And is this "better" something that we, the intelligent, should allow to be endangered, to become intermixed – indeed, subordinated to this uncertain mixture – with non-Christian morals, laws, opinions etc.? Whoever prefers to be governed in a Jewish way may convert to the Jewish nation. To argue with us that whoever persists in remaining Jewish may nevertheless have it in mind to help govern us according to purely Christian law and meaning – [this] is [something] of which the rabbinical power of persuasion is not capable.
I must declare this one more time: If we ask Jewry itself: would it want to be governed in a Jewish or Christian way? As protected members of society it has something that only the Christian Enlightenment could offer it. Christian governmental legislation should seize the current occasion to emancipate them from their rabbis. Christian school supervision should aid and support improving Jewry's civic schools and educational institutions. Christian governmental supervision should intervene to prevent any number of injustices from happening among them themselves – e.g., [among] boys, minors, the female sex, the mass of the oppressed etc. – as a result of wrongheaded religious interpretations. Additional amelioration, and thereby also improvement of their national condition, must depend on their own decisions, on their proceeding toward solid industriousness. Trust cannot be commanded. Every individual who discontinues what is everywhere called Jewish in customs and especially in business life ought, in the first instance, to nationalize himself, and he will then surely be welcomed with joy and acknowledged as someone who has put himself in the same category as the good among us, because he has developed himself into the equivalent of that which is worthy of being called Christian. Individuals like that will never lack a way toward nationalization in particular.
Source: H.E.G. Paulus, Die jüdische Nationalabsonderung nach Ursprung, Folge und Besserungsmitteln: oder über Pflichten, Rechte und Verordnungen zur Verbesserung der jüdischen Schutzbürgerschaft in Deutschland: allen deutschen Staatsregierungen und landständischen Versammlungen zur Erwägung gewidmet [The National Self-Segregation of the Jews according to Origin, Consequence, and Means of Improvement: or on the Duties, Rights and Regulations for the Improvement for Jewish Protected Subjects in Germany: Brought to the Attention of all German State Governments and Local Assemblies for their Consideration]. Heidelberg: Universitätsbuchhandlung von C. F. Winter, 1831, pp. 2-3, 8-10, 61, 65-66, 146-49.
Translation: Jeremiah Riemer
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