Rabbi Berel Wein - The Jews in Europe in the 19th Century

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi Berel Wein’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

[Music] in discussing the enlightenment as we began to talk last time the ideas of the western enlightenment came to the jews as well and reform in germany can be seen as a product of the can be seen as a product of the enlightenment now reform in germany beginning in the early 1800s turned radical it felt that in order to be german you have to give up practically everything so i mentioned to you that saturday became sunday the reform temple assembled the lutheran church the clergy uh dressed as the protestant ministers did that there was an organ in the temple it and the hebrew language was dismissed it was only in german and any reference design in jerusalem was taken out of the prayers uh it was a complete uh break with all tradition it was not a gradual with all tradition it was not a gradual thing but it was a uh really radical is the only word and it swept all of germany the overwhelming majority of german jews became reformed and the situation was such that the jews in germany felt that there were great opportunities open that there were great opportunities open for them and that in order to take advantage of the opportunities they had to discard their jewishness many even discarded being jews with a large number there were a large number of conversions to christianity in fact the entire 19th century is marked by conversions it's estimated that as many as 250 as 250 000 jews in germany and central europe bohemia slovakia converted austria converted to christianity because of the fact that that was the opportunity to get into the western world now the three most famous converts uh in the 19th century uh were ironic heine the great german poet and the

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1. 0:00[Music] in discussing the enlightenment as we began to talk last time the ideas of the…
2. 4:43attacks on capitalism so he made the jew a capitalist the irony as we all know…
3. 9:53swam another 100 miles up river on the yangtze river when he was 90 years old…
4. 15:11though the marxist ideas are are fading there as well and uh this idea of atheism…
5. 20:20everything is all the same and and what happened was that uh stalin took care of…
6. 25:29wonderful parliament it's just insults back and forth right it's just you cannot you know there's…
7. 30:04he was made a lord he was called lord beaconsfield now if you look in the…
8. 35:09judaism as being the preface towards being a christian in other words that you couldn't discard…
9. 40:19uh their system because it was a dictatorship and because everybody in russia was supposed to…
10. 45:32university that they made him a university professor in saint petersburg even though he did not…

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