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antisemitism logically. All the arguments had been known for fifty years; reason apparently did not count. From the very beginning of the modern antisemitic movement Jews were in two minds whether it was wiser to reply to the attacks or to ignore them. Some Jewish periodicals decided to play down the extent and significance of the anti-Jewish riots of 1819 and again of 1848: ‘Occasional stupidities of the German Michel against the Jews must be regarded from broader vistas’, Berthold Auerbach, the novelist, wrote to a friend in 1848. Jewish apologetic literature was curiously restricted in its arguments; it defended the Jews, but counter-attacks were considered in bad taste. Saul Ascher, almost the only one who made no secret of his feelings about Teutomania, did not have the blessing of his fellows. Years later Jewish spokesmen dissociated themselves from Börne and Heine, the emigrés who had shown excessive zeal in their struggle against the ultra-nationalists. It seems unduly timid, but a good case can be made in retrospect in justification of those who counselled caution. Attacks on the incipient völkisch nationalism could not have had the slightest impact; they would have been bound to strengthen the Teutomans in their belief that Jews were the enemies of the German people. If a man was convinced that Jewish influence was corrupting, nothing a Jew said or wrote would shake him in his belief; there was no room for a dialogue, not even for polemics. Much of the apologetic literature concentrated on refuting antisemitic attacks on the Jewish religion, but in this respect the Jewish liberals were on shakier ground than they realised. The antisemites rediscovered the Talmud and the Shulkhan Arukh, whereas the Jews had just about managed to forget them. Educated Jews of that generation genuinely believed that ‘their religion had always taught universalist ethics’ (Y. Katz), and the general Jewish public was genuinely astonished and outraged when it realised that this just was not so and that the Talmud included sayings and injunctions which made strange reading in the modern context.
    The anti-Jewish attacks came as a shock, but most Jews were still convinced that these were a rearguard action on the part of the forces of darkness. Despite all the restrictions still in force, between 1815 and 1848 they entered a great many professions hitherto closed to them and some of them rose to positions of prominence; the chosen people suddenly seemed omnipresent.
Wohin ihr fasst, Ihr werdet Juden fassen,
all ueberall das Lieblingsvolk des Herrn
    wrote the poet Franz Dingelstedt in 1842 in his ‘Songs of a cosmopolitan night-watchman’. The Jews were reluctant to ponder the social and political implications of these changes; other than the struggle for emancipation, they seemed no longer to have common interests. True, the ritual-murder case in Damascus in 1840 gave a fresh impetus to feelings of solidarity, but it did not last; those who had shed their religious beliefs did not feel much in common with the orthodox, and the educated were ashamed of the masses in their semi-barbaric backwardness. From time to time there were complaints about the lack of Jewish dignity; even Rothschild, it was reported, had given three hundred thaler for the completion of Cologne Cathedral but only ten for the reconstruction of the Leipzig synagogue. Was this not typical of the lack of Jewish self-esteem?
    With the revolution of 1848 a new era opened in the history of central European Jewry, bringing with it a wave of enthusiasm among them, both because of the revolution’s democratic character, and in connection with the great surge of the movement for German unity. The revolution was accompanied by antisemitic excesses and the constitutional achievements (such as the abolition of all discrimination on religious grounds) were again whittled down once the reactionary forces won the upper hand. Jews could still not be judges or burgomasters,