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332 THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

Austria

discharged

when Austria again took

possession of

Illyria.

The ecclesiastical laws were also applied with regard to the internal affairs of the Jews. The latter were not permitted to have any music in Advent, which generally occurred during Hanukkah and an order was issued that Christians should not be permitted to dance at the balls of the Jews on Purim

(1806 and 1824). How little the Jews were understood can be seen from the fact that when the assembly of Jewish notables convened in Paris, an order was given to watch the correspondence of the Jews, so as to ascertain whether they were plotting against the government. The police soon reported aside from some insignificant letters, which some Jews received from their relatives living in France, no interest was taken by them in the proceedings of the assembly and of the subsequent that,

Sanhedrin (1806). The only Austrian Jew who received an invitation to attend this meeting, Bernhard von Eskeles, loyally turned over his invitation to the police. Another ecclesiastical restriction against the Jews was the prohibition of the assumption of names of Christian saints as first names (Novl 6, 1834), which was evidently a reflex of the similar prohibition issued in Prussia Dec. 22, 1833. There was somewhat of the humorous in the report of a court councilor upon the synagogue which the Jews of Vienna desired to build: he expressed the fear that, if the Jews should have an attractive building and good sermons, the synagogue would soon be better frequented than the church (1824) (Wolf, " Gesch. der Juden in Wien," p. 133). On the other hand, it must be acknowledged that Francis had the intention of being in a measure just to the Jews, and that he sincerely wished to improve the desolate condition of their religious organizaIt is certainly a notable sign of tion. Interest in progress that as early as 1810 a Jew, Communal Honig, member of a family of famous financiers, was appointed an officer in Organization. the army except in France, the first Even a case of the kind in Europe. tyrannical measure, such as that requiring everyone who wished to marry to pass an examination in religion (based on Herz Romberg's text-book, "Bene Zion," 1810), was well meant, although its maintenance down to 1856 was vexatious. As early as 1795 the emperor had busied himself with a scheme to improve the spiritual condition of the Jews. He intended to establish a rabbinical seminary; and the failure of the scheme was due to the opposition of rabbis of the old school, like Eleazar Fleckeles, Samuel Landau, and Marcus Benedikt. It certainly is creditable to him that he declined to entertain the propositions of narrow-minded rationalists who delike Herz Homberg and Peter Beer nounced the rabbis as blind fanatics, and the Talmud as the source of all evil among the Jews and it is especially creditable that he did not reward Homberg's defamations of Judaism with the much-

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coveted "Toleranz." The next result of the investigations of the spiritual condition of Judaism was the " Patent " for Bohemia, issued Aug. 3, 1797, which stated the principle that it was the emperor's object ultimately to

332

remove all Jewish disabilities, although for the present the only tangible progress was the law requiring every rabbi to take a course of philosophical studies. This law was repeated for the other provinces of Austria (Jan. 22, 1820, and Jan. 29, 1826). It remained for a long time a dead letter, and even today (1902) it is not fully carried into practise. Next followed the establishment of the first scientific institution for the education of rabbis, opened in Padua (then under Austrian dominion) Nov. 10, 1829. It also redounds to the emperor's honor that ho refused to entertain the proposition made by three Jews to pay into the treasury the annual sum of 150,000 florins, if they were given the right to levy a tax on Etrogim. The emperor considered it wrong to impose a tax on a religious practise (Dec. 12, 1799) (" Israelitisches Familienblatt," Hamburg, It showed also considerable progressOct. 10, 1901). when the Jews in Vienna obtained permission to build a "Tempel," named so after the one founded in

Hamburg,

1817.

This name

is

in itself signifi-

cant for in 1620 the citizens of Vienna complain that, while the emperor had given the Jews the right to build a synagogue, they had erected a, "Tempel." On the other hand, the name "congregation" was they still denied to the Viennese Jews The Vienna were merely "the Jews of Vienna," Tempel." and their representatives not a board of trustees (" Vorstand "), but merely delegates ("Vertreter "), their rabbi an inspector of "kosher" meat, and their preacher (I. N. Mannheimer) merely a teacher of religion. Francis was succeeded by his son, Ferdinand I. (1835-48), an invalid of no brilliant intellect, and practically without influence on the affairs of the government. The ministers who ruled for him were bent on maintaining the patriarchal state of affairs which had existed under Francis I., and which was considered by the leading statesman, Metternich, to be the best safeguard of public order. Still, the progress of the age demanded here and there a milder interpretation of the existing laws. Thus, when the administration of Count Salm's estate in Raitz prohibited the giving of a night's lodging to Jewish pedlers, the authorities of the central government set aside the order (1836). The position of the Jews of Vienna was somewhat improved. Those that possessed the right of residence were allowed to transfer it to their children, and strangers were permitted to remain in the city two weeks. Further, the police did not carry out these restrictions rigorously and sometimes they became a dead letter. Those not having the right of residence had merely to have their passports revised, as if they had left the city. Immediately after having passed the gate, they returned and applied for a new permission to reside in the city two weeks (Wolf, "Gesch. der Juden in Wien," p. 142). Here and there senseless restrictions were introduced, probably upon the complaint of some overzealous official or of an unsympathetic population, as when (Jan. 31, 1836) a prohibition against pedling in the border districts was issued because the Jewish pedlers were supposed to be responsible for smuggling, or when (1841) the Jews of Prague were prohibited from spending the summer in the suburb of Bubentsch.



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