Israel in Europe

by G. F. Abbott

Analogous causes led to analogous conditions in Roumania’s western neighbour, Servia. Under Ottoman rule the lot of the Jew in that country differed little from that of his Christian fellow-slave. The Mohammedan theocracy recognises no rights except those of the true believers. Both Jews and Christians, inasmuch as they refuse to accept the latest addition to the revealed Word of God, are outside the pale of citizenship. But, on the whole, the Jews, thanks to their pacific disposition and lack of political aspirations, as well as to the closer resemblance between the Mosaic and the Mohammedan forms of worship, suffered less than the Christian rayahs from Turkish oppression. The emancipation of the province, while rescuing the Christian from ignominy, condemned the Jew to an even worse fate. Under the Turk the Jew was at least allowed the congenial privilege of buying and selling, whereas under the Christian even that consolation was denied to him. In Servia, by a curious dispensation of constitutional legislation, the very opposite to the one prevailing amongst us before 1858, the Jews, while forbidden the most elementary rights of citizenship, were theoretically eligible to the highest offices in the state. According to Servian law, a Jew could be a Prime Minister, but not a grocer. He might make laws for others, but could not appeal to them for his own protection. This Gilbertian state of things had attracted the attention of the friends of Israel abroad, and for many years successive representatives of Great Britain and of other Western Powers at Belgrade, spurred by the Jewish charitable associations, had endeavoured to induce the Servians to grant to the Jews the necessaries, as well as the luxuries, of existence. In 1875 the Servians, no longer able to resist the pressure of Europe, proceeded to show their liberality by electing a Jew to the Skuptchina. But the European Powers declined to be deluded by this clever display of legerdemain. Our own Foreign Office, besides steps taken directly at Belgrade, made an effort to enlist Prince Bismarck’s and Prince Gortchakoff’s powerful influence on behalf of the Servian Israelites. The effort was, of course, unsuccessful. The German Chancellor cared nothing for the Jews, and his Russian colleague less than nothing.[209]

Meanwhile similar remonstrances were made, and similar results obtained, at Bucharest, until the Congress of Berlin in 1878 afforded the champions of the Jews and justice an opportunity of forcing upon the Roumanians the counsels of toleration to which they had hitherto refused to listen.[210] Among these champions none was more staunch than Lord Beaconsfield. It was the one subject on which the Commander of the Tories out-whigged the most advanced of Whigs. Even Gladstone in the most radical period of his career pronounced Disraeli on the Jewish Question “much more than rational, he was fanatical.”[211] Though baptized at the age of twelve, Disraeli remained a genuine and loyal son of Israel. While as a British statesman of a certain school he opposed Gladstone’s campaign on behalf of the Eastern Christians in 1876, as a Jew he was working heart and soul on behalf of the Eastern Jews. He also was consistent. By the aid of M. Waddington, the French Delegate at the Congress of Berlin, and his own diplomatic adroitness, Disraeli succeeded in gaining over Prince Bismarck and, through him, in overcoming the good Emperor William’s conscientious scruples about the propriety of treating Eastern Jews as if they were Christians. And so it came to pass that by Art. 44 of the Treaty of Berlin the recognition of Roumanian Independence was made conditional upon the abolition of all religious disabilities in the Danubian principalities.

What followed might have supplied valuable material to Aristophanes. To the stipulation of the Treaty the Roumanians returned the astounding answer that “there was no such thing as a Roumanian Jew.” This calm denial of the existence of more than a quarter of a million of human beings failed to satisfy the signatories to the Treaty. Thereupon the Roumanians lifted up their voices and, with remarkable lack of sense of the ludicrous, protested against the “iniquity” of being forced to admit the Jews to the rights of Roumanian citizenship, solemnly declaring that the Russian or even the Turkish yoke was preferable to this grievous condition. The chief reasons brought forward by Roumanian politicians in justification of their attitude in 1878, and since that date re-echoed even in this country by apologists of Roumanian bigotry, were based upon grounds of national sentimentality. It was urged that it is contrary to Roumanian traditions to admit to political equality any one who is not of pure Roumanian blood; that the preservation of the purity of their race has ever been the chief concern of the Roumanians; and that the accident of being born on Roumanian soil does not constitute a title to the status of Roumanian citizenship.

Now, apart from the facts that the ancestors of many Roumanian Jews have been in the country for ages, and that many of their descendants have fought gallantly for Roumania’s freedom, the “purity of race,” on which Roumanian patriots are so fond of dwelling, is as pure a myth as any to be found in the collection of legends that still passes for history in the Balkan Peninsula. In the first place, the very origin of the Roumanians is surrounded by a denser cloud of mist than that which usually surrounds the origin of nations. That their language is akin to Latin is no more certain proof of the Roman descent which they claim than is the parallel kinship of Spanish, Portuguese, and French to the tongue of ancient Rome a proof of the Latin origin of the modern Spaniards, Portuguese, and Frenchmen. But, even granting that Rome is, to use the phrase of a recent Roumanian Minister, “le berceau de leur race,” the original nucleus of Roman colonists has undergone in the course of ages such matrimonial vicissitudes as must have caused the blood to lose a considerable portion of its primitive “purity.” The Roman settlers found the country already peopled by an alien race. Ovid, banished by Augustus to Tomi on the Black Sea—near the modern town of Kustendje—describes the district as one inhabited by savages. ♦8–17 A.D.♦ All his letters from the country during his ten years’ exile are one long lament over his hard fate. He dwells again and again on the bitterness of the lot which has cast him among people who do not understand Latin, he expresses the fear that he will gradually forget his own tongue, and his whole correspondence is an alternate wail on the horrors of barbarous warfare and the hardships of barbarous life.

Towards the end of the first century Trajan conquered Dacia, the modern Wallachia, and, in pursuance of the old Roman policy, the conquerors endeavoured to confirm their hold upon the country by the settlement of Latin colonists and by the introduction of the Latin language. ♦250 A.D.♦ The Latinisation of Dacia was, however, interrupted by the invasion of the Goths, a warlike horde lured by the prospect of reaping where the peaceful peasantry of Dacia had sown under the protection of the Roman eagles. They met with no opposition in the newly and imperfectly settled province; and this absence of opposition is the best proof of the precarious nature of the Roman rule and of the paucity of the Roman settlers. Twenty years later the Emperor Aurelian, convinced of the impossibility of holding the country, relinquished it to the Goths and Vandals. Upon the evacuation of Dacia most of the Roman subjects crossed the Danube and settled in the region stretching from the river’s southern bank, and then was formed the new Dacia which corresponds to modern Bulgaria. The old country of the same name on the northern bank of the Danube retained, it is true, a great number of its inhabitants, but the mere fact of their consenting to serve a Gothic master, when the option to remain under Roman rule was open to them, shows how feeble the Roman element must have been among them. This population was gradually blended with the dominant Gothic tribe, and there was formed an independent state inhabited by a mixed race which, characteristically enough, claimed the renown of a Scandinavian origin, or descent from the old indigenous “savage Getae” whom Ovid has immortalised in his Pontic Epistles. Interest promoted peaceful relations, and even alliance, with the Roman Empire, and thus the Roman language continued to be heard on the northern bank of the Danube.

Yet another hundred years have passed by, and a new horde of barbarians, even more fierce and monstrous, overthrew the power of the Goths, who in abject terror implored the Emperor Valens to permit them to cross the river and settle in Thrace. ♦375 A.D.♦ Valens, hoping to ensure the stability of his Empire by enlisting the services of new and hardy subjects, granted the request of the Goths, though not without hesitation and misgivings. The barbarians crossed the Danube to find themselves compelled to part with their arms and their children. This harsh demand, justified though it may have been as a precautionary measure, excited the indignation of the immigrants, who tried to force a passage in defiance of the Roman legions. The latter met violence with violence, until an Imperial order reached them to transport the new-comers across the river. The passage was stormy, and many were drowned, but there survived a number sufficient to rout the Imperial troops and to turn the Eastern Empire into a field of massacre, rapine, and ruin.[212]

Such are the titles upon which the modern Roumanians have always based their claims to a Roman pedigree. First, it is to be observed that the term Roumanian includes not only the inhabitants of Wallachia, the ancient Dacia, occupied for a while by the Roman legions, but also the inhabitants of Moldavia, over whom the Roman never bore sway. Secondly, even in Dacia, how many of the original Romans were there left after the double evacuation and conquest of the province? Nor did matters improve after the fourth century. Roumania is the highway over which, during the last fifteen hundred years, wave after wave of Goth, Hun, Avar, Slav, and Bulgar has poured on its southward course; and it must be a truly extraordinary flood that leaves no alluvial deposit behind it. If to these inundations be added the Greek element which, though never very numerous, exercised a powerful influence over the country during the Ottoman domination, it would need exceptionally robust faith to uphold the purity doctrine.

In fact, the quantity of foreign blood in Roumania is amply attested by the features of the modern Roumanian peasant and by the Roumanian language itself. This language, besides a large admixture of Slavonic words and idioms which the professors of Bucharest have been earnestly endeavouring to eliminate, is phonetically very closely related to the Slavonic dialects of the neighbourhood, and until two generations ago was actually written in Slavonic characters. It was about 1848—the annus mirabilis of Continental Nationalism—that the Latin alphabet was introduced, but, despite the strenuous exertions of patriotic pedants, even this alphabet had to be modified so as to meet the phonetic requirements of non-Latin throats,[213] and the feat has been accomplished, clumsily enough, by a profusion of accents and other accessories more or less picturesque and bewildering. The very family names of the Roumanians, when not artificially brought into harmony with modern academic sentiment, reveal a non-Latin origin. Those of the peasantry are frequently Slavonic, while those of the nobility are not infrequently Greek. Yet the purists banished the Slavonic element from the dictionary of the Roumanian language compiled under the auspices of the Roumanian Academy by two native Latinists. Take, again, Roumanian folk-lore. Any one who has given the subject even superficial attention can see at a glance the deep impress of Slavonic thought and custom in the legends and superstitions of the Roumanian peasantry. Yet, such are the sublime effects of racial fanaticism, when a few years ago a competition was instituted at Bucharest for the best comparative study of the national folk-lore, the work on which the prize was bestowed did not contain a single allusion to the folk-lore of the adjacent Slavonic countries.

Of course, these facts, ignored though they are by the Roumanians and their advocates, do not prevent a Roumanian from being a Roumanian, however much they may prevent him from being a Roman; nay, one would be loth to grudge to natives of Moldo-Wallachia the pleasure of contemplating a long line of noble Latin ancestors, imaginary though it be, did they not make this harmless gratification of their vanity an excuse for depriving other natives of Moldo-Wallachia of the very means of existence. Moreover, one may not unreasonably ask, in what way would the enfranchisement of the Jews impair the “purity” of the Roumanian race? The Jews in other lands are often charged, and not unjustly, with aversion from intermarriage with the Gentiles. Indeed, the Roumanians themselves seem to feel the force of this objection, for they attempt to parry it by the argument that, should the Jews be admitted to the deliberations of the Roumanian Parliament, they would form a compact party of obstructionists—why, does not appear. A more probable result of such an admittance has recently been suggested by one of those very Jews who, although a Roumanian for many generations, although educated in Roumania’s schools and imbued with Roumanian traditions, has been compelled to leave his country, because that country—“the only country I knew and, God knows, loved with heart and soul, reckoned me a ‘foreigner’ and as such deprived me of the chance of earning a livelihood.” This exile declares: “Were the treaty of Berlin lived up to, and the Jews given emancipation, they, being all literate and city-dwellers, would, according to the provisions of the electoral law, belong to either the first or the second electoral college, and would therefore either share the privileges of the present privileged class, whose number exactly equals that of the resident Jews, and share its power, or would compel that privileged class to give up its privileges and change the laws so as to give the great mass of people a voice in the running of their public affairs.”[214]

When the dialecticians of Bucharest realised that their ingenuity produced no impression upon the blunt minds of Western statesmen, they changed their tactics. A commission of deputies was appointed to investigate and report on the question of Jewish disabilities. The commissioners’ report began with the subtle distinction between “Roumanian Jews” and “native Jews,” declaring that only the latter variety was in existence, and adding that these Jews, though born in the country, were really aliens. As such, they might obtain naturalisation, if they applied for it individually; but the boon could only be granted by a special Act, passed for each particular case. This revision was effected by the simple alteration of Art. 7 of the Roumanian Constitution, which had hitherto restricted the right of naturalisation to “foreigners of Christian denominations,” into one embracing all “foreigners” alike, without distinction of creed, who had lived for ten years in the country.