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DPS Publishing House A Concise History of the Modern World by Dr S R Bakshi
A Concise History of the Modern Worlds from the eighteenth century onward he jews shared fully in the life of their respective countries, different as they were. In their political and social ideals they reflected the aspirations of their fellow citizens. In 1830 they regarded themselves in Central Europe, with Gabriel Riesser, as “the sons of the a century whose breath is freedom.” As the century progressed, freedom grew in the West; but the hopes of a similar growth in Central and Eastern Europe were often blighted. Many jews felt in the Enlightenment, or thought they felt, a profound kinship to Judaism, at least to its prophetic tradition. Were not the foundations of the Age of Enlightenment laid in seventeenth century Holland and England, to a large extent in the cove ants and bills of rights of Anglo-American Puritans who were deeply influenced by the Hebrew Bible? The growth of capitalism and urbanization which facilitated, and was in its turn strimulated by, Emlightenment Emancipation accelerated in the West the social and economic integration of sthejews. From the early nineteenth century on, the hostility Jewish emancipation in Central and Eastern Europe was based, on the rejection not only of the Enlightenment but also of capitalism. Wherever nineteenth-century Emancipation succeeded, it enhanced-like all spiritually libearting movements-Jewish creative productiveness in all fields. The Jews participated prominently in all cultural activities, many of which were open to them now for the first time, in science and philosophy, in secular music andliterature, in painting and sculpture. For obvious though opposite reasons Jewish life in the West and in the East was less fraught with complex intellectual tensions than Jewish life in the German speaking lands. In the West the Jews were fully integrated in the life of their homelands in the East they continued to live on its margin.