A HISTORY OF THE JEWS PAUL GOODMAN ifomia Dnal ity A HISTORY OF THE JFAVS }^^viyy*>y -jj^;)^^ Traditional Portrait of Moses Maimonides With Facsimile of His Autograph HISTORY OF THE JEWS BY PAUL GOODMAN NEW YORK E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 68i FIFTH AVENUE Published, J gig, By E. p. Dutton & Company All Rights reserved Printed in the United States of America TO MY SON MAURICE PAUL THIS HISTORY OF HIS PEOPLE IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED " Remember the days of old. Consider the years of many generations: Ask thy father, and he will shew thee; Thine elders, and they will tell thee." Deut. xxxii. 7. "Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom 1 have chosen." — Isaiah xHii. 10. "The life of man is numbered by days: The days of Israel are without number." Ecclus. xxxvii. 25. "Kingdoms arise and kingdoms pass away, but Israel endureth for evermore. "^Midrash. "Man is made man by history. The Jew recognizes that he is made what he is by the history of his fathers, and feels he is losing his better self so far as he loses his hold on his past history. "The history of Israel is the great living proof of the working of Divine Providence in the affairs of the world. Alone among the nations Israel has shared in all great movements since mankind became conscious of their destinies. If there is no Divine purpose in the long travail of Israel, it is vain to seek for any such purpose in man's life. In the reflected light of that purpose each Jew should lead his life with an added dignity." — Joseph Jacobs. VIU PREFACE The history of the Jews presents the struggles for hght and hfe of a people small in numbers and negligible in political power but great in achievement and unparalleled in endurance. This people, whom the historians and geographers of ancient Hellas hardly deigned to notice as a strange Syrian tribe, had already then pro- duced one of the most remarkable literatures of all time as well as a body of men who were later on acclaimed as the ethical and religious teachers of mankind. While in their most flourishing political state the Israelites formed only a petty Asiatic kingdom, the de- scendants of those who served the Pharaohs and whose national existence was wiped out by Nebuchadnezzar the Babylonian about 2,500 years ago still represent one of the most active and progressive human groups of to-day. What the Jews as a Kulturvolk mean to the world, not merely as an ancient factor but as one of the living forces of modern times, may be gauged by a comparison of the contributions which the Jews have made during the last century to all aspects of civilization with the almost inappreciable activities during the same period of the historically and politically favoured Greeks. If we take away the Jews from the realms of thought and life — if we imagine that there had not existed those who gave birth to the spiritual, ethical and dogmatic forces of Christianity; that Mohammedanism, the Arabian replica of a militant Judaism, had never seen the world; that we knew nothing of those and other Hebraic Influences which, in name, substance and action, have repeatedly changed the course of History — then both Eastern and Western civilization would appear to us beyond recognition. The Jews are one of the very rare races with a definite mission in the development of mankind — a mission of which the actors are conscious, if, at times, unwilling agents, destined to play the part of historic advocates for the freedom of the human conscience, in contravention of their own jealous and uncompromising adherence to ethical Monotheism and to the moral purpose of human life — the imperishable Jewish contributions to the foundations of civiliza- tion. The Jews have, however, not only given birth to prophets of the mission of Israel, but, strangest of all, they have also produced the ix X PREFACE greatest adversaries of their own claims and corporate existence. Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles, who boasted of being a Hebrew of the Hebrews, was the dogmatic founder of the world-conquering rehgion of which Jesus the Messiah (Christ) was the spiritual and ethical inspiration; Spinoza, the most dissolving philosopher of the modern age, broke the trammels of supernaturalism; Karl Marx, the scientific creator of the Socialist movement, became the cosmopolitan prophet of the disinherited of the whole human race. In spite of the extraordinary kaleidoscopic changes in Jewish history — from the conquest of the now extinct and forgotten Canaanites to the combat with the widespread and powerful forces of modern Anti-Semitism — an extensive survey of it presents a cycle of manifestations and problems that continually repeats itself. In substance, Jewish history is concentrated on the never-ending struggle between the universalistic and particularistic tendencies of Jewish thought and life, and, from the conflicts between Prophecy and Priesthood to those of Nationalism and Assimilation, we discern the same heroic effort to save the Jewish life by losing it. Never has such solidarity been exhibited between the scattered atoms of a race that frequently even lack molecular attraction, yet never has a people risen to such sublime heights, with entire oblivion of itself. It is because throughout this Jewish struggle for life there appears one underlying, fundamental purpose — the fulfilment of law and prophecy in their workings in History. Jewish history has shared the fate of the Jews in that it has been treated either from an offensive or defensive, and, too frequently, from the double-edged didactic, point of view. In the following pages, the course of Jewish history has been traced without reference to the question whether the Jews have the right to exist. The subject of Judaism as a world-religion has been fully treated by me elsewhere,^ but, Irrespective of the justification or condemnation of Judaism, our interest is surely due to the history of a people which, according to the natural law of the survival of the fittest, has justified itself by Its very existence. * * * I am deeply indebted to the Rev. David Bueno de Mesquita for the reading and revision of the MS. and proofs of the book. P. G. London, November 14, 1909. * The Synagogue and the Church, being a Contribution to the Apolo- getics of Judaism (Routledge, 1908). CONTENTS Chapter I. — The Ancient Israelites The Historical Records— The Patriarchs— Israel in Egypt— Moses— The Exodus — The Torah of Moses — The Conquest of the Land — The Judges— The United Monarchy — The Kingdom of Israel — The Kingdom of Judah— The Prophets . pp. 1-12 Chapter II. — The Second Temple The Babylonian Captivity— The Restoration — The Samaritans — Ezra and Nehemiah — A Silent Evolution — The Conflict with Hellenism — The Maccabean Revolt — The Hasmonean Dynasty — The Herodian Dynasty — Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes — The Rise of Rabbinic Schools— Hellenistic Judaism— The Rise of Christianity^The Spread of Judaism — The Shadows of the Roman War — The War with Rome — The Fall of Judea— The Last Struggle for Independence .... pp. 13-41 Chapter III. — The Talmudic Age The Dispersion— The Rally— Judaism in Babylonia— The Talmud — Under the Cross— Under Neo-Persian Dominion — Under the Crescent — In Western Europe — Social and Economic Condi- tions PP- 42-62 Chapter IV. — The Golden Age of Judaism The Geonim— Karaism- The Chazars— The Spanish Epoch— His- pano-Jewish Culture— Moses Maimonides— The Franco-Ger- man Schools pp. 63-80 Chapter V. — The Dark Ages The General State— Sufferings and Trials— The Forces of Resistance — The Crusades— In Medieval Erigland— In Central Europe- Spain and the Inquisition — Reaction Within — The Cabbalahy— Pseudo-Messiahs— Italy— Turkey— Poland— The Cossack Ris- ing—The Chassidim— The Rise of Tolerance — Spinoza — In the Middle of the Eighteenth Century . . . .pp. 81-130 xii CONTENTS Chapter VI. — The Era of Assimilation The Modern Epoch — The Growth of Jewish Population — Moses Mendelssohn — The Enlightenment and Neo-Hebrew Literature — Yiddish — The Science of Judaism — The Reform of Judaism — The Struggle for Emancipation — Emancipation m England. — Russia — The United States of America — Self-Emancipation — Anti-Semitism — Zionism — Modern Problems. pp. 131-158 Bibliography P- 159 Index pp. 161-164 thf HISTORY OF THE JEWS CHAPTER I The Ancient Israelites § I. The Historical Records. — The history of the Jews reaches back to a primeval age of human civilization, to those archaic times when gods walked the earth and held intercourse with the children of men. But whereas the descent of other nations of remote antiquity is lost in the dim mists of mythologj", the collection of literature known as the Bible has preserved a remarkably simple, and yet vivid, account of the origins and early history of the people called the Hebrews, Israelites or Jews. § 2. The Patriarchs. — Abraham, the Hebrew (i. e. from the other side of the river [Euphrates] ), the first of the patriarchs from whom the Jews trace their descent, came of so-called Semitic stock from Ur, in Chaldea, which was then, more than 2000 years b.C.e., an impor- tant centre of civilization. Tradition has it that a divine call came to him to leave his home and country and to proceed southward to the land of Canaan (Phcrnicia), or Palestine (the land of the Philistines), while he re- ceived the promise that his descendants should live there as a great nation and play an unique part in the history of the human race. In the national records, his son Isaac 2 HISTORY OF THE JEWS and grandson Jacob (or Israel) are described as pastoral chieftains, who moved about with their flocks in the then thinly inhabited land of Canaan. In the course of their migrations the family eventually settled in the rich pas- ture-lands of neighbouring Egypt. § 3. Israel in Egypt. — It was in Egypt, in the course of centuries, that, from a small clan, the Children of Israel (B'ne Israel) rose to be a people considerable in numbers. Living on a frontier exposed to the inroads of numerous marauding enemies attracted by the wealth and culture of Egypt, the Israelites incurred the suspicion that they would prove dangerous to the country, to the inhabitants of which they were indeed entirely foreign in race, religion, and occupation. To prevent such a probable contingency, the Israelites were turned into Pharaonic serfs, and set to labour at those gigantic works and monuments w^hich have repiained the wonder of pos- terity. The barbaric cruelties enacted by their Egyptian taskmasters broke the spirit of this shepherd-people. § 4. Moses. — At such a critical time there appeared on the scene one who, by the stupendous and enduring character of his work and the transcendent effect of his world-mission, not only stands out as the most luminous figure of antiquity, but as a mighty conqueror of the hu- man soul, whose influence has been pulsating throughout the ages with ever-increasing vitality. Moses, who was to become the leader and teacher of the Children of Is- rael, appears to have been brought up as an Egyptian and to have taken no interest or share in the servitude of his people. It was by an accident that he became alive to the slavery which crushed his kith and kin. On seeing one day an Egj^ptian taskmaster beating one of the Israelites, the generous indignation and racial consciousness of Moses were roused, and he killed the Egj'ptian. To escape Egyptian vengeance for his daring act, he left the country. But the enslavement and wrongs of his people pursued him to the wilderness of the Sinaitic peninsula to which THE ANCIENT ISRAELITES 3 he betook himself. While engaged there in the peaceful pursuit of a shepherd his musings brought before him a vision of the deliverance of his brethren, and he obeyed the voice which, recalling to him the purpose of the Eternal (JHVH) in His promise to the patriarchs of old, bade him to lead the people of Israel out of Eg}pt. § 5. The Exodus. — The enfranchisement of a nation of slaves trodden under the heel of a mighty military power — such was the task which presented itself to Moses, who was by nature a man halting in speech and of humble disposition. But when the appeal came to the Israelites to free themselves from the Egyptian yoke, "they heark- ened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit and for cruel bondage." The extrordinary self-assertion and confidence which Moses, in conjunction with his brother Aaron, inspired in the down-trodden Israelites, their deliverance from the crushing tyranny of the Egyptian, as well as the cohesion and discipline maintained among such a vast horde of rebel slaves, are more eloquent testimony than all the recorded supernatural signs and wonders to the inscrutable spiritual force which then brought the religion of Israel into being. § 6. The Torah of Moses. — The exodus of the Is- raelites from Eg}'pt (about 1200 b.c.e.) became the most far-reaching event, and has always been considered as the central incident, in the political and religious his- tory of the Jews. With the liberation of the Israelites from Eg}ptian bondage, there began their life as a free people, destined to take possession of that land of Canaan to which their steps were now directed. The invasion and conquest of that country might have been accomplished with more or less success if a daring and skilled warrior had led the Israelites, while their rough patriarchal and tribal organizations and rudimentary monotheistic tra- ditions would have furnished them w ith the necessary po- litical and religious bonds of a national life. The Is- raelites were, however, not merely to supplant the inhab- 4 HISTORY OF THE JEWS itants of Canaan, but, as a people providentially selected for a high purpose in the education of the human race, were to form an ideal polity, where individual and pub- lic righteousness should be the guiding and binding prin- ciples of law and order; where the authority and worship of the one God of Israel was to hold undivided sway — so that the existence of the people of Israel should be assured for ever. The corner-stone of the Torah (Instruction, or Law) of Moses was provided by the Ten Words (the Deca- logue), which solemnly proclaimed the absolute and un- divided unity and incorporeality of God, and gave a concise epitome of the moral law which was to govern the lives of the Israelites. In order to keep them effectively separated as a people dedicated to a high service, the Torah ordained rites and observances which were intended to strengthen the na- tional consciousness and the moral fibre of the Israelite by guiding and educating him in the fear and love of God, and it also contained laws and regulations for good government, both of the whole community and of its component parts. Apart from its unswerving insistence on the monotheistic conception and worship of God, the outstanding features of the Torah of Moses — whether promulgated by him or developed later on — were the sacredness and moral purpose of human life and the equal- ity of all without distinction, including the foreigner and the slave, before the law. In this the Israelites were to form a striking contrast to the natives of Canaan, against whom and their seductive immoral polytheism the Torah of Moses pronounced itself with ruthless se- verity. With the claim of authority from on high, and an appeal to the divine in man, the Torah demanded personal holiness as well as justice and righteousness in social relations. The tender mercy to be shown to the weak and the needy, and an exceptionally high sense of consideration for the unprotected foreigner, are remark- THE ANCIENT ISRAELITES S able traits in the Torah of Moses, which was later on summarized in tlic love of God with all one's heart, soul and belongings, and the love of the fellow-man, even though a stranger, as oneself, § 7. The Conquest of the Land. — It was about 1 1 60 B.C. that the Israelites invaded Canaan by crossing the river Jordan under the leadership of Joshua, the suc- cessor of Moses. Of the tribes into which the people of Israel was divided, some had contented themselves by stay- ing behind and settling on the eastern bank of the Jor- dan, for the invaders met with fierce resistance on the part of the natives. The holy war which had been pro- claimed against them was for centuries carried on with only partial success, and although the Israelites were able to overrun the country, and to gain a firm footing there, they had often to submit to serious reverses and to the humiliating yoke of their enemies. In these sanguinary struggles for the possession of the land, the Israelites de- veloped a martial disposition, which marks that epoch as the heroic period of their history. The rugged wildness of Israelitish life in those times stands out in striking con- trast to the regulating and restraining influences which made themselves felt in later ages. § 8. The Judges. — The frequent disasters that over- took the Israelites, and which were largely due to their divisions and tribal jealousies, produced a new kind of leader, known by the title of Judges (Shophetim, cf. the Carthaginian Sufifetes). They were men who by some act of public valour or sagacity had proved their fitness to lead the people against oppressors or rebels. Certain of these judges, like Samson, distinguished themselves by personal feats of prowess, but usually they were success- ful commanders whom their grateful tribesmen or ad- herents invested with the authority of a military and civil dictator. There appear to have been women also who were accepted as Judges, and one of them, Deborah, exercised considerable influence. The last and greatest 6 HISTORY OF THE JEWS of the Judges was Samuel, who was recognized by the whole people. But the old age of Samuel and the press- ing danger of the Canaanlte enemies, convinced the di- vided and democratically disposed tribes of Israel, even against the urgent advice of Samuel, that they required a common ruler who would lead them to war and judge them in times of peace. § 9. The United Monarchy. — The first one select- ed for the dignity of king was Saul, a man of commanding presence and proved military abilit}. His many success- ful campaigns, especially against the Philistines, who still threatened the security and independence of the Is- raelites, as well as the partially re-established political unity of the people, justified both the office and the selec- tion. But private troubles, brought about by differences with his former patron, Samuel, and by jealousy of the remarkable martial exploits of his armour-bearer David, made the end of Saul's reign an unhappy one, and in a disastrous battle he put an end to his life. With David, Saul's successor on the throne, there be- gins a period of great prestige and prosperity for the Israelites. David, who was justly described as "cunning in playing, a mighty man of valour, a man of war and prudent in speech," raised them to an important military power, and established the short-lived stability and unity of his people. He conquered Jerusalem, and made this, the Eternal City of the Jews, the political and religious capital of his kingdom. The extraordinary magnetic influence exercised by David on the Israelites and the halo with which they surrounded his reign, he bequeathed to his family, which became recognized as the legitimate dynasty of Jewish rulers. Endowed with a poetic genius of a high order, he laid the foundations of that collection of Hebrew devotional literature, the Psalms, which has stirred the hearts of men of countless generations, of all races and all climes. In the dispute which arose concerning the succession to THE ANCIENT ISRAELITES 7 David's throne, he himself selected his son Solomon, who developed his father's acliievements by raising the kingdom to a still higher state of strength and magnificence, Solo- mon, who was the most important king of his day be- tween the Euphrates and the border of Egypt, endeared himself to his subjects by building a national temple of remarkable splendour on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem (973), and by the prestige which now distinguished the Israelites among the conquered and surrounding nations. Solomon's friendship with Hiram, king of Tyre, was turned into a commercial alliance between the powerful Israelite and the enterprising Phoenician. The joint mari- time expeditions which were sent out by them from the port of Ezion-Geber, on the Red Sea, as well as the skilled Tyrian workmen lent to Solomon, brought to the agricultural Israelites a vast measure of wealth and ar- tistic productions. His reputation for wisdom, for the composition of gnomic sayings and riddles, gave him an added lustre in the memory of the Israelites. Solomon was the Grand Monarque of the Israelites, and, like the French Louis XIV, the glories of his reign involved the ultimate ruin of the country. His matri- monial alliances with the king of Egj'pt and other foreign sovereigns, as well as the creation of a large Oriental harem, established in Jerusalem the authorized worship of various idolatries which aroused the ire of those zeal- ous for the exclusive worship of the God of Israel, while the extravagance of his rule and the accompanying intro- duction of new, burdensome taxation and forced labour brought disaffection among his subjects and the disrup- tion of the kingdom after his death. § 10. The Kingdom of Israel. — The division of the Hebrew monarchy into two parts, Judah and Israel, was the most momentous national event since the invasion of Canaan. The smouldering disaffection and the jealousies of the northern tribes broke out into an open flame on the accession of Solomon's son, Rehoboam. The revolt 8 HISTORY OF THE JEWS was headed by Jeroboam, formerly an officer in Solomon's service, who, owing to a conspiracy, had been forced to escape to Egj'pt. Jeroboam returned to his native land with the favour of the king of Eg\pt, whose interest it was to weaken the formidable power of the Hebrew kingdom. A deputation, headed by the former rebel Jeroboam, was sent to Rehoboam to demand guarantees for the rights of the northern tribes which had been violated by Solomon, but the new king imperiously re- fused to redress any grievances. In the successful revo- lution which ensued, Jeroboam was elected to reign over the so-called Ten Tribes, under the title of King of Israel. The kingdom of Israel, which existed for about two centuries, was troubled by frequent dynastic disturb- ances, palace revolutions, conspiracies and assassinations. Jeroboam, the first king of Israel, set himself to widen the breach between the two Hebrew states, and, to pre- vent the religious fusion between both political sections of the people, established separate shrines with semi- idolatrous worship, to supersede the central sanctuary in Jerusalem. Later on, forced by the threatening power of the empire of Damascus, the Israelites re-established friendly relations with their kinsmen of Judah. The northern kingdom, however, had too little stability to maintain its independence. In spite of repeated gallant attempts, and even some signal successes, against the en- croachments and attacks of Damascus, the kingdom of Israel fell a prey to the mighty conquering power of Assyria. Under the reign of the Israelite king Pekah, the Assyrian emperor Tiglath-pileser III carried away a large number of Israelites captive. His successor, Shal- maneser IV, again invaded the country, took Hoshea, the last king of Israel, prisoner, and, in 721 B.C., after a siege of three 3'ears, the Assyrians, under Sargon, cap- tured Samaria, the capital, and, by earning the people away into exile, put an end to the kingdom of Israel. THE ANCIENT ISRAELITES 9 The captives practically disappeared amidst their for- eign surroundings, and, as a separate entity, Jewish his- tory knows them no more. § II. The Kingdom of Judah. — Different in very important respects from the inglorious end of the north- ern kingdom was the fate of the sister state of Judah, or Judea. Though it also could not escape the cata- clysms which were brought about by the rise and fall of the neighbouring empires, it survived all of them. The reasons for this resistance are first of all to be found in the allegiance which the people continued to pay to the royal house of David, and in the religious cohesion effected by the renowned national sanctuary in Jerusalem. While the kingdom of Judah was at the beginning more or less protected from northern invasion by the interven- ing kingdom of Israel, it was Egypt which proved a dangerous neighbour. Under the reign of Rehoboam, the first of the kings of Judah, Shishak, of Egypt, swept over the land, and carried away from Jerusalem the gold and other treasures of the Temple and royal palace. Indeed, the apparently inexhaustible wealth of the Tem- ple and the precious metals used in its construction and appointments, proved attractive objects for the cupidity of foreign invaders. The kings of Damascus, Israel and Assyria, who raided the land of Judah, plundered those treasures themselves or were bought off with them. Of far more serious consequences, however, proved the con- flicts betw-een the rival powers of Egj'pt and Babylonia, between which Judah served as a buffer-state, so that it w'as placed in the inextricable difficulty of having repeatedly to take sides with one power against the other. The trouble broke out when Necho II, of Eg}^pt, marched northward to come to grips with the Baby- lonians, and king Josiah, of Judah, considered it neces- sary to oppose the passage of the Egyptian army through his territory. At the battle of IVIegiddo, the well-mean- 10 HISTORY OF THE JEWS ing Josiah was defeated with great slaughter and lost his life (608). Confusion and disaster followed on this event. Necho interfered with the election to the throne, on which he placed his own nominee, Jehoiakim, Josiah's eldest son, and put the country under tribute to Egypt. Judah, however, soon passed under the ruthless yoke of the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar. Jehoiachin, the son and successor of Jehoiakim, together with many of the aristocracy, was carried away captive to Babylon, and his brother Zedekiah, the youngest son of Josiah, the twen- tieth and last king of Judah, was placed on the throne. Instigated by Egypt, Zedekiah rebelled against Babylonia; Nebuchadnezzar invested Jerusalem, and, after a siege of a year and a half, stormed the city and razed it to the ground (9 Ab, 586 B.C.). The king Zedekiah was blinded and taken in chains to Babylon, where he died in a dungeon; the most important and useful parts of the population were carried away into exile to that coun- try, and the once fair and flourishing kingdom of Judah became a howling wilderness. In language of moving pathos and power the Lamentations of Jeremiah depict the heartrending ruin which had overwhelmed the Judean nation. §12. The Prophets. — Amidst the disruptive influ- ences of events which brought about the downfall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, amidst all the gloom and terror which preceded and followed those great and crushing disasters, there stood out a class of men known as Prophets (Nebiim). At first regarded as mere vision- aries, who, in their ecstatic trances, could foretell the future, the prophets became the mouthpieces of the God of Israel in their zeal for Him and their warning ad- monitions against the moral transgressions of His people. Instead of saying smooth things to flatter the national vanity, the prophets denounced their own countrymen with pitiless severity, and threatened them with the doom of Heaven for their sins. In times of distress and calan>- THE ANCIENT ISRAELITES ii ity, the prophets, however, generally guided the people, and, in language of poetic tenderness, inspired it with trust in God and confidence in His ultimate merciful dealings with those, who, in spite of all, were to remain true to the Covenant which He had made with their fathers. The prophets whose utterances and writings have been perserved to us show an extraordinary variety of types of the highest moral grandeur. We have Samuel, who had unselfishly led the people during a long and eventful life; Elijah, the fierce champion of the Lord God of Israel, who could only recognize Him in the "still, small voice"; Nathan, who crushed to the dust the guilty warrior-king David, by the words, "Thou art the man !" ; Amos, the herdman of Teicoa, whose only partiality for his own people was his threat that their greater moral consciousness would bring a severer punishment for their sins; Micah, with his appeal, "What doth the Lord re- quire of thee but to do justly, love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"; Isaiah, the far-seeing statesman, with his burning anger against the prevailing luxury and licentiousness and his consuming zeal for righteousness; Jeremiah, the noble-minded patriot, who warned and threatened, and then bewailed and shared, the sad fate of his stricken people; Ezekiel, a captive in a strange land, proclaiming the dignity and responsibility of every human soul and the moral government of the world ; the illus- trious seer of the Restoration, the so-called second Isaiah, who announced the ultimate realization of the universal hopes of Israel. It is difficult to know what to admire most in these teachers and tribunes of humanity — w^hether their truly matchless eloquence, which would have been enough to invest their utterances w'ith immortal fame; their unsurpassed conception of ethical Monotheism, which has become the distinguishing mark of the religion of Israel throughout the ages; their lofty ideal of the mission of their people in history; their passion for social 12 HISTORY OF THE JEWS righteousness, or their dauntless courage in enforcing it. Certain it is, that they have indeHbly stamped their glory on the people of Israel, and have decisively shaped the spiritual and moral evolution of mankind. CHAPTER II The Second Temple § I. The Babylonian Captivity. By the rivers of Babylon, There we sat down, yea, we wept, When we remembered Zion. Upon the willows in the midst thereof We hanged up our harps. For there they that led us captive required of us words of song. And our tormentors required of us mirth, saying. Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, Let my right hand forget her cunning. Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, If I remember thee not; If I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. Remember, O Lord, against the children of Edom The day of Jerusalem; Who said, Rase it, rase it. Even to the foundation thereof. O daughter of Babylon, that art to be destroyed; Happy shall he be, that rewarded thee As thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones Against the rock. Such were the sentiments of keen pain and wild ven- geance which animated the Judeans, or Jews, who were in exile far away from their own native country. The feelings of pain and of vengeance became, however, sub- dued by the healing process of time, and were gradually replaced by an entirely diflFerent outlook on the course >3 14 HISTORY OF THE JEWS of events. If the hallowed Temple, where God had dwelt in His glory, was destroyed; if Jerusalem, the pride of the nation, was in ruins; if the whole land was lying waste — yet the God of Israel, to whom the Temple had been dedicated, still lived, and His people, to whom the land of Canaan belonged by ancient promise, still had its being. "Seek ye the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray unto the Lord for it," was the remarkable advice which the prophet Jeremiah addressed to his distressed compatriots, and they followed his counsel. In a short space of time the Jews of Babylonia grew into a flourishing community; some of its members, like Daniel, even rose to high rank at the imperial court, while king Jehoiachin, the last but one of the kings of Judah, had a seat of honour at the royal table of Evil Merodach, the son of Nebuchadnezzar. But of infinitely greater importance than their material prosperity was the development which their spiritual out- look assumed. From a cult national in scope, the religion of Israel became universal in effect. Deprived of the centralizing Temple with its animal sacrifices, the exiles in the various places of their dispersion established houses of prayer where God was indeed worshipped in spirit and in truth, and here the reading and exposition of the Torah of Moses gradually became a fixed institution. The idolatrous tendencies which prophets and priests had been unable to eradicate, vanished with the catastrophe that shook Israel to its foundations, so that, amidst all vicissitudes, the Jews remained the faithful bodyguard of that pure and ethical Monotheism which was so loftily proclaimed by one of the Jewish master-minds of that period: "Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool : what manner of house will ye build unto me, and what place shall be my rest? For all these things hath mine hand made, and so all these things came to be, saith the Lord ; but to this nian THE SECOND TEMPLE 15 will I look, even to him tliat is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that treniblcth at my word." § 2. The Restoration. When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, We were like unto them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, And our tongue with singing: Then said they among the nations. The Lord hath done great things for them. The Lord hath done great things for us; Therefore we are glad. Turn again our captivity, O Lord, As the streams in the South. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. Though he goeth on his way weeping, bearing forth the seed. He shall come again with joy, bringing his sheaves with him. It was not long after the destruction of the Jewish commonwealth that there occurred an event which con- vulsed the great Babylonian empire, and brought it to a dramatic fall. The new star which had risen in the person of Cyrus, the ruler of conquering Persia, also changed the fortunes of the Jewish people In the year 539, wMthin half-a-century of the captivity, Cyrus issued an edict permitting the return of the exiled Jews to their native land and the rebuilding of the Temple in Jeru- salem. It was a decree of incalculably far-reaching con- sequences, worthy to inspire that wonderful psalm which sang of the resurrection of a people. Yet, in spite of the intense enthusiasm and high hopes it evoked, the response was very meagre on the part of the bulk of the people, who had evidently found a permanent home in Babylonia. Only a com^iaratively small number of Jews, led by Sheshbazzar, a prince of the house of David, re- turned to Jerusalem. They proceeded to rebuild the Temple, but the opposition they encountered from vari- ous quarters forced them to discontinue the work. It i6 HISTORY OF THE JEWS was only under Darius Hystaspes that Zerubbabel, also a member of the royal line of David, who had returned with another group of colonists, was able, together with the High Priest Joshua, supported by the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, to complete the interrupted work of the rebuilding of the Temple (516). Great indeed was the jubilation of those who were privileged to wit- ness the re-establishment of the sacred edifice, but the old men who had seen the former Temple "wept with a loud voice." § 3. The Samaritans. — The opposition to the recon- struction of the Temple and capital of the former Jewish state had come from a strange quarter. The Samaritans, a mixture of foreign colonists introduced by the Assyrian Shalmaneser on the destruction of the kingdom of Israel and of the dregs of the original population that were then left behind, had adopted the religion of the land, and on hearing of the proposed rebuilding of the Temple, they offered to participate in the establishment of the new sanctuary. The small band of Jews who had come back to their country with the zeal and enthusiasm of patriots and reformers were, however, determined not to share the glory, nor to expose themselves to the dan- gers which a religious amalgamation with the semi-idol- atrous Samaritans would have entailed. The refusal by the Jews of the Samaritan oflEer led to an intense hatred between the two nations. The Samaritans, adhering to a peculiar text of the Torah of Moses, built a rival Temple on Mount Gerizim, which was eventually de- stroyed with the city of Samaria by the Jewish High Priest, John Hyrcanus, in the year 109 B.C. During the course of Jewish history we meet the Samaritans as now and again they rise into meteoric prominence. They joined the Jews in their last struggle for independence, and, after a formidable insurrection under the emperor Justinian (530 C.E.), they were reduced to insignificance. Surviving many vicissitudes, the Samaritans have dwin- THE SECOND TEMPLE 17 died to an interesting remnant of about 150 souls, who still inhabit the ancient centre of their history. § 4. Ezra and Nehemiah. — The rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem would have availed little to the future of the new Judean settlement, and still less to the future of Judaism, the religious polity of the Jews, if there had not appeared Ezra the Scribe, who, with the moral earnestness and zeal of a religious reformer, gave an entirely new tendency to Jewish history. The Jews became first and foremost a religious community, in w'hich the study of the Sacred Writings and the observance of their institutions were to be the great purpose of Jewish life. This regenerator of Judaism, of whom it was afterw'ards said that he restored the Torah which had been forgotten, came from Babylonia with a body of colonists, bringing with him a decree of king Artaxerxes Longimanus which gave full authority for the carrying out of the object they had in view. One of his first acts for the purification and preservation of the commun- ity was to take energetic steps to put a stop to the widely prevailing marriages with foreign women, and even to insist on their dismissal in the case of those who had contracted such mixed unions. Of epoch-making im- portance was his introduction of the Torah of Mosca as the basis of Jewish life and thought — a measure which more than anything else ensured the continuance and vitality of Judaism. In his strenuous work of reform, Ezra was effectively associated with, and supported by, Nehemiah, a cupbearer to Artaxerxes. He came to Jerusalem in the capacity of governor, and armed with powers to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. This most necessary and important work was carried out by him with great energy, especially as the workmen had to go about armed in fear of being attacked by Samaritan and other enemies. This Jewish patriot, however, not only interested himself in the strengthening and good government of the city, but also l8 HISTORY OF THE JEWS took a leading part in the religious revival of the com- munity. After a stay of twelve years, he returned to Babylonia, but subsequently paid another visit to Jeru- salem in order to amplify and enforce the reforms and enactments introduced by Ezra and himself. § 5. 4 Silent Evolution. — For the next two cen- turies few incidents of stirring historic importance have been preserved to us, and yet it was a period of immense consequence to the future of Judaism and religion gen- erally. During this period, a silent evolution, unheeded by the people concerned and entirely unknown to the outside world, went on in the growing Judean com- munit)\ This people, practically undisturbed by the con- tests for world-power which were then raging, or re- garded as of no account by the mighty conquerors and armies who swept past and over it, was yet undergoing a process of fermentation which was ultimately to effect a revolution in the whole all-embracing domain of religion and morals. The writings contained in the Hebrew Bible, undoubtedly the most remarkable and influential collection of literature ever penned by the hand of man, were then sifted and settled by the Jewish scribes and religious authorities with a conscientiousness which should have earned for them the gratitude of posterity. The reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah bore abundant fruit in the orderly development of Jewish religious tradition and life. The Great Synod, a body of somewhat uncertain composition and duration, applied itself to the solution of the new spiritual problems which arose with the ever- changing needs of the Jewish people. But in economic and political directions also the Jews made vast progress under the sheltering care of comparative peace and ob- scurity. The great struggles with Greek civilization and Roman militarism which lay before the Jewish people proved repeatedly the inexhaustible spiritual strength and the high qualities of patriotic courage and devotion which animated and sustained it. THE SECOND TEMPLE 19 § 6. The Conflict with Hellenism. — The seclusion of Judaism was broken by the appearance at Jerusalem of Alexander the Great (332), whose conquests were not only to inaugurate a new chapter in Universal His- tory, but also to bring Judaism on the world-stage, and to throw it into a deadly conflict with Hellenic thought and civilization. It was truly a dramatic moment when the High Priest Jaddua met Alexander to offer him the submission of the Jewish people. The Greeks had no conception of the forces which were hidden in the mind and life of this apparently strange and insignificant nation of barbarians, but, with an instinctive insight, Alexander took kindly to them. After his death Palestine passed under the rule of the Egyptian Ptolemies, who proved well disposed towards the Jews. They accorded them many marks of favour, and several Jews even rose to the command of the Egyptian army. The Jews of Alex- andria, which probably had Jewish settlers from its foun- dation, began to play a very important part in this great commercial emporium and centre of Hellenic philosophy. The Alexandrian Jews, who possessed the full rights of citizenship and were placed under the authority of their own head, with the title of ethnarch, prospered materially and intellectually, and were to exercise a far-reaching influence on the development of Judaism. Unfor- tunately, the Jews in Palestine became an object of con- tention between the rival dynasties of the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucida? of Syria. This contest between the two powers was entered upon by the Seleucid Anti- ochus HI, the Great, when Palestine fell into the hands of Syria (203). The Hellenizing process, which had made rapid prog- ress among the Egj'ptian Jews, reached their co-religion- ists in Judea, and particularly among the upper classes it became a general tendency to adopt Grecian names and manners and to affect a corresponding disregard of Jew- ish custom and sentiment — an attitude which many of 20 HISTORY OF THE JEWS the necessarily separatist Jewish people have at all times of intellectual expansion been prone to adopt. Such a course was, however, bound to lead to an enfeeblement of the Jewish power of resistance against the pressing attractions of Grecian life, and to a gradual dissolu- tion of the religious and moral bonds of Judaism. It was under Antiochus IV, surnamed Epiphanes (the Illus- trious), and nicknamed Epimanes (the Madman), that the struggle between the Hellenic and Hebraic influences on the Judean people came to a head. § 7. The Maccabean Revolt. — The Jewish settle- ment in Judea had gradually acquired the privileges of self-government, and both the Seleucidae and the Ptole- mies not only left the Jews to manage their internal af- fairs, but also recognized the High Priest as their natural ruler. The hereditary office of High Priest, which had descended from father to son, now became a matter of dispute and of venal competition, to decide which the intervention of Antiochus Epiphanes was called in. Antiochus, whose greed had been whetted by the tempting offers of the rival candidates, entered Jerusalem and plun- dered the treasures of the Temple. The resentment which this sacrilege aroused among all sections of the Jews led to an outburst of savage fury on the part of Antiochus against them. He sent an armed force to Judea with orders to spare nobody nor anything there. The Syrians behaved as in a rebellious country, and the people were plundered and butchered without mercy. Not satisfied with this, Antiochus issued an edict for- bidding the practice of Judaism under the penalty of death, and, as a finishing touch, the Jews were compelled to worship the idols which were specially erected, one of them even at the Temple of Jerusalem. These latter measures directed against the Jews came as a new experience to them. Amidst all their manifold misfortunes, they had never yet been subjected to reli- gious persecution, and Antiochus Epiphanes was the first THE SECOND TEMPLE 21 in the long line of the persecutors of the Jews for con- science' sake. The inroads which the Syro-Hellenic manners had made among; the upper classes, even among the priests, in Judea, found Judaism ill prepared to with- stand this unexpected and fierce onslaught. In spite of the passive resistance which the Syrian officers and execu- tioners encountered, and the martyrdom of many faithful Jews, the struggle was an unequal one, and was likely to end in the dissolution of Judaism in its native home. A sudden blow struck against the tyranny by an aged priest, was to change the whole course of events. Mat- tathias the Hasmoncan, in the town of Modin, near Jerusalem, raised the flag of revolt, and roused his coun- trymen from their sense of paralyzed helplessness (167). The five sons of Mattathias, surnamed the Maccabees, led the revolt which was to win the independence of the Jewish people. § 8. The Hasmonean Dynasty. — After the death of Mattathias (166), his son Judas became the leader of the Jewish insurrection. Judas Maccabeus was a true hero — very probably a magnetic personality, beyond doubt a devoted patriot and brilliant leader. His valour and resourcefulness were prodigious, and his genuine piety was tempered by common-sense. Judas was successful beyond possible expectation. He defeated the disciplined Syrian army with his small band of untrained warriors ; he entered Jerusalem and re-dedicated the Temple to the service of the God of Israel. The feast of Hanucah still commemorates this signal event in Jewish history. The struggle with the Syrian power nevertheless still continued, and Judas died fighting bravely agai«st over- whelming odds (160). In order to ensure the advan- tages gained by the Jews, Judas had entered into a treaty of alliance with Rome — the growing power with which the Jews were later on to enter into a life-and-death struggle. Judas' brother, Jonathan (i 61-143), carried on the fight with ability, though with varying success, 22 HISTORY OF THE JEWS and he was succeeded by Simon, the last surviving son of Mattathias. It was Simon who finally obtained from Syria a recognition of the political independence of Judea, and he was solemnly invested by the people with the hereditary dignity of High Priest as well as of the civil and military leadership of the Jews. John Hyrcanus I, son of Simon (135-106), was a suc- cessful ruler, who enlarged the frontiers of Judea and raised it to a high degree of prosperity. He waged suc- cessful wars with the Samaritans, whose temple on Mount Gerizim he destroyed, and with the Edomites, whom he forcibly compelled to adopt the Jewish religion. Towards the end of his reign, however, he became en- tangled with the religious parties of the Pharisees and Sadducees, who then entered into that turbulent political rivalry which was to bring such sore tribulation on their common nation. John Hyrcanus, after a reign of thirty years, was succeeded by his eldest son Aristobulus, whose brief reign of about a year was marked by the murder of his mother and favourite brother Antigonus. Alexander Jannaeus, another son of John Hyrcanus, was a strong ruler who engaged in a number of foreign enterprises, and extended the boundaries of Judea. Under Alex- ander's wife, Alexandra Salome, the only post-exilic Jew- ish queen regnant, who succeeded him, the people enjoyed nine years of peace, but the fight for the crown which broke out after her death between her son Hyrcanus II, the High Priest, and Aristobulus II, brought ruin to the country, and led to the ultimate extinction of the Has- monean dynasty and house. § 9. The Herodian Dynasty. — The fall of the Hasmoneans was brought about by the calamitous inter- vention of Rome, and accelerated by the rise of a family of foreign descent which was to rule the Jews in the last days of their independence. In a fatal moment, both the contending brothers, Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II, decided to invoke the assistance of all-powerful Rome. THE SECOND TEMPLE 23 Their representatives appeared before Pompey in Damas- cus, and pleaded the respective merits of the aspirants for the throne, while the long-suffering people, too, had taken care to send a deputation to Pompey, asking him to relieve them of both unwelcome rulers. As the result, Pompey marched on Jerusalem, and took the de- fended and fortified Temple by storm. On entering the Holy of Holies, where the High Priest only appeared once a year (on the Day of Atonement), Pompey was struck with wonder and awe at the entire absence of any visible representation of the Deity in that mysterious sanctuary. Strangely enough, he left the vast treasures of the Temple untouched, and re-instated Hyrcanus in the dignity of High Priest and ruler of Judea. Hyrcanus, who was to be burdened with the priest- hood for a long and stormy period of forty years (79-40), was a weak and easy-going man, altogether unfitted for the exposed parts he was called upon to play. Through- out he was instigated and supported by a crafty, self- seeking Edomite, Antipatcr, who held the reins of gov- ernment while his nominal master was made to serve his deeply-laid schemes. These efforts culminated by Hyrcanus being put out of the way, and in the ultimate election by the Roman Senate of Antipater's son, Herod, as king of Judea. The reign of Herod, called the Great (40-4 B.C.), con- stitutes a long series of murders and outrages. He killed the members of the Sanhedrin, the chief religious and judicial tribunal of the Jews, as well as several of his ten wives, among them the beautiful ]\Iariamne the Hasmonean, and a number of his own children. As Augustus once put it, it was better to be such a man's swine than his son. Swayed by unscrupulous ambition and fierce jealousy, he shrank from no crime which would further his aim or satisfy his suspicion. In order to ingratiate himself with his Roman masters, he built a number of Grecian cities in honour of the emperors, and 24 HISTORY OF THE JEWS introduced un-Jewish customs, such as Greek games and combats with wild beasts, into Judea. To flatter his vanity, he rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem on a magnifi- cent scale, and otherwise comported himself with regal pomp. As he had lived, so he died. During his last days he planned to throw the whole nation into mourn- ing on his death by slaying their most prorr.inent repre- sentatives. Herod was succeeded by his son, Archelaus, but, as the result of an appeal to Rome, Augustus divided Herod's kingdom and apportioned Judea proper, Idumea and Samaria to Archelaus, who only received the title of ethnarch. While the Herodian family was contending for the sovereignty, the Jewish people experienced a time of great tribulation. The country was in a state of anarchy, subjected to massacre and pillage by Jewish friend and Roman foe. While the so-called Zealots were patriots who considered fair all means that went to rid the country of the hateful foreigner, they became mixed up with doubtful and dangerous elements, like the Sicarii (daggermen), who used patriotism as a cloak for all manner of crime and outrage. Archelaus' reign of nine 5"ears was full of misery. He was ultimately summoned to Rome and banished to Gaul, and, with his departure, Judea sank into a Roman province, administered by a procurator resident in Caesarea, and subject to the au- thority of the prefect of Syria. § lo. Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes. — The eventful times through which the Jews had passed since the Maccabean revolt against the tyranny of Antiochus Epiphanes, and the stand which was then made by the bulk of the people against the subversive influences of Hellenism, had brought about a division of the Jews into religious parties, which were likewise coloured and guided by political sympathies and tendencies. Matta- thias the Hasmonean had turned to those who were "zeal- ous for the Law," and these faithful adherents of the THE SECOND TEMPLE 25 Mosaic institutions, distinguished as Assideans (Chassi- dim, Pietists, Saints), then became the dominant party in the Jewish commonwealth. The ultimate victory of^ the Maccabean arms still brought, however, no final reconciliation between the various sections of the Jewish people. Hence, there grew up two opposing parties — Pharisees and Sadducees — who represented differing in- terpretations of Judaism which long survived the exist- ence of those sections. The Pharisees (those who "separated" themselves) suc- ceeded the Assideans in the conscientious observance of the Torah of Moses and of its traditional development among the people of Israel. It is unfortunate that the religious earnestness and patriotic zeal of these Jewish Puritans should have been largely transmitted to us by unfriendly critics and rivals. To the primitive Chris- tians, the religious-minded Pharisees were the immediate and most exasperating opponents, and the violence of the disputes between them is reflected in the diatribes and denunciations against the Pharisees in the New Testa- ment, but it is hardly fair to the Pharisees to judge them through the colouring of inherited religious prejudice. The democratic Pharisees undoubtedly rendered lasting service to Judaism by curbing the priestly and aristocratic pretensions of the Sadducees, whose frequently pro- nounced Hellenistic proclivities constituted a veritable danger to the religious individuality and political inde- pendence of the Jewish nation. The Pharisees made the Sacred Writings the common property, indeed the obliga- tory possession, of every Jew, by raising their study to a duty most pleasing to God, and by the institution of cer- tain ceremonial observances transferred the centre of gravity of the religious life from the Temple, with its sacrifices and priesthood, to the synagogue and the home. A body which thus placed the knowledge and the min- istrations of religion into the hands of the people, cannot have been that self-seeking and obscurantist sect whicli 26 HISTORY OF THE JEWS traditional ignorance represents the Pharisees to have been. As it was, they assisted in an evolution of Juda- ism which survived without any spiritual strain or shock the destruction of the Temple, and maintained the intel- lectual vitality of the Jews amidst all the darkness that subsequently surrounded them. Another Jewish sect, the Essenes, grew out of a certain number of Pharisees, more strict than their fellows, or of a more contemplative turn of mind, who, tired of the political troubles that agitated their people, withdrew into secluded spots, particularly to the wilderness border- ing on the Dead Sea. There they settled in com- munistic colonies, whose wants were few, and became famed for their charitableness and austerity of morals. But in direct opposition to the basic idea of Pharisaism, that all the acts of life should be hallowed by being placed at the service of God, the Essene recluses became imbued with the Oriental theosophy which regarded mat- ter and spirit as irreconcilable principles. The other- world ideas of the Essenes, entirely alien to Judaism, found comparatively few adherents, of whom John the Baptist is the best known, but proved later on of great influence in the rise of Christianity. § II. The Rise of Rabbinical Schools. — In con- sidering the various sections of Judaism, it ought to be borne in mind that all of them agreed in its fundamental principles, and that the Temple was always recognized as the House of God of all Israel. The spirituality and unity of God were axioms above and beyond discussion, and the inviolability of the Torah of Moses undisputed. At that time, the Jewish religion under Palestinian aus- pices had not yet elaborated a speculative philosophy, and it was much later that it was formulated into dogmatic principles. The Mosaic institutions and ordinances be- ing universally accepted as the rule of both public and private life, it became necessary to amplify the provisions which the Torah had made for the governance of Israel. THE SECOND TEMPLE 27 There can be no doubt that the rch*p;i'ous, civil and crim- inal laws and regulations set out in the Torah of Moses had to be interpreted in their practical application, and that they had to be accommodated to changing circum- stances ; nor can it be denied that, on the one hand, the germ of many enactments foiuid in the Torah called for development, and that, on the other, new rules had to be devised to meet the fresh contingencies arising in the stress of life. It is, therefore, in the natiire of things that those who administered the Mosaic Code developed a chain of tradition which included precedents and principles essen- tial to all well-ordered legislation. It was due to the sense of continuity which governed this development of the Torah, and to the vivid consciousness of the divine sway over Israel, that led the Jewish doctors, the Rabbis, to assume authoritative tradition as a concurrent, if unwrit- ten, part of the recorded Law of Moses. The scribes and members of the Great Synod, who revised and fixed the canon of the Jewish Bible, carried out a highly delicate and important function of tradition. The scribes, however, not only attended to the extremely careful transcription of the Scriptures, but translated the Hebrew original into the Aramaic vernacular and ex- plained it to the people. Out of this grew the IVlidrash and Hagadah, the homiletical and general exposition of Scripture, and the Halachah, the legal decisions deduced from Mosaic and other enactments. The members of the Great Synod, which existed roughly from Ezra the Scribe till the invasion of Alexander the Great, considered themselves the immediate successors of the last of the prophets, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, and the oral traditions accumulated by them were further developed by the Elders, and then b}' the Tannaim (Teachers), who flourished from 10 to 220 c.E. Of fundamental importance to the systematic develop- ment of tradition were Hillcl and Shammai, and the schools called after their names. Jewish learning had 28 HISTORY OF THE JEWS already been flourishing in Palestine before their appear- ance, since Hillel came from Babylonia to Jerusalem for the purpose of extending his studies. He found in She- maiah and Abtalion (Sameas and Pollion) teachers of eminence, and ultimately became head of their college. Hillel, whose public activity in the schools and the San- hedrin extended from about 30 B.C. to 10 c.E., is not only one of the most illustrious, but also one of the most sympathique, figures of Jewish history — a master distin- guished by nobility of character, greatness of erudition and breadth of \\^\w. The gentleness and humility of his disposition and his love of peace became proverbial. Of notable interest is his reply to a scoffing would-be prose- lyte who demanded to know the essence of Judaism, "What thou wouldest not that thy neighbour should do unto thee, do not unto him: this is the whole Law, the rest is only a commentary." It was in this broad spirit that Hillel and his disciples were opposed to Shammai and his school, which was distinguished by the rigidity of its interpretations and views. Hillel, whose authority as a teacher was added to his high dignity of President of the Sanhedrin, was the ancestor of a line of Jewish spiritual leaders who held sway until the fifth centurj^ His most eminent disciple was Jochanan ben Zaccai, a fine type of that admirable race of Jewish scholars who, amidst all the clash of arms and the turmoil of warring factions, silently laboured in their colleges at that mighty fabric of Judaism which was to brave and withstand the storms and ravages of future ages. § 12. Hellenistic Judaism. — Concurrently with the growth of Judaism in Judea and its fruitful branch in Babylonia, another development of Judaism had taken place in the wide Greek-speaking world, of which Alex- andria was the Jewish centre. The Jews living amidst Greek surroundings became imbued with Hellenic influ- ences, which showed themselves not only in their Greek speech and names, but also in the intellectual and spir- THE SECOND TEMPLE 29 itual life. Although retaining a deep attachment to the Jewish motherland and an affectionate veneration for the great Sanctuary on Mount Zion, the Jews of Egypt set up as a rival to it the Temple of Onias at Leonto- polis, which was the only other Jewish fane in the world where sacrifices were offered up. The Hellenistic Jews lost the knowledge of the Hebrew language, so that the Sacred Writings had to be translated into the Greek vernacular — a rendering which has come down to us as the Septuagint, the Translation of the Seventy. This Greek Bible was used in the proseuche, or synagogues (both Greek words), and even the prayers in these Jew- ish places of worship were offered up in the tongue of Hellas. In addition to the Septuagint Bible — then a production of extraordinary kind in its magnificence and rarity, which was to exercise a far-reaching influence on the religious thought of mankind — there grew up a con- siderable Hellenistic literature which was intended for the instruction and edification of both non-Jews as well as Jews. The Jews, thrown into the midst of an alien population with pretensions to fabulous antiquity and immense cultural achievements, endeavoured to bring home to those who looked down on them the real great- ness of the Jewish people and the superiority of the Jew- ish faith over the polytheistic religions of their neighbours. The foremost representative of the Hellenistic Jews was Philo Juda?us, of Alexandria (born about 20 B.C.; died after 41 C.E.), a man of profound religious feeling and noble character. The life of Philo possesses a spe- cial interest and charm, as he was the forerunner of a type of Jew whom we must regard with particular sym- pathy. Of high social standing (his brother was alab- arch, or chief, of the Jews of Alexandria) and imbued with the best foreign culture of the time, he was never- theless warmly attached to the faith of Israel, and took a zealous interest in the welfare of his co-religionists. He wrote a number of works in Greek, setting out tb^ 30 HISTORY OF THE JEWS sublimity of the teachings of Judaism, and defended it with much ability and dignity against the malicious at- tacks of its opponents. When serious trouble arose in Alexandria through the endeavour of the hostile populace to force the Jews to place an image of the emperor Caligula in their synagogues, he formed part of the Jew- ish deputation which went to Rome to put the case before that mad ruler of the world-empire. As a philosopher, Philo holds a permanent position among the notable thinkers of antiquity. Adapting his ideas on the Jewish religion to the philosophy of Plato, he introduced into Judaism a speculative element which was to exert a far- reaching influence. The allegorical method of interpre- tation in which Philo excelled, though not received per- manently into the Jewish system, entered largely into the creation and composition of the future theology of Christianity. § 13. The Rise of Christianity. — Amidst the fer- mentation, political and religious, which disturbed the Jewish people as it struggled under the yoke of Rome, there occurred an event which was to shake the founda- tions of the ancient world and to change the course of human history. The galling oppression of the stranger, and the bitter sense of helplessness under the crushing power of the Roman legions, bred in the Jews a wild despair which made them look forward more eagerly than ever to the appearance of some one with extraordinary powers, who, as the Messiah (Anointed), would, in accordance with ancient oracles, free them, and, with them, the world, from the prevailing material and moral bondage. Among the various claimants to that office of danger and honour who arose in the last days of Jewish inde- pendence, and who were ultimately crushed as political rebels by the Roman power, was Jesus of Nazareth. In the Jewish history of his time Jesus played no prominent part. At the age of thirty, coming into contact with the THE SECOND TEMPLE 31 Essene John the Baptist, Jesus took up his cry that the generally expected end of the world and the subsequent "kingdom of Heaven" were at hand, and he announced that he had come to save "the lost sheep of the house of Israel." In thus turning to the forlorn outcasts of so- ciety, he added an exquisitely tendei note to the spiritual harmony of man. If his message was clothed in the words and ideas of the prohpets and sages of his people, his per- sonality has shed its rays over a large portion of the hu- man race. But the time of his appearance was out of joint, and the very following he secured proved his undo- ing. He fell a victim to the anarchy and turbulence which were to bring untold misery on the Jewish nation, and to the suspicious jealousy of the Roman authorities, who were glad of any pretext to do away with the Jew- ish popular leaders who might give rise to disturbance. Life, whether it was the Jife -of a mere thief or of a re- ligious genius of the first order, was then held in light esteem, and crucifixion, the favourite mode of Roman capital punishment, was as much the order of the day as the guillotine during the French Revolution. Jesus was arrested and crucified with two others, and with an al- lusion to the charge against Jesus and bitter mockery of the Jews in their own capital, the Roman executioners placed over his cross a board with the words, "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews." The profound impression which Jesus, who in his struggles had shared the fate of all reformers in all times, had created on his disciples was infinitely increased by the bitter pangs caused by his unexpected and shameful death. After their first bewilderment, the little community that had looked upon him as their lord and as the expected deliverer of his people, discovered in the sacred writings which were their daily spiritual food that the Messiah was to suffer ignominy and death before his assured tri- umph. It was only this faith, this certain hope that Jesus would soon return to earth to carry his mission 32 HISTORY OF THE JEWS to an end, which distinguished the adherents of Jesus from the mass of their countrymen. But the influx of Hellenistic Jews, with speculative ideas and anti-nomistic tendencies, changed the course of things. Led by Saul, afterwards named Paul, of Tarsus, a man of intense emo- tion, high-strung temperament and boundless energy, the Hellenists declared for the abolition of the Mosaic insti- tutions and the consequent dissolution of Judaism. The struggle between the original apostles and disciples of Jesus, who remained zealously attached to Judaism, and the growing number of Gentile followers of Jesus (largely semi-proselytes to Judaism), who struck out a path diverging from it, ended in a victory for the latter, and, from a purely Jewish sect, the believers in Jesus the Messiah (Christ) developed into an independent world- religion, Christianity, or the religion of the Messiah. The strictly Judaic Christians were reduced to a Chris- tian heresy, known variously as the Nazarenes or Ebion- ites, who, on the one hand, were spurned by their Chris- tian co-religionists for denying the virgin-birth and divin- ity of Jesus, while, on the other hand, their unpatriotic refusal to join the Jews in their great struggle for inde- pendence led to a deadly enmity, and then to a total separation, between the Jewish Christians and their people. § 14. The Spread of Judaism. — While Judaism was, on the one side, suffering from losses occasioned by the absorption of a number of its members among their pagan neighbours, and, on the other, by the ultimate secession of the adherents of Jesus of Nazareth, large accessions to the ranks were taking place by numerous conversions to the faith of Israel. It is an old, and still current, misconception that Judaism is averse to the in- corporation of strangers within its midst. The Jewish theological position, which makes no call on the outside world for any particular profession of faith, but recog- nizes the spontaneous moral and religious evolution of THE SECOND TEMPLE 33 mankind, has indeed kept Judaism from developing into a missionary creed, while the medieval legislative rigours and attendant dangers in connection with conversions to Judaism made them unpopular among the Jews them- selves. But it is an entirely erroneous idea that the Jews were opposed to proselytism out of sheer tribal ex- clusiveness. Apart from the assimilation of the autoch- thonous population of Palestine and the forced conversion of the Edomites, Judaism acquired numerous adherents from among the various nations with which it came into contact from the time of the Babylonian captivity till the rise of the Christian empire of Rome, when conversion to Judaism came to be treated as a capital crime. To- wards the end of the Second Temple we find Jewish proselytes all over the Roman empire and in neighbouring Parthia. In the latter country, the royal house of Adia- bene adopted the Jewish faith, and proved its zealous defendants, just as the religion of Israel found adherents even among several members of the Roman imperial fam- ily. The outside interest evinced in Judaism and its many proselytes were matters of moment \\ hich attracted the attention, and evoked the indignation, of Roman writers, while the Jewish authors of the time and the New Testament records provide ample confirmation of the vast spread of Judaism among the masses. Among the Hellenistic Jews, more in intellectual touch with their alien surroundings, there was a general desire to bring the heathen over to the truth ; and, besides their propagandist writings, still extant, there were even men like the Alexandrian Apollos, afterwards the friend of Paul, who went about proclaiming "the things of the Lord," and who "compassed sea and land" to make prose- lytes. Before and after Paul appeared on the scene, the question of the circumcision of male proselytes was an open one among the Rabbis, and radical Hellenists de- bated the advisability of abrogating the Jewish observ- ances in order to further the spread of the spiritual ele- 34 HISTORY OF THE JEWS ments of Judaism. It was in the widely scattered syna- gogues where Paul sought his Gentile, as well as Jewish, converts, and for a considerable time afterwards Judaism was the rival of Christianity in the missionary field. § 15. The Shadows of the Roman War. — While the Jews were thus occupied with their spiritual problems, the days of the Judean commonwealth were drawing to a tragic close under the iron rule of Roman officials. The throes which preceded the political extinction of Judea form a sad period of Jewish history. From the governor down to the meanest legionary, the Romans treated the Jews in their own country with a haughty insolence which was particularly galling to a people per- haps too keenly conscious of its achievements. In addi- tion to this, the representatives of Rome came to Palestine with a grasping greed which endeavoured to extort from the far-away Asiatic subject race as much treasure as possible. It is, therefore, not surprising that the Jews shrunk from the Roman census instituted for the purpose of taxation ; that now and again they turned against their alien oppressors, and that the usual bloody repression of these revolts left the people more sullen than ever. On some occasions, like the placing of the Roman eagles on the Temple gates, conflagrations broke out which were quenched by torrents of blood. A stray ray of light appeared unexpectedly by the short re-establishment of the Jewish kingdom under Agrippa I, a grandson of Herod, by Mariamne the Hasmonean. Thanks to the favour of Caligula, Agrippa was invested with the kingly dignity, and he ultimately entered into possession of the whole of Palestine (about 41 C.E.). His brief reign of three years came like a healing balsam to the suffering Jewish people. He not only secured or- derly government to the harassed country, but did every- thing possible to soothe the troubled mind of its people. Of great service to the Jews, both in Judea and in Egypt, was his timely intervention with Caligula, who had THE SECOND TEMPLE 35 ordered his statue to be erected and worshipped in the Temple and other Jewish sanctuaries. His success, how- ever, aroused the displeasure of the Romans^ and his suspiciously sudden death left the Jews mourning, while it was riotously celebrated by the foreign population, espe- cially the Roman soldiery, whose brutalities were soon to find ample scope in the final Jewish struggle for inde- pendence. After the death of Agrippa I, Judea became again a Roman province, while his son, Agrippa II, was later on invested with not only the small kingdom of Chalcis and other possessions, but also with the office of supervisor of the Temple and the accompanying right of nominating the High Priest. Agrippa II, who is regarded as the last king of the Jews, assisted in the subjugation of Judea by the Romans, and, in the enjoyment of their favour, survived its fall for several decades. The rupture with Rome was at last brought about by the insufferable rapacity and violence of Gesius Florus, the last procurator of Judea (64-66). This Roman gov- ernor became the omnipotent protector of bands of rob- bers who infested the country, and whose plunder was shared by him, and he deliberately goaded the Jews into rebellion so that he might profit thereb}-. He entered Jerusalem, and, in spite of the purposely peaceful de- meanour of the inhabitants, massacred them without mercy. Disappointed at the unexpected want of re- sistance by the Jews, he called on their leaders, as a proof of their good-will, to meet on their way two cohorts of troops who were marching on Jerusalem. Even this was complied with, but the Roman soldiers received the Jew- ish deputation with such studied contempt, that the affair ended in a general attack on the Jews. The people of Jerusalem rose in their despair, and forced Florus to evacuate the city. But Agrippa, who had all this time been away from Judea, now returned, and successfully prevailed on the insurgents to submit quietly to the in- 36 HISTORY OF THE JEWS evitable dominion of Rome. So soon, however, as he proposed that the people should recognize the authority of Florus, they broke out into such uncontrollable anger that he was glad to escape from their fury. Some of the bolder spirits thereupon seized the powerful fortress of Masada, near the Dead Sea, while the warlike party in Jerusalem went to the extreme step of refusing to accept any imperial offerings to the Temple, or to have the usual sacrifices for the emperor there. The moderate leaders, finding their authority unheeded, sent deputations to Florus and Agrippa, begging them to come to their rescue. But it was too late; the suppressed feelings of frantic vengeance excited and nurtured in the Jews had exploded at last with a terrible crash, and carried every- thing along with it. § 1 6. The War with Rome. — It would be futile to inquire whether the fateful insurrection should, or could, have been averted. In the histories of nations, as of individuals, it is success which turns the rebel into a hero, and accounts the revolt of a people against its op- pressors among its most glorious events. The Macca- bean rising against the powerful Syrians has received universal applause, hopeless though it must be acknowl- edged to have been at first sight. With the degeneration and profligacy which had generally overtaken the Romans under the emperors; with the callous ferocity and insa- tiable greed which then marked Roman administration of the subject-races in distant parts of the empire, the Jews could not for ever escape the fate which had made an end to the other states under the Roman dominion. Con- tinually outraged in their religious susceptibilities by inso- lent and scheming governors and their subordinates, the Jews of Palestine were also threatened by the foreign settlers there with the same humiliating conditions to which the Macedonian conquerors had reduced the native Egyptians in their own country. At the beginning of their rebellion the Jews were in- THE SECOND TEMPLE 37 flamed by the wholesale carnage to which their brethren were subjected by the Syrians and Greeks in the prov- inces, and they were still further encouraged and en- tirely committed by the disastrous defeat which they in- flicted on Cestius Gallus, the prefect of Syria, who had come to Jerusalem to subdue them — a defeat such as the Romans had not suffered since the destruction of Varus' legions by the Germans. The news of this event created surprise and consternation among the Romans, and the emperor Nero dispatched Vespasian, the greatest living Roman general, to quell the revolt in Palestine. Vespasian was joined by his son Titus, and, with the pick of the Roman army, they entered on the subjugation of the rebellious Jews with all the accustomed vigour and rigour which had awed the whole Western world into abject submission. For four long and terrible years this little people in an obscure corner of the empire withstood the power and skill of the conqueror of the Britons and of the most famous legions of Rome. The war was carried on, on both sides, with implacable ferocity rare in the annals of warfare — the Romans enraged at the obstinate and pro- longed resistance of the erstwhile despised Jews; the Jews fighting with all the despair and heroism born in the defence of home and religion against the insolent alien tyrant. It must remain a surprise to the historian, and ought to excite the admiration of posterity, that the feeble Jews, who had dreaded the frown of a Roman procurator, now withstood unflinchingly all the might and majesty of the Roman army. The Jews had become a race of men who knew neither fear nor would hear of surrender. The valour of the rank and file responded to leaders of extraordinary daring and fertde ingenuity — men like John of Gischala, Simon bar Giora, Josephus — the last still more famous as the historian of his people, which, in the time of its direst need, he deserted, and left to its own resources. 38 HISTORY OF THE JEWS § 17. The Fall of Judea. — The end, if it had not yet come, was onlj' delayed. The Romans, if not irresist- ible, still advanced on the Jewish capital and laid it under siege. And to the remorseless carnage of the Romans was added the wild frenzy which had now taken hold of the Jewish people. In the words of the ancient im- precations against them — which seemed to come true with an awful literalness — "without did the sword bereave and in the chambers terror." Something of that delirious violence which in our own times took hold of Paris under the Commune, shook the inhabitants of Jerusalem to their innermost depths. The enemy was at the gates, but the besieged people within, rent in factions, were tearing each other to pieces. The city, filled with a vast population, which had been swelled by the immense number of pil- grims who had come there to celebrate the feast of Pass- over, underwent all the horrors of civil war while the deadly grasp of the Romans was growing tighter and tighter upon them. Assassination and massacre were general, and even the pavements of the Temple reeked with human blood ; then famine made its dreaded appear- ance, and killed every remaining trace of pity or human feeling. Vespasian proceeded to Rome to take over the sov- ereignty of the empire, and it was left to Titus to bring about the complete subjugation of the Jews. The Jews contested every inch of their territory, of their capital, of the Temple. Their deeds of heroic valour only made the agony of death longer and more bitter. Jerusalem was at last turned into a heap of ruins, and, after a fran- tic resistance, on the 9 (or 10) Ab, 70 c.e. (the ominous anniversary of the destruction of the Temple of Solomon by Nebuchadnezzar), the Second Temple became a prey to the flames, and all its magnificence and glory were turned into a mass of smouldering ashes. A cry of horror — the cry of the anguish of death of a whole people — went up to heaven when the miserable remnant saw the THE SECOND TEMPLE 39 destroying flames encircling the noble sanctuary of the God of Israel. Innumerable were the victims which the war had cost the Jewish nation, still the end had not yet come. Hundreds of thousands had laid down their lives in the struggle, but the survivors, if not massacred in cold blood, were sold as slaves, sent to work in the mines, or to fight against wild beasts or as gladiators for the amusement of their exulting enemies. Vespasian and Titus celebrated their victory by a triumphal procession in Rome, which was graced by 700 specially selected captives, headed by their dauntless leaders John of Gischala and Simon bar Giora, the latter being finally put to an ignominious death. § 18. The Last Struggle for Independence. — Utterly hopeless was now the outlook of the Jewish struggle for independence, and still, incredible as it may seem, in spite of the complete destruction of Jerusalem and the desolation of the whole country, the Jewish re- sistance to Rome was by no means over, and was yet to blaze out in a fierce, lurid flame. Several Jewish strong- holds still held out, and Masada, the last of them, was only taken by the Romans after the self-inflicted immola- tion of its defenders. The country was administered WMth an iron rod, but the calm, where it was not the calm of death, was only an outward one. The land was not only declared as forfeited to the imperial treasury, but all the Jews in the empire were now forced to pay an annual capitation tax of two drachms to the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, in place of the half-shekel which they had hitherto contributed to the Temple in Jerusalem. This special Jewish tax, fiscus Judaicus, which was at first collected with great brutality, rigorous care being taken that no one should escape paying it, produced a strong feeling of resentment amongst the Jews. The war in Palestine had its aftermath in Eg^pt, the adjoining Cyrenaica and in Cyprus, where violent colli- 40 HISTORY OF THE JEWS sions between the numerous Jews and their neighbours led to incredible bloodshed between the combatants. Stirred by the inextinguishable hope for the restoration of the kingdom of Israel, and driven to desperation by the contemplated establishment by Hadrian of a pagan city on the site of Jerusalem, even the Jews in Judea began again to prepare for another trial of strength with Rome, which culminated in the year 132, only six decades after the great combat which had proved so disastrous to them. The head of the revolt was Bar Coziba, called Bar Cochba, "Son of the Star" (in allusion to Num. xxiv. 17), of whose deeds of prowess little that is historical is known, but who must be adjudged a leader of extra- ordinary personal magnetism and a warrior of truly won- drous power and skill. The prayer ascribed to him, "We pray Thee do not give assistance to the enemy; us Thou needst not help," gives perhaps a faithful picture of the man. He was supported by the universally revered Rabbi Akiba, whose unbounded authority over his breth- ren made the insurrection a national one. The success of the Jews again forced Rome to send its ablest com- mander, Julius Severus, who came all the way from Britain to break their rebellious spirit. The Jews resisted for a period of over three years, and the war was only concluded with the fall of Bethar, the last Jewish strong- hold, and the death of Bar Cochba in its defence (9 Ab — the date of the twofold destruction of Jerusalem — 135). The butcheries enacted rivalled those in the war with Titus, over half-a-million Jews having lost their lives, and the consequences were, if possible, still more disas- trous. The religion of the Jews was proscribed, and those found guilty of teaching or preaching it were sub- mitted to the most excruciating tortures which human ingenuity and a devilish lust of blood could devise. Rabbi Akiba was flayed alive and then done to death. Under pain of death, no Jew dared to appear even in the vicinity of Jerusalem, which was now turned into a THE SECOND TEMPLE 41 Roman colony, ^^lia Capitolina, and the very name of Jerusalem was henceforth to be obliterated from the mind of man. The Jews, who had been the last of the na- tions under Roman dominion to fight for what, in all sincerity and with all reverence, we may call the sacred cause of freedom, were at last crushed in the dust, and lay a helpless body, bleeding from innumerable wounds. CHAPTER III The Talmudic Age § I. The Dispersion. — One of the most far-reach- ing effects of the Judeo-Roman wars, and of the conse- quent destruction of the Jewish national centre, was the wide dispersion of that people, which has remained to this day one of its most distinguishing features. The Jews who escaped from the sword and fury of the Roman soldiery were met by violent and malevolent Syrians, Greeks, Egyptians or Roman neighbours, who gloated over the Jewish misfortunes and kept the Jews cowed with threats of still worse results. It is, therefore, not surprising that the Jews, who by their very turbulence appear to have been a high-spirited race, proceeded far away from Palestine to localities where the Jew was a stranger, yet considered as entitled to the protection and respect due to a human being. The Babylonian captivity had transferred the bulk of the Jews to Mesopotamia, and, in spite of the continuous remigration which took place to Palestine, the Babylonian Jews remained a very numerous community'. While liv- ing in a compact mass, many of them found their way all over the Parthian and subsequent Neo-Persian em- pires ; they spread Jewish colonies along the shores of the Black Sea, as far as the Crimea, where Jews had already followed in the wake of the Greeks, and cast out branches all over Central Asia, stretching as far as China, where a dwindling community has subsisted to our own day. 42 THE TALMUDIC AGE 43 Yet, in however flourishing a material condition they may have been, intellectually the Babylonian Jews were for a long time of no account in Jewish life, but, on the other hand, they remained free from those dissolving in- fluences winch threatened the existence of the Jews in the Greco-Roman world, including Palestine. Politically also they were able to offer a safe asylum to their breth- ren escaping oppression, as well as to resist the Romans in their aggressions on the Parthian territories bordering the Euphrates. To the Babylonians, as to the Jews of all other parts^ Palestine remained the centre of the Dispersion. For, in truth, the Torah went out of Zion and the word of God from Jerusalem. The tax of the half-shekel which was sent to the Temple brought in such vast wealth to its treasury that any disturbance of it by the rapacity of sacrilegious invaders affected the price of gold in the markets of the world. The Macedonian conquests and the break-up of the intellectual isolation of the Jews, brought about a vast and interesting development of the Jewish Dispersion. Under the friendly rule of the Egyp- tian Ptolemies, who were also masters of Palestine, great numbers of Jews settled in Egypt, where, to judge by the Elephantine papyri recently come to light, Jewish communities of importance had existed from the time of the Babylonian captivity, when Jeremiah and other Jews left for that country. Especially in Alexandria, where they formed an autonomous part of the population, dis- tinguished by their opulence and culture, the Jews rivalled the Greek inhabitants, with whom in later times they repeatedy came into sanguinary collision. While the in- fluntial commercial class envied and hated the Jews as their competitors, the lower orders of Alexandria, com- posed of those mixed and debased elements always to be met with in great Levantine sea-ports, lent themselves freely to any attack on the wealthy Jews. Thus the malicious attempt to place the statue of the reigning 44 HISTORY OF THE JEWS emperor Caligula in the synagogues, which was stoutly resisted by the Jews, was brought about by the ribaldry and turbulence of the rabble, and weakness or connivance of the Roman prefect led to the wholesale massacre and degradation of the Jewish citizens of Alexandria. The whole procedure on that occasion had in it all the ele- ments and sequence of events that have become familiar to us in the modern Russian attacks on the Jews in Odes- sa, who are placed in a position in certain respects similar to that occupied by their co-religionists in ancient Alex- andria. Still the Jews were able to maintain their ground, as their subsequent formidable revolts tend to show. From Egypt, the Jews overflowed into the neighbour- ing Cyrenaica, where they also formed a very populous centre. When the Judean Jews came into official contact with Rome, they had already spread into the Seleucidan terri- tories of Syria, far away in Asia Minor, as well as into the Greek islands, especially Cyprus. In Rome itself the Jewish colony, which arose through the commercial re- lations with Alexandria and the Maccabean embassy to that city, was largely reinforced by the Jewish captives brought by Pompey from Palestine, and the subsequent troubles helped to fill the place with many more Jewish slaves. The treaty of friendship with Rome, by which it lent its powerful protection to the Jews to the extent of its wide influence, gave a further stimulus to the mi- gration of the Jews, while the unfortunate wars, which made the Jewish slave a glut in the market, distributed them all over the empire, far away in Greece, Italy, Gaul and Spain. The broad-minded policy adopted towards the scattered Jewish communities by most of the emperors, particularly by Julius Czesar, whose friendliness to that people rendered his memory a grateful one among them, was also an effective aid to their dispersion. § 2. The Rally. — The fall of Jerusalem had left the Jews stunned under a catastrophe such as they may have THE TALMUDIC AGE 43 only dreaded, but had been afraid to contemplate. The spirit of the Jews was broken, and they were now even incapable of expressing their unutterable grief in elegies such as commemorated the destruction of their capital by Nebuchadnezzar or the bloody persecutions which were still in store for them a thousand years after. Had the Jews only been a nation like others, they would, like the powerful Carthaginians, have become extinguished with the end of their state; had they been a religious commu- nity bound to some local sanctuary and with no universal outlook, like that of the kindred Samaritans, they would have been exterminated, or have perished for want of a living spirit. But Judaism represented both a nation with a remarkable past and with a still more soaring vi- sion of the future, as well as a religion which, incon- testably the purest and highest of antiquity, embraced within its range the wliole of mankind, and even in its practical workings showed itself adaptable to every clime and civilization. It may be questioned whether, to attain its goal, Judaism had done better to divest itself of its na- tionalistic embodiments and to have identified itself with the tendencies assumed by nascent Christianity; but, had this been done, the Jews would have shared the inglori- ous fate of the equally gifted, and much more generous, powerful and influential Greek people; they would have been overwhelmed by the flowing tide of Christianity, and, ha\ing lost their heroic consciousness or abdicated their religious mission, would have ceased to possess any special message, or to make any additional contribution, to the spiritual and social life of mankind. Again, if there was any purpose in preserving intact the ethical Monotheism of the Jews, as distinguished from Trinita- rian and anthropomorphic conceptions of the Deity, and their social ideal of a kingdom of this world hallowed by justice and righteousness, as opposed to a kingdom of which heaven is the centre of gravity, then Judaism was fortunate in having at hand men, who, at the most crit- 46 HISTORY OF THE JEWS ical time, had the clear foresight and the determinated energy to save Judaism from the wreckage which threat- ened to bury it. Among those who re-established Judaism under the new conditions, Rabban Jochanan ben Zaccai has earned grateful distinction. It was he who, amidst the violence and confusion attending the fall of the Jewish state, recognized that, of all the vast issues involved, the great- est was the preservation of Judaism. Invested with the authority of recognized succession to Hillel, he trans- ferred the nerve-centre of Judaism from Jerusalem to Jamnia (Jabneh). He had been in Jerusalem during the siege by Vespasian and, finding that his moderate counsels were of no avail, he escaped the doom of the city by being carried out of it in a coffin on the shoulders of devoted disciples. He appeared before Vespasian, and obtained permission to transfer his activity to Jamnia, which, after the fall of Jerusalem, became the seat of a great Rabbinical academy and of the reconstructed San- hedrin. Thus the authority of the supreme religious and legislative councils was not only preserved, but the study and development of the Torah (comprising under this comprehensive designation the written canonical Scrip- tures and their oral interpretations and amplifications) received a fresh impetus. For 150 years after the fall of Jerusalem, a series of men of light and leading, the Tannaim (Teachers), continued their activity as doctors of the Law and as the highest recognized authorities on Jewish life and thought. Pre-eminent among the Tannaim w^as Rabbi Akiba ben Joseph, the patriot who suffered martyrdom in connection with the Bar Cochba insurrection (135). Rabbi Akiba finally settled the canon of the Jewish sacred Scriptures, rejecting various books now included in the collection of writings known as the Apocrypha. In order to supersede the faulty and misleading Septuagint translation of the Bible, which was used against the Jews by Christian con- THE TALMUDIC AGE 47 troverslallsts, another, more faithful, Greek rendering (now lost with the exception of some fragments) was carried out under his supervision by Aquila, a proselyte to Judaism. Of more enduring service to the orderly progress of Judaism was his systcmatization of the legal- istic aspect of Judaism as developed by continuous tra- dition. In spite of the profound significance he attached to the letter of Law, he was remarkably free from the shackles of stereotyped interpretation or of a slavish ad- herence to prejudice, as is shown, for example, in his friendly attitude towards the hated Samaritans. The Mosaic injunction to love the fcllowman as oneself, he declared to be the basic principle of the Torah. Although he was instrumental in introducing the study of the Torah as an all-sufficing object for the exercise of the Jewish mind, he explored the realms of philosophy and mysticism, but, unlike some of his contemporaries, "he entered in peace and went out in peace." Another factor of great and beneficial influence in the consolidation of the Jewish people was the rise of a new dignity, the holders of which for several centuries figured as the religious heads of the Jewish community. It was Gamaliel II, a descendant of Hillel and grandson of Rabban Gamaliel (mentioned in the New Testament), who succeeded Rabban Jochanan ben Zaccai as President of the College, or Sanhedrin, at Jamnia, and who as- sumed the title of Nasi (prince or patriarch). This of- fice, which remained hereditary in the family of Gamaliel and was officially recognized by the Roman government, was invested with various privileges, and formed not only an effective bond between the scattered Jews, but also raised their standing as a body in the eyes of others. After several changes of residence, the patriarchs, to- gether with their college, settled in Tiberias, on the lake of Genesareth, where their pontifical court rose to a cer- tain state of splendour. They kept in touch with the faithful bv means of legates, who visited the outlying 48 HISTORY OF THE JEWS communities, and thereby wielded a unifying authority over the whole Dispersion. § 3. Judaism in Babylonia. — Parallel with the march of events in Palestine after the fall of the Jewish commonwealth, the numerous and compact body of Jews under the rule of Parthia developed certain institutions of their own which were to make Babylonia the home and centre of Jewish life and thought. The Jews became united under the authority of a Prince of the Captivity (Resh Gelutha), who was also recognized by the Parthian kings as head of their Jewish subjects. The Princes of the Captivity, who claimed descent from the royal house of David, were at first more concerned with administrative functions, and in matters of religion, especially in the fix- ing of the calendar, had to content themselves to receive the directions of the authorities in the motherland. But the unsettled condition of things in Palestine, particularly the religious persecutions connected with the Bar Cochba insurrection, brought to Babylonia many scholars who gave an impetus to Jewish learning in the populous colony across the Euphrates. In 219 c.e. the return from Pal- estine of the Babylonian Abba Arica, named Rab (the Master), to his native country, inaugurated for Bab3'lo- nian Judaism a new era, the effects of which were felt for many centuries to come. Rab, whose utterances and achievements stamp him as a teacher and personality of exceptional power, brought the Babylonians to the front of Jewish culture, and the great academies of Nehardea, Sura, Pumpedita and Machuza, which gradually super- seded the Palestinian colleges, became centres of attrac- tion to vast numbers from all parts willing to acquire or to impart knowledge. With the intellectual advancement of the Babylonian Jews, the oflfice of the Prince of the Captivity also received an added lustre. On the one hand, he was invested with important powers, which gave him the rank and style of a minor sovereign; on the other hand, the Jewish patriarch in Tiberias was THE TALMUDIC AGE 49 harassed and limited in his authority by unfriendly rulers, until the dip:nity was entirely abolished in the year 415, and the spiritual supremacy wielded from Palestine passed over to Babylonia. § 4. The Talmud. — The accumulated results of the debates, pronouncements and decisions of the schools in Palestine and Babylonia were ultimately deposited in the Talmud — one of the gigantic monuments of the human intellect. About the year 200 c.e. the Palestinian Rabbi Judah the Patriarch (also called the Holy, on account of the purity of his life, or simply Rabbi) collected and edited the existing materials which had hitherto been handed down in a znva voce manner. This compendium, called the Mishnah, comprised in six parts an exposition of Jewish lav/ and custom in all their ramifications, and be- came the authoritative course-book in the studies of the schools. The compilation of tlie Mishnah as the code of Jewish private and public life in addition to the Torah of Moses, its foundation, was an event of almost the first order. The Tannaim (the Teachers) of the Mishnah were now succeeded by the Amoraim (the Interpreters) of the academies which flourished simultaneously in Pal- estine and Babylonia. The discussions and controversies which the dicta and decisions of the Mishnah aroused, the emendations and amplifications which were brought about in the course of time, the questions, answers and diverging opinions, sublime allegories and profound para- bles, weighty utterances of eternal import mixed with casual and flippant observations, ritualistic minutine of wearisome length with bold words on things divine, fierce flashes of hatred breaking upon serene expressions of the most exalted human sympathies, the folklore and supersti- tions together with the wisdom of ages — all these were incorporated in the Gemara, which, together with the Mishnah as its kernel, formed the Talmud. As the Gemara was elaborated more or less independently in the Palestinian and Babylonian colleges, there was formed so HISTORY OF THE JEWS a "Jerusalem" and "Babylonian" Talmud, but the decay of the colleges in the Holy Land and the greater prestige acquired by the Babylonian schools gained for the Baby- lonian Talmud a more practical and universal acceptance. The Talmud, which represents a record of the intel- lectual and religious life of the Jews for a period of al- most a thousand years (from the Babylonian captivity till 500 C.E.), has been so closely identified with the future development of the Jewish people that it has shared their checkered fortunes in all their various manifestations. Internally, the Talmud has formed the battle-ground of the Jewish mind, and, until a few generations ago, its authority as the ultimate court of appeal m matters af- fecting religious practice was hardly contested. Whether in the most flourishing periods of Jewish thought, or when all the avenues of learning were closed to the Jews, the Talmud retained its supreme place as a subject of close and unremitting study and research, which in the Jewish theological field it has practically remained to this day. But the closer the connection between Jewish life and the Talmud ; the more it proved itself an im- penetrable rampart against all the forces of dissolution — the greater became the hatred which it inspired in the Jews' enemies, especially among those who by their re- ligious professions were prevented from attacking the Jewish Bible, the Old Testament. All manner of charges have thus been levelled at the Jews through the Talmud, and apparently substantiated by stray texts torn from their context or by utterances due to the passions and circumstances of the moment. The Talmud, how- ever, deserves this concentrated venom very much less than the excessive reverence as the repository of all wis- dom which has long been paid to it in ultra-traditional Jewish quarters. If to the Jew the Talmud is still, next to the Bible, the most important production of the Jew- ish mind, the non-Jew can only judge it fairly if he approaches it with the understanding which is only born THE TALMUDIC AGE 51 of sympathy. The Talmud suffers very greatly by the ephemeral nature of some of its matter, by the rugged style of its language, and the loose and unsystematic manner in which it has been collected and edited. The deepest parables (meshalim) — a favourite mode of Jewish teaching that is best known from that semi-Jewish produc- tion, the New Testament, and lends such a charm to the words of Jesus in the Gospels — are related in a few ab- rupt sentences, and words of wondrous beauty or of pro- found moral significance are interspersed between schol- astic triflings or puerile anecdotes with which masters and pupils would enliven their discussion on some very dry subject. Ail this is somewhat in the style of the ir- ritating incongruity in the Book of Leviticus, where, in the same breath, we are told to love our neighbour as ourselves and not to sow the field with two kinds of seed. As for the interminable debates on matters of ritual and ceremonial observance, the writing of the contemporary Church Fathers, not to speak of the extraordinarily vol- luminous Acts of the Saints, provide us with good ex- amples of how the human mind, concentrated on one sub- ject, and that subject religion, will ultimately spread its branches in such a manner that it will shut off from the light those living under its shadow. The fact, however, that the Talmud is not a compilation purely religious, but, basing itself on the Pentateuchal legislation, also repre- sents the necessarily extensive code of the civil and crim- inal law, the corpus juris of the Jewish commonwealth — a code which is even still to a certain extent, especially in Eastern countries, in active use in Jewish communities of to-day — must be borne in mind in any consideration of that monumental production. § 5. Under the Cross. — It was well that the Jews had been setting their religious house in order, for they were about to be subjected to a siege which, in its endless length and unremitting rigour, stands unique in human history. The attack on the Jews is distinguished by the 52 HISTORY OF THE JEWS fact that it is mainly a religious one, and so it has re- mained to our own days. It began with the Christian- ization of the Roman empire under Constantine, and the intensity of the pressure exercised on the Jews may be measured by the process by which the European nations underwent that transformation. The Jewish people had naturally chafed under the humiliation which they ex- perienced by the conquest of their land, whose territory, soaked with Jewish blood and hallowed by so many glori- ous and sad memories, was now parcelled out among heathen and Christian settlers, while the imposition of the fiscus Judaicus since the destruction of the Temple served further to remind the Jews of the loss of their inde- pendence. But, as a whole, they enjoyed under the rule of pagan Rome liberty of conscience and even certain privileges, in so far as their communities were officially recognized and their religious peculiarities taken into cog- nizance. Certainly, the oppression which they had en- countered, even if religion was the immediate object of attack, was due to political considerations. With the rise of Christianity as the dominant political power, there began, however, a systematic attempt — elaborated by the clergy, and enforced by the power of the state — to weaken Judaism by all manner of repressive enactments, and to degrade it into the unholy cult of a cursed people — a sen- timent which is already expressed in the late New Testa- ment phrase, "the church of Christ and the synagogue of Satan." It is one of the strangest and most tragic ironies of history that the Christian Church, whose origin and existence is due to Jews, whose spiritual inspiration and highest moral lessons are derived from the lives of Jews, whose sacred books and divine worship are the most sub- lime productions and manifestations of the Jewish mind; that this Church, which recognizes in a Jew the greatest son of humanity and the incarnation of God Himself, which adores His mother as the Queen of Heaven and as the highest type of womanhood, and w^hich has dedi- THE TALMUDIC AGE 53 cated its greatest temples to the memory of Jews, should have been the most implacable foe of the Jewish people and of its religious individuality. It is a happy sign of the progressive enlightenment of mankind, as well as the highest tribute to the common aspirations of Judaism and Christianity that, at least in Anglo-Saxon countries, the Christian persecution of the Jews should now be re- garded as one of those sad features of the past over which Jew and Christian alike, for reasons which do honour to both of them, would fain draw a veil of oblivion. The fortunes of the Jews have not only been very largely influenced by the persecutions and oppressions to which they have been subjected, but these incidents also fill out a large proportion of the canvas of Jewish his- tory. It would, however, not serve the purpose here in view to chronicle at length the recurring attempts to break the spirit of the Jew or to capture his soul. It may be laid down as a rule that those peoples which had not yet been entirely subjected to ecclesiastical control were well disposed towards the peaceful and useful Jews, and it is indicative of their original relations that it used subsequently to be found necessary to forbid the Jews to admit proselytes and to threaten with the penalty of death those who intermarried with their Gentile neigh- bours. The Church Councils, particularly, devised means to reduce the Jew socially to the state of a pariah and morally to that of a leper. Not only were means taken by the authorities of the Church to prevent any social intercourse between Jews and Christians (one of the first historical references to Jews in England is a character- istic order of Egbert, archbishop of York [740], for- bidding Christians to attend at Jewish feasts), but they spurred the occasionally reluctant, and always more ju- dicial, authority of the secular state into such legislation and administration which took from the Jews the rights of citizenship and even an honourable livelihood. This growing darkness, intensified by the increasingly severe 54 HISTORY OF THE JEWS anti-Jewish edicts of succeeding Roman and Byzantine emperors, was only once lit up by a flash of lightning when Julian, called the Apostate, had ascended the throne. In his desire to subvert the power of Christian- ity, and to establish a philosophical paganism in its stead, he entered into friendly relations with the Jews. He abolished the fiscus Judaicus and destroyed the registers in connection with the tax. Perhaps to win the support of the influential Jews in Parthia, with which he entered into war, he even issued an order authorizing the Jews to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. This work was indeed begun, but was interrupted by explosions in the vast subterranean excavations, and the untimely death of Julian put an end for ever to any such at- tempt. § 6. Under Neo-Persian Dominion. — It was for- tunate for the Jews that, free from the power of Rome, either pagan or Christian, they were able to develop more or less undisturbed in their great settlement Babylonia. Even when the rule of the Parthians was superseded by that of the Neo-Persian dynasty of the Sassanids (226 C.E.), the Jews continued to enjoy under their Prince of the Captivity a certain dignity and security which were absent in their relations with their Roman conquerors or dominant Christian antagonists. In the repeated contests between the Byzantine empire and the Persians, the Jews, as a border population, played an important part, espe- cially as they could be relied upon to resist stoutly the yoke of the hated Romans. In the war of king Chosroes against the Byzantine emperor Heraclius, when Syria and Palestine fell into the hands of the successful Persians, the latter were everywhere welcomed and assisted by the Jews, who entered Jerusalem with the conquerors and wreaked fearful vengeance on the inhabitants of this Christianized city (614). But the Jews were not long to enjoy their triumph. Fourteen years afterwards, the Per- sians were deprived of their conquests, and the Jews THE TALMUDIC AGE 55 were again forbidden to appear even in the vicinity of their former capital. Of more lasting consequence was the intellectual ac- tivity of which the Babylonian Jews could boast. Al- though on the irruption of the Neo-Persians, who brought with them a fanatical zeal for their Zoroastrian, or Fire- worshipping, religion, the Jews suffered at times griev- ously under the creed of their new masters, the Rabbinical colleges continued to flourish. It was Rab Ashi, a most famous head of the college of Sura, who, at the begin- ning of the fifth century, set about to collect the tra- ditions and teachings of the Babylonian Academies, and his great work, resulting in the Babylonian Talmud, was continued under his successors and concluded by Rabina (died 499). With Rabina ended the long line of Amoraim (who, by the Gemara, completed the work of their predecessors, the Tannaim, the sages of the Mish- nah), and they were succeeded by the Saboraim, who put the finishing touches to the Babylonian Talmud. It was high time for the Jewish intellectual treasures to have been brought under safe custody, for the Babylonian Jews in the middle of the fifth century experienced severe re- ligious persecutions, in the course of which a Prince of the Captivity was publicly hanged (470). Fifty years after, an attempt by another Prince, Mar Zutra, to throw off the yoke of Persia, ended with his crucifixion. Never- theless, the Babylonian Jews maintained considerable in- tellectual vigour and political importance even under the Arab conquerors of Persia (642), and were yet to give another impetus to the development of the Jewish mind. ^ 7. Under the Crescent. — While the various Christian Churches were engaged in mutual warfare, there arose on their borders an enemy who swept away some of the most important and extensive tracts of Chris- tendom. Mohammedanism, the greatest opponent by which Christianity has ever been faced, also owes its existence to Judaism, At the time of the appearance of Moham- 56 HISTORY OF THE JEWS med, at the beginning of the seventh centurv', there was a large Jewish population in various parts of Arabia, in- cluding the neighbourhood of Medina, where a number of independent and powerful Jewish tribes had long ago established themselves. Mohammed, who had come into contact with Judaism and Christianity both in Arabia and in his travels in Syria, was evidently more attracted by the older monotheistic faith. His list of true prophets whom he honoured as his predecessors were all Jews; his monotheism was Jewish, in direct opposition to the Trini- tarian conception of Christianity, and he only claimed to have restored the religion of Abraham, the father of all the faithful, while many of the ideas and doctrines of Islam and various institutions and practices he established were directly borrowed from the Jews. He at first even Intended to make Jerusalem the sacred centre of the new religion, and Jerusalem is still known among the Moslem as Al Kuds, the Hol3^ If the irritating opposition he received from the Arabian Jews, whose co-operation he was anxious to receive, led Mohammed to attack them until they were driven out from the Peninsula, yet the extraordinary spread of his faith from the Caucasus to the Pyrenees found everywhere Jews anxious to escape from the. unbearable yoke of the Christian, and willing not only to submit to any tolerably indulgent master but also to help him in every possible way. Hence there grew up a certain sympathy between the oldest and the youngest monotheistic religion, so similar in many of their beliefs and observances, and this reacted most favourably on the development of Judaism. The Jews, touched by the elan and vivifying spirit which had taken hold of Islam In the first centuries of its growth, underwent a process of rejuvenation in all aspects of life and thought. § 8. In Western Europe. — While the East formed the centre of the activities and troubles of the Jews, there grew up in the far West of Europe those communities THE TALMUDIC AGE 57 which were to eclipse the achievements and sufferings of their brethren under Byzantine and Persian rule. The Jews had settled in Rome even before the times of the Maccabees, and, by immigration and conversion, new colonies gradually developed in the important centres in Italy, Greece, Gaul, Germany, Spain. On account of their proselytism, the Jews in Rome were not looked upon favourably, and the first religious persecution in the West ensued on that account under Tiberius. Later on, how- ever, during the invasion of the barbarians in the outly- ing European portions of the empire where Jews were to be found, they enjoyed such protection as their Roman citizenship (which they had received under the emperor Caracalla [212]), and their inolTensiveness and adaptable usefulness could give them. The Jews, largely as a mi- gratory element and not belonging to the dominant Chris- tian religion, suffered less than the native population from the fury of the barbarians, as they swept over the country devastating everything that came in their way. But the situation of the Jews changed materially with the spread of Christianity among the rude invaders. In the West- ern Roman empire a law of Theodosius II (439) de- prived the Jews entirely of the rights they had possessed, and reduced them to a state of an oppressed and inferior order. The emphatic confirmations and amplifications which this received at the hands of the Church Councils and influential Christian ecclesiastics became a fatal legacy which the barbarians inherited with the civilization and religion of imperial Rome, and proved the origin of the endless woe which was to overtake the Jews of Europe for about fifteen long and dreary centuries. The early history of the Jews in Western Europe un- der Christian rule is outlined by the discussions and reso- lutions of the Church Councils which dictated the policy of the secular Christian rulers. It is noteworthy that the Arians, who were not swayed by the Catholic Church Councils, treated the Jews with considerable liberalitv, 58 HISTORY OF THE JEWS perhaps on account of the monotheistic bonds between both sides. The Arian Theodoric, the Gothic king of Italy, proved a powerful protector of the Jews, and took ener- getic measures against the highest Christian authorities, lay and clerical, who had wantonly attacked the Jews in Rome, Milan and Genoa. The Jews repaid by the heroic resistance they offered in the defence of Naples against the Byzantine general Belisarius (536). The Jews likewise fared well under the barbarian Franks, even sometime after their adoption of Christianity, but this was changed by the violence of kings Childebert and Chilperic, and the zeal of the bishops in their eagerness to advance the cause of Christ among the obdurate Jews. The Jews found, however, in Pope Gregory the Great a pontiff who had a higher conception of the dignity md reasonableness of Christianity, and, although most anxious to bring about their conversion, his authority was exercised in favour of the existing, though meagre, rights of the Jews. It was in Spain, where Jewish com- munities were already established at the time of Paul, that they experienced most severely the rigours of Chris- tian legislation. The Visigothic kings of Spain and the Spanish Church Councils seemed, in their frantic efforts for the conversion of the Jews, to have been continually possessed of violent paroxysms which expressed themselves in the most vigorous measures against the Jews, whether baptized or unbaptized. The converted Jews were justly suspected of being false to their enforced Christian pro- fessions, and the severest punishments, among which death became a common penalty, were meted out to those discovered to be maintaining in the slightest way their Jewish connections or sympathies. It is characteristic of the manner in which these conversions were being effected and supervised that a number of Jews who had turned Christian begged at least not to be forced to eat pork. The Jews, thus ruthlessly hunted about, encour- aged and hailed with joy the invasion of the Moslem THE TALMUDIC AGE 59 conquerors (711), who, on their arrival, found in the Jev\s valuable allies, into whose hands they placed the captured cities as they proceeded to futher conquests. In Germany the condition of the Jews was subjected to the same evolution: while the Jews were at first living in amity with their barbarian neighbours, the increasing in- fluence of the Church was exerted to shut them out from intercourse with the faithful. A time very favourable to the Jews was the rule of the Carlovingians. Charlemagne employed Jewish merchants in his service, and one of them, named Isaac, was sent by him with an embassy to the khalif Harun al Rashid (797) ; he is even said to have interested himself in the in- tellectual advancement of his Jewish subjects. This en- lightened policy was pursued also by Charlemagne's suc- cessor, Louis le Debonnaire. The Jews rose to great influ- ence under this monarch, whose confidential adviser was his Jewish physician Zedekiah. From the diatribes direct- ed against them by Agobard, archbishop of Lyons, it would appear that the Jews had attained a position of importance which might well arouse the jealousy of a medieval churchman. In his own diocese, the Jews occupied the best quarter of the city of Lyons, just as one of the two mayors of Narbonne was always a Jew. It was not only their wealth, profitable to the king as well as to them- selves, which gave them this social standing, but the bishop complains that even the Synagogue fared better than the Church, inasmuch as many Christians went to hear the Jewish preachers, who evidently must have delivered their discourses in the French language. That Agobard's writ- ings and strenuous personal efforts had no immediate effect is in itself an indication «f the strength of the Jewish posi- tion at the time. But the Jews had good cause to remember the warning of their psalmist not to trust in princes, who are, after all, only sons of men. With other kings and changing times, the dignitaries of the Church had their way at last. The crusades in the eleventh century brought 6o HISTORY OF THE JEWS out to the full the artificially stimulated fanaticism of the populace against the first infidels on their way, which was traced by a trail of Jewish blood. § 9. Social and Economic Conditions. — The Babylonian Jews under Parthian and Persian rule, and then under the dominion of the khalifs, lived under nor- mal conditions which permitted them to carry on the oc- cupations of a well-ordered community. The self-gov- erning powers of the Prince of the Captivity, who, in eflFect, was one of the vassal rulers of the country and maintained a court and retinue of some magnificence, gave him and his Jewish subjects a dignified political standing, while the intellectual activity of the Jews must have raised them far above the level of their neighbours. In Arabia, up till the rise of Islam, the Jews had lived as independent tribes, with the free, martial and marauding spirit of the other sons of the desert, from whom they were only distinguished by a superiority due to their re- ligious traditions. It was not so under Byzantine and Roman rule, with their spreading influences on the lives and mental outlook of the barbarians. The exclusion of the Jews from the army and the offices of state placed them in a position of civil exclusiveness and inferiority, while the Church branded them as the people rejected by God for the crucifixion of the Saviour of mankind. The Jews, torn out by the r'^ots from their ancestral soil, and in other parts of the empire subjected to the turbulence and fanaticism of people and priests, became unsettled in their mode of life. Wars and insurrections had played havoc with the economic condition of the Jews, and the sale of enormously large numbers of Jewish slaves, who were mostly ransomed by their happier co-religionists, filled the empire with a Jewish proletariat which was obliged to seek its livelihood in the meanest occupations, among which sooth-saying and other charlatanic devices to gull the ever-credulous populace seem to have been of a favourite and lucrative kind. Yet we find the Jews own- THE TALMUDIC AGE 6l ing and tilling the land in all parts and in considerable numbers. The Church Council of Elvira, Spain (303), found it advisable to prohibit the blessing of the soil by Jews, lest the Christian prayers should prove unavailing. More reasonably, tlie Church Councils later on continu- ally interfered with the sale of Christian slaves to Jews, and endeavoured that no Christian should either come under Jewish masters or that Jews should not proselytize among their Christian, or even pagan, slaves. The vast upheavals which were brought about by the invasion of the barbarians, led to wholesale massacres, and, as a more merciful and more profitable measure, to the sale of large parts of the population as slaves. In this traffic the mo- bile Jews began to take the leading share, and we find them spread far and wide, from England and Bohemia to Persia and North Africa, in order to dispose of the victims of barbarian warfare. In general, however, the Jew^s occupied themselves with industry and trade, and barter, developed into commerce, became a very important factor and civilizing influence amidst a population who were either attached to the soil as serfs or sought glory and profit in the bloody pursuit of arms. In their com- mercial undertakings, the Jews were favoured by their comparatively high intellectual standard, and by the world-wide connections and community of sentiment and interests which made all Jews members of one family. When Mohammedanism took possession of the East, the Jews acted as the only possible intermediaries between Moslem and Christian lands, and this commercial ac- tivity had assumed by the tenth century most extraordi- nary proportions. All over inhabited Europe, South- western Asia and Northern Africa, Jewish merchants dealt with the needs and luxuries of civilization. Jewish captains navigated Jewish mercantile vessels which sailed on the waves of the Mediterranean. In the same way, the cosmopolitan Jews became the chief money-changers of the time. 62 HISTORY OF THE JEWS The crusades, however, altered this state of things. By coming into personal touch with the East, the Chris- tians entered into competition with the Jews, and by sub- sequent legislation were able to restrict the enterprise of their Jewish rivals. The trade guilds, which then be- gan to be formed under ecclesiastical auspices, and from which Jews were naturally excluded, gave the Christian merchant ample scope and security to oust the Jewish com- petitor. Still it seemed as if the life of the Jews in Christian Europe, made intolerable by religious legisla- tion and persecution, was not to be made entirely im- possible by all the avenues to the means of livelihood being closed against them. For, by a strange misinter- pretation of an injunction by Jesus, "Lend, never de- spairing" (Luke vi. 35), the Church stringently forbade the lending of money on interest. As such a measure would have paralyzed the ordinary course of life, not to speak of trade and enterprise, and as, furthermore, the salvation of the unbelieving Jews was in any case not considered in the pious enactments intended to protect Christian souls, the Jews received the very valuable, but two-edged, monopoly of money-lending. With this, how- ever, the Jews entered into the darkest misery which awaited them in the Dark Ages, when only a fervent attachment to their faith and an unquenchable hope for happier times saved them from total extinction. CHAPTER IV The Golden Age of Judaism § I. The Geonim. — The invasion of Persia by the Arabs, which brought the Jews there under new and more tolerant masters, seems to have been assisted by Bostonai, a Prince of the Captivity, on whom, among other distinc- tions, the Arab conqueror bestowed as wife a daughter of the Persian king Chosroes II. The dignity of Prince of the Captivity was thus continued, while the principals of the colleges of Sura and Pumpedita rose to new fame under the title of Geonim (singular, Gaon [Illustrious]). Al- ready before the conquest, the Babylonian Talmud had been settled, and had become a subject of devoted and widespread study. The colleges had been repeatedly closed and reopened in the troublous times that marked the end of Persian rule, but the creation of the khali- phate with its wide dominion and influence, and the proximity of the Babylonian Jews to the centre of the Mohammedan empire, preserved for the Princes of the Exile and, even more so, for the Geonim, the hegemony so long enjoyed by the Babylonians among the Jews of the Dispersion, who recognized those dignitaries as the highest authorities in Judaism and supported the colleges by liberal contributions. The adoption of the kindred Arabic language as the vernacular of the Jews under Moslem rule, served as a still further bond between the communities which extended and multiplied with the ever widening expansion of Islam in Asia, North Africa and the Iberian peninsula. 63 64 HISTORY OF THE JEWS If the Prince of the Captivity possessed the social dis- tinction of being the recognized chief of his people, among whom he enjoyed the still greater prestige of a scion of the royal house of David, the Geonim were invested with the judicial functions which formerly belonged to the Presi- dent of the Sanhedrin and with a spiritual authority which was universally acknowledged. From France to India, the Geonim were consulted on questions of religion and law — two cognate subjects — and twice a year, in the months of Adar and Elul (about March and September), there was held a conference, called Kallah, where scholars from all parts discussed a certain specified treatise of the Talmud, as well as the specific points which awaited con- sideration and decision. But these outward glories of the Jewish people were also to fall victims to the ravages of time. Owing to internal neglect and decay, and the growing fanaticism of the Mohammedans, the Gaonate (which had continued its functions for 450 years), as well as the dignity of Prince of the Captivity (which had existed for about 700 years), expired together in the person of Hezekiah, of Pumpedita, in the year 1040. Towards the end there had appeared one of the most famous of the Geonim, Sherira, to whom we owe our knowledge of Jewish history from the close of the Tal- mud to his own day, as well as Hai, an independent thinker, but they were far outshone by Saadia (born in Eg5T)t 892, died at Sur 942), truly one of the lights of the Exile. Saadia rendered lasting service to Judaism by the creation of a philosophical and scientific basis for the Talmudical conception of the religion. Saadia was the first to present it systematically in accordance with the highest culture of the time. His Arabic translation of the Bible was a work of epoch-making importance to his co-religionists, who thereby also became sharers of the rich and fruitful Mohammedan civilization. A work of much value, and even greater interest, was his Faith and Dogmas ("Emunoth Vedeoth"), which for the first THE GOLDEN AGE OF JUDAISM 65 time set out the principles and ideas of Talmudical Ju- daism from a philosophical point of view. Endowed with a penetrating mind and deep religious feeling, a vast capacity for work and a comprehensive grasp of the subjects dealt with by him, Saadia Gaon touched and adorned all aspects of Jewish thought, and laid the seed for its future vitality and development. § 2. Karaistn. — The political and intellectual up- heavals which ensued on the Moslem conquests, and in which the Babylonian Jews participated either actively or passively, led, among other things, to a certain unset- tlement of the mind among them. The traditions em- bodied in the Talmud which had hitherto held undisputed sway, were now^, seriously or frivolously, called into ques- tion. The Jews of Arabia, who had been expelled from the Peninsula by the Moslem onslaught and had settled in Syria and Babylonia, were groups almost ignorant of Rabbinical tradition, and, as free sons of the desert, per- haps little amenable to the bookish discipline of the Tal- mudists. But while such isolated sets of opinion as had been formed could make little headway against the vener- able authority of the Geonim and the Princes of the Exile, an effective opposition was offered by one high in scholarly and social standing, and endowed with the nec- essary energy to unite the diverse anti-traditionist ele- ments. Such a man was Anan ben David (died about 800). He was the legitimate successor to the office of Prince of the Captivity, which had become vacant in 762, but, whether it was on account of expressed heretical opinions or because of his character, the Jewish author- ities passed him over in favour of his younger brother. Anan did not allow this without a determined struggle. He was indeed thrown into prison and was to have been executed by the government, but he succeeded in escap- ing, and organized a systematic attack on the Gaonate, and on the Talmudical form of Judaism of which it was the highest representative. Discarding the traditions of 66 HISTORY OF THE JEWS the Rabbis and their schools, he went back to the original sources of the Bible and formulated his own interpreta- tions and amplifications of the ritualistic and legal laws of the Torah of Moses. It cannot, however, be said that Anan succeeded in his task better than the Talmudists, and personal hatred of them seems to have proved a bad counsellor. Nor can Anan be credited with having been either a bold reformer or original thinker. He kept his eyes close to the Talmudical laws with the object of evading or superseding them by regulations of his own. He thus produced a laborious code which lacked the or- derly evolution and the critical deliberation and experi- ence of numerous generations. Hence, instead of lighten- ing the burden of Talmudical legislation or unravelling its complexities, he added to it or made it more involved. With precipitation and without the test of practical con- sideration, Anan enforced many interpretations of Jewish law which were either so extravagant or untenable that his immediate followers abolished or changed them with- out scruple. In certain instances, however, such as his view that the prohibition to kindle a fire on the Sabbath (Exodus XXXV. 3) obliged the Israelite to sit in total darkness during Friday night and to have no warm food during the Sabbath day (which Anan seems to have re- garded something like a day of penance, when one was hardly to be allowed to leave the house if situated among Gentiles), Anan's regulations remained valid for all time. If in subsequent ages Christian theologians hailed the fol- lowers of Anan as the Protestants of Judaism, the anal- ogy can only be brought out in so far that Anan might be considered as a rebel against the authority of the Talmud, though he was only a reformer of mediocre mind who threw o& the Catholic traditions and the canon law of the Synagogue in order to reconstruct them in accordance with his personal notions. We must, however, give credit to the early followers of Anan, who came to be called Karaim, Karaites (from THE GOLDEN AGE OF JUDAISM 67 karah, to read [the written Bible]), that, like all dis- senters, they disturbed the intellectual lethargy which had taken possession of the Jews after the close of the Talmud — in the compilation of which they had, so to speak, exhausted themselves — and they also led them back to the invigorating and inspiring study of the Bible, which had become neglected in the absorbing devotion to tradition. The Karaites, who seceded from the so-called Rabbanites, or Talmudical Jews, produced later on a number of men who gave a scientific basis to the tenets of the sect and to its opposition to their Rabbinical breth- ren. The latter were, however, fortunate in the pos- session of the Gaon Saadia, who so far overshadowed their Karaite antagonists that they have since then been moving as in a magic circle around the arguments he adduced against them. The progress which Karaism made all over the East, from Constantinople to Spain, was arrested after a few centuries, and thereby afforded a remarkable testi- mony to the vitality inherent in traditional Judaism. The sense of initiative which had brought the Karaites into being, their early boldness and originality of con- ception, such as it was, waned with the advance of time. Karaism shrank into a petrified sect, whose adherents, to the number of about 12,000, are now mostly to be found in Southern Russia, while several small communi- ties in Turkey and Egypt still continue their obscure existence. § 3. The Chazars. — The Jewish forces in Babylonia had been fatally weakened by the decay and final extinc- tion of the venerable and universally revered dignities of the Prince of the Captivity and the Gaonate; the Karaites had created the first and only irreparable schism in the body of Israel; the once tolerant and enlightened khaliphs had begun to persecute the unbelieving Jews and Chris- tians with equal impartiality; even the Byzantine em- peror Leo the Isaurian being accused of "execrable" Judaizing tendencies on account of his iconoclastic ac- 68 HISTORY OF THE JEWS tivities, cleared himself of all suspicion by subjecting the Jews to cruel persecution — yet these were only the labours preceding the birth of one of the greatest and most fruit- ful epochs of Jewish history. From widely different quarters, at the shores of the Euxine and the Gates of Hercules, on the banks of the Volga and of the Guadal- quivir, Judaism received unexpected accessions of strength, while on the Rhine also the old Jewish tree blossomed out with renewed splendour. If Judaism was hard pressed by Roman, Persian or Arab, many of its members spread beyond their influence. The international relations of Jewish commerce brought a number of Jews as far as India, and, in the middle of the eighth century, Joseph Rabban obtained a charter from the king of Cochin granting autonomous rights to a Jewish settlement there which has survived to the present day. Of greater consequence was the migration of Jews along the trade-routes of the Black Sea and the Volga. In this region lived the Chazars, a people of Tartar race, whose chagan, Bulan, together with his nobles, adopted the Jewish religion. From the scanty records that have been preserved of this Jewish kingdom of the Chazars, which subsisted for a period of about 250 years, it ap- pears that ft had its capital, Atel, near the present As- trachan, on the Volga, while the Chazarian territory stretched all over the south of Russia. The incursions of the Chazars were so dreaded by the Persians that they built a great wall across the Caucasus to keep them away, while imperial Byzantium had to buy off their hostility by ill-disguised payments, and the Russian dukes of Kiev were forced to recognize the authority of the Jewish chagans of the Chazars by a fixed tribute. The country of the Jewish Chazars was governed in a spirit of exceptional tolerance, so that, for instance, the supreme court of justice was composed of two Jews, two Chris- tians, two Mohammedans, and one pagan to represent the Russians and Bulgars. The chagan Obadiah, the sue- THE GOLDEN AGE OF JUDAISM 69 cesser of Bulan, invited a number of Jewish teachers into his country, to instruct tlie people in the tenets of Ju- daism, and it was only the difficulties of distance and travel which kept this Jewish state from the general knowledge of the Jews. It w^as through ambassadors from Byzantium that Chasdai ibn Shaprut, a Jewish states- man at the court of Cordova in the middle of the tenth century, became acquainted with the fact of their ex- istence, and it is to an extant correspondence he initiated with the chagan Joseph that we are indebted for our information regarding the Jewish Chazars. They main- tained their power until the year 969, when Sviatoslav, duke of Kiev, conquered the capital and territory of the Chazars. Many of them withdrew^ to the Crimea, which also became known as Chazaria, but their political power had gone, and they were lost in the mass of Jews and Karaites who had settled there and in South-Eastern Europe generally. § 4. The Spanish Epoch. — It is a pregnant indica- tion of the vitality of the Jewish people that, at repeated periods in history, after adverse circumstances seemed to have entirely overwhelmed it, it rose superior to all ob- stacles, and played again an important part in the affairs of the world. A thousand years after the dissolution of the Jewish national existence, when the Roman world- empire with its mighty emperors had already become mere faint memories; when Judaism had given birth to a world- conquering religion, the head of which had usurped the throne of the Caesars; when Christianity itself had been expelled from its most ancient and fairest possessions, and the dioceses of Chrysostom, Cyril and Augustine were peopled and ruled by the circumcised followers of Mo- hammed, Judaism renewed its youth and led the highest culture of the age. There cannot indeed be any greater tribute to the Jewish mind than the fact that, though very few in numbers, oppressed and despised, they should have surpassed in intellectual eminence all the young and vig- 70 HISTORY OF THE JEWS orous nations of Europe, who were then occupying with the din of their arms the attention of the world. The magnificent epoch of Hispano-Jewish history sig- nalized over a thousand years ago the definite entry of the Jews and Judaism into European civilization — not as it was then, but as it was to become in later days. In the darkest period of that civilization the Jews rose to view as the brightest star. If we take into account that, with the exception of a few short glimpses of liberty and hon- our, the Jews were subjected to massacre, exile, misery and degradation, the horror and extent of which are in- conceivable to the modern mind, their achievements in all fields of human thought can only be regarded with the same admiration as that which we are wont to accord to the people who gave the Bible to the world. W. E. H. Lecky well set out these considerations when, re- ferring to the trials and triumphs of the Jews, he said, "The heroism of the defenders of every other creed fades into insignificance before this martyr people, who for thirteen centuries confronted all the evils that the fiercest fanaticism could devise, and the infliction of the most hideous sufferings, rather than abandon their faith. . . . But above all this the genius of that wonderful people rose supreme. While those around them were grovelling in the darkness of besotted ignorance; while juggling miracles and lying relics were the themes on which almost all Europe was expatiating; while the intellect of Chris- tendom, enthralled by countless superstitions, had sunk into a deadly torpor, in which all love of inquiry and all search for truth were abandoned, the Jews were still pur- suing the path of knowledge, amassing learning and stim- ulating progress with the same unflinching constancy that they manifested in their faith. They were the most skil- ful physicians, the ablest financiers, and among the most profound philosophers; while they were only second to the Moors in the cultivation of natural science. They were also the chief interpreters to Western Europe of THE GOLDEN AGE OF JUDAISM 71 Arabian learning." (History of Rationalism, I, p. 282.) § 5. Hispano-Jewish Culture. — The first incident in the course of events which was to lead to the transfer of the centre of Judaism from Babylonia to Spain was the arrival in Cordova of a captive, Moses ben Enoch, who had been ransomed by his brethrcn-in-faith. Moses ben Enoch had set out with three other legates from Sura in order to collect contribution for the college there, but they were all captured by pirates and sold into various quarters of the world, where they became the heads of new Jewish centres of learning. One of them, Shemaria ben Elchanan, settled in Cairo ; another, Chushiel, at Kairuan, in Africa; the third, Nathan bar Isaac Hacohen, at Narbonne, and Moses ben Enoch at Cordova. On his release, Moses ben Enoch paid a visit to the local school, and, in his beggarly garb, took a humble place near the door, listening to the exposition of the Talmud by the principal. Rabbi Nathan. IMoses ben Enoch, moved by the prevailing ignorance, made an interjection which drew general attention to him, and his explanation so gained the admiration of the assembly that Nathan, with unusual generosity, immediately withdrew from his po- sition in favour of the liberated slave, who was elected by the Jews of Cordova as their spiritual head. The revival of Talmudic studies and Hebrew letters at Cor- dova was, however, largely due to the influence and munificence of Chasdai ibn Shaprut, who was invested with various high duties relating to diplomacy, trade and finance at the court of the liberal-minded khaliph Abdul Rahman I (912-961). It was Chasdai ibn Shaprut who, in his intercourse with the Byzantine ambassadors to Cor- dova, had learnt of the existence of the Jewish Chazars, and he evinced even greater interest in the growth and W'elfare of Judaism at home. The first distinctions gained by the Spanish Jews were in the fields of Hebrew grammar and poetry, by two pro- teges of ibn Shaprut, Menachem ben Saruk and Dunash 72 HISTORY OF THE JEWS ibn Labrat. Menachem ben Saruk was a pathfinder in Hebrew grammar, in which, however, he was soon ex- celled by the more scientific Judah Chayug, and subse- quently entirely superseded by Jonah ibn Janach, one of the greatest masters of Hebrew philology (died 1050). Dunash ibn Labrat was the first of a long and glorious line of Hispano-Jewish poets. He developed and beauti- fied the rhythm and metre of Neo-Hebrew poetry, which, in imitation of the Arabic muse, had already sprung up in Babylonia, where Eleazar ben Kalir, whose stilted com- positions are to be found in the Jewish liturgy, for some of the holydays, became the foremost representative of the Payetanim, or liturgical poets. The break-up of the Spanish khaliphate (1013) also In- volved the Jews of Cordova, who were unfortunate in having espoused the losing side, and were, therefore, ex- pelled from the city. A fugitive from Cordova was Samuel ibn Nagdela (993-1055), who rose to be the vizier of the king of Granada, and was entrusted with the dip- lomatic affairs of state. Samuel ibn Nagdela, named by the Jews Samuel Hanagid (the Chief), was not only a generous and discriminating patron of Jewish learning, but himself a scholar and poet of distinction, being both the spiritual and secular head of the community. His son Joseph ibn Nagdela, who succeeded him in his dig- nities, was, however, not able to maintain himself against the envy and machinations of his enemies, and, on his fall and violent death, the Jews of Granada were given over to wholesale massacre and expulsion. A large num- ber of them went to Saragossa, where Abu al-Fadhl ibn Chasdai was vizier, an office of danger as well as of dig- nity which a number of Jews occupied in those days at the various Mohammedan courts in Spain. The interne- cine rivalries and struggles of the Moorish kings and parties brought many ups and downs to the Jews, so that in spite of all culture and prosperity, they were often forced to flee from one part of the Peninsula to another. THE GOLDEN AGE OF JUDAISM 73 Hence, the Jews also came under the rule of Christian rulers in Spain, a number of whom, impressed with the importance of winning over to their side such an influ- ential part of the population as the Jews, souq;ht to do so by tolerant treatment and equitable laws. The Chris- tian kings likewise employed Jews in the financial and diplomatic services, and Alfonso VI, who greatly fav- oured them, had 40,000 Jews in his army. It was on their account that the battle of Zallaka was, by a mutual truce, held over until after the Sabbath. The Jews seem indeed to have taken prominent parts in the wars between the various Iberian states. Christian and Mohammedan, and, as in the case of Judah ibn Ezra, the major-domo of Alfonso VII, Jews were sometimes entrusted with the charge and command of fortified places. Of universal import are the Jewish philosophers in Spain and those who traced their descent from that coun- try. They include stars of striking brilliancy in the phil- osophical firmament, and their influence on medieval thought was of the highest. It is the peculiar distinction of these Jewish philosophers that, while they were pro- foundly imbued with the Hebraic spirit, they were at the same time men of remarkably rationalistic thought and bold inquiry, and some of them were poets of the foremost rank. Hebrew poetry, which had been dormant since the times of the Maccabees, to which we owe a number of the most stirring psalms, immortalized with even greater luxuriance, if not with equally sublime simplicity, the happy days and inspired moments which Jews experienced under the sunny skies of Spain. Among the greatest of philosophers and poets who graced that epoch, Solomon ibn Gebirol was among the first, Judah Halevi among the highest, Solomon ibn Gebirol (1021-1070), who was early in life bereft of his parents and also had to mourn his patron, Jekuthiel ibn Hassan, the Jewish vizier of the king of Saragossa, was of a melancholy disposition, which pervaded his rich and varied poetry. Most of all, 74 HISTORY OF THE JEWS ibn Geblrol's renown rests on his philosophical distinction, as the first who introduced Greco-Arabic philosophy into medieval Christian circles. His acquaintance with the Greek and Arabic philosophers he brought into an or- ganized system in his work, The Fountain of Life ("Fons Vits"). This, in a Latin translation from the Arabic and free from any specific theological bias, became later on one of the important sources of Christian scholasticism, which looked upon ibn Gebirol as a Christian philosopher.' His best known poem, The Crown of Kingdoni ("Kether Malchuth"), which has been incorporated in the liturgy for the eve of the Day of Atonement, is a masterpiece of majestic religious thought and elevated praise of God's glory. Excelling him in depth of emotion and in beauty of expression was Judah Halevi (born about 1086, died about 1 140), the greatest Jewish poet since the days when the living source of Hebrew song was dried up with misfortune and neglect. As in those far-away days of old, Zion once more inspired the Jewish muse and raised it to the most exalted heights of divine ecstasy. Judah Halevi possessed the magic wand which made the lyrical waters flow again, and his songs of Zion, depicting the past glory, the unutterable sadness of the present and the yearnings for the joys of Israel's future, have re- mained among the most enduring of the spiritual treas- ures of his people. As his poetry, so his philosophy was imbued with a passionate love for the people of Israel, which he termed "the heart of mankind." With a lofty spirituality, he set out his conception of the Jewish faith in a work entitled Hakuzari, in which he weaves round the story of the conversion to Judaism of Bulan, the chagan of the Chazars, a philosophical apologv' for Ju- daism against the claims of opposing religions. True to his philosophy and his poetry, he turned his steps towards Zion, and, leaving home, family and friends, he entered on a pilgrimage to the Holy City, and died after having reached the goal of his life-long yearnings. THE GOLDEN AGE OF JUDAISM 75 A philosophical writer, whose warm reh'gious feeling and lucidity of stjle have placed him among the most popular of Jewish thinkers, was Bachya ihn Pakuda, and his Duties of the Heart ("Chohoth Halebahoth") has maintained its foremost position in the post-biblical de- votional literature of the Jews. A subject of engrossing thought and occupation to the medieval Jew was the interpretation of the Sacred Scrip- tures, and in this direction also the Spanish Jews took the most prominent part. Some of their biblical com- mentators were independent, rationalistic critics of Holy Writ, when the original text and its criticism were prac- tically unknow-n to the Christian ecclesiastics of Europe. Abraham ibn Ezra (1088-1167) still to the present day retains a place of honour among expositors of the Bible. Remarkable as an exegetist, he was an adept in grammar, mathematics, astronomy and astrology (which occupied with alchemy such a large portion of time of the wise men in the Midle Ages) ; a traveller who, in the twelfth century, knew his way all over the world, from Bagdad to London. If less known to fame, his relative and con- temporary, Moses ibn Ezra, was a thinker and poet of many parts and high distinction. Among the travellers of the age was Benjamin of Tudela, an account of whose extensive journeys over Europe, Asia and Africa has been preserved in his interesting and valuable Itinerary, a repeatedly re-edited and re-published book of travel. Of great importance as commentators were the Kimchi fam- ily in Spain and Provence, especially David Kimchi ( i I6o- I235), whose Michlol, containing a Hebrew grammar and biblical dictionary, and commentaries on the Bible, exerted a far-reaching influence on Christians and Jews alike. § 6. Moses Maimonides. — Whatever distinction must be ascribed to all these poets, philosophers, physi- cians, astronomers, grammarians and exegetists, they were excelled and entirely overshadowed by one of the giants '7(^ HISTORY OF THE JEWS of the Jewish people, whose appearance in the twelfth century marks the culminating point of medieval Judaism. Moses Maimonides (ben Maimon) was born in Cor- dova in 1 135, of a father who was himself a notable scholar. When he was thirteen years of age, Cordova was captured by the fanatical Almohades, who forced all the Jews and Christians there to adopt Islam. The fam- ily of Moses escaped, and, after aimlessly wandering about for some time, went to Fez, where the prevailing perse- cution forced them to outwardly conform to Moham- medanism, and then, after living for some time in Pal- estine, they settled permanently at Cairo (Fostat), in Egypt. A physician by profession, Moses Maimonides became famous in the art of medicine; he regularly at- tended to the court of the renowned Sultan Saladin, and refused a similar position to king Richard the Lion- hearted of England, when he was on his crusading ex- pedition at Ascalon. But in spite of his engrossing oc- cupation, in which he rose to high achievement both as practitioner and author, Moses Maimonides' marvellous energy and capacity overstepped the boundaries of time and the knowledge of his age. A disciple of Aristotle, Maimonides became a master of his philosophy. He wrote on mathematics and astronomy, but, unlike his contem- poraries, he declared astrology unworthy of attention. All this was, however, subsidiary to his unrivalled importance as the central figure of Talmudical Judaism. Maimon- ides, by his monumental work Mishneth Torch (also called "Yad Hachazakah," "The Strong Hand"), brought the whole unwieldy mass of traditional Jewish law into systematic order, and his statements and views, given with the confidence and authority of a master, became the accepted standard of his own and subsequent genera- tions. This exhaustive code of Jewish practice was followed by The Guide of the Perplexed ("Moreh Nebuchim"), a work on the philosophy of Judaism. Lacking the firip THE GOLDEN AGE OF JUDAISM 77 and unquestioned basis of the Biblical and Talmudical sources, and conceived in a spirit of bold, if reverent, philosophical inquiry, the Guide gave rise afterwards to very bitter disputes among the Jews, so violent that his name was execrated by his opponents, and gave oppor- tunity for the lamentable intervention of the none too friendly Christian authorities. The Guide of the Per- plexed was, however, a work which, by its profundity of thought, enlightened spirit and masterly treatment of the highest spiritual problems, gained the admiration of the best minds of the author's time. Soon afterwards, parts of the Guide were translated into Latin, and utilized by the great Christian scholastics, while it was to prove a source of creative thought for the Jews in future ages, Maimonides may be regarded as first among the ration- alists, yet while Jewish thought seemed up to his time without any recognized limits to speculation so long as the Torah and its institutions were respected, it was Maimonides who not only in his Guide laid down the lines and limitations of Jewish religious philosophy, but introduced a hitherto unknown definitely dogmatic con- ception of Judaism, and elaborated thirteen fundamental principles of the Jewish faith which have since remained the accepted basis of traditional, or orthodox, Judaism. There is perhaps nothing which gives so true an indication of the moral strength and spiritual unity of Judaism as the fact that while the Church, with all the pomp and power at its command, could not enforce the solemn de- cisions of its Councils and recognized ecclesiastical heads, the dogmatic authority of the simple and humble thinker Moses Maimonides was accepted unquestionably in all the dispersions of Israel. Maimonides, by his personality, transferred the centre of Judaism to Egj'pt, where he was recognized as the Nagid (Chief) of the Jewish community. He was con- sulted by Jews from all parts, and his extant replies give an insight into the generous tolerance and nobility of soul 78 HISTORY OF THE JEWS of this great son of Talmudical Judaism. He was not only friendly to the Karaites, and took a lenient view of those who, like himself at one time, had been forced to hide under a strange faith, but he also repudiated the narrow view that Mohammedanism should be looked upon as an idolatry on account of the veneration paid to the Kaaba, and regarded Christianity and Mohammedanism as world-religions with providential purposes in history. Yet a correspondence with a proselyte to Judaism shows that to him it was the faith whose truth ennobles all who place themselves under its allegiance. His death in the year 1 204, at the age of seventy, closes a brilliant epoch in Jewish history, and (in allusion to Deut. xxxiv. 10) it was well said of him that "from Moses till Moses (Maimonides) there did not arise one like unto Moses (Maimonides)." § 7. The Franco-German Schools. — A counter- part to the Spanish scholars, though small in comparison, is to be found in the learned men of France and Germany. An impetus to Jewish learning in the South of France, which benefited by its proximity to Spain, was given by the arrival in Narbonne of Nathan bar Isaac, one of the four Bab3donian legates who had been taken captive on their way. His disciple Judah ben Meir, or Leontin, took up his master's mantle, but it was reserved for Rabbenu (our Master) Gershom ben Judah to establish Talmudical studies in France and Germany on broad and sure foundations. The Franco-German scholars did not attain to the polish and versatility, as well as the philo- sophical breadth of view, which distinguished their Span- ish brethren; but, if the Northerns lacked the touch of genius, they at least possessed in an abundant measure moral earnestness and deep piety. Rabbenu Gershom, who was looked upon by his contemporaries in France, Germany and Italy as the "light of the captivity," was born in France in 960, and established a school at May- ence, which became for many generations an important THE GOLDEN AGE OF JUDAISM 79 centre for Talmudical studies, Rahbenu Gershom's ac- tivity remained remarkable in Jewish history by his edict forbidding polygamous marriages, and it is astounding that the mere word of a man with no recognized official authority should have been enough to turn this wholesome decree into a law for European Jewry. The fame of Rabbenu Gcrshom was even eclipsed by Solomon Itschaki, of Troves, in the province of Cham- pagne (1040-1105), who, under the name of Rashi,^ be- came one of the most popular post-biblical writers. This reputation he fully deserved by his commentaries on the Bible and the Talmud, particularly on the Bible, which be- came the vade mecuni of Jews of all degrees of learning or ignorance, and helped very much to give them an in- telligent meaning of the words of Holy Writ, To the Christian world, too, Rashi became an authority on the interpretation of the Old Testament, especially in the bringing out the literal, not the merely fanciful or al- legorical, sense. Luther's translation was largely based on Rashi's exegesis, conveyed to him through Rashi's countrjman Nicolas de Lyra, so that it was said: "Si Lyra non lyrasset, Luther non saltasset." Rashi, who united a saintly character to vast learning and lucidity of teaching, became the leader to the students of the Talmud in Europe, and his influence, continued by his learned grandsons and sons-in-law, made the Talmud an engrossing object of research among the Jews who were then spreading over the northern parts of the Continent. The most prominent of Rashi's successors was Rabbenu Jacob Tarn (1100-1171), his youngest grandson, a keen and enlightened mind. Rabbenu Tam was the founder of the Tossaphists, /'. e. those who added to the Talmud notes and decisions arising out of the studies of the Franco- ^ According to a peculiar and favourite Jewish method of nam- ing celebrities by a combination of their initials, e.g. Rabbi Sol- omon Itschaki as RaShI, or Rabbi Moses ben Malmon [Mai- monides] as RaMBaM. 8o HISTORY OP THE JEWS German schools. Under his spiritual guidance was ini- tiated the institution of Rabbinical conferences to decide on matters of moment which then threatened the very existence of the Jews. CHAPTER V The Dark Ages § I, The General State. — Judaism had now pro- duced its ripest fruits in Babylonia and Spain, and the seeds of Jewish learning had even been transplanted into Northern Europe. The gloom that had enshrouded the Jews by the growth of the Christian Roman empire had been pierced by the light which shone on them with the appearance of Mohammedanism as a world-power. Un- der the beneficent sway of Islam when it represented the highest forms of the then existing civilization, the Jews in the Iberian Peninsula had risen to great prosperity, and their intellectual achievements were for centuries to come to grow even on the uncongenial soil of Christian Spain. In Christendom the Jews had, forsooth, enough to suffer from mighty and petty tyrants, from councils and priests of a propagandist Church, intolerant of all opposition within and without. Yet, though treated as obnoxious strangers and unbelievers, at least the Jews in the Carlovingian empire, and even in England and Christian Spain, found some justice and occasional favour as a useful mercantile class in a state of society in which religion and arms were the only tolerable occupations. If trade was considered less honourable, it was, on the whole, more profitable than either of those professions. Regarded by the rulers as a very valuable source of rev- enue, even as an indispensable adjunct of the population, and competing with none of them, the Jews not only en- joyed the protection of the authorities, but also largely the passive good-will of their neighbours. 8i 82 HISTORY OF THE JEWS But the clouds had been gathering, and the Jews were overwhelmed by the storm that burst over them. The enlightened khaliphs in Bagdad and Cordova were suc- ceeded by Oriental despots and wild Moorish chiefs, whose fanaticism swept away the marks of Jewish liberty and dignity. The Prince of the Captivity became a mere memory, and Spain, where the sons of the last occupant of that high office had found an asylum, also soon ceased to be a safe refuge for the harassed Jews. In the de- ca3'ed Byzantine empire, now but a shrivelled shadow of its former glory, the Jews were torn up root and branch, and the Jewish kingdom of the Chazars had ceased to exist. Meanwhile, at the end of the eleventh century, the crusades finally introduced among the Jews in Western Christendom that era of darkness which was to envelop them for over seven centuries, and which was only to be lit up now and again by the indomitable vigour of the Jewish intellect and by the heroic resistance of Jewish faith. § 2. Sufferings and Trials. — It was particularly the crusades which changed the condition of the Jews for the worse in many directions. The wholesale mas- sacre of the Jews, which accompanied the crusades, broke their economic prosperity. The new relations which were now opened up between East and West deprived the Jews of the most reputable and useful part of their business, and drew them entirely into money-lending and petty trading. The outrages against the Jews hung since then like a pall over them, and darkened their friendly inter- course with the outside world ; the base and baseless ac- cusations which were levelled against the Jews to con- done the violence perpetrated, remained fixed in the ig- norant minds of the populace, and proved afterwards in- exhaustible causes for murder, plunder and all manner of persecution. Malice, stupidity, honest bigotry and zealous piety combined to make the life of the Jew in- tolerable. It became a current idea that Jews used the THE DARK AGES 83 blood of Christians, especially of defenceless Christian children, for ritual purposes during the feast of Passover (a charge similar to that levelled against the primitive Christians by their pagan enemies) ; on the occasion of an epidemic, there was a ready belief that the Jews had poisoned the wells; there was a shuddering tradition that the unbelieving Jews insulted and pierced the host as a revenge on Christ. These and other extravagances of a credulous people sent them into frantic outbursts against the Jews, which ended in tragedies the mere recital of which stirs the depths of our emotion. The persecution of the Jews in the Middle Ages presents the saddest tale of human cruelt)' and suffering, but it would not serve any useful purpose to set out here in detail the long, dreary record of sickening brutalities, the recurring massacres and expulsions, the numerous and elaborate regulations which were intended to degrade and dishonour the Jews, the fanatical determination to brand them as outcasts con- demned by God and man. It is not only that faith was superstitious, that manners were harsh and men cruel in those dark medieval days. It was just this state of things which aggravated the already precarious situation of the Jews. If heretics were hunted down mercilessly, many could escape un- noticed the general proscription ; if the Christian serf was treated with less kindness than the beast, he could at least appeal to the self-interest and pity of his superiors. What could the Jew expect, the Jew shut off by religious and racial, by natural and artificial barriers, from the general population? Driven to live in special quarters, which served perhaps as much for his protection as for his abase- ment, surrounded by oppressive and restrictive proscrip- tions, which hampered all his movements, the Lateran Church Council in 1215 promulgated its solemn decision that the Jews should wear a distinctive badge on their dress, and Christian authorities set seriously to work to determine the size and shape of the rag which was to 84 HISTORY OF THE JEWS be the compulsory mark of Cain on the body of every Jew. Thus degraded, cast out of the pale of humanity by the highest authority on earth, reduced to the most hateful and the meanest callings, the Jews became the butt of the rabble, high and low. Whether it was the spirit of fierce animosity or of coarse ribaldry, such as was known only to the Middle Ages, the life of a Jew was a constant, hopeless martyrdom. The economic state of the Jews was in every way con- ducive to the moral degradation to which they were sub- jected. The exclusion from the soil and every honour- able profession or handicraft drove the Jews to money- lending — indeed, a most useful, and even indispensable, function in commercial intercourse, yet one which under abnormal conditions lends itself to extortion, and exer- cises a pernicious effect on both parties to the transaction. The matter became infinitely worse when the Jew was only used by emperor and king, baron and bishop, to draw the substance out of the people, so that it might be more conveniently appropriated by their common lord, for the Jew was only suffered to exist because he was one of the most important sources of revenue to the ruler to whose mercy and caprice he owed his precarious protection. The Jews thereby became the property of their "pro- tectors," who sold, pawned or bequeathed them at their pleasure. In a moment of generosity, the emperor would reward some prince or town with the privilege of har- bouring Jews or would mark his gracious pleasure to- wards his faithful lieges by cancelling their indebtedness to the Jews. It was the appeal for protection, especially during the atrocities of the crusades, which largely brought about this servitude of the Jews. The prince who had protected the Jews from violence, and allowed them further to stay on his land, profited by his clemency, and converted "his" grateful Jews into bondsmen. At- tacks on the Jews were thus advantageous from all points, except the Jewish. The German emperors themselves THE DARK AGES 85 utilized the fiction that, as successors of the emperors of Rome, they were the lords of tiieir Jewish captives, and that the Jews were, therefore, the serfs of the imperial chamber. No wonder that, when the Jews found at times their condition so unbearable that they attempted to emigrate, they w ere stopped on the way. The short- est metliod of securing all the accumulated wealth of the Jews was to expel them and confiscate their possessions; sometimes, as in the case of Philip Augustus of France, the expulsion of the Jews was soon followed by their readmission. Ail this had evil consequences on the character of the Jews who had to submit to this life of wretched misery. Massacre and pillage were not every-day affairs, but in a way worse than these was the degradation which the Jews suffered from the cradle to the grave. The Jew could no longer strike a blow for independence, or even man- hood. He had no means to defend himself against over- whelming odds, and he, therefore, sought refuge and se- curity in contempt and obscurity, in calculated cringing and abject submission. It had been made impossible for him to inspire respect, and he gave up the attempt. Only tolerated on account of his wealth, which meant, there- fore, life and happiness to him, he had to amass it as well as he could. Surrounded by envious and greedy eyes, he dared not make generous use of his belongings. (As late as the )'ear 1601 the whole estate of Mordecai Meisel, of Prague, the most philanthropic as well as the richest Jew of hi« time, was, without rhyme or reason, confis- cated by order of the emperor Rudolph II, and the heirs were tortured to reveal any hidden treasure.) The Jew- ish house of study and prayer, regarded by the outsider as the synagogue of Satan, was situated in some inacces- sible spot of the Jewish quarter, away from the ribald gaze of the populace, and out of reach of the hand of fanaticism. Being confined to intimate intercourse amongst themselves, their garb distinguished by a hideous 86 HISTORY OF THE JEWS badge, they assumed an air of neglect, and their very speech turned into a mere jargon. § 3. The Forces of Resistance. — The inevitable consequences of this systematic degradation of the Jews was, however, very largely mitigated by the very remark- able Jewish scheme of life. So far from feeling degraded, the medieval Jews certainly considered themselves superior to their surroundings. They were in conscious posses- sion of a faith which excluded all miracle-mongering, relic and image worship and most other forms of active superstition ; they represented a moral standard which eschewed the bloodshed and inhuman cruelties that tarred their neighbours ; they upheld a pure and affectionate fam- ily life which W'on over the unwilling admiration of their enemies; they formed a voluntary brotherhood which knew of no serf or slave; they represented a culture of acknowledged grandeur which reached back a thousand years before their adversaries w^ere heard of; in an age when many of the highest dignitaries, and even princes, could hardly write their names, the Jews employed a system of universal education; at a time w^hen faith was raised into the highest principle, they produced their keen- est thinkers. Added to all these considerations, religious emotion of the purest and most exalted type quickened the self-consciousness of the Jews, steeled their patient en- durance and stirred them into heroic resolves, such as, in their intensity and duration, stand unparalleled in the experience of mankind. Thus, to the medal of the dull, drab wretchedness that surrounded Jewish life, there was an obverse, which was hardly observed by the outside world. If, in spite of all degradation, the Jews maintained an intellectual superior- ity' over their more favoured neighbours; if, after all their vicissitudes, they showed themselves on their emancipa- tion ready and anxious to enjoy the rights so long with- held from them, and if they w-ere able so soon to divest themselves of the servitude of immemorial ages, we must THE DARK AGES 87 ascribe this miracle to the inner life of the Jews, to the religious and social institutions of Judaism. The strength of resistance and cohesion was furnished by the high idealism, which, in spite of all outward sordidness, necessarily pervaded the thoughts of the Jew who suffered for his faith ; by the wondrously mapped-out life of healthy physical habits, intellectual exercise and family affection. The Jew was a sober, industrious and sexually moral man in his daily affairs. In times of epidemic it was remarked, and it was a dangerous accusation, that Jews suffered least. The regulations of personal cleanli- ness enjoined by the Jewish religion, the extreme care devoted to the selection and preparation of food, were more than enough to overcome the disadvantages pre- sented by the naturally cramped and pestilent conditions prevailing in the Jews' quarters. What if cleanliness, by being invested with the sanctity of religious ordinances, had thereby become to the Jew a part of godliness? In the Middle Ages, when cleanliness was a rare virtue even among the upper classes, the Jewish laws of purifica- tion must have exerted an enormous influence on well- being. The bath may indeed have been taken and the person adorned in honour of the divinely instituted Sab- bath; the hands washed preparatory to the meal as a religious injunction; the flesh-meat scrupulously investi- gated by the force of ritual ordinances; spring-cleaning of a most conscientious kind disguised under the obliga- tory preparations for the feast of unleavened bread (Pass- over), yet the blessings of health, and of the light and air that the ghetto (Jews' quarter) would admit, were all the same vouchsafed to the Jew, when all other cir- cumstances combined to reduce the standard of life to the lowest level. Of even greater value and consequence than the care bestowed on the body was the cultivation of the mind. In the darkest ignorance of the Dark Ages, study was regarded by the Jews as a religious duty second to none. 88 HISTORY OF THE JEWS If this study was at the worst periods restricted to Jewish sacred lore, it maintained and hallowed intellectual pur- suits from which not even the meanest Jew was con- sidered exempt. To the Jew of the Middle Ages, the highest ambition and ideal was — not to be rich, but to be counted among the learned in the community. Ignor- ance was a disgrace, for it was only the scholar who com- manded true respect. So much was study part of the ordinary day's work that the function of a Rabbi was an unpaid honour, and the Jews' meeting house, the syna- gogue, was termed the school (the shool [from the Ger- man Schule], as English Jews still call it). This attitude reached back to the early Talmudic age (as in Eastern parts it still continues largely to the present day), when every Jew was also exhorted to earn his living in such a way as not to turn his obligatory knowledge of the Torah into "a spade to dig with." When the medieval Jews were thrown back upon themselves, this devotion to scholarship was intensified, and made the Jews a nation of literati. The sharpening of the mind by the dialectics and arguments in which the Talmud, the chief object of Jewish study, abounds, produced a zest for knowledge, that quick capacity which the Jews were able to show when, after many centuries of stunted growth, they were afforded some fair measure of opportunit}'. Last, but not least, the medieval Jews were distin- guished by a wide and generous benevolence by which no son of the Covenant was considered an outcast. There was no circumstance in life which was not provided for by an all-embracing charity. Great care was taken to render this charity (euphemistically called zedakah, right- eousness) free from the taint of humiliation, and even the Jewish beggar, especially if he presumed on some learning, assumed a demanour which made it clear to the donor that his was the privilege to give what may justly be demanded of him. Everywhere the fugitive Jew found a welcome at the table of a somewhat more favour- THE DARK AGES 89 ably situated co-religionist, a welcome not as a poor stranger, but as a guest (orach) ; tlie Jew sold as a slave could rely on being ransomed by his brethren-in-faith. Like every good deed, personal service to the community was considered a divine commandment (mitzvah), where- by benevolence assumed tliat touch of tender solicitude which could only be lent by the experience of the uncer- tain and fitful fortunes of a medieval Jew. The social conditions which shut the Jews out from familiar intercourse with their neighbours made the Jews only at home amongst themselves, and their common interests formed a bond of union which their adversaries neither rightly understood nor justly forgave. Debarred from public activity, the Jew concentrated his attention on his own circle. The family became an object of in- tense devotion, and home life the centre of all-absorbing thought. The Sabbath and the holydays, in which riot- ous living was unknown, did as much for the fostering of the ties of family and kinship as of religion. Loyalty to the community was invested with a sanctity which made apostasy an unexpiable sacrilege. The false and slanderous accusations against their former co-religionists, to which many Jewish converts to the dominant faith lent themselves, made them particularly odious to those who, in spite of all, had remained true to the House of Israel. § 4. The Crusades. — The crusades called forth the first systematic onslaught on the Jews in Central Europe. Not that Jewish blood had not already been shed there without anger or provocation. The first persecution of the Jews in Germany had occurred at the beginning of the eleventh century, when, probably owing to the con- version to Judaism of a priest, Wecelinus, the emperor Henry H expelled the Jews from Mayence and other places, and many Jews, including a son of Rabbenu Ger- shom, were forced to turn Christian. Large sums of money stayed the persecution, and the new converts were 90 HISTORY OF THE JEWS even allowed to return to Judaism. This outbreak against the Jews was, however, as nothing compared to the terrible visitation that overtook them in the upheaval caused by the crusades. While the advance-guard of the crusaders had passed, leaving the Jews more or less un- disturbed, there gathered in Northern France a vast undisciplined host of about 200,000 crusading marauders who spread terror wherever they made their dreaded appearance. Preceded by a goose and a goat, which they expected to lead them to Jerusalem, their aimless fanati- cism was fired by the suggestion that here at hand were infidels like the far-away Saracens, to wit, Jews who had killed Christ, and that it would be an eminently Christian act to convert or exterminate them. Rapacity spurred the wild zeal, and the crusaders threw them- selves on the Jewish communities on their route ; all over the districts bordering on the Rhine and the Danube, death was the fate of the unconverted Jews who fell into the hands of the crusaders, and utter ruin of those who escaped. Twelve thousand Jews in the Rhenish cities are reckoned to have thus given their lives for their faith. In Worms 800 Jewish bodies were buried after the crusaders had done their work; over 1,300 were done to death at Mayence. Very few accepted Christianity even for appearance' sake, while a large number, espe- cially women and girls, took their own lives and those near and dear to them. The crusaders continued their bloody work all along their way as far as Hungary, but the miserable fate that overtook them there was regarded by Christian and Jew alike as a just visitation of God. The spirit in which even the best of the crusaders carried out their holy task may be judged by the fact that when they at last entered Jerusalem, under Godfrey de Bouil- lon, they drove all the Jews there into a synagogue and burnt them alive (1099). It must, however, be added that the calamities which had overtaken the Jews were largely due to the rabble, and, with few exceptions, were THE DARK AGES 91 not countenanced by the bishops, some of whom even pro- tected them with energy and kindness. The German emperor, Henry IV, who had been away in Italy, was full of indignation at the dark deeds that had been per- petrated in his absence, and he even allowed the Jews who had been forcibly converted to Christianity to return to their ancestral faith. In the second crusade (1145), the bull issued by Pope Eugenius III, according to which all those in debt to the Jews were absolved from paying interest on joining the crusade, was a bad incentive given by the head of the Church to those who had a score to pay of? against the Jews. It is small wonder, then, that the idea of taking away the possessions of the Jews found favour even with the authorities, and was countenanced by Louis VII of France. In Germany, the Jews along the Rhine were threatened with the fate that had befallen them during tiie first crusade, and it required the energetic intervention and all the authority of the saintly Bernard of Clairvaux to avert the entire annihilation of the Jew- ish population. The emperor Conrad III also took the part of the Jews, both from sheer humanity and to avoid the devastations which resulted from the anti-Jewish out- breaks. The Jews obtained the privilege to settle in a number of towns where they were able to defend them- sehes. But even the best protection they were able to secure for love or money did not save them entirely from massacre and pillage or enforced baptism. A number of Jews had taken refuge in the palace of the archbishop of Mayence, who was also the chancellor and prime minister of the emperor, but they were murdered by the mob in his very presence. We find that even Rab- benu Tam, the most renowned Jew in Europe, was set upon by the rabble, and, having been dragged into a field and nearly done to death, only escaped martv'rdom by the timely intervention of a friendly knight, who saved him on the promise of receiving a horse as reward. This 92 HISTORY OF THE JEWS incident is typical of what a Jew could expect in those dark days. With the third crusade, which was promoted by Pope Innocent III, who had declared the Jews as doomed to perpetual servitude for having killed Christ, their degra- dation by official authority of the Church reached the culminating point (1215). § 5. In Medieval England. — The very precarious position which the Jews held everywhere is exemplified by the history of the Jews in England. Already in Saxon times there were, no doubt, Jewish merchants and slave-dealers in England, but they came over permanently in large numbers with William the Conqueror (1070), and settled in London (in Old Jewry, off Cheapside), Oxford (where Moses Hall and Jacob Hall gave evi- dence of their residence) and other parts of the country. These Jews of French origin and speech enjoyed a large measure of freedom and prosperity. Their peace was, however, disturbed in the reign of Stephen by an accusa- tion that in Norwich the Jews had killed a Christian boy for their Passover (1144), and this boy was turned into a saint — St. William of Norwich — while the Jewish objects of this infamous charge paid for his canonization with their lives, and their co-religionists were made to suffer heavily in their goods. This blood accusation was the first raised against the Jews anywhere, and was shortly followed in England by two similar charges. The case of one of these, St. Hugh of Lincoln, was com- memorated by Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales ("The Prioresses Tale"), and gives some indication of the sav- age hatred with which the "cursed" Jews came to be regarded in medieval England. Nevertheless the Jews continued to prosper under Henry II, and rose to great wealth and prominence in the country. A most serious set-back occurred, however, on the accession of king Richard the Lion-hearted in 11 89. A deputation of leading Jews appeared at his coronation at Westminster, THE DARK AGES 93 but, on being refused admission there, they were attacked by the mob. Meanwhile the report was spread in Lon- don that the king had ordered the Jews to be killed, and the populace turned to the Jewish quarter, and began their work of murder and plunder. The Jews defended themselves in their stores and houses, but during the night the houses were set on fire, and the Jews who attempted to escape were put to death. King Richard was powerless to stop the outbreak, and after his de- parture for the crusade similar attacks on the Jews oc- curred at Lynn, Stamford, Bury St. Edmunds, Norwich and elsewhere. The tragedies that were enacted in those places assumed a ferocious grandeur in York, where the Jews had taken refuge in one of the towers of the King's Castle. Fearing treachery by the governor, however, they afterwards shut themselves up and refused to admit him. The Jews were thereupon besieged by the authori- ties as well as by the mob lusting for their wealth and blood. A monk celebrated mass every morning before the citadel, and, robed in his white surplice, called on the people to destroy the enemies of Christ. When in his imprudent zeal this fiery ecclesiastic was crushed to death by a stone hurled at him, the fury of the besiegers knew no bounds, and the Jews, to the number of about 500, seeing that the end had come, decided to die by their own hands. Josce, their head, slew first his wife and children, and the great self-immolation was concluded by the death of Josce himself at the hand of Rabbi Yom Tob, of Joigny, who, having led his brethren in their heroic resolution, finally killed himself. The gates were opened by a few Jews, who had hoped for mercy, but, in spite of their supplications for baptism, they were slain, and the victors, disappointed at not finding the bonds held by the Jews in the Castle, repaired to their keeping place in the Cathedral and there burned them. It was for this crime against the King's Exchequer, and not for the outrage on the Jews, that some attempt 94 HISTORY OF THE JEWS was subsequently made to bring the culprits to jus- tice. The belated, scanty and ineffective protection afforded to the Jews put them more than ever in the grasp of needy and greedy kings. Elaborate precautions were now taken to record and check the usurious transactions of the Jews on which the king levied heavy imposts for his own personal gain. For this reason, king John fa- voured them, but presumably finding the regular revenue too small for his wants, he imprisoned all the Jews, and extorted by the most violent means the wealth pos- sessed by them. The vast sums thus extracted from the coffers of the Jews were too tempting for the same profit- able measures not to be repeated by both barons and kings. It even came to this, that there was convened a so-called Jewish Parliament to which were summoned the richest representatives of the Jewish communities; they were informed that his most gracious Majesty re- quired 20,000 marks, which they were to collect as well and as fast as they could. The enormous exactions drained even the wealth of the rich Jews, and the com- petition of the privileged Caorsini, the Papal tax- gatherers and usurers, reduced the Jews to sore straits. Then an Act of Parliament (Statute of Judaism, 1275) undertook to reform the Jews; it forbade money-lending and directed the Jews to engage in other occupations, which for practical purposes were then closed to them. Many Jews took to debasing and clipping the coin of the realm, but on one day (1278) all the Jews were arrested, and 293 of them were executed in London and a large number also in the provinces. The coin and their goods went to the king, and the people took their share in plun- dering the Jews on their own account. The measure of tribulation of the Jews in England was now full to over- flowing. What was wanting in rapacity or in honest objec- tion to the usurious practices of the Jews was supplied by fanaticism. Even one of the most enlightened ecclesU THE DARK AGES 95 astics (Robert Grostcte), who had no desire to rob them of their lives, used this singular argument in favour of the Jews: "As murderers of the Lord, as still blasphem- ing Christ and mocking His Passion, they were to be in captivity to the princes of the earth. As they have the brand of Cain, and are condemned to wander over the face of the earth, so were they to have the privilege of Cain that no one was to kill them." What must have been the words and thoughts of those wlio were clamouring for the lives and souls of the Jews? Those people certainly had their way, for a decree was issued banishing absolutely and irrevocably all the Jews in the realm and confiscating their belongings. Any Jew found in the country after the time-limit of the expulsion was to be executed by hanging. By October 1290 about 16,000 Jews, preferring the bitterness of exile to the shame of apostasy, had quitted the inhospitable soil of England to face new dangers in strange lands. § 6. In Central Europe. — While England was spared all further persecution of the Jews for the simple reason that no professing Jew openly entered the island kingdom until the middle of the seventeenth century, when Christians had become alive to higher conceptions of holiness and humanity than those prevailing in the Middle Ages, the whole of Europe was during that inter- val a witches' kettle of rapine, murder and expulsion. In France, Philip Augustus had all the Jews in his kingdom arrested, their immovable property confiscated, and about 100,000 were driven into exile (1182). Yet such was the temper and greed of this monarch, and, more impor- tant still, such was the unhappy and insecure position of the Jews, that shortly afterwards negotiations were entered into between the king and the Jews for their re- admission into France and the continuance of their former traffic (1198). Tlie Jews were again to amass wealth for the benefit of the king, to be expelled when the king suffered a twinge of his Christian conscience or 96 HISTORY OF THE JEWS an extraordinary desire for money. Louis IX treated the Jews like the pious robber-knight he was, and their expulsion by Charles VI in 1394 closed for a long time the history of the Jews in France. Attempts subse- quently made by Jews, especially from Spain and Portu- gal, to enter the country, led to an order of Louis XIII (161 5) forbidding Christians under pain of death and confiscation to shelter Jews or even to converse with them. In the wide tracts of land under Germanic influence, the Jews lived on numerous volcanoes, represented by the caprice or helplessness of the numerous great and small princes. The Jews had to pay for all the troubles that befell the German people. The Jews were accused of having been in treasonable correspondence with the Mon- golian invaders; the Black Death (1348-51) gave rise to the charge that the Jews had poisoned the wells. On such occasions, the Jewish communities of whole regions were swept away by fire and sword, and the fugitives subjected to the most revolting atrocities. The Jews were still suffered only because they represented a certain value which could be used in raising revenue. Of course, in the religious disturbances the defenceless Jews were placed between hammer and anvil. Thus they sank into a despised class, and, until well into the eighteenth cen- tury, they remained out of touch with the outer world, and without that dignity and influence which learning and wealth might have bestowed on them. Meanwhile the harassed Jews in the German countries had found a refuge in the neighbouring kingdom of Poland, where they escaped the political convulsions and religious fanaticism that tore Central Europe into in- numerable bleeding fragments. Jews from Southern Russia had, no doubt, settled in Poland even before the introduction of Christianity there, but it was the German Jews who, driven in all directions by the frantic violence of the crusaders and during the horrors of the Black THE DARK AGES 97 Death, came to Poland in large numbers, and even im- posed their German language (which, with Slavic and Hebrew admixtures, developed into Yiddish) on the Jews of Eastern Europe. In Poland the Jews not only enjoyed peace, but many privileges of a trading class. In an agricultural population composed only of nobles and serfs, the presence of the Jews was of essential advantage to the country — a fact which was long recognized among the rulers of Poland. In a charter granted to the Jews by Boleslav Pobozny, king of Great Poland (1264), they were accorded important privileges which served as the basis of later legislation. In spite of the efforts of the Church to place the Jews under a ban of social degradation, the Polish Jews continued to prosper, and Casimir III, the Great (1309-70), who was much at- tached to his beautiful Jewish mistress Estherka, issued another charter incorporating the Jews among the inte- gral elements of the Polish population. Poland became an asylum for the hunted Jews, the only oasis in the great barren desert of intolerance, and the Polish Jews, therefore, rapidly grew in numbers and became of great importance in the religious and economic development of Jewish life. § 7. Spain and the Inquisition. — A country in the other end of Europe, where the Jews had risen to un- paralleled power and achievement, was feverishly en- deavouring to get rid of them. Christian Spain bore from the very beginning of its history an unenviable dis- tinction in religious bigotry, and this expressed itself most emphatically in the case of the Jews. The influ- ence of the Jews was evidently of such important conse- quence in the Iberian Peninsula that in the Christian reconquests of the country the Jews did not by any means fare so badly as might have been expected. They rose to high rank in the various states, and the later his- tory of the Spanish Jews presents a record of brilliant contributions to civilization as well as of sublime hero- 98 HISTORY OF THE JEWS ism in the selfless attachment to their faith. The Sephardim, as the Jews of Spain and Portugal are called/ stand in a category by themselves in the relentless persecution that was waged against the Jews in the Mid- dle Ages. Unlike their co-religionists in other parts, the Spanish and Portuguese Jews were not strangers in a strange land, degraded or protected by their ruler for his own benefit, but Spaniards in speech and thought, with all the refinement and graces of a high civilization, combining the chivalry and dignity of Spanish gentlemen with Jewish humanity and enlightenment. Among them were men well versed in affairs of state, and, as diploma- tists and financiers, their services were as much requisi- tioned by the Christian princes as they had been by their Mohammedan predecessors. Instead of Arabic, the Jew- ish Spaniards now employed Castilian as their mother- tongue, which became so engrained in their being that even to-day this language is still spoken and written (in Hebrew characters) by the descendants of those Sephardi Jews who, four centuries ago, left their native country for the hospitable soil of Mohammedan Turkey. Jewish men of talent and genius continued the work of their forbears, and, as the chief translators and mediators be- tween the ancient classical and IVIoorish cultures and the thought of the nascent European civilization, these medieval Jews rendered a service of unique value to the development of the human mind. The natural sciences were enriched by important contributions, and the era of discoveries, which were to prove the glory and downfall ^The Spanish and Portuguese Jews and their descendants all over Southern Europe and the East, belong by their origin, dis- tinctive religious ritual and pronunciation of Hebrew, to the smaller section of the Jewish people known as Sephardim (from Sepharad [Obadiah, 20], the traditional Hebrew name of Spain), while the Jews of Northern and Eastern Europe and their American emigrants are comprised under the name of Ashkenazim (from Ashkenaz [Gen. x. 3], the Hebrew appella- tion of Germany). THE DARK AGES 99 of the Spanish and Portuj^uese nations, was advanced by them both scientifically and financially. They stood fore- most as physicians, and their fame led even persecuting Popes to employ them. Rodrigo Lopez, the physician who was executed on a charge of attempted poisoning of queen Elizabeth, and vvjio in Jew-less England is sup- posed to have suggested to Shakespeare the character of Shylock, was one of those ubiquitous Jewish doctors, who, in Christian or Jewish garb, were prized at the courts of the most Christian princes. The deeper the Jews of Spain became imbedded in the nation, the more painful was the wrench which tore them out with their very roots. The Church which had enforced its canons and views all over Europe, at last turned to the anomalous position occupied by the Jews in Spain. Lashed into violent zeal by the rise of obstinate Christian heresies in Southern France, the Catholic authorities were not inclined to tolerate the hateful Jewish influence in neigbouring Spain. Fiercely in earnest, the friars and other agents of the Church went about the country inveighing against the Jews, their ill-gotten wealth, their avarice, their deadly unbelief, and these charges found the more ready credence among the ignorant and exploited populace as the prosperous condition of the Jews had long been an eyesore to them. Towards the end of the fourteenth century, the Jews were attacked in one city after another, and suffered all the horrors which the zest for plunder could add to the lust for infidel blood. The immunity and profit with which these wholesale massacres were perpetrated under the encouragement and protection of the all-powerful clerg^', led to numerous repetitions of savage outbursts by the brutalized Spanish mob. Over all these excesses was spread the comforting veil of Christian zeal, and, in the midst of the most frightful and merciless outrages, the Church would always be open to receive the submission of the obdurate Jewish souls. lOO HISTORY OF THE JEWS Before and after these scenes of carnage, the eternal salva- tion of Jewish souls was the dominating issue. Among the most conspicuous of the agents of the militant Church was the Dominican Vicente Ferrer, whose efforts alone resulted in the conversion of 35,000 Jews. Not contented with the successes of the Church, the converted Jew Joshua Lorqui, or Geronimo de Santa Fe, physician to Pope Benedict XIII, induced his Holiness to order a public disputation on the respective merits of Judaism and Christianity, or rather on the falsehood of Judaism, so that the Jews might be effectively convinced by Joshua Lorqui out of the mouths of their leading Rabbis. This disputation, which took place at Tortosa, and continued from February 141 3 to November 141 4, was opened by the Pope personally in the presence of a brilliant assembly. It is needless to add that the dispu- tation did not have the hoped-for result on the Jews and only tended to aggravate their lot. Such, with variations, were the misfortunes of the Jews in Spain, but they were to rise into even more ferocious tragedy under the pious Ferdinand and Isabella, at the end of the fifteenth century. The successful efforts of the Church had filled the country with many con- verted Jews, who, by their intelligence and wealth, had penetrated all ranks of society, and had even risen high in the Catholic hierarchy. The ecclesiastical authorities suspected, however, and with good reason, that, while outwardly Christian, most of these converts retained their former Jewish ideas, and even harboured a secret attach- ment to their ancestral faith and practices. The most drastic steps were taken to eradicate this danger from the very heart of Catholic Spain. The Inquisition, that monstrous ecclesiastical institution which stands con- demned at the bar of history as the vilest organization ever devised for the enslavement of the human mind, was in the year 1480 let loose on those new Christians, and the dungeon, the rack and the stake dealt unsparingly THE DARK AGES loi with those on whom even the breath of Judalzing suspi- cion had fallen. The imprisonment and torture of men and women were carried out with relentless energy, and thousands paid the last penalty at the stake. In the country where gory bullfights are still popular amuse- ments, the burning of lapsed Jews and heretics became a favourite entertainment and a great occasion where the court and fashion met in becoming festive mood to cele- brate an auto-da-fe (act of faith). In 1483 the matter was taken in hand by the Grand Inquisitor, Thomas Torquemada, of unenviable memory, who spared none, since even the priesthood and the very Inquisition were honeycombed with faithless Neo-Christians. Figures can give no conception of the demoniacal terror exercised by the Inquisition, of the excruciating cruelties enacted by the torture of the suspected, of the infamous means utilized to discover possible culprits. Yet all was in vain. The numerous Jews whom frenzied fear had driven to seek refuge in the Church were in their calmer moments overtaken by remorse. Contemptuously known as Maranos (Damned) by Jews and Christians, they could not hide their identity from their more steadfast brethren who shamed their inconstancy, nor from their Christian neighbours whom by the waters of baptism they had cheated of the excuse of robbery and hatred. Ex- cuses to attack and rob were, however, often invented, and the Maranos, like their former co-religionists, were overtaken by the fury of a pious savagery. Baffled by the persistent perverseness of its Jewish converts, the Church resolved on the extreme measure of expelling all the unbaptized Jews from the Spanish do- mains. A supreme attempt was made by the Jews to ward off the deadly blow, and their chief spokesman, the polished courtier and gifted scholar Don Isaac Abravanel, who had held the ofl'ice of royal treasurer, with honour to himself and benefit to the Crown, offered to the king as a last resort a ransom of 30,000 ducats to avert the 102 HISTORY OF THE JEWS dreaded edict. At this critical juncture, Torquemada is said to have interposed, crucifix in hand, with the dra- matic appeal to the king and queen, "Behold Him, whom Judas sold for thirty pieces of silver. Sell ye Him now for a higher price and render an account of your bargain before God." The doom of the Spanish Jews was sealed, and by the last appointed day, the 9th Ab (the ever-memorable anniversary of the twofold de- struction of Jerusalem) in the year 1492, about 200,000 Spanish Jews had left their homes, the graves of their forefathers, for ever. Within the whole range of his- tory, of all the sublime manifestations of the grandeur of the human soul in its self-sacrificing attachment to pure idealism and truth, there is no parallel to the heroic, unflinching resolve of these Jewish exiles from Spain. A word, and they might have remained in full possession of peace, honour and wealth, but astonishingly few spoke that word. It had been their country for centuries, the country to which their forefathers had added dazzling splendour and to which they themselves were attached with all the fibres of their being. The exiles saw nothing before them but the dark hostility that would greet them everywhere, the utter degradation to which their breth- ren had been reduced in other lands. Neverthless, all this was braved for the sake of the Lord God of Israel, for the sake also of the freedom of the human conscience to which civilized men of all opinions now pay sincere homage. The exiles were pursued by all the hardships and dangers which hunted strangers suspected of hidden treasures could expect in those days of heartless intoler- ance and widespread robbery on sea and land. It would be too harrowing to set out at length the manifold and intense tribulations of these devoted refugees. Many of those who had escaped to neighbouring Portugal, where they were admitted at so much per head, were soon afterwards exposed to still greater horrors than those THE DARK AGES 103 from which they had just fled. Whatever fiendish cruel- ties had yet been left undone in Spain were now carried out in Portugal with all manner of cowardice and per- fidy. By order of king Emanuel, suddenly organized raids were made on Jewish children, who were torn from their parents, to be brought up as Christians; traps were laid for those endeavouring to escape, if only with their bare lives, and they were coerced into baptism or sold as slaves. Yet these fiendish persecutors, with tragic irony, had ever the name of Clirist on their lips. Fortu- nate were those exiles who escaped from Portugal and turned to Southern France and Italy. To the latter country went the eminent family of Don Isaac Abravanel. More fortunate still were the numerous fugitives who found a warm welcome in far-away Mohammedan Tur- key, whose sultan, Bayazet II, expressed his surprise that Ferdinand and Isabella had impoverished their country and enriched his by such useful subjects. In spite of all, the Maranos still carried on their secret practice of Judaism, and, for centuries afterwards, num- bers of them continually left for other parts where they could openly profess the religion of their forefathers, and even today the race of Maranos in Portugal is not entirely extinct. Meanwliile, the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal pursued uninterruptedly its unholy work, and extended It with the same zeal to the regions of the New World that came under their sway. Well Into the eighteenth century, burning stakes with holocausts of Jewish victims lit up the ever-increasing decay and de- composition of the once flourishing and mighty Spanish and Portuguese nations. § 8. Reaction Within — The gathering clouds at the end of the eleventh century, the persecutions under Christian and Mohammedan rule, also affected the tone and temper of the inner life of the Jews. With Moses Malmonides Jewish thought and progress had reached their zenith. For a time, Jewish learning flourished in 104 HISTORY OF THE JEWS Provence, and, apart from the Kimchi family already mentioned as notable commentators of the Bible, special reference must be made to the remarkable family of Ibn Tibbon, translators, who rendered a large number of Arabic works, Jewish and non-Jewish, into Hebrew, the universal language of the Jews. Among these transla- tions was also Maimonides' Guide, which, originally written in Arabic, was now made available for the whole Dispersion. The bold philosophical utterances and spec- ulations of the Spanish sage were not, however, to pass unchallenged by the enlarged circle of his readers, and a violent polemic ensued between the supporters and oppon- ents of Maimonides. In the year 1233, a law was issued against those who studied the Guide or other similar philosophical works, to which dread sentence the sup- porters of Maimonides replied with a counter-excom- munication. Things came to such a pass, that the oppon- ents of Maimonides, headed by Solomon of Montpellier and Jonah Gerondi, appealed in their zeal to the tribunal of the Catholic Inquisition, which was then concerned with the heretical Albigenses. This court readily lent its powerful aid, and condemned Maimonides* writings to be burned. Such a fatal sequel aroused the indigna- tion of all Jews against the Rabbinical zealots who had dared to invoke the assistance of the hateful Inquisition in matters of Jewish faith. R. Jonah himself was so stricken with remorse that he vowed to undertake a pilgrimage to Palestine, in order to beg at the grave of Moses Maimonides for the forgiveness of the master. But the matter did not end here, for the Church now felt itself called upon also to sit in judgment on the morals of the literary productions of the Jews. A con- verted Jew, Nicholas Donin, submitted to Pope Gregory IX a number of charges of immorality and blasphemy against the Talmud, and, by order of Louis IX of France, a disputation took place in which Rabbi Jechiel, of Paris, was the leading Jewish spokesman against THE DARK AGES 105 Donin, but, whatever the argument, the Catholic court of inquiry ordered the Talmud to be burned. Under the threat of death, the Jews had to hand over their copies of the Talmud to the authorities, and twenty-four cartloads filled with those treasured books were publicly burned in Paris (1244), on the same spot where the writings of Maimonides had been burned some time before. Another public disputation between a converted Jew and a prominent Rabbi leads us to Moses Nachmanides ( 1 194-1270), one of the great figures of the thirteentH century. In spite of his clear mind, the troubles of the times left their impression on his voluminous writings, and he heralded the age of mysticism. Late in life he was called upon to enter into a public disputation on the truth of Judaism with Pablo Christiani, one of the most virulent of Jewish converts to Christianity, who made it the purpose of his life to persecute and slander his former co-religionists. The disputation was held in Barcelona in the year 1263, in the presence of king Jayme of Aragon and his court, and lasted four days. Contrary to general expectations, Nachmanides main- tained the Jewish cause with such fearlessness and dig- nity that the king presented him with a sum of money to signify his esteem of the Jewish champion. But when the Dominican judges spread the rumour that Nach- manides had been worsted in argument, he published the disputation for the benefit of those concerned. By this he incurred the displeasure of the king, and, forced by the Dominicans and the Pope, he exiled Nachmanides from the country. At the age of seventy, Nachmanides left all behind him, and proceeded to the Holy Land. He became the centre of a new Jewish life in the desolate land of Israel, where he passed his remaining years. Meir of Rothenburg (1215-1293), the most eminent German Rabbi of the time, w'ho also undertook a pil- grimage to Palestine, was not so fortunate in this respect io6 HISTORY OF THE JEWS as Nachmanides. Under Rudolph of Hapsburg, the German Jews were so sorely oppressed that many of their wealthy people in the Rhineland made up their minds to emigrate en ?nasse. Meir of Rothenburg headed them, but on the way he was recognized by a baptized Jew, who denounced him to the authorities. Meir was handed over to the emperor, and, to put a stop to an emigration which would have deprived him of con- siderable revenue, he had the far-famed Rabbi imprisoned in the tower of Ensisheim, Alsace (1286). If Rudolph expected that he would extort much money from the Jews as a ransom for their spiritual leader, he was dis- appointed, for, to prevent any repetition of such a strata- gem, Meir ordered his brethren not to obtain his release by any payment of money. He passed seven years in his confinement, and after his death (1293) his body re- mained there unburied for another fourteen years, until it was allowed to be removed for a large sum of money by a pious admirer of the deceased Rabbi. That the Jewish mind had now arrived at a decadent stage was evidenced by the withdrawal of Jewish scholars from the spirit of free inquiry, which had produced its ripest fruit in Moses Maimonides. A thinker of genius of a different type was Solomon ben Adret, of Barcelona (1235-13 10), a pupil of Moses Nachmanides, who be- came the leading authority in the Jewry of his day. Ben Adret concentrated his attention on the Talmud, and his view of the dangers of extraneous studies was marked by the anathema which he, together with others, pronounced against those who occupied themselves with natural or metaphysical sciences before their thirtieth year. That the Jewish intellect was nevetheless slow to succumb to obscurantism, was shown by the lives and writings of Judah Alcharizi, the author of Tachkemoni, one of the most remarkable productions of medieval belles lettres, and Jedaiah Bedersi (died about 1340). who wrote against Solomon ben Adret a defence of philosophy THE DARK AGES 107 and science, and achieved lasting fame by his Examina- tion of the World ("Rechinat Haolam"), which has been translated into various lanuagcs, including English. Still more renowned was Levi ben Gerson (Gersonides), or Maestro Leon de Bagnols (1288-1344). He was an astronomer of note, and his Hebrew description of an astronomical instrument invented by him was translated into Latin by order of Pope Clement VL His fame rests, however, on his philosophical work, The Wars of the Lord ("Milchamot Adonai"), which deals with the most thorny problems in a spirit of lofty independence and originality. Another philosopher of note was Chas- dai Crescas (1340-1410), whose Light of the Lord ("Or Adonai") represents an important contribution to the philosophy of Judaism, as does also the more popular Fundamentals ("Ikkarim") of Joseph Albo (died 1444)- All these, however, were the after-glow of the setting sun of Jewish thought, which now came to be dominated by men like Asher ben Jechiel (12501327; a pupil of Meir of Rothenbufg), and his sons, who settled in Toledo, and introduced among Spanish Jews that spirit of German exclusiveness which found its whole intellec- tual activity in the intensive study of the Talmud. In this they were followed by Isaac ben Sheshet and his successor Simon ben Zemach Duran, who flourished in Algiers at the end of the thirteenth, and the beginning of the fourteenth, century. The last is reputed to have been the first Rabbi who, owing to needy circumstances, was in receipt of a regular stipend. § 9. The Cabbalah. — The darker the world grew for the Jews the more they took refuge in the intricacies of the Talmud or lost themselves in the maze of mysti- cism. The Jews were staggering under the blows that fell on them in remorseless repetition. There were the great expulsions from France in 1306 and 1394, which re- duced the French Jews to beggary, and spread them with their misery far and wide; a hare-brained cru- io8 HISTORY OF THE JEWS sade by a wild rabble of the so-called Shepherds, which began in 1320, some time after a readmission of the Jews into France, involved the Jews there and in Spain in untold bloodshed and ruin; the Black Death and the frantic excesses of the Flagellants, which in their turn produced paroxysms that wiped out of existence hun- dreds of Jewish communities and pursued the escaped fugitives with a bestial ferocity which should have shamed even the Middle Ages. The massacres in Spain and the final great expulsions from the Iberian Peninsula were to fill the bitter cup to overflowing again and again. No wonder that the innate optimism of the Jews and the naturally joyous character of Judaism deepened into an unwonted gloom, and produced an un-Jewish asceticism which looked upon this world in very truth as a vale of tears — a state of things which could only have been worsened by the barbarization which later on engulfed the Jews of Germany and Poland. The mystic lore of the Jews, known under the name of Cabbalah (Tradition), could claim ancient lineage, since the Essenes, at the time of the Second Temple, indulged in esoteric speculations which were presumed to have been handed down from days of old and were only known to the initiated. The work of creation related in Genesis, and the Divine Throne described by the prophet Ezekiel, were the great themes that exercised the ingenuity of mystic minds, which lost themselves in fancies ranging over the vast unexplored regions of theos- ophy, cosmogony, angelolog>', etc. Eastern wisdom and Greek philosophy were called into requisition; many Talmudic masters, as well as Philo and Paul, were deeply infected by these ideas, which, under the form of Gnosticism, were to prove a very serious menace to the orthodox development of Christianity. To this was added a miscellaneous collection of theurgic and magic notions, incantations, etc., which represented, so to speak, the practical part of mysticism or Cabbalah. THE DARK AGES 109 This medley of Jewish religious philosophy and spir- itual quackery received its most important literary em- bodiment in the Zohar ("Splendour"), which, ascribed to the famous Rabbi Simon ben Jochai (of the second century c.e.), owes its birth to Moses de Leon, who flourished in Spain at the end of the thirteenth century. The Cabbalists multiplied, and the Zohar became the Bible of their mystic doctrines. In their speculations, in which God was conceived as the Infinite (En Soph) with ten Emanations (Sephiroth), there were riotous fancies on the essence of the Deity and the riddle of life, and they altogether represented an unsuc- cessful attempt to grasp the dim, floating shadows of the eternal. It proved, nevertheless, a welcome hal- lucination for troubled souls which the merely intellectual studies of the Talmud and of rationalistic philosophy were not able to appease. Especially in the East, Cab- balism found many adepts, among whom Isaac Luria, an ascetic saint living in Safed, Palestine, in the middle of the sixteenth century, was the most remarkable. It must be admitted that the Cabbalah raised Judaism, at times, into the highest regions of the most sublime spirituality and supplied that mystic element in which Judaism is markedly deficient, but unfortunately the Cabbalah came to be mixed up with religious charlatanry and degraded into a grossly sensuous attempt to lay hold of the un- fathomable for other than purely spiritual objects. The efforts to press the Cabbalah into the service of magic and necromancy debased it still further. The fantastic nature of the Cabbalah also attracted a number of Chris- tian thinkers (notably Pico de Mirandola and Reuchlin), some of whom thought that they could discern the dog- mas of Christianity in the theories of Jewish mysticism. § 10. Pseudo-Messiahs. — Among the first notable results of this devotion to occult speculation was a strange development of the Messianic idea. The darkness of Jewish life was illumined by the hope that the Messiah no HISTORY OF THE JEWS would appear in his promised glory, and the vision of faith soon found tangible proofs of the wish for redemp- tion from the ills of the world. More serious than the spurious enthusiasm was the consequent melancholy disappointment which followed it. One of the first of these cabbalistic pseudo-Messiahs who played upon the credulity of the people, or were perhaps carried away by their own hallucinations, was the Spaniard Abraham Abulafia in the thirteenth, and the German Asher Lemm- lein at the beginning of the sixteenth century, whose ap- pearances, however, only evoked local excitement. Much more interesting were the careers of David Reubeni and David Molcho, whose bold claims made a considerable stir in the world at large. David Reubeni entered on the scene as the brother and ambassador of a Jewish king of Chaibar, in Arabia, and endeavoured to interest Pope Clement VII and king Juan III of Portugal in his scheme, which was for them to support him with arms and ammunition in the conquest of the Holy Land from the hands of the Mohammedans. Reubeni must have made an extraordinary impression everywhere, not least on the Maranos in Portugal, who witnessed his princely reception in that country into which no professing Jew was allowed to enter. One of these Maranos, Diego Pires, returned formally to Judaism, assuming the name of Solomon Molcho. Molcho proclaimed the advent of the Messianic age in the year 1540, in which Reubeni was to play the leading part. After various bold ad- ventures, both of them appeared with their pretensions, or plans, before the emperor Charles V. This, however, proved their undoing. Solomon Molcho was burned at the stake as a lapsed Neo-Christian (though even at the last moment his life was vainly offered to him for his recantation of Judaism), while David Reubeni was taken to Portugal, where he was done away with by the Inquisition. Extravagantly strange as were the lives of these two THE DARK AGES ill adventurers, still more remarkable and of much greater influence was the Messianic enthusiast and impostor Sab- bethai Zebi, in the seventeenth century. Born at Smyrna, Turkey, in 1626, Sabbethai Zebi became ad- dicted to cabbalistic ideas and to those ascetic habits which were then held in high esteem. The advent of the year 1666, which many Christians as well as Jews considered to be the Messianic era when the Jews would be restored to their ancient land, quickened his imagina- tion and led him publicly to assume the role of the ex- pected Messiah (1665). The support which he found among his deluded countrymen spread all over the Jewish Dispersion, and gained everyAvhere numerous and en- thusiastic adherents. He was regarded as the Messiah, and prayers of a florid style were offered up for him in the synagogues. Distance and rumour lent unlimited charm and force to Sabbethai Zebi's extraordinary per- sonality, and the delirium took hold even of people of sober judgment and high culture, such as were to be found among the Spanish and Portuguese Jews in Am- sterdam and Hamburg. Among those who dared to oppose the dominant Sabbethaians was Jacob Sasportas, the first Haham (or Rabbi) of the newly established congregation of Spanish and Portuguese Jews in London (1665). Sabbethai Zebi, emboldened by his success, even went so far as to order the change of the Jewish fast days into days of rejoicing to mark the arrival of the Messianic times. The decisive moment came when he left Smyrna for Constantinople, where he was arrested by the Turkish authorities on landing. Even now his followers crowded around him, and were able to main- tain him in his imprisonment with much luxury. He was, however, denounced at Turkish head-quarters by Nehemiah Cohen, a Polish rival to the Messiahship, and Sabbethai Zebi was brought before the sultan, Moham- med IV, whose throne Sabbethai Zebi's devotees probably expected him to occupy as the king of kings. At the 112 HISTORY OF THE JEWS critical juncture the great drama was turned into low comedy, for, to save his life, the Messiah donned the Turkish turban as a sign of his conversion to Islam. Sabbethai Zebi u^as rev^^arded by being appointed the sul- tan's doorkeeper. In spite of his inglorious end, he had such a fascination over his adherents that a considerable number of them v^^ent over with him to Mohammedan- ism, many, no doubt, suspecting in the apostasy of their master some hidden meaning beyond their comprehension. Numerous disciples of Sabbethai Zebi evidently still up- held his evasive claim to the Messiahship, but his double character was, after all, to end fatally for him. He wag banished to Dulcigno, in Albania, away from all Jewish companionship, and there he died in 1676. The evil he wrought, however, lived after him. It was with diffi- culty that the disappointment and shame of the believers in Sabbethai Zebi were obliterated and that peace was restored to the faction-swept Jewish communities. In Turkey, the Sabbethaians who adopted Mohammedanism maintained themselves as a separate body, neither com- pletely Jewish nor Moslem, and excluded by both on ac- count of their double religious life. To this day, a number of Sabbethaians, called Donmeh (Apostates), still subsist, mostly in Salonica, as a Judeo-Moham- medan sect. The last of the notable race of Messianic adventurers, who are of great psychological as well as historical in- terest, was Jacob Frank (born in Podolia about 1726; died at Offenbach, Germany, 1791). He availed him- self of the still extant traces of the Sabbethaian mystifica- tion to create a Messianic movement in his own favour. The religious charlatanry and gross licentiousness of these new sectarians moved the Rabbis to justified oppo- sition, and the so-called Frankists were excommunicatecf and denounced to the authorities. The Frankists, find- ing themselves persecuted and forsaken, pretended to Catholic beliefs, and thereby gained the good-will of the THE DARK AGES 113 Church. This patronage, however, imposed on the Frankists the necessity of entering the Catholic Church as a body, and though at first they attempted to lead a double life as a separate sect, they gradually merged en- tirely in Christianity. Frank nevertheless kept up his impudent pretensions, which brought him great wealth from his adherents, to the end of his life. § II. Italy. — In three countries of unequal states of culture — Italy, Turkey and Poland — the Jews enjoyed a tolerable measure of tranquillity, and even a certain prosperity. In Italy, especially under the eyes of the Pope, the Jews fared not badly, comparatively speaking. As a rule, the Popes were more indulgent towards the obscure Hebrew communities (shall we say, more truly Christian towards them?) than the prelates and minor officers of the Church in other parts, nor were the rich Popes subjected to the same temptations as the impecuni- ous kings and nobles who used the Jews as financial milch cows. A number of Popes entrusted even their sacred persons to the care of Jewish physicians, and some of the pontififs gave a generous refuge in their realms to the Jewish victims of Christian persecutors. The prosperity and enterprise of the Italian towns not only bred a more enlightened people, but also a large and opulent class of merchants, and even the Christian money-lenders, under the names of Lombards and Caorsini, had little cause to envy the wealth of the handi- capped Jews. An incident which brought the Jews of Rome into general prominence was the conversion to Christianity of one of their number, Petrus Leonis, whose family rose to great distinction in the eleventh century, and in the third generation produced an anti-Pope, Heraclius II. The odium of his Jew^ish descent was the strongest objection against him, and even Bernard of Clairvaux, who had so nobly defended the Jews during the massacres of the second crusade, considered that the blood which had flowed in the veins of Christ and His 114 HISTORY OF THE JEWS apostles was an unexpiable offence in the temporal head of the Christian Church. Among the Jews who bene- fited by the enlightenment which reigned in Italy more than elsewhere in Christendom may briefly be mentioned Nathan ben Jechiel (died 1106), of Rome, the author of the Aruch, an important Talmudical lexicon, while Im- manuel, of Rome, a friend of Dante, wrote Mechabberot, on the lines of the Divina Commedia of the illustrious Florentine. Obadiah Sforno and the German Elias Levita were among the most important of the Hebrew teachers of Christian scholars, who, in the sixteenth cen- tury, turned to Hebrew as one of the sources of inspira- tion. Of the numerous Jewish men of letters who par- ticipated in the New Learning were Elias del Medigo and Judah Messer Leon, philosophers; the Frenchman Joseph Hacohen, a pathfinder in Jewish history, whose work The Vale of Tears ("Emek Habacha") is a valu- able record of Jewish sufferings during the Middle Ages; Azariah dei Rossi, who in his Enlightenment of the Eyes ("Meor Enaim") displays an original and refreshing acumen in Jewish literary criticism. Of the sons of Don Isaac Abravanel, who had headed the great exile from Spain, and whose diplomatic abilities found considerable scope in Naples and Venice, Leo Hebraeus achieved fame with his Dialoghi di Amore, while the youngest son, Samuel Abravanel, who occupied an influential position at the court in Naples, was a Maecenas and the centre of a large circle of Jewish scholars. The Catholic counter- Reformation which darkened the intellectual life of Italy, extinguished also the Jewish light that had shone in that country. § 12. Turkey. — The conquest of the crumbling Byzantine empire by the Turks proved of inestimable benefit to the Jews, who found in the Turk a tolerant master, able to appreciate the business capacities, if not the scholarly achievements, of the Jews. To the Jews under oppressive Christian dominion, especially to the THE DARK AGES 115 refugees from Spain, Turkey became a haven of refuge, and Palestine was resettled with several communities to which men of renown, most of whom had come there from abroad, gave again a position of some importance. The greatest of these Rabbis were Isaac Luria, tlie master of the Cabbalah already referred to, and Joseph Caro (1488-1575), whose Shulchan Aruch ("Prepared Table") has remained to this day the authoritative code of Jewish law and practice. A less enduring, if more dazzling, career was that of Don Joseph Nasi, duke of Naxos. Born in Portugal and brought up as a Marano, he left his native country after various adventurous pere- grinations, and settled in Constantinople together with his aunt, Donna Grazia Mendesia, who, by her vast wealth and its enlightened application in many good causes, as well as by her personal charm and culture, was the most engaging Jewish woman in the Middle Ages. Don Joseph married her daughter Reyna, and by his riches and address rose to high favour at the court of sultan Sulaiman. This influence was even increased under his successor Salim II. Joseph Nasi was invested with the dignity of duke of Naxos, and with the posses- sion of that and surrounding islands, as well as of a large tract of land in Palestine, whereon he rebuilt the town of Tiberias, and otherw-ise promoted Jewish coloniza- tion there. He acted as the recognized foreign adviser of the powerful sultan and treated with the ambassadors of the Powers represented in Constantinople. His au- thority can be gauged by the fact that he arrested a number of French ships in Alexandria for non-paj^ment of certain sums owing to his aunt by the French govern- ment, and this high-handed action was supported by the sultan against the protests of France. Don Joseph was also instrumental in inducing the sultan to engage in a war with Venice, and it w^as only the opposition of his rivals at the Turkish court that prevented his being raised to the dignity of king of Cyprus. Under Sulai- Ii6 HISTORY OF THE JEWS man's successor, Joseph lost the power he had exercised in affairs of state, but he continued to the end the active and generous interest he had always displayed in the for- tunes and endeavours of his brethren. A rival of Don Joseph was Solomon Ashkenazi, who likewise wielded great influence in political matters. He opposed Don Joseph in the war with Venice, and was selected by the sultan as the representative of Turkey in the peace negotiations. The senate of the Venetian Re- public (to which city we owe the word "ghetto" as the name of the Jewish quarter of a town) were very reluc- tant to treat with a Jewish ambassador, but he was eventually received with all the pomp and ceremony at- taching to the dignity and the importance of the occa- sion. At the same time he was instrumental in having revoked an edict of expulsion with which the Jews in Venice were then threatened. Solomon Ashkenazi also took part in the diplomatic negotiations which resulted in the election of Henry of Anjou as king of Poland, and, after Henry's return to France, he engaged in the Turkish support of Stephen Bathori to the vacant Polish throne. § 13. Poland. — Poland, including the grand duchy of Lithuania, was for a long time a country in which the Jews found a ready welcome, and, as practically forming the middle class, they came to be recognized as a necessary adjunct to the autochthonous population. The Polish Jews were invested with internal self-govern- ment, and, since the middle of the sixteenth century, for about 200 years, they possessed a central organization, the Council of the Four Lands (or parts of Poland), which, like a Diet, met half-yearly and transacted civil and religious affairs relating to the Jews of Poland. Yet the backward state of the country, in which only the nobles and priesthood enjoyed a certain amount of culture and well-being, had its depressing influence on the Polish Jews, who, in want of some contact with a native THE DARK AGES II7 civilization, eschewed all scientific pursuits and concen- trated their whole attention on the Talmud. This was not, however, with that wide philosophic outlook with which the Talmud was treated by the Spanish masters, or with the scientific interest which has been devoted to it as a great document of Judaism in the investigations of the nineteenth century, but largely as an end in itself. The Jewish idea of the high merit of study was exclu- sively applied to the Talmud, and all the fruitfulness of the Jewish mind was spent in creating a labyrinth of commentaries and an endless number of supercommen- taries, while ingenuity displayed itself in finding various ways out of the self-created maze. Whatever intellec- tual or even religious value this might have possessed was largely counter-balanced by the obscurantism which the one-sided devotion to the Talmud engendered. Hence the vast energy and keenness of mind evidenced by the great Polish Talmudists did not produce any origi- nal idea in Jewish thought or any quickening influence on Jewish life. On the contrary, the Polish Jews, in spreading over Western Europe, proved a retarding in- fluence on their co-religionists in other lands, especially as the considerable Jewish knowledge they undoubtedly possessed placed the ecclesiastical offices and the religious education of the young in their hands. This was par- ticularly the case in Germanic lands, which, for Jewish purposes, extend from Hungary to Holland. Thus Jacob Polak (the Pole), the most eminent Talmudist at the beginning of the sixteenth century, introduced the Polish casuistical method of the study of the Talmud, known as Pilpul, to Prague, one of the most ancient and important communities in Central Europe. A number of these Rabbis rose, however, above the prevailing objection to secular knowledge. Among such was Judah Low ben Bezalel, of Prague (died 1609), who had gathered around him a circle devoted to philoso- phy and science. Most prominent among them was Ii8 HISTORY OF THE JEWS David Gans, author of a work on Jewish and general history entitled The Branch of David ("Zemach David"), who was in touch with Kepler and Tycho Brahe, and translated for the latter certain astronomical tables from Hebrew into German. An adept of profane learning was also Yom Tob Lipman Heller (1579- 1654), the most cultured German Jew in the Middle Ages, whose Victory ("Nizachon") is one of the best Jewish polemical writings against Christianity. An apologist of still greater importance was in the sixteenth century the Karite Isaac of Troki, Lithuania, who achieved extraordinary fame by his Strengthening of the Faith ("Chizuk Emunah"), which attracted wide atten- tion also outside Jewish circles, and was hailed by Vol- taire as an effective attack on the Christian faith. Zebi Hirsh Ashkenazi, known as Haham Zebi (1658-17 18), was a great authority in his day, whom the Sephardi (Spanish and Portuguese) Jews in London called in (1705) to decide as to the orthodoxy of certain philo- sophical utterances by their Haham (Rabbi) David Nieto, himself a man of varied accomplishments. Among the distinguished Rabbis of the eighteenth century must be mentioned Jonathan Eybeschiitz (1690-1764), Chief Rabbi of Altona, who became involved in an accusation of Sabbethaian heresy which stirred the whole of Jewry in those days. That this race of Rabbinism could, even under adverse circumstances, produce spiritual leaders of enlightenment — not to speak of nobility of character, with which this period of Jewish history was no less rich than at other times — is evidenced by the life and work of Elijah of Vilna, named the Gaon of Vilna ( 1 720-1 797), whose vast and critical range of Jewish learning did not exclude knowledge of secular subjects, such as astronomy and mathematics. A master of the Hebrew language was Moses Chaim Luzzatto, of Padua ( 1 707-1 747), who might have inaugurated a new era in the national literature had his wayward genius not THE DARK AGBlS II9 been lost in the mazes of the Cabbalah. But Judaism was saved from the dry rot which had set in generally, by the rationalism and scientific investigation that arose in Western lands, and by the mystic movements which made their appearance in Eastern Europe. § 14. The Cossack Rising. — It was under the com- paratively favourable conditions prevailing in Poland that in the middle of the sixteenth century the Jews received a staggering blow which affected very seriously the whole Jewish organism. The Catholic Poles, who ruled the so-called Saporogian Cossacks on the Dnieper, and endeavoured to extract both material and spiritual ad- vantages from these Greek Orthodox subjects, had handed over to Jews the collection of taxes which the Cossacks had to pay to their Polish lords. These taxes, odious as they already were, were made even more so by fees on all religious family ceremonies, such as bap- tism, marriage or burial, according to Greek Orthodox rites, for the purpose of inducing the Cossacks to enter the Catholic Church. To enforce the payment of such taxes, the ke3'S of the Orthodox churches were handed over to the agents of the Polish nobles, who happened to be Jews. It was a hateful business, which was to cost both Jews and Poles very dear. In 1648, a rebellion broke out and, led by Bogdan Chmielnicki, a Cossack of murderous temperament with a personal grudge against the Jews, the Cossacks swept over the country, and, with all imaginable ferocity, exterminated every Jew and Pole who fell in their hands, only those being spared who embraced the Greek Orthodox religion. Hundreds oi large Jewish communities were wiped out of existence. The Poles were unable to offer effective resistance, and their troubles in the election of a king at that time gave the Cossacks still greater opportunities. The rebellion dragged on, with an interruption of a year and half, from 1 648- 1 65 1, but, even after the submission of the Cossacks, the troubles of the Jews were yet by no means 120 HISTORY OF THE JEWS at an end. At the instigation of Chmielnlcki, Russia en- tered into war with Poland, and the Russian invaders exterminated the Jews without mercy. The campaign which the Swedes undertook against Poland made the lot of the hapless Polish Jews still more sad. Perhaps a half-million of Jews lost their lives in the Cossack up- rising and the subsequent wars. The Jewish communi- ties, East and West, became full of Polish refugees who had escaped the shadow of the sword. The ravages and butcheries of the Russian brigand gangs, known as Haidamacks, in the middle of the eighteenth century, filled again the cup of Jewish sorrow and misery to over- flowing. § 15. The Chassidim. — The wretched condition of the Polish Jew^s, increased by the troubles consequent on the rapid decay of Poland, found relief in a still more intense devotion to the comforts of faith. Especially in those parts which had been most severely visited by the terrible ravages of the Cossack rebellion, the harassed and despairing Jews turned eagerly to mystic hopes of better times. If the stagnant scholastic studies of the Talmudists brought little satisfaction to simple souls thirsting for a refreshing draught of the living waters of religion, it came to them in a large measure by the rise of a movement which at one time threatened the supremacy of traditional Talmudical Judaism among the masses in Eastern Europe. The founder of this move- ment was Israel ben Eliezer, surnamed Baal Shem Tob (the good master of the [Divine] Name), or, by his ini- tials, Besht. He was born in Podolia about the year 1700, and lived in humble circumstances. He left no record of his views, but, by what can be gathered from the legends that have encrusted his fame, it is apparent that he was a mystical genius of a very high order, to which was added a heart of great humility and tender- ness. He swept away the rigid formalism and the casu- istic cobwebs which then overlaid the throbbing vigour THE DARK AGES 121 that had once distinguished the Talmudical scheme of life. Israel Baal Sliem Tob cared little for the favourite studies, nor would he join in the sombre views of those cabbalists who mortified the flesh as a service pleasing to God. He declared the immanence of God in man, and, therefore, saw God in all the acts and manifestations of life. This, the basic idea in the religious conceptions of the Baal Shcm, was supplemented by his spiritual exalta- tion and the intense fervour of his ecstatic joy in his communion with the all-pervading Creator. There were some, the Righteous (Zaddikim), who, he felt, were in the counsel of the Eternal, and could influence the course of that constant miracle, the divine government of the universe. Thus, all the forms and ceremonies were of little account compared to that spiritual abandon which bridges the gulf between mortal man and the eternal Spirit. The Baal Shem was, however, no mere panthe- istic philosopher or mystic recluse; he entered into the joys and sorrows of his surroundings, and became famed far and wide as a thaumaturgic saint who could heal the bodily, as well as the spiritual, ills of mankind. His gracious intercourse with the common people, especially with "publicans and sinners," as well as many of his utterances and acts, remind the sympathetic, though un- prejudiced, observer of his great kinsman Jesus of Nazareth, whom he strikingly resembled in several im- portant respects. This is a suggestion which would have horrified the good Baal Shem, but it is no extravagant assumption that his pure and unselfish heart would have also most energetically repudiated the subsequent mate- rialistic developments of his doctrines. Alas, for the spiritual growth of man! Israel Baal Shem Tob became the founder of the Chassidim (Pietists), a cabbalistic sect which spread with lightning rapidity all over Poland, Hungary-, Rumania, and brought for the moment a quick- ening influence, a comforting solace, to the weary exist- ence of the Jewish masses. But the beautiful spiritual 122 HISTORY OF THE JEWS ecstasj^ of the chosen few degenerated Into religious antics and perversions of the many ; the Righteous, who, by the purity of their souls, could see divine visions and inter- cede with the Almighty, became self-seeking pontiffs bent on their own aggrandizement. From the first, the apostles of the Chassidim were bitterly opposed by the leading Rabbis, headed by the famous Elijah, the Gaon of Vilna, but these "Opponents" (Mithnaggedim) could only hinder, not stop, the progress of Chassidism. The rationalistic ideas which subsequently found their way among the Jews of Eastern Europe proved a more effec- tive barrier. Yet at this day the Chassidim are still there a numerous and powerful force. The original leaders of the Chassidim founded various dynasties of Righteous, popularly known as Rebbes (Rabbis), which now subsist in considerable splendour by the lavish offer- ings of their pious adherents and devotees. Apart from this local jurisdiction, the Chassidim form part of the general Jewish community, and readily merge their sep- aratist doctrines and practices In different surroundings. § 1 6. The Rise of Tolerance. — It Is an extraordi- nary coincidence that on the day following the expulsion of the Jews from Spain (August 2, 1492), Christopher Columbus set out for the discovery of the American Continent, which was destined to play such a great part in the history of the persecuted Jews. It is a matter of Interest, showing the part the Jews took in the great discoveries of Columbus, Vasco de Gama, and others of that time, that the money with which Columbus provided for his memorable journeys was furnished by, or derived from, Jews; that astronomical charts and nautical Instru- ments he used had been prepared by Jews, and that the first European to set foot on the American Continent was one of a number of Jews who accompanied him, Luis de Torres, who was also the first to discover the use of tobacco. The New World did little at the beginning to help the Jews, except that a large number of crypto- THE DARK AGES 123 Jews found a refuge there from the implacable hostility of the Inquisition, until that dread tribunal transferred its activities to that region also, and the sky over Ameri- can soil was reddened by the flaring light of Jewish bodies burnt at the stake as an "act of faith" pleasing to God. The autos-da-fe, punctuated by the burning of Jewish books, were not, however, to last for ever. The enlightenment that came with the Renaissance, with the rise and spread of Protestantism, with the general rebel- lion against priestly authority, was to have its beneficent effects also on the Jews. It came indeed painfully slowly, but we can already discern its advent. In the darkness which enveloped the Jews at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Dominican Jacob von Hoch- straten, instigated by the converted Jew Johann Pfeffer- korn, of Frankfort-on-Main, brought up the old accusa- tions against the Talmud, which was to be burnt again "by authority." The matter came before the emperor Maximilian, and he referred it to the expert opinion of Reuchlin, one of the great humanists of Germany, who also possessed an extensive knowledge of the Jewish writings. Reuchlin's weighty pronouncement was in favour of the Talmud, and his bitter and successful strug- gle against his ecclesiastical opponent forms an interesting and important chapter in the history of human progress, and materially contributed to the commotion that brought about the Protestant Reformation in Germany. This incident drew the attention of the learned world to the value of post-biblical Jewish lircrature, and Chris- tian scholars began to take an intelligent interest in the intellectual productions of the Jewish people. Hebrew was included in the New Learning for the purpose of arriving at the original text of the Old Testament; Rabbinical commentaries provided guides to the rational study of the Sacred Scriptures ; the Talmud gave interest- ing and valuable information on the Jewish ideas and tendencies prevailing in New Testament times. Some, 124 HISTORY OF THE JEWS like Luther, ultimately turned in anger from the Jews, when they found that they would not see the truth in its Protestant Christian form; others, like Eisenmenger, the author of Judaism Unmasked, turned their Jewish knowledge into gall by collecting, with a zeal worthy of a better cause, every uncharitable and extravagant utter- ance in Jewish literature in order that the Jews might be irrevocably condemned to universal scorn and hatred; but Christian Hebraists like Bartolocci, the Buxtorfs, Lightfoot, Scaliger, Surenhusius, Wagenseil, Wolf and others looked no longer at the post-biblical Jewish litera- ture, and consequently at the Jews, with eyes of ignorant fanatics to whom the very Hebrew letters were magical forms. A work of high importance and considerable merit by a Christian divine was the History and Religion of the Jews since Christ to the Present Day by Jacob Christian Basnage (i 706-1 711). The religious evolution effected by Protestantism, if it still retained a large measure of intolerance, brought gradually a change in the idea of uniformity which had been the grand passion of Catholicism. The first af- fected by the rising gleam of tolerance were the Dutch, who had liberated themselves from the Spanish yoke at such a tremendous cost of energy and blood. The Maranos in the Iberian Peninsula, in danger of the In- quisition, turned their anxious gaze to that little, heroic people which, like the Jews, was battling with the mighty forces of fanaticism, and repeated attempts were made by these secret Jews to obtain a sure footing in Holland. After various dangerous and romantic attempts, they succeeded. Holland became the most important place of refuge for those secret Jews of Spain and Portugal who were prepared to leave their country in order to throw off their religious mask, and in Amsterdam there arose a great community, a New Jerusalem, the fame of which spread over the whole Dispersion. In these Neo-Jews we meet men of nobility in social station as well as in THE DARK AGES 125 chafacter; many who had played an important part in the commerce, politics and literature of their native coun- tries; not a few who, to escape the vigilant eyes of the Inquisition, had passed their days within the walls of a convent or church, or who had perhaps themselves sat in judgment on their detected fellow-Maranos; some even who had borne the priest's surplice or the friar's hood with becoming solemnity and outward piety. It was a strange company, these men and women, with the high- sounding names of proud hidalgos, who assembled in worship in some humble conventicle, and then, since 1675, in the noble synagogue which still forms an inter- esting Jewish landmark in Amsterdam. Endowed with much of this world's goods as well as with high intelli- gence and education, their influence came to be of great service to their co-religionists abroad. In 1612 a com- munity of Maranos settled in Hamburg under favour- able auspices, and in 1622 king Christian IV of Den- mark sent an invitation to Jews of Amsterdam to settle in Gliickstadt, granting them above all full liberty of conscience. It was from Amsterdam that one of its most eloquent and famous Rabbis, Manasseh ben Israel, a descendant of Marano refugees, set out for England in 1655 to induce Cromwell to readmit the Jews into that country, where the race had been proscribed since the expulsion of 1290. The ground had already been prepared by the settlement in London of a number of Maranos, who had lived there outwardly as Catholic merchants, and by the religious ideas which agitated Puritan England at that time. Manasseh ben Israel was very kindly received by the Lord Protector, and a national Conference met at Whitehall to consider the question of the readmission of Jews into England, but the commotion which the matter aroused rendered this assembly abortive. Nevertheless, the resettlement of the Jews in England was tacitly per- mitted by Cromwell (1657), who, with the eye of a 126 HISTORY OF THE JEWS statesman, saw the advantages that would accrue to the British realm from the wealth, enterprise and good-will of the Jews. Manasseh ben Israel, who had influenced English public opinion in favour of the Jews by his able work Vindicia Jud<£orum, was dismissed home by Crom- well with a state-pension of £ioo a year, but he died on his way back to Amsterdam (1657). Charles II confirmed the Jewish position in England, and the Jew- ish community of London became gradually one of the most influential in the Dispersion. After worshipping in a private house in Creechurch Lane, ofif Leadenhall Street, the congregation of Spanish and Portuguese Jews, "Shaar Hashamaim" ("The Gate of Heaven"), grew into such numbers that in 1701 they built the synagogue in Bevis Marks, near Bishopsgate, which, as the oldest synagogue in England and associated with many proud memories, is still an object of great interest and impor- tance. The Jewish activities that clustered around the sanctuary in Bevis Marks made this community for several generations the centre of the intellectual and political life of the Jews in England and the connecting link between Europe and the Jews who had settled in the British colonies in America. The Dutch and English conquests in Central and South America, which deprived the Spanish and Portu- guese nations of many of their possessions there, brought to light considerable numbers of secret Jews, who, under milder regimes, openly acknowledged their Jewish con- victions. Apart from the settlement of Jews in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, the earliest references to which are to be sought in the transportation of forc- ibly baptized Jewish children from Portugal and in the local records of the Inquisition, the Jews found refuge in the various Dutch, French and English colonies, and everyw^here took a prominent and honourable share in the commercial and political activities of the New World. In 1642 about 600 Jews sailed from Holland THE DARK AGES 127 to Pernambuco, Brazil, from which colony they were expelled when Portugal retook it from the Dutch in 1654. A small number of the refugees found their way to New York (then New Amsterdam), from which the Dutch governor Stuyvesant tried unsuccessfully to exclude them, and some of the them settled in Newport, Rhode Island, the ancient Jewish cemetery of which forms the subject of one of Longfellow's best-known poems. The congre- gation of Spanish and Portuguese Jews, "Shearith Israel" ("The Remnant of Israel"), in New York, was estab- lished in 1680, and is still in a flourishing condition. In all these settlements the Spanish and Portuguese Jews played the leading part, even some time after the immi- gration of German and Polish Jews had set in, and the wealth, social standing and public spirit of the first Jew- ish settlers largely influenced the favourable estimate which was formed of them in the early colonial days. § 17. Spinoza. — Of the men of distinction in the new communities of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, space only per- mits a short reference to Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza (1632-1677), who, in spite of his teachings and his life — or because of them — must be regarded as one of the glories of the people of Israel. Born in Amsterdam of Marano descent, he was brought up in the schools of the Amsterdam Jewish congregation, and acquired under Manasseh ben Israel and other Rabbis a large measure of Jewish learning. In his mental equipment, Moses Maimonides, Levi ben Gerson, Chasdai Crescas and other Jewish philosophers occupied the first place, but his bold mind led him into independent paths. Spinoza turned against the authority of Judaism, away from its concep- tions and practices, and the leaders of the communit}^ alarmed at his expressed views, first endeavoured to pla- cate him by an annual stipend of a thousand gulden, and, failing in this, they expelled him by excommunica- cation (1656). It was one of those stern acts of self- 128 HISTORY OF THE JEWS purification which the Jews of Spain and Portugal had learned by their own bitter experience, though we may perhaps credit them with the legitimate fear that the dangerous views or acts of one of their number might seriously affect the slender basis of their newly-won tol- eration. Spinoza took his excommunication resignedly and withdrew to the Hague, where he provided for his wants by polishing lenses. If the fame of his genius spread already in his lifetime — he refused, among other tempting offers, the chair of philosophy at the Heidel- berg University, as it would have fettered his indepen- dence — it was afterwards that his philosophy be came one of the corner-stones of miodern thought. High in the firmament of pure thought, Spinoza has his throne among the greatest master-minds of all time. The man who was once decried and dreaded as an atheist, has been recognized as "a God-intoxicated Jew." He founded no school and left few disciples, yet Leibnitz, Goethe and other intellectual giants did not disdain to sit at the feet of this sage of the Amsterdam ghetto. Even more than this: serene as was the mind of Spinoza, so was also his life, § 1 8, In the Middle of the Eighteenth Cen- tury. — While Europe was growing out of the swaddling- clothes of ecclesiasticism and awaking to a sense of man- hood ; while the French encyclopedists were accumulating the forces which were to burst and sweep away the dams of bigotry and servitude ; even though the Jewish people itself had already contributed to civilization one of the greatest luminaries of modern thought, the Jews were still living in their Dark Ages. Not only in Catholic countries, but likewise among Protestant nations which had clamoured and fought for the inalienable rights of the human conscience, the Jew was still an outcast for conscience' sake. By the middle of the eighteenth cen- tury, the Jews were yet everywhere a proscribed race, just as if Pope Innocent III, who had declared that the THE DARK AGES I29 Jews were branded with the mark of Cain, were still the all-powerful master of Europe. In spite of certain glimpses of light which had fallen on the Jewish people, its outlook was a verj' gloomy one indeed. The stray rays of toleration had reached main- ly those few Jewish refugees from the Iberian Peninsula, who, owing to their wealth and extensive influence in all the great marts of the Old and New World, had be- come more or less welcome guests among the trading rivals of the Spanish and Portuguese nations. In Poland, the most populous Jewish centre, the Cossack and other troubles had reduced the race to barbarism and misery; in neighbouring Austria, the Jews were barely allowed to vegetate, and, in 1745, the empress Maria Theresa hunted them out of Bohemia and Moravia. Where per- secution was not in an active state, the Jews remained burdened with the general opprobrium witii which con- tempt, the sickly offspring of the former religious fana- ticism, had loaded them. Centuries of grinding oppres- sion had brought the Jews very low. In Germanic lands there arose now and again a so-called court-Jew, who, entrusted WMth the financial affairs of one of the numerous princes, was perhaps at times able to secure some little administrative relief for his co-religionists. But, as happened in the cases of Lippold, the physician and financial agent of Joachim II of Brandenburg, and Joseph Siiss Oppenheimer, the minister of duke Charles Alexander of Wurtemberg (both of whom were executed with great ignominy on trumped-up charges in 1573 and 1738 respectively), the fall of the Jewish favourite usu- ally dragged the whole community into his ruin. As a whole, the Jews remained a class of social pariahs, petty traders or artisans, speaking a mongrel German, with no ambitions outside their own small and despised circles. Their degradation was stamped officially by the Leibzoll, or a special poll-tax which Jews had to pay in their pas- sage from one into another of the numerous principali- I30 HISTORY OF THE JEWS ties ; by the rigid institution of the "tolerated" and "pro- tected" Jews; by the humiliating and vexatious regula- tions and limitations regarding the residence of Jews, and by the restrictions which were even placed on the number of Jewish marriages — all Pharaonic laws in- tended to repress the expansion of the Jewish communities and to break the spirit as well as the body of the Jew. Their intellectual condition had also sunk to a low ebb, and even the religiously obligatory instruction in He- brew subjects was carried on in mean surroundings, in a mechanical manner, by men incompetent for any other calling. Religion still remained, but it had assumed the garb of its professors, and, in any case, it had lost that depth of interpretation and breadth of application which could alone ensure for Judaism the rank of a world-re- ligion in modern civilization. CHAPTER VI The Era of Assimilation § I. The Modern Epoch. — By the middle of the eighteenth century, when the status of the Jews had reached its lowest water-mark, they entered on a period of their history which, in its achievements and potenial- ities, was to rival, and, in certain respects, to eclipse, the most brilliant periods since the fall of the Jewish state. If the historian of the emancipation of the Israelites from the Egyptian yoke has had to have recourse to supernat- ural intervention, a more rationalistic age must seek in the extraordinary vitality and genius of the Jewish people for the causes of their rapid and marvellous evolution during the last hundred years. Leaving aside the un- productive millions in lands of oppression, the enfran- chised Jews have produced a remarkable host of men of international distinction in all walks of life, in science, arts and letters. This progress is even more strikingly apparent in the field of politics, where Jews are natural- ly most exposed to prejudice and obstruction. The same generation that had been subjected in Germany to the degrading poll-tax, saw the rise of Heinrich Heine, the greatest lyrical poet of the German tongue, and of Lud- ivig Borne, the most prominent German political writer of the day. Already in 1848, Gabriel Riesser, the grand- son of a Lithuanian Rabbi, was a Vice-President of the memorable German Parliament of that year, and a mem- ber of its deputation which offered to Frederick William IV the crown of the German empire. Adolphe Cremieux, 131 132 HISTORY OF THE JEWS born in 1796, almost under the shadow of the medieval Jewish disabilities, became in 1848 a member of the Provisional Government of France, again of the Govern- ment of National Defence in the critical days of 1 870-1 ; England received its greatest Imperialist stateman in Benjamin Disraeli, who, though nominally a Christian, was a Jew by inclination as well as by birth ; in Rome, the conqueror of ancient Judea, the Italian army has been governed by a Jewish general, Giuseppe Ottolenghi, and at the same time that a Jew, Luigi Luzzatti, was prime minister of Italy, the capital of Catholic Christendom, where only forty years ago the Jews were huddled to- gether in a few miserable lanes and dark courts, was be- ing administered by a Jewish chief magistrate, Ernesto Nathan, Not only have the Rothschilds and other Jew- ish bankers long maintained the leading, and a most hon- ourable, position in international finance, but two Jews, Karl Marx and Ferdinand Lassalle, were the founders of Socialism, undoubtedly the greatest movement of mod- ern times, which to many millions of both hemispheres has become a new religion that both guides and uplifts them. Against all this, political parties are doing the Jews the unwelcome honour of basing their existence on opposi- tion to Jewish influences, which, on the European Con- tinent, are found in all struggles for light, justice and truth. It is owing to the recognition of this fact that in Russia the greater half of the Jewish race is still crushed beneath the yoke of barbarous legislation and administration. Such a transformation of a scattered people of pariahs into one of the most progressive sec- tions of Western civilization, in spite of all the auto- cratic and ecclesiastical forces arrayed against them, in spite of all the ancient and deeply rooted social and re- ligious odium and prejudice which still cling to them, is without parallel in modern history. § 2. The Growth of Jewish Population. — In ad- dition to this mental vigour of the old race, there is a THE ERA OF ASSIMILATION 133 striking physical vitality which has manifested itself in the numerical expansion of the Jewish people within the last hundred years. Exact figures are generally wanting in Jewish statistics, but while at the beginning of the eighteenth century the Jewish population in Europe was computed by Basnage to be 1,360,000, and the historian Jost estimated the Jews all over the world in 1840 to be somewliat above three million souls, it is now (1911) near twelve millions — this in spite of the serious losses occasioned by religious defections, inter-marriages with non-Jews, etc. Of about nine and half million Jews to be found in Europe there are approximately six mil- lions in the Russian empire, two millions in Austria- Hungary, 600,000 in Germany, 250,000 in Great Britain and Ireland. Without appreciably affecting the growth of the Jewish population in Eastern Europe, the flow of emigration from those parts has rapidly increased the number of Jews in the United States of America to about two million souls, of whom close on a million are congre- gated in the city of New York, Next to New York, the largest community is to be found in Warsaw, with its Jewish population of 350,000. The quickened immigra- tion into Palestine since the last two decades of the nine- teenth century has also led to the strengthening of the Jewish element there, and of the 80,000 Jews in Pal- estine (about twelve per cent, of the population) the 40,000 Jews in Jerusalem comprise two-thirds of the total inhabitants of the ancient Jewish capital. § 3. Moses Mendelssohn. — The revolutionary, epoch-making change in the outlook and fortunes of the Jews was brought about in Germany, and by one who, both by his intellect and character, was well fitted to strike the generous imagination of the Christian world, and to usher in the social and political regeneration of his own people. Moses Mendelssohn, to whom modern Jewry owes its evolution from a strange element, out of touch with the interests and aspirations of its surround- 134 HISTORY OF THE JEWS ings, into an integral part of European civilization, was born in Dessau, in 1729, as the son of a poor scribe of scrolls of the Law. At the age of fourteen, Moses, the son of Mendel (Mendelssohn), betook himself on foot from Dessau to Berlin in order to seek wisdom in the great city, where the poor Jew-boy was only admitted by referring to Rabbi David Frankel, his former teacher, who had become Chief Rabbi of Berlin. Moses Men- delssohn, by sheer force of his own brilliant mind and the integrity of his heart, rose to the front rank of the German literary and philosophical world. He became an intimate friend of Lessing, who took Mendelssohn as his model in the fine type of a Jew he placed before the world in Nathan der Weise — a drama which represents the most effective plea on behalf of Mendelssohn's people — and among those who vied to do him honour was Kant, against whom Mendelssohn had successfully com- peted in a prize-essay on a philosophical theme. The world looked with surprise at this Jew, who was one of the most polished German stylists and among its pro- foundest philosophers — and who yet remained true to the religious faith of the Jewish people. If Mendelssohn's Phcedon, on the immortality of the soul, which became one of the most fascinating books of the day, earned for him the title of the German Socrates, his work on be- half of his brethren-in-faith won him undying fam^e. Once more the Bible was to be the source of the re- juvenation of the people which gave the great Book to the world. Mendelssohn translated the Jewish Scriptures into German (transcribed in Hebrew characters), and thereby German became the medium for introducing the Jews into the rich culture of one of the great nations of modern Europe. From the Rhine to the Vistula and all along the Danube, Judaism now assumed a German hue; the devotees of the new-born Englightenment (Has- kalah) were followers of IVIendelssohn, and its centre was Berlin. But as Mendelssohn himself had imbibed his THE ERA OF ASSIMILATION 135 first philosophical conceptions form Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed, and added to the German translation of the Bible a Hebrew commentary ("Biur") by various hands, so also his disciples turned their attention to the ancient language and derived new strength by contact with an inspiring past. In his great work Jerusalem, Mendelssohn put before Jew and Christian a rationalis- tic conception of Judaism, showing the compatibility of its doctrines and practices with modern thought, and he also set out his religious ideas in Morning Hours, or Lectures on the Existence of God (1785). His high standing within and without the Jewish community made him the object of attack on the part of zealous Chris- tians, but the loftiness and geniality of his personal char- acter, no less than the reasoned steadfastness to his an- cestral religion, inspired respect even among his opponents and reflected most favourably on his co-religionists. The emancipation of the Jews from the shackles of medieval barbarism and intolerance was thereby sounded in no uncertain tones, and they exerted their influence even beyond the confines of Germany. Thus the Jews en- tered on a new era in their history, and it was Mendels- sohn who indicated the problems that have agitated Jew- ish life and thought to the present day. The most extraordinary and original Jewish thinker in touch with Mendelssohn was Solomon Maimon (1754- 1800). Born in a Lithuanian townlet, married at the age of twelve, earning a living as a dominie to the chil- dren of a village publican, Solomon Maimon resolved to satisfy his craving for knowledge by proceeding to Ber- lin. Less fortunate than Moses Mendelssohn, he was not admitted by the gate-keeper, and had to wander about for some time as a vagabond. He was, however, enabled to secure the desired protection of Mendelssohn, and with it he entered on those literary activities which were to ensure him a high rank in the realm of philosophy. Kant acknowledged that in Die Trnnsccndentale Philosophie 136 HISTORY OF THE JEWS (1790) Solomon Maimon had shown himself the most penetrating of all his critics. His fame spread, and he received marked attention from Schiller, Goethe and other lights of his time, but his intellectual genius could not replace the moral fibre he sadly lacked, and this only accentuated the striking contrast he presented to Men- delssohn. § 4. The Enlightenment {Haskalah) and Neo- Hebrew Literature. — The first direct effect of Men- delssohn's activities was the revival of Hebrew as a medium of modern culture. The circle that had gath- ered around him became the centre of a general move- ment, the Enlightenment (Haskalah), the waves of which have not yet spent themselves. The purpose of it was to bring into the ghetto the best thought of the day in the old and acceptable language of the Jews, which had never been abandoned by them. The Hebrew commentary ("Biur") to Mendelssohn's Bible marked the first step; a periodical, Hameassef ("The Collector"), founded in 1784, grouped together a number of Neo-Hebraists in Germany, Austria and Poland, who became known by the name of Meassefim. These, as well as the Enlight- ened (Maskilim) generally, expended their literary ef- forts in the Hebrew translation or imitation of foreign classics, and in the criticism of the many superstitions and abuses which then dragged down Jewish life. Such attempts at reform created, of course, a cleavage be- tween the old and the new order. Mendelssohn himself had to brave the determined opposition of those who feared that the new departure would bring about the extinction of the cherished faith of Israel, and their fore- bodings were justified by the lapse and apostasy of many of those who stood for the Enlightenment. These strug- gles filled out the intellectual life in Eastern Europe for over a century, but it may be said that the modern Jew- ish humanists have won the day. It is now generally recognized there that traditional piety and general cul- THE ERA OF ASSIMILATION 137 ture are not merely compatible with, but are essential to, Jewish welfare. If the Enlightenment, in its cultural achievements, was but a pale reflection of the brilliant Spanish period, the Hebrew language has assumed a flexibility unexampled since Biblical times. There is no phase of modern lit- erature that has not found full expression in the ancient Hebrew tongue, which by degrees has again developed into a language for common use. There is a considerable output of Hebrew books of Jewish and general interest, as well as of original works of belles-lettres and science, and a Hebrew press, with daily newspapers and other periodicals of equal value to their contemporaries, pro- vide full accounts and discussions of political and social questions. In Palestine, Hebrew is once more the ver- nacular among an ever-growing number of Jews, and instruction in elementary and high schools there is, in all subjects, being carried on in that language. This latest form of Hebrew literature has already produced several names of the first rank, while there are a host of talented men of letters who would have done honour to any other language. Abraham Mapu (1808-1867) as a novelist, Leon Gordon (i 831-1892) as a poet, and Perez Smolenskin (1842-1885) as a litterateur, should stand high in the republic of letters, into which Hebrew, in spite of its hoary antiquity, has entered once more with all the elements and potentialities of a modern language. § 5. Yiddish. — As an annexe of Hebrew literature must be regarded Yiddish (Jiidisch, Jewish), the lingua franca of the Jews. It is spoken by the Jews of the whole of Eastern Europe and their numerous emigrants in Western Europe and the New World. It was orig- inally the Teutonic vernacular of the medieval German Jews, who used the language of their native country, and, strange as it may seem, even produced in the thirteenth century Siisskind von Trimberg, a minnesinger of the 138 HISTORY OF THE JEWS German tongue. The great Jewish migrations from Germany to Poland during the crusades and the Black Death brought the German language also into Eastern parts, but there the German was mixed up with Slavic expressions and grammatical turns, w^hile the religious influence gave Hebrew an important part in shaping the language. This Jewish German was, however, so over- shadow-ed by Hebrew that it long remained a stunted patois, and even those to whom Yiddish was the mother- tongue did not accord it the respect due to one's native language. With the growth of the Jewish publicistic activities in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Yiddish was at last recognized as the only medium for reaching the masses, and a literature of some consider- able dimensions has grown up, both In permanent and ephemeral form. A number of novelists and poets of high merit have arisen, and Yiddish plays, introduced by A. Goldfaden and developed by others, have also met with some success, especially in America. Hence Yiddish, with its enterprising press and extensive literature, does not by any means deserve the opprobrium which has been meted out to it by Jew-s as well as by the outside world. Certainly, in some respects, as in invective and satire, Yiddish possesses an Oriental exuberance not matched by any other European tongue (for such must Yiddish be acknowledged to be). But Yiddish has no future, and, beyond very remarkable and valuable studies of the life of the Jewish masses, with which only Yiddish writ- ers can have an intimate acquaintance, it has produced no work of permanent distinction. Yiddish has to give way to the dominant language of the country, while the wealth, prestige, and dignity of Hebrew secure for this ancient and historic tongue the indisputable precedence in the affection, and even veneration, of the Jewish people. § 6. The Science of Judaism. — While the He- brew Enlightenment took its course in Eastern Europe, THE ERA OF ASSIMILATION 139 the Jews of Germany, attracted by the throbbing intel- lectual life around them, drank in eagerly all that came within their reach. In an incredibly short time, they rose to a leading position in the literary world of Berlin. The daughters of Moses Mendelssohn, Rachel Levin, Henriette Herz, and other Jewesses, were now the bril- liant hostesses in famous salons where the intellectual lights of Germany were wont to assemble. This rapid rise was not without its dangers. Bewildered and in- toxicated, many of them lost their religious and moral balance. Even the daughters of Moses Mendelssohn went over to Christianity; his son Abraham, though still remaining a Jew himself, had his son Felix, the future composer, baptized, admittedly not because of a belief in the truths of Christianity, but to smooth the way of his future career. The abnormal position of the Ger- man Jews, imbued as they were with the highest culture of the age, and yet condemned as political outcasts, shut out from all the benefits and favours of a bureaucratic state, led to conversions en masse to the dominant re- ligion of the land. In a short space of time, about a third of the Berlin Jews, and that of the most wealthy and refined, entered the Christian fold. David Fried- lander, the successor of Mendelssohn among the Jews of Berlin, applied on behalf of a number of fellow Jews for admission into the Church on condition of not being obliged to subscribe to the divinity of Jesus or other dog- mas of Christianity. Whatever may be thought of any one solemnly for- swearing his or her ancestral religion and pubh'cly ac- knowledging an alien faith in which one does not believe, and whether worldly advancement is a sufficient condona- tion of what our better nature is sure to condemn, it must be admitted that very little had been done by the second quarter of the nineteenth century to strengthen the Jewish consciousness and to bring medieval Judaism into accord with modern thought. It began to be felt, 140 HISTORY OF THE JEWS however, that the great past of the Jewish people ought to be resuscitated from the dust of the ages, and pre- sented to the inner circle as well as the world at large as a picture worthy of all respect. A number of young men of eminent qualifications had set about to establish a society, "Kultur Verein," for Jewish studies, but, alas! some of the most promising, among them the poet Hein- rich Heine and the jurist Eduard Gans, left Judaism to be able to enter the service of the state or for some equally bad reason. It was an unhappy beginning, but it was left to one of the small band of the faithful to carry through an herculean task with every success. Leopold Zunz (1794- 1 886) became the founder of, what has been termed in Germany, the Science of Judaism, i. e. the scientific investigation and presentation of Jewish history and literature. With a marvellous industry and a remarkable instinct, Zunz collected and collated the ancient and scattered fragments of the extant Jewish documents, and brought order and beauty out of an ap- parently hopeless chaos. His masterly writings served to call forth the emulation of numerous other Jewish scholars. Among his contemporaries were the Galicians Nachman Krochmal and S. J. Rapoport, who combined the prodigious Talmudical erudition of the East with the critical sense of the West. Their labours brought forth an abundant harvest, especially in Germany. J. M. Jost (1793- 1 860), the first modern historian of the Jews; Abraham Geiger (1810-1874), a rabbi of en- cyclopedic knowledge, and Heinrich Gratz (1817-1891), the author of a monumental History of the Jews (also translated into English), stand out as the brightest stars in the galaxy of Jewish scholars and thinkers whose re- searches and penetrating minds have illumined the re- cesses of the Jewish past. Exceptional mention is due to M. Steinschneider (i 816- 1908), who, unlike other Jew- ish investigators, left the theological and historical high- ways and explored the rich contributions which the medi- 1 THE ERA OF ASSIMILATION 141 eval Moorish and Spanish Jews made to the general ad- vance of civilization. From Teutonic lands the new Science of Judaism spread to other parts of Europe, and also to America. Samuel David Luzzatto in Italy (1800-1865) and Salomon Munk in France (1803-1867) were the chief representatives in those countries. As fruitful foster-grounds of modern Jewish learning must be accounted the various Rabbinical Seminaries, the first of which was established in Breslau in 1854. Similar theological colleges have been estab- lished in Paris (a development of the Central Rabbinical School founded at Metz in 1830), London, Berlin, Vi- enna, Budapest, Rome (now in Florence), Cincinnati, New York. In Western parts they have supplanted the Talmudical High Schools (Yeshiboth), which still con- tinue their activities in Eastern Europe and the Orient. § 7. The Reform of Judaism. — The revival of Jewish learning, no less than the imperative call of the times, brought a change in the current conceptions of Judaism. While medievalism had practically confined the Jews to the Talmud and the ritual codes that had been elaborated by IVIoses Maimonides and Joseph Caro, the all-absorbing efifort to maintain Judaism against the numerous subversive influences that threatened its very existence, led to the neglect of the fascinating and inspir- ing Biblical epoch, of all the philosophical developments of Judaism, its wealth of ideas, the profundity of its so- cial ethics and the grandeur of the world-mission of Israel. A critical examination laid bare the strength as well as the weaknesses of Judaism. It showed that Judaism was not a religion bounded by the circumscribed outlook of medieval Rabbis, but that the Jews were still in possession of those wells w^hich had given the ethico-monotheistic idea and the prohpetical order to the world. It was only necessary to clear away the ac- cumulations of scholasticism and narrow-minded pietism in order to make the living waters accessible to all. 142 HISTORY OF THE JEWS The Reform of Judaism, which took its rise in Ger- many, the intellectual centre of Jewry, was not a moral revolt, like the Protestant Reformation of Christianity in the sixteenth century, but was primarily liturgical and ceremonial in character. The prayers, which had grown to inordinate length, were curtailed and certain customs abolished, not through any wanton desire for destruc- tion, but because historical investigation had shown what was truly ancient and essential and what was a later and unnecessary accretion. The Divine Services were beautified, because the growth of the aesthetic taste de- manded that a greater decorum and dignity^ should be introduced into the synagogues, which had hitherto been utilized as the ordinary house of assembly in the Jewish community. Religious instruction from the pulpit, which had been long neglected, became again an integral fea- ture of the Divine Service, and the vernacular was more and more introduced among the prayers. Throughout there was a general tendency to do away with the Ori- ental and separatist aspects of Judaism, and to bring into bold relief the universalistic and ethical mission of the Jewish people. The first effort to introduce liturgical and ceremonial reforms in the synagogue was made by Israel Jacobsohn, who, in i8iO, established at Seesen, near the Harz Mountains, a synagogue on those lines. In 1818 an- other such synagogue was erected in Hamburg, and many of the outward improvements adopted there were intro- duced later on in the Jewish houses of prayer through- out Western Europe, but those places where doctrinal changes were acted upon became known as Reform Syn- agogues, or Temples, which spread all over Germany and found their fullest development in the United States of America. The first Reform Synagogue in London was established in 1841, and was followed by similar synagogues in Manchester and Bradford. Among those Rabbis who worked in the cause of Re- THE ERA OF ASSIMILATION 143 form Judaism in Germany were Samuel Holdheim (1806-1860), a thorough-going Radical, whose syna- gogue in Berlin boldly transferred the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday ; Abraham Geiger, whose great learn- ing gave historical support to progressive ideas; Samuel Hirsch (1815-1889), who elaborated a philosophical basis for the new movement; Ludwig Philippson (1811- 1889), whose Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, long the most important German-Jewish periodical, spread the cause of reform far and wide. In the United States, the remarkable organizing abilities of Isaac M. Wise (1819-1900) rendered Reform the dominant feature of American Judaism. Rabbinical Conferences in Germany in the middle of the nineteenth century, and in America during the last decades, brought about definite pronounce- ments on the Reform attitude on vital problems of Ju- daism and their relations to modern thought and con- ditions. The cause of Conservatism, or Orthodoxy, was up- held in the first place by Rabbis of the old type, who saw in Reform the dissolution of Judaism, and by scholars and thinkers who, recognizing the need for some definite action to counteract the growing indifference and apos- tasy, sought to preserve the ancient structure of Judaism while affecting such alterations as were undoubtedly de- manded by the changed times. It was the latter attitude which stemmed the tide of Reform in Germany and else- where. Zecharias Frjinkel (1801-1875), the principal of the Breslau Theological Seminary, brought about a tendency, the so-called Breslau school, which, proclaim- ing the well-established freedom of Jewish thought, em- phasized the continuity — or the positive-historic aspect — of Judaism. Samson Raphael Hirsch (1807-1888), of Frankfort-on-Main, exercised a marked conservative ef- fect on those who came under his immediate influence, while Israel Hildesheimer (1820-1899), by his Rabbini- cal Seminary in Berlin, created a. living centre of tradi- 144 HISTORY OF THE JEWS tional Judaism. The somewhat disappointing results of the high hopes of Reform in Germany, and the common and pressing problems which affected the Jews of all parties, have acted as checks to the progress of Reform, while the reckless radicalism of some Rabhis on the one hand and the rally of the orthodox on the other, have brought about a general reaction towards moderate con- servatism. § 8. The Struggle for Emancipation. — While in- ternal problems, religious and social, stirred Western Judaism out of its long lethargy, the growing intellectual advancement of the Jews called for the abrogation of those medieval enactments with which bigotry and prej- udice still fettered all the efforts of the Jews. Even in Holland, England, and in other parts of Europe, where the Jews had found a refuge, they were tolerated as aliens rather than recognized as full-fledged citizens. To attain this latter object has been the determined ef- fort of the Jews during the last century. The first mod- ern European ruler to recognize the fact that the Jews might be turned into useful members of the state by ac- cording them the means of self-development was Joseph II of Austria, who, in 1782, issued a number of liberal laws affecting the Jews, but they proved of little prac- tical effect under the inimical governments of his suc- cessors, and it vi^as only in 1848, the year of fateful com- motions on the European Continent, that the Austrian Jews achieved some measure of freedom. In 1866 the Jews of Austria were completely emancipated from all legislation directed against them. The French Revolu- tion, which proclaimed the equality of all men, could not well have excluded the Jews from this fundamental principle. Napoleon I, who had his own opinions, was at first inclined to question the general idea of equality in its application to the Jews, but, to settle his doubts, he convened in 1806 an assembly of representative Jews, grandiosely called a Sanhedrin, which had to answer a THE ERA OF ASSIMILATION 145 series of questions relating to the attitude of Jews to- wards the state, and their non-Jewish fellow-citizens. The only concrete result of these deliberations was the establishment of a consistory of the Jews of France. The Revolution of 1830 crowned the citizenship of the Jews by including Judaism among the religions officially rec- ognized and subventioned by the state. France, which thus led in the emancipation of the Jews in Europe, brought the same boon to the Jews of all the states that came under its rule, or even influence, in the great con- quests of the Revolution and the Empire. But when the French receded from their positions in Western Ger- many, many of the old laws were again put into force against the Jews, and although the Congress of Vienna confirmed the rights granted to the German Jews during the French occupation, this was made invalid by the trickery and chicanery with which it was interpreted by the authorities. The leading Jewish champion in the struggle for the emancipation of the German Jews was Gabriel Riesser (1806-1860), who claimed the libera- tion of the German Jew as a German patriot to whom the name and fame of his fatherland was as dear as the welfare of his co-religionists. The upheaval of 1848 proved a turning-point in the political fortunes of the German Jews, whose emancipation was completed in the creation of the German empire in 1871. In Hungary, the Jews were emancipated with the grant of the consti- tution in 1867, and in Italy the last vestiges of Jewish disabilities were swept away with the entry of the Italian army into Rome in 1870. § 9. Emancipation in England. — The history of the Jews in England since the resettlement in the middle of the seventeenth century is one of organic development from a trading body of aliens domiciled in England to one of the many integral elements of which the British empire is composed. The Jews in England had not to battle against a medieval anti-Jewish legislation, as was 146 HISTORY OF THE JEWS the case on the Continent, but the Christian character of the English state precluded the incorporation of the Jews into the body politic. The disabilities which were thereby created rendered necessary a lengthy struggle to bring about the enfranchisement of the British Jews. The fact that already in the early part of the eighteenth cen- tury Jews took a prominent part in the financial affairs of the nation, such as the assistance rendered by Antonio Lopez Suasso (Baron Avernas de Gras) to William III in his descent on England, by Sir Solomon de Medina (the first Jew to be knighted in England) to the Duke of Marlborough, or the loyal support of the Jews during the Jacobite insurrection, predisposed the king and the government in their favour. In 1723 the words, "On the true faith of a Christian," were removed from Jewish oaths, though the phrase was to prove a very serious ob- struction to Jewish political progress. In 1753 a Jew- ish Naturalization Bill was passed both in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, but this created such a commotion that it was repealed in the following j^ear. With this the civic emancipation of the Jews was delayed indefinitely. Even more than on the Continent, the in- tellectual and social had preceded the political emancipa- tion of the Jews, and increased the discontent and im- patience of those who yearned to shine in the larger life of the nation. Hence a great number of the wealthy and cultivated Spanish and Portuguese Jews — descend- ants of those who for their religion's sake had braved the dangers of the Inquisition — entered into the coveted equalit}^ through the portals of the Church. The fam- ilies of D'Israeli, Basevi, Bernal, Ricardo, Ximenes, Lopes, etc., who have since risen high in British public and social life, gradually severed their connection with Juda- ism. But the Jewish community nevertheless increased in numbers and influence, and the demand for civic rights thus became only more urgent. In 1833 a Bill for the yernov^l of Jewish disabilities was passed by the House of THE ERA OF ASSIMILATION 147 Commons, but it was rejected by the House of Lords, and this procedure was repeated no less than ten times. Following the line of least resistance, relief was obtained meanwhile by the repeal of disabilities connected with municipal life, and David Salomons (afterwards created a baronet) was in 1835 elected sheriff of London. (In 1839 he was high sheriff of Kent, and in 1856 the first Jewish lord mayor of London.) Admission to Parlia- ment was, however, still barred by the Christian oath of allegiance. To force events, the City of London elected in 1847 Baron Lionel de Rothschild a member of Parlia- ment, but he could not take his seat, although re-elected in 1850, In 1 85 1 David Salomons, on being elected for Greenwich, took the bolder course of voting and speaking in the House, even against the Speaker's ruling. He was nevertheless obliged to withdraw, and to pay a fine of £500 for each of the three times he had sat in the House. It was only in 1858 that, as a compromise be- tween the Upper and the Lower Houses, it was decided that the oath could, by a special resolution, be modified, and it was under such a resolution that Baron Lionel de Rothschild, as the first professing Jew, entered Parlia- ment in that year. In i860 the Parliament oath for both Houses was permanently amended, and in 1885 Sir Nathan Mayer de Rothschild took, under the title of Lord Rothschild, his seat in the House of Lords as the first Jewish peer. All offices of state are now open to Jews all over the British empire, where a number of them have risen to the ranks of cabinet minister, colonial prime minister and governor. § 10. Russia. — All the important states of Western civilization have now, at least in principle, recognized the equality of the Jews with their fellow citizens, but the JcAvs in Russia, w'ho number about six millions and com- prise a half of the Jewish people, are still subject to all the tyranny and whims of medieval legislation and ad- ministration. 148 HISTORY OF THE JEWS In large tracts of modern Russia, Jews were already settled long before the arrival of their present rulers, and the conversion of the Chazars to Judaism brought a large part of Southern Russia under Jewish influence. But owing to the religious exclusiveness of the Musco- vite grand dukes as well as to the spread of a remarkable Judaizing heresy, which was formed in Novgorod to- wards the end of the fifteenth century, and affected the highest circles in the land, the Jews were barely suffered on Russian territory. Ivan the Terrible refused to con- sent to the proposal of king Sigismund Augustus of Poland to admit Jews into Russia, and this attitude was continued by Ivan's successors, who in effect adopted the famous words of the empress Elizabeth (1742), "I will not derive any profit from the enemies of Christ." Catherine II, who affected the airs of an enlightened sovereign, confirmed the exclusion of Jews from Russian soil, but with the first division of Poland in 1773, when a large number of Jews came under Russian rule, she had to content herself by issuing certain restrictive laws against them. This policy of discrimination against the Jews became the standing policy of the Russian tsars, and it was only now and again interrupted by some countervailing decrees designed to alleviate the too mani- fest misery of the Jewish lot or to incorporate them into the Russian national life. Attempts made in this latter direction, which were usually carried out with a brutal disregard of Jewish susceptibilities and with the ulterior motive of converting the Jews to the Orthodox Church, aroused their justified suspicions, and defeated even the well-intentioned objects of the central government. That the Russian Jews were more amenable to gen- uinely tolerant measures was proved in the hopeful reign of tsar Alexander II. The Russian defeat in the Crimean War, which led to general reforms, also affected favourably the welfare of the Jews. A relaxation of the restrictions imposed on their movements and social THE ERA OF ASSIMILATION 149 developments was all that was necessary to bring about a great forward stride in their Russification. In litera- ture and art, in industry and commerce, Russian Jews rose very rapidly to honourable positions. Anton Rubin- stein, the most famous musician, and Marc Antokolski, the greatest sculptor, produced by Russia, stood for a host of Russian Jews who added to the renown of their fatherland, while the intelligence and enterprise of Jew- ish merchants and manufacturers contributed to its wealth. Even the reaction that set in during the latter part of the reign of Alexander II did not check the progress and all-round expansion of Russian Jewry. But everything came to a sudden standstill with the shock occasioned by the assassination of the tsar-liberator and the accession of Alexander III. The growing revolutionary sentiment was arrested by a merciless proscription of every liberal idea, and, to save the Asiatic despotism and Byzantine bureaucracy peculiar to Russia, the Jews were thrown to the reactionary wolves. The civilized world was horri- fied by the wide-spread anti-Jewish riots which occurred all over South-Western Russia, and threatened to engulf the Russian Jews. Then sweeping measures were taken to cripple the economic and intellectual development of the Jewish population. On May 3, 1882, Count Igna- tiev issued certain "temporary" regulations, known as "May Laws," which, in spite of the recommendations of an imperial commission favourable to the Jews, have re- mained in force to the present day. The Jews were cooped up in Poland and in towns of certain specified provinces in North-Western Russia, designated as the Pale of Settlement; they were shut out from rural dis- tricts and hedged round with innumerable restrictions. The Jews outside this Pale of Settlement were merci- lessly driven out bag and baggage at the shortest notice, and the misery that was thus flaunted in the face of Europe and America at the end of the nineteenth century ISO HISTORY OF THE JEWS defies description. With some notable protests, particu- larly in London in 1882 and 1891, civilization had come to the end of its resources, and the Russian government, of which C. Pobiedonostzev, the procurator of the Holy Synod, was the leading spirit, had its own way. This policy (summed up in Pobiedonostzev's ideal solution that a third of the Russian Jews would emigrate, a third become converted, and a third die of starvation) has been continued under Nicholas II, whose reign was marked in 1905 by the most violent anti-Jewish atrocities that have taken place since the Cossack uprising in the eighteenth century. In spite of the mocking hopes of a constitution and a Duma, the Russian Jews are still in the same state of bondage, and there is none to deliver them. § II. The United States of America. — In strik- ing contrast to Russia stand the United States of Amer- ica, where the stream of Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe has found an easy and beneficent outlet. If, according to the oft-quoted saying of the Jewish novelist, Karl Emil Franzos, every country has the Jews it de- serves, we may extend the application by the remark that every people has the government worthy of it. From the time that the Spanish and Portuguese Jews, hunted out of priest-ridden countries, found a refuge in North America, it has received all manner of Jews, who have all proved citizens of value and worth to their new countr}'. The history of the Jews in America merges into American history. Although barely 4,000 all told at the time of the War of Independence, the American Jews took an appreciable part in the revolutionary strug- gle, Colonel Solomon Bush being among those who par- ticularly distinguished themselves. The most notable of the patriots was Haym Salomon (i 740-1 785), a Polish Jew, who unselfishly served in a variety of important financial capacities and spent his own large fortune for the benefit of his adopted country. Although the Jews THE AGE OF ASSIMILATION 151 in some of the States, like their co-religionists in England, had to contend against certain Christian formulas, which shut them out from public offices, the Jews in America have received uniform and friendly recognition of their value as citizens and patriots. Of the many American Jews who rose to high office in the service of their coun- try, mention can only be made of Judah P. Benjamin (1811-1884), the most able Minister of the American Confederation, who, after the Civil War, left for Eng- land, where he became one of the leaders of the Bar. The large influx of Jews from Eastern Europe into the United States is rapidly transferring the Jewish cen- tre of gravity to the great and free communities in America. In New York, close on a million Jews form the largest Jewish aggregation since the days when Jeru- salem was the capital of the land of Israel, and Jewish charitj' and self-help, both exemplary in manner and scope, have made an ever-increasing Jewish popula- tion sharers in the untold potentialities of the United States. The virgin soil of America has also brought forth re- ligious developments of Judaism adapted to the new con- ditions, but on this history must reserve its verdict. There can, however, be no doubt of the high purpose and moral earnestness of those spiritual leaders of American Judaism who stand for the Jewish Messianic ideals of social justice, of enlightenment and truth. § 12. Self-Emancipation. — While in the various lands of civilization the Jews were left to work out their own salvation, the collective Jewish conscience still re- ceives appeals for aid from outlying portions of the Dis- persion. Apart from the vast measures of relief ex- tended to the Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe, it has been particularly the Jews of the Orient that have called for the intervention of their more favourably situ- ated co-religionists. While the Jews under Turkish rule have always enjoyed a fair measure of toleration, it was 152 HISTORY OF THE JEWS a long time before the light made its appearance in the East, By virtue of a decree of Adolphe Cremieux, as a member of the Government of National Defence, the Jews in Algeria were incorporated among the citizens of France (1870), and the Jews of Tunis are now at least protected by the French occupation. But in Morocco, Persia and Rumania (alone among the Balkan States formerly belonging to Turkey) the Jewish lot is still a very sad one. The first concerted Jewish public action was aroused in 1840 by an accusation against a number of Jews in Damascus that they had killed a Franciscan monk in order to use his blood for religious purposes. This Damascus Affair, which excited great interest and indignation at the time, raised up two men who headed the struggle for the liberation of the whole Jewish race. Sir Moses Montefiore (i 784-1885) and Adolphe Cre- mieux (1796-1880), both men of high distinction in England and France, accompanied by Salomon Munk and Louis Loewe, Orientalists of note, set out for the East on a mission against the forces of religious bigotry. They were supported by enlightened public opinion, and were not only instrumental in freeing the accused, but also in obtaining a firman from the sultan of Turkey condemning the charge of ritual murder as a baseless fabrication. Still more important was the example and stimulus this gave to future public action on similar oc- casions. Such an instance occurred in 1858, when a six-year-old Jewish child, Edgar Mortara, of Bologna, was forcibly taken from his parents by papal guards on the ground of his having been surreptitiously baptized by a servant four years previous. The world was up in arms. The emperors Francis Joseph and Napoleon III intervened personally with Pope Pius IX, and Sir Moses Montefiore went on a mission to Rome, but it was all of no avail, and Mortara was afterwards brought up as a Catholic priest. The indignation aroused in this matter contributed much to the odium which surrounded the last THE AGE OF ASSIMILATION 153 days of the Papal State, and gave the impetus for the establishment, in i860, of the Alliance Israelite Univer- selle, until recently the most important international Jewish body. The Alliance was to act as the accredited representative of the Jewish people wherever it suffered for conscience' sake. 1 his function has been exercised with marked effect in Oriental countries, where the pres- tige of the Alliance has been supported by the representa- tives of France and other civilized Powers. At the Berlin Congress of 1878, the Alliance was also instrumental in obtaining the emancipation of the Jews in the Balkan States, but the persistence and impunity with which Rumania has evaded its undertaking in this respect, and the helplessness of the Alliance during the Russian troubles in 1882, have led to a subordination of political activity in favour of a vast educational work for the betterment of the Oriental Jews. This has largely been made possible by the munificence of Baron Maurice de Hirsch (1831-1896) and his equally noble-hearted widow, Clara de Hirsch (1833-1899)- The educational work of the Alliance is supported by the Anglo-Jewish Association (founded 1871), and since 1901 the German Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden is rendering a great service to the cause of Jewish progress in the East. An interesting development of Jewish self-help is the inter- national order of B'nai B'rith (Sons of the Covenant), established in New York in 1843, which has taken a leading part in Jewish affairs in America. Philanthropy, which formed the most prominent feature in Jewish pub- lic life during the second half of the nineteenth century, found its highest representative in Sir Moses Montefiore, who not only gave very generously of his own wealth, but intervened personally, and with some success, with the rulers of Turkey, Russia, Rumania, Morocco and Rome, in order to right Jewish wrong and to alleviate the unhappy lot of his oppressed co-religionists in those countries. His looth birthday, in 1884, was an event 154 HISTORY OF THE JEWS of general rejoicing among the Jews all over the world. The culminating point of philanthropic effort was reached when in 1891 Baron Maurice de Hirsch con- ceived the titanic scheme of transplanting the Jews from Darkest Europe into the light and freedom of the New World, and for this purpose created the Jewish Coloniza- tion Association, which he endowed with a fund of about £9,000,000. Its colonizing activities, which are largely being carried on in the Argentine, have, however, been found to be of slow growth, and the authorities of the Jewish Colonization Association have, therefore, thought it advisable to utilize a considerable part of its resources for the economic and educational relief of the over- whelming Jewish misery in Eastern Europe. Even as it is, only a fringe of the vast problem can be touched. § 13. Anti-Semitism. — The outburst of national feeling consequent on the Franco-German War in 1870- 187 1, brought a new phase of Jew-hatred into regions where emancipation had been already achieved. Con- formably with the character of the age and the country of its origin, the Jew-hatred that made its appearance in Germany was stripped of its old religious fanaticism, and clothed in a new scientific garb. It was now discovered that the Jew was constitutionally of an inferior moral nature by reason of his so-called Semitic descent, and could not, therefore, claim equality with the higher Aryan race. Anti-Semitism, as this "scientific" Jew-hatred came to be called, found great favour among the impres- sionable academic youth, and was spread among the people by demagogues, like the court chaplain Stocker, and by politicians in search for a battle-cry. In Ger- many and Austria, there arose Anti-Semitic parties in all legislative and municipal bodies, which, supported from above by the prevailing feudal and clerical elements, seri- ously threatened the hardly acquired citizenship of the Jews. Anti-Semitism, however, had the opposite effect THE AGE OF ASSIMILATION 155 of arousing the self-respect and consciousness of the Jews, and proved a great impetus to Jewish solidarity. In 1882, the theories of Anti-Semitism were translated into wild riots in Russia, and accusations of ritual murder by Jews, that claimed wide attention, were made in various parts of Europe. But the greatest efiFect of Anti-Sem- itism, one of the most remarkable incidents in recent times, was the Dreyfus Affair in France (1894), ^^ which Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer, was falsely ac- cused of treason and condemned for the purpose of oust- ing Jews from tlie higher ranks of the French army. The Dreyfus Affair, which convulsed France to its very depths, was largely responsible for the anti-clerical policy and the separation of Church and State following on the commotion that ended with the release and rehabilitation of Captain Dreyfus. § 14. Zionism. — The rise of virulent Anti-Semitism in cultured Germany and Austria, and the savage anti- Jewish outbreaks in Russia, brought about a revulsion of feeling and hope within the Jewish ranks in Eastern Europe, while the Dreyfus Affair in enlightened France led to a partial revision of the Jewish outlook in Western lands. It came to be recognized by ever-growing num- bers, that however desirable political emancipation had been at one time, this had not, and could not, achieve the object that formed the ra'ison d'etre of the Jewish people, viz., the full and unfettered development of its own innate forces, and that a purely legal enfranchise- ment could afford no solution of the Jewish social and economic problems so long as the Jews are subject to the will and power of a necessarily dominant majority of the non-Jewish population. It was found that Anti-Sem- itism is a growth of envy and malice which knows no frontiers; that even in free countries the Jews are sub- jected to intellectual and moral pressure ultimately en- tailing the loss of many valuable members; that the very Liberalism that stands up valiantly for the rights of the 156 HISTORY OF THE JEWS Jew, hopes for the dissolution of Judaism; that this dis- solution, forced by the identification of the Jewish citi- zens with all the aspects of the national life surrounding them, is in actual progress and a serious menace to the perpetuation of the Jewish people. These thoughts, and the consequent necessity for the regatherlng of the Jews in their ancient land as a political entity, were already elaborated by Moses Hess in Rome and Jerusalem, in 1840, during the throes of the emancipation movement, but the Russian atrocities in 1882 initiated an agitation for the realization of this idea. Groups of people, known as Chovevi Zion (Palestinophiles), were formed for the purpose of resettling Jews in Palestine, and a great suc- cess was achieved when their aims received the support of Baron Edmond de Rothschild, of Paris, who, with a generous heart, poured out enormous sums of money for the creation of Jewish colonies in that country. The continuous stream of immigration has introduced into Palestine once more a flourishing agricultural population passionately attached to the soil of the forefathers, and has again turned Jerusalem numerically into a Jewish city. While the movement had thus gathered strength in the East, there arose in the West a new star which shed a brilliant light on the whole Dispersion. Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), an heroic figure, recall- ing one of the Judges of Israel of ancient days, may be said to have inaugurated a new era in Jewish life, the developments of which it is not yet possible to forecast. WTiereas since the days of Moses Mendelssohn it had become the aim of the Jews to achieve political and social equality by assimilation with their fellow-citizens short of religious dissolution, the movement set on foot by Herzl under the name of Zionism declared the inade- quacy of the old ideal for the preservation of the Jewish individuality and raised the necessity for the rebirth of the Jewish people as a self-governing body in its historic home into an object and ideal worthy THE AGE OF ASSIMILATION isf of labour and achievement. This idea has, since its in- ception at an international Zionist Congress, held in Basle in 1897, received the suffrages of the largest num- ber of Jews ever permanently united for a definite pur- pose since the days of Jewish independence. The roots that the Jewish renaissance has already struck far and deep in the soil of Palestine have given a solid basis for the aspirations of Zionism. § 15. Modern Problems. — Jewish life now moves within two poles: on the one hand, there is the idea of the world-wide dispersion of the Jewish people and the adaptation of its individual members to their dominant surroundings; on the other, the Zionist ideal of the con- centration of Jewish forces for primarily Jewish ends. But within these two concepts of Jewish policy and Jew- ish destiny, there are a number of problems — not only religious or political, but economic and social — some of which are without parallel among any other race of men. The Jews, a religious community, are yet held together by a racial solidarity; closely identified with, and patri- otically devoted to, the conflicting interests of many different nationalities, the Jews yet retain a common bond between the most diverse elements of their people, which is now, as it was already described in the far-off days of Xerxes the Persian, "scattered and dispersed among the nations." The consequences of the economic and social upheavals, which have produced among the Jews a hitherto unknown class-conscious proletariat, have hardly yet received adequate consideration; the results of the intellectual and religious fermentation by the break-up of ancient Jewish landmarks, are still in the womb of time; the effects of the great migratory move- ments from Europe to the New World, will form a chapter in the Jewish history of the future. But what-, ever the future may bring in its train, the Jewish past has shown us the remarkable morale of a world-wide people which, without an inch of soil to call its own, 1S8 HISTORY OF THE JEWS without a common mothex-tongue, without a secular gov- ernment or even a religious hierarchy, actively partici- pates in the shaping of world-events, and manifests a vitality that goes from strength to strength. THE END. BIBLIOGRAPHY Abbott, G. F., Israel in Europe. Abrahams, I., Jewish Life in the Middle Ages. Cassel, D., Manual of Jewish History and Literature. Dubnow, S. M., Jewish History (A Philosophical Essay). Fishberg, M., The Jews: A Study of Place and Environment. Friedlander, M., The Jewish Religion (Orthodox). Gaster, M., Prayers of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews. Goodman, P., The Synagogue and the Church (An Apology of Judaism). Graetz, H., History of the Jews (The Standard History). Herzl, Th., a Jewish State (On Zionism). Hyamson, a. M., History of the Jews in England. Jewish Encyclopaedia, The. Joseph, M., Judaism as Creed and Life (Moderate Reform). Lazarus, M., Ethics of Judaism. Leroy-Beaulieu, M. A., Israel among the Nations. Lucas, Mrs. Henry, Songs of Zion (Medieval). Magnus, Lady, Jewish Portraits. MiiLMAN, H. H., History of the Jews (Everyman's Library). Montefiore, C. G., Liberal Judaism (Advanced Reform). Oesterley, W. O. E., and G. H. Box, The Religion and Wor- ship of the Synagogue. Philipson, D., The Reform Movement in Judaism. Renan, E., History of the People of Israel. Schechter, S., Studies in Judaism. ScHURER, E., History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ. Singer, S., Authorized Daily Prayer Book. Taylor, C, Ethics of the Jewish Fathers. Toy, C. H., Judaism and Christianity. Wiener, L., History of Yiddish Literature. 159 INDEX Aaron, 3 Abba Arica (Rab), 48 Abraham, i ibn Ezra, 75 Abravanel, Isaac, loi, 103, 114 Samuel, 114 Abtalion, 28 Abulafia, Abraham, no Adiabene, 33 JEWa. Capitohna, 40 Agrippa I, 34 — 7 n. 35. 36 Akiba ben Joseph, 40, 46 Albo, Joseph, 107 Alcharizi, Judah, 106 Alexander Janna^us, 22 Alexandra Salome, 22 Allgemeine Zeitung d. Juden- thums, 143 Alliance Israelite Universelle, 153 Amoraim, 49, 55 Amos, II Anan ben David, 65, 66 Anglo-Jewish Association, 153 Antipater, 23 . Anti-Semitism, 154, 155 Antokolski, Marc, 149 Apollos, 33 Aquila, 47 Archelaus, 24 Aristobulus I, 22 II, 22 Asher ben JechitI, 107 Ashi, Rab, 55 Ashkenazi, Solomon, 116 Zebi Hirsh, 118 Assideans, 25 Bachya ibn Pakuda, 75 Bar Cochba, 40 Bar Giora, Simon, 37, 40 Basnage, J. C, 124 Bedersi, Jedaiah, 106 Benjamin, Judah P., 151 ■ of Tudela, 75 B'nai Brith, 153 Borne, Ludwig, 131 Bostonai, 63 Bulan, 69 Bush, Solomon, 150 Cabbalah, 107-109 Caro, Joseph, 115, 141 Chasdai, Abu al-Fadhl, 72 Crescas, 107, 127 ibn Shaprut, 69, 71 Chassidim, 120, 122 Chazars, 67-69 Chushiel, 71 Cremieux, Adolphe, 131, 152 Daniel, 14 David, 6 Deborah, 5 Del Medigo, Elias, 114 Disraeli, Benjamin, 132 Donin, Nicholas, 104, 105 Donmeh, the, 112 Dreyfus, Alfred, 155 Dunash ibn Labrat, 71, 72 Duran, Simon, 107 Ebionites, the, 32 Eleazar ben Kalir, 72 161 1 62 INDEX Elijah, II ofVilna, Ii8, 122 Essenes, the, 26 Estherka, 97 EybeschiJtz, Jonathan, 118 Ezekiel, 11 Ezra, the Scribe, 17, 18 "Fiscus Judaicus," 39 Frank, Jacob, 1x2, 113 Frankel, David, 134 Zecharias, 143 Franzos, Karl Emil, 150 Friedlander, David, 139 Gamaliel I, 47 H, 47 Gans, David, 117 Eduard, 140 Geiger, Abraham, 140, 143 Gemara {see Talmud) Geonim, the, 63, 64 Gershom ben Judah, 78, 79 Goldfaden, A., 138 Gordon, Leon, 137 Gratz, H., 140 "Guide of the Perplexed," 76-78 104, 13s Hagadah, 27 Haggai, 16, 27 Hai, 64 Halachah, 27 Hanucah. 21 Haskalah, the, 136, 137 Hasmoneans, the, 21, 22 Heine, Heinrich, 131, 140 Heller, Yom Tob Lipman, 1 18 Herod, 23 Herz, Henriette, 139 Herzl, Theodor, 156 Hess, Moses, 156 Hezekiah, Gaon, 64 Hildesheimer, Israel, 143 Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden, JS3 Hillel, 27, 28 Hirsch, Clara de, 153 Maurice de, 153, 154 Samson Raphael Hirsch, 143 Samuel, 143 Holdheim, Samuel, 143 Hoshea, 8 Hyrcanus, John, 16, 22 Hyrcanus II, 22, 23 Immanuel, of Rome, 114 Isaac, I ben Sheset, 107 of Troki, 118 Isaiah, 11 Israel Baalshem, 120, 121 Jacob, 2 Jacobsohn, Israel, 142 Jacob Tam, 79, 91 Jamnia, 46 Jechiel, of Paris, 104 Jehoiachin, 10, 14 Jehoiakim, 10 Jekuthiel ibn Hassan, 169 Jereboam, 8 Jeremiah, 11, 14 Jesus of Nazareth, 30-32 Jewish Colonization Ass'n, 154 Jochanan ben Zaccai, 28, 46, 47 John the Baptist, 26, 31 John of Gischala, 37, 39 Jonah Gerondi, 104 ibn Janach, 72 Jonathan, the Maccabee, 21 the prophet, 10 Josce, 93 Joseph, chagan, 69 Hacohen, 114 Ibn Nagdela, 72 Josephus, 37 Joshua, 5 High Priest, 16 Josiah, 9 Jest, J. M., 140 INDEX 163 Judah ben Meir, 78 Chayug, 72 Halevi, 74 ibn Ezra, 73 Messer Leon, 114 Judah the Patriarch, 49 Judas Maccabeus, 21 Judges, the, j Karaites, the, 65, 67 Kimchi, David, 75 Krochmal, Nachman, 140 Lassalle, Ferdinand, 132 Lemmlein, Asher, 1 10 Leo Hebraeus, 114 Levi ben Gerson, 107, 127 Levin, Rachel, 139 Levita, Elias, 114 Lippold, 129 Loew, Judah ben Bezalel, 117 Loewe, Louis, 152 Lopez, Rodrigo, 99 Lorqui, Joshua, 100 Luria, Isaac, 109, 115 Luzzatti, Luigi, 132 Luzzatto, Moses Chaim, 1 18 , Samuel David, 141 Maccabeans, the, 20-22 Maimon, Solomon, 135 Maimonides, Moses, 75-78, 103- 105, 127, 141 Malachi, 27 Manasseh ben Israel, 125 Mapu, Abraham, 137 Mar Zutra, 55 Maranos, loi, 103 Mariamne the Hasmonean, 23 Marx, Karl, 132 Maskilim, 136 Mattathias the Hasmonean, 21 "Meassef," 136 Medina, Solomon de, 146 Meir of Rothenburg, 105-106 Meisel, Mordecai, 85 Menachem ben Saruk, 71 Mendelssohn, Abraham, 139 , Felix, 139 , Moses, 133-136 Mendesia, Gracia, 115 Messiah, the, 30 Micah, II Midrash, 27 Mishnah {see Talmud) "Mishneh Torah," 72 Molcho, David, no Montefiore, Sir Moses, 152, 153 Mortara, Edgar, 152 Moses, 2 et passim , the Torah of, 3-5, 17, 26, 27 ben Enoch, 71 de Leon, 109 ibn Ezra, 75 Munk, Salomon, 141, 152 Nachmanides, Moses, 105 Nasi, Joseph, 115, 116 Nathan, the prophet, II bar Isaac Hacohen, 71, 78 ben Jechiel, 114 , Ernesto, 132 "Nathan der Weise," 134 Nazarenes, the, 32 Nehemiah, 17 Cohen, 1 1 1 New Testament, the, 51 Nieto, David, 118 Obadiah, chagan, 68 Onias, Temple of, 29 Oppenheimer, Joseph Siiss, 129 Ottolenghi, Giuseppe, 132 Pablo Christiani, 105 Paul, 32, 33, 34, 108 Payetanim, the, 72 Petrus Leonis, 113 PfefFerkorn, Johann, 123 Pharisees, the, 22, 24, 26 Philippson, Ludwig, 143 Philo-Judaeus, 29, 30 108, 164 INDEX Polak, Jacob, 117 Prince of the Captivity, 48, 49, 60 Prophets, the, 10, 11 Proselytism, Jewish, 32-34 Psalms, the, 6 Rabban, Joseph, 68 Rapoport, S. J., 140 Rashi, 79 Reform Judaism, 141-144 Rehoboam, 7 Reubeni, David, no Riesser, Gabriel, 131, 145 Rossi, Azariah dei, 114 Rothschild, Lionel, 147 , Lord, 147 Rubinstein, Anton, 149 Saadia, Gaon, 64, d'j Sabbethai Zebi, ill, 112 Saboraim, 55 Sadducees, 22, 24-26 Salomon, Haym, 150 Salomons, Sir David, 147 Samaritans, the, 16 Samson, 5 Samuel, 6, il ibn Nagdela, 72 Sanhedrin, the, 23 Sasportas, Jacob, ill Saul, 6 Septuagint, 29, 46 Sforno, Obadiah, 114 Shammai, 27 Shemaiah, 28 Shemariah ben Elchanan, 71 Sheshbazzar, 15 "Shulchan Aruch," 115 Shylock, 99 Sicarii, 24 Simon bar Giora, 37, 40 ben Jochai, 109 — ; — Duran, 107 Simon the Maccabee, 22 Smolenskin, Perez, 137 Solomon, 7, 8 ben Adret, 106 ibn Gebirol, 73 of Montpellier, 104 Spinoza, Benedict, 127, 128 Steinschneider, M., 140 Suasso, Antonio Lopez, 146 Siisskind von Trimberg, 137 Synod, the Great, 18, 27 Talmud, the, 49-51 Tannaim, 27, 46, 49 Tibbon, the family of ibn, 104 Torah of Moses, the, 3-5, 17, 26, ^27 Torres, Luis de, 122 Tossaphists, the, 79 Wecelinus, 89 Wise, Isaac M., 143 Yiddish, 137, 138 Yom Tob, of Joigny, 93 Zealots, the, 24 Zechariah, 16, 27 Zedekiah, 10 Zerubbabel, 16 Zionism, 155-157 "Zohar," 109 Zunz, Leopold, 140 i UC SOUTHERfJ RfGIOMAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 478 734 7 J