Great Moments In English-Jewish History: BENJAMIN DISRAELI
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Like the wealthy banker Sidonia in his novels, Conigsby & Tancred,
Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, first JEWISH prime minister
of England, was a potent mixture of idealism and impassioned reason.
One of the greatest exponents of the parliamentary system, Disraeli
possessed a biting wit and fluency of tongue unmatched in democratic
history. More books have been written about this fascinating and
infuriating man that about any other British politician before Winston
Churchill. While his great Liberal opponent William Gladstone remains
to us forever caught up in mores of the Victorian era, Disraeli seems
timeless, a modern and ancient man who would have been equally
comfortable debating Pericles. Gladstone ruled England on and off for
over a dozen years, through four administrations. His archival,
Disraeli, served as the British leader for only a little over six
years.
However, Disraeli's contributions to British and world history were
as of more important than Gladstone's. Surely Disraeli's influence has
lasted longer. Briefly filling out Lord Derby's last term, Disraeli
became prime minister in 1868, making little effect in the short time
available. However, his second term, from 1874 to 1880, proved to be
decisive years for the British Empire. A bold, some would say
reckless, adventurer, Disraeli expanded British dominion over the Suez
Canal and India. He passed legislation that reformed Englanbd and
developed the founding principles of the Conservative (Tory) Party. At
the Congress of Berlin in 1878, Disraeli acted as peacemaker,
thwarting Russia's colonial intentions in the Balkans while preserving
his own.
Through his popular novels, he made his political views widely
known. Disraeli espoused strange racial ideas, stressing his own
"pure" origins in the sands of the Middle East as somehow superior to
those of "barbarian" Anglo-Saxons. He tried to reconcile a Jewish
background with his Christian conversion. Disraeli asserted that
Christianity was completed Judaism, a declaration that satisfied no
one, angering most, but was for him, more than a rationalization.
Familiar as a dandy when young, dubbed "Dizzy" by his friends (and
worse by many enemies, including the malicious "Jew d'esprit"),
Benjamin Disraeli was the most controversial politician in British
history (again before Churchill) and an essential, civilizing force.
The son of Isaac D'Israeli, an historian, essayist, and admirer of
Moses Mendelsson (also Jewish), Benjamin was of Italian-Jewish
descent. Reacting to a silly dispute with his Sephardic synagogue,
Isaac had his children baptized into the Anglican faith when son
Benjamin was thirteen, and brought up as Christians. But for this
conversion, Disraeli would never have become in 1837 a member of
Parliament and later prime minister.
Indeed, Lionel de Rothschild (some say Disraeli's true model for his
fictional character, Sidonia), elected to Parliament in 1847, was
denied entry to the House until 1858, for his refusal to utter the
required oath "on the true faith of a Christian." Disraeli's early
business undertakings were all failures (wild investments in South
American mining shares and a daily newspaper). However, in 1826 he
began to write under an anonymous name a series of novels, satirical
in tone, on the contemporary political scene. The books were largely
read but savagely criticized when the identity of their author was
uncovered. He then suffered something of a nervous breakdown. With his
sister's fiance', William Meredith, Disraeli left Britain in 1830 for
a "Grand Tour" of the Mediterranean. The sixteen-month trip made a
permanent impression on him. Disraeli was particularly taken with
Jersualem. He began to understand the relationship between his Jewish
heritage and Christian assimilation. Indeed, this Middle Eastern
journey inspired creation of the protagonist of his novel Alroy
(1833). Set in an exotic twelfth-century milieu, the character, David
Alroy, fails in his attempt to restore the Holy Land to Jewish
dominion.
Later, in his novel Tancred, Disraeli's early Zionism would result
in the often quoted line that "a race that persists in celebrating
their vintage although they have no fruits to gather, will regain
their vineyards." When Meredith died of smallpox in Cairo, Disraeli
cut short his extended vacation and returned to England. Due to his
burgeoning literary fame and stylish reputation as a flop with a
lively wit, he soon gained entry into fashionable society and the
bedrooms of extravagant ladies of high birth. In 1831, he decided to
enter politics and become in real life a hero of the same epic
proportions as his fictional ones. Associated initially as a radical
of questionable background (in other words, a JEW) and of immoral
sexual habits, Disraeli was trounced repeatedly.
Learning from his failures, he allied himself with the Conservative
party and was returned to Parliament in 1837. Disraeli consolidated
his position in 1839 by marrying the respectable and rich widow
(twelve years his senior) of a fellow former member. The brief support
of the Tory leader, Sir Robert Peel, gave Disraeli added prominence as
well as developing talents as a master orator skilled at ripping his
political enemies apart in cascades of brilliant argument. When Peel
failed to name him to his cabinet, Disraeli countered by founding a
group of young Tories bent on reforming the government. The "Young
England" movement sought to change the party from a stuffy bunch of
aristocrats concerned only with preserving the status quo to an
organization more representative of the British people. Despite the
escapist and rather romantic notions of his group, Disraeli tried to
rally the common people about the crown led by aristocratic leaders
enlightened by religious feeling. Even with all this nostalgic
nonsense, Disraeli expanded his party's political base and in effect
brought the Tories into modern times.
When Lord Dervy became prime minister in 1852, Disraeli became the
leader of the House of Commons and chancellor of the exchequer. He
returned to power in the second (1858) and third (1866) Derby
administrations, succeeding the party leader as PM in 1868. During
Disraeli's first short stay as prime minister in 1868, he expanded an
already close friendship with Queen Victoria. The queen grew to
despise the taciturn Gladstone, but almost fell in love with the
charming Mr. Disraeli, whose every audience brought her pleasure and
stimulus. Ironically, Disraeli's defeat in 1868 was largely due to the
electoral reform bill extending the right to vote to the working
classes which he had vigorously supported and helped to carry. In
1874, however, the Conservatives won a clear mandate. Prime Minister
Disraeli then embarked on a historic series of governmental
innovations. With the able initiative of his home secretary R.A.
Cross, Disraeli passed laws to clear the slums, improve public health
and factory conditions, and regulate the sale of food and drugs. Much
of this legislation was fifty years ahead of its time, establishing
England as the most progressive government of the era and a model for
other democracies. Disreli's greatest concern as prime minister was
his overwhelming desire to maintain Britain's power in Europe. He
viewed foreign policy as his most important duty and criticized
Gladstone's reaction to continental crisis as unnecessarily pacifist.
The Rothschilds (also Jewish), on Disraeli's urging, provided the
capital in 1875 for England to purchase shares in the Suez Canal from
the khedive of Egypt. The shares became known as the "Key of India,"
confirming British occupation of Egypt and control over a vital route
to South Asia. To commemorate expanding British dominion, Disraeli's
government declared Queen Victoria Empress of India. Her thanks to
Disraeli was the granting of a peerage, making this Sephardic Jew the
first earl of Beaconsfield. From 1876 to 1878 his administration was
preoccupied with international power politics. England and Russia had
become rivals, playing with developing countries in the Mediterranean
like pawns in a global chess game. Disraeli forced his upper hand when
Russia, exhausted by its war effort against Turkey, was made to submit
the terms of the peace to international mediation. At the Congress of
Berlin in 1878, Disraeli met with Chancellor Bismarck, whose words
"Der alte Jude, das ist der Mann!" ("The old Jew, that is some man!")
remain the most memorable from the conference. By the clear threat of
British military power, the Ottoman Empire was preserved (to become
forty years later an enemy of England) and the route to India secured
from Russian hegemony. Thereafter, petty wars in Afghanistan and South
Africa dominated Tory foreign policy concerns. Viewed today, this
colonial involvement in "Third World" countries was both civilized and
oppressive, subjugating unqiue cultures to the grave sameness of the
British Commonwealth. After these foreign mishap and troubles at home
and the return to power of Gladstone in 1880, Disraeli moved houses,
dominating Lords in his last year of life (and wrote the splendid
semiautobiographical ENDYMION, his last completed novel). -D, NYC "The
first American scientist ever awarded the Nobel prize was Jewish -
ALBERT ABRAHAM MICHAELSON"