By-paths in Hebraic bookland

by Israel Abrahams

LANCELOT ADDISON ON THE BARBARY JEWS

“Justice is done to the private virtues of the Jews of Barbary.” So Mr. Francis Espinasse remarks in his biography of Lancelot Addison. It is an accurate comment. Lancelot, the father of the more famous Joseph Addison—who himself wrote so amiably of the Jews a generation later—spent several years in Africa as English chaplain. Born in 1632, he showed an independent mind at Oxford. He roughly handled some of the University Puritans in 1658, and was promptly compelled to recant his speech on his knees in open Convocation. Tangier came into the possession of Charles II in 1662. Lancelot Addison had officiated in Dunkirk for the previous three years; but when that port was given up to the French, Addison was transferred to Morocco.

Here he kept his eyes open. Several lively volumes came from him on Tangier life, on Mohammedanism, on Moorish politics. The most remarkable of these deals with the Jews. So popular was this volume on their “Present State” that three editions were called for. The first came out in 1675. If one may judge by the British Museum copy, it lacked the awesome frontispiece which may be seen in the edition of 1676. Though superscribed “The Present State of the Jews in Barbary,” the almost naked figure is not meant to represent a child of Israel. The personage depicted wears a gorgeously feathered hat and a short waist-covering, also of feathers. Add to this a spear bigger than its wielder, and you have his full costume. It is less Addison’s than his illustrator’s idea of a typical Moor.

From the very opening paragraph of the dedication we see that Lancelot possessed some of his son’s gift of gentle humor. He had inscribed a former book to Secretary Williamson, and he now repeats the act, “it faring with Scriblers, as with those Votaries who never forsake the Saint they once finde propitious.” As for his account of the Jews, he claims that his is more “particular and true” than other descriptions, “this being,” he says, “the result of Conversation and not of Report.” (“Conversation,” of course, he uses in the old sense of “direct intercourse”). Some of the modern assailants of the Jews who appropriate aristocratic names will hardly like Addison’s justification of his interest. It is because of their clear genealogies and ancient lineage that he in the first instance admires the Jews. And if their ancestry was noble, they were not less happy in their primitive religion. “Now seeing that they have been the channel of so many benefits to the rest of mankind, they ought to be the matter of our thankful Reflection, and not of our obloquy and reproach.”

With fine indignation, he goes on to resent the manner in which the Jews of Barbary were “lorded over by the imperious and haughty Moor.” The Moorish boys beat the Jewish children, and the latter dare not retaliate. “The Moors permit not the Jews the possession of any war-like weapons, unless in point of Trade.” Addison adds that this gratifies the Jews, who are, he asserts, as “destitute of true courage as of good nature.” It is important to remember these severe remarks on the Jewish character, as it shows that when the author praises he does so not from partiality but from conviction. Curiously enough, he has hardly done calling them cowards, when he tells us that the Christians and Moors use the Jews for “sending them upon hazardous messages,” such as “collecting the maritime imposts,” an office which must have needed more than a little hardihood.

Our author contrasts the black caps of the Jews with the red of the Moors, and has other quaint details as to costume. He then calls attention to the religious unanimity of the Jews. “They are signally vigilant to avoid divisions, as looking upon those among Christian Professors, to be an argument against the truth of the things they profess.” This is amusing, coming from a man who, throughout his life, was a rather sturdy opponent of union among the Christian bodies. And what would he think of the unity among Jews if he could see our “present state”? Addison then enters into a eulogy of the sobriety and temperance of the Jews; he terms their conduct “well civilised,” and declares that they “cannot be charged with any of those Debauches which are grown unto reputation with whole nations of Christians.” Then he specifies. “Adultery, Drunkenness, Gluttony, Pride of Apparel, etc., are so far from being in request with them that they are scandalised at their frequent practice in Christians.” Again and again the author laments that he has to praise the Synagogue at the expense of the Church. But he takes it out in firm abuse of the rabbinic theology, information on which he obtained from a local Rabbi, “Aaron Ben-Netas”—a not unlearned man, he says, one who only needed to be a Christian to be thoroughly worthy of esteem.

But we must pass over Addison’s elaborate analysis of the Jewish creed, and of his many curious and mostly accurate details on rites and superstitions. The notable thing is that as soon as he touches fundamental social questions, his eulogy of the Jews reappears. “Orderly and decent” are the adjectives he uses of the Jewish marriage customs. I regret that I am unable to find space for Addison’s allusion to the fashions of dressing the brides for the canopies, or rather “bowers and arbours,” which in Barbary replaced the canopies used in other countries. Thus the custom in some American homes of performing Jewish marriages under a floral bower rather than a canopy has its analogue in the past. Very significant is another statement about marriage. Theoretically he found polygamy defended, but monogamy was the rule of life. “The Jews of whom I now write, though they greatly magnify and extol the concession of polygamy, yet they are not very fond of its practice.” He ascribes this abstinence to policy rather than to religion, and there is more truth in this than Addison saw. For such social institutions are entirely a matter for the social conscience, and “policy” dictates them. So long as social institutions remain within the bounds of such sanctification as religion can approve, religion must be content to follow “policy.” Monogamy is so clearly felt to be the best policy for mankind, under modern conditions, that religion in the West maintains it. “Religion” and “policy” are here at one.

Addison fairly gives his enthusiasm the rein when he discusses Jewish education. “The care of the Jews is very laudable in this particular, there being not many people in the world more watchful to have their children early tinctured with religion than the present Hebrews.” Though they usually speak “Moresco, the Language of their Nativity, and a sort of Spanish which enables them for Traffick,” they learn Hebrew. The children, he informs us, are usually taught the Hebrew for the domestic utensils and “terms of Traffick Negotiation.” The method was quite in accord with modern ideas of teaching a language. “By this Order they furnish the Children with a Nomenclature of Hebrew Words; and all this before they admit them to Syntax and Construction.” Addison pictures the Jewish Sabbath with some charm; he even cites passages from Luria, to whom the home and synagogue rites of the day of rest owe so much. On no subject is our author more interesting than with regard to the Jewish charities. The Jews live “in a more mutual charity of alms than either the Moor or Christians”; and Addison admits, “it cannot be denied that the Jews’ manner of relieving the poor, is regular and commendable.” In his day it was, as it is in ours, the Synagogue’s ideal to relieve its own poor. There were no beggars in the Barbary Jewry. “For though among the Jews of Barbary there is a great store of needy persons, yet they are supplied after a manner which much conceals (as to men of other religions) their poverty.” Obviously Addison would like these people to become Christians. Why do they refuse? The “stiffness of their necks,” on the one hand, and the “naughtiness of our lives,” on the other, cries the author. The “naughtiness” will, let us hope, be more easily removed than the “stiffness.” Lancelot Addison, says Macaulay, “made some figure in the world.” He deserved to do so. His book on the Jews was a credit to his power of observation and his goodness of heart.