About Jewishness

Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) wrote his critique of Mosaic law and his view of the conflict between "Judaism" as legalistic morality and Jesus' teaching, as he wrote critiques of Church rules in general. As a Christian, he regretted nonbelief and pitied unbelievers, without vicious hostility toward any single people. His theological opposition to a form of religious thought which he identified with Judaism was not translated into crude prejudice against actual Jews. In general, his calm consideration of the strange and the foreign and his willingness to restrict his judgments to the philosophical realm were, early and significant steps toward enlightened toleration.
Erasmus of Rotterdam was the greatest Christian humanist scholar of the Northern European Renaissance, a correspondent of Sir Thomas More and many other learned men of his time, known to his contemporaries and to posterity for subtlety of his thought and the depth of his learning. He was also, according to some modern writers, an anti-Semite. However, when you analyse Erasmus' writings on Jews and Judaism, this accusation cannot be sustained. To ask whether Erasmus was a friend or enemy of the Jews is to ask a modern question of a sixteenth-century man, whose attitude can best be called "asemitism". Erasmus' chief preoccupation was with the future of "the true philosophy of Christ"; he had little interest in the Jewish community of his own time.
Yet, Erasmus is probably one of the main philosophers who paved the path for the coming emancipation of the Jews. And in that emancipation wasn't any room for atheism.

Spinoza was depicted on Dutch 1000 guilder notes from 1972 to 1999

Baruch or Benedict de Spinoza (November 24, 1632 – February 21, 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Jewish origin. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death. Today, he is considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy, laying the groundwork for the 18th century Enlightment and modern biblical criticism.
Spinoza's ancestors were of Sephardic Jewish descent, and were a part of the community of that grew in the city of Amsterdam after the Alhambra Decree in Spain (1492) and the Portuguese Inquisition (1536) had led to forced conversions and expulsions from the Iberian peninsula.
When Spinoza's father was still a child, Spinoza's grandfather, Isaac de Spinoza (who was from Lisbon), took his family to Nantes in France. They were expelled in 1615 and moved to Rotterdam, where Isaac died in 1627. Spinoza's father, Miguel, and his uncle, Manuel, then moved to Amsterdam where they reassumed their Judaism.
Baruch Spinoza was born in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. His mother Ana Débora, Miguel's second wife, died when Baruch was only six years old. Miguel was a successful importer/merchant and Baruch had a traditional Jewish upbringing. However, his critical, curious nature would soon come into conflict with the Jewish community.
Though Spinoza was active in the Dutch Jewish community and extremely well-versed in Jewish texts, his controversial ideas eventually, on 27 July 1656, led community leaders to issue a cherem (excommunication) against him, effectively dismissing him from Jewish society at age 23. Likewise, all of Spinoza's works were listed on the (List of Prohibited Books) by the Roman Catholic Church.
Spinoza was able to publish his atheist ideas, because the Dutch port cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam were cities of free thought and shelter from the crushing hand of ecclesiastical authority.

Others weren't that lucky.
In Judaism, service to the Jewish community wasn't an option or a privilege, but an obligation. Further more, a person who was thrown out of the Synagogue needed to be a practicing Christian to be accepted as a scientist, a lawyer, a teacher, or a butcher (to name a few), which meant they had to be converted to a Christian faith. Leaving the Jewish faith wasn't enough; one had to embrace Christianity.
It has to be said that for many simple shopkeepers or tradesmen baptism became a question of life and death, as Jewish communities over time dispersed and there weren't enough Jewish clients to keep the business going. Certainly in smaller towns in the country it was common practice, or even decency, to buy your groceries from people who were part of your church community, and indeed not from other shopkeepers, even though their products might have been cheaper. In many parts of the Netherlands this used to be normal procedure until the arrival of supermarkets, in the 1960s.
One of my uncles used to be a kosher butcher, but needed to close his shop down, because there were too many kosher butchers. Even after he converted to Christianity, it was very difficult for him to get his new "normal" butcher's shop off the ground. Not unless he took in a gentile partner and married a gentile woman, his business became profitable.

On 31 July 1817 Benjamin Disraeli, 12 years old, was baptised into the Anglican Church. This was the culmination of a quarrel between the boy's father, Issac D'Israeli, and the Bevis Marks Synagogue. Although he had tried to reason with the Chamber of Elders, they fined him 40 pounds. D'Israeli withdrew from Judaism completely and had his children baptised. Jews were not legally admitted to British parliament until 1858, and without his baptism Benjamin Disraeli could never have become Prime Minister.

On 26 August 1824, seven years after Disraeli's baptism, a similar event took place in Trier, then Prussia. Karl Heinrich Marx, six years old, was baptised to Lutheranism. Heinrich Marx, his father, was born a Jew but converted to Lutheranism prior to Karl's birth, but his mother, Henrietta Pressburg, was from Holland and still Jewish when Karl was born. She later converted as well.
Marx's grandfather was rabbi in Trier, and so was his uncle. His mother came from a long line of famous rabbis and scholars. Karl's father became a Christian because although he was able to train in law, being a Jew, he was not able to practice it. In due course he managed to rise to be dean of the Trier bar. That wouldn't have been possible if he wouldn't have converted to Christianity.

During the nineteenth century more than 250,000 Jews in central Europe chose to be baptised, and although many of them, like Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), did that for the considerable rewards of such an act, like gaining entrance to European society, a lot of them did it for perhaps less material reasons of emancipation.
For most of them it was a secular act, not a religious one; no longer to escape from persecution, but to become a fully accepted person in society. Theodor Mommsen pointed out that Christianity was not so much a name for a religion as "the only word expressing the character of today's international civilisation in which numerous millions all over the many-nationed globe feel themselves united."
Welcome to the world of the decent people.
In Europe Judaism still was considered an obstacle to a political career and many forms of economic activity, even though legal emancipation was introduced by one country after another. It was a long and complicated process, and not until Rome embraced emancipation in 1870, things would really start to change, and Jewish people like the Rothschilds could make their way in high society.
Further east, however, in countries like Russia and Roumania, the situation for the Jews remained severe.

While emancipation progressed, people could admit to their Jewish ethnicity more easily, and in some circles it even became quite fashionable to have such exotic roots. Benjamin Disraeli, brought up a Christian, visited the Holy Land in 1830-1831 during a grand tour of the Mediterranean, and was fascinated by the renewed acquaintance with his race. He believed that the Jews, by their virtues and their glorious past, were entitled to special esteem, and he devoted his tremendous audacity and imagination to securing it for them.
Sir Moses Montefiore (1784-1885), born in Leghorn (Livorno), Italy, had been one of the twelve "Jew brokers"of the City of London, was a friend of Queen Victoria and as such responsible for her marked Judophilia. He became the president of the Board of Deputies, which represented British Jews, and retired from business in 1824 in order to devote his life to oppressed Jews.
The Rothschilds, descending from Mayer Amschell Rothschild (1744-1812), a money-changer from the Frankfurt ghetto, who also traded in old coins and antiques, could also openly advocate their Jewishness. Many Rothschilds were supporters of the State of Israel, although other members of the family opposed the creation of the state. Lord Victor Rothschild was against granting asylum or even help to Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. However, Baron Edmond James de Rothschild was a patron of the first settlement in at Rishon-LeZion, and bought from Ottoman landlords parts of the land which now makes up present-day Israel. In 1917 Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild was the addressee of the Balfour Declaration, which committed the British government to the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.
James A. de Rothschild financed the Knesset building as a gift to the State of Israel. The building was donated to Israel by Dorothy de Rothschild. Outside the President's Chamber is displayed the letter Mrs Rothschild wrote to Prime Minister Shimon Peres expressing her intention to donate a new building for the Supreme Court.

Heinrich Heine hated being a Jew. Heine finished his studies in 1825 with a doctorate in law and the same year he converted to Lutheranism. He wrote of "the three evil maladies, poverty, pain and Jewishness". He was befriended with the Rothschilds, but he refused to allow himself to be presented publicly as a Jew. He called Baron James de Rothschild "Herr Von Shylock in Paris", and said, "There is only one God - Mammon. And Rothschild is his prophet."
On 17 February 1856, at the age of 58, Heine died in Paris. He was interred in the Cimetière de Montmartre. His last words were: "God will forgive me. It's his job."