in readiness for the moment when the Messiah would announce the end." "Eban:" "As commerce came to a halt, the man empire grew alarmed." "They ordered Shabbetai Zvi arrested and gave him the choice of converting to Islam or dying." "He chose to convert." "He assumed the name Aziz Mehmed effendi and accepted a government pension of 950 piastres a day." "Shabbetai Zvi's betrayal seemed to mock the deepest hopes of the Jewish people." "Woman:" "Dear God and King, throughout the world, thy servants and children rent themselves with repentance, prayer and charity." "For 2, yea, for 3 years, thy beloved people Israel sat in labor, but there came forth naught but wind." "Eban:" "They had believed that a miracle would bring them back together as a nation, would redeem them from their scattered existence." "When the miracle failed, there was nothing left but despair." "In Poland, in the wake of physical ruin, there was now spiritual desolation." "In the early 18th century, a man left his home in the polish Ukraine and went into the mountains, to meditate on the condition of his world." "He was known as the Baal Shem Tov, the master of the good name." "The inspiration that he found would revitalize the Judaism of Eastern Europe through a movement known as Hasidism." "Unlike the rabbis of his day, he believed that even a simple, unlearned man could approach God directly through prayer and worship." "And in coming closer to God, a man could bring divine influence through himself into the world." "[men shouting and singing]" ""cleaving to God," it was called." "it was a joyous, ecstatic experience, and the paths to it were many- through prayer... through the keeping of any commandment, even through so simple an action as the tying of one's shoelaces." "God was everywhere and everywhere to be found." "Followers of Hasidism appeared throughout Poland and Lithuania among the poor who felt that the traditional community had failed them." "in the years following the death of the Baal Shem Tov," "Hasidism became a way of life for tens of thousands." "Many traditional rabbis saw the movement as a threat to their authority." "Their reaction was swift." "Man:" "Worthless and wanton men who call themselves Hasidim have deserted the Jewish group." "they worship in a most insane fashion which does not conform to the religion of the Holy Torah." "Eban:" "It is said that a scholar once asked the Baal Shem Tov," ""What of the rabbis who call your teachings false?"" "[man speaking Hebrew]" "Translator:" "The Baal Shem Tov answered," ""there was a wedding festival in a house." ""the musicians played in a corner" ""while the guests danced," ""and the house was filled with music and joy." ""a deaf man passed by outside the house." ""he looked in through the window" ""and saw people whirling about the room." ""see how they throw themselves about, he cried." ""the house is filled with madmen!" "For he could not hear the music to which they danced. "" "[men singing]" "Eban:" "The spread of Hasidism was not to be stemmed." "The Jews of Eastern Europe, weakened and demoralized, found in it the joy and hope they needed to continue." "While in Eastern Europe Jews were turning to Hasidism, in the west Judaism would find a different direction." "In the Netherlands, in England, and in France and Germany, the early 18th century saw unprecedented growth in trade and commerce, and with it a new attitude toward the Jews." "In 1712, an item appeared in the spectator, a respected English periodical." "Man:" "The Jews are so disseminated through all the trading parts of the world that they are become the instruments by which the most distant nations converse with one another." "They are like the pegs and nails in a great building, which, though they are but little valued in themselves, are absolutely necessary to keep the whole frame together." "Eban:" "It is an irony of Jewish history that the very conditions from which the Jews suffered should prove to be a source of strength." "Their dispersion had become a commercial network." "The financial skills they had been forced to learn in the Middle Ages were now needed by capitalist Europe." "In the German states, Europe." "rulers turned to Jewish merchants for assistance, often putting the finances of state in the hands of their Jewish advisors." "It was from these early hofjuden, or court Jews, that there arose the great families of European Jewry- the Oppenheimers, the Wertheimers, and the Rothschilds." "Wealth, influence, prestige- the rewards of the court were manifold for these Jews." "They lived in elegant surroundings, rode in carriages with large retinues, and gave parties that even Christian nobles would attend." "But spiritually and intellectually they remained part of Jewish society, all but unaware of the changes that were transforming western thought- for Europe was entering an age that would be known as the enlightenment." "Science had revolutionized the thinking of a generation with startling discoveries in physics, in chemistry, and in mathematics." "The enlightenment philosophers" "Voltaire, Rousseau, Locke, Hume- excited and optimistic, turned to examine human society with the reasoned techniques of science." "They called for an end to all social oppression, an end to religious intolerance." "Translator:" "Why do I not disclose myself?" "Eban:" "In 1754, in Germany, a play was published that created a storm of controversy." "[speaking German]" "Ich bin ein Jude." "Translator:" "I am a Jew..." "Ein Jude?" "Woman:" "Ein Jude?" "[continues in German]" "Eban:" "The play was written by a Christian- the enlightenment author Gotthold Lessing- and his purpose was to show to his fellow Christians that a Jew could be wise, sophisticated, enlightened." "[speaking German]" "Translator:" "The friendship of a man, whoever he may be, has always been esteemed by me." "[speaking German]" "What, you are a Jew and have been bold enough to take an honest Christian into your service?" "!" "You ought to observe me." "That would have been right, according to the Bible." "Eban:" "The public was skeptical." "Most Christians could not imagine such a man coming from the isolated and traditional world of the German Jews." "When accused of having conceived the impossible- a cultivated Jew" "Lessing pointed to a young man he had just met," "Moses Mendelssohn." "Man:" "He really is a Jew." "A man who without any guidance has achieved a great strength in languages, in mathematics, in philosophy, in poetry." "I regard him as a future honor to this nation." "Eban:" "Mendelssohn, the son of a poor Torah scribe, astounded Christian society by becoming one of the foremost enlightenment thinkers of Germany." "His acceptance as an equal by enlightened Europeans was without precedent, and it indicated a path that other Jews might follow." "Man:" "Adopt the mores that and constitution follow." "of the country in which you find yourself, but be steadfast in upholding the religion of your fathers, too." "Bear both burdens as well as you can." "Eban:" "He argued that only by opening their minds to non-Jewish knowledge could Jews leave the isolation of the ghetto." "It was the beginning of the Jewish enlightenment- the Haskalah." "And those who embraced Haskalah believed that western education was the way to a full and equal partnership with the Christians of Europe." "We must remember that with all the talk of scientific rationalism and equality and enlightenment, the experience of the Jews had been one of separation." "Separation had tried and preserved them." "It was the source of their vitality." "They had recently given birth to the Hasidic movement, which seemed to offer a way of spiritual fulfillment within exile." "To give up their particular identity by merging it with the lives of the society around them seemed a frightening idea." "After all, the enlightenment principles of freedom and equality were still only principles, and Christian Europe carried with it a dark heritage of resentment towards the Jews." "It was not until the end of the 18th century that these enlightenment ideals were expressed in the politics of nations." "Man:" "We hold these truths to be self-evident;" "that all men are created equal;" "that they are in doubt by their creator with certain unalienable rights." "Eban:" "The appetite for freedom that moved the American colonists now took hold in Europe." "[man singing the Marseillaise]" "In France, where Jews had been virtually excluded for centuries, the national assembly issued a declaration." "Woman:" "All men are born and remain free and equal in rights." "No person shall be molested for his opinions, even such as are religious." "Eban:" "There was the sense of a world on the threshold of a new age." "The central political vision of the late 18th century was of a state in which religious differences would count for little;" "in which citizens would be equal before the law." "Somehow, ethical and moral traditions which had been born thousands of years before and visions of universal peace and social justice which had been voiced by the Hebrew prophets had survived to be taken up again with renewed spirit and enthusiasm." "[horn blowing]" "It seemed that at last the time had come when the Jewish people could join in fellowship with all others, to work for the common good of the humankind."