subject of these lines. Nor could I think of giving here, even in outline,
the history of the oldest Jewish community in Europe. This has been
already admirably done by Dr. A. Berliner, who has made the history of the
Jews of Rome the subject of his studies for nearly a quarter of a century.
I intend only to reproduce here, in a stray fashion, some of those
impressions and reflections which, I am certain, must occur to every
Jewish traveller in Italy.
Now I do not think for a moment that we Jews should have a point of view
of our own for looking at things and men in this paradise of Europe. It
would be as silly to have a Jewish Baedeker as to think of orthodox
mathematics or an ecclesiastical logic or a racial morality—though
unfortunately there exist such things. But on the other hand, if we have
not, like the fox in the fable, left our heart at home, let us not do
violence to our feelings by passing over everything Jewish, over sights
which might remind us of our history, with a certain indifference which
would be affected on our part. We are not all little Goethes, nor even
little Ruskins, and our artistic enjoyment is hardly so intense as to shut
our hearts against impressions which force themselves upon us either by
the way of remembrance of the past, or even as a living contrast in the
present.
It so happened that my first visit to the Vatican was on a Friday. After
doing my work in the Vatican Library, which is open till noon, I went into
the adjoining Church of St. Peter.
One should be, like the angel of death in the legend, full of eyes,
properly to see all the wonders of art and marvels of architecture at
which human genius and piety laboured busily through centuries, in
adorning the grandest of sacred buildings in the world. But there is
Baedeker or Murray serving at least as a pair of good spectacles to the
layman, and it was by their aid that I made my round in St. Peter. But lo,
whilst you are observing the celebrated Pietà by Michael Angelo, and,
according to the instruction of your guides, admiring both the grief of
the Mother and the death of the Son, you notice in its vicinity a little
column, surrounded by rails to which the pilgrims approach with a certain
awe; for “Tradition affirms it to have been brought from Jerusalem.”
Naturally, one is instantly reminded of the report, given by the famous
traveller of Tudela, of the curiosities of Rome, which among other things
records, “That there are also to be seen in St. Giovanni in Porta Latina
(probably meant for Lateran) the two brazen pillars, constructed by King
Solomon of blessed memory, whose name, Solomon, the son of David, is
engraved upon each; of which he was also told that every year about the
9th of Ab (the anniversary of the destruction of Jerusalem), these pillars
sweat so much that water runs down from them.” So far Benjamin of Tudela
in the twelfth century. In our days pillars weep no longer, and even of
men it is considered a special sign of good breeding to behave pillar‐
like; but a sigh is still permissible at the sight of this temple‐column,
which in its captivity symbolises, not less than the Pietà, the grief of a
whole people. Of course, not possessing on the spot either the _Itinerary_
or even Urlick, one is unable to establish the connection between these
two traditions and their claim to authenticity. Perhaps one may even
comfort oneself on the same ground on which the famous curé tried to
appease his flock who were sobbing bitterly at his telling them the
Passion story. He exclaimed: “My children, do not weep so much; it
happened long ago, and even perhaps is not quite true.”
However, the Vatican is the last place in the world to exercise your
critical faculties; you are so deeply absorbed in seeing, that you have no
time to think. So on I went, from aisle to aisle, from niche to niche,
from chapel to chapel, looking, staring, and admiring, till of a sudden my
eyes were struck by a large statue, on which the words, “Thou shalt have
no other God before me,” are engraved. There I stood before a question of
exegesis, where one is permitted to use his right senses without any
regard to the æsthetic side. Yet not all the manifold expositions of the
Decalogue, nor all the talk about the subjective‐objective, the absolute
and the real, with which metaphysicians have tried to confuse the notion
of the Unity of God, will reconcile one to the meaning which Mediæval Art
has impressed upon the Ten Commandments. The truth has to be sought
elsewhere, and thus my thoughts were turned to the synagogue, and thither
I went.
The day was already drawing to its close, and, by a marvellous
coincidence, I arrived at the synagogue just as the congregation was
intoning the words: “The Lord is one, and His name is one to His renown
and glory.” Here was sound, simple exegesis, though sadly lacking in the
illustrative matter in which the Vatican is so rich. But what need was
there of any real or artificial “aid to the believer,” in the presence of
such a living faith, as enabled this little community to maintain its
protesting position in the teeth of the mistress of the world! And this
even at a time, when it only required a hint from the successors of the
old Roman Emperors to make the whole world renounce its right of thinking
and judging, and, were we to believe Herr Janssen, even to feel perfectly
happy in this torpor.
But, by the way, are our own times much better? As I write these lines
(October 1893) I hear that a Bill has been brought into the German Diet,
asking that the Talmud should be submitted to a Commission (which _en
passant_, has been sitting in unbroken session in that country since the
days of Pfefferkorn in the fifteenth century) with the purpose of
examining its contents, while in the Vatican the very pupils of Loyola are
offering every convenience and comfort to the student who should care to
devote his time to Rabbinic literature. Does not the work of a great
number of our poets, historians, theologians, and so‐called seers in this
blessed century of ours, in many respects prove but a strained effort to
destroy the few humanitarian principles which were established a few
generations ago, as well as to deify every brutal warrior who was
successful in his day? Again, is the national idea so much sublimer, so
much grander, than that of a universal religion, that we would willingly
permit the former to employ the means which have been denied to the latter
as inhuman and barbarous? Every age has its own idolatry, and the eternal
wandering Jew will always be the chosen victim of the Moloch in fashion.
Let us, however, return to the synagogue, which withstood many a cruelty,
both ancient and modern. The place where the synagogue stands is near the
Ghetto, now called Piazza di Scuola. It is, besides a few other communal
houses, the only building left there,—all those narrow, dirty, and
typhoid‐breeding streets which formed the old Ghetto having been
demolished by a sage and humane government, which by this action wiped out
the last stain from its history. There, on this vast blank is the
synagogue, a comparatively small, insignificant building, laden with heavy
age and looking down on her children whom she has been nursing, consoling,
and protecting for centuries, but who, now grown old, have forsaken her
and scattered to all the ends of the city. Of all her former acquaintances
there appears to be left only father Tiber, who would seem to be murmuring
to her many an old tale of the times before she was called into existence.
And if he listened to the special prayers recited within her walls by the
deputies of the Jewish communities, when preparing themselves to go to the
court of the Pope, the Tiber heard many a sigh and cry, wrung out from the
heart of a Jewish captive who, preferring death to slavery even under the
masters of the world, found his last repose in its waters. But
insignificant as this synagogue appears, she proved the spiritual bulwark
against all the attacks of the time, and you admire her brave resistance
all the more when you look at that multitude of churches and cloisters in
the closest vicinity of the Ghetto, impressing you as so many
intrenchments, all directing their missiles and weapons against this
humble, defenceless building, threatening it with death and destruction.
One of these churches, probably founded by some Jewish convert, who gained
in it both salvation and a good living, bears on its gates in Hebrew
letters the inscription: “I have spread out my hands all the day unto a
rebellious people, which walketh in the way that was not good, after their
own thoughts. A people that provoketh me to anger continually to my face”
(Isaiah lxv. 2, 3). Menace is followed by persuasion, the cited verses
being accompanied by the Latin words: “Indulgentia plenaria quotodiana
perpetua pro vivis et defunctis.” Theologians who like to quarrel most
about things they can know least, have for ages discussed the question,
whether prayers for the dead are of any use; here the matter is decided by
a simple advertisement. It is not to be denied that one would enjoy the
fortunes accumulated by one’s late sinner of an uncle all the better for
being sure that a few pennyworths of prayer enable the legatee to make
one’s benefactor in Hades comfortable and happy.
The thought is very consoling indeed, and it is not to be wondered at that
the Roman synagogue could not entirely withstand its temptations, and
introduced into the offering‐blessing after one is called up to the Torah,
the words: “To the advancing of the soul of the departed.” Of course much
of this tendency may be attributed to the Ford Jabbok,(266) which was and
is still very popular in that country; but the fact that the author of
this Jewish “Book of the Dead” was an Italian (from Modena), shows clearly
that there was some Catholic influence at work, from which even the
fellow‐countrymen of Azariah de Rossi and Judah Messer Leon could not
entirely emancipate themselves.
I ought to have spoken of Roman synagogues, since the building in the
Ghetto to which I have been constantly alluding comprises four prayer‐
houses devoted to Spanish and Italian rites. It says much for Roman
Judaism, that they did not consider ritual differences of such importance
as to prevent them from forming one community for all charitable and
congregational purposes. In Verona and in Modena some congregations even
retained the German rite, which their ancestors who immigrated from the
Rhine provinces brought with them, whilst they accepted the Spanish
pronunciation. I wish that the Anglo‐Jewish community could see their way
to imitate their example. Not that I think for a moment that the Spanish
pronunciation is more correct than the German. Each system has its own
mistakes and corruptions; and it is more than probable that the prophet
Isaiah, or even the author of Ecclesiastes, would be as little able to
follow the prayers in Bevis Marks as in Duke’s Place. But since the non‐
Jewish scientific world has, though only by pure accident, accepted the
Spanish way of reading the Hebrew, I should like to see this trifling
difference of _Ba_ruch over _Bu_ruch at last disappear, by pronouncing the
camets‐vowel _a_ instead of _o_, and accepting similar little changes,
which are of no real importance to us.
The inside of these synagogues is even more simple than their outside. I
was told that the synagogue which was burned down last winter, and which
also formed a part of this building, could boast of many fine decorations
and carvings, etc., but I could observe nothing of the kind in the
synagogues I had occasion to frequent. Nor is there much of natural
decorum in them, and they reconcile one perfectly to the worst of the
Small Synagogues elsewhere. I venture to think that in this respect, too,
we have to recognise Catholic influence. It was, I think, one of the
leaders in the Oxford Movement who expressed his delight at seeing in
Italy a woman poorly‐dressed coming into the church, who, after putting
down the basket from her back, kneels before one of the many altars and
says her prayers. A good deal of this familiarity in the place of worship
may also be noticed in the Roman synagogues, where I have seen a woman
come into the partition for men, notwithstanding their having a separate
gallery, without bonnet or hat on her head, and with an infant in her
arms, and listen there to the prayers, till she walked home with her
husband. The other people were also very restless, coming and going often,
whilst, as soon as the reading of the Law was over, the greater part of
the worshippers left the synagogue. It was not a very delightful sight. A
minus of decorum does not always mean a plus of devotion; just as little
as a maximum of respectability and stiffness are to be taken as signs of
true piety.
It is not uninteresting to notice that the Roman synagogue, in spite of
its old traditions, did not entirely shut itself against modern reforms.
Among them there is that of “calling up the people to the Torah” by the
simple formula, “Let the Priest” (or “the Levite”) “step forth,”(267) and
so on, not mentioning either names or titles, which I should like to
recommend most strongly to our congregations. I hope that no man will
suspect me of such heresy as that of questioning the wisdom of the
Synagogue Regulations. But I am inclined to think that the business of
conferring the degrees of _Rabbi_, “Associate” or “Master,” does not
exactly fall within the sphere of activity of the Wardens. The matter
could only be decided by a proper Board of examination. As the Council is
not provided with such a Board, nor is every aspirant to this honour
prepared to undergo the examination required, the wisest course would be
to give up titles altogether, calling up all people alike in the way
indicated.
The robes the ministers wear (somewhat similar to those of the Greek
clergy), are probably also an innovation of modern date,—the old orthodox
Rabbis looking at any special vestment for the Preacher or Reader with the
same feeling of disgust which the old Puritans entertained for surplice or
mitre. But the principle of “The Beauty of Holiness” proved too strong for
resistance, and it was only a pardonable vanity when the reformers applied
it to their own persons; “Vanity of vanities,” saith the preacher, so
often, that he gets rather to like it. This vanity is greatly redeemed by
the fact that the preacher does not grudge his uniform to his humbler
brother, the beadle, who is in most cases to be distinguished from the
officiating ministry only by the brass‐plate on his breast, on which the
word “Servant” is engraved. Considering the great confusion arising from
the meaningless “Reverend” and the universal white neck‐tie, such a label,
indicating the proper office of the bearer, might, perhaps, prove as
useful among the English Jews as it is among the Jews of Rome.
It was with a pupil of the Rabbinical College, in company with his
friends, that I took my first walk through ancient Rome. I felt attracted
to him by his striking face of that peculiar fine Jewish type, which is
more common among the Jews in the East than among us. And when he was
reading the lesson from the Prophets in the synagogue, where I made his
acquaintance, he reminded me of that Jewish boy with bright eyes, black
curls, and features strikingly beautiful walking as a captive from
Jerusalem through the streets of Rome some seventeen centuries ago, whose
proficiency in the words of Isaiah caused his redemption. It would be an
exaggeration to say that my companion’s remarks were very instructive from
an artistic point of view. Being born and bred in Rome, he passed with
utter indifference many objects which we are bidden to admire, whilst at
others he actually shouted out “Image,” or made some other prosaic remark.
But in a country where one is determined to play the heathen for so many
weeks, to worship superannuated deities, to get into raptures at every
reminiscence of superseded and vanishing religions, and to be delighted at
the sights of “greasy saints and martyrs hairy,” there can be no great
harm in being called back to one’s true nature.
The feelings crowding upon one, when entering that part of the ancient
city which probably was in the mind of the Rabbis when they spoke of
“Guilty Rome,” are of a conflicting nature. Every stone and every brick
there saw the humiliation of Israel, in every theatre and every circus the
Jew served as a comic figure, and was held up to ridicule, whilst there
was, perhaps, hardly a single lane or gate through which those who
resented the yoke of the “anti‐Semites of Antiquity” did not pass, in
order to “be butchered to make a Roman holiday.” What concerns a Jew most
in this perished world of ruins, and at the same time causes him the
deepest grief, is the triumphal arch of Titus, “commemorating the defeat
of the Jews, and dedicated to him by his successor, Domitian.” Enough has
been said and written about it both by antiquarians and theologians, the
former admiring the workmanship of the reliefs, the latter perceiving in
it a proof of the fulfilment of the well‐known passages in the New
Testament about the destruction of the Temple, which came to pass in spite
of the efforts made by Titus to save it. Those who have read Bernay’s
essay on the “Chronik des Sulpicius Severus” know that the behaviour of
“the delight of the human species” on that occasion is rather open to
doubt, and it is more probable that, instead of trying to rescue it, he
commanded that it should be set on fire. Josephus, who witnessed the shame
of his compatriots and co‐religionists, has left us a full account of the
triumphal procession. Only a flunkey like Josephus could maintain that
calm indifference with which he describes the events of the “bitter day,”
the perusal of which makes one’s blood boil. His description fairly agrees
with the famous relief on the arch, showing that part of the procession in
which the table with the shewbread, the candlestick with the seven lamps,
and the golden trumpets figure as the chief objects. The only thing which
we miss is the “Law of the Jews,” which, according to Josephus, was
carried in the triumph as “the last of all the spoils.” Was it only an
oversight of the artist, or had he no place for it, or is it Josephus who
committed the error, mistaking some other object for the Scroll of the
Law? I dearly hope that this last was the case, and that Heine was under
the impulse of a true and real and poetic inspiration when he wrote
(speaking of the Holy Scripture to which he owed his conversion): “The
Jews, who appreciate the value of precious things, knew right well what
they did when, at the burning of the second temple they left to their fate
the golden and silver implements of sacrifice, the candlesticks and lamps,
even the breastplate of the High Priest adorned with great jewels, but
saved the Bible. This was the real treasure of the temple, and, thanks be
to God! it was not left a prey to the flames, nor to the fury of Titus
Vespasian, the wretch, who, as the Rabbi tells us, met with so dreadful a
death.”
However, there were others who brought the glad tidings of the Old
Testament to Rome long before there existed a New one. And this is, on the
other side, what makes Rome a sort of Terra Sancta even to the Jew. It is
true that we have not to look for the footprints of the prophets, for whom
even tradition never claimed “the gift of missionary‐travelling.” But
might not the ground there have received a sort of consecration by the
fact that it was traversed by the ambassadors of Judas Maccabæus (about
161 B.C.) “to make a league of amity and confederacy” with the Roman
Senate? Of the embassy of Simon the Maccabee (about 140 B.C.) there is
actual historical evidence that they began to propagate in Rome the Jewish
religion. Some seventy or eighty years later the Jews had already their
own quarter in Rome, with their own synagogues, which they were in the
habit of visiting, “most especially on the sacred Sabbath days, when they
publicly cultivate their national philosophy.” That many of the oldest
teachers of Israel, the Tannaim, went to Rome as deputies, and that one of
them (R. Mathia ben Chares) founded a school there early in the second
century, is also an authenticated fact. One would like to know what they
taught, and in what way they expounded their _national philosophy_. Most
of all one would like to know what were the spiritual means they employed
in their proselytising work, in which they were, according to the
testimony of history, so successful. Did they preach in the streets? Or
did they hold public controversies? Or did they even send out Epistles
which, in form at least, served as a model to apostles of another creed?
How many a problem would be solved; how many a miracle would disappear;
how many a book would become superfluous, if we could obtain certainty
about these points! The Talmud tells us little, almost nothing, about
these important things, whilst we get from the Roman writers only sneers
and raillery. To these respectable Romans the Jews were only a mob of
unlettered atheists. Indeed, to a good orthodox heathen, a religion
without images and statues, with a God without a pedigree and without a
theogony, was an impossible thing. Those poor metaphysicians!
However, why dwell so long on a past world? A famous Rabbi once exclaimed:
“If a man would ask thee, ‘Where is thy God?’ answer him: ‘In the great
city of Rome.’ ” The underlying idea was the mystical notion that wherever
Israel had to migrate, they were accompanied by the Divine presence. And
Rome was, in the times of the Rabbis, the point to which the streams of
Jewish migration from the Holy Land chiefly converged. But now, instead of
to Rome, might we not point to London and New York as centres of Jewish
migrations?
INDEX
This Index contains the most important names of persons, titles of books,
technical terms and Hebrew words occurring in the text. In the notes to
the text, the Hebrew words are for the most part given also in Hebrew
characters.
Abarbanel, Isaac, 173, 174
Abaye, 311
_Ab Beth Din_, 84
Abba Mari b. Moses, 165, 179
Abba Tachnah, the Chassid, 221
Abraham, Baalshem’s father‐in‐law, 7
Abraham, son of Elijah Wilna, 88
Abraham of Bedres, 262
Abraham Abulaphia, 262
Abraham Ibn Daud, 162
Abraham Ibn Ezra, 50, 52, 64, 71, 210, 314
Abraham b. Shem—Tob Bibago, 172, 173
Abtalyon, 186
Abuha, 311
Acha, 310
_Acher_, 292
_Adam, Primal_, 239
_Agadah_, pl. _Agadoth_, 64, 105, 183, 197
_Agadic_, 110, 156, 157, 193, 262, 279
_Ages of Man_, 295
Akabyah b. Mahalaleel, 305
Akiba, 70, 84, 130, 188, 190, 194, 220, 227, 228, 234
_Almemor_, 302
Ammi, 214, 217, 226, 231
_Amora_, pl. _Amoraim_, 17, 84, 195
Amram Gaon, 293
Anna of Kaidon, wife of Elijah Wilna, 82
Anselm, St., of Canterbury, 79
Antigonos of Socho, 229
Anti‐Maimonists, 133
Aristotle, 79, 167
Aryeh Leb, son of Elijah Wilna, 88
_Ascension of Elijah_, 75
Asher b. Jechiel, 210
Assideans, 64
_Ayil Meshulash_, 81
Azariah de Rossi, 66, 71, 105, 333
_Aziluth_, 117
Azulai, 277
_Baalshem_, Israel, 3‐12, 14‐35, 73
Bachrach, Ch. J., 325
_Bachur_, pl. _Bachurim_, 95, 97
Bachya, 131
_Baraitha_, 271
_Baruch Sheamar_, 311
Bashazi, 161
_Bath‐Kol_, 190
Beer of Mizriez, 11, 37
Beer, Peter, 66
Ben Azzai, 130, 216, 319
Benjamin of Tudela, 329
Ben‐Jacob, 259
Ben Sira, 297
Ben Zoma, 130
_Bereshith_, 127
_Berith Milah_, 288, 292, 293
Berliner, A., 327
Bernays, Isaak, 337
_Beth Din_, 191‐193
_Beth Hammidrash_, 7, 16, 84, 139
_Beth Talmud_, 210
_Biccurim_, 58
Bloch, Samson, 51
Bodek, A., 51
_Book of Brightness_ (_see_ Zohar)
_Book of the Pious_, 295, 322
_Book of Victory_, 167
_Book of Weight_, 133
Boswell, 142, 197
Buckle, 96
_Burbot_, 138
Buzagli, the Cabbalist, 310
Cabbalah, Cabbalists, 99, 128, 129, 133, 210, 283, 315
_Cabod_, 120, 121
Caraites, 48, 160, 161, 207, 208
Casaubon, Isaac, 259
_Chagigah_, 77
_Chakhamim_, 57
_Chambers_, the, 208
Chanina b. Dossa, 217
_Chanukah_, 138
_Chapters of R. Eliezer the Great_, 68, 69, 316
Chasdai Ibn Crescas, 167‐173, 180
_Chassidim_, Chassid, Chassidic, Chassidism, 1‐4, 11, 12, 14‐16, 21, 22,
25‐27, 30, 33, 35‐41, 43‐45, 53, 73, 90, 298