CHAPTER VIII.
THE ENTRANCE OF THE JEWS INTO EUROPE.
CHASDAI'S LIBRARY.—HIS ACCOUNT OF THE ENTRANCE OF THE JEWS INTO EUROPE.—THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.—A TERRIBLE CARNAGE.—ISRAEL CEASES AS A NATION.—THE DIASPORE.—THE DAUGHTER-RELIGIONS THRIVE UPON THE SUFFERINGS THEY INFLICT UPON THE MOTHER-RELIGION.—THE INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF ISRAEL.—HUMILIATED BUT NOT FORSAKEN.
When we were comfortably seated in the magnificent library of Chasdai ben Isaac, which was furnished luxuriantly, and with an eye to ease and comfort, and stocked with thousands of parchment folios, which stood row upon row, from floor to ceiling, in beautifully arched and decorated alcoves, along the walls of the spacious library hall, our host, Chasdai ben Isaac, began:
"My friends, you asked for an account of 'The Entrance of the Jews into Europe.' The task you honor me with is not an easy one. Upon these shelves stand side by side the best that has been written upon History, Theology and Science, the classics, old and new, in their various tongues, both in prose and poetry, all that has been written for and against the religions of Mohammedanism and Christianity and Judaism, and yet among these thousands of volumes you will search in vain for historic traces of the movements of the Hebrew people since their exile from their native soil. Nay, more, you may even look through the vast library of the Caliph, than which exists at present (950 A. C.) none greater upon the face of the earth, and still you will find naught upon this subject. You may consult the most renowned scholars of our age and meet with no better result.
You marvel why so little is known of the History of the Jews during the period that extends from the Diaspore (70 A. C.) to the time of the conquests of the Arab-Moors of Spain, yet you will cease to marvel when you reflect upon the degradations, persecutions, cruelties, sufferings heaped upon them, when you remember that histories are never written of those who are considered outcasts, pariahs, moral lepers, the accursed by God and man, and the so degraded and execrated, the so persecuted and so barbarously treated are not over-zealous to rejoice their scourgers by flaunting the history of their suffering in their face. What I know of that period is little, and that little have I secured only after much labor and diligent research.
Insatiable Rome, she who had made the world her slave, in whose realm the sun ne'er set, and who, to vaunt of so vast a power, had killed in cold blood, and for no offense at all, fully as many as she ever claimed among the living had stretched at last her cruel hand against Palestine, and the "separate" and "peculiar" and sacred land became a heathen heritage. Jerusalem, the Holy City, lay in ruins. Smoking embers marked the site where stood the Temple of Temples, and the glory of Israel fell, and fell forever, and Israel ceased, and ceased forever, as a nation among the nations of the earth.
Rome enacted a carnage within the holy city, the like of which her inhuman legions, with all their multitudinous and murderous experience, had never seen before. What the famine had left the sword consumed, and what escaped the sword fell a prey to the flames, and what remained, after streams of human blood had quenched the flames, dropped dead beneath the pestilence, and they, that had defied all these grim allies of cruel death, were driven into an open space, the tallest and most handsome were reserved to grace the triumphal march of Titus, to be dragged along the streets of Rome with a halter around their neck, and to be executed after the eyes and ears of the Romans had had their fill of the conquered's sufferings; of the rest, all above seventeen years of age were sold to distant countries, to the most cruel servitude, or they were distributed among the provinces to give sport to the people by their gladiatorial combats, fighting for their lives against hungry and ferocious beasts.
One million one hundred and ten thousand Jews perished during this siege; ninety-seven thousand were driven in chains as slaves to distant lands. The old and feeble, and the young and helpless who were spared, not from mercy, but because the Romans for once, weary of their slaughter, and sickened from the loathsome sight and insufferable stench that arose from the heaps of unburied, putrid bodies, were forced to retreat. This pitiable remnant was compelled to take the staff of exile.