The Jews are justly called a peculiar people. During the past three
thousand years they have lived apart from their fellow-men, in a state
of voluntary or enforced isolation. The laws of the Pentateuch directed
them to avoid contact with heathens. Christianity in turn shunned
and execrated them. Proud and sensitive by nature, subjected to every
species of humiliation and contempt, they retired upon themselves, and
continued to be what the seer from Aram had described them in the olden
time, "A people that dwells in solitude."* It followed that, in the
progress of time, idiosyncrasies of character were developed, and
habits of thinking and feeling grew up amongst them, which could not but
contribute to alienate them still more from the surrounding world. They
felt that they were not understood. They were too shy to open their
confidence to their oppressors. They remained an enigma. At wide
intervals books appeared purporting to give an account of the Jews and
their sacred customs. But these attempts were, in the main, dictated by
no just or generous motive. Their authors, narrow bigots or renegades
from Judaism, ransacked the vast literature of the Hebrew people for
such scattered fragments as might be used to their discredit, and
exhibited these as samples of Jewish manners and Jewish religion.
The image thus presented, it is needless to say, was extremely
untrustworthy. And yet the writings of these partial judges have
remained almost the only sources from which even many modern writers are
accustomed to draw their information. The historian is yet to come who
will dispel the dense mists of prejudice that have gathered about Jewish
history, and reveal the inward life of this wonderful people, whose
perennial freshness has been preserved through so many centuries of
the most severe trials and persecution. In one respect, indeed, let us
hasten to add, the popular judgment concerning the Jews has never been
deceived.
* Numbers xxiii. 9.
The intense conservatism in religion for which they have become
proverbial is fully confirmed by facts. There exists no other race of
men that has approved its fidelity to religious conviction for an equal
period, under equal difficulties, and amid equal temptations. Antiochus,
Titus, Firuz, Reccared, Edward I. of England, Philip Augustus of France,
Ferdinand of Spain, exhausted the resources of tyranny in vain to shake
their constancy. Their power of resistance rose with the occasion that
called it forth; and their fervid loyalty to the faith transmitted to
them by the fathers never appeared to greater, advantage than when it
cost them their peace, their happiness, and their life to maintain
it. Since the close of the last century, however, a great change has
apparently come over the Jewish people. Not only have they abandoned
their former attitude of reserve and mingled freely with their
fellow-citizens of whatever creed, not only have they taken a leading
part in the great political revolutions that swept over Europe, but the
passion for change, so characteristic of the age in which we live, has
extended even to their time-honored religion; and a movement aiming at
nothing less than the complete reformation of Judaism has arisen, and
rapidly acquired the largest dimensions. The very fact that such a
movement should exist among such a people is rightly interpreted as a
sign of the times deserving of careful and candid consideration; and
great interest has accordingly been manifested of late on the subject
of Jewish Reform. In a series of articles we shall undertake to give
a brief sketch of the origin and bearings of the movement. But before
addressing ourselves to this task it will be necessary to review a few
of the main causes that have enabled the Jews to perdure in history, and
to consider the motives that impelled them to resist change so long, if
we would properly appreciate the process of transformation that is even
now taking place among them. Among the efficient forces that conduced to
the preservation of the Jewish people we rank highest: