HISTORY OF ZIONISM
1600‒1918

The Zionist idea has two distinctive features. On the one hand there is nothing in Zionism which is not more or less found elsewhere. The Promised Land, Jewish national distinctiveness, the future of the Jewish people—these ideas exist in Judaism and in Christianity. They go back to the remotest past; they take, during many generations, a thousand forms—sentimental, practical, sublime, even mystical. In Modern Zionism we find them all. On the other hand, while the elements of the older Zionism seem familiar, the total effect of Modern Zionism is that of something new and strange. The reason is that there is something in Modern Zionism which stamps it as unique, and raises it far above all older ideas and aspirations. Some of the old ideas of the Middle Ages about the restoration of Israel would nowadays be hardly acceptable. But the same ideas, when we see great masses of Jews inspired by them and aiming at their realization, become attractive. The same holds good as regards details.

In the Zionist programme every point of the old Zionist idea is preserved, but everything is modernized. Modern Zionism is the logical consequence of Jewish History. It does not appeal merely to old memories, which, however noble and moving, cannot be permanently sustained; it works by simple, intelligible means, by means of a Renascence. This Renascence kindles enthusiasm, renews courage, awakens in the heart fresh fervour and stimulus to action.

Zionism has tradition to support it; but if it were simply a thing of antiquity, it would perish; if it were simply a matter of history and not of living experience, it would be relegated to the sphere of archæology. Zionism, although old, like the Jewish people, thinks freshly and independently on Jewish subjects. The roots of Zionism are in the past, but its blossom is in the present and its fruit in the future. The reason is simply that everything really Jewish must be bound up with history. Zionism is, first of all, undoubtedly a great historical idea. It is a simple matter of fact that Israel’s history begins with Zionism. Israel’s history in ancient times shows the path to the realization of Zionism. The exodus from Egypt was an example of combined emigration and colonization. The Jewish people entered Canaan, occupied lands, and in a few generations became a glorious nation. The return from Babylon was a great Zionist event, without any supernatural miracle, dependent only on the grace of God and the approval of Cyrus the Great. The Jews who returned from Babylon were only an insignificant minority in numbers, but they were inspired, and therefore they succeeded in founding a centre, and that centre, Palestine, became a new light for Jews and Gentiles. In fact, the favourite idea of Modern Zionism, the idea of a spiritual centre in Zion for the whole Diaspora, the focussing of a pure Jewish life in Palestine, the creation of an intellectual and moral reservoir, from which a stream of influence should flow all over the scattered nation, and waves of Jewish inspiration and knowledge should spread in all directions, making the little land a metropolis of Judaism in religion and life—was not this Zionist programme laid down and carried out in the intentions and achievements of Zerubbabel, Ezra and Nehemiah?

In after years Jews went forth as emigrants to all parts of the world. They submitted to the laws of the various countries, and were capable of adapting themselves to surrounding circumstances. Wherever they went they carried with them their God and their traditions, their literature and their customs, nor did they ever forget the old, holy home which they had left.

This faithfulness is one of the most stirring and pathetic facts in the history of the world; it is the most sublime fact in the history of the Jews. The Jews never forgot Jerusalem, its ruined walls, its shattered palaces, its former grandeur, its old associations; they never forgot the old land and its desolate fields. This feeling never depended on individual Jews, it depended on the whole Jewish nation.

The Jews never forgot their old nationality. They never forgot that they were a nation apart, distinct in morality, in learning, in literature, in social arrangements and in agriculture: a civilized nation at a time when Western civilization was still unknown. For two thousand years after the loss of political independence, they believed with passionate intensity in their future as a nation in Palestine. While they were mingling with the world around them, no temptation, whether the hope of material success or the still more irresistible force of emulation, could withdraw them from their allegiance to the future. No inducement, however powerful, no suffering, no martyrdom, no agony could make them forget the sacred debt they owed to God, to their ancestors and to themselves. They always considered it their duty to be members of one great family, bound together not alone by a common past, but by a community of undying ideas, aspirations, and hopes for a national future. They remained unmistakably true to their duty. This strong conviction is deeply rooted in the hearts of millions of Jews. It is an unbroken chain stretching from the dawn of Jewish history through all generations from Abraham to our own times. This unshaken belief, which kept and still keeps together the Jews all over the world, is the quintessence of all Jewish prophecies, from Moses to Malachi, of all Jewish teaching, from the men of the Great Synod to Maimonides and to the present day.¹

This idea of a national future for Israel is the essence of all Jewish prayers, from the time when the “Eighteen Benedictions” were composed to the last of the Paitanim. It is the keynote of all Hebrew poetry, old and new, from the holy Psalms to the inspired poems of Jehudah Ha’levi, and from Jehudah Ha’levi to the living Hebrew poets of our own day. This everlasting, all-absorbing and unconquerable idea of a national future is absolutely Jewish. It has accompanied the Jews from the cradle to the grave. It is the secret of their long existence, which has no parallel in history. It has nothing to do with nationalistic tendencies and currents among the Gentiles in modern times. It existed as well in times of distress and misfortune as in times of prosperity. It was never the invention of individuals; on the contrary, there can be found occasionally the expression of individual views, in passages of little importance, which reveal a somewhat different standpoint. But the Jewish people as a whole, including even the most extreme sects, such as the Karaites and the Samaritans, remained faithful to this idea.

From an historical point of view, to speak of “Germans, Hungarians or Turks of the Jewish faith” in order to describe the Jews simply as persons of a certain religious faith similar to Protestants, Catholics or others, is nothing short of defying authentic history and hard facts. The Jews do not form a State within a State, as some anti-Semites maintain; but they are undoubtedly an old historic nation within other nations, an old nation which has outlived Egyptian Pharaohs, Assyrian Kings and Arabian Khalifs. That they at present do not live in their own land, but are scattered everywhere, that they have become acclimatized in different countries, and not only conform to their laws but belong to their most loyal citizens, that fact does not in the least alter the truth of our assertion. With a few unimportant exceptions Jews marry among themselves, and as far as the majority is concerned maintain their racial and historic peculiarities. Moreover, their entire religion abounds in historical ideas and national reminiscences. They can by no means be compared with Catholics or Protestants: there are French Catholics and German Catholics, English Protestants and German Protestants, but the Jewish religion has been a religion of the Jewish nation alone for thousands of years.

It is only in quite modern times that a kind of opposition to this idea has begun to find expression in some Jewish quarters, influenced by the general tendencies of the end of the eighteenth century, and chiefly represented by the so-called Mendelssohnian school. This opposition has been intensified to a certain extent, since Modern Zionism came into being with its clear programme and its up-to-date character.

The principal points of this opposition to the Zionist cause are the following:—

1. The Spiritual Character of Judaism.

2. The so-called Mission of the Jews.

3. The Progress of Modern Civilization.

4. The Duty of Patriotism, and

5. The Problem of Equality of Rights for the Jews.

The slightest examination of these objections shows that they are partly based on misunderstanding, and partly mere verbal criticism, which in no way affects the essence of Zionism.

1. It would be absurd to suppose that Zionism denies the spiritual or universal character of Judaism. Zionism does not worship “tribalism.” Far from it. Jewish religious doctrines are of value to the whole world, and their ethics undoubtedly tend to unite humanity. This is a truth so evident as to need no confirmation. But Jews are not ghosts; they are human beings, and they have to look upon Judaism in a human sense. And the human sense is that Jews, notwithstanding the spiritual character of their teachings, are, like any other ethnic group, a species of the genus homo, a distinct people united by their origin and by their common history. “God,” said Mazzini, “has written one line of His thought upon each people, and consequently each is to bring its gifts into the market-place of the world’s good.” In this sense Zionists are Nationalists: they look forward to the gradual and ultimate triumph of all national types, including their own. There is no reason for humanity to deny this natural right to the oldest nation of the world, and no justification for the Jews themselves to commit a sort of national hari-kari because of the spirituality of Judaism.

2. The Zionist conception of a living nationality, with all universal qualities, yet living and distinctive, holds good also for the idea of the Mission of Judaism. Frankly, Zionists do not like this idea as a justification of the Jew’s “right to exist.” But what exactly is the meaning of a mission of a people? This uncertain phrase of a mission of a people, the mystic form in which the knowledge won by a retrospective observation of history is expressed, the idea that a given people in a given way has influenced the development of the human moral system. In fact, this mode of expression confuses cause and effect. It presupposes that definite tasks are assigned to a nation beforehand and that it exists and acts with regard to the solution of these problems. The truth is, however, that every nation creates definite phenomena in the history of civilization, whilst it lives and acts as it can and must owing to its natural conditions and the influence of its surroundings. A nation has no other mission but to live and to develop fully all its latent capacities. Without intention and consciousness it then fulfils quite alone a rôle in human history. An oppressed, persecuted and despised Jewish people is worthless to humanity; a free, strong, happy Jewish people becomes a useful partner in the task of the progress of the whole human race. The co-operation in this task may be called a mission. In any case, this mission will certainly not be fulfilled by a Jewish people harassed by persecution or absorbed by assimilation; but, on the other hand, it may be fulfilled by a national self-centred Jewish people. Let us suppose that there are prospects of a “Jewish Mission” to spread far and wide the moralities that were revealed to the Jewish nation at the foot of Mount Sinai, to influence humanity by teachings given them and by examples which they are called on to offer. Surely, though such a mission may perhaps be carried out to a certain extent in the Diaspora, if circumstances are favourable and if the Jews themselves do not amalgamate and are not absorbed by others, it can be carried out best and most completely from a Jewish centre, from a Jewish Commonwealth living in that land from which the spirit of Judaism first passed into morality, into human society and institutions. There this mission will be on firm ground. Thence came the Divine literature, which has affected all subsequent literature, all hearts, all minds, and all studies. From Palestine the light of the Jewish genius will shine forth again with the light of a modern civilization according to the ideas and teachings of the Prophets. This will be the most efficient instrument of propaganda, because it will be the clearest manifestation of the real Jewish spirit and activity.

3. The progress of modern civilization has come to be regarded as a sort of modern Messiah for the final solution of the Jewish problem. Zionism considers this conception superficial and misleading. “Modern Civilization” is one of those vague, indefinite expressions which convey to the mind ideas large enough, no doubt, but still very nebulous, very indistinct. But our age is a mystery-dispelling age. Somehow during the last generations mysteries have become fewer and fewer; the light of truth has become more penetrating. Men begin to know what “modern civilization” is in its separate and distinctive aspects. “Modern civilization” connotes advanced thought, domestic comfort, railroads, telegraphs, telephones, airships, and many other things of the kind. It connotes the development of those rich physical resources by which man is surrounded; it connotes also guns and super-dreadnoughts and submarines, diplomacy and power. Zionists do not see how this “civilization” will become a Messiah for the Jews; they do not see how this “civilization” will solve any human or national problem. They see that in spite of all the admirable achievements of modern civilization something is wrong. Indeed, except for technical improvements everything is still lacking. One must go back and seek again the proper fountain-head of that real civilization, of that culture of the heart, whose triumph will be the “new heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.” If any one idea running through all the teachings of the Jewish prophets, and embodied likewise in the teachings of Christianity, is needed nowadays, it is the doctrine of Love and Justice and Truth.

Where are these ideals? We have seen all the Demons of Earth, all the Powers of Darkness let loose. The signs on Belshazzar’s wall appear again on the wall of modern civilization: Mene, Tekel, Upharsin. Never at any time has a crisis more momentous impended over humanity. Never at any time has a gloom more heavy darkened the world. Never did humanity long more than nowadays for Truth, Justice and Liberty, for the salvation of small, disinherited and oppressed nations. We all hope that good will come out of evil. But this good will not come automatically out of “Modern Civilization.” It will come from that Universal and National Justice to which Zionism appeals.

4. Of greater apparent importance is the question of Patriotism. But in reality, so far as Zionism is concerned, this is no question at all. It was an offensive and insulting question asked by anti-Semites: “Can a Jew be a patriot?” It is equally insulting to ask: “Can a Zionist be a patriot?” As a matter of fact there are no conflicting sentiments to be reconciled; there is only one sentiment: loyalty. A selfish materialist will never be attached to the old home of his fathers, nor to his present country. His maxim will be: Ubi bene, ibi patria. On the other hand, a man of character will as easily combine two objects of loyalty as he easily and naturally combines the love of his country and of his family.

The heart of the Jew beats warmly for the country in which he lives, the land in which is the home of his childhood, the school of his boyhood, the household of his mature life: the land in which he labours in his busy years, and in which he expects to rest when his struggles are over. No Englishman can love England better or labour for it more zealously than does the English Jew. The child will never forget the fostering warmth of the breast on which it has rested in happier days. This is natural. And Zionism has never interfered with this feeling. Zionists are as faithful patriots as non-Zionists: they work for their native lands, they sacrifice their fortunes and their lives. Even in countries where Jews have been deprived of the rights of citizenship they have been active as citizens, not only in war-time, but also in peace-time. There is no body of individuals more loyal, more charitable, more anxious at all times to do what they can for the country and to promote to their utmost its industry, arts and sciences. There is not the slightest difference in this respect between Zionists and non-Zionists. Zionists do not know or care whether it will please anti-Semites to recognize Zionist patriotism or not. It is equally impossible to know whether anti-Semites will recognize the patriotism of Jews who are not Zionists. Against sheer prejudice nothing can be done. But among Jews themselves and broad-minded Gentiles this question of the incompatibility of Zionism and patriotism should be eliminated at once on account of its manifest absurdity.

5. The question of equality of rights is another problem out of which anti-Zionists have endeavoured to make controversial capital. The Russian Revolution, with its recognition not only of individual but also of national equality of rights in the country where of all others this problem was most acute for the Jews, has taken the ground from under their feet; and we are no longer called on to treat seriously the contention that there is any sort of incompatibility between the Zionist claim for recognition of Jewish nationality and the claim of the individual Jew, wherever he may be, to be allowed the privileges, as he is ready to fulfil the duties, of citizenship. There is, in fact, unconscious humour in the attempt to reduce the problem to a sort of alternative formula: “Either rights or Palestine,” and therefore choose for yourself! “Hic Rhodus, hic salta!” This is surely the very height of naivete. Such a dilemma is a senseless invention. Every student of Jewish history knows that if there has been and if there is persecution of the Jews or any limitation of their rights, this has not been, and is not because the Jews were or are Zionists or non-Zionists, Orthodox or Reformers, and so on. One might more easily find some connection between anti-Semitism and the assimilation of those Jews who endeavoured to amalgamate too quickly. But even this point is irrelevant. The Jews must not ignore themselves, and ignoring themselves would not help them to get rights. The more they respect themselves the more they will be respected. And what is the self-respect of an ancient nation? Self-respect is faithfulness to one’s own history and traditions. There is no duality and no alternative. There is only one Jewish problem that requires solution. There is only one Justice—to man and to nations. Justice will consider Jewish needs; injustice will be deaf to any demand. Weak-minded and nervous people feared that Zionism which recognizes the Jews as a nationality will allow the anti-Semites to reproach us triumphantly as having no native land. Weakness of mind and nervousness are bad counsellors. The anti-Semites did not wait for Zionism in order to brand us as having no fatherland. The Christian peoples, however, amongst whom we may presuppose a sense of justice to exist, will believe us when we speak thus to them: “We Jews are true citizens of the States to which we belong. All interests of the country are also ours. We have no single interest which is opposed to any interest whatsoever of our country. We are strong and of deep feeling, and are attached therefore with more than ordinary love to that spot where our cradle stood and where the remains of our ancestors are buried.”

This self-reliance is of the essence of Zionism. Zionism is a Jewish programme. It is a Jewish programme because it requires of Jews courage, initiative, resourcefulness, tenacity, will-power and sacrifice. For Jewish emancipation the most important condition is that others should be humane. For Zionism the most important condition is that Jews should be Jews, adhering with tenacious consistency to this truly national idea of their own. In the first case the real work has to be done by others; Jews can do very little, their rôle being chiefly passive. They may be persecuted or not; they may get rights or not. Essentially it depends on many factors outside their influence and their control. But Zionism is essentially an active Jewish programme. Zionism is real Jewish self-help. Zionism tends to make the Jews creators, not creatures of conditions and situations.

Zionists, like all Jews, are fundamentally optimists; but theirs is no mere “wait and see” optimism. Confidence in the Future has been the curse of the Jew. Confidence in “Progress” as an idol has been blindness. Away with idols! Jews have to take their cause into their own hands, for God helps those who help themselves. First of all, they have to look on the general situation of the world and on that of their own people as it is. They have also to read the signs of the time. Time does not stand still. We are no longer at the end of the eighteenth century. The fundamental character of the present age is clear. This is a Nationalist age.

Zionism looks at the 2000 years of the Jewish tragedy in the perspective of national justice. The Jewish problem is essentially (and independently of the necessity of human rights for the Jews everywhere) a question of national homelessness.

The world has been passing through a period which sometimes seems like a nightmare of blood and ruin, and sometimes like one of the greatest eras in which man can be called upon to live. All over Europe, almost all over the world, the storm of the greatest and most terrible war in history has burst with the fury of a thousand volcanic eruptions and a thousand hells. Flourishing countries have been reduced to heaps of smoking ruins. Vast fields have been saturated with the blood of millions of men. Large masses of population, almost whole peoples, have been ruined or driven out of their countries.

But, after all, peace will return to the troubled world, that peace which will be peace indeed—the peace of security, of justice for great and small nations everywhere. The present Armageddon is succeeded by new problems and their solutions. We are facing political, economic, and, above all, national problems. It is plain common sense, and needs no argument, that all present developments tend inevitably to accentuate afresh and emphatically historic traditions, claims and distinctions. There will be difficulties in settling all these questions, but all such difficulties will be overcome by determination and necessity. Plenty of work will have to be done, for it may be long before the set-back which the war has given to the progress of the world is made good and the effects of this cruel destruction are obliterated. But this work will be achieved sooner or later. The whole energy of Governments and nations will have to be devoted to reconstruction. At last the ploughman will return from the battlefield to the cornfield, the tradesman from the camp to the market, and everybody to his old home and business. Every nation which possesses a country of its own will be restored. They will make a slow or rapid recovery from the ills and losses of the war. Finally, the shattered agricultural, domestic, industrial and spiritual lives of the people will be re-established.

Now, among all the battlefields and graveyards of the war, there is not one to be compared with the battlefield of the Jewish Ghetto in Eastern Europe. Millions of Jews have waded through seas of blood and tears. Towns and villages have been dyed with their blood. The Jews have sacrificed their trade, their fortunes and themselves. The flower of their manhood has been lost or mutilated. The sources of life have been cut off, every link of the chain of existence has been broken. Their schools and spiritual centres are no more. The sword of Damocles is suspended over the heads of the survivors. Starving and ruined communities are trembling on the edge of the precipice.

And what has the future in store for these millions? What will be the outcome of this terrible crisis for the disinherited and homeless masses? Where are the fields to be cultivated by them again? Where will they be able to convert spears into pruning-hooks? They are in the air. Have all their sufferings been for naught? Will the Jewish masses have to migrate again to England and to America and elsewhere, to face the world again as mendicants and “undesirable aliens”? Much Jewish benevolence is uselessly diffused, losing itself in the sands of vain or ill-directed effort, and most runs to absolute waste. With all these diverse floods of unutilized kindness and brotherly love that yearns to help but lacks the means and knows not how to put an end to the suffering, the situation remains unchanged.

There is a solution for this problem. This solution is Zionism. Give to the Jews a footing on their own soil, house and home of their own! Palestine (and gradually the thinly populated neighbouring districts) can become a great outlet for Jewish population: Palestine can again be made to “blossom like a rose,” and be capable of supporting a great population as in the glorious days of David and Solomon. Vast tracts of the so-called Syrian Desert are only regions deforested, and wherever the hum of men comes peacefully, the arid soil bursts into life. The plains of the Hauran, the villages of the Jordan, and the land of Gilead would form one of the richest and largest food-producing areas in the world.

Palestine can again become a centre. Napoleon I. and Alexander the Great, in their days, recognized this country as the key to the gate between West and East. The latter won it and penetrated to the Punjab; the former failed and had to go home again. But whatever value Palestine possessed in those days is immensely enhanced now by the vast extension of European civilization and industry over Africa, Australia, India and all the East, and by steam power, railways, the telegraph and the Suez Canal, which have shortened distances, and made the world so very small in comparison with what it was before; so that Palestine is now ten times more valuable and is suited by her position to become a blessed and happy country.

Now the present situation is full of possibilities and significance. Great developments have taken place in connection with the old home of the Jewish nation. This is the hour of the Zionist. The time has come to act. History will condemn the Zionists if they do not use their present opportunity. But what can their activity be? The reply has been given by the Programme of Zionism, the Basle Programme, adopted at the First Congress, in 1897:—

“The object of Zionism is to establish for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law.

“The Congress contemplates the following means to the attainment of this end:—

“1. The promotion, on suitable lines, of the colonization of Palestine by Jewish agricultural and industrial workers.

“2. The organization and binding together of the whole of Jewry by means of appropriate institutions, local and international, in accordance with the laws of each country.

“3. The strengthening and fostering of Jewish national sentiment and consciousness.

“4. Preparatory steps towards obtaining government consent, where necessary, to the attainment of the aim of Zionism.”

In constituting the organization for the purpose of carrying out this work Zionists are animated by one desire, namely, to establish a centre in the home of their fathers, where Jews shall earn their bread, and where the soul of the nation can be active in its own way. They wish to combine a judicious use of Jewish energies with the forces of Jewish capital and Jewish emigration. By means of these efforts they will lift some of the masses out of the Jewish homelessness of the Diaspora to a new level of material contentment and moral dignity in Palestine.

Zionists have started this work, and it has proved to be good work. The Chovevé Zion and Zionists have created the new colonization of Palestine. They are engaged in selecting suitable elements, in conveying them, in helping them to establish themselves, in supplying them with all kinds of information and encouragement. It has been said, and is still being obstinately repeated by anti-Zionists again and again, that Zionism aims at the creation of an independent “Jewish State.” But this is wholly fallacious. The “Jewish State” was never a part of the Zionist programme. The “Jewish State” was the title of Herzl’s first pamphlet, which had the supreme merit of forcing people to think. This pamphlet was followed by the first Zionist Congress, which accepted the Basle Programme—the only programme in existence.

The opposition, driven from one point of vantage to another, has made a certain confusion of ideas, arising from the term “political Zionism,” a pretext for decrying Zionism as a “political” movement. Zionism, it is true, is a political as well as a practical and a cultural movement. But wherein lies the political character of the movement? The term “political” covers two different conceptions. One is connected with the idea of adventure, intrigue, rivalry, antagonism or revolt; the other is that of a system which takes into account political conditions. A political movement in the first sense aims at carrying out its undertaking on the lines of political speculation; but a political movement in the second sense, like Zionism, aims at carrying on its work under all circumstances, and at the same time at convincing those in power of the utility of the work, in order to get the best possible conditions. The Basle Programme and the whole of Zionist activity bear witness to the fact that Zionism has nothing in common with political adventure. Zionists have never been influenced by any political aggressive spirit, nor have they in any way proposed to place themselves in antagonism to any Government or any other nation. Zionists have always desired to be supported (§ 4 of the Basle Programme) by all Governments on the merits of their object, and by all nations who know that Zionist work can only advance the interests of Justice and Freedom.

Zionism has the following objects in view:—

A home for Jews who are materially or morally suffering.

A home for Jewish education, learning and literature.

A source of idealism for Jews all over the world.

A place in which Jews can live a healthy Jewish life.

A revival of the language of the Bible.

The resurrection by civilization and industry of the old home of our fathers, long neglected and ruined.

The creation of a sound, strong Jewish agricultural class.

In this way Zionism will establish a Jewish society, bound together by similarity of feeling and unity of common ideas, working out its destiny in its own way. Zionists want a commonwealth of Jewish colonization and labour, a settlement of Jewish pioneers and workers who will be able to create and to develop a civilization of their own, undisturbed by any restrictions. This is possible only in Palestine, and is the paramount necessity of the whole Jewish people all over the world.

The creation of a settlement of this kind will help the Jews economically, but how much and how quickly it will help depends on the intensity of the work. It may be slow work, but it will be fundamental work. It is the foundation-stone for a great structure. Palestine may even become the home of considerable masses of Jews. But in any case the creation of a national home for the Jews will raise their prestige among the nations. It will never be an obstacle in the way of rights; on the contrary, it will help in this direction also.

On the spiritual and intellectual side this work will undoubtedly bring about a great revival of Judaism. Judaism will be no mere abstraction, but something real and living. “Jewish science” or Hebrew studies will not be merely a careful post-mortem analysis, to be undertaken exclusively by scholars and specialists. These studies will appear as the unbroken chain of the common cultural heritage of a living nation.

Zionists are under no misapprehension as to the gravity of the difficulties which may confront them. But they will meet these difficulties as serious men inspired by a great ideal and with a just cause. With a clear and distinct purpose in view, Zionists desire to work in full harmony with all the friends of Justice and Liberty and Truth, and while striving for the rescue of their own people they would not only not interfere with any just principle or cause injury to any patriotic aspiration of any other nation; they would accommodate and co-ordinate their cause with others. It is in this sense that we speak of “political Zionism.”

History shows that the Zionist idea and the continual renewal of efforts in this direction have been a tradition with the English people for centuries. English Christians taught the undying principles of Jewish nationality. Zionism was thus permanently connected with England. The Jewish national idea has always particularly appealed to English feeling, has touched the heart of the English nation. The facts and records disprove the absurd yet deeply rooted idea that Zionism is only a vision of sectarians or a hallucination of dreamers. The documents cited in this volume give ample and convincing proof of the high moral dignity and political value of the Zionist cause as championed by prominent English thinkers, men of letters and poets throughout many generations. For nearly three centuries Zionism was a religious as well as a political idea which great Christians and Jews, chiefly in England but to some extent also in France, handed down to posterity. And moreover, all the available evidence points to the fact that whenever the attention of the world has been invited to the question of Palestine and to measures for improving the development of the Near East, English opinion has given the most careful and sympathetic consideration to the Zionist idea. Thus the present Zionist movement is essentially a logical conclusion of all the premises which have been accepted from different points of view, not only by a considerable number of Jewish authorities, but also by public opinion in great civilized countries of Western Europe. Zionists, therefore, hope that English Christians will be worthy heirs and successors to the Earl of Shaftesbury, George Eliot, and many others; English Jews to Sir Moses Montefiore, French Christians to Henri Dunant, and French Jews to Joseph Salvador, Bernard Lazare, and others. One may also hope that as Zionism is not a source of conflicting element but a source of peace and unity, all the nations of the world will be open to conviction and will give strong support to its aims.

Zionism has started its work in Palestine, and will pursue it. Recognising the aspirations of the Jewish people with regard to Palestine and their historic rights, the British Government on November 2nd, 1917, made the well-known Declaration. This Declaration had been anticipated by the letter from the French Government of 4th June, 1917, and was fully endorsed in the letter from M. Stephen Pichon, Minister for Foreign Affairs, to myself, dated 14th February, 1918, and the letter to me communicating the concurrence of the Italian Government with these declarations, dated 9th May, 1918. (See Volume II., pp. 1 ff.) It will be the task of Zionism to accumulate by every effort the resources, material and moral, required for this purpose. Those Jews who are not yet in the movement will be brought into it by time and experience, because there is indeed no argument against this peaceful idea of national justice, except pure and unscrupulous prejudice, which must disappear. But Zionism is anxious to have also the moral support of the nations, and particularly in this country it is impossible for any Jew with a historic consciousness to forget the noble Zionist tradition of England during many centuries. Some of the most glorious pages in British history have been those in which she took a part, and an honourable and leading part, in the revival of ancient nations. The friends of Greece, of Italy, cannot forget this record.

Zionists can define only what they need. They need not only to continue their work, but to develop it on the largest possible scale. They want to do the peaceful work of agriculturists, craftsmen and intellectuals. They are ready to invest capital, energy and intelligence in order to establish a home for the Jews. Palestine is to be re-made. To this end national autonomy safeguarding the welfare of a Jewish Palestine is needed.

Let humanity do for Palestine only a small part of what has been done so liberally for the most exotic colony—nay, less than that, because Zionists ask for no material support, and for no embarrassing responsibility. They ask only for sympathetic consideration and help, for recognition and protection. And let humanity be sure of the loyalty of a people which, although sorely tried, has never grown cold in its affections, a people which by its resurrection will become again what it was in very ancient times, not a military power but a spiritual and peaceful power. Then the time will come when this people’s gratitude will recognize its indebtedness to the world for the co-operation which will assist its great and just cause.

From the Rt. Hon. Viscount Bryce.

Dear Sir,

In response to your request for some observations by me on the value which your treatise may have for students of history, I send you these few lines. The pressure of heavy and urgent work forbids me to deal in any but the briefest way with the subject of your book, great as its interest is.

The history of Israel presents some of the most striking phenomena in world history. No other nation (with the exception of the two very ancient nations of the Far East) has annals so long as are those of the descendants of Abraham. Those annals go back, dim as are their earlier outlines, to a time long anterior to the earliest records of the Hellenic and Italic peoples. The records of the old civilization of Assyria and Egypt are, no doubt, even more remote in time, but the nations that created those civilizations have been so changed by conquest and the admixture of new elements that we can no longer recognise them as the same. But Israel has preserved its identity through all vicissitudes. It was carried into captivity in a far land, and returned thence after seventy years. It was, after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Emperor Hadrian, scattered over the face of the earth, and now counts its children everywhere, from Singapore to San Francisco. Its numbers have grown to be fifteen or twenty times greater than they were before the Great Dispersion. It has been kept in existence as a nation through many centuries of oppression and suffering by its Faith and its Literature, a faith embodied in a law which included both a moral and a ceremonial code, a Literature small in bulk but splendid in content, which has formed the mind of the people, sharpening their intelligence and intensifying their national self-consciousness. It is one of those three great literatures of the ancient world which still rule the thought and still help to form the character of mankind. This is a unique phenomenon, and perhaps the most striking testimony that history can show to the vivifying power of ideas.

This consciousness of an enduring national life has been constantly associated in the thoughts of Israel with the ancient home in Palestine, a little country, no bigger than Wales in Britain or Connecticut in North America. To its rocky hills and green valleys, its cities and its battlefields, its heroes and its prophets, the hearts of the people have turned in days of sorrow. The memories of these things have maintained the sense of national life. The flame has often burnt low, but it has never been extinguished. Quite recently it has leapt up with a brilliant glow. The idea that a part of the dispersed people should be gathered from the regions where their lot was worst and be re-settled in their ancient home, long desolated by the tyranny of the cruel and rapacious Turk, has gained strength, and the capture of Jerusalem by the British arms has now made it seem attainable. The sympathy of many thoughtful and sympathetic Christians has been gained, and the British Government has given clear expression to that sympathy. It is to the history of this idea of re-settlement, to which the name of Zionism is now given, that your book is devoted. There are, I am aware, some differences of opinion among Jews themselves as to the form in which this idea might be practically realized, and as to the way in which that form might affect the position of Jews in the countries where they now dwell and of which they wish to remain citizens, though I gather that these differences do not touch the question of the desirability of a large Jewish immigration into Palestine. Upon these differences of opinion I must not pronounce any judgment, though personally inclined to believe that the existence of a national home at the eastern end of the Mediterranean will not affect the loyalty to the other countries where they dwell of the Jews settled in those countries, nor expose them to any suspicion of disloyalty. It is as a student of history, and in that capacity only, that on this particular occasion I desire to speak, expressing my sense of the high interest of the subject of your book, and feeling that the rapid growth of the Zionist movement, the forces that have produced it, and the enthusiasm it has excited, well deserve to be fully, accurately, and impartially described.

I am, 

Faithfully yours, 

Bryce.

Mr. N. Sokolow.

From Colonel Sir Mark Sykes, M.P.

My dear Mr. Sokolow,

After many days’ delay, I write to you my message of goodwill and good hope for the success of this your great work on the cause which you have at heart and for which you have laboured so long.

It is an odd thought which crosses my mind at this moment—if it be egotistical I cannot help it—nevertheless I will set it down. I foresee myself handed down to posterity as one of those enduring obscurities, who did nothing in any way remarkable, yet whose names last for all time, because they scratched their fleeting impressions on the Memnon at Luxor.

In languages yet unknown, and in States unborn, this your work will be read by people who will know perhaps as little of the details of life in these days as we do of those of the times of the first dispersion of the Jews.

Your cause has about it an enduring quality which mocks at time; if a generation is but a breath in the life of a nation, an epoch is but the space ’twixt a dawn and a sunrise in the history of Zionism.

When all the temporal things this world now holds are as dead and forgotten as the curled and scented Kings of Babylon who dragged your forefathers into captivity, there will still be Jews, and so long as there are Jews there must be Zionism.

We live in an age when mankind is reaping the whirlwind of its wickedness and folly. Wherein the past men have sown those dragons’ teeth of intolerance, tyranny, injustice, and race hatred, legions of armed men now spring up to destroy and shatter the husbanded resources of progress.

The War of to-day is the logical result of the “peace” of yesterday. The grand problem which we have to consider is whether or no the peace of to-morrow is to be the precursor of a future war which will overwhelm civilization for ever. Unless forces different to those which have counted in the direction of the affairs of men hitherto are in the ascendant, I feel no doubt that what is called Civilization is predestined to suicide, and that in the real meaning of the words “felo de se.” The blind genius which people call “science” wrests mechanical discoveries and chemical formulæ from the accumulated experience of the past and gives men hygiene, transit, and commerce with one hand, and explosives and military organization with the other. You, my dear Mr. Sokolow, represent a people who have watched this process of constructive destruction in the course of evolution, and have seen the higher men climb in pride and vanity the more deplorable is their fall.

If the peace which is to follow the War is to be a real peace, and not a pause in war, then you and your people must be watchers no longer. In Zionism lies your people’s opportunity. In alliance with those other forces of regeneration and illumination which are centred on Jerusalem and which radiate through the world, it may be that you and your successors will play a part in establishing a moral order which will enable mankind to combine universal material progress with mutual subjection and charity.

Yours very sincerely, 

Mark Sykes.

THE

HISTORY OF ZIONISM

Hellas, Rome and Israel—The Englishman’s Bible—Its influence upon English Literature—Rev. Paul Knell, Matthew Arnold, Sir H. Havelock, Gordon, Livingstone, Ruskin, Carlyle, Taine, Sir L. T. Dibdin, Huxley, and J. R. Green—The Puritans—The Pilgrim Fathers—James I.—Cromwell.

No great idea, once proclaimed, has ever yet perished from the earth. An idea may assume new forms, may change its mere outward semblance—for all great ideas are plastic in their attributes and immutable in their essentials—but, once it has been enunciated, human life absorbs it within itself for ever.

The Greek spirit of freedom, and the order, discipline and law of Rome survive in Anglo-Saxon institutions, not by mere enforcement of victorious arms, but because men have recognized them as the happiest approximation to the independence of each and the subordination of all that has ever yet been conceived.

To Greece was entrusted the cultivation of reason and taste. Her gift to mankind has been science and art. To the Greeks we owe the science of logic, which has dominated the minds of all modern thinkers. Much of the spirit of modern politics, too, comes from Greece. On the other hand, the sentiments and the organizing force behind all States and Governments, which are absolutely indispensable to their vigour, are to a great extent Roman. Justinian’s¹ laws have penetrated into all modern legislation. Thus Greece may be said to have disciplined human reason and taste, and Rome human organization and power.

But England has been influenced by Israel even more than by Hellas and Latium; by the power and the light of the Hebrew genius—by the Bible.

The mission of the Hebrew race was to lay the foundation of morality and religion on earth. Their works and their Book are great facts in the history of man; the influence of their mind upon the rest of mankind has been immense and peculiar. The Hebrews may be said to have disciplined the human conscience; and to the pages of their sacred books humanity has turned again and again for new inspiration.

No people has been so devotedly attached to the Bible as the English, and the effect may be traced in all the great movements of English history. The Bible has dominated the whole domestic and political life of the English people for some centuries, and has provided the basis of the English conception of personal and political liberty.

The education of a large number of Englishmen has consisted mainly in the reading of the Scriptures. There is indeed no book, or collection of books, so rich in teaching or capable of appealing so forcibly to the unlearned and the learned alike. That the growth and gradual diffusion of religious and moral thinking is due to the supreme influence of the Bible is a fact which can be recognized throughout the whole of English history. As a single instance, we may take two writers who lived at different periods, and dealt with this subject from dissimilar points of view—the Rev. Paul Knell (1615‒1664) and Matthew Arnold (1822‒1888). Knell compared England with Israel. The name “Israel” was used by writers of his age with so much laxity, that it is impossible to define the sense which it was generally intended to convey. It often meant the Religion of Israel; at other times it was used as if it was a synonym of the word “Church.” But Knell used the word in its plain meaning: for him “Israel” meant simply the People of Israel in the Land of Israel (Appendix ii). If we compare the general tone and attitude of Christian preachers in those times in other countries with the attitude taken up by the English clergy, we must acknowledge that the latter have a much greater appreciation of the value and dignity of the Jewish people and of its great influence on the character of the English nation.

In spite of all modern developments, and notwithstanding the fact that modern science has undermined some of the old beliefs, the fundamental attitude of Englishmen to the Bible remains unchanged. There is no need to quote many writers; it is sufficient to refer to Matthew Arnold, who insists that Righteousness is the burden of Old Testament teaching, and that this idea has greatly influenced the formation of the English character (Appendix iii).

The indebtedness of English literature to the Bible is immeasurable. The Bible has inspired the highest and most ennobling books in the English language. No other book has been so universally read or so carefully studied. The Bible has been an active force in English literature for over twelve hundred years, and during that whole period it has been moulding the diction of representative English thinkers and literary men. The Bible is “the book upon which they have been brought up,” says Thomas Carlyle (1795‒1881), Nor has its influence on men of action been less marked. Englishmen picture Sir Henry Havelock (1795‒1857) sustaining himself upon the promises of the Bible through the darkest hours of the Mutiny; Charles George (Chinese) Gordon (1833 ‒1885) writing with his Bible in front of him at Khartoum; and David Livingstone (1813‒1873) in the loneliness of Central Africa reading it four times through from beginning to end, drawing from it patience, fortitude and perseverance. One of the mightiest moral forces of the last century in England, John Ruskin (1819‒1900), acknowledges his great indebtedness to the Bible. “In religion,” he says, “which with me pervaded all the hours of life, I had been moved by the Jewish ideal, and as the perfect colour and sound gradually asserted their power on me they seemed finally to agree in the old article of Jewish faith that things done delightfully and rightfully were always done by the help and spirit of God.”

“I have before me one of those great old folios in black letter in which the pages, worn by horny fingers, have been patched together,” writes Hippolyte Adolphe Taine (1828‒1893), in his Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise (Paris, 1863‒4).¹... “Hence have sprung much of the English language and half of the English manners. To this day the country is Biblical; it was these big books which had transformed Shakespeare’s England. To understand this great change, try to picture these yeomen, these shopkeepers, who in the evening placed this Bible on their table and bareheaded, with veneration, heard or read one of its chapters. Think that they had no other books, that theirs was a virgin mind, that every impression would make a furrow, that they opened this book not for amusement but to discover in it their doom of life and death.”

“The Bible stands for so much in England: it is the foundation of our laws,” said Sir Lewis Tonna Dibdin, “for when you get back behind judicial decisions and Acts of Parliament you come at the bottom to the moral laws, of which the Ten Commandments were the first written summary.”

“The Bible,” says Thomas Henry Huxley (1825‒1895), in his Essays on Controverted Questions, “has been the ‘Magna Charta’ of the poor and the oppressed.”

There is no Christian people even among the Protestant nations which could be compared with the English in knowledge of the Old Testament and in devotion to its teachings. This was the avowed object and the undeniable result of the English Reformation.

“Elizabeth (1533‒1603) might silence or tune the pulpits,” says John Richard Green (1837‒1883), “but it was impossible for her to silence or tune the great preachers of justice and mercy and truth who spoke from the Book.... The whole temper of the nation was changed. A new conception of life and of man superseded the old. A new moral and religious impulse spread through every class.”

This Biblical influence was felt long before the translation of the Bible into English. When King James I. (1566‒1625) in 1604 sanctioned a new translation of the Bible, he let loose moral and spiritual forces which transformed English life and thought. But before this the Renaissance, or revival of learning, had led to the study of the Scriptures and so had helped to make men Puritans.

The Pilgrim Fathers crossed the ocean with little more than this sacred volume in their hands and its spirit in their hearts. The men who founded new Commonwealths built up their constitutions upon the teachings of the Bible; and tradition has long asserted that every soldier in Cromwell’s army was provided with a pocket edition, which consisted of appropriate quotations from the Scriptures, mostly from the Bible of the Jews.¹

A close parallel can be drawn between the Puritans, of whom Oliver Cromwell (1599‒1658) was the principal type, and the enthusiasts who shared with Judas Maccabæus (ob. 3628 a.m.) the dangers and glories of his illustrious career. Both were stern warriors forced into battle by the stress of great principles, and by the strongest sense of obligation to a sacred cause. Both fought for liberty against tyranny, against religious persecution and unrighteousness. The spirit which inspired them all was the secret of the world’s greatest achievements. The parallel can be traced even further. Cromwell’s life was shaped by the influence of the Bible. For a figure to compare with Cromwell we must turn neither to ancient history nor to early English history, but to the pages of Jewish national history in the Bible. Cromwell’s examples were Joshua (2406‒2516 a.m.), Gideon (fl. 2676 a.m.) and Samuel (ob. 2882 a.m.). Hebrew warriors and prophets were his ideals. And that is not to be wondered at, for Cromwell studied the Bible every day with attention and reverence and with a desire to be guided by it. He was an intellectual and spiritual child of the Old Testament, and he “imagined himself to be a second Phineas, raised up by Providence to be the scourge of idolatry and superstition.”¹

Its survival and revival—Its influence upon the English mind—De Quincey—Bacon—Shakespeare—Milton—Cowley—Taylor—Tillotson—Barrow—Dryden—Parnell—Pope—Addison—Young—Akenside—Gray—Warton—Cowper—Byron—Shelley—Southey—Moore—Sir Thomas Brown[e]—Earl of Clarendon—John Pym—Viscount Falkland—Sir Henry Vane—Earl of Chatham—Browning—Tennyson—John Bright.

The Hebrew language, mysteriously preserved like Israel, the people after whom it is called, through the tempests of many centuries, politically annihilated, but spiritually full of vigour, has never ceased to be a vehicle for the expression of sublime thoughts and sentiments. Not only in the brilliant epoch of Hebrew literature in Spain, from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries, but since then, Hebrew has been written in prose and in poetry with power and effect unattainable in any of the languages that have ceased to live. It is entirely wrong to consider Hebrew a dead language. Hebrew has never been dead. At no time in its long history has it ceased to be employed by the Jewish people, as a medium for the expression, whether in speech or in writing, of the living thoughts and the living feelings of the Jew. Its use as a national medium of everyday speech came, indeed, to an end with the destruction of the political organization of the Jewish people. But that catastrophe did not destroy the life of the language any more than it destroyed the life of the nation. The marvellous revival of the Hebrew language in our times in Palestine, which is one of the greatest achievements of the Zionist movement, shows that the language was only neglected, and that it was essentially a living language.

The Hebrew language, with its naturalness and noble simplicity, has exerted an influence not less powerful than that of Biblical ideas on the English mind. Knowing little of artificial forms, it has a natural sublimity of its own, and a great logical clearness in discriminating between nice shades of meaning. It appeals strongly to the English mind, because it is the holy language, bringing the Divine Word and coming from the sanctuary of that ancient covenant, whose faithful guardians are the people of Israel. The Semitic word has within historic times exercised on the civilisation of the whole human race an influence to which no parallel can be found, and which, if the future may be measured by the past, is destined triumphantly to extend, for the incalculable benefit of mankind, to the uttermost bounds of the earth. The poetry of the Bible has no rival.

“The Hebrew language,” says Thomas De Quincey (1785‒1859), “by introducing himself to the secret places of the human heart, and sitting there as incubator over the awful germs of the spiritualities that connect man with unseen worlds, has perpetuated himself as a power in the human system: he is co-enduring with man’s race, and careless of all revolutions in literature or in the composition of society....”¹

The Hebrew language deals best with concrete things, and is essentially personal. In poetry it is best adapted to re-echo the poet’s own thoughts, and to set forth the various phases of his intimate experience.

“Now, this poetry derives its excellence from its great outward simplicity: it acknowledges no rule of metrical art. Its poesy is esoteric, not exoteric. The outward characteristic of Hebrew poetic style is its parallelism, or the logical symmetry between two distichs of the same verse. The graceful execution of this difficult problem—unity of design under a diversity of forms—constitutes the incomparable charm of Hebrew poetic diction. Parallelism is the law of perfection. Thought and speech, body and spirit, here and hereafter, are divinely conceived parallelisms.”¹

The Hebrew language is pre-eminently intuitive, and adapted for teaching morality and expressing with authority religious and ethical truths in brief, pregnant utterances.

The best of English literature has been inspired by the Hebrew language of the Bible. Throughout the entire works of Francis Bacon (1561‒1626)¹ Scriptural influence is sufficiently apparent: but in his Essays—his favourite work—which he so carefully revised and re-wrote in the ripeness of his age and experience, and which, therefore, may be considered the very cream and essence of his genius, this characteristic element obtains a prominence that cannot fail to strike every reader. So natural was it—to borrow a figure of speech from Bacon himself—for his great mind “to turn upon the poles of truth,” and to revert to its great fountain-head, in support and confirmation of his own profound conclusions.

But by far the most prominent example of the deference and homage paid to the Bible will be found in the works of William Shakespeare (1564‒1616). As he excels in nearly all other points, so also is he greatest in this respect. His works are so perfectly impregnated with the Bible that we can scarcely open them without encountering one or other of the Bible’s great truths, assimilated by Shakespeare and reproduced in words that renew the Bible’s authority and strengthen its claim upon men’s attention. The influence of the Bible is apparent not only in the tone of Shakespeare’s poetry but also in the shape and character of it.¹ Both the spirit and the letter bear witness to this fact. The Bible has left its impression not only on Shakespeare’s mind but on his idiom, on the exquisite simplicity of his diction, while his innumerable allusions, direct and indirect, to Scripture history, persons, places, events, doctrines, parables, precepts, and even phrases show a great familiarity with the Bible.² The Reformation introduced the same spirit into all the English literature of the Elizabethan era. It was the distinguishing feature of the period, and naturally enough culminated in the greatest genius of the time.

The influence of this Hebrew spirit is clearly visible in John Milton’s (1608‒1674) poetry. “Paradise Lost,”¹ the most glorious cosmological epic of the world’s literature, could have been written only by a man who knew the Bible by heart, and whose verse, when he so chose, could consist simply and solely of combinations of texts from the Bible or images influenced by Biblical ideas. The way in which he tells his stories, the elevation of his style, the music of his verse, changing from the roar of the hurricane and the tramp of bannered hosts to the hum of bees and the song of birds, the numerous gem-like phrases and passages which are sure to be quoted for all time—all these wonderful qualities are Biblical. Milton knew Hebrew, and his verse is throughout inspired by the genius of that language. And the spirit which found voice in Milton caused England to take the lead in bringing about religious liberty. This recognition of righteousness and fair play among the nations of the world benefited not only the Jewish nation: some months before Manasseh Ben Israel visited England, the Commonwealth had made a most vigorous protest against the outrage on humanity perpetrated by the persecutors of Protestants in Piedmont.

“We shall conclude our account of this period by ... [referring to] the ‘♦Davideis¹ of the melancholy [Abraham] Cowley (1618‒1667) in which he seems to have borne in mind the language of the Bible.. ..’ ‘It will be in the recollection of every person, that there flourished in the latter half of the seventeenth century three churchmen, whose works are still regarded as models of style and mines of learning and thought—[Bishop Jeremy] Taylor (1613‒1667), [Archbishop John] Tillotson (1630‒1694) and [Dr. Isaac] Barrow (1630‒1677); whose writings, if they have ever been equalled, have certainly never been surpassed. The familiarity with the pages of Holy Writ which these illustrious men must infallibly have acquired during the course of that severe education which made them what they were, could not but have exercised a very great influence upon their works....’”

“There are many allusions to Sacred Writ in the works of [John] Dryden (1631‒1700), particularly in his polemical works,... In the Hind and Panther....¹

“In [Thomas] Parnell’s (1679‒1718) beautiful poem of the ‘Hermit’¹ there are several traces of Biblical influence:...

“A perusal of [Alexander] Pope’s (1688‒1744) Messiah,¹ in which many of the expressions are taken, word for word, from the book of Holy Writ, will convince any reader of the influence which has been exercised by it upon this poet. We have the authority of Mr. [Joseph] Addison (1672‒1719) himself for the assertion, that he was fully sensible of the beauties of the English translation. ‘Our language,’ says the writer, in the 405th Number of the Spectator, ‘has received innumerable elegancies and improvements from the infusion of Hebraisms which are derived to it out of the poetical passages of Holy Writ;—they give a force and energy to our expression, warm and animate our language, and convey our thought in more ardent and intense phrases than any that are to be met with in our own tongue.’ Addison was the founder of that pure, classical, and polished style which has, ever since the publication of the Spectator, been considered as the ne plus ultra of that manner of writing. Knowing then, as we do, the sentiments of this accomplished writer, it is not to be supposed that he would, in the formation of his own style, have neglected to borrow largely from that which he praised so much; and thus it appears probable that the translation, throughout in this case itself a direct agent, has yet exercised a beneficial influence upon the prose even of modern writers....”

“In the poems of [James] Thomson (1700‒1748) there are a few passages for which he was, probably, in some measure, indebted to the Bible Translation—....”

“In the writings of [Edward] Young (1683‒1765), many expressions may be found indebted for the idea or manner of expression to Scripture. In his paraphrase of the Book of Job, one of his earlier works, first published in 1719.”

“In the Night Thoughts,¹ traces of Biblical influence are not so traceable, but it is probable that they exist....”

“[Dr. Mark] Akenside (1721‒1770), in one of his poems;¹ [Thomas] Gray (1716‒1771), in his admirable lines on Milton,² and [Thomas] Warton [the Elder] (1688?‒1745), in his Address to Night,³ had clearly in mind some of the passages in the Psalms.”

“There is a real strain of religious feeling, of the very strongest description, which breathes through the poetry of [William] Cowper (1731‒1800); but though he no doubt felt that admiration for the translation with which a person of his great taste and love of religious writings especially must have been imbued, there is no very perceptible evidence of its having exercised more than a general influence upon his language....”

“The mind of [George Gordon] Byron [Sixth Baron Byron] (1788‒1824) had been early tinctured by a love of the poetical parts of the Bible; ... and there are several traces to be found in his works of the influence which this book exercised upon his mind....”

“There are some expressions in the Revolt of Islam¹ that would seem to indicate that the author of that poem had kept in memory some of the descriptive and mystical passages of Ezekiel....”

“In [Robert] Southey (1774‒1843) there are several Biblical expressions and ideas....”¹

“In the beautiful songs of a justly celebrated ... writer, Mr. [Thomas] Moore (1779‒1852), there is much that can be traced to a scriptural origin.”¹

“It can now be seen, we hope, satisfactorily demonstrated, that the translation of the Bible into English has exercised a considerable influence upon the poetry of the last two centuries; it is now time to speak of the effects which it has produced upon our prose.... There are, ... to be found in the writings of many of the most distinguished prose authors in our language, passages which, from the general character of their style, or the form of the ideas they express, may be concluded to have been suggested, or at least modified, by the influence of the Bible Translation ... in the writings of Sir Thomas Brown[e] (1535?‒1585), an author who enjoyed a considerable degree of fame in the days of Queen Elizabeth (1533‒1603), great traces are to be discovered of Biblical influence;—while at a much later period [Edward] Hyde (1609‒1674), Earl of Clarendon (particularly the introduction, and part of the first volume)¹ will convince the most sceptical reader, that the translation of the Bible has not been disregarded by that writer....”

“It may, perhaps, ... seem paradoxical to affirm, that the art of public speaking, ... can have been indebted to so remote an event as the translation of the Bible; but this supposition will nevertheless be found to be correct:... The speeches of [John] Pym (1584‒1643) and others upon the Earl of Strafford’s (1593‒1641) impeachment [1640], of Viscount Falkland (1610?‒1643), Sir Henry Vane (1589‒1655), etc., upon the Episcopacy Reformation question, will suffice as instances of discourses in which many proofs may be found, upon perusal, of Biblical influence.”

“It is well known that [William Pitt] the [First] Earl of Chatham (1708‒1778), the most eloquent orator that England has ever produced, recommended to every person who wished to become acquainted with the force of the English language, and to acquire the power of expressing himself with facility, to study the writings of the copious Barrow. Now we know that Barrow was deeply read in the Holy Scriptures; we know that his style is greatly tinctured by the influence which they exerted upon him; will it, then, be too much to assert that English speaking, in general, ... has been considerably influenced by the Bible translation?...”

“It may be concluded from the foregoing observations, that the translation of the Bible into our language is a most remarkable event in the history of English literature:... Those who have compared most of the European translations with the original have not scrupled to say that the English translation is the most accurate and faithful of the whole.... Besides, our translators have not only made a standard translation, but they have made their translation a standard of our language. The English tongue of their day was not equal to such a work; but God enabled them to stand as upon Mount Sinai; and crane up their country’s language to the dignity of the originals, so that after the lapse of two hundred years, the English Bible is still with a very few exceptions the standard of the purity and excellence of the English tongue.”¹

This influence of the Hebrew language can be traced not only in the masterpieces of great poets; it was also of a general and popular character. The study of the Hebrew language among Christians, which had only casually and at intervals occupied the attention of ecclesiastics during the Middle Ages, received an immense impulse from the revived interest in the Bible caused by the Reformation.

Scientific progress in Hebrew was perhaps more considerable in other countries where the Reformation was gaining ground, but while in other countries this influence was felt chiefly among scholars, in England the influence has been popular and has been felt in the daily life of the nation. The process of enrichment and ennoblement of the English language has been going on for centuries among all classes of the population, and one of the chief agencies by which it has been effected is certainly the influence, direct and indirect, of the Hebrew Bible.

To penetrate into the history, prophecy, and poetry of the Hebrew Bible, to revere them as the effusion of Divine inspiration, to live in them with all the emotions of the heart, and yet not to consider Israel, who had originated all this glory and greatness, as the “Chosen People,” was impossible.¹

Hence among the Puritans there were many earnest admirers of “God’s Ancient People,” and Cromwell himself joined in this admiration. It was by this Biblical Hebrew movement that public opinion in England had been prepared for a sympathetic treatment of the idea of a readmission of the Jews into England.

Manasseh Ben-Israel—Aaron Levi alias Antony Montezinos—Moses Wall—Leonard Busher—David Abrabanel [Manuel Martinez Dormido]—Oliver St. John.

Manasseh Ben-Israel (1606‒1657), the Amsterdam Jewish preacher and Hebrew-Spanish author, was the chief promoter of the readmission of the Jews to England and the leading figure in the history of that great event. He had all the virtues and accomplishments of a leader. He was a man of fine intellect and high moral character, unselfish in thought, word and deed, straightforward and sincere, extraordinarily endowed and irresistibly attractive, at the same time a faithful religious believer and a practical man of action. All the sorrows and all the hopes of the old Jewish nation were in him, and all the beauty of the Bible was in his visions.

Manasseh was neither a first-rate Talmudical authority, nor the principal of a great Rabbinical school, nor a celebrated and officially recognized leader of Rabbis. He achieved nothing striking in the field of Halachah,¹ where alone, according to traditional views, authority can be won among learned Rabbis and their followers. In high Rabbinical quarters he may have been considered a dilettante or an eclectic, perhaps a sort of dreamer; and not without justice. The “practical” people of the period, again, may have pointed out that there was plenty of immediate “practical” work for Manasseh to do in congregations, in societies, in charities and in schools among the Portuguese Jews of the “Jodenbreestraat” in Amsterdam, and that he would do better if he devoted himself to ordinary local work, instead of chasing chimeras and planning Utopian schemes in close agreement with the Puritan Saints and Marrano travellers. And yet, in spite of all the immediate needs of the hour, this remarkable man, inspired by a vision of the lost Ten Tribes of Israel, wrote one book after another; not the traditional commonplace Rabbinical books dealing with questions and details of the conduct of everyday Jewish religious life, but books about the past and the future, about the Ten Tribes and about Israel as a nation—and with an inimitable touch of mysticism and poetry. He thought that Judaism required something more than local activities, that it needed clear-sighted and fearless self-defence, emancipated from routine, and not localized within the boundaries of one country. And he not only wrote books in Hebrew, Spanish, and Latin on this subject, but had several of them translated into other languages; he also entered into personal relations with non-Jewish “dreamers” who had proved by their ideas their intellectual kinship with him, although they challenged him to controversy on some essential points. He wrote petitions and proposals, and interfered to a certain extent with what should, according to some other rabbis, be confidingly left to Providence. It had dawned upon him that the Jews should resettle in England, to pave the way for their final resettlement in Palestine.

Manasseh was nothing if not a Zionist, if we look upon Zionism in the light of his time. He was undoubtedly a dreamer, but one of those dreamers to whom the word of the Psalmist applies, “... We were like unto them that dream.”¹ He combined worldly wisdom with the prophetic spirit. There was some ancient magic about him; there was a deep sense of religion in all his writings. This religious character enabled Manasseh to stir up Christian England at a time when there was a great rekindling of the religious consciousness. No wealthy Jew could have influenced England as did this poor Hebrew scholar; no powerful Jewish community could have produced an impression equal to that produced by this Jewish dreamer, not only by his boundless activity, determination and persistence, but chiefly because he was an inspired man. He brought to his task deep religious feeling, and a mind ripened by Jewish historical studies. He thus set himself to perform with energy and moral courage an exceedingly responsible service to the Jewish people, which he carried out with singular fidelity, inspiration and enthusiasm, as well as with discretion and tact.

He sent his brother-in-law, David Abrabanel [Manuel Martinez Dormido]¹ to England in 1654, to present to the Council a petition for the readmission of the Jews, and followed up this visit by his own journey to England, in order to support this petition.

There were undoubtedly several auxiliary causes which made the readmission of the Jews possible, and the general conditions of the time and the country were assuredly favourable. Still, the fact remains that Manasseh’s powerful imaginative impulse and his emotional Messianic conception were the most important driving force in the wonderful story of the resettlement of the Jews in England.¹ It is true that he did not succeed in obtaining that formal permission for the resettlement which he wanted, but by the publicity of his appeal he brought the subject prominently before the ruling minds of England, and thus indirectly led to the recognition of the fact that there was nothing in English law against the readmission of the Jews.²

One can say, without exaggeration, that there was a Biblical and Messianic idea at the very root of this great event. In effect, Zionism stood at the cradle of the resettlement of the Jews in England. This is clear to everybody who has studied Manasseh’s writings, particularly in the original Hebrew, the language in which he can best be understood and appreciated. His favourite idea was that the return of the Jews to their ancient land must be preceded by their general dispersion. The Dispersion, according to the words of the Bible, was to be from one end of the earth to the other, and must therefore include the British Isles, which lay in the extreme north of the inhabited world. Manasseh made no secret of his Messianic hopes, because he could and did reckon upon the fact that the “Saints” or Puritans wished for the “assembling of God’s people” in their ancestral home and were inclined to help and promote it.

What was the difference between Manasseh and other Rabbis? No Rabbi could fail to be well acquainted with the familiar prophecies of the Bible, and to know that the Dispersion was to be from one end of the earth to the other. Are not these prophecies quoted in the Jewish daily prayers, prayers that have been lost unheard, as it seems, in the dark depths of 2000 years of dispersion, and are known to every Jewish child? Or did not the Rabbis cherish those Messianic hopes which inspired Manasseh? There was only one difference: the difference between passivity and activity, between purely spiritual impulses and impulses which lead to action. If the dispersion has to be complete, let Providence make it complete—this was the usual point of view. Those who merely believed declined to do anything, as they did not wish to face the danger of failure. They lived on that, of which other nations die—on sorrow. Their melancholy had much of majesty in it, but it led to nothing and ended in nothing. They dared not attempt to penetrate into the secrets of the Almighty; for God alone can see what will happen, and no man can avoid his destiny. They refused to undertake any effort for the readmission of their brethren not only into Palestine, but even into England. They were believers, not men of action. Manasseh took matters into his own hands. He not only believed, he acted in accordance with his belief. He collected evidence with judicious care, weighing and measuring difficulties, keeping facts calmly before his mind, studying the facts of the dispersion with interest and zeal. He occupied himself with Messianism more than any Jewish scholar since Don Isaac de Judah Abrabanel (1437‒1508), and more effectively than the latter, because of the active character of his plans.

In his מקוה ישראל, Esperança de Israel (Appendix iv), Manasseh relates how the Marrano traveller, Aaron Levi, alias Antony Montezinos, while travelling in South America, had met a race of natives in the Cordilleras, who recited the Shema, practised Jewish ceremonies, and were, in short, Israelites of the tribe of Reuben. Montezinos had related his story to Manasseh, and had even embodied it in a sworn affidavit before the heads of the Amsterdam Synagogue. Montezinos’ story seemed to be a proof of the increasing dispersion of Israel. Daniel (xii. 7) had foretold in his prophecies that the dispersion of the Jewish people would be the forerunner of their restoration.

“And the Lord shall scatter thee among all peoples, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth;...” (Deuteronomy xxviii. 64).

It was clear from Montezinos’ and other travellers’ reports that the Jews had already reached one end of the earth. “Let them enter England and the other end would be reached.” In this sense Manasseh wrote his book, which, at the instigation of John Dury (1596‒1680) was translated into English by the Puritan Moses Wall,¹ from the Latin version (Appendix v), of the original Spanish under the title of The Hope of Israel (Appendix vi), which produced a profound impression throughout England. It was followed in the next few years by two other tracts by Manasseh, The Humble Addresses [1655] (Appendix vii) and Vindiciæ Judæorum [1656] (Appendix viii).

These tracts followed the remarkable evolution of English religious ideas which occurred in the seventeenth century. It is a well-known fact that the recognition of religious liberty in England was due chiefly to the struggle between the True Believers and other Nonconformists. The Reformation had granted only a limited form of religious liberty: when the True Believers themselves began to be persecuted the demand for religious liberty became very strong. The earliest pamphlet on this subject, by Leonard Busher, published in 1614,¹ had already demanded religious liberty for the Jews as well.

The English refugees in Amsterdam came into contact with the Jews of that town, and above all with Manasseh, whom they admitted to the innermost circle of friendship. The intercourse was continuous, and did much to dispel the mutual prejudices which old enmities had created and ignorance had nourished. Intimacies were formed which proved salutary to both, particularly to the Saints. Manasseh was also on terms of intimacy with Oliver St. John (1598?‒1673), the English Ambassador in Holland (1651), who was afterwards a member of the Committee selected to consider the readmission of the Jews into England.

Manasseh as a Jewish Rabbi and as a Hebrew writer—His activity as a publisher and corrector of Hebrew books—The Bible editions, the Psalms and the Mishnah—Manasseh’s connection with Safed in Palestine—Enseña a Pecadores—The influence of Rabbi Isaiah ben Abraham Horwitz—Solomon de Oliveyra—Manasseh’s De Termino Vitae—The Influence of Don Isaac Abrabanel—The Lost Ten Tribes and the Marranos.

The literature concerning Manasseh, which is chiefly in English, but partly also in Dutch, German, Hebrew and Spanish, is very rich in detail and affords an accurate and thorough insight into Manasseh’s intellectual relationship to contemporary Christian scholars and statesmen, and extensive information as to his writings in defence of Judaism, his missions, etc. The Jewish Historical Society of England has played a prominent part in the researches on the subject by arranging lectures and publishing excellent papers, and the ground has been covered on the whole very thoroughly. There is, however, one point which has not yet been sufficiently elucidated, viz., Manasseh’s attitude as a Jewish Rabbi and as a Hebrew writer. His literary communications with Christian divines, his apologetic writings in Spanish and Latin, and his Spanish translations present after all only one view of his individuality and activity, the view seen by the outside world. If, however, we wish to describe Manasseh in his private, inner life, and to understand his particular views and methods, we have to leave the apologist and the polyglot translator and to discover the author when he writes for his nation in the national language. Here, and only here, we discover the Jewish scholar in his originality.

In this connection we meet Manasseh as publisher or corrector (proof reader) of his three partial and complete Bible editions: (1) Chamisha Chumshé Thora, Amsterdam, 1631; (2) Sefer T’hillim (Psalterium Hebraicum ex recens. Manasseh, etc.), Amsterdam, 1634; (3) Esrim V’arba (Biblia Hebraica), Amsterdam, 1639.

These books were edited by Manasseh with great care and fine judgment. Heer J. M. Hillesum, the scholarly librarian of the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana (Universiteits—Bibliotheek, Amsterdam), supposes that the first Hebrew book printed in Amsterdam¹ was the “Daily Prayers” according to the Spanish rite dated January, 1627, and edited by Manasseh.² Whatever view may be taken of this assumption, it is, at all events, certain that Manasseh was one of the pioneers of Amsterdam Hebrew printing, which will for ever have a distinguished place in the annals of Hebrew publications. He not only displayed artistic taste worthy of the friend of Rembrandt in creating the first specimens of beautiful Hebrew books, but by the precision of his corrections he proved himself an excellent Hebrew grammarian. It must be borne in mind that Hebrew grammarians among the Rabbis of his time were seldom met with, and found only among scholars of a somewhat progressive type.

He showed his competence also in the Mishnah, three volumes, Amsterdam, 5404, corrected with great care by Manasseh Ben-Israel, Teacher of the Law and Preacher, and published by Eliahu Aboab.¹ In this edition we see mere corrector’s work. As we gather from the preface, manuscripts of the Mishnah were brought from “the town which is full of Scholars and writers, Safed in the Land of Israel, may God rebuild it soon!”

In the course of our inquiry we shall show that Manasseh was in close touch with the Holy Land; here attention is called only to the fact that in this editorial work Manasseh was actuated by a desire to compare the various manuscripts. These Mishnaioth are a wonderful pocket edition, containing the text without any commentary, and evidently destined for repetition. Talmud students will find here a good many instructive variants.

Another book edited by Manasseh, though it is merely a translation, throws some light on the tendencies of the time and on Manasseh’s Jewish connections. This is the Libro Yntitulado Enseña a Pecadores.¹ (Appendix ix). This little book contains, in addition to a translation of a prayer composed by Rabbi Isaac (1534‒1572) ben Solomon [Ashkenazi] Luria, a translation of a section of Rabbi Isaiah (1555‒1630) ben Abraham Horwitz’s Sepher Shné Luchot Ha’brith ... Amsterdam ... 5409. The author’s name has come down to posterity by the initials of his great work “S. L. H.”² with the attribute Hakadosh.³ He was Rabbi in Frankfort-on-the-Main, Prague, Posen, and Cracow, and then went to the Holy Land, where he was called מרא דארץ ישראל⁴ His Shné Luchot Ha’brith is a work of admirable erudition in the Agadah (Legend, Saga) of the Talmud, as well as in homiletics and Cabbalah. Rabbi Isaiah Horwitz was a religiously inspired Zionist. His enthusiasm in expounding the glory of the Holy Land (Shné Luchot Ha’brith, p. 275, sermon to Lech L’cha, and p. 389, sermon to Va’etchanan) was almost unique in the literature of that time. He combined moreover a rare religious ecstasy and Cabbalistic visions with progressive ideas on education, in which he recommended a systematic method, contrary to the customs of that time—a tendency also found in Manasseh. Rabbi Isaiah lived to an advanced age, and his activities came to an end in the Holy Land. His manuscript was brought to Amsterdam and published there, with additions by his son David, who was also a distinguished scholar. This book seems to have impressed Manasseh so much that he published a translation of a part of it, containing prayers and contemplations for repentant sinners, evidently for Marranos, for whom a great many prayer-books and religious tracts were published at that time in Spanish and Portuguese.

This book, while proving the fact of Manasseh’s connection with a great Palestinian authority, shows also that he was in touch with the Hebrew poet and grammarian, Haham Ribi Solomon¹ de David de Israel d’Oliveyra, the author of Sharshot Gabluth—Ayeleth Ahabim, which were both published in Amsterdam in the year 5425 [1665], and many other books and treatises on Hebrew poetry. He is considered to be one of the precursors of the revival of modern Hebrew literature in Holland, and wrote poems and compositions of a didactic character. In the course of our inquiry we shall discover that Manasseh himself had a great predilection for Hebrew poetry. Embodied in the Enseña a Pecadores is a “Confession of Penitence” composed by Haham d’Oliveyra in Hebrew וידוי כפרה and Portuguese [♦Viduy Penetencial], which includes a prayer for the rebuilding of the “Holy City,” using the Biblical phrase:—תבנה חומות ירושלים Fabricarás murallas de Yerusalaim.

Another work of Manasseh in Latin, De Termino Vitae, Amsterdam, 1639 (Appendix x), was written with the object of answering a question which was addressed by his friend the Christian scholar Jan van Beverwijck [Johannes Beverovicius] (1594‒1647) to various divines and scholars, and is, consequently, apologetic in character. But two passages throw some light on Manasseh’s views as to the Land of Israel and Messianism. In one of them he emphasizes the fact that the Jews frequently collect alms for those who live in the Holy Land;¹ and in the other he says that “if anyone desires to know all the controversies of the Jews concerning the explanation of Daniel’s (fl. 3389 a.m.) Prophecies, he may read Abrabanel’s Treatise, which the learned Johannes Buxtorf II. (1599‒1664) has translated into Latin.”² In this way he identifies himself with the ideas expounded by Abrabanel in his Mayy’neh Hayeshuah, which showed that Abrabanel was not only Messianistic in the usual sense, but was firmly convinced that the end of the Captivity might be expected in the near future.

Manasseh was a Hebrew grammarian concerned with the correctness of ancient sacred texts, and an editor of keen discrimination. In his scholarly work he kept in close touch with the scholars of Safed; he was moreover influenced by the religious Zionistic enthusiasm of Rabbi Isaiah Horwitz. In his Messianic hopes he was a disciple of Abrabanel, and he highly appreciated the modern though religious Hebrew poetry of his time, which poetry he introduced in his devotional book as a Viduy, concluding with an apotheosis of Zion and Jerusalem.

Regarded from the point of view of these ideas, Manasseh of the “Conciliador” appears to us in his proper light. Broad-minded, highly accomplished, interested in all the discoveries of his time—an important period for discoveries—he sincerely believed in Montezinos’ report concerning his distant brethren, while, on the other hand, his great devotion to Palestine and his belief in Abrabanel’s predictions made the question of the Lost Ten Tribes for him not one of curiosity but one of vital importance for the national salvation. Judah and Israel are to return—where, then, is Israel? Is the Return thinkable so long as Israel is lost? All the legends concerning the Sambatyon and the various reports of Eldad ben Mahli Ha’dani (fl. 9th century) concerning the tribe of Dan and the “Sons of Moses” who live somewhere as an independent, strong nation, were essentially the reflex of a powerful national aspiration. The descendants of Judah, Benjamin and half of the tribe of Manasseh felt themselves too weak, too humiliated and too few in number to achieve the great work of Restoration, but believing as they did in the impossibility of the disappearance of the ancient nation, they were sure that the descendants of Israel, uniting with and absorbed by other nations though they might be at present, would one day be awakened to consciousness as to their origin and join Judah in repopulating the ♦Holy Land. This is the reason why they were so fascinated by the reports respecting the Lost Ten Tribes. Is it to be wondered at that Marranos were particularly ready to believe in this miracle? Were they not themselves like one of the Lost Ten Tribes in that, after all the tortures of the Inquisition, and after having apparently been ultimately denationalized, converted and absorbed, they had reasserted themselves and were now awakening to a new Jewish revival? Considering that these aspirations happened to coincide with the hope for the Restoration and the rediscovery of the Lost Ten Tribes, in which reformed Christianity, and especially the Puritans, believed, we can fully realize the popularity which Manasseh’s ideas had gained in these circles, and we can quite understand how they led to the readmission of the Jews to England.

The most important of his Hebrew writings—Quotations from Gebirol, Bedersi, R. Kalonymus, R. Zerahiah Ha’levi, and others—Plato, Aristotle and Philo—Cabbalistic ideas—R. Isaac Luria—Miracles and Christian Saints—Manasseh’s Jewish Nationalism—“The Jewish Soul”—The Zohar—R. Jehudah Ha’levi—The holiness of the Land of Israel—R. David Carcassone, the messenger from Constantinople.

The most important of Manasseh’s Hebrew writings, though it is only alluded to incidentally, or dismissed with derisive criticism in some biographies, was his Nishmath Chayyim...,¹ Amsterdam, 1651 (Appendix xi). Sarcastic observations have been made with regard to the legends and superstitions with which this book abounds. It is true that the book contains many legends and superstitious beliefs; but that is just why, from a literary point of view, it contributes far more to a real knowledge of Manasseh than the writings in which he advocated certain causes as apologist or translator. In this book we get Manasseh himself, a national Jew, preaching to his brethren in the national language. A careful study of the book in the original, with its peculiar style, its wide range of allusion, and its distinctive spirit, gives us a clear idea of Manasseh’s religious views, his Jewish national self-consciousness, or—to use the modern term—his Zionism.

The book is a careful compilation, skilfully put together and well chosen in every part. Though somewhat florid in certain portions, it is on the whole excellently written. Its style reminds one of that of Abrabanel, with a touch of R. Isaac (1402?‒1494) ben Moses Arama. The author often quotes poetical sentences of Solomon (1021?‒1058) ben Judah Ibn Gabirol [Abu Ayyub Sulaiman Ibn Yahya Ibn Jabirul], known as Avicebron: R. Jedaiah (1270?‒1340?) ben Abraham Bedersi [Bedaresi].¹ Kalonymos (1286‒post 1328) ben Kalonymos ben Meir [Maestro Calo]; Zerahiah (1131?‒1186?) ben Isaac Ha’levi Gerondi, and others, and thus shows himself well versed not only in the ancient texts, but also in the beauties of comparatively recent Hebrew poetry.

Manasseh’s argument aims at proving that the immortality of the soul is an old Biblical as well as a Talmudical, Rabbinical and Cabbalistic principle. He defines the Nefesh (Soul) as the internal ultimate principle by which man thinks, feels and wills. The term Ruach (Mind) denotes this principle as the subject of man’s conscious state, while Nefesh denotes it as the source of man’s physical activities as well. The question of the reality of the soul and its separate existence apart from the body is for him one of the most important problems of religion, for with it is bound up the doctrine of a future life. He knows Plato (427?‒347? b.c.e.), Aristotle (384 ‒322 b.c.e.) and Philo (20? b.c.e.‒post 40 c.e.). It is well known that Mysticism shares to a great extent the ideas of the system of Plato, e.g. in his theory of the world of ideas, of the origin of the world-soul and the human soul. The two standpoints, the cosmological and the epistemological, are found combined in Plato. In the Phædo the chief argument for the immortality of the soul is based on the nature of intellectual knowledge interpreted by the theory of memory; this of course implies the pre-existence of the soul. This doctrine developed into an extreme Transcendentalism. Aristotle, on the other hand, emphasized the intimacy of the union of body and soul. The difficulty in his theory is to determine what degree of distinctness or separateness from the matter of the body is to be conceded to the human soul. He fully recognizes the spiritual element in thought, and describes the “active intellect” as separate, but the precise relation of this “active intellect” to the individual mind was an obscure point in his theory. Philo combined the Platonic theory with the data of the Bible, and taught that every man, by freeing himself from matter and receiving illumination from God, may reach the mystic, ecstatic or prophetic state, where he is absorbed in the Divinity. The Stoics taught that all existence is material, and described the soul as a breath pervading the body. They also called it Divine, a particle of God. Manasseh’s system is a syncretism of the ideas of Plato, Philo and the Stoics, while he rejects the Aristotelian ideas. He endeavours to prove that Moses Maimonides (1135‒1204) did not follow the great Peripatetic, and opposes the commentator of Maimonides’ Moreh-Nebuchim Moses (fl. 14th cent.) ben Joshua Narboni [Mestre Vidal], in a somewhat forced dialectical manner.

Accepting on these grounds the pre-existence of the soul, the continuance of the soul in the world to come, and reincarnation, he comes to the Cabbalah, quotes the Zohar, and declares himself a disciple of R. Isaac Luria. According to the Zohar, man is composed of three things: Life, or Nefesh, Spirit, which is Ruach, and Soul, which is Neshamah. By this man becomes a Ruach Chajah (Living Spirit).¹ Manasseh’s doctrine may be summarized as follows:—

(1) The human soul is endowed with special gifts fitting it for an intimate union with the Divinity—the Stoic “particle of God,” corresponding to the Hebrew “Chelek Eloha Mimaal”;

(2) The gifts or graces through which every man is equipped for his perfection form his Life, Spirit and Soul into an organized whole, whose parts are knit together;

(3) Through contemplation and piety the human soul enters into that higher heavenly soul, into the mystical cosmos whose parts are united in divine eternity. This is, to his mind, the meaning of the Biblical teaching that man is made in the image and likeness of God.

The Cabbalistic ideas once accepted, Manasseh accepts also the transmigration of souls, physical resurrection, expelling of demons, and so on. He indulges in theosophical visions and metaphysical speculations. All these seem strange from a modern point of view, but he should be considered in the light of his time. He believed in miracles. Did not the Fathers of the Christian Church believe in them? Origen (185?‒253(4)) says that he has seen examples of demons expelled.¹ St. Athanasius (293‒373) writes in the Life of St. Anthony (251(2)‒356(7)) from what he himself saw and heard from one who had long been in attendance on the saint. Justin Martyr (100?‒163‒7), in his second apology to the Roman Senate appeals to miracles wrought in Rome and well attested. Tertullian (155?‒222?) challenges the heathen magistrates to work the miracles which the Christians perform²; St. Augustine (354‒430) gives a long list of extraordinary miracles wrought before his own eyes, mentioning names and particulars. And even in the time of the Reformation, did not Johann von Reuchlin (1455‒1522) adhere to Cabbalistic mysticism in his De arte cabalistias and De verbo mirifico? Paradoxical as it may seem at first sight, Manasseh even in his metaphysical beliefs was somewhat of a rationalist, in the sense that he accepted only evidence of trustworthy authority. The Safed authorities, who were supposed to have witnessed the miracles of Luria, of course impressed him in the same way as Montezinos’ reports, because they were in harmony with his theory. At any rate, it is characteristic of his way of thinking that he was anxious to build upon facts and evidence.

We have had to wander to some extent into a domain outside our province in order to appreciate fully Manasseh’s general ideas. His Jewish nationalism, which is for us the principal point, can be understood only in connection with his whole system of ideas. This nationalism is outspoken in the Nishmath Chayyim. What we, in modern language, call race, national (from natus—natio) individuality, i.e. what the Jew is by himself, by the fact of being born a Jew, is termed by Manasseh “the Jewish soul.” His system is rooted in his faith in the excellency of the Jewish soul, which is a profound act of homage to the race; that is the point of view from which he regards Jewish history. History, he thinks—and in this point again he is guided by the evidence of historical facts—bears witness to the beneficial influence that the soul of Israel, or—more precisely—the Israelitish soul, has exerted on the intellectual life of mankind.

On this point he is even carried away by his imagination to make exaggerated statements of the following kind, again backed up by authorities: “It is a truth confirmed by innumerable writers, that all the learning of the Greeks and Egyptians was derived from the Jews: Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria (150?‒213?) and Theodoret (386?‒247) assert that all the best philosophers and poets owe their learning to the Holy Scriptures, for which reason they call Plato the ‘Attic Moses’; the ‘Athenian Moses.’ Clearchus the Peripatetic (320 b.c.e.) writes that Aristotle gained most of his learning from a Jew with whom he had much conversation; Ambrose (340?‒397) writes that Pythagoras (fl. 540‒510 b.c.e.) was by origin a Jew, and like a pilferer robbed them of many things; Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor (80 b.c.e.) writes that he was a disciple of the prophet Ezekiel (fl. 3332 a.m.). Lastly, it is certain that Orpheus (14th or 13th cent. b.c.e.), Plato, Anaxagoras (500‒428 b.c.e.) Pythagoras, the Milesian Thales (640‒546 b.c.e.), Homer (fl. 962‒927 b.c.e.) and many other very learned men, derived their knowledge from the wide ocean of the knowledge of Moses (2368‒2488 a.m.) and the Sages and professors of his most Holy Law; for, according to the Psalmist,

“He declareth His word unto Jacob, ...”  (Psalm cxlvii. 19).

“He hath not dealt so with any nation; ...”  (Ibid. 20).

In his preface to Nishmath Chayyim he makes this statement in a more general form, saying that “wherever he quoted the non-Jewish authorities, he wanted only to show that most of their teachings were derived from our ancient sources.” He repeats that “Pythagoras was a Jew, and all he taught and wrote was copied from our Holy Law and true Tradition” (fol. 171a), and that “Plato had learned the teachings of our prophet Jeremiah” (fol. 171b) (fl. 3298 a.m.). Not that he was lacking in love and consideration for other nations. Far from it: on the contrary, he lays stress upon the sentence of the Mishnah, that the pious men even of heathen nations have their share in the future life, inasmuch as they observe the Seven Commandments of the Noahides; and, needless to say, he highly respected Christianity, and was practically the first Hebrew author who quoted so often and with such great reverence the authority of the Christian Church. Even when he speaks of the Spanish Inquisition, of which his father was one of the tortured victims, no word of contempt or hostility escapes his pen, although, living in Holland, and dealing almost exclusively with the adherents of the Reformation, he could have expressed his ideas on this subject quite frankly. But,nevertheless, he is convinced that “God gave to the Israelitish soul a very special grace, by which it is enabled to feel his sensible presence,” that “the Israelites are and have to remain a distinct nation, having essentially the prerogative of sanctifying life,” and he continually quotes and illustrates the Biblical verses:—

“... Blessed be ... Israel, Mine inheritance”  (Isaiah xix. 25).

“... Israel is the tribe of his inheritance;...”  (Jeremiah x. 16).

“And who is like Thy people, like Israel, a nation one in the earth,...”  (2 Samuel vii. 23).

as well as several passages of the Zohar, which emphasize the particular dignity of the Jewish soul, and R. Judah (1085(6)‒post 1140) ben Samuel Ha’levi’s [Abu al-Hasan al-Lawi] well-known views, expounded in the Kuzari (chap. i., par. 46):—

“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....”

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

They flock, says Manasseh, in thousands to other countries, and it is useless to attempt to tell in a few words the incalculable loss that Spain and Portugal have sustained in losing wealth, and inhabitants, by the inhuman acts of the Inquisition. Apart from their execrable inhumanity, the utter folly of the atrocities is apparent from the fact that the Inquisition forces the wealth, trade and skill of the country to leave it. Here he speaks as a statesman who knows the countries in question. In Nishmath Chayyim the note is one of sober-minded resignation. He does not inveigh against the Cossacks as he did against the Portuguese; he simply expresses the hope that Carcassone may raise the necessary funds, and that God may send His angel before him. By using this Biblical phrase¹ Manasseh expresses his high appreciation of the importance of the mission. The general situation of the Jews in the Diaspora is described by him in short but plain terms: “If the nations would ask, Why are you in captivity, exposed to outrage and contempt, dispersed and scattered...?” Manasseh clearly rejected the idea that Israel’s mission demands an everlasting dispersion. It seemed to him that the dispersion ought to be made complete, because it must lead to the Restoration. In this respect his views were not only in accordance with Scripture, but the outcome of a train of reasoning. The process of dispersion has to reach its climax, and then the process of restoration will begin. The Hagadic sentence:—

²צדקה עשה הקדוש ברוך הוא בישראל שפזרן לבין האומות. פסחים, פז׃

often quoted by the adherents of the dispersion in support of the Galuth, was interpreted by Manasseh to mean that so long as the Israelites must live dispersed they should live dispersed among several nations, because in this way their complete destruction is more difficult than if they were dependent upon one or two nations. But dispersion is not for him the ideal state of the Jewish nation.

The law of Divine providence with regard to the nation of Israel has ever been that defection is eventually to be followed by dispersion and reconciliation by restoration.

“Son of man, when the house of Israel dwelt in their own land they defiled it....”  (Ezekiel xxxvi. 17).

“... and I scattered them among the nations, and they were dispersed through the countries;...”  (Ibid. 19).

“... from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you”  (Ibid. 25).

“And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be My people, and I will be your God”  (Ibid. 28).

There is not one passage in which the promised restoration is represented as anything other than a distinct proof of reconciliation between God and his ancient People, or dispersion as anything other than a punishment. The People and the Land of Israel are so linked with one another that whatever continuity is ascribed to the one must, on all strict principles of interpretation, be also attributed to the other. In the twenty-sixth chapter of Leviticus we find Moses giving the people, as warning and encouragement, a prophetic outline of their future history, which forms the real basis, and, in fact, makes up the substance of all that is found in the later prophets as regards the people of Israel. It is true that both the judgments there threatened and the mercies there promised are set forth hypothetically, on the supposition of their wickedly departing from the Lord and afterwards repenting—“if ye walk contrary unto Me, and will not hearken unto Me,” on the one hand; “if they shall confess their iniquity” on the other. But since the conditional statements are changed—as they are in other places—into absolute announcements of what is to take place, the hypothetical forms of expression must be regarded as merely the appropriate mode of conveying warnings against defection and an encouragement to repentance:—

“And they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, ... and also that they have walked contrary to Me”  (Leviticus xxvi. 40).

“I also will walk contrary unto them, and bring them into the land of their enemies; ... and they shall then be paid the punishment of their iniquity”  (Ibid. 41).

“then will I remember My covenant with Jacob, and also My covenant with Isaac, and also My covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land”  (Ibid. 42).

It is impossible to deny that the “remembrance of the covenant” and the “remembrance of the land” here go together. If we allegorize the one, we must allegorize the other as well, and then there is neither land, people, covenant, prophets nor law—an obvious absurdity which at once refutes itself. The fundamental Mosaic principle is clear, plain and positive. The land is to be held in perpetuity by the Jewish nation, provided the conditions of the covenant are fulfilled. The infringement of the covenant subjects the rebel to bondage and makes him an outcast from the land of his inheritance. The promise of redemption is a rescue from the penalties thus incurred. Therefore, he explains, the Agadist did not say heglom, “He drove them out,” which is the usual expression, but pizrom, “He spread, scattered them,” because, so long as the Galuth lasts, they have to live in various countries. Yet it is absurd to think that the state of Galuth, predicted by Moses as a curse, is a blessing. Here we have in short Manasseh’s ideas as to the Galuth and Restoration. We know that he also acted in full accord with these ideas.¹

The constitution established by Moses was a theocracy. The true King of Israel was God, and the constitution was the Law. The priests and Levites were God’s ministers; the prophets were God’s ambassadors, commissioned to convey his instructions not only to the people but to the King himself. The Kingdom was thus emphatically the Kingdom of God, and the King was the earthly viceroy of the invisible Sovereign. He was more limited than a constitutional monarch; he was subject not only to the Law, but also to those who were entitled to explain the Law. Such a state of things never existed in any other nation, either in ancient or in modern times. The Jewish nation regards it as an Ideal State, and looks forward to a future in which this idea will be accepted by the whole world, when God will be the King; but this will take place only after the establishment of this Divine order in Palestine. Therefore Jews pray to God to give them their judges and their counsellors as in ancient times, i.e. to restore their life under God’s order, a life of justice and peace and wisdom; they hope also that this will influence all mankind to recognize the Kingdom of God, i.e. the rule of justice, mercy and love. Then the promise to Abraham will be fulfilled:—

“... and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; ...”  (Genesis xxii. 18).

and the blessings and privileges of God’s Kingdom will be offered freely to all mankind. Here the influence of Abrabanel is evident.¹ Another interesting point in Manasseh’s theory is his combination of the idea of the Nefesh Ha’yisraelith with the principle of heredity. He terms this principle Mizgé² Ha’aboth, that is, the particular character of the nationality inherited from the ancestors. This is Jewish nationality, which is part of the Jew’s inheritance at birth.³

This is more than the religious idea of the Z’chuth Aboth (Merits of the Fathers); it is, though mixed up with Cabbalistic notions, an ethnological conception—the real basis of the modern Jewish national idea.

Manasseh’s conception of the character (or particular blood mingling) of ancestors, which lives on in the nation, accords entirely with the mode of thought of a modern national Jew as this finds expression in the best writings of the new Zionistic literature. When the Jew feels the pulse-beat of nature in his heart, then the history of his forefathers comes to life within him. He no longer struggles alone through life, he is sensible of connections between himself and millions who have been and of whose spirit and soul he has received a share in life. The most glorious, invigorating feeling which an old race can offer; the consciousness of individual transitoriness and universal constancy, begins only then to be of value for him because the easily intelligible national future has made comprehensible his own infinite one. This psychic process is the unconscious aim of that which he perceives as national longing. The free individual must become a problematic nature if he cannot force the roots of his spiritual and physical personality into the soil of a soul-related community. The unit goes adrift in the chaos of social struggles when it is not linked by a thousand tender and yet untearable threads with the ethnical community of a nation. This ethnical community is the fount of two infinite perceptions which have become the mightiest supports of human civilization; first of all arises the consciousness of national control which develops into the unnoticed, yea, self-evident foundation of the ethnical unit, the moral consciousness of duty and sense of responsibility. National responsibility finds its complement in the right of recovery of the individual against the community. In the wrestle with other morals and conceptions of life, the individual has often to lean on those who are like-minded because like-born so as not to lose himself. It has been repeatedly experienced in Jewish history that many Jews have not only lost their veriest substance but have voluntarily surrendered it, so that their culture subsisted only through an ingenious system of exquisite imitations of foreign nature and foreign customs.

What Manasseh understood under “Character of Ancestors” pertains as little to atavism as the modern Jewish national idea. Atavism is something unconscious, it is found even among the dejudaized Jews. But what with the dejudaized is atavism becomes with nationalist Jews the historic basis of their whole life tendency. The comprehension of the past wafts the first breath of life into the present, upon the wreckage of bygone times dawns the premonition of the greatness of each lived moment—and new life blossoms upon the ruins. Therein lies also the power of the national consciousness to create cultural values. What is based upon heredity and tradition is no longer sacrificed to thoughtless recession of self—misconstrued as civilization—but replenished with national love. It is no longer the anarchy of aimless “culture” which wants to link up with the attainments of unfamiliar races so as to become like them, and which as an imitation it can never attain, but it is a strongly rooted culture, which reaches deep down to the national wells of life, and can thereby become equal to all other great and deep-rooted cultures.

The individual is the outcome of a nation, its ultimate aim. The nation is the circuitous way of nature to produce an individual. A nation is great, not only when great creative minds arise from its midst, but also when the many live intensively, so that they receive impulses from the few, and return impulses to the few—and when the past lives on in the present. It is this idea of Jewish nationality which Manasseh had forefelt in spite of his mysticism. He was permeated with religious enthusiasm and, at the same time, all aglow with intense national feeling. Therefore, his thoughts and sentiments tended to greatness; he understood that the best means of strengthening and reaffirming the national consciousness of a people about to lose the knowledge of its ethnical individuality, is just that it should be told its history, that its ancestors should be recalled to memory, their great deeds sung and praised, and that pride of the past should be instilled. As he poetised so sublimely he could also accomplish great deeds, because he kept his eye upon Palestine he was also able to achieve great results in the Diaspora. He was the father of post-exilic English Judaism, and this Judaism ought to follow in his footsteps.

To conclude, reference should be made to the Hebrew writer Perez Smolenskin, himself a pioneer of modern Zionism, who, though he did not deal with the matter in detail, was guided by a sound intuition when he characterized Manasseh in his Am Olam (1880) as a great pioneer of the national idea.

The Renaissance and the Reformation—John Sadler—Milton’s belief in the Return—Edmund Bunny—Isaac de La Peyrère—Leibnitz—Thomas Brightman—James Durham—The pamphlet “Doomes-Day”—Thomas Burnet—The pamphlet “The New Jerusalem”—Thomas Drake—Edward Nicholas, John Sadler, Hugh Peters, Henry Jesse, Isaac Vossius, Hugo Grotius, Rembrandt, Isaac da Fonseca Aboab, Dr. Ephraim Hezekiah Bueno, Dr. Abraham Zacuto Lusitano, H. H. R. Yahacob Sasportas, Haham Jacob Jehudah Aryeh de Leon [Templo]—Manasseh’s origin.

As a result of the impulse given to Letters generally by the Renaissance in the fifteenth century, and by the Reformation in the sixteenth century, the knowledge of the Hebrew language and literature spread rapidly in the literary world, and particularly in the first half of the seventeenth century. Hebrew was a favourite study with Puritan ministers, who dwelt much upon the Messianic hopes and promises of the Scriptures and Rabbinical works. A great stir was caused among Jews as well as Christians by Montezinos’ report and other rumours concerning the lost Ten Tribes. John Sadler (1615‒1674) (Appendix xii), Town Clerk of London, a friend of Cromwell, and probably also of Milton and Dury, stated that there was an old prophecy which fixed the time of the Restoration at the year 5408 = 1648 A.D. Puritans and Sectarians began to take the greatest interest in Jewish Messianic affairs just before King Charles I. (1600‒1649) was executed, for most of them were looking forward to some new reformed Commonwealth, some new communion of saints, some republic, some peaceful kingdom of Truth and Justice, and they connected the restoration of Israel scripturally with its advent. That was one reason why Sadler and Cromwell and others were favourably disposed towards the Jews and inclined to let them come back to England, for the idea prevailed that the Jews had first to be dispersed throughout the whole world before the Lord would return to set up His millennial Kingdom. Milton thought that the whole twelve tribes would return to Zion;¹ and similar sympathetic views are expressed in an anonymous romance published in London in 1648, entitled Nova Solyma (Appendix xiii), of which it has been claimed he was the author.

Edmund Bunny (1540‒1619), a theological writer, devoted himself to the work of an itinerant preacher, visiting towns and villages. His doctrine was Calvinistic, but his warm attachment to the ideals of ancient Israel was a singular feature of his theological views.¹

The distinguished French-Huguenot scholar Isaac de La Peyrère (1594‒1676) of Bordeaux, probably of marrano Jewish blood, author of many works, wrote and published anonymously Dv Rappel des Ivifs, M.DC.XLIII.¹ (Appendix xiv) which was intended to be part of a greater work on the same subject.² He demands in this book the restoration of Israel to the Holy Land in an unconverted state, in the belief that this restoration will lead to the final triumph of Christianity. He expects France to carry out this idea, and appeals in this sense to the Royal Dynasty in a somewhat strange homiletical manner.³ In 1644 he was appointed French Ambassador at Copenhagen. Being on intimate terms with the eminent scholars Isaac [Vos] Vossius (Appendix xv) (1618‒1689) and Hugo Grotius [Huig van Groot]⁴ (1583‒1645) he became acquainted with their mutual friend Manasseh and with Manasseh’s friends, Caspar [van Baerle] Barlaeus (1584‒1648), Simon Episcopius (1583‒1643), Gerard John [Vos] Vossius (1577‒1649),⁵ Johannes [van Meurs] Meursius (1579‒1639), David Blondel (1591‒1655), [Peter] Petrus [Serrurier] Serrarius (fl. 1650‒1700) and Paulus Felgenhauer (circa 1625), who all supported similar ideas.

The Rev. Thomas Draxe¹ (ob. 1618), a theologian of great knowledge and influence, demonstrated that “all the particular promises, such as the land of Canaan, a certain form of government ... were proper to the Jews...,” and “that we (Christians) must therefore acknowledge ourselves debtors unto the Jews, and deeply engaged unto them, we must be so far off from rendering or returning them evil for good....”²

Thomas Brightman (1562‒1607), a Puritan Divine and Bible exegete, in his comment on:—

“And the sixth [angel] poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared”  (Revelation xvi. 12).

gives reasons why these “kings of the east” must mean the Jews, and then says: “What! Shall they return to Jerusalem again? There is nothing more certain: the prophets do everywhere confirm it.”¹

The Rev. James Durham (1622‒1658) not only upholds, but gives solid reasons for his belief in the Restoration of the Jews.¹

Mr. Vavasor Powel (1617‒1660) expounds with abundant references to scriptural prophecy, the return and re-establishment of the Jews, attended with many miracles and peculiar circumstances.¹

An anonymous writer relates:—

“... the Jewes ... are ... assembling ... from out of all countreys ... to regaine the holy land once more out of the hand of the Ottaman:”¹  (Appendix xvi).

Thomas Burnet (1635?‒1715), Master of the Charterhouse, a great scholar and celebrated author in English and Latin, writes:—

Deum nunquam deserturum esse finaliter populum suum Israeliticum.

Secundò, Nondum impleta esse promissa omnia Israelitis data.¹

Another anonymous theologian published in 1674, A Paper, shewing that the great ... Restauration of all Israel and Judah will be fulfilled ... and that the New Jerusalem is most probably then to be set up (Appendix xvii).

Among the Christian friends of Manasseh, the following distinguished persons may be named: Edward Nicholas, the author of An Apology for the Honorable Nation of the Jews, 1648 (Appendix xviii); the above-mentioned John Sadler, who petitioned Richard Cromwell (1626‒1712) for a pension for Manasseh’s widow; Hugh Peters (1598‒1660), one of Oliver Cromwell’s army chaplains, and a strong advocate for the unrestricted admission of the Jews (Appendix xix), Isaac Vossius, the scholarly Protestant ecclesiastic, with whom he was in correspondence.¹ Vossius, at one time a member of the Court of Queen Christina of Sweden, was instrumental in bringing Manasseh to her notice.² Dr. Nathanael Homes (1599‒1678), the famous Puritan divine and author,³ and the great painter Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Ryn (1606(7)‒1669). The most notable of his Jewish friends were, Isaac da Fonseca Aboab (1605‒1693) (Appendix xx), Haham of the Sephardi community at Amsterdam, on whose initiative the Great Synagogue there was erected. Dr. Ephraim Hezekiah (ob. 1665) [de Dr. Joseph⁴ (ob. 1641)] Bueno (Bonus), author of several liturgical works⁵ and the subject of Rembrandt’s famous etching “The Jew Doctor”; Dr. Abraham Zacuto Lusitano (1580‒1642) (Appendix xxi), one of the most celebrated physicians of his age; Jacob Jehudah Aryeh de Leon [Templo] (1603‒1675), chiefly known as having designed models of the Tabernacle and Temple and was called “Templo” for that reason, which was assumed as a surname by his descendants. In anticipation of his visit to England, to exhibit the models before Charles II. (1630‒1685) and his Court, he published in Amsterdam a pamphlet in English describing them (Appendix xxii): and H. H. R. Yahacob Sasportas (1610‒1698), who accompanied Manasseh to England in 1655, was appointed in the month of Nisan, 1664, Haham of the Sephardi community in London. He was the author of one of the treatises in Sepher Pene Rabah edited by Manasseh Ben Israel ... Amsterdam 5388, and also wrote Sepher Ohel Ya’acob and Sepher Kizur Zizath Nobel Zebi, which were published together at Amsterdam 5497, against the adherents of Sabbatai Zebi (1626‒1676). His stay here was of short duration—not quite two years. He left the country to escape the plague which was then raging, and subsequently, in 1681, became the Ecclesiastical Head of the Sephardi Jews in Amsterdam. It is noteworthy that two of these friends of Manasseh, Aboab and Sasportas, were particularly interested in the Messianic hopes, though from different points of view. Aboab, a Cabbalist, whose religious poetry is remarkable for chaste diction and wealth of imagination, was supposed to be a secret Sabbatian, while Sasportas, sober-minded and a strict Talmudist, was strongly opposed to the mystical tendencies of pseudo-Messianism, and hoped for the restoration in the traditional way.

In 1603 Joseph Ben-Israel, the father of Manasseh, and his wife Rachel Soeiro, secretly left Lisbon. He had been a victim of the Inquisition, which deprived him of his wealth, and on three distinct occasions had been subjected to excruciating tortures, which undermined his health. They apparently fled to La Rochelle, France, for it was here that Manasseh was shortly afterwards born, in 1604, as is attested by his marriage certificate, deposited in the Archives of the City of Amsterdam (Puiboek, No. 669, fo. 95 verso, 15 Aug. 1623). Here he was also baptized, as it was not until his parents arrived at Amsterdam that they dared avow their faith in the God of Israel. In a holograph letter¹ of Manasseh to an unknown correspondent (suggested by Mr. E. N. Adler, the owner, to be Gerard John Vossius) he writes: “... and the Thesoro delos Dinim (Appendix xxiii) of our rites and ceremonies, the last in my Portuguese mother tongue, for I am a Lisbonian by patrimony....” He did not claim Lisbon as his own birthplace, but as that of his father. Most of his connections were with Spanish and Portuguese Jews, though he was opposed to any sort of separation, condemning it in his writings, and emphasizing the necessity of Jewish unity and brotherhood. It is noteworthy that a hundred and twenty-six years later, when the father of Jewish Rationalism, Moses Mendelssohn (1729‒1786), had to defend Judaism and the Jewish people, he found no better apology than Manasseh’s Vindiciae Judæorum (1656), which was translated into German, and for which he wrote the admirable Vorrede (Appendix xxiv).

Newes from Rome—Rev. Dr. William Gouge—Sir Henry Finch, Sergeant-at-law—King James I.—Archbishop Laud—Archbishop Abbot—Roger Williams—Johanna Cartwright and her son Ebenezer—John Harrison—Rev. John Dury—Rev. Henry Jessey—Rev. Thomas Fuller—Re-admission and Restoration—Manasseh and the Puritans.

The publication of a tract in 1607, entitled:—

“Newes from Rome ... of an Hebrew people ... who pretend their warre is to recouer the land of Promise....”  (Appendix xxv)

is remarkable for the interest evinced at a time when the presence of a Jew in England was deemed unlawful. It purports to be a translation from the Italian of a letter dated 1 June, 1606, sent by Signior Valesco to Don Mathias de Rensie of Venice. In it he is informed of the perturbed state of the world, and that Hungary, Bohemia and Muscovia are to declare war, seize Constantinople, and drive the Turk out of Europe. Tunis, Morocco, with the Arabians, and others, are to expel the Turk entirely out of Africa. The Soffie, the Medes, the people of Melibar on the border of India are in revolt. The most alarming news is to the effect than an unknown people, strong, mighty and swift, from beyond the Caspian mountains, claiming to be descendants of the lost Ten Tribes, are coming to recover the Land of Promise from the Turk. This is followed by a detailed account of the leaders of each tribe, the strength of each army, with the particulars of its equipment. The letter concludes by a promise of more news in a few days.

It was, however, a Puritan England that welcomed back the Jews as an ancient nation and as the “People of the Book.” In 1621 the Rev. Dr. William Gouge (1578‒1653) published the anonymous work:—

The World’s Great Restauration. Or, The Calling of the Iewes   (Appendix xxvi).

In the preliminary leaf, “To the Reader,” signed “Thine in the Lord, William Gouge. Church-Court in Black-fryers, London 8. Ianuary. 1621.” he states:—

“... I haue bin moued to publish this Treatise ... and to commend it to thy reading. And this is all that I haue done. The worke it selfe is the worke of one who hath dived deeper into that mysterie then I can doe. His great understanding of the Hebrew tongue hath bin a great helpe to him therein. How great his paines haue beene, not in this onely but also in other poynts of Diuinitie, his Sacred doctrine of Diuinitie, first published in a little Manuel, after set forth in a larger volume, his Old Testament, or Promise, Therein the mysteries of the Iewish types and ceremonies are opened, his Exposition of the song of Salomon,¹ and this, The World’s great restauration, or Calling of the Iewes (workes of his heretofore and now published) doe witnesse.”

The writer, Sir Henry Finch (1558‒1625), Serjeant-at-Law (1616), was a distinguished author of many legal works. Mr. J. M. Rigg, in the Dictionary of National Biography, vol. xix., 1889, tells us, that in this treatise “he seems to have predicted in the near future the restoration of temporal dominion to the Jews and the establishment by them of a world-wide empire.” This caused James I. to treat the work as a libel, and accordingly Finch was arrested in April, 1621. He obtained his liberty by disavowing all such portions of the work as might be construed as derogatory to the sovereign and by apologizing for having written unadvisedly. William Laud (1573‒1645), Bishop of St. David’s, 1621,¹ in a sermon preached in July of that year, took occasion to animadvert on the book. It was suppressed, and is now extremely rare.

In spite of the official proceedings, in consequence of which he was forced to sign his recantation and acknowledge his loyalty to the sovereign, Finch clearly never renounced the principal idea of his book. A letter from the pen of a celebrity of the day gives a fair idea not only of the sensation which Finch’s Apocryphal Apocalypse created at the time, but also of the personal and somewhat strange motives underlying King James’s indignation (Appendix xxvii).

Dr. Gouge was considered equally culpable. He was imprisoned for nine weeks, and only released on giving certain explanations, which [George Abbot (1562‒1633)] the Archbishop of Canterbury (1611) deemed satisfactory. He was a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, where he taught Hebrew, having been the only steadfast pupil of a Jew (Appendix xxviii) who came to Cambridge to give instruction in that language.

Roger Williams (1604(5)‒1683), the son of James (ob. 1621) and Alice Williams, was a native of London. He was one of the great pioneers of Religious liberty, his prime contention being that the civil powers should have no authority over the consciences of men. Ecclesiastical tyranny induced him to emigrate in 1631 to America. In 1635 he was banished from the state of Massachusetts for his heretical and political opinions. The following year he and a few other malcontents, after many hardships and trials arrived at Rhode Island, and in gratitude to God’s mercy he named the first settlement “Providence.” In 1638 he purchased land from the aborigines, and the state of Rhode Island was founded. In June, 1643, he set sail for his native land to obtain a charter, which was granted, dated 14 March, 1644, giving the “Providence Plantations” full power to rule themselves by any form of government they preferred. During his stay here of but a few months, he published two tracts advocating religious and political freedom. In one he writes: “For who knowes not but many ... of the ... Jewish Religion, may be clear and free from scandalous offences in their life, and also from disobedience to the Civill Lawes of a State?”¹

In July, 1644, he left the English shores, and in the following month, the tract containing this plea for the Jews, was by the order of the Commons publicly burnt by the common hangman. The author arrived at Boston on the seventeenth of December following. In 1651 he again embarked for England, in connection with matters concerning the State he had founded and remained for two and a half years.

Ecclesiastical affairs here were in an unsettled condition, so a “Parliamentary Committee,” known as “The Committee for the Propagation of the Gospel,” was formed, of which Cromwell himself was a member, to consider certain proposals of some twenty leading divines. Among the papers, one presented by Major Butler and others, contained the following clause:—

4. “Whether it be not the duty of the Magistrates to permit the Jews, ... to live freely and peaceably among us.”

This was accompanied by a comment, signed R.W.,¹ in which he argues at length under seven different heads why “this wrong”—their exclusion should not be continued:—

He returned to Providence in 1654, and in September, shortly after his arrival, was elected President or Governor of Rhode Island, one of the thirteen original states of the Union, and the first to accord Jews rights and privileges similar to other colonists. He held office until May, 1658, and it is worthy of note that one who took a significant part in securing the admission of Jews to England in the Old World, was the founder of a state in New England in the New World, which was the first to grant equal rights to Jews at a time when he was its President. He died at Providence in the early part of April, 1683.¹

In 1899 a tablet, with the following inscription:—

In Memory of Roger Williams,
Formerly a Scholar of Charterhouse
Founder of the State of Rhode Island, and the
Pioneer of Religious Liberty in America. Placed here by
Oscar S. Straus, United States Minister to Turkey, 1899.

was presented to the Charterhouse, where Williams was a scholar in the year 1624.

In 1649 two Baptists of Amsterdam, Johanna Cartwright and her son Ebenezer, presented a petition to Lord Fairfax (1612‒71) and the “generall Councell of Officers” in favour of the Jews (Appendix xxix). Religious fervour had been stirred to a high pitch, and there were few men whose minds had not been influenced by Messianic beliefs and other religious and mystical ideas.

John Harrison (fl. 1630), a famous traveller and diplomatist, envoy to Barbary, published The Messiah already come, etc. (Appendix xxx). He took a lively interest in the disputes which arose between partisans of the new Puritan movement and those who adhered to the old doctrines, besides dwelling on the question of religious liberty, and he argued that so long as the Jews were not equal in their rights to others as a nation, “the heart will be filled with violence.”

John Dury (Durie), the ubiquitous Protestant divine, who travelled much and endeavoured to bring together all sections of Protestantism, was a great friend of the Jews. He was one of those who drew up the “Westminster Confession” and “Catechisms.” In 1649 ‒50 he wrote An Epistolicall Discourse of Mr. Iohn Dury, to Mr. Thorowgood, concerning his conjecture that the Americans are descended from the Israelites (Appendix xxxi), and during his stay at Cassel, in Germany, A Case of Conscience, Whether it be lawful to admit Jews into a Christian Commonwealth? (Appendix xxxii).¹

Another great friend of the Jews was Henry Jessey, or Jacie (1601‒1663), a Baptist divine. He began his studies in 1618 at Cambridge, where at St. John’s College in ♦1622 he was admitted Constable’s scholar. Hebrew and Rabbinical literatures were his favourite studies. He projected a revised translation of the Bible and made some progress in it. He collected £300 for the poor Jews of Jerusalem, who in consequence of the war between the Swedes and Poles in 1657 were reduced to great extremity, as the main source of income derived from their charitable coreligionists in European countries was thereby cut off. This is, as far as is known, the earliest instance of English Christians helping the Jews of Palestine (Appendix xxxiii).

In 1653 he wrote a treatise for the purpose of reconciling the various religious opinions of Jews and Gentiles, entitled, The Glory of Jehudah and Israel (Appendix xxxiv).

His liberality to Jews was memorable on other occasions. He claimed for them the rights of citizenship and admission to this country which was then under consideration.

He was one of the members of the Assembly convened by Cromwell to consider Manasseh Ben Israel’s proposals for the return of his coreligionists to England. He is supposed to be the author of an anonymous tract, entitled A Narrative of the late Proceeds at White-Hall, concerning the Jews (Appendix xxxv).

Thomas Fuller (1608‒1661),¹ Prebendary of Salisbury, delivered several sermons, in which he argued that the Jewish nation was fulfilling an important office in the world and was, under the order of Providence, an instrument in giving the victory to good over evil. This nation ought not, therefore, to content itself with mere existence, but should throw its elements, or the best of them, into another mould and constitute out of them a new society which would become a blessing to the world.

All these Christian pioneers of religious liberty and Zionism were in close connection with Manasseh, and helped him to prepare the way for the re-admission of the Jews into England.

The view held by many Christians, especially in England, was that the Israelitish race, now scattered over the face of the earth, would eventually be brought back to its own land. To this was generally added the belief that the Jews would return in a converted, i.e. Christian, state.¹ In conformity with the general spirit of the period, all these ideas had a religious colouring in the minds both of English theologians and writers and of the Jews themselves.

Why were these considerations particularly important with regard to England? In seeking an answer to this question we are met at once by the significant fact dealt with in the first chapter of this book: the attachment of Englishmen to the Bible.

The men and women who live in the pages of the Bible had long ago become recognized types for the English nation. As early as the seventeenth century interest in the restoration of Israel had become deep and general, England providing the earliest stimulus to Zionism. The connection between this idea, and the idea of the readmission of the Jews into England after long years of exclusion, following their final expulsion under Edward I. in the year 1290, and the steady progress of the latter idea, supported and determined by the former, is characteristic not only of Manasseh’s writings, efforts and plans, but of the whole epoch. Facts prove with what steadfastness of aim and consistency of thought the problem was attacked and conquered by the Puritan theologians and writers, and to what an extent their defence of the Jews formed one comprehensive and consistent scheme, of which the readmission of the Jews (justice applied to individuals) was one part, and the Restoration of Israel (justice applied to the nation as a whole) was another.

Whoever studies Manasseh’s writings and the Puritan literature of that epoch will have no difficulty in recognizing that the idea of national justice to the Jews underlies all the discussions and controversies and is common to all schools of thought. Thus Zionism has but brought to light and given practical form and a recognized position to a principle which had long consciously or unconsciously guided English opinion. The ideas of Readmission and Restoration originally formed a single stream in England, before they separated to flow in distinct but parallel channels. Readmission, however, became an immediate practical result, whilst Restoration was left for the future.

Dr. John Jortin—Thomas Newton, Bishop of Bristol—Edward King—Samuel Horsley, Bishop of Rochester and St. Asaph—Jewish Colonies in South America—Marshal de Saxe’s scheme—Anecdote by Margravine of Anspach—Earl of Egmont’s project—Proposed settlement of German Jews in Pennsylvania—Viscount Kingsborough’s Mexican colony—John Adams, President of the United States.

The books and pamphlets, consisting largely of interpretations of the Bible, naturally contain many ideas open to serious criticism on the part of a modern reader. Inevitably also (seeing that the writers were theologians) they exhibit a persistent tendency to conversionism. But one thing that continually impresses one is the earnestness and sincerity revealed throughout. The readmission of the Jews into England was likewise connected in some quarters with conversionist tendencies, but on the whole it was an act of justice, and the Jews profited by it.

The writers with whom we have been dealing were men trained from childhood to read the Holy Scriptures, to reflect upon what they read, and to consider every question from the standpoint of their religious convictions. A certain weakness will no doubt be found in the one-sided exegetical tendency shown in the numberless explanations of the seventh chapter of the Book of Daniel, and various Apocalyptic prophecies. But have not all the different denominations done the same? Has not each one made use of some part of the Bible in order to support its ideas? Does not every sect explain the word of God according to its own way of thinking? Do not the opinions of one sect conflict with and contradict those of another? It must be remembered that this method of Scriptural interpretation was in keeping with the spirit of the time, and that the entire question was still in its infancy. Be that as it may, one cannot but be grateful for the devotion of these Christian champions, in spite of the peculiarity of some of their notions. Although as Jews we often differ from them as regards the interpretation and application of certain verses, still we cannot withhold our admiration for the sincere enthusiasm which is evinced in most of their writings.

Dr. John Jortin (1698‒1770), an ecclesiastical historian and critic, the author of The Life of Erasmus ... London ... 1758‒1760, and of many books dealing with the problem of the Jewish people, developed the idea that the preservation of this people, “under such long, such signal and such unexampled persecutions and calamities inclines one to think that they are reserved for some illustrious purpose of Providence.”

Thomas Newton (1704‒1782), Bishop of Bristol (1761), a divine of great authority, defended the idea of the Restoration of Israel in words which no Jewish national enthusiast could excel. The Jews, he believes, will be restored to their native city and country. At the same time, he emphasizes the dignity and the necessity of Jewish distinctiveness all over the world, and condemns anti-Jewish prejudice:—

“We see that the great empires, which in their turns subdued and oppressed the people of God, are all come to ruin; because, tho’ they executed the purposes of God, yet that was more than they understood; all that they intended was to satiate their own pride and ambition, their own cruelty and revenge. And if such hath been the fatal end of the enemies and oppressors of the Jews, let it serve as a warning to all those, who at any time or upon any occasion are for raising a clamor and persecution against them”¹ (Appendix xxxvi).

Edward King (1725‒1807), a miscellaneous writer and essayist, was a zealous champion of more enlightened theological views than were approved in his day by the orthodox believers. In one of his books,¹ which is written with intense faith and enthusiasm, and abounds in beautiful passages that appeal to the imagination and heart, the one point in which he is particularly emphatic is the return of the Jews as Jews to the Holy Land.

Samuel Horsley (1733‒1806), Bishop of Rochester (1793‒1802), Bishop of St. Asaph (1802‒1806), considered King’s book of sufficient importance to publish another¹ in reply, from which one gathers, that the opinions expressed by King were not entirely rejected. “I agree with you,” wrote the Bishop, “that some passages in Zechariah (fl. 3408 a.m.) in particular, make strongly for this idea of a previous settlement ... and so far I can admit....”

This declaration must have made a profound impression. It was the declaration of a man who was, as a contemporary biographer says, “an ornament to the Senate, an honour to the Church of England, and one of the first characters of the age in which he lived.”

In some tracts written at the beginning of the nineteenth century a semi-political note is already sounded, as, for instance, in the tract A Call to the Christians and the Hebrews, by Theætetus (Appendix xxxvii). This call did not find an immediate response; nevertheless, the political idea of the Restoration of Israel reappeared at various epochs in England as well as in the other English-speaking countries and elsewhere.

The various efforts to establish autonomous Jewish Colonies in America during the early history of that country are not strictly Zionism, but are not without interest from the Zionist point of view. “Under the authority of the Dutch West India Company.... In 1652, a tract of land ... was granted in the island of Curaçao to Joseph Nunez da Fonseca, and others, to found a colony of Jews in that island ... but it was not successful....”¹

About 1654 a project was formed for a settlement in Surinam, then a British colony, with Jewish fugitives from Brazil. The scheme is referred to as “Privileges Granted to the People of the Hebrew Nation that are to goe to the Wilde Cust” (Egerton MSS., vol. 2395, No. 8. [B. M.]).

A grant was made by the French West India Company to David Nasi, a Portuguese Jew, in 1659, by a charter which authorized him to found a Jewish colony in Cayenne.

Some of the later projects are even more interesting. About the year 1749 Marshal de Saxe¹ contemplated erecting a Jewish state in South America of which he would be King. “... We have only meagre accounts of this scheme; I am unable even to say whether he had abandoned it prior to his death....”²

The Margravine of Anspach¹ tells us in her anecdotes about him, that “He took a fancy to become a king: and on looking around..., as he found all the thrones occupied, he cast his eyes upon that nation which for seventeen hundred years had neither sovereign nor country; which was everywhere dispersed, and everywhere a stranger.... This extraordinary project occupied his attention for a considerable time. It is not known how far the Jews co-operated with him, nor to what point their negotiations were carried; nor was his plan ever developed: but the project was well known to the world, and his friends sometimes even joked with him on the subject.”²

John Perceval (1711‒1770), the second Earl of Egmont, when scarce a man, had a scheme of assembling the Jews, and making himself their King.¹

Hardly was the constitution of Pennsylvania of September 28th, 1776, adopted.... A German Jew, whose name and domicile are not mentioned, forwarded a letter to the President of the Continental Congress ... that a number of German Jews had the intention of settling in America.... Let the conditions be stated to us, gracious President....¹

Edward King (1795‒1837), Viscount Kingsborough, eldest son of George, third Earl of Kingston (1771‒1839), promoted and edited with copious notes a magnificent work, entitled Antiquities of Mexico ... 9 vols. Imperial Folio and 60 pp. of a tenth volume. London, 1830‒1848. The drift of King’s speculations was to establish the colonization of Mexico by the Israelites.¹

In this connection special mention should be made of a great American who was undoubtedly inspired by English Puritanism and displayed the same broad-mindedness as the Puritans in relation to the Jewish problem. This was John Adams (1735‒1826), the second President of the United States of America (1797‒1801), and one of the most distinguished patriots of the Revolution. He was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the Zionist idea. In a letter addressed to Major Mordecai Manuel Noah (1785‒1851), he says: “I really wish the Jews again in Judea, an independent nation, for, as I believe, the most enlightened men of it have participated in the amelioration of the philosophy of the age; once restored to an independent government, and no longer persecuted, they would soon wear away some of the asperities and peculiarities of their character,...” But, anticipating that he might be wrongly supposed to desire the return of the Jews to Palestine for the purpose of getting them away from America or limiting their rights in that country, he continues: “I wish your nation may be admitted to all the privileges of citizens in every part of the world. This country (America) has done much; I wish it may do more, and annul every narrow idea in religion, government and commerce.”¹

The Love and Knowledge of the Holy Land—The Land of the Bible—The Bible Societies and the Institutions for the Investigation of the Holy Land—The Palestine Exploration Fund—Colonel Conder—Sir Charles Wilson—Sir Charles Warren—Lord Kitchener.

The love and knowledge of the Holy Land were scarcely less valuable than the influence of the Bible and its language in paving the way for an understanding of Zionist aspirations. What is more natural than that the Land of Israel most strongly attracted the Christian Englishman by its past history and its present condition? He could not lay his hand upon his Bible without being reminded of the Jordan, of the Lebanon, of the Mount of Olives. Every Sunday called to his mind the ancient history and lost prosperity of the “glory of all lands,” while the existing ruin and desolation of the country gave testimony to the truth of the Bible and the certainty of the promised blessings.

While the familiar passages of Scripture concerning the Restoration were calculated to promote human effort in this great cause—for in many of these passages the spiritual application is not the most obvious, and all of them seem inspired by the vision of a real and natural return to the Land—the Biblical descriptions of the Holy Land contributed not less to the propaganda of what we may call the Zionist idea. There is no country whose geography is, if not better known, at any rate dearer to the heart of man than that of the land of which the Bible speaks.

Apart from the divine character of the Scriptures, they have handed down through the centuries the earliest history of which we have any records, and have preserved for all time records of the economic, domestic and political life of a people which inhabited one of the most important provinces of the ancient world. The people and the land are no allegory, no abstraction; they are realities. They still exist, and they can be brought together again as they were in their natural condition. They are both equally typical, almost unique. There is no other country whose geographical features are so strongly marked as those of Palestine, the character of whose inhabitants so strikingly depends on peculiarities of position, soil and climate. And there is no other people whose character, history and destinies are so peculiar as those of the Jewish people.

Two kinds of English organizations, without parallel in any other country—Bible Societies and Palestine Societies—have contributed particularly to the investigation of Palestine. Apart from their conversionist tendency, the Bible Societies were founded in order “to promote the circulation of the Holy Scriptures, both at home and in foreign lands.” This idea could take deep hold of the minds of the people only in England. The first Bible Society of Great Britain was founded in 1802 (Appendix xxxviii). Shortly afterwards—in 1805—a “Palestine Association”¹ was established for the purpose of promoting the knowledge of its geography, natural history and antiquities, with a view to the illustration of the Holy Writings. The inquiries of the Society were directed in the first place to ascertaining the natural and political boundaries of the several districts within the limits of the Land of Israel, the topographical situation of the towns and villages, the courses of streams and rivers, the ranges of mountains, and the manners and customs of the inhabitants. They extended to the natural products of the Holy Land and adjacent countries, to peculiarities of soil, climate and minerals, and to the exploration for Jewish antiquities. This was, however, by no means the beginning of the study of Palestine: it was rather a new organization of the studies in question. But notwithstanding the learned and laborious compilations of Christianus Adrichomus (1533‒1585), Petrus Ravanellus (ob. 1680), Christophorus Cellarius (1638‒1707), Thomas Fuller (1608‒1661), John Lightfoot (1602‒1675), and the more recent work of Dom [Antoine] Augustin Calmet (1672‒1757), Johann Heinrich Michaelis (1668‒1738), Thomas Harmer (1715‒1788), Willem Albert Bachiene (1712‒1783), and Ijsbrand van Hamelsveld (1743‒1812), many of the most important points were still left unexamined. “No country should be of so much interest to us as Palestine, and at the same time no country more urgently requires illustration.” With this motto the “Palestine Association” started its fruitful work, which it continued during the whole of the last century with growing skill and success.

The Society known as the “Palestine Exploration Fund” was first formally constituted in 1865. The object of the founders was the prosecution of systematic and scientific research in all branches of inquiry connected with the Holy Land, and the principal reason alleged for conducting this inquiry was the illustration of the Bible which might be expected to follow such an investigation. The Society numbered among its first supporters both Christians and Jews. The War Office granted the services of Royal Engineers for the execution of excavation work—Colonel Claude Reignier Conder (1848‒1910), Sir Charles William Wilson (1836‒1905), and Sir Charles Warren. Colonel Conder devoted his whole life to Palestinian research. Earl Kitchener (1850‒1916) surveyed Galilee for the Society, and his work aroused general interest and led to important results (Appendix xxxix). Hitherto knowledge regarding the country had been very limited; reconnaissance sketch-maps of parts of the country had been made, but every successive traveller was able to point out deficiencies, errors and unexplored tracts. With trained skill, thoroughness and conscientious work the Society combined a love and enthusiasm for Palestine which made it possible to obtain the most admirable results. The progress from the theological character of the first “Palestine Association” to the scientific methods of the “Palestine Exploration Fund” typifies the evolution of the whole Palestinian idea from a traditional belief to a great human and historical aspiration—the same evolution which can be traced in the development of the Zionist idea.

The Appeal of Bonaparte to the Jews of Asia and Africa—Haim Mu’allim Farhi—The Fortress of Acre—Jewish opinion in Palestine—El-Arish—Gaza—Jerusalem—Moses Mordecai Joseph Meyuchas—“A Letter addressed by a French Jew to his Brethren”—France and England—The real motives of Bonaparte’s Appeal.

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769‒1821) issued in 1799 a summons to the Asiatic and African Jews to march under his banner, promising “to give them the Holy Land,” and “to restore ancient Jerusalem to its pristine splendour” (Appendix xl). One hardly knows whether this was to be taken quite seriously. The Jews in Jerusalem appear either not to have put much trust in Bonaparte’s flattering words, or to have been utterly ignorant of the proclamation. The question was so important, and so much confusion prevailed regarding it, that the appeal, being vague in its terms, could not lead to any practical action. Some historians suppose that this proclamation was only a trick which Bonaparte played with the intention of winning over to his cause the Jewish minister of the Pasha of Acre, Haim Mu’allim Farhi (1750?‒1820), the soul of the defence of that important sea-fortress. This supposition, however, is based on no evidence. It is pure speculation, and is highly improbable.

No Jew seriously believed in the success of Bonaparte’s ambitious design or in the possibility of his victory, and no attention was paid to his promises. On the other hand, it would not have been impossible to suppose that Bonaparte’s plan might succeed after he had conquered Syria and carried the war into the heart of Turkey. He would then perhaps have assigned a share in his government to members of the Jewish nation upon whom the French could rely.

Bonaparte’s idea was simple and his intentions were sincere. He regarded the Jews—particularly those living in Asia and Africa—as a nation, and as having indisputable historical claims on the Holy Land and Jerusalem. He was sure that they would help him and hail his victory as a happy triumph¹ if they knew that their national ideal was to be realized and “ancient Jerusalem” to be restored to its “pristine splendour.” Was this not the same policy which he applied in later years in his relations with the small nationalities in Europe?

Jewish opinion in the East was reserved and somewhat pessimistic, not with regard to the purpose, but concerning the opportunity and the means. The Jews were willing to make any sacrifices in order to restore “ancient Jerusalem” in a peaceful way, but not to revolt against the rulers of the country. Moreover, they knew that this campaign was bound to be a failure.

The Turks followed the plan of allowing the inadequate forces of Bonaparte to advance as far as possible from their Egyptian base, while they massed heavy forces in Syria. El-Arish and Gaza in the south-west of Palestine fell into the hands of Bonaparte’s army on the 17th and 25th February, 1799. The Jewish community of Gaza had fled. In Jerusalem the news of victories and atrocities created a general panic. It was rumoured that Bonaparte was about to enter the Holy City. At the command of the deputy Governor the inhabitants began to throw up ramparts, the Jews also taking part in the work. One of the Rabbis, Moses Mordecai Joseph Meyuchas, encouraged and even assisted them in their operations. After these occurrences the success of Bonaparte in Egypt and Syria was arrested, chiefly by the arms of Great Britain, and his schemes in the East were frustrated.

The appearance of Bonaparte in Palestine was like the passing of a meteor, which, after causing much perturbance, disappears. His dream of becoming Emperor of the East faded away quickly. Still the fact remains that the idea of the Restoration of Israel had occupied the mind of this great conqueror in the prime of his youth, at the very beginning of his unexampled career. He and his adherents seemed, even after this failure, to persist in gazing with a wistful eye towards the same quarter, and their ambitious plans evidently involved the future fortunes of those Eastern countries which have so long been the monotonous scenes of isolation and ignorance.

Whatever judgment we may form as to the practical value of Bonaparte’s scheme in those days, the suggestion of restoring Palestine to the Jews remains highly significant. It is obvious that had there not been Jewish aspirations of this kind in France such a suggestion could not have arisen even as a fantastic plan or as a caprice of military headquarters in a distant country. Bonaparte had too much political foresight even in his younger years to run the risk of engaging himself in an undertaking before he had sounded the competent circles in his own country. As a matter of fact these aspirations were expressed, and, imaginary as they were, seem to have been very popular among French Jews. There is, consequently, reason to conclude that Bonaparte’s scheme was, in reality, more serious than it might have seemed at first sight.

A most curious document, almost entirely overlooked or underestimated by French historians, throws some light on the real tendencies of that time among French Jews. This is a “Letter addressed to his brethren by a Jew” in 1798¹—one year before the Bonaparte Proclamation (Appendix xli). This letter is a sort of Zionist programme. It is a mixture of different elements, partly Jewish, partly pan-French Imperialist, expounded in a manner that only a deep Jewish national feeling could have inspired. The impenetrable political speculations of those days already contain the germs of some ideas which are developed to full consciousness and clearness a hundred years later in modern Zionist speeches, pamphlets and programmes.

The author of this “Letter” rightly proclaims in the first place the pre-eminent interest of his theme, “the greatest theme of Jewish history.” “It is at last time to shake off this insupportable yoke—it is time to resume our rank among the other nations of the universe.” The nations of the world—he now hopes—will support the Jewish claim that the Jewish nation should be treated on the lines of the national idea. The design of the author, then, is to suggest a solution of no less a problem than the Jewish Tragedy. He begins with a review “of the Jewish situation during many ages under the weight of the cruellest persecutions,” and this review is not less tragic than the Jewish elegies of the Middle Ages, though it was written a few years after the great Revolution. He then addresses himself to his main task, the exposition, based, as far as he is able to base it, on lessons learnt from contemporary events, of that system of Restoration which he regards as the most practical.

This author was, no doubt, the agent and mouthpiece of the people behind him. The fact that this “Letter” was published at the suggestion of those then in power in France shows that the scheme suggested in it was in accordance with the views of the Government. This being the tendency of the Government, the appeal addressed by Bonaparte to the Jews of Asia and Africa one year after the publication of the “Letter,” in 1798, appears to be a logical consequence of prevailing opinions. Moreover, the fact that schemes of this kind had gained great currency in England, and that the Restoration of Israel was a favourite idea of the English, could not be unknown in France. It is scarcely necessary to point out what was the fundamental idea of the Egyptian and Syrian campaign. The idea of the Restoration of Israel, as suggested in the “Letter of the French Jew” in 1798 and in Bonaparte’s Appeal of 1799, was merely a link in the same chain.

To sum up, the situation of affairs, in view of the possibility of great changes in the East, seemed to afford an opportunity for the solution of the Jewish problem on national lines. Bonaparte may also have been anxious to avail himself of the services of the Jews of Asia and Africa. But the essential point is that many influential Christians as well as Jews considered the Jewish problem from a national point of view at the end of the eighteenth century.

Saul Farhi—Ahmad Jazzár—Saul Farhi’s sons: Haim, Solomon, Raphael and Moses Farhi—Jewish communities in Palestine and Syria—The importance of Palestine in the struggle between Bonaparte and the Ottoman Empire—Haim Farhi’s martyrdom.

In order to grasp the real importance and meaning of Bonaparte’s idea, we have to occupy ourselves with the dramatis personæ, and first of all with Haim Farhi. The life of this man was full of romance and of a devotion which has not yet met with such appreciation from Jewish historians as it deserves.

Haim Farhi was born at Damascus about the middle of the eighteenth century. The Farhis were an old Jewish family, whose members for several generations devoted their energies to the task of defending their ancient nation, while remaining loyal subjects of the Ottoman Government. Haim’s father, Saul, was “Katib” to Ahmad Jazzár (1735?‒1808), who was first Pasha of Acre and Sidon, then for a few years Pasha of Damascus, and afterwards for many years again Pasha of Acre and Sidon, and exercised a great influence over Syria and Palestine. Ahmad Jazzár (the Butcher) was a man without morals, as cruel as he was capricious and impetuous. Instead of using his influence and great wealth to promote the happiness of his subjects, he left the large plain near Acre almost a marsh. Pomp and luxury were greatly encouraged by him, while agriculture was neglected. His conduct was the exact opposite of that of the Sheikh Daher, his predecessor, who raised Acre from a village to a large town, and during whose reign the population of the district increased immensely. The main source of the riches of Jazzár was the pashalik of Damascus, which he contrived to add to his former dominion. Till the year 1791 the French had factories at Acre, Sidon and Beyrout. In that year they were all expelled from the territory of Jazzár by a sudden edict, which allowed them only three days in which to leave their respective abodes, under the penalty of death.

Jazzár retained his ill-gotten pashalik of Damascus a few years only. His government knew no methods but those of oppression and cruelty; he extorted from his people a considerable part of its fortunes, and put to death several hundred persons, who were mostly innocent. His own suspicious conduct, as leader of the caravan to Mecca, combined with the machinations of his enemies at the Porte, led finally to his deposition; but he left behind living monuments of his cruelty in the shape of mutilated subjects who by his orders had had their noses and ears cut off. Thus driven from Damascus, he returned to his former pashalik of Acre and Sidon.

Jazzár, who was full of energy and life, and was possessed of some heroic qualities, but was a monster in human form, and a true specimen of the Eastern “satrap,” addressed himself to his Katib for assistance and advice. Katib in Arabic, like Yazgy in Turkish, means no more than “writer” or “scribe,” but the office confers greater power than the name implies. The Katib is often at once government secretary and treasurer; and, as he is generally a permanent official in the pashalik for life, while the pashas are often changed, by removal or death, it necessarily happens that he is master of the business of the pashalik, and of its revenues and resources, while the pashas, coming from distant provinces, enter upon a rule of which the key is in the Katib’s hands, and are compelled to keep him in their service and to be guided by him. The pashalik of Damascus was, moreover, singularly placed, in so far as its pasha and chief officials had to go every year on the pilgrimage to Mecca, and consequently were more than ever bound to confide their affairs to the Katib. It is said that the order of march, the ordinances and regulations for the pilgrims, the quantity of provisions required and various other essential facts connected with this important occasion, had somehow become secrets in the keeping of the Jews, and that Saul Farhi was considered a great expert and a recognized authority in these matters. He had four sons: Haim, Solomon, Raphael and Moses (ob. 1840) and one daughter. Haim, the eldest, was initiated by his father into all the professional secrets of his office. He was a young man of excellent abilities and learning. In the early part of his life, when he was still in Damascus, the machinations of his enemies prevailed in so far that he was summoned to Constantinople to answer certain accusations made against him; and, being mulcted in a fine which he was unable to pay, he was thrown into prison. His sister, a woman of great energy, undertook the journey from Syria to Constantinople to petition for her brother’s release. She succeeded, and brought her brother back to his house. Haim’s loyalty and integrity were placed beyond doubt, and his experiences in Constantinople must have helped to give him knowledge of the laws and insight into the central government, to which he was sincerely devoted. He was then appointed by Jazzár to the post of Katib or minister at Acre, where there lived at that time thirty-six Jewish families. Jerusalem had, besides 9000 Moslem and Christian inhabitants, about 1000 Jews; and old communities of considerable size existed in Tiberias, Safed, Jaffa and Hebron. Although not important in numbers, the Jews, owing to their connection with the communities of Damascus, Aleppo, Bagdad, Constantinople, Smyrna and Salonica, which possessed numerous religious schools, and big business enterprises extending as far as Egypt and India, were justly considered an important element. The fact that Saul Farhi was Katib at Damascus, and his son Haim at Acre, and that, according to the general opinion, the Jews were better acquainted than anyone else with the route to Mecca, and with the ordinances and regulations, which were not only of a fiscal and commercial value, but also of great strategic importance—this fact did not fail to appeal to the imagination of Bonaparte. From this point of view, and considering all the circumstances, it would appear that Bonaparte’s appeal to the Jews was not so fantastic as it might seem at first sight. It was a well-considered scheme.

Haim Farhi’s activity was twofold. It fell to his lot to look after the communications with Damascus and the Hedjaz, to remain in touch with all the distant centres of commerce and resources, and at the same time to cultivate very carefully relations with Constantinople. Both these departments of official activity abounded with difficulties and responsibilities. The roads were bad, the tribes, clans, and families much divided and continually at feud with one another. Communications were unsafe, and the danger of being cut off was always imminent. On the other hand, the maintenance of peaceful relations between a powerful, capricious Pasha and the Padishah with all his camarilla was naturally a hard task. Farhi had secured a reputation for exceptional ability in both directions. Having been brought up in the atmosphere of the Katib’s profession, he was better informed than anyone else concerning the communications and the state of affairs in Damascus and elsewhere, while his dignity of manner, worthy of the descendant of an old Jewish family, his intellectual gifts and wonderful knowledge of Eastern languages, enabled him to cope most successfully with the duties of a diplomatic career. As to the latter function, there is the testimony of Jazzár, to whom is ascribed the statement that “Farhi’s notes to the Porte have the wonderful quality of being polite as well as expressive.”

Needless to say, Farhi’s influence and activity, which would have been important even in times of peace, proved of exceptional importance at the eventful period when for the first time since the Crusades East and West were involved in a struggle for existence. It was one of the strangest caprices of history that this contest of strength between the greatest powers of the world—Bonaparte and the Ottoman Empire of that time, backed up by Great Britain—was to be decided in the Holy Land, in the neighbourhood of that little port, and that a son of the nation which had possessed this land and made it a land of glory, and to which God had promised it as an “everlasting inheritance,” was the very soul of the defence, frustrating all the plans of the enemy.

Haim’s career, romantic as it was, derives a peculiar interest from one of its incidents, which makes the Pasha appear as a monster of barbarity and madness. The story sounds like the invention of a wild imagination, but is a real, indisputable fact. We mentioned with regard to Jazzár’s activities in Damascus that living monuments of his cruelty remained behind in the shape of the noseless faces and earless heads of the Damascenes. This passion for maiming and mutilating seems to have grown with him in Acre.

The Rev. John Wilson¹ (1804‒1875) tells us: “Almost every one in his domestic establishment was maimed. Some wanted a hand, some a foot; others mourned over the loss of a toe, a finger or an ear, according as the rage of the tyrant happened to be directed. Haim Farhi was an able man and withal of fine figure and prepossessing address. He enjoyed the confidence of the Pasha, and grew rich in his employment. One day Ahmad (Jazzár) said to him: ‘Haim, you have a fine person, you are very beautiful, you are the most athletic of men; when visitors come, it is you, not me, they admire; every one seems to say how happy is the Pasha to have such a man: Now, because of this I had some thoughts of dismissing you from your office; but my great love to you prevents that; you cannot, however, have any objection to my putting out one of your eyes.’ The barber was instantly sent for; and Haim Farhi lost his eye. He continued in his office, and faithfully discharged its duties, and the Pasha continued to heap favours upon him. The Jew, however, was attentive to his appearance, and dexterously contrived to edge down his turban so skilfully that his visual defect was not much observed. Jazzár noticed this, and said to him one day, ‘All I have done has been of no use, you have become as beautiful and as attractive as ever; I must cut off your nose.’ The barber was again sent for, and Haim lost his nose. He still continued in the service of the Pasha, and discharged his duties faithfully, and even presided over the obsequies of his tyrannical benefactor.”

Bonaparte approaching Jerusalem—Anti-Jewish accusations—Bonaparte and the Christians—Suleiman Pasha—Abdallah Pasha—Haim Farhi’s martyr death—The Farhi family—Generations of martyrs.

Through the primitive but excellent channels of information of the Eastern caravans, Bedouins and Dervishes, Bonaparte must have heard of this treatment of the Jewish minister by the “Butcher,” and of the other atrocities committed by him. The expulsion of the French from Acre, Sidon and Beyrout by this Pasha in 1791 was still fresh in his memory as an insult to France.

Haim Farhi continued his services; his popularity suffered no diminution, and it was evidently he who provided Acre with the necessary supplies, kept communications open with the hinterland, and made it possible to offer the stoutest resistance ever recorded in history. Great Britain helped, the Turks and Arabs were brave, and Jazzár with all his savage caprices possessed, no doubt, remarkable abilities as a general; but the soul of the entire organization was Haim. Winning him over would have meant breaking down the defence; but it was impossible to win him over.

Under such conditions Bonaparte approached Jerusalem. He had reached Ramleh (between Jaffa and Jerusalem) and intended to besiege the Holy City, but he changed his mind and turned to Acre. Meanwhile rumours spread that the Jews were helping the French as spies, and that they sympathized in their hearts with Bonaparte. This is the familiar story which hatred and calumny set on foot whenever people are excited, and there is any opportunity of stirring up thoughtless credulity and brutal instincts against a weak and defenceless minority. Bonaparte captured Gaza on the 25th December, 1799. The Jews of that place had to endure brutal treatment at the hands of Bonaparte’s soldiers, so that many seized the opportunity of escaping. The Jews of Jerusalem were, meanwhile, in the greatest danger of being massacred by the Mohammedan inhabitants, who accused them of being in secret communication with Bonaparte with a view to the surrender of the city. The Mohammedans actually believed that all the Jews of Jerusalem were spies and traitors, and they secretly resolved among themselves to kill all the Jewish inhabitants as soon as Napoleon marched on Jerusalem. This resolution, however, got abroad and was communicated by a Mohammedan, a confidant and friend of the Jews, to two Rabbis named Algazi and Meyuchas, who saved Palestinian Jewry, and particularly the Jerusalem Jews, by their presence of mind and wise precautions, such as arranging public prayers, helping to fortify the city, etc. The sight of the venerable, grey-headed Haham Meyuchas standing with a spade in his hand did not fail to impress the Mohammedans. The Jewish community was thus saved; still at Tiberias and Safed the Jews were savagely treated by Bonaparte’s soldiers.

It is impossible to know who circulated the accusation against the Jews. Such accusations are like proverbs; nobody knows their author, they are in the air, they appeal to the imagination, gain currency and subsequently become dogmas; nobody has examined their soundness, there is no evidence, no reason, there is merely a vague generalization, and yet people believe in them. We cannot know what some Jews may have thought of Bonaparte’s attempt: oppressed, persecuted, insulted as they were by the Jazzárs, some of them may have thought that Bonaparte’s victory would be their salvation, although, on the other hand, the behaviour of his soldiers caused great suffering. But in practice the Jews were most loyally devoted to the Ottoman cause.

The Jews were saved, and the outraged Farhi remained in service. According to the testimony of all his Christian contemporaries, this Jew, like a real Christian, “loved his enemy.” When Jazzár died, in 1808, he arranged the ceremonies of the funeral with remarkable devotion. Jazzár was succeeded by Suleiman Pasha, who confirmed Haim in his dignity. Suleiman, an ex-mameluk, ruled with Farhi sixteen years, and this was the happiest period for Palestine. Suleiman died in 1824, and Abdallah, the son of Ali Pasha of Tripoli (ob. 1815 at Acre), who was educated and looked after with great care by Farhi, was appointed Pasha of Acre. Very soon after the appointment of Abdallah Pasha the Jewish minister came to a tragic end. Abdallah showed himself not an impetuous barbarian of the Jazzár type, but a miserable and treacherous murderer. Jealous of his benefactor’s popularity, and seeing that it was impossible to disfigure him further, he ordered his Kiaja (minister of the police) to assassinate the old and venerable statesman, and to throw his body into the sea. The implacable tyrant was deaf to the entreaties of the dead man’s family and friends, who implored him to allow the body to be buried. It is said that the body was left floating for several days near the harbour, and that the Pasha ordered his servants to attach heavy stones to it and then to throw it into the sea. Farhi’s property, the personal fortune which he had acquired not as the result of his official occupation but as a member of an old and wealthy family, was ransacked and confiscated. His family escaped, and his widow died, in consequence of hardships, on her way to Damascus. As to the pretext for the murder of Farhi there are various accounts. According to Damoiseau, a French renegade, Abdallah (in whose service he was) proposed the building of some new fortifications. There was no practical reason for the fortifications; relations with the European powers being friendly, the measure could only stimulate the suspicions of the Porte. Moved by these reasons and by considerations of economy, Farhi objected. He was sentenced to death, and the Kiaja was authorized to carry out the execution. This he did by attacking the old man suddenly in his house, and murdering him in the night. But Abdallah never thought afterwards of building any new fortification. The version given by Rabbi Joseph Schwarz (1804‒1860) in his T’buoth Ha’arez (Jerusalem, 1845) is somewhat different in details, but the facts are essentially the same. Another traveller, Professor J. M. A. Scholz (1794‒1852), happened to be at that time in the neighbourhood of Acre, and he confirms the first version. He gives also the precise date of the assassination: the 24th August, 1824.

Peaceful and loyal as the Jews in the East were, this monstrous crime seems to have put an end to their great patience. The brothers of Haim in Damascus arranged to send an expedition of revenge. This was the first time for several centuries that Jews had gone forth as fighters in their own cause. The Pashas of Aleppo and Damascus concluded a treaty, and supported the expedition arranged by the Farhis. They besieged Acre, and had it not been for a spy sent to the camp of the Farhis, who succeeded in treacherously poisoning Solomon Farhi, the expedition would have had an excellent chance of success. The death of Solomon, however, put an end to the expedition, of which he was the organizer and leader. The last survivor of Haim’s brothers was Raphael. He also was a distinguished statesman. He was Minister at Damascus in 1820, and after the restoration of Ottoman rule in Syria was elected to the Council of that town.

Rev. John Wilson¹ gives a further account of his visits to Damascus in 1843. “6th June.—Mr. Graham and I visited the house of the chief Rabbi, Haim Maimon Tobhi. He had been eighteen years resident at Damascus, but is a native of Gibraltar. He had obtained, he said, an English passport, entitling him to British protection, from Lord Palmerston (1784‒1865); and he had been elected to office on account of the privilege which he thus enjoyed, it having been conceived by the Jews, that the name of an English subject, borne by him, would give weight to his dealings with the Turkish Government” (Ib. 330). “On the second day of our excursions among the Jews we visited one of the princely mansions of the Farhis, the richest bankers and merchants of Damascus.” In a footnote Wilson quotes [Sir John] Bowring’s [F.R.S.] (1792‒1872) Report on Syria, p. 94: “As a class, the Jewish foreign merchants of Damascus are the most wealthy.... The two most opulent are believed to be Mourad Farhi and (Raphael) Nassim Farhi, whose wealth in trade exceeds one and a half millions each. Most of the Jewish foreign houses trade with Great Britain.” In the first of these mansions Wilson admired the library, containing nearly the whole of Jewish literature, to which Jewish students had free access for purposes of study. He met there some of the Rabbis, who told him that the Jews of Damascus were supposed to number 5000 souls, and those of Aleppo 6000. He and Mr. Graham, who accompanied him, were then introduced to the female members of the household, who “deported themselves with a dignity and grace which would have done credit to the nobility of Europe.” “On the 8th of June we visited the mansion of Raphael, the chief of the Farhis. On our arrival we were received by a Jew, who humbly described himself to us as the ‘worthless Jacob Peretz,’ a quondam tutor to the children of the great man, and who in acknowledgment of his services is, with his whole family, retained as part of his household, which, he informed us, consists of from between sixty to seventy souls.” This establishment was even grander than that which we visited yesterday.... Mr. Graham expressed his doubts whether those in our own Royal palaces are superior to them. He then gives particulars of the principal apartments and reproduces a Hebrew inscription with an English translation (of his own). Of special interest is Mr. Wilson’s description of the head of the family, Raphael, the Nasi of the Damascus Jews, an old man who was at that time seriously indisposed, but received him and his friend with great kindness, and took them to his library, which was very large.

In 1840, during the riots following the accusation against the Jews, Raphael and his sons suffered very severely. Raphael died very soon after Wilson’s visit. This was the end of this Jewish family, whose history is bound up with the history of Palestine and Bonaparte’s expedition. They have a twofold claim upon our attention, first as eminent Jewish statesmen, and secondly as Palestinian martyrs.

Rabbi Moses Mordecai Joseph Meyuchas—The Spanish Jewish traditions—Rabbi Israel Jacob Algazi—The importance of the Jewish settlement in Palestine—Zionist aspirations.

To obtain an idea of the views and aspirations of the Jews of Palestine in that period we may glance at two Hahamim of Jerusalem—Moses Mordecai Joseph Meyuchas and Israel Jacob Algazi.

Haham Samuel Moses Mordecai Joseph de Raphael de Meyuchas was born in 1738 and died in Jerusalem in 1806. He was the descendant of a family of Rabbis and Talmudic scholars of great fame in Palestine and elsewhere. His most valuable contributions to Talmudic literature are his three works: Mayim Shaal (Salonica, 5559), Shaar Ha’mayim (Salonica, 5528) and B’rehot Ha’mayim (Salonica, 5549), which show profound scholarship and wide learning. He was on terms of intimacy with the great Talmudic scholars of his time, who addressed to him questions on various religious and communal matters. In the Preface to his B’rehot Ha’mayim he speaks in exalted terms of his love “of the dear land, the Golden Jerusalem,” and of “the changeable events of his time.” He says that he has had much to suffer, and that, poverty-stricken as he is, he enjoys his miserable existence and keeps in good spirits; he expresses his humble gratitude to God for having allowed him to earn “a piece of dry bread,” and to bear his share in building up the city; and adds that his only hope and aspiration is to be able to spend his life there to a very advanced age. His use of the verse:—

“For He hath made strong the bars of thy gates;...”  (Psalm cxlvii. 13).

in connection with what he describes as the “good idea,” which he “carried out,” might be taken as an allusion to his remarkable action in 5559 (1799), when this old Rabbi “stood with spade in hand labouring on the fortification of Jerusalem, digging and working with the greatest industry to make a new bastion and rampart around the fort, the Kallai,”¹ were it not for the chronological fact that his book was published in 5549 (1789). He is said to have practised medicine, and though this was not uncommon among the Sephardi Hahamim of the old generation, it probably indicates that he was a man of wider outlook than that of the usual Rabbi type. It is a mistake to suppose that all Palestinian Rabbis of the older generation were superstitious and hostile to science. The Sephardi Hahamim of that time in particular had preserved something of the scientific and rationalistic tradition of the Judæo-Spanish school. Some of them were men of great ability, well versed not only in the Talmud, but also in Oriental languages. They cherished an intense and sincere love for the Holy Land, and, if the position of the Jewish people in the country was maintained, through all the horrors and dangers of war and plague, stress and danger, it was due to the self-denial and the wonderful moral strength of those noble martyrs who guided and inspired the down-trodden people. Mostly descendants of the Spanish-Jewish fugitives who found refuge and shelter in the dominions of the Sultan, their loyalty and gratitude to their rulers were sincere and deep-rooted. The Jerusalem Rabbis were attached to their masters and friends in Constantinople, Salonica, Smyrna, Damascus and Aleppo. The Jewish communities, particularly those in distant parts of the Ottoman Empire, suffered severe afflictions from time to time, but they bore their heavy burdens with fortitude and resignation in order to maintain and to strengthen their foothold in the country. They trusted in the justice of the Central Government, and did not expect anything of Bonaparte’s invasion, or of any other invasion of the kind.

Haham Meyuchas was at that time Dayan.¹ Another scholar of great authority was the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, H.H.R. Israel Jacob Algazi, a great-grandson of Haham Solomon Algazi the Elder (who was Rabbi in Smyrna and in Jerusalem in the seventeenth century, wrote on all subjects of Rabbinic literature, and contributed much to the science of Talmudic methodology). Haham I. J. Algazi wrote some valuable books on homiletics and Halachah, which testify to his exceptional genius and astonishing industry. He was an excellent Rabbi, possessed of a keen intellect and a high sense of duty. His books She’erith Jacob (Constantinople, 5511) and Neoth Jacob (Smyrna, 5527) contain many chapters that bear testimony to his ardent desire for the development of the Jewish community in the Holy Land.

We read with special interest the books written by these two rabbis during that troublous period. These books are distinguished by the highest intellectual ability. There is nowhere a trace of weariness, languor or even indifference to be found; on the contrary, freshness, strength and unsatisfied intellectual impulse are throughout discernible. Living ideas pervade them all. It is impossible for any reader who is a Talmudic student not to be touched by their depth and force of sentiment, and their exceptional vigour and eloquence, in spite of the usual clumsiness and complexity due to the old Rabbinic language. It is indeed a relief to turn from the intrigues of the Pashas and the bloodshed of the expeditions to Haham Jacob Israel Algazi, who writes in a reply to the Leghorn Jews: “We are here insignificant in numbers, modest in our requirements, and we pray God that we may become self-supporting. We have to be here for the sake of our ancestors and our children’s children. This question is not of appearances, but of realities; not of delights, but of duties; not of private option, but of divine authority.” Both these Rabbis deal with Palestinian affairs in an elevating spirit and from an idealistic point of view. Whatsoever is in Palestine is holy and sublime, and all Jews are bound to support the Yishub.¹ This is the keynote of all their ideas. Haham M. M. J. Meyuchas writes to Salonica: “We have in our community some artisans, too few for our nation—because they should be more numerous here—and too many for the charities to support them when they are workless; more wealthy people should come here.” And Haham Algazi discusses the question of the special Rabbinical rules concerning the right of the community to inherit the property of rich Jews who die in Palestine leaving relatives in other countries. “It is not the community,” says the learned Rabbi, “it is the whole of Israel which is the ♦inheritor in this way.... Our people, so long scattered, oppressed, and trodden down, and wonderful from the beginning till now, should never despair. Israel is not deserted,” he says in another passage. The aspirations of an ancient people, as he knew, do not depend on the intrigues and adventures of Pashas, and will outlive all these passing incidents.

The “Sanhedrin”—R. David Sintzheim—M. S. Asser—Moses Leman—Juda Litvak—Michael Berr—Lipman Cerf-Berr—The Decisions and Declarations—Napoleon I. and the Jews.

Meanwhile circumstances had undergone a material change, and eight years after the failure of the Syrian Campaign and the Appeal to the Jews of Asia and Africa, Bonaparte, now Napoleon I., issued an order to convene a Jewish “Sanhedrin” in Paris (1807).

This came as a joyous surprise to the Jewish nation. The “Great Sanhedrin,” a feature of the ancient Jewish Government which had perished together with the Second Temple, and which alone had been endowed with unlimited religious authority in Israel, was to be revived in modern times, in the centre of civilized Europe, for the purpose of ♦making decisions which would command indisputable recognition on the part of Jews in all countries and throughout all centuries. “A great event,” wrote one of the leading Jews of that time, “is about to take place, one which through a long series of centuries our fathers, and even we in our own times, never expected to see, and which has now appeared before the eyes of the astonished world. The 20th of October (1807) has been fixed as the date of the Great Sanhedrin in the capital of one of the most powerful Christian nations, and under the protection of the great Prince who rules over it. Paris will thus show to the world a remarkable scene, and this memorable event will open to the dispersed remnants of the descendants of Abraham a period of deliverance and prosperity.”

On the 9th February, 1807, the Grand Sanhedrin assembled at the Grand Synagogue in Paris under the Presidency of Rabbi David Sintzheim (1745‒1812) of Strasburg. Service was read in Hebrew, French and Italian; an excellent discourse was delivered by the President in the first-named language. After his discourse he took a scroll of the Law from the Ark and blessed the Assembly, and then recited a prayer for the Emperor, the glory of his arms, and the return of peace. From the Synagogue the Assembly adjourned to the Hôtel de Ville, where, after appropriate speeches from the most distinguished members, the Committee appointed by the late First Consul laid before the Sanhedrin a general plan of organization for Mosaic worship, consisting of twenty-seven articles. According to this plan a Consistory and Synagogue were to be established in each Department containing 2000 Jews; those of the persuasion who intended to reside in France were to announce their intention to the Consistory within three months of their arrival on French territory; there was to be a Central Consistory in Paris, consisting of five persons, of whom three were to be Rabbis; and none were to be appointed Rabbis who were not naturalized in France or in the Kingdom of Italy. The functions of the Rabbis were to be:—

1. To give instruction in religious matters.

2. To inculcate the precepts contained in the decisions of the Grand Sanhedrin.

3. To preach complete obedience to the laws, and particularly to those enjoining the defence of the country, and above all, to exert themselves every year during the time of conscription, from the first summons to the complete carrying out of the law, in exhorting their followers to conform to that measure.

4. To impress the need for military service upon the Jews as a sacred duty, and to explain to them that so long as they devoted themselves to that service, their religion would give them a dispensation from such laws and customs as were incompatible with it.

5. To preach in the Synagogues, and to recite the prayers which were offered up for the Emperor and the Imperial Family.

6. To solemnize marriages and give divorces.

On the 12th February the Sanhedrin met again formally and commenced its deliberations as to the plan of organization. During the ensuing March the Deputies from Holland, Moses Solomon Asser (1754‒1826),¹ Moses Leman (1785‒1832), the learned Polish Jew, Juda Litvak (1760‒1836), and the delegates of Frankfort-on-the-Main were admitted into the Sanhedrin, and declared, in the name of their constituents, that they would adhere to the doctrinal decisions of the great Sanhedrin of France and Italy.² The President answered both delegations in Hebrew, congratulating them upon their resolutions, and also the Assembly on having them in its midst, and himself on having to answer coreligionists from a community so highly distinguished for its piety, and now governed by a just and liberal Prince, from whom the friends of humanity had everything to hope and expect. In brief, he considered himself fortunate in having to congratulate the Deputies of a country in which equal participation in the common rights of men had long since been granted to all the inhabitants, including the Israelites, who were quite as industrious as the best of the citizens. The President afterwards gave a discourse in French, which made a most favourable impression on the Assembly, and offered them the opportunity of expressing their gratitude to the great man whom Providence had chosen to be the instrument of its blessings and its miracles. He expressed the most sanguine hopes as to the salutary influence which that august Assembly and its labours would have upon the future destiny of the Jews. Having expressed sentiments of lasting devotion to all his colleagues, who had been convoked by the voice of this great man, from the Pyrenees to the borders of the Maine, and from the shores of the Adriatic to the Zuyder Zee, to form a religious Assembly unparalleled in modern history, and having done justice to the talents of the two Assessors, he paid, in the name of the Sanhedrin, a tribute of homage to the Commissaries of the Emperor, MM. le Comte Louis Matthieu Molé (1781‒1855), Etienne Denis, Baron et Duc de Pasquier (1767‒1862), le Comte Joseph Marie Portalis (1778‒1858), and others, whose assiduity, zeal and indulgence had so powerfully contributed to the success of the common cause. M. Abraham Furtado (1756‒1816) afterwards proposed a vote of thanks to the Chief of the Grand Sanhedrin, which was adopted with acclamation. M. Michael Berr (1780‒1847) then read the Procès Verbal, and the President concluded by announcing that the sittings of the Sanhedrin were closed.³

Some historians have been inclined to regard the Paris Sanhedrin as a denial of Jewish nationality. This view is wrong, and no conception of history could be more contrary to the facts. A careful study of the literature of that time will show that the Sanhedrin was inspired by traditional Jewish ideas. One of the most prominent French Jews, who was the first Jew to practise in France as a barrister, M. Michael Berr, had sent a request to all princes and nations “to release the Jews from bondage.” Another member of the Sanhedrin, M. Lipman Cerf-Berr (1760‒1831), said in his public speech: “Let us forget our origin! Let us no longer speak of Jews of Alsace, of Portugal, or of Germany! Though scattered over the face of the earth, we are still one people, worshipping the same God, and as our law commands, we are to obey the laws of the country in which we live.”¹ This is not the language of men who aim at assimilation and the disintegration of their nationality. The ideas of these men are not to be confused with what modern Jewish assimilation preaches. Modern Jewish assimilation denies and rejects all Jewish “separatism” except on the religious side. Consequently, it would not allow the Jew the right to forget that he was in Alsace, in Portugal, and so on. According to the assimilation doctrine, a Jew must be merely an Alsatian, or a Portuguese, “of the Jewish persuasion.” The purpose of the Sanhedrin was evidently quite different. The Sanhedrin intended to reconstruct European Jewry on French imperial lines, with a religious centre in Paris. It therefore examined, with great care and minuteness, those passages in the Bible and the Talmud which showed that the general laws of the Empire were binding on the Jews. On these premises was based a declaration of loyalty given by united Jewry, and sanctioned by the revival of the Sanhedrin, an ancient national institution.

For Napoleon, however, the Sanhedrin had another purpose, connected with his imperial ambitions. He hoped that the Jews, living scattered all over the world, would contribute to the strengthening of his world-empire. Two years prior to the edict of 1806‒7 he had conceived the idea of utilizing the special talents of his Hebrew subjects to that end. He had probably discovered that their financial skill was unrivalled, that their commercial correspondence and intercourse throughout Europe was more speedy and reliable than any other, and that the ramifications of their business in various countries gave them a great advantage over all their rivals. He intended to make them his devoted co-workers in carrying out his universal political plans, and with that end in view he contemplated granting them many concessions. As, however, the political and legal position of the Jews in France, as well as in other countries, was still insufficiently defined, and numberless accusations were directed against their religious principles and Talmudic laws, he deemed it necessary to lay the foundations of a more definite status. As a preliminary step in this direction he summoned this meeting of the great Sanhedrin, which was to consist of the most eminent and learned Rabbis from every part of France, as well as from adjacent countries over which his influence extended. The purpose for which this convention was avowedly called was to “convert into religious doctrines the answers given by the assembly, and likewise those which may result from a continuance of these sittings.” But these statements admit of various interpretations: they may mean a confirmation as well as a reformation of the old traditional laws. And while confirmation by a Sanhedrin is unnecessary, reformation would appear impossible. The Sanhedrin had no authority whatever to reform Judaism, and no intention of doing so. No conservative Jew would accept the Sanhedrin’s opinion in a matter of religious tradition, and, on the other hand, “reformed” Jews would not be satisfied with its decisions, or, not being bound by any tradition, would not require Rabbinical decisions at all.

In reality the patriotic Declaration of the Sanhedrin was intended to discredit and demolish the dangerous accusations against the Jewish people and against the teachings of Judaism. It is a mistake to regard it, as some writers have done, as an indication of a desire for the reform of Judaism or for assimilation. The statements of the Sanhedrin were in accordance with the traditional Jewish Law. Its solemn declaration of loyalty and patriotism was not an innovation. The fathers and grandfathers of the Rabbis who made this declaration were not less faithful and loyal to their Governments and to the countries in which they lived than the Rabbis of the Sanhedrin. The Declaration was practically a new edition of the Modaa Rabba printed as a preface to every treatise of the Talmud. This Modaa declares for human solidarity, community of interests with other nations and loyalty to the Government in the old traditional way; the Sanhedrin expresses identical views in modern language, in accordance with the spirit of the new age and environment. The purport of both is undoubtedly the same.

Far from being a natural product of internal Jewish development, the Sanhedrin was a governmental affair intended to organize Jewry in the new world-empire. But it remained an episode, because Napoleon’s attitude towards the Jews was, generally speaking, far from consistent. At one time he offered them Jerusalem; at another he was inclined to transport Jerusalem to Paris. Some time before the Sanhedrin assembled, he seemed to be vexed with the Jews—a feeling of a temporary character, which was probably the reflex of disappointment in his far-reaching plans. On other occasions he showed exceptional kindness to Jewish soldiers and other Jews.¹

All these facts combined lead to the inference that the Jewish problem had often engaged his attention. He seems, like his adherents, to have wavered as to the acceptance of the idea of the Restoration of Israel or of that of Assimilation, but finally embraced the doctrines of the Sanhedrin, which could be applied easily to the small Jewish population in France. The elimination not only of the Jews of Asia and Africa, but also of the Jews in other European countries, from the Jewish problem in France, caused by the failure of great schemes of conquest, necessarily narrowed the scope of the Jewish problem and deprived it of its former grandeur.

English opinion on the Sanhedrin—F. D. Kirwan—Abraham Furtado—Rev. James Bicheno—The Declaration of the Sanhedrin and English comment—M. Diogène Tama—The Prince de Ligne.

Coming back to English history, we now propose to trace the impression produced in this country by Bonaparte’s Palestine Appeal of 1798 and the Proclamation of a Sanhedrin in 1807.

English opinion on this point was quite clear. No objections were ever raised to the restoration of the Jewish nation to Palestine: this idea had been cherished in England for centuries. But English opinion was opposed to its becoming a strategic or political instrument in the hands of an ambitious conqueror. Moreover, that opinion was not inclined to separate the idea of the Restoration of Israel from that of the emancipation of the Jews. Thus the Sanhedrin was considered merely a tentative preliminary step towards Restoration, and the Declaration made by that body against Jewish national aspirations produced an impression of surprise and bewilderment. This Declaration was not, in fact, intended to be a denial of Jewish nationality in its ethical, historical, cultural or religious aspect: it was rather an avowal of political loyalty. Yet such a Declaration, expressed as it was in exaggerated terms, was calculated to surprise and puzzle the genuine friends of the Jews in England, and give rise to misunderstanding.

F. D. Kirwan, the English translator of the Parisian Sanhedrim, published in French by the French-Jewish editor, M. Diogène Tama (Appendix xlii), says, in his preface: “... The ultimate views which Bonaparte may have on the Jewish nation are, to this day, involved in obscurity; while the supposed advantages he so pompously conferred on them may reasonably be called in question. When we consider that the Jewish population of France and Italy is not calculated, by the deputies themselves, at more than one hundred thousand souls (a small number indeed when compared with the population of those countries), we are at a loss to see what great advantages could immediately result to Bonaparte from the Jews embracing zealously the profession of arms. We well know that his gigantic plans of ambition rest on the laws of conscription; but the Jews are already liable to them; they can hardly escape their excessive rigour; and even the whole of the Jewish youth, of the requisite age, would, in point of number, make but a contemptible reinforcement to the immense armies of France.

“These exhortations to embrace the profession of arms, so zealously repeated by the leading members of the French-Jews, are besides, always coupled with strong recommendations to follow mechanical trades and husbandry; in short, those professions without which a nation cannot exist by itself, but which are not more particularly useful than any others to a small given number of people, who consider as their country an Empire in which these professions abound.

“We find these same recommendations strongly inforced in the answer of M. Furtado to the commercial Jews of Frankfort, who hardly can have a choice of employment. ‘We have,’ says he, ‘too many merchants and bankers among us, and too few artificers and husbandmen,—and, above all, too few soldiers’: but if their countrymen thoroughly fill these branches of employment, what necessity is there for having husbandmen, artificers, and soldiers of their own?

“The Jewish deputies say that Bonaparte conceived the idea of their regeneration, or their political redemption, in the land of Egypt and on the banks of the Jordan. This we doubt not; and though we are almost ashamed to hazard the extravagant supposition, we feel a conviction that his gigantic mind entertains the idea of re-establishing them in Palestine, and that this forms a part of his plan respecting Egypt, which he is well known never to have abandoned.

“No one will contend that this idea is too wild for his conception; it is, on the contrary, perfectly consonant with his love for extraordinary, dazzling enterprises; he acts in this even with more than his usual foresight, by attempting to prepare the Jews for the new situation he intends for them. It is with this view that he encourages them to follow those professions which are necessary for men forming a distinct nation in a land of their own; for certainly, a body wholly composed of merchants and traders could never exist as such....

“The answer to the sixth question, by which the French Jews acknowledge France as their country, without any restriction whatever, is a still more heinous dereliction of the tenets of the Mosaic law; for they give up, by it, the hope of the expected Messiah, and of the everlasting possession of the promised land of Canaan, which they deem a part of the sacred covenant between God and His chosen people.

“While we thus inculpate the Jewish deputies, it cannot be expected that we shall lay too great a stress on the fulsome and frequently impious flattery which characterizes all their productions....

“But flattery is the opiate of the guilty conscience; it sooths the pangs of remorse;...”¹

A similar view was expressed with considerable eloquence by the Rev. James Bicheno (1751‒1831), of Newbury, an ♦Anabaptist minister who attained some distinction in his day through his works on the Prophecies, and of others on various subjects (Appendix xliii). He was the author of The Restoration Of The Jews: The Crisis Of All Nations;... 1800¹ (Appendix xliv).

This book is a valuable contribution to Christian pro-Zionist literature. The author is a great believer in the future of Israel and of Palestine, but he looks upon the problem mainly from a religious point of view, though he does not demand any conversion of Jews prior to their Restoration. Many of his conclusions are unacceptable, and others are incapable of proof, but even these are useful in so far as they may “stimulate the minds of rulers to meditation, and thus suggest to them new aspects¹ and new ways of inquiry”; and although there is little thought in his book, and some of its main themes are not developed with completeness or accuracy, the ingenuity which leads to so many suggestions, and the elegance which groups them so artistically, give the book vivacity and diversity. The author refers to the Parisian Sanhedrim, and accepts the view of the English translator, F. D. Kirwan.

“... If the Sanhedrim were to consult only on what was domestic, why invite the co-operation of all the Jews in Europe? The time was not come for the design to be exposed at full length. What grand scheme is developing, and whether Napoleon is devising the commercial aggrandizement of France, and the ruin of the English interest in the East, by the re-settlement of the Jews in their own land, time will discover. But it needs but little discernment, when, besides all this, the state of things both in Europe and in the East, and the character of the extraordinary man who has taken this people under his protection, are taken into consideration, to perceive, that something is intended more characteristic of the vast grasp of Napoleon’s ambition than that of squeezing out of the Jews a few millions of livres....”

Bicheno concludes thus: “... it must be allowed by all serious minds, ... that the great question relative to the future fortunes of the Jews, who, for so many ages, have been preserved as by a continued miracle, possesses considerable interest: ... that the Jews, after their present long captivity, will be gathered from all nations, and be again restored to their own country, and be made a holy and happy people. That their restoration will be effected at a time of great and general calamities.... That it is most likely they will be first put in motion by some foreign power, and that this power is some maritime one in these western parts of the world.... How long it is to the time when ‘the dry bones of the House of Israel’ will begin to move, it is impossible to say;... But although no one can say how near, or how distant, the time may be, when God will fulfil his promises to the Jewish nation; yet it is certain there never were so many reasons for concluding it not to be very far off, as at present. We live in awful times. We and our fathers have seen wars, but, since man learnt to shed blood, there never was one similar to the present, in which the nations are dashing each other to pieces.... Events the most alarming follow each other in quick succession.... Palestine itself is becoming the scene of contest; and that ferment, which has been productive of such unexpected and awful catastrophes in Europe, has reached the shores of Egypt and Syria.”¹

In conclusion, it may be pointed out that Bonaparte’s idea of the restoration of the Jews was not quite new in France. Some suggestions of the kind had been made in French literature before. Thus the Prince de Ligne¹ wrote, in his Memoirs upon the Jews, in 1797:

“After having traced to the Christian states their duties and their interests in regard to the amelioration of the condition of the Jews of Europe, we may prophesy what will happen in case they ignore this counsel.... If the Turks have a little common sense they will try and attract the Jews to them in order to make them their political, military and financial advisers, their police agents, their merchants, in short to become initiated by their advisers into all wherein lies the strength and weakness of the Christian states. Finally, the Sultan will sell to them the Kingdom of Judah, where they would act better than aforetimes.... The Jews who would have found again their country would be compelled to make therein flourish the arts, industry, agriculture and the commerce of Europe. Jerusalem, a horrible nest at present (this was written in 1797), giving a heartache to the pilgrims who come there now, would become a splendid capital. They would rebuild the Temple of Solomon upon its ruins. They would fix the waters of the torrents of Kidron, which would supply canals for circulation and exportation.”

The spirit of the time—Different currents—Thomas Witherby—Dr. Joseph Priestley—Anti-Socinus, alias Anselm Bayly—John Hadley Swain—William Whiston—Bishop Robert Lowth—Dr. Philip Doddridge—David Levi.

In the early years of the nineteenth century religious ideas exercised considerable influence on the English mind, and penetrated deeply into the soul of the nation. Public opinion was, therefore, favourably disposed towards Zionism, and prepared to accept it from the religious point of view. But that was not the only point of view from which Zionism was advocated and accepted. Zionism had two aspects, corresponding to the two meanings expressed by the words “Restoration of Israel.” Those words sometimes denoted simply the tendency towards a Jewish national revival, an aspiration as elementary and natural as any other of the kind; at other times the idea of the “Restoration of Israel” was connected with the realization of religious prophecies, and it was held that Judaism or Christianity (according to the point of view) was to be glorified by the resettlement of Jews in Palestine. As religion, and especially the Bible, was one of the most potent agencies in the formation of political and moral theories in England, it came about that the history of the Zionist idea was interwoven with that of religious opinions. But, on the other hand, it is impossible to overlook the influence of nationalist ideas which supported the Zionist cause from another point of view, and were expressed in a different tone and spirit. While on the one hand religious imagination gave to the conception the richness and warmth that belong to sentiment, ♦statesmanship contributed the clearness and firmness that reason alone can give.

Every keen student of the literature of that epoch concerning Zionism will readily notice that there were two different currents of thought. We will refer only to one writer who was altogether averse to conversionism, yet adopted the Zionist view—Thomas Witherby (1760‒1820). He was a London solicitor of repute, who after his retirement lived at Enfield and took up the study of political and social problems. He wrote An Attempt to Remove Prejudices Concerning the Jewish Nation (Appendix xlv), and was opposed on some important points to Mr. Bicheno’s prophecies (Appendix xlvi), but, essentially, shared the latter’s opinions concerning the rights of the Jewish nation. He was the first English author who dealt with the imaginary incompatibility of Jewish citizenship with Jewish national claims to Palestine. He confessed that prejudices against the Jews, though not as vigorous then as they had been in times gone by, were still very strong. He admitted “the sad conduct of Christians against Jews”; he praised “the Jewish sincerity and their attachment to their nationality and religion,” and on those grounds he defended the claim of the Jews’ citizenship. “Bad Jews would be bad citizens; good Jews would be good citizens.” According to his view, the just demand for equality of rights for the Jews does not conflict with the claim of the Jewish nation to a land of its own, in which he decidedly believed. We may let him speak for himself:

“Previous to the great and most conspicuous return of the Jews to their own land there will be a partial restoration of many of them to their land, which will probably be effected by the Protestant powers who may renounce their prejudices against them, and see that the non-acceptance of the Christian doctrines is not the bar to their restoration to the favour of God.”

He recognized both the right of the Jews to decide for themselves in matters affecting the preservation of the race, and the independent validity of the considerations which lead to the recognition of Jewish rights in all countries. It was his opinion that while humanity and justice must refuse to recognize anything in the laws of any country which was at variance with the principle of equality, they should be the more ready to admit the higher claim of the Jewish nation to a home of its own.

Witherby stood, then, for the Restoration of Israel as well as for Jewish Emancipation. There can be no stronger and more convincing protest against the fallacious assumption of the irreconcilability of Zionism and Emancipation than Witherby’s interesting and instructive pamphlet. His ideal—a noble and statesmanlike ideal—was to do justice to those Jews who lived in the country, and accordingly formed an integral part of the organism of the State, working like others for the prosperity and safety of the realm. Equally he considered it a sacred duty of humanity to enable this ancient and disinherited nation to rebuild a central home for those of its members who saw the necessity of such a home, and had the inclination to go there. The policy of the State towards the Jews was to be based on these broad principles. Witherby was a man of practical sense and clear sight; he stated clearly and forcibly the anomalies of the Jewish position, and, unhampered by petty prejudices, sought earnestly for a solution of the Jewish problem in its entirety.

In concluding this part of the review of the Zionist idea in Christian England, we may mention the name of Dr. Joseph Priestley (1733‒1804). Dr. Priestley was an eminent English philosopher, theologian, and chemist. Though not a conversionist in the true sense of the term, he was nevertheless somewhat influenced by that point of view. He was assisted by the Rev. Anselm Bayly (1719‒1794), LL.D., Sub-Dean of His Majesty’s chapels, alias Anti-Socinus, and John Hadley Swain. In his Letters to the Jews (Appendix xlvii) and in A Comparison of the Institutions of Moses ... And An Address to the Jews on the present state of the World (Appendix xlviii) he threw his arguments into a series of hypothetical syllogisms, the only defect in which is that his premises could hardly be proved. Yet the stress which he laid on the acknowledgment of Israel’s dignity atones for the sophistry of the argument. Having cast a good idea in the stereotyped mould of conversionism, he seems to have expected that a great impression would be produced upon the Jews; but, naturally, his conversionist methods evoked a storm of protest.

He found a strong opponent in David Levi (1742‒1808), a Hebraist and well-known author of books dealing with Jewish theology and ritual. In his controversies with believers and non-believers David Levi attempted to show that the divine mission of the prophets was fully established by the present dispersion of the Jews. He published a reply—Letters to Dr. Priestley, in answer to those he addressed to the Jews; London, 1787 (Appendix xlix)—in which the orthodox standpoint of passive, religious Zionism is defined in the following terms: “And, as all the calamities that were to befall our nation, in consequence of our transgressing the Law, as foretold by that great prophet, and divine legislator, Moses, have been fulfilled in all respects; consequently, those great and glorious promises, also foretold by the same prophet, must likewise have their full completion.

“But the exact time of this accomplishment is not known to any, save the eternal God Himself;... These prophecies, Sir, are our consolation in this long, and dreadful captivity, and have been our support, in enabling us to bear up against the many grievous and miserable persecutions, we have suffered....” (pp. 2‒3). In this way Levi withdraws Messianism altogether from human experience and the operation of the ordinary laws of thought.

On the other hand, William Whiston (1667‒1752),¹ Bishop Robert Lowth (1710‒1787)² and Dr. Philip Doddridge (1702‒1751),³ supported the idea of a speedy restoration of the Jews, and, with the exception of the liberal-minded Whiston, adopted the conversionist view. There was, unfortunately, too much hasty and captious objection on the one hand, and of settled and inveterate prejudice on the other; too strong a tendency to lose sight of the broader features of the main question in the eagerness to single out particularly salient points of attack. Nevertheless, the steady progress of the Zionist idea is unmistakable on both sides of the controversy. Regardless of all these polemical discussions, public opinion began to understand that Zionism was not opposed to and did not interfere with the Christian Millennium or the Jewish Messiah, but was simply a definite conception of the way in which humanity has to prepare for the realization of the great ideal.

The Biblical drama “Cain”—Byron and the Bible—The Hebrew Melodies—A poet and a hero—The Hon. Douglas Kinnaird—Isaac Nathan—John Braham—Lady Caroline Lamb—Sir Walter Scott—Dr. John Gill—Dr. Henry Hunter—The Rev. John Scott—Mr. Joseph Eyre.

At that time the ideal aspirations of the Jewish nation found their most forceful expression in English poetry. George Gordon Byron (1788‒1824), the sixth Baron Byron, who was conversant with every phase of human life, and touched every string of the divine lyre from its faintest to its most powerful and heart-stirring tones, rivals Milton, in his own sphere, in his noble and powerful Biblical drama Cain. He was one of the greatest of English poets, and his genius, like that of Milton, was penetrated with the aspirations of the Bible.¹ Byron had seen much in his Eastern wanderings, and by his Hebrew Melodies had constituted himself in some sort the laureate of Disraeli’s own race.² There is in his work an intensity of grief and yearning, a vigour of thought combined with enchanting beauty of imagination, a tenderness which make him comparable only to the sweet Hebrew Muse of Jehudah Halevi. Zionist poetry owes more to Byron than to any other Gentile poet. His Hebrew Melodies, which are among the most beautiful of his productions, have been translated several times into Hebrew, and there are no lines more popular and more often quoted than:

which might well have been a Zionist motto. Byron was a poet and a hero; the keynote of his character is to be found in the word “revolt.” Whenever the cause of liberty was in danger, his entire being was roused to indignation; this was the passion of his soul, and for this he gave his life. This “Pilgrim of Eternity,”³ who died a martyr to his zeal in the cause of the freedom of Greece, might perhaps have been equally able to sacrifice his life for the freedom of Judæa, had the deliverance of Judæa offered scope for a similar struggle in his time. As it was he expressed the Jewish tragedy, not only in its poetical but also in its political aspect.

The genius of pure imagination is usually apt to evade the actual facts of political and social life, and to wing its way into an ideal world of abstractions. But some there are who derive their material from the realities of social and national life, and transmute into poetry the prevailing ideas of the actual world. The Pilgrim Poet belonged to the latter category. He re-echoed the aspirations of his time. Thorough understanding of and sincere compassion for the sorrows of Israel found eloquent expression in the English writings of that epoch. At that time English writers were keen students of Jewish history, and since the time of Vespasian (9‒79) Jewish history has recorded only sorrowful scenes: it tells mainly of fugitives banished to all quarters of the world, where they have sought asylum and have been compelled to realize the unanimity of the desire to annihilate them. “The Jews were a prey to innumerable calamities, and their existence was little else than a protracted agony.” “The numberless banishments, oppressions, exactions, persecutions, massacres and miseries of all kinds, which they have undergone in almost every age and nation from their first dispersion down to these latter times—the various causes which have concurred to wipe off the very name and memorial of them from the face of the earth ... are indescribable.” This was what Byron read in the English literature of his time, and what he realized in his wanderings. A homeless nation—that was the fact which impressed itself most forcibly upon his mind.

Byron’s Hebrew Melodies, which were written at the suggestion of the Honourable Douglas James William Kinnaird (1788‒1830),¹ were published with music in January, 1815. Kinnaird was a man of considerable ability and great intellectual attainments. He introduced a Jewish composer, Isaac Nathan (1791‒1864), to Lord Byron about 1812. This was the beginning of a friendship which ended only with the death of the poet. Byron wrote the Hebrew Melodies with the express purpose of their being set to music by Nathan, who subsequently bought the copyright of the work. Nathan decided to raise the means for the publication of the Melodies by subscription, and with that object associated himself with his co-religionist, the melodious tenor John Braham (1774?‒1856), who began his musical career as a chorister at the Synagogue in Duke’s Place. Braham composed several operas, one of them the Americans, containing that famous song, The Death of Nelson; and achieved a European reputation in his time. On signing the subscription list, Braham intimated his desire to assist in the publication of the Melodies and to sing them in public. Hence on the title-page of the first edition, which was published in 1815, it was recorded that the music was newly arranged, harmonized and revised by I. Nathan and I. Braham.

The Melodies consisted mainly of a selection of favourite airs sung in connection with the observance of Jewish religious ceremonies (Appendix l). It is interesting to observe that the music was reviewed first. Some of the remarks respecting Hebrew music are worthy of note. “In our very limited Review, it cannot be expected that we should attempt to throw any new light on the dark subject of Hebrew musick.... Whether the present Melodies were ever performed by King David’s 4000 Levites, ... we shall not venture to decide: their age and originality are left entirely to conjecture, having been ‘preserved by memory and tradition alone.’ Some of them possess an interesting wildness of character, which leaves no doubt as to their real antiquity; and the Editors assure us that they have preserved as much of this feature as the rhythm of written musick and the adaptation of the words, would permit.”¹ The Literary Review of the same Magazine devotes a very few lines to a criticism of the poems: “To say that these Melodies are Lord Byron’s, is to pronounce them elegant. We select the following Poem, in addition to that already given in Part I., p. 450” (i.e. “I saw thee weep”). There follows the poem “Saul.”²

More light is thrown on the subject of Byron’s attitude to the Jewish people and the Zionist idea in Nathan’s Fugitive Pieces and Reminiscences of Lord Byron (Appendix li). In a note (p. 24) to “Oh! Weep for those,” Nathan writes: “Throughout the composition of these melodies, it will be observed by the attentive reader that Lord Byron has exhibited a peculiar feeling of commiseration towards the Jews. He was entirely free from the prevalent prejudices against that unhappy and oppressed race of men. On this subject, he has frequently remarked, that he deemed the existence of the Jews, as a distinct race of men, the most wonderful instance of the ill-effects of persecution....” That a period of 1800 years should have elapsed, and that these people should still preserve their own religion, their laws, and their customs, in defiance of ecclesiastical and civil oppression, does indeed seem astonishing; but less so, when the effect of his Lordship’s observation is sufficiently understood. On one occasion he remarked, “unfortunate men, surrounded by enemies among whom they are compelled to live; oppressed, scorned, and outcast: condemned as criminal, because they cannot succumb to their oppressors,...” In another note (p. 61) contributed to the poem, “From the last hill that looks on thy once holy dome.” On the day of the Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, Nathan says: “In the composition of the foregoing stanzas, he professed to me, that he had always considered the fall of Jerusalem, as the most remarkable event of all history; for (in his own words), ‘who can behold the entire destruction of that mighty pile; the desolate wanderings of its inhabitants, and compare these positive occurrences with the distant prophecies which foreran them, and be an infidel?’”

The authenticity of Nathan’s co-operation is beyond question. Nathan was a composer of acknowledged ability, and a writer on various subjects. He was born at Canterbury, Kent, and early in life was sent to Cambridge to study Hebrew and the classical languages. Lady Caroline Lamb (1785‒1828) was among Nathan’s friends, and wrote poetry for him to set to music. Sir Walter Scott (1771‒1832), was also an admirer of Nathan’s Jewish musical productions.

Enthusiasm for the revival of Hebrew music was characteristic of the time, and was partly due to the prevailing sympathy for the Jewish people, for their sufferings and their hopes (Appendix lii). If Hebrew Melodies were written at the suggestion of Kinnaird, this must not be taken to mean that poems like Hebrew Melodies can be written merely in response to the suggestion of a personal friend: they must be the product of a certain aspiration.

At the same time, the idea of the Restoration of Israel made considerable headway in other quarters. Rev. Dr. John Gill (1697‒1771) remarks that “the Protestant Princes will be assisting the Jews in replacing them in their own land.”¹ Rev. Dr. Henry Hunter (1741‒1802) says: “It is indeed now pretty generally agreed among the learned, that we are warranted by the Scriptures to expect ... their return to their own land;...”²

The Rev. John Scott (1777‒1834), speaking of the preservation of the Jews, asks: “But wherefore are the Jews thus preserved? Is it only as monuments of divine vengeance, and to bear testimony to others of blessings which they shall never taste themselves? ‘Hath God’ for ever ‘cast off His people’? ‘Have they stumbled that they might fall,’ to rise no more? God forbid! All the facts before us, and particularly their preservation, might well raise hopes in our minds that mercy was still in reserve for Israel.”¹

The “Advertisement” to Extracts from a work on the Prophecies, by Mr. Joseph Eyre, informs us that “The design in re-publishing them is to call the attention of Christians to those Prophecies of the Scriptures, which have a primary reference to the Jewish people, and which predict events concerning them that have not yet been fulfilled, and promise blessings to them of which they have not yet been partakers.”¹

“Civis” writes: “With respect to the restoration ... permit me to refer your readers to Mr. (George Stanley) Faber’s (B.D.) (1773‒1854) work on that subject, and also to The Sacred Calendar of Prophecy, 1828. The reasons ... are ... satisfactory and convincing. Even if there were no other passage to prove it, the one where God declares that it shall in future times be said ‘The Lord liveth, who brought up and who led the children of Israel out of the north country, and from all the countries whither I had driven them, and they shall dwell in their own land,’ would, I think, be sufficient to prove it; because it seems too minute and circumstantial to admit of a merely figurative interpretation; and, indeed, what can it be a figure of? What is the reality which the figure is supposed to represent? I would ask, if a prophecy were intended to declare a literal restoration, what more plain and forcible terms could have been made use of? We should never resort to figures except where the nature of the subject, or common sense, imperatively requires it.”¹

“Paulinus” taking the opposite view, says: “In some circles a writer is almost unchristianized if he does not follow the opinion therein current ... the literal restoration of the Jews to Palestine; in favour of which there is a much more general concurrence of opinion than in any other of the particulars.”¹

The Conflict between Turkey and Egypt—Mahmud II., Sultan of Turkey—Mehemet Ali, Pasha of Egypt—The victory of Nezib—The Turkish Fleet—Wellington’s policy—The Eastern Question—Wellington’s opinion—The London Conference, 1840—The Insurrection in Syria and the Lebanon—An Ultimatum—The Capture of Acre by the British Fleet, 1840—Schemes of annexation.

The Palmerston period, 1837‒52, was a great time in England for the idea of the Restoration of Israel. It was a time of stirring events in the East, events which raised some of the most momentous problems that can engage the statesman’s mind. The English people watched from day to day with the deepest interest the progress of annexations, of conquest, of negotiations, which they believed would go far to decide the future development and destinies of the greatest nations of the world. The European horizon was so disturbed that a great political authority of the day is said to have declared that “if an angel from heaven were in the Foreign Office he would not preserve peace for three months.”

The facts are sufficiently familiar to most readers. But it will be necessary for our purpose to go over the oft-trodden ground, which must be done rapidly.

In 1839 a tremendous crisis broke out between Turkey and Egypt as the result of a series of conflicts and struggles. In the brief space of eight years (1831‒39) Mehemet Ali (1769‒1849) had contrived to overrun the whole of Syria, having organized a fleet and an army beyond the legitimate necessities of his government, by acts of tyranny and oppression against the very people for whose defence he pretended to have raised them; and he forced these wretched people, whom he was bound to protect, to join him in rebellion, thus fastening more firmly the chains with which he had shackled them. Having concentrated 100,000 men on the Turkish frontier, he at once threw off the mask and intimated to the European consuls his intention of declaring his independence unless his demand for the government of Syria for life and of Egypt en hérédité were conceded.

He struck the first blow, and was very successful during the first stage of the war. The victory of Nezib (24 June, 1839) was the last of his triumphs. The new army, which he had taken pains to organize, was only half trained. Still his power was unshaken, and his advantage was not confined to the land. The Turkish admiral, beaten by Mehemet Ali, and fearing for his life if he returned to Constantinople, determined on an act of treachery, which would ingratiate him with the victorious ruler of Egypt. He took the Turkish fleet, with some 20,000 men aboard, to Alexandria, and surrendered it to Mehemet Ali.

The surprise and astonishment which the suddenness of these occurrences caused did not allow English diplomacy much time to consider. It was necessary to intervene at once, unless the Ottoman Empire was to be broken up. Palmerston determined to carry out Wellington’s (1769‒1852) policy, and to reduce the apparently invincible Pasha to “a state of obedience and subordination to the Sultan” (1808‒1839), Mahmud II. (1785‒1839). The difficulties seemed formidable, but Palmerston’s conception of the diplomatic situation was unerring. He scouted the idea of actual intervention on Egyptian soil. The lessons of the battle of the Nile and of the earlier siege of Acre had not been thrown away upon a survivor of the struggle with Napoleon Bonaparte. A different strategic plan was adopted: a British squadron was to compel the evacuation of Syria by Mehemet Ali.

The imminent perils and dangers which surrounded this undertaking from the political point of view were evident. A great international problem arose. The solution of those important and complex problems which include what is usually called the “Eastern Question” had long occupied a considerable place in the field of international politics, especially in England. There was scarcely one, perhaps, of the more eminent English diplomatists who had not distinguished himself in this department in a greater or a less degree; and there was scarcely an aspirant to foreign political activity and distinction who had not thought it one of the surest paths to his ambition to come forward as a champion in this arena. It must, however, be borne in mind that this question was continually taking on a new form, and accordingly opinions and interests were always changing. In 1839‒40 controversy about this question attained its greatest intensity, and the interested powers were in a position of the darkest perplexity.¹

After the traitorous defection of the Turkish fleet to the side of Mehemet Ali, five great Powers of Europe officially intimated to the Porte that they had determined to discuss and settle together the embarrassing Eastern question, and ultimately a Conference was called together in London, at which the Ambassadors of these Powers were to meet with full authority from their Governments to bring the matter to a definite issue. It appeared throughout that France was favourable to Mehemet Ali’s ambitious projects, whilst England had decided to compel him to evacuate Syria forthwith and to restore the fleet before it would entertain any proposition of his to be allowed to retain Egypt in hereditary possession, or any part of Syria during his lifetime. The negotiations in London dragged on slowly; month after month passed by, and the high contracting parties came to no definite decision. Everybody in England was anxious that Great Britain should play an important rôle in the Eastern Question. The state of the East had become utterly corrupt and hopeless. Great Britain considered that it was in its interest to maintain the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. What was meant by this principle? Great Britain as an Asiatic not less than a European Power was interested to see that the Ottoman Empire was made thoroughly independent and enabled to progress by consolidating and developing its provinces. As to Syria, everybody in England was aware that its possession was essential for the security of the richest and most important provinces of Asiatic Turkey, to which it was the military key. This was sufficiently demonstrated by the events which actually took place.

On the 25th May, 1840, an insurrection of an alarming character broke out in Syria and The Lebanon among the Druses and Christians against the Emir and the Egyptian Government. On the 15th of July, 1840, an event occurred which brought the affairs of the Levant to a crisis. A convention was signed in London between England, Russia, Austria and Prussia, without the concurrence of France, whereby an ultimatum was delivered to Mehemet Ali, calling on him to evacuate Palestine. The four Powers demanded of him, first, a prompt submission to the Sultan (1839‒1861) Abdul Medjid (1823‒1861) as his Sovereign; secondly, the immediate restoration of the Turkish fleet; thirdly, a prompt evacuation of Syria, Adana, Candia, Arabia, and the Holy Cities. Moreover the four Powers declared the ports of Syria and Egypt to be in a state of blockade. Consequently Acre, the fortress which had been the great depot and arsenal of Mehemet Ali, and which in 1799 had withstood Bonaparte after the twelfth assault, when he had been defeated by Admiral Sir William Sidney Smith (1764‒1840) with a few sailors and marines and a force of undisciplined Turks, was now successfully bombarded by the English Admiral, Sir Robert Stopford (1768‒1847), and placed in possession of the Sultan’s troops. The fortress, which was considered invulnerable, surrendered on the 3rd of November, 1840. Jaffa surrendered to the new garrison of Acre, a few days after the fall of the fortress. On the 3rd of November the happy tidings of the fall of Acre were brought to Constantinople, and the Government issued orders for public rejoicings; on the 19th of that month the Turkish Governor was officially informed that the garrison and inhabitants of Jerusalem had given allegiance to the Porte.

The question of the future of Palestine now arose. Was Palestine simply to be left to Turkey or was Great Britain to secure some important places? The prevalent tendency in English opinion was in favour of the annexation of Acre and Cyprus. Acre, in the hands of England, or of any other nation commanding the sea, could be made really impregnable, and Cyprus seemed also to be of great strategic importance, especially to England. The reasons for such an annexation were palpable. England and her Allies had not merely rescued Syria, they had absolutely saved the whole Ottoman Empire. After the battle of Nezib had given the defiles of Mount Taurus to Mehemet Ali, nothing could have obstructed the rebels’ triumphant march to Constantinople. The Allies had thus rendered to the Ottoman Empire the greatest possible service that one State can receive from another. Gratitude alone might have suggested a more valuable acknowledgment of this service than Acre and Cyprus; but as the service had been rendered at some risk, and at enormous expense, justice demanded that it should be paid for; and nobody could suggest that it would be paid for too dearly by a strip of territory which was of little value to Turkey, though useful to England, and which in British hands would assuredly supply the Porte with a fortress that could never be established in its own territory. Acre and Cyprus garrisoned by British troops would give Turkey the surest protection. Attention was also called to the fact that no spot in the world was associated with so many proud recollections as Acre, the theatre of British gallantry from the days of Richard Cœur de Lion (1157‒1199) to those of Admiral Sir W. Sidney Smith and Admiral Sir Robert Stopford. Another consideration had great weight with English opinion. The possession of Acre would open a road for the return of Biblical truth to the land from which that truth had spread to the human race; and Englishmen would feel guilty of sin if they failed to impress upon their Government the need of seizing this glorious and blessed opportunity. To take, however, the more utilitarian view of the matter, Great Britain, occupying the impregnable position of Acre, would not be under the necessity of seeking the freedom of the overland route to India from any other Power. She would command it at all times. Acre in the hands of Great Britain would be a perfect guarantee against revolts in Egypt or in Syria, and would in fact ensure the Turkish Empire against the only danger that could threaten it on the side of Asia.

The effects of an English settlement in Syria on the general interests of mankind presented a more serious question. Syria and the adjacent countries were in a worse state than they had been 2000 years ago. While the deserts of America and Australasia had been regained for the use of man, while India had been brought to peace and unity and its worst superstitions had been modified, if not altogether extirpated, by the influence of European civilization, man had given place to the savage creatures of the wilderness in those countries from which all that he knows of good, was originally derived. An English settlement in Syria would begin the work of regeneration in the most venerable and interesting country in the world. England would be to Syria and to the adjacent countries all that she had been to India—the protector of the weak, the common arbiter, the universal peacemaker. Her laws and her liberties enable her to fulfil that function, her commercial interests fit her to undertake it, while her wealth, her naval supremacy and her colonial power furnish her with the means required for the purpose. Why should any other power oppose her acquiring that region? That its acquisition would add to her commercial resources and to her defensive strength had to be conceded. But had no nation ever before sought to increase her commercial resources and add to her defensive strength by means in themselves legitimate, which would not in any way infringe upon the rights or interests of others? The advancement of the world in civilization and happiness must remain for ever at a standstill, if each nation is to be held in check by the jealousy of the others. This was the attitude of public opinion on this question from the point of view of human progress and of British interests.

The conflicting interests of the Powers—Was the conflict irreconcilable?—Public opinion—A new principle—The independence of Syria—A neutral position—The Zionist idea as the only solution—A practical proposition.

Public opinion had for a long time laboured under the impression that the intricacy of the Eastern question was due much more to the conflicting interests of the Powers engaged in its solution than to any insurmountable barrier between them and the Sultans Mahmud II., Abdul Medjid and Mehemet Ali. With France and Mehemet Ali on the one side and the four European Powers on the other, it was evident that war would have the most disastrous effect on the contending parties. The question arose whether the interests of the parties were irreconcilable, and whether it was not possible to devise an arrangement acceptable to both sides and thus to avert war. Some political leaders thought that they could settle the question, and that it would be possible to adopt a policy sufficiently far-reaching and just to satisfy the expectations of the five Powers.

It was common knowledge that the great dilemma in which Turkey and Egypt found themselves had throughout hinged on the question of Syria. Without the possession of Syria the power of Mehemet Ali became insecure; with it he would be in a very strong position, because Turkey could only exist by his sufferance. In fact, the possession of Syria would give a tremendous advantage to either side.

The problem was therefore to enable each of the Governments to prevent Syria from passing into the hands of the enemy. And there was only one possible solution—namely, the establishment of an independent state in Syria. The grounds for this conclusion may be stated in the following series of propositions:

Mehemet Ali could not object to a solution on these lines. He would be protected by the Sultan, Abdul Medjid, and would be at liberty to extend his influence in other directions. But the Sultan, having been paramount lord of Syria, might reasonably claim some consideration for consenting to the independence of Syria. Who was to pay this consideration?

It is at this point that we have to turn to the old idea of Zionism to find the only just and natural solution. Bishop Newton’s commentaries, Witherby’s moralisings, Byron’s poetry—to these lines of approach to Zionism was now added the tendency of British politics. A hundred times the promoters of the Zionist idea had been disheartened, a hundred times they had taken it up again. Now political developments offered the background for a new propaganda for Zionism. The Restoration of Israel, an idea dear not only to the sentimentalist, the essayist and the littérateur, but also to every believer in the Bible and to every friend of liberty, had become an actual question of the day.

If only the five European Powers could agree to settle the Eastern question upon the basis of Syrian independence, the carrying out of the details would be an easy matter. France would no doubt agree to such an arrangement. The amount of the consideration required by Turkey would be raised from the resources of Syria, augmented by a sum to be contributed by the Jews. Their contribution might be looked upon as consideration for their admission into Syria.

An arrangement of this character would satisfy all the parties concerned. Mehemet Ali would become the hereditary Sovereign of Egypt. France would be contented. The Jews would be virtually restored to their land. The Syrians would gladly agree, as their country would in this way achieve independence, while the Jews would help them to gain this end.

From then onwards, the Jews would begin to immigrate into Syria from every part of the world; they would carry in their train the apparatus of civilization, and would form a nucleus for the creation of European institutions. They would acquire and exercise the rights and duties of citizenship in their own country, and would build up, under the protection and auspices of the five European Powers, the government and independence of the Turco-Syrian State. And from this change other advantages also would accrue. Turkey would be relieved of the pressure that had been destructive of her interests. The consideration that she would receive for her consent would be the means of resuscitating her energies and restoring her strength. It would enable her to push on her reforms and again take her position as a powerful nation.

It must at once be admitted that the condition of Syria presented a host of difficulties, on account of the division of the inhabitants into a number of separate tribes. But this fact only proved the necessity for the introduction of fresh material, with a view to welding together all classes into one harmonious community. The necessity of introducing fresh material into the social fabric of Syria once admitted, it followed as a matter of course that the immigration of the Jews into Syria would provide the most acceptable material. The establishment of European institutions in Asia (so far as they might be suitable) would follow, and in all probability England would in that way find a new ally, whose friendship might eventually prove of advantage to her in dealing with Eastern affairs.

Damascus and Rhodes, 1840—The anti-Jewish accusations—Jewish opinion in England and France—Two views—The persecutions and the Zionist idea—The difficulties of a Jewish initiative—Sir W. R. W. Wilde.

At that time an occurrence of a grave character troubled the Jews in the East. The Jews resident at Damascus and Rhodes were subjected in 1840 to cruel persecution on the false and atrocious charge that they used human blood in the celebration of the Passover. On the 7th February a Catholic Priest named Father Thomas suddenly disappeared from the quarter of Damascus where he resided. As he had last been seen near the shop of a Jewish barber, the latter was seized and examined, and finally subjected to torture. In his agony he accused several of the principal Jews of having put Father Thomas to death. Many of the Jews were immediately thrown into prison, and the most revolting barbarities were inflicted upon them to induce them to confess. An appeal was made to Mehemet Ali, the Pasha of Egypt, to put a stop to these horrors, and he issued peremptory instructions to that effect, ordering that the matter should be investigated before a tribunal composed of the European consuls specially delegated for that purpose. At a later period of the year, the Jews of Rhodes were accused of having abducted a Greek boy for the purpose of murdering him, and using his blood at the Passover, but after a trial and a long investigation the charge was pronounced to be false. In this case also great barbarities had been inflicted, and the Porte, in order to show its sense of the injustice done to the Jews, deposed the Pasha of Rhodes.

These events awakened Israel from a long stupor. They stirred up Jewish public opinion all over the world, and especially in England and France. Like all persecutions, they served to accentuate Jewish solidarity. The first thing to do was to save the innocent martyrs; next to this immediate necessity the question arose how to prevent similar attacks on Jewish life, and on the honour of Judaism. It was necessary to raise a powerful protest against these abominable accusations, to make representations to the Governments to protect and to assist the oppressed Jews.

Up to this point Jewish leaders of all shades of opinion travelled the same road. It was only at this stage that commonplace charity and political foresight had to part company. To the former it seemed easy to surmount all difficulties and all objections instantly by a few plausible generalities, which to such minds were invested with the force of axiomatic truth, and to question which they would regard as useless. Persecution, it was said, is a temporary phenomenon, and consequently the defence should be temporary. But is the persecution of the Jews really only temporary? Are not all these outrages and accusations links in one chain? Are they not, to a certain extent, the consequences of the precarious and untenable position of a people without a land? Short-sighted philanthropists, harassed by no doubts of this kind, asserted as facts what they knew in reality to be only probabilities. There is no doubt as to their perfect good faith, nor should any wilful misrepresentation be attributed to them. They had seized on one part of the truth, namely, that justice should be applied to the Jews. With regard to questions of nationality and territory they had no experience. They knew little of the conditions of the countries where the Jewish masses lived; the psychology of the non-Jewish masses in those countries was unknown to them.

But history was against their superficial optimism, and in the minds of really thinking people grave doubts arose whether the future of the Jewish people could be secured by haphazard defence and immediate relief. It would be idle for the optimists to treat anxieties of this kind as if they were heresies. They were not reactionary aspirations; nor were they the pretensions of ignorant spirits to be wise beyond the limits of man’s wisdom. They were in reality the logical consequences of experience and observation. They reveal a true conception of the Jewish problem, which is belittled and watered down by commonplace optimism.

The Damascus affair, like similar events before and after it, stimulated Zionist aspirations, not because Zionism is merely a reflex of persecution, but because persecution reveals to the Jew his real situation, which, during the short intervals of peace, he does not clearly understand or is inclined to overlook.

Though far from being the real cause—the real cause is the whole of Jewish history—the sufferings of the Jews have always been a stimulus to Jewish national feeling. The Mortara case in 1860 gave rise to the Alliance Israélite Universelle, the persecutions which began in 1882 to the movement of the “Lovers of Zion,” and the Dreyfus affair in 1894 to Herzl’s pamphlet The Jewish State, 1896, which heralded modern Zionism. In the same way the Damascus and Rhodes affairs were the immediate cause of Montefiore’s journeys, the representations to Mehemet Ali about both the innocent martyrs and the establishment of Jewish colonies in Palestine, and the societies in England for the support of Palestinian colonization. A number of Jews in several countries, and especially in England, began to ask themselves: What will be the end of all these sufferings? The reply was: Two things are necessary:—

Public opinion had now taken a different turn; and, what is more important, the character of the difficulties and objections generally raised had become wholly different. People began to inquire about the Jews themselves: would they or would they not be inclined to form a new society for the colonization of Palestine? A greater disposition to follow up this kind of discussion had developed. The political sense of the day required definition, argument, and proof, where religion had been content to appeal merely to the instinct of reverence, and to put the whole matter on the plane of devotional feeling or exalted imagination.

Would the Jews go to Palestine?

In the nature of things it could not often happen that a nation would undergo rapidly any great, although at the same time peaceful and salutary change. A nation may, indeed, develop almost in a day. Empires have evaporated in fury or exploded in passion. But then such violent changes have usually been vicious and destructive. An utterly demoralized people will abandon itself in a moment to a dream of ambition, turn its ploughshares into swords, and break from its borders to conquer the world. A new field for cupidity or pleasure, the discovery of a continent, the sudden acquisition of a fertile territory or a mine of wealth, has ere now turned an ancient and noble race into a rabble of adventurers. But it is very rare, almost unparalleled, for a peaceful people to find a new opening all at once. There was doubt, then, about the Jewish desire for redemption.

Side by side with their attachment to the land of their birth, the sense of a long-lost home lies deep in the hearts of the Jewish masses, and they are drawn towards it by a longing expressed in heartfelt songs and prayers, in wishes and in hopes, not in rebellious efforts. But could the Jews by themselves, as a whole nation, or as scattered and divided masses, as a defenceless and persecuted minority, take up the realization of their cherished hope? Although it was an international political scheme, leading Jews would have to raise their voices and start the work if they wished to see its accomplishment.

Sir William Robert Wills Wilde (1815‒1876) wrote:—¹

“This extraordinary people, the favoured of the Lord, the descendants of the patriarchs and prophets, and the aristocracy of the earth, are to be seen in Jerusalem to greater advantage, and under an aspect and in a character totally different from that which they present in any other place on the face of the globe. In other countries the very name of Jew has associated with it cunning, deceit, usury, traffic and often wealth. But here, in addition to the usual degradation and purchased suffering of a despised, stricken, outcast race, they bend under extreme poverty, and wear the aspect of a weeping and a mourning people; lamenting over their fallen greatness as a nation, and over the prostrate grandeur of their once proud city. Here the usurer is turned into the pilgrim, the merchant into the priest, and the inexorable creditor into the weeping suppliant....” “It is curious, ... to read the indications of fond attachment of the Jew to the very air and soil, scattered about in Jewish writings; ... ‘The air of the land of Israel,’ says one, ‘makes a man wise’; another writes, ‘he who walks four cubits in the land of Israel is sure of being a son of the life to come.’ The great Wise Men are wont to kiss the borders of the Holy Land, to embrace its ruins, and roll themselves in its dust.”¹

The following extracts are taken from Der Orient, a German newspaper. They seem to betoken a movement among continental Jews in relation to the late crisis in Syria:—