CHAPTER III.
THE RE-ADMISSION OF THE JEWS INTO ENGLAND
Manasseh Ben-Israel—Aaron Levi alias Antony Montezinos—Moses Wall—Leonard Busher—David Abrabanel [Manuel Martinez Dormido]—Oliver St. John.
Manasseh Ben-Israel (1606–1657), the Amsterdam Jewish preacher and Hebrew-Spanish author, was the chief promoter of the readmission of the Jews to England and the leading figure in the history of that great event. He had all the virtues and accomplishments of a leader. He was a man of fine intellect and high moral character, unselfish in thought, word and deed, straightforward and sincere, extraordinarily endowed and irresistibly attractive, at the same time a faithful religious believer and a practical man of action. All the sorrows and all the hopes of the old Jewish nation were in him, and all the beauty of the Bible was in his visions.
Manasseh was neither a first-rate Talmudical authority, nor the principal of a great Rabbinical school, nor a celebrated and officially recognized leader of Rabbis. He achieved nothing striking in the field of Halachah,[¹] where alone, according to traditional views, authority can be won among learned Rabbis and their followers. In high Rabbinical quarters he may have been considered a dilettante or an eclectic, perhaps a sort of dreamer; and not without justice. The “practical” people of the period, again, may have pointed out that there was plenty of immediate “practical” work for Manasseh to do in congregations, in societies, in charities and in schools among the Portuguese Jews of the “Jodenbreestraat” in Amsterdam, and that he would do better if he devoted himself to ordinary local work, instead of chasing chimeras and planning Utopian schemes in close agreement with the Puritan Saints and Marrano travellers. And yet, in spite of all the immediate needs of the hour, this remarkable man, inspired by a vision of the lost Ten Tribes of Israel, wrote one book after another; not the traditional commonplace Rabbinical books dealing with questions and details of the conduct of everyday Jewish religious life, but books about the past and the future, about the Ten Tribes and about Israel as a nation—and with an inimitable touch of mysticism and poetry. He thought that Judaism required something more than local activities, that it needed clear-sighted and fearless self-defence, emancipated from routine, and not localized within the boundaries of one country. And he not only wrote books in Hebrew, Spanish, and Latin on this subject, but had several of them translated into other languages; he also entered into personal relations with non-Jewish “dreamers” who had proved by their ideas their intellectual kinship with him, although they challenged him to controversy on some essential points. He wrote petitions and proposals, and interfered to a certain extent with what should, according to some other rabbis, be confidingly left to Providence. It had dawned upon him that the Jews should resettle in England, to pave the way for their final resettlement in Palestine.
[¹] Jewish Jurisprudence.
Manasseh was nothing if not a Zionist, if we look upon Zionism in the light of his time. He was undoubtedly a dreamer, but one of those dreamers to whom the word of the Psalmist applies, “... We were like unto them that dream.”[¹] He combined worldly wisdom with the prophetic spirit. There was some ancient magic about him; there was a deep sense of religion in all his writings. This religious character enabled Manasseh to stir up Christian England at a time when there was a great rekindling of the religious consciousness. No wealthy Jew could have influenced England as did this poor Hebrew scholar; no powerful Jewish community could have produced an impression equal to that produced by this Jewish dreamer, not only by his boundless activity, determination and persistence, but chiefly because he was an inspired man. He brought to his task deep religious feeling, and a mind ripened by Jewish historical studies. He thus set himself to perform with energy and moral courage an exceedingly responsible service to the Jewish people, which he carried out with singular fidelity, inspiration and enthusiasm, as well as with discretion and tact.
[¹] Psalms, chap. cxxvi., v. 1.
He sent his brother-in-law, David Abrabanel [Manuel Martinez Dormido][¹] to England in 1654, to present to the Council a petition for the readmission of the Jews, and followed up this visit by his own journey to England, in order to support this petition.
[¹] He was a native of Andalusia, Spain, and was imprisoned for five years (1627–1632) by the Inquisition, and tortured, together with his wife and her sister. On being released he went to Bordeaux, and in 1640 to Amsterdam.
In the preliminary leaves of Thesouro dos Dinim, by Manasseh Ben-Israel, Amsterdam, 5405 (1645), his name appears as one of the dedicatees and is described as the Parnas da Sedaká e Talmud Tora. In 1663 he settled here, and in the following year “David ABrabanel dormido” appears as one of the signatories to the first Ascamot of the Sephardi Kahal in London in the year 5424. He died 2 Nisan 5427, and was interred in the second carera at the Beth Haim in the rear of the Beth Holim at Mile End.