Littell's Living Age/Volume 148/Issue 1909/A Jewish Cemetery

There are burial grounds where, as Tennyson beautifully says, "the stone-cut epitaph remains after the vanished voice and speaks to men." And what tales do they not tell us! Every name we read in rugged and half-worn capitals recalls some page of romantic history, some career over which the archæologist may linger with affectionate reverence; wafts legendary stories from the dim twilight of the past, and recalls traditions which years may have buried amongst the lumber of our recollections. Such a cemetery is the old Sephardic Burial Ground in the Mile End Road. Founded close upon a century and a half ago—on the 17th Nisan, 5493, says an inscription on the southern wall—the tombs may there be inspected of many of the ancestors of families whose names are historical in the Anglo-Jewish community. It is a bleak, damp, and dismal expanse of sward, this resting-place of our great—old even down to the tufts of rusty matted grass, which seem, under their weight of years, to be unequal even to the exertion of covering the graves to which they give such unearthly shapes. Everything betokens age, and on every side relics of past times may be seen. On the right stands the tumble-down ruin of the watchtower in which a servant of the congregation held his nightly vigils against the body-snatchers of a century ago. There with a fire to keep himself warm, a blunderbuss ready primed at hand, and a bell to summon assistance, he would keep guard against the graveyard robbers. On Friday nights he would be joined by a Christian colleague, whose religious scruples would not be violated by firing the blunderbuss on the Jewish Sabbath. Not very far from the entrance is a melancholy square of ground, which formerly was more strictly divided from the rest of the cemetery, and bore the significant name of "Behind the Boards." Here the rigid Puritanism of our forefathers unceremoniously huddled away the bodies of those who were of illegitimate birth. No stones, no mounds even were raised to mark the spots where they were laid to rest, but "unwept, unhonored, and unsung," the sins of the parents were, with fearful retribution, literally visited on the children. But let us away from this dread spot, where so much of the profligacy and intrigue of another age lies buried. One of the freshest-looking, but most interesting tombs is on the western side. It bears the simple inscription, "Sacred to the Memory of Benjamin Disraeli," and after the usual dates tells us that the deceased was "an affectionate husband, father, and friend." This Benjamin Disraeli was the grandfather of the late prime minister, the Viscount Hughenden, and the Earl of Beaconsfield, who until a few months ago was the arbiter of the destinies of the greatest empire in the world. The affectionate reverence of the distinguished grandson has recently penetrated into his ancestor’s humble Jewish resting-place, and the tomb has been repaired and freshly painted. On the opposite side is another tomb, half sunk in the ground, which is also interesting, as not only marking the resting-place of the mother-in-law of Benjamin Disraeli the elder—the mother of his first wife—but also as containing necrographic evidence with which to correct Lord Beaconsfield’s own account of his family history. This is the tomb of Abigail Mendes Furtado of Portugal, who, according to the inscription, "after suffering the tortures of the Inquisition, fled for protection to England with her children . . . whom she educated in the Jewish faith and established well in marriage." The tomb of her daughter Rebecca, "wife of Benjamin Disraeli," is not far distant, and here we are told that the family, as Lord Beaconsfield himself says, was connected with such important houses as the Laras and Da Sylvas. Two more tombs connected with the history of the Disraelis are those of Jeoshua Basevi and David Abarbanel Lindo. Basevi, who was in his time elected parnass of the synagogue, was Lord Beaconsfield’s grandfather on his mother’s side, the father of that Basevi who seceded from the synagogue with Isaac Disraeli; and Lindo was the gentleman who in 1805 performed on Lord Beaconsfield himself the initiatory rite by which he was admitted into that Abrahamic covenant which he subsequently was led to abandon. But it is not only the Disraelis, amongst the families which have left the pale of Judaism, whose names are to be read on the tombstones in this cemetery. There is the tomb of Sampson Gideon, the greatest financier of his day, whose son was baptized and raised to the peerage under the title of Baron Eardley. There are the Lopezes, who were evidently kinsmen of that Menasseh Lopez whose present descendant is Sir Massey Lopes, the member for South Devon, and late a civil lord of the Admiralty. Still fresh and legible is the last record of "Isaac of Benjamin Bernal," the brother of Jacob Bernal, whose descendants are the Bernal Osbornes, and whose family has become allied with the ducal house of St. Albans. Also to be seen is the grave of Jacob Samuda, the first Jewish civil engineer, the inventor of the atmospheric boiler, and founder of the eminent firm of Samuda Brothers, a member of which recently represented the Tower Hamlets in the House of Commons.