Israel in Europe

IT was not without reason that Philo, the famous Graeco-Jewish scholar of Alexandria, regarded Aaron’s rod, which “was budded, and brought forth buds, and bloomed blossoms, and...

IN spite of the well-known influence which Greek culture and Greek thought exercised over a portion of the Jews under Alexander the Great’s successors, the mass of the Hebrew na...

THE animosity between Jew and Gentile grew in intensity and bitterness under the Roman rule, and its growth was marked by various acts of mutual violence which finally resulted...

OVER and above the two great causes of the unpopularity of the Jew, already adduced, namely, man’s intolerance of dissent, and the antipathy between the European and the Asiatic...

THE struggle for freedom already narrated and its ruthless suppression were not calculated to diminish the Jew’s unpopularity at Rome. Under the successors of Titus we have fres...

In dream I saw two Jews that met by chance, One old, stern-eyed, deep-browed, yet garlanded With living light of love around his head, The other young, with sweet seraphic glance.

“JEWS massacred in France,” “Jews massacred in Germany,” “Jews massacred in England,” “Jews massacred in Germany and France,” “Jews massacred in Spain,” again and again and agai...

TOWARDS the end of the eleventh century there arose in Europe a gale of religious enthusiasm that boded no good to infidels. The zealous temper which at an earlier period had fo...

For an age accustomed to regard lending money at interest as a purely economic transaction, the rate of interest as an economic phenomenon obeying the law of demand and supply,...

THE first mention of Jews on this side of the Channel is said to occur in the Church Constitutions of Egbert, Archbishop of York, towards the middle of the eighth century; the s...

AS we have seen in a previous chapter, the lot of the Spanish Jews under Mohammedan rule was supremely enviable. Their condition in the Christian parts of the Iberian Peninsula...

TWELVE thousand of Spanish fugitives sought shelter in Navarre, where, after a few years’ peace, they were again confronted with the alternatives of baptism or banishment. Most...

WHILE Popes and Emperors waged a fierce warfare against each other for the heritage of the Roman Caesars, the democratic spirit of the Italian people grew in safe obscurity, der...

HITHERTO the life of Israel in Italy had been a life chequered by sunlight and shade. Henceforth it is to be all shade. The sixteenth century is the century of the Ghetto and it...

THE love for liberty which gave birth to the Renaissance was also the parent of another child--the Reformation. The first saw the light in Latin, the second in Teutonic Europe....

BUT if the Reformation brought with it Protestant hostility and new tribulations to the outcasts of humanity, it also proved the cause of fresh persecution on the part of Cathol...

HOLLAND was at this time the one European country in which man was allowed to worship his Maker according to the dictates of his conscience. Commercial activity in Europe has al...

THE banishment of the Jews from England by Edward I., in 1290, was not quite so thorough as is popularly supposed to have been. A small section of the community remained behind,...

THERE was much in Cromwell’s followers to dispose them favourably towards Israel. Their history, their theology, their character, their morals, and their ideals were all as Hebr...

ABOUT the middle of the eighteenth century a new spirit had arisen on the Continent of Europe; or rather the spirit of the Renaissance, suppressed in Italy, had re-asserted itse...

THE French Revolution is over. For a while the volcanic forces, which had long groaned in subterranean bondage, broke their prison, burst into the light of day, and brought deat...

THE one great power in Europe which has refused to follow the new spirit is Russia. In the middle of the sixteenth century Czar Ivan IV., surnamed the Terrible, voiced the feeli...

IN no part of Europe is mediaeval prejudice against the Hebrew race more fiercely rampant than in Roumania; for in no other part of Europe, save Russia, are mediaeval social con...

WE have followed the fortunes of the Jewish people from the moment of its first contact with the nations of the West to the last quarter of the nineteenth century. We have seen...

THE persecution of the Jews in Russia, their oppression in Roumania and the revival of the old prejudice against them in Western Europe during the last quarter of the nineteenth...