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(Continued from page 445.)
In
the preceding two articles on the subject under
discussion, we have no doubt appeared as going away
from it, instead of grappling with the difficulties
of the question. But our object was first to exhibit
that the modern unbelief is no proof what ever
against the admissibility of any doctrine, and that
the apostacies which we have had to deplore, had
nothing to do with the truth or otherwise, of our
opinions, but were owing to the state of exclusion
to which we were subjected as Jews: and that a mere
joining the popular churches opened the door to
political preferment, or the participation in
commercial and industrial privileges, the permission
to settle wherever the pretended convert pleased, or
to marry the woman or the man he or she fancied, all
of which was not permitted to professing Jews. It
must not be forgotten what we stated incidentally,
that sincerity was neither asked nor looked for; the
rulers who offered such high bribes for the catching
of straying souls were satisfied with the open
profession, and so but a Jew was withdrawn from his
faith, it was a matter of no importance whether he
felt any conviction for his new religion or not.
Since we wrote our articles for November,
<<482>>we
had several opportunities of speaking with men of
high intelligence, who came but lately from Europe,
and they confirmed, even to a greater extent than we
had any idea of, all that we then advanced. What
would our readers think of apostates meeting in the
capital of Austria to celebrate the Jewish festival
of the redemption? of sitting together to recount,
with psalmody and thanksgiving, the going forth of
the Israelites from Egypt? Incredible as the story
appears there is no doubt of its truth, our
informant being above suspicion of a desire to
deceive us. What the cause of such men’s apostacy is
lies on the surface. They could not be admitted as
citizens of Vienna, though, perhaps born within its
walls; they would as Jews have had, up to within
three years, to wear an oriental garb, as though
they were Turkish subjects, and actually to stand
under the protection of the ambassador of the
Ottoman Porte, strangers, even absolute aliens, in
their native land. It only needed the water of
baptism to wash out the foreign taint under which
they suffered. And do you expect to find in all the
same contempt of the world and its allurements? do
you fancy to find high principles and noble
disregard of self-interest in the mass of mankind?
If so, you reason upon false premises. Those who
rise above the earth and its pleasures are few
indeed, especially in this age of pride and seeking
for wealth, where the gilded popinjay stands so
immeasurably superior, in even your estimation, we
fear, kind reader, to the humble, plodding labourer,
who seeks to supply the few wants of his family, and
his own necessaries of life, by honest industry and
contented retirement.
The time indeed, has been when the Jew would have
scorned any allurement which temptation might have
offered; when he would have spurned the bribe, and
the hand that presented it to him, to exchange his
ever-living God, even to appearance, for the
idealities without existence, which the human fancy
has set up as objects of worship. But this was at a
period when men attempted to force us to relinquish
our identity, by means of cruel penal laws, and when
all around, likewise, clung to their belief and
deemed to doubt or to swerve crimes of the greatest
magnitude.
But with the change of tactics of our opponents,
<<483>>and in the same measure as they relaxed
themselves in the strictness of their own
observance, have we learned to esteem lightly our
birthright; not that we are thus absolutely worse,
but that we are no better than our
neighbours. Hence, when they trifled with their
religion, when they appeared to conform to outward
observance, merely to save appearances, whilst at
home they disregarded the precepts of the church;
nay more, whilst we felt convinced that even the
priests and superintendents of the popular systems
privately dissented from the opinions and practices
which they publicly taught; whilst we saw that even
those who were so active in church matters led
secretly a life of immorality, in daring defiance of
all good principles; added to which, that on this
appearance of being Christian, as the state termed
and defined it, all honour and dignity depended:
what would you expect of our worldlings, but to
exchange a faith which they had never practised, and
which, nevertheless, was a bar to their advancement,
for another which they did not mean to practise, and
which, nevertheless, opened to them the prospect of
being called to the council-table of the emperor and
king, of sitting in the seat of judgment, of being
court-physician, privileged merchant, at liberty to
live where they pleased marry whom they fancied, in
short, of becoming just what as Jews they could
never hope to attain?
The picture we draw presents a disgusting exhibition
of human wickedness; but would to Mercy, that we had
dipped our pencil in fancy or falsehood in tracing
it. Alas! it is too true; and if you imagine that we
have stated the least untruth, then go to Vienna, to
Berlin, to Breslau, to Hamburg, to Frankfort, to
Warsaw, to St. Petersburg, and even to Paris, where
no religious disqualification as such does exist,
and you will see in all of them abundant evidence of
the fact, that outward conversions for gain’s sake
are to be met with at every step. What compunction
these traitors may feel, when their anomalous
position in society is brought home to them, is
easily imagined; they must despise themselves,
loathe their very being; and hence they may covet
from time to time, whenever they can withdraw to the
secrecy of their own houses, to practise, with
perhaps a more intense devotion than the professing
<<484>>Jew, the rites and ceremonies of that holy
law, which they have bartered away for gain, power,
pleasure, or privilege.
So
also when there was a prospect that the disabilities
would be removed without a resort to absolute
apostacy, the want of religious conviction in the
dogmas of our faith, the lurking infidelity to all
practical religion, to which we have alluded in
several previous articles, became again apparent in
the manner our opinions were represented, and
the way in which the scriptural precepts and
rabbinical ordinances were practised. We have
abundant means to prove that by degrees and in order
to allay the storm of inveterate prejudices, even
learned men attempted to explain away the sharp
angles, if we may so call them, of our system,
hoping thereby to place themselves gradually within
the line of official preferment. And thus, in order
to convince the state that the Jews might be safely
trusted with a seat in the legislature, or a
commission as a judge, they averred that we did not
desire a separate nationality and that it is an
error to suppose that pure Judaism ever taught this
idea of separatism, as it is termed.
To
be sure “pure Judaism” may mean a great deal or
nothing, just as they who use the term have a
particular end in view, and according to the nature
of their convictions. Still it is with such
generalities that men deceive themselves and others,
and hence we need not wonder that they impose on
themselves even now the comforting flattery that
they are still good Jews whilst casting off a
considerable portion of its requisite elements. But
in addition to this gainsaying what “old Judaism”
taught, they showed also that the practices
belonging to it had lost all binding force for them,
as no longer needed in their system of philosophical
“theism.” Religion, according to their view, not
consisting in externals, but in something ethereal,
inward, unseen, progressive, changing with every age
and all circumstances, had of course to be modified,
and this essentially under the changed aspect of
things. The state stood now at the head of the
objects of allegiance;—formerly it was the duties
which our faith demanded; but this could no longer
be taught; for then we had no hope of ever becoming
deputies, judges, finance-ministers, or generals;
yet, whereas now we had a <<485>>prospect, provided
only we could get over a crowd of prejudices which
separated us from the world, of tasting the sweets
of public preferment and the dignity of official
standing, we had to make the sacrifice, as a matter
of course, of a good deal of our religious
conformity, and every violation became allowed, so
the state was but served by our faithfulness.
Did not, in these modern times, the Jewish merchant
violate his Sabbaths and festivals to acquire
additional gains? Did not the voluptuary set aside
all moral restraints which to the ancient Jew were
the most sacred, in order to be undistinguished from
his gentile associates, to whom such indulgences had
not been unknown in the traditional debaucheries of
their fathers? and why then should not the expectant
statesman, the would-be parliamentarian, the embryo
judge, the unfledged general, stride over the same
barrier for an end where glory led the way, where
renown incited him to follow?
We
have often felt indignant enough to weep when we
read in the public prints the evidences of the
frightful degeneracy which a quarter of a century’s
absence from our native land had produced among
those calling themselves Israelites. We were yet a
schoolboy when we were summoned away from the land
where first we saw the light of day; but we well
recollect the horror which was then felt for
new-fashioned Jews (neu modische Juden), who were
but few scattered here and there among those who had
been cursed by the acquisition of a little more
wealth or more enlarged education than their humble
brethren. Few, indeed, dared then to question the
truth of our ancient dogmas; few indeed there were
who ventured openly to profess their infidelity, if
they entertained it in their hearts. But, alas!
twice ten years had not elapsed before the demon of
unbelief had acquired strength; and now they who
have made a religion of their own, comprised in the
single word REFORM, arrogate to themselves to be the
sole expounders of the faith of Israel, and they set
themselves up as judges of the law and the facts as
though there was from their decision no appeal, no
gainsaying of the discoveries of their astonishing
learning, their unheard of acquaintance with all the
sciences under heaven and above it.
<<486>>
They are wiser than all men, above Solomon, and
Ethan, Heman, Kalkol, and Darda, and whatever the
real men of former ages may have been called; and it
is heresy to doubt their superior knowledge, and
presumption unparalleled to adhere to the teaching
of our ignorant predecessors in preference to
theirs. Had they the humility to propound their
opinions with moderation, whilst they practised all
the minutiae of religion, there might be some sense
in their claiming our undivided attention; but they
first set themselves above the law, do what they
please, and then talk of reforming what they have
long since rejected; they claim the merit of being
the sincere and only friends to Judaism, when they
are barely in name members of the Synagogue. But
what confidence can we place in men who, if the
Bible means anything, have no right to teach at all?
who merely seek for the situation of public
instructor as a profession to gain a living without
conviction or sincerity?
It
is painful to speak so of our own people; but it is
more humiliating still that nothing but truth
compels us to designate thus, unless common report
is totally deceptive, many who now are the leaders
of the reform party in Germany and elsewhere. We
have no personal knowledge of any of them,
consequently no personal ill-will or injuries to
complain of; but we cannot withhold from utterly
condemning such iniquitous teaching which would pull
down everything and build up nothing in its place.
Is it possible that we have been so utterly ignorant
of our faith for so many centuries? have Sanhedrin,
schools, Talmudists, Geonim, and Rabbins all
misunderstood the true principle of Judaism? Has it
been reserved for the nineteenth century, as these
men style our generation, to unfold the true faith
to a benighted world? This to a certainty would
sound more like absurd arrogance than anything else;
still we are reduced to its adoption, if the new
rage for destroying which has lately manifested
itself is at all allowable.
We
will cheerfully admit that all reforms are not
against our religion. Judaism, with all its
fixedness of principles, is progressive, and can
readily harmonize with the highest and widest
progress in arts and civilization; not in the sense,
however, in <<487>>which our moderns would represent
it. There may be many little observances which the
former circumstances of our people rendered
necessary, but which now have become useless, or
even burdensome and injurious; and it were well,
could we have the opinion of the truly learned and
pious all over the world about the propriety of
formally abrogating them; as they were originally
introduced, merely to subserve a certain and
therefore temporary purpose.
But, unfortunately, the hot haste, ignorance, and
selfishness with which vital principles have been
attacked by the knight-errants of a false progress,
have rendered true reform suspected by its very
friends, and men have hesitated, and are unwilling
to yield the minutest abuse, for fear of their acts
being misinterpreted as lending countenance to
absolute evil, and they stand aloof from laying hold
of the questions of the day, dreading that their
acts may open the door to progressive iniquity,
instead of leading to a restoration of the ancient
conformity to religion.
Hence we have the mortification to witness that
nearly all the publications of the day, whether in
books, or papers and magazines, proceed from men who
are notorious progressists, and who only temper
their destructive zeal, in order not to offend too
greatly the so-called orthodox. And, to digress a
little, what do these orthodox do in the premises?
Do they buckle on the armour of defence, and
manfully contend with their opponents? Oh no! they
are content to teach in their own Synagogues, where
they are Rabbins or appointed preachers; and beyond
these they exert themselves but little except
throwing suspicion upon the others. They write
little and publish less and when, once in a while,
an orthodox press is started, as this has been the
case in France, Germany, and England, they allow it
speedily to fall into decay, and the reformers are
triumphant in having the last word.
Another time, should we be spared to maintain our
present position, we mean to dilate properly on this
topic; at present we must merely glance at it, to
proceed with our main subject. Let, however, the
world not imagine that all the tendency of the age
is for destruction: on the contrary, a reaction
is already visible, thanks to the strength of our
faith, and to the confusion of its indolent official
teachers; men <<488>>begin to discover that it is
not in amalgamation with the gentile that the
salvation of Israel can consist, and that we are
destined for a far higher part in the history of
mankind than for a few individuals to sit in the
legislatures of France, Germany, England, and
America, or that a few others might violate the
Sabbath without remorse of conscience, by being
appointed
custom-house clerks, or officers in the army and
navy where labour, as they say, becomes allowed, as
being exerted in the service of the state, and
therefore religious duty has to yield to this
new-born necessity.
But whilst we individually contend for the perfect
equalization of our people in the eyes of the law,
in whatever country they live, whilst we would not
tolerate the idea of a religious test being demanded
before any one is admissible to office, we would
never care to see an Israelite holding office in
which a violation of his religion becomes a
necessary ingredient for his qualification thereto.
All we need is the eligibility; that the road to
preferment should be open to all; since it is
evident that, under the best of circumstances, but a
veriest fraction of our brothers could obtain
employment under the states, whilst the largest,
overwhelmingly large, portion would have to depend
on the labour of their hands to procure their daily
bread. Religion is, however, evidently the
birthright of all men, not of the exclusive few who
are lifted up above the masses by the fortuitous
possession of wealth, talents, or position; the
meanest labourer has the same claim to everlasting
happiness as kings or kaisers on their thrones.
Hence, we see, Israelites as a people have a higher
historical importance than to become officials in
the various states where they may live by choice,
birth, or necessity.
Do
not misunderstand us, kind reader, as being in the
least unfaithful to the commonwealth, or counselling
you to withhold the least duty from the state, or to
do otherwise than strive for the promotion of its
best interests and those of mankind: we are a
thorough republican, and would gladly see the power
of tyranny and misrule broken into fragments all
over the world; we rejoice whenever the people and
equal rights triumph, and had we any power, we would
lend it where it could be made <<489>>useful to
uproot aristocracy and inequality, wherever and
whenever they present themselves. Nor, on the other
hand, would we advise you, should you live in a land
where a king rules, to unite with wild conspirators
to upset the government in one insensate onslaught
on all hereditary customs and laws; for in such a
manner you would only perpetuate the evil, and not
“seek the peace of the city whither you have been
banished.”
But we only meant to say that you can best promote
the public good by being an Israelite. indeed, a
true servant of God, a faithful friend of mankind.
For thus you require no office, no standing aloof,
from the shoulder higher than all the people; but
you can be a common man, and yet lend more support
to every useful measure of progress than by being a
titled official, or wearing the decoration of some
order of knighthood or nobility conferred by those
in power often on men who served the prince or party
more faithfully than the people.
Let our readers reflect a little on our words, and
we are sure they must all agree with us, that we
have placed the question in its true light, and that
emancipation, the fullest even, desirable as it is,
and demanded as it should be upon the broad
principle that no man or people has a right to
abridge another’s natural rights, or to interfere
with the religious convictions of another, or to
attach any privilege or exclusion to the manner in
which he worships, nay, to the fact whether he
worships at all or not,—that emancipation, the
fullest even, we meant to say, was not, cannot be
the object of the institution of Israel as a
peculiar people, distinct in all their customs,
separate through so many centuries mingling without
amalgamating with other nations, and to this day
essentially the same they were from the beginning.
To
maintain that a perverse obstinacy, an indomitable
pride, has preserved us as we are, would be only
interpreting the great moral phenomenon which we
present by another, equally unintelligible. For why
should we be more perverse than all others? or our
pride less subduable than the hauteur of any other
race? Were not the Romans as fierce as the Jews? the
Greeks as proud, if not more so, than the sons of
Jacob? And, still, where are they? Where are the
unmixed sons of <<490>>Cecrops and Romulus ? Can you
point out to a single family, and maintain, with any
show of reason, that they are descended from the
ancient stock of Hellas or Italy? We fancy that no
one will be bold enough to venture on the
experiment.
But say even that you could find pure Greeks and
Romans in some undiscovered nook of Epirus or
Etruria, what sort of opinions do you think they
would defend now if they were truly questioned? Do
you imagine that one would appeal to the Delphine
oracle, or the other look into the entrails of
beasts before he would commence his work, or command
an army to march? would the one adopt his theology
from Homer, or the other quote Cicero as his guide
to his system of divinity? Scarcely can you imagine
that you would find such a vague dream realized.
And yet the Jew, the ubiquitous son of Israel, is
the most unchanged cosmopolite ever found on earth;
he is essentially the same intelligent yet simple,
yielding yet obstinate, ardent yet calculating,
daring yet timid creature he ever was; and as to his
ancient poets and philosophers, his David and his
Solomon, his Isaiah and his Moses, he does not dream
to seek for any better, and he will not permit you
for one moment, much as he may have himself swerved
from the line which such opinions as he professes
ought to demand, to imagine that their thoughts can
be improved upon by the farthest, wildest,
profoundest, and highest progress the sciences and
arts can possibly make. This anomalous character of
the Jew, a puzzle to himself, and an astonishment to
his opponents, and a riddle to all strangers to his
creed, has not been the growth of a year or of a
century but it appears was known and appreciated
already by his first teacher, the far-seeing and
clear-headed son of Amram, who superintended his
first introduction among the families of the earth,
and bore with his infirmities for a space of forty
years, often provoked, but in the end never wearied
by the constant exhibiting of that twofold
disposition of which his representatives of the
present day furnish so striking an example.
Was it joy, was it sorrow, was it Palestine, or any
other land, the north star did not truer watch in
the heaven to guide the storm-tossed mariner on the
trackless wave, than did the son of Israel remain
true to the <<491>>description we find of him in
Deuteronomy, xxxi. 21: “And it shall come to pass,
when many evils and troubles have befallen them,
that this song shall testify against them as a
witness; for it will not be forgotten out of the
mouth of their seed, for I know their disposition,
according to which they act this day, even before I
have brought them unto the land concerning which I
have sworn.”
Here we see how well the prophet foresaw the strange
commingling of rebellion and steadfastness; neglect
of religion and its eternal unforgotten permanence
among us; history, experience, has set its seal of
truth upon the vision that floated before Moses’s
eyes; and was it merely to play a secondary part in
some trumpery scheme of self-aggrandizement of
states and individuals, that God selected, or rather
endowed, so peculiar a people, not less so in
physiognomy than temper and mind? Ay, there is the
difficulty of the question, and we would not, could
we even conscientiously do it, join the petitioner
for political equality, had we to yield the smallest
tittle of our ancestral hopes in order to obtain the
highest gifts of human greatness. Nothing could
compensate us if we should be compelled to see the
curious race of which we are an insignificant
member, swallowed up amidst the noblest nation of
the earth, were it, no matter which, a thousand
times nobler than it is; we would hold all
distinction so purchased as an insult to common
sense, a worthless bauble, which the veriest fool,
the basest galley-slave, ought indignantly to spurn
as a worthless bribe held out to barter away his
birthright.
No, it cannot be; Providence did not make a mistake
when He selected the sons of Jacob, as strange a
compound as the first Israel himself, to be called
his peculiar people; He did not choose us to receive
the law on Sinai for a year or a thousand
revolutions of the year; but for time indefinite,
for seasons without number, for generation after
generation, at least until such time as He shall
himself announce to us as solemnly as he did on
Sinai, that now our task was done; that now his law
should no longer bind us, mark us as his own among
all other nations and tongues.
Do
our believing readers agree with us? will they
answer a sincere Amen to our <<492>>ideas? do they feel that they bear in themselves the
seeds of a glorious yet unaccomplished future? that
in belonging, from attachment, and feeling, and
duty, and interest to the land of their birth or
adoption, that whilst they devote to its service
their best energies, their undivided duty, their
ardent hopes as citizens, as counsellors, as
defenders, as merchants, as legislators, they owe
still an allegiance to a heavenly kingdom, which
though not yet established, is as sure of being one
day called into being as that they are still
recognizable as sons of Israel? And they need not
fear to profess this openly, loudly, before all the
world; for every reasoning being will maintain that
so much mercy was not vouchsafed to any one people
without a high and holy object; that the Almighty
acts not without an aim in creating the meanest
insect; and that hence He could not have endowed
Jacob with all the characteristics of the reed, that
bends to the storm without being uprooted, that
lifts up its tiny head in the light of sunshine, and
is even then an humble herb, unless He had meant
that it should stand erect after the mighty forest
trees long since decayed, to flourish in perennial
greenness, never sown by human hands, still
constantly shooting up again out of its native
element, enlivening the margin of mighty rivers, and
affording shelter to the fishes of the deep and the
birds of heaven.
(To be continued.) |
