5. In Italy.—In Italy, the Popes personally were, as a rule, mild in their treatment of the Jewish race. At the coronation of each new Pope the Jews of Rome had to offer the Holy Father a scroll of the Law, which the Pontiff would take in his hand, and sadly remarking, ‘Your Law is good, but you understand it not,’ would return to them, turning his back on the deputation as he did so. This old custom, somewhat humiliating in its form, and which can be traced back so far as the twelfth century, remained in force until our own times, as if to remind Jews that they were accounted heretics; but with this exception, and with only a very occasional baptism effected by force or by stratagem, there was little done to bring home the fact to them. Inthe Middle Ages, as we have seen, the Popes had small need for robbing Jews in the name of religion. They had all Christendom to draw on for revenue, and when the period of paying for indulgences and dispensations had passed away, the period of licensed plundering and proselytising was passing too. And many of the later Popes were learned and enlightened men, who were humane by nature as well as by habit. The downfall of Napoleon caused, for a time, a cloud to spread over that dawn of wider liberty which had broken with the Revolution. Once more, and until the year 1848, the Jews in the Papal dominions were shut up in their ghetto, and in Rome, they were not altogether emancipated, till 1870. From 1848, however, their position throughout Italy steadily, if somewhat slowly, improved. Since 1859, the Jews in Tuscany and Lombardy have been emancipated; since 1861, in Naples and Sicily; since 1866, in Venice; and since 1870, in the capital. At the present time, in all the Italian dominions, Jews are in possession of civil and religious rights.
6. In Spain and Portugal.—In 1821, Portugal opened her gates again to her long-expelled Jews. At the consecration service of the first reopened synagogue in Lisbon there was a curious sight. Members of what had always been accounted Catholic families hurried up from the interior of the country to take part in the ceremony. What could these Catholics want in a Jewish place of worship? thought the authorities. The mystery was soon explained. The strangers proved to be Marannos, who, from generation to generation for 300 years, had worn adisguise, and were now anxious to cast it off, and to take upon themselves once again the ‘inheritance of Jacob.’ Spain held longer than Portugal to the old bad policy, but in 1868 she, too, annulled the decree which kept Jews from her shores.
7. In Austrian Dominions.—The Leibzoll was abolished by Joseph II. of Austria in 1783. Other reforms followed, and slowly, and not without some occasional relapses into ancient barbaric ways, the Jewish inhabitants of Austria, Hungary, and Galicia were enfranchised. The capital of Austria was slowest at the good work, and in Vienna, until quite recent times, many humiliating restrictions were in force. The last legal disabilities which were in force in the Austrian Empire were, however, removed in 1867, and in Brody, the capital of Galicia, so numerous and so comfortable have the Jews become, that some of its grateful residents call it the ‘Galician Jerusalem.’ The Hungarian capital, Buda-Pesth, boasts an excellent Rabbinical college, and this modern seat of Jewish learning may serve as evidence that the old Jewish spirit, which ever sought cultivated expression directly the barest chance of such expression was open to it, is as active in Europe as it used to be in Babylon.
8. In other European States.—In the Netherlands, from the date of the French Revolution (1793), the Jews were legally emancipated. Practically, however, they had been free, and had enjoyed all the advantages of emancipation, from the time when the Portuguese refugees first found an asylum in Holland. Some of the chief men of the DutchJewish communities were not entirely pleased with the decree which, at the close of the eighteenth century, made Jews ‘citizens,’and substituted the authority of the ‘States-General’ for that of the ‘Mahamad.’[70] This and other causes led to a secession from the more conservative members of the community, and to the establishment in 1796 of a separate synagogue in Amsterdam. The Jews of Holland continue to maintain their respectable and respected position.
Belgium emancipated her Jews in 1830, Sweden in 1848, Denmark and Greece in 1849. Switzerland delayed her claim to take rank among enlightened nations till 1874; and Norway, up to the present day, still only tolerates Jews, and very few are to be found in that country.
9. In Russia and Poland.—The two and a half million Jews who are to be found at the present day in these wide and but semi-civilised territories, are still unhappily circumstanced. The ignorance and fanaticism of the native population, and the unintelligent policy of the governing classes, combine to make the position of the Jews a painful and a precarious one. Little progress has been made in the last hundred years. Many of the ‘blunders worse than crimes’ of the Middle Ages seem to lead a charmed life in Russia and in Russian Poland, and to be proof against the educating and humanising influences of these latter days. Jews are still confined to mean trades for their sole occupation, and are separate in dress and in social usage from their neighbours. Numberless legal restrictions are in force, which practically shutout Russian and Polish Jews from any worthy ambition, and condemn them to seek inglorious ends by sordid means. In spite, however, of ‘ukase’ after ‘ukase’ conceived in this ‘Middle Age’ spirit, the Jews are struggling upward in the old good fashion to the light, and a society for the promotion of education, which, since 1870, has been established at St. Petersburg, is helping them much in their efforts to rise.
10. In Danubian Provinces.—At the beginning of this century the persecutions in Russia caused a number of Jews to emigrate to those States on the Danube which, by the treaty of Berlin in 1878, at which Lord Beaconsfield presided, received a recognition of independence from the European Powers. The emancipation of the Jewish inhabitants of these provinces was a condition of the treaty, a condition which the conduct of the refugees since their settlement has fully justified. The Jewish immigrants rapidly multiplied, and their intelligence, industry, sobriety, and loyalty bore down prejudice, and won them friends. Of these Danubian states, Servia, Bulgaria, and Montenegro have honestly observed their part of the compact, but Roumania has distinguished itself by its systematic disregard of it—an attitude the more ignorantly ungrateful since, in the Roumanian war of independence, the Jewish Roumanians were among the bravest and staunchest of the soldiery.
11. A Glance at the Rest of the Map.—One can scarcely put one’s finger on any part in which there are not some Jews. When, in 1868, M. Joseph Halévy, at the request of the Alliance Israélite, travelledfor a year in Abyssinia, he came across some black men whom he believed to be descendants of Jewish refugees from Egypt. This remnant of a tribe is known by the name of Falashas, which in Abyssinian dialect means exiles. M. Halévy made friendly advances, but the little black crowd stood aloof from the white men, silent and suspicious as to their motives in seeking them. ‘Accidentally,’ says M. Halévy, who tells the story, ‘I mentioned the name of Jerusalem. As if by magic, the attitude of the most incredulous was changed. “Oh! do you come from Jerusalem, the blessed city? Have you beheld with your own eyes Mount Zion?” All doubt was gone. They were never weary of asking these questions, and I must confess,’ continues M. Halévy, ‘I was deeply touched at seeing their black faces light up at the memory of our glorious history.’ Travellers, also, in remote mountain recesses of Asia Minor, in the ancient cities of Hindostan, and in the vast empire of China, have come across various small settlements bearing undeniable traces of a Jewish origin, and keeping up, in a greater or lesser degree, the distinctive rites and customs of Judaism.
In the new world of the colonies, and in the United States, the numerous and prosperous Jewish communities, owing to their speaking European languages, are of course more readily recognisable as Jews, although, in America especially, the Judaism of these dispersed and transplanted Jews is not always in a very much better state of preservation than among the semi-savage sects of ancient civilisation. Among some American congregations Judaism seems to beoccasionally rather a religion of sentiment and of complaisant remembrance, than of active and steadfast observance.
In the eastern parts of the world less change is observable among the Jewish inhabitants. Throughout the Ottoman Empire the Jews are not ill-treated, and they keep to the old paths in the somewhat sluggish fashion of Orientals. In Turkey, Persia, and Afghanistan they are not very prosperous nor very enlightened, but the efforts of the Alliance Israélite and of the Anglo-Jewish Association in establishing schools for secular study, and for the teaching of handicrafts, are gradually leavening the mass. In Palestine the chief Jewish settlements are at Jerusalem, Safed, and Tiberias, and there are small agricultural colonies at Jaffa and Safed. At Nablous there is a remnant of Samaritans who, as in the old days, are quite distinct and aloof from their Jewish half-brothers. At Jerusalem all sects and many nationalities are represented. Ashkenazim, Sephardim and Karaites, Russians and Poles, and Rabbis from all parts of the world, come to weep and to pray, and to lay their bones among the ruins of the city which was once the joy of the whole earth. In these days, the leaders among us are wisely endeavouring to direct this beautiful religious and historic enthusiasm into healthy and useful channels, and to impress on these simple pious souls that labour is one form, and not the least admirable form, of praise.