the Egyptian bondage’. Thereafter a blessing was pronounced on the
unleavened bread, and they sat down to eat. The old Eleazar spoke of
past times, and contrasted them with the present: ‘Man born of woman
lives but a short time, and is full of trouble; he cometh up like a
flower, and is cut down; he fleeth hence like a shadow, and continueth
not. A stranger and a sojourner is he upon earth, and therefore he
should be always ready for his journey as we are, this holy evening.’
The eldest son, Jacob, who had come home in the evening after a journey,
seemed to wish to say something, but did not venture to do so till the
fourth and last cup was drunk.
‘Now, Jacob’, said Eleazar, ‘you want to talk. You come from a journey,
though somewhat late, and have something new to tell us. Hush! I hear
steps in the garden!’
All hurried to the window, for they lived in troublous times; but, as
no one was to be seen outside, they sat down again at the table.
‘Speak, Jacob’, Eleazar said again.
‘I come from Antioch, where the Crusaders are besieged by Kerboga, the
Emir Mosul. Famine has raged among them, and of three hundred thousand
Goyim, only twenty thousand remain.’
‘What had they to do here?’
‘Now, on the roads, they are talking of a new battle which the Goyim
have won, and they believe that the Crusaders will march straight on
Jerusalem.’
‘Well, they won’t come here.’
‘They won’t find the way, unless there are traitors.’
‘The Christians are misguided, and their doctrine is folly. They
believe the Messiah has come, although the world is like a hell, and
men resemble devils! And it ever gets worse....’
Then the door was flung open, and on the threshold appeared a little
man, emaciated as a skeleton, with burning eyes――Peter the Hermit.
He was clothed in rags, carried a cross in his hands, and bore a red
cross-shaped sign on his shoulder.
‘Are you Christians?’ he asked.
‘No’, answered Eleazar, ‘we are of Israel.’
‘Out with you!――down to the lake and be baptized, or you will die the
death!’
Then Eleazar turned to the Hermit, and cried, ‘No! I and my house will
serve the Lord, as we have done this holy evening according to the law
of our fathers. We suffer for our sins, that is true, but you, godless,
cursed man, pride not yourself on your power, for you have not yet
escaped the judgement of Almighty God.’
The Hermit had gone out to his followers. Those within the house closed
the window-shutters and the door.
There was a cry without: ‘Fire the house!’
‘Let us bless God, and die!’ said Eleazar, and none of them hesitated.
Eleazar spoke: ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He will stand
at the latter day upon the earth. And when I am free from my flesh, I
shall see God. Him shall I see and not another, and for that my soul
and my heart cry out.’
The mother had taken the youngest son in her arms, as though she wished
to protect him against the fire which now seized on the wall.
Then Eleazar began the Song of the Three Children[55] in the fire, and
when they came to the words,
‘O thank the Lord, for He is good,
And His mercy endureth for ever’,
their voices were choked, and they ended their days like the Maccabees.
AUGUST STRINDBERG, 1907.
THE EXPULSION FROM SPAIN AND PORTUGAL, 1492‒1497[56]
THE persecution of the Jewish race dates from the very earliest period
in which Christianity obtained the direction of the civil powers; and
the hatred of the Jews was for many centuries a faithful index of the
piety of the Christians.
Insulted, plundered, hated, and despised by all Christian nations,
banished from England by Edward I, and from France by Charles VI,
they found in the Spanish Moors rulers who were probably not without
a special sympathy for a race whose pure monotheism formed a marked
contrast to the scarcely disguised polytheism of the Spanish Catholics;
and Jewish learning and Jewish genius contributed very largely to
that bright but transient civilization which radiated from Toledo
and Cordova, and exercised so salutary an influence upon the belief
of Europe. But when, in an ill-omened hour, the Cross supplanted the
Crescent on the heights of the Alhambra, this solitary refuge was
destroyed, the last gleam of tolerance vanished from Spain, and the
expulsion of the Jews was determined.
This edict was immediately due to the exertions of Torquemada; but
its ultimate cause is to be found in that steadily increasing popular
fanaticism which made it impossible for the two races to exist together.
In 1390, about a hundred years before the conquest of Granada, the
Catholics of Seville being excited by the eloquence of a great preacher,
named Hernando Martinez, had attacked the Jews’ quarter, and murdered
4,000 Jews, Martinez himself presiding over the massacre. About a year
later, and partly through the influence of the same eminent divine,
similar scenes took place at Valentia, Cordova, Burgos, Toledo, and
Barcelona ... and more than once during the fifteenth century. At
last the Moorish war, which had always been regarded as a crusade, was
drawing to a close, the religious fervour of the Spanish rose to the
highest point, and the Inquisition was established as its expression.
Numbers of converted Jews were massacred; others, who had been baptized
during past explosions of popular fury, fled to the Moors, in order to
practise their rites, and at last, after a desperate resistance, were
captured and burnt alive. The clergy exerted all their energies to
produce the expulsion of the entire race, and to effect this object all
the old calumnies were revived, and two or three miracles invented.
It must be acknowledged that history relates very few measures that
produced so vast an amount of calamity. In three short months, all
unconverted Jews were obliged, under pain of death, to abandon the
Spanish soil. Multitudes, falling into the hands of the pirates, who
swarmed around the coast, were plundered of all they possessed and
reduced to slavery; multitudes died of famine or of plague, or were
murdered or tortured with horrible cruelty by the African savages.
About 80,000 took refuge in Portugal, relying on the promise of the
king. Spanish priests lashed the Portuguese into fury, and the king
was persuaded to issue an edict which threw even that of Isabella into
the shade. All the adult Jews were banished from Portugal; but first
of all their children below the age of fourteen were taken from them
to be educated as Christians. Then, indeed, the cup of bitterness was
filled to the brim. The serene fortitude with which the exiled people
had borne so many and such grievous calamities gave way, and was
replaced by the wildest paroxysms of despair. When at last, childless
and broken-hearted, they sought to leave the land, they found that
the ships had been purposely detained, and the allotted time, having
expired, they were reduced to slavery and baptized by force. A great
peal of rejoicing filled the Peninsula, and proclaimed that the triumph
of the Spanish priests was complete.
Certainly the heroism of the defenders of every other creed fades into
insignificance before this martyr people, who for thirteen centuries
confronted all the evils that the fiercest fanaticism could devise,
enduring obloquy and spoliation and the violation of the dearest ties,
and the infliction of the most hideous sufferings, rather than abandon
their faith.
Persecution came to the Jewish nation in its most horrible forms, yet
surrounded by every circumstance of petty annoyance that could destroy
its grandeur, and it continued for centuries their abiding portion. But
above all this the genius of that wonderful people rose supreme. While
those around them were grovelling in the darkness of besotted ignorance;
while juggling miracles and lying relics were the themes on which
almost all Europe was expatiating; while the intellect of Christendom,
enthralled by countless superstitions, had sunk into a deadly torpor,
in which all love of inquiry and all search for truth were abandoned,
the Jews were still pursuing the path of knowledge, amassing learning,
and stimulating progress with the same unflinching constancy that they
manifested in their faith. They were the most skilful physicians, the
ablest financiers, and among the most profound philosophers.
W. E. H. LECKY, 1865.
A PROTEST AGAINST THE AUTO-DA-FÉ
OF SEPTEMBER 20, 1761, LISBON
WHAT was their crime? Only that they were born. They were born
Israelites, they celebrated Pesach; that is the only reason that the
Portuguese burnt them. Would you believe that while the flames were
consuming these innocent victims, the inquisitors and the other savages
were chanting _our_ prayers? These pitiless monsters were invoking
the God of mercy and kindness, the God of pardon, while committing
the most atrocious and barbarous crime, while acting in a way which
demons in their rage would not use against their brother demons.
Your madness goes so far as to say that we are scattered because our
fathers condemned to death him whom you worship. O ye pious tigers,
ye fanatical panthers, who despise your sect so much that you have no
better way of supporting it than by executioners, cannot you see that
it was only the Romans who condemned him? We had not, at that time, the
right to inflict death; we were governed by Quirinus, Varus, Pilate.
No crucifixion was practised among us. Not a trace of that form of
punishment is to be found. Cease, therefore, to punish a whole nation
for an event for which it cannot be responsible. Would it be just to
go and burn the Pope and all the Monsignori at Rome to-day because the
first Romans ravished the Sabines and pillaged the Samnites?
O God, who hast created us all, who desirest not the misfortune of Thy
creatures, God, Father of all, God of mercy, accomplish Thou that there
be no longer on this globe, on this least of all the worlds, either
fanatics or persecutors. Amen.
F. M. A. VOLTAIRE,
_in ‘Sermon du Rabin Akib’_.
THE BIBLE IN ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND[57]
NO greater moral change ever passed over a nation than passed over
England during the years of the reign of Elizabeth. England became the
people of a book, and that book was the Bible. It was read in churches,
and it was read at home, and everywhere its words, as they fell on
ears which custom had not deadened to their force and beauty, kindled
a startling enthusiasm. As a mere literary monument, the English
Version of the Bible remains the noblest example of the English tongue,
while its perpetual use made it from the instant of its appearance the
standard of our language. But far greater than its effect on literature
was the effect of the Bible on the character of the people at large.
Elizabeth might silence or tune the pulpits, but it was impossible
for her to silence or tune the great preachers of justice, and mercy,
and truth, who spoke from the Book which the Lord again opened to the
people. The effect of the Bible in this way was simply amazing. The
whole temper of the nation was changed. A new conception of life and
of man superseded the old. A new moral and religious impulse spread
through every class.
J. R. GREEN, 1874.
FOR THE EMANCIPATION OF THE JEWS
IN the infancy of civilization, when our island was as savage as
New Guinea, when letters and arts were still unknown to Athens, when
scarcely a thatched hut stood on what was afterwards the site of Rome,
this contemned people had their fenced cities and cedar palaces, their
splendid Temple, their fleets of merchant ships, their schools of
sacred learning, their great statesmen and soldiers, their natural
philosophers, their historians, and their poets. What nation ever
contended more manfully against overwhelming odds for its independence
and religion? What nation ever, in its last agonies, gave such signal
proofs of what may be accomplished by a brave despair? And if, in the
course of many centuries, the oppressed descendants of warriors and
sages have degenerated from the qualities of their fathers ... shall
we consider this as a matter of reproach to them? Shall we not rather
consider it as matter of shame and remorse to ourselves? Let us do
justice to them. Let us open to them the door of the House of Commons.
Let us open to them every career in which ability and energy can be
displayed. Till we have done this, let us not presume to say that
there is no genius among the countrymen of Isaiah, no heroism among
the descendants of the Maccabees.
LORD MACAULAY, 1833.
IGNORANCE OF JUDAISM
HE had been roused to the consciousness of knowing hardly anything
about modern Judaism or the inner Jewish history. The Chosen People
have been commonly treated as a people chosen for the sake of somebody
else, and their thinking as something (no matter exactly what) that
ought to have been entirely otherwise; and Deronda, like his neighbours,
had regarded Judaism as a sort of eccentric fossilized form which an
accomplished man might dispense with studying, and leave to specialists.
But there had flashed on him the hitherto neglected reality that
Judaism was something still throbbing in human lives, still making for
them the only conceivable vesture of the world.
GEORGE ELIOT, 1876,
_in ‘Daniel Deronda’_.
* * * * *
MOCK on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau!
Mock on, mock on! ’tis all in vain:
You throw the sand against the wind,
And the wind blows it back again.
And every sand becomes a gem
Reflected in the beams divine;
Blown back, they blind the mocking eye,
But still in Israel’s paths they shine.
WILLIAM BLAKE.
THEY ARE OUR ELDERS
NEXT to the selection that has been in operation for centuries, it is,
in my opinion, the antiquity and the continuity of their civilization
that throws some light upon the Jews as well as upon the place they
occupy in our midst. They were here before us; they are our elders.
Their children were taught to read from the scrolls of the Torah before
our Latin alphabet had reached its final form, long before Cyrillus
and Methodius had given writing to the Slavs, and before the Runic
characters were known to the Germans of the North. As compared with the
Jews, we are young, we are new-comers; in the matter of civilization
they are far ahead of us. It was in vain that we locked them up for
several hundred years behind the walls of the Ghetto. No sooner were
their prison gates unbarred than they easily caught up with us, even
on those paths which we had opened up without their aid.
A. LEROY BEAULIEU, 1893.
THE JEWISH CEMETERY AT NEWPORT[58]
HOW strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves,
Close by the street of this fair seaport town,
Silent beside the never-silent waves,
At rest in all this moving up and down.
How came they here? What burst of Christian hate,
What persecution, merciless and blind,
Drove o’er the sea――that desert desolate――
These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind?
Pride and humiliation hand in hand
Walked with them through the world where’er they went;
Trampled and beaten were they as the sand,
And yet unshaken as the continent.
For in the background figures vague and vast
Of patriarchs and prophets rose sublime,
And all the great traditions of the Past
They saw reflected in the coming time.
And thus forever with reverted look
The mystic volume of the world they read,
Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book,
Till life became a Legend of the Dead.
H. W. LONGFELLOW, 1858.
THE JEW AS A CITIZEN
I AM glad to be able to say that while the Jews of the United States
have remained loyal to their faith and their race traditions, they
are engaged in generous rivalry with their fellow-citizens of other
denominations in advancing the interests of our common country. This
is true, not only of the descendants of the early settlers and those
of American birth, but of a great and constantly increasing proportion
of those who have come to our shores within the last twenty-five
years as refugees reduced to the direst straits of penury and misery.
In a few years, men and women hitherto utterly unaccustomed to any
of the privileges of citizenship have moved mightily upward toward
the standard of loyal, self-respecting American citizenship; of that
citizenship which not merely insists upon its rights, but also eagerly
recognizes its duty to do its full share in the material, social, and
moral advancement of the nation.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT,
_on the 250th anniversary of the
Settlement of the Jews in the
United States, November, 1905_.
IN THE EAST END OF LONDON
SOME years ago, when I was living in Europe, I went for six months to
reside in the very poorest part of the East End of London, when I made
friends with a poor Jewish woman. She took me into the tiny one-roomed
tenement where she and her husband and their children lived on the few
shillings a week they earned by their joint labour. Though it had all
the misery and confinement which extreme poverty means in a great city,
I had yet often a curious feeling that it was a _home_. With however
much difficulty, a few pence would be saved to celebrate, if it were
but in a pitiful little way, the festivals of their people; though it
were by starving themselves, the parents would lay by something for
the education of their children or to procure them some little extra
comfort. And the conclusion was forced on me that, taking the very
poorest class of Jew and comparing him with an exactly analogous class
of non-Jews earning the same wages and living in the same locality, the
life of the Jew was, on the whole, more mentally healthful, more human,
and had in it an element of hope that was often wanting in that of
others. I felt that these people needed but a little space, a little
chance, to develop into some far higher form. The material was there.
Therefore I would welcome the exiled Russian Jew to South Africa, not
merely with pity, but with a feeling of pride that any member of that
great, much-suffering people, to whom the world owes so great a debt,
should find a refuge and a home among us.
OLIVE SCHREINER, 1906.
THE RUSSIAN AGONY[59]
I. THE BEGINNINGS
IN 1563 Ivan the Terrible conquered Polotzk, and for the first time
the Russian Government was confronted by the fact of the existence of
the Jewish nationality. The Czar’s advisers were somewhat perplexed,
and asked him what to do with these newly acquired subjects. Ivan the
Terrible answered unhesitatingly: ‘Baptize them or drown them in the
river’. They were drowned.
P. MILYUKOV, 1916.
II. IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY[60]
FEW facts in the nineteenth century have been so well calculated to
disenchant the believers in perpetual progress with their creed as the
anti-Semite movement, which in a few years has swept like an angry wave
over the greater part of Europe.
The recent movement for proscribing, under pretence of preventing
cruelty to animals, the mode of killing animals for food which is
enjoined in the Jewish ritual, is certainly at least as much due to
dislike to the Jews as to consideration for cattle. It appears to have
arisen among the German anti-Semites, especially in Saxony....
The Russian persecution stands in some degree apart from the other
forms of the anti-Semite movement, both on account of its unparalleled
magnitude and ferocity, and also because it is the direct act of a
Government deliberately, systematically, remorselessly seeking to
reduce to utter misery millions of its own subjects.
An evil chance had placed upon the throne an absolute ruler who
combined with much private virtue and very limited faculties all the
genuine fanaticism of the great persecutors of the past, and who found
a new Torquemada at his side. He reigned over an administration which
is among the most despotic, and probably, without exception, the most
corrupt and the most cruel in Europe.
W. E. H. LECKY, 1896.
III. IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
TO lock people like wild beasts in a cage, to surround them with
disgraceful laws, as in an immense circus, for the sole revolting
purpose to let loose the murderous mob upon them whenever practicable
for St. Petersburg――terrible, terrible!
Anti-Semitism is a mad passion, akin to the lowest perversities of
diseased human nature. It is the will to hate.
The Emperor Hadrian was an honest anti-Semite. One day, the Talmud
records, on his journey in the East, a Jew passed the Imperial train
and saluted the Emperor. He was beside himself with rage. ‘You, a Jew,
dare to greet the Emperor! You shall pay for this with your life.’
In the course of the same day another Jew passed him, and, warned
by example, he did not greet Hadrian. ‘You, a Jew, dare to pass the
Emperor without a greeting!’ he angrily exclaimed. ‘You have forfeited
your life.’ To his astonished courtiers he replied: ‘I hate the Jews.
Whatever they do, I find intolerable. I therefore make use of any
pretext to destroy them.’
So are all anti-Semites.
LEO TOLSTOY, 1904.
IV. THE MORAL
THE study of the history of Europe during the past centuries teaches
us one uniform lesson: _That the nations which have received and in any
way dealt fairly and mercifully with the Jew have prospered; and that
the nations that have tortured and oppressed him have written out their
own curse_.
OLIVE SCHREINER, 1906.
THE BLOOD LIBEL
BRITISH PROTEST, 1912
WE desire to associate ourselves with the protests signed in Russia,
France, and Germany by leading Christian Theologians, Men of Letters,
Scientists, Politicians, and others against the attempt made in the
City of Kieff to revive the hideous charge of Ritual Murder――known as
the ‘Blood Accusation’――against Judaism and the Jewish People.
The question is one of humanity, civilization, and truth. The ‘blood
accusation’ is a relic of the days of witchcraft and ‘black magic’,
a cruel and utterly baseless libel on Judaism, an insult to Western
culture, and a dishonour to the Churches in whose name it has been
falsely formulated by ignorant fanatics. Religious minorities other
than the Jews, such as the early Christians, the Quakers, and Christian
Missionaries in China, have been victimized by it. It has been
denounced by the best men of all ages and creeds. The Popes, the
founders of the Reformation, the Khalif of Islam, statesmen of every
country, together with all the great seats of learning in Europe, have
publicly repudiated it.
_Signed by_:――
_The_ ARCHBISHOPS _of_ CANTERBURY, YORK, ARMAGH; _the_ CARDINAL
ARCHBISHOP _of_ WESTMINSTER, _and the_ HEADS _of all other_
CHRISTIAN DENOMINATIONS.
_The_ BISHOPS _of_ LONDON, OXFORD, WORCESTER, WINCHESTER, BIRMINGHAM,
GLOUCESTER, LIVERPOOL, MANCHESTER, _&c._; _the_ DEANS _of_
WESTMINSTER, CANTERBURY, NORWICH, RIPON, _&c._
_The_ DUKES _of_ NORFOLK _and_ NORTHUMBERLAND, _and the_ EARLS _of_
ROSEBERY, SELBORNE, _and_ CROMER; LORDS MILNER _and_ RAYLEIGH;
A. J. BALFOUR, SIR EDWARD CARSON, GEN. N. G. LYTTELTON, _&c._
FREDERIC HARRISON, A. V. DICEY, SIR WILLIAM OSLER, SIR FRANCIS
DARWIN, SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY; JAMES A. H. MURRAY, NORMAN LOCKYER,
J. G. FRAZER, _&c._
SIR OLIVER LODGE, _the_ PRINCIPALS _of eleven_ OXFORD COLLEGES;
_the_ MASTERS _of seven_ CAMBRIDGE COLLEGES, S. R. DRIVER,
F. C. BURKITT, A. E. COWLEY, W. SANDAY, H. B. SWETE, ESTLIN
CARPENTER, A. E. GARVIE, A. C. HEADLAM, KIRSOPP LAKE, _&c._
JUSTICES EVE, WARRINGTON, _and_ VAUGHAN WILLIAMS.
A. C. DOYLE, THOS. HARDY, ANTHONY HOPE, A. QUILLER-COUCH, G. B. SHAW,
H. G. WELLS, _&c._
_The_ EDITORS _of the_ _Edinburgh_, _Quarterly_, _Fortnightly_,
_Hibbert_, _Quest_, _Spectator_, _Nation_, _Daily Telegraph_,
_Manchester Guardian_, _Daily Chronicle_, _Daily News_, _Pall
Mall Gazette_, _&c., &c._
JEWISH NATIONALISM
WHEN it is rational to say, ‘I know not my father or my mother, let
my children be aliens to me that no prayer of mine may touch them’,
then it will be rational for the Jew to say, ‘I will not cherish the
prophetic consciousness of our nationality――let the Hebrew cease to
be, and let all his memorials be antiquarian trifles, dead as the wall
paintings of a conjectured race’.
The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory.
Let us help to will our own better future and the better future of the
world――not renounce our higher gift and say, ‘Let us be as if we were
not among the populations’; but choose our full heritage, claim the
brotherhood of our nation, and carry into it a new brotherhood with the
nations of the Gentiles. The vision is there; it will be fulfilled.
GEORGE ELIOT, 1876,
_in ‘Daniel Deronda’_.
* * * * *
No British Jew would be less British because he looked upon the cradle
of his race with pride, and at the religious centre of his faith with
happiness and reverence.
SIR MARK SYKES, 1918.