Catholic Judaism: The Political Theology of the Nineteenth-Century Russian Jewish Enlightenment

“It is true,” conceded the Russian Minister of Education on 17 March 1841, those “fanatics” who held fast to the Talmud “were not mistaken” in ascribing a missionary impulse to his project of enlightening Russia's Jewish population. The Jews’ anxieties were understandable, Count Sergei Uvarov admitted, “for is not the religion of Christ the purest symbol of grazhdanstvennost’ civil society?” Since conquering Polish-Lithuanian lands in 1795, the Russian government had been unable to establish a consistent policy for integrating its Jewish population into the social and political fabric of the Empire. Most notably, it restricted Jews to living in what was called the Pale of Settlement, a geographic region that includes lands in present day Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Moldova, Belarus, and Lithuania. The Jews of the Empire were highly observant, spoke their own languages, and occupied specific economic roles. Buoyed by the reformist initiatives that had begun to take hold in Jewish populations based in western European countries, Uvarov hoped to begin a similar process among Russia's Jews.