He was bidden to visit the sick among the non-Israelites, to relieve their poor, and to bury their dead, even as those of his own people for he was bound to walk in the ways of his Lord, "who is good to all, whose tender mercies are over all his works."[1]
The article proceeds: "At length humanity itself appeared.—The less noble part of the Jewish nation, led by national pride and ceremonialism, embodied in the Pharisee, rejected humanity." If Mr. Goldwin Smith desires to condemn us in these words for having refused to acknowledge the divinity of the teacher of Nazareth, we unhesitatingly plead guilty to the charge. We did refuse, and we still refuse, to pay divine adoration to a human being. We have been, and we are still, faithful to the teachings of Sinai: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."[2] Nor can we bind our heaven-given reason in iron fetters, such as a belief in the mystery of the Trinity would throw around us. But humanity we have never rejected. We are not genuine Jews unless we be humane, merciful, brotherly, tender, and considerate. And does not the professor himself admit: "Benevolent and munificent they [the Jews] often are in the highest degree"?
Next the old prejudice is revived—for prejudices die hard—that during the Middle Ages the Jews were "cruel usurers," "and learned to surpass all races in the art of handling money with profit, and in whatever is akin to that art." Unfortunately for humanity, the times have been when the Hebrew was shut out from every honest and honorable occupation, when money-lending constituted almost his sole means of obtaining a livelihood, and when the impost heaped upon him, together with the unscrupulous conduct of his borrowers, compelled him to exact usurious rates of interest. I will not seek to exculpate the cruel usurers, but simply repeat what was said by a high-minded prelate, Gregory, Bishop of Blois (in his memoir in favor of the Israelites): "O nations! If you recall the past faults of the Jews and their corruptions, let it be to deplore your own work." Similarly, Martin Luther observes in a pamphlet published in 1523: "If we prohibit the Jews from following trades and other civil occupations, we compel them to become usurers."
And how different is the estimate formed by another eminent contemporary historian of this martyr people, in whom Mr. G. Smith can see nothing, at the best, but agents and partners of royal and feudal extortion! Mr. Lecky, whose views were not blinded by party spirit, sees in them almost the only representatives of commercial activity, of learning and progress, during the Middle Ages.
While those around them were grovelling in the darkness of besotted ignorance; while juggling miracles and lying relics were themes on which almost all Europe was expatiating; while the intellect of Christendom, enthralled by countless persecutions, had sunk into a deadly torpor, in which all love of inquiry and all search for truth were abandoned, the Jews were still pursuing the path of knowledge, amassing learning, and stimulating progress, with the same unflinching constancy that they manifested in their faith. They were the most skilful physicians, the ablest financiers, and among the most profound philosophers. While they were only second to the moderns in the cultivation of natural science, they were also the chief interpreters to western Europe of Arabian learning.[3]
There now remains the gravest charge of all to be dealt with, that genuine Jews cannot be patriots. "Their only country is their race, which is one with their religion." "Alles schon dagewesen," says the rabbi in Gutzkow's "Uriel Acosta." It is not the first time that this cruel accusation has been preferred against us. We have heard it before from the lips of Haman, when he said, "There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of thy kingdom and their laws are diverse from all people; neither keep they the king's laws; therefore it is not for the king's profit to suffer them."[4]
Granted that eighteen hundred years ago our ancestors dwelt amid the vine-clad hills of Judæa, is that any reason why we should be less solicitous for the glory and interest of the empire we now inhabit? True, we still obey certain religious ordinances commanded by our law we still practise "an oriental and primeval rite." Can Mr. Goldwin Smith show in what
- ↑ Talmud. Gittin, p. 61; and Maimonides, Kings, ch. x., p. 12.
- ↑ Exod. xx. 3.
- ↑ See Lecky, "Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe," vol. ii., p. 281, and the authorities there quoted. Cf. Draper's "History of the Intellectual Development of Europe," vol. i., ch. xviii., and vol. ii., ch. iv. A valuable monograph on this subject has recently been published by Prof. Schleiden, entitled "Die Bedeutung der Juden für Erhaltung und Wiederbelebung der Wissenschaften im Mittelalter." The writer, neither a Jew nor of Jewish extraction, begins his treatise: "Die Juden sind und bleihen das merkwürdigste volk, und wenn man sich auf die Symbolik einer Vorsehung einlassen will, darf man sie wohl das 'auserwählte Volk Gottes' nennen."
- ↑ Book of Esther iii. 8.
