Heinrich Graetz

“ The little band of Jews was like a thorn in the side of the mighty potentate of the Church, who enthroned and dethroned kings, distributed crowns and countries, and who, through his army of papal legates, spies, Dominican and Franciscan monks, with their bloodthirsty piety, had subjugated the whole of Europe, from the Atlantic ocean to Constantinople, and from the Mediterranean to the Arctic regions. This handful of human beings, with their clear intellect, their purified faith, their moral force and their superior culture, was a silent protest against Roman arrogance. ”

“ A fresh current of air swept the heavens in Italy in the beginning of the fourteenth century, the epoch of Dante, thawing the icy coat of the church and of knightdom, the two pillars of the Middle Ages. A sense of citizenship, the impulse towards liberty, enthusiastic love for science, were the striking symptoms of a new spirit, of a striving for rejuvenescence, which only the emperor, the embodiment of rude, ungainly knighthood, and the pope, the incarnation of the stern, unbending church, failed to perceive. ”

“ The shouts of victory, the shrieks of despair, the fierce hissing of the flames, making the very earth tremble and the air vibrate, rose in one hideous din, which echoed from the tottering walls of the Sanctuary to the mountain-heights of Judæa. There were congregated clusters of trembling people from all the country round, who beheld in the ascending flames the sign that the glory of their nation had departed forever. Many of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, unwilling to outlive their beloved Temple, cast themselves headlong into the burning mass. ”

“ The rest of the tribes were on the eve of crossing the Jordan, when their great leader Moses was removed by death. The thirty days which the Israelites spent in mourning were not an excessive sacrifice. His loss was irreparable, and they felt themselves utterly bereft. Amongst all lawgivers, founders of states, and teachers of mankind, none has equalled Moses. Not only did he, under the most inauspicious circumstances, transform a horde of slaves into a nation, but he imprinted on it the seal of everlasting existence: he breathed into the national body an immortal soul. ”

“ Jehuda Halevi believed that he had not only cut away the ground from beneath the philosophical views of his time, but that he had also undermined the foundations both of Christianity and Islam, and laid down the criterion by which the true could be distinguished from the false religion. Judaism does not feed its adherents with the hope of a future world full of bliss, but grants them here on earth a glimpse of the heavenly kingdom, and raises, through an enduring chain of indisputable facts, the hope of the immortality of the soul to the plane of absolute certainty. ”

“ Not content with mere burning and destroying, it leads Christians to boast of such deeds, to rejoice when their eyes behold the members of my body (the sons of Jacob) burning to death in the flames, kindled with fagots dragged from afar on men's shoulders. Those baptized against their will, steal about overpowered with fear of this savage monster (the Inquisition) ; they turn their eyes on every side lest it seize them. With ill-assured hearts they pass to and fro, trembling like a leaf, terror strikes them suddenly, and they stay their steps lest it take them captive. ”

“ Before the thick clouds of deadly hatred had begun to gather from all sides over the house of Jacob, darkening the horizon without leaving even one span of the blue heaven; before the elements, pregnant with destruction, had been let loose on the head of the community of Israel, crushing it to the earth; before evil in the name of the Deity roused princes and nations, freemen and slaves, great and small, against the weak sons of Judah, and urged men with all the weapons of murder and the stings of scorn against them, to destroy this small body of men ”

“ The High Priest, perhaps Onias I., Jaddua's son and Simon's father, went forward, like the kings and princes of the land, with a suite of the elders, to do homage and swear allegiance to the conqueror. Alexander was a noble, generous conqueror, who punished cruelly only resistance to his will, but in no way interfered with the peculiar development, the customs, or religious rites of any nation under his sway. He did not force the Grecian faith on any nation, and the favour which he granted to other nations he certainly did not deny to the Judæans. ”

“ War will cease, and there will be no drought upon the lands, no more famine or fruit-destroying hail. But great peace will reign over all the world, and to the end of time each king will be the other's friend, and under one law will the people of the whole world be governed by the Eternal God, enthroned in the starry heavens—one law for all weak, pitiable men; for He is one God, and there is no other, and the wicked He will cast into the flames. ”

“ And if I had been a Jew, and seen such stupidity and such blockheads reign in the Christian Church, I would rather have been a pig than a Christian. They have treated the Jews as if they were dogs, not men; they have done nothing but revile them. They are blood-relations of our Lord; therefore, if it were proper to boast of flesh and blood, the Jews belong to Christ more than we. I beg, therefore, my dear papists, if you become tired of abusing me as a heretic, that you begin to revile me as a Jew. ”

“ Filled with enthusiastic admiration for Rome, he must upon his return have found the proportions of Judæa humble and dwarfed. How sarcastically he must have smiled at the wild gestures of the frenzied Zealots who dreamt of expelling the Romans from Judæa! Such an expectation appeared to him like the dream of a madman. With all the experiences that he had gathered in his travels he tried to shatter the revolutionary projects of the Zealots. But it was useless; the people determined upon war, seized their weapons, and rose to revolt. ”

“ In such times a man of striking personality, in whom lives a pure faith, and who is entirely ruled by it, naturally assumes leadership, and by firmness, enthusiasm and heroic self-sacrifice convinces the waverers, strengthens the weak, incites the indifferent, and thus collects an army of defenders to rescue from imminent destruction their own national, peculiar endowments. When such an individual is roused by the very opposition of the enemy, and spurred on to action, he becomes a vivifying principle, and brings about a new state of things, a mingling of both old and new elements. ”

“ All the beauties and treasures of Spain are worthless as dust, in mine eyes;
But the dust of the Lord's ruined house, as a treasure of beauty I prize."
This is the keynote of all the songs of Zion. But in how many and in what various ways does the poet skilfully manipulate his subject! What a wealth of sentiments, images and devices does he develop! The ancient days of Israel are idealized in his verses; the people of his own age at one time appear invested with the thorny crown of a thousand sufferings, and at another with the glittering diadem of a glorious hope. ”

“ If a soul lives piously and morally here below, it receives its former heavenly robe, and can once more enjoy the blissful ecstasy of God's presence; if not, particularly if it departs from the world impenitent, it wanders about naked and ashamed till purified in hell. The nakedness of the soul, paradise and hell—depicted in fantastic, baroque, and terrible images—are themes for which the Zohar often and gladly makes digressions. ”

“ He was nevertheless struck to the ground by a stone hurled by a Jewish hand, and yielded up his fanatical spirit.
The Jews had, in the meantime, exhausted their provisions, and death stared them in the face. When the men were deliberating what to do, one learned in the Law, who had come over from France, Yom Tob, of Joigny, counseled them to slay one another, saying, "God, whose decisions are inscrutable, desires that we should die for our holy religion. Death is at hand, unless you prefer, for a short span of life, to be unfaithful to your religion. ”

“ Can we believe that, whilst firm and unalterable laws govern all things in the kingdom of nature, the history of nations should be the result of mere caprice? Nebuchadnezzar's clemency to the people of Judah was of great importance in the historical development of that nation. The preservation of the exiles, reduced by much misery to a mere handful, was mainly due to this kindness. Nebuchadnezzar was not like those ruthless conquerors of earlier and later days, who took pleasure in wanton destruction. The desire to build up and to create was as dear to his heart as conquest. ”

“ Men fought desperately in the streets over the most loathsome and disgusting food, a handful of straw, a piece of leather, or offal thrown to the dogs. The wealthy Martha, wife of the High Priest Joshua ben Gamala, whose wont it had been to step on carpets from her house to the Temple, was found searching the town like the very poorest for a morsel of food, of even the most revolting description. As if not one line of the old prophecy concerning the doom of Judæa was to remain unfulfilled, a terrible scene was enacted, which struck even the enemy with horror. ”

“ Half a century after the banishment of the Jews from Spain and Portugal, we everywhere meet with fugitives: here a group, there a family, or solitary stragglers. It was a kind of exodus on a small scale, moving eastwards, chiefly to Turkey, as if the Jews were to approach their original home. But their very wanderings, until they again reached secure dwelling-places, and in a measure were settled, were heartrending through the calamities of every description, the humiliations, the contumely, sufferings worse than death, that they encountered. ”

“ The last twenty years of the Captivity were more productive even than the times of Hezekiah. The men of genius, disciples of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, who had so thoroughly absorbed the spirit of their literature that their own souls were brought into harmony with it, now produced fruitful thoughts of their own, clothed in elegant forms. An apparently inexhaustible fountain of poetry flowed once more in a strange land, in the very midst of the sufferings of captivity. The Hebrew language, so lovingly fostered by the exiles in their Aramaic home, was the language of their poetic works. ”

“ So unbearable was this condition of the state that even a cowardly nation must have lost patience, and the courage of the Judæan people, in spite of the thousand disasters which had befallen them, of the heavy weight of the Roman yoke, and of the daily acts of violence of which they were the victims, was not yet broken. Rome at that time resembled a community of madmen, among whom the emperor Nero, confiding in the favor of the Senate and the people, perpetrated one folly after another, and was guilty of a succession of crimes. ”

“ It was important for the future that Maimuni, in his unconscious self-deception, undertook for the first time to develop a Jewish system of belief. Since Judaism, according to his views, was nothing more than revealed philosophy, it ought to dominate the beliefs and opinions of men as well as their religious and moral conduct; ay, the one more than the other, as morality has no value in itself, and is only the fruit of right knowledge. He, accordingly, assumed as certain and positive that Judaism defines for us not only what we must do, but what we must believe ”

“ Who could have anticipated that from the German nation, everywhere considered heavy and stupid, from the land of lawless knights, of daily feuds about trifles, of confused political conditions, where everyone was both despot and slave, mercilessly oppressing his inferiors, and pitifully cringing to his superiors—who could have anticipated that from this people and this country would proceed a movement destined to shake European affairs to their center, create new political conditions, give the Middle Ages their death-blow, and set its seal on the dawn of a new historical era? ”

“ This prophet of the Captivity was the first who clearly grasped and demonstrated that a creed of general salvation was promised through Abraham to future generations. The past was to be forgotten and forgiven; a new social order was to spring up; heaven and earth were to be re-created. All people from all the ends of the earth would be included in this universal salvation, and every knee would bend and every tongue swear homage to the God adored by Israel. It was for this purpose that Abraham had been called from a distant land, and that his descendants had been chosen before their birth. ”

“ Only too soon was the Jewish race to realize the awful truth that it possessed no home on earth, and that it was only tolerated in the lands of its exile. As long as the intolerant religious principles of the Church and of the Mosque remained inoperative, either by reason of the indifference, or the inertia, or the selfish pursuits of their adherents, the Jews lived in comparative happiness; but when religious hatred was aroused, torture and martyrdom fell upon Israel, and again he was compelled to grasp the wanderer's staff, and with bleeding heart depart from his dearly beloved home. ”

“ These he summoned to the Mount of Olives, and there promised to overthrow the walls of Jerusalem with the breath of his mouth and to defeat the Roman soldiers. He was not the only one who, carried away by the fervor of desire, prophesied the approach of better times. And well may those enthusiasts have found acceptance among the people. A nation that had enjoyed so rich a past and looked forward even to a more glorious future, might allow itself to be lulled into forgetfulness of the dismal present by pictures of freedom and happiness. ”

“ Now it struck not a few that the Hebrew Scriptures make the people the source of all power, and condemn the despotism of kings, whilst evangelical Christianity does not recognize a people, but only humble believers, whom it exhorts to bow the neck to the yoke of tyrants. The contrast between the Old and the New Testament, the one teaching active virtue together with a God-fearing life, the other glorifying passive virtue together with blind faith, could not be overlooked by eyes sharpened through deep research into the Bible. ”

“ Few and brief had been the glimpses of light which had brightened the annals of the Judæan community during the last two hundred years! This light had illumined the first enthusiastic days of the return from captivity during the reign of Darius, who showered favours upon them, and during the time of Nehemiah's presence and zealous activity at Jerusalem. With these exceptions, their lot had been oppression, poverty and pitiable helplessness. They appear to us in their sadness and misery to be ever asking with tearful, uplifted eyes, "Whence shall help come to us?" ”

“ Thereupon the king of the Chazars replied, "I was right, then, in not asking of the Jews, because their wretched, low condition has destroyed every reasonable idea in them. You, O Jew, should have premised that you believe in the Creator and Ruler of the world, instead of giving me so dry and unattractive a mass of facts, which are of significance only to you." The Jewish sage replied: "This notion that God is the Creator and Ruler of the universe requires a lengthy demonstration, and the philosophers have different opinions on the matter. ”

“ This mutual antipathy displayed itself during Hadrian's journey through Judæa. The emperor, urged by vanity, and a desire to be called the father of his country, and impelled by a restlessness and want of occupation, which drove him from one spot to another, had visited nearly all the provinces of the great Roman empire, for the purpose of seeing everything with his own eyes. Hadrian's petty curiosity led him to concern himself with all manner of things, to desire to be considered as a philosopher, and better informed than his contemporaries in all matters. ”

“ Spain lost in them the twentieth part of her most industrious, painstaking, intelligent inhabitants, its middle class, which created trade, and maintained it in brisk circulation, like the blood of a living organism. For there were among the Spanish Jews not merely capitalists, merchants, farmers, physicians and men of learning, but also artisans, armor and metal workers of all kinds, at all events no idlers who slept away their time. ”

“ The enthusiasm for Jerusalem, for the deliverance from captivity, and for the Law, was fanned to a brighter flame by the astounding fact that some of the heathen population accepted the doctrines of the exiles, and entered into their covenant. Only the enthusiasm of the exiles could have effected this wonderful phenomenon. Zeal of a self-sacrificing, self-forgetting nature is a magic power which kindles enthusiasm. It was comparatively easy, by contrasting the Judæan doctrine of one sublime, spiritual God with the childish image-worship of the Chaldæans, to make the latter appear ridiculous. ”

“ The rich and the poor, the good and the bad Jews were, without distinction, hated most bitterly by the Greeks. No Jew was allowed to ride on a horse, the privilege of freemen; it was only by way of exception that the emperor Emanuel vouchsafed this privilege to Solomon, the Egyptian, his physician in ordinary. Any Greek might molest the Jews publicly, and in general treat them as slaves; the law did not protect them. Byzantium, from time immemorial celebrated for its avarice, imposed burdensome taxes on them. They endured this insolent brutality with the resignation of martyrs ”

“ The Talmud preserved and promoted the religious and moral life of Judaism; it held out a banner to the communities scattered in all corners of the earth, and protected them from schism and sectarian divisions; it acquainted subsequent generations with the history of their nation; finally, it produced a deep intellectual life which preserved the enslaved and proscribed from stagnation, and which lit for them the torch of science. ”

“ How, indeed, could a sober, critical method of inquiry have found favor in an age when the mystic, dazing Kabbala was the first authority, bidding men esteem blind credulity as the highest virtue, and exciting visionary enthusiasm to the highest pitch of fanatical intoxication? The visions of Solomon Molcho and Joseph Karo and their fond enthusiasm about the Messiah were sober compared with the excitement which reigned after their death, and celebrated a veritable witches' Sabbath. ”