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“The Jews should be denied everything as a nation, but granted everything as individuals”
Count Clermont-Tonnerre
How to “Improve” the Jews?
The French Revolution was a formative event on the way to the modern democratic state. Under the motto, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” equal rights for the Jews were declared as well. However, it meant that the Jews had to shed their communal autonomy and confine their separate identity to religious affairs under state supervision. Some of the people who favored equality for the Jews also claimed that their ‘inferiority’ was the result of centuries-old Christian oppression and that they should be allowed to assimilate in the general society.
