Israel in Europe

by G. F. Abbott

Such an opportunity offered itself in the Arab invasion, and the Mohammedan Caliphs found in these suffering children of a kindred race and religion ready and valuable allies. It is not improbable that the fear of such an alliance between the followers of Mohammed and those of Moses had intensified among the Christians of Spain the anti-Jewish feeling which found vent in the violent persecution of the Jews during the years immediately preceding the conquest of the peninsula. If so, the Spaniards by their treatment of the Jews created the situation which they feared. The Mohammedan invasion was prepared by the intrigues of the Jews of Spain with their co-religionists in Africa, who exposed to the Saracens the weaknesses of the Visigothic kingdoms. Tarik, the Mohammedan conqueror, in his triumphant career through the peninsula, ♦711♦ after the battle of Xeres, where Roderic the last of the Visigothic kings had fallen, was everywhere supported by the Jews. Cordova, Granada, Malaga, and other cities were entrusted to the safe-keeping of the Jews, and Toledo was betrayed to the invader by the Jews, who, while the Christian inhabitants were assembled in church praying for divine help, ♦712♦ threw the gates open to the enemy, acclaiming him as a saviour and an avenger.

Persecution had again awakened the desire for redemption, which had never been allowed to remain dormant long. ♦About 720♦ The new Messiah appeared in the person of a Syrian Jewish Reformer, named Serene. It so happened that the Jews of Syria were at that time suffering almost as cruelly at the hands of the fanatical Caliph Omar II. as at those of the Christian Emperor Leo. ♦717–720♦ When, therefore, the Messiah arose, promising to restore them to independence and to exterminate their enemies, many Eastern Jews lent an attentive ear to his gospel. The Redeemer’s fame reached Spain, and the Jews of that country also, still smarting under the sufferings of centuries and probably disappointed in the extravagant hopes which they had built upon the Arab conquest, hastened to enlist under his banner. But Serene’s career was cut short by Omar II.’s successor. The Commander of the Faithful seized the Messiah and subjected him to a severe cross-examination. Whether it was due to the subtlety of the theological riddles propounded to him by the Caliph, or to some more tangible test of constancy, the Prophet’s courage failed him. It was even said, by those who had refused to follow the Messiah, or who having followed were disillusioned, that Serene declared his mission to be only a practical pleasantry at the expense of his credulous co-religionists. Be that as it may, poor Serene was delivered up to the tender mercies of the Synagogue, and his disgrace dissipated the Messianic dream for the time.

But in less than a generation another Reformer of the Messianic type appeared in the Persian town of Ispahan to rekindle the enthusiasm and try the faith of his people. This was Obaiah Abu Isa ben Ishak. He, somewhat more modest than his predecessor, claimed to be only one—though the last and most perfect—of a line of five forerunners who were to prepare the way for the coming Redeemer. He also held out the promise to free the children of Israel from thraldom. Nor did he preach to deaf ears. One of the most striking inconsistencies in the Jewish character is the combination which it presents of unlimited shrewdness and suspiciousness with an almost equal capacity for being duped. The people who in every age have been hated as past masters of deceit, have themselves often been the greatest victims of imposture. Religious belief is so strong in them that, especially in times of suffering, nothing seems improbable that agrees with their predisposition. Libenter homines id quod volunt credunt. Ten thousand Jews rallied round Obaiah’s standard. The war for independence began at Ispahan and for a while seemed to promise success. But the Prophet fell in battle, and, though his memory was kept green by his followers, who endured till the tenth century, none proved able to carry on the work of deliverance.

CHAPTER VI
MIDDLE AGES

“Jews massacred in France,” “Jews massacred in Germany,” “Jews massacred in England,” “Jews massacred in Germany and France,” “Jews massacred in Spain,” again and again and again. These headings, not to mention expulsions, oppressions and spoliations without number, stare us in the face as we turn over the pages of the history of Mediaeval Europe, and the cold lines assume a terrible significance as we peruse tale after tale of bodily and mental torment, such as no other people ever suffered and survived. And as we read on, and try to realise the awful scenes, the desolate cry of the sufferers rings in our ears, like a long-drawn wail borne across the centuries: “How long, O Lord, how long?”

It would, of course, be an absurd exaggeration to assert that the life of Israel through the Middle Ages was an unbroken horror of carnage and rapine. There were spells of respite, some of them fairly long, during which the Jew was permitted to live and grow fat. But these Sabbaths of rest can be likened not inaptly to the periods during which a prudent husbandman suffers his land to lie fallow, in the hope of a richer harvest. They are only intervals between the acts of a tedious and bloody tragedy, with a continent for its stage and seven centuries for its night. But, though covering so vast an extent in space and time, the drama is not devoid of unity: the unity of plot. The motives and the characters are ever the same, each scene ends in strict accord with the foregoing, and the performance is a masterpiece of mournful monotony. Nor is it easy to bestow the crown of excellence on any European nation of actors without being unjust to their colleagues.

The drama naturally divides itself into two periods: the period of spontaneous but unsystematic hostility, and the period of deliberate and organised persecution.

While the Church was engaged in disseminating the gospel abroad, in rooting out heresy at home and in establishing her own authority, she had little time to devote to the persecution of the Jews; and the only canon law against them was the prohibition to dwell under the same roof with Christians and to employ Christian servants—a law which, in the absence of rigorous supervision, often remained a dead letter, and much oftener was observed, simply because neither side felt any violent desire to break it. The Jews consequently throve amazingly, their synagogues grew in number and splendour, and their antipathy to outside influences, though continuing to be as implacable as ever, found its chief expression in social isolation tempered by commercial exploitation.

In every country and in every city in Europe they remained sharply separated from their Christian neighbours, shunning intermarriage with them, and forming a perfectly distinct body of people, with the synagogue for its centre and its soul. The synagogue elected its own officers in accordance with the traditions of the Temple and the instructions of the Talmud, passing communal ordinances which, as in ancient times, regulated the whole of Jewish life: enforcing monogamy, prohibiting shaving, fixing the tax on meat, restraining gambling, forbidding the promiscuous dancing of Jews and Jewesses, dictating marriage settlements and divorce, defining the dress and diet of men and women. The State frequently levied the taxes on the Jewish community in a lump sum, leaving the assessment among individual members and the collection to the officers of the synagogue.[41] Justice also was administered by the Beth Din, or Jewish religious tribunal. Thus, despite much external interference, the Jewries constituted self-governing colonies—strange oases in mediaeval society. Their members were neither villeins nor freeholders; neither men-at-arms nor mechanics. Feudalism concerned them as little as Catholicism. They took no more part in the martial exercises than in the spiritual devotions of their neighbours. They belonged neither to the knightly orders nor to the commercial and industrial corporations; but they lived a life of their own, in closer communion of interests and tastes with their brethren in Cairo or Babylon than with their fellow-townsmen. In the ninth century, for instance, Babylon was to the Jews of Western Europe what Rome was to the Catholics—the oracle of Divine knowledge—and Rabbinical decisions issued therefrom were obeyed as implicitly as Papal Bulls. The Mediaeval Jews were as indifferent to the beauties of Chivalry as to its duties. The notes of the minstrel fell dead upon their ears, and the sterile subtleties of Talmudical exegesis thrilled them more than the amours of romance. Latin, the language of Western Christendom, was abhorred by the descendants of those whom the Roman destroyer of the Temple had driven into exile, and the study of the Torah was the one form of literature to which all Jews, old and young, rich and poor, devoted themselves with a single-minded earnestness worthy of the ancient Pharisees and Scribes. Even in their mutual greetings they retained the oriental formula “Peace be to thee,” “To thee a goodly blessing.”

This ominous isolation was to the Jews a source of pride, with which no bribe could induce them to part. The thought of making themselves one with the uncircumcised was as repugnant to them as it had been to their ancestors on entering Canaan. Their poetical literature, which through the Jewish hymn-book supplied a bond of sympathy between all the scattered sections of Mediaeval Jewry, is a lasting monument of their sorrows and of their self-glorification; of their faith in the promises of the past and of their firm trust in the future. All these sentiments may be regarded as embodied in that love for an idealised and idolised Zion which brightened many a gloomy hour, and which was for the Jews what political ambitions and aspirations were for their Christian neighbours. They looked upon themselves but as sojourners in the land, and upon their residence among the Gentiles as an evil dream from which the Lord in His time would awaken them, and lead His people back to the land of their fathers. Israel still was the slave of the Idea, and its victim.