THE MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND
William Ewart Gladstone――_Father_ Ignatius――Gladstone’s ideas
on Judaism――Concessions of the Jewish opposition――Goldsmid’s
and _d’_Avigdor’s nationalistic replies.
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE (1809‒1898), the “Grand Old Man,” statesman,
orator, and scholar, gained the undying gratitude of humanity for his
championship of right against might in countries which were striving
for freedom from the iron grip of tyrannical government. He stood
for liberty, liberty of race and creed. Wherever liberty had to
be championed he was always to the fore as one of its most valiant
defenders. It fell to him to help the cause of the English Jews rather
than that of the Jews of the world. Powerful as were his efforts in
the cause of national righteousness, he did nothing on behalf of the
Jews as a people. But we have it on the authority of _Father_ Ignatius
(1837‒1908) that he was “a friend of the Zionist movement.”
_Father_ Ignatius himself was for many years an enthusiastic supporter
of the movement from the religious standpoint, but without any
conversionist tendency. He defended the national idea of _Israel_ for
many years in numerous addresses, speeches and pamphlets. In one of
his lectures¹ he said:――
¹ “The World’s Debt to the Jews,” 14 Oct., 1896.
“... he was sorry to say that the magnificent truth respecting the
Chosen People has been set aside by certain Jews themselves. There
were some who were unconscious of the miracle of the preservation
of the Jewish race, in spite of the efforts of the whole world
to assimilate them――of the miracle of their distinct existence
unassimilated with the other nations of the earth. Where was there a
literature produced by any nation that had had that moral civilising
and enfranchising power over the hearts and minds and lives of men
that the literature of _Israel_ had exercised?...”
“... It was necessary to incite the national idea and national
ambition in the heart of _Israel_ throughout the world. Why should an
intelligent and powerful race be content to be vagrants on the face of
the earth? Why should they be content to be a homeless race now that
circumstances were pointing to facilities for giving them a home?...”
“... The national movement was a reality and a fact. It is not a
spasmodic movement, but one that was being carried on with great
practical business-like skill and determination....”
“... Let the world give the Jews their home. Palestine was the cradle
of their race, its ancient and proper home, the centre of its great
and glorious history, and it was the outpourings of sorrow for it
that has rendered the literature of the Jews the most precious and
beautiful one extant. The Jews had a right to Palestine, it was God’s
gift to them, and that was a greater right than an Englishman’s right
to England....”
“Stir yourselves up, agitate, work, labour for your cause. I know such
a man as Mr. Gladstone is a friend of this movement....”¹
¹ No. 18 ... Palestina, The _Chovevi Zion_ Quarterly....
――December, 1896. _pp._ 14‒16.
In confirmation of this evidence as to Gladstone’s attitude towards
Jewish national distinctiveness, we find in his writings an eloquent
recognition of the “Hebrew genius.”
81. “But indeed there is no need, in order to a due appreciation
of our debt to the ancient Greeks, that we should either forget or
disparage the function, which was assigned by the Almighty Father to
this most favoured people. Much profit, says St. Paul, had the Jew
in every way. He had the oracles of God: he had the custody of the
promises: he was the steward of the great and fundamental conception
of the unity of God, the sole and absolute condition under which the
Divine idea could be upheld among men at its just elevation. No poetry,
no philosophy, no art of Greece ever embraced, in its most soaring and
widest conceptions, that simple law of love towards God and towards
our neighbour, on which ‘two commandments hang all the law and the
prophets,’ and which supplied the moral basis of the new dispensation.”
82. “There is one history, and that the most touching and most
profound of all, for which we should search in vain through all the
pages of the classics,――I mean the history of the human soul in its
relations with its Maker; the history of its sin, and grief, and death,
and of the way of its recovery to hope and life and to enduring joy.
For the exercises of strength and skill, for the achievements and
for the enchantments of wit, of eloquence, of art, of genius, for
the imperial games of politics and of war let us seek them on the
shores of Greece.... All the wonders of the Greek civilisation heaped
together are less wonderful, than the single Book of Psalms.”
83. “Palestine was weak and despised, always obscure, oftentimes and
long trodden down beneath the feet of imperious masters. On the other
hand, Greece, for a thousand years, ... repelled every invader from
her shores. Fostering her strength in the keen air of freedom, she
defied, and at length overthrew, the mightiest of empires; and when
finally she felt the resistless grasp of the masters of all the world,
then too, at the very moment of her subjugation, she herself subdued
them to her literature, language, arts, and manners. Palestine, in
a word, had no share in the glories of our race; while they blaze on
every page of the history of Greece with an overpowering splendour.
Greece had valour, policy, renown, genius, wisdom, wit; she had all,
in a word, that this world could give her; but the flowers of Paradise,
which blossom at the best but thinly, blossomed in Palestine alone.”¹
¹ Place of Ancient Greece in the Providential Order, 1865,
in Gleanings of Past Years 1860‒79. By the Right Hon.
W. E. Gladstone, M.P., vol. vii. ... London: ... 1879.
_pp._ 79‒80.
Here we have again the closest connection between Zionism and Biblical
ideas.
At the Great Assembly Hall, Mile End, on the 29th May, 1891, on the
occasion when the petition to be presented to the _Sultan_ of Turkey,
composed in _Hebrew_ and English, was communicated to the public
by Mr. S. Montagu, M.P. (afterwards Lord Swaythling), Mr. Elim H.
_d’_Avigdor declared:――
“... His objection to colonising America was that the farther west
they went, the greater the distance they placed between them and
_Zion_. He wished rather that they should go to a country that was
once _Israel’s_ homestead, where brother might work with brother,
where the _Sabbath_ would be the _Sabbath_ of all, and where _Yom
Kippur_ would be the day of abstention from food throughout the
country. He was convinced that many wealthy co-religionists were
willing to surrender cheerfully all their worldly possessions, and
resign all their hopes of worldly aggrandisement, in order to return
with their brethren to the land of their fathers. They express the
hope every _Passover_, ‘Next year in _Jerusalem_.’ Was this utterance
merely a lip service, or did it spring from their hearts?...”
Lieut.-Col. Goldsmid followed, and said:――
“... The seed of _Israel_ was meant for something more than a
commercial people. Let them not only strive to find a home for their
outcast brethren, but let it be their aim and object to resuscitate
the national idea in _Israel_.”¹
¹ No. 4 ... Palestina, The _Chovevi Zion_ Quarterly.... June,
1893 (History of the _Chovevi Zion_ Rise of the Movement),
_pp._ 10‒13.
In an address delivered in Edinburgh he struck the same note:――
“... there was no nation on the earth nearer akin to the Jewish
nation than the Scottish, both in their love of the Bible and in their
sympathy with all that is best in Judaism. The _Chovevi Zion_, he
said, was not a charitable institution, the main object was to foster
the national idea in _Israel_. Had it not been for the national idea
we would have been wiped off the face of the earth long before now.¹
Colonel Goldsmid went on to show how we Jews, who are the descendants
of the faithful minority in Babylon, continue to exist as heirs to the
promises through all ages, while the descendants of the majority, who
turned away from the national idea, no longer exist. Some people said
that members of the _Chovevi Zion_ could not be good citizens, but he
maintained that the true lover of _Zion_, who could be faithful after
two thousand years, would die in defence of the _country_ he lived
in.... When I visited Palestine in 1883, colonies were just beginning
to be formed. People laughed at the idea of Jewish agriculturists.
There were three small colonies, but for want of implements to
work, things were at a standstill, some were actually tearing up the
ground with their fingers. Through the kindness of Baron Edmond _de_
Rothschild, matters are now very different. In future, colonisation,
from the experience which has been gained, would start with enormous
advantages....”²
¹ Christian Englishmen have ever considered the Jews to be
a historical unit, and appreciated their distinctiveness.
Sir Isambard Owen, Vice-Chancellor of Bristol University,
addressing a meeting of the Union of Jewish Literary
Societies at Bristol in 1914, said that the work of the
Union was of interest to him because it was a work which
he himself had spent a good many years of his life in
endeavouring to carry out amongst a nationality far smaller
in numbers and far less known in history than the Jewish
nationality――he meant the nationality of Wales.
² _Ibid._, No. 5.... September ... _p._ 16.
Illustration:
JUDAH TOURO EMMA LAZARUS
MORDECAI MANUEL NOAH _Rabbi Dr._ MORRIS JACOB RAPHALL