IV. The Position of the Jew in the Christian State

248 No doubt of our impartiality will remain if we let a Jew determine how his people is to be placed in the Christian state.

249 "Not through the abolition of our peculiarities," says another Fränkel, who appears in the name of the Jews (The Cultus-Order of the Jews in Prussia, 1842), "does the state gain, but rather through their preservation, because he who renders obedience to his religion cannot withdraw it from his superiors either, because he who recognises the holiness of his faith will not withhold it from human rights, from the laws of humanity. Religion is the all-embracing, the far-extended, the totality, and he who receives it into himself and faithfully preserves it must also hold in high esteem the particular, the partial, the individual, morality."

250 Morality, ethical life, the intercourse of man with man, the human in general, human rights, the law of humanity — all that is therefore only a particular, individual, partial thing — a particularity? Man is only something partial, the religious man the universal? But why waste words! In that the religious man expresses what his true essence is, he also expresses that the human, humanity, is no longer his essence, but only a partial thing, which must recede before the essential to which he professes and, in cases of collision, must completely deny itself.

251 The Christian state does what the Jew wants, what the Jew himself, so long as his theocracy existed, had attempted — it declares religion to be the essence and foundation of the state, only that the Christian state declares the consequence of Judaism to be its essence.

252 The Christian state evangelises, or as the proselyte Fränkel expresses it: "in the Christian state, evangelising is regarded and practised as a divine — we add: as the first commandment." If the Gospel is the completion of the law, then the Christian state is also the completed execution of what the legal theocracy regarded as its ideal; not a jot of the law is overlooked or even perished in its conception.

253 Recently, in order to prove the impossibility or non-existence of a Christian state, one has often pointed to those sayings in the Gospels which the present state not only does not follow, but cannot even follow if it does not wish to dissolve itself completely as a state.

254 But the matter is not so easily settled. What, then, do those evangelical sayings demand? Supernatural self-denial, submission to the authority of revelation, turning away from the state, the abolition of civil relations. Now, all that the Christian state demands and performs. It has appropriated the spirit of the Gospel, and if it does not reproduce it with the same letters with which the Gospel expresses it, this comes only from the fact that it expresses this spirit in state forms, i.e., in forms which are indeed borrowed from the state system and this world, but are reduced to semblance in the religious rebirth which they must undergo. It is the turning away from the state, which uses state forms for its execution.

255 The reborn people has the duty to keep itself far from all real national relations, indeed to make itself into a non-people. It no longer has its own will, is not sufficient to itself, for itself it should rather be nothing. It is "the people of property," but the property of another. Its true existence is only in the summit and in the head to which it is subject, which, however, is originally and by its nature foreign to it, i.e., given by God and come to it without its own doing. Its laws are not its work, but positive revelations to which it must obey unconditionally and without being allowed to direct critique against them. The power and authority which the actual people, at least everything, is, requires a host of mediators who represent it in all places and ends for the non-people, for the improper people, i.e., for the minors. This mediating estate is a prerogative, a privilege, which is either given by nature and birth or arbitrarily and by grace conferred by the power, or is tied to the fulfilment of certain conditions which, however, need stand in no inner relationship or connection with the mediating office. Since, finally, the mass of the improper people is just the mass which has no universal rights and may have no universal consciousness, it falls apart into a multitude of particular circles which chance forms and determines, which distinguish themselves by their interests, particular passions and prejudices, and receive as a privilege the permission to shut themselves off from each other, so that the perception of their particular interests — but among this mass there are only particular interests — is secured. A universal affair they have not, cannot and may not have: but so that they may not even come to the thought of having universal affairs, independence and a private authority is granted to them in the management of their particular affairs, but in such a way that no circle receives rights which could give it any power over the other.

256 Herr Hermes therefore had completely right when he said to the Kölnische Zeitung that the Christian state must not be built according to universal principles, but "institutions must be calculated on passions and prejudices."

257 If, on the other hand, Herr Philippson remarked in the Rheinische Zeitung, "because men are full of passion and prejudices, the law must rather stand elevated above these" — he was right insofar as it concerns the concept of law, but wrong if laws do not form themselves in the air but correspond to real relations, are the essence and laws of the existing, and if the real world in general is taken into view. The law always expresses only what in reality counts as the essence. If it is prejudice which enjoys this honour of counting as the essence, then the law can be nothing other than the sanction and legitimation of prejudice. Now the Jew holds himself for something particular in comparison with the Christian; therefore the law will also treat him as something particular. The Jew has the prejudice that certain foods and contacts defile. To keep himself pure from these defilements he holds for his essence; his essence therefore also separates him from every non-Jew; should the law then not take account of the essence of the Jew, not be the expression of this essence, the execution of the prejudice of the Jew, i.e., separate him from others? It does only what he wants. For the Jew the universal essence of man does not yet count as more and higher than his particular essence; may the law force upon him another essence than he wants?

258 Herr Philippson says that religion is made only a cloak of hypocrisy, a pretext for oppression of men, for coercion of conscience. "What? Does He perhaps take the Old Testament dietary and purity laws as a pretext" to separate Himself from others for the sake of other purposes? Well, as little as He will admit this, and as little as it will occur to us to set up an assertion of this absurdity, just as little should one say that the Christian state uses religion only as a "pretext for oppression." No, the Jew separates himself because he does not hold the essence of man higher than his particular essence, because he does not yet regard the essence of man in general as his essence; so the Christian state also knows only the exclusiveness of force, of the hierarchical official order and of corporations, because it and those belonging to it know force alone and the corporation as their essence.

259 As Herr Hermes, so also has the Elberfeld Fränkel completely correctly explained the essence of the Christian state when he says: "it is subject to no doubt — (certainly not!) — that the government has the right to tie the conferral of certain prerogatives (which are therefore and with full right presupposed as prerogatives) — privileges and offices — to certain conditions, e.g., to the taking of an oath on the truth of the writings of the Old and New Testament."

260 Let one not say, on the other hand, that the performance of "certain ceremonies gives the state no standard, the least guarantee for the capability of its members." If that which by its nature is a universal and an obligation for the universal, and should be conferred and undertaken as such, is rather presupposed, conferred and taken into possession as a privilege and prerogative, then the condition under which it is conferred and taken into possession can be any arbitrary one, and it need have as little inner relation to the other essence of what is conferred as those ceremonies which the vassal in the Middle Ages had to perform for the enfeoffment on certain occasions. Those conditions are even arbitrary and outside the matter, so that the conferral of the privilege may be designated and recognised as a pure matter of grace.

261 The most universal, therefore also the most exclusive privilege is faith. Faith — so it itself wants to be regarded, and it is right, since it is not free deed but expression and consequence of suffering — man does not give himself faith, man does not develop it out of reason; over faith he can therefore not arbitrarily dispose and determine as he will; it is rather a gift of grace, which distributes it according to its pleasure and calls whom it will to the state of grace. Its privilege must therefore the Christian absolutely recognise, regard as the guiding principle of his life, and regulate according to it his intercourse, conduct, love and beneficence. "Let us do good," says the holy Apostle, and Herr Fränkel rightly appeals to this saying, "let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith!"

262 As the wonderful people of the faithful, so also the people of Israel boasts of a particular privilege. One privilege therefore stands opposed to the other: one excludes the other. The Christian state is obliged to respect, protect, foster privileges and to support its edifice on them; the Jew regards his essence as a privilege: his only possible position in the Christian state can therefore also be only a privileged one, his existence only that of a particular corporation.

263 The demand of the Jews for emancipation and the support which it has found among the Christians are a sign that from both sides the barrier which hitherto separated both is beginning to be broken through. The orthodox Jew ought not to demand emancipation at all, because its real granting and use would lead him into relations and situations in which he can no longer observe his law. If the Christian speaks for the emancipation of the Jew, he proves, whether he has become clear about it himself or not, that man has gained the upper hand over the Christian. That finally individual states during the revolutionary wars made significant concessions to the Jews and went so far as almost to give them full civil rights, or at least to promise them: that was possible only because in the storms of that time the form of the Christian state no longer held fast and at least a part of the privileges had to be sacrificed on the spot.