Lazare himself expresses the opinion, however, that--
The complaint of the anti-Semites seems to be founded: the Jew has the revolutionary spirit; consciously or not he is an agent of revolution. Yet the complaint complicates itself, for anti-Semitism accuses the Jews of being the cause of revolutions. Let us examine what this accusation is worth....[456]
In the light of our present knowledge it would certainly be absurd to ascribe to the Jews the authorship of the conspiracy of Catiline or of the Gracchi, the rising of Jack Straw and Wat Tyler, Jack Cade's rebellion, the jacqueries of France, or the Peasants' Wars in Germany, although historical research may lead in time to the discovery of certain occult influences--not necessarily Jewish--behind the European insurrections here referred to. Moreover, apart from grievances or other causes of rebellion, the revolutionary spirit has always existed independently of the Jews. In all times and in all countries there have been men born to make trouble as the sparks fly upward.
Nevertheless, in modern revolutions the part played by the Jews cannot be ignored, and the influence they have exercised will be seen on examination to have been twofold--financial and occult. Throughout the Middle Ages it is as sorcerers and usurers that they incur the reproaches of the Christian world, and it is still in the same role, under the more modern terms of magicians and loan-mongers, that we detect their presence behind the scenes of revolution from the seventeenth century onward. Wherever money was to be made out of social or political upheavals, wealthy Jews have been found to back the winning side; and wherever the Christian races have turned against their own institutions, Jewish Rabbis, philosophers, professors, and occultists have lent them their support. It was not then necessarily that Jews created these movements, but they knew how to make use of them for their own ends.
It is thus that in the Great Rebellion we find them not amongst the Ironsides of Cromwell or the members of his State Council, but furnishing money and information to the insurgents, acting as army contractors, loan-mongers, and super-spies--or to use the more euphonious term of Mr. Lucien Wolf, as "political intelligencers" of extraordinary efficiency. Thus Mr. Lucien Wolf, in referring to Carvajal, "the great Jew of the Commonwealth," explains that "the wide ramifications of his commercial transactions and his relations with other Crypto-Jews all over the world placed him in an unrivalled position to obtain news of the enemies of the Commonwealth."[457]
It is obvious that a "secret service" of this kind rendered the Jews a formidable hidden power, the more so since their very existence was frequently unknown to the rest of the population around them. This precaution was necessary because Jews were not supposed to exist at that date in England. In 1290 Edward I had expelled them all, and for three and a half centuries they had remained in exile; the Crypto-Jews or Marranos who had come over from Spain contrived, however, to remain in the country by skilfully taking the colour of their surroundings. Mr. Wolf goes on to observe that Jewish services were regularly held in the secret Synagogue, but "in public Carvajal and his friends followed the practice of the secret Jews in Spain and Portugal, passing as Roman Catholics and regularly attending mass in the Spanish Ambassador's chapel."[458] But when war between England and Spain rendered this expedient inadvisable, the Marranos threw off the disguise of Christianity and proclaimed themselves followers of the Jewish faith.
Now, just at this period the Messianic era was generally believed by the Jews to be approaching, and it appears to have occurred to them that Cromwell might be fitted to the part. Consequently emissaries were despatched to search the archives of Cambridge in order to discover whether the Protector could possibly be of Jewish descent.[459] This quest proving fruitless, the Cabalist Rabbi of Amsterdam, Manasseh ben Israel,[460] addressed a petition to Cromwell for the readmission of the Jews to England, in which he adroitly insisted on the retribution that overtakes those who afflict the people of Israel and the rewards that await those who "cherish" them. These arguments were not without effect on Cromwell, who entertained the same superstition, and although he is said to have declined the Jews' offer to buy St. Paul's Cathedral and the Bodleian Library because he considered the £500,000 they offered inadequate,[461] he exerted every effort to obtain their readmission to the country. In this he encountered violent opposition, and it seems that Jews were not permitted to return in large numbers, or at any rate to enjoy full rights and privileges, until after the accession of Charles II, who in his turn had enlisted their financial aid.[462] Later, in 1688, the Jews of Amsterdam helped with their credit the expedition of William of Orange against James II; the former in return brought many Jews with him to England. So a Jewish writer is able to boast that "a Monarch reigned who was indebted to Hebrew gold for his royal diadem."[463]
In all this it is impossible to follow any consecutive political plan; the rôle of the Jews seems to have been to support no cause consistently but to obtain a footing in every camp, to back any venture that offered a chance of profit. Yet mingled with these material designs were still their ancient Messianic dreams. It is curious to note that the same Messianic idea pervaded the Levellers, the rebels of the Commonwealth; such phrases as "Let Israel go free," "Israel's restoration is now beginning," recur frequently in the literature of the sect. Gerard Winstanley, one of the two principal leaders, addressed an epistle to "the Twelve Tribes of Israel that are circumcised in heart and scattered through all the Nations of the Earth," and promised them "David their King that they have been waiting for." The other leader of the movement, by name Everard, in fact declared, when summoned before the Lord Fairfax at Whitehall, that "he was of the race of the Jews."[464] It is true that the Levellers were by profession Christian, but after the manner of the Bavarian Illuminati and of the Christian Socialists two centuries later, claiming Christ as the author of their Communistic and equalitarian doctrines: "For Jesus Christ, the Saviour of all Men, is the greatest, first, and truest Leveller that ever was spoken of in the world." The Levellers are said to have derived originally from the German Anabaptists; but Claudio Jannet, quoting German authorities, shows that there were Jews amongst the Anabaptists. "They were carried away by their hatred of the name of Christian and imagined that their dreams of the restoration of the kingdom of Israel would be realized amidst the conflagration."[465] Whether this was so or not, it is clear that by the middle of the seventeenth century the mystical ideas of Judaism had penetrated into all parts of Europe. Was there then some Cabalistic centre from which they radiated? Let us turn our eyes eastward and we shall see.
Since the sixteenth century the great mass of Jewry had settled in Poland, and a succession of miracle-workers known by the name of Zaddikim or Ba'al Shems had arisen. The latter word, which signifies "Master of the Name," originated with the German Polish Jews and was derived from the Cabalistic belief in the miraculous use of the sacred name of Jehovah, known as the Tetragrammaton.
According to Cabalistic traditions, certain Jews of peculiar sanctity or knowledge were able with impunity to make use of the Divine Name. A Ba'al Shem was therefore one who had acquired this power and employed it in writing amulets, invoking spirits, and prescribing cures for various diseases. Poland and particularly Podolia--which had not yet been ceded to Russia--became thus a centre of Cabalism where a series of extraordinary movements of a mystical kind followed each other. In 1666, when the Messianic era was still believed to be approaching, the whole Jewish world was convulsed by the sudden appearance of Shabbethai Zebi, the son of a poulterer in Smyrna named Mordecai, who proclaimed himself the promised Messiah and rallied to his support a huge following not only amongst the Jews of Palestine, Egypt, and Eastern Europe, but even the hard-headed Jews of the Continental bourses.[466] Samuel Pepys in his Diary refers to the bets made amongst the Jews in London on the chances of "a certain person now in Smyrna" being acclaimed King of the World and the true Messiah.[467]