But let us see a little after what manner the Jews are to live in their ancient Country under the Administration of the Messiah. In the First Place, the strange Nations, which they shall suffer to live, shall build them Houses and Cities, till them Ground, and plant them Vineyards; and all this, without so much as looking for any Reward of their Labour. These surviving Nations will likewise voluntarily offer them all their Wealth and Furniture: And Princes and Nobles shall attend them; and be ready at their Nod to pay them all Manner of Obedience; while they themselves shall be surrounded with Grandeur and Pleasure, appearing abroad in Apparel glittering with Jewels like Priests of the Unction, consecrated to God....
In a word, the felicity of this Holy Nation, in the Times of the Messiah, will be such, that the exalted Condition of it cannot enter into the Conception of Man; much less can it be couched in human Expression. This is what the Rabbis say of it. But the intelligent reader will doubtless pronounce it the Paradise of Fools.[810]
It is interesting to notice that this conception of the manner in which the return to Palestine is to be carried out has descended to certain of the modern colonists. Sir George Adam Smith, after watching Zionism at work in 1918, wrote:
On visiting a recently established Jewish colony in the north-east of the land, round which a high wall had been built by the munificent patron, I found the colonists sitting in its shade gambling away the morning, while groups of fellahin at a poor wage did the cultivation for them. I said that this was surely not the intention of their patron in helping them to settle on land of their own. A Jew replied to me in German: "Is it not written: The sons of the alien shall be your ploughmen and vinedressers?" I know that such delinquencies have become the exception in Jewish colonization of Palestine, but they are symptomatic of dangers which will have to be guarded against.[811]
The fellahin may, however, consider themselves lucky to be allowed to live at all, for, according to several passages in the Cabala, all the goyim are to be swept off the face of the earth when Israel comes into its own. Thus the Zohar relates that the Messiah will declare war on the whole world and all the kings of the world will end by declaring war on the Messiah. But "the Holy One, blessed be He, will display His force and exterminate them from the world."[812] Then:
Happy will be the lot of Israel, whom the Holy One, blessed be He, has chosen from amongst the goyim of whom the Scriptures say: "Their work is but vanity, it is an illusion at which we must laugh; they will all perish when God visits them in His wrath." At the moment when the Holy One, blessed be He, will exterminate all the goyim of the world, Israel alone will subsist, even as it is written: "The Lord alone will appear great on that day."[813]
The hope of world-domination is therefore not an idea attributed to the Jews by "anti-Semites," but a very real and essential part of their traditions. What then of their attitude to Christianity in the past? We have already seen that hatred of the person and teaching of Christ did not end at Golgotha, but was kept alive by the Rabbis and perpetuated in the Talmud and the Toledot Yeshu. The Cabala also contains passages referring both to Christ and to Mohammed so unspeakably foul that it would be impossible to quote them here.
But it will be urged: the Jews of Western Europe to-day know nothing of the Cabala. This may be so, yet imperceptibly the Cabala has moulded the mind of the Jew. As a modern Jewish writer has declared:
[Kabbalism] has contributed to the formation of modern Judaism, for, without the influence of the Kabbala, Judaism to-day might have been one-sided, lacking in warmth and imagination. Indeed, so deeply has it penetrated into the body of the faith that many ideas and prayers are now immovably rooted in the general body of orthodox doctrine and practice. This element has not only become incorporated, but it has fixed its hold on the affections of the Jews and cannot be eradicated.[814]
It is thus not in the law of Moses thundered from Sinai, not in the dry ritual of the Talmud, but in the stupendous imaginings of the Cabala, that the real dreams and aspirations of Jewry have been transmitted through the ages. Belief in the coming Messiah may burn low, but faith in the final triumph of Israel over the other nations of the world still glows in the hearts of a race nurtured on this hope from time immemorial. Even the free-thinking Jew must unconsciously react to the promptings of this vast and ancient ambition. As a modern French writer has expressed it:
Assuredly sectarian Freethinkers swarm, who flatter themselves on having borrowed nothing from the synagogue and on hating equally Jehovah and Jesus. But the modern Jewish world is itself also detached from any supernatural belief, and the Messianic tradition, of which it preserves the cult, reduces itself to considering the Jewish race as the veritable Messiah[815].