THE NEW CHIEF RABBI.
THERE is something very captivating to the imagination in the accounts of the magnificent ceremony performed on Tuesday in the "Cathedral Synagogue" of London, and in the presence of the "United Hebrew Congregation of the British Empire," on the installation of the new Chief Rabbi, who receives, the papers say, a salary of 22,000 a year. We are all apt to talk a great deal of the " fusing " and " levelling " and " absorbing " tendencies of modern civilisa- tion, and to think that in a few years we shall all be alike, all intermarrying, all equal, and all professors of a creed without dogmas, except that science alone is certainly true, and that it is good to be kind to the poor. Yet, here in Aldgate, in the very centre of London commerce, we have an im- mense collection of visible persons—thirteen hundred the reporters say—who are all pure-blooded Asiatics, yet all Englishmen in that they think in English and pursue the varied careers and perform all the varied duties of English- men, assembled to instal in the words of an Asiatic language, to the sound of Asiatic hymns, and with the forms of an Asiatic ritual, much of which is far older than Christianity, an ecclesiastic for whose position and office Europe offers no precise analogue, and even Asia, though she approaches nearer in the Sheikh ul Islam, provides no exact parallel. And it is not only probable but nearly certain, that a thousand years hence they will be doing it still ; that while they will become more English and more visible in English life, and more important in all departments of English effort, they will remain Hebrews, with thoughts in them as much apart from those of the snub-nosed Saxons, as if they had never quitted Palestine, or the Temple had never been destroyed. The efforts of their conquerors to compel them
into fusion, continued fiercely and resolutely for seventeen hundred and fifty years, counting from Hadrian, have failed, and in the belief of all who know them will hereafter fail, as will also the far wiser, and for Jews more dangerous, effort to absorb them through perfect or imperfect toleration. Speaking all languages, knowing all cultures, living amongst all races, imbibing all patriotic prejudices, and assimilating all peculiari- ties of any civilisation, the Hebrews display a capacity for mental aloofness which, through all the varied temptations of all the ages, still keeps them rigidly apart. There is nothing in the least like it in history, for the Armenians, who are as old and as separate, have not been exposed like the Jews to the disintegrating pressure of the great white civilisations, and the Parsees, who have now stood alone for twelve hundred years, are not accepted by their white protectors, as Jews are, as essentially equal to themselves. The incurable pre- judice of colour—which must in the earliest ages have been stronger even than at present, or each colour would not have taken a continent for its exclusive habitat—does not divide the Hebrews from the Europeans, yet they stand as distinct from them as from the Negro. Nor has there ever been an ex- planation of this durability in the Jew—other, of course, than the simple one of continuous miracle performed by God for some purpose to be revealed in his own time—which in the least satisfies or convinces any reflecting mind. It is not the result of creed, for their creed, after all, is indistinguishably close to that of the majority of the Unitarians and Theists who have existed in almost all countries and all ages, and a large section of modern Jews would confess that they were either materialists or agnostics. To say it is a result of race is only to push back the difficulty, for why should a special race, pressed by every variety of influence to give way, hold itself in every country, to its own social and material hurt, determinately and continuously apart P No white race has done it except the English, and the English have never been tempted by finding themselves lost amid superior numbers of an equal civilisation and a similar colour. In Ireland, where they were lost, and where there was no barrier of colour, they either huddled together or be- came with singular rapidity more Irish than the Irish them- selves. It cannot be pride of race alone, though that has operated powerfully, for, as their own writers have pointed out, great numbers of Jews dislike themselves for being Jews, are in a certain way ashamed of themselves—Heine was, for example, during part of his career—yet remain Jews just as firmly as those among them who believe, as so many Jews do now in Konigsberg, that they are destined ultimately, and after no long interval, to rule and guide all the races of mankind. It is not mere unreceptiveness, such as at the present day will keep a colony of Chinamen perfectly separate among all sorts of mankind, for the Jew is exceptionally re- ceptive of national cultures, no German being so German, no Frenchman so French, no Italian so Italian, as the German or French or Italian Jew. He even bridges the great gulf between East and West, there being Jews, and Jews of rank, in the community who have lived, perhaps are living, both the Asiatic and the European life. Nor is it, as has been repeatedly said by enemies of the race, mere hostility to Christianity, kept alive through centuries by savage persecution, for per- secution converts feeble races, and the Jew has withstood the Arab, who is his half-brother, as resolutely as he has with- stood the Christian. Mahommed found them as hopeless as did Torquemada, a fact the more notable because the Jews have never as individuals been absolutely confident in their own stubbornness, but have dreaded and hated proselytisers, and kept up, to avoid fallings away, a very strict system of family discipline, and many practices intended only to foster segregation. They have, too, had much deeper and more lasting differences among themselves than the world is generally aware. Differing schools of thought, or differences about discipline and ritual, have divided them at least as effectually as Catholic is divided from Protestant ; while there is one difference still subsisting • socially, though we presume, as the Synagogues are united, it has died away theo- logically, which is, or rather ,has been, of the nature of a difference of caste, in the Hindoo acceptation of the word.
There is plenty of literature about the difference between the Sephardim and Ashkenazim, the Spanish and German Jews, the Brahmins and Sudras of Judaism, but we have never met with an explanation as to the origin of the distinction 'which seemed so much as reasonable. That it exists is acknow- ledged on all hands, and is, indeed, as undeniable as any other social distinction, the "Spaniard" ranking definitely above the " German " in the community,—so definitely that an entrance by marriage among Sephardim is an object of ambition among the Ashkenazim sufficient to be weighed against great differences of pecuniary position. It is affirmed, also—principally, of course, by Sephardim—that there is a substantive difference between the castes ; that the " Spaniard "
more intellectual than the" German," has loftier aspirations, and possesses in particular more of the capacity for becoming a cultivated gentleman. The painters, they say, who would paint an idealised Jew, find a model only among Sephardim. Those opinions, whether true or false—a subject upon which we have not knowledge enough to form a final opinion, individual Jewish families displaying internally the widest differences, -not only of physique, but of what we call "caste "—point to a difference of birth as the ultimate origin of the difference in grade ; but then, of what kind can such a difference be ? In some way, which among a people with such persistent tradi- tions is to us inexplicable, the Jews have lost their pedigrees, are uncertain even of tribal distinctions, and do not, we believe, number in their ranks one single family which can -count back with anything approaching to evidence, to the time of the last Dispersion. A noble Jewish family, in the heraldic sense, cannot be said to exist, and if it did, could not cover the whole of the Sephardim. Lord Beaconsfield's explanation, that the Jews of the Mediterranean numbered among them nobles and statesmen, while their brethren in Germany and Poland were practically slaves, is no explanation at all, for there must have been all grades among the Jews of Granada and Seville ; and while the majority of the peoples of Europe were serfs -once, the fact has left no distinction of the same kind. He himself was certainly of the Sephardiea, though he looked as if he had sprung from the other side, and though his careful inquiries in Venice did not, we believe, show, at least in any producible way, that his ancestors had occupied very pro- minent positions. We find it difficult to believe that an accident of residence, or even a difference in the bitterness of persecution between one place and another, could establish a difference of caste, more especially as it is the Ashkenazim who have in our day made money and won power and place, and we should, if there were evidence for it, rather trust the explanation once forwarded to us by a learned Jewish lady. She said she believed the tradition which made of the Sephardim the descendants of 'Judah, while the Ashkenazim sprang from the Ten Tribes, an explanation which would give us a clue to many difficult points in Jewish history. If we take the gews of Eastern Europe to be he descendants of the earlier Dispersions, and those of the Western Mediterranean to be the heirs of Titus's victims, we .account for the whole nation, and get rid of the hundred myths which have so greatly agitated the exponents of prophecy about the lost Ten Tribes. But then, is there a particle of sound historical evidence for that theory P It is not to be proved out of the printed records, and if any Jewish families had remained unbroken through the centuries, and had kept records, both of which suppositions are possible, though unlikely, descendants of the Princes of the Captivity, who were of the House of David, having lasted—teste Gibbon— into the fifteenth century, the Jews would know it, and all obscurity would disappear. As it is, all that is known is that a great cleavage did exist among Jews, the origin of which has been forgotten, and that it is passing away, though it still ;leaves deep traces upon the social life of the nation.
It is a curious fact, curious because so entirely at variance with the popular fancy on the subject, that the Jews have never risen since the last Dispersion. All through the ages, from the day when the Omar was asked to banish them from Italy because they were emptying the peninsula of circulating medium, down to our own time, we hear of Jews who were making very large sums of money, and making them, as hostile neighbours thought, out of the Christians around. The idea of their special talent for accumulation has, indeed, become a tradition which it would be impious to disturb, even if it had not been illustrated by Shakespeare and affirmed by Lord Beaconsfield. Nevertheless, the body of the Jews must in all ages have been hideously poor, poor to extremes of penury ; and poor,, though even our proverbs assume them rich, they remain to this day. Ninety-nine Jews in a hundred throughout the world, if assured 30s, a week per family, would think themselves suddenly enriched. They have no country, and a country is a large estate; they have no property beyond small savings, and their wages are beaten down by the antipathy of all around them to the lowest figure which the poorest Gentile will take for the same work. The mass of them exist everywhere, as they exist in London, by working excessive hours for wages which are a shame to those who pay them, wages only just above those earned by women,—a fact which, when the question of their enduring separateness is considered, ought to be carefully remembered. The Jews, who love wealth and easy lives as much as any race in the world, have held out for what they thought right, not only against the persecution, but the poverty of centuries on end. We wonder if the English and their Yankee cousins would, under equal pressure, have displayed the same unshrinking firmness. An auto-dalfe is bad to bear, but at least it ends the victim. Imagine the workhouse for ten centuries, with liberty to leave it for saying a credo, and then reckon up the fortitude of the people who, after passing through all that, on Tuesday saw their Chief Rabbi led up the Synagogue by a Jewish Peer of Parliament, and yet sang their responses in words which showed that of themselves they had surrendered no jot of their separateness either of race or creed !
Previous page
