THE ENGLISH JEWS.
TrniumE are no English Jews, properly so called. That is to
say, there are no Jews in England—less than a hundred families possibly excepted—who have been here long enough to have lost all trace of a nationality other than English and other than Jew. There are two colonies of Jews who have settled in the cities of Great Britain who, having once differed violently in language, in civilisation, and in all that civilisation superinduces, are gradually becoming welded together, and will in time create a community of English Jews who, after the manner of the race, will probably become more English in aU distinctive qualities of intellect and occupation than the English themselves; but as yet there are no distinctively English Jews. There has not been time. It is not 220 years since the first community of "Sephardim,"--a word which is simply modern Hebrew for "Spaniards," but in its usage includes all the Jews of the Mediterranean, Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, and Levantines, all of whom thought in Spanish or Portuguese, and kept accoun tsaud wrote their letters in those languages—settled in England, and of them scarcely any remained permanently. With one or two exceptions, their very names have disappeared. It was not till the days of Queen Anne, when Sir Solomon Medina was the leading capitalist on 'Change, and paid Marlborough £6,000 a year for early in formation and profitable contracts, that the Jews became .at all numerous ; and even then they were almost all—not quite— Jews of the South, mainly Portuguese, Levantines, or Italians, men bearing names like Mendez, Gomes, Rodrigues, Miranda, Lopes, .and the like. It was not till the end of the seventeenth century that the Jews from whom the English idea of the race is usually derived, the -Ashkenazim," the German and Polish Jews, in spite of great discouragement from their forerunners, began to settle in any numbers ; and not till 1722 that they were enabledi by the liberality of Moses of Breslau, calling himself- in England "Moses Hart," to establish a synagogue of their- own. Since then the Ashkenseim have far outnumbered their rivals, till, indeed, Englishmen scarcely know of any other Jews; but both parties, factions, septa, or whatever word we may use to describe them, have prospered and been protected here, till England is one of the lands in whose welfare the entire community feels an eager interest, and both have shown a tendency to merge into - a single class of English Jews, as distinctive as the German or French. The division between them, however, has been very bitter; and still colours all the history of the community. Mr. Picciotto, one of the contributors to the Jewish Chronicle, from whose extremely curious and interestingbook, "Sketches of Anglo-Jewish History," we are taking most of our facts, hints that its origin was a real difference of grade ; that the Sephardim, bred among the races of the South, accustomed to high- office, proud of rank- as well as lineage, despised the Ashkenazim, or Jewsof the North, who had been forced by circumstances to be hucksters and little merchants ; but the difference is older than these circumstances, and we' should our- selves attribute its continuance to two facts,---first, that the Jews, separate as they are, can catch the external impress of any civili- sation, including its hatreds—do not the Sephardim call the Ashkenazim " Todesco ?" that is, " Tedesco," the epithet by which a Venetian or a Milanese describes a German?—and secondly, that a Jew in the Mediterranean bad so much more sympathy' with his entertainers, had so much less to conceal or to simulate, that he of necessity developed more freely the nobler and more natural side of himself. Some of the greatest of modern Jews have been Germans, but the aristocracy of the race lived, as Mr. Disraeli affirms, sometimes under frightful oppression, ou the shores of the Mediterranean. Be that as it may, there is no doubt that being as usual exceptional among mankind, the Southern Jewsheld themselves to be higher, nobler, purer, in some mysterious way, than the Northern Jews ; that the feeling was once as strong as the pride of birth among the Teutons, and that it flashes out even now, when it has been nominally discarded in England, in Syna- gogue arrangements, and in books like Mr. Disraeli's " Tancred." —where he, himself by birth one of the Sephardim, exalts the Sephardim into an aristocracy—in the speculator Mires' attack on the House of Rothschild, the extraordinary pam- phlet which we noticed at the time, and in which Mires? attributes his fall to the hatred • of the Ashkenazim for the Sephardim ; and in the volume before us, wherein a pride of caste, which its author would probably repudiate, flashes out now and again in the oddest manner. To -day, says Mr. Picciotto, there is no distinction between the septa, except that they pronounce Hebrew differently, and although-they main- tain different synagogues, they elect a common Committee of management for the entire community, but down to a very late period the mutual dislike was intense. In the reign of Queen Anne "the Portuguese did not allow the Germans to have any share in the management of congregational affairs. It was especially enacted that the latter, who probably were neither very refined nor very cultivated, should not be allowed to hold office in the Synagogue, nor vote at meetings, nor be called to the Law, nor receive Mitzvoth (religious honours), nor make offerings, nor pay imposts. The Germans, in point of fact, were treated as be- longing to a lower caste, and the only functions that a member of that nationality was permitted to fulfil were the useful, albeit lowly, duties of beadle, which were actually entrusted to a German, —a certain Benjamin Levy." A man born of the Sephardim who married into the rival congregation was looked upon as_ much as a Duke's son would be who married a housemaid,—as one who, although he had done nothing unlawful, or immoral, had nevertheless disgraced himself and his order. When. Jacob Israel Bernal, great-grandfather of Mr. Bernal Osborne, in 1744 proposed to a German Jewess, his congregation, though they consented to the union, expressed their strong disapproba- tion, and " to discourage for the future such ill-advised connections, imposed upon Mr. Bernal some rather humiliating conditions. Neither the members of the Beth Din, nor the Hazanim (ministers) were to be present at the solemnisation of the marriage ; the bridegroom was not to be called up to the Law in that capacity, no offerings or ' mesheberach ' were to be made for his health, and no celebration of any kind was to take place in Synagogue. Nous avows change tout cela." To this day, though the Jews best known to the outer world—the Rothschilds, Goldsmids, Cohens, Levis—are all Ashkenazim, something of caste, some flavour of aristocratic standing, indefinable but perceptible, still adheres to the members of the elder synagogue, and observers pretend that
the special look of the Oriental Jews, a look well rendered in nately piteous and offensive, requesting an immediate return of Holman Hunt's " Finding of the Saviour in the Temple," more his advances. Mr. Snow not only really required the money in, especially in the boy who is bending over the oldest Rabbi, is his own bank in this emergency, but he was afraid of losing it still confined to the Sephardim. altogether. Gideon quietly proceeded to the Bank of England It is this fact, the existence of colonies of Jews in England, and obtained therefrom twenty £1,000 notes, which he rolled rather than of a community of English Jews, which explains around a bottle of smelling-salts, and forwarded to the dismayed the puzzle about their names, which so often gives cause for so banker." lie was, however, ambitious, seeking, it is believed, much rather absurd ridicule. Many of the names supposed to be the peerage which was given to his son, Lord Eardley ; and, in specially Jewish in this country are not Jewish at all, but Portu- 1754 he resigned his membership in the Jewish congregation. The guese ; and Mr. A. Trollope, when in his new novel he makes resignation was, of course, accepted, and Abudiente, assiuning his great lawyer say that the name Lopez has a Jewish flavour the name of Gideon, declared himself a Christian, and brought about it, is talking nonsense, made sense only by an accident. The up all his children in that faith. Nine years after, however, he Jews are older than surnames, and the process going on among died, and then it was discovered that he had never ceased to be a them is precisely the process which went on some centuries. ago Jew, both in heart and faith :- among ourselves. Surnames have become convenient, and they " His executors forwarded a copy. of his will to the authorities of. thhot find them consciously, as our fathers found them unconsciously, .Sepaniivsehnaftoird tPhoertinugteuiemseenCtonogfrtegieatidoecn,ewasith. a request in the best way they can, sometimes taking the name of ° deceased. Thefcilltowaitnga paragraph waswasg found in that document: ' To my executors—£1,000 to be paid by a protector—as appears to have happened in Portugal, where them and applied to and for the use of the Portuguese Synagogue in Jews bear names like Lopez, Villareal, Medina, Gomez, Da Souza, Bevis Mtarmksi LEonddoninmthceasceaLsihraall(rebgeublaurrierdowmofthgerJaevewss)',bwuirtyhmtf: Rodriguez, and the rest ; sometimes that of their property, as, place of a -flue'. ebir (member), and an Escaba (or prayer for the dead) said we believe, in the case of the d'Aguilars ; sometimes that of every Kipper? The reply of the Portuguese elders was brief and their trade-sign, as, for example, the Rothschilds ; sometimes dignified, and to the effect that orders had been given to the keeper to that of the city they live in, whence Breslauer, de Worms, Perugia, the dburytenogigtreudnedceantset,deanEdndthtaotleltaistheravand others ; and very frequently that given them at birth altered the remains e wao uarcal epos according e treated as theoseeosfirany other member. Then Phineas Genies Serra, a gentleman into an anagram pronounceable by the people they happen to belonging to one of the first families of the community,. came forward reside among. Thus Manasseh becomes Massena ; Moses, Moss ; and stated that. a certain sum offderecolrsanwneurealdesignated—inly byhim Illthreoaname liatmy ewaofs Eli, Ellis ; David, Davis, Davies, or Davidson ; Benjamin, Ben- contributed' P eioAlm '—as e lateeneSnaymulpesouen Gideon, who had thus regularly kept son ; and Levi, Levison, Lewis, Louis, Lewison, Lawson, Lever, up his payments as member."
Lewes ; and many other combinations. The object is not to conceal
This is at least one origin of the belief about Jewish proselytising, either the race or the faith—though in old days of persecution,
which, never frequent anywhere, has in England been strictly that motive may have assisted, and in our days of social ambition forbidden by the rules of both the Portuguese and the German certainly does assist —but to supply a distinct defect which the synagogues. Lord George Gordon never was admitted into race has only felt in modern Europe, and which it shares with the Jewish burial-ground, and much later the Portuguese Con- Royal families, which, for the same reason, have no proper gregation formally rebuked the German one for allowing two surnames. We call them, for convenience, Bourbons, Hapsburgs, Norwegians to be admitted, contrary to the " express condition " Guelfs, Hohenzollerns, and Romanoffs, but those distinguishing on which Jews were admitted into England—a mistake, it words are only their surnames because they occasionally use is said—and the German Congregation passed strict rules them to describe their ancestral lines. The result of this practice a,,, ' st a similar error. The truth seems to be the Jews among English Jews is a medley of names from every country in care for no converts not descendants of Abraham, but are the world, a medley not found either in Germany or Portugal, always ready to receive back persons whose descent, however and of which they will have to rid themselves before a community corrupted, is clear to them. They themselves are almost mor- of distinctively English Jews can be fairly formed.
It is a very odd fact, never, to our minds, satisfactorily ex- Chronicle, generally an even-tempered paper, can write of per- planed, that wherever the Jews have settled, they have been ac- secutors with much more temperance than of the London Society cused of proselytism. They never try to make converts, and are for the Conversion of the Jews ; and Mr. Picciotto, .though most unwilling to receive them, and the popular notion, which has usually impartial, can hardly keep down his dislike of those who repeatedly in Southern Europe caused riots, and in England rose have abandoned the communion. Abudientes or Bernals, Lopezes once to heights as extravagant as the similar but better-founded or Ricardos, they have never done so merely from conviction ; feeling about Catholics, arose, we suspect, from two causes,—one and he is lenient only to Isaac d'Israeli, the Premier's father, who was the propagandist force of their great dogma, and its attrac- in fact never quitted the pale, though in 1813 he threw up his Lion for a certain class of thinkers, not as Judaism, but as a form seat in the Synagogue because the Elders were determined to make of Deism, and the belief of the priesthood that it must be urged
him an office-bearer against his will. In a most remarkable so earnestly by Jews in order to make proselytes ; and the other letter he affirmed that he would not bear this, but denied that he was the habit of the race, when exposed to unendurable .perse-
was like Sanballat the Horonite, who impeded Nehemiah in re- cution, of professing any faith convenient, and then, when circum- building the Holy City. He never, however, took any step stances altered, of " relapsing " into the concealed belief. Mr. beyond erasing his name from the lists of the Synagogue, and in Disraeli was accused of exaggeration when he talked of Mom's 1821 he applied for the certificates of birth of his four children. family, most Catholic for three centuries, making offerings in the Picciotto tells -'the following extraordinary story of Sampson Gideon, the Rothschild of 1745, who doubled his fortune by buying stock when the Pretender advanced to Derby. His real name was Sampson de Rehuel Abudiente, Jew of the Sephardim, and founder of the Culling-Eardley family, an extremely able, satiric, and ambitious man. Of his ability, the best proof is that, though speculator by trade, he could not be tempted into the South-Sea Bubble, and that he obtained a private Act of Parliament from Walpole ; and of his satire we have sufficient evidence in this little story :—" Some months before the revolution [1745], this enterprising financier had borrowed, to carry out some operation, a sum of £20,000 from Mr. Snow the banker. When the Pretender was marching on the capital, Mr. Snow wrote to Sampson Gideon in tones alter-
the special look of the Oriental Jews, a look well rendered in nately piteous and offensive, requesting an immediate return of Holman Hunt's " Finding of the Saviour in the Temple," more his advances. Mr. Snow not only really required the money in, especially in the boy who is bending over the oldest Rabbi, is his own bank in this emergency, but he was afraid of losing it It is this fact, the existence of colonies of Jews in England, and obtained therefrom twenty £1,000 notes, which he rolled rather than of a community of English Jews, which explains around a bottle of smelling-salts, and forwarded to the dismayed the puzzle about their names, which so often gives cause for so banker." lie was, however, ambitious, seeking, it is believed, much rather absurd ridicule. Many of the names supposed to be the peerage which was given to his son, Lord Eardley ; and, in specially Jewish in this country are not Jewish at all, but Portu- 1754 he resigned his membership in the Jewish congregation. The guese ; and Mr. A. Trollope, when in his new novel he makes resignation was, of course, accepted, and Abudiente, assiuning his great lawyer say that the name Lopez has a Jewish flavour the name of Gideon, declared himself a Christian, and brought about it, is talking nonsense, made sense only by an accident. The up all his children in that faith. Nine years after, however, he Jews are older than surnames, and the process going on among died, and then it was discovered that he had never ceased to be a them is precisely the process which went on some centuries. ago Jew, both in heart and faith :- among ourselves. Surnames have become convenient, and they " His executors forwarded a copy. of his will to the authorities of. thhot find them consciously, as our fathers found them unconsciously, .Sepaniivsehnaftoird tPhoertinugteuiemseenCtonogfrtegieatidoecn,ewasith. a request waswasg found in that document: ' To my executors—£1,000 to be paid by a protector—as appears to have happened in Portugal, where them and applied to and for the use of the Portuguese Synagogue in Jews bear names like Lopez, Villareal, Medina, Gomez, Da Souza, Bevis Mtarmksi LEonddoninmthceasceaLsihraall(rebgeublaurrierdowmofthgerJaevewss)',bwuirtyhmtf: Rodriguez, and the rest ; sometimes that of their property, as, place of a -flue'. ebir (member), and an Escaba (or prayer for the dead) said we believe, in the case of the d'Aguilars ; sometimes that of every Kipper? The reply of the Portuguese elders was brief and their trade-sign, as, for example, the Rothschilds ; sometimes dignified, and to the effect that orders had been given to the keeper to that of the city they live in, whence Breslauer, de Worms, Perugia, the dburytenogigtreudnedceantset,deanEdndthtaotleltaistheravand others ; and very frequently that given them at birth altered the remains e wao uarcal epos according e treated as liatmy ewaofs Eli, Ellis ; David, Davis, Davies, or Davidson ; Benjamin, Ben- contributed' P eioAlm '—as
which, never frequent anywhere, has in England been strictly that motive may have assisted, and in our days of social ambition synagogues. Lord George Gordon never was admitted into race has only felt in modern Europe, and which it shares with gregation formally rebuked the German one for allowing two surnames. We call them, for convenience, Bourbons, Hapsburgs, Norwegians to be admitted, contrary to the " express condition " Guelfs, Hohenzollerns, and Romanoffs, but those distinguishing on which Jews were admitted into England—a mistake, it words are only their surnames because they occasionally use is said—and the German Congregation passed strict rules them to describe their ancestral lines. The result of this practice a,,, ' st a similar error. The truth seems to be the Jews among English Jews is a medley of names from every country in care for no converts not descendants of Abraham, but are the world, a medley not found either in Germany or Portugal, always ready to receive back persons whose descent, however and of which they will have to rid themselves before a community corrupted, is clear to them. They themselves are almost mor- of distinctively English Jews can be fairly formed. bidly bitter against attempts to convert them. The Jewish It is a very odd fact, never, to our minds, satisfactorily ex- Chronicle, generally an even-tempered paper, can write of per- planed, that wherever the Jews have settled, they have been ac- secutors with much more temperance than of the London Society cused of proselytism. They never try to make converts, and are for the Conversion of the Jews ; and Mr. Picciotto, .though most unwilling to receive them, and the popular notion, which has usually impartial, can hardly keep down his dislike of those who repeatedly in Southern Europe caused riots, and in England rose have abandoned the communion. Abudientes or Bernals, Lopezes once to heights as extravagant as the similar but better-founded or Ricardos, they have never done so merely from conviction ; feeling about Catholics, arose, we suspect, from two causes,—one and he is lenient only to Isaac d'Israeli, the Premier's father, who was the propagandist force of their great dogma, and its attrac- in fact never quitted the pale, though in 1813 he threw up his Lion for a certain class of thinkers, not as Judaism, but as a form seat in the Synagogue because the Elders were determined to make of Deism, and the belief of the priesthood that it must be urged
him an office-bearer against his will. In a most remarkable so earnestly by Jews in order to make proselytes ; and the other letter he affirmed that he would not bear this, but denied that he was the habit of the race, when exposed to unendurable .perse-
was like Sanballat the Horonite, who impeded Nehemiah in re- cution, of professing any faith convenient, and then, when circum- building the Holy City. He never, however, took any step stances altered, of " relapsing " into the concealed belief. Mr. beyond erasing his name from the lists of the Synagogue, and in Disraeli was accused of exaggeration when he talked of Mom's 1821 he applied for the certificates of birth of his four children. family, most Catholic for three centuries, making offerings in the They were sent to him, and it appears from the record that the Synagogue ontheir anival in Great Britain, but he knew the customs eldest son, Benjamin, was born on December 21, 1804, a year of his people better than his critics. The Fathers of the Inquisition earlier than the date given in Dodd and Debrett, which is December did not punish "relapse" in the third and fourth generation for 31, 1805. As a rule, however, the Jew who quits the Synagogue nothing, and Mr. Picciotto clearly acknowledges the practice. The quits the community; and Mr. Picciotto bewails deeply the number Catholic family of Mendes, who accompanied Catharine of Bra- of Jews who, in England more especially, are tempted by sociaL ganza to England, professed themselves Jews on their arrival ; ambition, or dislike of social pressure, or the beauty of Gentile hundreds of Austrian families remained Catholics until 1870, maidens, to quit their ancient community and glide into the mass and then professed, creating everywhere in Austria a belief of the population. The danger of Judaism, indeed, it is evident that Judaism was becoming propagandist ; and Mr. from his book, arises, first of all, from perfect toleration.
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