"Abba Eban:" "The ghetto of Venice." "These walls stand today as a reminder of the long ages of Jewish isolation." "For centuries in this city, as in other cities of Western Europe," "Jews lived apart from their Christian neighbors." "Ghetto walls and legal restrictions kept them separate, and Jewish traditions fostered a separate way of life." "In the course of a single century, this way of life would change." "The way of life of all men would change." "The Jews would break free of their ghetto isolation and join in the creation of a modern world." "At the end of the 18th century, two great revolutionary forces burst upon the European world." "Revolutions in politics and in industry would drive and draw all of Europe through a century of dramatic change- the 19th century." "In the closing years of the 18th century and the early years of the 19th, both shores of the English channel were shaken by some of the most profound and convulsive forces in recorded history." "The clearest manifestations of this upheaval were the industrial revolution, which had begun in England in about 1780, and the French revolution, which began in 1789." "Out of the turmoil of revolution, the enlightenment ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity were shone as a beacon for all the world." "Woman:" "All men are born, and remain, free and equal in rights." "The goal of all political association is to preserve those natural and inalienable rights." "Eban:" "It was a new political order." "In 1790, the Jews of France asked to be accepted as citizens in the French republic." "For two years, the national assembly debated." "Could Jews and Christians overcome centuries of separation and join as equals?" "At last, in 1791, the national assembly accepted the Jews as fellow citizens of the French nation." "The French armies under Napoleon Bonaparte marched across Europe, carrying with them the ideals of the French revolution." "In country after country- in Italy, Germany, Austria, Hungary- medieval restrictions were swept aside, and political rights were granted to all." "For the first time, Jews were offered political equality and citizenship in these nations of Europe." "But the Jews entered this new age with their own ancient sense of separate nationhood." "For centuries, each Jewish child had learned that he was part of a separate nation... [children reciting]" "A nation whose history began in the pages of the Hebrew bible." "[recitations continue]" "Many children today still learn the lesson which have endured over the centuries." "Man:" "God said to Abraham, "You must leave your father's house, for you are going to become the father of a new people. "" "Eban:" "The spirit of nationhood had sustained the Jews, bound them together in adversity, and given meaning to their trials and sufferings." "The prospect of citizenship in the nations of Europe raised a troubling question." "Now that Jews were Frenchmen, Germans, and Austrians, were they still a separate nation?" "And if they were not a separate nation, what did it mean to be Jewish?" "The answers would be found, not only in the quiet of their own consciences, but in the turmoil of social and poly ahead." "In 1815, Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo." "Reactionary rulers throughout Europe tried to undo what the French revolution had done." "But even as governments tried to restore the old ways of life, economic forces were transforming European society." "Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish essayist, wrote..." "Man:" "It is the age of machinery." "The shuttle drops from the fingers of the weaver, and falls into iron fingers that ply it faster." "There is no end to machinery." "Nothing can resist us." "Eban:" "Factories turned out new goods to satisfy the needs of a growing population." "New wealth was created and a new social class:" "the industrial workers." "Peasants and farmers flocked to the cities, some of them driven off the land, some of them attracted by the new opportunities of the industrial economy." "And the agricultural world, in which people had lived for hundreds of years, was replaced by a dynamic, urban, industrial society." "The products of the industrial revolution flowed to busy markets in London and in all the major cities of Europe." "This expanding trade gave new power to the rising middle classes, to merchants, manufacturers, and professionals." "In the changing economy, the Jews of Western Europe found new opportunities." "They were literate, and many had experience in trade." "Some became manufacturers of clothing or textiles." "Some became merchants." "A few became bankers." "At the beginning of the 19th century," "Mayer Amschel Rothschild of Frankfurt-am-Main was a financial advisor to the ruler of one of the many German states." "In 1805, Rothschild's eldest son, Nathan, went to London, where he made his fortune as a stockbroker and banker." "His 4 brothers established branches of the family bank in Paris, Vienna, Naples, and Berlin." "Within 20 years, they became one of the most powerful banking families in Europe." "The Rothschilds were a dramatic symbol of Jewish success in the modern world." "For Jews like the Rothschilds, social acceptance was possible, but for the majority of Jews, legal restrictions and ancient prejudices were still barriers to social equality." "In most places, Jews were excluded from government, excluded from posts in universities." "they needed permits even to reside in certain cities such as Berlin." "In the 1820s, many prominent German Jews converted to Christianity." "Among them the poet, Heinrich Heine." "Man:" "The baptismal certificate is the ticket of admission to European culture." "Berlin is well worth a sermon." "Eban:" "For most Jews, however, the idea of baptism was unacceptable." "They wanted to join in the non-Jewish world without abandoning their Jewish identity." "But many traditional Jewish customs and practices reinforced their separateness." "By the 1820s in Germany, some Jewish reformers were questioning the validity of these practices." "Man:" "We can no longer adhere blindly to forms and prescriptions from a time long past and forever vanished." "We can no longer observe commands which have no spiritual hold on us." "Eban:" "The reform movement established its own congregations." "Here in the West London synagogue, reform Jews appeared as English as any other Englishman." "[organ plays, choir sings]" "Organ music and a choir were introduced into the Jewish service." "The reformers sought to create a modern expression of Jewish values and beliefs." "We are not a separate people, said the reformers, we're Europeans, different from others only in our religion." "A German rabbi, Samson Raphael Hirsch, disagreed." "Man:" "Judaism is not a religion, the synagogue is not a church, and the rabbi is not a priest." "Judaism is not a mere adjunct to life." "To be a Jew is the sum total of our task in life." "Eban:" "Most Jews did indeed hold to the traditional ways." "But gradually, they accepted those changes that seemed natural and inevitable in a changing world." "The unity of Jewish religious practice had been shattered." "It could never be restored." "[bell tolling]" "The Central European city of Prague still reflects the character of traditional Europe- a world of inherited privilege for the few and of poverty and powerlessness for most others." "As the early decades of the 19th century unfolded, this traditional world was being undermined by the forces of a changing economy." "The growing middle classes were demanding the political rights" "First promised in the French revolution." "They were demanding democracy." "1848..." "Guards fired on a political demonstration in Paris." "The people rioted." "They barricaded the streets and fought back the army." "Spontaneous revolts flared in Italy, Austria," "Denmark, Hungary, Germany." "Everywhere Jews joined in the struggle for liberty." "A rabbi of Vienna." "Man:" "We ask nothing for ourselves." "Everything for the nation and the fatherland." "First the right of all men to live, to breathe, to think, to speak." "First the rights of all citizens, afterwards our rights as Jews!" "In Frankfort and elsewhere throughout Europe hastily gathered assemblies created liberal constitutions." "And granted political equality to Jews and other religious minorities." "But the new governments were disorganized and inexperienced." "They were quickly overthrown as conservative rulers everywhere reasserted their authority." "It is true in one sense that the revolutions failed." "But in another sense, they succeeded." "All of Europe had glimpsed a vision of a more democratic society..." "A vision that could not be ignored, even by the most powerful of monarchs." "In Vienna, the failure of the revolution of 1848 was followed by the accession to the imperial throne of the youthful Franz Joseph." "He ruled here in the Hofburg palace for 68 years while the foundations of his Austro-Hungarian empire were being undermined by the diverse national aspirations of his many subject peoples." "The idea that political boundaries ought to encompass a people with a common language and culture- the idea of the nation-state- had sprung from the French revolution, together with the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity." "After 1848, Poles, Czechs," "Hungarians, Italians, and Germans, all clamored for independence, for their own nation-states in which every citizen could participate fully in government and politics." "[big Ben tolling]" "Nowhere was the struggle for political equality as far advanced as in Great Britain." "Jews and other minorities were, in most respects, full equals of the protestant majority." "But here in the house of commons, every new member of Parliament was required to take an oath" ""On the true faith of a Christian. "" "This oath excluded Jews from the highest levels of government." "In 1847, Lionel Rothschild was elected to the House of Commons." "He presented himself at Parliament but refused to take the oath." "He was obliged to withdraw." "Rothschild's supporters introduced a bill to remove the barrier of the oath." "The Anglican church was swift to respond." "Man:" "If you destroy the groundwork of Christianity upon which this legislature is based in order to gratify a handful of ambitious men, you will destroy Christian England." "Eban:" "Others disagreed." "England, they said, was not an exclusively Christian nation." "Man:" "What is proposed is not that Jews should legislate for a Christian community, but that a legislature composed of Christians and Jews should legislate for a community of Christians and Jews." "Eban:" "The debate continued for 11 years." "In 1858, after having been elected 6 times," "Lionel Rothschild was finally admitted to the house of commons." "He placed his hand on the Old Testament and took his oath as a member of Parliament." "The last major obstacle to Jewish participation in the political life of Britain had been removed." "Among the members of Parliament who had supported Lionel Rothschild was the son of an Italian Jewish immigrant." "His name was Benjamin Disraeli." "He had converted to Christianity." "Yet in the eyes of his colleagues, he remained a Jew." "10 years after Rothschild's victory," "Disraeli became prime minister of Great Britain." "His rise to power was evidence of a growing acceptance of Jews in the social and political life of Europe." "The liberal cause was making steady progress across the continent." "New nation-states were established with liberal constitutions." "And country after country granted political emancipation to the Jews." "But emancipation ended at the frontier of Russia." "Beyond that frontier, more than 50% of all the Jews in the world lived under Russian rule." "The vast Russian empire lay a thousand miles to the east of France and England." "It was a land as incomprehensible to most Western Europeans as it was remote." "Its customs were medieval, its society autocratic, all but untouched by the forces that were shaking Western Europe." "[choir singing]" "The Russian world was heir to the spiritual values of the Byzantine empire and the Eastern Orthodox faith." "[speaking in Russian]" "At the end of the 18th century, Russia annexed large parts of Poland, Lithuania, and the Ukraine." "With this expansion, Russia brought under its rule most of the great Jewish community of Poland." "For centuries, Russia had excluded all Jews." "Now it found within its borders a Jewish population of more than a million- a community of artisans and tradesmen," "of innkeepers and merchants." "Russian merchants, alarmed at the prospect of competition from these Jews, demanded protection." "The government responded." "It drew a line around the provinces where the Jews already lived and forbade them to leave this territory." "The region was called "the pale of settlement. "" "Everywhere within the great expanse of the pale," "Jews were a minority- living in the lands of other peoples- living among the peasants of the Ukraine or of Poland, of Lithuania or of Moldavia." "Christians and Jews lived side by side, depending upon each other in a rural economy centered on the local market town, called in Yiddish the "schtetl"." "Jews were the merchants in this agricultural economy." "Woman:" "The peasants come from many miles around, bringing their livestock and vegetables, their fish and hides, their wagonloads of grain." "In exchange, they buy the city produce which the Jews import- dry goods, boots, oil, and spades." "Eban:" "Although Jews and their peasant neighbors mingled in the marketplace and in the streets of town, they were separated by culture, language, and religion." "Jews had their own local governments, their own courts and schools," "and their own charitable institutions to care for the poor." "The rhythms of Jewish life were the rhythms of the religious calendar, of the Sabbath, the festivals, and the holy days." "A German Jew admired the pious integrity of their lives." "Man:" "A book is their fatherland." "They live enclosed within the boundaries of this book." "Here they exercise their inalienable right of citizenship." "Here they can be neither expelled nor despised." "Eban:" "The Hasidic Jews of today inherit a legacy of dress, of belief, of custom and tradition from their Eastern European past." "Among the most respected Jewish communal institutions of Eastern Europe was the yeshiva, the advanced academy of religious education" "The great yeshivas of the pale were famous for their scholarship among Jews everywhere." "Families made great sacrifices so that their sons might devote themselves entirely to the study of the sacred texts, the Torah and the Talmud." "For all men, study was the means by which Jewish law could be understood and applied to daily life." "Translator:" "A man who puts out his hand to beg does so because he is poor." "Unfortunately, in our times, the poor are forced to put out their hands." "The rich man doesn't take his hand from his pocket to give to the poor." "The poor man must beg first." "Isn't this true?" "Eban:" "A preoccupation with ethical values infused Jewish culture with a keen moral awareness that gave the Jewish community its particular cast and flavor." "[arguing in Yiddish]" "The dispute and argument of Talmudic study was the discipline by which they lived." "[arguing continues]" "But this distinctive culture was deeply alien to the Russian world." "The Russian government wanted the Jews to abandon their study of Torah and Talmud, to abandon their separateness." "At the beginning of the 19th century, the Jews of Eastern Europe would come face to face with the autocratic power of the Russian state." "The tsar of Russia, the emperor, was absolute in his authority." "His will was law." "The tsars sought to modernize their economy, to force all the peoples of the empire to serve the interests of the state." "Under Nicholas I, Jewish children as young as 12 were drafted into the army to serve for 25 years." "Whole communities were forcibly relocated." "When Nicholas died in 1855, it is said that there was such rejoicing that people embraced each other in the streets of St. Petersburg." "Nicholas was succeeded by his son, Alexander II." "Like his predecessors," "Alexander wanted to transform Russian society." "He, too, became an autocratic ruler, but he was a man of more generous spirit." "He freed the 30 million Russians who were bound to the land as serfs." "He encouraged modern industry and brought a measure of civil liberty to his people." "Alexander's policies accelerated the changes in Russian society." "To stimulate commerce, he allowed a few thousand of the most successful Jewish businessmen and professionals to leave the pale and settle anywhere in the empire." "Their children were able to enter the great universities in Moscow and St. Petersburg." "Man:" "When we came out of the university, we bowed before the sanctuary that had opened its doors to us." "We embraced each other." "Proudly we walked home, eager to shout to everyone we met:" ""Have you heard?" "We are students. "" "Eban:" "These Jewish students learned Russian instead of Hebrew, science, mathematics, and literature instead of Torah and Talmud." "They brought the Jewish passion for study with them as they entered the modern world and left the traditional world behind." "While Russian society changed, the Russian government did not." "The people remained powerless." "Economic modernization disrupted their lives." "The old network of rural commerce was destroyed." "Thousands left the villages and farms and headed for the cities." "Many lost their occupations and were forced to wander in search of employment." "In 1881, Alexander II was assassinated by anarchists." "Rumors spread that the Jews were responsible." "A few weeks later in the city of Elizavetgrad, a riot broke out among peasants and workers." "They attacked the Jews while the police looked on." "By the end of 1881, the riots had spread to more than 200 towns and villages." "Man:" "The air resounded with wild shouts." "The destruction began." "Clouds of feathers whirled in the air." "The din of breaking windows." "The crying, shouting, and despair." "Eban: "Pogrom", it was the Russian word for "riot. "" "In the decades that followed, pogroms would break out again and again with terrifying consequences." "The Russian government would begin to use pogroms as a tool of policy:" "To turn the anger of the populace away from the state and toward the Jews." "It was a crushing blow for all Jews, including those who had entered into Russian life." "Man:" "Until now, we thought of ourselves as Russians, not as Jews." "The events of these last weeks have shown us how tragic has been our mistake." "Yes, we are Jews." "Eban:" "Many looked for other lands in which they could settle." "Tens of thousands fled the pale in 1881, turning their eyes toward new worlds." "A few young enthusiasts headed for the ancient Jewish homeland:" "Palestine." "But the vast majority of those who left Eastern Europe headed west through the great ports of Germany, through Bremen and Hamburg, bound for America." "In the 40 years following 1881, about 2 million Jews, a third of the Jews in Eastern Europe, would pass through these halls clinging to their few belongings, headed toward what they hoped would be a better life." "Woman:" "The news was all over Polotsk that my mother had a steamer ticket for America." "Everyone wanted to handle the ticket." "How much did it cost?" "Was it sure that we could get kosher food on the ship?" "Oh, she must take all the feather beds." "Featherbeds are scarce in America." "In America, they sleep on hard mattresses, even in the winter." "Eban:" "A steamboat ticket was a passport to a new life." "Paris. 1889." "100 years had passed since the French revolution." "To commemorate the anniversary, the French erected a structure that rose over the city." "The Eiffel tower was a tribute to science, to optimism, and to the future of mankind." "Throughout Western Europe, the population was growing." "Cities were expanding." "The middle classes, secure in their power, enjoyed the benefits of a prosperous society." "The new economy developed with astonishing speed." "Industrial society produced more goods for more people than ever before in history." "Great wealth was created but also great social dislocations." "Men who have once worked the land, now worked machinery." "Jobs were sporadic and uncertain." "The wages were low, the hours long." "Machines took away the livelihood of artisans and craftsmen." "Thousands who had prospered in the old economy were threatened by the new." "The modern world seemed to bear down on them with implacable force." "Those who had lost in the new economy turned their anger and frustration against those who had gained." "By the 1880s, most Jews in Western Europe had become middle class." "They had won their political rights." "They had won a place in European society as well." "A Jewish textile manufacturer wrote about his home village in Germany." "Man:" "At one time, there were quite a number poor Jews in the community." "Those who still remember those earlier days must acknowledge that a transformation took place before their very eyes which the new generation cannot even imagine." "Eban:" "In Germany, France, Austria, the Jews now were above average in wealth and education." "They brought their tradition of literacy and scholarship to the liberal professions, helping to shape modern law, medicine, and journalism." "Those who were accustomed to look down upon the Jews and to despise them were astonished by the extent of their achievements." "Their new visibility was, in itself, an affront to their enemies." "To those who hated and dreaded the rapidly changing modern world, the Jews became the symbol for everything that they feared and could not understand." "By the 1880s, shrewd and opportunistic politicians recognized that resentment of Jewish success could be used as a source of political power." ""Anti-Semitism. "" "The word was new, but the hatreds it reflected were ancient." "And from those hatreds, the Anti-Semites created a dangerous political movement." "They wrenched from the work of Darwin and other biologists whatever theories could be twisted to support the idea of a Jewish race." "They blamed the Jews for the growth of industry." "They blamed them for poverty and suffering." "They blamed them for the modern world." "In Vienna, where the Jewish community was large and prosperous," "Karl Lueger ran for mayor on an anti-semitic platform." "He was elected over and over again." "An Austrian poet described the irrational politics of the day." "Man:" "Politics is magic." "He who knows how to summon the forces from the deep, him will they follow." "Eban:" "By the 1890s, the forces of anti-semitism had reached as far as these chambers of the Austrian Parliament." "Here in Vienna, as elsewhere, political parties sought to gain electoral support by pandering to popular anti-semitic attitudes." "And there were anti-semites for every political persuasion." "Radical anti-semites saw the Jews as leading the forces of capitalism." "Liberal anti-semites saw them as a backward, oriental people, incapable of absorption into the nations of Europe, while conservative anti-semites saw the Jews as rootless, lacking in tradition, dangerously modern." "Clearly, it was not the real content of Jewish life and character that mattered to the anti-semites." "Their Jews were the creation and the reflection of their own terrors, fantasies, and neuroses." "To attack the Jews was to attack whatever it was that they disliked in the modern world." "As the Jews strove to shed the burdens of traditional hatred and prejudice, the anti-semites found them to be a vulnerable and politically useful target." "[band playing]" "In France by the 1890s, the Jews had become fully integrated in the life of the nation, sharing equally in the rights and duties of citizens." "It was here that one of the most notorious anti-semitic episodes took place." "In 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish captain in the French army, was accused of spying for the Germans." "He was tried and convicted on forged evidence." "In a public ceremony, Dreyfus was stripped of his rank, while in the crowd around him there were shouts of" ""Death to the traitor!" "Death to the Jews!"" "The anti-semitic press took up the cry." "Man:" "What a terrible lesson, this disgraceful treason of the Jew, Dreyfus." "All the maneuvers of jewdom are directed against the very soul of France." "Eban:" "Dreyfus was, in fact, entirely innocent." "He was exiled to the prison colony of Devils Island." "For 4 years, his case was forgotten." "Then in 1898, the writer Emile Zola published an open letter to the president of France." "Man:" "I will tell the truth." "It is my duty to speak." "My nights were be haunted by the specter of innocent man atoning for a crime he did not commit." "I accuse general Billot of having had in his hands decisive proof of Dreyfus' innocence and having suppressed it." "I accuse general Mercier of being an accomplice." "I accuse general Boisdeffre of being an accomplice." "I accuse the court-martial of condemning an innocent man." "Eban:" "To many Frenchmen, Zola's attack on the generals seemed to be an attack on France itself." "His article unleashed a storm." "Mobs rioted in the streets of Paris." "Duels were fought." "Families and friendships were torn apart." "All France took sides, for Dreyfus or against him." "Anti-semites throughout Europe exploited the Dreyfus affair." "In Rome, the official Jesuit newspaper denounced the emancipation of the Jews." "Man:" "The Jews have invented the allegations of a judicial error." "The real error was granting them French nationality." "That law must be revoked, not only in France but in Germany, Austria, and Italy as well." "Eban:" "Zola and his allies held their ground." "In 1899, an official inquiry began." "It found that the evidence against Dreyfus had indeed been forged by officers of the French army." "A second court-martial again found Dreyfus guilty, although this time with "extenuating circumstances. "" "Dreyfus was fully cleared only in 1906." "He resumed his commission and was awarded the order of the legion of honor." "Most Jews in France were reassured by Dreyfus' victory." "They felt that they, along with Dreyfus, had won their case against the anti-semites." "Among the journalists in Paris during the Dreyfus affair was a Viennese Jew, Theodore Herzl." "he came to a different conclusion." "Man:" "We have honestly striven everywhere to merge ourselves in the social life of surrounding communities and to preserve only the faith of our fathers." "It has not been permitted to us." "In countries where we have lived for centuries, we are still cry down as strangers." "Eban:" "If the Jews could not be accepted as Europeans, then they remained a separate nation without a home." "Herzl called for the creation of a Jewish state." "The movement to create this state called itself Zionism, after the name of a hill in Jerusalem, mount Zion." "In 1897, in Basel, Switzerland, 200 delegates from all over Europe gathered for the first world Zionist congress." "Herzl's presence electrified the congress." "Man:" "The Jews who will it shall achieve their state." "We shall live at last as free men on our own soil." "Eban:" "A few Jewish settlers from Russia had already made their way to Palestine." "Now with Herzl's inspiration, the Zionist idea became a political movement." "The Zionist movement had it strongest appear in Russia where Jews were seeking to forge a better way of life." "By the end of the 19th century, many Jews in the pale lived in cities rather than market towns." "Increasing numbers worked in factories and in marginal industries." "Poverty was widespread, and recurring pogroms a constant source of fear." "In 1897, a group of Jewish socialists gathered in the city of Vilna to form what would be known as the Jewish Labor Bund." "Woman:" "For centuries, the Jew lived like a slave." "When his blood was shed, he fell like a dumb animal under the hand of the slaughterer." "But the spirit of the ancient Jewish heroes has been reborn among the Jewish workers." "Eban:" "The Bundists joined with other socialists to fight for the rights of workers." "Through revolution, they hoped to cure the ills of Russian life and end the oppressive poverty of the pale." "Jewish women, putting aside their traditional role, joined in the new movements- in Zionism, in Bundism, joined in the struggle to reshape Jewish life." "Yiddish, the ordinary speech of the Jewish masses, had never been taken seriously by educated Jews." "Its combination of Hebrew characters and German dialect had seemed common and uncultivated." "Now it became the vehicle of a renaissance in Jewish culture." "newspapers and journals brought the modern world into the lives of millions of Yiddish speaking Jews." "Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, the world's classics, were translated into Yiddish." "Writers created a new literature in both Yiddish and Hebrew." "Chaim Nachman Bialik, the Hebrew poet." "Simon Dubnow, the historian of the Jewish people." "Mendele Moykher-Sforim, the Yiddish novelist." "Judah Lev Peretz, the Yiddish poet." "Sholem Aleichem, the Yiddish writer." "A Yiddish theater developed." "A secular and popular culture was born based on the daily life of the Jewish people." "The stream of Jewish culture and Jewish life would flow into the larger European world as the 19th century drew to a close." "In the vivid urban life of Vienna, Paris," "Berlin, London, and St. Petersburg, the consequences of a century of social and economic change were visible everywhere." "The world was in ferment." "New industries appeared as if overnight, new sciences, new art forms, new ways of life." "At the beginning of the 19th century, most people had expected to live in a world very much like that of their parents." "By the end of the century, everyone knew that in his own lifetime, the world would be transformed beyond recognition." "Every aspect of society and of life was open to question, was filled with possibilities." "The generation joined enthusiastically in the exploration of the modern world." "In every field of endeavor Jews played an important role." "Arthur Schnitzler." "Sigmund Freud." "Arnold Schoenberg." "Amedeo Modigliani." "Franz Kafka." "Gustav Mahler." "Marcel Proust." "Albert Einstein." "These men were Jews." "But they were also modern Europeans." "Being Jewish no longer restricted them to a separate Jewish world." "What they contributed was not to a body of Jewish culture but to the common heritage of all Europeans." "In the capitals of Europe, the arrival of the 20th century was saluted with cannons." "One who heard them wrote:" "Woman:" "I listened with a kind of shiver." "One knew all the 19th century had carried away." "One did not know what the 20th would bring." "Eban:" "In march of 1912, the princess Louise was married in Moscow." "The tsar Nicholas II and the tsarina Alexandra led the procession with crown prince Alexis at their side." "Following them were the princesses," "Olga, Tatiana, Marie, and Anastasia." "the wedding brought together the potentates and royalty of all European lands, including Franz Josef, emperor of Austria, and Wilhelm II, emperor of Germany." "Within 6 years the empires of Franz Josef and Wilhelm would be gone." "Nicholas and his family would be dead." "A revolution in Russia and a world war in Europe would bring an end to these last vestiges of the old political order." "The Russian pale of settlement came to an end as armies marched back and forth across the region." "Its populations were evacuated, its social institutions destroyed." "Jews fought as citizens of the European nations- as Germans, as Frenchman, as Austrians, Englishmen, Russians." "For the Jews as for all others, the world of established truths was gone." "100 years before, the ghetto, the closed community, the religious laws, had formed the Jewish identity." "Now each Jew was forced to discover for himself the meaning of his Jewish heritage." "Now there was complex diversity in Jewish life." "Each Jew would have to find his own place in a world both promising and precarious." "In November 1917, after British forces gained control of Palestine, the Zionist leader Chaim Weitzman secured a pledge from the government of Great Britain." "It would be known as the Balfour declaration after its signer, foreign minister Arthur Balfour." "Man:" "His majesty's government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." "Eban: 30 years later, the promise of the Balfour declaration would be fulfilled in the creation of the state of Israel." "The diversity of Jewish life was now to find expression in new lands, where new opportunities awaited." "to many it seemed that the greatest hope lay in a land to the west, across the Atlantic." "Through this great hall of the Ellis Island immigration center in New York bay passed gentile and Jew, the poor and the dispossessed, the hungry and the disenfranchised." "The beacon that drew them here was the vision of an America where a new tradition would be forged- based on universal dreams of justice and equality." "The prophet Isaiah had written:" ""Then justice shall dwell in the wilderness and righteousness shall abide in the fruitful field. "" "America, they dreamed and hoped, would be that fruitful field."