Gotthard Deutsch

“ Numerous authors worked at the elucidation of portions of Jewish history and carefully edited old manuscripts. Thus they shed light on obscure parts of the Jewish past and showed the many-sided activity of the Jews during the long period of their history and their influence on all human activities.
In this connection the participation of the Jews in spiritual activity ought to be mentioned. We find them as authors, artists, inventors and scholars in all lines. Only the most prominent can be named. ”

“ Expelled from that city he went to Egypt, where he received the enthusiastic support of Raphael Joseph, a wealthy tax-farmer. In Palestine, whither he went, he found many admirers, and the prophet, Nathan of Gaza, proclaimed him the true Messiah. Being denounced for high treason, Sabbatai was brought to Constantinople and imprisoned in the fort of Abydos, but the means supplied by his followers enabled him to hold court like a prince. Everywhere in Europe the majority of the Jews believed him to be the Messiah. ”

“ Mohammed had frequent intercourse with the Jews, and received from them the first impetus to found a new religion in place of the crude worship of the old Arabs. He laid particular stress on converting the Jews to the new religion, which was to be a universal theocracy. For this purpose he adopted some of the Jewish ideas, customs, and modes of worship, the strict monotheistic idea, the fast of Yom Kippur and the turning toward Jerusalem in prayer. ”

“ While a favorite of Rome, Agrippa was beloved by the people, but he died in the prime of his life in 44. His brother Herod, who was his successor, possessed no other right except to appoint the high priest; similarly Agrippa’s son, Agrippa II, while honored with the title of king, had practically no power. For at the death of Agrippa I Palestine was again placed under Roman governors, seven of whom held office from 44 to 66 and did their utmost to drive the people into despair by cruel executions and wanton disregard of religious feeling. ”

“ The law of the North German Federation of July 3, 1869, declared that every state must remove all disabilities imposed upon citizens on the ground of their religious belief. This law was embodied in the constitution of the German Empire in 1871. Sweden, which had admitted the Jews only at the end of the eighteenth century, and in 1838 still restricted their residence to four cities, granted them full equality in 1870. Switzerland, while a republic, had for a long time restricted the Jews to two places in the Canton of Aargau. Not until 1878 were they given full equality with other citizens. ”

“ Of more permanent value were the measures of the humane Joseph II of Austria (1780-1790) . In various legislative acts, and especially in the so-called “Toleranz-Edict” of January 2, 1782, he laid down the principle that the Jews should be treated like human beings. Although they were still under considerable restrictions, their lot was in many ways improved, and the Emperor laid special stress on their education. As a tangible evidence of the improvement in their condition the abrogation of the poll tax, “Leibzoll,” the Jew badge and Jew taxes may be noted. ”

“ Six years later the first crusade broke out, and the mobs composing the army of the crusaders on the Rhine invaded the Jewish settlements, chiefly Cologne, Mayence, Speyer and Worms, in that part of the country. Houses were sacked, synagogues desecrated, and many Jews cruelly murdered; others committed suicide after killing their own children in order to save them from forced conversions. A number of Jews who had been converted to Christianity, in order to save their lives, later on returned to Judaism in spite of the ecclesiastic law which put this under the penalty of death. ”

“ The spiritual life of the Jews reached its highest development in Spain, where the contact with the cultured Arabs, whose language the Jews spoke, made the works of the ancient Greek philosophers and scientists accessible to them. ”

“ Knowing that the Romans watched the growth of the Syrian kingdom with great jealousy lest it should become a powerful rival, he tried to consolidate his states and for this reason wished to remove everything which kept the Jews apart from their neighbors. In his attempt to Hellenize the Jews he was supported by a party among them. Joseph, the son of Tobias, and the nephew of Onias II, the High Priest, had already under the Egyptian kings been appointed tax collector [10] and was very powerful. He and his family supported the Syrian kings in their desire to Hellenize the Jews. ”

“ Already before Mendelssohn’s time individual Jews in Germany and Austria distinguished themselves in literature and science. But the education of the masses was almost entirely confined to Bible and Talmud. With the popularization of secular knowledge the necessity for schools arose and the first institution of this kind was founded in Berlin as the “Jewish Free School” in 1778. The efforts of Emperor Joseph II to promote secular culture among the Jews of Austria led to the establishment of a primary school in Prague in 1782. ”

“ Isaac Abarbanel, born in Lisbon, 1447, died in Venice, 1508, wrote various dogmatic treatises in which, as in his commentaries on the Pentateuch, he outlined his views. He showed little independence, sometimes plagiarized, and is very verbose. He put together a great number of questions on some topic in Biblical literature, and attempted to answer them. From this time philosophy and scientific literature are on the decline. The intellectual activity of the Jews is confined mostly to Rabbinic literature.
Secular subjects are rarely taken up until the end of the eighteenth century. ”

“ The most illustrious author of mediæval times is Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides, born at Cordova, 1135; died at Cairo, 1204) . His first work was a commentary on the Mishnah, written in Arabic, and translated into Hebrew by Samuel ibn Tibbon. This work was a preparation for the greatest work of his life, the “Mishneh Torah,” in which he presents the whole doctrine and law of Judaism. It is written in clear Hebrew, and, while in the law following the Rabbinic sources, it shows here and there, especially in the dogmatic part, the author’s object to harmonize Judaism with philosophical thought. ”

“ From that time Jews began to emigrate to Palestine and Egypt. The persecution of the Jews through the Inquisition and their expulsion from Spain drove many to Morocco and Algeria. The conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 brought many Jews to the Balkans, and the number of the immigrants was so large that their dialect, Ladino, became the universal language of the Jews of the East, just as in Poland and Hungary the immigrants from Germany made Yiddish predominant. ”

“ In this law the territorial ruler for the first time proclaimed his right to legislate for the Jews, heretofore considered the exclusive privilege of the Emperor of Germany, as overlord of all the Jews. This law deals largely with the regulation of money-lending. It permits a very high rate of interest, and allows the Jews to be tried in accordance with their own laws. It prohibits all violence toward the persons and properties of the Jews, their synagogues and cemeteries, and forbids the forcible baptism of Jewish children. ”

“ The sufferings which Jews had to endure during the fifteenth century and of which the expulsion from Spain and Portugal was the culmination, were the cause of a strengthening of mysticism. Particularly in Palestine, to which quite a number of Spanish Jews were drawn by Messianic hopes, such a center was formed. In Safed, where Joseph Caro wrote his “Shulhan Aruk,” a number of disciples gathered around Isaac Luria, who preached a religion based on the belief in the mysterious. ”

“ The great change in the life of the Jews and their education brought about the necessity of harmonizing their religious practices with their new life. Thus the reform movement began. The forces which promoted it were æsthetic, political and dogmatic. In the first class may be reckoned the efforts of Israel Jacobson (1769-1828) . Although not a professional scholar he was a man of considerable Jewish learning, and his object was to make the services of the synagogue more attractive to the younger generation. ”

“ Very numerous are the societies created for the promotion of the welfare of the Jews, and aside from the local institutions, like hospitals, homes for the aged, orphan asylums and sanitariums, the societies for the promotion of mechanical trades and agriculture are distinctly a product of the Jewish conditions of the nineteenth century. ”

“ Some of the Jews were sold into slavery; some went to Rome, where they swelled the congregation existing there since the second century B.C., and where they had several synagogues and catacombs used as cemeteries. Others again emigrated to Babylonia, where a Jewish settlement existed since the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, or settled on the northern coast of Africa, and on the islands of the Mediterranean. ”

“ The bloodiest persecutions were those of Kishineff and Homel in 1903, and of Odessa and a great many other cities in Southern Russia in 1905, and of Bialystok in 1906, when more than a thousand people lost their lives. ”

“ The answers given by this body of men were satisfactory, and the Emperor in 1807 established a Sanhedrin to ratify these principles and form a supreme ecclesiastic authority for all the Jews of the world. While thus apparently showing favor to the Jews, he issued a law in 1808 which imposed some restrictions on the freedom of trade of the Jews of Alsace. With his downfall, however, a general reaction set in. Some states repealed the laws which had given full freedom to the Jews, while others, among them Prussia, limited the efficacy of these laws by interpretation. ”

“ It seems, however, that the Reformation increased the number of Jewish converts. Prominent among these was Emanuel Tremellius, an Italian, who first became a monk and then a Protestant. He was a friend of Calvin, and translated the Bible for him into Latin. He also translated Calvin’s Catechism into Hebrew. Another convert was Luke Helic, who assisted the Moravian Brethren in translating the Bible into the Slavic language. A calumniator of Judaism was Antonius Margaritha, the son of a rabbi of Ratisbon, named Jacob Margaliot, who in 1530 wrote a libel on Judaism. ”

“ These instances taken from Jewish history could be multiplied endlessly from every period and every section of the world’s history. Jewish history has to contend with two additional difficulties. It extends over every part of the civilized world, but it lacks chronological sequence, at least until we come to modern times. Another difficulty is that it deals with almost every known spiritual activity of mankind. ”

“ Moritz Oppenheimer (1800-1881) was a prominent painter, and his scenes from Jewish life possess, besides their value as works of art, great worth as historic scenes. Marcus Antokolsky (1842-1902) is one of the most famous sculptors, and Joseph Israels (born 1824) and Max Liebermann [109] (born 1849) are among the greatest painters of our age. In the lines of science and scholarly work the names of prominent Jews are too numerous to mention. ”

“ In 1499 the Jews were expelled from Nuremberg and Ulm, in 1493 from Magdeburg, in 1496 from the province of Styria, and somewhat later from Ratisbon and Saxony. The exiles sought refuge in villages and little towns under the rule of the nobles, or emigrated to Poland, where, toward the end of the fifteenth century, there was already a considerable Jewish settlement. This soon became in numbers the most important in Europe. ”

“ At the same time a strong fort was built in Jerusalem and the practice of the Jewish religion, particularly the observance of the Sabbath and the dietary laws, and the study of the Torah prohibited, on the ground that they tended to keep the Jews aloof from their neighbors. At the same time an altar to Zeus was erected in the Temple and other heathenish altars placed in various cities. The Jews were compelled under penalty of death to offer sacrifices to the Greek gods. ”

“ The heavy taxes laid upon the Jews forced them to charge higher rates of interest, thus embittering the people against them, and making them so miserable that they asked to be permitted to emigrate. Finally Edward I, in 1290, ordered the expulsion of all the Jews from England. They were permitted to take their property with them, and a sea captain, who put the Jewish exiles aboard his vessel on a sand bar where they were drowned by the high tide, was put to death. ”

“ The student, in order to understand Jewish history, should know the constantly shifting boundary lines of the Italian states from mediæval times until 1870, and he should know something of the morphological theories of Hebrew grammar and of scholastic philosophy.
These difficulties make themselves especially felt in a brief manual, and, no doubt, every teacher of Jewish history must have had such an experience. The Rabbis (Sanhedrin 93, b) find fault with Nehemiah for having spoken ill of his predecessors in office (Neh. V, 15) . ”

“ The Renaissance, which produced the Reformation, also had a favorable effect on the position of the Jews. When John Pfefferkorn, a convert from Judaism, in 1506 accused the Jews of blaspheming Jesus in their prayers and in their literature, and proposed the confiscation of all their books, John Reuchlin, a famous diplomat and expert Hebrew scholar, rendered an opinion in their favor. ”

“ The cities, originally small settlements where the Jews were the merchants and bankers, had [56] grown in size and importance, and the citizens were jealous of their successful Jewish competitors. Such expulsions were often ordered under the excitement aroused by some false accusation. Thus, in 1421, the Jews of Vienna were accused of having desecrated the host, and a number of them were publicly burned at the stake, all the others being expelled from the city and the entire province. ”