Haifa, April 17.—The exceptional interest which, in the minds of many
people, attaches to the Jewish question in Palestine must be my excuse
for now alluding to it. Although, in consequence of the strenuous
opposition of the Turkish government, the tide of emigration into the
country has been checked, the desire of the Russian and Roumanian Jews
to escape from the persecution to which they are subjected in Europe to
the Holy Land has in no degree diminished. On the contrary, colonization
societies continue to be formed and funds collected both in Russia and
Roumania, and the English government has lately remonstrated with the
Porte on the breach of treaty which the prohibition of Jews to settle in
Palestine involves, with what success remains to be seen. The diplomatic
action of the present government of England is by no means of a robust
kind. Curiously enough, the Russian policy on this interesting question
appears to be undergoing a change. The Russian government seems disposed
to espouse in Turkey the cause of the race which it oppresses so
unmercifully at home. M. de Nelidoff, the Russian Minister at
Constantinople, has lately addressed a note to the Porte, in which he
complains that the imperial authorities at Jaffa place every possible
obstacle in the way of Jewish pilgrims from Russia who wish to disembark
there in order to proceed to Jerusalem. The Porte has replied that no
restriction whatever has been placed upon pilgrimages to the Holy City,
and that the Jews, like everybody else, are free to go there. The Porte,
however, draws attention to the imperial decree, recently published,
which strictly prohibits the provincial authorities from allowing Jews,
under any condition whatsoever, to settle in Palestine, and states that
should any Jews, in spite of such express prohibition, seek to establish
themselves there, the law of exclusion would be rigorously enforced. But
all foreigners, of any nationality whatsoever, have a treaty right to
settle in Palestine. The proof of which is that American and German
colonists have established themselves here; that a society has been
formed in Petersburg for promoting colonization in Palestine by Russian
Christian subjects. A Jew, therefore, who is a Russian subject has
manifestly as good a right to buy a piece of land in the country and
settle upon it as a Christian. At this moment the Russian Consul-General
at Beyrout is warmly espousing the cause of a Russian Jew colonist, who
forms one of a colony of twenty-five Russian and Roumanian Jew families
who have bought land and settled not far from the Lake of Tiberias. A
Moslem youth wishing to examine his revolver, which the Jew refused to
allow him to do, the weapon accidentally went off in the struggle, and
mortally wounded the Moslem. The whole Mussulman village was up in arms,
and it was only by the exercise of much tact on the part of the native
Arab Jews that a general massacre was averted. The young Jew was thrown
into prison, although it was recognized as an accident, and has been
confined in a filthy cell for more than four months. His case was warmly
taken up by the Russian authorities, and the plea of the Porte is that
he had already signed a paper declaring himself an Ottoman subject. The
Russian officials reply to this that he has since travelled under his
Russian passport, has been recognized as a Russian subject by the
authorities, and that the Arabic paper he signed was erroneously
represented to him as being only a permission from the local authority
to buy land and build a house. There the matter stands at present, and a
warm correspondence is taking place on the subject. It is significant as
showing the attitude which the Russians are assuming in the matter. The
Russian vice-consul here not long since brought some Russian immigrant
Jews on shore in spite of the remonstrances of the local authorities. It
is evident that if the Russian government adopts the policy of
encouraging Jewish immigration into Palestine, and of protecting the
immigrants when here, they will have obtained an excellent excuse for
political interference in the country. This was always the danger, and
might have been avoided by a more enlightened and far-sighted policy on
the part of the Porte. Had the Turkish government encouraged Jewish
immigration on the condition of every immigrant becoming a Turkish
subject, they would have added to the population by an industrious class
of people, who would speedily have increased its material prosperity,
while the government might have so controlled and regulated the
immigration and the colonization that there would have been nothing to
fear from it. By adopting this policy they would avoid possible
complications with foreign powers, while they would at the same time
gain the sympathy of the most enlightened among them, by affording to a
suffering and persecuted race an asylum where their presence would not
only be harmless, but in the highest degree advantageous to the Turkish
province they had chosen for their home. Of late the prospects of both
the Jewish agricultural colonies which have been established in Galilee
have improved. The assiduity and perseverance with which, in spite of
their inexperience, of the obstacles thrown in their way, and of the
hardships inseparable from settlement in a new country, they have
laboured on the soil, the progress they have made, and their prospects
for the future, all go to show that under favourable auspices colonies
of this nature cannot but succeed; and this belief has taken too firm a
hold on the Jewish mind both in Russia and Roumania for it to be lightly
abandoned. At present the pressure on the part of the Roumanian Jews to
emigrate hither is greater than in Russia, where there has been a lull
in the persecution; but unfortunately the Roumanian government has no
diplomatic agents in these parts, and is indifferent to the fate of the
Jews who leave their country. In former times the British government had
a habit of taking waifs and strays of this description under its
protection. Thus, nearly the whole Jewish community at Tiberias were
originally Russian refugees who emigrated to Palestine thirty years ago,
and applied for British protection, a privilege which Lord Palmerston
promptly granted them, and to this day they travel with British
passports, and pay five shillings a year to renew their registration,
which secures them the protection of the British consul. If any
government were philanthropic enough to adopt a similar plan now, there
would be no difficulty in these poor Roumanians entering the country and
settling here; but it is a course which naturally involves
responsibilities, and opens a door to possible complications, and in
these practical days people's sufferings, unless something is to be made
out of them, do not furnish a sufficient justification to compensate for
the amount of trouble which they might involve. Meantime the
agricultural enterprise of the Jews in Palestine has to contend not
merely with local opposition, but with the unaccountable indifference
with which their efforts in this direction are regarded, with a few
brilliant exceptions, by their Western coreligionists. At present the
seven or eight colonies which exist are all composed of Russian or
Roumanian refugees, but the best material for farmers is to be found
among those Jews who have been bred and born in the country, who are
already Turkish subjects, who speak the language, and are familiar with
all the local conditions, and who are now mendicants, subsisting on that
most pernicious institution, the Haluka, which, while it is a tax upon
the whole Jewish nation outside of Palestine, is a fruitful source of
pillage, contention, and sloth, among its recipients at Jerusalem and
Safed. Out of some seven thousand Jews resident at the latter place,
many are willing to give up all claim to the Haluka, and establish
themselves as agriculturists, if they could be assisted in the first
instance with the necessary capital. With some of these the experiment
has been tried on a small scale, and they have proved more successful
farmers in every way than the foreign immigrants, while, as they are
natives of the country and subjects of the government, the latter does
not interfere with their operations, as in the case of the foreigners.
Under these circumstances, it is a thousand pities that Western Jews do
not come to their assistance. They would confer thereby a twofold
benefit upon their race. They would assist the industry and enterprise
of their coreligionists, while they would undermine that system of
religious mendicancy which is a disgrace to any religion, and they would
deprive thereby their adversaries of the right to say, as they do now,
that the success which attends missionary efforts at proselytism is due
chiefly to the fact that Jews abroad are indifferent to the best
interests of such of their race as have chosen for their home the land
of their ancestors.
“HOLY PLACES” IN GALILEE.
Nazareth, May 1.—Talking the other day to a Franciscan monk on the
prospects of his religion and of the propaganda for the faith which his
order is making in these parts, he informed me that much depended upon
the restoration of “holy places,” with a view to increasing their
importance and popularity, for practically the most effective agent for
the conversion of infidels is hard cash, and the increase of expenditure
means the increase of converts. Of course he did not put it in this
undisguised language, but it is distinctly a great pecuniary advantage
to a native village that it should become a centre of religious
attraction to pilgrims and tourists, and that money should be spent in
building churches and monasteries, and otherwise civilizing remote and
outlying localities where the inhabitants would remain paupers but for
the sanctity of the spot upon which they are fortunate enough to live.
Indeed, the latter are acute enough to understand that they can
frequently make a good thing of it by the exploitation of the rivalries
of opposing creeds, and they cleverly change from one to the other, when
they perceive that it would be to their advantage to do so. Thus, not
long ago, no fewer than a hundred and twenty of the inhabitants of the
village of Kefr Kenna, situated only a few miles from this place, who
belonged to the orthodox Greek Church, became Roman Catholics, and as a
reward for this proof of their spiritual intelligence a Franciscan
monastery is now in process of construction. The small village is
deriving no little profit in consequence, to say nothing of the fact
that it will draw pilgrims to visit the historic locality now that they
will be received there by the holy fathers. For both the Greek and the
Catholic churches have hitherto assumed the truth of a tradition to the
effect that Kefr Kenna was the village in which the miracle took place
of the conversion of water into wine—that it is none other, indeed, than
the Cana of Galilee—and they show you the house where the marriage took
place, and the stone water-pots, to prove it. The fact that it is a
matter of great doubt whether it be Cana of Galilee at all, does not
affect the question where religious faith is concerned, but it seems a
pity that the inhabitants of Kâna el Jelil, commonly called Khurbet
Kâna, should not be put up to the fact that they are possibly the
possessors of the site of the veritable Cana, and may have got a “holy
place” worth thousands of dollars to them if turned to proper account.
I will not trouble my readers with quotations from Scewelf (A.D. 1102),
from Marinus Sanutus in the fourteenth century, from Andrichomius, and
from De Vogue and Dr. Robinson in later times, to prove that this may be
so. The fact that it is admitted by many modern geographers would be
enough for the inhabitants of Khurbet Kâna or for the Greek Church, if
they wished to revenge themselves upon their Catholic rivals. These
latter have made another still more happy hit quite lately at Sefurieh,
the ancient Sepphoris, distant about three miles from Khurbet Kâna, in
reviving there an almost forgotten “holy place.” The merit of its
discovery seems to rest with Saint Helena, who made a pilgrimage to
Palestine in the fourth century, and to whose ardent piety, vivid
imagination, and energetic exertions are due most of these traditional
spots connected with the life of Christ which attract pilgrims to the
Holy Land. On what authority she decided that a certain house in
Sepphoris—called in those days Diocæsarea—had been the abode of Joachim
and Anna, the parents of the Virgin, we are not told, nor how, upon
descending into details, she was further enabled to identify the exact
spot upon which the Virgin received the salutation of the angel; suffice
it to say that the proofs were so convincing to her devout and august
mind that she stamped it with her sanction, and a cathedral was
afterwards erected upon it. In the course of centuries this edifice
crumbled away, the site, curiously enough, became the manure and rubbish
heap of the village, and under the mound thus formed was buried nearly
all that remained of this ancient cathedral. Only the high arch of the
middle aisle and the lower ones of the side aisles still testified to
the modern tourist the ancient proportions of the edifice.
Within the last two years, however, it has occurred to the Franciscans
to make excavations here, with the view of restoring the ancient
cathedral and of renewing its fame as a holy place, for, to all good
Catholics, it must ever be a matter of the deepest interest to see where
the angel saluted the Virgin, and where her parents lived, and to press
their lips to the ancient stones thus hallowed. Moreover, an influx of
pilgrims to this point will have a threefold effect. It will bring money
to the Franciscan treasury; it will probably be the means of converting
the resident local population, who have been fanatic Moslems, but who, I
was assured by my ecclesiastical informant, had benefited so much by the
money already spent, that they were only deterred by fear, and by its
not being quite enough, from declaring their conversion to Christianity
to-morrow; and, thirdly, it would give the French government another
holy place to protect. For it is by the manufacture and protection of
holy places that republican France extends and consolidates her
influence in these parts.
It was with a view of seeing what had been done that I determined to
ride over to Sefurieh and from there take a line of my own through the
woods to the Bay of Acre, instead of returning to the coast by the
regular road across the plain of Esdraelon. Passing Cana and the
Christian village of Reineh, where there is an old well with a
sculptured sarcophagus, we leave to our right a Moslem “holy place,”
called Mashad, where there is a conspicuous wely, or Moslem shrine. This
spot Moslem as well as Christian tradition declares to be the tomb of
Jonah. This tradition is based on the fact that the prophet is said in
the Bible to be of Gath-Hepher—and this site is pretty well identified
with that of the modern Mashad. There can be little doubt that these
Moslem welies are the modern representatives of those “high places”
which the ancient Jews were so constantly punished for erecting. They
seem, indeed, to differ in no very marked degree from the “holy places”
of the present day.
In an hour more we are galloping up the grassy slope on the side of
which are the mud hovels of the modern population, whose conversion is
so imminent, and the summit of which is crowned with the picturesque
ruins of a crusading castle, reared upon foundations which are evidently
of a far anterior date. This building is about fifty feet square, and
from the top, which we reach by a dilapidated stair, we have a
magnificent view of the surrounding country, the Buttauf, formerly the
plain of Zebulon, at our feet—at this time of year a sheet of water—with
the high range of the Jebel Safed behind, and bounding the horizon
westward the sea-line of the Bay of Acre, with the wooded hills, through
which lies my proposed route, intervening. On the side of the hill near
the village is the church in process of restoration, and in the
courtyard which has been recently built in front of it, where the
rubbish mound lately stood, are no less than a dozen syenite columns,
some standing to a height of twelve or fifteen feet, some prostrate,
while their capitals and entablatures are strewn around. A small chapel
has been fitted up in one of the side aisles, where a priest from
Nazareth comes every Sunday to perform mass to the Arab and his wife who
are left in charge during the week, and who at present form the whole
congregation. The priest told me that many more handsome columns were in
a subterranean part of the church which had recently been discovered,
but which I could not visit, on account of débris. He also pointed out
the fact that the pillars which supported the arches were divided into
five sections, so built that they might actually enclose the ancient
walls of the house of Joachim and Anna.
What renders this excavation interesting is, that as Sepphoris was, at
the time of Christ, the principal Roman city and fortress of Galilee,
some relics of a date anterior to that of the church itself may very
likely be discovered. The former importance of the town may be fairly
estimated by the extent of its ancient rock cemetery, which lies about a
mile to the eastward, and which I visited. Here abound caves with loculi
for the dead, sarcophagi, either cut into the living rock, with their
stone lids still upon them, or else detached and strewn like huge
water-troughs over the rocky area, immense cisterns, and rock-cut steps,
and a quarter of a mile distant is a wonderful work of Roman engineering
skill in the shape of an aqueduct many miles long, which supplied the
citadel with water, which it is supposed continues to Sheik Abreik, a
distance of ten miles, and which here tunnels through the hill for a
quarter of a mile. The roof has in places fallen in, and exposes to view
the canal itself, which is about twenty feet deep, with sides
beautifully cemented. This subterranean aqueduct has only been recently
discovered by the Palestine Exploration Fund Survey, and is quite
unknown to tourists, though the whole place is well worth visiting.
Leaving it with regret, for it required a longer examination than I was
able to give it, I struck off past the lovely springs of Sefurieh, where
a copious stream gushes out full-blown from its source, to fertilize a
valley rich with olive and fig gardens—a spot celebrated in crusading
annals as the scene of many skirmishes, in some of which Richard Cœur de
Lion distinguished himself so much that his name is still handed down in
tradition among the natives. Crossing wooded hills, we find that every
step opens new surprises upon us of scenery and of discovery, for these
wild forest recesses have never been thoroughly explored. First we came
upon a group of prostrate columns on which we found inscriptions, so
worn, however, that we were unable to decipher them, but the native who
was with us told us that the clump of old trees which overhung them bore
the name of “Trees of the Bridegroom,” suggestive of Baal-worship and a
holy place of antiquity. Then we examined two hill-tops covered with
cave tombs, and strewn with massive and overgrown remains hitherto
undiscovered. One of these was called Jissy and the other Hamitz. The
largest of the caves contained three chambers with loculi. The entrances
were carved. Not far from them I found another group of columns, and on
them managed to trace the letters IMP. AVR., evidently standing for
Imperator Aurelian, which would make them date from the third century
after Christ. So, winding through rocky, wooded dells, we reached
Bethlehem of Galilee, the modern Beit Lahm, where there were the remains
of an ancient subterranean aqueduct or sarcophagus and the fragment of a
column, and on through more glassy glades, finding our way by instinct,
for we were without a guide; but we had a better chance of stumbling
upon undiscovered ruins this way, and whatever path we followed was sure
in the end to lead us somewhere; moreover, the view guided us from the
hill-tops, and our compass when we were in the valleys. I quite
regretted when at last we suddenly emerged from these old oak
woods—alas! so rapidly being destroyed by the charcoal burners—and found
ourselves on the edge of a hill overlooking the plain of the Kishon,
across which a rapid ride of three hours brought us to our journey's
end, and completed one of the most delightful rides it has ever been my
fortune to make in this country.