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shut off from the outside world would soon explode with enormous force.

      Holland was one of the leading nations of Europe in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; and it is no surprise that both Jews and Japanese came in touch with the European thought of that time through some Dutch connection. The first scholar to introduce modern philosophical thought into Judaism was Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza (1632-77), whose father had fled from persecution in Portugal and settled in Holland. Spinoza's rational approach appeared heretical to the Jewish rabbis of Amsterdam, and he was excommunicated. However, his writing had an enormous impact on European thought, ultimately securing his place as one of the greatest Western philosophers.

      During the time of Spinoza, the only Westerners with whom the Japanese maintained some contact were the Dutch merchants in Nagasaki. In the middle of the eighteenth century the shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune ordered two scholars to learn the Dutch language from the Dutch in Nagasaki, and this initial study developed into a lively interest in Western disciplines, especially medicine and mathematics.

      Even the nationalist romantics (kokugakusha), who called upon their country to return to its "true self," admired Holland. Hirata Atsutane (1776-1843), who claimed that Japan was superior to all other nations in the world, wrote in 1811: "The Dutch have the excellent national characteristic of investigating matters with great patience until they can get to the very bottom. . . . Unlike China, Holland is a splendid country where they do not rely on superficial conjectures." At the same time that scholars of Dutch learning were introducing concepts of European enlightenment into Japan, the Enlightenment movement of the Jews (Haskala), calling for the adoption of secular, Western learning, was emerging with the Maskilim of central Europe. While Dutch was for more than a century the language through which the Japanese learned about Europe, German became the language through which the Jews acquainted themselves with European culture in the eighteenth century.

      The foremost proponent of the Jewish Enlightenment, Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86), first received a traditional Jewish education and then acquired a liberal Western education, mastering the German, Latin, Greek, English, and French languages and the philosophical writings of his time. Although he became a leading figure of German Enlightenment, Mendelssohn never distanced himself from Orthodox Judaism and was never excommunicated. Therefore he wielded more influence over his contemporary Jewish world than did Spinoza. Mendelssohn advocated that Jews should acquire Western civilization in addition to their Jewish culture, as these two could enrich each other. Like Hirata Atsutane, he also wished to return to the roots and revive ancient Jewish culture. He therefore wrote in modern German as well as in biblical Hebrew, two innovations for the Yiddish-speaking Jews of his time. The revival of the old Hebrew language, which paved the way for the Jewish national revival in the following century, was thus started not by conservatives but by advocates of modern Western culture.

      In the nineteenth century, the walls surrounding the closed societies of the Japanese and the Jews collapsed before the onslaught of the industrializing West. In the seventeenth century no one questioned the right of Japan to close her doors to the world and no foreign country was strong enough to challenge that policy. But in the nineteenth century Japan's isolation came to be regarded as an affront to the international order, and the Western powers possessed the means to put an end to it. The refusal of one country, situated on the sea route from North America to East Asia, to trade with the rest of the world could not be tolerated by the expanding West. The industrial revolution provided the maritime nations of the West with firepower adequate to defeat anyone who dared to oppose them. The American gunboats of Commodore Perry thus opened the gates of Japan in the middle of the nineteenth century, but had the Americans not done so, the British or the Russians would likely have shortly thereafter. The walls that the Japanese had erected around their islands could not withstand the Western impact.

      There was no need for gunboats to tear down the walls of the Jewish ghetto and shtetl, but the rationale for their dismantling was similar. In the increasingly integrated world of the nineteenth century there was no place for a detached society living and behaving according to its own rules. The concept of the modern nation-state that emerged with the French Revolution held that all citizens were equal, but each citizen was part of the integral community. During a debate on the Jews at the National Assembly of France in 1789, Delegate Count Clermont-Tonnerre declared, "The Jews should be denied everything as a nation, but granted everything as individuals.... If they do not want this, they must inform us and we shall then be compelled to expel them." The integration of Jews into Western society was attained through their surrender of communal autonomy and achievement of equal rights as individuals; the integration of Japan into the Western family of nations was achieved through accepting the international rules of the West and catering to Western interests in East Asia. Thus the Jews entered Western society as individuals whereas the Japanese entered it as a nation.

      The crumbling of the walls that had surrounded the Jews and the Japanese for centuries resulted in an unprecedented explosion of talents and skills. Pent-up energies and frustrations that previously could not be released now found channels of expression; long-suppressed ideals, plans, and ambitions could now be put into action; and high standards of education and scholarship, which had until then been applied to archaic books, could now be used for practical purposes.

      The yeshivah student, absorbed for years in studying, memorizing, analyzing, interpreting, and debating difficult talmudic passages, had no particular problem in mastering modern medicine, law, or philosophy. For scholars who had racked their brains on ancient Hebrew and Aramaic texts, modern German, with its similarity to Yiddish, was an easy language to master. A long familiarity with abstract argumentation prepared the Jews well for scientific discourse. And for the Jewish peddlers and shopkeepers, the world of modern finance was not that strange. Generations of insecurity had taught them the art of adapting to new opportunities and new methods. Skillful in handling goods, money, and ideas, the Jews of Europe mastered quickly the secrets of modern economy. Within one generation of opening themselves to the secular culture of the West, the Jews of Europe not only caught up with the level of civilization around them, but soon numbered among its cultural leaders.

      The enthusiasm with which the Jews immersed themselves in the German language produced outstanding literary fruits, exemplified in the writings of Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), one of the greatest German poets of all time, whose lyric verses and essays influenced many European writers of the nineteenth century. Heine studied at a private Jewish school until the age of eleven, when he was transferred to a French lycee. At age twenty-eight he was baptized as a Lutheran, but until the end of his life he stressed with pride his Jewish origins.

      The emancipated Jews of Europe flocked into many fields, where their individual excellence and intellectual virtuosity bore much fruit. Medicine was one such field. Jewish doctors and medical scholars became prominent, particularly in such new and related fields as biochemistry (Benedict Stilling), immunology (Paul Ehrlich), X-ray therapy (Leopold Freund), and psychiatry (Cesare Lombroso and Sigmund Freud).

      The same held true in the performing arts, music, and painting. The two most famous actresses of the French stage in the nineteenth century, Sarah Bernhardt and Rachel, were both Jewish. Among composers were Felix Mendelssohn (grandson of Moses Mendelssohn) in Germany, Jacques Offenbach in France, and Gustav Mahler in Austro-Hungary. Among the Jewish artists were Camille Pissarro and Amedeo Modigliani.

      The Japanese too were well prepared for modernization. Samurai schooled in the difficult texts of classical Chinese, who had mastered the complex Chinese writing system and its adaptation to Japanese, devoted the same energies into the learning of English and German. Yet, it was difficult for them to speak these languages. The classical Chinese that the Japanese had learned was not meant for oral communication but for textual comprehension. An educated Japanese was supposed to understand foreign books, not engage in a conversation with foreigners. The polyglot Jew did not have his counterpart in the islands of Japan; still, passive understanding served the Japanese well in absorbing Western culture.

      Since the Japanese did not possess a tradition of scholastic argumentation, practical ideas interested them more than abstract considerations. In possession of a rich tradition of sophisticated craftsmanship, well-developed learning skills, elaborate organizations, and rigorous personal and communal discipline, the Japanese could quickly adopt Western skills. Versed in

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