The pillars of Hercules

by David Urquhart

The Phylactery, and the Mazonza are to the Jews what amulets are to the Moors; with, however, this difference, that they protect against sin as well as against evil. One of the Talmudists writes:—“Whoever has Phylacteries on his head, Mazonza on his door, and fringes on his garment, is assured that he will not sin; for it is written, ‘And the threefold cord is not easily rent.’”[220]

The mystical vestments have a very different interest, and are so connected with the costume of this country that I shall reserve this subject till I come to the Moorish haïk. The following passage from the Baal Haturim, expresses the preservative influence of these usages upon the Jewish people:—

“Israel is son of the Holy King, for they are all marked by Him, in their bodies, with the sacred mark (circumcision); in their garments by robes of merit (Taleth and fringes); on their heads, by the Phylactery boxes with the name of the Lord; in their hands by the sacred straps; in their houses by the Mazonza. They are marked in every thing that they are the sons of the most High Being.”

The indifference of the Jews to apostacy may seem incompatible with the instance I have quoted in a former chapter: age makes the difference. The Moors are not doctrinal: they possess blandishments. The Jews do not fear them as contending with age, but as seducing youth; and their instinct appears, alike in yielding in the one case, and resisting in the other. They are gainers in both, for in the one they would lose by apostacy, in the other by martyrdom.

I have several times visited the wife of the renegade, and the mother of the Jewish boy. Speaking the Spanish of the sixteenth century as the Jews of Barbary do, she recalled the condition of the Jews in Spain, as the fate of her husband and child did something of the cause of their expulsion. The peninsula, which did not share in the frenzy of the Crusaders, remained a stranger to the religious fanaticism which resulted from them. At the time when the Jews were proscribed throughout the rest of Europe, they were, in Spain, the favourites of monarchs, princes, and rulers—they were possessors of land—they had most of the wealth and commerce of the different kingdoms in their hands, and appear to have been twice as numerous as their forefathers when they entered the Holy Land.[221] Then did the persecutions here assume a savage character unknown elsewhere.

No cause has been assigned for the sudden and bitter spirit of persecution which, at so late a period, arose against them. It may have taken its rise in their being the fiscal agents for king, bishop, monastery, and proprietor. First assailed from social animosities, their manner of screening themselves (which was afforded in no other country) aroused the inextinguishable hatred of the Christians. That part of their history, suggested by circumstances before me, is their facility in receiving baptism, then, of course, relapsing; and there can be no doubt that many of these nominally conforming Christians, and their children and descendants, filled every grade of the priesthood, and occupied the episcopal thrones of Spain. Out of this again grew the Inquisition, the most artful instrument of despotic power, and which, in Europe, has been mistaken for a religious institution. Finding that conversions were worthless, the proof of apostacy was sought in the traces of blood. The processes of the Inquisition were afterwards imitated by Parliament in England, when, fabricating a church by-law, it framed articles to catch consciences, as it now does resolutions to catch votes. The two great events are the emancipation from bondage, and the conquest of a territory. Promises, rights, obligations, and commandments, are all understood with reference to these. The stranger within their gates was to obey the commandments. He partook of necessity in certain ceremonies: he might at his option be admitted to all, unless excepted, like the Philistines, Amalekites, &c., because of historical events. Hence the difference with Mussulmans and Christians, whose bond is wholly religious, and who aim at extinguishing all distinctions derived from birth and race. The Jews having no idea of converting others, estimate differently from us an apparent conformity with the creeds of the people among whom they sojourn.[222]

The Jews have in common with the Mussulmans everything like doctrine—the unity of the Godhead—the attributes of God—the inspiration of the Sacred Books, the Creation, the scheme of Providence, the prophets on earth, the chosen people, the law of Sinai and of Horeb, the ceremony—the abhorrence of idolatry. There is nothing the Jew believes that the Mussulman does not believe; there is no ceremony the Jew performs that the Mussulman does not respect, or meat that he prepares, which the Mussulman cannot eat.[223] The passage, therefore, from Judaism to Islamism appears easy. It was amongst the Jews that Islamism first and most rapidly spread: fifty thousand were converted in one day, yet in its subsequent stages it has been by them most uncompromisingly resisted. Millions of Christians have become Mussulmans; of the Jews, no influx has taken place. I know but of two cases of apparent conformity: the one is a tribe at Thessalonica, who are called the Changed (Dunmeh). The other a tribe in Suz, also known by the name of the Changed.[224] In both cases they live as a distinct race; do not intermarry with the Mussulmans; and, though enjoying the privileges of Islamism, are not looked upon by the Jews as renegades.

The father of the boy whose story I have told, professed Islamism to escape popular vengeance, aroused by the extortions of a governor at Dar el Baida, whose agent he was. He nevertheless continued to live in the Jews’ quarter with his wife and child: instead of bringing up the child in his new faith, he sedulously inculcated on him the observance of the law. The Jews seem to have looked upon him as one who had incurred a misfortune. His Islamism was rather a disease, for which he had to be pitied, than an apostacy for which he was to be abhorred; and as the Jews took no offence at his religious profession, so the Moors took none at his domestic habits.

The Mussulmans accept the practices of the Jews, but not so the latter. Both cut the throats of animals, and allow “the blood to run like water on the earth;” but the Mussulman does not inspect the bowels of the ox or the sheep to determine whether it be kaser (imperfect) or tarefa (forbidden); he does not, before and after the operation, observe whether there be a flaw or jag in the knife. He does not examine whether the windpipe of the animal be completely severed—he does not abstain from “seething the kid in its mother’s milk;” that is, from mixing meat, or the juice of meat, in the same dish with butter, or from eating the internal fat. The food, therefore, of the Mussulman, is rejected by the Jews, even to the dishes from which they have eaten. The great obstacle to their amalgamation with the Mussulmans is the character of Christ. In the Mussulman system Christ is the Spirit of God, and is to be the Judge of the world: this, and the recognition of the Gospel by the Mussulmans, is the stumbling block in their path, and hence the common expression, “A Jew must become a Christian before he can be a Mussulman.”

The Jew in Barbary appears to me more Jewish than elsewhere. The burden on him is greater, and religious support less. They are Sadducees, if I am to judge by the conversations I have had with some; and have no idea of believing anything. In proportion to the association of a system of religion with domestic matters is it enduring. Those of Menu and Confucius stand, while the more theoretic one of Zoroaster has passed away. That of Menu presents not one, but a hundred different examples; for as many castes as there are, so many systems may there be said to be, and these are all based on injunctions respecting food and ceremonial. Confucius’s system is the simplest form of natural religion, and the purest rule of morals: it has no superstition, no priesthood, no castes, no doctrines—whence then its durability? Its basis is the ceremonial of society. It has minutely regulated the forms of intercourse and the mode of salutation of the nearest relatives.