26 SEPTEMBER 1874, Page 19

N EU-JUDAISM.*

IF the author of Judaism Surveyed be indeed, as he apparently claims to be, a representative of any considerable section of the Jewish people, it must be said that his description of the dominant tendencies of his co-religionists at the present day, as well as his narrative of the development of modern Judaism, constitutes a veritable expose rather more piquant than impressive. Dr. Beniach, however, is explicit in the declaration that the publica- tion of his treatise has been largely encouraged by the notices which his opinions, when delivered in the form of lectures, evoked from the Jewish, as well as the general Press. It was, " Judaism Surveyed,: being a Sketch of the Rise and Development of Judaism from Noses to Ow- Days. By Dr. A. Benison. London: Longmana, Green, and Co. 1874. tells us, for no mere intellectual pleasure that he devoted himself to laying bare the agencies which have .operated in the development of Judaism, as he conceives it. On the contrary, it was with a profoundly practical object that he addressed himself to the task. He wished, in common with the educated classes of Israelites now-a-days, to explain in what the essence of Judaism consists, and to point out the means by which that essence may be separated from the numerous accidents of tradition and rite which maintain a barrier between the Jewish religion, properly so called, and the progress and science of the age. "He is one," he repeats, "who shares the opinion of thousands of his co-religionists that Judaism in its present form does not fully answer the purpose for which it came into existence." Among the obnoxious peculiarities which, in common with the "thousands of his co-religionists," Dr. Benisch is prepared to sacrifice to the necessities of progress is, significant to relate, the expectation of a Messiah. The belief in the coming of the Messiah is now acknowledged, says our author, to be a mere myth, embodying the national aspirations in times of perse-- cution and distress for the arrival of a more comfortable state of things. Educated Hebrews now recognise that since the Act for the removal of the Disabilities of the Jews there is no longer room for such a superfluous idea. The Messiah came, in fact, when

the Jews were able to control the Exchanges of Europe and serve in Parliament for the City of London.

Dividing his survey of Judaism into the four periods extend- ing from Moses the lawgiver to Ezra the scribe, from Ezra to Rabbi Jochanan Ben Saceai, a contemporary of the destruction of the Second Temple, from Rabbi Jochanan to Moses Men- delasohn, who died in Berlin in 1786, and from this last to the present hour, Dr. Benisch incidentally traces what he believes to be the genesis of the Messianic idea, in terms which leave no doubt upon the abandonment by him and, as he intimates, by thousands of the more prosperous and educated Jews, of the faith that through forty centuries has been the devout consolation or the wild hope of the children of Israel. Down to the era of the Babylonian captivity, and so long as temporal success smiled upon the Beth-Israel, "neither the expectation nor the wish for a saviour, subsequently elaborated into that of the Messiah or Christ, as yet existed, as the people enjoyed prosperity, and had only lately triumphed over its enemies, and therefore," charac- teristically adds our modern Jew, "naturally felt no such want." In fact, "the Messianic idea, as will be seen further on, was the slowly-growing fruit which sprang from the troubles and disasters of the subsequent ages." Just as we read of the starving, that they feast in their dreams on the fatness of the earth, so it was but natural that the distressed mind of Israel should seek solace in turning away its glance from the confronting gloom, and fixing it on the bright vision of an imagined future.

"These hopes were naturally much dwelt upon during the Baby- lonian captivity, but became weakened in the national memory during the happy repose enjoyed for a considerable time by the returned settlers in judea, under the mild away of the Persians. At least after the prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, we hear of no such expecta- tions until the calamities, especially the persecutions under Antiochus Epiphanes, commenced. The longing of the nation for a deliverer once more awoke. This longing was soon translated into a distinct promise of speedy fulfilment. A deliverer was promised—a deliverer was wanted—the deliverer must be near at hand. It is the Book of Daniel which made itself the organ of this hope. The deliverer came in the person of Judas the Maccabee and his brothers. Israel once more sat in safety—each man under his vine and fig-tree—at least for a time. The idea of the deliverer, or saviour, receded. Soon new troubles arose. Judea foil into the hands of the Romans. Calamity now followed calamity. Again, the longing for a national deliverer awoke with great vehemence. At last the national disasters were consummated by the destruction of the Temple under Titus. Could there be any doubt

but that this national deliverer would soon make his appearance The doctrine of the Messiah now became, as it were, the first in Judaism recast, and has ever since occupied a foremost place in the array of Jewish articles of faith, has wonderfully shaped and moulded the fresh views, rites, and practices which have since sprung up among this people. Scores of times disappointed in their expectations, the hope of the advent of the Messiah has remained ever green in their hearts, with the difference that while one portion of the nation, and precisely that which groans under physical oppression, expects Him in the person of a mighty hero that will bring them deliverance, and restore them to their country ; another section, and this precisely that from whose limbs the galling fetters of bondage have been struck off, looks for the advent of that golden age, or rather Messianic period, in which virtue will conquer vice, crime will not be thought of, every man will regard his fellow as his brother, and strive after the happiness of his neighbour as after his own."

Dr. Benisch, it may be perceived, passes lightly enough over what has always seemed to have been a feature of Judaism so in- explicable, on ordinary grounds of national or tribal instinct, as the singular and astonishing monotheism which alone among the Semitic races distinguished the posterity of Jacob. He cannot indeed be said to have troubled himself to give much rational explanation of the circumstance that this petty people, concen- trated in itself, and averse from conquest and proselytism, should, through century after century, have nourished the surprising thought that out of its midst all the nations of the earth would one day receive their religious faith. What the expansive genius of Hellas never conceived, what remained foreign to the cosmo- politanism of Phoenicia and Carthage, what never entered into the dominating aspirations of Rome the Superb, was the popular conviction of Galileans, and Dr. Benisch sees nothing in it but an every-day occurrence, precisely on a par with the legends of the resurrection of Kaiser Barbarossa and the return of ICmg Sebas- tian. In more senses than one, Dr. Benisch's Messiah is a myth,. and if the preponderating tendency of educated Jews be to accept such a rendering, their education has not advanced their compre- hension of the history and the mission of their race.

Dr. Benisch's account of the origin of Christianity is not un- equal to his interpretation of the Messianic tradition. Jesus of Nazareth, a scrupulous and believing Jew, was shocked at the laxity of a portion of the Pharisaic classes under the enervating rule of the Romanising Herod, and in his unrellecting zeal de- nounced without discrimination an entire body which but very partially deserved his reproaches :—

" It was during this period of spiritual decadence that he, from whose epithet Christianity derives its name, made his appearance His- fierce denunciations of the Pharisees are on record, but impartial his- tory will rather perceive in them the momentary ebullitions of an over- sensitive, ardent ardent preacher, than the coolly-weighed utterances of a. philosophical moralist The Talmud informs us that there were seven distinct shades of Pharisaism, the one extreme bordering and touching upon the loftiness and saintly character of the Essenes, while the other wore the mask of the rankest hypocrisy. Between the two there was- ranged the mass of the Pharisees of all colours and shades of religions- opinion. There were Pharisees, we are informed, who were distin- guished by every virtue which can adorn a scholar, patriot, and saint ; and again' others, vain, superstitious, and ostentatious, paraded in the market-place the outward marks of religions zeal. It must have been the lot of Jesus to have fallen in with some of those lower-grade Pharisees."

Was it, then, only "lower-grade Pharisees" that "were gathered together into the Court of the High Priest, who was called Cthaphas, consulting together that by subtlety they might appre- hend Jesus and put him to death ?" "But they said, Not on the festival day, lest, perhaps, there should be a tumult among the people." Or was it only "lower-grade Pharisees" and not "the. chief priests and ancients" who persuaded the people that they should ask to have Barabbas freed, but Jesus crucified ?

Curiously enough, Dr. Benisch fixes upon the destruction of Jerusalem as the date when the outward and visible separation between the old and the new religion became in a special manner finally marked and declared :— "There was only one section which, in this fearful crisis, stood aloof. The members of the new sect withdrew from the danger' leaving it to its countrymen to conquer or perish nnhelped, and perhaps nncheered, on the plea of a certain prophecy of its founder (Eusebius's Eccles. Hist. iii., 1). After a protracted struggle' the country at last lay gasping and bleeding at every pore at the feet of the conqueror. A. million corpses covered her face, and a hundred thousand captives, among them some of her noblest and fairest sons and daughters, thronged the slave markets of the world. But no battle-field was stained by the gore of any of the adherents of the new faith, nor did. the fetters of the bondman press upon the limbs of any of its members. It may be easily imagined that in the mind of the prostrate patriot., if not in his utterance, the name of ' traitor ' was often joined to that of 'apostate,' and what reception he would have given to the approach of the deserter."

Nor does Dr. Benisch fail to give some significant indications of the spirit in which the Jews thenceforth set themselves to meet their Christian brethren :—

"Indications of this hatred appeared soon after the war, for by a decree of the Synhedrion every contact with the Jewish Christians was forbidden (Talmud Treat. Abodah Sarah. f. 16, b. Midrash Koheleth 84, d, to the verse, Col Hadebarim). A special formula, under the name of Bircath Hammeenim, was added to the so-called eighteen benedictions as a kind of test, in order to discover the favourers of the new doctrine, This hatred also naturally extended to the religions writings of the new sect. Despite the popular veneration for the name of the Deity, and the awe which it inspired, the Christian writings, even if containing these names, were allowed to be burnt (Ibid. Sabbath, f. 116, a. ; Jeru- salem Talmud, Ibid. c. xvi, p. 16, 8). The followers of the new sect naturally retaliated This hatred was still more increased during the insurrection of Bareochba against Hadrian, the Jews having wished the Christians to make common cause with them, which, how- ever, was refused. Ensebius (Chron. to the 17th year of Hadrian) recorded that this Jewish leader plurimos Christianos diversis sup- pliciis affecit eo quod nolnissent proficiaci cum illo pugnatum contra Romanos.'"

Unhappily, too many Christiana were found, when the time of Christian domination arrived, to have learned only too well the lesson of rancorous hostility so disastrously begun.

The description of the later development or attenuation of the old Jewish orthodoxy is interestingly, if unimpressively related, and the epoch-making life of Moses, son of Mendel, a native of Dessau, in Germany, is sketched with much suggestiveness. Since his time, the youth of Israel, instead of spending itself either upon the torturing subtleties of the Mischna and Gemaras, or apparently upon any unbiassed and careful appreciation of Christianity, has devoted itself more and more, with an applica- tion which has certainly not been uncrowned with success, to the doctrines of an extreme rationalism and the pursuits of literature and finance. In the opinion of Dr. Benisch, Judaism is not losing its distinctive merit by the transformation. Quite the contrary, and in a humble sort of way both Christianity and Mohammedanism are preparing mankind for the reception of the purified and exalted Judaism of the future, disencumbered alike of Messianic tradition and antiquated ritual, and probably summing up its regenerated creed in the exhaustive formula,— " Jehovah is Jehovah, and the Place de la Bourse is the New Jerusalem."

"Let Christians and Mohammedans by all means be zealous in the work of conversion. They will only work for the principles of my people. These principles are too sublime to be comprehended in their purity by the unprepared mind. From Paganism to Judaism there is such a spiritual distance as cannot be cleared in one bound by unaided efforts. Preparatory transition-stages have to be passed through. Christianity and Mohammedanism form these stages, suited to the differ- ences of tempers and degrees of culture characterising the divers popu- lations of the pagan world. This has even been emitted by a most eminent rabbi. When they have served their apprenticeship to these religions, and a yearning shall have been awakened after some- thing higher and more perfect—after something that will satisfy the noblest instincts of the soul, and does not jar with the results of science, the rules of logic, and the highest perceptions of intellect—then they will turn to the principle of Judaism, and find the repose after which their souls will long in the rabbinical institution of the proselytes of the gate."

This conclusion is exquisite. What the world could possibly see to admire in the desiccated and sapless trunk of such Neo- Judaism, or wherefore the science and progress of the day should find any attraction in sitting in the gates of a tribal temple from which the last raison d'être had departed, is certainly not easy to discover. The Neo-Judaisers have, indeed, attempted to reform Judaism, as the Bramo Samaj reformed Hindooism ; but the result of their labours is a poor copy of the Bramo Samaj, without its nobler features of enthusiasm and faith.