5. Communal Progress.—Meanwhile, by marriage or by conversion, or by simple aloofness and indifference, some of the more weak and the more selfish members of the community every now and then slipped from under the many burdens which their Judaism imposed upon them. The brave majority straightway took up the neglected duties of these occasional deserters, and did a double portion of communal work and communal charity. Their synagogues and their institutions supplied to them their only possibilities of distinction. Possibly an honourable ambition to be ‘known in the gates’ may have combined with religious zeal to make office in the synagogue eagerly sought after. There were, at any rate, good men in plenty who, unlike Sampson Gideon, were content to use their brains and their wealth, not as stepping-stones for themselves, but as scaffolding for the community—men who carried out in the practical, everyday actions of their life the words [a]לֹא לָנוּ יְיָ לֹא לָנוּ כִּי לְשִׁמְךָ תֵּן כָּבוֹד]. And as Sampson Gideon served as an instance of the one sort, so Benjamin Mendes da Costa, a man who lived as befitted his wealth, and yet spent 3,000l. a year on ‘the poor of all creeds,’ and who was generally known as ‘the truly good Jew,’ may be taken as an example of the other. Da Costa died in 1764. Meanwhile, the synagogues and schools and institutions, both ofthe Sephardim and Ashkenazim, continued to flourish, and every now and again new ones were founded. The present Portuguese Board of Deputies, instituted to look after Jewish interests generally, held its first meeting and presented its first address, which was one of congratulation to George III. on his accession, at the close of the year 1760. In this proceeding the German congregations united, and from that date forward the two sections of Jews in England, the Sephardim and the Ashkenazim, drew constantly closer to each other in every kindly feeling, and in all good works. The bond of brotherhood between European Jews was further cemented and extended by reason of the active correspondence which was maintained between the Jews of London and the older established committees on the Continent, and this intercourse was good not only for the religious, but for the commercial, interests of the various congregations.
As the eighteenth century drew to its close, echoes from the thunders of the French Revolution (1789) were borne to English shores, and the pitiful, passionate cry for liberty, equality, and fraternity, which, after all, was but a stammering version of ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself,’ seemed in the air; but yet, and for a long while, in the air only. The conscience of men was stirred, yet still, for many years to come, the Jews of England were regarded not as neighbours, but as ‘aliens.’ It is written that ‘it is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.’ The long hoping without fuss, the long waiting without anger, of thosedays were good for the English Jews; and their quiet steadfastness, no less than their active work, had a share in bringing about the happy state of things that was, though so slowly, coming to them.
6. The Nineteenth Century.—The years went on, and the nineteenth century opened on a numerous community of Jews in England, who were loyally fulfilling all the duties of Englishmen, and who were still denied most of the privileges and many of the rights of English subjects. When Benjamin d’Israeli was born, in 1804, trade was fettered by restrictions, professions were handicapped, university education was barred, and any municipal or state service was impossible to Jews. Prejudice certainly was dying down, and this was due, in some respects, to Jewish conduct, and in some respects, it may be gratefully acknowledged, to Christian effort. Novelists and dramatists often can preach to wider audiences than priests, and a certain Richard Cumberland, in 1794, by a kindly conceived and well-written play called ‘The Jew,’ did what he could to make Jews better known and better appreciated. His play became fashionable, and thus Richard Cumberland, in his degree, helped, like Lessing, in good work. But the work was of terribly slow accomplishment, and clever Jews and ambitions Jews grew often impatient, and now and again steadfast and observant Jews grew unwise in their zeal. Those who were in authority saw so plainly the temptations to apostasy, that their very keenness of vision was a danger. They drove too straight, and held the reins too tight, for waverers on the road. ‘For us or for our enemies?’ the Synagogueseemed to ask. It listened to no compromise. ‘Belong to us altogether, or leave us altogether,’ was its way of meeting half-hearted adherents. It was an attitude which admits of defence, and even excites admiration, but it was one, nevertheless, which lost many a member to the fold, among the rest the family of D’Israeli. The future Lord Beaconsfield was a boy of nine years old when (in 1812) his father, Isaac d’Israeli, then leading the life of a scholarly recluse, was fined 40l. for refusing to accept the office of warden in the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue. Much correspondence ensued, Isaac d’Israeli eloquently pointing out that he was by habit and by inclination unfit to hold office, and the authorities stubbornly insisting that each son of Israel should take his share of communal burdens, or, failing this, should pay without protest the money penalty which such refinements of disability, by the laws of the Synagogue, entailed. It ended, in 1817, by Isaac d’Israeli formally withdrawing from the Synagogue. His four sons and his one daughter were subsequently baptized.
More and more the disastrous effects of being thus shut out, by reason of their religious opinions, from use and name and fame impressed itself on the Jews. The time seemed ripe for active and sustained effort, and thoughtful and enlightened men in the community, Isaac Lyon Goldsmid foremost among them, began to work in earnest for the boundaries to be enlarged. Their energies were directed to the entire removal by Parliament of all remaining civil and religious disabilities, to the end that Jews might taketheir rightful place among their fellow-citizens in every department of the State. From the year 1833 onwards, a bill for the removal of Jewish disabilities was passed by the House of Commons, and each time by an increasing majority. Ten times was it sent up to the Lords, and ten times was it rejected by the Upper House. Year by year, however, the opposition declined, and Macaulay, in a very famous speech, demolished all the arguments that could be brought against it. In 1847, Baron Lionel de Rothschild was elected a member of Parliament for the City of London. For two years he did not attempt to take the oath nor his seat, but in 1850 he was admitted to be sworn on the Old Testament, and took the oath of allegiance, omitting the words ‘on the true faith of a Christian.’ The House counted this a disqualification, and ruled that the Baron could not sit nor vote. Sir David Salomons, when elected for Greenwich in 1851, disregarded this ruling of the House. He took the oath in the same form as Baron Rothschild had done, but sat and voted, incurring the legal penalty of a 500l. fine each time he did so. This of course brought things to a crisis, and a long struggle ensued. In 1858 the Commons (by 297 votes to 144) passed Lord John Russell’s Bill, which permitted Jews to omit the words which were to them unmeaning, unnecessary, and untrue. In the Lords the second reading of the Bill was rejected by 119 to 80. The dead-lock was averted by a suggestion that the House should be competent on occasion, by special resolution, to modify the form of oath. This was agreed to, and on July 26, 1858, Baron Lionel de Rothschild, by special resolutionof the House, took the oath of allegiance, with the distinctively Christian words omitted. In 1860 this concession was made a standing order of the House, and finally, in 1866, the Parliamentary Oaths Amendment Act was passed, an Act which removed the obnoxious words altogether. Since that date there has been but one form of oath for the two Houses, and Sir Nathaniel de Rothschild, on becoming our first English Jewish peer in 1885, had no trouble nor hesitation about taking his seat and vowing his allegiance in the Lords.
7. A Slander revived and slain.—In 1840 an anonymous writer in the ‘Times’ created a most painful sensation by gravely asserting that an accusation just then raised against some Jews of Damascus, of having killed Christian children and used their blood for Passover biscuits, was very likely to be true, since such rites were formulated in the Rabbinical writings of the Jews, and frequently practised in Jewish communities. An assertion so positively and authoritatively made, in a paper like the ‘Times,’ was a most serious matter for the Jews. Denial, of course, was easy, but something more than the scores of indignant letters which were despatched to the ‘Times’ was needed to disperse the readily aroused prejudice of ignorant folks, and to dispose once and for ever of this lying accusation. The necessary champion of the truth was found in Professor Theodores of Manchester.In a most remarkably able and scholarly letter,[75] which occupied two and a half columnsof the ‘Times,’ the matter was exhaustively treated, and so entirely and successfully was the blood accusation disproved, that no echo of that wicked calumny has been heard in England from that day to this.
8. The Man of the Nineteenth Century.—In English courts of law, the issue of a case depends less on its advocates than on its merits, and, in the long run, the like is true of the cases that come before the wider courts of public opinion. The emancipation of the Jews in England was greatly helped by the character of the Jews in England, and, despite the many restrictions which were still in force, the nineteenth century produced some noteworthy figures among them. Of the men who, by conduct and by effort, by using their riches or their talents as a trust rather than as a possession, helped to make the Jews respected and worthy of respect, the names of the Goldsmids, father and son, of many of the Rothschild family, of Sir David Salomons, and of Dr. Joshua van Oven, will be gratefully recalled. Among women writers of a wholesome and unsensational sort, Grace Aguilar (1800–1844) takes her graceful and honoured place; and Arthur Lumley Davids (1811–1832) and Emanuel Deutsch (died 1867) have each a niche among the scholars of the time. There are other names, both of workers and of scholars, some too valuable, some too recently lost, to be less than familiar. Numa Hartog, and Leonard Montefiore, and Edward Emanuel call on our hearts as well as our intellects for remembrance; but these, and such as these, may well be left.
In the goodly procession of nineteenth-century English Jews, the foremost figure is undoubtedly that of Sir Moses Montefiore (1784–1884). Both in his private character and in his public life, Sir Moses was a realisation of the Laureate’s ideal knight,—
‘Whose glory was redressing human wrong;
Who spoke no slander, no, nor listened to it;
Who loved one only, and who clave to her.’