ABSTRACT
The French Revolution faced one of its greatest challenges in trying to assimilate the Jews into the modern state. Most Jews ended up taking the deal in the course of time, succumbing to this process of secularization within the new fraternity, although it took a much longer time to affect this type of cultural transformation than the Revolution originally envisaged for the Jews and the French people in general. This chapter discusses a study that agrees with these scholars and endorses the basic thesis of Hertzberg, which finds the roots of modern anti-Semitism within the Enlightenment. The study demonstrates the veracity of the thesis beyond the limits of his work by showing the direct and unequivocal relationship between the Enlightenment and the development of modern anti-Semitism, which led to the Holocaust and the destruction of the Jewish faith in Germany, Russia, and secular Western culture.
