Thus arose a new sect, the Ananites, or Karaites. Although small in numbers, yet by their energy and combativeness they aroused the less active minds, and stimulated the desire for a knowledge of Holy Writ, which had hitherto fallen into neglect. The impulse given to this study was so powerful that Saadiah, the representative of a Talmudical school, devoted his entire attention to it. Through him a philosophical tendency was introduced into Judæan circles. Until this time, as in Christendom and Islam, a belief in existing authorities had caused it to be considered heretical to speculate upon religion.
From Babylon there now emanated a spark of rational thought and scientific inquiry, which traveled as far as the Pyrenean Peninsula. This territory, being under Mahometan rule, was connected in spirit with the East. A long succession of eminent personages had during two centuries fostered and cultivated a spirit of deep research in Spain, whilst in Christendom a fanatical desire for persecution resulted in the destruction of the Jews, or in their banishment from the homes which they had possessed for so long a time. The culminating point of philosophical thought was attained by Moses Maimuni, who for centuries was "the Guide of the Perplexed," and who also, under the sanction of the Church, exercised a powerful influence on Dominican scholasticism. Where there is great light there must also be much shadow. The shadows caused by the light which had proceeded from Maimuni became embodied in the vagaries of the Kabbala, which confused the minds of the multitude by its forgeries, and corrupted the feelings by its excesses.
A deep gulf was created in Spain and Southern France between the Maimunists and anti-Maimunists, between faith based upon intellectuality, and faith based upon authority. This schism would have given rise to sectarianism, had not the accumulated sufferings of the people riveted their attention on what was proximate—the misery of all. Faith in authority proved victorious, under the influence of the Kabbala, and every scientific pursuit, excepting that of medicine, was proscribed in Spain, as if it were intended to undermine the continuance of Judaism. The fourteenth century ignored the tenth century. Solomon ben Adret, who had solemnly pronounced an interdict against philosophy, ranked Saadiah as to some extent a heretic. It seemed as if, with the decay of knowledge, the glory of the Spanish Jews were to be entirely extinguished.
The cup of sorrow, drained by the Jews throughout Central Europe—from the Rhine to the Vistula, and from the Alps to the marsh-lands of the German Ocean—in consequence of the Black Death, as if they had indeed been poisoners, also reached the Spanish Jews. Their grandees, who had been employed at the court as ministers of finance, diplomatists, private secretaries, or court physicians, were powerless to protect them, as they had formerly done.
The horrible massacre in 1391 had driven many Jews, with wild despair in their hearts, into the arms of the Church, and they deceived themselves with the idea that they could outwardly join the Church, whilst remaining inwardly faithful to the God of Israel.
Thus arose the Marranos. Their fanatical persecutors, however, knew no peace until they had succeeded in arousing the thunders of the Inquisition against the Jews, in lighting the stake, in causing them to be banished from Spain by hundreds of thousands, and in enforcing compulsory baptism in Portugal. But the Inquisition and the stake in both of these countries only awoke a deeper love for Judaism in the hearts of the Marranos. Great as was the number of those who perished at the autos-da-fé, or who pined away in prison, yet their offspring, who secretly continued to cherish their own faith at the risk of their lives, after one or two centuries sought to escape from the hell on the Pyrenean Peninsula.
Under the guise of Spanish or Portuguese merchants, they founded large communities in Bordeaux, Amsterdam, London, and in various parts of Italy. From their step-fatherland they brought with them a higher culture and an aristocratic demeanor. Consequently they did not suffer from the contempt with which other Jews were treated in political and social circles. In fact, the Jews of Marrano descent looked down upon their co-religionists as gypsies, on account of their external deterioration. With marvelous rapidity, however, did those who were considered as gypsies regenerate and elevate themselves; and, what was more marvelous, this change did not proceed from the aristocratic Sephardim. The personage to whom this transformation was due sprang from the midst of those who were so despised and contemned. He bore no trace of culture in his youth, but was deformed, awkward, and shy—this was Moses Mendelssohn, from the petty community of Dessau. Had the call reached him to become the leader of his co-religionists, he would have replied, like the great Prophet in Egypt—"Who am I?" It is remarkable that Mendelssohn, without desiring or intending to do so, paved the way for the emancipation of the Jews and the purification of Judaism. The present age has given the lie to the assertion of Jew-haters (who at the close of the eighteenth century and commencement of the nineteenth century were numberless), that generation after generation must pass away before any improvement could be expected in the debased condition of the Jews.
In two decades there appeared on the canvas of History a series of noble, if not of ennobled Jews, in Germany, France, Holland, and Italy, and these ranked as high as if they had been of equal birth with Christians of the aristocratic class.
The historic course of the Israelite nation not only shows, as with other nations, the stages of growth, bloom, and decay, but it exhibits the extraordinary phenomenon that the decay was succeeded, on three different occasions, by a new budding and blossoming time. The history of the crystallization of the Israelite family group into a nation, and their entry into the land of Canaan, until the establishment of a kingdom, constitutes the growth. The stage of bloom was in the days of the kings David and Solomon, who raised the condition of the Israelite people to that of a state of the first rank. The period of blossoming was short, and was followed by loss of power and by the downfall of the nationality. But again it gradually revived under the rule of the Persians and Greeks, developed under the Maccabees, only to decay away under the Romans. This decay, however, was merely superficial, and was destined to give place to a resuscitation in another form.
One of the prophets has represented the growth of the Israelite nation in Egypt by the picture of a deserted female child left lying in the fields, begrimed with blood and filth, but who, notwithstanding her desertion and misery, develops into a blooming maiden. The development of the race in Babylon is described by another prophet under the image of an unhappy and sorrowing widow, who has been robbed of her children, until, on the unexpected return of her numerous offspring from all ends and corners of the earth, she is comforted, and regains her lost youth with them. For the third rejuvenescence of the Jewish race tradition has likewise found a fitting picture.