“The Israelites are favoured, for God gives them holy souls.”
This sentence from the Zohar is the keynote of Manasseh’s teachings, and his favourite phrase when he speaks of all Israel is,
“... shall ... surname himself by the name of Israel” (Isaiah xliv. 5).
Whenever he means to lay stress on Jewish origin, without distinction of country, party, school, etc. (a significant allusion also to the Marranos), he uses this phrase. If we add that he emphasizes the holiness of Palestine, enumerating the seven degrees of sanctity, explains the desire of pious men to find their rest after death in Palestinian soil by the fact that the Shechina will dwell in the Holy Land, and so on—we can realize the depth of his national Palestinian enthusiasm. His devoted attachment to the cause of his persecuted brethren is expressed when he speaks of Rabbi David Carcassone, the messenger from Constantinople, “who came to our city to collect funds for the relief of our brethren who had fallen a year before into the hands of the Cossacks, ... may God send His angel before him” (fol. 173b)—referring to the massacres in Poland, 1648. The most interesting reference to his propaganda among Christians on behalf of the Restoration is made in his preface, where he relates that towards morning he had a vision: “And I raised my eyes and I saw behold an Angel touched me and said unto me ... I have given thee for a light to the Nations in the book which thou hast written about the Ten Tribes to possess desolated heritages....”
CHAPTER VI.
SOME OF MANASSEH’S VIEWS
The massacres of Podolia—The Marrano Tragedy—Manasseh’s views on the mission of Israel—Dispersion and Restoration—R. Jacob Emden’s annotations—Manasseh’s theory of the Jewish race.
The frightful massacres of the Jewish communities in Podolia, Volhynia, and other provinces of Poland, entirely startled and horrified Jewry all over the world. For months and years the murder of the Jews went on. No language can describe the cruelties and sufferings inflicted upon this unfortunate people from the Dnieper to the Vistula. There was “a kind of chase taking place within an enclosed area.” Some of the aged and prominent Jews were kept as hostages in the hands of the mob, who demanded heavy ransoms from the Jews of other countries. This was the purpose of Carcassone’s mission from Constantinople to Amsterdam. Turkey offered an asylum for the hunted refugees who were fortunate enough to cross the boundary, but only very few succeeded, while thousands of those who tried to escape were murdered, or languished in the galleys and prisons as hostages. Manasseh, himself the son of a refugee and a martyr, felt this tragedy. On the other hand, the news concerning the Inquisition in the country of his birth was still horrifying the world, for Jews were still being burnt alive there. Putting together the brief note in the Nishmath Chayyim regarding the massacres of 1648 with the remarks in De Termino Vitae on the Inquisition, we obtain a terrible picture. In De Termino Manasseh alludes to the emigration of the Marranos.
The Marranos! What a splendid record of noble deeds, of spontaneous, gentle piety, of triumphant suffering, is called to memory at the mere mention of the word! What powerful endurance is described in the history of these Jewish martyrs! What an inspiration to attempt even the impossible in the cause of liberty of conscience! What a great tragedy theirs was—a tragedy illumined by personal deeds of self-sacrifice! Their story is a story of thrilling personal experiences and of sorrow and separation and death.[¹]
[¹] H. H. R. Jacob de Aaron Sasportas gives in his Ohel Jacob (Amsterdam, 1737) a most eloquent and stirring description of the tragedy of the Marranos (Respon. III.).