resting-place for the tribe of wandering foot and weary heart, where, no
longer weary and wandering, they might cease to be ‘tribal.’ He sought
a place where ‘protection’ should not be given as a sordid bribe, nor
conferred as a fickle favour, but claimed as an inalienable right, and
shared in common with all law-abiding citizens. His thoughts turned for
a while on Sweden, and there was some correspondence to that end with
the young Queen Christina, but this failing, or falling through, his
hopes were almost at once definitely directed towards England. It was a
wise selection and a happy one, and the course of events, and the time
and the temper of the people, seemed all upon his side. The faithless
Stuart king had but lately expiated his hateful, harmful weakness on the
scaffold, and sentiment was far as yet from setting the nimbus of saint
and martyr on that handsome, treacherous head. The echoes of John
Hampden’s brave voice seemed still vibrating in the air, and Englishmen,
but freshly reminded of their rights, were growing keen and eager in the
scenting out of wrongs; quick to discover, and fierce to redress evils
which had long lain rooted and rotting, and unheeded. The pompous
_insouciance_ of the first Stuart king, the frivolous _insouciance_ of
the second, were now being resented in inevitable reaction. The court no
longer led the fashion; the people had come to the front and were
growing grimly, even grotesquely, in earnest. The very fashion of
speaking seems to have changed with the new need for strong, terse
expression. Men greeted each other with old-fashioned Bible greetings;
they named their children after those ‘great ones gone,’ or with even
quainter effect in some simple selected Bible phrase; the very tones of
the Prophets seemed to resound in Whitehall, and Englishmen to have
become, in a wide, unsensational sense, not men only of the sword, or of
the plough, but men of the Book, and that Book the Bible. Liberty of
conscience, equality before the law for all religious denominations, had
been the unconditional demand of that wonderful army of Independents,
and although the Catholics were the immediate cause and object of this
appeal, yet Manasseh, watching events from the calm standpoint of a
keenly interested onlooker, thought he discerned in the listening
attitude of the English Parliament, a favourable omen of the attention
he desired to claim for his clients, since it was not alone for
political, but for religious, rights that he meant to plead.
He did not, however, actually come to England till 1655, when the way
for personal intercession had been already prepared by correspondence
and petition. His _Hope of Israel_ had been forwarded to Cromwell so
early as 1650; petitions praying for the readmission of Jews to England
with full rights of worship, of burial, and of commerce secured to them,
had been laid before the Long and the Rump Parliament, and Manasseh had
now in hand, and approaching completion, a less elaborate and more
impassioned composition than usual, entitled, _Vindiciæ Judæorum_. A
powerful and unexpected advocate of Jewish claims presently came forward
in the person of Edward Nicholas, the clerk to the Council. This
large-minded and enlightened gentleman had the courage to publish an
elaborate appeal for, and defence of, the Jews, ‘the most honourable
people in the world,’ as he styled them, ‘a people chosen by God and
protected by God.’ The pamphlet was headed, _Apology for the Honourable
Nation of the Jews and all the Sons of Israel_, and Nicholas’s arguments
aroused no small amount of attention and discussion. It was even
whispered that Cromwell had had a share in the authorship; but if this
had been so, undoubtedly he who ‘stood bare, not cased in euphemistic
coat of mail,’ but who ‘grappled like a giant, face to face, heart to
heart, with the naked truth of things,’[19] would have unhesitatingly
avowed it. His was not the sort of nature to shirk responsibilities nor
to lack the courage of his opinions. There can be no doubt that, from
first to last, Cromwell was strongly in favour of Jewish claims being
allowed, but just as little doubt is there that there was never any
tinge or taint of ‘secret favouring’ about his sayings or his doings on
the subject. The part, and all things considered the very unpopular
part, he took in the subsequent debates, had, of course, to be accounted
for by minds not quick to understand such simple motive power as
justice, generosity, or sympathy, and both now and later the wildest
accusations were levelled against the Protector. That he was,
unsuspected, himself of Jewish descent, and had designs on the long
vacant Messiahship of his interesting kinsfolk, was not the most
malignant, though it was perhaps among the most absurd, of these tales.
‘The man is without a soul,’ writes Carlyle, ‘that can look into the
great soul of a man, radiant with the splendours of very heaven, and see
nothing there but the shadow of his own mean darkness.’[20] There must
have been, if this view be correct, a good many particularly
materialistic bodies going about at that epoch in English history when
the Protector of England took upon himself the unpopular burden of being
also the Protector of the Jews.
There had been some opposition on the part of the family to overcome,
some tender timid forebodings, which events subsequently justified, to
dispel, before Manasseh was free to set out for England; but in the late
autumn of 1655[21] we find him with two or three companions safely
settled in lodgings in the Strand. An address to the Protector was
personally presented by Manasseh, whilst a more detailed declaration to
the Commonwealth was simultaneously published. Very remarkable are both
these documents. Neither in the personal petition to Cromwell, nor in
the more elaborate argument addressed to the Parliament, is there the
slightest approach to the _ad misericordiam_ style. The whole case for
the Jews is stated with dignity, and pleaded without passion, and
throughout justice rather than favour forms the staple of the demand.
The ‘clemency’ and ‘high-mindedness’ of Cromwell are certainly taken for
granted, but equally is assumed the worthiness of the clients who appeal
to these qualities. Manasseh makes also a strong point of the ‘Profit,’
which the Jews are likely to prove to their hosts, naïvely recognising
the fact that ‘Profit is a most powerful motive which all the world
prefers above all other things’; and ‘therefore dealing with that point
first.’ He dwells on the ‘ability,’ and ‘industry,’ and ‘natural
instinct’ of the Jews for ‘merchandising,’ and for ‘contributing new
inventions,’ which extra aptitude, in a somewhat optimistic spirit, he
moralises, may have been given to them for their ‘protection in their
wanderings,’ since ‘wheresoever they go to dwell, there presently the
traficq begins to flourish.’
Read in the light of some recent literature, one or two of Manasseh’s
arguments might almost be termed prophetic. Far-sighted, however, and
wide-seeing as was our Amsterdam Rabbi, he could certainly not have
foretold that more than two hundred years later his race would be
taunted in the same breath for being a ‘wandering’ and ‘homeless tribe,’
and for remaining a ‘settled’ and ‘parasitic’ people in their adopted
countries; yet are not such ingenious, and ungenerous, and inconsistent
taunts answered by anticipation in the following paragraph?--
‘The love that men ordinarily bear to their own country, and the
desire they have to end their lives where they had their beginning,
is the cause that most strangers, having gotten riches where they
are in a foreign land, are commonly taken in a desire to return to
their native soil, and there peaceably to enjoy their estate; so
that as they were a help to the places where they lived and
negotiated while they remained there, so when they depart from
thence, they carry all away and spoile them of their wealth;
transporting all into their own native country: but with the Jews,
the case is farre different, for where the Jews are once kindly
receaved, they make a firm resolution never to depart from thence,
seeing they have no proper place of their own; and so they are
always with their goods in the cities where they live, a perpetual
benefitt to all payments.’[22]
Manasseh goes on to quote Holy Writ, to show that to ‘seek for the
peace,’ and to ‘pray for the peace of the city whither ye are led
captive,’[23] was from remote times a loyal duty enjoined on Jews; and
so he makes perhaps another point against that thorough-going historian
of our day, who would have disposed of the People and the Book, the Jews
and the Old Testament together, in the course of a magazine article. To
prove that uncompromising loyalty has among the Jews the added force of
a religious obligation, Manasseh mentions the fact that the ruling
dynasty is always prayed for by upstanding congregations in every
Jewish place of worship, and he makes history give its evidence to show
that this is no mere lip loyalty, but that the obligation enjoined has
been over and over again faithfully fulfilled. He quotes numerous
instances in proof of this; beginning from the time, 900 years B.C.,
when the Jerusalem Jews, High Priest at their head, went forth to defy
Alexander, and to own staunch allegiance to discrowned Darius, till
those recent civil wars in Spain, when the Jews of Burgos manfully held
that city against the conqueror, Henry of Trastamare, in defence of
their conquered, but liege lord, Pedro.[24]
Of all the simply silly slanders from which his people had suffered,
such, for instance, as the kneading Passover biscuits with the blood of
Christian children, Manasseh disposes shortly, with brief and distinct
denial; pertinently reminding Englishmen, however, that like absurd
accusations crop up in the early history of the Church, when the ‘very
same ancient scandalls was cast of old upon the innocent Christians.’
With the more serious, because less absolutely untruthful, charge of
‘usury,’ Manasseh deals as boldly, urging even no extenuating plea, but
frankly admitting the practice to be ‘infamous.’ But characteristically,
he proceeds to express an opinion, that ‘inasmuch as no man is bound to
give his goods to another, so is he not bound to let it out but for his
own occasions and profit,’ ‘only,’ and this he adds emphatically--
‘It must be done with moderation, that the usury be not biting or
exorbitant.... The sacred Scripture, which allows usury with him
that is not of the same religion, forbids absolutely the robbing of
all men, whatsoever religion they be of. In our law it is a greater
sinne to rob or defraud a stranger, than if I did it to one of my
owne profession; a Jew is bound to show his charity to all men; he
hath a precept, not to abhorre an Idumean or an Egyptian; and yet
another, that he shall love and protect a stranger that comes to
live in his land. If, notwithstanding, there be some that do
contrary to this, they do it not as Jewes simply, but as wicked
Jewes.’
The Appeal made, as it could scarcely fail to do, a profound
impression--an impression which was helped not a little by the presence
and character of the pleader. And presently the whole question of the
return of the Jews to England was submitted to the nation for its
decision.
The clergy were dead against the measure, and, it is said, ‘raged like
fanatics against the Jews as an accursed nation.’ And then it was that
Cromwell, true to his highest convictions, stood up to speak in their
defence. On the ground of policy, he temperately urged the desirability
of adding thrifty, law-respecting, and enterprising citizens to the
national stock; and on the higher ground of duty, he passionately
pleaded the unpopular cause of religious and social toleration. He
deprecated the principle that, the claims of morality being satisfied,
any men or any body of men, on the score of race, of origin, or of
religion (‘tribal mark’ had not at that date been suggested), should be
excluded from full fellowship with other men. ‘I have never heard a man
speak so splendidly in my life,’ is the recorded opinion of one of the
audience, and it is a matter of intense regret that this famous speech
of Cromwell’s has not been preserved. Its eloquence, however, failed of
effect, so far as its whole and immediate object was concerned. The
gates were no more than shaken on their rusting hinges--not quite yet
were the people free to ‘go through.’
The decision of the Council of State was deferred, and some authorities
even allege that it was presently pronounced against the readmission of
the Jews to England. The known and avowed favour of the Protector
sufficed, nevertheless, to induce the few Jews who had come with, or in
the train of, Manasseh to remain, and others gradually, and by degrees,
and without any especial notice being taken of them, ventured to follow.
The creaking old gates were certainly ajar, and wider and wider they
opened, and fainter and fainter, from friction of unrestrained
intercourse, grew each dull rust and stain of prejudice, till that good
day, within living memories, when the barriers were definitely and
altogether flung down. And on their ruins a new and healthy human growth
sprang quickly up, ‘taking root downwards, and fruit upwards,’ spreading
wide enough in its vigorous luxuriance to cover up all the old bad past.
And by this time it has happily grown impervious to any wanton
unfriendly touch which would thrust its kindly shade aside and once
again lay those ugly ruins bare.
Manasseh, however, like so many of us, had to be content to sow seed
which he was destined never to see ripen. His petitions to the
Commonwealth were presented in 1655, his _Vindiciæ Judæorum_ was
completed and handed in some time in 1656, and in the early winter of
1657, on his journey homewards, he died. His mission had not fulfilled
itself in the complete triumphant way he had hoped, but ‘life fulfils
itself in many ways,’ and one part at any rate, perhaps the most
important part, of the Hebrew prophet’s charge, had been both poetically
and prosaically carried out by this seventeenth century Dutch Jew. He
had ‘lifted up a standard for his people.’
CHARITY IN TALMUDIC TIMES
SOME ANCIENT SOLVINGS OF A MODERN PROBLEM
‘What have we reaped from all the wisdom sown of ages?’ asks Lord Lytton
in one of his earlier poems. A large query, even for so questioning an
age as this, an age which, discarding catechisms, and rejecting the
omniscient Mangnall’s Questions as a classic for its children, yet seems
to be more interrogative than of old, even if a thought less ready in
its responses. Possibly, we are all in too great a hurry nowadays, too
eager in search to be patient to find, for certain it is that the
world’s already large stock of hows and whys seems to get bigger every
day. We catch the echoes in poetry and in prose, in all sorts of tones
and from all sorts of people, and Lord Lytton’s question sounds only
like another of the hopeless Pilate series. His is such a large
interrogation too--all the wisdom sown of all the ages suggests such an
enormous crop! And then as to what ‘we,’ who have neither planted nor
watered, have ‘reaped’ from it! An answer, if it were attempted, might
certainly be found to hinge on the ‘we’ as well as on the ‘wisdom,’ for
whereas untaught instinct may ‘reap’ honey from a rose, trained reason
in gathering the flower may only succeed in running a thorn into the
finger. What has been the general effect of inherited wisdom on the
general world may, however, very well be left for a possible solution to
prize competitors to puzzle over. But to a tiny corner of the tremendous
subject it is just possible that we may find some sort of suggestive
reply; and from seed sown ages since, and garnered as harvest by men
whose place knows them no more, we may likely light on some shadowy
aftermath worth, perhaps, our reaping.
The gospel of duty to one’s neighbour, which, long languishing as a
creed, seems now reviving as a fashion, has always been, amongst that
race which taught ‘love thy neighbour as thyself,’ not only of the very
essence of religion, but an ordinary social form of it. It is ‘law’ in
the ‘family chronicle’ of the race, as Heine calls the Bible; it is
‘law’ and legend both in those curious national archives known as
Talmud. Foremost in the ranks of _livres incompris_ stand those
portentous volumes, the one work of the world which has suffered about
equally at the hands of the commentator and the executioner. Many years
ago Emmanuel Deutsch gave to the uninitiated a glimpse into that
wondrous agglomeration of fantastically followed facts, where
long-winded legend, or close-argued ‘law,’ starts some phrase or word
from Holy Writ as quarry, and pursues it by paths the most devious, the
most digressive imaginable to man. The work of many generations and of
many ‘masters’ in each generation, such a book is singularly susceptible
to an open style of reading and a liberal aptitude of quotation, and it
is no marvel that searchers in its pages, even reasonably honest ones,
should be able to find detached individual utterances to fit into almost
any one of their own preconceived dogmas concerning Talmud. On many
subjects, qualifications, contradictions, differences abound, and
instances of illegal law, of pseudo-science, of doubtful physics, may
each, with a little trouble, be disinterred from the depths of these
twelve huge volumes. But the ethics of the Talmud are, as a whole, of a
high order, and on one point there is such remarkable and entire
agreement, that it is here permissible to speak of what ‘the Talmud
says,’ meaning thereby a general tone and consensus of opinion, and not
the views of this or of that individual master. The subject on which
this unusual harmony prevails is the, in these days, much discussed one
of charity; and to discover something concerning so very ancient a mode
of dealing with it may not prove uninteresting.
The word which in these venerable folios is made to express the thing
is, in itself, significant. In the Hebrew Scriptures, though the
injunctions to charitable acts are many, an exact equivalent to our word
‘charity’ can hardly be said to exist. In only eight instances, and not
even then in its modern sense, does the Septuagint translate צדקה
(_tzedakah_) into its Greek equivalent, ἑλεημοσὑνη, which would become
in English ‘alms,’ or ‘charity.’ The nearest synonyms for ‘charity’ in
the Hebrew Scriptures are צדקה (_tzedakah_), well translated as
‘righteousness’ in the Authorised Version, and חסד (_chesed_), which is
adequately rendered as ‘mercy, kindness, love.’ The Talmud, in its
exhaustive fashion, seems to accentuate the essential difference between
these two words. _Tzedakah_ is, to some extent, a class distinction; the
rights of the poor make occasion for the righteousness of the rich, and
the duties of _tzedakah_ find liberal and elaborate expression in a
strict and minute system of tithes and almsgiving.[25] The injunctions
of the Pentateuch concerning the poor are worked out by the Talmud into
the fullest detail of direction. The Levitical law, ‘When ye reap the
harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy
field’ (Levit. xiv. 9), gives occasion of itself to a considerable
quantity of literature. At length, it is enacted how, if brothers divide
a field between them, each has to give a ‘corner,’ and how, if a man
sell his field in several lots, each purchaser of each separate lot has
to leave unreaped his own proportionate ‘corner’ of the harvesting. And
not only to leave unreaped, but how, in cases where the ‘corner’ was of
a sort hard for the poor to gather, hanging high, as dates, or needing
light handling, as grapes, it became the duty of the owner to undertake
the ‘reaping’ thereof, and, himself, to make the rightful division; thus
guarding against injury to quickly perishable fruits from too eager
hands, or danger of a more serious sort to life or limbs, where ladders
had to be used by hungry and impatient folks. The exactest rules, too,
are formulated as to what constitutes a ‘field’ and what a ‘corner,’ as
to what produce is liable to the tax and in what measure. Very curious
it is to read long and gravely reasoned arguments as to why mushrooms
should be held exempt from the law of the corner, whilst onions must be
subject to it, or the weighty _pros_ and _cons_ over what may be fairly
considered a ‘fallen grape,’ or a ‘sheaf left through forgetfulness.’
Yet the principle underlying the whole is too clear for prolixity to
raise a smile, and the evident anxiety that no smallest loophole shall
be left for evading the obligations of property compels respect.
Little room for doubt on any disputed point of partition do these
exhaustive, and, occasionally, it must be owned, exhausting, masters
leave us, yet, when all is said, they are careful to add, ‘Whatever is
doubtful concerning the gifts of the poor belongeth to the poor.’ The
actual money value of this system of alms, the actual weight of ancient
ephah or omer, in modern lbs. and ozs. would convey little meaning.
Values fluctuate and measures vary, but ‘a tithe of thy increase,’ ‘a
corner of thy field,’ gives a tolerably safe index to the scale on which
_tzedakah_ was to be practised. Three times a day the poor might glean,
and to the question which some lover of system, old style or new, might
propound, ‘Why three times? Why not once, and get it over?’ an answer is
vouchsafed. ‘_Because there may be poor who are suckling children, and
thus stand in need of food in the early morning; there may be young
children who cannot be got ready early in the morning, nor come to the
field till it be mid-day; there may be aged folk who cannot come till
the time of evening prayer._’ Still, though plenty of sentiment in this
code, there is no trace of sentimentality; rather a tendency for each
back to bear its own burden, whether it be in the matter of give or
take. Rights are respected all round, and significant in this sense is
the rule that if a vineyard be sold by Gentile to Jew it must give up
its ‘small bunches’ of grapes to the poor; while if the transaction be
the other way, the Gentile purchaser is altogether exempt, and if Jew
and Gentile be partners, that part of the crop belonging to the Jew
alone is taxed. And equally clear is it that the poor, though cared for
and protected, are not to be petted. At this very three-times-a-day
gleaning, if one should keep a corner of his ‘corner’ to himself, hiding
his harvesting and defrauding his neighbour, justice is prompt: ‘_Let
him be forced to depart_,’ it is written, ‘_and what he may have
received let it be taken out of his hands._’ Neither is any preference
permitted to poverty of the plausible or of the picturesque sort: ‘_He
who refuseth to one and giveth to another, that man is a defrauder of
the poor_,’ it is gravely said.
In general charity, there are, it is true, certain rules of precedence
to be observed; kindred, for example, have, in all cases, the first
claim, and a child supporting his parents, or even a parent supporting
adult children, to the end that these may be ‘versed in the law, and
have good manners,’ is set high among followers of _tzedakah_. Then,
‘_The poor who are neighbours are to be regarded before all others; the
poor of one’s own family before the poor of one’s own city, and the poor
of one’s own city before the poor of another’s city._’ And this version
of ‘charity begins at home’ is worked out in another place into quite a
detailed table, so to speak, of professional precedence in the ranks of
recognised recipients. And, curiously enough, first among all the
distinctions to be observed comes this: ‘_If a man and woman solicit
relief, the woman shall be first attended to and then the man._’ An
explanation, perhaps a justification, of this mild forestalment of
women’s rights, is given in the further dictum that ‘Man is accustomed
to wander, and that woman is not,’ and ‘Her feelings of modesty being
more acute,’ it is fit that she should be ‘always fed and clothed before
the man.’ And if, in this ancient system, there be a recognised scale of
rights for receiving, so, equally, is there a graduated order of merit
in giving. Eight in number are these so-called ‘Degrees in Alms Deeds,’
the curious list gravely setting forth as ‘highest,’ and this, it would
seem, rather on the lines of ‘considering the poor’ than of mere giving,
that _tzedakah_ which ‘helpeth ... who is cast down,’ by means of gift
or loan, or timely procuring of employment, and ranging through ‘next’
and ‘next,’ till it announces, as eighth and least, the ‘any one who
giveth after much molestation.’ High in the list, too, are placed those
‘silent givers’ who ‘let not poor children of upright parents know from
whom they receive support,’ and even the man who ‘giveth less than his
means allow’ is lifted one degree above the lowest if he ‘give with a
kind countenance.’