Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/719

JEWS 685 They seceded in 1840. Congregations at Manchester and Bradford worship with the same rites. The Sephardim and Ashkenazim still dill er in liturgy and in pronunciation of Hebrew. The principal London synagogues of the latter body were federated by private Act of Parliament in 1870 under the name of the United Synagogue, which now consists of ten London congregations. Its liturgy was modified in the direction of brevity in 1880. Forty provincial orthodox synagogues are recognized by the Board of Deputies, which under the Marriage Acts certifies the secretaries of orthodox syna gogues entitled to register marriages. The Jewish population of Great Britain is estimated (in the absence of a census by religions) to be 62,000, of whom 40,000 are reckoned to be in London. There were 453 Jews in Ireland at the census of 1881. In the British colonies Jews are numerous and their congregations flourishing. There are nearly 2000 Jews in Gibraltar, who carry on an active commerce with their brethren in Morocco, sending Man chester and Sheffield goods, and receiving corn, hides, and other pro duce. Their settlement dates from the British occupation in 1704, which allowed the unhappy Spanish refugees in Morocco to return to a corner of Spain. Jews have been law-officers, ministers, mem bers of the legislatures, and magistrates in the Australasian colonies, Cape Colony, the West Indies, &c. In Victoria there were 3571 Jews in 1870, and a Jewish newspaper is published at Melbourne; in West Australia there were 62 only in 1870; in Tasmania they formed only 23 per cent, of the total population of 99,328. A remarkable settlement exists in Bombay under the name of the Beni Israel. They are 5000 in number, and are for the most part artisans, some of them soldiers. They support a school to which the Anglo-Jewish association in London and Manchester contri butes. The Beni Israel have a tradition that they were ship wrecked on that coast more than one thousand years ago. They have always strictly observed the Sabbath, refraining from cooking their food or doing any other work on that day. They do not eat unclean fish or ilesh ; they observe the great feasts, and have a Jewish type of countenance. The Beni Israel are found not only in Bombay itself but in other towns on the coast not beneath the direct rule of the British Government. They relate that David Rababia, a Jew either of Baghdad or Cochin, came to that part of India about nine hundred years ago, and, having discovered that the Beni Israel were observing the Jewish code, was convinced of their Jewish origin, and established a Hebrew school. Before his death he gave a written order to two of his scholars to succeed him as religious ministers. This office has been retained to this day by their descendants. These ministers are called kajees, and are con sidered superior to the ordinary religious ministers who receive payment for officiating in the synagogues. They are in some re spects like high priests and civil heads of the community ; and in the outlying villages ecclesiastical and civil matters are investigated and settled by them with the aid of a council. With these kajees may be compared the cohanim (priests) in the AVestern Jewish com munities, who are reputed to be descendants of Aaron, and enjoy the prerogative of blessing the people, and a certain precedence in synagogue, to the exclusion of ministers who are not of the same lineage. In Bombay judicial and other civil functions for the Beni Israel are performed by a person called Nassi or head, aided by a council. The Beni Israel have been settled in Bombay itself for upwards of one hundred and fifty years. Their first synagogue was built in 1796 by Samuel Ezekiel, a native commandant in the British army sent against Tippoo Sahib. The Sephardic daily prayer-book, Dr Hermann Adler s sermons, and some other works have been translated by the Beni Israel into Marathi. Some of them know Hebrew, although Marathi is their ordinary language, and their knowledge of Hebrew is probably rather due to frequent intercommunication with the Jews of Baghdad and Europe than to independent tradition. The Beni Israel rarely intermarry with the ordinary Jews. They have a literature in Marathi. They tie a golden band (" munny ") with black glass beads round the bride s neck during marriage to show that the bride is a married woman; when she is stripped of it she is considered a widow. They say that they adopted the title of Beni Israel because that of Jehudini or Jews was hateful to the Mussulmans. The Baghdad and Cochin Jews attend their synagogues and. eat with them, and vice versa. They have among them a class of Beni Israel whom they designate Kala Israel or Black Israel. Between them and the white Beni Israel no intermarriages are ever solemnized. They are descendants of Beni Israel by heathen wives, or are proselytes or their descendants. They have separate burying-grounds. The Jews of Cochin, found in that British port of the Madras presidency and elsewhere on the Malabar coast, have the tradition that they arrived at Cranganore in the sixty-eighth year of the Christian era, and received a written charter from the native ruler, and that when the Portuguese came they suffered oppression and removed to Cochin, where the rajah granted them places to build their synagogues and houses. They again suffered from the Portu guese, but the Dutch conquest in 1662 gave them protection. At Cochin there are black and white Jews. The white Jews consider themselves as immigrants from Palestine. The black Jews are regarded as proselytes and emancipated slaves of the white Jews. The black and white do not intermarry with each other, and the black Jews do not observe all the ceremonies of the law. The history and condition of the Jews in three important Austria, countries and their colonies having been somewhat fully sketched, a shorter account of their situation elsewhere will be sufficient. The Austrian Jews participated in all the intellectual movements of their brethren in Germany. Their chief writers are Kompert (the brilliant author of Talcs of the Ghetto), Frankl the poet, G. Wolf, historian, Mosenthal, dramatist, Dukes, Kayserling, Mannheimer, Jellinek, Gudemann, Kaufmann, Letteris. The chief training establishment for rabbis is the Budapest seminary established with the proceeds of the fine imposed upon the Jews for participation in the insurrection in 1848. Austria was long notorious for ill-treatment of the Jews, but Joseph II. made in 1783 a new departure in his policy towards this class of his subjects. He abolished the Leibzoll, night-notices, passport regulations, and gave the Jews permission to learn trades, art, science, and, under certain restrictions, agriculture. The doors of the universities and academies were opened to them. He founded Jewish elementary and normal schools, and also compelled the adults to learn the language of the country. In spite of these reforms, considerable restrictions were still imposed upon the Jews with regard to right of residence, &c., and the successors of the philosophic emperor, Leopold II. and Francis I., restored many of the old humiliating regulations. The Jews in Austria remained during the greater part of the present century subject to special restrictions. To remove from province to province they required the permission of the central Government. In many parts of the empire they were not allowed to rent or purchase lands beyond their own dwellings. The Magyar nobles, however, employed them largely as bailiffs, gave them great freedom of tenure, and actually fought under their lead as military officers in the struggle for independence. After 1848 the Jewish capitation tax was reduced except in Vienna ; but, as many Jews had taken part in the revolutionary movement in Hungary, a heavy exaction was imposed upon them after its suppression. The reforms inaugurated by the constitution of 1860 for Austria and in 1861 for the rest of the empire, and completed in 1868, at length gave the Austrian Jews the freedom which they now enjoy, which makes them influential and respected in Vienna and the other great towns, and even in the backward province of Galicia a striking contrast to their less favoured brethren in the neighbouring country of Russian Poland. Several Jews, two of them rabbis, sit in the legislatures. The Israelitish Alliance was founded in Vienna in 1872. The number of the Jews in the empire of Austria-Hungary is 1,372,333, or more than 3 per cent, of the total population. Of the total number, 820,200 are found in Austria (including 575,433, or more than a tenth of the total population in Galicia), and 552,133 in Hungary. In Italy, while Venice and Leghorn sheltered large and compara- Italy, tively flourishing colonies, the Roman Jews had long an unenviable pre-eminence in suffering. Till 1 847 they were not permitted to leave the Ghetto, and their conversion was sought by most oppres sive means. It was in the papal states after this date that the young Mortara, secretly baptized by his nurse, was torn from his parents, and trained to be a monk. The kingdom of Italy brought freedom and political equality to the Jews. The most celebrated of recent Jewish scholars in Italy was S. D. Luzzatto (1800-1865). The rabbinical college at Padua, founded by J. S. Reggio of GiJrz (1784-1855), fell with the Austrian domination in 1866. The number of Jews in Italy was in 1876 estimated to be 53,000, of whom 5000 were in Rome, 2800 in Modena, 3000 in Venice, 2000 in Sicily, 7688 in Leghorn, 2500 in Turin, 2000 in Padua. The census of 1870 gave 2582 as the number of the Jews in Greece. Greece. They enjoy perfect freedom of worship, and live on terms of friendship and equality with their neighbours in the kingdom of Greece, although at Alexandria, Smyrna, and other towns of the Levant, quarrels sometimes occur between the two races. The liberal institutions established during the last few years in Spain. Spain have permitted the Jews to return to a country in which their ancestors enjoyed a glorious period of literary and social activity. In 1881 the Spanish representative at Constantinople was autho rized to assure some distressed Jews who fled into Turkey to escape the persecutions of Russia that the Government of Spain would welcome them to that country, in which, he added, all Jews could now settle. At Seville Jewish worship is regularly held, and meat killed according to Jewish rites can be bought. At Madrid a con gregation assembles on the most solemn fast in a private house. Since the commencement of this century foreign Jews of Portugal. Portuguese origin from Gibraltar and Africa have immigrated into Portugal and been permitted to solemnize religious service there. There are three synagogues at Lisbon and one in Oporto. On the Day of Atonement, unknown persons from a distance in the interior have been observed to join these congregations ; they were members of Jewish families who had secretly preserved their religion and the tradition of their origin during the whole time of the exclusion of