histocy of the Jewish people
RUFUS LEARSI
296
Goldberg
Israel
67-09166
KANSAS CITY, MO PUBLIC LI BRARY
D DDD1 DBllDEa 7
Israel :
A HISTORY OF THE
JEWISH PEOPLE
Behold, the bush burned
'with -fire, and the bush 'was
not consumed. EXODUS in, 2
ISRAEL : A HISTORY
OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE
BY RUFUS LEARSI
Meridian Books
THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY
CLEVELAND AND NEW YORK
A MERIDIAN BOOK
Published by The World Publishing Company
2231 West iioth Street, Cleveland, Ohio 44102
Published simultaneously in Canada by
Nelson, Foster & Scott Ltd.
First Meridian printing May 1966.
Copyright 1949 by Rufus Learsi.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
if any form without written permission from the publisher,
except for brief passages included in a review
appearing in a newspaper or magazine.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 49-8382
Printed in the United States of America. Fi>566
TO SUNDEL DONIGER
"with affection and esteem
Foreword
Not the achievements of renowned individuals, not even the rise
and fall of great communities across the centuries, but the career of
a single people should stand before the reader as the dominant theme
of this narrative. In this drama, altogether unique in the annals of
the nations, the leading actor is the Jewish people.
Moreover, a reading of this odyssey should, in spite of diversions
and retreats, engender a sense of direction and goal. A river may
twist and wind, but its general course is nonetheless definite. The
sense of destiny a destiny not in terms of "might and power, but
of spirit'' is, of course, explicit in the traditions that began with
the first Hebrew, but it seems to emerge also from the career of
his descendants. The history of man, like man himself, "doth not
live by bread only"; not, at any rate, the history of the Jewish
people.
This book appears at a time when the nations of the world have,
knowingly or unknowingly, aligned themselves with the millennial
goal by decreeing the reestablishment of the Jewish state in Pales-
tine, and when the heroic Jewish community in that land has
actually transformed itself into the State of Israel. After sustaining
a disaster of unparalleled magnitude in the Second World War, the
Jewish people may now achieve one of the essential conditions of
a dignified and creative life. In the making of that event the tragic
present joined hands with the imperative past the present which
all who run may read, and the past which, it is hoped, the following
pages will help to reveal.
After years of labor spent on this work, it is pleasant to recall
the friends who upheld the author in his task. First among them
are Dr. Israel S. Wechsler and Sundel Doniger. Others are Mrs.
FOREWORD
Frank Cohen, Maurice J. Waldinger, Dr. Joshua H. Neumann and
Dr. Joshua Bloch, of whom the last two read the proof and made
many sound suggestions. I am greatly indebted to my son, David
Emanud, for his help in connection with the last chapters of the
book and with the preparation of the manuscript for publication.
Finally, the generous assistance of the Jewish History Foundation,
Inc., and of the Esco Fund Committee, Inc., is gratefully acknowl-
edged.
RUFUS LEARSI
Contents
Part One THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
2000 B.C.E.-586 B.C.E.
1 Abraham, Isaac, Jacob 3
2 Bondage and Freedom 1 1
3 Desert and Torah 19
4 The Land and the Conquest 3 1
5 The Judges 41
6 Saul and David 48
7 David the King 53
8 Solomon 59
9 The Kingdom of Israel 65
10 Prophets in Israel 72
1 1 Judah and Isaiah 79
12 Judah and Jeremiah 89
Part Two THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
586 B.C.E. 70 C.E.
13 Exile ioi
14 Restoration 108
15 The Life and the Book 114
1 6 Greek Dominion 121
17 The Maccabaean Revolt 129
1 8 The Hasmonaean Dynasty 138
CONTENTS
19 Roman Dominion
20 Messiah Longing
21 Mounting Crisis 162
22 The Great Revolt 171
Part Three DISPERSION
7O C.E. 1492
23 New Life 183
24 Rebels and Sages 188
25 The Mishnah 193
26 The Patriarchate 198
27 Christian Palestine 203
28 The Talmud 210
29 The Rise of Islam 220
30 Decline of the East 228
31 Westward to Spain 239
32 High Noon 249
33 France, Germany, and the Crusades 265
34 Martyrdom and Exile 274
35 Inner Life 287
36 Christian Spain 298
37 Twilight in Spain 306
38 Exile 313
Part Four IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
14921789
39 Light and Shadow in Italy 321
40 Turkey Haven of Refuge 329
41 In Germany and Holland 335
42 The Great Center in Poland 345
CONTENTS
43 The Disaster of 1648 354
44 False Messiahs 360
45 Eighteenth-Century Europe 370
46 Chassidism and "Enlightenment" 380
Part Five EMANCIPATION
1789-1914
47 A Brave New World 393
48 Europe in Revolution and Reaction 401
49 The Primrose Path 413
50 Reform and Neo-Orthodoxy 42 1
51 Heights and Depths 432
52 Emancipation 439
53 In Czarist Russia 449
54 Russianizatioli and "Enlightenment" 462
55 Pogroms and Self -Help 472
56 America, City of Refuge 482
57 The "City" Expands 492
58 Anti-Semitism and the Dreyfus Affair 502
59 Theodor Herzl 515
60 The Last of the Czars 527
61 Survey, 1914: The East 540
62 Survey, 1914: The West 554
Pan Six THE WORLD WARS
19141948
63 The First World War 571
64 New Europe and New Russia 583
65 Disaster Made in Germany 591
66 The "Long Truce" in Eastern Europe 600
CONTENTS
67 The "Long Truce" in the West 615
68 Palestine Resurgent 631
69 Holocaust in Europe 645
70 Crimson Dawn 659
FOR ADDITIONAL READING 683
INDEX 689
List of Maps
Canaan and Sinai 16
The World of the Ancient Hebrews 16
"The Face of the Land": Topography of Palestine 36
Land of Israel under David and Solomon 60
Jerusalem in the Reign of Solomon 60
Israel and Judah, and their Neighbors 80
Land of Israel in the Second Commonwealth 146
Jerusalem During the Roman Siege 146
<*
The Diaspora in the East 212
The Remnant in Palestine 212
The Diaspora in the West 290
The Diaspora in the North 378
The East European Center 450
The Larger Jewish Communities in the United States 620
Communities Founded before 1776 620
Palestine Resurgent 632
The Remnants of European Jewry in 1946 656
Part One
2OOO B.C.E. TO 586 B.C.E.
The First* Commonwealth
Faith, Land, and People
CHAPTER ONE
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob
THE Bible as history has found remarkable support in the
testimony of archaeology, and chronicles of the Jewish
people may well continue to follow its lead and begin
with the three Patriarchs. They, like the rest of the Bible, have of
course been exposed to various theories, some of which have even
shed doubt on their existence. But as we read their lives in the
sacred text the theories fade and vanish: the conviction that they
were men, real men, grows on $ie reader and becomes indelible.
The first of the three, Abraham son of Terah, as the pro-
genitor of the twelve tribes of Israel, is the founder of the Hebrew
nation. This nomad shepherd, tradition reports, received the most
momentous illumination in the spiritual ascent of man the recog-
nition of the One God, maker of heaven and earth, holy and
righteous, champion of the weak and oppressed. On Abraham was
also conferred the Great Covenant with its promise that his de-
scendants would forever possess the land of Canaan. Thus, out of
the first Patriarch emerge the three leading strands of this narrative:
faith, land, and people.
2
BORN some forty centuries ago in Ur of the Chaldees, not
far from the Gulf of Persia, Abraham belonged to a clan of
nomads whose remote origins must be sought in Arabia. And from
Ur the clan resumed its wanderings, moving north and sojourning
a space of time in Haran on the upper reaches of the Euphrates.
Now the world through which the first Hebrew patriarch
wandered was already old. A thousand years before him, the
country, inhabited by a people called Sumerians, was already
dotted with cities where the arts and vices of civilization flourished
3
4 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
profusely. Kings waged war with standing armies; merchants
traded near and far; scribes wrote skillfully and durably in wedge-
shaped letters on clay tablets, and architects built huge temples
where many and strange deities were worshipped gods and
demons of earth, air, and water, of sun, moon, and stars. Centuries
later, the Sumerian cities were overrun by hordes of bearded
Semitic warriors and, about the time of Abraham, the Semites had
produced a ruler of genius named Hammurabi (2 123-2081 B.C.E.*),
who bound the bickering cities to his will, made Babylon, his own
city, the capital of the Empire of Babylonia, and established a
system of laws which has become famous as the Code of Ham-
murabi. As Abraham drove his flocks along the Euphrates, it was
the civilization of Babylonia that he found everywhere pre-
dominant.
But Abraham was not to end his days in Mesopotamia. The
Voice of the One God he heard and obeyed ordered him to leave
his country and his kindred for "a land that I will show thee."
Crossing the Euphrates River, the patriarch, with his flocks and
herds, his menservants and maidservants, turned west and then
south toward Canaan. It was one of the momentous river crossings
in history; thereafter Abraham was to be known as Ibri, "the man
who crossed over."
To the people of Canaan the newcomers were, of course, just
another nomad band. The land was inhabited by a number of
nations at different stages of development, from the cave dwellers,
who have been traced back to 12,000 B.C.E., to the highly civilized
Amorites. The latter were agriculturists, artisans, and traders.
They lived in walled cities, possessed skillfully constructed for-
tresses, and were so dominant that in the earliest inscriptions the
country as a whole is called the Land of Amurru. The religion
of the Amorites, like all primitive religions, was essentially a
nature idolatry, with deities who presided over the different natural
forces. The male Baal and the female Asherah were worshipped on
the so-called "high-places'* with gory and lewd ceremonies, often
accompanied by human sacrifice.
In Canaan, moreover, the Hebrew nomads found the civilization
of Babylonia challenged by the power and glamour of Egypt. For
Before the current era.
ABRAHAM, ISAAC, JACOB 5
in the valley of the Nile there flourished a civilization even more
splendid than the Babylonian. Egypt's pyramids and temples, her
palaces, paintings, and statues, the might and magnificence of her
1-ulers, were the envy and dread of all the lands. And the animal
divinities of Egypt clashed and mingled in Canaan with the gods
and demons of Babylonia.
The Hebrew nomads pitched their tents at Shechem, moved on
to Bethel, and wandered farther south. In a year of drought and
famine, they trekked through the Desert of Shur to find sustenance
in Egypt. But they returned to Canaan, growing steadily stronger,
richer, more numerous.
3
THUS, between two hoary civilizations, moved a little band
of nomads charged with a new destiny. Between two idolatries
appeared the first sprouts of a new faith, the faith of the spirit. For
the journey of the first Hebrew, we learn, was already stamped
with the seal that marks the career of his descendants. He was not
merely searching for greener pastures: he was carrying out the
Covenant between himself and his Deity, the pact in which God
had declared: "I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless
thee and make thy name great . . . and in thee shall all the families
of the earth be blessed."
So the patriarch walked through the land with the tread of a
conqueror. Under stress of necessity, he pitted his clan victoriously
against a coalition of four kings. The kings in question, led by
Chedor-laomer of Elam, had invaded Canaan to punish certain
cities, among them being Sodom and Gomorrah, which had re-
belled against his suzerainty. One of the four, Amraphel, King of
Shinar, has been identified as none other than the great Hammurabi
of Babylon. After overcoming a defensive alliance of five Canaan-
ite kings, the invaders departed, carrying off among their captives
Abraham's nephew Lot together with his household. But Abraham
pursued and defeated the kings, rescued his kinsman, and recovered
the booty.
On his return the local rulers courted his good will and he dealt
with them shrewdly and masterfully. The patriarch is not pic-
tured as a flawless saint; in difficult situations he resorts to guile.
6 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
But Abraham is magnanimous and compassionate; his justice is
tempered with mercy. When an edict of doom goes out against
the depraved cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, his heart is moved
with pity for their inhabitants and, vain though his plea, he
implores God to spare them. He sits at the door of his tent and
receives wayfarers with lordly hospitality. He stands before men
with assurance and dignity, before God with humility. Nor does
he conceive his God as only a family or tribal deity. "Shall not
the judge of all the earth do justly?" he cries in his plea for the
wicked cities.
In old age, his wife Sarah bears him the son they had long
despaired of, and when the infant Isaac is eight days old, the
father, in token of the Great Covenant, performs upon him the
rite of circumcision. Thus, with Isaac, the line is continued and
the Covenant confirmed.
But a strange doom is pronounced upon the boy: to prove his
utter devotion to God, Abraham must offer him up as a sacrifice.
All the nations of antiquity, Aryan as well as Semitic, worshipped
their gods with human sacrifice; Moloch, a deity of the nations
among whom Abraham wandered, delighted especially in the
charred bodies of first-born sons. The Hebrew Patriarch and his
descendants were to learn that their God abhorred such sacrifice,
and the lesson was to be so vivid that neither he nor his descend-
ants would ever forget it. At the crucial moment he hears the
Voice say: "Lay not thy hand upon the lad, neither do thou
anything unto him!" The story of that ordeal, the Akedah or
the "binding" of Isaac, still makes human hearts shudder and
thrill.
Sarah, the first mother of her people, died in Hebron, a city
destined to be the scene of great events in the career of her de-
scendants. There were Hittites in the city, and from one of them
Abraham acquired his first stake in the soil of the Promised Land:
the field "which was in Machpelach . . . and the cave that was
therein," and in that cave the first mother of the Hebrews was
laid to rest.
4
ISAAC has entered into manhood, but his wife must not be
of the daughters of Canaan, for the land reeks with idolatry and
ABRAHAM, ISAAC, JACOB 7
pollution. So the patriarch's steward, Eliezer, journeys to Haran
and brings back Rebekah, granddaughter of Nahor, his master's
brother, to be Isaac's wife. In the regal narrative of the Bible the
first meeting of Isaac and Rebekah is thus related:
And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the eventide;
and he lifted up his eyes, and saw, and, behold, there were
camels coming. And Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when
she saw Isaac, she alighted from the camel. And she said unto
the servant: "What man is this that walketh in the field to
meet us?" And the servant said: "It is my master." And she
took her veil and covered herself. And the servant told Isaac
all the things that he had done. And Isaac brought her into his
mother's tent, and took Rebekah and she became his wife; and
he loved her. And Isaac was comforted for his mother.
Other sons besides Isaac had been born to Abraham; one of
them, Ishmael, is famous in story and legend. With his mother
Hagar, the lad has been thrust into the desert by the jealousy of
Sarah, and is near to die of thirst when God's angel intervenes
and saves him. Ishmael, whose mother was an Egyptian, could
not be the bearer of the Covenant: he became the father of the
Arab nomads. To Isaac alone fell the glory and the burden.
5
"IN A GOOD old age, an old man, and full of years," Abra-
ham died and was gathered to his people. Ishmael and Isaac, their
feud forgotten, took up their father and laid him beside Sarah
in the cave of Machpelah. Now Isaac, the second patriarch, com-
manded the Hebrews, and God blessed him in all his ways, reaf-
firming unto him the Great Covenant.
The Hebrew nomads become stronger, and Abimelech, a king
of the Philistines, orders them out of his borders and sets his people
to destroy their wells. In the end, however, the Philistine monarch
is forced to sue for a treaty of peace and alliance with them. Grad-
ually the nomads take up the ways of settled life: they learn to
plow and plant and reap. So Isaac, we learn, "waxed great, and
grew more and more until he became very great."
In the meantime Rebekah, whom God in His mercy saved
from barrenness, bore the patriarch twin sons. The parents named
8 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
one Esau, "the hairy one," for he was covered with hair from
birth, and the other Jacob, for he gripped his brother's heel
(Hebrew: ekeb), striving with him while still in the womb.
Though twins, the brothers were as unlike as two human beings
could be. Esau was wild and rude, a hunter and man of the field.
Jacob was gentle and wise, "a quiet man dwelling in tents."
A tense drama unfolds, a struggle for supremacy between the
brothers. Esau is obviously unfit to be the carrier of the Covenant,
for he lacks the gifts by which men apprehend God. Moreover,
he marries Hittite women who are "a bitterness of spirit unto
Isaac and unto Rebekah." Coming home one day from the hunt
and famished for food, Esau sells his birthright to his brother for
4 'bread and pottage of lentils," thus despising the great prerogative.
The long duel reaches its climax when Isaac is old and his eyes
are dim. One of the brothers is to receive the patriarch's final
blessing. The father chooses Esau, but Rebekah, with the cunning
of an Oriental queen-mother, puts Jacob in Esau's place and Isaac
speaks the irrevocable words over Jacob. A fury of hatred against
the supplanter blazes up in Esau, and Rebekah sends Jacob away
to Aram, or Mesopotamia, to find safety with her brother Laban.
ON THE way to Aram the fugitive, we read, hears the voice
of God reaffirming the Covenant. "The land whereon thou liest,
to thee will I give it and to thy seed . . . And in thee and in thy
seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed."
And at last Jacob comes to "the land of the children of the east,"
the land of Aram. At a well surrounded by shepherds and flocks,
he meets the comely Rachel, daughter of Laban, coming to water
her father's sheep. Unaided, Jacob rolls away from the well's
mouth the great stone which always required the united strength
of all the shepherds to move.
Seven years Jacob serves Laban for Rachel the beautiful, only
to find himself, through Laban's deceit, wedded to her plain
sister Leah; but he serves seven more and obtains the cousin he
loves. Finally, he labors six more years for flocks of sheep and
goats, outwitting the wily Aramaean who tries to defraud him
ABRAHAM, ISAAC, JACOB 9
again. And sons are born to Jacob of his wives and concubines:
Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar and Zebulun, whose mother
was Leah; Dan and Naphtali, whose mother was Bilhah, Rachel's
handmaid; Gad and Asher whom Zilpah, Leah's handmaid, bore.
And, finally, there was Joseph, whom Rachel the beloved bore
unto Jacob, God having heard her prayers and taken away from
her the shame of barrenness.
Twenty years have passed, and the call of Canaan comes strong
upon Jacob, but on the way he faces- a great peril. Esau has become
a warrior chieftain in the land of Edom, and when Jacob's mes-
sengers bring him tidings of his brother's approach, Esau hastens
to meet him with four hundred armed men. Jacob's courage and
ingenuity are severely tested, but neither fails him. His strategy is
remarkable for its shrewd understanding of human nature, partic-
ularly the fickle nature of a desert sheik. Esau's designs, if they
were hostile, melt in the warmth of his brother's generosity. Both
brothers are deeply moved. "And Esau," we read, "ran to meet him
and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him; and they
wept." The night before, an aftgel had come and wrestled with
Jacob. Unable to prevail against him, the angel had bestowed on
him a new name: Israel, "prince of God," expressive of the patri-
arch's power with God and men.
7
so ISRAEL returned to Canaan with wives and sons and
daughters, with menservants and maidservants, with flocks of sheep
and herds of cattle. His advent must have created no little stir in
the country. Israel pitched his tents before Shechem, and his sons
wreaked terrible vengeance on that city for an insult inflicted on
their sister Dinah. He went on to Bethel, and on the way to
Bethlehem, Rachel gave birth to another son whom she was just
able to name Ben-oni, "son of^my agony," later called Benjamin,
before giving up the spirit. In Hebron, Jacob found his father
Isaac "old and full of days," and when Isaac died, Esau came up
from Edom and the brothers laid their father in the cave of Mach-
pelah.
The years pass and a new drama fraught with immense con-
10 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
sequences unfolds itself, the drama of Joseph and his brothers.
In the Bible narrative it throbs with passion and pathos and glows
with the color of the East. Joseph has dreams of domination and as
he foolishly boasts of them, hatred grows in the hearts of the
brothers against the favorite son whom Israel has singled out for
special marks of affection, the most provoking being a gift sym-
bolizing authority, "a coat of many colors." So they seize their
brother and cast him into a pit. "And they sat down to eat bread;
and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and behold, a caravan
of Ishmaelites came from Gilead, with their camels bearing spicery
and balm and ladanum, going to carry it down to Egypt."
And while the sons of Jacob deliberate, deciding at last to sell
their brother into bondage instead of letting him die in the pit,
some Midianite merchants happen along and anticipate them.
They draw the youth out of the pit and sell him to the Ishmaelites
"for twenty pieces of silver." And when the brothers find him
gone, they dip the hated coat of many colors in the blood of a
slain goat and lay it before their father as proof that Joseph has
been torn by a wild beast. Alas for the old man with the blood-
stained coat in his hands! Alas for Israel weeping and refusing to be
comforted for the dearest of all his sons!
But down the coastal plain and across the desert, the caravan
now bears a new freight, a Hebrew youth given to dreaming
dreams, sold to the merchants and going down to be sold again in
the fabulous land of Egypt.
Such, in swift review, is the story of the Hebrew Patriarchs,
the first "heroes" of the Jewish people. But they are wholly unlike
the first heroes in the annals of any other people. They are neither
demigods nor men of giant mold, brandishing sword, spear, and
club, hacking their way through hosts of enemies, performing
incredible deeds of valor. Nor are they perfect knights and saints,
sans pew et sans reprocbe, fearless and stainless. On the contrary,
they are men, real men, moved by the earthy passions of the
human heart, nor are they free from error and sin. But, in all
their journeys and tribulations, a strange and unique light beats
upon them, an awareness that the Spirit of all flesh has chosen
them for a sublime purpose.
BONDAGE AND FREEDOM I I
CHAPTER TWO
Bondage and Freedom
THE Egypt to which Joseph was brought was altogether a
marvelous land. It teemed with cities and villages, it glit-
tered with palaces and temples, with stately mansions and
public buildings, with pyramids, obelisks, and statues. The king,
or Pharaoh, ruled it in might and splendor and the people wor-
shipped him as a god, toiling and dying for his glory. Led by a
numerous priesthood, the Egyptians venerated a great many gods,
including birds and beasts, reptiles and insects. They worshipped
bulls, cats and ibis, snakes, lizards and beetles. Their religion,
moreover, was intensely preoccupied with the dead: their bible,
the Book of the Dead, consisted of directions and incantations to
aid the departed in the nether world. The priests, moreover, were
masters of the art of embalming, and the exalted dead were laid
away in tombs inside the pyramids which have not been equaled
for magnitude and opulence.
By trade and conquest the civilization of Egypt had overflowed
its borders. The "sand dwellers" of the North, as the Egyptians
called the nomads of Canaan, as well as the walled cities of the
Canaanite princes, were frequently brought under the sway of the
Pharaoh. Sometimes the armed forces of Egypt spearmen and
bowmen, chariots and horsemen swept up the coastal plain of
Canaan, swung east at the foot of Carmel into the Valley of Jezreel,
and there they set their array and locked in battle with the
Hittites or Babylonians. With the recession of the armies, the
merchant caravans reappeared, going down into Egypt for pottery,
glassware, and jewelry, and bearing for exchange the spices of
Gilead as well as leather and wool, and, perhaps, a handsome youth
who might be picked up on the way to fetch a high price in the
slave market of Memphis or Thebes.
12 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
JOSEPH, we learn, was bought by a wealthy Egyptian
named Potiphar, and soon rose to a place of importance in his
master's household. But the youth's fortunes were brought down
by the rage of his master's wife, whose lustful advances he dared
to spurn. Now he was in the prison house awaiting the fate of all
the wretched in Egypt who incurred the displeasure of the mighty.
But the young Hebrew was marvelously gifted. He "was of
beautiful form and fair to look upon," and to outward charm
he added wisdom and intuition. He had above all the gift of action:
he knew what to do at moments when others were dismayed or
bewildered. "The Lord made all that he did to prosper in his
hand."
And suddenly the Hebrew slave finds himself in the presence
of the monarch. The Pharaoh has dreamed strange, disquieting
dreams: seven lean cows consume seven fat cows; seven ears of
corn, "thin and blasted with the wind," swallow up seven ears
"full and good." The official magicians and dream interpreters
can make nothing of it, but the keen vision of the Hebrew reveals
the hidden meaning. Before the startled king and courtiers he
raises the famine signal. Let Egypt take heed! Seven years of
drought are coming upon the land and grain must be stored up
against the famine, or Egypt will die. Let power be entrusted to
one man, for the menace is grave. "You are the man," says the
Pharaoh to the Hebrew slave.
So Joseph becomes the food dictator of die empire and his power
is second only to the monarch's. Seven years of plenty come and
go: Joseph fills up the granaries of Egypt. His word is law. Then
come the lean years; the Nile is too low to water the fields, the
irrigation buckets shrivel in the heat. Famine comes down like a
conqueror over all the lands of the East: in Egypt alone there
is food.
In Canaan, Joseph's brothers sit and wonder whence food is
to be gotten for their hungry children. "Why do you look one
upon another?" says their old father. "I have heard that there is
corn in Egypt. Get you down thither and buy for us from there:
that we may live and not die." So they go down into Egypt and
BONDAGE AND FREEDOM 13
stand before their brother Joseph, who knows them but they
know him not.
Now Benjamin, whose mother was also the mother of Joseph,
is not with them, for Israel feared to expose the lad to the hazards of
die journey. But Joseph yearns for Benjamin and, charging his
brothers with being spies, he holds Simeon as a hostage and sends
the rest away with the admonition that they can clear themselves
only by bringing Benjamin. "And," we read, "he turned himself
about from them, and wept."
The famine continues; the clan of Israel in Canaan cries aloud
for bread. Benjamin is forced to take the journey with his brothers
and face the harsh man who rules in Egypt. But the man receives
and feasts the Hebrews in his own house. "Is your father well,"
he asks them, "the old man of whom you spoke? Is he yet alive?
Is this your youngest brother of whom you spoke to me? God
be gracious unto thee, my son." And Joseph retires to his own
room to weep.
The sacks are filled and the brothers depart, but they are
brought back posthaste. Joseph *had ordered his favorite silver
goblet placed in Benjamin's sack, for he would hold the lad as
a thief. But Judah, who had gone as surety for Benjamin with
his father, steps forward and pleads to be held and punished in
place of the boy.
Now Joseph can no longer contain himself: the flood breaks
every bound. "I am Joseph," he cries, "Doth my father yet live?"
The news is brought to Israel. "It is enough," cries the old man,
"Joseph my son is yet alive. I will go and see him before I die."
Such is the story of Joseph and his brothers, a tale that still
excites the imagination of poets and dramatists, that will never
lose its hold on the heart of humanity. But the story is not only
drama; k is also history, for it leads to a strange turn in the career
of the Hebrews, the long sojourn in Egypt which changed the
nomad clan into a people.
3
THE famine shows no abatement, and Joseph sends his
father an eager invitation, which the Pharaoh endorses, to come
with all his household and settle in Egypt. The Hebrews shall eat
14 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
"the fat of the land." The fertile region of Goshen in the eastern
delta of the Nile is thrown open to the shepherds and their flocks.
On the way to Egypt Israel is visited by the God of Abraham and
Isaac, who reassures him: in Egypt his seed shall become a nation.
Who was the Pharaoh to whom Joseph owed his elevation and
his brothers their rescue from famine? He has not yet been iden-
tified, but the internal evidence of the biblical narrative the
names of the persons that figure in it, the customs it reveals, as
well as the general atmosphere in which it moves is so convinc-
ing, that there is no reason to doubt its authenticity. The most
probable date of Joseph's arrival in Egypt is about 1850 B.C.E. The
land was still ruled by a line of Semitic invaders, nomads from the
north known as Hyksos, or "shepherd kings," a circumstance that
would account for the welcome accorded the kindred Hebrews
under Joseph and Jacob, and for the complete reversal of attitude
toward them when, many years later, the Hyksos were over-
thrown and expelled. Remarkable parallels have been found in
Egyptian inscriptions to the biblical account of Joseph's elevation
and to the measures he took before and during the famine to save
the land from starvation.
Thus, under favor of man and God, began the long sojourn of
the Hebrews in Egypt. Their abode was not far from the land
they regarded as their own. On the fat grasslands of Goshen where
the Hebrew shepherds pastured their flocks, they kept alive the
memory of their origin, the knowledge of the God of their
fathers, and the sense of destiny that ruled their consciousness. The
lure of the Egyptian way of life reached them, if at all, with
attenuated force: the shepherd clans preserved their spiritual
personality. Moreover, as the generations followed one another
the danger of absorption dwindled and vanished. For the seed of
Jacob was "fruitful and multiplied exceedingly." The seventy
who came from Canaan became a nation.
4
THE "shepherd kings" were expelled in 1580 B.C.E. and a
new Pharaoh, we read, ascended the throne of Egypt, one who
"knew not Joseph." This Pharaoh is believed to have been
BONDAGE AND FREEDOM 15
Amosis (1580-1557 B.C.E), founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
He saw the children of Israel grown numerous and strong, and he
felt alarmed. The Hebrews, moreover, had been the proteges of
the hated Hyksos and what if the land were invaded and they
joined the enemy? They might then "get them up out of the land."
The Pharaoh wanted them in Egypt, for there were cities to be
built near the border, military store-cities, and the children of
Israel could be put to labor. Other sections of Egypt's population
toiled for the ruler, dug and quarried and dragged huge blocks
of stone for pyramids, temples and palaces. Why should the He-
brews be exempted?
So the shepherds were reduced to slavery; but while the Egyp-
tians may have looked on bondage as part of the order of nature,
to the Hebrews it was an insufferable wrong. They groaned aloud
in their misery and shame. "And God heard their groaning, and
God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and
with Jacob."
5
THE plight of the Hebrews in Egypt called out the greatest
leader of men the human race has known, Moses son of Amram,
emancipator and lawgiver, teacher, prophet and saint. No feet
that have trod this earth have borne a spirit wiser and humbler
and more exalted. No life has been more perfect and beneficent.
His childhood and early manhood were spent in the court of
the 'Pharaoh as the adopted son of the monarch's daughter. A
royal princess, we learn, had saved him from the Nile to which
his mother herself had consigned him; for the Pharaoh, determined
to put an end to the children of Israel, had decreed that all male
infants be cast into the river. This princess is believed to have
been Hatshepsut, the favorite daughter of Thotmes I (1539-1501
B.C.E.). But the milk that nourished the infant Moses was his own
mother's, for the princess engaged her to be the child's nurse;
and the people he came to know as his own were the Hebrews.
The sight of an Egyptian taskmaster beating a Hebreto slave is
more than the youth Moses can bear. He slays the Egyptian, but
his deed becomes known and -he is forced to flee. He comes to the
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THE WORLD OF THE ANCIENT HEBREWS
GRAPHIC ASSOCIATES
BONDAGE AND FREEDOM IJ
bleak land of Midian in the Sinai Peninsula, and lives the life of a
shepherd pasturing the flocks of one Jethro whose daughter,
Zipporah, he takes to wife.
On Mount Horeb, a place sacred to the God of his fathers, he
sees a strange sight. It is a bush wrapped in flames; it burns, but
the flames are powerless against it: "the bush burned with fire,
but the bush was not consumed." And a Voice speaks out of the
flames: "I will send thee unto Pharaoh to bring my people the
children of Israel out of Egypt." The shepherd is dismayed by the
charge, but all his pleading is in vain: he must go. But what shall
he say when they ask him the name of Him Who sent him? And
the Voice answers: "i AM THAT i AM." The name is like a veil
hiding the Mystery yet vouchsafing a faint glimpse of it. And
the bush which the flames were unable to consume, and out of
which came the voice of God, has become the symbol of Israel
through the ages.
Moses goes back to Egypt, where he speaks first to the elders
of his people. Accompanied by his brother Aaron as his spokesman
for Moses is no orator he then appears before the ruler with
the bold demand: "Let my people go!" The Pharaoh is angry
and adamant. He lays heavier burdens on the slaves who now
cry out bitterly against Moses.
In the end, however, the Pharaoh is forced to let the Hebrew
slaves go. All the plagues that fester in the air of Egypt fall upon
the land, plagues of insects and frogs, of murrain and boils, of
hail and thick darkness, climaxed by the smiting of the first born.
The king sees the hand of a Higher Power lifted up against him.
6
WHEN Thotmes I died, the princess Hatshepsut became
the virtual ruler of Egypt. The Pharaoh on the throne was her
brother Thotmes III (1501-1448 B.C.E.) for whom, until her death,
she acted as regent. Thotmes III is now believed to have been the
Pharaoh of the Oppression. Like his father he was a great con-
queror or, at any rate, he saw to it that posterity should so regard
him. An inscription found in the temple at Thebes and dated
1479 B.C.E., proudly records a campaign he fought in Canaan
which netted him a vast booty, including
1 8 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
2,041 mares, 1,949 oxen, 2,000 goats, 296 bulls, 20,500 sheep,
200 suits of armor, 892 chariots, 32 gold-plated chariots, 7
silver-plated tent-poles, 1,784 pounds of golden rings, 966
pounds of silver rings, ivory and ebony ornaments, a golden
plough, cedarwood tables inlaid with gold and precious stones,
golden sceptres, embroidered robes, 208,000 bushels of corn.
And whether or not the inventory is correct, for several centuries
thereafter Canaan, with its kings and kinglets often in revolt, was
a province of Egypt.
On his death in 1448 B.C.E., Thotmes III was succeeded by
Amenophis II, and a year later the Exodus is believed to have
taken place. That date receives remarkable confirmation in the
First Book of Kings, 6;i, which states that Solomon began to
build the Temple "in the four hundred and eightieth year after
the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt." Now,
the date of the Temple is 967 B.C.E., which also sets the Exodus
at 1447 B.C.E.
Archaeology, it is true, has thus far failed to produce specific
evidence in support of the biblical narrative but the failure need
not occasion surprise, for Egyptian rulers always omitted from
their records whatever might detract from their glory. However,
archaeology does confirm the general historic background as
revealed in the Bible. The death of the oppressor was the signal
for revolt in Syria and Palestine, and Moses may well have taken
advantage of the difficulties in which the new monarch became
involved. On purely psychological grounds, moreover, it is im-
possible to believe that a story like the sojourn in Egypt or the
Exodus could have been invented. Why should a people choose to
identify its beginnings with the shame of slavery? Invention,
indeed, pursues an opposite course: nations love to surround their
origins with circumstances that are heroic and glorious. The Bible,
in fact, is the only ancient historic document that shuns die vain-
glory of embellishment and apotheosis.
7
so GREAT was the haste of the Hebrews to leave Egypt that
the dough they carried had no time to become leavened. They ate
DESERT AND TORAH 19
the unleavened cakes which, through the ages that follow, serve
as a symbol of the Great Exodus. The Hebrews made up a vast
assemblage "with their sons and their daughters, with their flocks
and their herds." The men alone numbered six hundred thousand,
and there was in addition "a mixed multitude," strangers who
attached themselves to the Israelites. Thus did Jacob's children
multiply in the centuries of their sojourn in Egypt.
From Raamses, one of the cities they had built for the Pharaoh,
the Hebrews moved on to Pithom and they encamped on the shore
of an inlet of the Red Sea. Suddenly the army of Egypt appeared
in the distance: the ruler had repented of his weakness and was
pursuing the fugitives. But a wind came up and blew the waters
away, the Hebrews passed to the other side in safety, and when
the waters returned the pursuing hosts were engulfed. A cry of
jubilation arose from the multitude:
Thou didst blow with thy wind,
The sea covered them;
They sank as lead in the mighty waters!
Now the slaves were free. Before them stretched the desert
and beyond the desert beckoned the Promised Land.
CHAPTER THREE
Desert and Torah
THE short route from Egypt to Canaan, the path followed
by caravans and armies, lay due north through the Wil-
derness of Shur. But Moses avoided this route, for the
warlike Philistines dwelt on it and the newly liberated slaves
were not prepared for so strong an adversary. Moses turned south,
past Marah of the bitter waters and Elim of the twelve springs
and seventy palm trees. Southward also lay the mountain of the
burning bush, where a momentous experience lay in store for
the Hebrews.
2O THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
But on the road he chose there also lay in wait a powerful
enemy. The Amalekites appeared at Rephidim and challenged the
desert invaders. The battle was long and bitter. Israel's warriors,
led by the young captain Joshua son of Nun, looked up from the
field to an elevation where Moses sat, and when they saw his arms
uplifted, they pressed valiantly forward upon the enemy until
they defeated him. Such was the inspiration that flowed from the
leader. It is clear, moreover, from the account of this battle that
the fugitives were no mere rabble. They were, on the contrary,
an organized expedition, marching by tribes behind their elders
or chieftains, each tribe furnishing its tale of fighting men to
meet emergencies as they arose.
Now Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, who dwelt in near-by
Midian, came to bless his son-in-law, and with him came Zipporah
and the leader's two sons, Gershon and Eliezer. Jethro was a wise
old sheik, and Moses organized the administration of justice in the
nomad nation in accordance with his counsel. He appointed "rulers
of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties and rulers of
tens," who acted as judges in ordinary cases, referring the more
important disputes to the leader.
But the Israelites were not a docile people. They were, on the
contrary, clamorous and rebellious. Apparently the transition
from bondage to freedom had been too sudden. Amid the priva-
tions of the desert they pined for the good and abundant food of
Egypt, and this nostalgia of the fleshpots became for all time the
symbol of their lower nature.
But, we are told, the Hand that took them out of the house of
bondage made provision for the journey. It fed their hunger and
quenched their thirst. It pointed the way to them with "a pillar
of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night."
2
NOW these wayward children of Israel whom, nevertheless,
the Lord loved, are to receive the most precious of His gifts, the
Torah. Torah is usually translated as "Law," but it embraces a
great deal more than law. It includes everything else contained
in the Written and Oral Tradition: history and prophecy, proverb
DESERT AND TORAH 21
and parable, wisdom and homily, song and psalm. A legend relates
that God had previously offered the Torah to the other nations, all
of whom refused it. Israel alone said: "We will do and obey."
The consecration, attended by signs and wonders, occurs at
Mount Sinai, the mountain of the burning bush. Now the career
of Israel is stamped with the seal of a great teaching: this nomad
troop is to become "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation."
The Ten Commandments are the freshets from which flows the
river of Torah that has watered the earth. They make up the
groundwork of the faith and ethics of humanity. The First and
Second of the Ten Commandments proclaim the omnipotence and
unity of God, and represent the most revolutionary doctrine in
the religious history of mankind. No illumination of the intellect
and spirit of man, before it or since, can compare with it in gran-
deur of conception or vital implications. Ethical monotheism, as
this doctrine is designated, is the first and foremost contribution
of the Jewish genius to humanity, and the most fruitful seed of
progress toward the higher lifejying imbedded in the heart of
mankind, and still waiting to sprout and flourish.
The doctrine, in all its majestic simplicity, is expressed in a
verse (Deuteronomy 654) spoken by Moses to his people in later
years. That verse, called after its first word, meaning "hear," is
the Shema: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One!"
The six Hebrew words of the Sbenm are not a cold mathematical
formula: they are a confession of faith, a passionate affirmation,
a ringing manifesto. They have been the watchword of the Jew
through the ages, holding the central place in his daily prayers.
They have been his last words on his deathbed and at other su-
preme moments, especially when face to face with martyrdom.
Every dilution of the doctrine, every compromise with it, be it
the equal powers of light and darkness of Zoroastrianisni, or the
Trinitarianism of Christianity, has been implacably rejected.
Monotheism, which proclaims the One God to be creator and
ruler of all nature, begins by destroying the foundations of pagan-
ism. For the many gods of paganism only reflect the many and
often conflicting forces of nature. Monotheism goes on to replace
the apparent conflict and chaos of nature with design and harmony;
22 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
and, since God controls human destiny also, monotheism replaces
the apparent capriciousness of human history with moral purpose
and goal. The goal is "to make the world perfect under the king-
ship of the Almighty," as the Alenu prayer expresses it. Mono-
theism, in other words, proclaims a goal that is ethical, universal,
and holy, and demands that human life be dedicated to its achieve-
ment by rising to the level of purity and- holiness.
Ethical monotheism is a rigorous doctrine, as exacting as it is
sublime, nor is it to be expected that the frail children of men
who will be led to pay lip-devotion to it will overflow with grati-
tude toward the people who first proclaimed it.
3
THE Third Commandment prohibits the frivolous invo-
cation of the name of God to which men are so prone. The Fourth
establishes the Sabbath as a day of rest in which even the beast of
burden must be allowed to share.
If the distinction can be made, the first four commandments
are primarily religious in character, while those that follow are
ethical or social. The Fifth, "Honor thy father and thy mother," is
one of the two safeguards of the family, the basic institution of
society; the other is the Seventh, "Thou shalt not commit adul-
tery." The Sixth, "Thou shalt not murder," the Eighth, "Thou
shalt not steal," and the Ninth, "Thou shalt not bear false witness
against thy neighbor," make up the keystone of the arch that sup-
ports all human relationships. The Tenth, "Thou shalt not covet
anything that is thy neighbor's," seeks to control the passions
leading to antisocial conduct.
4
THE Great Tradition relates that Moses remained forty
days on the mount in solitary communion with God, and when
he reappeared, he carried two tablets of stone on which the Ten
Words were inscribed. It was a common practice in the lands of
the East to inscribe laws and other important records on tablets
or steles, and the conclusion that Moses possessed the art of
writing is abundantly justified by the evidence of archaeology.
At a place not far from Mount Sinai, Sir Flinders Petrie. the
DESERT AND TORAH 23
famous Egyptologist, discovered inscriptions dating a century
and a half before the Exodus.
The script that Moses used was most probably an early form of
the Hebrew or Phoenician alphabet, in which the symbols repre-
sented not syllables and words, as in early cuneiform and hiero-
glyphic writing, but sounds. This phonetic alphabet represents an
enormous advance in the art of writing: twenty-odd letters took
the place of the great number of symbols required by the picto-
graphic or syllabic systems. This alphabet, in fact, is believed to
have been invented in the Sinai Peninsula, whence it eventually
reached the Phoenicians and Aramaeans who carried it to all the
known lands.
The language of Moses and the children of Israel was Hebrew,
a Semitic tongue of Canaanite origin, which Jacob and his house-
hold took with them into Egypt. There, though modified by the
influence of Egyptian, the language was preserved throughout
the long sojourn.
5
HAVING accepted the Ten Commandments, the children
of Israel were soon to demonstrate how difficult it was to observe
them. Almost immediately they violated the First. Coming down
from the mountain with his tablets, Moses saw the people beneath
him dancing around a golden calf. The old idolatry of Egypt had
reared its head. "This is thy god, O Israel," they said, pointing
to the image, "which brought thee out of the land of Egypt!"
Moses shattered the tablets he carried; but in his heart mercy
fought with justice and mercy prevailed. "Forgive their sin," he
pleaded with God, "and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of the
book which Thou hast written." And God answered, "Go, lead
the people to the place of which I have spoken unto thee."
Instructed by Moses, the people set up a portable tabernacle as
a visible symbol of their faith and for a center of worship. It
foreshadowed the temple which, centuries later, was to rise up in
Jerusalem. Around the Tabernacle public worship was elabo-
rately organized after Aaron and his sons, as well as the other
men of the tribe of Levi, had been solemnly invested with the
priesthood.
24 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
But while the craftsmen were building the Tabernacle, Moses
labored at the still greater edifice of Torah. His aim, however
difficult of attainment, was clear: to fashion a nation physically
and morally pure, and practicing justice and righteousness toward
their fellow-men. He understood that a nation so ordered must
be zealously devoted to the One God. Laws and institutions,
priests and judges, penalties and rewards all these were necessary,
but the foundation must be: "And thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
strength." So the teacher never tires of denouncing idolatry and
warning the people against its lure. Idolatry was the sin of sins,
the foundation of impurity and iniquity. Idolatry meant human
sacrifice, sexual depravity, slavery and oppression. Israel was going
to a land teeming with idolatry. Israel must beware of contamina-
tion.
Higher and higher rose the structure of Torah. To regulate
and elevate every aspect of private and public life, in work and
worship, at home, in the field, and in the marketplace, on weekdays,
Sabbaths and festivals, a stream of commands and prohibitions,
warnings and appeals, flowed from the leader to his people. Purity
and justice are their touchstone; forbearance and mercy have
sat as their interpreters. Thus the injunction "an eye for an eye
and a tooth for a tooth," was early explained as meaning monetary
compensation: the spirit of the Mosaic Code makes a literal in-
terpretation of this ordinance impossible.
At moments a command appears that taxes our modern view-
point. In this connection the dietary prohibitions, distinguishing
between clean and unclean animals, as well as the prohibition
that developed into the "milk and meat" regulations, are often cited.
Apart from their obvious disciplinary value, however, there lies be-
hind these so-called taboos a vast experience which no wise people
would ignore. They have been shown to be closely related to the
health of the body as well as of the soul. The prohibitions, for
example, disqualify foods like pork and shellfish which, it is
now known, may carry the germs of disease. But the explicit
premise on which the regulations are based is: "For I am the Lord
your God; sanctify yourselves, therefore, and be ye holy; for I am
DESERT AND TORAH 25
holy." The dietary laws were to have a share in fashioning and
preserving "a holy people."
6
WHENCE came these "statutes and judgments," these warn-
ings and pleas, these signposts for the labyrinth of life? Did they all
flow from the inspired genius of the leader? Did he owe nothing
to other men, other nations, other eras?
In 1901 a stone slab, or stele, was discovered in Susa, capital
of ancient Persia, on which some three hundred laws were found
inscribed in cuneiform beneath two figures representing the great
Hammurabi and the Babylonian sun-god Shamash.The stele was
deciphered, the laws were hailed as the Code of Hammurabi, and
striking resemblances were discovered between them and those of
Moses. The "eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth" laws were there,
as well as many other enactments not unlike those in the Mosaic
Code for the regulation of a pastoral and agricultural society. Cer-
tain scholars and "higher critics" now believed that at last they
were in possession of the source tff the Mosaic Code. All that Moses
did, they declared, was to copy Hammurabi, and some of them
went further, finding Hebrew civilization generally to be a mere
imitation of the Babylonian. Of late, moreover, the claim has been
advanced that Egyptian influence upon the language, customs,
and institutions of the children of Israel has been undervalued in
favor of the Babylonian, while with the discovery of the Minaean
inscriptions in South Arabia and the Ras Shamra tablets on the
Syrian coast an increasing amount of "credit" has been claimed
for the influence of Arabia.
But the claims of the Babylonians to originality or priority
over the Hebrews are no longer honored.* The laws of both
may have had a common source that is lost in the nebulae of
prehistoric times, or each code may have grown up independently
of the other, developing similarities because of the similar con-
* "A comparison of the Code of Hammurabi as a whole with the Pentatcuchal
code as a whole, while it reveals certain similarities, convinces the student that
the laws of the Old Testament are in no essential way dependent upon the Baby-
lonian laws." George A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, p. 567.
26 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
ditions under which both arose. The resemblances between the
two codes, in fact, are far less remarkable than their differences.
The Hebrew Sabbath, for example, may be said to bear the same
relation to the Babylonian Nubattum and Shabbattum as the hu-
man species bears to the ape. The Nubattum, which also occurred
every seventh day, is, as described in the Babylonian Seven Tablets
of Creation, "an evil day," a day of gloom and dread when "cooked
flesh he shall not eat: he shall not change his coat: he shall not
put on clean clothes . . . the physician shall not heal the sick."
The Shabbattum, which others believe may have been the origin
of the Sabbath, occurred in the middle of the month when die
moon was at full and about to wane, and for that reason was also a
day of gloom and foreboding. The Jewish Sabbath, on the other
hand, is a day of rest and joy and spiritual replenishment. In die
Code of Hammurabi the ideal of holiness is conspicuous by its
absence, while the Mosaic Code is saturated with it. The harsh
customs of the desert, like blood revenge, the Mosaic Code aims to
abolish or moderate, and with the hideous practice of human immo-
lation prohibited, sacrifice is exalted into a means of releasing the
purest human emotions: gratitude, repentance, and reverence. All
that the great teacher ordains is stamped with the seal of spirit:
whatever he touches becomes holy.
7
A PROFOUND concern for social justice permeates the Torah.
The universal institution of slavery, after being shorn of its cruel-
ties, is discredited by being made contemptible in the sight of men.
The weak and the helpless the poor, the widow, the orphan and
the stranger are the special wards of God. The husbandman reap-
ing his harvest is not to crop the "corners" of the field; he is not to
return for the sheaf he has forgotten; he is not to beat his olive tree
twice; he is not to glean his vineyard after gathering the grapes:
all that is left over shall be "for the stranger, for the fatherless, and
for the widow." The poor man who has pledged his garment must
have it restored to him in the evening "that he may sleep in his
garment, and bless thee." Hie laborer is to receive his hire the same
day, "for he is poor and setteth his heart upon it." The stranger is
as much an object of God's care as the widow and orphan. "And
DESERT AND TORAH 27
if a stranger sojourn in your land with thee," says the Torah, "ye
shall not do him wrong. The stranger that sojourneth with you
shall be unto you as the homeborn among you, and thou shalt love
him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt."
But in none of its provisions does the sacred code reveal such
insight into social problems as in those that ordain the Sabbatical
and Jubilee years. Every seventh year the fields were to lie fallow
and all debts were to be cancelled. It was to be a "sabbath" year for
the reparation of the soil and for lifting the burden from the home-
steads of the poor. At the end of seven Sabbatical cycles, or
every fiftieth year, the Jubilee was ordered to be proclaimed in
all the borders of Israel. In that year all land was to be restored to
the original owners or their heirs, and all slaves were to be liberated.
The Jubilee was for restitution and redemption. Were not the
worst of the social evils slavery and prostitution, excessive wealth
and exploitation of the poor the results of those economic wrongs
that stripped the peasant of his holding and enabled the rich, as
the prophet Isaiah later expressed it, to "join house to house" and
"lay field to field, till there be no room"? Israel must not be a
nation of landless serfs in the clutches of a few landed barons. Israel
must be a nation of freemen before the Lord, and men who are
economically enslaved cannot be free. The Jubilee was to be the
season of emancipation, when Israel was to "proclaim liberty
throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."
8
"A HOLY nation," the ever-recurring demand of Torah,
may sound austere and forbidding, but such is not the spirit of the
sacred code. Life is for joy, as well as holiness. "Thou shalt re-
joice before the Lord thy God" is an injunction repeated again
and again by the prophet and lawgiver. And for increase of joy
as well as holiness, the year was adorned with a series of gracious
and exalted festivals.
There were, first, the three "pilgrimage" festivals, Passover,
Shabuoth, and Sukkoth, when every man of Israel was required to
repair to the national center for worship. These festivals bear a
double significance. They signalize first some turning point in the
agricultural year, and second, they commemorate a decisive ex-
28 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
perience in the career of the nation. Passover is the time when
"the sickle is first put to the standing corn"; it is also for remem-
brance of the Exodus, "the season of our liberation." Shabuoth, or
the Feast of Weeks, when the Story of Ruth, redolent of the earth
in its freshness and beauty, is read, marks the season of the ripen-
ing harvest; it also commemorates the promulgation of the Ten
Commandments at Sinai. Sukkoth, or the Feast of Booths, is the
"season of rejoicing" with the final ingathering from field, orchard,
and vineyard; it also recalls the years of wandering through the
Sinai Desert, when the people dwelt in tents or booths.
To the three "pilgrimage" festivals, each of them a season of
joy, were added two solemn occasions, both falling just prior to
the Feast of Booths. One is Rosh Hashana, the first of the year;
the other, ten days later, is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement,
the holiest day of all.
Through all the round of the year came, of course, the Sabbath,
the vehicle of ascent for the soul of man from the sordid to the
sublime. Numerous and momentous are the appeals and warnings
touching the Sabbath. Without the Sabbath, no holy nation, no
kingdom of priests.
Thus in the web of Torah there entered as warp and woof a
marvelous mingling of holiness and joy. With the promulgation of
the Written Torah, moreover, began the tradition of Oral Torah,
handed down by word of mouth from father to son, from teacher
to scholar. Generation after generation the web was extended. The
pattern, though it remained always essentially the same, was
constantly elaborated. Israel became the Torah-people. Israel and
the Torah became inseparable.
Later, the Jewish sages expressed the relationship in a terse and
tremendous statement. "The Holy One, blessed be He," said they,
"and Israel and the Torah are One."
9
NORTH of the sacred mount, across tlie wild wastes of the
Sinai Peninsula, lies the oasis of Kadesh-barnea. This verdant spot
springs out of the dreary desert like a magic apparition. Shepherds
from pastures near and far gather there to water their flocks, and
DESERT AND TORAH 2Q
not far away winds a pass that leads into die Negeb, or southern
section of Canaan.
To this oasis Moses marched the children of Israel. They moved
in order, tribe by tribe, guarded by their armed men. Frequently
the craven spirit born of slavery came out in loud complaints. Now
they demanded water, now meat. Nor was the spirit of rebellion
confined to the rabble. Once the leader faced a serious revolt led
by Korah of the tribe of Levi with whom other Levites, "princes
of the congregation, the elect men of the assembly, men of re-
nown" associated themselves. The revolt, we read, failed ignomin-
iously, for God Himself intervened for His chosen prophet. Korah
and his followers were swallowed up in an earthquake.
From Kadesh-barnea the leader's gaze turned to the Promised
Land; the hour to strike seemed to have come. First he sent twelve
scouts to survey the land, its people, its towns, its defenses. The
scouts returned with a tale of wonders and terrors. The land was
marvelous, it flowed with milk and honey, but alas, they could
not hope to conquer it. The inhabitants were fierce giants, the
Cities "fortified and very great." Fear gave wings to their imagina-
tion. Through the camp ran the rumor: beside the Canaanites the
Hebrews were as grasshoppers. The scouts may have seen some of
the massive prehistoric monuments that still stand in Palestine:
monoliths, dolmens and menhirs, consisting of huge stone slabs
arranged in circles or avenues, which they decided only giants
could have set up.
Two of the scouts, Caleb of Judah and Joshua of Ephraim, stood
forth and denounced the fears of their comrades. "We should go
up at once and possess the land," cried Caleb, "for we are well
able to overcome it!" But the former slaves were in panic. "Let us
make a captain," they cried, "and return to Egypt."
Now Moses became convinced that these former slaves were not
fit to enter the Promised Land: they must die in the wilderness and
the task would be accomplished by their children. Such, indeed,
was the stern decree, and when the people heard it they were dis-
mayed. A strange courag^took possession of them, the courage of
despair. They marched up into the hills, unmindful of the leader's
warnings, and the Amalekites and Canaanites came out and routed
them.
JO THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
The desert generation resumed its wanderings, moving south
again toward the Gulf of Akaba. For forty years they marched
and halted, and marched again. Young men became old, men in
their prime aged and died. And a new generation arose, nurtured
by the great leader and his aides, a generation that knew not the
fleshpots of Egypt.
10.
AGAIN the nomad nation assembled at Kadesh-barnea, eager
to strike for the Promised Land. The tribe of Judah, led by Caleb,
had already broken through the Negeb and established itself in the
region around Hebron. But Moses decided to take possession first
of the regions east of the River Jordan.
The road to the Jordan lay through Edom and Moab, and Moses
petitioned Edom to let Israel through. "We will not pass through
field or through vineyard," ran the message, "neither shall we
drink of the waters of the wells; we will go along the king's high-
way, we will not turn aside to the right hand nor to the left, until
we have passed the border." The answer was a curt refusal, and
Israel had to make a hard journey around Edom's borders. Then
followed victory on victory. At Hormah the Canaanites of the
south were decisively defeated. The wild Midianites, led by five of
their kings, suffered disaster and spoliation. At Jahaz, Israel smote
the Transjordanian Amorites led by Sihon, King of Heshbon, and
conquered the region from the Arnon to the Jabbok. The warriors
of Israel swept on. At Edrei they overwhelmed the forces of Og,
King of Bashan, and became masters of Transjordania to the foot
of Mount Hermon.
Edom, Moab, and Ammon were spared for reasons of kinship,
for Edom was descended from Esau, brother of Jacob, and Moab
and Ammon from Abraham's nephew Lot. Nevertheless, Balak,
King of Moab, was seized with great fear, and hired Balaam, a
famous magician, to pronounce a doom on Israel. But every curse
in Balaam's mouth, we read, was changed to a blessing. The ma-
gician spoke in a trance, he was not his own master. "Behold a
people," he cried, "that riseth up as a lioness, and as a lion doth he
lift himself up!" King Balak was enraged. "What hast thou done?"
THE LAND AND THE CONQUEST 31
he cried. And Balaam answered: "Must I not speak that which the
Lord putteth in my mouth?"
The East Jordan plateau, now held by the Israelites, was excel-
lent grazing land. The tribes of Reuben and Gad, who possessed
much cattle, were especially attracted by it. They, together with
half the tribes of Manasseh, asked to be allowed to settle there,
promising, however, that their armed contingents would cross the
Jordan with the rest of Israel and would not return until Canaan
had been conquered. "We will build sheepfolds here for our
cattle," said they, "and cities for our little ones, but we ourselves
will be ready armed to go before the children of Israel." With
solemn emphasis on this engagement, the petition of Reuben, Gad,
and half of Manasseh was granted.
The people encamped in the plain of Moab near the Jordan
opposite Jericho, but their leader was not to go across the river with
them. He had already placed his hands on Joshua son of Nun, and
ordained him his successor. Now in words of passionate eloquence,
he delivered his final charge to the people he had nurtured and led.
Then, with a final blessing and farewell, he turned and left them:
he went away alone to die. He climbed to the summit of Mount
Nebo and looked out upon the Promised Land which his feet
were forbidden to tread. Then he gave up his spirit to God, and
a legend reports that the Holy One, blessed be He, took up his
soul with a kiss.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Land and the Conquest
THE new leader, Joshua son of Nun, was no stranger to his
people. Through the forty years of desert wandering he
had stood by the side of Moses and led the embattled hosts
of Israel against their enemies. He was one of the twelve scouts
whom Moses had sent to spy out the land, and one of the two who
22 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
had returned undismayed. Essentially a soldier, Joshua was never-
theless imbued with the spirit of his great master.
The days of mourning for Moses came to an end and the new
leader ordered the nation to march. Headed by the priests bearing
the Ark of the Covenant, the children of Israel streamed across the
Jordan and stood at last on its western bank.
FROM time to time the boundaries of Canaan or Palestine
have varied, the only fixed line being its coast on the Western Sea.
Its eastern limit has generally embraced Trans jordania, while the
traditional formula "from Dan to Beersheba," designed to indicate
its north and south borders, has proved exceedingly elastic.
Within its area of some 50,000 square miles, the land is remark-
able for its topographical contrasts. West of the Transjordanian
plateau, the relief map reveals three longitudinal zones of which
the Jordan Valley, where the invaders now stood, is one. Starting
with the Huleh swamps in the north and embracing the Sea of
Galilee, the Jordan River, and the Dead Sea, this valley is a great
gash between the mountains of Trans) ordania and those of western
Canaan. The gash becomes broader and deeper as it cuts south; the
thick waters of the Dead Sea, which are part of it, lie in the
earth's deepest hollow, almost 1300 feet below sea level. The
shores of this strange sea are wild and torrid wastes, but its waters
have been found to harbor immense wealth: asphalt and vast
quantities of other minerals, especially compounds of potassium
and magnesium.
The Jordan, or "downcomer," as the name signifies, rises in the
glades of Mount Hermon and in a flow of only ten miles through
the swampy plain of Huleh and the shallow' Lake Merom to Lake
Kinnereth, the river drops almost 700 feet. Kinnereth is the beau-
tiful "Lake of the Harp," or Sea of Galilee. The Jordan comes
rushing out of it, and, in a serpentine flow of sixty-five miles, it
drops an additional 600 feet to the Dead Sea.
Up from the Jordan Valley rises steeply the middle zone, the
broad mountainous backbone, extending 150 miles through the
length of the land and setting its seal upon the country as a whole.
THE LAND AND THE CONQUEST 33
In the north the slopes of this range are craggy and precipitous. As
they roll south, the hills become broken by many vales of which
the largest is the Valley of Jezreel. This low, undulating plain is
roughly triangular in shape, with its eastern corner at the ridge of
Mount Gilboa, its apex at the foot of Mount Tabor, and its
western limit at Mount Carmel where the River Kishon falls into
the Great Sea.
The Valley of Jezreel opens Palestine to the world north and
south of it, and has enormously influenced the destiny of the
country. The traders from Egypt, moving north along the coast,
turned at the foot of Carmel into this plain to go on to Damascus
and beyond, or to veer south into the interior of Canaan. The
traders from Mesopotamia, with merchandise for Palestine or
Egypt, reversed the same route. And often enough the route was
followed not by the peaceful caravans of trade but by the hosts of
warring empires. Down from Mesopotamia or up from Egypt, the
armies swept into Jezreel and camped there. It was a good camping
ground, and it was also a good battleground. Jezreel became
famous as a battlefield and the belief arose that the final battle of
the nations before the advent of Messiah the Redeemer, the Battle
of Armageddon, would be fought on this plain, "Armageddon"
being a name derived from the city of Megiddo that stood sentinel
above the valley on the south.
Below Jezreel the mountainous backbone resumes its march
through the district of Mount Ephraim or Samaria, with Carmel
on the west and Gilboa on the east. Near Shechem, where
Gerizim and Ebal rise to a height of 3000 feet, the Samarian up-
land reaches its highest altitude. Intersected here and there by
small secluded vales, the hills roll on into Judea where they form
the fulcrum of the country. There the hills rise in gentle slopes to
broad rounded summits. Today they are for the most part treeless
and desolate, their soil washed away by the rains of centuries, their
rock-ribbed sides naked in the glare of the sun. In Joshua's time,
however, they were covered with forests and orchards and vine-
yards. At Jerusalem the hills, rising to a height of 2500 feet, repre-
sent the most important point in the Judean range. Farther south,
in the neighborhood of Hebron, the hills reach their highest eleva-
34 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
don. They become low east-and-west ridges as they move down
into the Negeb, or southland, merging finally with the rocky
wastes of the Sinai Peninsula.
Westward the hills slope gendy down toward the Great Sea,
and sea and mountains are separated by the third zone, the maritime
plain. As it stretches southward, this plain grows wider. At Haifa,
Mount Carmel almost obliterates it, leaving a passage only 600
feet wide, but enough to enable the caravans from Egypt to plod
on to Phoenicia. The Plain of Sharon which, in the spring, becomes
transformed into a vast field of flowers, makes up the northern
section of this zone, and the Plain of Philistia, at soifc^ points as
much as 20 miles wide, is its southern portion. In the winter or
rainy season, this maritime plain is watered by numerous torrents
that rush across it to the sea; in the summer dry pebbly gullies or
wadies reveal the beds of these streams. There are a few rivers
that flow all year round of which the most important are the
Kishon that empties near Haifa, the Yarkon north of Jaffa, and
the Rubin in the Plain of Philistia.
3
THE climate of the country is as varied as its surface: on
neighboring plain and mountain, the palm and pine grow within
sight of each other. From Jerusalem to Jericho a brief but sharp
descent takes the traveler from a temperate climate to a tropical
one. In the north there are similar contrasts such as that between
temperate Safed and subtropical Tiberias.
The summer is a long succession of hot days followed by cool
refreshing nights, and only when the fiery sirocco blows in from
the southeast are the days and nights oppressive. The winter is a
season of rain, but in the mountains heavy snowfalls are not un-
known. In October and November come the "former rains"
which prepare the ground for ploughing. In the months that
follow, the "latter rains" continue up to the early spring. Egypt
and a considerable part of Babylonia depended for their crops on
irrigation, but Canaan, we are told, "drinketh water as the rain
of heaven cometh down." Even during the dry summer the
absence of rain is relieved by the exceptionally heavy dew. Rain
and dew are the life of the land; they are the great boons which
THE LAND AND THE CONQUEST 35
evoked eager and constant prayer. With the rain and dew coming
in season, the land blossomed like the rose and flowed with milk
and honey. It was "a good land, a land of brooks of water, of
fountains and depths springing forth in valleys and hills; a land of
wheat and barley, and vines and fig trees and pomegranates; a land
of olive trees and honey."
The vegetation varied, of course, with the topography. The
coastal plain, the Valley of Jezreel, and especially the uplands
across the Jordan, were covered with fields of wheat and barley.
Throughout the land rose the watchmen's lodges amid the vine-
yards. The twisted grey-leaved olive tree grew everywhere, and
along the coastland and in the Jordan Valley the fig tree and palm
lifted their graceful foliage. In the higher altitudes rose forests
of timber trees: cedar and cypress, sycamore and oak. Southward
the hills of Judah became craggy and bare, but even there the
herdsman found pasture for his sheep and goats.
And altogether Canaan was a land that enchanted the eye and
uplifted the soul. Its varied aspects had each its own mood, but
they were all clad in beauty, oea and sky, mountain and plain,
forest and desert spoke in a chorus of symphonic grandeur. What
strains of ecstasy this beauty was to evoke from the soul of a
gifted people! The heavens will declare the glory of God, the
firmament show His handiwork. The mountains will skip like
rams, the trees of the field clap their hands. It was a land well
fitted to ripen a God-hungry people into prophets and psalmists.
4
THE country lies like a bridge between Asia and Africa.
Up and down the coastal plain and the Jordan Valley, the cara-
vans linked the two continents in a continuous stream of com-
merce. From the south came camel caravans laden with the arts
and crafts of Egypt; from Mesopotamia came donkey caravans
with bales of wool and leather, and merchants of the Hittites came
from the north. In the markets of Palestine they met and traded.
In the gates of its cities sat Babylonians poring over their invoices
inscribed in cuneiform on clay tablets, and Egyptians were there
with their rolls of papyri covered with hieroglyphics. Native
merchants and money-changers joined in the babel of many
"THE FACE OF THE LAND"
TOPOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE
I Mt
~'e : ffr*
y* < i-
, *t$i
S H A ISI
10 20 30
OttmC AttOOATCS
THE LAND AND THE CONQUEST 37
tongues, while the whir of wheels and the clanging of hammers
came from the neighboring workshops of potters, goldsmiths,
armorers, and other artisans.
Except for the Philistines, the inhabitants of Canaan belonged
to the Semitic race. The two leading stocks, Amorites and Canaan-
ites, had mingled and become practically one. Across the Jordan
also, Edomites, Moabites, and Amorites meant political rather than
ethnological distinctions. The broken character of the country
favored division. Each city was ruled by its own king who fought
his neighbors or intrigued with them against the foreign suzerain,
Babylonian or Egyptian. Sometimes, when faced by a common
enemy, a number of cities united for mutual defense, but such
unions fell quickly apart. Only the Philistine cities on the coastal
plain Ekron, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath, and Gaza managed to
maintain a more or less stable confederation.
From every point of the compass the land had always been the
goal of invading armies. They came from Babylonia on the north,
from Egypt on the south, from the isles of the Western Sea and
from the desert on the east. Even the incursion of the Hebrews is
sometimes represented as just another descent of famished nomads
upon the rich cities and fat pastures of Canaan.
5
BUT the invasion of the Hebrews was marked by a dif-
ference that makes their story significant and memorable the
difference which lay in the religious gulf between them and the
natives. The beliefs and practices of the Canaanites made up a
confused nature-cult derived from many sources, principally
Babylonian, Hitrite, and Egyptian. Every political group had its
own special deity, in addition to the gods, goddesses, and demons
they all had in common. The principal objects of devotion were
the male Baal and the female Baala, or Asherah, Baal was not a
single, definite god: every field and spring, every village and city
had its own Baal: he was its master and protector. Baala was his
consort, and she is frequently identified with the lewd Astarte of
the East and the wanton Aphrodite of the West. A leading figure
among the demon-gods was Moloch, who delighted in human
sacrifices.
38 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
The worship of these deities was conducted with gory and
lecherous rites. Priests, priestesses, and people abandoned them-
selves to unrestrained orgies. The wooded places on the hilltops,
where this worship took place, the "high places," as they are called
in the Bible, were so many plague-spots of physical and moral
corruption.
But a new conqueror now stood in the gateway of Canaan, claim-
ing the land in the name of a new God, a God of justice and
purity, whose people were to wage eternal war against idolatry
and all its vices.
6
FROM the Plain of Gilgal, where the Israelites pitched
camp, rose the mountains on whose crags and summits stood the
cities of the Canaanites. These strongholds were prepared for
irruptions from the desert, but the Hebrews were not the cus-
tomary nomad raiders. Rumors of their exploits in Trans jordania
had already come to the ears of the cities, and the hearts of their
inhabitants, we are told, "melted, neither was there spirit in them
any more."
The city of Jericho stood in the Plain of Gilgal like an outpost
guarding the ascent into the mountains. Against that city the
strength of the nation, moral and physical, was brought to bear.
The Ark of the Covenant, making a circuit about the walls, struck
the inhabitants with terror. The walls of Jericho, the chronicle
relates, fell suddenly, and the city was captured and destroyed.
7
EXCAVATIONS that have been made on the site of ancient
Jericho have furnished amazing confirmation of the biblical ac-
count of its downfall. Proof has been found that about the year
1400 B.C.E., the approximate date of the Hebrew invasion, the
aralls of Jericho collapsed and the city was destroyed by fire. The
evidence unearthed at Jericho indicates also that Canaan was then
under Egypt's domination. The reigning Pharaoh, Amenhophis
III (1411-1375 B.C.E.), claims to have raised his country to an un-
precedented height of power and glory, but his inscriptions, like
those of all the Pharaohs, must be taken with many grains of salt.
THE LAND AND THE CONQUEST 39
There is, in fact, reason to believe that at the time of the Hebrew
invasion his authority in Canaan was already waning.
Toward the end of his reign and during that of his successor
Akhenaten (1375-1358 B.C.E.), Egypt was deluged with appeals
for help from the vassal kings of Palestine. Some of these appeals,
written in Babylonian cuneiform on clay tablets, were discovered
in 1887 in Tell el-Amarna, the site of Akhenaten's capital. The
kinglets of Canaan implore their suzerain to send them reinforce-
ments against the Hittites who are invading the country from the
north, and against the HaJriru who are breaking in from the south
and east. The Habiru, it is now generally believed, were the
Hebrews. "I am like a bird caught in a trap," writes Rip-Adda of
Byblus. Arad-Hiba, King of Jerusalem, writes frantically: "The
Habiru are now capturing the fortresses of the Pharaoh . . . Lo,
if no reinforcements come this year, all the countries of my lord
the king will be utterly destroyed . . . What have I done against
my lord the king, that thou lovest the Habiru, and hatest the
governors?" There is evidence also that some of the kings, while
appealing for help against the invaders, were actually in collusion
with them.
8
THE outpost city having been taken, the ascent began, and
the first mountain city to feel the strength of the invaders was
Ai. After a first attempt that failed, Joshua drew the defenders
away from the city by stratagem, and Ai suffered the same fate as
Jericho. Thereupon Joshua held a solemn convocation of his
people and re-dedicated them to the law of Moses.
Shortly afterwards some natives appeared in the Israelite camp
and laid their submission at the feet of the commander. Their
garments were tattered and covered with dust, their shoes worn
through. They were from a distant city, they said, and begged the
Hebrews to make a treaty of alliance with them. A covenant was
duly concluded but the men, it turned out, were from near-by
Gibeon. The marks of long travel had been craftily feigned in
order to obtain the desired pact. Despite the deception, however,
the covenant was honored by the Israelites.
But the other cities were not disposed to follow Gibeon's ex*
4O THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
ample. Jerusalem, Hebron, Lachish, Eglon, and Jarmuth formed
an alliance and began by attacking Gibeon. The Gibeonites ap-
pealed to Joshua to save them, and in a swift movement the
Hebrew chieftain struck at the allied forces and overwhelmed
them. The survivors, fleeing into the foothills through the pass
of Beth-horon, were beaten down by a terrific hailstorm. The
victory at Gibeon opened the southern half of the country to the
invaders.
In the north, as the Israelites continued to penetrate slowly but
steadily, the Canaanite cities finally bestirred themselves. Led by
King Jabin of Hazor, they set out to halt the invaders and a deci-
sive battle was fought on a plain near Lake Merom where the
Canaanites were routed. The city of Hazor was captured and
destroyed.
Thus, bit by bit, the greater part of the land was conquered.
Hills and valleys yielded to the steady pressure of the Hebrews.
The natives, however, continued to dwell beside the conquerors.
There were places, moreover, which the invaders were unable to
seize. The southern portion of the coastal plain, for example, con-
tinued to be held by the Philistines and certain cities, among them
Jerusalem, proved impregnable.
The struggle lasted for a long time, and Joshua, now grown
old, pronounced his task completed and sent the warriors of
Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh back to their wives and children and
flocks across the Jordan. He then allotted to each of the other
tribes its "inheritance" in Canaan. South of Jerusalem the largest
portion went to Judah. Simeon, lying south of Judah, merged
finally with its stronger neighbor. In the north, the leading tribe
was Ephraim, and between Judah and Ephraim lay Benjamin and
Dan. North of Ephraim were the portions of half-Manasseh, of
Issachar, Zebulun, Naphtali, and Asher. The Levites alone received
no allotment: as priests they dwelt among the other tribes, even
as Moses had commanded.
The Tabernacle containing the Ark of the Covenant was set up
in the city of Shiloh. The high priest Eleazar took up his abode in
the sanctuary, and the solemn assemblies of the people were held
there. Shiloh became the religious center of the tribes. There Joshua
accomplished the allocation of the land, the act that marked the
THE JUDGES 41
completion of his task. He had led his people for twenty-five
years and his work was done. After solemn warnings and adjura-
tions to be faithful to the teachings of his master, the rugged old
warrior died and was gathered to his fathers.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Judges
FOR three and a half centuries after Joshua no leader arose
in Israel strong enough to command the obedience of all
the tribes. It was a period of disunion that threatened to
end the career of Abraham's descendants. Enemies swarmed against
them within and without their borders, and the tribes showed
little inclination to aid each other in time of need. The sense of
kinship and common destiny, which the perils of the desert had
quickened, went slowly glimmering.
Moreover, the beliefs and customs of the Canaanites began to
make inroads on the faith of the Hebrews. The former desert
nomads, now settled agriculturists, were surrounded by neighbors
whose way of life they found hard to resist. They forsook the
God of justice and purity whom their fathers had worshipped
in the desert, and joined the Canaanites in the worship of Baal
and Asherah on the "high places." "The children of Israel," we
read, "dwelt among the Canaanites, the Hittites, and the Amorites,
and the Perizzites, and the Hivites and the Jebusites; and they
took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their own daugh-
ters to their sons, and served their gods." Thus apostasy made
common cause with disunion jo undermine the Hebrew nation.
Against these disintegrating forces the great memories of their
past struggled valiantly. The sense of divine selection, nourished
by the Great Teaching that had been placed in their keeping,
could not be entirely erased. In every generation there were zealots
who kept alive the fires of the old faith in the hearts of the people.
From time to time, moreoyer, men of might and daring rose up
42 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
who met the enemies of Israel in battle and overthrew them. The
grateful people made these heroes their leaders and rulers: they
were the shofetim or judges.
IN THE Book of Judges the exploits of some of these shofe-
are recorded. Like all the figures that move through the Bible,
the judges are men of large mold, but intensely human. The book
is a glowing canvas of epic heroes and deeds, and out of it emerges
the picture of a people struggling against overwhelming odds to
save its body and soul.
There emerges also a picture of the religious and political an-
archy that reigned in Israel during this period. Those were the days
when "there was no king in Israel, and every man did that which
was right in his own eyes." We read, for instance, how men from
the tribe of Dan, on their way to a new home in the far north of
the land, forced a certain Levite to go with them and serve as
priest to the idols they carried. Such was the confusion of creed
and practice among those whose fathers had stood at Sinai! We
read, further, how the tribe of Benjamin, having committed a
heinous moral offense, was nearly annihilated by the other tribes,
an incident bearing testimony to the higher ethical perceptions
which nonetheless persisted in Israel.
The first judge named in the chronicle is Othniel of Judah who
delivered Israel from the oppression of Aram. The second is Ehud
of Benjamin, left-handed, but swift with the dagger. The oppressor
of his day was Eglon, King of Moab, whom Ehud slew in an
exploit of great daring. Ehud then "blew a horn in the hill country
of Ephraim," and, at the fords of the Jordan, the Moabites were
overwhelmed by the Hebrew warriors who had responded to the
summons.
But a new oppressor arose in the north. He was Jabin, King
of the Canaanites, whose yoke lay on Israel for twenty years. It
remained for a woman to rouse the people to revolt: Deborah,
whose proudest title was "a mother in Israel." Barak, the man
she chose to command the warriors of Israel, would march only on
condition that she accompany him. In a great battle fought at
THE JUDGES 43
the River Kishon, the Canaanite forces, led by the overconfident
Sisera, were routed, and Sisera himself met his fate at the hands of
another woman, Jael of the Bedouin Kenites, who were allies of
Israel. In a passionate song of triumph Deborah contrasts vividly
the disgrace endured by her people at the hands of the oppressor
and the glorious victory which she inspired. The battle of the
Kishon broke the power of the Canaanites for all time.
But from the eastern desert came Midianite and Amalekite
raiders, stealing crops and cattle, burning and slaying. The deliv-
erer this time was Gideon of the tribe of Manasseh, whose first act
was to destroy the idols in his father's household. Then, on a
dark night and with only 300 followers, he surprised and routed
a large Midianite encampment. Many had come to march behind
his standard but Gideon had sifted his men until the bravest only
were left. The victory won, Gideon proved he had wisdom as well
as courage. He knew how to placate the blustering and unruly
Ephraimites, and when his grateful people offered him a royal
crown he refused it. All his life he was content to be only their
"judge." When Gideon died, however, his son Abimelech deter-
mined to be king. Abimelech began by murdering his brothers, a
measure frequently resorted to by royal aspirants. But the attempt
at monarchy failed: the people rose up against the usurper and he
met an inglorious death while besieging one of his rebellious cities.
The scene shifts to the other side of the Jordan, where the tribes
of Reuben and Gad groaned beneath the oppression of the Am-
monites. Then rose up a certain Jephthah of Gilead, "a mighty
man of valor," who rallied the Israelites and inflicted a crushing
defeat on the children of Ammon. On the eve of the battle Jeph-
thah rashly vowed to sacrifice "whatsoever cometh forth of the
doors of my house to meet me." There came to meet him his only
daughter. The savage vow may have been kept the account is
not clear. What is clear, however, is that Torah had not yet
triumphed in Israel: in the religious confusion of the times, human
sacrifice still exercised its hideous lure.
Again the Ephraimites blustered and challenged. Why had
Jephthah proceeded against the enemy without them? But Jeph-
thah, unlike Gideon, minced no words with them. He set his
44 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
warriors upon the men of Ephraim who paid a terrible price for
their insolence.
3
WHAT light does archaeology shed upon the Age of the
Judges? The Egyptian records upon which we are chiefly depend-
ent are extremely meager and their interpretation is still, in
large part, a matter of controversy. But a little light does break
through them.
A period of 480 years, says the Great Tradition, runs from
the Exodus (1447 B.C.E.) to the building of Solomon's Temple
(967 B.C.E.), and the latest archaeological findings, as already
noted, confirm the statement with startling exactitude. In this
stretch of nearly half a millennium, the three and a half centuries
from the death of Joshua (1377 B.C.E.) to the accession of Saul,
the first King of Israel (1025 B.C.E.) may be regarded as the period
of the Judges.
It appears that during these centuries Canaan continued to owe
allegiance to Egypt. It was a debt on which the country was
always more or less in arrears; the amount paid depended on the
degree of power possessed at different times by the suzerain. Nor
did Egyptian domination prove an obstacle to the Israelites. On the
contrary, a remarkable correspondence in time has been pointed out
between the periods of Egyptian ascendancy and the years when
the children of Israel had "rest" from their enemies. Conversely
the periods of Egyptian decline correspond with those when Israel
bore the yoke of oppressors.
It may be taken for granted that the armies of Egypt, in the Age
o the Judges, marched up and down the coastal plain, but they
interfered little with the Israelites who occupied the central and
southern portions of the land. The Pharaoh Seti I (1314-1292
B.C.E.), for example, has left inscriptions and pictures recording
triumphs in Palestine. His successor, Ramses II, called the Great,
whose long reign extended from 1292 to 1225 B.C.E., fought an
indecisive battle with th6 Hitrites in the far north, followed by
a treaty of peace which has been discovered and deciphered.
But the most important discovery bearing on the period is a
stone inscription left by Merneptah (1225-1200 B.C.E.), the sue-
THE JUDGES 45
cessor of Ramses the Great. It is known as the Israel Stele, for
on it Israel is for the first time found mentioned in a record other
than the Bible. The inscription tells of Merneptah's triumphs in
Palestine and Syria.
Devastated is Tehermu;
The Hittite land is pacified;
Plundered is Canaan ivith every evil;
Carried off is Ascalon;
Seized upon is Gezer;
Yendom is made a thing of naught;
Israel is desolated^ her seed is not;
Palestine has become a defenseless
r wido f w for Egypt;
Everyone that is turbulent is bound
by King Merneptah,
Giving life like the sun every day.
It goes without saying that Merneptah's victories were not as
decisive as he desired posterity \o believe. Shortly afterwards, in
fact, Egypt was attacked by new enemies from the north and west.
They were defeated, but the empire was reduced to a state of
exhaustion and Egypt entered upon a long period of decline.
The new enemies were probably the Philistines. They are first
found mentioned in the records of Ramses III (1198-1167 B.C.E.),
although they must have begun their raids many centiiries earlier.
They are believed to have fled from their original home in Crete
or elsewhere as a result of the pressure of the Greeks whom, in
many ways, they resembled.
4
GENERATIONS followed one another with alternations of
freedom and oppression. Gradually Israel gained the upper hand
over the surrounding nations, over the Canaanites on the north and
the desert marauders east and south. On the coast, however,
dwelt the Philistines, the most formidable enemy of all, whose
united eities the Israelites had not yet been able to breach.
The most humanly appealing of the heroes that stride through
the Book of Judges is associated with the struggle against die
46 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
Philistines. He is Samson the Danite, the man no enemy can subdue
but who is himself unable to subdue his passions.
From birth Samson has been ordained to the service of God;
he has taken the vows of a Nazirite which require him to forego
the pleasures of the senses. His prowess strikes terror into the
Philistines, but the strength against which their men are helpless
is brought down by the wiles of a woman. In his death as well as
in his life, however, Samson inflicts terrible punishment upon the
Philistines. In a supreme effort he brings down their temple on
their heads and on his own, his last words being, "Let me die with
the Philistines."
But the Philistines recovered and began a career of new con-
quests. They marched north along the coast, apparently intending
to drive a wedge between the tribes of Israel by seizing the Valley
of Jezreel. At Aphek the Israelites attacked the invaders and were
repulsed. The Hebrew warriors sent to Shiloh for the Ark of the
Covenant, to be borne by them against the enemy. It was a des-
perate measure and it failed; a second time the Israelites were
defeated.
The Philistines pressed on; they captured Shiloh and destroyed
it. Philistine garrisons were stationed in the towns of Israel, He-
brew blacksmiths were forbidden to make arms, and the proudest
tribes, Ephraim, Manasseh, and Benjamin, were forced to pay
tribute. The sun appeared to be setting for Israel in Canaan.
5
A YOUTH named Samuel, who had been living with the
priest in the sanctuary at Shiloh, returned after the defeat at Aphek
to his birthplace, the village of Ramah. Samuel became the greatest
of the judges. For fifty years he led his people in the struggle
against Philistine domination, and where the strength of Samson
failed, the sword of the spirit, which Samuel wielded, brought
eventual victory.
From early childhood, Samuel had displayed remarkable spiritual
gifts, and on his return to his native village, people flocked to him
for counsel and comfort. Samuel believed that Torah alone would
save his people. Were they sinking in the mire of idolatry? Torah
would lift them out of it. Were the tribes forgetting their common
THE JUDGES 47
past? Torah would recall them to it. Have they become indifferent
to each other's welfare? Torah would remind them of their com-
mon destiny.
Such was the faith that determined the career of the great judge
and prophet Samuel. And groups of young men came forward to
assist him. They led peculiar lives and displayed peculiar powers
in the midst of the people. They were the B'nai Nebiim^ "Sons of
the Prophets," or young prophets, who wandered up and down the
land, appearing suddenly in the gates of villages and towns, and
calling on the people to be faithful to the God of Moses. They
punctuated their appeals with singing and dancing, and their zeal
and enthusiasm proved infectious.
Of these young men Samuel became the guide and inspiration.
He too traveled through the land, holding court, teaching Torah,
instilling hope and courage. In Mizpah, in Bethel, in Gilgal, as
well as in his native Ramah, the elders frequently came together
at his call. Even the tribe of Judah, until then secluded in its own
rugged hills, became aware of its kinship with Israel. Adversity
proved more effective for restoring the solidarity of the tribes
than prosperity and triumph.
In a manner unexpected, the people became aware that sub-
jection to the Philistines was not inevitable. An attack by the
oppressor on one of the assemblies at Mizpah was repulsed by
Israel's warriors. Though not a decisive victory, it nourished the
hope of eventual liberation.
But the leader was growing old and the elders of Israel perceived
with sorrow that his sons were not worthy of succeeding him.
They came to Samuel with the startling demand that he choose
a king to rule over them. Only thus, it appeared to them, could
they have union in the face of the enemies who, they pointed
out, were all ruled by kings. Must Israel alone be different?
In words that have become Classic, Samuel warned the elders
against royalty. The king, he told them, would take away from
them all that was most precious to them, their sons and (feughters,
their fields and vineyards, even their lives.
He will take your men-servants, and your maid-servants^ and
your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to
48 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks; and ye shall
be his servants. And ye shall cry out in that day because of
your king whom ye shall have chosen you; and the Lord will
not answer you in that day.
Thus did Samuel sound a warning against autocracy and tyr-
anny which has re-echoed through the ages.
CHAPTER six
Saul and David
BUT the immediate dangers were too great for the prophet's
warnings to be heeded. The elders insisted on a king, and
Samuel had to assume the task of finding someone qualified
for the exalted and dangerous post.
There came to him one day a youth of heroic aspect, tall and
handsome, and the seer, moved by a prophetic impulse, poured oil
on his head and kissed him. The young man was Saul son of Kish,
of the tribe of Benjamin.
On his way back to his native Gibeah, Saul stopped to sing and
dance with a group of the B'ntri Nebiim. Neighbors who knew
the modest youth were surprised: "Is Saul, too, among the proph-
ets?" they asked. And soon afterwards Samuel presented him
formally to a large assemblage of elders, who confirmed the choice.
"Long live the king!" the people shouted, the first time this cry
sounded in Israel. But it became established that a king of Israel
was subject to the free choice of the people's representatives.
Not long afterwards the king performed a deed that vindicated
Samuel's insight. Across the Jordan the Ammonites were besieging
the Israelite stronghold of Jabesh. Prepared to surrender, the men
of Jabesh were met by - the shameful demand that they give up
their right eyes to the victors. So they sent messengers across the
Jordan appealing for help. The king was in the field, plowing,
the message reached him. Roused to fury, he slashed the
SAUL AND DAVID 49
oxen that pulled his plow and sent the pieces to the tribes. The
men of the nation understood the summons and warning. They
flocked to his standard and he led them across the Jordan and
overwhelmed the insolent foe.
It was a great victory, and all the tribes hastened to do homage
to the king. Saul set up a government, made Gibeah his capital,
and created a standing army with his cousin Abner as commander.
No voice of disaffection made itself heard, not even in fractious
Ephraim. Nevertheless, Samuel's authority was greater than Saul's,
the young king submitting to the guidance of the priest and seer.
The years passed, Saul came to full manhood, and his depend-
ence on Samuel became a burden to him. His chief task, however,
the liberation of his people from the yoke of the Philistines, was
still to be accomplished. At last the revolt against the oppressor
broke out. It was set off by Jonathan, the king's heroic son, who
began by wiping out the Philistine garrison in Gibeah, the capital.
Thereupon the Philistines marched against Israel in full force, and
Saul's case appeared desperate. Samuel himself, offended by the
king's growing independence, seemed to have deserted him.
Again Jonathan came forward and saved his people's cause.
At Michmash, where the enemy was encamped, the daring youth,
followed only by his armor-bearer, climbed a sheer ascent, slew the
sentries, and threw the Philistine camp into panic. The enemy
sought safety in flight. Saul's summons rang through the hills and
even the timid came out and joined in the pursuit. The Philistine
flight became a rout.
The king had triumphed against his strongest enemy: the king
should have been joyous and happy. Yet Saul was not happy.
Samuel's change of attitude had, no doubt, a great deal to do with
it, but the final source of the king's unhappiness lay in himself.
A mood of profound melancholy settled upon him and under its
baleful spell joy turned to bitterness, victory to wormwood.
2
THE Philistines, for the rime being, at least, were discom-
fited; on the east the desert marauders kept a respectful distance.
Only on the south the Amalekites, hereditary foe of Israel, needed
to be punished. Samuel appeared and ordered Saul to strike the
5O THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
Amalekites a crushing blow, to give no quarter, not even to take
booty. Saul obeyed except for the last injunction: he permitted
some of his men to drive off the enemy's catde. Thereupon the
prophet publicly denounced the monarch and rejected him.
Saul became more gloomy and bitter, and he sought relief in
battle and victory. He fought the Moabites, the Ammonites, the
Edomites, and the kings of the north as far as Damascus. But
neither clash of arms nor shouts of victory could soothe his tor-
mented spirit.
His officers, who loved their noble king, thought that music
might bring him relief, so they brought him one day a young
shepherd and harpist who had come up from Bethlehem in Judah,
one David son of Jesse. At once Saul was captivated by the
charming youth, and David's playing brought him respite from
the melancholy that preyed on his soul.
But David was no mere plucker of harp-strings; he was cast
for a far greater role. The shadow of the youth grew longer and
soon he had the opportunity to prove the stuff he was made of.
The Philistines had again invaded Israel, and the two armies stood
facing each other on opposite heights. For a number of days a
giant Philistine, one Goliath, had come and taken his stand in
die valley between, defying the Hebrews to send down a champion
to engage him in combat. At last the champion of Israel stood
forth. He was the harpist from Judah, armed only with a sling and
"five smooth stones out of the brook.*' One of them flew swift
and tnle and the giant fell like a blasted cedar. The Philistines
abandoned their camp, pursued by the Hebrews, and David was
hailed as Israel's savior.
David's star continued to rise, but as yet the king's love was
undiminished. No one seemed able to resist the youth's charm.
Jonathan became his fast friend; Michal, the king's daughter, loved
him; the people idolized him.
Suddenly Saul's mood changed. David returned one day fro.n
a triumphant raid against the Philistines, and the women came
out to greet him and the king heard them sing:
Saul had slain his thousands,
. And David his ten thousands/
SAUL AND DAVID 5 1
Now the king became aware that David was taking precedence
over him in the thoughts of the people. He recalled the wrath of
Samuel and how the prophet had renounced him, and with the
clairvoyance that madmen are said to possess, he saw David as the
man for whom the prophet had rejected him. Suspicion, fear,
and hate took possession of the king's heart. Saul sought to slay
him, and David was compelled to flee. Grief-stricken, he bade
farewell to Jonathan, the comrade of his bosom, and to Michal,
who had become his wife.
He stopped at a sanctuary in Nob near Jerusalem, and the
priests gave him the sword of Goliath which had been entrusted
to their keeping. Then he fled south and came to his own Judah.
He sent his parents away into Moab for safety, and took refuge in
the hills, where before long he became the leader of a company
of outcasts like himself. They numbered some 400 desperate men,
and the caves near Adullam became their place of refuge.
3
SAUL pursued the fugitive relentlessly. First he massacred
the priests of Nob for having befriended David, then he followed
him into Judah. The people had welcomed the help of David's
outlaws against Philistine raiders, but once the enemy was driven
off, they were eager to be rid of their wild and hungry deliverers.
So they sent word to Saul informing him of the fugitive's presence
among them. David fled deeper into the southland.
He had hairbreadth escapes from Saul. Twice he had the king
in his power and could have slain him, but he would not stretch
out his hand against "the Lord's anointed." On one of those occa-
sions, as the king lay asleep, David cut off a piece of his garment;
on the other, he made off with the king's spear and pitcher. On
learning how his foe had spared him, Saul was overcome with
remorse, but the ravening monster of suspicion took possession of
him again, and the hunt continued.
Finally, David was compelled to take refuge in Philistine terri-
tory. Achish, King of Gath, welcomed the conqueror of Goliath,
believing that David, embittered by the ingratitude of the Hebrew
monarch, would turn his arms against his own people. Achish
52 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
assigned the stronghold of Ziklag to David and his followers. The
Philistine ruler reckoned without David's cunning. With Ziklag
as his base, David took his followers on raids, but the victims of
his sallies were not his own people; they were Amalekites and
other of his people's enemies.
4
AT LENGTH the hunter was forced to leave his quarry, for
the Philistines were gathering to strike a decisive blow at Israel.
Their plan of campaign was one followed frequently by invaders
of Palestine. They marched up the coast, turned at the foot of
Carmel and swept into the Plain of Jezreel. It was good ground
for them: it allowed them to make full use of their equipment,
especially the war chariots of which they had large quantities.
But a new crisis arose for David also. His host and patron, the
King of Gath, invited him to march with the Philistines, an invita-
tion too dangerous to decline. At Aphek, however, the other Philis-
tine chiefs demanded to know what David was doing among them.
Recalling what they had suffered at his hands in the days when
he fought for Saul, they insisted on his discharge. David was saved!
Returning to Ziklag, he found the place in ruins: in his absence
an Amalekite band had raided it, carrying off the women and
children. David pursued the Amalekites, routed them, and rescued
the captives.
For David the crisis was over; for Saul it swept on to its tragic
climax. Having concentrated his forces on Mount Gilboa, the
king looked out on the Philistine encampment at Shunem. Was
this to be the end? A fierce desire to know the answer took posses-
sion of him. Against the prohibition of Torah, he resorted to the
black arts of divination by which all his forebodings were con-
firmed.
The armies clashed and Israel was overwhelmed. Three of the
king's sons were slain in the field, among them Jonathan. As the
enemy pressed closer, the king commanded his armor-bearer to
slay him. The man, dismayed, held back; whereupon Saul "took his
sword and fell upon it."
The soul of the unhappy king found repose at last.
DAVID THE KING 53
CHAPTER SEVEN-
David the King
DVVID was still a fugitive in Ziklag when he heard of Saul's
defeat and death, and he was overcome with grief. He
mourned aloud for the "Lord's anointed" and for Jona-
than, the friend of his bosom. "Thy beauty, O Israel," he cried, "is
slain upon thy high places!" And of Jonathan he sang:
Wonderful was thy love to me,
Passing the love of women.
How are the mighty fallen,
And the weapons of war perished!
But soon the urge to action came strong upon him. His nation
lay broken and bleeding; the frail ship of state would founder in
a sea of anarchy unless a strong and skillful hand seized the helm.
That hand was his: he knew it with the self-assurance of genius.
He shook the dust of the Philistines from his feet, and with his
band of followers, faithful to him unto death, he came to Hebron
in Judah. There the elders of his tribe assembled and elected him
their king.
David proceeded to make overtures to the northern tribes, but
for a long time without success. Saul's general, Abner, had rescued
one of his master's sons from the disaster at Gilboa, and this prince,
Ishbaal by name, challenged David's right to succeed his father.
There was civil war between Ishbaal and David until Abner was
won over. But David's general, Joab, slew Abner, who in the course
of the previous fighting had slain Joab's brother. This ruthless
act of blood revenge was denounced by David: nevertheless the
removal of Abner strengthened the position of the new monarch,
for between Abner and Joab peace would have been impossible.
Not long afterwards Ishbaal, too, was the victim of assassins,
54 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
and only a crippled child, a son of Jonathan, remained who might
challenge David's right to the throne. The star of Jesse's son con-
tinued to rise. Seven years after receiving the crown of Judah, the
elders of the north came together at Hebron and proclaimed him
king over all Israel. The year was 1006 B.C.E.
DAVID thus became the founder of a dynasty whose title
to succession has persisted longer than that of any other in re-
corded history. In the traditions of his people, David is the king
par excellence; his descendants alone may rightfully reign over
Israel. The double light of temporal greatness and of holiness
illumines David's crown, for, in the same tradition, this mighty
ruler is also the devout singer of the Lord, the author of the in-
comparable Psalms. And the belief arose that from him would
descend mankind's ultimate Redeemer, "Messiah son of David."
Nevertheless, his greatness and glory have not blinded the
generations to his faults: the Great Tradition has neither omitted
nor condoned them. Full-blooded and passionate, he was guilty of
sins and errors for which he suffered grievous penalties, including
shame and remorse. And not the least of his sorrows sprang from
his military prowess. For David was denied the supreme joy of
building a temple to the Lord: "God said unto me," he declared:
"Thou shalt not build a house for My name, because thou art a
man of war, and hast shed blood."
But David was a statesman of genius, and as his reign advanced
his greatness became more and more manifest. To the diplomatic
business of consolidating his authority over Israel was added, in
the early years of his reign, the formidable task of freeing his
people from the yoke of the Philistines. The war of liberation
lasted many years. David's fortunes rose and fell, and there were
times when he seemed to be pursuing a forlorn hope. Again David
became a fugitive, seeking the protection of the caves in Adullam.
With a band of desperate men, his gibborim, heroes for whom no
exploit was too hazardous, David resorted to guerrilla warfare. His
men adored him. When they saw him as ardent in battle as they
were themselves, they forced him to guard his life, fearful lest he
quench "the lamp of Israel." Then his fortunes rose. In a swift
DAVID THE KING 55
northerly movement he met the Philistines in the plain of Rephaim,
near Jerusalem, and defeated them. He went on and even invaded
their territory, capturing the city of Gath. The Philistine yoke fell
from the neck of Israel.
The early years of David's reign saw still another decisive event:
Jerusalem was taken and became the capital of the Hebrew nation.
This well-nigh impregnable fortress was still being held by the
Jebusites, but its location and natural strength recommended it to
David as the ideal center of his kingdom. It was neutrally situated
between the mutually jealous tribes of Judah and Ephraim, and
east, south, and west of it lay valleys which made it almost unap-
proachable. The Jebusite chieftains laughed at David when he
called on them to surrender the citadel, taunting him that the
blind and the lame would suffice to defend it. David's gibborim led
the attack on the fortress of Mount Zion and captured it. They
crawled through a tunnel, clambered up a vertical shaft, made
their way through another passage, reached the city, and smote
down the unsuspecting garrison. The actual tunnel through which
they passed, now called Warren's Shaft, has been discovered and
identified.
Shortly after the capture of Jerusalem, the Hebrew monarch
built himself a splendid residence on Mount Zion, and he made
Jerusalem the religious capital of the nation as well by bringing
to Zion the sacred Ark of die Covenant which had formerly rested
in Shiloh. The progress of the Ark was a solemn and festive occa-
sion; the king himself danced before it as the Levites bore it to
the Mount. There, in the Tabernacle which had been prepared for
it, the sacred object was reverently lodged. David felt that it de-
served a more impressive accommodation: he longed to build a
magnificent temple to his God; but the prophet Nathan, whose
voice he had learned to heed, ordered him to leave the building
of a temple to his successor.
Thus did David launch Jerusalem on its career as the Stronghold
of Israel and the Holy City of many nations.
3
HAVING secured his throne against all possible pretenders,
subdued the Philistines, and created a national center, David turned
56 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
his abundant energies to the task of organizing his kingdom and
extending its borders. He appointed ministers, commanders, priests.
He set up his gibborim as a personal bodyguard, but shrewdly
placed at his call still another guard composed of Philistine
mercenaries, foreigners who would not be likely to take sides with
a pretender. Joab and his brother Abishai were put in command
of the army; Zadok and Abiathar were appointed chief priests.
On the other side of the Jordan the inveterate enemies of Israel
seemed to be anxious to try the mettle of the new king, nor was
David loath to accept their challenge. An ambassador whom he
sent to Ammon with condolences to the new ruler of the kingdom
on the death of his father, was made the victim of an outrageous
insult. At once David dispatched an army commanded by Joab
to Ammon, and a Avar followed which lasted several years. The
Ammonites drew the Aramaeans into an alliance against Israel, but
both allies were eventually defeated. David himself took an army
to the north and overthrew the forces of the Aramaean kings of
Zobah and Damascus, annexing both kingdoms to his own. Joab
overcame the resistance of the Ammonites whose capital, Rabbath
Ammon, was seized together with a vast booty. The arrogant king
of Ammon was dethroned, and his possessions made tributary to
Israel.
Farther south, Moab, Edom, and Amalek were added to David's
conquests. Amalek was crushed, Moab and Edom made tributary.
The ports on the Gulf of Akaba were drawn into David's borders.
Thus, stretching from the Euphrates on the north to the Gulf of
Akaba on the south, from the Mediterranean on the west to the
desert on the east, David's kingdom became an empire. Among his
allies were the Phoenicians, those skillful craftsmen and seagoing
traders, whose cities lay on the coast north of Canaan.
Such was the greatness and the glory to which Israel was
elevated by David. The monarch's skies were darkened by no
menace. His enemies feared him. His allies admired him. His
people idolized him.
4
BUT all the wisdom and prowess of the king proved power-
less against two demons Hiat have plagued monarchs from time im-
DAVID THE KING 57
memorial. The first was the demon of domestic dissension to which
the polygamous households of eastern potentates are especially
exposed. The second was the fiend of lawless passion which even
those who conquer cities are unable to hold in leash.
The blot on David's escutcheon was the work of the second of
these demons. The king became sinfully enamored of Bathsheba,
wife of Uriah the Hittite, an officer in his army. With Uriah away
fighting the Ammonites, the king had Bathsheba conducted into
his palace, and sent secret word to Joab to expose Uriah in battle.
Uriah was slain. It was a foul crime, but one of those which rulers
permitted themselves without exciting a murmur either in their
own consciences or on the lips of their people.
In Israel, however, a spirit was at work which brooked no
wrong even from monarchs. The prophet Nathan came and stood
before David, calm words on his lips, a storm of wrath in his heart.
He asked the king to pass judgment on a certain rich man, owner
of many flocks and herds, who had nevertheless stolen the "one
little ewe lamb," sole possession of a poor neighbor, and killed it
for a feast. And when the indignant king pronounced death upon
the rich man, the prophet thundered: "Thou art the man!" And
David bowed his head. "I have sinned before the Lord," he said.
5
THE years of David's reign became many. Israel's farmers
and burghers had peace at last. The frontiers were well-defended.
Internal dissension dared not raise its head.
In his palace on Mount Zion the king saw his sons and daughters,
born of different wives, grow into manhood and womanhood.
Then came conflicts that darkened his days. His eldest son,
Amnon, guilty of a shameful deed against his half-sister Tamar,
was slain by Tamar's brother Absalom. Absalom escaped into exile,
but David loved the brave and handsome youth and permitted him,
after several years, to return to his palace and his favor. The young
man looked upon himself as his father's successor.
But Absalom was impatient; he would not wait until his father
was dead. So he raised the standard of revolt against the king and
was joined by enough malcontents to menace his father's throne.
58 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
The king, accompanied by his faithful gibborim, fled from Jerusa-
lem across the Jordan to Mahanaim,
He was already old, but the keen mind and great spirit held
firm. With the precision of genius he took his measures for quelling
the rebellion, augmenting his fighting forces and throwing con-
fusion into the councils of Absalom. In a bloody battle fought in
the jungles east of the Jordan the revolt was crushed. Absalom,
his head caught fast in the branches of an oak as he rode under the
tree, was slain by Joab. David's throne was saved, but the victory
brought him no joy: bitterly the king wept for Absalom, the
faithless son whom he loved.
The elders of Israel were bringing David back to Jerusalem in
triumph when a fierce quarrel broke out between Judah and the
other tribes. David had to put down another rebellion led by a
Benjamite named Sheba. Between north and south jealousy and
hate were always festering.
With faltering steps the aged king mounted his throne again.
In spite of his sorrows, God's goodness and mercy, he felt, had
followed him all the days of his life. His heart overflowed with
thankfulness and adoration, and out of his tribulations sprang new
psalms to the Lord who "drew me out of many waters."
AGAIN David's throne stood secure, his enemies subdued, his
people contented. The drift toward idolatry which had, for gen-
erations, menaced the integrity of the nation, was now checked.
For David was the servant of the God of Moses, and under his
mighty scepter Israel strove to achieve the way of life prescribed
by Torah.
In extreme old age, the king still found the strength and resolu-
tion to put an end to a new rivalry which arose in his household
around the succession. The rivals were his sons Adonijah and
Solomon. Adonijah was the oldest, but Solomon's mother was the
well-loved Bathsheba. Solomon, moreover, had the support of the
prophet Nathan.
Adonijah attempted to follow in Absalom's footsteps. On a cer-
tain day he solemnly declared himself successor and king. There-
SOLOMON 59
upon Bathsheba, who had been promised by David that her son
should reign after him, came and stood before the king, demanding
that he proclaim Solomon his successor. The king so ordered, and
Solomon's rival fled for safety to a sanctuary.
Thus was the nation saved from another civil war, and David
could meet his approaching end with serenity. With a final ad-
monition to Solomon and a warning against Joab, for Joab had
slain Absalom and supported the pretender Adonijah, David, after
a reign of forty years (1013-973 B.C.E.), died, and was gathered
to his fathers.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Solomon
THERE was enough of David's genius in Solomon to insure
another long and prosperous reign in Israel. Solomon's
splendor even surpassed his father's, for the son inherited
a realm so strong and united, its enemies so thoroughly subdued,
that his sword could rest in its scabbard and the king could apply
his wealth and talents to the embellishment of his kingdom. Later
chroniclers looked back upon the forty years of his reign (973-
933 B.C.E.) with pride and wistfulness. It was a period when
Judah and Israel from Dan to Beersheba dwelt safely, "every man
under his vine and under his fig tree, and there was none to make
them afraid."
Solomon was a monarch of whom a people might well be proud.
In his palace in Jerusalem, splendidly aloof from his subjects, he
dwelt in pomp and grandeur. Foreign rulers came to pay him
homage and gaze upon his magnificence. His wisdom, moreover,
was phenomenal; it "excelled the wisdom of all the children of the
east and all the wisdom of Egypt." He had "a wise and un-
derstanding heart": it was the one gift he chose when, in a
dream, gifts of all sorts, among them wealth and long life, were set
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LAND OF ISRAEL
UNDER DAVID AND SOLOMON
SOLOMON 6 1
before him. To Solomon was credited the garnered wisdom of the
race, as well as the possession of powers that made him master of
the secret forces of life.
He was an Oriental monarch vying with other Oriental mon-
archs in the parade of pomp and power, and he began his reign in
the manner characteristic of Oriental monarchs by removing
every potential rival and rebel. Pretexts were found readily
enough, and among those who forfeited their lives were Adonijah
and the grizzled old warrior, Joab.
Solomon went on to overhaul and strengthen the administrative
establishment he inherited from his father. He made Benaiah, the
captain of the guard, commander in chief of the army. He named
head priests, a recorder, a palace steward, two scribes, and a col-
lector of the revenue. The latter was Adoniram, a minister of ex-
ceptional importance. For Solomon divided the country into
twelve districts with twelve officials charged with the duty of
securing annually from each a month's supplies for tlje main-
tenance of the king's expanding household; and Adoniram was
the chief of the twelve. Thus did Solomon in his wisdom organize
his administration and revenues.
In addition, wealth came pouring into the land from foreign
countries. The "Pax Hebraica" maintained by his father and him-
self among the surrounding nations kept the caravans moving in a
steady stream between Babylonia and Egypt. Solomon, moreover,
widened his commerce to include the fabled land of Ophir, which
may have been India. With the help of his friends and allies, the
seagoing Phoenicians, he sent a fleet to that distant land. Two
years later, the fleet returned to Ezion-geber, his port on the Gulf
of Akaba, laden with the spices and luxuries of the Far East.
On the site of Ezion-geber recent excavations have uncovered
the remains of a great factory town which, the excavators report,
Solomon alone in his day "had the ability and the vision and the
power to build." In this industrial city the copper and iron
ores taken from Solomon's mines in Akaba were smelted, refined,
and made into finished products which went out by sea and land
"to be exchanged for the spices, ivory, gold, and precious woods
of Africa and Arabia and India." At various points in his realm
Solomon established depots for controlling the commercial traffic
62 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
and policing the country. At one of these depots, Megiddo in
Jezreel, Solomon's stables, together with a hangar for his chariots,
have actually been discovered. There was little in the aits of
industry, commerce, and statecraft in which Solomon the wise
did not prove himself adept.
rr MAY be taken as evidence of Solomon's wisdom that
throughout his long reign war was a rare and unimportant oc-
currence. Military glory had no lure for this king who, unlike his
martial father, had spent his youth amid the pleasures and ameni-
ties of a royal court, and it was probably this aversion for war
that led to a shrinkage in the boundaries of his empire. In the north,
the city of Damascus fell away, while in the south Edom revolted
and won its freedom. But Damascus was too distant to excite keen
regret in Solomon's heart, and as for Edom, he retained, probably
by treaty arrangement, the important harbor of Ezion-geber. As
for the rest of that forbidding region, Solomon felt, no doubt, that
it was not worth the blood of Israel's warriors.
The keystone of Solomon's foreign policy, in fact, was not war
but alliance. He made an alliance with Egypt and cemented it by
marrying the daughter of the Pharaoh, his royal father-in-law
giving him the city of Gezer, lately conquered by Egypt, as
dowry. He followed the same policy with his other neighbors,
and with every entente cordiale a foreign princess was added to his
harem. His most lucrative alliance was with the Phoenicians from
whom he obtained ships and sailors for his trade with distant lands,
and artisans and materials for his buildings.
Jerusalem began to lose its provincial aspect. The high-born
ladies whom Solomon married brought their retinues to the
capital. They also brought their religious cults into the city, and
Solomon, for diplomatic reasons, refrained from interfering with
the innovations. Strange forms of worship now appeared in Jeru-
salem, exercising a lure which the king himself was at times unable
to resist.
Moreover, these elegant ladies, the Egyptian princess in par-
ticular, had been reared in a splendor beside which Solomon's
SOLOMON 63
capital must have seemed barbaric. What were the rude structures
of Jerusalem beside the monuments and palaces of Egypt? The
king determined to remove the reproach. Jerusalem must not be
inferior to the capitals of his neighbors.
3
SOLOMON proceeded to transform his capital. First he
strengthened its defenses, encircling the city with a wall that em-
braced the western hill, the Tyropean Valley, and the hills on the
east above the Vale of Kidron. On the northern area of the eastern
hill, or Mount Zion, he erected a new city, indulging to die full his
taste for splendor and his ambition to figure as a great builder.
He required for these structures armies of laborers and vast
stores of material. He required also skilled artisans of many crafts,
masons, carvers of wood and stone, workers in metal and ivory.
His Phoenician allies supplied the principal craftsmen as well as the
timber from the forest of Lebanon; the stones were quarried near
Jerusalem. For unskilled labor he had recourse to the method em-
ployed by the despots of Egypt: he drafted thousands of his sub-
jects to labor in the forests and quarries.
Gradually there rose up a palace for the king, another for his
wives, and still another for the Pharaoh's daughter. A gold and
ivory throne was fashioned for the king, and set up in a great Hall
of Justice. Below the palaces and Hall of Justice an arsenal was
erected called, because of its cedar columns, the House of the
Forest of Lebanon.
North of the palaces rose the most illustrious of all of Solomon's
structures, the Temple. Great courts surrounded it, and two
enormous pillars of bronze, before which stood the Brazen Altar,
flanked the entrance to the sanctuary proper. The latter had two
principal chambers. The first was the hechal, into which die priests
alone could enter; the second was the debir, or Holy of Holies,
where, beneath the wings of two giant cherubim, rested the Ark
of the Covenant. The debtr could be entered by the High Priest
alone, and only on the Day of Atonement. It was this Temple that
became the national shrine of the people, their glory in prosperity,
their consolation and hope in adversity. And wherever, in die
64 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
centuries that followed, the tides of history bore them, the memory
of the Temple on Mount Zion filled their hearts with pride
and sorrow and expectation.
The dedication of the Temple was a memorable event in Israel;
Jerusalem was thronged for the occasion with pilgrims from every
corner of the land. The king's dedication address rang with
eloquence and spiritual exaltation. In deep humility he offered the
Temple to the God of Israel. But his conception of God was not
merely that of a local or national deity. "Behold!" he cried,
"heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee: how
much less this house that I have builded!" The Temple, more-
over, was declared open to all nations, "that all the peoples of the
earth may know- Thy name."
Having listened to their king and seen his greatness and glory,
the pilgrims set their faces homeward. The shepherds returned to
their flocks and pastures, the husbandmen to their fields, groves,
and vineyards, the craftsmen to their shops, the merchants to their
wares. Their hearts were filled with pride and gratitude, for Israel
was great among the nations.
Solomon's fame swept across the boundaries of his empire to
distant lands, and foreign potentates, impelled by interest and
curiosity, came to his capital on visits of state. The most illustrious
of these visitors was the Queen of Sheba, a faraway land on the
southwestern coast of Arabia. The Queen went away awed by
Solomon's splendor and dazzled by his brilliance. "The half was
not told me," said she when at last she tore herself away and
returned to her country.
4
IT is pleasant to dwell on Solomon's glory, and later genera-
tions have done so in full measure. Nevertheless, all was not well
with the nation. Too high a price was demanded for all that
magnificence. The people found the taxes too high, particularly
the maintenance tax for the king's household, and they resented
even more the forced labor the monarch exacted from them for
his building operations. Moreover, the King of Tyre had obtained
twenty Israelite towns for the help he gave Solomon. Was it right,
the people asked, to barter away the patrimony of Israel? In addi-
THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL 65
tion Solomon pursued a policy that alienated the religious leaders
of the people, especially the prophets. True, the king in the main
remembered his father's behest to be loyal to the Great Teaching.
At the same time, however, to please his foreign wives, he did
permit the introduction of idolatrous cults into Jerusalem.
Finally, it must be set down that Solomon did nothing to allay
the old hostility between the north and the south. Ephraim could
not forget that the king was a son of Judah, and the king himself
helped them to remember it, for in the imposition of the hated
maintenance tax, the tribe of Judah, foolishly enough, was ex-
empted.
While the king was alive, however, the discontent, despite the
abundant fuel it had to feed on, was not a serious problem. Only
one incident is recorded which disturbed the king's serenity. A
certain bold fellow, Jeroboam son of Nebat, attempted to launch
a rebellion in Ephraim. The attempt was quickly suppressed, but
Jeroboam escaped into Egypt, where a new Pharaoh gave him
refuge. The rebel, it seems, had been encouraged by the prophets.
One of them, Ahijah of Shilolf, having cut his garment into twelve
pieces symbolizing the twelve tribes of Israel, had presented ten of
them to Jeroboam.
There came a day when the news was brought to Jeroboam in
Egypt that Solomon was dead. The great king had died peacefully,
without premonition, apparently, of the troublous heritage he was
leaving to Rehoboam, his son and successor.
CHAPTER NINE
The Kingdom of Israel
"1^ *yor a trace of the genius of David or the wisdom of Solo-
j^^^j mon fell to Rehoboam: he bears the inglorious distinc-
-L. ^1 tion of having been the immediate cause of the breakup
of the kingdom. His conduct, as soon as he ascended the throne,
was precisely calculated to make the embers of discontent burst
66 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
into flame. For when the elders of the northern tribes, gathered
to confirm his selection, demanded relief from the oppressive
burdens of his father, the arrogant young man, spurred on by a
coterie of youthful counselors, told his subjects: "My father made
your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke; my father chastised
you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions."
Thereupon, the traditional cry of revolt: "To your tents, O
Israel!" rang out in the multitude; the leader was the former rebel
Jeroboam who had returned to Israel. The king then made an-
other mistake. He sent an ambassador to the elders to reason with
them, choosing for this delicate mission none other than Adoniram,
the man who had been in charge of Solomon's tax levies. The
people stoned the messenger to death. Rehoboam fled to Jerusalem,
and the northern tribes proclaimed Jeroboam their king. The year
was 933 B.C.E.
It was the end of the united kingdom: the commonwealth
created by David was no more. In its place arose two Hebrew
kingdoms, each one pursuing its own destiny. The two were un-
equal in extent and resources. The northern kingdom, sometimes
called Ephraim in deference to its leading tribe, but more often
called Israel, had three times the area of the southern kingdom,
which came to be known as Judalu The south embraced the tribes
of Judah and Benjamin only, the other ten being credited to
Israel. 9 The north was more fertile; its cities were larger and more
numerous. Israel was in closer contact with the currents of world
commerce and world events.
In spite of its advantages, however, Israel ended its career almost
a century and a half sooner than Judah. The northern kingdom
encountered more enemies, and it was internally weakened by
numerous dynastic revolutions. The people of Judah, on the other
hand, were spared the turmoil of dynastic changes by their un-
shakable loyalty to the House of David. Moreover, the attachment
to Torah and die Torah way of life, which augmented the power
Of the original tribes, Simeon also may be assigned to the kingdom of Judah.
Simeon, however, had practically lost its identity in the tribe of, Judah, so that
only the latter and Benjamin are included in the kingdom of the south. In the
north there would be only nine tribes, but the two parts of Manasseh, divided by
the Jordan, came to be looked upon as separate tribes. Thus, Israel if frequently
called the Kingdom of the Ten Tribes.
THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL 67
of national resistance, was much stronger in the south than in the
north*
WAR broke out at once between the two kingdoms and
continued throughout the reign of Jeroboam, whose defeat was
only averted by the intervention of his patron, the Pharaoh of
Egypt. The latter invaded Canaan and captured many cities.
The prophets, from whom the northern rebel had received en-
couragement, were compelled in the end to turn against him, for
he set up shrines in his kingdom where the bull, sacred to the
Egyptians, was worshipped. These shrines, he hoped, would wean
his subjects from the temple in Jerusalem which they continued to
visit. At the same time he was paying homage to his protector by
worshipping his gods.
Jeroboam's son survived his accession for only two years. A
number of bloody palace revolutions followed, out of which there
finally emerged a military leader of exceptional prowess Omri,
who seized the throne of Israel about the year 884 B.C.E. Israel's
army, which proclaimed Omri king, was at the moment besieging
the Philistine stronghold of Gibbethon. Apparently the ancient
enemy, after a period of decline, had again become formidable.
During a reign of only twelve years Omri, who possessed the
gift of statesmanship, brought Israel to a high place of power and
importance. To begin with, he established peace between Israel
and Judah. The other enemies, the Philistines on the west and
the Moabites across the Jordan, were made to feel the strength of
Omri's arms. Finally, Omri built a new capital for Israel. He built
it on a hill overlooking a plain, and he rendered it almost impreg-
nable. It was the city of Shomron or Samaria, which became the
metropolis of the north and the religious and political rival of
Jerusalem.
3
OMRI was followed by his son Ahab, the most notorious of
Israel's kings. Ahab attempted to emulate the opulence of Solo-
mon, strengthening his capital and other cities in Israel, and em-
bellishing them with fine edifices, including a sumptuous "ivory
68 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
palace," remains of which have been discovered by excavators.
But it was Ahab's misfortune to reign at a time when the smolder-
ing hostility between the zealots of the ancient faith and the
idolaters burst into flame. The conflict had been prepared by
Ahab's father. Having formed an alliance with the Phoenician
city of Tyre, Omri had thought to cement it by a marriage be-
tween the crown prince and the Tyrian princess Jezebel. The
princess brought her national idols with her, and Samaria became
infested with the cult of Baal, Asherah, and Moloch. Jezebel was
determined to foist the Phoenician worship upon her adopted
land, and she brought in hundreds of priests of Baal to assist her.
The prophets became aroused. No such insolent defiance of the
God of Moses had ever been attempted before. Idolatry, more-
over, brought its normal brood of social vices: luxury and licen-
tiousness, oppression of the poor, perversion of justice. The
prophets, of course, stood for the ancient purities and simplicities.
There were Nazirites among them and Rechabites; the latter were
named after Aminadab son of Rechab, and lived, like their remote
ancestors, as nomad shepherds. In that life alone, they felt, could
the ancient virtues be preserved.
A leader rose up among the prophets, Elijah the Tishbite, a man
of irresistible power and passion. His zeal was for the God of
justice and righteousness, and he spurned all compromise with
idolatry and vice. The nation, he demanded, must stop vacillating
between Torah and idolatry.
With incredible boldness Elijah defies king and queen, and
challenges the prophets of Baal to a supreme test of faith. The
scene of the great contest is Mount CarmeL The priests of Baal
offer their sacrifices, but in vain: no fire comes down to consume
them. "Louder, shout louder!" Elijah taunts the frantic priests,
"Perhaps your god is asleep and needs to be awakened." Then
the prophet offers his sacrifice and, we are told, a bolt from
heaven comes down and consumes it. Elijah's victory is so spec-
tacular that the people turn on Jezebel's priests and annihilate
them.
To escape the fury of Jezebel, Elijah flees to the deserts of the
south. There, in a revelation of incomparable beauty, he finds his
THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL 69
God, not in a strong wind that rends the mountains, nor in an
earthquake, nor in a fire, but in a "still small voice." The voice
commands him to return to Israel and continue the struggle against
the faithless house of Omri.
Elijah, his aspect gaunt and terrifying, returns to the north. On
the way he meets Elisha son of Shaphat plowing his father's field,
and throws his mantle over him in token of selection as his suc-
cessor.
Again Elijah appears before Ahab, for the king has permitted
his wife to commit a heinous crime. She has caused an innocent
man, Naboth the Jezreelite, to be put to death in order to rob him
of a vineyard which the king coveted. Elijah's return strikes terror
into Ahab. "Hast thou found me, Oh mine enemy?" he cries; and
Elijah pronounces doom upon him and his house.
The day of Elijah's final departure arrives. "What shall I do
for thee before I be taken from thee?" he asks Elisha who is with
him. "Let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me," Elisha
answers. And the young disciple, we read, sees his master caught
up in a fiery chariot and lifted by a whirlwind to heaven.
4
AHAB was killed in battle fighting the Aramaeans, Israel's
principal enemy. His father had also suffered from Aram: he
had been compelled to set aside a special section in the city of
Samaria for the Aramaean merchants. Ahab was, on the whole,
more fortunate. He routed the Aramaeans while they were be-
sieging his capital, and later he defeated them again at Aphek in
the Valley of Jezreel, compelling the King of Aram to let the
merchants of Israel trade in Damascus. The final war against them
was fought with the King of Judah as Ahab's ally. They met the
Aramaeans at Ramoth-gilead, both Hebrew monarchs fighting in
the thick of the fray. Ahab, mortally wounded by an arrow, re-
mained standing in his chariot until the evening, when he died. The
day was won by the enemy.
The fate of Israel was left in the hands not of Ahab's sons, but
of the queen-mother Jezebel: Ahaziah, who reigned only two
years, and Jehoram who followed him, were completely
7O THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
dominated by her. The house of Omri continued to be the foun-
tainhead of idolatry and corruption.
Jehoram's career as a warrior was checked by Moab, whose
king, Mesha, was an aggressive ruler. Mesha refused to pay tribute
to Omri's grandson, and even raided Israelite territory. Jehoram
set out to punish the arrogant Moabite, and the King of Judah
accompanied him. The allies were besieging the Moabite capital
when Mesha brought out his eldest son upon the city's wall and
burnt him as a sacrifice to his god Chemosh. The besiegers were
seized with dread and retired.
A remarkable record of Mesha's rebellion was found on the site
of ancient Dibon in 1 868, confirming the account in the Bible. It
is the famous Moabite stone on which Mesha set down in
Phoenician script and in the current Hebrew language, his successes
against Israel. Mesha omits the sacrifice of his son, but he ascribes
all his victories to his god Chemosh, to whom he "devotes," or
sacrifices, his booty and his enemies. "I am Mesha, son of Chemosh,
King of Moab, the Dibonite," the inscription begins, and then it
goes on to tell of the afflictions visited upon Moab by Ahab and
of Mesha's defiance and defeat of Israel. "And Israel perished ever-
lastingly," the Moabite magniloquently adds. Mesha fought also
against the tribe of Gad who still dwelt in the land. He writes:
And Chemosh said unto me, "Go, seize
Nebo against Israel.*"
And I went by night, and fought against
it from da r um imto noon.
And I seized it, and slew all of it . . .
For to Chemosh I had devoted it.
Jehoram then fought against the Aramaeans. He took from them
the city of Ramoth-gilead, but, wounded in battle, he returned
to his summer palace in the city of Jezreel, leaving the army in
command of his general Jehu. The prophets, to whom the house
of Omri was anathema, now encouraged this ruthless soldier to
put an end to it. Jehu began by obtaining the support of the army,
then proceeded to Jezreel and with his own hand slew Jehoram,
throwing his body into the vineyard which had belonged to
THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL Jl
Naboth. He then rode to the palace where, from a window, the
queen-mother Jezebel, painted and bedizened, looked down upon
him and defied him. She was seized and thrown down in front of
his chariot wheels. Jehu went on, nor did he desist until all the
princes of the dynasty, and even some of the royal family of Judah
who had fallen into his hands, were slain.
5
JEHU'S long reign of twenty-eight years (843-816 B.C.E.)
was a turbulent period in the career of the northern kingdom. By
his bloody deeds he forfeited the friendship of Judah and Phoe-
nicia, Israel's former allies, while its inveterate enemies, Moab and
Aram, became more aggressive than ever.
Meanwhile, north of Aram a new power was reaching out for
world dominion. It was Assyria, planted on the upper reaches of
the Euphrates, whose shadow was growing ever longer across
the neighboring lands. Assyria lived only by and for conquest: its
armies were the most efficient instruments of devastation of the
age. *
The red shadow lengthened, pointing toward Egypt. In 854
B.C.E. the nations that lay between the two great powers, including
Israel, had made common cause against the advancing Assyrians,
led by their emperor Shalmaneser III (859-825 B.C.E.). At Karkar,
where Shalmaneser claims to have won a great victory, the allies
had nevertheless succeeded in checking his march.
A record of Shalmaneser's "victory" at Karkar has been found,
inscribed on a stone slab known as Shalmaneser's Monolith Inscrip-
tion. His principal victims, according to this inscription, were Ben-
hadad the Syrian, and "Ahab the Israelite," who thus has the
distinction of being the first biblical personage definitely found
mentioned in a non-biblical source. Says Shalmaneser:
Karkar, his royal city, I destroyed, I devastated, I burned
with fire. 1,200 chariots, 1,200 cavalry, 20,000 soldiers of
Hadadezer of Damascus . . . 2,000 chariots, 10,000 soldiers
of Ahab the Israelite . . . thousands of soldiers of Baasa son
of Ruhubi the Ammonite , , . I defeated. I rained destruction
J2 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
upon them. I scattered their corpses far and wide . . . the
plain was too small to let their bodies fall. With their bodies
I spanned the Orontes as with a bridge.
Now Jehu, harassed by Aram, sent tribute to Shalmaneser,
hoping that the Assyrian would save him from his foe. On the
famous Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser where, in picture and word,
the triumphs of this monarch are vividly recorded, the King of
Israel, erroneously called "Jehu son of Omri," is shown kneel-
ing before the Assyrian ruler. But Jehu's hope was vain. The
Aramaeans overran Transjordania and, in the reign of his son,
they even besieged Samaria. It was only in the reign of his
grandson, Jehoash, that the longed-for respite came. The Assyrians
had captured Damascus, the capital of Aram, and the King of
Israel was able to defeat his hereditary enemy.
Jehoash defeated Judah also. The Judean monarch had sent him
an arrogant challenge, and Jehoash entered Jerusalem, seized the
treasures of the Temple and palace as well as hostages, and re-
turned to Samaria. Nevertheless, victorious Israel did not deal
harshly with Judah. Amid all the bitterness between the two
kingdoms, the sense of kinship was still alive.
CHAPTER TEN
Prophets in Israel
IN THE two-century career of the northern kingdom, a century
and a half had already passed. The sun of Israel was soon
to set, but before the final darkness the kingdom was destined
to have its day of glory.
The monarch to whom this day was granted was Jeroboam II,
son of Jehoash. In a reign of forty years (785-745 B.C.E.), he
lifted Israel to its pinnacle of worldly power. Aram had been
greatly weakened by the Assyrians and Israel had its opportunity
against its principal enemy. Jeroboam brought the Aramaeans
PROPHETS IN ISRAEL 73
under his yoke, capturing Damascus and sweeping on to the
Euphrates. He forced the Moabites to pay tribute again. The
Phoenicians and the Philistines were kept within their borders, and
Israel dwelt in safety.
IN THE events that crowd the political history of the
kingdom, there is little or nothing that distinguishes Israel from
the surrounding nations. Palace revolutions and bloody dynastic
changes stain the domestic record of all of them, while in their
foreign affairs, war, frequent if not continuous, marks their
"normal" relations with their neighbors. Why then have Moab
and Aram, Phoenicia and Philistia been forgotten while Israel is
remembered?
Nor does Israel reveal any striking divergence from its neighbors
in the social and economic spheres. Two of these neighbors, the
Phoenicians and Aramaeans, were keen traders, the first by sea,
the second by land. The Aramaeans, whose language eventually
became the vernacular of the East, were a ubiquitous people, trad-
ing in every land. Their principal kingdom lay west of the
Euphrates, in the region called Syria; the name resulted from the
fact that the Greeks confused the Aramaeans with the Assyrians.
The Phoenicians occupied a string of cities along the northern
coast, whence they sent their argosies sailing to all the coasts and
islands of the Mediterranean, and beyond the Pillars of Hercules
as far as Britain. The cities of Aram and Phoenicia grew large and
populous, serving as depots and marts as well as centers of in-
dustry, and those of Israel developed along the same lines. In the
main, of course, the Hebrews were still a nation of farmers,
planters, and herders, and the village was still the foundation of
their social life. But the cities had grown enormously, with slums
that swarmed with artisans and laborers, with warehouses and
bazaars for the traffic of the traders, with palatial residences for
the merchant princes and bankers.
In these cities, Aramaean and Phoenician as well aS Israelite,
the gulf between rich and poor made its inevitable appearance.
The evils of excessive wealth as well as those of poverty lifted their
ugly heads. Idleness and luxury became the fertile breeding-
74 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
ground of ostentation, vice, and oppression. The poor and the
needy were pawns in the hands of the rich, and justice was per-
verted in favor of the powerful.
Nor was the city alone the dwelling place of greed and ex-
ploitation. The small farms that once supported a numerous
peasantry gave way to large estates, to absentee landlords and
rural proletarians, to all those evils which the Jubilee Year was
designed to prevent. But the Jubilee was not observed, the large
estates became larger, the position of the landless peasants more
precarious.
In all these things Israel was like its neighbors. Nor would its
annals deserve the special place they hold in the interest and hopes
of mankind were it not for one difference. It was the difference
that had its origin in Torah. A light had been kindled in the Sinai
Desert which violence and oppression could obscure but not
extinguish, and in every generation there were priests and prophets
who kept it burning. In Israel, above the tumult of war and revo-
lution, above the clamor of the market place and the orgies of the
overrated, rose "the still small voice" of the Lord.
3
IN THE Book of Kings where the reign of Jeroboam II is
briefly recorded, no mention is made of a man named Amos, a
shepherd from Judah who, in the days of that monarch, came to
Bethel in Israel on a strange mission. Apparently his visit was not
regarded by the chronicler as an event of importance. Bethel was
the religious center of Jeroboam's realm; the place was thronged
with priests and worshippers; numerous sacrifices smoked on the
altars. Suddenly words of incredible boldness fell on the ears of
the people, terrifying words, announcing doom. It was Amos
speaking in the name of the Lord:
Hear ye this word which I take up for a
lamentation over you, O house of Israel:
The virgin of Israel is fallen.
She shall no more rise;
She is cast down upon her Iand 9
There if none to raise her up.
PROPHETS IN ISRAEL 75
Amos turned to the pampered wives of the wealthy and
shriveled them with his irony and wrath:
Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan,
That are in the mountain of Samaria,
That oppress the poor, that crush the needy,
That say unto their lords: "Bring,
that r we may feast."
The Lord God hath sworn by His Holiness:
Lo, surely the days shall come upon you,
That ye shall be taken away with hooks,
And your residue 'with fish-hooks.
And lest they or their husbands imagine they can atone for
their wrongdoing by bringing sacrifices to the priests, this peasant
assures them that the Lord takes no delight in their solemn as-
semblies, that He will not accept their burnt offerings. Or do they
comfort themselves with the doctrine of Israel's selection? The
shepherd tells them they were selected not for ease and luxury,
but to be a light unto the nations; and in his wrath and anguish he
cries out:
You only have I known of all the families of earth!
Therefore I 'will visit upon you all your sins.
It was the ancient and true doctrine of Israel's selection that he
proclaimed, the doctrine which the worldly rich had perverted,
accepting its favors and rejecting its obligations. And what finally
did Amos demand? The prophet makes no secret of it, he is as
outspoken in his demands as in his accusations:
Let justice well up as waters
And righteousness as a mighty stream!
Apparently the words of Amos roused his hearers. There must
have been muttering among the poor and protest among the rich.
At any rate, Amaziah, the presiding priest of Bethel, became
alarmed and urged the king to expel the agitator. "Go into the
land of Judah and prophesy there," says the priest to the prophet.
He was apparently ignorant of the nature of the prophetic call;
j6 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
he was unaware that the true prophet has no choice. Amos states
it very simply:
The lion bath roared,
Who trill not fear?
The Lord God hath spoken,
Who can but prophesy?
THE stormy career of the northern kingdom was moving
to its dose, Jeroboam II being its last great king. Jeroboam died
in 745 B.C.E., and only twenty-three years later, after a number of
dynastic upheavals, the final curtain fell on the "pride of Ephraim."
The prowess and diplomacy of its rulers were futile. Israel lay in
the path of the Assyrian juggernaut and its doom was sealed.
Egypt, itself menaced by the same peril, gave niggard help and
only bedeviled the counsels of the smaller nations. They vacillated
continually between submission to Assyria and hope in Egypt.
Of the kings there remains but a meager memory. It is the
prophets who make Israel's story vivid and memorable. Of the
many "Sons of the Prophets" who must have raised their voices
against idolatry and injustice in Israel there is, besides Amos, only
one other whose words were written down and saved. He was
Hosea son of Been, whose sayings are recorded in the book that
bears his name.
In their denunciations and demands, there is little difference
between Amos and Hosea. Both cried out against the sins of Israel:
against the idolatry that polluted the land, against the iniquity and
oppression that made a mockery of the ancient covenant. But
while the shepherd from Judah heaped scorn and derision upon
the evildoers, Hosea's heart is full of pity for the backsliding
children, whom God loves despite their faithlessness. The prophet
knew the bitterness of infidelity: his own wife, whom he loved,
had been unfaithful to him. So, while he accuses he also pleads,
and his heart overflows with sorrow.
In his very denunciations there is a tenderness that finds ex-
pression in a matchless lyricism; as when he cries:
PROPHETS IN ISRAEL 77
O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee?
Judah 9 'what shall I do twto thee?
For your goodness is as a morning cloud,
And as: the dew that early passeth away.
Therefore have I hewed them by the prophets,
1 have slain them by the words of my mouth.
And thy judgment goeth forth as the light.
For I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,
And the knowledge of God rather than burnt
offerings.
And when his love for his people sweeps away all other emo-
tions, God speaks through him, saying:
How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?
How shall 1 surrender thee, Israel?
My heart is turned within Me,
My compassions are kindled together.
I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger >
1 will not return to destroy Ephraim.
So, in the midst of his sorrows, Hosea has the vision of a day
when a new betrothal will take place between the Lord and His
people.
And I will betroth thee unto Me forever;
Yea, I will betroth thee unto Me in righteousness,
and in justice,
And in lovingkindness, and in compassion.
And I will betroth thee unto Me in faithfulness;
And thou shalt know the Lord.
But for all his compassion Hosea does not mince words when
dealing with the iniquity of Israel. The seal of the true prophet
is upon him: his mission is to , cleanse the human soul. His final
utterance, however, is one of hope and healing. He sees a time
when his people will no longer put their trust in Assyria or Egypt,
but in God. And God, speaking through the prophet, declares that
in that day
78 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
7 'will heal their backsliding,
1 will love them freely;
For Mine anger is turned away from him.
1 will be as the dew unto Israel;
He shall blossom as the lily,
And cast forth his roots as Lebanon.
5
IN 745 B.C.E., the year when Jeroboam II died, Tiglath-
pileser III came to the throne of Assyria. The conqueror set his
cohorts moving and swept on toward Israel. Israel's ruler, Mena-
hem, held him off with a large tribute. Pekah, who usurped the
throne of Israel, allied himself with Rezin, King of Aram, against
the Assyrians, and even made war on Judah to compel it to join
the coalition. The Assyrians came down and captured Damascus,
Rezin's capital. They overran Gilead and Galilee, and drove many
of the inhabitants into exile.
Tiglath-pileser has left us a record of his gory triumph over
Rezin. Concerning the hapless king of Aram, he writes:
That one fled alone to save his life and like a mouse he
entered the gate of his city. His nobles I captured alive with
my own hands and hanged them on stakes and let his land
gaze on them. His gardens and plantations without number
I cut down, not one escaped . . . Sixteen districts of Syria I
destroyed like mounds left by a flood.
What he did to the "Land of Omri," or Israel, he reports as
follows:
The Land of Omri, all its people together with their goods,
I carried off to Assyria. Pekah their king they deposed, and
I placed Hoshea over them as king.
HosKea, however, played fast and loose with the Assyrians,
relying on Egypt for help. The Assyrians, led by a new emperor,
Shalmaneser IV, came down and besieged Samaria. For three years
the city held out against the invaders. Finally, in 722 B.C.E., with
JUDAH AND ISAIAH 79
Sargon II now emperor of Assyria, the capital of Israel fell to
the enemy.
Sargon's own account of his capture of Samaria has been found
in an inscription on the walls of the palace at Khorsabad, and it
reads as follows:
In my first year of reign the people of Samaria to die
number of 27,290 ... I carried away. Fifty chariots for my
royal equipment I selected. The city I rebuilt. I made it
greater than it was before. People of the lands I had conquered
I settled therein. My official I placed over them as governor.
Thus were the people led away captive into distant provinces
of the empire and became the Lost Ten Tribes. Samaria, as Saigon
informs us, was colonized with strangers, and the Kingdom of
Israel became a tale that is told.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Judah and Isaiah
FOR nearly a century and a half the kingdom of Judah sur-
vived its sister and rival on the north. Judah was less vul-
nerable than Israel; its capital had stronger defenses; its
rugged territory was less tempting to the greed of neighbors.
Moreover, Judah's loyalty to the House of David saved it from the
bloody revolutions that stain the annals of Israel. In fact, with
only one short break (843-837 B.C.E.), the Davidic line continued
to reign over Judah to the end.
Rehoboam, whose folly was the immediate cause of Israel's
defection, fought against Israel, as did his son and grandson. To
his grandson Asa is ascribed the merit of attempting to clear the
land of the "high places" where heathen rites were still practiced,
an attempt which was only partly successful. His aim was to
make the Temple the only place of worship for his people. Asa
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was a capable and warlike ruler. With the aid of the Aramaeans,
whom he bribed lavishly, he humbled the king of Israel and turned
back an invasion from Africa.
A policy of peace with Israel was inaugurated by Asa's suc-
cessor, whose son married Athaliah, daughter of Jezebel, the idol-
atrous queen of Israel. When Athaliah became queen of Judah,
Phoenician idolatry began to flourish in the land, and years later
this faithful daughter of Jezebel seized the throne after slaying
her own grandchildren. That was the one break in David's line,
but one of the royal grandchildren, an infant boy, had been saved,
and six years later he was acclaimed by the priests of the Temple
and by the army as King of Judah. Athaliah's career was speedily
ended and the line of David restored.
The restored king, Jehoash, reigned over Judah from 837 to 798
B.C.E. He labored hard to stamp out the idolatry which still infested
the land. He fought his neighbors, but his wars brought him no
glory, for he suffered defeat at the hands of the Aramaeans and
Edomites. His son retrieved Judah'^ pride against Edom, but he
was worsted in an encounter with Israel whose king he foolishly
challenged. Then came Uzziah (780-740 B.C.E.) whose reign was
contemporaneous with that of Jeroboam II in Israel. There was
peace between the two, and both reigns were long, prosperous,
and brilliant. The Philistines, Ammonites, and Edomites were made
to feel the power of Judah's king.
A grave situation confronted Uzziah's grandson, Ahaz. Threat-
ened by Assyria, Aram and Israel had formed an alliance which
they sought to compel Judah to join. The allies besieged Jerusalem
but in the end Ahaz foiled them: he sent a huge tribute to Tiglath-
pileser, acknowledged the Assyrian as his suzerain, and prayed
for deliverance from Israel and Aram. The Assyrian was only too
willing to grant the petition, and the allies were compelled to
withdraw from Judah in order to defend their own capitals.
But Ahaz paid a heavy price for his deliverance. He surrendered
not only the gold of the Temple and the independence of his
country, but also the pure faith of his fathers. The King of Judah
brought the idolatry of his Assyrian master into Jerusalem. The
heavenly bodies were worshipped ki the capital, as well as statues
82 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
of horses which were set up in the Temple. Nor was the country
spared the ultimate abomination: children were sacrificed to Mo-
loch, the king himself offering up his son. What better way for
a vassal to flatter and appease his suzerain than to adopt his gods
and his rites?
In 722 B.C.E., when Samaria fell, Ahaz still sat on the throne of
Judah. The rivalries of former days were now forgotten: the down-
fall of Israel threw a. pall of sorrow and anxiety over Judah and
Jerusalem.
THERE was at least one man in the capital of Judah who did
not mince words in condemnation of the foreign policy of King
Ahaz. He was the prophet Isaiah, in many respects the greatest
in the long line of the Hebrew seers.
Isaiah had begun his prophetic career in 740 B.C.E., the year
when King Uzziah died. In that year the youthful prophet had
a vision: a glowing coal from the altar of the Temple was pressed
to his lips by an angel, and the voice of the Lord sounded in his
ears, saying: "Whom shall I send, who will go for us?" And Isaiah
answered and said: "Here am I; send me." And that was the man-
ner in which Isaiah was inducted into his mission.
In the years that follow, the prophet moves against the dark
background of the times, robed in light and splendor. His voice
thunders above the din of Judah's capital; his utterances are mag-
nificent beyond compare. Nevertheless, he is no mere commen-
tator on the events of the day, for nothing of importance occurs
in which Isaiah does not play an important role. He rises im-
measurably above his age, but he is also part and parcel of it.
During the reign of Ahaz, the prophet, because of his opposition
to the king's policies, could have but little influence at court. But
other questions besides those of international politics disturbed
Judah and Jerusalem. Isaiah blasted the idolaters with all the force
of his irony; he denounced the luxury and the callousness of the rich
and their oppression of the poor and humble. Never has the cry
of the disinherited and the summons to righteousness been uttered
JUDAH AND ISAIAH 83
in words more stirring. In the name of God, Isaiah cries to his
people:
Wash you, make you clean!
Put away the evil of your doings
From before Mine eyes.
Cease to do evil!
Learn to do 'well!
Seek justice, relieve the oppressed.
Judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.
First and last Isaiah is the uncompromising moralist. Human
problems are conflicts between good and evil, and man comes
nearer to God in proportion as he sees what is good and does it.
Not by mere sacrifices is God to be worshipped,
But the Lord of Hosts is exalted through justice,
And God the Holy One is sanctified through righteousness.
3
ISAIAH, though the greatest seer of the age, was not the
only one. In Judah, as in Israel, there were many prophets who
expressed the living conscience of the people. They came from all
classes and they were heard in the countryside as well as in the
city.
Through the storms of the centuries the words of one of the
village prophets have also been saved. He was Micah of Moresheth
who, simple peasant though he was, gave the most lofty expression
to the ideal life of the spirit. He asks the supreme moral question of
the age and of all ages, and answers it:
"Wherewith shall I come before the Lord,
And bow myself before God on high?
Shall 1 come before him with burnt-offerings.
With calves of a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
With ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my first-born for my transgression^
The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?"
84 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
It hath been told thee y O mm, 'what is good,
And 'what the Lord doth require of thee:
Only to do justly, and to love mercy, and to
'walk humbly 'with thy God.
For the rest, Micah voices the wrath of the simple husbandman
upon whom the city has laid its talons.
Woe to them that devise iniquity
And 'work evil upon their beds!
When the morning is light, they execute it.
Because it is in the power of their hand.
And they covet fields, and seize them;
And houses, and take them away;
Thus they oppress a man and his house,
Even a man and his heritage.
The city is the home of greed and oppression, and both Isaiah
and Micah see the "day of the Lord" advancing, the day when the
city shall pay the price of its follies and vices.
4
IN 720 B.C.E., Prince Hezekiah became King of Judah and
there was great rejoicing among Isaiah's followers. Hezekiah sided
with the prophets against the idolaters, and he began his reign
with a sweeping religious reform. The "high places" where
idolatry and its vices still flourished were demolished, and the
Temple in Jerusalem, purified and purged, was proclaimed the
only legitimate place of worship in the land. The following Pass-
over, Jerusalem overflowed with the pilgrims who, in obedience
to the king's decree, came to sacrifice at the national shrine. They
came from every corner of Judah, and among them were many
Israelites who had escaped the Assyrian dragnet and whom Heze-
kiah invited to join in the festivities. Thus the Temple was in-
vested with new authority. It became the chief bond of national
union, and, as die only recognized center of worship, the principal
means of checking the ever-recurring drift toward idol worship.
To Isaiah the moralist, as to Moses the lawgiver seven centuries
earlier, idolatry was the fountainhead of sin and corruption.
JUDAH AND ISAIAH 85
Eagerly the prophet now looked forward to the dawn of a new
day in Judah. "The people that walked in darkness" he cried,
"have seen a great light! "
5
BUT Judah, because of its parlous situation between Assyria
and Egypt, was not permitted to work out its religious and social
problems in peace. The two giants were measuring each other for
mortal combat, and the fate of Judah hung in the balance.
It was inevitable that two parties, one pro-Egyptian, the other
pro-Assyrian, should come into existence in Judah. Galled and
humiliated by their country's vassalage to Assyria, the pro-Egyp-
tian party clamored for rebellion. Egypt, they were sure, would
come to their aid. The party included many of Judah's princes and
magnates and was led by one Shabua, who stood at the head of the
king's ministerial council. The rival party was led by Isaiah.
Having chosen to pay tribute to Assyria, his country, he felt,
should abide by its choice: the alternative was fraught with greater
evils. Besides, Judah should devote its strength to spiritual re-
generation, not to conspiracy and rebellion. As for Egypt, Isaiah
had nothing but contempt for it and its promises.
The ambitious intrigues of Shabua and his henchmen filled
Isaiah with alarm. He struggled against the minister and finally
brought about his downfall. Hezekiah held fast to his prophetic
counselor: he rejected the invitations of his neighbors to join a
coalition against Assyria. Hanno, King of Gaza, had extended him
such an invitation in 720 B.C.E., and Hezekiah had to defeat the
Philistine king in order to be clear of his machinations. Ten years
later the city of Ashdod rebelled against Sargon, and Judah was
nearly drawn into the vortex. Again it was saved by the influence
of Isaiah.
Inscriptions have been discovered in which the Assyrian em-
peror records the attempts of the neighboring rulers to induce
Hezekiah to join them in rebellion against him. In one of them,
dated 711 B.C.E., Sargon writes:
Azuri king of Ashdod plotted in his heart to withhold his
tribute, and sent messages of hostility to the kings round about
86 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
him. To the kings of Philistia, Judah, Edom, Moab . . . payers
of tribute to Assyria, he sent numberless inflammatory mes-
sages ... to set them at enmity with me. To Pharaoh king
of Egypt, a prince who could not save them, they sent
presents ... to gain him as an ally.
Sargon records that he dethroned the bold Azuri, captured Ashdod
and other rebellious Philistine cities, and colonized them with
strangers.
6
FINALLY, about the year 705 B.C.E., Hezekiah could no
longer resist the pressure to throw off the Assyrian yoke. The
moment seemed auspicious. Sargon, the cruel and invincible, had
been murdered, and his son Sennacherib became ruler of an em-
pire in revolt. Assyria's vassals became inflamed with the hope of
immediate liberation. Jerusalem became a focal point in the gen-
eral uprising, which extended from the lower reaches of the Tigris
and Euphrates, where the Chaldean Merodach-baladan led the
revolt, to Egypt, where the Pharaoh So threw down the gauntlet
to Assyria. Padi, King of Ekron, who chose to remain loyal, was
dethroned and placed in a dungeon in Jerusalem. Not even the
passionate pleas and warnings of Isaiah could prevent Judah from
throwing itself into the conflagration. The king stopped paying
tribute to Assyria.
Hezekiah took steps to fortify Jerusalem, and one of his accom-
plishments was to secure the city's water supply by digging a
tunnel from a spring outside the city to the Pool of Siloam. This
tunnel or conduit has been discovered, as well as an inscription in
the ancient Hebrew characters carved upon the rock. The words
convey the excitement of the two groups of excavators when they
heard each other's pickaxes from opposite sides of the rock, and
their joy when .they finally met.
For all that Hezekiah could do, however, Judah found itself
face to face with disaster. Sennacherib proved a worthy successor
of Sargon and Tiglath-pileser. After crushing the rebellion in
Babylonia, he turned west and swept down the Mediterranean
JUDAH AND ISAIAH 87
coast, where in 701 B.C.E., he defeated the combined forces of the
rebels: Philistines, Egyptians, and Ethiopians. The cities of Phoe-
nicia and Philisria hastened to pay tribute and beg for mercy.
Hezekiah and his counselors continued to defy the Assyrians
and the hosts of Sennacherib began the ascent to Jerusalem. One
after another the intervening fortresses were taken and given
away to the Philistine cities of Ashdod, Ekron, and Gaza, in-
veterate enemies of Israel and Judah. "Himself," writes Sen-
nacherib, referring to Hezekiah, "like a bird in a cage in the midst
of Jerusalem, his royal city, I shut. The dread of the splendor of
my reign overpowered him."
Finally, the King of Judah shook off his illusions. He humbly
acknowledged his guilt and offered the conqueror a huge tribute.
Sennacherib took the gold and silver, then demanded the surrender
of Jerusalem. He was determined that the capital of Judah should
suffer the fate of Samaria. Like Israel, Judah was to be led away
into distant captivity.
Hezekiah rejected Sennacherib's demand and prepared his
capital for defense. The hosts of Assyria came up and the siege of
the city began. An Assyrian deputation approached the walls of
Jerusalem and called upon the city to surrender. The spokesman,
Rab-shakeh, taunted the people and defied their God.
Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out
of the hand of the king of Assyria? And have they delivered
Samaria out of my hand? Who are they among all the gods
of these countries, that have delivered their country out of
my hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of my
hand?
The people, including the king and his ministers, were struck
with dismay. But there was one man who remained unafraid. The
prophet Isaiah, roused to wrath and scorn, came forward and
defied the blasphemous invader, accepting the challenge flung at
the Holy One of Israel. "The Assyrians," he declared with the
confidence born of faith, "shall not come into this city."
The Assyrians never did. A strange thing occurred which, the
people were convinced, only the intervention of the Most High
88 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
could have brought to pass. Suddenly Sennacherib withdrew his
forces and marched them down into Egypt to meet a new foe
hailing from Ethiopia. The Assyrians lay down in their tents one
night; the next morning, we are told, they were lifeless corpses:
some dreadful pestilence had mowed them down. The survivors,
including the emperor, fled in terror to their own borders.
Thus was Jerusalem delivered and the faith of Isaiah vindicated
in the sight of his people. The influence of the prophet rose to its
zenith and stood there for another decade, until the end of the
reign of Hezekiah in 692 B.C.E.
7
FROM the sublime utterances of Isaiah which have come
down to us, it does not appear that the power he achieved made
him happy. Happiness, alas, is never the lot of the true prophet.
The political skies of Judah were still overcast, nor could he be at
ease in the moral climate of Jerusalem. For, as with all the Hebrew
prophets, Isaiah's dominant passions were love of justice and
detestation of wrong. He was an aristocrat, but his heart over-
flowed with pity for the poor and weak, and he excoriated the
oppressors with words that fall like hammer-strokes.
He cries to the nabobs and nobles of Jerusalem:
Hear the 'words of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom,
To 'what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me?
Saith the Lord.
Bring no more vain oblations;
It is an offering of abomination unto Me.
And 'when you spread forth your hands,
I 'will hide Mine eyes from you;
Yea, 'when you make many prayers,
/ 'will not hear:
Your hands are full of blood.
It was only in visions of the distant future that the prophet's
soul found repose, visions of the perfect king, or Messiah, holding
the nations in benign sway; of universal peace, with the specter of
war forever banished; of Israel, saved and restored, dwelling se-
curely in its own land, and practicing justice and righteousness.
JUDAH AND JEREMIAH 89
And it shall come to pass in the end of days,
That the mountain of the Lord's house shall be
established as the top of the mountains,
And shall be exalted above the hills;
And all nations shall flow unto it.
And many peoples shall go and say:
'Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
To the house of the God of Jacob;
And he will teach its of his ways,
And we ivill 'walk in his paths}
For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
And He shall judge between the nations,
And shall decide for many peoples;
And they shall beat their swords into plowshares.
And their spears into pruning-hooks;
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
Neither shall they learn war any more.
That was the supreme vision of the great prophet spoken in
words which only amplify the promise of the Great Covenant:
"In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed."
CHAPTER TWELVE
Judah and Jeremiah
SOME ten years after the invasion of Sennacherib, the good
king Hezekiah died and the voice of Isaiah fell silent. The
king's successor was his twelve-year-old son Manasseh, and
the court party found their long-awaited opportunity to over-
throw the influence of the prophet and restore the idol worship
which Hezekiah had suppressed.
They were the princes and magnates of the land, these men who
were so lightly lured by the gods of their neighbors. They only
QO THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
sought to resemble these neighbors, rather than tread the hard
road enjoined by the command: "Ye shall be unto me a kingdom
of priests and a holy nation." That was the road of Isaiah and his
followers, who came to be known as Anavim, "the humble."
The Anavim became the objects of relentless persecution. Isaiah
himself, according to legend, fell victim to the rage of the reac-
tionaries.
The licentious Astarte, the unspeakable Moloch, the demons of
the Babylonians and Assyrians, now ruled the moral and social
life of Judah. The "high places" reappeared, and a shrine to
Moloch was set up where first-born sons, among them the first-
born of the king himself, were sacrificed to the monster. The voice
of justice and mercy was stifled. Luxury and oppression flourished,
all the vices abhorred by the prophets lifted their heads. Yet, in
hidden corners of the land, the Anavim continued to feed the flame
of Torah and prophecy for the day when it should again illumine
the land.
IN THE meantime Judah continued in vassalage to Assyria.
That vast robber empire held together, notwithstanding Sennach-
erib's disaster in Egypt, notwithstanding rebellions and upheavals.
Whatever hopes in the might of Egypt persisted among the
princes of Judah must have been rudely shaken when, in 671
B.C.E., Sennacherib's son, Esar-haddon, invaded Egypt and cap-
tured the city of Memphis. Esar-haddon, it seems, held the King
of Judah for a time in captivity, suspicious, no doubt, of Manas-
seh's loyalty.
In 638 B.C.E., after a weary reign of fifty-four years, Manasseh
died, and a year later his son and successor Amon was slain by a
palace cabal, and Amon's eight-year-old son, Josiah, was crowned
king. The assassins, apparently anti- Assyrians, were punished, but
idolatry continued unabated. The Anavim, though not without
friends in high places, still labored in secret.
In 621 B.C.E., came a sudden change, a religious revolution led
by the still youthful King Josiah, whom secret prophetic influences
had prepared for the event. With the force of revelation, the young
king was brought face to face with the Great Teaching. In that
JUDAH AND JEREMIAH 9!
year, the High Priest Hilkiah found in the Temple a copy of the
Book of Deuteronomy, the last of the Five Books of Moses, and
took it to Josiah. The eloquence of the great lawgiver, his solemn
warnings against idolatry, his clarion summons to purity and
probity, swept like a cleansing storm through the hearts of king
and people.
Judah was ripe for a religious revival. The voice of prophecy,
long suppressed, had grown bold again. The few prophetic voices
of the period which still speak to us across the millennia must have
been part of a much more numerous chorus, with the "Sons of the
Prophets" in zealot bands again rousing the fires of the ancient
faith.
The thunderous voice of Nahum strikes our ears, as well as the
somber accents of Zephaniah. Nahum has left us a great cry of
jubilation as he sees in his vision wicked Nineveh, capital of
Assyria, trampled by its foes. The prophet reports his vision with
a vividness that is almost terrifying:
Woe to the bloody city?
It is all fidl of lies and rapine;
The prey departeth not.
Hark! the 'whip, and hark! the rattling of 'wheels;
And prancing horses, and bounding chariots;
The horseman charging,
And the flashing s f word, and the glittering spear;
And a multitude of slain, and a heap of carcasses ;
And there is no end of the corpses,
And they stumble upon their corpses.
Indeed the doom of Assyria was fast approaching. Early in
Josiah's reign a horde of savage horsemen from the Scythian
uplands broke through the empire's defenses and swept down the
Mediterranean plain toward Egypt. Zephaniah, who may have
witnessed this invasion, sees the dread "day of the Lord" advanc-
ing against all the nations, his own included, and he calls upon
Judah to put away its idols and return to its God.
That day is a day of wrath,
A day of trouble and distress
92 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
A day of 'waste and desolation,
A day of darkness and gloominess,
A day of clouds and thick darkness,
A day of the horn and alarm,
Against the fortified cities, and against the high towers.
A mood of repentance seized upon the people. Throughout the
land, and including the former territory of Israel, the "high
places" were demolished and the idols destroyed. The Passover
festival of the year 621 B.C.R. saw the climax of the great revival.
At the summons of the king, the people gathered in Jerusalem,
bearing offerings to the purified Temple and rejoicing in their
new-found faith. Again the Temple was established as the sole
shrine of the nation.
3
AMONG the celebrants of that unforgettable Passover in
Jerusalem there must have been a young priest named Jeremiah
who, five years earlier, had left his village of Anathoth near Jeru-
salem, driven to the capital by the same urge which a century
before had brought Amos from Judah to Bethel. It was the im-
placable call of prophecy which the true prophet must obey.
Jeremiah belonged to a priestly family of wealth and distinction,
but the summons had come to him, and he set out
To root out and to pull down
And to destroy and to overthrow;
To build and to plant.
And if I say I will not make mention of Him,
Nor speak any more in His name,
Then there is in my heart as it were a burning fire
Shut up in my bones,
And I 'weary myself to hold it in,
But cannot.
Thus began the great and tragic career of the prophet Jeremiah,
tragic because the true prophet, a stranger to the smooth ways of
the courtier and demagogue, can hope for neither honor nor com-
fort from men. Jeremiah, moreover, prophesied in a period of
world confusion, war, and disaster, a period of supreme crisis for
JUDAH AND JEREMIAH 93
his people. In the forty years of his career (626-586 B.C.E.), he
never faltered, speaking and acting always without fear or favor,
undeterred by threats of persecution.
What did it matter to Jeremiah that his words cut across the pet
beliefs of his people, the belief, for example, in the efficacy of
sacrifice? Not sacrifice had the Lord commanded when He
brought their fathers out of Egypt, declared the prophet, but this
He had commanded them: "Hearken unto My voice, and I will
be your God, and ye shall be My people; and walk ye in the ways
that I command you, that it may be well with you." And did the
people believe the Temple to be impregnable and inviolate, ex-
pecting God's house to be their refuge no matter what might
befall? It was a foolish and wicked hope, and the prophet minces
no words about it:
Will ye steal, murder and commit adultery, and swear
falsely, and offer unto Baal, and walk after other gods whom
ye have not known, and come and stand before Me in this
house, whereupon My name is called, and say: "We are de-
livered," that ye may do all these abominations? Is this house,
whereupon My name is called, become a den of robbers in
your eyes?
He is a great searcher of hearts, this prophet of the searing word.
He will not accept a formal devotion to which the heart does not
solemnly assent. A new covenant shall come into existence be-
tween God and His people, a covenant to which every man's inner
self shall be so attuned as to require no formal engagements. "I
will put my law in their inward parts, and in their hearts I will
write it," says the Lord by His prophet Jeremiah.
Amid a present dark with forebodings of rack and ruin, visions
of moral perfection mingle in Jeremiah with tender memories of
the idyllic past. Bent with a burden of inescapable woes, this "man
of sorrows," as he calls himself, towers above his age like a lone
mountain over a plain.
4
IN THE meantime, the game of war and empire among the
nations of the Eastern world followed its fateful course. Assyria,
94 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
a brigand power fit only for war and plunder, was brought down
at last. North, south, and east, the nations that groaned beneath
its yoke rose up and in 612 B.C.E. they poured into its capital,
Nineveh on the Tigris, and left it a heap of ruins. Mighty among
the avengers were the Chaldeans, a Semitic people which had
possessed itself of Babylonia, now to be known as Chaldea.
What part in this game was played by Egypt, Assyria's arch-
rival and the hope of the and- Assyrian party in Jerusalem? Egypt
tried to save Assyria from destruction! Egypt had no desire to see
Chaldea take Assyria's place among the powers, a place it was
eager to seize for itself. The Pharaoh Necho II led an army north
to assert the might of Egypt among Assyria's conquerors. At
Megiddo in the Valley of Jezreel, the Pharaoh found his passage
barred by King Josiah of Judah. In the encounter that followed
Judah was defeated, and in the thick of the battle the good and
brave king Josiah was slain.
That was in 609 B.C.E. In the next twelve years Judah was the
scene of swift and tragic changes. For four brief years the Pharaoh
Necho was arbiter of the nations. He deposed Josiah's son Je-
hoahaz and put his brother Jehoiakim on Judah's throne, after
wringing a huge tribute from him. In 605 B.C.E., however, Jehoia-
kim had to change masters, for in that year Egypt and Chaldea
fought it out in the decisive Battle of Carchemish on the Euphrates,
and Egypt was overwhelmed. In Jerusalem the prophet Jeremiah
exulted:
The swift cannot flee away
Nor the mighty men escape;
In the north by the River Euphrates
Have they stumbled and fallen.
The Chaldeans, led by Nebuchadnezzar, now laid their yoke
upon the nations. Eventually Jehoiakim yielded to the Pharaoh's
threats and blandishments, and refused to pay tribute to Chaldea.
At once, Judah was invaded and Jerusalem beleaguered. Its invet-
erate enemies, Aramaeans, Moabites, Ammonites, were unleashed
against it. Jehoiakim died and his young son Jehoiachin fell heir
to the crisis. There was nothing for him to do but throw himself
on Nebuchadnezzar's mercy, and the Chaldean ruler wreaked a
JUDAH AND JEREMIAH 95
terrible revenge. He deposed Jehoiachin and, together with ten
thousand of the leading men of the nation, including the armorers
and other craftsmen, exiled him to Chaldea. It was the first Baby-
lonian captivity, in the year 597 B.C.E.
5
ON JUDAH'S vacant throne Nebuchadnezzar placed Zede-
kiah, a remaining son of King Josiah. For a few years Zedekiah
paid his tribute submissively to the conqueror. But soon enough
Egypt recovered from the blow it suffered at Carchemish, and the
pro-Egyptian party in Jerusalem took heart again. The hope of
freedom, fed by the lying promises of Egypt, once more threw
the small nations into a ferment. Zedekiah, torn between longing
and fear, leaped at length into the vortex and the scene was pre-
pared for the final agony of Judah.
Jerusalem became the center of the rebel ferment: from the
neighboring nations emissaries gathered in Judah's capital to plan
revolt. Jeremiah donned a wooden yoke in dramatic warning to
the people to bear the yoke of the Chaldean or suffer disaster, for
like the prophets before him, Jeremiah scorned Egypt, putting
no trust in its promises. Besides, his nation, engrossed like the
others in the sordid business of international intrigue, mistook its
destiny. What mattered political subjection, if only it left Judah
free to execute God's law of righteousness and holiness? Let the
Chaldean have his tribute; Israel had his Torah.
For a number of years Zedekiah continued to vacillate: it was
a bitter choice that confronted him. He understood the risks, nor
did he fail to be impressed by Jeremiah's warnings, but he lacked
the prophet's conviction and strength of spirit. So it came to pass
that in 588 B.C.E., the year being the sixth of his reign, Zedekiah
stopped paying tribute to his suzerain.
Other dependencies of Nebuchadnezzar were also in revolt, but
the emperor sent the major part of his vast armament against
Zedekiah. It swept through the lesser cities of Judah, and in the
tenth month of the year of revolt, appeared before Jerusalem. The
city's supreme trial was now upon her.
King and people had made her ready for the siege, and the
Chaldeans, past masters in the art of siege-craft, found her im-
g6 THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH
pregnable to assault. So they girdled her about with counter-
fortifications, trusting to famine to bring to slow fruition what
their arms and engines were unable to achieve. Their plan was
aided by the congestion in the city, for throngs of fugitives from
other parts of the country had taken refuge in the capital.
Gripped in the vise of famine, the city nevertheless held firm,
still hoping for succor from Egypt. Month followed month in
growing agony, until, at the turn of the year, the hope in Egypt
seemed vindicated! The besiegers abandoned their posts and de-
parted hurriedly to meet an enemy from the south. Jerusalem
exulted; and men who, obeying the law of Moses, had in fear and
contrition liberated their slaves, now repented of their piety and
compelled their slaves to return. Such were the magnates of Jeru-
salem, their righteousness like the grass on the housetops which
the sun dries up. Jeremiah denounced the backsliders and warned
the king against overconfidence: the Chaldean, he predicted, would
return. The prophet was not without influence upon the king, but
the leaders of the war party were in full control, the king a more
or less unwilling tool in their hands.
Nor did Jeremiah escape their persecution, to which the aged
prophet, were it not for Zedekiah's friendship, would have suc-
cumbed. They cast him into a miry pit from which the king
rescued him, but not a single word of comfort would the prophet
give the king in return.
The Pharaoh Hophra, whose incursion had drawn the besiegers
away from Jerusalem, was, like his predecessor Necho II, deci-
sively defeated, and the Chaldeans reappeared before the unhappy
city. Now the twin scourges of famine and pestilence made com-
mon cause with the enemy. The heroic defenders still manned the
walls, but their strength was ebbing. On the seventeenth day of
Tammuz the wall was breached. The foe poured into the city,
venting his rage and lust upon the survivors.
The king attempted to escape, but near the Jordan he and the
greater part of his retinue, including his household, were captured.
He was taken north to Riblah where Nebuchadnezzar sat over
him in judgment. The Chaldean decreed a dire fate for Judah's
last king. Zedekiah was compelled to see his sons slain, and it was the
last thing he saw; immediately after, he was blinded.
JUDAH AND JEREMIAH 97
The conqueror then pronounced doom upon Jerusalem: he
ordered his commander Nebuzaradan to destroy the city. On the
ninth day of Ab, the day when Jews still mourn for the great
disaster, the enemy set fire to the Temple. Jerusalem, the beautiful
and holy, was destroyed, its walls, houses, and palaces became a
heap of ruins, and the Temple, the nation's pride and glory, was
no more. A mere remnant of the people, the very poorest, were
permitted to remain in the land. The others, in chains, were driven
into Babylonia, to join their fellow-exiles who had preceded them
eleven years before.
Among those whom the Chaldeans allowed to remain was
Jeremiah. His heart, overflowing with sorrow, poured itself out
in lamentation. On the Fast of Tisha b'Ab (Ninth of Ab), in
houses of worship the world over, the strains of his mourning are
still heard:
How doth the city sit solitary
That 'was full of people!
How is she become a? a widow,
She that was great among the nations!
https://archive.org/stream/israelahistoryof009502mbp/israelahistoryof009502mbp_djvu.txt
12
Part Two
586 B.C.E. TO 70 C.E.
The Second Commonwealth
A Torah People
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Exile
THE singular career of Israel from bondage to liberation,
from desert trials to Revelation, from battle and conquest
to defeat and disaster this unique surge of a whole people
toward the higher reaches of the spirit, seemed now to have come
to a tragic and inglorious conclusion. The citadels of Judah were
rubble and ashes, its defenders decimated and the survivors dis-
persed or led away captive to the land of the enemy. What fate
could the exiles expect in Babylonia but absorption and dissolu-
tion?
Four generations earlier, the road of the captives had been
traveled by their brothers of the northern kingdom. Had the
exiles from Judah undergone the fate that befell their predecessors,
this story would now be a tale that is told. To the Lost Ten Tribes
of Israel would have to be added the two tribes of Judah, and
the rest would be silence.
The new exiles, however, carried an elixir of life, an invisible
baggage that was beyond the reach of the enemy or the attrition
of time. It was the burden bequeathed by their unique past. All
that is embraced in the word Torah doctrine and creed, ritual and
law, history and prophecy, memories and aspiration had laid its
indelible stamp upon them. The roots had struck too deep to be
torn up by adversity or withered by prosperity. Teaching and
experience had produced an integrated and tenacious spiritual per-
sonality.
Imbedded in it was a profound nostalgia for the homeland which
one of the psalms has preserved with powerful poignancy:
By the rivers of Babylon,
There we sat down, yea, we wept,
IOI
IO2 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
When t we remembered Zion.
Upon the 'willows m the midst thereof
We hanged up our harps
For there they that led us captive asked of us
words of song,
And our tormentors asked of us mirth:
"Sing us one of the songs of Zion."
Ho*w shall we sing the Lord's song
In a foreign land?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,
Let my right hand forget her cunning.
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of
my mauth y
If I remember thee not;
If I set not Jerusalem
Above my chief est joy.
That sentiment was more than home longing: it was part and
parcel of their faith, of the mission of holiness which Torah had
laid upon them. For the land had been promised to Abraham's
descendants, and only there could His house be built, only there
could the Covenant be fulfilled. With the first step across the
border was born the hope of restoration, and the name the exiles
chose for themselves was "Mourners of Zion."
BUT even in the ruined homeland life was not wholly ex-
tinct. Shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem, a new center,
small but promising, made its appearance in Mizpah, north of the
former capital. Gedaliah, a man of wisdom and courage, was ap-
pointed by the Chaldeans as governor of those survivors whose
unimportance had earned them exemption from exile. They were
the old and the destitute, but others came and joined the feeble
community, fugitives who slowly gained courage to come out
from the caves and jungles. Jeremiah also came to Mizpah, eager
to devote his remaining years to the work of reclamation.
But among those who returned were desperate jnen who had
fought the Chaldeans and looked upon Gedaliah as a traitor. They
EXILE
had found refuge in Ammon, across the Jordan, and, it is thought,
the king of that country instigated them to commit the bloody
deed which extinguished the new promise. They slew the Chaldean
garrison stationed at Mizpah as well as the governor, and the entire
community, to escape the wrath of Nebuchadnezzar, fled into
Egypt. The Fast of Gedaliah, on the day following the New Year
festival, is still kept in memory of the governor's assassination.
To the sorrows of Jeremiah was now added the bitterness of
exile in the land of his loathing. In Egypt the refugees found many
of their countrymen who had gotten there before them: some of
the earlier settlers even bore arms for the Pharaoh, and there was
a Jewish military colony in the south defending Upper Egypt
against incursions from Nubia. But Jeremiah had no happiness
among his brethren in Egypt, for they remembered their own faith
but dimly and, in spite of the prophet's appeals and warnings,
clung to the idolatry of Egypt.
For the next two generations the main current of Jewish life,
narrow though it was, flowed nejther in Palestine nor in Egypt,
but among the exiles in Babylonia.
3
IN BABYLONIA, it appears, the captives were permitted to
live in large, well-knit communities, and perhaps they were joined
by descendants of the northern exiles. They struck root in the
agriculture, industry, and commerce of the land, and in time some
among them acquired wealth, power, and influence.
The decades followed each other, the hope of immediate restora-
tion dimmed, but the pious fervor of the Mourners of Zion did
not diminish. A new institution, the synagogue, which centuries
later became the model for the Christian church and Mohammedan
mosque, sprang up among them. The synagogue may have been
regarded at first as a temporary substitute for the Temple: prayer
certainly became the substitute for sacrifice. But the new institu-
tion answered to a vital need; it spread and flourished, developing
its own forms of organization and ritual. A new mode of worship
came into existence consisting of prayer, devotion, and study.
Thus an instrument was created to express the urge for collective
communion, which is one of the roots of the religious impulse.
IO4 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
The synagogue, always virile and supple, became, like the taber-
nacle in the desert, the focus of Jewish life.
4
FOR thirty years after his conquest of little Judah, Nebu-
chadnezzar, who is remembered among men only because of that
conquest, continued to reign over the Chaldean Empire. His death
in 555 B.C.E. set off the usual Oriental byplay of intrigue, cabal,
and palace revolution. His son Evil-merodach, who was brought
down by assassins only two years after his accession, found time to
release Jehoiachin from prison and show the former king of Judah
special favor. Then came a few more inglorious reigns until there
sat on the throne in Babylon a certain Nabonidus, who, having no
taste for the court or the camp, left those things to his son Bel-
shazzar.
In the meantime, the eastern world had become a prey to new
convulsions. First the Medes, then the Persians threatened to upset
its -unstable equilibrium. Finally, Cyrus the Persian, a remarkably
gifted conqueror and statesman, having brought the Medes under
his sway, shattered an alliance which Babylonia, Lydia, and Egypt
formed against him, and in 539 B.C.E. his united Medes and Persians
laid siege to Babylon.
The Mourners of Zion saw the impending collapse of Chaldea
with mingled hopes and fears. Nearly half a century had now
elapsed since the fall of Judah, but in their hearts the longing for
restoration was as keen as ever. What awaited them at the hands
of the new master? Under Nabonidus their lot had grown worse:
in place of liberation, which the ill-starred Evil-merodach had ap-
peared to promise, there was suppression and persecution. Might
not deliverance come from Cyrus the Persian?
5
THE mysterious force called prophecy, which for so many
centuries had denied the seed of Abraham the "right" to be like
the other nations, accompanied the captives into Babylonia. Two
glorious figures stand out among the heirs of Elijah, Amos, and
Isaiah in the Exile, the first being the priest Ezekiel who had been
carried away with King Jehoiachin in 597 B.C.E., the other the
EXILE 105
Great Unknown, whose utterances are believed to make up the
latter part of the Book of Isaiah.
Ezekiel is a perfect blend of the God-intoxicated prophet and
the pious priest. Like the other great prophets, Ezekiel denounces
and consoles. He denounced the idolatry of which his first fellow-
exiles were guilty, as well as their foolish expectations of speedy
deliverance. But when the disaster of the year 586 B.C.E. came upon
Judah, and the first exiles saw the new contingents who came to
join them, Ezekiel, true to his name (God will strengthen), be-
came the great strengthener and consoler. Now he prophesied
restoration and the reunion of Israel with his God in holiness of
life and purity of worship.
For I will take you from among the nations, and gather
you out of all the countries, and will bring you into your own
land. And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall
be clean; from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols,
will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a
new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the
stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of
flesh. And I will put My spirit within you, and cause you to
walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep Mine ordinances, and
do them. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your
fathers; and ye shall be My people, and I will be your God.
And were the exiles skeptical of their future? Were they op-
pressed by a sense of guilt? Ezekiel proclaims the revolutionary
doctrine of individual responsibility, removing from the children
the moral taint of their fathers. The Lord will restore His people
if only to vindicate His holy name among the nations. In his firm
assurance, Ezekiel sees a new Temple rise up on the ruins of the
old. He even prepared plans for the new structure with elaborate
architectural detail. And to those who continued to doubt and
despair, Ezekiel addressed the vision of the Valley of Dry Bones,
a vision which has become the supreme symbol of rebirth and
restoration. And this is the manner of EzekiePs vision:
The hand of the Lord was upon me, and the Lord carried
me out in a spirit, and set me down in the midst of the valley,
IO6 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
and it was full of bones; and He caused me to pass by them
round about, and, behold, there were very many in the open
valley; and, lo, they were very dry. And He said unto me:
"Son of man, can these bones live?" And I answered: "O
Lord God, Thou knowest." Then He said unto me: "O,
prophesy over these bones, and say unto them: 'O ye dry
bones, hear the word of the Lord: Thus saith the Lord God
unto these bones: Behold I will cause breath to enter into you,
and ye shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will
bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put
breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I
am the Lord.' " So I prophesied as I was commanded; and
as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a commotion,
and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I beheld,
and, lo, there were sinews upon them, and flesh came up, and
skin covered them above; but there was no breath in them.
Then said He unto me: "Prophesy unto the breath, prophesy,
son of man, and say to the breath: 'Thus said the Lord God:
Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these
slain, that they may live.' " So I prophesied as He commanded
me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood
up upon their feet, an exceeding great host. Then He said
unto me: "Son of man, these bones are the whole house of
Israel; behold, they say: Our bones are dried up, and our
hope is lost; we are clean cut off. Therefore prophesy, and
say unto them: 'Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I will open
your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves,
O My people; and I Will bring you into the land of Israel.' "
6
AS THE Babylonian Exile draws to a close, Israel's destiny is
lighted up by the other prophetic luminary of whom nothing is
known except the words in the Book of Isaiah that are attributed
to him. He has been called the Second Isaiah, and the utterances
ascribed to him lift the* prophetic line to a summit of dazzling
splendor.
The universalist outlook, apparent in prophecy from the begin
EXILE IO7
ning, finds in this seer its most brilliant expression. The God of
Israel is the God of all the nations; His temple shall be a "house
of prayer for all peoples"; Israel redeemed shall bring redemption
to all mankind.
Look unto Me, and be ye saved,
All the ends of the earth;
For I am God, and there is none else.
By Myself have I sworn,
The word is gone forth from My mouth
in righteousness y
And shall not come back,
That unto Me every knee shall bow,
Every tongue shall swear.
But the immediate task of the prophet is to comfort and inspire
the exiles, and he does it in words that have brought consolation
to the exiles of all times:
Comfort ye, comfort ye My people,
Saith your God.
Bid Jerusalem take hearty
And proclaim unto her.
That her time of service is accomplished,
That her guilt is paid off;
That she hath received of the Lord's hand
Double for all her sins.
Hark! one calleth:
"Clew ye in the 'wilderness the 'way of the Lord,
Make plain in the desert
A highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
And every mountain and hill shall be made low;
And the rugged shall be* made level.
And the rough places a plain;
And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
And all flesh shall see it together;
For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken i>."
108 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
Like the other Mourners of Zion, the great prophet looked to-
ward the horizon where the star of Cyrus the Persian was steadily
rising.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Restoration
IN THE forty-seventh year of the captivity (539 B.C.E.), proud
Babylon fell to the Persians and Medes, and the mighty em-
pire of Nebuchadnezzar went the way of Assyria. The night
before the city fell, the prince Belshazzar, we are told, was feast-
ing in the royal palace when a mysterious hand appeared and
wrote upon the wall the strange words: mene mene tekel upharsin.
These words a young Hebrew captive named Daniel interpreted
to mean: "Thou art weighed in the balance and art found wanting.
Thy kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians."
The people of Babylon, Cyrus relates, welcomed him, and the
city was his "without fighting and battle." The rest of the
empire was also his, including the little land on the Mediterranean
toward which the Mourners of Zion looked with so much longing.
A year later their hope became a reality: the new ruler put an
end to their captivity in a proclamation which permitted the exiles
to return and rebuild the Temple. This was the great King's Decla-
ration as recorded in the Book of Ezra:
All the kingdoms of the earth hath the Lord, the God of
Heaven given me; and He hath charged me to build Him a
house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whosoever there is
among you of all His people- his God be with him let him
go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house
of the Lord, the God of Israel; He is the God who is in
Jerusalem. And whosoever is left, in any place where he so-
journeth, let the men of his place help him with silver, and
RESTORATION 1 09
with gold, and with goods, and with beasts, beside the free-
will-offering for the house of God which is in Jerusalem.
Rarely do the favor of kings spring from pure benevolence:
Cyrus, no doubt, weighed the advantages of having a grateful and
loyal community on the road to Egypt, a road which, sooner or
later, he or hia successors were bound to follow. The declaration
recorded by Ezra, however, is in accord with the general policy
of the Persian conqueror. "The gods dwelling within diem [the
cities of Chaldea]," he writes on his famous Cylinder, discovered
in Babylon, "I returned to their homes, and caused eternal shrines
to be built. All their people I collected and restored to their homes."
2
FROM all over the Captivity the Mourners of Zion gathered
in Babylon for the journey back to the homeland. The first con-
tingent of returning captives, as recorded in the Book of Ezra,
numbered 42,360, "besides their menservants and their maid-
servants." Escorted by a Persian military guard, and bearing with
them the sacred vessels of the Temple which Nebuchadnezzar had
plundered, the returning remnant retraced the road of exile and at
length beheld the ruined site where Jerusalem once stood in her
glory. But all sorrow was swept away in a transport of joy. A
psalmist sang:
When the Lord brought back those that returned to Zion,
We were like unto them that dream.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter,
And our tongue with singing.
Under the leadership of Sheshbazzar, a son of Jehoiachin, they
took possession of Jerusalem and a small area around it, divided
the land among the clans, and began the labor of building a new
life on the harsh and neglectecl soil. They also found themselves
ringed about with enemies. The ancient foes were all there,
astonished and alarmed at the reappearance of the nation which
they thought Jiad been destroyed. There were the Mostbites and
the Ammonites on the east, the Edomites on the south, the Philis-
IIO THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
tines on the west. On the north, moreover, a new and peculiar
enemy had come into existence. In Samaria, once the capital of
the Kingdom of Israel, which the Assyrians had colonized with
strangers, a mingling of race and religion had taken place between
the remaining Israelites and the newcomers. The Samaritans, as
the product of this mixture became known, felt that they were
true heirs of the Hebrew tradition. They welcomed the exiles and
desired to share in the rebuilding of the Temple, but the returned
captives found them unqualified for partnership and rejected them.
Spurned affection turned into hatred, and the Samaritans be-
came the bitterest enemy of all. For twenty-five years their in-
trigues with the Persian officials, before whom they charged the
Jewish community with aiming at revolt and independence, pre-
vented the rebuilding of the Temple.
In the meantime, Cyrus died and the Persian Empire went
through a series of violent convulsions. Usurpation and rebellion
threatened to undo all that Cyrus had accomplished. Peace was
finally restored by Darius, a member of a younger branch of the
royal family. In Jerusalem, as in the rest of the far-flung empire,
events were watched with anxiety and hope. Zerubbabel, a grand-
son of Jehoiachin, now headed the community, with Jeshua, who
traced his descent from the last high priest, exercising the priestly
functions. Hopes of independence may have stirred in the gov-
ernor's heart, but they were checked by the priest. The Persian
master, suspicious of Zerubbabel's intentions, decreed that the
higher authority should be vested in the priest, a decree which fixed
the political constitution of the Jewish community for several cen-
turies.
At length, in 515 B.C.E., the Second Temple was rebuilt. A direct
appeal to Darius and to the Declaration of Cyrus overcame the
machinations of the Samaritans and their allies. Darius proved him-
self as magnanimous as his predecessor, ordering that the taxes paid
by the Jews should be applied to the rebuilding of the sanctuary.
The dedication, which occurred on the Passover of that year,
was celebrated with solemn and moving rites. Hearts were stirred
by old memories and uplifted with new hopes. The symbol of
their national life stood again on Mount Zion.
RESTORATION III
3
LIKE an island in a stormy sea, the new community lay amid
the foes that surrounded it, and completion of the Temple Became
the signal for new hostilities. The embittered Samaritans retaliated
by building a temple of their own on Mount Gerizim. Nor did
they cease their accusations before the Persian authorities, and the
calumnies were not without effect: the Persian officials denied the
Jews permission to build a wall around Jerusalem, and the city was
almost defenseless against the raids of its enemies.
Nor did the inner life of the community develop in a manner
to satisfy the disciples of Ezekiel. In the ritual sphere there was
much to be desired, especially with regard to the observance of
the Sabbath and the Temple sacrifices. Moreover, the ancient social
inequalities reappeared, with the poor receiving scant mercy from
the rich, who violated the safeguards which the Mosaic Code
prescribed for the protection of the unfortunate and the needy.
Furthermore, as the years passed,, a new menace rose up against
the community. In the crucible of time old enmities began to dis-
solve; gradually better relations arose between the Jews and their
neighbors, and with religion interposing only feeble opposition, the
inevitable consequence was intermarriage. Even Samaritan wives
were not rejected by the grandchildren and great-grandchildren
of the returned exiles. Naturally, the offspring of such unions spoke
the language of the foreign mothers and were taught the worship of
foreign gods. Again the little community stood on the brink of
dissolution.
4
JUDEA was saved by the indomitable will and resolution of
Ezra the Scribe. Ezra came from Babylonia, with authority from
the reigning emperor to govern the Jewish community according
to the law of Moses. He was apparently a personage of high
standing in the court, for the Persian ruler not only showered him
with gifts for the Temple, but permitted him to lead back to the
homeland a new and large group of exiles.
In 458 B.C.E., eighty years after the arrival of the first contingent
under Sheshbazzar, Ezra, with, several thousand followers, came to
112 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
Jerusalem. His appearance was a great event, but he was dismayed
by the prevailing religious indifference. For Ezra's primary inter-
est was to reestablish the ancient faith in Judea.
At a large gathering of the people which he assembled in Jeru-
salem he branded intermarriage as the worst of the evils that flour-
ished in the community. He proceeded to apply heroic measures,
calling upon the men to divorce their foreign wives. "As thou hast
said, so it is for us to do," they answered.
The drastic decree, which no doubt saved the struggling com-
munity from extinction, was duly enforced by a tribunal headed
by the new governor, and the foreign wives were divorced. But
this action brought a recrudescence of all the ancient animosities.
Again Jerusalem was attacked by the neighboring nations. Bands
of Samaritans led by the crafty Sanballat, Ammonites led by
Tobiah, and other enemies as well, raided the open city. Thereupon
Ezra set out to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. But the grant of
power under which he governed gave him no authority to fortify
the city. Again their enemies accused the Jews of planning rebellion,
and Ezra was forced to desist. His prestige declined, the old evils
raised their heads, and all his labor seemed lost,
5
IN THE apathy and stagnation that followed, there suddenly
appeared a new leader who poured a fresh wave of energy into
the community. He was Nehemiah son of Hacaliah and cupbearer
to the Persian emperor in Shushan, the imperial capital. On being
told that the Holy City lay helpless in the face of its enemies,
Nehemiah's heart was fired with indignation and resolve. The
emperor, whose favor he enjoyed, conferred upon him the powers
of governor, with authority to rebuild the city's defenses. Escorted
by a military guard and accompanied by numerous followers,
Nehemiah, in the summer of 445 B.C.E., presented himself to the
startled inhabitants of Jerusalem.
The people flocked to his standard. "Let us rise up and build!"
they cried. In an incredibly short time, and in spite of all that
Sanballat and Tobiah could do to prevent them, they raised the
city's walls, making it secure against sudden attack. In a graphic
RESTORATION I I 3
account of his mission, Nehemiah reports the measures he took to
foil the enemy:
And it came to pass from that time forth, that half of my
servants wrought in the work, and half of them held the
spears, the shields, and the bows, and the coats of mail; and
the rulers were behind all the house of Judah. They that
builded the wall and they that bore burdens laded themselves;
every one with one of his hands wrought in the work, and
with the other held his weapon; and the builders, every one
had his sword girded by his side, and so builded. And he that
sounded the horn was by me. And I said unto the nobles,
and to the rulers and to the rest of the people: "The work is
great and large, and we are separated upon the wall, one far
from another; in what place soever ye hear the sound of the
horn, resort ye thither unto us; our God will fight for us." So
we wrought in the work; and the half of them held the spears
from the rising of the morning till the stars appeared.
Having fortified the city, Nehemiah turned his attention to the
internal affairs of the community. He was particularly incensed
at the exploitation of the poor by the rich. Many a destitute hus-
bandman had been compelled to put his possessions and even his
children in pawn. Nehemiah called upon the rich to make restitu-
tion and they answered: "So we will do, even as thou sayest," a
promise which they actually kept. A spirit of solemn exaltation took
possession of the restored community. It seemed ripe for full
acceptance of the Torah way of life.
Ezra the Scribe now came forward and resumed his labors, he
and Nehemiah working in loyal partnership for the preservation
of people and faith. In the festival month of Tishri, 445 B.C.E., the
leaders convoked a Great Assembly (Keneset Hagedolah) where
Ezra read and expounded the Torah and a covenant was signed by
the heads of families who bound themselves to its observance. In
particular, they agreed to ban intermarriage, hold sacred the Sab-
bath and festivals, maintain the priests and Levites, and observe
the sabbatical year. The ancient constitution was thus reaffirmed
and amplified into living laws.
114 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Life and the Book
THE foundations of the Second Commonwealth were now
laid: at last the community was free from the shame of
helpless exposure to hostile neighbors and from the danger
of dissolution by intermarriage. It proceeded now to embody its
unique tradition of spirit and law in institutions and ways of life
that have, down to our own times, withstood the onslaughts of a
thousand enemies.
But the victories of Ezra and Nehemiah did not remain un-
challenged: like all precious possessions, their retention demanded
eternal vigilance. Nehemiah, thinking his mission fulfilled, re-
turned to his duties in the imperial household at Shushan. But re-
ports soon reached him that brought him back to Jerusalem in haste.
The ban on intermarriage was being violated. Manasseh, grandson
of the high priest himself, was among the guilty: he had married a
daughter of the Samaritan chief Sanballat. Nehemiah acted with
characteristic sternness: he exiled the delinquents from the city.
Manasseh fled to Shechem where he was elevated to the priesthood
of the temple which the Samaritans had built on Mount Gerizim
to rival the sanctuary that stood on Zion.
2
CONCERNING the following century and more, the meager
records from which we glean our knowledge of the Second Com-
monwealth are altogether silent. Apparently no startling events
came to disturb the current of its life. The period, therefore, was
well adapted for social and spiritual consolidation.
The records speak again, briefly and in the hazy voice of legend,
when a young conqueror from the West swept through Asia
Minor and overthrew the Persian Empire. For, until the Battle of
THE LIFE AND THE BOOK I 1 5
Arbela in 331 B.C.E., when Alexander the Great overcame the
hosts of Darius III, the empire established by Cyrus in 539 B.C.E.
stood firm.
Another record, moreover, the Book of Esther, reveals that,
besides the community in Palestine, the Jews already formed a
Diaspora that extended through the length and breadth of the
empire. Some twenty-three centuries have passed since the days of
Esther and Mordecai, but the tale of peril and deliverance, of
malicious intrigue and steadfast courage, has a strangely familiar
ring. Haman has become a stock character in dramas that were
still to be enacted, and the Feast of Purim* which celebrates his
downfall has provided a measure of comfort in the face of his
numerous descendants. Ahasuerus, the bibulous and amorous mon-
arch whom Haman sought to manipulate, was probably Artaxerxes
II who reigned between 404 and 358 B.C.E.
In the vast empire, little Judea lived its own self-contained life.
The suzerainty of Persia did not weigh heavily upon it. The
Persian governor collected the taxes for his master and kept a
watchful eye for rebellious intrigue that might emanate from
Egypt or other quarters. The internal life of the community was
free to follow its own course.
It was a rich and intense life, cast into forms to which the people
became passionately attached. Nor was it a static life which the
Jews developed, for notwithstanding its fixed devotion to certain
fundamentals, like the Oneness of God and the ideal of holiness, it
was essentially flexible and progressive. The Torah was like a
living tree, its roots sunk deep in the soil of basic faith, but always
striking out new branches. The weaving of the fabric of Oral Law
and legend had been long in progress, its beginnings going back to
the First Commonwealth, back even to the very promulgation of
the written code; and this tradition was always at work, interpret-
ing and adapting, illuminating and molding, building a "fence
around the Torah," a fortress of the spirit against the days of
trial that were to follow.
The name is derived from the Persian pur meaning "lot." The fourteenth
day of Adar, the day fixed for the destruction of the Jews, was determined by
Haman by casting lots.
Il6 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
3
THE political headship of the community continued to be
vested in the high priest, and this union in one person of the secular
and sacerdotal powers prevented the tension and conflict which
their separation nearly always engendered. The high priest, how-
ever, notwithstanding the solemn and divine sanctions under which
he exercised his functions, was far from possessing unlimited au-
thority. His powers were circumscribed by the Sanhedrin, a body
of seventy-one notables and sages, with the high priest, as a rule,
the presiding officer.
The Sanhedrin had its origin in the Great Assembly (Keneset
Hagedolah) convoked in 445 B.C.E. by Ezra and Nehemiah; some
trace its beginnings further back to the "seventy men of the
Elders of Israel," whom Moses was commanded to choose "to bear
the burden of the people with him." It was at once a legislative
and judicial body. From it emanated decisions that established laws
and precedents. The general temper of this tribunal is illustrated
by the treatment it meted out to defendants charged with capital
crimes. So manifold were the safeguards with which the accused
was surrounded that a Sanhedrin which, in the course of its life,
imposed the death penalty on more than one person, achieved the
unenvied appellation of "the bloody court."
For purposes of local government, small councils or courts came
into existence, consisting as a rule of seven men, "the seven worthies
of the town" as they came to be called; while in the larger towns
"little Sanhedrins" of twenty-three members arose, modeled upon
the national Sanhedrin in Jerusalem.
It was a simple and wholesome life which the Sanhedrins, na-
tional and local, were called upon to govern. Agriculture continued
to be its economic basis. In field and fruit grove, in pasture and
vineyard, God's power was seen in the periodic renewal of life,
and the people testified to this vision in daily prayers to Him "Who
in His mercy giveth light unto the earth and unto them that dwell
thereon, and in His goodness reneweth every day continually the
deeds of creation." Again the hard soil of Judea blossomed like
the rose. The hills became terraced with vineyards and groves of
THE LIFE AND THE BOOK II J
fig trees and olives, the fields gave bountiful harvests of grain, the
pastures nourished flocks of sheep and cattle. Every seventh year,
the pious farmers observed "the sabbath of the soil" when the
fields lay fallow.
In the cities and towns, where life was more complex, many
crafts were plied by artisans, and commerce too had its place in
the economy of the land. For Palestine was still the highway be-
tween the people of the Nile and those of the Two Rivers, and
it is the way of men that when they do not fight they trade.
Thus the economy of the new Commonwealth was essentially
like that of the neighboring lands or those beyond the sea. In one
important respect, however, it was different. In other lands, nota-
bly in Greece and Rome, slavery was an essential part of the
economic system. To the philosophers of those lands slavery was
indispensable for the ideal human society: in their Utopias, human
labor is the labor of slaves. In the Jewish Commonwealth, that evil
institution, pernicious alike to master and slave, gradually dis-
appeared, primarily because in the^law of Moses it found not
sanction but reprobation. The Commonwealth became a society of
free men, equal before God, equal before the law by which they
lived. Labor became not a token of degradation, but a patent of
nobility.
In order to live and flourish, this society of free men had to
know the Torah and be deeply attached to it. Reason united with
instinct to make learning and popular education the cornerstone
of the Commonwealth. Learning was the principal qualification for
honor and public preferment. Every place of worship became also
a school for the young; the teachers were the soferim or scribes,
who taught and transcribed the Book, making it accessible to the
people.
In the synagogues, successive portions of the Five Books of
Moses, called Sidrahs, were read on the Sabbath, and smaller
portions on Mondays and Thursdays, when the farmers came to
town with their produce. On the Sabbath, portions of the Prophets
known as Haftorot or "conclusions," were added. By the process
known as Midrash, or interpretation, the sacred text was elaborated
and illumined; and since the Aramaic tongue had displaced the
Il8 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
Hebrew as the general language of intercourse, the reading of the
portions on the Sabbath was supplemented by an Aramaic trans-
lation called Targum.
That remarkable institution, the synagogue, was alike the reli-
gious, the educational, and the communal center of each locality.
It was the Bet Tejtilah y or House of Prayer, the Bet Hamidrash
(House of Study), and the Bet Hakeneset (House of Assembly).
Three times daily, corresponding to the services of song and sac-
rifice in the Temple, the 'synagogue was the scene of public
worship by prayer. The order of prayer became fixed, affording
sustenance to the deepest human emotions: love and hope, ven-
eration and ecstasy.
No picture of the life of the Second Commonwealth, however
cursory, can omit the Sabbaths and festivals. The Sabbath rested
men from toil and replenished their souls. The festivals, especially
the three pilgrimage festivals, brought days filled with glamour and
rejoicing. The boundaries of the Commonwealth were narrow
enough to permit the farmers who lived within them, and many
who lived without, to repair to Jerusalem on Passover, Shabuoth,
and Sukkoth, bearing the fruit of their toil for the Temple and
its ministers. The roads were thronged with pilgrims; the city
resounded with jubilation; the courts of the Temple echoed with
praise and thanksgiving.
4
UNDERLYING and shaping this unique life was the Book in
which the nation had stored its experiences, its thoughts, and its
longings. So dominant a role has this Book played in the career of
the Jews and in that of a great portion of mankind in general, that
the people who created it are often called the People of the Book,
and the leading nations of the world have found in it guidance,
inspiration, and delight. It moves men profoundly by the surge of
passion and lofty aspiration that throb in its pages; the Book has
been the most potent influence in the art of the medieval and
modern world: in architecture, sculpture, and painting; in music,
poetry, and the drama. In it men find the ideals of justice, love,
THE LIFE AND THE BOOK 119
and peace exalted not only as individual virtues, but as the essen-
tials of social order.*
It was during the Second Commonwealth that this Book, which
is really a collection of books, took definite form. Every mode of
literary expression is represented in it: history and law, homily and
philosophy, prophecy and psalms, prose and poetry. The books of
the Hebrew Scriptures, twenty-four in number, are divided into
three groups of which the first is called the Torah. Now the word
"Torah" is applied also to the Book as a whole and to the vast
system of law and lore which resulted from its interpretation. But
the Pentateuch, or Five Books of Moses, are the Torah, for
their authorship is ascribed to Moses, who was not only the great
emancipator and the first among the prophets, but also the in-
spired lawgiver.
After Torah comes the division called Nebiim, or Prophets.
Nebiim contains eight books of which the first four, Joshua,
Judges, Samuel, and Kings are narratives, telling the story of the
Hebrew nation from the death of Moses to the downfall of the
First Commonwealth. The remainlhg four books record the actual
words and some of the deeds of fifteen prophets. Three of them,
Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, because of the volume of their re-
corded utterances, are called the Major Prophets, and the remaining
twelve, among whom are the great poets and moralists Hosea,
Amos, Jonah, Micah, and Nahum, only because of the meagerness
of the record, are known as the Minor Prophets.
In the third division of the Hebrew Scriptures, called Ketubim,
or Writings, there are twelve books. As set down in the Hebrew
canon,t they are: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth,
Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and
Chronicles. Ketubim, as these titles indicate, is extremely diversified.
It includes history and prophecy, poetry, philosophy, and even
* "The Bible has been the Magna Charta of the poor and the oppressed; down
to modem times no state has had a constitution in which the interests of the
people are so largely taken into account, in which the duties so much more than
the privileges of the rulers are insisted upon, as that drawn up for Israel in
Deuteronomy and in Leviticus." Thomas H. Huxley (1825*1895).
f "Canon" means order or arrangement. The Christian canon differs in m
number of ways from the Jewish.
I2O THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
drama, the Book of Job having been found to follow in the main
the dramatic form. The Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ec-
clesiastes, and Esther are the Five Megillot, or Scrolls. The Song
of Songs, comprising the most exquisite love songs in any literature,
and interpreted by the Orthodox as an allegory of the love between
God and Israel, is read in synagogues on Passover. Ruth, that
enchanting idyll of field and harvest, is read on Shabuoth. Lamen-
tations is a dirge for the destruction of the Temple and is chanted
on the Fast of the Ninth of Ab. Ecclesiastes, consisting of the
broodings of a pessimistic moralist, is read on Tabernacles, per-
haps to temper the high joy of the festival. Esther, which relates
the story of Purim, is of course read on that feast. Esther is the
"Megillah" par excellence. Unless another of the five is indicated,
"Megillah" is taken to mean the Book of Esther.
The compilation of the canon, not to speak of the actual com-
position of the books, was the work not of years but of centuries.
The art of writing, as we have seen, was known even to the
generation of the Exodus, and events were probably recorded
when, or shortly after, they occurred. Nor are the books thai-
make up the canon the only ones that sought admittance into the
sacred fraternity. Others applied but were not admitted. Some of
those rejected make up a compilation of their own under the name
of Apocrypha, derived from a Greek word meaning "hidden,"
since those books were believed to contain secret meanings.
Who were the authors of the books that make up the Hebrew
Scriptures? Tradition answers the question about each of them
and answers it with assurance. The author of the Pentateuch, for
example, was Moses. Most, though not all of the books whose
titles are the names of persons such as Joshua, Samuel, Jeremiah,
and Isaiah, were written by those persons. Psalms is the work of
David; Proverbs, the Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes that of Solo-
mon. Other books, among them Esther and Daniel, are ascribed
to the "men of the Keneset Hagedolah" or Great Assembly.
In recent times, however, certain scholars, the so-called "higher
critics," have rejected the answers given by tradition. Having
subjected the text of the Bible to microscopic analysis, they have
declared it to be a blending of a number of literary streams which,
GREEK DOMINION 121
before being channeled into writing, flowed by word of mouth
down the generations among the people. With the recent discovery,
however, that the art of writing must have existed among the
Hebrews even in Egypt, that hypothesis has lost one of its chief
supports. An even more important prop for that theory was found
in the different names of God which occur in the Pentateuch, the
use of different names being ascribed to different authors. But that
hypothesis, too, was badly shaken when it was shown to be based
on a misapprehension of the passage Exodus VI, 3 which served
as its starting point. The "higher critics" have been eagerly pre-
occupied with precise dates, exact authorship, and linguistic prob-
lems, but of much greater importance to men are the beauty, the
holiness and the inspiration which they find in the Sacred Scrip-
tures.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Greek Dominion
^TUDEA was a mere mite in the vast realms which Alexander the
I Macedonian gathered beneath his scepter. For to Greece, Mac-
%J edonia, and Thrace in Europe; to Asia Minor, Syria and Pales-
tine in Asia; and to Egypt in Africa, he added Mesopotamia and the
unbounded regions stretching east along the Caspian Sea and the
Indian Ocean as far as the River Indus. Never before in recorded
history had an empire so immense been assembled. And only little
more than a decade elapsed between the day when the twenty-
three-year-old Alexander crossed the Hellespont and the day in
June, 323 B.C.E., when he died.
But rapid as the conquest had been, the dissolution of Alexan-
der's empire, which began immediately after his death, was still
more rapid. His leading generals seized different portions of it and
fought over them like wolves. The provinces of the former Persian
Empire became the prey of three of the generals until a battle
122 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
fought at Ipsus in Asia Minor in 301 B.C.E. reduced the number of
rivals to two. Four years earlier, one of the two, whose principal
domain was Egypt, had proclaimed himself ruler of that land with
the title of Ptolemy I. The other, who claimed sovereignty over
the rest of the former Persian Empire, was Seleucus. Ptolemy's
capital was Alexandria, a city which the great conqueror had
built at one of the mouths of the Nile. The capital of Seleucus
was Antioch, a city on the River Orontes in Syria, which Seleucus
had built and named in honor of his father Antiochus.
There were Jewish communities in both capitals; the one in
Alexandria was particularly large and influential. It was not long
before Alexandria became the chief center of commerce and cul-
ture on the Mediterranean, with the Jews playing a leading part in
both spheres. Antioch strove hard to rival Alexandria and, by
granting the Jews equal rights, Seleucus induced thousands of them
to settle there.
The Jewish Diaspora, or Dispersion, had in fact begun long
before and was steadily expanding. In Egypt, for example, there
existed a Jewish military colony at Elephantine or Yeb as far back
as the Persian period. It may have begun even before the fall of
Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. Letters have been discovered which mem-
bers of this colony, bearing such names as Jonathan, Azariah, and
Hosea, addressed to each other, as well as the copy of a letter of
complaint against certain Egyptians, which the high priest of the
Jewish Temple in "Yeb the fortress" addressed to Bogoas the
Persian governor of Judea in 407 B.C.E. In this letter mention is
made of "Jehohanan the high priest of Jerusalem" and of "San-
ballat, governor of Samaria." To Egypt and Syria should be added
Babylonia, where Jewish communities had their origins in die
deportations of Sargon and Nebuchadnezzar.
2
THE hostility between the Seleucids, as the Syrian rulers
came to be called, and the Egyptian Ptolemies went further than
the rivalry between their capitals. The two heirs of Alexander
and their successors found it impossible to divide the inheritance
peacefully. And between them lay Judea, intent on its own life,
GREEK DOMINION 123
indifferent as to which of them was the suzerain, but condemned
to bear the brunt of their collisions.
As early as 3 1 8 B.C.E., only five years after the death of Alexan-
der, Ptolemy stormed Jerusalem and took many of the people
captive into Egypt. He assaulted the holy city on a Sabbath and
met with no resistance: the use of weapons on the sacred day was
forbidden to the Jews.
Through the greater part of the century that followed the Bat-
tle of Ipsus, Palestine was held by the Ptolemies. But, by war or
diplomacy, every Seleucid ruler attempted to add the little land to
his dominions. It changed hands several times until in 198 B.C.E.,
at the Battle of Panion, the Seleucid ruler Antiochus III, called the
Great, overwhelmed the forces of Egypt, and the destiny of the
Jewish nation became linked with the rulers of the north.
3
EGYPT and Syria had many scores to settle, but in the vital
matter of culture and way of life, they were essentially at one.
For Alexander the Great had conquered not only the cities and
fortresses of the nations, but their spirit as well. They succumbed
to the culture of the conqueror even more promptly and much
more permanently than to his arms.
It was the civilization of the Greeks, known as Hellenism, which
thus became the prevailing mode and fashion of the eastern world.
It was a brilliant civilization which, over a period of a thousand
years, the city-states of Hellas or Greece, with Athens in the lead,
had brought to perfection. This culture was a complete expression
of the spirit of paganism, the spirit that revels in the joy of life
and the exercise of power, that sees the entire universe of nature
and man as a blind interplay of ruthless forces, that knows no
higher law than the struggle for existence and the survival of the
fittest.
It was destined that this spirit should find as its leading exponents
a remarkably gifted people. For the Greeks, or Hellenes, as they
preferred to call themselves, contrary to other pagans, ancient and
modern, knew how to embody this outlook on life into institutions
and works of such power and fascination that their attraction is
124 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
still potent in the world of today. Indeed, according to many of
its pundits, the legacy of Greece is the most important element
in modern civilization.
In the ancient world, at any rate, Hellenism had no difficulty
in establishing its empire over nations and men. It came to them
clad in all the graces of the plastic arts, of sculpture and architec-
ture, of painting and craftsmanship. It spoke to them in the subtle
music of abstract sound and in the lofty or intimate strains of
passionate verse. It lured them with bold excursions of the intellect
into new worlds of speculation and science. It summoned them
to cultivate all their faculties of mind and body in libraries and
museums, in theatres and athletic contests. It gave sanction and
license to the clamorous urge of the instincts for self-assertion and
self-indulgence.
Moreover, hand in hand with these lures and gifts went a religion
which the nations found no difficulty in assimilating to their own.
Like their own, it was a profuse polytheism that deified the phe-
nomena and forces of nature. Sky, earth, and sea; sun and stars;
fields, forests, and fountains all had their tutelary deities; and
there were divinities who presided over the forces that move in
nature and man, over storm and thunder, fate and death, the arts
of war and peace, with emphasis always on the forces of procrea-
tion.
In this assemblage of Greek gods and goddesses, demigods and
demons, there existed a measure of organization, for they all ac-
knowledged the supremacy of Zeus the Thunderer. But Zeus is a
genial and indulgent master, himself rather lax and irresponsible,
occupied with numerous amours in which beautiful mortals and
goddesses figure promiscuously; and his subordinates exhibit the
same proclivities, imposing their capricious will upon men with
little regard for considerations of right and wrong.
The nations of the East accepted these divinities, admitted them
into their own pantheons, and recognized in most of them familiar
spirits. To the worshippers* of Baal the transition to Jove presented
no serious obstacle. They entered with enthusiasm into the bac-
chanalian mysteries of Dionysus, the dissolute god of wine whose
wanton feasts were celebrated with drunkenness and debauchery.
And as for Aphrodite, the goddess of love, she had been wor-
GREEK DOMINION 125
shipped under the name of Astarte from time immemorial, and the
lewd rites of her priests and priestesses were prevalent throughout
the East.
4-
THERE was one people, however, and only one, which re-
sisted resolutely the refinements and depravities with which Hel-
lenism beguiled the nations. Every instinct of the Jews, every
tradition, belief, and institution rebelled against it. How could
the sublime conception of the One God who transcends and rules
the universe of nature make peace with a multitude of divinities
who were themselves the slaves of nature? In a world controlled
by those gods, purity and justice, the stern law of the God of the
Hebrews, was impossible. Holiness, or the elevation of man to
the plane of spirit, was a thing undreamed-of. Man's eternal soul
was unrecognized, his individual worth and dignity denied, cruelty
and torture flourished, and slavery was the basic institution of
society.
Nor could the graces and sedufttions of Hellenism be harmonized
with the teachings of Torah. The beauty that appeals only, or
primarily, to the senses was met with profound distrust. The
statues of the Greeks were incitations to idolatry: they vindicated
the ban which the Decalogue pronounced against graven images.
The Greek enthusiasm for bodily prowess was childish and friv-
olous and, moreover, it went hand in hand with shameless im-
modesty. The Greek theatre was a nest of lewdness, or a forum
for doctrines that denied the justice of God. And even the wisdom
of Hellenism, its philosophy, poetry, and science, was regarded
with suspicion. For what did this poetry celebrate but the ex-
ploits and crimes of the Greek gods and heroes? To a people
steeped in the passionate pity of the prophets and the God-hunger
of the psalmists, the blood-lusty chants of Homer were nothing
but blasphemy. In the name of Greek science, human beings
condemned criminals, but still human beings were undergoing
vivisection. And as for Greek philosophy, it was, as the later Jewish
sages expressed it, a plant that "bears flowers but no fruit."
What was to happen when the two antagonists, Judaism and
Hellenism, would come to grips?
126 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
5
FOR a period of four or five generations the antagonists
lived side by side, measuring each other, as it were, without coming
to grips. Neither the Ptolemies nor the Seleucids attempted during
that period to impose the religion and culture of Hellenism upon
the Jews. Changes of suzerainty meant little to this people whose
rich and peculiar life continued to flourish under one political
domination or another.
It was natural, of course, that in the Jewish communities outside
Palestine, living as they did in close relations with Greeks and
Hellenized Egyptians or Syrians, the opportunity as well as the
practical necessity of adopting the Greek language and customs
should arise much sooner than in the homeland. Among the Jews
of Alexandria, for example, the Greek language had, as early as
the reign of Ptolemy II (285-247 B.C.E.), replaced the sacred He-
brew and the Aramaic vernacular to such an extent that the
leaders of the community felt the need for a Greek translation of
the Torah. Accordingly, the famous translation known as the
Septuagint came into existence.
The circumstances surrounding the production of the Septuagint,
its name derived from a Greek word meaning seventy, are shrouded
in legend, and according to one account the Egyptian ruler invited
Eleazar, the Jewish high priest, to send seventy or seventy-two
scholars to Alexandria to perform the task. The scholars worked
separately, but when their translations were compared they were
found to be miraculously identical! The early history, laws, and
concepts of the Hebrews were now open to the Greek mind and,
no doubt, a desire on the part of the Jews in Alexandria to reveal
the excellencies of their faith and laws to their neighbors figured
in the enterprise.
6
AGAINST Judea itself, guarded by the watchful zeal of the
High Priest and Sanhedrin, the waves of Hellenism beat in vain.
The records of those generations continue to be vague and meager;
the only eminent personality disclosed is that of the high priest
Simon the Just who held office about the year 300 B.C.E. Simon
GREEK DOMINION 127
may have been the high priest who, at the head of a solemn retinue,
met Alexander the Great outside the walls of Jerusalem. The
records reveal that Simon was a man of courage as well as wisdom
and gentleness. He repaired the Temple, strengthened the defenses
of the city, and improved its water supply. To him is attributed
the following saying: "The world is upheld by three things: Torah,
worship, and good deeds."
Simon was succeeded in the office of high priest by his son
Onias II. But a nephew of Onias, the bold and crafty Joseph, found
an opportunity to discredit his uncle and ingratiate himself with
the Egyptian sovereign Ptolemy III (247-221 B.C.E.). Onias was
not blameless: he had joined a pro-Seleucid party in Jerusalem
which aimed to repudiate the suzerainty of Egypt. Joseph de-
nounced Onias, and Ptolemy rewarded the informer with the
lucrative post of taxgatherer for his northern province, which
included Judea.
When Joseph died, his place and prestige fell to his youngest
son Hyrcanus, whose brothers before long found an opportunity
to satisfy their natural resentment. About 200 B.C.E., when the
insatiable Antiochus III appeared before Jerusalem, they opened
the gates of the city to the Syrians. Shortly afterwards, the Egyp-
tians succeeded in recovering the city, but in 198 B.C.E. came the
Battle of Panion and the final victory of the Seleucid. Hyrcanus,
however, was not abandoned by his Egyptian patron: he was
made taxgatherer of a region in Transjordania which continued
under Egyptian sovereignty.
7
THE dose relations which Joseph and his son were com-
pelled to maintain with the court of the Ptolemies, as well as their
natural zeal to please their sovereigns, led them to embrace the
fashions and customs of their masters. With the weakening of
moral fiber that often accompanies great wealth, they, as well as
their agents, yielded to the lure of the Greek way, and Judea itself
began to be inundated by the ever-advancing tide of Hellenism.
Nor were they and their satellites the only carriers of the germs in
Judea. The government officials in Jerusalem, the merchants who
traded with Syria, Egypt, and other lands, as well as the Jews who
12$ THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
were domiciled in foreign parts and made pilgrimages to the Holy
City, became the conscious or unconscious agents of Hellenism.
There was, of course, no suggestion of religious apostasy in their
attitude, but the Hellenists, as the Jewish admirers of the foreign
culture may be called, saw no good reason for rejecting the art and
wisdom, as well as the adornments and amenities, of Greek life.
Gradually they brought into their homes the Greek banquet, with
its music and dancing. They Hellenized their Hebrew names:
Joshua became Jason, or Jesus, Choni became Menelaus, and Jakim
was changed to Alcimus. They taught their children the Greek
language and Greek sports. The cynosure that drew their gaze
was no longer Sinai but the Acropolis of Athens. They wanted
nothing better than to disappear in the huge Hellenistic melting-pot
which the entire East had become.
Numerically, however, the Hellenists were a minor portion of
the nation. The great majority clung to Torah and vmtzvot. The
laborers and craftsmen of the cities, the peasants of the country-
side, the humble priests and Levites, the so^erim or scribes all
looked upon Hellenism with profound misgivings. They formed a
party in opposition to it, and called themselves Chassidim or pietists.
The Chassidim despised the postures and pretensions of the Hel-
lenists and suspected their loyalty to the faith of Israel. Beneath
the elegant veneer of art and poetry and philosophy, the Chassidim
discerned the same greeds and lusts, the same cruelties and super-
stitions against which the prophets had thundered and which the
laws of Moses were designed to eradicate. A synthesis of Judaism,
which affirmed the existence of absolute moral law, and of Hel-
lenism which denied it, seemed to them impossible.
In the great outer world of intrigue and conflict by which Judea
was surrounded, as well as within the little Commonwealth itself,
the lines were being drawn for one of the decisive struggles in
the history of humanity.
8
AT THE Battle of Magnesia in Asia Minor, fought in 190
B.C.E., only eight years after his victory at Panion, the triumphant
career of Antiochus the Great was brought to a disastrous close
by Rome, the great western power that was now reaching out its
THE MACCABAEAN REVOLT 1 29
tentacles to the East. The victors compelled Antiochus to send
his young son, who bore his father's name, as a hostage to Rome.
Three years later Antiochus the Great died, and for eleven years
another son held his throne as Seleucus IV. Then Seleucus was
murdered by his treasurer Heliodorus, who is better known for
an unsuccessful attempt he made to rob the Temple at Jerusalem.
Now came the turn of young Antiochus. He had been replaced
as hostage to Rome by his nephew Demetrius to whom, on the
death of Seleucus IV, the throne rightfully belonged. Antiochus,
however, was not disposed to allow a scruple like that to stand in
his way. He came to Antioch and mounted the throne of the
Seleucid Empire as Antiochus IV.
To this imperial title Antiochus added the Greek word Epiphanes
the divine but posterity has accorded him the sobriquet
Epimanes the madman,
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Maccabaean Revolt
EITON before the accession of Antiochus IV, the tension in
Jerusalem between the Hellenists and their opponents had
grown acute. Partisan bitterness reared its ugly head in the
leading families of the nation, including that of the high priest;
and, as in all party strife, unscrupulous men utilized the conflict
for the promotion of personal ambitions.
The high priest in the reign of Seleucus IV was Onias III, whose
own brother, Jason, espoused the Hellenist cause as a means of
usurping the office. Harassed by Jason and his minions, Onias pro-
ceeded to Antioch to lay his case before the royal court. He was
still there when Antiochus ascended the throne, and the new
ruler, immersed in plans of conquest for which he required huge
sums of money, accepted an offer from Jason of a large payment
and a bigger annual tribute in return for the coveted office. To
ingratiate himself with his suzerain, Jason built a Greek gymnasium
I3O THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
in Jerusalem; on one occasion when games were held in the city
of Tyre in honor of Hercules, he sent costly gifts to be offered to
the hero-god. At the last moment, however, the high priest, afraid
of his people's wrath, offered the gifts to the Emperor's navy
instead.
But after four years of insecure tenure, the usurper was re-
moved by Antiochus to make way for a higher bidder, one
Menelaus, who, to pay the price, rifled the Temple of its treasures.
The animosity between Hellenists and Chassidim became more
bitter and sanguinary. The deposed high priest Onias was mur-
dered at the instigation of Menelaus, while the latter's brother
fell victim to the wrath of his opponents. Menelaus who, besides
other disqualifications, was not even a member of the high priestly
family, brazenly urged his sovereign to stamp out the religion
over which he presided.
THE plans of conquest with which Antiochus fed his vain-
glory began with Egypt, and were calculated to end with Rome.
In 170 B.C.E. he invaded his southern neighbor, but found himself
checked at Alexandria. On his way back he entered Jerusalem
and, escorted by Menelaus, he defiled the Temple by entering the
Holy of Holies.
Two years kter he again invaded Egypt. This time he was more
successful against the Egyptians, but the Roman envoy ordered
him, out of the country. When Antiochus hesitated, he drew a
circle around him demanding his yea or nay before stepping out of
it. Antiochus, who remembered only too well the might of Rome,
abandoned Egypt, his dreams shattered and his glory turned to
shame and dishonor.
Again Antiochus stopped at Jerusalem, and there he found what
he sought: an outlet for his rage. False rumors of his death pro-
duced intense excitement among the Jews, and Jason, the deposed
high priest, had returned to Jerusalem and forced Menelaus to
take refuge in the Acra or citadel. Antiochus avenged himself to
the hilt. On a Sabbath day, when he knew the pious inhabitants
would offer no resistance, his mercenaries broke into the city,
butchered the men, plundered the homes, and carried off women
THE MACCABAEAN REVOLT 131
and children to be sold into slavery. The defenses of the city were
razed, and a garrison was quartered in the Acra for the protection
of Menelaus and his fellow traitors.
Antiochus followed up his "victory" with a decree command-
ing "that all should be one people, and every one should leave his
laws," an edict aimed at the Jews alone, since the others had no
scruples about accepting the culture of the Greeks or worshipping
their gods. On the fifteenth day of the month of Kislev, 168 B.C.E.,
a statue of Zeus was erected in the sanctuary, and the king ordered
a swine, an animal held in special abhorrence by the Jews, to be
sacrificed on the altar. In towns and villages throughout the land,
shrines were set up for the same loathsome rite. The people were
compelled to join in the shameful processions in honor of Dionysus,
and the glory of the nation, the Temple of the God of Israel, was
profaned by the revelries and debaucheries of pagan worship.
To enforce the edict "that all should be one people," Antiochus
decreed the penalty of death for loyalty to the Jewish faith. Cir-
cumcision, the observance of the Sabbath and dietary laws, and the
possession of Torah scrolls became capital crimes. The land
swarmed with spies and the victims were numerous. Tradition has
preserved in particular the memory of Eleazar, who died under
torture for spurning the flesh of the swine, and of Hannah and her
seven sons, all of whom perished for their faith, refusing to bow
down to the heathen idols.
Jerusalem became a desolate city inhabited by strangers. The
Chassidim fled to the hills and sought refuge in the caves. One
Sabbath day a thousand of them were surprised in their retreats by
soldiers of the king, and all the thousand perished. In the court of
the Temple, beside the altar, stood "the abomination of desolation,"
the statue of Zeus, symbol of the triumph of Hellenism and the
subjugation of the Hebrew spirit and nation.
3
A TROOP of Syrian soldiers, charged with enforcing the
imperial edicts against the Jews, came one day to the village of
Modin in the Judean foothills. Following their customary proce-
dure, they summoned the villagers to the market place, erected an
altar, and prepared to sacrifice a swine in honor of Zeus. The
132 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
leader of the troop ordered an old man who stood among the
people to come forward and perform the sacrifice.
The man was Mattathias of the family of Hasmonaeus. He had
been a priest in the Temple, and when the sanctuary was desecrated
by Antiochus, he had fled with his five sons to Modin. Now Mat-
tathias stood in the market place with his sons, and saw the sacrilege
follow him to his place of refuge. The old priest defied the order,
and when another Jew, a renegade, prepared to perform the foul
deed, Mattathias rushed forward and slew the man by the altar.
Behind him came his sons, who fell upon and routed the Syrians.
The soldiers fled, leaving their captain among the slain.
A village brawl but it was the signal for the revolt that saved
the Jewish faith and people. The old man and his sons fled into
the mountains. News of their exploit spread through the country-
side and from far and near men flocked to join them. They spent
a year in guerilla warfare, cutting down patrols of the king's sol-
diers and swooping down on towns and villages to demolish pagan
altars and bring hope to the faithful and terror to the renegades.
In these forays the man who stood out for skill and daring was
Judas, the third of the old priest's sons. Men called him the "Mac-
cabee," which means "the hammerer," and Judas Maccabaeus is the
name by which he is known to posterity. His brothers were Jo-
hanan, Simon, Eleazar, and Jonathan.
Two more important deeds were accomplished by their father
before he died: he declared it lawful to use weapons on the Sab-
bath against the enemy, and he commanded his followers to make
Simon their counselor and Judas their leader in battle.
4
THE long and desperate struggle that followed is one of the
most unequal contests recorded in history: for the first time a
people rose up in arms to defend its religious freedom. It was, no
doubt, the victories of Judas, won by his intrepid courage and
brilliant generalship, that proved the decisive factor. In Judas the
revolt found a superb leader, one who combined military genius
with a stainless character. He was the fearless and faultless knight,
a soldier of God, true-hearted and with no taint of personal ambi-
tion. "In his acts," records the chronicler in the First Book of the
THE MACCABAEAN REVOLT 133
Maccabees, "he was like a lion, and like a lion's whelp roaring for
his prey."
In his first open battle Judas defeated a large force of Syrian
troops and slew their leader Apollonius. Shortly afterwards came
a larger force, led by a general named Seron, whom Judas am-
bushed and routed in the pass of Beth-horon.
News of these defeats reached Anriochus and he swore to ex-
terminate the Jewish people. Confronted, however, with uprisings
in Parthia and Armenia, he led half his forces away to subdue the
rebels in the east, and gave the other half to Lysias, a prince of
the royal family, appointing him guardian of his young heir and
governor of his western provinces, and charging him with the task
of dealing with the Jews.
Lysias assembled a force of nearly 50,000 footmen and horsemen,
and placed them under the command of three veteran generals.
They moved down the coast and, turning east from die Plain of
Philistia, encamped at Emmaus midway between Jerusalem and
the sea. The outcome of the campaign appeared to be a foregone
conclusion: a large contingent of slave merchants, with ample bags
of gold, marched with the Syrian forces.
The Jewish warriors who, though greatly outnumbered, were
now well-armed and disciplined, went first to Mizpah where they
heard the reading of the Torah and prayed and fasted. Judas then
led them to Emmaus where, by a combination of ruse and daring,
he won an amazing victory. On a dark night, under pretense of hav-
ing abandoned the field, he lured a portion of the enemy into the
hills and, in the gray of dawn, surprised and overwhelmed the
remainder. When, after their fruitless search, the first contingent
returned and saw their encampment in smoke and flames, they fled
in every direction. There was great rejoicing throughout Judea.
Judas gathered an immense booty, including the silver and gold
of the slave merchants and the weapons which the Syrians dis-
carded in their flight.
The following spring it was the year 165 B.C.E. Judas won
another great victory. This time Lysias had resolved to strike from
the south, and with a still greater force. At Beth-zur, just north
of Hebron, the Jewish patriots, who now numbered 10,000 sea-
soned warriors, fell upon the Syrian mercenaries and routed diem.
134 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
Secure against further immediate attacks, Judas, in the late fall
of the same year, entered Jerusalem and cleansed the Temple of
its pagan pollutions. He removed the idols and replaced the sullied
altar and its vessels. On the twenty-fifth day of Kislev and for the
seven days that followed, the dedication, or hanukkah, of the puri-
fied sanctuary was solemnized with praise and sacrifice, with music
of voice and instrument, and the relighting of the Menorah. It was
a festival of thanksgiving for the victory of "the weak over the
strong, of the few over the many."
5
THE festival of Hanukkah, which is known also as the Feast
of Lights, was ordained as a perpetual observance and the city
once again became the habitation of the faithful. But Judas and his
brothers were well aware that the final victory was not yet won.
The city itself, in fact, was not yet clear of the enemy. Above the
Temple loomed the citadel of the Acra which sheltered a Syrian
garrison together with a band of extreme Hellenists, whom the
patriots were unable to dislodge.
Moreover, the ancient enemies of the Jews, Idumaeans and
Ammonites, Philistines and Phoenicians, alarmed by the victories
of the Judean warriors and egged on by Lysias, made common
cause with the Syrians. They raided Jewish territory, gave asylum
to Syrian troops and Hellenist traitors, and persecuted the Jews
who lived in their midst. The Battle of Beth-zur was followed by
a lull that lasted for two years, and Judas and his brothers used the
opportunity to punish these hostile neighbors and rescue their
Jewish victims by removing them to Judea. The Maccabaean
brothers captured and burned the Idumaean strongholds, defeated
a large force of Ammonites, drove the Phoenicians back into their
cities on the coast, and punished the Philistines by destroying the
city of Ashdod and raiding the port of Jaffa, where they burned
the ships in the harbor.
The lull in major operations which enabled Judas and his brothers
to settle old scores with their neighbors was occasioned by a change
of heart in Lysias. Unlike his master, the viceroy was not a rabid
Hellenizer. He saw no good reason for draining the resources of
the empire in order to compel an obstinate people to renounce
THE MACCABAEAN REVOLT 135
their faith. Accordingly, he issued a decree restoring freedom of
worship to the Jews. And shortly afterwards came the news that
Antiochus, the arch-enemy of the Jews, was dead in distant Persia.
But Lysias was unwilling to remove Menelaus and his henchmen,
and the Maccabaean brothers declined the olive branch which he
extended. They were fighting not alone against the foreign oppres-
sor, but against the Hellenist traitors who stood in his service.
When, therefore, Lysias learned that Judas was preparing to attack
the Acra, he repented of his offer and made another and even more
formidable attempt to crush the Jewish patriots.
Again a huge Syrian army moved up toward Jerusalem from
the south, and Judas moved down to meet it. This time the enemy
was furnished with a new terror in the shape of fighting elephants,
and a rumor spread that the regent and his boy-king would diem-
selves ride into battle on one of the beasts. At Beth-zacharias, not
far from the field of Beth-zur, Judas clashed with the mighty host
of Syria and suffered his first defeat. Also, he lost one of his
devoted brothers. Eleazar, believing that one of the elephants he
saw plunging into the melee was bearing the Syrian king, broke
through the enemy ranks, drove his spear into the beast, and died
under its huge bulk as it fell. Judas took his shattered forces back
to Jerusalem and found himself besieged behind the walls of the
Temple.
THE Jewish cause seemed lost, when a series of events began,
born of the sordid rivalry and intrigue in the court of Anrioch,
which time and again brought providential respite and new hope
to the hard-pressed Jews. The events moved with confusing swift-
ness. The regent was forced to make peace with the Jews, even
going so far as to put Menelaus to death, in order to deal with a rival
regent whom Antiochus had appointed before his death. Lysias
defeated his rival, but his triumph was brief; suddenly Demetrius,
the victim of Antiochus' usurpation, appeared on the scene sup-
ported by Rome, and Lysias and his boy-king went down to dis-
grace and death. But the new ruler appointed another Hellenist,
one named Alcimus, as high priest in Jerusalem, and the struggle
between Hellenists and patriots flared up again. Alcimus had die
136 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
support of the emperor, and the Chassidim fell on evil days again.
Sixty of them were put to death by order of Bacchides, the gov-
ernor of the province.
Again Judas took to the hills where he gathered fresh strength
for the struggle. He won two brilliant victories against the Syrian
general Nicanor; in the second victory, the Battle of Adasa in 161
B.C.E., the Syrian was slain. The anniversary of this battle, the
1 3th day of Adar, was observed for many years as the Day of
Nicanor. But Judas and his brothers had no illusions about the
chances of ultimate victory. Accordingly, they sought and obtained
a treaty of alliance with Rome, in which the mightiest of the
empires recognized the independence of the Jewish nation.
But before his ambassadors returned from Italy, Judas fought
his last fight. At Elasa in 160 B.C.E., he faced a huge Syrian force
led by Bacchides. The patriot army, hopelessly outnumbered,
melted away just before the battle to a band of eight hundred
men, with whom Judas and his brothers performed mighty deeds
of valor. All day long, and with dwindling numbers, they held
the Syrian hosts at bay, but when night fell Judas lay dead on the
field.
The survivors, under cover of darkness, fled into the hills, and
Jonathan, Simon, and Johanan took their brother and bore him
to the village of Modin where they buried him beside their father,
the valiant priest Mattathias.
7
FROM the hills of Judea the survivors of Elasa fled to the
jungles on the banks of the Jordan. Their case was desperate in-
deed, and they lost another of the Maccabaean brothers when
Johanan, while guarding the baggage of the fugitives, was at-
tacked and slain by Arab plunderers.
The command now fell to Jonathan, who proved himself a
worthy successor of the great Judas. He avenged the death of
Johanan and for several years conducted relentless guerilla war-
fare against the Hellenists and their Syrian protectors.
In the capital, Alcimus and his followers, supported by Bacchides,
obtained a free hand against the Chassidim, many of whom were
skin. Egged on by the Hellenists, Bacchides pierced the Jordan
THE MACCABAEAN REVOLT 137
jungles and attacked Jonathan in force. Again the incredible hap-
pened: the Syrians were defeated. The governor turned his rage
on his Hellenist counselors. He was willing to protect them, but
not at so high a cost; and he had as little enthusiasm for Hellenism
as a policy as his predecessor Lysias. Bacchides came to terms with
Jonathan, who returned to Judea, established himself at Michmash
and, for a number of years, was looked upon as the unofficial
head of the nation.
In 152 B.C.E., eight years after the death of Judas, another series
of court revolutions began in Antioch which carried the patriotic
cause still further. A pretender arose who claimed to be a son of
Antiochus IV and challenged the emperor Demetrius. Both sides
made generous bids for Jonathan's support, and he was enabled
to enter and fortify Jerusalem and assume the office of high priest.
Jonathan finally threw in his lot with the pretender and the choice
proved fortunate. Judea had six years of peace. Jonathan was a
strong and resourceful ruler and added some of the Philistine cities
to his dominions. Then a new pretender arose who overthrew the
first; but, in spite of war and confusion, Jonathan was able to
add further strength and territory to the Jewish Commonwealth.
He improved the fortifications of the capital, built up a large
army, and renewed the treaty of friendship with Rome.
In the court of Antioch, the turbid current of intrigue and
treachery ran on. Finally Jonathan's skill and wariness failed him.
A Syrian general named Tryphon who, after espousing the cause
of a third pretender, murdered his protege and took his place,
lured Jonathan into the city of Ptolemais, massacred his bodyguard,
and held him prisoner. Tryphon moved on Jerusalem with a large
army but had to fall back; the roads had become impassable be-
cause of a heavy snowfall, a rare occurrence in Palestine. In his
rage, Tryphon ordered Jonathan, still his prisoner, to be slain.
Simon, the last of the lion'? brood, had already assumed the
headship of the nation. The oldest of the five brothers, Simon was
already advanced in years, but he was nothing behind them in
heroic zeal. Besides, he commanded a strong army, a devoted
people, and a country with enlarged borders and a well-fortified
capital where the only remaining symbol of subjection was the
Acra.
138 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
Simon laid siege to this fortress. At the same time, he threw in
his lot with Demetrius II, the reigning Seleucid monarch, against
the bloody Tryphon, and in return Judea was freed from all
taxes and tribute. The year was 142 B.C.E.
A solemn assembly was convoked of priests and elders who con-
ferred on Simon the title of "high priest, commander of the army,
and prince of the nation." He was king in everything but name,
and the name was withheld because of the belief that it should
only be borne by a descendant of David. Judea was now inde-
pendent and recognized as such by Rome, the leading world
power. Simon struck his own coins and the year 142 became Year
One of a new era.
The same year the Acra was taken. The last symbol of servitude
was overthrown; the twenty-five year struggle was over and the
victory complete*
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Hasmonaean Dynasty
SIMON, records the chronicler, "made peace in the land, and
Israel rejoiced with great joy: for every man sat under his
vine and under his fig-tree, and there was none to make
them afraid." This picture, perhaps too idyllic, reflects the pride
of the nation in the new era of unity and independence, achieved
after twenty-five years of intense struggle and suffering. But the
independence of Judea under the rule of Simon and his descendants
lasted only little more than two generations (142 B.C.E. to 63
B.C.E.), and its existence in the rapacious world that surrounded it
was always precarious. As for unity, while the victory of the
Hasmonaeans did away with the Hellenist party, a new division
arose before long to plague the nation; and, what proved equally
mischievous, the harmony that had reigned among the five
sons of Mattathias gave place among their successors to the feuds
THE HASMONAEAN DYNASTY 139
and rivalries which, with few exceptions, stain the annals of every
dynasty.
In the seven brief years that he ruled as "high priest, commander
of the army, and prince of the nation," Simon was compelled to
renew the struggle for the freedom of his people, and he ended
his career as the first victim of the discord that undermined the
dynasty he founded. The new Seleucid ruler, Antiochus VII, as
soon as he felt strong enough to hold his scepter without the sup-
port of his Jewish ally, ordered Simon to surrender the coastal
cities and when Simon refused, Antiochus invaded Judea. At
Jabneh, on the coastal plain, the Syrians were met by the Jewish
forces commanded by Simon's two sons, John and Judah, and were
decisively defeated.
The freedom of his nation was saved, but shortly afterwards
the aged Simon was slain in a conspiracy hatched by his own son-
in-law at the instigation of the Seleucid monarch. Thus died the
last of the Maccabaean brothers, giving his life, as did the other
four, in his people's service. Simon's son John, or John Hyrcanus,
as he now called himself,* was also marked for death, but he was
warned in time and escaped.
John Hyrcanus made his way to Jerusalem and the people hailed
him as their ruler. He avenged the death of his father, but
Antiochus VII came down with an immense array and besieged
Jerusalem. In spite of famine the city held out: the Syrians, suffer-
ing heavy losses, were unable to storm it. But in the end Hyrcanus
was compelled to accept a peace under which, after losing the
coastal cities, he became a vassal of Syria.
But shortly afterwards Syria was again thrown into a welter of
confusion by contending rivals for the Seleucid throne, and
Hyrcanus lost no time in shaking off his vassalage. He took back
the cities on the coast, renewed the treaty with Rome, and, with
the help of hired troops, made, war on his enemy neighbors. He
crossed the Jordan and took the city of Medeba; and after captur-
ing Shechem, he demolished the Samaritan temple on Mount
* Cendebeus, the Syrian general whom John defeated, hailed from Hyrcania, a
country near Parthia, and in accordance with a prevailing custom, John, after his
victory, called himself Hyrcanus.
I4O THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
Gerizim. He seized and destroyed the Idumaean fortresses on the
south compelling the Idumaeans, on pain of exile, to embrace the
Jewish faith. Thus for the first time, and contrary to its spirit and
traditions, Judaism was endowed with the dubious gift of forced
converts.
Toward the end of his long reign of thirty-one years (135-104
B.C.E.) the son of Simon captured and destroyed the city of
Samaria, and pushing farther north, took Scythopolis as the former
Beth-shean was now called. Since the days of Solomon, the borders
of the Jewish Commonwealth had not been so wide. On his coins
Hyrcanus stamped his title as "High Priest and Chief of the Com-
monwealth of the Jews/'
THE title of king was first assumed by Hyrcanus' son
Aristobulus, whose reign of only one year was marred by the
bitter and sordid family discord which in the end was to bring a
new servitude upon the nation. He imprisoned his mother and
three brothers, while another brother, Antigonus, who had been
his favorite, the two having fought their country's enemies side
by side, was put to death by his orders. And all because their
father, out of deference to the teachings of a new party that had
sprung up in the nation, had provided by will that the functions
of ruler and high priest should be separated, with his wife to be
queen and Aristobulus high priest.
Aristobulus extended his borders farther north to the foot of
Mount Hermon, continuing his father's mistaken policy of forced
conversion. When he died from grief and remorse for his crimes,
it is said his brother Alexander Jannaeus was released from prison
and promptly became both high priest and king.
3
THE new party that John Hyrcanus had been so eager to
placate was new in name only. Its members called themselves
Pharisees but, in spirit and doctrine, they were the direct heirs of
the Chassidim. Against them stood the Sadducees who, although
they rejected the aims and affectations of the Hellenists, may
nevertheless be identified with their general disposition and out-
THE HASMONAEAN DYNASTY
look. For, in the career of the nation, two tendencies have been
at work, sometimes running side by side, more often crossing and
clashing: one of them resolved to preserve the Jews as a "peculiar"
people, the other striving to make them "like all the nations." The
Pharisees, like the Chassidim, represented the first tendency; the
Sadducees, like the Hellenists, the second.
The Sadducees, in Hebrew Zadukim, derived their name from
Zadok, the progenitor of the family from which the high priest,
before the office was conferred on Simon and his successors, used
to be selected. The party included most of the leading priests, the
army officers, the state officials, the notables and merchants, and
in general, the men of wealth and station. The Sadducees were
staunch patriots, proud of their country's new power and eager
to augment it. At the same time they were "men of the world,"
in contact with other nations and attracted by some of the foreign
customs they met with. In the Sanhedrin the Sadducees were in
the majority, and at court they naturally wielded considerable
influence.
In the reign of John Hyrcanus, a minority of the Sanhedrin,
finding themselves in disagreement with the majority, "separated
themselves" and formed what may be called an opposition. They
came to be known as Separatists, in Hebrew Perushim, whence
arose the name Pharisees. But there are other theories to account
for the name, one of them connecting the "separateness" of the
Pharisees with their scrupulous observance of the laws of ritual
purity, and another with their insistence that Israel must be a
nation separate and distinct from all others. The Pharisees looked
upon themselves as keepers of the Great Covenant that ordained
their people "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation."
Although the Sanhedrin, the palace, and the Temple were con-
trolled by the Sadducees, the bulk of the nation stood behind the
Pharisees. The latter ruled the^ synagogue, the center of the re-
ligious and social life of each community. The Pharisees were the
local communal leaders, the teachers of young and old, the cus-
todians of the noble tradition of learning. They were not the dry
religious formalists which a long-standing prejudice charges them
to have been, nor were their teachings and practices marked by a
joyless austerity. They sought, on the contrary, to make religious
142 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
observance a source of joy, while in the administration of justice
they were, as against the Sadducees, noted for leniency rather than
rigor. The Sadducees acknowledged the validity of the Written
Law only; the Pharisees recognized the Oral Tradition also, thus
admitting the necessity of continually interpreting and adapting
the ordinances of Torah. As in the days of the Maccabees, the
nation at large, while deploring the excesses of the partisan spirit,
was inclined to entrust its destiny to those who exalted the historic
faith and clung to the ancient customs.
4
IN THE long and hectic reign of Alexander Jannaeus (103-
76 B.C.E.) the smoldering antagonism between the two parties
broke into civil war. The monarch was a man of violent temper;
he sided openly with the Sadducees, and, out of recklessness or
incomprehension, flouted the sensibilities of their opponents.
Alexander began his reign auspiciously. He made conquests on
both sides of the Jordan, and although he was once threatened with
disaster by an invasion from Cyprus, he was rescued by an
Egyptian army commanded by Hananiah and Hilkiah, sons of the
high priest of the Jewish community in Egypt. The Queen of
Egypt was preparing to annex Palestine when she was warned
by her Jewish commanders and desisted.
In the beginning, also, Alexander endeavored to keep the scales
even between the Pharisees and Sadducees. He even appointed
Simon ben Shetach, the queen's brother and a leader of the
Pharisees, to the Sanhedrin, of which Simon subsequently became
president. But the Pharisees, for two reasons they deemed sufficient,
refused to be reconciled with Alexander. The title of king, they
held, could be borne by a descendant of David only; and one
who wields the sword should not officiate as high priest. Had not
David himself been told by God: "Thou shalt not build a house
for My name, because thou art a man of war, and hast shed blood?"
The people had still another grievance against their ruler: his
army contained too marty mercenaries. The justice of this com-
plaint received terrible confirmation during a celebration of the
Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem, when Alexander, flushed with
military successes, deemed the moment opportune for defying the
THE HASMONAEAN DYNASTY 143
Pharisees. He was officiating as high priest, and at the ceremony of
"pouring water/' instead of pouring on the altar, as the ritual pre-
scribed, he deliberately poured it on the ground. There was a
violent outburst of resentment, and some of the people hurled at
the king their citrons and palm branches, objects which enter into
the ceremonial of the day. Thereupon Alexander unleashed his
mercenaries who slew six thousand of the worshippers in the court
of the Temple.
Alexander's turbulent spirit craved for war and violence, and
he crossed the Jordan for fresh conquests. But this time he was
ambushed and routed, barely escaping with his life. When he
returned to the capital he found his people in open revolt. For
six years the civil war raged and many more thousands fell vic-
tim to the king's hirelings. The Pharisees were driven to despera-
tion. They persuaded the Seleucid ruler to come to their aid;
Alexander's mercenaries were defeated, and he became a fugitive.
His plight induced a change of heart in many of his opponents;
and when the Syrians withdrew, Alexander rallied and overcame
the remainder. He crucified eight hundred of his captives in an
orgy of degenerate cruelty, and thousands of Pharisees fled the
country. Alexander continued fighting to the day of his death,
adding the habit of excessive drinking to his other vices. He died
while besieging a city across the Jordan.
Alexander's widow, Salome Alexandra, now mounted the throne,
and her reign of nine years (76 to 67 B.C.E.) was a period of peace
and recovery. She reversed her husband's policy, favoring the
Pharisees against the Sadducees. She made her brother, Simon ben
Shetach, her chief counselor and Judah ben Tabbai, another
Pharisee leader, became president of the Sanhedrin. She appointed
her son Hyrcanus high priest, and his brother, Aristobulus com-
mander of the army. It was the intention of the aged queen that
on her death the secular and sacerdotal functions should thus be
divided between them.
But while she lay dying, Aristobulus, with the aid of the Saddu-
cees who regarded him as their protector, revolted, and there
was civil war again. After a year of fighting in which the older
and weaker Hyrcanus was worsted, the brothers met and made
peace on terms that accorded with their mother's wishes. But
144 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
the peace lasted only three years: Hyrcanus gave ear -to the
promptings of one Antipater, a crafty Idumaean who, having
wormed himself into the high priest's favor, made it his business
to feed his grudge against his more successful brother. The result
was a renewal of the conflict. This time Aristobulus was defeated
and driven for refuge behind the walls of the Temple. Hyrcanus
was aided by a large force of Nabataeans, a people to the south
of Idumaea whose ruler, Aretas, had been persuaded by Antipater
to inject himself into the bitter feud of the Hasmonaean brothers.
5 ....
AT THIS critical juncture in the affairs of the Common-
wealth, a new power, beside whom King Aretas was less than a
pygmy, appeared on the scene in Judea. The year was 63 B.C.E.
The Roman conqueror Pompey the Great, having subdued
Mithridates, King of Pontus, obtained the submission of Armenia,
put an end to the inglorious Seleucid line, and made Syria a Roman
province. Now he scanned the horizons to see what other laurels
he could gather before returning to Rome for the prodigious tri-
umph that awaited him. He determined to "settle" the bloody
quarrel that raged in Jerusalem and sent down an emissary whose
decision favored Aristobulus. The Nabataeans, ordered by the
Romans to return to their own country, were overtaken by Aris-
tobulus and defeated. To make doubly sure of Pompey's favor,
the lucky brother sent the Roman a magnificent golden vine. Sud-
denly, however, the conqueror ordered both brothers to appear
before him. A third party appeared also, a deputation that spoke
in the name of the nation, pleading that both be removed and
Judea be permitted to become a republic.
But Pompey, influenced by the wily Antipater, decided that the
interests of Rome would be served best by elevating the weaker
of the two brothers. Aristobulus, after surrendering a fortress in
which he had taken refuge, fled to Jerusalem, with the Roman
legions in pursuit. His supporters shut the gates against them, but
the followers of Hyrcanus opened them. For three months a
large .body entrenched behind the walls of the Temple defied the
Romans. But the enemy broke through the walls, fell upon the
helpless people, and massacred twelve thousand of them, sparing
ROMAN DOMINION 145
not even the priests who refused to abandon the sacred rites. Like
the Greek Antiochus before him, Pompey defiled the Holy of
Holies by entering within its precincts. But the Roman, according
to one account, was so greatly awed when he saw neither statue
nor other object of worship in the chamber, that he refrained
from robbing the Temple treasures.
The Roman reduced the boundaries of Judea and abolished the
crown, leaving a mere shadow of authority to Hyrcanus, with
Antipater in possession of the real power. And among the captives
he took with him to Rome to be led in his public triumph were
Aristobulus and his two sons and two daughters.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Roman Dominion
AD the bewildering changes in the quarter century (63 to
37 B.C.E.) that separates the rape of Jerusalem by Pompey
from the elevation of Herod, son of Antipater, to the
throne of Palestine, the two basic factors that stand out clearly
are the strangle hold of Rome upon the body and soul of the
nation, and the desperate efforts of the Jews to break it.
In Rome a greater man than Pompey, Julius Caesar, appeared
on the scene and, together with one Crassus, set up the First
Triumvirate for possession of the Roman world. Crassus, who
came to gather military laurels in the East, stopped in Jerusalem,
robbed the Temple of an immense treasure, but met defeat and
death at the hands of the Parthians. Led by Pitholaus, the patriots
in Palestine rose up in arms. They were put down and thirty
thousand of them, together with their leader, were executed.
For a number of years Caesar and Pompey managed to share
the Roman world between them. They finally broke, and in
48 B.C.E., at the Battle of Pharsalia in Greece, the clever Pompey
was outmaneuvered by Caesar and overthrown. But only four
years later, on the fateful Ides of March, 44 B.C.E., a band of
y^w ^
JERUSALEM
DURING THE ROMAN SIEGE
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SCALE OF MILES
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LAND OF ISRAEL
IN THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
ROMAN DOMINION 147
assassins led by the high-minded Brutus and the "lean and hungry"
Cassius, stabbed Caesar to death, and Rome fell into the hands of
his adopted son, Octavian, and his friend Mark Antony. Two
years later, at the Battle of Philippi in Macedonia, the new masters
of Rome extinguished the hope, by which Brutus and Cassius had
been beguiled, of preserving Rome as a republic. Those events
are well-remembered: the poets and dramatists have not permitted
the world to forget them, for closely associated with them is the
Egyptian Queen Cleopatra, whose charms overcame both Caesar
and Antony.
In Palestine the little nation of Jews lay clamped in the vise of
Roman dominion, with Antipater a puppet in the hands of the
Roman governor and Hyrcanus a puppet in the hands of Antip-
ater. One after another the luckless Aristobulus and his two sons,
Alexander and Antigonus, escaped from Rome, and, with the
Jewish patriots rallying round them, Palestine became the scene
of one revolt after another. But they were all suppressed; Aristo-
bulus and Alexander forfeited their lives and Antipater tightened
his hold on the land.
It was not long, moreover, before the crafty Antipater was able
to win the good will of Caesar by bringing him timely help in
putting down an outbreak in Egypt. Caesar was grateful, and he
requited the service by conferring rights and privileges upon the
Jews in Palestine and elsewhere. He permitted the restoration of
Jerusalem's defenses, augmented the power of the high priest and
Sanhedrin, and restored the possessions of which the country had
been deprived by Pompey.
2
THE favors of Caesar, however, granted as they were
through a foreign usurper and sycophant, failed to placate the
Jewish patriots. The hotbed of insurgency was Galilee, and Anti-
pater decided to appoint his son Herod governor of that district.
Thus began a career of crime and power for which a posterity
none too discriminating has conferred upon Herod the title of
"the Great." It was a career wherein amazing good fortune seemed
to play as large a role as Herod's exceptional qualities and vices.
148 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
From his father he inherited a boundless ambition and indomitable
will, and at their service stood a fund of energy, cruelty, and
cunning that seemed inexhaustible.
Herod began by seizing Ezekias, a leader of the Galilean patriots,
and, without the formality of a trial, he put him to death together
with a number of his followers. The people were shocked. The
clamor was so great that Hyrcanus was forced to order Herod to
stand trial before the Sanhedrin. Herod, sure of Roman support,
treated the august body with insolent contempt, appearing before
it in royal purple and surrounded by a bodyguard. Hyrcanus
found it expedient to allow the young man to escape from Jeru-
salem. But Herod soon returned in command of an army, deter-
mined to put his enemies to death, a pleasure which, on the advice
of his crafty father, he decided to postpone.
Mark Antony having become the man of destiny, and Antipater
having been poisoned, Herod labored alone and successfully
to win the favor of the new master of Rome. The son of the
Idumaean took his father's place as virtual ruler of Judea. Then
came the Parthians, whom the Roman legions had never conquered,
and invaded Palestine. With their help Antigonus, the last son
of Aristobulus, became king and high priest of the Jews. Herod
fled for his life and Hyrcanus was carried off, a captive, to Parthia.
But Herod was not dismayed. For a time he found refuge in
the fortress of Masada; then he set out to repair his fortunes. He
got to Rome where he had no difficulty persuading Antony and
Octavian that he and not Antigonus would best serve the interests
of the empire. The Roman Senate declared him king of the Jews
and in 39 B.C.E. he landed in Acco. Finding the Roman authorities
in Syria lukewarm to his cause, he raised an army of mercenaries
and gradually conquered the country. He defeated Antigonus and
laid siege to Jerusalem. For five months the city held out, and when
it was finally taken by assault, the mercenaries and their Roman
allies indulged in an orgy of pillage and massacre which Herod
himself, to save the city from destruction, could only bring to a
halt with costly bribes. Antigonus was captured and beheaded.
The Idumaean adventurer, under the protecting wings of the
Roman eagle, became the unchallenged master of the nation.
ROMAN DOMINION 549
3
HE WAS not unaware of the importance of winning the
good will of the people he conquered, and while the siege of
Jerusalem was still in progress, he celebrated his nuptials with
Mariamne, a grand-daughter of the exiled Hyrcanus, hoping
through this alliance with the royal Hasmonaean family to in-
gratiate himself with his subjects. He even proclaimed himself a
descendant of an exile who had returned with Ezra from Babylon,
and he made a special bid for the allegiance of the Pharisees by de-
clining to assume the office of high priest. But all his efforts were
futile. They were nullified by his servility to the hated Romans,
and even more by his morbid suspicions and sadistic cruelty.
Throughout his long reign of thirty-three years (37 to 4 B.C.E.)
Herod won nothing from the people he ruled but hatred and
contempt.
He began by ordering the execution of the leading supporters of
Ahtigonus and seizing their property. Among them were the mem-
bers of the Sanhedrin, of whom only Shemaya, the president, and
Abtalion, the vice-president, were spared. He instigated the murder
of Mariamne's young and popular brother Aristobulus, and after
enticing Hyrcanus to come and live under his patronage in Jeru-
salem, he brought about the old man's death on a false accusation.
Thus he rid himself of the two male survivors of the Hasmonaean
line, but his fears and suspicions were never at rest. He even came
to suspect his wife and children, and his reign became tarnished
with foul and unnatural crimes.
The gloomy record is only slightly relieved by a passion for
building which, in the intervals between war and intrigue, he fully
indulged. He built cities and fortresses, temples and palaces. He
rebuilt the city of Samaria, renaming it Sebaste, which is Greek for
Augustus, in honor of the Roman emperor. He erected a splendid
city on the coast, calling it Caesarea, also in honor of the emperor.
Two new fortresses he named Herodium, and in his capital he set
up an amphitheater for gladiatorial shows which outraged his God-
fearing people. His thirst for fame carried his building operations
to foreign lands, to Asia Minor, to Greece, to the islands.
I5O THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
The edifice on which his fame principally rests is the Temple
in Jerusalem, which he rebuilt. It was a structure of immense
strength and surpassing beauty, this temple of Herod. A resplendent
mass of white marble and gold, it rose on the summit of Zion, sur-
rounded by three walled-off courts, the whole enclosed in a
lofty and impregnable rampart. But the evil genius that possessed
him brought his best intentions to ruin. He adorned the principal
gate of the Temple with a golden Roman eagle, defying the law
against graven images and violating the deepest religious instincts
of his people.
Early in his reign he fought a successful war against the
Nabataeans, in which he displayed great personal courage and
military skill. The war had been fomented by Cleopatra, as crafty
as she was seductive, in the hope of weakening both contestants,
and with the consent of her lord and slave Mark Antony, she
possessed herself of Herod's kingdom. But with all her advantages,
Herod proved more than a match for her in the strategy of
diplomacy as well as of war.
It was not long, moreover, before Cleopatra and Egypt ceased
to be a menace to him altogether. For in 32 B.C.E. the inevitable
conflict between Octavian and Antony broke out, and the fol-
lowing year, at the naval Battle of Actium off the western coast of
Greece, Antony and Cleopatra were decisively defeated. Antony,
who proved to be a greater lover than warrior, on being informed
that his mistress was dead, took his own life; and Cleopatra, who
was not dead, but found Octavian immune to her charms, ended
her life symbolically and magnificently by laying a poisonous
viper to her bosom. Thus perished Cleopatra and with her the
Ptolemaic line which for nearly three centuries had reigned over
Egypt.
But, strangely enough, where Cleopatra failed, Herod suc-
ceeded. He had been a loyal henchman to Antony and now, he
felt, he was in great peril. At once he brought into play all his
energy, cunning, and audacity. He sent his children, his mother,
and his sister Salome to the stronghold of Masada; and Mariamne
with her mother Alexandra he confined in another fortress with
orders to execute the two women if his worst fears for himself
should prove true. Then he met the new master and first emperor
ROMAN DOMINION
of Rome on the Island of Rhodes and employed his wiles with
such consummate skill that the Roman not only confirmed him
in his possessions but, before long, even added to them, making
the boundaries of his kingdom as wide as they had been in die
days of David.
Notwithstanding the end of Herod's fears, the fate of Mariamne
and her mother Alexandra was sealed. His love for Mariamne was
genuine, but he listened with morbid avidity to false accusations
which the venomous Salome whispered in his ear, and finally
ordered his wife's execution. To the end of his life that crime
gave him no rest and exacerbated a nature already a prey to the
most violent passions. Alexandra attempted a feeble rebellion
against her son-in-law which ended in her death.
The detestation of his subjects became more intense, but Herod
had the favor of Rome and he needed nothing more. The emperor
and his heir were his friends, for he earned their gratitude by aiding
them in their wars and accompanying them on their campaigns.
The campaigns were successful, ihe civil wars to which Rome
had been a prey for a century came to an end, and the accession
of Octavian, renamed Augustus, as first emperor of Rome ushered
in a long period of peace and prosperity in which Palestine shared
in full measure. Its old harbors were improved and new ones built,
commerce expanded and flourished, and considerable wealth, of
which a great deal made its way into the king's coffers, flowed into
the country.
4
A STORM upon the sea lashes the surface into huge waves,
but the depths below may be calm and tranquil. Beneath the
tumult of war, revolution and crime, ran the steady stream of the
nation's life, pursuing the course marked out for it by its traditions
and destiny.
The economic structure of this life, although affected by die
turmoils of political change, continued to rest on its agricultural
base, with a steady increase in the number and size of the cities
where, of course, industry and commerce made their home. The
merchants exported corn, wine and oil, wool, purple and linen,
while the imports included textiles, implements, ornaments, and
152 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
other wares. There were flourishing cities on the coast and on both
sides of the Jordan. East of the river, the cities, which included
Gadara, Gerasa, Pella, Philadelphia,* and others, made up a prov-
ince called the Decapolis, or ten-city district. In some of the cities
dwelt heathens, but the Jewish population of the country as a
whole is estimated to have numbered some 3,000,000, a number
that testifies to the skill with which the soil was cultivated.
The labor in field and workshop was arduous, but it was a labor
of devotion and love. For the teachers of the nation never wearied
of extolling the virtues of the toilsome life, demanding that the
sage shall not use the Torah u as a spade to dig with," but should
"combine Torah with a worldly occupation"; and the psalmist
too exalted the beauty and dignity of labor.
When thou eatest the labor of thy hands,
Happy shah thou be and it shall be 'well imih thee.
Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine, in the
innermost part of thy house;
Thy children like olive plains, round about thy table.
It was, of course, the Torah, and the observance of its precepts,
especially the observance of the Sabbaths and festivals, that in-
vested even the lowliest lives with dignity. Only by a steady per-
ception of this truth is it possible to realize the profound attach-
ment of the people to their way of life, and to understand the
tragic and heroic events to which this passionate devotion gave
rise. Education, based as it was on Torah, became a national neces-
sity; every synagogue was also a school for young and old. To-
wards the end of the Second Commonwealth, a decree of the
high priest Joshua ben Gamala made it obligatory upon every com-
munity of ten families or more to provide a school for the male
children, the first instance of compulsory education that history
records.
The Temple to which, on the pilgrimage festivals of Passover,
Shabuoth and Sukkoth, the men of the nation flocked, filled the
worshippers with reverent pride. The New Year, when the ram's
*The name is the Greek version of "Rabbath-ammon." It is the modern
Amman, capital of Trans-Jordan.
ROMAN DOMINION 153
horn was sounded, the solemn Day of Atonement, the Feast of
Lights, or Hanukkah, and the Feast of Purim, brought additional
joy and exaltation. An aura of holiness clung to all of them, but
each possessed its own savor, bringing into the lives of the people
a rich variety of inspiration and joy.
5
NOR was the spirit that produced the Sacred Scriptures ex-
hausted. On the contrary, in days of wrath and menace, as if
impelled by an instinctive awareness that the spirit alone provided
a safe refuge, the Jewish mind gave itself over to intense activity.
With the Scriptures as a springboard, it struck out into new
realms, not only in the disciplined pursuit of legal elaboration, but
in the free play of poetic fancy. The age of the tcnmarm (singular,
tarma), as the teachers of the period are called, had begun. Herod
was building imposing structures which the fury of foes or the
ravages of time were destined to obliterate. The tanncam were
building up the edifice of Torah which neither time nor enemies
could demolish.
The greatest of these builders in the reign of Herod was Hillel,
who left the deepest impress on the generations that followed.
Driven by a thirst for knowledge, he left Babylonia, where he was
born, to study in the schools of Shemaya and Abtalion. He rose to
be president of the Sanhedrin, but, what is more important, he
was the founder of an academy, the Bet Hillel (House of Hillel)
and of a system of interpretation which rose to the rank of highest
authority.
His system was the natural outgrowth of his character, and
both are best understood by contrasting them with the character
and teachings of Shammai, his contemporary and rival. Shammai
too was a great tanna, a leader of the Pharisees and founder of
a school known as Bet Shammai. But Shammai was stern, while
Hillel was gentle; Shammai was inflexible, while Hillel was liberal.
The character of the two men is illustrated by the story of the
insolent heathen who came to Shammai and demanded to be taught
the whole Torah in the time he could stand on one foot. The
irascible Shammai drove the man away, but when the scoffer came
154 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
to Hillel, the gentle teacher told him: "Do not unto others what
you do not wish them to do unto you. This is the whole Torah:
all else is commentary."
Hillel, as tradition portrays him, was a man of singular force
and charm, while Shammai stands out as a tower of strength in
his zeal for Torah. The two schools locked horns on many ques-
tions, and their disputations continued for a long time after the
death of the founders. In the end, it was Bet Hillel that triumphed,
and in the evolution of Oral Torah it was the liberal method of
Hillel that prevailed. Nevertheless, Shammai too had his place in
this evolution; and a legend relates that when a certain student,
unable to reconcile the opinions of the two schools, cried out in
his perplexity, a voice from heaven answered him in the cryptic
pronouncement: "Both are the words of the living God!"
6
AS HIS life drew to a close, the morbid suspicions that
tortured King Herod became darker and deeper, and the crimes
with which he sought to allay them became more hideous. His
sister Salome went on with her role of incendiary, and among his
victims were three of his sons, two of whom had been borne him
by Mariamne, the beloved wife whose death preyed on him con-
tinually. News of these crimes reached the imperial capital. "Better
to be Herod's swine than Herod's son," was the comment of
Emperor Augustus.
The people were eager for Herod's death. Once a rumor that
he was dead spread through the capital, and a band of youthful
zealots gave vent to their joy by tearing down the Roman eagle
from the gate of the Temple. But the rumor was false, and Herod,
though his end was approaching, sent forty-two of the offenders
to the stake. In the torments of a malignant disease, he conjured
up the most fantastic crime of all. Knowing that his end would
be hailed with joy, he determined that the day should be one of
mourning and left orders that the same day the leading men of
the nation should be executed.
But Herod's final command was not obeyed, and the day of his
death was a day of general rejoicing.
MESSIAH LONGING 155
CHAPTER TWENTY
Messiah Longing
KME ruled over many nations, and, sullen or resigned, they
accepted her dominion and obeyed her laws, bending to
the yoke of her brutal legions and rapacious governors.
The Jews alone, with a unique passion for freedom, remained irre-
concilable. It was more than Rome could understand, more than
Rome could tolerate. She continued to tighten her grip, but with
every turn of the vise the wrath and bitterness of the Jews became
only more intense.
Helpless against the might of the tyrant, the exasperated yearning
for freedom turned upon itself, feeding on expectations of immedi-
ate divine intervention, and producing strange aberrations. Men
found refuge in desperate deeds or in dreams and hallucinations.
And, naturally, what moved the people most powerfully was the
belief that the time was ripe for the advent of the Great Deliverer,
scion of David, the King and Messiah.
IT ADDED greatly to the misfortunes of the Jews that not
only the Romans but their own immediate rulers, notably Herod,
were strangers to their blood and spirit. As if his kingdom belonged
to him in fee simple, Herod, before he died, divided it among
three of his sons, leaving to Herod Archelaus, whose character was
most like his own, the southern half of the realm together with the
royal title. The paternal character declared itself without delay.
The people demanded the punishment of the men they held guilty
in the execution of the Pharisees who had torn down the Roman
eagle. They demanded also the removal of the Sadducee high
priest, Joezer, who was a servile tool in the hands of the rulers.
Archelaus, seeing his people on the verge of rebellion, set the
156 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
garrison upon them and again the courts of the Temple were
stained with blood.
But soon Archelaus found it necessary to travel to Rome, for
his two brothers, who had their grievances against him, had taken
them to the imperial capital. Palestine was left to the tender mercies
of Varus, the Roman governor of Syria. Varus quartered a Roman
legion on Jerusalem, and under its protection, but not without
a bloody affray, the Romans plundered the treasures of the Temple.
Galilee rose up and Palestine seethed with revolt. Varus overran
the country with his legions and nailed two thousand of the
patriots to the cross.
In the imperial capital a deputation of the people pleaded in
vain that Palestine be ruled by a high priest alone. Rome confirmed
Herod's will, placating the brothers of Archelaus by depriving
him of the royal title. From 4 B.C.E. to 6 C.E. Archelaus, under the
title of ethnarch, was the hated ruler of Judea until, having in-
curred the suspicions of Rome, he was removed and exiled to
Gaul.
3
THERE followed a line of Roman governors appointed by
the emperor with the title of procurator. The procurators were
charged with the maintenance of public order and the collection
of taxes. They were given power to appoint the high priest and
to intervene in the judicial functions of the Sanhedrin, particularly
in capital cases. In practice, the procurators abused their power,
selling their favors to the highest bidders. They aimed at one thing:
to make their tenure of office as lucrative as possible for the em-
peror and, even more, for themselves. As in the days of Antiochus,
men bribed their way into the exalted office of high priest, while
the august Sanhedrin was left with only a shadow of its authority.
The first procurator was Coponius, who nearly plunged the
country into a general revolt. He ordered a census to be taken of
the people, a procedure to which they had a traditional aversion
and which, they well knew, portended higher taxes and new re-
strictions. In Galilee the patriots, led by Judas, whose father
Ezckias had been murdered by Herod, prepared to resist. In the
MESSIAH LONGING 157
end, however, they yielded to the pleas and warnings of the high
priest and submitted.
There were now two new parties in the nation, who, though
poles apart, represented a natural reaction to the fever and anguish
through which it was passing. The first consisted of men who called
themselves Zealots, reckless and fearless men who swore undying
hatred against the Romans. Be the prospect victory or defeat, they
were always ready to throw themselves upon the enemy, and to
avoid capture, did not hesitate to slay their wives and children and
put an end to themselves.
At the other extreme were the Essenes,* who bore the closest
resemblance to a monastic order ever developed in Judaism. The
Essenes turned their backs on the labors and sorrows of the world
and went off to live in communities of their own, most of them
located in the desert regions near the Dead Sea. They surrendered
their property to the community and spent their days in deeds
of piety, observing the laws of their faith with exceeding scrupu-
lousness and practicing every form of self-denial, including
celibacy. They renounced all hope of happiness in the brutal world
that surrounded them and looked forward to the bliss of the World
to Come. v
< ^
4 x J
FOUR procurators came and went in the twenty years that
elapsed from the removal of Archelaus to the year 26 C.E., the
year when the emperor Tiberius appointed Pontius Pilate, the
best-remembered procurator of all. Pilate is remembered best
because it was during his administration that a young preacher
named Joshua, but better known as Jesus, the son of a carpenter of
Nazareth in the province of Galilee, was convicted of blasphemy
and sedition and put to death by the Roman method of crucifixion.
No great stir was produced either in the capital or in the country
at large by the execution of the Galilean preacher. Josephus, the
most important historian of the period, who was born only seven
* The origin of the word is uncertain. One explanation derives it from a word
meaning "to bathe and refers to the scrupulousness with which the Essenes
observed the laws of ritual purity.
158 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
or eight years after the crucifixion, makes no mention of Jesus.*
The capital was witnessing too many executions to be startled by
any one of them, for Pilate was as brutal a tyrant as Rome ever
inflicted upon the Jews. He made free with the treasures of the
Temple and executed many Zealots without trial. He violated the
dearest sentiments of the people by displaying the hated regimental
images in the capital, answered complaints by giving his soldiery
a free hand against the complainants, and in the end was ordered
back to Rome to answer charges against him. Pilate was anything
but the compassionate and amiable official which certain Christian
traditions, bent on laying the odium of the crucifixion on the Jews
alone, make him out to have been.
For the rest, preachers like the Galilean aroused the fears and
suspicions, above all, of the Roman authorities. The air was rife
with rebellion, and any concourse of people, assembled for no
matter what purpose, might take a seditious trend. Wandering
preachers and their followers were particularly suspect, and the
most dangerous orators were those who enflamed their hearers with
extravagant hopes and messianic notions. A year or so before the
conviction of the Galilean, a certain Johanan, better known as
John the Baptist, also a preacher and bringer of messianic tidings,
had been beheaded as a public menace. John, we are informed,
had taken his stand beside the Jordan, calling upon all men to
confess their sins and be baptised in the river, for, he declared,
the Great Redeemer was at hand; and among those who had
heeded his call was the young preacher from Nazareth. John, it
may be assumed, belonged to the Essenes; his manner of dress,
the food he ate, and the importance he attached to ritual ablution,
or baptism, all point to that conclusion.
People flocked to hear the preacher of Nazareth, and not a few
followed him wherever he went. He spoke of a better world which
he called the kingdom of God, a place apparently not of this earth.
The world of sorrows through which he moved, the world that
writhed in the merciless grip of Rome, was a matter of small con-
cern to him. "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's," he
told his hearers, "and unto God the things that are God's." He
The passage on Jesus in Josephus* Antiquities of the Jews (XVIII; 3) is un-
doubtedly a pious interpolation by a later hand.
MESSIAH LONGING 159
exhorted men to be compassionate to one another, to love one an-
other, to love even their enemies. "If any man will sue thee at
law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also/* he
commanded. And he taught the doctrine of non-resistance, saying:
"Resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek,
turn to him the other also."
Whence came the teachings and exhortations of this itinerant
preacher, his pity for the poor and the oppressed, his burning in-
dignation against evil-doers, his withering scorn for hypocrites and
sycophants? They came from Amos and Hosea, from Isaiah and
Jeremiah, from Nahum and Micah. They harked further back to
the Decalogue and the laws of Moses, nor do we have to strain our
hearing to discover echoes in them of the later sages, of Ezra, and
Simon the Just, and Hillel. In fact, Jesus himself acknowledged his
debt to his predecessors by proclaiming it to be his mission not
to nullify their teachings but to fulfill them. "Think not," said
he, "that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets: I am not
come to destroy but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, till heaven
and earth pass, one jot or one tktle shall in no wise pass from the
law, till all be fulfilled."
Notwithstanding this pronouncement, however, the Galilean
took liberties with certain of the laws, treating them in a manner
that could not but shock the pious. In particular, he made light
of the laws governing the observance of the Sabbath. "The Son of
man is Lord also of the Sabbath," said he in answer to those who
protested against his violations.
Perhaps the best known of his revisions was the one that resulted
in the so-called Golden Rule. Jesus took the famous dictum of
Hillel, "Do not unto others what you do not wish them to do unto
you," and revised it to say, "Whatsoever ye would that men
should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them." Was the
change a happy one? It has been so acclaimed, and the positive
version of Jesus rather than the negative version of Hillel is offered
as the basic rule to guide men to the good life. Nevertheless there
are those who doubt the wisdom of that choice. The most obvious
fact in nature, including human nature, say the doubters, is its
infinite diversity. The things I would have done to me are not
always a proper guide as to what I should do to my neighbor. The
l6o THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
positive version of the golden rule, they point out, has provided
well-intentioned meddlers and bigots with a sanction for interfer-
ing with the lives of others. As a guide to the good life, HillePs
version, though it enjoins restraint rather than zeal, is wiser and
safer; and, as for positive deeds of charity, certainly the traditional
teaching, both written and oral, did anything but underrate them.
"Torah, worship and good deeds," declared Simon the Just, are the
three pillars of the universe.
5
"AND there followed him great multitudes of people from
Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea,
and from beyond the Jordan." Apparently the Galilean preacher
was causing great excitement throughout the land. He attracted
the poor especially; and many who came to him were diseased or
crippled, for the word had spread that Jesus performed miracles,
that he could heal the halt and the blind, eject evil spirits, and
even raise up the dead.
Soon the belief arose among his followers that the man from
Galilee was the Messiah himself, the anointed savior for whom
the people yearned so passionately. And by his words and manner
the Galilean encouraged the belief, for now he began to lapse into
strange silences or speak in riddles, using common expressions with
a new and startling purport. The words "son of man," which
Ezekiel and Daniel had used before him, thus acquired a vague
messianic connotation, while the expression "son of God," which
to the Jews meant simply that all men were the children of their
Father in heaven, took on a special and fantastic significance.
The only testimony on the arrest, the trial, and the execution of
Jesus is to be found in the four gospels of the New Testament,
and not only do the witnesses contradict each other, but it is
extremely doubtful if they are unprejudiced. The record was set
down at a time when feeling ran high between the devotees of
the new faith and the guardians of the old, and the witnesses are
bitter against the Pharisee leaders and teachers of the people and,
in particular, against the Sanhedrin. They lay the onus of the
execution upon the Jews, and find amazing extenuations for the
Roman master. But, with a knowledge of the background against
MESSIAH LONGING l6l
which the tragedy was enacted, a glimpse of the truth may be
obtained from this record, confusing and biased though it is.
It was Passover of the year 30 C.E. and Jerusalem was thronged
with pilgrims. The Galilean preacher was also there, and with him
came a band of disciples and followers. He preached in the courts
of the Temple and large crowds gathered to hear him. In his utter-
ances the messianic note had become more pronounced. A peculiar
exaltation took possession of him and his disciples. There were
money-changers in the courts of the Temple and men who sold
doves for sacrifice: the wrath of the preacher and his disciples
turned on these men. \Vho were these money-changers? Twenty
centuries of odium lies heaped upon them and it is almost im-
possible to dig them out of it. But they were not scamps and male-
factors; they performed a useful function: they exchanged the
coins of pilgrims from foreign lands for the currency of the realm.
The preacher and his followers overturned the tables of the money-
changers and drove them, as well as the dove-sellers, out of the
courts. Undoubtedly the incident must have had all the ear-
marks of a riot. Jesus was arrested, tried before a court of the
Sanhedrin, and convicted of blasphemy. The evidence against him
was his claim to be, in a special sense, the "son of God."
From now on the records begin to strain ordinary credulity to
the breaking point. Jesus is sentenced to death, but the sentence
must be confirmed by the procurator, and the bloody Pilate is
represented as a genial and merciful judge! He, who had more
reason to fear the Galilean agitator than anyone else, pleads for his
release! But the first question, which, according to the same records,
the procurator addressed to Jesus, reveals the mind of the Roman
quite clearly. The question was: "Art thou the king of the Jews?"
that being the seditious title by which his followers had acclaimed
him. Jesus replied: "Thou sayest it." And upon the cross to
which the Roman executioners nailed him, they placed the de-
risive inscription: "Jesus of Nazareth king of the Jews." The
question and the inscription leave no doubt as to the crime for
which Jesus suffered.
Seldom does it happen that one who has become the focus and
lodestar of men's hopes loses his power with his death. Too bitter
was die thought that the Redeemer had died on the cross like any
1 62 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
other victim of Roman "justice," and the belief soon spread among
his followers that he had risen from his grave and been assumed
to heaven. They believed also that he would, before long, return
and accomplish his mission; and this belief in his second coming has
been held by countless millions of his devotees in the centuries
that followed.
About thirty years later, Saul, or Paul, of the city of Tarsus in
Asia Minor, carried the evangel of the Galilean preacher to many
lands and nations. But among the great body of the Jewish people
the new religion failed to take root. The reasons are not hard to
find. To begin with, in order to win converts among the heathens,
the new creed abrogated the immemorial laws and practices of
Judaism; the missionaries of the new faith embraced a policy which
the Jews always regarded with deep distrust, the policy of easy
conversion. The new faith, moreover, clashed too violently with
the basic credo of Judaism, the Unity of God. For out of this
credo flows the sublime conception of a universe controlled by
design and moral purpose and, to vindicate it, numberless Jewish
martyrs have died with the words of the Sbema on their lips:
"Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One!"
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Mounting Crisis
THE Roman emperor Tiberius, in whose reign the events
just related occurred, died in 37 C.E. His successor was
Caligula, whose mentality and character are sufficiently
illustrated by the fact that he seriously proposed to have his favorite
horse elected consul of Rome. But this madman befriended die
Jewish prince Agrippa, whose father was one of the unfortunate
sons of Mariamne and Herod. With his own hands Caligula, as
soon as he ascended the throne, released Agrippa from the prison
in which Tiberius had incarcerated him, and made him king of
die northern provinces of Palestine, the regions formerly governed
MOUNTING CRISIS 163
by Herod's son Philip. Two years later Caligula removed Philip's
brother, Herod Antipas, who still ruled over Galilee and the lands
across the Jordan, and added those provinces to Agrippa's pos-
sessions. Agrippa's good fortune continued: in 41 C.E., Caligula's
successor Claudius bestowed on him the remainder of Palestine,
Samaria and Idumaea. Thus it came about that Agrippa reigned
over a kingdom of even greater extent than his grandfather's.
He reigned wisely and well, but all too briefly. Only three
years after the country had become united under his scepter, he
died suddenly and under circumstances that lent color to the
suspicion that he was the victim of Roman treachery. He was too
solicitous of his people's welfare, too energetic in strengthening
his country's defenses, and too popular to suit the policy of Rome.
With this policy, as well as with the depravity of Rome's ruling
class, Agrippa was only too familiar, for he had spent most of his
life in the imperial capital. No doubt he saw the impending strug-
gle and endeavored to prepare for it, but although he enjoyed the
favor of the emperor, his efforts, were thwarted by Marsus, the
governor of Syria. Marsus prevented Agrippa from building a third
wall around Jerusalem, and once, when the Jewish king was meet-
ing with five neighboring rulers in the city of Tiberias, the Roman
suddenly appeared on the scene and ordered each of them to return
to his own country.
Agrippa owed his popularity primarily to a delicate regard for
his people's sensibilities. He celebrated the festivals with them and
read aloud from the sacred books in the court of the Temple. Once,
it is recorded, when he came to the passage, "One from among
thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee; thou mayest not put
a foreigner over thee, who is not thy brother," Agrippa, remember-
ing his grandfather Herod, burst into tears. But his people chose to
remember instead his Hasmonaean grandmother Mariamne, and
their answer was: "Thou art our brother! Thou art our brother!"
His people remembered still other things for which they were
grateful to Agrippa. Earlier in his reign, when the maniac Caligula
was still on the throne, an imperial edict had gone out ordering the
emperor's statue to be set up and worshipped in all the shrines and
temples of the empire. The edict threw the Jews into consternation.
Previous emperors had also required their subjects to worship them
164 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
as gods, but in Palestine the Roman officials, aware of the danger
of trying to enforce this command upon the Jews* connived at its
nonobservance. Now Caligula, with die obstinacy of madness, re-
fused to grant the Jews exemption from an edict which all his
other subjects accepted without demur, and ordered his statue to
be erected in the Temple of Jerusalem. Petronius, the governor
of Syria, sent word to Caligula that enforcement would entail an
enormous amount of bloodshed, but the message made the mad-
man only more determined. As a result of Agrippa's efforts and
influence, however, the imperial edict was repealed.
2
IN THE city of Alexandria, where a numerous and wealthy
Jewish community flourished, the edict of Caligula did not have
so fortunate an outcome. The other inhabitants of the city, who
envied the Jews their privileges and prosperity, found in the edict
a welcome pretext for giving vent to their resentment.
It was 38 C.E., and Agrippa, on the way to take over his pos-
sessions in Palestine, had stopped in Alexandria, where the Jews
welcomed him with high honors and the Greeks made public
mockery of him. Flaccus, the Roman prefect of the city, sided
with the Greeks, and to curry favor with Caligula he sought to
compel the Jews to worship the emperor's statue. But the Jews
refused to set up the image in their houses of prayer, and the
prefect, after depriving them of their civil rights, left them to the
mercy of the Greek mob.
The result was a bloody pogrom. The synagogues were dese-
crated and destroyed and the Jewish quarters looted. Many Jews
were slain and their leaders scourged in public. Agrippa inter-
vened and effected the removal of the prefect, but the situation in
the city continued dangerous, with venomous anti-Jewish propa-
ganda conducted by Apion, a Greek writer of unsavory character
and reputation*
The quarrel was carried to Rome. In 40 C.E. the Jews of Alex-
andria sent an embassy to the emperor headed by their foremost
citizen, the sage and philosopher Philo, and the Greeks sent a
deputation headed by Apion. Philo, who holds an important place
in Greek philosophy, was an ardent admirer of Greek culture,
MOUNTING CRISIS 165
especially of the system of Plato, but at the same time he was
deeply attached to his faith, convinced that the truths of Greek
philosophy lay imbedded in the Sacred Scriptures. He sought to
bring these truths to light by the allegorical interpretation of the
Bible, a method which looks for hidden meanings beneath the
surface of the text. Philo was an elegant and facile writer, and his
Embassy to Caligula reveals the Rome of his day, the strange vagar-
ies of the ruler, the intrigues of his corrupt courtiers. PWlo's mis-
sion was a failure: Caligula's final verdict on the Jews was: "These
men do not appear to me to be wicked so much, as unfortunate
and foolish in not believing that I have been endowed with the
nature of God."
3
IN HIS Embassy to Caligula, Philo quotes a letter of appeal
which King Agrippa addressed to the emperor. Agrippa writes:
Concerning the holy city I must now say what is necessary.
It, as I have already stated, i my native country, and the
metropolis not only of the one country of Judea, but also of
many, by reason of the colonies which it has sent out from time
to rime into the bordering districts of Egypt, Phoenicia, Syria
in general, and especially that part of it which is called Coele-
Syria,* and also those more distant regions of Pamphylia,
Qlicia, the greater part of Asia Minor as far as Bithynia, and
the furthermost corners of Pontus. And in the same manner
into Europe, into Thessaly, and Boeoria, and Macedonia, and
Aetolia, and Attica, and Argos, and Corinth, and all the most
fertile and wealthiest districts of Peloponnesus. And not only
are the continents full of Jewish colonies, but also all the most
celebrated islands are so too; such as Euboea, and Cyprus and
Crete.
I say nothing of the countries beyond the Euphrates, for
all of them except a very small portion, and Babylon, and all
the satrapies around, which have any advantage whatever of
soil or climate, have Jews settled in diem. So that if my native
Code-Syria means "Hollow Syria." It is the valley north of Palestine between
the Lebanon *v* Anti-Lebanon mountains.
1 66 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
land is, as it reasonably may be, looked upon as entitled to a
share in your favor, it is not one city only that would be
benefited by you, but ten thousand of them in every region of
the habitable world, in Europe, in Asia, and in Africa, on the
continent, in the islands, on the coasts and in the inland parts.
Thus the king vividly portrays the great Jewish world that had
grown up around Palestine, a world that reached out into all the
known lands, with communities, large or little, linked to the
motherland by the silver cords of a common tradition and a com-
mon faith. The Jewish population beyond the borders of Palestine
may have even exceeded the 3,000,000 who dwelt within them.
The largest of these communities was domiciled in Mesopotamia,
and it possessed the advantage of lying outside the boundaries of
the Roman Empire. In the fertile plain between the Tigris and
Euphrates, the descendants of the captives whom Sargon and
Nebuchadnezzar had driven from Israel and Judah, now numbered
a million souls. They were destined for an important role in their
people's career. Firmly rooted in the soil of the land they inhabited
and deeply attached to their faith, they enjoyed a large measure
of autonomy under a governor of their own whom they called
Exilarch, or "chief of the exile."
The prophet Jeremiah had sent the early captives the advice:
"Build ye houses, and dwell in them, and plant gardens, and eat
the fruit of them; take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters . . .
And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be
carried away captive, and pray unto the Lord for it; for in the
peace thereof shall ye have peace." This counsel the Jews of Baby-
lonia observed in letter and in spirit; and untouched by the glamour
and vices of Hellenism, the Babylonian community was preparing
for the role that lay in store for it.
The second largest concentration in the Diaspora was the com-
munity in Alexandria which, geographically as well as by fortune
and misfortune, was closely linked with the motherland. There,
too, Jeremiah's advice was followed and the Jews prospered
greatly. They lived in quarters of their own, for security as well
as common worship. They had large and splendid synagogues, and
at Lcontopolis, not far from the land of Goshen which a Pharaoh
MOUNTING CRISIS 167
once allotted to the sons of Jacob, a temple had been erected by a
son of the hapless high priest Onias III. This son, also named
Onias, had fled to Egypt where, after a brilliant military career,
he was named Ethnarch, or ruler of the Jews, and permitted to
build the temple.
In Alexandria, the influence of Hellenism was powerful and
corrosive. Not all the Jews of the city were, like the illustrious
Philo, able to combine an enthusiasm for Hellenic culture with
unswerving loyalty to Torah. Many of them became lukewarm to
Judaism and some fell away from it altogether; among the rene-
gades was a nephew of Philo himself, the notorious Tiberius Alex-
ander, who was to add to the miseries of the people he renounced.
On the River Tigris, north of Mesopotamia, lay a country called
Adiabene, whose queen, Helen, and her son Izates who reigned
after her, became converts to Judaism. The royal family continued
Jewish for several generations and some of its members took part
in the struggle against Rome. There were proselytes in other
places also. In Damascus most of the women were at one time
reported to have embraced the Jewish faith. There were converts
in Alexandria and in Rome itself where the Jews, though not
numerous, had grown to great influence. The most distinguished
of the Roman proselytes was Fulvia, the wife of a senator. Her
conversion incited the enemies of the Jews, and in 19 C.E. Sejanus,
minister of the emperor Tiberius, expelled them from the city. The
ban continued until the removal of the minister twelve years later.
Judaism was no longer a sealed book. In addition to the Sep-
tuagint and the writings of Philo, other works had appeared in
Greek explaining the laws of the faith and defending them against
the attacks of enemies like Apion.
Many were the ways by which the settlements of the Diaspora
had come into existence. Some of them, especially those on the
coasts and the islands, owed their origin to Jewish traders and
sailors. Others were begun or augmented by captives whom their
fellow-Jews ransomed from heathen masters. Colonies of Jewish
soldiers defended the borders of Egypt against the Ethiopians, and
in Babylonia also Jews were selected by the government as frontier
guardsmen. Even the Romans sent a contingent of 4,000 Jews
against the brigands in Sardinia. Wherever they settled, the Jews
1 68 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
were quick to adapt themselves, learning the language of the land
for their secular needs, and entering into every economic field,
agricultural, industrial, commercial, and professional. Nor were
they absent from the civic and political affairs of their communi-
ties, including service in the military and naval forces.
But when they prayed, the Jews of the Diaspora turned their
faces to the motherland. For all the scattered communities the
religious authority of the Sanhedrin was supreme. Jerusalem was
their pride and the Temple their glory. From Media and Babylonia,
from Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, from Greece and Italy, from
the islands of the seas and from the coasts of Africa the annual
poll tax of half a shekel, decreed in the reign of Salome Alexandra
(76-67 B.C.E.), flowed into the treasury of the Temple; and on
Passover, Shabuoth and Sukkoth, pilgrims from all the lands
streamed to Jerusalem to feast their eyes and souls on its beauty
and holiness.
4
AGRIPPA s son, who bore his father's name, was only sixteen
years old when the king died, and again Rome sent a procurator
to rule over Palestine. His name was Fadus and his successors, until
the fateful year 66 C.E. when the revolt against Rome broke out,
were Tiberius Alexander, the renegade nephew of Philo, Cumanus,
Felix, Festus, Albinus, and Floras. But the names matter little. They
were all alike in their brutal callousness to the sensibilities of the
people they governed, and in their rapacity which reduced the
Jews to poverty and despair.
The procurators were faithful mirrors of the Rome they rep-
resented: the imperial city had become a hot-bed of corruption,
with the successive wives of the emperor Claudius setting the
fashion in depravity and vice. It was in this atmosphere that young
Agrippa grew to manhood, and the fact that he became a favorite
with die court and its monarch was a portent of the ignoble part
he was to play in the tragedy of his nation.
The messianic yearning continued to agitate the people. The
first of the new procurators was faced with a messianic aspirant
in the person of a certain Theudas who attracted large throngs
with fantastic predictions and promises of miracles. The procurator
MOUNTING CRISIS 169
dealt with him in Roman fashion: he crucified the would-be mes-
siah together with a large number of his f ollowers. The tragic tale
repeats itself again and again, particularly in the time of the pro-
curator Festus (60-62 C.E.). The country was like a tinder-
box, and the Romans stamped out every spark that might produce
the conflagration.
But with a policy of plunder and brutal suppression the Romans
could not hope to subdue the Jews. Tiberius Alexander, whom the
Jews hated as an apostate, captured and crucified the two Zealot
leaders, Jacob and Simon, but the Zealots grew in number and
audacity, and from their midst sprang a band of men who became
notorious as the Sicarii, or dagger-men. They were the terror of
Romans and friends of Rome alike. Many husbandmen whom
Roman rapacity had ruined joined the Zealots and Sicarii, and the
struggle against Rome was complicated by a struggle of the poor
against the rich, who, in the main, were not disposed to challenge
the might of the master.
Nor were those the only conflicts that afflicted the land. The
ancient antagonism between Jetvs and Samaritans persisted, and
in the procuratorship of Cumanus (48-52 C.E.) it broke into vio-
lence. Cumanus had already earned the hatred of the Jews: earlier
in his administration, when the people had demanded the punish-
ment of a Roman soldier for insulting their Passover service in
the Temple, Cumanus had set his legionaries upon them and three
thousand of them had been crushed to death in the panic that
followed. Now, when some Galilean Jew's on the way to Jerusalem
were murdered by Samaritans and the procurator failed to act,
the Zealots took the matter into their own hands. The governor of
Syria intervened; the issue was carried to Rome; and, with the help
of young Agrippa, Cumanus was removed and exiled.
Agrippa had come of age, and Claudius conferred upon him the
northeastern provinces and the power to appoint the high priest.
But Judea was given a new procurator, a former slave named Felix
who, as is customary with former slaves, proved an abominable
master. After eight years of misrule, during which he hunted down
and crucified many of the Zealots, he was removed by the new
emperor Nero. The Sicarii became more active. In their choice of
victims they eschewed fine distinctions, and one of the men they
17O THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
struck down was the high priest Jonathan, who appears to have
deserved a better fate.
But Agrippa made poor use of his power to name the high
priest. Jerusalem became the scene of violent brawls between rival
high-priestly families. Agrippa's appointees, moreover, robbed the
lower priestly orders and maintained large bodies of retainers
with whom they terrorized the people.
The procurators resided not in Jerusalem but in Caesarea, the
city on the coast built by Herod and inhabited by mutually hostile
Jewish and heathen communities. In other cities also there was
friction between the religious groups, a condition that added to
the maze of conflicts that enveloped the country. But the bloodiest
affray took place in Caesarea. First, as had been the case in Alexan-
dria, the Jews were deprived of their civil rights, and when a riot
broke out in the city, the legionaries who were called in to sup-
press it attacked the Jews of whom great numbers were slain. It
was apparent that the soldiers acted with the connivance of the
procurator Floras (64-66 C.E.).
He was the last of these officials, this Floras, and a concentrate
of all their vices. His passion was plunder, and the recklessness
with which he indulged it drove many who had stood for patience
and moderation into the camp of the Zealots. He looted the treas-
ures of the Temple, took bribes from the enemies of the Jews, and
even shared in the spoils of the professional assassins who had
attached themselves to the Sicarii.
5
JUST before the final break, a series of events took place in
Jerusalem that have the unreality and terror of a nightmare. Floras
demanded a huge sum from the treasury of the Temple. In rage and
derision the people passed the basket to collect alms for "poor
Floras." The procurator unleashed his legions who, in an orgy of
slaughter, slew thousands of men, women, and children. Even the
wiles of the beautiful and profligate Berenice, sister of Agrippa,
failed to soften the heart of the Roman governor.
Nevertheless the peace leaders prevailed on the people to go
out and extend the customary greetings to a new contingent of
THE GREAT REVOLT 17 1
Romans who, shortly afterwards, came to Jerusalem from Caesarea.
But the soldiers, under orders from Florus, provoked the people
to new rage by failing to return the gesture. The Jews were driven
into the city: they were first to reach the Temple and defied the
Romans, whereupon the latter took possession of the opposite
fort of Antonia.
Agrippa, friend of Rome and leader of the peace party, came to
Jerusalem with 3,000 horsemen. The Zealots, led by Eleazar ben
Hananiah, drove them off, burned down the house of the high
priest, another leader of the peace party, and the palace of Agrippa.
They captured the fort of Antonia and slew the Roman soldiers
to a man.
Now the city belonged to the Zealots. The usual sacrifice for
the welfare of the emperor was suspended, as well as the payment
of taxes. The tiny nation threw down the gauntlet to Rome, mistress
of the lands, the seas, and the nations.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Great Revolt
THE war that followed and lasted four years (66-70 C.E.)
was one of the most desperate and amazing struggles in the
annals of mankind. To many, of course, it appeared from
the very beginning a forlorn hope: how could little Palestine pit it-
self successfully against the mistress of the world? Nevertheless,
the courage and tenacity of the Jews were so great that were it
not for the perfidy of traitors and the dissensions among the pa-
triots, it is not impossible to believe that the outcome might have
been different. Were not the early prospects of the Maccabaean
revolt just as hopeless?
The situation in Jerusalem, which Florus seems to have de-
liberately provoked, was now too much for him, and Agrippa pre-
vailed on Cestius Gallus, the governor of Syria, to intervene,
172 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
offering to assist him with a force of 3,000 footmen and 1,000 horse-
men. Gallus assembled an army of 30,000 men, overran Galilee
and the coast, and in short order stood before Jerusalem. But the
siege was scarcely under way when the Roman, to the great
chagrin of the traitors, ordered a retreat. Undoubtedly, the strength
of the Zealots who nearly routed him on his first appearance
before Jerusalem had convinced him that with the forces at his
command, he could not hope to take the city.
The retreat was a terrible ordeal for the Romans. The Zealots
poured out of the city and attacked their rear and flanks, cutting
them down in large numbers. In the pass of Beth-horon, where
invaders had come to grief in the past, Gallus managed to extricate
himself by a ruse, but he lost his war material and 6,000 of his men.
The patriots were jubilant, the peace party was submerged, and
coins were struck with the inscription "The deliverance of Jeru-
salem."
BUT the Zealots had no illusions: the struggle had only,
begun. They prepared for it with feverish energy, forging weapons,
strengthening the defenses of the city, drilling and training the
young men. But they failed to achieve what was most important
of all: unity of policy and command. It was not they who con-
trolled the capital but the Sanhedrin, a body of rich notables whose
insurgent ardor was not above suspicion. Eleazar ben Hananiah v
probably the ablest Zealot leader, was sent by them to Idumaea;.
Joseph ben Gorion and a former high priest named Hanan were
put in charge of the capital; while the defense of Galilee, the key
post in the struggle, was entrusted to Joseph ben Mattathiah, who
is better known as Josephus the historian.
The fame of Josephus as an historian rests principally on his
account of this war, an account devoted in large measure to apolo-
gies for his own conduct. Josephus had a great deal to explain and
apologize for: it is clear from his own record that he was never a
single-minded patriot and ended by turning traitor.
Galilee was the nursery of Zealotism and the first line of defense.
The men of Galilee were renowned for their bravery, and the
THE GREAT REVOLT 173
province bristled with strongholds. Josephus made a great display
of patriotic fervor, but there promptly sprang up a feud between
him and John of Giscala, a fiery Zealot leader who ruled over a
fortress in the far north. John suspected and despised the young
aristocrat whom Jerusalem had sent up to take over his beloved
Galilee, nor was it long before his suspicions became certainties.
But Josephus, bold and adroit, defeated his attempts to expose him.
Finally John sent a deputation to the capital with charges against
Josephus, and a military force was dispatched to remove him.
But Josephus stayed. He sent his own emissaries to Jerusalem to
defend him, and when the Sanhedrin's commissioners appeared
before him, he had the audacity to order them back in chains.
Galilee was in a state of virtual civil war: the first line of defense
became weaker instead of stronger. In the meantime Vespasian,
the best general the empire possessed, was named commander in
chief of the Roman forces in Palestine. His son Titus having
brought up two additional legions from Egypt, Vespasian com-
manded a host of 60,000 men footmen and horsemen, archers and
slingers, hardened legionaries, equipped with all the engines of war
and siegecraft.
In the spring of 67 C.E. Vespasian reached Ptolemais. The strong-
hold of Sepphoris surrendered without a blow. The Romans ad-
vanced and the army of Josephus melted before them. Josephus
himself took refuge in Tiberias.
The next citadel to fall was Gabara, whose defenders the
Romans put to the sword. Then they laid siege to Jotapota, the
most redoubtable fortress of them all. The cliff on which Jotapota
stood was surrounded by rugged hills, and on its northern side,
which alone was open to assault, the defenders had raised a high
wall. On the fifth day of the siege, Josephus appeared in Jotapota
and took over its defense. The Romans raised their breastworks
and brought into play their battering rams and other siege-engines.
The defenders made almost daily sorties, destroying the works and
engines of the Romans, penetrating into their camp, and on one
occasion wounding the commander in chief himself. The strong-
hold, Vespasian decided, could only be taken by starving the
garrison into surrender. After forty-seven days of siege, with the
174 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
water supply cut off, the heroic garrison, starved and exhausted,
was overcome and massacred and the women and children carried
off to be sold into slavery.
The capture of Jotapota brought an end to the career of Jo-
sephus as a leader of the revolt. He managed to escape the .mas-
sacre of the garrison and, according to his own account, by a
combination of luck and duplicity, he managed also to circumvent
a suicide pact with a group of forty other survivors who had
taken refuge with him in a cave. Josephus gave himself up to the
Romans, was received by them with cordiality, and thereafter
served as adviser of the Roman command in the war against his
people.
The Romans swept on through Galilee, taking Tabor and
Tiberias and, after a month's siege, capturing Gamala which was
defended with true Zealot heroism. Finally, Giscala, where the
fearless and high-spirited John commanded a little army of Zealots,
was forced to open its gates, but not until John himself escaped
with some of his men, going south to continue the struggle in the
capital.
Galilee, the first bulwark of the nation, was lost. All hope and
resolution were now concentrated on Jerusalem, and from every
corner of the land streams of refugees and warriors flowed steadily
to the capital.
3
JERUSALEM'S defenses appeared impregnable, and the vast
multitude of a million souls that, for refuge or combat, had gath-
ered within its walls, felt little alarm at the approach of the enemy.
Protected on the west, south, and east by the encircling valleys of
Hinnom and Kidron, the city on the hills could be effectively
attacked on the north only. And there a series of walls and other
defenses, of which the Temple itself was the most formidable,
seemed capable of defying every assault. With such fortifications
and, more important still, with the indomitable spirit that ani-
mated its defenders, the city looked out unafraid upon the supreme
trial that awaited her.
Besides, the enemy seemed to be in no hurry to attack Jerusalem.
THE GREAT REVOLT 175
Having conquered Galilee, Transjordania, Idumaea, and the lower
regions of Judea, Vespasian spent the greater part of the years 68
and 69 in apparent inactivity. The general, in fact, had a greater
preoccupation than the revolt of the Jews. Nero had died a suicide,
and the legions were making and unmaking emperors. Vespasian,
the ablest soldier of the empire, was the idol of the legions of the
east, and the great prize which a number of hands weaker than
his had been forced to relinquish, fell, in the middle of the year 69,
into his own. The legions of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt proclaimed
him emperor, and Vespasian set out for Rome, leaving his son
Titus to finish the war against the Jews.
But there was still another reason for the Roman's apparent
idleness. In Jerusalem the Jews were fighting his battle, and Ves-
pasian knew it. The factional strife among them was steadily
increasing and took on the proportions of a civil war. The Zealots
were profoundly dissatisfied with the men who were in control
of the city: that was but natural, for they were the men who were
responsible for Josephus, and others among them were suspected
of collusion with Agrippa and the peace party. The Zealot
leaders, however, were incapable of agreeing among themselves,
making unity of command impossible and insanely thwarting each
other's efforts to prepare the city for effective resistance.
After a bitter and bloody struggle the Zealot leaders John of
Giscala and Eleazar ben Simon settled their scores with the San-
hedrin and the peace party. The high priest Joshua ben Gamala
was removed, and a humble priest put in his place. With the help
of a body of Idumaean Jews, to whom they opened the gates of
the city, the Zealots put down an uprising of their foes and exe-
cuted the leaders. John then began to prepare the city for the siege.
But, the traitors having been suppressed, a fierce rivalry sprang
up between the two Zealot leaders, and they turned their weapons
on each other. The remnant of the peace party, finding the bloody
strife suited to their purpose, aftded to it by opening the gates of
the city to Simon bar Giora, a famous firebrand, intrepid leader
of a band of desperate Zealots and Sicarii in the neighborhood of
the fortress of Masada, near the Dead Sea. John, Eleazar, and
Simon, holding different sections of the city, spent their strength
176 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
in internecine conflict, instead of saving it for the common enemy.
They even went to the insane extent of setting fire to each other's
stores of grain.
4
IN THE early spring of the year 70, just before Passover,
Titus came up with a host of 80,000 men and the siege began. He
pitched his camp on Mount Scopus, the northern extension of the
Mount of Olives, and brought his engines around north opposite
the outer or third wall. He began "with a call on the city to sur-
render. But the Zealots spurned his ambassador, who was none
other than the subtle and ubiquitous Josephus, now the protege
and adviser of Titus; and shortly afterward, in sorties from the
city, the Zealots wrought havoc in the camp of the Romans and
almost slew the commander himself.
But soon enough the battering rams were crashing at the outer
wall, and what reason and sanity had been powerless to accomplish,
the enemy engines brought to pass: the Zealot leaders, of whom
one, Eleazar ben Simon, had been eliminated, put an end to their
suicidal strife. They rushed out of the city and destroyed the
embankments and engines, but the enemy set up new ones. To
terrorize the defenders, Titus ordered his prisoners crucified within
sight of the city.
Fifteen days of continuous battering breached the outer wall; five
days later the rams broke through the second wall, and the Romans
were facing Fort Antonia. Here the struggle was stupendous. John
of Giscala, leonine in might and daring, burned down the first
works set up by the enemy against the fortress, and when the wall
of Antonia came down, the Romans stood before a new wall which
the Zealots had quickly erected. But new legionaries came to re-
place the slain, new embankments and engines were set up, and
Titus used all the arts of martial eloquence to bolster the waning
morale of his soldiers. Antonia fell and the Jews were driven to
their last citadel the Temple.
And now there came 'two grisly allies, famine and pestilence,
and joined forces with the Romans. The people in the crowded
city died by the thousands. Titus, who knew that the strength and
valor of his legions would not suffice to take Jerusalem, had com-
THE GREAT REVOLT 177
pletely encircled the city with a stone wall, permitting no food
to be brought in and none of the starving to escape. On the seven-
teenth day of the month of Tammuz the most important rite, the
daily sacrifice in the Temple, came to an end. No more animals
were obtainable.
In the battle for the Temple the epic struggle soon reached its
climax. The Jews inflicted enormous losses on the Romans, de-
molishing their earthworks and defeating their attempts to scale the
walls by ladder. Even the battering rams proved futile, and on
the ninth day of the month of Ab Titus ordered the huge gates
that opened on the courts to be set on fire. They burned for a
night and a day, and the legionaries charged through. The starved
and exhausted defenders, though they hurled themselves again and
again on the shields and swords' of the Romans, were unable to
throw them back.
A burning brand, flung by a legionary, fell into one of the sur-
rounding chambers of the sanctuary, and before it could be ex-
tinguished the Temple itself was in flames. The courts were
thronged with a great concourse of people, men, women, and
children, whom the legionaries, crazed with all they had suffered
at the hands of the Jews, slaughtered indiscriminately. Not even
Titus who, according to Josephus, was anxious to save the Temple,
could restrain the fury of his men.*
The Zealots died fighting to the last. Some threw themselves
bare-handed on the foe, others leaped into the flames, unwilling
to survive the destruction of the Temple. The din of clashing arms
and tumbling walls, of roaring flames and shrieking men, was heard
for miles around, and when it died down, the glory of Judea was
a heap of smoking ruins.
5
BELOW the Old Wall and the hill on which the Temple
stood lay the sections of Jerusalem known as the Upper City and
the Lower City. To the latter the torch was quickly applied, but
* Josephus, The Jewish War, VI; 4. This book is our principal source on the
uprising against Rome. It should be read with caution. It was written at the com-
mand of Titus, and its bias in favor of Rome is evident throughout. There ii
reason to doubt that Titus was really anxious to save the Temple.
178 THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH
the Upper City, protected by the Old Wall, held out. The Romans
raised their siege-works, the battering rams went into action, and
the starved and exhausted remnants of the Zealots were over-
whelmed. The garrison which Titus now lodged in the towers of
Herod's palace stood guard over a dead city.
Outside the devastated capital, the enemy sought out and de-
stroyed several thousand Zealots who had escaped and were hiding
in the Jordan forests. The fortress of Herodium in Judea held out
for a time, and it took a long siege to reduce Machaerus on the
eastern shore of the Dead Sea. The climax of heroic resistance was
reached by Masada. This almost impregnable natural fortress was
held by a thousand Zealots under command of Eleazar ben Jair,
who traced his descent to the founder of the party. When, after
breaking down two walls, the Romans finally came through, they
found only the bodies of the defenders. The Zealots, after slaying
their wives and children, had turned their weapons upon them-
selves.
Palestine was proclaimed a Roman province, and a great part
of the land became the personal property of the emperor. But the
country was in ruins, its once flourishing towns and villages almost
without inhabitants, dogs and jackals prowling through the dev-
astated streets and houses. In Jerusalem, a million people are re-
ported to have perished, with a hundred thousand taken captive
to glut the slave markets of the empire. The tall and handsome
youths were held for the arena, to die fighting, or to be torn by
wild beasts for the entertainment of Egyptian, Syrian, and Roman
spectators.
Some bands of Zealots escaped into Arabia where the long arm
of Rome was unable to reach them; they settled in the neighbor-
hood of Medina where their descendants dwelt for many centu-
ries. Those who found themselves within the empire were not so
fortunate. In the Jewish communities where they sought refuge
their mere presence enflamed the smoldering hatred of the Jews
against Rome. Revolts, which were put down with great cruelty,
were attempted in northern Africa including Alexandria.
Sorrow and despair came down like a pall upon all the commu-
nities of the Diaspora. All that they loved and gloried in was
extinguished: Jerusalem the holy and beautiful, the Sanhedrin and
THE GREAT REVOLT 179
the Temple. With refined cruelty, Rome continued to collect the
Temple-tax from the Jews but applied it to a temple of Jupiter
in Rome.
6
THE magnitude and splendor of the public triumph with
which Rome hailed the conqueror of Judea is a measure of the
fierceness of the struggle and the losses which the embattled Jews
inflicted upon her. It is doubtful if Rome ever saw a more imposing
spectacle. Among the trophies that were carried in the procession
were the seven-branched candlestick, the table of shew-bread and
other objects taken from the Temple; and among the prisoners
who were dragged in chains before the Roman populace were
Simon bar Giora and John of Giscala. When the triumph was over
the first was put to death, while John suffered the worse fate of
lifelong incarceration.
But Rome signalized her victory in more durable symbols as
well. Special coins were struck to commemorate the event, and a
magnificent arch in honor of Titus who, in 79, succeeded his father
as emperor, was erected in the Forum of the city. On a sculptured
panel inside this arch, the spoils of the Temple borne in triumph
can still be seen, and one can almost hear the shouts of the Roman
multitude witnessing the procession.
Still stands the arch of Titus, its proud inscriptions dimmed, its
marble crumbling slowly into ruins. But it stands rather as a
monument to "the grandeur that was Rome," than as a symbol of
the conquest of the Jews. For ancient Rome is only a memory, and
the "conquered" Jews, in spite of that disaster and others which
were to follow, are still unconquered.*
*On November 30, 1947, almost nineteen centuries after the fall of the Jewish
State, the Arch of Titus was the scene of a remarkable demonstration. Thousands
of Italian Jews and Jewish "Displaced Persons" in Italy marched beneath the
Arch in a symbolic and jubilant procession. The day before, the General Assem-
bly of the United Nations, meeting at Flushing Meadows, New York, had voted
to re-establish in Palestine what the Romans had destroyedthe Jewish State.
Part Three
70 C.B. TO 1492
* Dispersion
The Spirit Lives On
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
New Life
UNTIL the year 70, when the legions of Rome completed
their work of devastation in Palestine, the Jews possessed
the conditions that are deemed essential for national life.
In its outward aspects, at least, their career was like that of other
nations that have their day, brief or long, on the stage of history
and vanish. They had, to begin with, a geographical center, a
land of their own. They had, in addition, a polity and civilization
of their own, owing allegiance to the same government, obeying
the same laws, adhering to the same customs, speaking the same
language, and cherishing common memories, all of these possessions
being part and parcel of a common faith. Can a people, it may well
be asked, pursue a distinctive career without at least a land and
polity of its own?
The year 70, however, may be taken to mark the Great Divide
when the career of the Jewish people became wholly unique.
Broken and scattered, stripped of all the possessions that appear to
be indispensable for national survival, they nevertheless preserved
their integrity and remained a distinct people. And the story that
records their career also becomes unique, for now it lacks a focus
in space: it must wander with them over die face of the earth. It
is a pageant, moreover, from which the customary sights and sounds
are absent. There is no parade of pomp and power, no glitter of
kings and conquerors. There is no tramp of marching armies, no
thunder of battle or shouts of victory. The heroes of the story lack
die glamour that captivates the eye and excites the facile imagina-
tion: they are sages and scholars, singers and dreamers, martyrs,
mystics, and saints. It is a story like no other in the annals of die
nations.
183
1 84 DISPERSION
THE story, however, is not without a focus, dwelling not in
space but in spirit, and beyond the reach, therefore, of fire and
sword. It dwells in all that is embraced in the word Torah faith
and practice, law and doctrine, prophecy and aspiration. The loss
of land and freedom only added to the power of this supreme
possession, only led to a fiercer concentration around the spiritual
standard. The Jewish people, conquered and dispersed, withdrew
into its fortress of faith and law and lived on.
The Roman engines were still crashing against the walls of
Jerusalem when out of the stricken city issued the man who was to
set up anew- the ancient standard. He was a tanna, a teacher and
interpreter of Torah, and his name was Johanan ben Zaccai. Con-
vinced of the futility of resistance, Johanan had advocated peace
with Rome. Who the political master might be was a matter of
indifference to him: all he desired was that he and his people should
be undisturbed in the study and observance of Torah.
Johanan determined to quit the beleaguered city and set up a
center of Torah in another place. It was no small task to escape
the watchfulness of the Zealots, and legend has embellished ben
Zaccai's enterprise with the glamour of adventure. The tanna, we
are told, was carried out of the city in a coffin by two of his
disciples, and taken before the Roman commander who granted
him permission to transfer his school to the little town of Jabneh
near Jaffa.
A troop of disciples quickly gathered about the teacher. Some
of them expected to resume their studies before long in Jerusalem,
and when they learned that the city was taken and destroyed, the
Temple burnt down, and the Sanhedrin slain or scattered, they
gave way to despair. Their leader, however, stood firm. True, the
daily Temple sacrifice, considered an essential of the national cult,
was no longer possible; but Johanan, with the prophets for au-
thority, declared that good deeds and the study of Torah were
more pleasing to God than sacrifice. Had not the prophet Hosea
proclaimed:
NEW LIFE 185
/ desire mercy and not sacrifice,
And the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
Before long Johanan was compelled to take another important
step. The religious life of the people, not only in Palestine but in
the numerous communities of the Diaspora, required direction and
regulation. These functions had formerly been exercised by the
Sanhedrin, and Johanan proceeded to establish a new Sanhedrin at
Jabneh. It could not, of course, compare with its august prede-
cessor, but in time the Romans granted it a measure of recognition.
It came to be known as the Bet-Din, or Court of Justice, and its
authority as the supreme Jewish tribunal was established when
it assumed the right of fixing the dates for the observance of new
moons and festivals.
Thus Judaism acquired a new national center under a wise and
firm leader. His influence derived solely from intellectual and
moral preeminence, and his wisdom sprang from an insight into
the character and destiny of his people. He saved his people at a
time when an overwhelming national disaster and the advent of a
new faith and new doctrines combined to threaten the Jews with
extinction. These doctrines, soon to eventuate in the new religion
of Christianity, sprang from passionate Messianic yearnings, from
despair of the world and the renunciation of life. Already Paul
of Tarsus, having accepted Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ or
Messiah, had proclaimed the abrogation of the laws of Torah,
and called on men to despise the things of this world and prepare
for the second coming of Jesus. Johanan and his disciples rejected
the new teaching: like other generations who had lived in times
of crisis, they faced their problems not in a spirit of surrender,
but of affirmation and renewed faith.
The source whence the fresh streams of living waters issued
was the old fountain, the Torah. The master and his disciples
continued to weave the fabric of Oral Torah, which not only
sheltered them against the harsh winds that blew around them,
but brought them relief and delight. For Oral Torah consisted not
only of Halachah, or law in the strict sense of the word, but also
of Haggadah, or poetry and legend; and even the study of
1 86 DISPERSION
Halachah had a fascination of its own. The school at Jabneh was
open to all who were willing and able to follow the discourses of
the master and the intricate discussions of his disciples. They were
not a body of professional teachers and students: it had now
become a feed tradition that Torah must not be used as "a spade to
dig with." Every scholar, no matter how distinguished, was
expected to obtain his livelihood from some other occupation,
preferably of a manual character. Teachers and students usually
met for study and discussion after the day's work in field or work-
shop.
3
JOHANAN died in the arms of his disciples. His piety and
shrewd wisdom are manifest in his final admonition to them: "May
the fear of God influence your actions as much as the fear of man."
Johanan's successor, known as Gamaliel II, had a stormy career.
Gamaliel was a man of distinguished lineage, a descendant of the
great Hillel and of several generations of heads of the Sanhedrin
in Jerusalem. With the consent of the Roman governor, Gamaliel
assumed the title of Nasi, the meaning of which is "prince" or
"patriarch." He thus became the founder of the Patriarchate, which
became hereditary and continued as the highest office of the com-
munity in Palestine for more than three centuries.
Gamaliel succeeded in putting an end to the controversy that
broke out afresh between the followers of Shammai and those of
Hillel. There was danger of a serious division in the doctrines and
practices of Judaism, which the Nasi averted by decreeing the
interpretations of Hillel and his school to be valid in practice,
granting at the same time that those of Shammai also possessed
divine origin. "Both are the words of the living God," was the
formula by which the acrimony of the strife was allayed. Gamaliel
himself, however, became involved in serious differences with his
colleagues at Jabneh, in particular with the learned and gentle
Joshua ben Hananiah and the equally learned but ungentle Eliezer
ben Hyrcanus, the NasP s brother-in-law. The Nasi, who was not
distinguished for tactfulness, used his power of excommunication
too freely. He was removed from his position for a time, but in
NEW LIFE 187
recognition of his merits and after a reconciliation with Joshua,
he was reinstated.
Thus the annals of the decades after the year 70, though meager,
disclose an intense intellectual activity, with the Sanhedrin at
Jabneh gaining steadily in respect and authority. A new national
center had come into existence, holding together the remnants of
the people. Vacancies in the Sanhedrin were filled with scholars
who, through the ceremony of "laying on of hands,"* or ordina-
tion, were declared to be qualified for the honor and responsibility.
Nor were legal matters alone dealt with by the Sanhedrin. In
Gamaliel's day an important and hotly debated question was
whether the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes should be received into
the Bible canon. The two books were subsequently admitted but
others, like the Proverbs of ben Sira, were excluded and became
part of the Apocrypha.
4
SOME fifty years after the Jfall of Jerusalem, when Gamaliel
II was at the zenith of his career, the fields and vineyards of
Palestine were again being cultivated. A new generation of Jews
now lived in the land, repairing its ruins and rebuilding the national
life. In towns and villages communities arose with law courts of
their own and elected councils that managed communal affairs,
including education, philanthropy, and public safety. The syna-
gogue took the place of the Temple, prayer and the study of Torah
the place of sacrifice.
The principal prayer was the AmidahJ called also Shemoneh-
esreb, or "Eighteen Benedictions." Before the Avndah came the
Shema, which proclaims the basic doctrine of the faith: "Hear
O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One." The Torah was
read in the synagogues on Sabbaths and festivals. It was also read
on Mondays and Thursdays, when the farmers, many of whom
had no synagogues where they lived, came to town to sell their
produce. The Torah is still read in synagogues on those days.
Education, which was compulsory for boys, was one of the
11 Hebrew, scmichah, a word still employed to mean the act of certifying a rabbi.
t Derived from the word meaning M to stand/' the prayer being recited standing.
1 88 DISPERSION
chief cares of every community. To every house of worship was
attached an elementary as well as a higher school. In the first, thfe
principal study was the Bible; in the second, it was Oral Torah as
handed down by the taniunm. Children of the poor and orphans
were educated at the expense of the community.
Jewish life in Palestine appeared to be on the road to recovery.
The ancient faith found new props, it evolved new safeguards for
the preservation of the people. But the fires of hope and hate
which the new generation had inherited continued to smolder,
and before long burst into new and devastating conflagrations.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Rebels and Sages
THE hate was directed against Rome, the tyrant who had
laid waste their land, given its fairest fields to strangers,
and was still diverting the tax they paid for the Temple
at Jerusalem to a temple of Jupiter in Rome. The hope that stirred
the new generation was that their Temple would be speedily re-
built and its glories restored. "Let our eyes behold Thy return
in mercy to Zion," they prayed three times a day, a prayer the
Patriarch Gamaliel had inserted into the "Eighteen Benedictions."
Forty-five years after the fall of Jerusalem, the old flame of
Zealotry burst with a strange and savage violence. Exactly what
happened the annals do not make clear, but throughout the Medi-
terranean world, it appears, the Jews were roused to fury by an
attempt of Emperor Trajan to extend the boundaries of Rome
eastward into Mesopotamia and Parthia. This attempt, if successful,
would have put the yoke of Rome upon the large and flourishing
Jewish community of Babylonia. Trajan was a brilliant soldier.
Early in his reign he added regions that are now part of Rumania
and Hungary to the empire. About the year 105 he carved out
a new province east of Syria and Palestine including the Sinai
Peninsula, enabling Rome to control the trade routes from Arabia.
REBELS AND SAGES 189
Ten years later he subdued Armenia and Mesopotamia and pre-
pared to invade Parthia.
The following year, however, the conquered provinces, with
the Jews of Mesopotamia in the lead, revolted. At the same
moment, apparently in accordance with a preconcerted plan, the
Jews of Cyprus, North Africa, Egypt, and Palestine rose up in
arms, and with incredible ferocity fell upon their heathen rulers
and neighbors. The victims of their fury are reported by the
Roman chroniclers to have numbered hundreds of thousands. In
the meantime, Trajan had suffered a humiliating defeat in Parthia
which, owing in large part to the Jewish uprisings, he was never
able to retrieve.
That the motherland was a formidable factor in this second
challenge of the Jewish people to the might of Rome may be in-
ferred from the fact that Lucius Quietus, the general who quelled
the uprising in Mesopotamia, was made governor of Palestine. The
leaders of die revolt in Palestine seem to have been two brothers,
Pappus and Julianus, who were afterwards joined by the leader of
the revolt in North Africa. The uprising came to an end when
Quietus, after a relentless siege, captured and destroyed the city
of Lydda where the Jewish forces were gathered. In Egypt and
Cyprus the rebellions were put down by Marcius Turf>o after
bitter fighting and wholesale slaughter.
MESOPOTAMIA was abandoned by Trajan's successor, Aelius
Hadrian, and the Babylonian Jewish community was saved from
Roman domination. Under Hadrian, however, the Jews again
threw down the gauntlet to Rome, and this time the motherland
was the principal theater of revolt. The new emperor had inherited
the task of bringing the second Jewish uprising to an end and
seems afterwards to have adopted a policy of conciliation. He
recalled the brutal Quietus and had him executed. He even
promised to permit the Jews to rebuild the Temple.
The promise was not fulfilled: the Samaritans, it appears, again
opposed the project as their ancestors had done in the beginning of
the Second Commonwealth. The Jews were bitterly disappointed.
In the year 130, moreover, Hadrian ordered Jerusalem to be re-
I go DISPERSION
built, not as the capital of the Jews, but as a Roman city to be
named Aelia Capitolina, with a temple to Jupiter on the site of the
Jewish sanctuary. The disappointment of the Jews changed to
fury.
The old sage Joshua ben Hananiah, who had probably succeeded
Gamaliel as Patriarch, managed for a brief interval to curb his
people's wrath. It is recorded that he told them the fable of the
lion and the crane. The lion was feasting with too much relish
and a bone stuck in his throat. Thereupon he promised the crane
a handsome reward if she would insert her long neck between
his jaws and pull the bone out. When, however, after performing
the service, the crane claimed her reward, the lion answered: "Is it
not enough that your head is safe after having been in the jaws
of a lion?" The crane insisted no further. Should the Jews, asked
Joshua, insist that the Roman lion fulfill his promises?
Not long afterwards, however, Hadrian issued another edict
which made revolt inevitable. It was not, it is said, directed against
the Jews in particular it was an old Roman law against mutilation
which Hadrian saw fit to revive but under it the Jews were for-
bidden to practice the rite of circumcision. The records of the
period are confused, and it may well be that the rebuilding of
Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina as well as the ban against circum-
cision -were consequences rather than causes of the third uprising
of the Jews against Rome. What is certain is that the deeper causes
of the revolt must be sought in the thwarted hopes of the Jewish
patriots who had fought against Trajan, and beyond that in the
implacable hostility of the Jews against Rome. The fact is that
in the interval of fifteen years after the suppression of the second
outbreak, the Jewish patriots had made extensive preparations for
the next attempt. They fortified the caves in which the country
abounded, connected them with subterranean passages, and stored
arms in secret places.
3
THE uprising that followed found two brilliant leaders
who, against a less formidable adversary than Rome, might have
won the freedom of their people. They were the scholar Akiba
ben Joseph and the warrior Simon bar Kochba. Akiba is a figure
REBELS AND SAGES
of fabulous splendor. He was the leading taama of his generation,
perhaps even of his century, and to his luster as a sage he added
the crown of a patriot and martyr. His epic career has been em-
bellished with legend and romance. It is told of Akiba ben Joseph
that in his youth and early manhood he was only a shepherd.
Rachel, his master's daughter, fell in love with him and, defying
her father's commands, became his wife. Notwithstanding her
love, however, she sent him away with the admonition not to re-
turn until he had become a great scholar. Years later the former
shepherd came back followed by a great retinue of students who
addressed him reverently as "Rabbi" or master.
Akiba belonged to the circle of Gamaliel II, and about the year
95 he accompanied the Patriarch on a journey to Rome, under-
taken, it appears, for the purpose of petitioning the emperor
Domitian to allay his persecutions against the Jews. Later Akiba
made many other journeys. He visited Parthia, Asia Minor, and
perhaps Africa and Europe, in all likelihood seeking the support
of the Jewish communities of the piaspora in preparation for the
struggle against Rome.
Akiba was inspired with the conviction that the advent of the
Messiah was at hand, and he saw the deliverer in the warrior
Simon bar Kochba. Not much that is certain is known of bar
Kochba: he looms against the period more than half hidden in
the mists of legend. His name, it is thought, was originally bar
Kozba, and in token of his messianic mission it was changed, per-
haps by Akiba himself, to bar Kochba, meaning "son of a star."
Bar Kochba, we are told, was gifted with incredible strength and
prowess: among other feats, he could stop with his knees the stones
the Romans hurled from their ballistae. He was undoubtedly a
soldier of heroic mold, worthy of taking his stand beside the
Zealot leaders of the year 70.
4
IN 131, Emperor Hadrian was visiting Egypt, Palestine,
and Syria; the Jewish patriots waited for his departure, and die
following year the revolt broke out. From every corner of Pales-
tine and from other countries too, the Jews flocked to bar Kochba's
standard. Even Samaritans made common cause with them: only
DISPERSION
the Nazarenes, as the new sect of Christians was called, held aloof,
an attitude which bar Kochba regarded as treason and for which
he made them pay dearly. The forces of bar Kochba are reported
to have numbered hundreds of thousands, and although the report
is no doubt an exaggeration, bar Kochba must have commanded a
formidable array. The power of recovery displayed by the Jews
is nothing short of amazing: it was the third major war in less
than two generations fought by a little nation against the mightiest
empire on earth.
The war lasted three years and exacted the best that Rome
possessed in generalship and arms. The Roman governor of Pales-
tine, the depraved Tinnius Rufus, suffered one defeat after an-
other, and the same fate befell the legate of Syria, Publius Mar-
cellus, who went to the governor's assistance. Fifty fortified places
and numerous other towns and villages were seized by the vic-
torious rebels. Finally, Jerusalem itself was captured by bar
Kochba, who thereupon proclaimed the restoration of the Jewish
state, striking coins to signalize the event and stamping them with
the words: "For the freedom of Israel."
Hadrian himself hurried back to Palestine and shortly after-
wards he summoned Julius Severus, his ablest general, to leave
England, where he was putting down a rebellion of the Britons,
and quell the uprising of the Jews. Slowly but relentlessly the
huge war machine that was Julius Severus' to command swept
down from the north, recapturing one stronghold after another
and forcing the Jewish patriots to their retreats in the mountains.
The Romans fought over fifty battles before they were again
masters of the country; and so great were their losses that when the
emperor reported his final victory to the Senate he omitted the
customary formula, "I and the army are well."
After holding the capital for two years bar Kochba was com-
pelled to abandon it and in Bethar, a fortified place southwest of
the city, he made his last stand against the enemy. For a long
time Bethar defied the Roman legions and their siege engines.
Famine decimated the defenders, but the survivors fought on.
Once the Romans were on the point of giving up the siege, but
Bethar finally fell, as a result, according to one report, of Samaritan
THE MISHNAH 193
treachery; and among the many who were slain defending the
citadel to the last was bar Kochba himself.
Over half a million, it is estimated, fell in the war fighting the
Roman legions, besides those who succumbed to famine and pes-
tilence. The victorious Romans avenged themselves on the Jews
with more than their customary ferocity: they massacred great
numbers and seized many others to be sold in the slave markets,
which became glutted with Jewish captives. Palestine, and par-
ticularly Judea, again became a desolate waste. Jerusalem alone
stood up among the ruins, but it was a pagan city, with its temple
to Jupiter and other heathen gods. Hadrian colonized it with
Roman, Phoenician and Syrian legionaries. Jews were forbidden
on pain of death to approach it.
Bethar, according to tradition, fell on the ninth day of Ab, a
portentous day in the annals of the Jews. But Jewish resistance
was not over: the Romans had to put down a formidable Jewish
force near Tiberias. They enticed some of the fugitives out of
their retreats by false promises, and established a cordon of garri-
sons to capture those who sought safety in flight to other lands.
There were many, however, who made their way to Arabia where
they were safe from the avenging arm of Rome,
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Mishnah
BUT Hadrian was not satisfied with crushing the rebellion and
transforming Jerusalem into a pagan city: he determined
to destroy Judaism altogether. Like Antiochus IV in his
day, Hadrian issued a series of edicts making it a capital crime to
follow the basic practices of Judaism, such as circumcision and
the observance of the Sabbath. The Roman, however, went even
further than his predecessor. Advised in all likelihood by traitors
or by members of the new sect of Nazarenes, the emperor in-
194 DISPERSION
eluded among the capital crimes the teaching of Torah and the
ceremony of ordination. Hadrian was well advised, for Torah, as
well as the practice of ordination which perpetuated its teaching,
was the very breath of the faith he was determined to stamp out.
A reign of terror was instituted against all those who remained
loyal to the faith, the Roman officials being particularly zealous
in hunting down the sages and their pupils. The leaders of the
bleeding remnants of the people thereupon held a secret meeting
and voted to distinguish between laws of primary and laws of
secondary importance, condoning a breach of the latter which
might be committed in order to escape death and torture. The
laws of primary importance were declared to be those that pro-
hibited murder, adultery, and idolatry, and were declared in-
violable. The teachers, however, decided that they themselves must
be denied any immunity: as leaders of the people they must bear
the full burden of the faith. They were especially resolved to
continue the teaching of Torah and many of them suffered
martyrdom. The martyrs included men of the highest eminence;
among them was Akiba ben Joseph, who died under torture with
the Shema on his lips, rejoicing that he was privileged to sanctify
God's name with his death.
Another of the illustrious martyrs was Judah ben Baba, whom
the Romans surprised in the act of ordaining seven of Akiba's dis-
ciples. Judah performed the rite in a valley in Galilee near Usha,
for the school at Jabneh had come to an end and the students and
teachers sought refuge in the north. Judah was seized by the
Romans, but the young scholars he ordained escaped to Babylonia.
2
BEFORE long, however, these scholars returned to their
native land, where a change for the better had taken place. In
138 Hadrian died, and his successor, the humane and wise An-
toninus Pius, ended most of the persecutions against the Jews,
including the prohibitions against the observance of the faith. The
school and Sanhedrin could again be set up, and a gathering of
scholars took place in the town of Usha, which before long re-
placed Jabneh as the center of the community. However, the
edict that barred the Jews on pain of death from Jerusalem or
THE MISHNAH 195
Aelia Capitolina, as the city was now called, remained in force,
and they were forbidden to make proselytes, a restriction that
testifies to the attraction which Judaism still exerted upon other
faiths.
A son of Gamaliel II, known as Simon II, was recognized as
Patriarch. Simon had escaped from the massacre at Bethar and
spent a number of years in Babylonia, 'where he was impressed by
the power and dignity of the Exilarch (chief of the Exile), as the
head of the Babylonian Jewish community was called. As Patri-
arch, Simon was eager to enjoy the same status but he lacked the
preeminent scholarship which alone could sanction his claim.
Like his father before him, Simon found himself in difficulties with
some of his colleagues. His leading opponents were Meir, the most
brilliant scholar of his generation, and Nathan of Babylonia, a
son of the Exilarch. The dissensions, however, did not impede the
paramount task of the period the elaboration of the Oral Tradi-
tion.
This elaboration was, of course* accomplished by the collective
labor of generations- of tannahn. Each of the generations was
illumined by stars of the first magnitude: Hillel, Johanan ben
Zaccai, Akiba ben Joseph, Meir, and others. The culmination of
the process was the great code- known as the Mishnah, the most
important step toward its completion having been taken by Akiba.
It was he who brought the whole process back to its origin, the
Torah, by discovering new and hidden meanings in every word
and letter of the sacred text. What is even more important, he
arranged the vast body of Halachah and Haggadah into an orderly
system, without, however, writing it down.
Meir, who had- been a pupil of Akiba, continued in the path
laid out by his master. Meir was also a man- of broad sympathies
and varied interests. He numbered Samaritans and learned pagans
among his friends, and even kept up relations with the famous
renegade Elisha ben Abuyah, better known as Acher.* The spirit
that lived in these sages is illustrated by the story of Meir and his
wife Beruriah, the modest and learned daughter of Chanina ben
Teradion. Meir and Beruriah had two young sons and one Sabbath
* The name means "another," signifying that Elisha f s apostasy had completely
transformed him.
196 DISPERSION
afternoon both of them died. When Meir came home from the
synagogue, his wife said- nothing until the close of the Sabbath,
when she told, him that someone had entrusted some jewels to her
and had now come to claim them. Was it right, she asked, to give
them up? "But how can you ask such a question?" her husband
replied. She' led him to the room where their sons lay dead. "Be-
hold," said she, "Here are the jewels! The Lord gave and the
Lord has taken away."
3
THERE were other bright stars whose light pierced the gloom
in which the Jews of Palestine were still shrouded. There was
Judah ben Ilai who delighted as much in deeds of kindness as in
learning. There was Jose ben Halaftha, sage and historian, who
supported himself as a worker in leather. There were numerous
others, but the most picturesque figure among them is undoubtedly
Simon ben Yochai. Condemned to death by the Romans, Simon
escaped and hid in a cave where he lived with his son Eleazer for
thirteen years. Many marvelous stories grew up about Simon:
he was credited with power to work miracles, and centuries later
he came to be regarded as the founder of the mystic lore of Cabala.
The terrible wounds which bar Kochba's revolt left on the
Jewish, community of Palestine began to heal, but the longing for
deliverance never died. The year 161 saw this longing in fresh
ferment. That year two emperors in joint partnership, Verus
Commodus and Marcus Aurelius, came to the throne of Rome,
and her inveterate foe, the Parthians, declared war and invaded
Syria. Many of the Jews saw deliverance on their borders and
rose up against the oppressor. But the revolt, it seems, was a mere
flare which was quickly extinguished by the governor of Syria.
The Parthians, after some initial victories, were compelled to re-
tire, and still another dream of freedom lay shattered.
The Romans imposed new restrictions on the Jews. They de-
prived them of their courts of justice, and kept a special watch
on the Sanhedrin at Usha. But after Verus died and the Empire
was ruled by the wise and just Marcus Aurelius, the special laws
were repealed. According to one report it was Simon ben Johai
who traveled to Rome and secured their abrogation.
THE MISHNAH 197
4
ABOUT the year 170, the patriarch Simon II was succeeded
by his son Judah Ha-Nasi. Judah was first in learning as he was
first in authority. Moreover, he possessed great wealth which he
employed wisely and unselfishly. He was respected by the Roman
officials, and tradition records that he was on intimate terms with
the emperor. Throughout his patriarchate, which lasted nearly
half a century, no one presumed to challenge his authority. So
great was the esteem in which his colleagues and disciples held him,
that they referred to him simply as "Rabbi," implying that he was
the rabbi or teacher par excellence, and by that name he became
best known to posterity. He died in 217, having spent the last
years of his life in the Galilean town of Sepphoris, where his school
and the Sanhedrin also established their domicile.
The generation of Judah Ha-Nasi was the last of the line of
tanncmn: it saw the completion of the Mishnah toward which the
labors of all of them converged- Under the direction of the
Patriarch, this compilation of the Oral Tradition received its
definitive form, and about the year 200 it was reduced to writing.
This great compendium of law and lore names one hundred and
forty-eight tannairn^ but many others contributed to the work who
are anonymous. Its language is Hebrew, although the vernacular
of the Jews at the time was probably Aramaic, and its foundation,
of course, is the Bible; more particularly, the Five Books of Moses.
The Mishnah is divided into six parts or "Orders," which are in
turn divided into messichtot or tractates. The Order of "Seeds"
deals with agriculture; "Seasons" with festivals and fast days;
"Women" with marriage and divorce; "Damages" with crimes
and compensation. Appended to "Damages" is the famous collec-
tion of ethical maxims known as Pirke A both or "Sayings of the
Fathers." The fifth Order is called "Holy Things" and contains
the laws governing religious observances; and the sixth and last
is "Purities," and deals with the laws of ritual purity and impurity.
Thus, notwithstanding persecution, war, and terror, the mind
and spirit of the remnant in Palestine continued to labor and bear
fruit. The Mishnah, as we shall see, served as the foundation for
the Talmud, just as the Bible was the foundation for the Mishnah,
198 DISPERSION
and all three made up the citadel of the Jewish people in the dark
ages that followed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Patriarchate
THE disaster of the year 70, which put an end to the ascend-
ancy of the Jews in Palestine, lifted none of the other
national groups to the place the Jews relinquished. The
land became the home of a motley population with no common
memories, interests, or aspirations to weld them together. In this
human potpourri, moreover, we miss nearly all of the nations that
march through the pages of the Bible. In the west, we now look
in vain for the redoubtable Philistines who gave their name to the
entire land, the terror of Israel in the days before King David.
Gath, Ashdod, and Ekron of their proud "Five City District"
have become mere memories; while Gaza and Ashkelon still re-
main, the people that dwelt in them are gone. The same is true of
the Phoenician cities in the north: centuries of subjection to
Seleucid and Roman rulers had thoroughly Hellenized them and
made the descendants of the ancient sea rangers indistinguishable
from the immigrants who hailed from Greece and Macedonia. In
the markets and workshops of those cities the language spoken
was not the ancient Phoenician which was so much like the
Hebrew, nor even the Aramaic which had once held dominion
throughout the east, but Greek. The Ammonites and Moabites
were no more, as well as the Midianites and the other ancient
prowlers of the desert; and even the Edomites, or Idumaeans as
they were later called, became absorbed by the Nabataean Arabs
who occupied the Trans Jordanian regions and whose capital Petra,
a rocky fortress of fantastic beauty and immense natural strength,
became an important commercial center.
In fact, of the many nations other than the Jews who have a
place in the Bible narrative we now encounter only the Samaritans
THE PATRIARCHATE 199
who still regarded themselves, as indeed their handful of de-
scendants still regard themselves today, as the custodians of the
genuine Jewish faith. After the Great Revolt, when the Samaritans
made common cause with the Jews, the relations between the two
communities fluctuated from friendliness to hostility until, about
the year 300, the Sanhedrin issued a decree enjoining complete
separation between them.
In the cities once held by Moabites and Ammonites, by Philistines
and Phoenicians, as well as in many others formerly inhabited by
Jews, now swarmed "a mixed multitude" whom it would be diffi-
cult to designate by any ethnographic term. They are sometimes
called Greco-Romans, and there were no doubt Greeks and
Romans among them. But there were also Syrians, Egyptians, and
newcomers from the other lands of the vast Roman Empire. They
made up the bulk of the population of Aelia Capitolina, die former
Jerusalem; they dwelt in large numbers in the cities of the coast
and of Transjordania; they occupied many of the choice agri-
cultural regions, particularly in Sapiaria. And they had, of course,
brought with them the gods of the lands from which they hailed,
so that Palestine became the home of nearly every variety of
heathen cult and strange worship.
BUT a new religion had now made its appearance in Pales-
tine, which was destined to spread over the greater part of the
earth and make the place of its birth a holy land to the leading
nations of mankind. By every token the Roman world, with its
wretched and brutalized masses, was ripe for a new faith. The
pagan cults were moribund, they failed to satisfy the yearnings of
the human spirit; the Greek gods were too hard and aloof for men
whose daily lot was oppression and sorrow. Even in Greece and
Italy, the classic pagan lands, the cult of the more intimate and
"human" gods of the East, of Mithras and Serapis and other
Oriental deities, had won numerous proselytes; and the elements
of the old faiths were combined into new and fantastic beliefs,
into the mystic doctrines of the Gnostics, early Christians, and
other sects who sought an answer to the eternal problem of human
suffering.
2OO DISPERSION
That problem, in the cruel world to which the great masses of
humanity were doomed, had become acute. Life was terribly hard.
The lot of the numerous slaves on the estates of the wealthy few
was literally worse than that of cattle, while the small farmers and
craftsmen found themselves crushed beneath the constantly grow-
ing burden of taxation. Emperor Caracalla, in the year 212, granted
the rights of Roman citizenship to all the inhabitants of the Empire.
The aim of this apparently liberal measure, however, was to
increase the public revenues so that the ruling classes, from the
emperor down to the petty officials, could live in opulence and
debauchery, while the millions of slaves, husbandmen, and artisans
were sunk in hopeless toil and misery. Small wonder that these
millions were eager to embrace the promise of something better,
even if its fulfillment should be postponed beyond the grave.
In the general search for a nobler faith, Judaism, although it
pursued no aggressive missionary policy, had won many adherents
among the pagans. There were numerous converts to Judaism in
the west as well as in the east. The synagogues in Rome were at-
tended by Romans, and Jewish rites made their appearance in
Roman homes. In the year 95 Emperor Domitian, brother and suc-
cessor of Titus, sentenced to death his own nephew, Flavius
Clemens, for having embraced Judaism. There were even proselytes
in Alexandria, despite the hostile relations between the Jews and
pagans of that city. But the most illustrious convert was Aquila,
a native of Pontus on the Black Sea and a relative of Emperor
Hadrian. Aquila, who had at first joined the Christians, became a
disciple of Akiba ben Joseph under whose guidance he made a
new translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek.
But Judaism was not only a faith and a body of doctrine; it was
also a stern discipline and its progress among the pagans was bound
to .be slow. The Jewish teachers were not anxious to make their
faith an "easy" one. On the contrary, they continued to build
higher "the fence around the Law," multiplying rites and duties
which, while congenial to their own people, looked forbidding
to others.
The new religion of Christianity, on the other hand, adopted a
wholly different policy It began, it is true, as an apparently un-
THE PATRIARCHATE 2OI
important departure from Judaism, its first followers being all Jews
who only differed from their fellows in the belief that the Messiah
had already come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. In their
mode of life the Nazarenes, as these first Christians were called,
were very much like the Essenes, living in separate communities,
renouncing marriage, and holding their property in common. A
radical change of policy, however, was launched by Paul of Tarsus.
He traveled through the heathen world as far west as Rome, and he
knew how to address himself to the pagans of his day. Paul gave
the new religion its greatest impetus by declaring the Jewish laws
no longer binding. Now it was easy to become a Christian, and the
new faith spread rapidly: the missionary policy initiated by Paul
carried it to every part of the Roman Empire.
In Palestine the Jewish Nazarenes refused to accept Paul's
abrogation of the law and continued as a separate sect under the
name of Ebionites (Poor Men), but the apostle's teachings found
many converts among the other inhabitants of the land, who looked
upon the Ebionites as heretics. Now the breach between Judaism
and Christianity became too wicfe to be healed and the mission-
aries and bishops of Palestine, whose church came to be regarded
as the mother church of the new faith, conceived a special hatred
against Judaism, the only one of the old faiths that refused to
give way to the new.
3
BUT as long as Christianity was itself a persecuted sect, its
hostility did not seriously affect the Jews of Palestine. For some-
what more than two centuries after the death of Judah Ha-Nasi,
the Jewish community continued to be governed by the patri-
archs. There were occasional flurries of revolt, like the one in
193 when Septimus Severus was fighting for the imperial crown
against Pescennius Niger, the gpvernor of Syria. It was this Niger
who once told a Jewish deputation which came to complain of
the unbearable burden of taxation that he was sorry he could not
tax the very air they breathed. But the Roman emperors were
frequently at war with Parthia or Neo-Persia and they sometimes
thought it wise, in view of the powerful Jewish community in
202 DISPERSION
Babylonia, not to be too harsh with their Jewish subjects in
Palestine. There were times, therefore, when the relations between
Jews and Romans were almost friendly.
Judah I was followed in 217 by his son Gamaliel III, who after
holding office for eight years, was succeeded by Judah II. The
latter, unlike his illustrious grandfather, was not the greatest
scholar of his age: he was eclipsed in learning by Johanan bar
Nappacha who, as his name testifies, was the son of a blacksmith;
by Eleazar ben Pedath, who came from Babylonia; and by Simon
ben Lakish, who in his youth was a gladiator but, under the guid-
ance of the blacksmith's son, became a formidable dialectitian.
But though others might surpass the patriarch in scholarly at-
tainments, the office invested its holder with authority that ex-
tended to the Jewish communities of other lands, including
Babylonia. It was an authority that was recognized by the Roman
master: the emperors Antoninus and Alexander Severus, we gather,
were on terms of friendship with the patriarchs Judah I and Judah
II respectively. Severus, who reigned from 222 to 235, was par-
ticularly friendly to the Jews and sympathetic to their faith.
The era of the tcrmcrim was now over, the completion of the
Mishnah having signalized the end of their labors. The new era in
the growth of Torah is known as that of the fftnoraam y a word
meaning "speakers" or interpreters. The new generation of scholars
expounded the terse sayings of the Mishnah, and applied them to
new needs as they ar<jse. The most important school in Palestine
was now located in Tiberias, but there were other centers of
learning like the one in Lydda, which was headed by the illustrious
Joshua ben Levi. He, we are told, once visited Rome. He saw
many things in the imperial capital that excited his wonder and
admiration; but he saw also a statue covered with a fine cloth to
protect it from the rain and, lying at its base, a half-naked beggar-
shivering in die cold.
4
JUDAH II died in 255, and was followed by his son Gamaliel
IV f who held office for twenty years. For some twelve years of the
patriarchate of Gamaliel IV, Palestine was subject to Palmyra, a
city located on an oasis in the Syrian desert, known also by its
CHRISTIAN PALESTINE
Hebrew name of Tadmor and believed to have been founded by
King Solomon. In 260 Odenathus, prince of Palmyra, defeated
the Persians and the Romans allowed him to take possession of
Palestine. But twelve years later his widow, the celebrated Queen
Zenobia, incurred their wrath. She was defeated and dethroned,
and Palestine returned to the dominion of Rome.
Gamaliel IV was succeeded by his son Judah III, who was
patriarch from 275 to 320. It was in his time that the Roman im-
perial throne was seized by a general named Constantine, who was
destined to have a profound influence on the course of history in
general and on the fate of Palestine and the Jews in particular.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Christian Palestine
THE Christian communities throughout the empire, with
their clergy and laity, had, despite the persecutions visited
upon them by previous emperors and to a large degree
even because of those persecutions, become a power, and Con-
stantine, fighting for the imperial throne against formidable rivals,
took the shrewd course of enlisting those communities on his side.
After defeating one of his rivals in a great battle fought in 3 1 2
at Milvian Bridge near Rome, a victory which made him master
of the western part of the empire, Constantine issued an edict from
the city of Milan proclaiming equal toleration for all religions.
Thirteen years later, having in die meantime also defeated Licinius,
the ruler of the east, Constantine, seated on a throne of gold,
presided over a Christian Council at Nicaea in Asia Minor. The
leading clergy of the empire, numbering nearly 300, had gathered
to deal with certain dissensions which had risen up among them
and threatened to undermine the new faith upon which Constantine
relied to check the disintegration of his vast empire. The most
alarming issue concerned the question of the divinity of Jesus:
the followers of Athanasius of Alexandria insisted that the Nazarene
204 DISPERSION
was another "person" of the same godhead; the followers of Anus,
also of Alexandria, were equally adamant in their contention that
he was on a plane lower than God. The bishops wrangled and
even came to blows but in the end Athanasius triumphed. The
Council adopted the Nicene Creed requiring all Christians to be-
lieve that Jesus was "of the same substance as God," and a later
ecumenical or world council, held at Constantinople in 381, com-
pleted the Trinity by declaring still another "person/' the Holy
Ghost, as being "of the same substance." Constantine himself was
not baptized until shortly before his death in 357, but the year 325,
the year of the Council of Nicaea, may be taken as the date when
Christianity became the official religion of Rome.
It was only natural that Palestine should be an object of special
interest and veneration to Christians. The church at Jerusalem
became known as the mother church of Christendom; and soon
pilgrims began to stream toward Palestine from all parts of the
empire. Numerous spots that were associated, correctly or mis-
takenly, with the life and death of the Nazarene were proclaimed
holy places. The most famous of the early pilgrims was Helena,
the mother of Constantine, who claimed to have discovered the
very cross to which Jesus was nailed and the tomb or sepulcher
in which he was laid. On the site of the sepulcher the emperor
ordered the immediate erection of magnificent churches. The num-
ber of pilgrims continued to multiply as well as the holy places,
many of which were destined to become a source of violent con-
tention among different sects and to play an important role in
history.
2
THE edicts of Constantine extended toleration to Judaism
also, but the victory of Christianity added enormously to the power
of the clergy in Palestine and they lost no time in imposing upon
the Jews the same repressions of which they themselves had been
the victims. The Jews were forbidden to make converts and the
old law of Hadrian, which barred them from Jerusalem, was re-
vived. The persecutions became especially severe in the reign of
Constantine's son and successor, Constantius II.
CHRISTIAN PALESTINE 2<>5
In 35 1 the Jews of Palestine were goaded to rebellion, and a new
"Messiah," who called himself Natrona, and whom the Romans
called Patricius, arose in Galilee and defied the Roman legate
Ursicinus and his legions. The Romans, it appears, were preparing
to march against Neo-Persia and were no doubt imposing new tax
burdens on the Jews. Natrona and his followers were crushed. The
three principal centers of Jewish learning, Tiberias, Lydda and
Sepphoris, were destroyed. The Patriarchate fell into decline:
HUlel II, who succeeded Judah III in 320 and held office until 365,
was the last of the patriarchs to exercise real authority.
Toward the end of HilleFs incumbency, between 361 and 363,
the Jews of Palestine enjoyed a breathing spell under the liberal
and brilliant emperor Julian, whom historians have stigmatized as
Julian the Apostate. He restored the ancient Roman religion as the
religion of the state and treated the Jews with singular liberality,
even promising to let them rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple.
The promise, which Julian knew would rally the Jews to his sup-
port, was announced on the eve of a campaign against the Neo-
Persian monarch Shapur II. At the emperor's expense, material and
workmen were assembled at Jerusalem, but fires, which the Chris-
tian chroniclers ascribe to divine intervention, broke out in the
ruins and the work was suspended. Julian met his death in the
campaign against Neo-Persia. He was slain by an arrow, shot, it is
said, by one of his own archers, a Christian.
The principle of religious toleration, which the Roman em-
perors who followed Julian adopted as their policy, was of little
benefit to the Jews of Palestine, who found themselves more and
more at the mercy of the clergy. Palestine, in fact, became a Chris-
tian country. Many of the pilgrims came to stay and churches,
chapels, and monasteries rose up everywhere, especially on the
"holy places," whose number continued to grow. The restrictions
against the Jews multiplied: they were barred from public office;
they were prohibited from owning Christian slaves; they were for-
bidden to build new synagogues. Liberal emperors like Theodosius
the Great (379-395), endeavored to protect their Jewish* subjects,
but the local officials found it more profitable to cultivate the
good will of the clergy. The latter were determined to convert
2O6 DISPERSION
the Jews, while the Christian merchants, for more practical reasons,
favored the suppression of their Jewish competitors.
3
THE Patriarchate continued for sixty years after Hillel II,
but while the office still possessed a certain prestige, its real power
was gone. Three patriarchs, all in the direct line of descent, came
after Hillel II: Gamaliel V (365-385), Judah IV (385-400), and
Gamaliel VI (400-425). The latter died without an heir, and
Emperor Theodosius II (408-450), whose reign was marked by
repressive laws against the Jews, abolished the patriarchate alto-
gether. Thus came to an end the exalted office which, since the
year of disaster 70 C.E., served as a unifying and directing force
for the Jews of Palestine and every other land.
4
THE Roman Empire had, in the meantime, undergone far-
reaching changes. The vast structure had begun to disintegrate.
From north and east, hordes of barbarians were beating against
its frontiers and breaking through them, and a deep fissure ap-
peared along a line between Italy and Greece, between the western
provinces that spoke Latin and the eastern that spoke Greek. Con-
stantine the Great had moved his capital from Italy to a new
one in the east, on the site of the old Greek town of Byzantium,
which he renamed Constantinople. Theodosius the Great, reigning
in Constantinople, had been the last emperor to hold sway over
east and west: on his death in 395, the west went to his son
Honorious and the east to his son Arcadius. The split became
permanent, and the Jews of Palestine, as well as those of Asia
Minor, Syria, and Egypt, became subjects of the Byzantine em-
perors.
In the western empire the real rulers were now the barbarians
from the north who, after breaking through the frontiers, had
compelled the emperors to let them remain. In 410, only fifteen
years after the death of Theodosius the Great, one of the barbarian
leaders, Alaric the Goth, captured and sacked the city of Rome.
Fifteen years later, the Vandals seized the south of Spain; they
CHRISTIAN PALESTINE 2O7
pushed across into North Africa whence they made incursions into
Sicily and the Italian mainland. In 455 they, too, captured and
plundered the capital of the west and, included in the loot they
carried off, were the golden candlesticks and other spoils of the
Temple which, after the conquest of Judea, had been borne in
triumph through the streets of Rome. In 476, the last emperor of
the west whose name, as if in mockery, was Augustulus, "little
Augustus," was murdered by the barbarians and one of their own
leaders mounted the throne of Rome.
The eastern empire, with many changes of fortune and bound-
aries, lasted nearly a thousand years longer: it was not until 1453
that its capital fell to the conquering Turks. After 425, when
Theodosius II extinguished the Patriarchate, Palestine, however,
continued under Byzantine sway for only two centuries: in 636,
as we shall see, the land was seized by a new power that burst upon
the arena of history out of the deserts of Arabia.
We know little of what befell the Jews of Palestine during those
two centuries. All that is certain is that their imperial masters
were dominated by the church and lent themselves, willingly or
unwillingly, to the policy of the clergy, aimed at the conversion
or suppression of non-Christians throughout the empire.
The wrath of the clergy burned more fiercely against the Jews
than against other nonconformists: it was intolerable to them that
the founder's own people should reject the new faith. The persecu-
tions extended, of course, to Jewish communities outside of Pal-
estine to Antioch, Alexandria, and other cities. In 415 the Jews
of Alexandria were plundered and driven out of die city after
bloody riots instigated against them by the bishop Cyril.
In Palestine, the victims of this policy were the Samaritans as
well as the Jews. Several rimes the Samaritans rebelled against their
oppressors, wreaking bloody vengeance on the Christians, and for
a rime defying the emperors' Jegions. But the uprising brought
almost total annihilation upon them. Justinian (5*7~5 6 5) was cs P e "
cially merciless. He slew large numbers of them and reduced the
survivors to the condition of pariahs.
Justinian distinguished himself by his hostility against the Jews
also. The oppressive laws of Theodosius II wane enforced and
2O8 DISPERSION
extended. The Jews were barred from all positions of honor except
one, the magisterial post of decurion which, however, imposed
heavy burdens on its holders. The testimony of Jews as witnesses
against Christians was declared invalid, and no Jew could set foot
in Jerusalem. Spurred on by the bishops and abbots, who were now
the real rulers of Palestine, Justinian invaded also the religious
practices of the Jews, with which the previous emperors had not
interfered. He denied them the right to celebrate their Passover
before the Christians celebrated Easter, and even went so far as to
require Jewish congregations to listen to a Greek translation of
the Bible abounding in Christian interpretations. The reading of
Isaiah, the great consoler and herald of better days, was altogether
forbidden.
The bitterness of the Jews against their Christian oppressors was
so great that in 556 a violent clash occurred in the city of Caesarea.
It was at the time of the chariot races, often the occasion of racial
and religious conflicts in that and other cities. Justinian's governor
Stephanus, together with many other Christians, fell victim to the
fury of the oppressed. The outbreak was put down and cruel
penalties were imposed on the rebels, but Justinian found it neces-
sary to increase his garrison in Palestine.
5
THE immediate successors of Justinian left the Jews of
Palestine more or less at peace, and there is reason to believe that
the half -century that followed saw a substantial increase in their
numbers and strength. For the year 614 saw them involved in a
remarkable movement aiming at nothing less than the liberation of
the land from Christian rule and the restoration of the Jewish
Commonwealth. Again war had broken out between the Byzantine
Empire and Neo-Persia, and in 614 the Persians invaded Palestine.
Led by Benjamin of Tiberias, the Jews rallied to the standard of
the Persian ruler Chosru II, from whom, it appears, they obtained
assurances for the restoration of their national life. The meager
reports that are available suggest a movement of considerable mag-
nitude. Jewish contingents came flocking from Tiberias, Nazareth,
and other cities of Galilee and, later* from the cities of the south
CHRISTIAN PALESTINE 2O<)
also. One of the incidents of the movement was an attempt by
a force of 20,000 Jews to seize the city of Tyre.
In the summer of 614 the Jews and Persians stormed Jerusalem
and 90,000 Christians are reported to have been massacred by
the victors. The patriarch of the Christians, together with the
"true cross," was carried off by the Persians to Ctesiphon, their
capital. Churches and monasteries throughout the country went
up in flames. The pent-up wrath of centuries of oppression and
humiliation broke loose, and Christian rule in Palestine seemed
to be definitely ended.
In the fourteen years during which the Persians were masters of
the country, however, the Jews had full opportunity to become
disillusioned with them. The Persians not only failed to carry
out their promises but imposed heavy burdens upon them. In
the meantime, Heraclius, the Byzantine emperor, took vigorous
measures to expel the invaders from his realms. In turn, he en-
tered into an agreement with the Jews, promising them amnesty for
renewed loyalty and assistance.
After a long struggle Heraclius was successful. In 627 he de-
feated the Persians near Nineveh and was marching to Ctesiphon
when the Persian monarch was murdered by his own son, who
hastened to make peace with the Romans. In 628 the Persians
evacuated Palestine, and the following year Heraclius carried the
"true cross" on his own shoulders back into Jerusalem.
Palestine again belonged to the Christians, who in their turn be-
trayed the Jews. The monks and priests demanded their total
extermination; when Heraclius displayed qualms of conscience, the
ecclesiastics, headed by the Patriarch Sophronius, quieted the
scruples of the pious emperor by taking full responsibility for the
breach of faith. Moreover, they declared a week of fasting as an
anticipatory atonement. Thereupon Heraclius proceeded to carry
out their wishes. The Jews were hunted down and massacred.
The survivors were those who found refuge in the caves of the
mountains or escaped into Babylonia, Egypt, and Arabia.
But the resumption of Christian rule over Palestine was des-
tined to be brief. For a new power came sweeping up from
Arabia, bringing a new era in the history of Palestine and of the
Jewish people in that land and in many other lands.
2 I O DISPERSION
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Talmud
WHILE the remnant in the homeland was thus spending
itself in the unequal struggle against Roman oppres-
sors and Christian persecutors, a Jewish community
grew big and strong in the Tigris-Euphrates valley where, some
twenty-five centuries earlier, the Jewish people was born. From
the loins of the exiles who had stayed on in Babylonia sprang a
proud center of creative life. It flourished for fifteen hundred
years and, except for the motherland itself, left the deepest mark
on the generations that followed. And again it was a Book, this
time the Talmud, whence came the power and the glory.
During the six centuries of the Second Commonwealth and the
generations of spiritual ingathering that produced the Mishnah,
the Babylonian community was content to be a mere satellite of
Palestine. It is only in the third century C.E., when the Parthian
monarchs known as the Arsacids still reigned over the lands east
of the Euphrates, that we become aware of a vigorous, self-
contained, and populous Jewish society, resting on strong eco-
nomic foundations, enjoying a large measure of political auton-
omy, and bearing rich fruit of mind and spirit. In the year 226
the Hellenistic Arsacids were overthrown by the Sassanids, bet-
ter known as the Neo-Persians, zealous fire-worshippers and
fanatically devoted to the faith of Zoroaster. Although the Jews,
like the Christians and other nonconformists, suffered persecution
at their hands, the community continued to flourish so deeply
was it rooted in the soil of the country and in its own institutions.
The region inhabited by the Jews of Babylonia, a region so
definitely dominated by them that it came to be called the "Land
of Israel," lay in the central portion of the great plain between
the two rivers. The principal cities of the district were Nehardea,
Pumbeditha, and Sura along the Euphrates, and Mahoza, not far
THE TALMUD 211
from Ctesiphon, the capital on the Tigris. These were practically
Jewish cities, inhabited by Jewish merchants and industrialists,
craftsmen and laborers. Outside the cities, on a soil crisscrossed by
canals and irrigation ditches, dwelt Jewish cattlemen and farmers
whose toil and skill transformed the rainless plain into a fruitful
garden. This region, with a population believed to have numbered
in the millions, was practically self-governing. Its recognized
political head bore the title of Resh-Galutha or Exilarch, meaning
"Prince of the Captivity." The Prince, who inherited his office
and claimed descent from the royal line of David, was invested by
the sovereigns with executive, judicial, and fiscal powers. He ap-
pointed judges, police officials, inspectors of canals, controllers of
weights and measure, and other officers. He maintained a body
of retainers and cultivated the pomp of a court and palace. His
power was great and he sometimes abused it.
2
FOR centuries the wealth, freedom, and learning of the
Babylonian community made it more important than Palestine, but
the love of the exiles for such they deemed themselves for the
motherland never wavered. As long as the Temple stood in Zion,
the flow of their gifts for the national shrine continued: from
Nehardea, their leading city, the treasure was taken by armed
caravan to Jerusalem. The inner life of the community was gov-
erned by Torah and Mishnah; its local institutions for worship,
education, and charity were modeled after those in Palestine. The
prayers and scriptural readings in the synagogues were much
the same as in the homeland; the judges sat in the gates of the
city; and the voices of teachers and pupils resounded in the houses
of study.
The hardships and foibles that go with human life were, of
course, not absent: in the pages of the Talmud they are clearly
reflected. Farming by irrigation, with canals and ditches often
overflowing, was arduous toil. The small traders and peddlers, the
porters, blacksmiths, tanners, and other artisans worked hard for
a bare living and envied the industrial and commercial magnates
who were served by slaves and lived in luxury. But pride of lineage
was common to all of them, and all were proud of the Exilarch,
THE DIASPORA (N THE EAST
/. A R.A.B.I A
' Khoibor . " t * *'* I
.*.**.
o*: : N'EJ D." '. *
ffemnanf" in I j
PALEiSTINE M
THE TALMUD 21$
who bore himself like a monarch. There were other compensa-
tions, and on the whole life was pleasant. There were the Sabbaths
and the festivals; weddings were celebrated with lighted processions
and music; the women adorned themselves with finery and cos-
metics. Monogamy was the rule and the wife was mistress of the
home.
Such were the external aspects of life in the Babylonian commu-
nity. Its inner life is reflected first and foremost in the crowning
achievement of Babylonian Jewry, the Talmud. It is also reflected
in certain prayers that had their origin in Babylonia and that are
still part of the liturgy in synagogues throughout the world.
Among these prayers, the Kaddish and Alemi are the most im-
portant. The first is now chanted in memory of the dead; in content
however, the Kaddish is a hymn of glorification and a prayer for
the advent of the messianic era. The Alertu^ which has suffered
calumny and persecution, is an expression of hope for the redemp-
tion of mankind, couched in language of incomparable grandeur.
Composed originally for the services of the New Year, it is now
recited by the Orthodox thrice daily, at the conclusion of the
morning, afternoon, and evening prayers. The second paragraph of
the Alenu may be set down as one of the great spiritual achieve-
ments of Babylonian Jewry:
Therefore do we hope in thee, O Lord our God, that we
may speedily behold the glory of Thy strength, when Thou
wilt remove abominations from the earth, and the idols will
be utterly destroyed; when the world will be made perfect
under the kingdom of the Almighty, and all children of flesh
will call upon Thy name, and all the wicked of the earth will
be turned unto Thee. Then will all the inhabitants of the
world acknowledge and perceive that unto Thee must bend
every knee and swear every tongue. Before Thee, O Lord our
God, will they bow and prostrate themselves, and give honor
to Thy glorious name; and they will all accept the yoke of Thy
kingdom, and Thou wilt reign over them speedily and forever.
For Thine is the kingdom, and in all eternity Thou wilt reign
in glory, as is written in Thy Torah: "The Lord shall reign
forever and ever." And it is also said: "And the Lord shall be
214 DISPERSION
King over all the earth; on that day the Lord shall be One and
His name be One/'
But the most characteristic and revealing of the prayers is the
Yekum Purkan ("May salvation come") which is still chanted on
Sabbath immediately after the scriptural reading. The prayer is in
the stately Aramaic vernacular and it glows with the local color of
the remote life in which it originated. Yekum Purkan is a prayer
for "the teachers and the rabbis, a holy company, whether in the
Land of Israel or in Babylonia," for the "heads of the student
assemblies, the Exilarchs, and the masters of the academies, and the
judges in the gates, and all the disciples and the disciples of their
disciples, and all who engage in the study of Torah." For them, the
congregations pray not only for "grace and loving kindness" and
the material things of life, but also for the "higher enlightenment."
3
FOR Torah and piety were the only attainments that could
vie with the power of the Exilarch. Great academies of learning
rose up in Babylonia where the lore of the tcmnaim was taught and
refined and ripened by thousands of teachers and students, and the
masters of these schools became the spiritual heads of the com-
munity. Beginning with the Exilarch Mar-Huna, a contemporary
of the compiler of the Mishnah, the line of the Exilarchs proceeds
without a break for nearly a thousand years; but more important
than these secular dignitaries were the heads of the academies
where, on the foundations of the Mishnah, rose up the imposing
edifice of the Talmud.
Only the master builders of the Talmud can be admitted into this
brief narrative. Two of the early ones who left a lasting mark on
the life and lore of their people and whose names have been like
magic in the ears of the generations that followed, were friends and
fellow-students in the school of Judah I in Galilee. They were Abba
and Samuel. The first was nicknamed "Arika" (the tall). "I can
see further than most men," he jested about his height; but to his
colleagues and students the saying was no jest. For Abba is better
known by the name of Rab, the word meaning master or teacher
THE TALMUD 21$
and the name signifying that Abba was the teacher. Some years
after his return from Palestine, Rab was asked to become head of
the academy at Nehardea, then the leading city of the "Land of
Israel." But he felt that Samuel was more entitled to the post and
declined in his favor. His modesty, however, did not prevent Rab
from being regarded by his contemporaries as the leading scholar
of his age and by later generations as the founder of Babylonian
learning.
This learning was no diversion from the stream of tradition, al-
though the special conditions of the land and the times are reflected
in it. In the broad stream the two currents, Halachah and Hag-
gadah, law and legend, continue to flow together. The age of the
tannaim, makers of the Mishnah, was over. Now came the genera-
tions of amoraim who interpreted and expanded the Mishnah.
The Exilarch appointed Abba Arika inspector of markets, and
as the sage traveled through the land he noted with sorrow the
ignorance that prevailed among his people as well as the laxity in
religious observance. Nehardea in the north had its academy but
there was none in the south, and Abba proceeded to supply the
lack: he founded a school at Sura and became its head. Before long
thousands of students, including farmers, artisans, and merchants
who gathered for instruction in the early morning or late at night,
came to listen to the teachers. For just as in Palestine, learning was
an obligation or privilege that belonged alike to the rich and the
poor, the great and the lowly. For nearly thirty years Rab was
the master of Sura, and the school he founded flourished for eight
centuries. When Rab died in 247, he was so deeply mourned by his
people that for a whole year the myrtle and palm branches were
not displayed at weddings.
During all these years Samuel was the great cnnora of Nehardea,
and when the master of Sura died the mantle of spiritual leadership
fell upon his shoulders. Samuel was a man of balanced intellect and
broad learning which he knew how to put to practical use. His
knowledge of astronomy enabled him to devise a fixed calendar;
an eye salve of his invention made him famous as a physician; he
served with distinction as a jurist; and he displayed skill and tact
in handling men. To guide his people in their relations with die
2l6 DISPERSION
sovereign, Samuel reduced to a legal formula the exhortation "to
seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried
away captive and pray unto the Lord for it," which the prophet
Jeremiah had addressed to the exiles in Babylonia seven centuries
earlier. Samuel's formula, dina de-malchuta dina (the law of the
government is binding law), applied to all laws that did no vio-
lence to religious convictions, and the rule has been honored and
observed by Jews in all the lands of their dispersion.
4
IN THE meantime the liberal Parthian monarch Artaban IV,
last in a line that had reigned for nearly four centuries, was over-
thrown by the bigoted Neo-Persian Ardashir I (226-241). Spurred
by the fire-worshipping Magi, or priests of Zoroaster, the new
emperor moved to suppress all the other faiths in his realms. The
Jews were deprived of important civil rights; synagogues were
burnt down; restrictions were imposed on the ritual slaughter of
animals for food and the use of fire and light. One of the strangest
beliefs of the Magi concerned the disposal of the dead: the corpse,
they believed, would desecrate the soil, so they left their dead to
be devoured by beasts and birds of prey. The Jews were forbidden
to bury their dead and Jewish corpses were even dug up to be
disposed of after the manner of the Magi.
But as time went on the fanatical zeal of the Neo-Persians
abated: Samuel even succeeded in winning the friendship of Arda-
shir's son and successor, Shapur I (241-272). As a result of minor
concessions made by the Jews and the financial and military help
they gave the monarchs in their wars, the persecutions were re-
laxed. Yet from time to time, during the four centuries of Neo-
Persian domination, new persecutors arose, some of them even
more ruthless than Ardashir I.
The wars the Neo-Persians fought were chiefly against Rome.
Shapur conquered Syria and in 260 defeated the Roman emperor
Valerian, whom he took prisoner. Shortly afterwards, however,
the desert freebooter Odenathus, whose native city was Palmyra or
Tadmor, defeated the Persians and, as we have already noted, set
up a short-lived kingdom which included Palestine, and on which
his wife, the famous queen Zenobia who reigned after him, shed
THE TALMUD 217
a legendary luster. Odenathus, whom the Jews of Babylonia
fiercely resisted, destroyed the city of Nehardea with its famous
seat of learning. Samuel was spared the sorrow of this tragedy: he
died in 254, five years before it occurred. Eventually the academy
of Nehardea was transferred to Mahoza, but thereafter the princi-
pal centers of learning were the school founded by Rab in Sura
and another that arose in the city of Pumbeditha.
s
TO THE galaxy of the amordm whose labors produced the
Talmud, all three schools contributed stars of the first magnitude
of whom only the most brilliant can here be noted. In Pumbeditha,
early in the fourth century, there was the amazing "mover of
mountains," Rabbah son of Nahmani (died 330), who attracted so
many students that the government ended his career to prevent
a slump in production and taxes. Then came Rabbah's nephew
Abaye, whose name is among those most often repeated wherever
the wistful chant of the Talmud is heard. A simple and kindly
soul, Abaye heeded the wholesome advice of the ttmnaim, farming
his own little plot for a living, and spending his devotion on his
many disciples.
Among the sages of Mahoza, the most illustrious was Raba (died
352). When in 338 Abaye died, his students flocked to Mahoza to
sit at Raba's feet. Raba was no recluse in the ivory tower of
Halachah and Haggadah, although he was master of both. He was
also a mystic and moralist and he brought the wisdom of law and
legend down to the people, striving to improve their manners and
morals and lead them to the study of Torah. He had great influence
in the court of Shapur II (310-379); the king's mother was his
friend, and he served his people well by mitigating the persecu-
tions of her bigoted son. Raba's influence, in fact, was greater than
that of the Exilarch.
The next figure of splendor in the line of amorcmn was Ashi,
who for more than fifty years (375-427) was master of the academy
at Sura. Ashi's learning, wealth, and renown made Sura the center
of the "Land of Israel" in Babylonia, a position it continued to
hold for several centuries.
In the meantime the law and lore accumulated by the amorarm,
2 1 8 DISPERSION
to which was given the general name of Talmud or Gemara,* had
grown to .vast proportions, and it was still stored in the incredible
memories of the sages. But even they were finding it difficult to
retain: mnemonic devices were not sufficient. Ashi had recourse
to the more effective method of organization. He did for Talmud
what Akiba and Meir had done for Mishnah: he arranged the vast
body of argument, opinion, and decision, as well as the tales and
homilies of the Haggadah, into a definite system without writing it
down: only the sacred scriptures, it was felt, should be in writing.
Legend has it that the work, in which Ashi was assisted by many
disciples, took thirty years, and thirty years more were spent in
going over and confirming it.
Ashi died in 427. His son Mar bar Ashi continued the work of
compilation, adding his father's contributions to the system of
Talmud. About this rime, however, the Babylonian community fell
on evil days. First the Emperor Jazdejerd II (438-457), then his son
Firuz (457-484) bore down hard upon their Jewish subjects. The
first forbade them to observe the Sabbath and festivals; the sec-
ond, who earned the title of "Firuz the Wicked," had many of
them slain, took their children away to be brought up by the
Magians, and imposed harsh restrictions on the academies. Among
the victims of his executioners was the Exilarch Huna-Mari. It was
during these persecutions that a group of Jews fled from Persia and
settled in India.
What lay in store for the proud Babylonian community in the
near or more distant future? The sages had many forebodings:
the schools might be closed and the line of amorrim extinguished.
Rabina (474-499), the master of Sura, and Jose, the head of the
academy at Pumbeditha, took the only measure open to them to
guard against such calamities: they completed the compilation of
Ashi and put it into writing. Thus the Talmud of Babylonia, which
had been growing for several centuries and was nurtured by a
thousand sages, the book that gave content to the life of the Jewish
people in the centuries that followed, received its final foimt
The word means "completion" the completion, that is, of the Mishnah.
f There are, in fact, two Talmud*. Besides the Babylonian, there is the Palestinian
or Jerusalem Talmud, which was completed half a century earlier, but foiled to
achieve the authority of the first.
THE TALMUD 2ig
OF THE books that have influenced the course of humanity,
the most important is no doubt the Bible: it has swayed the mind
and spirit of a larger portion of mankind than any other work.
Since the same Book is the ultimate source from which the Talmud
derives its authority, the Bible has remained supreme, but the day-
to-day life of the Jewish people in the scattered communities of
the Diaspora has been dominated by the Talmud.
Structurally, as we have seen, the Talmud is an extension of the
Mishnah. Passage after passage of the Mishnah is quoted and fol-
lowed by questions, answers, and rejoinders, opinions, obiter dicta,
and decisions. The language of the Gemara, or Talmud proper as
distinguished from Mishnah, is principally Aramaic, the style is
compact and terse, the transitions sudden and swift. In the midst
of a legal argument that calls for the keenest concentration, a flash
of poetic fancy breaks through the intricate web, a glow of pious
fervor, a homily or proverb, a quaint tale or parable. Not every
question is answered, not every doubt resolved. The sages joust
and wrestle through the pages, their polemics ring like the swords
of fencers. The student is captivated and charmed; the conclusion
of every argument, the solution of every problem, is an arrival
and a triumph.
Thus the Talmud is a unique and altogether remarkable book;
a true understanding of it is almost inaccessible to minds operating
with the usual conceptions concerning books. The familiar con-
notations that go with the word "literature" are foreign to it. To
its devotees the study of the Talmud is an act of worship: the
ruling quality of the Book is holiness, and from this quality stems
the authority it has exercised in all spheres of life. Primarily a code
of laws to govern man's relations to God and to his fellows, the
Talmud at the same time ministers to his intellectual and emotional
needs. Its dialectics have produced keen and athletic minds; its
exuberant flights into wisdom and fancy provide a feast for the
imagination. From the sorrows and perils that surrounded them,
men could retire to it as to an ideal and enchanted world.
The Talmud has had a checkered career: enemies of the Jews
have distorted and slandered it, on occasion made bonfires of it.
22O DISPERSION
Others have judged it by the criteria of another age and another
intellectual climate. Among its own people, as we shall see, it pro-
voked before long a schismatic revolt, while in modern times it
has been subjected to harsh judgment by those who rejected its
authority in the name of reform and "enlightenment." For the
Talmud is not a mere book; it is a distinct world and a unique way
of life and was bound to have its critics and insurgents, its foes and
rivals. But it commanded the fervent devotion of scores of genera-
tions and still commands it today,
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The Rise of Islam
FOR nearly a century and a half longer, and through varying
fortunes, the Jews of Babylonia lived on under Neo-Persian
monarchs. There were periods of persecution when the
academies, where the heart of the community was located, re-
mained closed. But the Talmud, towards which the labor of the
schools had converged, was completed; the sages who followed,
known as saboraim, or explicators, were content to review and
clarify the opinions of their revered predecessors. In the tribula-
tions that were only too often inflicted upon them, the people
rallied to the Talmud for resolution and solace.
The reign of Kovad I (488-531) was particularly grievous for
the Jews of Babylonia. The monarch came under the influence of
a fanatical reformer who persuaded his master that the triumph
of light over darkness was being thwarted by the two dominant
human passions: greed for possessions and sexual lust. Thereupon
Kovad issued a decree ordering that property and women should,
throughout his realm, be held in common. At least half of the
startling innovation struck at a basic tenet of the Jewish faith: the
sanctity of the marriage tie. Led by their youthful Exilarch, Mar-
Zutrah, the Jews rose up in revolt. For nearly seven years the
Exilarch maintained the independence of Jewish Babylonia, with
THE RISE OF ISLAM 221
Mahoza as its capital. In the end Mar-Zutrah's diminutive army
was overcome, he himself executed, and an amazing episode in the
history of Babylonian Jewry came to an end.
Kovad's successor, Chosru I (531-579) abolished the fantastic
reforms that were to have ushered in the millennium. Chosru was a
vigorous and enlightened monarch: he extended his empire to the
east and as far south as Yemen in Arabia. He was nearly always at
war with Justinian, the Christian Byzantine emperor, and gave
refuge to the Greek philosophers whom Justinian persecuted.
Chosru put an end to the persecutions against the Jews, and the
Talmudic academies reopened. Then came the weak and dissolute
Ormuz IV (579-590) who permitted the Magian priests to vent
their animosity on Christians and Jews alike. The academies were
closed again and the teachers had to flee. It was a turbulent period
in the history of Neo-Persia. The king's brilliant general Bahram
overthrew his degenerate master and seized the throne. But Bahram
suffered defeat at the hands of the Byzantine emperor, and the
respite the Jews enjoyed came to a swift and tragic end: the
Romans seized Mahoza and slew most of its Jewish inhabitants.
It was during the reign of the next monarch, Chosru II (590-
628), that the Persians invaded Palestine and, as we have seen,
brought the persecuted Jews of the homeland a brief hope of de-
liverance and freedom. In Babylonia the persecutions again subsided
and the academies reopened and flourished. It was about this time
that the heads of the academies assumed the tide Goon or "Ex-
cellency."
Chosru II was murdered by his own son, and in the decade that
followed ten monarchs succeeded each other on the tottering
throne of Neo-Persia. The wars between the Neo-Persian and
Byzantine empires, which had been going on for nearly two cen-
turies, had sapped the strength of both contestants. The wretched
masses of both empires felt no loyalty to their rulers, no attachment
to the state. Both were now ripe for the sword of a new conqueror
who burst upon them out of the wastes and oases of Arabia, im-
posing a new sovereignty upon the lands of western Asia, shattering
the power of Magian priest and Christian prelate alike, and bringing
new turns of fortune to the scattered communities of the Jewish
people.
222 DISPERSION
2,
rr WAS, to begin with, a passionate resolve to convert man-
kind to a new faith that set the Arabs on their spectacular career
of conquest. But added to missionary zeal was the immemorial drive
of the desert which again sent its lean and hungry children swarm-
ing across the frontiers of more favored lands. And both impulses
were strangely commingled in the enigmatic personality of
Mohammed, founder of the new faith and first leader of the Arabs
in the battle for Allah and for the green lands beyond the deserts.
It was about 610, when he was already forty years old and a
prosperous citizen of his native Mecca, that Mohammed, who
belonged to the distinguished Koreish family, began to preach the
new faith. The ideas that had come to a ferment in his mind, giving
rise to that hectic book called the Koran and the simple and austere
faith called Islam, were undoubtedly of Jewish origin. Earlier
in his life, when he was a camel driver in the caravans that plodded
from Yemen to Medina and up farther into Syria, he had come
into contact with Jews whose communities lay along the route.
"There is no God save Allah!" is only a paraphrase of the Hebrew
Shema: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One!"
Nor when he added "and Mohammed is his prophet," did it mean
that he rejected the teachers and prophets of Israel. On the con-
trary, Mohammed insisted on his descent through Ishmael from
Abraham, whom he also regarded as a prophet of Allah, and he
acknowledged the other prophets of Israel, among whom he in-
cluded Jesus of Nazareth. Early in his apostolic career he even
adopted some of the practices of Judaism: he appointed the Day
of Atonement as a fast day and directed his adherents to turn
their faces toward Jerusalem when they prayed. Of all the prophets,
Mohammed was, of course, the crown and culmination. To him
Allah, through the angel Gabriel, had vouchsafed His final revela-
tion.
That revelation, both as theology and ethics, was an enormous
advance over the primitive idol worship that flourished in Arabia.
Of this coarse worship Mecca had become the center and shrine.
Thither from near and far came pilgrims to worship in an ancient
temple that housed the tribal deities, some three hundred in num-
THE RISE OF ISLAM 22$
her, and to kiss the Kaaba, a sacred meteorite stone and the only
object of veneration the tribes had in common. The town, lying
on the principal caravan route, developed also into a great
trading center, and from the pilgrims and traders Mecca derived
its prosperity. Naturally, the worthies of the place frowned upon
Mohammed and his doctrine of a single deity which threatened
to undermine the prestige of their temple and its revenues.
For ten years the prophet's progress was desperately slow, his
converts forming but a small circle, nearly all of them his own rela-
tives. Mohammed decided to quit Mecca and go north to the rival
city of Yathrib, later called Medina, the city of the prophet, where
the prospects for the new faith appeared much brighter and where
most of his converts had already established themselves. Moham-
med's journey became a flight: the Meccans had become aware
of his plans and early one morning a group representing the
leading families broke into his home with the object of slaying
him, notwithstanding the prohibition against the shedding of blood
within the bounds of the sacred city. But the "committee" found
his adopted son Ali in the prophet's bed. He himself, with his
faithful friend Abu Bekr, was already on his way by circuitous
trails to Medina where, after eluding a determined pursuit, he
finally arrived and was warmly welcomed. It was the year 622,
the year of the Hegira or flight, which became Year One of the
Mohammedan calendar.
3
THE welcome Mohammed found in Medina can only be
explained by the large number of Jews who inhabited that city
and by the influence of Judaism in predisposing its Arab residents
to accept the basic doctrine of the new faith. Medina, in fact, is
believed to have been founded by Jews, who in the course of
centuries had established themselves also in many other parts of
the western fringe of the peninsula from Hedjaz in the north to
Yemen in the south. They trickled down from the motherland as
traders, soldiers of fortune, and fugitives, and there must have been
a particularly large influx of refugees after the Roman conquest
in 70 C.E., five hundred years before Mohammed was born. Similar-
ity of race and language simplified the process of adjustment, and
224 DISPERSION
although the religious difference brought occasional conflict and
persecution, Jewish religious ideas made important penetrations
among the Arabs. There is even a recorded instance of a mass
conversion of Arabs to Judaism. It took place about the year 500 in
the kingdom of Yemen, the region known as Arabia Felix, "Arabia
the Happy," at the southwestern rip of the peninsula opposite
Abyssinia. Dhu Nawas Masrug, King of Yemen, embraced the
Jewish faith, changed his name to Joseph, and his subjects fol-
lowed him into the new fold. Not long afterwards, however, the
Jewish kingdom was invaded and conquered by the Christian
rulers of Abyssinia, aided by the Byzantine emperor.
The most important Jewish settlements, however, were located
in the Hedjaz around Medina and farther north in the region of
Khaibar. Although in language, dress, and general mode of life
they were indistinguishable from their neighbors, the Jews were
proudly attached to their faith. In Medina they maintained a school
for the study of the Bible, and the degree of literacy among them
must have been comparatively high, for the Arabs, among whom
they won many converts, called them "the People of the Book."
The Jews of the Hedjaz were farmers, fruit-growers and traders,
and many of them were artisans renowned for their skill as jewelers
and armorers. Like the Arabs, the Jews became divided into tribes
of which the Banu* Kainuka, the Banu Nadhir and the Banu
Kuraiza were the most prominent; the last two claimed descent
from the priestly tribe of Levi. The tribes erected strongholds in
their settlements for defense against marauding Bedouins, nor did
they differ from the Arabs in their contentiousness and zest for
combat. Sometimes, in alliance with Arab tribes, they even fought
each other. But when a Jewish prisoner was in danger of being
sold into slavery, even his Jewish enemies came forward to ransom
him. Every other consideration was put aside in face of the duty of
pidyon shevityim, the redemption of the captives of their faith,
which that faith laid upon them.
4
THE fugitive prophet, who had so narrowly escaped to
Medina with his life, based the hope of repairing his fortunes in
* Equivalent of the Hebrew B'nai, "Sons of."
THE RISE OF ISLAM 225
that city largely upon the Jews. They, he was sure, would be
among the first to acknowledge his mission and accept the new
faith, which he called Islam or "submission to God." Did he not
come to them in the name of the One God, the God of Abraham
and Moses and Isaiah? Did he not pray with his face turned toward
Jerusalem the Holy? And were they not waiting and hoping for
the advent of the last great prophet, the Messiah? "O children of
Israel," he pleads in the second Sura, or chapter, of the Koran,
"Remember my favor wherewith I have favored you; and per-
form your covenant with me, and I will perform my covenant with
you; and revere me: and believe in the revelation which I have
set down, confirming that which is with you."
It was not long, however, before Mohammed realized that the
Jews would not follow him. A few there were who did embrace
the new faith of Islam, but the majority, including the leading
men of the Jewish tribes, looked askance at the prophet and his
pretensions. Some of them even treated his claims with levity. The
unity of God was a doctrine thoy did not need to be taught by
him; rather it was he who had learned it from them; and as for
his claims to messianic ordination, they found his manner of life,
particularly his eagerness to add to his worldly possessions and to
his harem, incompatible with their conception of the redeemer.
The prophet soon realized that the Jews would impede rather
than promote his progress. He resolved to destroy them and in
the seven years of his sojourn in Medina, Mohammed waged im-
placable war on them. During the same period the Meccans waged
war on him, sending one expedition after another against the
prophet who menaced their prestige and prosperity. "War is
enjoined you against the infidels," Mohammed commanded his
followers. He defeated the Meccans in 624 and followed up his vic-
tory by besieging the stronghold of the Banu Kainuka after they
defied his summons to embrace the new faith. The Jewish tribes-
men, unaided by their Arab neighbors with whom they had a
treaty of alliance, were compelled to capitulate. They were exiled
and migrated to Palestine, settling east of the Jordan.
A year later came the turn of the Banu Nadhir. Mohammed, who
had now suffered a reverse at the hands of the Meccans, was in-
formed by the angel Gabriel that the Jews had plotted to slay him.
226 DISPERSION
He invested their fortress and, in violation of die desert code of
warfare, he cut down their date palms, a shocking procedure for
which he required and obtained a special revelation. "What palm
trees ye cut down or left standing on their roots," he tells his faith-
ful, in the Sura called "The Emigration," "we so cut down or left
by the will of God; and that he might disgrace the wicked doers."
The plight of the Banu Nadhir, deprived of their principal source
of food, became desperate; in vain they pleaded with their Arab
allies and the Banu Kuraiza to bring them help* They were con-
quered and exiled. They proceeded north to the Jewish commu-
nities in Khaibar, and like the Banu Kainuka, eventually found new
homes east of the Jordan.
In 627 the Meccans, in confederation with other foes of Moham-
med, failed ignominiously in an effort to capture Medina and
crush the prophet and his new faith, an effort instigated by tribes-
men of the Banu Nadhir. Flushed with victory, Mohammed turned
on the Banu Kuraiza, accusing them of having aided his enemies.
After a valiant defense, the Jewish tribe was starved into surrender
and seven hundred of the men were massacred. The women and
children were sold into slavery, but not before the prophet had
selected one of the widows for his harem.
The proud Jewish community in and around Medina was now
practically obliterated, and the following year Mohammed at-
tacked the northern settlements in the district of Khaibar. Here the
Moslems met with even more formidable resistance and Mohammed
was compelled to call into the field his three ablest generals, Abu
Bekr, Omar, and Ali, all three of whom later became caliphs or
successors to the prophet. The Jewish fortresses were stormed or
compelled to surrender, and though allowed to remain in the land,
the Jews were plundered and reduced to a condition of semi-
servitude. It was in the course of this campaign that another
Jewess Safiyya, wife of Kinana was selected by the prophet
for his harem, after her husband had been tortured and slain by
his orders.
Arabia and the Arabs now lay in the palm of the prophet's hand.
The Jews were either massacred, exiled, or reduced to bondage,
and his Arab opponents defeated and demoralized. His followers
were no longer a tattered mob: victory and the spoils of victory
THE RISE OF ISLAM 227
had transformed them into a well-equipped and confident fighting
force. "God hath caused you to inherit their land, and their houses,
and their wealth, and a land on which ye have not trodden," he
told his true believers of the Jews they had conquered. No wonder
that in 628 Mohammed had the superb audacity to address a
letter to the rulers of the earth, including Heraclius in Byzantium
and Kovad II in Ctesiphon, calling upon them to acknowledge
Allah and his prophet or take the consequences. He had already
severed his former ties with Judaism: no longer were the faithful
to pray with their faces toward Jerusalem but toward Mecca;
instead of fasting on the Day of Atonement they were to fast
every day from dawn to sunset during the month of Ramadan.
He even permitted them to make pilgrimages to Mecca and to kiss
the Kaaba! Like Paul of Tarsus and other religious innovators,
Mohammed knew the art of making terms with the old beliefs and
practices for the greater glory of the new.
The proud and bellicose Jewish tribes who defied Mohammed
sank into oblivion, but in succeeding centuries, and right down
to the present, travelers have continued to bring reports of Jewish
tribes in Nejd and other remote regions of Arabia, tribes of nomads,
raiders, and desert warriors.
5
IN 629, seven years after the great flight, Mohammed re-
turned to Mecca in triumph. He was now ruler of the city and
the temple, ruler of Arabia. In 632 he died, and the stern and faith-
ful Abu Bekr, who became the first caliph, proceeded to carry into
effect his master's resolve to subdue the earth to the new faith.
In a magnificent rush of conquest, the Arabs in less than a decade
wrested from both the Byzantine and Neo-Persian empires all those
provinces, including the motherland, where the principal Jewish
communities were established. The battle of the river Yarmuk
in 634 was the climax of the campaign against Heraclius: the river
became the grave of the motley Byzantine host that endeavored to
stem the pious fury of the Moslems. In 637, at Kadessia on the
Euphrates, not far from Sura and Pumbeditha, the power of Neo-
Persia was overthrown, never to rise again. With the help of the
Jews, and many Christians also, the conquerors drove on and cap-
228 DISPERSION
tured Ctesiphon the capital, and three years later the Moslem arc
of the Near East was completed with the conquest of Egypt.
The Moslems, of course, did not stop there: they pushed on to
the east and west for another hundred years, and it was under their
rule that, in addition to lesser Jewish communities, the great center
in Babylonia flourished for another four centuries and, as we shall
see, the equally great center in Spain grew up and reached its zenith.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Decline of the East
THE Jews in the lands of the East had suffered too long and
too cruelly at the hands of Christian prelates and Magian
priests not to welcome the conqueror. The Moslems, who
divided mankind into believers and unbelievers, imposed on the
latter a special poll and ground tax, as well as certain civil and re-
ligious disabilities, but they proved, on the whole, more humane and
tolerant masters than their predecessors. Omar, the rough and pious
warrior who in 634 followed Abu Bekr as caliph, obeying Moham-
med's admonition that "there cannot be two religions in Arabia,"
ordered the Jewish remnants expelled from the Hedjaz; but ap-
parently the order was not thoroughly enforced, for in later times
Jewish communities were still there. In 638 when Sophronius, the
bishop of Jerusalem, after a four month siege, surrendered his city
to Omar, he stipulated that no Jews were to be allowed to dwell
there; nevertheless, despite that condition, which Omar apparently
accepted, a Jewish community shortly afterwards rose up in the
Holy City.
On the site of the ancient Temple Omar laid the foundation
of a mosque which he, austere pietist, built of wood, but which
under a successor was transformed into the magnificent structure
it is today. With Mecca and Medina, Jerusalem became one of the
three holy cities of Islam, a place of pilgrimage for the faithful.
The year of Jerusalem's surrender saw also the capture of Caesarea,
DECLINE OF THE EAST
which completed the Moslem conquest of Palestine. The fall of
Caesarea, it is related, was hastened by the help the invaders re-
ceived from the Jews.
The Moslems, in fact, came to look upon the Jews, whom they
delivered from the Byzantine yoke, as their allies. It took a sur-
prisingly short time for the stern puritanism with which the new
faith began, and of which the first two caliphs were the most
distinguished exemplars, to wear off; and while, as unbelievers,
the Jews were bound to occupy a station of civil and social in-
feriority, the restrictions were less galling in practice than in
theory. The new rulers even permitted the schools in Tiberias
to reopen.
THE unity and concord which the prophet enjoined upon
the true believers came to grief even sooner than their austere
pietism. A bitter rivalry sprang up almost immediately between
the faithful of Medina, whose zeal and loyalty had brought Moham-
med in triumph through the critical years after the Hegira, and
the aristocratic families of Mecca who, after that triumph, found
it advantageous to embrace the new faith and were shown special
favor by the prophet. He was particularly partial to the Omayyad
family, distinguished for its able men of affairs, but in deadly
rivalry with other Meccan families among whom the Abassids
were most prominent.
The first Omayyad caliph was Othman: in 644 he succeeded
Omar who had died at the hands of an assassin. Twelve years later
Othman too was murdered and he was followed by Ali, the
prophet's son-in-law, husband of his daughter Fatima. The
Omayyads rose in revolt. In 66 1 Ali was dispatched like his two
predecessors, and until 749 the caliphs were Omayyads, imposing,
from their capital in Damascus, their autocratic will on the Islamic
world. For another half century and more Islam continued to ex-
pand eastward toward China and westward to the Pillars of
Hercules. Asia Minor and Byzantium, however, remained uncon-
quered until many centuries later when a new and more vigorous
nation, the Mohammedan Turks, appeared on the scene.
In the meantime, Islam had become rent by a religious division
230 DISPERSION
which went hand in hand with the political rivalries and exists to
this day. On the one hand were the Sunnites and on the other the
Shiites. The latter cling to the conviction, which they have elevated
to a religious dogma, that the Omayyads were usurpers and that
the caliphate belonged rightfully to the descendants of the prophet
through his daughter Fatima and her husband All. The Abassids,
ancient rivals of the Omayyads, espoused the Shiite cause, or ap-
peared to do so. In 749 they seized the caliphate and secured it
by a wholesale massacre of their opponents. According to one
account they invited some eighty Omayyads to a banquet in
Damascus, and after murdering them all, spread a carpet over the
victims and continued the feast, using the heap of corpses as a
board. They then sought out and slew the descendants of AH. The
Abassids moved their seat of government east: near Ctesiphon,
the ancient capital of Neo-Persia, they built the new and splendid
metropolis of Bagdad.
The Abassid line continued for some two and a half centuries
until, about the year 1000, it was swept out by the conquering
Turks. The zenith of its glory is identified with the caliph Harun-
al-Rashid (786-809), the glamorous monarch of the Arabian
Nights; but notwithstanding the political upheavals and rebellions
that followed, Bagdad remained the center of a vast and opulent
imperial system and of a brilliant literary and scientific culture.
3
IN THIS Moslem empire of western Asia, as well as in the
Moslem states that stretched across northern Africa and into Spain,
old communities of the scattered Jewish* people carried on and
new ones arose, each one having its cycle of prosperity and afflic-
tion, of vigor and decline. By different courses and with different
degrees of success they sought to adapt themselves to the political,
social, and intellectual pressures that bore down upon them from
outside and, at the same time, to keep alive the ancient tradition of
which they were the heirs and trustees.
The Moslem world, unlike the Christian world in which for
many centuries later they languished and suffered, did not rebuff
or segregate them. In short order the Jews of Babylonia abandoned
the Aramaic as their vernacular, and spoke and wrote in Arabic.
DECLINE OF THE EAST 231
The caliphs, especially the Abassids, as well as the provincial gov-
ernors, admitted them into the administrative functions of the
state, and many of them rose to high station and power. They
shared in the expanding industry and commerce of the empire
and made brilliant contributions to its literature, science, and art.
Arabs and Jews seemed to constitute an ideal partnership for the
advancement of civilization at a time when the western Christian
world was in a state of mental torpor and civic barbarism.
The community in Babylonia, with the Exilarch as its secular
head and the masters or Gaonim (Excellencies) of the academies in
Sura and Pumbeditha as the religious authority, continued for
several more centuries to retain the hegemony of the scattered
nation. The records of the period are scanty, but there is enough to
testify to the existence of a large and well-knit community with
an intense inner life, drawing its principal nourishment from the
Talmud. Nor was Babylonian Jewry immune to the doctrinal di-
visions and the personal and party dissensions that are the lot of
all human societies, and that sometimes make for growth and some-
times for decay.
4
WITH respect to the community in the motherland the
records are even scantier. Like Judea in the Empire of Cyrus and
his successors more than a thousand years earlier, Palestine was but
a tiny spot in the dominions of the Omayyads and Abassids. There
is sufficient evidence, however, of a rich and organized intellectual
and religious life headed by a Sanhedrin, with its probable center
in Tiberias, and with Jerusalem, of course, as its lodestar. In
Tiberias also, the masters bore the title of Gaon, and in its schools
the Sacred Scriptures became an object of intense study, particu-
larly after the Karaite schism which for a time had its headquarters
in Palestine. The scholars in Tiberias developed the system of
vocalizing the Bible text (the Masorah), which won general accept-
ance, and there, also, liturgical poetry (piyyut) is believed to have
had its first strong impulse. Like the rest of the population, the
Jews of the motherland suffered from the chronic wars between
the Moslems and Byzantine Christians, particularly in the tenth
232 DISPERSION
century when the Byzantines more than once invaded Palestine,
bringing ruin and devastation.
The larger and more important community in Babylonia con-
tinued to look upon the teachers in Palestine as their masters, par-
ticularly in Biblical scholarship and in the matter of fixing the
calendar, the latter a highly important function since the feast
days and fast days depended upon it. In time, however, Palestine
lost its authority in those fields also.
5
THE Moslems, who swept the Neo-Persians out of Baby-
lonia in 637, recognized the Exilarch Bustani and even conferred
special privileges upon him. The Jews had no doubt been helpful
to them and so, for that matter, had been the Nestorian Christians,
who had also suffered persecutions at the hands of the fire-worship-
pers. Bustani was permitted to have a signet ring a highly coveted
distinction and the symbol he chose for it was the image of a fly.
As he stood once in the presence of his sovereign, the Exilarch, it is
reported, was stung by a savage fly but refrained from brushing it
away out of respect for his master; hence the choice of the symbol.
This and other legends have clustered about the first Prince of the
Captivity under the Moslems.
In addition to the Exilarch, the conquerors recognized the heads,
or Gaonim, of the academies in Sura and Pumbeditha. Needless to
say, this triangular arrangement was not conducive to community
concord, and the rivalries of wives and half-brothers, in which
polygamous households are generally embroiled, sometimes in-
volved the succession to the dignity of Exilarch in bitter dissen-
sion. But the four centuries during which Babylonian Jewry con-
tinued to hold the hegemony of the Diaspora is known as the Age
of the Gaonim: in accord with the Jewish genius it was they, rather
than the secular princes, who imposed their impress upon the
period.
The Gaonim exercised a unifying influence over the entire
Diaspora, which spread through the lands of the Inland Sea from
Asia Minor to Spain. Wherever Jews lived they looked to the
masters in the land where the Talmud had been created as their
teachers and guides. Questions on law, ritual, and other matters
DECLINE OF THE EAST 233
flowed to the Gaonim, especially to the Gaon of Sura, from near
and far, and their answers, or responsa, were accepted as having
final authority. Those responsa, moreover, were more than indi-
vidual opinions, for learning was not the exclusive possession of the
Gaon and a few intellectual aristocrats: learning was largely de-
mocratized. The tradition of the Pharisees lived on. In the months
of March and September the Kallah* or gathering of students and
teachers from all over the land, took place in Sura and Pumbeditha
where the Talmud was zealously studied and responsa were pre-
pared for the questions that had come in.
In the ninth century the distant community of Spain still leaned
heavily on the Gaonim. Amram of Sura, who was Gaon from 856
to 874, arranged the order of prayers for them. Paltoi, who was
Gaon of Pumbeditha from 842 to 858, sent them the Talmud
together with aids for its study.
IT WAS inevitable that movements of dissent and rebellion
against the authority of the Talmud should, from time to time,
make their appearance among the Jews of Babylonia. The intellec-
tual climate that surrounded them, the climate created by Zoro-
astrian superstition, Moslem dissension, and Christian mysticism,
was bound to seep in among them. In particular, the mystic impulse
which nourishes the roots of all religion, but which, if uncontrolled,
produces crops of fantastic and idle vagaries, beguiled a great
many minds. It lingered with special fondness about the longing
for the advent of the final redeemer, giving rise to Messianic pre-
tenders who renounced the Talmud and provoked tragic social
upheavals.
Early in the eighth century came a self-proclaimed Messiah
named Serenus, who flouted the Talmud and promised a miracle
which would restore Palestine t;o the Jews. He attracted numerous
followers, some of them in far-away Spain. Before the caliph
Yazid II (720-724) Serenus quailed and recanted, but another
Messianic movement arose not long afterwards under the leadership
of Abu Isa of Persia. Abu Isa was a man of sterner stuff than
* The origin of the word is in dispute. It is probably derived from the Hebrew
word meaning "all" or "everybody,"
234 DISPERSION
Serenus. He was content to proclaim himself only the forerunner
of the Messiah. Nor did Abu intend to rely on miracles only: he
gathered a force of 10,000 armed men to liberate Palestine from
Moslem rule. His plan was not altogether fantastic. The Omayyad
clynasty was about to fall and the Moslem empire was rent with
civil strife. Abu Isa, however, was compelled to flee from the wrath
of Mansur (754-775), the second Abassid caliph, and died a hero's
death in battle against the Moslems, for generations afterwards
there were Jews in Persia who still believed in Abu Isa. They re-
jected many ordinances of the Talmud and were, to all intents and
purposes, a separate sect.
7
BUT the most important secession from the Talmud, the
rebellion that gave rise to a sect which has persisted to our own
day, was not inspired by the Messianic impulse although it must
have been very much influenced by it. The movement known as
Karaism was largely a revolt against the Oral Tradition and the
numerous interpretations and laws of which the Talmud was the
compendium. The authority which the movement invoked against
the Talmud was, of course, the Written Tradition or the Bible
hence the name by which its followers became known, "Karaite"
being derived from the word which means "reading" or "Scrip-
ture." Their opponents the Karaites called Rabbanites, or followers
of the rabbis.
The man who started the revolt was probably animated as much
by personal pique as by animosity against the Rabbanites. He was
Anan ben David, who in 760 stood next in line for the office of
Exilarch, but whose choice was thwarted in favor of a younger
brother by the Gaomrn, who already doubted his loyalty. There-
after the events in Anan's life are veiled in legend. His followers,
it is related, refused to abide by the choice of the Gaonim. For a
time the caliph kept Anan in prison as a rebel, then permitted him
to settle in Jerusalem, where he built his own synagogue and de-
voted his zeal and knowledge to relentless war against the Rab-
banites.
Anan ben David enjoined strict adherence to the laws and
statutes of the Bible, but instead of making religious observance
DECLINE OF THE EAST 235
less rigorous, he made it more so. He reduced the number of
feast days and increased the number of fast days. He made drastic
reductions in the kinds of food that might be eaten. The Sabbath
ceased to be a day of joy. No warm food was to be eaten on the
Sabbath, Friday must be spent indoors, and Friday night must be
spent in darkness. Anan arrived at all these hard regulations be-
cause he happened to be an ascetic. He failed to realize that the
Talmud was not an arbitrary dictate, but a slow and laborious
growth, and that often perhaps most often its conclusions were
not in the direction of severity but moderation. Was it not the
liberal house of Hillel rather than the rigorous house of Shammai
that generally prevailed in its decisions?
Anan ben David, however, found many followers. He found
them among those who for one reason or another rejected the
Talmud, and among those who were unfamiliar with it. The second
included the Jews from Arabia who had lived in a Jewish back-
water and had taken no part in the creation of the Talmud. He
found followers also among tho$e who preferred more to less
religious observance, for a religious reform, to be successful, need
not necessarily offer the easier way.
The Karaite teachers who followed Anan did not always adhere
to the conclusions of the master: dissent had become a virtue. Such
was the attitude of Benjamin Nehawend who flourished early in
the tenth century. Daniel al-Kumisi, a later Karaite teacher, finally
went so far as to reject the founder, deriving his own laws from
the Scriptures. Benjamin's method was haggadic and allegorical;
Daniel's was severely literal.
Communities of Karaites sprang up in Babylonia, Syria, and
Egypt. The rebellion made its way into the Byzantine Empire and
across northern Africa into Spain. Eventually Karaites migrated
into southern Russia where there were some 10,000 members of the
sect before the First World \yar; and Karaite remnants are still
to be found in Jerusalem.
8
IN SPITE of rivalries and defections, in spite of the infiltra-
tion of alien superstitions and mystic absurdities, in spite of the
increasing jars and cracks iji the empire of the Abassid caliphs, to
236 DISPERSION
whose fortunes it was inevitably bound, the Babylonian com-
munity continued to be the center of Jewish life in the Diaspora.
Its sun had long passed the meridian, but before its final setting
it was destined to flare up in a new burst of glory. In the line of
Gaomm appeared Saadia ben Joseph and Babylonia was stirred to
new creative life.
Since men often owe their progress to their rivals, a large por-
tion of the credit for the new surge of energy should not be denied
to the Karaites. As the latter grew in numbers and boldness, the
Rabbanites, or traditionalists, were spurred to self-defense and
attack, to establish anew the foundations of Oral Torah and, in
particular, to meet the opponents on their own ground that of
the Written Word.
But the effective force that stemmed the spread of Karaism did
not flow from the Gaonvm of Sura and Pumbeditha who consumed
too much of their strength in mutual rivalry. The Exilarch had lost
his prestige with the caliph and each of the Gaonlm was anxious
to inherit his power. Of the two colleges, Pumbeditha, because it
lay nearer to Bagdad, had the advantage; when in 928 Sura found
itself without a head, Cohen-Zedek, the Gaon of Pumbeditha, pro-
posed to the Exilarch that the rival school should be closed alto-
gether. The Exilarch, David ben Zaccai, thought otherwise: he
refused to close the school that had been founded by the great
Rab, the school where the Talmud had been compiled. Moreover,
it was obviously more in his interest to have two rival Gaomm
than to have one who would concentrate all his fire on him. After
a long and bitter quarrel, the Exilarch secured the selection as
Gaon of Sura of a man who was not a Babylonian, but whose fame
as a brilliant upholder of the traditional faith had already spread
throughout the communities of the East.
Saadia ben Joseph (882-942) was a native of Egypt where an-
other dynasty of caliphs the Farimites, who claimed descent from
Fatima and Ali, dear to the heart of the Shiites were now reign-
ing. There were prosperous Jewish settlements and schools in
Egypt, and when Saadia had learned what those schools could
teach him, he moved on to Palestine. Early in his career he entered
die lists against the Karaites, and he fought them relentlessly all
his life. He met them on their own ground, the Bible, which he
DECLINE OF THE EAST 2 37
translated into Arabic, and he wrote the first grammar of die
Hebrew language as an aid to a correct understanding of the sacred
text. Saadia's translation is still used by the Jews of Yemen.
The new Gaon of Sura was a man of regal intellect and unbend-
ing principles. He loved to fight the good fight. He defeated an
attempt made by Aaron ben Meir, head of the schools in Palestine,
to assert the former authority of the motherland: Saadia rejected
a new calendar proposed by Ben Meir and wrote the Book of the
Seasons to disprove his claims. It was not long, however, before
he became involved in a bitter feud with the man to whom he
owed his high office. David ben Zaccai called on him to approve
a verdict in a lawsuit of which the Exilarch would be the benefi-
ciary. Saadia, finding the verdict unjust, refused to comply. In
the course of the feud that followed the Exilarch removed the Gaon
and had him excommunicated. Saadia retaliated by declaring the
Exilarchate vacant and appointing a brother of David to the office.
Both sides sought the support of the caliph, his ministers, and his
courtiers. The Babylonian community was divided into two war-
ring camps.
At last, after seven years of strife, the leading men got together
and managed to heal the breach. In 937, on the day before Purim,
the Gaon and Exilarch were brought together and peace and
friendship restored. For the rest of his life Saadia remained scrupu-
lously loyal to his former enemy. When, three years later, the
Exilarch died, the Gaon saw to it that David's son should be chosen
in his place, and when the son died shortly afterwards, Saadia
adopted David's grandson and educated him to be worthy of the
high office.
During the period of his rupture with the Exilarch, Saadia lived
in retirement and produced his greatest works. He compiled a
systematic code of Talmudic law, made his own arrangement of the
traditional prayers, and wrote npw ones. He continued to wage war
on his opponents including those who, like the Exilarch, wielded
despotic power, and the arsenal he stored up against the Karaites
provided weapons against them for generations.
He ventured also to seek a solution for the conflict between
science and religion, a problem that bids fair to challenge the
human mind to the end of ,time. Saadia offered his solution in his
238 DISPERSION
greatest and most enduring work, his Emunoth Ve-Death, which
may be freely translated. "Faith and Reason." The book consti-
tutes a system of what we would today call religious philosophy.
Saadia may be described as a rationalist in the sense that he does
hot reject reason but, on the contrary, invokes it to vindicate his
faith. He answered the eternal question for his own age and more
cannot be expected from any man.
That Saadia Gaon and his works still command admiration and
homage is attested by the fact that in 1942, amid the anguish and
toils of the Second World War, the Jews of the world reverently
observed the one thousandth anniversary of the death of the great
master of Sura.
9
WITH Saadia's death began the sunset and twilight of the
Babylonian centers of learning and of the Babylonian community.
It was, however, a sunset of lingering splendor, for up to the eve
of the final closing of the schools, which occurred about the mid-
dle of the eleventh century, they still produced luminous spirits
who shed their luster on other lands and later generations.
The decline of the Babylonian community was undoubtedly
hastened, if it was not principally caused, by the ravages and dis-
asters that befell the empire of the Abassids. A new people, the
warlike Turks, swarmed down from central Asia, adopted the
faith of Islam, filled the ranks of the empire's armies, and did pretty
much as they pleased. The old line of lusty caliphs degenerated into
a succession of impotent rulers whose power was usurped by their
viziers or by brigand chiefs. Outlying provinces defied the man-
dates of Bagdad and became practically independent under dynas-
ties of their own. And all the time the process of religious cleavage
continued, producing numerous sects and schisms in the two orig-
inal camps of Shiites and Sunnites, and adding to the confusion
and conflicts in Islam.
Before it faded from history Pumbeditha produced two great
teachers, father and son, men of splendid intellect and saintly life.
Sherira, who died in 998, traced the growth of Mishnah and Tal-
mud as the original tradition was passed on from one tanna and
amora to the next. His son Hai, who died in 1038, codified the civil
WESTWARD TO SPAIN 2 39
law of the Talmud and brilliantly maintained the prestige and
authority of his school at home and abroad.
A hundred years after the death of Saadia, the glory of Baby-
lonia was a thing of the past. The last important Gaon of the school
in Sura, the great nursery of the Talmud, was Samuel ben Hophni
who died in 1034. The last Gaon of Pumbeditha was Hezekiah, a
descendant of David ben Zaccai, who also held the office of
Exilarch. Hezekiah had powerful enemies at court; he was impris-
oned and executed, and with his death both offices were extin-
guished.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Westward to Spain
WE TURN now to the West, and not until the resurgence of
the ancient homeland in our own generation will the
East recapture its central place in this narrative. The
present goal of our journey is the land at the other end of
the Mediterranean, but on the way we stop to take brief note of
the Jewish communities in the intervening lands on both sides
of the Inland Sea.
In Asia Minor, Greece, Macedonia, and other provinces of the
Byzantine Empire, the lot of the Jews under the monarchs who
reigned in Constantinople was not a happy one. The general policy
was to force them into baptism by making life as hard for them
as possible. They were forbidden to build new synagogues, and
crimes committed against them were allowed to go unpunished. In
the larger cities they were often at the mercy of die mob. In
Antioch, for example, during the chariot races in the year 507, the
synagogue was attacked and burned down, and many Jews were
murdered. The illustrious Justinian (527-565), as we Have seen,
even undertook to tell them how to conduct their religious services.
A later emperor, Leo III, tried to solve die problem more simply:
he issued a decree in 722 ordering his Jews to become Christians,
24O DISPERSION
Many of them fled north to the Crimea and the Caucasus, and
some of them came where the Volga empties into the Caspian Sea
to a land inhabited by the Khazars of whom we shall hear more
anon.
IN ITALY, the next stage in our journey westward, there
were Jewish communities all over the land from Milan in the north
to Calabria in the south, as well as in Sicily across the Straits of
Messina.
The origin of the first community in Rome is lost in conjecture:
in Caesar's day it was already well established, its members enjoy-
ing religious and civil rights, taxing themselves for the support of
the Temple in Jerusalem and, without indulging in active proselyt-
ism, attracting numerous Romans, many of high rank, to observe
Jewish rites and even become full converts to Judaism. Their
numbers were augmented by the revolts against Rome in the first
and second centuries: Jewish captives were brought to Italy whom
the Italian Jews, as their faith enjoined, ransomed from bondage.
Although they suffered the cruel humiliation of seeing the tax they
raised for their sanctuary in Jerusalem diverted for a temple of
Jupiter, they were later allowed to raise funds for the support of
the Patriarch in Palestine.
In the large cities of Italy and Sicily they belonged to every
trade and profession. There were Jewish weavers and dyers, tailors,
metal workers, and artisans of every other sort. There were even
Jewish painters, sculptors, and actors, and a considerable number
embraced soldiering as a career. Like their neighbors, the Jews
owned fields, orchards, and vineyards, and engaged in agriculture
on a large or small scale. Some began as small peddlers and became
merchant princes, shipowners, and bankers. The community or
congregation was headed by a parner, and the scribe who wrote the
Torah scrolls was held in almost equal regard. The education of
the young was not neglected, and eventually there were schools of
higher learning also, especially in the cities of the south, Bari,
Otranto, Oria, and others. For guidance and inspiration every com-
munity, of course, looked to the motherland and later to Baby-
lonia.
WESTWARD TO SPAIN 241
When Rome turned Christian, the Jews became the victims of
official persecution and mob violence. They did not therefore look
upon the incursion of the barbarians, who put an end to the
western Roman empire, with the same dread as the rest of the
population. When in 489 Theodoric, chief of the Ostrogoths, be-
came king of Italy, their lot actually improved: he protected them
against the pious venom of the bishops and the greed of the mobs.
Theodoric and his barbarians were also Christians but they, like
other barbarian nations, rejected the orthodox Nicene Creed, pro-
fessing instead the doctrines of Arius, which denied the divinity
of Jesus; and Arianism was curiously lacking in zeal for persecu-
tion. But half a century later, Ostrogothic Italy was conquered by
Belisarius, the brilliant general of Justinian, emperor of the east,
and the Jews, who fought bravely against the invaders, again
became the victims of persecution under the famous Code of
Justinian.
In the meantime the bishops of Rome were growing in the power
and prestige that before long made*them supreme in the Christian
world of the west, a supremacy that meant so much for the weal
or woe of the Jewish communities scattered in that part of the
world. Italy itself was breaking up. In 566 came another barbarian
nation, the Lombards, who ousted the Byzantine rulers from a
great part of the peninsula and ruled its northern reaches for more
than two centuries. The Lombards, originally Arian, became
orthodox, and the shadow of the bishop of Rome, now designated
as Pope or "father," continued to grow. In 774 he was powerful
enough to bring about the downfall of the Lombards by the sword
of his ally, the great Charlemagne.
The papal attitude toward the Jews across the centuries was
not uniform, but the popes were, in the main, more liberal than
their subordinates. Gregory I (590-604), called the Great, set the
general pattern of papal policy. He was anxious to convert the
Jews, but by persuasion rather than by force: forcible conversion,
he realized, was futile. He was not in favor of molesting them but
he denied them the right to employ Christian servants or possess
Christian slaves, not because he disapproved of slavery, an institu-
tion to which only the Jewish religious conscience had shown
242 DISPERSION
itself hostile, but because it was wrong that an infidel should be
the master of a true believer.
In the south the Byzantines continued to hold sway until in
827 Sicily and parts of the mainland were conquered by the Mos-
lems, who held on for more than two centuries. The Jewish com-
munities grew and prospered, maintaining contact with Palestine,
Babylonia, and Spain, and even with communities north of the
Alps. Wherever the doors were not shut against them, they served
the state and rose to high station, like the famous family whose
achievements over two centuries have been found quaintly and
piously recorded in 1054 in the memoirs of a descendant, Ahimaaz,
son of Paltiel of Padua.
Everywhere they studied their own tradition, adding to the
Talmud the absorbing and sometimes disturbing mysteries of the
Cabala. Many Talmudic academies rose up and flourished, the most
famous in Rome, and many scholars labored to enrich the lore of
the past. Among them we can only mention the anonymous author
of the Joseppon (Little Josephus), an historic compendium that
achieved wide and enduring popularity; and Nathan ben Jechiel of
Rome, famous for his dictionary of the Talmud which he finished
in 1 100 and called Aruch (Arrangement).
3
IN NORTHERN Africa, old Jewish centers revived and new
ones came to life in the wake of the conquering Moslems. In Egypt
the principal communities were in Alexandria, where Jewish life
persisted in defiance of all the bishops could do to uproot it; in
Fostat near Cairo, where the great Maimonides was to find refuge;
and at Fayum, birthplace of Saadia Gaon. In all these places, Rab-
banites and Karaites dwelt in separate communities and in uneasy
propinquity, each with its own head and its own institutions.
Westward along the African coast new centers arose, of which
the most important was Kairwan, located near the site of ancient
Carthage in Tunisia. The pulse of Jewish life beat high in this
new Moslem stronghold and shrine, capital of the state of Ifrikia,
whose rulers were only nominally subject to the caliphs. The
secular head of the community bore the title of Nagid, and many of
its religious leaders rose to distinction as teachers and scholars.
WESTWARD TO SPAIN 243
There was a continuous intellectual flow between Kairwan and
the other communities of the Diaspora. Hushiel ben Elhanan, on
his way from Rome to Egypt, remained in Kairwan and established
a school for higher learning. Both he and his son Hananel won
wide recognition in the Jewish world of the eleventh century.
Another international figure was Nissim ben Jacob, who was in
touch with some of the greatest figures among the Jews of Spain.
Isaac Israeli, teacher and friend of Saadia Gaon, came to Kairwan
from Egypt and served as court physician to a succession of rulers.
A curious and glamorous personage, who stands out in this
exotic and colorful world of the Mediterranean Diaspora and is
identified chiefly with the community of Kairwan, is Eldad the
Danite. He is a figure out of a Jewish Arabian Nights who, about
the year 870, came down as on a magic carpet to Kairwan and
told wonderful tales about descendants of four or five of the
ancient tribes of Israel, redoubtable warriors who were living in
a Shangri-la beyond Ethiopia, where the waterless river Sambation
flowed with a torrent of sand and stones all week, and rested on
the Sabbath. And he brought a ritual written in Hebrew which,
he reported, was in use among those castaway Jews, and which
impressed many of the scholars! There is enough in Eldad's marvel-
ous stories to suggest the existence of Jewish settlements in faraway
lands; his reports, at any rate, found wide acceptance and stirred
vague messianic hopes: were not God's people scattered through
all the known and unknown lands while the motherland lay deso-
late waiting for their return?
4
THERE were Jewish settlements in other cities of North
Africa, notably in Fez, but we hasten westward to the Strait and
across into Spain.
It was natural that Jews, on the bitter road of exile, should
prefer Spain to almost any other land; they became passionately
attached to it, for in many ways Spain resembled Palestine. Its
climate is largely subtropical, with hot rainless summers and mild
winters. It is a land of steep hills and sunny plains, of olive groves
and vineyards, grainfields and pastures.
Jews must have come to Spain very early in their history: there
244 DISPERSION
were Jewish families in Spain who proudly claimed descent from
King David and whose ancestors, they averred, had come to the
land right after the destruction of the First Temple (586 B.C.E.).
It is certain, however, that by the year 305 C.E. they were already
important in number and influence, for in that year the Christian
clergy of Spain met in the small city of Elvira near Granada and
adopted measures against them. The prelates forbade all Christians
to trade with them, to intermarry with them, and to let them
bless their fields. Apparently the relations between the Jews and
their neighbors were altogether friendly.
But the people, it seems, paid little heed to the dictates of the
priests and, besides, the rural inhabitants were still pagan. The
Jews followed the same occupations as their neighbors. They
owned fields, vineyards, and olive groves. In the cities they were
artisans and merchants and their ships sailed to all the ports of the
Mediterranean. For a hundred years after the Council of Elvira
they flourished under the Roman governors in spite of the bishops.
In 409 the barbarians broke into Spain. First came the Vandals,
who passed on into Africa whence they crossed over into Italy
and sacked the city of Rome. Then came the Visigoths who, like
the kindred Ostrogoths, belonged to the Arian creed. They treated
the Jews well; better, in fact, than they treated the Catholics, whom
they looked upon as Romans and enemies. The Visigoth rulers
elevated many Jews to important government posts and Jewish
military contingents defended the Pyrenees passes against the in-
cursions of the Franks. The Jews were even permitted to convert
their slaves to their faith. It was during this period of nearly two
centuries of Visigoth-Arian rule that the Jews established them-
selves so firmly in Spain that not even the persecutions that fol-
lowed were able to uproot them.
The change came in 589 when King Reccared I renounced the
Arian creed and became Catholic. His conversion stemmed from
political rather than religious motives: he found it expedient to
have the support of the Catholic clergy against the nobility who
elected the monarch and frequently defied him. At once the Jews
were forbidden to hold public office or own slaves. Intermarriage
was banned and all children born of such marriages were to be
WESTWARD TO SPAIN 245
baptized by force. But the nobles found the Jews too useful to
persecute and, to a large extent, the laws remained a dead letter.
Then came King Sisebut, who was more determined and more
drastic. He issued a decree ordering all Jews to choose between
baptism and exile. There were many who chose baptism but con-
tinued to practice their faith in secret, while thousands fled from
the country and sought refuge in France or Africa.
The story of the Jews in Spain during the century preceding the
descent of the Moslems is one of remorseless oppression, inter-
spersed with brief and rare periods of relaxation. The wrath of the
clergy burned even more fiercely against the converts who prac-
ticed their faith in secret than against those who refused to be
baptized. After ten years of respite from persecution under Sisebut's
successor Swintilla, the baptized Jews caught practicing their
former faith were ordered enslaved and their children torn from
them and brought up in convents. The highest pitch of cruelty
came under Euric and Egica. The first placed the secret Jews
wholly at the mercy of the clergy, and declared forfeit the prop-
erty of all others who clung to their faith. The second decreed
all Jews to be slaves forever, stripped them of land and houses, and
tore all children of seven and over from their parents to be brought
up as Christians.
The proud and tortured Jews of Spain whose spirit, despite all
cruelties, remained unbroken, grasped at every opportunity that
offered relief from their pitiless oppressors. Once they supported
a rebel noble who claimed the throne of Spain and promised to
abolish the laws against them. The rebel was defeated and the Jews
were in worse plight than ever. More and more they looked toward
Africa where the Moslem hosts were advancing and coming nearer.
By the turn of the century the Visigoth kingdom was ripe for
destruction. The court was seedling with conspiracy, the nobles
were unruly and defiant, the clergy corrupt and insolent. King
Egica, the last and worst of the oppressors, died in 701. The reign
of his son, who was probably murdered, ended in general disorder,
and when Roderic, the last Visigoth king, came to the throne, Tarik
the Moslem already stood at the tip of Africa opposite the great
rock which bears his name.*
Jebel Tarik, Mount Tarik, has become "Gibraltar."
24-6 DISPERSION
5
IN JULY of the year 711, Tank took his 12,000 Berbers
and Arabs across the straits, and in a three-day battle at Jerez
overthrew the last Visigoth ruler of Spain. He was, of course, hailed
by the Jews as their deliverer, but he was welcomed and assisted
by Christians also: Spaniards who looked upon Roderic as a usurper
provided Tarik with ships and many of them fought at his side.
The Moslems, moreover, were not persecutors. Christians and Jews,
as unbelievers, were of course compelled to pay the poll tax, but
they could worship as they pleased. Many a Christian became a
willing convert to the religion of the conqueror.
The fire and fervor as well as the austere simplicity that marked
the faith of Abu Bekr and Omar were now gone. The invaders
were worldly men who sought to reap as much wealth and power
from their conquests as they could, and they made excellent
progress. In less than three years, they overran the entire country
to the Pyrenees Mountains. Cordova became their capital, and
they made it a city of grace and splendor, rivaling the magnificence
of Bagdad, the metropolis at the other end of the Moslem world.
The centers of Christendom were like rude encampments com-
pared to the elegant cities of the Moslems with their public build-
ings, mosques and palaces cities where, under the patronage of
the rulers, artists and scientists, philosophers and poets, forgathered
and pursued their labors.
It was natural that in the affairs of the new regime, as well as in
the cultural efflorescence that came in its wake, the Jews of Spain
should play a leading part. Not only was there an affinity of race
and language between Jew and Arab which promoted under-
standing and in short order enabled the Jews to make the Arabic
tongue their vernacular; the Moslems also found in the Jews a
convenient link between themselves and the Christians, and en-
trusted to them the administration of many of the centers they
occupied. A broad path of freedom and opportunity opened for
the Jews of Spain, and as they grew more numerous, more wealthy,
more influential, they spread their wings and mounted to dazzling
heights of cultural achievement. While the great center of the
East was sinking into twilight and dusk, Spain became the Baby-
WESTWARD TO SPAIN 247
Ionia of the West, and for five hundred years held the hegemony
of the Dispersion.
The primacy did not descend suddenly upon the Jews of Spain:
the Moslem conquest was two centuries old before the remarkable
talents of Chasdai ibn Shaprut raised Spanish Jewry to pre-
eminence. It was first necessary that Moslem power in Spain should
itself be consolidated, a process long retarded by internal dissen-
sion and strife which enabled the Christians to reconquer the north-
ern and western parts of the peninsula and establish kingdoms with
which the Moslems had to be constantly at war. In 758 Abdurrah-
man, one of the few Omayyads who escaped massacre at the hands
of the Abassids, became the first independent and effective ruler
of Moslem Spain, but for a century and a half under his weak
successors the country fared badly. It was not until 912, when
Abdurrahman III, the first to assume the royal title of caliph, came
to the throne that a long period of power and splendor was
ushered in for Moslem Spain.
ABDURRAHMAN in reigned for fifty years, and it was under
him and under his son Hakam II (961-976) that Chasdai ibn
Shaprut displayed his versatile and brilliant attainments. Chasdai,
to begin with, was a physician and watched over the health of the
rulers. Being a master of Latin, he served as interpreter to the
caliph and ambassador to Christian monarchs. He was, in fact, a
remarkably adroit diplomat: he won his greatest triumph when
he persuaded a Christian king as well as a queen-regent and her
ward to come to Cordova and sign a treaty of peace with the caliph.
In addition Chasdai was an able financier and man of affairs: he
served the caliph also as minister of finance and commerce.
With all that, however, Chasdai was not accorded the title of
vizier or any other official rank: such a distinction and token of
equality could not be conferred upon an unbeliever. And Chasdai
was first and last a Jew whose deepest concern was the honor and
welfare of his people. He was particularly zealous for the exalta-
tion and diffusion of Torah. For students, he secured copies of the
Talmud from the college of Sura, and men of learning and talent,
like the poets and grammarians Menahem ben Saruk and Dunash
248 DISPERSION
ben Labrat, could always count on his assistance. Nor was he
insensible to the fallen estate of his scattered people, to the glory
that was no more, or to the jibes of Moslems and Christians who
would have it that since "the scepter had departed from Judah,"
it could only mean that God had cast them aside, that they were
no longer His people.
7
CHASDAI and his people in Spain were deeply stirred one
day to learn that in a faraway land to the east the scepter had not
departed from Judah. Rumors about a Jewish kingdom in the
nebulous regions north of the Byzantine Empire had long been
current among them, and people connected them with the fantastic
tales of Eldad the Danite. This time, however, Chasdai's informa-
tion was definite: it came to him from the Byzantine and other
foreign ambassadors who arrived in Cordova. On the western
shore of the Caspian Sea, between the Volga and the Don, they
told him, there dwelt the Khazars, a powerful nation, and they
were ruled by a Jewish king named Joseph.
Chasdai determined to establish contact with King Joseph. He
tried first to correspond wkh him through Constantinople and
failed, but finally a letter was delivered to the king by a Jew from
Germany named Isaac ben Eliezer. The letter was long; it was
written with the assistance of the poet and grammarian Menahem
ben Saruk. Some years later Chasdai received King Joseph's reply.
The Khazars, he learned, were not, as many people supposed,
descended from the lost tribes of Israel; they were not, in fact, of
Jewish origin. The Khazars were a people of uncertain stock and
must have come originally from Ask. Centuries ago they had
established a kingdom near the mouth of the Volga and conquered
the tribes around them, forcing them to pay tribute. They were
formidable warriors, these Khazars, and struck terror into die hearts
of the Persian and Byzantine rulers.
King Joseph went on to answer the question that was uppermost
in Chasdai's mind: How did it come about that the Khazar king-
dom became Jewish? In the beginning, the ancestors of the king
were worshippers of idols, but in 740 or thereabout the reigning
monarch, King Bulan, became converted to Judaism. How that
HIGH NOON 249
happened Joseph did not know exactly. Already, it seems, there
were many foreign merchants in Itil, the Khazar capital, and -many
Jews must have found refuge there from Byzantine persecution.
One record had it that King Bulan, seeking a new religion for
himself and his people, had summoned learned Christians, Moslems,
and Jews to debate before him the merits of their respective creeds,
and when he learned that the first two were the offspring of Juda-
ism, he and his nobles and some of the people decided to embrace
the mother faith. Later a law was enacted that only a Jewish king
could sit on the throne of the Khazars, and a successor of Bulan,
named Obadiah, had established schools for the study of the Bible
and Talmud, the Khazars in the meantime having made contact
with the schools in Babylonia. The fact must be noted that there
was no persecution in the Khazar kingdom: the members of all
faiths were on a footing of equality.
"You state that you long to see me," King Joseph writes to
Chasdai ibn Shaprut. "I too long to know you and your wisdom.
Could I but speak to you face to face, you should be my father
and I your son, and I would place the government of my land into
your hands." How marvelous the king's words must have sounded
in Chasdai's ears! But, alas, the Jewish kingdom was already on
the verge of downfall. In 965 the Russian prince of Kiev captured
Sarkell, the chief Khazar stronghold; four years later Itil, the
capital, was taken, and in time the Jewish kingdom of the Khazars
became only a tale and a memory.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
High Noon
IN THE west, the sun of Spanish Jewry was mounting to a bril-
liant noon, and the chronicle glows with the names of states-
men and warriors, scholars, scientists, and philosophers, poets,
mystics, and moralists. But the dazzling light they shed should not
blind us to the community which they crown. It was a community
250 DISPERSION
of noble men and women in whom the Arabic culture that had
come to a fine fruition in Spain appeared to be perfectly blended
with their own millennial tradition.
Outwardly their life was stamped with the grace and dignity
that wealth bestows upon those who deserve to possess it. They
lived in beautiful houses, wore handsome attire, gathered at rich
banquets, and walked abroad with poise and assurance. They min-
gled freely with their Moslem neighbors, nor was their devotion
to their own faith or their pride in the great past of their people
weakened by this intercourse. Their basic culture was still Jewish,
grounded in the Bible and Talmud; nor was the structure they
built on it less Jewish for being cast in the graceful mold of a rich
and colorful age.
The Jews of Spain, moreover, considered themselves a single
people with common interests and aims, and they were recognized
by Christians as well as Moslems as distinct communities or aljamas.
In the tenth century, when they lived under one caliph; in the
eleventh, when Moslem Spain broke up into rival states; as well as
in the twelfth and later centuries, when the Christians made heavy
inroads upon the Moslems, the Jews were normally free to manage
their own communal institutions, and they possessed a large meas-
ure of autonomy in judicial and fiscal matters as well. They recog-
nized a common leadership, secular as well as religious, and
delegates from different communities met from time to time in
assemblies to consider their common interests.
Five centuries is a long span even in Jewish history, and the
career of Spanish Jewry is not free from suffering and disaster, but
it still casts the richest glow across the two millennia of the Jewish
Dispersion.
2
THE lore of the Talmud was brought from Babylonia to
Spain by a scholar named Moses ben Enoch after an odyssey of
high adventure. Moses was one of four emissaries from Sura who
were charged with the mission of obtaining support for the ancient
academy from communities in other lands. They were sailing west
on the Mediterranean near Italy when their ship was seized by Ibn
Rumahis, admiral of the Spanish caliph Abdurrahman III, then at
HIGH NOON 251
war with the caliph of the east. Moses ben Enoch's wife threw
herself into the sea to escape dishonor, and he and his young son
were taken to Cordova where they were duly ransomed by the
Jewish community. The fate of his three companions is veiled in
legend: one account has it that they were taken to different lands
where each became the head of a Talmudic academy.
Such, however, was certainly the dignity achieved by Moses
ben Enoch. His superior learning was quickly recognized, and
under his guidance and with the support of Chasdai ibn Shaprut,
Cordova became an important Talmudic center which attracted
students from all parts of Spain and North Africa. The caliph
looked with favor upon the event: he was glad to see the Jews of
his realm no longer dependent on the schools in the land of his
rival and enemy. Moses ben Enoch died in 965 and, after one of
those bitter contests that too often disturbed the harmony of the
community, his son was chosen to take his place. Chasdai, still the
secular head of the community, survived Moses for five years; his
successor, appointed in the reigrvof Hisham II (976-1013), was the
wealthy Jacob ibn Jau, who became the Nagid or secular head of
the Jews in all the realms of the caliph, in Africa as well as Spain.
But the caliphate that was centered in the gorgeous city of Cor-
dova was approaching evil days. Hisham reigned but he did not
rule: the real power was his chief minister Almanzur, and when
this strong and crafty man died a period of fierce civil strife and
chaos ensued. The armies which were composed of slaves and
mercenaries turned on their masters, and in 1013 the Berbers seized
the capital and looted it. The Omayyad princes fought among
themselves like wolves, and the Caliphate of Cordova fell to pieces.
3
PEOPLE fled from Cordova to other cities in Spain and many
Jews found refuge in Granada, the beautiful city of the famous
Alhambra, where a thriving Jewish community had existed for
centuries. The Arabs, in fact, sometimes called Granada Karratta-
al-Yabud, the "City of the Jews." Before long Granada became the
capital of a new kingdom which included the port of Malaga, and
in 1013 a remarkable young man named Samuel ibn Nagrela left
Cordova and came to live in Malaga.
2 $2 DISPERSION
Samuel's story reads like a tale from the Arabian Nights, but his
career may nevertheless be considered symbolic of his people in
Spain. His education was typical of the cultured Spanish Jew:
mathematics and philosophy went hand in hand with the Talmud
and Hebrew, and Samuel knew six other languages besides. Young
Samuel derived his living from a little spice shop, but people came
to him to write letters and petitions for them addressed to the
vizier of King Habbus in Granada. Impressed by Samuel's epistles,
the vizier sought out the young spice merchant and persuaded
him to come to Granada and be his secretary. Samuel became also
his friend and adviser, and when the vizier died the king, to the
amazement and chagrin of all pious Moslems, put Samuel in his
place, conferring upon the Jew not only the powers but the title
as well. But Samuel knew how to win over his enemies, and there
seemed to be no limit to his talents. He was the king's war minister
and often led his troops in battle. He conducted the foreign af-
fairs of die kingdom, raising it to a high position among the states
into which Moslem Spain had become divided. In 1038 King
Habbus died, and Granada became the scene of a bitter contest
for the crown between his two sons. Samuel won the succession for
Badis, the elder of the two, and his position in the kingdom became
even stronger.
Samuel was, of course, the official leader of the Jews of Granada:
he is best known as Shmuel Ha-Nagid, or Samuel the Prince. His
influence and good deeds extended to the whole of Spain and into
the other lands of the Mediterranean Diaspora. He corresponded
with its leading men, among others with Hai and Hezekiah of Pum-
beditha and Nissim ben Jacob of Kairwan. He found time, more-
over, to conduct his own Talmudic academy, decide questions on
law and religion, and write philosophic and scholarly works as
well as poetry, the latter an exercise that attracted most cultured
men of the age. He even found time to engage in a literary feud
with die great Joseph ibn Janah of Saragossa, the foremost gram-
marian and biblical scholar of the period. Such feuds were not
infrequent and furnished entertainment as well as enlightenment
to wide circles especially when, as in the war between the two
grammarians Dunash ben Labrat and Menahem ben Saruk, the
controversy descended to personalities.
HIGH NOON 253
Shmuel Ha-Nagid, said the poets after his death, wore the
quadruple crown of priestly descent, exalted station, Torah, and
good deeds; and the last, they added, was the brightest of all.
4
WITH all the wealth and elegance that adorns the Jewish
communities in Spain, and with all the prestige to which so many
of their leaders rose, their position as a racial and religious minority
was always more or less insecure. A terrible demonstration of this
truth came to the Jews of Granada shortly after Samuel's death,
which occurred about 1056. His son Joseph, who possessed much of
his father's brilliance but lacked his tact and wisdom, succeeded to
his dignities. Joseph was arrogant and indiscreet. He incurred the
bitter hatred of the Arabs and Berbers of the city, long resentful
of the power exercised by his father. In December 1066, after
spreading rumors that Joseph was in treasonous correspondence
with a neighboring ruler, they overran his palace and crucified him
at the gate of the city. The mob then turned on the Jews of
Granada and in a single day, December 30, massacred four thousand
of the community.
5
THREE years later, there died in the city of Valencia the
poet and philosopher Solomon ibn Gabirol, a star of the first magni-
tude in the galaxy of Spanish Jewry. He had spent his brief and
restless life in many cities of Spain, including Malaga, Granada
and Saragossa. In Saragossa he was befriended by Yekutiel ibn
Hasan, who held high office with the ruler of the land, and in
Granada Shmuel Ha-Nagid was his friend and protector. Ibn
Gabirol, like the prophet Jeremiah, was a man of sorrows: he was
the victim of envy and malice. His patron Yekutiel was put to
death by a usurper, and he saw the calamity that befell the Jews of
Granada. Like Jeremiah also, Ibn Gabirol sought refuge in an
unshakable faith in divine justice, and gave expression to it in songs
of towering grandeur. Many of Ibn GabiroPs poems are still in-
cluded in the synagogue ritual. His majestic Royd Crown glows
with the whole gamut of emotions experienced by the devout soul
before die impenetrable mystery of the universe. But as a phi-
254 DISPERSION
losopher Ibn Gabirol's merit has only recently obtained recogni-
tion. When still a young man he wrote in Arabic a book called The
fountain of Life, and a century later, in a Latin translation, it be-
came a textbook in philosophy widely adopted by the universities
of Europe. In the translation and copying, however, the name of
the author was garbled into Avencebrol and Avicebron, and only
in the nineteenth century was the author's identity discovered.
A legend has come down concerning the death of Ibn Gabirol
which reflects the love and admiration in which he was held. It
reports that an Arab poet in a jealous rage slew Gabirol and buried
his body under a fig tree. At once the tree burst into bloom and
bore fruit!
"The Lord anointed him his nation's king of song," was the ver-
dict pronounced over Ibn Gabirol by Al-Harizi, himself a dis-
tinguished poet who lived a century later. Both belonged to the
monarchs of the spirit who, in the annals of the Jewish people, now
took the place of the more common variety of kings. They were
well described by Abraham ibn Daud, also a member of the royal
company, as the men "who strengthened the hands of Israel with
songs and with words of comfort."
THE generation of Ibn Gabirol and Shmuel Ha-Nagid is
rich with many other luminaries, among whom the moralist and
mystic Bachya ibn Pakuda deserves special mention. He is the
author of The Duties of the Heart, a book that is still a source of
pious inspiration to thousands of his people. Bachya is not satisfied
with mere observance, which he calls "the duties of the limbs"; he
demands the inward piety that leads to the soul's ascent and
absorption with the infinite and he teaches how it may be achieved.
He was called Chassid, or saint, and many centuries later, at the
other end of the European continent, his teachings had no small
share in giving impulse to a powerful religious movement whose
followers also called themselves Chassidim.
The position of the Jews in the other Moslem kingdoms of Spain
does not seem to have deteriorated as a result of the catastrophe
that overtook the Jews of Granada in 1066. From Saragossa in the
north to Seville in the south, learning continued to flourish, and
HIGH NOON 255
Jews rose to high station in the service of the rulers. Isaac ibn
Albulia, for example, who had escaped from the massacre in
Granada, was raised to the distinguished post of astrologer in the
court of Seville, and being a Talmudic scholar as well as an
astronomer, he was made head of the Jewish community. By the
middle of the eleventh century, Spain had in fact become the
center of Talmudic learning, and the laurels of Sura fell to the city
of Lucena, situated not far from Seville. There the school of Isaac
Alfasi, a lion among the savants of the age and the author of a
great commentary on the Talmud, became the nursery of many
of the choice spirits of Spanish Jewry.
7
IN THE meantime, the power of the Moslems in Spain con-
tinued to wane: the Christians, taking advantage of their feuds
and divisions, kept pressing down upon them. Moreover, after a
long period of wrangling, in the course of which one Christian
king sometimes called in the Moslems to help him against another,
the Christians began to unite. Thus in 1065 Alphonso VI, who
reigned till 1 109, found himself the ruler of the three kingdoms of
Galicia, Leon, and Castile, and with little opposition extended his
suzerainty over the petty Moslem rulers south to Andalusia. In
1085 the important city of Toledo surrendered to him and became
the capital of Christian Spain.
Now for the first time the Moslems found the will to act to-
gether, but the course they took was a counsel of despair. They
invited Yussuf ibn Tashufin, who ruled over a wide Berber empire
in Africa, to come to their aid. They knew the invitation was
dangerous to its senders, for Yussuf might come and choose to stay;
but, said the king of Seville, he would rather drive camels in Africa
than tend pigs in Castile. Yussuf came over with his fierce Berbers,
who are known as the Almoravides, defeated the Christians and
stayed. Moslem Spain became a province of his African empire.
As the Christians moved down, absorbing one community after
another, their treatment of the Jews was surprisingly fair. The
Jews were declared equal before the law, and so many of them
held important positions in the government of Alphonso that the
Pope, Gregory VII, chided him for allowing them to hold sway
256 DISPERSION
over Christians. The Almoravides, however, who were a savage lot
and had only recently become converted to Islam, began by bear-
ing down hard upon all unbelievers. Yussuf summoned the Jews
to redeem a pledge which, he informed them, their ancestors had
made: that they would all turn Moslem if, five hundred years after
the Hegira, the Messiah had not yet appeared. Yussuf s missionary
ardor, however, was cooled with a handsome bribe, and before
long the Almoravides became less fanatical. Yussuf s successor Ali
(1106-1 143) received the Jews into his service and Spanish Jewry,
under Moslem rule or Christian, went forward to new heights of
achievement.
8
THE twelfth is the century of high noon in the career of
Spanish Jewry. It is the century of Yehudah Halevi, of Moses ibn
Ezra, Abraham ibn Ezra, Abraham ibn Daud, Benjamin of Tudela,
and of other giants, too numerous to be contained in this chronicle.
It is, above all, the century of Moses Maimonides, the giant among
the giants.
The life of Yehudah Halevi, ardent champion of his people and
the most inspired singer since the days of the psalmists, is a minia-
ture of the saga of Spanish Jewry as a whole. It was a noble life,
filled with high aspiration and achievement, and it ended in trag-
edy. Born in Toledo in 1086, a year after that city was wrested
from the Moslems by Alphonso VI, Halevi went for his education
to Lucena. There he studied in the school of the renowned Alfasi
and met the most learned and gifted men of the day.
Among them was Moses ibn Ezra, scion of an illustrious family
which produced a constellation of bright luminaries. From
Granada an unhappy love affair had sent Moses wandering through
Spain, pouring out his sorrows in song. But no Jewish poet of that
day could sing only of "love and the sorrows of love/* Moses
wrote songs of pious devotion, many of which have entered into
the synagogue ritual. In Yehudah Halevi, however, he recognized
his master.
Halevi absorbed all that Lucena could teach him of Hebrew and
Talmud as well as the secular subjects, including Arabic, mathe-
matics, philosophy, and science, and returned to his native city to
HIGH NOON 257
practice medicine. But he was not happy in that profession or in
the city itself. "I busy myself with the vanities of medical science,
although I am unable to heal," he wrote to a friend; "I physic
Babel, but it continues infirm." Toledo was a Babel to him, so he
went to Cordova, a center of Arab-Jewish culture for centuries.
There he practiced his true vocation of inspired philosopher and
poet, singing in words that fall on the ears like music, of love and
friendship and joy in the beauty and majesty of God's creation.
But the full passion of his love he lavished on Zion, the abode of his
people's former glory. On the Ninth of Ab, the day of mourning
for the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, his Ode to Zion
is still chanted in synagogues the world over. It is the chant that
begins with the famous lines:
Zion, wilt thou not greet thy captive sons.
The remnant of thy flock, 'who bid thee Peace?
From 'west and east and north and south they cry
Their Peace, from near and far and every side.
And Peace from tins poor prisoner of hope
Who yearns to shed his tears upon Thy hills!
His love of Zion grew until it became the ruling passion of his
life, and his songs rose to an ecstasy of rapture and longing. Of
Jerusalem he sang:
Could I but fly on eagle's wings to thee
And mingle 'with thy sacred sod my tears!
How tenderly thy stones and dust Td kiss,
Their taste than honey sweeter to my lips.
Cost what it might, he determined at last to satisfy his longing.
He took ship and after a stormy voyage came to Egypt where his
fame had preceded him and where the leaders of his people, includ-
ing the Nagid, Samuel ibn Mansur, tried to detain him. Ibn Mansur
lived in Fostat near Cairo; he held high office in the court of the
Fatimite caliph who ruled over the country, and was probably the
recognized head of the community. Halevi tore himself from his
admirers and came at last to Palestine, where he becomes lost to
view suddenly and completely. He visited Tyre and Damascus, but
legend places his death near the mount of the Temple, where, as
258 DISPERSION
he lay prostrate in prayer, he was trampled and slain by an Arab
horseman.
The year was 1141, the country was again in Christian hands,
and Halevi must have found more sorrow than joy in the land of
his longing. But he had the never-failing refuge of song; he visioned
the redemption of his people and sang:
When in dreams I see thy captive throngs,
Then straight am I a harp unto thy songs!
But Halevi the poet must not be allowed to eclipse Halevi the
philosopher and defender of the faith. From within and without,
the faith he loved was under attack. From within, it was directly
attacked by Karaism, which had made its way into Spain, and by
Jewish disciples of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, some
of whose teachings, like his doctrine of the eternity of the universe,
conflicted with the tenets of Judaism. From without, it was of
course under constant attack by Christian and Moslem theologians.
Halevi embodied his momentous defense of Judaism in his book
Kitab al Khazari (Letter of the Khazars), an inspired work which
may still be read for pleasure as well as instruction. As a frame
for his ideas Halevi used the debate that was reported to have taken
place before King Bulan of the Khazars when he sought a new faith
for himself and his people. "Israel among the nations," declares
Halevi through the mouth of the Jewish champion in this debate,
"is like the heart amid the organs of the body"; God is glorified
in Israel, and Palestine is die "inheritance of the Lord and His
footstool."
9
IN NORTH AFRICA a new Moslem ferment had sprung up
and boiled over into Spain. Combining religious frenzy with a lust
for conquest, it started again among the African Berbers who, in
the name of the true faith, smote the Almoravides who had grown
lax and tolerant. The leader, a certain Ibn Tumart, proclaimed
himself the Mahdi, or appointed prophet, and his followers took
the name of Almohades. By 1 149 the whole of Moslem Spain was
in their hands.
To the Jews they offered the choice of Islam or exile. There
HIGH NOON 259
were some who rejected both and died the death of martyrs. Others
renounced their faith in the open but continued to practice it in
secret. The majority chose exile and sought refuge in the Christian
kingdoms of the north. The Talmudic schools of Seville and
Lucena were closed, the beautiful synagogues of Cordova were
laid in ruins. Toledo, where Alphonso VII (1126-1157) reigned
as King of Castile and Leon, became the most important city of
refuge. Judah ibn Ezra, a nephew of the poet Moses, was in high
favor with the king and held important posts in the government.
He was appointed Nasi of the Jews in the kingdom, and helped the
victims of the Almohades to find asylum in Toledo and elsewhere
in Christian Spain. In Portugal in the west, in Aragon in the east,
and in Navarre in the far north, Jewish communities gathered new
strength and flourished. Saragossa and Barcelona in Aragon and
Toledo in Castile became leading centers. Meir ibn Megas, pupil
and successor of the great Alfasi, became the head of a Talmudic
academy in Toledo, the city where Yehudah Halevi had been so
ill at ease. Jews rose to high station m the service of the Christian
monarchs and they fought with distinction in the wars, both
foreign and civil, to which there was never an end.
Many names were added also to the roster of the illuminari.
There was Abraham ibn Daud, philosopher, scientist, historian, and
moralist who, to the confusion of the Karaites, traced the origin
and continuous progress of Oral Torah. There was Judah al-Harizi,
poet, critic, and traveler. There was Benjamin of Tudela, a small
city which was a perennial bone of contention between Navarre
and Aragon, and where the Jews fought from their own citadel.
Benjamin, whose fame rests on his travels, epitomizes the bold spirit
that stamped the Jews of Spain. He visited many lands in Europe,
Asia, and Africa, and wrote a fascinating account of what he saw
of the life of his own and other people.
An even more striking example of boldness and versatility is
Abraham ibn Ezra, whose fame has been embellished by Robert
Browning in the well-known poem Rabbi Ben Ezra. Abraham,
who died in 1167, was the most picturesque member of the illus-
trious family to which belonged the poet Moses and the Nasi
Judah. He became familiar with all the learning as well as with the
world of his day, traveling as far east as Babylonia and as far west
260 DISPERSION
as London, sojourning in many lands and writing books wherever
he stopped. His stay in Italy profoundly influenced the cultural
life of his people in that country. He wrote extensively on the
Bible, on mathematics, astronomy, and astrology; he wrote poetry
and philosophy also. He was a man of restless spirit, a sparkling
wit and a good deal of a paradox. He lived to a ripe old age with
unimpaired intellectual vigor, but he was always poor in worldly
goods. "If I should deal in shrouds," he once declared, "men would
stop dying; and if I should take to selling candles, the sun would
never set."
10
THE labors and journeys of Yehudah Halevi, Al-Harizi,
Benjamin of Tudela, and the amazing Ibn Ezra, highlight the ex-
istence of a Jewish world not confined to- Spain alone. It lay scat-
tered in large and small concentrations throughout the Mediter-
ranean lands; it overflowed north into- the realms of the Franks, the
Germans, and the Anglo-Saxons; it carried on in good and evil
days, thriving and suffering' under Christian and Moslem dominion
alike. But the man whose life is the clearest reflection of the cosmo-
politan range of the Jewish community, and who is regarded as the
peak which the Jewish mind attained in the twelfth century, is
Moses ben Maimon, better known to the world at large as Mai-
monides and among his own people as the Rambam.* His influence
on succeeding Jewish generations was incalculable and is still, after
a lapse of eight centuries, unexhausted; it is reflected in the terse
saying that compares him to his greater namesake: "From Moses
unto Moses there has been none like Moses."
In 1 148, at the age of thirteen, his family became refugees from
the fury of the Almohades. That year the stately city of Cordova,
where die sage was born, was seized and ravaged by the Berber
savages and the family of Maimon, after years of wandering in
Spain, made their way to North Africa and sought asylum in Fez.
* Rambam Is derived by combining the first letters of "Rabbi Moses ben Maimon/'
a device followed in the case of many other Jewish sages, ancient and modern, e.g.:
Rashbag for Rabbi Shimon ben Gamaliel, Rashi for Rabbi Shlomo Itzhaki, Besht
lor Baal Shem Tov, Shadal for Shmuel David Luzzatto, etc.
HIGH NOON 26l
But that was only the beginning of their exile. Fez was ruled by
the Almohades, Jews had to pretend they were Moslems, and the
family fled and resumed their travels. They set sail for Palestine,
having decided to seek a haven in the land of their fathers. After
landing in Acco they proceeded to Jerusalem, but the land was
still in the hands of the Christians and their people were few and
poor and persecuted. Like Jacob's clan in the days of Pharaoh,
they migrated to Egypt and settled in Fostat, near Cairo, where
the sage lived for the rest of his life. The education of this youthful
wanderer, however, had not been neglected. His father, who had
been a student of Alfasi, taught him the Bible and Talmud, and
from Arab teachers he learned physics and medicine. Nor did his
travels prevent him from beginning some of those works which
were to make him the ranking authority of his own and later
generations.
In Egypt things went hard for Moses in the beginning. Soon
after his arrival his father died; then his brother David, who sup-
ported the family by trading in precious stones, went down in
the Indian Ocean together with his fortune. Moses took to the
practice of medicine and became so famous as a healer that he was
appointed physician to the court of Saladin, the ruler of Egypt.
This was the gallant and knightly Saladin, the first and greatest of
the Ayyubite dynasty, who in 1169 became Sultan of Egypt and
in 1 1 87 drove the Crusaders out of Jerusalem and the greater part
of Palestine. His opponent was the equally famous and chivalrous
English monarch Richard the Lion-Hearted, who is reported to
have tried, without success, to induce Moses ben Maimon to desert
his rival and accept the post of physician to himself. Moses had
every reason to remain in the service of the Egyptian sultan. Since
Saladin was always in the field, the real ruler of the land was his
vizier Alfadhel, a friend and admirer of the sage, whom he ele-
vated to the leadership of the Jewish community with the title of
Nagid. M^imonides made good use of his influence to improve the
lot of his people in Egypt and other lands. They were again per-
mitted to dwell in Jerusalem, from which the Christians had
banished them, and he was successful also in alleviating the hard
lot of the Jews of Yemen.
262 DISPERSION
Immersed in professional, communal, and literary labors, the
Rambam's life was a continuous round of toil. "When night falls
I am so exhausted I can scarcely speak," he writes to a friend. The
fame of his wisdom and erudition spread far and wide, and from
every land his people sought counsel from him in matters small
and great, just as in former days they sought it from the academies
in Babylonia. The light he shed in dark and grievous moments is
illustrated by the famous reply he sent the Jews of Yemen who had
turned to him for help in evil days on which they had fallen. Their
troubles were laid before him in a letter from Jacob al Fayumi,
one of the Yemenite scholars. Not only, wrote Al Fayumi, were
they tormented by their rulers, who were forcing them to embrace
Mohammedanism, but they were bedeviled by two self-proclaimed
prophets, one of whom had turned renegade, contending that Islam
was the true faith, while the other admonished them to divide their
wealth among the poor and prepare for the speedy coming of
the Messiah.
In his "Letter to Yemen" (Iggeret Tenwri), remarkable both for
courage and elevation, the Rambam exhorted them to be steadfast
in their own faith, compared to which, he told them, the others
were but as dead likenesses to the living original. "The nations hate
us," he declared, "on account of the divinity that lives in our
midst." But, he warned them, they must not be tempted to calcu-
late the advent of the Messiah, who would come in God's own time.
The Rambam's words were like a tonic to the Jews of Yemen,
who were so grateful that they included him in the Kaddish prayer.
"May God's kingdom," they revised the Kaddish to read, "be
established in your lifetime, and in the lifetime of our teacher
Moses ben Maimon, and in the lifetime of all the house of Israel."
The same zeal for the ancient faith produced his thirteen credos,
which Jews the world over still recite in their daily prayers. These
Articles of Faith the great teacher embodied in one of his monu-
mental works, a commentary on the Mishnah which he called the
Luminary , and on which he labored during his years of wandering.
The Articles are so framed as to refute not only the claims of the
rival religions, but the philosophical heresies as well, including
atheism and the denial of free will. The second and third Articles,
HIGH NOON 263
for example, proclaim the unity of God in such a manner as to
render impossible a belief in polytheism or the Christian Trinity.
The second great work of the Rambam, a complete code of
Biblical and Talmudic law, contributed even more than the Lumi-
nary to establish his authority with his people. This colossal work,
known as Mishneh Torah (Torah Repeated) and also as the Yad
Ha-Chazakah (The Mighty Hand) is an ordered classification of
the vast jurisprudence of the Talmud, together with illuminating
explanations which the sage drew from his rich store of philosophic
and scientific knowledge. The Mishneh Torah was acclaimed
throughout the Jewish world and exalted the Rambam to a plane
unattained by a Jewish leader since Saadia Gaon, two and a half
centuries earlier.
But the work had its opponents also. There were those who
frowned upon its rationalistic outlook; others were afraid it would
supplant the Talmud; and still others were envious of the prestige
it conferred upon its author. Among the latter was Samuel ben
Ali, master of a Talmudic college in Bagdad with the title of Gaon;
for the Gaonate had, it seems, been restored in Babylonia, shedding
a false glow and striving to recapture its ancient authority. In the
sharp controversy that ensued the sage of Fostat stood aloof:
unlike Saadia he found no zest in combat, but his cause was vali-
antly upheld by his favorite pupil, Joseph ibn Aknin.
II
THE Rambam's lucid mind produced another work which
provoked even more controversy. He called it Guide to the Per-
plexed, and wrote it for those whose minds were lured by the
philosophy and science of the age and found their faith incom-
patible with reason. "The object of this treatise," he writes, "is to
enlighten a religious man who has been trained to believe in the
truth of our holy Torah . . . and at the same time has been success-
ful in his philosophical studies. Human reason has attracted him to
abide within its sphere, and he finds it difficult to accept as correct
the teaching based on the literal interpretation of Torah . . . hence
he is lost in perplexity and anxiety." In the realm of philosophy
and "human reason" Aristotle was still the reigning monarch.
264 DISPERSION
One way by which the Rambam seeks to enlighten the per-
plexed is to interpret passages of the Bible not literally but figura-
tively. Another is to reconcile the teachings of philosophy and
science with those of Torah. He is not, however, a thick-and-thin
follower of Aristotle. On the contrary, he clashes with him on a
number of fundamental questions. Is the universe, or matter,
without beginning or end, and without aim, or is it the product of
God's creative will and purpose? Is man a creature held fast in
the shackles of predestination, an irresponsible slave of necessity,
or is he endowed with free will, and responsible, therefore, for
what he does or fails to do? With brilliant dialectic, Maimonides,
taking issue with Aristotle, upholds the doctrines of creation and
design, of free will and responsibility, doctrines which are basic
not only to Judaism, but to all theistic religion.
The Rambam, moreover, is well aware of the limitations of the
human intellect, nor does he invoke the judgment of reason in all
questions. "Do not imagine," he writes, "that these most difficult
problems can be thoroughly understood by any one of us. This is
not the case. At times the truth shines so brilliantly that we per-
ceive it as clear as day. Our nature and habit then draw a veil over
our perception, and we return to a darkness almost as dense as
before. We are like those who, though beholding frequent flashes
of lightning, still find ourselves in the thickest darkness of the
night."
From the Arabic in which Maimonides wrote it, the Guide was
translated into Hebrew and Latin, and the work has given its
author an honored place in the history of philosophy. But among
his own people the conflict that began with the Mishneh Torah
grew more bitter with the appearance of the Guide, and although
such controversies may be a tribute to the intellectual vigor of an
age, it did not add to the strength and serenity of the Jewish
communities in exile.
The sage himself continued his round of arduous labor until
his death, which occurred on December 1 3, 1 204. His remains were
taken to Palestine for burial, and the entire Diaspora went into
mourning for the great light that had gone out in Israel.
FRANCE, GERMANY, AND THE CRUSADES 265
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
France, Germany, and the Crusades
BEFORE pursuing the tale of Spanish Jewry to its tragic finale,
we raise the curtain on the communities in what are today
France, Germany, and England, the classic lands of European
civilization. For the Spain we have so far dealt with was Moslem
and Oriental rather than Christian and European; and, although
the current of Jewish history has flowed through many civiliza-
tions, it is Christian Europe which, by reason of the faith it
adopted, that the Jewish spirit has influenced most profoundly;
and it is Christian Europe which, for better or worse, has left the
deepest mark on the Jews themselves.
THERE came a time, toward the end of the fifth century,
when the Roman legions holding the Rhine frontier of the empire
broke before the pressure of the barbarians swarming in from the
forests of Germany. Clovis the Frank set up a great kingdom which
took in what is now France and most of Germany. He and his
warriors embraced the Catholic faith, but it was a conversion that
was only an immersion, without relation to the ethical teachings
of the founder. It left the lusts and savagery of the converts un-
affected, but it had an important influence on the fate of the Jews
who were scattered among them.
There were Jews in those lands centuries before the invasion of
the Franks; they came as early ^s the first century with the Roman
armies that pressed up into northern Gaul; and there were little
Jewish communities along the Rhine frontier, the largest of them
in the fortified outpost of Cologne. They were farmers, traders,
artisans, and physicians, and they lived at peace with their neigh-
bors: Romans, Gauls, or Franks.
266 DISPERSION
Their troubles began when Christianity became the state religion
and the bishops sought to put an end to all intercourse between
them and their neighbors. For a long time the prelates were only
moderately successful: the special laws forbidding them to own
slaves, to employ Christians or intermarry with them, and to be
employed in government service had to be enacted over and over
again, for the people generally, including the lower clergy, bore
them no ill will. A great deal, of course, depended on the ruler:
a strong man like Clovis dominated the bishops and checked their
zeal for persecution. But Clovis was followed by a succession of
weaklings known in history as "the do-nothing kings," and the
bishops raised their heads. Life became hard for the Jews in the
Prankish realms. Although the official papal policy did not favor
forced conversion, that method was often attempted. In 596 the
synagogue of Clermont was destroyed by a mob, and the Jews who
rejected baptism were driven from the city. When the Spanish
Jews fled from the cruelties of King Sisebut they found the gates
of France closed to them. Finally in 629, the Prankish king forced
all his Jews to accept baptism or leave the country, and for 150
years thereafter their story is a blank. Many of them must have
made their way to the region around Narbonne, which was ruled
by the Visigoths, and farther south into Spain.
After conquering Spain the Moslems swept on into France,
and for a rime it looked as if the Jews of that country would share
in the new era of freedom and culture which had been ushered in
for their brothers in Spain. But this was not to be. The Moslems
were approaching the river Loire when in 732 they were met
near Tours and defeated by a mighty host assembled and led by
the great Carolus or Charles Martel. The son of Charles dethroned
the last do-nothing king and established the Carolingian dynasty, of
which the greatest ruler was Charlemagne (768-814), under whom
we again pick up the thread of the Jewish story in the land of
die Franks.
3
CHARLEMAGNE was a relentless converter: with fire and
sword he brought the faith to the heathens on his borders, but he
seems to have let the Jews alone. He even appointed special officers
FRANCE, GERMANY, AND THE CRUSADES 267
with the title of "Master of the Jews" to protect them. No doubt
Charlemagne found them very useful. They were the leading
merchants of the land; through connections with their coreligion-
ists in other lands, they carried on a large international commerce,
and a tithe of their profits went into the king's coffers. Charlemagne
employed them also in the service of his government: a certain
Isaac was a member of an embassy he sent to the caliph Harun
al-Rashid in Bagdad. Charlemagne is best remembered as the man
whom, in 800, Pope Leo III crowned Emperor of Rome, thus
restoring a title that was now empty, but which for many centuries
haunted Europe like a ghost.
The son of Charlemagne, Louis the Pious, also resisted the efforts
of the bishops, of whom the most determined was Agobard, Bishop
of Lyons, to persecute his Jews. Agobard and his colleagues had
abundant cause for complaint against them. They often converted
their heathen slaves to Judaism, their Christian servants rested on
Saturdays and worked on Sundays, and every now and then
prominent personages embraced the Jewish faith.
After Louis, the empire his great father had built up fell apart.
Now for the first time we see France and Germany emerge and
go their separate ways, for the western Franks had become Latin-
ized, speaking a Roman language which is the French of today;
while the eastern Franks, too far removed from Roman influence,
clung to their German dialects, as well as their barbarous ways.
In neither country, however, were the monarchs strong enough
to control their dukes and counts, and the fortunes of the Jews
varied with the interests or whims of the local lords. But the gen-
eral state of confusion and division was not without its compensa-
tions. Banished from one city, as they were from Sens in 875,
from Limoges in 1010, and from Mayence in 1012, they could find
refuge in another in the same country.
Gradually the chaos gave wpy to the feudal system, but while
feudalism helped to make life tolerable in those dark and bloody
centuries, it provided no room for the Jew. Under that system all
men except the king were proteges or vassals of some protector or
suzerain to whom they swore fealty and service. The religion of
the Jew, however, prevented him from taking the feudal oath.
Nor was it possible for him to join in the feasting, fighting, and
268 DISPERSION
gaming that made up the life of the knights and nobles who left
all useful labor to be performed by their serfs. Moreover, as the
system tightened, it became practically impossible for those outside
of it to own land, for every landowner had to become the vassal
of some larger and more powerful owner or find himself landless.
In France, particularly in the south, Jews continued to own landed
property, but their possession was precarious. In 900 the Jews
of Narbonne, for example, were despoiled of their vineyards and
other real property, which the king handed over to the church.
In Germany the only occupation freely open to the Jews was
commerce, and communities sprang up on the banks of the prin-
cipal rivers. Along the Rhine the most important were in Cologne,
Mayence, Worms, Speyer, and Strasbourg. On the Danube and
its tributaries there were communities in Ulm, Augsburg, Munich,
Regensburg, and other towns, and there were still others on the
Elbe and its tributaries, the most important in Magdeburg, Merse-
burg, and Prague.
In 962 a German king, Otto I, was crowned Emperor of Rome,
a title which brought his successors a heritage of troubles: wars in
Italy and bitter feuds with the popes. In one of his battles in
Sicily, his successor Otto II was saved by an Italian Jew named
Calonymus who then, it appears, migrated to Germany and settled
in Mayence, where his family achieved great distinction for learn-
ing and good deeds.
4
rr WAS a hard and harassed life that the Jews of France
and Germany lived amid the coarseness and violence of the Dark
Ages, but by the practice of their faith and the pursuit of learning
it acquired grace and elevation. From Provence, the region adjacent
to Spain, the study of the Talmud spread northward to the Rhine.
Legend has it that it was brought to Narbonne by Nathan ben Isaac,
one of the four emissaries from Sura; and Judah ben Meir, better
known as Leontin, the first important teacher of the academy in
Narbonne of whom we have definite knowledge, may have been
one of Nathan's pupils.
But it is certain that Gershom ben Judah, a pupil of Leontin,
born in France in 960, left his native land and established a school
FRANCE, GERMANY, AND THE CRUSADES 269
in Mayence on the Rhine, which became the most important
center of Jewish learning north of the Pyrenees. The learning of
the north lacked the breadth and elegance of Spain, where it was
embellished with the poetry, the philosophy, and the science that
surrounded it. But it was deeper and more thorough. The Talmud
was like a fortress to which its devotees fled for refuge, and with
every nook and cranny of which they became familiar.
Gershom became "the Light of the Exile." Pupils flocked to his
school from France, Germany, and Italy, bringing the learning
they acquired from the master back to their own communities.
His authority surpassed that of Hai, the last Gaon who was then
striving to uphold the prestige of Pumbeditha. Questions on law
and ritual poured in on him from communities all over the conti-
nent, and he issued decrees that were accepted without question.
The one on which his fame is most securely founded was a decree
formally abolishing polygamy, and another required a husband to
have the consent of his wife before he could divorce her.
The master's teachings may have been too persuasive, for it hap-
pened that a Christian priest became converted to Judaism and evil
days fell on the Jews of Mayence and other cities in the Rhine-
land. They were ordered to accept baptism or be expelled. Before
the persecutions were checked by the wealthy and learned Simon
ben Isaac, Gershom sustained the sorrow of seeing his own son
embrace Christianity. When the Jews were finally able to return
to their own homes and faith, Gershom issued a decree forbidding
any slur to be cast on the former converts. Their sufferings, he
declared, had already been great enough.
5
AFTER his death the school of Gershom ben Judah declined,
but before it disappeared it gave instruction to one who was
destined to surpass its founder on learning and prestige. The new
light of Israel was Rabbi Shlomo ben Isaac, better known as Rashi.
He was born in 1040, and when still a youth left his natiye city of
Troyes in France and set out, poor and friendless, to quench an
insatiable thirst for knowledge. He studied in Mayence and Speyer
and found teachers also in Worms, where the chapel in which
he studied has been reverently preserved. At twenty-five he ce-
270 DISPERSION
turned to his native city and lived there for the remaining forty
years of his life, teaching the young men who flocked to him for
instruction; but, like the sages of old, he earned his livelihood by
the labor of his hands. From near and far, his answers were sought
to questions on Talmudic law, and so highly regarded was his
school at Troyes that its students were in demand as rabbis and
teachers even by the communities of Spain.
Rashi is the great illuminator of the Bible and Talmud. His com-
mentaries, which are still an essential part of the traditional educa-
tion of the Jew, are remarkable for their incisiveness and clarity. A
single word or short phrase, often with the French and German
equivalent, lights up the meaning of a difficult passage, and when
something escapes his understanding he very frankly states: "This
I do not understand."
His personal life was a model of saintliness, and his children and
grandchildren proved worthy of him. His work on the Talmud
was completed after his death by his son-in-law and grandsons,
who also made additions (tossafot) to the commentaries of the
master. His mantle of authority fell on the shoulders of his grand-
son Jacob Tarn,* who became recognized as the master Talmudist
of his generation. He too was the recipient of interpellations from
near and far, and in order to give his answers greater validity he
referred them to a congress of rabbis which, from time to time,
assembled at his call in the city of Troyes.
IN 1095 Rashi and his disciples were peacefully pursuing
their studies in Troyes, and the Jewish communities on the Rhine
and Danube felt safe under the protection of the "Roman Em-
peror*' and the lesser German rulers. But the same year an as-
sembly of bishops and princes, meeting in the French city of
Qermont, was roused to a frenzy by Pope Urban II, who called on
all true Christians to march on Jerusalem with cross and sword and
deliver the Holy City from the Turks. The infidels, he thundered,
were torturing and murdering the pilgrims who came to kneel at
the Holy Sepulcher. That assembly marked the beginning of those
Tarn in Hebrew means "perfect."
FRANCE, GERMANY, AND THE CRUSADES 271
fantastic mass movements of the Middle Ages known as the Cru-
sades which, before marching to their objective, swept like a
devastating storm over the Jewish communities of Western Europe.
The Turks had come from the plateaus of central Asia, a region
boiling over with barbarians who descended on the provinces of
the Abassid caliphs and the Byzantine emperors. By 1073 they
were in possession of Jerusalem and were holding Nicaea, not
far from Constantinople. The Byzantine emperor Alexius appealed
for help, and the shrewd Pope Urban saw in the situation an oppor-
tunity to become head of the Christians of the east as he was
already the head of those of the west.
A monk named Peter the Hermit took up the cry sounded by
the Pope. He travelled through France and along the Rhine, and
in response to his flaming speeches, people left their fields, hovels,
and castles and assembled in motley throngs to march on to Pales-
tine, two thousand miles away. Something like a fever took hold
of Christian Europe. Here was an adventure that broke with bright
promise on the drab and bitter lifef of the masses. In addition to
those who were fired by simple religious enthusiasm, the movement
swept in vagabonds, criminals, camp followers, and those who
loved excitement regardless of what it was all about. Needy
knights and bankrupt nobles were lured by the fabled riches of
the East. They dreamed of acquiring little kingdoms or principali-
ties, nor did it matter very much to them whether they wrested
them from the infidel Turks or the Christian Greeks.
7
EARLY in 1096 the strange aggregations in northern France
and along the Rhine were ready to move. The Jews, especially in
France, watched the growing excitement of their neighbors with
fear and foreboding. The pious crusaders were asking why, before
dealing with the unbelievers iji Palestine, they should not deal
with those in their own midst. Would it be less pleasing to God to
kill a Jew than to kill a Mohammedan? Godfrey de Bouillon, one
of the foremost leaders of the Crusade, declared that the Wood of
Christ must be avenged with the blood of the Jews. And cupidity
joined hands with fanaticism: for the Jews, it was rumored, pos-
sessed great stores of gold and silver.
272 DISPERSION
To their brothers on the Rhine the Jews of France sent word
of their peril, imploring them to fast and pray for them. It turned
out, however, that with the exception of Rouen, the Jewish com-
munities in France suffered but little, while those in Germany,
who felt secure in the rights which emperors, bishops, and nobles
had granted them, bore the brunt of the crusaders' fury.
In the spring of 1096, a horde of crusaders turned up in the
region of Metz and Treves. The procession was headed by a
goose and some goats, who were to lead the way to Jerusalem. In
Metz they slew twenty-two Jews; in Treves they offered the
Jews the choice of baptism or death. After appealing in vain to the
bishop of the city for protection, most of the Jews accepted
baptism, hoping that as soon as the Emperor Henry IV, who was
away in Italy, came back to Germany they could return to their
faith.
Early in May a horde of crusaders broke into Speyer. There the
Jews were enjoying special rights and occupying a section of their
own protected by a wall. After repelling an attack on the syna-
gogue, many of them found refuge in the palace of the bishop
who even seized some of the mob and executed them. A week
later, however, the crusaders, joined by peasants and burghers,
surrounded the palace and demanded the surrender of the Jews.
The bishop told his wards he was unable to hold out and advised
them to accept baptism. They asked for time to consider it, and
when he returned there lay before him a heap of corpses. The
Jews of Speyer had taken their own lives.
Equally grim and sublime was the fate which, in May of the
same year, overtook the communities at Worms and Cologne. The
great majority of them preferred death to baptism, and many
died by their own hands, fathers and mothers first slaying their
children. In Cologne the bishop, as well as the Christian burghers,
did their best to protect the Jews, but the crusaders tracked them
down in their places of refuge. In Mayence over a thousand Jews
perished, many of them suicides. A descendant of the famous
Calonymus slew his own son before he died. A desperate act of
vengeance by a Jewish youth of Worms is recorded. He was
Simcha Cohen, who had seen his father and seven brothers mur-
FRANCE, GERMANY, AND THE CRUSADES 273
dered. He agreed to be baptised and, in the midst of the cere-
mony, plunged his dagger into the heart of the bishop's nephew.
By July of 1096, more than 10,000 Jews had perished in the
cities of the Rhine alone. As the crusaders moved eastward still
other Jewish communities lay in their path, and wherever they
came in Regensburg, Prague, and other places they gathered a
rich harvest of plunder, forced converts, and corpses. In Hungary,
however, they met with terrible retribution. Alarmed by the in-
cursion of the rabble horde, the Hungarians met them and slew
scores of thousands of them. Those that escaped and went on were
later massacred by the Turks.
Such were the exploits and such the climax of the so-called
people's part of the First Crusade. There was another part which
consisted of mustered armies led by princes and dukes. These
potentates distrusted and hated each other, and all of them despised
the Byzantine emperor whom, ostensibly, they had come to succor.
Some went so far as to ally themselves with the Mohammedans
and Turks against their brother crusaders.
A portion got to Palestine, and in 1099 they captured Jerusalem
and massacred its inhabitants, the Jews of the city perishing in the
flames of the synagogue into which the crusaders herded them be-
fore setting it on fire. The "Franks," as the Moslems called the
crusaders, met fierce resistance from Jews and Mohammedans
alike, but managed to establish themselves also along the coast of
Syria and Palestine. They were still there in 1141 when Yehudah
Halevi set foot in Palestine and in 1 165 when the Rambam passed
through the land on his way to Egypt.
On his return from Italy, Emperor Henry IV, outraged by the
crimes, did what he could for the survivors. He ordered their
property to be restored and, against the protests of the Pope, he
permitted the forced converts to return to their faith. From his
study in Troyes the great Rashi raised his voice, admonishing those
who had remained steadfast not to reject their repentant brothers,
but to welcome them back into the fold. On the surface, life re-
sumed its former course, but the soldiers of the cross had inflicted
wounds on the Jewish communities of the Germanics that never
quite healed.
174 DISPERSION
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Martyrdom and Exile
FOR another century and a half crusades flared up and flick-
ered out, providing an outlet for the miseries and passions
of the multitude, as well as a channel for the ambitions of
princes and potentates. The Crusades became more and more sor-
did and futile as they continued. The Second Crusade, which
came in 1147 after the Turks had wrested the Syrian county of
Edessa from the "Franks," was led by the king of France and the
German emperor; they hated each other and were distrusted by
those whom they came to succor.
The adventure was a failure, but it "succeeded*' against the
Jews of France and Germany, whom the crusaders attacked and
forced into baptism or suicide. Jacob Tarn, grandson of Rashi and
leading rabbi of the age, suffered grievous wounds at their hands
and barely escaped with his life. During this crusade, however,
there were Jews who met their foes arms in hand. A pitched battle
took place at Carentan in France, where the small Jewish com-
munity was overcome only after slaying a large number of the
assailants.
Forty years later when Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt, had re-
taken Jerusalem, came the Third Crusade, copiously besung by
bards and troubadours. Its leaders, who wasted no love on each
other, were the French king, Philip Augustus, the German em-
peror, Frederick Redbeard, and the English king, Richard the
Lion-Hearted. The only bright spot in that affair was the mutual
respect and admiration that developed between Richard and
Saladin. In Germany the emperor took the Jews under his personal
protection, and they were saved from massacre. Philip Augustus,
on the other hand, was a ferocious persecutor who murdered and
exiled many of his Jewish subjects until, on his return from the
crusade, he discovered that by making them his property and
MARTYRDOM AND EXILE 275
affording them a measure of protection, he could extort a hand-
some revenue from them. His barons adopted the same policy. In
1182 Philip had banished his Jews; in 1198 he recalled them and
encouraged them to engage in moneylending in order to plunder
them.
The Crusades continued. Some of them, like the Fourth Cru-
sade in 1202, which was really a war not against the infidels, but
against the Byzantine Empire, and the crusades against heretics and
monarchs who incurred the wrath of the Pope, were directed
against Christians rather than infidel Moslems. In 1212, there was
even a Children's Crusade in which thousands of French and
German boys perished or were captured and sold into slavery.
The innocent children, it was urged, would succeed where the
wicked elders had failed. In 1229 Emperor Frederick II, the
enfant terrible of the century and a liberal skeptic who preferred
Jewish and Moslem companions to orthodox Christians, after
having been himself the target of a crusade, made off to Palestine
and conducted an opera bouffe cruade of his own.
The ferment abated, the glamour became tamisHed, and the
movement ebbed away. It was seven centuries later, in 1918, that
an army of a Christian power wrested Palestine from Moslem
rule, and that army, as we shall see, contained battalions of Jews,
descendants of those who survived the crusaders' fury, who
fought for the restoration of their people in its ancient land.
BUT the Crusades inflicted upon the Jews of Germany
and France even worse ravages than snuffed-out lives and forced
conversions. Changes were brought about in their economic, legal,
and social position, from which they found it more difficult to
recover and which fixed their status for centuries to come.
The feudal system had already made it practically impossible
for Jews to own and till the soil. As for the handicrafts, they were
barred from the guilds of artisans in the towns, and so were unable
to ply the manual trades except within the narrow confines of
their own communities. Commerce, however, was open to them,
and they had occupied an important and often dominant place in
it, particularly in international trade. But the Crusades brought
276 DISPERSION
large numbers of Christians into contact with foreign lands and
foreign commodities. Christian tradesmen now appeared on the
scene who, finding themselves hampered by their Jewish com-
petitors, secured the enactment of laws that cut the ground from
under the feet of the Jewish merchants. Only the meanest forms
of trading, such as pack-peddling and dealing in second-hand
merchandise, remained open to them.
Another occupation which was still permitted the Jews was
that of moneylending. Its practice was forbidden to Christians;
the church took the position that all interest was usury and there-
fore sinful, a position, it may be noted, that it no longer holds,
the leading bankers or moneylenders of today being not Jews but
Christians. It was not inclination but necessity that impelled the
Jews of the Middle Ages to resort to moneylending, for the oc-
cupation was fraught with hazards and perils. It roused against
them the resentment and greed of the very people it served, and
in the popular fancy it gave rise to the fantastic and dangerous
legend that every Jew was possessed of fabulous wealth.
It was greed that was chiefly responsible also for a change in
the legal position of the Jews. Kings and emperors, princes, dukes
and bishops, having discovered they could derive a lucrative income
from the Jews inhabiting their realms, made them their personal
property and sold them protection for a price. Always in need of
money for their wars or pleasures, they contrived all sorts of
devices for extorting it from "their" Jews, and when the latter
sought to escape ruin by emigration, they prevented them from
leaving their borders. In the reign of Philip Augustus, for example,
the dukes and barons agreed that each of them would keep out
of his territory Jews belonging to the others. It was these "pro-
tectors" who benefited from the ilsury; it was they who were the
real usurers.
Still another change was imposed upon the Jews, a change iu
their social status even more catastrophic than the economic and
legal changes already noted. In 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council
in Rome, convened by the illustrious Pope Innocent III, re-enacted
the old laws that aimed to prevent all intercourse between Jews
and Christians, and added new ones. Among the latter was one
requiring all Jews to wear a special mark that would distinguish
MARTYRDOM AND EXILE 277
them from their neighbors. The yellow patch, which they were
now forced to wear on their outer garments, reduced them to the
status of social outcasts. The patch was an invitation to every
scoundrel and ruffian to insult and attack them. The yellow patch
was responsible for untold physical suff ering and moral anguish.
To the Christian masses of the Middle Ages, the Jews became
not only an object of aversion and derision; they became also a
mystery and a dread. In the popular mind, always beguiled by the
bizarre and the lurid, fantastic ideas took root concerning the
Jews, including the insane belief that they use the blood of Chris-
tians in preparing their Passover bread, a belief that brought death
and ruin to thousands of innocents. Nor is it amiss to point out
that this belief and others like them still persist in our own day
for the ready use of charlatans, bigots, and demagogues.
3
UNTIL 1 189, when Richard the Lion-Hearted became king f
the Jews of England were on the whole more fortunate than their
brothers on the continent. Jewish traders must have come to Eng-
land from France and Germany before the Norman conquest in
1066; they may, in fact, have come with the Roman legions that
descended on Britain in the first century. It is certain, however,
that William the Conqueror was accompanied by a group of them
from Rouen, his capital in Normandy, and his son Henry I granted
them a charter of rights and privileges as traders.
Their legal and economic status, to be sure, was not secure, for
they were the wards and virtually the property of the rulers, and
subject to his whims and greed. By levying special taxes on them
and naming themselves their heirs, the kings took care that their
Jews should not become too wealthy. When, for example, the rich
banker, Aaron of Lincoln, died, Henry II made himself his heir.
Jrhe kings found the Jews useful also in improving their relations
with their proud and unruly vassals. Every now and then the
monarchs permitted the barons to liquidate the debts they owed
the Jews on terms favorable to them and to the royal treasury, but
not, of course, to the creditors.
Nevertheless, in spite of oppression and chicanery, the Jews of
England increased and prospered. Communities sprang up in the
278 DISPERSION
principal towns, the largest of them in London. There, in 1 158, the
famous traveler and philosopher Abraham ibn Ezra came to visit
them. Jacob of Orleans, a pupil of Jacob Tarn, came to live there
and they made him their rabbi. A few of them even managed to
become rich and lived in fine palaces: they might have chosen to
live in hovels could they have foreseen what the future held in
store for them. Already in 1 144, the ghastly blood accusation had
been laid against the Jews of Norwich, and many of them had been
murdered by the mob.
But the First and Second Crusades left the Jews of England
unscathed: to belong in fee simple to the monarch had its advan-
tages. Henry II, who reigned from 1 1 54 to 1 1 89, resorted to all
the royal devices for fleecing them and when, toward the end of
his long reign, he made ready to take part in the Third Crusade,
he extorted a huge sum from them for his expenses. But the Jews
of England were grateful that they were not faced with the
crusaders' choice of baptism or death. Henry, moreover, reigned
also over many of the provinces of France, having acquired them
by inheritance or marriage, and the Jews of those regions also
enjoyed his protection.
Henry II did not set out on the Crusade. He died of a broken
heart, his sons having rebelled against him and made war on him
in open or secret alliance with Philip Augustus of France; it was
his son Richard who was destined to gather laurels in Palestine as
a soldier of the cross. On September 3, 1189, Richard was
crowned king, and the same day a series of bloody outbreaks
against the Jews of England began which made their lot one with
their brothers in France and Germany.
4
THE king himself, it appears, was not to blame. A Jewish
deputation headed by Benedict of York and bearing gifts for the
monarch, had come to the coronation, and the Archbishop of Can-
terbury prevailed on Richard not to admit them into his presence.
The multitude outside the palace saw the Jewish notables not only
dismissed, but insulted and beaten. At once the rumor spread
among them that their pious king wanted them to do with the Jews
as they pleased. The good people of London, like the good people
MARTYRDOM AND EXILE 279
of other places and times before and since, became a bloodthirsty
mob. They set fire to Jewish homes, hunted the victims to their
places of refuge, and gave them the choice of baptism or death.
The Jews chose death and many of them, including their rabbi,
Jacob of Orleans, died by their own hands. The king tried to stop
the butchery; he even had two of the mob executed. He issued an
edict proclaiming the Jews to be under his protection, but the
passions that were roused were out of control and he himself,
moreover, had to leave for Palestine.
From London the violence spread to other towns. The barons,
who were generally in debt to the Jews, made little or no effort
to check it, and some of them even aided and abetted it. Before
embarking on the Crusade, the soldiers of the cross gave full vent
to their religious zeal at home. They wiped out a little congrega-
tion of twenty English families who had embraced Judaism, and
Jews were slain or driven to self-immolation in Lynn, Norwich,
Stamford, York, Bury St. Edmunds, and other places.
The most somber and heroic tragecjy was enacted in the city of
York. Benedict of York had died from the wounds he received
in the London outbreak, and the mob attacked and looted his home.
The Jews took refuge in the town citadel to which the mob, led
by a baron who was heavily in debt to the Jews, laid siege. The
besieged beat off every attack, the ardor of the rabble began to
wane, and they were about to abandon the enterprise when a monk
dressed in a white robe appeared among them and roused them to
fresh enthusiasm. The enthusiasm changed to frenzy when a stone
from the tower killed the monk in his pious exercises. But die
frenzy was of no avail; the Jews continued to hold out.
Before long, however, they saw themselves faced with starva-
tion and capture, and one morning it was the morning of the
Great Sabbath: March 17, 1190 the besiegers, noting the absence
of the usual signs of resistance, broke into the citadel. When they
reached the tower they stood facing five hundred corpses. The
defenders had performed the supreme act of martyrdom. The men,
after slaying their wives and children, had slain each other. Joseph,
the lay leader of the community, sought and obtained the honor of
being slain by the rabbi, Yom Tob of Joigny.
2 So DISPERSION
5
A CENTURY later, in July 1290, Edward I issued an edict
ordering all Jews, on pain of death, to be gone from the soil of
England by November i of that year. It had been a century of
mounting misery for the victims. Legally they belonged to the
king and Henry HI, whose long reign lasted from 1216 to 1272,
once leased them for a year to his brother Richard! But the kings
"protected" them only in order to rob them, the bishops and
abbots insisted on their right to persecute the unbelievers, and
behind kings and bishops lowered the coarse and bestial mob, easily
incited and always ready to vent its wretchedness on the helpless.
In 1222, an assembly of the clergy had met in Oxford and
passed laws forbidding the Jews to build new synagogues or em-
ploy Christian servants, and ordering them to wear the shameful
patch on their clothing. The king, on the other hand, professed to
be interested in their welfare. In 1241 Henry III had assembled
a "Jewish Parliament" to which every community in England sent
representatives; but all it did was to raise a huge sum of money
for die royal treasury. The principal function of the chief rabbi,
whom the king chose, was to collect the special taxes levied upon
them.
The credulous mob was particularly fascinated by the blood
accusation. Torture was used to obtain confessions from the in-
nocent, and in 1255 eighteen Jews of Lincoln were put to death
when the body of a boy named Hugh was discovered, and the
Jews were accused of having murdered him. During a disturbance
in 1264 the Jews of London and other places were plundered and
many of them slain.
Early in his reign Henry III Had been petitioned by his Jews
for permission to emigrate. By 1211 many of their rabbis had left
and gone to Palestine with another group of rabbis from France.
But the king refused permission and took measures to prevent
them from leaving the country. In time, however, the usefulness
of the Jews to the crown declined. The extortions had almost
wrung them dry; in 1275 they were forbidden by Edward I in
his Statute of Judaism to engage in moneylending. About the same
rime, moreover, they began to be supplanted by Italian bankers
MARTYRDOM AND EXILE 28l
the Lombards, as they came to be known in England. Economi-
cally the Jews were left dangling in the air, and morally the per-
secutions instigated by the clergy became more and more galfing.
Finally came the Edict of Expulsion, and some 16,000 Jews left
English soil. The royal policy was enforced to the hilt, the real
property of the exiles as well as the debts which Englishmen owed
them were taken over by the king.
It was not until 1656, more than three and a half centuries later,
that Jews were readmitted into England, but although they them-
selves were absent, the weird legends about them persisted. The
trail of those legends moves in the literature of those centuries: in
ballads about little Hugh of Lincoln, including a famous one by
Chaucer; in Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, in Shake-
speare's The Merchant of Venice, the latter still a fertile breeding
ground of prejudice against a people whom the author could only
have known through legend and rumor.
MOST of the exiles from England found refuge in France,
but not for long did they remain unmolested. Here too they were
exposed to the greed of kings and nobles, the bigotry of bishops
and friars, and the ferocity of the mob. France, in fact, was even
more dominated by the clergy than England; in 1242, during the
reign of the pious Louis IX, known as Saint Louis, Paris had been
the scene of the first public burning of the Talmud. An apostate
named Nicholas Donin, one of those twisted souls whose bitterness
and hate added greatly to the woes of the people they renounced,
had charged that the Talmud contained insults to the Christian
faith, and the king's officers had seized twenty-four wagon loads
of the sacred and precious books and burned them. Saint Louis
loved converts. He often honored the ceremony of baptism by his
presence; and once he manifested his generosity to his people by
cancelling a third of the debts they owed the Jews.
In 1306 the refugees from England, together with a much
larger number of native Jews whose ancestors had lived in France
for a thousand years, were ordered by Philip IV to leave the coun-
try. It was a simple device for replenishing the royal coffers: the
king left to the exiles only the clothes they wore and enough money
DISPERSION
for a day's maintenance. Nine years later, however, Louis X re-
called them for a period of twelve years: the people, it appears,
preferred the Jews to the moneylenders who had taken their place.
But their lot in France until the final expulsion in 1394 was hard
and bitter. In 1320 they were the victims of a crusade of shepherds
and peasants who destroyed more than a hundred Jewish commu-
nities, some in northern Spain, most of them in southern France.
The "shepherds" were suppressed only after, in their warped
fanaticism, they had begun to attack the clergy also. A year later,
thousands of French Jews lost their lives following a charge made
by lepers that the Jews had hired them to poison the wells. This
accusation was not to be the last of its kind: the wretched popu-
lace believed it avidly, the clergy countenanced it, and the kings
profited from the victims' possessions which they confiscated.
There was another expulsion, followed after nearly forty years
by another invitation to return, which many of the exiles pa-
thetically accepted. What happened was that in the Battle of
Poitiers in 1356, John the Good had been taken prisoner by the
English, and France was unable to raise the ransom for its king.
So the Jews were asked to come back; but the mob and the clergy
were not appeased. Finally in 1394, when it was found that a
French Jew who had accepted baptism had had the audacity to
return to his faith, the clamor became greater than the king could
withstand. On the Day of Atonement of that year, Charles VI
signed the order of expulsion. It went into effect on November 3
and for the next four centuries, until the Great Revolution swept
out the old regime, the history of the Jews in France is a blank page.
7
IN THE political crazy quilt of Germany, only nominally
ruled by the head of the Holy Roman Empire, the same social
conditions prevailed that made Jewish life precarious all over
Europe. Emperors, princes, and bishops granted Jewish communi-
ties charters of rights and privileges to protect them in their life,
property, and worship; charters which were, of course, well paid
for. Frederick II, who reigned from 1215 to 1250, even allowed
diem to settle their disputes in their own courts. The rulers of the
neighboring lands, Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, Silesia,
MARTYRDOM AND EXILE 283
and Poland, conferred similar grants upon their Jews. But those
parchments were no talisman against the primitive passions that
surged around them. Not even Frederick II could save them from
outbreaks that took place at Erfurt, at Frankfort on the Main, at
Meiningen, in Baden, in Wuerttemberg, in Bavaria. Thirty-two
Jews perished in Fulda as the result of a blood accusation. The
emperor denounced the legend, pointing out that the Bible and
Talmud prohibited the Jews from using even the blood of animals;
Innocent IV and Gregory X issued papal bulls proclaiming the
accusations to be false; but nothing could dislodge the insane belief
from the mind of the mob.
Under the emperor Rudolph of Hapsburg (1273-1291), the
plight of the Jews grew worse; many of them secretly left Ger-
many, and some of them decided to migrate to Palestine. Their
leader was Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg, the outstanding Jewish
personality of the century. As a scholar, Rabbi Meir belonged to
the Tassafists; that is, to those who wrote additions to Rashi's
commentary on the Talmud. Meir*was educated in the Tossafist
schools in France; as a young man he had seen the public burning
of the Talmud in Paris and written a lament which is still read on
the Ninth of Ab. In Rothenburg he conducted a school of his
own, and his disciples carried his teachings to foreign lands, in-
cluding Spain and Austria. Questions on law and religion came to
him from distant communities in many parts of the world.
The project of migrating to Palestine was not new; it dove-
tailed, of course, with the hope of eventual restoration which is part
and parcel of the ancient faith. The urge to live and die on the
holy soil had impelled others besides Yehudah Halevi to brave the
hazards of the journey. About 1211, for example, some 300 rabbis
of France and England, led by another famous Tossafist, Samson
ben Abraham of Sens, had made their way to Palestine and settled
there. Meir of Rothenburg, however, was not destined to be so
fortunate. He was stopping in Italy, waiting to be joined by his
community, when he was recognized, taken back to Germany,
and imprisoned in a fortress near Colmar. It was a crime to deprive
the emperor of "his" Jews. But the large sum that was raised for
Meir's ransom never reached the emperor's coffers. Meir of Rothen-
burg refused to be ransomed; he refused to show the wicked a new
284 DISPERSION
way of oppressing his unhappy people. In 1293, after an incar-
ceration of six years, the noble and courageous teacher died in his
prison*
8
THE centuries that follow provide litde comfort for those
who are eager to discover in history a progressive refinement of the
human mind and character. Perhaps the basic cause was the ap-
palling misery and squalor that prevailed in Europe, and the blind
rage of those who suffer and hunt for a scapegoat. But the capacity
of the human intellect to believe the weird and incredible, and of
the human character to descend to the level of the beast of prey,
is no less appalling. And woe to the helpless who find themselves
caught between the millstones of credulity and greed!
In 1298, five years after the great-hearted Meir of Rothenburg
died in prison, a new chimera of the human imagination, more
ghastly even than the blood libel, was born in Germany. The
Jews were accused of "bleeding the host." It should be recalled that
the sacrament of the Eucharist is based on the belief that by the
recital of the mass, a piece of bread, or "host,"* is changed by the
priest into the body of Christ. The Jews of Roettingen in Fran-
conia were accused of stealing the host and beating it until it bled!
The duty of avenging the sacrilege was assumed by a nobleman
named Rindfleisch, and his task was rendered easier by a civil war
in which the empire was embroiled. Beginning with Roettingen,
Rindfleisch and his horde swept on through Bavaria and Austria.
About 140 Jewish communities that lay in his path are believed to
have been destroyed. Forty years later came another orgy of
destruction, led by two noblemen with leather arm-bands who
called themselves Arndeder. The pope, Benedict XII, denounced
the new libel, but his words had little or no effect on the popular
mind. The advantages of destroying the Jews were too obvious.
But the terror of those years, and even that of the First Crusade
two and a half centuries earlier, appears small when compared to
the desolation that descended on the Jews of Europe in 1 348 and
1 349. In those years the nations were in the grip of a great horror.
From the Latin word hostia, meaning "facrifice."
MARTYRDOM AND EXILE 285
By way of Africa and through Spain the Black Death had spread
through the continent. A third of the population is believed to
have been carried off by it, and in some parts as many as two-
thirds and three-quarters perished. Soon, rumors began to circulate
that the pestilence was the result of a plot, an "international con-
spiracy" hatched by the Jews to destroy the Christians. The Jews
did it by poisoning the wells and rivers, the poison being com-
pounded of spiders, frogs, lizards, hearts of Christians, and the
host! Haggard bands of Flagellants, religious maniacs who scourged
themselves and each other with whips, moved from town to town,
performed their penance in public, and called cm the people to kill
the Jews.
The fact that the plague was rife in France and England where
there were no Jews, and that Jews also perished from it, meant
nothing to the inventors of the rumors or their dupes. Or it may
be true that the Jews, by reason of the hygienic mode of life
which their religion enjoined upon them, did not so readily suc-
cumb to the pestilence as did their neighbors. Confessions were
wrung from the innocent by torture, and whole communities in
Spain, Switzerland, and Germany were wiped out. Some of the
victims set fire to their quarters and perished in the flames which,
in many instances, spread and destroyed the rest of the towns.
More than two hundred communities, it is estimated, were anni-
hilated.
Some of the city councils, as well as the pope and, half-heartedly,
the emperor also, tried to check the fury of the rabble, but without
success. The intervention of the councils, dominated as they were
by the nobility, only added fuel to the flames. For the guilds of
the towns were in revolt against the privileged nobility, and they
regarded the Jews as the allies of the oppressors: the pattern of
European society was undergoing a change and the principal
victims were the Jews. Where the guilds succeeded in seizing the
councils they set about liquidating the Jewish communities "le-
gally" and methodically. But the wealth they acquired by pillaging
their victims proved illusory. The cancellation of debts only
strengthened the nobles who were the principal debtors, and the
liquidation of the Jews brought a decline not only in the revenues
of emperors, dukes, princes and bishops, but in the general pros-
2 86 DISPERSION
perity of the towns themselves. For the Jews played an immensely
important role in the economy of the Middle Ages, and their dis-
appearance was apt to be followed by stagnation and decay.
Before long the fever of insurrection and violence in the Ger-
manies subsided, and those who had managed to escape the holo-
caust through flight were invited to return. The special quarters
to which they were consigned were now closed off, the gates
locked every night. The ghetto became a separate world, in the
physical as well as the spiritual sense. The emperor, nobles, bishops,
and town councils composed their differences as to who should
own and despoil the Jews, and for about thirty years the ghettos
were not assaulted.
New disturbances broke out in 1384. This time the Jews were
prevented from leaving: they remained between the hammer and
anvil of the contending classes, the matter in dispute being who
should benefit from the spoliation of the victims. In 1 389 a frightful
massacre occurred in Prague when the host, which was being
carried in a religious procession through the ghetto, was acci-
dentally sprinkled with sand by Jewish children playing in the
street. In 1400, eighty Jews of Prague perished when a Jewish
renegade charged that the Alenu prayer insulted the founder of
Christianity.
9
THROUGH the fifteenth century, the dreary tale of extortion,
libel, violence, and exile continues. The fate of the Jewish com-
munities in the numerous political units into which the empire was
divided and over which the authority of the emperor often failed,
hung on the interests, the whims, and the passions of rulers, clergy,
and mobs. In the wars against the religious rebel and reformer,
John Huss, which lasted from 1419 to 1436, the Jews were accused
of helping the heretics. The friars called upon the faithful to treat
Jews and Hussites alike, and Jews suffered as they did centuries
earlier at the hands of the crusaders. In 142 1, after a series of bloody
persecutions, all Jews were expelled from Austria. The same fate
befell those of Cologne, Augsburg, and other towns.
In the middle of the century the center of the stage was held
INNER LIFE 287
by the Franciscan monk John Capistrano, styled "the Scourge of
the Jews." His eloquence led to their expulsion from Bavaria and
Franconia, and to the hideous accusation of bleeding the host
against the Jews of Breslau in Silesia. Israel Isserlein, the leading
rabbi of Germany, challenged Capistrano to go with him to the
stake and let God decide between them, but the monk declined the
offer.
A colleague of Capistrano named Bernardinus won even greater
glory in the Tyrolean city of Trent. In 1475 he accused the Jews
of that city, who had been living in friendship with their neigh-
bors, of having murdered a Christian child for Passover, and all of
them, with the exception of four who accepted baptism, were
buried alive. The child became an object of worship. Not even
a later investigation, clearing the accused, not even a bull issued
by Pope Sixtus IV, could shake the belief of the populace in the
guilt of the Jews and the miraculous virtues of the child's grave.
The affair of Trent had wide repercussions: it led to large-scale
persecutions in other places, particularly in Regensburg.
Such was the social and moral atmosphere in which this "peculiar
people" struggled to exist and preserve its soul.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Inner Life
NEVERTHELESS, it would throw the picture of Jewish life
during those somber centuries out of focus if we dwelt
solely on the woes and disasters that crowd the annals of
the European Diaspora. Endowed with an inner strength that
bordered on the mysterious, Jewish life displayed an incredible
capacity for recovery and renewal. The communities stood always
in the shadow of a smoldering volcano, but in the intervals be-
tween eruptions their wounds healed and they resumed their own
inner life, the exuberance and elevation of which were a sealed book
to their neighbors.
288 DISPERSION
THIS life became completely inaccessible to their neighbors
when, after the Black Death, the Jews were compelled to live in
walled ghettos, and intercourse with Christians was drastically
curtailed. Of course the ghetto was decreed with the object of
preventing such intercourse; at the same time, however, it afforded
its residents a measure of protection and was therefore not wholly
unwelcome to them. Even before the ghetto was established by
law in Germany and other lands, the Jews dwelt together in sec-
tions of their own, for apart from the desire of human beings
to live with their own kind, it was only natural for them to group
themselves around the synagogue where the heart of the com-
munity pulsated.
The ghetto was usually the dingiest street of the dingy medie-
val towns, and so narrow that a vehicle was unable to turn around
in it. The gables and dormers on both sides of the street nearly
met, shutting out the light almost completely. At one end of the
street was the gate, kept locked from sundown to sunrise and all
day on the Sabbath; at the other end lay the burial ground. The
ghettos were usually overcrowded; only rarely were they allowed
additional space for increased population, and congestion, as is
well known, is an effective check on the graces and adornments of
life. Such were now the gloomy and squalid habitations of a people
whose ancestors had once lived in a green and sunny land of their
own, cultivating fields, groves, and vineyards, or shepherding their
flocks on its hillsides and valleys. Those days when "every man
sat under his vine and fig tree and there was none to make them
afraid," were now only a memory, but a memory that never ceased
to glow and beckon,
3
THE denizens of the ghetto were surrounded also by a wall
of economic restrictions, but they clung to every jut and crevice
they could find in it. They took to the soil wherever the legal
barriers were not yet raised against them, and they labored at every
handicraft wherever the guilds did not block them. As artisans
they were unexcelled. They were known in northern Italy, Prague,
INNER LIFE 289
and other places in central Europe as the best goldsmiths; in
southern Italy as the best dyers and silk weavers; in Sicily where,
according to a contemporary report "nearly all the artisans of
the realm are Jews," as the best craftsmen in iron and other metals,
making "horseshoes, agricultural implements and equipments for
ships, galleys, and other conveyances."* They were among the best
craftsmen in the art of printing, and in all countries tailoring be-
came one of their principal trades.
In the professions they were distinguished in the art of healing.
The church tried hard to prevent Christians from employing
Jewish physicians, for doctors often acquire influence over their
patients. But the sick paid no attention to the prohibitions; not
only kings and princes, but even bishops and popes entrusted their
health to Jews. In Spain, as we have seen, there were many Jews
in the public service, and before the thirteenth century they even
served in the papal household! There were Jewish soldiers and
sailors as well as navigators, geographers, and cartographers. They
contributed not a little to the success of the epoch-making voyages
of Christopher Columbus who, it is believed by many, was himself
of Jewish origin.
It was in commerce and banking, however, that the Jews of the
Middle Ages were most prominent. They brought life and vigor
into the local markets and fairs, and before the Crusades gave rise
to a class of Christian traders who suppressed their Jewish com-
petitors, they were the leading international merchants of Europe.
Such cities as Montpelier and Marseille in southern France became
great commercial depots where Jewish merchants exchanged the
grain, wine, and manufactures of France for the spices, perfumes,
carpets, and other luxuries of the East. In Germany, a similar
role was played by the cities of Regensburg, Augsburg, and
Nuremberg.
In popular fancy, of course, the medieval Jew figured princi-
pally as a moneylender, and literature and legend have combined
to keep the illusion alive to our own day. Forgotten are the Jewish
blacksmiths, glass blowers, weavers, and printers of the Middle
Ages. The Jewish merchant princes, physicians, statesmen, and
* La Lumia, Gli Ebrei Siciliani, Palermo, 1870; quoted in Israel Abrahams' Jewish
Life in the Middle Ages.
INNER LIFE 291
public servants are only dimly remembered. It was of course in his
role as moneylender that the Jew, after the Crusades, came into
most frequent contact with Christians. It was a role which by its
very nature was bound to engender hostility against its practi-
tioners Jews, Lombards, or whoever they might be. Nevertheless
too much needless apologizing has been done for the Jewish
moneylender: today the banker, who is primarily a moneylender, is
looked upon as a useful member of society, and commands
general deference. Nor should it be forgotten that the stigma of
usury had nothing to do with the rate of interest, for all interest
was branded as usury. No doubt there were Jewish moneylenders
and Christian also who charged exorbitant rates of interest, most
of which, in the case of the Jews, found its way into the coffers
of kings, nobles, and town councils. But their willingness to follow
the hated and dangerous calling should be taken rather as a meas-
ure of the extent to which they were barred from other sources
of livelihood.
4
NEEDLESS to say, it was not their material but their spiritual
resources that gave the Jewish communities of the Middle Ages
the power to suffer and endure. The economic roots of their ex-
istence hung in the air, but their spiritual roots were sunk deep in
the soil of a vital faith and creative tradition. Out of this faith and
tradition had been evolved the pattern of a self-contained and
integrated life, equipped with forms and institutions which had
stood the test of a millennial experience, and which nourished the
mind and spirit of a gifted people. The survival of the Jewish
communities of the Middle Ages offers perhaps the most convinc-
ing proof that "man doth not live by bread only, but by every-
thing that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live."
The central institution of the community was the synagogue,
which continued to perform the three functions it acquired from
its origin: as a house of prayer, a house of assembly, and a house
of study. The ritual of prayer for weekdays, Sabbaths, and festivals,
including the readings from the Scriptures, followed in the
main the order and content that had been fixed toward the end
of the Second Commonwealth, although minor variations arose as
2<) 2 DISPERSION
between the Sephardic or Spanish ritual and die Ashkenazic or
German. The highest religious authority was of course the rabbi,
and the principal functionary during the worship was the chazzan
or cantor, but the services, unlike those in the church, did not
depend on the ministrations of a priest. The Jewish community,
in fact, had no religious or clerical caste: all worshippers were
eligible to perform any of the functions.
Nor was there any formal distinction between the religious
and secular affairs of the community, so that the synagogue was
also the place where communal business, such as the election of
officials or the allocation of taxes, was transacted, and where the
people met to share their joys and sorrows. It was the place where
the bridegroom came to be congratulated and the mourner to be
consoled. It was the place where any man who had a grievance
could publicly proclaim it and demand redress, and where the
dread sentence of excommunication was pronounced upon mem-
bers of the community who were deemed dangerous to its welfare.
The roaming preacher or vnaggid held forth in the synagogue, and
the people who in all ages, benighted or "enlightened," cherish an
assortment of superstitions, flocked to hear his grim and picturesque
warnings against sin.
The officers whom the people chose to conduct the affairs of the
community were the parnes or president, the gabbed or treasurer,
and a* council that varied in size, often consisting of seven men
known as the tobei ha-ir, the "good men" or notables of "the city."
Two dayyanrm (judges) handed down decisions in disputes or
passed sentence on offenders in matters that fell within their juris-
diction.
In Spain the routine administration of the affairs of the com-
munity or djama was in many instances entrusted to a smaller
executive body of mukdannm who had a wide range of duties and
powers, from assigning seats in the synagogue to proclaiming edicts
of excommunication, and even passing the death sentence if the
right was included in the aljarwts charter. In most of the communi-
ties, however, the administration of justice, civil as well as criminal,
was entrusted to a special court or bet din. And from time to time
representatives of communities in a region met to deliberate on
their common interests.
INNER LIFE 293
A highly respected official in every community was the shochet
or ritual slaughterer, who had to possess considerable learning as
well as skill. The shamash, or sexton, performed many functions in
addition to those connected with the synagogue, from executing
judicial sentences on offenders to delivering invitations to wed-
dings.
5
THE synagogue was also the center of a network of philan-
thropic societies, each one devoted to a special charity. There
was a society that furnished dowries for orphans and daughters of
the poor, another that provided Passover food to the needy, still
another that ransomed Jewish captives. And there were societies to
raise money for the relief of the needy in Palestine, to visit^e
sick, to bury the dead. In addition to these voluntary philanthropic
associations, there was a communal charity fund raised and ad-
ministered by designated officials, with power to levy assessments
based on the ability of each donor. The well-to-do were expected
to give a tenth of their income, and the observance of this tithe
was fairly common. It was even found necessary to check some
who were inclined to give too much: the Talmud itself fixes a
maximum of 20 per cent to prevent the overcharitable from im-
poverishing themselves!
Begging in the open or from door to door was discouraged by
distributing food to the poor, and when, after the ravages of the
Crusades, troops of roaming beggars began to descend upon the
ghettos, they were provided for by special societies, and communi-
ties built inns to accommodate them. Entertaining an oreach or
stranger over the Sabbath was a highly coveted privilege: it added
greatly to the sanctity of the day. All deeds of charity were, of
course, looked upon as religious duties, and in their performance,
the greatest care had to be taken to safeguard the self-respect of
the recipient. The Talmud not only enjoins charity as a supreme
virtue, but it multiplies warnings and pleas not to offend the sensi-
bilities of the poor. The true dispenser of charity was he who
gave anonymously or in secret. To the Jew of the Middle Ages the
practice of charity was a natural corollary of the spirit of loving-
kindness which permeated his faith and which, in turn, permeated
294 DISPERSION
every aspect of his life. Charity was justice: the same Hebrew
word, zedakak, stands for both.
ANOTHER religious duty, which ranked even higher than
charity, was education and study. The Biblical injunction, "And
thou shalt teach them [the commandments] diligently unto thy
children," repeated three times every day, was the foundation for
a system of compulsory education that has kept the Jews the
most literate people in the world. In the Middle Ages, when kings
and nobles never learned to read and write, every Jewish boy began
going to school at the age of five. He stayed there under a regime
of rigorous instruction until he was at least thirteen, and there
were schools where many acquired higher learning, whether it con-
sisted only of the Talmud and the commentaries as in France and
Germany, or included philosophy, poetry, mathematics, and
science as in Spain and Italy. Education required no legal enforce-
ment to be compulsory. Its cost, except for orphans and the
children of the very poor, was met by the parents of the pupils,
but fathers and mothers would no more think of depriving their
sons of education than of depriving them of food. Girls, on the
other hand, were exempted from formal schooling; the knowledge
they required for the conduct of a household was imparted to them
in the home. Exemption, however, did not mean prohibition:
women could read the prayer book and some, like the daughters
of Rashi, were even distinguished for learning.
From the first day when the five-year-old was carried by a
learned man of the community to the synagogue and school in a
quaint but solemn initiation ceremony, the boy's schooling became
an arduous occupation. He left his home early in the morning
in winter, when it was still dark and returned after sunset. By
the time he was ten years old, he had mastered the Pentateuch,
the Prophets and the other books of the Bible together with the
tar gum or Aramaic translation, and was ready to begin the Mishnah;
his elementary education even included portions of the Talmud.
He translated the original into the language of the land, which
the Jews used as their everyday speech. Many Hebrew words
gradually entered into this speech and special Jewish vernaculars
INNER LIFE 295
arose, the most important of them being the Germanic, out of
which modern Yiddish developed. Hebrew, of course, continued to
be the literary language and, in large part, the language of official
and even commercial transactions. The Jews of the Middle Ages
spoke French or German, Arabic, Spanish, or Italian, but in all
the lands of their dispersion, the Hebrew language was one of the
bonds that united them.
Education and study, however, were not limited to particular
periods of life or particular institutions such as elementary schools
and academies. For study was not only an alluring exercise; it
was also a supreme religious duty. Study was worship. There was
no period, therefore, in a man's life when study could be discon-
tinued, and among the societies that clustered around the syna-
gogue must be included the many groups that met for the study
of the Bible, Mishnah, or Talmud. Each of the societies had its own
membership and ritual, and the completion of a course was the
occasion for a solemn celebration. They were an integral part of
the educational system of the Jews pf the Middle Ages.
7
IF THE synagogue was the common sanctuary of the ghetto,
the refuge of the individual Jew was his home. In the street and
market place oppression and derision might bend his back and
subdue his glance; in the serenity of his home he regained his
dignity and became aware of his superiority over his oppressor.
For in spite of insecurity and poverty, the typical ghetto home was
the abode of affection, sobriety, and sanctity.
Of this home the presiding genius was the wife and mother.
Polygamy had by force of custom become virtually nonexistent
centuries before the decree of Gershom ben Judah made it illegal,
although exceptions to the rule of monogamy existed in lands
where Mohammedanism held sway. Polygamy, in fact, had prac-
tically become .a thing of the past as early as the Second Common-
wealth: the domestic code of the Mishnah and Talmud takes
monogamy for granted. True enough, from the standpoint of the
modern feminist the legal position of the woman left much to be
desired, but the tenderness, respect, and devotion die Talmud
demands from the husband on behalf of his wife more than made
296 DISPERSION
amends for the legal inequality. And from all that can be gathered
it appears that compliance with these demands was the rule and
not die exception. On Friday night, when the husband returned
from the synagogue to a home pervaded by the sanctity of the
Sabbath, he chanted the glowing song to "the woman of valor"
from the Book of Proverbs, exalting the busy and God-fearing
housewife who "reacheth forth her hands to the needy" and "the
law of kindness is on her tongue."
Her children rise up and call her blessed;
Her husband also, and he praiseth her:
"Many daughters have done valiantly,
But thou excellest them all"
The fifth command of the Decalogue, "Honor thy father and
thy mother," controlled the relations between parents and children.
The family gathered at the table not merely to eat and drink; the
meals were sanctified by the precepts that called for washing of
the hands, benedictions, and grace, and on Sabbaths and festivals the
spirit was heightened by special table hymns. Excessive eating and
drinking were frowned upon; moderation and sobriety were the
rule and the only occasions when a certain latitude was allowed
were the Purim Feast and Simhath Torah (Joy-in-Torah) which
concludes the autumn festival season.
Frivolous conversation at the table was also discouraged for, says
the Mishnah, "If three have eaten at a table and have spoken no
words of Torah, it is as if they had eaten of sacrifices to dead idols,"
i.e., as if they were guilty of idol worship. Torah furnished the
themes for conversation at the typical table. This was particularly
true at the special repasts, the so-called "commandment" or de-
votional meals which were served at marriages, betrothals, circum-
cisions, and other festive occasions. At these banquets, it may be
noted, luxury and ostentation were not uncommon, and many
communities imposed special taxes as a curb on extravagance.
The Jewish home of the Middle Ages was governed by a spirit
of moderation and order, as well as a peculiar delicacy in the
relations among its members that extended to servants, Christian
as well as Jewish. No doubt the clergy had reason to oppose
the employment of Christian domestics by Jews: the servants be-
INNER LIFE
came too strongly attached to their masters and might even
embrace their religion. For in all those qualities that transform a
house into a home, Jewish life stood on a much higher level than
the life that surrounded it.
The same is true in the matter of cleanliness which, in a quite
literal sense, stood next to Godliness, for cleanliness was com-
manded and regulated by religious ordinance. No community was
without the rmkvdh, or ritual bath for women, and in nearly all
of them a bathhouse for men was one of the public institutions.
The hygienic value of those observances in the intimate relations
between husband and wife, of which the ritual bath is a part, has
been generally acknowledged; among the Jews of the Middle
Ages they were universal, and contributed greatly to the elevation
of the moral atmosphere of the home.
8
THE color and vitality that characterized the inner life of
the Jew flowed largely from the Sabbaths and festivals. These were
like brilliant splashes of light against the drabness that surrounded
him, and the special observances in the synagogue had their coun-
terparts in the home. On every seventh day the home was trans-
formed into a shrine; with the lighting of the candles on Friday
night the "Sabbath Queen" reigned in the home, and the "over-
soul" of the Jew emerged and held sway until the "going out" of
the Sabbath on the following night.
Except for Purim and the Feast of Lights, the festivals were
those his ancestors had celebrated in Biblical times. They were "the
appointed times for gladness, festivals and seasons for joy." In the
squalid ghetto, the fragrance of field and vineyard exhaled by
the ritual aroused a profound nostalgia, which only added to its
charm. The festivals were a round of varied delights that feasted
the body and uplifted the spirit. There was the exaltation and
awe of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, the gladness of Suk-
koth, the joy of Simhath Torah, die cheer of Hanukkah, the
hilarity of Purim. In the early spring came Passover, the "season
of our freedom," with the stately seder in the home bringing a sense
of liberation and new life; and in the early summer came die festi-
val of Shabuoth, a hymn of Torah and a song of corn waving in
298 DISPERSION
golden sunlight. And even the Fast of TTsha b'Ab, when he sat on
the floor of the synagogue mourning for the glory of the past,
brought the shrinking denizen of the ghetto a species of consola-
tion. For he never doubted that the past would live again, that in
God's own rime, and perhaps soon, the bitter exile would come
to an end, and the prayer "Let our eyes behold Thy return in
mercy to Zion" which he repeated three times daily, would be
granted at last.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Christian Spain
FOR two centuries after Maimonides, Spain was still a shining
contrast to the other lands of western Europe. Moslem
power on the peninsula was on the wane; in 1212, only eight
years after the Rambam's death, the Almohades, whose fierce
bigotry had driven him into exile, were overthrown by the Chris-
tian kingdoms of the north. By 1265 all that was left to the Mo-
hammedans was Granada and some ports near Cadiz; but until the
black year of 1391 the Jews did not, on the whole, fare worse
under Christian than under Moslem rule. The monarchs of the
four Christian kingdoms Castile, the largest, in the center; Portu-
gal on the west; Aragon on the east; and tiny Navarre, tucked in
between Castile and Aragon were not very keen about enforcing
the edicts of the church councils, particularly the law of the
patch. In fact, every now and then the popes found it necessary
to censure the kings for their laxness, or for favors bestowed on
their Jewish subjects. The kings, however, found these subjects too
useful to persecute: they were the best artisans, merchants, and
physicians in Spain, and when the state coffers became empty they
could be relied upon to replenish them. Under royal charters,
moreover, the Jewish communities enjoyed a large measure of
internal autonomy, each one being governed by its own council
CHRISTIAN SPAIN 299
and paying its taxes as a body. At times, they formed regional
unions to promote their common welfare.
TOLEDO in Castile and Gerona in Aragon harbored the most
important Jewish communities of Christian Spain. Gerona was
the mother of great scholars and rabbis, and the greatest of them
was Moses ben Nachman, better known as Nachmani. He was
rabbi of his native city during the greater part of his life, but his
authority extended throughout the land and into other countries
also. He is best known, however, as the leading opponent of
Maimonides' philosophic doctrines in the bitter and far-flung con-
troversy which for several generations after the Rambam's death
disturbed the peace of Jewish communities.
Maimonides found his stoutest defenders in Italy and in the
communities of southern France, in the district known as Provence
which, in language and climate, resembled Spain. Narbonne, Mont-
pelier, Lunel, Marseille, and other cities of Provence had become
flourishing centers of Jewish life and learning. For a long rime the
local potentates paid little attention to the anti-Jewish edicts that
emanated from Paris. The Jews enjoyed a large measure of self-
government and, in Narbonne especially, they owned and culti-
vated land and vineyards. The communities of Provence, where
the science and philosophy of Spain mingled with the Talmudic
and Tossafist learning of France and Germany, served as a bridge
between the south and the north, and it was only natural that the
most famous translators of the age, the Ibn Tibbon family, should
hail from that region.
One of the Ibn Tibbons translated the Rambam's Guide to the
Perplexed from its original Arabic into Hebrew, and together
with David Kimchi of Narbonne, they became the leading cham-
pions of the renowned philosopher. Kimchi even left his native
city and went to Spain in an effort to win over the Spanish rabbis.
But the controversy, which had its roots in the ancient and perhaps
irreconcilable conflict between faith and reason, between the
mystic elan of the heart and the cold logic of the head, became
more bitter and violent. Some of the opponents of the Rambam
300 DISPERSION
resorted to a dangerous expedient: led by Solomon of Montpelier,
they brought accusations against his teachings before the Domini-
can friars, who thereupon seized as many copies of his writings as
they could ferret out and in 1234 destroyed them at public burn-
ings in Narbonne and Paris. Those were the same Dominicans who
instigated the crusade against the Albigensian heretics, a crusade
that became a civil war between the north and south of France
and wiped out the fine civilization of Provence. It ended by bring-
ing the region under the domination of the French kings who,
together with the friars and bishops, saw to it that the Jews of
Provence were shorn of their wealth and freedom.
Moses ben Nachman who, by temperament and education, was
an opponent of the Rambam, nevertheless exerted himself to allay
the bitterness of the conflict. He was not a stranger to the philoso-
phy and science of his day; like the Rambam, he derived his living
from the practice of medicine, refusing to make the rabbinate a
source of income. But he considered Torah the most important
object of study, and he found every "beauty of wisdom sealed in
her treasures." Nachmani indeed was not only a profound student
of the Talmud, but essentially a poet and mystic. He saw life as a
procession of miracles, most of them beyond the reach of the
senses, by which man is in constant communion with the Divine,
and he saw all of it alike body and soul, joy and sorrow the
work of God and equally good and beautiful. When toward the
end of his life Nachmani, as an exile, saw the ruins of Jerusalem,
he could say: "I wept bitterly, but I found joy in my tears."
Notwithstanding the gulf that lay between Nachmani the mystic
and the analytical author of the Guide, he was not blind to the
Rambam's greatness. He was shocked when the friars burned the
master's writings, and he addressed letters to the communities of
France and Spain imploring both sides to end or at least to moder-
ate the bitter feud. His pleadings, however, had little effect: the
differences were too fundamental, the passions they stirred too
profound*
3
IN THE meantime the Dominican friars, who had shown
themselves so efficient with the Albigensians in France, were en-
CHRISTIAN SPAIN 30 1
trusted by the pope with the task of stamping out heresy in Castile
and Aragon also, and the means provided them for the purpose
was the Inquisition. This instrument, consisting of an elaborate
system of investigation, trial, and punishment, was designed for
Christians only; its primary aim was to induce suspects to confess
to the crime of heresy, that is, of holding beliefs that were con-
trary to the teachings of the church, confessions which were often
wrung out of them by torture. Technically, Jews were not heretics;
their conversion, the church hoped, would come about in due
course, especially if the process were stimulated by segregating
them from their neighbors and degrading them socially. How-
ever, once a Jew, voluntarily or under compulsion, had submitted
to baptism, he too was answerable to the Inquisition for heresy,
especially if he relapsed to the practices of his former faith.
Now, there was one Dominican who found the process of con-
version too slow, and he hit upon a device for expediting it. He was
Pablo Christiani, himself a converted Jew, and he persuaded King
James of Aragon to order Moses ben Nachman to meet him in
public debate where he, Pablo, would prove that Jesus of Nazareth
was the true Messiah, and the Jews would all be converted en
masse! The debate, which went by the solemn name of Disputa-
tion, took place at Barcelona in July 1263, and it was not to be the
last of these tragi-comedies so fraught with peril for the Jews
whether they won or lost. Pablo, of course, was no match for
Nachmani. Before an august audience that included the king, the
court, and the highest clergy, the Jewish champion with dignity
and skill demolished the claims and arguments of the renegade.
Fortunately the Jews of Aragon escaped the consequences they
feared from the victory, but Nachmani himself fell under the
king's displeasure through a report of the event which he wrote
for the Archbishop of Gerona. Egged on by the friars, the king
condemned him to a two-year .exile, and in 1267 the sage, already
advanced in years, arrived in Palestine where, with superb cour-
age, he continued his labors until his death three years later.
Nachmani found Palestine in ruins. Twice in a period of twenty
years the land had been overrun and devastated by savage hordes
from central Asia: in 1240 by the Mongolians and in 1260 by the
Tartars. In Jerusalem he found only a handful of Jews, most of
3O2 DISPERSION
them pilgrims and beggars. But his brief sojourn brought new life
into the scattered remnants. He established a school for the study
of Talmud and spent his remaining days completing a commentary
on the Pentateuch. In words that echo the passionate love of
Vehudah Halevi, who sang his songs of Zion more than a century
earlier, Nachmani writes from Jerusalem:
I am a man who has seen affliction ... I forsook my
family and home . . . and with the dear children whom I
brought up on my knees I left also my soul . . . But the
loss of all this, and of every other glory my eyes beheld, is
repaid by the joy of being a day in thy courts, O Jerusalem,
visiting the ruins of the Temple and wailing over the desolate
sanctuary where I am permitted to caress thy stones, to fondle
thy dust, and to weep over thy ruins.
FOR more than a century after Nachmani's death the Jewish
communities in the Christian kingdoms of Spain continued to pros-
per, despite the ill will of the clergy, the hostility of the nobles,
and the zeal of the friars to bring about their conversion. There
were more than a hundred communities in Castile alone, the largest
of them in Toledo, Burgos, and Carrion. They were proud com-
munities, strong in numbers, wealth, and influence, and it was
not safe to insult or to attack them. In 1 348-49, the years of the
Black Death when the populace of Europe was transformed into
raging mobs and thousands of Jews in Germany perished at their
hands, the Jews of Spain repelled the rabble, arms in hand.
They owed their safety in large measure to the kings to whom
they rendered outstanding service as physicians, collectors of taxes,
financiers, and men of affairs. It was the kings who reduced to a
dead letter the special laws passed against them, like the law the
Castilian parliament adopted in 1193 forbidding them to own land
or houses.
Not that dependence on the monarchs was a uniform blessing,
for there were times when it was a dangerous honor to be em-
ployed by them. In 1280, for example, Alphonso X of Castile put
to death his treasurer, Isaac de Malea, who had been compelled to
CHRISTIAN SPAIN 303
deliver a large sum to the king's rebellious son. Alphonso XI (1312-
1350) had many Jews in his service including Joseph ibn Ben-
veniste, scion of an illustrious family, who was his treasurer, and
Samuel ibn Wakar, who was the royal physician. As it happened,
the two were bitter rivals, but they both incurred the hostility of
the king's general, Gonzalo Martinez, a typical Haman, who
coveted their wealth and plotted successfully against them, his
machinations being aided by a venomous anti-Jewish agitation
conducted by the renegade Abner of Burgos. Samuel was tortured
to death and Joseph died in prison.
But the most famous object lesson in the perils of the court is
furnished by the career of Samuel Abulafia, the treasurer and
favorite minister of King Peter of Castile, who reigned from 1350
to 1369. Peter's reign was disturbed and finally overthrown by
the rebellion of his step-brother Henry, and the Jews of the king-
dom, who supported Peter, paid a huge price in blood and treasure
for their loyalty. In 1355 Henry's mercenaries were driven back
by the Jews of Toledo when they attacked their inner quarter,
but in the final siege of the city, more than ten thousand of them
perished by sword and famine. Samuel Abulafia, who led his people
in loyal support of the king, met his doom at the hands of Peter
himself. The Jewish minister whose enemies poisoned the king's
mind against him was stripped of his possessions and tortured on
the rack until he died.
The part the Jews of Castile played in the civil war between
Peter and Henry is a measure of the important position they held
in the kingdom, but Henry's victory in 1369 marks the beginning
of their decline. They could no longer count on the king to pro-
tect them against the clergy and nobility.
5
THE three centuries of 'Jewish life in Spain after the death
of Maimonides failed to produce a line of philosophers and poets
who could vie with those of the previous generations. Perhaps it
was the somber and repressive atmosphere of Christian 'dominion
that affected the spirit of the Jews; perhaps it was a pervasive sense
of insecurity and foreboding: but the leading minds of those cen-
turies concentrated on the traditional lore of their people and, in
304 DISPERSION
the hunger of the heart and fancy, they turned to the exciting mys-
teries and speculations of Cabala. North of the Pyrenees, in the
freer atmosphere of Provence, the tradition of Maimonides lasted
longer, reaching its highest expression in the philosopher and sci-
entist Levi ben Gershon, better known as Gersonides (1288-1344),
who was also, of course, a thorough Talmudist and profound
commentator of the Bible. In Spain, however, the Talmud and
the Zohar became the two books which nourished the inner life
of the Jews.
The word Cabala means "tradition," and the mystic knowledge
was so called because for many generations, so it was believed, it
was handed down by word of mouth only. This fantastic medley
of exalted doctrine, numerological mysteries, and compelling for-
mulas, this revelation of the hidden forces of heaven and earth,
was meant only for the elect, and the cabalist, in his search for
the divine essence and the destiny of man, was eager above all
things to know the signs presaging the advent of the Messiah and
the redemption of his suffering people. At various times, this
strange lore stimulated messianic movements that gave rise to
wild hopes and desperate efforts, but its cultivation was not con-
fined to the restless and fanciful. It attracted many of the great
minds of the age, even those who, like Nachmani, were well
grounded in the sober spirit of Halachah, although they, unlike
others, did not allow its mysteries to possess them and disturb the
even tenor of their lives.
Among those who allowed themselves to be enthralled by it,
the man who figures most prominently is Abraham Abulafia ( 1 240-
1292), scion of a clan that produced great scholars and statesmen.
It would be difficult to say which was more fantastic, his life or the
beliefs to which he clung. Obeying the command of a mystic voice,
Abulafia proceeded to Rome to convert the pope to Judaism! He
was arrested and imprisoned but his judges, impressed by his
strange talk, set him free and he wandered down to Sicily where
he made a great stir, especially in the flourishing communities of
Messina and Palermo, by proclaiming himself the Messiah. There
were some who made ready to follow him to Palestine but the
Jewish leaders, alarmed by the agitation, obtained a letter from
CHRISTIAN SPAIN 305
the most distinguished rabbi of Spain denouncing Abulafia as a
dangerous person. His followers fell away and the movement ex-
pired, but like all messiahs, Abulafia left behind him a trail of
longing and loyalty which long survived him.
But the most important master of Cabala was Moses de Leon
(1250-1305), the compiler of the book called Zohar (Brightness).
In it Moses assembled the mystic knowledge that had been handed
down through the generations, the authorship of which he ascribed
to the famous tanna Simon ben Yochai who, to escape persecu-
tion, had, it was said, lived for thirteen years in a cave in Palestine
where the secrets of heaven and earth were unlocked to him.
These secrets the Zohar undertakes to derive from the Bible, every
word and letter of which is believed to abound with hidden mean-
ing. Life is conceived as a struggle between good and evil, both
of which, however, serve the divine purpose; and every right deed,
every fervent prayer, produces spiritual influences that bring nearer
the triumph of good over evil, a triumph that will appear in all
its fullness and glory with the coming of the Messiah.
The Zohar itself is a triumph of the fervid and unfettered
imagination. It appealed powerfully to all in whom the longing
for redemption was intense, nor is it surprising that with all its
crudenesses, it attracted students of the Talmud who looked for
something that gave freer rein to the fancy than the labyrinthian
discussions of the Babylonian amoraim.
THE distinguished scholar to whom the leaders of the com-
munities in Sicily appealed against Abraham Abulafia was Solomon
ibn Adret (1235-1310), rabbi of Barcelona in the kingdom of
Aragon. Solomon's fame and influence covered the whole of
Spain and reached out into other lands. Like Nachmani, he sub-
ordinated the philosophy and science of the day, of which he had
considerable knowledge, to the Bible and Talmud, and he took
his stand against the Rambam when the old controversy flared
up anew. In addition, Ibn Adret defended his faith valiantly against
the Dominicans, one of whom, Raymund Martin, made a study
of the Bible and Talmud in order to vilify Judaism.
306 DISPERSION
It was Ibn Adret who persuaded the Jews of Toledo to receive
the German refugee Asher ben Yechiel (1250-1328) and appoint
him their rabbi. Asher's prestige rose even higher than Ibn Adret's.
His learning was only equalled by his piety and good deeds, and
his school attracted students from many lands. He too frowned
on the pretensions of philosophy and science, although he en-
couraged the study of astronomy as a useful aid in determining
the holy seasons and festivals. His son Judah succeeded him as
rabbi of Toledo, and proved worthy of his illustrious father. An-
other son, Jacob, whose learning entitled him to be rabbi of the
foremost community, desired no place of honor or profit but
spent his life in pious study and works of charity. The three
Asheris, as they are known, all fugitives from the fury of the
German rabble, symbolized the plight of their exiled people, as
well as the qualities of their mind and spirit.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Twilight in Spain
IN 1371 the clergy and nobility of the proud kingdom of
Castile scored a great triumph: Henry II, who had over-
thrown King Peter and seized his throne, issued a decree
ordering the Jews of his kingdom to wear the shameful yellow
patch on their clothing. Now began the twilight of Spanish Jewry
which was to end with the total blackout of 1492.
The clergy, who found it intolerable that those who rejected
"the true faith" should be the equals of those who professed it,
felt triumphant because the yellow patch degraded its wearers and
created a gulf between them and their neighbors. The nobility
triumphed because the Jews would now find it harder to hold
positions of honor and profit which, they felt, belonged by right
to themselves. Before long, in fact, a law was passed by the Cortes,
or parliament, that made it impossible for the king to appoint a
Jewish treasurer, and in 1385 the clergy gained another victory
TWILIGHT IN SPAIN 307
when Jews were forbidden to live among Christians or to employ
them as servants.
The yellow badge of shame inflicted untold suffering on the
proud Castilian Jews, and the relations between them and their
neighbors continued to deteriorate. But even more serious was
a decline in the moral fiber of the Jews themselves, for while per-
secution may at times have a bracing effect on its victims, it may
also lacerate the spirit and enfeeble it. The old-time reverence for
piety and learning was no more. Luxury and ostentation, which
inflamed the envy and hostility of the populace, increased. In the
allocation of communal taxes the rich threw the greater burden
on the poor. Vanity and oppression raised their heads, and there
was no Amos or Isaiah to cry out against the evildoers.
That vile creature, the informer, who together with the slander-
ous apostate was the bane of the Jews in the Middle Ages, made
his appearance among the Jews of Spain, poisoning the minds of
their neighbors for profit and advantage. Joseph Pichon, chief tax
collector of Henry II, became the ^victim of informers together
with Nissim ben Reuben, illustrious scholar and rabbi of Bar-
celona, and other prominent men of that community. The case of
Pichon, in particular, illustrates the low level to which the com-
munity in Castile had sunk. After being cleared of the charges,
Pichon informed against those who had informed against him,
whereupon a Jewish court condemned him to death, and the
sentence was carried out by order of the king under conditions that
cast suspicion on the court's integrity.
2
A STORM was brewing in the sultry atmosphere that sur-
rounded the Jews of Spain, and it broke in 1391 with incredible
fury. It started in Seville, the ancient and beautiful city on the
Guadalquivir, famous for its splendid synagogues and illustrious
scholars. For years the archdeacon Ferrand Martinez had conducted
a vicious campaign of incitement, and in June 1391 the populace
stormed the ghetto from all sides, looted and burned the houses,
and slew more than four thousand of the inhabitants. Most of the
survivors saved their lives by accepting baptism.
From Seville the storm swept north and overwhelmed one com-
308 DISPERSION
munity after another. In Cordova, the Jewish quarters went up in
flames, thousands perished in Toledo, and in small communities like
Ecija and Carmona not a Jew was left alive. The storm crossed
the border into the kingdom of Aragon and broke over Valencia,
Barcelona, Gerona and other cities. Even the sea was unable to
stop it: the community in Palma on the island of Minorca was
practically wiped out. By the time the fury spent itself, some
seventy communities in Castile alone were devastated and the num-
ber of forced converts rose to scores of thousands. Only in Portugal
and in Granada, the latter still held by the Moslems, were the
Jews safe.
The destruction of property and the disruption of industry and
commerce, from which the whole of Spain suffered, could before
long be remedied, but the moral havoc was another matter. The
gulf between the Jews and their neighbors became wider, and the
spirit of Spanish Jewry was humbled and nearly broken. Their
enemies, flushed with victory, became more insolent, and thought
to make an end of Judaism in Spain altogether.
But the most serious menace to the future of Spanish Jewry lay
in those who, to save their lives, had accepted baptism. They were
called New Christians, but they held in horror the religion that
had been thrust on them with the torch and the sword. They
continued to love the faith that had been theirs and their fathers',
and they loved it the more passionately from a sense of guilt,
having proven too weak to die for it. Many of them sought the
first opportunity to return to it by escaping into North Africa,
Granada, Portugal, and other lands, and those unable to escape
wore the mask of Christianity in public and practiced their own
religion in secret. Their devotion to Judaism was all the stronger
because the practice of it was not only a joy but a penance and a
peril.
The secret, of course, could not be indefinitely kept, and the
wrath of the clergy burned even fiercer against the New Chris-
tians than against the Jews. They called them Marranos or "the
damned," a name which is still borne by many of their descendants,
but which has become a badge not of scorn, but of tragedy and
pride.
TWILIGHT IN SPAIN 309
3
THE Jews of Spain became like a city besieged. All the
power of the church and all its learning and skill were brought
into play to undermine their faith and break their spirit, and there
were apostates and traitors who joined the hue and cry against
their people. The most effective and violent of the renegades was
Paul of Burgos. He was one of the converts of 1391, and rose fast
and high not only in the government of Castile but in the church
itself. In 1412 he induced the Cortes to pass a law which outdid
all previous ones for insult and injury. It became a crime for Jews
to trim their hair and shave their beards. Their clothes had to be
of inferior material and ugly cut. They were forbidden to carry
arms. They were forbidden to engage in handicrafts and profes-
sions, or deal in wine, flour, meat, or bread. The aim was clear:
the Jew's of Castile were to be brought down to the level of pariahs
and paupers. All debts which Christians owed to Jews had already
been declared null and void.
But Paul's zeal and ingenuity were not exhausted. There was a
Dominican friar named Vincent Ferrer, a redoubtable preacher,
and Paul invited him to exercise his talents on his former people.
Accompanied by a gang of ruffians, Vincent traveled through
Castile and Aragon, and the Jews were forced to listen to his threats
and ravings in their own synagogues. Vincent, of course, claimed
many converts.
In Aragon, however, there was a man at the time who was sure
he could convert the Jews faster than was being done by Vincent
and Paul. He was none other than the pope, or rather the anti-
pope, Benedict XIII, for since 1378 there had been two rival popes,
one in Rome, the other in the French city of Avignon. Benedict
had encouraged both Paul of Burgos and Vincent Ferrer. Then he
lost the anti-papal throne and sought to retrieve his fortunes by
bringing about a mass conversion of the Spanish Jews.
The method he chose was that of the public disputation which
Pablo Christiani had first tried a century and a half earlier. Pablo
had failed but he, Benedict, proposed to stage it on a grand and
crushing scale. Accordingly, in answer to his summons, twenty-
310 DISPERSION
two Jewish representatives, headed by Vidal Benveniste and Joseph
Albo, were confronted by the most learned and adroit Christian
theologians, including a number of Jewish renegades. From Febru-
ary 1413 to November 1414, the two sides debated the merits of
their respective faiths. This, the most famous of the disputations,
took place at Tortosa in the kingdom of Aragon.
But Benedict took care that his appeal should be directed not
only to reason, but above all to fear. The Jews saw facing them
not only the Christian advocates, but an imposing array of knights
and bishops. Vincent Ferrer, who was operating in Tortosa at
the time, paraded his converts before the disputants. The keynote
was sounded by one of the renegades. "If ye be willing and
obedient," he quoted from Isaiah, "ye shall eat the good of the
land; but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the
sword." He could not have expressed himself more plainly.
The Jewish spokesmen, however, held their ground with cour-
age and dignity. Their opponents began by seeking support in
the Talmud; they ended by denouncing it and demanding that its
study be banned. The grand disputation was a failure, and seeing
he could not convert the Jews en masse, Benedict prevailed on the
government to lay upon the Jews of Aragon the same crushing
burden of social, economic, and moral indignities as had already
been enacted against their brothers in Castile. They were deprived
of their internal autonomy, forbidden to study their sacred books,
compelled to put on the disgraceful patch, and three times a year
they had to listen to Christian sermons in their own synagogues.
All that, of course, was in addition to the ruinous economic re-
strictions that had the double aim of pauperizing those who re-
mained steadfast and seducing those who vacillated.
4
THE Jews of Castile and Aragon suffered but remained, on
the whole, steadfast; and even those who, in face of the uplifted
sword, abjured their faith, continued for the most part loyal to
it in secret. Nor was the age deficient in men of light and learning,
although the stress of the times drove them into narrower channels,
contracting the free flow of reason and imagination which dis-
tinguished the poets and philosophers of former generations. Isaac
TWILIGHT IN SPAIN 311
ben Sheshet Barfat (1326-1408), rabbi of Saragossa and later of
Valencia, stood like a rock against every attempt to compromise
with Talmudic law in deference to the science and philosophy of
Aristotle. His contemporary and friend, Hasdai Grescas (1340-
1410), also frowned upon philosophy, but he was a fine thinker
and able to challenge it on its own ground. Both men wielded
authority not only in the communities of Spain but in those of
France, Germany, and other lands. The deplorable character of
the rimes they lived in is illustrated by the fact that they and other
Jewish notables of Aragon, including the aged and renowned
Nissim of Gerona, who had been the teacher of both men, were
kept in prison for a long rime as the result of a denunciation lodged
against them by an informer.
The man whose work influenced not only his own but later
generations was Joseph Albo, who had been among the foremost
Jewish spokesmen in the disputation of Tortosa. He was a per-
suasive writer and his book Ikkarim (Fundamentals) plunges boldly
into the deep waters of religious philosophy. He even dared to
cross swords with the Rambam, asserting that the belief in a
Messiah is not a fundamental of the Jewish faith. Albo's aim is
not far to seek. He, like the other Jewish scholars of his day,
desired to strengthen his people against the pressure of Christianity
in which the Messianic belief is the central dogma.
5
IN 1432, twelve years before Joseph Albo died, action of a
more direct sort was taken by the communities of Castile to
strengthen their religious and communal life and eradicate abuses
that had crept in among them. Politically, their situation had im-
proved. John II (1406-1454) was king, and Alvaro de Luna, his
favorite minister, needed the help of Jewish money and brains in
the perennial conflict between the throne and the nobility. Abra-
ham Benveniste, one of Alvaro's closest friends and advisers, was
named chief rabbi of Castile; the internal autonomy of Castilian
Jewry was restored; and Benveniste convened a congress of repre-
sentatives to remedy the sad state into which the communities of
the kingdom had fallen. The deliberations of this congress, which
met in the city of Valladolid, hold up a mirror to the internal
312 DISPERSION
problems that beset the Jews of Spain. The Congress denounced
extravagance and ostentation as a danger to the community; it dealt
with the plague of apostates and informers; it sought means for
the restoration and maintenance of communal institutions; and it
labored, above all, to promote learning and the education of the
young.
Nor did the Jews of Castile fare badly under John's successor
Henry IV (1454-1474), whose personal physician, Jacob ibn
Nunez, was chief rabbi of the kingdom. In Aragon also the mon-
arch's physician was a Jew, and in both kingdoms, notwithstanding
the protests of nobles and bishops, Jews were again received into
the employ of the state. Their lot, in fact, might have continued
to improve and the tragedy of 1492 perhaps been averted or at
least deferred, if their situation had not been bedeviled by the New
Christians and Marranos.
IT WAS against the New Christians, in fact, that the general
wrath burned hottest and kept steadily mounting. It was not simply
that they were suspected of clandestine loyalty to the faith they
had renounced, although in the eyes of the clergy no crime could
be more heinous than such heresy. The New Christians aroused
bitter resentment even more because they were too successful. Too
many of them, now' that religion no longer barred their way,
became rich and powerful. They held high positions in the gov-
ernment, the army, the universities in the church itself! They
went even further. Their sons and daughters married into the
nobility, and to such an extent that before long there was hardly
a noble family in Spain without an admixture of Jewish blood, and
even royalty itself was not immune to this "invasion."
Altogether the New Christians, even more than the Jews, fur-
nished excellent fuel for zealous bigots, frustrated mediocrities, and
ambitious demagogues. When the sovereigns, whose coffers were
always being drained by endless wars, increased the burden of
taxation, the fury of the populace was shunted to the tax collectors,
many of whom were New Christians. In all of them, even in those
who wore the habits of the church, the priests and friars saw here-
tics, and they inflamed the passions of the people against them to the
EXILE 3 I 3
point of violence. In 1440 and again in 1467 the mob broke loose
in Toledo, and many New Christians were slain and their homes
sent up in flames. Six years later bloody riots against them occurred
in Cordova, Saen, and Segovia.
Thus, by a strange irony, those who thought they could escape
the wrath by renouncing their faith, found themselves in deadlier
peril than those who remained loyal to it. It was clear, however,
that the comparative safety of the latter would not long endure.
The two groups were too closely identified: the Jews, in fact,
were suspected of aiding and abetting the Marranos in their secret
heresies.
In the New Christians the bishops and friars found proof of the
futility of conversion as a solution for the Jewish problem in
Spain. They looked for a new solution and they found it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Exile
THE year 1479 is an important landmark in the history of
Christian Spain. On the throne of Castile sat the pious
but hardheaded Isabella, and that year her husband Ferdi-
nand fell heir to the throne of Aragon. Thus were united the two
kingdoms which comprised by far the greater part of the peninsula.
Both rulers, whom the pope designated as "the Catholic Sover-
eigns," were competent, aggressive, and unscrupulous, the queen
leaning toward bigotry and the king toward greed. The policy
which the monarchs adopted called for absolutism at home and ex-
pansion abroad and, in pursuit of the first objective, the nobles were
to be stripped of their ancient prerogatives and heresy stamped
out as treason to the state.
A most important instrument for promoting this objective was
the Inquisition, but the Catholic Sovereigns were not willing that
their Inquisition should be under papal jurisdiction, and in 1480
they established a national and royal Inquisition of their own. It
314 DISPERSION
began operations in the south, and a year later its first auto-da-f
was staged in Seville where twelve Marranos, six men and six
women, were burned at the stake with all the solemnity and fes-
tivity that befitted the occasion. Thousands of Marranos who fled
to Cadiz were brought back and thrown into dungeons. Thousands
of Jews who were accused of aiding them were banished to other
parts of the kingdom. All Christians were ordered, on pain of ex-
communication, to become spies and informers. They received
careful instructions. They were told, for example, to note if New
Christians bought meat from the Jewish butcher or wore clean
linen on Saturdays.
The flames of the autos-da-f continued to blaze, and in the
dungeons the torturers were busy. Even corpses were not allowed
to lie in peace. Charges of having practiced Judaism were brought
against many of the dead, and their bones were disinterred and
burned at the stake. The property of the victims, which swelled
the royal coffers, provided the sovereigns with the means to finance
other undertakings.
The proud Marranos did not take the Inquisition submissively.
They appealed to the pope, they exploited their powerful connec-
tions, they plotted against the leading inquisitors. Some of them
succeeded in escaping its clutches, and in 1485 one of the two
chief inquisitors of Aragon was assassinated. But these efforts were
of little avail. The great majority of Spaniards approved of the
Inquisition, convinced that its work was holy and patriotic.
2
IN 1483 the Inquisition gained immensely in reach and
power when the Dominican monk Thomas de Torquemada, al-
ready inquisitor-general of Castile, was elevated to the same rank
for Aragon. The holy office was now centralized, its jurisdiction
was gradually extended to every nook and corner of the united
kingdoms, and in Torquemada it had a servant of ferocious zeal
and rare ingenuity. The business of detecting, torturing, and pun-
ishing was organized into a perfect system, with the penalties, based
oil the principle of panic, graded in proportion to the promptness
of confession. Besides, Torquemada was confessor to their "Cath-
olic Majesties/' and he had little difficulty in impressing the king
EXILE 3 I 5
and queen with the spiritual and material advantages of liquidating
the heretics.
Thousands of Marranos confessed "voluntarily," and if they
did so after the period of grace, they were stripped of their pos-
sessions and imprisoned for life. At the solemn and imposing
autos-da-fe, the more fortunate, principally minors, were only com-
pelled to wear the grotesque penitential robe called the sanbenito.
The others, including even friars and priests of the church, after
being tortured into confession, were consigned to the holy flames.
Torquemada was indefatigable, but the work of purification, he
felt, should include the Jews also, and since they were not eligible
for the ministrations of the Inquisition, the only alternative, he
concluded, was expulsion. He took his measures toward this end
with thorough care, and he made particularly good use of a blood
accusation which brought death at the stake to six Marranos and
five Jews in the city of Avila near Madrid. The victims had been
charged with slaying a Christian child that never existed.
3
IN 1492 the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella attained its
zenith. In January of that year, the monarchs made a triumphal
entry into the city of Granada, the last stronghold of the Moslems
in Spain. Nearly eight hundred years earlier, the land had been
overrun by them, and for centuries they ruled in it in power and
splendor. For the Jews, those centuries were a bright memory,
and it was a bitter irony that a special tax was levied upon them
to finance the final war against the Moslems. The reigning princes
of Granada, it may be added, deserved no better fate. They were
torn by rivalries and betrayed each other to the Christians with-
out scruple.
The year 1492, moreover, witnessed two other great events in
Spain: the departure of Christopher Columbus on his momentous
voyage across the Atlantic and the fall of the final curtain on the
tragedy of Spanish Jewry. In view of the important part played
by Jews and Marranos in making the voyage of Columbus pos-
sible, and in view, further, of what the discovery of the New
World has meant for the future of the Jewish people, the con-
currence of those two events has exerted a peculiar, almost mystical,
3 1 6 DISPERSION
fascination on many minds, a fascination which the recent dis-
covery of evidence supporting the theory that Columbus was him-
self of Jewish descent, has naturally intensified. Whatever the
merits of that theory may be, there is no doubt that Jewish money
and brains contributed greatly to the success of the daring enter-
prise. Jewish scientists had prepared the ground for it, including
Abraham Zacuto, astronomer-royal of Portugal, whose perpetual
almanac and astronomical tables guided the voyager; Zacuto's
pupil, Joseph Vecinho; Yehuda Cresques, the map-maker of Maj-
orca; and other Jewish mariners, navigators, and scholars. The
funds for the voyage came from Marranos and Jews: from Luis
de Santangel, controller-general of Aragon, from Gabriel Sanchez,
chief treasurer of the kingdom, from Abraham Senior, chief rabbi
and principal tax collector of Castile, from Isaac Abarbanel, and
others. And there were even Jewish sailors who accompanied
Columbus, among them Rodrigo Sanchez, a relative of Gabriel;
Maestro Bernal, the ship's physician; and Luis de Torres, the inter-
preter, who is believed to have been the first man of the expedition
to set foot on the soil of the New World.
Whether it was because the expulsion of the Jews from Spain
was the news sensation of the day, or because Columbus* con-
sciousness of his origin overcame his customary vigilance on this
occasion, as indeed it seems to have done on others also, he him-
self couples the two events in his diary. "In the same month in
which their Majesties issued the edict that all Jews should be
driven out of the kingdom and its territories," the diary begins,
"in the same month they gave me the order to undertake with
sufficient men my expedition of discovery to the Indies."
4
THE edict of expulsion was issued on March 30, 1492, from
the Alhambra in newly conquered Granada, and it provided that
by the end of July, any Jew found in the realms of Ferdinand and
Isabella would escape death only by baptism. The exiles were
forbidden to take their gold or silver with them, and although they
might sell their land and houses, the market became so glutted with
their possessions that a house was sold for a cart and a vineyard
for a donkey. They made desperate last-minute efforts to ward
EXILE 3 1 7
off the blow. It is related that Abraham Senior and Isaac Abarbanel
appeared before the monarchs and offered their own immense
fortunes for the annulment of the edict, and as the king began
to waver, Torquemada came rushing in and, extending a crucifix
to the rulers, he cried: "Here! Take him and sell him!"
The edict was not recalled and the exiles made ready to depart.
To the very end Torquemada and his minions continued their
efforts to force them into baptism, inventing a variety of new de-
vices for the purpose. But the great majority held firm. They
wept at the graves of their fathers, said farewell to the land they
still loved, and with the cry, "Let us go in the name of the Lord,"
they set out, some 300,000 of them, for lands across the waters and
for the neighboring kingdom of Portugal.
Terrible beyond description were the hardships and cruelties
suffered by the exiles on the ships at sea and on the shores of
Europe, Africa, and Asia where they sought refuge. Many were
lost in wreck and storm, others died from pestilence or at the
hands of brigands, still others were sold into slavery by the masters
of the ships on which they sailed or by pirates who overtook and
captured them. Only in the lands of Bayazid II, Sultan of Turkey,
who understood how valuable the exiles would prove for the pros-
perity of his empire, did they find welcome.
5
BUT most of the exiles got across the border into Portugal
where they bought permission to remain for a period of eight
months. When the term expired and there were not enough ships
for them, many of those who were left behind were sold into
slavery and their children torn from them to be baptized. Four
years later, the King of Portugal ordered those who still remained
to leave the country, but they were too valuable for him and he
did not really intend to let them go. Instead he proceeded to
baptize them by force. A few escaped, and many parents, after
slaying their children, put an end to their own lives.
A large body of Marranos thus came into existence in Portugal
and their misfortunes were the same as those of the Marranos in
Spain. In 1506 two thousand of them perished at the hands of a
mob, and in 1531 the Inquisition, with its trials and tortures and
3 1 8 DISPERSION
autos-da-fe, came to nest in Portugal. For a long time Marranos
continued to escape from that country and seek asylum in other
lands of the Old World as well as the New, but to this day there
are thousands of descendants of the forced converts in Portugal
who still remember their proud and tragic lineage.
And thus the glory and tragedy of Spanish Jewry also becomes
a tale that is told.
Part Four , 492 T0 , 7 8 9
In Medieval Europe
A People Besieged
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Light and Shadow in Italy
A, things," says the Talmud, "are in the hands of God,
except the fear of God." The winds of destiny had swept
the Jewish people westward through the lands washed
by the Mediterranean, with remnants still in the east, and tributaries
from the main stream branching north and south. From England
the current was turned back in 1290; from France in 1394. In the
foul ghettos of the Germanics it lay stagnating. Now from the
fallen grandeur of Spain it was set moving back toward the east.
Back and forth like driftwood, this people seemed buffeted on the
tides of history. Nevertheless, one thing, which is well described
as "the fear of God," lay within the power of their own hands
and souls. For wherever they went, they still carried the ancient
lamp with them, they still chose to cling to the fire that had been
kindled for them at their birth as a people in the Sinai desert.
Not since the year 70, when the Romans extinguished their
corporate life and devastated their land, had the Jewish people
sustained a disaster so shattering as the expulsion from Spain. Spain
had been the largest, proudest, and most brilliant center of the
Diaspora; for half a millennium it had held the primacy in the life
of the scattered nation; and now, at a single stroke, it was no more.
How great the anguish, how bitter the shame! The invincible
Romans had at least felt the edge of the Jewish sword on their
necks; the struggle had dowered the generations that followed with
a glorious memory. In Spain, the victims were like sheep led to the
slaughter; and, as the exiles dragged their sorrow from one land to
another, the full meaning of the catastrophe came home to every
other community, and wherever Jews lived in Europe, Africa,
Asia lamentation rose up as if for a third time their Temple had
been defiled and destroyed.
322 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
TO the communities in Italy, particularly in the so-called
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which embraced the island of Sicily
and the southern half of the peninsula, the fugitives from Spain
brought a sharp awareness of the sword that hung suspended
above their own heads. In that segment of the Italian political
chaos, and north of it in the republics and duchies that jostled each
other to the foot of the Alps, numerous Jewish communities per-
sisted under varying fortunes through the centuries. The political
disunion was not without certain advantages: when life became
impossible for them in one state they found refuge in another. Italy,
indeed, was a land of many contrasts. It was the land of the sub-
lime poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) whose Divine Comedy is
a mirror of the medieval mind at its loftiest and purest. It was also
the land of Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), who lifted the in-
famy and cruelty that marked the political life of the Italian states
to the dignity of a philosophy and a guide to the art of statecraft.
The Jewish poet Immanuel of Rome is said to have been a friend
of Dante, and commentators on the Italian poet have expressed
wonder that in the region of hell which he reserved for usurers, he
found only Christians and noblemen! Moreover, the edicts of the
church, which were designed to keep Jews segregated from
their neighbors, were less effective in Italy than in other lands.
Many famous and fruitful friendships are on record. Pico della
Mirandola, one of the luminous spirits of the Renaissance, was a
friend and disciple of the grammarian and cabalist Elijah del Medigo
(1460-1497). Elijah Levita (1469-1549) who, in the course of
his long life was buffeted about between Germany and Italy, had
among his friends and pupils a number of distinguished church-
men, including Cardinal Egidio di Viterbo. In both countries, in
fact, the Renaissance awakened in Christian scholars a lively in-
terest in the Hebrew language and in the books of the Jewish
people, an interest which led not only to friendships between men
of learning of both faiths, but, as we shall see, added greatly to
those deeper stirrings which eventually gave rise to the Protestant
Reformation.
LIGHT AND SHADOW IN ITALY 323
3
THE steady flow of refugees from Germany to the relative
safety of Italy and Turkey, and the sudden flood of exiles from
Spain bear testimony to the basic unity of destiny and character
that stamped the Jewish people throughout the Dispersion. In
their internal tensions also, they were all very much alike. The
clamor that rose up around the teachings of the Rambam echoed
loudly in Italy where, in addition to the Talmud and Cabala,
philosophy and poetry were held in high esteem. It was an
esteem, however, which the scholars and rabbis from Germany
frowned upon, and there was fierce dissension in Padua, Mantua,
and elsewhere. But when the Spanish exiles arrived, many of them
in the condition of captive slaves, the communities knew their
duty and united to discharge it. They hastened to obey the ancient
command to ransom their captive brothers and make them wel-
come.
The exiles, however, were no mece pensioners on the bounty
of their hosts. They still possessed the qualities that made them
great in Spain: they brought with them not only energy and prac-
tical skill, but also learning and prestige. Of these qualities, as
well as of the changing fortunes that hounded the refugees from
Spain, and, for that matter, the Jews of Italy also, Isaac Abarbanel
(1437-1509) and his sons provide a striking illustration. They
were a noble and remarkably gifted family, claiming direct descent
from King David. After his vain attempt to ward off the fatal
decree, Isaac found asylum in Naples, where the king took him
into his service. It was not long, however, before the kingdom was
conquered by Spain, and Isaac resumed his wanderings, until
finally he joined his son Joseph in Venice. There too Isaac played
an important role in state affairs, but his chief interest was scholar-
ship. He was a philosopher and Biblical commentator. His Herald
of Salvation is a cabalistic work which he wrote in order to sustain
the spirit of his people with the promise of a speedy fulfillment
of the Messianic hope.
Joseph Abarbanel was a physician; his older brother Judah Leo,
after a distinguished career with Gonzalo de Cordova, the con-
324 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
queror of Naples for Ferdinand of Spain, joined his father and
brother in Venice, for the Spanish conquest had, of course,
brought the Inquisition with it. Nor should Isaac's youngest son
Samuel (1473-1550) be omitted from the roster. Samuel inherited
his father's financial skill, which he too placed at the service of
the government of Naples. Himself a fine Talmudic scholar, Samuel
was also a patron of learning and his people's protector. But the
Spanish monarch was determined to extend the expulsion decree
to his Italian possessions, and after one edict had been suppressed
by the efforts of Samuel and his brilliant and noble wife Benvenida,
the expulsion finally took place. In 1 540 the Jews of the Kingdom
of Naples took up the wanderer's staff. They sought asylum across
the Adriatic in the realms of the Sultan and in other Italian states,
principally in Ancona and Ferrara. Samuel and Benvenida, al-
though they were exempted from the edict, chose to share their
people's exile and spent the remainder of their lives in Ferrara.
4
THE states and cities of Italy were nearly always in the
throes of civil turmoil, war, and political change, and the fortunes
of the Jewish communities fluctuated continually. Nevertheless
their records contain many bright and noble pages, to which
Sephardic and Ashkenazic refugees, as well as natives, contributed.
Ferrara, for example, was developed by the exiles into an im-
portant commercial center and for a hundred years the com-
munity flourished, although each of the three groups maintained its
own communal institutions and only rarely united for common
action. Ferrara produced a brilliant scholar in Azariah dei Rossi,
and among its distinguished leaders we come upon a grandson and
namesake of Isaac Abarbanel. In 1597, however, the duchy was
annexed to the Papal States, half the community migrated, and
the rest were confined in a ghetto and forced to listen to con-
versionist sermons delivered by zealous monks.
Perhaps the best example of tenacious life is furnished by the
community of Venice, the largest in the Venetian republic and
the second largest in the peninsula, the first being in Rome. In
1566, earlier than in any other Italian city, a ghetto was estab-
lished in Venice, and from time to time decrees of expulsion were
LIGHT AND SHADOW IN ITALY 325
issued and revoked. But the community, with its various groupings,
persisted and even flourished, playing an important part in the far-
flung commerce of the republic and yielding a substantial revenue
to its coffers. There were schools for secular as well as religious
learning, and the duty of purchasing the freedom of captives was
not neglected. The Venice community had its distinguished per-
sonalities, among them two poetesses, Deborah Ascarelli and Sarah
Sullam. Nor did the frivolities and foibles of the age leave it un-
affected, a condition which Rabbi Simeone Luzzatto, in his
Status of the Jews, frankly exposes and condemns, lamenting in
particular a lack of interest in the public weal and a tendency on
the part of many of his people to be too obsequious toward their
neighbors. Strangely enough, it was a colleague of Luzzatto's, the
brilliant and erratic Judah Leon Modena (1571-1648), who ex-
hibited not a few of those deplorable traits, including a passion for
card-playing and a general lack of intellectual stability. Modena,
however, possessed considerable learning and was capable of lofty
poetic and devotional flights. His contradictions are perhaps ex*
plained as the result of a conflict between his Hebraic heritage and
the Hellenistic influences of the Italian Renaissance that surrounded
him.
5
THERE was hardly a sizable place in northern Italy that
did not have its Jewish community, clinging, in fair political
weather or foul, to all that made life possible. Their story in Milan,
Cremona, Pavia, and other cities is shadowed with persecutions
and expulsions, but it contains bright pages also. In Leghorn, or
Livorno, for example, Duke Ferdinand was anxious to expand the
city's commerce. He invited some Marranos and Jews to settle
there, and in 1597 granted them a charter of rights by which they
enjoyed complete autonomy and acquired a leading place in the
cultural life of their people. They were prominent in industry as
well as commerce, particularly in the manufacture of soap and
textiles. Leghorn, which was sometimes called the Jerusalem of
Italy, became also an important center of the art of Hebrew print-
ing, of which, it may be noted, there were many other centers on
the peninsula, the most famous in Soncino, Mantua, and Bologna.
326 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
In the Papal States, which cut across the peninsula north of the
Kingdom of Naples, the Jewish communities in the first half of
the sixteenth century had little to complain of. Clement VII, who
headed the church from 1523 to 1534, even permitted Marranos
from Portugal in his city of Ancona to return openly to their
former faith, and to the community in Rome he extended a large
measure of internal autonomy. In both cities, to be sure, the Jews
were an important economic factor, but there can be no doubt that
both Clement VII and his successor Paul III (1534-1549) had no
zeal for persecution and sought to allay the bitter lot of the
Marranos.
BOTH Clement VII and Paul III tried hard, also, to keep
the Inquisition out of Portugal, or at least to mitigate its horrors.
But all their efforts, stimulated in large measure by the influence
and largess of the Marranos, had little success. In 1531 the dread
tribunal was authorized in Portugal and promptly began its fiendish
work, with escape for the victims made practically impossible. A
year later it was suppressed, then re-established and extended to
the Portuguese possessions in the New World. Too many interests
and passions were concentrated against the Marranos in Portugal:
the bigotry and hatred of the clergy and populace; the dread of
heresy, augmented now by the rising tide of Protestantism in the
north; the avarice of the king, who of course fell heir to the
fortunes of the condemned; and the machinations of the wily and
unscrupulous Emperor Charles V who sought to make the papacy
subservient to himself by depriving it of independent action.
7
THE liberal and humane policies of Clement VII and Paul
III were completely reversed when Paul IV (1555-1559) ascended
the papal throne, and the change lasted for three centuries. The
old church laws were now invoked, and even the traditional papal
policy against forced conversion was violated. The Jews were
herded into miserable ghettos with the gates kept locked from
dark to dawn. They could own neither land nor houses; were
barred from most occupations, including the professions; and a
LIGHT AND SHADOW IN ITALY 327
system of cruel humiliations was imposed upon them, with the
yellow hat for men and the yellow veil for women. They had to
listen to conversionist sermons by priests, monks, and renegades,
and from time to time there were public burnings of the Talmud.
The Marranos were ordered back to Christianity, and in Ancona
twenty-four of them who defied the command suffered martyrdom
at the stake. In 1569 and again in 1593 all the Jews of the Papal
States, except those in Rome and Ancona, were ordered into exile.
In those two cities the Jews could not be spared: in spite of their
impoverishment and degradation they still furnished too large a
share of the state revenues.
8
AGAINST this shifting background of light and shadow in
sixteenth century Italy, we come upon a strange drama springing
from the intense longing of a homeless and harassed people. In
1524, in the reign of the liberal Clement VII, a curious stranger
appeared in Rome with a tale about a brother of his, a Jewish
king somewhere in the nebulous east, who had sent him as am-
bassador to the Christian rulers of the west. The inhabitants of
his brother's kingdom, he stated, were a brave and warlike people,
descended from the tribe of Reuben, and they were eager to make
war on the Turks and reconquer Palestine. But, he reported, they
lacked arms which he, David Reubeni, as he called himself, had
come to obtain from the rulers of Europe.
Many, including the pope himself, believed the mysterious am-
bassador. He was an odd personage, of pigmy size, dark-skinned
and alert, pious and solemn, and he stirred vague messianic long-
ings. The pope gave him letters to King John III of Portugal,
Italian Jews supplied him with funds, and Reubeni sailed on a
ship flying a Jewish flag and arrived in Portugal, where the king
received him in grand style and promised to grant his petition.
But the Marranos in Portugal were too deeply moved; they saw in
Reubeni the harbinger of the Messiah, they saw their deliverance
at hand, and some of them rose up in arms. Reubeni was compelled
to leave the country and eventually returned to Italy.
Before he departed, however, he had come to know a youthful
Marrano who was destined to become the central figure of this
328 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
fantastic drama. This brilliant mystic whose mind, already excited
by the study of Cabala, became enflamed by the appearance of
the ambassador from the East, began to have marvelous dreams
and visions. He threw off the mask of Christianity and came out
openly as a Jew, under the name of Solomon Molcho. On Reubeni's
advice Molcho fled from Portugal and went to live in Salonika,
Safed, and other cities of the East, where he became still more
certain of his messianic mission and roused similar convictions in
others.
Now the scene shifts back to Italy where the things that happen
surpass the imaginings of the most fertile romancer. The trail of
Solomon Molcho takes us to Ancona, Pesaro, Rome, and Venice.
Multitudes flock to see him and hear him. Among his own people
a few come out against him, fearing the evil that may result from
the ferment. More than once his life is in danger. In the presence
of the pope, to whom he gains admittance disguised as a beggar,
he predicts an inundation of Rome and an earthquake in Portugal,
together with the appearance of a comet; and his predictions actu-
ally come true! The Inquisition, aided by an informer, steps in
and condemns him to death, but with the connivance of the pope,
Molcho escapes and someone else, who resembles him, is delivered
to the flames.
In Venice and Milan, Molcho and Reubeni meet again, and in
1532 they proceed together on the last stage of their journey. They
go to Regensburg and stand before Emperor Charles V, offering
the help of the Jewish people in a war against the Turks. Above
them flutters a banner embroidered with the initials of the Hebrew
words meaning "Who is like unto Thee among the mighty, O
Lord!"
But this time their magnificent faith or folly proved unavailing.
Charles put them in chains. Molcho was again delivered to the In-
quisition in Italy, and with superb courage sanctified the Divine
Name at the stake. Some ten years later Reubeni is believed to
have suffered a like fate in Spain. It is related that with the fagots
piled around him, a messenger from the emperor came posthaste
to Molcho, offering him life and pardon if he would return to
the church. Molcho spurned the offer. His most ardent desire
the longing for kiddush hashem was at last fulfilled.
TURKEY HAVEN OF REFUGE 329
CHAPTER FORTY
Turkey Haven of Refuge
IN THE political patchwork of Italy the lot of the Jews, native
and refugee, was spotty and precarious, but eastward now
stretched a new Moslem* world, where the victims of exile
and persecution could find asylum. The Ottoman Empire had
been steadily enlarging its borders. In Asia, it now included Ana-
tolia, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and the regions east almost
to the Caspian Sea. In Africa the sultan ruled over Egypt, and
many of the Berber states recognized him as their suzerain, while
in Europe his domains embraced the Balkan peninsula, as well as
Crimea and Hungary to the borders of Austria and Poland. The
Aegean Islands fell under his sway, and the Turkish fleet was
mistress of the Mediterranean and its inlets.
Millions of Jews, it is estimated, lived in the sixteenth century
under the scepter of the sultan, and Constantinople and Salonika
harbored the largest Jewish communities in the world. At times,
they suffered from the malevolence and greed of a pasha or local
governor but, compared to other lands, there was little religious
oppression in the Turkish Empire non-Moslems were only re-
quired to pay a special poll tax. In 1532 a blood accusation was
fabricated by Greek Catholics against the Jews in a small town in
Asia Minor and it claimed a number of victims, but the conspira-
tors were exposed and executed, and a decree was issued making
it mandatory for such accusations to be tried in the sultan's courts.
The imperial community was Beaded by a chief rabbi appointed
by the sultan, and Jews rose to high station in the service of the
state. Joseph Hamon was physician to Bayazid II who opened
wide the gates of his empire to the fugitives from Spain, and
Joseph's son Moses was physician to the brilliant conqueror and
lawgiver Suleiman the Magnificent (1530-1566), and stood high
in his favor.
330 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
Joseph and his son were both fugitives from Spain, and their
career is typical of the progress the exiles achieved in their new
homes. In Constantinople and Salonika as well as in Adrianople,
Nicopolis, and elsewhere, they rose to commanding positions.
Refugees from each of the various provinces and cities of Spain
formed congregations of their own, very much like the landsmarm-
schaft societies and synagogues that still flourish in America today,
each congregation collecting from its members the state poll tax
as well as an impost for its own institutions. In time, the exiles
imposed the language they spoke upon the communities where
they settled, and it became the dialect known today as "Spaniolish"
or Ladino. They brought their learning with them also; Salonika,
where the Jewish population became a majority, and Safed in
Palestine became leading centers of Talmudic and Cabalistic study.
Thus, in the "Vale of Tears," as Joseph Cohen, an historian of
the period, calls the Dispersion, Turkey was a veritable city of
refuge. In the capital especially, the Jews made up a numerous,
wealthy, and powerful community, and because of the empire's
importance in the affairs of Europe and the influence the Jews
exerted in shaping its policies, they were able to mitigate the hard
lot of their brothers in other lands.
THE far-flung and variegated Jewish world of the six-
teenth century is brought into sharp relief by the epic story of
Gracia Mendes, a remarkable exemplar of the Biblical "woman of
valor," and her brilliant nephew Joseph Nassi, who rose to power
and splendor with Suleiman the Magnificent and his successor.
They belonged to a distinguished Portuguese Marrano family of
bankers, whose transactions embraced many lands, and among
whose debtors were Emperor Charles V and the kings of France.
But they nought a land where they could return openly to their
own faith, and their odyssey takes us from Portugal to Flanders
and across the Mediterranean world to Constantinople and Pales-
tine.
On the death of her husband, Gracia Mendes left Portugal and
went to Antwerp, then the leading port of Europe, where a branch
of her husband's business was located. But Flanders, a Spanish
TURKEY HAVEN OF REFUGE 331
possession, was a bad place for Marranos and so, after conquering
many difficulties and dangers, Gracia reached Venice only to be
betrayed, imprisoned, and despoiled. At this point Turkey steps
into the picture. Gracia's nephew Joseph Nassi, who with other
members of the family accompanied her on her travels, received the
aid of Moses Hamon, Suleiman's physician; the sultan's govern-
ment, alive to the benefits the wealthy family could bestow on
Turkey, compelled the Venetian republic to set her free and restore
her property. Before proceeding to Turkey, she stayed a number
of years in Ferrara and there, as in all places where she dwelt, her
nobility and munificence brought her the love and gratitude of
the community. She was a generous patron of learning, and always
eager to help Marranos who were menaced by the Inquisition.
In Constantinople, where in 1553 Gracia and her nephew ar-
rived with a large retinue, both were at last able to return openly
to the faith of their fathers, and it was not long before Joseph won
the favor of the sultan. Joseph possessed an intimate knowledge
of the European diplomatic labyrinth, and Suleiman, as well as his
successor Selim II, found in him a valuable adviser. Like Mordecai
in the palace of Ahasuerus, Joseph Nassi "waxed greater and
greater . . . seeking the good of his people and speaking peace to
all his seed."
The grateful Suleiman gave Joseph the city of Tiberias in
Palestine and the district around it to be developed as a refuge for
his persecuted people, and Selim made him Duke of Naxos and
a group of neighboring islands in the Aegean which the Turks had
conquered in 1566. On Joseph's advice, Selim made war on Venice
and conquered the island of Cyprus, then a Venetian possession-
Ambassadors of the European powers, including those of Emperor
Maximilian II himself, came seeking favors from the Jewish duke.
The Netherlands, in revolt against their sovereign, the gloomy
fanatic Philip II of Spain, besought Joseph to prevail on the sultan
to make war on their oppressor.
For Tiberias, Joseph conceived the plan of a large Jewish settle-
ment to which he hoped the sultan would grant self-government.
Joseph, in fact, had all his life nourished the dream of creating a
Jewish state. He issued a call to his persecuted people to return
to their ancient homeland, .and provided ships to transport them.
332 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
Hundreds of them in the Papal States, suffering brutal persecutions
at the hand of Pius V, heeded the call, but some of them were
overtaken at sea by pirates and sold into slavery. Joseph went
forward with his plans. He rebuilt the ancient city which had
fallen in ruins, and tried to establish silk and cloth industries in it.
But the experiment did not prove successful; the failure was no
doubt due in some measure to Joseph's loss of favor at court.
3
EVENT before the death of Selim II in 1574, the star of
Joseph Nassi had begun to wane, owing chiefly to the hostility of
the grand vizier, Mohammed Sokolli. But the man who sup-
planted Joseph in influence at the court was his coreligionist, Solo-
mon Ashkenazi, whose career was almost as remarkable as his
rival's. Ashkenazi had served as physician to King Sigismund Au-
gustus of Poland, and one of his achievements was to secure the
election as Polish king of Henry of Anjou, later Henry III of
France. It was Ashkenazi also who negotiated the peace that con-
cluded the war between Turkey and Venice, and it was his pres-
tige that brought about the revocation by Venice of an edict of
expulsion which had been issued against his people in that city.
4
THE capital, with its magnates, courtiers, and diplomats, its
palace and harem intrigue, and its international jockeying, presents
a striking contrast to other communities in the empire, particularly
in the ancient homeland, where men devoted themselves to the
study and observance of Talmud and Cabala. By 1521, a sizable
community had grown up in Jerusalem, and Saf ed, the city perched
in the hills of Upper Galilee, with its eighteen Talmudic academies
and numerous synagogues, became the most important center of
Jewish learning in the world.
To Safed in 1538, after a life of exile and wandering, came the
wealthy and scholarly Jacob Berab, who dreamed of restoring
the ancient Sanhedrin in the motherland as the supreme religious
authority for all the communities of the world. He attempted
further to revive the practice of ordination or semicha, whereby
through "the laying of the hands," the right to serve as a rabbi
TURKEY HAVEN OF REFUGE 333
and judge was in olden times conferred upon the scholars of one
generation by those of the preceding one. But jealousy arose be-
tween the rabbis of Jerusalem headed by Levi ibn Habib, and
those of Safed, and Berab's efforts came to naught. Jerusalem,
teeming with glorious memories, would not be eclipsed by her
northern rival.
But if Berab's attempt to integrate Jewish life by reviving the
ancient institutions of Sanhedrin and sermcba failed, the same end
was accomplished in large measure by another man and another
method. He was Joseph Karo, poet and scholar, and the instrument
he fashioned was a book, the Shulchan Aruch (Ready-set Table),
which has guided generations of his people in every act of their
daily lives. Born in Spain in 1488, Joseph Karo was, shortly after
the expulsion, taken by his father to Turkey. He spent thirty-two
years of his long life on a vast commentary on the four Rows of
Jacob ben Asher, and the Sbulchan Aruch is really a summary of
this commentary. But Karo was a cabalist as well as a legal scholar.
He knew Solomon Molcho and was^deeply impressed by him, and
in Safed, where he believed he was to accomplish a great mission,
one of his friends and colleagues was Solomon Alkabez, the
author of the strangely beautiful hymn Lecha Dodi* the Friday
night welcome to the Sabbath Bride which is still part of the syna-
gogue liturgy. Thus a peculiar poetic strain runs through the Shul-
chan Aruch, that legal compendium dealing with prayer and festi-
vals, food and dress, marriage and divorce, business and charity, and
all things that concern the life of man from cradle to grave. "Be
strong as a leopard, light as an eagle, fleet as a hart, and mighty as
a lion, to do the will of thy Father who is in heaven." These
words, quoted from an ancient tanna, form the opening theme of
the Shulchan Aruch.
s
JOSEPH KARO, who represents a blending of Talmud and
Cabala, died in 1575, surviving by three years the man who made
Cabala alone the guide and inspiration for himself and for a little
community that gathered around him in Safed. This man was
* Lecha Dodi are the first words of the refrain of this hymn: "Come, my friend,
to meet the Bride, let us welcome jhe Sabbath."
334 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
Isaac Luria who, born of parents who had come from Germany,
was called Ashkenazi Rabbi Isaac. The first letters of the name
were, according to custom, combined to make the word ari, mean-
ing "lion," and "the Ari" is the name by which Isaac Luria is best
known. As a youth he was taken to Egypt, where for several
years he lived the life of a hermit near the Nile, developed a mystic
system based on the Zohar, and came to look upon himself as the
forerunner of the Messiah. He and his followers in Safed, who
made up a separate commune, lived with the things "that eye hath
not seen nor ear ever heard." Together, in ecstasy, they paid
periodic visits to the grave of Simon ben Yochai in nearby Meron.
On Luria's death in 1572 at the age of thirty-eight, the leader-
ship of his mystic community was taken over by Chaim Vital,
whose father hailed from Italy. The teachings of the Ari were dis-
seminated before long to all the lands of the Diaspora by men who
called themselves "the lion's whelps." One of the outstanding
"whelps" was the renowned Talmudic scholar Isaiah Hurwitz of
Poland (1570-1628), who in his old age migrated to Palestine where
he settled in the Holy City, but had to seek refuge in Safed to
escape the persecutions of the local pasha. Another "whelp" was
Abraham de Herrera, a prominent member of the important com-
munity which had come into being in Amsterdam.
The Cabala of "the lion" and his "whelps," it should be stressed,
was not merely an object of study or a system of thought: the
creative genius of the Ari transformed it into a collective way of
life. Out of its basic conceptions with regard to the emanation or
diffusion of the Divine in creation, Luria and his disciples elabo-
rated an applied or "practical" Cabala, the aim of which was to
achieve the re-ascent of the individual soul to the Godhead. The
system laid special emphasis on ecstasy in prayer and the fervent
observance of the Sabbath. Cabala, moreover, was more than
nutriment for the individual heart and imagination. Of greater
historic significance was its appeal to the longing for national
redemption. For the purification of the soul, which was the goal
of "practical" Cabala, was intended to prepare it for the coming
of the Messiah, every thought and deed being directed to hasten
his arrival.
IN GERMANY AND HOLLAND 335
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
In Germany and Holland
IN THE meantime, a German monk named Martin Luther had
launched the first successful challenge to the authority of the
Catholic Church, but the religious and social revolutions
which followed did little or nothing to improve the lot of the
Jewish communities of the north. The nobles and burghers, the
artisans and peasants, who rallied to Luther's teachings could not
be liquidated as were the Albigensians, the Hussites, and the Mar-
ranos; but against the Jews the new sectaries displayed the same
old zeal for persecution, and centuries were to elapse before it
dawned on men that they could be united in citizenship though
divided in religion.
It goes without saying that the segregated denizens of the
ghettos had no direct part in the revolt against Rome; indirectly,
however, and unwittingly, they played an important and perhaps
decisive role. For it was the Bible that served as the chief arsenal
of the reformers in their attacks on the pretensions and abuses of
the Catholic clergy. Christian scholars mastered the Hebrew lan-
guage in order to know the Bible in the original. Luther himself
spent two years translating the Bible into German, and before long
translations appeared in the other European languages also. For the
first time, this product of the Jewish genius was brought home to
the masses of Europe, and it became the most powerful instrument
for the propagation of religious reform.
But, more indirectly perhaps, the Talmud and other Jewish
books also played an important part in producing the ferment that
resulted in the great schism. In fact, for a number of years before
Luther posted his epoch-making ninety-five theses on the door
of the church in Wittenberg, a bitter controversy had been raging
among Christian scholars and clerics over the Jews and their books.
336 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
The conflict was set off by Johann Pfefferkorn, a depraved rene-
gade' who urged that with the exception of the Bible, all the books
of the Jews should be confiscated and burned.
In 1 509 this rabid apostate, with the help of the powerful Do-
minicans, obtained an order from Emperor Maximilian giving him
a free hand with the Jewish books, but the following year a new
figure appeared on the arena who became the center of the fray.
He was Johann Reuchlin, the foremost German scholar of the
day. Reuchlin was an enthusiastic student and teacher of the lan-
guage and books of the Jews and from the brilliant Italian human-
ist Pico della Mirandola he imbibed a profound veneration for
Cabala. Called upon by the emperor to say whether the books
should be destroyed, Reuchlin defended them and denounced their
detractors. A venomous attack against Reuchlin by Pfefferkorn,
printed in the German vernacular under the title of Hmdspiegel,
made its appearance, and Reuchlin countered with his famous
Augenspiegel, also in German, excoriating Pfefferkorn and his
abettors and defending the Talmud. Thereafter the Augenspiegel
and its author were the objects of a relentless pursuit by the
Dominicans and their allies, and western Europe became divided
into Reuchlinites and anti-Reuchlinites in much the same way as,
four centuries later, France was divided into Dreyfusites and anti-
Dreyfusites.
For ten years the war, fought chiefly with pamphlets, lawsuits,
and investigations, continued. On the side of Pfefferkorn and the
Dominicans, with Jacob van Hoogstraten, the Inquisitor and
General of the Order in Cologne, at the head, were ranged the
forces of bigotry and persecution. On the side of Reuchlin were
the men of learning, the so-called humanists, including the gallant
and brilliant Ulrich von Hutten, the great Dutch scholar Erasmus,
Martin Luther himself, and others whose thoughts were directed to
religious reform. The controversy served to open men's eyes to
the follies and corruptions of the clergy. A devastating satire ap-
peared entitled Letters of Obscure Men, written, some believe, by
von Hutten, exposing and ridiculing without mercy the ignorance
and vices of priests, monks, and friars. It was a short step from the
Letters of Obscure Men to the ninety-five theses of Martin
IN GERMANY AND HOLLAND 337
Luther. The conflict that raged around the Jewish books now
menaced the very foundations of the church.
The War of the Jewish Books was fought not only in Germany
but in France and Italy also, and Reuchlin had to stand trial in
Rome, as well as in Mayence and Speyer. Inevitably, other interests
and passions entered the lists. Thus the Franciscan friars, rivals of
the Dominicans, took sides with Reuchlin. Emperor Maximilian
II and the worldly Pope Leo X followed a policy of vacillation.
They favored Reuchlin, but they dared not show their sympathies
openly for fear of the powerful Dominicans. On the other hand,
the king of France, who wasted no love on the emperor, and the
future king of Spain and emperor, Charles V, took sides against
Reuchlin. The University of Paris issued a judgment charging the
champion of the Talmud with heresy and ordering him to recant.
The Jewish communities along the Rhine and throughout Ger-
many trembled over the outcome of the conflict. Expulsion and
other dangers lowered over them, and they dared not celebrate
Reuchlin's victories or lament his defeats too openly. In 1510, while
the controversy was at its height, the insane charge of stabbing the
host was brought against them in Brandenburg and claimed thirty
martyrs.
The matter came finally before the papal court in Rome where
it dragged on for six years, with one decision in favor of Reuchlin
and a second against him. The second and final verdict was issued
in 1520, and it was dictated not by justice but by fear of Luther's
revolt, which was making alarming progress and to which Reuchlin
and his adherents were lending powerful support.
2
THE progress of the Reformation was bound to produce
a messianic effervescence in the ghettos of Germany, for the
longing was always quickened by world-shaking events, and
Luther's revolt seemed to presage the end of the millennial domin-
ion of Rome. Two Jews, Luther relates, came to him and tried
to convert him to their faith, and his attitude toward the people
who gave the Christians their Bible and savior began by being
deeply sympathetic. Jesus Was Born a Jeiv, is the challenging tide
of one of his pamphlets, and in it he declares:
338 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
Our fools, the popes, bishops, sophists and monks, these
coarse blockheads, dealt with the Jews in such a manner that
any Christian would have preferred to be a Jew. Indeed, had
I been a Jew and had I seen such idiots and dunderheads
expound Christianity, I should rather have become a hog than
a Christian.
And Luther concludes with the following advice to his fellow-
Christians:
I would advise and beg everybody to deal kindly with the
Jews and to instruct them in the Scriptures: in such a case
we could expect them to come over to us.
Luther's aim is clear enough. His purified doctrine, he expected,
drawing its inspiration directly from the Bible, would bring the
Jews en masse into his fold. It was the old missionary zeal pursuing
the old objective, not, however, with cruelty, but with kindness.
But it met with the same resistance, and the kindness, as is usually
the case, turned sour. In his last years, embittered by other disap-
pointments, Luther's attitude towards the Jew's underwent a com-
plete transformation. Now he wrote about "the Jews and their lies,"
gloated over their expulsion from Spain and more recently from
Bohemia, and advised his followers to burn their synagogues, con-
fiscate their books, and tear down their houses. He outdid himself
in exercising against them an unusual talent for coarse invective.
There was alarm in the ghettos of Germany and Joseph Rosheim,
leader of the Jews in Alsace, besought the Strasbourg council for
permission, which was denied, to publish a refutation. In general,
it was the advice of the later, not the earlier, Luther that the rulers
and populace of Protestant Germany followed.
If in the logic of the Reformation there lay the seeds of reli-
gious tolerance, it was centuries before they germinated, for logic,
alas, is of little avail against habit and self-interest. In 1555, a ^ ter
a generation of religious strife, including a peasant uprising which
on Luther's own advice was put down with ruthless cruelty, the
princes of Germany adopted the Peace of Augsburg. It permitted
each of them to choose between the old and the new faiths, but
their subjects were required to follow the faith of their princes,
IN GERMANY AND HOLLAND 339
or emigrate. And the Protestant princes, needless to say, were im-
pelled more by political than religious motives; they were tempted
not only by the prospect of freedom from the domination of
Rome, but by the possessions of the Catholic Church in their
domains, which they proceeded to confiscate. The Peace of Augs-
burg, however, was only a long truce.
The Reformation, moreover, did not follow a single course.
Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich, John Calvin in Geneva, John Knox in
Scotland, and many others also preached and practiced secession
from Rome, but their paths diverged from Martin Luther's and
from each other's. Nor would they, any more than Luther, con-
cede religious freedom to those who differed with them. To the
Jews it soon became apparent that the Reformation, whatever its
ultimate implications might be, meant additional perils, caught as
they were between the warring factions of the different faiths.
3
THE Low Countries, today embracing Belgium and The
Netherlands, were then part of the scattered domains of the arch-
bigot Philip II of Spain, and in 1567 the progress of the Reforma-
tion, particularly in the northern provinces, forced the Dutch
people into open revolt against their ruler. For heroism and en-
durance, as well as objective, this revolt may well be compared with
the Maccabean struggle against the mad Antiochus and his suc-
cessors. It was not until the end of the century, and after Philip's
power had been dealt a crippling blow by the English seamen who
in 1588 destroyed his "Invincible Armada," that the Dutch burgh-
ers drove out of their country the armies of the gloomy fanatic,
together with the Inquisition and its horrors. And it was this vic-
tory of "the weak against the strong, the few against the many"
that made it possible for Jews and Marranos to find refuge in those
lands.
4
ON THE Day of Atonement of the year 1596, the city mag-
istrates of Amsterdam, amazed and indignant, sent armed men to
arrest a group of worshippers whom they took for Catholics. Jacob
Tirado, one of the worshippers, explained that they were Marrano
34 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
fugitives from the Inquisition in Portugal. Although he could only
converse with them in Latin, he was able, it appears, to convince
the magistrates that the city would benefit from their wealth and
commercial connections. Not long afterwards, the little commu-
nity was allowed to build a synagogue which, in honor of Jacob
Tirado, was named the "House of Jacob."
More Marranos fled from Portugal and found asylum in Am-
sterdam. Somewhat later came refugees from the ghettos of Ger-
many seeking escape from persecution and the terrors of the
Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), and still later their number was
augmented by fugitives from Poland fleeing from the fury that
assailed them with the uprising in 1648 of the Cossacks against the
Poles. The land that under the leadership of the great-hearted
William of Orange had thrown off the hideous yoke of Spain, be-
came a haven of refuge for the persecuted, at a time when the
gates of England and France were still shut against them, and
when in Italy, especially in the Papal States, they had fallen on
evil days with persecutions of many sorts, crude and refined,
practiced upon them. Nor did the Dutch have reason to regret their
hospitality, for Jewish wealth and skill contributed in no small
measure toward making Holland the leading maritime and trading
power of the century. So great indeed were the benefits Holland
derived from them that other countries, including Denmark, were
anxious to receive them, and they made their way also into the
free city of Hamburg.
By 1618 the community in Amsterdam had three synagogues,
and twenty years later an academy of learning called "Talmud
Torah" was established. It took some time before the three groups,
Sephardic, German, and Polish, overcame their mutual aloofness
and began to mingle, and it may not be amiss to note that in the
same order, these groups later migrated to the New World also,
and that there too, for a considerable time, the same aloofness
prevailed.
5
ENGLAND was not destined to remain shut against the Jews
much longer, and it was Menasseh ben Israel of Amsterdam who
opened it. The career of this scholar and statesman, cabalist and
IN GERMANY AND HOLLAND 34!
man of affairs, is a mirror of his age, Christian as well as Jewish.
His friendships embraced the leading lights of the day, including
the painter Rembrandt and Hugo Grotius, the savant who laid
the foundations of international law. Among those with whom
he corresponded was the learned Queen Christina of Sweden. He
was rabbi, preacher, and teacher, writer in many languages and
printer, and his mind was a strange amalgam of the practical and
the mystical.
His cabalistic speculations were, of course, messianic, and his
belief in the speedy restoration of Israel was strengthened by a
traveler who convinced him that the American Indians were de-
scended from the Lost Ten Tribes. In 1650 he published his faith
in his Hope of Israel, and from the "Fifth Monarchy Men" of
England came a responsive chord. These "Men" believed in the
imminent second coming of Jesus, who would establish the fifth
and final kingdom on earth, the other four having been the As-
syrian, the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman.
It was one of Menasseh ben Israel's convictions, however, that
the great fulfillment could not take place until his people were
scattered through every land, and England still refused to admit
them. But great and startling events had occurred in England,
events that could only be messianic in their import. In 1649, the
tyrant king Charles I had been led to the execution block; a re-
public had been established, and at its head stood Oliver Cromwell,
a plain God-fearing man, but a soldier and statesman of genius.
His followers, the Puritans, drew their inspiration from the heroes
of the Bible, Moses and Joshua, Gideon and Saul, and they went
into battle singing the psalms of the shepherd-king David. Was
it not reasonable to expect that Cromwell and his ministers would
remove the ban that forbade the descendants of those heroes and
lawgivers to set foot on the soil of England?
The ban, moreover, had to pn extent been weakened by the
presence in London of a group of wealthy Marranos of whom
Antonio Fernandez Carvajal and Simon de Caceres were the most
influential. They were both merchants with far-flung connections,
which gave them opportunities to serve England not only with
their commerce, but with valuable information they were able to
gather for the government.. Carvajal, who had settled in London
342 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
about 1635 and some twenty years later returned openly to
Judaism, was the owner of ships that sailed to the East Indies and
Asia as well as the West Indies and South America. He had
agents in every important commercial center in Europe; the mer-
chants in the City of London held him in high esteem and he
enjoyed the special protection of the government. De Caceres was
the author of a plan for the conquest of Chile which he sub-
mitted to Cromwell, offering to organize and command the ex-
pedition himself.
AS SPOKESMAN for his people before Cromwell and his
ministers, Menasseh the mystic and cabalist was powerfully aided
by Menasseh the practical man of affairs. He began by translating
his Hope of Israel from Spanish into Latin and dedicating it to the
British Parliament, and in 1652 he was invited to come to London.
But it happened that just then the commercial rivalry between
England and Holland broke into war, and it was not until three
years later that Menasseh laid before the Lord Protector his famous
"Humble Address" in which he buttressed his messianic arguments
for the readmission of the Jews by pointing out the benefits their
wealth and commercial abilities would confer on England. Crom-
well was impressed by both arguments: he too was a combination
of the mystic and realist.
Menasseh's path in London, however, was not strewn with roses.
The lawyers, it is true, found no legal obstacle to the readmission
of the Jews, but there were clergymen who raised theological ob-
jections and, above all, the London merchants vieKved with alarm
an influx of competitors. Menasseh ben Israel wrote a spirited reply
to the enemies of his people, but shortly afterwards he returned
to Holland where he died a sad and broken man. As events
proved, however, his mission was not a failure. The gates of Eng-
land were not formally opened as Menasseh hoped they would be,
but his efforts had overcome prejudice and prepared the country
if not to welcome, then att least to tolerate, the return of the Jews.
Marranos from Spain and Portugal continued to come in, and both
Cromwell and his successors permitted them, as fugitives from the
hated Inquisition, to remain and openly profess their faith. Quietly
IN GERMANY AND HOLLAND 343
and almost unnoticed, other Jews came to England and were
allowed to stay. By 1664 there were enough of diem in London
to establish community life, and Jacob Sasportas, who had traveled
to England with Menasseh, became their first rabbi.
7
IN THE summer of 1656, when Menasseh ben Israel was
still in London laboring to obtain another asylum for his people,
the solemn ban of excommunication was published against a former
pupil of his in Amsterdam named Baruch or Benedict Spinoza.
The elders of the synagogue found the twenty-four-year-old
Baruch guilty of spreading doctrines subversive of their faith and
of all religion, and they read him out of their community not only
to protect the things they and their fathers had preserved at the
risk of their lives, but also in order to disassociate themselves openly
from one whose conduct imperiled their standing with their Chris-
tian neighbors. In the annals of the Jewish people, that event is not
of overshadowing importance, but it Iboms large in the memory of
men because Benedict Spinoza became one of the giants in the
history of metaphysical thought.
Some twenty years earlier, in fact, a similar event had occurred
in Amsterdam which created a much deeper stir in the commu-
nity. It was the pronouncement of the ban and for the second
time upon Uriel Acosta, a former Marrano who in 1617, when
he was about thirty years old, escaped from Portugal to Amster-
dam and was received into the Jewish fold. Soon afterwards, how-
ever, the somber and restless Acosta became intensely dissatisfied.
He openly rejected the Talmud, which he found incompatible with
the teaching of Scriptures, and laid his views before the community
in Venice which, on his refusal to recant, excommunicated him.
For fifteen years Acosta lived in Amsterdam as an outcast until,
unable to bear it any longer,^ he agreed to recant. But he was
moved not by conviction but despair, and he became even more
embittered. He branded the community leaders as Pharisees, using
the word, like the Christian theologians, as a stigma and reproach,
and denied the immortality of the soul and other Jewish teachings.
He dreamed of a religion consisting of faith unencumbered by
ritual and observance, and came gradually to deny die authority
344 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
of the Scriptures also. In 1633 Acosta was put under the ban a
second time, and after suffering the shame and hardships of an
outcast for another seven years, he again agreed to recant. But
die public humiliations that were inflicted upon him during the
ceremony of recantation were more than he could bear. Acosta
returned to his lodgings, hastily finished a brief autobiography
entitled Specimen of a Human Life, and shot himself.
Such was the somber tragedy of Uriel Acosta, the memory of
which, no doubt, was still fresh in the community when in 1656
the ban of excommunication was pronounced against Baruch
Spinoza. In Spinoza's case, however, it led to no tragic conse-
quences. Spinoza had, in fact, withdrawn from the community
even before he was excommunicated. He had retired to a village
near Amsterdam, and in later years resided in The Hague. He
lived serenely, earning his livelihood as a polisher of lenses.
All his friends and admirers were Christians. Among those who
paid him an extended visit was the illustrious German philosopher
Gottfried Leibnitz, who derived some of his basic ideas from
Spinoza but later repaid his master with open rejection and de-
rision.
8
THAT the leaders of the Amsterdam community had good
reason to disassociate themselves from Spinoza, is indicated by the
reception his views met on publication. His Tractatus Theologico-
PoliticiiSj published anonymously in 1670, was banned by the
clergy and suppressed by the States-General of the provinces of
Holland, Zealand, and West Friesland. In that work, Spinoza
rejects the belief that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch, and
contends that with the fall of the Jewish state, the rites and institu-
tions of Judaism had lost their validity a conclusion defying the
group instinct of his people which had led them, after the fall of
die Jewish state, to cling to those rites with even greater tenacity.
In this conclusion, as in his basic metaphysical assumptions,
Spinoza cannot be reconciled with the teachings of Judaism, not-
withstanding the valiant attempts that have been made to do so.
Spinoza sees the universe of nature and thought as two of the in-
finite attributes of the Ultimate Substance, or God, but his uni-
THE GREAT CENTER IN POLAND 345
verse and his God are fettered in Law and Necessity. It is a static
and frozen universe, and the hungry heart beats in it as in a vacuum.
Judaism sees the universe as the product of God's creative will, and
it sees man endowed with freedom to rise and grow in spiritual
stature. Nor is it surprising that the philosopher, immersed in his
vast and frigid speculations, should be repelled by religious rites
and observance. In relation to their people, both he and Acosta
lacked a sense of continuity and progression the sense of history;
and they failed to realize that, by linking every human act with
the Divine, the rites of Judaism aimed to regulate the passions that
tend to debase human life, and to serve as vehicles for elevating it
to higher spiritual levels.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The Great Center in Poland
FROM Spain and Portugal, exiled Jews and fugitive Marranos
found asylum, as we have seen, in Italy, in Turkey, in The
Netherlands, and later in England; and wherever they came
they planted new communities or infused fresh vigor into the old
ones. In those countries, however, no concentration arose which,
for magnitude and achievement, could be compared with the Span-
ish community, which was now no more, or with the Babylonian
which preceded it. The hegemony of the Diaspora, which be-
longed first to Babylonia, then to Spain, now fell to a center which
arose in eastern Europe.
Where the great rivers that water the steppes of the Ukraine end
their courses, Jews had planted their first settlements in what is now
the Soviet Union. Centuries before the shadowy career of the
Jewish kingdom of the Khazars, whose capital Itil lay at the mouth
of the Volga, began, there were Jews in the Crimea who, as early
as the first century of the current era, already lived in organized
communities. Their language was Greek, and they must have
drifted in from Asia and Egypt during the period when the mother-
346 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
land was subject to Rome and perhaps even earlier. The persecu-
tions of die Byzantine emperors drove more of them to the north-
ern coasts of the Black Sea; and Khazars found refuge there when
the Russians overthrew their kingdom, as did Karaites from Asia,
whose descendants have liv^d in those regions as a separate Jewish
sect to our day.
The warriors who conquered the Khazars hailed from the
reaches of the middle Dnieper, and were ruled by the Prince of
Kiev, a city to which Jewish traders had made their way at a time
when the Russians were still pagans. These traders, it appears,
attempted to convert the Russians to the faith that had been adopted
by the Khazars. But the prince was assisted in his Avar against the
Khazars by the Byzantine emperor, so he chose instead the Greek
Orthodoxy of his ally, which rejected the authority of the pope
in Rome. For there had always been rivalry between the bishops
of Constantinople and those of Rome, and in 1054 the break
between the two churches became final. Toward the end of the
tenth century, the Poles were also converted, but they became
Roman Catholics, a fact of far-reaching importance for the rela-
tions between the two leading Slav nations, as well as for the Jewish
communities lying between them.
Moscow and the other principalities into which Russia was
divided also became Greek Catholic, and die new church lost no
time in persecuting the Jews whose early missionary efforts, it
appears, were not wholly fruitless, leaving the Russian clergy with
a dread of the "Judaisers" which clung to them for centuries. In
Kiev and towns near it, nevertheless, fugitives from Germany,
who fled from the fury of die crusaders, were permitted to stay,
but the princes of Moscow admitted no foreigners or infidels to
their "holy" soil.
For two and a half centuries, Russia was subject to the Tartars,
those Mold horsemen from central Asia who in 1241 swept west-
ward as far as Germany, and in 1260 overran Palestine. Their
domination was brought to an end in 1480 when Ivan III (1462-
1505), Duke of Moscow and leading Russian potentate, refused
to pay them tribute. His grandson was Ivan IV, called the Terrible
(1547-1584), who proclaimed himself the heir of the Byzantine
Empire by assuming the tide of Caesar, or Czar* In the two cen-
THE GREAT CENTER IN POLAND 347
tunes that followed, his successors, as we shall see, expanded their
domains westward, and toward the end of the eighteenth century
swept in beneath their harsh and autocratic scepter the greater
portion of a large and vigorous Jewish community which had
grown up in Poland.
IN POSEN, Kalisz, Cracow, and other cities near the border
between Germany and Poland, small groups of Jews must have
established themselves in very early times, but it was as refugees
from the pogroms of the crusaders that they arrived in Poland in
large numbers. They came into a primitive society consisting of
nobles and peasant serfs, and they filled the gap between the two
classes as craftsmen and traders. The landed gentry, or shlakhta,
was a numerous and proud caste, but most of its members had
little land and revenue. The saying was that a poor nobleman's dog
who sat in the middle of his owner's estate rested the tip of his tail
on the land of his master's neighbor. iBut rich or poor, the nobleman
could not stain his escutcheon by engaging in useful work. As
craftsmen and merchants, therefore, the only rivals the Jews faced
were immigrant Germans who, of course, found it profitable to
incite the Poles to persecute their Jewish competitors, and found
willing allies in the clergy.
The Jews who found refuge in Poland would have fared badly
if the kings and the more powerful nobles had not come to their
rescue. Not only did the monarchs derive a considerable personal
revenue from them, but they could not fail to realize their impor-
tance for the prosperity of the country as a whole. The kings like
Boleslav the Pious and Casimir the Great (1333-1373) found it
useful, therefore, to confirm the rights and immunities of their
Jewish subjects by charter, and to facilitate their commercial
operations. But not always were the royal charters potent enough
to ward off persecution. The Rindfleisch massacres in 1348 sent
more and more Jews fleeing into Poland and, particularly in the
cities near the German border, the lurid libels against them raised
their heads and claimed their victims. Thus, in 1 399 the rabbi of
Posen and thirteen community notables perished at the stake on the
charge of "bleeding the host." In Cracow, a priest in 1407 charged
348 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
the Jews with slaying a Christian child, and many of them were
murdered by the mob which attacked the Jewish quarter. In 1454,
die rabid inquisitor John Capistrano, who gloried in the title of the
"scourge of the Jews," and whom the Archbishop of Cracow in-
vited to come to Poland, helped the shlakhta to pare the powers of
King Casimir IV (1447-1492) and terminate the charter of Jewish
rights. In Cracow and Posen Jews were again the victims of mob
violence.
Nor could the Jews of Poland always count on the protection of
the monarchs. There were times when, as in the case of Casimir IV,
kings had to make concessions to zealous bishops and arrogant
squires, and there were times when they themselves were not in-
clined to be friendly. Such was the case with Casimir's sons. One
of them, John I, on the pretext of shielding them against attack,
herded the Jews of Cracow into a ghetto; the other, Alexander, who
began by being Grand Duke of Lithuania, plundered and expelled
them from his grand duchy. When, however, in 1501 he succeeded
his brother to die throne of Poland, and Lithuania became part of
the kingdom, he was compelled to let them return, and even in-
corporated the Jewish charter of Casimir the Great into the con-
stitution. In Lithuania the Jewish settlements, of which the largest
were in Grodno, Brest, and Vladimir, were still weak; in Poland,
however, the Jews were not to be trifled with, not even by a king:
the country's welfare depended too much upon them.
3
FOR a century and a half before 1648, the year of disaster
for Polish Jewry, die community increased and prospered. In
numbers it grew from 50,000 to 500,000; it developed a rich inner
life; it enjoyed wealth and power, as well as a larger measure of
internal autonomy than a community of the Diaspora had ever
exercised.
The period, of course, had its darker aspects also. In the more
populous places, the churchmen, as well as the burghers with whom
the Jews competed, made no secret of their hostility. In the villages
they were dependent on die whims of idle and brutal squires, and
even the peasants were not always friendly, for they were op-
THE GREAT CENTER IN POLAND 349
pressed by the gentry who utilized the Jews as instruments of
exploitation.
During the reign of Sigisinund I (1506-1548) die Protestant
Reformation began to make inroads into Poland, and the clergy,
more watchful than ever, accused the Jews also of seeking to make
converts. This, and the charge that they were plotting treason with
the Turks were proven false; nevertheless they served their pur-
pose. The Diet enacted laws barring Jews from many occupations,
restricting their trade, and even ordering them to wear a special
headgear of yellow cloth, although the last provision could not be
enforced. The king refused to protect those Jews who were living
on the estates of the nobles: since he derived no income from them,
he was not, he declared, "obliged to secure justice for them."
The same attitude was taken by Sigismund Augustus (1548-
1572), although he extended the autonomy of the Jewish com-
munities or kahals, permitting lawsuits in which both parties were
Jews to be judged in accordance with Jewish law by rabbis or
elders of the kabal. He also ordered disputes between Jews and
Christians to be tried in the royal courts instead of the local
tribunals whose judges were not, as a rule, impartial. For the rest,
in the campaign to check the progress of the Reformation, the old
libels against the Jews were found useful for inflaming the religious
fervor of the populace. The blood accusation cropped up again
and again, in spite of royal edicts against it. In the towns, the coun-
cils devised a variety of restrictions against the Jewish merchants,
and at times the mob broke into the ghetto and there was looting
and bloodshed. Such was the case in Posen in 1577 and 1618, in
Vilna in 1592, in Cracow in 1637.
The attack on the Jewish quarter of Posen in 1618 was led by
the teachers and students of the local Jesuit academy. With sup-
pression of the Protestant Reformation as their primary objective,
the Polish Jesuits, in the reign of Stephen Batory (1572-1586),
acquired control of the schools, and Stephen's successor, Sigismund
III (1586-1632), surrounded himself with Jesuit advisers. The
Jesuits taught their pupils to hate Jews and Protestants, and their
pious hostility extended to members of the Greek Orthodox
Church, many of whom lived under Polish rule, for as far back as
35O IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
1320 the Russian principality of Kiev had been conquered by
Lithuania, which later became part of Poland. The Jews suffered
at the hands of the Jesuits directly; and indirectly, as we shall see,
the persecution of the Greek Orthodox Russians was largely re-
sponsible for the catastrophe which swept down upon them in
1648.
4
IN SPITE of the shocks which disturbed it and the dangers
lurking around it, the current of Jewish life in Poland ran deep
and strong, and no better mirror of this life existed than the annual
fairs which took place in the city of Lublin. To these fairs, which
were held between Purim and Passover, came Jewish merchants
from every province in Poland and its outlying possessions. They
came from Great Poland, from Little Poland, and from Galicia or
Red Russia, of which the principal city was Lemberg, now called
Lwow. They came also from Lithuania, Volhynia, Little Russia,
Podolia, and the distant settlements beyond the Dnieper in the
Ukraine. They came in sheepskin coats and cloth caps, as well as
in silk caftans and great hats of fur. The stalls were crammed with
the goods they manufactured: cloth of wool and silk, articles of
wood and metal, clothing and shoes, necessities and luxuries. There
was considerable traffic also in religious articles: phylacteries and
prayer shawls, silver breastplates and crowns for Torah scrolls,
great leather-bound folios of the Talmud printed in Lublin itself,
and Bibles printed in Cracow and Italy. The fairs swarmed with
Poles, Lithuanians and Russians, and there were German merchants
also who scowled in the direction of their Jewish competitors.
The economic life of Polish Jewry stood mirrored at the fair,
and how richer and more varied it was than that of their brothers
in Germany! For in spite of legal restrictions, the Polish Jews
followed practically every calling. They were merchants and man-
ufacturers, artisans and farmers. They cut the forests for timber,
and opened up the salt mines. Many of them, especially in the
outlying districts, lived as arendars or renters on the estates of the
gentry, operating flour mills and taverns and looking after the
interests of the indolent nobles in their relations with the peasants,
a function that brought more peril than profit.
THE GREAT CENTER IN POLAND 351
But it was not only to buy and sell that they came to the Lublin
fairs. Committees representing the widely scattered kahals came to
engage rabbis for their communities, or to invite a famous maggid
(preacher) to visit them. Fathers brought their promising sons to
be enrolled in the renowned Yeshivah of Lublin, a Talmudic
academy authorized in 1567 by King Sigismund Augustus himself;
or they sought out the most brilliant students to be their sons-in-
law, for learning and piety were more highly esteemed than
wealth or lineage.
5
THE most important event, however, which took place at
the Lublin fairs, was the meeting of the "Council of the Four
Lands," the Vaad Arba Arazoth y as it was called in Hebrew. The
four "lands" which this body represented were Great Poland,
Little Poland, Galicia and Volhynia, the communities of Lithuania
having in 1620 set up a council of their own. Under the Vaad,
which acted, of course, under royal authority, die Jews of Poland
achieved a broader and more effective autonomy than had the
Babylonian community under the Exilarchs or the Spanish com-
munity under the aljamas. The Vaad has been compared to the
ancient Sanhedrin of the motherland, but it was more directly
representative. Its thirty-odd members, some of them rabbis, most
of them laymen, came from the principal kahals of the "four lands."
Each "land" had its provincial council, which elected members to
the national Vaad. Like the Sanhedrin, the Vaad was vested with
judicial as well as legislative powers: the most important disputes
came to it for adjudication.
The ordinances, or takkcmoth, which the Council enacted aimed
to strengthen the internal life of the community and to promote
good relations between them and their Christian neighbors. It
appointed shtadlmim, or agents, to protect their common interests
with the king and his ministers: to save them, if possible, from
being burdened with special taxes, to be on guard lest their rights
and privileges be revoked or impaired. An important duty of the
Vaad was to allocate among the provinces die taxes which the
government levied upon the community as a whole. It did the same
with other funds which had to be raised for the general interest,
352 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
and in turn, each provincial council allocated its share among the
local kahals.
But the Council of the Four Lands was even more zealous and
successful in regulating the inner life of Polish Jewry. It labored
to enforce fair practices in commercial transactions with Jews and
Christians alike. It prescribed modesty and restraint in dress and
demeanor so as not to arouse envy and ill will. It enjoined the
strict performance of religious duties, and one of its most important
concerns was the education of the young.
IN POLAND, as in the other lands of the Dispersion, it was
almost impossible to find an illiterate Jew in an age when, among
their neighbors, only members of the clergy and the higher no-
bility were taught to read and write. The Jewish girl was required
to know only her prayers, which she was taught at home, but every
boy began his schooling when he was four or five, and continued
it for at least seven or eight years.
The elementary school, or cheder* kept the boy eight to ten
hours a day. The cheder was maintained by the tuition fees of the
parents, and for orphans and destitute children the kahal provided
a free school, called Talmud Torah. Reading was followed by the
Scriptures, which the boy learned to translate into his Yiddish
vernacular; then came the commentary of Rashi, the Mishnah, and
even the Talmud. The more able and studious went to the Yeshi-
voth, or Talmudic academies, where they continued with the
Talmud and the commentaries of the great rabbis. Drawn by the
fame of some illustrious scholar, youths left the shelter of their
homes and flocked to the Yeshivoth in Lublin, Ostrog, Cracow,
Lemberg, and other cities, where they spent their days, and often
also their nights, in intense study, living on the bounty of strangers,
who considered it a pious deed to entertain poor students at their
boards. Some secular subjects, like science and philosophy, were
frowned upon as a menace to faith, but it is doubtful if there has
ever existed a community, Jewish or non-Jewish, where the ac-
cepted learning was as widespread as it was among the Jews of
Poland. There was no learned caste among them; the study of
The word means "room."
THE GREAT CENTER IN POLAND 353
Torah resounded in every home; and every community, large and
small, had numerous accomplished scholars, men who earned their
bread by the sweat of their brow and found their delight in study.
For the rest, the Talmud was not merely an academic subject for
them: under the autonomy they enjoyed, their life was regulated
by it. Criminal as well as civil cases which came before the rabbis
and dayyamm (judges) were decided in accordance with Tal-
mudic law.
7 ...
ABOVE this high intellectual plateau rose numerous towering
peaks, men of commanding authority, who left their impress on
their own and succeeding generations. In 1541 King Sigismund I
appointed Sholom Shakhna, who was rabbi of Lublin, as chief rabbi
of Little Poland. Shakhna is credited with introducing the method
known as pilpul in the study of the Talmud, a method that delights
in keen and minute analysis, finding differences in things apparently
alike and agreements in things apparently different. Pilpul has been
praised and condemned, but it gained vogue and became the ac-
cepted method of study in Poland. A pupil of Shakhna was Moses
Isserles (1520-1572), for many years head of the Yeshivah in
Cracow, who leaned towards philosophy and was attracted by the
Rambam's Guide to the Perplexed. With certain additions which
Isserles made to the Shulchan Aruch of Joseph Karo, that com-
pendium of Talmudic law became the manual and guide of Polish
Jewry.
Solomon Luria, who made the Yeshivah of Ostrog in Volhynia
a renowned center of learning, was both a friend and opponent
of Isserles. Luria was a bold and independent spirit who disapproved
of pilpul and was attracted by Cabala; each accused the other of
incomplete loyalty to the Talmud. There were other scholars in
Poland who delved into the mysteries of the Zohar and were at-
tracted by the system of applied Cabala of Isaac Luria and Chaim
Vital. Among the people generally, moreover, cabalistic notions
were rife, and the advent of the Messiah, who would redeem them
from exile and restore their ancient glory, was not relegated to "the
end of days," but, on the contrary, was expected to occur "speed-
ily, in our day."
354 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
There were also among the great scholars of Poland not a few
who combined learning with statesmanship. Mordecai Jaffe (1530-
1612), who compiled a Talmudic code of his own and, besides,
was at home in astronomy and mathematics, served a number of
times as president of the Council of the Four Lands, as did Joshua
Falk, rabbi of Lublin. Other illustrious names of the first half of
the seventeenth century are those of Meir of Lublin, Samuel Edels,
Joseph Serkes, and Yom Tob Lipman Heller, a profound scholar
and a man of great courage, who, though born in Germany, lived
the last twenty-two years of his life in Poland and, at his death in
1654, was rabbi of Cracow. His stormy career illustrates some of
the inner tensions which at times disturbed the peace of Jewish
life amid the anomalies surrounding it. As chief rabbi of Prague,
Heller antagonized powerful members .of the community, who
charged him -with laying upon them an unjust share of the taxes
which the emperor levied upon the community as a whole. In
their feud against him, they resorted to a method which the history
of their people, as well as every healthy instinct, should have
taught them to shun: they accused him before the Imperial Gov-
ernment in Vienna of having insulted the Christian faith in his
writings. Heller was removed from office, imprisoned, and com-
pelled to pay a large fine. On his release, he migrated to Poland,
where he resumed his distinguished career; he occupied a number
of rabbinical posts, playing an important part also in the Council
of the Four Lands.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The Disaster of 1648
THE long reign of Sigismund III, which witnessed a marked
growth of Jesuit influence in Poland and a corresponding
rise in hostility against the Jews, ended in 1632, and the
shlakhta elected his son Vladislav (1632-1648) to succeed him.
The right of electing the monarch had, since 1572, been exercised
THE DISASTER OF 1648 355
by the nobles, whose power to paralyze the government of Poland
was assured by the preposterous liberum veto, a constitutional pro-
vision which enabled a single member of the Diet, by pronouncing
the formula "I do not permit," to make legislation impossible. A
grave crisis was impending for Poland, but the "intelligence
quotient" of her statesmanship was never lower. In 1643, for ex-
ample, the Diet fixed the legal profit of Christian merchants at
seven per cent, and of Jewish merchants at three. It did not, ap-
parently, occur to the noble legislators that the law made it manda-
tory for Jewish merchants to undersell and thus drive out of
business the very people whom they were so eager to protect.
The new monarch nourished designs for extending the boun-
daries of Poland at the expense of the Tartars and the Turks, de-
signs for which he counted on the loyalty of the Cossacks, his
warlike subjects east of the Dnieper River. But he died in 1648
without obtaining the approval of the shlakhta, and the same year
the Cossacks launched a revolt against their Polish rulers and
oppressors, setting off a train of events which convulsed the king-
dom for more than a decade, and brought death and devastation
to hundreds of Jewish communities.
THE Cossacks, whose name stems from a Tartar word mean-
ing "freebooters," lived on both sides of the Dnieper and owed
allegiance to the kings of Poland, who found them useful as a
barrier against the Tartars and Turks. Many of them were still
nomads, their principal occupation and passion being to make
plundering forays on their neighbors; but in many places settled
communities of peasant Cossacks had sprung up whose land, how-
ever, belonged to Polish nobles. The Polish kings permitted the
Cossacks a large measure of autonomy, with the right of choosing
their own chief, or hetman, but their real masters were their land-
lords who kept them in virtual bondage. A fierce hatred against
their oppressors sprang up among the wild and primitive Cossacks,
and it became greatly intensified when the Jesuits added religious
persecution to the economic oppression of the gentry. For the Cos-
sacks were Greek Orthodox, and the Jesuits applied against them, as
they did against the Jews, the general policy of making it as hard
356 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
as possible for anyone in Poland to be a non-Catholic. Already in
1635 and 1636, the Cossacks had risen up in arms, but they were
cruelly put down and their ancient rights declared forfeit.
In the fierce hostility between Cossacks and Poles, the Jews
were caught as between the upper and nether millstones, for both
landlords and Jesuits used them as instruments of oppression. The
nobles, who preferred the pleasures of the big cities and rarely
lived on their estates, employed them as stewards, with orders to
wring the largest possible revenue out of their Cossack serfs. Nor
did the Jewish arendars to whom the gentry sold the liquor and
other concessions, add to the good will of the primitive peasants.
But an even greater danger lurked in a device contrived by the
Jesuits and designed to humiliate the Cossacks: they placed the
keys to the Greek Orthodox churches in the custody of stewards
or innkeepers, thus compelling the Cossacks to apply to Jews for
the use of their churches.
3
AWARE of their peril, the Jews relied on the Polish lords to
protect them, but the year 1648 proved how utterly vain was that
reliance. Early that year, the Cossack hetman Bogdan Chmelnitzki
raised the standard of revolt, made an alliance with the Tartars of
Crimea, and in May, his combined forces inflicted a decisive defeat
on the Polish army. Now the Greek Orthodox peasants on both
sides of the Dnieper left their plows and joined the uprising to
avenge themselves upon the Catholic landlords and their minions.
The Cossacks were transformed into bands of ravening beasts, and
one after another the little Jewish communities east of the Dnieper
were wiped out. They butchered Jews and Poles alike, but reserved
their most hideous tortures for the Jews.
East of the River Bug, the fortified city of Nemirov in Little
Russia drew thousands of fugitives from the villages and towns
which lay in the path of the rebels. The Cossacks besieged the city,
but the Jewish refugees defended it with skill and courage. One
day, the defenders were overjoyed to see an army with Polish
banners approach the city. They opened the gates, but it was a
Cossack horde in Polish uniforms whom they admitted. Together
with the Russian inhabitants of the city, the Cossacks fell upon
THE DISASTER OF 1648 357
the Jews and massacred six thousand of them; among the victims
were the rabbi of Nemirov, Yechiel Michel ben Eliezer, and his
aged mother.
Across the River Bug, southwest of Nemirov, lay the town of
Tulchin where some fifteen hundred Jews, including a number
who succeeded in escaping from Nemirov, took refuge. The Jews
baffled every attempt of die Cossacks to take the town, and they
were assisted by several hundred Poles who had solemnly sworn
to stand together with them to the last. The besiegers sent word
to the Poles, promising to spare them if they would betray the
Jews, and the Polish gentry accepted the proposal. When the Jews
discovered the treachery, they prepared to wipe out their faithless
allies, but their rabbi, Aaron ben Meir, arose and warned them
that by punishing their betrayers, they would draw down upon
their people the wrath of the Poles throughout the kingdom. "Let
us rather perish," he cried, "and not endanger the lives of our
brethren in all the places of their Dispersion!" So the Jews spared
their betrayers, and when the Cossacks entered the town they were
herded into an enclosure and given the choice of baptism or death.
Without exception, they chose death, sanctifying the Name with
the Shema on their lips.
4
THE bloody ride rose higher, sweeping northward along
the Dnieper and westward into Volhynia and Galicia, and engulf-
ing the Jewish communities which lay in its path. The toll of
martyrs grew to scores of thousands. Some saved their lives by
fleeing to the Tartars, who took them as captive slaves to Turkey,
where they were ransomed by their coreligionists. There were
women who were spared by the Cossacks only to be forced into
baptism and marriage with their captors. The story is told of one
girl who assured her enamored captor that she possessed magic
powers. "Shoot at me," she commanded him, "and you will sec
that no bullets can harm me." The simple peasant obeyed, and the
girl found the death she longed for.
The Polish nobility and their demoralized retainers failed to
rise to the occasion, the only exception being the gallant Count
Jeremiah Vishnevitzki who, though commanding but a small force,
358 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
routed many Cossack bands and took Jewish communities under
his protection. But he was unable to stem the raging flood. In
September, Chmelnitzki overwhelmed a picked army of 40,000
Poles, and Poland lay open to him in every direction. He laid siege
to Lemberg and was bought off by a large sum, most of which came
from the Jews of the city. His march towards Lublin and Warsaw
was blocked by the stronghold of Zamosc, but he found compensa-
tion in wiping out numerous Jewish communities round about.
In the meantime Vladislav IV died, and the country was further
paralyzed by the confusion and intrigue which always attended
the election of a new monarch. In the spring of 1649, the Cossacks,
after a vain attempt by the new king John Casimir (1648-1669)
to come to terms with the hetman, were again on the warpath,
and more Jewish communities were obliterated. Finally in August
of that year, the Poles, after suffering further defeats, accepted
Chmelftitzki's terms, which contained a provision that Jews were
to be excluded from the regions inhabited by the Cossacks. The
peace proved only an eighteen-month truce, but in the interval the
Council of the Four Lands labored heroically to salvage and heal,
uniting broken families and bringing forced converts back to the
faith.
When, early in 1651, the war blazed up again, the hetman
found himself facing a new Polish army. John Casimir had de-
termined to rely no longer on the nobility and their retainers. He
created a people's militia, which included a regiment consisting
entirely of Jews. In July, Chmelnitzki suffered an ignominious
defeat. He was forced to accept a new treaty which restored the
right of the Jews to live in the Cossack territories.
5
BUT the wily Cossack chieftain was not at the end of his
resources. Three years later he transferred his allegiance from the
King of Poland to the Czar of Russia, and the same year the
armies of the Czar, with strong contingents of Cossacks, marched
into Poland. The war that followed was one of the most ruthless
in history, but those who suffered most were the Jews. Now the
proud communities of Moghilev, Smolensk, Vitebsk, Polotsk,
THE DISASTER OF 1648 359
Minsk, Kovno, Vilna, and many others were added to the black
roster.
A year later, the communities in the west were drawn into the
maelstrom. This time the enemy came from the north. He was
Charles X of Sweden, who quickly overran Great Poland and
Little Poland; but the woes the Jews suffered in those provinces
were inflicted not so much by the Swedes as by the Poles. The
Swedes, who were Protestants, were welcomed by their Polish
coreligionists, and when the Catholic Poles turned on the invaders
and forced them out, they charged all non-Catholics, including
the Jews, with treason. With regard to the Jews, they had, it
seemed to them, sufficient proof: the Swedes, although they plun-
dered and burned many of the Jewish communities of the west,
had failed to visit upon them the same horrors as the Muscovites and
Cossacks were inflicting upon those of the north and east. The
Poles lost no time in making up for the omission. The Protestant
Poles were granted pardon, but, as the Swedes retreated, the Jewish
inhabitants were tortured and massacral, the Poles differing from
the Cossacks only in that they gave their victims the choice of
embracing Catholicism instead of Greek Orthodoxy. Nearly all
the communities in the districts of Posen, Kalisz, Piotrokov, and
Cracow were annihilated. The synagogues of Posen and Cracow
were confiscated and bestowed upon the Dominican friars.
rr WAS not until 1660 that the storm which blew upon
Poland from every point of the compass and claimed, according
to some estimates, half a million Jewish victims and some seven
hundred Jewish communities, began to abate. Many who succeeded
in escaping the terror, as well as those who were ransomed from
slavery, brought the tragedy of Polish Jewry vividly home to the
communities of western Europe and the Turkish Empire. But
among them were eminent scholars who established new centers
of Talmudic learning in their places of refuge.
In Poland the Jews, despite all their heroic exertions, never
quite regained their former prosperity and power. The material
devastation they suffered, as well as the primitive passions which
360 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
the storm unleashed against them, would have made recovery
difficult enough. But in addition, the labor of reconstruction had
to be carried on in a country greatly reduced in territory, and
afflicted to an even higher degree by its traditional weaknesses and
inner tensions.
CHAPTER FORTY- FOUR
False Messiahs
Bur the storms of persecution and terror, however great the
havoc they wrought, were unable to quench the hope of
restoration in the heart of the exiles. It was, in fact, in
rimes of direst woe that hope shone brightest, and from time to
rime across the centuries, as we have seen, it converged upon
messianic pretenders who rose up like mirages in a desert and
beckoned the wanderers. Whether they called themselves Messiahs
or precursors of the Messiah, their rise was sure to create a ferment,
and their fall leave behind them a trail not only of disillusion and
shame, but of tenacious, desperate loyalty.
Even while the great community of Poland was being subjected
to its ordeal by fire and sword, a messianic movement was going
forward in the Turkish Empire which, in the range and depth of
its repercussions as well as in the persistence of its aftermath, far
surpassed any similar event in the annals of the Diaspora. It was
in 1648, the year of disaster for Polish Jewry, that, in the city of
Smyrna, Sabbatai Zevi, a youth of twenty-two, solemnly performed
in the presence of a small group of followers the forbidden act
of uttering aloud the Ineffable Name of God. The Name, it was
held, could only be spoken after the coming of the Messiah, and
Sabbatai pronounced it in order to proclaim that the longed-for
Redeemer, who was none other than himself, had at last arrived.
Thus began a messianic career filled with strange events and fan-
tastic figures, rousing people all over the far-flung Dispersion to
FALSE MESSIAHS 361
frenzied enthusiasm and reckless deeds, and leaving in its wake a
devotion which has lingered on to this day.
YOUNG Sabbatai believed in himself no less ardently than
did his followers. Talmudic studies had scant attraction for him:
he was lured instead by the Zohar, and especially by the system
of applied Cabala as elaborated by Isaac Luria. Sabbatai fasted a
great deal and performed many ablutions. He gave himself up to
solitude and mystic rites, and knew the ecstasies of self -mortifica-
tion. He knew also that in 1648 cabalists expected the reign of
the Messiah to begin, and he was informed of the belief held by
Christian mystics, particularly the Fifth Monarchy Men of Eng-
land, that the restoration of the Jews and the beginning of the
millennium would occur in 1666. His father, who was the agent
in Smyrna for an English trading company, had ample occasion to
learn what people in England were thinking.
For nearly twenty years Sabbatai Zevi kept his mission within
bounds, for he found not only adherents but also opponents. The
rabbis of his native city excommunicated him, forcing him to go
into exile. In his journeys, which took him to Constantinople,
Salonika, Cairo, Jerusalem, and other cities, most of the rabbis
repudiated him. But wherever he went he found people who were
fascinated by him. He was tall and handsome, his manner was
grave and stately, he seemed always wrapt in mystery and exalta-
tion, and when he spoke or sang he thrilled his listeners with his
beautiful voice.
His circle of devotees continued to grow, a motley aggregation
of simple and pious folk, hysterical mystics and practical men of
affairs, with a sprinkling of impostors. In Constantinople a preacher
named Abraham Yakini displayed a book in which Sabbatai Zevi
was designated as the Messiah. In Cairo the master of the mint,
Raphael Joseph Chelebi, a man of wealth and station but also a
fervent mystic, became an ardent follower of Sabbatai. He en-
abled him to win enormous popularity by providing him with a
large sum to relieve the destitute community in Jerusalem, for
the disaster in Poland had stopped the flow of charity from that
country, and, in addition, the community in Jerusalem suffered
362 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
from the extortions of Turkish officials. In Gaza, Sabbatai found
a powerful supporter in Nathan Benjamin Levi, a youth of twenty
who proclaimed himself to be the prophet Elijah reincarnated
and the forerunner of the Messiah. Nathan, who became one of
Sabbatai's principal lieutenants, promised a series of miraculous
events, including the bloodless conquest of the Turkish Empire
and the rest of the world, which would speedily elevate Sabbatai
Zevi to the kingdom and the power and the glory ordained for the
Messiah.
As if to make sure the drama would be complete, a romance en-
tered into it as fantastic as any of its other ingredients. Sabbatai
Zevi was sojourning in Cairo in the home of the wealthy Chelebi
when it came to his ears that a beautiful maiden named Sarah
was looking for the Messiah whose wife, she declared, she was
destined to become. Sarah was a native of Poland where both her
parents had perished in the Cossack uprising. She had escaped
from a nunnery where she was being brought up, and when she
was found one morning wandering in the Jewish cemetery, she
affirmed it was the spirit of her father that had taken her there.
Sarah was enabled to join a brother in Amsterdam where she re-
turned to her father's faith, and before long went journeying
through Germany and Italy to fulfill her destiny. The fact that
the lady's reputation for chastity was not of the highest mattered
nothing to Sabbatai and his followers: the prophet Hosea, it was
pointed out, was also married to a loose woman. In the career of
a Messiah, in fact, not only persecution but even blemishes could
be interpreted as confirming his mission. Sabbatai Zevi had her
conducted from Leghorn to Cairo where she captivated him and
his followers, and the marriage was duly solemnized.
3
SHORTLY afterwards the Messiah and his mate, with a retinue
of devout enthusiasts, set out for his native city, and the journey
was a triumphal procession. It was now the fall of 1665: the
mystic and momentous year 1666 was at hand. The Messiah was
preceded by heralds who prophesied his coming. In Jerusalem, the
rabbis were hostile, but in Aleppo, and above all in his native
Smyrna, he received a royal reception. In the synagogue of Smyrna
FALSE MESSIAHS 363
the horn of annunciation was sounded, and the joyous multitude
shouted "Long live our king, our Redeemer!"
The news spread rapidly. Envoys of the Messiah, chief among
them Samuel Primo of Jerusalem and Nathan of Gaza, carried it
to Salonika, Venice, Amsterdam, Hamburg, and London. A wave
of delirious joy swept through the ghettos of the world. Deliver-
ance was at hand, deliverance and restoration for the exiles and
outcasts of the earth! Men fasted and prayed to make themselves
worthy of the boon, and they neglected their occupations or
wound up their affairs in preparation for the return to Palestine.
In the spring of 1666 the entire community of Avignon, for ex-
ample, was ready to depart.
Nor was it the naive masses alone who were infected by the
strange fever. Many of the leaders rabbis, Talmudists, scholars,
and philosophers succumbed to the frenzy. In Smyrna the rabbi,
Chaim Benveniste, was a devotee of the Messiah. In Venice he had
the support of the rabbinate and of the distinguished cabalist,
Moses Zacuto. In Hamburg there w2s public jubilation, and hard-
headed merchants liquidated their affairs to be ready for the great
call. The influential community of Amsterdam went almost en-
tirely Sabbatian. There the enthusiasts included the rabbis Isaac
Aboab and Moses Raphael d'Aguilar; the president of the com-
munity, Abraham Pereira; and the philosopher Benjamin Mussafia.
Even the imperturbable Spinoza responded to it, though in a man-
ner vague and pale: his Christian friend and admirer, the eminent
savant Heinrich Oldenberg, wrote him from London that the
return of the Israelites "may bring about a revolution in all things";
and many other Christians were also stirred by the sensational
news. There were congregations where special prayers were re-
cited for the new redeemer, and in some communities it became
dangerous to deny his Messiahship. The zealots and envoys of
the pretender who, as is always the case with disciples, went be-
yond the claims of their master, propagated the most fantastic
notions about their idol notions that bore a close resemblance to
the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
Nevertheless, the extent of the aberration should not be ex-
aggerated. Although, as in every social ferment, the center of
the stage was held by the fanatics, the great majority of the people
364 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
are believed to have held aloof from the frenzy. The kofrim, or
unbelievers, as the Sabbatians styled their opponents, became
more numerous and determined, when in the name of the new
Messiah his followers attempted to abolish some of the basic
practices of Judaism, ordering, for example, that the Fast of the
Ninth of Ab, as well as other fasts, should be changed to days
of rejoicing, "for ye shall weep no more . . . because I have ap-
peared." The change, it is true, was in accord with cabalistic
doctrine touching the messianic era, but it shocked and alarmed
the great number of doubters, to say nothing of those who had
definitely rejected the claims of the pretender. Among the latter,
one of the most energetic and uncompromising was Jacob Sas-
portas, rabbi of the new community in London who, to escape the
plague that was raging in that city, was now living in Hamburg.
4
THE year 1666, ordained for momentous events, had now
begun; and Sabbatai Zevi, accompanied by a retinue of followers,
left Smyrna, where he was wielding absolute power, and set sail
for Constantinople where he was to achieve his messianic mission.
There followed a series of grotesque events which are easy to
narrate in a spirit of farce, if not for the suffering and hope out
of which they grew and the anguished frustration they produced.
Nor is it possible to dismiss the leading actor of this incredible
drama as a mere impostor, despite the pitiful and unheroic act
with which he climaxed his career. The solution of the riddle must
be sought in the contradictions of an abnormal psychology, op-
erating in an atmosphere charged with intense longing and
apocalyptic dreams.
The ship that bore him and his "prophets" was compelled by a
storm to land on the coast of the Dardanelles. There he was met
by Turkish officers who arrested him and brought him in chains to
Constantinople, for the grand vizier, Ahmed Coprili, was aware
of the strange ferment that was agitating the Jews of the empire
and many non-Jews also. Ahmed considered the agitation danger-
ous, but he felt it would be even more dangerous to exasperate the
followers of Sabbatai by extreme measures. For two months he
kept the pretender under lock in Constantinople, then, being com*
FALSE MESSIAHS 365
pelled to leave the capital on an urgent matter of state, the grand
vizier thought it best to transfer him to the fortress of Abydos
on the Dardanelles. Strangely enough, both imprisonments only
added to Sabbatai's power and glory. In the capital he was the
sensation of the day, and Turks as well as Jews flocked to see him
and were deeply impressed by him. In Abydos his followers had
free access to him; it became a place of pilgrimage for devotees from
near and far, and in his prison Sabbatai held court like a monarch.
Indeed, his imprisonment was looked upon as an essential part of
his messianic career. Sabbatai's lieutenants spread the news of
his "elevation" far and wide, and excitement in Jewish communi-
ties on the three continents continued to mount. Many more pre-
pared for the great migration, but there was also considerable
opposition, and sometimes the dissensions assumed violent forms.
5
IT HAPPENED that among the pilgrims to Migdal Oz, the
"Tower of Strength," as Sabbatai's adherents called his prison at
Abydos, there were two who came from Poland, and they informed
the august prisoner that in their country a certain Nehemiah
Cohen, who pretended to be a prophet, while proclaiming the
Messianic kingdom to be at hand, failed to name Sabbatai Zevi as
the Messiah. Sabbatai summoned Nehemiah to appear before him,
but the prophet from Poland, who in due course arrived, would not
recognize him. Abydos became a dangerous place for Nehemiah so
he fled to Adrianople where he turned Moslem and informed
the governor that the Sabbatian movement was a plot to put an
end to the rule of the sultan.
The "plot" was conveyed to Sultan Mohammed IV, Sabbatai
was removed to Adrianople, and the sultan and his ministers met
to decide what to do with him. The sultan himself, it is reported,
was inclined to drastic action, not excluding the extermination of
all the Messiah's followers in his empire. Various proposals were
considered and rejected, and finally the sultan's physician, another
Jew who had turned Moslem, was sent off to persuade Sabbatai
to do likewise. The physician succeeded beyond all expectations!
On a day in September 1666, Sabbatai, conducted into the sultan's
presence, performed the gesture which he had obviously re-
366 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
hearsed in advance: he removed his Jewish headgear and put on a
Turkish turban. The Messiah became Mehemet Effendi and a
pensioner of the sultan.
Various explanations have been offered for the sudden act of
betrayal, of which the most generous assumes that in that way
alone could Sabbatai have saved his adherents in the Turkish
Empire from destruction. He did not, of course, save them or his
followers in other lands from bitter shame and confusion. Never-
theless the movement he started did not come to an end: even his
conversion, it was believed, was a necessary part of his messianic
calling! He himself encouraged the belief by asserting that "God
has made me an Ishmaelite," and by leading a double life as a
sort of Marrano Mohammedan. Unrepentant enthusiasts, old and
new, men like Samuel Primo, Nathan of Gaza, the physician and
cabalist Abraham Michael Cardoso, the preacher Mordecai of
Eisenstadt, and others, journeyed far and wide throughout the
Jewish world, offering weird theories to explain the Messiah's
apostasy, and exhorting the faithful to remain steadfast. Sabbatai
was unable to maintain his double role of teaching Cabala to
Moslems and preaching Islam to Jews. He was finally banished
to the town of Dulcigno in Albania where, in 1676, he died.
FOR another half century and more the ground swell of
Sabbatianism continued to disturb Jewish communities in different
parts of the world. In Salonika it gave rise to the Mohammedan
sect known as the Donmeh, or Dissenters, which may have its
votaries to this day. Originally, the Donmeh were a group of
Jews who were led to believe that a lad named Jacob Querido was
the son and reincarnation of Sabbatai. When they found themselves
menaced by the hostility of the Jewish and Turkish authorities
they became Mohammedans. Secretly, however, they clung to
their Sabbatian beliefs and, by banning intermarriage with other
Moslems, they have been able to preserve their identity. In Poland,
the Sabbatian heresy is associated with the names of Judah the
Saint of Dubno and Chaim Malak. The first was a simple and
devout soul who, when he found himself an object of suspicion,
FALSE MESSIAHS 367
set out for Palestine with a large troop of followers, some of
whom managed to reach Jerusalem where they could not, however,
maintain themselves. The second was a dubious character who,
after migrating with Judah to Palestine, followed a restless career
which took him to Salonika and Constantinople, then back to
Poland, always preaching faith in the lost Redeemer.
But the most amazing and unscrupulous of the Sabbatian apostles
and adventurers was Nehemiah Chiya Chayun whose trail takes
us into nearly every land where Jews dwelt. In Smyrna and Jeru-
salem, in Venice and Prague, in Berlin and Amsterdam wherever
he appeared he created a sensation by his personal glamour and
his cabalistic extravaganzas, which included a new trinitarian doc-
trine. He kept shooting like a baleful meteor through the com-
munities of Asia and Europe, bringing confusion and strife
wherever he came. Excommunicated by the rabbis in Palestine, he
retrieved his fortunes in Prague with the aid of the rabbi of that
city, the wealthy and scholarly David Oppenheim. In Amsterdam,
he gave rise to a serious feud betWben the Sephardic and Ash-
kenazic communities of that city, finding favor with the Portu-
guese rabbi Solomon Ayllon, himself suspected of being tarred
with the Sabbatian brush, and bitterly opposed by Chacham Zevi,
the Ashkenazic rabbi, perhaps the most distinguished scholar of
his generation. Victory already lay within Chayun's grasp when a
flood of excommunications against him poured into Amsterdam
from other lands, and he was forced to resume his travels, winning
fresh victories in Turkey but compelled finally to end his adven-
tures and impostures as an exile in North Africa.
7
THE Sabbatian virus lingered on, and as late as 1750 it was
still potent enough to produce a disturbance which rocked the
Jewish world. The commotion had its center in "the three com-
munities" of Hamburg, Altona, and Wandsbeck, which really
constituted one, and which that year chose as rabbi the eminent
Jonathan Eybeschuetz instead of Jacob Emden, Chacham Zevi's
son who, like his father, was a relentless enemy of the Sabbatian
heresy. Shortly afterwards, Emden, together with some German
3 68 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
rabbis, accused Eybeschuetz of being the author of secret formulas
which recognized Sabbatai Zevi as the Messiah. Eybeschuetz denied
the charge, and a bitter controversy ensued which divided Jewish
communities throughout Europe. In Poland, nearly all the rabbis
supported Eybeschuetz. Each side issued edicts of excommunica-
tion against the other, there were threats of violence, and the matter
came before the senate of the free city of Hamburg and, since
Altona belonged to Denmark, before the Danish courts and the
Danish king himself. First Emden was the victor and the rabbi
was removed from his post. But Eybeschuetz was a resourceful
man and a hard fighter. He won fresh supporters, Christian as well
as Jewish, and in 1756, after the controversy had dragged on for
six years, Eybeschuetz was reinstated and "the three communities"
held a public celebration of his triumph. That bitter and inglorious
conflict was the last important flare-up of the fires left smoldering
by the false Messiah of Smyrna.
8
IT is a relief to turn from the miasmas and impostures of
the Sabbatian aftermath to recount the career of Moses Chaim
Luzzatto, an exalted spirit, who was not only a cabalist and a
dreamer of messianic dreams, but a poet and moralist in direct
spiritual descent from Yehudah Halevi and Solomon GabiroL
Luzzatto's intense and stormy life ended in 1747 when he was only
forty years old. He was born in the city of Padua, and early in
life the Zohar became one of his studies: it influenced him so
deeply that he wrote a book in imitation of it which he called
the Second Zohar. He became familiar also with the mystic system
of Isaac Luria, and the things that are sealed from human sense
became real to him. Just as all phenomena are by some modern
scientists reduced to waves of energy, Luzzatto saw the whole of
creation in terms of spiritual waves all having their origin in God
but set in motion also, for good or ill, by men through their
deeds. It was a challenging metaphysical system which left every
individual man, no matter how humble, the freedom to bring
nearer "the perfection of the world under the kingship of the Al-
mighty." The reality of his supersensual world continued to grow
on him. He felt that a special guardian angel was guiding him,
FALSE MESSIAHS 369
and he came to look upon himself as God's chosen instrument for
the redemption of his suffering people and all mankind.
He confided his faith to a few intimate friends whom he in-
fluenced not only by his daring speculations, but also by his poetic
achievements; for Luzzatto had already produced a collection of
psalms in the style of the Bible psalter, as well as an allegorical
drama glorifying virtue. One of his disciples, a young man who
abandoned the study of medicine, for which he had come to
Padua, to devote himself to Luzzatto's "mission," revealed the secret
in letters which he wrote home, and before long it came to the ears
of Moses Hagiz, rabbi of Altona, who had fought valiantly against
the Sabbatian impostor Nehemiah Chayun. Hagiz became alarmed.
Was the Jewish world to be thrown into another turmoil by a
false messiah? He appealed to the rabbis of Venice, he admonished
and warned Luzzatto, and secured a ban of excommunication
against anyone who should presume to write in the language of
the Zohar. Luzzatto was persuaded to surrender his manuscripts
and undertook to discontinue his cabalistic studies.
But he returned to them, and the rabbis of Venice pronounced
the ban upon him. In the meantime, poverty had also come to
afflict him, and Luzzatto left his native country and went to Ger-
many where he was taken back into the fold after pledging him-
self to resume his cabalistic studies only after reaching the age of
forty and only in Palestine. Those conditions were accepted by
rabbis in Poland, Germany, Holland, and Denmark: the Luzzatto
affair had clearly made a big stir in the Jewish world.
Moses Chaim Luzzatto finally found a home and a livelihood in
Amsterdam, where he spent ten comparatively peaceful years and
produced his two greatest works. The first, which is still widely
read and studied, he called The Path of the Upright, a fervent
moralistic treatise in the tradition of Ibn Pakudah's Ditties of the
Heart. The second was his poetic drama Glory to the Upright, a
moral allegory of great stylistic beauty. In the exile from Italy
Yehudah Halevi had at last found a true heir. And like his great
forebear, Luzzatto migrated to Palestine and died there shortly
after his arrival. The end came as he was approaching his fortieth
year and returning to his visionary world where alone, he was
certain, the truth lay hiddeji.
370 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Eighteenth-Century Europe
AWE follow the dreary trail of the Sabbatian aftermath east
or west in the first half of the eighteenth century, we
find little in the scattered patches of Jewish life that is
splendid or cheering. We look in vain for a single center with
power to dominate the Diaspora and exert a cohesive influence:
for in the west the communities are politically divided and in-
secure; in Turkey they have become impoverished and depressed;
and in Poland, where such a center had flourished for at least two
centuries, the Bloody Decade and its rank aftergrowth had left the
survivors despoiled and exhausted. Nor did the period produce
men of towering importance it is only in the second half of
the century that movements and personalities came up above the
drab level to exert deep and lasting influence.
The walls of the western ghettos stood firm, the people cloistered
behind them still living their life apart, still an object of scorn
as well as a mystery and a dread to their neighbors. Personal rela-
tions between members of the two faiths, though not infrequent in
Italy and Holland, were in the Germanics almost nonexistent.
From many of the several hundred little states into which that
land was broken, Jews were altogether excluded, while in the
others they were a people without natural rights, the immunities
they received and paid for in each state ending at its borders. Out-
ride these borders, and even at the gates of another city within
them, a special body tax was imposed upon a Jew who applied
for temporary admission or passage. By an elaborate network of
restrictions which taxed marriages and births and prohibited more
than one son to remain with his family, governments exercised
their ingenuity and fed their cupidity to check the population of
the ghetto; but the single squalid street to which the quarter was
usually limited was nearly always overcrowded.
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EUROPE 371
Life in its outward aspects was hard and unlovely. The Jew
was still kept from the two basic occupations: from agriculture
by being barred from the ownership of land; from the handicrafts
by being barred from the guilds. As carpenter, shoemaker, or other
artisan, he could ply his craft in and for the ghetto only. His
commerce was in like manner restricted or, if permitted to emerge
from the ghetto walls, it was confined to the pettiest forms of
trading. Economic competition between Jew and non-Jew was
out of the question: the latter would not permit it. The Jew found
his competitor in the ghetto itself, and life within its stuffy confines
might have been insufferably harsh and discordant but for the
solidarity which sprang from a common faith and the sense of a
common destiny, and which the sense of a common peril cemented.
The ethical standards which the ancient faith enjoined had to
struggle hard, and did so on the whole successfully, against the
corrosive influences of congestion and extreme poverty. In Hol-
land, Hamburg, and London there were still a few wealthy Jews,
and there were also a few in Berlin. Isaac Suasso of The Hague,
for example, advanced the Prince of Orange, later William III of
England, two million guldens without interest to enable him to
accomplish the "glorious revolution" of 1689. The Pintos of
Amsterdam were among the leading financiers of the city and
distinguished for their lavish philanthropy, which embraced all
creeds. In Berlin, Israel Aaron held the post of military purveyor
to the Great Elector Frederick William (1640-1688), and Jost
Liebmann was his mint master and court jeweler. These and a
few more like them only served to perpetuate the myth, which
still persists, that Jews are fabulously rich, while in reality the
eighteenth century ghettos of Germany, Italy, Turkey, and espe-
cially Poland, harbored a people that lived in grinding poverty.
Nor could the graces of life, including the cultivation of polite
learning, flourish under such Conditions, although the traditional
learning, as an integral part of the faith, was of course zealously
cherished. Talmud and Cabala complemented and often rivaled
each other, and it was inevitable that absorption in the mystic
knowledge should engender a brood of superstitions which, it
may be noted, no age, no matter how "enlightened/' has been
able to banish from human, hopes and fears.
372 I** MEDIEVAL EUROPE
But if the outer aspects of life in the ghetto were ungracious, its
people never lost the sound ethical ballast which the ancient faith
provided. The ghetto, to be sure, was not without its black sheep
renegades, informers, and overreachers but the basic virtues
of sobriety, continence, and sympathy for the suffering continued
to flourish in it, and that in an age when drunkenness, debauchery,
and brutality were generally rampant.
IT is one of the bitterest ironies of history that when in
the course of time, the prisoners of the ghettos, not only of western
but also of eastern Europe, first singly then in large numbers,
stepped into the wide world beyond, the culture to which most
of them were drawn was that of Germany, the country which is
guilty of the most stupendous crime ever perpetrated against them
or any other people. The growth, therefore, of the community in
Berlin, where the lure started and whence it spread abroad, be-
comes a matter of special interest. When in 1670, Emperor Leo-
pold I, instigated by the Jesuits, expelled the Jews from the arch-
duchy of Austria, Frederick William, the Elector of Brandenburg,
permitted some of the exiles to settle in Berlin. Thus the community
had its start. Berlin became enormously important when through
the military skill and cynical diplomacy of Frederick the Great
(1740-1786), Prussia, of which it was the capital, became a great
power. But as early as 1712, in the reign of his grandfather Fred-
erick I, the Jews of Berlin built their first synagogue and, in spite
of severe restrictions, their numbers continued to grow. A com-
plicated system of laws came into existence to regulate their
status. It provided for two general categories, "protected" Jews
and "tolerated" Jews. The first group had three subdivisions, rang-
ing from families all of whose members possessed full rights of
trade and residence, to others whose rights were limited in extent
and in the number of offspring who could inherit them. The
lowest subdivision included physicians and members of other pro-
fessions, as well as artists! Children who were barred from in-
heriting "protection" were only "tolerated," and members of one
group were prohibited from intermarrying with those of another.
The grandfather of Frederick the Great prided himself on treat-
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EUROPE 373
ing the Jews with fairness. It was rumored that he was not in-
different to the charms of the wife of his court jeweler, the wealthy
Jost Liebmann; it is certain that he was not indifferent to die sub-
stantial revenue he derived from the Jews of his realms. He
cleared the Jews of a malicious charge brought against them by
two renegades that the Alenu prayer contained aspersions on the
founder of Christianity, but he failed them when he permitted the
publication of a violently anti-Jewish work entitled Judaism Un-
masked, by a university professor named Johann Andreas Eisen-
menger.
This book, "written for the Honest Information of all Chris-
tians," omits none of the weird myths that have plagued the Jews
in their wanderings, including the libels against the Talmud and
the blood accusation. On its first appearance in 1700, Emperor
Leopold I, at the solicitation of the banker Samuel Oppenheim,
forbade its circulation, and Eisenmenger offered to destroy all the
copies for 90,000 marks. The sum was not forthcoming and the
author, it is related, died of chagrin, but eleven years later his
heirs obtained permission from Frederick I to publish it in Koenigs-
berg, where the ban of the emperor was unable to reach it. The
king's arguments in support of his action were piously hypocritical:
similar exposures in the past, he claimed, had done the Jews no
hurt and besides, the book only aimed to dissuade good Christians
from embracing Judaism. But Eisenmenger's screed, as events
proved, furnished the enemies of the Jews with ammunition for
many decades.
There were other German professors who devoted their learn-
ing and zeal to promote and vindicate persecution, and it is almost
surprising to find that one or two of them exhibit a degree of
humanity and a little concern for the truth in the process. Thus,
Johann Wuelfer of Nuremberg and Johann Christopher Wagen-
seil of Altdorf, both of whom,, never tired of fulminating against
the Alenu prayer and exhorting the princes of Germany to sup-
press the "blasphemies" of the Jews, nevertheless admitted that
Christians were guilty of cruelty against them. They even rejected
the testimony of renegades, and denounced the blood accusation
which still cropped up from time to time. Wagenseil, though ad-
vocating measures for the conversion of the Jews to Protestantism,
374 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
deplored the baptism of children without the consent of the par-
ents, and when he scolds his countrymen he holds up a mirror to
the cruelties and indignities which the Jews of Germany were made
to endure. It is wrong, he declares, to throw stones at them or
compel them to say "Christ is risen." Nor, he contends, should
they be burned, despoiled, or exiled!
In Amsterdam the genius of Rembrandt, in his portraits of
rabbis, merchants, and even beggars, reveals the innate dignity
and nobility of the Jew; but in the Germanics, the image, refracted
by the mists of scorn and by the morbid resentment which the
persecutor always generates in his own heart against his victim, is
distorted into something sinister or ludicrous. In word or picture,
the representations of the eighteenth century German Jew which
have come down to us are only caricatures, and in the absence of a
Rembrandt, we shall do well to turn to the testimony of a great
poet. William Wordsworth, traveling in Germany some forty
years after the death of Frederick the Great came upon a Jewish
family, "exceedingly poor, and in rags," of which he has left us a
memorable description. The poet was almost startled by the grace
and the beauty he saw shining through the rags. "The Jews," he
states in a prefatory note, ". . . greatly surpass the German peas-
antry in the beauty of their features and the intelligence of their
countenances," and his glowing picture ends with the following
stanza:
Mysterious safeguard, that, in spite
Of poverty and wrong,
Doth here preserve a living light
From Hebrew fountains sprung;
That gives this ragged group to cast
Around the dell a gleam
Of Palestine, of glory past,
And proud Jerusalem!
3
IN POLAND, in the meantime, the valiant efforts of the once
proud and prosperous community to recover from the havoc of
the Bloody Decade, were all but thwarted by the irresponsible
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EUROPE 375
greed of the nobility and the zealous bigotry of the clergy, the
only two estates that had a voice in the Polish Diet. The principal
preoccupation of the shlakhta was that the taxes should be paid by
someone else. "Who imposes and who pays the taxes?" is a ques-
tion that occurs in a serious political catechism of the period; and
the answer is: "The taxes are imposed by the nobility, and are
paid by the peasant, the burgher, and the Jew." Useful labor, of
course, was held by the nobility in horror. The same catechism
contains also the following questions and answers: "Who is it
in this vast country that engages in commerce, in handicrafts, in
keeping inns and taverns?" "The Jews." "What may be the reason
for it?" "Because all commerce and handicrafts are forbidden to
the nobility on account of the importance of this estate, just as
sins are prohibited by the commandments of God and by the law
of nature." And the liberwn veto, that incredible contrivance
which permitted a single nobleman to block legislation in the Diet
and even compel its adjournment, continued in force.
As for the clergy, its primary objective was to suppress the
non-Catholic religions in Poland or, at least, to hold them in
subjection. In 1720 a synod of the clergy demanded that the
Jews be forbidden to build new synagogues or repair old ones.
By their degradation and misery the Jews must bear witness to
the "tortures of Christ," and to their "unbelief and stubbornness":
such was the solemn pronouncement of another synod held in
1733. The clergy, moreover, gave willing support to the Catholic
merchants in their crusade to destroy their Jewish competitors;
the sordid purpose was dressed up in the vestments of religion, and
it became popular with the Polish masses. And not only the mer-
chants, but the artisans also could always count on the support of
the priests, as well as the city councils and courts, in their warfare
against Jewish competitors.
The kings, now that the re^l power lay in the hands of the
Diets who elected them, could not, as in the past, serve as the bul-
wark of the Jews of Poland. King John Casimir, it is true, lightened
their burden of taxes and in other ways helped them to emerge
from the jravages of the Cossack uprising and the wars that fol-
lowed. King Michael, a son of the gallant Jeremiah Vishnevitzki,
who succeeded John Casimir, was also friendly to his Jewish sub*
376 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
jects, but in his reign the Diet revived the old church laws against
them, including the law which forbade them to employ Christian
servants. The next king, John Sobieski (1674-1696), was a warm
friend of the Jews and the Diets often complained about it. John
was the most brilliant military leader in the history of Poland:
it was he who in 1683 finally checked the Turks in their career
of conquest across Europe by defeating them outside the walls of
Vienna, which they were besieging.
4
POLAND, with its arrogant nobility and narrow-hearted
clergy, appeared to be stricken with a mortal malady and in the
general decline, the Jews not only suffered with the rest of the
population, but were the victims of special misfortunes. Augustus
II and his son Augustus III, who reigned between 1697 and 1763,
were also the rulers of Saxony, and neither of them had any real
concern for the welfare of Poland or the protection of their Jewish
subjects. The lawlessness of the nobles and the boldness of the
clergy increased by leaps and bounds. In the reign of the first,
Poland was invaded by that military meteor, Charles XII of
Sweden, and although the Jews suffered greatly, the Diet of 1717
voted a large increase in their poll tax. In 1740 the nobles tried to
reduce the Jews on their estates to the legal status of serfs in order
that the taxes might be paid them instead of the king; and if
Augustus III thwarted the attempt, it was not to save the Jews
from serfdom but to protect his revenue. The same monarch per-
mitted Poland to fall completely under the influence of Russia, and
thereafter the fate of the country lay in the hands of its eastern
neighbor.
The general decline of the Polish commonwealth, the hostility
of the merchant and artisan guilds, and the growing burden of
taxes imposed upon the Jews, reduced the once prosperous com-
munity to a state of poverty bordering on destitution. In the
towns, the local councils or kahals were always in desperate straits
to meet debts and imposts, as well as their share of the head tax
for which the community as a whole was held accountable. The
kabals were forced to enact sumptuary ordinances, limiting private
expenditures and even the number of weddings. In many a large
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EUROPE 377
city, like Posen and Cracow, the community found itself obliged
to pay a species of blackmail, in the form of an annual levy, to the
local Jesuit college as the price of safety from attack by the stu-
dents. In 1644 suc h an attack by students in Lemberg, assisted by
the rabble, led to the loss of a hundred Jewish lives. In 1687 the
Jews of Posen fought a three-day battle against a student mob,
and there were similar disorders in Cracow, Vilna, and Brest.
In the rural sections, where Jews continued to live as arendars,
they were wholly at the mercy of the coarse and lawless land-
owners, and were generally the first victims of their chronic feuds.
Moreover, a vile custom arose, peculiar, apparently, to the Polish
gentry, which added bitter humiliation to the hard lot of their
Jewish dependents. For their own entertainment and that of their
noble friends, the landowners invented a variety of cruel and de-
grading sports with Jews as the butt. And woe to the arendar who
fell into arrears with his landlord! The arbitrary power of the
nobleman extended to his victim's children, whom he could seize
and force into baptism. *
5
THE pauperized Jews of Poland were further afflicted by
an orgy of blood accusations which claimed many victims and kept
the community in a state of terror. In the seventeenth century the
libel had also cropped up occasionally. In 1657, for example, two
rabbis of the little community of Ruzhany, in the province of
Grodno, died the death of martyrs as the result of a ritual murder
charge. Accused of blaspheming Christianity, Mattathiah Calahora,
an immigrant from Italy living in Cracow, was in 1663 done to
death with hideous cruelty. Between 1700 and 1760, however, the
period when Poland was rapidly decaying, there were no less than
twenty blood accusations which brought torture and death to
numerous innocent victims. In Sandomir the trial of a parties,
accused of ritual murder, dragged on from 1698 to 1710 until, with
the aid of the clergy and a Jewish renegade, the innocent man was
convicted and the entire community exiled. In 1736, in the city
of Posen, the preacher Arye-Leib Calahora, a descendant of the
martyr of 1663, and the parnes Jacob Pinkasevitch died under
torture even before their trial. A particularly revolting case oc-
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EUROPE 379
curred in Zaslav in 1747; it added five martyrs to the ever-growing
list and the case of Zhitomir in 1753 added eleven more.
Something like a nightmare descended on the Jews of Poland.
The discovery anywhere of a dead body was sure to bring down
upon them an accusation of ritual murder. Finally they sent an
emissary to Rome to solicit the help of Pope Benedict XIV, who
commissioned Cardinal Ganganelli to make a thorough investiga-
tion. The cardinal's report, which recalled that in 1247 Pope
Innocent IV had issued a bull condemning the blood accusation,
found "no evidence whatsoever to substantiate that prejudice." In
1763, the government of Augustus III was duly informed of the
findings, and the king promised to protect his Jewish subjects
against the libel. But the virus persisted; not only the ignorant, but
the so-called educated also, were infected with it: the lie was too
big and had been too often repeated to be eradicated.
POLAND, in the meantime, was staggering to its doom. Torn
by class hatreds and religious persecution, and ruled by a de-
moralized nobility and a blindly fanatical clergy, the country was
unable to thwart the rapacity of its powerful neighbors. Stanislav
II, who mounted the Polish throne in 1764, owed his elevation to
the favor of the Russian empress Catherine II. Four years later his
Greek Orthodox subjects, relying on the support of Russia, rose
again in rebellion and the events of 1648, though not on so large
a scale, were repeated. Again the steppes of the Ukraine emitted
hordes of savages who unleashed their brutal instincts on the
Jewish communities in their path. The bloodiest incident of the
uprising was the massacre of Uman, a fortified city in the province
of Podolia, where thousands of Jews and Poles had taken refuge.
For a time they fought shoulder to shoulder against the rebel Gonta
in defense of the city; then the Poles betrayed the Jews to the
Cossacks even as their forebears had done in Tulchin in 1648.
And, as had happened in Tulchin, the Cossacks, after massacring
the Jews, dealt in the same manner with the Poles.
The rebellion, with the help of Russia, was put down, but only
a few years later, in 1772, the first of the three acts of international
brigandage which resulted in the dismemberment of Poland was
380 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
carried out by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, each of these neighbors
helping itself to the provinces nearest its borders. The chronic
state of anarchy in Poland, they asserted with pious hypocrisy
though not without a semblance of reason, left them no other
course to follow. The second partition was perpetrated in 1793,
the third in 1796. Eleven years later, Napoleon, with his grand
duchy of Warsaw, gave the Poles a brief illusion of restoration;
then the Polish nation for more than a hundred years remained
fettered and broken, with the bulk of its Jewish population swept
in under the scepter of the czars.
In 1794 the Poles, led by their great soldier and patriot Thaddeus
Kosciusko, were up in arms, and Warsaw was under siege by the
Russians. The Polish Jews forgot their wrongs and remembered
only their unfortunate country. Together with the Poles they
manned the trenches outside the city, and a regiment of light
cavalry consisting entirely of Jews made up part of the Polish
forces. The regiment was almost annihilated in a fierce battle
fought at Praga, the eastern suburb of the capital. It had been
raised and was commanded by Berek Yoselovitch, a man of bold
and adventurous spirit, an ardent patriot and a proud Jew, who
summoned his people to fight for the freedom of Poland. Their
sacrifices, so he promised them and himself, would be recognized
and rewarded.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Chassidism and "Enlightenment"
WITH the terror, destitution, and the encircling anarchy, a
depression and gloom which threatened to undermine
their spirit had descended on the Jews of Poland, when,
toward the middle of the eighteenth century, a fresh spring of
living water broke from the ancient fountain, bringing joy to the
heavy-hearted and new strength to the weary. Chassidism, as this
CHASSIDISM AND "ENLIGHTENMENT" 381
movement came to be called, also had many roots in Cabala, but
unlike the neurotic messianic ferments, it remained loyal to the
ancient faith and accomplished a vital historic mission.
Not that the Jews of Poland remained unaffected by the lure
of the false messiahs. In their helplessness they became fertile
ground for a large assortment of mystic beliefs and superstitions,
and when in 1666, with the ravages of the Bloody Decade still
fresh, the news came to them of Sabbatai Zevi's messiahship, many
of them accepted him eagerly. Swiftly the news traveled from the
southern provinces to Lithuania, and everywhere men prepared for
deliverance. And even after the disgrace and death of the pretender,
many in Poland, as in other lands, continued to hope and believe,
and in 1700, as we saw, a large group of them, led by Judah
Chassid and Chaim Malak, migrated to Palestine and waited there
for his reappearance. Nor did the failure of that pilgrimage put an
end to the Sabbatian heresy, for in 1725 the rabbis found it neces-
sary to issue a ban against its followers.
Some thirty years later, moreover, the lingering faith of the
Sabbatian die-hards merged with an even more dangerous messianic
aberration launched by an impostor known as Jacob Frank. This
cunning adventurer, whose real name was Jacob Leibovich, was a
native of Podolia. After sojourning in Turkey, where he studied
the beliefs and practices of the Donmeh and the other Sabbatians
of the east, he returned in 1755 to Poland, and announced himself
as the reincarnation of Sabbatai Zevi. He taught a doctrine that
bore a striking resemblance to the Christian dogma of the Trinity,
rejected the authority of the Talmud, and introduced strange and
indecent practices among his followers. In 1756 the rabbis ex-
communicated them, whereupon they appeared before the bishop
of Podolia, spoke vaguely about their belief in a trinity, and lodged
false accusations against the Talmud. The accusations led to the
seizure and burning of thousands of copies of the book, and the
bishop dreamed of leading the Frankists to the baptismal font.
Shortly afterwards, in fact, the new messiah and his followers
adopted Catholicism, the king himself attending the baptism of
the leader as his godfather. Had not Sabbatai also embraced an-
other faith? But Frank was made of viler stuff: he ridiculed and
382 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
slandered the Talmud, and at a time when blood accusations were
rife in Poland, he and his followers did not hesitate to declare the
libel to be true.
It was not long, however, before the Polish bishops discovered
that the Frankist trinity was not at all like their own; its redeemer
was none other than Frank himself. He was arrested and convicted
by a church tribunal of heresy and fraud, and kept in prison for
thirteen years, but his imprisonment, as might have been expected,
only added to his prestige with his followers. In 1772 the Russians
released him and he went to Austria and Germany where, for
another twenty years, he continued to practice his frauds. Gradu-
ally the rank growth withered and died, the descendants of his
baptized followers mingling with the Poles and losing their identity
as a separate sect.
THE sinister aberration spawned by Jacob Frank may be
taken as one reaction to the gloom that oppressed the Jews of
Poland; it was not, however, the characteristic reaction. The
masses of the people recoiled from it, and the Frankist mania went
the way of the other excrescences which from time to time arose to
afflict the Jewish people and to which, for that matter, no human
society is immune. It was rather the movement which sprang from
the fervent spirit of the simple man known as the Besht, a lime
digger of the Carpathian Mountains, that won the masses of
Polish Jewry, bringing them wholesome solace and new life.
His real name was Israel son of Eliezer, but they called him the
Baal-shem-tov, meaning "the good master of the Name." A baal-
shem was a man believed to possess exceptional spiritual power
who, operating with the holy Name, was able to help and heal
and save. But Israel was no ordinary baal-shem, so he was dis-
tinguished by the word tov, and the initials when combined made
up the word Besht, the name by which he is known. He was born
about 1700 of poor parents in a little town near the border of
Moldavia, and many days of his boyhood he spent not in cheder
but alone in the neighboring woods. He made no great progress
in the study of Talmud, and at twelve he became a teacher's
CHASSIDISM AND "ENLIGHTENMENT" 383
"helper," taking the youngest pupils to and from school and find-
ing peculiar delight in teaching them their prayers. He loved the
little ones and they loved him, just as throughout his life his heart
overflowed with love for all beings, including those whom others
looked upon with contempt or scorn. Later he found other occu-
pations, all of them humble, and although he married into a well-
to-do family, the couple went to live in a village in the Carpathians
where, for a livelihood, he dug lime which she carted away and
sold in the city. In this manner, and always in close touch with
nature, he spent many happy years, his spirit undergoing further
growth in the solitude of the mountains, in the mysteries of
Cabala, to which he devoted many hours of his nights, and in the
ecstasy of prayer.
At the age of forty the Besht went to live in the little town of
Medzhibozh in Podolia where before long disciples gathered around
him, and whence his fame as a teacher began to spread. He taught
with sayings and parables, by word of mouth only, and every-
thing he said was treasured by his disciples. Legends and won-
ders grew up and clustered around him. It was no new religion
that he taught, nor did he come in the guise of a revolutionary. Far
from it. He taught his ever-growing circle that the way of union
with God is through the heart rather than the head; did not
the supreme lawgiver himself declare that "thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all
thy might"? He taught his followers to pray not in dejection and
with self-torment, but in joy and in ecstasy; does not the psalmist
call on men to "serve the Lord with gladness" and "come before
his presence with singing"? And in the olden days, before there
were kings in Israel, the "sons of the prophets" went about the
land worshipping the Lord with singing and dancing. He taught
them also that life is good, and that too was in accord with the
optimism which underlies the ancient faith.
But the emphasis which the Besht put on these teachings did
have a revolutionary effect on the lives of his disciples. They were
lifted as on a wave of holy joy out of the prevailing gloom and
despair. Nor did the teacher, like the Karaites, reject the Talmud.
But while study was important, fervent prayer, he taught, was more
384 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
important; and all men, great or lowly, learned or ignorant, could
in simple-hearted piety achieve that union with the Divine which
is man's supreme goal, and his greatest good, and deepest joy.
So the followers of the Besht called themselves "pious men,"
or Chassidim. With great rapidity the movement spread through
Galicia, Podolia, and Volhynia, the southern provinces of Poland,
where persecution and poverty had wrought their greatest havoc,
and where Talmudic learning, it should also be noted, had come to
a low ebb*
3
IT WAS not long, however, before Chassidism began to
move north, where Talmudic learning still flourished and was
held in highest esteem. The Besbt died in 1760, and his successor,
Dov-Baer, known as the maggid, or preacher, of Mezerich, was
a Talmudic scholar also, and the movement began to attract the
learned. A definite union of Chassidism and learning was achieved
by Shneur Zalman of Liady, who became the leader of a group
that called itself Chabad, a name derived from the first letters of
the words Chachmah, Binah, and Deah, meaning Wisdom, Under-
standing, and Knowledge.
Before long the Rebbe or Tzaddik the "righteous man" be-
came the central figure in the Chassidic communities of the south.
Special powers of the spirit were ascribed to him, he was revered
by his followers, and he often maintained a large establishment, a
kind of court, to which they repaired for inspiration, advice, and
spiritual comfort. The authority of the Rebbe usually descended
to his son, and Chassidic "dynasties" came into existence which
have flourished for generations and to this day. The blind venera-
tion in which the Tzaddik was held went frequently to excess. It
assumed the character of a superstitious devotion which, naturally,
was subject to abuse, and was looked at askance by the more sober-
minded, particularly in the northern provinces. For their prayers,
moreover, the Chassidim adopted the Sephardic ritual of Isaac
Luria, and the innovation widened the breach between them
and those who were repelled by their demonstrative pietism and
lack of enthusiasm for learning.
CHASSIDISM AND "ENLIGHTENMENT" 385
It happened, therefore, that Chassidism, which mads a clean
sweep of the southern provinces, only divided the communities of
the north, bringing dissension and conflict which at times became
acrid and violent. Shortly after the death of Israel Baal-shem-tov,
his antagonists, who called themselves Mimagdim, or "opponents,"
found a valiant leader in Elijah ben Solomon (1720-1797) who is
better known as the Vilna Gaon. Vilna, called the "Jerusalem of
Lithuania," was the leading center of learning in Poland, and the
Gaon was the pinnacle of its greatness and glory. He was a man
of amazing intellectual prowess; at the age of ten he is said to have
held his own in Talmudic discussions with the rabbis. Nor was
he a stranger to the science of his day astronomy, physics, and
mathematics. The Gaon was revered also for his piety and saintli-
ness; important communal questions were submitted to him but
he was not the official head of the community. The cares of com-
munal leadership, he feared, might prove an impediment to the
paramount aim of his life: the study of Torah.
In the meantime, Chassidism had gained converts in the north:
in Minsk, in Vilna, and other communities large and small; and the
rabbis, with the Gaon at the head, moved to suppress it. In 1772
the first ban was pronounced against the Chassidim in Vilna, and
other communities followed suit. The conflict grew more intense.
In 1781, when the teachings of the Besht were first published, the
assembled rabbis of Lithuania issued a general ban against his
followers. The struggle reached its climax toward the end of the
century, when Shneur Zalman of Liady came out with a work
setting forth the principles of Chabad. The author was denounced
before the Russian government, now in possession of Lithuania,
as a dangerous radical and thrice imprisoned. He was eventually
freed, Chassidism was recognized as a legal sect, and, though the
strife continued, it became gradually less bitter as the movement
continued to spread and the Misnagdim realized that their weapons
against it were useless. On many of them, moreover, the realization
dawned that the new road and their own led to the same goal,
that "both are the words of the living God," to apply the verdict
pronounced eighteen centuries earlier on the dissensions between
the house of Shammai and the house of Hillel. And in recent
386 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
decades, Chassidism has been the object of deep and reverent study
by scholars and so-called rationalists who have found in it a
wealth of truth and beauty.
4
WHILE in eastern Europe Chassidim and Misnagdim, both
belonging to a people proscribed and shackled, fought their need-
less battles, the rumblings of the French Revolution, which was to
deal the first effective blow at those shackles, could be heard in the
West. The Revolution struck at the ghetto walls from without,
but for several decades before it, the walls were being battered
from within, and the champion who delivered the lustiest blows
was the frail, bent-backed Moses Mendelssohn of Berlin.
In former periods the blending of cultures, which Mendelssohn
represented, was not a rare phenomenon. As early as the first
century of the Christian era Philo of Alexandria, writing in ele-
gant Greek, made a brilliant attempt to produce a synthesis of the
teachings of his faith and the doctrines of Plato; and particularly
in the golden period of the Spanish community, we came upon a
procession of luminous spirits, pillars of the faith and learning of
their people Ibn Gabirol, the Ibn Ezras, Yehudah Halevi, Mai-
monides, Gersonides, and numerous others who were thoroughly
at home also in the science, the philosophy, the poetry, as well as
the language of the Arab world in which they lived. In the Ger-
many of the eighteenth century, however, Moses Mendelssohn,
son of a suppressed and despised community, is a strange phe-
nomenon. He became one of the glories of German philosophy and
literature, hailed and befriended by the leading spirits of the age,
and sought after by the great and the exalted. Of the Christian
world, he demanded civic equality for the Jews, and his own
people in Germany he summoned to acquire the language and
culture of the country which barely tolerated them. In the chang-
ing fashions of philosophy and literature, Mendelssohn's popularity
was bound to wane, but as an advocate of German culture and
general "enlightenment" to his people, his influence was great and
enduring.
Moses was the son of Menahem Mendel, a Torah scribe of
CHASSIDISM AND "ENLIGHTENMENT" 387
Dessau where, in addition to the Bible and Talmud, the boy re-
ceived instruction in the philosophy of Maimonides from David
Frankel, rabbi of the community. Moses broke down from over-
study, and emerged from his illness with his spine incurably bent.
At fourteen he followed his teacher to Berlin, where he struggled
hard to earn a living and even harder to increase his knowledge.
He learned Latin, French, and English, as well as mathematics, and
after seven years of privation he had the good fortune to be en-
gaged as tutor to the children of a rich manufacturer, eventually
becoming the manager of his business.
Not long afterwards, he made the acquaintance of Gotthold
Ephraim Lessing, the leading German poet, dramatist, and critic of
the day, and a remarkable friendship developed between them, one
of those friendships which were not uncommon in Spain and Italy
but were practically unknown in Germany. Lessing was a rare
spirit, ardent, generous, and unprejudiced. The friendship is en-
shrined in Lessing's play Nathan the Wise, in which he took Men-
delssohn as his model for the noble Jew who is the leading char-
acter of the drama. And other intellectual leaders of the day
sought Mendelssohn's friendship, among them the poet Johann
Gottfried von Herder, and the philosopher Immanuel Kant. In
1763 Mendelssohn won the prize in a philosophical essay contest
in which Kant was one of the competitors, an achievement for
which Frederick II of Prussia deemed him worthy of being elevated
to the category of "protected Jew." Four years later, Mendelssohn
became an even greater celebrity through the publication of his
Phaedon, a book on the immortality of the soul written in a German
that was hailed as a model of purity and beauty. The book was
translated into nearly every European language and became the
"best seller" of the day. Naturally his coreligionists in Prussia were
not among the last to do him honor, and he gave effective help to
those in other lands, as in Saxony and Switzerland, who were
menaced with persecution and expulsion.
For many years, however, Mendelssohn's chief concern was not
with his own people: he seemed content to be part of the rational
"enlightenment" in Germany, that pale counterpart of the daring
Encyclopedists of France. In 1770, however, Mendelssohn re-
3 88 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
ceived a rude shock. One of his admirers, the Swiss theologian
Johann Kaspar Lavater; who described "the Jew Moses" as the
"man with the Socratic soul/' had the bad taste to call on him
publicly either to refute the "truths" of Christianity or consent to
be baptized. Mendelssohn, who shrank from controversy, could
not ignore the challenge, and he replied with a vigorous affirmation
of loyalty to his faith. Thereafter the defense and welfare of his
people became his chief interest, and he saw the improvement of
their lot to lie in two directions: the adoption of German culture
and the acquisition of equal rights.
The first objective appeared simple enough: he himself was an
impressive demonstration of its feasibility and advantages. But
first his people must give up their dialect, a mixture of German and
Hebrew, and learn to speak the pure German for which he was
so justly admired. To help them do so, Mendelssohn translated into
German those books of the Bible, the Pentateuch and the Psalms,
which with the prayers made up their daily spiritual fare. In some
of the communities of Germany, Holland, France, and of Eng-
land, there were many who hailed the translation with enthusiasm,
and Napthali Herz Wessely, a collaborator of Mendelssohn's,
wrote a poem in honor of the translator. Nevertheless, the innova-
tion was not as easy to accomplish as first appeared; soon enough
it met with determined opposition. Like the Rambam's Guide to
the Perplexed six hundred years earlier, Mendelssohn's translation
of the Pentateuch and the commentaries that went with it became
a battlefield, and for much the same reasons. Its general approach
was rationalistic; the Bible was held up as great literature, to be
relished as a work of art. No, said Ezekiel Landau, chief rabbi of
Prague and leading scholar of his generation, and many others:
that way lies unbelief and apostasy. The Bible is to be studied not
as literature but as divine revelation, to be cherished not for its
beauty but its holiness. In Prague, Hamburg, Posen, and other
communities the translation was denounced and put under the ban.
But its influence could not be suppressed. In die East, as well as
the West, Mendelssohn's translation served not a few of his people
as the gateway to European, especially German, culture. The
isolation of the ghetto became more intolerable, the longing for
CHASSIDISM AND "ENLIGHTENMENT" 389
the "free enlightened world" more intense. In the view of Men-
delssohn's opponents, the moth was rushing for the flame.
5
THE acquisition of equal rights, the second great objective
of which Mendelssohn dreamed, was seen of course as more difficult
of attainment, depending as it did not on the prisoners but on the
jailers. Mendelssohn and his friends could only argue and plead:
Lessing's Nathan the Wise was, in fact, a powerful though indirect
plea for emancipation. A direct appeal to the governments to
emancipate the Jews was made in a pamphlet by another friend of
the sage, Christian Wilhelm Dohm, a Prussian official, who wrote
it at Mendelssohn's request and with his assistance. In 1781 Cerf
Berr, leader of the Jews of Alsace, had asked Mendelssohn to draw
up a petition for equal rights to be presented to the French Council
of State, and the pamphlet of Dohm, which created a considerable
stir, was the result. The faults of the Jews, Dohm argued, had their
origin in Christian persecution and would be cured by emancipa-
tion to their own happiness and the happiness of the state.
It was the age of the "enlightened despots," monarchs who pro-
fessed an interest in the happiness of their subjects and in the ad-
vanced ideas of the age, among whom historians include the cyni-
cal Frederick II of Prussia and even the rapacious and dissolute
Catherine II of Russia. One of them, however, Emperor Joseph II
of Austria, though dismally ineffective, was undoubtedly sincere,
nor did he omit his Jewish subjects from his reforming zeal. In-
fluenced to an extent by Dohm's appeal, he abolished in 1782 some
of the medieval restrictions against the Jews in his realms, opening
to them, at the same time, the public schools and universities. The
reforms were hailed by Wessely and other disciples of Mendelssohn
who were eager to see a complete revolution in the education of
the Jewish child. The previous year a Jewish school had already
been opened in Berlin where secular as well as religious subjects
were taught, and Wessely and his friends urged all other commu-
nities to follow suit. In the Italian regions of Joseph's empire, their
advice was followed; in Bohemia and Galicia, however, it was re-
jected. The rabbis and Chassidim saw the new education as paving
the way to the baptismal font.
390 IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
WITH respect to Mendelssohn himself those apprehensions
were certainly baseless. By practice as well as profession, he re-
mained loyal to the faith of his fathers, and in his Jerusalem, a book
which may be considered his final testament on religion in general
and Judaism in particular, he declared that his people would not
accept emancipation if the price demanded for it should be sur-
render of their faith- His last days, in fact, were deeply disturbed
by a report that Lessing, shortly before his death, had espoused
the philosophy of Spinoza which, rejecting as it did a personal God
and the immortality of the soul, Mendelssohn regarded as sub-
versive of his own and all religion.
There is, however, quite another story to tell about Mendels-
sohn's disciples, and the most impressive confirmation of those
fears and alarms was furnished by his children and grandchildren.
Four of his six children accepted baptism: his eldest daughter
Dorothea, who married the celebrated romantic poet, Friedrich
von Schlegel; his youngest daughter Henrietta; and his sons Abra-
ham and Nathan. The former led to the baptismal font his little son
Felix, who was to become one of the leading European composers.
The only son of the sage who remained in the Jewish fold was
Joseph; and when in 1871 Joseph's son Alexander died, the line of
Moses Mendelssohn the Jew became extinguished.
Three years after Mendelssohn's death the first thunder peal
of the French Revolution reverberated through Europe. Now the
ghetto walls of western Europe would begin to come down in
earnest; Mendelssohn's dreams of emancipation and "Europeaniza-
tion," it would seem, stood on the threshold of fulfillment. But
was the exodus from the ghetto to be a stampede and a dissolu-
tion? Was that to be the end of the story that began with Abraham
the Patriarch and had gone on through four millennia of unparal-
leled struggle and suffering and achievement? Such was the supreme
question which faced the Jewish people as the so-called modern
period of its history began.
Part Five i 7 8 9
TO 1914
Emancipation
New Horizons and New Perils
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
A Brave New World
IN AUGUST 1789, after a cataclysmic summer which brought
down the pillars of the Old Regime in France, the National
Constituent Assembly of France in revolution adopted its
momentous "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen,"
with its basic credos that "men are born and remain free and equal
in rights," and that "no one shall be molested on account of his
opinions, including his religious views." Small wonder that Jews
in France and other European lands, for seventeen centuries the
pariahs and scapegoats of history, thofcght they heard the horn of
the true Messiah sounding at last. There were men among them
who compared the Declaration to the Decalogue, who flocked to
worship in the "Temple of Reason," who accepted the Revolu-
tionary calendar which did away with the immemorial Sabbath.
It would have been strange if, in the intoxication that seized upon
all the disinherited, the Jew had been the least intoxicated.
And yet the French Declaration was modeled on one which had
been proclaimed thirteen years earlier on the other side of the
world, its first credo being only a paraphrase, more realistically
conceived, of the sweeping generalization in the American Declara-
tion of Independence that "all men are created equal." In 1787,
moreover, delegates of the independent thirteen colonies of North
America had drawn up a constitution which, in Article Six, de-
clared that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification
to any office or public trust under the United States." Four years
later an amendment was added, stipulating that "Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or pro-
hibiting the free exercise thereof." Thus the process of civil eman-
cipation, which stamps the modern period in the history of the
393
394 EMANCIPATION
Jewish people, had its beginnings not in the Old World but in
the New.
LUIS DE TORRES the interpreter, Bernal the ship's doctor,
and the other Marranos who sailed with Columbus on his first
voyage dreamed, perhaps, of finding a refuge across the ocean from
the bloody reach of the Inquisition. It is certain, however, that
this hope promptly drew large numbers of New Christians and
Jews from Spain and Portugal to the New World: to Mexico and
the West Indies, to Peru, the Guianas, and Brazil. Early in the
sixteenth century, Spain and Portugal prohibited them from mi-
grating to their possessions in the Americas, the only "legal" im-
migrants, many of them children torn from their parents, being
those who, together with lunatics and criminals, were deported
to hideous penal settlements that were established in the New
World. The prohibition, however, proved futile: Marranos con-
tinued to arrive.
But soon enough, the Inquisition also arrived in America. In
1570 it was formally established in New Spain, or Mexico, where,
fifty years earlier, "Jewish heretics" had already been burnt at
the stake. The Inquisition in Mexico was not abolished until 1802.
Of special interest are the fortunes of those who settled in
Brazil, for it was they who supplied the first contingent to estab-
lish itself in what became the United States. As early as 1 548, with
Brazil in possession of Portugal, the sugar industry was brought to
the colony by Jewish planters from Madeira, but life under the
probing eyes of the Inquisition was precarious and the period of
prosperity for the* Jews of Brazil did not begin until 1630 when
Pernambuco, its principal city, \vas conquered by the Dutch.
Shortly afterwards, several hundred newcomers arrived from Am-
sterdam, among them Isaac Aboab de Fonseca, who was chosen
rabbi of the congregation. But the period did not last long. In
1654 th c cfcy anc ^ the colony, after a valiant defense in which the
Jews fought bravely by the side of the Dutch, were reconquered
by the Portuguese, and the Jewish community sailed away in
sixteen ships and became scattered to the four winds. Many of
them returned to Holland, some of them got to London, others
A BRAVE NEW WORLD 395
found asylum in more proximate regions ruled by the Dutch or
English: in Surinam, British Guiana, and the West Indies. But the
spotlight of destiny comes to rest on a little group of some twenty-
odd fugitives who, after many vicissitudes, arrived on a day in
September 1654 in New Amsterdam.
3
THEY stand out as an epitome of the plight which pursued
their people through the ages, these anonymous fugitives from the
Old World and the New. After being plundered by Caribbean
pirates, they reached their destination, only to find the gates guarded
by a surly Cerberus in the shape of the wooden-legged governor
Peter Stuyvesant, who wanted no "Jewish problem" in New
Holland. After a year of growling and barking, however, he was
forced to yield to his masters, the directors of the Dutch West
India Company, who informed him from Amsterdam that he was
"unreasonable and unfair, especially because of the considerable
loss sustained by the Jews in the taklhg of Brazil, and also because
of the large amount of capital which they have invested in the
shares of the Company." He was to admit them, "provided the poor
among them shall not become a burden to the Company or com-
munity, but be supported by their own nation." But the governor
and his council imposed additional and more serious restrictions.
They denied the newcomers the right to build a synagogue, to
hold public office, to trade freely, or to serve in the armed guard,
though it must be noted that other dissenters from the Dutch
Reformed Church, Lutherans, Baptists, and especially Quakers,
fared no better in New Holland. Among the Jews, there were at
least two, Jacob Barsimson and the indomitable Asser Levy, who
fought stubbornly against the disabilities. Asser Levy won the
right to bear arms in defense of the colony, then he petitioned "to
be admitted a Burgher." The governor and his council thought it
best to yield: the shadow of those directors in Amsterdam lay
heavy upon them.
4
TEN years after the arrival of those storm-tossed refugees
from Brazil, the Dutch colony was conquered by the English and
EMANCIPATION
New Amsterdam became New York. Slowly the little community
increased, but it was not rill 1730 that the congregation, which
called itself Shearith Israel (Remnant of Israel), was free to erect
its first synagogue; and for many years Jews were denied citizen-
ship because they were unable to take the prescribed oath "upon
the true faith of a Christian."
In the meantime, little groups established themselves in other
colonies also: in Pennsylvania, where the congregation Mikveh
Israel (Hope of Israel), was founded in Philadelphia in 1740; in
Georgia, where they settled in 1733, the year when the colony
was founded; and in South Carolina where they arrived eight years
later. In 1737 John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, while on
a mission in Georgia recorded in his diary that he was learning
Spanish in order to converse with the Jews, "some of whom seem
nearer the mind that was in Christ than many of those who call
Him Lord." In Maryland they were not welcome: in 1658 the
physician Jacob Lumbrozo of Baltimore was sentenced to prison
for denying the divinity of Jesus. Nor were the Puritans of Mas-
sachusetts more friendly to Jews than they were to Quakers and
other dissenters.
But the colony to which the cause of religious freedom in
America owes its greatest debt was Rhode Island. Roger Williams,
who founded it in 1636 as a "shelter for persons distressed for
conscience," had been banished from Massachusetts for insisting,
among other things, that government had no right to control
religious beliefs; and when, twenty-two years later, fifteen Jewish
families arrived in Newport, they were at once received as equals.
They were followed by others, and it was chiefly owing to their
energy and enterprise that Newport came to rival New York
as the busiest commercial center on the Atlantic seaboard. That
rivalry is now a thing of the past, and of the thriving Jewish
community in Newport what remains to stir the memory is the
cemetery, which evoked a famous poetic reverie from Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow. "Gone are the living, but the dead re-
main,'* Longfellow sang a century later, but shortly before the
Revolution, Newport had become the seat of the largest Jewish
community in the New World, numbering a thousand souls. Its
A BRAVE NEW WORLD 397
leading merchant, Aaron Lopez, with his argosy of thirty ships
bearing cargoes to and from Europe, the Guianas, and the West
Indies, was, it is reported by Ezra Stiles, President of Yale College,
"a Merchant of First Eminence: for Honor & Extent of Commerce
probably surpassed by no Merchant in America." Its rabbi, Isaac
Touro, was an immigrant from Jamaica; and the renown and
wealth of the community attracted scholars and preachers from the
Old World, of whom Hayim Isaac Karigal, who came from
Palestine, made the deepest impression.
In New York, Philadelphia, and Savannah also, Jews figured
prominently in industrial, commercial, and financial affairs, as well
as in philanthropy and public service. They were not yet in
possession of complete equality, but compared to the lot of their
brothers in Europe, theirs was happy indeed. Equality, they be-
lieved, was sure to come, and for two reasons. The first was the
fact that their fellow-colonists, from the Puritans in Massachusetts
to the Catholics in Maryland, were themselves refugees from reli-
gious oppression, and the logic of thfeir position would, they were
sure, compel them sooner or later to grant to others what they
insisted upon for themselves. The second was perhaps even more
important. This New World was free from the poisons with which
centuries of calumny had impregnated the air of Europe. Here
humanity was making a fresh start, unhampered by the hates and
prejudices which the Old World seemed unable to shake off.
5
THE crisis with which the Revolution confronted the col-
onies found the great majority of the Jewish inhabitants on the
side of independence, but there were supporters of the Crown
among them also. A few of the latter, notably David Frank of
Philadelphia and his vivacious daughter Rebecca, achieved promi-
nence; and at least one of them, the wealthy merchant Isaac Hart
of Newport, was mobbed to death for his Tory sympathies. The
war dealt harshly with most of the little congregations. The
capture and sack of Newport by the British dispersed the com-
munity of that town, dealing it a blow from which it never recov-
ered. The occupation of New York drove Gershom Mendes Sqbcas,
398 EMANCIPATION
rabbi of Shcarith Israel, with many of his flock to Philadelphia,
and refugees from the South also came to that city which, during
the Revolution, remained the most important Jewish center.
Many of the Jews fought for independence, and not a few died
for it. The proportion of officers among them, some of whom
were promoted from the ranks for gallantry in action, was strik-
ingly high. There was a company of militia in South Carolina two-
thirds of which consisted of Jews from Charleston, and Major
Benjamin Nones, who came from France in 1777, commanded
another unit with a high proportion of his coreligionists. Among
those whose names and deeds are preserved in the military annals
of the Revolution are Francis Salvador and Major Lewis Bush,
who were killed in action, and Colonel Isaac Frank and Lieutenant
Colonel Solomon Bush, who were wounded. Other distinguished
soldiers were Colonel David Franks, Captain Jacob de Leon, Cap-
tain Jacob de la Motta, Captain Isaac Israel, Captain Jacob Cohen
of Virginia, the brothers Solomon, William, and Abraham Pinto of
Connecticut, Mordecai Davis of Pennsylvania, and Mordecai
Sheftall of Georgia.
Nor were Jews absent in the financial crises that plagued the
Revolution, and for modest but princely generosity as well as
courage, the name of Haym Salomon, an immigrant from Poland
living in Philadelphia, became posthumously famous. Of Salomon,
a committee of the United States Senate reported in 1850 that he
"gave great assistance to the government by loans of money and
by advancing liberally of his means to sustain the men engaged in
the struggle for independence at a time when the sinews of war
were essential to success." Among the leaders who found in Haym
Salomon a friend in need were Jefferson, Madison, Randolph, and
Morris, the Superintendent of Finance.
6
BUT the Jewish contribution to the revolutionary cause is
not to be measured by the men and money furnished by a group
which in a total population of three million did not exceed three
thousand. A far greater contribution was made by the remote
biblical ancestors of those three thousand. It was, in fact, the Bible,
A BRAVE NEW WORLD 399
that provided the revolutionary ideology and leaven. Concerning
the Puritans, who created the intellectual climate of New England,
the historian James Truslow Adams asserts that "in spirit they may
be considered as Jews and not Christians. Their God was the God
of the Old Testament, their laws were the laws of the Old Testa-
ment, their guides to conduct were the characters of the Old
Testament." In the intellectual ferment which preceded the Revo-
lution, writers like James Harrington, Algernon Sidney, and Tom
Paine operated with biblical concepts and ideals. The words in-
scribed on the Liberty Bell: "Proclaim liberty throughout the land
unto all the inhabitants thereof," were found in the Book of
Leviticus. From the pulpits of the land in those days the most
effective molders of public opinion the leading preachers of the
time drew on biblical history and prophecy for those concepts and
passions that became crystallized in the slogan "Rebellion to tyrants
is obedience to God." That was the motto which Franklin, Adams,
and Jefferson proposed for the seal of the United States: it was to
be inscribed around an engraving representing Israel crossing the
Red Sea.
Nor was the influence of the Hebrew Scriptures less potent in
the genesis of the basic political institutions of the new republic.
The preachers, of whom the brilliant Jonathan Mayhew is an
example, inferred from the warning of the prophet Samuel against
royalty, that Israel was given a king in order to punish him. Samuel
Langdon, president of Harvard, found that "the Jewish govern-
ment was a perfect republic," and his confrere, Ezra Stiles of Yale,
saw the American government as the fulfillment of biblical proph-
ecy. Oscar S. Straus, statesman and scholar, has summed it up in
his conclusion that "in the spirit and essence of our Constitution,
the influence of the Hebrew Commonwealth was paramount."
Those little groups scattered along the Atlantic seaboard bore a
burden and a boon out of their past greater and more potent than
many of them surmised.
7
THEIR solemn joy in the equality which the Constitution
conferred upon them is reflected in a number of formal addresses
4OO EMANCIPATION
which Jewish communities presented to the first president of the
Republic. The congregation in Newport, in an address dated
August 17, 1790, 'wrote:
Deprived as we hitherto have been of the invaluable rights
of free citizens, we now (with a deep sense of gratitude to
the Almighty disposer of all events) behold a Government,
erected by the Majesty of the People, a Government which to
bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance, but
generously affording to All liberty of conscience and immu-
nities of citizenship . . . For all the Blessings of civil and
religious liberty, which we enjoy under an equal and benign
administration, we desire to send up our thanks to the Ancient
of Days.
In his reply to this address, Washington repeated the terse and
statesmanlike assertion that the Government of the United States
"gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance," and he
spoke of toleration in terms that will bear emphasis at a time like
the present when the virtue of mere "tolerance" is so highly ex-
tolled. "It is now no more," Washington wrote, "that toleration
is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people,
that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights,"
a statement that echoes the lofty libertarianism of Roger Williams,
Thomas Jefferson, and the other great spirits who left their impress
on the new republic.
Nevertheless, in some of the states, the ground swell of intoler-
ance and sectarian habits of thought persisted. In Virginia an at-
tempt was made in 1784 to make Christianity the state religion.
It was defeated largely through the labors of James Madison. That
victory for democracy, wrote Thbmas Jefferson, then minister to
France, "has been received with infinite approbation in Europe."
In Maryland civil and political disabilities against the Jews and
Quakers were not abolished until 1825. The Constitution of North
Carolina contained provisions, which were not removed until 1868,
designed to exclude Jews and Catholics from holding office; and
as late as 1 876 certain offices were still banned to Jews and Catholics
in New Hampshire. Those survivals, however, only served to bring
home more vividly the amazing transformation, the new status
REVOLUTION AND REACTION 40!
of dignity and freedom, which had been achieved in the New
World by the outcasts of the Old,
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Europe in Revolution and Reaction
IT WAS only after a long and hard struggle that the equality
which the French Assembly proclaimed in its Declaration of
the Rights of Man, was extended to the Jews also. The oppo-
sition came from Alsace and Lorraine, the so-called German prov-
inces, which Louis XIV had wrested from Austria more than a
century earlier, and where lived the majority of the 50,000 Jewish
subjects of Louis XVI. The expulsion edict of 1394 had not been
applied against the Jews of Alsace dhd Lorraine, although Stras-
bourg remained a forbidden city to them; and they were exposed
to other restrictions and impositions, of which the poll tax was
the most humiliating, for the old religious hostility was now
reinforced by economic rivalries. Nor was the edict enforced
against the prosperous Sephardim, descendants of Spanish and Por-
tuguese Marranos, who made up sizable communities in the ports
of Bordeaux and Bayonne; and some hundreds of Jews managed
also to maintain themselves in Paris, where they had no legal right
of residence and were often the target of police raids. In all three
of these centers, they fought strenuously for their emancipation,
but for two years their efforts were balked by the hostility of the
Alsatian deputies.
Not that the Jews of France were without friends and cham-
pions. Even before the outbrea,Jc of the Revolution, a commission
headed by Louis' honest but ill-fated minister Malesherbes, and
assisted by Abraham Furtado of Bordeaux, Cerf Berr of Alsace,
Berr Isaac Berr of Lorraine, and other Jewish notables, had labored,
though without results, to introduce reforms. Among the revolu-
tionary leaders, their champions included the Abb6 Gr6goire and
Count Mirabeau, the colossus of the National Assembly* M irabeau
4O2 EMANCIPATION
knew and admired the aims and attainments of Moses Mendelssohn,
and in 1787 had written a powerful plea for the emancipation of
the Jews in which he ridiculed and excoriated their enemies. "There
is only one thing to be lamented," he wrote, "that a nation so highly
gifted should so long have been kept in a state wherein it was
impossible for its power to develop." But the eloquent pleas of these
and other advocates, including Clermont-Tonnerre, Robespierre,
and Rabaut-Saint-Etienne, were parried by vehement protests and
threats from the Alsatian deputies. The threats were underscored
by the peasants of Alsace, who, when they rose up against the
aristocrats as did the peasants throughout the land after the storm-
ing of the Bastille, attacked and plundered the Jews also, forcing
many of them to seek refuge in Switzerland.
When the Assembly, staggering under its load of problems,
seemed to be in no hurry to grasp the nettle of Jewish emancipa-
tion, the Sephardim of the south adopted the dubious course of
divorcing their plea from that of their Ashkenazic brothers on the
ground that they were "superior" and more deserving. In February
1790 they were granted civil equality, whereupon the communities
of the north redoubled their efforts. Led by Salkind Hurwitz, an
immigrant from Poland, and a group of young Parisian Jews who
had joined the National Guard, they won the support of the Paris
Commune, the power that swayed the decisions of the Assembly
itself. Early in 1790, a deputation of the municipal commune
petitioned the Assembly to extend full civil rights to the Jews of
Paris, but again the question was postponed, and it was not until
September 28, 1791, two days before it was to adjourn sine die,
that the National Assembly acted. The deputy Duport demanded
that "the motion for postponement be withdrawn, and a decree
passed that the Jews in France enjoy the rights of full citizens."
A deputy from Alsace rose to object and was called to order.
"Any one who spoke against this motion," said the presiding officer,
"would be speaking against the Constitution itself." The motion
was adopted, and the Jews of France became free men. Their
jubilation knew no bounds. "God chose the noble French nation,"
wrote Berr Isaac Berr of Nancy, "to restore our rights, just as in
former days He chose Antiochus and Pompey to degrade and
oppress us.
REVOLUTION AND REACTION 403
LASHED to a fury by its enemies within and without, the
Revolution rolled on with increasing violence. The monarch, after
a vain attempt to join his country's enemies, was deposed and
guillotined; France stood at war with the most powerful rulers of
Europe; and the French Jews hurried to defend the infant republic
with their possessions and their lives. The strange innovations of
the extremists, like the Republican calendar and the "Worship of
Reason," which plowed under the roots of their faith, were re-
ceived by some of them with enthusiasm, while the others, with
the patience and wisdom of age-old suffering, bowed their heads
for the storm to pass. Even the unleavened bread for the feast of
Passover became suspect. "But these calces," a housewife in Metz
told the commissars, "are a symbol of freedom," and the watchdogs
of the Revolution relented. There were even a few Jewish victims
of the busy guillotine during the Reigp of Terror, but neither the
moderate reaction that followed the overthrow of Robespierre in
July 1794, nor the Constitution of the Directory which was
adopted in the fall of the following year, impaired their hard-won
rights.
The Revolution, in fact, now carried the boon of equality to
the disinherited of the neighboring lands, for the armies of the
Republic, which swept across its frontiers, marched not only as
conquerors but as liberators. In Holland, which in 1795 was trans-
formed into the French-controlled Batavian Republic, not all the
Jews agreed that equality was a boon and a blessing. Some feared
it would undermine the way of life based on the ancient faith,
and deprive the community of its privileges as a self-governing
body. Others pointed out that privileges went hand in hand with
disabilities, and demanded equal rights and duties. There was de-
bate and dissension, but the issue was resolved by the French envoy
Noel, on whose insistence the Dutch National Assembly, in Sep-
tember 1796, decreed full rights of citizenship for the 50,000 Jews
of the Republic. A few years later two of them were elected
deputies to the Assembly, and the following year Isaac de Costa
Atias was chosen to preside over it.
404 EMANCIPATION
3
THERE was no such disagreement, however, among the Jews
of Italy, certainly not among the 7,000 prisoners of the foul ghetto
in Rome, whom Pius VI was persecuting with all the refinements
of medieval barbarism. When, early in 1798, the French entered
Rome and the pope became a prisoner of war, the Jews broke down
the gates of the ghetto and tore the yellow badge from their gar-
ments. They became free citizens, joined the militia, and one of
them was even elevated to the Roman Senate. The following year,
however, the French had to withdraw, the Jews were driven back
to the ghetto, the Inquisition was restored, and the new pope,
Pius VII, even compelled them to listen to conversionist sermons.
In the Italian cities of the north, events followed the same cycle.
In July 1797, for example, the gates of the Venetian ghetto went
up in a jubilant bonfire, but later the same year the Treaty of
Campoformio, the first of the shrewd international bargains exe-
cuted by Napoleon Bonaparte, gave the Venetian Republic to
Austria, and the dream of freedom was over. At the Congress of
Rastadt, called the same year to make peace between France and
the German states, the Dutch Jews brought pressure, but without
success, to compel the German rulers to relax their discriminations
against their Jewish subjects, and in particular to abolish the de-
grading poll tax which they were compelled to pay at every border.
But what the German princes failed to concede to humanity and
justice they later yielded to French bayonets.
In November 1799, Napoleon overthrew the unwieldy French
government known as the Directory, became master of France,
and began his amazing career of conquest in Europe. Earlier that
year, in the course of a daring but fruitless campaign to conquer
Egypt and the Near East and cut the life line of England to India,
he had taken an army to Palestine and summoned the Jews of Asia
and Africa to help him wrest the Holy Land from the Turks,
promising to restore it to the Jewish nation a call to which the
Jews of Palestine turned a deaf ear. In the Germanic states, the
events that brought the dawn of freedom for the Jews were the
Battle of Austerlitz where, on December 2, 1805, Napoleon routed
a combined Austrian and Russian army, and the Battle of Jena
REVOLUTION AND REACTION 405
on October 14, 1806, where he broke the power of Prussia. The
first erased the still lingering shadow of the Holy Roman Empire
and forced the lesser German states into a Confederation of the
Rhine headed by Napoleon himself as "Protector." The second
deprived Prussia of her Polish provinces, which became the Grand
Duchy of Warsaw, and of a portion of her western territory, which
became the Kingdom of Westphalia with Napoleon's brother
Jerome as king.
Wherever the French exercised direct control, the Jews were
emancipated as a matter of course. In Westphalia, a royal decree
granting them equal rights was issued in 1808. In the Hanseatic
cities of Luebeck and Bremen, which were annexed to France, they
also obtained equal rights. In the states comprising the Confedera-
tion of the Rhine, on the other hand, where they were still at the
mercy of the reigning princes, emancipation dragged slowly and
painfully. Frankfort, the capital of the Confederation, drove a
particularly hard bargain: in 1 8 1 1 the Jews paid for equality with
a huge sum equal to twenty times ttie annual "protection" tax. In
some of the other states, like Baden and Mecklenburg, some prog-
ress was made. But the grants fell short of equality or were subject
to a variety of restrictions, like those limiting the right to marry
which, like the famous decree of the Pharaohs, were of course
designed to check the growth of the Jewish population. In the
Grand Duchy of Warsaw, many of the restrictions which had
been retained or introduced by Prussia, continued in force, and
equality was out of the question.
4
IN PRUSSIA itself, or what was left of it, the disaster of
Jena aroused a new conscience in the rulers and led to far-reaching
social reforms, of which the emancipation of the peasant serfs was
the most important. The Jews ^Iso benefited from the new mood.
In fact, Frederick William II, who succeeded Frederick the Great,
had abolished the poll tax as early as 1787, and even set up a
commission to propose further ameliorations which, however, the
Jewish communities rejected as offering too little for too much.
His successor, Frederick William III, also evinced a benevolent
interest in his Jewish subjects, but the attempts at reform were
406 EMANCIPATION
thwarted by his ministers who could not forgive them for being
different, a "state within a state" as they put it. But the wave of
liberal reform, which Baron von Stein and Chancellor Hardenburg
set in motion in Prussia after the defeat at Jena and the humiliating
Treaty of Tilsit which followed, finally reached the Jews also.
In March 1812, with the country in a state of secret and feverish
preparation for the war of liberation, all the disabilities from which
they suffered, except the one that banned them from positions in
the state service, were removed.
In Austria, on the other hand, the liberal policies of the "benevo-
lent despot" Joseph II were reversed. Francis I, since 1806 no
longer head of the Holy Roman Empire but simply Emperor of
Austria, subjected the Jews in his realms to a bewildering variety
of restrictions, which, however, did not prevent some of the richest
among them from being ennobled. In Vienna, a limited number of
"tolerated" families were accorded the right of residence, for
which they paid a special toleration tax. A larger number of
families were allowed to reside there, under restrictions as to
occupation and possessions, as their "dependents." Officials who
issued residence permits found it a highly lucrative function.
In Moravia and Bohemia also the number of Jewish families was
strictly limited. In Hungary they were confined to certain sections
and were deprived of elementary civil rights. In Galicia, formerly
part of Poland, there were 250,000 Jews, most of them Chassidim,
who had no hankering for equal rights, which they looked upon as
a bait to lure their children away from the ancient faith. But they
were in effect barred from the villages, and were required to pass
academic examinations before being allowed to marry! The ex-
amination was no doubt calculated to keep down the number of
marriages, but it was also part of a larger effort to impose Europ'ean
culture on the Jews of Galicia, an effort which busied itself prin-
cipally with reforming the education of the children with or with-
out the consent of the parents.
5
AS WE have moved eastward, away from the leaven of the
Great Revolution, we found the spirit of the Middle Ages more
and more firmly entrenched. But even in France itself the Jews
REVOLUTION AND REACTION 407
were not permitted to enjoy their equality undisturbed. The spec-
tacle of a people of different blood and religion, for centuries the
pariahs of Europe, now suddenly thrown into the national life
stream, excited misgivings in the hearts of the rulers. The enemies
of the Jews, moreover, were not idle, particularly in Alsace where
they charged their Jewish competitors with usury and evasion of
conscription. The charges came to the attention of Napoleon
himself, and he determined to apply to French Judaism, with
appropriate variations, the general policy he pursued with regard
to French Catholicism and Protestantism. That policy aimed to
subordinate religious loyalties to loyalty to the French state and
to himself as its head. In a catechism prepared for the children,
they were taught that Christians owed their emperor, Napoleon I,
"love, respect, obedience, fidelity, military service, and taxes," be-
sides "fervent prayers for his safety and for the spiritual and
temporal prosperity of the state." The Jews must be taught to do
likewise* They must abandon whatever national hopes they still
cherished and become thoroughgoing Frenchmen.
The emperor, therefore, prepared a catechism for Jews also, but
he presented it to them in an altogether novel fashion. Napoleon,
who did all things with a glance over his shoulder at the muse of
history, first convoked an assembly of Jewish notables, and then
proceeded to resurrect the ancient Grand Sanhedrin to pass legis-
lation which all Jews would recognize as binding. The assembly
of notables, consisting of in deputies under the presidency of
Abraham Furtado of Bordeaux, held sessions in Paris from July
1806 to February 1807, and was called upon to furnish answers
to the twelve questions that made up the catechism. The Grand
Sanhedrin, which convened immediately after the adjournment of
the Assembly, consisted as of yore of seventy-one members, forty-
six of them rabbis. Its president was David Sinzheim, the rabbi of
Strasbourg.
Ostensibly, the notables were free to answer the questions as
they deemed proper. Actually, however, Napoleon's commissioners
to the Assembly intimated clearly enough what sort o answers
the emperor expected. Their attitude was suspicious and un-
friendly and some of the questions, the deputies felt, were an affront
to their loyalty and integrity. Nevertheless these spokesmen of a
408 EMANCIPATION
long-suffering people had to play their part in the pompous gesture
of an histrionic ruler. They answered the questions to his complete
satisfaction, and most of them without difficulty. They had no
difficulty, for example, in declaring France alone to be their
country, which they were prepared to defend "even unto death."
They acknowledged all Frenchmen as their brothers, and the
laws of France, including the performance of military service, as
binding upon their people. They recalled the honored place which
Jewish tradition accorded to agriculture and the handicrafts, and
condemned usury as a violation of Jewish law, whether practiced
against Jews or non-Jews. The only question, in fact, which placed
the deputies in a quandary was the one on intermarriage between
Jews and Christians. The answer they gave to that question can
only be regarded as an ingenious evasion, unavoidable under the
circumstances. The ban on intermarriage, the Assembly declared,
was not valid against Christians, the Bible having intended it
against idolaters only. Since, however, the traditional religious
ceremony could not be performed in such marriages, it was not
permissible for rabbis to preside over them any more than Catholic
priests could officiate under analogous conditions. Mixed marriages,
in other words, could receive the sanction of civil law only.
The Grand Sanhedrin duly ratified the answers of the notables,
giving them the force of legal enactments to govern all Jews. Its
authority, however, failed to reach the lands that lay beyond the
French imperial system. Nor were the bright hopes aroused among
the Jews of France by the Assembly and Sanhedrin fulfilled. The
proclamation concerning the Sanhedrin, which the notables issued
to the Jews of the world, promised that it would inaugurate for
the Jewish people "a period of deliverance and prosperity/' but,
as it turned out, the progeny of the two solemn convocations was
the harsh and humiliating imperial edict of March 17, 1808, which
became known as the "infamous decree." It established a central
Jewish consistory, or governing body, in Paris, and lower con-
sistories, embracing rabbis and laymen, for local communities
throughout the empire. The principal function of these bodies,
however, was to promote conscription, and Jewish conscripts,
unlike Christian, were debarred from offering a substitute. Nor
REVOLUTION AND REACTION 409
were rabbis, like Catholic priests and Protestant ministers, paid by
the state. Moreover, for a term of ten years the decree imposed a
variety of galling restrictions with respect to residence, trade, and
other occupations, depriving thousands of Jews of their livelihood:
such was the method the emperor provided for "uplifting" them.
Before the term expired, however, most parts of the empire, but
not Alsace and Lorraine, were freed from the provisions of the
decret injdme, nor was it, at the end of the ten year period, re-
newed.
THE Revolution proper which, like the prophet Jeremiah,
was ordained "to root out and pull down, and to destroy and to
overthrow; to build and to plant," covered the decade between
1789 and 1799. It was followed by the Napoleonic period which,
drawing upon the idealistic surge of the Revolution, harnessed it
to the chariot of a conqueror who exploited it to trample lands
and nations. The first period saw die sweeping emancipation of
the Jews of France; the second brought emancipation, in whole or
in part, to those of other lands. But in 1812 the star of Napoleon
began to pale: that was the year of his shattering debacle in Russia,
where he came with an army of half a million of whom only
twenty thousand escaped with their lives. Then came the German
"War of Liberation," and in October 1813, Napoleon was de-
feated near Leipzig in the tremendous Battle of the Nations. There
for the first time, perhaps, in Europe, Jews fought against each
other French and Italian Jews in the armies of Napoleon against
German, Austrian, and Russian Jews. In that battle, as well as at
Waterloo in June 1815, many Jews in the German army were
killed and wounded; not a few were decorated for gallantry; some
were even promoted to officer's rank.
And while the armies were closing for the final decision, the
ambassadors of the nations, assembled to "restore" Europe, were
already in session in Vienna. What, the Jews asked themselves
anxiously, would the exalted apostles of "restoration" do with the
hard-won rights which the Revolution and its conquests had
brought them?
4IO EMANCIPATION
7
THAT there was ample ground for anxiety, not only for the
Jews, but for all men upon whom the Revolution had conferred
greater dignity and freedom, was soon apparent enough to all
observers. For it was clear that the statesmen who were assembled
in Vienna hated the Revolution and all its works. They had, of
course, more pressing problems to deal with than the status of the
Jews. They had, first, to redraw the boundaries of the European
countries a task which brought the former allies perilously close
to war. Second, they had to contrive an effective system for the
suppression of every libertarian impulse among the nations, for
they were resolved that there must be no more revolutions.
The territorial changes that meant most for the Jews of Europe
were, first, the cession of the greater part of the Grand Duchy of
Warsaw, with its large Jewish population, to Russia; and, second,
the establishment of the German Confederation, with thirty-eight
states instead of the several hundred before the Revolution. The
Confederation, a loose union which lasted from 1815 to 1866, now
confronted the Jews of Germany with so many fewer govern-
ments to inspire them with hopes and fears. The Kingdom of
Westphalia, where emancipation had fallen to them like manna
from heaven, was now, of course, no more, and as the French
armies evacuated Napoleon's Confederation of the Rhine, the
old abuses against them reappeared. In France, on the other hand,
where the embers of liberalism still glowed, not even the restora-
tion of the Bourbon Louis XVIII meant the abrogation of their
rights.
While the Congress of Vienna was in session the Jews of Ger-
many were not idle. In an effort to pluck as many brands as possible
from the burning, communities sent agents, or shtadlomm^ to
plead with the diplomats, and some of the outstanding am-
bassadors, like Wellington the conqueror of Napoleon, Talleyrand
die leading French diplomat, and the Prussian statesman Harden-
burg, were entertained in the brilliant salons of wealthy Vienna
Jews. Perhaps the blandishments of elegant Jewish hostesses were
not without effect, for after considerable discussion a resolution
was presented to the Congress which seemed to provide ample
REVOLUTION AND REACTION 4 1 I
protection for the rights the Jews of Germany had won under
the hegemony of the French. "The Congress of the Allies," the
resolution stated, "will consider how the civil improvement of
those professing the Jewish faith in Germany is to be effected in
the most harmonious manner, and how in particular the enjoyment
of civil rights and participation in civil duties may be secured to
them. The rights already conceded to them in the several federated
states will be continued." Of the two sentences the significant one
was, of course, the second, of which the key word was the preposi-
tion "in."
The diplomats of "the several federated states" became alarmed.
Those representing Saxony, Frankfort, and others protested, and
the Bremen representative offered an amendment. He proposed a
"slight" change in the wording of the second sentence: the
preposition "by" instead of "in." With cynical complacency, the
Congress accepted the change, and the Jews were despoiled of the
rights which had been conceded to them in those states but not by
them.
8
THE Congress of Vienna committed Europe to the velvet
grip of the Austrian arch-reactionary Metternich, and the liberal
spirit from which alone the Jews could expect help in their struggle
for emancipation, was fettered and gagged. From Austria Metter-
nich's system of tyranny extended to Germany, Italy, and other
lands, and, particularly in Germany, it seemed to the Jews that
the Middle Ages had returned. In Hamburg, Saxony, Bavaria, and
other states, they were hedged about with ruinous and humiliating
restrictions, both economic and social. From Luebeck and Bremen
they were altogether expelled. In Frankfort, where they had paid
a huge sum for a grant of equality, they were deprived of all
political rights, nor could they reside and trade in the city on
equal terms with Christians.
Even in Prussia the arrogant Junkers, who were now again in
the saddle, made a mockery of the emancipation which had been
enacted in 1812. The new territories which the Congress of Vienna
ceded to Prussia were excluded from the grant, and elsewhere a
variety of economic and social disabilities were imposed upon the
412 EMANCIPATION
Jews, among them debarment from positions in the universities
and the civil service.
9
TO OMIT nothing from this resurgence of medievalism, Ger-
man cities in 1819 became the scene of violent anti-Jewish out-
breaks, resulting in bloodshed and murder. The old-time bigotry
and economic rivalry, which still flourished, were now reinforced
by a new passion, a morbid chauvinism which proclaimed the
German nation superior to all others, and stigmatized the Jews
as an alien element which prevented Germany from achieving its
"destiny." Poets, philosophers, and historians united in preaching
the new gospel, and university students took the lead in the new
crusade against the Jews.
The first pogrom occurred in August 1819 in the Bavarian city
of Wuerzburg, where, for the first time, the strange cry of "Hep!
Hep!" was heard as students and clerks broke into Jewish shops
and homes and attacked their owners. The origin of the word is a
mystery: as usually explained, it consists of the initials of the Latin
Hierosolyma est perdita, "Jerusalem is destroyed." The cry, so
ran the legend, was first used by the rabble crusaders of the eleventh
century; now it was gleefully echoed by their cultured descendants
of the nineteenth. They too would have massacred the Jews, if
not in the name of their savior, then in the name of "German
destiny," if their victims had not defended themselves until they
were rescued by the militia. But the authorities of Wuerzburg
yielded to the demand of the citizens that the Jews be expelled,
and the fury spread to other cities, among them Karlsruhe, Ham-
burg, Frankfort, Mannheim, Bamberg, and Heidelberg. Among
the houses attacked in Frankfort, the capital of the German Con-
federation, was that of the famous bankers, the Rothschilds. Most
ominous, perhaps, was the fact that while Goethe, the greatest
German poet of the period, Fichte, its leading philosopher, and
Schleiermacher, the eminent theologian, made no secret of their
hostility against the Jews, not a single influential voice was raised
in Germany in defense of the victims and in condemnation of the
mob.
Exactly thirty years had now passed since the outbreak of the
THE PRIMROSE PATH 413
French Revolution. In the ears of the Jews in Germany and the
rest of Europe, the cry of "Hep! Hep!" was like a savage and
derisive commentary on all the dreams and hopes which that event
had inspired.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
The Primrose Path
AEW months after the "Hep! Hep!" resounded in the streets
of German cities, a group of idealistic young men, of
whom some were destined to achieve enduring fame, met
in Berlin and organized themselves into a "Society for Jewish
Culture and Science." Their aims were vague but ambitious. The
society was to establish institution^ of learning, encourage handi-
crafts and agriculture among the Jews, teach them the social
graces, and above all check the prevailing trend toward baptism.
Eduard Gans, a gifted young jurist and historian, was chosen presi-
dent, and among the members were David Friedlaender and Israel
Jacobson, both older men and ardent disciples of Moses Mendels-
sohn; Leopold Zunz, founder of the new learning called the Science
of Judaism; and the poet Heinrich Heine, then in his early twenties.
It was a strange moral and social atmosphere, altogether novel
in the experience of their people, on which these men sought to
make an impression. On the one hand the new culture, which
Mendelssohn and his disciples advocated, was weakening the hold
of the ancient faith on those who espoused it; and on the other,
emancipation and the rumors of emancipation had whetted the
eagerness of these young "moderns" to achieve positions in the
world to which they felt their talents entitled them. Among the
founders and members of the society itself there were men who
stood poised in unstable equilibrium, groping souls who sought
support for their vacillating loyalties in a common effort.
The society came to an inglorious end. In 1825 Eduard Gans
accepted baptism in return for a university position, and Heinrich
414 EMANCIPATION
Heine and others did the same for similar reasons. The older men
among them, like Friedlaender and Jacobson, lacked the power to
guide and restrain. Twenty years earlier, in fact, when he was
already fifty, Friedlaender had made a formal offer for himself and
others to join the Protestant community, provided they were not
required to acknowledge the divinity of Jesus! The offer was of
course rejected, and Friedlaender remained in the Jewish fold;
but it was a shallow and uneasy affiliation, having little relation
to the basic values of Judaism, but preoccupied with forms and
practices, particularly in the synagogue ritual, which the gentile
might find bizarre or unaesthetic. Jacobson shared the same general
outlook. In the short-lived kingdom of Westphalia, he had served
the monarchs as financial agent, and utilized his wealth and station
to establish schools where, for the first time, Jewish children re-
ceived instruction from Christian teachers. He also imposed re-
forms in the synagogue ritual which the Orthodox strongly resented
and against which they complained, but to no avail. The changes,
which included the public confirmation of girls and the singing of
hymns in German, appeared to them a mere aping of Lutheranism.
TO HEINE and many others of his generation, the ship of
Judaism, which had weathered so many storms across the cen-
turies, appeared to be sinking. In the generation after Mendelssohn,
no less than half the members of the community in Berlin had, it
has been estimated, left the Jewish fold. In Koenigsberg, Breslau,
and other cities, baptism among the cultured and wealthy was a
common occurrence, and although the converts did not generally
receive the warm welcome they expected, and the Prussian gov-
ernment even passed a law to make baptism harder, devout Chris-
tians looked for the speedy conversion of all Jews and in Berlin
they established a society to accelerate the process. The flight from
Judaism was, of course, advance payment for the boon of emanci-
pation. It held out a world of equality and opportunity in ex-
change for something which the "spirit of the age" had, so it was
believed, already invalidated. When all theologies are equally
discredited, why not adopt the least inconvenient? Why continue
THE PRIMROSE PATH 415
to stagger under the burden of Judaism which, in Heine's bitter
words, was "not a religion, but a misfortune"?
But even where, as in France and Holland, such advance payment
was not demanded, and even with those whom honor or conscience
forbade the final act of desertion, the ancestral way of life no
longer wielded its former authority. For centuries the mind and
heart of the Jewish people had been nourished by the Bible, the
Mishnah, the Talmud, and Cabala. These constituted a self-
contained and self-sufficient culture, by no means closed or static,
but deriving its principle of growth out of itself. In Babylonia,
in Spain, in Poland, it met the challenge of rival cultures and
emerged unimpaired, and in the Germanics the ghetto walls had
kept it intact. But now these walls, physical and spiritual, were
coming down, the culture of the gentiles beckoned, and emancipa-
tion, or the struggle for emancipation, multiplied the motives as
well as the opportunities for acquiring it.
Together with emancipation, therefore, and usually anticipating
it, has proceeded in the period since the French Revolution the
movement called assimilation. The first can be defined with pre-
cision as the attainment of civil and political equality. The second
is not so definite: it may range from adopting the language and
garb of the gentiles to baptism, intermarriage, and total absorption.
In its minor manifestations, assimilation had in fact been the rule
in every land and period of the Dispersion. Jews spoke Greek in
Alexandria, Arabic in Cordova, Spanish in Toledo, German along
the Rhine; and, unless prevented, they generally dressed like the
people among whom they lived. It was their faith, and the way
of life it enjoined, which preserved them as a people. Now, how-
ever, what with the eager desire to share in the life of their neigh-
bors their art and literature, their science and politics and what
with the havoc which the growing spirit of rationalism was work-
ing on all faiths, the Jews of western Europe stood before the
prospect of total absorption or extinction. Assimilation, therefore,
was bound to become a battleground in the internal life of the
Jewish people; and the clashes it provoked were not only between
those who stood for totai preservation and those who aimed at
total dissolution, but also among those who differed on the extent
41 6 EMANCIPATION
and character of the concessions to which "the spirit of the age"
was entitled.
3
THE labors of Mendelssohn, coinciding as they did with the
dawn of emancipation and the general progress of "Enlighten-
ment," acted like an enzyme on the Jewish youth of Germany and
other lands, producing a variety of phenomena all of which moved
in the direction of assimilation. His summons and example, of
course, created a desire primarily for the German language and
literature, but it also stimulated a group of enthusiasts to attempt
a renaissance of Hebrew and Hebrew literature. But the language
of the Holy Scriptures and the Mishnah, revived and refurbished,
was now to serve a secular purpose, to induct the heirs of Isaiah and
Akiba into the culture of the new age, to quicken their aesthetic
perceptions, to inspire them with a desire for "progress and re-
form*" To promote this program, the young men launched a
Hebrew periodical in 1784 which they named Ha-meassef, "The
Gatherer." The poet Naphtali Herz Wessely and Mendelssohn
himself contributed to it, and it found enough material support in
Prussia, France, Holland, and Italy to stay alive for a dozen years.
But the attitude of the "gatherers" to the faith and culture of their
own people was not sympathetic and constructive, and although
they wrote in correct and even elegant Hebrew, they contributed
little except criticism and satire.
Among the "gatherers" were a few who hailed from Poland, for
echoes of the new culture had reached that country also and
brought pilgrims to its mecca in Berlin. But their cultural trans-
formation and change of habitat failed to strengthen their moral
stamina or promote their mental serenity. The most distinguished
of these pilgrims was Solomon Maimon, who hailed from Lithuania.
Deeply enamored of the Guide to the Perplexed, Solomon had
adopted the name of its author and in 1777, when still in his early
twenties, turned his back on his native land as well as his wife and
children, and made his way to Prussia, where his keen and original
mind won the admiration of the intellectual leaders of the day,
including Kant, Goethe, and Schiller. But Maimon, who divorced
himself from his people, found no lasting happiness in the praise
THE PRIMROSE PATH 417
of the stranger. His bitterness overflowed in an autobiography, in
which, after the manner of Rousseau's Confessions, he revels in
his own and other men's foibles and depravities.
Maimon was a zealous apostle and interpreter of the teachings of
Immanuel Kant, which seemed to have a particular attraction for
those who, having lost the ancient faith, were groping for some-
thing to fill the void. Another was Lazarus Ben-David, mathe-
matician and philosopher, who dreamed of a "pure" religion,
stripped of ceremonial and dogma. A third was Marcus Herz
(1747-1803), physician and metaphysician, who while still a stu-
dent in Koenigsberg was a favorite of the illustrious Kant. Later,
when practicing medicine in Berlin, he delivered lectures on
philosophy and science which were attended by the most dis-
tinguished personalities in the Prussian capital, including members
of the royal family. Herz inherited and extended the influence of
Mendelssohn, to whose circle he belonged.
4
THE home of Marcus Herz became the gathering place of
Berlin's celebrities, but the magic that attracted them was not so
much the erudition of the doctor, as the charms of his beautiful and
clever wife Henrietta. Her salon, to which the leading poets, sci-
entists, and artists thought it an honor to be invited, became the
social mecca of the capital. One of the frequent and intimate visi-
tors was the great-hearted Count Mirabeau, who was in Berlin in
1786 on a secret diplomatic mission. Among the others were
Schleiermacher, the subtly anti-Semitic preacher and theologian;
the Prussian statesman Wilhelm von Humboldt and his even more
famous brother, the scientist Alexander; Friedrich von Schlegel,
the romantic poet, who was first the lover, then the husband of
Mendelssohn's daughter Dorothea; the writer and diplomat Varn-
hagen von Ense, and others. What a leap from the ghetto to the
most brilliant salon in the capital!
There were those, however, who thought the change repre-
sented a descent rather than a rise, for Henrietta's salon gave the
tongue of scandal a great deal to wag about. Apparently the
transition had been too swift, and the maudlin romanticism, which
had become the literary fashion, contributed its share to the break-
4 I 8 EMANCIPATION
down of the ancient virtues. Eventually Henrietta, like Dorothea,
became baptized. She was preceded by her friend and intimate,
Rahel Levin, who married von Ense and whose home also became
a resort for the brilliant, the influential, and the fashionable. Rahel
had a keen intellect but she was greatly distressed by her Jewish
birth, and it was only when death stood before her that she de-
clared: "What all my life I considered my greatest disgrace, I
would not give up for any price."
In Vienna also, there were brilliant salons presided over by
Jewish grandes dames and frequented by the celebrities of the
day, including the leading diplomats of England, Prussia, and
Austria when they attended the Congress of Vienna. The most
famous was the salon of Baroness Fanny von Arnstein, daughter
of the Berlin banker Daniel Itzig, and wife of the ennobled Nathan
Adam von Arnstein of Vienna. The baroness devoted herself
zealously to "enlightenment" and general philanthropy, but mani-
fested little concern for the plight of her coreligionists.
5
THE attainments of men like Maimon, Cans, and Herz, and
the amazing influence wielded by the Jewish salon queens in
Berlin and Vienna, an influence comparable to that of the re-
nowned Madame Recamier in Paris, testified to the ease with which
the former residents of the ghetto could adjust themselves to the
intellectual and social climate of the gentile world. It was an ease
that should have disquieted the impatient apostles of "enlighten-
ment" and assimilation. The echoes of Mendelssohn's summons had
not yet died away, and already it appeared that his people was
capable of producing a quota of gifted and eager young men and
women larger than the nations might be willing to absorb. There
could be no doubt that the dogged opposition to emancipation
which persisted in the German states, and the savage outburst of
their "gilded youth" in the summer of 1819, were rooted not in
contempt for Jewish inferiority but rather in fear of Jewish
superiority. What lay in store for these gifted men in the im-
mediate and more remote future? Their people's destiny, from
which they generally divorced themselves, lay with those in whom
THE PRIMROSE PATH 419
the millennial tradition remained a living force, but their own fate
is also part of this story.
Among these men, whom the new conditions brought to the
surface, were the publicist Ludwig Boerne and the poet Heinrich
Heine. Both of them, like many others who followed them, be-
long more to the history of Europe than that of their own people.
They certainly cannot be classed with the giants of the Spanish
period who, in the words of one of them, Abraham ibn Daud,
"strengthened the hands of Israel with songs and with words of
comfort." But their story sheds light on the new and strange path
that had opened for their people.
In 1786, the year Mendelssohn died, Ludwig Boerne began life
in Frankfort as Loeb Baruch. His father, the wealthy and promi-
nent Jacob Baruch, was one of the deputies whom the Jews of
Frankfort sent to the Congress of Vienna to protect their hard-won
and dearly-purchased rights. When the reaction demolished those
rights, Ludwig was dismissed from the government position he
held, and shortly afterwards had himself baptized in order, as he
hoped, to serve more effectively the cause of liberty, his dominant
passion. "Liberty shall be the soul of my pen, until it becomes
blunted, or my hand is lamed/' he wrote. Uncompromising in his
idealism and gifted with a vein of trenchant satire, he became one
of the standard-bearers of the movement known as "Young Ger-
many," which defied and eventually overthrew the tyrannical sys-
tem of Metternich. He fought the traducers of his people, but he
had neither pride in his origin nor understanding of what his
people's genius had contributed to the spirit of man and, for that
matter, to his own. When the revolution of 1830 swept out the
reactionary regime of Charles X in France, Boerne made his home
in Paris where, seven years later, he died.
About the same time, and for the same reason, Heinrich Heine
(1799-1856), the pet victim of the busy censors in his native land,
also exiled himself to Paris, the city where free men could breathe
freely, and lived there for the rest of his life. Heine was not like
Boerne, a social philosopher or a political leader. He was first and
last a poet, generally regarded as one of the three greatest poets
who have sung in the German language, the other two being
42O EMANCIPATION
Goethe and Schiller. The motives that led him to the baptismal
font were exceedingly mixed. To a friend he wrote: "I assure
you if the law permitted the stealing of silver spoons, I should
not have become baptized." Nor would he forgive Gans, the
president of the Society for Jewish Culture and Science, for com-
mitting the same act of desertion. "The captain," said Heine,
"should be the last to leave the sinking ship. Gans, however, was
the first to save himself."
Heine's was a temperament teeming with contradictions, a per-
petual battleground between the austere imperatives of Judaism
and the allurements of Hellenism. But there was one vision within
him that always burned bright and never faltered: the vision of
liberty and justice enthroned among men in place of the tyranny
and oppression which reigned in his fatherland and against which
he directed the sharpest arrows of his brilliant and merciless satire.
In his last years, when sickness chained him to his "mattress
grave," Heine's insight into the world significance of Judaism
deepened and his reverence for it, previously stifled and denied,
found clear expression. The following passage is from his Con-
fessions, which he wrote in the winter of 1853-54:
Time was when I had no great love for Moses, no doubt
because I was dominated by the Greek spirit and could not
forgive the Jewish lawgiver his hatred of images, of the
plastic arts. I failed to see that Moses, despite his antagonism
to art, was, nevertheless, a great artist himself, endowed with
the genuine artistic spirit. With him, as with his Egyptian
countrymen, the artistic spirit aimed at the colossal and in-
destructible. But, unlike the Egyptians, he fashioned his works
of art not out of bricks and granite; he built pyramids of
humanity, he carved human obelisks, he took a poor race of
shepherds and created a nation which should also defy the
centuries, a great, eternal, holy nation, a people of God, to
serve as an example to all other nations, as a pattern, indeed,
to all humanity. He created Israel!
As of the artist, so also of his creation, the Jews, I have
never spoken with sufficient reverence, and again, no doubt,
because of my Hellenic temperament, which was repelled by
REFORM AND NEO-ORTHODOXY 421
Jewish asceticism. My predilection for Greece has since then
waned. I see now that the Greeks were only handsome
youths, that the Jews, on the other hand, were always men,
strong, inflexible men, not only in those days, but also in the
present, in spite of eighteen centuries of persecution and
sorrow. I have since learned to appreciate them better; and
were it not that champions of revolution and democracy
must look upon pride of birth as a foolish contradiction, the
writer of these pages might be proud that his forebears be-
longed to the noble house of Israel, that he is a descendant of
the martyrs who gave the world a God and a moral law, who
fought and suffered on every battlefield of the spirit.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Reform and Neo-Orthodcrxy
BAPTISM, as the baptized soon enough discovered, was not
the potent charm they had hoped for: that "passport to
European civilization," as Heine mockingly called it,
failed to sterilize the ingrown antipathies which surrounded them,
and it only aggravated their ]udenschmerz y those inner qualms
and tensions to which their sturdy ancestors were at least immune.
The way of secession, however, was not the road the great ma-
jority chose to meet the new problems and new horizons. Although
there were moments, especially in the generation after Mendels-
sohn, when the exodus from Judaism had the appearance of a
stampede, the ancient faith, both as doctrine and way of life, was
too firmly rooted in the. habits and emotions of the masses, not
alone in the East but also in the West, to yield to the new
promises and temptations. The apostates belonged to the camp of
those to whom all religion had become a matter of indifference.
It was inevitable, however, that many who rejected the way of
secession should nevertheless be led to re-examine doctrines and
practices which former generations had taken for granted. The
422 EMANCIPATION
impulse to question and challenge flowed from numerous sources.
German philosophy, particularly the system of Hegel, another
system to which many Jews were attracted, saw religion, like all
human institutions, subject to a process of development and change
from which Judaism could not, of course, be exempted. Then
came the "Science of Judaism," which is essentially an inquiry into
the historic origins of doctrine and ritual, and seemed to confirm
that view, especially with regard to the Oral Law or Talmud; and
the "higher critics" of the Bible, German scholars, many of them
not without an anti- Jewish bias, subjected the Written Law also
to the same process of adaptation and change. But those ideological
motives were powerfully reinforced, and perhaps preceded, by
practical considerations, of which the most important was the
desire to remove or re-interpret doctrines and rites which seemed
to be incompatible with the obligations that flowed from emancipa-
tion. And of those doctrines, the one which declared the Jews in
dispersion to be in a state of exile from which they were ultimately
to be redeemed by restoration to their own land, was considered
the most incompatible.
Whether the movement known as Reform Judaism which thus
arose in western Europe would have come to life without emanci-
pation or the struggle for it, may or may not be a subject of
fruitful speculation. It might be pointed out that Karaism, which,
like Reform Judaism, was also a challenge to the authority of the
Talmud, arose in a wholly different social and intellectual climate.
But the fact remains that the first step in the direction of Reform
was intimately bound up with the issue of emancipation: it was
taken in Amsterdam in 1796, when those who welcomed the offer
of emancipation established a separate synagogue where they in-
troduced changes in the ritual.
2
THAT was but a feeble beginning, and it was not until 1810
that the first thoroughly Reform temple, with an organ and mixed
choir, with hymns, prayers, and sermons in German, was estab-
lished. It was the work of Israel Jacobson, the leader of the Jewish
community in the Kingdom of Westphalia, and his chief purpose
REFORM AND NEO-ORTHODOXY 423
was to invest the services with more dignity and beauty, to give
them greater decorum. That word "decorum" came to play a big
role in the controversies the new movement provoked. The tra-
ditional services were found to suffer from a lack of aesthetic
appeal, to violate the rules of "decorum." The advocates of Reform
compared them with the hushed and solemn services in the Catholic
and Lutheran churches, weighed them in the aesthetic balance,
and found them wanting. Of course the synagogue had for cen-
turies been much more than the scene of a weekly religious service;
within its walls men worshipped together three times every day
of the week; they came there to study and they met there to de-
liberate on community affairs. Its informal atmosphere, however,
might strike a stranger as unseemly for a place of worship as
lacking "decorum."
In 1815 Jacobson transferred his activities to Berlin, where he
conducted a private Reform synagogue and secured the active
support of the banker Jacob Herz Beer, father of the famous
operatic composer, Giacomo Meyerbeer. But the rabbis of the
city were strenuously opposed to every innovation. They were
supported by the reactionary Prussian government, which refused
to countenance any changes anywhere at all, and Reform in the
Prussian capital came to a halt.
3
THE first successful effort at Reform is represented by the
Hamburg Temple, dedicated in 1818, of which Eduard Kley, prin-
cipal of the Jewish Free School of that city, became the preacher.
The innovations were the same as those which had been intro-
duced by Jacobson, and when the three rabbis of the city de-
nounced them as a menace to the faith and as a way station on
the road to baptism, the reformers solicited and obtained rabbinical
opinions justifying the changes on Talmudic grounds. The struggle
between the two factions became more and more embittered: the
opponents of Reform had no difficulty, of course, in enlisting on
their side a much larger number of rabbis, including Akiba Eger of
Posen, Moses Sofer of Pressburg, and Mordecai Benet of Nikob-
burg. This controversy, however, did not yet define the issues
424 EMANCIPATION
with precision. The Hamburg reformers hesitated to accept the
full logic of their position, or they lacked the courage of their
convictions: they sought Talmudic support instead of openly re-
jecting the Talmud, as the reformers did later. They amended the
prayers for the coming of the Messiah and national restoration,
instead of omitting them as they eventually did.
In the meantime the Temple expanded, and in 1820 it opened
a branch in Leipzig, the city where the great fairs brought Jewish
merchants from many lands and cities. During the fairs, Reform
services were conducted for them, they heard Reform principles
expounded, and they brought Reform ideas home to their com-
munities. The movement spread and made its way into Austria,
Denmark, and other countries. In some of the German states, in-
cluding Hanover and Baden, synagogue reforms were even
ordered to be introduced by the governments.
4
A YEAR after the Hamburg Temple embarked upon its
program of expansion, the Orthodox congregation of that city
chose as its chief rabbi, or chacham, as he preferred to be called,
Isaac Bernays the first champion of the traditional faith to enter
the lists who was equipped with the weapons of the reformers.
Bernays combined Talmudic learning with a university education,
and he preached eloquent sermons in unimpeachable German. He
was not a foe of general culture; on the contrary, he even intro-
duced the secular subjects into the community school, but his
conception of Judaism and its world significance made emancipa-
tion and European culture, the twin lodestars of Mendelssohn's
disciples, relatively unimportant: it made Reform look like the
surrender of a noble birthright.
For two decades the temple and synagogue in Hamburg pur-
sued their separate ways in a state of smoldering antagonism; then,
in 1841, a bitter conflict flared up between them. The occasion was
the adoption by the Temple of a new prayer book, bearing the
general title of Prayer Book for Israelites, in which, among other
changes, the prayers for national restoration were expunged. Isaac
Bernays denounced the new compendium and placed it under the
REFORM AND NEO-ORTHODOXY 425
ban. The Temple replied with a counterblast, and the discord
spread as each side sought support in other communities. The
younger rabbis, many of whom preferred to call themselves pas-
tors, hastened to uphold the new prayer book: in the two decades
Reform had apparently made large gains and grown bolder.
5
IN FRANKFORT, about the same time, a Reform Society came
into existence which displayed even greater boldness. It proclaimed
the Mosaic religion subject to unrestricted development, rejected
the authority of the Talmud, renounced the hope of national
restoration, questioned the validity of the dietary laws, and even
denied that the rite of circumcision was binding. The last denial
aroused too, much opposition, and was dropped from the society's
program. But circumcision remained a hotly debated issue, al-
though nearly all the religious leaders, in Italy and Austria as well
as in Germany, insisted on its binding character.
The most distinguished dissenter \^as Abraham Geiger (1810-
1874), a native of Frankfort who, after a brilliant career as stu-
dent, scholar, and author, was serving as assistant rabbi in Breslau.
There he and Solomon Tiktin, the first and elder rabbi, were in
continuous conflict over Geiger's religious doctrines and reforms,
a conflict which only ended with the creation, after Tiktin's death,
of two separate congregations. Geiger's general outlook was his-
torical, evolutionary, and "scientific." Although he held that
Reform must be patient and reckon with the deep-rooted senti-
ments that stood in its way, his ultimate objectives were no less
radical than those of the Frankfort Reform Society. He had little
sympathy with middle-of-the-road men like Zechariah Frankel and
Leopold Zunz, whose "Science of Judaism," however, he, like the
other Reform rabbis, ardently espoused.
Geiger, however, was not the most extreme reformer of his day.
The palm for radicalism belongs rather to a Reform Fellowship,
which made its appearance in Berlin, and to Samuel Holdheim
(1806-1860) who became its leader. Holdheim stood for the
abolition of all those prescriptions, like the marriage and divorce
laws, which stemmed from the national character of Judaism. The
426 EMANCIPATION
scparatcness of the Jewish people, he argued, had been enjoined
in order to safeguard their monotheism, but it became unnecessary
as soon as the unity of God was acknowledged by the nations
among whom they lived. Holdheim had from childhood been a bril-
liant student of the Talmud, and all the dialectic skill he acquired in
its study he now employed in attacking it. As rabbi of the Reform
Fellowship, he introduced religious services on Sundays and
officiated at marriages between Jews and Christians. Needless
to say, his reforms were vehemently denounced by the Orthodox.
They branded him as a second Paul of Tarsus, hacking away at
the roots of Judaism in order to curry favor with the gentiles.
LIKE Karaism a thousand years earlier, the demand for
change threatened to produce a schism in Judaism: some of the
reformers, notably the Reform Fellowship in Berlin, were prepared
to welcome it in the form of a "German Jewish Church." But
Reform itself was moving at different rates of speed and in
different directions. Was it not possible to resolve the differences?
In 1844 Ludwig Philippson, founder and editor of the Allgemeine
Zeitvng des ]udentums, a weekly journal which lasted till 1922,
published a call for a rabbinical conference, which met the same
year in Brunswick u to consider ways and means for the preserva-
tion of Judaism and the awakening of the religious spirit."
The conference, which brought together twenty-four rabbis,
nearly all advocates of reform, was dominated by Holdheim and
Geiger. It accomplished little and evoked a vigorous denunciation
from a much larger number of Orthodox rabbis in Germany and
Hungary. The following year, another and larger conference was
held in Frankfort, and although agreement was reached to eliminate
the prayers for national restoration and make other liturgic
changes, the incident that made the biggest stir was the withdrawal
of the eminent scholar Zechariah Frankel in protest against the
decision of the conference to subordinate Hebrew to the vernacular
in the ritual. A third rabbinical conference took place in 1846 in
Breslau. It dealt with such matters as Sabbath observance, cir-
cumcision, and mourning customs, but in general it failed to
REFORM AND NEO-ORTHODOXY 427
impress its authority on the congregations. If anything, the war
of sermons and pamphlets to which the rabbinical conferences gave
rise, only intensified the religious strife that divided the communi-
ties in Germany.
7
IN HIS break with the Frankfort conference, Zechariah
Frankel made it clear that he occupied a middle position which he
described as "positive-historical." In other words, the antiquity
of a religious institution and the depth of sentiment that clung to
it, invested it with a sanctity which must not be violated. Frankel
was a university graduate and a scholar of rare attainments. In
1 854, after a rabbinical career in Bohemia, he was chosen to head
a newly established theological seminary in Breslau, which came
into existence through the efforts of Abraham Geiger. The latter
was deeply hurt when the choice fell on some one else: for all
the esteem in which the lay leaders held him, they apparently
still preferred a moderate like Frankel to be the teacher and mentor
of the future religious leaders of their people. Frankel held the
post until his death in 1875, holding firm against the extremes of
the reformers.
But the acknowledged head of the historical school was Leopold
Zunz (1794-1886), creator of the "Science of Judaism," who
mastered the vast range of Jewish literature through the ages and
drew light from it for the questions of the day, particularly in his
monumental work Die Gottesdienstliche Vortraege der Juden,
which some consider the most important Jewish book of the
nineteenth century. The purpose of the work was to demonstrate
that the sermon in the vernacular had always had a place in the
synagogue; but it was also in effect a powerful plea for Jewish
emancipation and a demand for the admission of Jewish science
into the universities. That book appeared in 1832, and in 1855
Zunz published his Synagogue Poetry of the Middle Ages, another
work of vast scholarship. His prodigious labors of research and
authorship, moreover, did not prevent Zunz from taking an active
part in public affairs, especially after the Revolution of 1848.
Zunz began as an advocate of Reform, but in the course of his
428 EMANCIPATION
long life he saw many things which brought him back to the
sacred moorings of the past. He saw the fiasco of the "Society
for Jewish Culture and Science," of which he was a founder; he
sa^w the stampede to the baptismal font; he observed the illusions
and disillusions of emancipation, and the excesses of Reform. He
preferred teaching to preaching, and from 1840 to 1850 held the
post of principal of the Jewish Teacher's College in Berlin.
In 1845 Zunz received a letter from Geiger expressing amaze-
ment and sorrow over the master's continued adherence to certain
practices which had their support only in "habit and fear," like
the use of phylacteries in prayer and the dietary laws. "Will you,"
Geiger demands, "find in the past not merely the history of the
spirit, but also the norm for our spiritual life?" To this letter Zunz
wrote an ironic reply in which he declared: "We must reform our-
selves, not our religion." Abuses must be attacked, he adds, but
not a "sacred heritage." As for the Talmud, wrote Zunz, the outcry
against it "has ever been the way of the renegade."
8
BUT Germany was not the only land where the Jewish
past became an object of study and speculation. In Galicia there
was Nachman Krochmal (1785-1840) whose Guide to the Per-
plexed of Our Times, edited after the author's death by Leopold
Zunz, aimed to do for Krochmal's generation what Maimonides in
his Guide to the Perplexed had endeavored to do for his. Mai-
monides relied to a large extent on the philosophic system of
Aristotle; Krochmal on the developmental philosophy of his day.
In his Gwde Krochmal aimed chiefly to clarify the course of
Jewish history, which he found to be unique. For while other his-
toric groups were subject to the three stages of birth, efflorescence,
and decay, he saw the Jewish people rescued from the third by
the power of the "Absolute Spirit," or Divine Providence. An-
other eminent scholar, who, like others, was greatly influenced
by Krochmal, was Solomon Judah Loeb Rappaport (1790-1867)
also a native of Galicia. For die last twenty-seven years of his life,
he was rabbi of Prague. Rappaport defended Zechariah Frankel
against Geiger and die other reformers, but devoted most of his
REFORM AND NEO-ORTHODOXY 429
energies to a study of the Jewish past, shedding light on Saadia
Gaon and other great figures of the post-Talmudic period.
Rappaport, like Krochmal, wrote in Hebrew and corresponded
in that language with Samuel David Luzzatto (1800-1865), the
outstanding Jewish scholar of the period in Italy. In 1829 Luzzatto
was appointed professor at the rabbinical college of Padua, an
institution which owed its existence largely to the efforts of Isaac
Samuel Reggio (1784-1855), another Italian savant who was also
a distinguished mathematician and painter and who has been called
the Italian Mendelssohn. But while Reggio was by temperament a
rationalist, Luzzatto was a poet and mystic. In spirit as well as by
lineage he was related to Moses Chayim Luzzatto, the poet and
mystic of the previous century. His was a mind of exceptional
originality and independence. Unlike other devotees of the "Sci-
ence of Judaism," he refused to bow low to the philosophers, de-
ploring the Rambam's dependence on Aristotle and pouring wrath
and ridicule on Spinoza for his Olympian contempt of the quality
of compassion, which Luzzatto regarded as the fundamental teach-
ing of Torah. Luzzatto's "science," unlike Zunz's, became a tower
of strength to the defenders of the ancient faith.
9
THIS "Jewish science," a child of the rationalist "enlighten-
ment," received nourishment from a variety of sources, not least
among them the desire to compel the past to sanction reform in
the present. The principle of evolution, now sitting enthroned
over every science, must be extended to the beliefs and rites of
Judaism, including even the doctrine of revelation which, as in-
terpreted by Geiger and his disciples, was a continuous, never-
ending process. But the new learning was a double-edged sword:
it could also be employed to confound or, at least, throw doubt
on, the conclusions of the innovators; and in the hands of men
like Frankel, Rappaport, and especially Luzzatto, it became a
weapon against the reformers.
In one respect, at least, the enthusiasts of the new science were
certainly destined to be disappointed: it never took the place which
the old learning held in the love and devotion of the people. Zunz's
43 EMANCIPATION
Gottesdienstliche Vortraege and KrochmaTs Guide were read and
relished by scholars and specialists, but how could they substitute
for the Mishnah and Talmud, for Rashi and the Shulchan Aruch?
The books of the new learning might have everything that was
claimed for them erudition, and logic, and style but one thing
they could not claim: the quality of holiness, which clung to the
books of the past and gave them their unique hold on the Jewish
people.
10
IN GERMANY, the struggle between Reform and Orthodoxy
continued unabated until the Revolution of 1848, which diverted
general interest from religious to political issues, above all to the
prospect of imminent and complete emancipation. In the mean-
time, champions of Orthodoxy like Isaac Bernays of Hamburg, and
opponents of radical Reform like Zechariah Frankel of Breslau,
came to the fore in other communities also. In 1845, Michael Sachs,
a magnificent preacher and a man of great charm who held a doc-
torate from the University of Berlin, was chosen rabbi of that
community, and fought valiantly against the innovations of the
Reform Fellowship, as well as against Reform tendencies in his
own congregation. In Vienna, the sweep toward radical Reform
was checked by Isaac Noah Mannheimer, whose brilliant sermons,
as well as the liturgic music of his cantor, Solomon Sulzer, proved
that the reformers had no monopoly on aesthetics.
But the champion of Orthodoxy in those days of storm and
strife who left the deepest impression, was Samson Raphael Hirsch
(1808-1888). He was born in Hamburg and had sat at the feet of
Isaac Bernays, studied in the University of Bonn, and served as
rabbi in Hanover, Moravia, and Silesia before 1851, when he
accepted the call to head the Orthodox community in Frankfort.
There he ministered for the rest of his life, and his labors made
Frankfort the citadel of Orthodoxy in Germany. As early as 1836,
Hirsch had already published his Nineteen Letters of Ben Uziel,
an elucidation and panegyric of the time-hallowed institutions and
rites of Judaism. The book became the bugle call of the movement
known as neo-orthodoxy. Here indeed was something new: a
REFORM AND NEO-ORTHODOXY 431
militant defense, in faultless German, of the ancient faith, finding
no antagonism between the complete observance of all its pre-
scriptions and the demands of modern culture. The mission of
Israel "to perfect the world under the kingship of the Almighty,"
which the pious affirmed three times daily in the Alenu prayer,
and which the reformers also proclaimed as a central doctrine, did
not, Hirsch contended, require the Jews to surrender their hope
of national restoration or to water down their faith for the sake of
a rapprochement with their Christian fellow-citizens. On the con-
trary, the very ideal of human brotherhood under God obligated
them to maintain their religious separateness, as well as the hope
of restoration. Emancipation, which Hirsch welcomed, might
render some of the rites more difficult to observe, but the new
conditions called for more, not less, devotion from those who
would be loyal to the commands of noblesse oblige. Men with a
mission, Hirsch argued, do not order their lives on the principle of
ease and convenience.
Among those who were influenced by the Nineteen Letters was
a young student named Heinrich Graetz, who was to become the
foremost historian of the Jews. The letters of Ben Uziel, he wrote
the author in 1836, were like "bright sunlight," revealing the abyss
which threatened to engulf him. "Already I hovered over the in-
fernal brink . . . when your Letters appeared, every line a rescu-
ing angel, melting the ice of the rigid and frightful skepticism
which lay in my heart, rendering my feelings and ideas pure and
genuinely Jewish."
The future historian wrote with the enthusiasm of youth, but
he was essentially a rationalist and, after a number of years as a
disciple of Hirsch, he went his separate way the way of Frankel
and Zunz. Hirsch, on the other hand, was essentially a mystic;
he saw the vindication of his faith in something deeper than logic,
deeper than what the rationalist scholars called the historical sanc-
tion. He stood in direct spiritual descent from those who saw the
justification for Jewish survival in the revelation of Sinai, and his
distinction rests on his valiant defense of the divine sanction and his
denial of the claim that the "spirit of the age" had abolished it.
43 2 EMANCIPATION
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Heights and Depths
THE rising tide of religious unrest and reform in western
and central Europe may be taken as a measure of the eager-
ness with which the Jews advanced to welcome the gift or
promise of civil equality, or emancipation. Now the current of
emancipation, though it wound and twisted with heartbreaking
sluggishness, at times even turning back on itself, was nevertheless
moving generally in their direction. It received impulse not only
from social convulsions like the French Revolution; it was assisted
also by the abatement of religious bigotry which resulted from the
progress of natural science and skeptical philosophy, and it was
aided by the less spectacular but surer forces of the Industrial
Revolution.
One need not subscribe to the doubtful conclusions of the econ-
omist Werner Sombart, who credits the Jews with a preponderant
role in the rise and growth of modern capitalism, to recognize that
the same conditions which gave them a large share in the commerce
and banking of the Middle Ages would force them into the ex-
panding industry, commerce, and finance of the new age. Their
concentration in the large urban centers, which the rise of the fac-
tory system multiplied and enlarged, provided the opportunities;
their exclusion from other fields which might have employed
their energies and talents made them only too ready to seize upon
them. Economically, more and more of them in western Europe
became part of the up-and-coming bourgeoisie, the class that
emerged as the chief beneficiary of the Revolution of 1789 and of
the revolutions that followed. By and large, that class was liberal
and skeptical, and therefore more favorable to the emancipation
of the Jews than the nobility and clergy whose power it curbed.
Unlike the feudal system which it replaced, the capitalist system
did have a legal place for the Jews.
HEIGHTS AND DEPTHS 433
In every land of central and western Europe, moreover, in the
Germanics and in Italy, in France and in England, there emerged
Jewish families and individuals so conspicuous for achievement in
the economic sphere that they became, like the Rothschilds, almost
a legend. They promoted and financed vast undertakings and, in
war and peace, governments leaned heavily on their resources and
skills. Nor did they limit their interest to the accumulation of
wealth. They gave liberally to philanthropic causes, they supported
the arts and sciences, they attained influence in society and poli-
tics and used it on occasion to obtain justice for their people, in
their own and other lands. In performing this function they con-
tinued the long-standing tradition of the shtadlanim, or court
agents, of the Middle Ages and of the highly privileged "Court
Jews" of the eighteenth century: men like the wealthy and per-
suasive Joseph or Joselman of Rosheim in Alsace who, in the first
half of the sixteenth century, was a font of salvation to his perse-
cuted people in Germany and Bohemia; like the mint master Jacob
Bassevi von Treuenburg of Prague (1570-1634), the first Jew to
be ennobled in Austria; like the banker Samuel Oppenheim of
Vienna (1635-1703) and his friend and successor, the learned
Samson Wertheimer (1658-1724), both of whom used their wealth
and influence to suppress Eisenmenger's vicious screed Judaism
Unmasked; like the ill-starred Joseph Suess Oppenheimer of
Wuerttemberg who, after a brilliant but dubious career, ended his
life on the gallows in 1738.
But the Oppenheimers and Rothschilds have their place on the
debit side of the Jewish ledger also, for no matter how appalling
the poverty of the Jewish masses might be, that handful of nabobs
was enough to keep alive the myth of "the rich Jew"; and in
popular fancy their wealth and power were grotesquely exagger-
ated, enabling demagogues and hate-mongers to create another
myth, that of the "international Jewish bankers," banded together
in a world conspiracy to rule or destroy the Christian nations!
2
THE founder of the most fabulous of these clans was Meyer
Anselm Rothschild of Frankfort who, in 1760, established a bank-
ing house to which both Gjerman and foreign princes had recourse
434 EMANCIPATION
in their need. His five sons built up a financial empire that em-
braced the continent. Two of them, Anselm Meyer and Carl, both
of whom died in 1855, conducted operations in Germany and
Italy. Solomon established himself in Vienna, where he built the
first Austrian railroad and became a baron. James, who founded the
French line of Rothschilds, rose to be the trusted adviser of King
Louis Philippe, and was also ennobled. These four brothers, how-
ever, were outdistanced by Nathan Meyer, who became the out-
standing member of the Exchange in London, advanced huge sums
in 1814 to England and its allies, and, after the defeat of Napoleon,
was the acknowledged ruler of world finance. Nathan's eldest son
Lionel, who succeeded him as head of the English Rothschilds, rose
to prominence in social and political circles also. He was Disraeli's
trusted friend, and provided the funds with which the British
government acquired a controlling interest in the Suez Canal. And,
as we shall see, it was Lionel who in 1858, after a prolonged and
hard struggle, became the first unbaptized Jew to be seated in the
House of Commons. The romance of the Rothschilds was crowned
in 1885 when Lionel's son Nathan Meyer, the great-grandson of
Meyer Anselm of the Frankfort ghetto, was raised to the peerage
and, as Lord Rothschild, became the first Jewish member of the
House of Lords. A large share of the spectacular good fortune
that attended the Rothschilds has been credited to the solidarity
which the founder of the house enjoined upon his descendants and
which, besides other obligations, required them to look for hus-
bands and wives among their own cousins.
There were other distinguished and wealthy Jews in England
and on the continent who, like the English Rothschilds, threw their
influence into the scales in the struggle for emancipation. In Eng-
land, an important place in the story of that struggle belongs to
the Goldsmids and the Salomons. Aaron Goldsmid, founder of the
famous family of bankers, merchants, and public servants, came to
London from Amsterdam in 1765; in 1841, his grandson Isaac
Lyon Goldsmid, was knighted, and in 1860 Isaac's son, Sir Francis
Goldsmid, after many years of valiant labor for Jewish emancipa-
tion, was elected to the House of Commons, where he sat until his
death in 1878. Of the Salomons the most distinguished member and
the most colorful figure in the battle for emancipation was Sir
HEIGHTS AND DEPTHS 435
David who, in 1855, became the first Jewish Lord Mayor of
London.
In England there were also the remarkable Montefiores, who
produced not only outstanding financiers, merchants, and men of
affairs, but scholars and soldiers as well. The most illustrious
Montefiore was Sir Moses, whose journeys and deeds on behalf of
his suffering people on three continents have shed the luster of a
legend over a life that spanned more than a century (1784-1885).
3
IN FRANCE, the brothers Emile and Isaac Pereire represented
an unusual commingling of large-scale, creative business ability and
social idealism. Both were ardent followers of Saint-Simon, the
founder of French socialism. They published and edited a number
of papers to promote his theories, nor did they lose sight of them
in their financial creations, which aimed to extend participation and
profits to the masses of the French nation. This was particularly
true of the Credit fonder, founded by them in 1852, and of the
Credit mobilier, which became the most important financial institu-
tion of the Second Empire. The Pereires built the first railroads in
France and Spain, and were prominently associated with many
other industries and public utilities.
Another family of outstanding achievement in finance was the
Bischoff sheims, who were noted, in addition, for their contributions
to philanthropy and to the advancement of science. The brothers
Jonathan and Louis Bischoffsheim founded banks and built rail-
roads in Holland, Belgium, and France. In Germany, the banker
Gerson Bleichroeder (1822-1893) was Bismarck's leading financial
adviser and the immediate cause of a savage anti-Semitic campaign
which did not prevent him, however, from using his influence with
the German statesman on behalf of the Balkan Jews when their
fate lay in the balance at the Berlin Congress of 1878.
4-
BETWEEN the financial and industrial magnates of the West
and the oppressed masses of the East the gulf could not, it would
seem, be wider. Nevertheless in 1 840, the ancient city of Damascus,
capital of Syria, became the scene of a blood libel which brought
436 EMANCIPATION
home to the Jews scattered throughout the world, die high as well
as the low, that they were all one people, at the mercy of the same
foe. For the first time, moreover, the monstrous accusation roused
not only the Jews of the world; it outraged also the civilized
nations, so that the Damascus Affair, as this series of events came to
be known, added considerable momentum to the process of emanci-
pation.
To be fully understood, the affair must be seen against the
background of the current international scene. The obscure victims
of the medieval legend found themselves caught between the
exalted players of a far-flung diplomatic game; and the villain of the
piece, strange to relate, was France, the cradle of "liberty, equality,
and fraternity" ruled at the time by the "liberal" Louis Philippe
with Adolphe Thiers, renowned statesman and historian, as his
principal minister. The Turkish, or eastern, question had reached
an acute stage and was threatening the peace of Europe: the pasha
of Egypt, Mehemet Ali, had rebelled against his master, the Turk-
ish sultan, and possessed himself of Palestine and Syria. Thiers threw
France on the side of the rebel, while all the other European powers
supported the sultan. Thiers was eager to extend French influence
in the Near East and, under French protection, the Catholic in-
stitutions in Syria were considerably strengthened.
On February 5, 1840, Father Thomas, head of a Franciscan
monastery in Damascus, disappeared, and the monks raised the cry
that the Jews of the city had murdered him for ritual purposes. To
Ratti Menton, the French consul, it appeared that the interests of
France required that the accusation should be sustained. He took
charge of the case, and Sherif Pasha, Mehemet's governor in
Damascus, felt it his duty to assist the representative of the only
friendly power. Several Jews were arrested and one of them "con-
fessed" under torture and named eight others as the "criminals."
The eight were then arrested, but though one of them, Joseph
Laniado, an old man of eighty, succumbed to the tortures, no
confession could be extorted from them. The patriotic Menton,
however, was not discouraged. He rounded up sixty Jewish chil-
dren, locked them in a prison, and starved them in order to wring
confessions from the frantic parents. When that device also failed,
he arrested three rabbis, together with other prominent men of the
HEIGHTS AND DEPTHS 437
community, and, under torture, some of them, eager for speedy
death, took the crime upon themselves. The governor of Damascus
obtained the permission of Mehemet Ali to execute them, but the
prisoners repudiated their confessions and insisted on their in-
nocence.
The zealous M. Menton applied himself also to spread the blood
libel among the Moslems and not without success. An Arab mob
broke into a synagogue in the city and mutilated the scrolls. Jews
were attacked in different parts of Turkey as far as Smyrna, and
a blood accusation was trumped up against them on the island of
Rhodes which, however, failed in its purpose, the innocence of
the accused being plainly proved. In France, the reactionary and
clerical newspapers naturally supported the consul.
5
BUT now it became clear to the Jews of western Europe
and America, to the emancipated and unemancipated, the influen-
tial and the lowly, that they too, and*hot only those who were
being tortured in Damascus, were among the accused. The man
who came forward as the leading Jewish champion was the brilliant
lawyer and orator, Adolphe Cremieux (17961880), who had al-
ready delivered some telling blows against the few anti-Jewish dis-
criminations still remaining in France. Five years earlier, when the
city of Basel prohibited a French Jew from settling there, Cremieux
had intervened and brought about a rupture in consular relations
between France and the Swiss city. This time, however, he found
his government deaf to his pleas. French political stakes in the
Near East were more important than the claims of justice and
decency.
Fortunately for the victims, the other governments of Europe
were willing to help them; they were, in fact, eager to do so, if
only to check the ambitions of, France. In June, Lord Palmerston,
then British foreign minister, notified Mehemet Ali that the perse-
cutions in Damascus were producing a painful impression in
Europe. Metternich, in response, it is believed, to representations
from the Rothschilds, took similar action for Austria. Both in-
structed their consuls-general in Alexandria to intervene with
Mehemet Ali, who thereupon ordered his governor in Damascus
EM ANCI PATION
to put a stop to the tortures and offered to lay the case before a
special court to consist of the consuls-general of England, Austria,
Prussia, and Russia. But the French consul interfered and thwarted
the plan.
All this time the echoes of the Damascus Affair throughout the
world grew louder. In the European press, the campaign of slander
against the Jews, stimulated by the clerical parties in France, Italy,
and Belgium, increased in violence, and for the first time in the
somber history of their Dispersion, the Jews of the world invoked
the decent opinion of mankind in their behalf. At the call of the
Lord Mayor of London, an impressive public meeting took place
on July 3, 1840, in the famous Mansion House, where men of
distinction voiced their indignation. Some of the speakers went
beyond the immediate question and demanded the emancipation of
the Jews. In the United States there were meetings of protest in
New York and Philadelphia, and President Martin Van Buren,
through his diplomatic representatives in Alexandria and Constanti-
nople, informed Mehemet Ali and the sultan that the bare recital
of the events in Damascus "has caused a shudder throughout the
civilized world." The leaders of French and British Jewry now
took an even bolder step: they sent a deputation to the Near East,
headed by Cremieux and Sir Moses Montefiore, and accompanied
by the renowned Orientalist Solomon Munk.
Early in August, Sir Moses was received by Mehemet Ali in
Cairo, and requested letters of safe conduct that would enable
the deputation to conduct a thorough investigation on the spot*
Under pressure from the French consul, the wily old governor
hesitated. When, however, the nine other consuls, representing as
many European governments, prepared to send him a collective
note in support of the deputation, Mehemet Ali hastened to issue
an order for the release of the prisoners. The fact was that the
general policy of France in the Near East had already been re-
versed, Louis Philippe having no stomach to defy the other powers,
and French influence with Mehemet Ali was on the wane. The
order of release spoke of "pardon," but on the insistence of the
deputation that word was changed to "acquittal." On September 6
the prisoners were liberated there were only nine alive of the
EMANCIPATION 439
thirteen who had been incarcerated and Mehemet All's governor
in Damascus paid for his crimes with his life.
NOT long afterwards, Syria and Palestine were restored to
Turkey, whereupon the Jewish emissaries from the West pro-
ceeded to Constantinople and prevailed on the sultan to issue a
finnan, in which the blood accusation was denounced as a libel.
There was great rejoicing among the Jews throughout the world,
and all men who loved justice and hated oppression rejoiced with
them.
This Damascus Aifair, however, seemed to point a number of
lessons. It made all Jews, high and low, free or fettered, realize
their kinship: with all their differences they were still a world
community, if not of common goals, then of common suffering
and perils. For the first time, moreover, they became aware of their
moral strength, the strength that derives from courageous action
and from the support of the decent opinion of the world. And
many of them, finally, were sobered by the spectacle of a govern-
ment representing the most liberal and civilized nation and tradi-
tion in Europe, ready, in order to promote a national policy, to
resort to the vilest barbarities against the weak and the helpless.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Emancipation
BUT the removal of the disabilities still cramping the Jews of
Europe required more than the sympathy which a Da-
mascus Affair might evoke, nor did the social and political
influence of the rich and exalted suffice to bring it about. It called
for increasing exertion to awaken the normally sluggish sense of
justice in men and nations, and, above all, it depended on social
upheavals, which produce a drastic revision in social relations, giv-
ing long-standing wrongs a chance of being righted. Indeed, the
44 EMANCIPATION
complete legal emancipation of the Jews of Europe waited a cen-
tury and a quarter from 1791, when the National Assembly of
France in revolution voted the Jews of France free and equal
citizens, to the Revolution of 1917 in Russia, which accomplished
the same result for those in that country. And the Nazi nightmare,
from which the world emerged in 1945, proved with hideous clarity
how fragile the growth still was.
The insurrection of July 1830, when the armed workers of
Paris forced King Charles X to flee to England, was but a curtain
raiser to the revolutionary fever that seized upon Europe eighteen
years later. Nevertheless, the Paris uprising had its repercussions in
the Low Countries, in Italy, in Poland, and in some of the smaller
German states. It led to the extension in 1831 of state support to
synagogues and rabbis in France, thus placing Judaism on an
equal footing with the other faiths. But it was not until 1 846 that
the French Supreme Court abolished that degrading vestige of the
Middle Ages, the special form of oath required of Jewish witnesses
in legal proceedings; and it may be added that in Prussia this
humiliation, the oath more Judaica, was not abolished till 1869.
Prussia and Austria remained untouched by the ground swell
of the July revolution; in Poland, an uprising in 1831 against the
Russian master, Czar Nicholas I, was crushed; and in Italy Austrian
bayonets restored those rulers, including Pope Gregory XVI, who
had been ousted by popular uprisings. The tyrannical system of
Metternich, though badly shaken, still held firm in Austria, Italy,
and the Germanics, but another and greater surge was gathering
to overthrow it.
2
rr CAME in February 1848, and again the first eruption oc-
curred in Paris when the government of the sham liberal Louis
Philippe, and his cynical minister Frangois Guizot, who had man-
aged to antagonize all classes of the nation, was overthrown to be
followed by a short-lived republic. With "democracy and nation-
alism" as its watchword,' the ferment spread rapidly to Germany,
Austria, and Italy. For Germany and Italy, nationalism, of course,
meant unification; but for Austria, with its hodgepodge of na-
tionalities, it implied exactly the reverse. The Jews, however, were
EM ANCI PATION 44 1
primarily interested in "democracy," which meant everywhere the
same: constitutional government with all citizens equal before the
law. Jewish nationalism was not to become an issue until half a
century later.
In March 1848, revolutionary riots broke out in Vienna and
Count Metternich, his vise on Europe broken at last, fled for his
life to England. The same month, there were street battles in Milan
and Venice with the soldiers of Austria. In Germany, the rulers of
the lesser states granted constitutions and other reforms; and on
March 18, 1848, there was a bloody clash between populace and
troops in Berlin, in which over two hundred lost their lives. The
King of Prussia promised a constitution and appointed a liberal
ministry.
The Jews of Prussia and the rest of Germany were thrilled with
new hope. Twenty-one of the dead in the Berlin outbreak were
Jews, and they shared the common grave in which all the victims
were laid. Michael Sachs pronounced a prayer over the grave, and
Leopold Zunz saw the rise of "the Dominion of Freedom," with
the "recognition of Man unclouded by distinctions of sect or
class." And, as if to fulfill this vision, a Constitutional Convention,
representing the entire German Confederation, assembled in Frank-
fort on the Main, and in May 1848 entered upon the Herculean
task of unifying Germany on a democratic basis.
The Frankfort Assembly, which remained in session for nearly
a year, proved to be one of the most heartbreaking failures in
history. The constitution which it drafted for a unified Germany
was democratic enough; it recognized the equality of all citizens,
irrespective of religion; but the King of Prussia, Frederick Wil-
liam IV, to whom the Assembly offered the imperial crown, re-
fused to accept it from a revolutionary body. Besides, he had no
stomach for a war with Austria and the other large German states,
who were opposed to a unified Germany under the leadership of
Prussia. It was one of the fateful decrees of history, and fraught
with disaster for mankind in general and the Jewish people in par-
ticular, that a united Germany was to be born, not in the liberal
spirit of the Frankfort Assembly, but in the "blood and iron" of
Otto von Bismarck.
There were four Jews among the deputies in the Frankfort
442 EMANCIPATION
Assembly, of whom Gabriel Riesser (1806-1863) was chosen as
one of the vice-presidents. He had the doubtful honor, also, of
being a member of the deputation which received the "great re-
fusal" from the Prussian monarch. Riesser, the acknowledged leader
of the Jews in Germany in the struggle for emancipation, stood
firmly on the principle that the grant of equality was an act of
justice, in return for which no surrender of any portion of the
Jewish faith or practice should be demanded or offered. In 1832, he
founded and edited a magazine which he boldly called Der Jude,
wherein he scrutinized without fear or favor certain half-measures
which were brought forward for improving the civil status of the
Jews in Baden, Wuerttemberg, Bavaria, Prussia, and other German
states, always demanding "unconditional emancipation." Riesser
was a persuasive writer, a brilliant orator, and a fearless champion
of his people against their traducers. In the Frankfort Assembly he
was successful in defeating a constitutional proposal which, in
spite of the reforms it provided, would still have given the Jews an
exceptional status; he saw clearly, and he made others see, the
intimate connection between the denial of full rights to the Jews
and the general ascendancy of reaction and tyranny. For Germany,
he advocated a constitutional monarchy, and the speech in which
he called for unification under the hegemony of Prussia was one
of the great moments of the Assembly.
The Frankfort Assembly, which had stirred so many high but
vain hopes, was dispersed, and in the summer of 1849 there were
new uprisings led, this rime, by the republicans. They were all
put down, and many of these "forty-niners," among them a good
sprinkling of Jews, managed to escape and find refuge in America.
3
IN THE meantime, the revolutionary movements in Austria,
bedeviled by conflicts among the numerous nationalities, suffered
the same fate. The outbreak in Vienna in March 1 848 had wrested
a liberal constitution from the emperor, in which religious in-
equalities were banned; but in June, a Pan-Slavic rebellion in
Prague was easily quelled. In the summer of 1 849, the Republic of
Hungary, which Louis Kossuth had proclaimed earlier that year,
was wiped out by the forces of the new emperor, the youthful
EMANCIPATION 443
Francis Joseph, aided by a large Russian army; and Kossuth be-
came a fugitive. A fine of 2,300,000 gulden was imposed upon
the Jews of Hungary for the part they had played in the revolution:
they were only about three per cent of the population, but in the
revolutionary forces there were 20,000 of them in a total of 1 80,000.
They fought valiantly for Hungarian independence, despite the
fact that on the outbreak of the revolution there were mob attacks
against them in a number of cities, including Pressburg and Pest.
Emperor Francis Joseph, it should be added, reduced the fine to
1,000,000 gulden, with the provision that its income should be
used for Jewish educational and philanthropic purposes.
Nor did the revolutions in Italy fare any better. In the spring
of 1848, the Risorgimento or "Resurrection," as the patriots called
the movement for the liberation and unification of Italy, stood on
the threshold of victory; in the summer it was snuffed out by a
new Austrian army and the Hapsburg princes came back to their
thrones. In the interval, the Jews of Piedmont, Venice, Tuscany,
Modena, and other Italian states had a taste of emancipation. Early
in 1849, an outbreak in Rome, led by Giuseppe Mazzini, trans-
formed the Papal States into a republic; several months later Pius
IX, who had been forced to flee, was restored, and similar move-
ments in the south were also suppressed. In the interval, the gates
of the Roman ghetto, amid the jubilation of Jews and Christians,
were torn down, and the revolutionary assembly decreed civic
equality for the Roman Jews. In all these struggles, Jewish volun-
teers bore arms against the tyrants, they sat in the revolutionary
legislative bodies, and they served as ministers in the newly created
governments.
4
IN SPITE of the luckless star that dogged the revolutionary
movements of 1848-49, they can still be credited with a marked
advance in the emancipation of the Jews, just as they were instru-
mental also in sweeping out the tyranny of the Metternich system
and extending the boundaries of liberalism in western and central
Europe. In Hungary the sacrifices the Jews laid on the altar of
independence did not remain entirely unrewarded, although com-
plete emancipation became a fact only after the Ausgleich, or
444 EMANCIPATION
Compromise of 1867, had established the Dual Monarchy of Aus-
tria-Hungary. The same year a law was adopted by the Hungarian
Parliament declaring the Jews of Hungary "equal with the Chris-
tian inhabitants in the exercise of all civil and political rights."
In Austria, where the Jews were also active supporters of the
libertarian movements of 1848-49, the progress toward emancipa-
tion was especially marked. The constitution of 1849 made free
men of them, its first article providing that "the enjoyment of
civil and political rights does not depend on religious profession."
Now they could live openly in Vienna or anywhere else in the
empire, acquire landed property, and engage in all trades and pro-
fessions. They could send their children to the general schools and
were not subject to legal restrictions with respect to marriage. In
1851, that constitution was abrogated, and the Jews found them-
selves again deprived of their elementary human rights; but with the
best efforts of the clericals, the old order in Austria could not be
quite restored. In December 1867, after the empire had sustained
a series of severe reverses, a new constitution was promulgated
which restored full rights to the Jews and completed their emanci-
pation.
In almost the same words as were inscribed in the Austrian con-
stitution of 1849, the Prussian constitution of 1850 proclaimed the
divorcement of civil and political rights from religious affiliation,
although in practice Prussian officials still managed to exclude Jews
from government and university positions. Nevertheless, that pro-
vision represented a notable advance, and in Bavaria and other
German states Jewish rights were also extended. It was not, how-
ever, until 1871 that full emancipation was enacted for the whole
of Germany, which had in the meantime been transformed by
Bismarck into a well-knit empire, after a series of wars in which
Denmark, Austria, and France were successively humbled by
Prussia.
In the Italian peninsula, emancipation survived the reaction of
1849 only in the kingdom of Piedmont. But out of that kingdom
came the three men Victor Emmanuel the king, Cavour the
statesman, and Garibaldi the hero who achieved a unified Italy.
When, in September 1870, Victor Emmanuel took possession of
Rome as King of Italy, and the temporal power of the pope came
EMANCIPATION 445
to an end, the wretched ghetto of that city was at long last abol-
ished, and all Italian Jews were fully emancipated.
5
THE interval between the return of Pius IX to Rome and
his final deposition as temporal ruler is marked by an outrage which
made men throughout the world wonder if the Dark Ages had
really come to an end. On June 23, 1858, by order of the holy
office of the Inquisition in Rome, Edgar Mortara, a six-year-old
Jewish child, was torn from his parents by a troop of papal soldiers
and placed in a convent to be brought up as a Catholic. The Mor-
tara family lived in Bologna which, at the time, was still under
papal jurisdiction, and the reason given for the abduction was that
four years earlier, when the child was seriously ill, his nurse, ac-
cording to her own confession, had secretly baptized him. The
sacrament having been administered, the child, so the pontiff main-
tained, no longer belonged to his parents but to the church. All
efforts of the parents to recover their child remained futile.
News of the abduction spread throughout the world, and the
Mortara case created a sensation. In every land Jews appealed to
their governments for diplomatic aid. Napoleon III of France and
Francis Joseph of Austria, both Catholic sovereigns, appealed per-
sonally to Pius IX; Protestant rulers also expressed their sympathy;
decent humanity everywhere was outraged, but the pope remained
unmoved. "I snap my fingers at the whole world," he is reported
to have said. The rabbis of Germany sent him a petition, which
remained unanswered, and Sir Moses Montefiore journeyed to
Rome, where the pope refused to see him. Edgar Mortara was
brought up as a Catholic and remained one. Pius IX, angered by
the notoriety which the case received, vented his resentment upon
the Jews under his jurisdiction; but the Mortara case, it is believed,
contributed not a little to his reverses in 1870. "If you only knew
how much it cost me! " he once declared to the youth whom he had
torn from his parents and his faith*
6
THE same year that witnessed the triumph of medieval
bigotry in the ruthless abduction of little Edgar Mortara, brought
446 EMANCIPATION
the Jews of England a triumph of another order. In 1858 they won
a decisive victory after more than a century of struggle for their
civil and political emancipation.
As early as 1753, Parliament had passed a law which empowered
it to naturalize members of the Jewish faith. It was a century since,
as a result of the exertions of Menasseh ben Israel, the country
which had been closed to the Jews since 1290, was reopened to
them. During that century they had made good progress. Not even
the restoration of Charles II in 1660, which their enemies, includ-
ing the Corporation of the City of London, attempted to exploit
to injure and blackmail them, could seriously undermine their
position. On two separate occasions, in fact, Charles assured them
of his protection, and in 1685 the Crown Council of his successor,
James II, informed them they could "quietly enjoy the free exer-
cise of their religion." With the wealth they brought to England
and their commercial connections, they had become an important
asset to the country.
In 1701, the Sephardic community, numbering several hundred
members, dedicated their famous Bevis Marks synagogue which
still stands. Its rabbi was the learned and philosophical David
Nieto, and its membership included men of wealth and influence
like Sir Solomon de Medina, the first Jew in England to be
knighted. In 1692 Ashkenazic Jews had begun to arrive from
Germany and Poland, but lacking the wealth and culture of the
Sephardim, they were not welcomed by them and established
synagogues of their own. It took a century for the walls of snob-
bery to come down and for the Ashkenazim to share in the leader-
ship of British Jewry.
7
THE law of 1753, which would have made England the
first European country to extend equality to Jews, was repealed
only a year after its passage. Two years previously, a similar law
for the benefit of the Huguenots who had settled in England, had
come to grief, and now a violent campaign was launched against
the enfranchisement of the Jews. The popular slogan was "No
Jews, no wooden shoes," the "wooden shoes," of course, repre-
senting the Huguenots. Early in the reign of George III, more-
EMANCIPATION 447
over, the cause of emancipation suffered an even more serious
blow in the passage of a law requiring voters, army officers, mem-
bers of parliament, and all government and university officials to
take an oath containing the words "upon the true faith of a
Christian."
In that formula, the prejudice against the Jews appeared to be
immovably entrenched, and many of the wealthy and ambitious
among them sought the solution in baptism, if not for themselves,
then for their children. The example was set by Samson Gideon,
the head of the community, who took his children out of the
faith; and it was followed by many of the leading Sephardic
families, whose descendants gradually mingled with the British
aristocracy and were lost in it. The most famous secession occurred
in 1817 when thirteen-year-old Benjamin Disraeli, who was to
become one of England's most illustrious prime ministers, was sent
to the baptismal font by his father Isaac. Somewhat earlier, oc-
curred the alienation of David Ricardo who, in 1819, became an
outstanding member of Parliament, but is better known as the
founder of the science of economics.
In the meantime, however, popular prejudice against the Jews
began to ebb. More of them were arriving from Germany and
Poland and, as small traders, they came into closer contact with
the common people than did the Sephardic magnates. Many pious
Englishmen like Lewis May, who founded a missionary society in
London, labored for the speedy conversion of the Jews; and al-
though they made few converts, their preaching inspired more
tolerance and respect for the people who gave the Christians their
Bible and Redeemer. But curiously enough, what contributed
more, perhaps, to the change of attitude was the prominence
achieved by Jews in pugilism, first in the affections of sports-loving
Britons. In 1789, Daniel Mendoza became the boxing champion
of England, and he was followed by other Jewish champions of
the highly admired sport. The Jewish boxers, moreover, elevated
the sport into a fine art in which skill counted for more than brute
strength, so that members of the aristocracy also became devoted
to it and admired its teachers and champions.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century the leadership of
the community had to a large degree passed into the hands of the
448 EMANCIPATION
Ashkenazim: the Rothschilds, the Goldsmids, the Salomons. The
barriers between the two groups 'were coming down. In 1812,
Judith Cohen, daughter of an Ashkenazi, became the wife of
Moses Montefiore and, by marrying Judith's sister, Nathan Meyer
Rothschild, as Montefiore's brother-in-law, established close rela-
tions with the Sephardic leaders. The latter had, in 1760, estab-
lished the Board of Deputies to promote and safeguard Jewish
rights, and by 1830 that body, which was destined to exert influ-
ence in many lands, numbered Ashkenazim also among its members.
8
THE previous year had witnessed the emancipation of the
Catholics in England, and now a bill was introduced in Commons
on behalf of the Jews. It was supported by petitions signed by
thousands of leading Englishmen and it had staunch advocates in
both houses. Among its champions was the poet, historian and
statesman, Thomas Babington Macaulay, who in 1830 delivered
his maiden speech in Commons in support of the measure and a
year later published his famous essay on the political disabilities of
the Jews. But after passing in Commons the bill was rejected by
the Tory House of Lords. Year after year, it was presented and
met the same fate. In the meantime, however, other political offices
were opened to the Jews, in each case not without a struggle. In
1835 David Salomons was elected sheriff of London county, and
when he refused to take the prescribed oath, Parliament adopted
a law changing the wording of the oath, but for that office only.
Ten years later, when David Salomons was elected an alderman,
the change was extended to municipal offices. By 1846, the for-
bidding oath barred the way to Parliament only. The following
year, and again in 1850, Baron Lionel Rothschild was elected to
that body, but the House of Lords again defeated every attempt to
modify the oath and prevented him from being seated. t
The following year the solemn decorum of the House of Com-
mons was rudely disturbed, and the struggle against the disfran-
chising formula assumed the character of an exciting drama. David
Salomons was again the hero of the piece and the forbidding
formula the villain. Having been elected to Parliament, he refused
to take the oath, and when ordered to leave, he refused to do that
IN CZARIST RUSSIA 449
also. He addressed the Commons in defense of his conduct and
made a deep impression. In view of the tumult that arose it was
moved to adjourn, and Salomons insisted on registering his vote on
the motion. He voted also on two other occasions, and later the
courts fined him ^500 for each vote.
The country was stirred by Salomons' boldness; he became even
more popular, and in 1855 he was elected Lord Mayor of London.
The struggle against the formula continued: it was still a tug of
war between the House of Commons and the House of Lords. At
length, in 1858, the Lords agreed to a compromise which per-
mitted each house to modify the oath as it desired in order to admit
Jewish members. The same year Lionel Rothschild was seated as
the first Jewish member of Parliament. He had taken the oath with
covered head as prescribed by orthodox usage, replacing the words
"upon the true faith of a Christian" with u so help me God."
Two years later, the parliamentary oath was changed for all
members and for both houses, and in 1885 Lionel's son Nathan
Meyer was raised to the peerage and became the first Jewish mem-
ber of the House of Lords. A few restrictions, particularly in the
universities, still remained; they were not removed until 1890 when
all British subjects, without regard to religion, were made eligible
for every position in the British Empire, except that of monarch.
And it should be added that in no country has emancipation been
better honored, in spirit as well as in letter, than in Britain.
Continued on Part 2
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