Jews and Freemasonry in the nineteenth century: An overview of current knowledge

[This is an academic article from 2010. Jan]

1
The relationship between Judaism and Freemasonry features very little in the historiography of Jews in the nineteenth century, and even less in that of Jews during the Enlightenment. As such, there is a need to provide an overview of the areas that have previously been investigated, so as to identify avenues of future research for completing the gaps in our knowledge.

2
The presence of Jews in Masonic lodges in the first century of Speculative Freemasonry’s existence contributed to gradually fragmenting Jewish society and bringing about the pluralism that would henceforth characterize it. From the eighteenth century onward, the appeal of the lodges for Christians, but also some Jews, reflected an increased rejection of religious institutions, the desire to bring men together beyond religious divides, the weakening of traditional bonds, and the foregrounding of the individual. As Judaism allowed for a degree of freedom of conscience, it was not in fact difficult for the Jews who freed themselves from the weight of tradition and the social fetters of their community of origin to decide to become a member of a société de pensée (intellectual society) foreign to Judaism. From the Jewish point of view, there were therefore no real religious obstacles to becoming a Mason; instead, it required more of a preliminary social change, in the general context of Jewish integration into the surrounding society, which was at its height in the nineteenth century.

3
But what kind of reception awaited them in the lodges? And what influence did the Masons have on the life of nineteenth-century Jewish elites and communities?
Masonic attitudes to the Jews: British liberalism versus German exclusionism

4
The first reference to a Jew becoming a Mason dates back to 1716. From 1723, Jewish names appear in the archives of the Grand Lodge of England, and James Anderson himself, in the second edition of his Constitutions (1738), refers to several senior Jewish officers of the Grand Lodge, most of them Sephardi. [1]
[1]Jean-Philippe Schreiber and Luc Nefontaine, Judaïsme et…
The practice in England and the British Empire (which would later play an important role in the expansion of Masonry to the United States [2]
[2]Samuel Oppenheim, The Jews and Masonry in the United States…
), then in the United Provinces and Dutch colonies, was to admit Jews as members, although some lodges did discriminate against them. Masonry, including in its early days, may not have had the monopoly on fraternity, nor on the new “religion” of deism. But placed at the heart of the contemporary movement to liberate minds, its originality and profoundly innovative nature lay in two aspects: the pluralism that it strove to practice, and the aspiration to rise above religious quarrels that it promoted by showing itself to be pluralist in this respect also—at least in principle. In early eighteenth-century England, which had a small Jewish community, there was no real Jewish question for the originators of Speculative Freemasonry when they were developing its first constitutions. So when the first Jew knocked on the door of the lodge, he was granted admission. The eligibility of the Jews was, of course, the subject of later debate, but due to the general atmosphere of tolerance and their attachment to the founding principles of Freemasonry, English lodges generally admitted Jewish members. This was also the case in the United States and, in the nineteenth century, across several European countries. Except in Germany.
Image 1
Image 1
Cover of the first edition of Anderson’s Constitutions. Setting out the duties of Masons and conveying an ancient and venerable vision of their history, they formed and still form the basis of universal Freemasonry.
Taken from Gérard Serbanesco, Histoire de la franc-maçonnerie universelle, son rituel, son symbolisme, vol. 1 (Paris: Les Ed. Intercontinentales, 1963).

5
There, due to prejudice, the particular social position of the Jews, the rise of German Romanticism and nationalism, and above all the particular relationship of many German lodges to Christianity, such tolerance was far from being universally applied. Yet it was in Germany, where Masonry included representatives of the intellectual elite steeped in modern humanism, that many Jews began from the late eighteenth century to knock on the door of temples, only to be refused admission. This rejection contributed to holding back a movement of social emancipation that the context required just as much as elsewhere—and sometimes even as mindsets developed considerably in this regard in German society, particularly between 1830 and 1875. This was the moment when German Masonry, or at least the greatest part of it, failed in its role as an agent of social integration. Not through the linear crumbling of tolerance, from inclusion to exclusion, but through the coexistence of these two inextricably linked movements: a tension that continued, as Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann has clearly shown in his work on Freemasonry and Bildung (German education and culture). [3]
[3]Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, “Brothers or Strangers? Jews and…

6
Eighteenth-century German Masonry, like German society as a whole, was largely against the admission of Jews as members, on the basis of the Christian nature of Freemasonry. There was however one exception: the Order of Brüder Sint-Johannes des Evangelisten aus Asien in Europa or the “Asiatic Brethren,” founded in Vienna in 1780 as the first Masonic order offering to accept both Jews and Christians among its members. It had lodges in Prague, Innsbruck, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, and Hamburg. [4]
[4]Jacob Katz dedicates a chapter to them in Jews and Freemasons…
Following in the footsteps of the Asiatic Brethren a few months after the French Revolution, the Berlin Toleranzloge also advocated openly, though in isolation, the admission of Jewish members.

7
It was also in Germany that Gotthold Ephraim Lessing—who saw Freemasons as a model of universalism, benevolence, and fraternity, and the ultimate philosophers—maintained a friendship with another enlightened mind, Moses Mendelssohn. This was a friendship characterized by a community of philosophical ideals. Yet when Mendelssohn expressed the desire to learn more about Masonry, Lessing refused to tell him what went on in a lodge. A Christian Mason like Lessing, despite fighting for the emancipation of the Jews, was still therefore unable to bear one of them entering the brotherhood.

8
The three United Grand Lodges in Berlin, the backbone of German Masonry, which all followed a Christian rite, unanimously decided not to admit any Jewish members into the lodges under their jurisdiction, even if they had been admitted elsewhere. Jews enjoyed limited tolerance in the capacity of visitors only. This exclusionary trend grew even as the legal situation of the Jews in the German states improved, as if civil and political emancipation were a driver for a symmetrical increase in segregation, even in intellectual societies. This rejection hardened in Berlin, where it endured for several decades, in contrast to the tolerance of the Grand Lodge of Hamburg and the lodges under French jurisdiction.

9
This was the result of the advance of the French revolutionary and then imperial armies, which contributed to the expansion of Masonry and spread tolerance toward the Jews within it: a Jewish lodge, for example, was created in Frankfurt am Main shortly after the imperial city became a principality administered by Napoleonic France. “L’Aurore Naissante” (later the Zur aufgehenden Morgenröte), was recognized in 1807 by the Grand Orient thanks to the people skills of Max Cerfbeer, [5]
[5]Daniel Ligou, ed., Dictionnaire de la franc-maçonnerie…
and its first lodge master was Siegmund Geisenheimer, an associate of the Rothschild family. The historians Jacob Katz and Paul Arnsberg have shown that its members included almost all the leading families of the old Jewish community in Frankfurt along with those who had rapidly climbed the social ladder—such as the Hanau, Goldschmidt, and Rothschild families, and in particular their younger members.

10
This pattern was repeated in many other cities: the first individuals from the elite Jewish community to become Masons were men who sought, among other things, to end the community’s isolation and open a dialogue with the Christian world. [6]
[6]Strongly influenced by Friedrich Schiller, a convert to…
The creation of the Morgenröte was therefore closely linked to the struggle of Frankfurt’s Jews to obtain their civic emancipation. Of the two delegates sent by the Jewish community to the Assembly of Notables and the Sanhedrin convened by Napoleon, one was in fact one of the lodge’s founders—namely its orator Isaac Hildesheim, who spoke on behalf of the lodge and was responsible for ensuring procedures were properly followed. Its members would later include the writer Ludwig Börne, who joined in 1809, [7]
[7]On this topic see Dominique Bourel, “Deutsche Juden in Paris.…
the journalist Gabriel Riesser, initiated in 1832, [8]
[8]The first Jewish judge in Germany, Riesser led the struggle for…
the poet and champion of German unification Berthold Auerbach, [9]
[9]The son of a rabbi, Auerbach wrote one of the most successful…
who was initiated in 1838, the historian Isaac Marcus Jost, and the artist Moritz Oppenheim.

11
It was this Jewish Masonic bourgeoisie in Frankfurt that managed the affairs of a community increasingly attracted to a liberal, reforming vision of Judaism, and thus played a key role in the cultural and religious history of nineteenth-century German Judaism. [10]
[10]Jacob J. Petuchowski, “Frankfurt Jewry. A Model of Transition…
All of its leading figures were Masons from 1817 to 1832, a period of significant community change—raising the question of the influence of their membership of the Masons on this reforming attitude. Far from being short-lived, the Jewish presence continued into the second half of the century, when the Creizenach, Goldschmidt, Hahn, and Lehberger families, for example, were both community leaders and members of several Frankfurt lodges.

12
In the early nineteenth century, Freemasonry in Germany, as in France, Belgium, and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, thus began to exercise its role of common social framework at a significant level. It contributed to ending the isolation of Jewish communities, and in some cases acted as a laboratory of ideas in favor of reforming the civic status of the Jews. In the lodges under French jurisdiction—one such, in the Netherlands, even took the name of “Saint Napoléon”—Masonic discourse was in unison with that of Jewish consistories, reflecting the same Bonapartist Legitimism and the same desire to see the new regime realize its promise of a new humanity, revitalized by reason and fraternity. But with the conservative, nationalist reaction that followed 1815, the Morgenröte became an almost exclusively Jewish lodge, continuing in vain to denounce the exclusive Christianization of German Masonry. The other lodges refused to have any further contact with it.

13
Some achievements nevertheless endured, and these again came into play at the height of German liberalism, as a convergence arose in the 1840s between emancipated Jews increasingly shedding their religious particularism, and Christian Masons seeing the link to their own faith weaken day by day. Driven by a new generation, tolerance developed and made it possible to bring an end to the isolation of Jewish lodges. In 1844, Frankfurt’s Eclectic Alliance, one of the non-Prussian mother lodges, finally allowed members of the Morgenröte to attend meetings of its affiliated lodges in the capacity of visitors. The majority of lodges adopted this position, with the exception of the mystical and Christian lodges, who were themselves increasingly marginalized from their openly humanist mother lodge. Johann Georg Kloss, Grand Master of the Eclectic Alliance from 1836, played a key role in this process, including by clearly marking the divide between the Christian and humanist points of view.

14
Jacob Katz is right therefore to claim that the Jews played a decisive role in the history of German Masonry, including in the transfer of jurisdiction of some lodges from the conservative mother lodges of Berlin to their more liberal counterparts in Frankfurt and Hamburg. Such liberalization, around 1848, was however short-lived. Once the Revolution was over, after the power of mother lodges and state control over Prussian Freemasonry was restored, the rebel lodges returned to their bosom and once again excluded their Jewish members. While they did not have a complete monopoly over German Masonry, the Prussian mother lodges were extremely powerful. Their bans therefore endured, even if time gradually weakened their impact.

15
The social evolution of the Jewish community, the growing number of Jews who wanted to become Masons, their cultural integration, and the progress of the process that would soon lead to their legal emancipation all worked in favor of this change in attitude. However, with the unification of Germany in 1871 and the unification of German Freemasonry that followed, those most attached to Christian homogeneity looked for arguments other than the principle of the Christian character of lodges to exclude Jewish members. This resulted, in certain conservative lodges during the 1870s, in the promotion of a social discourse concerning the Jews revitalized by the biological perspective. The supposed differences between Aryans and Semites strengthened the arguments of those who could no longer justify their aversion to the Jews on the basis of religious differences. [11]
[11]Although, like the lodges in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, the…
The prospects opened up by German unification were therefore quickly swept away by reality. Once again, hatred of the Jews, an issue in German political debate and social discourse, was not absent from the Masons. Under Bismarck’s Reich, and particularly during the 1880s, which saw a surge of anti-Semitic frenzy, Freemasonry was as anti-Semitic as the rest of German society. Those who had been admitted as members left, and some lodges, who had until then accepted Jews, began to exclude them. But in reality, even at the height of German liberalism, the Jews had never had truly free access to lodges. And the religious restriction clause invoked until then—the Christian character of Freemasonry—turned out to have primarily been a pretext designed to exclude them from an intellectual society in which not all minds were ready for true tolerance.
Freemasonry as a framework for social integration

16
With German lodges so reluctant to admit Jewish members, and Masonry banned for nearly a century in the areas of western Europe under Tsarist Russian control—home to half the world’s Jewish population—it was only in western Europe and the Mediterranean that Masonry could truly play its role as an integrating framework for some modernized Jewish elites. In these countries their admission was not really a politically, or even philosophically or religiously charged issue—except perhaps during the Dreyfus affair. This goes to show the extent to which Masonry merely supported the general movement of Jews throughout the century toward their integration in western Europe and the Americas, regions that did not yet have significant Jewish communities but were becoming the favored destinations for Jewish migration, and where the major debates concerning the future of Judaism were taking shape.

17
In this context, similarities can be seen between the social policy of Reform Jewish communities, their education system, their philanthropic system founded on patronage, assistance, and social provision, and the Masonic model, which also promoted philanthropy, mutual support, and solidarity. The case of Frankfurt is significant in this respect. There was also clearly a link worthy of greater investigation between membership of the Masons and the modernization of Jewish society: its innovators, reformers, radicals, and even marginal figures were sometimes if not often Masons. There are therefore striking similarities between Masonic discourse and liberal Jewish discourse. The ideology of “regeneration,” while driven by ideological and economic objectives, also suited a key concern of Masonry: to create “new men” through initiation. This similarity is more than merely symbolic.

18
Affinities can also be identified between the Masonic model and Jewish education. The Philanthropin, for example, a model school and showcase for Jewish reform in Germany, was created in 1804 by Siegmund Geisenheimer, who would later found the Jewish lodge in Frankfurt. It included a number of Masons among its leaders and teachers, with some playing a non-negligible role in the cultural and religious development of German Judaism and in the Science of Judaism (Wissenschaft des Judentums), such as the writer Moses Hess, the historian Isaac Marcus Jost, and the mathematician Michaël Creizenach. [12]
[12]Arnsberg, Die Geschichte der Frankfurter Juden, 234; Stanley L.…

19
The Masons also included Reform Jewish members who were close to the Masons in philosophical and ideological terms. Liberal rabbi Leopold Stein, for example, who was admitted in 1867 into the Frankfurt lodge Zur Einigkeit—Franz Liszt’s lodge—had steered the Reform synod of 1845, then led the Frankfurt community before stepping down from his rabbinical functions in 1862. He was then replaced by a leading figure of German Reform Judaism, Abraham Geiger. [13]
[13]Arnsberg, Die Geschichte der Frankfurter Juden, 239.
There was also Gotthold Salomon, leader of the Reform temple of Hamburg, initiated into the Frankfurt Morgenröte in 1837, who had previously advocated stripping Freemasonry of its Christian additions in Masonic orations [14]
[14]Orations published under the title: Stimmen aus Osten, eine…
; Isaac Bamberger, rabbi of the Reform community of Königsberg between 1865 and 1896 [15]
[15]Jean-Philippe Schreiber, “Le grand-rabbin de Belgique Élie…
; Solomon Formstecher, [16]
[16]Arnsberg, Die Geschichte der Frankfurter Juden, 241.
rabbi in Offenbach, who was a member of the Zum Frankfurter Adler; and Samuel Hirsch, [17]
[17]Jacob Katz, “Samuel Hirsch: Rabbi, philosopher and freemason,”…
a member of the Enfants de la Concorde Fortifiée lodge and chief rabbi of Luxembourg—as well as his successor Isaac Blumenstein, also initiated into this lodge in 1874. [18]
[18]Alexandre Marius Dées de Stério, Essai d’histoire de la…
Jacob Katz has highlighted the figure of Samuel Hirsch, trained in the yeshivas of Metz and Mainz and the universities of Bonn and Berlin, who was initiated in 1843, the year he was appointed chief rabbi of Luxembourg—which he left in 1866 for Philadelphia, where he became a leading figure in American Reform Judaism. [19]
[19]Michael Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform…
Finally, the pattern of Reform rabbis having membership of the Masons was even more marked in Great Britain. [20]
[20]See in particular John M. Shaftesley, “Jews in English…

20
For philosophical, spiritual, and religious, but also historical and symbolic reasons, Freemasonry generally disseminated a positive image of Judaism, and thus contributed, in conjunction with other drivers of the new society, to accelerating the change in mentalities toward it. Rabbi Isaac M. Wise, a Mason and pioneer of Reform Judaism in the United States, thus enthusiastically declared: “Masonry is a Jewish institution whose history, degrees, charges, passwords and explanations are Jewish from the beginning to the end”—a maxim that anti-Masons took great delight in exploiting. [21]
[21]The Israelite, August 3, 1866.

21
Conversely, the process of Jewish emancipation came later in places where Freemasonry was prohibited. [22]
[22]In Austria, lodges were forced to cease their activities at the…
The example of Tsarist Russia, where Freemasonry survived only in secrecy after being outlawed by Alexander I in 1822, is revealing in this respect. This ban effectively ended the mass entry of Jews into lodges that had begun in 1815, particularly in Warsaw, which might have constituted a modernizing factor for Judaism in eastern Europe. According to Artur Eisenbach, a large element of Warsaw’s Jewish bourgeoisie, namely members of the enlightened elite, influenced by the Haskalah, who were active as leaders of the Jewish community and its educational and social institutions, had participated in Masonic life for the decade and a half prior to its prohibition. [23]
[23]Artur Eisenbach, The Emancipation of the Jews in Poland,…

22
Daniel Tollet has also shown that a number of Polish Jewish revolutionaries exiled after 1831 joined Masonic lodges in Paris or provincial France. [24]
[24]Daniel Tollet, Histoire des Juifs en Pologne, du XVIe siècle à…
Historian Joachim Lelewel, elected to the Diet in 1828 and the likely intellectual inspiration behind the Polish Uprising of 1830 before he was forced to seek exile in France, thus maintained, through Masonry, a link between Jewish and non-Jewish Polish democrats.

23
Of course, assimilation, mixed marriage, and conversion resulted in defections from Judaism; without provoking them, Freemasonry enabled its members to lessen their effects, by conferring respectability and normality on mixed identities. Heinrich Heine, a Jew by origin and a Mason, thus saw his own conversion in a way that rejected any form of betrayal. As Michael Meyer has highlighted, the gradual breakdown of community unity, which began in the modern era, drove many marginal figures to integrate the cultural norms of the surrounding society more quickly and to relax their religious practice, to the extent of sometimes adopting deviant attitudes. [25]
[25]Meyer, Response to Modernity.
There were many such cases in the nineteenth century, particularly in places where the community held relatively little sway. The widespread religious laxism and clear regression of orthopraxy experienced by some elements of Jewish society since the modern era—among the Sephardi but also among some Ashkenazi, and some Jews in eighteenth-century Alsace—was compounded in the nineteenth century by a reaction against religious law, perceived to be archaic and dogmatic. These marginal figures shared Freemasonry’s inclination toward the universal, accorded morality the same supremacy over faith, harbored the same desire to promote the individual, social action, and philanthropy, and had the same progressive vision of society. Moreover, through a range of different routes depending on whether it was spiritualist or materialist, Freemasonry, like some sectors of liberal Judaism—and Protestantism—sought to overcome faith-based divides in order to reach a single, universal religion or philosophy.

24
As Jacob Katz has shown, relations between the Jews and Freemasonry have taken on the status of a myth, and few historians have thus taken a real look at the role of Masonry in the integration of Jewish elites and their doctrinal development of a Jewish universalism. Yet if we take the example of France and in particular Belgium, it is clear that the close relationship that developed between some enlightened Jewish elites and Masonry must have contributed both to the socialization of these elites within that part of the bourgeoisie adhering to Enlightenment principles and to the consolidation of consistorial doctrine in its universal values, its social doctrine, and its return to the Mosaic and Prophetic sources of the Jewish religion.
The Sephardic world

25
The first Jews to integrate into western societies in the eighteenth century were often Sephardi, in places where the coexistence of Jews and non-Jews originated in the expulsion of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula—namely the cosmopolitan ports of London, Amsterdam, Bordeaux, and Hamburg, which were the first places where Jews and Masons encountered one another. The first Jewish Masons were Sephardi living in Amsterdam and London and in the American colonies, at a time when the Grande Loge de France, for example, made membership of the Masons, in the eighteenth century, conditional on baptism. This reflects the traces some Sephardi retained of the close links cultivated by their ancestors with Christianity until the end of the seventeenth century. Their tradition and history made them more willing than others to agree to coexist with Christian culture without giving up their own religious identity.

26
From the eighteenth century, many Sephardi thus became Freemasons in the Dutch Republic. Van Pelt locates between 1757 and 1765—at a time when the lodges in Amsterdam did not admit Jewish members—what he believes to be the sole confirmed case of a primarily Jewish lodge affiliated to the then recently created Dutch Grand Lodge, De Resolutie. [26]
[26]Robert Jan Van Pelt, “De loge als speel-en oefenplaats der…
But there were more lodges with a majority of Jewish members in South America. The colonies, particularly Dutch colonies, gave civil rights to the Jews very early on. On the island of Curaçao, Daniel Cohen Peixotto founded an irregular lodge in 1743 and, even after an official Masonic order was founded in 1757, it continued to have many Jewish members. In Suriname, another Dutch colony, the lodge L’Union (1773) consisted almost entirely of Jewish members—and both Sephardi and Ashkenazi, a phenomenon still unheard of on the mainland at the time. Coexistence appeared to prove a challenge, however, with the Ashkenazi leaving L’Union in 1798 to start their own lodge, De Standvastigheid. [27]
[27]Van Pelt, “De loge,” 78–86.
Finally, there were also many Sephardi in South American lodges in the nineteenth century, particularly in Venezuela, Colombia, and Chile. [28]
[28]Léon Zeldis, “Aportas Sefarditas a la Francmasonería” [What the…

27
Meanwhile, Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue have demonstrated the role played by Jewish elites in the lodges of Istanbul and Thessaloniki during the period of Freemasonry’s expansion in the Ottoman Empire, between 1850 and 1875. [29]
[29]Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue, The Jews of the Balkans: The…
French, Italian, English, Greek, and German lodges all coexisted in these two cities, all linked to countries that played a key role in the Empire’s astonishing economic development. Later on, many members of Alexandria’s Jewish bourgeoisie were also Masons. Lodges affiliated to the Grand Orient of France and the Grand Orient of Italy in particular disseminated liberal ideas throughout the cities of the Empire, helping to make native Jews receptive to western ideas. Here again, these lodges played an active role in breaking down community barriers and were also places for dialogue, in particular between Jews and Muslims, in a context where such relations were not always easy. Jewish elites had a particular presence in the lodges of the highly cosmopolitan city of Thessaloniki, the “Jerusalem of the Balkans,” where the Jewish population constituted a majority.

28
This was also the case in Tunisia, where a greater number of Jews appear to have been Masons than in Algeria or Morocco. [30]
[30]Éric Saunier, ed., Encyclopédie de la franc-maçonnerie…
In Morocco, however, Jews were present in the English, French, and Spanish lodges. L’Union 194, affiliated to the Grande Loge de France, was founded in Tangier, in 1867, before the creation of the Nouvelle Volubilis by Haïm Benchimol, who was also one of the local founders of the Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Alliance Française. [31]
[31]Sarah Leibovici, Judios y masones en Tetuan y Tanger (segunda…
Along with the other, Spanish, lodges, L’Union 194 acted as a powerful driver for Europeanization. [32]
[32]Georges Odo, Les Francs-maçons au Maroc sous la IIIe République…

29
Lucien Sabah is one of the few authors to have demonstrated the role played by Freemasonry as a place of integration for Mediterranean Jews into French culture and the republican spirit. He cites the example, among others, of a Mason in Algiers who was both the lodge master and the president of the Jewish consistory. [33]
[33]Lucien Sabah, “La franc-maçonnerie et l’antisémitisme”…
In Oran, where an old, very poor, Arabized Jewish community present before the French conquest lived alongside a more recent community mostly originally from Livorno and closer to the authorities, the Jews were both westernized and stigmatized by Masonry, which was closely entangled with local political issues.

30
Although, according to Lucien Sabah, local Masons were unable to persuade a substantial number of Muslims to join them, despite their efforts to do so, they appeared to have little desire to make up the numbers, at the start of the French occupation, by welcoming “native” Jews. This prejudice seems to have persisted well beyond the 1840s, even though the joint struggle of 1848 in all likelihood brought together the Jewish elites and Masonry. There was a clear convergence between the views of those in the French community who wanted to eradicate Jewish traditions considered as outdated and give Jews access to French civilization, and the efforts undertaken by mainland French Judaism to get “native” Jews to support the spirit of Franco-Judaism through the work of the consistories, philanthropic societies, and the Alliance Israélite, which included individuals active in this emancipation who were also Freemasons, including some Alliance teachers. [34]
[34]Lucien Sabah cites examples of this in La franc-maçonnerie à…

31
The surge of anti-Semitic frenzy that afflicted Algeria between 1871 and 1892 also affected Algerian Masons. It hardened when Freemasons joined the anti-Jewish campaign at its height in 1898, when bloody pogroms swept through Algiers. Two years earlier, the Congress of Lodges of North Africa, held in Constantine, had expressed its wish for the Crémieux Decree to be repealed. Like the Fédération des libres penseurs d’Algérie (Algerian Federation of Freethinkers), Algerian Masonry was for a time, and in part, anti-Semitic. The Dreyfus affair even revealed that some Masons would rather break with their lodge than renounce their anti-Dreyfusard sentiments. This was particularly the case in Algeria. Geneviève Dermenjian has shown the extent to which, despite their republican, anti-clerical nature, the lodges in Oran, Constantine, Tlemcen and Mostaganem, which were active at all levels of social life and urban politics, did not diverge from the view of other Europeans on questions concerning the Jews. The majority of lodges in Algeria clearly shared the widespread anti-Semitism of the 1890s. Masonic anti-Semitism therefore certainly existed, and not only in the colony. The Saint Jean de Jérusalem lodge in Nancy thus decided, in 1897, not to admit a Jewish candidate for initiation, and was reprimanded for clearly violating Masonic rules by arguing on the basis of the candidate’s Jewishness. Vanessa Ragache is right to suppose that “this lodge was undoubtedly not the only one to infringe Masonic law”; at least one Parisian lodge, La Fraternité des Peuples, also seems to have been struck by the plague of anti-Semitism. [35]
[35]Sabah, La franc-maçonnerie à Oran, 494; Vanessa Ragache, Le…
Notable Jews and Freemasonry

32
In both western Europe and in the colonies, Masonry therefore played a role as a channel for Jewish integration from the eighteenth century onward, but not solely for philosophical reasons. The example of Frankfurt’s Morgenröte clearly shows that while the intellectual ambition to create a common framework within which Jews and Christians could come together, enter into dialogue, and fraternize may certainly have predominated, the role of social and economic aspirations should not be overlooked. If the majority of Jewish Masons were merchants it was because the lodges, like other places of sociability—few of which existed at the time—constituted a framework within which Jewish businessmen could end their community’s isolation and open up to the world for their greater benefit, a framework within which the transformation of both the Jewish community and the way in which Jews were perceived can be observed.

33
Bruno Étienne’s demonstration of the way in which Freemasonry served as a vector for the upward social mobility of Jewish families in the nineteenth century in Aix-en-Provence, before their abandonment of both Freemasonry and Judaism, has been confirmed by Iet Erdtsieck in relation to the Dutch province of Overijssel. [36]
[36]Bruno Étienne, “Note sur quelques juifs francs-maçons de…
In certain periods—including around 1870—Erdtsieck has found that over 15 percent of members were Jewish in lodges including Le Profond Silence in Kampen, or even 20 percent in the Fides Mutua in Zwolle and the Tubantia in Enschede, at a time when the Jewish population of Overijssel never exceeded 1.6 percent of the total population. [37]
[37]Iet Erdtsieck, “De loge als werk-en bezinningsplaats der joodse…
But from the end of the century, which coincided with the full participation of Jews in Dutch society, the presence of Jews in lodges declined markedly. The same pattern is therefore seen in both cases. Erdtsieck adds nuance to the picture, however, by showing that the decreased appeal of Freemasonry at the end of the century played a role in combination with the awareness of a new Jewish identity as well as an orthodox reaction.

34
After 1830 we can therefore observe a gradual normalization of the access of Jews to Freemasonry in emancipated countries, at the very time and in the very place where Freemasonry became truly universalist. This was the case in France, where the figure of Adolphe Crémieux dominated Jewish and Masonic circles. It was the case in Belgium, where Freemasonry welcomed Jews, as much for reasons of social integration that were not specific to it as for particular reasons related to the fierce conflict between liberals and clericals. All, or almost all, senior community leaders belonged to a lodge, along with a large part of the upper middle classes and the bourgeoisie, particularly in Anvers and above all in Brussels, not to mention numerous Jewish intellectuals and Polish Jewish exiles of 1830. [38]
[38]See in particular Marcel De Schampheleire, “De loge La…
The majority of community leaders were therefore Masons, along with almost all the presidents of the Consistory, a large number of Consistory members and the governing board of the Jewish community of Brussels and several leaders of the community in Anvers. The Free University of Brussels, founded by Masons, had four Jewish rectors in the nineteenth century, all Masons: Gottlieb Gluge, Martin Philippson, Adolphe Prins, and Paul Errera. [39]
[39]Jean-Philippe Schreiber, Politique et religion: le Consistoire…

35
The same could be seen in the Netherlands, but to a lesser extent: the last lodges that refused to open their doors to Jews on principle finally opened to them in 1817. Erdtsieck cites, among others, the case of Seligman Susan, master between 1862 and 1872 of the Le Préjugé Vaincu lodge in Deventer, in the north of the country, who was president of the local Jewish community at the same time; this was also the case for two of his direct successors. [40]
[40]Erdtsieck, “De loge,” 37–50.
In Luxembourg, the Les Enfants de la Concorde Fortifiée lodge had several Jewish members from 1818 onward, and Louis Godchaux, president of the Luxembourg Jewish community from 1882 to 1906, was a member from at least 1867. [41]
[41]Katz, Jews and Freemasons, 170; Alexandre Marius Dées de…

36
The same was also true in Great Britain, where Moses Montefiore, initiated in 1812 to the Jewish lodge Mount Moriah, gave his name to two Masonic lodges. The second Jew to enter the UK parliament, he acquired the status of an international Jewish leader and was head of the Board of Deputies of British Jews from 1838 to 1874. To an even greater extent than clubs, the hubs of English sociability, Freemasonry—the anglophone, “regular” kind, fundamentally different from continental Masonry—provided a ticket of entry into liberal, cultivated English society. Whether or not through primarily Jewish lodges, English Jews thus acquired status, respectability, and familiarity with British culture. [42]
[42]Eugene C. Black, The Social Politics of Anglo-Jewry, 1880–1920…
This was welcomed by the English Jewish press—such as the monthly Jewish Chronicle, founded by Mason Isaac Vallentine—which published information on lodge activities in its pages and reported the passage of Jewish Masons toward higher degrees or major roles and responsibilities. [43]
[43]Shaftesley, “Jews in English Freemasonry,” 42.

37
Finally, the same could also be seen in the United States from the mid-eighteenth century, and then in Australia. The leaders of the newly formed Sydney Synagogue, around 1840, were members of the Lodge of Australia, of whom 15 to 20 percent of members were Jewish, and things were similar in Melbourne. [44]
[44]Raymond Apple, “Australian Jews and Freemasonry”, in…
To such an extent that, with the concomitant development of Masonry and the Jewish community in this colony, it became relatively common for members of the Jewish establishment, or even the majority of rabbis and officiants, to become Masons. This practice sat within the very specific context of social interactions in a country of immigration: it was not therefore rare, in return, for major events in Jewish community life to be graced by the presence and active participation of the Masonic authorities.

38
This overview has therefore set out the hypothesis of the role of Freemasonry in the integration of some western Jewish elites, particularly in France, while seeking to encourage more in-depth research into the topic, based on the available Masonic archives: from lodge meetings recorded in minutes (or “tracings”), to the correspondence maintained between jurisdictions and affiliates, or the “lodge boards” consisting of elements identifying members, valuable sources are available from lodges themselves and in the archives of Masonic jurisdictions, which are often open to researchers. For there would appear to be a real need to integrate Freemasonry into the history of post-Emancipation Judaism.
Image 2
Image 2
Sir Moses Montefiore (Livorno, 1784 – Ramsgate, 1885), L’Univers israélite, 1885.
Photo Mario Goldman. © MAHJ

39
It must however be admitted that it is difficult to draw up a sociology of Masonic membership, and to speculate on a sociology of Jews in Masonry. An individual’s membership of the Masons constituted merely one aspect of his commitments and affiliations. It would be dangerous to overestimate this aspect of identity, which is difficult to isolate and objectify, and unrealistic to think that we might segment the life of a “plural actor” defined also by his family ties, political and philosophical affinities, professional occupations, and so on, and to consider his membership of the Masons, detached from this spectrum as a whole, as relating solely to the private sphere. The Masons were not a homogeneous social group, nor a homogeneous socialization matrix. The plural nature of behavior among social actors always requires the use of conceptual tools to consider such diversity; the same is true when considering the relationship between Judaism and Freemasonry in terms of membership.

40
The fact remains that finding themselves in circles with profoundly different rituals and symbols, where initiation combined with the oath constituted a rite of passage fundamentally different to Judaism and with distinct forms of sociability, represented a major change for these Jews. But it is also true that a number of those who joined the Freemasons had previously undergone such a change in other types of societies or guilds. Integration certainly requires not only adherence to values and systems of thinking common to all men, but also adaptation to the social practices involved in this shared humanity. As an intellectual, spiritual, and philosophical form of appropriation, membership of the Freemasons in turn led Masons to draw on their Masonic virtues, Masonic teaching, and voyage of initiation in the profane world. This can be identified—though here again a more nuanced analysis is required—in the Masonic flavor of certain Reform Jewish practices (such as the replacement of the bar mitzvah with confirmation, the profession of faith in confirmations or in weddings, death rituals, and so on), as well as in the ideological forms and rhetoric employed in philanthropic discourse, for example. This poses the question of Masonic influence on nineteenth-century Jewish social reformers.

41
Liberal or Reform Jewish circles were not however the only ones to include Masons among their ranks. Moses Montefiore himself, a Jew and eminent Mason, was profoundly orthodox and opposed to religious reforms—admittedly in an English Jewish community strongly influenced by the surrounding Christian society. This also brings us back to the question of the presence of Christian symbolism in Masonry and the way in which its Jewish members were able to adapt to it. It is true that outside the lodges, the same kind of adaptation was sometimes necessary, in a now open society where the esthetic reforms of the Jewish faith included a number of Christian references, such as in civil cemeteries where Jewish and Christian symbols coexisted.

42
Finally, it is worth emphasizing the fact that, for a long period of time, Freemasonry was a place of sociability, dialogue, and fraternization with non-Jews solely for a very small number of emancipated, educated Jews open to European culture. Some of them may have played a non-negligible role as cultural bridges for their community of origin, particularly as they held senior positions within it. But the fact remains that the majority of Jewish people mostly continued to be attached to tradition and unaware of this route toward knowledge of others—or had different relationships with the society around them. Yet still, in places where, in the global society, Christians and Jews often despised or were ignorant of one another, Christian—or secularized—and Jewish elites somehow became acquainted with one another in the Masonic lodges.
Notes

[1]
Jean-Philippe Schreiber and Luc Nefontaine, Judaïsme et franc-maçonnerie. Histoire d’une fraternité [Judaism and Freemasonry. The History of a Brotherhood] (Paris: Albin Michel, 2000), 25 et sq.
[2]
Samuel Oppenheim, The Jews and Masonry in the United States before 1810 (New York: American Jewish Historical Society, 1910).
[3]
Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, “Brothers or Strangers? Jews and Freemasons in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” German History 18 (2000): 143–61; on the concept of Bildung, see Daniel Azuélos, L’Entrée en bourgeoisie des Juifs allemands ou le paradigme libéral (1800–1933) (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2005).
[4]
Jacob Katz dedicates a chapter to them in Jews and Freemasons in Europe: 1723–1939, translated from the Hebrew by Leonard Oschry (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970).
[5]
Daniel Ligou, ed., Dictionnaire de la franc-maçonnerie [Dictionary of Freemasonry] (Paris: PUF, 1987), 208.
[6]
Strongly influenced by Friedrich Schiller, a convert to Lutheranism after an education marked by the birth of Reform Judaism, Ludwig Börne was one of the leading figures in the struggle for Jewish civic and political equality in Germany. He left Frankfurt for Paris in 1830, at the same time and for reasons similar to Heinrich Heine. See Paul Arnsberg, Die Geschichte der Frankfurter Juden seit der Französischen Revolution [The History of the Jews in Frankfurt since the French Revolution] (Darmstadt: Roether, 1983), vol. 1, 232 et sq.
[7]
On this topic see Dominique Bourel, “Deutsche Juden in Paris. Ludwig Börne,” in Ludwig Börne. Deutscher, Jude, Demokrat, eds. Frank Stern and Maria Gierlinger (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 2003), 105–117.
[8]
The first Jewish judge in Germany, Riesser led the struggle for Jewish civic equality and became a leading liberal politician. See Manfred Steffens, Freimaurer in Deutschland. Bilanz eines Vierteljahrtausends [The Freemasons in Germany: A 250 Year History] (Flensburg: Christian Wolff Verlag, 1964), 237–238.
[9]
The son of a rabbi, Auerbach wrote one of the most successful books of his time, Barfüssele [Bare Feet].
[10]
Jacob J. Petuchowski, “Frankfurt Jewry. A Model of Transition to Modernity,” in Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, XXIX (1984): 405–418.
[11]
Although, like the lodges in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, the Grand Lodge of Germany, one of the three Berlin mother lodges, continued to refuse Jews admission on the basis of its Christian character.
[12]
Arnsberg, Die Geschichte der Frankfurter Juden, 234; Stanley L. Hoffmann, Die Politik der Geselligkeit: Freimaurerlogen in der deutschen Bürgergesellschaft, 1840–1918 [The Politics of Sociability: Masonic Lodges in German Civil Society, 1840–1918] (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 76.
[13]
Arnsberg, Die Geschichte der Frankfurter Juden, 239.
[14]
Orations published under the title: Stimmen aus Osten, eine Sammlung von Reden und Betrachtungen maurerischen Inhalts [Voices from the East: A Collection of Speeches and Commentaries of Masonic Content] (Hamburg, 1845).
[15]
Jean-Philippe Schreiber, “Le grand-rabbin de Belgique Élie Aristide Astruc et l’enseignement du judaïsme, 1866–1879” [The Grand Rabbi of Belgium Élie Aristide Astruc and the Teaching of Judaism], in Libre pensée et pensée libre. Combats et débats, eds. Andrée Despy-Meyer and Hervé Hasquin (Brussels: Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 1996), 139–158.
[16]
Arnsberg, Die Geschichte der Frankfurter Juden, 241.
[17]
Jacob Katz, “Samuel Hirsch: Rabbi, philosopher and freemason,” Revue des études juives, CXXV, 1–3 (1966): 113–126.
[18]
Alexandre Marius Dées de Stério, Essai d’histoire de la franc-maçonnerie dans le Grand-Duché de Luxembourg [Essay on the History of Freemasonry in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg] (Luxembourg: V. Buck, 1939).
[19]
Michael Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 72 et sq.; Samuel Hirsch, Die Humanität als Religion in Voträgen gehalten in der Loge zu Luxemburg [The Religion of Humanity: Speeches Made at the Luxembourg Lodge] (Trèves, 1854).
[20]
See in particular John M. Shaftesley, “Jews in English Freemasonry in the 18th and 19th Centuries,” A.Q.C. Transactions of Quatuor Coronati Lodge 92 (1980): 36–37.
[21]
The Israelite, August 3, 1866.
[22]
In Austria, lodges were forced to cease their activities at the end of the eighteenth century. All attempts to rebuild Austrian Masonry in the following century failed, despite a brief resurgence in 1848.
[23]
Artur Eisenbach, The Emancipation of the Jews in Poland, 1780–1870 (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1991), 258.
[24]
Daniel Tollet, Histoire des Juifs en Pologne, du XVIe siècle à nos jours (Paris: PUF, 1992), 221.
[25]
Meyer, Response to Modernity.
[26]
Robert Jan Van Pelt, “De loge als speel-en oefenplaats der joodse emancipatie in Holland” [The Masonic Lodge as a Laboratory for Jewish Emancipation in the Netherlands], Thoth. Tijdschrift voor Vrijmetselaren 2 (1979): 75.
[27]
Van Pelt, “De loge,” 78–86.
[28]
Léon Zeldis, “Aportas Sefarditas a la Francmasonería” [What the Sephardi Contributed to Freemasonry], in Masonería Española y América, ed. José Antonio Ferrer Benimeli (Zaragoza: Centro de Estudios Históricos de La Masonería, 1993), 591–612.
[29]
Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue, The Jews of the Balkans: The Judeo-Spanish Community, 15th to 20th Centuries (Oxford, UK; Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1995), 78–79; See also Aron Rodrigue, De l’instruction à l’émancipation: Les enseignants de l’Alliance israélite universelle et les juifs d’Orient, 1860–1939 [From Teaching to Emancipation: The Teachers of the Alliance israélite universelle and the Jews of the East, 1860–1939] (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1994).
[30]
Éric Saunier, ed., Encyclopédie de la franc-maçonnerie [Encyclopedia of Freemasonry] (Paris: Livre de Poche, 2000), 529.
[31]
Sarah Leibovici, Judios y masones en Tetuan y Tanger (segunda mitad del siglo XIX) [Jews and Freemasons in Tetouan and Tangier (second half of the 19th century)], Caracas, 1984, extract from Escudo no. 53 (1984): 45–49.
[32]
Georges Odo, Les Francs-maçons au Maroc sous la IIIe République [Freemasons in Morocco under the Third Republic] (Paris: Éditions maçonniques de France, 1999).
[33]
Lucien Sabah, “La franc-maçonnerie et l’antisémitisme” [Freemasonry and Anti-Semitism], Revue des études juives CLV, nos. 1–2 (1996): 116.
[34]
Lucien Sabah cites examples of this in La franc-maçonnerie à Oran, 1832–1914 (Paris: Klincksieck, 1990), for example on p. 480.
[35]
Sabah, La franc-maçonnerie à Oran, 494; Vanessa Ragache, Le Grand Orient de France et l’affaire Dreyfus. Mythes et réalités (1894–1906) [The Grand Orient of France the Dreyfus Affair. Myths and Realities] (Paris: Éditions maçonniques de France, 1998), 90.
[36]
Bruno Étienne, “Note sur quelques juifs francs-maçons de Provence” [Paper on Certain Jewish Freemasons in Provence], in Les relations intercommunautaires juives en méditerranée occidentale, XIIIe-XXe siècles, ed. Jean-Louis Miège (Paris: CNRS, 1984), 270–274.
[37]
Iet Erdtsieck, “De loge als werk-en bezinningsplaats der joodse emancipatie in Overijssel, 1818–1940” [The Masonic Lodge as a Place of Reflection and Exercise for the Emancipation of the Jews in the Province of Overijssel, 1818–1940], Thoth. Tijdschrift voor Vrijmetselaren (Den Haag) 45, no. 2 (April 1994): 37–50.
[38]
See in particular Marcel De Schampheleire, “De loge La Persévérance (1832–1850)” [La Persévérance Lodge (1832–1850)], in Annuaire du Grand Orient de Belgique, 5972, 77–119.
[39]
Jean-Philippe Schreiber, Politique et religion: le Consistoire central israélite de Belgique au XIXe siècle [Politics and Religion: The Israelite Central Consistory in Nineteenth-Century Belgium] (Brussels: Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 1995), 286 et sq.
[40]
Erdtsieck, “De loge,” 37–50.
[41]
Katz, Jews and Freemasons, 170; Alexandre Marius Dées de Stério, La Franc-maçonnerie au Luxembourg [Freemasonry in Luxembourg] (Paris: Ed. maçonniques de France, 1998), 71 and 75; Dées de Stério, Essai d’histoire de la franc-maçonnerie [Essay on the History of Freemasonry]; Chanan Lehrmann, La Communauté juive du Luxembourg dans le passé et dans le présent [The Jewish Community of Luxembourg Past and Present] (Esch-sur-Alzette: Imprimerie coopérative luxembourgeoise, 1953), 126.
[42]
Eugene C. Black, The Social Politics of Anglo-Jewry, 1880–1920 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 152.
[43]
Shaftesley, “Jews in English Freemasonry,” 42.
[44]
Raymond Apple, “Australian Jews and Freemasonry”, in Freemasonry Uncovered, eds. K. Henderson and G. Love, The Victorian Lodge of Research 218, no. IX (Victoria, Australia): 20 et sq.

Source: https://www.cairn-int.info/journal-archives-juives1-2010-2-page-30.htm#xd_co_f=MTM4MDY0YjktYzA5OS00YjA5LWIzZWYtOGY5Zjc5MGFjYjVi~