Part 2

No country, for one thing, has been so completely influenced by the Bible. The English translation of the Bible is an English classic, as well as Jewish. Insofar as the Puritans molded English civilization, it meant the introduction of a strong and unmistakable Hebrew influence. It is in England that Biblical learning, of a devout and constructive kind, has flourished as nowhere else, there that a society for the diffusion of the Scriptures first was founded, there that most has been done for the exploration of Palestine, there that some of the finest collections of Hebrew books and manuscripts are found (in the British Museum and in the Bodleian Library at Oxford), and there that even rabbinical learning has found its most earnest and sympathetic devotees among non-Jews.

It would take us far afield to trace the relationship between the English spirit and that of Israel. But we cannot think of it without realizing why some people should believe that the English in reality are descendants of the Ten Tribes, why the integration of Israel in English life should have become so complete, and why the Jew should finally have found such appreciation and happiness in England.

How about the future? What effect has the War had on the position of the Jew in England?

It is whispered here and there that the War had created an increase of anti-Semitism in England. This is impossible. It is true that in the early days of the War some sensation-mongers tried to cast aspersions on the Jews. It is true, also, that in those days a serious problem was created by the presence of many Russian Jews who would not fight for the old government of Russia, thus giving rise to some slurs upon the patriotism of the Jews. No less true it is that some few fanatical journalists seem to regard this as a good time for creating strife and spreading anti-Jewish prejudice. But the futility of such an enterprise is self-evident.

The Jews of England are as loyal as the most loyal. Their best sons were among the first volunteers and martyrs. Their ablest men are serving in all sorts of positions of trust and leadership, and are occupying posts of supreme responsibility both at home and abroad. Nay more, each and every one of them, however lowly and obscure, is ready to die for England and her cause. These facts speak for themselves, with a voice louder than fanaticism and bigotry.

As long as England remains true to herself--to her democratic spirit, to her spirit of enterprise and fair-play, to her spirit of Freedom and Righteousness, as long as she remains true to that genius for democracy that has animated her for centuries, that has kept on asserting itself within her against all handicaps and impediments, that has kept on moving her toward the democratic goal often in spite of herself,--as long, I say, as England remains true to democracy, so long will Israel be safe and happy under her flag!

III

RUSSIA AND THE JEWS

The ascendency of Russia as a power making for democracy is one of the miracles of the present War. Who could have foreseen five years ago that the country suffering under the most despotic autocracy of modern times would so suddenly become the champion of a most radical democracy? Yet, this is what is actually happening today. Notwithstanding the vacillations and frightful uncertainties that still beset Russia, she seems destined to play an enormous part in the future definition and direction of democracy, and the world may yet learn many a lesson from her. This is one of the miracles of the War. Under these circumstances, we, as Jews, must be doubly interested in the story of the relation that has existed between Russia and the Jews.

Only yesterday the name of Russia was the synonym of nothing so much as Jewish suffering. Persecution has been the well-nigh universal lot of the Jew. In even the freest and fairest countries he has had to endure outlawry and disability. But in no other country was he called upon to bear persecution so continuous and variegated as in old-time Russia. There all the persecutions of the past seemed to gain repetition and culmination. Wherever the Jew turned, he found himself hedged in by restrictions and humiliations. His dwelling, his education, his occupations--everything was under the ban. For centuries he was driven from pillar to post and forced to drink the cup of calamity to the very dregs.

When we think of all the misery that the Russian Jew had to undergo, we cannot but marvel that he should have been able to survive it all, and thus to belie the prediction of that arch-enemy, Pobiedonostseff, that as a result of the laws against them, one third of the Jews of Russia would emigrate, one third would be baptized, and the rest would perish. Thank Heaven, the contrary has come to pass: Pobiedonostseff and his kind are gone, the autocracy is dead, and the Jew of Russia is still there, with a new era before him, destined, let us hope, to surpass in grandeur and glory any that has gone before.

When we consider the story of those horrible persecutions, we find that the chief excuse for them was the charge that the Jew was not a true Russian, but a stranger. Yet, this charge was fundamentally false. It is only necessary to think of the Jew's history, to realize that he is as little a stranger in Russia as any other part of the population.

The Jew's beginnings in many parts of Russia go back to the very earliest times--in some instances beyond the records of history. It is true that a large part of her Jewish population Russia acquired in the year 1772, and subsequent years, as a result of the division of Poland. But in other parts of Russia, the presence of Jews is of much more ancient date.

In Kieff, the mother of cities to the Russian, Jews were settled as far back as the eighth or ninth century--some holding that they came there with the Khazars, who are supposed to have founded Kieff. In the centuries following the Jews worked and traded and flourished there and held important official positions, so much so that by the sixteenth century Kieff became a centre of Jewish learning, with the motto: "From Kieff shall go forth the law."

As for the Crimea--the beautiful province to which the deposed Czar was so eager to be sent--its Jewish settlements date back to Hellenic days, when the Greeks began to found commercial centres on the shores of the Black Sea, and Jews from the Byzantine Empire, as well as from Persia and the Caucasus, came along with them, establishing communities with synagogues and cemeteries and other institutions, as we know from recently discovered inscriptions, which go back to the first century.

Similarly, we have early accounts of Jews going and coming in Novgorod and Moscow--Jews speaking the Slavic dialect and antedating by many years those from Western Europe who came to Russia as a result of persecutions in Germany and elsewhere, and who brought with them their German speech. When we examine these records, we can see how ancient is the lineage of the Jew in Russia and how groundless, as well as vicious, was the theory of those who maintained that the Jew of Russia had to be repressed and oppressed for the reason that he was a stranger in the land.

There has never been a more complete, nor a more wonderful, transformation than the one wrought by the Russian Revolution in the condition of the Jew. One of the first consequences of the Revolution was the abolition of Jewish disabilities, the specific abrogation of all Jewish restrictions, the repudiation of all the laws and regulations against them that centuries had accumulated--the instant recognition of the Jew. It is nothing short of marvellous to think that today Jews are found in the highest positions in Russia--in the Senate, which means their Supreme Court, in the police administration, in the army, and on most responsible commissions to foreign lands. Magic could have wrought no more marvellous change.

Yet, it would be wrong to think that all this has no connection with the previous life and conduct of the Jew of Russia. On the contrary, the student of the history of the Russian Jew cannot help recognizing the intimate relation between the life and the achievements of the Russian Jew in the past and the recognition that has come to him at the very dawn of the new age. Here, too, there has been no exception to the normal operation of historic law.

If the Jew of Russia has been adopted so promptly and so fully into the new-born Russian democracy, it is because in the past he has shown his mettle, because his whole record has demonstrated his civic worth, and because his character and his attainments even under the worst possible conditions demonstrated what he was capable of being and doing once he was given that boon of recognition and opportunity which it is the aim of democracy to bring to all men.

This the Jew of Russia has shown, first of all, by his spiritual life. The Russian poet Pushkin has said that glass is shattered by blows, but iron is thus made the stronger. This saying has been properly applied to the effect of persecution upon the character of the Russian Jew.

Nothing is more remarkable than the spiritual history of the Jew in Russia. The Russian Jew has been proud of his Judaism, and devoted to it. Nowhere else do we find from the very beginning so great a readiness to propagate his ideas. It is remarkable that in Russia, of all countries, we find the Jewish influence reaching out the farthest into the non-Jewish world.

Nestor, the old Russian chronicler, relates that in the tenth century the Jews came to Kieff in order to convert to their religion the Grand Duke Vladimir. As a matter of fact, the Khazars, a people living in southern Russia, did become Jews in the eighth century, and remained such for a couple of centuries. In the sixteenth century the Judaistic sect sprang up in Novgorod and spread to the very monasteries of Moscow, and in one form or another, in spite of many efforts to suppress it, it has not ceased to this very day. Perhaps it is this persistence of the Jewish spirit and spread of Jewish influence that made the autocracy fear the Jew as a menace to Christianity.

Even more important, however, has been the spiritual life of the Jewish community itself. It has thrived despite persecution. It has created centres of learning, scholars, saints, and above all masses of learned and saintly men and women, which both in number and character have never been surpassed in the whole heroic range of Jewish history. It is this spiritual life of the Jew of Russia--devout, loyal, God-intoxicated--that could not help but excite the admiration, and ultimately to gain the recognition, of the world.

Then, there is the contribution that the Jew has made to the life and civilization of Russia and of other countries. One of the charges of his enemies was that the Jew of Russia was not a useful subject--that he was a menace to his neighbors. In vain writers and statesmen of enlightenment sought to expose the falsehood of this charge; in vain they insisted that whatever was wrong with the Jew was due to the restrictions and discriminations that were placed upon him; in vain did such men as Count Uvarov, as far back as the year 1841, and Alexander Stroganov, in 1858, demand the creation of educational facilities, and even complete emancipation, for the Jews in their interest as well as for the common good. The dread and the tyranny of the autocracy could not be overcome.

Fortunately, the Jew did not allow himself to be wholly crushed by these calumnies and calamities. He went on using his powers to the utmost. He grasped education where-ever he could find it. He became an important factor in the literary, in the artistic, in the musical, in the commercial and industrial life of Russia--producing an Antokolsky, Rubinstein, a Frug, the Polyakoffs and the Ginzburgs, and no end of others, to say nothing of the vast new Hebrew literature he has created, including the names of such genuine poets as Lebenson, Gordon, and Byalik, while the rest of the world has been so vastly enriched by the work of Russian Jewish exiles that it is no exaggeration to say that they have covered the face of the earth with the fruits of their spirit.

Nor must we forget the ineradicable patriotism of the Russian Jew. Often under the old regime people asked how it was possible for the Jew of Russia to be patriotic. The answer is that no matter what made it possible, the Jew of Russia was patriotic. Though he may have had grievances against the autocracy and its agents, he loved his country none the less and in war and in peace he was there to show it.

As far back as the Russian War of Liberation, in 1812, the Jew so distinguished himself in the Russian army, that he evoked the praise and satisfaction of Alexander I, who was fortified thereby in his good intentions toward the Jew; unfortunately thwarted later on by hostile influences and religious apprehensions.

Similar patriotism the Jews have shown on all other occasions, including the present War. As for the fight for liberty and the Russian revolutionary movement, the Jews have played a leading part in it, shrinking not from its severities and hardships, and this they have done not only for their own sake, but for the common good.

Thus, we can see that the vindication and recognition of the Jew of Russia today are not without their roots in the life of yesterday. They are the efflorescence of his spiritual life--of his contribution to the life of his country and other countries--of his inalienable patriotism. "The Revolution," Kerensky has said, "is the expiation of the past and its sins." It may well form such an expiation to the Jew!

How about the future? It would be idle to deny that the peril is not yet past. The Jew of Russia is not yet out of the woods. But neither is Russia as a whole. As long as reaction and anarchy threaten, there is danger for the Jew. But in this regard the Jew of Russia must take his chance with the rest. His fate is bound up with the complete triumph of democracy in Russia--democracy founded on self-discipline, self-sacrifice, and service, toward the firm establishing of which she is still struggling. If we would help the Jew, we must do what we can toward the help of Russian democracy. Let democracy triumph in Russia, and it will mean the triumph of the Jew!

IV

ITALY AND THE JEWS

Within the last few days our attention has been focused upon Italy, because of the reverses which have befallen her army, so soon after its notable heroic achievements. Knowing the innate courage and heroism of the Italians, we must hope that their military misfortunes are only temporary. Meantime, this situation serves to increase our interest in the relation that has existed between Italy and the Jews--a question which our association with her in the present world-struggle has brought to the fore.

It is well to remember that the Jewish community of Italy is the oldest Jewish community of Europe. Moreover, if the origin of the Jews in other countries is shrouded in mist, this is not the case here. The full light of history illumines the earliest period of Jewish life in Italy.

In Talmudic literature we read of the journeys of famous rabbis to Rome and of their activities there; in the New Testament we hear of the Jews of Italy, and of their synagogues, which formed the scene of activity for the founders of the new faith; in Philo, the great Jewish writer of the first century, we have a description of the Jewish community of Rome in the days of Augustus, with references to their communal life and religious observances. Similarly, there is an allusion to the Jews, their number and their influence, at Rome, in one of Cicero's famous orations.

All this teaches us in unmistakable language that even before the beginning of the Christian era, Jews in considerable numbers established themselves in the capital of the Roman empire, and that before long they attained to a position of marked prosperity and power, thanks not only to their own industry and intelligence, but also to the good-will of some of the emperors. When Caesar died, it is said, the Jews kept vigil at his tomb for three nights.

But the history of the Jews in Italy is remarkable not only for its antiquity. It is remarkable also for its uninterrupted glory and magnificence. Italy, it has been said, is the one country in which there has never been such a thing as Jewish persecution on a large scale. In England and in France there were periods when the Jews were banished. In Italy they were spared such a wholesale calamity.

This is not to say that the Jews of Italy were not called upon time and again to face hardship and misery. This is not to say that now and then one city or another did not try to expel them. Nor is this meant to cover up the fact that in Rome, from the year 1555 to the year 1848, the Jews were made to live in a ghetto, which contributed beyond measure to their material and spiritual degradation. In Italy, as everywhere else, the Jews had more than their share of sorrow and misery to endure, owing to the fanaticism of popes and the vacillation of the masses. But the one thing that never did occur was a wholesale expulsion of the Jews from all her domain, similar to the one from England in 1290, from France in 1393, and from Spain in 1492.

As a result, the history of the Jews of Italy affords today a record of uninterrupted activity and glory, extending over more than the entire period of Christian history. In every century of Italian Jewish history, we find men and movements of importance, bearing witness to the energy of the Jew and to the opportunities for its exercise. And this long period of the past is worthily crowned by the position that the Jews occupy in the Italy of today. Though their number is small, there being but about forty thousand of them in Italy, their influence is striking, seeing that in every sphere they have risen to exalted positions, unsurpassed, in this respect, if equalled, by their brethren in any other part of the world.

When we try to account for this, various facts have to be considered. First, there is the condition of the country. Then, the character of the people. And, finally, the part of the Jew himself.

For hundreds of years Italy was broken up into many independent towns and rival principalities, competing and contending with one another, which frequently proved to the advantage of the Jew, who, when driven from one part, found refuge in another. Then, the Italians have always been known for their love of liberty and justice, of education and enlightenment, in addition to being a pre-eminently practical and commercial people. This, in its turn, could not help but make them hospitable to the Jews.

But all this would not have availed to make the history of Israel in Italy illustrious were it not for the Jews themselves and for what they have accomplished in various spheres. It is these latter things particularly that we must consider in a survey of the Jew's history in Italy.

There is, first of all, the part of the Jew in the commerce of Italy, as well as in her industries.

This we may name first, because history makes it quite clear that the Jews were first welcomed and appreciated in Rome and her dependencies and neighbor-cities because of their commercial ingenuity and enterprise. Well, there is good reason for believing that as far back as Augustus, the Jews had begun to play an important part as commercial factors between Italy and other countries.

In the middle ages, however, they became the commonly recognized bankers of Italy, particularly in the southern parts, so much so that in some cases the Jews were even compelled to maintain banks and in some instances their doing so was made part of diplomatic treaties between cities, as when Venice making an alliance with Ravenna, in the fifteenth century, it was stipulated by Ravenna that the Jews should conduct a bank there, and in one case, at least, on record, in Gubbio, a Jew was paid a salary by the city for maintaining a bank. In this way the Jews were expected to contribute to the trade of the town and the relief of the needy, though in the course of time they were called usurers for engaging in this sort of business, and it was made the cause of propaganda against them, and of persecution.

Nor is it fair to suppose that the Jews of Italy were merely engaged in money-lending and commerce. History tells us that they were also largely represented in the various trades and industries. The dye-making industry formed one of the chief occupations of the Jews of Italy in the thirteenth century. In Sicily, documents relate, almost all iron workers were Jews. In Sardinia there were among the Jews so many blacksmiths, locksmiths, weavers, and silversmiths that Ferdinand the Catholic felt impelled to make a law against their plying their noisy trades on Christian holidays.

It is hard for some people to get away from the notion that the Jew is nothing but a merchant. No matter how much they hear of tens of thousands of Jews engaged in various trades, to the extent of having trade unions of their own, they still cling to their preposterous notion that the Jews are a people of merchants only, (though every now and then they will change their tune and charge all Jews with being socialists, which certainly is not the special characteristic of merchants).

It is equally wrong to assume that in the Italy of the past, the Jews were only bankers and merchants; no, they were also artisans, engaged in all kinds of trades, including agriculture, and as such they were of vast importance to their country.

If the Jews of Italy are said to have invented the letter of credit, thanks to Jewish immigrants in Lombardy possessing valuable interests in other countries from which they had been expelled, and thus to have added an important instrument to the conduct of commerce, they were no less conspicuous in the diverse manual occupations. And the Italians, knowing the value of commerce and the crafts, stood ready to appreciate the worth of the Jew.

No less remarkable has been the spiritual history of the Jews of Italy. Macauley depicts the Italians as possessing a spirit so proud and fine as to make them equally eminent in the active and the contemplative life. Even if this description did not happen to apply to all Jews, it certainly would be applicable to the Jews of Italy. What would all their distinction in the industrial and commercial life have signified if they had failed to maintain their spiritual ideals? As a matter of fact, it is herein that the Jews of Italy have been especially fortunate.

From the very beginning to this day, as a French writer has put it, the fire has never died out upon their altars. They were always among the leaders in Jewish learning and loyalty. Their rabbis were among the most famous in the world. Some of their works are among the great classics of Jewish scholarship--such as the _Arukh_, the great Talmudic cyclopedia of Rabbi Nathan of Rome, or the _Malmad_, the popular homiletic work of Rabbi Jacob Anatoli, or the _Mesiloth Yesharim_, the celebrated ethical treatise Hayyim David Luzzatto. Some of their poets are among the most famous and permanent, like the satirist Immanuel of Rome, said to have been the friend of Dante.