EARL OF BEACONSFIELD
Christianity and Judaism――Disraeli’s character――Jewish
features――_Alroy_――_Tancred_――The defence of Jewish rights
――Oriental policy.
THE most original combination of an Englishman and a Jew was Benjamin
Disraeli (1804‒1887), Earl of Beaconsfield (1876), whom Zionists
may claim as one of the greatest representatives of their movement.
Was Lord Beaconsfield a Christian or a Jew? For Jews the question
is satisfactorily answered by their instinct of sympathy. Lord
Beaconsfield felt towards the members of his race as a Jew feels for
his fellow-Jews. That being the test, Lord Beaconsfield proved himself
a good Jew in that respect. In religious matters, however, Lord
Beaconsfield was a Christian――and a Zionist.
He was purely Jewish by descent, and was the eldest son of Isaac
_D’_Israeli (1766‒1848), the author of _The Curiosities of Literature_
(1791), _The Genius of Judaism_ (1833), _etc._, by his wife Miriam
(Maria), a daughter of Naphtali (_d._ 1808) _de_ Solomon Basevi of
Verona, Italy. He was born in London on Friday, 21 December, 1804,
and was initiated into the _Abrahamic_ covenant on the following
Friday, 26 _Tebet_, 5565, by David Abarbanel Lindo (1772‒1852).
Isaac _D’_Israeli severed his connection finally with the Bevis
Marks synagogue in March, 1817, and on the 31 July following, at the
instigation it is said of Samuel Rogers (1763‒1855), the banker poet,
the future Premier was baptised at the parish church of St. Andrew,
Holborn. In his public conduct and pronouncements he proved undeniably
that an Englishman, by birth a Jew, can be as much an Englishman as
any descendant of Saxon, Norman, or Dane living in these islands, and
can share with as warm a glow the common sentiment of patriotism that
unites Englishmen round their ancient throne and institutions.
Disraeli was a living monument of the greatness of the Jewish race,
of its capacity to produce individuals equal in mental stature to
the loftiest among mankind. What he thought of his ancestral and of
his adopted faith respectively may be gathered from the well-known
words in one of his earlier writings: “Christianity is Judaism for
the multitude,” a sentence which to his brethren in race is equivalent
to saying: “Ye are the salt of the earth.” The perseverance and zeal
which acknowledged no defeat and produced such extraordinary successes
were essentially Jewish. The most superficial acquaintance with Jews
is sufficient to reveal the fact that there is no Jewish trait more
distinctive than this unconquerable determination. It is a heritage
bequeathed to them by their ancestors. With the many different
experiences of a race dispersed in every corner of the globe, without
a home for nearly twenty centuries, hunted from country to country,
carrying their lives in their hands, and bound to be on the alert for
every emergency, it is not strange that the Jews display great
resourcefulness.
The Disraeli family had been expelled by the persecutions of the
Spanish Inquisition, in the fifteenth century, and found an asylum
in Italy. Two centuries and a half later, Benjamin (1730‒1816) [_de_
Isaac] Israeli of Cento, in Ferrara, Italy, grandfather of the Earl
of Beaconsfield, settled in England. Thus the experience stored in the
mind of a typical Jew like Beaconsfield represents more than a single
trait of heredity; it is a combination of such traits. But what was
most Jewish in him was his affection for the Holy Land. This pious
feeling, which he shared with his race, became with him a tremendous
power; it influenced his policy and caused him to consolidate
England’s power in the East. He also constantly supported every
movement towards Jewish emancipation.
As a historic figure he possesses a charm of his own, and romanticism
pervades his whole career. Neither his birth nor the religion of his
ancestors nor his own antecedents prevented him from conquering the
prejudices which the aristocracy is wont to show towards a self-made
man; for the English aristocracy possesses the wonderful quality that
ensures the preservation of its strength――that if once it recognizes
genius, far from opposing or avoiding it, it defends it, attracts
it, and completely absorbs it. And so Disraeli, instead of becoming
a fiery tribune of the masses, developed into an able and successful
leader of the aristocracy. This man, whom his opponents had abused as
a foreigner, so conducted himself as finally to become one of
England’s most famous champions.
It was no common energy and perseverance that Benjamin Disraeli needed
to climb to fame as he did. It was a continuous struggle for him,
from the time when, hooted by the Whig majority in Parliament, he
retorted that the day would come when they would hear him, to the time
when the great Conservative Party chose him as its leader and he was
acclaimed by all his countrymen. Without inheriting a fortune in this
country――where wealth and birth had always been, if not altogether
indispensable, at least a most important qualification for admission
to public life――he was yet able to overcome obstacles that were
then deemed insurmountable and to attain by sheer force of his own
unconquerable will to a position that powers unfathomable seemed
joined to prevent him from gaining. By race a Jew, he was at bottom
a clear-sighted sceptic. With remarkable foresight he had been
able to weigh the advantage which, from the point of view of a
Cabinet Minister, he could gain from the position offered him by the
Conservative party. No one foresaw more clearly than he the future
in store for it. As a Jew he also knew well that it was impossible
to prevent the Liberal evolution from being slowly accomplished in
England. Instead of declaring war upon Liberalism he compromised with
it, and, by means of concessions cleverly granted at the right moment,
he contrived to concede only a portion of what public opinion demanded.
His tendencies, however, were democratic, and in an age in which greed
for material advancement was levelling all things to the lowest plane,
he was able to rescue England from a grovelling servility to blatant
commercialism, uplift her soul and rouse her to a recognition of the
fact that ephemeral interests are not everything to a great people.
As Premier he showed Europe that “England was something more than
a counting-house.” He obtained possession of the Suez Canal by the
purchase of shares――a transaction in which he was assisted by the late
Lord Rothschild (Appendix lviii).
He placed the Imperial Crown of India on his Sovereign’s head. Without
firing a shot, he took possession of Cyprus (Appendix lix), and caused
the might of British arms to be felt in every continent.
His genius, with its many interesting characteristics, was perceived
long before his abilities in international statesmanship and diplomacy
became known. But as a man of letters, no less than as a statesman,
he was first of all a son of his race (Appendix lx) and a Zionist.
His speeches and writings were never those of a renegade anxious to
vilify the faith he had forsaken, or to condemn the ancestry from
which he had sprung. There never was a Jew who wrote in more glowing
terms of the greatness of the Jewish race. No Jew has borne more
fervid testimony to the sublimity of the religion by which the Jewish
people has been sustained through all persecutions. No one could
have used more persuasive arguments, or adopted wiser measures to
remove restrictions from which the Jews were suffering. He had a
deeply-rooted respect and love for his ancient people and for its
ancient land.
To restore the Jews to their rightful place in the esteem of the world,
he wrote and spoke and toiled (Appendix lxi). For this he imperilled
the prospects of his own career. For this he was content to expose
himself to the scoffs and gibes of opponents who almost to his
last hour never forgave him the “crime” of being a Jew. He held the
firm belief that “the Lord still fights for _Israel_.” Unlike those
degenerate sons of _Israel_, who are ever eager to conceal what should
be a source of honour to them, he was never ashamed of his origin:
and when taunted with being of common extraction he would maintain
that his ancestors were already noble when those of the proudest
aristocracy in the world were still barbarians, roaming helplessly
about the woods.
Although he was educated in the bosom of the Christian Church, his
heart never ceased to beat for the greatness and to feel for the
sufferings of the Jewish nation, to which he belonged by the blood in
his veins and the honoured name he bore. Wherever there was a struggle
for the rights of Jews in matters that concerned their honour and
well-being, wherever there was a fight for truth and uprightness,
there we see him stand――a conqueror. While so many authors made it
their business to depict the dark side of the Jewish character or
history, he used his gifted pen to show the worthier traits of the
Jewish character and the influence of the Jews in the world.
As a writer Lord Beaconsfield was essentially an Oriental. Even the
tales in which he describes the clubs and drawing-rooms of London are
like an Arabian Nights’ entertainment transplanted to St. James’. Over
persons and scenes he casts an Oriental magnificence. His Oriental
tales are, to our mind, the most natural that he wrote.
_The wonderful tale of Alroy_ (1833)¹ is an Oriental romance founded
on a _Hebrew_ tradition concerning the Princes of the Captivity
――rulers whom the Jews continued to elect from among the descendants
of the House of _David_ (2854‒2924 _a.m._) even after their dispersion.
Alroy is one of them,² who after a long interregnum possesses himself,
by supernatural assistance, of a part of the sceptre of _Solomon_
(_ob._ 2964), and establishes the _Hebrew_ monarchy on the ruins of
the new Caliphate of Bagdad. His life is short, and his reign much
shorter. The tale is full of enthusiasm for the hopes of _Israel_.
One little passage may be cited: “All was silent: alone the _Hebrew_
prince stood, amid the regal creation of the Macedonian captains.
Empires and dynasties flourish and pass away; the proud metropolis
becomes a solitude, the conquering kingdom even a desert: but _Israel_
still remains, still a descendant of the most ancient kings.”
¹ חטר מגזע ישי או אל־ראי מאת ... בנימין בנימין דיזראעלי ... ונעתק לשפת עברית צחה ע״י
.אברהם אבא ראקאווסקי ... ווראשא ... שנת תרמ״ג לפ״ק ... 1883
² David Alroy, or Alrui (El David: Menahem _ben_ Suleiman
ibn Alruhi), born at Amadia in Kurdistan. He appeared as
a pseudo-messiah about the year 1160.
A biographer of Disraeli remarks on this passage: “This (with its
after-irony of ‘Alroy’s seizure by the Kourdish bandits’) may be
compared with the satire in which Disraeli encountered Mr. [Charles
Newdigate] Newdegate’s [M.P.] (1816‒1887) appeals to ‘prophecy’:...
They have survived the Pharaohs, they have survived the Cæsars, they
have survived the Antonines and Seleucidæ, and I think they will
survive the arguments of the right honourable member....” Mr. Morley
tells that (1838‒1918)¹ Mr. Gladstone said that Disraeli asserted that
only those nations that behaved well to the Jews prospered....²
¹ Afterwards Viscount (1908‒) Morley of Blackburn.
² Disraeli: A Study in Personality and Ideas, by Walter Sichel
... London, 1904, _p._ 223.
Disraeli loved the East, and particularly Palestine. Its
picturesqueness, both in scenery and in history, fascinated him.
“Say what they like,” says Herbert in _Venetia_, “there is a spell in
the shores of the Mediterranean Sea which no others can rival. Never
was such a union of natural loveliness and magical associations!
On these shores have risen all that interests us in the past――Egypt
and Palestine, Greece, Rome and Carthage, Moorish Spain and feudal
Italy. These shores have yielded us our religion, our arts, our
literature and our laws. If all that we have gained from the shores
of the Mediterranean was erased from the memory of man, we should be
savages.”¹
¹ _Ibid._ Note 1.
The great merit of _Tancred_ (1847)¹ lies in the description of Syria,
and of life in the mountain and desert, in which it abounds. Tancred
is a high-born youth dissatisfied with modern society, yearning for
the restoration of true faith, and resolving to visit the land in
which the Creator had conversed with man, as the only spot in which it
is at all likely that enlightenment or inspiration will be vouchsafed
to him. The story of his adventures is told with wonderful spiritual
beauty. The author leads his reader to the desert, the cradle of the
Arabs, from which they spread East and West, and come to be known as
Moors in Spain, as Jews in Palestine. Nothing can be more interesting
than his account of the manners and the men, neither of which are
much changed since the days of the Patriarchs; nothing finer than the
pictures of the rocks and towers of _Jerusalem_, or the grey forests
of _The Lebanon_.
¹ נס לגוים או טאנקרעד מאת בנימן דיזראעלי ... נעתק עברית מאת יהל״ל ... [יחודה לב לוין]
.ווארשא ... שנת תרמ״ג לפ״ק ... 1883
It was quite natural that the East should engage his attention. He
believed in the glory of Great Britain’s imperial mission, and was
interested to the bottom of his heart in the past history and future
welfare of her venerable and still vigorous institutions. He was
anxious to see the influence of Great Britain strong and decisive in
the East. His policy on the Eastern question was constantly ascribed
by his enemies to his “Semitic instincts,” which were supposed to
taint his views of the relations between Turkey and all her Christian
subjects. But they could know little of Beaconsfield who supposed that
his Semitic instincts led him to any partiality. What guided him was
his deep conception of Great Britain’s policy and highest interests,
working in conjunction and in harmony with his feeling for the real
East, for the Jews, the Semites, for Judaism in its idealism and
Oriental beauty. The conditions were not yet ripe for practical
progress in Zionism, but he was throughout an enthusiastic supporter
of the Zionist idea, and he worked for the future.