XIV. The Earliest Jewish Community in Europe
Roman Judaism has disappeared from our guide-books. Civilisation has levelled down the walls of the Ghetto, and its former inhabitants are not any longer “a people that dwell alone.” But with this well-deserved destruction a good deal of the interest was also destroyed which the traveller used to attach to “the peculiar people” enclosed in that terrible slum of Rome.
Still, if there is anything eternal in the “eternal city,” which was neither reconstructed by the Cæsars, nor improved upon by the Popes, it is the little Jewish community at Rome. It has survived the former; it has suffered for many centuries under the latter, and, partaking in the general revival which has come upon the Italian nation, it may still be destined for a great future. Indeed, the history of the relation of Israel to Rome is so old that it is not lacking even in legendary elements. On the day on which King Solomon married the daughter of Pharaoh, the Rabbis narrate, there came down the angel Gabriel. He put a reed into the sea, which, by means of the slime that adhered to it, formed itself, in the course of time, into a large island, on which the city of Rome was built—an event with which the troubles of Israel began. These [pg 327] were the evil consequences of the first mésalliance. Even more unfortunate for Israel (and it is not impossible that this is the meaning of the legend) were the results of that spiritual mixed marriage between Judaism and paganism which took place at a much later period, whereat a blunt soldier, who sympathised with neither, and “who dealt in salvation as he dealt in provinces,” acted as best man. As a fact, the parties concerned never understood each other properly. The declaration of love, and the final proposal, were made in an Alexandrine jargon, strange to both, the obscurities of which only grew with the commentaries each successive generation added to them. Under such circumstances, a happy union was not to be expected, and the family quarrel which fills the annals of civilised Europe soon broke out. Judaism, more particularly Roman Judaism, witnessed this struggle from the beginning, and its fortunes were greatly dependent on the chance which of these two elements, the Jewish or the pagan, won the ascendency.
However, I am theologising too much, whilst I am deviating from the subject of these lines. Nor could I think of giving here, even in outline, the history of the oldest Jewish community in Europe. This has been already admirably done by Dr. A. Berliner, who has made the history of the Jews of Rome the subject of his studies for nearly a quarter of a century. I intend only to reproduce here, in a stray fashion, some of those impressions and reflections which, I am certain, must occur to every Jewish traveller in Italy.
Now I do not think for a moment that we Jews should have a point of view of our own for looking at things and men in this paradise of Europe. It would be as silly to [pg 328] have a Jewish Baedeker as to think of orthodox mathematics or an ecclesiastical logic or a racial morality—though unfortunately there exist such things. But on the other hand, if we have not, like the fox in the fable, left our heart at home, let us not do violence to our feelings by passing over everything Jewish, over sights which might remind us of our history, with a certain indifference which would be affected on our part. We are not all little Goethes, nor even little Ruskins, and our artistic enjoyment is hardly so intense as to shut our hearts against impressions which force themselves upon us either by the way of remembrance of the past, or even as a living contrast in the present.
It so happened that my first visit to the Vatican was on a Friday. After doing my work in the Vatican Library, which is open till noon, I went into the adjoining Church of St. Peter.
One should be, like the angel of death in the legend, full of eyes, properly to see all the wonders of art and marvels of architecture at which human genius and piety laboured busily through centuries, in adorning the grandest of sacred buildings in the world. But there is Baedeker or Murray serving at least as a pair of good spectacles to the layman, and it was by their aid that I made my round in St. Peter. But lo, whilst you are observing the celebrated Pietà by Michael Angelo, and, according to the instruction of your guides, admiring both the grief of the Mother and the death of the Son, you notice in its vicinity a little column, surrounded by rails to which the pilgrims approach with a certain awe; for “Tradition affirms it to have been brought from Jerusalem.” Naturally, one is instantly reminded of the report, given by the [pg 329] famous traveller of Tudela, of the curiosities of Rome, which among other things records, “That there are also to be seen in St. Giovanni in Porta Latina (probably meant for Lateran) the two brazen pillars, constructed by King Solomon of blessed memory, whose name, Solomon, the son of David, is engraved upon each; of which he was also told that every year about the 9th of Ab (the anniversary of the destruction of Jerusalem), these pillars sweat so much that water runs down from them.” So far Benjamin of Tudela in the twelfth century. In our days pillars weep no longer, and even of men it is considered a special sign of good breeding to behave pillar-like; but a sigh is still permissible at the sight of this temple-column, which in its captivity symbolises, not less than the Pietà, the grief of a whole people. Of course, not possessing on the spot either the Itinerary or even Urlick, one is unable to establish the connection between these two traditions and their claim to authenticity. Perhaps one may even comfort oneself on the same ground on which the famous curé tried to appease his flock who were sobbing bitterly at his telling them the Passion story. He exclaimed: “My children, do not weep so much; it happened long ago, and even perhaps is not quite true.”
However, the Vatican is the last place in the world to exercise your critical faculties; you are so deeply absorbed in seeing, that you have no time to think. So on I went, from aisle to aisle, from niche to niche, from chapel to chapel, looking, staring, and admiring, till of a sudden my eyes were struck by a large statue, on which the words, “Thou shalt have no other God before me,” are engraved. There I stood before a question of exegesis, where one is [pg 330] permitted to use his right senses without any regard to the æsthetic side. Yet not all the manifold expositions of the Decalogue, nor all the talk about the subjective-objective, the absolute and the real, with which metaphysicians have tried to confuse the notion of the Unity of God, will reconcile one to the meaning which Mediæval Art has impressed upon the Ten Commandments. The truth has to be sought elsewhere, and thus my thoughts were turned to the synagogue, and thither I went.