Od emancypacji do autoemancypacji Żydów. Zarys historyczno-kulturowy .......... 457

FROM EMANCIPATION TO SELF-EMANCIPATION AMONG JEWS. A HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL OUTLINE

The article shows the process of emancipation among Jews from the late eighteenth to early twentieth century (1919). It was largely stimulated by state authorities who wanted to change their legal status in order to integrate them into society, improve their quality of life and – in accordance with Enlightenment ideas – secularize them, or in some cases convert them to Christianity. The success of the Jewish emancipation process was dependent on three factors: recognition of the equality of minorities by the social majority, surrender by the Jews themselves to the processes of assimilation and acculturation, which was a measure of the effectiveness of socio-political reforms, and the shaping of Jewish philosophical thought that stimulated the depth of change and its course. This last factor led to the Jews reaching new awareness. Equality of rights meant that “being citizens of the state and at the same time Jews, they considered their status as a person endowed with rights to be the deepest moral category of their own”. Granting them civil rights gave them the opportunity to make use of them against both the authorities and the authority of Jewish law, especially after depriving it, under the influence of the Haskalah, of divine authority and reducing it to the human dimension conditioned historically. The Jewish emancipation process largely turned out to be a fiasco. Most of the population did not want to support their integration, which led to the rise of anti-Semitism. In addition, a large proportion of Jews did not accept the reform of Judaism, opting for its traditional form (orthodoxy and neo-orthodoxy). The expectations of the Reformed Jews also failed because assimilation and acculturation did not lead to their actual equality. Historical events and processes taking place in Europe have influenced the transformation of an increasing number of European Jews. It ran from emancipation (and tradition) to self-emancipation. Because the Haskalah and emancipation failed to overcome or reduce anti-Semitism, three fundamental options emerged from European Jewry: emigration from Europe, joining the general revolutionary movements, or following the path of Zionism, which in the twentieth century became the main solution for them.