Of all the simply silly slanders from which his people had suffered, such, for instance, as the kneading Passover biscuits with the blood of Christian children, Manasseh disposes shortly, with brief and distinct denial; pertinently reminding Englishmen, however, that like absurd accusations crop up in the early history of the Church, when the ‘very same ancient scandalls was cast of old upon the innocent Christians.’
With the more serious, because less absolutely untruthful, charge of ‘usury,’ Manasseh deals as boldly, urging even no extenuating plea, but frankly admitting the practice to be ‘infamous.’ But characteristically, he proceeds to express an opinion, that ‘inasmuch as no man is bound to give his goods to another, so is he not bound to let it out but for his own occasions and profit,’ ‘only,’ and this he adds emphatically—
‘It must be done with moderation, that the usury be not biting or exorbitant.... The sacred Scripture, which allows usury with him that is not of the same religion, forbids absolutely the robbing of all men, whatsoever religion they be of. In our law it is a greater sinne to rob or defraud a stranger, than if I did it to one of my owne profession; a Jew is bound to show his charity to all men; he hath a precept, not to abhorre an Idumean or an Egyptian; and yet another, that he shall love and protect a stranger that comes to live in his land. If, notwithstanding, there be some that do contrary to this, they do it not as Jewes simply, but as wicked Jewes.’
The Appeal made, as it could scarcely fail to do, a profound impression—an impression which was helped not a little by the presence and character of the pleader. And presently the whole question of the return of the Jews to England was submitted to the nation for its decision.
The clergy were dead against the measure, and, it is said, ‘raged like fanatics against the Jews as an accursed nation.’ And then it was that Cromwell, true to his highest convictions, stood up to speak in their defence. On the ground of policy, he temperately urged the desirability of adding thrifty, law-respecting, and enterprising citizens to the national stock; and on the higher ground of duty, he passionately pleaded the unpopular cause of religious and social toleration. He deprecated the principle that, the claims of morality being satisfied, any men or any body of men, on the score of race, of origin, or of religion (‘tribal mark’ had not at that date been suggested), should be excluded from full fellowship with other men. ‘I have never heard a man speak so splendidly in my life,’ is the recorded opinion of one of the audience, and it is a matter of intense regret that this famous speech of Cromwell’s has not been preserved. Its eloquence, however, failed of effect, so far as its whole and immediate object was concerned. The gates were no more than shaken on their rusting hinges—not quite yet were the people free to ‘go through.’
The decision of the Council of State was deferred, and some authorities even allege that it was presently pronounced against the readmission of the Jews to England. The known and avowed favour of the Protector sufficed, nevertheless, to induce the few Jews who had come with, or in the train of, Manasseh to remain, and others gradually, and by degrees, and without any especial notice being taken of them, ventured to follow. The creaking old gates were certainly ajar, and wider and wider they opened, and fainter and fainter, from friction of unrestrained intercourse, grew each dull rust and stain of prejudice, till that good day, within living memories, when the barriers were definitely and altogether flung down. And on their ruins a new and healthy human growth sprang quickly up, ‘taking root downwards, and fruit upwards,’ spreading wide enough in its vigorous luxuriance to cover up all the old bad past. And by this time it has happily grown impervious to any wanton unfriendly touch which would thrust its kindly shade aside and once again lay those ugly ruins bare.
Manasseh, however, like so many of us, had to be content to sow seed which he was destined never to see ripen. His petitions to the Commonwealth were presented in 1655, his Vindiciæ Judæorum was completed and handed in some time in 1656, and in the early winter of 1657, on his journey homewards, he died. His mission had not fulfilled itself in the complete triumphant way he had hoped, but ‘life fulfils itself in many ways,’ and one part at any rate, perhaps the most important part, of the Hebrew prophet’s charge, had been both poetically and prosaically carried out by this seventeenth century Dutch Jew. He had ‘lifted up a standard for his people.’
CHARITY IN TALMUDIC TIMES
SOME ANCIENT SOLVINGS OF A MODERN PROBLEM
‘What have we reaped from all the wisdom sown of ages?’ asks Lord Lytton in one of his earlier poems. A large query, even for so questioning an age as this, an age which, discarding catechisms, and rejecting the omniscient Mangnall’s Questions as a classic for its children, yet seems to be more interrogative than of old, even if a thought less ready in its responses. Possibly, we are all in too great a hurry nowadays, too eager in search to be patient to find, for certain it is that the world’s already large stock of hows and whys seems to get bigger every day. We catch the echoes in poetry and in prose, in all sorts of tones and from all sorts of people, and Lord Lytton’s question sounds only like another of the hopeless Pilate series. His is such a large interrogation too—all the wisdom sown of all the ages suggests such an enormous crop! And then as to what ‘we,’ who have neither planted nor watered, have ‘reaped’ from it! An answer, if it were attempted, might certainly be found to hinge on the ‘we’ as well as on the ‘wisdom,’ for whereas untaught instinct may ‘reap’ honey from a rose, trained reason in gathering the flower may only succeed in running a thorn into the finger. What has been the general effect of inherited wisdom on the general world may, however, very well be left for a possible solution to prize competitors to puzzle over. But to a tiny corner of the tremendous subject it is just possible that we may find some sort of suggestive reply; and from seed sown ages since, and garnered as harvest by men whose place knows them no more, we may likely light on some shadowy aftermath worth, perhaps, our reaping.
The gospel of duty to one’s neighbour, which, long languishing as a creed, seems now reviving as a fashion, has always been, amongst that race which taught ‘love thy neighbour as thyself,’ not only of the very essence of religion, but an ordinary social form of it. It is ‘law’ in the ‘family chronicle’ of the race, as Heine calls the Bible; it is ‘law’ and legend both in those curious national archives known as Talmud. Foremost in the ranks of livres incompris stand those portentous volumes, the one work of the world which has suffered about equally at the hands of the commentator and the executioner. Many years ago Emmanuel Deutsch gave to the uninitiated a glimpse into that wondrous agglomeration of fantastically followed facts, where long-winded legend, or close-argued ‘law,’ starts some phrase or word from Holy Writ as quarry, and pursues it by paths the most devious, the most digressive imaginable to man. The work of many generations and of many ‘masters’ in each generation, such a book is singularly susceptible to an open style of reading and a liberal aptitude of quotation, and it is no marvel that searchers in its pages, even reasonably honest ones, should be able to find detached individual utterances to fit into almost any one of their own preconceived dogmas concerning Talmud. On many subjects, qualifications, contradictions, differences abound, and instances of illegal law, of pseudo-science, of doubtful physics, may each, with a little trouble, be disinterred from the depths of these twelve huge volumes. But the ethics of the Talmud are, as a whole, of a high order, and on one point there is such remarkable and entire agreement, that it is here permissible to speak of what ‘the Talmud says,’ meaning thereby a general tone and consensus of opinion, and not the views of this or of that individual master. The subject on which this unusual harmony prevails is the, in these days, much discussed one of charity; and to discover something concerning so very ancient a mode of dealing with it may not prove uninteresting.