When vaunting Folly lifts her head on high?
No! rather let us triumph still the more,
And as our fortune sinks, our spirit soar.”
Faith has its reward. While the captives bewail their lot, deliverance is close at hand. The star of Cyrus has risen; Babylon the proud falls, and the prophecy concerning the restoration of Israel is fulfilled.
But strong as is the sympathy with the fortunes and the spirit of Israel in both these works, neither of them can be legitimately considered as bearing directly on the Jewish question. The Shylock tradition is still powerful in England, for want of a Lessing. It is not ponderous poetasters, like Cumberland and Burgess, nor yet sweet singers like the gentle Goldsmith, who will overthrow a convention hallowed by the genius of a Shakespeare.
CHAPTER XX
PALINGENESIA
The French Revolution is over. For a while the volcanic forces, which had long groaned in subterranean bondage, broke their prison, burst into the light of day, and brought death and desolation upon the face of the earth. But their task is done. Nemesis has obtained the due and forfeit of her bond, and the Titans have returned to their Tartarean abode, until such time as their services may be needed again. A sentimentalist will, no doubt, find much to lament in the unsparing fury of the avengers. Their hand has struck down everything that stood high—good, evil, and indifferent alike—with elemental impartiality. But the philosopher may, on the whole, see reason to rejoice. At all events, he will, if he happens to be a Jew. For among the ruins of tyranny he will recognise the rusty chains which had for centuries weighed upon the limbs of Israel. They are gone, whatever may have survived. Whatever may be said of the rest, they were an evil. The Jew sees nothing but the hand of God in the desolation wrought by another. For him the Powers of Darkness had broken their prison; for him the proud ones of the earth had been laid low; for him the dreams of freedom dreamt by the poets and thinkers of France had been turned into a reality of despotism. What matter? Cyrus was a despot, and yet a deliverer of Israel; Alexander was another; and Napoleon was doubtless destined to be the third. Strange, indeed, are the ways of the Lord, but His mercy endureth for ever toward Israel.
The hopes of the Jews were not disappointed. The work of enfranchisement, commenced by philosophers like Montesquieu, and carried on by patriots like Mirabeau, was completed by Napoleon. Though deeply sensible of the disagreeable fact that usury and extortion had been the favourite pursuits of the Jews from time immemorial, Napoleon did not allow himself to be biassed by the mediaeval view of the matter. Like Alexander the Great, Caesar, Charlemagne, and Cromwell, he saw the advantage of securing the support of so numerous, so opulent, and so scattered a nation as the Israelites, and one at least of his motives undoubtedly was to conciliate the Jews of Old Prussia, Poland, and Southern Russia, in the hope of profiting by their sympathy and assistance in the contest in which he was then engaged. While depriving individual Jews, notorious for rapacity, of their civil rights, and restricting the operations of the Jews of the north-east of France by temporarily refusing to them the right to sequester the goods of their debtors, the Emperor decided to hear the Jewish side of the question. ♦1806 July♦ By his order an assembly of Hebrew notables from the French and German departments, as well as from Italy, was summoned in Paris. Twelve questions were put to the delegates concerning the Jew’s attitude towards the Gentile, the authority of the Rabbis, usury and conscription; and, on the answers proving satisfactory, Napoleon astonished the assembly with an announcement which no Jewish ear had ever hoped to hear in Europe. The Sanhedrin, or National Council of Israel, after a prorogation of seventeen centuries, was once more convoked. The Hebrew polity had outlasted the heathen Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, Feudalism, and the French Monarchy. Time and the seismic convulsions which had overthrown these mighty fabrics, once regarded as eternal, had respected the humble institutions of the outcasts of humanity. The constitutions of other nations were built upon the earth and were subject to the laws which govern earthly things; the constitution of the Jews was preserved in the archives of Heaven, and was therefore immortal. ♦1807 Feb. 9♦ And so, at a word from Napoleon, seventy-one delegates of the French and Italian Jewries were gathered together in Paris, elected by the synagogues of the two countries in accordance with the ancient forms and usages of Israel.
♦1807 March 2♦
The fruit of the Sanhedrin’s deliberations was a charter which defined the relations between Jew and Gentile in France. While retaining the essential features of Judaism, the Rabbis wisely conceded much to the demands of the country which so generously adopted them. The Nine Responses of the document form a rational compromise between the rights of God and the rights of Caesar: polygamy is forbidden; divorce is allowed in accordance with the civil law of the land; intermarriage with the Gentiles is tolerated, though not sanctioned, by the Synagogue; French Jews are bidden to regard the French people as brethren; acts of justice and charity are recommended towards all believers in the Creator, without distinction of creed; Jews born in France are exhorted to look upon the country as their fatherland, to educate their children in its language, to acquire real property in it, to renounce pursuits hated by their neighbours, and in every way to endeavour to earn the esteem and goodwill of the latter; usury is forbidden towards the stranger as towards the brother; and the interest raised on loans is not, in any case, to exceed the legal rate. Thus an effective answer was given to all the legal arguments which had been advanced by the opponents of Jewish emancipation, and an honest attempt was made by the doctors and chiefs of the nation to remove from the children of Israel a portion at least of that odium under which they had so long laboured.