[77] The treatment of the Jewish sick, even in these degenerate days, is very scrupulous. When the patient is evidently moribund, not a drop of medicine or even a drink of water must be given to him unless he ask for it himself, lest such act hasten dissolution, and make the giver guilty of having caused the death of a brother Hebrew.
[78] [Sic Burton, but should be 94.]
[79] [The neumes, properly pneumes (Gr. [Greek: πνευμα: pneuma]), i.e. the musical notations prevalent from the eighth to the twelfth century, are supposed by some to represent the ancient Nota Romana, though others hold them to be of Oriental origin.]
CHAPTER V
THE CONTINUITY OF TRADITION IN THE EAST
Obviously such cruel and vindictive teaching as that recounted in the previous chapter must bear fruit in crime and atrocities. The occurrence of such deeds explains much of what appears to have been the mere results of superstition and greed of gain amongst semi-barbarous peoples. From the earliest ages to these modern days, and not in one place, but all the world over, the hatred of the Jew against the non-Jew has been of the fiercest. Those who are so ready to admit and deplore the mighty provocations which roused a spirit of retaliation in the Rabbinical mind should equally make allowance for the natural feelings of the unfortunate Gentiles and heathens when the “People of the Synagogue” had their wicked will. In the fifth century the Hebrew colony, which, flying from Syria and Palestine after the wars of Titus and Hadrian, settled near Yathrib (Medina), was powerful enough to murder the Viceroy of the Tobbaa, or Himyarite King, and to convert to Judaism, Du-nawás (a.d. 480), one of the last of that dynasty. He acquired the title “Lord of the Fiery Pit,” by burning alive, in a trench filled with combustibles, thousands of the Christians of Nejerán at the instigation of the Jews. In later times the “People of the Synagogue” brought upon themselves a war of extermination by insulting an Arab woman, and after the siege of Kheibar they attempted to poison Muhammad. In a.d. 614 the Hebrews of Galilee, according to Eutychius, joining the Persian army under Chosroes II., caused a great slaughter of the Nazarenes. When the Holy City was captured, they bought at a cheap rate those taken by the Persians, especially from the Greek monastery of Mar Saba, for the sole purpose of butchering them. Even in Abyssinia, when the Falashas, or black proselytes, established a powerful kingdom, this quasi-Jewish race, under their King Gideon and their Queen Judith, was a scourge to all the nations around. These are but a few instances of the many which would fill a volume. It is absurd to suppose with the “liberal” writers of the nineteenth century that whole colonies have been expelled, driven away half naked, from England and France, from Germany, Spain, Portugal, and other Christian kingdoms; that communities were imprisoned in Ghettos, and subjected to tumultuous and wholesale massacres; and that thousands of individual Jews and Jewesses, old men and children, were roasted with dogs over slow fires, were skinned alive, tortured, dismembered, and slain like savage beasts for the mere frenzy and the ignorance of superstition, for simply diabolical barbarity, and for clipping coin or for claiming more than two shillings per week as interest on a loan of twenty shillings.
We must seek for a solid cause underlying these horrible acts of vengeance; we find ample motive in the fact that the Jew’s hand was ever, like Ishmael’s, against every man but those belonging to the Synagogue. His fierce passions and fiendish cunning, combined with abnormal powers of intellect, with intense vitality, and with a persistency of purpose which the world has rarely seen, and whetted moreover by a keen thirst for blood engendered by defeat and subjection, combined to make him the deadly enemy of all mankind, whilst his unsocial and iniquitous Oral Law contributed to inflame his wild lust of pelf, and to justify the crimes suggested by spite and superstition. Because under the present enlightened Governments of the West the Jews have lost much of their ancient rancour, and no longer perpetrate the atrocities of the Dark Ages, Europe is determined to believe that the race is, and ever has been, incapable of such atrocities. The conclusion is by no means logical. We have seen them even now repeated in the Holy Land, and presently we shall see that they are still not unknown to Western Europe, Asia Minor, and Persia.
And what can we expect from a system which teaches men to believe and to act as follows?[80] “A tradition of the Talmud says (Talmud, Book Baba Kama, Chapter Haggozel) if an Israelite and a Gentile come before thee to judgment, if thou canst absolve the Israelite according to the Jewish Law, absolve him, and say, ‘This is our way of judging.’ But if thou canst absolve him by Gentile Law, absolve him, and say, ‘This is your way of judging.’ But if not, then they are to come upon him with cunning frauds. R. Samuel says the error of a Gentile is also lawful. For, behold, Samuel bought a piece of gold for four small coins, and added one more (that he might go away the sooner, and not perceive the fraud). Chahana bought a hundred and twenty casks of wine for the price of a hundred; he said, ‘My trust is in thee.’ So far the Talmud. From these and similar passages Jews infer that they may and ought to deceive Christians and others who are not Jews. Thus also from other passages they infer that they may and ought to kill Christians, of which the following example is found in the book Mechilta: Exod. xiv. 7, And he took six hundred chosen chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt. From whom did he take them? If you say from the Egyptians, is it not said already, Exod. ix. 6, And all the cattle of Egypt died? If you say Pharaoh, then there is a difficulty; for it is said already, ix. 3, Behold, the hand of the Lord shall be upon thy cattle. But if you say they were from the Israelites, it is said already, x. 26, Our cattle shall go with us. From whom then were they? It is plain that they must have been from those who feared the word of the Lord. Hence we learn that those of the servants of Pharaoh who feared the word of the Lord were a stumbling-block to Israel, and hence R. Simeon ben Jochai says, ‘Slay thou the best amongst the Gentiles, and of the best of serpents bruise the head.’[81] Thus far the Talmud; and by this they mean to say, that as of serpents he especially is to be killed that is the greatest and best of its kind, so Christians are to be dealt with in the same way. For killing Christians and throwing their children into pits, and even for killing them when they can do it secretly, they derive an argument from that which is said in the book Abodah Zarah, Chapter En Maamidin: ‘As to Gentiles and robbers, and those that tend small cattle, they are neither to be helped out of a well nor to be thrown into it. But heretics and informers and apostates are to be thrown in, but not to be helped out.’ The commentary of Rashi says: ‘Heretics mean the priests of idols; informers mean calumniators who betray the wealth of their brethren into the hands of the Gentiles.’ R. Shesheth says: ‘If there be a step in the pit, let him find an excuse, and say, Lest an evil beast descend upon him.’ Rabba and R. Joseph both say: ‘If there be a stone upon the mouth of the well, he is to cover it, and say, I do it that the beasts may pass over it.’ R. Nachman says: ‘If there be a ladder in the well, he is to take it away, and say, I wish to get down my son from the roof.’ Thus far the Talmud. Thy prudence, O reader, may perceive that the Talmud, which so perniciously teaches them to lie and to kill Christians, is not the law of God, but the figment of the devil.”