The Notorious EUNUCH
Pyro 1488
and stupidity. There are far more that I could pull up, but this should
suffice for the perceptive readers among the audience.
Lack of abstract thinking and reading ability - Exhibit A
Pyro 1488 wrote:
"It [Plato's prose] should be preserved in golden letters."
The EUNUCH responded:
"How do golden letters improve upon the substance of Plato?"
Lack of abstract thinking and reading ability (as well as ignorance on
history) - Exhibit B
Pyro 1488 wrote:
"Even the Vikings were the best shipbuilders in the world as they plundered
the coasts of Europe and the British Isles!"
The EUNUCH responded:
"So 'plundering' was proof of their shipbuilding skill?"
Lack of abstract thinking and reading ability (as well as ignorance on
history) - Exhibit C
Pyro 1488 wrote:
"Your claim that MODERNISM led to 2 world wars is nonsense. There were wars
before MODERNISM. War is the result of man's greed and has nothing to do
with an artistic movement. What you say is fallacious."
The EUNUCH responded:
"What you say is ILLITERATE !!! WORLD WARS DID NOT HAPPEN UNTIL THE
20th-CENTURY. EVEN YOUR "NAZI FRIENDS" (sic!) KNOW THAT !!! BUT YOU DO NOT
READ, YOU CANNOT READ, YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO READ !"
Pyro 1488 wrote:
"Historians generally recognize the French and Indian War as the first true
world war. France and Britain battled for colonies in both North America and
Asia. Incidentally, this was a precursor to the Seven Years' War (1756-1763)
which involved almost every country in Europe due the the network of
alliances. By 1763, war on 3 continents had ended."
On another note...
This idiot claims (as if we needed another example of his stupidity and
ignorance) that only left-wingers can be revolutionaries. He asserts China
is a right wing bastion in the world, ignoring the political evolution which
has occured in the country throughout the 20th century. Such commentary can
only come from a simpleton such as himself. China was not always open to
free market ideas. Mao Tse-tung, like Castro, modelled his system after the
Soviet system. Even Cuba has been forced to alter its system (although it
has to a lesser degree, perhaps as a result of the embargo) in order to
adapt to the global changes. So, are we now going to refer to Cuba as
right-wing, too?
This idiot should read about the "beer-hall putsch" (1923) and the Fascists
who in 1922, led by Mussolini, marched into Rome. It would also be of use
if he read about Augusto Pinochet and Francisco Franco.
Regards,
Pyro
Pyro 1488
"YOU SAID '...the Vikings were the best shipbuilders in the world -AS- they
plundered...' (i.e. concurrent to plundering they were building ships
????). YOUR LANGUAGE DOES NOT MAKE SENSE !!!!"
Your lack of knowledge, imagination, and intelligence is VERY CLEAR. Those
words were carefully crafted. The Vikings plundered the coasts of Europe
and the British Isles from the 8th century to the 10th century. Eventually
they became more peaceful for several reasons: Christianity; a warming trend
that lasted several centuries; and because Europeans had worked out a way to
defend themselves against their swift, terrorizing incursions.
When people think of the Vikings, they don't realize they were the
technological marvel of their age. They were also farmers and skillful
traders. In addition, they were the greatest explorers of their time.
People normally don't think of "barbarians" in this manner.
The "AS" that I wrote emphasized this paradox. Of course, you wouldn't have
a clue.
The EUNUCH wrote:
(re: French and Indian War as first true world war)
"Not generally recognized by historians but one -theory- some had
aired -AFTER- the World Wars of THIS century, in part to -rationalize- the
ACTIVITY OF WAR FOR THOSE EAGER TO START THE NEXT ONE !!!!!"
That's what we are getting in the school textbooks. I don't see why this
would be a controversial point. This war involved 3 continents, virtually
every country in Europe, as well as the indigenous inhabitants of various
colonies. Why don't you just stop embarrassing yourself and admit having
committed a gaffe? You are such a pitiful fool.
The EUNUCH blathered:
"Where was Africa involved during the colonial battles for N.America and
Asia? Australia? HOW MANY POPULATED CONTINENTS IN THE WORLD?"
During World War I and World War II European countries (for the most part)
were at the center of the stage. What role did Angola play during WWI or
WWII? Or Indonesia? Or the Latin American nations? During WWII it seems
more of the "world" was involved: for example Japan, which formed an
alliance with the Axis powers, was expanding into the Pacific Islands and
invaded Manchuria. After WWI the Ottoman Empire completely dissolved; they
came into the war as a weak player, having internal problems.
AUSTRALIA WAS NOT A MAJOR PLAYER IN EITHER WAR. During WWII Japan bombed,
or shelled, Newcastle, Port Jackson, and Darwin; but the American victory at
Coral Sea in 1942 was what prevented an invasion of Japanese ground forces
into the continent.
The EUNUCH wrote:
"'...almost every country in Europe...' IS NOT THE WORLD, IDIOT"
Read above, IGNORAMUS.
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@email.msn.com>
> He asserts China is a right wing bastion in the world, ignoring the
> political evolution which has occured in the country throughout the
> 20th century.
The EUNUCH responded:
"Yes, China has drifted -RIGHT- toward the center after accomplishing its
revolution from the -LEFT-. Same thing happened to USSR, Cuba. YOU FAILED
TO READ MY EARLIER POST ON THIS TOPIC !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
No problem. Watch me kick your sorry little ass, again. ;-)
>> From: jum...@my-deja.com
>>> Webster's offers for "revolution: a sudden and
>>> violent change of the government or the political
>>> constitution of a country, usu. by internal
>>> instigation..." A _status_quo_ may drift left or
>>> right according to political winds, while an
>>> assertion of right-wing power upon the domestic
>>> "state-of-affairs" might be "sudden and violent"
>>> but would not be "a sudden and violent CHANGE." An
>>> example of that sort of "right-wing crackdown" was
>>> provided by Tiananmen Square, which resulted in NO
>>> POLITICAL CHANGE upon the Chinese Government. An
>>> apparent paradox is supplied when observing that
>>> the Government of Mainland China is ostensibly
>>> that of a Communist Regime, which one would think
>>> is "leftist," but the situation of Tiananmen
>>> Square consisted of Chinese students even FURTHER
>>> TO THE LEFT of their own (so-called) "communist"
>>> government. Most all regimes tend back to
>>> centrism after assuming power, whether from the
>>> left or right, but since CHANGE occurs generally
>>> from the left, a subsequent movement in governmant
>>> consists of a rightward movement from left to
>>> center. The "Communist Regime" of Mainland China
>>> has instead today become a "relatively right-wing
>>> government" typical of any regime and/or dynasty
>>> that incrementally consolidates administrative
>>> powers and then gradually stagnates. Ironic to
>>> Tiananmen Square is the fact that the Chinese
>>> students were no more "leftist" than T.Jefferson
>>> and other founding fathers of the "American
>>> Revolution" they cited, so the government of
>>> Mainland China must be considerably further to the
>>> right than anyone had imagined, even while it
>>> labels itself with "communism." A guiding
>>> principle with regards to current governments is
>>> that "things are not what they seem to be" whereas
>>> "revolutionary movements" (from the left) are
>>> typically straightforward (even naive) about what
>>> they stand against, stand for, and hope to
>>> accomplish. TK's criticisms of the left were
>>> heaped upon the "naive left" yet one of the
>>> reasons he could offer (constructive) criticism of
>>> the left is due to the fact that there's so much
>>> more of interest in political leftism than in the
>>> brain-dead political right. These terms ("left"
>>> and "right") are utilized herein by their modern
>>> sense and are not quite the same when applied to
>>> history 100 years ago, or history 200 years ago.
>>> Political innovation can occur from either the
>>> left or the right, but the topic being addressed
>>> by this paragraph, and TK's paragraph #204, does
>>> NOT concern the matter of innovation, but
>>> questions of "revolution" in the contemporary
>>> sense.
It is not surprising to us that you suggest the government the students at
Tiananmen Square were protesting against was further to the right than the
students themselves. After all, what could we expect from a cultural
polluter and ignoramus who claims Socrates was not a great philosopher and
Johnny Cochran is, that only leftists can be (in practice or in theory)
revolutionaries, and that Modernism is the root of the 2 World Wars of the
20th century?
You really need some fundamental lessons on history, chump.
First, let's dig into the background which led to the uprising at Tiananmen
Square. Deng Xiaoping emerged as the new leader of China following the
deaths of Mao and Zhou Enlai. He was a veteran of the Long March and the
last of the "old revolutionaries." Deng supported new economic policies,
seeing the stagnation that Communism brought to the nation. He was willing
to use capitalist ideas, and even proclaimed: "It is glorious to get rich."
So, yes, he was further to the right than Mao.
Deng eliminated the unpopular communes, allowed farmers to grow crops and
sell them for profit, allowed private businesses to produce goods and
services, and welcomed foreign technology and investment.
Because of these changes, incomes increased, and people began to buy
appliances and televisions. As living standards increased, the gap between
rich and poor widened. The public especially began to notice the growing
corruption in government, which they saw as a contributing factor to this
problem.
The Open Door policy pushed by Deng enabled the Chinese to enjoy some of the
fruits of Democracy, and naturally (as what occured in Eastern Europe) there
was a yearning for more and more of it.
So, in the sense that the students were frustrated with the corruption
within the government, which they believed contributed to the gap between
the haves and have-nots, I can see where one might claim (although even this
would be dubious) there was a left-wing element in the protests.
Even you have admitted that China has "drifted right." Just think of it
like this. Freedom is like sex: once you start experiencing it, you just
can't get enough of it. ;-) The students had experienced more freedom than
their parents and grandparents, and because they got a taste of it and
enjoyed it, they demanded even more. In other words, THEY WERE PUSHING FOR
EVEN MORE RADICAL CHANGES. Do you understand this, Jumangi? They wanted
the government to take further steps away from Marxism/Communism/leftism.
Pyro 1488 <pyro...@email.msn.com> wrote:
> This idiot should read about the "beer-hall putsch" (1923) and the
> Fascists who in 1922, led by Mussolini, marched into Rome. It
> would also be of use if he read about Augusto Pinochet and
> Francisco Franco.
The EUNUCH tresponded:
"These 'right-wing bullies' were your examples of 'revolutionaries?'"
They brought swift, radical changes to government. My personal opinion on
them (and especially yours) is totally irrelevant. Stop being so damn
infantile!
The EUNUCH wrote:
"Why should I require another emetic?"
Your cultural pollution and ignorance is a greater emetic than anything I
could ever come up with.
Regards,
Pyro
jum...@my-deja.com
> From: jum...@my-deja.com
>> "YOU SAID '...the Vikings were the best shipbuilders in the world
>> -AS- they plundered...' (i.e. concurrent to plundering they were
>> building ships ????). YOUR LANGUAGE DOES NOT MAKE SENSE !!!!"
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@email.msn.com>
> Your lack of knowledge, imagination, and intelligence is VERY
> CLEAR. Those words were carefully crafted. The Vikings plundered
> the coasts of Europe and the British Isles from the 8th century to
> the 10th century. Eventually they became more peaceful for several
> reasons: Christianity; a warming trend that lasted several
> centuries; and because Europeans had worked out a way to defend
> themselves against their swift, terrorizing incursions.
>
> When people think of the Vikings, they don't realize they were the
> technological marvel of their age. They were also farmers and
> skillful traders. In addition, they were the greatest explorers of
> their time. People normally don't think of "barbarians" in this
> manner.
>
> The "AS" that I wrote emphasized this paradox. Of course, you
> wouldn't have a clue.
There's no paradox except between your ears. *-FIRST-* they
built ships, and *-THEN-* they plundered. YOU LIED !!!!!!
THEY DID *-NOT-* PLUNDER *-WHILE-* THEY WERE BUILDING SHIPS !
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
OR YOU COULD HAVE SAID: SOME VIKINGS PLUNDERED WHILE OTHER VIKINGS
WERE BUILDING MORE SHIPS. BUT YOU DID *-NOT-* SAY THAT !!!!!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
YOU SAID "...the Vikings were the best shipbuilders in the world
as -THEY- plundered..." (i.e. "they" refers to the -same- Vikings)
> From: jum...@my-deja.com
>> (re: French and Indian War as first true world war) "Not generally
>> recognized by historians but one -theory- some had aired -AFTER-
>> the World Wars of THIS century, in part to -rationalize- the
>> ACTIVITY OF WAR FOR THOSE EAGER TO START THE NEXT ONE !!!!!"
>> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@email.msn.com>
> That's what we are getting in the school textbooks. I don't see
> why this would be a controversial point. This war involved 3
> continents, virtually every country in Europe, as well as the
> indigenous inhabitants of various colonies. Why don't you just
> stop embarrassing yourself and admit having committed a gaffe? You
> are such a pitiful fool.
Are *-YOU-* still reading "school" textbooks? ha ha ha ha
WHY DON'T YOU MAKE A TRIP TO THE LIBRARY AND READ ALL OF HISTORY?
There are seven continents on this world and six are populated.
YOU SAID "3 continents" WHICH IS NOT SIX CONTINENTS, IDIOT !!!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
THREE DOES NOT EQUAL SIX. THREE IS *-LESS-* THAN SIX !!!!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> From: jum...@my-deja.com
>> "Where was Africa involved during the colonial battles for
>> N.America and Asia? Australia?
>> HOW MANY POPULATED CONTINENTS IN THE WORLD?"
>> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@email.msn.com>
> During World War I and World War II European countries (for the
> most part) were at the center of the stage. What role did Angola
> play during WWI or WWII? Or Indonesia? Or the Latin American
> nations? During WWII it seems more of the "world" was involved: for
> example Japan, which formed an alliance with the Axis powers, was
> expanding into the Pacific Islands and invaded Manchuria. After
> WWI the Ottoman Empire completely dissolved; they came into the war
> as a weak player, having internal problems.
> [...]
> AUSTRALIA WAS NOT A MAJOR PLAYER IN EITHER WAR. During WWII Japan
> bombed, or shelled, Newcastle, Port Jackson, and Darwin; but the
> American victory at Coral Sea in 1942 was what prevented an
> invasion of Japanese ground forces into the continent.
YOU ARE A LIAR -- (Encyl.Brit):
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
WW-I: "Some 330,000 Australians served in World War I; 60,000 died,
165,000 suffered wounds -- few nations made such relatively heavy
sacrifice..."
WW-II: "Some 30,000 Australians died in World War II and 65,000 were
injured. From early in the war, the Royal Australian Air Force was
active in the defense of Britain..."
HOW MANY THOUSANDS MUST DIE IN ORDER TO BE A MAJOR PLAYER?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
You are *-INSENSITIVE-* and *-NEGLIGENT-* of human life !!!!!
World War I *-CRUSHED-* the Australian economy; that's why they
couldn't send as many to World War II.
> From: jum...@my-deja.com
>> "'...almost every country in Europe...' IS NOT THE WORLD, IDIOT"
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@email.msn.com>
> Read above, IGNORAMUS.
-YOU- NEED TO READ THE ABOVE INSTEAD OF "JACKING-OFF" (squirt squirt).
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@email.msn.com>
>>> He asserts China is a right wing bastion in the world, ignoring the
>>> political evolution which has occured in the country throughout the
>>> 20th century.
> From: jum...@my-deja.com
>> "Yes, China has drifted -RIGHT- toward the center after
>> accomplishing its revolution from the -LEFT-. Same thing happened
>> to USSR, Cuba. YOU FAILED TO READ MY EARLIER POST ON THIS TOPIC !
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@email.msn.com>
> No problem. Watch me kick your sorry little ass, again. ;-)
DON'T BOTHER TRYING TO SHOVE YOUR COCK IN MY ASSHOLE! AIM AT TRUTH!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@email.msn.com>
> ... So, in the sense that the students were frustrated with the
> corruption within the government, which they believed contributed
> to the gap between the haves and have-nots, I can see where one
> might claim (although even this would be dubious) there was a
> left-wing element in the protests.
>
> Even you have admitted that China has "drifted right." Just think
> of it like this. Freedom is like sex: once you start experiencing
> it, you just can't get enough of it. ;-) The students had
> experienced more freedom than their parents and grandparents, and
> because they got a taste of it and enjoyed it, they demanded even
> more. In other words, THEY WERE PUSHING FOR EVEN MORE RADICAL
> CHANGES. Do you understand this, Jumangi? They wanted the
> government to take further steps away from
> Marxism/Communism/leftism.
Narrowing the gap between haves and have-nots -IS- leftist, TWIT !!
Marxism is left, but "state communism" ( USSR and China ) had drifted
right, toward the center and away from left Marxism.
>> Pyro 1488 <pyro...@email.msn.com> wrote:
>>> This idiot should read about the "beer-hall putsch" (1923) and the
>>> Fascists who in 1922, led by Mussolini, marched into Rome. It
>>> would also be of use if he read about Augusto Pinochet and
>>> Francisco Franco.
> From: jum...@my-deja.com
>> "These 'right-wing bullies' were your examples of
>> 'revolutionaries?'"
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@email.msn.com>
> They brought swift, radical changes to government. My personal
> opinion on them (and especially yours) is totally irrelevant. Stop
> being so damn infantile!
FALSE! The word "change" does not appear in this characterization:
"The Philosophical Basis of Fascism" - (Encyl.Brit.)
"Fascism rejected the main philosophical trends of the 18th and 19th
centuries, the "spirit" of the American and French revolutions with
their emphasis on individual liberty and on the equality of men and
races. The message of the Enlightenment had served to enhance the
dignity of the individual and had emphasized openness in a secularized
society. In contrast, fascism extolled the supreme sovereignty of
the nation as an absolute. It demanded the revival of the spirit of
the ancient _polis_ (city-state), above all of Sparta with its
discipline and total devotion to duty, and of the complete
coordination of all intellectual and political thought and activities
against modern individualism and scientific skepticism. The
Italian slogan "to believe, to obey, to combat" was fascism's
antithesis to "liberty, equality, fraternity," and to the prophetic
and Christian messages of peace. The combination of an unquestioning
faith and of a virile combativeness was to transform the nation into
a permanently mobilized armed force to conquer, maintain, and
expand power.
"In its beginnings fascism was not a doctrine and had no clearly
elaborated program. It was a technique for gaining and retaining
power by violence, and with astonishing flexibility it subordinated
all questions of program to this one aim. From the beginning it was
dominated by a definite attitude of mind that exalted the fighting
spirit, military discipline, ruthlessness, and action and rejected
all ethical motives as weakening the resoluteness of will. Stressing
the irrational and instincts and activism, fascism insisted that the
strong will always prevail over the weak, the more resolute over the
irresolute. Ultimately everything depended upon the decisions of the
leader, decisions to be blindly obeyed and immediately executed.
Fascism returned to an authoritarian order, based upon the
subordination of the individual and the inequality of caste and rank."
In order to be a "change" it must:
change -- "To make different, alter, transmute; to become different,
vary; to enter upon a new phase"
Political change, as a revolution, does -NOT- "REVERT" to previous
methods of government. The "anti-enlightenment" quality of fascism
identifies it as *-ANTITHETICAL-* to "change." You QUITE OBVIOUSLY
have a "personal opinion" and *-DISINGENUOUS-* AGENDA or else you
wouldn't be making a big *-FUSS-* about getting your rocks off here.
IF YOU ARE WILLING TO LET "THEM" CONTROL YOU, THEN YOU'RE WILLING TO
BECOME "PASSIVE" TO LETTING *-ANYONE-* CONTROL YOU. WAKE UP, IDIOT!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> From: jum...@my-deja.com
>> "Why should I require another emetic?"
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@email.msn.com>
> Your cultural pollution and ignorance is a greater emetic than
> anything I could ever come up with.
You persist with _ad_hominem_ because you can't make a valid argument.
- regards
- jb
.
=================================================================
From: Secret Squirrel <squi...@echelon.alias.net>
Subject: THE ECHELON ATTACK
Date: Wednesday, November 03, 1999 2:42 PM
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 27 1999
[between the lines] [Joseph Farah]
------------------------------------------
[WND Exclusive Commentary]
------------------------------------------
The Echelon attack
------------------------------------------
Internet activists last week tried to
overwhelm National Security Agency
eavesdroppers by flooding the Echelon spy
system with fabricated messages about
terrorist plots and bombs.
The idea never posed a real threat to the
NSA, but the electronic protest helped
raise awareness of the fact that the
government is snooping on every man, woman
and child in the country through this
system.
Organizers urged Internet users to send
millions of e-mails with NSA "keywords"
designed to trigger eavesdropping programs
and analysis. The idea was to flood the
powerful NSA computers with enough
suspicious traffic to crash them and
disrupt the mysterious high-tech listening
system.
How serious is the threat to civil
liberties posed by Echelon? A 1997 report
commissioned by the European Parliament
described "routine and indiscriminate"
monitoring of faxes, e-mails and telephone
messages in Europe by the global spy
network, which it said was coordinated by
the NSA with the help of other nations'
security organizations. Rep. Bob Barr,
R-Ga., has said he supports congressional
hearings to determine the scope of the spy
network's capabilities and to prevent
abuses.
Dozens of websites promoted the protest by
listing some of the keywords believed to
set off the Echelon trackers. But my
sources tell me the spy network is far
more sophisticated than the web protesters
anticipated. It can easily filter out
communications specifically designed to
set it off with random keywords. Screening
software helps the NSA ignore
communications written or spoken as
"bait."
Want to see a longer list than you have
ever seen before? Here it is:
Explosives, guns, assassination,
conspiracy, primers, detonators,
initiators, main charge, nuclear charges,
ambush, sniping, motorcade, IRS, BATF,
jtf-6, mjtf, hrt, srt, hostages,
munitions, weapons, TNT, rdx, amfo, hmtd,
picric acid, silver nitrite, mercury
fulminate, presidential motorcade, salt
peter, charcoal, sulfur, c4, composition
b, amatol, petn, lead azide, lead
styphante, ddnp, tetryl, nitrocellulose,
nitrostarch, mines, grenades, rockets,
fuses, delay mechanism, mortars, rpg7,
propellants, incendiaries, incendiary
device, thermite, security forces,
intelligence, agencies, hrt, resistance,
psyops, infiltration, assault team,
defensive elements, evasion, detection,
mission, communications, the football,
platter charge, shaped charges, m118,
claymore, body armor, charges, shrapnel,
timers, timing devices, boobytraps,
detcord, pmk 40, silencers, Uzi, HK-MP5,
AK-47, FAL, Jatti, Skorpion MP, teflon
bullets, cordite, napalm, law, Stingers,
RPK, SOCIMI 821 SMG, STEN, BAR, MP40,
HK-G3,FN-MAG, RPD,PzB39, Air Force One,
M60, RPK74, SG530, SG540, Galil arm,
Walther WA2000, HK33KE, Parker-Hale MOD.
82, AKR, Ingram MAC10, M3, L34A1, Walther
MPL, AKS-74, HK-GR6, subsonic rounds,
ballistic media, special forces, JFKSWC,
SFOD-D, SRT, Rewson, SAFE, Waihopai,
INFOSEC, ASPIC, Information Security, SAI,
Information Warfare, IW, IS, Privacy,
Information Terrorism, Kenya, Terrorism
Defensive Information, Defense Information
Warfare, Offensive Information, Offensive
Information Warfare, NAIA, SAPM, ASU,
ECHELON ASTS, National Information
Infrastructure, InfoSec, SAO, Reno,
Compsec, JICS, Computer Terrorism,
Firewalls, Secure Internet Connections,
RSP, ISS, JDF, Passwords, NAAP, DefCon V,
RSO, Hackers, Encryption, ASWS, Espionage,
USDOJ, NSA, CIA, S/Key, SSL, FBI, Secret
Service, USSS, Defcon, Military, White
House, Undercover, NCCS, Mayfly, PGP,
SALDV, PEM, resta, RSA, Perl-RSA, MSNBC,
bet, AOL, AOL TOS, CIS, CBOT, AIMSX,
STARLAN, 3B2, BITNET, Tanzania, SAMU,
COSMOS, DATTA, E911, FCIC, HTCIA, IACIS,
UT/RUS, JANET, ram, JICC, ReMOB, LEETAC,
UTU, VNET, BRLO, SADCC, NSLEP, SACLANTCEN,
FALN, 877, NAVELEXSYSSECENGCEN, BZ,
CANSLO, CBNRC, CIDA, JAVA, rsta, Active X,
Compsec 97, RENS, LLC, DERA, JIC, rip, rb,
Wu, RDI, Mavricks, BIOL, Meta-hackers, ^?,
SADT, Steve Case, Tools, RECCEX, Telex,
OTAN, monarchist, NMIC, NIOG, IDB, MID/KL,
NADIS, NMI, SEIDM, BNC, CNCIS,
STEEPLEBUSH, RG, BSS, DDIS, mixmaster,
BCCI, BRGE, SARL, Military Intelligence,
JICA, Scully, recondo, Flame, Infowar,
Bubba, Freeh, Archives, ISADC, CISSP,
Sundevil, jack, Investigation, JOTS,
ISACA, NCSA, ASVC, spook words, RRF, 1071,
Bugs Bunny, Verisign, Secure, ASIO, Lebed,
ICE, NRO, Lexis-Nexis, NSCT, SCIF, FLiR,
JIC, bce, Lacrosse, Flashbangs, HRT, IRA,
EODG, DIA, USCOI, CID, BOP, FINCEN, FLETC,
NIJ, ACC, AFSPC, BMDO, site, SASSTIXS,
NAVWAN, NRL, RL, NAVWCWPNS, NSWC, USAFA,
AHPCRC, ARPA, SARD, LABLINK, USACIL, SAPT,
USCG, NRC, ~, O, NSA/CSS, CDC, DOE, SAAM,
FMS, HPCC, NTIS, SEL, USCODE, CISE, SIRC,
CIM, ISN, DJC, bemd, SGC, UNCPCJ, CFC,
SABENA, DREO, CDA, SADRS, DRA, SHAPE, bird
dog, SACLANT, BECCA, DCJFTF, HALO, SC, TA
SAS, Lander, GSM, T Branch, AST, SAMCOMM,
HAHO, FKS, 868, GCHQ, DITSA, SORT, AMEMB,
NSG, HIC, EDI, benelux, SAS, SBS, SAW,
UDT, EODC, GOE, DOE, SAMF, GEO, JRB,
3P-HV, Masuda, Forte, AT, GIGN, Exon
Shell, radint, MB, CQB, CONUS, CTU, RCMP,
GRU, SASR, GSG-9, 22nd SAS, GEOS, EADA,
SART, BBE, STEP, Echelon, Dictionary, MD2,
MD4, MDA, diwn, 747, ASIC, 777, RDI, 767,
MI5, 737, MI6, 757, Kh-11, EODN, SHS, ^X,
Shayet-13, SADMS, Spetznaz, Recce, 707,
CIO, NOCS, Halcon, NSS, Duress, RAID,
Uziel, wojo, Psyops, SASCOM, grom, NSIRL,
D-11, SERT, VIP, ARC, S.E.T. Team, NSWG,
MP5k, SATKA, DREC, DEVGRP, DF, DSD, FDM,
GRU, LRTS, SIGDEV, NACSI, MEU/SOC,PSAC,
PTT, RFI, ZL31, SIGDASYS, TDM, SUKLO,
SUSLO, TELINT, fake, TEXTA, ELF, LF, MF,
SIGS, VHF, Recon, peapod, PA598D28, Spall,
dort, 50MZ, 11Emc Choe, SATCOMA, UHF, SHF,
ASIO, SASP, WANK, Colonel, domestic
disruption, 5ESS, smuggle, Z-200, 15kg,
DUVDEVAN, RFX, nitrate, OIR, Pretoria,
M-14, enigma, Bletchley Park, Clandestine,
NSO, nkvd, argus, afsatcom, CQB, NVD,
Counter Terrorism Security, SARA, Rapid
Reaction, JSOFC3IP, Corporate Security,
Police, sniper, PPS, ASIS, ASLET, TSCM,
Security Consulting, M-x spook, Z-150T,
High Security, Security Evaluation,
Electronic Surveillance, MI-17, ISR, NSAS,
Counterterrorism, real, spies, IWO,
eavesdropping, debugging, CCSS,
interception, COCOT, NACSI, rhost, rhosts,
ASO, SETA, Amherst, Broadside, Capricorn,
NAVCM, Gamma, Gorizont, Guppy, NSS, rita,
ISSO, submiss, ASDIC, .tc, 2EME REP, FID,
7NL SBS, tekka, captain, 226, .45, nonac,
li, Ionosphere, Mole, Keyhole, NABS,
Kilderkin, Artichoke, Badger, Emerson,
Tzvrif, SDIS, T2S2, STTC, DNR, NADDIS,
NFLIS, CFD, quarter, Cornflower, Daisy,
Egret, Iris, JSOTF, Hollyhock, Jasmine,
Juile, Vinnell, B.D.M., Sphinx, Stephanie,
Reflection, Spoke, Talent, Trump, FX, FXR,
IMF, POCSAG, rusers, Covert Video, Intiso,
r00t, lock picking, Beyond Hope, LASINT,
csystems, .tm, passwd, 2600 Magazine,
JUWTF, Competitor, EO, Chan, Pathfinders,
SEAL Team 3, JTF, Nash, ISSAA, B61-11,
Alouette, executive, Event Security, Mace,
Cap-Stun, stakeout, ninja, ASIS, ISA, EOD,
Oscor, Merlin, NTT, SL-1, Rolm, TIE,
Tie-fighter, PBX, SLI, NTT, MSCJ, MIT, 69,
RIT, Time, MSEE, Cable & Wireless, CSE,
SUW, J2, Embassy, ETA, Fax, finks, Fax
encryption, white noise, Fernspah, MYK,
GAFE, forcast, import, rain, tiger,
buzzer, N9, pink noise, CRA, M.P.R.I., top
secret, Mossberg, 50BMG, Macintosh
Security, Macintosh Internet Security,
OC3, Macintosh Firewalls, Unix Security,
VIP Protection, SIG, sweep, Medco, TRD,
TDR, Z, sweeping, SURSAT, 5926, TELINT,
Audiotel, Harvard, 1080H, SWS, Asset,
Satellite imagery, force, NAIAG,
Cypherpunks, NARF, 127, Coderpunks, TRW,
remailers, replay, redheads, RX-7,
explicit, FLAME, JTF-6, AVN, ISSSP,
Anonymous, W, Sex, chaining, codes,
Nuclear, 20, subversives, SLIP, toad,
fish, data havens, unix, c, a, b, d,
SUBACS, the, Elvis, quiche, DES, 1*,
NATIA, NATOA, sneakers, UXO, (), OC-12,
counterintelligence, Shaldag, sport, NASA,
TWA, DT, gtegsc, owhere, .ch, hope, emc,
industrial espionage, SUPIR, PI, TSCI,
spookwords, industrial intelligence,
H.N.P., SUAEWICS, Juiliett Class
Submarine, Locks, qrss, loch, 64 Vauxhall
Cross, Ingram Mac-10, wwics, sigvoice,
ssa, E.O.D., SEMTEX, penrep, racal, OTP,
OSS, Siemens, RPC, Met, CIA-DST, INI,
watchers, keebler, contacts, Blowpipe,
BTM, CCS, GSA, Kilo Class, squib,
primacord, RSP, Z7, Becker, Nerd, fangs,
Austin, no|d, Comirex, GPMG, Speakeasy,
humint, GEODSS, SORO, M5, BROMURE, ANC,
zone, SBI, DSS, S.A.I.C., Minox, Keyhole,
SAR, Rand Corporation, Starr, Wackenhutt,
EO, burhop, Wackendude, mol, Shelton,
2E781, F-22, 2010, JCET, cocaine, Vale,
IG, Kosovo, Dake, 36,800, Hillal, Pesec,
Hindawi, GGL, NAICC, CTU, botux, Virii,
CCC, ISPE, CCSC, Scud, SecDef, Magdeyev,
VOA, Kosiura, Small Pox, Tajik, +=,
Blacklisted 411, TRDL, Internet
Underground, BX, XS4ALL, wetsu, muezzin,
Retinal Fetish, WIR, Fetish, FCA, Yobie,
forschung, emm, ANZUS, Reprieve, NZC-332,
edition, cards, mania, 701, CTP, CATO,
Phon-e, Chicago Posse, NSDM, l0ck, spook,
keywords, QRR, PLA, TDYC, W3, CUD, CdC,
Weekly World News, Zen, World Domination,
Dead, GRU, M72750, Salsa, 7, Blowfish,
Gorelick, Glock, Ft. Meade, NSWT,
press-release, WISDIM, burned, Indigo,
wire transfer, e-cash, Bubba the Love
Sponge, Enforcers, Digicash, zip, SWAT,
Ortega, PPP, NACSE, crypto-anarchy, AT&T,
SGI, SUN, MCI, Blacknet, ISM, JCE,
Middleman, KLM, Blackbird, NSV, GQ360,
X400, Texas, jihad, SDI, BRIGAND, Uzi,
Fort Meade, *&, gchq.gov.uk,
supercomputer, bullion, 3, NTTC,
Blackmednet, :, Propaganda, ABC, Satellite
phones, IWIS, Planet-1, ISTA, rs9512c,
South Africa, Sergeyev, Montenegro,
Toeffler, Rebollo, sorot, cryptanalysis,
nuclear, 52 52 N - 03 03 W, Morgan,
Canine, GEBA, INSCOM, MEMEX, Stanley, FBI,
Panama, fissionable, Sears Tower, NORAD,
Delta Force, SEAL, virtual, WASS, WID,
Dolch, secure shell, screws, Black-Ops,
O/S, Area51, SABC, basement, ISWG, $ @,
data-haven, NSDD, black-bag, rack,
TEMPEST, Goodwin, rebels, ID, MD5, IDEA,
garbage, market, beef, Stego, ISAF,
unclassified, Sayeret Tzanhanim, PARASAR,
Gripan, pirg, curly, Taiwan, guest,
utopia, NSG, orthodox, CCSQ, Alica, SHA,
Global, gorilla, Bob, UNSCOM, Fukuyama,
Manfurov, Kvashnin, Marx, Abdurahmon,
snullen, Pseudonyms, MITM, NARF, Gray
Data, VLSI, mega, Leitrim, Yakima, NSES,
Sugar Grove, WAS, Cowboy, Gist, 8182,
Gatt, Platform, 1911, Geraldton, UKUSA,
veggie, XM, Parvus, NAVSVS, 3848,
Morwenstow, Consul, Oratory, Pine Gap,
Menwith, Mantis, DSD, BVD, 1984, blow out,
BUDS, WQC, Flintlock, PABX, Electron,
Chicago Crust, e95, DDR&E, 3M, KEDO,
iButton, R1, erco, Toffler, FAS, RHL, K3,
Visa/BCC, SNT, Ceridian, STE, condor,
CipherTAC-2000, Etacs, Shipiro, ssor, piz,
fritz, KY, 32, Edens, Kiwis, Kamumaruha,
DODIG, Firefly, HRM, Albright, Bellcore,
rail, csim, NMS, 2c, FIPS140-1, CAVE,
E-Bomb, CDMA, Fortezza, 355ml, ISSC,
cybercash, NAWAS, government, NSY, hate,
speedbump, joe, illuminati, BOSS, Kourou,
Misawa, Morse, HF, P415, ladylove,
filofax, Gulf, lamma, Unit 5707, Sayeret
Mat'Kal, Unit 669, Sayeret Golani,
Lanceros, Summercon, NSADS, president,
ISFR, freedom, ISSO, walburn, Defcon VI,
DC6, Larson, P99, HERF pipe-bomb, 2.3 Oz.,
cocaine, $, impact, Roswell, ESN, COS,
E.T., credit card, b9, fraud, ST1,
assassinate, virus, ISCS, ISPR, anarchy,
rogue, mailbomb, 888, Chelsea, 1997,
Whitewater, MOD, York, plutonium, William
Gates, clone, BATF, SGDN, Nike, WWSV,
Atlas, IWWSVCS, Delta, TWA, Kiwi, PGP
2.6.2., PGP 5.0i, PGP 5.1, siliconpimp,
SASSTIXS, IWG, Lynch, 414, Face, Pixar,
IRIDF, NSRB, eternity server, Skytel,
Yukon, Templeton, Johohonbu, LUK, Cohiba,
Soros, Standford, niche, ISEP, ISEC, 51,
H&K, USP, ^, sardine, bank, EUB, USP, PCS,
NRO, Red Cell, NSOF, Glock 26, snuffle,
Patel, package, ISI, INR, INS, IRS, GRU,
RUOP, GSS, NSP, SRI, Ronco, Armani, BOSS,
Chobetsu, FBIS, BND, SISDE, FSB, BfV, IB,
froglegs, JITEM, SADF, advise, TUSA, LITE,
PKK, HoHoCon, SISMI, ISG, FIS, MSW,
Spyderco, UOP, SSCI, NIMA, HAMASMOIS, SVR,
SIN, advisors, SAP, Monica, OAU, PFS,
Aladdin, AG, chameleon man, Hutsul, CESID,
Bess, rail gun, .375, Peering, CSC,
Tangimoana Beach, Commecen, Vanuatu,
Kwajalein, LHI, DRM, GSGI, DST, MITI,
JERTO, SDF, Koancho, Blenheim, Rivera,
Kyudanki, varon, 310, 17, 312, NB, CBM,
CTP, Sardine, SBIRS, jaws, SGDN, ADIU,
DEADBEEF, IDP, IDF, Halibut, SONANGOL,
Flu, &, Loin, PGP 5.53, meta, Faber, SFPD,
EG&G, ISEP, blackjack, Fox, Aum, AIEWS,
AMW, RHL, Baranyi, WORM, MP5K-SD, 1071,
WINGS, cdi, VIA, DynCorp, UXO, Ti, WWSP,
WID, osco, Mary, honor, Templar, THAAD,
package, CISD, ISG, BIOLWPN, JRA, ISB,
ISDS, chosen, LBSD, van, schloss, secops,
DCSS, DPSD, LIF, PRIME, SURVIAC, telex,
SP4, Analyzer, embassy, Golf, B61-7,
Maple, Tokyo, ERR, SBU, Threat, JPL, Tess,
SE, EPL, SPINTCOM, ISS-ADP, Merv, Mexico,
SUR, SO13, Rojdykarna, airframe, 510,
EuroFed, Avi, shelter, Crypto AG.
I know, I know. Hard to believe that such
a list could be real? I mean, if words
like "Rivera" are included, every Yankee
box score would trigger an NSA alert. But,
nevertheless, this is much closer to the
keyword list actually used by NSA. So,
don't ask your wife to take out the
"garbage" over the phone. Don't discuss
"Whitewater" with your e-mail buddies --
unless you don't mind Big Brother
listening in. And, please, don't ask me
what half this stuff means. All I know is
that it irritates the gods of government.
So be careful out there.
-------
A daily radio broadcast adaptation of
Joseph Farah's commentaries can be heard
at http://www.ktkz.com/
--------------------------------------------------------
[WorldNetDaily.com]
---------------------------------------------------------
© 1999 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc.
---------------------------------------------------------
========================================================
From: Secret Squirrel <squi...@echelon.alias.net>
Subject: THE Y2K 100-DAY COUNTDOWN
Date: Tuesday, November 09, 1999 2:13 PM
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 22 1999
[be prepared] [Michael Hyatt]
------------------------------------------
[WND Exclusive Commentary]
------------------------------------------
The Y2K 100-day countdown
------------------------------------------
© 1999 Michael S. Hyatt
Editor's note: Starting today,
best-selling author Michael S. Hyatt
begins a daily Y2K commentary in
WorldNetDaily. With only 100 days left
before the new millennium, we thought it
timely to add this insightful feature.
Hyatt's first book, "The Millennium Bug,"
stayed on the New York Times' "Business
Best Sellers List" for seven months. But
he considers his new book on personal
survival even more important. 'The Y2K
Personal Survival Guide'; is available
from our on-line store.
If you think that Y2K has been all but
solved, think again. Even the officials
spouting the good news don't really
believe it. Forget what they are saying.
If you want to know what they believe,
take a look at what they are doing.
I am constantly reminded by the Y2K
naysayers that government officials,
corporate spokespersons, and the
traditional media are all saying that Y2K
no longer poses a significant threat.
According to them, organizations -- at
least in the United States -- have the
problem well under control and expect to
have their mission critical systems
remediated before Jan. 1. They are on
track, making good progress and confident
that the problem is all but solved. There
may be some minor disruptions, but nothing
catastrophic -- certainly nothing like
what I have suggested could happen if we
don't get a substantial percentage of our
automated systems repaired in time.
The effect of this propaganda -- and
that's precisely what it is -- is apathy
on the part of the general public and
confusion on the part of the Y2K aware. A
recent survey for the CBS news program
"Sunday Morning" found that less than
one-fifth of U.S. households plan to stock
up on food or water in preparation for
possible Y2K disruptions. Although most
are doing nothing at the current time, 18
percent of respondents said they were
thinking about storing some supplies later
this year. The majority of those surveyed,
56 percent, said that no one in their home
was even thinking about doing anything to
prepare for Y2K problems.
Even those who a few short months ago were
convinced that Y2K would adversely affect
their lives have begun to second-guess
their concerns. I've heard from hundreds
of them. Many are wondering if their
preparations were misguided. A few have
even said they feel that they were misled.
Some have asked if they should stop
preparing, now that the threat is past.
The amazing thing about this perception is
that it is wholly misguided and based on
nothing other than the vague assurances of
government and corporate spokespersons.
Yes, there has been progress -- in a few
cases, dramatic progress. But, overall,
the available facts do not support the
conclusion that the Y2K problem is well in
tow, let alone substantially solved. In
fact, I would go so far as to say that
those who are telling us it is, do not
really believe their own public rhetoric.
Why? Because their actions betray their
true perceptions. Let me give you a few
examples.
1. They continue to raise budgets. While
companies are publicly saying that the
problem is nearly solved, many are
continuing to raise their budgets. Why?
Because Y2K projects are turning out to be
more complex and more expensive than they
anticipated. The federal government
initially projected spending $2.3 billion
to repair its computers. Its most recent
estimate (June 15, 1999) is a whopping
$8.03 billion -- an increase of 287
percent. The amazing thing about that is
that this is $1.3 billion more than the
government projected just four months ago!
Corporate Y2K budgets have followed suit.
According to a recent CAP Gemini survey
(May 17, 1999), 85 percent of the Fortune
500 companies said that their spending
would have to rise above current
estimates. To cite but one example, in its
annual shareholder's report filed in
April, retail giant Wal-Mart reported that
it will spend more than twice as much as
it previously expected to solve
Y2K-related problems. Other companies such
as Aetna, AT&T, General Motors,
McDonald's, Merrill Lynch, Sears, and
Xerox have experienced a similar, dramatic
rise in Y2K repair costs.
If Y2K is no big deal, why aren't the
budgets going down or at least leveling
off?
2. They are still pushing the deadlines
out. Although virtually every corporation
in the United States and Canada promised
the public that they would be finished
with their Y2K projects by the end of
1998, as of June 21, 1999, 92 percent of
large companies have not actually
completed the work and one in ten will not
finish until well into next year. Worse,
33 percent admitted to being behind
schedule; 35 percent are still waiting for
mission-critical software to be delivered
by suppliers. According to the CAP Gemini
survey cited earlier, 22 percent of the
Fortune 500 say they do not expect to have
all their mission critical systems tested
and ready for the new millennium by Jan.
1! If this is true of the largest
companies -- presumably the ones with the
most resources to throw at the problem --
what can we expect from smaller companies?
Every indication is that they are running
even further behind.
The federal government has now missed
three Y2K deadlines imposed by the Clinton
administration. The Sept. 30, 1998
deadline came and went without a single
agency able to claim victory. The deadline
was then extended to Dec. 31, 1998. This
time two agencies -- the Social Security
Administration and the Small Business
Administration -- met the deadline. (The
U.S. Customs Service and the Health Care
and Financing Corporation [HCFA] also
claimed compliance, but these claims were
later proven to be bogus.)
The deadline was again extended, this time
to March 31, 1999. On this date, the
administration claimed that 92 percent of
the government's mission critical systems
were Y2K-ready. However, most of this
progress was made by simply reducing the
scope of the project -- from some 9,100
mission critical systems in September 1998
to 6,123 systems in March 1999. In
addition, the simple fact is that 11 out
of 24 key agencies missed the deadline
again, including some of the most
critical: Energy, Treasury, Health and
Human Services, Defense, and
Transportation. Worse, of the 43 systems
identified as "high impact" (e.g., Social
Security, Air Traffic Control, and
Medicare) by the Office of Management and
Budget, only two -- Social Security and
the National Weather Service -- were
compliant as of March 31. (The complete
list can be found here.) What was the
administration's response? You guessed it
-- extend the deadline to Sept. 30. This,
despite the fact that several agencies are
not scheduled to be ready until December
at the earliest.
If Y2K is no big deal, why are so many
organizations having chronic difficulty
meeting their deadlines? Why do they keep
quietly pushing them back, and why isn't
the press calling them to task?
3. They are making contingency plans.
According to another survey conducted by
CAP Gemini (May 31, 1999), the vast
majority of major corporations have begun
to build crisis management centers from
which they will control damage and
coordinate the recovery of Y2K-stricken
technology systems. The survey found that
85 percent of Fortune 1000 companies now
plan to build Y2K command centers, up from
40 percent in November 1998. In addition,
organizations across the country are
canceling vacations from November through
February to make sure their employees are
available to address Y2K-related
disruptions.
According to a report issued by the
Cranfield School of Management (The Sunday
Times, June 13, 1999) 60 percent of
British corporations are already
stockpiling raw materials and finished
goods out of fear of Y2K-related supply
interruptions. My guess is that a similar
percentage of U.S. companies are doing the
same. Even the Federal Reserve is
stockpiling $50 - 70 billion in additional
cash reserves.
Whatever else a contingency plan is, it is
an admission that things may go wrong. But
if Y2K is all but solved, if it will be no
worse than your typical three-day winter
snowstorm, why are so many organizations
going to such lengths to prepare for
failure? (By the way, would someone please
explain to me why it is that when
individuals and families make contingency
plans it is seen as a form of panic, but
when governments and corporations do so,
it is seen as simple common sense?)
4. They are passing legislation to limit
Y2K litigation. When I first began doing
research on Y2K, the GartnerGroup, Giga
Information Group, and others were
estimating that litigation stemming from
unresolved Y2K problems could approach $1
trillion. (Just to put that amount in
perspective, that is one-seventh of the
annual U.S. economic output. It is
equivalent to the entire U.S. healthcare
industry.) According to USA Today,
"Litigation resulting from Year 2000
meltdowns will be more costly than
asbestos, breast implant and Superfund
cleanup lawsuits combined."
The first Y2K lawsuit was filed in August
1997. By the end of 1998, ten more
lawsuits had been filed. Soon, the trickle
was threatening to turn into a flood. As
of March 1999, a total of 80 lawsuits had
been filed along with 790 "demand letters"
(the step in the litigation process that
comes prior to filing a lawsuit). Almost
immediately, the Senate Judiciary
Committee voted 10-7 to limit lawsuits
against high-tech companies stemming from
Y2K malfunctions. By June, the Senate had
passed the Y2K liability bill. On July 1,
the House passed the same bill, and on
July 20, President Clinton signed the bill
into law. The new legislation is aimed at
limiting frivolous lawsuits by setting a
ceiling on punitive damages, narrowing the
guidelines for class-action suits, and
ensuring that defendants will be held
liable only for the share of any damages
that they cause.
But here's the question: why are they so
concerned about mounting litigation? If
Y2K is all but solved, there will be few
failures, right? If there are few
failures, there won't be many lawsuits,
right? You would think so, but obviously
the president and Congress are expecting
something different -- something contrary
to what they are stating publicly.
5. They are even preparing for martial
law. Even though I get asked about this
subject wherever I go, I have studiously
tried to avoid discussing it. It's always
sounded to me like something that only
conspiracy theorists take seriously.
Initially, it was hard for me to admit
that the government might be saying one
thing and doing another. But, as I've
watched Y2K unfold, I've gradually become
more and more convinced that they are
doing exactly that. As I testified before
Congress in September 1998:
I have detected a disturbing attitude
in Washington and elsewhere as I have
traveled the country. There are those
who, if not saying it directly, are
acting as if the people cannot be
trusted with "dangerous information."
This attitude betrays a fundamental
presupposition about our citizens
that I do not share: that is, if
people know the truth they will act
irrationally and without concern for
their neighbors. While this may be
true in isolated incidents, it is not
true of our people as a whole, as any
cursory reading of our history will
show.
Now the handwriting is clearly on the
wall:
* The London Sunday Times reported that
the British government has drawn up
secret plans to use elite special
forces to deal with Y2K disruptions
when Jan. 1 arrives. Code-named
"Operation Surety," the plans call
for members of the SAS -- comparable
to the U.S. military's Army Rangers
or Navy Seals -- to protect not only
key government sites, but also
civilian installations such as banks,
airports, and power stations if civil
unrest becomes widespread. You can
bet that if they are doing this in
Great Britain, they are doing it in
the other NATO nations as well.
* The Washington Post reported that a
contingent of Marines based in
Washington D.C. recently trained in
Quantico, Va., to hone its skills in
dealing with civil unrest. In the
mock scenario, an angry mob of
disgruntled federal workers had not
received their paychecks because of
Y2K computer problems and were
storming government buildings.
Equipped with riot shields and
concertina wire, the Marines
practiced various techniques for
controlling the crowds.
* According to Federal Computer Week,
"the Defense Department has
instructed all military commanders to
maintain their units' ability to go
to war in the event of widespread
Year 2000-related critical
infrastructure failures, relegating
local community assistance to the
bottom of the department's priority
list. Local commanders at military
installations across the United
States and abroad will be authorized
to 'undertake immediate, unilateral,
emergency response actions that
involve measures to save lives,
prevent human suffering or mitigate
great property damage' in the event
of catastrophic infrastructure
failures, according to a recent
memorandum signed by Deputy Secretary
of Defense John Hamre."
These examples do not even include the
myriad reports I am getting from private
citizens and military personnel about
urban assault training, low-flying
military helicopters at all hours of the
day and night (I have witnessed this
myself on two separate occasions, one of
them last night), the erection of convoy
signs on Interstates, special Y2K
operating procedures, and the re-opening
of military bases that have been closed
since World War II. Some of these reports
may, in fact, be bogus, but I can tell you
the volume has increased substantially and
some of them are coming from sources I
trust.
Think about this: If there aren't going to
be significant problems, why would the
military be anticipating civil unrest and
"critical infrastructure failures"? Why
would they be engaged in such
comprehensive mobilization exercises? Why
would the deputy secretary of defense be
instructing all military commanders to be
prepared for a situation that can only be
described as something akin to war?
The bottom line is this: Forget what you
are hearing in the mainstream media.
Forget the happy-face notices you are
receiving in the mail from your suppliers
and from government officials. If these
spin doctors really believed that Y2K has
been substantially solved, they would not
be doing what they are doing.
Specifically, they would not continue to
raise budgets, push the deadlines out,
make contingency plans, pass legislation
to limit Y2K litigation, and prepare for
martial law. But they are, and in doing
so, they betray their true colors.
Again, forget what they are saying, and
watch what they are doing. Like your Momma
used to say, "actions speak louder than
words."
--------------------------------------------------------
[WorldNetDaily.com]
---------------------------------------------------------
© 1999 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc.
---------------------------------------------------------
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
jum...@my-deja.com
ANTISEMITISM ITS HISTORY AND CAUSES
by Bernard LAZARE
Chapter 1
_____________________
PREFACE
PORTIONS of this book, which at various times appeared in the
newspapers and periodicals, received the honour of being noticed and
discussed. This has induced me to write the few lines that follow.
It has been my intention to write neither an apology nor a diatribe,
but an impartial study in history and sociology. I dislike
antisemitism; it is a narrow, one-sided view, still I have sought to
account for it. It was not born without cause, I have searched for its
causes. Whether I have succeeded in discovering them, it is for the
reader to decide.
An opinion as general as antisemitism, which has flourished in all
countries and in all ages, before and after the Christian era, at
Alexandria, Rome, and Antiachia, in Arabia, and in Persia, in
mediaeval and in modern Europe, in a word, in all parts of the world
wherever there are or have been Jewssuch an opinion, it has seemed to
me, could not spring from a mere whim or fancy, but must be the effect
of deep and serious causes. It has, therefore, been my aim to draw a
full-size picture of antisemitism, of its history and causes, to
follow its successive changes and transformations. Such a study might
easily fill volumes. I have, therefore, been obliged to limit its
scope, confining myself to broad outlines and omitting details. I hope
to take up, at no distant day, some of its aspects which could only be
hinted at here, and I shall then endeavour to show what has been the
intellectual, moral, economic and revolutionary role of the Jew in the
world.
BERNARD LAZARE.
Paris, 25 April, 1894.
[Page numbers in brackets]
Chapter One
GENERAL CAUSES OF ANTISEMITISM
To make the history of antisemitism complete, omitting none of the
manifestations of this sentiment and following its divers phases and
modifications, it is necessary to go into the history of Israel since
its dispersion, or, more properly speaking, since the beginning of its
expansion beyond the boundaries of Palestine.
Wherever the Jews settled after ceasing to be a nation ready to defend
its liberty and independence, one observes the development of
antisemitism, or rather anti-Judaism; for antisemitism is an ill
chosen word, which has its raison d'etre only in our day, when it is
sought to broaden this strife between the Jew and the Christians by
supplying it with a philosophy and a metaphysical, rather than a
material reason. If this hostility, this repugnance had been shown
towards the Jews at one time or in one country only, it would be easy
to account for the local causes of this sentiment. But this race has
been the object of hatred with all the nations amidst whom it ever
settled. Inasmuch as the enemies of the Jews belonged to divers races,
as they dwelled far apart from one another, were ruled by different
laws and governed by opposite principles; as they had not the same
customs and differed in spirit from one another, so that they could
not possibly judge alike of any subject, it must needs be that the
general causes of antisemitism have always resided in Israel itself,
and not in those who antagonized it.
This does not mean that justice was always on the side of Israel's
persecutors, or that they did not indulge in all the extremes born of
hatred; it is merely asserted that the Jews were themselves, in part,
at least, the cause of their own ills.
Considering the unanimity of antisemitic manifestations, it can hardly
be admitted, as had too willingly been done, that they were merely due
to a religious war, and one must not view the strife against the Jews
as a struggle of polytheism against monotheism, or that of the Trinity
against Jehovah. The polytheistic, as well as[9] the Christian nations
combated not the doctrine of one sole God, but the Jew.
Which virtues or which vices have earned for the Jew this universal
enmity? Why was he ill-treated and hated alike and in turn by the
Alexandrians and the Romans, by the Persians and the Arabs, by the
Turks and the Christian nations ? Because, everywhere up to our own
days the Jew was an unsociable being. Why was he unsociable ? Because
he was exclusive, and his exclusiveness was both political and
religious, or rather he held fast to his political and religious cult,
to his law.
All through history we see the conquered peoples submit to the laws of
the conqueror, though they may guard their own faith and beliefs. It
was easy for them to do so, for with them a line was drawn between
their religious teachings which had come from the gods, and their
civil laws which emanated from legislation and could be modified
according to circumstances, without inviting upon the reformers the
theological anathema or execration; what had been done by man could be
undone by man. Thus, if the conquered rose up against the conquerors,
it was through patriotism alone, and they were actuated by no other
motive but the desire to regain their land and their liberty. Aside
from these national uprisings, they seldom took exception to being
subjected to the general laws; if they protested, it was against
particular enactments which placed them into a position of inferiority
towards the dominant people; in the history of the Roman conquests we
see the conquered bow to Rome when she extended to them the laws which
governed the empire.
Not so with the Jewish people. In fact, as was observed by Spinoza,1
"the laws revealed by God to Moses were nothing but laws for the
special government of the Hebrews." Moses,2 the prophet and
legislator, assigned the same authority for his judicial and
governmental enactments, as for his religious precepts, i.e.,
revelation. Not only did Yahweh say to the Jews, "Ye shall believe in
the one God and ye shall worship no idols," he also prescribed for
them rules of hygiene and morality; not only did he designate the
territory where sacrifices were to be offered, he also determined the
manner in which that territory was to be governed. Each of the given
laws, whether agrarian, civil, prophylactic, theological, or moral
proceeded from the same authority, so that all these codes[10] formed
a whole, a rigorous system of which naught could be taken away for
fear of sacrilege.
In reality, the Jew lived under the rule of a lord, Yahweh, who could
neither be conquered, nor even assailed, and he knew but one thing,
the law, i.e., the collection of rules and decrees which it had once
pleased Yahweh to give to Mosesa law divine and excellent, made to
lead its followers to eternal bliss; a perfect law which the Jewish
people alone had received.
With such an idea of his Torah, the Jew could not accept the laws of
strange nations; nor could he think of submitting to them; he could
not abandon the divine laws, eternal, good and just, to follow human
laws, necessarily imperfect and subject to decay. Thus, wherever
colonies were founded by the Jews, to whatever land they were
deported, they insisted, not only upon permission to follow their
religion, but also upon exemption from the customs of the people
amidst whom they were to live, and the privileges to govern themselves
by their own laws.
At Rome, at Alexandria, at Antioch, in Cyrenaica they were allowed
full freedom in the matter. They were not required to appear in court
on Saturday;3 they were even permitted to have their own special
tribunals, and were not amenable to the laws of the empire; when the
distribution of grains occurred on a Saturday their share was reserved
for them until the next day,4 they could be decurions, being at the
same time exempt from all practices contrary to their religion;5 they
enjoyed complete self-government, as in Alexandria; they had their own
chiefs, their own senate, their ethnarch, and were not subject to the
general municipal authorities.
Everywhere they wanted to remain Jews, and everywhere they were
granted the privilege of establishing a State within the State. By
virtue of these privileges and exemptions, and immunity from taxes,
they would soon rise above the general condition of the citizens of
the municipalities where they resided; they had better opportunities
for trade and accumulation of wealth, whereby they excited jealousy
and hatred.
Thus, Israel's attachment to its law was one of the first causes of
its unpopularity, whether because it derived from that law benefits
and advantages which were apt to excite envy, or because it prided
itself upon the excellence of its Torah and considered itself above
and beyond other peoples.
Still had the Israelites adhered to pure Mosaism, they could,[11]
doubtless, at some time in their history, have so modified that
Mosaism as to retain none but the religious and metaphysical precepts;
possibly, if they had no other sacred book but the Bible they might
have merged in the nascent church, which enlisted its first followers
among the Sadducees, the Essenes, and the Jewish proselytes. One thing
prevented that fusion and upheld the existence of the Hebrews among
the nations; it was the growth of the Talmud, the authority and rule
of the doctors who taught a pretended tradition. The policy of the
doctors to which we shall return further made of the Jews sullen
beings, unsociable and haughty, of whom Spinoza, who knew them well,
could say: "It is not at all surprising that after being scattered for
so many years they have preserved their identity without a government
of their own, for, by their external rites, contrary to those of other
nations, as well as by the sign of circumcision, they have isolated
themselves from all other nations, even to the extent of drawing upon
themselves the hate of all mankind."6
Man's aim on earth, said the doctors, is the knowledge and observance
of the law, and one cannot thoroughly observe it without denying
allegiance to all but the true law. The Jew who followed these
precepts isolated himself from the rest of mankind; he retrenched
himself behind the fences which had been erected around the Torah by
Ezra and the first scribes,7 later by the Pharisees and the
Talmudists, the successors of Ezra, reformers of primitive Mosaism and
enemies or the prophets. He isolated himself, not merely by declining
to submit to the customs which bound together the inhabitants of the
countries where he settled, but also by shunning all intercourse with
the inhabitants themselves. To his unsociability the Jew added
exclusiveness.
With the law, yet without Israel to put it into practice, the world
could not exist, God would turn it back into nothing; nor will the
world know happiness until it be brought under the universal
domination of that law, i.e., under the domination of the Jews. Thus
the Jewish people is chosen by God as the trustee of His will; it is
the only people with whom the Deity has made a covenant; it is the
choice of the Lord. At the time when the serpent tempted Eve, says the
Talmud, he corrupted her with his venom. Israel, on receiving the
revelation from Sinai, delivered itself from the evil; the rest of
mankind could not recover. Thus, if they have each its guardian and
its protecting constellation, Israel is placed under the very eye of
Jehovah; it is the Eternal's favoured son who has the[12] sole right
to his love, to his good will, to his special protection, other men
are placed beneath the Hebrews; it is by mere mercy that they are
entitled to divine munificence, since the souls of the Jews alone are
descended from the first man. The wealth which has come to the
nations, in truth belongs to Israel, and we hear Jesus Himself reply
to the Greek woman: "It is not meet to take the children's bread and
so cast it unto the dogs."8 This faith in their predestination, in
their election, developed among the Jews an immense pride. It led them
to view the Gentiles with contempt, often with hate, when patriotic
considerations supervened to religious feeling.
When Jewish nationality was in peril, the Pharisees, under John
Hyrcanus, declared impure the soil of strange peoples, as well as all
intercourse among Jews and Greeks. Later, the Shamaites advocated at a
synod complete separation of the Jews from the heathens, and drafted a
set of injunctions, called The Eighteen Things, which ultimately
prevailed over the opposition of the Hillelites. As a result Jewish
unsociability begins to engage the attention of the councils of
Antiochus Sidetes; exception is taken to "their persistence in
shutting themselves up amidst their own kind and avoiding all
intercourse with pagans, and to their eagerness to make that
intercourse more and more difficult, if not impossible."9 And the high
priest Menelaus accuses the law before Antiochus Epiphanes, "of
teaching hatred of the human race, of prohibiting to sit down at the
table of strangers and to show good-will towards them."
If these prescriptions had lost their authority when the cause which
had produced and, in a way, justified them, had disappeared, the evil
would not have been great. Yet we see them reappear in the Talmud and
receive a new sanction from the authority of the doctors. After the
controversy between the Sadducees and the Pharisees had terminated in
the victory of the latter, these injunctions became part of the law,
they were taught with the law and helped to develop and exaggerate the
exclusiveness of the Jews.
Another fear, that of contamination, separated the Jews from the world
and made their isolation still more rigorous. The Pharisees held views
of extreme rigour on the subject of contamination; with them the
injunctions and prescriptions of the Bible were insufficient to
preserve Man from sin. As the sacrificial vases were contaminated by
the least impure contact, they came to regard themselves contaminated
by contact with strangers. Of this fear were born innumerable rules
affecting everyday life: rules relating to clothing,[13] dwelling,
nourishment, all of which were promulgated with a view to save the
Israelites from contamination and sacrilege; all these rules might
properly be observed in an independent state or city, but could not
possibly be enforced in foreign lands, for their strict observance
would require the Jews to flee the society of Gentiles, and thus to
live isolated, hostile to their environment. The Pharisees and the
Rabbinites went still farther. Not satisfied with preserving the body,
they also sought to save the soul. Experience had shown them that
Hellenic and Roman importations imperiled what they deemed their
faith. The names of the Hellenistic high priests, Jason, Menelaus,
etc., reminded the Rabbinites of the times when the genius of Greece,
winning over one portion of Israel, came very near conquering it. They
knew that the Sadducean party, friendly to the Greeks, had paved the
way for Christianity, as much as the Alexandrians and all those who
maintained that "none but the legal provisions, clearly enunciated in
the Mosaic law were binding, whereas all other rules growing from
local traditions or subsequently issued, could lay no claim to
rigorous observance.10
It was under Greek influence that the books and oracles originated
which prepared the minds for Messiah. The Hellenistic Jews, Philo and
Aristobulus, the pseudo- Phocylides and the pseudo-Longinus, authors
of the Sibylline oracles and of the pseudo-Orphics, all these
successors of the prophets who continued their work, led mankind to
Christ. And it may be said that true Mosaism, purified and enlarged by
Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, broadened and generalized by the
Judaeo-Hellenists, would have brought Israel to Christianity, but for
Ezraism,Pharisaism and Talmudism, which held the mass of the Jews
bound to strict observances and narrow ritual practices.
To guard God's people, to keep it safe from evil influences, the
doctors exalted their law above all things. They declared that no
study but that of the law alone became an Israelite, and as a whole
life-time was hardly sufficient to learn and penetrate all the
subtleties and all the casuistry of that law, they prohibited the
study of profane sciences and foreign languages. "Those among us who
learn several languages are not held in esteem," said Josephus;
contempt alone was soon thought insufficient, they were excom
municated. Nor did these expulsions satisfy the Rabbinites. Though
deprived of Plato, had not the Jew still the Bible, could he not
listen to the voice of the prophets? As the book could not be
proscribed,[14] it was belittled and made subordinate to the Talmud;
the doctors declared: "The law is water, the Mishna is wine." And the
reading of the Bible was considered less beneficial, less conducive to
salvation than the reading of the Mishna.
However, the Rabbinites could not kill Jewish curiosity with one blow;
it required centuries. It was as late as the fourteenth century, after
Ibn Ezra, Rabbi Bechai, Maimonides, Bedares, Joseph Caspi, Levi Ben
Gerson, Moses of Narbonne, and many others, were gone, all true sons
of Philo and the Alexandrians, who strove to verify Judaism by foreign
philosophy; after Asher Ben Yechiel had induced the assembly of the
rabbis at Barcelona to excommunicate those who would study profane
sciences; after Rabbi Shalem, of Montpellier had complained to the
Dominicans of the Moreh Nebukhim, and this book, the highest
expression of the ideas of Maimonides, had been burnedit was only
after all this that the rabbis ultimately triumphed.12
Their end was attained. They had cut off Israel from the community of
nations; they had made of it a sullen recluse, a rebel against all
laws, foreign to all feeling fraternity, closed to all beautiful,
noble and generous ideas; they had made of it a small and miserable
nation, soured by isolation, brutalized by a narrow education,
demoralized and corrupted by an unjustifiable pride.13 With this
transformation of the Jewish spirit and the victory of sectarian
doctors, coincides the beginning of official persecution. Until that
epoch there had only been outbursts of local hatred, but no systematic
vexations. With the triumph of the Rabbinites, the ghettos come into
being. The expulsions and massacres commence. The Jews want to live
aparta line is drawn against them. They detest the spirit of the
nations amidst whom they livethe nations chase them. They burn the
Morehtheir Talmud is burned and they themselves are burned with it.14
It would seem that no further agency was needed to render the
separation of the Jews from the rest of mankind complete and to make
them an object of horror and reprobation. Still another cause must be
added to those just mentioned: the indomitable and tenacious
patriotism of Israel.
Certainly, every people was attached to the land of its birth.
Conquered, beaten by the conquerors, driven into exile or forced into
slavery, they remained true to the sweet memories of their plundered
city or the country they had lost. Still none other knew[15] the
patriotic enthusiasm of the Jews. The Greek, whose city was destroyed,
could elsewhere build anew the hearth upon which his ancestors
bestowed their blessings; the Roman who went into exile took along
with him his penates; Athens or Rome had nothing of the mystic
fatherland like Jerusalem.
Jerusalem was the guardian of the Tabernacle which received the divine
word; it was the city of the only Temple, the only place in the world
where God could efficiently be worshipped and sacrifices offered to
Him. It was only much later, at a very late day, that prayer houses
were erected in other towns of Juda, or Greece, or Italy; still in
those houses they confined themselves to the reading of the law and
theological discussion; the pomp of Jehovah was known nowhere but at
Jerusalem, the chosen sanctuary. When a temple was built at
Alexandria, it was considered heretical; indeed, the ceremonies which
were celebrated there had no sense, for they ought not to be performed
anywhere but in a true temple; so St. Chrysostom, after the dispersion
of the Jews and the destruction of their city, was justified in
saying: "The Jews offer sacrifices in all parts of the earth except
there where the sacrifice is permitted and valid, i.e., at Jerusalem."
All Jews of the period of dispersion sent to Jerusalem the didrachm
tax for the maintenance of the temple; once in their lives they came
to the holy city, as later the Mohammedans came to Mecca; after their
death they were carried to Palestine, and numerous craft anchored at
the coast, loaded with small coffins which were thence forwarded on
camel's back.
It was because in Jerusalem only, in the land given by God to their
ancestors, their bodies would be resurrected. There those who had
believed in Yahweh, who had observed his law and obeyed his word,
would awake at the sound of the last trumpet and appear before their
Lord. Nowhere but there could they rise at the appointed hour; every
other land but that washed by the yellow Jordan was a vile land,
fouled by idolatry, deprived of God.
When the fatherland was dead, when adversity was sweeping Israel all
over the world, after the Temple had perished in flames, and when the
heathens occupied the holiest ground, mourning over bygone days became
everlasting in the soul of the Jew. It was over; they could no longer
hope to see on the day of mercy the black buck carry away their sins
into the desert, neither could they see the lamb killed for the
passover night, or bring their offerings to[16] the altar; and,
deprived of Jerusalem during life, they would not be brought there
after death.
God ought not to abandon his children, reasoned the pious; and naive
legends came to comfort the exiles. Near the tombs of the Jews who die
in exile, they said, Jehovah opens long caverns through which the
corpses roll as far as Palestine, whereas the pagan who dies there,
near the consecrated hills, is removed from the chosen land, for he is
unworthy of remaining there where the resurrection will take place.
Still that did not satisfy them. They did not resign themselves to
visiting Jerusalem merely as pitiable pilgrims, weeping before the
ruined walls, many of them so maddened by grief as to let themselves
be trampled upon by horses' hoofs, embracing the ground while moaning;
they could not believe that God, that the blessed city had abandoned
them; with Judah Levita they exclaimed: "Zion, hast thou forgotten thy
unfortunate children who groan in slavery ?"
They expected that their Lord would by his mighty right hand raise the
fallen walls; they hoped that a prophet, a chosen one, would bring
them back to the promised land; and how many times, in the course of
ages, have they left their homes, their fortunes they who are
reproached of being too much attached to worldly goodsin order to
follow a false Messiah who undertook to lead them and promised them
the return so much longed for ! Thousands were attracted by Serenus,
Moses of Crete, Alroi, and massacred in the expectation of the happy
day.
With the Talmudists these sentiments of popular enthusiasm, this
mystic heroism underwent a transformation. The doctors taught the
restoration of the Jewish empire; in order that Jerusalem might be
born anew from its ruins, they wanted to preserve the people of Israel
pure, to prevent them from mixing with other people, to inculcate on
them the idea that they were everywhere in exile, amidst enemies that
held them captive. They said to their disciples: "Do not cultivate
strange lands, soon you will cultivate your own; do not attach
yourself to any land, for thus will you be unfaithful to the memory of
your native land; do not submit to any king, for you have no master
but the Lord of the Holy Land, Jehovah; do not scatter amongst the
nations, you will forfeit your salvation and you will not see the
light of the day of resurrection; remain such as you left your house;
the hour will come and you will see again[17] the hills of your
ancestors, and those hills will then be the centre of the world, which
will be subject to your power."
Thus all those complex sentiments which had in olden days served to
build up the hegemony of Israel, to maintain its character as a
nation, to develop a high and powerful originality, all those virtues
and vices which gave it the spirit and countenance necessary to
preserve a nation; which enabled it to attain greatness and later to
defend its independence with desperate valour worthy of admiration;
all that, after the Jews had ceased to be a State, combined to shut
them up in the most complete, the most absolute isolation.
This isolation has been their strength, in the opinion of some
apologists. If they mean to say that owing to it the Jews have
survived, so much is true; if the conditions are considered, however,
under which the Jews have preserved their identity as a people, it is
obvious that this isolation has been their weakness, and that they
have survived up to modern times, as a race of pariahs, persecuted ,
often martyred. Moreover, it is not only to their seclusion that they
owe this surprising persistence. Their extraordinary solidarity, due
to their misfortunes, and mutual support count for very much; and even
in our day, when they take part in public life in some countries,
having abandoned their sectarian dogmas, this very solidarity prevents
them from dissolving and disappearing as a people, by conferring upon
them certain benefits to which they are by no means indifferent.
This solicitude for worldly goods, which is a marked feature of the
Hebrew character, has not been without effect upon the conduct of the
Jews, especially since they left Palestine; by directing them along
certain avenues, to the exclusion of all others, this feature of their
character has drawn upon them the most violent animosities. The soul
of the Jew is twofold: it is both mystic and positive. His mysticism
has come down from the theophanies of the desert to the metaphysical
dreaming of the kabbala; his positivism, or rather his rationalism,
manifests itself in the sentences of the Ecclesiastes as well as the
legislative enactments of the rabbis and the dogmatic controversies of
the theologians. Still if mysticism leads to a Philo or Spinoza,
rationalism leads to the usurer, the weigher of gold; it creates the
greedy trader. It is true that at times these two states of the mind
are found in just opposition, and the Israelite, as it occurred in the
middle ages, can split his life into two parts: one devoted to
meditation on the Absolute, the other to business.
[18] Of the Jewish love for gold, there can be no question here.
Though it may have grown so abnormal with this race as to have become
well-nigh the only motive of their actions, though it may have
engendered a violent and exasperated antisemitism, yet it cannot be
classed among the general causes of antisemitism. It was, on the
contrary, the effect of those very causes, and we shall see that it is
partly the exclusiveness, the persistent patriotism, and pride of
Israel, that has driven it to become the hated usurer of the whole
world.
In fact, all the causes we have just enumerated, if they be general,
are not the only ones. I have called them general, because they depend
upon one constant element: the Jew. Still the Jew is only one of the
factors of antisemitism; he provokes it by his presence, but he is not
the only one that determines it. The nations among whom the Israelites
have lived, their manners, their customs, their religion, the
philosophy even of the nations in whose midst Israel has developed
determine the particular character of antisemitism, which changes with
time and place.
We shall trace these modifications and variations of antisemitism
through the course of ages down to our epoch; and we shall examine
whether, in some countries at least, the general causes I have
attempted to deduce are still operating, or whether the reasons for
modern antisemitism must not be sought elsewhere.
FOOTNOTES
1 Tractatus theologico-politicus.
2 When I say "Moses assigned," it is not to maintain that Moses himself
elaborated all the laws which pass under his name, but merely because
he is credited with having revised them.
3 Cod. Theod., book II, title III, §2. Cod. Just., book I, title IX,
§2.
4 Philo, Legat. ad Cai.
5 Dig., book I, title III, §3. (Decisions by Septimius Severus and
Caracalla.)
6 Spinoza, Tractatus theologico-politicus.
7 The Dibre Sopherim.
8 Mark, vii, 27.
9 Derembourg, Geographie de la Palestine.
10 Graetz, Histoire des Juits, b. II, p. 469.
11 Ant. Jud., xx, 9.
12 The Jewish thought still had a few lights in the fifteenth and
sixteenth century. But those among the Jews who produced anything
mostly took part in the struggle between philosophy and religion,
and were without influence upon their co-religionists; their
existence is therefore no denial of the spirit inculcated on the
masses by the rabbis. Besides, one meets, throughout that period,
none but unimportant commentators, physicians and translators;
there appears no great mind among them. One must go as far as
Spinoza to find a Jew truly capable of high ideas; it is wellknown
how the Synagogue treated Spinoza.
13 "Insolentia Judaeorum," spoken of by Agobard, Amolon and the
polemists of the Middle Ages means nothing but the pride of the
Jews, who consider themselves the chosen people. This expression
has not the sense forced into it by modern antisemites, who, it
may be noted, are poor historians.
14 The Roman laws, the Visigothic ordinances and those of the Councils
will probably be cited; yet nearly all these measures proceeded
principally from Jewish proselytism. It was not until the
thirteenth century that the Jews were radically and officially
separated from the Christians, by ghettos, by symbols of infamy
(the hat, the cape, etc.). See Ulysse Robert, Les Signes d'infamie
au Moyen Age. (Paris, 1891.)
ANTISEMITISM
ITS HISTORY AND CAUSES
by Bernard LAZARE
_____________________
Chapter Two
ANTI-JUDAISM IN ANTIQUITY
[Page numbers in brackets]
MODERN antisemites who are in quest of sires for themselves,
unhesitatingly trace the first demonstrations against the Jews back to
the days of ancient Egypt. For that purpose they are particularly
pleased to refer to Genesis, xliii, 32, where it is said: "The
Egyptians might not eat bread with the Hebrews; for that it is an
abomination unto the Egyptians." They also rely upon a few verses of
the Exodus, among them the following: "Behold, the people of the
children of Israel are more and mightier than we; come on, let us deal
wisely with them, lest they multiply." (Exodus, i, 9, 10.)
It is certain that the sons of Jacob who came to the land of Goshen
under the Shepherd Pharaoh Aphobis, were treated by the Egyptians with
the same contempt as their brothers, the Hyksos, referred to in
hieroglyphic texts as lepers, called also "plague" and "pest" in some
inscriptions.15 They arrived at that very epoch when a very strong
national sentiment manifested itself against the Asiatic invaders,
hated for their cruelty; this sentiment soon led to the war of
independence, which resulted in the final victory of Ahmos I., and the
enslavement of the Hebrews. However, unless one is a violent anti-Jew,
it is impossible to perceive in those remote disturbances anything
beyond a mere incident in a struggle between conquerors and conquered.
There is no antisemitism until the Jews, having abandoned their native
land, settle as immigrants in foreign countries and come into contact
with natives or older settlers, whose customs, race and religion are
different from those of the Hebrews.
Accordingly, the history of Haman and Mordecai may be taken as the
beginning of antisemitism, and the antisemites have not failed so to
do. This view is, perhaps, more correct. Though the historical reality
of the book of Esther can scarcely be relied upon, still it is worthy
of note that its author puts into the mouth of Haman some of the
complaints, which, at a later period, are uttered by Tacitus and other
Latin writers. "And Haman said unto the[20] king, Ahasuerus: 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." (Esther, iii, 8.)
The pamphleteers of the middle ages, of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, and of our own time, say nothing else; and if the history
of Haman is apocryphal, which is highly probable, still it cannot be
denied that the author of the Book of Esther has very ably brought out
some of the causes, which for many centuries exposed the Jews to the
hatred of nations.
Yet we must go to the period of Jewish expansion abroad, to be enabled
to observe with certainty that hostility against them, which by a
peculiar misuse of terms has in our days been called antisemitism.
Some traditions refer the entrance of the Jews into the ancient world
to the epoch of the first captivity. While Nabu- Kudur-Ussur led away
to Babylonia a portion of the Jewish people, many of the Israelites,
to escape from the conqueror, fled to Egypt, to Tripoli, and reached
the Greek colonies. Tradition brings back to the same period the
arrival of the Jews in China and India. Historically, however, the
wanderings of the Jews across the globe commence in the fourth century
before our era. About 331 B.C. Alexander transported some Jews to
Alexandria, Ptolemy sent some of them to Cyrenaica, and about the same
time Seleucus led some of them to Antioch. When Jesus was born Jewish
colonies flourished everywhere, and it was among them that
Christianity recruited its first adherents. There were Jews in Egypt,
in Phoenicia, in Syria, in Coele-Syria, in Pamphylia, in Cilicia, and
as far as Bithynia. In Europe they had settled in Thessalia, Boeotia,
Macedonia, Attica and Peloponnesus. They were to be found in the Great
Isles, on Euboea, on Crete, on Cyprus, and at Rome. "It is not easy to
find a place on earth," says Strabo, "which has not received that
race."
Why were the Jews hated in all those countries, in all those cities?
Because they never entered any city as citizens, but always as a
privileged class. Though having left Palestine, they wanted above all
to remain Jews, and their native country was still Jerusalem, i.e.,
the only city where God might be worshipped and sacrifices offered in
His Temple. They formed everywhere republics, as it were, united with
Judea and Jerusalem, and from every place they[21] remitted monies to
the high priest in payment of a special tax for the maintenance of the
Temple: the didrachm.
Moreover, they separated themselves from other inhabitants by their
rites and their customs; they considered the soil of foreign nations
impure and sought to constitute themselves in every city into a sort
of a sacred territory. They lived apart, in special quarters, secluded
among themselves, isolated, governing themselves by virtue of
privileges which were jealously guarded by them, and excited the envy
of their neighbours. They intermarried amongst themselves and en
tertained no strangers, for fear of pollution. The mystery with which
they surrounded themselves excited curiosity as well as aversion.
Their rites appeared strange and gave occasion for ridicule; being
unknown, they were misrepresented and slandered.
At Alexandria they were quite numerous. According to Philo,16
Alexandria was divided into five wards. Two were inhabited by the
Jews. The privileges accorded to them by Caesar were engraved on a
column and guarded by them as a precious treasure. They had their own
Senate with exclusive jurisdiction in Jewish affairs, and they were
judged by an ethnarch. They were ship-owners, traders, farmers, most
of them wealthy; the sumptuousness of their monuments and synagogues
bore witness to it. The Ptolemies made them farmers of the revenues;
this was one of the causes of popular hatred against them. Besides,
they had a monopoly of navigation on the Nile, of the grain trade and
of provisioning Alexandria, and they extended their trade to all the
provinces along the Mediterranean coast. They accumulated great
fortunes; this gave rise to the invidia auri Judaici. The growing
resentment against these foreign cornerers, constituting a nation
within a nation, led to popular disturbances; the Jews were frequently
assaulted, and Germanicu, among others, had great trouble protecting
them.
The Egyptians took revenge upon them by deriding their religious
customs, their abhorrence of pork. They once paraded in the city a
fool, Carabas by name, adorned with a papyrus diadem, decked in a
royal gown, and they saluted him as king of the Jews. Under
Philadelphus, one of the first Ptolemies, Manetho, the high-priest of
the Temple at Heliopolis, lent his authority to the popular hatred; he
considered the Jews descendants of the Hyksos usurpers, and said that
that leprous tribe had been expelled for sacrilege and impiousness.
Those fables were repeated by Chaeremon and Lysimachus. It was not
only popular animosity, however, that[22] persecuted the Jews; they
had also against them the Stoics and the Sophists. The Jews, by their
proselytism, interfered with the Stoics; there was a rivalry for
influence between them, and, notwithstanding their common belief in
divine unity, there was opposition between them. The Stoics charged
the Jews with irreligiousness, judging by the sayings of Posidonius
and Apollonius Molo; they had a very scant knowledge of the Jewish
religion. The Jews, they said, refuse to worship the gods; they do not
consent to bow even before the divinity of the emperor. They have in
their sanctuary the head of an ass and render homage to it; they are
cannibals; every year they fatten a man and sacrifice him in a grove,
after which they divide among themselves his flesh and swear on it to
hate strangers. "The Jews, says Apollonius Molo, are enemies of all
mankind; they have invented nothing useful, and they are brutal." To
this Posidonius adds: "They are the worst of all men."
Not less than the Stoics did the Sophists detest the Jews. But the
causes of their hatred were not religious, but, I should say, rather
literary. From Ptolemy Philadelphus, until the middle of the third
century, the Alexandrian Jews, with the intent of sustaining and
strengthening their propaganda, gave themselves to forging all texts
which were capable of lending support to their cause. The verses of
Aeschylus, of Sophocles, of Euripides, the pretended oracles of
Orpheus, preserved in Aristobulus and the Stromata of Clement of
Alexandria were thus made to glorify the one God and the Sabbath.
Historians were falsified or credited with the authorship of books
they had never written. It is thus that a History of the Jews was
published under the name of Hecataeus of Abdera. The most important of
these inventions was the Sibylline oracles, a fabrication of the
Alexandrian Jews, which prophesied the future advent of the reign of
the one God. They found imitators, however, for since the Sibyl had
begun to speak, in the second century before Christ, the first
Christians also made her speak. The Jews would appropriate to
themselves even the Greek literature and philosophy. In a commentary
on the Pentateuch, which has been preserved for us by Eusebius,l7
Aristobulus attempted to show that Plato and Aristotle had found their
metaphysical and ethical ideas in an old Greek translation of the
Pentateuch. The Greeks were greatly incensed at such treatment of
their literature and philosophy, and out of revenge they circulated
the slanderous stories of Manetho, adapting them to those of the
Bible, to the great fury of the Jews; thus the con- [23]fusion of
languages was identified with the myth of Zeus robbing the animals of
their common language. The Sophists, wounded by the conduct of the
Jews, would speak against them in their teaching. One among them,
Apion, wrote a Treatise against the Jews. This Apion was a peculiar
individual, a liar and babbler, to a degree uncommon even among
rhetors, and full of vanity, which earned him from Tiberius the
nickname "Cymbalum mundi." His stories were famous; he claimed to have
called out, by means of magic herbs, the shade of Homer, says Pliny.
Apion repeated in his Treatise against the Jews the stories of
Manetho, which had been previously restated by Chaeremon and
Lysimachus, and supplemented them by quoting from Posidonius and
Apollonius Molo. According to him, Moses was "nothing but a seducer
and wizard," and his laws contained "nothing but what is bad and
dangerous."18
As to the Sabbath, the name was derived, he said, from a disease, a
sort of an ulcer, with which the Jews were afflicted, and which the
Egyptians called sabbatosim, i.e., disease of the groins.
Philo and Josephus undertook the defence of the Jews and fought the
Sophists and Apion. In Contra Apionem, Josephus is very severe on his
adversary. "Apion," says he, "is as stupid as an ass and as imprudent
as a dog, which is one of the gods of his nation." Philo, on the other
hand, prefers to attack the Sophists in general, and if he mentions
Apion at all, in his Legatio ad Caium, it is merely because Apion was
sent to Rome to prefer charges against the Jews before Caligula.
In his Treatise on Agriculture he draws a very black picture of the
Sophists, and insinuates that Moses has compared them to hogs.
Nevertheless, in his other writings, he advises his co-religionists
not to irritate them, so as to avoid all provocation to disturbances,
but to await patiently their chastisement, which will come on the day
the Jewish Empire, the empire of salvation, will be established on
earth.
Philo's injunctions were not heeded; the exasperation on both sides
often led to violent riots and massacres of Jews; the latter, however,
valiantly defended themselves.19
At Rome the Jews had a powerful and wealthy colony as early as the
first year of the Christian era. If Valerius Maximus may be trusted
they first came to the city about 139 B.C., during the consulate of
Popilius Loenus and Cajas Calpwinius.20[24]
Certain it is that, in 160 B.C., an embassy from Judas Maccabee
arrived in Rome to negotiate an alliance with the Republic against the
Syrians; other embassies followed, in 143 and 139.21
The settlement of the Jews at Rome probably dates from that time.
Under Pompey they came in numbers, and as early as 58 B.C., they had
quite a settlement. Turbulent and formidable, they were an important
factor in politics. Caesar availed himself of their support during the
civil wars and lavished favours upon them; he even granted them
exemption from military service. Under Augustus the distribution of
free bread was postponed for them whenever it fell due on Saturday.
The Emperor gave them permission to collect the didrachm which was
sent to Palestine, and he ordered the sacrifice of one or two lambs to
be offered in his behalf at the Temple of Jerusalem for all time to
come. When Tiberius became emperor, there were at Rome 20,000 Jews,
who were organized in colleges and sodalitates.
Except the Jews of prominent families, like the Herods and the
Agrippas, who mixed in public life, the Jewish masses lived in
retirement. The majority resided in the dirtiest and busiest quarter
of the city, the Transtiberinus. They were to be seen near the Via
Portuensis, the Emporium and the Great Circus, in the Campus Martius,
and in Suburra, beyond the Capenian Gate, on the banks of the Egerian
Creek, and near the sacred grove. They were engaged in retail trade
and the sale of second-hand goods; those at the Capenian Gate were
fortune tellers. The Jew of the Ghetto is already there.
At Rome the same causes were at work as at Alexandria. There, also,
the excessive privileges of the Jews, the wealth of some of them, as
well as their unheard-of luxury and ostentation, excited popular
hatred. This resentment was aggravated by deeper and more important
reasons of a religious character; it may even be maintained, strange
as it may seem, that the motive of Roman anti-Judaism was religious.
The Roman religion resembled in nothing the admirable and profoundly
symbolic polytheism of the Greeks. It was ritual rather than mythical;
it consisted of customs closely connected with the doings of everyday
life, as well as with all sorts of public acts. Rome was one body with
its gods; its greatness was bound, as it were, with the rigorous
observance of the practices of their national religion; its glory
depended upon the piety of its citizens, and it[25] seems that the
Roman must have had, like the Jew, that notion of a covenant between
the deities and himself, which was to be scrupulously lived up to by
both parties. Somehow or other, the Roman was always in the presence
of his gods; he left his hearth, where they abode, only to find them
again in the Forum, on the public highways, in the Senate, even in the
fields, where they kept watch over the power of Rome. At all times and
on all occasions sacrifices were offered; the warriors and the
diplomats were guided by auguries, and all authority, civil as well as
military, partook of the priesthood, for the officer could not perform
his duties unless he knew the rites and observances of the cult.
It was this cult that for centuries sustained the Republic, and its
commandments were faithfully obeyed; when they were changed, when the
traditions became adulterated, when the rules were violated, Rome saw
its glory fade, and its agony commenced.
Thus the Roman religion preserved itself for a long time without
change. True, Rome was familiar with foreign cults; she saw the
worshipers of Isis and Osiris, those of the great Mother and those of
Sabazius; still, though admitting them into her Pantheon, she gave
them no place in her national religion. All these Orientals were
tolerated; the citizens were allowed to practice their superstitions,
provided they were harmless; but when Rome perceived that a new faith
was subversive of the Roman spirit, she was pitiless, as in the case
of the conspiracy of the Bacchantes, or the expulsion of Egyptian
priests. Rome guarded herself against the foreign spirit; she feared
affiliation with religious societies; she was afraid even of Greek
philosophers, and the Senate, in 161, upon the report of the praetor
Marcus Pomponius, barred them from entering the city.
From this, one may understand the feeling of the Romans toward the
Jews, Greeks, Asiatics, Egyptians, Germans, or Gauls, while bringing
with them their rites and beliefs, made no objection to bowing before
Mars of the Palatine, or even before Jupiter Latiaris. They conformed
within certain limits, to the rules of the city, to its religious
customs; at all events, they showed no opposition. Not so the Jews.
They brought with them a religion as rigid, as ritualistic, as
intolerant, as the Roman religion. Their worship of Yahweh excluded
all other worship; thus they shocked their fellow citizens by refusing
to swear to the eagles, whereas the eagle was the deity of the legion.
As their religious faith was blended with the observance of certain
social laws, the adoption of this faith was pregnant[26] with a change
of the social order. Therefore the Romans were worried by its
establishment in their midst, for the Jews were eager to make
proselytes.
jum...@my-deja.com
The proselytic spirit of the Jews is attested by all the historians,
and Philo justly says: "Our customs win over and convert the
barbarians and the Hellenes, the continent and the isles, the Orient
and the Occident, Europe and Asia, the whole world, from end to end."
The ancient nations, at their decline, were deeply attracted by
Judaism, by its dogma of divine unity, by its morals; many of the poor
people were attracted by the privileges accorded to the Jews. These
proselytes were divided into two great classes: those who accepted the
circumcision and thereby entered into the Jewish community, thus
becoming strangers to their families, and those who, without complying
with the requisites for admission to the community, nevertheless
gathered around it.
These conversions, generally by suasion and at times by force, as when
the rich Jews converted their slaves, were bound to create a reaction.
It was this chief cause, together with the secondary causes previously
referred to, viz., the wealth of the Jews, their political influence,
their privileged condition, that led to anti-Judaic demonstrations at
Rome. The majority of Roman and Greek writers from Cicero on bear
witness to this state of mind.
Cicero, who was a disciple of Apollonius Molo, inherited his teacher's
prejudices; he found the Jews in his way: they were with the popular
party against the party of the Senate, to which he belonged. He feared
them, and we can see from some passages of Pro Flacco, that he hardly
dared to speak of them, so numerous were they around him and in the
public place. Nevertheless, one day he burst forth. "Their barbarous
superstitions must be fought," says he; he accuses them of being a
nation "given to suspicion and slander," and proceeds by saying that
they "show contempt for the splendour of the Roman power,"22 They were
to be feared, according to himthose men who, detaching themselves from
Rome, turned their eyes towards the far away city, that Jerusalem, and
supported it by denaries which they drew from the Republic. Moreover,
he reproached them for winning citizens over to the Sabbatarian rites.
It is this last charge that recurs most frequently in the writings of
the polemists, the poets and the historians. The Jewish religion,[27]
which charmed those who had penetrated its essence, was repulsive to
others who had a scant knowledge of it and regarded it as a heap of
absurd and dismal rites. The Jews are nothing but a superstitious
nation, says Persius ;23 their Sabbath is a lugubrious day, adds
Ovid;24 they worship the hog and the ass, affirms Petronius.25
Tacitus, well informed as he is, repeats, with regard to Judaism, the
fables of Manetho and Posidonius. The Jews, says he, are descended
from lepers, they honour the head of an ass, they have infamous rites.
He further specifies his charges, which, one would say, are those of
modern French Nationalists: "All those who embrace their faith," says
he, "undergo circumcision, and the first instruction they receive is
to despise the gods, to forswear their country, to forget father,
mother and children." And he warms up by saying: "The Jews consider as
profane all that is held sacred with us."26 Suetonius and Juvenal
repeat the same thing; the principal charge reads: "They have a
particular cult and particular laws; they despise the Roman laws."27
This is likewise the complaint of Pliny: "They despise the gods."28
Seneca has the same grudge, still with the philosopher other motives
supervene. There was a rivalry between Seneca, the Stoic, and the
Jews, the same as there had been between the Stoics and the Jews at
Alexandria. He quarreled less with their contempt of the gods than
with their proselytism which thwarted the spread of the doctrine of
the Stoics. He thus gives expression to his displeasure: "The Romans,"
says he regretfully, "have adopted the Sabbath."29 And, further
speaking of the Jews, he says in conclusion: "This abominable nation
has succeeded in spreading its usages throughout the whole world; the
conquered have given their laws to the conquerors."30 Seneca's view
was in accord with the attitude of both the Republic and the Empire,
by which measures were adopted from time to time to check Jewish
proselytism. Under Tiberius, in the year 22, a senatus-consult was
directed against the Egyptian and Judaic superstitions and four
thousand Jews, says Tacitus, were deported to Sardinia. Caligula
subjected them to vexatious persecution; he encouraged the doings of
Flaccus in Egypt, and Flaccus, sustained by the Emperor, robbed the
Jews of the privileges granted to them by Caesar; he took away from
them their synagogue and directed that they might be treated as in
habitants of a captured city. Domitian imposed a special tax upon Jews
and those who led a Judaic life, hoping by the levy of the tax[28] to
stop conversions, and Antoninus Pius prohibited the Jews from
circumcising other than their sons.
Anti-Judaism manifested itself not only at Rome and Alexandria, but
wherever there were Jews: at Antioch, where great massacres occurred;
in Lybia, where, under Vespasian, the governor Catullus stirred up the
populace against them; in Ionia, where, under Augustus, the Greek
cities, by an understanding among themselves, forced the Jews either
to renounce their faith or to bear the entire burden of public
expenditures.
Yet it is impossible to speak of the persecution of the Jews without
speaking of the persecution of the Christians. For a long time Jews
and Christians, these hostile brothers, were included in the same
contempt, and the same causes which made the Jews hateful made the
Christians hateful as well. The disciples of the Nazarene brought into
the ancient world the same deadly principles. If the Jews taught the
people to leave their gods, to abandon husband, father, child and
wife, and to come to Jehovah, Jesus also said: "I have not come to
unite, but to separate." The Christians, like the Jews, refused to bow
to the eagle; like the Jews they would not lie prostrate before idols.
Like the Jews, the Christians knew another country than Rome; like the
Jews, they would be oblivious of their civic, rather than their
religious duties.
Thus, during the first years of the Christian era, the Synagogue and
the ancient Church were despised alike. Simultaneously with the Jews
"a certain chrestus''31 and his followers were driven from Rome. Each
side endeavoured to convince the people that it ought not to be
mistaken for the other, and no sooner did Christianity make itself
heard than it rejected, in its turn, the descendants of Abraham.
FOOTNOTES
15 Inscription of Aahmes, chief of the mariners, cited in Ledrain's
Histoire du
peuple d'Israel, I, p. 53.
16 In Flaccum.
17 Preparatio Evangelica.
18 Josephus, Contra Apionem, book II, ch. 6.
19 Philo, In Flaccum.
20 Valerius Maximus, I, 3, 2.
[185]
21 Maccab. viii., 11, 17-32- xii, 1-3; xiv, 16-19, 24.-Josephus,
Antiqu. Jud., xii, 110; xiii, 5, 7, 9 Mai; Script. vet., 111,
part 3, p. 998.
22 Pro Flacco.
23 Sat., V.
24 Ars amatoria, I, 75, 76.
25 Fragm. poet.
26 Tac., Hist., v. 4, 5.
27 Juvenal, Sat., xiv, 96, 104.
28 Hist. nat., xii, 4.
29 Epistle xv.
30 De superstitione, fragm. xxxvi.
31 Suetonius, Claud., 25.
ANTISEMITISM
ITS HISTORY AND CAUSES
by Bernard LAZARE
_____________________
Chapter Three
ANTI-JUDAISM IN CHRISTIAN ANTIQUITY
FROM THE FOUNDATION OF CHURCH OF CONSTANTINE
[Page numbers in brackets]
THE Church is the daughter of the Synagogue; she owes her early
development to the Synagogue; she grew in the shade of the Temple, and
from her first infant cry she opposed her mother, which was quite
natural, for they were divided by a wide divergence of opinion.
In the first centuries of the Christian era, during the apostolic age,
Christian communities sprang forth from Jewish communities, like a
swarm of bees escaping from a beehive; they settled on the same soil.
Jesus was not yet born when the Jews had built their prayer-houses in
the cities of the Orient and the Occident; their expansion to Asia
Minor, Egypt, Cyrenaica, Rome, Greece and Spain has already been
noted. By their unceasing proselytism, by their preaching, by the
moral influence they exercised over the nations amidst whom they
lived, they paved the way for Christianity.
This immense class of proselytes won over by the Jews, this
God-fearing multitude, was ready to receive the broader and more
humanitarian teachings of Jesus, those teachings which the universal
Church, from its very inception, undertook to adulterate and to turn
away from their true meaning. These converts whose numbers steadily
increased during the first century before Christ, were free from the
national prejudices of Israel; they Judaized, but their eyes were not
turned toward Jerusalem, and, one may say, the fervid patriotism of
the Jews rather checked the conversions. The Apostles, or at least
some of them, completely separated the precepts of the Jewish faith
from the narrow idea of nationality; they built upon the foundation of
Jewish work accomplished before and thus won for themselves the souls
of those who had received the Jewish seed.[30] The Apostles preached
in the synagogues. In the cities, where they arrived, they went
straight to the prayer-houses and there made their propaganda and
found their first helpers; later a Christian community was founded,
side by side with the Jewish community, and the original Jewish
nucleus was increased by all those whom they had convinced among the
Gentiles.
Without the existence of Jewish colonies Christianity would have
encountered much greater obstacles; it would have had greater
difficulties in establishing itself. As has been stated, the Jews in
ancient society enjoyed considerable privileges; they had protective
charters assuring them an independent political and judicial
organization and freedom of worship. These privileges facilitated the
development of the Christian churches. For a long time the
associations of the Christians were not distinguished by the
authorities from Jewish associations, the Roman government taking no
cogni zance of the division between the two religions. Christianity
was treated as a Jewish sect, thus benefiting by the same advantages;
it was not only tolerated, but, in an indirect way, protected by the
imperial governors.
Thus, on the one hand, unwillingly, the Jews were unconscious
auxiliaries of Christianity while, on the other hand, they were its
enemies, for which there were numerous reasons. It is known that Jesus
and his teachings enlisted their first following among the Galilean
provincials who were despised by the Jerusalemites for having yielded
more than others to foreign influences. "Can there any good thing come
out of Nazareth?" they said. These humble folks of Galilee, though
much attached to the Judaic rites and customs, in which respect they
were perhaps stricter than the Jerusalemites, were ignorant of the Law
and were therefore despised by the haughty doctors of Judea. This
scorn likewise followed the first disciples of Jesus, some of whom,
besides, belonged to the disreputable classes, such as e.g., the
publicans.
Nevertheless, while the origin of the primitive Christians brought
upon them the scorn of the Jews, it was not enough to excite their
hatred; graver reasons were required for that, foremost among them was
Jewish patriotism.
The birth and early development of Christianity coincided with the
time when the Jewish nation attempted to shake off the yoke of Rome.
Offended in their religious feelings, ill- treated by the Roman
administration, the Jews felt a yearning for liberty, which grew
with[31] their hatred of Rome. Bands of zealots and assassins
traversed the mountains of Judea, entering the villages and wreaking
vengeance upon Rome by striking those of their brethren who bowed to
the imperial authority. Plainly, these zealots and assassins who
attacked the Sadducees for mere complacency towards the Roman procura
tors, could not spare the disciples of Him to whom the words were
attributed, "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's."
Absorbed in the expectation of the coming Messianic reign, the Jewish
Christians of those days were "men without a country"; the thought of
free Judea no longer made their hearts throb, though some, like the
seer of the Apocalypse, had a horror of Rome, still they had no
passion for captive Jerusalem, which the zealots strove to liberate;
they were unpatriotic.
When all Galilee rose in response to the appeal of John of Gischala,
they held aloof, and when the Jerusalemites triumphed over Cestius
Gallus, the Jewish Christians, indifferent to the outcome of this
supreme struggle, fled from Jerusalem, crossed the Jordan and sought
refuge at Pella. In the last battles which Bar Giora, John of Gischala
and their faithful gave to the Roman power, to the trained legions of
Vespasian and Titus, the disciples of Jesus took no part; and when
Zion was reduced to ashes, burying under its ruins the nation of
Israel, no Christian met his death amidst the destruction.
One may well understand what could have been the treatment accorded,
in those days of exaltation, before, during and after the
insurrection, to the Jewish and Gentile Christians, who, with St.
Paul, counseled submission to the power of Rome. The patriotic
indignation roused by the nascent Church was seconded by the wrath of
the rabbis against Christian proselytism.
Originally the relations between the Jewish Christians and the Jews
were fairly cordial. The followers of the Apostles, as well as the
Apostles themselves, recognized the sanctity of the ancient law; they
observed the rites of Judaism and as yet had not placed the worship of
Jesus side by side with that of the one God. The development of the
dogma of the divinity of Christ made a breach between the Church and
the Synagogue. Judaism could not admit of the deification of a man; to
recognize any one as the son of God was blasphemy; and as the Jewish
Christians had not severed their connections with the Jewish
community, they were disciplined. This accounts for the flagellation
of the Apostles and the new con-[32] verts, the stoning of Stephen and
the beheading of the Apostle James.
After the capture of Jerusalem, after that storm which left Judea
depopulated, the best of her sons having perished in battle, or in the
circus where they were delivered to the beasts, or in the lead mines
of Egypt, during this third captivity called by the Jews the Roman
exile, the relations between the Jews and Jewish Christians became
still more strained. Their country being dead, Israel gathered around
their doctors. Jabne, where the Sanhedrin reconvened, replaced Zion
without extinguishing its memory, and the conquered attached
themselves still more closely to the Law which the sages commented
upon.
Thenceforth, those who assailed that Law, which had become the most
cherished heritage of the Jew, were to be treated as enemies worse
than the Romans. The doctors accordingly fought the Christian doctrine
which was making proselytes amidst their flock. "The Gospels must be
burnedsays Rabbi Tarphonfor paganism is not as dangerous to the Jewish
faith as the Jewish Christian sects. I should rather seek refuge in a
pagan temple than in an assembly of Jewish Christians." He was not the
only one who thought so, and all the rabbis comprehended the danger
threatening Judaism from Jewish Christianity.
Some modern interpreters of the Talmud have gone to the rabbinical
discussions and decisions of that epoch for weapons against the Jews,
accusing them of blind hatred against anything that did not bear the
mark of Israel; they do not seem, however, to have carried into their
researches the requisite scientific spirit and good faith.
Originally, all Talmudical inhibitions contemplated the Jewish
Christians alone. The Tanaim wanted to preserve the faithful from
Christian contamination; for this purpose the Gospels were likened to
books on witchcraft, and Samuel Junior, by order of the patriarch
Gamaliel, inserted in the daily prayers a curse against the Jewish
Christians, Birkat Haminim, which has furnished the foundation for the
charge that the Jews curse Jesus thrice a day.
While the Jews thus sought to separate themselves from the Christians,
the Church, swayed by a great religious movement, was forced to cast
away Judaism. To conquer the world, to become a universal creed,
Christianity had to rid itself of Jewish[33] particularism, to break
the narrow chains of the ancient law, so as to be able to spread the
new one. This was the work of St. Paul, the true founder of the
Church, who opposed to the exclusiveness of the Jewish-Christian
doctrine the principle of catholicity.
As is well known, the struggle between these two tendencies in the
nascent Christianity, which were symbolized by Peter and Paul, was
long and bitter. The whole apostolic service of Paul was a long battle
against the Judaizing. On the day when the Apostle declared that in
order to come to Jesus one need not pass through the Synagogue nor
accept the sign of the old covenant, the circumcision, on that very
day all ties which bound the Christian Church to its mother were torn
and the nations of the world were won over by Jesus.
The resistance of the Judaizing who wanted to belong to Jesus and at
the same time to observe the Sabbath and the Passover, was in vain;
their prejudice against the conversion of the Gentiles was of no
avail. After Paul's journey to Asia Minor the cause of Catholicism was
won. The Apostle was braced up by an army, and that army arrayed
against the Jewish spirit the Hellenic, Antioch against Jerusalem.
The great bulk of the Jewish Christians tore themselves away from the
narrow doctrine of the little community of Jerusalem; the ruin of the
holy city led them to doubt the efficacy of the ancient law. It was
good for the further development of the Church. Ebionism met its
death. If Christianity had followed the Jerusalemites it would have
remained a small Jewish sect. Having rid itself of the Ebionites and
the Jewish Christians and cut loose from its mother, Christianity
allowed the nations to come to it without forfeiting their
individuality.
To safeguard its supremacy, the Church had to fight the Jewish spirit
in two forms. The first was that noted above, the Judaic positivism,
hostile to anthropomorphism and deification of heroes. Nevertheless
this positivism has maintained its existence throughout the ages so
that a history of the Jewish current in the Christian Church could be
written, beginning with early Ebionism down to Protestantism,
including among others the Unitarians and Arians. The second form is
the mystic form represented by the Alexandria and Asiatic gnosis. The
Alexandrian Jews, as known, were influenced by Platonism and
Pythagorism; Philo himself was the forerunner of Plotinus and Porphyry
in this renovation of the meta-[34] physical spirit. Aided by Hellenic
doctrines the Jews interpreted the Bible and scrutinized the mysteries
contained therein, construing them into allegories and further
developing them.
Proceeding from monotheism and the conception of a personal God as
their religious point of departure, the Jews of Alexandria were bound
to come metaphysically to pantheism, to the idea of a divine
substance, to the doctrine of intermediaries between man and the
Absolute, i.e., to emanations, to the Eons of Valentinus and the
Sephiroths of Kabbala. To this Jewish fund were superadded the
contributions of Chaldean, Persian and Egyptian religions, which
coexisted at Alexandria; at that time were elaborated those
extraordinary Gnostic theogonies, so multifarious, so varied, so madly
mystical.
When Christianity was born, the gnosis was already in existence; the
Gospels brought new elements into it; it speculated on the life and
words of Jesus, as it had speculated on the Old Testament, and when
the Apostles, in their early preaching, addressed themselves to the
Gentiles, they were confronted with the Gnostics, and primarily the
Jewish Gnostics. Peter met them at Samaria in the person of Simon the
Magician; Paul faced them at Colosse, at Ephesus, at Antioch, wherever
he came with his Gospel, and possibly he fought Cerinthus; John
himself fought them, and, in the Epistles of the Apocalypse he opposed
the Nicolaites who were "of the Synagogue of Satan."
After having escaped the danger of crystallizing into a barren Jewish
community, the Church was thus exposed to the new danger of
Gnosticism, which, if triumphant, would have resulted in splitting it
up into small sects and breaking its unity.
All preachers of the Christian religion had to contend against this
gnosis; traces of that fight are found in the Epistles of Paul to the
Colossians and Ephesians, in the pastoral letters, in the second
Epistle of Peter, in the Epistle of Jude and in the Apocalypse. They
did not confine themselves to persecuting the Jewish spirit in the
gnosis; as soon as the Pauline spirit had triumphed over Peter, they
declared war to the Judaizing tendencies within the Church, as well as
to the Jews themselves.
We find all these sentiments reflected in the writings of the Apostle
Fathers, with a growing desire to separate Christianity from Judaism;
and with the development of the dogma of the divinity of Jesus, the
Jews became the abominable people of Deicides, which[35] they had not
been originally. The Pauline traditions resound in the beginning of
the second century in the seven letters of Ignatius of Antioch
addressed to the churches of Rome, Magnesia, Philadel phia, Ephesus,
Smyrna and Tralles and to the Bishop Polycarp. Still in face of these
hostile demonstrations the Jews were not inactive and proved very
dangerous adversaries. It was under the fire of their criticism that
the dogma was constructed; it was they who, by their subtle exegetics,
by their firm logic, forced the teachers of Christianity to give
precision to their arguments. Their hostility worried the theologians;
though having severed themselves from Judaism, they wanted to win over
the Jews to their side; they believed that the triumph of Jesus would
only be assured on the day when Israel would recognize the power of
the Son of God; indeed, this belief has survived under different forms
throughout the ages. It would seem as though the Church were not
satisfied of the legitimacy of its faith until the day when the people
of whom its God had come were converted to the Galilean.
This work was taken up by the apologists of Christianity, and their
apologetic prepossession was mixed with violent enmity. Thus the
Letter to Diognetus, which has been preserved for us in the work of
St. Justin, and was written to refute the errors of the adversaries of
the Christians, may be considered as one of the first anti-Jewish
writings. The unknown author of this brief epistle, in his vigorous
attack upon the Millenarian ideas, speaks of the Jewish rites as
superstitions. The motives are not the same as those which actuated
the unknown author of the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, for he
wanted, and so he declared, to convert the Jews and convince them of
the excellence of the word of Christ.
The most thorough of the apologists of that epoch is assuredly Justin,
the philosopher. His Dialogue with Tryphon will remain a model of this
kind of dialogical polemics, of which we have another sample from the
same epoch in the Altercation of Jason and Papiscus, from the pen of
the Greek Ariston of Pella; the latter dialogue was reproduced in the
fifth century by Evagrius, in his Altercation of Simon and Theophilus.
Justin, a native of Samaria, and well acquainted with the Judeans,
puts all the objections of the Jewish exegetes into the mouth of
Tryphon, meant to represent Rabbi Tarphon, who vigorously fought
against the apostolic evan gelization. The author attempts to persuade
him that the New Testament is in accord with the Old, and to reconcile
monotheism [36] with the theory of Messiah as the Word incarnate. At
the same time, replying to Tryphon's reproach that the Christians have
abandoned the Mosaic law, he maintains that it was merely a
preparatory law. Justin attacked the Judaizing tendencies in both
forms, viz., Jewish Christianity on the one hand, and, on the other,
Alexandrinism, which would admit the Word only as a temporary
irradiation of the One Being. He closes with the warning: "Blaspheme
not the Son of God; listen not to the Pharisees; ridicule not the King
of Israel, as you are doing daily." The irony of the Jews he met with
sarcasm directed against the rabbis: "Instead of expounding the
meaning of the prophecies your teachers indulge in tomfoolery; they
are anxious to ascertain why male camels are referred to in this or
that passage, or why a certain quantity of flour is required for your
oblations. They are worried to know why an alpha is added to the
original name of Abraham. This is the subject of their studies. As to
things essential, worthy of meditation, they dare not speak of them to
you, they do not attempt to explain them, and they prohibit you from
listening to our interpretation."
The last complaint is important, it indicates the character of the
struggle for the conquest of souls in which Judaism was defeated. The
second century is one of the most momentous epochs in the history of
the Church. The dogma, still uncertain in the first century, is then
formulated and defined; Jesus advances toward divinity and attains it,
and his metaphysics, his worship, his conception, are blended with
Judeo-Alexandrian doctrines, with Philo's theories of the Word of God,
the Chaldean memra and the Greek logos. The Word is born, it becomes
identified with the Galilean; in Justin's apologetics and the fourth
Gospel, we see the work completed. Christianity has become
Alexandrian, and its most ardent upholders, its defenders, even its
orators, are at that hour the Christian philosophers of the
Alexandrian school: Justin, the author of the fourth Gospel, and
Clement.
While this dogmatic transformation was going on, the idea of a
universal church gained strength. Bonds of union were formed between
the small Christian communities, detached from Jewish congregations;
the more their numbers increased the stronger became the ties, and
this conception of unity and catholicity kept pace with the growing
expansion of Christianity.
This expansion could not proceed undisturbed. Christian preaching
addressed itself to all the Jewries of Asia Minor, Egypt,[37]
Cyrenaica and Italy, wherever there was an unorthodox element among
them, the Hellenized Jews whom the Christian teachers sought to win
over to their side. The propagandists likewise spoke to the anxious
masses who had already lent their ears to the Jewish word. The Jews
witnessed the failure of their influence and, perhaps, of their hopes;
at all events, they saw their beliefs, their faith, attacked by the
neophytes; the feeling of the Jews against the Christians was as
bitter as that of the Christians when they saw the obstacles which the
Jewish preachers put in their way. Furious hatred was mutual, and the
parties were not content with Platonic hatred. The Christian
congregations, unlike the Jewish communities, were not recognized by
the law; they were considered enemies of law and a danger to the
Empire. From this there was but one step to violence; this accounts
for the periods of suffering the Church had to go through. The Church,
in those evil days, could not count upon its rival, the Synagogue, for
assistance; in some places where the struggle between the Jews and the
Christians had reached an acute stage the Jews, recognized by Roman
legislation and possessed of vested rights, would join the citizens of
the towns in dragging the Christians before the court. In Antioch, for
example, where the enmity between those two sects was most bitter, in
all probability, the Jews, like the pagans, demanded the trial and
execution of Polycarp. They are said to have fed with great eagerness
the stake upon which the bishop was burned.
Still, not everywhere was the strife marked with such bloody
manifestations. The controversy was always very lively, yet it must be
said it was not conducted with equal weapons. The Bible was their
common arsenal, but the Christian teachers had but a scant knowledge
of it. They did not know Hebrew and used the Septuagint version, which
they interpreted very freely, often relying, in support of their
dogma, upon passages interpolated into the Septuagint by falsifiers
for the good of the cause. The Greek speaking Jews did not hesitate to
do the same, so that the Septuagint, a bad translation as it was, full
of absurdities, became available for any purpose.
These controversies, which continued through long centuries, were not
always courteous. Simultaneously with touching legends concerning
Jesus, scandalous stories were invented. To humiliate their enemies,
the Jews attacked him of whom the former made their God, and to the
deification of Jesus they opposed the stories[38] of the soldier
Pantherus, of abandoned Mary; these were taken up by philosophers
hostile to Christianity, and Origen refuted them in his Contra Celsum,
meeting abuse with abuse.
Amidst these battles was born a theological anti-Judaism, purely
ideological, which consisted in rejecting as bad or worthless anything
coming from Israel. This sentiment is evidenced by Tertullian's De
Adversus ludaeos. In that work the fiery African attacked
circumcision, which, he said, brought no salvation, but was a simple
sign for distinguishing Israel; when Messiah would come he would
substitute spiritual for bodily circumcision; he attacked the Sabbath,
the temporal Sabbath, to which he opposed the eternal Sabbath.
But this special anti-Judaism, which we find again in Octavius, by
Minucius Felix; in De Catholicae Ecclesiae Unitate, by Cyprian of
Carthage; in Instructiones Adrersus Gentium Deos, by the poet
Commodian, and in Divinae Institutiones, by Lactantius, was mixed with
the desire to convince the Jews of the truth of the Christian
religion, of the soundness of its beliefs, its dogmas and principles;
hence the ambition to make proselytes among them. This anti- Judaism
crossed with the efforts which the Church was making to arrive at
universality, and during the first three centuries remained purely
theoretical. We shall further see how, since Constantine and the
triumph of the Church, this anti-Judaism was transformed and more
precisely defined.
ANTISEMITISM
ITS HISTORY AND CAUSES
by Bernard LAZARE
_____________________
Chapter Four
ANTISEMITISM FROM CONSTANTINE
TO THE EIGHTH CENTURY
FOR three centuries the Church had to contend against those with whom
the greatness of Rome was inseparable from the secular worship of the
Gods. Still, the resistance of the civil authorities, of the priests
and philosophers, could not arrest the march of the Church;
persecutions, hatred, hostility enhanced its power of propaganda; it
addressed itself to those whose spirit was troubled, whose conscience
was vacillating, and to them it brought an ideal and that moral
satisfaction which they lacked. Moreover, at that hour when the Roman
Empire was rending all over, when Rome, having abdicated all power and
authority, received its Caesars from the hands of the legions, and
competitors for the purple bobbed up in every nook of the provinces,
the Catholic Church offered to that expiring world the unity it was
seeking.
Yet, while offering intellectual unity to the world, the Church at the
same time was ruining its institutions, customs and manners. In fact,
at Rome, as well as in the Empire, all public functions were at once
civil and religious, the magistrate, the procurator, the dux being
invested with priestly functions; no public act was performed without
rites; the government was, in a manner, theocratic; this ultimately
came to be symbolized in the worship of the Emperor. All those who
wanted to withdraw from that worship were held to be enemies of Caesar
and the Empire; they were considered bad citizens. This sentiment
explains the Roman dislike of Oriental religions and of the Jews; it
explains the measures adopted against the worshipers of Yahweh, and
still more the severity shown towards the worshipers of Mithra, of
Sabazius and particularly towards the Christians, for the latter were
not foreigners like the Jews, but rebel citizens.
The triumph of Christianity was brought about by political
considerations, and so, to make its victory and domination lasting, it
was obliged to adopt many of the ceremonial observances of[40] ancient
Rome. When the Christians had increased in numbers, and formed a
considerable party, they were saved and could see the dawn of victory
glimmer, for now a pretender to the throne could find support among
them and use their services to solidify his authority. So it happened
with Constantine, and Constantius, perhaps, foresaw it when he
commanded the Gallic legions. The victorious church succeeded to Rome.
She inherited its haughtiness, its exclusiveness, its pride, and
almost without any transition period the persecuted turned
persecutrix, wielding the power by which she had been fought, holding
the consular fasces and hatchet and commanding the legionaries.
While Jesus was taking possession of the superb city and his universal
reign was commencing, Judaism was in agony in Pales tine; the teachers
of Tiberias were powerless to hold the young Judeans and the
"illustrious, most glorious, right reverend" patriarch had but the
shadow of authority. The flourishing Jewish schools were in Babylonia;
the centre of Israel's intellectual life was transferred thither;
still wherever Christianity endeavoured to extend its influence it had
to reckon and to contend with the influence of Judaism; though since
the close of the third century the latter was of little importance, at
least directly. Indeed, at that time the Judaizing heresies were
nearly extinct. The Nazarenes, those circumcised Christians attached
to the old law, who are mentioned by St. Jerome and St. Epiphanius,
were reduced to a handful of meek believers, who had found refuge at
Berea (Alep), at Kokabe in Batanea, and at Pella, in the Decapolis.
They spoke the Syro-Chaldaic language; a remnant of the primitive
Church of Jerusalem, they no longer exerted any influence, swamped as
they were amidst Greek-speaking churches.
Still, though Ebionism was dying out, Judaizing continued; the
Christians attended the synagogues, celebrated the Jewish holidays,
and the contentions over the Passover were still on. A large faction
in the churches of the Orient insisted upon celebrating the Passover
at the same time as the Jews. It required the action of the Nicaean
Council to free Christianity of this last and weak bond by which it
had still been tied to its cradle. After the Synod all was over
between the Church and the Temple, officially, and from the orthodox
standpoint, at least; it required, however, the action of further
councils to prevent the faithful from conforming to the old usage, and
it was not until 341 A.D., when the Council of Antioch[41] had
excommunicated the Quartodecimans that unity of the celebration of the
Easter was effected.
Since the Church had become armed, anti-Judaism underwent a
transformation. Purely theological in the beginning, confined to
arguments and controversies, it defined itself and became harsher,
more severe and aggressive. Beside writings, laws appeared; the
enactment of laws resulted in popular manifestations. The writings
themselves underwent a change. Throughout the centuries of
persecution, apologetics had flourished, and a vast literature had
come into being, born of the need felt by the Christians to convince
their adversaries. They addressed themselves now to the Jews, now to
the pagans, now to the emperors, and all of them, Justin, Athenagoras,
Tatian, Aristo of Pella, Melito, endeavoured to prove to Caesar that
their doctrines were not dangerous to the public weal; that even
without sacrificing to the gods, they could be loyal subjects, as
obedient as the pagans and morally superior. They argued with the Jews
that it was they, the Christians, that were the only faithful to
tradition, for they fulfilled the prophecies and the least details of
their dogmas were foreseen and announced by the Scriptures. Triumphant
Christianity was no longer in need of apologists; Caesar had been
converted and Cyril of Alexandria, the author of a book against Julian
the Apostate, was the last of the apologists. As regards Israel, the
Christians persisted, even to our own day, in demonstrating to them
their stubbornness; it was done in a less insidious and less
convincing manner; they spoke as masters, and from the middle of the
fifth century, apologetics proper ceased, reappearing only much later
considerably modified and transformed. They no longer tried to win
over the Jews to Christ; indeed, a few years sufficed to show to the
theologians the futility of their efforts, and the effect of their
reasoning, based most frequently upon a fantastic exegesis or a few
absurdities of the Alexandrian translation of the Bible, was lost on
these stubborn men, who listened only to their own teachers and clung
the stronger to their faith the more it was despised. To arguments was
added insult; the Jew was regarded less as a possible Christian than
as an unrepenting deicide. They denounced those men, whose persistence
was so shocking and whose very presence marred the complete triumph of
the Church. Pains were taken to forget the Jewish origin of Jesus and
the Apostles; to forget that Christianity had[42] grown in the shade
of the Synagogue. This oblivion perpetuated itself, and today who in
all Christendom would acknowledge that he bows to a poor Jew and a
humble Jewess of Galilee?
The Fathers, the bishops, the priests, who had to contend against the
Jews treated them very badly. Hosius in Spain; Pope Sylvester; Paul,
bishop of Constantine; Eusebius of Caesarea,32 call them "a perverse,
dangerous and criminal sect."
Some, like Gregory of Nyssa,33 remain on dogmatic ground, and merely
reproach the Jews for being infidels, who refuse to accept the
testimony of Moses and the prophets on the Trinity and Incarnation.
St. Augustine34 is more vehement. Irritated by the objections of the
Talmudists he brands them as falsifiers, and declares that one need
seek no religion in the blindness of the Jews, and that Judaism may
serve only as a term of comparison to demonstrate the beauty of
Christianity. St. Ambrose35 attacked them from another side; he took
up anew the charges of the ancient world, those which had been used
against the first Christians, and accused the Jews of despising the
laws of Rome. St. Jerome36 claimed that an impure spirit had seized
the Jews. Having learned Hebrew in the schools of the rabbis, he said,
referring doubtless to the curses pronounced against the Mineans and
distorting their meaning: "The Jews must be hated, for they daily
insult Jesus Christ in their synagogues"; and St. Cyril of Jerusalem37
abused the Jewish patriarchs, claiming that they were a low race. We
find all these theological and polemical attacks combined in the six
sermons delivered at Antioch, by St. John Chrysostom38 against the
Jews; an examination of those homilies will give us an understanding
of the methods of discussion, as well as the reciprocal attitude of
Christians and Jews and their mutual relations.
The Jews, says Chrysostom in the first of his sermons, are
ignoramuses, who lack all understanding of their own law, and are
consequently impious. They are wretches, dogs, bull- headed; their
people are like a herd of brutes, like wild beasts. They have driven
Christ away, therefore they are capable of evil only. Their synagogues
may be likened to playhouses, they are dens of brigands, the abode of
Satan. Being obliged to admit that the Jews are not ignorant of the
Father, he adds that this is not enough, since they have crucified the
Son and reject the Holy Ghost, and that their souls are the abode of
the devil. Therefore they must be mistrusted; the Jewish disease must
be guarded against.[43]
In the second sermon these diatribes are resumed; Chrysostom appears
in it much worried over the influence exerted by the Jews. "Our
sheep," he exclaims, "are surrounded by Jewish wolves," and he
reiterates the warning: Avoid them; avoid their impiety; it is not
significant controversies that separate us from them, but the death of
Christ. If you think that Judaism is true, leave the Church; if not,
quit Judaism.
The other four sermons are chiefly theological. Availing himself of
the invectives of the prophets, Chrysostom calls the Jews thieves,
impure, debauchees, rapacious, misers, crafty, oppressors of the poor;
they have filled the measure of their crimes by immolating Jesus. He
does not content himself with all that. He advances arguments upon
controversies which must have been very lively at Antioch. He defends
the Church; he shows that Israel is dispersed in consequence of the
death of Christ; he draws from the prophets and the stories of the
Bible proofs of the divinity of Jesus, and he recommends to his flock
to stay away from the sermons of those Jews who call the cross an
abomination and whose religion is null and useless to those who know
the true faith. In short, says he in conclusion, it is absurd to
consort with men who have treated God with such indignity and at the
same time to worship the Crucified.
These homilies of Chrysostom are characteristic and valuable. One
finds there already the policy which the Christian preachers were to
pursue throughout the ages to follow; that mixture of argument and
apostrophizing, of suasion and abuse, which has remained peculiar to
anti-Jewish preaching. Especially worthy of notice is the part of the
clergy in the development of anti-Judaism originally religious anti-
Judaism, for social anti-Judaism arose much later in Christian
society. These sermons portray, in a live picture, the relations
between Judaism and Christianity in the fourth century; these
relations continued for a long time, until about the ninth century.
The Jews had not arrived yet at that exclusive conception of their
individuality and their nationality which was the work of the
Talmudists. Their proselytic ardour was not dead; they were not
conscious of the fact that they had forever lost their moral power
over the world, and they struggled on. They persuaded pagans and
Christians to Judaize, and they found followers; if need be they would
make converts by force; they did not hesitate to circumcise their
slaves. They were the only foes the[44] Church had to face, for
paganism was quietly passing away, leaving in the souls but legendary
survivals, which have not entirely died out even to this day. If
paganism, through its last philosophers and poets, still opposed the
diffusion of Christianity, it no longer sought, since the fourth
century, to regain those whom Jesus held by his bonds. The Jews,
however, had not given up; they deemed themselves in possession of the
true religion, upon as good a title as the Christians, and in the eyes
of the people their assertion had the attraction flowing from
unflinching convictions.
In the morning of its triumph the Church as yet did not hold that
universal ascendancy which it gained later; it was still weak, though
powerful; but those who directed it aspired to universality, and they
could not help considering the Jews as their worst adversaries; they
had to strain themselves to the utmost to weaken Jewish propaganda and
proselytism. In this the Fathers followed a secular tradition; upon
this battle ground they are unanimous, and there are legions of
theologians, historians and writers who think and write of the Jews
the same as Chrysostom: Epiphanius, Diodorus of Tarsus, Theodore of
Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyprus, Cosmas Indicopleustes, Athanasius the
Sinaite, Synesius, among the Greeks; Hilarius of Poitiers, Prudentius,
Paulas Orosius, Sulpicius Severus, Gennadius, Venantius Fortunatus,
Isidore of Seville, among the Latins.
However, after the edict of Milan, anti-Judaism could no longer
confine itself to oral or written controversies; it was no longer a
quarrel between two sects equally detested or despised. Before his
conversion, Constantine, who originally declined to grant any
exclusive privileges to Christians, accorded, by the edict of
tolerance, to everyone the right to observe the religion of his
choice. The Jews were thus put on an equal footing with the
Christians; the pagan pontiffs, the priests of Jesus, the patriarchs
and teachers of Israel enjoyed the same favour and were exempt from
municipal taxes. But in 323, after the defeat and death of Licinius,
who had reigned in the Orient, Constantine, the victor and lord over
the Empire, supported by all the Christians of his states, showed them
marked preference. He made them his great dignitaries, his counselors,
his generals, and thenceforth the Church had the imperial power at its
disposal to build up its dominion. The first use it made of this
authority was to persecute those who were hostile to the Church; it
found Constantine quite obedient to its wishes. On the[45] one hand,
the emperor prohibited divination and sacrifices, closed the temples,
ordered the gold and silver statues of the gods to be melted for the
embellishment of the churches; on the other hand, he consented to
repress Jewish proselytism and revived an ancient Roman law which
prohibited the Jews from circumcising their slaves; at the same time
he deprived them of many of their former privileges and barred them
from Jerusalem, except on the anniversary of the destruction of the
Temple, and that upon payment of a special tax in silver. Thus, by
aggravating the burdens which were oppressing the Jews, Constantine
favoured Christian proselytism, and the preachers were not slow to
represent to the Jews the advantages baptism would bring.
Still, in spite of his hostility to the Jews, perhaps factitious,
since the authenticity of the letter written in a violent language and
attributed to him by Eusebius39 cannot be vouched for, he took pains
to protect them against the attacks of their own renegades. Under his
successors, no such reservation was made. The Church was now
all-powerful with the emperors. Catholicism became the established
religion, the Christian worship was the official worship, the
importance of the bishops increased from day to day, as well as their
influence. They inculcated upon the minds of the emperors those
sentiments with which they were inspired themselves, and while their
anti-Judaism manifested itself in writings, imperial anti Judaism
found expression in statutes. These laws, inspired by the clergy, were
directed not only against the Jews, but against Christian heretics as
well. Indeed, during the fourth century, so fertile in heresies, the
orthodox themselves were at times disturbed when heretical theologians
led the emperors.
jum...@my-deja.com
Of these laws, all of which were enacted from the fourth to the
seventh century, the majority are directed against Jewish proselytism.
The penal statutes directed against those who circumcise Christians
are reaffirmed;40 the offense is made punishable by exile for life and
confiscation of property. The Jews are prohibited from owning
Christian slaves;41 they are not allowed to marry Christians; such
unions are treated like criminal fornication.42 Other laws encourage
Christian propaganda and proselytism among the Jews, either directlyby
protecting the apostates43 and enjoining Jews from disinheriting their
converted sons and grandsons44 or indirectly, by vexatious legislation
against Jews. Their privileges were curtailed. It was decreed that the
moneys which were sent by[46] the Israelites to Palestine should be
paid into the imperial treasury;45 they were debarred from holding
public office;46 they were assessed with hard and oppressive curial
taxes;47 they were practically deprived of their special tribunals.48
The vexations were not confined to that; the Jews were harassed even
in the observance of their religion; the law undertook to regulate the
manner of observing the Sabbath;49 they were ordered not to celebrate
their Passover before Easter, and Justinian went as far as to prohibit
them from reciting the daily prayer, the Schema, which proclaimed one
God, as against the Trinity.
Still, notwithstanding the favourable disposition of Emperor
Constantine, the Church was not given a free hand in everything. While
restricting the religious liberties of the pagans and the Jews, he was
obliged to act with caution; the worshipers of the gods were still
numerous under his reign, and he dared not provoke dangerous
disturbances. The Jews benefited to some extent by this hesitation.
With Constantius everything changed. Constantine, who was baptized
only on his deathbed by Eusebius of Nicomedia, was a skeptic and a
politician, who used Christianity as a tool; Constantius was an
orthodox, as fanatical and intolerant as the clergy and the monks of
his day. With him, the Church became dominant, and wielded its power
for revenge; it seems the Church was eager to make its erstwhile
persecutors pay dearly for all it had suffered at their hands. No
sooner was it armed than it forgot its most elementary principles, and
directed the secular arm against its adversaries. The pagans and the
Jews were persecuted with utmost severity; those who offered
sacrifices to Zeus, as well as those who worshipped Jehovah, were
maltreated: anti-Judaism went together with anti- paganism.
The Jewish teachers of Judea were exiled, they were threatened with
death if they persisted in giving instruction, they were compelled to
flee from Palestine, while in other provinces of the empire they were
denied the rights of Roman citizenship. While the Roman legions, on
expedition against King Shabur II, of Persia, were camping in Judea,
the Jews were treated like inhabitants of a conquered country. They
were heavily taxed; they were forced to bake bread for the soldiers on
Sabbath and on holidays.
In the cities, monks and bishops denounced pagans and Jews, inciting
against them the Christian populace and leading fanatical mobs in
assaults upon temples and synagogues. Under Theodosius I,[47] and
under Arcadius, synagogues were burned at Rome and at Callinicus, in
Mesopotamia. Under Theodosius II, at Alexandria, St. Cyril stirred up
the mob, hermits invaded the city, massacred all the Jews and pagans
they met, assassinated Hypathia, plundered synagogues, set the
libraries on fire, defying the efforts of the prefect Orestes whom the
emperor later disavowed. At Imnestar, near Antioch, Simon, the
ascetic, acts likewise, and under Zeno similar scenes are enacted at
Antioch. A fury of destruction takes possession of the Christians; one
might say, they wish to destroy all traces of the old world to prepare
the sweet reign of Christ. Still the Jews did not behave passively in
the face of their enemies, they had not, as yet, acquired that
stubborn and touching resignation which became their characteristic
later.
To the vehement discourses of the priests they replied by dis courses,
to acts they responded by acts; to Christian proselytism they opposed
their own proselytism and vowed execration on their apostates. Violent
sermons were preached in the synagogues. Jewish preachers thundered
against Edom, i.e., against Rome, the Rome of the Caesars which had
become the Rome of Jesus, and which was now ravishing the faith of the
Jews after having ravished their nationality. They did not content
themselves with rhetorical common-places, they excited their brethren
to revolt. While Gallus, Constantius's nephew, governed the Oriental
provinces, Isaac of Sepphoris raised the Judeans, being aided in his
undertaking by a fearless man, Natrona, whom the Romans called
Patricius. The Jews took up arms, but they were severely repressed by
Gallus and his general, Ursicinus. Women, children, and old men were
butchered, Tiberias and Lydda were half destroyed, Sepphoris was razed
to the ground and the catacombs of Tiberias were filled with fugitives
who were hiding for months to escape detection and death.
Under the reign of Phocas the Jews of Antioch, tired of persecutions,
outrages and massacres, one day rushed upon the Christians,
assassinated the patriarch Anastasius the Sinaite, and took possession
of the city. Phocas sent against them an army with Kotys in Command,
the Jews at first repelled the imperial legions, but unable to hold
out against large enforcements brought to Antioch, they were subdued
and massacred, maimed, or banished. Their submission, however, was
merely apparent; they were awaiting an opportunity to renew the
struggle; the opportunity soon presented[48] itself. When Chosru II,
king of Persia, marched against the Byzantine empire, to avenge his
son-in-law, Mauritius, whose throne had been usurped by Phocas, the
Jews joined the king. Sharbarza invaded Asia Minor, disregarding the
peace proposals of Heraclius, who had just dethroned Phocas, and he
saw the Jewish warriors of Galilee flock under his banners. Benjamin
of Tiberias was the soul of the revolt; he armed and led the rebels.
The Jews wanted to reconquer Palestine and restore it to that purity
which to them had been polluted by the Christian cult. They burned the
churches, sacked Jerusalem, destroyed the convents, raising on their
way all their co-religionists, and joined by the Israelites of
Damascus, Southern Palestine, and the Isle of Cyprus, they besieged
Tyre, but were forced to raise the siege.
For fourteen years they were masters of Palestine, and the Christians
of Palestine were in great numbers converted to Judaism. Heraclius
drew them away from the Persians, who had not lived up to their
promise to surrender to their allies the holy city of Jerusalem; he
reached an understanding with Benjamin of Tiberias, promising to the
Jews impunity and other advantages; but when the emperor reconquered
his provinces from Chosru, he ordered, at the instigation of monks and
the Patriarch Modestus, to massacre those with whom he had treated.
When Julian the Apostate, after repealing the restrictive laws of
Constantine and Constantius against the Jews, wanted to reconstruct
the Temple of Jerusalem, the foreign Jewish communities remained deaf
to the imperial appeal; they had become estranged from their national
cause, at least directly. With all the Jews of that time, the
restoration of the Kingdom of Judah was intimately bound with the
advent of Messiah and they could not expect it from a crowned
philosopher; they had but to await the heavenly king who had been
promised them; this sentiment persisted throughout the ages. With the
death of the last patriarch Gamaliel VI, the phantom of royalty and of
a Jewish nationality passed away and there was left to Israel but the
chief of exile, the exilarch of Babylonia, who disappeared in the
eleventh century. In Persia and Babylonia, the Jews lived since their
captivity, after the ruin of Jerusalem many more sought refuge in that
admirable and fertile country, where they were given land to farm on
and lived happily under the benevolent rule of the Arsacidae. They
founded schools at Sora, Nachardea and Pumbaditha, and[49] made
numerous proselytes. But in the middle of the third century the
dynasty of the Arsacidae, who were very unpopular, fell with Artaban,
and Ardashir founded the dynasty of the Sassanides. It was a national
and religious movement. The Neo-Persians or Guebres execrated the
Hellenizing Arsacidae who had abandoned the fire worship. The triumph
of Ardashir was the triumph of the Magi, who raged against the
Hellenizing, the Christians of Edessa and the Jews, for the
anti-Judaism of the Magi was combined with anti-Christianity; so the
hostile brothers were persecuted simultaneously, still the Jews, more
feared for their numbers and their strength, suffered more in
consequence, in those troublous days. However, those persecutions were
never of long duration. After suffering oppression at the end of the
third century from Shabur II, who led away 70,000 Jewish prisoners
from Armenia to Ispahan, the Israelites were for many years left
undisturbed; but in the sixth and the seventh century under Yezdigerd
II, under Pheroces, and under Kobad, restrictive measures were adopted
at the instigation of the Magi. The Jews were prohibited from
celebrating the Sabbath; their schools were closed, the Jewish
tribunals were abolished. During the reign of Kobad, Mazdak, the
Magus, was the originator of these persecutions. Mazdak, the founder
of the sect of Zendiks, preached communism and deprived the Jews and
Christians of their wives and property. Under the leadership of the
Exilarch Mar Zutra II, the Jews rebelled, and, according to Persian
chronicles, they defeated the partisans of the Magus and founded a
state, whose capital was Mahuza, a city inhabited by Persian converts
to Judaism. This state existed for seven years until Mar Zutra was
defeated and killed.
Since then the Jews, in Persia, witnessed alternately peace and
trouble; happy under Chosroes Nushirvan and Chosru II, oppressed under
Hormisdas IV, they ultimately tired of their precarious situation,
and, in concert with the Christians of the Sassanide kingdom aided
Omar to capture the throne of Persia, thus contributing to the triumph
of Mohammed and the Arabs.
Still the Jews had little to rejoice at under the Mussulman yoke.
Their first settlement in Arabia, disregarding the legends which trace
it as far back as Joshua or Saul, must date from the time of the
captivity, or of the destruction of the first Temple. The original
nucleus was swelled by fugitives from Judea, who reached Arabia at the
time Palestine was conquered by the Romans. In[50] the beginning of
the Christian era there were in Arabia four Jewish tribes, whose
centre was Medina.
The Jews accomplished a moral and intellectual conquest of the Arabs,
whom they converted to Judaism; at least they made them adopt its
rites. The kinship between the two peoples made it easy, the more so
that, in Yemen, the Jews had in their turn adopted Arabian customs,
which differed but little from the early Jewish customs. They were
farmers, shepherds and warriors, at times freebooters and poets.
Divided into small groups, fighting among themselves and taking part
in the quarrels which divided the Arab tribes, they at the same time
founded schools at Yathrib, built temples and propagated their
religion as far as the Himyarites with whom their traders were in
regular intercourse. In the sixth century, under the reign of
Zorah-Dhu-Nowas, all Yemen was Jewish. With the conversion of one Arab
tribe of Nedjran to Christianity, difficulties began; they were,
however, of short duration, for Christian propaganda was cut short in
Arabia by Mohammed. Mohammed was nursed by the Jewish spirit; fleeing
from Mecca, where his preaching had aroused against him the Arabs who
were true to old traditions, he sought refuge at Medina, the Jewish
city, and as the apostles found their first adherents among the
Hellenic proselytes, so he found his first disciples among the
Judaizing Arabs. Likewise, the same religious causes embittered
Mohammed and Paul to hatred. The Jews rebelled against the preaching
of the prophet, they heaped ridicule upon him, and Mohammed who had
until then been inclined to compromise with them, violently repudiated
them and wrote the celebrated Sura of the Cow, in which he
unmercifully inveighed against them. When the prophet had assembled an
army of followers he no longer confined himself to abuse, he marched
against the Jewish tribes, vanquished them, and decreed that "neither
Jews nor Christians" should be accepted as friends. The Jews rose and
allied themselves to those Arabs who rejected the new doctrines, but
the extension of Mohammedanism triumphed over them. By the time of
Mohammed's death they had been reduced to extreme weakness; Omar
completed the work. He drove out of Chaibar and Wadil Kora the last
Jewish tribes, as well as the Christians of Dedjran, for Christians
and Jews alike polluted the sacred soil of Islam.
Wherever Omar carried his arms, the Jews, oppressed by reason of that
very affinity which united them with the Arabs, favoured[51] the
second caliph, who took possession of Persia and Palestine. Omar
enacted severe laws against the Jews, who had assisted his antagonist;
he subjected them to restrictive legislation, prohibited the erection
of new synagogues, forced them to wear dress of a particular colour,
enjoined them from riding on horseback, and imposed upon them a
personal and a land tax. Christians were treated likewise.
Nevertheless the Jews enjoyed greater liberty under Arab rule than
under Christian domination. On the one hand, the legislation of Omar
was not rigorously enforced; on the other hand, aside from a few
manifestations of fanaticism, the Mussulmanic mass, in spite of
religious differences, showed a friendly disposition towards them. And
later, with the expansion of Islam, the Arabs were hailed as
liberators by all the Western Jews.
The condition of the Western Jews since the destruction of the fragile
Roman empire and the rush of barbarians upon the old world, was
subject to all the vicissitudes of the times. The Csesars, those poor
Caesars who bore the names of Olybrius, Glycerius, Julius Nepos, and
Romulus Augustulus, fell, but the Roman laws remained; and if for
short periods they were not enforced against the Jews, they still
remained in effect, and the German sovereigns could make use of them
at pleasure.
From the fifth to the eighth century the fortunes of the Jews wholly
depended upon religious causes which were external to them, and their
history among those who were called barbarians is bound with the
history of Arianism, its triumph and defeats. So long as the Arian
doctrine predominated, the Jews lived in a state of relative welfare,
for the clergy and even the heretical government were busy fighting
against orthodoxy and little worried about the Israelites, who, to
them, were not the enemies to be crushed. Theodoric, however, was an
exception. No sooner was the Ostrogoth empire established than the
king prohibited the erection of synagogues and endeavoured to convert
the Jews.50 He protected them, however, against popular outbreaks, and
compelled the Roman Senate to rebuild the synagogues which had been
set on fire by the Catholic mobs which rose against the Arian
Theodoric.
Still in Italy, under the Byzantine dominion so harassing to them, or
under the more indifferent Lombard rule, for the Arian and the pagan
Lombards scarcely took notice of the existence of Israelthe Jews were
guarded against the zeal of the lower clergy[52] and their flocks by
the benevolence of the pontifical authority, which, from the earliest
days of its power, seems to have desired, with rare exceptions, to
preserve the synagogue as a living testimony of its victory.
In Spain the condition of the Jews was quite different. From time
immemorial they freely settled in the peninsula; their numbers
increased under Vespasian, Titus and Hadrian, during the Judean wars
and after the dispersion; they owned large fortunes, they were
wealthy, powerful and respectable and exerted a great influence upon
the population among whom they lived. The imprint received by the
peoples of Spain from Judaism, endured for centuries, and that land
was the last to witness once more the contest, with almost equal
weapons, between the Jewish and the Christian spirit. More than once
Spain came very near becoming Jewish, and to write the history of that
country until the fifteenth century means to write the history of the
Jews, for they were intimately connected in a most remarkable way,
with its literature and intellectual, national, moral and economic
development. The church, from its very establishment in Spain,
contended against Jewish tendencies and proselytism, and it was only
after a struggle of twelve centuries that it succeeded in completely
extirpating them. Until the sixth century the Spanish Jews lived in
perfect happiness. They were as happy as in Babylonia, and they found
a new mother country in Spain. The Roman laws did not reach them there
and the ecclesiastical ordinances of the Council of Elvira, in the
fourth century which enjoined Christians from intercourse with them,
remained a dead letter.
The Visigothic conquest did not change their condition and the Arian
Visigoths confined themselves to persecuting the Catholics. The Jews
enjoyed the same civil and political rights as the conquerors;
moreover, the Jews joined their armies and the Pyrenean frontier was
guarded by Jewish troops. With the conversion of King Reccared
everything changed; the triumphant clergy heaped persecution and
vexation upon the Jews, and from that hour (589 A.D.) their existence
became precarious. They were gradually brought under severe and
meddlesome laws which were drafted by the numerous councils, held
during that period in Spain, and were enacted by the Visigoth kings.
These successive laws are all combined in the edict promulgated, in
652, by Receswinth; they were[53] re-enacted and aggravated by Erwig,
who had them approved by the twelfth council of Toledo (680).51 The
Jews were prohibited from performing the right of circumcision and
observing the dietary laws, from marrying relatives until the sixth
generation, from reading books condemned by the Christian religion.
They were not allowed to testify against Christians or to maintain an
action in court against them, or to hold public office. These laws
which had been enacted one by one, were not always enforced by the
Visigoth lords, who were independent, in a way, but the clergy doubled
their efforts to procure their strict enforcement. The object of the
bishops and the dignitaries of the church was to bring about the
conversion of the Jews and to kill the spirit of Judaism in Spain and
the secular authority lent them its support. From time to time the
Jews were put to the choice between banishment and baptism; from that
epoch dates the origin of the class of Marranos, those Judaizing
Christians who were later dispersed by the Inquisition. Until the
eighth century the Spanish Jews lived in that state of uncertainty and
distress, relying only upon the transitory good will of some kings
like Swintila and Wamba. They were liberated only by Tariq, the
Mohammedan conqueror, who destroyed the Visigothic empire with the aid
of the exiled Jews joining his army and with the support of the Jews
remaining in Spain. After the battle of Xeres and the defeat of
Roderick (711), the Jews breathed again. About the same epoch a better
era dawned for them in France. They had established colonies in Gaul
in the days of the Roman republic, or of Caesar, and they prospered,
benefiting by their privileges of Roman citizenship. The arrival of
the Burgundians and Franks did not change their condition, and the
invaders accorded them the same treatment as the Gauls. Their history
was subject to the same fluctuations and rhythms as in Italy and
Spain. Free under pagan or Arian dominion, they were persecuted as
soon as orthodoxy became dominant. Sigismund, king of the Burgundians,
after his conversion to Catholicism enacted laws against them which
were confirmed by his successors.52 The Franks, being ignorant of the
very existence of the Jews, were wholly guided by the bishops, and
after Clovis they naturally began to apply to the Jews the provisions
of the Theodosian Code. These provisions were aggravated and
complicated by ecclesiastical authority which left to the secular
power the duty of enforcing and compelling the[54] observance of its
decrees. From the fifth to the eighth century that part of the canon
law relating to the Jews was worked out in Gaul. The laws were
formulated by the councils and approved by the edicts of the
Merovingian kings.
The chief concern of the church, during those three centuries, seems
to have been to separate the Jews from the Christians, to prevent
Judaizing among the faithful and to check Israelite proselytism. This
legislation which had, towards the eighth century, become extremely
severe in dealing with the Jews and the Judaizing, was not enacted at
one stroke; beginning with the council of Vannes, of the year 465, the
synods first confined themselves to platonic injunctions. The clergy
at that epoch had but very scant authority and could inflict no
penalties; it was not before the sixth century that the support of the
Frank chiefs enabled it to enact penal legislation, which originally
applied only to clerical offenders against the decisions of the
councils, but later was extended to laymen.
Nevertheless, one must not imagine the condition of the Jews at that
epoch as very miserable. On the Jewish, as well as on the Christian
side, one notices a mixture of tolerance and intolerance which is
accounted for either by a mutual desire to make converts, or even to
some extent by reciprocal religious good-will. The Jews took an
interest in public life, the Christians ate at their tables; they
shared in their joys and sorrows, as well as in factional fights. Thus
they are seen, at Arles, to unite with the Visigothic party against
the bishop Caesarius,53 and later to follow the funeral of the same
bishop, crying: Vae! vae! They were the clients of great seignors (as
witnessed by two letters of Sidonius Apollinaris),54 and the latter
helped them to evade the vexatious ordinances. In many regions the
clergy visited them, a great many Christians went to the synagogues,
and the Jews likewise attended Catholic services during the mass of
the catechumens. They resisted, as far as possible, the numerous
efforts to convert them, at times attended with violence,
notwithstanding the recommendations of certain Popes,55 and they
boldly engaged in controversies with theologians who endeavoured to
persuade them by the same means as the Fathers of former ages. We
shall return to these controversies and writings when we shall come to
study the anti-Jewish literature.
Thus, as shown above, during the first seven centuries of the
Christian era, anti-Judaism proceeded exclusively from religious[55]
causes and was led only by the clergy. One must not be misled by
popular excesses and legislative repression, for they were never
spontaneous, but always inspired by bishops, priests, or monks. It was
only since the eighth century that social causes supervened to
religious causes, and it was only after the eighth century that real
persecution commenced. It coincided with the universal spread of
Catholicism, with the development of feudalism and also with the
intellectual and moral change of the Jews, which was mostly due to the
influence of the Talmudists and the exaggerated growth of
exclusiveness among the Jews. We shall now proceed to examine this new
transformation of anti- Judaism.
FOOTNOTES
32 Demonstratio Evangelica.
33 Testimonium adversus Judaeos ex Tetere Testamento, Migne, P. G.,.
XLVI.
34 Oratio adversus Judaeos, Migne, P. L. XLII.
35 De Tobia, Migne, P. L. XIV.
36 Ep. CLI, Quaest. 10, Migne, P. L. XXII.
37 Ep. CLI, Quaest, 10, Migne, P. G., XXXIII.
38 Adversus Judaeos, 10, Migne, P. C., XLVIII.
39 Eusebius, Vita Constantini, III, 18, 20.
40 Codex Justinianeus, 1. I, tit. IX, 16.
41 Codex Theodosianus, 1. XVI, tit. IX, 3, 4, 5.
42 Codex Justinianeus 1. I, tit. IX, 6.
43 Cod. Theod., b. XVI, tit. viii, 5.
44Ó Code Theodosien, 1. XVI, tit. VIII, 28.
45 Codex Justinianeus, 1. I, tit. IX, 17 and Cod. Theodos., 1. XVI,
tit. VIII, .
14. 46 Codex Justinianeus, 1. I, tit. IX, 18.
47 Justinianus, Novellae, 45.
48 Codex Justinianeus, 1. I, tit. IX, 15.
49 Codex Justinianeus 1. I, tit. IX, 13, and Cod. Theod., 1. VIII, tit.
IX, 8.
50 His course was probably influenced by his Minister Cassiodorus, who
seems to have had scant sympathy for the Jews-he characterized them
as scorpions, wild asses, dogs and unicorns.
51 Leges Visigoth, 1. XII, tit. II, 5.
52 Lex Burgundionum, tit. XV, 1, 2, 3.
53 Vie de Saint Cesaire, Migne. Patrologie latine, t. LXVII.
54 Sidonius Apollinaris, 1. III, ep. IV, and 1. IV, ep. V.
55 Fredegaire (Chronique, XV), and Aumoin (Chroniqua Moissiacensis,
XLV) relate that, at the instigation of Emperor Heraclius, Dagobert
gave to the Jews the choice between death, exile and baptism.
(Gesta Dagoberti, XXIV). The same is reported of the Visigothic
King Sisebut (see appendix to the Chronicle of Bishop Marius, A.D.
588; Dom Bouquet, t. II, p. 19). Chilperich forced many Jews to be
baptized. (Gregoire de Tours, H. F., 1. VI, ch. XVII). Bishop
Avitus compelled the Jews of Clermont to renounce their faith, or
leave the city. Gregoire de Tours, H. F., 1. V, ch. XI). Other
bishops resorted to force, and it required the interference of Pope
St. Gregory to stop or at least moderate their zeal. "The Jews must
not be baptized by force, but brought over by sweetness," says he in
his letters addressed to Virgil bishop of Arles, to Theodore, bishop
of
Marseilles, and to Paschasius, bishop of Naples. (Regesta Pontificum
Romanorum, ed. Jafle, nos. 1115 and 1879.) But the authority of the
Pope was not always effective.
ANTISEMITISM
ITS HISTORY AND CAUSES
by Bernard LAZARE
_____________________
Chapter Five
ANTI-JUDAISM FROM THE EIGHTH
CENTURY TO THE REFORMATION
THE church reaches its final constitution in the eighth century. The
period of great doctrinal crises is at an end, dogma is settled and
heresies will not cause it any trouble until the Reformation.
Pontifical primacy strikes deep root, the organization of the clergy
is henceforth solid, religion and liturgy are unified, discipline and
canonic law are settled, ecclesiastic property increases, the tithe is
established, the federal constitution of the Churchsub- divided into
sufficiently autonomous circuitsdisappears, the movement of
centralization for the benefit of Rome is clearly outlined. This
movement came to an end, when the Carolingians had established the
temporal power of the popes, and the Latin church, strongly
hierarchical before, became as centralized, in a comparatively short
time, as the Roman empire of yore, which the church's universal
authority had thus supplanted. Simultaneously Christianity spread
further still and conquered the barbarians. The Anglo-Saxon
missionaries had set the examples in Saint Boniface and Saint
Willibrod; they had followers. The gospel was preached to the Alamans,
the Frisians, the Saxons, the Scandinavians, the Bohemians and the
Hungarians, the Russians and the Wends, the Pomeranians and the
Prussians, the Lithuanians and the Finns. The work was accomplished at
the end of the thirteenth century: Europe was Christianized.
The Jews settled in the wake of Christianity as it kept spreading by
degrees. In the ninth century, they came from France to Germany, got
thence into Bohemia, into Hungary and into Poland, where they met
another wave of Jewsthose coming by way of the Caucasus and converting
on their march several Tartar tribes. In the twelfth century they
settled in England and Belgium, and everywhere they built their
synagogues, they organized their communities at that decisive hour,
when the nations were coming out from chaos, when states were being
formed and consolidated. They[57] remained outside of these great
agitations, amid which conquering and conquered races were
amalgamating and uniting one with the other; and in the midst of these
tumultuous combinations they remained spectators, strangers and
hostile to these fusions: an eternal people witnessing the rise of new
nations. However, their role was surely of account at all times; they
were one of the active elements of ferment of these societies in the
process of formation.
In some countries, as e.g., in Spain, their history is in so high a
degree interlinked with that of the peninsula, that, without them it
is impossible to grasp and appreciate the development of the Spanish
people. But if they had influenced its constitution by the numbers of
their converts in that country, by the support they had given in
succession to the various masters in possession of its soil they did
so by seeking to bring to themselves those among whom they lived and
not by letting themselves be absorbed. Still, the history of the
Spanish Marranos is exceptional. Everywhere, though, as we shall see,
the Jews played a part of economic agents; they did not create a
social state, but they assisted after a fashion in establishing it,
and yet they could not be treated with favour among the organizations
to whose formation they had lent aid. For this there was a serious
obstacle. All the states of the Middle Ages were molded by the church;
in their essence, in their very being, they were permeated with the
ideas and doctrines of Catholicism; the Christian religion gave the
unity they lacked to the numerous tribes which had gathered together
into nations. As representatives of contrary dogmas, the Jews could
not but oppose the general movement, both by their proselytism, and by
their very presence as well. As the church led this movement it was
from the church that anti-Judaism, theoretical and legislative,
proceeded, anti Judaism which the governments and the peoples shared
and which other causes came to aggravate. The social and religious
state of affairs and the Jews themselves gave origin to these causes.
But they had remained ever subordinated to those essential reasons
which may be traced to the opposition, then secular already between
the Christian spirit and the Jewish spirit, between the universal, and
so to say, international Catholic religion, and the particularist and
narrow Jewish faith.
Only towards the end of the eighth century the activity of the Western
Jews developed. Protected in Spain by the Caliphs, given support by
Charlemagne who let the Merovingian laws fall into[58] disuse, they
extended their commerce which until then centered chiefly in the sale
of slaves. For this they were, indeed, particularly favoured by
circumstances. Their communities were in constant communication, they
were united by the religious bond which tied them all to the
theological centre of Babylonia whose dependencies they considered
themselves up to the decline of the exilarchate. Thus they acquired
very great facilities for exporting commerce, in which they amassed
considerable fortunes, if we are to believe the diatribes of
Dagobard,56 and later those of Rigord,57 which, with all their
exaggeration of the property of the Jews must not, yet, be entirely
rejected as unworthy of credence.58 Indeed, with regard to this wealth
of the Jews, especially in France and Spain, we possess the
testimonies of chroniclers and the Jews themselves, several of whom
reproached their coreligionists for devoting to worldly welfare much
more time than to the worship of Jehovah. "Instead of calculating the
numerical value of the name of God," says the Kabbalist Abulafia, "the
Jews prefer to count their riches."
Parallel with the general advance we really see this preoccupation
with wealth grow among the Jews and their practical activity
concentrating on a special business: I mean the gold business. Here we
must emphasize a point. It has often been said, and it is repeated
still, that the Christian societies had forced the Jews into this
position of creditor and usurer, which they have for a long time kept:
this is the thesis of the philosemites. On the other hand the
antisemites assert that the Jews, from time immemorial, had natural
inclinations for commerce and finance, and that they but followed
their normal disposition, and that nothing had ever been forced upon
them. In these two assertions there is a portion of verity and a
portion of error, or rather that there is room to comment on them, and
especially to give them a hearing.
At the time of their national prosperity the Jews, like all other
nations, for that matter, had a class of the rich, which proved itself
as eager for gain and as hard to the lowly as the capitalists of all
ages and all nations have proven. The antisemites, as well, who make
use of the texts of Isaiah and Jeremiah, e.g., to prove the constant
eternal rapacity of the Jews, act very naively, and, thanks to the
words of the prophets, can but establishand puerile it is the
existence, in Israel, of possessors and poor. If they examined
impartially the Judaic codes and precepts only, they would acknow[59]
ledge that legislation and morals prescribed never to charge interest
on debts.59 Taking all in all, the Jews were, in Palestine, the least
mercantile of the Semites, in this regard much inferior to the
Phoenicians and Carthaginians. It was only under Solomon that they
entered into intercourse with the other nations. Even at that time, it
was a powerful corporation of Phoenicians that was engaged in the
banking business at Jerusalem. However, the geographical position of
Palestine prevented its inhabitants from devoting themselves to a very
extensive and considerable traffic. Nevertheless, during the first
captivity and through the contact with the Babylonians, a class of
merchants had formed, and from it came the first Jewish emigrants, who
established their colonies in Egypt, Cyrenaica and Asia Minor. In all
cities that admitted them, they formed active communities, powerful
and opulent, and, with the final dispersion, important groups of
emigrants joined the original groups which facilitated their
installation. To explain the attitude of the Jews it is, accordingly,
not necessary to fall back upon a theory of the Arian genius and the
Semitic genius. Indeed, we well know the traditional Roman cupidity
and the commercial sense of the Greeks. The usury of the Roman
feneratores had no limit any more than had their bad faith; they were
encouraged by the very harsh laws against the debtors, a worthy
daughter of that law of the Twelve Tables which granted to the
creditor the right of cutting pieces of flesh from the live body of an
insolvent borrower. In Rome gold was absolute master, and Juvenal
could speak of the "sanctissima divitiarum maiestas." 60 As to the
Greeks, they were the cleverest and boldest of spectators; rivaling
the Phoenicians in the slave-trade, in piracy, they knew the use of
letters of exchange and maritime insurance, and, Solon having
authorized usury, they never did away with it.
As a nation the Jews differed in nothing from other nations, and if at
first they were a nation of shepherds and agriculturists, they came,
by a natural course of evolution, to constitute other classes among
them. And devoting themselves to commerce, after their dispersion,
they followed a general law which is applicable to all colonists.
Indeed, with the exception of cases when he goes to break virgin soil,
the emigrant can be only an artisan or merchant, as nothing but
necessity or allurement of gain can force him to leave his native
soil. Therefore, the Jews coming into Western cities acted in no way
differently from the Dutch or English when[60] they established
business offices.
Nevertheless, they came soon enough to specialize in the money
business, for which they have been so bitterly reproached ever since,
and in the fourteenth century they constituted quite a coterie of
changers and lenders: they had become the bankers of the world.
The Middle Ages considered gold and silver as tokens possessing
imaginary value, varying at the will of the king, who could order its
rate according to the dictations of his fancy. This notion was derived
from Roman law, which refused to treat money as a merchandise. The
church inherited these financial dogmas, combined them with the
biblical prescriptions which forbade loan on interest, and was severe,
from its very start, against the Christians and ecclesiastics even
that followed the example of the teneratores, who advanced money at
24, 48 and even 60 per cent., when the legal rate of interest was 12
per cent. The canons of councils are quite explicit on this point;
they follow the teaching of the Fathers, Saint Augustin, Saint
Chrysostom, Saint Jerome; they forbid loans and are harsh against
those clerics and laymen who engage in the usurer's business.
At the same time, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the wage
system was established, the bourgeoisie developed, grew rich and
acquired privileges and franchises: capitalistic power was now born.
Commerce having taken on a new form, the value of gold increased and
the passion for money grew with the importance which the currency had
acquired.
Indeed, on one hand were the rich, on the otherthe peasants, landless,
subject to the tithe and prestations; workingmen dominated over by the
capitalist laws. To cap it all, perpetual wars, revolts, diseases and
famines. Whenever the year was bad, the money gave out, the crop
failed, an epidemic came, the peasant, the proletarian, and the small
bourgeois were forced to resort to borrowing. Hence, by necessity
there had to be borrowers. But the church had forbidden loan at
interest, and capital does not choose to remain unproductive, but
during the Middle Ages capital could only be either merchant or
lender, as money could be made productive in no other way. As far as
the ecclesiastical decisions had any influence, a great part of the
Christian capitalists did not want to begin an open revolt against
their authority; there was also formed a class of reprobates for whom
the bourgeoisie and nobility often acted as silent partners. It
consisted of Lombards, Caeorsins, to whom the[61] princes, the lords
granted the privileges of loaning on interest, gathering a part of the
profits which were considerable, as the Lombards lent money at 10 per
cent. a month; or of unscrupulous foreigners, like Tuscan emigrants
settled in Istria who went in usury to such extremes that the
community of Triest suspended, in 1350, all execution for debts for
three years. This did not take away the ground from under the usurers,
but as I have said they found obstacles which the church placed in the
way of their operations (the council of Lyons of 1215 wanted to
declare the wills of usurers void).
As for Jews, these obstacles did not exist. The church had no moral
power over them, it could not forbid them, in the name of the doctrine
and dogma, to engage in money exchanging and banking. Thus a religious
conception of the functions of capital and interest, and a social
system which ran counter to this conception, led the Jews of the
Middle Ages to adopt a profession cried down but made necessary; and
in reality they were not the cause of the abuses of usury, for which
the social order itself was responsible. If they did not cultivate
land, if they were not agriculturists, it is not because they
possessed none, as has often been said; the restrictive laws relative
to the property rights of the Jews came at a date posterior to their
settlement. They own property, but had their domains cultivated by
slaves, for their stubborn patriotism forbade them to break foreign
soil. This patriotism, the notion which they attached to the sanctity
of their Palestinian fatherland, the allusion which they kept alive in
them of the restoration of that fatherland and this particular faith
which made them consider themselves exiles who would one day again see
the holy cityall this drove them above all other foreigners and
colonists to take up commerce.
As merchants they were destined to become usurers, given the
conditions which the codes had imposed upon them and the conditions
they had imposed upon themselves. To escape persecution and annoyance
they had to make themselves useful, even necessary, to their rulers,
the noblemen upon whom they depended, to the church whose vassals they
were. Now the nobleman, the Church despite its anathemasneeded gold,
and this gold they demanded from the Jews. During the Middle Ages gold
became the great motive power, the supreme deity alchemists spent
their lives in search of the magistery which was to produce it, the
idea of possessing it inflamed the minds, in its name all kinds of
cruelties were[62] committed, the thirst of riches laid hold of all
souls; later on, for Cortez and Pizarro, the successors of Columbus,
the conquest of America meant the conquest of gold. The Jews fell
under the universal charmthe same under which the Templars had fallen
and for them it was particularly fatal, because of their state of mind
and the civil status imposed upon them. In order to exist, they turned
brokers in gold, but this the Christians sought as eagerly as they.
More than that, under the constant menace of banishment, always acamp,
forced to be nomads, the Jews had to guard against the terrible
eventualities of exile. They had to transform their property so as to
make it more convertible into money, that is, to give it a more
movable form, and they were the most active in developing the money
value, in considering it as a merchandise, hence the lending andto
recoup for periodic and unavoidable confiscations the usury.
The creation of guildsmerchant and craftguilds and their organization,
in the thirteenth century, finally forced the Jews into the condition
to which they had been led by the social conditions general and
specialunder which they lived. All these organizations were, so to
speak, religious organizations, brotherhoods which none joined but
those who prostrated themselves before the standard of the patron
saint. The ceremonies attendant upon the initiation into these bodies
being Christian ceremonies, the Jews could not but be shut out from
them: and so they were. A series of prohibitions successively shut
them out of all industry and all commerce, except that in odds and
ends and in old clothes. Those who escaped this disqualification did
so by virtue of special privileges for which they often paid too
dearly.
However, this is not all; other more intimate causes were added to
those I have just enumerated, and all joined in throwing the Jew more
and more out of society, in shutting him up in the ghetto, in
immobilizing him behind the counter where he was weighing gold.
An energetic, vivacious nation, of infinite pride, thinking themselves
superior to the other nations, the Jews wished to become a power. They
instinctively had a taste for domination, as they believed themselves
superior to all others by their origin, their religion, their title of
a "chosen race," which they had always ascribed to themselves. To
exercise this kind of power the Jews had no choice of means. Gold gave
them a power which all political [63] and religious laws denied them,
and it was the only one they could hope for. As possessors of gold
they became the masters of their masters, they dominated over them,
and this was the only way to deploy their energy and their activity.
Would they not have been able to display it in some other fashion?
Yes, and they tried it, but there they had to fight their own spirit.
For many long years they had worked in the intellectual line, devoted
themselves to sciences, letters, philosophy. They were mathematicians
and astronomers; they practiced medicine, and, if the school of
Montpellier was not founded by them, they surely helped in developing
it; they had translated the works of Averroes and of the Arabic
commentators of Aristotle; they had revealed the Greek philosophy to
the Christian world, and their metaphysicians Ibn Gabirol and
Maimonides had been among the teachers of the schoolmen. 61 Who
stopped them in this advance? They themselves.
Their doctors endeavoured to confine Israel to the exclusive study of
the law in order to preserve Israel from outside influences,
pernicious, it was said, to the integrity of the law. Efforts to this
effect had been made since the time of the Maccabees, when the
Hellenizers constituted a great party in Palestine. Beaten at first,
or, at least, hardly listened to, those who later acquired the name of
obscurantists, kept at their task. When Jewish intolerance and bigotry
grew in the twelfth century, when exclusiveness increased, the
struggle between the partisans of profane science and their opponents
became fiercer, it blazed up after the death of Maimonides and ended
in the victory of the obscurantists. In his works, particularly in the
Moreh Nebukhim (Guide of the Perplexed) 62 Moses Maimonides attempted
to reconcile faith and science. As a convinced Aristotelian, he wished
to unite peripatetic philosophy with the Mosaic faith, and his
speculations on the nature of the soul and its immortality found
followers and ardent admirers as well as fierce detractors. As a
matter of fact, especially in France and Spain, the Maimunists were
led to neglect the ritual practices and petty ceremonies of worship:
bold rationalists, they had allegoric interpretations for the biblical
miracles, as the disciples of Philo before them, and thus they escaped
the tyranny of religious precepts. They claimed the right of taking
part in the intellectual movement of the time and mingling in the
society in which they lived without giving up their beliefs. Their
opponents clung to the purity of Israel, to the absolute integrity of
its worship,[64] its rites, and its beliefs; in philosophy and science
they saw the most deadly enemies of Judaism and maintained that the
Jews were destined to perish and scatter among the nations, if they
did not recover their wits and did not reject everything that was not
of the Holy Law.
In 1232, Rabbi Solomon of Montpellier issued an anathema against all
those who would read the Moreh Nebukhim or would take up scientific
and philosophic studies. This was the signal for the struggle. It was
violent on both sides, and all weapons were resorted to. The fanatical
rabbis appealed to the fanaticism of the Dominicans, they denounced
the Guide of the Perplexed and had it burned by the inquisition. At
the instigation of a German doctor, Asher Ben Yechiel, a synod of
thirty rabbis met at Barcelona, with Ben Adret in the chair, and
excommunicated all those who read books other than the Bible and the
Talmud, when under twenty-five years.
jum...@my-deja.com
A counter-excommunication was proclaimed by Jacob Tibbon, who, at the
head of all Provencial rabbis, boldly defended condemned science. All
was in vain: those wretched Jews, whom everybody tormented for their
faith, persecuted their coreligionists more cruelly and severely than
they had ever been persecuted. Those whom they accused of indifference
had to undergo the worst punishments; the blasphemers had their
tongues cut; Jewish women who had any relations with Christians were
condemned to disfigurement: their noses were subjected to ablation.
Despite this, Tibbon's followers persisted. It was due to them, that
Jewish thought did not completely die out in Spain, France and Italy
during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Even such men as Moses
of Narbonne and Levy de Bagnols, as Elias of Crete and Alemani, the
teacher of Pico di Mirandola, as well as later Spinoza, were all
isolated men. As for the mass of Jews, it had completely fallen under
the power of the obscurantists. Hereafter it was separated from the
world, its whole horizon was shut out; to nourish its spirit it had
nothing but futile talmudic commentaries, idle and mediocre
discussions on the Law.
Henceforth the Jew thought no longer. And what need had he of thinking
since he possessed a minute, precise code, the work of casuist
legists, which could give answer to any question that it was
legitimate to ask ? For believers were forbidden to inquire into
problems which were not mentioned in this code the Talmud. [65]
The Jew found everything foreseen in the Talmud: the sentiments, the
emotions, whatever they might be, were designated; prayers, formulas,
all ready-made, supplied the means for expressing them. The book left
room neither to reason nor to freedom, inasmuch as in instruction the
legendary and gnomical portions were almost proscribedto lay stress
upon the law and ritual. True, by the tyranny they had exercised over
their flock they developed in each the ingenuity and spirit of
craftiness necessary to escape from the net which closed without pity;
but they also increased the natural positivism of the Jews by
presenting to them as their only idea the material and personal
happiness, a happiness which one could attain on earth if one knew how
to bind oneself to the thousand religious laws. To attain this selfish
happiness, the Jew, whom the prescribed ceremonies rid of all care and
trouble, was fatally led on to strive after gold, for under the
existing social conditions which ruled him, as they ruled all the
people of that epoch, gold alone could give him the gratification
which his limited and narrow brain could conceive. He was prepared to
be changer, lender, usurer, one who strives after the metal, at first
for the pleasures it could afford and then afterwards for the sole
happiness of possessing it; one who greedily seizes gold and
avariciously immobilizes it. The Jew having become such, anti-Judaism
became more complicated, social causes intermingled with religious
causes; the combination of these causes explains the intensity and
gravity of the persecutions which Israel had to undergo.
Indeed, the Lombards and Caeorsins, for instance, were the object of
popular animosity; they were hated and despised but they were not
victims of systematic persecutions. It was deemed abominable that Jews
should have acquired wealth, especially because they were Jews.
Against the Christian who cheated him, and was neither better nor
worse than the Jew, the poor wretch when plundered felt less anger
than against the Israelite reprobate, the enemy of God and man. When
the deicide, even so the object of terror, had become the usurer, the
collector of taxes, the merciless agent of the fiscthe terror
increased; it became intermingled with hatred on the part of the
oppressed and downtrodden. The simple minds did not seek the real
causes of their distress; they only saw the proximate causes. For the
Jew was the proximate cause of usury; by the heavy interest he charged
he caused destitution, severe and hard misery; accordingly, it was
upon the Jews that enmities [66] fell. The suffering populace did not
trouble themselves about responsibilities; they were neither
economists nor reasoners; they only ascertained that a heavy hand
weighed upon them: that was the hand of the Jew, and the people rushed
upon him. They did not rush upon him alone; when at the limit of their
endurance, they often attacked all the rich, indiscriminately killing
Jews and Christians alike. In Gascony and southern France the
Pastoureaux destroyed 120 Jewish communities, but the Jews were not
their only victims; they invaded castles, they exterminated the nobles
and the propertied. Only that among the Christians the propertied
alone suffered violence at the hands of the rebels, the poor were
spared; among the Jews the rich and the poor were exterminated
indiscriminately, for, before any crime, they were guilty of being
Jews.
At all events, the masses, restrained by authority and law rarely
attacked the capitalists in general; to goad them on to revolt a
terrible accumulation of miseries was necessary. But with reference to
the Jews their ill-feeling was not restrained at all; on the contrary,
it was encouraged. This was a means to divert attention, and every now
and then kings, nobles or burghers offered their slaves a holocaust of
Jews. This unfortunate Jew was utilized for two purposes during the
Middle Ages. They employed him as a leech, let him swell up, fill
himself with gold, then they made him clear; or, whenever popular
hatred was too bitter, he was subjected to corporal punishment which
was profitable to the Christian capitalists, who thus paid a tribute
of propitiary blood to those whom they oppressed.
To give satisfaction to their wretched subjects, the kings would from
time to time proscribe Jewish usury, would cancel debts; but oftenest
they tolerated the Jews, encouraged them, being sure to derive benefit
from them through confiscation or by taking their place as creditors.
Nevertheless these measures were always but temporary, and
governmental anti-Judaism was purely political. They banished the Jews
either to mend their finances, or to elicit the gratitude of the small
fry by partly relieving them of the heavy burden of debt; but they
would soon recall the Jews, as they could find no better tax
collectors. However, anti-Jewish legislation was, as we have said,
most frequently forced upon the royal power by the church, either by
the monks or the popes and synods. Even the regular clergy and the
secular clergy acted upon different principles.[67]
The monks addressed themselves to the people, with whom they were in
constant touch. In the first place they preached against the Deicides,
but they represented these deicides as domineering, while they should
have been bent forever under the yoke of Christendom. All these
preachers gave expression to popular grievances. "If the Jews fill
their granaries with fruit, their cellar with victuals, their bags
with money and their chests with gold," said Pierre de Cluny: 63 "it
is neither by tilling the earth, nor by serving in war, nor by
practicing any other useful and honourable trade, but by cheating the
Christians and buying, at low price, from thieves the things which
they have stolen." They thundered against the "infamous" nation "which
lives by pillage," and while their invectives were prompted by zeal in
proselytism, they posed especially as avengers, who had come to punish
"the isolence, avarice and hardheartedness" of the Jews. And they
found a hearing. In Italy, John of Capistrano, "the scourge of the
Hebrews," was stirring up the poor against the usury and obduracy of
the Jews. He continued his work in Germany and Poland, leading gangs
of poor wretches and desperadoes who exacted expiation for their
sufferings from the Jewish communities. Bernardinus of Feltre followed
his example, but he was haunted by more practical notions, among
others by that of establishing mont-de-pietes to counteract the
rapacity of the lenders. He traveled all over Italy and Tyrol,
demanding the expulsion of the Hebrews, inciting insurrections and
riots, causing the massacre of the Jews in Trent.
The kings, nobles and bishops did not encourage this campaign of the
regulars. They protected the Jews from the monk Radulphe in Germany;
in Italy, they set themselves against the preachings of Bernardinus of
Feltre, who accused the princes of having sold themselves to Yechiel
of Pisa, the wealthiest Jew of the peninsula; in Poland, Pope Gregory
XI stopped the crusade of Jan of Ryczywol. The rulers had every
interest to suppress these partial uprisings; from experience they
knew that when the bands of starvelings were through slaughtering the
Jews, they would kill those who possessed too great wealth, those who
enjoyed excessive privileges, or those lords, counts or barons, whose
power weighed too heavily on the shoulders of tax-payers.
As for the Church, it kept to theological anti-Judaism, and, being
essentially conservative, favouring the mighty and rich, it took care
not to encourage the passions of the people. I speak of the
official[68] Church, abounding in prebendaries; striving for unity and
centralization, cherishing dreams of universal domination; the Church
of the Synods, the law-making Church, and not the church of petty
priests and monks which was stirred by the same passions as agitated
the lowly. But if the church sometimes interfered in behalf of the
Jews when they were the object of the mob's fury, it nursed this fury
and supplied it with fuel by combating Judaism, even though combating
it from different motives. Faithful to its principles, it vainly
persecuted the spirit of Judaism in all its forms. It could not get
rid of it, as this Jewish spirit had inspired it in its earliest
stages. It was impregnated with it as the beach-sands are impregnated
with the sea-salt which rises to their surface, and despite its
efforts from the second century on to rebuff its origin, to thrust far
away all memory of its original foundation, it still preserved the
marks of it. In seeking to realize its conception of Christian states
directed and ruled over by the Papacy, the church strove to reduce all
anti-Christian elements. Thus it inspired Europe's violent reaction
against the Arabs, and the struggle of the European nationalities
against Mahommedanism was a struggle at once political and religious.
Still the Moslem danger was external, but the internal dangers
threatening the dogma proved quite as grave for the church. Formerly
benign and confining itself to canonic penalties, hereafter it
appealed to the secular powers, and the Vaudois, Albigenses, Beghards,
Apostolic Brothers, Luciferians were treated with cruelty. The limit
of this movement was reached in the inquisition which the Pope
Innocent III. instituted in the thirteenth century. Henceforth, a
special tribunal, backed by civil authority, obedient to its orders
was to be the sole judge, and pitiless at that, of heresy.
The Jews could not be overlooked in this legislation. They were
persecuted not as Jewsthe church wished to preserve the Jews as a
living testimony of its triumphbut because they instigated people to
judaization, either directly or unconsciously, by the very fact of
their existence. Had not their philosophers sent forth metaphysicians
like Amaury de Bene and David de Dinan? What is more, were not certain
heretics judaizing? The Pasagians of Upper Italy observed the Mosaic
law; the Orleans heresy was a Jewish heresy; an Albigens sect
maintained that the doctrine of the Jews was preferable to that of the
Christians; the Hussites were supported by the Jews; accordingly, the
Dominicans preached[69] against the Hussites and the Jews, and the
imperial army that advanced against Jan Ziska massacred the Jews on
its way.
In Spain, where the mingling of Jews and Christians was considerable,
the Inquisition was instituted by Gregory XI, who gave it its
constitution, to survey the judaizing heretics and the Jews and Moors,
who, though not subjects of the Church, were subject to the will of
the Holy Office whenever "by their words or their writings they urged
the Catholics to embrace their faith." More than that, the popes
recalled the canonic decisions to the minds of the Kings of Spain,
because the fueros, i.e., Castillian customs which superseded the
Visigothic laws, had granted equal rights to Jews, Christians and
Moslems. All these ecclesiastic measures reinforced the anti-Jewish
sentiments of kings and nations; they were the prime causes; they
upheld a special state of mind, which political motives emphasized
with the kings; social motiveswith the nations. Owing to it,
anti-Judaism became general, and no class of society was free from it,
for all classes were more or less guided by the Church or inspired by
its teachings, all of them were or thought themselves harmed by the
Jews. The nobility took offense at their riches; the proletarians, the
artisans and peasants, in a word the small people, were provoked by
their usury; as for the bourgeoisie, the merchant class, the dealers
in money, it was in permanent rivalry with the Jews, and their
constant competition engendered hatred. The modern contest between
Christian and Jewish capital assumes shape in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, the Catholic bourgeois looks with calm eyes on
the murder of Jews, which rids him of an often successful rival. Thus
everything concurred to make of the Jew a universal foe, and the only
support that he found during this terrible period of several centuries
was with the popes, who, while abetting the passions of which they
made capital, still wanted to guard carefully this witness of the
excellence of the Christian faith. If the Church preserved the Jews,
it often was not without schooling and punishing them. The Church
forbade giving them public positions that might confer upon them
authority over Christians, it instigated the kings to adopt
restrictive measures against them; it imposed upon them distinctive
badges, the rouelle and hat; it shut them in those ghettoes, which the
Jews had often accepted and even sought in their eagerness to separate
themselves from the world, to live apart,[70] without mixing with the
nations, to preserve intact their beliefs and their race; so that in
many points the edicts bidding the Jews to remain confined in special
quarters really but sanctioned an already existing state of affairs.
But the chief task of the Church was to combat the Jewish religion
dogmatically. However, controversies, numerous as they were, did not
suffice for this; laws were issued against the Jewish books. The
reading of the Mishna in synagogues had already been prohibited by
Justinian; after him no laws were passed against the Talmud, until the
time of Saint Louis. After the controversy between Nicholas Donin and
Yechiel of Paris (1240) Gregory IX ordered to burn the Talmud; this
order was repeated by Innocent IV (1244), Honorius IV (1286), John
XXII (1320) and the anti-pope Benedict XIII (1415). Moreover, the
Jewish prayers were expurgated and the erection of new synagogues was
forbidden.
The civil laws expounded the ecclesiastical decrees and were inspired
by them, as e.g., the laws of Alfonso X of Castile, in the code of
Siete Partidas, 64 the dispositions of Saint Louis, those of Phillip
IV, those of the German emperors and the Polish kings. 65 The Jews
were forbidden to appear in public on certain days; a personal toll
was imposed upon them as if on cattle; they were sometimes forbidden
to marry without authorization.
To the laws one must add the customs -- vexatious customs -- like that
of Toulouse, which made the syndic of the Jews subject to boxing on
the ear. The mob insulted them during their holidays and sabbaths; it
profaned their cemeteries; on leaving the Mysteries and Passion plays
it would lay their houses waste. Not content with vexing them, with
expelling them, as did Edward I in England (1287), Phillip IV and
Charles VI in France (1306 and 1394), Ferdinand the Catholic in Spain
(1492), they killed the Jews everywhere.
When on their way to liberate the Holy Tomb, the Crusaders prepared
themselves for the Holy War by the immolation of Jews; whenever the
black plague or a famine raged, the Jews were sacrificed in holocaust
to the angered divinity; whenever extortions, misery, hunger,
destitution maddened the people, they would avenge themselves on the
Jews, who were made victims of expiation. "What's the use of going to
fight the Mohammedans," cried Pierre de Cluny ,66 "when we have among
us the Jews, who are worse than the Saracens?" [71]
What was to be done against an epidemic unless to kill the Jews who
conspired with the lepers to poison the wells? And so they were
exterminated in York and London, in Spain at the instigation of St.
Vincent Ferrer; in Italy, where John of Capistrano preached; in
Poland, Bohemia, France, Moravia, Austria. They were burned in
Strassburg, Mayence, Troyes. In Spain the Marranos mounted the
scaffold by the thousands, elsewhere they were ripped open with
pitchforks and scythes; they were beaten to death like dogs.
What crimes could have deserved such frightful punishments? How
poignant must have been the afflictions of those beings ! In those
evil hours they cuddled one to the other and felt themselves brethren;
the bond that joined them was fastened more tightly. To whom could
they tell their plaints and their feeble joys, if not to themselves ?
From these general desolations, from these sobs was born an intense
and suffering brotherhood. The ancient Jewish patriotism became still
more exalted. These outcasts, maltreated all over Europe, and marching
with bespattered faces, got it into their heads to feel Zion and its
hills brought back to life, to conjure up what a supreme and sweet
consolation !the beloved banks of the Jordan and the lake of Galilee;
they arrived there through an intense solidarity.
Still, to understand exactly the position of the Jews during these
Dark Ages, one must compare it with that of the people surrounding
them. The persecutions of the Jews would go on now that their
exclusive character would render them more sorrowful. In the Middle
Ages the proletarians and the peasants were not much better off; after
being shaken up by terrible upheavals, the Jews would enjoy periods of
comparative tranquility, of which the serfs knew nothing. Steps were
taken against them, but what steps were not taken against the
Moriscoes, the Hussites, the Albigenses, the Pastoureaux, the Jacques,
against the heretics and the outcasts? From the eleventh to the end of
the sixteenth century, abominable years fell out, and the Jews
suffered from it not a whit more than did those among whom they lived.
They suffered for other reasons, and traces of it were left impressed
in a different way. But as the manners had grown softer, hours of
greater happiness for them were born. We shall see what changes the
Reformation and the Renaissance were to bring about in their position.
FOOTNOTES
56 De Insolentia Iudaeorum (Patrologie Latine, t. CIV).
57 Gesta Philippi Augusti.
58 For the position of Southern Jews at the time of Philip the Fair,
cf. Simeon Luce (Catalogue des documents du Tresor des Chartes
(Revue des Etudes Juives, t.I, 3).
59 "Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money,
usury of victuals, usury of anything that is lent upon usury: unto
a stranger (nokhri ) thou mayest lend upon usury." Deuter. XXIII,
19-20. Nokhri means a transient stranger; a resident stranger is
ger. "And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with
thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger,
or a sojourner; that he may live with thee. Take thou no usury of
him or increase." Levit. XXV, 35-36. "Lord, who shall abide in
Thy tabernacle?... He that putteth not out his money to usury."
(Psalm, XV, 1-5). "Even to a non-Jew," adds the Talmudic
cominentary (Makkoth, XXIV). Consult also: Exod. XXII 25; Philo,
De Charitate; Josephus, Antiquitates Judaeorum, IV, ch. VIII;
Selden, VI, ch. IX.
60 The Hebrew Sibyl speaks of "the execrable thirst for gold, of the
passion for sordid gain which goads the Latins on to the conquest
of the world."
61 Cf. S. Munk, Melanges de philosophie juive et arabe.
62 Guide des Egares (Translated by S. Munk).
63 Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny: Tractatus adversus Judaeorum
inveteratam duritiam (Bibl. des Peres Latins, Lyons).
64 Title XXIV.
65 General Statute of Ladislas Jagellon. Art. XIX.
66 Loc. cit.
ANTISEMITISM
ITS HISTORY AND CAUSES
by Bernard LAZARE
_____________________
Chapter Six
ANTI-JUDAISM FROM THE TIME OF
THE REFORMATION TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
WHEN the first breath of freedom swept over the world at the dawn of
the sixteenth century, the Jews were but a nation of captives and
slaves. Cooped up in the ghettoes, whose walls their own foolish hands
helped only to make thicker, they were retired from human society,
and, for the most part, lived in a state of lamentable and
heartrending abjection. Their intellect had become atrophied, as they
had themselves barred all the doors and shut all the windows through
which air and light might have come to them.
The number of those who had escaped this abasement was very limited,
and the Jews who succeeded in keeping a free brain and proud spirit
were in the lowest minority. These were mostly physicians, as medicine
is the only science permitted by the Talmud; at the same time there
were philosophers occasionally, and we shall see the role they played
in Italy during the Renaissance.
Toward the end of the fifteenth century, the Jew had become the serf
of the Imperial Chamber in Germany; in France he was the king's serf,
the serf of the lord, less even than a serf, for a serf could still
own something, while a Jew in reality had no property; he was a thing
rather than a person. The king and the lord, the bishop or the abbot,
could dispose of all his belongings, i.e., of all that seemed to
belong to him, since for him the possibility of owning was purely
fictitious. He was taxable at will; he was subjected to fixed imposts,
without prejudice to confiscations, and while, on the one hand, the
Church was making every effort to attract to it the Jew, on the other
hand, the baron and church dignitaries kept him in his condition. If
he turned to Christianity he lost his possessions in favour of the
lord, who was anxious to make good the loss of the taxes which he
could no longer levy on the convert, and thus it was to his interest
to remain in the slaves' prison. He was looked upon as a beast, impure
and useful at that, as lower than a [73] dog or hog, to which the
personal toll likened him, however; he was the one forever accursed,
he upon whom it was lawful, even meritorious, to shower the blows
which the Crucified had received in Pilate's pretorium. The only
country where the Jews could claim the dignity of human beings was
closed to them at the opening of the sixteenth century. The capture of
Granada and the conquest of the Moorish Kingdom had deprived the Jews
of their last refuge. The whole of Spain became Christian on the day
(January 2, 1492) when Ferdinand and Isabella entered the Mohammedan
city. The holy war of the Spaniards against the infidels ended
victoriously, and the Moors in existence were cruelly persecuted in
spite of the security which had been granted them. The victory having
aroused on the one hand fanaticism, and the national sentiment on the
other, Spain, now free from the Moors, wished to get rid of the Jews,
whom the Catholic king and queen expelled the very year of Boabdil's
fall, while the Inquisition doubled the severities against the
Marranos and the descendants of the Moriscoes.
Still, the time of great sorrows had passed for the Jews,
notwithstanding that the circumstances to which they had been reduced
were lamentable. They began to descend the hill which they had so
laboriously climbed, and if they found as yet no complete security in
their paths, they met with more humaneness, more pity. The manners
soften at this epoch, the souls become less rude, people actually
acquire the idea of a human being; this age when individualism
increases, better understands the individuals; while personality
develops, more tenderness is displayed towards the personality of the
other.
The Jews felt the effects of this state of mind. They were despised
all the same, but they were hated in a less violent way. It was still
sought to attract them to Christianity, but that was by persuasion.
They were banished from a good many cities and countries; they were
driven from Cologne and Bohemia in the sixteenth century; the
trade-bodies of Frankfort and Worms, led by Vincent Fettmilch, forced
them to leave those cities; but as serfs of the Imperial Chamber, they
were efficiently protected by their suzerain. If Leopold I sent them
out of Vienna, if later on Maria Theresa expelled them from Moravia,
these decrees of exile had but a temporary effect, their consequences
were felt but for a short time; and when the Jews re-entered the
cities by virtue of un-[74] doubted tolerance, they were not molested.
The massacres of Franconia and Moravia, the funeral piles of Prague,
were exceptions in the sixteenth century, and as for the extermination
ordered in Poland by Chmielnicki, in the seventeenth century, they
reached the Jews by ricochet only.
Hereafter there have been no systematic persecutions, except those
kept up in Spain against the Jewish converts, and in Portugal when
introduced by the Pope Clement VII, at the request of John III, and
after the massacres of 1506. Even there the inquisition was entrusted
to the Franciscans, who had shown themselves less cruel than the
Spanish Dominicans.
Still the Jews did not change. Such as we have seen them right in the
Middle Ages, we find them also at the moment of the the Reformation;
morally and intellectually the mass of the Jews was perhaps even
worse. But if they had not changed, those by their side had changed.
People were less believing, and therefore less inclined to detest
heretics. Averroism had prepared this decadence of faith, and the part
played by the Jews in the spread of Averroism is well known; so that
they thus had worked for their own benefit. The majority of Averroists
were unbelievers, or more or less assailed the Christian religion.
They were the direct ancestors of the men of the Renaissance. It is
owing to them that the spirit of doubt, as well as the spirit of
investigation, had worked itself out. The Florentine platonists, the
Italian Aristotelians, the German humanists came from them; thanks to
them Pomponazzo composed the treatises against the immortality of the
soul; thanks to them, too, among the thinkers of the sixteenth century
sprang up the theism which corresponded with the decadence of
Catholicism.
Animated by such sentiments, the men of this period could not glow
with religious indignation against the Jews. Other preoccupations
engaged them, though, and they had to abate two powerful
authoritiesscholasticism and the supremacy of Rome. The struggles of
the preceding century, the schisms of the West, the license in the
manners of the clergy, simony, the sale of benefices and indulgences,
all these had weakened the Church and impaired the Papacy. There were
protests rising against them on all sides. "The clergy must be made
moral," said the Father of the Vienna Synod (1311). The movement of
the Hussites, that of the Frerots, the Fraticellians, the Beghards,
had already been a protest against the wealth and corruption of the
Church; but the Papacy was[75] incapable of reform, and the
Reformation had to take place outside of and against it.
The Humanists were its promoters. Everything turned them away from
Catholicism. The Greeks of Constantinople, fleeing from the Turks, had
brought to them the treasures of the ancient literatures. By
discovering a new world Columbus was to open for them unknown
horizons. They were finding new reasons for combating scholasticism,
that old servant-maid of the Church. The humanists were becoming
sceptics and pagans in Italy, but in Germany the emancipating movement
which they helped to bring about was becoming more religious. To beat
the scholastics the humanists of the empire became theologians, and
went to the very sources in order to arm themselves better; they
learned Hebrew, not as Pico di Mirandola and the Italians had done, in
the way of a dilettante or out of love for knowledge, but in order to
find therein arguments against their opponents. During these years
which ushered in the Reformation, the Jew turned educator, and taught
the scholars Hebrew; he initiated them into the mysteries of the
kabbala after having opened to them the doors of Arabic philosophy.
Against Catholicism he equipped them with the formidable exegesis
which the rabbis had cultivated and built up during centuries: the
exegesis which protestantism, and later on rationalism, would make
good use of. By a singular chance the Jews, who had consciously or
unconsciously supplied humanism with weapons, had also given it the
pretext for its first serious battle. The contest for or against the
Talmud was the forerunner of the disputes over the Eucharist.
The struggle started at Cologne, the city of the inquisition and
capital of the Dominicans. A converted Jew, Joseph Pfefferkorn, once
more denounced the Talmud before the Christian world, and, with the
aid of the great inquisitor, Hochstraten, obtained from the Emperor
Maximilian an edict authorizing him to examine the contents of the
Jewish books and destroy those which blasphemed the Bible and the
Catholic faith. From this decision the Jews appealed to Maximilian,
and succeeded in having the power originally conferred upon
Pfefferkorn transferred to the archbishop elector of Mayence. As his
advisors the archbishop took the doctors, the humanists, and among
them Reuchlin, who felt no unbounded sympathy for the Jews, having
even attacked them once upon a time. But though he scorned the Jews in
general, he was a hebraizer[76] for all that, and as such was
doubtless more interested in the Talmud than in the inquisitorial
tribunal with its arrests. He, therefore, violently fought the
projects of Pfefferkorn and the Dominicans, and not only declared that
the books of the Israelites ought to be preserved, but even maintained
that chairs of Hebrew ought to be created in the universities.
Reuchlin was accused of having sold himself for the gold of the Jews.
He replied with a terrible pamphlet, The Mirror of the Eyes, which was
condemned to be burned.
But new times were approaching; the storm foreseen by everybody broke
over the Church. Luther issued at Wittenberg his ninety-five theses,
and Catholicism not only had to defend the position of its priests,
but was also forced to fight for its essential - tenets. For a moment
the theologians forgot the Jews, they even forgot that the spreading
movement took its roots in Hebrew sources.
Nevertheless, the Reformation in Germany and England as well was one
of those movements when Christianity acquired new force in Jewish
sources. The Jewish spirit triumphed with Protestantism. In certain
respects the Reformation was a return to the ancient Ebionism of the
evangelic ages. A great portion of the protestant sects was
semi-Jewish, the anti-trinitarian doctrines were later preached by the
protestants, by Michel Servet and the two Socins of Sienna among
others. Even in Transylvania anti-trinitarianism had flourish since
the sixteenth century, and Seidelius had asserted the excellence of
Judaism and of the Decalogue. The Gospels had been abandoned for the
Old Testament and the Apocalypse. The influence exercised by these two
books over the Lutherans, the Calvinists and especially the Reformers
and the English revolutionists, is well known. This influence
continued to the nineteenth century; it produced the Methodists,
Pietists, and particularly the Millenaries, the men of the Fifth
Monarchy, who in London dreamed with Venner of a republic and allied
themselves with the Levellers of John Lilburne.
Moreover, Protestantism, at its inception in Germany, endeavoured to
win over the Jews, and in this respect, the analogy between Luther and
Mohammed is striking. Both had drawn their teachings from Hebrew
sources, both wished to have the remains of Israel stamp with approval
the new dogmas which they were formulating. But the Jews had always
been the stubborn people of the Scriptures, the people with the hard
nape, rebellious against[77] injunctions, tenacious, fearlessly
faithful to its God and its Law.
Luther's preaching proved vain, and the irascible monk issued a
terrible pamphlet against the Jews. 67 "The Jews are brutes," he said;
"their synagogues are pig-sties, they ought to be burned, for Moses
would do it, if he came back to this world. They drag in mire the
divine words, they live by evil and plunders, they are wicked beasts
that ought to be driven out like mad dogs." In spite of these violent
outbursts and excitement, in spite of the numerous controversies,
which had taken place between the protestants and Jews, the latter
were not ill-treated in Germany; people had no spare time to busy
themselves with them.
Overwhelmed with miseries, decimated by war, ruined, reduced to
slavery, a prey to destitution and famine, the peasants of the
sixteenth century no longer went for the Jewish money-lender or the
Christian usurer, but they aimed higher; they attacked in the first
place a whole classof the richand then the social order as a whole.
The revolt was general; at first it was the peasants of the
Netherlands, then, and chiefly, those of Germany. All over the Empire
they founded secret societies, the Bundschuh, 68 the Poor Conrad, the
Evangelic Confederation. The peasants of Speyer and of the banks of
the Rhine rose in 1503; the bands of Joss Fritz, in 1512; the peasants
of Austria and Hungary, in 1515; those of Suabia, in 1524; those of
Suabia, Alsace and the Palatinate, in 1525. All marched with the
battle cry: "In Christ there is no longer master or slave." The
tradesmen joined them; knights, like Goetz von Berlichingen, placed
themselves at their head, and they massacred the nobles and set the
castles and convents on fire. In this formidable movement which
convulsed a part of Europe until 1535, everywhere leaving deep traces,
the Jews had been neglected, they had ceased to be the scapegoat, and
the poor wretches, famished and miserable, no longer fell upon them.
Were they as happy in the Catholic countries? Yes, for there, too,
they ceased to be the chief and sole enemies of the Church, and it was
no longer they that were feared. The relaxation of religious ideas
brought in Italy a rapprochement between a certain class of Jews and
the various classes of society. First, the humanists, the poets,
visited the Jewish scholars, philosophers and physicians. This
familiarity had begun in the fourteenth century, when Dante was seen
to have for his friend the Jew Manoello, the cousin of the philosopher
Giuda Romano; it continued in the fifteenth and[78] the sixteenth
centuries. Alemani was the teacher of Picodi Mirandola, Elias del
Medigo publicly taught metaphysics in Padua and Florence, Leo the
Hebrew published his platonic dialogues on love. The Jewish printers,
like the scholar Soncino, were in constant touch with the literature
of the period; his library was the centre of Hebrew publications, and
he even rivaled Aldo by publishing Greek authors. Hercules Gonzago,
bishop of Mantua and disciple of the Jew Pomponazzo of Bologna,
accepted the dedication of Jacob Mantino, who had translated the
Compendium of Averroes, while other princes encouraged Abraham de
Balmes in his work of translation. 69 And not only the sceptical, even
unbelieving faction, of the Hellenists and Latinists, worshipers of
Zeus and Aphrodite more than of Jesus, were on good terms with the
Jews, but the lord and the bourgeois were likewise. "There are," says
the bishop Maiol, "persons, and often persons of quality, both men and
women, who are so foolish and senseless as to take counsel with Jews
over their most intimate affairs, to their own detriment. They (the
Jews) are seen visiting the houses and palaces of the great ones, the
dwellings of officers, councillors, secretaries, gentlemen, both in
the city and country." People did not content themselves with
receiving Jews, they went to their houses, and, what is more, attended
their religious ceremonies. "There are among us," says again Maiol,
"some who visit and superstitiously revere the synagogues"; and,
addressing them, he exclaims: "You hear the Jews blow their trumpets
on the days of their festivities, and you run with your families to
look at them." Thus it went on during the seventeenth century. In
Ferrara they went to hear the sermons of Judah Azael, and, in 1676,
Innocent XI threatened with excommunication and a fine of fifteen
ducats those who frequented the synagogues. After the terrible shock
which had just disturbed the Church, they more than ever wished to
guarantee security to the Catholic dogma. Julius III had the Talmud
burned in Rome and Venice upon denunciation by Solomon Romano, a
converted Jew; Paul IV condemned it again at the request of another
convert, Vittorio Eliano; Pius V and Clement VIII did likewise.
During the dogmatic and theological reaction which followed the
Reformation, the Roman Church, friendly to the Jews heretofore, came
to be the only government, almost the only power, systematically to
persecute Judaism. Paul IV revived the ancient canonic laws and had
the Marranos burned; Pius V banished the[79] Jews from his domains,
except from Rome and Ancona, after having issued his Constitution
against the Jews, while the Spaniards, as they penetrated further into
Italy, were driving them from Naples, Genoa and Milan.
The other sovereigns had not the same motives as the popes to attend
to the Jews. And so, from the sixteenth century on, legislation
against the Jews ceased. We find only the edict of Ferdinand I against
Jewish usuryin Germany; a few decrees in Poland, and much later, the
prohibitions of Louis XV and Louis XVI. Again to find anti-Jewish
legislation, it will be necessary to study modern Russia, Rumania and
Serbia, which we shall shortly do. Anti-Judaism consisted chiefly in
molestations and outrages. The populace delighted in jeering the Jews,
and the grandees often gave them a chance to do it. Leo X, that
ostentatious pontiff, who was fond of buffooneryhe had at his side two
monks to divert him with their pleasantrieswould order races between
Jews, and, being very shortsighted, would watch them, glass in hand,
from the heights of his balconies. During the carnival in Rome the
people would parody the burial of rabbis, and a Jew would be marched
through the city streets, mounted backward on a donkey and holding the
animal's tail in his hand. On the ghetto-gates a sow was carved, and
they were often covered with obscene groups, in which rabbis were
represented. The sow symbolized the synagogueexactly as with the
Israelites the Roman Church was designated by the Hebrew name for
hogand the Jews were constantly reminded of it; a painter once even
related at Wagenseil how he had painted a sow on the door-leaf of the
arch of a synagogue which he was engaged to adorn.
With the scholars, the learned and the theologians, anti-Judaism was
becoming dogmatic and theoretical. True they wanted to bring the Jews
back, but by soft measures. It was no longer a question of burning
their books, but of translating them. It was said that now that the
Christian faith had struck deep enough roots, there was no danger to
believers from publishing Hebrew books, as had been done in the case
of those of the Arians and other heretics. Thus it would be possible
to know the polemic practices of the Israelites, and it would thus be
possible successfully to combat them.
This study brought about a result quite different from that expected.
By scrutinizing the Jewish spirit one came nearer to the[80] Jews, and
thereby became more sympathizing with them. Men, like Richard Simon,
e.g., who had prepared themselves for scientific exegesis, through
talmudists and hebraizing researches, could not look with hatred upon
those from whom they held their knowledge. Others were anxious to know
when the Jews would be called to Christian communion. The seventeenth
century was the most propitious time for the disputes over the
recalling of the Jews. In France this question as to whether the Jews
would be recalled at the end of the world or before itdivided Bossuet
and the Figurists led by Duguet. 70 In England the Millenaries
proclaimed the return of the Jews.71 In Germany also this opinion had
its advocates, such as Bengal, e.g. In France, not only did the
convulsionaries of Saint-Menard proclaim the approaching entry of the
Jews into the Church, but some were seen entertaining these dreams
until our days, and in 1809 President Agier fixed upon 1849 as the
year of the conversion of the Jews.
All over Europe the Jews enjoyed the greatest tranquility during the
eighteenth century. In Poland alone they fared badly for having once
lived too well. They had been prosperous there up to the middle of the
seventeenth century. Rich, powerful, they had lived on an equal
footing with the Christians, treated as though of the people amid whom
they lived; but they could not help giving themselves up to their
usual commerce, their vices, their passion for gold. Dominated by the
Talmudists they succeeded in producing nothing beyond commentators of
the Talmud. They were tax collectors, spirit-distillers, usurers,
seigneurial stewards. They were the noblemen's allies in their
abominable work of oppression, and when the Cossacks of Ukraine and
Little Russia had risen, under Chmielnicki, against Polish tyranny,
the Jews, as accomplices of the lords, were the first to be massacred.
It is said that over 100,000 of them were killed in ten years, but
just as many Catholics and especially Jesuits, were killed as well.
Elsewhere they were very prosperous. Thus, in the Ottoman Empire, they
were simply liable to the tax on foreigners and subject to no other
restrictive regulations, but nowhere was their prosperity so great as
in the Netherlands and England. Marranos fleeing the Spanish
Inquisition had settled in the Netherlands in 1593, and thence settled
a colony in Hamburg, then, later on, under Cromwell, one in England,
whence they had been banished for centuries and whither
Menasse-ben-Israel brought them back. [81] The Dutch, as practical and
circumspect a people as the English, utilized the commercial genius of
the Jews and turned it to their own enrichment. In France Henry II had
authorized the Portuguese Jews to settle in Bordeaux, where, on the
strength of the granted privileges, confirmed also by Henry III, Louis
XIV, Louis XV, and Louis XVI, they acquired great wealth in maritime
commerce.
In the other cities of France there were few of them, and, besides,
those residing in Paris or elsewhere had settled there only because of
the administrative tolerance. In Alsace alone there was a great
agglomeration. Their splendid condition provoked no violent
demonstrations; now and then protests would be heard, they would say
with Expilly: "With infinite grief one sees how such base people, who
had been received in the capacity of slaves, possess costly furniture,
lead a refined life, wear gold and silver on their garments, dress
showily, perfume themselves, study instrumental and vocal music and
ride horseback for mere diversion." At the same time, greater and
greater toleration was shown them from day to day; the world was
drawing nearer to them. Were they, in turn, drawing nearer to the
world? No. They seemed more and more to attach themselves to their
mystic patriotism; the further they went, the more the dreams of
Kabbala haunted them, with ever renewed confidence they awaited the
Messiah, and never had the pseudo-Messiahs been received with so much
enthusiasm as they were in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The Kabbalists exhausted arithmetical combinations to calculate the
exact date of the coming of him, who was so longed for. Toward 1666,
the date most commonly designated as the sacred date, all Jews of the
Orient were raised by the preachings of Sabbatai Zevi. From Smyrna,
where Sabbatai had proclaimed himself Messiah, the movement spread to
the Netherlands, and England even, and everybody expected the
restoration of Jerusalem and of the holy kingdom from the King of
Kings, as Sabattai was called. The same enthusiasm was displayed in
1755 when Frank appeared in Podolia as the new Messiah.
These hopes which the illuminism of the Kabbalists entertained helped
to keep the Jews apart, but those who were not seduced by the
speculations of dreamers, were weighed down by the yoke of the Talmud,
a yoke at all events even ruder and more humiliating.[82]
So far from decreasing, the Talmudic tyranny had even increased since
the sixteenth century. At this time Joseph Caro had edited the
Shulchan Aruch, a Talmudic code, whichaccording to the traditions
inculcated by the rabbinistsset up as laws the opinions of the
doctors. Up to our time the European Jews had lived under the
execrable oppression of these practices. 72 The Polish Jews improved
even upon Joseph Caro and refined the already enormous subtleties of
the Shulchan Aruch by making additions thereto, and they introduced
the method of Pilpul (pepper-grains) into their instruction.
Accordingly, as the world grew kinder to them, the Jewsat least the
massesretired into themselves, straightened their prison, bound
themselves with tighter bonds. Their decrepitude was unheard of, their
intellectual sinking was equaled only by their moral debasement; this
nation seemed dead.
However, the reaction against the Talmud had proceeded from the Jews
themselves. Mordecai Kolkos, 73 of Venice, had already published a
book against the Mishna; in the seventeenth century, Uriel Acosta 74
violently fought the rabbis, and Spinoza 75 exhibited little affection
for them. But anti-talmudism displayed itself particularly in the
eighteenth century, at first among the mystics, such as, e.g., the
Zoharites, disciples of Franck, who declared themselves enemies of the
doctors of the law. At any rate these opponents of the rabbinites were
unable to extricate the Jews from their abjection. To begin this task,
it was necessary for Moses Mendelssohn, a Jew and philosopher at the
same time, to array the Bible against the Talmud. His German version
(1779)was a great revolution. It was the first blow dealt to the
rabbinical authority. The Talmudists, too, who had once wished to kill
Kolkos and Spinoza, violently attacked Mendelssohn, and prohibited,
under penalty of excommunication, to read the Bible which he had
translated.
jum...@my-deja.com
These outbursts of rage were of no avail. Mendelssohn had followers:
young men, his disciples, founded the periodical Meassef, which
advocated the new Judaism, endeavoured to snatch the Jews from their
ignorance and humiliation, and prepared their moral emancipation. As
for political emancipation, the humanitarian philosophy of the
eighteenth century was working hard to bring it about. Though Voltaire
was an ardent Judoephobe, the ideas which he and the Encyclopaedists
represented were not [83] hostile to the Jews, as being ideas of
liberty and universal equality. On the other hand, if the Jews really
were isolated in the various states, they still had some points of
contact with those surrounding them.
Capitalism had by this time developed among the nations; stock-jobbing
and speculation were born; the Christian financiers applied themselves
to them with a zeal, just as they had applied themselves to usury,
just as they had, in the capacity of farmers-general, collected
imposts and taxes. The Jews could, therefore, take their place among
those whom "discounts were enriching at the public's expense, and who
were masters of all possessions of the French of all classes," as
already Saint Simon was saying.
The economic objections which were raised against their possible
emancipation had no longer the same import as in the Middle Ages, when
the church wanted to make the Jews the only representatives of the
class of money-brokers. As for the political objections, that they
formed a State within the State, that their presence as citizens could
not be tolerated in a Christian society and was even injurious to it,
they remained valid until the day when the French Revolution dealt its
direct blow to the conception of a Christian State. And so Dohm,
Mirabeau, Clermont-Tonnerre, the Abbot Gregoire were right with regard
to Rewbel, Maury and the Prince de Broglie, and the Constituent
Assembly obeyed the spirit which had guided it since its inception
when it declared on September 27, 1791, that the Jews would enjoy in
France the rights of actual citizens The Jews were on the threshold to
society.
FOOTNOTES
67 The Jews and their Lies, Wittenberg, 1558.
68 The confederate shoe.
69 Abraham de Balmes translated into Latin the greatest part of
Averroes's writings, and his translations were in use in the
Italian universities until the end of the seventeeth century.
70 On this point consult Duguet, Regles pour l'intelligence des
Saintes Ecritures, 1723. Bossuet, Discours sur l'Histoire
universelle, part II. Rondet, Dissertation sur le rappel des
Juifs, Paris, 1778. Anonymous, Lettre sur le proche retour des
Juifs, Paris, 1789, etc.
71 Gregoire, Histoire des sectes religieuses, t. II (Paris, 1825).
72 In Russia, Poland and Galicia they are extant even to-day.
73 Consult Wolf, Bibliotheca Hebraea, v. II, p. 798. Hamburg.
74 Exemplar vitae humanae (Published by Limbroch, 1687).
75 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus.
ANTISEMITISM
ITS HISTORY AND CAUSES
by Bernard LAZARE
_____________________
Chapter Seven
ANTI-JUDAIC LITERATURE AND THE PREJUDICES
WE have studied only the legal and the popular anti-Judaism from the
eighth century to the French Revolution. We have seen how anti-Jewish
legislation, at first canonic and later civil, was little by little
instituted. We have shown how the populace had been partly prepared by
the decrees of the popes, kings and republics, to hate and abuse the
Jews, and how far this exasperation of the people, the massacres it
committed, the insults and outrages it showered, had given the
counter-blow to this legislation. We have shown that up to the
fifteenth century, the accusations weighing over the Jews, had grown
each year, so that they had reached their maximum at this period, and
from then on went decreasing, that the codes had ceased to be applied
rigorously, that customs had gradually fallen into disuse, that few,
if at all, new laws were made, and that the Jew thus marched towards
liberation.
However, there is a kind of anti-Judaism to which we have paid no
special attention, and which we must hereafter examine. While the
Church and the monarchies issued laws against the Jews, the
theologians, philosophers, poets, and historians were writing about
them. It is the role, the working and the importance of this
anti-Judaism of the pen that we still have to examine. Theological
anti-Judaism, chronologically the first, naturally had apologetic ways
at its inception; it could not be otherwise as Judaism was fought only
to glorify the Christian faith and prove its excellence. As we have
said, they ceased producing apologetic writings towards the end of the
fourth century; the young church, in the intoxication of its triumph,
did no longer think it necessary to prove its superiority, and as
representatives of the apologetic manner, we find in the fifth century
only the Altercation of Simon and Theopilus of Evagrivs ,76 in which
the Altercation of Jason and Papiscus of Aristo of Pella was imitated
and even plagiarized; after that one has to come to the seventh
century to find the three books of Isidore of Seville directed against
the Jews. 77 [85]
When scholasticism was born, apologetics reappeared. They had two ends
in view: they defended the Catholic dogmas and symbols, and they
combated Judaism. They set themselves against that judaizing which the
church, its doctors, philosophers and apologists had always feared,
imagining the Jew as a sort of wolf that prowled around the sheep-fold
in order to carry the sheep away from a happy life. These were the
sentiments that guided, e.g., Cedrenus 78 and Theophanes 79 when they
wrote their Contra Judaeos, and Gilbert Crepin, abbot of Westminster,
in his Disputatio Judei cum Christiano de fide Christiana. 80 The form
of these writings was little varied; they reproduced almost servilely
the classic arguments of the Fathers of the Church, and their wording
followed similar patterns. To analyze one of them means analyzing all.
Thus, e.g., Pierre de Blois's Against the Perfidy of the Jews, 81
enumerated through thirty chapters the testimonies which the Old
Testament, and especially the prophets, contain in favour of the
divine Trinity and Unity, of the Father and the Son, of the Holy
Spirit, of the Messianism of Jesus Christ, of the Davidic descent of
the Son of Man, and of his incarnation. He ended by proving, on the
basis of the same authorities, that the Law had been transmitted to
the Gentiles, that the Jews had been doomed to reprobation, but that
the remnants of Israel would nevertheless one day be converted and
saved.
Yet these writings, discussions, fictitious dialogues hardly, if at
all, attained their object. They were consulted by clergymen only, and
were thus directed at converts; rabbis read them in very rare cases;
their own biblical exegesis and science being much superior to those
of the good monks, these latter rarely were at an advantage. At all
events they never convinced those whom they were to convince, and they
could not effectively fight the Jews, as they did not know the
talmudic and exegetic commentaries, from which the Jews drew their
weapons and forces. Things changed in the thirteenth century. The
works of Jewish philosophers had spread and exercised considerable
influence on the scholasticism of the time; men like Alexandre de
Hales had read Maimonides (Rabbi Moses) and Ibn Gebirol (Avicebron),
and they bore the impress of the teachings exposed by the Guide of the
Perplexed and the Fountain of Life. Curiosity was awakened, people
wanted to know Jewish thought and dialectics, at first for
philosophical motives, then to fight against the Jews with better
success.[86]
The Dominican Raymond de Penaforte, confessor of James I, of Aragon,
and a great converter of the Jews, bade the Dominicans to learn Hebrew
and Arabic to be able better to persuade and battle with the Jews. He
established schools for the instruction of monks in these two
languages and was the pioneer of Hebrew and Arabic studies in Spain.
He thus started a line of apologists who were no longer contented with
collecting the passages of the Old Testament that foreshadowed the
Trinity or prophesied the Messiah, but who endeavoured to refute the
rabbinical books and Talmudic assertions.
The best known among all these theological lampoons are those
published by the Dominican Raymund Martin, "a man as remarkable for
his knowledge of Hebrew and Arabic writings as for that of Latin
works." 82 These squibs bear characteristic enough titles: Capistrum
Judaeorum (Muzzle of the Jews) and Pugio Fidei (Dagger of the Faith).
33 The second had the greatest circulation. "It is well," Raymund
Martin said therein, "that the Christians take in hand the sword of
their enemies, the Jews, to strike them with it?"
During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the Pugio Fidei was
quite in vogue among the monks, especially the Dominicans, ardent
defenders of the faith. It was studied, consulted, plagiarized. The
number of writings which were inspired by Raymund Martin and for which
the Pugio Fidei served as the prototype and even mould, was
considerable. Among others those of Porchet Salvaticus, 84 Pierre de
Barcelona, 85 and Pietro Galatini 86 may be named.
Still even Martin's knowledge was not perfect, and as we shall
presently see, the rabbis very often worsted their opponents in their
controversies. The anti-Jews needed better weapons: the Franciscan,
Nicholas de Lyra, supplied them. He had made a careful study of
rabbinical literature, and his Hebraic attainments, their extent,
variety and solidity led to the belief that he was of Jewish origin,
which is of little probability. At all events, he was the precursor of
modern exegesis, which is the daughter of Jewish thought and whose
rationalism is purely Jewish; he was the ancestor of Richard Simon.
Nicholas de Lyra declared that the literal explanation of the text of
the Scriptures should form the foundation of ecclesiastic science, and
that the text and its meaning once established four meanings should be
derived therefrom: the literal,[87] allegoric, moral and anagogic. 87
Nicholas de Lyra expounded his researches in the Postilla and the
Moralitates, collected and recast later into a larger work. Hereafter
this was the arsenal to draw upon in the polemics against the Jews, as
well as for the defense of the Gospels against the Jewish attacks, for
Nicholas de Lyra had refuted, in his De Messia, the criticisms passed
on the Old Testament by the Jews. Numerous editions of Nicholas de
Lyra's works appeared, commentaries, notes and additions thereto were
made, and in the matter of exegesis even Luther was his pupil.
But praiseworthy as it was to combat the Jews, it was still more
meritorious to convince them, and most of the polemist monks did not
forget that the conversion of Judah was one of the aims of the church.
While the councils took steps to convert the Jews, the writers, on
their part, endeavoured to be convincing, several of them, the more
practical, went so far as to seek ground for reconciliation. So, e.g.,
by making certain concessionshe was even ready to accept
circumcisionNicholas de Lyra wanted to unite all religions into one,
with the Trinity as its principal dogma. The ancient "obstinatio
Judaeorum" which maintained divine unity resisted these attempts, and
the overtures of the Christians were generally received with
disfavour. However, conversions were not infrequent, and I mean not
only those brought about by violence, but also those obtained by
persuasion. These converted Jews played a very great role in the
anti-Jewish literature as well as in the history of the persecutions.
Toward their coreligionists they proved themselves the most cruel,
unjust and treacherous of adversaries. This is generally
characteristic of converts, and the Arabs converted to Christianity or
Christians turned to Islam witness that this rule allows of very few
exceptions.
A host of sentiments united in maintaining this bilious disposition
among the apostates. Above all they wished to give proof of their
sincerity: they felt that a sort of suspicion surrounded them at
entering into the Christian world, and the affectation of piety which
they proclaimed did not seem sufficient to them to dispel the
suspicions.
Nothing did they fear so much as the accusation of lukewarmness or
sympathy with their former brethren, and the way in which the
Inquisition treated those it deemed relapsers, was not calculated to
diminish the fears entertained by the proselytes. Accordingly, they
simulated an excess of zeal which in many, if not all, upheld a [88]
genuine faith. Some of them, convinced of having found salvation in
their conversion, made even efforts to win over their coreligionists
to the Christian faith; among these the church found several of its
most fearless and eagerly listened to converters. 88 Some even
informed against the Jews that they had abandoned the rigours of the
ecclesiastical and civil laws. About 1475, for instance, Peter
Schwartz and Hans Bayol, both converted Jews, instigated the
inhabitants of Ratisbon to sack the Ghetto; in Spain, Paul de
Santa-Maria instigated Henry III of Castile to take measures against
the Jews. This Paul de Santa-Maria, previously known under the name of
Solomon Levi of Burgos, was not an ordinary personality. A very pious,
very learned rabbi, he abjured at the age of forty, after the
massacres of 1391, and was baptized along with his brother and four of
his sons. He studied theology at Paris, was ordained priest, became
bishop of Cartagena and afterwards chancellor of Castile. He published
an Examination of the Holy Writa dialogue between the infidel Saul and
the convert Paul and issued an edition of Nicholas de Lyra's Postilla,
supplemented by his Additiones and glosses. He did not stop at that in
his activity. He is generally found the instigator in all the
persecutions which befell the Jews of his time, and he hunted the
synagogue with a ferocious hatred; and yet in his works he confined
himself to theological polemics. 89 But the Talmud was the great
antagonist of the converts, and one that had to withstand most of
their wrath. They constantly denounced it before the inquisitors, the
king, the emperor, the pope. The Talmud was the execrable book, the
receptacle of the most hideous abuses of Jesus, the Trinity and the
Christians; against it Pedro de la Caballeria wrote his Wrath of
Christ Against the Jews, 90 Pfefferkorn, his Enemy of the Jews, 91 in
which he congratulated himself upon "having withdrawn from the dirty
and pestilential mire of the Jews," and Jerome of Santa Fe, his
Hebreomastyx. 92 The Catholic theologians followed the example of the
converts, most frequently they had about the Talmud no other notions
beyond those given them by the converts.
Usually auto-da-fes followed these denunciations of the Talmud, but
they were, as a rule, preceded by a disputation. This custom of
disputations goes back to deep antiquity. We know that already the
Hebrew doctors held disputations with the apostles. On several
occasions rabbis and monks were seen contending in eloquence in [89]
the presence of the Emperors of Rome and Byzantium in order to
convince their audience of the excellence of their cause, and the
Chazar King made up his mind to embrace Judaism only after a
discussion, in which a Jew, a Christian and a Mohammedan took part,
so, at least, the legend relates. 93 These discussions were, however,
rarely public, the church feared their consequences; it feared Jewish
subtlety, clever at finding objections which embarrassed the defenders
of the Catholic faith and troubled the believer. There remained in use
only private discussions between ecclesiastical dignitaries and
Talmudists, and few auditors were admitted to these meetings, except
under rare and important circumstances, in which cases a legal
sanction followed the dispute. In these queer disputes, in which one
side acted as judge at the same time, the Jews were, in general, the
stronger. Their more concise dialectics, their more genuine knowledge,
their more serious and subtle exegesis, gave them an easy advantage.
In spite of this, or rather, because of this, the Jews were very
prudent in their assertions, they appeared in the most courteous
light, and heeded those melancholy words of Moses Cohen of
Tordesillas, addressed to his brethren: "Never let your zeal carry you
away to the point of uttering stinging words, for the Christians hold
the power and may silence the truth with fist-blows." These counsels
were followed, but in spite of the precautions taken, at the end of
the argument the Jew, who was always wrong in the end, was beaten to
death.
However, the informers were usually commanded to sustain their
charges. In 1239, a converted Jew, Nicholas Donin, of La Rochelle,
brought before the pope, Gregory IX, a charge against the Talmud.
Gregory ordered the copies of the book to be seized and an inquest
made. Bulls were sent out to the bishops of France, England, Castile
and Aragon. Eudes de Chateauroux, chancellor of the University of
Paris, directed the investigation in France, the only country where
the bulls had produced an effect. The disputation was ordered, and
took place in 1240, between the informer, Nicholas Donin, and four
rabbis: Yechiel of Paris, Jehuda ben David Melun, Samuel ben Solomon,
and Moses of Coucy. The discussion was long, but Donin's skill finally
divided the rabbis; the Talmud was condemned and burned a few years
later.
In 1263, Raymond de Penaforte arranged at the Aragonian court a
dispute between the rabbis, Nachmani of Girone (Bonastruc de Porta),
and the Dominican, Pablo Christiani, a converted Jew and[90] a zealous
converter. This time Nachmani was victorious after a four-day
disputation on the coming of Messiah, on the divinity of Jesus, and
the Talmud. The king himself accorded him an audience, received him
very cordially and loaded him with presents. But such victories were
exceptional, as the Jewish books were most frequently condemned by the
judges beforehand, whatever the skill of their defenders.
These controversies increased in number in Spain during the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries. Thus the convert Alfonso of Valladolid had a
dispute with his former coreligionists at Valladolid; John of
Valladolid, another convert, had a dispute with Moses Cohen de
Tordesillas on the proofs of the Christian faith contained in the Old
Testament, but was defeated in the contest; Shem-Tob ben Isaac Shaprut
had at Pampeluna a controversy on the original sin and redemption,
with the cardinal Pedro de Luna, later anti-pope Benedict XIII. Many
more might be mentioned, all of them proving what amount of trouble
the Jews were giving the church and how eagerly conversion was desired
and solicited. Still all these disputes were courteous up to the
moment the Inquisition was introduced.
But alongside of the Jew, considered the enemy of Jesus and the foe of
Christianity, there was the Jew, the usurer, the moneydealer, he upon
whom fell a part of the hatred of the oppressed and the poor, he whom
the rising bourgeoisie was beginning to envy and hate. I have pictured
that Jew at work, how he had come to the exclusive pursuit of gold,
and how he became the object of popular passions as a sort of victim
of expiation, the scapegoat for all the sins of a society that was no
better than he. If the populace oftenest killed the deicide, it also
fell upon the clipper of ducats; its anti-Judaism was not religious
only, but social as well. The case was similar with anti-Judaism of
the pen. If certain bishops and ecclesiastical writers confined
themselves to defending the symbols of their faith against Jewish
exegesis, if they fought against this Jewish spiritthe terror of the
church that was, nevertheless, deeply impregnated with this
spiritothers followed the example of the Fathers who had thundered
against Jewish rapacity and the rapacity of the rich in general. To
the theological treatises issued by them they added addresses to the
court intended to combat the leaders on pawned articles, those who
lived by usury. Dagobard, 94 Amolon, 95 Rigord, 96 Pierre de Cluny, 97
Simon Maiol 98 were these [91] anti-Jews. They were among those whom
the wealth of the Jews revolted more than their ungodliness, who were
more scandalized by their luxury than by their blasphemies. No doubt,
for them the Jews were the most hateful adversaries of the truth, the
worst of the unbelievers; 99 they are the enemies of God and Jesus
Christ; they call the apostles apostates; they scoff at the Bible of
the Septuagint; 100 in their daily prayers they curse the Saviour
under the name of the Nazarene; they build new synagogues as if to
insult the Christian religion; they Judaize the believers, they preach
the Sabbath to them and they persuade them to take a rest on Sabbath.
But, besides, the Jews oppress the people; they hoard up wealth that
is the fruit of usury and plunder; 101 they hold the Christians in
servitude; they possess enormous treasures in the cities which had
received them, e.g., in Paris and Lyons; they commit larceny, they
acquire money by evil methods; "everything passes through their hands,
they insinuate themselves into houses and gain confidence; by their
usury they draw the sap, the blood and the natural vigour of the
Christians." 102 They sell counterfeit jewels, they receive stolen
goods, they coin base money, cannot be trusted, collect their debts
twice over. In brief, "there is no wickedness in the world which the
Jews are not guilty of, so that they seem to aim at nothing but the
Christians' ruin." 103
To this picture of the perfidia Judaeorum, the anti-Jews, like Maiol
or Luther, 104 added abundant abuse, and soon anti-Judaism became
purely polemic. The theological and social considerations now occupy
but a limited place in the books of Alonzo da Spina, 105 especially
Pierre de Lancre 106 and Francisco de Torrejoncillo. 107 The Sentinel
Against the Jews, a pamphlet by the last named, is particularly
curious. Written in Spain at the beginning of the seventeenth century,
it was aimed at the Marranos, who, it was said, invaded all the civil
and religious offices. It consisted of fourteen books and showed that
the Jews were presumptuous and liars, that they were traitors, that
they were despised and dejected, that those favouring them came to an
evil end, that neither they nor their work could be trusted, that they
were turbulent, selfconceited, seditious, that the church preserved
them only that in their midst might be born their Messiah the
anti-Christ, who will be vanquished to allow Israel to recognize his
error. At any rate Francisco de Torrejoncillo may be considered
amiable if one compares his pamphlet with a singular little work of
the same epoch [92] bearing the title, Book of the Alboraique. 108 The
Alboraique was Mohamed's mount, a queer animal, neither horse, nor
mule, nor ox, nor donkey; to this singular animal the author of the
squib likens the new Christians, the Marranos, who are Alboraiques as
being neither Jews nor Christians.
Had all the polemists limited themselves to allegorical comparisons,
not much harm would have come to the Jews. But some did not hesitate
to relate the most extraordinary things about these accursed ones, and
the anti-Jewish polemic literature enregistered all the popular
prejudices, even made them worse; it originated new ones and
perpetuated them in all instances. The wildest stories about the Jews
were circulated; they were represented with monstrous features; the
most abominable deformities, the blackest vices, the most heinous
crimes, the most despicable habits were attributed to them. They have,
so it was declared, the figure of a he-goat, they have horns and a
caudal appendage, 109 they are subject to quinsy, to scrofula, to
blood-flux, stinking infirmities which make them lower their heads,
110 they have haemorrhoids, bloody sores on their hands, they cannot
spit; at night their tongue is overrun with worms. The belief in these
diseases peculiar to the Jews had come from Spain, in the fourteenth
century; later on they were arranged in lists, the oldest of which
belongs to 1634. In these lists, to each of the twelve tribes its
special disease is assigned.
Thus can be explained some other anti-Jewish prejudices; but though it
is evident that the likening of the Israelites to the evil spirit
caused the he-goat figure and horns on their foreheads to be
attributed them, still many of these beliefs remain inexplicable. They
all arise, in part, from the fact that the retired life of the Jews,
their venerable habit of keeping aloof, not to mingle with those
surrounding themever served to excite excessively the popular
imagination.
As to the Templars, concerning whom so many similar abominations had
been spread, they, above all others, can be likened unto the Jews.
Like the latter, they were hated for their pride, their ostentation,
their wealth in the midst of general misery, their eagerness for gain,
their shameless use of means of acquisition, their making usurious
contracts. They were hated because they advanced money on chattels and
fiefs on condition that these fiefs and chattels remained theirs in
case of the borrower's death; because the Templars' Order possessed a
greater part of the French [93] territory in the thirteenth century
and formed a commonwealth within the state, the Templars having and
recognizing no master but God. 111 We see then that the same causes
produce the same results, create the same animosities, give rise to
the same beliefs.
Were not the Templars said to "burn and roast the children they begat
by young girls, and to sacrifice to and anoint their idols with the
fat taken off"; 112 were not the Cagots said to make use of Christian
blood? Does not the charge of ritual murder weigh over the Jews as it
had weighed over those wretches, the lepers, whom the Middle Ages
treated as the Jew's brethren, thus taking up again the assertions of
Manetho, repeated by Chaeremon, Lysimachus, Posidonius, Apollonius
Molo and Apion, just as it had weighed over the sorcerers, who were
also likened to the Jews? But we shall come back to this question when
we speak of the modern antisemites.
What was the attitude of the Jews in the face of all these attacks and
abuses which the theologians and polemists directed at them? They
vigorously defended themselves. They opposed exegesis to exegesis;
they opposed their logic to their opponents' arguments; they answered
insults and calumnies with calumnies and insults; which is but normal,
natural, inevitable, but all the same these insults fatally rebounded
against them. If the anti-Jewish literature is enormous, the defensive
literature of the Jews, as well as their anti-Christian literaturefor
the Jews oftentimes took up the offensiveis quite considerable. The
first controversial work belonging to the Israelite literature of the
Middle Ages, was the Book of the Lord's Wars, written in 1170, by
Jacob ben Ruben. 113 It was made up of twelve chapters, or gateways,
proving that Messiah had not yet come, which, however, for the
exegetic rhetoricians, was just as easy as, if not easier than to
prove the opposite. But it was not enough to prove that Jesus was not
the awaited Messiah; it was equally necessary to prove the superiority
of the Jewish religion to those who were establishing, irrefutably,
the superiority of the Christian religion, and this was easy for both
sides, as each drew from the Bible what suited it. The Talmudists made
use of the New Testament even to confirm their Judaic dogmas. This was
done by Moses Cohen de Tordesillas, in his Support of the Faith, while
Shem-Tob ben Isaac Shaprut resumed, in the form of a dialogue between
a Unitarian and a Trinitarian, the ideas propounded by Jacob ben
Ruben. 114 [94]
In imitation of the ecclesiastical writers and inquisitors, the rabbis
wrote books for the use of those who were challenged in disputes. A
kind of vade mecum, these books pointed out the vulnerable sides of
the Christian dogmas; and if, on the one hand, there were publications
like "Judaism Defeated with Its Own Weapons," on the other hand were
composed works like "Christianity Defeated with Its Own Arms," i.e.,
with those found in the New Testament. In anti-Christian literature
the Gospels played the part of the Talmud in anti-Jewish literature.
Beginning with the eleventh or twelfth century they were often
assailed, and numerous discussions took place between rabbinites and
theologians. These discussions were sometimes gathered in collections,
where they were presented in a light favourable to Jewish dialectics.
Presently these collections came to be used as manuals; among them
were the ancient Nizzachon (Victory) of Rabbi Mattathiah; Nizzachon of
Lipman de Mulhausen; the one by Joseph Kimhi; the Strengthening of the
Faith, by Isaac Troki, 115 and the Book of Joseph the Zcalot. 116
Still this was not sufficient for the fervour of the Jews. Having
prepared the minds for future debates, having assailed the Catholic
doctrines, not in oratorical tournaments only, but in apologies as
well, they wrote abusive pamphlets, like that famous Toldot Jesho, the
life of the Galilean which goes back to the second or third century,
and which Celsius possibly was acquainted with. 117 This Toldot Jesho
was published by Raymund Martin, Luther translated it into German;
Wagenseil and the Dutchman Huldrich also published it. It contained
the story of Pantherus the soldier and the legends representing Jesus
as a magician. After defending the Bible and Monotheism the Jews
turned upon those who were their most dangerous enemiesthe converted.
If they had refuted Raymund Martin and Nicholas de Lyra, 118 they
refuted with still greater energy Jerome de Santa Fe, the Santa Fe
whom his former coreligionists called Megaddef, i.e., blasphemer. At
Jerome they were incensed. Don Vidal ibn Labi, Isaac ben Nathan
Kalonymos, 119 Solomon Duran, 120 several others, wrote to give the
lie to the "calumniator." The same was done by Isaac Pulgar against
Alfonso of Valladolid, 121 by Joshua ben Joseph Lorqui and Profiat
Duran.122 In the seventeenth century anti-Judaism took on another
form. The theologians were succeeded by erudites, scholars, exegetes.
Anti-Judaism became milder and more scientific; it was represented
[95] by hebraizers, often of great attainments, like Wagenseil, 123
Bartolocci, 124 Voetius, 125 Joseph de Voisin, 126 etc. These men
studied Jewish literature and manners in a more serious way. Thus
Wagenseil denied ritual murder; 127 though saying that the Talmud
contained "blasphemies, impostures and absurdities," Buxtorf declared
that it also contained things of value for the historian and
philosopher. 128 Yet the same ideas persisted which had inspired the
authors of the preceding centuries. The object was always to prove the
truth of the Christian faith and dogmas on the basis of the Old
Testament; the anxiety to convert the Jews ever haunted the souls, the
recall of Israel was spoken of, means of bringing them back were
proposed; 129 the apostates invoked the Zohar and Mishna in favour of
Jesus, 130 and the polemic literature was still in bloom under
Eisenmenger, whose Judaism Unveiled 131 has inspired many contemporary
antisemites; under Schudt, 132 later under Voltaire. It is true that
literary anti-Judaism, particularly that of combative tendencies and
pamphleteers, is varied but little. Most of the anti-Jewish writers
imitate one another, without scruple; they plagiarize without even
taking the trouble to verify the assertions of their predecessors. One
book of the kind is responsible for similar others: Alonzo da Spina
draws his inspiration from Batallas de Dios, by Alfonso of Valladolid;
Porchet Salvaticus, Pietro Galatini, Pierre de Barcelona republish,
under different names, Raymund Martin's Sword of the Faith; Paul
Fagius and Sebastian Munster 133 help themselves to the Book of the
Faith.
In spite of this, and independently of the dissimilarities I have
noted, anti-Judaism, from the seventeenth century on, is in all
respects quite different from the anti-Judaism of the preceding
centuries. The social side gets gradually the upperhand of the
religious side, though this latter continues to exist. The question is
asked, not whether the Jews are wrong in being usurers, or merchants,
or deicides, but whether, as Schudt 134 says, the Jews ought to be
tolerated in a State or not, whether it is lawful to admit Jews into a
Christian commonwealth, as John Dury 135 inquires, about 1655, in a
pamphlet directed against Cromwell's protege, Menasseh ben Israel.
This is the social standpoint which we shall see developing henceforth
in literary anti-Judaism; a part of modern antisemitism will rest on
the theory of a Christian State and its integrity, and in this wise it
will be connected with the ancient anti-Judaism.
FOOTNOTES
76 Consult the Spicilegium by Achery, vols. X and XV.
77 Isidore of Seville, De Fide Catholica ex vetere et novo
Testamento contra Judaeos (Opera, vol. VII). Migne, P. L., lxxxiii.
78 Disputatio contra Judaeos, Opera, Editio Basileensis, p. 180.
79 Contra Judaeos,. Lib. VI.
80 Migne, P. L., Ch. CLIX.
81 Liber contra perfidia Judaeorum, Opera, Paris, 1519.
82 Augustin Giustiniani, Linguae Hebreae (1566).
83 Pugio Fidei (Paris, 1651). (Cf. Quetif, Bibl. Scriptorum
dominicanorum, v. I, p. 396, and the edition of Carpzon, Leipzig,
1687).
84 Victoria adversus impios Hebreos et sacris litteris (Paris, 1629).
Wolf, Bibl. Hebr. v. I, p. 1124.
85 Consult Fabricius, Bibliotheca Latina, on Peter of Barcelona (Petrus
Barcinonensis) .
86 De Arcanis catholicae veritatis libris (Soncino, 1518).
87 Throughout the Middle Ages they believed in this fourfold meaning
of the Scriptures, and the following distich expressed its import:
Littera gesta docet, quid credas, allegoria;
Moralis, quid agas quo tendas anagogia.
88 For the antisemitic literature of the Jewish apostates consult Wolf,
Bibl. Hebr., v. I.
89 Cf. Wolf, Bibl. Hebr., I, p. 1004; and Joseph Rodriguez de Castro,
Bibliotheca espanola (Madrid, 1781), vol. I, p. 235.
90 Tractatus Zelus christi contra Judaeos, Saracenos et infideles
(Venice, 1542).
91 Hostis Judaeorum (Cologne, 1509).
92 Hebreomastyx (Frankfort, 1601).
93 Juda Hallevy, Liber Cosri. Translated by John Buxtorf, Jr., 1660 --
a German translation with an introduction was published by H.
Jolowicz and D. Cassel, Das Buch Kuzari, 1841, 1853.
94 De Insolentia Judaeorum (Patrologie latine v. CIV).
95 Epistola seu liber contra Judaeos (Patrologie latine, v. CXVI).
96 Gesta Philippi Augusti, 12-16.
97 Tractatus adversus Judaeorum inveteratam duritiam (Bibliotheque des
Peres latins. Lyons).
98 Les Jours caniculaires (Dierum canicularium) translated by F. de
Rosset (Paris, 1612).
99 Agobard, loc. cit.
100 Amolon, loc. cit.
101 Pierre de Cluny, loc. cit.
102 Agobard, loc. cit. -- Rigord, loc. cit.
103 S. Maiol, loc. cit.
104 The Jews and their lies (Wittemberg, 1558).
105 Fortalitium Fidei (Nuremberg, 1494). Wolf, Bibl. Hebr., v. I,
p. 1116.
106 L'lncredulite et mecreance du sortilege pleinement convaincue
(1622).
107 Centinela contra Judios (Cf. Loeb, Revue des Etudes Juives, v. V).
108 Bibliotheque Nationale, Spanish section, Ms. No. 356 (Loeb, Revue
des Etudes Juives, v. XVIII).
109 Centinela contra Judios.
110 Pierre de Lancre, loc. cit.
111 Lavocat, Proces des Freres de l'ordre du Temple, Paris, 1888.
112 Lavocat, loc. cit.
113 Loeb, Revue des Etudes Juives, v. XVIII.
114 Shem-Tob ben Isaac Shaprut, The Touchstone (Loeb, loc. cit.).
115 Wagenseil in his Tela ignea Satanae (Altdorf, 1681), reproduces
all these treatises in print.
116 Zadoc Kahn, The Book of Joseph the Zealot (Revue des Etudes Juives,
vols. I and III).
117 For the Toldot Jesho, cf. Tela ignea Satanae, Wagenseil, v. II,
p. 189, and B. de Rossi, Biblotheca Judaica antichristiana
(Parma, 1800), p. 117.
118 Wagenseil, loc. cit.
119 Magna Biblothica Rabbinica (Rome, 1693-95).
120 Solomon ben Adret, of Barcelona, refuted the Pugio Fidei.
121 Chayim ibn Musa refuted Nicholas de Lyra in his Shield and Sword
(Graetz, loc. cit.)
122 Letter of Combat (Graetz, loc. cit., and Rossi, Bibloth.
antichrist, p.100).
123 Dialogue against the Apostates (Loeb, loc. cit.)
124 Alteca Boteca (Loeb, loc. cit.) -- De Rossi, Dizionario Storico
degli autori Ebrei (Parma, 1802), p. 89.
125 Disputationes Selectae (Utrecht, 1663).
126 Theologia Judaeorum (1647).
127 Benachrichtung wegen einiger die Judenschaft engehenden Sachen
(Altdorf, 1709).
128 Dictionn, chaldeo-talmadico-rabbinique (Basiliae, 1639) and
Synagogua Judaica (Hanau, 1604).
129 Pean de la Croullardiere, Methode facile pour convaincre les
heretiques (Paris, 1667), which contains a "method of assailing
and converting the Jews"; Thomas Bell, Hader, Dottrina facile e
breve per reduire l'Hebreo al conoscimento del vero Messia e
Salvator del Mondo (Venetia 1608).
130 Conrad Otton, Gali Razia (Secrets unveiled), (Nurenberg, 1605).
131 Judaism Unveiled (Frankfort, 1700).
132 Compendium Historiae Judaicae (Frankfort, 1700) and Judaeas
Christicida gravissime peccans et vapulans (1700).
133 Revue des Etudes juives, v. V, p. 57.
134 Loc. cit.
135 A Case of Conscience (London 1655).
ANTISEMITISM
ITS HISTORY AND CAUSES
by Bernard LAZARE
_____________________
Chapter Eight
MODERN LEGAL ANTI-JUDAISM
AFTER preliminary discussions, as a result of which any decision on
the emancipation of the Jews was adjourned, the Constituent Assembly
voted, on September 27, 1791, on a motion by Duport, and thanks to
Regnault de Saint-Jean-d'Angely's intervention, the admission of the
Jews to the rank of citizens. This decree had been ready for a long
time, prepared as it was through the work of the commission assembled
by Louis XVI, with Malesherbes in the chair; prepared by the writings
of Lessing and Dohm, of Mirabeau and Gregoire. It was the logical
outcome of the efforts made for some time by the Jews and the
philosophers; in Germany Mendelssohn had been its promoter and most
active advocate, and in Berlin Mirabeau drew his inspiration at the
side of Dohm in the salons of Henriette de Lemos.
A certain class of Jews had, however, already been emancipated. In
Germany the court Jews (Hofjuden) had obtained commercial privileges;
even titles of nobility were being conferred upon them for money. In
France the Portuguese Marranos returned to Judaism, enjoyed great
liberties and prospered under the supervision of their syndics at
Bordeaux, very indifferent nevertheless to the fate of their
unfortunate brethren, though very influential: one of them, Gradis,
failed to secure a nomination as deputy to the States-General. In
Alsace even, several Jews obtained important favours, as, e.g., Cerf
Berr, purveyor to the armies of Louis XV, who granted him
naturalization and the title of Marquis de Tombelaine.
Thanks to all these privileges, there sprang into existence a class of
rich Jews which came into contact with the christian society;
open-minded, subtle, intelligent, refined, of extreme intellectualism,
it had given up, like so many Christians, the letter of religion or of
the faith even, and retained nothing but a mystic idealism which, for
good or ill, went hand in hand with a liberal rationalism. The fusion
between this group of Jews and the elite led by Lessing,[97] was
brought about above all in Berlin, a young city and centre of a
kingdom which was rising to fame, an easy-going city, with little
tradition. Young Germany gathered at the houses of Henrietta de Lemos
and Rachel von Varnhagen; with the Jews, German Romanticism ended in
impregnating itself with Spinozaism; Schleiermacher and Humboldt were
seen visiting there, and it may be said that if the Constituent
Assembly decreed the emancipation of the Jews, it was in Germany that
it had been prepared.
At any rate, the number of these Jews qualified to mingle with the
nations, was extremely limited, the more so because the majority of
themlike Mendelsson's daughters, like Boerne and Heine later onended
by converting, and thus no longer existed as Israelites. As for the
mass of Jews, it was in quite different circumstances.
The decree of 1791 freed these pariahs from a secular servitude; it
broke the fetters with which the laws had bound them; it wrested them
from all kinds of ghettos where they had been imprisoned; from, as it
were, cattle it made them human beings. But if it was within its power
to restore them to liberty, if it was possible for it to undo within
one day the legislative work of centuries, it could not annul their
moral effect, and it was especially impotent to break the chains which
the Jews had forged themselves. The Jews were emancipated legally, but
not so morally; they kept their manners, customs and
prejudicesprejudices which their fellow citizens of other confessions
kept, too. They were happy at having escaped their humiliation, but
they looked around with diffidence and suspected even their
liberators.
For centuries they had looked with disgust and terror at this world
which was rejecting them; they had suffered from it, but they still
more feared to lose their personality and faith from contact with it.
More than one old Jew must have looked with anxiety at the new
existence which opened before him; I should not even be surprised if
there were some in whose eyes the liberation appeared a misfortune or
abomination.
As the decree of emancipation did not change the Judaic self, the way
in which this self manifested itself was not changed either.
Economically the Jews remained what they werebe it understood that I
speak of the majorityunproductive, i.e., brokers, money-lenders,
usurers, and they could not be otherwise, given their habits and
conditions under which they had lived. With the excep-[98]tion of an
insignificant minority among them, they had no other aptitudes, and
even nowadays a great many Jews are in the same plight. They did not
fail to apply these aptitudes, and during this period of unrest and
disorder they found occasion to apply them more than ever. In France
they availed themselves of events, and the events were favourable for
them. In Alsace, for instance, they acted as auxiliaries to the
peasants, whom they lent the funds necessary for the purchase of
national property. Already before the revolution they were the
home-bred usurers in this province, and the objects of hatred and
contempt, 136 after the Revolution, the very peasants who had
erstwhile forged quittances 137 to escape from the clutches of their
creditors, now appealed to them. Thanks to the Alsatian Jews, the new
ownership continued, but they meant to draw profit from it with a
plentiful, usurious hand. The debtors raised a protest; they pretended
they would be ruined if no aid were forthcoming, and in this they
exaggerated, as they, who previous to 1795 had nothing, had eighteen
years later acquired 60,000,000 francs' worth of estates on which they
owed the Jews 9,500,000 francs. Nevertheless, Napoleon lent ear to
them, and suspended, during one year, judicial decisions in behalf of
the Jewish usurers of the Upper Rhine, the Lower Rhine, and the Rhine
provinces. His work did not stop at that. In the preambles of the
decree of suspension of May 30, 1806, he showed that he did not
consider the repressive measures sufficient, but wanted the source of
the evil done away with.
"These circumstances," said he, "caused us at the same time to
consider how urgent it was to revive among those subjects of our
country who profess the Jewish religion, the sentiments of civic
morals, which have unfortunately been deadened with a great number of
them through the state of humiliation in which they have languished
too long, and which is not our intention to maintain and renew."
To revive or rather to give birth to these sentiments, he wanted to
bend the Jewish religion to suit his discipline, to hierarchize it as
he had hierarchized the rest of the nation, to make it conform to the
general plan. When first consul he had neglected to take up the
question of the Jewish religion, and so he wanted to make amends for
this failure by convoking an Assembly of Notable Jews for the purpose
of "considering the means of improving the condition of the Jewish
nation and spreading the taste for the useful[99] arts and professions
among its members," and of organizing Judaism administratively. A list
of questions was sent out among prominent Jews and when the answers
had come in, the Emperor called together a Great Sanhedrin vested with
the power of bestowing a religious authority upon the responses of the
first assembly. The Sanhedrin declared that the Mosaic law contained
obligatory religious provisions, and political provisions; the latter
concerned the people of Israel when an autonomous nation, and had,
therefore, lost their meaning since the Jews had scattered among the
nations; it also forbade to make, in the future, any distinctions
between Jews and Christians in the matter of loans, and entirely
prohibited usury.
These declarations showed that the prominent Jews belonging for the
most part to the minority I have mentioned, knew to adapt themselves
to the new state of affairs, but could in no way make any presumption
upon the dispositions of the mass. It required the candour of Napoleon
the legist to believe that a synod could enjoin love for the
neighbour, or forbid usury which the social conditions facilitated.
The imperial prohibition for Jews against providing substitutes for
military servicethis for the purpose of making them better realize the
grandeur of their civic dutieswas bound to have the same effect as the
prescriptions of the synod. 138 The case was the same with the decree
of March 17, 1808, forbidding the Jews to engage in commerce without a
personal license issued by the prefect, or to take mortgages without
authorization; besides, Jews were forbidden to settle in Alsace and
the Rhine provinces, and the Alsatian Jews were forbidden to enter
other departments unless to engage in agriculture. 139 These decrees
issued for ten years, did not turn a single Jew into a farmer, and if
any of them became chauvinists, the obligation of serving in the army
had something to do with it. These were the last restrictive laws in
France; the legal assimilation was consummated in 1830, when Lafitte
had the Jewish creed incorporated in the budget. This meant the final
downfall of the "Christian State," though the lay state was not, as
yet, completely established. The last trace of the ancient
distinctions between Jews and Christians disappeared with the
abolition of the oath More Judaico, in 1839. Nor was the moral
assimilation complete.
jum...@my-deja.com
So far we have been speaking of the emancipation of the French Jews,
it remains to examine the influence it had on the [100] Jews of
Europe. From the moment of the foundation of the Batavian Republic, in
1796, the National Assembly gave the Jews in the Netherlands the
rights of citizenship, and their position regulated later by Louis
Bonaparte was settled in a decisive way by William I, in 1815. As a
matter of fact, the Dutch Jews enjoyed important privileges and quite
a deal of liberty since the sixteenth century: the Revolution was but
the decisive cause of their total liberation. In Italy and Germany
emancipation was brought to the Jews by the armies of the Republic and
the Empire. Napoleon became the hero and god of Israel, the awaited
liberator, he whose mighty hand was breaking the barriers of the
Ghetto. He entered all cities greeted by the acclamations of the
Jewswitness the way in which Heinrich Heine extolled himwho felt that
their cause was linked with the triumph of the eagles. And for this
reason the Jews were the first to feel the effects of the Napoleonic
reaction. A return to anti-Judaism went hand in hand with the
exaltation of patriotism. The emancipation was a French act; it was,
therefore, necessary to prove it bad, besides, it was a revolutionary
act, and there was a reaction against the Revolution and the ideas of
equality. While the Christian State was being re-established, the Jews
were being banished. In Germany in particular this antique religious
conception of the State again came to life with a new splendour, and
in Germany, especially, anti-Judaism manifested itself more acutely,
but the revival of anti-Jewish legislation was general. In Italy
legislation had been resumed in 1770; in Germany the Vienna Congress
abolished all imperial provisions for Jews, leaving them only the
rights granted by the lawful German governments. As a result of the
decisions of the Congress, the cities and communities showed
themselves harsh toward the Jews. Lubeck and Bremen expelled them;
like Rome, Frankfort shut them up anew in their ancient quarters 140 .
Naturally, popular movements followed suit of the legal measures. At
this moment of overheated patriotism, any restriction of the rights of
strangers met with approval; for the Jews were as ever the strangers
par excellence, who best represented noxious strangers, and so, about
1820, i.e., the moment when this state of minds reached its paroxysm,
the mob fell, in many places, upon the Jews and badly maltreated them,
even if it did not massacre them.
The thirty years following the disappearance of Napoleon did not
witness any great progress for the Jews. In England where they[101]
were, as a matter of fact, treated liberally enough, they were,
nevertheless, always considered dissidents, and, like the Catholics,
were subject to certain obligations. Little by little only did they
see their condition modified, and the history of their emancipation is
an episode in the struggle between the House of Commons and the House
of the Lords. Not before 1860 were they completely assimilated with
the other English citizens.
In Austria they had been partly emancipated by the Toleration edict of
Joseph II (1785), but had to undergo the same reaction; the Revolution
was too fatal for the Austrian House, that the latter should even put
up with this well-nigh equality of the Jews which a democratic and
philosophic sovereign had granted. Only in 1848 the Austrian Jews
became citizens 141. . At the same time their emancipation was
achieved in Germany, 142 Greece, Sweden, and Denmark. Once more they
owed their independence to the revolutionary spirit which once again
came from France. However, we shall see that they were not strangers
to the great movement which agitated all Europe; in some countries,
notably in Germany, they aided in preparing it, and they were the
advocates of liberty. They also were among the first to benefit
thereby, as legal anti-Judaism may be said to have come to an end in
the Occident after 1848. Little by little the last obstacles fell, and
the last restrictions were abolished. The fall of the temporal power
of the Popes, in 1870, did away with the last occidental Ghetto, and
the Jews now could become citizens even in St. Peter's city.
Since then anti-Judaism has transformed, it has become purely
literary, it has come to be but an opinion, and this opinion has no
longer had its effect on laws. But before examining this antisemitism
of the pen which in certain countries existed until 1870, side by side
with restrictive regulations, we must speak of the Christian States of
Eastern Europe, where the anti-Judaism is even now legal and
persecutionary, i.e., of Roumania and Russia.
The Jews have lived in Roumania, 143 i.e., the Moldau-Valachian lands,
since the fourteenth century, but they came there in numbers at the
beginning of this century only, and are about 300,000 in all, as a
result of Hungarian and Russian emigration. For many long years they
lived undisturbed. They naturally depended upon the boyars who hold
the power in this country, and they leased the sale of spirits from
these noblemen, who held the monopoly therefore. As they were
indispensable to the noblemen as tax-collectors, fiscal[102] agents
and all sorts of middlemen, the nobles were rather inclined to grant
them privileges, and they only had the excess of popular superstitions
or passions. The official persecutions of the Jews began only in 1856,
when Roumania adopted the representative system and the power thus
fell into the hands of the bourgeois class. Thenceforth restrictive
measures grew more serious. The Jews could not obtain any rank, they
were deprived of the right of permanent domicile in country places,
they were forbidden to hold real estateexcept in citiesor lands, or
vineyards. They were prohibited to take estates on lease, to keep
hotels and taverns outside of cities, to retail spirits, to have
Christian domestics, to build new synagogues. Some of these decisions
were passed arbitrarily by certain municipalities; in other villages,
on the contrary, the Jews were tolerated. This state of affairs lasted
till 1867. At this time the minister Jean Bratiano published a
circular in which he recalled to mind the fact that the Jews had no
right to live in rural communities, or to take there property on
lease. As a result of this circular the Jews were expelled from the
villages they inhabited, they were condemned like vagabonds, and the
expulsions continued till 1877; they were generally called forth by
the uprisings in Bucharest, Yassy, Galatz, Tecucin, as well as in
other places, and during these uprisings cemeteries were profaned and
synagogues burned.
What were, what are still the causes of this special legislation, and
of this animosity of the Roumanians towards the Jews? They are not
exclusively religious, and despite the persistence of ancestral
prejudices, it is not a case of a confessional war. The Roumanian Jews
constituted, especially at the moment of the formation of Roumania,
agglomerations completely isolated from the bulk of the population in
the Moldau-Valachian lands. They wore a special garb, lived in
quarters set apart in order to escape contaminations, and spoke a
Judaeo-German jargon, which rounded off their marks of distinction.
They lived under the domination of their rabbis, narrow-minded,
limited, ignorant Talmudists, from whom they received in Jewish
schoolshederan education which was conducive to their intellectual
abasement and their degradation.
They were the victims of this isolation which was due to their guides,
the rabbinists. The patriotic passions were particularly aroused in
this land, which was being born, was acquiring a[103] nationality and
striving for unity. There has been a pan-Roumanism, just like
pan-Germanism or pan-Slavism. There were discussions on the Roumanian
race, on its integrity, its purity, the danger threatening it from
adulteration. Associations were formed to counteract foreign
encroachment, and Jewish encroachment in particular. Schoolmasters,
university professors were the soul of these societies; just as in
Germany, they were the most active antisemites. They asserted that the
Jewish education crippled the brains of those receiving it, that it
rendered them unfit for social life, which was but too correct, and
yet they were going to shut the Jews out completely from obtaining the
education given to Christians, exactly the one that would lift them
from their degradation.
But the college-bred were not the sole antisemites in Roumania, and
there were economic causes beside patriotic causes. As I have said,
antisemitism was born with the advent of the bourgeoisie, because this
bourgeois class, composed of merchants and manufacturers, came into
competition with the Jews who displayed their activity exclusively in
commerce and industry, when not in usury. The bourgeoisie had every
interest in the passage of protective laws, which, though nominally
directed at strangers and not at the Jews, principally aimed at
placing obstacles to the expansion of their formidable rivals. It
achieved its point by skillfully fomenting disturbances which gave
their representatives in Parliament a chance to propose new
regulations. Thus these diverse causes of antisemitism may be reduced
to a single onenational protectionismand very clever it is, as
simultaneously with denying the Jews all civic rights on the ground
that they are strangers, it forces them into military service, which
again is a contradiction, as none but a citizen can form a part of a
national army. Harder still, more miserable than in Roumania, is the
condition of the Jews in Russia. Their history in that country, where
they arrived in the third century B.C. and founded colonies in Crimea,
has been that of the Jews of all Europe. They were banished in the
twelfth century never to be recalled. Nevertheless, at present Russia
counts 4,500,000 Jews, and to say, as the antisemites maintain, that
the Jews have invaded it is nonsense, for Russia has acquired them by
seizing White Russia in 1769 and later on the Polish provinces and
Crimea, which contained a great number of Jews. At the moment of this
conquest it was out of the question[104] to apply the ukase of 1742
which banished the Jews once more. On the one hand, it was not an easy
thing to drive out several million individuals into the neighbouring
states; on the other, commerce, industry, and particularly the
treasury, would have fared ill from such wholesale expulsion.
Catherine II then granted the Jews equal rights with her Russian
subjects, but the Senate ukases of 1786, 1791 and 1794 curtailed these
privileges and confined the Israelites within White Russia and
Crimeathenceforth constituting the Jewish territoryand Poland. Only in
certain cases and under special conditions were they allowed to leave
the limits of this territorial Ghetto.
In Russia all modern antisemitism, which is official antisemitism par
excellence, consists in keeping the Jews from escaping the Senate
ukases just spoken of. Russia has resigned herself to her Jews, but
she wants to leave them where she found them. Still there were
favourable or rather less unfavourable times for the Jews. Alexander I
permitted them in 1808 to settle in the crown lands on condition of
engaging there in agriculture; Nicholas I gave them permission to
travel when their business required it, they were allowed to attend
the universities; and under Alexander II their position improved still
further. 144
After the death of Alexander II the autocratic reaction became
monstrous in Russia: an abominable reawakening of absolutism was the
answer to the bomb of the nihilists. The national orthodox spirit was
overexcited, the liberal and revolutionary movement was charged to
foreign influences, and the Jews were made the scapegoats, in order to
divert the people from the nihilistic propaganda; hence the massacres
of 1881 and 1882, during which the mob burned Jewish houses, robbed
and killed the Jews, saying: "Our daddy, the Tsar, wants it." After
these disturbances General Ignatyeff promulgated the "May Laws" of
1882.
They read as follows:
1. As a temporary measure and until the general revision of the laws
regulating their status, Jews are forbidden to settle hereafter
outside of cities and towns. Exception is made with regard to
Jewish villages already in existence where the Jews are engaged
in agriculture.
2. Until further order all contracts for the mortgaging or renting
of real estate situated outside of cities and towns to a Jew,
shall be of no effect. Equally void is any power of attorney
granted to a[105] Jew for the administration or disposition of
property of the above-indicated nature.
3. Jews are forbidden to do business on Sundays and Christian
holidays; the laws compelling Christians to close their places
of business on those days will be applied to Jewish places of
business.
4. The above measures are applicable only in the governments
situated within the Jewish pale of settlement.
These laws were enacted as a temporary measure. Accordingly, a
commission presided over by Count Pahlen met in 1883 to settle finally
the Jewish question. The conclusions of this commission were quite
liberal in spirit; it recommended that certain civil rights be given
to the Jews. Owing to the influence of Pobyedonostseff, the Procurator
of the Holy Synod, the report of the Pahlen Commission was buried, and
the May Laws have remained in force. Since that time, and especially
from 1890 on, the persecutions redoubled. The "pale" was narrowed by
forbidding the Jews to enter certain fortified places, and by creating
a frontier belt where the Jews could not reside. The ukase of 1865 of
Alexander II, allowing "skilled" artisans to choose a domicile
throughout the empire was abrogated. Thus nearly 3,000,000 Jews were
crowded into the cities of the pale of settlement, while a million was
spread over Poland, and 500,000 privilegedmerchants of the first rank,
financiers and studentsall over Russia. Other measures, besides this
systematic crowding, were taken against the Jews. They were shut out
of certain occupations and certain professions; those sheltered in
hospitals as invalids were sent away; employees of railroads and
steamship companies were dismissed; the number of those who could
enter universities, colleges and high schools was limited; they were
barred from becoming attorneys, physicians, engineers, or at least
their opportunities for entering these professions were restricted;
even their own schools were closed to them, they are not admitted even
to hospitals, they are burdened with special taxes on their rents,
inheritances, the animals they kill for meat, the candles they light
on Friday evenings, the skull-caps they wear during religious
ceremonies, even when these are of a private nature.
Besides these official taxes imposed by the government, the Jews are
under the exploitation of the Russian administration and police, the
basest, the most corrupt and venal in all Europe. Half the income of
the middle class Jews, says Weber and Kempster, and [106] Harold
Frederic, goes to the police. Every Jew in easy circumstances is the
victim of constant extortion. As for those (and they are the
majority), who are too poor to be able to pay, they are subjected to
the most loathsome, most inhuman treatment, forced to bow to all the
whims of brutal policemen who domineer and martyrize them, as they
martyrize also the nihilists and the suspects of liberalism whom the
horrible autocracy of the Tsar places in their power. 145
We shall not deal with the frauds with which Jewish business men are
charged, as exactly these business men occupy a privileged position;
as for the lawlessness of a part of the miserable mass, those of whom
it is made up "would not have food if they did not rob," and so they
are in the same position with a great number of orthodox Russians whom
the social and economic condition of Russia forces to resort to
unscrupulous methods, in order to make a living.
What are then the real causes of antisemitism? They are political and
religious. Antisemitism is by no means a popular movement in Russia;
it is purely official. The Russian people, laden with misery, crushed
under taxes, groaning under the most atrocious of tyrannies,
embittered by administrative violence and governmental abuse of power,
burdened with suffering and humiliation is in an unbearable condition.
Generally resigned, they are liable to yield to passions; their
uprisings and revolts are formidable; antisemitic riots are the proper
thing to divert popular anger, and that is why the government
encouraged them and often provoked them. As to the peasants and
workingmen, they fell upon the Jews because, they said, "the Jew and
the nobleman are of a pair, only it is easy to thrash the Jew." 146
Thus is explained the plundering of rich Jewish merchants, of wealthy
money-lenders, often of poor Jewish workmen, and it is heart-rending
to see these disinherited fall upon one another instead of uniting
against the oppressive tsarism.
The possibility of a union between these two camps of misery is,
perhaps, foreseen by those whose interest it is to engender and keep
their antagonism and who actually saw the rioters burn many Christian
houses during the riots of 1881 and 1882. After Alexander II's death
it became urgent to blot out of the moujik's and proletarians'
memories the nihilists' attempts at liberation. The revolution was
more than ever the frightful hydra and dragon, against which Holy
Russia was to be protected. To accomplish it a return [107] to
orthodox ideas was thought necessary. All evil, it was said, comes
from the foreign, the heretical, that which pollutes the sacred soil.
The religious origin of the official antisemitism has often been
denied; yet it cannot be denied, and the Russians will yet probably
give up even Panslavism in order to arrive at religious unity, a unity
which to some of them, at least, seems indispensable for the unity of
the State. The national and the religious question are but one in
Russia, the Tsar being simultaneously the temporal and spiritual head,
Caesar and Pope; but to faith more importance is attached than to
race, and the proof is that a Jew who is willing to be converted is
not persecuted. On the contrary, the Jew is encouraged to embrace
orthodoxy. Thus we may say that in eastern Europe where the actual
condition of the Jews fairly well represents what had been their
condition in the Middle Ages, the causes of antisemitism are twofold:
social causes, and religious causes combined with patriotic ones. It
now remains for us to see what are the causes that maintain
antisemitism in the countries where it has become antisemitism of the
pen instead of legal antisemitism, and, first of all, to examine this
transformation and the phenomena to which it has given rise.
FOOTNOTES
136 Mention must be made that, as in the Middle ages, the Alsatian
Jews were the "dummies" and intermediaries of the Christian
usurers (Cf. Halphen, Recueil des lois et decrets concernant les
Israelites (Paris, 1851), and the Petition des Juifs etablis en
France addressee a l'Assemblee nationale le 28 janvier 1790).
137 On the Alsatian Jews before and after the Revolution, consult:
Gregoire, Essai sur la Regeneration des Juifs; Dohm, De la Reforme
politique des Juifs; Paul Fauchille, La Question Juive en France
Sous le premier Empire (Paris, 1884).
138 Halphen, Recueil des lois et decrets.
139 Halphen, loc. cit.
140 At this moment the Jews entered suit against the city of Frankfort
to contest the legality of the city's decisions. This suit was the
occasion of violent anti-Jewish polemics.
141 The constitution of March 4, 1849, proclaimed the equality before
the law. But as this constitution was abolished in 1851, an
ordinance of July 29, 1853, restored the old legislation against
the Jews. Successive Amendments were added to it, and the
Constitution of 1867 finally restored equality before the law and
liberated the Jews. In Hungary the law emancipating the Jews was
also voted in 1867 by the Chamber of Deputies, on motion by the
Government. (Cf. Wolf, Geschichte der Juden in Wien, Vienna, 1876;
Kaim, Ein Jahrhundert der Judenemancipation. Leipzig, 1869.)
142 The German Constituent Assembly voted the equality of all citizens
before the law, on May 20, 1848. The Parliament of Frankfort did
likewise, and the principle of this equality was incorporated in
the German constitution of 1849. At any rate many States retained
the restrictions against the Jews till the time of the Law of the
Northern Federation of July 3, 1869, which abolished all the
"restrictions of civil and political rights that still existed and
were based on difference in religion." (Cf. Kaim, loc. cit. and
Allegemeine Zeitung des Judenthums for the years 1837, 1849, 1856,
1867, 1869). After the Franco-German war, this way was forced upon
those States like Bavaria, e.g., which had not adopted it before
the organization of the Empire.
143 Desjardins, Les Juifs de Moldavie (Paris, 1867). -- Isidore Loeb,
La Situation des Israelites en Turquie, en Serbie et en Roumanie
(Paris 1877).
144 N. de Gradovski, La Situation legale des Israelites en Russie
(Paris, 1891).
-- Tikhomirov, La Russie politique et sociale (Paris, 1888).
-- Les Juifs de Russie (Paris, 1891).
-- Prince Demidoff-San-Donato, La question juive en Russie
(Bruxelles, 1884).
-- Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, L'Empire des Tzars et les Russes
(Paris, 1881-82-89).
[English translation, London and New York, 1894].
-- Weber et Kempster, La Situation des Juifs en Russie (Resume of
a report to the United States Government by its delegates).
-- Leo Errera, Les Juifs russes (Bruxelles, 1893).
-- Harold Frederic, The New Exodus (1892).
145 The condition of the Jews in Russia, compared with that of the
native people, is absolutely the same as in the Middle Ages. The
Russian peasant and the workingman are pretty nearly as wretched
as the Jew. They, too, are subjected to annoyances and arbitrary
rule, but they are not persecuted, and have, to a certain degree
the right of migrating.
146 Tikhomirov, loc. cit.
ANTISEMITISM
ITS HISTORY AND CAUSES
by Bernard LAZARE
_____________________
Chapter Nine
MODERN ANTISEMITISM AND ITS LITERATURE
THE emancipated Jews scattered among the nations just like strangers,
and, as we have seen, it could not be otherwise, since for centuries
they formed a nation among the nations, a special people preserving
its characteristics thanks to the strict and precise ritual, as well
as owing to the legislation which kept it apart and tended to
perpetuate it. As conquerors, not as guests did they come into modern
societies. They were like a penned-in flock; suddenly the barriers
fell and they rushed upon the field opened to them. They were not
warriors, what is more, the moment was not favourable to an expedition
of a small band, but they made the only conquest for which they were
armed, the economic conquest for which they had been preparing for
some many long years. They were a race of merchants and money-dealers,
perhaps degraded by mercantile practice, but, thanks to this very
practice, equipped with qualities which were becoming preponderant in
the new economic system. And so it was easy for them to take to
commerce and finances, and, it must be repeated, they could not act
otherwise. Crowded together, oppressed for centuries, ever curbed in
their soarings, they had acquired a formidable power of expansion, and
this power could find application in certain channels only; their
efforts were limited, but their nature was not changed, and it was not
changed on the day of their liberation either, and they marched ahead
on the road which was familiar to them. However, the state of affairs
was particularly favourable to them. At this period of great
overthrows and reconstructions, when nations were being modified, new
principles established, new social, moral and metaphysical conceptions
wrought out, they were the only ones to be free. They were without any
attachments to those surrounding them; they had no ancient patrimony
to defend, the heritage which the former society was leaving to
nascent society was not theirs; the thousand ancestral ties which
linked the citizens of the modern state with [109] the past, could not
influence their conduct, their intellectuality, their morality; their
spirit had no shackles.
I have shown that their liberation could not change them, that a
number of them regretted their past of isolation, and even if they did
endeavour to remain themselves, if they did not assimilate, they
marvelously adapted themselves, by the very force of their special
tendencies, to the economic conditions which had affected the nations
since the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The French Revolution was above all an economic revolution. If it is
considered as the termination of a struggle between classes, it must
be viewed as the consummation of a struggle between two forms of
capital, viz: real property and personal property, or landed capital,
and industrial and speculative capital. With the supremacy of the
nobility the supremacy of landed capital disappeared, too, and the
supremacy of the bourgeoisie brought on the supremacy of industrial
and speculative capital. The emancipation of the Jew is linked with
the growth of the prevalence of industrial capital. So long as landed
capital retained the political power, the Jew was deprived of any
right; the Jew was liberated on the day when political power passed to
industrial capital, and that proved fatal. The bourgeoisie needed help
in the struggle it undertook; the Jew was for it a valuable ally, whom
it was its interest to emancipate. Since the days of the Revolution,
Jew and bourgeois marched hand in hand, together they sustained
Napoleon at the moment when dictatorship became necessary to defend
the privileges gained by the Third Estate, and when the imperial
tyranny became too heavy and oppressive for capitalism the bourgeois
and the Jew, united and preluded the fall of the Empire by
forestalling provisions at the time of the Russian campaign and helped
to bring about the final disaster by calling forth slumps at the
exchange and buying the disloyalty of marshals.
At the beginning of the great industrial development, after 1815, when
canal, mine, and insurance companies were formed, the Jews were among
the most active in promoting combination of capital. Moreover, they
were the most skillful, because the spirit of combination had for
centuries been their only support. But they were not content to aid in
bringing about in this practical way the triumph of industrialism,
they gave their aid in a theoretical way, also. They gathered around
Saint-Simon, the philosopher of the bourgeoisie; they worked at
diffusing and developing his teaching. [110]
Saint-Simon had said: 147 "The manufacturers must be entrusted with
the administration of the temporal power," and "the last step that
remains for industry to make is to obtain the direction of the State
and the chief problem of our time is to secure to industry a majority
in our parliaments." He had added : 145 "The industrial class must
occupy the first rank, because it is the most important of all;
because it can do without all the others, while none other can do
without it; because it exists by its own forces, by its personal
labours. The other classes must work for it, because they are its
creatures and because it sustains their existence; in a word, as
everything is made by industry, everything must be made for it." The
Jews helped to realize the Saint-Simonian dream; they proved
themselves the most trustworthy allies of the bourgeoisie, inasmuch as
in working for it they worked for themselves and, in all Europe, they
were in the front rank of the liberal movement, which from 1815 till
1848 succeeded in establishing the domination of bourgeois capitalism.
This role of the Jews did not escape the class of landed capitalists,
and we shall see that therein lay one of the causes of the
anti-Judaism of the conservatives, but to the Jews it was not worth so
much as the recognition of the bourgeoisie. When the latter had firmly
established its power, when it became restful and secure, it
discovered that its ally, the Jew, was its formidable competitor, and
it reacted against it. Thus the conservative parties, made up, as a
rule, of capitalist agriculturers, became anti-Jewish in their fight
against industrial and speculative capitalism, represented chiefly by
the Jew, and industrial and speculative capitalism became anti-Jewish
in its turn, on account of Jewish competition. Anti-Judaism, which had
been religious at first, became economic, or, rather, the religious
causes, which had once been dominant in anti-Judaism, were
subordinated to economic and social causes. This transformation, which
corresponded with the change in the role played by the Jews, was not
the only one. Once a matter of sentiment, the hostility towards the
Jews became one of reason. The Christians of yesterday hated the
deicides instinctively, and they never attempted to justify their
animosity: they showed it. The antisemites of to-day conceived a
desire to explain their hatred, i.e., they wanted to dignify it:
anti-Judaism moulted into antisemitism. How was this antisemitism
manifested? It had no other way of expression but through the printing
press. Official[111] antisemitism was dead in the West, or it was
dying; as a result anti-Jewish legislation, too, was disappearing;
there remained theoretical antisemitism, it was an opinion, a theory,
but the antisemites had a very distinct object in view. Up to the time
of the Revolution literary anti-Judaism sustained legal anti-Judaism,
since the Revolution and the emancipation of the Jews, literary
antisemitism has striven to restore legal anti-Judaism in the
countries where it no longer exists. It has not, as yet, achieved
that, and we have to study only the manifestations of the antisemitism
of the pen, manifestations, some of which represent the opinion of the
many, for, if literary antisemities have supplied reasons to the
unconscious antisemites, they were produced by them; they attempted to
explain what the flock felt, manifested, and if they have at times
ascribed strange and improbable motives, they often but echoed the
sentiments of their inspirers. What were these sentiments? We shall
see if we examine the antisemitic literature, and at the same time we
shall disentangle the manifold causes of contemporary antisemitism.
Except in the case of some of them, it is impossible to classify the
antisemitic works under too narrow categories, as each of them often
presented manifold tendencies. Still they each have a dominant idea,
in accordance with which their classification may be settled, always
remembering that a work approaching a definite type does not belong
solely and exclusively to it. We shall, then, subdivide antisemitism
into Christian, Socialist, economic, ethnological and national,
metaphysical, revolutionary and anti-Christian antisemitism.
Christian Socialist antisemitism was generated by the permanency of
religious prejudices. If the Jews had not changed on entering into
society, the sentiments felt toward them for so many long years would
not have disappeared either. The Jews owed their emancipation to a
philosophical movement coinciding with an economic movement and not to
the abolition of secular prejudices against them. Those who thought
the Christian State the only State possible looked with disfavour upon
the intrusion of the Jews, and anti-Talmudism was the first
manifestation of this hostility. The Talmud which was justly
considered the religious stronghold of the Jews was assailed and a
host of polemists devoted themselves to proving how much the teachings
of the Talmud were opposed to the teachings of the Gospel. Against
the[112] book they resumed all the complaints of the controversialists
of yore, those enumerated by the Jewish apostates in debates, and
repeated in the thirteenth century by Raymund Martin, those raised by
Pfefferkorn and later on by Eisenmenger. Not even the method or the
make-up was changed; the same moulds were made use of; in writing
pamphlets the same traditions were followed as those of the dominican
inquisitors, and not a whit more of critical acumen was put to use in
the study of the Talmudic "deep." Nevertheless, concerning the Jew,
his dogmas, his race, the Christian antisemites of our time have the
same notions as the Jews of the Middle Ages had. The Jew preoccupies
and haunts them, they see him everywhere, they trace everything back
to him, they have the same conception of history as had Bossuet. For
the bishop, Judea was the centre of the world; all events, disasters
and joys, conquests and downfalls, as well as the foundings of empires
had for its primary, mysterious and ineffable cause the whims of a God
faithful to the Bene-Israel, and this people, wanderer, founder of
kingdoms and captive, in turn, had continually directed mankind toward
its only goal: the coming of Christ. Ben Hadad and Sennacherib, Cyrus
and Alexander, seem to exist only because Judah exists, and because
Judah must now be exalted and then humiliated, until the hour when he
will enjoin upon the world the law which must come from him. But what
Bossuet had conceived for the purpose of unheard of glorification, the
Christian antisemites renew that with quite opposite ends in view. For
them the Jewish race, the scourge of the nations, scattered over the
earth, accounts for the misfortunes and blessings of the alien nations
in whose midst it had settled, and the history of the Hebrews once
more becomes the history of monarchies and republics. Scourged or
tolerated, banished or admitted, they, by the very fact of these
political vicissitudes, account for the glory of the states or even
their decadence. To tell the story of Israel, is to tell the story of
France, or Germany, or Spain. This is what the Christian antisemites
see, and their antisemitism is thus purely theological, it is the
antisemitism of the Fathers, that of Chrysostom, Saint Augustin, Saint
Jerome. Before the birth of Jesus, the Jewish people was the chosen
people, the beloved son of God; since the time it had disowned the
Saviour, since it had become a deicide, it had become the fallen
people par excellence, and having before brought the world's
salvation, it now causes its ruin.
[113]Whatever their affinities and kinship with the anti-Jews of the
Middle Ages, the anti-Talmudists, at all events, take a little
different point of view. Formerly, the blasphemies against the
Christian religion were chiefly sought in the Talmud, or arguments in
support of the divinity of Jesus Christ were sought there; hereafter
this book's enemies hunt it especially as an anti-social, pernicious
and destructive work. The Talmud, according to them, makes the Jew an
enemy of all nations, but if some of them, like des Mousseaux and
Chiarini are guided, like the theologians of yore, above all by the
desire to bring Israel back to the bosom of the church, 149 others,
like Doctor Rohling, 150 are rather inclined to suppress him and they
declare him forever incapable to be of any good. Quite the contrary;
since, they say, not only are his teachings incompatible with the
principles of Christian governments, but because he even seeks to ruin
these governments in order to draw profit therefrom.
It is easy to understand that after the upsettings caused by the
French Revolution, the conservatives felt called upon to hold the Jews
responsible for the destruction of the ancient regime. When they cast
a glance around them after the storm had passed away, one of the
things that must have given them the greatest surprise, was surely the
position of the Jew. But yesterday the Jew was nothing, he had no
right, no power, and now he was shining in the front rank; not only
was he rich, but he could even be a doctor and govern the land, as he
paid his tax. Him particularly did the social change favour.
Accordingly, the Christian antisemites did not stop at being incensed
at the Jews' speculations over national property or the military
supply, but applied to them the old juridical saying: fecisti qui
prodes ("those hast done it who profitest thereby.") If the Jew indeed
had profited by the Revolution in this respect, if he had derived from
it so great a benefit, it means that he had prepared them, or rather,
to say, he had helped along with all his forces.
Nevertheless it was necessary to explain how this despised and hated
Jew, considered a thing, had obtained the power of accomplishing such
deeds, how he had prepared so formidable a might. Here comes in a
theory, or rather a philosophy of history familiar to the Catholic
polemists. According to these historians, the French Revolution whose
counter blow has been universal, and which has transformed the
institutions of Western Europe, was but the capping [114] of a secular
conspiracy. Those who attribute it to the philosophical movement of
the eighteenth century, to the excesses of monarchical governments, to
a fatal economic change, to the decrepitude of a class, the
enfeeblement of a form of capital, to the inevitable evolution of the
ideas of authority and State, to the enlargement of the idea of an
individualall those are grievously in error, according to the
historians I am speaking about. They are blind people who do not see
the truth: the Revolution was the work of one or several sects, whose
establishment goes back to great antiquity, sects brought out by the
same desire and the same principle: the desire for domination and the
principle of destruction.
The Genesis of this conception of history is easy to find. It took its
origin under the Terror itself. The part taken by the Masonic lodges,
by the Illumines, the Red-Crosses, the Martinists, etc., in the
Revolution, had vividly struck certain minds which were carried away
to exaggerate the influence and role of these societies. A thing which
particularly astonished these superficial observers, was the
international character of the Revolution of 1789 and the
simultaneousness of the movements it called forth. They contrasted its
general effect with the local effect of the previous Revolutions,
which had agitated, as, e.g., in England, only the countries where
they took place, and, in order to account for this difference they
attributed the work of centuries to a European association with
representatives in the midst of all nations, rather than to admit that
the same stage of civilization and similar intellectual, social, moral
and economic causes, could have simultaneously produced the same
effects. The very members of these lodges, of these societies, helped
in spreading this belief. 151 They, too, exaggerated their importance,
they not only asserted to have worked, during the eighteenth century,
for the changes then in the process of preparationwhich was truebut
they even claimed to have been their distant initiators. This,
however, is not the place to debate this question; suffice it to have
stated the existence of these theories: we are going to show how they
came to the assistance of the Christian antisemites.
The first writers to set forth these ideas confined themselves to
stating the existence of "a peculiar nation which was born and had
grown in darkness, amidst all civilized nations, for the purpose of
subjecting all of them to its rule," 152 as, e.g., the cavalier de
Malet, brother of the conspiring general, wanted to prove in a book,
little-known and very poor at that. Men like P. Barruel, in[115] his
Memoirs on Jacobinism, 153 like Eckert in his works on Free Masonry,
154 like Dom Deschamps, 155 like Claudio Jannet, like Cretineau Joly,
156 have developed and systematized this theory, they have even
endeavoured to prove its reality and though they did not attain their
aim, they have at least gathered all the elements necessary to
undertake so curious a history as that of secret societies. In all
their works, they were led to examine what had been the position of
the Jews in these groups and sects, and, struck by the analogies
presented by the mystagogic rites of Masonry as compared with certain
Judaic and Kabbalistic traditions, 157 misled by the Hebrew pomp which
characterizes the initiation in these lodges, they arrived at the
conclusion that the Jews had always been the inspirers, guides and
masters of Free Masonry, nay, more than that, they had been its
founders, and that they, with its aid, persistently aimed at the
destruction of the church, from the very time of its foundation. They
went further in this path, they wanted to prove that the Jews had
preserved their national constitution, that they were still ruled by
princes, the Nassi, who led them to the conquest of the world, and
that these enemies of mankind possessed a formidable organization and
tactics. Gougenot des Mousseaux, 158 Rupert, 159 de Saint Andre, 160
the abbot Chabeauty, 161 have supported these assertions. As for
Edouard Drumont, the whole pseudo-historic portion of his books, when
not borrowed from father Loriquet, is nothing but a clumsy and
uncritical plagiarism of Barruel, Gougenot, of Dom Deschamps and
Cretineau Joly. 162
Whatever the case may be, with Drumont, as with pastor Stoecker,
Christian antisemitism transforms or rather it borrows new weapons
from several sociologists. Though Drumont fights the Jew's
anti-clericalism, though Stoecker, in his anxiety to win the name of a
second Luther, rises against the Jewish religion as destructive of the
Christian State, other preoccupations engage them; they attack Jewish
wealth and attribute to Jews the economic transformation which is the
work of the l9th century. They still persecute in the Jew, the enemy
of Jesus, the murderer of a God, but they aim particularly at the
financier, and therein they join hands with those who preach economic
antisemitism.
This antisemitism has manifested itself since the beginning of Jewish
financiering and industrialism. If we find only traces of it in
Fourier 163 and Proudhon, who confined themselves to stating[116] only
the role of the Jew as middle-man, stockjobber and nonproducer, 164 it
gave life to men like Toussenel 165 and Capefigue 166 ; it inspired
such books as The Jews Kings of the Epoch and the History of Great
Financial Operations; and later on, in Germany, the pamphlets of Otto
Glagau against the Jewish bankers and brokers. 167 However, I have
already pointed out the origin of this antisemitism, how, on the one
hand, the landed capitalists held the Jew accountable for the
predominance of industrial and financial capitalism, so hateful to
them, how, on the other hand, the bourgeoisie, stocked with
privileges, turned against the Jew, its erstwhile ally, henceforth its
competitor and a foreign competitor at that; for to his position as a
non-assimilated stranger the Jew owes the excessive animosity shown
him, and thus economic antisemitism is bound up with ethnologic and
national antisemitism.
This last form of antisemitism is modern, it was born in Germany, and
from the Germans the French antisemites have derived their theory.
This doctrine of races, which Renan advocated in France 168 was
wrought out in Germany under the influence of the Hegelian doctrines.
It gained the ascendancy in 1840 and particularly in 1848, not only
because German policy pressed it into service, but because it was in
accord with the nationalist and patriotic movement that produced
nations, and with that striving for unity which characterized all
European nations.
The state, so they said, must be national; the nation must be one, and
must include all the individuals speaking the national language and
belonging to the same race. More than that, it is of importance that
this national State reduce all the heterogeneous elements, i.e., the
foreigners. For the Jew, not being an Aryan, has not the same moral,
social and intellectual conceptions as the Aryan; he is irreducible,
and therefore he must be eliminated, or else he will ruin the nations
that have received him, and some among the nationalist and ethnologic
antisemites assert that the work has already been accomplished.
These notions, resumed since then by von Treitschke 169 and Adolph
Wagner in Germany, by Schoenerer in Austria, Pattai in Hungary and, at
a much later date, by Drumont in France, 170 were reduced, for the
first time, to a system by W. Marr, in a pamphlet which had a certain
echo in France: The Victory of Judaism over Germanism. 171 . In it
Marr declared Germany the prey [117] of a conquering race, the Jews, a
race possessing everything and wanting to Judaize Germany, like
France, however, and he concluded by saying that Germany was lost. To
his ethnologic antisemitism he even admixed the metaphysical
antisemitism which, if I may say so, Schopenhauer had professed, 172
the antisemitism consisting in combating the optimism of the Jewish
religion, an optimism which Schopenhauer found low and degrading, and
with which he contrasted Greek and Hindu religious conceptions.
But Schopenhauer and Marr are not the only representatives of
philosophical antisemitism. The whole of German metaphysics combated
the Jewish spirit, which it considered essentially different from the
Germanic spirit, and which for it stood for the past as contrasted
with the present. While the Spirit is realized in the world's history,
while it advances, the Jews remain at a lower stage. Such is the
Hegelian thought, that of Hegel and also of his disciples of the
extreme leftFeuerbach, Arnold Ruge and Bruno Bauer. 173 Max Stirner
174 developed these ideas with much precision. To his mind, universal
history has until now passed through two ages: the first, represented
by antiquity, during which we had to work out and eliminate "the negro
stage of the soul;" the second, that of Mongolism, represented by the
Christian period. During the first age man depended upon things,
during the second he is swayed by ideas, waiting until he can dominate
them and free himself. But the Jews, these precociously wise children
of antiquity, have not passed out of this negro stage of the soul. In
Duhring we find another more ethical than metaphysical form of
philosophical antisemitism. In several treatises, pamphlets and books,
175 Duhring assails the Semitic spirit and the Semitic conception of
the divine and of ethics, which he contrasts with the conception of
the Northern peoples. Pushing the deductions from his premises to
their logical end and still following up Bruno Bauer's doctrine, he
assails Christianity which is the last manifestation of the Semitic
spirit: "Christianity," says he, "has above all no practical morality
such as is not capable of ambiguous interpretation and thus might be
available and sane. The nations will, therefore, not be done with the
Semitic spirit until they have expelled from their spirit this present
second aspect of Hebraism."
jum...@my-deja.com
After Duhring, Nietzsche ,176 in his turn, combated Jewish and
Christian ethics, which, according to him, are the ethics of slaves as
contrasted with the ethics of masters. Through the prophets and [118]
Jesus, the Jews and the Christians have set up low and noxious
conceptions which consist in the deification of the weak, the humble,
the wretched, and sacrificing to it the strong, the proud, the mighty.
Several revolutionary atheists, Gustave Tridon 177 and Regnard 178
among them, have espoused, in France, this Christian antisemitism
which, in its final analysis, is reduced to the ethnologic
antisemitism, just like the strictly metaphysical antisemitism.
The different varieties of antisemitism may, then, be reduced to
three: Christian antisemitism, economic antisemitism, and ethnological
antisemitism. In our examination just made we have pointed out that
the grievances of the antisemites were religious grievances, social
grievances, ethnologic grievances, national grievances, intellectual
and moral grievances. To the antisemite the Jew is an individual of a
foreign race, incapable of adapting himself, hostile to Christian
civilization and religion; immoral, antisocial, of an intellectuality
different from the Aryan intellectuality, and, to cap it all, a
depredator and wrongdoer.
We shall now examine these grievances in regular order. We shall see
whether they are well-founded, i.e., whether the real causes of
contemporary antisemitism correspond to them, or whether they are but
prejudices. Let us first turn to the study of the ethnologic
grievance.
FOOTNOTES
l47 Saint-Simon, Du Systeme industriel (Paris, 1821).
148 Saint-Simon, Catechisme des Industriels, 1er Cahier (Paris, 1823).
149 The anxiety for the future role of the Jews is expressed in a
striking book by Leon Bloy, Le Salut par les Juits (Paris, 1892).
In the volume of documents and notes written as a sequel to Dom
Deschamps' work on Secret Societies, Claudio Jannet expresses the
opinion that the Jews are undoubtedly destined to lead the world
back to God. This is exactly the ancient theological belief.
150 Eng. translation. A. Rohling, Le Juif selon le Talmud (Paris, 1888)
Translated from the German.
151 Louis Blanc, Histoire de la Revolution Française, vol. II, p. 74.
152 Recherches historiques et politiques qui prouvent l'existence d'une
secte revolutionnaire, son antique origine, son organisation, ses
moyens ainsi que son but; et devoilent entierement l'unique cause
de la Revolution Française, par le Chevalier de Malet, Paris, Gide
fils, libraire, 1817.
153 Barruel, Memoires sur le Jacobinisme (1797-1813). Father Barruel
was the first to expound these ideas, and those who followed him
have, properly speaking, only imitated or continued his work.
154 Eckert, La Franc-Maconnerie dans sa veritable signification
(Liege, 1854).
-- La Franc-Maconnerie en elle-même (Liege, 1859).
155 Dom Deschamps, Les Societes Secretes et la Societe, with an
introduction, notes and documents by Claudio Jannet. Paris, 1883.
156 Cretineau Joly, L'Eglise romaine avant la Revolution. Paris 1863.
157 On the Hebrew traditions in Free-Masonry, and on the points of
similarity between the Free-Masons and the ancient Essenians, cf.
Clavel, Histoire pittoresque de la Franc-Maconnerie (Paris, 1843);
Kauffmann et Cherpin, Histoire philosophique de la Franc-Maconnerie
(Lyons, 1856) and an artitle by Moise Schwab on the Jews and the
Free-Masons, published in the Annuaire des Archives israelites pour
l'an 5650 (1889-1890). Consult also the various works of J. M.
Ragon on Free-Masonry (Paris, Dentu).
158 Gougenot des Mousseaux, loc. cit.
159 Rupert, L'Eglise et la Synagogue (Paris, 1859).
160 De Saint-Andre, Francs-Macons et Juifs (Paris, 1880).
161 A Chabeauty, Les Juifs nos Maitres (Paris, 1883).
162 It must be noted that in his France Juive (I mean in its first
chapters) Drumont does not quote Gougenot des Mousseau or Barruel
even once; he quotes, in passing, Dom Deschamps three times and
Cretineau de Joly's Vendee Militaire once, and yet he laid these
writers under heavy contribution. Unless his "historical documents"
had been furnished to him by the disciples of those I have just
mentioned -- that is quite possible. Let it be understood here,
that this refers to Drumont as historian and not as polemist.
163 Fourier, Le Nouveau Monde industrial et societaire (Paris, libraire
societaire, 1848).
164 In Karl Marx (Annales franco-allemandes, 1844, p. 211) and in
Lassalle, the same estimates of the parasite Jew may be found as
in Fourier and Proudhon .
165 Toussenel, Les Juits rois de l'Epoque (Paris, 1847). Toussenel
followed up this book with a violent campaign in the newspaper,
La Democratie pacifique. However, the antisemitic movement was
quite violent, under the July monarchy, and numerous pamphlets were
published against the Jewish financiers.
166 Capefigue, Histoire des grandes operations financieres
(Paris, 1855).
167 Otto Glagau, Der Boersen und Grundergeschwindel in Berlin
(Leipzig, 1876).
-- Les besoins de l'Empire et le nouveau Kulturkampf
(Osnabruck, 1879).
168 During the last years of his life Renan had given up his theory
of races, their inequality and their mutual superiority or
inferiority. These theories will be found set forth quite clearly
and lucidly in Gobineau's in many ways remarkable book, L'inegalite
des races (Paris, Firmin Didot, 1884).
169 H. von Treitschke, Ein Wort uber unser Judenthum
(A Word about Our Jews). Berlin, 1888.
170 Drumont is the type of the assimilator antisemite who has
flourished in France these last years, and who has overrun Germany.
A talented polemist, vigorous journalist and sprightly satirist,
Drumont is a historian of poor documentary evidence, a mediocre
sociologist and especially philosopher, and can under no
circumstances be compared with men of H. von Treitschke's, Adolph
Wagner's and Eugen Duhring's standing. Yet, in the development of
antisemitism in France and Germany even he has played a
considerable role, and he has exercised a great influence as a
propagandist.
171 W. Marr, Der Sieg des Judenthums uber das Germanthum (Berne, 1879).
In the Journal des Debats of Nov. 5, 1879, Bourdeau devoted an
essay to this pamphlet.
172 "A God like that Jehovah," says Schopenhauer, "who, as animi
causa, for its own pleasure and from the joy of heart produces this
world of misery and lamentations, and who even glories in it --
this is too much. Let us then, at this point, consider the religion
of the Jews as the last among the religious doctrines of the
civilized nations, and this will be in perfect accord with the fact
that it is the only one that has absolutely not a trace of
immortality." (Parerga und Paralipomena, v. II, ch. XII, p. 312,
Leipzig 1874).
173 We shall return to this question in our Economic History of the
Jews, when speaking of the role of the Jews in Germany in the
nineteenth century. -- Cf. Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts; Arnold
Ruge, Zwei Jahre in Paris; Bruno Bauer, Die Judenfrage; L.
Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Christenthums.
174 Max Stirner, Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum. Leipzig, 1882,
pp. 22, 25, 31, 69.
175 Particularly in The Parties and the Jewish Question, Die Judenfrage
als Frage der Racenschaedlichkeit.
176 Frierich Nietzche, Human, all too Human (1879), Beyond Good and
Evil; The Geneaology of Morality (1887).
177 Gustave Tridon, Du Molochisme juif, (Bruxelles, 1884).
178 A. Regnard, Aryens et Semites (Paris, 1890).
ANTISEMITISM
ITS HISTORY AND CAUSES
by Bernard LAZARE
_____________________
Chapter Ten
THE RACE
THE Jew is a Semite, he belongs to a strange, noxious, disturbing and
inferior race such is the ethnologic grievance of the antisemites.
What does it rest upon? It rests upon an anthropological theory which
had given rise or at least justification to an historical theory: the
doctrine of the inequality of races, of which we must speak first of
all.
Since the eighteenth century attempts have been made to classify men
and distribute them under well-defined, distinct and separate
categories. As a basis for it quite different indices were taken: the
section of the hair oval section for negroes with woolly hair, or
round section; 179 the shape of the skull broad or elongated; 180 the
colour of the skin. This last classification has prevailed: nowadays
three races of mankind the negro, the yellow, and the white race are
distinguished. Different aptitudes are ascribed to these races, and
they are arranged in the order of their superiority in a ladder of
which the negro race occupies the lowest and the white race the
highest round. Race is, however, a fiction. No human group exists that
can boast of having had two original ancestors and having descended
from them without any adulteration of the primitive stock through
mixture; human races are not pure, i.e., strictly speaking, there is
no such thing as a race. "There is no unity," says Topinard: 181 "the
races have divided, scattered, blended, inter crossed in all degrees
and directions since thousands of centuries; most of them gave up
their language in favour of that of their conquerors, then gave the
same up for a third, if not a fourth language; the principal masses
have disappeared and now we find ourselves face to face with peoples
and not races." The anthropologic classification of mankind has
consequently no value whatever.
Nevertheless, and however untenable this doctrine of the inequality of
races, whether from the linguistic or from the anthropologic point of
view, it has been quite dominant in our times, and[120] nations have
chased and still chase this chimera of ethnologic unity, which is but
the heritage of an ill-informed past and, truth to tell, a form of
regress.
Whatever they be, true or false, these ethnologic principles which
concern us, have, by the very fact of their existence been one of the
causes of antisemitism; they have supplied a scientific appearance to
a phenomenon which we shall later recognize as national and economic
and, through them, the grievances of the antisemites were fortified
with pseudo-historical and pseudo-anthropological arguments. Indeed,
not only was the existence admitted of three races negro, yellow and
white ranged in hierarchic order, but even in these races
sub-divisions, categories, were established. At first it was asserted
that the white race alone and some families of the yellow race were
capable of founding superior civilizations; presently this white race
was divided into two branches: the Aryan race and the Semitic race;
finally it was maintained that the Aryan must be considered the most
perfect race. Even in our days the Aryan race has been subdivided into
groups, and this enabled anthropologists and chauvinistic ethnologists
to declare either that the Celtic or the Germanic group must be
considered as the pure wheat of this Aryan race, already superior as
it was. Thus, consciously or unconsciously, history is modeled after
the ethnic tables of Genesis tables also met with among the
Babylonians and the primitive Greeks which accounted in a rudimentary
way for the diversity of human groups, by the existence of sprouts
issued from single parents, each sprout then producing a nation. Thus
it is the Bible again that lends assistance to the antisemites, for in
ethnography and history we are still clinging to the explanations of
the GenesisShem, Ham and Japhet, only replaced by the Semite, the
Turanian and the Aryan, however impossible it may be to justify these
divisions linguistically, anthropologically or historically.
Without stopping to discuss whether the negro races are capable of
civilization or not we must see what is understood under the names
Aryans and Semites. Aryans is the name of all peoples whose language
is derived from Sanskrit, a language spoken by a human group called
arya. Now, this group "presents no scientifically demonstrable unity
except from the exclusively linguistic point of view." All
anthropologic unity is undemonstrable: the cranial measurements,
indices,[121] numbers, furnish no proof. In this Aryan chaos are found
Semitic types, Mongolian types, all types and all varieties of types,
from the one which is capable of developing morally, intellectually
and socially, up to the one that remains in everlasting mediocrity.
There may be observed dolichocephals and brachycephals, men with brown
skin, others with yellowish and yet others with white skin Still,
despite the fact that some tribes of Aryan language had no development
perceptibly superior to that of some agglomerations of negroes, it is
not a whit less energetically asserted that the Aryan is the most
beautiful and noblest of the races, that it is the productive and
creative race par excellence, that to it we are indebted for the most
wonderful metaphysics, the most magnificent lyric, religious and
ethical productions and that no other race ever was or is susceptible
of a like expansion. To arrive at such a result, an abstraction is
naturally made from the indisputable fact that all historical
organisms had been formed of the most dissimilar elements, whose
respective share in the common work it is impossible to determine.
The Aryan race, then, is superior, and it has proven its superiority
by resisting the rule of a fraternal and rival race the Semitic. This
latter is a ferocious, brutal race, incapable of creative power,
devoid of any ideal, and Universal History is represented as the
history of the conflict between the Aryan and the Semitic race, a
conflict which we witness even at present. Each antisemite affords
proof of this secular conflict. Even the Trojan War becomes, with
some, the struggle between the Aryan and the Semite, and through the
exigencies of the case, Paris becomes a Semitic brigand who ravishes
Aryan beauties. Later on the Median Wars form a phase of this great
contest, and the great king is pictured as the leader of the Semitic
Orient falling upon the Aryan Occident; then it is Carthage disputing
with Rome over the Empire of the World; then Islam advances against
Christendom, and all through, it is pointed with pleasure that the
Greek has defeated the Trojan and Artaxerxes, that Rome triumphed over
Carthage, and Charles Martel checked Abder-Rahman.
The Christian antisemites have thus reconciled their faith with their
animosity, and not stopping short even before heresy, they have
admitted that the prophets and Jesus were Aryans, 182 while the
anti-Christian antisemites consider the Galilean and the nabis
(prophets) as deserving condemnation and inferior Semites.
[122] Does what we know of the history of ancient and modern nations
give us the right to accept as genuine this rivalry, this struggle,
this instinctive opposition between the Aryan and the Semitic race? By
no means, since Semites and Aryans have intermingled in a continuous
way, and since the Semitic share in all so-called Aryan civilizations
is considerable. From this point of view, the history of Hellenic
myths is curious and instructive, and this Semitic contribution may be
grasped by comparing Hercules to Melkart, or Ashtoreth to Aphrodite.
Likewise, the Phoenician cups and vases, exported in great numbers by
the merchants of Tyre and Sidon, served as models for the Greek
artists, and thus enabled the subtle mind of the Ionians and Dorians
to interpret the myths represented on them, and the Phoenician
image-trade helped out much the Greek iconologic mythology.
Still the modern antisemites would rigorously admit the importance of
the Semites in the history of civilization, but would make a
classification even there. There are, they say, superior and inferior
Semites. The Jew is the latter type, of the Semites, essentially
unproductive, from whom men have received nothing and who can give
nothing. It is impossible to accept this assertion. It is true that
the Jewish nation has never displayed any great aptitudes for the
plastic arts, but, through the voice of its prophets, it has
accomplished a moral work by which every nation has been benefited; it
has worked out some of those ethical and social ideas which are the
leaven of humanity; if it has not had any divine sculptors and
painters, it has had wonderful poets, it has, above all, had moralists
who had worked for universal brotherhood, prophetic pamphleteers who
made living and immortal the idea of justice, and Isaiah, Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, despite their violence, fierceness even, have made heard the
voice of suffering which wants not only to be protected against
execrable force, but to be freed from it.
However, if the Phoenician element had incorporated itself with the
Pelasgian, Hellenic, Latin, Celtic and Iberian elements, the Jewish
element, by intermingling with others, has also contributed to the
formation of those agglomerations which later on united to form the
modern nations. The Jew, too, came to sink and disappear in that
enormous crucible which Asia Minor presented, and where the most
diverse nations were cast. Slowly hellenized, the Jews in Alexandria
turned the city into one of the most active centres of Christian
propaganda. They were among the first to[123] convert; they formed the
nucleus of the primitive Church in Alexandria, Antioch, Rome, and
after the disappearance of the Ebionites they were absorbed in the
total mass of Greek and Roman converts.
Throughout the Middle Ages Jewish blood was intermingling with
Christian blood. Cases of wholesale conversion were exceedingly
numerous, and it would make interesting reading to recount those of
the Jews of Braine, 183 of Tortosa, 184 those of Clermont converted by
Avitus, the 25,000 converted, as tradition goes, by Vincent Ferrer all
of whom disappeared in the midst of the nations among whom they lived.
If the Inquisition hindered, or at least tried to hinder, judaization,
it favoured the absorption of the Jews, and were the Christian
antisemites logical they would curse Torquemada and his successors,
who helped to pollute Aryan purity by the adjunction of the Jew. The
number of Marranos in Spain was enormous. In nearly all Spanish
families, a Jew or a Moor is found at some point of their genealogy;
"the noblest houses are full of Jews," they said, 185 and the cardinal
Mendoza y Bovadilla wrote in the sixteenth century a pamphlet on the
flaws in Spanish lineages, 186
We have thus made answer to those who maintain the purity of the Aryan
race; we have pointed out that this race, like all the others, was a
product of countless mixtures. Not to speak of the prehistoric times
we have made it clear that the Persian, Macedonian and Roman conquests
made worse the ethnologic confusion which increased in Europe still
further during the invasions. The so-called Indo-Germanic races,
stock-full of alluvions even before, intermingled with Chudians,
Ugrians, Uralo-Altaians. Those among the Europeans who believe
themselves descended in line direct from Aryan ancestors do not keep
in mind those so diverse lands which these ancestors had traversed in
their long journeys, nor all the tribes which they had swept along
with them, nor all those which they found settled wherever they
tarried tribes of unknown races and of uncertain origin, obscure and
unknown tribes whose blood is still running in the veins of those who
boast themselves heirs of the legendary and noble Aryans, as the blood
of the yellow Dasyus and black Dravidians flows under the skin of the
white Arya-Hindoos.
At present, the Jews who consider themselves the highest incarnation
of Semitism help in perpetuating this belief in the inequality and
hierarchy of races. The ethnologic prejudice is[124] universal, and
those even who suffer from it are its most tenacious upholders.
Antisemites and philosemites join hands to defend the same doctrines,
they part company only when it comes to award the supremacy. If the
antisemite reproaches the Jew for being a part of a strange and base
race, the Jew vaunts of belonging to an elect and superior race; to
his nobility and antiquity he attaches the highest importance and even
now he is the prey of patriotic pride. Though no longer a nation,
though protesting against those who see in him the representative of a
nation encamped among strange nations, he nevertheless harbours in the
depth of his heart this absurdly vain conviction, and thus he is like
the chauvinists of all lands. Like them he claims to be of pure
origin, while his assertion is no more well-founded, and we have to
examine closely the assertion of Israel's enemy and of Israel himself:
to wit, that the Jews are the most united, stable, impenetrable,
irreducible nation.
We possess no documents to determine the ethnology of the nomadic
Bene-Israel, but probable it is that the twelve tribes constituting
this people, according to the tradition, did not belong to a single
stock. They were doubtless heterogeneous tribes, for, in spite of its
legends, the Jewish nation cannot, any more than the other nations,
boast of having originated from a single couple, and the current
conception which represents the Hebrew tribe as subdividing into
sub-tribes 187 is but a legendary and traditional conception that of
the Genesis and one which a portion of historians of the Hebrews have
wrongly accepted. Already composed of various unities among which
doubtless were Turanian and Kushite groups, i.e., yellows and blacks,
the Jews added still other strange elements while living in Egypt and
in the land of Canaan which they conquered. Later on Gog and Magog,
the Scythians, coming in Josiah's reign to Jerusalem's gates, probably
left their impress on Israel. But starting with the first captivity
the mixtures grow in number. "During the Babylonian captivity," says
Maimonides, 188 "the Israelites mingled with all sorts of foreign
races and had children, who formed, owing to these unions, a kind of a
new confusion of tongues," and yet this Babylonia, where there were
cities like Mahuza, almost entirely peopled by Persians converted to
Judaism, was deemed to contain Jews of a purer race than the Jews of
Palestine. Said an old proverb: "For the purity of the race, the
difference between the Jews of the Roman provinces is[125] just as
perceptible as the difference between dough of mediocre quality and
dough made of the flour of meal; but, compared to Babylonia, Judea
itself is like mediocre dough."
This means that Judea had undergone many vicissitudes. It had always
been the transit ground for the Mizraim and Assur; afterwards, on
returning from captivity, the Jews united with the Samaritans,
Edomites and Moabites. After the conquest of Idumea by Hyrcan, there
were Jewish and Idumean unions, and it was said that, during the war
with Rome, the Latin conquerors had begotten sons. "Are we perfectly
sure," said Rabbi Ulla, melancholically, to Judah-ben Ezekiel, "that
we are not descended from pagans who dishonoured the young daughters
of Zion after the capture of Jerusalem?"
But what was most conducive to the introduction of foreign blood into
the Jewish nation was proselytism. The Jews were a propagandist nation
par excellence, and from the construction of the Second Temple and
particularly after the dispersion, their zeal was considerable. They
were exactly those of whom the Gospel says, that they ran over "earth
and sea to make a proselyte," 189 and with perfect right could Rabbi
Eliezer exclaim: "Wherefore has God scattered the Jews among the
nations? To recruit for Him proselytes everywhere." 190 There are
abundant proofs of the proselyting ardour of the Jews, 191 and during
the first centuries before the Christian era Judaism spread with the
same vigour as characterized Christianity and Mohammedanism later on.
Rome, Alexandria, Antioch where nearly all the Jews were converted
gentiles Damask, Cyprus were the centres of fusion, as I have already
pointed out. 192 Nay, more, the Hasmonide conquerors compelled the
vanquished Syrians to circumcise; kings, carrying their subjects
along, converted, as, e.g., the family of Adiabenus, and the
population was very mixed in certain cantons of Palestine itself, as
was the case with Galilea, in that "circle of gentiles" where Jesus
was to be born.
All over Europe the Jews attracted proselytes, thus rejuvenating their
blood by the admixture of new blood. They made converts in Spain where
successive councils at Toledo forbade mixed marriages; in Switzerland,
where a decree of the fourteenth century sentenced young girls to
wearing Jewish hats for having begotten children by Israelite fathers;
in Poland, in the sixteenth century, in spite of Sigismund I's edicts,
if we are to believe the historian[126] Bielski. 193 And they not only
made these unions with the so-called Aryan nations in Europe, but also
with the Uralo-Altaians and Turanians; there the infiltration was more
considerable.
On the shores of the Black and the Caspian Sea, the Jews had
established themselves in great antiquity. The story goes that during
the war he waged against King Tachus (361 B.C.) in Egypt, Artaxerxes
Ochus wrested the Jews from their land and transferred them to
Hyrcania on the Caspian shore. Even if their establishment in this
region is not so old as claimed by this tradition, they still were
settled there long before the Christian era, witness the Greek
inscriptions of Anape, Olbia and Panticapea. They emigrated in the
seventh and eighth centuries from Babylonia and came to the Tartar
cities, Kertsh, Tarku, Derbend, etc. About 620 they converted there a
whole tribe, the Khazars, 194 whose territory was in the neighbourhood
of Astrakhan. Legend seized upon this fact, which greatly stirred up
the Jews of the West, but, despite of this, there can be no doubt
about it. Isidore of Seville, a contemporary of the event, mentions
it, and afterwards Chasdai Ibn-Shaprut, minister of the Khalif
Abd-er-Rahman, corresponded with Joseph, the last Khagan of the
Khazars, whose kingdom was destroyed by Svyatoslav, prince of Kieff.
The Khazars exercised a great influence over the neighbouring Slav
tribes, the Polyane, Syeveryane and Vyatichi, and made numerous
proselytes among them.
The Tartar peoples of the Caucasus also embraced Judaism in the
twelfth century, according to the report of the traveler Petachya of
Ratisbon. 195 In the fourteenth century, there were numerous Jews in
the hordes, which, with Mamay at their head, invaded the lands
surrounding the Caucasus. It was in this nook of E:astern Europe that
actively went on the fusion of Jews and Uralo-Altaians; here the
Semite mixed with the Turanian, and even now, in studying the nations
of the Caucasus, one meets with traces of this mixture among the
30,000 Jews of that country and the tribes surrounding them. 196
Thus this Jewish race represented by Jews and antisemites as the most
unassailable, most homogeneous of races, is strongly multifarious.
Anthropologists would in the first place divide it into two
well-defined parts: the dolichocephals and the brachycephals. To the
first type belong the Sephardic Jews the Spanish and Portuguese Jews
as well as the greater part of the Jews of Italy and Southern France;
to the second may be assigned the Ashkenazim,[127] i.e., the Polish,
Russian and German Jews. 197 But the Sephardim and the Ashkenazim are
not the only two known varieties of Jews; these varieties are
numerous.
In Africa are found agricultural and nomadic Jews, allied with the
Kabyls and Berberians, near Setif, Guelma and Biskra, at the frontier
of Morocco; in caravan they go as far as Timbuctoo, and some of their
tribes, on the borders of Sahara, like the Daggatouns, are black
tribes, 195 as also are the Fellah Jews of Abyssinia. 199 In India,
one finds white Jews in Bombay, and black Jews in Cochin China, but
the white Jews have in them melanian blood. They settled in India in
the fifth century, after the persecutions of the Persian King
Pheroces, who banished them from Baghdad. Their settling is at all
events assigned to a more remote date: the coming of the Jews into
China, i.e., before Christ. As to the Jews of China, they are not only
related to the Chinese surrounding them, but they have also adopted
the practices of the Confucian religion. 200
The Jew, consequently, has incessantly been transformed by the
environments in which he stayed. He has changed because the different
languages which he has spoken, have introduced into his mind different
and opposite notions; he has not remained such as a united and
homogeneous people ought to be, but, on the contrary, he is, at
present, the most heterogeneous of all nations, one that presents the
greatest varieties. And this pretended race whose stability and power
of resistance friend and foe agree in extolling, affords us the most
multifarious and most opposite types, since they range from the white
to the black Jew, passing by way of the yellow Jew, not to speak of
the secondary divisions Jews with blond and red hair, and brown Jews
with black hair.
Consequently, the ethnologic grievance of the antisemites does not
rest upon any serious and real foundation. The opposition of the
Aryans and the Semites is artificial; it is not correct to say that
the Aryan race and the Semitic race are pure races, and that the Jew
is a single and unvarying people. Semitic blood has mingled with Aryan
blood and Aryan blood has mixed with Semitic blood. Aryans and Semites
have both, furthermore, received an admixture of Turanian blood and
Hamite, Negro or Negroid blood, and in the Babel of nationalities and
races which the world is at present, the preoccupation of those who
seek to discover who among his neighbours is an Aryan, a Turanian, a
Semite, is a vain pursuit.
In spite of this there is a portion of truth in the grievance
which[128] we have examined, or, rather, the theories of the
antisemites about the inequality of races and Aryan superiority, in
one word, the anthropologic prejudices are but the veil which covers
some real causes of antisemitism.
We have said that there are no races, but there are peoples and
nations. What is improperly called a race is not an ethnologic unit,
but is an historic, intellectual and moral unit. The Jews are not an
ethnos, but they are a nationality, they are diversified types, it is
true, but what nation is not diversified? What makes a people is not
unity of origin, but unity of sentiments, ideas, ethics. Let us see
whether the Jews do not present this unity, and whether we cannot find
therein, in part, the secret of the animosity shown them.
FOOTNOTES
179 Ulotrichi and Leiotrichi.
180 Brachycephals and Dolichocephals.
181 L. Gumplowicz, La Lutte des races (Paris, 1893).
182 This theory, which has the immense advantage of not resting on any
foundation, sprang up in Germany and passed from there into France
and Belgium. De Biez and Edmond Picard have in turn upheld it, but
they did not bring any even illusory proof in support of their
assertions. (Cf. Antisemiten -- Spiegel,pp. 132, et seq,
Danzig, 1892).
183 Saint-Prioux, Histoire de Braine.
184 The Jews of Tortosa converted in thousands after the conference
opened at the instigation of Jerome de Santa Fe.
185 Centinela contra Judios.
186 Francisco Mendoza y Bovadilla, El Tizon de la Nobleza Espanola, o
maculas y sambenitos de sus Linajes (Barcelona, 1880; Bibliotheca
de obras raras). -- Cf. also Llorente, Histoire de l'Inquisition
(Paris, 1817).
187 Ernest Renan, Histoire du peuple d'lsrael, v. I.
188 Maimonides, Yad Hazaka (the powerful hand), Part I, chap. 1, §4.
189 Matth. xxiii.
190 Talmud Babli, Pesachim, f. 87.
191 Horace, Sat. IV, 143. -- Josephus, Bell. Jud., vii, III., 3. --
Dio Cassius, xxxvii, xvii, etc., etc.
192 Cf. ch. II; ch. III and ch. IV.
193 Bielski, Chronicon rerum Polonicarum.
194 Vivien de Saint-Martin, Les Khazars (Paris, 1851). -- C. C.
d'Ohsson, Les Peuples du Caucase, Paris, 1828. -- Revue des Etudes
juives, v. XX, p. 144.
195 Basnage, Histoire des Juifs, v. IX, p. 246; and Wagenseil,
Exercitationes.
196 Among the Chechens inhabiting the East and Northwest of the
Caucasus, as well as among the Andis of Daghestan, the Jewish type
is very widespread. The Tats of the Caspian Sea are considered to
be Jews, and there are many Jews among the Tatar tribes, as the
Kumiks, for instance. (Cf. Eckert, Der Kaukasus und seine Volker,
Leipzig, 1887).
197 For the dolichocephalous Jews of Africa and Italy, cf. the works of
Pruner-Bey (Memoire de la Societe d'anthropologie, II, p. 432 and
III, p. 82) and Lombroso. -- For the brachycephalous Jews cf.
Copernicki and Mayer, Physical Characteristics of the Population
of Galicia, Cracow, 1876 (in Polish).
198 Mardochee Aby Serour, Les Daggatouns, Paris, 1880.
199 On the Fellahs cf. Abbadie, Nouvelles annales des Voyages, 1845,
III, p. 84, and Ph. Luzzato, Archives israelites, 1851-1854.
200 Elie Schwartz, God's Nation in China, Strassburg, 1880. -- Abbe
Sionnet, Essai sur les Juifs de la Chine, Paris, 1837.
ANTISEMITISM
ITS HISTORY AND CAUSES
by Bernard LAZARE
_____________________
Chapter Eleven
NATIONALISM AND ANTISEMITISM
THERE are about eight million Jews scattered over the face of the
earth, nearly seven-eighths of which inhabit Europe. Among these Jews
figure the Bedouin Jews living on the confines of Sahara, the
Daggatouns of the desert, the Fellahs of Abyssinia, the black Jews of
India, the Mongoloid Jews of China, the Kalmuk and Tartar Jews of the
Caucasus, the blond Jews of Bohemia and Germany, the brown Jews of
Portugal, Southern France, Italy and the Orient, the dolichocephalous
Jews, the brachycephalous and sub-brachycephalous Jews, all Jews, who,
according to the section of their hair, the shape of their skull, the
colour of their skin, could be classified, on the strength of the best
principles of ethnology, into four or five different races, as we have
just shown.
Still, proceeding in this way, we shall really have proven that the
race is not an ethnologic unity, i.e., that no people is a descendant
of common parents, and that no nation has been formed from the
aggregation of cells of this kind. But we shall by no means have
proven that there exists no French people, a German people, an English
people, etc., and we should not be able to do it, since there exists
an English literature, a German literature, a French literature,
different literatures all of them, expressing in a different way
common sentiments, it is true, but whose objective and subjective play
upon the various individuals affected by them is not the same,
sentiments common to human nature, but ones which each man and each
collection of men feels and expresses in a different way. We have had
to reject the anthropologic notion of race, a notion which is
erroneous and which we shall see to have given origin to the worst
opinions, the most detestable and least justifiable vanities, that
anthropologic notion which tends to make of each people an association
of proud and egoistic recluses, but we are forced to admit the
existence of historical units i.e., separate nations. For the idea of
race we substitute the idea of nation, and again we have to make an
explanation, for the nineteenth century[130 ] based its belief in
nationalities on its belief in race, and an innate race at that. To
sum up. Customarily a nation is called an agglomeration of individuals
having in common their territory, language, religion, law, customs,
manners, spirit, historic mission. Now, we have seen that a common
race, innate race, a race implying the same origin and purity of blood
is but a fiction; the idea of race is not necessarily linked with the
conception of a nation proof that the Basques, Bretons, Provencals,
belong all to the French nation, though very different
anthropologically. As for territorial community, it is not a whit more
necessary; the Poles, e.g., possess no common territory, and yet there
is a Polish nation. Language, too, does not seem indispensable, and
indeed one may refer to Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, in which
countries two or several languages are spoken but these countries,
organized with the exception of Switzerland federatively, permit us on
the contrary, to assert that language is clearly the sign of
nationality, since in all of them those speaking the same language
strive to group together, in other words, that one language tends to
become preponderant and destroy the others. Religion was formerly one
of the most important forces that contributed to the formation of
peoples. We cannot possibly realize what Rome, Athens or Sparta had
been, if we disregard the Gods of Olympus and the Capitolium; the same
is true of Memphis, Nineveh, Babylon and Jerusalem, and what becomes
of the Middle Ages if we leave out Christianity? Nations,
consequently, do exist. These nations may sometimes not be organized
under the same government; they may have lost their fatherland, their
language, but the nation continues as long as this self-consciousness
and the consciousness of that community of thought and interests which
they represent by the fictitious background of race, filiation, origin
and purity of blood have not disappeared.
Now let us turn to the Jew. We have seen that he does not exist, as
far as race is concerned, and those are in error who say: "There is no
longer a Jewish people, there is a Jewish fellowship closely united
with a race."201 It remains to inquire whether the Jew is not a part
of a nation composed, like all nations, of various elements, and
nevertheless possessing unity. Now, if we leave aside the Abyssinian
Fellaheen, some little known nomadic Jewish tribes of Africa, the
black Jews of India, and the Chinese Jews, we arrive[131] at the
conclusion that by the side of the pointed out differences which
distinguish these Jews they possess also common peculiarities, a
common individuality and a common type. Still, the Jews have lived in
quite contrasting countries, they were subjected to very diverse
climatic influences, they were surrounded by very dissimilar peoples.
What is it that succeeded in keeping them such as they have remained
until today? Why do they continue to exist otherwise than as a
religious confession ? This is due to three causes: one depending on
the Jews religion; another for which they are partly responsible their
social condition; the third, which is external the conditions which
have been forced upon them.
No religion has ever moulded soul and spirit as has the Jewish
religion. Nearly all religions have had a philosophy, ethics, a
literature alongside of their religious dogmas; with Israel religion
was simultaneously ethics and metaphysics, nay, more, it was law. The
Jews had no symbolic independence from their legislation; no, after
the return from the second captivity, they had Yahweh and his Law,
each inseparable from the other. To become part of the nation one had
to accept not its God only, but also all legal prescriptions emanating
from Him and bearing the stamp of sanctity. Had the Jew had only
Yahweh, he would probably have vanished in the midst of the different
peoples that had received him, just as had vanished the Phoenicians
who carried only Melkart with them. But the Jew had something more
than his God he had his Torah, his law, and by it he has been
preserved. He not only did not lose this law when losing his ancestral
territory, but, on the contrary, he has strengthened its authority; he
has developed it; he has increased its power as well as its property.
After the destruction of Jerusalem the law became the bond of Israel;
he lived for and by his law. But this law was minute and meddlesome,
it was the most perfect manifestation of the ritual religion into
which the Jewish religion turned under the influence of its doctors,
an influence which may be contrasted with the spiritualism of the
prophets whose tradition Jesus carried on. These rites which foresaw
every act in life, and which the Talmudists made infinitely
complicated, have given shape to the Jewish brain, and everywhere, in
all lands, they have shaped it in the same manner. Though scattered,
the Jews thought the same way in Seville, York, Ancona, Ratisbon,
Troyes and Prague; they had the same feelings and ideas about human
beings and things; they viewed things through the same[132]
eye-glasses; they judged according to similar principles. The Jewish
type has been formed in a way analogous to that in which were formed
and are still forming the type of a physician, the type of a lawyer,
etc., types produced by the identity of the social and psychic
function. The Jew is a confessional type; such as he is he has been
made by the law and the Talmud; more powerful than blood or climatic
varieties, they have developed in him the characteristics which
imitation and heredity have perpetuated.
Social characteristics were added to these confessional
characteristics. We have spoken 202 of the role played by the Jew
during the Middle Ages, how internal and external causes, proceeding
from economic and psychological laws, led them to become almost
exclusively traders, and above all dealers in gold at a time when
capital was forced to be creditor in order to be productive. This role
was general; the Jews filled it in all countries, not in any
particular one only. To their common religious preoccupations were
consequently added common social preoccupations. As a religious being
the Jew was already thinking in a certain way wherever he was; as a
social being he again thought identically; thus other peculiarities
were created, which, too, spread peculiarities, the formation of which
was general and simultaneous with all Jews. In Spain, France, Italy,
Germany, Poland, the legislation against the Jews was identical, a
fact quite easy of explanation as in all these lands the legislation
was inspired by the church. The Jew was placed under the same
restrictions, the same barriers were built around him, he was ruled by
the same laws. The Jew obtained a territory on the day he was
imprisoned in these Jewries, and the Israelites lived since then
exactly like a people that had a fatherland of its own; in these
special quarters they preserved their customs, manners and secular
habits, scrupulously transmitted by an education which was everywhere
guided by the same invariable principles.
This education did not preserve the traditions only, it was preserving
the language. The Jew spoke the language of the country he inhabited,
but he spoke it only because it was indispensable in his business
transactions; once at home he made use of a corrupt Hebrew or of a
jargon of which Hebrew formed the basis. For writing purposes he
employed Hebrew, and the Bible and the Talmud do not constitute the
whole of Hebrew literature. The Jewish literary productivity from the
eighth to the fifteenth century[133] was very great. There has been a
neo-hebraic poetry of the synagogue, which was particularly copious
and brilliant in Spain, 203 there has been a Jewish religious
philosophy which was born with Saadiah in Egypt and which Ibn Gebirol
and Maimonides developed afterwards; there has been a Jewish theology
since the time of Joseph Albo and Jehuda Halevi, and Jewish
metaphysics that is the Kabbala. This literature, this philosophy,
this theology, these metaphysics were the common property of the
Israelites of all countries.
Thus, consequently, the Jews had the same religion, manners, habits
and customs, they were subjected to the same civil, religious, moral
and restrictive laws; they lived in similar conditions; in each city
they had their own territory, they spoke the same language, they
enjoyed a literature, they speculated over the same persisting and
very old ideas. This alone was sufficient to constitute a nation. They
had even more than that: they have had the consciousness of being a
nation, that they had never ceased to be one. After they had left
Palestine, in the first centuries before the Christian era, a bond
always tied them to Jerusalem; after Jerusalem had been plunged in
flames, they had their exilarchs, their Nassis and Gaons, their
schools of doctors, schools of Babylon, Palestine, then Egypt, finally
of Spain and France. The chain of tradition has never been broken.
They have ever considered themselves exiles and have deluded
themselves with the dream of the restoration of Israel's kingdom on
earth. Every year, on the eve of the Passover they have chanted from
the depth of their whole beings, three times the sentence: "Leshana
haba b'Yerushalaim" (the next year in Jerusalem !). They have
preserved their ancient patriotism, even their chauvinism; in spite of
disasters, misfortunes, outrages, slavery, they have considered
themselves the elect people, one superior to all other peoples, which
is characteristic of all chauvinist nations, the Germans as well as
the French and English of today. At one time in the beginning of the
Middle Ages, the Jew was really superior, because, he, the inheritor
of an already ancient civilization, the possessor of a literature,
philosophy and above all experience, which should have given him the
advantage, came into the midst of barbarian children. He lost that
supremacy, and in the fourteenth century even, his was already a
culture lower than the general culture of those in the same class with
him. But he has religiously kept this idea of supremacy, has kept on
looking with[134] disdain and scorn upon all those who were strangers
to his law. However, he was taught to be such by his book, the Talmud
pervaded by a narrow and ferocious patriotism. The book has been
charged with being anti-social, and there is some truth in this
accusation; it has been claimed that it is the most abominable code of
law and ethics, and therein lay the error, since it is neither more
nor less execrable than all particularist and national codes. If it is
anti-social, it is so only in that it represented and still represents
a spirit differing from that of the laws in force in the country where
the Jews lived and that the Jews wanted to follow their code before
following the one to which every member of society was amenable, and
again it is unsocial only in a relative sense, as the law was not
always uniform and custom invariable in all parts of the States. At
one moment of history it appeared fatally anti-human, because it
remained immutable while everything was changing. Its brutality has
been exposed by the Christian antisemites, because this brutality
shocked them directly, but in saying, "Kill even the best of Goyim,"
Rabbi Simon ben Jochai was no more cruel than was Saint Louis, who
thought that the best way of arguing with a Jew was to plunge a dirk
in his belly, or than the Pope Urban III when he wrote in his bull:
"Everybody is allowed to kill an excommunicate if it is done from zeal
for the church." One thing, besides, has to be taken into account.
Some modern Jews and philosemites have rejected with horror those
aphorisms and axioms that had been national aphorisms and axioms. They
say that the invectives against the goyim, the Mineans, were directed
at the Romans, the Hellenes, the Jewish apostates, but they were never
aimed at the Christians. There is a great deal of truth in these
assertions, but there is also a great deal of error. When Judaism was
fought by the rising Christianity, all the hatred and wrath of hired
assassins, patriots, pious people turned upon the Jews who were
converting themselvesthe Mineans. When deserting the national faith
they deserted the battle against Rome and the enemy; they were
traitors to their country, to the Jewish religion; they lost interest
in a struggle that was vital for Israel; gathered around their new
temples they looked with an eye of indifference upon the fall of the
national glory, the disappearance of their autonomy, and not only did
they not fight against the she-wolf, but they even unnerved the
courage of those listening[135]to them. Against them, against these
anti-patriots, formulas of malediction were drawn up; the Jews placed
them under the ban of their society, it was lawful to kill them, just
as it was lawful to kill "the best of goyim." Similar exhortations
would be found at all periods of patriotic struggles, among all
nations; the proclamations of the generals, the calls to arms of the
tribunes of all ages contain just as odious formulas. When the French,
for instance, invaded the Palatinate, it must have been a rule, nay,
even a duty, for all Germans to say: "Death even to the best of
Frenchmen !"
jum...@my-deja.com
There came a day when the Jew had but one enemy in Europe the
Christian who persecuted, hunted, massacred, burned, martyrized him.
As a consequence he could not experience any very tender feeling
toward the Christian, the more so that all the efforts of the
Christian were bent on destroying Judaism, on annihilating the
religion which from that time on constituted the Jewish fatherland.
The goy of the Maccabees, the Minean of the doctors, turned into the
Christian, and to the Christian all the words of furious hatred, wrath
and despair found in the book, were applied. To the Christian, the Jew
was a despicable being, but to the Jew the Christian became the goy,
the execrable stranger, who fears no pollution, who maltreats the
elect nation, one through whom Judah suffers. This word goy
comprehended all the passions, scorns, hatreds of persecuted Israel
against the stranger, and this cruelty of the Jews toward the non-Jew
is one of the things that best prove how long-lived the idea of
nationality was among the children of Jacob. They have always believed
themselves a people. Do they still believe it at present?
Among the Jews who receive a Talmudic education, and this means the
majority of the Jews in Russia, Poland, Galicia, Hungary, Bohemia and
the Orient, the idea of nationality is still as alive at present as it
had been during the Middle Ages. They still form a people apart,
fixed, rigid, congealed by the scrupulously observed rites, by the
unvarying customs and the manners; hostile to every innovation, to
every change, rebelling against all attempted efforts to detalmudize
him. In 1854 the rabbis anathematized the Oriental schools founded by
French Jews, where profane sciences were taught; at Jerusalem, an
anathema was hurled, in 1856, against the school established by Doctor
Franckel. In Russia and Galicia, sects like those of the New Chassidim
are still opposing all attempts made to civilize the Jews. In all
these countries only[136] a minority escapes the Talmudic spirit, but
the mass persists in its isolation, and however great its abjection
and its humiliation, it ever holds itself the chosen people, the
nation of God.
This intolerant aversion toward the stranger has disappeared among the
Western Jews, the Jews of France, England, Italy and a great portion
of the German Jews. 204 The Talmud is no longer read by these Jews,
and the Talmudic ethics, at least the nationalist ethics of the
Talmud, have no longer any hold on them. They no longer observe the
613 laws, have lost their fear of impurity, a horror which the Eastern
Jews have preserved; the majority no longer know Hebrew; they have
forgotten the meaning of the antique ceremonies; they have transformed
the rabbinic Judaism into a religious rationalism; they have given up
the familiar observances, and the religious exercise has been reduced
by them to passing several hours in the year in a synagogue listening
to hymns they no longer understand. They can't attach themselves to a
dogma, a symbol; they have none of it; in giving up the Talmudic
practices they have given up what made their unity, that which
contributed to forming their spirit. The Talmud had formed the Jewish
nation after its dispersion; thanks to it, individuals of diverse
origin had constituted a people; it had been the mould of the Jewish
soul, the creator of the race; it and the restrictive laws of the
various societies have modeled it. It appears that with the
legislators abolished, the Talmud left in disdain, the Jewish nation
should inevitably have died, and yet the Western Jews are Jews still.
They are Jews, because they have kept perennial and living their
national consciousness; they still believe they are a nation, and,
believing that, they preserve themselves. When the Jew ceases to have
the national consciousness he disappears; so long as he has this
consciousness, he continues to be. He practices his religious faith no
longer, he is irreligious, often even an atheist, but he continues to
be, because he has a belief in his race. He has kept his national
pride, he always fancies himself a superior individuality, a different
being from those surrounding him, and this conviction prevents him
from assimilating himself, for, being always exclusive, he generally
refuses to mix through marriage with the peoples surrounding him.
Modern Judaism claims to be but a religious confession; but in reality
it is an ethnos besides, for it believes it is that, for it has
preserved its prejudices, egoism and vanity as a people a belief,
prejudices, egoism and vanity which[137] make it appear a stranger to
the peoples in whose midst it exists, and here we touch upon one of
the most profound causes of antisemitism. Antisemitism is one of the
ways in which the principle of nationalities is manifested.
What is this question of nationalities? By it is understood "the
movement which carries certain populations, of the same origin and
language, but constituting a part of different States to unite in such
a way as to make a single political body, a single nation." 205
Simultaneously with proclaiming the rights of the land, formerly the
property and domain of the peoples the Revolution overthrew the old
conception of rule and dynasty on which the nations were founded; the
land, formerly the property and domain of the kings, now became the
domain of the people that occupied them.
The royal government in itself constituted the national unity the
representative, constitutional government placed that unity somewhere
else: in the community of origin and language. The artificial bond
being broken, a natural bond was sought for; there have been efforts
on the part of nations to acquire an individuality; they all strove
for the unity they lacked. It was about 1840 that nationalist ideas
especially manifested themselves, they began the work, and
contemporary Europe was founded through them. The theory of a National
State was wrought out by the savants, historians, philosophers, poets
of a whole generation.
On these ideas of nationalities Russia and Germany have been and are
resting to make up their empire, Pangermanic or Panslavic; and is not
this Panslavism, and this Pangermanism what agitates the East of
Europe, do not the destinies of that part of Europe depend on this
remote or near clash of theirs ?
It would be out of place to discuss here the legitimacy or
illegitimacy of this movement. It will suffice for our purpose merely
to state its existence. How do the peoples construe this tendency into
unity? In two ways: either by uniting under the same government all
individuals who speak the national language, or by reducing all
heterogeneous elements coexisting in the nations, for the benefit of
one of these elements which becomes preponderant and whose
characteristics henceforth become the national characteristics. Thus
the Germans have endeavoured to assimilate the Alsatians and Poles;
the Russians compel the Poles to maintain the Russian universities
which denationalize them; in Austria the Germans try to absorb the
Czechs; in Hungary, "Slovak orphans[138] are taken from the places
where their native tongue is spoken and removed to Magyar comitats."
206 If these heterogeneous elements do not let themselves be absorbed,
there comes a struggle, a violent struggle often, which is manifested
in many various ways from persecution down to expulsion in some cases.
Now, in the midst of the European nations the Jews live as a
confessional community, believing in the latter's nationality, having
preserved a peculiar type, special aptitudes and a spirit of their
own. In their struggle against the heterogeneous elements which they
contained, the nations were led to struggle against the Jews, and
antisemitism was one of the manifestations of the effort made by the
peoples in order to reduce these strange individualities.
To these nationalist egotists, to these exclusivists, the Jews
appeared a danger, because they felt that the Jews were still a
people, a people whose mentality did not agree with the national
mentality, whose concepts were opposed to that ensemble of social,
moral, psychological, and intellectual conceptions, which constitutes
nationality. For this reason the exclusivists became antisemites,
because they could reproach the Jews with an exclusivism exactly as
uncompromising as theirs, and every antisemitic effort tends, as we
have seen already, 207 to restore those ancient laws restricting the
rights of the Jews who are considered strangers. Thus is realized this
fundamental and everlasting contradiction of nationalist antisemitism:
antisemitism was born in modern societies, because the Jew did not
assimilate himself, did not cease to be a people, but when
antisemitism had ascertained that the Jew was not assimilated, it
violently reproached him for it, and at the same whenever possible it
took all necessary measures to prevent his assimilation in the future.
At all events, there exist contrary, opposing tendencies by the side
of these nationalist tendencies. Above nationalities there is mankind;
now, this mankind, so fragmental at the start, composed of thousands
of inimical tribes that were devouring one another, is becoming a very
homogeneous mankind. The different peoples possess a common ground,
despite their differences; a general conscience is formed above all
the national consciences; formerly there had been civilizations, now
we advance towards one civilization; once upon a time Athens resisted
its neighbour Sparta; from now on, even if dissimilarities between one
nation and another persist, the similarities are accentuated. As by
the side of his special qualities[139] constituting his essence and
personality, each individual in a nation possesses qualities in common
with those who speak the same tongue and have the same interests as
he, just so civilized mankind acquires similar characteristics, though
each nation preserves its physiognomy. More frequent from day to day,
the relations among the peoples bring on a more intimate communion.
Science, art, literature, become more and more cosmopolitan.
Humanitarianism takes its place by the side of patriotism,
internationalism by the side of nationalism, and presently the idea of
mankind will acquire more force than the idea of fatherland, which is
being modified and is losing some of that exclusivism which the
national egoists wish to perpetuate. Hence the antagonism between the
two tendencies. To internationalism, which is already so powerful,
patriotism is opposed with unheard of violence. The old conservative
spirit is elated; it is in training against cosmopolitanism which will
some day defeat it; it fiercely fights those who are in favour of
cosmopolitanism, and this is again a cause of antisemitism.
Though often exceedingly chauvinist, the Jews are essentially
cosmopolitan in character; they are the cosmopolitan element of
mankind, says Schaeffle. This is quite true, since they have always
possessed in a high degree that mark of cosmopolitanism the extreme
facility of adaptation. On their arrival into the Promised Land they
adopted the language of Canaan; after a seventy year sojourn in
Babylonia, they forgot Hebrew and re-entered Jerusalem, speaking an
Aramaic or Chaldee jargon; during the first century before and after
the Christian era, the Hellenic tongue pervaded the Jewries. Once
dispersed the Jews fatally became cosmopolites. Indeed they did not
again attach themselves to any territorial unit, and have had only a
religious unity. True, they have had a fatherland, but this
fatherland, the most beautiful of all, as, however, every fatherland
is, was placed in the future, it was Zion renewed, with which no land
is compared or comparable; a spiritual fatherland which they loved so
ardently that they became indifferent to every land, and that every
land seemed to them equally good or equally bad. Finally they lived
under such and so terrible circumstances that they could not be
expected to have a fatherland of their choice, and, with the aid of
their instinct of solidarity, they have remained internationalists.
The nationalists have been led to consider them as the most active
propagators of the ideas of internationalism; they even[140] found
that the example alone of these countryless laymen was bad, and that
by their presence they undermined the idea of fatherland, that is any
special idea of fatherland. For this reason they became antisemites or
rather for this reason their antisemitism took on added force. They
not only accused the Jews of being strangers, but even destructive
strangers. The conservatism of the exclusivists connected
cosmopolitanism with revolution; it upbraided the Jews first for their
cosmopolitanism, and then for their revolutionary spirit and activity.
Has the Jew, indeed, any leaning toward revolution ? We shall examine
that.
FOOTNOTES
201 A. Franck, lecture on "Religion and Science in Judaism," in
Annuaire dc la Societe des Etudes Juives, 2nd year.
202 Chapt. VII.
203 Cf. Munk, De la Poesie hebraique apres la Bible, in "Le Temps"
of Jan. 19, 1835, and the works of Zunz, Rappoport and Abraham
Geiger. Cf. also Amador de los Rios, Histoire des Juifs d'Espagne
(1875).
204 I leave apart the Polish Jews of Germany.
205 Laveleye, Le Gouvernement dans la Democratie, v. I, p. 53
(Paris, 1891)
206 J. Novicow, Les luttes entre societes humaines, Paris, 1893.
207 Ch. ix.
ANTISEMITISM
ITS HISTORY AND CAUSES
by Bernard LAZARE
_____________________
Chapter Twelve
THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT IN JUDAISM
To inquire into the revolutionary tendencies of Judaism does not mean
to examine Jewish Communism. Moreover, from the fact that the
so-called Mosaic institutions had been inspired by socialistic
principles it should not necessarily be inferred that the
revolutionary spirit has always guided Israel.
Communism and revolution are not inseparable terms, and if nowadays we
cannot utter the first word without fatally evoking the other this is
due to the economic conditions governing us and to the fact that the
transformation of the present-day societies, based as they are on
individual property, is considered impossible without a violent
tearing up. In a capitalistic State the communist is looked upon as a
revolutionist, but it is not taken into account that a partisan of
private capital would be treated in similar fashion in a communistic
State.
If it can be said, with Renan, of the Jews that they have been an
element of progress or at least of transformation, if they could be
regarded as the ferments of revolution, and that, too, at all times,
we shall see, it is not because of these laws on gleaning, on the
workmen's wages, on the sabbatic and jubilee years, which are found in
the Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, etc., 208 but because they have always
been malcontents.
I do not mean to claim thereby that they were mere mudslingers and
systematic opponents of all government, for they were not wrought up
against an Ahab or Ahaziah only but the state of things did not
satisfy them; they were forever restless, in the expectation of a
better state which they never found realized. Their ideal not being
one of those which are satisfied with hope they had not placed it high
enough for that they never could lull their ambitions with dreams and
phantoms. They thought they had a right to demand immediate
satisfactions and not remote promises. Hence this constant agitation
of the Jews, which had manifested[142] itself not only in prophetism,
Messianism and Christianity that was its supreme consummation, but as
well since the time of the dispersion, and then in an individual
manner.
The causes that gave birth to this agitation, which kept it up and
perpetuated it in the souls of some modern Jews, are not external
causes such as the tyranny of a ruler, of a people or ferocious code:
they are internal causes, i.e., such as pertain to the very essence of
the Hebrew spirit. The reasons of the sentiments of revolt with which
the Jews were animated must be sought in the idea they had of God, in
their conception of life and death.
To Israel, life is a boon, the existence granted to man by God is
good; to live is in itself good luck.
By contrast, death is the only evil that can afflict man, it is the
greatest of calamities; it is so horrible, so frightful that to be
struck by it is the most terrible of punishments. "May death serve me
as expiation," the dying would say, for he could not conceive of a
more serious punishment than that consisting in death. The only
recompense that the pious earnestly desired was that Yahweh might make
them die sated with days, after years passed in abundance and
jubilation.
Besides, what recompense other than this could they have expected?
They did not believe in the future life, and it was late, perhaps only
under the influence of Parsism, that they began to admire the
immortality of the soul. For a Jew, his existence ended with life, he
was sleeping till the day of resurrection, he had nothing to hope for
except from existence, and the punishments that threatened vice, just
as the satisfactions that accompanied virtue, were all of this world.
Having no hope of future reward the Jew could not resign to the
misfortunes of life; it was only at a very late date that he could
console himself in his misfortunes by dreaming of celestial happiness.
To the scourges befalling him he replied neither with the Mohammedan's
fatalism, nor with the Christian's resignation, but with revolt. As he
possessed a concrete ideal, he wanted to realize it, and whatever
retarded its advent aroused his wrath.
The peoples that believed in a world beyond, those who deluded
themselves with sweet and consoling chimeras and let themselves be
lulled to sleep with the dream of eternity; those that possessed the
dogma of rewards and punishments, of paradise and hell, all these
peoples accepted poverty and sickness with bowed heads. The[143] dream
of future rejoicing kept them up, and without anger they put up with
their sores and their privation. They consoled themselves of the
injustices of this world by thinking of the mirth that would be their
idyllic pleasures, they consented to bend, without complaint, before
the strong who tyrannized them.
But this idea of the continuity and persistence of the personality
contributed nothing to the formation of the moral being with the Jews.
In earliest times they did not share the hopes of the later Pharisees;
after Yahweh had closed their eyelids, they expected only the horror
of Sheol. Accordingly, life was for them the important thing; they
sought to beautify it with all blessings, and these mad idealists, who
had conceived the pure idea of one God were, by a startling yet
explicable contrast, the most untractable of sensualists. Yahweh had
assigned to them a certain number of years on earth; in this
existence, always too short to suit the Hebrew, He demanded of them a
faithful and scrupulous worship; in return, the Hebrew claimed
positive advantages from his Lord.
The idea of contract dominated the whole of Jewish theology. When the
Israelite fulfilled his duties toward Yahweh, he demanded reciprocity.
If he thought himself wronged, if he considered his rights had not
been respected, he had no good reason to temporize, for the minute of
happiness he lost was a minute stolen from him, one which could never
be returned to him. Accordingly, he looked to a punctual fulfillment
of mutual obligations; he wanted a correct balance to exist between
his God and himself; he kept a strict account of his duties and his
rights, this account was part of the religion, and Spinoza could
justly say : 209 "With the Jews the religious dogmas did not consist
in instructions, but in rights and prescriptions; piety meant justice,
impiety meant injustice and crime."
The man whom the Jew lauds is not a saint, not a resignee: it is the
just man. The charitable man does not exist for those of Judah's
people; in Israel there can be no question of charity, but only of
justice: alms is but a restitution. Besides, what did Yahweh say? He
has said: "Just balances, just weights, a just ephah and a just hin
shall ye have;" 210 he has also said: "Thou shalt not respect the
person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty; but in
righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbours." 211
From this conception of the primitive times of Israel came the law of
retaliation. Simple spirits, imbued with the idea of justice,[144]
were obviously bound to come to: "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a
tooth." The rigour of the code softened only then when a more exact
idea of equity was obtained. The Yahwehism of the prophets reflects
these sentiments. What the God they praise wants is: "Let judgment run
down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream;" 212 he says: "I
am the Lord which exercise loving kindness, judgment and righteousness
in the earth; for in these things I delight." 213 To know justice is
to know God, 214 and justice becomes an emanation from divinity; it
takes on the character of a revelation. With Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel
it formed part of the dogma, it had been proclaimed during the
Sinaitic theophanies, and little by little is born this idea: Israel
must realize justice.
On returning from Babylon, the Jewish population formed a considerable
nucleus of poor, just, pious, humble, and saints. A great portion of
the Psalms came from this midst. These Psalms are for the most part
violent diatribes against the rich; they symbolize the struggle of the
ebionim against the mighty. When addressing the possessors, the sated,
the Psalmists readily say with Amos: "Hear this, O ye that swallow up
the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail," 215 and in all
these poems written between the Babylonian exile and the Maccabees
(589-167) the poor is glorified. He is God's friend, His prophet, His
anointed; he is good, his hands are pure; he is upright and just; he
is part of the flock of which God is the shepherd.
The rich is the wicked, he is the man of violence and blood; he is
knavish, perfidious, haughty; he does evil without motive; he is
contemptible, for he exploits, oppresses, persecutes and devours the
poor. But his great crime is that he does not do justice; that he has
bribed judges who condemn the poor beforehand. 216
Incited by the words of their poets, the ebionim did not slumber in
their misery, they did not delight in their misfortunes, they did not
resign to poverty. On the contrary, they dreamed of the day that would
avenge the iniquities and opprobriums heaped upon them, the day when
the wicked would be hurled down and the just exalted: the day of the
Messiah.
When Jesus comes he will repeat what the ebionim Psalmists had said,
he will say: "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after
righteousness, for they shall be filled;" 217 he will anathematize the
rich, and will exclaim: "It is easier for a camel to go through[145]
the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God."
218 On this point the Christian doctrine will turn out to be purely
Jewish, not at all Hellenic, and Jesus will find his first adherents
among the ebionim.
Thus the conception the Jews formed of life and death furnished the
first element of their revolutionary spirit. Starting with the idea
that good, that is justice, was to be realized not beyond the grave
for beyond the grave there is sleep, until the day of the resurrection
of the dead but during life, they sought justice, and never finding
it, ever dissatisfied, they were restless to get it.
The second element was given them by their conception of divinity. It
led them to conceive the equality of men, it led them even to anarchy;
a theoretic and sentimental anarchy, since they always had a
government, but a real anarchy, for they never accepted with cheerful
heart this government, whatever it were. Whether worshiping Yahweh as
their national God, or when they rose with their prophets to the
belief in one and universal God, the Jews never speculated over the
essence of Divinity. Judaism never set for itself any essential
metaphysical questions, whether about the "beyond" or the nature of
God. "Sublime speculations have no connection with the Scripture,"
says Spinoza, "and, as far as I am concerned, I have not and could not
learn, from the Holy Writ, any of the eternal attributes of God", 219
and Mendelssohn adds: "Judaism has not revealed unto us any of the
eternal truths." 210
The Jews looked upon Yahweh as a celestial monarch, who would give a
charter to his people and enter into engagements with it, demanding,
in return, obedience to his laws and prescriptions. In the eyes of the
ancient Hebrews and, later on, the Talmudists, the Bene-Israel alone
could enjoy the prerogatives granted by Yahweh; in the eyes of the
prophets, all nations could lawfully claim these privileges, because
Yahweh was the God Universal, and not the equal of Dagon or Beelzebub.
But Yahweh was "the supreme head of the Hebrew people", 221 He was the
all-powerful and formidable lord, the only king, jealous of His
authority, cruelly punishing those who showed themselves rebellious
against His omnipotence. In good luck, as in ill-luck, a pious Jew had
ever to have recourse to Him. To turn to men and not to God Yahweh was
a crime, and having made an alliance with Rome and Mithridates I,
Judas Maccadaeus in-[146] curred this anathema of Rabbi Jose, son of
Johanan: "Accursed be he who places his reliance in creatures of flesh
and who removes his heart from Yahweh !" Yahweh is thy fort, thy
shield, thy citadel, thy hope, say the Psalms.
All Jews are Yahweh's subjects; He has said it Himself: "For unto me
the children of Israel are servants." 222 What authority can, then,
prevail by the side of the divine authority? All government, whatever
it be, is evil since it tends to take the place of the government of
God; it must be fought against, because Yahweh is the only head of the
Jewish commonwealth, the only one to whom the Israelite owes
obedience.
When insulting the Kings, the prophets represented the sentiment of
Israel. They were giving expression to the thoughts of the poor, the
humble, all those who, being directly ill-used by the power of the
Kings or of the rich, were more inclined, for that very reason, to
criticize or deny the good coming from this tyranny.
Holding Yahweh alone as their lord, these anavim and ebionim, were
ever driven to revolt against human magistracy; they could not accept
it, and during the periods of uprising Zadok and Judah the Galilean
were seen carrying with them the zealots by their cry: "Call none your
master!" Zadok and Judah were logical: if we place our tyrant in
heavens we cannot endure one down here.
God himself commands this equality, and again the mighty are the
obstacle to its realization. The humble, who live in common, practice
it; they follow the communistic precepts of Leviticus, Exodus,
Numbers, precepts inspired by preoccupations with equality. As for the
rich, they forget that God had made all men from the same clay, they
disown the equality proclaimed by God. Thus they oppress the people,
they fill their houses with the spoils of the poor, they browse his
vineyard, they make of widows their prey, of orphans their booty, 223
and owing to them inequality exists.
At them, at these possessors and these grandees the prophets hurl the
anathema; the psalmists thunder: "O Lord God, to whom vengeance
belongeth; O God, to whom vengeance belongeth, show thyself !" 224
they cry. They rebuke the rich for the abundance of his treasures, his
luxury, his love of pleasures; whatever contributes to raise him
materially above his brethren; whatever can give him the impious
arrogance of deeming himself made of other dust than that of which is
made the mountain-shepherd who pastures his[147] sheep and fears God;
whatever makes him forget this divine truth; men are equal to one
another, since they are the children of Yahweh who pretended giving
each of his subjects an equal share of the earth they tread on, an
equal share of joys and blessings. After Yahweh they believed in self
only. To the unity of God there corresponded the unity of being; to
God absolute absolute being. Accordingly, subjectivity has ever been
the fundamental trait of the Semitic character; it has often led the
Jews to egoism, and having once exaggerated this egoism, certain
Talmudists ended with recognizing, in the matter of duties, nothing
but duties to one's self. This subjectivity, as much as monotheism,
accounts for the incapacity shown by the Jews in all plastic arts. As
for their literature it was purely subjective; the Jewish prophets,
like the psalmists, like the poets of Job and the Song of Songs, like
the moralists of the Ecclesiastes and the Book of Wisdom, knew only
themselves and generalized their feelings or their personal
sensations. This subjectivity also makes us understand why the Jews
have at all times, even in our days, shown so much aptness for
musicthat most subjective of all arts.
Thus they were undeniably individualists, and these men, so eager to
pursue earthly interests, appear to us thanks to their uncompromising
conception of existence as untractable idealists. Now, an
individualist imbued with idealism is and will always be in revolt. He
will never want to allow anybody to violate his sacred self, and no
will can prevail over his.
Notwithstanding their long bondage, despite the years of martyrdom
which have been their lot, in spite of the centuries of humiliation,
which have debased their character, depressed their brains, cramped
their intelligence, changed their tastes, their customs, their
aptitudes, the debris of Judah have not abjured their so vivid dream,
which had been their support and inspiration during the wars for
independence.
The funeral-piles, massacres, spoliations, insults, everything
contributed to make dearer to them the justice, the equality and the
liberty which during many long years were for them the emptiest words.
The great voice of the prophets proclaiming that the wicked will be
punished one day has always found an echo in these tenacious souls
that did not like to bend, and despised this so miserable reality in
order to delude themselves with the idea of the future time; that
future time, of which Amos and Isaiah, Jeremiah and[148] Ezekiel, and
all those have spoken who sang Mizmorim (psalms), to their own
accompaniment on stringed instruments. However gloomy the present,
Israel never ceased to believe in the future.
The Jews were told: "Why do you await Messiah; obdurate, know ye not
that he has come?" They answered with sarcasm, they shrugged their
shoulders and replied: 'The Messiah has not come, for we are
suffering, for famine desolates the land, for the black pest and the
nobleman burden the sorrowful wretches !" But when they would be told
that their Meshiach would never come, they would lift up their bowed
down heads and, stubborn that they were, would say: "Meshiach will
come one day and on that day will be understood the word of the
Psalmist: 'I have seen the wicked in great power and spreading himself
like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away and lo ! he was not; yea, I
sought him, but he could not be found' 225 and the poor, the just are
those who will possess the earth." The narrow practices into which
their doctors had pressed the Jews, have put to slumber their
instincts of revolt. Under the bonds of the Talmudic laws, they felt
tottering in them the ideas that had ever sustained them, and it could
be said that Israel could be vanquished only by himself. Still the
Talmud did not debase all Jews; among those who rejected it there were
some who persisted in the belief that justice, liberty and equality
were to come to this world; there were many of them who believed that
the people of Yahweh was charged with working for this coming. This
makes it plain why the Jews were implicated in all revolutionary
movements, for they took an active part in all revolutions, as we
shall see when we study their role during all periods of trouble and
change.
It remains now to know how the Jew has manifested these revolutionary
tendencies, whether he was actually (as he is accused) an element of
disturbance in modern societies; and thus we are led to examine the
religious, political and economic causes of antisemitism.
FOOTNOTES
208 Leviticus, xix, xxv; Exodus, xxii; Numbers, xxv.
210 Levit., xix, 36.
211 Levit., xix, 15.
212 Amos, v, 24.
213 Jeremiah, ix, 24.
214 Jeremiah, xxii, 15-16.
215 Amos, viii, 4.
216 Psalms, xxvi, 10; lxxxii, 2-3; lviii, 2; xxii; xlviii; lxix;
cii, 1, 2; cvii, etc. 217 Matth., v, 6.
218 Mark, x, 25.
219 Spinoza, Letters, xxxiv.
220 Mendelssohn, Jerusalem.
221 Munk, Palestine.
222 Levit., xxv, 55.
223 Isaiah, iii; x.
224 Psalms, xciv.
225 Psalms, xxxvii, 35-36.
ANTISEMITISM
ITS HISTORY AND CAUSES
by Bernard LAZARE
_____________________
Chapter Thirteen
THE JEW AS A FACTOR IN THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY
THUS it would seem as if the grievance of the antisemite were well
founded; the Jewish spirit is essentially a revolutionary spirit, and
consciously or otherwise, the Jew is a revolutionist. Not content,
however, with this, antisemitism would have it that the Jews are the
very cause of revolution. Let us see what truth there is in the
charge.
Taking him as he was, the tendencies of his nature and the direction
of his sympathies made it inevitable that the Jew should play an
important part in the revolutions of history; and such a part he has
not failed to play. Nevertheless it would be too much to say, with the
great mass of Israel's enemies, that every public commotion, every
uprising, every political overturning has originated with the Jews, or
has been provoked or occasioned by the Jews, and that governments
change and take on new forms because the Jew in his secret counsels
has plotted such changes and transformations. In maintaining such a
proposition we violate the simplest of historical laws, by assigning
to a minute cause a totally disproportionate effect, and concentrating
our attention upon one phase of historical development to the
exclusion of a thousand others of its manifold aspects. Had the Jews
perished to a man behind the walls of Zion, the destiny of nations
would not have been changed, and though the Jewish element were
wanting to this wondrous totality which we call progress, society
would have developed notwithstanding. Other forces would have taken
the place of the Jews and accomplished what the Jews have accomplished
in the general scheme. Given the Bible and Christianity, the
intellectual and moral mission of the Jew would have been carried out
without him.
Theologians who resort to reason for the defense of dogma, will
inevitably end by asserting the superiority of reason to dogma, with
fatal results to the latter. Exegesis and freedom of investigation are
powerful destroyers, and it is the Jews who originated biblical[150]
exegesis, just as they were the first to criticize the forms and
doctrines of Christianity. The importance of the controversial
literature of the Middle Ages has already been shown. If we study
closely we find in it all the arguments advanced by the scholars of
our own day. It might, indeed, be maintained in denial of the
revolutionary role said to have been played by the Jews, that the
greater part of their exegesis was addressed to Jews only, and that it
consequently could not have been a means of inciting to change,
inasmuch as the Jew knew well how to reconcile the results of textual
criticism with the minutiae of his practices and the integrity of his
faith. This, however, is not altogether true, for Jewish doctrines did
find their way out of the synagogue, and this in two different ways.
In the first place the Jews could always find an opportunity for
proclaiming their ideals, thanks to the prevalence of public
disputation. In the second place, they were the means of disseminating
the Arabian philosophy, and were its expounders at a time, twelfth
century, to be precise, when Al Farabi and Ibn Sina were being
anathematized in the mosques, and orthodox Muslims were feeding the
fires with the writings of the Arabian Aristotelians. The Jews of this
period translated the writings of Aristotle and of the Arabian
philosophers into Hebrew, and these, retranslated into Latin, afforded
the scholastics an opportunity for becoming acquainted with Greek
thought. The most famous of the scholastics, "men like Albertus Magnus
and St. Thomas Aquinas, studied the works of Aristotle in Latin
versions made from the Hebrew." 226
The Jews did not stop there. They preached the materialism of the
Arabian philosophers which was to prove so destructive to the
Christian faith, and carried abroad the spirit of skepticism. Their
activity was such as to give rise to a general belief in the existence
of a secret society sworn to the destruction of Christianity. 227
During the thirteenth century, a century which witnessed the rapid
development of that complex of humanism, skepticism and paganism which
we call the Renaissance, at a time when the Hohenstaufen defended the
cause of science against dogma, and showed themselves the protectors
of Epicureanism, the Jews occupied the first place among scholars and
rationalist philosophers. At the Court of the Emperor Frederick II,
"that hotbed of irreligion," they were received with favour and
respect. It was they, as Renan has shown, 228 that created Averroism;
it was they who established the[151] fame of that Ibn-Roshd, that
Averroes whose influence was destined to become so great. Without
doubt they had their share, too, in the dissemination of the
"blasphemies" of the impious Arabians; blasphemies which an Emperor,
fond of science and of philosophy, encouraged. These find their type
in the so-called "Blasphemy of the Three Impostors," Moses, Jesus and
Mohammed, invented by the theologians, and their spirit is tersely
summed up in the saying of the Arabian soufis, "What care I for the
Kaaba of the Mohammedan, the synagogue of the Jew, or the convent of
the Christian !" Truly has Darmesteter written: "The Jew was the
apostle of unbelief, and every revolt of the mind originated with him,
whether secretly or in the open. In that immense foundry of blasphemy
maintained by the Emperor Frederick and the princes of Suabia and
Aragon, he acted a busy part." 229
Another thing also is worthy of notice. If the Jews as followers of
Averroes, or as unbelievers, skeptics and blasphemers, sapped the
foundations of Christianity in spreading the doctrines of materialism
and rationalism, they were also the creators of that other enemy of
Catholic dogma, pantheism. In fact the Fons Vitae of Avicebron was the
well at which numerous heretics drank. It is even quite possible that
David de Dinant and Amaury de Chartres, were influenced by the Fons
Vitae which they knew in a Latin translation made in the twelfth
century by the archdeacon Dominique Gundissalinus. It is certain that
Giordano Bruno borrowed from the Fons Vitae, whence his pantheism came
in part. 230 If, therefore, the Jews were not solely responsible for
the destruction of religious doctrine and the decay of faith, they may
at least be counted among those who helped to bring about such a state
of desuetude and the changes which followed. If they had never
existed, the Arabians and the heterodox theologians would have filled
their place; but they did exist, and existing they were not idle.
Moreover the Hebrew genius worked not only through them, for their
Bible became a powerful aid to all advocates of freedom of thought.
The Bible was the soul of the Reformation, just as it was the soul of
the religious and political revolution in England. Bible in hand,
Luther and the English recusants blazed the path to liberty, and it
was through the Bible that Luther, Melanchthon and others broke the
yoke of Roman theocracy and overthrew the tyranny of dogma. But they
made use, too, of that Jewish scholar-[152]ship which Nicholas de Lyra
had transmitted to the Christian world. Si Lyra non Iyrasset, Lutherus
non saltasset, it used to be said, and Lyra had studied with the Jews;
in fact, he was so steeped in the science of Hebrew exegesis that he
was taken for a Jew himself.
In like manner we would have to inquire what was the importance, I
will not say of the Jew, but of the Jewish spirit throughout the
period of fierce revolt against Christianity which characterized the
eighteenth century. We must not forget that in the seventeenth
century, scholars like Wagenseil, Bartolocci, Buxtorf and Wolf, had
brought forth from oblivion old volumes of Hebrew polemic, written in
refutation of the Trinity and the Incarnation and attacking all dogmas
and forms of Christianity with a bitterness entirely Judaic, and with
all the subtlety of those peerless casuists who created the Talmud.
They gave to the world not only treatises on questions of doctrine and
exegesis, like the Nizzachon or the Chizuk Emunah, 231 but published
blasphemous tracts and pseudo-lives of Jesus, of the character of the
Toldoth Jesho. The eighteenth century repeated, concerning Jesus and
the Virgin, the outrageous fables invented by the Pharisees of the
second century; we find them in Voltaire and in Parney, and their
rationalist satire, pellucid and mordant, lives again in Heine, in
Boerne and in Disraeli; just as the powerful logic of the ancient
rabbis lives again in Karl Marx, and the passionate thirst for liberty
of the ancient Hebrew rebels breathes forth again in the glowing soul
of Ferdinand Lassalle.
I have sketched here, and that in the broadest strokes, the function
performed by the Jews in the development of certain ideas which helped
to bring on the general revolution; but I have not yet shown how the
activity of the Jew revealed itself in the very work of revolution. I
believe I have established the fact, on more than one occasion, that
the Jews acted as a leaven upon the economic development of the age,
232 even though their influence may have proved to be, as the
partisans of the old regime assert, a source of disorder; order and
stability being represented by the Christian monarchical state. If we
are to believe Barruel, Cretineau-Joly, Gougenot des Mousseaux, Dom
Deschamps, Claudio Jannet, all those who see in history the mere work
of secret societies, the role played by the Jews in the political and
social upheavals of history has been one of capital importance.[153]
True it is that, during the last years of the eighteenth century,
secret associations exercised a great influence on the course of
events, and though they may not have been formulators of the
humanitarian, rationalistic and revolutionary theories of the time,
societies certainly were the cause of the enormously widespread
dissemination of revolutionary ideas. They were, in fact, great
centres of agitation. It cannot be denied that Free Masonry and
Martinism were powerful agents in bringing about the revolution, but
it must be remembered that their importance increased only as the
theories for which they stood became predominant in society, and that,
far from being the creators of that spirit of the times which was the
fundamental cause of the Revolution, they were in themselves but one
of its effects, though an effect to be sure which reacted in its turn
upon the course of events.
What then was the connection between these secret societies and the
Jews? The problem is a difficult one to solve, for respectable
documentary evidence on the subject there is none. It is clear,
however, that the Jews were not the dominant factors in these
associations, as the writer whom I have just now quoted would have it;
they were not "necessarily the soul, the heads, the grandmasters of
Free Masonry," as Gougenot des Mousseaux maintains. 233 It is true, of
course, that there were Jews connected with Free Masonry from its
birth, students of the Kabbala, as is shown by certain rites which
survive. It is very probable, too, that in the years preceding the
outbreak of the French Revolution, they entered in greater numbers
than ever, into the councils of the secret societies, becoming,
indeed, themselves the founders of secret associations. There were
Jews in the circle around Weishaupt, and a Jew of Portuguese origin,
Martinez de Pasquales, established numerous groups of illuminati in
France and gathered a large number of disciples, whom he instructed in
the doctrines of reintegration. 234 The lodges which Martinez founded
were mystic in character, whereas the other orders of Free Masonry
were, on the whole, rationalistic in their teachings. This might
almost lead one to say that the secret societies gave expression in a
way to the two fold nature of the Jew, on the one hand a rigid
rationalism, on the other that pantheism which, beginning as the
metaphysical reflection of the belief in one God, often ended in a
sort of Kabbalistic theurgy. There would be little difficulty in
showing how these two tendencies worked in harmony; how Cazotte,[154]
Cagliostro, 235 Martinez, Saint-Martin, the Comte de Saint Gervais,
and Eckartshausen were practically in alliance with the
Encyclopaedists and Jacobins, and both, in spite of their seeming
hostility, succeeded in arriving at the same end, the under-mining,
namely, of Christianity.
jum...@my-deja.com
This, too, then, would tend to show that though the Jews might very
well have been active participants in the agitation carried on by the
secret societies, it was not because they were the founders of such
associations, but merely because the doctrines of the secret societies
agreed so well with their own. The case of Martinez de Pasquales is an
exceptionable one, and even with regard to him, it should be
remembered that before he became the founder of lodges, Martinez had
already been initiated into the mysteries of the illuminati and the
Rosicrucians.
During the Revolution the Jews did not remain inactive, considering
how few their numbers were in Paris; the position they occupied as
district electors, officers of legion, and associate judges, was
important. There were eighteen of them in the capital, and one must
wade through provincial archives to determine what part they played in
affairs. Of these eighteen some even deserve official mention. There
was the surgeon Joseph Ravel, member of the General Council of the
Commune, who was executed on the ninth Thermidor; Isaac Calmer,
President of the Committee of Safety at Clichy, executed on the 29th
Messidor, Year II; and Jacob Pereira, who had held the post of
commissioner of the Belgian government with the army of Dumouriez, and
who as a follower of Hebert, was brought to trial and condemned at the
same time as his chief, and was executed on the 4th Germinal, Year II.
236 We have seen how, as followers of Saint Simon, they bought about
the economic revolution in which the year 1789 was but a step, 237 the
important position occupied by d'Eichthal and Isaac Pereira in the
school of Olinde Rodriguez. During the second revolutionary period,
which begins in 1830, they displayed even greater ardour than during
the first. They were actuated by motives of personal interest, for in
the great number of European countries they were not as yet completely
emancipated. Those, therefore, who were not revolutionists by
temperament or principle, became such through self-interest. In
labouring for the triumph of liberalism, they were looking for their
own good. It is beyond a doubt that the Jews, through their wealth,
their energy and their talents,[155] supported and furthered the
progress of the European revolution. During this period Jewish
bankers, Jewish manufacturers, Jewish poets, journalists, and orators,
stirred perhaps by quite different motives, were, nevertheless, all
striving towards the same goal. "With stooping form, unkempt beard,
and flashing eye," writes Cretineau-Joly, 238 "they might have been
seen breathlessly rushing up and down everywhere in those countries
which were unhappy enough to be afflicted with them. Contrary to their
usual motives, it was not the desire for wealth that spurred them on
to such activity, but rather the thought that Christianity could no
longer withstand the repeated shocks which were convulsing society,
and they were preparing to wreak on the cross of Calvary revenge for
eighteen hundred and forty years of well-deserved suffering."
Nevertheless, it was not such feeling that animated Moses Hess,
Gabriel Riesser, Heine, and Boerne in Germany, Manin in Italy,
Jellinek in Austria, Lubliner in Poland, and many others besides who
fought for liberty in those days. To discover in that all embracing
crusade which agitated Europe until the aftermath of 1848 the work of
a few Jews intent on revenging themselves on the Nazarene, argues a
remarkable mental attitude. Still, whatever may have been the end
pursued, self-interest or idealism, the Jews were the most active, the
most zealous of missionaries. We find them taking part in the
agitation of Young Germany; large numbers of them were members of the
secret societies which constituted the fighting force of the
Revolution; they made their way l into the Masonic lodges, into the
societies of the Carbonari, they were found everywhere in France, in
Germany, in England, in Austria, in Italy.
Their contribution to present-day socialism was, as is well known, and
still is very great. The Jews, it may be said, are situated at the
poles of contemporary society. They are found among the
representatives of industrial and financial capitalism, and among
those who have vehemently protested against capital. Rothschild is the
antithesis of Marx and Lassalle; the struggle for money finds its
counterpart in the struggle against money, and the worldwide outlook
of the stock-speculator finds its answer in the international
proletarian and revolutionary movement. It was Marx who gave the first
impulse to the founding of the International through the manifesto of
1847, drawn up by himself and Engels. Not that it can be said that he
"founded" the International, as is maintained by[156] those who
persist in regarding the International as a secret society controlled
by the Jews. Many causes led to the organization of the International,
but from Marx proceeded the idea of a Labour Congress, which was held
at London in 1864, and resulted in the founding of that society. The
Jews constituted a very large proportion of its members, and in the
General Council of the society, we find Karl Marx, Secretary for
Germany and Russia, and James Cohen, secretary for Denmark. 239 Many
of the Jewish members of the International took part subsequently in
the Commune, 240 where they found others of their faith. In the
organization of the socialistic party, the Jews participated to the
greatest extent. Marx and Lassalle in Germany, 241 Aaron Libermann and
Adler in Austria, Dobrojan Gherea in Roumania, are or were at one time
its creators and its leaders. The Jews of Russia deserve special
notice in this brief resume. Young Jewish students, scarcely escaped
from the Ghetto, have played an important part in the Nihilistic
propaganda; some, among them women, have given up their lives for the
cause of liberation, and to these young Jewish physicians and lawyers,
we must add the large number of exiled workingmen who have founded in
London and in New York important labour societies, which serve as
centres of socialistic and even of anarchistic propaganda. 242
Thus have I briefly depicted the Jew in his character as a
revolutionist, or at least have attempted to show how we might
approach the subject. I have described his achievements both as an
agent in the dissemination of revolutionary ideas, and as an actual
participant in the struggle, and have shown how he belongs to both
those who prepare the way for revolution through the activity of the
mind, and those who translate thought into action. The objection may
be raised that, in joining the ranks of revolution, the Jew as a rule,
turns atheist, and ceases practically to be a Jew. This, however, is
true only in the sense that the children of the Jewish radical lose
themselves more easily in the surrounding population, and that as a
result the Jewish revolutionist is more easily assimilated. But as a
general thing, the Jew, even the extreme Jewish radical, can not help
retaining his Jewish characteristics, and though he may have abandoned
all religion and all faith, he has none the less received the impress
of the national genius acting through heredity and early training.
This is especially true of those Jews who lived during the earlier
half of the nineteenth century,[157] and of whom Heinrich Heine and
Karl Marx may serve as fitting examples.
Heine, who in France was regarded as a German, and was reproached in
Germany with being French, was before all things a Jew. As a Jew he
sang the praises of Napoleon, for whom he entertained a fervent
admiration common to all the German Jews, who had been freed from
their disabilities by the Emperor's will. Heine's disenchantment, his
irony, are the disenchantment and the irony of the Ecclesiastes; like
Koheleth he bore within him the love for life and for the pleasures of
the earth; and before sorrow and disease ground him down, death to him
was the worst of evils. Heine's mysticism came to him from the ancient
Job. The only philosophy that ever really attracted him was pantheism,
a doctrine which seems to come naturally to the Jewish philosopher who
in speculating upon the unity of God by instinct transforms it into a
unity of substance. His sensuousness, that sad and voluptuous
sensuousness of the Intermezzo, is purely oriental, and has its source
in the Song of Songs. The same is true of Marx. The descendant of a
long line of rabbis and teachers he inherited the splendid powers of
his ancestors. He had that clear Talmudic mind which does not falter
at the petty difficulties of fact. He was a Talmudist devoted to
sociology and applying his native power of exegesis to the criticism
of economic theory. He was inspired by that ancient Hebraic
materialism, which, rejecting as too distant and doubtful the hope of
an Eden after death, never ceased to dream of Paradise realized on
earth. But Marx was not merely a logician, he was also a rebel, an
agitator, an acrid controversialist, and he derived his gift for
sarcasm and invective, as Heine did, from his Jewish ancestry.
The Jew, therefore, does take an active part in revolutions; and he
participates in them in so far as he is a Jew, or more correctly in so
far as he remains Jewish. Is it for this reason, then, that the
conservative elements among Christians are antisemites, and is this
predisposition of the Jews for revolutionary ideas a cause of
antisemitism? We may say at once that the great majority of
conservatives overlook entirely the historic and educative role of the
Jews. It is appreciated only, and that very imperfectly, by the
theorists and the literary men among the antisemites. The hatred
against Israel does not come from the fact that the Jews were
instrumental in bringing about the Terror, or that Manin
liberated[158] Venice, or that Marx organized the International.
Antisemitism, the antisemitism of the Christian conservatives, says:
"If modern society is so different from the old regime; if religious
faith has diminished; if the political system has been entirely
changed; if stock-gambling, if speculation, if capital in its
industrial and financial forms, knowing no spirit of nationality
dominates now and is to dominate in the future, the fault rests with
the Jew." Let us clearly examine this point. The Jew has been living
for centuries in the midst of those nations which, so it is said, are
now perishing on account of his presence. Why, it may be asked, has
the poison taken such a long time to work? The usual answer is,
because formerly the Jew was outside of society; because he was
carefully kept apart. Now that the Jew has entered into society, he
has become a source of disorder, and, like the mole, he is busily
engaged in undermining the ancient foundations upon which rests the
Christian state. And this accounts for the decline of nations, and
their intellectual and moral decadence: they are like a human body
which suffers from the intrusion of some foreign element which it
cannot assimilate and the presence of which brings on convulsions and
lasting disease. By his very presence the Jew acts as a solvent; he
produces disorders, he destroys, he brings on the most fearful
catastrophes. The admission of the Jew into the body of the nations
has proved fatal to them; they are doomed for having received him.
Such is the very simple explanation which the antisemites advance to
account for the changes which society is undergoing.
The accusation has not been limited to this alone. The Jew, it is
said, is not only a destroyer, but also an up-builder; arrogant,
ambitious and domineering, he seeks to subject everything to himself.
He is not content merely to destroy Christianity, but he preaches the
gospel of Judaism; he not only assails the Catholic or the Protestant
faith, but he incites to unbelief, and then imposes on those whose
faith he has undermined his own conception of the world, of morality
and of life. He is engaged in his historic mission, the annihilation
of the religion of Christ. Are the Christian antisemites right or
wrong in this respect? Has the Jew retained his ancient notions; is he
still in his actions anti-Christian? I say in his actions, because he
is necessarily anti-Christian, by definition, in being a Jew, just as
he is anti-Mohammedan, just as he is opposed to every principle which
is not his own. The answer[159] is that the Jew has retained his
ancient animosities precisely where he has been kept outside of
society; wherever he herds apart; in the Ghettoes, where he lives
under the guidance of his rabbis, who unite with the powers in
authority to prevent him from attaining light; everywhere, in fact,
where the Talmud still dominates, and especially in eastern Europe
where official antisemitism still prevails. In western Europe where
the Talmud nowadays has lost its influence and the Jewish cheder has
given place to the public school, the hereditary hatred of the Jew for
the Christian has disappeared in the same proportion as the hatred of
the Christian for the Jew. For we must not forget that though we speak
frequently of the animosity of the Jew against the Christian, we speak
very rarely of the animosity of the Christian against the Jew, a
feeling which always thrives. Prejudice against the Jew, or, better
still, the numerous prejudices against the Jew are not dead. We find
in the publications of the antisemites all the ancient charges, which
were brought forward in the Middle Ages, and which the seventeenth
century revived, accusations which find support in popular belief. The
most persistent of all accusations, however, and the one which
typifies best the historic struggle of Judaism against Christianity,
is the charge of ritual-murder. The Jew, it is maintained to the
present day, has need of Christian blood in order to celebrate his
Passover. What is the origin of this accusation which goes back to the
twelfth century?
The first instance of such an accusation being brought against the
Jews occurred at Blois, in 1171, when they were accused of having
crucified a child during their celebration of Passover. Count Theobald
of Chartres, after having caused the accuser of the Jews to undergo
the ordeal by water, which proved favourable to him, condemned
thirty-four Jewish men and seventeen Jewish women to be burnt. We can
see clearly enough why the Romans should have brought the identical
charge against the early Christians. It arose from a materialistic
conception of the Lord's Supper, from a literal interpretation of the
words employed in consecrating the flesh and blood of Jesus. But how
could the Jews, whose sacred books breathe forth a horror of blood,
have given occasion, and still give occasion, for such a belief? This
question must be discussed to the very bottom. We must examine the
theories advanced by those who would have it that human sacrifice is a
Semitic institution, whereas, as a matter[160] of fact, it is found
among all peoples at a certain stage of civilization. In this manner
we would prove, as has in fact been proven, that the Jewish religion
does not demand blood. Can we, however, prove, in addition, that no
Jew ever shed blood? Of course not, and throughout the Middle Ages
there must have been Jewish murderers, Jews whom oppression and
persecution drove to avenge themselves by assassinating their
persecutors or even perhaps their children. To this general belief
there were added the accusations, often justified, which were brought
against the Jews as being addicted to the practice of magic.
Throughout the Middle Ages the Jew was considered by the common people
as the magician par excellence. As a matter of fact, a number of Jews
did devote themselves to magic. We find many formulas of exorcism in
the Talmud, and the demonology both of the Talmud and the Kabbala is
very complicated. Now it is well known the blood played always a very
important part in the arts of sorcery. In Chaldean magic, it was of
the utmost consequence; in Persia it was considered as a means of
redemption, and it delivered all those who submitted themselves to the
practices of Taurobolus and Kriobolus. The Middle Ages were haunted by
the idea of blood as they were haunted by the idea of gold; for the
alchemist, for the enchanter blood was the medium through which the
astral light could work. The elemental spirits, according to the
magicians, utilized outpoured blood in fashioning a body for
themselves, and it is in this sense that Paracelsus speaks when he
says that "the blood lost by them brought into being phantoms and
larvae." To blood, and especially to the blood of a virgin, unheard of
powers were assigned. Blood was the curer, the redeemer, the
preserver; it was useful in the search for the Philosopher's Stone, in
the composition of potions, and in the practice of enchantments. Now
it is quite probable, certain, in fact, that Jewish magicians may have
sacrificed children, and thence the genesis of ritual murder. The
isolated acts of certain magicians were attributed to them in their
character as Jews. It was maintained that the Jewish religion which
approved of the Crucifixion of Christ, prescribed in addition the
shedding of Christian blood; and the Talmud and the Kabbala were
zealously searched for text that might be made to justify such a
thesis. Such investigations have succeeded only through deliberate
misinterpretation, as in the Middle Ages, or through actual
falsifications like those recently committed by Dr. Rohling, and[161]
proven spurious by Delitzch. The result, therefore, is this, that
whatever the facts brought forward, they cannot prove that the murder
of children constituted, or still constitutes, a part of the Jewish
ritual any more than the acts of the marechal de Retz and of the
sacrilegious priests who practiced the "black mass" would prove that
the Church recommends in its books assassination and human sacrifice.
Are there still in existence in the East sects maintaining such
practices? It is possible. Do Jews constitute a part of such
societies? There is nothing to support such a contention. The general
accusation of ritual murder, therefore, is shown to be utterly
baseless. The murder of children, I speak of cases where murder was
actually proved, and these are very rare, can be attributed only to
vengeance or to the practices of magicians, practices which were no
more peculiar to Jews than to Christians.
Among the nations of the West, the orthodox Jew likewise affords
evidences of his conservatism. He holds to the law and to the
regulations of society. He knows how to reconcile his Judaism with a
spirit of patriotism, which in its excess amounts at times almost to
jingoism. As we have seen, it was only a minority of emancipated Jews
who took part in the French Revolution. These emancipated Jews, even
though they might abandon their faith, could not for all that cease to
be Jews. And, indeed, how could they have done otherwise? By embracing
Christianity, it is said, a course of action followed by some, but
from which the majority have recoiled, as merely hypocrisy on their
part, inasmuch as the emancipated Jew speedily arrives at a state of
irreligion. They have therefore remained Jews by apathy. All those
revolutionaries of the first half of the nineteenth century, of whom I
have spoken, were brought up in Judaism, and if they abandoned Judaism
in the sense that they no longer practiced it, they remained its
adherents in retaining the spirit of their nation.
The emancipated Jew, being no longer bound by the faith of his
ancestors, and owning no ties with the old forms of a society in the
midst of which he had lived an outcast, has become in modern nations a
veritable breeder of revolutions. Now it has happened that the
emancipated Jew has drawn perceptibly nearer to the Christian
unbeliever; but instead of observing that the Christian has allied
himself with the Jew, because he, too, like the Jew, has lost his
religion, the antisemites would have us believe that the [162] Jew, by
his very contact, has undermined the faith of the Christians who have
joined him. The Jews, therefore, are made responsible for the
disappearance of religious belief, and the general decay of faith; and
in doing so, moreover, the antisemite does not distinguish between the
Jew who is still faithful to his religion and the emancipated Jew. To
the impartial observer, however, it is not the Jew that is destroying
Christianity. The Christian religion is disappearing like the Jewish
religion, like all religions, which we may now observe in their slow
agony. It is passing away under the blows of reason and of science. It
is dying a natural death, because it essentially was in harmony with
only one period of civilization, and because the further we advance,
the less in harmony it is with changing conditions. From day to day
our yearning for the irrational and our need of the supernatural is
disappearing, and with them our need for religion, especially for the
rites of religion: for those even who believe in God, do not believe
in the necessity nor in the efficacy of worship.
These, then, in brief, are the political and religious mainsprings of
antisemitism. First and fundamental are hereditary dislike and
prejudice; then, as a result of these prejudices, an exaggerated
conception of the role which the Jews have played in the development
and organization of modern society; a conception in which the Jews
appear as the representatives of the revolutionary spirit, against the
spirit of established order; of change against tradition; a conception
which makes them responsible in this age of transition for the fall of
antiquated institutions and the disappearance of ancient beliefs.
The nineteenth century witnessed the last effort on the part of the
Christian state to retain its dominance. Antisemitism represents one
phase of the struggle between the feudal state, based upon unity of
belief, and the opposite notion of a neutral and secular state, upon
which the greater number of political entities are at present based.
The Jew is the living testimony of the disappearance of that state
which had its foundations in theological principles and the
restoration of which is the dream of the Christian antisemite. The day
when the Jew was first admitted to civil rights, the Christian state
was in danger. This is true, and the antisemites who say that the Jews
have destroyed the idea of State could more justly say that the
entrance of the Jew into society marked the destruction of the State,
meaning by State, the Christian State.
FOOTNOTES
226 S. Munk, loc. cit.
227 Cf. the poetic account of the Descent of St. Paul into Hell,
cited by Ernest Renan in his Averroes et l'Averroisme, p. 284.
228 E. Renan, loc. cit.
229 James Darmesteter, Coup d'oeil sur l'histoire du peuple juif,
Paris, 1881.
230 p. 582.
231 See Chap. vii. -- Wolf, Bibl. Hebr., vol. iv, p. 639.
232 I hope to establish the point still more completely in my Economic
History of the Jews, of which The Role of Jew in the French
Revolution forms but a part.
233 Gougenot des Mousseaux, loc. cit.
234 M. Matter, Saint Martin et le philosophe inconnu.
235 The statement is often made that Cagliostro was a Jew, but the
assertion is based on no real evidence.
236 See Emile Campardon, Le Tribunal revolutionnaire de Paris,
Paris 1866.
-- Proces instruit et juge au tribunal revolutionnaire contre
Hebert et ses consorts (1-4 Germinal), Paris, An. II.
-- Leon Kahn, Les Juifs a Paris (Paris, 1889).
237 Capefigue, Histoire des grandes operations financieres.
-- Toussenel, Les Juifs rois de l'epoque.
238 Cretineau-Joly, Histoire du Sonderbund, p. 195 (Paris, 1850).
239 Besides Marx and Cohen, mention might be made of Neumayer,
secretary of the bureau of correspondence in Austria; Fribourg,
who was one of the directors of the Parisian Federation of the
International to which belonged Loeb, Haltmayer, Lazare and
Armand Levi; Leon Frankel, director of the German section at
Paris; Cohen who acted as delegate from the Cigar Makers' Union
of London to the Congress of the International held at Brussels
in 1868; Ph. Coenen who, at the same Congress, represented the
Antwerp section of the International, etc. See O. Testut:
L'lnternationale, Paris, 1871; and L'Internationale au ban de
l'Europe (Paris, 1871-72); Fribourg, L'Association internationale
des travailleurs (Paris, 1891).
240 Among the others Fribourg and Leon Frankel.
241 There are at present four Jewish social-democrats in the German
Reichstag, and among the younger element in the ranks of the
socialists, collectivists and communistic anarchists, the number
of the Jews is very large. Of the reform part in Germany we may
mention Doctor Hertzka, the founder of the Freiland colony, an
attempt at realizing the ideal social organization. (See Eine
Reise nach Freiland, von Theodor Hertzka.)
242 In April the members of the Jewish revolutionary party in London,
celebrated the anniversary of the founding of heir club in Berners
Street. In reviewing the history of the social movement among the
Jews, the orator of the occasion declared that "during the last
seven years, the Jew has made his entrance as a revolutionary; and
now wherever there are Jews -- in London, in America, in Austria,
in Poland, and in Russia -- there are Jewish revolutionists and
anarchists." By seven years, the speaker was referring to the date
when the proletarian class among the Jews first declared their
adhesion to the revolutionary propaganda.
ANTISEMITISM
ITS HISTORY AND CAUSES
by Bernard LAZARE
_____________________
Chapter Fourteen
THE ECONOMIC CAUSES OF ANTISEMITISM
AFTER being assailed as a Semite, as a stranger, as a revolutionist,
as an enemy to Christianity, the Jew is attacked as a factor in
economic affairs. This has been the case ever since the dispersion.
Already before our era the Romans and the Greeks were jealous of the
privileges which permitted the Jews to carry on trade under more
favourable conditions than the rest of the people,243 and during the
Middle Ages the usurer was hated as much as, if not more than, the
murderer of Christ.244 The condition of the Jews was changed at the
end of the eighteenth century; and so favourable was the change to
them that it tended to confirm, if not to increase, the feeling of
antipathy with which they were regarded. Economic antisemitism to-day
is stronger than it ever was, for the reason that to-day, more than
ever, the Jew appears powerful and rich. Formerly he was not seen: he
remained hidden in his Ghetto, far from Christian eyes. He had but one
care, to conceal his wealth, that wealth of which tradition regarded
him as the gatherer, and not the proprietor. The day he was freed from
his disabilities, the day the restrictions put to his activities fell
away, the Jew showed himself in public. Indeed, he showed himself with
ostentation. He wished, after centuries of imprisonment, after years
of oppression, to appear a man; and he had the naive vanity of the
savage. That was his way of re-acting upon centuries of humiliation.
On the eve of the French Revolution, they saw him humble, timid, an
object of general contempt, exposed to insult and injury. They found
him after the tempest, free, liberated from every constraint, and from
a slave, become a master. Such a rapid exaltation was offensive.
People were affronted by the wealth which the Jews had now attained
the right to pile up, and recourse was had at once to the old
accusation of the fathers, the charge that the Jew was an enemy to
society. The wealth of the Jew, it was said, is gained at the expense
of the Christian. It is acquired [164] through deception, through
fraud, through oppression, by all means and principally by detestable
means. This is what I shall call the moral charge of the antisemites,
and it may be summed up thus: the Jew is more dishonest than the
Christian; he is entirely unscrupulous, a stranger to loyalty and
candour.
Is this charge well founded? It was true and still is true in all
those countries where the Jew is kept outside of society; where he
receives only the traditional Talmudic education; where he is exposed
to persecution, to insult, and to oppression; where people refuse to
recognize in him the dignity and the independence of the human being.
The moral condition of the Jew is due partly to himself, and partly to
exterior circumstances. His soul has been moulded by the law which he
imposed on himself, and the law which has been forced upon him.
Throughout the centuries he lived twice a slave: he was the bondman of
the law, and the bondman of everyone. He was a pariah, but a pariah
whom teachers and guides united to keep in a state of servitude more
complete than the ancient bondage of Egypt. From without, a thousand
restrictions impeded his way, arrested his development, restrained his
activity; within, he was confronted by an elaborate system of
prohibitions. Outside the Ghetto, he experienced the constraint of the
law; within the Ghetto, he suffered the oppression of the Talmud. If
he attempted to escape from the one, a thousand punishments awaited
him; if he ventured to depart from the other, he exposed himself to
the Cherem, that awful excommunication which left him alone to the
world. It would have been vain to attack these two hostile powers
boldly; and therefore the Jew attempted to triumph over them by guile.
Both forms of oppression developed in him the instinct of cunning. He
attained to an unequaled talent for diplomacy, to a subtlety rarely
found. His natural finesse increased, but it was employed for base
purposes -- to deceive a tyrannical God and despotic rulers. The
Talmud and anti-Judaic legislation united to corrupt the Jew to his
very depths. Impelled by his teachers, on the one hand, by hostile
legislation on the other, by many social causes besides,245 to the
exclusive occupation of commerce and of usury, the Jew became
degraded. The pursuit of wealth ceaselessly prosecuted, debauched him,
weakened the voice of conscience within him, taught him habits of
fraud. In this war of self-preservation which he was forced to carry
on against the world and against the secular and [165] religious law,
he could conquer only by intrigue, and the unhappy wretch, given over
to humiliations, to insults, forced to bow his head under blows and
curses and persecution, could avenge himself on his enemies, his
tormentors, his executioners only by guile. Robbery and bad faith
became his weapons; they were the only weapons of which he could
possibly make use, and therefore he exerted himself to elaborate them,
to sharpen them, and to conceal them.
When the walls of the Ghetto were overthrown, the Jew, such as he had
been made by the Talmud and the legislative and social restrictions
imposed upon him, did not change all at once. Upon the morrow of the
Revolution he lived just as he had lived upon its eve, nor did he
alter his customs, his manners, and, above all, his spirit, as quickly
as his condition in life had been altered.
Liberated, he retained the soul of a slave, that soul which he is
losing day by day as one by one the memories of his degradation are
disappearing.
I have already shown how in the course of time the bourgeoisie found
in the Jew a powerful and marvelously endowed ally. During long
centuries, while society was still plunged in the barbarism of the
Middle Ages, the Jew, the trader of old, well armed, well provided
with a fine mental equipment, and rich in the possession of ages of
experience, was either the representative of capital as employed in
commerce and in usury, or else aided in its creation. Nevertheless,
these forms of capital did not attain their greatest influence until
the labour of centuries had prepared the way for their domination and
had transformed them into industrial and bonded capital. To accomplish
this, capital needed those two great movements, the Crusades and the
discovery of America, followed by the manifold colonial enterprises of
Spain, of Portugal, of the Netherlands, of England, and of France, all
the activity, in fact, of the age of commercial development. It needed
the establishment of public credit and the rise of great banking
institutions. It needed the rise of manufactures and the scientific
discoveries which brought about the invention and the perfection of
machinery. It needed all the elaborate legislation looking towards the
restriction of the labourer's rights and wages, until the moment came
when the proletariat was deprived even of the right of association; it
needed all that and many other causes besides, causes historic,
religious and moral, in order to make present-day society what it is.
[166] Those who maintain that the Jews are the sole cause of the
present state of things succeed only in establishing their own
absurdly marvelous ignorance.
Of course, as I have just said, the part played by the Jews in the
development of modern society, was important, but its true character
is very little known, or, at least, very imperfectly known, and that
especially to the antisemites. It is not to this very elementary
knowledge of the economic history of the Jews that antisemitism must
be attributed. Our knowledge of the Jews since their emancipation is
more complete; in France, under the Restoration and the July Monarchy,
they stood at the head of the financial and industrial enterprise, and
were among the founders of the great canal, railway and insurance
companies. In Germany their activity was exceedingly great. They were
at the bottom of all the legislation favourable to the carrying on of
banking and exchange, the practice of usury and speculation. It was
they who profited by the abolition, in 1867, of the ancient laws
limiting the rate of interest. They were active in bringing about the
enactment of the law of June 1870, which exempted stock companies from
government supervision. After the Franco-German War, they were among
the boldest speculators, and at a time when German capitalists were
carried away by a passion for the creation of industrial combinations,
they acted a no less important part than had the Jews of France, from
1830 to 1848.246 Their activity persisted until the financial panic of
1873, when the country squires and the small traders who had been
ruined by the excesses of this Gründer Periode (the era of promoters)
in which the Jew had played the most important part, gave themselves
up to the most violent antisemitism, such, indeed, as proceeds only
from injured interests.
Once the important part played by the Jews of this period had been
proven, and, indeed, their importance was undeniable, people proceeded
to the conclusion that the Jew was the possessor of capital par
excellence. This became an added cause of hatred against him. The
Jews, it was asserted, held everything, and the word Jew, after having
been a synonym for knave, malefactor and usurer, came to be used as
equivalent to rich. Every Jew is a capitalist; such is the common
belief. The error of course is deep.
There remain, about two million Jews in Western Europe and in the
United States, who may be said to belong to the middle [167] class. Of
these two millions, however, it must be admitted that if they were of
very little importance a hundred years ago, they are of very great
importance to-day. Through their wealth, through their education,
through their relations to one another, they occupy a place far out of
proportion to their numbers. Compared with the general body of the
population they are but a handful, and yet their position in life is
such that they are to be seen everywhere, and in number seem to be
legion. It is true that we must avoid the common error of comparing
them with the total population of any country, inasmuch as they do not
generally live outside of towns, but confine themselves to the cities
where they play a correspondingly important part. If we would arrive
at some exact statistical basis we must compare them to the Christian
population of their own class, that is, to the bourgeoisie of
commerce, industry and finance. And yet even when we reduce the
comparison to these two factors, the Jew versus the bourgeoisie, it is
still in favour of the Jew. Wherefore, then, this preponderance ? Some
Jews are in the habit of ascribing their economic supremacy to their
intellectual superiority. This boast of Jewish superiority is not
altogether true, or, at least, requires explanation. In the present
bourgeois society, which is founded upon the exploitation of capital
and upon exploitation by capital, where the power of wealth is
supreme, where stock-jobbing and speculation are all-powerful, the Jew
is certainly better equipped for success than any other body. Though
he may have been degraded by his exclusive devotion to commerce
through the ages, his experience has nevertheless endowed him with
certain qualities which have become of surpassing value in the new
organization of society. He is cold and calculating, supple and
energetic, persevering and patient, clear and exact, qualities which
he has inherited all from his ancestors, the money changers and
traders of mediaeval times. When he devotes himself to commerce or to
finance, he naturally profits by the education which his ancestors
have undergone through centuries, an education which has rendered him,
perhaps, not more suited for certain pursuits as his vanity suggests,
but certainly more adaptable to them. In the present industrial
struggle, he is better endowed, man for man -- I am speaking in
general terms -- than his competitors, and all things being equal, he
must succeed because of his superior equipment. He has no need to make
use of fraud, or, at least, to make more use of it than his
neighbours, since his [l68] personal and inherited qualities are
sufficient to assure him the victory. Still the possession of such
personal gifts is not sufficient to explain the preponderance of the
Jews. Among the Christians, too, there are ancient merchant families;
a section of the bourgeoisie has inherited qualities very similar to
those of the Jews, and therefore it would seem, should be able to
challenge the Jews successfully. The answer is that there are other,
farther reaching causes, arising both from the nature of the Jew and
from the character of modern society. Bourgeois society is based
entirely upon competition between man and man in the field of the
daily necessities of life. It affords us the spectacle of individuals
fighting bitterly one against the other, of isolated units stubbornly
disputing the victory and making use of their own individual
resources. In this state of society Darwin's principle of the struggle
of life dominates. This spirit governs the actions of every man, and
tacitly it is recognized that victory ought to belong to the
strongest, to him, that is, who is best equipped, whose body and whose
spirit are most perfectly adjusted to the social conditions of
existence. If we conceive, then, in the midst of such a community,
based upon egoistic action, associations of citizens strongly
organized and gifted, animated for many centuries by the spirit of
common action, and knowing by instinct and experience, the advantages
which they may derive from union, it is certain that such
organizations by directing their activity towards the same end as that
pursued by the scattered individuals around them will possess such an
advantage in the struggle as to assure them an easy victory. This is
just the role which is being played by the Jews of the middle class in
modern society. They are desirous of winning the same prizes of life
as the Christian; they enter the same field of battle; they have the
same ambitions; they are just as keen, just as greedy, just as hungry
for wealth, just as foreign to any form of justice that is not the
justice of their caste, or that does not defend them against the
classes they hold in subjection; they are, to sum up, just as immoral
at bottom as the Christian in the sense that they consider only the
advantages which they may obtain for themselves, and that the sole
ambition of their lives is the acquisition of material goods, of which
each hopes and strives to obtain the maximum. But in this daily
struggle, the Jew, who, personally, as we have already seen, is better
endowed than his competitors, increases his [169] advantage by uniting
with his co-religionists possessed of similar virtues, and thus
augments his powers by acting in common with his brethren; the
inevitable result being that they out-distance their rivals in the
pursuit of any common end. In the midst of a disunited middle class,
whose members are engaged in a perpetual struggle against one another,
the Jews stand united as one. This is the secret of their success.
Their solidarity is all the stronger in that it goes so far back. Its
very existence is denied, and yet it is undeniable. The links in the
chain have been forged in the course of ages until the flight of
centuries has made man unconscious of their existence. It is worth our
while to see how this bond of union was formed and how it was
perpetuated.
Jewish solidarity dates from the Dispersion. Jewish emigrants and
colonists took up their residence in foreign countries, and wherever
they made their home they constituted a distinct society. Their
communities centered around their houses of prayer, which they built
in every town where they formed a nucleus. Everywhere they possessed
numerous important privileges (see Chapters II and III.). The
Diasporoi were invaluable allies of the Greeks in carrying on the work
of eastern colonization, and strangely enough the Jews who adopted
Hellenism, assisted in turn in Hellenizing the East. As a recompense
they were allowed to retain their national homogeneity, together with
full powers of self-government. This was the case in Alexandria, in
Antioch, in Asia Minor, and in the Greek cities of Ionia. In almost
every city they constituted corporations at the head of which was an
ethnarch or patriarch, who, with the assistance of a council of
leaders and a special tribunal, &laqno;exercised all the powers of
civil authority and of justice. The synagogues were "veritable small
republics." They were, in addition, the centres of religious and
public life. The Jews came together in their synagogues, not only to
listen to the reading of the Law, but also for the discussion of their
private affairs and for the purpose of exchanging views upon the
general course of events. All the synagogues were closely connected in
a vast federation which included within its scope the entire ancient
world, progressing parallel with the expansion of the Macedonian power
and Hellenistic civilization. They communicated with one another by
messengers and kept one another in constant touch with events, the
knowledge of which was likely to prove useful. In every city the
Jewish traveler could count upon the aid of the community; [170] when
he arrived as an immigrant or as a settler, he was received as a
brother, succoured in his need and assisted in his designs, he was
permitted to take up his home wherever he desired and he enjoyed the
protection of the community which put all its resources at his
disposal. He did not come as a stranger bound upon a difficult
conquest, but as one well equipped and with protectors, friends, and
brothers by his side. Throughout Asia Minor, the Archipelago,
Cyrenaica and Egypt, a Jew might travel in perfect security;
everywhere he was treated as a guest, everywhere he proceeded straight
to the house of prayer, where he was sure to find a welcome. The
Essenes carried on their propaganda in the same manner. They, too,
created their little social centres, little associations in the very
heart of the Jewish communities, and in this fashion they traveled
from city to city, at their own free will taking no thought of the
morrow.
At Rome, where they lived in considerable numbers,247 the Jews were as
firmly united as in the cities of the Orient. "They are bound together
by indissoluble bonds by the ties of loving sympathy," says
Tacitus.248 Thanks to their solidarity, they had acquired at Rome, as
in Alexandria, such power that political parties feared them and
sought their support. "You know," says Cicero,249 "how great is the
multitude of the Jews, how firm their union and their sympathy, how
striking their political skill and their sway over the crowd in the
assemblies."
When the Roman Empire fell, when the barbarian hosts invaded the
ancient world, and triumphant Catholicism entered upon its career of
expansion, the Jewish communities did not change. They were still
powerful organisms and the activity of their common life was such as
to lend them great powers of resistance. In the midst of the universal
upheaval they preserved their religious and social unity, two
inseparable bonds to which they owe their prosperity. The members of
the Jewish synagogues drew still more closely together. It was owing
to this mutual support that they suffered nothing from the great
changes that were going on about them. For some time, even after the
Gothic and German kingdoms had been established Jewish communities
preserved a certain degree of self-government. They were placed under
a special jurisdiction and in the midst of those new societies they
constituted veritable trading corporations in which none of the
ancient solidarity was wanting. In proportion as the nations became
more hostile to the [171] Jews, in proportion as persecution and
oppressive legislation increased, their solidarity increased. The
external and internal forces which tended to imprison the Jews within
the narrow circumference of their Ghettoes, only served to foster the
spirit of union among them. Isolated from the world, they only
tightened the bonds which held them together. Their common life
nourished the desire for, and the need of, fraternal action. In other
words, the Ghettoes developed the spirit of Jewish solidarity. In
addition, the synagogues had succeeded in preserving their authority,
so that while the Jews were subject to the harsh laws of king and of
emperor, they had also a government of their own, councils of elders,
and tribunals, to whose decisions they submitted. Their general synods
forbade, in fact, any Jew under the pain of anathema, from citing a
fellow Jew before a Christian tribunal.250 Everything drove them to
unity in those long years of horror and cruelty known as the Middle
Ages. Had they been disunited they would have suffered still more. By
common action they could defend themselves the more easily and escape
some of the calamities that threatened them without end. In the
eleventh century a Rabbinical synod at Worms, forbade a Jewish
landlord to rent out his house, occupied by a Jew, to a Gentile
without the consent of the tenant251 and a council of the twelfth
century forbade a Jew, under the pain of anathema, to bring a fellow
Jew before a Christian tribunal. The Jewish community, or Kahal, made
use of a powerful weapon against those who proved themselves lacking
in the spirit of solidarity; it struck them with anathema and
pronounced against them the Cherem Hakahal (the ban of the community).
jum...@my-deja.com
In this manner, the action of time, the influence of hostile
legislation and of religious persecution, and the need for mutual
defense, have intensified the feeling of fellowship among the Jews. In
our own day the powerful institution of the Kahal exerts its influence
wherever the Jew is subjected to a rigorous regime, and even the
reformed Jew, who has broken away from the narrow restrictions of the
synagogue, and yields no obedience to the will of the community) has
not forgotten the spirit of solidarity.252 Once having acquired the
sentiment of union and fostered it by the habit of ages, they could
not get rid of it in getting rid of their faith. It had become a
social instinct, and social instincts, slowly formed, are slow to
disappear. A Jew will always obtain assistance from his [172]
co-religionists, provided he be found faithful to the ties of Jewish
brotherhood; but, if on the contrary, he prove hostile to the
sentiment of Jewish unity, he will meet with nothing but hostility.
The Jew, even though he may have departed from the synagogue, is still
a member of the Jewish free-masonry,253 of the Jewish clique, if you
will.
United, then, by the strongest feelings of solidarity, the Jews can
easily hold their own in this disjointed and anarchic society of ours.
If the millions of Christians by whom they are surrounded were to
substitute this same principle of co-operation for that of individual
competition, the importance of the Jew would immediately be destroyed.
The Christian, however, will not adopt such a course, and the Jew must
inevitably, I will not say dominate, the favourite expression of the
antisemites, but certainly possess the advantage over others, and
exercise that supremacy against which the antisemites inveigh, without
being able to destroy it, seeing that its reason lies not only in the
middle class among the Jews, but in the Christian bourgeoisie as well.
If we keep in mind, then, this conception of Jewish fellowship and the
fact that the Jews at present, constitute an organized minority, we
are not unjust in concluding that antisemitism is, in part, a mere
struggle among the rich, a contest among the possessors of capital. In
truth, it is the capitalist, the merchant, the manufacturer, the
financier, among the Christians, who feels himself injured by the
Jews, and not the Christian proletariat, who suffer no more from the
class of Jewish employers than from their Christian masters; less,
indeed, if we consider that in a case like this, where numbers count,
the entrepreneur class among the Jews by comparison with the
Christians amounts to little. This will explain why antisemitism is
essentially the sentiment of the middle classes, and why it is so
rarely met with, except in the form of a vague prejudice among the
mass of the peasants and the working classes.
This war within the ranks of capital does not reveal itself after the
same fashion; it presents rather two aspects, according as it arises
from the hostility between the landowning class and the capitalist
class in the narrower sense, or from competition within the industrial
class itself.
The agrarian capitalist, in his contest against the captain of
industry, has embraced antisemitism, because to the territorial [173]
lord, the Jew is the representative of commercial and industrial
capitalism. For this reason, in Germany, the Agrarian Protectionists,
are bitter enemies of the Jews, who are among the most conspicuous
champions of free trade. By instinct and self-interest the Jews are
opposed to the physiocratic theory which would vest political power
only in the owners of land; they maintain rather the theory of modern
industrialism, which makes political power go hand in hand with
industrial development. Jews and Agrarians both are probably
unconscious, as individuals, of the part they are playing in the
economic struggle, but their mutual hatred comes from this source,
nevertheless. The man of the lower middle class, the small tradesman
whom speculation has probably ruined has much clearer ideas of why he
is an antisemite. He knows that reckless speculation, with its
attendant panics, has been his bane, and for him, the most formidable
jugglers of capital, the most dangerous speculators are the Jews;
which, indeed, is very true. Those even whose downfall has not been
caused by speculation, ascribe their misfortunes indirectly to this
cause which has destroyed a great part of the industrial and
commercial capital of the world. But here, as everywhere, they make
the Jew responsible for a state of things, of which he is far from
being the sole cause.
The other form of economic antisemitism is more simple. It arises from
the direct competition between Jewish and Christian brokers,
manufacturers, and merchants. The Christian capitalist, acting for the
most part, independently of his fellows, when confronted by the
harmonious, if not united, opposition of the Jewish capitalists, finds
himself necessarily at a disadvantage, and in the daily struggle for
life frequently succumbs to his adversaries. He, therefore, suffers
directly, from the rise of Jewish manufacturers and merchants. Hence
his extreme animosity against the Jews, and the desire to break the
power of his fortunate rivals. This is the most violent, the most
bitter of all the manifestations of antisemitism, because it is the
expression of the sentiments of those who feel themselves injured in
their personal interests.
This prejudice against the Jews has prevailed to the present day,
secret, instinctive rather than deliberate, and acquired by heredity.
People still feel an intense bitterness against the deicides, and
glance with no favourable eye at their riches, for they still find it
difficult to understand how this tribe of miscreants and murderers,
doomed to perdition, can legitimately be the owners of wealth. [174]
The belief is still held that the Jew cannot acquire wealth without
plundering the sons of the soil -- every owner of land looking upon
himself as its child. If economic antisemitism therefore must be
regarded as the manifestation of a struggle within the ranks of
capital, we must not forget, too, that it is an outcome of the
opposition between national and foreign wealth.
FOOTNOTES
243 Chap. ii.
244 Chap. v.
245 Chap. v.
246 Otto Glagau, loc. cit.
247 E. Renan estimates the number of Jews in Rome at the time of Nero
at from twenty to thirty thousand (L'Antechrist, p. 7, note 2).
248 Hist. v. 5.
249 Pro Flacco, xxviii.
250 These synods frequently met after the twelfth century, and
constituted the first general assemblies of the Rabbis since the
closing of the Talmud. Jacob Tam (Rabbenu Tam), the founder of the
school of Tossafists, was the first to bring about the reunion of
such assemblies, for the purpose, undoubtedly, of considering means
of common resistance to persecution.
251 Jost, Geschichte der Juden, Berlin, 1820, Vol. 2.
252 The Alliance Israelite Universelle, founded in 1860 by Adolphe
Cremieux, and numbering at present more than thirty thousand
members, has served only to foster the fraternal spirit among the
Jews. The aims of the Alliance are to ameliorate the intellectual
and moral conditions of the Jews in the Orient by the establishment
of schools, to take measures for their relief from oppression, and
to bring about their complete emancipation.
253 I am not speaking, of course, of Masonic lodges, but use the word
Free Masonry in the broad meaning of the term.
ANTISEMITISM
ITS HISTORY AND CAUSES
by Bernard LAZARE
_____________________
Chapter Fifteen
THE FATE OF ANTISEMITISM
WE have seen then that the causes of antisemitism are, in their
nature, ethnic, religious, political and economic. They are all causes
of far reaching importance, and they exist not because of the Jew
alone, nor because of his neighbours alone, but principally because of
prevailing social conditions. Ignorant of the real cause of their
sentiments, those who profess antisemitism, justify their opinion by
accusations against the Jew which, as we have seen, do not at all
agree with facts. Charges racial, charges religious, charges political
and economic, none of these grievances of antisemitism are well
founded. Some, like the ethnic grievance arise from a false conception
of race; others like the religious and political charges, are due to a
narrow and incomplete interpretation of historical evolution; and last
of all, the economic count, has its justification in the necessity of
concealing the strife going on within the capitalist class. None of
these accusations is justified. It is no more correct to say that the
Jew is a pure Semite than it would be to say that the European peoples
are pure Aryans.
Still though the Jews are not a race, they were, until our own days, a
nation. They did not fail to perpetuate their national
characteristics, their religion and their theological code, which was
at the same time a social code. Though they were never guilty of
working for the destruction of Christianity, and were never organized
in a secret conspiracy against Jesus, they did lend aid to those who
assailed the Christian religion, and in all attacks on the Church,
they were ever in the front rank. In the same way, even if they did
not constitute a vast secret society, implacably pursuing through the
centuries as its object, the undermining of monarchy, they did render
important aid to the cause of Revolution. In the nineteenth century
they were among the most ardent adherents of the liberal, social, and
revolutionary parties, to which they contributed men like Lasker and
Disraeli, Cremieux, Marx and Lassalle, not counting the obscure herd
of agitators. To the revolu- [176] tionary cause, too, they
contributed their wealth. Finally, as I have just said, if they did
not, by themselves, erect the throne of triumphant capitalism on the
ruins of the old regime they were instrumental in its erection. Thus
are the Jews found at the opposite poles of modern society. On the one
hand they labour assiduously at that enormous concentration of wealth,
which, no doubt, is bound to result in its expropriation by the State;
on the other hand, they are among the most bitter foes of capital.
Opposed to the Jewish money baron, the product of exile, of Talmudism,
of hostile legislation and persecution, stands the Jewish
revolutionist, the child of biblical and prophetic tradition, that
same tradition which animated the fanatic Anabaptists of Germany in
the sixteenth century, and the Puritan warriors of Cromwell. In the
midst of the many transformations which our age has witnessed, they
have not remained inactive; indeed, it is their activity which has, I
will not say caused, but rather perpetuated, antisemitism, for
antisemitism is but the successor of the anti-Judaism of the Middle
Ages. Long ago, in Spain, the persecution of the Moriscoes and the
Marranos was an attempt to eliminate a foreign element in the Spanish
nation; and in the same way the Jews were regarded as a strange tribe,
a horde of deicides, whose aim was by propaganda to infuse their
spirit into the Christian peoples, and in addition, to obtain
possession of great wealth, the importance of which was becoming
apparent even during the early years of the Mediaeval period.
Antisemitism, at present, finds different expression from that of
former times; the charges brought against the Jew have also varied, in
that they are formulated after a different fashion and are given a
basis of ethnologic and anthropologic theory; but the causes have not
altered appreciably, and modern antisemitism differs from the
anti-Judaism of former times only in that it is more self-conscious,
more pragmatic, and more deliberate. At the bottom of the antisemitism
of our own days, as at the bottom of the anti-Judaism of the
thirteenth century are the fear of, and the hatred for, the stranger.
This is the primal cause of all antisemitism, the never failing cause.
It appears in Alexandria under the Ptolemies, in Rome during the
lifetime of Cicero, in the Greek cities of Ionia, in Antioch, in
Cyrenaica, in feudal Europe, and in the modern state whose soul is the
spirit of nationality.
Let us leave now this old anti-Judaism and concern ourselves only with
the antisemitism of modern times. A product of the [177] spirit of
national exclusiveness and of a reaction on the part of the
conservative spirit against the tendencies set into motion by the
Revolution, all the causes which have brought it about, or have served
to maintain it, may be reduced to this one only: the Jews are not as
yet assimilated; that is to say, they have not yet given up their
belief in their own nationality. By the practice of circumcision, by
the observation of their special rules of prayer and their dietary
regulations, they still continue to differentiate themselves from
those around them; they persist in being Jews. Not that they are
incapable of the sentiment of patriotism -- the Jews in certain
countries, as in Germany, have contributed more than anybody else to
the realization of national unity -- but they seem to solve the
apparently unsolvable problem of constituting an integral part of two
nationalities; if they are Frenchmen, or if they are Germans, they are
also Jews.
Why is this so? Because everything has contributed to maintain their
peculiar characteristics as a people; because they have been the
possessors of a religion which is national in character, and which had
its perfect reason for existence while the Jews constituted a people,
but which ceased to be of service after the Dispersion and now tends
only to keep them apart from the rest of the world; because all over
Europe they have established colonies jealous of their prerogatives,
and clinging firmly to their customs, to their religious practices, to
their manners of life; because they have been living for ages under
the domination of a theological code, which has rendered them
immobile; because the laws of the numerous countries in which they
have made their abode, together with prejudice and persecution, have
prevented them from mingling with the body of the people; because
since the second exodus, since their departure, that is, from
Palestine, they have raised around themselves, and others have raised
around them rigid and insurmountable barriers. Such as they are they
are the result of a slow process of creation, on their own part, and
on the part of others: their intellectual and moral life is what it
is, because others made it their object to differentiate the Jews from
the world, and the Jews themselves devoted themselves to the same
object. They feared defilement through contact, and they were feared
in turn as a source of defilement. Their doctors forbade them to unite
with the Christians, and the Christian lawmakers forbade all union
with the Jews. Of their own impulse they devoted themselves to [178]
the occupation of money-changing, and they were forbidden to exercise
any other profession than that; of their own accord, they separated
themselves from the world, and they were forced by others to remain in
the Ghettoes.
Here we find ourselves confronted with a most serious objection. The
antisemites are not content with saying that the Jew belongs to a
different race, and is therefore a stranger, but they declare that he
is by nature an element which can never be assimilated; and even if
some of them admit that the Jew may become a constituent part in the
composition of nations, they would have it that such an amalgamation
is only detrimental to that nation. The Semite, it is maintained, saps
the strength of and destroys the Aryan, and this in spite of the
antisemitic theory that the superior race is bound to overcome the
inferior race without being in the least affected by it. Are the Jews
then incapable of assimilation? Not the least in the world, and their
entire history proves the contrary. It shows us254 how large is the
number of Jews who have become mixed with the other nations through
baptism, how numerous were their conversions in the Middle Ages; how
many Jews have been absorbed by the surrounding population, going over
of their own free will to Christ, or driven to the baptismal font by
the violence of monks and fanatical kings. Jews, in short, of whom we
can no longer find any trace, just as we can no longer find any traces
of the Goths, the Alamani and the Suevi, who with many other peoples
united to form the French nation. At all times the Jew, like all
Semites, has been in touch with the Aryan; at all times there has been
intercommunication between the two races, and nothing can serve better
to prove that their assimilation is possible. If we find certain
resemblances between the Spanish Jew and the Jew of Russia255 we find
also marked differences, and these differences are due not only to the
absorption of other races, attracted and converted by the Jew, but are
the result also of the Jew's natural environment, social, moral, and
intellectual. The Jewish type has varied not only geographically, but
has changed through time; it is a truism that the Jew of the Roman
Ghetto was not the same as the Jew who fought under Bar-Cochba, just
as the Jew of our great European cities does not resemble the Jew of
the Middle Ages. The Jew has been no exception to this law of human
evolution, and it is not the snows of Poland, or the burning suns of
Spain that have been the principal factors in his development. He has
been reduced to a [179] state of putrefaction by the hostile laws of
the nations in which he lived, and by his religion, a powerful and
fearful religion, like all non-metaphysical religions which are
characterized predominantly by a ritual and a Law. For the Jew this
religion and this Law have always been the same, in all times and all
places. They have been constant forces in his development, both
externally and internally.
But during the last hundred years, these seemingly constant factors
have undoubtedly undergone a change.256 There are no longer external
legislative restrictions on the Jew; the special laws to which he was
formerly subjected have been abolished, and henceforth, he is amenable
only to the laws of the country of which he is a citizen (and these
laws, let me remark, differing with every country constitute in
themselves a factor of differentiation for the Jew). With the
disappearance of discriminating laws, his own peculiar laws have also
disappeared. The Jew no longer lives apart, but shares in the common
life; is no longer a stranger to the civilization of the countries
which have received him; has no longer a literature of his own; nor
manners that mark him as different from others. In short, he has
adapted himself to the mode of life of whatever nation he adheres to.
And as these modes of life differ from nation to nation, they serve to
create marked differences among the Jews themselves, with the progress
of time creating more and more striking variety among them. Day by day
they are departing from the class of occupations and the type of
religion peculiar to the Jew.
Still more important, however, is the fact that the Talmudic spirit is
slowly vanishing. Such schools of the Talmud as still exist in Western
Europe are disappearing day by day: the modern Jew is not even able to
read Hebrew; freed from the bonds of the rabbinical code, the
synagogue of the present day professes at most a sort of ceremonial
deism, and deism itself is losing its strength with the modern Jew,
making every reformed Jew ready for rationalism. Nor is it only
Talmudism that is dying, but the Jewish religion itself is in its
death agony. It is the oldest of all existing religions, and it would
seem right that it should be the first to disappear. Direct contact
with the Christian world has started it upon its course of
dissolution. For a long time it has endured as all bodies endure which
are deprived of light and air: but once a breach is made in the cavern
in which it has been sleeping, the sun and the fresh breath of the
outside air have entered and it has [180] fallen apart. Together with
the Jewish religion, the Jewish spirit is vanishing. True it is that
that was the spirit which animated Heine and Boerne, Marx and
Lassalle, but they were still the products of the Jewry; they were
cradled in traditions which the young Jews of to-day overlook or
despise. At the present time, if there is still such a thing as Jewish
personality, it tends to disappear. What religious persecution could
not bring about, the decline of religious faith, based upon national
ideal has accomplished. The emancipated Jew, freed alike from hostile
legislation and obscurant Talmudism, far from being an element to
absorb others, has become an element that can be readily absorbed. In
certain countries, as in the United States, the distinction between
Jews and Christians is rapidly disappearing.257 It is vanishing from
day to day, because from day to day the Jews are abandoning their
ancient prejudices, their peculiar modes of worship, the observance of
their special laws of prayer and their dietary regulations. They no
longer persist in the belief that they are destined always to remain a
people; they no longer dream -- a touching dream, perhaps, but
ridiculous -- that they have an eternal mission to fulfill. The time
will come when they shall be completely eliminated; when they shall be
merged into the body of the nations, after the same manner as the
Phoenicians, who, having planted their trading stations all over
Europe disappeared without leaving a trace behind them. By that time,
too, antisemitism will have run its course. The moment, to be sure, is
not near; the number of orthodox Jews is still great, and as long as
they exist it would seem that antisemitism must exist.
If Judaism, then, is in the process of dissolution, neither is
Catholicism or Protestantism gaining in strength, and we may venture
to say that every external form of religion is losing its influence.
On the one hand, we are advancing towards a narrow and stupid
materialism, opposed to all religious feeling; on the other, our way
is towards a state of philosophic and moral unreligion which shall be
"a degree higher than religion or civilization itself."258 At the same
time while these tendencies are increasing, religious prejudice is
tending to disappear, and the prejudice of Christian against Jew, and
of Jew against Christian, persistent, in its way, as the prejudice of
the Catholic against the Protestant, cannot possibly be the only one
to remain. Even now it is decreasing in intensity, and the time is
near, no doubt, when every Jew [181]will no longer be held responsible
for the sufferings of Jesus on Calvary. With the steady extinction of
religious animosities, one of the causes of antisemitism must
disappear, and antisemitism itself must lose much of its violence,
though exist it will, so long as the economic and ethnic causes which
have made it, endure. The spirit of national egotism and
self-sufficiency, however strong it may be at present is also showing
signs of decay. Other ideas have arisen, which from day to day are
gaining in influence; they enter into the spirits of men, they impress
themselves upon their understanding, they engender new conceptions and
new forms of thought. The brotherhood of nations which formerly was a
mere chimera, may be dreamt of now, without transcending the limits of
common sense. The sentiment of human solidarity is growing stronger;
and the number of thinkers and writers who labour at furthering its
growth is increasing from day to day. The nations are coming into
closer touch, and are learning to know one another better, admire one
another, love one another. Increased facilities of communication tend
to favour the development of the cosmopolitan spirit, and this spirit
of cosmopolitanism will unite one day the most diverse of races in a
peaceful Federation of definite entities, substituting universal
altruism for selfish patriotism. The Jews are bound to profit by this
decline of national exclusiveness, in that it must coincide with the
partial elimination of their own peculiar characteristics. The
progress of internationalism must bring about the decay of
antisemitism. Parallel with the decline of national prejudices the
Jews will witness the economic causes of antisemitism losing their
force. At present the Jews are assailed as the representatives of
foreign wealth. It is therefore just to suppose that when the
animosity against things foreign shall have disappeared, Jewish
capital will no longer be an object of attack for Christian capital.
Competition will, of course, persist in spite of all this, and those
Jews who persist in maintaining their national identity, will always
remain the objects of an hostility based upon this competitive
struggle. Other events, however, and other changes may bring about the
disappearance of these economic causes. In the struggle which is now
on between the proletariat and the industrial and financial classes,
we shall possibly see Jewish and Christian capitalists forgetting
their differences to unite against a common enemy. If present social
conditions persist, however, such a union of the [182] Christian and
Jewish bourgeoisie can only bring about a temporary truce. From the
battle which must inevitably be fought out, the indications are that
Capital cannot come out the victor. Founded upon egoism, upon
selfishness, upon injustice, upon lies, and upon theft, our present
society is doomed to disappear. However brilliant it may appear,
however resplendent, refined, luxurious, magnificent, it is stricken
with death. It has been weighed morally and found wanting. The
bourgeoisie which exercises all political power because it holds
control of all economic agencies, will draw upon its resources in
vain; in vain will it appeal to all the armies that defend it, to all
the tribunals of justice that watch over it, to all the legal codes
that protect it; it will not be able to withstand the inflexible laws
which day by day are working towards the substitution of communal
property for the capitalistic regime.
Everything is tending to bring about such a consummation. Such is the
irony of things that antisemitism which everywhere is the creed of the
conservative class, of those who accuse the Jews of having worked hand
in hand with the Jacobins of 1789 and the Liberals and Revolutionists
of the nineteenth century, this very antisemitism is acting, in fact,
as an ally of the Revolution. Drumont in France, Pattai in Hungary,
Stoecker and von Boeckel in Germany are co-operating with the very
demagogues and revolutionists whom they believe they are attacking.
This antisemitic movement, in its origin reactionary, has become
transformed and is acting now for the advantage of the revolutionary
cause. Antisemitism stirs up the middle class, the small tradesmen,
and sometimes the peasant, against the Jewish capitalist, but in doing
so it gently leads them toward Socialism, prepares them for anarchy,
infuses in them a hatred for all capitalists, and, more than that, for
capital in the abstract. And thus, unconsciously, antisemitism is
working its own ruin, for it carries in itself the germ of
destruction.
Such, then, is the probable fate of modern antisemitism. I have tried
to show how it may be traced back to the ancient hatred against the
Jews; how it persisted after the emancipation of the Jews, how it has
grown and what are its manifestations. In every way I am led to
believe that it must ultimately perish, and that it will perish for
the various reasons which I have indicated, because the Jew is
undergoing a process of change; because religious, political, social,
and economic conditions are likewise changing; [183] but above all,
because antisemitism is one of the last, though most long lived,
manifestations of that old spirit of reaction and narrow conservatism,
which is vainly attempting to arrest the onward movement of the
Revolution.
FOOTNOTES
254 Chap. x.
255 I am speaking of the Jews who have remained true to their faith.
256 I must repeat once more that I am speaking now only of the Jews
of Western Europe, who have been admitted to the rights of
citizenship in the countries where they live, and not of the Jews
of the East, who are still subject to discriminating laws, as in
Roumania, in Russia, in Morocco, and in Persia.
257 Henry George, Progress and Poverty.
258 M. Guyau, L'lrreligion de l'avenir, Paris, 1893.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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ANTI-JEWISH LITERATURE
Apion: Tractatus contra Judaeos
Cicero: Pro Flacco
Juvenal: Saturnalia
Ovid: Ars amatoria
Petronius: Fragm. poet.
Pliny: Hist. nat.
Seneca: De superstitione
Suetonius: Claudius
Tacitus: Historia
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Alfonso of Valladolid: Batallos de Dios
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Pfefferkorn:
Hostis Judaeorum, 1509
Rigord: Gesta Philippi Augusti
St. Justin: Dialogue with Tryphon -- Letter to Diognetus
Theophanus: Contra Judeos
JEWISH APOLOGISTS, ANTl-CHRlSTlAN POLEMICS:
I SPAIN
Crescas Hasdai: Tratado
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Duran Simon ben Zemah: Keshet-u-Magen
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II FRANCE
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Mordecai ben Josiphiah: Mahuzik ha-Emunah
III ITALY
Brieli: Hassugot 'al Sifre ha-Shilluhim
Farissol, Abraham: Magen Abraham
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Solomon ben Jekuthiel: Mikhamot Adonai
IV GERMANY
Lipman Mülhausen: Nizzachon
Reuchlin: Mirror of the Eyes
V HOLLAND
Isaac Cardoso: Fuenta Clara las Excellencias y Calumnias de los hebreos
Nahamios de Castro: Tratado de Calumnia
Saul Levi Morteira: Tractado de la Verdad de la Ley
Spinoza: Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
VI GENERAL
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Moyen-age, 1888
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3 Reformation to the French Revolution
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Bossuet: Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle
Croullardiere, Pean de la: Methode facile pour convaincre les
heretiques, 1667
Duguet: Regles pour I'Intelligence des Saintes Ecritures
Dury, John: A Case of Conscience, 1655
Eisenmenger: Judaism Unveiled
1700 Giustiniani, Augustin: Linguae Hebreae, 1656
Hallevy, Judah: Liber Cosri, 1660
Otton, Conrad: Gali Razzia, 1605
Piere de Lancre: L'incredulite et mecreance du sortilege pleinement
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Rondet: Dissertation sur le rappel des Juits, 1778
Roth, C.: Menasseh Ben Israel, 1945
Voetius: Disputationes Selectae, 1663
Voisin, Joseph de: Theologia Judaeorum, 1647
Wagenseil: Tela ignea Satanae 1681
Wolf, L.: "Cromwell's Jewish Intelligencers", Jewish Literary Annual,
1904
4 The French Revolution
Barruel: Memoires sur le Jacobinisme, 1789
Blanc, Louis: Histoire de la Revolution française
Campardon, E.: Le Tribunal Revolutionnaire de Paris, 1866
Dohm: De la Reforme Politique des Juifs
Gregoire: Essai sur la Regeneration des Juifs
Kahn, Leon: Les Juifs a Paris, 1889
Malet, Chevalier de: Essai sur la Secte des Illumines, 1789 Recherches
Historiques, 1817
Petition des Juifs etablis en France addressee a l'Assemblee nationale,
le 28 janvier, 1790
Webster, N. H.: The French Revolution, 1919
5 Antisemitism in Russia
Adler C.: Jacob Schiff -- His Life and Letters, 1929
Aubert, maitre: Bolshevism's Terrible Record, 1924
Errera, Leo: Les Juifs russes, 1893
Fahey, Rev. Denis: The Rulers of Russia
Fejto, Ferenc (Francois): Les Juifs et l'Antisemitisme dans les Pays
Communistes, 1960
Frederic, Harold: The New Exodus, 1892
Gradovski, N. de: La Situation legale des Israelites en Russie, 1891
Lenin: The Jewish Question
Leroy-Beaulieu: L'Empire des Tzars et les Russes
Sarolea, Charles: Impressions of Soviet Russia, 1924
Tikhomirov: Les Juifs de Russie, 1891
"The Persecution of the Jews in Russia" -- Russo-Jewish Committee, 1890
Weber et Kempster: La Situation des Juifs en Russie
Wilton, Robert: Russia's Agony, 1918
Yarmolinsky, Avrahm: The Jews and other minorities under the Soviets
6 Antisemitisrn and the Talmud
Drach (ex-Rabbi), Chevalier P. L. B.: De l'Harmonie entre l'Eglise et
la Synagogue, 1844
Freedman, Benjamin: Facts are Facts, 1955
Gougenot des Mousseaux: Le Juif, le Judaisme et la Judaisation des
peuples chretiens, 1869
Lemann, the Fathers: La Question du Messie et le Concile du Vatican,
1869
Mielziner M.: Introduction to the Talmud
Nossig, Aifred: Integrales Judentum, 1922
Rodkinson, M.: The History of the Talmud
Rohling, A.: Le Juif selon le Talmud, 1888
Rupert: L'Eglise et la Synagogue, 1859
7 Antisemitism and Kabbalism and Magic
Christian, Dr.: The Kabbalah, 1920
Davies: Magic, Divination and Demonology among the Hebrews and their
Neighbours, 1898
Ginsburg, C . D.: Kabbalah 1865
Levi, Eliphas: Histoire de la Magie
Mathers, S. L. MacGregor: The Kabbalah Unveiled 1887
Monod, Bernard: Juifs, sorciers et heretiques au moyenage, 1903
Rhodes, H. T. F.: The Satanic Mass, 1965
Vulliaud, Paul: La Kabbale Juive, 1923
A. E. Waite: The Doctrine and Literature of the Kabbalah, 1902
The Holy Kabbalah, 1929
8 Antisemitism and tbe Blood Accusation
AGAINST THE ACCUSATION
Menasse-ben-Israel: Vindiciae Judaeorum, 1656
Roth, C.: The Ritual Murder Libel and the Jews 1935
Strack, H. L.: The Jews and Human Sacrifice, 1900
SUPPORTING THE ACCUSATION
Leese, A. S.: Jewish Ritual Murder, 1938
Monniot, A.: Le Crime Rituel chez les Juifs, 1914
Prynne, William: A Short Demurrer to the Jews long dissontinued
Remitter into England, 1656
9 Antisemitism and Freemasonry
MASONIC WRITINGS
Clavel: Historie Pittoresque de la Franc-Maçonnerie, 1843
Goodman, Paul: B'nai B'rith, 1936
Haute Vente Romaine (Alta Vendita) Correspondence of, 1846
Mackey, A. G.: Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, 1905 etc.
MARTIN, G.: La Franc-Maçonnerie française et la preparation de la
revolution 1925
Mellor, A.: Nos Freres Separes Les Francs-Maçons, 1961 La
Franc-Maçonnerie a l'Heure du choix, 1963
Originalschriften des Illuminaten Ordens, 1787
Pike, Albert: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish
Rite of Freemasonry, 1880
Ragon: Cours Philosophique
Vindex: Light Invisible, 1964
A. E. Waite: The Secret Tradition in Freemasonry, 1911; etc.
NON-MASONIC WRITINGS
Cahill, Rev. E.: Freemasonry and the Anti-Christian Movement, 1959
Cretineau-Joly: L'Eglise Romaine en face de la Revolution, 1859.
Deschamps, Rev. N., S.J.: Les Societes Secretes et la Societe, 1881
Dillon, Mgr. G.: Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked as the Power Behind
Communism, 1965
Eckert: La Franc-Maçonnerie dans sa veritable signification, 1854
Hannah, Rev. W.: Darkness Visible, 1963 Christian by Degrees, 1964
Lecouteux de Canteleu, Comte: Les Sectes et societies secretes, 1863
Leo XIII, Pope: Humanum Genus, 1884
Poncins, Vicomte Leon de: The Secret Powers behind Revolution, 1929
Webster, N. H.: World Revolution 1921
Secret Societies and Subrersive Movements, 1964
10 Reference Books
Aurnoin: Chronique Moissiacensis
Bartolocci: Magna Bibliotheca Rabbinica, 1693-95
Bielski: Chronicon Rerum Ponolicarum
Buxtorf: Dictionnaire chaldeo-talmudico-rabbinique, 1639
Catholic Encyclopedia, The
Codex Justinianus
Codex Theodosianus
Encyclopaedia Britannica, The (Art. "Antisemitism" by L. Wolf)
Fabricius: Bibliotheca Latina
Fredegaire: Chronique
Halphen: Recueil des Lois et Decrets concernant les Israelites, 1851
Jewish Encyclopedia, The, Funk & Wagnall Edition, New York, 1901-1906
see Articles: Antisemitism, Apologists, Apostasy, Blood
Accusation, Conversion, Disputations, Freemasonry, Polemics,
Talmud
Kayserling: Bibliotheca Espanola-Portugueza-Judaica, 1890
Migne: Patrologie latine (P.L.)
Patrologie gresque (P.G.)
Quetif: Bibliotheca Scriptorum Dominicanorum
Regesta Pontificum Romanorum, Jafle edition
Rerue des Etudes Juives
Rodriguez, de Castro, Joseph: Bibliotheca espanola, 1781
Rossi, B. de: Bibliotheca ludaica Antichristiana, 1800
Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society
Wolf, J. C.: Bibliotheca Hebreae, 1721
11 General Bibliography
Abbott, G F. : Israel in Euro pe
Amadore de los Rios: Histoire des Juits d'Espagne, 1875
Basnage: Histoire des Juits
Benamozegh, Elie: Israel et l'Humanite, 1961
Capefigue: Histoire des grandes operations financiees, 1855
Corti, Count: The Rise of the House of Rothschild, 1928 The Reign of
the House of Rothschild, 1928
Crosland: T. W. H.: The Fine Old Hebrew Gentleman, 1930
Darmesteter, J.: Coup d'oeil sur l'histoire du peuple juif, 1881
Dimont, Max I.: Jews, Cod and History, 1964
Drumont: La France Juive, 1886 Testament d'un Antisemite, 1891
Fauchille, Paul: La Question juive en France sous le premier Empire,
1884
Fejto, Ferenc (Francois): Dieu et son Juif, 1960
Fleg, E.: Pourquoi je suis juif, 1928 Israel et moi, 1936
Fourier: Le Nouveau Monde industriel et societaire, 1848
Fribourg: L' Association internationale des travailleurs, 1891
Gobineau, Comte de: L'lnegalite des races
Golding, Louis: The Jewish Problem, 1938
Graetz, H.: History of the Jews, 2 vols., 1891-92
Gumplowicz, L.: La Lutte des races, 1893
Guyau, M.: L'lrreligion de l'avenir, 1893
Herford, R. Travers: The Pharisees, 1924
Herzl, T .:The Jewish State, 1936
Hyamson; A. M.: History of the Jews in England, 1929
Isaac, Jules: Genese de l'Antisemitisme, 1948, 1956 Jesus et Israel,
1946, 1959
The Christian Roots of Antisemitism, 1965 (Tr. by J. Parkes)
Jacobs, J.: Jewish Contributions to Civilisation, 1919
Jehouda, Joshua: L'Antisemitisme, Miroir du Monde, 1958
Jost: Geschichte der Juden, 1820
Kadmi-Kohen, Nomades, 1929
Lavocat: Proces des Freres de l'ordre du Temple, 1888
Ledrain: Histoire du peuple d'lsrael
Leroy-Beaulieu, A: Israel parmi les nations, 1893
Levison, Leon: The Jew in History, 1916
Lewisohn, Ludwig: Israel, 1925
Madaule, Jacques: Les Juifs et le monde actuel, 1963
Memmi, A.: Portrait of a Jew, 1963
Mendoza y Bovadilla, Francisco: El Tizon de la Nobleza Espanol, 1880
Neumann: Permanent Revolution, 1942
Parkes, James: The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue, 1934
An Enemy of the People Antisemitism, 1945
The Emergence of the Jewish Problem, 1946
Poliakov, Leon: Histoire de l'Antisemitisme
Poncins, Vicomte Leon de: Les forces secretes de la Revolution, 1929
La Franc-Maçonnerie, d'apres ses documents secrets, 1934
Le Probleme Juif face au Concile, 1965
Regnard, A.: Aryens et Semites, 1890
Reitlinger, G.: The Final Solution, 1953
Renan: Le Judaisme comme Race et Religion, 1883- etc.
Rennap, I.: Antisemitism and the Jewish Question 1942
Roth, C.: A Short History of the Jewish People, 1936
The Jewish Contribution to Civilisation, 1938
Sacks, George: The Jewish Question, 1937
Saint-Martin, Vivien de: Les Khazars, 1851
Saint-Simon: Du Systeme Industriel, 1821
Samuel, Maurice: The Great Hatred, 1943
Sartre, Jean-Paul: Portrait of the Antisemite, 1948
Schwartz, Elie: God's Nation in China, 1880
Sionnet, Abbe: Essai sur les Juifs de la Chine 1837
Sombart, W.: The Jews and Modern Capitalism
Testat, O.: L'lnternationale, 1871
Toulat, Abbe Jean: Juifs mes Freres 1963 (Pref. by Cardinal Gerlier)
Unity in Dispersion -- A History of the World Jewish Congress, 1948
Valentin, Hugo: Antisemitism, 1936
Wolf, Lucien: The Myth of the Jewish Menace in World Affairs, 1921
Zangwill, Israel: The Voice of lerusalem, 1921
Zenker, E. V.: Anarchism, 1898
Zukerman, W.: The Jew in Revolt, 1937
We do not know who has compiled this bibliography, which includes the
books cited by Lazare but adds many books published later. It
could be the translator, or rather compiler, who has remained
anonymous. It does not appear in the last French edition.
+++++++++++++
END OF THE BOOK
Pyro 1488
>>> (re: French and Indian War as first true world war) "Not generally
>>> recognized by historians but one -theory- some had aired -AFTER-
>>> the World Wars of THIS century, in part to -rationalize- the
>>> ACTIVITY OF WAR FOR THOSE EAGER TO START THE NEXT ONE !!!!!"
>>> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@email.msn.com>
>> That's what we are getting in the school textbooks. I don't see
>> why this would be a controversial point. This war involved 3
>> continents, virtually every country in Europe, as well as the
>> indigenous inhabitants of various colonies. Why don't you just
>> stop embarrassing yourself and admit having committed a gaffe? You
>> are such a pitiful fool.
>
>
> Are *-YOU-* still reading "school" textbooks? ha ha ha ha
> WHY DON'T YOU MAKE A TRIP TO THE LIBRARY AND READ ALL OF HISTORY?
> There are seven continents on this world and six are populated.
> YOU SAID "3 continents" WHICH IS NOT SIX CONTINENTS, IDIOT !!!
Just because I pick up (some) information from university textbooks does not
mean they are my only source of information. And what is wrong with
learning from a school textbook, anyhow? Why don't you stop your noise (all
caps) and admit having made a mistake? Your efforts to cover yourself up
only expose your ignorance much more.
Again, no world war (even those you cite) has occured on 6 continents.
Generally, world wars have involved European nations at the center of the
stage. In neither World War I nor World War II was there fighting in North
and South America; Australia experienced some brief air raids by the
Japanese during WWII until the Americans won at Coral Sea (1942). If not
for American aid they would have succumbed to a Japanese invasion. And, as
you pointed out, Antarctica (the 7th continent) is uninhabitable.
First off, calm down with the emotionally-driven appeals. I think the loss
of ONE life in war is terrible. As I said, Australia was not a major player
in either WWI or WWII. That's not to say they didn't make a noteworthy
contribution to either war, or did not put up a valiant effort for their
size (population-wise and military-wise). On their own they just didn't
have the numbers to tilt either war to one side.
Here is some information I picked up from Microsoft Encarta '96 and "World
History".
_World War I_
Country - Numbers Who Fought - Persons Killed
United States - 4 million - 112,432 (the U.S. did not enter until 1917)
France - N/A - 1,400,000
Turkey - N/A - 6,000,000
Italy - N/A - 500,000
Russia lost many millions, particularly because as it entered the war the
soldiers were poorly equipped. France lost 20% of its population and
Germany lost 15%. Of course, there were other nations which participated in
the war, but this is what I found.
In total, 37 million combatant deaths. (I am not counting civilians).
_World War II_
Germany - 17 million - 5 million
United States - 16 million - 291,000 (again, the U.S. entered the war late)
USSR - 25 million - N/A
Greece - 500,000 - N/A
Great Britain - ~12.5 million - N/A
Japan - ~10 million - 2 million
China - ~10 million - 2.2. million
Again, there were many other countries involved, but this is what I found.
In total, there were 25 million combatant deaths. (I am not counting
civilians).
About the same number of Australians died in WWI as Americans during the
Vietnam War; and interestingly they were less involved in WWII, when they
were at risk of capitulating to the Japanese.
>From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@email.msn.com>
>> ... So, in the sense that the students were frustrated with the
>> corruption within the government, which they believed contributed
>> to the gap between the haves and have-nots, I can see where one
>> might claim (although even this would be dubious) there was a
>> left-wing element in the protests.
>>
>> Even you have admitted that China has "drifted right." Just think
>> of it like this. Freedom is like sex: once you start experiencing
>> it, you just can't get enough of it. ;-) The students had
>> experienced more freedom than their parents and grandparents, and
>> because they got a taste of it and enjoyed it, they demanded even
>> more. In other words, THEY WERE PUSHING FOR EVEN MORE RADICAL
>> CHANGES. Do you understand this, Jumangi? They wanted the
>> government to take further steps away from
>> Marxism/Communism/leftism.
>
>
> Narrowing the gap between haves and have-nots -IS- leftist, TWIT !!
> Marxism is left, but "state communism" ( USSR and China ) had drifted
> right, toward the center and away from left Marxism.
So then Otto von Bismarck is a leftist, according to you? He enacted child
labor laws, maximum hours legislation, unemployment insurence, and
protection for the elderly and sick.
You are simplifying things way too much. How is it that leftists
traditionally have reduced the gap between rich and poor? Answer: by making
EVERYONE poor.
Interesting that you excised much of the material I gave. What I wanted to
point out was how the Chinese government's shift to the center-left from the
left stimulated a desire among young people for even further movement to the
right. One of the chants among the demonstrators was: "Long live
democracy!" These were not Maoists or leftists, as you would like to
believe; they were kids who were just sick of the corruption, and wanted
what other young people in the rest of the world have.
Regards,
Pyro
Pyro 1488
>fact that the Jews at present, constitute an organized minority, we
>are not unjust in concluding that antisemitism is, in part, a mere
>struggle among the rich, a contest among the possessors of capital. In
>truth, it is the capitalist, the merchant, the manufacturer, the
>financier, among the Christians, who feels himself injured by the
>Jews, and not the Christian proletariat, who suffer no more from the
>class of Jewish employers than from their Christian masters; less,
>indeed, if we consider that in a case like this, where numbers count,
>the entrepreneur class among the Jews by comparison with the
>Christians amounts to little. This will explain why antisemitism is
>essentially the sentiment of the middle classes, and why it is so
>rarely met with, except in the form of a vague prejudice among the
>mass of the peasants and the working classes.
As an entrepeneur myself, I have greatly benefited from my Jewish cohorts.
;-) The Jews of Wall St. who buy and sell worthless (i.e., fundamentally
unsound but technically sound) stocks which are "trendy" have enabled me to
earn more money this year than (roughly) 99.999% of those my age and even
most people who have careers. Jews are not competition for me, but rather
my _friends_ in finance.
My criticism of Jews has nothing to do with their financial success. I
think money is great. My criticism of Jews is in their hypocrisy (i.e., PC
liberalism). The Jews seem to oppose any efforts among White people to
establish feelings of community and kinship, as they themselves have. The
Jewish media bosses have a clear slant AGAINST White people. Jews have
played a disproportionate role in slandering academics and thinkers who have
politically incorrect ideas (i.e., J. Philippe Rushton, Charles Murray,
etc.,) and have themselves played a disproportionate role in creating the
atmosphere of political correctness which is so prevalent today in our
institutions (i.e., courts, schools, media).
In addition, while the Jews were "financially" successful during the Middle
Ages, this came largely as a result of the exploitation of Gentiles by
charging rates of interest up to 200%. Moreover, this practice, common
among Jews, dates back WELL BEFORE the Middle Ages, when Jews were barred
from the guilds. Such exploitation is what earned their disdain among
thinkers and writers such as Diodorus Sicilus, Cicero, Cervantes,
Shakespeare, Voltaire, Diderot, H.G. Wells, Bakunin, etc., etc., and what
led to the Russian pogroms of the late 19th century.
The Jews present themselves as victims to gain the benefits which come with
such status, when IN FACT THEY ARE NOT. They disproportionately played a
role in the Black holocaust (which many academics and intellectuals are
ignorant of), and the Russian Revolution (which took the lives of tens of
millions of Gentiles). All the other holocausts and reigns of terror
committed by Jews would be too numerous to mention. Again, it's not so much
that they committed these holocausts that is the problem, but in that they
rigorously deny them and continue to portray themselves as victims -- and do
so successfully, particularly with their control of the media.
Again, for me to take a stand against the anti-White agenda being pushed by
Jews goes against what is most expedient for my financial well-being. It is
a sacrifice for me to stand up for my race, my people, and for my ideas.
But for me it is a sacrifice that is worthwhile. For the revolution that I
hope for to occur, changes are going to have to take place that will
destabilize the financial markets I am so heavily involved in (like many
Jews). That's why I have some contingency plans in place.
I somehow get the feeling many of the White middle class liberals who post
at alt.fan.unabomber (among other Usenet forums) are feeling nice and smug,
knowing that their ideas are generally accepted and in line with the Oprah
Winfrey and PC crowd, as well as with the media. I somehow get the feeling
they would be the first to abandon ship if their ideas were to get them
labelled with the smears many right-wingers receive today, IMHO. I think TK
was right! ;-)
Regards,
Pyro
Pyro 1488
>
> "Fascism rejected the main philosophical trends of the 18th and 19th
> centuries, the "spirit" of the American and French revolutions with
> their emphasis on individual liberty and on the equality of men and
> races.
[...]
What a load of PC rhetoric! I'm surprised Encyclopedia Britannica has sunk
this low. The Enlightenment thinkers were racists, sexists, and
anti-Semites (according to how leftists today define such terms). Thomas
Jefferson, who was deeply influenced by the ideas of Locke, was staunchly
racist, believing the Negro to be intellectually inferior by genes. Of
course, Locke was an exponent of the notion of _tabula rasa_, but he lived
before the discoveries of Charles Darwin. In any case, such a view, that
people are born as "blank slates" and are influenced solely by environment,
was not a predominant belief at the time, even among thinkers of the
Enlightenment. Such a view is scoffed at today by behavioral geneticists,
many of whom are unpopular among the PC crowd (for obvious reasons).
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who wrote "Social Contract," held deeply sexist views
(according to modern feminists), yet was adored by women. Denis Diderot and
Voltaire (two prominent figures of the Enlightenment) had very negative
views on Jews.
From what I understand, Benjamin Franklin (who helped draft the Declaration
of Independence) also had very negative views of Jews.
Here are some interesting quotes.
"Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these [the
Negro] people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races,
equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has
drawn indelible lines of distinction between them."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"And you, angry and brutish people, vile and vulgar men, slaves worthy of
the yoke [Talmudism] which you bear ... Go, take back your books and remove
yourselves from me." (LA MOISADE)
"[The Talmud] taught the Jews to steal the goods of Christians, to regard
them as savage beasts, to push them over the precipice ... to kill them with
impunity and to utter every morning the most horrible imprecations against
them." (JUIFS)
-- Denis Diderot, 18th century French scholar. His famous ENCYCLOPEDIE, the
bible of the pre-revolutionary French "enlightenment," has often been
complained of by Jewish writers as "anti-Semitic."
"Why are the Jews hated? It is the inevitable result of their laws; they
either have to conquer everybody or be hated by the whole human race..."
"The Jewish nation dares to display an irreconcilable hatred toward all
nations, and revolts against all masters; always superstitious, always
greedy for the well-being enjoyed by others, always barbarous - cringing in
misfortune and insolent in prosperity." (Essai sur le Moeurs)
"You seem to me to be the maddest of the lot. The Kaffirs, the Hottentots,
and the Negroes of Guinea are much more reasonable and more honest people
than your ancestors, the Jews. You have surpassed all nations in impertinent
fables in bad conduct and in barbarism. You deserve to be punished, for this
is your destiny." (From a letter to a Jew who had written to him,
complaining of his 'anti-Semitism.' Examen des Quelques Objections... dans
L'Essai sur le Moeurs.)
"You will only find in the Jews an ignorant and barbarous people, who for a
long time have joined the most sordid avarice to the most detestable
superstition and to the most invincible hatred of all peoples which tolerate
and enrich them." ("Juif," Dictionnaire Philosophique)
"I know that there are some Jews in the English colonies. These marranos go
wherever there is money to be made... But whether these circumcised who sell
old clothes claim that they are of the tribe of Naphtali or Issachar is not
of the slightest importance. They are, simply, the biggest scoundrels who
have ever dirtied the face of the earth." (Letter to Jean-Baptiste Nicolas
de Lisle de Sales, December 15, 1773. Correspondance. 86:166)
"They are, all of them, born with raging fanaticism in their hearts, just as
the Bretons and the Germans are born with blond hair. I would not be in the
least bit surprised if these people would not some day become deadly to the
human race." (Lettres de Memmius a Ciceron, 1771)
-- Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet)
Regards,
Pyro