Judeans

“ The native Jewish families in Jerusalem, as well as those in other parts of Palestine, present a marked difference to the Jews of Europe and America. They possess the same physical characteristics--the dark, oblong eye, the prominent nose, the strongly-marked cheek and jaw--but in the latter, these traits have become harsh and coarse. Centuries devoted to the lowest and most debasing forms of traffic, with the endurance of persecution and contumely, have greatly changed and vulgarized the appearance of the race. ”

“ The Jew alone, through these centuries, has remained the Jew: proscribed, persecuted, hunted as never was tiger or wolf, he is as vividly defined, as unchangeably national, as when he stood alone, everywhere without and beyond the despised and hated Gentile. And this intense and conservative nationality springs essentially out of the central conception of Judaism, “God is one.” ”

“ The Jews—the children of the kingdom—have been cast out, and many have come from the east and the west to occupy their place in the desolate land promised to their fathers. They usually take up their abode in the narrow space between the Temple and the foot of Mount Zion, defended from the tyranny of their Turkish masters by their indigence and misery. ”

“ But the Jews are still a distinct race, and they are a living record of the truth of the revelations of God.
There are a few thousand Jews in Jerusalem. They have synagogues, and they are permitted to go to a portion of the old wall, which they suppose to be a remnant of the outside enclosure of Solomon's temple, and wail. A great many people who visit Jerusalem, go to witness their wailing. These Jews are graciously accorded the privilege, by the rulers of that country—the Turks—to wail over the desolation of Israel, provided they do not make so much noise as to disturb the neighborhood. ”

“ Torn from the stem that bore and from the soil that nourished them, and for nearly twenty centuries exposed to the wintry blasts of adversity and persecution, the children of Israel still bud and blossom and provide the world with the perennial problem now known as the Jewish Question—a question than which none possesses a deeper interest for the student of the past, or a stronger fascination for the speculator on the future ”

“ They obey the laws and comply with the customs of the land in which they reside; they converse in its language and respect its religious observances. But they cling to the Jewish laws and customs, so far as it is possible for them [Pg 41] to do so. The Hebrew is still their national language; the ancient worship of Israel the only one they will render. Like the stream of the Rhone at Chalons, which mingles with that of the Saone, yet continues to retain the peculiarity of its colour, they are dwellers among many nations, but Jews after all, and Jews only. ”

“ JEWS (Heb. Yĕhūdi, man of Judah; Gr. Ἰουδαῖοι; Lat. Judaei) , the general name for the Semitic people which inhabited Palestine from early times, and is known in various connexions as “the Hebrews,” “the Jews,” and “Israel” (see § 5 below) . Their history may be divided into three great periods: (1) That covered by the Old Testament to the foundation of Judaism in the Persian age, (2) that of the Greek and Roman domination to the destruction of Jerusalem, and (3) that of the Diaspora or Dispersion to the present day. ”

“ These who are not even in a position to protect their co-religionists against a miser- able rabble of Arabs, Moors, or Persians, who thirst for their blood ! These Jews, the personification of Mam- mon, of whom by far the greater number own not even a stone whereon to lay their head, or rag to cover their nakedness ! This is the mockery which drops poison into the wound which hatred has struck. True, there are some few Jews superfluously rich whose rumoured millions attract attention far and wide, but what has Israel to do with these? ”

“ I have also omitted the other small section of black Jews, namely, the Beni-Israel in India, whose origin is likewise a subject of doubt, many Western Jews even disputing their geniune Israelitish descent.
The whole Jewish nation, at any rate in Europe, is usually divided into two great bodies or families. ”

“ It is one of the absurd fallacies of Anglo-Israelism to presuppose that the term " Jew " stands for a bodily descendant of "Judah." It stands for all those from among the sons of Jacob who acknowledged themselves, or were considered, subjects of the theocratic kingdom of Judah, which they expected to be established by the promised " Son of David " the Lion of the tribe of Judah whose reign is to extend not only over " all the tribes of the land" but also " from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth." ”

“ But the real gipsy there is no mistaking—their dark piercing eyes and Asiatic countenance mark them as distinctly as do the eyes and peculiar features of a Jew. (By the by, I wonder that no searcher after the marvellous has endeavoured to prove them to be a remnant of the lost tribes of Israel.) Like the Jews, they are scattered over the whole earth—like them, they are found in every land; and in every land they remain a distinct people. ”

“ The glory of Israel is no fine vision of the fancy. The same prophetic word which has given terrible demonstration of its reality in our ruin declares the hope once held forth to our obedience. Judea was to have borne the first rank among nations; to have been an object of universal honor; to have been unconquerable; to have enjoyed unwearied fertility; to have been protected from the casualties of the elements; to have been free from disease, the life of its people continuing to the farthest limit of our nature. ”

“ Do you realize the present helplessness of poor Israel? We sometimes hear the Jews spoken of by Christians of a certain stamp, after this manner: "After all, they are not so badly off as the heathen. They are a moral, God-fearing people; they have the Old Testament Scriptures in their possession. They are intelligent, clever, influential, and certainly not so low and degraded as the heathen." ”

“ But the bulk of the race still is a people of wanderers; and their hope of restoration little more than a beautiful, melancholy dream. There are at the present hour upwards of ten million Jews, scattered to the four corners of the earth. Nine of these millions live in Europe: two-thirds of them in Russia, Roumania and Poland. In the Middle Ages persecution in the West had driven them Eastwards. Lately persecution in the East has turned the tide Westwards. There is no rest for Israel. ”

“ It is good to be able to ‘write injuries in dust, and kindnesses in marble.’ In 1492, the Jews were wickedly expelled from the land in which they had been, for centuries, so happy, and 200 years later we hear of descendants of those cruelly exiled Jews sending secretly to Spain and Portugal for citrons and branches of the palm, that their ‏סוּכּוֹת‎ might look ‘homelike’ in the bleak north lands in which their lot was cast. ”

“ But that small colonies of men, transported into strange and populous nations, should preserve a distinct existence, and not insensibly moulder away, and mix themselves with their numerous native masters; This, I think, is without example in the history of mankind. If the Jews might be expected to abound any where, it should, methinks, be in Judæa; where the sight of the holy land, and the memory of their past fortunes, might invigorate their prejudices, and perpetuate their attachment to the Jewish name and worship. ”

“ THE JEWS AND JUDAISM The opening years of the nineteenth century found the Jew blinded by the light of a new sun, the rays of which were beating upon the Ghetto and were forcing him to take off, one by one, the many garments with which he had clothed himself during the hostile Middle Ages. ”

“ Is he the genuine Hebrew of the sixteenth century, or the mere embodiment of blind and inveterate prejudice?
What do travellers answer when asked whether the soil of the Holy Land is waste and barren, unable to support even its sparse population? They will tell us that it is naturally rich and fertile, but has become unproductive by long neglect and abuse. [149] As it has been with the land of the Jews, so it has been with themselves. Their true national character is among the noblest—if it is not the very noblest—that the world has seen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In those countries which form a dividing line between the Occident and the Orient, namely, Russia, Poland, Prussia, Austria, and Turkey, there live millions of our brethren who earnestly believe in the restoration of the Jewish kingdom and pray for it fervently in their daily services. These Jews have preserved, by their belief in Jewish nationality, the very kernel of Judaism in a more faithful manner than have our Occidental Jews. ”

“ Whatever triumph Judaism might celebrate by the accession of proselytes, and bright as seemed the dawn of the day predicted by the prophet, when the peoples of the earth would turn their eyes to Zion, and towards the light issuing thence to illumine the human race, yet in their native land, and more especially in Jerusalem, the yoke of the Romans weighed heavily on the Judæans, and became daily more oppressive. ”

“ The Jews, as I have before mentioned, are the most important, both in consequence of their number and of their superior wealth; they belong to the tribe of Judah, and are very industrious, being the manufacturers of the place. ”

“ Having brought our story to the close of an epoch, we will pause and glance at the status of the Jew in other lands. The dispersion of Israel in a voluntary way had already begun, though Judea was still the centre of gravity. So the sway of the High Priest reached not only to the Palestinian provinces—Phœnicia, Samaria, Galilee, Gilead, Edom and Philistia—but extended through parts of Asia Minor and to lands on both banks of the Mediterranean Sea. These lands of Jewish settlement outside of Palestine are called the Diaspora. ”

“ Before resuming the story of Judea under the procurators, let us take another survey of Jews and Judaism in lands outside of Palestine. The voluntary dispersion still went on. The Jews were now scattered over all the Roman Empire, which included Asiatic and European lands from Syria to Spain. We also find our ancestors, at the beginning of the Christian era, in Arabia and in Parthia, an Asiatic kingdom south of the Caspian Sea. But, however widely scattered, religion was the bond of union and Jerusalem the spiritual centre. ”

“ Not only are the tribes of Israel to be re-assembled upon the lands of their inheritances, but the descendants of the children of Israel scattered through all the nations among which they have been "sifted," are also to be gathered. The Jews since the destruction of their city and nation by the Romans have been scattered among all nations, but they have succeeded in a remarkable manner in preserving their identity as a distinct people. ”

“ On my next visit, in 1902, more colonies had been planted, and a serious effort was being made to turn the Jewish colonists into farmers. The majority of Jews who had come to Palestine, however, were settled about Jerusalem, and the new Jerusalem without the walls was larger, in space at least, than the old Jerusalem within. The Alliance Israelite had developed there splendid schools to teach agriculture, and manual and industrial arts. I was urgently solicited by the management to visit and inspect these schools. Here I found Jew, Moslem and Christian working side by side without prejudice. ”

“ The Jew is returning to his own land—Palestine.
“Only a year or two ago the world was electrified by hearing of the formation of that wonderful Zionist movement. How it has spread and grown! And how, ever since, the increasing thousands have been flocking back to Palestine! There are now nearly three times the number of Jews in and around Jerusalem, that there [129] were after the return from the Babylonish captivity. Agricultural settlements are extending all over the land. Vineyards and olive-grounds are springing up everywhere.
“Now note a remarkable fulfillment of prophecy. ”

“ It nourished the Jews in their amazing obstinacy, and led to the annihilation of their State which, to the very end, they saw in their dreams bruising all other nations with a rod of iron, and breaking them in pieces like a potter's vessel. But, as any idealism is better than none, the Hebrew race has won remarkable triumphs, though of a kind which it never desired. ”

“ Yearning ever after the holy land of his forefathers, the Jew, as life begins to wear out, often collects together his earnings, and rouses up his sinking strength to carry him hither, that he may die in Jerusalem, and have his bones laid beneath the mountain of the ancient temple. They are not permitted to set foot within the enclosure of Mount Moriah, but in pleasant weather they may be seen just without the outer wall, seated on the ground, and reading in their devotional books; and even for this privilege they have to pay the Turkish governor. ”