In surveying the history of the Jewish people we find a strange blending
of nationalism and cosmopolitism illustrated in their actions and
beliefs. They proudly styled themselves the elect people of God, they
looked down with a certain contempt upon the Gentile nations, yet they
conceived themselves chosen, not on their own account, but for the
world's sake, in order to spread the knowledge of the true God among
men. They repudiated heathenism, and regarded Trinitarianism as an
aberration. In contradistinction to these their mission was to protect
the purity of the monotheistic religion until in the millennial age all
nations would gather about their "holy Mount." They considered their
own continued existence as a people foreordained in the Divine scheme,*
because they believed themselves divinely commissioned to bring about
the eternal happiness of the human race. The centripetal and centrifugal
forces of character were thus evenly balanced, and this circumstance
contributed not a little to enliven their courage in the face of
long-continued adversity. When the independence of Greece was lost, the
Greeks ceased to exist as a nation. But the loss of the Temple and
the fatherland gave barely more than a passing shock to the national
consciousness of the Jews. Easily they acclimatized themselves in
every quarter of the globe. The fact of their dispersion was cited
by Christianity as a sign of their rejection by God. They themselves
regarded it as a part of their mission to be scattered as seed over
the whole earth. That they should suffer was necessary, they being the
Messianic people! Their prayers were filled with lamentations and the
recital of their cruel woes. But they invariably ended with words of
promise and confidence in the ultimate fulfillment of Israel's hope.
Thus in the very depths of their degradation they were supported by a
sense of the grandeur of their destinies, and by the proud consciousness
that their sufferings were the price paid for the world's spiritual
redemption.
* "Let it not seem strange to you that we should regain our
former condition, even though only a single one of us were
left, as it is written, 'Fear not, thou worm, Jacob!'"--Juda
HA-Levi, in the book Cusari (twelfth century), iii. ii.
In the earlier half of the Middle Ages the Jews were still permitted to
enjoy a certain measure of liberty. In Spain, France and Germany they
lived on amicable terms with their neighbors, they engaged in trade and
manufacture, and were allowed to possess landed property. In the tenth
and eleventh centuries a great part of the city of Paris was owned by
Jews. But at the time of the Crusades a terrible change in the aspect of
their affairs took place. The principles embodied in the canonical law
had by this time entered into the practice of the European nations.
Fanaticism was rampant. The banks of the Rhine and the Moselle became
the theatre of the most pitiless persecution. Among the Crusaders the
cry was raised, "We go to Palestine to slay the unbelievers; why not
begin with the infidel Jews in our own midst?" Worms, Spires, Mayence,
Strassburg, Basle, Regens-burg, Breslau, witnessed the slaughter of
their Jewish inhabitants. Toward the close of the thirteenth century
one hundred thousand Jews perished at the hands of Rindfleisch, and the
murderous hordes of whom he was the leader. To add fuel to the passions
of the populace the most absurd accusations were brought forward against
them, and their religion was made odious by connecting it with charges
of grave moral obliquity. Jewish physicians being in great request,
especially at the court of kings, it was given out that with fiendish
malice they were wont to procure the death of their Christian patients.*
They were accused of killing Christian children, and using the blood
of Christians in celebrating the Passover festival, and this monstrous
falsehood was repeated until no one doubted its substantial truth.
Let it be remembered that this charge was originally preferred, in a
somewhat different shape, against the Christians themselves. It floated
down, as such rumors will, from age to age, until, its authorship being
forgotten, it was finally used as a convenient handle against the hated
Jews. In this manner the Easter-tide which was to announce the triumph
of a religion of love became to the Jews a season of terror and mortal
agony, and the Easter dawn was often reddened with the flames that rose
from Jewish homes.
* Thus in the case of Charles the Bald, and others.
It is impossible to calculate the number of lives that have been lost
in consequence of this single accusation. It has lived on even into the
present century.* In the fourteenth century the Black Death devastated
the Continent of Europe. Soon the opinion gained ground that the Jews
were responsible for the ravages of the plague. It was claimed that the
Rabbi of Toledo had sent out a venomous mixture concocted of consecrated
wafers and the blood of Christian hearts to the various congregations,
with orders to poison the wells. The Pope himself undertook to plead for
their innocency, but even papal bulls were powerless to stay the popular
madness. In Dekkendorf a church was built in honor of the massacre of
the Jews of that town, and the spot thus consecrated has remained a
favorite resort of pilgrims down to modern times. The preaching friars
of the Franciscan and Dominican orders were particularly active in
fanning the embers of bigotry whenever they threatened to die down. In
England, France and Spain the horrors enacted in Germany were repeated
on a scale of similar magnitude. The tragic fate of the Jews of York,
the fury of the Pastoureaux, the miserable scenes that accompanied the
exodus of the Jews from Spain are familiar facts of history. In Poland,
in the seventeenth century, the uprising of the Cossacks under the
chieftainship of Chmielnicki became once more the signal of destruction.
It is estimated that in ten years (1648-1658) upwards of two hundred
and fifty thousand Jews perished.** Even when the lives of the Jews were
spared, their condition was so extremely wretched that death might often
have seemed the preferable alternative.
* In the year 1840 it was simultaneously renewed in Rhenish
Prussia, on the Isle of Rhodos, and in the city of Damascus.
In that city the most respected members of the Jewish
community were arrested, with the assistance of the French
Consul, Ratti Menton, and underwent cruel torture. The
intense excitement caused throughout Europe at the time is,
doubtless, still fresh in the memory of many who will read
these pages. The utter falsity of the charge was at last
exposed, thanks to the efforts of the Austrian Consul
Merlato and the energetic action of Lord Palmerston.
** Graetz, Gesch. der Juden, X. p. 78.
The theory propounded by the Church and acted out by the temporal rulers
of the Middle Ages is expressed in the words of Innocent III.,
"Quos propria culpa submisit perpetuae servituti, quum Dominum
crucifixerint--pietas Christiana receptet et sus-tineat cohabitationem
illorum."*
By the crucifixion of Jesus the Jews had forfeited for themselves and
their posterity the right to exist in Christian states. They lived on
sufferance merely. In the feudal system there was no room for them. They
were aliens, were regarded as the property of the Emperor, and he was
free to deal with them as suited his convenience. Hence the name _servi
camera_--servants of the imperial chamber--was applied to them. They
could be sold, purchased, given away at pleasure. Charles IV. presented
"the persons and property of his Jews" to the city of Worms. In a
schedule of toll-dues dating from the year 1398 we read: "a horse pays
two shillings, a Jew six shillings, an ox two heller."** They were
compelled to wear a badge of shame upon their garments;*** were confined
to narrow and filthy quarters,---_ghetto, juderia_,--debarred from all
honorable employments. The schools and universities were closed against
them. The guilds shut them out from the various trades. To gain the
means of subsistence nothing remained for them but to engage in the
petty traffic of the peddler or the disreputable business of the
money-lender. They had absolutely no choice in the matter. The laws of
Moses certainly discountenance the lending of money at interest. The
authorities of the Talmud severely condemn the practice of usury, and
refuse to admit the testimony of usurers in courts of law.****
* Cassel, art. Juden, p. 83, in Ersch und Gruber; vide also
p. 85, "ad perpetuam Judaici sceleris ultionem eisdem
Judaeis induxerit perpetuam servitutem."
** Ibid, p. 91
*** The _signum circulate_ was borrowed from Islam. It has
been ingeniously conjectured that the circular form was
selected in contradistinction to the sign of the crescent.
Ibid, p. 75.
**** Mishna Sanhedrin, III. 3.
But all scruples on the part of the Jews had now to be set aside. Gold
they must have, and in abundance. It was the only means of buying their
peace. The taxes levied by the imperial chamber were enormous.* The
cities, the baronial lords, in whose territory they took refuge,
constantly imposed new burdens as the price of toleration. The Jews
have often been held up to contempt for their avarice and rapacity.
The reproach is unjust. It reminds one of the ancient Philistines, who,
having shorn the Hebrew of his strength and blinded him, called him with
jeers from his prison-house to exhibit him to the popular gaze and to
make sport of his infirmity.
Under these circumstances the conservatism of the Jews in matters of
religion can no longer astonish us. Rejected by the world, they lived
in a world of their own. They had inherited from their ancestors an
extended code of ceremonial observances, dietary laws, and minute and
manifold directions for the conduct of life. In these they beheld the
bulwark of their religion, the common bond that united the scattered
members of their race. The Jew of Persia or Palestine could come among
his German brethren, and hear the same prayers expressed in the same
language, and recognize the same customs as were current among his
co-religionists in the East. The passwords of the faith were everywhere
understood. To preserve complete unanimity with respect to
religious usage was a measure dictated by the commanding instinct of
self-preservation. The Jews of all countries were furthermore united by
the common yearnings with which they looked back to the past, and their
common hope of ultimate restoration to the heritage of the promised
land.**
* A general tax paid in recognition of the Emperor's
protection; the Temple tax claimed by the Holy Roman
Emperor in his capacity as the successor of Vespasian; the
so-called _aurum coronarium_, or coronation tax, by virtue
of which every new emperor, upon his accession to the
throne, could confiscate the third part of the property of
the Jews. Besides these, extraordinary levies were
frequent.
** On the eve of the 9th of the fifth month it was customary
at Jerusalem to announce the number of years that had
elapsed since the fall of the Temple. Zunz, Die Ritus, p.
84.
However prolonged their abode in the land of the stranger might be, they
never regarded it otherwise than in the light of a temporary sojourn,
and Palestine remained their true fatherland, "If I forget thee,
Jerusalem, wither my right hand," was sung as plaintively on the banks
of the Danube and the Rhine as it had resounded of old by Babel's
streams. The Jewish people walked through history as in a dream, their
eyes fixed on Zion's vanished glories. Empires fell; wars devastated the
earth; new manners, new modes of life, arose around them. What was all
this toil and turmoil of the nations to them! They were not admitted
to the fellowship of mankind, they preserved their iron stability, they
alone remained changeless. So long as the world maintained its hostile
attitude toward them, there was little likelihood that they would
abandon their time-honored traditions. But toward the close of the
last century the first tokens of political, social, and spiritual
regeneration began to appear among the despondent people of the Hebrews.
The spirit of the Reformation, which had slumbered so long, awoke to
new vitality. The voice of love rebuked the selfishness of creeds;
Philosophy in the person of Kant emphasized the duties of man to man;
Poetry sent its warm breath through the German land, and with its sweet
strains instilled broad, humanitarian doctrine into the hearts of men.
Lessing celebrated the virtues of his friend, Moses Mendelssohn, in
"Nathan the Wise," and in the parable of the rings showed how the
true religion is to be sought and found. The Royal Academy at Berlin
nominated the same Mendelssohn for membership in its body. Jewish
scholars were received with distinction in the Austrian and Prussian
capitals. Eminent statesmen and writers began to exert themselves
to remove the foul blot that had so long stained the conduct of the
Christian states in their dealings with the Jews. In France the
great Revolution was rapidly sweeping away the accumulated wrongs of
centuries. When the emancipation of the Jews came up for discussion
in the Convention, the ablest speakers rose in their behalf. The Abbe
Gregoire exclaimed: "A new century is about to open. May its portals be
wreathed with the palm of humanity!" Mirabeau lent his mighty eloquence
to their cause. "I will not speak of tolerance," he said; "the freedom
of conscience is a right so sacred that even the name of tolerance
involves a species of tyranny."*
*Vide the account of the debates in the official Moniteur.
On the 28th September, 1791, the National Convention decreed
the equality of the Israelites of France with their Christian
fellow-citizens. The waves of the Revolution, however, overflowed
the borders of France, and the agitation they caused was quickly
communicated to all Germany. Wherever the armies of the Republic
penetrated, the gates of the ghettos were thrown open, and in the name
of Fraternity, Liberty and Equality were announced to their inhabitants.
When Napoleonic misrule at last exasperated Germany into resistance, the
seeds which French influence had sown had already taken firm root in the
German soil. On the 11th March, 1812, Frederick William III. issued his
famous edict, removing the main disabilities from which the Jews of his
dominions had suffered, granting them the rights and imposing upon them
the honorable duties of citizenship. They were no longer to be classed
as foreigners. The state claimed them as its children, and exacted of
them the same sacrifices as all its sons were called upon to bring in
the troublous times that soon followed. With what eager alacrity the
Jews responded to the king's call the records of the German wars for
independence amply testify. On the battlefields of Leipzig and Waterloo
they stood side by side with their Christian brethren. Many sons and
fathers of Jewish households yielded their lives in the country's
defence. In the blood of the fallen the new covenant of equal justice
was sealed for all time to come. However prejudice might still dog their
footsteps, however shamefully the government might violate its solemn
pledges to the Jewish soldiers on their return from the wars, the Jews
of Germany had now gained what they could no more lose. They felt that
the land for which they had adventured their all, in whose behalf they
had lost so much, was indeed their fatherland. For the first time, after
many, many centuries, the fugitives had gained a home, a country. They
awoke as from a long sleep. They found the world greatly changed around
them; vast problems engaging the attention of thinkers, science and
philosophy everywhere shedding new light upon the path of mankind. They
were eager to approve themselves worthy and loyal citizens, eager to
join in the general work of progress. They dwelt no more with anxious
preference on the past. The present and the future demanded their
exertions, and the motives that had so long compelled their exclusion
from the fellowship of the Gentiles were gradually disappearing. As
their religion was mainly retrospective in character and exclusive in
tendency, great changes were needed to bring it into harmony with the
altered condition of affairs. These changes were accordingly attempted,
and their history is the history of Jewish Reform.