fornia 
 lal 
 
 V 
 
 ? 
 
 JEW AND 
 GENTILE 
 
 
 (Assays on Jewish 
 
 Jtpologetics and 
 
 Kindred Historical 
 
 Subjects 
 
 GOTTHARD 
 DEUTSCH
 
 JEW and GENTILE 
 
 Essays on Jewish Apologetics and 
 Kindred* Historical Subjects 
 
 BY 
 
 GOTTHARD DEUTSCH 
 
 Professor of Jewish History and Literature, Hebrew Union College 
 
 SCROLLS, VOL. Ill 
 
 I 920 
 
 THE STRATFORD COMPANY, Publishers 
 
 BOSTON
 
 Copyright 1920 
 
 The STRATFORD CO., Publishers 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
 The Alpine Press, Boston, Mass., U. S. A.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The Deficiency of the Sources of Jewish 
 
 History ..... 1 
 
 II. Origin of Christianity . . .10 
 
 III. The Protestant Reformation and Juda- 
 
 ism . . . . . .38 
 
 IV. Why, When and How Shall We Write 
 
 Memoirs? 67 
 
 V. The Humor and Tragedy of "Jew- 
 Taxes" 82 
 
 VI. The Maimonides Prayer Myth . . 93 
 
 VII. Journalese . . . . .96 
 
 VIII. Library Chat 103 
 
 IX. Plowden in Theology . . . .109 
 
 X. Higher and Lower Anti-Semitism . 119 
 
 XI. It Takes Two to Make a "Shidduk" . 127 
 
 XII. The Real Cause of Anti-Semitic Perse- 
 cution ...... 140 
 
 XIII. The Curse of the Crucifixion . 164
 
 PREFACE 
 
 AN author needs no apology for his desire to see 
 essays, scattered in periodicals, published in a 
 more accessible and permanent form. He does not 
 wish to "sow among the thorns." The public, how- 
 ever, requires an explanation, why the author should 
 presuppose on their part a similar interest. The 
 reason for this expectation shall be briefly given. 
 
 The position of the Jewish people is absolutely 
 unique. The Jews are not only found in all lands of 
 civilization and semi-civilization but their position 
 enters conspicuously into all prominent questions of 
 public life. 
 
 The relation between Church and State, one of the 
 most vital problems of humanity, which dominated 
 the politics of caliphs and czars, which impeded the 
 unification of Italy and cemented the North American 
 colonies into a nation of unparalleled strength, has 
 to a greater or lesser extent always been linked with 
 the Jewish question. 
 
 The regeneration of Russia was preceded by an era 
 of pogroms. The French republic achieved the separa- 
 tion of State and Church through the Dreyfus affair. 
 The seething caldrons of eastern Europe, and espe- 
 cially the Balkans, furnish another impressive il- 
 lustration of the same law of history. Poland and 
 Rumania particularly bring it home to us. They have
 
 PREFACE 
 
 to provide a resting place for Ahasuerus before they 
 can expect to bring order into their chaotic household. 
 
 Above all, the Balfour Declaration of Nov. 2, 1917, 
 and its indorsement by the Supreme Council of the 
 Allied Nations at San Remo, April 24, 1920, are an 
 epoch-making event in the history of the question 
 whether the Orient shall conquer the Occident, or 
 whether the latter shall in a peaceful way return to 
 the former the interest on the capital of civiliatzion 
 which in the infancy of mankind, Cadmus, the king 
 of the East, invested in Europe, the land of the west. 
 
 It may be that the mandates over the lands of Abra- 
 ham and Nimrod will be the closing chapter in the 
 struggle for western dominion of which the victory 
 of Charles Martel over the Arabs at Tours (732) and 
 the defeat of the Turks by John Sobieski at the gates 
 of Vienna (1683) are the most important epochs. 
 
 But even if these mandates should prove another 
 crusaders' romance, their connection with the Jewish 
 question will remain a fact, and the Jews will con- 
 tinue to stand forth as a people who in the words of 
 their prophet are either a "burdensome stone for all 
 the peoples" or a "blessing among the nations." 
 
 It therefore does not seem altogether an author's 
 vanity when he expects that the Jewish side of the 
 many questions connected with the relation between 
 "Jew and Gentile" will meet with interest on the 
 part of the large public, an interest which, he hopes, 
 may prove sympathetic. Leopold Zunz (1794-1886), 
 the pioneer of systematic and critical study of Jewish
 
 PREFACE 
 
 History and Literature, misnamed "Science of Juda- 
 ism," called a collection of essays, bearing 011 this 
 topic, "Zur Geschichte und Literatur. " It was his 
 desire to emphasize the principle that the history and 
 literature of the Jews are part of the cultural activi- 
 ties of universal mankind. I believe, as he did, al- 
 though I selected a title which cannot be suspected as 
 camouflage or as over-estimation of my work. 
 
 The first two volumes have appeared under the title 
 "Scrolls" (New York and Cincinnati, 1917), ex- 
 plained from a Talmudic motto which implies the 
 idea that the interest of the large public is more 
 easily enlisted by essays on individual topics, loosely 
 connected, than by ponderous coherent works, in- 
 tended for the information of specialists. Upon the 
 advice of friends who claim that the original title 
 was not easily understood, I relegated it in this third 
 volume to the position of sub-title. I hope that their 
 advice will gain for the book greater popularity, and 
 that I shall have contributed a modest share to the 
 noblest ideal of mankind, preached by Isaiah and 
 Micah, by Rousseau and Lessing, and not less impress- 
 ively by the Jewish apostle to the heathen world, when 
 he said : "let each man, wherein he was called, therein 
 abide with God."
 
 THE DEFICIENCY OF THE SOURCES OF 
 JEWISH HISTORY* 
 
 The difficulties in writing Jewish history are mani- 
 fold. The severest one is that our history extends 
 over so many countries, and lacks, at least up to the 
 eighteenth century, all chronological continuity. 
 Even today, this most important basis of history is 
 missing in such countries as Persia, Morocco, and 
 Turkey, where the annals are filled with an occasional 
 massacre, the sacking of a Jewish quarter, a blood 
 accusation, and the like. 
 
 Another very important defect is the lack of the 
 personal element. The Jews were evidently no hero- 
 worshippers. Still, this does not suffice to explain 
 the entire absence of biographies and autobiographies, 
 down to the seventeenth century, and their dearth, 
 even now. This defect is not accidental. When we 
 see how medieval rabbis, such as Mordecai ben 
 Hillel, of the thirteenth century, and Solomon St. 
 Goar, of the fifteenth, minutely noted down all that 
 they had seen from their teachers, or heard from 
 them, about the religious practices of former rabbis, 
 we must admit that there is bound to be a strong 
 
 'The American Hebrew, Nov. 9, 1906. 
 
 [1]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 reason, other than a lack of hero-worship, for the 
 absence of biographical literature. This is the gen- 
 eral tendency of rabbinic thought, which has created 
 dialecticism. 
 
 Dialecticism, or Pilpul, as it is called in rabbinic 
 terminology, is the method of harmonizing two ad- 
 mittedly contradictory statements. The same method 
 prevails in the theology of all denominations. It is 
 the method of the opponents of biblical criticism, 
 of the Catholic apologists in their defense of Catholi- 
 cism, and of Protestant apologists in their arguments 
 against the liberal school. Rabbinic theology, how- 
 ever, seems to have developed this art to such an 
 extent, that it has become a habit, and has been 
 applied even in cases where, from a religious point of 
 view, it was not necessary at all. It is easily under- 
 stood that a believer in the Mosaic origin of the whole 
 Pentateuch, would not find a contradiction between 
 the Pentateuchal law, which allows the election of a 
 King, and the book of Samuel, supposed to have been 
 written about 400 years after Moses, which treats the 
 desire to elect a King as a rebellion against the will of 
 God. Rabbi Abraham Biberfeld tried his hand on 
 this difficulty, and solved it by saying that Moses 
 intended to defer the election of a King, after the 
 completed conquest of Palestine, because he was 
 afraid, that in a country not divided up into farms 
 of modest size, the election of a King would lead to 
 the formation of large landed estates. The orthodox 
 
 [2]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 Society for the Promotion of the Science of Judaism, 
 in Frankfort, o. M., judged this essay worthy of the 
 honor of publication in its yearbook. To one who is 
 not compelled by dogmatic views to harmonize these 
 two contradictory statements, this attempt at a solu- 
 tion must appear exceedingly weak, nevertheless as 
 some kind of a harmonization was necessary from the 
 orthodox point of view, this might do, for lack of a 
 better one. 
 
 Less cogent, according to our opinion, is the har- 
 monization of two different views of the rabbinical 
 law. If, for instance, one rabbi limits the time for 
 the recital of the Shema to midnight, and the other 
 extends it to daybreak, there would seem to be no 
 apparent reason for harmonization. We might very 
 well say, that the two men had different opinions on a 
 law. The important factor for the understanding 
 of this anxiety for harmonization is the belief that the 
 whole rabbinical law dates back to the time of Moses, 
 and consequently, must not be contradictory in any 
 detail. Therefore, two different authorities, unless 
 one is absolutely wrong, which can not be admitted, 
 must have expressed the same views in words which 
 are only apparently contradictory. This theory of 
 the Mosaic origin of the rabbinical law also pushes the 
 personality of its interpreter into the background. 
 He became a mere messenger. Samson R. Hirsch has 
 most emphatically expressed this theory in his criti- 
 cism of Graetz's work. When Rabbi Johanan thinks 
 
 [3]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 that it was not necessary to sacrifice one's life, in 
 order to escape violation of the law ordered by a 
 tyrant, he was not, as Graetz thinks, influenced by 
 existing conditions. Hirsch insists that Johanan 
 merely gave information on a law, which had been 
 so interpreted from the time of Moses. 
 
 It is manifest that such a view tends to make the 
 personal element disappear from history, and, 
 therefore, as this unrestricted belief in authority 
 grew, scholars would perhaps note carefully how 
 Rabbi So-and-So acted in religious practice, but would 
 pay, otherwise, no attention to his private life. Only 
 in this way can we understand how such a powerful 
 personality as Rashi, worshipped by his contempo- 
 raries and idolized by posterity, was not made the sub- 
 ject of a biography, although, at the time of his death, 
 one of his grandsons was quite old enough to appreci- 
 ate his grandfather's importance. The same reason 
 explains to us the indifference to strictly personal 
 material in historic records. We have very few 
 private letters, diaries, household ledgers and other 
 documents, which might tend to cast a light on a 
 man's individuality. Only occasionally, in the pref- 
 aces of their works, the authors make a few personal 
 remarks touching their life, mostly in the sense of 
 presenting an excuse for their boldness in publishing 
 their works. Jair Hayim Bacharach (1634-1762), 
 points, with pardonable pride, to his father and 
 grandfather, his predecessors in the rabbinate of 
 
 [4]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 Worms, and to his grandmother's grandfather, the 
 famous "High Rabbi Loew," of Prague (1530-1609). 
 He does it in order to prepare the readers for the 
 publication of his own works, in which he wishes to 
 show himself not unworthy of his great ancestors. 
 Zebi Ashkenazi (1658-1718) tells of his terrible ex- 
 periences when the city of Ofen was besieged in 1686, 
 and his wife and child were killed by a bombshell. 
 It is a public expression of gratitude to Providence, 
 which saved his life, and which he thus acknowledges. 
 Jacob Joshua, of Frankfort, o. M., (1680-1756) 
 speaks, in the preface of his work, ' ' Pene Jehoshua, ' ' 
 of the miracle which saved his life, when, in the explo- 
 sion of a powder magazine at Lemberg, in 1703, he was 
 buried under the debris of his house. In order to 
 express his thanks to Providence, he resolved to 
 defend the honor of Rashi against the criticism by the 
 Tosafists. The first real memoirs that I know of, if 
 we do not include the autobiography of Josephus, who 
 lived in the pre-Talmudic age, is the short history of 
 his troubles written by Lipman Heller (1578-1654), 
 when some of his enemies informed against him to 
 the effect that he had blasphemed Jesus and Mary. 
 This was a very dangerous charge at a time when 
 religious fanaticism reigned supreme in Bohemia, and 
 the Jesuits strained every effort to show the necessity 
 of protecting the holy Catholic religion from all 
 attacks. He was brought in chains to Vienna, and 
 saved from prison only with great difficulty. Even 
 
 [5]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 then he felt insecure in the lands of the Emperor, and 
 therefore emigrated to Poland. In writing down his 
 story, he wishes to preserve the memory of his salva- 
 tion for his posterity, who should forever celebrate the 
 day of his liberation from prison. The details were 
 of little consequence to him, and, in his great kind- 
 ness he even suppressed the names of his enemies. 
 This delicacy, however, greatly reduced the historical 
 value of his memoir. 
 
 A very valuable specimen of a real autobiography 
 is preserved to us in the memoirs of Glueckel, of 
 Hameln (1646-1724). She was a woman of uncom- 
 mon intellect, and of more than ordinary education, 
 but her life presented nothing extraordinary. She 
 was born in Hamburg, married at the age of 14, 
 Hayim of Hameln, and, after a short stay in the 
 latter city, went back to her native place, where she 
 remained until she went to Metz, where she married 
 again after a long widowhood, and where she spent 
 the years of her old age. Her interests are, naturally, 
 centered on her petty business affairs, and on the 
 events in her large family. Of the non-Jewish world, 
 she knows nothing worth telling. Even great events 
 in Jewish life, such as the excitement created by the 
 Messianic pretender, Sabbathai Zebi, she touches but 
 slightly. Still, her naive way of describing match- 
 making, and journeys to the fairs of Leipsic, instruc- 
 tion of children, and the like, possess a great value to 
 us, because we learn something of the daily life of the 
 
 [6]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 great masses, which is entirely neglected in literature. 
 A great master of history, considering his age and 
 education, was Jacob Emden (1696-1776), born at 
 Altona, as the son of a prominent rabbinical family, 
 following, later on, his father, to Amsterdam. He 
 married at the age of 18, and lived for a time in the 
 house of his father-in-law, Mordecai Kohen, of 
 Ungarisch-Brod, in Moravia, and afterwards returned 
 to Germany, when he became rabbi of Emden, and, 
 finally settled down again in his birthplace. He saw 
 a great deal of the world, aside from his occasional 
 journeys to such distant places as Lemberg and 
 London. Besides, he was a great Talmudic scholar; 
 in my estimation, the greatest scholar of his age. 
 His horizon was wide, and owing to the prominent 
 part which he took in the religious controversies of his 
 days, his experiences are a valuable source of informa- 
 tion as to the moving forces of the Judaism of his day. 
 Towards the end of his life, he wrote his memoirs, 
 which present a wealth of information about com- 
 munal and private life. He tells us how his father 
 failed to be elected Rabbi of Altona, because he was 
 too independent for the congregational boss, whom he 
 had once rebuked because of the high-handed manner 
 in which he conducted congregational affairs. He 
 tells us how matrimonial schemes occasionally de- 
 cided, in his days, rabbinical elections. Issachar 
 Kohen, of Altona, had a very homely daughter, 
 whom he wanted to marry off, and for whom he found 
 
 [7]
 
 some Schlemihl of a Bachur. In order to obtain for 
 his son-in-law the rabbinical position of Keidani, in 
 Lithuania, he promised to the rabbi of that place, 
 Ezekiel Katzenelbogen, the rabbinate of Altona, 
 and, in order to create a sentiment favorable to this 
 election, Schnorrers and Melamedim were instructed 
 to tell wonderful tales of Rabbi Ezekiel 's learning and 
 piety. With the same naive frankness, he tells the 
 story how he sold his vote, at the election of the suc- 
 cessor to his enemy, Jonathan Eybeschuetz, and how 
 he was cheated, afterwards, of the bribe promised to 
 him. He tells us further that he had trouble in 
 Emden, because he would not allow the son of a con- 
 gregational boss to blow the Shofar on Eosh Hoshana, 
 and because he exposed some frauds, for which a 
 prominent member of the congregation had engaged 
 himself, and who now was ashamed of his credulity, 
 and, therefore, accused the rabbi of intriguing against 
 him. He tells us of the Palestinian Haham, Moses 
 Hagis, who was liberally supported by the German 
 congregation of Altona, but reciprocated merely by 
 expressions of contempt for the ' ' Tudescos. ' ' He tells 
 us of his travels in Austria, and how a Catholic priest 
 who was in the same stage-coach, forced him to give 
 up his better seat for another one, which was less con- 
 venient. Such incidents make his book full of highly 
 interesting information. 
 
 In modern times this literature has become more 
 numerous, and, strange to say, a great deal is due to 
 
 [8]
 
 the Hasidim. While these people in their fanatical 
 mysticism, might be expected to be hostile to all 
 civilizing influences, they have developed a biograph- 
 ical literature, because the important point in their 
 doctrine is that certain chosen individuals are medi- 
 ators between God and man. Their "Zaddik," or 
 "Rebbe," occupies the central position in their 
 religious life, and, therefore, they have preserved all 
 recollections concerning him, even the most insig- 
 nificant private letters. There is a great deal of 
 legend, very often of the silliest kind, in their works, 
 but these are, nevertheless, a laudable presentation 
 of the value of the personal in history. With the 
 entrance of the Jews into modern civilization, bio- 
 graphical literature, naturally, increased. Moses 
 Mendelssohn was already, shortly after his death, the 
 subject of a careful biographical research. Isaac M. 
 Jost, with his fine historical tact, unfortunately 
 marred by his dry, schoolmasterly tone, showed his 
 historic insight by writing his autobiography, which 
 is very important because it presents the history of 
 the transition from the uncouth methods of the Heder 
 to modern education. Still the material is, even now, 
 not as large as it might have been for a clear presenta- 
 tion in all its details of the marvellous transition from 
 Ghetto life into modern civilization.
 
 II 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY* 
 
 This essay originally was a lecture delivered in 
 1895, eleven years before William Benjamin Smith 
 published his "Der Vorchristliche Jesus" and fifteen 
 years before Arthur Drews startled the public, accus- 
 tomed to take Harnack's idealized Jesus as the final 
 verdict of historic science by his ''Die Christus- 
 mythe." 
 
 The author states this fact not with a desire of 
 boasting of originality. Alfred Loisy has proven 
 that Harnack's views are an arbitrary compromise 
 between historic criticism and the longing of a church- 
 man for some definite expression of Christian belief. 
 The fundamental work of David Friedrich Strauss 
 had to be continued. Strauss was largely negative. 
 He showed that the mythological method, applied to 
 the gospel story, led to the conclusion that what we 
 possess of early Christian history is a crystallization 
 of ideals, not an exaggerated account of actual facts, 
 as the rationalistic school had taught. The only 
 point which is entirely new in my presentation of the 
 subject is the explanation of Judas Iscariot as "the 
 
 *A lecture delivered in the B. Y. Temple of Cincinnati, Friday 
 evening, Jan. 5, 1896. American Israelite, Jan. 30, Feb. 6, 1896. 
 
 [10]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 man of falsehood, ' ' an emblem of Israel, pertinaciously 
 clinging to an error. 
 
 An apology is due to Christian readers who and I 
 can not blame them for this will believe that "my 
 eyes are blinded and my heart is hardened" by Jewish 
 prejudice. To them I owe the following explanation. 
 As a Jew I did approach the question of the historic 
 origin of Christianity without dogmatic prejudice. 
 I started from the conviction that the Christ of the 
 dogma, the son of God, ' ' the lamb of God which taketh 
 away the sins of the world" by vicarious atonement 
 through his death, who rose from the tomb on the 
 third day after his death to give evidence of the truth 
 of bodily resurrection and to fulfill what, by the way, 
 is a misrepresentation of Psalm 110, a prophecy that 
 he would sit on the right hand of the father in heaven, 
 is an impossibility. 
 
 Yet he might have been a Jerome Savonarola, a 
 John Huss, a Michael Servet, one of the many victims 
 of ecclesiastical tyranny and religious fanaticism, of 
 whom there were undoubtedly some in ancient Israel 
 also. My study of the problem, however, led me to 
 the belief, that he is a creation of mythical idealiza- 
 tion, symbolizing the ideal Judaism of the second 
 century in the same way in which Ahasuerus is the 
 symbol of Judaism, condemned to live, or "William 
 Tell the symbol of the Swiss struggle for freedom. 
 Twenty-three years of study have only confirmed 
 this conviction, and I therefore give this essay to the 
 
 [11]
 
 public in the form in which it originally was delivered 
 without any except slight, verbal changes. ''And 
 be indeed that I have erred, mine error remaineth 
 with myself." 
 
 The Talmud, (Abodah zarah, 55, a) gives a dialogue 
 between Zeno the founder of the Stoic school and R. 
 Akiba, in which the philosopher is reported to say: 
 Although both of us know that there is nothing 
 essential in Christianity, how is it that so many sick 
 are healed in the Christian churches? Between 
 Zeno and B. Akiba there is an interval of four cen- 
 turies and although for this reason the dialogue 
 can never have taken place, nevertheless there may 
 be some truth underlying this statement, viz, that the 
 leaders of the two spiritual movements of whose flesh 
 and bone Christianity's flesh and bone were formed, 
 were astonished at the marvellous rapid growth 
 of Christianity. The stoic philosophy on one hand 
 taught not to resist evil, and Judaism taught an ideal 
 state of the future. So the puzzle over the remarkable 
 progress of Christianity may well have been the topic 
 of the conversation between some rabbi and some 
 representative of the Stoic philosophy. The reason 
 for the remarkable progress of Christianity is still 
 a problem to this day. In order to understand it, it 
 will be necessary for us to go back to its beginnings, 
 and to study the religion of its founder. But here 
 we meet an insuperable obstacle. The German 
 emperor recently addressing the recruits of his navy 
 
 [12]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 said: A soldier must be a good Christian. If we 
 revert the statement, he is not wrong, for Jesus said : 
 Give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and 
 therefore a good Christian ought to be a soldier. But 
 His Majesty on another occasion shortly before that 
 time, was present when a recruit refused to take the 
 oath, for he was a Christian and Jesus had taught: 
 Swear not at all and resist not evil. Which Christian- 
 ity is the real religion of Jesus ? 
 
 We therefore arrive at the conclusion that Chris- 
 tianity is not a unit, but rather a complex of forces 
 and ideas. When I speak of Christianity in this con- 
 nection, I do not speak of the Christianity of Pope 
 Pius the Ninth, or of Mr. Pobedonoszew compared 
 with that of Roger Williams and General Booth, the 
 diversity of which no one of the parties concerned 
 would deny. I speak of Christianity as it appears in 
 the oldest documents; even then it comprised views 
 of a diametrically opposed character. 
 
 Christianity was as little the work of one man as 
 was any movement in history. No matter how large 
 a portion you assign to George Washington in the 
 foundation of this republic, there were many promi- 
 nent men who aided him, and whatever they have ac- 
 complished, it would not have been possible without 
 the Puritan spirit that induced men to leave their 
 homes in order to establish the kingdom of righteous- 
 ness, that taught Barrow and Greenwood to die on 
 
 [13]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 the scaffold praying for the Queen who had con- 
 demned them to the gallows. 
 
 Nor was the reformed church for which the Puri- 
 tans suffered the work of one man, not the work of 
 Knox, nor the work of Luther and Calvin, however 
 great their merits are. John Huss had with a smile 
 on his lips testified to it on the pyre of Constance, he 
 had based his views on the doctrines which Bohemian 
 scholars had brought over from across the Channel 
 and there Wycliffe had preached these doctrines with 
 impunity because the English people resented the 
 humiliation by the Pope of their king, and were de- 
 termined not to allow their king to be a vassal of the 
 Pope. 
 
 If history therefore has any right at all to investi- 
 gate the origin of Christianity, which it certainly has, 
 if we do not accept the dogma of its supernatural 
 origin, then we know that not one person conceived 
 the idea of a new religion without any impetus from 
 outside, but a number of men in successive ages, af- 
 fected by conditions of political nature and by phil- 
 osophical views then prevalent and potent, contributed 
 to build up what about the middle of the second cen- 
 tury presents itself to us as early Christianity. How 
 much of it belongs to one man as a leading spirit, 
 we can not know, for dogmatic tendencies have been 
 at work to obscure just this point. And this is not 
 an isolated fact in history ; it is quite common. There 
 are up to date two forces at work in the narration of 
 
 [14]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 events of the past, the historical and the mythological ; 
 the former tries to present the facts as they really 
 are, the latter, as they might have been, if they would 
 have been shaped with a knowledge of the events 
 that grew out of them in later times, and therefore 
 later ideas are transferred back to former ages and 
 subjective opinions are made the generally accepted 
 views of olden times. In the sixteenth century Cabbala 
 had taken hold of religious practice, and, while for- 
 merly it was speculative only, it now permeated the 
 daily life of Judaism. The expounders of this doc- 
 trine would never own their shares in this new depar- 
 ture from Jewish traditions ; they referred it back to 
 one Isaac Luria, of whose teachings, we only know that 
 his disciples mutually accused each other of having 
 put their own opinions into the mouth of the dead 
 teacher. The modern expounders of theosophy who 
 claim to have received their teachings from the Bud- 
 dhists in Tibet and India, while men, who are in a po- 
 sition to know it, state that there never existed an 
 esoteric doctrine of Buddhism, are another instance of 
 the same character. Thus the views of Christians in 
 the second century, one of whom preached abolition 
 of the Law, while the other warned against such 
 tendencies as destructive, one of whom preached a 
 universal religion, while the other insisted on an in- 
 ternal reform in Judaism, they all claimed that their 
 views were the real teachings of Jesus. Nor are such 
 historical delusions limited to antiquity. 
 
 [15]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 The anecdotes about Washington, Napoleon, Bis- 
 marck are other instances of the principle which 
 makes the hero of the past act in a way in which we 
 would think he ought to have acted. Nearer related 
 to our topic is the anecdote which makes John Huss 
 say on the stake : ' ' This time you roast a goose ( Hus 
 is in Slavic, goose), but after a hundred years there 
 will appear a swan whom you will have to let alone. ' ' 
 
 While there are instances, in which real historic 
 characters are the tree on which the ivy of mythology 
 climbs with its grasping fibres, there are others, which 
 show us a mere idea personified. This is the case 
 with Ahasuerus the Wandering Jew who is the per- 
 sonification of Judaism which did not die in spite of 
 centuries of persecution. William Tell is another 
 instance of the brave struggle of the Swiss for their 
 independence, personified in one man. Faust is 
 another instance of the same character, a personifica- 
 tion of the ever repeated attempt of humanity to solve 
 the problem of happiness. 
 
 Thus, the biography of Jesus may be a fiction of the 
 second century, combining everything which to men 
 of that age made the ideal man. In fact there were 
 many widely different views all claiming to represent 
 the real Christianity, just as it was the case during 
 the age of Reformation. 
 
 There was a conservative party, of men, like Eras- 
 mus of Rotterdam, advanced liberals in theory, but 
 strictly conservative in practice. Their views are 
 
 [16]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 expounded by the author of the epistle of James 2, 17 
 who says that faith without works is barren and by 
 the author of Matthew 5, 19, who says he who breaketh 
 the least of the commands shall be the least in the 
 kingdom of heaven. There were radicals like Carl- 
 stadt and Thomas Muenzer who denounced the con- 
 servatives as false brethren just as Hutten denounced 
 Erasmus, and who preached "If ye be circumcised 
 Christ shall profit you nothing" (1) and "whosoever 
 of you are justified by the law, ye are fallen from 
 grace." (2) There were also mediators between the 
 two extremes who like Luther and Calvin would de- 
 nounce equally the coolness of an Erasmus and the 
 hot-headed radicalism of the Anabaptists and above 
 all things preached unity entreating their hearers to 
 set aside all differences. Circumcision is nothing and 
 noncircumcision is nothing. Brethren let every man 
 wherein he is called, therein abide with God. (3) 
 
 That Jesus took a part in the foundation of Chris- 
 tianity is by these remarks neither affirmed nor de- 
 nied. However it must be borne in mind that outside 
 of the gospels we possess no sources on the history of 
 Jesus. A passage in Suetonius' history of Vespasian 
 is misinterpreted, another in Josephus' Antiquities is 
 evidently interpolated, the epistle of Pliny and the re- 
 ply of Trajan are forged, the Talmudic reports, far 
 from being historical, are altogether influenced by the 
 narratives of the gospels, and the latter were written 
 nearly a century after the events which they report 
 
 [17]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 had elapsed. The Talmudic authorities that appear 
 as opponents of Christianity, (and in two instances 
 as adherents of the new doctrine) as, R. Gamaliel, 
 R. Tarphon, R. Akiba, R. Ishmael, R. Eliezer ben 
 Hyrkanos and Elisha ben Abujah belong to the 
 second century. 
 
 To this negative evidence we must add the positive 
 self-contradiction of New Testament history, omit- 
 ting all that is miraculous as not coming within the 
 range of this historian. 
 
 In the biography of Jesus we first are struck by the 
 discrepancies of the two pedigrees, the one found in 
 Matthew (1), the other in Luke (2). Both writers 
 inform us that Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary, 
 but Joseph's father in Matthew is named Jacob, while 
 Luke calls him Eli. Eli's father is Mathat, while 
 Jacob's father is called Mathan. If in this case we 
 would overlook the slight difference, we would gain 
 nothing, for Mathat 's father is Levi, while Mathan 's 
 father is Eleazar and so the whole lineage differs, only 
 David and Shaltiel and his son Zerubabel being com- 
 mon to both, but with the son of David the difference 
 begins ; Matthew tracing Jesus ' descent from Solomon 
 and Luke from Nathan, another son of David; 
 Matthew counting twenty-six generations from David 
 to Jesus, Luke forty-one, and to remove the possibility 
 of supposing that Matthew omitted some names, the 
 latter states expressly that there were fourteen gen- 
 
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 erations from David until the Babylonian exile, and 
 fourteen from the exile unto Christ. 
 
 The only way out of this difficulty is to admit 
 frankly, that both pedigrees are fictitious and based 
 on no other records except on the conviction that 
 Jesus was the Messiah, and therefore had to be of 
 Davidic origin. Must we not ask ourselves, after the 
 authors had invented so many names, would their 
 conscience have warned them against the invention 
 of one more name, and could they not have derived the 
 name of Jesus, too, from the inexhaustible archives 
 of their imagination ? 
 
 We have now to consider the report concerning 
 the place of Jesus' birth. In both gospels that contain 
 the history of Jesus' youth we are told that he was 
 born at Bethlehem, while otherwise his home is 
 Nazareth, he is always called Jesus of Nazareth (3) 
 and his followers the sect of the Nazarenes (4). Luke 
 seems to have felt this difficulty and he apparently 
 tells us the story of the taxation (5) to make it plaus- 
 ible that Jesus' parents left their home temporarily 
 for Bethlehem. 
 
 But there is another difficulty : first of all we do not 
 know from reliable sources that such a census of the 
 whole Roman empire as Luke expressly states, 
 ever took place under the reign of Augustus, but even 
 if such a remarkable event should have taken place 
 without being recorded, it could not have taken place 
 while Herod was king, for the Romans, although they 
 
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 could levy tribute from a country that had its own 
 king, could not assess the individual citizens. It 
 would have been the same thing as if the United States 
 were to assess the people of Venezuela. 
 
 It is so much the less likely as the first census after 
 the expulsion of Archelaus, i. e. about ten years after 
 this supposed event, caused a revolution amongst the 
 Jews, who not only resented this manifestation of 
 Roman sovereignty but objected to it on religious 
 grounds. (1) And so strongly they objected to it, 
 that the word "Kenas" census meant to them fine or 
 punishment. Is it likely that they would have 
 tolerated the first census and objected to the second? 
 But even this is not all. The census is said to 
 have taken place when Cyrenius was governor of 
 Syria, but Jesus was born, while Herod was king and 
 Cyrenius was appointed governor about ten years 
 after Herod 's death. If we should overlook all these 
 difficulties, there would still remain some more. A 
 citizen had to appear before the assessor of his city, 
 for only there was he known. What should the 
 Romans care about the supposed Davidic descent 
 of Joseph? It were just as if my grandchildren 
 should be cited before the assessor, not of my native 
 town, but before the assessor at Brunswick, whence 
 two hundred years ago my eighth ancestor emigrated. 
 And granted even that, what necessity was there for 
 Mary in her delicate condition to journey to Bethle- 
 hem ? Yes, there was one reason. The reason that she 
 
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 should give birth to the Messiah who according to a 
 misinterpreted passage in the prophet Micah (2) was 
 to be born in that city and according to another mis- 
 interpreted passage in Genesis (3) before Judea would 
 lose its independence that is, while Herod was yet 
 king and before the first taxation had made it mani- 
 fest that Judea had ceased to be an independent king- 
 dom. The whole story is therefore a fabrication of 
 which dogmatic tendencies are the only reliable basis. 
 Time does not permit that I should go through the 
 whole history of Jesus. Let it suffice to state that 
 the account given by Matthew (4) according to which 
 Jesus with his parents went from Bethlehem to 
 Egypt is irreconcilable with the account given by 
 Luke (5) according to which they repaired from 
 Bethlehem to Jerusalem. The story of Jesus' dis- 
 putation in the temple, when he was twelve years 
 (6) old, is highly improbable. According to one 
 account given by both Matthew (7) and Luke, (8) 
 John the Baptist heard only in prison of Jesus and 
 sent disciples asking Jesus whether (9) or not he was 
 the expected Messiah, but, according to another 
 account John refused to grant Jesus' request to be 
 baptised by him, saying : "I have need to be baptised 
 by thee" and after he had yielded to Jesus' request, 
 the heavens were opened and the spirit of God de- 
 scended like a dove and a voice was heard saying: 
 "This is my beloved son." I should think this would 
 have satisfied the most skeptically inclined agnostic. 
 
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 In another account John, when he first saw Jesus 
 exclaimed: ''Behold the lamb of God" (10) and 
 finally according to Luke, (11) John when still in the 
 womb greeted Jesus, who was his cousin, as the Lord. 
 Here we have decidedly a growing tendency to mark 
 the relation of John to Jesus as that of a forerunner of 
 the Messiah. 
 
 The first report made John testify to Jesus shortly 
 before his death, the second at the baptism, the third 
 when he first saw him, the fourth when he was an 
 unborn baby in the womb. Similarly the accounts 
 of Jesus' greatest miracle, the resurrection of the 
 dead, show a gradation. According to Mark and 
 Luke (1) the daughter of Jair was dying when Jesus 
 was called to heal her; according to Matthew (2) 
 she had just died when the father called him but in 
 all three reports she was dead when Jesus entered 
 the house. Luke (3) records the resurrection of the 
 son of the widow of Nain, who was carried out to the 
 cemetery when Jesus stopped the funeral procession 
 and revived him. John evidently finds this account 
 not a sufficient evidence of Jesus' Messianic powers 
 and records the resurrection of Lazarus (4) who was 
 already four days in the tomb and to remove all 
 doubt concerning his death, Martha, his sister says: 
 "Lord, by this time he stinketh." (5) The only con- 
 clusion remains that these stories were invented to 
 prove Jesus' Messianic powers. 
 
 Another difficulty is the record of Judas' treachery. 
 
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 I forego the question why Jesus, knowing beforehand 
 that Judas would betray him, made him his disciple. 
 I only ask why was it necessary for the Sanhedrin to 
 hire a traitor? Surely not for a testimony to Jesus' 
 doctrine. He had preached it to multitudes (6) and 
 had driven the money changers out of the temple. 
 (7) It was not necessary to know his hiding place, for 
 he did not hide himself; besides Judas did not content 
 himself to show Jesus' hiding place but he gave to the 
 soldiers a sign by kissing Jesus, (8) which would only 
 have a sense, if it was the person, not the place which 
 had to be betrayed. Now, we ask, was it worth 30 
 pieces of silver, about five dollars, to point out a man 
 whom the whole city had hailed with Hosannas, whom 
 the children had proclaimed the son of David (10) 
 who had discussed his ideas with the priests as well as 
 with the heads of the Pharisees and Sadducees ? This 
 is a problem which can only be solved, if we deny all 
 historical basis of it, and understand Judas only as a 
 type of the Jewish unbelief and, may be, that the 
 name Iskarioth is to be derived from "skakrutlia" 
 man of falsehood. One of the greatest difficulties is the 
 celebration of the Passover, which gave origin to the 
 ecclesiastic rite of the Lord's supper. The three 
 synoptic gospels make Jesus celebrate the Passover 
 on the night of the festival in Jerusalem, (11) while 
 the fourth gospel (12) states expressly that it was 
 celebrated at Bethany six days before the Passover. 
 Prof. Daniel Chwolson a few years ago with the 
 
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 zeal of the convert attempted to solve this difficulty 
 by retranslating, as he thought, the text into Aramaic. 
 The attempt is a failure. The only solution possible 
 is this: The Judeo-Christians had retained the 
 solemn rite of the Seder-evening just as many in our 
 days who are entirely estranged from the Jewish 
 community will go to the Synagog when they have 
 Yahrzeit. 
 
 The custom had such a powerful influence that 
 even the proselytes from paganism celebrated it. By 
 and by the original meaning was lost or rather was 
 found inconvenient, just as our people would not 
 trace back our lamp on the Yahrzeit to usages of the 
 Catholic mass or to ancestor-worship of the pagan 
 world, and so Jesus had to establish the Passover 
 anew. The more conservative element made Him 
 celebrate the Passover in the traditional Jewish way 
 and give another meaning to it. It is not any more 
 the Exodus that shall be remembered, but the death 
 of Jesus who took his last meal on earth promising to 
 his followers, as he was sure to receive it, the new wine 
 from the hands of the father, (Mat. 26, 29). The 
 radical Christians would not admit this origin of the 
 Lord's supper. Therefore Jesus had to celebrate his 
 meal not in Jerusalem, and on the 14th of the Nissan, 
 but in Bethany and six days earlier. So the dogma 
 is the source of the history, and not the history the 
 source of the dogma. 
 
 The difficult and intricate problem of Jesus' teach- 
 
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 ings I can only treat in two instances: His position 
 to the law and, what is closely connected with this, the 
 mission of Israel to the heathen-world. The gen- 
 erally accepted theory is that Christianity taught the 
 law merely as a symbol of certain ideas and that 
 Judaism must cease to be clannish and take the 
 heathen world into its fold, or, while Pharisean 
 Rabbinical Judaism regarded these things as a distant 
 ideal, Christianity wished them to be put into im- 
 mediate effect. 
 
 The question now remains: Did Jesus himself 
 already teach these doctrines? Let us consult the 
 sources: According to Matthew he says: "Think 
 not that I am come to destroy the Law or Prophets 
 but to fulfill ; for verily I say unto you, till earth or 
 heaven pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass 
 from the law, till all be fulfilled." "Whosoever shall 
 break one of the least commandments and shall teach 
 men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of 
 heaven: for I say unto you, that except your right- 
 eousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes 
 and the Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the 
 kingdom of heaven," (ib, 5, 17-20). If we translate 
 this into our modern way of speaking, Jesus said: 
 One who would not observe all the minutias of the 
 law, "the dot on the i" (Menahot 29, a), does not de- 
 serve the name of a Christian. The sentiment is 
 quite Jewish and a parallel passage is found in the 
 Midrash, (Exod. Rabba C. 6) where it reads: "King 
 
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 Solomon and thousands like him shall perish but not 
 a dot on the "i" shall perish from the law." Chris- 
 tianity according to this doctrine is only something 
 accessory to the teachings of Rabbinical Judaism. 
 The Greek word "plerosai" may have the meaning 
 "to add to" or "to complete" by bringing to the light 
 the real meaning. We can accept it only in the 
 former sense for the quotation of this passage in the 
 Talmud (Sabbath 116, b) has in its place "le-osofe al" 
 which unmistakably means to add to. While here 
 the law is regarded as essential to Christianity, Jesus 
 according to Luke (16, 26) says: the law and the 
 prophets were until John, since that time the kingdom 
 of God is preached, which evidently means that since 
 Christianity arose, the law lost all obligatory 
 character. While according to Matthew (Mat. 
 5, 18) Jesus taught that heaven and earth would 
 sooner pass than a word of the law, according to Luke 
 (16, 17) Jesus complains that it is easier for heaven 
 and earth to pass than for one tittle of the law to fall. 
 Furthermore, the three synoptic gospels (Mat. 9, 
 16, Me. 2, 21, Luc. 5, 36) contain the parable: No 
 man putteth a piece of a new garment on an old and 
 no man putteth new wine into old wine skins. This 
 means clearly a radical view of the law. No patch- 
 work, no conservative reform, no regard for tradition ! 
 Luke who more than the other evangelists preaches 
 this radicalism adds: No man also having drunk old 
 wine straightway desireth new for he saith, the old is 
 
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 better. (Luc. 4, 39.) That is exactly the point: If 
 you tolerate tradition, you put yourself in the wrong, 
 just as the Catholic would say to the Episcopalian : 
 If the church is a divine institution, why not accept 
 the pope? 
 
 The toleration of the law is the view which accord- 
 ing to Matthew (19, 16-22) is Jesus' principle. When 
 a young man asks him: ''What good thing shall 
 I do, that I may have eternal life?" Jesus answers 
 straightway: "Keep the commandments," and when 
 the young man says: "All these things I have kept 
 from my youth, what lack I yet ? ' ' Jesus says : ' ' Sell 
 all that thou hast and give it to the poor. ' ' There we 
 see the principle of the fulfillment in the sense of 
 adding righteousness to the observance of the law. 
 
 The same story is found in the other gospels, but 
 both Mark and Luke (Me. 10, 19 ; Luc. 18, 20) say 
 instead of "Keep the commandments" "thou knowest 
 the commandments." Evidently they avoided to 
 make Jesus say that one should keep the command- 
 ments. Stronger still is the declaration against the 
 law, found in an incident, told with slight variations 
 by both Matthew and Luke. (Mt. 8, 19-22; Luc. 9, 
 57-62.) A disciple wishes to join Jesus, but he first 
 would bury his father. Jesus says : ' ' Let the dead bury 
 their dead." We can understand this only, when we 
 present to ourselves the rabbinical view, that to bury 
 the dead is the foremost duty (Moed Katan 27, b) and 
 is one that brings man to eternal life. (Mishnah, 
 
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 Peah I, 1.) To bury his father is even permitted to 
 the priest (Lev. 21, 2) who otherwise is not allowed 
 to defile himself by coming into contact with a dead 
 body. Therefore Jesus emphasizes that to preach the 
 kingdom of heaven stands higher than to observe even 
 the highest commandments. 
 
 Another telling story which only Luke (10, 38-42) 
 has, presents this view in stronger words. Jesus 
 entered the house of Martha; Martha was cumbered 
 about much service, while her sister Mary was 
 sitting at Jesus' feet and heard his words. When 
 Martha complained, Jesus said to her : ' ' Thou art care- 
 ful about many things but one thing is needful : and 
 Mary has chosen that good part, which shall not be 
 taken away from her." Martha represents Judaism 
 which is troubled about many laws, while Mary who 
 is the type of Christianity which instead of observing 
 the many laws only listens to Jesus' preaching of the 
 kingdom, the one thing needful, and so she has chosen 
 the good part which shall never be taken away from 
 her. 
 
 The strongest condemnation of the law as worth- 
 less, when compared with the belief in Jesus, is the 
 story of Jesus' anointment, which with some varia- 
 tions appears in all the four gospels (Mat. 26, 6-13; 
 Me. 14, 3-9; Luc. 7, 36-50; John 12, 1-9) but most 
 manifest in its meaning it appears in John. 
 
 Jesus enters the house of Martha and Mary in 
 Bethany. Mary, the representative of Christianity, 
 
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 poured out a pint of ointment, which was worth 300 
 Denars, on his feet, and Judas Iscariot said that this 
 ointment should rather have been sold and given to 
 the poor. This he said, not because he cared for the 
 poor, but because, as the evangelist suggests, Judas 
 was the treasurer of the small society, and could have 
 made some money by this transaction, but Jesus said : 
 "Let her alone, for the poor you have always with 
 you, but me you have not always with you." In this 
 parable so to speak even charity is deprecated in 
 comparison with the belief in the kingdom of God. 
 And it is most noteworthy that John makes Judas 
 instead of all the disciples, as the other gospels have it, 
 the interpreter of this dissatisfaction and discredits 
 his motives. This is therefore the strongest contra- 
 diction of the Jewish doctrines that charity secures 
 man the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 The same tendencies, viz : a commendation of works 
 as laudable and indispensable, an indifference towards 
 them, and finally a decided condemnation of all ob- 
 servances as obnoxious appears in the epistles. James, 
 no doubt the apostle of Judseo-Christians, known in 
 the Talmud (Aboda Zara, 17, a) as Jacob of Sakanja, 
 says : ' ' What doth it profit though a man say he hath 
 faith, and have no works?" (James 2, 14). Exactly 
 the opposite view is held by the author of the epistle 
 to the Galatians, who calls the law a curse from which 
 Christ hath redeemed us (Gal. 3, 13), and finally a 
 mediating position is taken by the author of the epistle 
 
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 to the Corinthians, who says: "Circumcision and 
 uncircumcision is nothing but the keeping of the 
 commandments of God," (I. Cor. 7, 19) and similarly 
 the author of Romans, for ' ' circumcision verily profit- 
 eth, if thou keep the law." (Rom. 2, 25). In the same 
 way, as this important question, whether the law 
 should be observed, tolerated or rejected, was the plat- 
 form on which the first Christians were divided, so 
 was the attitude towards the pagan world, and just 
 as each faction made Jesus the expounder of its par- 
 ticular views in the former case, so they did in the 
 latter. 
 
 Matthew makes Jesus denounce strictly all missions 
 to the heathen. "Go not," he says to the twelve dis- 
 ciples, "into the way of the Gentiles, and into any 
 city of the Samaritans enter ye not, but go rather to 
 the lost sheep of the house of Israel." (Mat. 10, 67.) 
 
 In another instance he is approached by a Canaani- 
 tish woman (Mat. 15, 21-28; Me. 7, 24-30) who begs 
 him to heal her daughter who is grievously vexed 
 with a devil, and he, at first not taking any notice of 
 her, on the entreating by his disciple says: "I am 
 not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," 
 but the woman would not desist, and so he answers 
 her: "It is not meet to take the children's bread, 
 and to cast it to the dogs." And when the woman 
 cleverly applies the adage of no rule without excep- 
 tion to her case, saying: "Yet the dogs eat of the 
 crumbs which fall from their master's table," he 
 
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 reluctantly complied with her request. It is of great 
 importance that Luke omitted this story entirely, 
 because he would not admit that Jesus called the 
 heathens dogs, and that Mark mitigates it somewhat 
 omitting the words ' ' Let the children first be filled, ' ' 
 so indicating that the heathen world should not be 
 excluded from salvation entirely. 
 
 Just the opposite tendency is manifest in the story 
 of the centurion of Capernaum (Mat. 8, 5-13; Luc. 7, 
 1-10) who came to beg Jesus that he might heal his 
 servant, and Jesus, being struck by his faith said: 
 ' ' I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel, and 
 I say unto you many shall come from the east and 
 west, and shall sit down with Abraham, with Isaac 
 and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the children 
 of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness, 
 there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." In our 
 modern language this means the heathen shall be in 
 heaven and the Jews shall be in hell. 
 
 The parable of the vineyard (Mat. 21, 33-46; Me. 
 12, 1-12; Luc. 20, 9-19) in which the owner whose 
 son was killed by the tenants, destroyeth the tenants 
 and gives the vineyard to others, clearly means that 
 the Gentiles shall take the place of Israel. And so 
 repeatedly Jesus is made to say, the gospel must first 
 be preached to the gentiles. (Me. 13, 10). The story 
 of the Samaritan (Luc. 10, 29-37) who took care of 
 the wounded man while a priest and a Levite passed 
 by without rendering assistance, is told by Luke ex- 
 
 [31]
 
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 clusively to show that the Jews are not any more the 
 bearers of the divine spirit, and therefore according to 
 Luke, Jesus refuses to accede to the wishes of his dis- 
 ciples that he might curse the Samaritans, while the 
 order given to the disciples in Matthew not to enter 
 the cities of the Samaritans shows the opposite ten- 
 dency. 
 
 Thus we see that even in this case, tendencies which 
 agitated the minds of the early Christians, not later 
 than in the second century, are referred back to Jesus ; 
 for in the first century Rabban Gamaliel defends a 
 friendly attitude to the Samaritans (Weiss. Gesch. 
 Jued. Trad. II. 74) and consequently they were not 
 held in so low an esteem by the Jews, as the gospel 
 describes it. 
 
 How are we to solve the question of Jesus ' genuine 
 teachings, and the real doctrines of early Christianity ? 
 The only possible answer is : Dogmas were made into 
 historical facts and thoughts were referred back to 
 earlier times, just as the Catholics of today would 
 prove the supremacy of the Pope from Jesus' words 
 or as Rabbi Ezekiel Landau (Z'lach p. 39. d.) would 
 prove from the Talmud that the study of Hebrew 
 grammar as advocated by the Mendelssohn school was 
 dangerous, while Leon Modena (Haboneh, Kiddushin 
 2. b) would prove that the Talmud commends the 
 study of grammar. 
 
 We must try to understand the great crisis of the 
 destruction of the temple, the death blow which cruel 
 
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 reality dealt the Messianic hopes. The Messiah had 
 not preserved the temple, he had not established the 
 kingdom of God, which should include the heathen 
 world, as Daniel (12, 1-3) had prophesied. The dead 
 had not been resurrected. What wonder that the 
 progressive party concluded, that God did not care 
 to preserve the temple and Israel's worldly kingdom, 
 but that his kingdom would soon be established as one 
 that is not of this world, that the dead then should rise, 
 the people should then make themselves worthy of this 
 kingdom by turning away from worldly pleasures, that 
 Jews should do missionary work amongst the heathens, 
 that what the Rabbis had taught as an ideal, the view 
 that to love one's neighbor is the whole law, that the 
 gentiles who lived a righteous moral life and ab- 
 stained from idolatry, are God-fearing people, should 
 be practically acknowledged. What is this theory for, 
 they exclaimed, let us put it into practice at once, 
 and in this way they constructed the picture of 
 Jesus, the ideal man, a utopia referred back into the 
 past, as Thomas Moore, Bebel and Bellamy referred 
 theirs to the future. 
 
 The question that agitates us is : How do we under- 
 stand the claims of Christianity? To answer this, 
 we must ask first : What is Christianity ? The belief 
 that mankind, overburdened with sins had to perish, 
 for God in his righteousness could not pardon them, 
 therefore he accepted the sacrifice of His son, who, 
 though sinless, died the death of a criminal, and this 
 
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 meritorious self sacrifice outbalanced the sins of the 
 whole world, present and future. This doctrine we 
 cannot accept. We believe in the great truth, every- 
 one shall die for his own sin. Liberal Christians have 
 long ago given up this theory, and the philosopher 
 Schleiermacher has reconstructed the doctrine by 
 declaring Jesus to be the divine man, the man who 
 in himself combined all the ideals of mankind. 
 Against this theory there was objected, that not one 
 man but only mankind represents the human ideal, 
 and even mankind for a certain period of time. 
 Aristotle was no poet, Michelangelo no philosopher, 
 Goethe no sculptor, and the classic age of the Greeks 
 as a whole is inferior to ours in mechanic arts, in nat- 
 ural science, in statescraft and in many other things. 
 Then the belief in Jesus as the ideal man was re- 
 stricted to his ethical teachings, but even to this we 
 cannot subscribe. The Jesus of the gospel despised 
 family life. He says to his mother: "Woman, what 
 have I to do with thee" (John 2, 4). He would not 
 permit his disciple to attend the funeral of his father. 
 (Mat. 8, 22.) Jesus finds no merit in any practical 
 pursuit. He says: "He who putteth his hand to the 
 plow and looketh backward is not fit for the king- 
 dom of heaven," (Luc. 9, 62.) Jesus regards wealth, 
 no matter how honestly acquired, as sinful. He says 
 to the young man: "Take all that thou hast and 
 give it to the poor." (Mat. 19, 21). The rich man is 
 in hell suffering agonizing pain, poor Lazarus is in 
 
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 Abraham's bosom, and yet is it not said that the rich 
 man was a sinner and Lazarus was righteous, but the 
 one suffers in the hereafter because he had received 
 his share of happiness already, the other is happy, 
 because he was miserable on earth. (Luc. 16, 19-31). 
 Jesus despises science and praises those that are poor 
 in spirit (Mat. 5, 3) and although this by some apolo- 
 gists is understood to mean the meek and lowly, 
 (Prov. 16, 19) it is not so, for the meek are mentioned 
 afterwards and R. Eliezer ben Hyrkanos who stood 
 nearest the Christians, teaches: Keep your children 
 away from speculation and through this you shall in- 
 herit eternal life. (Berakoth 28, b.) At all events 
 Jesus is indifferent to science. Jesus commands a 
 passive attitude to the state, to the highest interests 
 of his country and his people. He says when ques- 
 tioned about the important issue of the tribute money : 
 "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, 
 and unto God the things which are God's" (Mat. 22, 
 21). No word of encouragement for the struggle of 
 his people for independence; no word about Caesar's 
 tyranny who revelled in luxury on the earnings of 
 hard-working people, no word of condemnation for 
 the outrageous practices of the Roman officials. He 
 preaches unconditioned submission. Still even Mai- 
 monides (Moreh II., 37) admitted that Jesus was a 
 divine instrument, or as we put it: Christianity 
 fulfilled a mission in the world. Judaism at that 
 time missed the opportunity to become a universal 
 
 [35]
 
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 religion by intrenching itself behind the breastwork 
 of its national hopes and traditional customs. It 
 suffered for it terribly. The flames of the fagots on 
 which innocent men and women sang "in thy hand I 
 commend my soul," made the heavens lurid. From 
 the dungeons and racks resounded the cries of the 
 tortured. The descendants of those whom Christians 
 acknowledged as the beloved of God were mercilessly 
 expelled from one country and debarred from another. 
 Have they suffered in vain ? No, they have not. They 
 taught the world the lesson of the highest liberty, 
 the liberty of conscience. They worked in narrower 
 confines, it is true, but their work was so much the 
 more thorough and complete. They assisted the poor 
 in unselfish manner, they cultivated exemplary family 
 relations, they created the concept of fear of God as 
 self restraint as "Dabar hamasur laleb," they made 
 charity a duty of justice, "Zedakah" which is higher 
 than love. Yea, even their ceremonialism had its great 
 merits. It produced a Yom Kippurim, a day that 
 taught the lesson of contrition and self-humiliation 
 and fostered the sense of responsibility for one's deeds. 
 Let me abide by this reminiscence. Before my eyes 
 there arises the synagog of my native city on Kippur 
 eve. It is late. Most of the worshippers have left the 
 house, few only are present, reciting the Psalms, and 
 I see my good old father in his white gown, covered 
 with a Tallith, standing before the ark, and I hear 
 him recite the touching mystical prayer, in a voice 
 
 [36]
 
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 trembling with emotion: "As we recite these Psalms 
 this day, so may it be our lot to sing thy praises in the 
 world to come, and may the rose of Sharon be awak- 
 ened to sing with a voice jubilant and rejoicing, the 
 glory of the Lebanon may be given to her; magnifi- 
 cence, majesty in the house of our God. Amen. 
 Selah." 
 
 37 J
 
 Ill 
 
 THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION AND 
 JUDAISM.* 
 
 Heinrich Graetz, the centenary of whose birth was 
 celebrated all over the Jewish world a few months 
 ago, speaking of the Hussite movement, makes the 
 brilliant remark that every attempt to deepen the 
 religious sentiment within the church, started from a 
 return to the Old Testament. (Graetz: Geschichte, 
 VIII, 130-131. 3d. ed.) Indeed the Hussites named 
 their principal fortress Tabor, and the Puritans of 
 New England are in every modern American novel 
 characterized by the most unusual Old Testament 
 names. 
 
 Again speaking of Luther's movement the master 
 historian of Judaism makes the somewhat flippant 
 remark that the only beneficial effect which the great 
 upheaval of the Christian church had on the Jews 
 was the negative boon that the contending parties 
 within the Church were so busy fighting their own 
 battles that there was no time left to them to harass 
 the Jews. (ib. IX, 196, 3d. ed.) Graetz in his case 
 yielded to a prompting of temper which is claimed as 
 typically Jewish. An antisemitic essayist once said 
 
 * Address, delivered at the Second Annual Spring Conference of the 
 Chicago Rabbinical Association, April 8, 1918. 
 
 [38]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 that a Jew would kill his own father, if it would be 
 needed for a clever pun. This is no doubt one of the 
 exaggerations in which the enemies of Judaism often 
 indulge in order to make their arguments more im- 
 pressive, but in this individual case it does seem that 
 Graetz preferred being clever to being guided by his- 
 toric temper. 
 
 With the exception of the Unitarian movement 
 which, remarkably enough, arose in the Latin coun- 
 tries, Spain and Italy, where the revised Christianity 
 of Luther, Calvin and Zwingli found the least fertile 
 soil, none of the various Protestant churches that were 
 established in the sixteenth century, could see in 
 Judaism more than an anachronism, and in rarest 
 cases even a sincere and sympathetic anachronism, 
 such as High Church Episcopolians might see in the 
 Quaker church. Yet the mere fact that all Protes- 
 tant churches started as minorities and for centuries 
 afterwards had to protect followers who were hope- 
 less minorities in lands of intolerance, necessitated 
 their insistence on the principle of freedom of con- 
 science, usually not as a theory, but as an accommo- 
 dation to existing conditions. A clear case is found 
 in a letter, written by Landgrave William IV of 
 Hesse to his brother Ludwig in 1570. A pastor, 
 named Nigrinus, who was under the jurisdiction of 
 Landgrave Ludwig had published a book whose title : 
 "Jew-hater" (Juedenfeind, oder von den edelen 
 Fruechten der talmudischen Jueden, so itziger Zeit in 
 
 [39]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 Deutschland wohnen. Giessen, 1570) sufficiently char- 
 acterizes the author's tendency. Landgrave William 
 reproaches his brother for tolerating such an agitation, 
 for, so he argues, if arguments like those of Pastor 
 Nigrinus were accepted and a monarch would have 
 the right of persecuting all those who profess a reli- 
 gion different from his own, the " papists" would use 
 this argument for the persecution of the Protestants 
 in countries where they have the majority. 
 
 While the effect of the Reformation on the condition 
 of the Jews, appears only later, we have to look for 
 their beginnings at a time, coeval with the beginnings 
 of the movement, just as renewed measures of oppres- 
 sion in Catholic countries, and especially under eccle- 
 siastic rule, indicate the effect of the principle of 
 strict ecclesiastic authority. The first important event 
 which proves the favorable turn in the situation of 
 the Jews is the opening of Holland to their settle- 
 ment. William the Silent, one of the noblest rulers 
 of all times, opened right after the proclamation of 
 the independence of the Netherlands in 1581 the 
 country to the Jews on the principle of unrestricted 
 toleration of all religions. There was no stage dis- 
 play in this measure, such as a later Jewish author, 
 Daniel de Barrios, tells us, whom Graetz, somewhat 
 fond of romance, follows. The story of an Argonaut 
 expedition of Maranos protected by a young woman 
 mascot of captivating beauty, which, driven by ill 
 winds into the harbor of Emden, and wandering aim- 
 
 [40]
 
 lessly about in the city, until they were attracted by 
 a Hebrew sign over the door of a house, where they 
 found a Jew who advised them to go on to Amster- 
 dam, offering his services as their minister, is pure 
 fiction. The Netherlands were a Spanish dependency, 
 and it was natural that they should have in their 
 midst some Spanish Jews, who, as they were accus- 
 tomed at home, continued to practice their religion 
 in secret, until the proclamation of religious liberty, 
 inspired them by and by with the courage to worship 
 the God of their fathers publicly. The same was 
 done in Hamburg and Bordeaux, where the fugitives 
 from the horrors of the Inquisition first settled as 
 Portuguese merchants, the municipal authorities 
 winking at the fact that the newcomers were Jews, 
 until the population became used to it, and recognized 
 them as Jews. 
 
 Hamburg was another refuge opened to Jews 
 through the growing spirit of toleration which was 
 the unintended result of the Reformation. This is of 
 no mean import, for Hamburg was strictly Lutheran 
 and tolerated in the beginning neither Calvinists nor 
 Roman Catholics. The German emperor, theoretically 
 the overlord of the free city, was wroth at this par- 
 tiality which allowed, as he expresses himself, the 
 worship of the synagog, where the name of Jesus is 
 reviled, while the holy mass was prohibited. We find 
 such a complaint a century later in another Protestant 
 country. The elector of Brandenburg, himself a 
 
 [41]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 Lutheran, but desirous to maintain peace between 
 the two leading Protestant denominations, severely 
 reprimanded the Berlin pastor Paul Gerhardt for 
 his vehement attacks on the Calvinists. Gerhardt, a 
 deeply devout soul and author of inspiring religious 
 poetry, was a narrowminded Lutheran and would not 
 yield, so the elector dismissed him from his charge. 
 The congregation that loved its pastor protested. 
 They proclaimed it an injustice that in a city, where 
 the "blasphemy" of the Jews was tolerated, the. 
 "pure doctrine" of Luther should not be permitted 
 to express itself in the abuse of its opponents. 
 
 The readmission of the Jews to Berlin in 1670 has 
 a more than local import. It marks an epoch in the 
 modern history of Judaism and is a milestone in the 
 progress of religious toleration. Trade jealousy and 
 religious fanaticism had combined to make the ex- 
 istence of the Jews in Vienna impossible. The com- 
 plete triumph of Catholicism in the lands of the 
 Austrian crown had in the course of the seventeenth 
 century shown its consequences in growing hostility to 
 the Jews. The Jesuits had succeeded in introducing 
 the practice of the papal states, inaugurated by Sixtus 
 IV in 1584 which compelled the Jews to listen to the 
 sermon of a conversionist every Sunday. A ghetto 
 was established on an island of the Danube River, 
 making their isolation complete, and finally their 
 banishment from Vienna and from the province of 
 Lower Austria seemed to complete the realization of 
 
 [42]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 the Spanish ideal to which the wife of Emperor 
 Leopold I was sworn as a Spanish princess. The 
 exiles looked for a new home. In their distress they 
 appealed to the Elector Frederick William who had 
 opened his land to the Huguenots, who had shortly 
 before been exiled from France. This is the new 
 feature of the event. The Jews do not ask for the 
 right to crouch in another corner, where thanks to 
 personal benevolence or, which was more frequently 
 the case, owing to financial stress there was an oppor- 
 tunity of finding a shelter. They ask for a home in 
 a land whose prince had recognized religious liberty 
 by opening his country to the victims of religious 
 tyranny, and they obtained this privilege. 
 
 Still more important, both for the motives and for 
 the effects is the opening of England to the Jews. 
 Desirous to avoid a romantic coloring of history, we 
 shall begin with the most prosaic point. The Stuarts 
 plotted in Holland for their reinstatement on the 
 throne of their fathers. The community of Amster- 
 dam, little older than half a century, had already 
 won a considerable financial standing. Charles II 
 bargained frankly for the financial assistance of the 
 Portuguese bankers who had settled in Amsterdam, 
 promising them in turn for the support that they 
 were to give him, the right of settlement in England. 
 Cromwell could not overlook the safety of his own 
 government, and introduced a bill into Parliament 
 which abolished the edict of expulsion, issued by 
 
 [43]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 Edward I in 1290. The bill failed to pass, but the 
 Jews silently found toleration, afterwards legalized by 
 the opinion rendered by the highest court which de- 
 clared the edict of expulsion as invalid on the ground 
 that it never had been passed by Parliament. This 
 fact in itself shows that it was not mere utilitarianism 
 which brought about the change in a condition, main- 
 tained for nearly four centuries. The civil wars 
 which ravaged the British Isles, and the war of thirty 
 years which had devastated the European continent, 
 led the highest intellects, to the appreciation of free- 
 dom of conscience. Sir John Locke, born in 1630, 
 was in the most impressionable period of his life, 
 when the peoples of Europe began to draw the balance 
 of the terrible cost in lives and property, which the 
 war for the sake of religion had imposed upon them. 
 He embodied the results of his thinking in his vari- 
 ous epoch-making works of which from the Jewish 
 point of view his "Letters concerning Toleration" is 
 the most important. In it he mentions the Jews ex- 
 pressly as entitled to legal equality, and he went even 
 farther. In the constitution of the colony of Caro- 
 lina which he drafted, the Jews are mentioned again 
 as being on one level with the professors of other 
 religions. The Magna Charta, passed in the same 
 year when Pope Innocent III decreed the yellow badge 
 as symbol of the position of the Jews as pariahs, was 
 a protest against ecclesiastic tyranny. Puritanism 
 was its logical consequence, and it laid a breach into 
 
 [44]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 the ghetto walls, although it did not remove the ghetto 
 gates. Puritanism had, however, also another emo- 
 tional feature which guided its policy with regard 
 to the Jews. It worshipped the Old Testament whose 
 halo still surrounded the people to whom it had been 
 revealed. The church which would not allow any 
 hymns except the versified Psalms in its service, felt 
 a deep sense of gratitude to the descendants of the 
 inspired poet who had sung the triumph arising from 
 suffering which in their church hymnal reads: 
 
 ' ' He that sowing precious seed, in going forth does 
 mourn. 
 
 He doubtless, bringing home his sheaves, rejoicing 
 shall return." 
 
 The establishment of Jewish communities in 
 Amsterdam, Hamburg, London and Berlin is a living 
 testimony to the growth of the spirit of toleration that 
 sprang from the Protestant insistence, though by no 
 means carried to its logical consequences, on the free- 
 dom of human conscience. Luther's bold word, 
 spoken in the memorable session of the Reichstag of 
 Worms: "Councils may err and have erred," was a 
 condemnation of all the misery which these councils 
 had heaped upon the Jews, the ghetto, the restrictions 
 on earning an honest livelihood, the yellow badge, 
 the suppression of rabbinic literature, the enforced 
 baptism of infants, the taxation of Jews for the bene- 
 fit of rich cathedrals and monasteries, and all that un- 
 equalled catalog of fiendish sufferings which wily 
 
 [45]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 priestcraft had evolved in order to make its own 
 ambition appear as the will of God. In 1529 a com- 
 promise was decreed by the Reichstag of Speyer, 
 which, leaving the religious controversy in statu quo, 
 practically recognized the breach of the church as 
 past healing. In 1540 a Spanish noble, whose charac- 
 ter was a peculiar mixture of the visionary and the 
 tyrant, founded the Jesuit order, which, determined 
 to establish absolute ecclesiastic authority, had to 
 treat the Jews as rebels against the kingdom of God, 
 and in addition, justifying the means by the ends, 
 though this much quoted word is not literally found 
 in the works of the Jesuit theologians, utilized the 
 age-long hatred of the Jews, created and nurtured by 
 the church, for its own needs. In 1555 Pope Paul IV 
 issued a bull which made the ghetto a law for all 
 Christendom, and yet even at that time a plain 
 Alsatian village Jew, Josel of Rosheim, had the cour- 
 age to say to the Reichstag over which the bigoted 
 Emperor Charles V presided: "The Almighty has 
 created us to live by your side, although we do not 
 profess the same religion, and it is the duty of the 
 governments to provide for our livelihood. " (Feilchen- 
 feld: Rabbi Josel von Rosheim, Strasburg, 1898, p. 
 86 et seq). 
 
 Of still greater importance is the work of the French 
 statesman and philosopher, Jean Bodin (Heptaplo- 
 meres De Rerum Sublimium Arcanis Abditis, ed. L. 
 Nowack, Schwerin, 1857. M. Philippson: Jean 
 
 [46]
 
 Bodin. Eine Lebensskizze, Allg. Zeitung des Juden- 
 tums. 1866, pp. 437-440. J. Guttmann : Jean Bodin in 
 seinen Beziehungen zum Judentum, Breslau, 1906) 
 who presented in the. form of a dialogue the claims of 
 the various religions in which Judaism is given the 
 best of the arguments. Some authors therefore claimed 
 that Bodin was a Maranno, although there is no proof 
 to be found for it, except the provocation of certain 
 historians at Bodin 's sympathetic attitude to Juda- 
 ism. To the same category belongs the famous 
 statesman John Reuchlin, like Bodin, a Catholic and 
 even strongly opposed to Luther's work, which was 
 most enthusiastically supported by Melanchthon, 
 Reuchlin 's grandnephew. Reuchlin, the first Chris- 
 tian to write a Hebrew grammar, was a Humanist. 
 As representative of the Renaissance movement, he 
 advocated the study of the Hebrew Bible, and even 
 of rabbinical literature on the ground of the same 
 principle which induced the Humanists to encourage 
 the study of the ancient classics, and to abandon the 
 fanaticism of the Dominican friars who used the 
 apostate Pfefferkorn, an ignorant butcher, to de- 
 nounce the whole rabbinic literature as blasphemous. 
 While Reuchlin deplored the breach in the church 
 caused by Luther, he may be classed as a reformer 
 from the point of view of his opposition to the narrow 
 fanaticism of the two mendicant orders, the Fran- 
 ciscans and the Dominicans, who for three centuries 
 
 [47]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 had vied with each other in making the life of the 
 Jews miserable in every Christian country of Europe. 
 Another pre-Reformation reformer was the Domin- 
 ican friar, Girolamo Savonarola, one of the heralds 
 of the new era which began with the discovery of the 
 New World. Savonarola was not only a Catholic like 
 Reuehlin, but a devout monk who believed not only 
 in the sacrament, in the worship of saints, the inter- 
 cession of the Madonna and the remission of sins by 
 confession, but even in the infallibility of the pope, 
 while at the same time, he denounced Pope Alexander 
 VI as the Antichrist. Savonarola called the pope a 
 Jew, while the pope's advocate and Savonarola's life- 
 long enemy, Mariano da Gennazzano, returned the 
 compliment, calling his rival a Jew. Savonarola was a 
 most remarkable character, and, like all great men, 
 full of contradictions. Possessing a clear grasp of 
 politics which astonished trained diplomats who 
 visited the famous monk in his cell at San Marco in 
 Florence, he was at the same time a mystic, who 
 earnestly believed that his political foresight was a 
 supernatural gift. So, as already indicated, was his 
 religious view contradictory. He saw in the pope 
 the legitimate successor of St. Peter to whom Jesus 
 had entrusted the keys that open the heavens, and at 
 the same time, he denounced the pope who then was 
 the trustee of the keys, as the embodiment of evil 
 whom nobody was held to obey. Equally contradic- 
 tory was his attitude to the Jews. In his chief work, 
 
 [48]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 "The Mystery of the Cross," he denounces them 
 as rebels against the kingdom of God in the style of 
 mediaeval scholasticism. In one individual instance 
 he uses milder forms of expression. The Republic of 
 Lucca had asked the famous monk for an opinion on 
 the question whether it was permitted to allow Jews 
 to settle in the city and engage in the business of 
 usury. Such invitations were usually extended to 
 Jews in the various cities of Italy by princes or mu- 
 nicipal boards. The Jews, often associated in busi- 
 ness, obtained the privileges of a bank whose business 
 was an aid to commerce and industry. The mendi- 
 cant friars, always ready to utilize every opportunity 
 of gaining influence in public life, aroused the popu- 
 lation to rebellion against the authorities who favored 
 the enemies of Christ. The Franciscan friar, Ber- 
 nardino da Feltre, preached all over northern Italy 
 against the Jewish exploiters and agitated for the 
 establishment of cheap loan banks, known since that 
 time as "Monte di Pieta." The princes, like the 
 Medici in Florence, did not cherish either the form or 
 the object of the agitation, and the Dominican friars, 
 as rivals of the Franciscans, denounced the loan banks 
 as sinful, inasmuch as talking of interest was sin iu 
 itself. Savonarola's view is a compromise. The 
 Jews, so he says in his reply to the aldermen of Lucca, 
 are to be preserved as a living testimony to the truth 
 of Christianity. "Slay them not, lest my people for- 
 get," he quotes from Psalms (Psalm 59, 11). They 
 
 [49]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 may be admitted not in order to practice usury, but 
 if they do it after they are admitted, it may be toler- 
 ated, just as prostitutes are tolerated to avoid a greater 
 evil. Savonarola's view is that of scholastic theology 
 and in accordance with the principles laid down by 
 Pope Innocent III in the thirteenth century, which 
 was even maintained by the New York Presbytery in 
 its synod, held in 1849 (Occident, VII, 491) and by 
 the " Churchman, " the organ of the Episcopal 
 Church in 1856. (ib. XIV, 31.) At the same time he 
 urged the establishment of a Monte di Pieta in 
 Florence under the auspices of the state. 
 
 Savonarola is claimed by the Protestant Church. 
 Pope Pius IV condemned his doctrines as Lutheran, 
 Luther declared him as his forerunner, and his statue 
 is seen at the foot of the Luther monument in Worms. 
 While historic analogies are never complete, we may 
 justly say that the Dominican friar who died at the 
 stake in Florence on May 23, 1498, as a martyr for 
 the liberty of conscience, and cruel, as his view on the 
 Jews is, measured by our own standard of religious 
 liberty, he foreshadows, nevertheless, the awakening 
 of justice toward the victims of ecclesiastic tyranny. 
 
 Martin Luther whose bold challenge of the right 
 of ecclesiastic authority to control the individual con- 
 science, makes him the prophet of a new era, is like 
 Savonarola, full of contradictions, when viewed in the 
 light of the modern conception of freedom of con- 
 science. 
 
 [50]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 His inconsistency, manifest in approving of the 
 execution of Michael Servet, while he demanded toler- 
 ation for his own departure from the standard of 
 ecclesiastic othodoxy, insisting on the sacramental 
 character of the communion service, while he rejected 
 five of the sacraments of the Catholic Church, is 
 equally manifest in his attitude to the Jews. In his 
 earlier works, especially in his pamphlet, entitled: 
 ' ' Jesus, born a Jew ' ' he condemns the persecutions of 
 the Jews by the medieval church, advocates kindness 
 toward them as means of their conversion to Christian- 
 ity and toleration of those who refuse to convert. 
 He goes even so far as to say that had he been born a 
 Jew and seen the idolatry, practiced by the "Papists" 
 in the name of Christianity, he would sooner have 
 become a hog than a Christian. This pamphlet was 
 published in 1523. Twenty years later Luther 
 changed his attitude. In two pamphlets of which the 
 more important bears the title "About the Jews and 
 their Lies" he joins with his Catholic opponent, 
 John Eck, in reviling the Jews. Even the hope in 
 their conversion is abandoned, for the Jewish heart is 
 so "stocksteineisenteufelshart" that one might sooner 
 expect to convert the devil himself than a Jew. The 
 only solution of the Jewish question is to kill all 
 Jewish adults, and educate their children as Chris- 
 tians. Various causes have contributed to this re- 
 markable change. Various converts from Judaism 
 had filled Luther with bitter hatred of their former 
 
 [51]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 co-religionists, by their stories of the ridicule of his 
 work on the part of the Jews, another proof of the 
 great reformer's inconsistency who allowed himself to 
 be influenced by apostates from Judaism, while at the 
 same time he declared in his writings that there was 
 no such thing as a sincere convert to Christianity from 
 Judaism. Besides, the experiences of his later life, 
 the continued strife in the church, the disagreement 
 in the camp of the reformers, political and economic 
 radicalism which threw Germany into a state of an- 
 archy, and for which his work was held responsible, 
 and finally physical ailment had embittered the soul 
 of the man who like all great men was of an impetuous 
 temperament. So he went back on the humane ideals 
 which he had expressed in 1523, and in 1537 refused 
 to receive the Jewish advocate Josel of Rosheim who 
 brought a letter of introduction from Luther's trusted 
 friend, Pastor Capito of Strasburg, with the request 
 that Luther assist Josel in his attempt to make the 
 Elector of Saxony, Luther's protector, repeal the edict 
 of expulsion of the Jews from his states. 
 
 The fundamental principle of the Reformation was 
 the examination of church doctrines by the words of 
 the Bible. For this purpose the study of the Hebrew 
 language was necessary. Luther advocated this 
 study and introduced it in the university of Witten- 
 berg, in which he held a chair as professor. His own 
 knowledge of Hebrew was limited. It does not seem 
 to have gone beyond the ability to read an occasional 
 
 [52]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 Hebrew word, quoted in the older Latin commentaries 
 of the Old Testament. As the knowledge of Hebrew 
 among Christians was exceedingly rare in those days, 
 Luther had to employ converted Jews as professors 
 in Wittenberg, but he changed them constantly, as 
 inefficient for one reason or other. Bernhard Gepier 
 (the name seems to point to Goeppingen, Wuertem- 
 berg) the same man whose stories seem to be re- 
 sponsible for Luther's animosity, expressed in his 
 anti-Jewish pamphlets, was an ignorant man who 
 even after his conversion was unable to sign his name 
 in other than Hebrew characters. He naturally could 
 not command the respect of his students, and soon 
 afterwards changed his position for that of a night- 
 watchman. Mathaeus Adrianus, a Spanish Jew who 
 was a physician, and seems to have been originally 
 converted to Catholicism, teaching at the University 
 of Louvain, then as now a center of Catholic scholar- 
 ship, became a Protestant, and taught Hebrew at 
 Wittenberg. For unknown reasons he fell out with 
 Luther and was discharged. A successor of his, 
 Johann Boeschenstein, was born a Christian, and one 
 of the few who were qualified to teach Hebrew. He 
 was even less able to agree with Luther, because he 
 wished to teach Hebrew as an academic study, while 
 Luther angrily declared, he did not mean to train his 
 students to become preachers in the synagog, and 
 Boeschenstein speaks of Luther as a fanatic friar 
 (ab atrato quodam circulatore) (Bauch: Die Em- 
 
 [53]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 fuehrung des Hebraeischen in Wittenberg. Mo- 
 natsschrift flier Geschichte und Wissenschaft des 
 Judentums, Vol. 48, p. 22 et seq. 1904). 
 
 The desire for the knowledge of Hebrew among 
 Christians increased constantly, partly, as was done in 
 the case of Ruechlin from strictly academic, humanis- 
 tic motives, and partly inspired by religious senti- 
 ments. Rabbis began to discuss the question, whether 
 it was permissible to instruct Christians in Hebrew, 
 and Christian scholars recommended this study as part 
 of the prescribed curriculum for secondary institu- 
 tions. (Elijah Manahem Half an 's opinion, written 
 in 1544, Revue des Etudes Juifs, XXVIII, Allg. 
 Zeitg. d. Judentums, 1897, pp. 463-464. Solomon 
 Luria, Baba Kamma, IV, 9, who strongly condemns 
 the teaching of Hebrew to Christians. He is approv- 
 ingly quoted by Isaiah Horowitz in fol. 185a and by 
 Hayyim Hezekiah Medini X, 133, Warsaw, 1901. 
 Michael Neander (a disciple of Luther and Melanch- 
 thon) ; Bendencken an einen guten Herrn and Freund, 
 wie ein Knabe zu Leiten und zu Unterweisen, etc. 
 Eisleben, 1582. (see Steinschneider, Hebr. Biblio- 
 graphic VII, pp. 69-71.) 
 
 Solomon Luria who wrote about 1545, gives as one 
 reason for his disapproval of the teaching of Hebrew 
 to Christians, his experience of cases of apostasy of 
 such teachers, and it is quite probable that some of 
 the numerous cases of conversion to Christianity by 
 learned Jews that occurred about this time, represent 
 
 [54]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 instances in which the Jewish teacher was influenced 
 by his Christian pupil to embrace the religion of the 
 New Testament. One of the most remarkable in-j 
 stances is that of Immanuel Tremellius, 1510-1580, 
 an Italian, at first a monk, who afterwards converted 
 to the Reformed church, became a close friend of 
 Calvin, whose Catechism he translated into Hebrew 
 as a text book for the conversion of the Jews. He also 
 translated the Old Testament from the Hebrew into 
 Latin because the Reformers would not use the Vul- 
 gate, the official Latin church Bible, as biased in 
 the Catholic sense, and needed a Latin Bible text for 
 quotations in their scholarly works which were 
 written in Latin. 
 
 Another co-worker of the early Reformers was a 
 Polish Jew who as Christian called himself Luke 
 Helic. We hear of him first in 1570, when he joined 
 the Moravian Brethren, whom he assisted in the trans- 
 lation of the Bible into the Slavic language, the so- 
 called Bible of Kralitz. In Eibenschitz, Moravia, 
 he was ordained as minister of the Brethren commun- 
 ity and served as such in the Moravian town of 
 Fulnek in 1581. He returned in 1592 to Posen, and 
 caused the community constant trouble. (Ottuv 
 Slovnik naucny, dil XI. Prague, 1897.) One Paul 
 Helic of Cracow published already in 1540 Luther 'g 
 translation of the New Testament in Hebrew char- 
 acters in Cracow. (Jahrbuch, Jued. Liter. Gesell- 
 schaft, X. 301. Frankfort o. M. 1913.) It was evi- 
 
 [55]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 dently done for the sake of missionary work among 
 the Jews. It is not known whether he was a relative 
 of Luke Helic. 
 
 Marco Perez was a Marano who had left Spain to 
 escape from the Inquisition. Like many others of his 
 class he turned first to the Netherlands, where, al- 
 though the country was a Spanish possession, the 
 Inquisition was less powerful in the first half of the 
 sixteenth century. There he became an ardent 
 follower of Calvin's teachings, had the "Institution," 
 Calvin's main work, published at his own expense in 
 30,000 copies for distribution in Spain. When the 
 Inquisition spread its horrors to the Netherlands, 
 Perez emigrated to Basel (1567) where he became a 
 benefactor of the numerous Huguenot refugees, for 
 whose benefit he established a silk mill. There he 
 also had the Spanish translation of the Bible printed 
 at his own expense. (Allg. Zeitg. d. Judentums, 
 1898, 477). While Perez must have been a sincere 
 enthusiast, it is safe to assume that the majority of 
 the converts from Judaism, won by both parties in 
 Christendom, were guided by mercenary motives and 
 tried to make themselves useful by heaping abuse on, 
 and often maliciously slandering, their former relig- 
 ion, and its followers. Paul Staffelstein of Nurem- 
 berg published in 1536 "Ein kurze Underrichtung, 
 das man einfeltig dem Herrn Jesu Christo nachwand- 
 ern . . . sol, und die juedischen . . . Heuchler und 
 Gleisner nicht sol abwenden lassen." Paul, reminis- 
 
 [56]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 cent of the fanatic Pharisee Paul, who had turned 
 into an enthusiastic believer in Christ's resurrection, 
 was a name favored by apostates from Judaism. One 
 Paul Pfedersheimer became a Franciscan friar about 
 the same time when Staffelsteiner became a Protestant. 
 He instructed another brother of the same order, 
 Konrad Pellican, in Hebrew, and the latter w r as the 
 first Christian to write a textbook of Hebrew grammar 
 in German. This instruction may have contributed 
 to a change in Pellican 's religious views. He left the 
 order and the church, and became a follower of the 
 Swiss hero reformer, Ulrich Zwingli. (Bacher: Zur 
 Biographic Elijah Levitas. Monatsschrift fuer 
 Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums, vol. 
 37, pp. 398-404. 1893.) 
 
 We see that Catholicism, as well as Protestantism, 
 had its accessions from the ranks of the Jews. It 
 seems that there was more to gain in the Catholic 
 Church. One of these converts for revenue was 
 Antonius Margaritha, the son of Rabbi Jacob Margalit 
 of Ratisbon, who slandered his former co-religionists 
 in a mean pamphlet, entitled "Der Gantze Juedische 
 Glaube." The book is so idiotic that it would bore 
 the reader, were it not for its vile tone which gives 
 evidence of the mercenary motives of its author. 
 Margaritha did not find satisfaction in the pay roll 
 of the Catholic church and tried to sell his convictions 
 to Luther, but with no better success. It is a great 
 pity that Jewish authors of that time were so bitter 
 
 [57]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 against apostates that, as we saw in the case of Solo- 
 mon Luria, they would not mention their names, thus 
 depriving us of the information so interesting from 
 an historical point of view, what the Jews had to say 
 about the motives of men like Margaritha, the son of 
 a rabbi, or Johannes Levita Isaac, 1515-1577, who 
 was rabbi in "Wetzlar and became a Protestant in 
 mature manhood. Teaching Hebrew in Louvain, 
 he turned to Catholicism, and educated his son 
 Stephen who was born as a Jew in 1547, as Catholic. 
 The latter took orders, was professor in Cologne, and 
 there became a convert to Protestantism, writing a 
 number of polemical works against Catholicism. 
 (Wetzer und "Welte, Kirchenlexikon, article: Isaac, 
 VII, 938. 2. ed.) 
 
 Individual instances of such apostasies we find all 
 the time, for there are always rogues willing to sell 
 their conscience, and dupes willing to buy it. Yet 
 it can hardly be denied that the religious excitement 
 produced by the upheaval within the Church, made 
 itself felt in the ghetto too. There were at all events 
 largely increased opportunities for people acquiring 
 and changing religious convictions. Protestantism 
 had made great headway through the printing press, 
 and we saw in the case of Marco Perez that its ad- 
 vocates made great sacrifices in order to spread the 
 new gospel. The Roman Catholic Church felt that 
 it had to watch its fold against the attacks by literary 
 wolves, and established strict censorship of all books. 
 
 [58]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 Naturally Jewish converts for revenue saw their 
 opportunity. Following the example of equally ig- 
 noble predecessors, dating back to the thirteenth 
 century, before the printing press existed, they called 
 the attention of the commision appointed for the 
 compilation of the Index of Prohibited Books, as it 
 was now called, to the fact that Jewish literature con- 
 tained many books which denied the divinity of 
 Jesus, his virgin birth, his resurrection and his ascent 
 into heaven. A special index commission was ap- 
 pointed, and one of its members, who signs as Do- 
 menico Gerosolymitano, though he was a native of 
 Egypt, had so suddenly become convinced of the 
 truth of Christianity, that he had no time to acquire 
 even the Latin alphabet, signing the imprimatur of 
 the books which he revised, in Hebrew characters. 
 (Steinschneider: Hebr. Bibliographic, V, 76, 97, 125. 
 Berliner. Gesammelte Schrifteu, I, 19.) 
 
 While Judaism, persecuted in a manner which has 
 no parallel in the world's history, was bound to lose 
 those weak characters who from a material point of 
 view had everything to gain by their apostasy, it re- 
 quired no small amount of firmness for non-Jews who 
 were in sympathy with the plain ideas of monotheism, 
 to profess their views openly. The first one who, 
 drawing the consequences of the principle of Reforma- 
 tion, followed his own convictions regardless of ecclesi- 
 astic authority, was the Spaniard Michael Servet. 
 He came to the conclusion that the New Testament 
 
 [59]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 did not teach Trinity and expressed this view openly. 
 Feeling his life threatened in Catholic countries, 
 he turned to Geneva, believing that Calvin who had 
 found there a refuge from persecution would be will- 
 ing to act consistently on the same principle towards 
 those who differed with him, but he was sadly disap- 
 pointed. Calvin, who decoyed him to Geneva by am- 
 biguous promises, had him burned at the stake in 1553. 
 Luther approved of this act with equal inconsistency. 
 The blood of martyrs has always proven the seed of a 
 new religion. Servet's sympathizers, persecuted in 
 free Switzerland, turned to the wilds of Poland, and 
 found there a foothold simultaneously with the 
 Jesuits who were called there a year after Servet's 
 martyrdom. While their pioneers, like Lelio Socino 
 and his nephew Fausto, were professed Christians 
 who merely denied the divinity of Jesus, some of 
 them went farther, declaring that the transfer of the 
 Sabbath to the first day of the week was a violation 
 of the Divine will, and others going still farther re- 
 jected the fundamental principle of Paulinian Chris- 
 tianity, which declared the Law abrogated, and 
 professed Judaism without any limitation. 
 
 These sectaries found accession among a class of 
 Christians in the Slavic east of Europe, who since 
 1470 under the influence of a missionary named 
 Zechariah, and supposed to have been a Karaite, had 
 more or less accepted the doctrines of Judaism. They 
 had found followers among the high dignitaries of 
 
 [60]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 the Russian church, like Zosima, the metropolitan of 
 Kiew. Their number grew in spite of wholesale 
 executions and banishments, and their descendants, 
 named variously Sobotniki (Sabbatharians), Molokani 
 (milk people, a term not satisfactorily explained), and 
 Yudeyushtshvi (Judaizers) survive in large numbers 
 in Transcaucasia, where the czars Alexander I and 
 Nicholas I exiled them, unable to coerce them back 
 into the Greek Orthodox Church. (Johannes Geh- 
 ring: Die Sekten der Russischen Kirche, 1003-1897. 
 Nach ihrem Ursprunge und inneren Zusammenhange 
 dargestellt. Leipsic, 1898.) Jacob Emden, who is 
 very reliable, reports that in 1763 a large number of 
 peasants from the Ukraine emigrated to Turkey in 
 order to escape persecution and to live as Jews, 
 (Hitabbekut, p. 19a, 46a, 59b. Lember, 1877.) With 
 the growing power of the Jesuit order in Poland the 
 Unitarians were compelled to leave and found a new 
 home in Transylvania which, being contested terri- 
 tory between Christians of various denominations and 
 Mohammedans, offered them a refuge. Yet even there 
 they were not free from persecution during the 
 ascendancy of Christian dominion. Catherine Wej- 
 giel or Zalaszewska, the widow of a member of the 
 Cracow city council was burned at the stake in 1539 
 for refusing to believe in Trinity. (Graetz Geschichte, 
 IX, 454, 3. ed. Ha-Eshkol, VI, 227, 1909. Allg. 
 Zeitg. d. Judt. 1909, p. 576. Jahrbuch der Jued. Liter. 
 Gesellschaft, VII, 375. 1910. IX, 499. 1912. Oesterr. 
 
 [61]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 Worhenschrift, 1914, p. 133.) In Transylvania 
 various princes and diets had since the end of the 
 sixteenth century legislated against these heretics. One 
 of their number, John Toroczkai, was stoned to death 
 in 1638, thus being given to understand that even 
 the Christian Law was occasionally a hard taskmaster ; 
 but with all these persecutions the seed of Unitari- 
 anism continued to bear fruit, and in 1869 the rem- 
 nants of their descendants in Transylvania, at last 
 freed from legal restrictions, openly professed Juda- 
 ism, while in Transcaucasia according to the estimate 
 of German Protestant missionaries who can hardly be 
 suspected to exaggerate, 15,000 peasants of Russian 
 nationality are devout and steadfast Jews. A num- 
 ber of them emigrated to Palestine and a small colony 
 lives in Los Angeles, California. It is also fairly 
 certain that the author of a polemical work against 
 Christianity, Isaac of Troki, who lived in the sixteenth 
 century, was a convert to Judaism. Graetz, (Ge- 
 schichte, IX, pp. 456-457, 3 ed.) believes him to have 
 been a Karaite, which is possible, but would not 
 militate against the conjecture that he was originally 
 a Unitarian. For his Christian origin speaks his 
 knowledge of the New Testament and of Christian 
 polemical literature and also the name Isaac ben 
 Abraham, the latter often assumed by proselytes on 
 the ground of the rabbinic theology which makes 
 Abraham the prototype of all missionaries. (Gen 
 Rabb, 44.) 
 
 [62]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 Considering the great advantages offered to Jews 
 who turned Christians and the dangers which con- 
 fronted converts to Judaism, we have a right to be 
 proud of the facts, but it does not seem that the 
 struggle between religions has ever been settled by a 
 melodramatic surrender, such as may have been the 
 dream of Pope Benedict XIII when he arranged the 
 disputation of Tortosa in 1413. The Jews won 
 another more decisive victory. They persisted to live 
 in spite of discrimination, persecution and humilia- 
 tion, and the most enlightened rulers learned that the 
 prophet Zechariah was right, when he warned tyrants 
 that Jerusalem would be a burdensome stone and 
 those who would try to move it, would hurt them- 
 selves, while those who would injure Israel would 
 touch the apple of their own eye. The exiles from 
 Spain found new homes, not only in Mohammedan 
 Turkey and in the Protestant states of Holland, 
 Hamburg and England, but even in the territories of 
 some enlightened Catholic princes right under the 
 eyes of the pope, who, however, as was the case with 
 Alexander VI, in times of financial stress overlooked 
 previous conditions and allowed refugees from the 
 Inquisition, although baptized, to live as Jews in their 
 own states. A Talmudic statement that it was a 
 providential act of God to divide the world into so 
 many realms that in case of tyranny in one, the Jews 
 could find refuge in another, (Pesahim 87b) proved 
 true, especially in Germany and Italy. Emanuel Phili- 
 
 [63]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 bert, Duke of Savoy, had admitted such fugitives in 
 1551. A papal nuncio who was anxious to win his 
 spurs in the service of the Church, reported the fact. 
 The duke denied that his Jewish subjects had ever 
 been Christians, but he was bound to expel them, al- 
 though after a while the Church winked at this order, 
 and they were tolerated again. The senate of the 
 duchy of Milan, then (1597) under the rule of the 
 fiendish and bigoted Philip II of Spain, asked for an 
 opinion on the Jewish question, had the courage to 
 declare that by the law of nature the Jews are to be 
 considered fellow human beings to whom humane 
 treatment was due. ( Impero che participando essi con 
 li cristiani della ragione della natura e chiamandosi 
 prossimi non si devar negar loro la ragione della com- 
 munione humana. Vessillo, Israelitico, 1915, pp. 337- 
 339.) 
 
 Tuscany, whose rulers of the house of Medici had 
 risen from the counting room, was still more appre- 
 ciative of the economic importance of the Jews. 
 They opened their land to them as to Greeks and 
 Mohammedans, regardless of ecclesiastic laws. The 
 consequence was that the Jews, whom the bitter enemy 
 of the Medicis, Savonarola, had denounced as dan- 
 gerous on acount of their usurious practices, now 
 under the rule of these benevolent autocrats, who 
 opened to them other avenues of livelihood, became 
 merchants on a large scale, raising the port of Leg- 
 horn to first-class importance in the Levant trade, 
 
 [64]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 and developing the silk and coral industries which to 
 this day are giving to the city its importance. The 
 removal of the restrictions on the practice of Jewish 
 physicians, which, while decreed by popes and council, 
 were disregarded by prelates and popes alike in their 
 own cases, gave to Jewish talent opportunities in 
 professional life. Ecclesiastic tyranny and profes- 
 sional, usually mercenary jealousy, tried to blacken 
 the character of Jewish physicians (George Marius 
 (originally Meier) ; In Judaeorum Medicastrorum 
 Calumnia et Homicidia pro Christianis Pia Exhor- 
 tatio. Marburg, 1570. See also article: Lopez in 
 Jewish Encyclopaedia), but the public rendered here 
 as in business relations, the final verdict which was 
 favorable to the Jews. The Jesuits staged ritual 
 murder trials and host desecration dramas in Poland, 
 and claiming that a number of Jews had sneaked into 
 the order, and occupied a high rank in it, passed under 
 the fifth general Claudius Aquaviva (1581-1615) a 
 rule that men of Jewish ancestry to the fifth genera- 
 tion can not enter the order. (Institutum Societatis 
 Jesu. Decreta Congr. V. 52, Congr. VI. 28. Flor- 
 ence, 1893, II, pp 278-279, 302. Count Hoensbroech : 
 Vierzehn Jahre Jesuit. Leipsic, 1910, II. 10.) 
 
 We have lived to see the time when right under the 
 eyes of the Black Pope, as the Jesuit general is called, 
 a Jew, Ernest Nathan, was mayor of Rome and 
 another Jew, Luigi Luzzatti, was directing the govern- 
 ment of the United Italy which was the dream of the 
 
 [65]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 infidel Machiavelli and of the mystic monk Savona- 
 rola alike. As in Leghorn, when the law of intolerance 
 was broken, so in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, New 
 York and in all important centers of commerce and 
 industry, the Jews have shown that their supposed 
 harmful influence was due not to their innate charac- 
 ter but to the restrictions imposed upon them, and that 
 it would have paid Philip II of Spain to accept the 
 advice of the senate of Milan and treat the Jews as 
 "Prossimi" to whom "communione humana" ought 
 not to be denied.
 
 IV 
 
 When I speak of "we" as authors of memoirs, I 
 mean "we" the small people who have never com- 
 manded in a naval battle, nor attempted to reach the 
 North pole, who have not invented an apparatus for 
 wireless telegraphy, nor written Faust or Hamlet, 
 who have not distinguished themselves as premiers of 
 a great country, nor as assassins of a noted monarch. 
 
 The average people think there is nothing interest- 
 ing in such memoirs. I believe, with Leibniz, the 
 great to be an evolution of the small (les perceptions 
 petites). Cognitio est adaequata, quum id omne, quod 
 notitiam distinctam ingreditur, rursus distincte cogni- 
 tiim est. The arguments for my statement are evi- 
 dent. Even our interest in the biography of great men 
 is a proof of it. We are interested in the life of Wash- 
 ington as a civil engineer or as a landholder, because 
 we wish to understand the great man not only as a 
 strategist or as a statesman, but as one who is hu- 
 man like ourselves. A clear insight into the condition 
 of the average Virginia farmer of the eighteenth 
 century is absolutely necessary for us, if we wish to 
 
 U. 0. Journal, Vol. V, pages 4-10, September, 1900. 
 
 [67]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 understand the heroic figure of the leader towering 
 above his contemporaries. 
 
 Unfortunately Jewish history, owing to the de- 
 ficiency of our sources, lacks this personal element. 
 We possess the literary productions of past ages, but 
 in many cases we do not know their authors, and in 
 no case previous to the eighteenth century do we 
 possess that notitiam distinctam which is necessary 
 for a cognitio adequata. 
 
 We possess a codification of Jewish laws, called 
 Halakot Gedolot, supposed to be the work of Simeon 
 Kayara, written in 741. The first question is, whether 
 this gentleman 's name is Kayara, the Thora-reader, or 
 Kahira, which would make him a Cairene (see: Neu- 
 bauer, Letterbode, IV, 65). Another question is, 
 whether we shall trust those authorities who call 
 Simeon Kayara the author of this book and whom we 
 can follow back to the tenth century (Respp. Geonim, 
 ed. Harkavy, Berlin 1885, p. 191) or whether we 
 shall accept the testimony of others, going back to 
 Rashi (Berakot 42, a) who make Jehuday Gaon the 
 author of this compendium. A decision on this ques- 
 tion would not make Mr. Jacob Biegeleisen, of Taylor, 
 Wash., hats, gents' furnishing goods, etc., feel any 
 more comfortable. I don't blame him. We would 
 have collars, cuffs, neckties and nightrobes, if Simon 
 Kayara had never lived and if Halakot Gedolot had 
 never existed. To me it would be of some interest 
 to have light on the question. I suspect that this 
 
 [68]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 work was written much against the wish of the 
 Geonim. It was somewhat handier and more sys- 
 tematically arranged than the Talmud. It might in 
 some instances render an appeal to the Geonim un- 
 necessary, and we do not wish to be dispensable. 
 The Geonim said, the authors of "Halakot" are 
 incendiaries, destroying the law. (Temurah 14b.) 
 This is quite natural. Since a handy volume, with 
 appropriate headings makes the law more accessible 
 to the less learned, the admiration for the Gaon would 
 decrease. Our high-school professors do not approve 
 of "ponies;" in my time they did not even permit 
 " Special woerterbuecher. " The rabbis of the begin- 
 ning of the nineteenth century were very much 
 opposed to the works of Abraham Danziger, because 
 they contained the material of the laws on ritual in a 
 much handier form than any of the older works. 
 So Simeon Kayara's biography would be of some 
 interest, even if what is not very likely the Hala- 
 kot Gedolot had been written verbatim as we possess 
 them. 
 
 But I have a far stronger proof for the benefit 
 derived from the Perceptions petites. A younger con- 
 temporary of Simeon Kayara and of Jehuday Gaon 
 was a sort of a peddler or travelling merchant whom 
 I do not even know by name, but whose biography 
 would be intensely interesting to me and perhaps even 
 to our friend Mr. Jacob Biegeleisen. This unknown 
 gentleman is spoken of in a biography of Charlemagne 
 
 [69]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 written by an anonymous monk of St. Gallen, in 
 Switzerland. The author tells us that Charlemagne 
 wished to play a trick on a parsimonious bishop and 
 for this the Jew had to serve him. The Jew went to 
 the bishop, showed him his goods, amongst which was 
 a mounted mouse. This attracted the bishop's 
 attention and he asked what it was for. The Jew 
 replied that he had bought it in the East for a great 
 deal of money; it was a charm of great value. The 
 bishop offered three pounds, but the Jew said: "I 
 would sooner throw it into the sea." The bishop 
 offered eight pounds, but the Jew said : ' ' The God of 
 Abraham would not have me lose time and money." 
 Thereupon the bishop offered twenty pounds, but 
 the Jew instead of giving a reply, wrapped his mouse 
 in costly silk and turned to the door. Then the 
 bishop offered a peck of silver. The Jew hesitated, 
 and with profuse protestations of his disinterestedness 
 finally yielded. He brought the money to the 
 emperor who publicly rebuked the bishop for his 
 worldliness. (Freytag: Bilder aus der deutschen 
 Vergangenheit, vol. I, p. 322). 
 
 This story is highly interesting. It shows that the 
 Jew in the eighth century was a trader in the highest 
 sense of the word, an importer, an advance agent of 
 civilization. This business brought him in contact 
 with the greatest on earth. He enjoyed their con- 
 fidence and what is of greater moment he deserved 
 it. He was shrewd in business, he swore by the God 
 
 [70]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 of Abraham, but he was honest. Of what great 
 interest would it be to us, had this peddler written 
 his biography, telling us where his home was, how 
 he had been taught, how he came to Germany, where 
 he bought his goods, how he was introduced to 
 Charlemagne's court, where he ate and where he 
 slept while on his journey and so many other things ! 
 How I would love to read his letters addressed to his 
 wife and to his children ! In his days, however, and 
 this is my point, this interesting man was a very 
 commonplace personality, and his letters were de- 
 void of all interest to anyone except the nearest of 
 kin and even to them they were of merely passing 
 interest. 
 
 Why should we small people write memoirs ? Be- 
 cause there may come a time when no one will be 
 able to supply the information which they contain. 
 Goethe, the author of Faust, we know through his 
 works, but it is Goethe, the student, who was no 
 more than a bright young man in whom we are 
 interested. The Coliseum, the arch of Titus, the 
 needle of Cleopatra are certainly very valuable 
 relics of art, but we need for a full comprehension of 
 ancient life such relics as a shoemaker's shop, the 
 notebook of a schoolboy, the interior of a tavern, 
 a middle class people's kitchen, a plow, a stable 
 and briefly just those things which in those times 
 no one would have described or preserved, because 
 everybody knew them. 
 
 [71]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 Our rabbis were wise when they said: "Do not 
 say: 'When I shall be at leisure, I shall study, for 
 perhaps thou shalt never be at leisure.' ' It was 
 Goethe, if I am not mistaken, who said that a man 
 should begin to write his memoirs at the age of fifty. 
 It is a fact that he who began at the age of sixty 
 committed many serious errors which can be proven 
 as such from documents. Even fifty is late. I rec- 
 ollect, e. g. very dimly that I was acquainted with 
 Theodore Herzl when we both were students in 
 Vienna, 1879-1881. I also recollect that Herzl spoke 
 to me of Judaism as a matter of no consequence, but 
 in those days no one knew that there would ever be 
 such a thing as a Zionistic movement and that Herzl 
 would be its leader. There were then about 5,000 
 or 6,000 students in the university of Vienna and 
 most likely more than 1,000 members in the 
 ' ' Akademische Lesehalle" and I did not keep a 
 diary, but today I am very sorry that I did not 
 take down verbatim what Herzl said to me. 
 
 Just we Jews have in this respect a meagre litera- 
 ture. There is nothing of memoirs known to me pre- 
 vious to the sxiteenth century, when the great 
 ' ' Shtadlan ' ' Josel Rosheim wrote his book. Occasional 
 incidents like the arrest of Yomtob Lipman Heller 
 for blasphemy have prompted people to write down 
 their experiences, but the oldest memoirs in our sense, 
 are the naive descriptions of Jewish life in the seven- 
 
 [72]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 teenth and eighteenth centuries by Glueckel of 
 Hameln and Jacob Emden. 
 
 I have drifted into the ''why," while I was to 
 speak on the "when." It is never too early as we 
 saw in the case of Goethe and as I can prove from 
 numerous instances. Imagination is always en- 
 croaching upon our intellect. If I were to read to a 
 class the story of Charlemagne and the Jew, and 
 then ask them to write it down, you can depend 
 upon it that everyone will add something of his own. 
 Besides the unconscious working of the imaginative 
 faculty, there is the frequent wilful misrepresenta- 
 tion of facts. Here is an excellent illustration. In 
 the diary of empress Augusta, grandmother of the 
 present emperor, the story is told that the empress 
 regretted the growth of anti-Semitism so much, be- 
 cause it impeded the progress of the Christianization 
 of the Jews. In this connection, the empress says 
 that Zunz, at her teas had expressed his regret at 
 having remained a Jew or, as he put it, at the great 
 whim of his life. Zunz died March 18, 1886; Em- 
 press Augusta, Jan. 7, 1890 ; her diary was published 
 by one of her ladies-in-waiting in 1892 ; consequently 
 all evidence would seem to prove the reliableness of 
 the narrative, but it is all false. Zunz never was at 
 the court. Zunz was strongly opposed to apostasy 
 and this cynical remark about a whim comes from 
 Heine and has been adulterated by Karpeles. 
 (Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, 1893, p. 110.) 
 
 [73]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 The author of this story mixed up Berthold Auer- 
 bach, to whom the empress spoke with regret of the 
 growth of anti-Semitism, with Zunz and put into 
 Zunz's mouth a witticism which Heine had used in 
 regard to Zunz and which she had read in a changed 
 form in Karpeles' book on Heine. 
 
 In 1886 a Spanish author, Menendez Pelayo, wrote 
 an essay on Acosta published in the Madrid paper, 
 El Dia, in which he includes a supposed letter of 
 Daniel de Barrios dated May 25, 1641, in which de 
 Barrios gives an account of Uriel Acosta 's death 
 and adds that R. Isaac Jesurun prophesied that Spi- 
 noza would end similarly. This letter was reprinted 
 in the "Vossische Zeitung" of Berlin, July 18, 1886, 
 and in a number of other papers. The facts are, 
 that in 1641, Spinoza was only eight years old and 
 that de Barrios was not in Amsterdam before 1660. 
 In 1641 no one considered Spinoza's age a matter of 
 any consequence and in 1660 no one believed that it 
 ever would be of any interest to fix the date of the 
 arrival in Amsterdam of de Barrios, who was one 
 of the many fugitives from the Inquisition. 
 
 Moses Mendelssohn died Jan. 4, 1786, and King 
 Frederick the Great, Aug. 17, of the same year. 
 Two years later, Mendelssohn's friend, the publisher 
 Nicolai, wrote a book "Anekdoten ueber Friedrich 
 II," Berlin, 1788. It would appear that time and 
 persons should guarantee the genuineness of the re- 
 ported facts. Yet amongst them is the following 
 
 [74]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 popular anecdote. Marquis d'Argens handed to 
 the king Mendelssohn's petition for a charter 
 "Schutzbrief" in April, 1763, but the petition was 
 pigeonholed. Mendelssohn felt very much humili- 
 ated and yielded only to d'Argens' urgent demands 
 when he wrote another petition, July 12, 1763. 
 D'Argens endorsed this petition with the words: "A 
 philosopher who is a bad Catholic petitions a bad 
 Protestant to grant the desired charter to a phil- 
 osopher who is a bad Jew. There is too much phil- 
 osophy in this petition that common sense should 
 not grant it." This story found its way into Men- 
 delssohn's works, edited by his grandson, I, 49, and 
 from there into Kayserling's biography of Moses 
 Mendelssohn, 1st ed. p. 126 and God knows into how 
 many almanacs, but it is not true. First of all 
 Mendelssohn's charter dates from March 25, 1762, 
 and then we possess a letter from Mendelssohn's 
 own hand dated July 7, 1761, in which he writes to 
 his fiancee that he has to wait with his petition until 
 the king shall have joined the army and that he 
 hoped to obtain the charter without cringing before 
 R. Veitel Veitel Heine Ephraim, the influential 
 mint-contractor (L. Geiger, Berlin, 1688-1840, Ber- 
 lin, 1893, vol. I, p. 393). 
 
 In the cases quoted, there is some wilful invention 
 underlying the reports, but in most instances we 
 find inaccuracies due to the workings of imagination 
 and especially to the shifting of persons and facts, 
 
 [75]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 due to the association of ideas. According to the 
 story told by Graetz (Geschichte, vol. V, 3d ed. p. 
 183) Charlemagne called R. Kalonymus from Lucca 
 to Mayence in 787 to establish there a congregation. 
 The fact that the story is first told in the sixteenth 
 century; that there are no documents proving the 
 existence of Jewish congregations in Germany previ- 
 ous to the eleventh century ; that the appointment of 
 rabbis by the king is something unknown previous 
 to the fifteenth century; goes to prove that it is 
 not true. But it originated in the following way: 
 A man by the name of Kalonymus had saved Em- 
 peror Otto II 's life in Italy, 982. He was perhaps re- 
 warded with some grant in Germany, and a later 
 legend combined this Kalonymus with the more 
 popular emperor Charlemagne. (Zeitschrift fuer 
 Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland vol. II, p. 82, 
 et seq.) 
 
 This series could be endlessly prolonged. I shall 
 give only two more instances because they are par- 
 ticularly striking. In 1785 a Roman Catholic, 
 Joseph Steblicky, a respectable citizen in the town 
 of Nicolai in Upper Silesia, converted to Judaism. 
 He was a man of fifty years, of sober habits, and no 
 outward inducement could have tempted him to 
 take such an unusual step. One should imagine 
 that such an exceptional occurrence should have in- 
 duced people to write it down faithfully. But these 
 are the facts. Steblicky died in 1807 and in 1816 a 
 
 [76]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 man by the name of David Samostz published in 
 German a report of Steblicky's conversion which 
 the rabbi of Nicolai, Samuel Zuelz, had written in 
 Hebrew, and which must have been written not more 
 than thirty years after the event. It is full of ficti- 
 tious features. Steblicky is made burgomaster, he 
 goes to Amsterdam to be converted, the Christians 
 of the town threaten to take his life, all of which, as 
 the court-records prove, is not true. (L. Neustadt: 
 Josef Steblicky, Breslau 1891.) 
 
 In Dr. Wise's biography, the following fact is re- 
 ported as having taken place in 1846. "A move- 
 ment was then on foot to erect a statue in Vienna to 
 Joseph II. the liberal minded emperor. Turning to 
 Auerbach, Fuerst asked: "Dr. Auerbach, what 
 biblical verse would you suggest for this statue?" 
 Quick as a flash Auerbach answered: "Joseph recog- 
 nized his brethren, but they did not know him." 
 (Gen. 43, 8.) (Selected writings of Isaac M. Wise, 
 Cincinnati, 1900, p. 15.) This story cannot be true, 
 the way it is told here. The statue of Joseph II. was 
 erected in 1807, and this remark of Auerbach is 
 found in a story called "Josef und Benjamin" in the 
 first volume of his collection "Zur guten Stunde," 
 Berlin, 1872, vol. I. when he says : of Joseph not in 
 regard to any monument it may be said: "Joseph 
 knew his brethren and they knew him not." I do 
 not doubt that Dr. Wise told the story, but then, his 
 recollections were not exact, and in order to show 
 
 [77]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 how such things originate, I shall, contrary to my 
 original intention, add three incidents of my own 
 experience. 
 
 While in Buffalo attending the rabbinical conven- 
 tion I formed the acquaintance of a very interesting 
 old gentleman, Mr. Kaiser. As he is like myself a 
 Moravian, our conversation turned on topics con- 
 nected with the Jewish history of our native prov- 
 ince. In the course of this conversation, Mr. Kaiser 
 said that he recollected how the congregations of 
 Prague and of Nikolsburg quarreled over the privi- 
 lege of burying the chief rabbi, Marcus Benedict, 
 who had died in Karlsbad. Said I: "Mr. Kaiser, 
 you are mistaken." Said he: "How can I be mis- 
 taken? I recollect it distinctly. I was then a boy 
 fifteen or sixteen years of age." I looked at Mr. 
 Kaiser, who is a very well preserved old man, with 
 some astonishment and said: "How old are you, Mr. 
 Kaiser?" "I am seventy-four," he replied. "Well," 
 said I, "here you have it that you are mistaken. 
 Marcus Benedict died Aug. 12, 1829, and you were 
 then only three years of age. Therefore, you cannot 
 remember the fact distinctly. Further, Benedict 
 died in Karlsbad, where Jews were then not allowed 
 to reside and, therefore, he was buried in Lichten- 
 stadt. The question which arose was, whether he 
 should be left in Lichtenstadt or transferred to 
 Nikolsburg. The latter congregation wished its be- 
 loved pastor to rest among his flock, and the former 
 
 [78]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 did not wish to give him up, presumably because his 
 grave would have been a place of pilgrimage for the 
 many pious Jews visiting Karlsbad. But I tell you, 
 Mr. Kaiser, what you do recollect. You recollect 
 the death of Benedict's successor, Nehemias (Na- 
 hum) Trebitsch, which occurred July 6, 1842, in 
 Prague, his native city, strangely enough, while, like 
 his predecessor, he was on his way to Karlsbad. In 
 this case, the congregation of Nikolsburg was not so 
 eager to obtain the body of the Zaddik and he found 
 his resting place in Prague." Here it is, where Mr. 
 Kaiser got mixed up and it is quite pardonable. If 
 he had kept a diary he would not have been mis- 
 taken. 
 
 The next incident happened while I was in Cleve- 
 land, conversing with another "Landsman," Dr. 
 Wolfenstein, who told me some interesting stories 
 from his student-life in Vienna. Amongst them was 
 the story I shall not give the particulars, for they 
 would surely be wrong of a critic, who in 1861 or 
 so about, had written a review of a new play, from 
 what he had seen at the rehearsal. Next morning 
 the review appeared in the Neue Freie Presse, but un- 
 fortunately, owing to the sudden sickness of an actor, 
 the play had not been given. The story was the talk 
 of the town and the talented critic lost his position. 
 Said I: "Doctor, you are mistaken, for the Neue 
 Freie Presse was not published until 1864 and 
 therefore it either happened later or it was a differ- 
 
 [79]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 ent paper." Dr. Wolfenstein was positive. In 1864 
 he was not in Vienna and it was surely the Neue 
 Freie Presse. Fortunately he possessed a Konversa- 
 tions Lexicon and as this showed that the Neue Freie 
 Press was actually not started before 1864, he had to 
 admit that it was some other paper. 
 
 And now the last! In Cleveland I found in the 
 Home for the Aged a man named Bernhard Weiden- 
 thal, a Bohemian, 85 years old. He had attended 
 the Yeshibah of Nikolsburg and was very glad to see 
 me, especially as for some time he had tried to recall 
 the name of Reb Shmul Reb Phol' Koien's boy who 
 had died meantime as an old man and no one could 
 assist him. Now when I told him that I had known 
 this boy as Reb Moishe Loeb, he was the happiest 
 man on the western hemisphere. But now he had 
 serious grievances. "Mr. Deutsch," he said, "I was 
 longing to see you. You have once written in the 
 Deborah that my teacher, Reb Nochem Trebitsch of 
 blessed memory, was opposed to secular education. 
 I tell you, you are wrong. He even advised me to 
 get a secular education." "Well," said I, "Mr. 
 Weidenthal, I have written a number of things in my 
 life, and not only in the Deborah, which would 
 better not have been written; but in this case, I 
 plead not guilty. I took it from Leopold Loew's 
 works, (II, 99 f.) where this statement is made. I 
 naturally inferred that Loew who lived in Prossnitz, 
 where Nehemias Trebitsch had been rabbi, knew the 
 
 [80]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 facts." "No," said Mr. Weidenthal, "it is not 
 true, ' ' and he gave me a whole story which was well 
 connected and proved that the man's memory is ex- 
 cellent. "Mr. Deutsch," he said, "you have to 
 change that." "Well," said I, "Nehemiah Tre- 
 bisch, as a Zaddik, will come to life again in the re- 
 surrection, but as to the resurrection of the Deborah 
 I am not so sure." Returning home, I found that 
 the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, as early as 
 1838, (p. 196 and 365), contains two contradictory 
 statements. According to one, Trebitsch was op- 
 posed to modern education, according to the other 
 he was orthodox, but not an opponent of secular 
 education. 
 
 The question, yet to be answered, is: "How to 
 write memoirs." I would state it in general. "Write 
 them with consciousness of responsibility to poster- 
 ity, write the full truth and if you cannot, or are 
 afraid of it, say nothing. 
 
 1.81]
 
 THE HUMOR AND TRAGEDY OF 
 "JEW TAXES"* 
 
 In an editorial comment on the death of Emperor 
 Francis Joseph, the Jewish World refers to the 
 ancient custom according to which the congregation 
 of Pressburg presents the Austrian Emperor, or to 
 speak more correctly, the King of Hungary, with 
 Michaelmas geese on November 11. The London 
 paper gives as a reason for this custom that the 
 predecessor of the late Emperor once strolled 
 through the ghetto of Pressburg, and scenting the 
 odor of roast geese, entered a Jewish restaurant, 
 where he tasted some of this famous product of the 
 Jewish kitchen, and being highly pleased with it, or- 
 dered that the congregation present him every year 
 with this delicacy. The story is, of course, without 
 basis in fact, although the legend has been repeated 
 with numerous variations. Some even go back as 
 far as the reign of King Mathias, in the fifteenth 
 century, while others, more modest, ascribe it to 
 Joseph II, who was indeed wont to appear unexpect- 
 edly, in any part of his empire, and is said to have 
 entered, incognito, a Jewish restaurant in the Press- 
 
 ''The American Israelite, January 11, 1917. 
 
 [82]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 burg ghetto. Again others, with a touch of roman- 
 ticism, ascribe it to Francis II, the grandfather of 
 the late Emperor, who is said to have fled after the 
 battle of Austerlitz, in 1805, and to have arrived 
 very hungry at Pressburg, where he entered a kosher 
 restaurant to obtain a meal. Needless to say, all 
 these romantic stories are fiction without any his- 
 toric basis. 
 
 No better is Guedemann's (Geschichte des Erzie- 
 hungswesens III, 183) rationalistic attempt to ex- 
 plain this custom as having originated from an 
 incident reported of Emperor Maximilian (1493- 
 1519), to whom the German Jews made a coronation 
 present of golden eggs. The Emperor, upon his 
 ascent to the throne, had been approached by the 
 enemies of the Jews, with the request to expel all 
 Jews from Germany. When he received this pres- 
 ent he was so highly pleased, that he said, it would 
 be folly to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. 
 The report of such a generous present is highly sus- 
 picious. The truth is, that Maximilian's father, 
 Frederick III (1440-1493), was a friend of the Jews, 
 and repeatedly refused to act upon the hostile de- 
 mands made by the Austrian "states," and that the 
 latter expected from his successor a different policy, 
 but were disappointed. These golden eggs have a 
 counterpart in the story reported from Worms at 
 the occupation of the city by the French in 1689, 
 that the Jews presented the French general with 
 
 [83]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 two geese that were filled with louis d'ors. A con- 
 temporary, Alderman Seidenbender, who is author- 
 ity for this story, tries to prove from it that the Jews 
 were the cause of the fall of the city (Loewenstein : 
 Blaetter fuer Juedische Geschichte und Literatur 
 III, 66). Needless to say there is not a particle of 
 truth in the whole business. 
 
 Jews were the favorite object for taxation all 
 through medieval times and down to the end of the 
 eighteenth century, when the special Jew taxes were 
 eventually abolished. They were first of all subject 
 to excessive taxation, for which they had to be re- 
 sponsible as a body. Thus in the thirteenth century 
 in Germany, the Jews paid one-twelfth of the total 
 taxes of the empire, while they could hardly have 
 formed one per cent of the total population. In ad- 
 dition to these " legal taxes" they were bled on every 
 possible occasion when the royal treasury faced a 
 deficit. Thus Emperor Rudolph, in the thirteenth 
 century, imprisoned Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg, in 
 order to compel the Jews to pay additional taxes, 
 which they declared themselves unable to raise. 
 Somewhat earlier King John of England imprisoned 
 a Jew and ordered that every day one of his teeth 
 be drawn it is not reported that gas was used in 
 the operation until he would pay the sum de- 
 manded of him. 
 
 Finally, the Jews had to pay for anything in an 
 emergency, and to furnish any article that was diffi- 
 
 [84]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 cult to obtain. Thus a Jew in Brandenburg, an der 
 Havel, was obliged to keep a stallion for the city and 
 to furnish seven "Wispel" of oats per annum, 1416. 
 ( Ackermann : Geschichte der Juden in Brandenburg 
 p. 23.) The Jews living under the protection of the 
 commandery of the Teutonic Knights in Franconia 
 had to furnish to every commander upon his election 
 a "schoenen und kostbaren Leitpferd samint Equi- 
 page," which in 1658 was compromised by a tax of, 
 400 florins. (Israelitische Wochenschrift, Strassburg 
 1910, No. 32.) The wife of the Landgrave of Hesse, 
 on a tour through her country, on October 22, 1687, 
 ordered that the Jews of every district have a fine 
 saddle horse ready for her on that day (Jahrb. der 
 Jued. Lit. Gesellschaft VI, p. 112, F. a. M., 1909). In 
 order to keep the stable of their sovereign in good 
 condition, the Jews of Hesse were required to buy all 
 old saddle horses of the Landgrave, and to have 
 good ones ready for their places. In 1745 they com- 
 promised this duty by a payment of 500 florins per 
 annum (ib. VI, 112; Monatsschr. f. G. u. W. d. J. 41, 
 514). From the same source we learn that the 
 Jews of Hesse had to furnish hounds for the Land- 
 grave, in lieu of which they paid in 1715 the sum of 
 3,000 florins. Hounds were also a favorite article of 
 taxes in kind. The Jews of Prague had to provide 
 them for the princely house of Piccolomini known to 
 us from Schiller's "Wallenstein" (All. Z. d. J. 1869, 
 p. 244). The Jews of Mergentheim had to maintain 
 
 [85]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 eleven hounds for their lord, and in addition furnish 
 relays for his coach (Jued. Pr., 1909, No. 19). The 
 Jews of Hesse Cassel had to furnish a sort of feather 
 duster used in chasing game. This tax was later 
 changed into an annual payment of one florin in 
 gold per capita (M. f. G. u. W. d. J. 41, 514). An 
 order, issued in Prague (1652) directed the Jews of 
 Prague to pay for the maintenance of the king's 
 English hounds. The Jews of Peine, Hannover, a 
 very small community, had to furnish six "Matter" 
 of rye for the maintenance of two greyhounds, 1621 
 (ib. 1899, p. 572). The Baron of Osterberg, Bavaria, 
 evidently was in straightened circumstances when he 
 received Jews under his protection in 1802, for he 
 stipulated that every Jew or Jewess pay on their mar- 
 riage 11 florins as "glove money" for the "gnaedige 
 Frau" or "Fraeulein" and furnish upon receiving 
 his "Schutzbrief" a shirt and two florins in money 
 (Meidel: Die Juden in Memmingen, p. 82). The 
 papal court was especially liberal in devising taxes 
 to be levied on the Jews. The Jews of Avignon, 
 which, until the French Revolution was papal terri- 
 tory, had to furnish torches on St. John's Day (Re- 
 vue des Etudes Juives, 53, pp. 272-276). Emperor 
 Rudolph II, a queer character, who left the duties of 
 the government in the hands of Philip Lang, a con- 
 verted Jew, once received a pair of lions as a present 
 from some African ruler. As the treasurer reported 
 that there were no funds for their maintenance, the 
 
 [86]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 Emperor ordered that the Jews of Prague furnish 
 twenty-two pounds of fresh meat every day, 1593 
 (Bondy: Zur Geschichte der Juden in Boehmen, II, 
 p. 668). 
 
 Any individual who conceived of a pet scheme, for 
 which he had no money, would petition the sov- 
 ereign to furnish it to him from a special tax imposed 
 upon the Jews. P. B. Boetticher, Mayor of Pyritz, 
 had designed a map of Palestine with a diagram of 
 all battles that were fought there. Not having the 
 means to publish it, he petitioned in 1765, Frederick 
 the Great to compel every Jew of his kingdom to buy 
 this map for two thalers, which would yield to the 
 royal treasury approximately 300,000 thalers and of 
 which the inventor of the scheme demanded only 
 20,000. The king declined the offer (Isr. Fambl. 
 1915, No. 25). This great ruler, who was very hos- 
 tile to the Jews imposed upon them the duty to buy 
 on any occasion, when they needed a privilege, as for 
 instance a license to marry, 300 thalers' worth of 
 china from the royal manufactory, and to export it 
 (1769.) Similarly the Jews were taxed elsewhere for 
 the benefit of a struggling industry. Thus Markgrave 
 Karl Friedrich of Baden gives to a firm in Pforzheim, 
 the privilege that every Jew, received into his pro- 
 tection, buy of them 200 florins' worth of goods and 
 export them, 1778 (M. f. G. u. W. d. J. 1908, p. 79). 
 Emperor Charles IV, who was always in bad finan- 
 cial straits and used to help himself by pledging the 
 
 [87]
 
 Jews of various cities, which means their taxes, re- 
 served for himself the right that the congregation of 
 Frankfort should furnish him parchment, bedding 
 and kitchen utensils, when he should reside in the 
 city (Kracauer : Polit. Gesch. d. Juden in F. a. M., p. 
 37). Similarly the Jews of Nuremberg had to fur- 
 nish the Emperor with bedding and firewood, when 
 he was in the city (Fraenk. Kurrier, March 29, 
 1908). King Charles of Naples (1266-1284) ordered 
 the Jews of Bari and Trani to furnish him with the 
 necessary furniture on his visit to these cities 
 (Guedemann: Erziehungswesen, II, p. 153). When 
 Marguerite Aldobrandini, grandniece of Pope Cle- 
 ment VIII, married, the Jews had to furnish a bro- 
 cade canopy, 1600. (Vessillo, 1914, p. 387.) When 
 Duke Alfred of Modena married (1579), the Jews 
 had to pay a special tax to defray the cost of the fes- 
 tivities (ib. p. 386). The Jews of Rome had to main- 
 tain 2500 beds for the soldiers of the papal guards 
 (Rev, d. E. J. LI, p. 340.) At least somewhat in har- 
 mony with Jewish ideals, was a tax imposed upon 
 his Jewish subjects by King John II of France 
 (1350-1365). They had to pay for the expense of 
 writing a French Bible with commentaries (R. d. E. 
 J. LV, p. 97). 
 
 In many places the Jews had to pay special taxes 
 for fire protection. To avoid misunderstanding, it 
 must be stated that this was not done because the 
 Jews were suspected of starting fires in order to de- 
 
 [88]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 fraud insurance companies, which did not exist, but 
 it had a semblance of justice in the fact that the fire 
 companies were composed of volunteers, and the 
 Jews were not admitted to them. In Ober Hesse 
 every Jew had to furnish a bucket for the fire bri- 
 gade, 1750. (Jahrb. d. J. L. G. VI, p. 112). In Berlin 
 the Jews paid in the eighteenth century fifteen 
 thalers at every fire that occurred in the city 
 (Geiger: Gesch. d. Juden in Berlin, II, p. 61, Freund: 
 Emancipation d. Juden in Preussen I, p. 23). In May- 
 ence, the Jews had to keep fifteen fire buckets in 
 readiness, 1661. (Salfeld: Vorboten d. Emancipa- 
 tion, p. 349). Frederick William I of Prussia was es- 
 pecially fond of tall soldiers. As militarism had not 
 yet developed, he had to depend on the enlistment of 
 volunteers, and for this purpose the Jews since 1728, 
 had to pay 4,800 thalers per annum for the enlistment 
 of "Lange Kerls" (Freund: Emancipation I, p. 23). 
 In Negroponte, Greece, which in medieval times was 
 under the rule of Venice, the Jews had to pay for 
 the maintenance of the fortification (1304). They 
 also had to pay for the additional expense, incurred by 
 the city, when the salary of the aldermen was in- 
 creased in order to compensate them for the prohibi- 
 tion to engage in trade (Miller: The Latins in the 
 Levant, p. 209). Frankfort o. M. was favored with a 
 list of taxes which almost fills a book. As a curious 
 instance, which has some bearing on our main topic, 
 it may be mentioned that they had to furnish the 
 
 [89]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 officials of the building department, up to 1703, with 
 lemons, which in those days did not have the signifi- 
 cance that they have now in America (Festschrift, 
 Philanthropin II, p. 399). 
 
 St. Michael's Day was a favorite time for collect- 
 ing taxes. As early as 1227, Viscount Aimeri IV, of 
 Narbonne, imposed upon a Jew the duty to furnish 
 a certain amount of grain on that day (R. d. E. J. 
 LVIII, p. 82). In Koenigsbach, Baden, the Jews had 
 to furnish six pounds of hemp every year to their lord 
 (Lewin: Gesch. d. Badischen Juden, p. 172). Prob- 
 ably hemp was a scarce commodity in those days. 
 In Hesse, just as is the case now, fats had become 
 scarce in 1718, and a special tax of 1,200 florins per an- 
 num was imposed on the Jews to pay for the 
 increased price of candles and soap. A somewhat 
 comical tax is reported from the same country as 
 late as 1807. The Jews of Wannfried had to furnish 
 to the pastor, to the judge, and to the governor, each 
 a silver spoon every year (All. Ztg. d. Judenthums, 
 1865, p. 383). In Poland, a specialty of Jewish tax- 
 ation was the duty to furnish wax for church 
 candles, and spices to the officials, evidently because 
 in those days spices were hard to obtain. Thus the 
 Jews of Iiiowratzlaw, now Hohensalza, Poseu, had to 
 furnish to the "Starosta" six "stein" of wax, one 
 pound of pepper, four pounds of crocus, and similar 
 quantities to the provost of the cathedral (Zeitschr. d. 
 Hist. Ges. f. d. Prov. Posen XV, 1, pp. 43, 49). The 
 
 [90]
 
 constitution of Cracow, 1595, provides for a special 
 overseer of this spice tax (Jahrb. d. J. L. G. X. p. 327). 
 In Carpentras, France, which was also under papal 
 rule, the Jews were accused of having crucified a 
 dummy made of straw. To make atonement for this 
 supposed mockery of the Christian religion they had 
 to pay for an iron crucifix, and were annually taxed 
 for its maintenance until 1793 (Vessillio 1915, p. 367). 
 Such a crucifix, erected at the expense of the Jews 
 for supposed blasphemy, is seen on the historic 
 bridge of Prague, and also in some other place. For 
 the fun of the carnival the Jews of Pisa had to fur- 
 nish the university students with confetti, until 1783 
 (Vessillo 1907, p. 76). The sufferings of the Jews in 
 Rome during the carnival season, where they were 
 made the sport of the mob, and from which they had 
 to redeem themselves by excessive taxes, are well 
 known to American readers^ through Zangwill's 
 "Dreamers of the Ghetto." 
 
 The law requiring Jews to furnish geese to their 
 rulers, therefore, presents but one of the many taxes 
 imposed upon the Jews. It is reported from Salz- 
 burg, under the rule of Bishop Pilgrim (1364-1396), 
 (Der. Isr. 1912, No. 30), from Altenstadt an der Iller, 
 Bavaria, in 1719 (ib. 1898, p. 101), from Horburg, 
 Alsace 1723 (Ginsburger, Les Juifs des Horburg, 
 Paris 1904), from various places in the Grand-duchy 
 of Baden, as late as 1814 (Lewin: Gesch. d. Badi- 
 schen Juden, p. 172), from Osterberg, Bavaria in 1802 
 
 [91]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 (Meidel: Juden in Memmingen, p. 82), from Schnait- 
 tach, Bavaria in 1645 (Der. Isr. 1878, p. 1229), from 
 Illereichen, Bavaria, in 1789 (Meidel, p. 77), from 
 Mayence, in 1724, where in addition, they had to 
 help maintain the students of the Jesuit College, to 
 furnish fish during the Lent season to the Francis- 
 cans, the Capuchins and the Jesuits, in addition to 
 furnishing bedding for the bishop's hunting lodge 
 at Aschaffenburg, during the hunting season. This 
 sufficiently explains the fact that the origin of the 
 custom in Pressburg is but a relic of such a tax, 
 which the Jewish community in later times con- 
 sidered as a privilege, and therefore maintains it to 
 this day. 
 
 [92]
 
 VI 
 THE MAIMONIDES PRAYER MYTH.* 
 
 Editor Israelite : 
 
 Sir Rev. Madison C. Peters in one of the editions 
 of his book, "Justice to the Jew," quotes a prayer for 
 physicians by Maimonides. Can you tell me where 
 the original can be found, or, at least in what au- 
 thoritative work on history, literature or medicine 
 can it be found, and oblige? 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 Wm. W. Golden, 
 
 Supt. Davis Memorial Hospital, 
 Elkins, "W. Va., June, 1914. 
 
 REPLY. 
 
 This so-called prayer of Maimonides is an old hoax. 
 It was actually written by Marcus Herz, a prominent 
 physician of Berlin (1747-1803), who attended Moses 
 Mendelssohn in his last illness and, while in his day 
 quite prominent as practitioner and lecturer on phil- 
 osophy, has won lasting fame through his wife, 
 Henriette, a society leader who survived him more 
 than forty years. This prayer was translated into 
 
 *The American Israelite, June 25, 1914. 
 
 [93]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 Hebrew by Isaac Euchel, one of Mendelssohn's col- 
 laborators in the Bible translation (1756-1804). It 
 appeared for the first time in the Hebrew periodical 
 "Meassef" (VI, pp. 242-244) in 1790, as the work of 
 Herz. For reasons quite inconceivable to me, Lud- 
 wig Philippson published it in his "Weltbewegende 
 Fragen" (II, pp. 159-160) Leipsic, 1869, as the prayer 
 of a Jewish physician of the twelfth century. As the 
 translation is so accurate that it could not have been 
 made from memory, my only explanation is that 
 somebody else must have published it before, mak- 
 ing a false statement as to its origin. I have not 
 been able to discover the source of Philippson 's au- 
 thority. From Philippson 's popular book it was 
 incorporated into the popular "Magazin fuer die 
 Literatur des Auslands, ' ' published by a Jew, Joseph 
 Lehmann, and so Haeser embodied it in his "Ges- 
 chichte der Medizin," I, p. 837, Jena, 1875. Having 
 thus been recognized by a standard publication it 
 was accepted by Julius Pagel, professor of the his- 
 tory of medicine at the Berlin University (1851- 
 1912) also a Jew, in his essay on Maimonides as 
 physician, which forms part of the memorial volume, 
 "Moses Ben Maimon," edited by the Gesellschaft zur 
 Foerderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums, I, p. 
 244, Leipsic, 1908. Following all this its authencity 
 could no more be doubted than the authenticity of 
 the gospel of St. John. The Israelite (March 12, 
 1908) gave it its seal of approval, although I con- 
 
 [94]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 tested it in the subsequent issue, but repeatedly 
 since it has been proclaimed as being written in dis- 
 tinctly Maimonidean spirit. Recently I wrote a let- 
 ter to the editor of "Ost und West," who had 
 published it as Maimonidean. He thanked me, but 
 preferred not to publish it. As the very popular 
 "Medizinische Wochenscrift" of Berlin published 
 it in 1902, and any number of medical journals re- 
 printed it, no amount of argument will rob Mai- 
 monides of the credit for having written this 
 typically sweet-lemonade prayer, characteristic 
 of the rationalistic tendencies of the era of "Auf- 
 klaerung, " and I still have hopes that one hundred 
 years hence, somebody will credit Herodotus or at 
 least Rabbi Jose Ben Halafta, the genuine author of 
 Seder Olam, with my "Foreign Notes." 
 
 [95]
 
 VII 
 JOURNALESE* 
 
 Men of genius are best recognized by the readiness 
 with which the public takes up their winged words. 
 Whatever we may think of Roosevelt, whose picture, 
 to quote the German poet, is swaying in history, ow- 
 ing to partisanship, his hat in the ring, his muck- 
 raker, his armaggedon, and various other expres- 
 sions show, like the popularity of the teddybear, the 
 hold which the man has on the nation. Bismarck's 
 greatness may be gauged by similar experiences. 
 One of his famous sayings is: "Newspapers are 
 printer's ink to me," and another is that "journalists 
 are people who have missed their calling in life." 
 Israel Zangwill, another brilliant man, is wonderfully 
 happy in coining popular phrases. To him inter- 
 national vocabulary is indebted for the invention of 
 the term "Yiddish." It is the best name for a dia- 
 lect which in its previous form of Judeo-German is 
 awkward, and, under the name of jargon, unjust. 
 Zangwill once said with regard to certain American 
 Jewish literature, that is was "journalese" to him. 
 In this way he expresses tersely a widespread view 
 of many people who look upon journalism as sloven- 
 
 *The American Israelite, September 2, 1914. 
 
 [96]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 ly from the point of view of its literary form, and as 
 superficial from the point of view of the information 
 contained. 
 
 With all due respect to Bismarck, it is much easier 
 to fill the position of presiding judge of a court of 
 appeal, or even to be the head of a department in 
 the foreign office than to be an efficient editor. 
 These people have time to consult works of reference, 
 and always have the advice and assistance of spe- 
 cialists at hand. Finally, they have time before 
 passing on any question. It is different with the 
 publicist. He must be ready within a few hours, 
 and rarely has any other help at hand than that 
 which a general encyclopedia can furnish. Jewish 
 journalism, being, as a rule, confined to weekly pub- 
 lications has, perhaps, in the majority of instances, 
 more time than the daily paper permits, but it is 
 equally hampered by the difficulty of obtaining 
 ready information, and, further, labors under the 
 grave responsibility of the mischief which incorrect 
 information or tactlessness may produce. The work 
 of painstaking scholars like Zunz and Steinschneider 
 certainly deserves admiration, but they had time to 
 do their work, they could submit the proof sheets of 
 their books to friends, and, if they made mistakes 
 and they surely did make some they had the for- 
 giveness of every fairminded reader who knows how 
 deeply he is indebted to them for the mass of cor- 
 rect information. The journalist has a very critical 
 
 [97]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 public, one with a short memory and inclined to be 
 ungrateful. 
 
 Jewish journalism is very young. The small 
 sheets that were published in Yiddish in Amsterdam 
 at the end of the seventeenth century are hardly to 
 be classed as newspapers in any but the historic 
 sense. The haphazard information and the combina- 
 tion of magazine and newspaper found in our earli- 
 est publications of the nineteenth century, such as 
 "Sulamith" or "Voice of Jacob," would in our 
 days be ridiculous. It is only since the appearance 
 of "Die Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums" in 1837 
 that real journalism began to develop. Even then 
 the development was slow, as was still more the 
 case in the earliest years of the "Jewish Chronicle." 
 The real news was almost exclusively taken from the 
 secular papers, and what correspondents furnished 
 was mostly small talk. The contributors were peo- 
 ple who worked either for the love of the cause or 
 for self-advertisement. It is, for instance, remark- 
 able that the "Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums" 
 did not take notice of the death of Herz Homberg. 
 Here was a man eighty-two years old, probably the 
 last survivor of the intimate circle of Moses Men- 
 delssohn, a man who had been tutor in Mendels- 
 sohn's family and a witness to the policy of 
 Emperor Joseph II, and who earnestly strove to im- 
 prove the condition of the Jews by education. In 
 our day every Jewish paper would devote columns 
 
 [98]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 to his obituary and thus preserve the testimony of 
 contemporaries which would have been of invaluable 
 help to the historian, but is now definitely lost. 
 
 The reading public of a newspaper is not supposed 
 to be interested in posterity. It may even be said 
 that history is a by-product of journalism, but with- 
 out contemporaries gathering the events posterity 
 will be the loser, too. Take as an instance the Frank 
 case. What inestimable value is found in the col- 
 lection of newspaper comments, such as the "New 
 York Times" devoted to the tragedy! How easy 
 will it be with a complete list of the chronologically 
 arranged series of events to study the case in detail ! 
 
 Again, let us make a concession to the Philistine 
 who says, "Why shall I care for posterity since pos- 
 terity never cared for me?" We, therefore, may 
 illustrate the value of newspapers to current activi- 
 ties by two recent instances. Some anti-Semite had 
 noticed that eleven Jews were employed in clerical 
 work in military offices in the city of Constance. 
 He wrote an anonymous letter to the department of 
 war complaining that the Jews, with their money, 
 are able to dodge the dangerous field service, prefer- 
 ring to perform their military duty in comfortable 
 and safe offices. An investigation was ordered, and 
 it was found that these eleven men were physically 
 unfit for duty in the field, that the Jewish commu- 
 nity of Constance, numbering 580 souls, had 110 men 
 in the field, of whom fourteen had been killed m 
 
 [99]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 action and nine decorated with the iron cross. Fig- 
 uring that more than twenty per cent of the Jewish 
 community serve their country in one capacity or 
 other, that more than ten per cent of those in the 
 field sacrificed their lives, that eight per cent were 
 decorated for bravery, and that it is certainly to be 
 presumed that the conditions at Constance are not 
 different from the average, it is well established that 
 the Jew is doing his patriotic duty at least as well as 
 any other class of the population. The newspaper 
 furnished this information. 
 
 Another very frequent charge against the Jew is 
 that he shuns physical labor, or, as one of our Chris- 
 tian contemporaries not so long ago put it, that he 
 prefers getting money to making it. Our newspa- 
 pers last year, in discussing conditions in the over- 
 crowded districts of the Russian pale, gave us the 
 fact that 2,224 Jews were employed in the various 
 manufactories in the district of Lodz, a figure which 
 does not include 3,000 girls working at various 
 minor occupations in the factories,. The weekly 
 wages ranged from five roubles for a girl's work to 
 eighteen roubles earned by a foreman. One must take 
 into consideration that Jewish labor meets with two 
 difficulties. The Christian manufacturer will not 
 employ Jewish help, and the Sabbath observance is 
 a serious obstacle even in the way of the laborer 
 seeking employment with a Jewish firm. There is 
 still another difficulty in the fact that a Jewish em- 
 
 [100]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 ployer who cannot employ Jewish labor exclusively 
 is compelled for political reasons to discriminate 
 against Jews if he wishes to avoid labor troubles. 
 Another lesser but equally important item the New 
 York papers of June 28 reported. Two Jewish 
 painters fell from a scaffold in Rivington street, one 
 being killed and the other seriously injured. The 
 anti-semite, making charges against the Jews as 
 parasites, never cares to quote facts. He takes his 
 task very easy and speaks in terms to imply that all 
 Jews are millionaires who accummulated their for- 
 tunes by stock-broking, exploitation of labor, of 
 crime and vice, by fraudulent bankruptcy and arson. 
 The publicist presenting the Jewish side in the argu- 
 ment has the harder task of meeting these general 
 accusations with actual facts. His task becomes 
 still more difficult because, while the anti-semitic ap- 
 peals to a public that is already convinced even be- 
 fore reading the argument, the Jewish apologist is 
 compelled to combat this prejudice in addition. 
 
 Does our Jewish public appreciate the work which 
 the journalist is doing? "We prefer not to give the 
 answer directly but leave it to every reader to ascer- 
 tain how many of his friends and neighbors will an- 
 swer his question whether they read a Jewish paper 
 with a sneer, one saying with a supercilious smile, "I 
 don't read a Jewish paper," and another insinuating 
 that he pays his subscription as a matter of charity, 
 saying, "It comes to the house but I hardly have the 
 
 [101]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 time to look into it." Very often these very same 
 people have time to read the trashiest novel in a 
 magazine that has no literary merit, either in its 
 form of expression or in its ideas, and surely they 
 have time for other pleasures. Very few realize that 
 the support of a Jewish paper is a service to the 
 cause nowise inferior to the support given to the 
 synagogue and to educational and charitable institu- 
 tions. At no time, perhaps, has this duty been of 
 greater importance than at this critical moment in 
 our history. Let us not forget that the outside world 
 cares very little for us. The British House of Lords 
 will stage an indignation debate on cruelties per- 
 petrated against the Armenians, but ignores the 
 atrocities committed by Russia against her Jews. 
 The secular press is no longer interested. "We must 
 follow Hillel's maxim, "If I do not work for myself 
 who else will?" 
 
 [102]
 
 VIII 
 LIBRARY CHAT.* 
 
 One of the most charming things which Isaac M 
 Wise has written is a series of essays called "Aus 
 Meiner Buecherei," and published about ten years 
 ago in Die Deborah. There is a peculiar charm in the 
 still converse held by a student with his books. 
 They are whispering to him of the intimate events of 
 the past, they are suggesting to him plans for the 
 future, they are soothing him in days of trouble and 
 quickening his energy when his will power relaxes. 
 
 Such a feeling has to be lived through in order to 
 be understood. Even intelligent people fail to grasp 
 it. It is nearly thirty years since one of my older 
 classmates in Breslau, Dr. Emanuel Fuchs, died. 
 His parents and brothers had come to the funeral, 
 and before they left, wanted to see the Seminar. As 
 a special attraction they were shown in the library 
 the alcoves containing the donation of Dr. Bernhard 
 Beer, the life-long friend of Zacharias Frankel. 
 Their surprise at seeing this large collection grew 
 into amazement when they were told that these 
 books constituted only one-half of the man's library, 
 the other half containing his collection of secular 
 
 *The American Israelite, Feb. 8, 1906. 
 
 [103]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 works, having gone to the University of Leipsic. 
 "Nu, is das nicht a Shetuss?" one of the party 
 exclaimed; "can the man have read all these 
 books?" 
 
 They were plain country folks, and they thought 
 books, being an expensive luxury, ought to be read 
 from cover to cover before being placed on the 
 shelves, just as they would not buy a new garment 
 before the old one had served its time limit. Even 
 intelligent people are of the opinion that as long as 
 you have enough books to keep you busy, there is no 
 need of collecting others, and therefore it might not 
 be altogether superfluous to talk of the needs of a 
 Jewish library. 
 
 We are all to some extent historically educated. 
 Because of the rapid changes produced in our mod- 
 ern life by inventions, and because of the growth of 
 large cities, buildings, house furnishings and our 
 whole environment are undergoing a constant 
 change. This produces in us a longing for retaining 
 symbols of the past. There is not a Jewish home of 
 a well-to-do family in our days which has not in the 
 parlor a brass Sabbath lamp, a Shofar, an illuminated 
 Megillah and the like. Of course, with many it 
 is merely a fashion. Silversteins have to have it be- 
 cause Goldsteins have it. Still, this instinct of 
 mimicry would not suffice to explain that fact, if we 
 do not appreciate the sentiment underlying it. 
 
 Collections in private houses can not do away 
 
 [104]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 with the needs of museums, systematically arranged 
 by experts as a factor in public education. I have 
 just recently received through Rabbi Rubinstein in 
 Baltimore a Mohel's record, begun in 1697 and car- 
 ried on by his successors until the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century. The prayers are written on 
 parchment and an awkward pen and ink drawing 
 of a Milah is a highly interesting piece of naive art, 
 besides being instructive in showing the costumes 
 of Dutch Jews in the seventeenth century. A scrap 
 of paper, containing a receipt of fifteen Silbergro- 
 schen, which the Herr Vorsteher, Dr. Beer, paid for 
 the privilege of opening the ark, is another historical 
 curio in our days, although not more than fifty years 
 old. A donation by Mrs. Louis S. Levi of an auto- 
 graph of Berthold Auerbach brings home to the 
 observer the fine painter of country life whose good 
 fortune it was to be beaten by a much inferior man, 
 in his competition for a Hamburg pulpit and so to be 
 forced into literature. 
 
 From the collection of Temple Emanuel we pos- 
 sess a Mahzor, printed on vellum at Bologna in 1541. 
 Think of the many reminiscences connected with 
 such a book that has served worshippers for over 
 three centuries. When it was printed the censor- 
 ship was not established. About twenty years later 
 a monk went over it, carefully erasing everything 
 that seemed objectionable to Christians, and affixing 
 
 [105]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 his signature at the end "Revista da me Fra Giovan- 
 ni, 0. Pr." To possess a Hebrew book without such 
 a mark was a crime punishable with fine and im- 
 prisonment. What a vivid object lesson this is in 
 studying the recently again so much lauded kindness 
 of the Pope towards us, and in understanding the 
 charge that Reform means apostasy! The Domini- 
 can friar who revised the Mahzor was a Meshummad 
 and there were hundreds like him. An important 
 erasure was made in the "Alenu," where the origi- 
 nal text reads: "We thank the Lord of the Universe 
 who has not made our lot like that of the Gentiles, 
 for they prostrate themselves before what is naught 
 and vanity, and pray to a God who cannot help, while 
 we bow before the king of Kings, etc." The words 
 in italics have been erased by the censor and later 
 editions were not allowed to print them. Two hun- 
 dred years ago upon the denunciation of a Meshum- 
 mad that the Jews still recited these words and spat 
 out when they mentioned the God "Lo Yoshia" 
 (who can not save), the King of Prussia ordered 
 policemen to the synagog to watch that this should 
 not be done, and in every letter of protection 
 granted to a Jew it was expressly enjoined that "he 
 shall refrain from blaspheming our most gracious 
 Lord and Savior under penalty of incurring our dis- 
 grace and forfeiting this letter." The sight of such 
 
 [106]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 a book is a vivid object lesson in Jewish yea, in the 
 world 's history. 
 
 There are about thirty, perhaps fifty thousand 
 books of Jewish interest. Of every one of these 
 books something might be said which is of general 
 interest. Say, e. g. } a year ago, I bought at an auc- 
 tion in Amsterdam a little pamphlet of about twelve 
 pages for one dollar. A fancy price, indeed! But 
 it is worth it to me. It contains the story of how 
 a devil was driven out of a young man in Nikols- 
 burg, the congregation fasting, chanting Psalms 
 during the exorcism, the devil finally leaving his 
 abode from the tips of the young man's little fin- 
 ger you could observe the notch and flying 
 through the window. This happened in 1785. One 
 of the Beth Din present was Mordecai Benet, the 
 famous opponent of Reform. He also indorsed the 
 book as sound religious literature. Some liberal- 
 minded men must have objected to it, for a little 
 later an imperial edict prohibited the printing of 
 such ghost stories of course, only Jewish while 
 Catholic devils could be exorcised without any 
 hindrance upon the part of his imperial and royal 
 majesty's government. I came to Nikolsburg 
 eighty-three years later. You could not have ob- 
 tained a Minyan for such a devil affair, you could 
 not have gotten my Talmud teacher to tackle such a 
 ghost, although he was a graduate (Morenu) of 
 
 [107]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 Mordecai Benet's Yeshiba. Mordecai Benet's great- 
 grandson, who was a classmate of mine, would not 
 have been able to recite the Psalms necessary for 
 expelling the devil without a flaw. All this philos- 
 ophy of history is taught by this small pamphlet. 
 
 [108]
 
 IX 
 
 PLOWDEN IN THEOLOGY* 
 
 Probably all nations have proverbs ridiculing 
 that selfishness which applies a different standard 
 to the same act when done by ourselves and when 
 done by others. The Romans said, "Quod licet 
 Jovi, non licet bovi." The English say, "The case 
 is altered, quoth Plowden," and the Germans, "Ja 
 Bauer das ist etwas anderes. " In no branch of hu- 
 man intellect is this selfish discrimination more evi- 
 dent than in liberal theology. 
 
 The orthodox Protestant and the Roman Catholic 
 need no defense. Pope Pius IX, in 1864 issued his 
 Syllabus Errorum, containing some seventy state- 
 ments, which are declared damnable errors, and any- 
 one who holds one of them, anathema sit. Luther, 
 or any good Puritan holding to the Westminster 
 Confession, is equally positive. Luther does not like 
 scholastic philosophy. Belief cannot be demon- 
 strated, but "Wer glaubt, wird selig." Calvinists 
 declare that Catholicism is paganism, and that its 
 devotees believe in a "baked god." Every one is as 
 sure of his ground as the drummer who sells a well 
 known brand of champagne. All he has to prove is 
 
 "The American Israelite, Oct. 19, 1916. 
 
 [109]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 that his goods are entitled to their label, for if they 
 are genuine, their superior quality needs no demon- 
 stration. It is only the fellow with a new article to 
 sell who wants to prove to his customer that his 
 goods are home made, and union made, and that the 
 other fellow sells goods that are manufactured by 
 child labor sold at ruinous prices. Our liberal 
 Christian theologians also are past masters in such 
 drummers' tricks, especially when presenting Juda- 
 ism. The procedure is an easy one. Christianity is 
 so presented, that features which the apologist does 
 not like, healing the dumb and the paralytic by driv- 
 ing out the evil spirit, the contempt for industrial 
 activity, for thrift and the virtues of family life, 
 are ignored or declared to be passing phases for the 
 sake of accommodation to the local ideas. Other 
 statements like the fatherhood of God are exalted 
 away above their actual meaning, or even inter- 
 preted in a meaning absolutely foreign to the orig- 
 inal author. 
 
 With Judaism the procedure is just the opposite. 
 When Jacob deceives his father to obtain his bless- 
 ing, this folklore story is promoted to the rank of a 
 fundamental creed, to be contrasted with Jesus' say- 
 ing, "Forgive them, for they know not what they 
 do," but never with his saying to the Canaanitish 
 woman who implores his miraculous healing power 
 in a loathsome chronic infirmity: "It is not meet to 
 take the bread from the children and give it to the 
 
 [110]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 dogs." When the Torah says, "God visiteth the sin 
 of the fathers upon children and the children's child- 
 ren, to the third and fourth generation, ' ' a fact which 
 hospitals, insane asylums and penitentiaries prove 
 every day, then Jehovah is the god of vengeance, a 
 sort of giant Bedouin who likes nothing better as an 
 ornament to his house than a pyramid of the skulls 
 of his enemies : but when the gospel records the cry 
 of the Jews, "His blood come upon us and our chil- 
 dren," as justification for the unparalleled suffer- 
 ings wliich Christianity, praised as the religion of 
 love, has meted out to the supposed believers in a 
 religion of hatred, then the case is altered. 
 
 When the Hebrew Bible gives a law, "Eye for 
 eye, ' ' which is a crude form of justice no worse than 
 that still practiced in the days of Cromwell, this one 
 section of a criminal code is promoted to the rank 
 of the fundamental principle of Jewish ethics. 
 When, however, Jesus predicts that people who will 
 not believe certain irrational doctrines (which our 
 liberal theologians do not believe any more than did 
 Jesus' Jewish contemporaries), then the case is al- 
 tered. But did he not say: "By their fruits ye shall 
 know them?" Let us quote one fact out of hun- 
 dreds of thousands. In many dioceses of Christen- 
 dom the believers in the improved ethics of "Ye 
 have heard * * but I say unto you, ' ' required a Jew 
 to stand at the door of the cathedral so that the 
 bishop after mass could slap his face. In Toulouse, 
 
 [HI]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 in the eleventh century, on such an occasion the 
 bishop hit so hard that the eyes of the unfortunate 
 Jew popped out and in falling to the ground his 
 brains were dashed out. After that time the Jews 
 compromised with the bishop, paying an annual 
 sum of money to be freed from the humiliating cere- 
 mony. This also helped them to obtain an order 
 that the people, who upon the signal given by the 
 bishop used to storm the Jewish quarter, butchering 
 and pillaging the inhabitants, were warned not to 
 use any weapons except stones. They evidently had 
 used axes, scythes and swords before. I admit that 
 I am not convinced of the muscular strength of the 
 archbishop who with one slap of his hand made a 
 man's eyes pop out and the man fall bodily to the 
 ground, but is it not just as bad that the monk who 
 wrote the chronicles in which this fact (?) is re- 
 ported invented it out of Christian zeal ? Is not the 
 fact undisputed and indisputable, continuing in 
 some parts of Europe to this day that Christians 
 with the inspiration of the Easter service, exchang- 
 ing the greeting, "Christ has arisen," celebrating 
 the crowning act of him who said, "Father, forgive 
 them, ' ' who taught, ' ' I say unto you, do good to them 
 that persecute you," rush from church to the street, 
 torturing helpless old women to death and dashing 
 infants out of the windows to the pavement? This 
 ought to settle the question. Suppose (which we are 
 not ready to grant) that the gospel contains the 
 
 [112]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 highest expression of morality, what good did it do, 
 if the organization, based on these teachings, taught 
 on its part that it was a meritorious deed in the sight 
 of the God, who so loved the world that he sent his 
 only beloved son, to slap the face of an absolutely 
 innocent man in public, and to kill, maim and rob 
 helpless individuals who were no more responsible 
 for Jesus' crucifixion (provided it ever took place) 
 than Dr. Lyman Abbott is responsible for the brutal 
 killing of that Jew in Toulouse? 
 
 For he is the venerable exponent of liberal Chris- 
 tianity with whom we have to deal. In a discussion 
 of what prayer means to the liberal Christian, Dr. 
 Abbott, in The Outlook of September 13, contrasts 
 "two kinds of prayer," that of Jacob who prays for 
 bread to eat and raiment to put on, and that of 
 Paul, who encourages the brethren in Ephesus with 
 the announcement of his prayer, "that ye may be 
 strengthened with power through his spirit in the in- 
 ward man." This is sheer pulpit cant, although one 
 does not like to apply such harsh word to such a 
 sympathetic and venerable figure as Dr. Abbott. Its 
 real meaning is: The Jew knew only a material 
 prayer; his God was a boss who would give him a 
 well-paying job if he kept himself remembered un- 
 til a vacancy occurred. Even the "Preacher King" 
 had only the one life prayer: Give me, give me 
 houses, orchards, silver and gold. 
 
 The Christian prays for "fulness of God;" he 
 
 [113]
 
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 does not care for pleasure, like wicked old Solomon 
 in his well-stocked harem. On the reverse, he takes 
 pleasure in "infirmities, in reproaches, in persecu- 
 tions, in distresses," and other things that count 
 only in heaven. Of course he also prays "Give us 
 our daily bread," as did the "preacher king," in a 
 distinct way, when he desired neither poverty nor 
 riches, but enough bread to sustain him, but this is 
 an entirely different case. The Christian, when he 
 prays for things material, does not mean it ; he means 
 fullness, spirit inwardness, and other "Schmoos" 
 that you don't have to understand, as long as it 
 sounds like something, while the Jew, when he 
 prays, "Search me, God, and know my heart," to 
 which we could add many others, like "Whom have 
 I in heaven beside thee, and with thee I desire 
 nothing on earth," the case is altered. 
 
 The grave injustice, perhaps done unintentionally, 
 but more likely with the feeling that something must 
 be done to prop the tottering structure of liberal 
 Christianity, leads simply to this: to pass by all in 
 Judaism which presents in clear, often more impres- 
 sive language, that which is supposed to be real 
 Christianity; to underscore in Christianity that 
 which we like, though we have read it into the text, 
 and to underscore a misinterpreted conception of 
 Judaism, to paint as black as we need it to show to the 
 dullest eye the difference between Lucifer's com- 
 plexion and that of the union Hallelujah Chorus. 
 
 [114]
 
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 First of all, ought we not know them by their 
 fruits? Most of the magnates who have created 
 the economic condition which places our country all 
 the time before a crisis portending civil war, are 
 orthodox Christians. You find them like Rockefel- 
 ler in the Baptist, like Gould, Morgan and Belmont 
 in the Episcopal church, which seems to hold the 
 largest part of Paul's disciples, believing that not 
 the treasures that rust and moth will destroy, but 
 only distresses bring real happiness. But we find 
 them also in the Methodist church, where they find 
 happiness in manufacturing cardui, a schnapps pur- 
 porting to be a patent medicine; we find them in 
 the Presbyterian church, where a man like Russell 
 Sage, until his ninetieth year, went every day to his 
 seat in the stock exchange, though he never actually 
 had to care for the morrow. You find among them, 
 quite exceptionally, a Unitarian like H. H. Rogers, 
 though as a rule it is rather plebeian to be a member 
 of a liberal church. The only question is, if Chris- 
 tianity is and can be a real force in shaping man's 
 spiritual life, and if it taught people "the power in 
 the inward man with all the fullness of God," why 
 did the miners in Colorado have to be shot down to 
 protect the outward man in John D. Rockefeller and 
 the fullness of the safe in the offices of the Standard 
 Oil Company? 
 
 We might go on indefinitely enumerating people 
 with admiration for Paul and contempt for Jacob, 
 
 [115]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 who, to use the terminology of Dr. Abbott, pray 
 "give me" in stead of "make me." "Give me" is 
 the prayer of the wily Jewish Jacob; "make me" is 
 the prayer of the prodigal son who prays, "Make me 
 one of thy servants." We shall have to say some- 
 thing about that Midrash which Abbott substitutes 
 for the altogether different meaning of the New 
 Testament text. We shall see, first, how the rabbis 
 in the Midrash interpret Jacob's trick in obtaining 
 the birthright. They say Jacob knew through his 
 prophetic gift that the first born were destined to be 
 called into the service of God, and therefore he craved 
 for it, obtaining it easily from Esau, who frankly 
 confesses he does not care for it. You see how you 
 can read idealism into anything. Much better is 
 another Midrash on Jacob's attitude. Scripture 
 tells us that he was left alone on the other side of the 
 Yabbok, when he fought with the angel. The rabbis 
 asked the correct question "How could Jacob re- 
 main alone when he successively forded the river 
 with the members of his family?" The answer is : he 
 returned to fetch some household goods, acting like 
 the righteous who will risk their lives for the sake 
 of their property because they are afraid of tempta- 
 tion to become dishonest through need. Is not this 
 Midrash a more natural interpretation of Jacob's 
 prayer? He prays for bread to eat and raiment to 
 put on, not for wealth and power, but, like Solomon, 
 for the bread he needs. He adds the prayer that 
 
 [116]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 God bring him back in peace to his father's house. 
 He does not go out with the spirit of the Spanish 
 conquistadores, who while driven by the thirst of 
 gold, claimed they wanted to subject the whole 
 world to the Holy Virgin. Jacob longs for the home 
 of his fathers, though one of the charges against his 
 descendants is that they are nomads, lacking the 
 home sentiment, "Bodenstaendigkeit." Then he 
 promises, of the modest fortune which he expects 
 from God to whom he prays, one-tenth to good pur- 
 poses. Ten per cent of the gross income of all the 
 believers in the inspiration of the Epistle to the 
 Ephesians would go a long way to settle our labor 
 troubles. And with all that, we have read nothing 
 into the prayer of Jacob which is not actually found 
 in it. 
 
 Let us read the New Testament story of the son 
 who squandered his father's heritage, and in order 
 to save himself from starvation would work on his 
 father's farm as a hired man. The outward mean- 
 ing is clear. Conditions at home were too narrow 
 for the ambitious young man; he was seized with 
 something like the wild west fever, lost all he had, 
 and when he was completely broke he thought of his 
 father again ; feeling that the servants in his father's 
 house were better off than he. 
 
 True, it is a parable. The younger son is the 
 heathen world that will come to the father they had 
 forsaken. But surely the insignificant phrase, 
 
 [117]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 "make me as one of thy hired servants," is not the 
 pivotal point, contrasting the moral lesson with 
 Jacob's "give me." Nor had the Preacher King 
 prayed, as Abbott put it, for knowledge, pleasures, 
 houses, servants. Praying is not his habit at all. 
 He merely tried the various roads to happiness 
 learning, wealth, power and being disgusted with 
 all, cried "All is vanity." Only for the sake of 
 propping up liberal Christianity, Jacob's and Solo- 
 mon's, cases are altered, quoth Plowden. 
 
 [118]
 
 X 
 
 HIGHER AND LOWER ANTI-SEMITISM.* 
 
 The late Dr. Schechter coined the very clever 
 phrase "higher anti-semitism. " It is patterned 
 after the commonly accepted term "higher criti- 
 cism." The latter meant the attempt to determine 
 the origin of a certain book of the Bible or of a cer- 
 tain doctrine by internal evidence, and is distin- 
 guished from lower criticism which concerns itself 
 with textual questions alone. Higher anti-semitism 
 is the more or less conscious anti-semitism of 
 scholars, who, while they would shrink in horror 
 from the atrocities of a pogrom, are guided in their 
 scientific studies by an unreasoning antipathy to 
 everything Jewish. 
 
 Julius Wellhausen, whose name is typical for ad- 
 vanced criticism, or Friedrich Delitzsch, to whom 
 the whole of the Old Testament is an Assyrian re- 
 ligion, are good specimens of this type. Their 
 method is simple. Everything Jewish is interpreted 
 in the narrowest sense the text will bear, and every- 
 thing Christian is presented in the broadest interpre- 
 tation which an apologetic conception of the text 
 will permit. One of the most popular terms that 
 
 'The American Israelite, January 26, 1916. 
 
 [119]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 owe their origin to this sentiment is "henotheism" 
 as contradistinguished from monotheism. For cen- 
 turies the Jews were considered the pioneers of the 
 latter doctrine, which declares the belief in one God 
 as the basis of all ethical and religious conception. 
 This world is a unit, created and governed by one 
 spiritual force, and therefore all humanity is one. 
 Any Sabbath School child knows that the "Sh'ma 
 Yisrael" has been inserted in the ritual for all occa- 
 sions as the expression of this fundamental truth, 
 and as the guiding force of truly Jewish concept. 
 Probably the majority of Jews who have received 
 a fair religious training are familiar with the Tal- 
 mudic statement that God created only one man in 
 the beginning, so that no one should have the right 
 to say: "I am of a higher descent than you!" 
 Liberal Christian theologians of our day claim that 
 Judaism did not teach this idea, but spoke only of 
 one God as the God of Israel, who loves his people, 
 but hates all other nations in the manner of a whim- 
 sical despot. This doctrine is called "henotheism. " 
 It is true there are passages in the Bible and in Rab- 
 binic literature which corroborate or seem to cor- 
 roborate such an idea, and by emphasizing such pas- 
 sages and by ignoring all others, it is easy to make 
 such defamatory statements with a semblance and 
 pretense of scientific correctness. The exactly op- 
 posite is done in the case of Christianity. Every- 
 thing unfavorable is interpreted away, or entirely 
 
 [120]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 ignored, or declared a later interpolation. Every- 
 thing favorable, though it may have its exact paral- 
 lels in the Old Testament or in Rabbinic literature, is 
 typically Christian. 
 
 When Jeptha, who is represented in the Bible as 
 a chief of brigands, says, "That which Chemosh, 
 Thy God, giveth thee to possess, thou shalt possess, 
 and whomsoever the Lord our God, has dispossesed 
 from before us them we will possess" (Judges 11, 
 24), he lays down a fundamental doctrine of Israel 
 for all time. When, however, Moses, the teacher of 
 Israel, than whom there never was any greater nor 
 ever will be according to Jewish dogma, said, 
 "Know therefore this day and lay it to thine heart 
 that the Lord he is God in Heaven above and upon the 
 Earth beneath. There is none else" (Deut. 4, 39), 
 and when this passage is found in the daily prayers 
 of the Jews, our higher critics for all of their liberal- 
 ism ignore this fact altogether. 
 
 When Jesus is quoted as saying, "Blessed are the 
 peacemakers for they shall be called 'Sons of God' ' 
 (Mat. 5, 9), this is the undisputed and original 
 teaching of Christianity. When, however, the same 
 author quotes Jesus as saying, "Think not that I 
 came to make peace on the Earth. I came not to 
 send peace but a sword," (ib. 10, 34), this is entirely 
 ignored or declared to be a later invention put into 
 the mouth of Jesus by some fanatic. When in the 
 Talmud Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai, who lived at the 
 
 [121]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 time of the Bar Kochba rebellion said, "The best of 
 the Goyim kill and the best snake crush its head" 
 (Mekiltha Par. IV.), this is irrefutable proof that 
 the Jews are vindictive and that they know of no 
 ethical law which binds them to other nations by the 
 principles of humanity. Nobody remembers then 
 that an American general once said that the only 
 good Indian is a dead Indian; that the Inquisition 
 put to death in Spain alone, according to Llorente's 
 computation 300,000 people and that even if Llorente 
 exaggerated, we know it to be a fact that in the little 
 town of Guadeloupe, which numbered about 3,000 
 people, 53 persons were burned at the stake in a 
 single year, (1485). We know also that in the city 
 of Seville during forty years 40,000 people were 
 burned at the stake. We know also that Pope Six- 
 tus IV, congratulated Thomas Torquemada, the 
 butcher who is responsible for the expulsion of the 
 Jews from Spain, on his ' ' great achievements for the 
 glory of the church." We further know that on 
 June 29, 1867, Peter Arbues, "the bitter persecutor 
 of heresies" as his admirers called him, was declared 
 a saint. For all these occurrences Christianity is 
 supposed not to be responsible, but we Jews of today 
 and Judaism of all generations, are charged with 
 responsibility for a word spoken by Simeon ben 
 Yohai, a man who lived at a time when his people 
 fought against that system of tyrannical oppression 
 and exploitation, which characterized the Roman 
 
 [122]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 provincial administration. Is it really so bad that a 
 man in his bitter feeling, provoked at the sham of 
 Roman Kultur, said that the best of the Goyim 
 speaking of the Romans of his time are no more to 
 be trusted than a snake ? 
 
 We have no quarrel with the narrow-minded fana- 
 tic. To him Christianity is the only means of salva- 
 tion, and by Christianity he understands the dog- 
 matic system in which he believes and therefore, "if 
 any man loveth not the Lord, let him be anathema" 
 (I Cor. 16, 22) and the Jews "shall be cast forth 
 into the outer darkness. There shall be the weeping 
 and gnashing of teeth." (Mat. 8, 13). It is grievous, 
 however, to find that a man of broad views like the 
 venerable Washington Gladden, in an article en- 
 titled, "What ails the Church?" published in The 
 Congregationalist and Christian World of Janu- 
 ary 13 should say, "By the precepts of henotheism, 
 the massacre of the Caananites was lauded. Under 
 the precepts of Christ it is horrible." We find that 
 "under the precepts of henotheism, the prophet 
 said, "Have we not all one father, has not one God 
 created us ? Why shall we deal treacherously, every 
 man against his brother? (Malachai, 2, 10). We 
 find that under the same precepts of henotheism, a 
 man said: "I will gather all nations and tongues, 
 and they shall come and see my glory, and they shall 
 bring all your brethren from all the nations for an 
 offering unto the Lord; and all flesh shall come to 
 
 [123]
 
 worship before the Lord." (Isa. 66, 18-24). We see 
 on the other hand, that, under the precepts of Christ 
 as late as 1799, a mob, shouting, "Viva Maria," 
 burned 19 Jews alive in the public square of Siena 
 and as late as November, 1905, in the city of Odessa 
 alone, 301 Jews were horribly butchered within 
 four days by a mob that was led by priests carrying 
 the images of Him under whose precepts the massa- 
 cres of the Caananites are said to be impossible. It 
 is true Dr. Gladden frankly admits that the churches 
 have often generally misrepresented Christ. We 
 are quite willing to admit this statement but then 
 it must also be admitted that the precepts of Christ 
 were not strong enough to prevent such misrepre- 
 sentation and Torquemada and Arbues could not 
 possibly have been worse monsters than they actu- 
 ally were under "The precepts of henotheism." 
 
 It affords some little satisfaction to read a differ- 
 ent view of the cause of Christianity's degeneration. 
 Ellwood Hendrick, in an article entitled "Saul of 
 Tarsus," published in the January issue of the 
 North American Review, makes the apostle Paul 
 responsible for all the ills of the present Chris- 
 tian society, and the reason for this pernicious influ- 
 ence of Paul was that he preached "Instead of the 
 simple gospel of love which Jesus taught, a new 
 Jewish code." Mr. Hendrick is not an anti-semite. 
 He wishes that Paul had never contaminated Chris- 
 tianity. "Then we should all have been Jews, and 
 
 [134]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 the Jews would have been different." Mr. Hen- 
 drick also regrets the persecutions of the Jews which 
 are "one of the most unkind and unchristian 
 features of Christian society." Paul is also respon- 
 sible for Calvin and the Presbyterian Church, which, 
 following his principles, established a political ma- 
 chine that took all the heart out of religion. 
 
 It cannot be our purpose to meddle with these 
 internal quarrels of Christendom. We don't rejoice 
 in them and we do not believe that in themselves 
 they prove the superiority of Judaism. It may, 
 however, be said that we fail to understand the big 
 ado made by a Church society which recently held 
 its convention in the Madison Square Presbyterian 
 Church, of New York. This convention declares it 
 to be the great need of the present Church to convert 
 the Jews to Christianity. Fortunately the Jews are 
 in position to reply that the fear of the success of 
 these missions is the least trouble which confronts 
 the present day Jewry. It is quite a long time since 
 the apostle Paul though according to modern 
 critics the authenticity of his writings is in doubt 
 prophesied that "All Israel shall be saved" (Rom. 
 11, 26). It is now a hundred years since a German 
 cobbler named J. C. Frey patched up he doesn't 
 seem to have made good in patching shoes a mis- 
 sionary society in America which proposed to settle 
 Jews on the land and incidentally make Christians 
 of them. The scheme did no good to anyone except 
 
 [125]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 to the reverend cobbler. The New York convention 
 spoke gloriously of the wonderful success of a mis- 
 sion in Chicago. From personal observation the 
 writer knows that this mission is officered by two 
 young Polish Jews, who make a livelihood by repeat- 
 ing the cant in which they have been drilled by one 
 who is of the same type as themselves. We can un- 
 derstand that a Christian, though he has outgrown 
 the dogmatic conceptions in which he was reared, 
 constructs for himself a Christianity which, while 
 entirely of his own making, he claims and even be- 
 lieves to be the real Christianity of Jesus. We can 
 understand that the Christianity which he sees about 
 him, the Christianity preached by Billy Sunday, who 
 prays to the Trinitarian God to kill the Unitarians, 
 else He should be considered a liar, that such 
 Christianity is abhorrent to men of such refined mind 
 as is the famous Columbus preacher. We can under- 
 stand that one sees the cause of Christianity's 
 troubles in the misrepresentation by such preachers 
 while another dates the degeneracy back to St. Paul. 
 We cannot understand, however, how people admit- 
 ting the need of re-interpreting Christianity, can logi- 
 cally insist that Judaism is incapable of any devel- 
 opment and requires the services of ignorant scamps, 
 or at best ' ' Schlemiels ' ' to bring it up to the level of 
 the only true type of humanity. 
 
 [126]
 
 A CONTRIBUTION TO THE QUESTION OF 
 INTERMARRIAGE IN JUDAISM. 
 
 Every world crisis has in some way or other a con- 
 nection with Jewish affairs. Of modern instances 
 the case of Dreyfus furnishes the best example. It 
 \vas the prelude to the final passing of the bill which 
 legalized the separation of state and church in 
 France. The present world crisis no doubt has had 
 and will have a still greater bearing on Jewish af- 
 fairs and, vice-versa, its complication with Jewish 
 affairs will in all likelihood contribute considerably 
 to the settlement of the present war. From this 
 point of view it is but natural that the discussion of 
 Jewish affairs at this very moment has assumed such 
 great proportions, even in neutral countries like the 
 United States. There are two pre-eminent questions 
 connected with the war which in some way or other 
 are bound to be solved when peace shall have been 
 declared. One is the unbearable situation of the 
 Jews in Russia, and the other the scheme of estab- 
 lishing a Jewish state in Palestine. The condition 
 of the Russian Jews has come prominently before 
 
 *The American Israelite, Feb. 10, 1916. 
 
 [127]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 the public through a resolution passed by the United 
 States Senate, which requested the president to ap- 
 point a special day for a collection on behalf of the 
 Jewish war victims in the eastern theater of the 
 European war. The question of a Jewish State in 
 Palestine, which has been agitated for the last twenty 
 years quite considerably, has in the United States as- 
 sumed a more popular aspect by the rather unex- 
 pected participation in the movement on the part of 
 Louis D. Brandeis, the great advocate of efficient 
 trust legislation. 
 
 The various views on the future of the Jews, or to 
 use a more popular term, on the solution of the Jew- 
 ish question, can easily be summed up in two of these 
 views; the ultimate end is either the renationaliza- 
 tion of the Jews, or their absorption by the people in 
 whose midst they are living. The latter view is pre- 
 sented by Mr. Schreiber, in an article published in 
 Harper's Weekly of January 8. It is by no means 
 new. In October, 1912, there appeared in the Open 
 Court of Chicago an anonymous article which, like 
 Mr. Schreiber, quotes Ahasuerus who yearns for 
 death. Nor is this very new. More than a hundred 
 years ago a Jewish merchant living in Koenigsberg 
 published a pamphlet in which he appealed to the 
 state's authorities to utilize the then still existing 
 restrictions on marriage in the interest of a similar 
 scheme. No Jew should obtain a license to marry 
 unless a brother or a sister of his had married out of 
 
 [128]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 the faith. "We are too enlightened to propose such 
 police measures as might have been considered feas- 
 ible in Prussia under the system of strictest pater- 
 nalism, but our views, at least those of a considerable 
 portion amongst the Jews, are still the same. They 
 seem to overlook two important points. The one is 
 that there might after all be a third alternative. 
 The Jews might be tolerated as Jews by their envi- 
 ronment, and then feel perfectly happy and in place. 
 Logically or theoretically, everybody will admit 
 that such a solution is within the range of possibil- 
 ity. Another point, which is overlooked by Mr. 
 Schreiber, as it has been overlooked by many before, 
 is, that intermarriage, whether decreed by a police 
 power, or by some benevolent philanthropist, or by a 
 Jew afflicted with what Heine aptly terms, "Juden- 
 schmerz," conflicts with the Ghetto proverb, "It 
 takes two to make a Shidduk." "Shidduk" and 
 "Shadchen" are two words not merely peculiar to 
 the Jewish vocabulary, though slowly being adopted 
 by the English language, but also to Jewish social 
 life. The word "Shidduk" taken from Talmudic 
 Aramaic means originally, "compromise," because 
 it was the duty of the "Shadchen," the match- 
 maker, to bring about a compromise between the 
 conflicting views of the two families whose children 
 he proposed to unite in wedlock. In modern times, 
 under the influence of the environment, this institu- 
 tion is no longer legalized. It is, however, not ex- 
 
 [129]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 tinct, as the advertisements of the "Shadchen" in 
 the Jewish press prove. In former times the ' ' Shad- 
 chen" practiced a recognized profession, often as a 
 secondary occupation of the rabbi, teacher, or any 
 other person connected with Jewish congregational 
 life. It was then calmly deliberated, whether the 
 standing of the family, and especially the amount 
 of dower promised, justified to enter into further 
 negotiations!. Modern times have changed the 
 social habits, or at least the professed social ideals 
 of the Jews, and the "Shadchen" practices his pro- 
 fession, more under cover, so that the engagement, 
 when announced, is supposed to be the choice of the 
 two young pepole. Yet we find in Jewish plutoc- 
 racy, and in bourgeois circles this old system still 
 prevailing, and as a rule, only abandoned when the 
 young man or the young woman marry out of the 
 faith. 
 
 It remains inconceivable, how one can appeal to 
 the Jews in favor of intermarriage, when this fact 
 cannot be arranged by the police as in good old 
 Prussia; but has to be left to the choice of the in- 
 dividual. Or should indeed somebody decree that 
 a Jewish young man or a Jewish young woman must 
 under no condition marry anyone who is of Jewish 
 parentage? For let this be understood: Intermar- 
 riage from the racial point of view, was at no time 
 prohibited by Jewish law. Up to very recent times, 
 all political laws prohibited intermarriage between 
 
 [130]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 Jews and Christians. Conversion to Judaism from 
 Christianity was also prohibited. Intermarriage, 
 therefore, could only occur under great difficulties. 
 But it did occur. It was not infrequent in the case 
 of slaves. The Jews in mediaeval times were largely 
 engaged in slave trade, and very often kept some 
 slaves in their homes treating them as members of 
 the family and raising their offspring as Jews. Fur- 
 ther, numerous cases, comparatively speaking of 
 course, of proselytes are recorded, and at no time do 
 we find any objection to intermarriage with these 
 newly made Jews. In modern times, beginning 
 with the nineteenth century, when progressive states 
 permitted conversion from Christianity to Judaism, 
 which, it must be remembered, is even today not 
 legally permitted in Russia, cases of such intermar- 
 riage are quite frequent. So are cases of intermar- 
 riage without conversion of the Jewish part, in 
 which children are brought up as Jews. 
 
 The whole idea of racial purity and of a theoreti- 
 cal objection to intermarrying with persons of non- 
 Jewish descent, is an invention, unless in so far as 
 habit and social prejudice are concerned. The per- 
 centage of such intermarriage may be small. In the 
 United States, we have absolutely no means of form- 
 ing any idea as to their statistics. In Germany they 
 average ten per cent. In large cities, like Berlin, 
 they rise to sixteen per cent among women, and 
 eighteen per cent among men. These figures 
 
 [131]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 naturally do not include those who, before marrying, 
 accept the faith of the other party. Therefore, the 
 total must show even a larger figure. At any rate 
 the tendency to intermarry is on the increase. In 
 Hungary where up to 1895 intermarriage between 
 Jews and Christians, as well as conversion from 
 Christianity to Judaism were prohibited, the latest 
 figures at my disposal show for 1911, 7950 Jewish 
 marriages amongst whom 391 were intermarriages. 
 This is slightly less than five per cent, and again, 
 there must be added to these figures the marriage 
 of those who embrace Judaism before marrying. 
 Leaving them out, though they may not be an incon- 
 siderable quantity, we would of course find five per 
 cent very little. It still would mean that out of a 
 hundred Jews, ninety-five marry within the Jewish 
 fold, and only five outside of it, so that the absorp- 
 tion of Jews by their environment, if not progress- 
 ing more rapidly, would be indeed a very slow 
 process. Suppose such an aim were desirable, the 
 question still remains as to what can be done to in- 
 crease this ratio, unless the Prussian method of 1804 
 were adopted. The most important question, how- 
 ever, is, why should it be the Jews, taking them to be 
 a racial unit, who are to be compelled to marry out- 
 side of their racial boundary line ? The only answer 
 to be given to it would be that Judaism as an institu- 
 tion, be it expressed in synagog or in social life, is 
 something undesirable. It is undesirable to their 
 
 [132]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 neighbors ; for to the Jews themselves it could only be 
 undesirable, when their neighbors treat them as in- 
 feriors. That the Jews are racially inferior beings, 
 no sound person will assert. Even the most pro- 
 nounced anti-semites of the type which took its cue 
 from Renan, claim no more than that the Jews have 
 habits that are objectionable to their neighbors, or 
 at worst have habits which are morally undesirable. 
 Sound reasoning will hardly be willing to admit 
 this claim. No one will deny that there are 
 "white" and "black" non-Jews. The fact that 
 seven Jews have received Nobel prizes during the 
 short time that these prizes are in existence, is in it- 
 self sufficient evidence. The names of David Ricar- 
 do, Benjamin Disraeli, Heinrich Heine, Giacomo 
 Meyerbeer, and Paul Ehrlich, certainly prove that 
 the Jews as a class are not inferior. It will even 
 seem to me that proportionately the Jews have done 
 more for the world's civilization, than their small 
 number would require of them, applying to them a 
 per cent limit, which only narrow-minded, and bar- 
 barous governments like Russia would exact. A 
 proof for such an assertion is just as hard to bring, 
 as it is hard to refute. "We may say, however, this. 
 If Italian Jews who number only one permille of the 
 total population, have given, to their country a 
 statesman like Luigi Luzzatti, and a scientist like 
 Lombroso, the case would be proven for Italy. We 
 may even say that names like those of Israel Zang- 
 
 [133]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 will, of Arthur Schnitzler, of Ludwig Fulda, and 
 David Belasco, will be in a century hence, as promi- 
 nent as the average found in any history of litera- 
 ture, or in any biographical encyclopedia. Be it, 
 however, as it may, no sane person will deny, that 
 the Jews as a class have done their share towards 
 establishing their claim on recognition as equals, 
 and human society as such has absolutely no reason 
 for demanding that the Jews as a class shall disap- 
 pear. 
 
 The question, however, may be placed before the 
 Jews themselves. Why should they persist to exist 
 when their existence as a separate body has become 
 meaningless? The answer has to be given from 
 three points of view. There is still a very large 
 class of Jews who contest the claim that their exist- 
 ence is an anachronism. To millions of Jews their 
 religion is something God-given, that can be neither 
 abolished, nor improved upon. They see absolutely 
 no reason why they should loosen the tie which 
 binds them to their ancient historic tribe to use the 
 anti-semitic slang. That in this twentieth century 
 any public authority should compel Jews to abandon 
 this claim, no sensible person will demand. Let us 
 take an individual instance. The first Jews arrived 
 on the soil of the United States in 1654. Suppose 
 we could trace an American Jew who could establish 
 his ancestry from these Jewish pilgrims. Suppose 
 this Jew were an enthustiastic Jew, who believes 
 
 [134]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 that the Jewish law is divine, and has to be observed 
 in all details, until by some act of a new revelation it 
 shall be abrogated, or until the prophecy that all 
 Israel shall be brought together from the four cor- 
 ners of the earth and renationalized in ancient 
 Palestine, shall have been realized. I will admit 
 that the probability to find such a person is not very 
 strong, but it might be the case. The question then 
 would be in order: Can any state or any social law, 
 or even prejudice rightfully demand of such a man 
 that he submit to ostracism, to legal disabilities or 
 persecution, unless he would give up this idea? We 
 have no statistics on the early Jewish population of 
 the United States, but as there were in 1840 about 
 twenty organized Jewish congregations, it is safe to 
 assume that there were 10,000 Jewish people living 
 in the country. There are, therefore, numerous 
 Jews still affiliated with Jewish life, and some of 
 them sincere, and devout Jews, who have four Ameri- 
 can ancestors to look back upon. Could it occur to 
 anybody as possible to compel these people to aban- 
 don their affiliation with Judaism? There can be 
 but one answer to this question. 
 
 There is a second class of Jews and they may 
 form the largest proportion to whom Judaism is 
 not absolute truth and absolute revelation, but who 
 consider Judaism either better, or at least as good as 
 Christianity. These Jews will, as a rule, let us say 
 nine out of ten, marry within the Jewish fold. They 
 
 [135]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 will do so, perhaps from choice, but more likely from 
 social habit, because, "It takes two to make a Shid- 
 duk." Such people, facing the question how to 
 bring up their children, will feel that these children 
 ought to be taught the religion of their fathers, at 
 least in that way, that this constitutes not merely an 
 inheritance of historic value, and an inspiration in 
 the forming of character, but in some respects the 
 best system of religious thought. This may, and 
 does even occur in a considerable number of cases of 
 intermarriage. But the consistent attitude of those 
 who advocate intermarriage with a view that Juda- 
 ism as a class shall disappear, would be that only 
 such intermarriages should be tolerated, whose off- 
 spring will be brought up as Christians. I ask, is 
 this reasonable? 
 
 A third class consists of those who labor under 
 their "Judenschmerz." The type of this class is 
 Michael Beer, the brother of the composer Meyer- 
 beer, who writes to Heinrich Heine from a French 
 seashore resort that unfortunately even all the wa- 
 ters of the Atlantic Ocean cannot wash his Judaism 
 off. Many of these have tried their best to meet 
 the advice of getting rid of their Judaism. Some 
 have changed their names, have changed their re- 
 ligion, have studiously avoided contact with Jews, 
 and have even affected the habits of their environ- 
 ment to an extent which made them ridiculous. Did 
 
 [136]
 
 they succeed ? The case of Heinrich Heine, to whom 
 his native city refuses a monument, and that of Ben- 
 jamin Disraeli, whom his political opponent, the 
 truly liberal Gladstone, calls a fanatic Jew, proves 
 the contrary. 
 
 Any injustice done to the first two classes, which 
 means, any withholding of social or civic rights on 
 the ground of their affiliation with Judaism, is plain- 
 ly illogical, and as to the third class, the proper 
 policy would be for those who feel that the Jews of 
 today are "the burdensome stone" of which Zecha- 
 riah speaks, to encourage the assimilative tendencies 
 by proper social attitude. On the part of the Jews 
 nothing can be done in this respect, for "It takes 
 two to make a Shidduk." 
 
 All this is beside the question. What is de- 
 manded now under the present critical condition of 
 the world, is first of all the removal of the burning 
 shame under which the Jews of Russia suffer. 
 These Jews who were, at least for the most part, in- 
 habitants of the territory which they now occupy, 
 long before Russia annexed it, are entitled to full 
 civic and political equality, as are all human beings. 
 Russia for the present, withholds from them the 
 most natural rights of decent people, the right of 
 selecting their residence, their occupation, and of 
 availing themselves of the educational facilities fur- 
 nished by the state, to the maintenance of which they 
 
 [137]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 contribute liberally by their taxes. In addition, 
 they are entitled to a full participation in the public 
 life of their country, while at present they are not 
 permitted to take part in municipal elections, even 
 in places where they form from seventy to eighty 
 per cent of the population. This is rank injustice 
 and has to be removed. The same rule is true of 
 Roumania, although she is at present no party to the 
 world conflict. The next problem is that of the 
 countries, where the Jews do enjoy full civic and 
 political equality by law, but where the practice of 
 the administrative authorities denies them this full 
 enjoyment. Questions like this are difficult to set- 
 tle. The Dreyfus case is the clearest proof of it. 
 The state may give to the Jew the right to occupy 
 positions in the army, and the administrative au- 
 thorities may carry out this law, but the prejudice 
 of the privileged classes, existing for centuries, will 
 negate such a law or such practices or at least work 
 against its realization. Still more difficult, however, 
 is the question of social prejudice. No legislation, 
 no administrative act, can solve this difficulty. Life 
 alone must act here as the only remedy. In each 
 case it is not the Jew who has to speak the first 
 word. A clever cartoon in a German anti-semitic 
 paper, on just this point of the proposed self-efface- 
 ment of the Jews, presented a negro, who is refused 
 service at an American bar. The bartender points 
 
 [138]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 to a legend above the bar, which says that colored 
 persons will not be served. The negro, however, 
 says: "I have resigned from the negro race." In 
 spite of the malice of the story, this is a very good 
 illustration of actual conditions^ As far as the 
 Jews are concerned, it takes two parties to make a 
 "Shidduk." 
 
 [139]
 
 XII 
 
 THE REAL CAUSE OF ANTI-SEMITIC 
 PERSECUTION.* 
 
 To the Editor. 
 
 Sir: On June 14 a pogrom broke out in Bialystok. The 
 daily papers contained the first reports, June 15, and it 
 seems that Professor Goldwin Smith, who lives in Toronto, 
 must have at once sat down to write an article which 
 amounts to as much as saying "Serves them right," for this 
 article appeared already, June 21, in the New York Inde- 
 pendent. 
 
 I first learned of the appearance of this article while I 
 was attending the rabbinical convention held at Indiana- 
 polis in the first week of July, and as it requires more time 
 to refute a falsehood than to utter it, for the one who makes 
 the false statement does not go to the trouble of proving it, 
 while the argument for the defense has to be that is, at 
 least, my habit supported by facts, an earlier reply was 
 impossible. 
 
 I wrote the argument from the Jewish point of view, as 
 the reader may judge, without any animosity or personal 
 abuse and expected that the Independent would be glad to 
 publish it in order to prove that the paper is not identified 
 with the ideas expressed by Goldwin Smith, but my ex- 
 pectation was too optimistic. One who reviles the Jews 
 will always find a readier publisher than one who attempts 
 to defend them against calumny, as will be seen from the 
 letter of the Independent. I therefore have to publish my 
 reply to Goldwin Smith in the Jewish press and hope that 
 
 *Published in various American Jewish weeklies in August, 1906. An 
 abstract of it appeared in the "Literary Digest," Sept. 22, 1906. 
 
 [140]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 at least the readers will do their best to make this modest 
 attempt of mine circulate in the non-Jewish world. 
 
 Respectfully yours, 
 G. DEUTSCH. 
 
 LETTER OF INDEPENDENT 
 
 New York, August 10, 1906. 
 My Dear Sir : 
 
 I am sorry to have to return to you this article in reply 
 to one published some time ago by Goldwin Smith. I 
 would like to print this article. It is an admirable one, 
 but in the first place that was a good while ago, and in the 
 second place it is not our habit to publish articles attacking 
 other contributors, and again it is very long and finally the 
 record of the Independent, editorially, does not make it 
 really needy, for we criticised his article when it appeared, 
 and we have always in every way attacked the anti-Semites. 
 It is not likely that one who like myself has read the 
 Hebrew Bible through before I was nine years old, would 
 be likely to have much anti-Semitic feeling. It is a very 
 valuable article, and if it would have been shorter and had 
 not been in the form of a reply to Professor Smith, I should 
 have been glad to use it. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 WILLIAM HAYES WARD, 
 Editor. 
 
 Professor Goldwin Smith, in his article (Inde- 
 pendent, June 21), entitled, "Is It Religious Perse- 
 cution?" takes, in the light of recent events in Rus- 
 sia, his old stand, taken a quarter of a century ago, 
 that the Jew has only himself to blame, if he is per- 
 secuted. 
 
 The committee appointed by the Duma to investi- 
 
 [141]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 gate the events in Bialystok, found that during the 
 two days of June 14 and 15, 82 Jews and 6 Chris- 
 tians had been killed and 70 Jews and 12 Christians 
 wounded. The government appointed another com- 
 mittee, which arrived at somewhat different results, 
 finding that, instead of 6 Christians, 7 had been 
 killed, while the Jews, killed, numbered not 82, but 
 75. It may be stated right here that the Duma re- 
 port deserves preference, because the official record 
 of the Jewish Cemetery shows that on June 18, 78 
 bodies were buried in Bialystok. 
 
 This event is not isolated. Similar outrages have 
 occurred now and then for the last three years. To 
 quote the best known instance: In Odessa, during 
 four days, commencing October 31, 1905, 301 people 
 were killed, and thousands wounded, and property 
 to the amount of millions was destroyed. 
 
 In the midst of peace, under the eyes of the officers 
 of the law, both civil and military, some seventy 
 people, amongst them old men, women and infants, 
 are killed, and a writer sits in his study, some four 
 or five thousand miles away, and calmly tells an in- 
 telligent public that the thing was not so bad, after 
 all. 
 
 It is true that Professor Smith says that the out- 
 rage is not palliated by inquiring into its cause, but 
 as he goes on, trying to prove that the provocation 
 was all on the Jewish side, that this evil has existed 
 for centuries, and that the qualities of the Jews do 
 
 [142]
 
 not change, even when they leave the Jewish fold, 
 the only inference is that there is no remedy for the 
 evil, unless all the Jews are disposed of, in the way 
 in which the hooligans of Odessa and Bialystok un- 
 derstood the philosophy of history. 
 
 Of course, Professor Smith may say that in find- 
 ing fault with the Jews he spoke expressly and ex- 
 clusively of those who are unassimilated, but, at the 
 same time, he includes Benjamin Disraeli, who was 
 never educated as a Jew and who was baptised at the 
 age of thirteen, amongst those who prove his theory of 
 the absolute Jewish depravity, and when he says that 
 the transportation of the negro to America and the dis- 
 persion of the Jew are the greatest evils that have 
 befallen mankind, the so-called assimilation of the 
 Jew is at once declared an impossibility. 
 
 Compared with this view, it is a small matter when 
 Professor Smith speaks of exaggeration of the perse- 
 cutions which the Jews of Russia have suffered. Sup- 
 pose that in a city of half a million inhabitants 
 slaughtering was going on for four days. Frightened 
 people flee from cellar to garret, from the roof to the 
 house of a neighbor, down again into a cellar, out into 
 an alley, and everywhere they meet the ghastly faces 
 of cruelly murdered people, they see others fleeing 
 with the blood streaming down their faces, they hear 
 the bell of the ambulance which is carrying victims to 
 the hospital, and the agonizing cries of those who 
 are being kicked, clubbed or stabbed. Should any 
 
 [143]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 one wonder that in the excitement of these moments 
 they believe the hundreds to be thousands? Or can 
 any exaggeration add to the impression produced by 
 the fact that among the victims are infants, two years 
 of age, or that a Cossack, just for the fun of the mat- 
 ter, grasped a five-months-old child by the throat and 
 held it out in the air until it choked to death, just as 
 naughty boys might do with a bird fallen from the 
 nest? These are facts which one can only deny if 
 he would declare the burning of Bruno and Huss, the 
 hanging of Mary Fisher in Massachusetts, the execu- 
 tions of the Puritans in England, and the record of the 
 Spanish Inquisition, a myth. 
 
 Goldwin Smith, however, claims that all these facts 
 are not religious persecution, although, strangely 
 enough, in one instance, which I shall illustrate later, 
 he admits it, evidently without being aware that he 
 has overthrown his theory. For the sake of systemati- 
 cally arranging the plea on the Jewish side, I shall 
 divide Mr. Smith's statements according to three 
 principles: The objection to the Jews from the 
 economical, from the ethnological and from the re- 
 ligious point of view, and as we are living in a 
 materialistic age the economical side of the question 
 shall be taken up first. 
 
 The Jews, according to Goldwin Smith, are a para- 
 sitic race, a tribe wandering all over the world for the 
 purpose of gain. The metaphor is not very compli- 
 mentary, as it suggests the vines which, killing the 
 
 [144]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 tree, live on by their embrace. We will, however, not 
 quarrel with Professor Smith on this account, as 
 the expression is not his own, for it has been used 
 by the late Edward von Hartmann (Das Judentum in 
 Gegenwart mid Zukunft, Leipsic, 1885), and is, very 
 likely, older still. If, however, we examine it crit- 
 ically, it will be impossible to give a definition of it. 
 Why are the Jews parasites? They are traders, stock- 
 jobbers and, in general intermediaries in the economic 
 life of the world. Granted for a moment that this 
 be so, are they the only ones in this line ? Are there 
 no Christian merchants, shopkeepers, stock-jobbers, 
 insurance and book agents, real estate and ship brok- 
 ers, and engaged in any number of other pursuits 
 where they make a livelihood by bringing the buyer 
 and seller together ? The only answer that I can think 
 of in this case is that the Jew practices his vocation 
 unscrupulously and dishonestly, while the non-Jew 
 is always filled with higher ideals. To such a state- 
 ment no objection could be raised, because fairness 
 and unfairness are terms which can not be proven 
 by statistical records. But if we consult the statistics 
 of criminality, it will become evident that the Jew 
 shows, on an average, a higher morality than his 
 Christian neighbors. Not wishing to burden this es- 
 say with cumbersome statistics, I merely refer to the 
 article, "Criminality of the Jews," in the Jewish En- 
 cyclopaedia. Taking the matter up from the stand- 
 point of personal experience, I might add that I at- 
 
 [145]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 tended recently a discussion on the subject of trusts, 
 and one of the debaters, quoting his own business 
 practices in favor of the trusts, answered the objec- 
 tions raised from a moral point of view, with the 
 plain words, "I am not in business for my health." 
 I merely ask the reader whether he is convinced that 
 such a statement could only have been made by a 
 Jew, or whether the great magnates of finance, like 
 Jay Gould, Russell Sage, J. D. Rockefeller, J. Pier- 
 pont Morgan, and all the great speculators, whose 
 practices have been revealed by Thomas W. Lawson, 
 have not been acting on this principle. 
 
 Merely to defend myself against misinterpretation 
 I wish to add that I do not consider the work of a 
 middleman parasitic. Jewish second-hand shopkeep- 
 ers help to turn cast-off articles, valueless and bur- 
 densome to their present owner, into articles of value 
 and usefulness. The junk dealer is not a criminal, 
 and his business practices, even if they are somewhat 
 sharp, do not justify anybody in choking that shop- 
 keeper's baby to death, nor in performing the same 
 act of kindness on his neighbor's child, who happens 
 to recite his prayers in Hebrew. Further, I do not 
 believe that the publisher in this line of business 
 the Jews are almost totally unrepresented is any- 
 thing different from a middleman. I further do not 
 believe that a Jewish storekeeper in New York could 
 do business on any different methods than those em- 
 ployed by John Wanamaker or Marshall Field. 
 
 [146[
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 Neither of these gentlemen are in the business for 
 their health, nor is the self-avowed object of English- 
 men wandering all over the globe different from those 
 which Goldwin Smith charges to the Jews. The 
 Spectator of July 14, 1906, says: "We (the British 
 people) have in most of the dark regions commenced 
 our work w r ith the intention of securing gain." 
 
 The most important point, however, is that it is 
 absolutely false to say that the Jew is exclusively a 
 middleman. This statement is so grossly false that 
 it cannot have been made out of ignorance. The 
 New York papers of July 27 contain the report that 
 Meyer Goldstein, a painter, fell from the scaffold 
 and was killed. The name, Meyer Goldstein, does 
 not suggest Irish descent; still, this same Mr. Gold- 
 stein, who may have come from Bialystok, and might 
 have been killed there by hooligans, if he had not 
 previously gone to New York, is made responsible 
 for the deeds, which the good-natured Mujik has 
 been goaded into doing. Or should Meyer Gold- 
 stein be the only one, amongst the 750,000 Jews of 
 New York, who followed a manual trade, while the 
 remaining 749,999 are sucking the blood of their 
 Christian neighbors? Is it not a matter of public 
 record that the workers in the sweatshops of London 
 and the large cities of America are, to a great extent, 
 Jews? Do we not know hundreds of thousands of 
 Jews to be working in the tailor shops, in the shirt, 
 cap and cloak-making trades, in the shoe factories 
 
 [147]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 and the like? This fact is patent with anti-Semitic 
 agitators. They often use it against Jewish immi- 
 gration, as tending to the pauperization of the 
 masses. Now what is the Jew to do? If he makes 
 money in business, he is ruining his neighbors by 
 taking too much of their money. If he works in 
 shops at low wages, he is ruining them by not taking 
 enough of their money. So it is the old story of 
 Lessing's Patriarch, "Thut nichts, der Jude wird 
 verbrannt." Prof. Smith brings another argument 
 from history. The Jew has always been a blood- 
 sucker. He was a money-lender, serving the king 
 for the purpose of looting his dearly beloved sub- 
 jects. I shall lay stress on the latter fact, proving 
 from altogether unsuspected sources how little the 
 Jew was to blame for such a condition. The Tal- 
 mud prohibits the taking of interest mind you, the 
 taking of any interest, not merely usury as unlaw- 
 ful, even when the debtor is a non-Jew. This is 
 clearly stated in the usual Talmud editions. (Trac- 
 tate Baba Meziah, page 70b), and pious Jews, in the 
 twelfth century had, naturally, very serious scruples. 
 One of their rabbis, Jacob ben Meir, who lived in the 
 Champagne, says; "What can we do? Since we 
 have to pay burdensome . taxes to kings and nobles, 
 no matter at what interest we lend the money, it 
 barely suffices to make a livelihood. Furthermore, 
 we have no other trade left, and, therefore, it is just 
 as legitimate to lend money as to follow any other 
 
 [148]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 trade." Prof. Smith may look this reference up in 
 any edition of the Talmud, from any library, or con- 
 sult any manuscript, all in the possession of non- 
 Jews. 
 
 We have, however, other testimony. Under the 
 Carlovingian kings, collections of specimens of pub- 
 lic documents were made. In such a Liber Formu- 
 larum, passports, issued to Jews, are preserved, and 
 the most careful study of these documents shows 
 not the slightest evidence of money-lending as an 
 occupation amongst the Jews. (Ed. Rozieres: 
 Recueil general des documents usites dans 1'empire 
 de France. Paris, 1859-71, Vol. I, pp. 41-3). They 
 were traders, and no less reprehensible than the 
 English or German merchants, who are praised as 
 pioneers of civilization for establishing their busi- 
 ness houses in some South Sea Island, or on the coast 
 of Africa. Under Charlemagne, we hear of a Jew 
 who came to court as an importer of foreign goods. 
 The king had great confidence in his honesty, and 
 used him to play a trick on a greedy bishop. (Frey- 
 tag: Bilder aus der deutchen Vergangenheit, Leip- 
 sic, 1888, Vol 1, p. 321.) The story is reported by 
 the biographer of Charlemagne, the Monk of St. 
 Gall. A toll law, referring to a place called Raffel- 
 stetten, on the Danube River, speaks of ''Jews and 
 other merchants" passing by this place on their 
 business travels. (Monumenta Germaniae, Leges, 
 iii, p. 480.) The two famous charters, granted by 
 
 [149]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 King Henry IV (1090) to the Jews of Speyer and 
 Worms give them the freedom to travel all over the 
 empire for the purpose of buying and selling, but 
 make no mention of money-lending as a Jewish oc- 
 cupation. (Zeitschrift fuer die Geschichte der Juden 
 in Deutschland, Vol. i, p. 151 et seq.) This negative 
 evidence is stronger than it would appear on the sur- 
 face, for, in the legislation on the Jews, from the 
 thirteenth century on, money-lending and pawn-brok- 
 ing regulations occupied most of the space. This is the 
 case with the charter issued by Duke Frederick II 
 of Austria (1244), (Scherer: Rechtsverhaeltnisse der 
 Juden in deutschoesterreichischen Laendern, Leip- 
 sic, 1901, p. 179), a document, which became typical 
 of the legislation on the Jews in mediaeval times. 
 If, therefore, money-lending is not mentioned as an 
 occupation of the Jews, in 1090, but is given a promi- 
 nent place in 1244, it is certainly proven that the 
 Jews were not money-lenders up to that time. This 
 inference is corroborated by the fact that St. Ber- 
 nard was the first to speak of the Jews as money- 
 lenders, adding that Christians are, in this respect, 
 no better, while Agobard, the Bishop of Lyons, who 
 wrote a venomous libel against the Jews, does not 
 mention this vice, amongst the others of which they 
 are guilty. ( Simon: Jahrbuecher des fraenkischen 
 Reichs unter Ludwig dem Frommen, Leipsic, 1874, 
 Vol. i. pp. 393-6.) It may therefore be said to be 
 absolutely proven that the Jews were not money- 
 
 [150]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 lenders until after the first Crusade (1096), when the 
 bitter animosity of the mob, fomented by the clergy, 
 relegated the Jews to this trade. How they were 
 driven to high rates of interest can best be estab- 
 lished from the fact that from time to time, the kings 
 would declare the debts owed to the Jews void, then 
 settled with their debtors on the basis of one-third of 
 the amount, or, in other instances, let the mob pillage 
 the Jewish houses, burn the bonds and take the 
 pledges found in their possession, as long as they re- 
 ceived a share of the plunder. (Jewish Encyclo- 
 pedia, article : Toetbrief . ) This is an answer to Prof. 
 Smith's statement that the Jews were always safe, 
 under royal protection. 
 
 Under such conditions the Jew was, by law, ex- 
 cluded from following a manual trade, because this 
 trade was monopolized by the guilds, which would 
 never admit a Jew to membership; he was further 
 excluded from regular commerce, because this occu- 
 pation also was controlled by the guilds. Finally, 
 he was absolutely prohibited to hold land in some 
 countries down to the latter half of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, in almost all countries down to the beginning of 
 the nineteenth century, while in Russia and Roumania 
 this prohibition is still in force. In Saxony, as late a.s 
 1833, it required a royal order for a Jewish boy to be 
 apprenticed to a trade. In Austria, as late as 1852, 
 a Jew had to fight, in the courts, for the possession of 
 a house in a rural district. In Russia the Jewish 
 
 [151]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 agricultural school of Minsk a few years ago was not 
 allowed to buy a farm beyond the city corporation 
 line. The demand, therefore, that under these con- 
 ditions the Jews should be farmers is equal to the 
 demand that a man with hands and feet tied should 
 jump into the water and swim. 
 
 One of the most malicious calumnies against the 
 Jews in Russia is that, by their wealth, they provoke 
 the peasants, who naturally think that this wealth is 
 stolen from them. I do not know whether Prof. 
 Smith has ever visited Russia. I have. I can state 
 that in Bialystok alone there are twelve to fifteen 
 thousand Jews working in the woolen mills, in the 
 tanneries and in the tobacco shops. All over the 
 so-called "Pale of Settlement" in Russia the great 
 majority of the mechanics, cab drivers and other 
 people living by hard labor are Jews. This fact can 
 be tested in this country, where, in every large city, 
 a great number of Jewish mechanics will be found, 
 so that, of all charges made by Prof. Smith, only one 
 remains: That the Jews are not found, to any large 
 extent, amongst the farming population. Consider- 
 ing the fact that the laborer in the factory, the me- 
 chanic and the shopkeeper are not drones of society, 
 it would be no condemnation of the Jews that they 
 are not farmers, and still even this is not true. All 
 over the world the Jews are found amongst the 
 farming population. But even if they were not 
 among the farmers at all, they would merely follow 
 
 [152]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 the general tendency of the ordinary population. 
 The general tendency is from rural districts into the 
 city, not the reverse. "The cry 'Back to the land,' " 
 says the Spectotar, July 14, 1906, p. 47, "has not as 
 yet led to any appreciable result." 
 
 The most serious charge placed against the Jews 
 by Prof. Smith is that they are a different race, and 
 that their "tribal spirit" prevents them from as- 
 similating with other nationalities. First of all, the 
 intermingling of the two terms, tribe and race, is di- 
 rectly illogical. The Jew is certainly not a race, in 
 the sense in which we speak of the negro, or of the 
 mongol race. What keeps him separate is his re- 
 ligion. The best proof of it is that a Jew who 
 changes his religion is immediately absorbed by the 
 people which he joins at the moment when he pro- 
 fesses his new faith. It is further a fact that the 
 Jew does not present a different tribe, race, nation- 
 ality or whatever you may call it. While the ma- 
 jority of the Jews are descended from Jews, they 
 have, from time immemorial, received into their 
 covenant people of other nationalities. Dio Cassius 
 (xxxvii, 17) already, in defining the word Jew, says 
 that by this name all those are comprised who, com- 
 ing from other countries, have accepted the Jewish 
 customs. During the mediaeval times, while both 
 in Christian and in Mohammedan countries proselyt- 
 ing was prohibited under penalty of death, individ- 
 ual cases of converts to Judaism are recorded. 
 
 [153]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 They were especially numerous in the cases of slaves 
 emancipated by their Jewish masters, and perhaps 
 still more frequent in the cases of bondswomen, 
 whose children, begotten of Jewish masters, were 
 educated as Jews (Lehem Rab, rabbinical decisions 
 by Abraham di Botom, Smyrna, 1660, No. 44). Of 
 the individual cases I shall mention but one. In 1874, 
 Joseph Steblitzky, a Roman Catholic of Nicolai, in 
 Silesia, converted to Judaism. He was charged with 
 apostasy, a crime, according to the laws then in ex- 
 istence, punishable with death. He escaped execu- 
 tion merely because in the days of the free-thinker, 
 Frederick the Great, it was not quite practicable, 
 and the authorities got out of the entanglement by 
 declaring him insane (Jewish Encyclopedia, article : 
 Steblitzky). It is natural that only a few instances 
 of this kind have been preserved in historic records. 
 The only objection to this argument would be that 
 such cases were not very frequent, and while this is 
 true, it would be a puzzle to define how little Jewish 
 blood one must have in his veins in order to become 
 estranged from his former nationality, or how much 
 he must have, in order to become assimilated with it. 
 Let us take a well-known instance. The Belmont 
 Brothers, of New York, are the sons of a Jewish fa- 
 ther, and of a non-Jewish mother, but they are not 
 considered Jews any more. On other hand, there 
 are numerous instances, known to me, as to every- 
 body else, in which sons of a Jewish father and of 
 
 [154]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 a non-Jewish mother have been raised as Jews. 
 Why should the latter be less of American nationality 
 than the former? 
 
 The absolute impossibility of making such a defini- 
 tion of Jews as a tribal group is increased by the 
 question of nationality. Why should the child of a 
 German Jew, born in America, be less American 
 than the child of a German Catholic? Or why 
 should the great-grandchild of an immigrant Jew 
 be less American than William McKinley, the son of 
 an Irish immigrant? Is there anything like in- 
 herited nationality in these days even in countries, 
 which, for years, have had a stable population? 
 England had amongst her statemen, Mundella, an 
 Italian; Labouchere, evidently of French descent, 
 while France has had her Wilson, Waddington and 
 Thompson. Germany has now three members of the 
 Cabinet, with decidedly Slavic names: Posadowsky, 
 Podbielski and Tschirsky, and she has had, in 
 former times, a chancellor by the name of Caprivi. 
 Russia has any number of prominent public men 
 with German names. I mention off hand Lamsdorff, 
 Voelkersam, von Plehve. The same is true of all other 
 nations. In the ruling families this is still more 
 pronounced. The English king is the son of a Ger- 
 man father, and there is very little, if any English 
 blood in his family, if we go back to George I, who 
 was unable to speak English correctly. This clearly 
 proves that nationality is a matter of choice, and 
 
 [155]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 still Prof. Smith claims that Disraeli, English born, 
 and the son of English-born parents, was not British, 
 but merely a Jew. Even Disraeli's interference in 
 the peace of San Stephano, and his successful effort 
 to keep Russia from seizing Constantinople, is 
 counted against him, as a proof of the unassimilative 
 character of the Jews. Perhaps Prof. Smith's an- 
 tipathy to Disraeli may be the cause of his anti- 
 Jewish feelings, for twenty-five years ago he claimed 
 that Disraeli created jingoism for the purpose of 
 Jewish propaganda (The Nineteenth Century, 1881, 
 pp. 494-515). This statement is equal to the other, 
 that the Jews of Johannesburg, although cosmopoli- 
 tan, dragged Great Britain into the Boer war. 
 Leaving the question unsettled, as to whether it was 
 such a crime, that people, holding considerable prop- 
 erty, wanted to protect themselves against the arbi- 
 trary rule of medieval theocracy, I do not know of 
 any Jew who could be held responsible for the Boer 
 war unless it were Alfred Beit, who, born of Jewish 
 parents, was raised as a Christian. Surely Cecil 
 Rhodes and Dr. Jameson were no Jews. It is a 
 strange thing that Alexander Dumas, the son of a 
 mulatto father, and of a Jewish mother, could be- 
 come a Frenchman! 
 
 The tribal spirit of the Jews is responsible for the 
 fact that the Russian Jews are charged with eating 
 into the core of the Muscovite nationality. It would 
 seem to palpable a truth to retort that there is no 
 
 [156]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 Muscovite nationality, but that Russia has several 
 dozens of nationalities, the Russian forming only one- 
 half of the population of the empire, and Jews living 
 mostly amongst the Poles, or in that part of the Rus- 
 sian Empire which was formerly Polish. Their exist- 
 ence in that country is proven by laws regulating their 
 condition, dating as early as 1264. Consequently, 
 their claim to the territory is older than that of Rus- 
 sia. History, however, seems to have little weight 
 with Prof. Smith, or else he could not say that Taci- 
 tus called the Jews the enemies of all races. As no 
 quotation is given, I must believe that Prof. Smith's 
 reference, often quoted by anti-Semites, is found in 
 Tacitus' Annales (xv, 4), where he speaks of odium 
 generis humani. A careful reading of this passage 
 would convince Prof. Smith that this refers to the 
 Christians. Tacitus speaks in this passage of the con- 
 flagration of Rome. He says that Nero accused the 
 Christians of having set Rome on fire in order to 
 avert suspicion from himself. Tacitus clears the 
 Christians of this accusation, but says that they de- 
 served their fate for their hatred of mankind, and 
 in connection with this statement charges them with 
 a number of vile habits. This passage, as I stated 
 before, has often been referred to the Jews, and oc- 
 curs again and again in anti-Semitic literature, al- 
 though, even in the German Reichstag, February 13, 
 1893, this interpretation was proven to be wrong, and 
 if this is not of sufficient authority, I refer to the 
 
 [157]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 Protestant theologian Karl Mueller, who, in his Kir- 
 chengeschichte, Freiburg, i. B., 1892, Vol. I., page 53, 
 takes the same view. I lay stress on this fact merely 
 to prove the inaccuracy of Goldwin Smith's state- 
 ments in historical matters, not because it would con- 
 demn the Jews, if Tacitus had charged them with such 
 an attitude toward the non-Jewish world. In fact, 
 Tacitus (Histories, V, 2, et seq.) does not speak very 
 well of the Jews, either, but he at least gives them 
 credit for resisting religious tyranny. This inac- 
 curacy is quoting hstory is also evident in the ref- 
 erence to the murder of Greeks in Gyrene and Cyprus, 
 reported by Dio Cassius (Ixviii. 32) who says that 
 in Cyrene 220,000, and in Cyprus 240,000 Greeks were 
 killed by the Jews. It will be permitted to allow a 
 considerable discount on these figures, when we com- 
 pare them with the number of those killed in the 
 bloodiest wars in modern history (as e. g., that Ger- 
 many in the war of 1870-71, lost only 40,080 men), 
 and it will be sufficient to say that, as in Palestine and 
 in Egypt, there were frictions between the two na- 
 tionalities which resulted in bloody fights, in which 
 the Jews were not always merely the victims. 
 
 The only remedy which Prof. Smith seems to hold 
 out to the Jews, if they wish to escape the fate of their 
 co-religionists in Russia, seems to be contained in the 
 words : ' ' The Jew may presently learn to give up the 
 tribal rites, which conflict with a full sense of nation- 
 ality, to intermarry, to associate freely, and to keep 
 
 [158]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 the same day of rest." This statement leads us at 
 once into the religious side of the question, which 
 Prof. Smith, by the very title of his essay, makes an 
 absolutely indifferent matter. While not minimizing 
 the fact that there is an objection amongst the Jews 
 to intermarriage, I first of all wish to point out that it 
 is not found amongst the Jews exclusively. The Neue 
 Freie Presse, of July 1, 1906, contains a report of a 
 case which came before the court of Graz, and in 
 which Bishop Kahn, of Klagenfurt by the way, 
 not a Jewish, but a Roman Catholic Bishop had de- 
 clared a marriage between a Catholic and a Protes- 
 tant invalid because a Protestant minister had solem- 
 nized the marriage, and on this ground the Bishop 
 gave to the Catholic husband the right to marry again. 
 The Supreme Court of Austria, on October 3, 1905, 
 declared the marriage of a Christian and a Jewess, 
 contracted in Switzerland, invalid in accordance 
 with the view of canonical law. Another court de- 
 cision in Austria, May 21, 1900, declared the mar- 
 riage of a Jew and a Catholic woman contracted in 
 New York as invalid. Strong invectives against the 
 marriage of Protestants and Catholics are found in 
 one of the leading Catholic newspapers of Germany 
 (Die Koelnische Volkszeitung, February 14, 1906). 
 In the German Reichstag, on January 24, 1906, a 
 complaint was made that in a book, by a Catholic 
 priest, Father Fischer, it is stated that a mixed mar- 
 riage, i. e., a marriage between a Catholic and Prot- 
 
 [159]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 estant, was "not a Christian marriage, but merely 
 a beastly, political intermingling of sexes." Better 
 known is the fact that the Imperial Protestant Federa- 
 tion of England appealed to the king to veto the mar- 
 riage of his niece, Princess Ena, of Battenberg, to 
 the King of Spain. In a divorce case which came 
 before the court of New York, March 30, 1906, the 
 woman who was the defendant stated that she could 
 not inform her parents of the fact that she had mar- 
 ried a Jew (New Yorker Staatszeitung, March 31, 
 1906). Anti-Semitic politicians hav f repeatedly 
 spoken in European Parliaments of the necessity of is- 
 suing a law, prohibiting the marriage of "Jews and 
 human beings." Still, the number of intermarriages 
 is not inconsiderable. In countries in which we have 
 statistics, this can be proven. So, in Prussia, one out 
 of seven Jews, and in Bavaria, one out of ten, mar- 
 ried out of the faith, and in this number, naturally, 
 those are not included who were converted to the 
 religion of the other party before their marriage. 
 Prof. Smith speaks, in a vague way, of the tribal 
 rite. I can only imagine that he refers to circum- 
 cision. Leaving aside the hygienic question, it would 
 seem to me evident that no law has any right to in- 
 terfere with religious convictions. Granted that cir- 
 cumcision is a barbarous rite from the point of 
 view of logic there is no reason why it should be 
 prohibited by law, while the belief in transubstantia- 
 tion, or, for that matter, in the vicarious atonement, 
 
 [160]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 and in the practices built on these dogmas, such as 
 the Lord's Supper, Supreme Unction, etc., should be 
 more reasonable. This being a delicate matter, I wish 
 to be clearly understood. I do not attack any of these 
 dogmas or practices, but I merely see no reason for 
 declaring that circumcision ought to be prohibited as 
 contrary to the spirit of modern civilization. Will 
 there not be a possibility that some day an Ingersoll 
 might make a demand that baptism, being a gross 
 superstition, ought to be prohibited by law? This 
 argument r "ers to tEe Day of Best just as well. We 
 have now v _ jte a number of Seventh Day Baptists 
 and Adventists. There was Alexander Webb, a con- 
 vert to Islam, who made propaganda for conversion 
 to Mohammedanism. Supposing he would have been 
 successful? It is not the noblest idea which the 
 Prophet of Israel has proclaimed ''that all the 
 peoples will walk everyone in the name of his god ? ' ' 
 
 A word must be said on the Talmudic Jew, whom 
 Goldwin Smith attacks so bitterly. Let me first of all 
 say that the Talmudic Jew does not exist any more 
 than the "tribal" Jew. If Prof. Smith w T ere capable 
 of the slightest degree of fairness he would notice 
 that in America, as well as in Western Europe, the 
 observance of the Sabbath in business is a very rare 
 exception. He would see, not only in passing along 
 Broadway, New York, that there is perhaps not one 
 Jewish business house closed on the seventh day. 
 He could even notice in the heart of the ' ' Ghetto, ' ' on 
 
 [161]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 Canal Street, that the push-cart trade is flourishing 
 on Saturday more than on any week-day, although 
 buyers and sellers are both Jews. The expression, 
 Talmudic Jew, is a meaningless, anti-Semitic phrase. 
 The Talmud is partly a code, regulating the ritual 
 and the civil laws of the Jews, and partly a scholastic 
 and strictly theoretical discussion of the Biblical laws 
 which have not been practiced for 2000 years. Tal- 
 mudic literature also contains historical and archaeo- 
 logical statements, folk-lore and ethical teachings, 
 many of which are no more law than the eth- 
 nical theories of Goldwin Smith are part of the 
 American Constitution, because they appeared in a 
 New York periodical. This does not mean that the 
 Talmud is an altogether condemnable book. The 
 Talmud teaches patriotism as a duty, enjoins moral 
 principles in commercial life, praises menial labor and 
 is very emphatic on the duty of gratitude to one's 
 teachers, and on the importance of cultivating the in- 
 tellect. Of course, there are a number of antiquated 
 statements in the Talmud. Rabbis of 1600 years ago 
 believed that the sun revolved around the earth, and, 
 provoked by oppression, made here and there bitter 
 statements against the Romans and the Parthians. 
 Suppose that these statements are somewhat more 
 objectionable than the compliments paid by Tacitus 
 and other Roman authors to the Christians. Could 
 any Roman in our days be held responsible for what 
 Tacitus said in the days of Rabbi Akiba ? Still, Gold- 
 
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 win Smith claims that the Jew is not "tolerant" 
 now. His diatribe will certainly not foster the spirit 
 of toleration, which alone can bring about the progress 
 of the world. 
 
 How do we account for the hostility to the Jews? 
 It has three causes : Snobbery, bigotry and that men- 
 tal inertia which is responsible for the survival of 
 many other antiquated ideas. 
 
 [163]
 
 XIII 
 THE CURSE OF THE CRUCIFIXION* 
 
 In the " Journal and Messenger" of April 24 I read 
 the following : 
 
 Our attention has been called to an address, or 
 sermon, delivered on Easter Sunday by a Jewish 
 rabbi in Poughkeepsie, N. Y., in which he took occa- 
 sion to air his objections to Christianity. He held 
 that Easter is to be observed, not because it commemo- 
 rates the resurrection of the Son of God, but because 
 it signalizes "the resurrection of earth's energies." 
 The rabbi declared his disbelief of the record of the 
 resurrection of Christ, and was particular to declare 
 the Jews non-responsible for his death. All was to be 
 charged upon the Romans; and he undertook to rea- 
 son that if the death of Christ brought about redemp- 
 tion, the Jew ought not to be blamed for it, since good 
 came of it. All this is very shallow reasoning, and 
 yet it is nothing new. It has been a sort of stock 
 argument with Jews in all ages. It must not be for- 
 gotten that the Jews said to Pilate : " If thou let this 
 man go thou art not Caesar 's friend. " " His blood be 
 upon us and upon our children." "Crucify him!" 
 ' ' Crucify him ! ' ' Today we are not disposed to load 
 
 *American Israelite, May 15, 1902. 
 
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 upon the Jews anything more than they dke upon 
 themselves. But when the Jews undertake to shift 
 the responsibility by such arguments, and when they 
 persist in justifying their ancestors of the days of 
 Pilate and Caiaphas, we are compelled to withdraw 
 some of our sympathy and to admit that the blood 
 called down upon them has not been all washed off. 
 
 It is remarkable how people will oppose incon- 
 venient truths. Many years ago Ludwig Philippson 
 wrote a pamphlet under the title, "Did the Jews 
 Crucify Jesus?" in which he said everything that 
 could be said on the subject. The summary of his 
 arguments, which I give from memory, is the follow- 
 ing: 
 
 According to the account of the crucifixion found 
 in the first three, so-called synoptic, gospels, Jesus 
 was crucified on the Passover. This was plainly an 
 impossibility, for Jews, fanatical enough to have de- 
 manded his crucifixion, would certainly under no 
 condition have desecrated their holy day. According 
 to the Gospel of John, the crucifixion took place on the 
 day preceding Passover. Mistake is excluded in both 
 cases, because according to the synoptics Jesus cele- 
 brated the Passover meal with his disciples; conse- 
 quently the crucifixion could not have taken place 
 before the day following that meal, while in the fourth 
 gospel stress is laid on the fact that Jesus represented 
 the Passover lamb which was to be sacrificed on the 
 day preceding Passover, and consequently the state- 
 
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 merit that the crucifixion took place on that day can 
 not rest on a mistake of a scribe or on the inexactness 
 of the memory of the author. These contradictory 
 statements would in themselves suffice to make any 
 judge hesitate before he would pronounce sentence on 
 such conflicting testimony. 
 
 Further, crucifixion was never a Jewish mode of 
 executing criminals. The Pharisees, who were BO 
 particular in their legal minutiae, would, if they had 
 had to pronounce sentence, certainly have proceeded 
 according to their law. Again, unmistakable historical 
 testimony proves that the Jews under Pontius Pilate 
 and long before his time possessed no jurisdiction in 
 criminal matters, and consequently a sentence of 
 death rendered by the Sanhedrin, had to be submitted 
 to the Roman govelrnment for confirmation. The 
 authors of the various gospel accounts were familiar 
 with this fact, and this is the reason why they as- 
 signed to Pilate the role of pleader for clemency. 
 Pilate washes his hands in innocence and attempts to 
 dissuade the members of the court from insisting on 
 the sentence. From what we learn from reliable 
 historians about Pilate's character, he was a tyrant, 
 who certainly could have had no reason for objecting 
 to an execution but the authors of the gospels found 
 it desirable to reconcile the supposed guilt of the Jews 
 with the fact that before a sentence of death could 
 be executed the governor had first to confirm it. 
 
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 Further, if we accept the crucifixion story, we must 
 also accept the reports of the resurrection and the 
 ascent to heaven, and there are serious obstacles in 
 the way of an honest man's accepting these. If such 
 reports were given out today from Bowie's Zion City, 
 I have no doubt but that the editorial staff of the 
 "Journal and Messenger" would greet them with 
 laughter, and would consider as dupes those who be- 
 lieved them. 
 
 But suppose that all this be true. Suppose that the 
 Jews really did crucify some one who promised to 
 come on the clouds of heaven, and who said that he 
 and the Father were one. What would it prove ? It 
 would prove that there were fanatics in those days 
 just as there are now, who, instead of committing a 
 man, mentally afflicted, to an insane asylum, prose- 
 cute him as a blasphemer. Many worse things have 
 been committed in the course of history. Shall we 
 again point out the fact that on free American soil 
 the Puritans hanged Mary Fisher, a Quakeress, be- 
 cause she preached against the rigidity of the Puritan 
 creed, and that a number of others were scourged and 
 put to death for the same offense? Shall we point 
 out the fact that Michael Servetus was burned at the 
 stake by Calvin because he rejected the belief in the 
 Trinity, and that Luther heartily congratulated the 
 Swiss reformer for the act? Shall we point out the 
 fact that about 1620, in the very same Geneva, where 
 Calvin taught, a reformed preacher, Nicholas An- 
 
 [167]
 
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 thoine, was burned at the stake because he professed 
 belief in Judaism ? Shall we point out the numerous 
 victims of the Inquisition and of the Crusades ? The 
 Jews can not be accused of any persecutions such as 
 these. It is true, it may be said they had not the 
 power to enforce their religion with the threat of the 
 fagot. Very well. But if they really did crucify 
 Jesus, they did certainly nothing worse than every 
 church of Christendom has done since the beginning 
 of its history, or what some churches would do today 
 if they had the power. 
 
 As late as 1852, Pope Pius IX, condemned a man 
 and his wife to the galleys for life because they had 
 become converted to Protestantism, and about 1867 
 he made Peter Arbues a saint, whose only claim to 
 this elevated position was that he relentlessly burned 
 heretics, mostly Jewish backsliders, at the stake. 
 
 Allowing that the Jews crucified Jesus and that 
 their case was worse than all the cases thus far quoted, 
 which can hardly be proven, it remains a fact that the 
 present generation of Jews is entirely free from re- 
 sponsibility in this matter. At the supposed time of 
 the crucifixion there were thousands of Jews living 
 in Alexandria and a great number in Rome, in all the 
 important commercial centers of the Mediterranean 
 and in Mesopotamia. Even a great number of those 
 who lived in Palestine were beyond the scene of the 
 tragedy. How can it be proven to the present gen- 
 eration of Jews that they are those upon whom the 
 
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 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 blood of Jesus came in accordance with the curse 
 which they are supposed to have brought upon them- 
 selves ? 
 
 Pilate held office as governor of Palestine from 26 
 A. D. to 36 A. D. Suppose the crucifixion took place 
 in 30 A. D. Since that time 1870 years have elapsed. 
 Giving only three generations to a century, which is a 
 liberal estimate, this would make 56 generations. Now, 
 how can any reasonable being suppose that the al- 
 mighty, Allwise and Beneficent Being who rules the 
 universe will punish anybody for a crime, no matter 
 how atrocious it may be, which his 56th ancestor had 
 commited? What outcry of horror would fill the 
 civilized world, were any court to pass a sentence that 
 the innocent child of a murderer should be hanged for 
 the crime of his father. If this is not logic, I would like 
 to know what is. And another thing: How can it be 
 proven to any Jew living that he is not a descendant of 
 one of the multitude of Jews who at the time of the 
 crucifixion lived hundreds of miles away from this 
 scene, and never heard of it until Christian Sunday- 
 school children surprised them with the important 
 news? How can it be proven to any Jew living at 
 present that he is not the descendant of one of the 
 numerous proselytes who were converted to Judaism 
 from nations who had not the slightest hand in that 
 crime of crucifixion ! 
 
 All the preceding remarks are based on the suppo- 
 sition that the crucifixion really took place, which for 
 
 [169]
 
 SCROLLS, VOLUME III 
 
 argument's sake I am willing to allow. Still I con- 
 sider it my duty to state again and again that a sound 
 historical critic can arrive at but one conclusion, 
 namely, that the crucifixion, like the resurrection and 
 ascent into heaven, like the whole history of Jesus, is 
 a myth. Here are my arguments. Any one who will 
 not accept the miracles finds himself placed before the 
 following alternatives : The history of Jesus, as given 
 in the gospels, is either a legendary ornamentation 
 of an event the truth of which cannot be ascertained 
 at this distant date, or it is an outgrowth of folklore, 
 a myth become faith, an idea materialized into belief. 
 There is no other way of getting out of the difficulty 
 which faces us when we consider the various conflict- 
 ing stories of the accounts of Jesus' birth and all the 
 miracles connected with his life until his ascent into 
 heaven. If we do not accept them, we have to choose 
 between interpreting them as legends or regarding 
 them as myths. To me personally the latter course 
 seems to be the better, not from the Jewish point of 
 view, from which, as I said before, it would be alto- 
 gether immaterial if all these events had actually 
 taken place, but from the point of view of the scien- 
 tific historian. That ideas are really condensed into 
 myth the experience of every day will prove. I might 
 cite the story of the Wandering Jew, of "William Tell 
 or of Faust. In all these instances a mere idea is 
 through the evolution of folklore condensed into fact. 
 If, however, we regard the story of Christ as legend- 
 
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 ary, we would have to state that we are confronted 
 with such a perplexing theory that our only escape 
 from the difficulty lies in the conclusion that all that 
 is definitely known about the crucifixion is that some- 
 thing like a heresy trial was held in Palestine about 
 1870 years ago. It is because of that one meager bit 
 of knowledge on the subject that today in Rumania 
 the poor Jewish mechanic is not permitted to follow 
 his trade ; that the Jewish boy in Russia is not admit- 
 ted to a public school, and that an inoffensive old 
 Jewish peddler in America is insulted on the streets 
 by those who are "baptized" and "believe" and shall 
 be "saved." 
 
 * 
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