The Maskilim of Romania and the Question of Identity: "The Romanian Israelites"

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to answer some questions concerning the identity of the maskilim of Romania, mainly those of the second generation, called "the generation of 1878" or "the generation of the Congress of Berlin". They called themselves "Romanian Israelites," similarly to the maskilim of other countries, just like the "French Israelites," "German Israelites," "Russian Israelites," and so on. What was it that defined their Jewish identity and what their Romanian one? When did this "Romanian Israelite" identity appear? Under what conditions did the new kind of maskil of the "generation of 1878" emerge, and why did these maskilim struggle for emancipation? Did this identification influence the Romanian Jewish community on issues other than emancipation as well? In fact, the "Romanian Israelite" identity appeared with the maskilim of the first generation of Moldavia and Wallachia, in the fifth decade of the 19th century, under the double influence of the Haskalah ideology and the national-cultural Romanian Renaissance. The refusal of the succeeding Romanian governments to naturalize the Jews gave an impetus to the maskilim to fight for emancipation, mainly after the 1878 Berlin Congress. In their polemics related to Romanian citizenship, they used various arguments to demonstrate that the Jewish presence in Romania dated back to ancient times, that they were descendants of Jews who had lived on these lands from the antiquity and the middle ages. They also tried to convince the entire Jewish community to accept the "Romanian Israelite identity" and apply for individual naturalization. They promoted the idea of a double identity, Jewish ("Israelite") from the viewpoint of religion and ethnicity, and Romanian from that of nationality.